Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 925: Position Players the Projections Missed

Episode Date: July 14, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about the Sonoma Stompers and MLB payroll disparities, then try to outwit PECOTA in projecting hitters’ second halves.

Now who's the best boy in the casting director? And the editor splicing your face from the scene It's all in the hands of a lazy projector That forgetting, embellishing, lying machine. That forgetting, embellishing, lying machine. Hello and welcome to episode 925 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus presented by our supporters on Patreon and the Baseball Reference Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus.

Hello. Hey, Ben. Congratulations to the Sonoma Stompers, the team that they get a spot reserved in the final playoff game unless they win the second half of the season, in which case they wouldn't even have to play that. So does the Stompers' success in the first half, and it was kind of a dogfight, it came down to the wire. Last year we had a very easy first half run, but they did not. They had to fight it out, but they did. Does their success in any way retroactively influence your opinion of our performance with the Stompers last season? No, it doesn't.

And I don't even know if saying that, I don't even know if I'm saying that in a way that props us up or brings us down. Because there's still some of our fingerprints on this roster. But I just think that every team is its own beast and it's really hard to, you know, every team finds its own way of being good. And last year in the first half, we were good. And this year in the first half, they're good. And I don't think it's that simple to tease out what made them good It doesn't make me any less happy with our success in the first half last year And I'm extremely happy for their success in the first half this year

It was a great game Yes, it was It was streaming and Sean Conroy was starting And we were watching, lots of people in the Facebook group were watching It was not back and forth exactly But the Stompers kept taking larger leads and then losing those leads. And so it was a fun one. And yes, congratulations to them.

And I hope they win the whole thing. And then we have to try to wrestle with what that means in the paperback edition of the book next year. So my dad clipped something out of the Wall Street Journal the other day. I don't know what section it was in, but it's a tiny little square advertisement. And it says, pro baseball team for sale. Club in storied Atlantic League of professional baseball located in large attractive market on East Coast. Team built. Bridgeport. It could be Bridgeport. Team built slash priced to sell. New owner has ability for immediate success with attractive lease and

community. Are you interested? Do you want to go in on an Atlantic League team? If your dad's funding it. I'll inquire. I'll find out what team it is. That seems like a good place to start. Yeah, I don't know. Is an Atlantic League team, with all you know about IndieBall now, is an IndieBall team a good place to start. Yeah, I don't know. Is an Atlantic League team, with all you know about IndieBall now,

is an IndieBall team a good investment, do you think, at this stage? Or is it still rich person's hobby where you expect to lose money? Well, IndieBall on the whole has been thriving and growing in popularity and expanding lately, but I would guess that buying an individual franchise is still a worse way to spend your money than, I don't know, putting it in a mutual fund or something. Yeah. There's certainly a lot more players getting signed out of indie leagues than there used to be, and it's becoming more and more a part of the baseball ecosystem, the talent funnel, I guess. And if Rob Manfred is telling the truth, and I don't believe he is, but if he's telling the truth about the threat that basic labor law poses to the current minor

league system with your six affiliates in every franchise, you could imagine that if he's being honest and if teams actually do go from, say, six teams to four because of the cost, then that would make IndieBall a lot bigger deal. There'd be, first of all, less competition and more talent, but there'd also be a whole lot more players going back and forth. You'd have a lot more familiar names and you'd have a lot more player, you know, you'd have, you'd start to have actual, you know, in time, you'd have a lot of major leaguers on rosters probably who on their resume have Bridgeport, what, Bluefish? Was that what they were? Yeah. Yeah. And so, so if that were the case, then it would be

a growth market for sure. I don't really believe that's the case though, but all the same, it's growing anyway. Yeah. Well, someone else wants to buy it and fund a sequel to The Only Rule. Maybe we could work something out. That'd be different. We could own the team this time instead of being faux GMs for a season. So Henry Druskell, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, wrote an article for Baseball Perspectives earlier this week. And like a lot of his articles, I enjoyed this article. This was about payroll disparities in Major League Baseball and how they're smaller than they used to be. And I don't know how much this has to do with the fact

that the average payroll keeps going up. And so if the average payroll is higher, maybe it's harder to have a big range around that payroll or it's harder to have outliers. On the other hand, maybe it's not because teams keep making more and more money and the league keeps making more and more money every year. So the rich teams probably make more of that, although keeps making more and more money every year. So the rich teams probably

make more of that. Although I guess the advanced media money is distributed equally. Anyway, it's a good article about how the ultra poor teams in baseball really do tend to lose more, even though there are exceptions to that rule. And the ultra rich teams in baseball really do tend to win more. And it's not just that they are more likely to have really, really good teams, but that they are very much more likely not to have terrible teams, even though the Yankees are trying to show that there are exceptions to that this season. Even the Yankees are kind of an example of that in that they've been putting together pretty lousy teams and yet they really haven't been bad. They haven't finished below 500

yet. So I thought it was interesting. Henry wondered in the article why it was happening. It seems to be not just this season, but the last few seasons that there's less and less of a discrepancy between payrolls. And he speculated that it might just be as simple as the luxury tax, which is not really a brand new thing, but maybe teams are taking it into account more. And when you go over the penalty for four years in a row, you're paying 50% of everything else that you're spending on top of your regular payroll. And so it's a lot and you do see teams kind of trying to dip below that to reset their luxury tax threshold. So I don't know if you had any thoughts about it, but I wanted to shout it out and I will link to it. And we've talked in the past about parity

and how for a while there, there seemed to be no relationship between spending and success. I don't know if that's held up well in the couple of years since we've talked about it, but there is less discrepancy in payrolls and that seems like a good thing yeah and the key uh the key word that you said i think is ultra rich uh there isn't i i didn't i don't think henry is making the case that being a little rich makes you foolproof uh in you know uh bulletproof yeah or that a team that spends 160 million is significantly more likely than a team that spends $120 million to be successful. And we can all think of lots of examples of teams that have been simply rich that have been woefully disappointing sometimes in our memories because they were rich, because they spent a lot of money

on bad players, aging players, because they got caught up in the pressure to win every year and because they did things that hurt their long-term viability in pressure to win every year and to, you know, and because they did things that hurt their long-term viability in pursuit of that every year. It's really the ultra is the key thing here. If you are rich enough, you can essentially beat the game. Although only up until a certain point, the playoffs are still the playoffs. Yeah. And he pointed out that I'm quoting now, teams in a more moderate spending range with payrolls between 130% and 170% of league average don't enjoy the same guarantees of success that those from 170% and up do. bring the ultra rich teams down slightly into that very rich but not ultra rich band, then maybe there would be even less of a discrepancy.

But things seem pretty healthy in this respect overall relative to where they've been any time recently. Anything you want to bring up before we move on? Nope. Okay. So I want to do a quick exercise that we have done at least once in the past. And this is building off one of my favorite pieces of research from the past few years, which was by Mitchell Lichman. And I'm trying to remember when it was, was it even, was it last year? It was maybe two years ago. It was fairly recent. And he showed basically that projections really matter for players even very deep into the season. You should continue to trust the projections,

even when you're sure that some player is doing something differently and he's a different guy than the projection system thinks he is. That's not often the case. And on the whole, your best bet is to bet on the projections. And the projections shift a little, so there are rest-of-season projections, whether you're using Pocota or Steamer or Zips or whatever, they're updated in season. So if you have a crazy first half, then your projection for the second half will be a bit more optimistic than your preseason projection would be. And so Mitchell looked at this and he looked at even the guys who exceeded their projections or fell short of their projections by the most in any given year. And your best bet, if you want to project their performance for the rest of the current season,

if you want to project their performance for the rest of the current season, is just to go with those rest-of-season numbers and not try to talk yourself into someone actually being better than he was before. And so we did this exercise, I guess it was last year, and at some point in the season, around the halfway point, we looked at the top 10 over-performing hitters and bottom 10 under-performing hitters and did the same with pitchers. And then we just did over or under on their Pocota rest of season projections. And the hook here was that there was no reason to think that we would be better than the projection systems, but we were going to try anyway.

better than the projection systems, but we were going to try anyway. And John Chenier, effectively wild official scorekeeper, kept the stats and kept track of how the players did from that day forward. And we were not better than the projection systems. I think of the, or we were, we were barely better than the projection system. So we were talking about 40 players and I was in the right direction on 26 of them, and you were in the right direction of 23 of them. So we were slightly better than chance, but well within the margin of error there. So I wouldn't say we demonstrated that we have some ability to beat Pakoda. But I think it's a fun exercise because even though I know this is the case for all players put together, it's about something else but just going to give you the names and the guys who have exceeded their projections by the most this season and then I'm going to tell you what Pocota projects for them

over the rest of the season and then we'll do our over under and at the end of the season we'll find out that we weren't any good at it. So making no promises here about our expertise. So going to use true average for this, which is baseball prospectus is all in one offensive stat. 300 is good. 220 is bad. 260 is average. So it's sort of centered around the historical norm for batting average.

So the number one guy is Daniel Murphy. And Daniel Murphy has a.352 true average this far this season, obviously one of the best in baseball. And he was projected for.265. So he was expected to be just a little bit better than a league average hitter. And he's been one of the best hitters in baseball. Over the rest of the season, Pakoda thinks he will be a.277 hitter. So he has raised his projected Pakoda performance by 12 full points in half a season, which is pretty impressive given that

he had a very long history of being what he was before he turned into what he was late last season. So he has changed Pakoda's mind, but Pakoda still thinks he's just a pretty good hitter instead of a great hitter. So 277 is the over-under mark for Murphy. And so Murphy is a guy who had, even before this, even before this, had shown some seeming growth late last year, and also, of course, had his great postseason, which Pocota doesn't know about. And so that gives us a little extra information that Pocota doesn't even have. And there's a story that is told about him. And the other thing about Daniel Murphy is that he was above 277 each of the previous two years, and he is above 277 for his career. So that's a fairly modest—I mean, there'd be some aging curve, perhaps,

but otherwise it's a fairly modest projection for him anyway. So I'm saying over on Daniel Murphy. Yeah, I agree. I think everyone has a story and that's the dangerous thing, as we've often talked about on this podcast. When someone does well, we look for reasons why they're doing well and people write articles about those reasons. And sometimes they're really the cause of the change in performance. those reasons and sometimes they're really the cause of the change in performance other times they're just sort of post hoc causes that we pick out because we're looking for some reason other than randomness to reassure us about this being an orderly universe so remember when sammy remember

when sammy sosa's story was that he had uh he had finally gotten a cavity filled. I don't remember that one. Yeah, that's a good one. And so, yeah, I mean, Murphy's is the Kevin Long method of moving closer to the plate and trying to pull the ball and trying to hit for power. And so he obviously did that in the second half of last season and in the postseason. And I agree,

it does not seem like a high bar to clear. So I'm going to go with the over on Murphy. All right. Number two on the list of over performers is Oledmus Diaz. He, of course, started out great this season. He was filling in for Peralta with the Cardinals. And he was just a discard last season, and no one really thought anything of him. And then April, he was fantastic. And then he kind of tanked a little bit in May, and then he got a little bit better in June. And then in July, he's on fire again. So overall, he's had an excellent season,

and he has produced a.338 true average, which is just the most Cardinals thing that could possibly happen. You lose Peralta, you pick up Oled Mis-Diaz, who no one wanted and who wasn't good for most of his career, even in the minors, and suddenly he's a star. Pakoda is somewhat swayed by this. He's actually quite a bit swayed by this, I guess, because he didn't have a big major league sample before the season. In fact, he had zero major league sample before the season. So he was projected for a.252 true average,

so significantly below average hitter. And now, Pocota thinks he's better than Daniel Murphy. 279 rest of season true average for Ledmise Diaz. 279, to put that in perspective, would be like a 115 OPS plus. Yeah, sounds about right. I'm going to take the under and hope that the league has an adjustment ready for him. Although I don't really believe in adjustments all that much. But I'm still taking the under.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if there's a great narrative for why he's a new man. He was not particularly good in AA last season in 400 plate appearances. He was fine, but nothing special. And then he had like 14 games in AAA where he was great. And then he was good in 20 games in the Arizona Fall League. And then he was great to start the season. So I don't know. The fact that when he started to fall off after the April hot streak, then it looked like he was the classic fluky guy and that either he'd regressed or the league had adjusted or whatever, but he's sort of pulled out of that nosedive and become good again.

So I'm not sure, but I don't know if there's a compelling story for why he's great now. So I think I'm going to agree with you because 279 is pretty good. I mean, if anyone had told the Cardinals that they could have 279 true average Oled Mis-Diaz going into the season, they would have been absolutely thrilled, I think. And so that's a pretty high mark for someone with no track record of being able to hit. So I think I will go with you and take the under on that one too. All right, next up is All-star snub and one of the most notable, I guess, turnarounds or overhauls this season. Jake Lamb of the Diamondbacks, who was projected for a 265 true average, a little bit above average, has been a 340 thus far.

And like Oled Mistiasias Is projected for a 279 Rest of season true average Hmm so That's just about well it's always Going to be this but that's just about his Career to date Hmm Jake Lamb huh Been hearing a lot of good things about Jake Lamb

In the last week which is So have I Yeah it's been testing my anti-Jake Lamb worldview. Yeah. Golly. 279. Again, 279? Yep.

Over. Okay. I'm also going to go over because he's got a good story. He is the classic swing overhaul guy. He changed his swing angle and there were mental changes and he did all this different stuff. He looks like a different guy. to the Jose Batista slash JD Martinez kind of reimagining as a player. He's doing different things with getting his hands to the zone and leg kicks, and he's got everything. He's got all of the stance and swing stuff working for him. I don't even want the swing overhaul, though.

Like, to me, that actually makes it a little worse because, to me, like, he was a—in the minors, he was a 321, 408, 552 hitter. He had a 960 career OPS in the minors. I just want to think he's always been that good and that it just took a little while for him to catch up to Major League Pitching. So the less story, the better for me on Jake Lamb. Okay. Well, he's doing good things stat cast wise from what i have read he's doing good things with launch angle and he's hitting the ball hard and he had

a very good spring training he hit for a ton of power in spring training and so people were touting him as a potential breakout player even before opening day so So I'm also going to take the over on Jake Lamb. Wait, you're telling me the guy with 46 extra base hits and a 612 slugging percentage has good stat cast numbers? Yeah. I mean, there's nothing about his stat cast numbers that don't support the slash line. Okay. All right.

Next up is yoannis cespedes by the way i am i i set a minimum here of 250 played appearances so far this season just so we wouldn't get any any really fluky ones yoannis cespedes is next on the list he is running a 356 true average right now, and he was obviously great for the Mets last year, but came into the season projected for.284, and that has climbed to.289. I think everyone sort of expected Cespedes to come back to earth when the Mets signed him.

I mean, people still mostly approved of the contract because it was a strange contract with a short commitment, but I don't think anyone foresaw him not only sustaining what he did for the Mets last year, but significantly improving upon it. And he is now approaching his 31st birthday. He'll turn 31 during the playoffs and uh will almost certainly become a free agent and make many millions of dollars so you want a cesspitous are you buying the breakout that is now about a full year old so what's the number what's the the projection number is 289 which is basically what he was in 2014 and basically what he was in the first half of last season yeah basically and so uh but he was even slightly above that then

i am not necessarily a full-on believer in unicest but his breakout, but, but 289, like he could do 289. And especially if you think that there's anything to the, I mean, last year was a walk year for him and he had, you know, one of the biggest second halves in baseball. This year is another walk year for him and maybe that matters. So I'm going over. Yeah. The, uh, the studies have shown that, you know, walkier doesn't matter mostly for most guys, but you never know. Could be some guys it matters for. So I'm going to take the over also. I didn't anticipate that we would have the same answers for everyone because we didn't last time we did this. And it always seems easy.

Like most of these seem pretty easy. Diaz was seems easy. Like most of these seem pretty easy. Diaz was not easy, but the other ones so far have been pretty easy calls for me. And yet I know that even though many of them seem easy, many of them will also be wrong. Yeah, like Jake Lamb was kind of hard for me, but like I can't even imagine saying under on Murphy or Cespedes. And yet one of them's gonna be wrong and like i wouldn't be able to bring like even even if like i was reading the script for a play and it called for me to take the under i'm not sure i could even deliver the line okay well i'm not sure whether this one will be any easier. Matt Carpenter is the next guy on the list.

He is at.352 thus far this year, same as Daniel Murphy, and was projected better than Daniel Murphy but much worse than this,.283. He is now, like Cespedes, at.289. And.289 is right where he was in 2014. And he's kind of a different guy now, or I think it's safe to say he's a different guy now, because he had all of last season where he hit for power. He had 28 home runs last season, and that was after hitting eight the previous year and hitting no more than 11 in his career. And then he just suddenly started hitting for tons of power and had 28 home runs. And now he's at 14 through the quote unquote,

first half of the season. So he has not only sustained that, but even, I guess he has done it even more. He's, uh, well, everyone in baseball is hitting for more power this year But he's hitting for lots more power And he's also getting on base a lot more He's just been a monster thus far this year Easy call Yeah, easy call I mean, easy call anyway Like, even if you take away the fact that he is developing new skills

And that he is sort of synthesizing the brilliant plate discipline Matt Carpenter of before with the great power Matt Carpenter of last year. He's got 61 strikeouts and 58 walks right now. He's Joey Votto. And so even if you take away, though, that growth, it's a 309 career true average. 289 is too low. I'm taking the over. Okay.

By the way, how's your Pakoda over-under team doing? Because you built a whole contest out of this concept. It is on my to-do list to write about it today or tomorrow. Oh, cool. All right. So you can update us in a coming banter section. All right. So this might be the most difficult one we've had yet.

Wilson Ramos Wilson Ramos of the Nationals Has run a 326 true average He was projected for 258 So right around league average And he has raised that 11 points to 269

And Wilson Ramos Has a recent history Of being worse to 269 and uh wilson ramos has a recent history of being worse than 269 he was better than that at times but 2013 he was 268 2014 250 2015 231 so this is kind of coming out of nowhere so this is our first one that maybe is, well, it's definitely difficult. Yeah, I mean, I'm a longtime fan of Wilson Ramos, which means that I'm a longtime victim of Wilson Ramos. So that puts me in a little bit of a tough position. I also want to say an under on one of these guys.

And so I'm going to take the under. I really wish that instead of 269, Pocota had been like 281, then I'd feel a lot better. So I'll take the under. You edited the annual comment for him this year, which says Ramos will be one of the best hitting catchers in baseball if he can just stay healthy. Ancient wisdom passed down through many generations. So there has been a kind of longstanding belief that Wilson Ramos should be better than Wilson Ramos was, but not this much better. So 269. I mean, he failed to do that in each of the three last seasons. So that's like 1,100 or more plate appearances in which he did not do that.

And he's now about to turn 29. Maybe sometimes catchers peak a little later, decline a little earlier. I don't know. He's a guy who hasn't stayed healthy in the past, so there's no real reason to think that he will be more healthy in the second half of the season than he has been historically. Would you speculate that a catcher who has dealt with injury problems in his career would be more susceptible to a second half fatigue effect or bumps and bruises. Yeah, having past injuries is always a good predictor of future.

Yeah, I'm not talking past injuries though. I'm sort of thinking like I think that probably all catchers are a little worse in September than they are in April just because their legs are moving slower. are in April just because their legs are moving slower. And I'm wondering if fatigue and injury proneness are the same gene or the same characteristic or if they're separate and I shouldn't think of it that way. All right. I'm going to take the under on him and it might have something to do with the fact that I actually want to have a different answer than you at some point in this episode. But I said under. Oh, you said under?

Oh, no. Okay. Well, I'm saying under also. Okay. All right. A few more guys on this list. Marcel Ozuna is next. And Marlins outfielder, 331 true average this year.

268 coming into the season, 276 rest of season. is hard to say out loud. So I'm not a buyer. I'm not a believer. But I would have taken the over on 268 before the season. And 276 is barely distinguishable. I might have taken the over on 276 before the season. I might have taken the over on 276 before the season. So it's hard to not take it now so i'll take the over yeah i agree and he was at 255 for almost 500 plate appearances last season and he was kind of

jerked around and there was service time stuff and there was loria stuff and he probably did better than the numbers showed i know mike pet Petriello on the StatCast podcast was a big Ozuna booster coming into this year based on his exit velocity last season, despite his lackluster stats. So I agree, going with the over. Three more guys to go. Michael Saunders. Michael Saunders, 322 true average this season and was at 261 coming into the year, is at 272 for the rest of the season. Under. Yeah, so I'm trying to think. I've liked Michael Saunders for a while and he's never been able to stay healthy. And that's kind of the thing with him is that if you look at his you know limited playing time in 2012 he was better than 272 2013 he was better than 272 2014 he was much better than 272 and last year he barely played

so it's always seemed like he had talent and that if he could stay healthy, then he would easily exceed a 272. He's never really actually played regularly and not exceeded that. I guess, you know, going back to 2010 and 2011, he did, but he always had nagging injuries of some sort. And, of course, he could very well develop a nagging injury any day now. It's not getting less likely that he will do that probably as he gets older, unless the Blue Jays' fancy sports science department has figured out how to fix him for good. So if he were healthy, then I think I would easily take the over.

But it's very possible that he'll strain something or pull something or ding something and try to play through it and slump and be bad and not exceed it. So I almost wish I could do like a Michael Saunders playing time projection instead of a true average projection. You want to say over and I said under this is perfect for you just say over okay okay all right i'll take the over all right second to last over performer anthony rizzo who is at 360 so far this season and was projected for only 301 which he has only raised somehow four points so he's now at 305 rest of season uh easy over easy over yeah he is i don't know that's penalizing him for stuff he did when he was 22 and 23 i guess and he has clearly reached a new level of performance over the last two and a half years. I agree. It seems like Pakoda has been slow to adjust to that. So

agreed on over and last guy, Jose Altuve, 331 true average so far this season was projected for 273 is now at 284. I mean, again, it's like, I'm, I want to take the under on Altuve at this point, but the under ain't 283 or whatever. Like, you just don't really have a choice, I think. Although, he was 285 last year, and he was a star last year, too. Yeah. If it were, like, again, it's not a big difference, but if it were 293, probably I would take the under. But I am not going that low on him at this point. So I'll take the over.

Yep, me too. If we were taking the under on what Altuve has done so far, then we would do that. But this is taking into account prior seasons of Altuve when he wasn't so good and often that smart and it makes your projection more accurate. But in this case, it's hard to bet on the under there. So it seemed like most of these calls were pretty easy. Diaz was not easy. Lamb was maybe not easy. Saunders was not easy. Ramos was not easy. A lot of the others seemed like no-brainers, and yet of the several no-brainers, I'm sure that at least one guy somewhere in there will prove us wrong, because that's just the way that this has worked, historically speaking all right looking at the underperformers the biggest underperformer so far is the indians jan gomes who has a 186 true average and he came into the

year projected for 263 that has fallen 10 points to 253 did this this last year. He might have even been on our list last year, perhaps as an under. I don't know. You go first. Okay. Well, so 253, that's basically his lifetime. He's a 255 lifetime. And I mean, he was really good. He was a really good hitter. He was a five win player in 2013 and 2014, according to BP's stats. And I guess that's including some framing runs, but still he was a really good hitter, particularly for a catcher. I haven't looked deep into the Jan Gomes downfall, so I can't say I know exactly what's going on with him. But I suppose I will take the under on Jan Gomes at 253. So it's basically asking us to think that he is as good as we thought Wilson Ramos was coming into the season, more or less.

I don't know. I mean, he would have beat this in the second half last year. thought Wilson Ramos was coming into the season, more or less. All right. I don't know. I mean, he would have beat this in the second half last year. Last year he was, you know, close to equally as bad in the first half and ended up with terrible numbers for the season, but I think would have beat 253 in the second half, I think. So I will, not that that's predictive in any way but none of this is i will take over on yon gomes okay ben ben yeah baseball reference nicknames for yon gomes these these are these are weird because they they pronounce his name two different ways the nicknames there are

two nicknames and they both suppose a different pronunciation of his name. All right. Obi-Yan. Okay. Star Wars reference, sure. And the Yanimal. Yeah. I don't, I can't say I've heard of him. Yeah.

I don't know. Sometimes you get a weird baseball reference nickname where, like, it must have been in one columnist's article at one point, but no one ever actually called him that. I don't know. For all I know, there's a cheering section in Cleveland of the Yanimals or the Obi-Yans, but not familiar with that. Would he get paid more if he went by Yonigomes? Yeah, I think he probably would. All right. Okay.

Next up, Prince Fielder Prince Fielder At 234 Was projected to be a really good hitter At 299 Is projected to continue to be A really good hitter At 292 And last year was at 289

So you don't have to go that far back. But I will nonetheless take the under. Yeah, so will I. He had a decent June, but he is slumped again in July. Don't see a whole lot of reason for optimism there, so I agree. Prince Fielder, people used to sort of prejudge him based on his body type. And then, you know, people would write articles about aging curves by height and weight and BMI. And I guess they said negative things on the whole, but there were certainly exceptions to

that. It wasn't like once you hit 30, if you were a certain weight, you were a bad player beyond that point. But he's had injuries, and so it's not necessarily conditioning related, although the injuries, of course, could be conditioning related. Anyway, point is, I miss good Prince Fielder. Good Prince Fielder was really, really good. Next guy, Justin Upton, who is at 239 right now, was projected for 289 and has slipped only slightly to 285. Ah, yeah. It wasn't a big booster of Upton before the season, and it hasn't slipped enough that it makes it easy.

Nonetheless, because I know that something like half of these guys are going to end up being overs, I will take over on Upton. Yeah, I mean, he's been better than that in each of the three last seasons, so he's not old. He's been better in every month. He was better in May than he was in April. He was better in June than he was in May. He's been better in July than he was in June. Hasn't really been good in any of those months though. So all right. Yeah, I think I'll go with the over, but that's a tough one. Can I just interrupt real quick though? The thing about Justin Upton is that he's over the next five years, he's going to have 10 halves, you know, 10 first, first or second halves. And in at least three and maybe five of those, he's going to have a true average higher than 284. Like we are really stuck in the way that we're viewing Justin Upton

right now. And it's hard to think that he's tomorrow, he's going to flip a switch and be, you know, classic 292 average Justin Upton. But over the next five years, he's, he's going to do it a bunch. And, uh, it's not going to seem weird to us when he does. I mean, just look at Victor Martinez and imagine trying to reevaluate Victor Martinez based on only the previous three months over the course of the last six years, how wrong you'd be all the time. And that's like, we don't, I don't think we necessarily give enough credit to how many different career swings these guys have, especially if you consider a swing to be two months or a half of a season. I mean, to be two months or a half of a season.

I mean, these guys are constantly getting buried or reviving themselves. And at the end of a career, it all kind of evens out and you don't even think about it. But like a lot of guys, there really are a lot of guys who are good at 34 who we buried at 32. And so I'm not that worried about Justin Upton. It's just, will this be the half, one of the halves that he does it? Anyway, go ahead. Right. Okay, Carlos Gomez, 218 to date, was at 267 coming into the season,

is at 262 the rest of the season. Hmm. And with the Astros last year after the trade, he was at 241 and he was barely above that with the Brewers. So yeah, I guess this is a question of if that was just a short peak because he wasn't a good hitter. He wasn't a good hitter, wasn't a good hitter, wasn't a good hitter, suddenly was, and now is he just as suddenly not? And this goes to my parabola theory of baseball careers, that most careers are parabolas, and if you're a late bloomer, you're probably going to be an early fader. And Carlos Gomez was a late bloomer with the bat.

You could look at that as the manifestation of his tools, and he had finally turned the corner, and he was going to be a great player now that he knew how to do this one, you know, now that he had figured it out. Or you could say, well, you know, he wasn't that good at 25. He probably won't be that good at 31. And I will, because it's my theory, I will say under on Carlos Gomez. All right. I mean, at the beginning of the year, I thought he was hurt. And so I definitely would have taken the under.

And he was terrible in April. He was terrible in May, but then he had a good June and he was, you know, he hit 286, 362, 452 in June. And that means more to me in Carlos Gomez's case than it would with some other player, because I just thought he had shoulder issues or hip issues or both and just didn't expect very much. But the fact that he had a full healthy month and played well and hit better than this true average projection, I think, over that month makes me more optimistic, even though he's now slumped again for the first half of July. So I think I'll take the over just based on my concerns were mostly health-related, and he showed that he was healthy enough to perform at this level for a somewhat extended period. All right, next, Andrew McCutcheonon who was projected for 313 has been at 268

and is now projected for 309 and how's how's his health at the moment i know that that's a big reason he was been at 268 he hasn't been healthy fully healthy was that a temporary thing is he okay now do you know I don't know that anyone knows for sure. He was pretty circumspect about his health issues last year with the knee, and I don't know that he's been tremendously more forthcoming this year. So I haven't heard any updates lately. He's still playing, and so I guess it's not bad and he's so it's from 313 down to 309 yeah i'll take i'll take the over okay so let's see so yeah i mean he had a bad june good start to july and where is he generally i mean he's he's significantly higher than that. Yeah, the last four years before this, 326, 350, 330, 338. Yep, okay, over. Next,

Yasiel Puig, who was projected for 303, has been at 258, and is now projected for 297. And, oh man, wow, I was gonna say it, that, boy, it feels to me like he was good for one year as a hitter and then i looked and he actually was good all the years as a hitter he was a lot better than i realized that's dodger stadium for you because uh he was 329 his rookie year 322 his sophomore year uh 286 last year, which was widely seen as a huge flop. And then now this year. So 289? No, 297. And it was projected over 300 before the season started?

Yep. You go first. I'm going to say over. I could very easily see Yasiel Puig great second half. I don't know. see a Yasiel Puig great second half. I don't know. Maybe I'm just rooting for him so I can make my pick of Puig in some ESPN franchise draft I did like a year or two ago that no one else remembers. Seem more smart in retrospect. But I had this agonizing decision. I don't even know. I forget who was off the board. I was picking. I don't even know where I forget who was off the board I was picking. I don't even know where I was picking. But I remember that I was choosing between Puig and Nolan Arenado. Those were the two

top guys on my board. And this was like starting a franchise. So I was taking into account a little bit Puig's star power and marketing value and all that because at the time he was an extremely popular player you know controversial player but but very popular he was playing well and so it was kind of a coin toss but i took puig over arenado and i kind of want that one back but even more than wanting it back i want puig to prove me right so uh i will go with Puig over 297. I just, I don't know, as long as he's not hurt. I mean, he's had injuries at various times, but I just thought he was a really good hitter,

just not purely based on his skills. He obviously had skills. He had all the tools, but I thought he was a pretty smart hitter and an adaptable hitter also. And that hasn't been the case this season. So general rule of thumb is if a guy hits 300 one year, then 290, then 280, then 270, the average person among us will then go, oh, well, that's a trajectory and project 260 the next year. And that that is wrong. That in fact, you should project something like

285, that, that it's about regression. It's not about trajectory. And Puig is a guy who is all trajectory right now. Every year has gotten worse and I'm going to fall for it. I'm going to make an exception to the, to the regression assumption. And I will take, well, because he still has to be good to meet it, so I'm going to say under. I'm going to say he will not be good enough. Okay. All right. Last few guys here. Eric Ibar has been 212 this year and came into the year 249. That has slipped to 243 rest of season. I'll take over. Okay. He was worse than 243 last year with the Angels, but had been better than that fairly consistently before that. Of

course, he's getting on in years a little bit, but 243, I'll take the under, I guess, just based on him being worse than that all of last year. Haven't done a deep dive on Eric Ibar either, so just going to go with that. All right, Billy Burns. Billy Burns has been a flop. He's been at 208 so far this year, was not expected to be good. He was 244 coming into the year, and he's lost six points off of that. So 238 for Billy Burns. I'll take, boy, woke up today with a to-do list that did not include project Billy Burns true average. I'm not sure Billy Burns is a credible major leaguer, and so I'll take the under. Yeah, I'm not sure Billy Burns is a Credible major leaguer And so I'll take the under Yeah I'm not sure about that either

So 238 That's bad That's pretty bad you have to be bad To not hit 238 But I don't know You'd think just based on like Beat alone and beating out some base hits You could get to that point

But maybe it's just a case of being Overmatched so Based on like bead alone and beating out some base hits, he could get to that point. But maybe it's just a case of being overmatched. So I'll take the under on Billy Burns. All right. Last two guys. Jose Bautista, 281 so far. Of course, has had injuries. But 281 so far was 316 preseason is essentially the same now,14 that's amazing that you're gonna have a 281 true average and be on this list yeah i'll take the over yeah i mean he had a toe injury i don't

know whether uh turf toe is something that really lingers after you fix it and come back doesn't seem like there's any real reason to think that would be the case. I would assume that that has been the cause of his poor performance and he's been so good before that, that doesn't seem too unreasonable. I mean, we're saying 314, so he's projected to be five points better than Andrew McCutcheon. He's projected to be really, really good. He sort of straddles that. He hits that about every other half the years. It's a good projection for him. It's not easy. Yeah, it feels about right. Well, he was 316 last year. He's

almost 36 now. He's going to turn 36 in October. I'll take the under, I guess. And last guy, Jose Abreu, who has been at 272 this year. Pakoda expected 306, and rest of the season, he's at 301. I'll take the under on Jose Abreu. Yeah, this feels like another trend line guy. Not that he has that long a trend line at all, but he was so much better in his first year than he was in his sophomore season, and now he's been worse again. 301 is, that's good. So I'm going to say under on 301 also. All right, so we have done this exercise. Again, no reason to trust us over Pakoda particularly, but you can if you want. Hopefully, John Chenier will put all of this

in the Effectively Wild Competitions Google Doc that you can find in the file section of the Facebook group, and we will see where we end up at the end of the season. And tomorrow, maybe we'll do pictures. Maybe we won't. I don't know. But that's it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Today's five listeners who have already pledged their support are J.P. Zhefransky, Jeff Fang, Alex Conway, Sean P. Montana, and Aaron Hartman.

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