Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1137: How Much is That Slugger in the Window?

Episode Date: November 16, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about pitcher Luis Perdomo’s unusual triples total, Carlos Beltran’s retirement, and Giancarlo Stanton’s trade value, then answer listener emails about Aaron Judge’s similarities to Ryan Howard, an automatic nine-inning, five-run pitcher, the difficulty of evaluating pitch-calling, and bathroom breaks in baseball. Audio intro: Beastie Boys, "Triple Trouble" Audio outro: The Strokes, […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1137 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. My name is Ben Lindberg. I work for The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. And I know it is a big day for you because you finally published your post on Louis Perdomo hitting four triples. I know that you were really impatient for the playoffs to end so that you could finally write about this. So congratulations on the big day thank you i uh i i felt an extraordinary amount of pressure as i was uh as i was writing it i collected all the videos many other writers were chasing this story i know

they were right behind you the other day i i had also published this post about javier bias striking out and i i remember seeing in like in game five of the nlcs javier baez struck out looking and then he took like a little he took a swing after the pitch had gone by and the umpire had already called him out and he like he took a swing not just like a half swing he took a real swing but it was like literally a second late and i scrawled it down in my notepad and i was like this is gonna be great and then i can't wait to write about this with the playoffs are over and i found i did all this internet searching and i found another case of him doing the exact same thing in like august of 2016 i was like ah it's a pattern and so i got i was

really excited and then the day came where i was like well i need something to write about i'm gonna do the bias thing and i started it and then i thought what what is this so somebody published it somebody published it. Yeah, no, it definitely got published. It's nice to not have editorial oversight. But somebody left a comment. He was like, I usually like Jeff's stuff, but this seems like it's one relevant video and a bunch of words just kind of in between. And I read that comment like, yeah, no, you kind of saw through it. But still, I think something like 10 or 11% of the voters decided that he struck out swinging instead of looking, which, yeah, you know what? I'm open to it.

Well, tell me about Perdomo's four triples. Well, most of them were defensive mistakes. One triple was a line drive pretty much at Keon Broxton that Keon Broxton seemed to lose in the lights. So he ranged over over and at the last second he turned his head away and the ball got by him the next triple was a flare in the left center gap against Cincinnati and Billy Hamilton was closing in and left fielder was closing in and it looked like Hamilton kind of pulled up a little bit so he slid and just missed the ball

and it got by and Pernima kept going the third triple was a legitimate triple to unsurprisingly triplesey in San Francisco. I think Hunter Pence kind of took a funny route, but it was the most legitimate of all the triples that Perdomo hit. He hit the ball hard the other way. That's a good triple. And the fourth triple is on the last game of the season where Perdomo just hit like a kind of ordinary ground ball down the third baseline. But I don't know if you've seen Pablo Sandoval recently. I have. Can't really stop those balls anymore. Ball got by him, goes into the left field corner. Now, this is a ground ball into the left field corner in San Francisco, and Perdomo wound up on third

base, but Jarrett Parker was the left fielder. He went over to try to retrieve the ball, but he seemed to take his time. I think he approached the ball and sort of assumed, oh, Perdomo's a pitcher. He's going to stop at second. He didn't do that. He went all the way to third. And so Jarrett Parker's, I don't know, lackadaisical behavior might have gifted Perdomo his fourth triple. He is the first pitcher since 1955 to hit at least four triples in a season. The Kansas City Royals in franchise history do not have four pitcher triples, and their

pitchers used to hit more than they do now. So that's like 2,300 plate appearances. The last team to have at least four pitcher triples was the 1977 Pittsburgh Pirates, and as much as probably three of the four Perdomo triples maybe shouldn't have happened if the defense were better. At the end of the day, he did end up on third base. Many triples sort of require some sort of defensive mistake or miscommunication, and Perdomo was willing to go for it. And I found some cases of balls that Perdomo hit that might have turned into triples, too. There was one where he hit a double where the ball kind of stuck at the base of the wall,

but he got to second because I guess he hit the ball too hard. There was a little flare hit to right center field against St. Louis, where Randall Gritrick made a diving catch, but had the ball gotten by him. His backup wasn't in place. That was going to be a triple. And in Perdomo's first game of the season, he hit this opposite field fly ball to the right field corner in San Diego. And Jarrett Parker, in one of his two games, two starts in right field,

made a leaping catch against the wall where Perdomo might have had three bases. So first game Parker robs him of a triple last game Parker gives him a triple playing in the other corner Luis Perdomo according to stat cast the fastest pitcher in baseball and as fast as Lorenzo Kane as an everyday player huh all right lots of fun facts there glad you got those off your chest and it's particularly impressive because this is a very triples-averse era. Like, this was, I think, the hardest season ever to triple or tied with the hardest with 2013. There were, what, 0.16 triples per game, which, you know, has to do with a lot of factors.

I guess fewer balls in play, period. And then lots of balls just going over the fence instead of hitting off the fence or whatever triples often do and maybe positioning is better maybe runners are better about not trying to stretch into triples at times when they shouldn't I don't know there are many factors behind that but it is very hard to hit triples these days so even better good job Perdomo I think I haven't confirmed this but i i think that the blue jays actually just set the record for the fewest triples in a season by a team they had five the blue jays had five and lewis perdomo had four maybe fewer irregular outfield fences and

dimensions probably has something to do with it so yeah which is a shame because everyone loves triples but if you love triples you should love per Perdomo. So now we know. I want to banter about a couple things before we get to emails. Got a lot of emails lined up, but everyone this week, of course, is talking about Carlos Beltran and John Carlos Stanton for different reasons. Stanton as a trade candidate, Beltran as a recent retiree. So not a shock. Beltran retired. I think we all sensed that was coming probably. He was very diminished as a player and was losing playing time and was 40 years old and he finally won that elusive World Series. So this seemed like the perfect time to go out. And indeed, that is what he decided to do. And so we've gotten many waves

of appreciation of Carlos Beltran and people talking about his Hall of Fame case, of course, because that's what we do the second a player retires who is in any kind of meaningful way. But it's been fun to review Beltran's career and also who he is as a person. And that's the thing. I mean, it almost reminded me of the previous week when we were all talking about Roy Halladay in this way. And obviously, Beltran is fine. This is not a sad, tragic occasion as it was when we were talking about Halladay. But there are a lot of parallels between these guys in that they were essentially the same age. I think Beltran was born about three weeks before Halliday was, and if anything, this just makes Halliday's death sadder, but the fact

that their careers overlapped, their ages were the same, they were kind of equally valuable as players. Depending on what war you use Beltran was you know somewhere like two to four wins ahead of Halliday and they were both kind of perfect players in a way at least at their peaks I mean Halliday had better seasons higher peak probably seasons where he was the best pitcher in baseball Beltran probably didn't have that on the hitter side but they both had sort of an overlapping period where they were among the best players of the game and didn't really have any weaknesses in their game. And I think the other commonality that has been really nice to

see, because we all know Carl's Beltran's numbers and it can be fun to run through them again and review just how good he was at every aspect of the game. But all the stories that have come out about what good people they were, I think that was the most touching thing about all the Halliday remembrances in the previous week. And we've heard the same thing about Carlos Beltran and just, you know, how he would be generous with his time, how he has helped people, how he is retiring to help people more. And fortunately, he got to hear all of these nice things that people were saying about him, which Halliday didn't. So you, among many people, wrote a story about how Beltran was just a complete player, which doesn't necessarily mean that he's better or more valuable or more deserving of honors than someone who was less complete but

equally valuable. but there is something really satisfying about looking at his stats and remembering who he was especially as a young guy who could do everything yeah Beltran kind of came around almost at the right time maybe he was a little ahead of his time in terms of when he peaked he was one of those players that you can really appreciate when you have all the numbers that we have now and it's easy to take them for granted but even 10 years ago we didn't have the uh we didn't really have wins above replacement on any website that i can think of i think that people weren't so accustomed to base running and defensive metrics and meltron was good at it all and he came up for

just a dreadful royal team that had a lot of top prospects but he was the only one who really really did anything he's a guy who came up and he became successful almost immediately, even though he never played in AAA. He played like a third of a season in AA. The Royals were just so excited to use him. And he bumped Johnny Damon, I think it was, out of center field almost immediately. And he was just so amazingly good and he fulfilled nearly every role that you can think of a player filling over the course of a long career, aside from, I guess, he didn't—I don't think he pitched. So that's one role he didn't fill. But, you know, maybe he'll have another career.

I saw Jake Peavy wants to come back to the Major League. So maybe in a year, Carlos Beltran's going to want to make a comeback and try it out as a pitcher. But in terms of just his humanity, his good role model behavior, I think it's easy. If you as the average person are having an ordinary day, maybe it's a Saturday, you can think, I'm a good person. I'm going to do some nice things for other people. But then when you have a workday and you go to your job and maybe you have things piling up or you're just feeling a lot of pressure, then you can start to feel almost necessarily selfish or self-involved. And you can kind of be on edge and you might be less of a good human than you might be under other more relaxed circumstances. So maybe you might have a warped opinion of yourself. circumstances so maybe you might have a warped opinion of yourself you might think well at my core i am a good person but i'm just so busy that i don't often get to act necessarily like the good

person that i i want to be or could be if you're a professional baseball player i i've never been one i never will be one but i have to imagine that you're kind of under a lot of stress almost all the time maybe you get used to it over the course of two decades in the major leagues and of course you do have an off season and of course you technically only have like four hours of work a day but we both know that's not true you're always at the ballpark it's just less if you're a dh and a part-time player so there's that his glove was retired in ceremony so that that opened up some afternoons for him you know the worst part he played defense after that ceremony. He played in the outfield.

I wonder if they had to dig it up. Or I wonder if there's actually a glove still down there. So I don't know exactly how much time Beltran was giving to teammates and the community when he was a younger player, I guess. But I think it speaks volumes about someone like Beltran or a comparable player, like Halliday. I keep doing this wrong. Responding to listener feedback, I see. I've been saying Halliday my entire life,

and I just looked it up, and yeah, no, sure enough, Halliday. That A is meant to be pronounced as it is. There was also a Halliday, which is just confusing. There's another prominent player with that name. And there's the less prominent Brian Holliday. Look, there's a lot of words, there's a lot of syllables, and they sound kind of alike. You know what I'm talking about. But anyway, I think it speaks volumes about someone like Beltran or Holliday, where they're still able to do so much for other people while fulfilling this role as a very prominent Major League Baseball player. The spotlight is always on them. They're constantly getting attention from fans. They're always just, yeah, you know, just always feeling the stress of being a celebrity and to still be able to do so much

for other people is something that I would like to think that I'd be able to do, but I know almost for a fact that I couldn't because sometimes I get stressed out by the silliest things, like writing about Luis Perdomo. Yeah, right. Yeah, I think, you know, if you play for 20 years in the major leagues and when you retire, no one really has anything bad to say about you except that you once struck out looking on a borderline curveball. I think that is, that's pretty good. I think, you know, we didn't have to review any quote-unquote problematic storylines in Carl Speltron's career. He was just always above board and without reproach, and that is admirable as well, his ability to steal bases at a remarkable clip or efficiency and everything else he did.

Hit for average, hit for power, be a great playoff player. and everything else he did, hit for average, hit for power, be a great playoff player. So I actually might have a chance to vote for Carl Spelltron as a Hall of Famer if they don't kick me out of the BBWA before then. I don't remember exactly what year I'll be eligible for the first time, but I think I've been in there about five years and he'll be eligible in five years. So it's got to be right around that time. So I would certainly cast my vote for him and would look forward to doing so. And I think he, you know, he's just about right at the level of an average Hall of Fame center fielder, Jaws-wise. And I was going to say, I don't see the argument against him.

I do. I can imagine what the argument will be. Probably just that he was never the best player in baseball or the best player in his league, which isn't really fair because he overlapped with late career Bonds and then prime Albert Pujols. So it was very difficult for him to be the best player in baseball at any point. I guess 2006 was the closest he came, probably his peak season with the Mets. And he was fantastic and probably still not quite as good as Pujols. But I never am very persuaded by that

argument about you know he was never the best I think I mean many Hall of Famers were the best at some point but I would guess that how many were never the best that that'd actually be a fun stat segment or something just how many people in the Hall of Fame were never the best player in their league even just going by one year or or. I mean, it's got to be a high percentage because in a lot of cases, you have guys who had 20-year careers who were great the whole time. And if you overlapped with one of those people, as most players do, then there's no shame in being the second best or the third best over a very long period. That still gets you into the Hall of Fame, unless we're just saying that only the best player at any one time could be in the Hall, which is like extreme small Hall. So I don't care about that line of argument at all. And

if you think he's a borderline statistical candidate, which, you know, is true. I mean, he's not a slam dunk. He's over the line for me, but I could see if you quibble with that. over the line for me, but I could see if you quibble with that. But the postseason record, I just think that has to be your tiebreaker, right? I mean, when you play 65 games, 256 plate appearances with an OPS over 1,000 in the playoffs, that is extraordinary. So I think that should get him in, if nothing else. And really, I would just think that anyone who doesn't consider his statistical case compelling is probably either not looking at a metric that sums up everything he did well or maybe just didn't pay that close attention because he was playing for the Royals for some of his best years or you know I just I don't really see a strong argument for leaving

him out other than the fact that maybe he doesn't pass that sniff test or smell test. But you were talking about that when we talked about Halliday last week, how you kind of have that sniff test. So does he pass your sniff test? I mean, the reason why the sniff test is dangerous is because different people and different potential voters have different senses of smell, so to speak. Like your smell is calibrated by war and by evaluating players in that way, and someone else's smell is dependent on whatever, RPI or something. So that's not really the way I would want to settle a Hall of Fame debate, but does he pass that test for you? Yep. And I think that ultimately, no matter how much research Hall of Fame voters do

on players, I have a sense that at the end of the day, it does kind of come down to the sniff test for everyone anyway. I think that people have a gut sense, and I think that the human tendency is to search for information that confirms that sense. I can tell you, by the way, I just pulled up the baseball reference year by year leaderboard for war. I looked for pitchers, and I'll tell you who by this measure was never the best pitcher in baseball. Jack Morris, non-Hhall of famer jack morris never the best pitcher in baseball which is weird because you'd think that the people who have thrown their support behind him would be the same people who insist that you'd be the best anyway jack morris trying to make the hall of fame on the strength of one game that he pitched but yeah carlos beltran passes my sniff test of

course it's calibrated differently but that's kind of the whole point of having several hundred people voting for the Hall of Fame. Now, I'm not one of them yet. You're not one of them yet. Did you have a vote this year for anything? No, no, I never have votes because I'm in the New York chapter of the Baseball Writers Association, which is very large. And the votes kind of pass, I guess, randomly from person to person. So even after years, I have not had any vote. So I didn't have to get any angry tweets from, I don't know, people who didn't like your

Jordan Montgomery second place vote for the AL Rookie of the Year award. Can you imagine how easy your life must be if you are passionately angry about who someone votes for second place. Did you get a lot of that? Did you get blowback for that? I got enough. Now, so there's a setting. There's a setting I discovered on Twitter where you can basically not see people who haven't verified their Twitter accounts through their phone or their email. And I've turned it on.

I'll tell you what. Twitter is a lot more, a lot clearer, a lot less busy than it used to be. There's a lot of unfair. Now, here's the downside is there are certain people who I like who apparently haven't verified their accounts. But you win some, you lose some. It's fine. Is that what that means? That verified only?

I thought that was like checkmark people. That's different. Oh, okay. So that's your verified identity. But I guess you can confirm your Twitter account using your phone or your email, just to be clear of this link. I think that by using that filter, then you lose a lot of like egg avatars or people who are just clearly on there to troll non-serious Twitter users. So it's one way to weed out a certain amount of riffraff now. It also weeds out a certain amount of non-riffraff, but whatever. It's Twitter.

It's not important. Yeah, okay. All right, and we also wanted to talk briefly about John Carl Stanton just because everyone is. I'm sure we'll have other opportunities to talk about him this winter. But right now the trade rumors are really ramping up because it's the GM meetings, and Derek Jeter has spoken out about Stanton and has evidently said, quote, everything is complicated, which is a philosophical player quote taken out of context. Such is life. Yeah. I guess the question is, the central question here is what do you think Stanton's surplus value is? And that's a really hard question to answer because, of course, he is,

we know, signed for three more years and $77 million, which is not cheap, but he is an MVP caliber player, certainly was this year. So that's perfectly fine. If it were just $3.77, he'd have plenty of value and he would bring back lots of prospects and that would be great and we could talk about that very easily. But he also has an additional seven years on the deal for $208 million and he can opt out of that if he wants to after 2020, but we don't know if he will. It's really, it's impossible to predict whether he will really because so much of the opt-out decision comes down to the player's walk year so I don't know what Stanton's going to do the year before he has that decision and we saw this year with what Ian

Kennedy and and Johnny Cueto and Masiro Tanaka I mean their decisions not to opt out were largely dependent on their 2017 so that's going to be the case with Stanton too. And if he doesn't opt out, well, then you're on the hook. You know, presumably he will be declining or will be coming off a down year, and that's why he won't have opted out. So then you'll be stuck with a guy for another seven years, and who knows how he's going to age with his kind of unusual profile as a player and just as a physical being so it's really hard to say either he has a lot of surplus value or he has

like no surplus value so just given the sums involved in the uncertainties involved it's going to be tough to figure out what he is worth and I guess that's why when we were talking about the Krasnick survey last time and how a lot of baseball insiders or at least a sizable minority think that he won't be traded, that is probably why. Not because the Marlins don't want to clear the contract, but just because no one is totally sure what the contract is exactly. Yeah, this one is very complicated, as Derek Jeter said. I think this is sort of, it's a banter part about Giancarlo Stanton, but also in large part about Derek Jeter, who, okay, so the Marlins still have some baseball operations people. They still have Michael Hill, I believe. They still have a lot of people who have than I was kind of expecting. I thought that he might be sort of around to be the baseball-friendly face of new management, and then he would, I don't know, maybe kind of rubber stamp some things.

But I'm starting to get the sense that Jeter is more involved than I expected him to be. Look, Derek Jeter, really good player. Called overrated so often, he might even be kind of underrated if you go back and look at what he was maybe kind of in over his head maybe kind of a a transactional moron for now yeah let's give him some time it's hard to know right i i did an interview with stephen goldman of the excellent infinite inning podcast on the ringer pod not long ago just about Jeter and kind of the precedence for Jeter like great players who've gone on to have front office roles and it's not that distinguished a group in terms of their front office performance it's it's just you know it's

two different skill sets and one doesn't necessarily translate to the other and right now Jeter is kind of out of step with the times just in the sense that we don't really get to see former players running baseball teams anymore, at least not former players who've kind of gotten that position because they are well-known and famous and respected as people, but haven't really put in any time to train as baseball executives. It's a pretty specialized job now. There's a lot you have to know, and Cheater might be fine. Who knows? He's been good at everything else in his life to this point, but it's a big learning curve, and he is stepping into deep waters that are patrolled by people who really know what they're doing, so it's tough. Now he's immediately facing one of the more difficult transactional propositions in all of baseball right now. Yeah, right. I don't know. There are not very many players who would be more difficult to move than Giancarlo San just because of his unique contract. But I don't think that there is a defense for looking at San and thinking, I want a team's top four prospects for him. That just doesn't make sense. It's just too expensive.

That just doesn't make sense. It's just too expensive. And look, in theory, and maybe even in practice, in theory or in practice, baseball could stand to have more diversity of thought. There's been a lot written about this and, you know, how every front office is starting to look the same and everyity of thought, I guess. But when you get to this in practice, if you have a general manager who is looking at things in a different way, or I guess a CEO who's looking at things in a different way, well, the fact of the matter is that the people who run their teams like, I don't know, Wall Street businesses or some sort of finance word, run their teams like I don't know, Wall Street businesses or some sort of finance word they are doing so because they are they believe they are optimizing the process to make the team as good as possible at some point or for as long as possible. They're trying to be really efficient. And if you have someone who steps in, like Derek Jeter, he's coming at things from a different perspective. He sees Stan and

he thinks wow, look at that superstar, what could be more desirable than a power hitting young marketable superstar? And he's right. It's more complicated than that. And if you have someone like that step in with this power, the likelihood, like, I don't know, like Dave Stewart, is that person is just going to be taken advantage of. And they're going to lose assets to other teams who are going to celebrate the fact that they just made moves that are positive for them. So I don't know how you accomplish greater diversity of thought in the way that baseball teams operate. Because

if you have 29 teams or however many that think that they're trying to optimize the process, then unless someone comes along who approaches things very differently, but is great, I don't know what you do. So maybe you just need a really good throwback talent evaluator. Maybe that's Derek Jeter. Yeah. Yeah. MLB is running a diversity fellowship program for the first time, I believe, ever this year. And that might be worth talking about at some point. But yes, I mean, being a Hall of Famer is also another way maybe to get one of these jobs. another way maybe to get one of these jobs but I just don't know like is Stanton more of a salary dump guy or is he more of a you have to give us a top prospect type guy like I I honestly have a hard time telling which he is and maybe the Marlins will be prioritizing the salary dump side more so than the talent acquisition side I don't, given their financial constraints or what they've decided their financial constraints are.

But I don't know how to value him. Like, just looking at the entirety of the contract, obviously you can't just ignore the seven years post opt-out. So you have to put some kind of percentage on that, I suppose, about how likely he is to pick up that option or not exercise the opt-out. And I don't know what percentage you put on it. I don't know how you project inflation will change how his contract is perceived. You know, by the end of his contract, when he's making, well, he's, I think he makes $25 million in his final year, which is actually lower than he makes for most of those years. But, you know, when he's making 32 million in 2025, is that a lot? How much will that be at

that point? You can't project the economy and yet you kind of have to. So I just, I don't know, like what would you give up for Stanton? If someone just said you can have him, he'll accept a trade. He won't waive a no trade clause which is yet another complication here you know you'd think that he'd be eager to leave but he does have to approve the trade so if someone says okay you got him or how do you value him over whatever he is three years plus seven years the possibility of 10 years what is he for you so what are what are those last seven so he can opt out after 2020 and then he has the uh the seven years what is that seven two eight two oh eight and then it has a well then there's a 10 million option at the end and yeah and a 10 million dollar

buyout so you're right i guess it's 218 technically so let's call it 7 and 218 okay so plugging into that trustee contract evaluation tool that is using a steamer estimate right now so that i set stanton for a 10-year contract beginning uh now and he begins as a 5.3 war player that sounds about right he's super good so using the same eight million dollars per war etc etc etc all these estimates no you need to know about all this the last seven years of his contract come out to a evaluation of you have any guesses uh i guess i'll say man 200 222.5 million almost right on the nose of uh of what stanton could be due now you can uh move around these estimates so if you think that a win is

worth a little more on the market, then that goes up to something like 230 or 235. But if you think that Stanton is going to age somewhat poorly, then that's bad news. Let's just say that's bad news. So right now, it seems to me we're about to see sort of a, I don't know, it's not going to be a market reset, but we're going to get some market market perspective i think in a year when all of these really good players start talking about new contracts i think we're going to learn a lot about sand this coming year as well because this past year he trimmed his strikeout rate pretty substantially he trimmed it by like 20 he just started hitting the ball more but he didn't seem to sacrifice anything in terms of power which is just terrifying by the way yeah so he uh he in a sense, he hits the ball as hard as Aaron Judge, but he also hits the ball more than Aaron Judge.

So I don't know why he didn't out hit Aaron Judge. I'll just blame the ballpark. In any case, there's a lot to learn. But right now, I might actually say that it's kind of 50-50 whether Stanton would take that, would use that opt-out clause or not. So that's, I don't know. I am so glad I am not a general manager trying to trade for Giancarlo Stanton. Yeah, or trying to trade him to someone else.

Yeah, it's really complicated. So I'm sure we'll be talking about it much more this winter. So that's enough for now. I like that this is a podcast where we do talk about the big stories that everyone's talking about, but we lead with Perdomo hitting four triples. We'll get to the big stuff.

Four triples! He's a pitcher! And after the last one, after the last triple he hit, one of the Padres' announcers, it wasn't like their main announcer, it was an unfamiliar, younger, worse-sounding voice. Anyway, whoever it was said, you know prodomo is really athletic which we can see that he is he's so fast he said this is a guy who when he was younger he came up as a shortstop and when i heard that i thought oh that's kind of it's actually kind of a bummer to me because i didn't want pronomo to have a hitting background because then that would make this less

of a fun fact and i don't know where that came from because i could find no record of luis prodomo being a shortstop i looked up the other luis prodomo being a shortstop i looked up the other luis prodomo in the major leagues who by the way also played for the padres he was a pitcher he was never a shortstop there is a luis prodomo in the minor leagues right now with i think the nationals and he is a first baseman slash outfielder not a shortstop when i when i did uh some googling and i searched for luis prodomo and shortstop i found a lot of play logs where luis prodomo pitched and the game had a shortstop so typical baseball i can find no record of luis perdomo being a shortstop now i don't want to i assume that the local broadcast knows what it's

talking about when you're dealing with a player who's been a regular for the last two years on on the padres but i don't know what that person was talking about. I don't think Luis Perdomo was ever a shortstop in any meaningful sense. Maybe when he was like 12, he played shortstop for his team, but I don't think that that is pertinent to anyone. I used to play piano for eight years. No one would be like, oh, that Jeff Sullivan, classically trained pianist. No, I just, there was a piano in the living room. Yeah. Yeah, I have tapes of myself playing piano, but at this point. How good were you?

I was pretty good, actually, but I've lost it all now. All right, so we have a lot of emails to try to squeeze in here. Do you have a stat segment you want to use as a transition here, or? It'll be quick. Okay. Okay, so I guess I'll just do it, I'll do it now.

The Scott Boris propaganda machine has been effective in that I do now find Eric Hosmer more interesting than I think I want to. But now I can't help it. So congratulations, Boris. You got me. And of the several things that are interesting to me about Eric Hosmer, it's that he sucks as a pull hitter. And he's very good going the other way here's what i mean this past season eric osmer on balls hit to the pole side uh the field is broken into thirds on fan graphs and balls hit to the pole side osmer had a 55 wrc plus that classifies

as terrible to the opposite field he had a 283 wrc plus that classifies as amazing and if you if you prefer to think of things in batting average terms pull side 218 opposite field 539 he hit 539 going the other way no Mike Moustakis here Eric Hosmer for his career he has an 84 WRC plus to the pull side that's bad and a 199 WRC plus to the opposite field that That's very good. So on Fangraphs, we have this information going back 16 years to 2002. We have splits information for everyone. And I wanted to find the biggest differences for players who have hit to the pull side and the other way. So for example, the biggest difference I could find,

and for every player, I set a minimum of 500 batted balls in either direction. Biggest difference I could find among active players, this probably won't surprise many of you, but Chris Young, extreme pull hitter. He has a 212 WRC plus to the pull side. Say Ben, do you have a guess for his opposite field WRC plus for his career? Chris Young. 67.

Not even close. All right, 33. Keep going. Wow even close. All right. 33. Keep going. Wow. 22. Keep going. Oh, my goodness.

11. I feel like you're actually somehow getting colder. Nope. Wait, I'm getting colder? I mean, you're going in the right direction, but you're slowing down. You're declining. Okay. Negative 3.

Keep going. My gosh. Negative 22. Negative 19, Chris Young. Wow. negative three keep going my gosh negative 22 negative 19 chris young chris young the other way negative 19 wrc plus as i say every time this is a statistic that has plus right in the name doesn't matter chris young negative so his difference between poland opposite field 231 points of wrc plus that's crazy not number one because since 2002 i don't know how many years of data there was for Frank Thomas. I don't remember when Frank Thomas stopped playing professional baseball.

But in any case, as Frank Thomas was declining, boy, was he just pull side oriented. Opposite field hitter, negative 14 WRC plus, pull side hitter, 270. So Frank Thomas, a WRC plus difference, pull side to opposite of 284 points so that is the lead in that direction but of course for eric hosmer we are talking about the other direction of all of the players in my sample 300 some players there was an average difference of plus 69 points of wrc plus to the uh the bullseye so i think we all know that players prefer to hit to the bullseye on average they are more productive there that's where they hit the ball hardest so again the average is plus 69 the median is plus 71 eric hosmer is at negative 115 points that rates him i don't want to say worst

but fourth lowest fourth lowest in this group out of uh the 300 players. The name right above him, David Fries, who's at negative 119 points of WRC Plus. Second to last, second to lowest, I guess, Christian Jelic, negative 127. And in last place or first place, depending on how you sort things, we've got Joe Maurer, who is at a 67 WRC Plus to the pole side and 199 to the opposite field. So looking at some of the names up here, Ryan Howard is actually here. He's right below eric cosmer but the funny thing is ryan howard was good to the pull side he was just amazing to the opposite field or when ryan howard made contact he was a fantastic baseball player but that was kind of the problem he had to make the contact so and for example joey vato is is here joey vato has numbers that are very similar to ryan howard's pull side

and opposite field but the thing is that joey Votto makes a lot more contact. And so therefore, Joey Votto is a far better baseball player. Jim Tomei is here too, because he was just amazing everywhere. But as I look at Hosmer, we talk about like Christian Yelich's upside all the time and how Christian Yelich is a really good and desirable player. And he's kind of in a lot of ways the same as Hosmer, except that he's I guess a better outfielder and Hosmer is just a seemingly overrated first baseman but I wonder how different the perception is of Jelic's offense versus Hosmer's offense because they look pretty similar yeah Hosmer's just another really perplexing case I don't know what I would do with him he basically

projects to be a league average player essentially and maybe a bit better than that just because he almost never misses a game literally never missed a game this year but that's kind of his biggest draw I mean he's coming off his best offensive season but he's had almost as many average offensive seasons as he has had good offensive seasons so I just don't know we've talked about the difference between the perception of his defense and what the stats say about his defense so i mean if you take the less optimistic or rose-colored glasses version of eric osmer he's just not that great a player at least kind of with the on-field stuff maybe he adds more value in the

clubhouse but it's, I don't know, you look at the statistical profile and you don't necessarily think, oh, this is like a seven-year, 200 million or whatever numbers are getting thrown around there for him. I just, I don't see it. So that's going to be a really fascinating case also.

All right. Well, we have been talking for quite a while already. Maybe we can just get to a few emails and maybe we'll do a second email or partial email show just to get to more of them. But since you just mentioned Ryan Howard, I will segue from that to a question from Adam, who says, listening to episode 1134, I heard you describe Aaron Judge as an extreme player in good ways and bad ways? Lots of home runs, lots of walks, lots of strikeouts. It just reminded me of another player who once won Rookie of the Year with a similar skill set, Ryan Howard. Is this a relevant data point for what to potentially expect from Judge? Or do the similarities end at the Power, Strikeouts, and Rookie of the Year? I've done no research, so feel free to either give me the benefit of the doubt as you examine this

or ruthlessly mock me for such a comparison. And it is kind of a fun comparison because they do have some things in common offensively. Obviously, both three true outcomes types, both guys who didn't really break in until their mid-20s. In Howard's case, maybe he was blocked by Jim Tomei and that had something to do with it. Judge just had more things to straighten out in his game to earn that spot. But there are obvious parallels here. I think if you want to say that, I mean, you know, we think of this as a negative, a scary comparison for Aaron Judge, which, you know, doesn't necessarily have to be. Ryan Howard was, at least for a while, a star and a really good player and an MVP.

And, you know, sure, he was not maybe as good as the RBI totals made him look. And obviously our perception of him and his career is colored by his early and steep decline and the extension that he never should have gotten and all of that. But, you know, pretty good player. Certainly not what anyone is hoping that Aaron Judge turns out to be, though. So I guess the best hope for someone who is saying, no, please don't let Aaron Judge be Ryan Howard. Aaron Judge is much more athletic, I think, than Howard.

He is a more well-rounded player. Howard was a first baseman and not an especially good one, I don't think, at least, you know, certainly not in his later years. And Judge is, or at least was this year, a very good corner outfielder and has a good arm and covers more ground than you would expect him to and is certainly faster than I think Howard probably ever was. So there's's that i think that is some reason for optimism i don't know maybe if you want to talk about the hitting profile you just mentioned the the pull side and opposite side stuff i don't know if judge has that kind of differential seems like he has great power pretty much everywhere and maybe is a little less shift prone than Howard was. Anything else stick out to you

here? I think there is the just the athleticism and and the shifting thing. Howard I think was easily exposed against left-handed pitching as well and Judge doesn't really have the same kind of platoon concerns. So yeah Howard as a younger hitter was amazing like on contact few players were more successful than Ryanyan howard but you give judge judge is a little more athletic he bats right-handed instead of lefty and he's a he's more of a defensive player howard was always a first baseman or adh so even if judge were to follow the howard track right down to the major lower body injury later in his career it's not that bad it uh it falls short maybe of being a

hall of famer but again we don't have batted ball information to know exactly how hard howard was hitting the ball we can assume that he was hitting the ball very hard but we can also assume that maybe he wasn't hitting the ball as hard as aaron judge so judge might have that advantage on him as well so howard first of all not even that bad of a comparison point but i think that judge has like three or four boxes that he checks that Howard didn't, which is only even more encouraging. Now, interestingly, Howard's career contact rate was, I think, 67%, and this season Aaron Judge's contact rate was 67%.

So there's a good matchup right there. Yeah, right. Okay. All right. Bob says, My friend and I have spent days arguing about this and i feel like this is the best source from which to get an answer would a pitcher who went nine innings every single start but also gave up five runs in each of those starts be a valuable player to have on your team i'd say you'd lose most of your games that he pitched my friend says you'd finish close enough to 500 in his starts to make the value of giving your bullpen one game in five off worth it. What do you guys think? And I answered this in an email and sorry,

Bob, but I have to come closer to siding with your friend here than you. And I did ask for additional details and parameters here, and I haven't heard back from Bob yet. I'm curious about whether he only goes nine innings and gives up five runs or do you have to let him go nine innings? Can you take him out earlier and just have pro-rated runs allowed or not? I'm just going to go with the spirit of the question

and say that he just does this automatically every time and you don't really have a choice because I think that probably makes the question more interesting. So if we say that's the case, this guy just gives up five runs and goes nine innings, I would say that definitely this guy has value and almost every team would want to roster him, if not every team probably, just because the average team in baseball this year allowed or scored 4.65 runs per game. So

five runs per game is not much more than that and this guy spares your bullpen gives you innings so i would say that every team would want this guy almost every team would want this guy instead of say their fifth starter and maybe their fourth starter because with those guys you're already conceding that they're going to be worse than the league average they'd probably allow runs at a five runs per game type rate if not worse and they don't give you as many innings so i guess you could argue that having to throw him for nine innings is a negative at times like if you're in a very close game and you want to pull the guy for a reliever like it it certainly allows less flexibility and and ability to leverage the

the game state and your other assets but i think the the benefits far outweigh the minuses so let me know if this changes your answer at all the baseball reference does have a table that i was able to find and when teams allowed five runs exactly five runs uh this year there were 540 games and they won just 38% of those games. So does that change your answer at all? Is that a worse winning percentage than you expected? No, I don't think that surprises me that much. game started by your nominal fourth or fifth starter or your worst starter in your rotation at any given time, you'd probably end up with a similar or even worse percentage, I would think,

because most fifth starters are worse than this hypothetical automatic complete game guy, right? So I think you would live with that. You'd say, okay, we're going to lose most of his starts. So Bob is right in that respect that you would lose most of the games that this guy pitches but i think you're already living with that in the case of most or you know the back end guys in your rotation and this guy gives you the advantage of helping you out in the game before and after because you can use your bullpen planning not to have to use any relievers on the days that he pitches. So I don't think that changes my answer. Okay.

All right. You disagree or that sounds right to you? No, that's fine. Okay. All right. Alex says, unless I've just missed some giant area of sabermetric discussion, has there been much focus on identifying what the optimal pitch for any situation is and getting the pitcher to throw it? I'm sure there are pregame discussions between the pitcher, catcher, pitching coach,

and whoever else they'd go over this type of strategy with, but outside of the rare situations where the coach comes to the mound, the most essential part of every baseball play, the pitch, is just determined by the pitcher and catcher. Given how much time we spend agonizing over things a manager might only do once or twice a game, are we just taking it on faith that pitchers and catchers have figured this one out? I know there are some catchers who have reputations as good game callers, but I've never really seen fleshed out what this means and what we could take from it in the way that framing has become a very tangible thing. And I guess I should mention

that even in the majors, there are some teams and some managers that call pitches from the bench, from the dugout, but I think even so, the question applies. You're transferring that responsibility to someone else, but that someone else may not have devoted all that much time and effort to figuring out the optimal pitch either. Yeah, I think that we do kind of assume that pitchers and pitchers have it worked out. And a sort of fundamental point to understand is that I think in any given situation, there is no such thing as the one optimal pitch. Now, maybe that seems counterintuitive, but I think if it were that easy to figure out the one optimal pitch, then the batter would be able to figure out what that one optimal pitch would be. And so then it no longer is the optimal pitch.

And so if you listen to Mitchell Lichtman at all then he'll talk your ear off about game theory which is all very interesting but in essence in any situation there is sort of an optimal pitch mix unless I guess you are a one pitch pitcher in which case well you've got one pitch you should throw it but in any given situation if you're a typical fastball slider change-up guy then there is going to be some optimal kind of unknowable mix of frequency odds. And so of course you're only throwing one pitch at a time, but maybe the optimal mix there is 50% fastballs, 30% sliders, and 20% change-ups or something. And you just have to, at all times, as the pitcher and as the catcher, try to decide on your pitches such that

the hitter can't know what's coming if you ever end up in a situation where you are predictable then that is going to be a disservice because the whole point of pitching is to not let the hitter know what's going to be coming so as far as studying game calling this is essentially a game calling question right and as far as studying it is concerned good luck people have tried people have taken some i think maybe good steps but it's just so freaking difficult to know how to even begin or what your point of comparison is so it it does feel like a situation where maybe there's a lot of value that's out there that we don't know about or we just can't measure or maybe someone like i don't know i think you and i have both heard of rumors

that for example like yosemite grandal is not a very good game caller but i don't know where that necessarily comes from i don't know how backed up that is with evidence maybe it undoes all of his measured framing value maybe it's worse maybe someone like jonathan lucroy is a such a good game caller that even as his framing value goes down he's still a really good catcher i don't know i'm open i'm open to the idea but i just i don't know how we're going to figure that out yeah i mean i think there are definitely players who are probably under throwing some pitch they should be throwing more there have been many stories written about players who've turned themselves around because they started relying more on their best pitch or they started

throwing it more in certain counts or something. And so I think there are cases like that where guys do get to the majors and have a lot of room for improvement in that area. But it is a really tough thing. You know, maybe it's a little easier to look at a guy's overall stuff and mix and say, well, he doesn't throw this one type of pitch enough because it's a really good pitch. But I think looking at it on a pitch by pitch basis, it's very important and also really difficult. And there's a lot we don't know and we can't really analyze from afar. Like, does the pitcher feel comfortable in this pitch? Does he want to throw that pitch? Will he have the conviction to throw that pitch well? And, you know, does he have a good feel for it on this day? And how did he set up the hitter in the previous pitch or the previous play appearances in that game?

Maybe he's been trying to, you know, show him a certain pitch a lot so that he's able to catch him by surprise with another pitch. It's really, it's hard because you have to analyze the hitter's strengths and weaknesses as well as the pitcher's strengths and weaknesses and how he's doing on this specific day and the umpire. So there's just a lot to try to factor into this discussion. And I don't know that we're anywhere really close to being able to say who's good at it or to make recommendations on an individual pitch basis. on an individual pitch basis. And so, you know, you fall back on kind of post hoc judgments about, well, you can't get beat with your, you know, third best pitch or something in this situation. But often you do want to throw your third best pitch just because you can't throw your best pitch every time or it won't be your best pitch anymore.

So it's really hard. And as for the catcher stats, I think there have been some attempts and Harry Povitis and Jonathan Judge and those guys have done some work on this, but it's really still sort of, you know, like they'll look up the value that a catcher seems to have just based on comparing various batteries, pitcher-catcher combos and saying, well, this catcher seems to be worth this amount defensively just based on how pitcher's performance varies when they're pitching to him as opposed to someone else, and it's even more complicated than that. But they'll come up with kind of a number, okay, this catcher seems to be worth this many runs, and we know how much the framing is worth, and we know how much the arm is worth, and the blocking is worth, so the game calling must be everything else. That is about as sophisticated as game calling stats have gotten. And maybe there's some signal there,

but it's very shadowy. And even if you get a sense that a guy might be a good game caller, you don't necessarily know why or what it is about his game calling that is so valuable. And maybe it all comes down to the relationship with the pitcher,

even more so than the specific pitch you're calling. If you're kind of coaxing the pitcher through the game and making him think that it's the right pitch at all times maybe that's more important than it actually being the right pitch so it's a really really difficult kind of line of inquiry and i'm i'm sure that some teams have done work on this that would probably blow our minds but in the public sphere there isn't a lot out there, although there have been some initial inroads, but you know, it is really important, and it is really hard. I have some breaking news to announce. First of all, according to Giancarlo Stanton's Fangraphs page, trade talks between the Marlins and the Red Sox for Stanton

quote, may be heating up. And according mark carrig and david lennon of newsday the mets are weighing a pursuit for japanese pitching and hitting sensation shohei otani weighing a pursuit wow how about that huh that changes my entire understanding of the market weighing just let reporters go on vacation this time of year let them just leave for a month and then return yes we don't need this every single team specific writer or blogger has written the does this team make sense for otani and or stanton post at this point so i i have sympathy for all of them and i'm sure people want to read those things but they can only go to one team each. So I don't know. Unless, what if they didn't?

Well, Otani still might not. What if Otani, what if he pitched for the Yankees and hit for the Mets? Yeah, that could work. Sometimes, not usually in the same city, despite being based in the same city. So would be a complication but you know we have planes these days you could pitch one day go to the other team on another day i like it what would that player be worth what would you want just the hitting of otani when he's perpetually jet lagged what would what would you sign him for i don't know all right let's see one more maybe we can take here andy says so i was talking with my wife during game five of the world series the game was built up to be a pitcher's

duel kershaw versus keitel who can go the distance who will break first and my wife asked me a question that i couldn't answer what happens if one of these guys needs to take a leak and god forbid what if they had some bad chinese takeout before taking the mound can coaches ask for and can umpires grant bathroom breaks all i can recall in recent gameplay is prince fielder running to the dugout for a drink of water or that other time prince fielder needed to borrow sunglasses from a fan in the stands i turn to you guys for the answer also apparently i pay way too much attention to prince fielder. Well, baseball players have one advantage, I guess, in that they sort of get a break roughly every 10 minutes or so, depending on what's happening.

If your team is up to bat, then you have some time on your hands. And if your team is in the field, then hopefully, unless it's the playoffs and Bruce Bochy is your manager, then you're only going to be out there for eight to 15 minutes. Although now you do have the opportunity. Sometimes rarely, I think, do you have a situation where all of a sudden you really need the bathroom? Like, I don't think it sneaks up on you like that, especially during a game when you're generally,

like any eating that you've done is now hours past. Maybe you have like an energy bar or some sort of like energy drink during the game but you're not going like straight from takeout chinese to playing shortstop for like the cardinals you know that doesn't uh that doesn't happen you have some time to let it settle sometimes when players have food poisoning or other similar symptoms they will be scratched because of flu-like symptoms and it it is a very flu-like symptom, I can assure you. But I think that rare is the circumstance where you're just out there, and you're like, oh man, I really need a bathroom right now.

Like that just crept up on me, and I need to go. That doesn't happen often enough for me to notice during games, but I was able to pull up an article that the New York Times wrote about this in like 2011 that I sent back, and I don't remember all the specifics, but we've all heard the stories of players or coaches getting like stuck in the bathroom during a game, and those can be funny, but sometimes apparently players will run in for a quick leak during like a pitching change or something, because you know, a pitching change takes what, two and, with a commercial break, probably like two and a half minutes that's a

lot of i used to when i was young i used to time myself if i'd be watching television in the living room i'd be like all right commercial break maybe it's a minute i want to see how quickly i can come back here while going to take a leak you find your entertainment where you can and i i would get down to like 43 seconds. Like I'd be satisfied. Now, you know, this is a smaller house. This isn't a baseball stadium, but still you probably, you're not like in an Austin Powers situation

where you're having to take a leak for like seven and a half minutes, you know? So you just kind of, you run in, you go do your business. The bathroom can't be that far removed from the dugout. That would be irresponsible. And then you jog back out to your position and then you just have the pitcher maybe slow down his warm-up throws or maybe throw an extra one and

hope the umpire is noticing or something and then you just kind of get back to to where you are and that's the worst case scenario is you're like a corner outfielder and you have the furthest to go but i think that uh i think this is not a a major concern how often a pitcher has to just go take a i don't know but you know sometimes pitchers get really sweaty and and maybe you uh maybe you just wouldn't notice uh at all yeah if they just kind of did what they needed to do in the field yeah this is uh i think an area where baseball players have it easy there was this this times article as you noted or you linked to in that email response you cited this article from 2011 that the Times wrote, sports defer to TV,

but not to athletes in need of relief. And, you know, they mentioned like Tour de France and I guess, you know, marathons and lots of other situations where athletes are indisposed much more so than baseball players. But it starts with this anecdote. I'll just read the first few paragraphs here.

Time waits for no one, especially when it is time to go to the bathroom. Monday night's Mets-Phillies game, this is in August of 2011, was delayed briefly because Angel Pagan could not be located when it was his turn to bat. Pagan was not in the on-deck circle. He was not in the dugout. He was in the upstairs clubhouse dealing with the sudden and unavoidable effects of a stomach virus. Quote, when I finished, I looked up at the TV and I see Nick Evans at three and two full count, Pagan said. Thank goodness for in lavatory televisions. Never has a man wished so much for a few foul balls so he could wash his hands.

Pagan did get to the plate and grounded out. And, you know, this article goes through all of the sports and how they handle this, but baseball definitely, I think, has it easiest with all the frequent breaks. And I don't know, like if a pitcher actually got sick on the mound or something or in the batter's box, I mean, I assume there would be some grace period or some brief delay. I mean, we have injury delays, right? And this is an injury of a sort. So I would think you'd maybe get a break to run to the bathroom. I mean, most dugouts have bathrooms just in the tunnel right out of the dugout, so you don't have to go far. And I would think maybe you'd pause the game and let someone go throw up and run back. I'm sure that has happened. So yeah, baseball has it easy, but I don't know that we've seen this tested all that often.

Angel Pagan. Okay, so let's see. This article was published on August 23rd, 2011, so I'm going to assume that therefore Monday would have been August 22nd. Let's confirm. August 22nd, Monday. Okay, Angel Pagan, leadoff for the Mets. Let's see, when was Nick Evans was at 3-2? Okay, let's confirm this. So Pagan led off, he flew out in the first inning, then he came up again in the third. He struck out. Okay, let's see, that's not going to do it. Top of the fifth.

Yeah, Nick Evans worked a seven pitch. Nick Evans got to a full count, and then he fouled the pitch off. That's good. Bought Pagan a little extra second, and then Nick Evans walked. Pagan actually came out, and he swung at the first pitch from Cliff Lee,

and he granted out. I don't know what I was expecting. Maybe he just wanted it to be over with as quickly as possible. Maybe, unsurprisingly, in the bottom of the fifth, Angel Pagan was replaced, removed from the game for Jason Preeti.

Okay. All right. Well, we can take bathroom breaks now. I think we're finished. We have talked enough. So we'll be back. We'll maybe take some more emails next time just to empty out the mailbag a bit. But this has been fun. It was pride-y. Jason's pride-y.

I'm sorry, everyone. All right. I think it's also Mark Carrigg, just so we set the record straight on all pronunciations. I know that's your favorite part of podcasting. Way too dangerous. Everything is complicated. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who've already done so include David Foster, Marco Leppe, Andrew Cordellini, Thank you. have continued to do. I get an email every time one of you leaves an iTunes review. It's always a nice little shot of affirmation.

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