Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1122: Frog in Our Throats

Episode Date: October 12, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about John Farrell’s firing and the Nationals’ will-they-or-won’t-they pregame routine with Stephen Strasburg, then answer listener emails about the definition of “veteran,” projecting a team to win 116 games, looking up players’ stats, a pitcher getting both a blown save and a save in the same game, the career […]

You're my picture on the wall, you're my vision in the hall, you're the one I'm talking to when I get in from my work. You are my girl and you don't even know it. I am living out the life of a fool. I am the jester in the ancient court, and you're the funny little frog in my throat. Am I doing? in Chicago. There has been baseball news. I guess we can briefly discuss the firing of John Farrell before we get into our regularly scheduled email show. So the Red Sox have not really supplied any rationale for their firing of John Farrell. There was an extremely uninformative David Dombrowski press conference, which he essentially refused to explain why he fired Farrell. He said it was just sort of everything. He said you weigh everything when making a decision like this.

There are things that you keep to yourself. I'm not going to get into particular John Farrell, I would say, just because obviously he's had a pretty successful tenure despite a couple down years. The Red Sox are coming off back-to-back division titles. He is the first Red Sox manager ever to win back-to-back division titles. And sure, they had two ALDS exits in a row, but they ran into better teams. I don't know how much he can be blamed for that. I think he is not a great tactical manager. I know lots of Red Sox fans have been frustrated by him and his managing.

And it's not really that shocking, I guess, when you consider that Dave Dombrowski was not around for the John Farrell World Series. Often a general manager or president of baseball ops will just make a change when he comes in. And Farrell got to stick around for a while. And there was a fair amount of controversy on the Red Sox this season, I guess, between the Apple Watch nonsense and David Price and the press and all the beanball stuff with Machado. But, you know, I guess there are things going on here that we are not aware of, at least as we speak. And maybe some of that will come out. Maybe some of it won't. But it sounds like it probably had more to do with personality stuff, either Farrell not working well with Dombrowski or players complaining about Farrell, that kind of thing. I know that, you know, the Red Sox, some of their young talented players sort of

stagnated this season. And I know Joe Sheehan pointed out that if you were going to make a case for firing Farrell, you would probably make that case that guys like Bogarts and Betts and Bradley failed to advance or took steps back in some way, whereas Joe Girardi, for instance, presided over a bunch of breakouts of young players. And for me, I think that just wouldn't really have much bearing on the decision. I think like at this point in baseball, I don't know that I would really attribute young players' success or failure to the manager. I would blame a manager for, say, burying a young player for not playing him and trusting veterans too much,

something that Mike Matheny has seemed to be guilty of in the past. But as for actual player development, that just seems to me to be kind of outside of the scope of the manager's duties at this point. You have pitching coach, you have hitting coaches and assistant hitting coaches, and managers have so much other stuff to worry about and media responsibilities that I just don't know how much time any of them really devotes to that. So I'm sure that they could make young players comfortable in a way. But as for helping their skills or retarding their skills in some way, that to me, without knowing the specifics of the situation, probably wouldn't play a huge role in my decision.

A few weeks ago, I was asked by an editor at ESPN if I could write an article that was talking about the playoff teams. And I was supposed to write an article that essentially discussed and attempted to rank the the playoff managers. And I received that email and said some words to myself under my breath. And then I responded to that email that to paraphrase said, no, I can't do this. I will not do this. This is not just me being stubborn. This is also for the sake of your own website, because anything I write would be uninformed

garbage. Now, that was out of complete honesty on my part. And I believe you and I have the same perspective on this and on all things in that it's impossible to know from our perspective, it's impossible to know what a manager does. And while there are, of course, people who follow the teams and have more personal insight and are just far better informed, I don't know, maybe it's just because I've been doing this so long. And I still have no answers with managers. But I end up sort of being this manager apologist. I don't intend to be, but it's just where I am. I know that I mean, for Pharaoh, you're looking at he'd

had five years of being the manager. And you see Dave Dombrowski, he wasn't there when Farrell won his first World Series. But he was on the other side when Farrell won his ALCS in 2013. Not that that really means anything. But you've got three first place finishes and two last place finishes. So you know, kind of hit or miss John Farrell tenure, but I wouldn't hold it against him that young players failed to develop any more than I would give him credit for the fact that those young players emerged in the first place so I don't really I mean he didn't have the rotation he thought he was going to have this year and still they finished in first place ahead of a Yankees team that was far better than it was supposed to be they didn't have David Price pitching at full effectiveness they certainly didn't have Rick

Porcello being his Cy Young self but well why wasn't he his Cy Young self well he was last year is Farrell responsible for his emergence or for his decline? I don't know. I think that this ultimately will come down to the old need a new voice explanation, which, you know, totally fine. I get it. Sometimes you just get sick of being in. I mean, it's not like the team is in a relationship with Feral, but all the players have their own individual relationships with Feral, I guess, or at least they did. And, you know, things change over five years. I don't need to explain that to anyone who's ever been in a relationship with anyone. Sometimes you just kind of get sick of someone.

Sometimes you just want to just did some sort of shift. So I'm sure there were some sort of working disagreements that existed just as there would be with even the most successful manager in the game. be with even the most successful manager in the game and well if the red sox think they need a new voice to if it's just all about trying to foster a better more supportive clubhouse atmosphere which is how i interpret the need for a new voice then i guess that's their decision to make i am not one to say that it's wrong but i certainly would not ever want to have some manager's job security come down to the fact that you lost two consecutive division series to superior baseball teams. That's just short-sighted and stupid. Yeah. And Dombrowski said that regardless of the team's success, this would have happened, which I wonder whether that's

true. If the Red Sox had actually won a World Series, would he have followed through on that? I kind of doubt it, but I don't know what was going on behind the scenes here. So maybe we'll get more details. Sometimes when a manager is fired, you get people who are still with the team or even players kind of leaking stuff about why he was fired or why they didn't get along. So some of that might come out, but this is probably largely about things that we are not privy to, and that's fine. And yeah, I'm basically with you on that. In the past, a couple times I've done an article that I called the Managerial Meddling Index. Maybe I'll do it again at some point in the future because it's a fun exercise. It was just sort of breaking down descriptively but not prescriptively how managers operate in games.

but not prescriptively how managers operate in games. And obviously this included nothing about how they handle the press or how they interact with their players, which is very important, but just characteristics of how they manage basically. And it was an interactive thing where you could choose the categories you cared about and didn't care about and end up with a ranking basically of how much managers intervene. But even that, I mean, there are probably some things that you could say, oh, this is bad or this is good. I mean, if you're leading the majors in intentional walks or sacrifice bunts or something by position

players, that's probably bad, I guess, if you want to just have a blanket judgment on it. But for the most part, it's pretty tough to do that. So it was more of a fun exercise than saying these managers are good or these managers are bad. So this is not entirely unpredictable. I think people's columns right after the Red Sox lost were, will they fire Farrell? And yes, they fired Farrell, as it turns out. So that's about all we can say on the subject right now.

And I guess the Red Sox are kind of in an interesting place as a team, but maybe that's more of an off-season topic than a mid-playoffs topic. Yeah, don't burn topics. Yeah, we need to save them for those cold, cold winter nights. So we have baseball today, of course, important baseball today, but we can't really talk about it yet and by the time you're hearing this much of it will have happened we know now it seems that steven strasburg will be starting game four after a flip-flop on that as far as we knew yesterday

he was either sick or had thrown a bullpen and was therefore unavailable, or just had a weak moral character, according to some people who wrote about this situation. Now, according to the latest reports as we record this, he actually will be starting. Kind of confusing. Don't really know what was going on there any more than we know what was going on with Farrell and Dombrowski, but seems like Strasburg will be starting probably for the best,

although there were positive spins you could put on Tanner Roark still continuing to start too. Anyway, there's probably a limit to how much we can say about these games. Do you have anything you want to say about either of these games that will maybe be outdated by the time anyone hears this? Okay, so just with the Nationals thing, maybe I don't get why this is such a big deal. I understand that elimination games are stressful.

But look, Strasburg, whether he starts Game 4 or Game 5, again, when you listen to this, it will have already happened or something. But the Nationals need to win both games. So they need to win two games to knock out the Cubs. They need to lose zero games to knock out the Cubs. Steven Strasburg is slated to start one of those games no matter what. So you figure, well, the odds in that game don't change and so this really comes down to i guess whether the nationals can start tanner rowork or geo gonzalez in the other game well geo gonzalez

had a sparkling era this year great that's good for him doesn't mean anything to me his other numbers were the same as always and tanner rowork had a worse era this year so you know you look at rowork versus gonzalez and think well rowork's era was higher by almost two runs that's terrible well on the other hand it doesn't matter because all the numbers that actually mean anything are basically exactly the same and just last year gonzalez was the one who had the era about two runs higher than rowork and that doesn't not matter and plus this is the playoffs so this identity of the starting pitcher doesn't really matter that much anyway because in theory you're going to go to the bullpen before there's too much trouble, and you can have Max Scherzer available to come out of the bullpen just because he can be that kind of workhorse.

So this has been, I don't know, maybe it's because there's been no baseball for a day that people need something to be all dramatic about, but I don't know, maybe I'm also just a serial down player, but this seems like it's a big story about not really anything that matters to me. If Strasburg is sick, I mean, who cares about being like a hog, being an ace, being a workhorse? Because, yeah, give him a day to heal up, give him a day to rest and feel better. Maybe he'll pitch better because his body won't be trying to kill itself. So I understand that the Nationals are on the brink and you don't want to be on the brink of elimination starting someone who isn't steven strasburg but you have to win two games and whether you lose in four or five or advance it just uh the order of things

doesn't really matter to me but i don't know maybe this is just lingering era based influence geo gonzalez is not that good of a pitcher. I'm sorry, you guys and girls. I think the lesson from this series maybe is just that you can never go wrong as a manager just sticking with your best player, basically. It might be the wrong decision, but you will get criticized less if you leave Max Scherzer in or if you start Steven Strasberg or whatever. If you just say, this is our best guy and so he is pitching, I think probably the majority of fans and maybe writers even will be on board with that. It's harder to criticize, but it takes a bravery and a boldness not to do that at times when it makes sense not to do that. So I think we've already talked about Dusty's decision with Scherzer and this one, we don't know the facts.

So it's really hard to say if Strasburg is actually feeling sick or unprepared in some way and was essentially pressured into saying, fine, I'll start. That seems not great. But we don't know that that was the case, really. case really and anyway it will contribute probably if the nationals lose this game to a perception that you know whatever they have some kind of built-in playoff problem and weakness and chokeness and they can't get on the same page about who's starting this important potential elimination game so not great from a pr perspective hard to say if it's good or bad from a baseball perspective currently. All right. So let's do emails.

Let's do some playoff emails, but not entirely. So let's start with this one. Nick says, there was a lot of hype this year about the Dodgers, who before they went on their huge losing streak, had something like a 20% chance of tying or breaking the 116 win record, according to an article at FiveThirtyEight. This got me thinking about how many all-time great teams still had to get a little lucky to win as many games as they did. For instance, the 2001 Mariners played seven games above their Pythagorean record, and the 1998 Yankees played six games above their Pythagorean record.

I don't know if sabermetric projections were a thing in 1998 or 2001, but I doubt the Yankees and Mariners would have been projected for 114 and 116 wins respectively. This got me wondering how good a team's roster would need to be in order to be projected for 116 wins, meaning out of all simulated seasons for that team, they would most often win 116 games. Would you be able to discuss what goes into win projections along with what the roster of a true talent 116 win team might look like? Good Lord. Well, let's see. Let me just pull up this spreadsheet that I have that I've referred to several times before. This is a spreadsheet of all the team projections I could find kind of

smashed together going back to the year 2005. That was the first year I could find anything on the internet that seemed vaguely reliable that projected the upcoming season. So that gives me what 13 years of data now, which gives me 390 team projections. And there has been exactly one team in the entire window that was projected to win even 100 games. And that was the 2005 Cardinals. So this is pulling from the earliest projection set that I could find. So maybe the least reliable in any case, that team actually did win 100 games so you could say they underachieved by a game but still they won 100 games but we're talking about a projection of 101 wins the email is about a projection of 116 wins so you take whatever that team was and i

guess the 2005 cardinals that was pujols that's the first name that comes to mind so essentially you would need to take that team and add let's say so let's see we're we're missing 15 projected wins right so let's say that you have five positions where you have pretty good above average players replace all of those players with albert pooh holes and then well maybe maybe only three positions but that team would need to have at least three more albert pooh holes is in order to be projected for 116 wins because you just can't you can't build the team that good

first of all not in this day and age is just it's almost impossible unless you get extraordinarily lucky and so in order to be projected that good that's basically impossible you need to have basically four or five of the best 10 players in baseball because i can't think of another way that you would be able to have that kind of projection because projections are based on true talent and true talent is based on projections this is tautological but any sort of extreme statistical outlier, I guess. Well, outlier is the wrong word, but no, outlier makes sense. Any extreme data point, I guess, you should expect to be influenced by luck. You should expect anything that seems way too low or way too high to have been unlucky or lucky because the actual distribution of talent and ability is closer to the mean than the results that we get. So I don't have a better answer than you need a lot of pool houses, or I guess in this day and age, you need as few pool houses as possible. So that's a sad way to answer that question. Yeah. Is the article that you wrote

a little more than a week ago relevant here when you did your rating all the playoff teams post? Because you've done this back to back years. And so at the very end, when you published your final table about weighted 2017 stats projections for the playoff teams, this year you had the Dodgers at 114. Last year, you actually had them at 117. So can you explain what exactly you did there? Because you did end up with a projection for a team roughly in this win range sort of a projection so each of the last two years at fangraphs i have when the playoffs began i have tried to figure out which teams look the best it's easy to look at teams in the playoffs and think that oh this team had this era but this team had this drs whatever but i don't really like

using full season numbers for teams because we know that the teams are actually different when they go to the playoffs they're going to use their players differently and they've just made transactions or there are injuries or recovered players whatever so in each of the last two years I have taken the projected playoff rosters for every team in the playoffs and I have tried to figure out expected playing time for those players and then I have tried to see which team looks the best based on how we think the players will be actually used now of course when I was doing this for this postseason, I didn't expect that starting pitchers would go one inning a game. So the numbers are a little bit warped, but I've done this. And in each of the last two years, I have tried to figure out which

teams looked the best based on the projections that we had on the website and which teams looked the best based on how their players actually did the season before so for example looking at the dodgers this season based on their expected playoff roster and based on the projections we have on fan graphs i found that their expected playoff roster if that were a roster over a full season would be expected to win about 106 games that would be an outstanding baseball team. Now, granted, all the other teams, except for the Twins and the Rockies, also outstanding.

But if this is explained clearly, looking at that same expected Dodgers roster, if you just plugged in their 2017 performances instead of their projections, which there's a difference there because projections are based on more than one year, then those Dodgers came out to uh about a 114 win pace just barely clearing the indians nationals astros hankies who are all extraordinarily good themselves so i guess looking at just one season alone not the same as looking at projections so maybe it's helpful to think about it in terms of even if you take the dodgers probably maybe the best team in baseball even if you take the dodgers and use

their playoff roster for an entire season i still couldn't get them above 106 projected wins that's with a four-man starting rotation where you use kershaw and darvish more than the other guys and that's with their position players and not any real weaknesses on the bench last year when i did this the highest projection i got was oh look at that also the dodgers at 105 wins per 162 so even if you took the last two seasons of the dodgers and used their playoff roster which would lean on their best players and only their best players i still couldn't get them close to 116 wins as a projection because that projection would require the Dodgers have two more, or I guess two in the first place, Mike Trouts. Yeah. All right.

We don't actually have to answer this question, but I wanted to just read it because I really liked this tiny two email thread that we had here. This was received on October 3rd at 8.43 p.m. from a listener named Joe. This was during the AL Wildcard game, and the subject line says, the phrase, clinging to a lead. And Joe says, the Twins broadcasters on the radio feed used the following phrase,

the Twins right now are clinging to a 3-0 lead here in the bottom of the first. And Joe says, when does it qualify as clinging? Then follow-up email from Joe, six minutes later at 8.49. Never mind, I forgot Urban Santana was pitching. It was after the Yankees tied the game. So yeah, the situation, the pitcher on the mound, the ballpark, the offensive team, I think all of that weighs into whether a team is actually clinging to a leader or not. And in that situation, I think when you have a guy who gives up as many fly balls and home runs as Irvin Santana does in Yankee Stadium with the Yankees lineup,

that was clinging to a lead and he did not cling to it. If it is the Twins and it is the Yankees and the Twins are in front, it is a cling. Yes. Okay. So Jay says another terminology question. To continue the fine new tradition of Effectively wild becoming the official lexicographer of baseball. I ask you this. When does a player become a veteran?

Just now I saw an article that called Yomar Sanchez a veteran utility man. And I thought, damn, when did Yomar Sanchez become a veteran? I usually think of veterans being guys over 30 who've seen regular MLB playing time for at least five to ten years, maybe with a little gray in their goatee. But every now and then I see a guy like Sanchez being dubbed a veteran. What makes a veteran? A certain number of games, years played, or is it a demeanor or something earned just by comparison? Could a 25-year-old part-time three-year utility man be called a veteran if he's one of the oldest in a young clubhouse?

Well, I guess the answer there is yes, because that's Yolmer Sanchez and he is in a young clubhouse. There are, I guess, relative veterans, but if you're going to go black and white, it's a problem of not having the words, right? Because we've got rookies and I don't know, just post-rookie young players, but there's nothing, I don't really know if we have a word for what's between a young inexperienced player and a veteran. And if you want to use sort of the dictionary definition of veteran, it's just someone who has experience, right? So how, what, I guess the question is how little experience do you need? I equate veterans with being like, I don't know, at least 28 or 29, like at least kind of Paul Goldschmitty, you know, but as I think about it, that seems like it's kind of my mistake. I wouldn't refer

to Yulmar Sanchez as a veteran. I wouldn't even necessarily refer to Yulmar Sanchez because I still think of him as Carlos. But I guess if I were pressed, he does count as a veteran. He's played more than 300 games in the major leagues and he's not like a doe-eyed rookie anymore. So what else is he? We don't a word for the the sort of intermediate career players yeah i wouldn't quite go veteran with him although yes i think as the email points out maybe it depends on the context i mean you could certainly say like so and so is a veteran compared to these players like or you could say he's the veteran on the roster or something if it's a very young team like the white socks were in the second half of the season then relative to most players then sure he was

a veteran but I wouldn't call him a veteran probably in just sort of a general context is maybe like just using up your team control years is that a decent rule of thumb? Like to me, if you're still in your pre-arb or arbitration years, maybe that's a good way to distinguish between veteran and non-veteran. Like if you're in pre-arb, I don't think you can be a veteran. If you're in arb, I don't know, maybe you could, but that like six or seven years that you're under team control seems to me to be, I guess, just kind of a handy way to decide who's a veteran and who isn't. But maybe it's different. I mean, if you're an older player when you come up, that's the thing. Like some guys might have a lot of minor league experience before they become major leaguers, and maybe that contributes to being a veteran too. So

you could be well into your 30s and still be in your team control years if you happen to debut late. So I don't know if that's across the board, one size fits all policy, but maybe that's a handy way to think about it for the typical player. Yeah, let's try it. So if you're just going off like dictionary.com, first definition would be a person who has had a long experience in a particular field. Emphasis on long. Second definition would be a person who has served in the military well sorry baseball players but none of you really can but based on this other website i can say what is a veteran this is all a quote from v uh oh from the va great this is a real website that's reputable what is a veteran title 38 of the code of federal regulations defines a veteran as quote a person who served in the active military naval or air

service and who was discharged or released under conditions other than dishonorable. So that suggests that it's someone who is no longer active. And now, of course, we're not talking about the military, but that does introduce a condition that is not just someone who has combat or military experience. So I like your definition then as sort of a carryover. And if you figure it, sometimes you have like some sort of middle reliever who hasn't actually used up his team control years, even though he's in his 30s, just because he'll kind of be up and down. But that doesn't really count anyway. That's maybe more of a journeyman than a veteran to go to some old lexicon we've tried to describe. So, yeah, I like it.

I like your definition. If you've used up your team control years then you are a veteran all right question from donald this is in response to a discussion we briefly had about what was it whether a pitcher could get both a hold and a blown save was that what we were talking about or something like that? Yeah, something like that. Something I was wrong about. Yeah, so Donald says, I have a scoring question as a follow-up to episode 1119. Haven't listened to episode 1120 yet, so my apologies if you already discussed this. We have not.

During 1119, there is a discussion. Oh, he's going to say what it was right now. Of not being able to get a blown save and hold or save during the same game, would it be possible as a result of a Waxahachie swap? And as people who may not know Waxahachie swap, that is the term that we've come to use for when a pitcher is used as a position player and then is swapped back in as pitcher within the same game. So Donald says it's not a super plausible possibility, but I think it would be within the rules. Pitcher A comes in with his team leading by one in the top of the eighth.

He gives up the game-tying homer to the leadoff batter and walks the next two men. He then goes to left field, which would be weird, but okay, and pitcher B takes the mound. Pitcher B strikes out the next three hitters to end the inning. Pitcher A's team scores two runs in the bottom of the eighth to retake the lead. Pitcher A returns to the mound and pitches end the inning. Pitcher A's team scores two runs in the bottom of the eighth to retake the lead. Pitcher A returns to the mound and pitches a clean ninth. Pitcher A would clearly get a blown save for giving up the game-tying run in the eighth. However, pitcher B would get the win. He was the pitcher of record when his team took the lead,

and by striking out three in a key situation, there'd be no reason for a scorekeeper to label the appearance brief and ineffective. Would pitcher A get a save for his ninth inning work? So after he comes back from left field and holds the lead, essentially, that his team got while pitcher B was the pitcher of record. So this is a strange scenario that we wouldn't actually see. But I forwarded to our usual official scorekeeper consultant, Darren, who says, I believe in this scenario, you could assign pitcher A a blown save and then a save. Just a

note, there is no requirement to be effective to earn a save as long as the following criteria are met. He's the finishing pitcher of the game won by his team. He is not the winning pitcher. He is credited with at least a third of an innings pitched. And he enters the game with a lead of no more than three runs and pitches for at least one inning. Or enters the game regardless of the score with the potential tying run either on base at bat or on deck. Or he pitches for at least three innings. Apologies for masculine pronouns, but I'm quoting from the MLB rulebook. Stacey Piagno and other women who pitch are definitely capable of earning saves.

It used to say pitchers had to be effective to earn the three-inning save, so it doesn't say that anymore. Looking at the scenario described, I believe the criteria are met. It doesn't say he cannot get a blown save in order to earn a save. I think it would work. So there it is. Okay. I was very glad that you forwarded that along to Darren because I was looking at that email and thought, I do not want to go into the work to try to figure out the answer to this.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's the answer. So thank you, Donald, for coming up with that crazy scenario. All right. So question from, let's take this one from Bo. I wanted to look up Zach Greinke's career postseason stats. So I started to type Zach Greinke fan graphs into my browser.

His player page came up in my website history. It struck me that almost any time I want to go to a player's fangraphs page, it comes up in my browser history. So my question is this, what percent of active MLB players do you think you have looked up on fangraphs or baseball reference, et cetera? So what percentage of active players have you gone to a player page for? I guess, I don't know we could confine it to say fangraphs and baseball reference and baseball prospectus or something like that okay well we

we might have different answers to this you and i so i'm sure yours is i am probably at about 99 so i'm going to i'm going to quiz you just on some some random players that i will pull from let's say the padres pirates and whateverates, and whatever, Orioles. So just tell me if you can recall going to player pages for Miguel Diaz. I think so. I think I have gone to Miguel Diaz. How about Phil Matone? Matten?

Maten? No. Phil Maten. Certainly not. I don't think so. Let's try. What about Max Moroff? Doubt it. Don't think so. Okay. But you would be a yes for a gift and go pay think so. Let's try. What about Max Moroff? Doubt it.

Don't think so. Okay. But you would be a yes for a gift and go pay? Yes. Oh, definitely. I've interviewed him. So yes. How about Dovidas Nevaroskis?

Also interviewed him. So yes. Josh Lindblom? Lindblom? I can't say it made a huge impression on me if I visited his player page. made a huge impression on me if i visited his player page i i don't have a specific memory of visiting or writing something about him or ever referring to him in print so i'll say no okay uh here's one of my favorite names to say out loud in the majors anthony santander probably not probably not okay austin hayes i'm gonna say yes i think i've i think i've gone

and here's a pitcher i've never heard of before who was in the major leagues. So this is how I know I'm not at 100%. Jimmy Yacobonis. Yeah, I don't think so. Well, I can now say that I have clicked on his player page. So I'm climbing the list personally. Okay. And last one, I guess Tanner Scott.

Doubt it. Probably not. Okay. So a little hit or miss with the ultra depth, like September call up 31st man relievers, but probably just about every single regular or every day or semi-regular, probably every meaningful starting pitcher and meaningful reliever. So I don't know how much of baseball that covers, but right there, that's probably like 80 to 85%.

Yeah. There's so many relievers now. So I don't know what percent. I mean, you post more often than I do. You are, I think, probably browsing through leaderboards for weird outliers more often than I am. And you manage the depth charts, which I would assume leads to going to a lot of player pages for players I might not know. So you've got to be significantly higher than I am. But yeah, 80% probably roughly in that range, I guess. I don't know. If you count September call-ups and like Last Man in the Bullpen types, maybe it's a little bit lower than that at this point.

What percent of active movie producers or actors or actresses have you researched on? I don't know if you use IMDb, but I don't know anything about researching this stuff. So on the leading movie and film industry resource data, well, you know where this is going. Yeah. Well, there are a lot more actors and actresses than baseball players in the majors. So probably pretty low. I did recently write an article about the most frequent director-actor pairings in recent movies and went to a lot of IMDb pages for that. But yeah, it's probably, I mean, if we're talking all actors who have an IMDb page who are active and acting, I mean, it's got to be in the single digits probably.

Someone like Jimmy Iacobonus is essentially like your struggling actor who's waiting at the coffee shop right yeah well he's made the majors so that's that would be like i guess getting a bit part in a major like studio motion picture or something like that so yeah it's got to be very low there are a lot of actors and actresses but if we're talking like leading stars then i don't know know, maybe like 30 percent, 40 percent, something like that. I think, sure, Jimmy Iacobonus made the majors, but it's like being in Extra and CSI Grand Rapids. Like it didn't really. When you were doing the director and actor link up, how much of that did you just manually research?

Like, did you have a faster way of looking that up? Yes. Yeah. It would have been deadly otherwise. Yeah. Walt Hickey, one of my former colleagues from FiveThirtyEight helped me scrape IMDB data with like a Python script. So it just automatically downloaded all this information that then was manipulated in Excel.

So yeah, that saved me years of research probably. Yeah, my forehead was sweating a little bit when I clicked on that article thinking, oh God, how much work did he do for this? Yeah. All right, Play Index, we have a Play Index question. Yes. This is from listener John.

I have it up here. I guess I can read it. He says, with Jason Kipnis debuting in center field, this was in mid-September, obviously, although Kipnis still sometimes looks like he's debuting in center field i was wondering who the active mlb leaders are at each position of players who have only played a single position in the field excluding dh kipnis had never played anywhere on the field besides second base in his tenure in cleveland prior to his debut in centerfield in september who are the career

leaders in innings played for players who have played only one position in the field and what chances do the active leaders have to catch the career leaders that is maybe a more difficult question but anyway the first part of the question yeah so the second part of the question is so difficult i did not even bother to look it up but yeah so i this took me a little while longer than i thought it was going to to look up who has played exclusively one position in the field allowing for appearances at dh or pinch running pinch hitting whatever so i've arrived at what i think are answers i'm not 100 confident in these answers just for the record jason kipnis has played 6978.1 innings as a second baseman and he did that all i i don't think he's played

second base since he came back i haven't looked it up it doesn't matter to me but he has played nearly 7,000 innings as a second baseman before playing center field in his age 30 season okay so we're looking at catcher through right field positions one through or two through nine i guess and here i'm not going to read out the innings totals because that doesn't matter. Those are just going to be big numbers. So here's what I think are the right answers. Catcher. I don't know if I should ask you for guesses because maybe I'll ask you for guesses at the prominent position.

So who do you think might... This is a recent catcher. Who do you think might be the leader that I found for catcher innings without ever playing like first base or anywhere else? Yachty? It is not Molina. Now Molina has only played catcher, but let me just make sure. So Yachty or Molina has played, scroll down. Yachty or Molina has played, scroll down, scroll down. All right. I guess I'll manually scroll down. There we go. Yachty or Molina. Oh no. He, he has played first base a few times before. He's played 82 innings at first base, so Molina doesn't count. Okay.

That's why. But he has played more than 14,000 innings at catcher. Yeah, that's a lot of innings. The leader that I found played 16,335.1 innings as a catcher, and he DH'd 32 times. And he is active? Very recently inactive. You might hear him on certain postseason broadcasts. People think that he's kind of a dick uh had blonde hair is uh punched by michael barrett i think it was oh oh his first name is two letters

this is not going well at all oh aj perzinski AJ Pruszynski. He was a catcher until he was 39 years old, which is incredible because he was never great, you know, but he hung around, but he was never good enough to like put at another position. So that would be his explanation. He caught almost all of the time. He caught nearly 2000 games. So not only did he only play catcher or DH, he just about only played catcher. So AJ Pruszynski at catcher. Okay.

These other positions, we won't take that long. First base, I think the answer is Fred McGriff. played catcher or dh he just about only played catcher so eddie persinski at catcher okay these other positions we won't take that long first base i think the answer is fred mcgriff second base i believe the answer is lou whittaker now shortstop this one's fun shortstop well i'll ask you for guesses so uh give me some short stops who you think only played shortstop this this should not be that difficult probably all time i mean yeah this is all time. But these are shortstops you know. Okay. Is it like Ozzie Smith? Ozzie Smith is, I believe, third on the list.

Ozzie Smith played 21,785.2 innings as a shortstop. He played zero innings anywhere else. Not a surprise. Still a shortstop at 41 years old. He, I believe, third place. Vizquel? Second place guy. Not Vizquel. Vizquel moved around, I believe. Second place is a guy who viskel viskel moved around i believe second place is a

guy who played in the 60s and 70s and i guess the 50s too played for the white socks no i'll just say it's luis aparicio ah aparicio which i would have been tempted to say aparicio but baseball references there to save the day prevent me from getting a another corrective email from mark simon who knows more than i do aparicio 22 408.2 innings at shortstop who do you think played shortstop more than luis apparicio and ozzy smith hmm yeah i guess concepcion actually played a lot of positions for brief periods so let's see i'll give you a hint perhaps this guy does not seem to like firing employees himself. Oh, I was going to say, could it be Derek Jeter? Because, of course, he refused to play other positions or had a strong aversion to doing that.

So, OK. Yeah. Derek Jeter, 23. This does not count the playoffs. 23,225.2 innings as a shortstop started 73 games at DH. But that's it. Derek Jeter, more shortstop than Luis games at dh but that's it derrick jeter more shortstop than louis apericio and ozzy smith that's funny that enabled him to rack up some really incredible lifetime defensive stats that position my goodness so less impressively but i believe the answer at third base is scott roland as i look it up roland played yep only third base 17 479.1 innings never did anything else so scott roland good i look it up roland played yep only third base 17 479.1 innings never did anything else so scott roland good for him outfield it gets worse at least it gets less remarkable

because you know if you can play one outfield position you can probably play a few most i can find in left field is actually chris davis so current player but i can't imagine he's going to go anywhere else maybe he'll play first base down the road we've talked about him a little bit before in that he he has a mental block with his throwing but he's not actually that bad of a defender so i could see him moving i guess to first base maybe just because he is fairly athletic but there's a decent chance there that he just sticks in left field and that's it yeah center field to brian mccray whatever usually if you have a center fielder then he's going to decline and end up playing a corner frequently.

So couldn't do much for center field. In the right field, I'm not sure. The answer, I think, is either someone named Harry Lumley, who played infinity years ago, or it might be Aaron Judge. The problem with this is that when I looked it up, Harry Lumley, according to Baseball Reference, played between 1904 and 1910, which are years before we had any written records of humanity's existence. So this is all just word of mouth passed down from the dark ages.

But Harry Lumley shows up on Baseball Reference with 5,965 innings played as an outfielder. But it does not specify. However, oh, I guess right over here, there is a column that suggests that it specifies. I think Harry Lumley is the answer. I think he played all these innings in right field. That's what Baseball Reference would suggest. But if that's not true, then I think the answer is Aaron Judge, who has played like basically 1,000, 1,400 innings in right field. And he edges out like Hunter Renfro.

How could it be Aaron Judge, really? Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, it surprised me. I couldn't, I don't know. I guess maybe as a right fielder declines, then maybe they end up going to left field commonly, or maybe then they go to first base. Couldn't find a good answer, but yeah, that's where I wound up.

Wow, all right. Well, I know that you put a lot of effort into play indexing that, so thanks for that. All right, let's take a question from Andrew. I'm writing you because in all the playoff coverage you've done on your show, I have not heard any discussion of what might be the most exciting

and dramatic inning of the whole postseason. It features an all-star, a graded bat going to a full count, and a two-out walk-off home run, all described in what will certainly go down as an all-time great radio call. I am, of course, talking about the baseball action featured in the often-played commercial for Frog Tape, in which some men, painting a room, turn on a radio and listen to the slightly confusing call of the close finish of a baseball game.

I have seen this commercial, or heard it, I suppose, countless times during my playoff baseball consumption, and I thought that I should bring it to your attention because Breakdowns of Confusing Baseball Action and Commercials has been one of my favorite segments on the programs in the past. I would love to hear what you guys think of this one. It is on during every ad break, it seems, and it makes me laugh every time. And he does include a link, which I will send to you here in case you have not heard this.

And while you're listening to that, I will send to you here in case you have not heard this. And while you're listening to that, I will play it for the people. Bottom of the ninth. Ooh, swing and a miss. Two outs. In comes the all-star with the game on the line. Let's see if Smith can protect his home turf. He's really painting the corners tonight. And here's the 3-2 pitch. Smith pulls one to right. A walk-off homer to win the game. What an amazing finish. Paint like a pro with Frog Tape brand painter's tape. For the sharpest lines every time.

Okay, hold on. So this is for Frog Tape, which is Painter's Tape, evidently. And this is a somewhat confusing sequence of events. Obviously, it is very alighted. They're skipping over plays and events here. They're just hitting the highlights. But even so, this is a pretty strange inning going on here. I don't know if anything stands out to you immediately, but I can just,

I mean, first of all, the fact that they are bringing in the closer in the bottom of the ninth with two outs following a strikeout, following a swing and a miss, that seems unlikely. I mean, unless there, like, unless there was an injury or something, it's hard to imagine a manager letting a pitcher get the second out in the bottom of the ninth on a strikeout and then bring in the all-star closer like i i could see like maybe bringing in a situational guy or maybe you had a situational guy but you probably would have started the inning with the all-star closer so this seems unlikely i don't know if this is happening right is this i don't know is this bruce Bruce Bochy who's playing the platoons in the ninth inning, like bringing in Javier Lopez? But Javier Lopez probably wasn't an all-star unless the Giants had a terrible season and he was a really good Louie.

So I can't tell. Maybe the in comes the all-star means to say up comes the all-star with a game on the line. I don't think that's what the announcer means. Well, so there's further confusion there that might possibly support that because after the all-star comes in with the game on the line the announcer says let's see if smith can protect his home turf and then he's really painting the corners tonight which what okay yeah so smith let's see if smith can protect his home turf can only can only refer to the batter because this is the bottom of the inning. Well, it's the bottom of the inning. Right.

So the home team is batting, so it can't refer to the pitcher. But what if a game was relocated because of a natural disaster and then the home team was actually the road team? This has taken place a few times in recent years, including this year with the Marlins and the Brewers, right? Okay, so clearly there's been a hurricane, and that's just what's left out. But even so, protect his home turf. Does that mean you're protecting it? Is home turf, is that home plate? Or is that the ballpark is home turf?

It's got to be the ballpark. It's got to be. We have to protect the ballpark. Well, okay, we have to protect the ballpark. It's got to be. We have to protect the ballpark. Well, okay. We have to protect the ballpark. These aren't security guards, but presumably. No, I can't even presume anything. This is just stupid.

He's really painting. Let's see if Smith can protect his home turf. He's really painting the corners tonight, referring to, if it's referring to the pitcher, well, the pitcher just came in. I mean, it could be skipping. Right. It could just be skipping. Smith could be either when you're saying protect his home turf and then he's really painting the corners tonight. That's the next thing we hear, but not necessarily the next thing the announcer says. So, I mean, it wouldn't be the next thing he says because he's just coming in. So he hasn't been painting anything with frog tape or otherwise. So I think, yeah, from context, we can't really tell. I'm not sure it makes sense in either context, but it's hard to say. I'm rewatching here. In the commercial,

there's something that happens between, let's see if Smith can protect his home turf, and he's really painting the corners tonight. So I think there's some sort of omission there. So maybe that's referring to the first six or five odd pitches of this at bat that's being discussed. But can you really say that someone's really painting the first six or five odd pitches of this at bat that's being discussed. But can you really say that someone's really painting the corners when he just came in and he's thrown at most like five or six pitches? It's the first batter he's faced, right? So it seems kind of quick to say that. Yeah.

And then it skips right to the full count pitch, which if he's, is he really painting the corners if there are two balls? It's a full count. Three balls. So, well, I mean, yeah, right, right. Three balls. So I don't know if you can face one batter as far as we know, paint the corners and still have a 3-2 count.

Okay. That seems. So anyone who's listening to this is listening to the radio call. You can't actually see the visual. So I'm going to, there are at least two men who seem to be painting a room the room is white it's being painted brown okay so when the announcer says he's quote he's really painting the corners tonight the walls appear to be completely white and there is a man who is adding a few brown brush strokes around the frame of a window when When the announcer then says, and here's the 3-2 pitch,

in the commercial, all of a sudden, the room is completely brown. The entire room has been painted and the tape is being removed in the span of he's really painting the corners tonight and here's the 3-2 pitch. So either... So he's gotten

rocked, basically, between these two. This picture is getting obliterated, but we know that can't be happening because he's allowing aed basically between these two. This pitcher is getting obliterated. But we know that can't be happening because he's allowing a single at-bat to take place. Right, because the game is on the line. Right. So either this is the slow. This is like a very, very subtle jab at baseball's miserably slow pace of game. Or this is like the longest at-bat. This is like Alex Cora on like foul ball steroids.

And this has been like a 70 pitch at bat in which case there's a lot more to discuss takuya nakashima is up at the plate here yeah this is this is weird and then so smith pulls one to right so as the emailer andrew points out probably a lefty potentially seth smith is hitting here he's a left-handed hitter. I don't know. So there's a lot weird going on here. And as always, when we do this, I will repeat the plea. If you are doing some kind of representation of baseball in media, if you're doing a baseball ad, just come to us. Just run it by us. Just we'll listen. We'll give you our thoughts and feedback. We don't ask for a lot. We just want to help.

We just want to be your baseball consultant and tell you why your script doesn't make sense. So this is like an unforced error because the announcer could be saying anything while these painters are painting. So this is inexcusable. I think there's a lot of weirdness for this very short ad with not that much commentary. For absolutely no reason you're right unforced error is a good way to put and i'm trying to listen to the crowd as smith pulls the home run and i don't think that the crowd makes any more noise as the ball is hit or leave it they they do manage to include the crack of the bat so kudos to them for their attention to detail but

it's like the crowd didn't notice like how how out of the race is this team in order for the crowd to just be like oh well great we won the game but now we just lost like a high draft pick or something where they're just kind of caught in between and like people don't necessarily want like signature home run calls right like this sometimes it can seem a little forced or acne or whatever but if you're an announcer here's how not to call a dramatic walk-off home run smith pulls one to right a walk-off home run to win the game what an amazing finish this is there's zero sincerity or this is what people used to complain about like joe buck when they thought oh he just doesn't even care he shows no emotion and no matter what's happening on the field like what

an amazing fit no there's what level maybe this isn't maybe this isn't major league baseball and also is it the radio broadcaster who's calling the game is he the same one who does the the frog tape information yes the end of this yeah so he goes right from what an amazing finish to talking about frog tape which makes that call even worse here's the well yeah because i guess frog tape frog tape, it's not even like measuring tape. So you can't see the frog tape. Distance of that walk, haul, farm, run was 430. No, it's just like frog tape.

Yeah, when you're painting the corners, you could say that. But again, this guy was clearly not painting the corners. All right. Well, thanks, Andrew, for bringing that to our attention. And thanks, frog tape, for getting that entirely wrong. All right. Question from... Let's take one from Joel.

On the Ringer MLB show, Ben mentioned David Price and in passing called him a Hall of Fame level guy. At first, I thought that was a bit much. But after looking at his BRF page, I was surprised at how high his overall career value stats and Hall of Fame indicators are in the current Hall of Fame voting environment. Do you think he'll have a legitimate shot at the Hall? And that is the big question, because obviously voters, it seems, have been slow to adjust to the changes in pitcher usage. And I wonder whether we'll see some kind of like veterans committee down the road that is composed of former pitchers or players from this era who recognize that pitchers are not throwing 250, 300 innings anymore. And so they have to adjust their expectations for what is Hall of Fame caliber. And maybe then we'll see a bunch of guys who did not get in the first time around get in. innings anymore and so they have to adjust their expectations for what is hall of fame caliber and maybe then we'll see a bunch of guys who did not get in the first time around get in but anyway

that hasn't really happened yet so here we are with david price who of course is only 32 years old and might have a long ways ahead of him although his recent history performance and health throws that into some question. Right. So according to baseball reference, at least David Price is 14th among active pitchers in career wins above replacement. Just reading down the top five, we've got CeCe Sabathia, Clayton Kershaw, Zach Granke, Justin Verlander, and Cole Hamels. And then there's Felix, Bertolo Colon, Scherzer, Lester, Lackey, and Sale, I guess, rounding out the next six. I don't know why I went six. If you look at fan graphs, then it's not quite so easy to

search, but you've got Sabathia is up there. He's in first place, a little bit ahead of Clayton Kershaw, who is ahead of Verlander, who's ahead of Grinke. Grinke is up there. Cool for him. Did I just overlook him on baseball reference or what happened here? Oh, I did. I think I might have overlooked him or I said his name and don't remember. It doesn't really matter. So David Price, though, is all the way down. He's in like the mid 30s and he's 31 years old. So as good as he's been, he's going to need just turned 32.

Yeah. OK, so I just had his age 31 season. So he's 32 years old. It seems I don't want to get ahead of myself, but it seems like he could shortly be on the verge of missing about 12 to 15 months if he needed a certain ligament replaced so uh i get he hasn't really declined that much he's still effective as a starting pitcher but i feel like he's gonna need some more yeah more years of starting than being really, which you can never count on in your 30s. He has a Cy Young award.

He has two runner-up Cy Young finishes. But yeah, he needs several more years. And I think, I mean, maybe if the elbow is all that is ailing him and he gets a fresh one, maybe he'll have a second wind. I don't know. But yeah, he was at one point, I would say, on a Hall of Fame trajectory. And then, well, 2016, he led the majors in innings pitched, but was not as effective on a per inning basis. And then he missed most of this year.

So it'll be tough. He has a shot at it, but certainly not a lock or anything like that. And not the first guy you would mention if you're talking about beneficiaries of the Hall of Fame voters possibly reappraising pitchers in this era. Here's a question for you. David Price and Johnny Cueto have both played over 10 years. Both debuted in 2008. Both played through 2017.

They're both same age. They've thrown about the same number of innings, a little shy of 1,800 in the major leagues. Would you rather have Price or Cueto going forward? Also, they've both been worth about 33 or 34 wins, but replacement according to baseball reference. Yeah, probably would have said Cueto before this season. And then, well, he missed some time, but he was also just a lot less effective below average pitcher when he was pitching. So that's a tough one. I guess i'd take

price over cueto probably i'll take cueto okay all right question from rob i've noticed over the years that certain pitching coaches will develop a reputation for excellence and garner attention for their methods we're all familiar with ray searidge don cooper david getty earlier there was bud black and earlier still i remember roger Craig. There are others, of course. One that I hear very little about is Rick Honeycutt. This despite the fact that I'm a lifelong Dodgers fan, Honeycutt has remained in his position over various Dodgers front office regimes and several different managerial regimes. Note that the current front office cleaned house at all levels organizationally, but kept Honeycutt in place. This leads me to think he's actually one of the more valuable pitching coaches in baseball.

Strange then that his profile is so low, or am I misreading this? Honeycutt's profile is actually larger than I perceive. I've heard some talk on Dodgers Twitter over the past couple of years that Honeycutt is valued by the team for his ability to fix mechanics and deliveries. I have an irrational desire for Honeycutt to get more attention, although maybe it would be counterproductive to the Dodgers' success, so maybe I should just shut up. Well, let's see.

Honeycutt is, he joined the Dodgers coaching staff as a pitching coach for the 2006 season. Okay, so he's been, this would be then the completion of his 12th year of being the pitching coach for the Dodgers. Yeah, he's the only guy who stuck around. I don't have a real good, quick, easy way

of looking up who's been the longest-serving pitching coach. So if you were to try to measure these a real good, quick, easy way of looking up who's been the longest serving pitching coach. So if you were to try to measure these things, which, well, first of all, you can't, but one might argue that the best way, the best measure of a coach's effectiveness might just be how long he has lasted, which is sort of along the same lines of saying, well, a pitcher's best pitch is just the pitch that he throws the most. And that's it, which is a compelling and convincing viewpoint.

So from that perspective honeycutt clearly is among the best pitching coaches in the game because he just has kept his job and you see how even john farrell can lose a job after finishing in first place two years in a row in the best division in baseball because they just wanted a new voice with the dodgers haven't wanted or needed a new voice so that is a point in honeycutt's credit i think that what's probably working against them and this is maybe there are maybe a few things here, but one, it's the Dodgers. And I think people are disinclined to give too much credit to the coaching staff or team that has so many resources. That's not Honeycutt's fault. It's just the reality of what the situation is. And even though he has his own

reclamation projects, they don't need those reclamation projects in the same way that the Pirates do or the White Sox have. And I think in addition to that, at least now, I think that there's a perception that's probably based in reality that the Dodgers are just a very complex, complicated organism where there are a lot of different people who are responsible for any one decision. Like when the Dodgers seem to have like fixed Tony Singrani, who they picked up from the Reds with very little fanfare around the deadline. But in the articles that have been written about Singrani getting better, it's been mostly about changing how he's using his pitches and and changing the frequency of how often he uses his pitches and so that is a a successful a seemingly successful reclamation

project on the dodgers part but one that seemed to come from people other than rick honeycutt so in this sense he could be suffering or not suffering from the idea of other people being responsible for pitching consequences. So there are those points to make against him. But I don't think that Honeycutt is a bad coach by any means. I think that Honeycutt is one of those coaches that the fans of the team like. There are only so many of those to go around. I think people tend to anchor to like with Don Cooper. Whenever I think of Don Cooper, I think of Matt Thornton

because he made Matt Thornton good when he was bad. And it's really easy to get anchored into guys like that. And Ray Searge had his own. I don't know who you might get anchored to with Rick Honeycutt. So maybe that's another area where he's he's coming up short for reasons other than his own. Yeah, it's I mean, I'm always sort of suspicious of the coaching guru who, you know, we've seen so many times that guys will develop that reputation and then they won't continue to do whatever it was that got them that reputation. And maybe they actually never were that great. Maybe they just happened to work really well with a certain collection of players and not with the collection of players who followed them. So I don't know really how predictive that reputation is, but I would agree if you managed to survive changes in front office regime and manager like multiple times, that's pretty impressive. I mean, I guess it could mean that you just like have dirt on everyone and compromising pictures of people, or you're just

like a really good guy who people like to hang out with or it's like interpersonal skills more so than baseball skills but i doubt it especially with that dodgers regime i doubt they're making decisions on that basis so yeah it's probably a positive sign and maybe it has something to do with like just how forthcoming you are with the media in some cases like you know maybe some coaches are more willing to talk about what they've done or to promote themselves in a way that lends itself to glowing flattering profiles and pieces and maybe honeycutt is not like that i don't know i don't know rick honeycutt but that could have something to do with it too so yeah i would agree just the fact that

he's still there with this regime that really takes a hard look at everything and and tries to maximize every area of the organization i would say that's probably a positive sign this is a few years old but just for the record i did ask fans on fangraps about their pitching coaches uh in february of 2015 so again this is three seasons ago basically but just i just asked fans for whether they thought their pitching coach was very good, pretty good, average, pretty bad, very bad, or no opinion. And Rick Honeycutt finished exactly 15th. So he was very middle of the pack, according to Dodgers fans back then. He was behind Derek Lilliquist and ahead of Brett Strom.

Uh-huh. Okay. Well, sure. Yeah, I mean, certain coaches like have a very identifiable philosophy. Like there's one thing that they become known for, whether it's like Charlie Lau or something with his unorthodox hitting style or whatever, or like Mets pitching coach Dan Worthen, right? With like the Worthen slider that everyone was writing about for a while. And now worthen just got fired right because like there was speculation that maybe that slider actually hurt people or something so those kind of coaches can kind of crash and burn reputation wise very quickly if you get known for one thing maybe that thing stops working maybe it's a positive sign if you don't have a one thing associated with you because maybe there is no one size fits all thing that you should apply to all players it should be a case-by-case basis so maybe if a coach doesn't have that it's a sign that he just kind of treats every player on a personalized individual basis which would potentially be yeah

which is important i think that it's it's really simple to want there to be a one size fits all philosophy it's the easiest for a fan to analyze be like oh this is the team that pitches inside or this is the team that uses the sinker but of course there are pitchers who have different skill sets and they'll thrive by following different paths so you want those individualized coaches which is of course very difficult because a coach will have i don't know 30 pitchers that he's looking at over the course of a season which is a lot to work with and those are a lot of people to understand but then that's why you have multiple coaches all right last one from brendan in this weekend st louis post dispatch jose de j Jesus Ortiz wrote about the dysfunctional clubhouse atmosphere the Cardinals have had this season.

In it, one part stuck out to me, and it's one we all heard because it's such a cliche. In this article, Ortiz states, the veterans implored their teammates to put the team's goals above individual glory. This article, by the way, is, you know, it's like a bunch of cliches about how the Cardinals' way is great and they're lost because players from outside the organization hadn't internalized the Cardinals' way or whatever. It's probably nonsense. But anyway, the question from Brendan is, it seems to me that striving for good individual stats can only help the team's goal of winning as many games as possible. This isn't a sport like basketball where you can actually hurt your team by taking too many shots. You try and hit for average, probably going to help your team out. Trying to strike out as many batters as possible, generally going to have a positive effect on your team's outcome. Is there any instance in baseball

where going for individual glory could hurt your team's chances of winning? The only thing I could think of is trying to steal bases or possibly refusing to bunt in a situation where doing so makes sense. And that's probably the case, even trying to steal bases. I mean, if you get caught stealing, that hurts you just as much as the team potentially. So, I mean, there are like the productive outs kind of situation, the situation where you get butt pats when you get back to the dugout, even though you didn't necessarily do something positive for your stats there are cases where you do want to choke up and try to hit the ball the other way or hit a sack fly or something because the team really needs to score one run in that situation and by not swinging for the fences maybe you are minimizing your chances of hitting a home run or something but

you're maximizing your chances of getting the run in. So there is that there are certain cases where maybe your incentives and the team's incentives are not totally aligned. But your response to this email, I think was more about the psychological aspects of this or kind of the team building bonding. Yeah, I would suspect I didn't read the article that closely, because again, it's the same cliches as always but i i i suspect that this is less of a baseball is an individual game that's that's the end of it uh just about everything is about whether you out pitch at the hitter or whether you out hit the pitcher or something it is all about who is on the bases at the plate the most selfish player would have really good numbers if he's a good player but i would imagine that this has less to do with necessarily on field selfish behavior and and just about the

perception that players don't care so much about what the team does as opposed to what they do because at the end of the day every player does need to be selfish he needs to worry about himself but you at least want to create that illusion that this is a a team-based sport and while i think everyone has the understanding that it really is about one-on-one 25 times or whatever you want to say that it is, if players don't have the sense that their teammates are there and passionate about supporting everyone, then you can see how that could cause some sort of discord or at least prevent bonds from forming that might have formed otherwise.

So I don't know, because this is just an analysis of one clubhouse and one season in which a team didn't make the playoffs. Well, I mean, I would imagine that you're going to get a lot of the same stories from 19 other clubhouses that wouldn't really be a surprise to me and certainly for the cardinals to come close to the playoffs and miss them and and being the cardinals and what they've been in the past then you just kind of go into it thinking like what went wrong with this team as opposed to maybe they just weren't talented enough but i i can see without having been there i know there have been uh complaints about mike math been there, I know there have been

complaints about Mike Matheny's leadership. I know there have been complaints from players about Mike Matheny's leadership from, you know, the actual leader of the Cardinals, which would be Audier Molina. And I can see how maybe there just wasn't that supportive atmosphere that you want that, you know, to put it simply, just makes you want to go to work every morning or in their case, every afternoon to just kind of want to be there and enjoy your time at the ballpark god knows how much that actually affects the product on the field but i can see that i don't know maybe the cardinals just didn't have quite the same supportive atmosphere that they've had in the past and and that's pretty easy thing to point to for a player or coach after the season which is easier to point

to than saying well we just weren't as good as other teams were who did make the playoffs. All right. While we were speaking, we got some details about Steven Strasburg. Mike Rizzo, Nationals GM, talked to the press, said that Strasburg had flu-like symptoms since his start, was placed on antibiotics, was given intravenous fluids, and told Dusty Baker he would start. Rizzo says that Strasburg felt obligated to pitch and was not pressured by teammates or media to make the start, according to Bob Nightingale's tweets here. So that is what we know about Strasburg now. Sounds like he was fairly seriously sick. And I'm always amazed by pitchers, really any players, but particularly pitchers, since they have the bulk of the work in any one game. As a starter, I'm always amazed that they manage to pitch through things because anyone who has ever

like been sick, just regular civilians, especially if you're nauseated, I mean, it's hard to imagine just going to a job where you sit in a cubicle at a computer, let alone being a baseball pitcher. And I wrote an article about five years ago at Baseball Perspectives called What Happens When Starters Get Sick that you can all Google if you're interested. And I just looked for examples of times when starters were sick and talked about their symptoms and how they looked and how they pitched and everything. And of course, it's a very skewed sample because generally, I think you don't necessarily hear that the pitcher was sick unless like he pitched very well. Often you'll hear like, oh, he was throwing up right before the game and yet he still went out there and was great. Or I guess maybe there are cases where there's a blowout or something.

I mean, pitchers are often reluctant to make this despite having these symptoms that would sideline most of us from our less physically demanding jobs. So Strasburg had flu-like symptoms, but Rizzo says he was given antibiotics. Yeah, that's kind of weird, right? I guess. Yeah. Someone's telling a lie here. Yeah, maybe they just don't know you can't cure a virus. I don't know you can't cure a virus. I don't know. But it's, yeah, flu-like symptoms is just like, at this point, it's just a generic term

for like any illness in baseball. It seems like if you, I don't know. He was pooping too much. Yeah. He was having some diarrhea. Yes. It can even be a euphemism probably for a hangover at some, I'm not saying it was in this case.

I'm sure it wasn't. But that probably has been the case in the past and all sorts of ailments probably contained under the umbrella of flu-like symptoms we could we could have an expose here if the national is prescribing antibiotics for someone who has a virus then like there's a training set here that's bigger than the other one that's yeah medical stuff all right so we will end there and we'll be back soon to talk about actual baseball games. Yay. All right.

I actually just went back and reviewed that article that I wrote about sick pitchers. Evidently, I concluded that these sick starters actually throw less hard than they usually do and usually pitch poorly. Although not in all cases. And even the ones who pitched poorly had great moments. So my memory was off a bit about that. Maybe I was thinking about the fact that if you pitch well, you won't say you're sick because, hey, who cares? Doesn't matter. You pitched well anyway. So probably still a skewed sample. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already pledged

their support include Nick Taylor, Jem Organ, Craig Danchik, Dustin McDonald, and Ryan Kutchin. 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. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast at fangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We'll talk to you soon. I'm