Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1134: Remembering Roy

Episode Date: November 9, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan mourn the loss of (and celebrate the greatness of) Roy Halladay, then answer listener emails about Halladay’s career, what Aaron Judge and the Astros teach us about strikeouts, whether better pitchers are also better at hitting, the players with the wildest fluctuations in WAR, Eric Hosmer’s stats-defying Gold Glove, the […]

Holiday, no matter where you play, you will always be a J. In our hearts any day, no matter what your jerseys say, you will always be a J to me Hello. Hello. How are you today? Pretty good. Yeah, okay. Me too. How are you? I'm doing all right. So we're doing an email show. We have a bunch of excellent emails lined up. But of course, we want to acknowledge and remember Roy Halladay for a few minutes here before we get to emails. And yesterday, we all got the news that Halladay had been killed in a plane crash. It was really sad.

It was sad how the news came out. It kind of, you know, initially leaked out on Twitter and no one was sure it was true. And we were all hoping it was true, but then feeling bad about hoping it wasn't him because that meant hoping it was someone other than Roy Halliday because we knew that someone had been killed in this crash. And then we got confirmation that it was him. And it was, I think, difficult for everyone just because Halladay was so popular as a player and even more popular, I think, as a person, which is, you know, if you didn't know him personally and we didn't know him personally, that is something that is kind

of one degree removed from you. But when you're seeing testimonies from former friends and teammates and even opponents about how special a person he was. And I was texting with Dan Heron who tweeted something and Brandon McCarthy tweeted something. And they were among the many accolades of Halliday, guys who modeled themselves on him or aspired to be like him, both as a pitcher and a person. And we can talk about just his merits as a player. And I mean, he was, I think it's fair to say, probably the best pitcher of his era, at least if we narrowly define his era as the years when he was pitching. But he was also just a special guy, which very clearly came out in the wake of this news. You think of how good Roy Holiday was, how good he was for so long, how good he was on the field, how good he was off the field,

how good he was even away from the stadium. And you think of how easy it would be. You figure at any given time, he's got hundreds of peers. And then there are thousands of people who aspire to be Roy Holiday, just thousands of people who want to live that life and at least just want to sample like a shred of what it's like to be Roy Holiday. And the way that he was talked about, not even now, of course, everyone who always speaks well of the recently deceased, but with Roy Holiday, even if you consider how he was talked about when he was pitching, it would have been so easy for people, for competitors to focus on any single little quirk, something that could have annoyed them. People could have been so envious and jealous of

Roy Holiday that they could have found something that bothered them about him. And it just didn't happen. He was as close as you can get to sort of the perfect role model baseball player that it's almost he sets an impossible standard because you you can want you can want to be as good as holiday on the field and you can want to be that pleasant of a man that much of a family man that passionate of a man outside of the field you can want to be that determined but most people just don't have it in them it's almost it's almost obnoxious how driven and successful he was even after getting so thoroughly knocked down when he was young in the major leagues he overcame i mean as i think every article was compelled to point out he had

like the worst era in baseball history in a season which is just i mean we don't need to dwell on it anymore but it's kind of the half of the most incredible thing about him. So it would have been so easy to find something to harp on just to try to pull yourself up and try to be able to have some sort of point of comparison. But no one could compare to Roy Holiday. Just nobody could. And the way that so many things are glossed over when somebody passes away, nothing is being glossed over here. He was just that good yeah and he had that intensity and and single-minded dedication and focus and i mean a lot of players have that and you'll hear that i mean they're great and people will admire it and respect it

but they're also kind of assholes sometimes and holiday somehow had that intensity but did not repel anyone like he had the thing where he wouldn't talk to anyone on the days he was pitching, like during the game or before the game. Even if a teammate was trying to talk to him, he wouldn't talk to them, that kind of thing. But I think everyone understood it. It wasn't some sort of antisocial quality or like he was better than anyone. He just really, really really really wanted to pitch well and he did everything he could to accomplish that and i think people appreciated that so

he was one of these people who has that quality of the elite athlete that is just like well these these people are not like other people and sometimes that quality can come across as aloof or off-putting and in in Halliday's case, it just didn't because I think he was a very genuine, personable guy whenever he wasn't pitching. And you could see that, especially, I think, after his career, at least for those of us who were not in the clubhouse hanging out with him every day. You could see it once he was on Twitter, once he was doing stuff like going to the zoo with the Zoo with Roy blogger who just started a blog to get Roy Halliday to go to the zoo with him and ultimately did. Or when he would tweet a picture of some guy wearing a Halliday jersey and Halliday himself would photobomb him.

Or just even his work with kids or animals. Or, you know, just even his work with kids or animals or, I mean, the really heartbreaking stuff was seeing all the recent pictures of his plane and flying, which was obviously his greatest hobby, it seemed, in his post-retirement days. And he was clearly very, very happy doing that. And that just made it sadder to see all these smiling pictures of him with this new plane which just looked barely big enough for him to to fit inside so i think you know and he had a family obviously a wife two kids and so it's it's really sad and you know i think the remembrances have been nice and have probably illuminated to an even greater degree what sort of person he was but we already knew what sort of pitcher he was which i we already knew what sort of pitcher he was, which, I mean, he was basically a perfect pitcher. Like the only knock on him was that he didn't do what he did longer because, you know, he didn't really blossom until his mid-20s. He had control problems early

on. And as you mentioned, that really just catastrophic season where he had a 10.64 ERA and had to go back to A-ball and embrace sports psychology and revamp his mechanics and everything. But that did sort of humanize him and made him maybe the perfect model for guys like Charlie Morton and other pitchers to embrace because it was like no one was worse than Roy Halladay for that one year, and yet no one was better than Roy Halladay immediately after that. So he was just an example of how you could reinvent yourself. And he just, he did everything. I mean, he obviously went extraordinarily deep into games, and the complete game stats are legendary, and the shutouts that he racked up just dwarfed any of his contemporaries. And he didn't allow home runs.

He got tons of ground balls. He didn't walk anyone. He had good strikeout rates for an extreme ground ball pitcher, particularly later in his career. He was efficient. He worked quickly. He didn't throw any more pitches than he had to. And he didn't have to throw many because he had great command and good stuff.

And he was just perfect, basically. And the fact that he didn't last longer, you know, he had to retire at 36 with a torn rotator cuff. And if not for that, he very well may have been pitching into his late 30s or 40s because he was that kind of elite guy. guy and whatever war model you use if you start with his first full season from then through his last season no one was more valuable no pitcher was better than holiday over that span i think it was in sam's memorial article that he pointed out that even in holidays 2000 season when he had the 10.64 era he had a he his season ended on september 28th biscuits anecdotal his season ended on september 28th of that season. He pitched in a game for the Blue Jays against the Orioles. This is a game the Blue Jays lost 23 to 1. Holiday did not start the game, but he threw two thirds of an inning.

He came in in the fourth inning and he replaced Chris Carpenter. This is how that inning went. Walk, error. Walk, error, fly ball. Single, ground out. Pick off, but error. Single, single, single, single. Roy Holiday's line.

Lance Painter came in to relieve Holliday and he immediately allowed a double a single and a home run to Delano to Shields the first one so if you look at Holliday's line for that game he went two-thirds of an inning and he allowed seven runs none of which were earned so Holliday's 10.64 ERA season kind of kind of even worse but I think it was it was fitting that he was paired at least ever so briefly with Cliff Lee because Lee was one of those rare sorts of pitchers who could kind of almost belong in the Holiday peer group. And Lee, of course, had his own sort of adversity story where he overcame a similar miserable era and had to rebuild himself. And so it was appropriate to have Holiday and Lee

on the same staff, probably the best starting rotation that's ever existed for a single season didn't win the world series but of course it was a joy for everyone to watch and i mean we we just saw the world series end with charlie morton on the mound and of course there's the famous story of morton trying to just rebuild himself in the image of of roy holiday and it kind of it worked by morton's own standards that it worked and Brandon McCarthy had a similar idea where he wanted to I mean how many how many pictures dozens hundreds of pictures were inspired by Holiday and yeah some it's in some way stories there are just like guys who either tried to do something like he did or in Morton's case just literally tried to be him and was kind

of a clone of him and And yeah, it worked. I mean, Morton has reached a new level more recently, but he modeled himself on Halliday after his own disastrous season with a 7-plus ERA, and then he came right back the next year and had a much higher ground ball rate and the best home run rate in the majors and threw like twice as many innings and was just a productive pitcher again. ground ball rate and the best home run rate in the majors and through like twice as many innings and was just a productive pitcher again and you know he was doing that looking like Roy Halladay and I

thought it was fun that even in that season when Morton came back looking like Halladay they faced off in late June against each other and Morton had his worst start of the season like he lasted like four innings and gave up several runs on you know like eight runs on nine hits or something and holiday through seven scoreless one hit innings so i don't know if morton was feeling some pressure because the guy he modeled himself on was on the same mound that day or not but clearly holiday was not feeling any pressure going against his copycat yeah don't uh they say ordinarily they say don't meet your heroes because your heroes will disappoint you but sometimes don't meet your heroes because you will embarrass yourself yes can i was looking over trying to think of sort of a we have all

these pictures who have been inspired by holiday in some shape or form but in terms of a current pitcher who kind of carries the legacy of holiday is there anyone who seems more i mean it's easy to say clayton kershaw he's got that same sort of intensity but he's he's almost like a goofy guy on his other days he's just like he's clearly one of the the biggest hearts in in baseball but is there is there anyone who seems more in the holiday image just in terms of intensity and approach and results than cory kluber is he kind of like the V guy at this point? Yeah, maybe so. And he has his sort of unlikely origin story too. So yeah, not to oversell. I mean, Halliday was a first round pick and a top prospect and everything and got to the

majors at 21. So he was always promising. It wasn't like he was an out of nowhere guy, but he looked just completely broken like his career could be over after that one terrible season so yeah that i would say they were both kind of in that lineage i would think were you going to name someone else uh no i think i think kluber is that he even he just threw five complete games in an era in which complete games are completely unheard of it just doesn't exist now i in fairness when i started talking i did not realize urban santana also threw five complete games uh that's that's a news to me but third place was a tie for two so just there aren't complete games anymore but cory kluber overcomes that he has the same sort of you know people refer to him as the clue bot he's a robot on the mound but that's exactly how holiday

was talked about back when he was in his prime and even just as his prime was coming to an end. So Coy Kluber, not Roy Holiday, but if maybe you were newer to baseball, if you just didn't, if you caught the tail end of Roy Holiday, or maybe you didn't get to watch him at all. And I mean, you can go back, you can watch old games if you want to. But if you're just looking for someone who sort of carries the torch for him going forward, I guess Kluber is kind of the best you can do. Yeah, it's incredible. I think it was, I mentioned in my piece,

do. Yeah, it's incredible. I think it was, I mentioned in my piece, 2003 to 2011 was kind of Halliday's prime complete game span. And in those years, he threw 61 complete games and no one else in the majors threw more than 31. So he essentially doubled just the next most durable guy in that respect. And I mean, we could look back in hindsight now and say, well, maybe he shouldn't have knowing what we know now, but I don't think you can even really say that because I mean, it wasn't like he wasn't amazing the third and fourth time through the order too. He held hitters to sub 700 OPSs, both their third and fourth times facing him in games. So he was often the best option available anyway. And, you know, I guess you could say that maybe those workloads contributed to his shoulder problems or his early end to his

career. I don't know. Maybe you can make that connection. Maybe you shouldn't. But he racked up an enormous amount of value over that span. And, you know, even surpassing Pedro and Randy Johnson during the years that he was in the majors. And obviously the, you know, eight All-Star games and the two Cy Youngs and the two Cy Young runner-ups and three other Cy Young top five finishes and the no-hitter in the perfect game in the same season, including the playoff no-hitter. So, you know, he has all the accolades, all the traditional and advanced stats agree really that he was really great. And now I think some of the conversation has shifted to his Hall of Fame candidacy. And obviously he'll be eligible. He'd be eligible for the first time on next year's ballot if they

stick with the five-year period. And I mean, I think he was a Hall of Famer the second he retired. I would imagine that this untimely end will lead to some people voting for him immediately who might otherwise have waited for a while. You can't really take anything for granted with the BBWA and pitchers these days because they're just still treating Hall of Fame standards for pitchers as if it's still the 60s or 70s or something and just have been really strict stringent with the standards and so I think maybe Halliday is a guy who by getting in could open the doors for some other people because I just I don't see any argument for keeping him out I mean forget about the sadness and the sympathy and you know obviously it'll be

a very bittersweet ceremony. But I think aside from that, just on the merits, just on the stats, I mean, how can you not put in the guy who was the best pitcher in baseball for more than a decade? That's just saying there were no Hall of Fame pitchers during that period, essentially, if you're saying Holiday wasn't one. So I don't see how you can keep him out other than, you know, if you say his career didn't last long enough. And, you know, it's true that compared to the historical standards, I think his Jaws score is a little bit below the historical average for starting pitchers. But the historical average for starting pitchers is almost meaningless at this point because pitchers don't

pitch the way they used to, and they don't have the opportunity to accrue that value anymore so i think that by getting in as i can't imagine he won't now maybe he opens the door for other guys who've had problems getting in messina shilling etc or future guys from his own era whether it's sabathia or verlander felix or you know people in that class i would think that even, you know, though he's gone, he'll still, in a sense, be helping his peers in a way because I think he'll contribute to guys getting recognized for what they're accomplishing in this era, which is different from previous generations of pitchers, but you have to compare peers to their peers, I think. I have a sort of a hall of Fame test that I think works pretty well to separate the yes candidates from the no candidates.

And this has nothing to do with the numbers. So, of course, there's the Black Ink and there's Jaws. And you can look at all the numbers. But the Hall of Fame test I like to use is take a player name. It's Roy Holiday. And you ask yourself, is Roy Holiday a Hall of Famer? And if the answer is yes, then he goes in the Hall of Fame. And I think that Roy Holiday just he just feels like it, you know, it feels like, yeah, of course, Roy Holiday

deserves to be in the Hall of Fame for the reasons you said he was the best pitcher in baseball for an entire decade. And right and not not by some like slim margin, he was starting games, he was completing them more than like any other anybody else more than other teams entirely. And he was just dominant. Nevermind the story story never mind the person that he was off the field or away from the ballpark he was just he was the best and so i i agree with you in one sense because if holiday makes it with his relatively historically low right that kind of thing too right the traditional stats yeah yeah he'll open he'll open the door to some to some contemporary pitchers by that comparison but But on the other hand, now we're back to trying to compare pitchers to Roy Holiday.

It's like, good luck. He was, again, the best of his prime, the best of his decade. And so it will help, as you wrote in your article, he's going to help to open the door to other guys who've had trouble and it's just going to be sort of more, the Holiday legacy will continue henceforth.

He's going to continue to influence baseball even though he has been taken away from it and from us but yeah it's it's not gonna get that much easier for someone like mike messina where you put his numbers next to roy holiday and say boy that roy holiday sure was good yeah yeah no it's i mean i know he meant a lot to blue jays fans and to philly's fans and it's also sad because I think he probably would have worked with young pitchers for years to come. I think he had an inclination to get back into the game. He was working in a part-time role as an instructor for the Phillies in spring training and during the season. But I think based on some of his comments, he would have been interested in

coming back on a full-time basis at some point and just molding even more arms that probably looked like Roy Halladay but were not quite as good as Roy Halladay because you could copy him, but you couldn't equal him. He was just that good. So it was really sad news, and we hate that we have to talk about it, but we wanted to acknowledge his greatness

and the magnitude of the loss. So unless you have anything else to add. And I'm just looking at his entire career. So he was in the major leagues from 1998 to 2013. That's 16 years, more or less, of pitching in the major leagues. And over that span, Holiday had 67 complete games. And the guy in second place, Randy Johnson, had 54. Third place, Levon Hernandez. Levon Hernandez, incidentally, a specimen unto his own. That is the most rubber-armed, mediocre pitcher that maybe there ever was.

He's just so high up there in all the innings lists. And you look at his career and you wonder like, wow, teams really wanted to keep around the number four starter for like a long time. But anyway, so Holiday, 67 complete games. That's 13 more than second place. This is even including Holiday's decline and his start and stop beginning. 67 complete games, 1998 to 2013. Over those same 16 years, the san diego padres completed 62 games and the milwaukee brewers completed 65 roy holiday more complete

games than two major league baseball organizations over that span that's great for roy holiday and we don't uh using the fan graphs leaderboards we don't have pitch data stretching back before 2002. But whatever, that still captures most of Roy Holiday's career. And from 2002 onward, there were just over 200 pitchers who have thrown at least 500 innings. And so I got curious just about some efficiency metrics. So Holiday averaged just 14.3 pitches per inning. The only pitcher who was better than that over that span, the only starting pitcher at least, is Greg Maddux.

Fitting comparison. And when you sort, at least when I sort, by pitches per inning, I have all these guys who were, Maddux was the only guy who threw 13-something, but then you have some handful of guys around 14 and 15. And the thing about those guys is that they averaged almost to a man fewer than 100 pitches per start but as i sort this down roy holiday also averaged 103.8 pitches per start compare that to greg maddox who averaged 82.5 so you know

again we don't look we don't need any more statistical evidence that roy holiday was working deep a whole bunch but roy holiday worked deep a whole bunch and so over that span Roy Holiday averaged 7.2 innings per start that is first place Curt Schilling and second at 6.9 Holiday's I don't know if idol is the right word but very good friend Chris Carpenter is in third place at 6.8 also CeCe Sabathia and is really good starters it turns out are way up there in the innings per game started leaderboard but roy holiday all by himself so just that sort of blend of he wasn't only extremely efficient but just so durable and you can talk about maybe the the impact of all those complete games on his arm later in his career but at the end of the day he threw nearly 3 000 innings he lasted until he was about 36 years old and he wasn't hurt for solid 10 11 12 years so i think that his body held out about

as long as you could expect anyone's body that isn't levon hernandez's for some reason and just another another way that holiday was a freak all right well let's start then with a holiday inspired question this is from john C. in New Hampshire, and he was talking about how he was reading a lot of the pieces written about Halliday, and he was focusing specifically on Tyler Kepner's In the New York Times because Kepler had just interviewed Halliday for a book he's writing on pitching, and John says, I thought Halliday had some interesting things to say. Halliday is being lauded for his durability and rightfully so.

He tallied eight different seasons of at least 220 innings. No pitcher reached this total in 2017. When asked about the modern state of pitching, starters pitching fewer innings, he said this, quote, I felt like with two strikes, 0-2 or 1-2, if they didn't swing at it, it was going to be strike three. He said, I wanted something that they either had to swing at and put in play or was going to be a strike on 0-2. If they didn't swing at it, it was going to be strike three. He said, I wanted something that they either had to swing at and put in play or was going to be a strike on 0-2. Now it's two extra pitches and we're getting back to 2-2 and the count goes on. So I think it's just changed a lot in the way people think about pitching. They want to stay just off the plate to where they're avoiding contact. Does Halliday have a point here? Obviously a pitcher would rather avoid contact if

at all possible. However, Halliday's point about modern pitchers being overly concerned with striking hitters out seems interesting. Do pitchers lose something in efficiency by staying off the plate that could in some way correspond to negative impact on their pitching performance? Or maybe Halliday isn't even trying to be negative about today's game, he is just answering the question as a fact. Which brings up a larger question, is a starting pitcher throwing fewer innings even a negative thing holiday was maddox-esque in his control so perhaps he could stay on the plate while still inducing weak contact in a way few pitchers could so even if he has a point it's not like many pitchers could do anything about it anyway right well okay so there's there's maybe a lot here to unpack i think what holiday is holiday is a pitcher he's giving his approach

he would go into an abad and think okay when there two strikes, I don't want to waste a pitch. Now, no pitcher actually wants to waste a pitch with two strikes. You don't want to throw a pitch where you figure, well, look, this is going to be way off the plate and hopefully I get a swing. That doesn't make sense. Nobody does that on purpose. Now, there are a lot of pitchers who will throw a ball deliberately out of the zone because they want to get that swing. And maybe's what Holliday is referring to whereas you think of I don't know if this is the best example but I think of John Lester as a guy who at least when he's been at his best he doesn't really leave the plate by very much he always sort of hangs out around the periphery and that's one of the reasons he was he paired so well with David Ross is that he could get a lot of those

called strikeouts off the plate but I think with Holiday he still got a lot of strikeouts first of all and he didn't get an unusual amount of called strikeouts he was getting a lot of swinging strikeouts and I think maybe one of the things he had uh working for him that a lot of other pitchers don't is that he was just really good he was really hard to hit and so he could throw pitches sort of around the periphery of the plate even over the plate with two strikes and still miss a bat or still maybe keep the batter from swinging but still have a pitch close enough to get a called strikeout he just had such good command that it didn't look like he was wasting pitches yeah and most pitchers don't have that so as as far as whether it's

better to be more efficient i don't know i mean we've we've had years and years of evidence suggesting that pitchers don't have that much control over generating soft contact and it's better to be more efficient. I don't know. I mean, we've had years and years of evidence suggesting that pitchers don't have that much control over generating soft contact. And it's not even clear that Holiday himself generated a bunch of soft contact. He just got a lot of ground ball contact in an era where that was more at a premium. You wanted ground ball pitchers because the home runs were so out of control. Now the home runs are out of control again, but the situation is different for reasons we don't need to get into here, but I've talked long enough. Ben, what do you think? Well, every now and then you hear about a pitcher who tries to pitch to contact. This has happened, say, with Francisco Liriano is one I remember who went from being a strikeout

pitcher to trying not to be or trying to be less, and Chris Sale was another recent example, trying not to be or trying to be less. And Chris Sale was another recent example. And the idea is always that you'll be more efficient if you don't try to go for strikeouts. And I think generally what's been found is that that's not really the case that, you know, yes, a strikeout takes more pitches on average than an out via contact, but a strikeout always leads to an out or, you know, with very few exceptions. And so I think in general, trying to pitch to contact means that, yes, you'll maybe have fewer pitches per plate appearance, but you'll have more plate appearances because you'll give up more hits. And so ultimately, it seems to wash out more or less or maybe even be less efficient to quote unquote pitch for contact or pitch to contact. But I think there is a certain element of this that's just Roy Halladay is not like other pitchers and his stuff was great. And we don't really think of him as like the hardest thrower and he wasn't touching triple digits or anything but in 2010 we have data for that year his second Cy Young year he threw the hardest cutter of any starting pitcher it was like 92

and this was seven years ago when guys didn't throw quite as hard on average so he had stuff and he did throw hard and he did have a variety of pitches and got good movement and had pinpoint control and command so I think when you do that it's you know i don't know whether holiday was saying that his approach was really something you could generalize and apply widely because not everyone has holidays skill set so i think that's part of it i think there are definitely aspects of holidays approach that other pitchers could pick up on and use but you couldn't do what he did and be him. And that's the case. I mean, no one who learned from Halliday equaled Halliday. They all right, if he had come along, say, 10, 15 years later, he probably wouldn't have had the workloads that he did. And so I think you could say that's less efficient, perhaps, just in that he was a guy who could go deep into games and could be effective.

effective and you know if you just transplanted roy holiday in his prime to 2017 he would not be pitching 250 260 innings as he sometimes did he might be leading the league but probably you know with a lot fewer innings and that would be bad i guess that would be under utilizing roy holiday probably so i think there there can be cases maybe where this emphasis on restricting guys' workloads, both for health reasons and also for effectiveness reasons, and we've got big bullpens and we know about times through the order, et cetera. I think there are probably cases where you have a real outlier like Halladay who, because his manager doesn't want to be getting questions about why this guy is pitching way more than any other pitcher is pitching, which could seem irresponsible,

probably there are people who could do that who are not doing that. And so I think that, in a sense, could be inefficient in isolated cases while being efficient on the whole. Okay, so I have a few numbers here that i can uh i can run so just real quick using baseball savant i was able to look up two strike strike rate that seems pretty intuitive here right holiday talking about throwing strikes with two strikes so this only goes back to 2008 so let's just look at 2008 2009 and 2010 that seems fair that covers the end of roy holiday's peak so in 2008 roy holiday threw 67.7% strikes when he had two strikes. That's very good. But that also ranked 28th that year. First place, Scott Baker. Okay. Scott Baker, you could argue, threw too many strikes. Cliff Lee,

second place. That's kind of fitting. So Holiday in 2008, 28th place, still above average. In 2009, Holiday, 35th place. Again place again about 37 two strike strikes first place ted lilly second place scott baker getting a scott baker theme here in 2010 roy holiday up to 15th place 68.5 two strike strikes first place ted lilly fourth place scott baker way to go scott baker uh r.a dick, second place, Tim Wakefield, third place. There was some knuckleball situation. Cliff Lee, incidentally, in sixth place. So anyway, just to combine, I was able to get a multi-year query to work on Baseball Savant, which is not always the case.

That's a little insider tip. But anyway, combining 2008, 2009, and 2010, looking at starting pitchers. So now a three-year span. First place, two-strike strike rate, Ted Lilly. Second place, Scott Baker, then Tim Wakefield, Cliff Lee, Ari Dickey. And Roy Holiday shows up in, why didn't I search for him before, 22nd place, 67.6%. That's quite good, although it ranked him between Dallas Braden and Zach Duke. Weird company.

The median in this whole group is about 65 so holiday definitely above average but not quite sort of cliff lee or i guess scott baker territory uh but again i would i would say based on what i remember of scott baker and based on these numbers probably too many strikes you don't want to be that around the zone with two strikes because when you have a two strike at the reality is that you do have a lot to work with. And because this is never fun without pointing out the guy in last place, that's Joe Saunders. Joe Saunders down there at 60% two strike strike rate just behind. Oh, these are unsurprising names.

Giovanni Gallardo, Carlos Silva. That's a little more surprising. And Ubaldo Jimenez, who has never had control. All right. And I guess we can segue from that to another strikeout-related question. This one is from Matt. He says, I have a quandary about strikeouts that I hope you might be able to break down. I've been agitated for the past few months because Aaron Judge spent most of the 2017 season

with a lot of talk about his potential for MVP votes. All the while, he managed to set more than one record for strikeouts in the year for baseball. When the dust cleared from the playoffs, however, the Astros stood alone, and they managed to strike out the least of any team in 2017. For every writer and pundit I heard say that we live in a new culture of not caring as much about whether a player strikes out, it sure seems like putting the bat on the ball gets you what you're looking for, all the way down to what we saw in World Series Game 7. I won't even get into how maybe if Judge had struck

out less and the Astros struck out more in the ALCS, maybe we would have had a different World Series matchup. So I answered Matt via email, and we had a nice productive little exchange. I think we ended up in a nice place. But this, I think, premise that, you know, I think this is in some degree sort of starting with the premise that strikeouts are bad and looking for data that or evidence that supports that narrative. Because I think certainly it's true that Aaron Drudge struck out more than any other player in his league. But as we know, he also walked more than any other player in his league and hit more home runs than any other player in his league. So he had the highest on-base percentage of any AL player, not named Mike Trout. And so I think you can dwell on the plate appearances when he didn't reach base. And yes, a higher percentage of those were strikeouts than the typical players or any players, almost any players. But he also reached base much more often than almost anyone. And when he reached base,

it wasn't just via singles. He was often getting extra base hits. So when you add up all the good things that he did, it just more than makes up for the strikeouts. He's just an extreme player in every way, extreme in some bad ways, extreme in some good ways, but in more good ways than bad ways. And so I think that's how you end up at the conclusion that, yeah, Aaron Judge is either the most valuable or second most valuable player in the league this year, despite setting strikeout records, because he also set home run record. So I think it's sort of a similar thing when you talk about the Astros that doesn't really make sense to single out the negative of Judge's strikeouts to the exclusion of the positive things he did. It also doesn't totally make sense to fixate on the positive aspects of the Astros not striking out because, yes, they had the majors lowest strikeout rate. It was very impressive and an asset to them, but they also had the majors lowest strikeout rate. It was very impressive and an asset to them. But they also had the majors highest isolated power. They hit for more power than anyone else too.

And it's incredible that they did that, that they combined both of those qualities in one lineup because usually they don't get together. You have to compromise on one to improve the other. If you're someone who swings hard and swings for the fences, you're going to have to accept a certain number of strikeouts with that. And the Astros didn't. They built this lineup seemingly intentionally that would make contact and also hit for power, which is great, but it's a hard thing to replicate. I think you can't reliably do that really. And so if you're going to choose one of these things, strikeouts or power, usually you're

going to want to go with the power that it will help you more in the long run. And the Astros weren't the Royals of 2014, 2015, who made a lot of contact but didn't really do anything else. The Astros did everything. So even if you just dwell on the strikeouts, you had the Yankees, who had of the highest strikeout rates and they took the Astros to a game seven this year. The Dodgers nearly won the World Series, also took the Astros to a game seven. They had a higher than average strikeout rate. They won more games than the Astros did this year. The 2016 Cubs, great team, not really a great contact team. So I think just saying that the Astros prove that putting the bat

on the ball gets you what you're looking for is somewhat reductive because you could just as easily cite other teams that prove the opposite or cite other qualities of the Astros that help them just as much or more. So that's my take on this. Good answer, Ben. Thank you. Okay. All right. So then we'll move on to a couple of questions that you have already answered via email with some numbers that you looked up. So one question was from Guy or Guy, who says, I was thinking about how the best hitting pitchers are often big name pitchers like Jake Arrieta, Madison Baumgartner, and also how, as you have often said on the podcast, really good athletes are really good at everything. So I was wondering if there's

any correlation between how good a pitcher is at pitching and how good he is at hitting. Of course, there are a lot of pitchers who were never expected to hit, so they wouldn't count. But among pitchers who have, say, spent a full season as starters in the National League, do the better pitchers also tend to be better at picking up hitting well i ran a little query i already forgot exactly what my query was but i looked for pitchers who had you know pitched and hit over some number of years finding a decent sample and what i found i i was looking at what was it i think era minus so adjusted and wrc plus so pitcher hitting and pitcher pitching pretty easy so i ran a basic correlation and i found an r

squared value of 0.12 which is better than nothing yep so the r value that came back was i think it was like negative 0.34 so indeed as era minus gets better wrc plus gets better so the conclusion that could be reached from this is that there is some sort of relationship between better pitchers and better pitcher hitting it's certainly not uniform and there are exceptions on either side but there does appear to be something and i don't think it's just the madison bumgarner bias yeah that's that's interesting that definitely supports the idea that there's something to that so next question from dylan he says, seasons in which he was worth at least four wins consecutively during his career he also had consecutive seasons in which he was below replacement level as well as multiple seasons

in which he was worth at least one win below replacement level where does this put him among other players historically let me just pull up this email in my inbox so that i can tell you exactly how i responded and the answer is that i used baseball reference war so i'll just read my email back whatever out loud this is easier assuming i i used baseball reference war so i'll just read my email back whatever out loud this is easier assuming i loaded the right thing correct so i used baseball reference war instead and uh i found that jermaine die is one of 11 hitters all time meet the following criteria he had at least three seasons of being worth four or more wins above replacement and he had at least four seasons being worth negative war with at least

100 played appearances just to select for some playing time so we've got jermaine die jason giambi gary sheffield del ennis brian jordan bobby tolan billy rogel rogel forget it mark simon you're on it aramis ramirez ken henderson ken henderson that's fun to say pete rose and reggie jackson so there have been certainly a few players who have bounced around like this and in a very small sample there was adam dunn who just went from good to absolutely positively dreadful to kind of good again but now someone like pete rose in this case that's a different case than jermaine di pete rose had a bunch of really good years in just a few terrible years. And this does not select for the same sort of random trajectory.

But as longer baseball fans, medium term baseball fans might remember, Jermaine Dye did stay in a catastrophic injury where he, as I recall, he basically shattered his own leg with a foul ball, I believe is what that was. Maybe I'm exaggerating my memory, but I'm pretty sure I'm not. Yeah, yeah, it was it was really bad uh and i've never seen anything actually quite like it since that i can recall so die his career took a downward turn for reasons that weren't entirely just due to his own performance and ability but then he got healthier and he got better and then that's a pretty cool story for jermaine die and incidentally one of the weirdest things is that as I got this email in the inbox, just Sabre, Eric Hosmer was ranked 12th out of 13 first basemen in the AL and baseball reference has his defensive war at negative 1.6. In what universe can Rawlings

justify giving Eric Hosmer a gold glove? This isn't a situation where you have multiple players leading in different areas and ultimately have to decide on a single winner like Altuve versus Judge in the AL MVP race or Kuber versus Sale in the AL Cy Young race. This is a guy who is a bad first baseman based on quantifiable statistics. Is there some other statistical model that values Hosmer's defense? I don't know what the deal is here. People keep, what is the, first baseman have the weirdest damn reputation eric osborne has been talked about as like this amazing defensive first baseman since

he came up to the major leagues and by defensive run saved he's been 21 runs below average by ultimate zone writing he's been 29 runs below average as a first baseman no the defensive ratings are not perfect you could even argue that they're far from perfect. Are they 20 or 30 runs? No, not even because that would just if you improve Hosmer by 20 or 30 runs, then he's just average for a first baseman. They have to be off for like 40 or 50 runs over the course of his career. And look, I get it. You see a first baseman Hosmer. He has he looks good to the eye, I guess. I don't even know. But he scoops the ball like all first basemen do. Who's a first baseman who's bad at scooping? Name one. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to name one who's bad at scooping. I don't really know a fan, but Hosmer has the reputation for maybe being the best. And I mean, that is a fan graphs stat scoops. We can look it up.

It's from Baseball Info Solutions, I assume. And Hosmer did lead the majors in scoops this year with 34, but he also never takes a day off, really. So that's partially a playing time thing. He had the third most innings fielded at first base this year. So that's part of it. And he led Anthony Rizzo, who basically had the same innings total by three scoops. It's not that significant a difference. Plus, that is obviously

dependent on your infielders, too. I don't know whether Hosmer's getting more scoop opportunities than the typical first baseman, but it's possible. I mean, that does seem to be something that he is good at, and maybe that sticks in people's minds the most. I mean, Hosmer's a guy who's kind of always been maybe had a reputation that exceeds his actual performance on the field. I mean, Hosmer is a guy who's kind of always been maybe had a reputation that exceeds his actual performance on the field. Now, granted, he was very good this year after a slow start that looked like it might totally sink his free agent chances. Now he is set up very well to get a good contract this offseason. But he has always just seemed like a guy for whatever reason. Maybe it's leadership qualities. Maybe it's his prospect pedigree you know like Jim Leland was starting him over Goldschmidt

right on the on the US WBC team which was making a lot of people mad so that's probably part of it and you know I don't know I guess it's just one of those things where he looks good and he's respected by the players and so that has a conflict with the stats in this case and it's not a small sample that the stats are based on over the past three years looking at first baseman with at least 1500 innings played in the field eric hosmer ranks fourth worst by defensive runs saved however by ultimate zone writing he ranks fourth worst which is the same. So what are the chances? Here are some first basemen who also have good defensive reputations who rank above

Hosmer. First of all, the answer is nearly all of them, by the way, because as discussed, fourth from the bottom. But like Brandon Belt, this is the one area where he has a good reputation. Justin Smoke. I remember when he was even a terrible hitter, which was most of his career. People were like, oh, but he came up with that defensive pedigree which is funny because you look at Justin Smoke and he has the mobility of an unplugged refrigerator but Will Myers is a good

defensive reputation at first base which is funny because he used to be a center fielder Yonder Alonzo really good defensive reputation he also ranks as below average Mark Desherre I think had a good reputation James Loney definitely has a good defense reputation as a first baseman i remember during the playoffs this year ryan zimmerman scooped a low throw and therefore that compelled the announcer just like it compels every announcer in every game when this happens to say oh that guy ryan zimmerman in this case best in the business at scooping the low throw which is the line that every announcer says whenever a first baseman scoops a low throw you know do you know how infrequently the ball gets by the first they're all good at scooping the ball every single one of them or else they wouldn't be a first baseman because it's like one of the most important

parts of the job look i get eric cosmer has a great reputation our defensive numbers are not that good especially for infielders especially for first baseman it's a complicated job i definitely understand it there are things that you could do you could anthony rizzo was great about keeping his foot on the bag javier bias is not a first baseman. It's a complicated job. I definitely understand it. There are things that you could do. Anthony Rizzo was great about keeping his foot on the bag. Javier Baez, who's not a first baseman, is really good at applying tags. There are like little quirks and Hosmer scores well

by like the fan scouting report. So people see something with their eyes, but I just don't. It seems like it's been a very, very successful propaganda campaign to make people believe that Eric Hosmer is an excellent defensive first baseman when there's just not the evidence. The evidence is not there. It's just,

I can't buy it as being true. Wow. It's been a while since we've had like a gold glove backlash. I thought we were past that, but wow, it's brought something out of us. Hosmer is a Boris guy, right? Yeah, he's a Boris guy. I wonder where the propaganda came from. Congratulations to Scott Boris, who's just like laundered his Eric Hosmer reputation through John Heyman. And it's been successful. All right. Question from Tom in Denver.

I think there's a consensus that Game 7 was a letdown yes if you could go back in time and rearrange world series games in order for maximum dramatic effect in what order would you arrange the games with the incredible game six i'm guessing he means game five game six was good too but not the game five would that be last would it be first would it be better to space out the exciting games or have them all at the end what would be the most enjoyable so the question is i guess do you just go in ascending order of excitement and just have most exciting last that's pretty compelling way to do it i mean the only objection i can think of to that of you know essentially having i guess what game two as game six and game five as game seven,

and you'd start the series with game seven. I mean, maybe there's an argument to be made that you want to hook people with an exciting game just so they get invested in the series. And so game one was fairly exciting, and it was quick. It was two hours and 28 minutes. That was, I think, yeah, that got a lot of people excited. And Clayton Kershaw was great, and it was a crisply played and pitched game. So maybe that was a good one to start with, just kind of as a gateway think was part of the reason why we all enjoyed it so much, but also led to a lot of think pieces about home run rates and strikeouts and game length and all

of that. Maybe you don't want game seven to be more than five hours long. Maybe you don't want to go into the offseason with that as the last image in your mind of seven home runs or whatever, the eight homers in game two maybe you want more of a conventional baseball game deciding the baseball season but yeah yeah i don't think strong disagree yeah i don't even agree with that yeah i'm playing devil's advocate to a position no one has taken so i think yeah i think you just you want to end on a high note and for me for most people i think game five was the high note in this series yeah i mean game seven of of last year ended in a weird way like cory kluber was not good and who started the clubs was it hendrix or something it was complicated but game seven of

2016 was an incredible game but i mean that got out of hand that's not how those teams were supposed to play but it was a lot of fun the only only thing that makes me not, I guess, want game two of this year's World Series to be the last one is that, I don't know, it ended with Brandon McCarthy on the mound, which is just a weird way for, I guess, the Dodgers to lose their season in the 11th inning. I know how they got there. Right. And that was one where there was a lot of managerial move controversy. I think some of it unfounded the pulling Rich Hill early stuff, but there were legitimate critiques you could make, I think, of how Dave Roberts handled his pitching staff between pulling Hill and having McCarthy in the game, or between pulling Hill and having Jansen in the game to close it out. He went through a bunch of pitchers very quickly and maybe left himself

without good options later in the game. So yeah, if that had been the decisive game in the series, I mean, I guess you could say it was, but it didn't come at the end. So if it had come at the end, then maybe that would have been a bigger part of the story that did Dave Roberts screw this up, which I think none of us really wanted that to be the story of this series because it was just so fun on other levels yeah right absolutely not so I like I like the way the series began I like the first two games you could swap them if you want but I like that the each team won a game there was a very clean fast-paced baseball game where aces pitch like aces there was a crazy game

that we thought was going to be the craziest game that we'd see for years and then it was not even the craziest game we saw for a week and I like that that hooked more people into the world series like that drew everyone in it was like look this is incredible this is a a battle between the two best teams of baseball this is going to be a really fun series so i like that both of those happened at the start and and really as i review the order of the games maybe i would just swap games five and seven because everything else kind of worked out perfectly but after game five i just didn't have it in me to watch more baseball like that's that should have been it it was so draining yeah it's true all right question from ryan who says upon hearing of the rumors that the dodgers might trade yasmani grandal to make room for austin barnes i looked up their numbers remembering

their defensive reputations i checked baseball prospectus's framing data if their numbers. Remembering their defensive reputations, I checked Baseball Perspectives' framing data. If their numbers are to be believed, the tandem combined for something like nine wins last year. This is similar to what Luke Roy did in 2014 with his backup. It would have been, what, Martin Maldonado maybe at that point. Are we in an age when catching tandems plausibly

contribute nine wins a year? And if so, doesn't that make them clearly the most valuable position well i firstly i think a lot of management people would tell you that catching is already the most important position because it's just so specialized and you have all these leadership qualities now i don't know i can't quite bring myself to buy that the dodgers catches were nine wins above replacement that it requires me to believe in I mean well yeah I guess it is above replacement the framing stats are relative to average and

they've both excelled in in those stats but overall right I mean looking so baseball reference has a convenient little breakdown of team wins above replacement by position and that doesn't include framing it just has whatever the whatever the defensive component is but by the baseball reference numbers the Braves finished with the best catchers at 4.4 wins above replacement unsurprisingly the Nationals in dead last at negative 1.7 Matt Weider sucks now what a life so the Braves are there at 4.4 the Dodgers are in fifth place at 3.3 do we think that the baseball prospectus defensive measurements would should would and should give the dodgers a six win boost and that that's so

large look i love the contemporary measures we have for catcher defense and i think one day they'll even be accurate and precise but i just can't bring myself to believe in that and i have to think that there's just something that is not being captured something that's maybe dependent on the pitchers or the approach that's making the catchers look better but that being said i definitely buy the dodgers were wealthy at the catcher position they had two starter caliber catchers one of whom is a second baseman which is just crazy yeah but i think it is an underrated component of how the dodgers got to where they were where they got and I think that Grandol is a pretty obvious fit for say the Nationals for next season yeah I think so too I just linked you to the baseball prospectus version of the baseball reference page and their site was recently redesigned at least for me the team icons are not currently showing up but you

can mouse over the things to see which team is which and i think it's just in order of who finished in the division anyway this is they call it the visual depth charts and so if you look at this they have the dodgers catching tandem at 8.2 wins above replacement which is actually not very far above the braves because it's not above the Braves, right? It's 8.7. Actually, yeah, 8.7. Yeah. Tyler Flowers had an amazing season, certainly if you go by the framing stats. And I wrote something about him at midseason and I interviewed him on the Ringer podcast. And I think Evan Davis wrote something about him just recently for the Hardball Times. And his framing stats were just kind of you know off the off the charts this year

and he also hit very well so he was very valuable at about six wins and then kurt suzuki actually had a good season this year both offensively and let's see it looks like even the framing stats usually he's terrible in that respect this year he was below average but not bad so he was actually good this year so they have the Braves as having the best catching tandem of all and then of course the the Cubs are high it looks like and who else is high well no one is really Orioles yeah oh right yes the Orioles are high yeah well well Castillo and Caleb Joseph are are up there. I was confusing them with the Cubs, actually. So, yeah, no one else is in the range of the Dodgers and Braves. And, I mean, I generally believe the stats.

I mean, anytime there is a real outlier, I think some skepticism is warranted, assuming it's not something you're directly recording, like, you know, a number of home runs hit or something. There's no dispute about that, really. But even in those cases, often it's, well, it's the ballpark, or it's the offensive environment, or it's having a bunch of balls that just scraped over the fence instead of dying on the wall or track, that kind of thing, or the quality of pitching. Anyway, I think I generally believe the stats, and I think they do the best job they can do to adjust for all the factors that they should adjust for. The count, the pitch type, the pitcher who's pitching and might have a tendency to get extra strikes, the umpires who've been behind the plate. All of that is factored in here, and perhaps not factored in perfectly, but I'm fairly comfortable with it as a decent, close approximation of value. And, you know, I kind of buy it.

I think that a catching tandem can be worth kind of a Mike Trout level of value when you combine multiple catchers on a team. And I think teams sort of treat it that way. I think teams have started paying for that skill receiving. There's still aspects of the catching position that we're probably not doing a great job quantifying. I think Grandal has also, I think, been celebrated for—I'm trying to remember. Is he one who has had a poor reputation as a pitch caller or a good reputation as a pitch caller? Poor reputation as a caller. Right, yeah.

Poor reputation as a caller. So it's possible that maybe he's been bad in that area and that saps some of this value. But in general, I do think that catching is extremely important and I think teams have long treated it that way, but if anything, maybe its value

is underappreciated among fans because there's just so much that catchers do. I know that the numbers bounce around every year. Definitely get it it but this year wellington castillo rated as a above average framer jt real moto rated as an above average framer steven vote rated as an above average framer these were all quite bad framers in the past they all suddenly got good this year such that i guess even and you can't even like with Wellington Castillo, look, he was paired with Caleb Joseph and Joseph has been known

as a good framer for a while. That's his skill. Orioles did not have a good pitching staff. No one would ever accuse the Orioles of having a good pitching staff, but still Castillo showed up looking good. Something's not sitting well with me right now with, with these numbers. I don't know what's going on, but yeah, great Dodgers. They're good.

Yeah. Yeah. The thing that I think sold us all initially on framing stats is that they are very consistent year to year and in fairly small samples. And so it's been really fascinating when there have been cases of guys who have gone from good to bad, like Luke Roy or bad to good, which has happened sometimes. Like Chris Ianneda has been an object of some interest because he was really bad and then he got good and then he was bad again and there were stories about how he was working on this so it wasn't just the stats it seemed to be an intentional thing but

then he kind of backslid a bit so they're all are there's a lot of consistency generally and then there are guys who fluctuate and you wonder whether it's something in the sets or something they were actually working on i don't know maybe there was less consistency this year than usual it's perhaps a jess sullivan post topic i don't know but i think in general i trust them they've proven to be consistent at least that you know i i believe it if they say that someone was really good at it so i think there was something something was off this year, I think with pitch location, this gets into the weeds a little too much. But something has changed. Like, for example, I noticed I was trying to do some research a few weeks ago on

where home runs were hit in the strike zone. So looking at like the lower third, the middle third and the upper third and something there's something anomalous. I deleted the spreadsheet because it was too weird. I didn't follow through with it something changed dramatically with the pitch locations in 2017 it's the kind of thing that would be subtle if you look at every pitch by pitch by pitch but i think something was miscalibrated and i don't think it's been corrected this is maybe some sort of i don't know if it's a conspiracy theory but something it seems like it's a big problem that's a small problem with every individual pitch but i I have a suspicion that something is off with the entire bulk of the 2017 pitch location data. Interesting. Yeah, there was obviously the transition from PitchFX to StatCarks for stat cast calibration issues and missed pitches and missed locations early in the season and that that had improved.

And so he warned me that maybe Flowers' ratings were inflated at that point by calibration problems. Flowers' ratings were inflated at that point by calibration problems. But then Flowers, I think, by the end of the season had either improved or not tailed off at all. So he seemed to be just as good from that point forward as he had been to that point. So I don't know what to make of that. But by the way, we were just mentioning the Nationals as a potential landing spot for Grandal. They, according to baseball prospectus had the least productive catching core this season negative 1.7 wins above replacement combined so i am now sending you something that has nothing to do at all with anything at all but i'm sending you a link to a page on baseball reference this is a page that's it's just bob dillinger everyone should look up bob dillinger on baseball reference to see that hat on that forehead. That's all. Also from the

front page of Baseball Reference, just to break some news that I think is maybe, we never had a pool for like the most obvious headlines of the entire 2017-2018 offseason. This though would have been a container for first place. Orioles interested in Andrew Kashner, Jason Vargas. Is that not the most obvious Orioles sentence that's ever been written? Oh, man. It really is. The only thing that could be more Orioles would be like if they sign them both on February 13th or something like that, which maybe they will. And then one of them fails the physical.

Right. They definitely have a type. It's not a great type. What is the type? It's bad. Yeah, bad. is the type? It's bad. Yeah, bad. And yeah, that's about it. Low on base percentage sluggers and back of the rotation starters. One was about tanking in the NL East. Specifically, Scott in Philadelphia was wondering why we were drawing a distinction between the Braves' rebuild or tank progress and the Phillies' rebuild or tank progress, why we were alluding to a difference there, at least when it comes to the player talent. Obviously, there seems to be a front office difference there, but the talent in the organization. And then Colin emailed us also to ask a more broad question, which was spurred by our discussion of the Cubs tanking. So we've got a Phillies fan emailing us about our Phillies tanking discussion and a Cubs fan emailing us

about our Cubs tanking discussion. And they both in their emails acknowledge possible biases here. But Colin wants to know, what's the line between rebuilding and tanking? Why would we say that one team is tanking and another is not? What would make us draw that distinction? And I think there isn't really a line necessarily. Maybe you could make the case that there are certain things that you do if you're tanking that you don't do if you're just regular rebuilding but really it's a spectrum probably and tanking is just further along that spectrum than rebuilding is and so when you start

saying one word and not the other word i i don't know if i can pin down exactly where it is but like with the astros i think you say it because they were abysmal. They were winning 50-something games, and they were not really signing free agents. They were getting number one picks year after year. I think they kind of check all the tanking boxes. And with other teams, maybe it's a little blurrier. Like the Cubs never got that bad. They did sign some free agents. They signed signed like edwin jackson for instance they their payroll was low but not that low it wasn't like the lowest in the majors so you know maybe they're more debatable still feels like tanking to me but i don't know if you have any thoughts on how to classify a team as one or the other yeah all tanks are rebuilds but not all rebuilds

are tanks and i think that the there's obviously no line you can draw. But I think the defining trait of a team that is tanking is that they are paying next to no attention at all to the major league level. They are not even concerned with having a somewhat competitive product. Like it's clear that the Brewers have rebuilt and they are still rebuilding. But as you wrote about the summer, Brewers didn't really tank. They never quite tanked. And some of that might just be a product of having capable players at the major league level in the first place but you know for example the brewers went out and they they signed eric thames last offseason and they gave him a job and they just kind of junior gara these are special sorts of players but he's not a prototypical player that you would sign if you were a team that

didn't care at all about the major major league level because he was like already in his 30s when they brought him over and that's weird so and they they signed some relievers like what neftali feliz it didn't work out but a team that's tanking is just like all right look we're gonna lose a lot we already know that so we're not gonna fake it and a team that's rebuilding is like look we're not going to fake it. And a team that's rebuilding is like, look, we're going to lose a lot, but please still watch sometimes. And so there's that subtle difference, but it's there, I think. And I think with those criteria, there have been very few actual tanks. Like the Astras were an obvious tank and the other ones you could debate.

But like the Astras went, they turned it to the hell with 11. They turned it to 20. with 11 they turned it to 20 yeah right all right close with a couple very quick ones mike says whether you darvish is tipping his pitches or not it seems like the perception that he might be will force him to change parts of his wind-up delivery and mechanics for next season my question is could a team fictitiously claim an opposing pitcher is tipping his pitches in a ploy to rattle him might there be some upside to doing that and okay i thought i thought about i want i'm sorry to interrupt but i actually wanted wanted to throw this right over to you okay so maybe i shouldn't cut you off at all but when i got this i thought i read this email and i thought no there's something

obvious about this that there's a reason it doesn't happen and then i thought no with no there's not yeah can you come up with anything i I mean, with Darvish, he was tipping his pitches story. That kind of came out after his second start in the series, right? Were people saying he was tipping in his first start? People were talking about the slick balls and the slider and all that. But I seem to remember the tipping kind of coming out more after the first one. And, you know, there's no advantage no advantage obviously to having that come out at that point so i could see though if you know you're going into a series against a guy and you're going

to be facing him twice most likely sure like especially if he struggles a little bit in game one get in his head and say well maybe i was struggling because i was doing something i mean the worst thing that you can do probably for a pitcher is to be so conscious of your mechanics and your movements that, you know, you're in your head, you're overthinking it, and maybe you're not acting as naturally as you would normally. So I don't really see a downside. I mean, obviously, if you're doing it all the time, it's not going to work. But if you deploy this strategy judiciously, like, you know, I don't know how you get the news out. I guess you kind of allude to it, like in the way that Carlos Beltran seemed to in his post-Game 7 interview when he didn't really offer specifics. He was kind of

saved from doing that by A-Rod, it seemed like. But I think that, yeah, you could kind of make a casual comment. We were seeing his pitches really well today or we picked up on some sort of pattern. So I don't see a dramatic downside to this. I mean, it might not work. Like the guy might know that he's not tipping pitches. He might think it's gamesmanship. He might have people on his own team telling him, no, they're just making this up.

But there's no real downside or cost to doing this, I don't think. We've talked before about the hypothetical of what if every team intentionally walked Mike Trout in spring training just to like just piss off the Angels and absolutely nothing else. Because like he couldn't do anything about it. The Angels would be super annoyed. But let's say you're, I don't know, let's say you're the Astros. And then you want to pick on, I don't know, who's the best pitcher? Oh, right, James Paxton.

You want to pick on James Paxton. And so let's just say you're going to face Paxton a few times in a season, probably for the Astros. And then if you have a good game or a good inning against him, you just say after the game, like, yeah, no, we just happened to we pick something up and we kind of had an idea of what he was throwing. And so based on that, we're able to hit him just something like that. It doesn't even it doesn't have to mean anything.

You just say it and you say it so consistently and you just say it every time. And then if Paxton has like a good game, then I don't know what you do. You just keep it to yourself or you say, I don't you just say it every time and then if paxton has like a good game then i don't know what you do you just keep it to yourself or you say i don't know we we saw something but then we just couldn't get the bat on the ball maybe you didn't say anything at all but if you just keep saying it over and over at the very least paxton's gonna be like just come on just knock it off stop saying that but i mean they're going to hear it and they're going to get curious about it and maybe i don't know maybe it would be more fun to pick on some like worst pitcher who you have a better chance of hitting well in the first place because odds are maybe maybe the astros aren't going to hit paxton farewell but i don't know pick on sean monea or

something just be like yeah no we we totally saw he was doing something with his breaking balls and so we picked up on that and we were able to lay off them and yeah it just seems like he would just it would have the potential to drive an opponent crazy. And even if it kind of pisses them off, well, whatever. He's a rival. You don't want to get on his good side anyway. So, yeah, just do it. Just do it for the hell of it. Yeah.

All right. And last one. This is from Nick. He says, right now I'm watching a baseball anime called Major. And the main antagonist is a 27-year-old Cy Young winner from the, quote-unquote, Detroit Jaguars, who transferred to the NPP because of the big contract offered to him, number not mentioned. How much money do you think a real NPP team would have to pay to get a Cy Young winning pitcher entering their prime? I'd imagine the

dollars per war would need to be doubled, tripled, maybe even more, or is it simply just impossible? So how much would an NPP team have to pay a major league player to go over there who would not otherwise be going over there? Okay. Well, let's say we have a Cy Young caliber starter free agent. He's looking at a $200 million contract in the States. Japanese team might need to offer 300, maybe 400 million. And then I think at that point, the pitcher would be like be like whoa i can't turn that down but a

more likely approach japanese teams don't have that kind of money maybe you're just like look we want to give you like 60 million dollars for one year just come just come over just check it out and that i could actually see happening i don't know with who i don't know who has that kind of characteristic but can you imagine if like i don't know zach granky wanted to see the world and he just spent a year in japan maybe he would hate that absolutely hate that but maybe he'd love it i don't know someone someone quirky could go over there and just do it for a year yeah someone maybe young someone single who doesn't have to transplant his whole family maybe would be more likely to do this someone who has some affinity for Japanese culture maybe has been there before maybe has some heritage there would help but yeah I mean one year like I don't know for some guys there's probably almost no amount of money you could give them to get them to go over on a long

term contract because if you're talking about the difference between like 200 million and 400 million or something I mean you're super rich either way. And maybe at that point, you care more about your legacy and about the competition and how you're perceived than you do about being able to afford whatever, like three luxury yachts instead of two or something. So I think there are probably some guys who would just say no, almost no matter what. But one year, I think that's much more palatable because you know that's just that's not gonna be necessarily the thing about you that is most remembered it's not gonna kill your career stats or anything and especially if you're someone

who maybe hasn't had the big contract yet and is a free agent for the first time something like that and someone offers you 60 million for season, and then you can come back right after and sign another big deal, it's definitely, it's got to be tempting. And obviously, it's become much more common for players to go in one direction or the other. So it's not quite as much of a culture shock now as it might have been 10, 20 years ago. So yeah, I could see it, but it would have to be a really hefty premium to to get a star or you look at this you take this in the other direction and i know he's not a free agent but take imagine you're like you're justin verlander you were 34 years old you just won the world

series you have won the rookie of the year you've been the cy young you've been the mvp you've done everything you need to do in the major leagues now he's maybe he still has a hall of fame legacy to build but if you're verlander what if you just like took this year to be like let's just go see what japan's like and i'll come back after it but you know he wouldn't even necessarily need that 60 70 million dollar premium whatever because he'd be like well i have all this money already i don't really need anything and i'm now married to someone who might even have more money than i do for all i know so like let's let's just see what it's like. Kate Upton is probably familiar with traveling the world for work.

Let's just go live in Japan for a year. Sure. Yeah. I could see it. All right. Well, this was a long one, but a fun one, at least after our initial discussion. So we will end there and be back later this week. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild.

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in the show page podcast post on the site. Get them while they're available. We can order more at some point in the future. So that'll do it for today. We will talk to you soon. I'm going to tell it a burning song slowly No matter what we've ever done