Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1026: The Best Podcast on the Planet

Episode Date: March 2, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about nets, nicknames, and scouting directors’ comments about international prospect Luis Robert, then answer listener emails about robbing from the Cubs, a division composed of only the worst teams, pitch counts and automatic intentional walks, pitchers pitching to pitchers, trying to win in spring training, Mike Trout batting eighth, […]

Go take off my pants. Go take off my pants. Go take off my pants. Go take off my pants. Your mama can't stop me. Your papa can't stop me. And the police can't stop me. No one can stop me. Hello and welcome to episode 1026 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. My name is Ben Lindberg and I'm a writer for The Ringer, joined as always by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello, Jeff. Hi. I have a couple of follow-ups to last week's email show before we get to this week's email show. Do you have anything you want to talk about

before that? Sure. Some real quick banter that was sent to us via email, maybe in the Effectively Wild group, I don't know. It was a link to MLB Trade Rumors. The headline of the story is Cardinals interested in Cuban prospect, I'm sorry, I don't know how to say this, but I'm going to guess Louis Robert.

Yeah, I think that's right. Let's go with Louis Robert. Looks like Louis Robert, but it's probably not Louis Robert. So just an ordinary article Cardinals have been scouting. Cuban outfielder Louis Robert. Derek Gold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. Blah, blah, blah. Ordinary article about a potential international signee.

Except that if you scroll down in the article, in the penultimate paragraph, we have the following sentence. I'll just read the paragraph. I'll just read the paragraph for everyone. Needless to say, Robert will command far beyond that $300,000 figure, given the eye-popping early reports on his talent. One NL international scouting director tells Sanchez, Jesse Sanchez, that Robert is second only to Shohei Otani on the list of best international talents in baseball, describing the 19-year-old as, quote, a five-tool guy that can be in the big league soon. But wait, it gets better. That's not part of the paragraph.

That was mine. This is back to the paragraph. An international scouting director for an AL team goes even further, calling Robert, quote, the best player on the planet, and that's no exaggeration. The best player on the planet, and that's no exaggeration. The best player on the planet. And that's no exaggeration. So we don't have much of a record of Louis Robert, which, by the way, that's point of evidence number one, that he's not the best player on the planet. And that's no exaggeration. But we do have, or I should say baseball reference does have some history of Louis Robert. I don't know how complete these numbers are, but we have parts of, I guess, four years of being a player in Cuba. Louis Robert has played predominantly left field, some center field. He's listed as a first baseman perplexingly. I don't know what that's about, but over the fractions of four years, this totals nearly 500 trips to the plate. Robert has hit 276 with six home runs in a league that's been almost entirely depleted of talent.

Granted, this is Robert as a teenager when the average age in the league has been kind of more, I guess, my age. But the ages are all over the place. The talent levels are all over the place. I have never seen Louis Robert. I am certainly not a scout, even if I had seen Louis Robert. never seen louis robert i am certainly not a scout even if i had seen louis robert but what i am is a guy who writes about baseball often enough to know that a 19 year old from cuba is almost certainly not as good or better than mike trout who is the best player in the world and that's no exaggeration maybe shohei otani although i'm skeptical he could bring we don't need to go into that

what what odds given only these two glowing quotes and one quote so glowing that it could have its own solar system around it what odds based only on that do you think there are that Louis Robert actually is the best baseball player on the planet right now and that's no exaggeration I don't think you could give me odds that I would take for that bet. I mean, he played 16 games last year in the Can-Am League, which is a mid-level indie league. I'm not sure exactly how that happened. Apparently the Cuban team played in the Can-Am League for a little while.

And he was 19 and he hit 286, 319, 397, which whatever, it's 71 plate appearances. But I mean, I think if you put Mike Trout in the Can-Am League for 16 games, he would totally destroy it. So I'm going to say he's not the best player on the planet. Maybe he's projecting and saying he has the potential to be the best player on the planet. Even that seems like a stretch. I mean, the first glowing quote, I'd believe, I suppose, just knowing very little about the player. If a scouting director says he's the second best international prospect, I don't have a better suggestion for who the second best international prospect is.

So, sure, I'll go along with that one. But best player on the planet right now, no exaggeration. That seems like an exaggeration. So the question is, why would he say that? Because usually baseball people don't say things for no reason. They have some sort of motive. Some of them just like talking to reporters and like getting quoted maybe. But do you think that he's trying to drive the price up for a guy that his team is not interested in or doesn't have the budget to sign? Is he hoping to make the Cardinals or some other team pay more by being quoted saying he's the best player on the planet?

And would that work? I mean, I could see that the problem is that other, that other sorts of a different quote in the same paragraph. It's sort of like a prereq, I guess, for the subsequent quote, where if you buy that this guy is a 5-2-0 player and he could be in the major soon, then the other quote isn't so extraordinary. You say, well, that guy could be the best player in the league, I guess, in the short term future or, you know, right now. So it's very possible.

Again, I've never seen him. This is the first I've ever heard of him. I think the probability is even this is the last I'll ever hear of him, just based on the way these things usually go. But I can buy your theory, or it could be that that guy is trying to drive up his own team's price, which would be, I guess, silly negotiating in public. But you think of when the Dodgers signed Yasiel Puig and everybody else is like, what are they doing? And then it turned out he was actually pretty good until the things he was doing wore off, I guess would be one way to put it. Or he's just a big fan of the player and he wants his team to sign him, but his team isn't that interested. So he's just like bringing in this clipping from this article. Look at this scouting director. He says he's the best player in the planet. I was right about this guy when I told you that same thing. player in the planet. I was right about this guy when I told you that same thing. Here are the four players on, according to Baseball Reference, on the 2016 Cuban National team that participated in the Canadian American Association. Here are the four players who had

a higher OPS than Louis Robert, Juan Torriente, Yosvany Alarcon, Yorubis Borrotto, and Yoelvis Fis. I've never known Fis as a last name, but not only is Fiss a last name, but he even was a better player in the league last of the word thing that I've seen related to baseball since I saw that Pakoda projected the Dodgers to be seven games better than the Cubs. I also want to point out, just looking at the baseball reference page for this 2016 Canadian American Association, that's a Can-Am League, right? That's what you said. So here are the eight teams that are in that league. The New Jersey Jackals, whatever.

Les Capitales de Quebec. I shouldn't do French. Cuban national team. Boring name for that team, I guess. The Rockland Boulders, which is very literal. The Shikoku Island All-Stars. The Sussex County Miners. The Trois Rivieres.

Come on, French. Three rivers. They signed us into a stomper while i was there so i know about them and the last team in the league of eight are the ottawa champions who finished in fourth place you can never you can never refer to your own team as the champions unless you are extremely sure i can get like the the shikoku island all-stars whatever maybe they're the all-stars from the island but the ottawa champions no you can't get away with that that's absurd that's worse than having two rough riders they were probably the best team in ottawa in the league hey adrian chambers is on that team so on robert's cuban team in 2015 his last full season that he played in that league,

he was only the sixth best hitter on that team. And one of the hitters ahead of him was 43 years old. Cuba is insane, man. Okay, so a couple follow-ups to recent topics. The first, the Andrew Miller net saga. Why was Andrew Miller throwing from in front of the net in spring training? We found out that hitters weren't swinging, and balls being hit from behind or being thrown from behind. The idea being that, I don't know, outfielders would be throwing in balls. Maybe coaches would be hitting grounders or fungos or something. And so the balls would be coming back to the mound and you want to protect Andrew Miller from that.

So maybe that was happening. We don't know if balls were being hit at the same time as Miller was throwing two hitters who weren't swinging, but that's plausible. That could explain it. Yeah. I do remember from my own baseball practices now, I recall that there would be like a net set up. It was kind of behind the second base. Then there would be a bucket behind the net, and then there would be somebody there collecting balls thrown in from the outfield to then put in the bucket and the net was there to keep balls from getting beyond that person and the bucket the net of course was very small we were in high

school throw still got away we sucked but the difference here is that this net is directly behind the mound protecting seemingly nothing and while i understand that yeah this is spring training there's a lot of players around on the same field doing a bunch of different drills. I can totally get that that net could serve a different function. But somebody tweeted at me yesterday or today a picture of Edwin Diaz pitching in the same circumstance where he's on the mound and there's a net behind him and there's a coach behind the net. And you can see in the picture a lot of the background of the field and there's nothing. There's not a single spectator. There's nobody on the field. There's nothing going on. I realized that by talking about this and i think our third

podcast and now we're really doubling down on this being weird even though clearly every single team appears to do it so there's got to be a reason i know people keep writing in and suggesting reasons i can come to the conclusion i think there are two conclusions one is that coaches do just like to lean on things so they want a prop and two the net is there as sort of a relic from an earlier drill and no one bothered to move it out of the way. And so we're seeing, I guess, sort of a vestigial net photographed, even though the net serves no purpose anymore. It once did for protection and maybe we talked about whether it's actually true. group where listeners are reporting nicknames from their teams that maybe are not nationally known but are known at least in the local markets or on the internet or blogs use them or whatever it is and there are a ton of nicknames there and some of them I was aware of some of them I wasn't

I'll just read quickly some the original poster was an Indians fan so he posted some from the Indians Corey Kluber Klubert Michael Brantley Dr. Smooth Jose Ramirez is the angry hamster Josh Tomlin is the little cowboy there are a lot of these they they go on and on Anthony Rizzo the main ingredient the Orioles Chris Davis Crush Davis Mark Trumbo Trumbom Manny Machado is Manny Babyfaced Assassin Machado. Brandon Belt is the Baby Giraffe, of course. And Gregor Blanco was called the Shark because he was the Greg White Shark. And Kyle Hendricks, the Professor, Wilson Contreras, WC40.

And then, of course, the Mets have Noah Syndergaard as Thor and La Potencia as Cespedes and The Dark Knight which is kind of a lame one But that's Harvey and David Wright Captain America Anthony Discofani Is Disco and Josh Donaldson the bringer of rain that's His Twitter handle and I guess it's kind of

Caught on the Cardinals Matt Adams big city jumbo Pepsi for some reason Carlos Martinez tsunami I think we know adams big city jumbo pepsi for some reason carlos martinez tsunami i think we know why matt adams is jumbo pepsi yeah i guess that makes sense the mariners hisashi uakuma the bear is that one you're aware of is that uh yeah kuma is japanese for bear and so there's yeah there's been a bear hat giveaway where it's like, I don't need to explain it to you. You can imagine. What's in your imagination is better than reality.

Nelson Cruz, Boomstick, Tom Wilhelmsen, the bartender, because he was a bartender, and Edwin Diaz, Sugar, Eric Campbell on the Met, Soup, Michael Conforto, Scooter. Anyway, there are a lot of them. There's a lot of recycled nicknames in there also. Yeah, Soup. Good Soup. Yeah, Soup. Good soup. Yeah, as our president would say. So they're out there.

So maybe they're not nationally known. Maybe they will be at some point. Some of them will break through. But if you fast forward 50 years into the future, maybe some of these would be nicknames on baseball reference. Because as Alex wrote to us, how widely known or used were those old-timey nicknames on baseball reference because as Alex wrote to us, how widely known or used were those old timey nicknames really? How often would you get on someone's Wikipedia or baseball reference page and see nicknames that you have never seen or heard before? Wouldn't it only take one writer to make a nickname seem like it was a real nickname when it actually lacked any real

cultural cachet? So that's true. I don't know what the nickname standards for those sites are, but sometimes you see some that you've never heard. Of course, we know the really famous nicknames in baseball history were actually widely used at the time, but there were probably some that were just in one local market or it was some writer's pet name or something, and someone submitted it to those sites, and it looks like there were more nicknames than were actually in regular rotation at the time so nicknames are alive and well let's see i'm gonna i'm gonna try something live see if this works so i'm i'm already looking at a baseball reference page for the future stat segment which is coming from baseball reference not fan graphs please sponsor

us anyway okay so let's see i'm looking famous players famous players okay first player i don't recognize is someone named bill hands i don't need to explain why he's on this list but let's look at bill hands bill heads former effectively wild guest okay well i'll be damned okay he was actually the the second old timey pitcher not quite as old timey as the late ned garver but old-timey ish and we cold called him too so i must have missed that episode somehow incidentally on this list bill hands is tied with only one player in the stat of choice bill hands tied with someone named rich hand so that's a fun coincidence anyway bill hands clicking on the more bio do you think maybe you already know this but do you think bill hands old-timey player,

had a nickname or did not have a nickname that shows up in baseball reference? I would say yes. The answer is yes, Froggy. Bill Hands, nickname Froggy. Okay. I did, yeah, I remember that. I wonder, oh, there's a link to look at all nicknames.

That's for a different time. So I wonder also, baseball is known to be a regional or tribal game now, where I think that if there's like a game of the week, people are not particularly interested if it does not feature their team. And granted, maybe this is not unique to baseball. Maybe this is true among all sports except for football. But I wonder, maybe baseball used to be more national. Maybe people used to care about baseball more than just their own teams. And so maybe that allowed nicknames to spread more easily.

Because you're right, teams have a bunch of their own nicknames now. And obviously I know about the Mariners' nicknames, and I've heard Lake Dr. Smooth before. But maybe in retrospect, don't nickname Michael Brantley after a doctor, but that's foreshadowing. I wonder if maybe it's just more difficult for a nickname like that to spread beyond an individual team's market because people outside of that market don't care. Yeah, maybe. All right. Emails. Emails.

Okay. Michael says you own the worst team in baseball in hopes of competitive balance. MLB is offering you free personnel from the best team in baseball. You can take Chris Bryant for one year. You would be able to trade him, but he's only under contract for the one year. Theo Epstein for three years, or Joe Madden

and his entire coaching staff for six years. Whom do you take? Worst team in baseball, so I can have a coaching staff, a general manager or president of baseball operations, I should say, or a third baseman, first baseman, right fielder, left fielder, DH face of the franchise and magazine spread. I will take Chris Bryant for one year.

I think that I would probably trade Chris Bryant almost immediately for longer term assets in this circumstance, but I think that it would be, there's just too much that's less known about the value of the coaching staff or even the executive of course if you get Theo Epstein that by no means guarantees you're getting a bunch of people with Theo Epstein which Theo Epstein himself would say is even more important because you need to have that that big giant staff I don't know how long it would take to assemble in order I think I'd go Bryant thenstein, then Madden as much as I want to pick

the coaching staff just because, hey, being contrarian, I can't bring myself to do it. I think just objectively, based on the information I know, it would be a lot more difficult to replace a Chris Bryant with someone close than a single executive or an entire coaching staff. I think I'm taking Theo. I think Theo just turned the worst team in baseball into the best team in baseball, basically, in about three years, which is how long we have him under contract in this scenario. He drafted Chris Bryant. So in theory, at least, he can get another Chris Bryantant not that there's always another one out there not that there was no luck involved in that pick but he can replenish a roster he's proven he can do that

with the Red Sox he didn't do that so much as he inherited a pretty good veteran team and supplemented it but with the Cubs he basically built it from, and you'd think that kind of thing would get harder and harder over time. Front offices get smarter and smarter. They learn from the things that the Cubs did. Maybe Theo Epstein's strategies won't work as well a second time. But I think that you hire him. If you hire him, even if he doesn't come with his coworkers-workers he would attract some just people who like working with him people have followed him around people who know his reputation so i figure you could

put together a really good front office if you just start with theo and he's pretty proven at being able to put together a good team and evaluate talent and sign undervalued talent or trade for it. And so I think Theo, and that would suggest that probably Theo is still underpaid relative to what he's paid, which is a lot relative to a lot of other baseball executives if he's really this valuable. He's really this valuable. But I think based on the job he did in Chicago, you have to bank on him being able to do the same for your terrible team. And Chris Bryant, as great as he is and as huge a return as he would bring back in trade, doesn't give you a great baseball team all by himself.

So I think you're going with Theo. Okay. I understand the argument. Granted, Theo's, let's see, what was his first draft of the Cubs? 2012, I think you're going with Theo. Okay, I understand the argument. Granted, Theo's, let's see, what was his first draft of the Cubs? 2012, I think. So his first high pick was Albert Almora in 2012, which granted he's on the team now, but I mean, he's no Chris Bryant at this point,

is the least we can say. You're right, Theo is going to bring other people with him. He's going to fill out his staff pretty quickly, as every new executive does. I don't know. I don't know. In these conditions, does that just mean he's guaranteed to be gone in three years? I guess you can't keep him. He can stay, right?

I don't know. Chris Bryan. I'll get Bryan and I'll sign him to an extension. Yeah, you could do that. If you can convince him to. I still probably wouldn't. I mean, if you're the worst team in baseball, you know you're already getting the number one pick in the next draft. So I guess I have more faith in being able to get Bryant and then getting a pretty good GM than getting Epstein

and then trying to fill out the roster. I don't know. I mean, given the conditions, if you get Bryant, you know you need a general manager. But if you get a general manager, what players are you selecting from here? I'm not explaining this very well. Well, yeah, we don't know what you're starting with. When Theo was with the Cubs, he traded a bunch of guys and he got guys back.

We don't know if this terrible team he's inheriting is just totally valueless or whether there are people he can trade to recoup talent. So hard to know what situation he's heading into here exactly okay well i guess if if you're the worst team in baseball and you presumably are not going to be good in the following season maybe brian doesn't make sense because you're not really talking about brian at that point if you're just going to have him for one year there's no point in having him for one year then you're trading him and then so you're basically comparing the coaching staff for six years Epstein for three or whatever prospects you get for one year of Chris Bryant and maybe at that point then I'm more convinced to take the front office because I don't know what

the trade value is of one year of Chris Bryant I could I guess try to figure it out but it would be it would be high but I think it would be less outlandish than people would expect you can reflect on when david price is trade okay i'm i'm coming around i understand i understand maybe you take the front office but i still am not certain what the difference is between epstein and the next level replacement gm that you could get on the market neither am i no you i mean you could hire epstein's right hand people right now and promote them to president. And you could basically know everything that the Cubs know. And so I don't know how much value there is to actually having him and whatever discipline or creativity or hard work he brings relative to the next best candidate, it could be a pretty small difference. It's hard to say. He's just done it and proven that he can do it recently.

And that's the thing. We're saying that all the other GMs are smart and all the other front offices are smart, and I believe that. And yet he just built a better baseball team than all of those other front offices did right in a pretty short amount of time so I know he did he built the best team we've seen in a while and like you know they definitely got lucky in some ways they easily could have drafted someone else other than Bryant instead of Bryant like I don't know that that means that they are better drafters than everyone else like I mean what they drafted second that year right he was the second pick so maybe 28 other teams would have taken Chris Bryant with that pick if they had had it so I don't know that that makes them brilliant he was just there and they happened to have that pick. And I don't know that percentile outcome their actual rebuild was.

Maybe that was a 99th percentile outcome where they build the best team of baseball in three years and they win a World Series. I don't know how many times that happens if you could somehow replay that over and over again. So maybe our perception of Theo Epstein is inflated because they just had a bunch of things go right. Obviously, it wasn't all luck. There's lots of skill involved. But yeah, relative to other baseball teams, I don't know exactly how much value he adds. So taking the MVP player, who we know is better than almost all the other baseball players, except for Mike Trout and Louis Robert,

than almost all the other baseball players, except for Mike Trout and Louis Robert, would be probably a safe pick. So I could understand that angle also. I just, I don't know. I guess I'm biased by the Cubs' success. Maybe I'm buying too much into it. They're really good.

They're a really good organization. I don't know, maybe you take Bryant and then you just get someone in your organization to cozy up to the Kremlin so then you can sort of know what's going on with the Cubs on a day-to-day basis. Because, you know, if it's an American, Chris Cray, he's going to go to jail for 46 months. But if you cozy—okay, anyway. All right. Good question, Michael. Eric Hartman says, All right. Good question, Michael. Eric Hartman says, Fangraphs projects the bottom five teams in baseball this year to be the other terrible teams, what, almost 80 times.

So that helps a lot. So like half of their schedule is against teams that are as bad as they are, basically. Really bad teams. So then at that point, you're basically playing probably 500 baseball against those teams. Right. Over, what is it, 19 games against your division rival still yeah so 19 times four that's 76 times half that is 38 so you're getting i don't know if you expect that you're playing doing math on the fly here you're so you're probably if you're talking about a 70

win team then over a 76 game stretch then you're looking at like 33 wins however if you're getting 38 then you're you're looking at maybe five extra wins just based on that really soft schedule this is making things maybe too easy but five extra wins so then you're looking at the best of those teams maybe winning 70 being like a 76 win team but then you're yeah also playing outside the division you're gonna lose even more yeah then you're getting slaughtered so you get a a small boost but not an extraordinary boost i'm i'm thinking now of the 2005 nl west when the padres won by going 82 and 80 and then they promptly got swept in the first round but maybe my favorite i don't know if you remember this because uh and maybe you do so i i've thought a lot about the 1995 Mariners because that team was sensational, had a great story and everything.

I think less about the 1994 Mariners because that season had no conclusion. For anyone out there who doesn't know, the 1994 Mariners were 49-63 when the season came to a close, 49-63. 49 and 63 so just based on winning percentage that had them at the end of the season they were the second worst team in the american league second worst seattle mariners 49 and 63 second worst team in the american league they were also two games out of the division lead because the texas rangers were 52 into 62 and they were in first place in the AL West after 114 games. So I haven't actually looked at the history, but that was almost certainly going to be easily the worst division in the history of baseball.

The four worst teams in the American League that season were all the four teams in the American League West. So the Rangers were going to make the playoffs and then the A's who were in second place, they were going to be, or they were, I guess, back then they had one wild card, right? They were going to transition into the wild card era. So the A's were one game out of the division

and 15 and a half games out of the wild card race at the same time. So maybe this division that we're discussing would look a lot like the 1994 American League West, which is the worst division I have to imagine that has ever existed in sports. Okay. So the winning team in this division is still a losing team. Yeah, almost.

It's got to be. Okay. All right. Andre says, with the advent of the new intentional walk rule, it's very likely that we'll soon see a pitcher get through a full half inning of three outs with fewer than three pitches thrown picture this the leadoff man has walked intentionally the next batter hits into a double play on the first pitch and then the third batter has a one pitch pop-up how long do you think it'll take before we see this sort of situation for real next season the next seasons, you have already responded to this question. Yeah, so I sent an email back, but I might as well.

I feel guilty. I send emails back, and then I realize, well, maybe we'll talk about this on the show, so I shouldn't send an email back. But in any case, for everyone's benefit. So he's right. In theory, we can see a two-pitch inning. In theory, we can see a one-pitch inning, as a matter of fact. You intentionally walk the first two people, and then you get a triple play. You could have a nine-pitch complete game, shutout, no hitter.

Here's the problem with the theory. I totally agree that it makes sense we could see these low-pitch innings, but under what circumstances would you ever intentionally walk the first batter of an inning? Even if Barry Bonds is coming up in his prime, not in 2017, even though I might still intentionally walk him, even if the worst player in baseball is on deck, it still doesn't really do you any good i guess have the first batter i don't know double and then you intentionally walk the next guy because the pitcher is coming up or something to set up the force and then the last guy hits into a triple play so maybe if the first guy doubles on the first pitch of the inning then you intentionally walk the second guy and the last guy hits into a

triple play on the first pitch of his bet then you can have a two pitch inning but i don't think that i don't know maybe you see that once in a century but i think the odds are extraordinarily slim yeah we can't check to see if bonds was ever walked intentionally to lead off an inning can we that would be a tough thing to check i can certainly try here while you continue to talk on the air i'll just do this in the background yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, it's hard to imagine I'm with you on this. I don't think I have all that much else to say. It's fun that this is at least theoretically possible now, but yeah, I can't imagine a realistic scenario where it would happen. Okay, let's look at all of Barry Bonds' career intentional walks,

where it would happen okay let's look at all of barry bonds's career intentional walks courtesy of baseball reference so do we have anything with the bases empty there are 41 qualifying intentional walks for some reason so why don't we do those and bases empty and number of outs five what the hell hold on what's going on here well i'm looking at five intentional walks with nobody on and nobody out really well let's just go into let's look at the most recent one so 2007 okay giants blue jays 2007 at this point barry bonds is 64 years old and it's the bottom of the sixth and uh barry bonds is facing brian tall Okay. Because this is history, let's just call him Brian Tellay. It makes it more fun. The Giants are winning 4-3.

Brian Tallett is facing Barry Bonds. Barry Bonds has intentionally walked to lead off the inning. And Tallett is a lefty. And Tallett is a... Okay, so here's... Maybe this isn't his rise. Tallett fell behind 3-0. Okay.

He was throwing three actual pitches and then he decided, well, let's just put him on. So why don't we look at the other four instances of this? I'm going to guess that it's been the exact same thing, although the first one's from 1996. That's pretty far back there. So, okay, 2004, we have the last one against Jose Mesa, who I think walked everyone, never on purpose.

He threw two balls before he intentionally walked bare-bones to lead off. Justin Spire threw three balls before issuing a fourth intentional ball Danny Graves threw four okay hold on Danny Graves May 9th we're looking at the top of the 10th this is 2004 peak Barry Bonds Danny Graves opens the 10th inning 6-6 game by intentionally walking Barry Bonds on four intentional balls there it is the following batter Edgardo Alfonso doubles Bonds goes to third the next guy hits a fly ball to score Bonds and the Giants win the game so it all falls apart but Danny great okay so let's just to make sure in 1996 Jeff Brantley walked bonds on okay so I don't know how to read this but this is this is the full line from baseball reference pitches one sub or play on a runner comma sub or play on a runner comma sub or play on a runner comma sub

or play on a runner comma intentional ball so I'm going to guess that well I'm I can't guess anything because that doesn't make any sense so let's just see what happened with uh with jeff brantley and barry okay so this i don't quite understand bottom of the ninth 1996 the giants are batting down by one jeff brantley comes in look at that jeff brantley replaces lenny harris so let's just go ahead and have our lenny harris mentioned in this podcast so brantley bottom of the, trying to protect a 3-2 game. Something weird is happening. It says that he intentionally walked to Barry Bonds to start the inning, but the first pitch, the last three were all intentional balls. The first one says

intentional ball, but all this sub or play on a runner stuff. So I don't know what that is about, but we have some evidence that in 1996, Barry Bonds was intentionally walked to four pitches to start an inning, and then Glenn Allen Hill struck out. Surprise. Tom Lampkin hit a fly ball. Rick Wilkins singled, and then Jay Cannizzaro struck out to end the game, and the Reds won.

So maybe Barry Bonds was intentionally walked to start an inning on four pitches then, but we know he was in 2004. Danny Graves did it and then got the loss because it's a stupid idea to intentionally walk the first batter of an inning on four pitches but it has happened all right so we just need the reincarnation of peak bonds and maybe someone will be crazy enough to try it what the hell was going what did bonds do in that game bonds went over four just for the record. However, his OPS coming into the game was 1.556. Okay, so kind of get it, but still don't get it. Yeah. All right. Well, this is related. Let's

do a Trout hypothetical. Perfect. Dan from New Jersey says, if Mike Trout were traded to a National League team that insisted on batting him eighth in front of the pitcher, what would his walk rate and on-base percentage look like? Do you think he would break Barry Bonds' single-season records for walks and intentional walks? I don't think that he'd break Bonds' record. He would be walked a ton.

Who's the best? I should have researched this one, but I didn't. I don't know who the best player is that we've seen bat eighth. Obviously, there are a number of intentional walks in that circumstance, but you still like you wouldn't want to, as just discussed, you wouldn't want to like walk Trout to lead off an inning. You wouldn't just want to put them on all willy nilly for no reason, but his walk rate would be, I would say at least... He already led the American League in walks or in walk rate last year without batting eighth. So he walks a lot as it is without being put on intentionally all that much. I think we talked on this podcast before about, I think, how infrequently Trout has been intentionally walked. It seems like he should have been Intentionally walked more and maybe

He hasn't been because Pujols Has been hitting behind him and People have respected Pujols A lot like in 2012 When he was the best player in baseball he was Only intentionally walked four times And then ten times and then six Times last couple seasons

A little bit more 14 times and 12 times but no one's really pitching around trout in that way all that much but again he's batting second and third so if he were in eighth he would what double his walk rate okay so let's see what i can do here third of the time batting eighth okay so i'm just gonna again we're i guess doing this on the fly i'm looking at players who have batted eighth since 2002 this is a a fan grabs thing let's give them at least i don't know 100 plate appearances and let's just see what spits out here see what we can do with players batting eighth and okay highest walk rate of anyone batting eighth we've got god these

players are terrible. Okay. Jock Peterson, he batted eighth 281 times, I guess. That's a National League thing. He walked 17% of the time. He's pretty good. Yosemite Grandol walked 16% of the time. Kevin Euclid, 16% of the time batting eighth. But, of course, that's the American League, so that's very different.

I don't know how you... The overall walk rate in the National League for eighth- place hitters was 8.9% last year. In the American League, it was only 7.8%. So it's higher, but not that much higher. Yeah, without running the actual predictive math, I'd say you would have Trout walking at least a third of the time which is insane and then he would steal a lot of bases but yeah he i don't i i still don't think he would

break bonds's record that that would require something absolutely extraordinary yeah all right you want to do your stat segment sure okay so this fangraph stat segment is brought to you by baseball reference where i looked up all the numbers. So I was curious, as I get when I'm very desperate for topics. It is March 1st. This is a terrible time to be trying to write. There's not even video footage of very much spring training, so we can hardly break. Anyway, I end up in the same well, which is pitchers facing pitchers.

I am very curious about how pitchers have done facing pitchers, because pitchers are universally good at pitching and universally, almost universally, absolutely terrible at hitting. So just to set some background, I've mentioned it before, but there's a very useful statistic on Baseball Reference that is called T-OPS+. Everyone, I think, is pretty familiar with OPS+. T is a letter that I don't understand why it's there, but this is the name of the set. And it is essentially OPS plus in a specific split that you're looking up relative to the players overall OPS plus. So it is a useful way to compare a player against himself. So as a means of explaining what this is, I was looking at the pitchers who have been all time the best at facing other pitchers relative to themselves. And so I looked at, this is all players, I set a minimum for all these stats, I set a minimum of 50 plate appearances. And the first name, the pitcher

who has been the best against pitchers, or at least the most effective is current young, young, young Brewers pitcher Zach Davies. Zach Davies has faced 60 pitchers. He's allowed three hits. So he's allowed a batting average of 0.053, an OBP of 0.053, and a slugging percentage of 0.053. The T-OPS plus for that split is negative 70. Zach Davies has been absolutely outstanding against other pitchers in his very young career. More extraordinary. No, you know what? I'm going to get to that. So I'm going to get to because my i'll leave my favorite thing for last so i was looking at just active pitchers of course zach davies is the best top s plus of negative 70 robbie ray interestingly i might have to write about this but robbie ray even better here than noah cinderguard

who can you imagine a pitcher facing noah cinderguard noah cinderguard is fifth he's faced 95 pitchers and he's allowed six hits I don't know how he's generated just 56 strikeouts I would have expected 95 but Noah Sindegard at TOPS plus negative 53 for against pitchers relative to other people but Robbie Ray is there at negative 60 he's in second place Robbie Ray has faced 94 pitchers in his career he struck out 55 of them he's allowed just four hits Robbie Ray has dominated other pitchers and he's been more occasionally dominated by non-pitchers so there's something to write about because Robbie Ray is an interesting pitcher and that he has really good strikeout

numbers and not so good other stuff pitcher the current pitcher who's been the worst against do you have a guess I don't know why you would ever know this no the pitcher who's been least effective against other pitchers relative to his overall success, we're looking at, confusingly, Jacob deGrom, who has a TOPS plus of 56. He's still been quite good against pitchers, of course, but pitchers have hit him for a 482 OPS.

Regular OPS, which relative to what Jacob deGrom usually does, which is pitch very well, that's weird. So I don't know why this is what it is it probably doesn't mean anything but we're looking at 133 pitchers that degrom has faced and they've hit him fairly well he's allowed two doubles two home runs looking at uh individual seasons the uh the worst pitcher against pitchers ever mickey lolich in 1976. He allowed a T OPS plus of 144. Pitchers hit him for an 842 OPS plus or 842 regular OPS. I am getting tired of saying those three letters. I mentioned Bill Hands and Rich Hand before as being tied. That's because they were the 10th worst individual seasons against.

This is really confusing. So why don't I just get into the best stuff, at least what I consider the best stuff. Last year, or I guess it was actually two years ago madison bumgarner zach grinky had basically the the second best seasons ever against other pitchers madison bumgarner allowed zero hits in 57 plate appearances against pitchers even though didn't he homer off clayton kershaw yeah two years ago so that's a fun fact but madison bumgarner allowed one walk to pitchers in 57 plate appearances zach grinky allowed one walk two pitchers in 57 plate appearances zach grinke allowed one walk two pitchers in 55 plate appearances they were basically the second best seasons ever against pitchers but first place we've got 1998 masato yoshi he pitched for i don't know i don't care probably the rockies that year

doesn't make any difference to me but masato yoshi faced 57 pitchers that season and he allowed zero hits zero walks zero hit batters he allowed a perfect batting line against pitchers that year tlps plus of negative 100 that's 1998 so 1998 masato yoshi basically two perfect games and then some against pitchers and uh oh he actually pitched for the mets that year and uh he also went six and eight so he did not have a very good season he was 33 years old uh so what was the last thing all right okay so the absolute best thing that i found while doing this research i loved masada yoshi's double perfect game against pitchers which yeah granted that is uh not a statistic that many people will

be impressed by but look it's hard did it in a high-offense era, too. That's right, 1998. Yeah, that was the McGuire-Associa year. So, okay, so I was looking at the worst pitchers ever for their entire careers against pitchers. Again, using that TOPS Plus statistic, there is one single pitcher with this minimum who has ever been worse against pitchers than he was against non pitchers one

pitcher and i would have expected you know the usual none because they're pitchers yeah i don't know how this would ever occur third place tommy de la cruz whatever don't know who he is don't care he uh he allowed a top plus of 94 almost as bad second place jim panther awesome name worst results top plus of 96 just as a hunch do you think jim panther awesome name worst results tops plus of 96 just as a hunch do you think jim panther had a nickname sex he did not have a nickname james edward panther his nickname was probably panther oh and also by the way it's his birthday he's 72 years old happy birthday jim panther you sucked against pitchers so first place or let's be honest last place last place on this leaderboard one pitcher t ops plus of 103 this pitcher was worse against pitchers

this is a a modern baseball pitcher worse against pitchers than non-pitchers he was drafted by the phillies this pitcher allowed a 756 opsPS against regular players, you know, or as they're known, hitters. And he allowed a 771 OPS against pitchers. This pitcher, Jason Grimsley, the only pitcher in Major League history to be worse against pitchers than non-pitchers. So kudos to Jason Grimsley for being, I guess, better than you'd expect against hitters. But more importantly, just embarrassing. The one, the one ever. The one ever guy.

Wow, that's a really good fun fact. That replaces, what are the other things Jason Grimsley is known for? Being named in the Mitchell Report and being involved in that 1994 Indians Albert Bell cork bat heist where Grimsley went to go retrieve the bat. Now we can know him for being worse against pitchers than against actual hitters. Let's see. Let's take a quick glance at his baseball reference

bullpen page. Do you think this shows up? Do you think the baseball reference I don't think they found this. The answer is yeah, no. Notable achievements. He won two World Series with the New York Yankees 1999-2000 2000 but he did not play in the 2000 world series because he was not very good he did throw a no-hitter in double a so nice for him yet he finished the season leading the minors and walks okay blah blah blah

definitely not on the jason grimsley page it is there because he's uh his home was searched as part of a steroid investigation he asked for his release from the arizona diamondbacks he was let go the next day. Several months later, the Los Angeles Times reported that he had claimed that Roger Clemens, Andy Pettit, Miguel Tejada,

Brian Roberts, and Jay Gibbons used illegal substances, but the federal judge reviewing the case said that the Times story contained, quote, significant inaccuracies. All of this is just beating around the bush.

Jason Grimsley, only pitcher of all time to be worse against pitchers than non-pitchers. That is the only thing that should be listed on his page. All right. We called Bill Hands in episode 964, by the way, because I think we found that he had allowed the most home runs to pitchers in a single season.

It was 1968. He allowed something like five home runs to pitchers that season. And he was a good sport about it. But no worse than Rich Hand hand no oh i should say jason crimsey right here he was uh he was scouted by philly scout doug gasaway doug gasaway who is a scout whose last name is also the name of a hypothetical uh indigestion relief medicine i guess doug gas away all All right. Question from Matt. With talk of changing of the strike

zone, I was taking a look at the rule defining the strike zone. Here it is. The strike zone is that area over home plate, the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap. The strike zone shall be determined from the batter's stance

as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball. It seems weird to me that the upper bound of the strike zone is defined not by a characteristic inherent to the player, but by where the top of the player's uniform pants are, which seems to imply that a player sagging his pants could reduce the size of his strike zone. This could be taken to an extreme in which the player pulls his pants down all the way to his ankles, in which case the midpoint between the shoulders and the top of his pants would be somewhere around the middle of his thigh, rendering the strike zone quite small. An even greater extreme would be the player not wearing any pants at all and creating a real conundrum, but I think that violates rules about team uniforms. My questions are, what would happen if someone tried this?

Would this be called according to the rules in the rulebook? Or is there some rule somewhere about preventing things like this from happening and making mockery the game? Lastly, would Adam Lind have been able to fart without anyone noticing had he been employing this strategy? I think yes, probably to the last question. To the other questions, we've had a little bit of an email discussion of this already i pointed to some research that was done a couple years ago by frank furkey about players with high socks and whether that seemed to have any impact on their called strike zones and he found that it did not relative to players with regular socks so that's one data point i think that here's here's what would happen if you had a player who pulled his pants all the way down to his ankles he would go up to

the plate let's assume he's just allowed to play like this which of course it wouldn't the midpoint between his top of his pants and his shoulders if the umpire was strictly by the book would still be in the vague vicinity of his hips which is basically where the top of the strike zone actually is and then if this player were to ever swing, he would immediately fall down. He would never get it out of the box, and he would be thrown out at first base if he hit a grounder, or the ball would be caught. He probably wouldn't be able to get a very good swing off in the first place.

The problem, I should say, there's multiple problems here, but one of the problems is that if you... Pants fit very naturally where they fit. I think that there is not much disagreement. Some people do wear higher pants i guess and maybe that would give a hitter some slight disadvantage but in my experience as a man who's worn pants and is currently wearing pants pants will find their natural center whether you lift them up or pull them down they will return to where they balance the best especially when

you were wearing a baseball belt if you lowered your pants which is the only way you could conceivably get an advantage in this circumstance if you lowered your pants and then fastened i don't know what kind of weird ass pencil hips do you have that you can pull your pants down and still get a belt around them but let's say you pull your pants down for a slight advantage at the top of the strike zone even though we're talking about moving this alleged boundary which by the way is not at all how the zone is called you're moving it by like a fraction of an inch but if you move your pants down and you have a really tight belt just to keep them in place that's restrictive it's very difficult for you to use your lower body in the

way that like imagine one of those exaggerated leg kicks imagine j Jose Batista or Josh Donaldson sagging or I guess wearing low risers, I think is the term for low pants, and then trying to hit a baseball and perform on the field. Your pants would either return to their usual level or you just wouldn't be able to move your legs the same. So you would be countering your own negligible advantage by putting yourself at a far less negligible disadvantage because you wouldn't be able to derive power from your lower body but i guess if you're a player who's absolutely terrible then you can go up there and you can try to mess around but here's the reality the top of the strike zone is where your belt is that's how the zone is essentially called and also the top

of the zone is not where you find many called strikes anyway that's if anything the area where hitters can't help themselves but swing so this hitter would probably still chase those pitches anyway and he would just swing worse because he can't use his legs and as you pointed out in an email players like to win in a way that they can be proud of i think or at least they they might feel somewhat ashamed to exploit this by adjusting their pants to a great degree, I think, as you wrote, they're competitive beings who don't want to beat the pitcher on some technicality. And so many of these techniques would probably cross a line where they would be sort of cheating

their way to a walk or whatever instead of using their actual talent. Of course, there's a long history of players cheating and bending the rules and everything, but I think it gets to a point where probably just some sort of macho pride would interfere with adjusting your pants to such a great degree that you're getting on base more often because of it. You can imagine, like, maybe AJ Brzezinski would try it once. But, like, the players already think a regular walk is like a technicality. They already don't like walking. This is one of the reasons people think, like, Bryce Harper and Joey Votto are overrated is because they walk so much.

But people go up there and they want to hit. Walks are almost like beneath them. And of course, some players have gotten used to it. Some players will enjoy their walk. So Dubal Herrera would give himself a standing ovation whenever he drew a walk last season because he was so proud of himself. But yeah, players want to hit and no one likes to be walked very much. They know it works out for them.

But certainly, I don't think anyone, this would be humiliating. humiliating if anyone if if you i mean you would notice pretty quick if a player went up there and you're like that guy's pants look low yeah then he'd be like well why are his pants so low either he has a wasting disease or he's trying to like confuse the strike zone this is humiliating his his teammates would give him crap the fans would give him crap and he would fix his pants after one pitch maybe maybe one at bat. And it would all, well, it would never be forgotten, except that he would not try to do that anymore because it is just such a stupid way to try to get on base. Right.

All right. James in Nova Scotia says, say I am an eccentric billionaire who buys a major league team with the sole intention of winning the Grapefruit or Cactus League. I do not care about anything other than spring training wins and my front office and coaching staff are on board with my mission. What kind of winning percentage could I achieve in the spring? What kind of organizational strategies and in-game tactics should I employ? So I guess it's obvious enough

what you could do if you treated spring training as your regular season. You could essentially have spring training before spring training so that you would be ready. You'd start over the winter. You'd get everyone up to game speed. They'd be in mid-season form by the time every other team's pitchers and catchers report. You would never do split squad games or any of that you'd start your starters and your best players in every game whereas other teams are resting guys and giving rookies at bats to see what they have you'd never do that so that alone i think would make a pretty big difference i don't

know we can quibble about how much spring training actually matters and how much players really improve over the course of spring training. I think pitchers certainly build up endurance and that sort of thing. I don't know how much better a hitter is really at the end of March as opposed to the beginning of March. It's hard to say. There's the Tim Raines example where he came back after a long layoff with no spring training because of collusion, and he had that legendary, amazing game. So maybe some guys don't even need it. Of course, players now are training year round, they're staying in shape, they're taking BP, they're throwing whatever it is, they're getting ready to a

greater extent than they used to where more players had offseason jobs or just didn't train as hard. So not sure you'd be able to get as big an advantage today as you might have decades ago, but still probably a pretty big advantage. the previous at least September in order to give your players a break so that they could rest up have an offseason so then they could have spring training before spring training which I guess would begin probably in the middle of January just to get players up to speed yeah you'd never you'd never bench guys it is always fun to look at spring training how many teams might kind of take it seriously and one of the things I love to look at as an indicator is that for example last year in spring training there were six intentional walks I don't know under what circumstances you would ever call for a spring training intentional walk. I guess maybe you're trying to set up a situation, but it's just objectively silly to look at. Among

the players intentionally walked last spring training, Jose Abreu, David Ortiz, John Carlos Tanton, kind of get it. Greg Garcia, Carlos Pagaro, Daniel Robertson, get it less. Six intentional walks last spring training. But yeah, you would not ever remove your starters. You would treat every game. You would, I don't know, maybe you bullpen game it. You just bring in your closer and your setup guy in the sixth, seventh inning. Leave your best pitchers.

Yeah, I guess you have to treat it like it's the playoffs. And I don't know. You'd probably achieve a winning percentage. Right, so let's say it's a league average team. It a league average team it's a 500 team what can they do if they do this i so the question is if teams start to pick up on the fact that you're taking these games really seriously would they respond at all just out of like a out of their natural desire to compete or would they be like no this is still strength training you're making a mockery of things and we're going to keep playing our backups yeah i don't think they would i think

they'd they'd be okay with losing exhibition games as the spring training rolls on of course there are cuts and rosters get better and better and by the end of spring training many teams are fielding uh lineups that are close to the equivalent of their their regular season lineup so i think that you would start to struggle maybe if you're an average team maybe you'd win like 60 of the games at the end of spring training but you'd probably win like 80 or 90 of the games at the at the start like i don't know i haven't looked at like how the major league teams have done versus the college teams when they've played those games but didn't the phillies lose a couple years ago yeah the college team that

was funny. The Phillies suck. So I don't know. I think maybe overall you'd achieve a winning percentage around 750 or 800, but I don't think you'd run the table. Yeah, sounds right. All right, last question is Eric from Plainview. He says, whom would you rather have as your beer pong partner, Kershaw, Trout, or my friend Murphy? Kershaw has the arm precision to throw a baseball with extreme accuracy, but does that translate to a ping pong ball?

Trout is a virtuosic athlete with superior hand-eye coordination, but how does he fare inebriated? And my friend Murphy was the Buffalo University frat pong tourney winner. Which one do you take? Yeah, I'm taking Murphy. I think the best way to train for something is by doing the same activity. And I don't, I think if you take Clayton Kershaw and you're trying to get granted, I don't know how much beer pong Clayton Kershaw has played before in his life. I'm going to guess it's almost zero. I don't think it seems like much of his activity,

but I think there's the difference between beer pong and throwing a baseball is like the difference between a baseball and a football. And I don't think that a quarterback would make a very good pitcher. I'd rather have like a college pitcher in the majors than an NFL quarterback. So, yeah, I'm taking Murphy walking away. Yeah, neither Trout nor Kershaw went to college, so they missed out on prime beer pong time. And, I mean, the answer differs, I think, if you give them a lot of time to prepare. If we say long-term and they're devoting themselves to this, then I think you probably take Trout and Kershaw over Murphy. But while Murphy has the experience advantage, I think you take him. And long-term,

I'd probably take Kershaw, experience experience being equal and then Trout and then Murphy. But it would take a while for those two to catch up to Murphy. Question is, how good is Murphy at pitching? Yeah, probably not that great. That's why he's spending all that time playing beer pong. Yeah, he's not in the best shape of his life. Sorry, Murphy. All right.

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