Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1099: How a Five-Way (Tie) Would Work

Episode Date: August 19, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Ben’s broken mic and common cold, an almost-record day for home-run hitting (and a juiced-ball update), Arthur “Doc” Irwin and the Irwin Glove, Joey Votto’s Hall of Fame case, the increasing difficulty of projecting players, the AL wild card race and the odds (and potential ramifications) of a […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1099 of Effectively Wild, the Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters, by Fangraphs, and by myself, by Ben. I am Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, but not as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer in a different country. So, hi Ben, how is it in the country? Hi, well the country's nice, but two things have happened since we last spoke. The first is that I have contracted a terrible cold just in time to infect your whole household and everyone I will shortly be sharing an enclosed space with on the way to our eclipse event and all of the faithful listeners who show up at the event and get their tickets from me. So sorry about the timing on that.

And the other thing that happened is that my microphone in sympathy with my nose maybe has also kicked the bucket. And back on episode 802, I think we talked about the expression rode hard and put away wet, which I think was used to describe a pitcher who had been worked very hard and we had some banter about it. And it was a term from equestrian from the equestrian world. And then we followed up on that a bit. But basically my mic has been rode hard and put away wet and it did not survive the latest jostling it took in a suitcase. So some piece of the USB connector broke off, which is why I probably sound a bit different today. I'm recording myself on my phone. And so now I have this broken mic and I'm wondering if I can auction this thing off or something. I mean, this is the original Effectively Wild microphone, which is faithfully recorded well over a thousand episodes. It's the mic I was talking into when we got the idea for the book. If I sign this thing and auction it off for a good cause, I wonder whether I can scam anyone into buying a broken microphone for me. Anyone want it?

You've had it from the beginning? The very first episode? Yeah, very first, I believe. Yeah, this thing goes back more than five years. Wow. Before Ben Lindbergh was Ben Lindbergh exclusive podcaster who does nothing else but record and edit podcasts, you had a microphone.

It's a historic artifact. Before you knew what you were doing. I'm just talking into a headset like a telemarketer from 1997 now so yeah yeah you could uh you could definitely auction that off and uh i would probably start the bidding in 99.99 cents if i were yeah we have to think of uh an effectively wild cause i don't know maybe people in the facebook group can suggest something that would be good for the world but also distinctively, effectively wild. Yeah, that won't be controversial at all.

People can buy my broken microphone. Yeah. If there's one thing people agree on, it's good causes. I wonder if maybe the microphone broke because it's being put away wet. It's possible that you were using it wet, which is very much against the warranty. I look forward to contracting your cold, and so does my mother, who will be staying here the day after. So everything will be terrific. You are coming down much of the coast on Saturday afternoon,

and it looks like you will probably not be doing so the day after Major League Baseball sets a new record for home runs in one day. However, it's close. So as we record this, there are three games still active. None of them involve particularly good offensive teams. All of them are late. So here's hoping that the Washington Nationals have some sort of late inning explosion. But in any case, so far, according to the Fangraphs leaderboards,

in Major League Baseball, there have been 58 home runs hit all combined on Friday. Three of them hit by Manny Machado, one very dramatic. We'll talk about that a little later. And apparently the all-time record, according to Wikipedia, is 62 set in 2002. It was June 2nd, I think. July. July. It matters.

Yeah, sure. Whatever. Summer of 2002, all baseball teams combined hit 62 home runs. So we think 58 would be second to most. Yeah, according to some not really reliably sourced forum post I just found. The previous record was 57, which was set on April 7th, 2000 at the height of the previous home run era. So that would mean that this would be the second most home runs in a day and we've still got a few innings left here so i will check in with you at the end of this episode

to see if anyone homered while we were talking okay and let's see so baseball teams today have slugged 5 11 i think i remember seeing the numbers up well uh yesterday in limited action baseball teams slugged 494 however i remember checking at one point and they had slugged 526. So yesterday, the evening hours brought some regression to the mean, regrettably. But still, Friday, big day for baseball. If I recall, the Orioles and the Angels played a game in which there were something like nine home runs in just the first three innings before I stopped paying attention to that. So big day taking place there.

And do you have anything you'd like to banter about? Well, the ball is juiced. And I believe there is going to be some research coming from that old standby, Alan Nathan. Next week at the Hardball Times, he presented at Sabre Seminar, and he did a different method from the one that Rob Arthur had used in his previous inquiry into the seam height of the baseball or the change in the baseball's drag over the last few years. And he confirmed via that independent method that it seems as if there was a 15% increase in home runs from the beginning of 2015 to 2016 that is solely attributable to a change in the drag of the baseball, which would be related to its size or composition or seam height, some

combination of those things. So I think he's publishing that research soon, but that is another indicator. And it doesn't necessarily explain the increase from 2016 to 2017 or the entirety of the increase, but it's further corroborating evidence that the ball has something to do with this. And that was only looking at the drag, wasn't even looking at the bounciness of the ball, for instance. So that probably has a little bit to do with the 58 home runs that have been hit already today, but we know that. We've covered that. There is one other thing that I did want to mention, and I have plugged before on this podcast the great newsletter that Craig Wright writes. It's called Pages from Baseball's Past. You can find

it at baseballspast.com. It's a couple times per week. And Craig Wright is one of the pioneering sabermetricians, one of the first, maybe the first to have a full-time position with a team. He's a historian and statistician, and he does really great research for this newsletter. And he's constantly unearthing things that I had no idea about. So his most recent addition, which just came in earlier today, is about the Irwin glove. So this is essentially the first glove that was used by someone other than a catcher or a first baseman. The first gloves in baseball were used by players at those positions, logically enough. But Irwin, who was Arthur Doc Irwin of the Providence Grays, he was a shortstop. And in 1883, he broke the ring finger and pinky finger on his left hand.

And today, what a player would probably do in that situation is stop playing baseball for a while. But that's not what they did in 1883. Instead, he tried to look for some way to protect his broken fingers and keep playing baseball. So he did, and he went and bought some thick buckskin gloves that workmen wore, and he tailored them a little bit, and over time, the Irwin glove evolved. But unsurprisingly, he discovered that this helped him field baseballs and not only protected his fingers, but an article in 1909, which was a retrospective about the evolution of the glove, said from the first time Irwin took a grounder

with that glove, he noticed that he could meet the ball solidly. He did not have to ease off, and he could get away his throw quicker than any other man on the infield. And the interesting thing here is that you can see it in the numbers. When he started using this glove in 1883, the previous two years, and Wright compares him to the league average shortstop fielding percentage-wise, and previous two years, he was 22 points below the league average in fielding percentage, and then 20 points below the league average. If you want to go by fielding runs at Baseball Reference, he was several runs below average in each of those years. Then in 1883, his first year with this glove, he was 11 runs above average and then 13 runs above average, and his fielding percentage increased correspondingly.

So this was a huge advantage, as one would expect, and he was ridiculed for this. He was made fun of for this, for being weak and having to wear some kind of protective gear on his hands. And he was an inventor. He was a Canadian. So I'm talking about him while I'm in Canada. He was called Doc because he patented lots of things and he was kind of a tinkerer. Anyway, the interesting thing is that you can really see it in the numbers. And he gradually introduced this glove to other teams. And Monty Ward, who's a Hall of Famer, he was the shortstop for the New York Giants. He became a convert for this glove. And he convinced all the other Giants to use this glove, not only the infielders, but

also the outfielders. And then in 1888, a bunch of players started using it. Cap Hansen, another Hall of Famer, started using it. And in the middle of that season, he said, I purchased one of Irwin's improved fielding gloves. And after that, it was impossible to drop a thrown ball. Perhaps like hyperbole from Kap Anson, because fielders do still drop balls with better gloves than the Irwin glove. But that season, Monty Ward's Giants, who were all wearing this glove, won the pennant. And that was probably not a complete coincidence anyway. So this just struck me as interesting because there was a time in baseball where the inefficiencies and the advantages that one player could get over another or one team could get over another was the difference between wearing a glove and not wearing a glove, which is pretty big. These days, we talk about very

slight edges that players and teams can get. Back then, it was whole team wearing a glove, other teams not wearing a glove. That's a pretty big advantage. And for a while there, and it caught on very quickly. The article mentions that by 1895, just, you know, a decade or so after everyone was making fun of him, everyone was wearing the glove because it was so obvious that it helped. But that's kind of amazing, right? That A, that you could just do that. Like there was nothing in the rules that prevented you from suddenly wearing a glove on your hand, which is a huge advantage. And the idea that a lot of people would not do it and would think it was silly. And then the idea that it would just be this enormous differentiating factor between teams for a period of a few years there. So that kind of puts into perspective, I think, just how much of the low-hanging fruit has been grasped and devoured and the edges that we talk about now are so much smaller than wearing a glove versus not wearing a glove. But it's cool that you can actually see it show up in the numbers like that.

Yeah, that fruit was basically on the ground. It was hanging so low. It's fun sometimes when you see players who have dramatic performance changes season to season, you can sometimes figure out what happened to the numbers. Sometimes there's stuff that we don't know about. You think maybe there's some sort of off the field issue, some sort of tragedy or family issue and it's stuff that we're not always necessarily privy to. But then you could go into the defensive data and see this year to year change. And you might rack your brain thinking, well, what could have possibly happened between these two seasons and

then you think oh because he had a glove in one yeah then he could pick pick the ball up it's uh that took place well before but it's reminiscent i'll just read from the wikipedia entry for a goaltender mask it was not until 1959 that a goaltender wore a mask full-time on november 1st 1959 in a game between the Montreal Canadiens and New York Rangers of the National Hockey League parentheses NHL, Canadiens goaltender Jacques Plante was struck in the face by a shot from Andy Bathgate.

Plante had previously worn his mask in practice, but coach Toe Blake refused to permit him to wear it in the game, fearing it would inhibit his vision. Okay. After being stitched up, because Plante, again, hit in the face by a shot

with a hockey puck that's not in wikipedia but it's implied plant gave blake an ultimatum refusing to go back out onto the ice without the mask to which blake obliged not wanting to forfeit the game since nhl teams did not have backup goaltenders at the time i have now learned something new about the story plant went on a long unbeaten streak wearing the mask, which stopped when he was asked to remove it for a game. After that particular loss, Plante resumed donning the mask for the remainder of his career. When Plante introduced the mask into the game, many questioned his dedication and bravery.

In response, Plante made an analogy to a person skydiving without a parachute. Although Plante faced some laughter, the face-hugging fiberglass goaltender mask soon became the standard. So I already knew the story about the first goaltender mask being worn by Jacques Plante, and he wore it after being hit in the face. What I did not know is that not only did goaltenders not wear masks while people were hitting pucks at them, but there were no backup goaltenders. So there were two things wrong with hockey in the 1950s. This was a much later invention than the ordinary baseball glove both so obvious now as to be humiliating to history in hindsight but i guess these things do need time to develop i feel like i guess i don't know which one i know which one is worse

because in the story you told gloves already did exist just for other positions whereas in this story it's okay. Now the first person is going to start wearing a mask. So I don't know which is worse, but yours happened much, much sooner. Yeah. And the same thing happened with catcher's gear, masks and shin guards and all of that earlier in baseball, obviously than hockey, but it was the same sort of process. And a couple other tidbits about Doc Irwin while we're on the subject. One, he had two nicknames, one Sandy, which was probably a reference to his hair color, and also Foxy, which man who popularized the fielding glove broke with tradition in more ways than one and led an astonishing double life. It was not Bartolo Colon who had the first double life in baseball. Doc Irwin had married his first

wife, Elizabeth, in Boston in 1883, same year he started wearing the glove, big year for Doc, and they had three children together. When Doc was coaching the University of Pennsylvania baseball team in 1893, he started seeing a local woman named Mary and ended up marrying her the next year. They had a child in 1897 and later moved to New York City. Because both families were used to Irwin always being on the road to this place or that, he managed to keep his polygamy and double life a secret until he was dying in 1921. His sons from the two families, 24-year-old F. Harold Irwin

and 37-year-old A. Herbert Irwin, ran into each other at a hospital in New York where their father had had an unsuccessful operation and been told he had only a few days to live. While the wives had not yet been told at that point, Doc was likely mortified at his exposure besides dealing with the news that he was dying. It's a rough week for for doc

find out you're gonna die and then your double life is exposed he got on a ship to boston telling mary no i said mary his wife's name's actually may the second wife that is he got on a ship to boston telling may he was going to say goodbye to some old friends and return when the ship docked his clothes and luggage were in his stateroom, but Irwin was gone. It was assumed he committed suicide by jumping overboard during the voyage, but his body was never found, and no one really can say for sure what happened to the secretive Arthur Irwin. And that's why on his baseball reference page, he is born February 1858 in Toronto, Canada, and it has died July 16th, 1921 in blank. Right, yeah. 16th 1921 in blank right yeah and i guess the way he did it he his families both of them appeared in the 1900 census but the last names were spelled differently there was erwin with an i in philadelphia and erwin with an e in boston and he was 41 years old in boston and 37 years old

in philadelphia so he took a few years off so is, I guess, if you're a ballplayer who's always on the road, the double life becomes more feasible than it would be for many people. Good double life. I had no idea that Al Martin as a baseball player had bigamy precedent, and it only took something like 100 years for that to take place. But now we've all learned something about Doc Irwin. I'm surprised that his nickname was not Babe Ruth's Glove. Yeah, it's funny, though, that you mentioned that, like, there's this explanation for the numbers that you wouldn't necessarily know. And that's one of the cool things about Craig's newsletter is that, like, often he will have, you know, so and so was hit on the hand on this day,

and then he missed a couple games, and then he hit 150 for the next three weeks or something. And Craig will break it down like that, because he's digging into the historical record and he's looking at newspaper accounts from the turn of the century. And he finds these injuries and then he matches them up with the performance dips. And I'm sure in some cases that could be deceptive. It could just be that a guy went through a slump or something. But the way that he presents it, it is kind of compelling. there's all this hidden backstory to seasons that is very quickly forgotten and undetectable in the stats that we have for for most years in baseball so i'm glad that we have craig wright doing that research so again pages

from baseball's past baseball's past.com highly recommend it we should have craig on sometime before too long there uh since we since we started having, since we started bantering there have been no additional home runs. We're running out of time. The Nationals have scored two runs, however neither have scored on a home run. Okay, do you have anything else you'd like to banter about? One more thing, another

entry into the annals of people claiming that someone is the best player ever or the best player in the world. This one a little more convincing than Lee, Louie, Robert citation, but Chris Bryant said that Joey Votto is the best player ever. And he said he's a future hall of famer. That's for sure. Now the best player ever discussion is probably not worth having, although, you know, you could make a case that Votto has been the best player over some span of time recently. But is Votto a Hall of Famer, you think?

Well, OK. It obviously depends on how he plays from now on. But based on what he's accomplished thus far, because he kind of got a late start to his prime seasons. Right. So somebody asked me in my Friday chat what kind of chance Paul Goldschmidt has at the Hall of Fame. And Goldschmidt is four years or so younger than Votto, and he's been less valuable over his career, of course, because of those four years. But there's similar cases in that they both got sort of late starts, at least traditionally speaking, for players who became elite. So yeah, thinking about Goldschmidt just got me reconsidering the case of Votto. And I have assumed I've talked to Dave Cameron about this

off and on just just for the hell of it over the years. And he's been pretty strongly of the conclusion, at least in the past, that Votto was not going to make the Hall of Famer, that at least it was unlikely because of how late he arrived. And because even now, he's only up to 52 wins above replacement, at least according to fan graphs graphs and there's no real cutoff of course but people will commonly start to take cases seriously when someone reaches 60 or so now when when dave and i first started talking about this vada was well back even in the 40s maybe even the 30s and in in 2014 he had uh he was hurt and he had a not very good season at all but then he's he's come back and he was worth worth 7.5 wins in 2015,

then 5, then 5. He is showing, so far, 0-0 signs of any sort of offensive decline in the numbers. He has cut his strikeout rate to what would be easily a career low, as everybody else is striking out more. Just looking at the numbers this year, he has drawn 38 more walks than strikeouts, which is just absurd. So the Votto case is getting so much more compelling than it has been before,

because everyone would have assumed, okay, he's getting into his mid 30s. Now he's going to start to decline, and then he's going to be one of those borderline cases. But if he's going to have a six win season now, then you figure that he could conceivably get to that 60 war cutoff or whatever next year or just a little bit after that. And so I don't know exactly how he's going to decline. Of course, nobody can ever know Alex Rodriguez fell off the cliff immediately. And that's just one case. I don't know why I went to him. But Votto this year, the only thing that's really holding his wins above replacement down is that I guess his base running hasn't been very good. But I mean, honestly, who cares? He's still a phenomenal hitter.

Chris Bryant is wrong about Votto being the best baseball player of all time for reasons we need to get into. Barry Vaughn's had a whole Albert Pujols career on top of the Joey Votto career. Is Mike Trout's career were higher than Votto's? Probably, right? Well, give me your guess. I would say yes.

Yes, by 1.3, according fan graphs at least so yeah mike trout hall of fame trajectory that much is uh that much is clear it would take something horrible than unspeakable for that not to happen but vato at this point i would think gonna lean toward yeah i think that he will i would say that too yeah i'm just looking at his Jaws numbers right now on Baseball Reference, and he has already exceeded the peak standard for first baseman. The seven-year peak for Hall of Fame first baseman on average has been 42.7 war. Votto just above that at 43.8 and presumably still adding to it by the day. So his peak is Hall of Fame level already,

and he is about 13 war or so going by baseball references numbers behind the average Hall of Fame first baseman. And yeah, to not make it, he would really have to hit a wall all of a sudden, and he has aged fantastically well, and he seems at least intelligence-wise like the sort of player who would age well. So yeah, I'm going to say he makes it. Maybe he's probably not helped by playing for Cincinnati his whole career to this point, not much of a postseason record and not a distinguished one, but I think he has made himself beloved in other ways, like he has almost an Adrian Beltre type following, I would say above people among people who are just fond of him for his various antics and quotes. So yeah, I would think that

by the time he wraps it up, he will meet the standard and probably will have the notoriety that is necessary to get in. Yeah, you figure he's he's at least I don't know, eight years away from his first ballot, probably more like 10 or conceivably even more. I don't know exactly. So there will be a slightly more educated voter pool as well. He's not going to have a lot of those traditional benchmark numbers, but I think that those are being reduced in importance. And he's just been a really, really good hitter. You know, if you can support Edgar Martinez, you're going to find it in your heart to support Joey Votto.

And Edgar Martinez is going to make it, if not this next time, then the time after that. So yeah, I've come all the way around. Now I believe that Joey Votto will make the Hall of Fame. And that's pretty incredible. All right. Do you have anything else you'd like to discuss? I do not. Whatever you would like to discuss is what I would like to discuss.

Well, let's see. Still no more home runs. It's not going to happen today. So there were a couple to discuss. Well, let's see. Still no more home runs. It's not going to happen today. So there were a couple of things. Well, I guess three things, really. Another thing that came up in my chat was someone was asking a question about Manny Margot for the Padres and talking about how when he was a prospect, scouts said that, oh, you know, he's got all these tools.

He's probably never going to hit for a whole lot of power. Then the chatter asked, do you think Margot will turn into a 20 home run a year kind of player so it made me wonder when you're dealing with scout evaluations this season scooter jeanette is a 20 home run player and marwin gonzalez is a 20 home run player i will say that as of uh as of today keon broxton is a 20 home run player he is a comeback and he's had a scorching month of August. So all eyes on Keon Broxton. So I wonder what we're supposed to do. That goes, of course, back to the point that you and everybody else in the world is raised

about the ball being juiced. But the scouting evaluations no longer necessarily fit. Because if you think this guy's, if you see a guy when he's 21 and he's in double a and he's just hitting a bunch of balls to the track and maybe only a few of them sneak over the fence you think okay well this guy just he's not going to have the power that needs to be a major league player but you can't evaluate that right now in the minor leagues you would need and you could get i guess minor league velocity numbers, but the ball just doesn't fly down there. Home run rates are a lot lower and it's not an approximation of the major league

game. So I wonder, I mean, on the one hand, we've seen scouts not give Aaron Judge 80 grade power in the minors, which is insane based on literally everything that we've seen him do at the major league level. But I wonder what we're supposed to do with any kind of power evaluation with minor leaguers. Because yeah, Manny Margot could be a 20 home run guy because almost anyone could be a 20 home run guy given the opportunity. Gerard Dyson has set a career line. Freddie Galvis. Freddie Galvis, exactly. So I have no larger point here, except that I'm not sure that, I guess I wonder how prospect evaluation is going to look for this era in hindsight, because power is, of course, the most valuable thing that a young hitter can have. And you just

don't see power play the same where those players are being scouted. Yeah, or I mean, this maybe applies at the major league level too, right? Because you did a post maybe last month or so about some evidence that hitters have become less predictable in the big leagues. And I know this is something that Tom Tango has tweeted about and Bill Petty has tweeted about, and I believe Dave Cameron has done some research on and maybe we'll present that research at some point soon. So there is evidence that, yeah, players are less likely to do the same thing that they did before, I guess, than they have been in the past.

And that does seem related possibly to changes in the ball or changes in the way that players change and tailor their swings and approach their plate appearances. And yeah, that poses a challenge for teams that particularly with players who are not superstars and just kind of fall into that decent or pretty good player range. If it's harder to nail down the differences between those players, then it's harder to commit as much salary to those players or be as confident when you're drawing distinctions between them. So that does seem related to the overall changes in the game that we've seen in recent years. Yep. Moving right along.

So there are two more things I'd like to discuss, provided we have the time. So right now, I'm going to read to you the current and active American League wildcard standings. The Yankees, of course, have wildcard position one. They're up three and a half games on the rest. So this is all now related to wildcard position two, American League. Minnesota Twins, Los Angeles Angels, tied. Royals, half game back. Mariners, half game back. Rangers, one and a half back. now related to wild card position two american league minnesota twins los angeles angels tied royals half game back mariners half game back rangers one and a half back orioles two back

thanks to manny machado and it's friday heroics tampa bay three back toronto three back the rays and the jays in the hunt and the tigers are only out of it because they've lost five in a row so they're eight and a half back there that's's where the gap is. But only three teams in the American League are out of playoff hunt. There are what did I just name? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight teams all close. Eight teams all within three games of the second wildcard. And of course, the Yankees are only up three and a half. So we know it's complicated. Now we know that it will probably sort itself out. I guess we know it will have to sort itself out somehow. But that's what I want to talk about real quick, because Fangraphs has a page on its playoff odds tab where you could look at tiebreaker scenarios. And I'm just going to read a few things here. So for example, in the American League East, there is currently projected a 3% chance of a two way tie that would presumably be the Red Sox and the Yankees. Okay, great. There is a projected 17.7% chance of a two-way tie for the second wildcard. There is a 3.9% chance of a three-way tie.

There is a 0.5% chance of a four-way tie. And there is a 0.1% chance of a five-way tie for the second American League wildcard. Let's leave aside the fact. I like those odds. Right? That's a one in 1,000 chance, roughly. And this is rounded because it only goes to the one decimal point. Let's leave aside the fact. I like those odds. Right? That's a one in 1,000 chance, roughly, and this is rounded because it only goes to the one decimal point. Let's leave

aside the fact that there could conceivably be an eight-team tie. This page concludes at the five columns, so the best I can say is that there is a 0.1% chance of a five-way tie, which is a bigger than zero chance for a five-way tie for one wildcard position. So here's the thing. I pointed this out on Twitter the other day, and people asked me, what do you do? So when we were getting in touch, I was searching through the newest CBA for any sort of tiebreaker scenario. Nothing in there. I don't know who makes the rules. I looked at a Wikipedia page for Major League Baseball tie-breaking procedures, and it goes down to four team ties maximum. I looked at MLB.com, found an article from just 2016 about playoff tiebreaker rules,

and that concludes at a four-club tie for one wildcard spot. As far as I know, there might not be any written instruction for how to handle a five-way tie for one wildcard spot. What we know is that it would be a nightmare and there would be a lot of travel and delays involved, but I don't know how it would be handled because all we have here is designating clubs with A, B, C, and D designations for a four-way tie. And then you have the sort of a, you have a little bracket that you set up, but five, five is not an even number. Five is a really annoying number.

I don't know if you would handle it like you do a three-way tie, except with more layers. But while it's not going to happen, it might happen. It might happen this year. And I can't imagine that there would be anything worse that doesn't involve people dying that Rob Manfred would have to deal with. Yeah, you know, this is actually just jogging a memory. I wrote about this almost five years ago. I wrote a specific case, the five-way tie. I'm going to send you a link to the story.

Excellent. So this article was called the tie break that would bring baseball to its knees. I wrote it on October 2nd, 2012, when there were three days remaining in that regular season. And there were still three divisions where there could conceivably be a two way tie for first place. So I went through the various tiebreaker scenarios, up to and including a four way tie, I believe. And then I wondered what would happen in the case of a five-way tie. Extremely unlikely, obviously, but I wrote, surely Major League Baseball has planned for this eventuality, etc., etc. Then I called the late Katie Feeney, who at the time was Major League

Baseball's Senior Vice President of Scheduling and Club Relations. Very wonderful woman, and she indulged my crazy scenario here. And she said, to be perfectly honest, considerations for tiebreakers do not go that far. It's not there anywhere. It's probably something that would have to be determined. And I wrote chilling words. By the time a fix for a five-way tie would have to be determined, it might already be too late. Now I'm reading her speculation here, and she was just sort of spitballing, and she said, once you design the designations, I guess you'd have A, B, C, D, and E. That's hard to say because I don't know if they decide to do it like the three-team tiebreaker

and have B play A at A and C play the winner. If you were doing that and you have A, B, C, and D, you have A hosting B and C hosting D on the same day, and then the winners play each other. Now, whether or not, if you have to go to an E, if E gets to wait until both those games are over and then play the winner, I don't know. People would have to talk about that to see if that was fair. They'd probably do something similar to the four-team, but I'm not sure if it would be A, B, and C, and then D and E playing. but I'm not sure if it would be A, B, and C, and then D and E playing. I mean, we're talking minimum three days for the five-team tie. You could have a couple of games on the same day, but you're talking minimum three days, if not more. So that is the answer, and the answer is that there is no answer. So I guess that's not reassuring.

Yeah, that was a CBA ago, so I'm assuming that they have not figured this out since then and they haven't had to and they probably won't have to. But it has been brought up by me. Well, it was either going to be you or Russell Carlton. So it's fitting that this has already been addressed, sort of. Yes. And Russell Carlton left the first comment on the article. So, yes. So I guess I'm really, I don't know. I think I want it to happen just because, you know, it's a memory.

Just like we're all going to go see this total solar eclipse, even though it's going to make our Monday a nightmare. You want to see it from a writing perspective. I don't want to have to deal with it, you know. So, I think that if this happens, I'm just going to take a very timely vacation and relax and just watch the baseball. I don't want to have to deal with the complexities of the baseball it's possible that your questions and your article might have convinced a few people in the league office to maybe come up with the at least the the outline of a plan i can tell you that the tiebreaker scenarios don't seem to be collectively bargained because there is no mention of any sort of tiebreaker scenario really in the cba aside from some minor points

but nothing about like a four-way tie in there. So I don't know where the rules are, where they reside, but they're not in that document. Yeah, there was a comment left on that article, which I'll read. It'll probably save us an email or two from our extremely informed audience. This was by BP reader Bob Shore, who said, it's not true that we've never come close to a five-way tiebreaker. With two days left to play in the 1973 regular season, the correct combination of wins and losses, starting with the Cubs By my lights, that's pretty close. That is pretty close. So I am sort of surprised that that kind of close call didn't make anyone think we better come up with an answer for this. their nearest hole integers. That was redundant. So I'll ignore the Yankees. They're projected for

86 wins. Angels, 82. Royals, 82. Twins, 82. Mariners, 81. Rangers, 80. Rays, 79. Orioles, 79. Blue Jays, 79. It's all possibly coming together. This could happen. And you know what? Even if it doesn't happen, the standings are likely to remain awfully close for at least a few weeks. So there's going to be a little bit of sweating. Yeah. Does it bother you that these teams are bad and they're all contending for a playoff spot? Like, will it bother you? Whichever one ends up winning this thing with, you know, whatever, 87 wins or something like

is that something that you think of as a stain on the sport that you don't have to be good to make the playoffs anymore? Or do you not really care? No, don't care. record, I think maybe it is more likely to bother you. But it seems that no one particularly cares, because if it's an exciting pennant race, then that's good for everyone. And once you get to the playoffs, obviously, it's exciting, no matter what, even if it's unfair and unfortunate for the better team that gets to face the worst team and possibly get eliminated in three games. Yeah, I mean, we're looking at there's six weeks left in the season, and the fans of 80% of the teams in the American League can actually think about their team being in the playoffs, even if it only lasts a day. I don't see how that's a thing to be upset about. I understand the point where you want whatever the best team, etc, etc, etc. We've been over this we go over this

most years because most years the team that is last year's Cubs doesn't win the World Series. And so then we always have our articles and conversations about what we're supposed to do when the best team doesn't win. But you know what? The best team generally doesn't win. And it's really interesting if the Angels, if the Angels, literally this year's Angels, if they make the playoffs and, you know, if they win the wildcard game, win a round, win all the rounds. I don't know what that means. It would be silly. They're not as good as the other teams. But what a thing to have happen if that happened yeah yeah that'd be something yeah mike trot still would not win the world series mvp

well uh we've been going as is normal for i think the friday episodes we've done about 40 45 minutes of banter before we get into the topic which is just as well because i did zero preparation for this but i wanted to talk a little bit about the Miami Marlins. The Marlins have been in the news recently and not only on John Heyman's Twitter feed, they have been in the news for lots of reasons. One, they seemingly are, I don't think it's done yet, but they're on the verge of being sold to a group that includes Derek Jeter. Jeter being the name value, other people being the money value, which is the way that it goes. Bruce Sherman. Yeah, perfect. Why not? I don't know who he is, but he's done well

in life, or at least his parents have. This is relevant for two reasons. One, because Jeter's involved, and two, because that means Jeffrey Loria is not involved after the sale is final. So I wanted to have a little conversation with you about the idea of sort of rebranding the Marlins. They don't need to do, I don't think they need to do any sort of physical rebrand. Their jerseys are fine, as much fun as was made of them before. They're fine. I think they work very well. It's a good look. We know articles have come out. They're not allowed to so much as touch or alter in any way the Red Grooms home run sculpture in left center field, which again, it's fine. It's iconic. As Grant Brisby pointed out, the idea of the Mets having a home run apple is ridiculous. Yes, but it's there and people like it. So much of baseball is stupid plus time

equals cherished. So the Marlins have their stupid sculpture that is they're going to be there forever. Ballpark is good. So there's a lot of conversation taking place. A lot of people are talking, as someone might say, a lot of people are talking as someone might say a lot of people these days are talking about the uh the direction of the marlins what Derek Jeter could mean to them and the marlins have always at least for a while they've sort of operated outside the the usual circle of baseball teams they've always been an anomaly they have the fire sales they've had the Jeffrey Loria ownership. They've basically repelled their own possible potential fan base because of that Loria ownership and the fire sales.

So it's going to be incumbent upon the new ownership group to come in and try to restore or at least build for the first time some faith in the product. They're going to try to make this into a normal baseball team, which is noble, even though it sets the bar awfully low. I know that Buster only has written this year about how it would be in baseball's best interests to have Jeter be involved. There's been speculation that baseball has worked hard to essentially make sure that Derek Jeter is involved in the ownership group, just because from baseball's perspective,

literally, who better to take over? He's still the most famous baseball player by far. So might as well have him involved with baseball yeah a new dad apparently according to twitter yes congratulations captain so he could uh he could have a new uh he could have i guess you could say two babies uh coming up in theory he could have uh one that costs a lot of money and one that costs even more money so as far as the marlins are concerned one of the biggest points of contention, assuming all the sale goes through, is what they're supposed to do with Giancarlo Stanton. And this is going to be probably a crucial point for the new owners and executives to have to deal with.

Stanton is having a healthy and outstanding season. So he has sort of brushed aside any sort of concerns about his body not holding up or his performance declining. He's at an outstanding year. He's making a charge for 60 home runs, which does still mean something, even though Scooter Jeanette is most of the way there. So Stanton is good. He is the Marlins best player.

He also has what I think is a pretty bad or at least team unfriendly contract. So it's going to be difficult for the new management to figure out what they want to do with Stanton. There's talk that they're going to lower payroll next year. Stanton is very expensive. And the big nugget in his contract is that I think it's after six years, which is now after, I don't know what it is, four or five years, he has an opt-out clause where he could get out of the back end of the deal, which the Marlins have put in a lot of contracts over the years. But it makes Stanton very trade unfriendly, if you will, because it puts so much of the risk on the team that's acquiring. So on the one hand, I understand why the Marlins would want to get out from under Stanton's deal and start clean,

so to speak. But on the other hand, is it possible for the Marlins to make their first movelins as usual if they trade Stanton. And I was, I think, more in the Jeff Passan camp because Jeff Passan kind of got this conversation started with a column about how they should trade Stanton. And it's more feasible now that he's been on this hot streak than it would have been before then. And I wonder, I mean, if they could work it out, it would have to be in the next couple of weeks. And presumably that would still be a Jeffrey Loria move, at least technically. I don't know to what extent the new ownership group is involved or what say they have over transactions right now. You would think that with a franchise altering move like that, they

would have some input on that, but maybe it's the sort of thing that you could pin on loria one last loria sell off on his way out the door and then the new owners could come in with their hands clean so that's one way you could improve the pr reception to such a trade but i don't know because you would think that one way for the new ownership to endear itself would be to come in and make splashy spending moves and say oh we're the new marlins we don't do what loria did but of course loria did do that he just then a year after the splashy spending would then divest himself of all the players he had spent on so i think it's just going to take time to establish that they are not loria because you can't really establish that in one year of spending or one year of not spending because loria did both of those things and so the marlins have over the years tried to import kind of a

yankee-ish way of conducting themselves like when they hired don mattingly and they tried the no facial hair policy and everything and you wonder whether cheater will try to bring that back but that kind of thing i mean it's silly regardless but if you want to try to use that to make some sort of statement, then you also have to act and run your team accordingly. And they never really did that. So I would think it might be best to start fresh, especially if they are planning to cut back on payroll and maybe go through a bit of a rebuild.

Stanton has already expressed his displeasure with the way the team has run multiple times. He's not going to want the rest of his prime to be wasted on bad teams. So he's probably going to be agitating to go even more so than he has to this point. So I would think it might be better for all involved. If you could get another team to take the contract or give you good prospects back, I would think that might be the best baseball move. But really, we have no idea how Derek Jeter will operate a team. We know that he'll be a compelling public face. And we know that he has a great reputation, the way he conducts himself and everything. But we have no idea whether he'll be good at running a baseball team. And having someone like that, a former player,

a recent former player with no real front office experience and baseball operations experience have the final say on transactions is not the typical arrangement anymore. That's how it worked at one time, but not now. So I kind of am curious about whether Jeter will find himself outclassed a bit in brainpower. Of course, it's totally possible that he'll realize what he has to do and he'll beef up the Marlins front office and build that team into a contender in every way, but I do wonder whether a team that is run by a player like that with no management

experience will, in some ways, be trailing the pack of specialists in that area. He's just going to run the team like a business. He's going to give it a new direction. He's a businessman. He's a dealmaker. Anyway, I like the idea of maybe trying to pin it on Loria one last time to just let him absorb. You make it a condition of the sale. You figure like, look, your reputation is shot.

Might as well just take one more hit. Or, you know, failing that, you could sort of orchestrate it where maybe if Stanton really wants to go, you could just kind of get him to say as much. You know, players and other sports demand trades. I think more often than they seem to do it in baseball. Maybe that's just me having a blind memory. But if you can get Stanton to at least make it seem like it's different now, granted, they sort of would need his permission because as part of his contract, he gets full no trade protection. I'm going to read two bullet points from his his Cots baseball contracts section just because this is about as a harrowing as foreshadowing get last two bullets under the

john carlo stanton contracts section matches josh hamilton for a contract with highest average annual value for an outfielder and matches ryan howard for a contract with highest average annual value for a player with four plus years of ml service stanton's final year of guaranteed team control is 2027 that is 10 years away i will uh i will now read you a selection of players who were the highest on the war leaderboard 10 years ago alex rodriguez david wright maglia ordonez curtis granderson albert pujols chase utley chipper jones matt holiday jake peavy alfonso soriano jimmy rollins cc sabathathia, Grady Sizemore, David Ortiz, Brandon Webb, etc. Ichiro Suzuki still playing. He's there in 16th place.

Now, of course, the way these contracts... Matt Holiday, still pretty good. Matt Holiday, still going. Curtis Granderson, still around. Could be a waiver trade, as we're talking right now. And Albert Pujols, definitely still around as a frequent podcast topic, if nothing else. So, as I think everyone has an understanding, these contracts don't work in the way where you expect Stanton to be valuable.

Every year of his contract, 2027, I think everyone can agree is probably shot. But the idea is just to kind of spread out the money so that you are not paying Stanton a lot in the individual seasons where you think he's going to be good. So hey, guess what? Since we started recording, the Dodgers acquired Curtis Granderson. That happened. Are you serious? I'm serious. Curtis Granderson,

Los Angeles Dodger now. Okay. I was not expecting that. I did not think that the Dodgers needed... I mean, I wouldn't say anything, really anything, but I had no idea that they needed an outfielder. I am always confused by the Dodgers roster picture because I know that they have a number of players on the disabled list at any one time, but I never know how many of those to take seriously. Just got Gonzalez back too. how many Dodgers were actually hurt aside from Andrew Tolles, who I assume is actually hurt

and he did not fake an ACL tear for a number of months. So the Dodgers current outfield situation, according to MLB.com 40-man roster, Brett Ibener, disabled list, Andre Ethier, disabled list, Franklin Gutierrez, disabled list, Enrique Hernandez, Jock Peterson,

Yossi Alpuig, Chris Taylor, Trace Thompson, Andrew Tolles, disabled list. So add Curtis Granderson in there. Kudos to him. I guess he's going to have an incredible opportunity. I will never probably figure out exactly how the Dodgers intend to distribute their playing time, but they will do it in a way that is smarter than anything I can come up with off the top of my head. Yep. I guess that's kind of more interesting than the Marlins. I don't really know.

I don't really have a point beyond how much more interesting it's going to be to follow the Marlins after the sale is done, because it's going to be a real attempt to revive a more urban franchise. And it's a little like when the Dodgers were purchased. And of course, they made a big splash when they got their new ownership group in place. But there was a bit of a difference between the Loriaoria ownership and the mccourt ownership now you could argue that i don't know they're similarly terrible uh the dodgers were at least respectable under mccourt i don't need to relitigate the frank mccourt ownership era with the dodgers things changed we've seen teams change hands before and have things go a lot smoother but

i just wonder how much of that damage in miami is has been. I wonder if they just have to start completely from scratch. This is an excuse to have, what, Tim Healy on the podcast at some point. And we can, we'll probably talk about this, I guess, when we, if and when we do our team previews next spring, we can talk about the Marlins and their new ownership group and have the same conversation that I think we probably had this past spring, talking about whether the Marlins can do anything to rescue their standing where they are. It will be interesting. I know that is a cop out of a thing to say, but it will be interesting. You know, it'll be more interesting than most ownership changes in baseball because most of the time it's just ordinary rich person handing team to another

ordinary rich person. This will be that exact same thing. But the Marlins ownership that currently does exist and will shortly cease to exist has been a little extra hands-on and so it will be fascinating to see how it will be different under the i'm just going to call them the judah group it's not the judah group but it basically is we've already seen news came out there was a an initial rumor that david samson was going to stick around with the marlins but then thankfully he will not he is also awful he's quietly awful he's awful in ways that jeffrey lori gets most of blame for, but he should be gone. They're going to clean house and the Marlins will. They had their rebrand ceremony in what was it, 2012, shortly before they signed all those free agents

for a year. And you know, Pitbull was present for that one. Pitbull probably will be present for the next one and maybe this next one will take. Yeah. I don't know if they could possibly be more interesting than they were before because this is literally a team that made their general manager their manager two years ago. So that was pretty interesting. But it will be interesting in a way that's hopefully beneficial to baseball and to Marlins fans to the extent that they exist. And hopefully they will exist to a greater extent under this new regime. So good riddance to the Laurier regime. And he will be laughing all the way to the bank because his franchise value has increased exponentially as he has essentially run the team out of a fan base. And Curtis Grandison probably going to be playing in place

of Jock Peterson pretty often, which is a certain fall from grace. I don't know if that means centerfield or whatnot. But another point related to the Dodgers, I might as well just bring up Yasiel Puig, you know, always interesting. I was checking, somebody asked me what was going on with Yasiel Puig's base running this year. This is something you're probably not aware of, because why would you be aware of this? But last year, Yasiel Puig granted into 10 double plays. This year, 20. He's granted into 20 double plays, Yasiel Puig. So he's tanked his own base running value. I was checking his advance rates, how often he takes extra bases

when he's on base, and he's doing it basically half as often as he did last year. Yasiel Puig running with, I don't know if you want to call it control, but he's running less and he's grounding into a lot of double plays. So Yasiel Puig is having another interesting season. Now, is it fair for us to psychologically link Yasiel Puig and Jeffrey Luria and the Marlins ownership? That's probably not fair, but this podcast has ended. Yeah, he's kind of the anti-Joey Gallo, I guess. We've gotten a lot of questions about Joey Gallo being among the major league leaders

in base running runs and because he does not ground into double plays because he does not ground. He does not hit the ball in play very often. And that is factored into the fan graph stats in case you were curious about why Joey Gallo is up there with Billy Hamilton and Dee Gordon and Bradley Zimmer and guys like that. And just to check, I will just do a quick little baseball reference query of the situational hitting to see where Yossi Alpuig ranks among double play rates, because it's this seems a little absurd.

And this season, given a, I don't know, where's a good minimum? 50? Is 50 a good minimum number of double play opportunities? Sure, sure. I don't know, actually, but OK. Matt Kemp, he is in first place slash last place. Matt Kemp has grounded into a double play and 28% of his chances. Puig

is at 23. So Yasiel Puig, I don't know what's going on. But as is generally true, you are still better in a lot of different ways than Matt Kemp, who is not a very good baseball player. Mm hmm. All right, So we can stop there. I will be bringing myself and my germs your way in just a few hours. And good luck to everyone getting to the Eclipse event. If you're coming on Monday morning, good luck to us getting to the Eclipse event on Monday morning. And if you are in the area and you don't currently have tickets and you think you can get to the event and you want to come,

email us because there are people who are canceling or unable to attend and maybe we can match you all up but i look forward to meeting and possibly infecting some of you bring purell i was restraining a sneeze that entire podcast my goodness and we you even stopped to send a link and read an article. I could have sneezed at some point. All right. You can, and dare I say should, support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already supported the podcast include Brian Hamilton, Graham Lesch, Francesca Ossie, Greg, and Daniel Thrasher. 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.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance and apologies to all of our listeners for subjecting you to my mucus today. Please keep your questions and comments coming via email at podcast at fancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system. Please have some patience with us early next week with the eclipse and the traffic and my flying back to new york i don't know exactly when we'll record but we will record so have a wonderful weekend and we will talk to you soon

you Finish him with five ways to end it