Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 929: You Want it This Way

Episode Date: July 21, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Ben’s new job at The Ringer, a distressing Jose Altuve video, and Clayton Kershaw, then answer listener emails about dugout pranks, contracts and the Hall of Fame, tattoos of players, how to manage managers, and more.

Ah, ring, ring, why don't you give me a call? Ring, ring, that's the sound of the ball Ring, ring, I stare at the phone on the wall And I sit alone impatiently Won't you please understand the need in me? So ring, ring, why don't you give me a call? Hello and welcome to episode 929 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives,

presented by our Patreon supporters and the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Ben, hey. Hi. How are you? I'm okay. I did not say that I am Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight today, although technically, I suppose that's still true for a few more hours. But as you may have seen elsewhere, I have a new job. Two years ago, I signed a contract with Grantland. Today, that deal is ending. And as of tomorrow, I will work for The Ringer, which is the new website started by Bill Simmons and a bunch of former Grantland staffers, including my excellent editor, Mallory Rubin. For those of you who haven't been reading The Ringer, it's a sports and culture and tech site.

You can find it at theringer.com. I'll be writing about baseball and also about other things. I'll be doing some podcast stuff too. To start, I will be hosting the Ringer MLB podcast, which you can all subscribe to in the usual places. Probably pretty predictable. I know I've had a few Twitter eggs ask me if I would be going there or when I would be going there. So now you know. However, that does not mean that Effectively Wild is ending.

Those of you who've followed us as I've moved from Baseball Perspectives to Grantland to FiveThirtyEight will, I hope, be pleased to know that Effectively Wild lives on, and it's thanks to all of you. If not for your support on Patreon, I probably would not have been able to make the case that Effectively Wild should continue, even though I will be hosting another baseball podcast, so those of you who have supported us thus far really did save the show in this case. So I will be doing the Ringer MLB podcast maybe a couple times a week, at least Thank you. with the Stompers. So we will still find time to do shows as long as you all keep listening and keep supporting us on Patreon. I'm excited to start over there. I hope you'll all read and listen to my work for The Ringer, but I'm happy to say that Effectively Wild doesn't have to die. So we'll probably cut back a little bit, but we will still be doing a regular show. It better only be a little bit, Benby, because I love doing this every day.

I know. That is one thing I've always known about you. I really, really want to do a daily podcast. Yeah, 929. So remember when we had KG on at 100 and he agreed to come on at 1,000? That seemed impossible. That was a joke. That was a joke. We're only like three months away.

Yeah, and if you had told me that I'd be working for three different places in the interim, I probably would have said that we wouldn't have made it to a thousand, but I am hopeful that we will. So glad that we can keep this thing going. It's apparently unkillable. And again, thanks to all of you for enabling us to continue to do it. And we hope that that will remain the case. So thanks, and I look forward to doing things over there and continuing to do things here. All right, so we are doing an email show today. Anything you want to talk about before we do?

Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, I do have something I'm going to talk about. And this is going to be one of those things where I'm going to get really wound up and seem angry. And I don't like it when this happens. I feel like people misunderstand me a little bit because I am very rarely this angry, but this just gets me so wound up, Ben. Okay. All right. Okay. The Astros Twitter account yesterday tweeted, probably the best video to ever hit the internet. Okay, was a one minute snip of Jose Altuve and other Astros half singing, half lip syncing to the Backstreet Boys, I Want It That Way. Now,

this is not just a video. Like, it's not just that there's really nothing happening in this video. It's not just that there's really nothing happening in this video. It's that one of the best videos to ever hit the internet is literally this song being lip-sunged to. Okay? Lip-sunked? Lip-synced? Lip-synced to. Yes. Okay?

It is just staggering that just 11 years after Wei Wei and Huang Yixin of the Backdorm Boys revolutionized YouTube and the internet with a pitch perfect lip syncing of the Backstreet Boys, I want it that way. That this half-hearted, not that interesting, completely unoriginal video of Jose Altuve kind of singing to Backstreet Boys, maybe ironic, not really that important, would be called probably the best video to ever hit the internet. It would be as if the Astros took a video of Evan Gattis saying it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, I forget what comes after, and tweeted it and said probably the best literature mankind has ever created it is not that impressive this is really heartbreaking however what kills me about this video and what really sinks the shot is that in the background somebody is wearing Zubas. Zubas pants. The tacky pants from the 1990s that the Oakland A's turned into a meme four years ago are

still in clubhouses and they're just wearing Zubas. Like that's still cool. You guys, this has got to stop. Make up your own thing. It's not hard. Everybody will applaud you for it. It doesn't have to be awesome. We want to see your rough drafts.

It's okay. Just do your own thing, and we will celebrate you. Oh, the unoriginality is bad, but the soft bigotry of low expectations that the public has for baseball players trying to be funny kills me ben it kills me oh i'm gonna have to hang on i gotta i gotta resettle myself never reeks of garlic never reeks of garlic never reeks of okay i'm good i'm happy again never reeks of garlic. Yeah, so I had a similar reaction when I saw this video, even with the BuzzFeedization of internet headlines that conditions you to expect things to be disappointing because not everything can be the greatest thing ever.

And yet so many things are described that way. that, I was really let down by this because I figured there was going to be some element of choreography or some kind of production value. This was going to be a big team activity. Like when Munonori Kawasaki did karaoke and sang I Don't Want to Miss a Thing to the Cubs in spring training this year. I'm sure that was described by someone as the greatest thing ever. And I watched that and I was amused. It was not the greatest thing ever, but I enjoyed it as much as I expect to enjoy any video I click on that says it's the greatest thing ever.

This just really fell short of the branding. Yeah, and they spent six tweets on this. I mean, I get it because it's Altuve and people will click on anything Altuve is in and Altuve is great. Obviously, people liked it, right? Other than us. Oh, my gosh, Ben. Oh, I just I'm just looking through the replies here. And somebody I assumed I was the only one who noticed the Zubas crime, but somebody else also replied, what are those pants Marwin had on? Some tiger print like Will Ferrell in Kicking and Screaming? Super cool reference, by the way. Houston Astros replied, Zubas, and then fire emoji.

Yeah, that's Twitter. That is Twitter. I mean, you know, whatever. I'm with you. I understand there will be a backlash, but I get it. All right. It was just a disappointing showing. Yeah, let's email it up.

Okay. I was going to ask you on a more somber note Whether you feel as if your greatest fears about Clayton Kershaw are finally coming true Yeah, I called this like four years ago You've been convinced that Clayton Kershaw is about to break forever Not because he'd really shown any sign of breaking But I guess what? Because he was just too good for this earth or something and so something had to happen to him and now he is uh not feeling great following his simulated game and

his timeline is uncertain yeah it was specifically that he had like a foot injury three years ago in spring training and i thought that that would cascade and i've just been waiting for it to go off but i uh yeah uh, yeah, I was just talking about this with my dad, who's a Giants fan. And, uh, I'm strong in favor of rooting for injuries generally, if they, if they help your team, there are exceptions as I've laid out on the show before. I think when we had Brisbane on, if it's, if you're pre particularly, if you're pre-arb, if you're pre-free agency, then I don't root for injuries for you. And I don't root for anything that's going to end your career, certainly.

I don't root for, for instance, I would never root for anybody to have a punctured spleen. But if you pull a hamstring, miss six weeks, I think it's perfectly acceptable for a player to root for their team's number five hitter to pull a hamstring. I know a lot of people find that monstrous, and it might be. But Kershaw, who, of course, for a Giants fan like my dad, would be the biggest trophy that you could hunt. And I don't think he, and I certainly feel no happiness about Clayton Kershaw missing even a single inning. So Kershaw's loss is a loss for all the sport. And I hope he comes back.

It's weird. It's hard to know what it is. I have no idea what it is. What's going on? Yeah, it's too bad. Times like these when you really just want to watch Jose Altuve lip sync to Backstreet Boys to make it all okay again.

Never reeks of garlic. All right, questions. We will start with a question from Asabeel, Patreon supporter, who says, I make the following claim. Speaking of baseball players attempting to be funny, the practice of giving a player the silent treatment when he returns to the dugout after his first career home Run has jumped the shark agree

Or disagree I feel like this Used to happen sometimes and it was funny I feel like this now happens every time Without fail and it's a hundred percent Unfunny what's the perfect mix of Non-celebration troll jobs and Actual celebrations that will produce The funniest moments asked

Another way are jokes better when there's a lot of setup before the punchline or a little setup before the punchline when do y'all remember first seeing the non-celebration troll job did this happen to joe dimaggio i don't actually mind the repeat of this particular joke i i feel like that repeating a joke over and over does sort of inspire some good comedy because you have to really force yourself to be original. So, like, you know, I've seen various twists on it that were kind of funny. I definitely remember thinking, that's funny.

The first time I saw the guy come in and give imaginary high fives to his imaginary teammates. And at the Stompers, everybody ran to the bullpen so we were not just giving the silent treatment but we were not even there uh and so i don't mind that i mean the problem is that we see it every time they show us every time on tv and look when we're competing for entertainment with people who are watching their first baseball game it's gonna there's gonna be a lot of unoriginality. And the broadcast has to assume that not everybody knows that this has been done a million times. And so they show it and there's a sense of whimsy.

And that can be a little bit grating. And so, yeah, I kind of roll my eyes a little bit when I see it. But its heart is in the right place. And to me, it's more the announcers pretending to be more amused than they are that probably bothers me yeah i really like the idea of it and i like it when it works i'm not sure whether it works anymore and by work i mean you know actually like confuse the player mystify the player surprise the player because that's the whole idea of it is that the player's going to come back expecting to be greeted like a conquering hero,

and then no one's there, and he wonders what he did wrong and what's going on. And now I imagine that just never happens anymore because it's obligatory and everyone expects it. And so that kind of defeats the whole purpose. I don't hate it, but I don't really get anything out of it if that's the case. I'm pretty sure that most of these guys have had this stunt pulled on them at least twice in their careers. Probably their first – I would say certainly their first professional home run this was done to them.

And if they went to college, their first college home run. And there are other opportunities here and there where it might have been done. Their first college home run And there are other opportunities here and there Where it might have been done So this is not even Not just not a surprise Or original this is not even A first for them probably

Yeah right but you're still okay with it It's fine It's fine look again I don't mind ballplayers not being funny Most of us are not I mind pretending they are. That's it. Okay.

All right. Question from Maximilian, who also is a Patreon supporter. He says, Sam has mentioned that while we live in a world where every pitch thrown at any level of organized baseball has worth only insofar as it advances the current or future chances of an MLB franchise winning a World Series, insofar as it advances the current or future chances of an MLB franchise winning a World Series, this was not always the case, that independent leagues and even barnstorming tours were once considered an end in and of themselves. What might happen if two young transcendent stars, let's call them Hrout and Tarper, decided after their initial MLB service time was up to sign

10-year contracts with the Sugarland Skeeters and the Somerset Patriots. Could this have a bird magic effect on the whole Atlantic League? Would fans and other stars follow? I mean, at this point, baseball is so big that, like, the scale of the sport itself is so big that I just don't think that there's, even if it worked, I don't think there's the infrastructure in place. I mean, the Sugarland Skeeters are an extremely successful independent league team. They draw 6,500 fans a game. I don't know how you scale up. There aren't more than one 50,000-seat baseball-ready stadiums in most cities.

So, you know, it just seems like even if you really wanted it to happen you would it kind of would be impossible like i don't know trout and harper i don't think would certainly be enough although it would be really fun to watch them put up stats against bad competition but like how many of the how many of the top let's say 75ers, if you picked at random, so you're not like, so, you know, I'll just ask the question. How many of the top 75 players in baseball would have to join this competing league for it to have a chance of surviving, you know, 10 years profitably? Well, I mean, profitably is impossible because i don't know how they would

pay these players to begin with but yeah but that it could compete with that it could do to major league baseball what the american league did to the national league and basically reach reach uh you know equality or maybe even get to like federal league level where they were actually enticing some stars to leave and it was considered a threat even though it didn't last that long. Well, the Federal League though is exactly, I mean, the Federal League is a big flop though. Like that's the point. You can't do it.

Even a hundred years ago, you couldn't do it. And that was before, you know, we had $8 billion TV contracts, before we had organizations with, you know, 60 scouts and seven levels of play and, you know, the stadium and all that, like that was a pretty simple time and they couldn't do it. So now it just seems just the scale is unfathomable, right? Yeah. I mean, you can't even really say like you have some mad billionaire take over a team because that's not even enough money anymore

That's like Bryce Harper's contract Would be half of the billionaire's fortune Unless they're a many times over billionaire So it would be hard to make it work in any way But as for if it somehow did happen How many would it take to actually get people to watch? I think you'd probably need like 20 of the top 75 sprinkled around the league. I think it would need to be much higher than that.

I think it would have to be greater than half because you don't, even if you have the players, you don't have the uniforms, you don't have the history, you don't have the rooting interest. You don't have, like, you don't know, like, look, if I want to go to a Giants game right now, it's really easy for me because I've been to a bunch of Giants games. I know where to park. I know the train schedule. I know where, I know which, I know the little place down in the left field corner that has the best hot dogs with the grilled onions on it. And you'd have to relearn all that stuff from scratch. It just doesn't seem worth it just so that, you

know, you can see Ryan Zimmerman play. Like I just wouldn't do it. Like I think it could hurt MLB. If you had, you know, immeasurable, immeasurable billions and you wanted to try this, you could probably take a big chunk out of MLB's business. I just don't know that that business would go anywhere. Like I don't know that that business would go anywhere. Like, I don't know that that business would go to you. I think it might go to the NBA. Yeah, maybe so. I don't know if Rich Hill was on the team you would watch. Okay. You know that the 30 teams, however many teams they had, say they had 18 teams, you know that the 18 team names would be garbage team names too. Like they, nobody names a team well anymore. anymore Takes a long time before they seem

Any less than absurd And you know if there was a league With 18 new teams They would name them all horribly And we would just mock their uniforms Alright Alright Next question from Amos Blackman

Who is actually also a Patreon supporter I swear I'm not even Picking out Patreon people But they just happen to be Next question from Amos Blackman, who is actually also a Patreon supporter. I swear I'm not even picking out Patreon people, but they just happen to be. And his question is somewhat related to the book. He says, this question occurred to me before I started reading. The only rule is it has to work. So I'm going to ask it anyway, even though the book is pretty clearly going to get into this. It's pretty clear now that even managers of quote unquote smart Teams make decisions that violate pretty Basic sabermetric insights the

Dodgers don't shift Escobar leads Off for the Royals most clubs follow closer Orthodoxy etc in Most cases there's an explanation Kershaw Doesn't like pitching in front of the shift Esky magic is part of the Royals chemistry High performance relievers demand Saves and get paid for them good

Managers undoubtedly provide real value through chemistry and leader of men qualities Even if we don't know how to quantify them yet My question is, should front offices try to tell managers Which suboptimal strategies to use in establishing their leadership? For example, lineup construction usually has a very small impact So it seems like a good area to allow managers free reign to keep players happy Build chemistry, etc very small impact. So it seems like a good area to allow managers free reign to keep players happy, build chemistry,

et cetera. But maybe the Dodgers would be better served by working to bring Kershaw on board with shifting, which as a leader himself, he would influence the entire staff. Which areas should managers be given the most free reign or the least, or would such guidance be self-defeating because these power, because the power of these decisions to build on the field unity comes in part because they reject the analysts input i it's intriguing it's an interesting question but i do think that i i had a shift in the way that i viewed power or politics or whatever

when we did the stompers i used to think okay life is about compromise and you take a little here because it's more important to you and you give up a little there because it's less important to you. And I sort of came to feel that, in fact, anytime you give up, you simply lose your chances of getting the next thing. Like that it's all about establishing a precedent for you getting what you want and that's not great that's not fun i don't really like that world but i think if you let your players see the manager overruling you for instance they would be more resistant the next time you overruled your manager does that make sense yeah sure we we. We lived it. Yeah. I mean, it's weird

because like, again, I don't really like this. This is not really my sort of personality, but you just kind of have to project that you're the powerful one. And like most of the world already knows this. Like a lot of people are listening to me say this and they're like, yeah, no, of course. It's like every prison movie where they say that thing that they say in every prison movie about finding the toughest guy in the yard and and like this is not surprising to a lot of people winning begets winning power begets power but like i i think almost if you're the front office and you are like if you're the front office and you're worried about your players resisting you then i think you have to demonstrate strength. I think it's better to not worry about them resisting you. You have to figure out a way that you're not in,

you're not in an antagonistic relationship with your players. You need to figure out a way to sort of disguise your influence perhaps, so that you're not constantly in a position of conflict. But if you are in a position of conflict, which this question sort of implies, I don't think that meeting in the middle and assuming that they're going to see your good intentions or whatever is going to work. Yep, I think that's right.

And of course, the best of all worlds is to avoid the problems in the first place by being very clear about what your expectations are going in and making sure that you are working with someone who, you know, mostly is on the same page, not completely in lockstep with you about everything, but at least knows how to talk to you and is willing to take input and have these discussions. So you can save yourself a whole lot of trouble and conflict and fights in the recruiting or the interviewing process.

But I agree, if you do get into a situation like that, it kind of helps you in the long run to put your foot down. All right, play index? Play index. All right. This one goes a couple of different directions. People might have seen during the All-Star game a graphic that caught my eye, might have caught your eye.

It was that Mike Trout on the first pitch this year is hitting 619. That's a big old number. So I, of course, wanted to see where this ranks, historically speaking. Trout only has 22 plate appearances right now so presumably this will regress but whatever i want to see if he's chasing any sort of record so i looked up since 1913 although really since 1988 because that's how

far back this goes since 1988 uh who has the highest uh batting average on ball on first pitches. And I set a minimum of 30 plate appearances. And I will tell you this just because I've told you how much amusement I get that wherever you set the minimum on these small sample splits, the highest is always a person who is right at the minimum. And in fact, the highest ever is Scott Van Slyke at 621, who had exactly 30 plate appearances. I set the minimum at 30.

First place had 30. It is creepy how it happened. Not 31, 30. Josh Rutledge is number three, also at 30. This is not a stat that means anything. If you just look at the leaderboard, the leaderboard right now is Scott Van Slyke, Jim Edmonds, Josh Rutledge, Tyler Houston, Carlton Fisk, Jack Cust, Edgar Martinez, Larry Walker, Gary Redis, and Will Cordero.

And so this is not that interesting. It just does not tell you that a player is good. There's a very small percentage of their plate appearances, a selected portion of those plate appearances. Nonetheless, Mike Trout is sort of in pursuit of the record for the highest batting average ever on the first pitch of an at-bat. But number five on this list caught my interest because while all these guys hit between 550 and 620 one player's overall performance actually stood out quite a bit that's Carlton Fisk who in his 31 plate appearances that ended on the first pitch in 1988 he hit 586 but he slugged 1621

which is way higher than everybody else on here he had 29 at bats that ended on the first pitch he also had two hit by pitches so that's 31 played appearances but 29 at bats so 29 times he put the ball in play and he hit nine home runs in those 29 nine home runs so he had a 22 34 ops which is a i don't you have if you're familiar with baseball reference you'll know what i'm talking about but they have something called the split ops plus which is how your your ops plus relative to the league as a whole in that specific split and so uh it's basically ops plus except instead of comparing it's the league average on on everything it's just in that same split so Carlton Fisk had a split OPS plus of 441 his OPS of 2234

was uh you know 441 percent of what the league average is and this got me wondering whether this was the highest split OPS plus I could find. If anybody has ever had a higher one in their split than this. So I searched. I feel like I might have done this once, but I couldn't remember. So I just did it again just in case. I searched every split to see if I could find any split OPS plus higher than 441. I had a few rules.

I ignored. This is only batting stats. I ignored pitchers batting because the denominator is too low and it creates weirdness. And I just didn't consider that important because pitchers aren't really hitters. I took out things that are completely irrelevant to hitting. So for instance, Greg Jeffries had like a 450 split OPS plus as a second baseman one year. But like, it doesn't matter if you're a second baseman or a third baseman, you go up there trying to do the same thing. It is not like most other splits where you're looking at the context of hitting. So I threw out those and I threw out three ball count stats because intentional walks screw them up too

much like Rafael Palmeiro for instance one time had a year where he had 32 plate appearances that ended on 3-0 and he had a 5,000 OPS but of course he walked 31 times and hit one home run it's like not interesting that's just not 3-0 counts on it so I threw those out okay so then I went through and I looked at every other split to see if I could find a split OPS plus higher than, what was our number? 4.41. All right. So the first person I found that beats it, Todd Helton had a year where he had a split

OPS plus of 5.35 on O2 counts. had a split OPS plus of 535 on O2 counts. And that year in 34 plate appearances, he hit 471 with an 853 slugging percentage on O2. That's not after O2. That is on O2. That is 34 really bad mistakes that pitchers made to him. And he is our new leader 535 okay yeah all right next i found somebody who beats him that is ted williams who in september of 1957 had a 632 788 1526 slugging percentage line and i think 32 plate appearances that is the highest that is the greatest month anybody has ever had uh and uh and that is a split ops plus of i don't think i wrote it down it doesn't matter he's not the champion all right uh next up beating him out is albert pool holes is Albert Pujols, who had a 579 split OPS plus in 2010 with two outs and a runner on second.

That specific instance, two outs with a runner on second. He hit 636, 867, 1636. And there's a little bit of the intentional walk in here, but not a lot. He still hit 636 with a 1600 slugging percentage. That is again, by the way, in exactly 30 plate appearances. And that is a split OPS plus a 579. I could not find anything higher than Albert Poole's split OPS plus a 579 for any split except for one and that's why i like this one there is one person who's ever done it and it is nuke logan of course nuke logan in 38 plate appearances on balls hit in the infield. Hit.297 with a.297 on base percentage

and a.297 slugging percentage in 2006. That doesn't sound very good, but think about hitting.297 on balls in the infield. That's really good. Most guys hit about 100 or less on balls in the infield. Nuke Logan's split split ops plus that year for balls in the infield in 38 plate appearances was 807 way above albert pools you could argue this is a denominator problem you could also argue that i shouldn't include splits where the result itself

is a result of the thing you're measuring. Like it sort of feels weird that like this feels different than this, but whatever. Nook Logan, 807. That's the record. Mike Trout's, by the way, not anywhere close. Mike Trout's split OPS plus is like 279. But even more notable,

Mike Trout has been a pretty poor hitter in his career on the first pitch. Last year, and most guys kill the ball on the first pitch because, A, you can't strike out. So if you swing and miss, it doesn't go on your ledger. B, you're swinging because it's a pitch you loved. You're not swinging at the pitch in the corner on 0-0. So almost everybody crushes the ball on 0-0. Mike Trout last year, 192 with a 722 OPS. The year before, 292 with a 619 OPS.

The year before, 314 with a 783 OPS. He's been one of the worst hitters in baseball relative to his overall performance on first pitches this year, on first pitches in his career. So this is brand new, totally random, completely insignificant, but it does give you a, I guess, a record watch that you could pay attention to in the second half. All right. Well, I kind of hope Nuke Logan keeps the distinction because Mike Trout has enough going for him. Yep. All right. You can conduct your own split search with the Baseball Reference Play Index. Use the coupon code BP when you subscribe to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription.

All right. Question from Tony. Given the increased focus on contracts and value, do you think a very bad contract could negatively impact a player's chance at the Hall of Fame when voters will be the sort of folks that were raised on quantitative analysis and value. See, for example, Albert Pujols. He was great, and he's still good, but the last 10 years of his career will almost certainly be seen as a disappointing affair. Hmm. Interesting question. There are two kind of ways of thinking about this.

One is, would it subconsciously affect them if Albert Pujols feels like – Albert Pujols, by the way, is going to make the Hall of Fame. So he's not a perfect case for this because there's no doubt he's going to make the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. But a player who is as disappointing and who's more of a borderline candidate than Pujols, who's as disappointing for 10 years psychologically could matter now that of course the first name you think of who this would apply to is ken griffey jr who just set the all time record for highest highest percentage of hall of fame votes received so the psychological argument doesn't seem to make much sense would Would anybody use it literally? I think there's a real resistance to using contract status as a way of assessing players in any way.

Like I know Jeff Sullivan has written well about whether we should look at contract status for MVP. at $500,000 salary, he's clearly more valuable, technically speaking, to his team than a player who produces seven war and costs $28 million. It's just kind of undeniable. And yet, nobody thinks about that. And when Jeff writes about it, I feel like there's always pushback. There's always people who really resist that sentiment hard um and there's kind of a negative response to it so i don't think that there's any imminent threat threat threat's the wrong word but threat of people thinking about it that way yeah i don't think so either i i mean obviously if you have a bad end to your career and you're not a valuable player for reasons that have nothing to do with your contract, that could and should hurt your Hall

of Fame case. And it has in many individual cases, guys who just tanked early and didn't keep up their Hall of Fame beginning to the career, and they didn't end up in the Hall of Fame. So that happens, but you don't really get to the point where your contract is seen as an albatross unless you're not a good player. And so that's already, I think, accounting for it. If you're not a good player and you're making $20 million or you're not a good player and you're going year to year with $2 million a year contracts or something, I don't think that affects how you are perceived. If anything, the fact that you're still making $20 million reminds people that you used to be good enough to earn that much money. So maybe it's almost the opposite.

But I agree. Don't think anyone will really hold this against anyone. You could hold it against Pujols, and it doesn't matter because he was the best hitter in baseball for many years and one of the best hitters of the century, and so that's enough to get him in, even if he winds up his career with almost a decade of disappointment. But I don't think it matters that he's on a big contract or not. It matters to the Angels, but I don't think it matters that he's on a big contract or

not. It matters to the angels, but I don't think it could. And I don't think it really should matter to hall of fame voters because the hall of fame is about how good a baseball player you were. It's not really about whether you were worth more to your team. Yeah. Good point. Well said. You know, what's interesting is that the sports illustrated annual survey of players where they ask who is the most overrated player in baseball, and it's almost always whoever's overpaid, you know, like it was A-Rod for a while or whatever, but it's someone who's overpaid. away being underrated like not always like ryan howard was actually every bit as bad as analysts said he was and people feared he was but a lot of times like a guy like you know jason worth or i remember vernon wells was this before he went to the angels and actually became that bad you just get so obsessed with their contract that you uh that they become punchlines or they become

albatrosses while they're still producing pretty good major league Performances So in a weird way Those guys end up being underrated Often times Alright last question from Luis If you were the sort of person who gets tattoos And you wanted to get a tattoo of your favorite player

When would be the second best time To do it? The best time being never Take Take Mookie Betts. I love Mookie Betts. It would be so cool in retrospect to have had that much faith in a player so early. His future was so uncertain at that point, there was a non-zero chance that he'd never amount to much, and then I'd be stuck with some obscure name on my body for the rest of my life. If I go with Adrian Beltre, I'm pretty late to the party and I'm risking very little. If I go with Griffey, again'm pretty late to the party And I'm risking very little If I go with Griffey Again it's very safe

But it's also made with the knowledge Of his sharp decline So if you're forced to get a tattoo Of any player you like How would you make your choice? A bold bet on a young player A long dead legend A safe pick of a future Hall of Famer

Still in or near his prime An underrated sentimental favorite. An obscure former bench guy or middle reliever. Anyone named Mike Trout. Well, if it's somebody who's famous, like if for some reason your favorite player, like my favorite players growing up were always guys who were terrible. Like I was looking at a note from my camp counselor when I was eight. He wrote a note to my parents that like talked about like how I'd done at camp. Right. And he said like, Sam has great spirit and loves to root

for the underdog. He's probably the only person in the world whose favorite baseball player is a rookie backup infielder. And at the time my favorite player was Greg Litton. So much so that I insisted that everybody call me Greg Litton. And so if you're purposefully choosing guys like that, you

could probably just do whatever you want. Whether they turn out good or bad is irrelevant. But I'm assuming you're going to choose somebody good, or you hope to choose somebody good. And in that case, it simply has to, they have to be dead. They have to be dead, partly because I'm a huge believer in the no statues of living people philosophy that he mentions.

But also, it's creepy. It's creepy to have a living person tattooed on your body, in my opinion. Like what, if you run in, say you pick Mookie Betts, right? Say Mookie Betts is great and everything's working great. And then one day you're in Las Vegas and you walk into an elevator and Mookie Betts is in that elevator. Are you showing him the tattoo? No, you're not.

You're never showing him that tattoo. It is a, you are hiding that you are hoping you don't wear shorts that day because that tattoo is really embarrassing when you come face to face with a person, the adult person whose face is tattooed on your adult body. So I think the day after he dies is the right time to do it. And I think, you know, I'm not a tattooed person, but I think that would be a great tattoo. because no one knows when you got it. I mean, you know, maybe a few people do, but if you show up to the game, once the guys, I mean, if you show up to the game and you have the tattoo and he's obscure, then no one even knows who it is. And if he's a star, then no one says, oh, we salute you for being the first to have faith in this player. They just said, oh, you got a tattoo of the most famous player. So you don't even get credit for being the first on the bandwagon.

So I don't think there's really any value to that. So yeah, if I were going to go with someone, which I wouldn't, but if I would, then probably the sentimental favorite, probably the Greg Litton would be a decent choice just because then you could explain why Greg Litton and maybe

there's a story behind that. But otherwise, I don't know. Buy a jersey. A jersey is a good way to hedge your bets. If I were going to get a tattoo, a baseball tattoo, I would probably get a tattoo that was a little bit less obvious and a little less awkward, my tattoo would be, it would just say 362 slash 609 slash 812. All right. Today, Greg Litton is a successful motivational speaker. No kidding. Yeah, apparently, according to Baseball Reference Bullpen.

Oh, wow. Great. I probably knew that. I think I've probably Googled him before. Did you get my tattoo? You get it? There's a bun step. Yeah, yeah. Okay, good. Just wanted to make sure.

It's weird. People can't tell this, but right now, since I've been on mom and dad's Wi-Fi for the last week, I'm about 11 seconds behind him. last week i'm about 11 seconds behind him and so we're having we're having conversations you know like with each other by like you know tapping on prison bars basically uh so every time i say something there's just this 11 moments of terror that ben's not gonna laugh and it's very it's very stressful oh he laughed at that one good yeah and i'm trying to anticipate when you'll stop talking 11 seconds in advance so i can start responding yeah go back to the last week of episodes and listen to how masterfully ben put them together all right so that is it for today you can support the podcast on Patreon at patreon.com slash effectively wild.

And again, a big thank you to all of you who have helped us preserve the podcast and who I hope will continue to help us preserve the podcast. Today's five listeners who have already pledged their support are Jeffrey Young, Virgil O'Neill, Duncan Leitegny, Taylor Mucaria, and Christian Thomas. Thank you. You can buy our book, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work, at theonlyruleisithastowork.com. If you've read it, please leave us a review at Amazon and Goodreads. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild, and you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild, as well as to the Ringer MLB show on iTunes.

Send us emails at podcastatbaseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon. I'll be doing a Ringer show with Michael Bauman tomorrow. So you can look out for that. And then Sam and I will most likely be back on Friday with another episode of effectively wild. So we will talk to you soon. Ain't nothing but a mistake Tell me why I never wanna be the same

I want it that way Cause I want it that way