Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1140: Just Another Slow November News Day

Episode Date: November 22, 2017

After an abnormally busy baseball news day, Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Aaron Judge’s shoulder surgery, Joe Morgan’s letter about steroids and the Hall of Fame, the Shohei Ohtani posting agreement, and MLB’s severe sanctions against the Atlanta Braves, then welcome listener Mike Juntunen to help them answer emails from other listeners about […]

Sold me out for chicken change Yes, you did Told me they had it all arranged They had me down And that's the bank And now you're fucked You gotta get ready For the big payback

The big payback That's where I land For the big payback The big Payback The Big Payback That's where I land Oh! The Big Payback The Big Payback Hello and welcome to episode 1140 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters, one of whom will be joining us later in this episode. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello! 1140, do you always fan crafts hello 11 40 do you

always do it that way or do you ever i wasn't paying attention you do the 1140 you're trying to kill as much time as possible in your episode days but i i go with the streamlined pronunciation yeah i know there's a difference in uh in the way american speakers and spanish speakers say phone numbers uh i think we tend to say all the numbers individually. And as I recall, I might have this backwards, but I think in Spanish it was, you say the first digit and then three pairs. So I have no further follow-up comment.

Boy, the Braves got the hammer down, didn't they? Look at that. Look what happened to them. Yeah, we have a lot to banter about here. So this was ostensibly a listener email show, and it still will be to some extent. We're going to be joined by one of our real high rollers, one of our big time Patreon supporters, about here. So this was ostensibly a listener email show, and it still will be to some extent. We're going to be joined by one of our real high rollers, one of our big time Patreon supporters.

One of the perks of supporting us on Patreon at a certain level is you get to come on for a listener email show. So we're going to do some listener emails with a listener who often emails us, Mike, later in this episode. But we have more than we planned to talk about before then, because this was a news-packed day. Man, some November 21sts, you really have to struggle to come up with something to say about baseball, but this is Thanksgiving week and things are happening. So a couple of things that we aren't even really going to have time to touch on. Aaron Judge had shoulder surgery, which is kind of interesting. Left shoulder surgery, nothing super serious, arthroscopic surgery, and it's just loose bodies. Love the loose bodies and clean up cartilage in the shoulder. It probably doesn't tell us anything about his next season. It's not any kind of career threatening, worrisome injury, but it is

interesting because there were reports mid-season that he was having some shoulder issues that he would not talk about publicly and would not even really acknowledge to the team but there were some sort of whisperings and rumblings that the shoulder was bothering him and I think a lot of us speculated that that was why he went into that slump in August-ish and obviously he recovered to be amazing after that. So it wasn't holding him back too much, but maybe he was figuring out some way to play even as he was hampered by this injury. So I guess that's a good thing in that, A, it means that maybe it wasn't so much the league adjusting to Aaron Judge for that period and him adjusting back as it was him adjusting to his own

infirmity, which maybe will not continue into next season. So that's good, I guess. I mean, it's never a good sign when a player has shoulder surgery, but in this case, maybe it is encouraging in a way. Anyway, that's notable. We can close the book maybe on wondering what was getting into Aaron Judge at that point in the season. So WRC Plus 225 next year, over or under Aaron Judge? I'll take under. You shouldn't have to think about this so much. 225, that was supposed to be ridiculous.

225, that's big, yeah. It's way too big. Yeah, it's not often you want to talk about arthroscopic surgery, but I wonder, in the case of Judge, you're right, it makes you feel weirdly a little bit maybe better about the second half. I don't recall if, did Bryce Harper ever have anything done on his shoulder after 2016? I don't think so, right? At least not that we know about. There was that whole mystery about what was bothering him, and he said it was nothing, and there were various reports.

Yeah, I don't think so. I wonder, if you were a player—let's call him, well, someone like Aaron Judge, but who had a worse second half. If you're a player who has a big first half and a bad second half and you just really want to save some face, do you think you could compel a surgeon to just open you up in the winter? Just to kind of toy around in there? Because all you really need is to say removed loose bodies or bone chips or tightened something up or frayed something else. or tightened something up or frayed something else. And then it buys you a little bit of leniency until I think the next spring training when you resume being terrible, assuming that you've become a bad player.

But I wonder, you hear about those high school preemptive Tommy John cases, and I wonder if there are players who are just so concerned with their image that they would go under the knife and find someone sufficiently unethical to follow up and actually do it. Although you'd think if you found an unethical surgeon, you could just persuade him to say that he did surgery on you without actually performing the surgery. Maybe that would be easier.

I guess that might be the easier way out. Yeah, you're right. Less of the dying. Yes, right. And the other piece of news that we're barely going to talk about is a letter that our old pal Joe Morgan sent to all Hall of Fame voters expressing his opinion. And he says the opinion of many Hall of Fame members that steroid users should not be admitted into the Hall of Fame. This is coming on the heels of the Hall of Fame strangely rejecting the BBWA's request to publicize their ballots. That was weird, but this is not so weird.

This is kind of what we would think that Joe Morgan would think and what many Hall of Famers would think. The only note I have for Joe Morgan here is that if you're going to send this letter about how no steroid users should be allowed in the hall and it's cheating and it's character clause and so forth wouldn't you not want to say something like quote but it still occurs to me that anyone who took body altering chemicals in a deliberate effort to cheat the game we love etc etc he keeps saying chemicals and like body altering which clearly applies to greenies and amphetamines which by many accounts many players if not players, if not most players, if not all players of Joe Morgan's era were taking. And that is the clear double standard. You're opening yourself up to accusations of being hypocritical here when someone from an era when players were cheating in a different way or altering their chemistry in a different way

were prevalent. I mean, at least say like anabolic steroids or something that you can't just come right back and say players were doing the same thing in your era exactly. So I would have advised him to change up the language here a little bit just to leave it a little less open to the accurate accusation that this is extremely hypocritical. And there's that old story about, what was it, Babe Ruth was trying to shoot himself up with like sheep testicles or something and then he got sick and had to miss a game well that's just improper application of the drug but i guess if you maybe talk me away from this point because i don't care nearly enough to actually know all the all the rationale behind it but there was no real meaningful drug policy for a very long time,

but at least in baseball. But amphetamines have been a controlled substance since, what is it, 1970? Something like that. Maybe. Yeah. That may be. Yeah. Quite a while. Yeah. So I don't think that there, for a long time, there was no explicit baseball rule, I don't think, against the use of amphetamines. But there was, you know, the whole it's against the law rule, which I guess kind of covers it. But if you want to really kind of drill down, if you're a real, I don't know, steroid truther, and you don't want any PED users in the Hall of Fame, but you're willing to wave by some greenies users, then maybe you could say that the players who were taking amphetamines weren't breaking the baseball rules, but then eventually some of the steroid users were, look, I don't like it, but go ahead and tell me why that's not true. I mean, there is something to that, I guess, if you want to be a stickler about it, and you can do the same thing with steroids, of course. I mean, they were banned as, you know, made a protected substance, I think, around the same time that there was actually a baseball rule put in place that they were banned, which

no one really paid attention to or was necessarily even aware of. There was like a memo sent from the commissioner to teams that just kind of ended up in people's junk piles. But, you know, I think that you could say that the law of the land governs a sport that takes place in the land. So for me, at least the idea of needing a specific baseball rule or not, eh, it's not particularly persuasive. Anyway, the idea that players would take a body-altering chemical

is nothing new in baseball and was certainly not unheard of in Joe Morgan's day either. So anyway, that's the obvious rebuttal. And I feel like the language here could have been constructed in such a way that it wouldn't have been as easy to apply it. Yeah. Okay. So look, the letter could have been phrased better. And I agree with you. And I don't know if there's an original way to have this same conversation every year because it is a conversation that we have every year i think we knew that was going to be the case and certainly it's not going to go away anytime soon i will uh give joe morgan credit i guess for just i know

that what was the announcement like yesterday the ballots were mailed out or received or something so it was like oh look it's hall of fame voting season but then you wake up tuesday and it's like bam all right we're doing it it's hall of Fame voting season. But then you wake up Tuesday and it's like, bam, all right, we're doing it. It's Hall of Fame voting season and it sucks. It's the worst time of year, just kind of in general. I understand that there are people who have differences of opinion and that's great. Some of them are my peers, although not many of them. But some people care very deeply and passionately about the Hall of Fame.

I've never been able to bring myself to do it. And with the way that it gets covered, I'm not sure that I'll be able to bring myself to do it. If in eight years, I'm still writing about baseball. And if I'm still in good graces with the BBWA, and if I get a Hall of Fame vote, I have no freaking idea what I'm gonna do with it, or how much I'm going to care about it, or if I'll even submit a ballot at all. But I just I've been writing about baseball for a decade and a half and I haven't I haven't cared about the Hall of Fame that much yet. So I don't know if it's going to get to the point. I think I remember receiving a I don't know if it was a text or a direct message or an email from Grant Brisby some years ago and

he was just inquiring, have you ever written about the Hall of Fame ever? And I was thinking about it and I couldn't come up with an instance. Yeah, I up with an instance. I'm going to try real hard to keep that intact. Yeah, that's how you should become eligible for a vote, is if you can go 10 years without ever actually writing about the Hall of Fame, then you get one. That'd be funny. You finally get one, and you submit one of those protest votes, blank ballots, Murray Chast style. Jeff Sullivan making a statement. Yeah. Another passage from the Morgan letter. Steroid users knew they were taking a drug that physically improved how they played.

Could also apply to amphetamines. Taking steroids is a decision. It's the deliberate act of using chemistry to change how hard you hit and throw, etc., etc. Anyway, I think it's probably silly to believe that whatever PED you want to name, I'm sure there is someone who has taken it or tried to take it already in the hall, whether he was knowingly elected or not. And of course, it's maybe fair to draw some distinctions between people who did things before there was testing and harsh punishment and after. And if you want to make that distinction, that's okay. But anyway, I think the point is that place is full of cheaters and ped users and bud sealing for that matter so i think the time to hold the line on the character clause is probably behind us at this point anyway did we start

podcasting together at the start of 2017 when i was back from from my trip did we begin by talking about the hall of fame because i have some vague vague deja vu at the time that we would be talking about it yeah yeah yeah that's that's too bad what a great anniversary it's a full circle i don't i don't i'm not sure if there's a perspective i agree with more than just the perspective that the hall of fame is a museum of baseball history containing a whole bunch of players who were significant because of what they did on the field or what they did related to what happens on the field or with roster management whatever it's just a museum and in museums you can point out the good things and the bad things and i don't know what the point is of of leaving out someone who was extremely

prominent i don't know i'm not saying mark mcguire should be in the hall of fame but if he were in the hall of fame i don't know what the point would be of. He was a bad example to bring up. So let's bring up Barry Bonds instead, because Barry Bonds clearly, look, I don't need to support Barry Bonds' numbers. So great. So I don't know what benefit there would be in his being excluded, because then you're just completely just, okay, let's move on to the next thing. I don't want to do this anymore. We didn't even mean to really talk about this. This is all my fault. The things we actually wanted to talk about today, there was finally Shohei Otani news. There will be much more Shohei Otani news in the next few weeks, but we know now that there is an agreement in place between MLB and NPB and the Players Association. Players Association is not going to stand in the way of his coming and playing in MLB in 2018. So that is basically certain to happen at this point. And we got the details. I mean, the news itself, not that surprising.

I think we were all virtually certain that this would happen. But we did get the details, which is that the old posting agreement is grandfathered in in Otani's case. So the fighters will get $20 million for the posting fee and in future years there will be no more posting fee there will just be a sliding scale where the Japanese teams will get a percentage a cut of the player's contract and they get various percentages depending on what the total amount of the contract is. So that's settled to everyone's satisfaction or at least acquiescence. And there are other provisions in here like a shortened posting period. The Players Association didn't want the free agency, domestic free agent market to be sidetracked

or delayed by posting questions. And so now the free agents, potential free agents from Japan will have to be posted and signed between November 1st and December 5th. I guess that is the posting period. And then NPV teams can't pull back the player when there's a deal because of the sliding scale that will give them a set amount

depending on the contract total. So basically that's how this was resolved and really the interesting thing is that i think this is all going to happen very soon and this agreement has to be ratified by the owners next week next friday december 1st and if that happens as is expected to be the case then he'll be eligible to be posted more or less immediately so that's going to happen probably either next fr or Saturday and then teams will have about three weeks to sign him so someone it seems is going to have Shohei Otani before Christmas so all this is going to play out in accelerated fashion I don't know whether he'll have people coming to him and making their case or whether he'll be

touring various places but it's all going to be hot and heavy over the course of about three weeks, and this is going to be playing out during the winter meetings, so that's going to put a crimp in some teams' plans. Maybe it'll be a slow winter meetings because of that, but we're going to see a lot of suitors lining up, and it's all going to start happening very soon. He's going to be such an attractive and desirable piece that I don't know. What's the baseball front office equivalent of sending a shirtless mirror selfie to Shohei Ohtani to just

kind of grab his attention? He should go the Bumble way and he should be the one who has to initiate contact with teams as opposed to the other way around. But I guess if he wanted to do this in a very poetic way, he would sign with the team on Christmas. For all of our sakes, I hope that he doesn't sign with the team on christmas i hope that he gets it over with well in advance of that but it is good it's exciting to finally have i don't know another step toward resolution here even though it's a step that we both knew and i think we all knew was coming there was much manufactured drama over whether or not an agreement would be reached and of course an agreement was going to be reached it was always going to be reached but it's uh it's good to have this moving quickly because we've had

multiple cases of prominent japanese players not signing until january which is just kind of a bother it's great for the january writing season because there's nothing else to talk about but you just kind of want these things to advance smarter the players you need to get the timeline moved up i can't really think of much of a downside from the Japanese player or team perspective there. So I like it. It's kind of weird to know that we're roughly a month or so away from Otani actually belonging to a team,

but it also feels like it's like three years overdue to just finally get it over with so we can know what's going to happen. But just if you think about it, within the next month, some team, and we have no idea what team it could be, genuinely no idea, some team in and we have no idea what team it could be, genuinely no idea, some team in baseball is going to have arguably the single most valuable asset in the world fall into their lap.

Yeah. And some teams, it seems like, have been positioning themselves to be able to offer Otani a little more money, the Yankees, the Mariners trading for international bonus pool money, but we don't actually know whether that's so they'll have a better chance of citing Otani a little more money, the Yankees, the Mariners trading for international bonus pool money, but we don't actually know whether that's so they'll have a better chance of signing Otani or whether they'll have a better chance of signing a bunch of Braves prospects who are no longer Braves prospects. Look at that segue. Yeah. So in other news that we knew was coming, but now has actually come and we know the

details of the Braves got the smackdown they have been punished for their international signing and I guess some domestic signing infractions and I think we all had the sense that the penalties were going to be pretty severe but if anything they're probably more severe than I was expecting this is not just for show. So if I can try to summarize everything that MLB has levied against the Braves here. So on an individual level, general manager John Cappellella, banned for life, banned for baseball for life. Not a lot of people who've been banned for baseball from life. He is now one of them. And special assistant Gordon Blakely was suspended for a year as well there may be some more punishments for various international operations employees coming but that's not the important stuff from a braves fan perspective those people were already gone as is john hart who i guess gets off scott free here nice nice job john hart but the big penalty here the braves are losing 12 players signed over the last couple international free agent periods. And I'm not going to claim to be an expert on any, you know, 17-year-old foreign signees, but you can read various scatting reports.

And the big name, the name that people know is Kevin Maitan, who was a big signee but has seen his stock fall for various reasons. Just hasn't looked that great physically or on the field. But they do have some really promising prospects here. Obviously, everyone extremely raw and far from the majors, but having essentially an entire international signing class wiped away, that's pretty significant, completely deserved, of course, but pretty significant nonetheless. And then the Braves are barred from signing a couple specific international prospects who will be eligible in the next couple signing periods, but's for some extra contractual compensation shenanigans that

went on with a 2017 second round pick, Drew Waters, who they do get to keep. But another significant cost here, they are prohibited from signing international players for more than $10,000 during the 2019 to 2020 signing period. So basically they can't sign any attractive prospect during that period. And their bonus pool is cut in half for the following signing period, 2020 to 2021. So this is a lot. This is a lot of news, a lot of punishments. I don't think anyone could really argue with the punishments based on the nature of what we know the Braves did, which do you want to try to describe what the Braves did? I mean, this is not novel. This is not dramatically different from, say,

what the Red Sox were caught doing or what other teams have probably done. But I guess the extent of the infractions, the kind of brazenness of the infractions and the number of them, essentially the Braves wouldn't have been able to sign any of the prospects that they, essentially the Braves wouldn't have been able to sign any of the prospects that they signed in the most recent international signing period, if not for

the money that they were essentially hiding. So can you explain, do you understand the bonus packaging scheme that they were running here? A little bit. And I'm trying to find the most, just with some quick Googling october 1st 2015 is the last time i could find john coppola referred to as a rising star within the industry that was two years ago and there's a several other examples i can find from before that but so i think one thing to understand is that based on i guess secondhand knowledge of how this works within the industry pretty much every team does something like what the Braves have been doing or like what the Red Sox were caught doing. I don't want to cast stones at every organization in baseball, but let's at least say that what the actions similar

to what the Braves were doing and similar to what the Red Sox were doing are not uncommon. It is very frequent that you will see these signing bonus packages. I believe it took a while for details to actually come out of what the Braves were doing. And one of the infractions that they frequent that you will see these signing bonus packages. I believe it took a while for details to actually come out of what the Braves were doing. And one of the infractions that they committed, which is unrelated to the international market, is they were trying to throw some sort of essentially under the table benefits to a draft pick from last year or the year before to compel him to sign. So that was sort of a more of a minor infraction on their part. And that cost him a third round pick. But it's the signing bonus packaging that got them in the most trouble, to say nothing of entering into premature agreements with, what, at least one 14-year-old?

Which is also not too uncommon. It's a Wild West kind of frontier industry down there, and everybody sucks. But what the Braves have been caught doing, at least in one instance, there was a player that they wanted. But, of course, with the international bonus pools, there are, I think, what, there are now hard caps. But there used to be soft caps where you didn't want to exceed the cap by too much because you would incur some pretty severe penalties. So what the Braves, forgot who the player was. It's one of the players they no longer possess. But they wanted to sign him. And so they gave him a pretty good signing bonus but they were able to effectively get more money to him by

giving an unusually large signing bonus to an older player who is not covered by the what under i think at that point under 23 age limit. So essentially there was some other player that they gave money to who was, I don't know, 24, 25, 26. Someone who wasn't affected by the bonus pool limits. And so presumably those players shared a trainer and then the trainer could facilitate delivering some of the money that went to the older player to the younger player so they could that way get the higher bonus to the younger desirable player in such a way that it skirted the bonus pool caps you were not allowed to do that the Braves were caught many teams have done this before Kali McDaniel went to work for ironically the Braves he wrote a post a few posts at VanGraft that talked about how this is something that would go on uh down there in the international market it's uh when when the Red Sox were caught people

said yeah lots of teams are doing this when the Braves are cut people said yep lots of teams are doing this but the Braves apparently doing it more more substantially they uh flouted the rules a little too much I don't remember do you recall who if it's been said how baseball found out about this in the first place I would assume you don't just stumble upon this. Right. I've heard that it was maybe people from inside the organization who were embittered or let go and kind of informed on their former colleagues. But I don't know the exact details. So I think, you know, they were they were tipped off to this maybe by people within the organization or former members or, I don't know, maybe from people in rival organizations. Although I think, you know, you'd be worried about tipping off MLB about something one team is doing if you know that your team is doing that too.

So I think that has something to do with it. But basically, I think it's kind of an open secret that this goes on. It's kind of an open secret that this goes on, but if you get caught doing it, if you do it in such a fashion that it's just obvious to everyone and you leave evidence and you ask to be caught meant to keep money in very rich owners pockets instead of impoverished players pockets it's not something that you can feel great about really but hey these are the rules these are the standards that the league put in place and they are enforcing them here this is no fool and these are really the rules people so i think you know this is harsh enough that if a team is doing this if team other than the braves is doing this then i think this is a strict enough penalty that that team might stop doing it just because they don't want this to happen to them this is the era now

that we've entered of people slash organizations getting blown up for so-called open secrets. So these open secrets are becoming increasingly disciplined for more reasons than one. You don't want to, I don't know, on the face of it, this is a very severe penalty. This chips away at the Braves' organizational depth. These are a very talented albeit I think in every single case pretty distant from the major leagues players but this is how a lot of teams prefer to build up their systems and from this crop of of talented young players you could get in a few years half of an organizational top 10 it kind of depends on how these players

develop so you don't want to overstate it's not like the mlb stripped the braves of their owning of the ronald acuna which would be like a major organizational blow this is a severe penalty for those who pay attention to the international market which and that's kind of a niche interest and most of those players don't really pan out in any meaningful way so this isn't a huge franchise crippling penalty but for a baseball organization and every single organization cherishes the players who are worth just a few million dollars to the 17 year old lottery tickets this is massive and i i don't i still don't think it's going to serve as a deterrent teams are going to keep doing what they can ultimately whenever you have a system that caps the amount of money that teams can throw

to the players they want to give the money to, teams are going to find some way to get around the rules. I don't know if this means they're going to be less blatant about it. I don't know if the Braves are even that blatant about it. But you can say that maybe from this point forward, major league teams will be careful about not having general managers that are super easy for people to dislike. That's, I don't know, $20 million, more than $20 million probably that the Braves spent that they now get nothing for. Players get to keep that money because they weren't really the ones to blame here. And essentially other teams can sign them now using their international bonus pools either from this year or from next year.

So unfortunately, I would say they're not true free agents. That would have been fun if these were just unrestricted free agents. And then we actually would have gotten a glimpse at how teams value this type of talent. You know, if you didn't have these rules in place to restrict spending, like I have no idea what one of these, you know, one of the best prospects in this group available would go for if they could sign with any team for as much money as they wanted. But it would be so much that it would, I think, expose kind of the artificiality of the way that the international market works now and just how much the rules depress the potential earnings of these players because, you know, it would be some enormous multiple of what

they will actually make. But at least they get to keep what they had and they get an additional bonus on top of that from some lucky team that has enough in its spending pool that it can now dip into that for some of these prospects. So works out for them, does not work out for the Braves. But I agree, it's not that the Braves are crippled or that their rebuild is over now and that they can't compete. But it's a setback certainly last uh last offseason let's see i can just read down this list trevor plouffe signed for a year and 5.25 million dollars rajay davis got six million for a year jerry blevins boone logan both got six and a half million for a year club options on those ben revere signed for a year and four million ben revere signed for

more money than shohei otani will be able to sign for he signed for i forgot what kevin maiton's bonus was the first time around but he'll get less this time around because he's uh he's just worse he projects worse but he's still gonna get seven figures for his second bonus so ben revere last year's a free agent signed for probably about i don't know a double what kevin miton is going to sign for as a restricted international free agent now so yeah it would be it would be all kinds of fun to have these players be true free agents and one can make a very convincing argument that they ought to be true free agents but yep nope gotta keep paying ben revere and chris carter and drew butera and i'm

just this is a really uninspiring part of the free agent list let me tell you derrick holland he was in baseball last year i didn't remember that joaquin benoit pitched anyway i don't need to keep going over veterans we'll have plenty of time to talk about them when they sign this year right yeah joel sherman also reported that the braves offered impermissible benefits which were never provided to players who were drafted so essentially they said if you sign with us for less money a lower bonus will give you something I don't know what but something they weren't supposed to give to the player and then they never gave it to him anyway so this you know it's extremely sleazy, just all aspects of this, really. And I don't think you can really criticize, even if you're a hardcore Braves fan,

I don't think you can really have any objection to what happened here because these contracts that were voided were essentially contracts that they never would have been able to sign because they would have exceeded their bonus cap and been unable to get these guys. would have exceeded their bonus cap and been unable to get these guys. So essentially, they're just losing players they never would have had if they hadn't tried to skirt the rules and then individual punishments for certain executives and, you know, an additional bonus pool restriction because, hey, you can't do that. So this is going to be something that will continue to hamstring the Braves to a certain extent for years to come

so you know well you uh you can as a Braves fan you could rationalize being upset here in the same way where we were talking about how seemingly most teams or every team does something like this and you could say well why why should we be singled out or I guess with the Red Sox also getting singled out doubled out I don't know plucked out why should we why should we bear the brunt of what the entire industry is doing now that's kind of like saying why should i don't know johnny peralta be suspended for peds when lots of players are taking peds and you know you get caught you get caught that's the way that it always works we all speed etc other metaphors so there is some avenue to be a real homer here and say that the braves don't

deserve to be penalized because they're just doing what everyone does and we're just going with the flow of traffic you know so there's there's an avenue there to really show your brave support but at the end of the day yeah you aren't supposed to do this nope all right so we got through all the news so let's take a quick break and we'll be back with mike to enter some emails all right so we're back and we're joined now by one of our most active commenters in the Facebook group and emailers. And I think most importantly, perhaps from our perspective, Patreon supporters. Mike Jontanen. Hello, Mike. How are you? Hi, I'm doing good.

Yeah, nice to have you on. We appreciate your very informed emails and often informative emails. I have written articles that were inspired by your emails. So it's a pleasure to be joined by you now, and we are grateful for your support. So we're going to get to emails in a minute, but you want to tell the people anything about yourself, where you are, what you do, any of that? Sure. I live in Nebraska. I'm originally from Michigan. I'm a Dodger fan and I work for FedEx. I'm a manager and I had a lot of free time this year. I tend to go really hard on my hobbies and a friend of mine, her family are all Cubs fans, and she was following the NLCS last year and she's like, I find myself rooting for the Dodgers because I know they mean a lot to you. should follow next season really closely and i'm like okay

i work nine to five now i don't have to work at night i'm gonna get mlb tv and i'm just gonna follow a season of i was wanted to do that oh wow you can't do that so well when you work at night and that worked out really well so you didn't have a team so you you basically just jumped onto the the dodgers bandwagon no i've been a dodger fan since i was a kid oh i see but i haven't always been able to follow a whole season when you're working until like 11 o'clock at night with your team plays on the west coast you can't really follow everything and i kind of overdo it when i follow things so it kind of worked out uh this year it was a good year yeah this is probably the closest i've followed a season since 2006

yeah perfect time like every yeah in every i mean i watched basically every at least some of every game there were definitely games i turned off and discussed especially in late august yeah but there weren't that many because the first game that i turned off and discussed like god that this game is just terrible was the game against the phillies that i was fortunate enough to turn back on because cody bellinger hit his first career home run and i'm like i'm going to turn that back on and see if they show a replay and then they hit three home runs to tie the game and won the game and i'm like apparently i can just never turn this team off anymore so i i watched a lot of ends of games and i'm like i really want to do something else but you

never know and as it turns out that happened a lot more than i think it usually does yeah i would say from our perspective you didn't overdo it because the emails and comments that you would submit about the dodgers were greatly helpful in informing content that both ben and myself put together certainly just i never have watched somebody's swing mechanics change as much as i watched cody bellinger's swing mechanics change seemingly from pitch to pitch in the world series when it started to get a lot of uh attention and you were the first person to let me and i i think also ben know that cody bellinger was working on this weird series of swings that he would do he would started i think in two strike counts and i don't know i don't need to keep explaining your level of fandom to everybody else but for someone who was

took the first opportunity to really dive into a dodger season in a long time you really dove in there and it was greatly helpful to us yes the the first time when i when i wrote i wrote something to you guys about clayton kershaw's slider yes it was just like one day when i was watching the game i'm like wait he figured it out. And I pull up my tablet and I open baseball savant. And I'm like, holy crap, there it is. And I'm like, oh, that was a neat thing. And you guys wrote something back.

And I'm like, oh, that was cool. This is what that Patreon thing gets you is that you're like, hey, you know, like, hey, that was cool. And then the next day I go and I go to the ringer and I'm like, hold crap. Yes, we're both frauds. Basically, we're just crowdsourcing all of our content. We're relying on tips from readers who are actually watching the games to tell us what is happening. And then we turn that into articles. So it's a great scheme we have going here. So what was your level of sadness after the World Series? Were you feeling like, well, I had everything go well and this is just gravy?

Or were you really down in the dumps? And if so, how quickly did you recover? I don't know that I was really down. I mean, it sucks to lose game seven of the World Series. I think the fact that it played out so long and they ended up being behind in the series more than they were ahead. Like I spend a lot of time getting myself ready for like they might lose at two to one and, you know, at three at three to like they're probably going to lose the series. I'd rather be prepared for that than just be wiped out, especially like I mean, you can't be sad. They did better than anybody can.

Nobody can expect to get there. Yeah. But on the other hand, it's like, man, that, you know, can nobody can expect to get there yeah but on the other hand it's like man that you know i became a fan i was a seven-year-old kid and i had played t-ball but i wasn't a baseball fan and i just happened to be at like a children's rec center on a air force base because my dad was in the air force and they had game one of the 1988 world series on and i walked by and i started watching and we know what happens at the end of that game. And I'm like, wow, this baseball thing is really cool. We followed the whole World Series and there it was. Like, baseball

and the Dodgers have always been completely inseparable to me to where when they're terrible, I just can't follow because it's depressing. Like, the Rupert Murdoch ownership, like, I just did when I was a teenager, I just stopped following baseball for a few years because I just couldn't do it.

But it feels like they blew maybe the best chance they're going to have in who knows how long because you just don't get back there no matter how good you are. You can't count on it happening again. But it was a great season, so you can't really feel like it was a disappointment either like on the other hand like i think that that cody like that three home runs in a row game was probably like the single most ridiculously excited moment i actually had all year because the playoffs were so predictable yeah like and even in those crazy world series games it was i was coming back to tie like they never took a lead again in one of those games which would have been oh my god yes yes yes it was, yes. It was like, oh god, okay, it's not over yet. Okay, we're back in it. They never had that hit because they were coming from behind over and over and over again

after having blown those leads, so there was never that cathartic moment of, oh my god, we've got this. We can do it now. It was a train wreck. Like, oh god, we just keep blowing it over and over and over again. This isn't supposed to happen. What's going on? And, I mean, the NLCS and the Arizona series, they were fun to watch, but they weren't exactly dramatic.

Yeah. Well, you're rooting for a team that will have a very good chance to be back. So that probably eases the post-World Series depression. Yeah. I got over it pretty fast. I think I missed three episodes of the podcast because when they were in the losing streak, I missed some episodes. I just would

be like, you know what? They're going to talk about it and I know what they're going to say and it's just going to make me feel crappy again. I'm going to skip this one. This segment is over You can't skip episodes

I thought you were a true fan Mike Alright well we have Broken the ice we've gotten to know each other So now let's answer some emails So I will read them out and feel free to Chime in whenever you are moved to So question from Evan says

Miguel Cabrera's contract has $30 million options in 2024 and 2025 that vest if he finishes in the top 10 of MVP voting the previous year. Let's say it's 2023 and you're the GM of an AL Central team. Also assume that Cabrera is still on the Tigers and sub-replacement level. Baseball writers are poor and corruptible. I'm sure that will continue to be the case. And three, you care about results, but don't care about ethics. How much would you pay, say, four or five writers to vote for Cabrera for MVP,

forcing the Tigers to be on the hook for that $30 million that would vest if Cabrera gets in the top 10? So, Jeff, I know you have already expressed some thoughts via email. Would you like to re-express those thoughts? All right. Well, here's—okay. Here's the thing.

It's not going to be that cheap. I know that riders are poor and corruptible as a population. I am one. I know exactly how poor and corruptible I am. But this is— How much did Jordan Montgomery give you for that second place AL rookie of the year vote just tell us now his entire league minimum salary and it is fantastic so I think that this is these are careers I don't know what would happen because we're talking about an awful

it's like if somebody voted Albert Pujols on the ballot this year except even worse because Pujols at least was kind of like clutch and he drove in 101 runs but yeah if albert pujols or someone that bad showed up on an mvp ballot or you know a few if it were a few i think that this conspiracy would reveal itself very fast yes because it wouldn't make any sense right if you had one throwaway vote that would be easier to to understand and maybe you'd only need to buy off one writer to give one first place vote. That would probably give Cabrera sufficient points. I don't know. But it would be expensive because you would have writers losing credibility like immediately among their peers. Clear ending, basically. I mean, I think you would not get a job as a writer anymore. I guess it would not be illegal. Like you couldn't be prosecuted for this probably,

right? I mean, you'd just get kicked out of the BBWA. Everyone would lose respect for you and you'd probably get fired or let go and that'd be the end of your career. So you'd have to make sure it was enough money to support yourself for the rest of your life basically and to make up for the sting of everyone losing all respect for you. Right, yeah, you know. So about $10,000. And so you have Miguel Cabrera then. If you are basically doing this to hurt the Tigers,

and let's assume that by 2024, the Tigers aren't a catastrophe anymore, which they very well could be, but let's just assume they're a half-decent team. Okay, they're a division rival of yours. And so it works to your benefit to make the tigers worse which them having to eat this money would make them worse by reducing their flexibility but it wouldn't make your team that much better and it certainly wouldn't make your team that much better relative to the three other

teams or however many teams are in the american league central at that point if you figure let's call it three other teams it's such an incremental gain for your own team yeah even if you think you're costing the tigers say 30 million dollars of value then if you figure that lifts up the rest of the american league i'm just i don't know if these numbers make any sense but if you're lifting up the rest of the american league by said 30 million dollars of value then that's roughly two million dollars of value to each team just by really kicking the tigers when they're down and that's if the tigers are in any way relevant so maybe that means you cap yourself at 30 divided by 14 or however many teams are in the american league at that point minus the tigers but yeah it's a it's a fun hypothetical especially because

it's fun to think about what would happen to that rider. But it would be expensive and there would be a very limited gain. Yes. I feel like the real person who would want to do this isn't the GM of another AL Central team. It's Miguel Cabrera. That's the person who wants to spend the money to get this vote because he has nothing to lose where said GM has a lot to lose. Right. Yeah. No, I don't see it happening. I don't think the cost-benefit works out here. I am curious.

I mean, if you're a writer at the end of your career, let's say, hey, it's an uncertain industry, I wonder what it would take to completely compromise your principles and reputation to vote. I'm trying to think of my own number. I don't know if I have a number, but it would be higher than a team should be willing to pay. I would sell a vote for $50,000. All right. Well, I mean, if you're already considering a career change, why not really, right? Get something on the way out. All right. Question from Colin. Long ago, I believe

Sam posited that gold gloves are not worthless because there is something to the notion that where there is consensus as to the eye test, perception may have some merit. One of my favorite players, Omar Vizquel, is widely cited as a defensive leader for the 90s, although the stats don't necessarily agree. He's also the victim of many well-written and objectively statistically correct articles saying he's not worthy of the hall based on war and offensive environment stats thoughts on omar's hall of fame candidacy yes jeff another hall of fame question your favorite specifically through the lens of popular perception of defensive talent and wizardry i promise not to flame your takes as the arguments against viskell are sound and I no longer recognize the legitimacy of the haul without Barry Bonds in it. I'm just curious as to your thoughts, and particularly Jeff's, as to the trade.

Particularly to the Jeffs. Oh, I see. Particularly Jeff's, as the trade didn't work so well for the Mariners. That's why he wants to know about Jeff's opinion here. I was almost insulted. So either of you, any thoughts on the Omar Vizquel candidacy? I'm going to let Mike go first on this one. Okay.

Oh, great. All right. Well, Vizquel has this great defensive reputation. He was obviously a great defender, but I think there's so much of the eye test that anybody who's not truly a professional baseball scout or player is going to be misled by the whole not in the right position and make a great play anyway and make a play that should be easy look good anything like that? But I think that it throws such a wrench in there, like maybe he's merely good and he looked great because he did it with flair and crisp and all the plays are executed so well. I have no idea because I'm not a scout and I can't answer that question. But I think that that's the thing

that makes the whole eye test argument difficult for me, even though I know that defensive metrics aren't that great either, because it's just so easy to get a reputation for the highlight plays and not actually for being great at defense. Right. Jeff, you have any thoughts? I'll take it from here. We were, for everyone's benefit, we were given explicit instruction from Mike some time ago that he requested, please just ask me about the Dodgers. I really, really know a lot about the Dodgers. And he just held his

on an Omar Vizquel Hall of Fame question. Not easy to do. I totally avoided making a Dodgers reference there too because I end up doing that way too frequently because it's the examples that are easy for me. Like, the Dodgers won the defensive team of the year award and had no goal glovers because it was just great defense

or good defense everywhere, but it wasn't flashy so nobody won i think with with viskell he was one of the top defensive players of his era i don't think that there's a great way to disagree with that and the fact that he played 24 years in the major leagues and played and spent a lot of time at shortstop even up until the end really speaks to how good he was and i think that i hadn't thought of things in this perspective before until i responded to the email and i think that omar vizcal clearly what holds him back as a hall of famer is that he didn't really hit much at all he had a i think maybe one or two seasons in there of being an above average hitter but those were weird like his 14 home run season in 2002 no idea what happened there but he was just

not a great hitter not a not a new story about Omar Vizquel great defensive player and if you think of him as like a as a defensive specialist I think that he was I don't know roughly as good at defense as Edgar Martinez was at offense I think Edgar Martinez should be a hall of famer and so that made me think about well why do I think that one specialist deserves to be in? And I'm not quite sold on Vizquel making it in myself. And what I've come down to and what I think is probably inarguable is that while Vizquel was a similarly talented specialist, his specialty is simply less significant on the field than Edgar's specialty is or was hitting. I don't know if you're familiar with the usual breakdowns but

i think the current guesstimate is that baseball is like 40 offense 40 pitching and 20 defense something like that i don't know if that's entirely true but i think that offense is something like twice as important as defensive ability this is even though vizcal played in sort of the pre-shift days so short stops needed to have a lot of range to be good and he was he was really outstanding i wouldn't have a great lamentation if vizkel made the hall of fame but mostly that goes back to my previous point about how i don't care right yeah i i just don't see it i don't think it's even a particularly strong candidacy i mean if you're a hall of famer you have to be good at everything really and not being good at hitting Is just too big a part of

Baseball to make the Hall of Fame for me Even if you're a great Fielder even if you play for a long time And you know you compare I guess The natural comp maybe is Ozzie Smith but Ozzie Smith was just a way better player Than Omar Vizcal he

Also played forever, maybe not quite as long, but he was a significantly better hitter, still a below average hitter for his career, but a better hitter and probably an above average hitter in maybe the second half of his career. He improved as a hitter and he was just an otherworldly fielder. He was really in a class of his own. And I don't know that Vizquel is in a class of his own. He may have looked like it, but certainly the stats see Ozzy as great as his reputation was. And with Vizquel, that's just not quite the case, at least after the first half or so of his career. And, you know, even Fangraphs, which loves his defense. I mean, his defensive

stats on Fangraphs are fantastic, but even so, he's really nowhere even close to the region where we start saying that someone is a Hall of Famer. Certainly he falls far, far short of the shortstop standards by Jaws, and that's true both of the peak and of the career. And I don't want to say that if a guy is below the Jaws average, he definitely doesn't get in, but Vizquel is just nowhere close to that. So for me, I just don't see it. He's a great player and by all accounts, a good guy.

And I hope he is a coach and a manager and he's around the game forever. But I just don't see him as a Hall of Famer. And likewise, I would not be upset because I don't get upset about Hall of Fame cases. But I think, you know, if you're going to get upset about Jack Morris potentially making it, I think you should probably preemptively get even more upset about the possibility of Omar Vizquel making it because I just don't see it. And I mean, you'd have to bump up his defensive stats to a really extreme degree to get him anywhere close to the typical baseline that we talk about. So he's a no for me, and I'm sorry, Vizcal fans, and I enjoyed Vizcal too, so that's that.

All right, question four. This is peripherally Dodgers-related, I suppose. This is from Josh. He says, Assumes similar to Munanori Kawasaki wanting to play with Ichiro, Otani's agent makes it known that the sole factor that will determine where he signs is Shohei Otani's desire to play on the same team as a particular player. Let's say it's Yu Darvish, or let's not even say it's Yu Darvish, but if that player is

a free agent like Darvish, how much does that increase his value? Conversely, if Otani will sign with whichever team is currently employing his childhood idol, Albert Pujols, how much could the Angels extract in trade for Pujols, assuming they don't want Otani for themselves? So I guess the question really is, you know, how much surplus value do you get from Otani? And how much of that are you willing to give to another player who will get you, Otani? Mike, do you have anything to say or should I just go from right now? I mean, you did just write an article about the value of Albert Pujols. I think you're on the hook to go first. All right.

So Albert Pujols' value is nothing. It's $0. He's due, what was it, $114 million over the next four years. He is projected to be worth $0. He's projected to be worth as much as these words that i'm saying right now and i have put very little thought into these words so there is no value here whatsoever so i think that i don't think the teams would pay out the full otani surplus value estimate guarantee whatever you want to say because there's there's just something it's not in writing you don't have that guarantee that

otani would uh would say true to his word, but it would be awfully compelling. And so I think that this could actually increase the Darvish contract by nine figures. I think that it could be something like $100 million that you could see a team overpay you Darvish. Now, you would have teams overbidding one another, of course, and the Darvish's representation would have great incentives to let other teams know like hey this is where the the bidding has gotten to because you would there is just so much value in getting six years of xiaoyi otani that if you had to give away half of that a little more than half of that by signing you darvish as well if you can fit it into the competitive balance sacks then you are very very strongly incentivized to do so so i think i don't know what darvish is projected to get if you figure he's going to get i don't

know six years 150 million something like that you could see him get 250 or 275 if otani made this sort of guarantee and and meanwhile with the the pujols contract i think that you would have a team trade for albert pujols and just assume the contract giving up nothing i guess you would have a team trade for Albert Pujols and just assume the contract, giving up nothing. I guess you'd have to throw in some sort of live arm because otherwise it would just look like giving a person away, which you're not allowed to do. But I think that Otani would cancel out the Pujols money because if you have Pujols, who's due 114 over the next four years, he's due 27, 28, 29, and 30. I think teams would be happy to give Shohei otani 27 28 29 and 30 million dollars over the next four years and then you have more years after that so yeah if uh if otani and pujols are like bffs then someone's gonna trade for if someone trades for albert pools just know

that's a clue that's something's going on there right it feels like the uh the answer would almost certainly be somebody trying to sign like you darvish, for life, way past his playing career. Because that's the only way that you can do that without running into the competitive balance tax problems. You just tell you, Darvish, hey, we're going to pay you $10 million a year until you're 45. Right. You just give him the Bobby Bonilla for whatever amount of money that it takes, and then it doesn't even impact you all that much down the road because what's the value of $10 million when the competitive balance tax is at $400 million in 10 years? It's a pittance. Yeah.

Pujols has a 10-year at a million per year personal services contract that begins once his contract expires. So same sort of thing. I'll ask this to both of you. How long do you think Pujols lasts with the Angels? I feel bad about asking it because it sounds like I'm the vulture circling around his career or something. I don't want his career to end. I hope he bounces back and is great. But it's hard to see that happening at this point.

And he is signed, as we know, for four more years at 27, then 28, then 29, then 30, then the 10-year, $10 million personal services contract, which would be awkward, I suppose, if the Angels release him at some point and then also have his personal services contract tacked on after that. But what do you guys think? Because if he plays like he did this year where he was essentially the least

valuable player in major league baseball except for the fact that he was clutch which is not really a consistent pattern in his career it's not like he's always been clutch i think he had been just about even clutchness before this year or negative clutchness even. So let's say he has the exact same season he has this year, except that he is not clutch or let's say he gets even worse. I mean, what do you guys think is the most likely time for him to be cut? And if you want to say that the most likely is that he serves out the whole contract, that is a valid answer too. I don't think he's going to serve up the contract but i think that it will be a physical thing it will be because he can't go i think the angels are just never going to be comfortable saying yo

we're cutting you goodbye but albert's so fragile and has such a hard time now that the injury is almost inevitable anyway and like that's the thing that leads to retirement is it just hurts him too much to go because he's not going to want to sit around and be the pinch hit 25th guy on the bench. He's going to want to play every day. And once he can't do that, he's set for life. I mean, it's crazy for us to think about leaving that many millions of dollars on the table. But if he just, you know, something goes in his legs or his feet, which has always been the problem, even next year, you could see him finishing out the year and at some point in the rehab going, you know what, I'm done. I just can't do this anymore. I think that's the, it's that more than performance because if they let him play every day, he'll probably keep doing it. But if they

do that, he'll break. So I think that's the most likely trigger. Yeah. I can, I can relate to this a little bit when, well, I left $114 million on the table when I left SB Nation, they were really trying to keep me on. I think the Angels are going to give him a full year and a month. And then I think that they're going to be optimistic. I think Pujols, I read an article not too long ago that Pujols is already having his first regular offseason in like three or four years. You know, the usual article you read about an aging player who used to be good something something working out he's healthy this time and i think that the angels do believe that a little bit i don't believe that pools's skills have diminished quite to the level that it seemed like they did last season i i can see a reason to

believe that he could be a decent hitter again and i think the angels can see that again too i think they will go in and he will be a regular i expect that he will stick as a semi-regular a mostly regular i don't think he's going to be a good player i think that by the end of the season maybe he's an average hitter maybe he's a little worse than that and then i think they go into 2019 and you think well you're gonna have to do this again and then you know about a month month and a half into the season when pools is just not hitting he's not having fun anymore i can't imagine he would be having fun anymore he's probably not going to be so clutch anymore and then at that point i think that the the team and pools will find some way of facilitating a graceful exit where pools walks

away and hangs him up but doesn't sacrifice the entire remainder of his contract because i think that that's an awful lot to leave up even if you figure he's set for life well maybe he wants to use that money for good he's got his own foundation you know that's a it's a whole lot of money to put toward good causes so i don't know exactly what that means will be but i think that they will come to some sort of settlement and pujos will no longer be playing for the Angels by the all-star break of 2019. Yeah, yeah. I think 2019 is the most likely year for this to end somehow. But I think, Mike, you make a good point that this will probably be made easier for the Angels in some way, where it won't just be cruelly cutting him. It'll be he can't play and it's clear to himself and everyone else that he can't play for health reasons. That's probably, we'd rather pay you not to play for us,

that it's, you know, not the kind of thing that you want to say to Albert Pujols. So I would imagine you're right. They will go out of their way to try to avoid that situation, but they might not have to. So let's take one from Mike. He says, suppose a baseball fan from 1918 time traveled to today what would be the most mind-blowing aspect of modern baseball to him and i guess we can just focus on the game on the field more so than everything else that is happening in the world and in the stands surrounding the baseball game and and the technology yeah the fact that jumbotron right and you know jets are flying overhead and people are parachuting into the stadium and i mean i guess they had airplanes that wouldn't be so shocking to someone from 1918 but still let's you know the the flyovers let's say not that

but just the stuff that's happening on the field i mean the answer is probably just how big and fast and strong all of these guys are all at the same time right yeah like the athletic standards have changed so much they're throwing so hard they're huge i mean it seems like the average baseball player is like six foot three or something at this point right like these guys are just gigantic i mean mike does say the most mind-blowing aspect of modern baseball i guess that could include the economics of modern baseball so it could be just the fact that players are multi-multi-millionaires that would probably be pretty mind-blowing to a baseball player from

1918 it could be i guess this could encompass the data collection the fact that everything is measured precisely and swings tracked and pitches tracked and all of that, that would probably be pretty mind-blowing too. I guess that stuff would be more mind-blowing than any stylistic difference, but, you know, certainly the changeover from, I mean, this is someone who is from essentially the beginning of Babe Ruth's career as a hitter, and, you know, this guy would be time traveling to a time when no one minds strikeouts and everyone's trying to hit home runs and everyone is hitting home runs. And that would clearly be different, I think. And he would be exposed to

pitches that he has never seen before. That would be pretty mind blowing. Although I guess he'd be happy that he didn't have to deal with spitballs anymore so that's something oh wait no i got it it's how long the freaking game takes this is a fan this is a fan from a hundred years ago who's i'm looking at baseball reference actually conveniently missing the average length of a game in 1918 but the years around it it's like an hour 50 an hour 50 for the average game in 1918 and then you fast forward he's got a time travel like, wow, I wonder how they've streamlined baseball in the years since. They haven't. They haven't done that at all. It's a lot worse. It's so much less fun than it probably was in 1918. So he would be in the stands and then he would get to the two hour mark and then he'd look

at his whatever version of a wristwatch they had in 1918. It was probably a wristwatch. And then he would look at it and think, that's funny. The game seems to be in the fourth inning. And then he would go home or maybe time travel back, depending on how much he weighs the duration of baseball games against the other perks of living in the 21st century. On the plus side, they have lights now, so they

can keep playing at night and play at night at all. So that's new. That's exciting. Maybe the 20 20 second pitch clock will fix that yeah right maybe so or you know we haven't even mentioned the fact that the game is integrated that players are coming from all over the world that would certainly be something that would surprise a baseball fan from 1918 so there's no shortage of options here and yeah most of the most mind-blowing stuff has to do probably with all the things surrounding the game

and the player pool and the money and the stats and all of that, more so than the game itself, which has changed, obviously, but is still recognizably the same game. All right, Gary has another Hall of Fame question. Excellent. What are the odds that Joey Votto missed out on making the Hall of Fame by two MVP votes last week? Not to mention not winning the Silver Slugger Award somehow.

Low. Yeah. I, too, like to think that they're low, though. I did forget that Joey Votto had already won an MVP award and got schooled in a fan graphs comment section where I was like, you know, some idiot in 10 years, 15 years is going to be like, Joey Votto can't be in the hall of fame.

He's never won an MVP award. And then we were discussing whether it's like, what's, what's that word for like the whole, the thing that Berenstain bears effect where everyone thinks that like something is completely untrue is the Mandela effect. We just Mandela affected awayed away the 2010 MVP award. But, you know, it's less likely from two to one,

but I think that in 15 years, hopefully we won't even care that much about those. It's the only thing that makes me want to care about awards right now, though, is some idiot saying, oh, look, never the best player in the league. How can he be a hall of famer yeah i mean jeff bagwell won only one mvp that was in a strike shortened 1994 season craig biggio never won the mvp at all his highest finish was fourth place in 1997 so i think that if you were if you

were thinking about voting for joey vato i think that you are already focusing on the other numbers. You are a more forward-thinking voter than otherwise, which is not to say that the MVP wouldn't have helped, but I don't think a second MVP is really going to mean anything here. Yeah, and every Joey Votto voter will be forward-thinking because this will be in the future, and it will be, what, 12 years from now or more? I don't know. Well, what if we get from now or more? I don't know. So... Well, what if we get time-traveling voters? Well, that could change things a little bit. The 1918 fan voting for Joey Votto. I don't know if he's going to appreciate his talents.

But yeah, I think by the time... I mean, that's the one risk. If you can say that you don't care about regular season awards, and I totally understand that, but they can sometimes affect the perception of a player. And Joe Sheehan was making the point recently that the fact that Max Scherzer now has three Cy Young Awards, that puts him on a very short list of pitchers who have won three Cy Young Awards. And, you know, maybe he wouldn't have won either of those awards if Clayton Kershaw hadn't hurt his back when he did these last couple seasons and you know maybe someone like Scherzer now seems more impressive than someone like Mike Messina because he has the hardware even though Messina was the superior pitcher or certainly had the superior career to this point at least and so it can affect how a player is regarded and whether he gets into the hall but I have to think that yeah by the time

Joey Votto is eligible we won't be, or at least Joey Votto potential voters won't be voting based on whether he won one MVP award or two MVP awards or whatever it is. And, you know, he barely lost out as well. So I'm going to say also very low odds that that will make the difference. Let's hope. All right. Let's see. Maybe we can do another one, finish with one more here. All right. Well, it's been quite a while since we took a Trout question, so I guess we can take this one. This is actually from late September, and this is Robert asking, I seem to remember after Mike Trout's injury, there was a discussion on the podcast about his baseball reference page and whether it would feel incomplete or some other negative

feeling like that if he does qualify for the batting title which of course he did and get some black ink in obp and slugging and ops and so on would you feel the same way so when we look at mike trout's baseball reference page now yes he did do we feel anything different about him do we feel that the season was somehow unsatisfying is any of these shine off of mike trout now because he finally did not lead the league in in war and match the stats he put up in previous seasons i think for me the only real letdown aside from him being hurt in the first place because that's rough on me as a writer i want to write about him and only him hot tip but i think the real letdown for me was that when the Angels were,

by some miracle, sort of alive in the last month or so of the season, that Trout didn't do more to kind of help the team. Now, granted, apparently he finished the month with an 890 OPS. I have no recollection of that, but I remember monitoring him and while the Angels...

It's like not even good for Mike Trout. I know. It was his split OPS. I don't want to go through the T-OPS plus explanation on this podcast again, but for that month, it was his his split ops i don't want to go through the tops plus explanation on this podcast again but for that month it was 67 he was like two-thirds of his normal self with an eight not anyway so mike tried is really good but when the angels were close to the race and they were vying for the wild card spot trout was in he was walking a bunch but he wasn't contributing hits or home runs and while i don't want to blame trout or anything it was just some poor timing his season was great that was the only thing that really disappointed

me i think otherwise he's still the best player in baseball i don't think that that's changed in any meaningful sense but i think there was an opportunity there for him to emerge as sort of a strong league mvp candidate i think it would have been a strong narrative for him because even though he missed time he would have helped push this like really mediocre team into the playoffs. But it just didn't come together, which was a bit of a letdown. Yeah, for me, I think it's not disappointing when you look at his baseball reference page. I mean, he led the league in on-base percentage and slugging and intentional walks, oddly enough, and also led the majors in OPS and OPS+. So if anything, I think the fact that he really improved his rate stats kind of makes up for the shortfall in the playing time and the total value stats.

I mean, it's always going to feel like a missed opportunity to me. Unless he comes back, say, next year and has his best season ever, or any year after this, then I will wonder what might have been just because he was off to and had the best season of his career just on a by plate appearance basis. So of course, I'll always wonder, well, what would happen if he had gotten his usual 700-ish plate appearances instead of 507? What would his war have been? And of course course he would have extended all his amazing records about you know best start to a career and most seasons leading and this and that and all of that so i feel that loss a little bit just because this had the potential to be at least his best full offensive

season maybe his best overall season and i want trout to be as superlative as he possibly can be so it's not a reflection on him as much as it is a reflection of me and my unrealistic expectations and hopes for Trout, essentially. So I want him to achieve anything he possibly can. And so I will always be a little sad when I look at this line and realize that maybe he could have just prorated this line over another almost 200 plate appearances and put up an even more phenomenal season but certainly it's not a

black mark although there is a lot of black ink on this line it really is sweet conclusion that six just when you look at the awards on baseball reference Mike Trout like 2-2-1-2-1-4

that's the disappointing year yeah yeah but it's still incredible Mike Trout just finished what what was that fourth on the MVP and what did I say earlier Biggio topped out at fourth on the MVP so you could say that therefore Mike Trout just had Craig Biggio's best season and it was Mike Trout's worst it's like last year's Kershaw or his career is like 1-2, 1-1, 5-3 like 2, just like

that's your anomaly the 15-1 strikeout to walk ratio that was the worst finish of his career Trout is the same thing yeah this is you know thing that you see in some other sports a little bit like awards fatigue like michael jordan didn't win as many mvps as he probably should have because people just got tired of giving him the trophy every year i feel like kershaw and trout both get a little bit of

that like i think last year somebody like kershaw would have finished higher than fifth with that partial season if it was anybody but him but for him it was disappointing and same thing with trout if it was somebody out of nowhere even if at 120 games if it was uh someone who you know had their breakout year i don't think they would have you know been in top two but i bet they would have been a finalist like who was the other finalist it was ramirez yeah was the was the third finalist like you could easily see that line trumping that and getting into that conversation but because it's trout it feels like a letdown all right well we can wrap it up there mike it has been a pleasure not just having you on the podcast but also having you as a patreon supporter and an active

participant in the facebook group and email and comment sections all over the baseball internet. So thank you for being such a constant presence. Well, thank you. You guys have provided me with a lot of drives to work that are worth it. So I appreciate that very much. Is there anything you want to plug where people can find you or read you or just FedEx's competitive rates? I won't talk about that. God, it's going to be Christmas time. Don't even remind me what that's like.

Just can I blank out and come back in January? I mean, I don't write anywhere or anything like that. I mean, I'm in our Facebook group and i post on fangraphs and i tried today to delve through the archives of baseball prospectus to find an article that i remembered from 12 years ago about something that i wanted to link to someone on twitter and that's when i found that you really can't do that in the archives of baseball prospectus i could not find this article for the life of me i spent 35 minutes on it and I eventually just gave up and linked to something from 2012 instead because I could find that yeah Google knew where that was but uh you know the

Facebook group is a really great uh really great discussion and I know when I when I started listening I did not go in there and I sent you guys a lot of things that I probably could have just posted in the Facebook group because I wasn't using it. But there's a really great group in there, and they're a lot of fun to talk to. They keep it interesting from the stat of the day countdown to next year that we've been having to the point where somebody or one of us is deep, deep in their own homerism. Everyone else is like, dude, right. If it was the other way around, you'd think that you'd think that we were crazy. But the conversations are generally great. And the community has come together and done all kinds of great stuff from your microphone auction to, you know, the way that they handled the

resident troll a while back. So all of those things, I'm really glad to have way that they handled Resident Troll a while back. So all of those things. I'm really glad to have found that group. And if you're listening and not participating in it, I recommend you check it out because there's a lot of people who are funnier than I am. All right. Well, let's see how selfless that was.

I asked you to promote yourself and instead you promoted the Facebook group. So we appreciate it. Nice talking to you. And thanks again. Yeah, thanks, guys. It was a lot of fun. You can be like Mike and support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support other than Mike include Ben Medeiros, David Lizerbram, Nicholas Rapp, Terry Spencer, and Nathan Bodnar. Thanks to all of you. And you can also be like Mike and join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. You can also rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

I don't know if Mike's done those things, but I'm going to guess that he has. Thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We are pre-recording a podcast for Friday so you'll have something to listen to if you're traveling or digesting or trying to avoid your family after the

Thanksgiving holiday, but we hope that you all do have a wonderful holiday and we will talk to you later this week. I tell you I'm going to handle all the money, and I don't want no back talk. Because if you don't like the way I'm doing, just pick up your things and walk. You've got to be crazy, baby. Oh, you must be out of your mind. As long as I pay the bill, I stand the cause to be the ball