Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 919: All-Star Emails

Episode Date: July 6, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about their All-Star selection philosophies, then answer listener emails about the DH, the trade deadline, hidden knuckleball benefits, the virtues of tanking, and more.

Together again, my tears have stopped falling. The long, lonely nights are now at an end. At an end a six-episode break, or six episodes when we were not together, by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hi, Ben. Any more episodes not together, people would have started to wonder whether there was an Archie Punjabi, Julianna Margulies situation going on. We're never in the same episode. Yeah.

But no, that wasn't it. We were just globetrotting. Yep. So we're going to do an email show today. The first email show in a couple of weeks. Anything you want to talk about before we do? I, uh, no, I, I'm, you know, me with banter. It's always, it's always no. And then yes, it's a banter. Do you remember when you were a kid and you'd like, uh, you, you'd go to camp or something and everybody would be sitting around telling jokes and you'd hear like 9,000 jokes in 20 minutes and you'd be dying and laughing and everything.

And then the next day you'd try to tell somebody the jokes and you could only remember like one of them. That is me and banter. Like I just can't keep them cataloged. Yeah. Well, Ryan Webb was designated for assignment while you were away. So we didn't get to talk about that. I don't have anything else to say other than the drought continues. Yeah. Do you have any thoughts on the great all-star definition debate of our times? I don't know if we've talked about this. We don't tend to talk

about the all-star game very much. No. Is this happening on Twitter right now as we speak? Like something about like whether you have to be a star or not to be an all-star? Yeah. Well, that's, I mean, people will use the fact that star is in the name, the way that some people will use the fact that fame is in the hall of fame to mean something. And, you know, the fact that it's all-star, I mean, that's not a good argument because people disagree about what star means. Sure. But sure. Sure, but I mean, it's a subjective, it's going to be subjective no matter what. So if I'm not, this is not my position, but if somebody's belief is that an all-star game should be all stars, then that seems like as good a kind of playing field to argue over as who's been the best over the course of eight weeks

weighted against their career averages and so on. I mean, like there's no good, clear, easy way of doing this, right? So why not? Right. Well, the word star doesn't preclude the first half star definition or interpretation, right? I mean, it's who was the star of the first half of the season. That's what the people who think that those people should be all stars think. They still think they're stars. They're not as nationally known as whoever, John Carlos Stanton or someone who doesn't have a good first half, but is well known. So, you know, I think both people think they're selecting stars. They're just defining star differently. Yeah, exactly. So then it's not helpful to say it's the all-star game.

So why don't we send stars? Oh, come on. Everyone thinks they're sending stars. No, come on. Nobody thinks Eduardo Nunez is a star. Eduardo Nunez, did I get the right Nunez? Which, who's the Nunez in the all-star game this year yeah eduardo nunez is an all-star all right i it's fine look ben remember a week and a half ago when you wanted to have a home run derby of first base coaches well no that was the one i didn't want to watch yeah but you would watch a home run i wanted every other one you suggested virtually anything else and so you've you i think that that, you have demonstrated that you appreciate the appeal of sort of charisma and characters more than necessarily the actual skill of those involved or anything else. run derby just to see it, then, you know, like, at that point, you just have to allow that everybody's got their own way of deciding who they want to watch play baseball in meaningless ways. If it mattered, if it really mattered, then we could have a real, you know, rigorous debate

about this. But as it does not matter, it is simply taste. It is like you and me arguing about whether I should get a tomato on my hamburger. You have no standing. Just let me choose what I want. It is taste. It is taste. And I'm saying they're both valid interpretations of what star means. I'm just saying that the word star in itself does not settle the debate. All right.

So I see what you're saying. So you're saying that people cannot use the word star as a mallet against other people's definitions of star. Like Eduardo Nunez has arguably starred this season for the Twins, at least relative to all the other Twins. And it is no shame on the grammar of the All-Star game to have him in it. Right. It's like when people debate most valuable player and they say, well, it's the most valuable player, not the best player. But to other people, most valuable and best are the same thing. So it doesn't, you know, it doesn't really settle the argument in my mind. So... Wait, so you've brought up three examples and really the three kind of most debated honors for a player in the, you know, the all-star game, the most valuable player, and

the Hall of Fame in which the creators, the originators of these honors decided to put, you know, colorful, evocative language in there, perhaps unnecessarily. Yeah. Do you think that these are weaknesses in the award that they have these words in them that maybe add a certain amount of glitz to them, but also create, you know, ambiguity about how literally we are to take them? Or is this good for the awards that they are better than simply calling them best player, best players, and then best player parentheses long term. Yeah, I think they are features for the people who

hand out these awards and honors. I think they make me frustrated and less interested in the award. I would maybe be more interested if it were best and we actually knew what we were, we all agreed what we were talking about. But the fact that we don't means that we can have these debates and I'm usually not all that interested in the debates. And so, but most people are, and most people love talking about all-star snubs.

And, you know, we talked about Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera plenty of times on this podcast. And people talk about Jack Morris or, you know, whoever. And these debates go on and on and on. And you could end them pretty quickly if you just renamed them or had some set definition. But the Hall of Fame likes that people debate Hall of Fame candidates. And I'm sure that Major League Baseball likes that people debate All-Star selections. So I think it's probably a smart thing.

Yeah, I think I agree with that. The only thing is that I don't know that there would be any less debate if they were called best player, best player team, and best career or whatever. I don't know that there'd be any less debate and it might be, so for the Hall of Fame's purposes or for Major League Baseball purposes, they might get just as much debate and it might be, so for the Hall of Fame's purposes or for Major League Baseball purposes, they might get just as much debate and it might be less frustrating for everybody involved to have everybody sort of reading from the same text, you know, like using the same, you know, basic paradigm for deciding these things because it is very frustrating to,

you know, argue with somebody who is basically operating, you know, in an argument that has different physical properties than the one that you're arguing with. Right. So if you if you call it best player, then maybe you wouldn't get the arguments about team quality mattering as much in MVP debates. You know, you you can't be valuable because the team didn't make the playoffs. If it were just best player, maybe you wouldn't have as much of a leg to stand on with that sort of angle. player maybe you wouldn't have as much of a leg to stand on with that sort of angle so yeah if you called it if you if you called it best player of the first half or something then that would be pretty unambiguous and uh you couldn't really make the argument that i don't know stanton or or andrew mccutcheon or whoever should be there because it's for the stars you couldn't argue

that they are the best players of the first half but the argument that they should be there because it's for the stars. You couldn't argue that they are the best players of the first half, but the argument that they should be there because they're stars is totally reasonable and I'm somewhat sympathetic to it. So I don't want to equate that necessarily with the team quality MVP debate, which I'm less sympathetic toward. Is it your preference that the best players are there, that the most entertaining players are there, or that the best players are there, that the most entertaining players are there, or that the best players from this season are there? I think they're all considerations. So I'm trying to come up with the weighting that I would assign to each thing. It does matter to me if you have one anomalous first half and you are one of the best players in baseball,

but you're not one of the most nationally known, I still think you deserve a spot there unless there's someone just as good as you are who had a much longer and better track record. And if you are a former star who's really fallen on hard times, I mean, I don't know. The whole system, as Joe Sheehan wrote in his newsletter today, the whole system is set up to make strange and maybe wrong and inconsistent all-star selections. So it's hard to really obsess over any one snub or pick when, you know, the fan voting is obviously it's catered toward teams that are playing well or, you know, fan bases that actually care enough to vote. And so you end up with starting lineups full of players from a couple of teams, and that's just how it goes. And between that and the players just voting completely differently from the fans and from the managers, and, you know, you have three different parties selecting these teams, and they're all doing it in different ways.

And it's just a really strange mishmash of criteria for All-Stars. So the whole thing is crazy, and so that's probably why I don't spend too much time on it. That and the fact that, of course, we all get to see these players all the time, so it's not as much of a treat to see these players play each other in a game because we are seeing that all season long, and we can watch them whenever we want. So it's just, I think inherently going to be a less special event than it once was. But I think for me,

you definitely, if you want it to be a showcase for the sport and you want it to attract other fans or show off the best that the sport has to offer, then definitely I think you have to give some consideration to, you know, players who have been there before and players who have made names for themselves and players who are fun to watch. So I do think that is a consideration. But would I want to say that, you know, someone like Adam Duvall can never make an all-star team because he hasn't been all-star quality before? No, I wouldn't want to say that. I think if you come out of nowhere and you have one crazy season and you're actually good and no one knows who you are, I think you still have a pretty decent case. I don't know that Adam Duvall was the best selection anyway. He's got a 290 on base percentage, but I'm just saying that someone like Adam Duvall could be on my

all-star team. Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, I don't, I don't even know how to answer my own question because I don't have there. The only thing that is interesting about the all-star game, the two things that I think are interesting about it. One is seeing starting pitchers, pitching and relief. Great start, seeing starting pitchers pitching in relief. Great starting pitchers pitching in relief. Always fun, never not fun. Which you don't even get to see as much as you'd like because instead we get to see relievers pitching in relief. Right. So I like that and I like just the general like awesome people hanging out together aspect of it.

general like awesome people hanging out together aspect of it like there are every once in a while little details will uh will sneak into the broadcast uh where you're like oh look at that awesome people hanging out together and that's fun and so i guess uh to to that end to the latter end i guess i'm not that interested in adam duvall unless adam duvall is very good at at being starstruck or something so So maybe I would rather. But then on the other hand, I don't know if I need to see McCutcheon and Stanton there every year either. Well, yeah, I think I'd rather. Well, I don't know. There's a certain point.

If you're playing at something significantly less than your usual capacity, whether you're hurt or whatever, I don't think you should get an automatic ticket. I mean, there's probably a certain point at which a player wouldn't even want to go, right? It's almost embarrassing to be on an all-star team and, you know, be batting 240 and just not being up to your usual skill level. You know, in a way, it sort of cheapens the achievement, I guess, in that, well, you didn't even have to be good and you're an all-star. So what does an all-star even mean? And it's a little different if it's kind of a farewell tour thing, if it's like a tip of the cap at the end of a career thing and you have a diminished Derek Jeter, diminished Cal Ripken.

I don't really have a problem with that. I mean, whatever. really have a problem with that. I mean, whatever, you give them a nice moment on the national stage and everyone's happy and everyone remembers that more so than they remember the snub of the unknown reserve who had better stats that season but didn't get onto the team. But I don't think you, I'm not so far to the star side of the spectrum, the long-lasting star side of the spectrum that I would just give an automatic pass to, you know, former MVPs or people who had achieved a certain status. I think you still have to play at a pretty high level to have a spot. Yeah, yeah.

I don't—yeah, I've felt many different ways in this conversation. I'm back on Team Duvall because I think I'll feel more emotions about seeing Adam Duvall than tucking in one extra famous player. That's the other thing because you know Adam Duvall will feel more emotions. Exactly. The first-time All-Star is still a significant thing. So maybe I would err on the side of the first-time All-Star. I would feel fine snubbing a second-time All-Star who is not of sufficient star caliber. But the first-time All-star is a pretty cool thing.

Yeah. And it's, I don't know. I think it's just a nice message to send that you don't have to have made the all-star team before to make the all-star team again, that anyone can be an all-star. You can have a breakout, you can be great and you can be on the stage with the other great players.

And, you know, I mean, when, when we talk about a gold glove players. And, you know, I mean, when we talk about gold glove voters, just, you know, gold glove winners, just kind of getting an automatic gold glove for years and years because they won one before, that frustrates us.

And it's a little bit different in that this is a showcase and maybe it doesn't matter if they're actually the best players. But still, I think it's nice to recognize achievement, even if it's by people who haven't achieved that much before. All right. We talked about that longer than I planned to. So let's get to emails. And we got a few emails, responses to our Mitch Trout hypothetical from a couple weeks ago where we talked about whether a team would sign Mike Trout's identical twin who has never played baseball.

A few people responded with the Jose Canseco, Ozzie Canseco precedent. So Michael was one of those who said, The Mitch Trout hypothetical reminded me that this has actually happened with the identical twin of former Sonoma Stomper, Jose Canseco. Jose was not Mike Trout, but he peaked at around a 10-win player. Ozzie was younger than Mitch Trout when he switched to the outfield, and he was still a sub-replacement player. So I guess the Ozzie precedent is a pretty good argument

for why a team wouldn't want to sign Mitch Trout, because it's different in that Ozzie was drafted as a pitcher, so he had plenty of high-level baseball experience, unlike Mitch Trout. And he converted to the outfield after Jose proved that he was a good player. Ozzie converted at a younger age than Mike Trout's current age. And still, he never made anything of himself as a player. So that's a pretty good guide, I guess, for Mitch Trout. So obviously, Jose was not the equal of Mike Trout, even with chemical assistance. And so

maybe that changes things a little. I don't know. Was Ozzie Canseco a juicer? Can we assume that that was the case? I don't know if that's actually been revealed. He certainly had the same build. For legal purposes, I don't think you can. But let's see. So definitely for legal purposes, we are not assuming anything about Ozzy Gonseko. No. However, what you know about humanity, can you assume? I mean, he is the twin, but then you've got nature.

I would say, and they are... I believe they're still close. So he would have maybe continued to be an influence on his brother. I would say that... I would go so far as to say that the chances of Ozzy Canseco having done performance enhancing drugs, I would assign it 1% lower than whatever gets us in legal trouble. Yeah. So, yeah. Although there is a long precedent in fiction for evil twins and good twins. So that might also apply to clean twins and dirty twins.

A lot of times, though, the trait of an evil person is actually very similar to the trait of a good person. They're flip sides of the same traits. And so it really does come down to your choices. And so it might be that they're very similar people with similar drives and ambition. And then, yeah, it would just come down to their choice. And you would really have no way of knowing. I mean, the mystery of choices and free will is hard to get into at this stage in an email episode. All right. But it's instructive, I think, the fact that Ozzie turned out to be as good as Ozzie Canseco

is definitely a data point that you would want to consider in your Mitch Trout signing decision. All right. Aaron says, am I crazy to think one factor in the Cubs' insistence in holding on to Kyle Schwarber is a belief that the National League could add a DH following the completion of the new CBA later this year? Oh my gosh, that's not going to happen this year, is it? No, I don't think so. You're not crazy to think about it, but I don't think there's any possibility. I think if that were going to happen, we would have heard far more about it by this point. And everything Rob Manfred has said indicates

that he is in favor of status quo, and it just doesn't seem to be a big point of contention currently. Well, it's always a big point of contention, but it doesn't seem to be very high on the negotiating agenda from what we can tell. So wouldn't expect it to happen that quickly. And there are plenty of other reasons why the Cubs would want to hold on to Kyle Schwarber. So it seems like those are probably sufficient. You know, what's crazy is that Ozzie Canseco is actually two inches shorter than Jose. They're identical twins, two inches difference. If you can get that much variance on height, then you would think that for things that are much more precise and

skill-based and experience-based, you'd have extremely wide error bars on those. Yeah, definitely. All right. How do you get two inches taller? Did they just not feed Ozzy a nutritious breakfast? Is it possible that maybe he had a thyroid? Some environment. Jose started taking. At age eight. Some sort of.

Jose started taking growth hormone earlier than we know. Yeah. It could be that there was an environmental factor that suppressed Ozzy's thyroid production. Yeah. Could be. It could be that maybe was an environmental factor that suppressed Ozzy's thyroid production. Yeah, could be. It could be that maybe Ozzy was, no, I guess you've been in a small car with Jose Canseco. Jose is not. I was going to say that maybe Ozzy is more honest, but having seen Jose up close, I don't think that's an issue here. No, I'm surprised Jose's only 6'4".

Yeah, he is a monster of a man yeah not a monster physically speaking for legal purposes i just want to make it with i mean size wise he is as large as a six foot four monster yeah okay brett says jeff merrick of sportsnet has discussed his idea for improving the NHL trade deadline a couple of times on Hockey Central at Noon and Merrick vs. Wyszynski podcasts. He wishes the NHL would set it up for two days like they do the draft. He wants a stadium with every team having a table on a main floor with phones and mandating someone sit there. He thinks it would make for great TV viewing among the diehards and would lead to more trades. His basis is just being in proximity creates trades,

thinking of the draft and GM meetings. Would you like to see two days of the MLB GMs put together for the trade deadline in such a manner? Would it help the trade deadline be a more enjoyable fan experience? The other thing, he's probably mentioned this, but the other reason that it could plausibly lead to more trades is that if you were a GM and you just had to sit there for 48 hours while a camera basically captures you not doing anything, there would be an intense pressure for you to at least do busy work, to at least pick up the phone. I think there'd be a lot of fake conversations that were prearranged between GMs.

Like, hey, can you bail me out? I don't have any scripted content. Yeah, exactly. It'd be well, I don't know if you could actually make the GMs sit there. I think you might have to have representatives like you do at the draft where you just have some,

some team figure sit there and relay the, the instructions from someone who actually matters? I don't know that it would be as entertaining. Well, so this is the thing. You know, like reality shows are obviously not really reality. They're heavily edited. They're heavily produced. They're manipulated.

And if you can't get past that, they're not, they're not that entertaining. And I am a person who cannot get past that. I, I don't find them compelling at all. If there is, I guess there's some sort of competition based shows. Like I liked project runway, uh, that I have enjoyed, but generally I, I'm, I'm just too aware of the editing ticks that give away all the, all the, uh, the stuff that has been left out or shot oddly to change what you think about things. And so to me, this sounds horrible because I would feel like it was edited, it was produced, it was false. And yet I know that The Bachelor is an extremely popular show that lots of people that I know love, and so is professional wrestling,

for that matter. Including yours truly. Yes, including everybody who I follow, unfortunately, on Twitter. So while it doesn't sound entertaining to me, I do see why it would be appealing to most people, and maybe I would too. It seems like the last thing you want as a GM is for your players to know how easily traded they are, like the ones that you keep. You don't want them thinking that they were ever considered to be traded, that they were as disposable as they actually are. You want them to feel like they're part of a team.

That's a huge part of getting through a long season is having everybody feel like they're part of something special, a cohesive unit. And it seems to me like it would be a real challenge to have any extra, that GMs would really be disincentivized from having sort of free, wide ranging, freewheeling conversations that would put more names into public consumption as trade targets or trade offers. Yeah, right. I mean, this would be fun if we could actually hear all the conversations going on. I think we would all enjoy that. But if we could hear them all, I mean, first of all, there's just no way that you could

compel anyone with a team to have those conversations out in the open. Even if you put a camera on them, they would just, I don't think they would say anything real. If there were actual trade talks, I think they'd be going on off camera somewhere because you couldn't put the entire front office on TV. So I don't think that would ever work. And if we can't hear every word and we're just watching them sit there and talk on the phone or maybe talk to each other, that's not all that interesting either. So I don't think it works that well. I don't think it works unless we get full transparency and I don't see how that happens. Yeah, it's not an idea I like at all. However, I want to ask you about a

little bit different twist on this. If there were documentary filmmakers who were given complete access to all this stuff, but it couldn't be released for X years, how big a number could X be for you to still be interested in watching the end product? And let's say not just one time, because I think even if it were 19, you know, like for one year, we would all be interested in watching the end product. And let's say not just one time, because I think even if it were 19, you know, like for one year, we would all be interested in it. But let's say you want to make this a sustainable model where it is released every, every, every year's trade deadline is documented and released in X years. How many, how big could X be that you would watch it every year that it would be destination TV for you? Oh, man. I think I might go up to like 20 at least.

Yeah, I do too. I think I would watch it no matter what. I mean I would want to watch it just to see kind of the alternate history of what could have happened if a move had been made. If a move had been made, I'd want to watch it to get insights into executives who are maybe still in the game, which of course could be decades and decades. So I think it would be very, I mean, it wouldn't be interesting if you were, say, you know, 15 years old maybe and you'd never heard of all these players and you weren't alive when all of it was happening. But if you were an adult who was watching baseball at the time and was familiar with all of these people, then I think it would be almost evergreen. Yeah, that's exactly right, I think. X is always growing because X is your age minus, say, 8.

Basically, any season that you followed. Yeah, right. Okay, play index? Sure. Yeah, right. Okay, play index? the all-star game not only mattered but mattered more than everything basically that like you had you just had to win do whatever you need to do to win you have to follow baseball rules general baseball rules and you have to have one player from every major league team uh represented but every other rule custom tradition is thrown out and you can manage however you want all right and so in the process of doing this and inspired by a sort of a

suggestion that Zachary Levine gave me, I looked at whether knuckleballers are all-star killers. And the kind of basis of this hypothesis is that knuckleball is, of random. It's not necessarily like a ton of skill from pitch to pitch or a ton of correlation between how good you throw it and the result. There's a lot of randomness from the pitcher's end, and then there's probably a lot of randomness from the hitter's end, and there's not a lot you can do as a hitter. You either get one that floats or you get one that doesn't float or whatever, and either the guy's wild or he's not

wild. And so it seemed like while a stronger hitter who connected with a knuckleball would still hit the ball a lot further, and a faster hitter who put it on the ground would, you know, reach base more often, and maybe a more patient hitter would be more patient, and there'd be all these ways that skill would matter. It seemed like skill would matter less from a hitter's perspective than, uh, against any other pitcher. And plus the fact that these are just not what you're selecting. You're not selected from high school upward or from junior high upward for your ability to hit the knuckleball. You're selected for your ability to hit the fastball, the slider, the change up, the curve ball, the knuckleball is an afterthought, right? Because you only face maybe one a year. And so basically what we were looking at is whether Stephen Wright is, you know,

who besides being a very good pitcher, whether he's actually like the best pitcher against all-stars on account of all-stars don't have much of an advantage over him. Everybody's basically the same against him. So to measure this, I don't have enough Stephen Wright in history to draw from. So I looked at Tim Wakefield, who's the closest thing we've had to Stephen Wright in a while. I looked at his best five-year run, which was from 2001 to 2005. When he threw more than 1,000 innings, he had an ERA plus of 115 or something like that. He was a good pitcher, Stephen Wright-esque, throwing a knuckleball almost all the time. And I used the play index to get the 25 best hitters in the American League

during those five years. And with a minimum of 1,500 plate appearances, the 25 worst hitters in the American League those five years. And so there's about 100. So it's basically the top quartile and the bottom quartile of all hitters. And the good hitters overall had a.373 on base percentage and a.515 slugging percentage. So that's pretty much what you know to be a very good hitter. It's a.900 OPS. The very bad hitters had, remember this is the offensive era, had a 324 on base percentage, a 395 slug. So a 720, you know, basically like a 720 OPS. Those are very bad hitters. And then I looked at how they had done against Tim Wakefield, those two cohorts. And

sure enough, the gap shrinks considerably. The good hitters on base edge goes from 50 points down to 30, and the slugging edge goes from 120 points down to 45. So knuckleballs are, in fact, this great, well, at least for this five-year period against this one pitcher, were this great flattening effect where everybody kind of became the same. Like the difference between them was greater than halved. And this has, if this were true, if this held up, this would have potential for, you know, potentially would have potential.

This would have potential for real strategic deployment if you had a guy like Stephen Wright who is already good or maybe you have a guy who's worse than Stephen Wright who's a you know number four starter in the regular season puts up a 3.8 ERA but you know he's also going to put up something like a you know 3.8 ERA in the postseason against better hitters whereas all your aces with their 3.2 ERAs are also going to have 3.8 ERAs in the postseason, there might be a real benefit to having that guy on your team to basically pay more for him, knowing that against the toughest competition, in situations where you have the toughest competition, you can essentially neutralize that competition. It's interesting to think about.

Yeah, that's very cool. That's another underrated thing about knuckleballers. I know you mentioned that you're not that big a fan of the knuckleballer in general when we talked about Wright recently, and it's partially because they're not always that fun to watch unless it's a really crazy pitch that everyone gifts and we have a physicist on to talk about. But another nice thing about knuckleballers is that you get all of these research questions and studies surrounding knuckleballers. Like, is there this knuckleball effect against great players? Is there like a knuckleball hangover effect? There's been lots of research done about that, whether you're screwed up after facing a knuckleballer just

because it's so different from the normal routine. So it's nice to just have something completely different thrown in there so that we can actually come up with and answer these hypotheticals. Yep. I quoted you. I quoted you in my piece. You did the knuckleball effect piece a few years ago and found it to be real. And for your purposes, maybe for general purposes, it wasn't enough to make decisions based on. But for my purposes, for this one game, I totally used that and had Stephen Wright start the game knowing that almost everybody he faces the first time through the order would bat a second time because starters tend to bat a second time. And I posited that, in fact, going from Stephen Wright to Chris Sale would be a significant enough effect to make

a personnel choice based on it. So I did. Yeah. And we didn't in our little all-star debate at the beginning of this episode, we didn't even talk about the wrinkle of the this time and every time it counts in the World Series home field advantage. Does the fact that the game has World Series implications help that there is some sort of actual stake here sway your team selection philosophy at all? It does not. If I actually were the manager, I would only get to choose like two people. So I would still be the wrong person to ask. But if I actually were the manager, I probably would err on the side of winning for that reason. But it's like 96% of the game is played not to actually maximize your chances of winning.

So it's not really the top priority in this either. So no. Right. Okay. All right. So use the coupon code BP when you sign up for the Play Index At BaseballReference.com Get the discounted price of $30

On a one year subscription So this is just a quick one That I know you already agree with So it's not even really a question But it's a comment from a listener named Max Who says Can we please fix the phrase Unintentional intentional walk?

The thing this is used to refer to is most definitely an intentional unintentional walk, not vice versa. It's a classic moronic lazy usage of language resembling saying a double negative from the tongue of Phil Simms or Tim McCarver, except somehow it's permeated all of baseball.

An unintentional intentional walk is literally impossible, or if you're willing to stretch your definition of intentional walk, would be possibly the weirdest thing ever seen in a baseball game. Next year, if you can just put up four to signal intentional walk, perhaps this will be a thing, and actually I'll venture that it may happen, which makes it all the more important that we correctly differentiate between these two events. Do you like semi-intentional walk?

Yeah, I guess it's okay. We have a lot of ways to describe this, whether it's pitching around someone, pitching carefully to someone. I don't know how many terms we need for this one thing, but semi-intentional, that's okay. Yeah, I think you're right. Pitch pitching around is perfect and it captures it exactly and and having semi-intentional walk or intentional unintentional walk or unintentional intentional it all giving a noun to it implies almost that you're counting it and that it's a stat now and that you need to like you need to have it counted and we don't it's not something we count so we don't i

don't think we need a noun for this i think the verb is fine the verb is much stronger yeah okay last one from a patreon supporter named peter who says in the world of sports today it is impossible not to talk about tanking or rebuilding bottoming out etc but there is one aspect that I don't recall hearing mentioned much, and in some ways it pertains to this year's Cubs team. People tend to either chastise teams for rigging the system through tanking or shrug and admit that it's a good strategy if you want to be good and not end up like the team I support, the poor doomed by Mike Illich to be middling Tigers.

My question is this. Should we take more time to appreciate the process for the great teams it brings us? As a fan of baseball, as a sport, I appreciate watching the greatness of a team like the Cubs. So as Bill Simmons likes to talk about, in history you have teams like the Lakers ending up with Magic Johnson, birthing the Showtime Lakers, or you have the Spurs scoring Tim Duncan because of a down year, giving us almost two decades of great Spurs teams. Of course, baseball isn't basketball and tanking, sorry, rebuilding doesn't work the same way or with nearly the same speed. But perhaps we should step back and say thanks to a strategy that gives us great collections of talent like the Cubs.

I find that I enjoy it less when a team has tanked, though. And this is fairly recent. I don't know if I felt this way 10 years ago, and I don't know if the average fan feels this way or should feel this way, but I personally do sort of feel this way. I get less satisfaction knowing that there was something sort of inorganic about how the great team was put together. And so I think you will have great teams regardless.

I mean, for instance, with the Spurs example, the Spurs didn't tank. The Spurs had one down year and made the most of it. But they didn't go through an ugly process that their fans had to hold their nose for. And it was certainly not automatic. You know, they also got really lucky. They won that lottery, and they happened to get, you know,

they won that lottery in a year that the first pick was somebody who became a transcendental superstar, and maybe partly because he was, I mean, largely maybe because he was in their organization. And so I don't think that you can really say that the Spurs are an example of this. And so my point, I guess, is that teams like the Spurs happen anyway. And I would rather root for a team like the Spurs or to watch and observe a great team, a dynastic team or an all-time great team that felt like it was put together in a little bit of a less cynical way. So if I thought that there was some eternal shortage of great teams,

then maybe I would reconsider it. But I think great teams, they happen, they're going to happen, and we always find things to cheer for anyway. Yeah, I think I agree. If the tanking were enabling us to see something that we wouldn't see otherwise, then I would be in favor of it. Maybe if it were the only way to build a real juggernaut team, the likes of which we rarely see in baseball, then maybe it would be worth it once in a while, or at least you could highlight the positive aspects of it But as it is, I mean, the Cubs have essentially the same record As the Texas Rangers right now

I think the Cubs are a better team But, you know, the separation between the Cubs and the Rangers Or the Cubs and the Giants Or, you know, the Cubs and the next best teams in baseball Is not so significant It appeared that it might be for a little while, but it probably isn't so significant that we're going to look back and say that the Cubs are the kind of team you couldn't have built without doing what the

Cubs did. So not sure it really rises to that level. I guess the things that the Cubs did, it's always more impressive if you can do it while also winning. And a team like the Giants is doing that now. And a team like the Rangers is sort of doing that. I mean, they had a little down period, but nothing like the extended slump of the Cubs or the Astros. So I guess you could say that maybe it's a more foolproof way to ensure that you get to be good again in a reasonable time frame. Like if you do get stuck in the sort of Tigers situation, then maybe that's bad for baseball. Maybe that's bad for fans of that team. But the Tigers are kind of a good example of why there's some merits to the other approach,

because Tigers were a really good team for a long time. And even now in the twilight of their time as a contender, I mean, they're still watchable. They're still in it. They're still in the wildcard race. So you would probably rather have the Tigers kind of limping along as they are now than you would, say, have them be a 50-win team for three years in order to be slightly better at the end of it. So I think you're right. The Rangers, and I know you know this, but just to sort of clarify, the Rangers really had, they had one year in which they were decimated by injuries. Otherwise, 87, 90, 96, 93, 91, down year, 88.

So they've won 87 or more in six of seven years before this year. They're going to do it again this year. They won 88 or more in five of six, and it's going to be six of seven. So I think they were just every bit as winning as the Giants were in that time. Yeah, right. They were just as every bit as winning as the Giants were in that time, I think. Yeah, right. So it's possible to do that and just rebuild on the fly. And that's the best of all possible approaches. All right.

That is it for today. Thank you to Russell Carlton for trying to salvage yesterday's outro. You did a pretty passable impression of me when I say that you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Today's five listeners who have already pledged their support are Daniel Wilson, Tim Ellithorpe, Max Schleicher, Byron Eknoyan, and Kevin Seip. Thank you. You can buy our book. The only rule is it has to work. Our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team.

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