Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 996: The Second Draft of Things About Baseball

Episode Date: December 24, 2016

Ben, Sam, Grant Brisbee, and Jeff Sullivan produce a sequel to Episode 500 by drafting 12 more things about baseball.

And you feel like it was the second time with you That feeling of a vivid memory Well it had to do with a dream come true Hello and welcome to episode 996 of Effectively Wild, Welcome to... about two and a half years ago, episode 500, we did a draft with Jeff Sullivan and Grant Brisby, two of our favorite writers and favorite people. And it was also one of our favorite episodes, maybe my favorite episode. I don't know if it holds up, but at the time I liked it. So we're going to sort of do that again, not for 1000 because Jeff is about to be very far away in a place that he can't talk on podcasts. So we're going to do this now.

And since that episode, Sam and I have made a combined three job changes and Jeff and Grant have made zero. You guys are constants. So you know Jeff from Fangraphs and Grant from SB Nation. Hi, Jeff and Grant. Hi. Hello. Hi. I used to work with Grant, but then I didn't want to share an office with him anymore. Yeah, last time we did this, you guys were feuding. We talked about that. We had bunk desks. I've never even heard of that before, but it was fantastic.

How have the last two and a half years been for you? You know, I've watched a couple of baseball games, done some writing. Giants won a World Series. I mean, it's, yeah, I've watched a couple baseball games, done some writing Giants won a World Series I mean, it was that long ago? Yeah, I think it was, right? That was pre-2014 World Series Wow, hot damn Yeah, all right Well, last time we drafted baseball things, just things about baseball

We didn't get any more specific than that And each of us took three So we're going to do that again, unbeknownst to Sam, who found out about that five minutes ago. So he's going to think of some things about baseball, hopefully. But I went back and reviewed what we picked last time. And Sam's picks were Babe Ruth, although he spent most of the time talking about Ernie Shore in relation to Babe Ruth, baseball radio commercials, and GMs making predictions, specifically in the annual Jerry

Krasnick survey. Grant's picks were the other Ryan Braun, when baseball players get mentioned in rap or hip hop lyrics, and searching for players with dirty words in their names on baseball reference. My picks were Pitch FX, the fact that field dimensions are different, and platoons. And Jeff's picks were the rotating scoreboard faces on Petco Park's scoreboard at some time that he couldn't remember exactly when it was. And player expressions, specifically Paul O'Neill's suffering after the 1995 ALDS ending. And property disputes, specifically the John Olerud tree story. So I don't know who won.

I think the other Ryan Braun was the best pick of the draft. That's good. But where was the other Jeff D'Amico? Yeah. You brought him up last time. I'm sure I did. Those are the two. I don't know, but they were the two Bobby Jones, right?

And they were teammates that one time for like a month. Yeah, you brought that up too. God damn it. I, just a couple days ago, I was thinking about how completely Adam Eaton, the old Adam Eaton has been forgotten about. It's very rare that you have an Adam Eaton. One player is so swallowed up by the other one. That's fair. Completely transcended.

Yeah. Adam Eaton just owns that name now. The new Adam Eaton, that is. So last time Sam drafted first, he's going to go last this time. Or not at all. Have time to think of some things. Hopefully, we'll see. Does anyone want to go first?

Well, I guess I'll talk. Does anyone want to go first? Well, I guess I'll talk just because pertinent to what we were just talking about. I think people have also forgotten the other Billy Hamilton, the one who's in the Hall of Fame, literally in the Hall of Fame. But anyway, I'm not drafting the other Billy Hamilton. I guess something I was just thinking about this morning because another one came across my Twitter feed. I guess I'll draft first the annually completely uninspiring baltimore orioles off-season rumor mill uh i'm just gonna i'm just gonna scroll down this is mlb trade rumors and i'm just gonna read off some names that are linked uh mlb trade rumors slash baltimore dash orioles uh just from the top uh rajay davis uh-huh uh they've previously been linked to on help a gun

that's great uh scroll down orioles, not signing Ben Revere. It's big news. They're not signing Ben Revere. They've long coveted Boone Logan. They've long coveted the most likely to resign Pedro Alvarez. However, that might make things difficult for Trey Mancini. Uh,

after that, we've got, we've got, they've pulled their offer to Mark Trumbo, but they're still, we know they're still going to sign Mark Trumbo, uh, who is a sexy name because of the home runs, but you know, unsexy player.

Here's a whole thing about how they might lose Manny Machado, you know, the one who's good. There's more. There's Colby Rasmus now that he's bad. Orioles interested. I'm not making this stuff up. Orioles interested in David Hernandez, Vance Worley. Still going. Orioles sign Chris Dickerson,

Tomo Oka. Tomo Oka may be the most interesting one here. Craig got an article out of that. Yeah, that was well done. Oh, yeah. Tomo Oka, I mean, that's big news. He's come back as a knuckleballer and he's 57 years old. That's fantastic. That's good baseball. Continuing on down the list, we've got Orioles signing

Wellington Castillo. Right after that is a post that says Orioles unlikely to sign Wellington Castillo. Right after that is a post that says, Orioles unlikely to sign Wellington Castillo. They signed Sean Coyle. They've expressed interest in Chris Carter. And on and on it goes. You can look at the Orioles, and it seems like every offseason,

the Orioles have been a good team. The last five years, I think they've won more games than any other team in the American League. Maybe their second. But they've won a lot, and they've won consistently. But their offseason seems like it is designed to put their fans to sleep. And I was thinking like at this point, I would not be while we're recording this right now, there could be a tweet linking them to Chris Jimenez. There could be a tweet linking them to Dylan G. There could be a tweet linking them to Bobby Estelaya. And I wouldn't be surprised by any single one of them just because they suck at generating interest and yet they win so there's

just so many ways in which the Orioles kind of like convolute what you would expect a competitive team to do and like maintain fan interest in the winter because they just kind of talk about all this crap and then they get like 1 20th of the crap that they expressed interest in and then they win 85 games or 95 games and they bullpen their way into an ALDS loss. So I don't know exactly what they're doing, but for a competitive team, it's like they think they're the Reds, but it sucks, but it's fun. And that's draft pick number one. Can I jump in here?

I've actually written about this phenomenon. Really? Like they do this. They do this often. I just dropped a link into whatever that site Ben had us log into. I'm really hungry for clicks here. In 2013, I went through all their transactions. This is the entire off-season for 2013. They signed Jason Priddy. They selected Alexi Kassia off waivers. They signed Nate McCluth. There was a

Yamaiko Navarro trade. There was Chris Dickerson again. Getting or not getting Yamaiko Navarro? Yamaiko? Yes. And then I think there was Rich Rundles. And then there was also another Chris Dickerson.

And then in 2015, there is Alex Hassan, Jason Garcia. They re-signed Delman Young. They sold Steve Lombardozzi. I mean, it's like every other year they have these just amazing off-seasons of absolute nothing. And like you said, they're contending. They're ostensibly in the hunt. They're not the Reds. They're supposed to be building something.

And it's utter inactivity. It's fantastic. And the fun thing is, you know, with the way Dan Duquette loves his international markets, they've had Yamiko Navarro. They gave up Yamiko Navarro. Yamiko Navarro went to Korea and just killed it. So do you think the Orioles might be in the market for another Yamiko Navarro reunion? Only if he throws a knuckleball now.

Oh, you know what? Yamiko Navarro last year fell apart in Japan. Do not make that transition. Oh, man. Far. Hey, what's the time frame on that, the risk of losing Manny Machado? I closed it. Yeah.

There's two years left. That's, okay. That's too bad. Yes, they are organizationally, I don't know the proper word for screwed, but it seems like it's screwed. Except for the part where they're perplexingly good now, but nothing in the farm system aside from Chance Sisko. And they have this guy who's like the best third baseman in baseball, second best, and they're probably going to lose him.

Yeah. Sometimes they make those sneaky moves at the very end of the offseason, like the Nelson Cruz a few years ago. And I don't know whether Giovanni Gallardo was sneaky. I don't know whether they were hurting themselves or helping themselves. But that happened. And I guess the biggest news this offseason was when Dan Duquette didn't sign Jose Bautista, but had a good line for why he wasn't signing him. So yeah, I think this is a good one. Good pick.

Grant, you want to go? I will go. I was actually going to pick the other Ryan Braun, and I had to scuttle that at the last second. And one that was on my mind, and I'm not going to pick this, I'm just throwing things out there, is I was going to pick before this all started when I'm on the radio or a podcast and I realize at the last second that I've never said this player's name out loud. And I know I'm just going to screw it up and sound like an idiot.

And I just did it twice. Jason Pradee and Yamiko Navarro. I've never said that name. Yamiko Navarro? How did you say it, Jeff? Yamiko Navarro? How'd you say it, Jeff? Yamiko Navarro. I had to look up Bobby Estelaya on Baseball Reference just because I didn't know if he Americanized it.

I mean, you'd know you watched him, but I had to make sure before I came on the air because I had the same problem. Oh, fantastic, fantastic. I'm going to pick Rally Caps and specifically the sadness inherent in taking an upside-down, inside-out baseball cap off and folding it the right way and realizing you look like a total ass for no reason. It didn't work.

It didn't help. And you sat there in public with an inside out baseball cap tilted to the side cheering like an idiot. And now you look like a bigger idiot and nothing you do works. You will always fail. Everything in your life will be a disappointment to everyone who's ever loved you. So I guess that's like a proxy for superstition in general. Just baseball superstition. I'm not sure if you guys, being logic-fearing individuals, if you were into superstitions at any point in your baseball-loving lives.

But I'm kind of an idiot. Like, I do sort of engage in superstitions, you know. I'll still mention no-hitters when they're going on, but I have been known to wear a rally cap in the past, and I've been known to turn it inside out and then right side in very sadly after my team does not come back because they rarely do. So as a proxy for superstitions,

I'll go with ineffective rally caps. That's good. Yeah, my only superstition is that as long as I don't favorite any of your tweets, I keep my job at Fangraphs and so forth. It's been going good four years running. All right. For my pick, I am taking players being afraid of the elements.

And this is something that happens, I think, maybe once per season. I just quickly looked and I found one prominent example in each of the last several years. So, you know, baseball players, when they're on the field, they are masters of their domain. They look like they're in command. They're in charge. They are impossibly more competent than we could ever hope to be at this thing they're doing. And then suddenly there will be like lightning or thunder and a bunch of them will freak out and it'll be captured in slow motion by all the many cameras that are on the field and we can watch it forever. all the many cameras that are on the field and we can watch it forever.

So I think one of my favorites is if you just look on YouTube, there's an MLB video called Strike of Lightning Delays Game. And it's from July 2012. And it's just a normal generic game. It's a Rangers game in Texas and baseball is happening. And then suddenly just as the pitcher and the batter are prepared to do what pitchers and batters do, there's a loud peal of lightning. No, that's not right. Peal of thunder, which follows lightning. And then just everyone streaks off the field, just sprints off the field.

Whoever's in the batter's box leaves immediately. The umpires don't suspend the game, as far as I can tell. The players just make a unilateral decision. I'm not going to be on this field anymore. And they leave. And there are some other really good reactions. Like there's an MLB.com video and maybe also a YouTube video called Thunder Scares Yanks and Socks. This is from June of 2013. And they have the videos, cameras set up in both dugouts. And so there are guys sitting there.

I think this is during a rain delay because it's pouring. And then there's thunder. And these guys just act like they have never heard thunder before. I don't know whether this was unusually loud thunder, but like Brett Gardner spasms for like four full seconds. I timed it.

There are like four players like hugging each other. Like I guess maybe it's that like they're at a public event and they're celebrities and maybe like they just assume it's a bomb. Like anything that would make that noise would be a bomb. So maybe that's it. But they look just very skittish, very afraid. There's another one on YouTube. Melky jumps back after hearing thunder. This is from September of 2014. Melky's in the batter's box and there's thunder and he freaks out. Maybe that was especially surprising because he's in Tropicana Field and you can't see the sky. So maybe that makes thunder more scary.

I don't know. And the last and best one I found from July of 2015 is Kevin Kiermaier gets spooked by a pigeon. So, it's called Pigeon Gives Kiermaier a Scare. If you want to look for that on MLB.com. And Kiermaier's on first base

and a pigeon just swoops at him and he falls back as if he has been shot. And he looks like he has had the breath taken out of him. So this is one of my favorite things about baseball. It's a complete interruption and it shows us the humanity of these otherwise somewhat superhuman people. There's a little bit of like a groundhog effect where if you give them a few minutes to adjust you'll see the players they'll come out they'll like play in the rain they'll play in the tarp or i think my favorite one was

a few years ago many years ago the mariners were playing a series in cleveland in april and it snowed all weekend and so a game was snowed out but then you had this this large latin american population of players who for the most part many of them have never seen snow and so they adjusted to the elements and then they got excited for the elements part many of them have never seen snow and so they adjusted to the elements and then they got excited for the elements and you would just see pictures on on twitter and posted elsewhere of them making like snow angels and building snowmen on the rail and the dugout so they came around to the elements it just took them a little while no no one likes to be startled right yeah no not by at the risk of uh detailing exactly how out of story ideas I am,

I actually wrote about the lightning in that Rangers game in 2012. We all just got linked to another Grant Bersbee post here. Yeah, this is so wild. The part of... Traffic's going through the room, baby. My favorite thing about that that rangers uh twins game is that ian kinsler like you see there's like a top-down view of the entire field the players and when the lightning flashes like people just go everywhere i mean they're just

they're running they're ducking they're hitting the deck, and Ian Kinsler does not move. The runner on first literally drops to the ground and does a duck and cover, and Ian Kinsler doesn't do anything. It's amazing. I was going to ask you, Grant, because I'm watching that, and the pitcher is pretty chill about things, and the first baseman is still near the bag. And yeah, like you say, the runner drops down,

and like Ben said, I don't think time had been called. What would the unwritten rules have been of picking him off? I think it breaks the unwritten rule if you cause the thunder. If somehow you've planned that and you've figured out a way to make that sort of loud atomic noise, that's against the rules. But if you're just picking a guy off because he's a weenie and he's doing a duck and cover, you can't fault the pitcher for that. I remember that time against Toronto when Alex Rodriguez simulated the sound of thunder when there was a pop-up that he hit. All right. Sam, have we vamped long enough? all right sam have we vamped long enough uh so i sure uh good picks guys i uh one of the things that um there was a game where the cubs and the indians were playing in i think 2015 and and john

lester's thing was a thing by that point it was actually kind of near the peak of its being a thing. And if I'm remembering this right, I think Terry Franconis had a quote about how he wasn't looking to go out and embarrass Lester. Of course, he managed Lester. And I think if I recall this correctly, there was a quote about how, yeah, they'd run on him, but they weren't planning on running on him. They weren't going to try to embarrass him. And this reminded me of my favorite sacrifice bunt in history, which I don't think I've ever talked about on this show. But in 1998, Mark Wohlers got the yips as a pitcher. He came out, basically he came out on June 12th, walked a batter on four pitches. And then over his next nine outings, he had four and a third innings pitched and walked 16 batters.

And the offseason happens, and he maybe gets better or maybe he doesn't get better, and the Braves alternate closer, Kerry Leitenberg, gets hurt. And so Wohlers has a good spring training. He gets to be the closer again. He comes out in his first game of the year, walks four batters, 20 balls and 11 strikes. He blows up at the reporters after the game. So he comes back the next game and throws a pitch to the backstop in his warmups. he throws his first two pitches past the catcher. He walks the first batter on four pitches.

And then Terry Francona calls a bunt. So Doug Glanville is asked to lay it down. I believe he does lay it down. Wohlers then walks the next batter on four pitches. That might have been it. After that, Wohlers does not pitch again for the rest of the year. So he throws one strike in that outing, and Doug Glanville lays it down. And I have, I mean, this is either the worst bunt ever called in history by far

from a strategic perspective, or it is the sort of truest form of humanity we've ever seen. Like this was, I don't think this game was, yeah, the game wasn't even that close. It was a three-run game in the ninth inning. There's no reason really to even be bunting there. They were, you know, they were up three already. And I think that Terry Francona was throwing him a lifeline. And that's, you know, there's a, there's a very fine line between when that becomes acceptable

and when it sort of chips away at the competition that we demand of our players and like the red assness that we demand of them. But I think this is squarely on the right side. I think Terry Francona, who is I think well regarded as a good human, demonstrated it there. I think that is one of the finest moments of humanity that the sport has ever seen. And it did not do any good at all.

Wooler's basically could not grab that lifeline. Grant, you write about that? Yeah, let me, I just dropped a link uh did about 4 000 words on it all right good one good one especially since you had 10 minutes to prep got 10 minutes for the next one uh okay okay so first pick second round i think there there is a certain phenomenon in in sports where you have obviously any superstar, you love to have a superstar on your favorite team instead of another team. When I think about hockey in particular, there are these players who are like agitators. And the name that always comes to mind is this guy, Darcy Tucker.

He's just like the scrappy fighter, one of those guys you love on your team and you hate him on any other team. There's any number of these players. AJ Pierzynski would be a baseball player. Maybe you love on your team and hate on another team or Francisco Rodriguez. I don't know. I've never had him on my team. I don't know if people like him, but he seems like a guy who's, you know, he agitates if you're playing against him. So I'm going to pick Fernando Rodney because what I think is interesting about Fernando Rodney is he's a player that you love most when he's not on your team because of the difficulty of watching him try to do his job.

Except as a person, he seems like he is delightful. He has his very heartwarming and distinctive cap tip, which is just a neat little identifier. He's funny. He's charming in the English that he speaks and in Spanish. He has that jig video. You know, he's kind of weird. He had that jig clip that went viral last year. He does this whole bow and arrow thing, which is just patently absurd as a closer celebration.

There are so many reasons, I think, to love the idea of Fernando Rodney, except the problem is that he also has a job that's sufficiently high leverage that you never want to see him actually do it. So in a way, he's a little like Munanori Kawasaki, except with him, I think that if you don't follow his team, and I don't even know if he has a team anymore, you might not really be exposed to his charms. Kawasaki is nice as like a non-rostered mascot, but like Rodney is a major league player, and you never want to see him try to close. But if you're the you're the team playing against fernando ronnie's team i think that you love him then more than anyone on your own roster what percentage of

closers at any given time have that reputation of someone you don't want to see close i feel like they're only like five guys that people want to see close and everyone else you can find someone being like oh it's always an adventure when that guy's absolutely if you have a whip of one you are unreliable because fans hate a base runner and it's no different from well maybe maybe it's a little different from managers where like as long as you're not talking about your manager then that's fine or like a third base coach but like yeah how many how many closers are automatic, would you say? You know, you've got your, well, I guess Miller's not a closer. You've got Jansen, you've got Chapman. It's been Melanson, but who knows if that's going to continue. But like, even in the playoffs, you think of

all this Chapman, the most dominant per inning pitcher in the history of the sport, and you give him like one bad outing, maybe two, and all of a sudden, people just don't trust him anymore. He comes out in game seven. Now, granted, in Game 7 he wasn't really looking very good, but how many Cubs fans were nervous when Aroldis freaking Chapman came out of the bullpen for Game 7 of the World Series? There's not a single pitcher in the history of the game

you would want more on the mound in that specific situation than Aroldis Chapman. And yeah, I know he kind of blew it, but the fact that it takes so little to shake your faith in someone so dominant, being a closer looks like it sucks. And I hope that they always get paid a lot through arbitration, as broken as the system is, because they have to take so much shit from everyone. My mom used to react like that when Mariano Rivera came in. Rivera would come in and she'd be like, oh, hereiano and i would explain that he was like the best ever

doing this job and then she would uh in fairness i guess for a guy who was a legend and like you know the best postseason pitcher ever and all that he had a couple high profile failures where he blew games and got his team eliminated and i guess she only remembered 2001 and 97 and not all the other times. So she would always like roll her eyes when Rivera would come in. So yeah, there's a, I think no matter who the closer is, no matter how good he is, there's someone convinced that he's about to blow it. It sucks because they have a job where they come in and they pitch with the odds strongly in their own team's favor. And when you have the odds that are like 85 or 95 percent then as a fan you just assume the game is over so if they get the save it's like well you did what you're supposed to do if you blow it then that's

unforgivable if you're a starting pitcher or a hitter you're not coming into those circumstances so it's like oh the game is in question and what you do is a big deal but if you're a vera and you close the door and you retire three batters on the road to preserve a 4-3 win, it's like, well, yeah, but we kind of figured we were going to win before you even threw a pitch. So, hey, great going. We don't care. So it's just unfair. It's unfair.

It's probably unfair to Fernando Rodney, too, but in fairness, he does suck to watch. Got to have a short memory if you're a closer. That's what they say. All right. So I'm going to take pitchers' bodies and especially their arms when they're throwing. And Grant tweeted a great one of what Alex Meyer the other day of Alex Meyer's body just contorted in a highly unnatural way when he was throwing a pitch. And this is always the case. Like we talk about pitchers with weird pitch faces

and that sort of thing, but I don't know if there's a single pitcher whose arm doesn't look grotesque when you capture him in the act of throwing a pitch. Like Randy Johnson's arm used to be particularly gross. I remember, I don't even know if there are really degrees of grossness because to throw a major league pitch, your arm has to rotate so fast that if you take a still image at the moment when it's moving the fastest, it just looks incredibly unnatural. And there's just like a bundle of veins and tendons snaking around and like things are popping out of the skin almost. And it just looks horrible. And so when I see one of those, that is like a, it's a good reminder that this is why I'm not a major league player. I cannot move any part of my body that quickly, probably in order to look that gross and unnatural. And also that, oh, that's why

pitchers get hurt all the time and why you can't rely on them and can't expect that they'll be good next year because they do this like a hundred times every five days or so all season. next year because they do this like a hundred times every five days or so all season. I've never seen anyone look anything less than horrific in that pose. So a lot of guys will look, you know, like if you take a hitter and you pause a hitter at the moment he's making contact, it looks graceful and just, you know, so smooth and so coordinated, but a pitcher at his moment of triumph on the field just looks sickening. So I will take that. Yeah, Chris Sale looks like an H.R.

Geiger sculpture, like just like when you stop him, he's got bones, everything's splayed all over the place. So good, good draft, good draft choice. I remember, yeah, I remember when I was a kid and I would look at baseball cards where the pitcher would be right at the end of their motion or at some point in their motion. And I would try to figure out how to look like that. And I just couldn't do it. It's impossible to get into those positions on your own.

Nor would you want to. those positions uh on your own yeah nor would you want to what it was uh i think that at the the moment of throwing or at like peak torque on your elbow i think it's compared to like holding like a 60 pound weight at the end of your arm i think it's just that's the like that's the strain that you put on your elbow and you do that 100 times uh in every game and then you also have all your warm-up pitches that nobody that nobody tracks but i i do like i mean this this kind of goes into pitch face you know the whole arm thing and then the pitch face thing and i think the the best one i've ever seen was cliff lee because everyone's so you think pitch face and you think like r.a dickie and his scream which is funny because he doesn't throw that hard and he just

looks like he's he's terrified but most pictures look like they're terrified or about the vomit on the mound like Chris Perez. But Cliff Lee would just, everything was so composed that he would just have this big old smile. He would just like look at you and he'd just grin like he was having the best time of his life. And I mean, his arm would look like crap like any other pitcher's arm, but he was just charming. And I wonder if that added to his deception.

He's just beguiling hitters with his friendliness and overall charm. All right, Sam. All right. I will pick Matt Kemp's rap album. A while ago, maybe five, six years ago, Matt Kemp tweeted that he was in the studio working on his album. And every so often I look, I try to find it. I try to find any reference to it ever again. And I have not. I've not found any evidence that it's been released. There are lyrics anywhere

that he ever acknowledged it again. And yet he was in the the studio it's not like he's like thinking about going to the studio he was in the studio so he recorded he recorded this album and i just like to imagine how bad it must have been that none of it was allowed to see the light of day like i don't i don't get the feeling i mean again he was in the, so he already had convinced himself that he was a good rapper, uh, worth, uh, you know, a rapper who was worth hearing by the world. Uh, and so it's something in this performance though, he heard it and it spooked him. And, uh, someday I feel like someday this album is, is going to get out and we're going to, we're understand it but uh in the meantime every time i i see matt kemp uh at the plate i just know he has a secret that he is he has he has kept an album from us uh and and my guess is that it is not like the uh secret

wu-tang album uh that is just so valuable that it can't be given over to the public that that there is just something i don't know what he said i don't know if it was lyrics i don't know if it was style i don't know if he decided that he doesn't like rap music anymore i don't know but it exists can i posit an alternate theory yeah that it was released in a pretty big success but this is the same thing like the sinbad uh shazam movie just gonna bring that up yeah where Where people are remembering, like, no, that existed. I saw that movie as a kid, or I was in that movie.

It launched my career, and now I don't have a career. I think maybe he released it and it did very, very well. Rihanna was on it, and it was fantastic. I remember it. Should we all sing our favorite song from it?

What's your favorite lyric from that album, Grant? I think it's the one where he goes, hitting the balls both near and far, sticking these lyrics to you like a palm full of pine tar. Right? That's probably the hottest. Was this effectively Wilde's first freestyle? I think it was.

First and probably last. It could be like a Chinese democracy sort of situation where they're just, he's working on it. He'll be back in the studio at some point. It'll be a number of different sessions and lineups and he's still tinkering. So he might actually come out someday. What year did you say that he was doing this?

I can guess. I can find out an answer for you quickly enough, but in the meantime, I'm guessing it was like 2012. Okay, so pretty much right as Matt Kemp's career war started to go in the tank, do you think that the burden of the task or maybe the embarrassment is what has caused him to become so gravely slow in the outfield? Yes. All right.

Conclusive. The weirdest thing is that this whole time I've been trying to find the original tweet that started all this. tweet that I, that started all this. And I can't find any reference to it or the tweet itself or where it used to be on my tickler file of things to follow up on. And so I can't even say for sure that it ever existed. And I might have been drawing energy all these years from an imagined recording session for an album that in fact never did occur which will only make me think about this when i look at matt kemp even more are we uh well we're through through two rounds already i i didn't get i didn't get my second you know uh point of order i didn't get my second, you know, point of order. I didn't get my second one.

Oh, wait. Oh, I skipped you. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, that's okay. That's okay. Home run reactions from pitchers, and I'm going to draft a very specific one because if you're going to rank them or rate them, you know, if you're going to rank them, like, okay,

so a guy hits a home run, pitcher turns around. That's like, you know, the typical um that's the most boring a guy hits a home run pitcher swears a lot and then you know obviously he's disgusted and turns around that that's just a little bit better than that pitcher who points at at the ball as if you know to say you know you got it you got it like that's a very famous that's like uh that is a top sort of pick. That's a very famous, that's like the ideal. But my favorite, and the one I'm going to draft, are the pitchers who don't even turn around.

They're like, it is Sodom and Gomorrah. They can't, they'll turn into a pillar of salt. They just, they will not turn around and look. And it's like the ark, when they open the arc. And it takes such like a stoicism. And I always admire that. Like they don't want to see how far that ball goes. Because that would be part of the fun, I would think, of being a pitcher.

Is if you're going to give up a home run, at least you can go like, wow, you know, I played a part in this magnificent ballet of physics that allowed the baseball to be hit 500 feet. Good job, me. But they don't even look. And it's those pitchers, that reaction that I'm going to draft because I just, I love it. I love the commitment. Yeah. You know what I've noticed recently? I've started to notice this is the pitchers who flinch, who flinch as though the ball is going to hit them, even though it's hit, you know, far off in another direction. I had never really noticed that before, but there's a lot more flinching, pitcher flinching though the ball is going to hit them, even though it's hit, you know, far off in another direction. I had never really noticed that before, but there's a lot more flinching,

pitcher flinching than I expected. They don't want to die. There's the Chris Resop that Cespedes family barbecue found the reflexive crotch grab after every, after every hit. You know what I like? This is a different thing entirely and not my pick, but I like the pitcher who walks off the mound screaming profanity after a clean inning. All right, Jeff? Okay, so I'm sure this is episode 99 episode 996 right so i'm sure this has come up before but i would just like to formally draft the uh the worst hitter of all time i'm gonna you

know bill bergen got a draft bill bergen if anybody doesn't know bill bergen so i i sorted i looked at every player in in baseball history that's batted at least 2 000 times good proxy for like regular player uh bill bergen batted 3200 times and change and and by wrc plus which i assume the audience is familiar with the third worst hitter of all time is rafael bellyard you remember him he's recent he's bad 44 wrc plus 44 second worst hitter of all time warren spawn you remember him he's a pitcher wrc plus 42 uh so 42 second worst worst bill bergen he was a catcher uh not a pitcher, and his WRC Plus was 22. That is 20 points worse than Warren's fun, Bill Bergen.

So if you look at the worst individual offensive seasons of all time, minimum 250 plate appearances, the worst belongs to Bill Bergen. That's a WRC Plus of zero. The second worst belongs to Bill Bergen. That's a WRC plus of five. Third worst, Del Young. Not Delman Young.

Might as well be. WRC plus of eight. Fourth worst, Bill Bergen comes in at nine. And Bill Bergen shows up again at seventh. I'm sorry. Tied for sixth. Tied for sixth. It's Jim McLeod.

Bill Bergen in that year, WRC plus of 17. So Bill Bergen, absolutely miserable. Drew Butera, incidentally, in 2011, had a Wc plus of 17 so bill bergen absolutely miserable drew butera incidentally in 2011 had a wrc plus of uh of 19 which is 19 points better than bill bergen's worst uh when he still played often for the dodgers he held a record that was broken by mark lemke which tells you that it was a record that lasted a while he never got hit by a pitch in his entire career. He did hit two home runs, both of which were inside the park. And he had a brother, a brother who was a major league catcher, Marty Bergen. Marty Bergen played right around the turn of the previous century, or I guess now the previous century.

Marty Bergen played for whatever BSN stands for. I'm going to guess that is the Boston Bean Eaters. There we go. Marty Bergen played between the ages of 24 and 27. He was a far better hitter than Bill Bergen. However, he suffered from severe mental illness. And when he was 27 years old, he killed himself and his entire family. So the Bergen chain. Not including Bill. Not including Bill. He must have murdered just his non-blood family, except I guess his kids would have been blood.

We're not here to talk about Marty Bergen. What we are here to talk about is how Marty Bergen, by some measurements, had a more successful adult life than his brother Bill. It really kind of depends on your perspective. But Bill did go on to coach. His major league career ended in 1911 when he had that WRC plus of zero. Although his BAP up was 162.

So maybe he got unlucky. I don't know. The Dodgers should have given him another chance. But he went on to play in the minors and he coached. And he died much later than Marty Bergen did. And I think he lived another 43 years. So Bill Bergen, worst hitter in baseball history. He has been linked to one Fangraphs post according to his Fangraphs page.

That Fangraphs post from February 18th by Joe Pawlikowski is titled the worst hitter in baseball history. Negative 16.2 war. He is a negative 16.2 war He is a Negative 16.2 war however According to some baseball researchers He races one of the better defensive catchers of all time So probably still a better player than Ryan Domet If you look okay so Domet According to the numbers on baseball prospectus

Which is a website that you've both worked for If you look at their Total for Ryan Domet's career War equivalent negative seven negative seven wins above replacement so i guess seven full wins below replacement for ryan domic over the course of his career bill bergen he was uh at about negative 16 with no defensive credit no real defensive credit i don't know if framing was a thing in like 1908 but if it was there's a chance there's a chance bill bergen was chance. Bill Bergen was better than

Ryan Domet, which this is just now a pitch framing thing, but Ryan Domet's so bad. All right, Grant, your turn again, I guess. I'll go on right back. Let's see. I think I'm going to draft just how good, generally, umpires are. In the grand scheme of things, they are very, very, very talented. And nobody recognizes that because they screw up occasionally because they're human. But they're generally... Whenever I notice how good an umpire is, maybe it's making a split second decision or a call or reacting to something weird that you wouldn't have thought that there was like precedent for it, but they know the rule off the top of their

head and they can, they can calm the managers down. Uh, but just in general, like you'll see a pitcher throw a pitch and you'll in the upper call a strike and go, Oh, come on. And then it'll like pull up the, the, the graphic, the pitch FX graphic. And it's like perfect right on the corner. And you're the idiot because you have the bad camera. And you're still not convinced. And you're just, no, that umpire's terrible. And you've got the laser, you know, in front of you that's telling you, no, that was a strike.

Those little glimmers of just how competent most umpires are. I mean, we're not talking about Angel Hernandez or anything. But just umpires in general are awesome at what they do. And if you watch college, if you watch high school, I mean, especially any other level, you're going to notice, you're going to notice the difference that, you know, most umpires just aren't, aren't so hot. But when you get to the majors, those guys generally are incredible. And we don't notice it because that's the game and, you know, tough break. They make a pretty hefty salary and they're unionized and good for them. But whenever I'm sort of, you get a peek behind the curtain

and realize that umpires are competent, I do enjoy that. So I'm going to draft that. You can just look at when they call up like triple A umpires for their like spot starts in the majors. They suck like a lot of the time. Like this dude, Sean Barber. I don't want to call one guy out, but I will. His name is Sean Barber. He's a bad umpire. And they brought him up from triple A and he calls a really bad zone. And like I think because you you don't want umpires to matter in any sport, it's not just baseball. You just assume they should all be great and you don't want umpires to matter in any sport. It's not just baseball. You just assume they should all be great and you don't give them any thought like you're talking about.

But like there's umpire prospects in the minors and then the best, the fully developed elite ones go to the majors. And of course they make mistakes, but it's like how people underestimate how difficult it is to be a broadcaster for a four and a half hour baseball game that is the current average.

Like that is a very hard job and it's even like the bad announcers are incredible that they can just sit and talk for four and a half hours it's been 47 minutes and i already hit all three of you doing this like they have to do that all season long all spring training and then for a certain fraction of teams i also well i guess they don't do the postseason maybe radio does but yeah i am i am with you people get uh get way too mad at umpires and broadcasters not understanding that hey you know you know that the favorite baseball player you love he makes outs more than half the time unless he's joey vato yeah and and specifically

when people get on like as a giants fan i listen to a lot of mike krukum people just can't stand how much he repeats himself and and he'll sort of use the same jokes over and over again. And as someone who like – I get defensive when people bring up like Rick Riley reusing jokes because I write – I've written so much. I'm sure I've written the same jokes hundreds and hundreds of times. There was one time I described someone who was injured as having like a family of raccoons living in his knee. And it's a stupid like image i don't know why and then someone like googled that specific phrase family of raccoons living his knee and they're like all means there's six of them i went back to that like six times and it was never good and i bet they were all roy oswald so it's like when people get on when people get

on broadcasters for repeating the same stuff, it's like, man, they're talking for hours. They're talking for like thousands of hours every year. And yeah, they're going to reuse some of the same imagery or same jokes. This is the talking that I do out loud. Maybe I podcast during the day. You know, I work from home. I live with somebody, but you know, she goes to work. we don't talk that much during the day I'd have very little social time in my average week I repeat stories constantly when I'm talking to friends like I swear I'll go meet my friend Dan and he repeats the stories too I pick up on it when he does I don't pick up on it when I do it but then I think we've just been having the same

conversation for like the two and a half years that we've been friends because I repeat stories all the time and I talk maybe 15 minutes a day. We're far exceeding your quota today. Sorry about that. I like that when you go to a long dead player's fan grass page, it will tell you how old he is regardless. I went to Bill Bergen's fan grass page and he is 138 years, six months, and 10 days old, or he would be. Doesn't look a day over 132. According to the Fangraphs page, he doesn't have a current contract. No, you can add one though.

All right. I am going with an obvious pick, which I think is okay because Sam took Babe Ruth with the first ever pick in these drafts. I'm taking Trout. And I'm taking Trout just largely out of gratitude for how much content he has supplied for all four of us over the last several years. Sam wrote an article about Mike Trout, and then four years later, he got hired by the same company that he wrote that article about. I can only assume that that was because of that article four years earlier. And if you put all of our Mike Trout output together, how long do you think that book would be? Jeff alone has written, like, every time Mike Trout gets better at something, which he does like five times a season, even though he was already the

best player in baseball, Jeff has a post on it. So I think, I mean, just Jeff's writing on Trout alone would be a sizable, sizable collection. And of course, he's also a great source of fun facts. He is the best player through his age ever. So he's a constant reminder that we are still living in extraordinary times, that things didn't used to be better in the past. We have the best baseball player perhaps ever playing right in front of us every night. Even if many of us aren't paying attention because the Angels are bad, we can always say we saw Mike Trout peak. So when we first did this, we had three rounds, right? Four people, three rounds.

And we have four people, three rounds. You just went third in the third round this time. So we had 12, 20. Mike Trout, the 23rd pick in our drafting. He was the 25th pick. So once again, other people had an opportunity to draft Mike Trout. Totally knew about him. Just bypassed him.

Overlooked him in favor of trying to do something clever. I was about to take Randall Gritchick, too. I love how boring he is as a personality. Just so boring. There's never been a good interview with Mike Trout. There's never been a quotable line. Hey, as a personality. Just so boring. There's never been a good interview with Mike Trout. There's never been a quotable line. Hey, thanks a lot. You know it's true. I've talked to Mike Trout. You've talked to Mike Trout. Anyone who's talked to Mike Trout has struggled to come up with some portion of a sentence he said that was interesting,

and it doesn't happen. And I don't know whether he is not an interesting person or whether he is just not choosing to share that part of himself with us, but it doesn't matter. He is the most interesting baseball player and that is enough to make him my pick. In terms of players being afraid of the elements, he's most passionate about stuff that causes baseball to not happen. Like that's Mike Trout. He's very good at what he does but he's like no kind

of like when there's a storm i don't want to baseball anymore i just want to talk about the storm how frustrating must that be to be like unel escobar or maybe a better example who just like busts his ass and has been caring about baseball for 25 years and he's just like yeah i'm i'm the guy who flanks mike try that nobody nobody talks about. How – whatever, Cole Calhoun. All right. Sam, last pick. All right. I am – when I was at the register, I had to do a lot of slideshows, which was a real bummer.

but the one thing is that I could sometimes just identify some visual thing that, that showed up a lot and then just dump 25 of them in a slideshow. And then, and then my boss would think I was, I was doing great. And so like one time, I think I did one on athletes standing next to David Eckstein. And one time I did one on baseball players wearing their glove as a hat. And one that I never got to, but I always wanted to, and I sort of regret that now I haven't worked at a slideshow shop for a while, is Phil Necro being old. Because Phil Necro, so Phil Necro played until he was was 48 which made him pretty old for a baseball player but I want to I'm going to show you guys this is a I'm going to just show you a what I

would consider a representative baseball card of Phil Negro not even like a very extreme one try that one he does and so that's not even that's two years before he retired i've got i'm gonna send you this one so this one i'm sending, is 13 years before he retired. That's a full career before his career ended. There are Hall of Famers who played less time than he played after this picture was taken. There's just so many of them. uh and there's just so many of them if you if you just look up like 1987 1988 phil negro pictures he just i just like that he did not he didn't fake it he didn't bother he was 48 looked 68 and he just embraced it and i don't know not many athletes do that uh like but this is ridiculous this is a um this is clearly an old-timers game picture

uh right let's see yeah it's the one i was gonna send exactly that is that is he's he's pitching to yogi bara and there is a chain link fence 25 feet behind the infield because they can't have a full size field for the old timers game in this picture that's an active major leaguer with a era plus that was like probably like 102 the other thing about the phil negro that uh phil negro being old is i don't understand why knuckleballers can't do even more than they do like i don't understand why knuckleballers ever retire i don't understand why knuckleballers can't do even more than they do. Like, I don't understand why knuckleballers ever retire. I don't understand why knuckleballers can't pitch every day. Like, Tim Wakefield was a knuckleballer, and in some ways that made his career unusual and interesting. But in a lot of ways, his career was just pretty normal.

He pitched a couple years beyond when he might otherwise have, but he wasn't very good after he turned 40. He didn't have starts where he threw 215 pitches. He didn't start back-to-back games, and I don't understand why. I don't have an answer for that. I mean, I don't know. I can't throw a knuckleball. I've never been able to, So I can't. It seems like it would hurt me just trying and just going through the motions. There's got to be some resistance and some sort of wear and tear that comes from throwing even a knuckleball. A catcher throws 180, 200 times a game every day, five, six days a week. And it can't be that much worse than a catcher, can it?

You've kind of blown my mind. I've literally never thought about that before. Got to sit down for a second. Are you standing? Knuckleballers might actually be an exception to my pick from earlier about how every pitcher looks disgusting and gross when they throw. Yeah, I just sent you one of Phil Negro, and it looks like he's doing Tai Chi on a dewy morning in the park.

Yeah, I've been looking at Wakefield, and there's one where you can see a vein, but that's about it. For the most part, it just looks like a normal arm. I guess R.I. Dickey's arm can't look weird because it doesn't have anything in it. Yeah, right. Looking at this Necro card, his autograph looks like what a knuckleball does. Grant just sent a picture of Joe Patini. I just had to drop that in.

There's 1981 tops, Joe Patini. That's my favorite baseball card of all time. I would follow that man. Did they wear turtlenecks in their uniform that year? I don't know. I would follow that man anywhere. If you ever wondered how do these colts start up, it's because a guy looks like that, and you trust him.

I've always loved listening to radio shows where the people who are talking are looking at things that I can't see as a listener. Yeah, we do that a lot. Our listeners are usually... Let's just trust us. Let's go over some gifs. All right.

Well, we're at just about an hour. We went an hour 17 somehow the first time, but we are more efficient now, I guess. So, yeah, we're at just about an hour. We went an hour 17 somehow the first time, but we are more efficient now, I guess. So yeah, we're done. We drafted some things. We still like baseball for the most part, and we found more things to single out. Good job, guys. Yay. Writing at Fangraphs and at Based underscore ball you can find Grant writing at SB Nation At the main MLB page and also at McCovey Chronicles and on Twitter at McCovey Cron you all already know that But just in case and

That'll do it bye all see you Oh bye Five listeners who Have supported the podcast on Patreon At patreon.com slash effectively wild Scott Andrews, Scott Powers, John Armstrong, Francisco Gomez, and John McGovern.

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. This is my last chance to plug it before Christmas. Go to theonlyruleisithastowork.com for more information.

You can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on itunes you can join our facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and you can contact me and sam at podcast at baseball prospectus.com or by messaging us through patreon have a wonderful weekend if you're celebrating christmas have a great christmas and we will talk to you next week We like him That's the way We like him That's the way We like him

That's the way We like him