Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1038: The Player With a Permanent Head Start

Episode Date: March 30, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about a Carter Capps mimic, several recently released Effectively Wild favorites, a baseball use for trampolines, and Derek Jeter’s prolific publishing career, then answer listener emails about a different kind of fantasy league, a player who can see slightly into the future, speed vs. velocity, a home-run/strikeout pitcher, spring […]

Oh, please release me, let me go For I just don't love you anymore To waste our lives would be the same Release me and let me go again Hello and welcome to episode 1038 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. My name is Ben Lindberg and I'm a writer for TheRinger.com, joined as always by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. presented by our Patreon supporters. My name is Ben Lindberg, and I'm a writer for TheRinger.com, joined as always by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello.

Hi. No more previews to do, just emails to answer. What do you have to talk about before that? Okay, quick thing. I think I alluded some time ago to this unverified rumor that there was a minor league pitcher who attempted to copy the Carter Caps delivery. I think we talked about that. So I checked with the Salem Kaiser Volcanoes.

That's a fun coincidence. Checked with them and their announcer about a little over a month ago. And I asked, might you have any insight into an unverified rumor that Nolan Riggs tried to copy Carter Caps' delivery? Nolan Riggs is a presently 23-year-old right-hander in the Giants system. He is enormous, standing officially 6'8", 235 pounds. Sounds like just a regular throwing motion might get him as close to the plate as Carter Capps, but in any case, the team and the announcer could not confirm. They said that there was news to them or whatever.

So I kind of let it die. And then last night. Wasn't that the second time you had inquired with that team or a team about something and your journalistic impulse had been thwarted? Yes, because I had also talked to the Spokane Indians about their playing baseball after the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980. And they're like, maybe we had a game canceled. You should know. It's kind of like in a momentous... It's fine.

Okay, so I checked with the team and then they couldn't confirm anything. So I kind of let it go, figuring, okay, unverified rumor, whatever. I just saw a tweet about it. Well, last night I got a tweet from someone who responded to a tweet from February 23rd. So I have no idea how this even showed up in somebody's timeline. But in any case, I'll just read this, I guess, word for word. Quote, definitely happened, but got scrapped because of ball calls. This was last summer during extended.

Got called for it in short season. Currently working a low three quarters slot currently. And then I asked whose idea it was. And I was told it was proposed by the team with Caps and the other guy who was with the Angels in mind. That would be Jordan Walden, blanking on name. So I have nothing further on this right now. But I guess this would explain why the Salem Kaiser Volcanoes didn't really know what was going on. Because I guess he was trying to do this in extended spring training, which would have been down in Arizona if I have this all figured out correctly.

So Nolan Riggs, 23, right-handed with the Giants. He was drafted in, well, maybe he wasn't drafted. Baseball reference claims he wasn't drafted. So what do I know? I feel like anybody who pitches and is six foot eight or higher is probably going to get drafted at some point. But in any case, I don't know anything about Nolan Riggs, except that according to one person who I don't really know who he is, but he seems to have a lot to say on what would be a

weird thing to lie about that Nolan Riggs was indeed not only trying to mimic the Carter Caps delivery last summer, but he was even compelled to do so by someone. I don't know if it's like the Giants as a whole organization, but at least by the team or the coaching staff that he had. And then the home plate upper is like, nope. And so Riggs went back to pitching like he normally does. Interesting. Well, he probably hopes he won't be, but I wonder if he will be with the Volcanoes on August 21st when we are also with the Volcanoes and maybe we'll have an opportunity to ask

him in person. Or maybe if I really put on my journalistic pants and hat, then maybe I could reach out to him before that. But I don't know. You figure at some point, you're delighted to be able to pitch for a low A-ball team. So you want some innings if you're a pitcher with Salem-Kaiser. But Nolan Riggs is up to 108. Maybe that's too many innings with the Salem-Kaiser Volcanoes. I don't know. Another thing to ask him, although that might be personal. any innings with the Salem Kaiser volcanoes? I don't know.

Another thing to ask him, although that might be personal. Yeah, well, you should pursue it. I'm sure that the volcanoes don't get a ton of media requests from non-local people. I guess you are a local person, but not professionally, really. So if you can find out more about it,

I hope you'll give us an update. Excuse me, excuse me. What's your favorite volcano? Why is it your favorite volcano? How tall is your favorite volcano? Do you have other favorite volcanoes? Okay, my banter for today. First of all, it's been a very rough week for players who've become effectively wild memes.

Just about all of them have been released from one camp or another this week, which makes sense because they're all sort of marginal players, and this is the week when marginal players get cut, but still sad to see them go. Matt Albers was the most notable cut. He was in Nationals camp and he was basically one of the most effective pitchers on the team or in all of spring training. He had thrown 11 and two thirds innings, allowed zero runs with only six strikeouts and three walks, but still zero runs. And he was released, and Ryan Webb had only pitched three innings, allowed two runs, one earned for the Brewers.

He's gone, and our pal Ryan Rayburn, who was with the Reds and who was doing fine, he was hitting 219, 324, 500 with three home runs and 32 at-bats. So nothing to suggest too. And in even worse personal news. Santos Saldivar and Dylan Stoops. The Sonoma Stompers. Who were signed by big league teams. Were also released from the Brewers. And the Padres respectively. Although they had both pitched well in spring training.

So roster crunch. Hit effectively wild favorites. It's hard this week. And I hope they all land somewhere so that we'll have Something to talk about they're all going to land on the same team That they put together it's going to be the 31st Major league baseball team and Ryan Rayburn is going to Slug 700

Yeah well A couple other things I wanted to mention We did get one Rayburn anecdote So maybe we can relay That to send him off Just in case he doesn't land Somewhere else so this is from a Patreon supporter who goes by Lord

Byron for some reason And he says I have a Ryan Rayburn anecdote that could interest you Unfortunately it reflects more on me than on Rayburn In spring training of 2016 My friend and I went to Arizona to see our Rockies. Rayburn had just signed with The Rockies early in March so we knew little about him

Or his historic volatility We read up on him in the Baseball Perspectives Annual where his 2015 hitting Performance against lefties was likened to Some of the best hitters of the game As the nerd I am I was having players sign Their comment in the BP annual before The game. It's just a nice idea

When Rayburn came along I could tell he Was either reading his comment or looking at his his stats. Desperate for something to say, I blurted out, you were great last year against lefties. Rayburn responded by laughing at me saying, all right, man, and walking back to the dugout while shaking his head. I immediately realized that my comment implied that he was bad against righties, and I can understand why players don't like to be insulted to their faces. I believe that game was on march 10th where rayburn went over three with a walk but he was the dh so he wasn't able to throw the ball hard in warm-ups or crash into any walls so you do have to be careful when you cite stats when you're talking to players because if you're

not careful you can say them in a way that might reflect poorly on them or you always kind of want to present it in the best possible light to elicit the best response and that can be tricky at times because sometimes you're wanting to talk to a player about some extreme performance that wasn't so good you know unless you're conducting an interview i guess a situation like that you're not really looking for a truthful exchange of information. You know, it's more like, hey, Ryan Rayburn, please sign my book. You're great. Full stop.

That's it. You really don't need to, like, dig in. Be like, what is it about right-handed pitchers that gives you the most trouble while I have you over here? Clearly, you're willing to take time out of your day. Right. All right. One more trampoline follow-up, naturally. This was posted in the Facebook group.

No, probably not. This was about David Price, and it's actually baseball-related. So David Price, I guess it was last week, said in a quote in the Boston Globe, he was being asked about whether Red Sox medical people were kind of holding him back and getting him to stop doing more in his attempt to come back from the elbow problem. And he said, knowing my personality, yeah, I was throwing balls against the trampoline a week and a half ago. That's probably not the smartest thing to do. That's just myself going stir crazy. I'm just bored. That's just myself going stir crazy.

I'm just bored. And I don't think this was actually an unsanctioned activity or anything because I found other quotes where John Farrell was talking about how they were going to have Price throw a weighted ball against a trampoline from a shortened distance. So I guess this is an approved part of the rehab process, but I wanted to get your thoughts on whether you think there's any potential danger here. Well, I think I probably don't need to go into detail about the one immediate potential danger of the ball coming right back because trampolines are naturally springy. They will return the ball in a similar direction to the direction with which the ball arrived at the trampoline. Yeah. But you don't want to get hit by a weighted ball.

Yeah, right. The ball is even heavier and you're throwing from a shorter distance. You're just asking for triple at this point. David Price on the DL with an elbow problem and a concussion. But just as a general rule, I'm kind of in favor of anyone who's throwing things or otherwise abusing a trampoline. I think this is how

we kind of get them back. This is the human response and David Price throws really hard, even in his compromised state. So take that trampoline, presuming he did not actually launch the ball back at David Price's head. All right. And last follow up. This is in response to an email we answered last week from Andrew in Australia. And it was about the hypothetical person who knows what pitch is coming every time and whether that makes him a good player or whether he can get a job in baseball. So we got a follow

up on this from Trey who says Andrew was talking about being able to know what every single pitch slash location of the pitch before the pitcher threw the ball and was wondering how good you would be slash how likely you are to get a job. I don't think you would actually be able to play because if someone told me there was a 95 mile per hour fastball coming right down the middle, there's no way I'm going to make contact with it. But I think the most likely thing that you guys are overlooking would be the greatest behind the plate umpire of all time. Called game every single time he was behind The plate but theoretically we might even Be able to see a Javier Baez Esque play where the umpires Ringing up the batter before the pitch even crosses The plate or leaves the pitchers

Hand which is a good Point although I don't know we We said did we say pitch type and Location was yeah Okay all right so then yeah I mean maybe there's still borderline Calls where even if you do know the location, it's hard to say what it is. But for the most part, yes, this would be difficult to delay yourself if you already have the information that you would have an umpire making a bunch of borderline calls really difficult calls very quickly which would get noticed by broadcasts and then I think that I know if I were this

umpire I would want to convey like how smugly accurate I am with everything and so I would kind of make a show of it and I think that you would end up having legitimate plate appearances where the home plate umpire is kind of at least as interesting as the players participating in the plate appearance itself i think that i don't know if viewers would tune in to watch an umpire but it would at least it would like spice up a game if this guy were your home plate umpire or this woman were your home plate umpire for a given game i think it would make that game a lot more enjoyable to watch you kind of feel sort of like a buzz in the air like there's an approaching electrical storm you'd be like all right like i got to watch there's now like four four participants in every plate appearance and

yeah it'll be great i think the home plate umpire would be uh beloved i think it would be incredible to observe that there is a referee in a sport that people like full stop and uh i guess you would still have the umpire making some controversial calls on other plays because you probably don't anticipate when the runner is going to touch the plate and where and when but you know now we have replay reviews so most of those are erased from the game so you would have a nearly perfect home plate umpire which i don't know maybe he would be poisoned by the other home plate umpires, which I don't know, maybe he would be poisoned by the other home plate umpires. Right. Yeah. And in connection with this, someone else pointed out in the Facebook group that there's a new book called Baseball Genius, which was co-written by Tim Green,

who is a former NFL player and also a pretty prolific author. And ostensibly Derek Jeter as well. It's published Derek Jeter as well. It's published by Jeter Publishing. It's called Baseball Genius. It came out on March 7th, and here is the Amazon blurb. An average kid with an above-average talent for predicting baseball pitches tries to help his favorite player out of a slump in this entertaining novel from best-selling authors Tim Green and Derek Jeter.

Jalen DeLuca loves baseball. Unfortunately, his dad can't afford to keep him on the travel team. His dad runs a diner and makes enough to cover the bills, but there isn't enough to cover any extras. So Jalen decides to take matters into his own hands, and he sneaks into the home of the New York Yankees star second baseman James Yeager and steals a couple of balls from his personal batting cage. He knows that if he can sell them, he'll be able to keep himself on the team.

But like the best laid plans, or in this case, the worst, Jalen's scheme goes wrong when Jaeger catches him. But Jalen has a secret, his baseball genius. He can analyze and predict almost exactly what a pitcher is going to do with his next pitch. He can't quite explain how he knows. He just knows. And after proving to Jaeger that he can really do this using a televised game and predicting

pitch after pitch with perfect accuracy, the two agree to a deal. Jalen will help Jaeger out of his batting slump and Jaeger won't press charges. However, when he begins to suspect the team's general manager has his own agenda, Jalen's going to need his friends and his unusual baseball talent to save not only Jaeger's career, but his own agenda. Jalen's going to need his friends and his unusual baseball talent to save not only Jaeger's career, but his own good name. It's right now the number one new release in children's parents' books,

and it has a four-star rating with three customer reviews. So, I don't know if this was connected to that question at all, but it is oddly similar. How old is Jalen DeLucauca roughly uh this doesn't specify we can assume like i don't know what but 12 12 yeah okay right so let's say you're what was his name jaeger not steve jaeger yes jaeger no james jaeger okay so we can assume okay if if

someone our age or maybe even someone familiar to baseball roughly our age was talking to james yeager and we were trying to convey hey we have this we could we could help you yeager unless he knows that we work for a team or as some are some sort of independent scout he would be very reluctant to give us time of day and he would be skeptical he probably wouldn't listen to us but it would take a certain amount of coercion and at least it's possible to imagine maybe one day that a a star second baseman could allow himself to listen to somebody like us to give him advice there is no way that a star second baseman would listen to a damn 12 year old i don't care how talented this kid is there is no way do you know how little respect adults give to anyone who's like not an

adult even college student i'm sorry college students out there but you know it's you're stupid and we have no reason to listen to you unless you are doing our team preview about the baltimore orioles but there is like especially especially with a child you don't even when a 12 year old talks it doesn't even register in an adult's ears. Like you don't even know that there's noise. You're just like, well, kind of windy today. So under what circumstances is Jalen DeLuca able to convince James Yeager to even respond to him like through speech, let alone sitting down and watching video like, hey, James, I know you're in a slump, but I've got some video here and I want to go over your bets

because I know exactly what's going to come. Well, first of all, that's not very helpful because those are bets already happened. So maybe you just know what's already happened. History, we all know previous pitches with 100% accuracy. So how would, I guess maybe they're sitting down watching like other games in this yeah i'm not

i'm not gonna read the book just i was gonna say you gotta buy baseball genius to get the answer okay that's a that's a trick is this this is now like a this has wormed its way into my brain but so you would have okay so maybe you had to have like grown adult star second baseman james yeager sitting down watching baseball with somebody else's 12 year old child like in his house and then james is like tell me more tell me more what's this one gonna be no it's just it defies i know that this book is asking you to like suspend all disbelief because like 12 year olds don't know anything about anything let alone one of the most complicated subjects in contemporary sports but that's i can't no there's

there's absolutely no way 12 no there's no way that's stupid no way also you're not going to break into his that's that's stupid derrick jeter by the way is incredibly prolific as a writer because he has five books coming out this spring baseball genius was his first of five. So that came out on March 7th. On April 18th, he has two books coming out, one called Fair Ball and one called Change Up. And then on April 26th, he has The Contract. And April 28th, he has Hit and Miss. And these are all four of those are co-written with someone named Paul Mantel, who I imagined did the work. York Times bestselling author Derek Jeter for like half of the cover almost. And then it has a picture of a scene from the book and then the title of the book and no mention whatsoever of Paul Mantel. So that's sad for him, but I'm sure the book will sell better having Derek Jeter's

name emblazoned on the cover. But man, Derek Jeter publishing is really productive. But also like, dude, branch out, first of all, with your subjects. We get it. You played baseball. Like there's other things in the world. You've done a lot. You've traveled. You've been with-

Write what you know. Well, yeah, I guess. Hopefully he knows a little more than this. He knows publishing at least, but no one wants to read that book. But do you suspect that this is like some sort of racket where Derek Jeter just has like extorts authors to put his name on the book. Or I guess the other example is like he's sort of the leader of a scientific lab where every single paper that's published from the lab is like the first author credit goes to the person who runs the lab,

even if the person was barely involved. So I guess maybe a condition of going through Derek Jeter publishing is, by the way, this book's going to be credited to Derek Jeter. Nobody cares about you. Yeah, right. I don't know. I've got to look into this, see how the Derek Jeter novel sausage is made. You've got to talk about Jalen DeLuca, because that is nonsense. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Maybe one of our readers can fill us in

on what that scenario was exactly. All right. Question from Patreon supporter Jeremy Bernfeld, and this is a fantasy question which I know neither of us likes to answer, but it's not a standard fantasy question. So I think it's OK. He says a couple of buddies and I wanted a way to stay invested in baseball teams throughout the year as opposed to following individual players on our fantasy teams. we came up with. We hold an auction draft and we bid to win three teams each. Every win by those teams is worth one point. The final team bidding against itself is selected for the lowest dollar amount paid by another team. Then we hold an auction and bid to win one team each. Each loss by those teams is worth one point. We get five points for winning a division and five points for each playoff series win. The winner gets all of the money spent in the auction.

How would you tweak this game to make it more fun? Can you come up with a better game? I don't know if I can do either of those things. I like this idea, though. It seems like a decent idea. It's like asking you to predict the outcome of the season, essentially, which is something that everyone does kind of for fun or because it's their job or whatever, but it's adding some stakes to it and it's giving you a reason to pay attention to these particular teams over the course of the season, which a lot

of people have trouble with if it's not their team or it's not a team that has a lot of their fantasy players. So I like the idea. I don't know if there's an obvious way to improve it. Do you have anything to the purpose of the game itself, which whatever, I mean, it's all arbitrary, but I like that this still kind of keeps it all focused on the wins and the losses, which is ultimately the whole point. So that part is fun. I think that it makes you less strange as like viewing company because you're not just out there being like, I need Liori Garcia to hit a single. And then you're like, dude, why did you draft Liori Garcia on your fantasy team? But I guess that's a different conversation.

I'm sorry. I'm just looking at a website that has Liori Garcia on it. You would never draft him. So yeah, I like it. I have never thought about a sort of fantasy league like this. Obviously, I don't think there's any that are officially organized on websites. But yeah, I like it. It's easy.

You don't really have... You don't like... Actually, I wonder, can you it's easy you don't really have you don't like like actually i wonder can you trade teams i don't know maybe that's one way we just came up with to improve this idea yeah because otherwise you're not doing anything but for like six or seven months right you're just like well i got our teams and that's it right yeah okay i like it this is a fantasy league i could imagine myself participating in because i wouldn't have to do anything for six months Okay This question's kind of related to the Pitch prediction question

This is from another listener named Ben He says, let's say there's a position player Whose true talent level is exactly replacement level But who can see.1 seconds Into the future How many wins above replacement would this player be worth? Based upon quick internet research Players have around. 0.4 seconds to react to a 90 mile per hour pitch, which would mean this player would effectively have 0.5 seconds to react. They would also have advantages in base running and fielding, but how much of an advantage and the world. My opinion is that this would make such an enormous difference. You'd basically be, you're a future seer because it's not just that, it's like what the average fastball gets from the hand to the plate in like 0.4 seconds,

but you actually have, I think about 0.2 seconds to react because you need to swing and all that. So you'd be talking about increasing that window by like 50%, which is absurd. I know that the difference between two tenths of a second and three tenths of a second sounds like nothing. And if you hear it, it does sound like nothing. But that is such an enormous advantage you would have. I don't know how it would actually work out. Like, I don't know.

I guess you just see it when it's half as close, half as far from whatever. You know what I mean? But I think that this would make all the difference in the world. Of course, you'd be better on defense because there's a lot of bang bang plays. And if you get a 10th of a second head start, you'll be better. Base running, same deal. So you could be better on the periphery. But I think that as a hitter, this would make all the difference in the world. You would be the best hitter of all time, I think. Because what was the baseline? You're an average player, replacement level player? Repl player replacement level player replacement level placement level yeah so you clearly have a good

amount of baseball talent because like a replacement level player is quite good best player in my neighborhood anyway and so you take someone with that kind of ability and then he he sees yeah no unbelievable player better than barry bones yeah i think you might be right just i mean even just thinking about being able to get that great jump. And when you look at the stat cast reaction time numbers, they're always like some tiny fraction of a second, I think usually, which is just like how, how long it takes your center of mass to start moving after the ball starts moving, I think. And so if you could get a 0.1 second head start so that you would be running in the right

direction by the time the ball is hit already that would be immensely valuable to your range and yeah I mean if you could see 0.1 seconds in the future you could get a better jump on the bases and yes as you mentioned obviously the big advantage is as a hitter. So I agree. This would be huge. And then you could like call out from the dugout when your team is hitting, being like, it's a fastball up. Dude, stop talking. It'd be super annoying as a teammate. But yeah, you'd be so good.

You'd never get out. Well, you'd get out. But anyway. Yeah. All right. Charles says this might be more of a physics question than a baseball one. But I'll ask it here anyway. Is the term velocity misapplied when talking about pitch speeds? Obviously, the direction of the ball is relevant to the whole picture, but when we talk about velocity, isn't all we want to know just the

speed of the ball? And this is a critique you hear every now and then. It can come off as pedantic. I don't think it did in Charles's case. He seems genuinely curious, and I kind of am too. I think, as you already answered this email, that yes, it's true that velocity is at best redundant, probably, or just not necessary because we almost always know what direction a baseball is going. If it's a pitch, we know it's heading to home plate. If it's a hit, we know it's not. So velocity is movement and direction, speed and direction. And you generally don't need direction when you're talking about baseball. So yes, but it is kind of the convention at this point. Yeah, it is definitely the convention. But even the shorthand for velocity, which is VELO, is still twice as many syllables as speed.

So as I think about it, there's no, I can't think of any good reason why we use velocity or like same with exit velocity. It's the same idea, but no, it's just bad at ball speed. That is what it should be, I guess, but whatever exit velocity caught on. And I can't think of, I genuinely can't think of any reason to use velocity over speed, except that it just sounds like a more complicated word and people want to pretend that they're scientists. Yeah. I've kind of, I've been more mindful of this lately since some people pointed it out. I'm always thinking about it whenever I write velocity. And so I have sort of said speed more, I think, but also if you use speed 10 times in an article, it starts sounding silly. So you kind of want more words just to vary things up.

So it's a helpful synonym, even though it's technically not a synonym. So anyway, get used to it, I guess. All right. You already answered this one. So this will be quick. Curtis says, suppose a pitcher only has two outcomes, striking out the batter or giving up a home run. What would the best role for the pitcher be and what would the break-even point be

until he's no longer effective? Obviously, 100% strikeouts is godlike and 100% homers is home run derby contestant's dream pitcher. I assume a 50-50 ratio would not be effective because that's potentially three homers per inning and it wouldn't necessarily be in a K-homer, K-homer pattern. He might strike out the side in one inning and then give up three

straight bombs the next. Yeah, I don't know if I oversimplified this in my response. I don't think I did because I think that the answer is really quite simple after all. Last year, the average pitcher, or at least the league average, was 4.5 runs allowed per nine innings, pretty much right on the nose. So if we assume that we want this pitcher to be at least somewhere in the vicinity of average, of course, he could be worse. But you know, this is kind of a weird picture. So maybe the teams are going to have a shorter leash, you would be looking for 4.5 runs per nine innings. And all of those runs would score on homers, assuming there are not uncaught third strike base runners, which would be super annoying,

I guess this picture would have the potential for more of those. But accepting that, if you are looking for 4.5 runs per nine innings, then you are basically talking about one run per two innings, which means you need six outs, allowing one run, which would be six strikeouts, one home run. So for every seven batters, you could allow one solo home run, and you would be about a league average pitcher, which would give you a home run percent, a little over 14% and a ratio of six strikeouts for every home run. And I cannot tell you how frustrated pitching coaches would be with this individual. Yeah. He's almost Kyle Bearclaw-esque except it's home runs instead

of walks, which is even worse. All right. You have a stat segment? Sure. Let's do this. I think I've mentioned before, I am enchanted by the idea of spring training intentional walks because I know that it's more complicated than this, but it's kind of like evidence that to some degree, the managers care, which we already know there's absolutely zero reason to care about the outcome. But intentional walks at their core are strategic. So in any case, I'm going to read a bunch of numbers now. MLB.com has spring training statistics that date back to 2006, as far as I can

tell. So now I'm going to read league wide intentional walk totals year by year, all the way up to this year, which is still regrettably in progress. So beginning in 2006, 23, 19, 8, 15, 14, 9, 16, 11, 10, 9, 6, 3. So far this year, there have been three spring training intentional walks. I assume nothing has changed about the recording. I know we have different intentional walk rules now. You just point. But in any case, there has been very little pointing to first base. Over that history of, I guess, basically 12 years, there have been the 2007 Phillies and the 2013 Dodgers. Both intentionally walked five batters in spring training, which is too many. five batters in spring training, which is too many. The 2007 Nationals, 2010 Cardinals, 2012 Yankees, 2012 Rangers, and the 2014 Cubs all intentionally walked four batters in one spring

training, which again is too many. All of those are more than the current league-wide number of spring training intentional walks this year. Again, three. I will now review quickly some of the details. There's one that I kind of get, and. I will now review quickly some of the details. There's one that I kind of get, and this is where I do understand some spring training intentional walks. Daniel Stumpf was pitching the ninth inning of a game between the Tigers and the Braves just about a week ago. And in the bottom of the ninth tie game, Stumpf comes in, he allows a double, then Emilio Bonifacio bunts the runner to third because I guess Emilio Bonifacio is here doing bunting practice against minor league pitchers in the ninth inning so anyway

tie game one out runner on third and Stumpf then intentionally walked Matt Tuiasa Sopo so that he could face Adam Walker the second well okay yeah Adam Walker the second whatever so Walker ultimately singled and then the game was over and Stumpf lost. But this one I can kind of get because this intentional walk set up a could be double play situation. I can understand if you're a manager, like, okay, the intentional walk here is stupid, but we can at least try to get Stumpf to pitch to a double play, right? I think we can both agree there's a strategic uh angle here okay the two other intentional walks so we've got the white socks and the d-backs this is on march 1st a pitcher i've never heard of who goes by and is probably also literally named caleb fleck he was pitching at the bottom of the ninth tie game so the inning goes walk single strikeout so walk single strikeout walk run around first single put runners on the corners then there was a around first, single, put runners on the corners, then there was a strikeout. So now there's runners on the corners and one out. And then Caleb Fleck intentionally walked Yuan Mankata so that he could pitch to Reimer Liriano.

So I understand here that in theory, you're trying to set up the force at every base, right? Because you've got runners on the corners. But after the single, he pitched to Jacob May before he intentionally walked Yuan Mohan Mankata. So why not set up the force at every base before Yohan Mankata? What that implies to me is that his team or the pitcher or the manager or whatever was just afraid of Yohan Mankata and not so much Jacob May or after Mankata, Reimer Liriano, because they skipped the guy. This was just, OK, Mankato's up there. He's good. We're going to pitch around him.

Okay, but that's where it stops making sense. There's no reason to do that. Either you walk May and pitch to Mankato, which, by the way, that would be excellent practice, right, in a no-stakes game. Deal with that. You're Caleb Fleck. You want to show that you're something.

And I haven't looked up Caleb Fleck. Maybe he's a number one prospect and he didn't allow a run last year. I'm going to guess that isn't true. Caleb Fleck doesn't sound like the name of a future Cy Young candidate or Rolaids Relief Award winner if that's still a thing. But so this is this is a coward's intentional walk is what that is. And we have a third a third intentional walk. This one's my favorite. This one just happened on Tuesday. Rangers Rockies again, I think so So this is in the sixth inning. It's the score is nobody cares. And we're looking at bottom of the sixth. So let's see Mike Housechild. This is a rule five pick, I believe, of the Rangers from the Astros. That sounds fine.

He comes in in relief of A.J. Griffin. A.J. Griffin left a runner on first and one out in the bottom of the sixth. So Housechild comes in and it's Mark Reynolds on first. And Housechild threw a wild pitch while facing Krista Norfia. He threw a wild pitch that sent Mark Reynolds all the way to third from first. My God, that's an extremely wild pitch. I think this is a regrettable rule five pick. But in any case, so Housechild comes in one out runner on first throws a wild pitch. So the this is a regrettable rule five pick. But in any case, so Housechild comes in, one out, runner on first, throws a wild pitch. So the runner goes a third, but he strikes out Chris Dinorfia. So now there's a runner on third and two outs. Runner on third, two outs, sixth inning, spring training game. Okay. So the next batter up is Dustin Garneau and Mike Housechild

intentionally walks Dustin Garneau so that he can face Jordan Lyles, the other team's relief pitcher, and then he strikes out Jordan Lyles to end the inning. This is the ultimate coward's intentional walk in spring training. Serves zero purpose. You're not going to learn from watching how well Mike Housechild pitches to opposing relief pitcher Jordan Lyles, and it's not like Dustin Garneau is even that good of a hitter in the first place, but this is just pitching around a batter to get to the pitcher, which makes all the sense in the world

if it's the regular season. This was Tuesday, March 28th in a game between the Rangers and the Rockies in the Cactus League. This is stupid. This is a BS intentional walk, a waste of everybody's time, although I guess less of a waste of time than it used to be. But nevertheless, we've got three spring training intentional walks, two of them completely useless and cowardly. That's all that I have to say. I can't believe I can't believe this. Why would you do that? If you're Jeff Bannister? Why would you have him intentionally walk the catcher? And okay, actually, it's even it's even weirder, because the first pitch, I don't know how this worked out. I don't know, maybe this is a tracking problem. But as I look at the game day,

it's Mike Hauschild intentionally walks Dustin Garneau, but the first pitch was a swinging strike on a changeup. Something must be weird here. So maybe it wasn't intentional. I would have to further research this, but if this did happen as it says that it happened, that's weak. That's a weak move.

You can't even claim that it's to practice throwing intentional pitches anymore. I know. Because that's not a thing that happens now. And there was two outs, so you're not trying to set up some sort of double play ball. Jordan Lyles in his career, he's batted 161 times, Jordan Lyles, and he's hit 125 and he's slugged 194. He has hit two home runs

to his credit, but when those happened, he was with the Astros and the Rockies, so I'm going to guess these were maybe not the most impressive home runs. He's struck out a whole lot. He's a terrible hitter. His OPS plus is negative. Bad hitter. Mike House child, major league, arguable pitcher. You're not going to learn anything from that. That's stupid. Well, if the trend continues, maybe we're a spring or two away from not seeing a single one. So you'll keep tracking it, I'm sure. All right.

Question from Connor. What would happen if a pitcher secretly made it his singular goal to break old Haas Radborn's record of 59 wins in the season? I imagine it would have to be a reliever frequently blowing a small lead late in games that his team would have to then come back and win. How many times would he be allowed to do this before someone figured out what he was trying to do? What current pitcher would be most likely to attempt this feat and what team would give him the best chance of accomplishing it? Under what circumstances might the team actually encourage it? I can't think of a possible

circumstance such as that, but you looked up some examples of basically bad relievers to see how long a bad reliever can last and it's not long yeah okay so here's the problem with the hype okay well here's one of several problems with the hypothetical as presented the reliever would last like a week and a half and then his team would be like all right leave and that's that's basically it because here's here's what you'd be asking here's what you'd be doing as a reliever allowing a lot of runs all the time and then hoping hoping that you last the rest of the inning so that you are the pitcher of record and then your team scores so maybe maybe you would get one vultured win and then your team would be like okay bye because jj hoover was good and then last year he was terrible so the reds caught him pretty quick

the rangers had tom wilhelmsen who had been pretty good, interesting stuff. He was terrible. They dropped him. The Rangers also had Sean Tolleson, who had been even better than Wilhelmsen in the recent past. He's been like their closer, and then he was bad. So then I think he went on a DL. I think he came back later, but he lost his job fairly quickly. I don't know under what circumstances this would ever be. No, no, I can't. I can't even wrap my head around the idea behind this hypothetical it would be it's impossible the the best way the best way to try to beat the record is that before every game you put a gun to your manager's head you say you're going to use me you're going to use me in critical innings and then you hope that your arm doesn't fall off because you need to

pitch in at least six games and realistically probably all of the games in order to get that many wins i don't know when you would be most what win prone but you i guess maybe you'd ask your manager to never let a starting pitcher go five innings and then you pitch in relief so then then it's a official scorer's decision and maybe at a certain point the official scorer starts developing momentum of assigning wins to the guy who already has a bunch of wins but you know maybe the official sc the official scorer starts to notice something, gets annoyed by giving you so many wins. So he decides or she decides to stop giving you wins based on their own judgment. So, yeah, terrible idea. Absolutely terrible idea. Agreed. And yeah, I think even in the threatening scenario, the manager could always take the weapon away while the pitcher is in the game, right? And then

release him immediately after. And so that would only work once, I think. Yeah, unless you took the gun with you out to the mound. But then I think the other... Yeah, I don't know. You need metal detectors to get into ballparks these days. So it might be tough. Do you think players are held to that standard?

I wonder. Writers are. If you go into a media entrance, I don't know whether players would be. Maybe this exact scenario is why they've installed metal detectors at every ballpark, which has been something of a mystery, it seemed. But now that you bring up this plan, it might be a good precaution. All right. Scott says, on the Tigers team preview, Jason Beck noted that Jordan Zimmerman's velocity Velocity is ticking up but what matters

Jason said is whether Zimmerman Will be able to miss bats this got Me thinking let's say Zimmerman Had the supernatural ability to miss a Bat that is if the batter swings At the pitch he will miss it once per Plate appearance Zimmerman could choose Which pitch it would be but could only select

One pitch per plate appearance naturally Zimmerman will use this power the first time each plate appearance he gets to a two-strike count. He'll throw a meatball down the middle so if the batter swings, he magically misses, but if he takes, he'll be called out on strikes. Note that in The Only Rule Is It Has to Work, Ben cited research showing that since 2009 on 3-0 counts with opposing pitchers at the plate, MLB pitchers throw strikes only 68% of the time, so Zimmerman might not strike 100% of batters out if they do take the first two-strike pitch they see. First question, would this ability make Zimmerman the best pitcher ever? Second question, how many magical bat misses per plate appearance would one of you need at your disposal to become

a league average MLB pitcher? Well, first of all, I like that it's Jordan Zimmerman for some reason. That is the guy that we're working with here, but running some math. So yeah, he's right. You would use this power in two strike counts because then that's when it makes the biggest difference. So last year, Jordan Zimmerman, last year was a bad year for Jordan Zimmerman, to be clear. So this is already starting from a low level, but he faced 450 batters in the season. And he had in a bad end with a two strike pitch 237 times. That's more than half the time. That's somewhere in the vicinity of average. There are a lot of two strike counts, especially in the game today. So with two strikes last year, Zimmerman allowed a 709 OPS. Oh, that's bad. Oh, you don't want to do that with two strikes. Here's Hey, did you know Jordan Zimmerman is not very good last year Zimmerman allowed a 709 OPS oh that's bad oh you don't want to do

that with two strikes here's hey did you know Jordan Zimmerman is not very good last year anyway it's one of the reasons so last year he got 66 strikeouts when he was pitching with two strikes which I don't know exactly where that is league average but that seems below average but let's say now you're using the power they wouldn't all turn into strikeouts because as he mentioned sometimes you still throw a ball or maybe the better will take it anyway. So I don't know, maybe you give him 200 out of 237 strikeouts. Maybe that's still too low. But if you give him 200 strikeouts out of those 237 times into strike counts, then his strikeout rate last year as a starting pitcher would have been right around 45%. I don't know exactly how

the rest of his profile would work out because that part is crazy easily the best strikeout rate even relative to the league average that I assume has ever been would have ever been posted by a starting pitcher. He'd be missing bats like a Roldis Chapman but as a starter so I'm inclined to say that he would be basically the best starting pitcher of all time. Now granted Zimmerman last year had some injuries but let's also assume that he's magical and able to avoid those. Yeah, yeah, I think he would he would qualify as the best ever, although then you would have batters maybe realizing how good he is at putting hitters away.

So maybe they get aggressive earlier and they try to avoid two strike counts at all. So every every change has those unforeseen consequences. Yeah. And as for the second part of the question maybe this answer is different for you than for me because you have some pitching experience but for me i think i'd probably need three magical bat missing pitches for play to do this because i mean there's no way i'm going to get to one strike really probably like and i mean i can't imagine how i would i'm not gonna actually legitimately miss a bat so maybe against like mike trout or who's the uh the guy you just

wrote about who takes all the first pitches oh oh jj hardy yeah right jj hardy never swings at first pitches so maybe against him i could strike him out because I could just lob one down the middle and he'd take it for a strike and then I'd have the two magic pitches. But otherwise, if the hitter at least knows I'm going to do this and knows that I'm a terrible pitcher, then I don't think I could even get to one strike consistently enough to last. Yeah, I really wanted to say two to give myself the benefit of some doubt, but just because I have pitching experience

doesn't mean that I'm any good. I might be able to brush 80. I haven't been gunned in a long time, so I don't know how hard I throw, but I know how to throw other stuff, but it's not good because also my fastball isn't good. I really wanted to say two because I know how bad hitters

are when they're behind 0-2, but something tells me their approach would be different against someone like me because they can plainly see that I am not good, even though I'm still missing bats all the time. So I don't know how that works, but yeah, I would, I mean, I want to say like maybe two and a half or I don't know, maybe I could get a foul ball because hitters get overaggressive. They're like, I can crush this guy. But also, I do remember when I was pitching even semi-regularly in high school, you still need to throw a strike, which is not easy. Sometimes we used to throw live batting practice where the pitchers would go up. And so we'd have like a third of the team was pitchers and we'd be throwing intentional strikes to our hitters who

would take batting practice and i hated that because i felt like every all eyes were on me even though the whole idea was to watch the hitters and i maybe threw strikes like half the time because there's not even a catcher at that point which is whatever this is getting off the rails but throwing strikes is difficult i would still throw a whole lot of balls So yeah I think it's three for me too And last question From another Patreon supporter Sean Cusack

While hearing the news of Jung Ho Gong Being denied a work visa And possibly missing the 2017 season It made me start asking myself random questions And making up scenarios And I came to a scenario of what if Clayton Kershaw were a foreign player? And for one reason or another, he got his visa denied into America, but somehow it was okay to get into Canada. Would there be enough value for the Blue Jays to add him to their team?

Let's say he's a free agent, so we don't have to worry about trade value. If he could only start games played at home. On the other side, what if it were Mike Trout? Does the answer change based on them being a pitcher or position player? Oh my god, so worth it. So worth it. Because you still have a player half the time. The downside, if I've thought about this correctly, the downside is that you have a limited roster

because you have 25 men and half the time one of those players is not useful. So there is a cost to that. It's a not negligible cost, but you can work with it. And as a benefit, you're getting half of Clayton Kershaw or Mike Trout's full season value, which is extraordinary. Of course, if you are, if it's Kershaw, you could sort of try to stagger the start. So he makes maybe 17 or 18 starts at home. I don't know exactly how it would work out. Trout, that would obviously be more exactly even. But I think that the cost is so negligible. I don't know where the break even

point is. Maybe it's like a slightly above average player where it's worth it. Maybe that's too high or too low, but the break even point is easily below the best position player or starting pitcher in the game. So worth it. Also, if no other team can sign these players, like you've got the leverage guys, you can get these players for cheap. Right. Yeah. And I mean, it might negatively impact the player to only play half the time, particularly probably with a position player who would have to, you know, like if there's a long road trip or something, he's going to be off. He's not going to be seeing pitches. He'd have to, I don't know, maybe send him down to the minors or something, have him go to AAA just to stay fresh or something. So not playing regularly might hurt the player.

But if it's Trout, it's not going to hurt him enough to not make this worthwhile. So, yeah, I mean, there's a level where it wouldn't be worth it, but it's well below best pitcher in baseball or best hitter in baseball. Am I misremembering some old story about how Roger Clemens didn't want to travel with the Yankees? Yeah, no, that's right. Yeah. And in his later years with the Yankees, maybe with the Astros too, he would not go on road trips or he would just show up on the days that he pitched and he was amazing when he was pitching. Yeah. Although I guess in his last year, he had nine pitching appearances at home and nine on the road. So I don't know, maybe he just didn't travel when he wasn't scheduled to pitch. On the road so I don't know maybe he just didn't Travel when he wasn't scheduled to pitch Yeah something like that So there's some sort

Of precedent I guess but Anyway easy yes to that question Okay so That will do it for today You can support the podcast on Patreon By going to patreon.com slash effectively wild Five listeners who have done so recently Include Mark Kramer, Luke Whitestone

Matt Bougie, Jake Wilkinson, and Michael Hunter. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. By the time you hear this, we'll have a post up on the Fangraphs Instagraphs page that collects all of the team preview podcasts. So if you missed any, want to catch up before opening day, that's a convenient place to find them all. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance.

Keep the questions coming via email at podcast at fan graphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We will be back on Friday with not an email show, not a preview podcast, just a regular old episode of Effectively Wild. Talk to you then Bye.