Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1158: Is a Harper in the Hand Worth Two on the 25-Man?

Episode Date: January 3, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and former co-host Sam Miller of ESPN discuss what (if anything) future generations will remember about the 2017 season, then answer listener emails about an Albert Pujols hypothetical, preserving and valuing front-office secrets, whether keeping Bryce Harper would be worth carrying his brother, planning the perfect baseball-fan retirement, and whether baseball fields are […]

But the devil had a hold of me The devil had a hold of me I snapped back down when he pulled my leg The devil had a hold of me Hello and welcome to episode 1158 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, and I'm joined by Sam Miller of ESPN, who is filling in temporarily for Jeff Sullivan, who is, in a sense, permanently filling in for him. Welcome back. Did you know that today is the one year anniversary of your first episode without me? Oh, is it episode of episode 1001? Yeah. Wow. It's just flown by. Haven't even thought about you. No, not really. It's been a lot of episodes, but it's gone pretty smoothly. I think better than I could have hoped.

We miss you around here, but I hope I feel like, yeah, I don't know any of the jokes. I feel like you got, you're going to have all these jokes that I'm not going to get. And you're going to be snickering at, at my, at my,

uh, obliviousness to your trampoline humor or whatever. Uh, even that, even trampoline, like trampoline humor is like so old for you guys that it feels like I, I just made a, like, I'm gonna let you finish joke or something. Trying to trying to be Internet cool.

We have T-shirts now with all of our memes, most of them from your era, but some from the more recent era. But yeah, since you left, we've really classed up the joint. Yeah. What's the last joke? Gosh, I don't know probably i mean the last memorable thing that happened probably is is the johnny o'brien not quite cold call that's not really a meme but it occupies the same space i think as the net garver cold call did when we were doing the show together but actual meme i don't know i didn't listen to that you should well no i specifically I would have.

But I told you to. Well, not just told me to, but you basically sent me an email that said, well, we have surpassed you. You're now second place among the effectively wild hosts, co-hosts. You sent me an email that said, like said the interview we did today was even better than Ned Garber. And that was the whole email. And I sort of wiped away a tear and then unsubscribed to your podcast that I wasn't listening to anyway. Full honesty here. I appreciate your candor. So we're doing an email show today. Is there anything you want to discuss any,

uh, year of banter backlog that you want to get out of the way here? No, but I, uh, I do want to ask you, I wrote a piece that is the last piece I wrote in 2017. And it's the sort of article that a year ago would have been a podcast topic instead of an article topic, but I don't have a podcast instead I write articles. And so I did an article topic, but I don't have a podcast. Instead, I write articles. And so I did an article about, basically, I often think about this idea of like, what are we consuming now that will be a classic 60 years from now? And sometimes it's really obvious, but a lot of times it's not really obvious. And the things that become classics were not considered classics in their time and were maybe not even considered highbrow in their time or weren't considered significant in their time for a variety of reasons.

And so I – Cody Bellinger could be the all-time home run king. I did write that. I wrote that article, yeah. You did. And how we should appreciate the possibility. Yeah. It's more possible.

It's probably more likely than it was when I wrote that article. Maybe. His pace tailed off a bit. A bit. But so this, I wanted to, I wanted to know, I wanted to think about what will be remembered by a kid raised in 2077, about the 2017 baseball season. And so to do that, I first just sort of jotted down a list of what has been remembered throughout history. And then I thought, well, this is too much work.

And so that became an article as well. And so then it became two articles. But I'm only interested in the second one, which is the one that I mentioned first here, which is what you think will be remembered by a fan, by a baseball fan raised on all the baseball cultural accoutrements that we are raised on, all the memories and all the legends and the books and the stories and the things that are like answers to baseball crossword puzzles in baseball card price guides and that sort of thing. What will it be from 2017? Well, how confident, first of all, are you

that there will be something? Because you went back and you looked at every previous year and you found things. But did you have to dig deep in some years? Are there some years that just kind of fade into history and don't really produce that indelible moment? You know, I really only had one of those years. No, two of those years. I would say two years that I did not have an answer that I thought is particularly well known. And one was 1948. And I use Satchel Paige debuting in the majors. But Satchel Paige's debut

is not particularly well known to the average baseball fan in 2017. In fact, Satchel Paige pitching at age 59 is much better remembered, but that came in a crowded year. And so I felt like 1948 was disappointing. And then 1950 was Vin Scully. He began broadcasting Dodger games. And that one was kind of a reach. You know, it's not like, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I didn't generally do great thing started doing a thing, unless there was a reason that its debut was itself memorable. And it's not like Vince Scully's like first year was like, he won like the broadcasting rookie of the year award or anything like that.

He's probably just a guy for a few years. So those, I don't know. There, there were maybe a few of that, a few of those, but not more than five, I would say.

I mean, I mean, these are, these are all pretty much like the things that everybody knows. Yeah. I think. So, all right. So maybe there's a 6% chance that there will be nothing remembered.

And then, I mean, obviously there's like it. Did I say six or 60? Six. Six. Good. And then obviously there's a some percent chance that baseball won't be well known enough to have a lot of fans and books and things like that. But I'd say that's a pretty low chance. And then, you know, of course, there's the other thing,

right? World ending. Sure. So there weren't any really notable records broken, I guess, except for judge breaking all sorts of rookie records. And then, you know, everyone broke records for like most home runs hit in first X games of career. I feel like that was broken by like four different people at some point in the past season, which probably leads to my answer, which was one of the answers you considered in your article, which is the home runs. And as you point out, it totally depends on what happens next, I guess. So it's hard to forecast because obviously if next year there are even more home runs hit, or I guess I can say this year now, then no one will remember last year for having a record number of home runs.

So it totally depends on what comes after. But it's such a peak and seems like such an extreme that it's hard to imagine it going higher. And there's so much scrutiny around the ball and around what players are doing differently that you figure maybe it's time for someone to adjust in some way. some way. So that's probably the most likely pick, I would say, because all the individual accomplishments are home run related, or maybe not all of them, but the interesting ones, whether it's Stanton with 59 homers or whatever he had, or Judge's rookie season. You've already forgotten how many Stanton had. I feel vindicated for not including Stanton in here. Yeah, right. I think that's right. So they all just kind of fall under that umbrella. It was like a season where a lot of wacky individual seasons happened and, you know, Reese Hoskins came up and was amazing and Bellinger

was amazing, but those all kind of fall under the umbrella of offense was really weird this year. And yeah, I mean, it might be just as weird or weirder next year, but I think that's probably the best one. And then I guess the backup, I don't know how broad these can be. If I can just say like the Astros winning, that's not a moment. But nobody in 60 years will remember that unless you've got a good reason for this team. Like I don't remember.

If they're remembered as trailblazers in the way that they built their World Series team. Right. So you have to have a reason for that team. So is that your reason? Is that they were the... Yeah, I think so. Yeah, they've got a lot of guys who could be good for a long time and the team could be good for a long time.

But I think that's why just because the prediction that was made that they would win years in advance and the whole process that led to that and the fact that they were trailblazers in a sense and then it all worked out. So that would probably be my backup answer. Although I don't know how many years that would be the answer for just team one, probably not that many, unless it's like a dynasty or something. Yeah, other than the fact that picking the Yankees gives you basically a 50-50 chance of being right for a big part of the century,

I don't know that many champions from before, like probably like 69 maybe or around then. I know pretty much every team since then. But before that, it's like, well, it's probably the Yankees. And if it's not the Yankees, then I can name a handful. But do you think that a kid born this year will know in 15 years that Houston, the city, had a terrible hurricane a few weeks before the World Series? No, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't either.

It's not part of the story the way that September 11th was part of the 2001 playoffs. I don't think it's just not quite of that magnitude. I mean, fortunately, it's not quite of that magnitude, but not that many people ended up dying, which was a pleasant surprise, I suppose, since there were even more dire predictions. And then it was almost immediately eclipsed by an even more terrible and costly natural disaster. So I don't think so. No. And I think that the home run, the year of the home run is a really good one. And like you say, I said that it all depends on whether this is the peak year or not. It'll get lost if it's not,

because it's neither the change year, nor if it's not the peak year, will it be the peak year? But it seems like it, you know, baseball was crazy this year. And it doesn't seem like Major League Baseball is acting proud of this. They're not out there with juiced balls going, we did it, we did it. And it's sort of an and the fact that it comes in this you know in this modernity where steroids are also a part of athletic conversations that you know that introduces a whole other thing where like you know fans doubt the integrity of your game you know already is so it doesn't it seems to me that like like major league baseball would probably rather the home runs go back to a more reasonable rate and it seems you, you know, that the evidence suggests that for that to happen, the ball is going to need to be adjusted somehow backward. And so you're an expert on this. I feel like I feel like the last time I was on here,

I might have asked you this exact same question with this exact same lead up. But you're an expert on this. Do you believe that when Major League Baseball fixes the ball, it will do so with an announcement? I don't think so, except that I'm aware of some research that's being done, not by me, that might shed some further light on this matter within the next week or two. And if so, then there might be just so much scrutiny on the ball that they'll be forced to say something if it changes so i mean to this point they've insisted that they haven't changed it so i don't know that they can announce that they're changing it back without acknowledging that they've they've been misleading us all along or that is yeah that's the that is the tricky

thing but they haven't they they have said that they haven't changed it which is could be consistent with the facts as we know them right i always put in parentheses perhaps unwittingly because it seems very plausible that it totally happened by accident and they are using a ball that's within specifications this is not a it's not an illegal ball it's not a ball that is a travesty. And so everything that they have said so far seems like it could be taken as honest and in good faith. And if they say, well, we're going to adjust it within the specifications, that would not be, I don't think that would be considered damning by right thinking people. Instead, you know, the, when you start tinkering with equipment, you have to do so in a, you know, cautious way because sometimes it's, yeah, no big deal. No problem. Yeah, of course.

But the baseball's in a humidor. And then sometimes it's a, you know, big scandal, or if it turns out that the effects are greater than you think, then you have kind of a new Coke problem where the momentum against it picks up. And so it's probably like i don't know it's maybe less risky to not say anything though i have argued in the past that they should be juicing or unjuicing the ball constantly and they should be doing it publicly openly and proudly so maybe they'll maybe they'll finally take my advice if the home run rate keeps climbing and

climbing eventually it will get to a point where people won't want it to keep climbing. And it'll be acceptable for baseball to say we are deadening the ball, even if they're not admitting that they ever juiced it or that it was ever juiced. They can still say it's the players doing it, but we don't like this. So we're going to do something. And if it gets to that point, then maybe it would be acceptable for them to say so. All right, let's do some emails. Let's start with an Angels hypothetical for old time's sake. Although this is not about Trout. It's sort of about Trout. Indirectly, this is from Drew. He says, if the Angels could make a deal with the devil and get Albert Pujols in his offensive prime. Never, never make a deal with the devil. That's the whole point.

You don't do it. Don't listen to the rest of the question. It's a trick. All right, let's say they make a deal with some benevolent, neutral third party who has the power. It's the devil in disguise. Haven't you been watching?

They make a deal with God, God, him or her or itself, to get Albert Pujols in his offensive prime on the condition that he plays center field in his current physical state. Would they do it? So he somehow is producing offense at his prime level despite still being a broken husk. Yes. Kind of a mixed metaphor there yeah i guess that's true yeah so and so what about wait what do we because this is not irrelevant what do we think about his base running because he was a you know close to a one win base runner

in his prime as well i think offensive prime should include his base running probably right i think that's only fair. So for some reason, he's a good base runner. So this is pretty... He can barely move. Yeah, this is pretty simple math then, right? Yeah. And in fact, he gets... What do we get?

He gets about 15 runs just in the positional adjustment. Yeah. I don't know if it's simple because I don't know if there's ever been a center fielder as bad as what a 38-year-old broken down Albert Pujols would be. So I don't know that there's a comp for this. And that's what's not simple, right? But the math is fairly simple. He's a 10-win player at first base in his prime. We're going to give him another win and a half for the positional adjustments. Now he's at 11 and a half. We're going to take away the 20 runs that he was worth at first base.

So now he's nine and a half. And then we're going to make him a minus 55 center fielder, right? And assume that that's probably the extreme end of it because you can always put two speedy corner guys on his flanks and he's not going to be worse than minus 55 is he there's not that many fly balls no it would be it would be hard and unless yeah unless hitters were somehow able to direct all of their fly balls to Albert Pujols, there is a lower bound to how bad you could be, and he would be at that lower bound. So if he were minus 65, then he's a three-win player.

And if he were minus 75, he's a two-win player. Now, I imagine that the projections that come out this winter will put Pujols at about a two-win projection. And I imagine that most of us would take the under. So do you think the Angels, if this same devil in disguise offers the Angels simply a much simpler trade, which is you can have Albert Pujols, he's going to be worth two wins, and he's not going to be worth any more or any less than two wins, they would take that, right? Yeah, I think so.

The other thing is, I mean, if he's playing center field, he will last about one game. That's true. I don't know how that factors into this. Just having to stand out there, let alone run for five balls. Yeah, so let's rephrase it. Let's let, let me, let's do a third hypothetical. Albert Poole's offensive, you know, level of his 2009 self has to play center field, but is a shackled and, and can't actually chase the ball, pick the ball up, throw the ball.

So you basically, you have to play with eight. Is it better to have him not move at all because he might no have run less risk of hurting himself no no the choices here are you can either have that you can either have peak albert pools but you play with eight on the field or you can have this albert pools and you play with nine yeah i think man is a ninth is a ninth defender worth uh 90 90 ish 90 ish runs right that's hmm i don't know i guess if you if you can plan for it and have the the right two outfielders out there i guess i'd rather have that than poolujols. I mean, he'll catch the routine fly balls right at him, but he will do so for one game until he breaks down immediately and he loses bat. So, I mean, I guess if you lose him, then you can just put a regular player in there for the rest of the season. But yeah, I think I

might take the two outfielders over Pujols and no Pujols bat. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. You think? That's a little harder. You think that there's a possibility that we answered this wrong? Well, you said it was simple math, so it got a little more complicated as we went on. All right.

We got two almost identical questions from two Patreon supporters. One is Ken, one is David. Ken says, say the top few members of a front office stumble upon the elusive secret sauce that would ensure championships year after year. There's almost no chance anyone would discover it on their own. After putting it to the test for a few years, it holds up. Would the people with this knowledge name their price to stay? Would anyone even consider leaving for more money? Knowing the magic formula becomes much less valuable as more teams learn it. What would MLB do to restore parity? Would there eventually be a death under mysterious circumstances? And David says, similarly, let's say a team figures out something that gives them a big competitive edge. It could be player development, in-game decision, player acquisition, or keeping players healthy. How big of a difference would it have to be for people to figure out that a team had figured out something new?

And how would the other teams go about catching up to the team with an advantage with the original team, try and hide this advantage by only using it up to a point to help keep it a secret? The answer to the first question, but really to both of them,

depends on what the advance is that they're envisioning. And you really can't answer this question if you don't know whether you're talking about, you know, some sort of like, like, I don't know. I mean, for instance, there's different tiers of things that could be it could be something that is invisible to the public that is about preparation. So maybe it's like a CD that you play while the players are sleeping. Or it could be that, but even the players don't know about it,

which would be a significantly longer lasting because players change teams constantly. And, or thirdly, it could be like, having your second baseman stand 35 feet in a right field, in which case everybody sees it. And it's just a matter of how long will it be before they can do their own math. We'll assume it's something that you can't see from outside. How many people in the, how many people does the player know? And how many people in the front office have to know to implement it? Because if you're telling

the whole front office, you've got it, you know, what, at most two years, at most two years before that guy goes to, you know, somebody goes to another team. Right. Well, you know, what, at most two years, at most two years before that guy goes to somebody goes to another team. Right. Well, that's the question, I guess. What do you do to keep them? Because I'm not talking about keeping the originator, the guy who invented the thing. Anyone who knows about it. Yeah. Anybody who knows about it. Or, I mean, they might not leave because they're planning to sell your your secret sauce and they might not leave because of,

you know, they're holding you hostage and you told them to walk. They might just, they might leave. Yeah, especially if the thing is so valuable that you're super successful, everyone's going to want to hire your people. And you can't really keep them if they're getting offered superior jobs

unless you're paying. I mean, I guess you could pay just, you know, 10 times the going rate for whatever their position is just pay them like a gm or or double a gm or something which you know if this thing whatever it is is valuable enough maybe that still makes sense for you so some people would still want to go because they'll want to run the show and they'll want the position and the reputation and everything so ultimately ultimately, I think it's impossible. You could have a holding action, though.

You could delay it a little longer. I mean, under normal circumstances, people are changing front offices every winter just about, just because they get let go, they get a better offer somewhere else. There's a new GM, a new owner who cleans house, whatever it is. Plus, you just have people coming in and out all the time. Like when I was a Yankees intern and they found out about framing, they didn't keep me. Maybe I was so bad they didn't even hire me to keep that secret at like an entry level salary. So they just let me leave and take that knowledge with me. And that's potentially

a very valuable thing. Could be worth a few wins to you a year, if not more at that time. So I don't know. Yeah. The tricky thing for the boss of the person who develops this or the owner of the person who develops this is that these jobs are explicitly about valuing contributions to victories and like basically putting a dollar figure on those contributions. So the brain who comes up with this should be, is probably thinking, like probably is in, like this is not a person who is raised in the, necessarily raised in the fifties where you go work for a company out of college, and then you know, retire with the Golden Watch 38 years later. This is somebody who is in a competitive industry that exists only for the sake of competition, and who is constantly thinking about how much one person's

one person is contributing to victories and how much that contribution is worth. So it is sort of odd. I have always kind of found it somewhat odd that the front office personnel don't change very often, don't change as much. It's that basically front office people don't treat themselves like a talent. We sometimes talk about them that way. And there's been more of an indication

that the top of front offices are viewing that as a place to have a competitive advantage, but you don't really see them treating themselves like talent very much. You don't see a lot of, as far as I can tell, a lot of high profile, for instance, moves, you see promotions, but like you rarely see like scouting director of the twins become scouting director for the Rangers because the Rangers paid him three times as much. You see him become assistant vice president of the Rangers, but not just like, well, this guy's worth more. I'm going to pay him more. And so, you know, my, I forget where I was going with all this. I've said it, I've said it. You find it, you find it in there. What was my point?

It's there. Okay. Well, I don't, yeah. I mean, it. You find it. You find it in there. What was my point? It's there. Okay. Well, I don't, yeah. I mean, if this is such a valuable thing, you would obviously restrict it to a need to know basis. I mean, you know, presumably the insight is coming from maybe one person or a couple people and you're the GM or something. So the GM knows about it. You're, you're not telling the interns, you're, you're not telling or something, so the GM knows about it. You're not telling the interns, you're not telling your lower level people, you're telling as few people as possible to, I think, still be able to get the most value out of it without just spreading the knowledge around. But even so, I don't think it's really hard to also to come up with an example of something that makes you much better in a way that no one else can

detect. I mean, I guess it would have to be in drafting or scouting or player development. Like if a team just had an incredible run in the draft and just every player they took was a hit and, you know, made it to the majors, I guess you would know, even then you'd know pretty soon what it was, right? You could like backwards reverse engineer it somehow. Okay, what are the characteristics of the players they're taking? Here's the thing that they all have in common. So I think it's just really hard to keep secrets. Like I'm trying to think of an example of a past insight or advance that would have been memorable like this like you

know if it's like on base percentage or something it's a pitch like inventing a curveball inventing a curve if you invented a if you somehow invented a pitch that didn't exist right now and that was as effective as you know one of the big four pitches are basically, and all your guys could throw it immediately, that would potentially be, you know, at six to 20 win, I don't 20, maybe at the very high end, probably like six to 12 win advantage that you could have. And that would be plausibly difficult for somebody, maybe plausibly difficult for somebody to copy now probably not anymore probably now that now you you'd see that you obviously you could see the grip on the cameras harry pavlidis would notice it that night oh certainly yeah you know tagging the pitch he'd say what was this oh yeah and then we'd have everyone with the you know know, high speed video and the GIFs and the screenshots and we'd know exactly how he was holding it.

Right. And there's enough. I mean, everybody knows enough about the physics of pitching that it probably couldn't. This is maybe something that could have happened. I don't know, 20 years ago, maybe. But at that at this point, it's probably not even that. But that's the closest thing I can think of to something that is maybe difficult to repeat, maybe plausible to develop that is not Ghani Jones, more or less. And that and that would be worth that the person who came up with the insight would plausibly still have value to the organization, because it's not just a flip switch that you flip, but it might be something that you can teach to anybody. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. But even then, you know, you teach your whole staff how to throw this pitch and then you lose part of your staff when the winter comes and bring it to the other team and that's that. Yeah, it's true. I don't know. It's impossible.

Yeah, it's true. And really with that, I mean, you lose a pitcher every, I mean, there's some pitching staff turnover probably every month. Sure. Teams are sending out relievers constantly. The reliever teaches it to his AAA teammates. They're gone all the time to someone else. They spread it. Yeah. It's really, really hard to quarantine a good idea in baseball, I think. Do you think that there will ever be another pitch that is developed and basically gets its own finger on the catcher's signs that isn't like an extreme niche pitch? Like, you know, Jared, we were throwing a one-seam fastball sort of or something like that, but like a real pitch. I don't think so. I remember Eno writing something about like trying to design a new pitch and coming up with some ideas, but I don't think so. I mean, we're talking centuries of baseball here with thousands and thousands of pitchers constantly experimenting with grips and releases and let alone coaches. I don't think there's any territory left to be mined there. I mean, you could have some guy with freakish anatomy

who could snap off a pitch maybe in a way that no one else ever could have. I don't know. He's quadruple jointed and he's got more flexibility in his arm than anyone else and he could just put more torque on it. I don't know. But that wouldn't be something you could teach. So I don't think so. I read an article about 10 years ago about a guy who had

found a new cut of beef, just like right there in the middle of the cow, found a new cut that nobody had ever found before. And it was a big hit. Well, there's hope then. All right. Daniel says hypothetical situation. aren't they all? I read a rumor on one of the many blogs that I read that the Nats are considering calling up Bryce Harper's older brother, Brian, a relief pitcher. My first instinct was that it was strictly a ploy to try to get Bryce to sign an extension. As I examined Brian Harper's fan graphs page, I noticed he isn't all that bad. In AAA in 2016, he had a 2.95 era and a babbip of 246 plus he struck out 8.4 per nine innings since then he's had tommy john surgery and missed all 2017 the

question is would it be worth it to the gnats to put brian in the starting rotation for the entire year in order to get bryce to sign an extension how about if he had to be in the rotation for the duration of the contract? Uh, no. Yeah. For one thing. Yeah. I mean, for one thing, I don't like, I can't tell, but I think this question is asking us to just assume that it would have a strong effect on Bryce Harper's decision. And I'm not willing to, I don't believe it would. And now I've got, I'm jotting down on my, on my notes, my tickler file, to someday look and see whether brothers sign to play with each other a disproportionate amount of time. I believe the answer is no, they do not. But also, you know. Johnny O'Brien did, which you would know if you listened.

Who? Johnny O'Brien. But also, I mean, Harper's, I think that you probably don't want to assume that you're going to get like a huge, you're not going to get a discount, you know, at this point. I mean, you want to sign him. Like, I'm sure the Nationals want to sign him. And if they sign him, they will do high fives. And if they don't sign him, they'll be bummed out. But realistically, like you don't really have any reason to assume that signing Bryce Harper is going to be great, right? He's not going to give you a discount. It's not like

he's a guy at three months into his career and he might sign a sweetheart deal. He's going to get paid at this point for sure. And, you know, half of these deals don't turn out that great. Like there's a sort of basic market force here where like half of them are great and half of them are bad. I mean, it's November of 2011 and we're saying like, well, all right, should the Cardinals let Deidre Pujols fly the team plane if Albert will sign an extension? The answer would be no, because Albert Pujols was going to be bad right away.

We didn't know that. They were bummed out probably when he left, and the Angels definitely gave high fives. But that's half of these things turn out bad. Otherwise, they would ask for more. If they turned out good all the time, they'd ask for more money. That's right. Yeah, I mean, I don't know anything about Bryce and Brian Harper's relationship. Some brothers can't stand each other.

But assuming they like each other and want to be around each other, I would guess that it would be a tiebreaker at least if he could continue to play with his brother. But, right, it's not worth it if you have to hurt yourself in the process and if you're sticking him. I mean, if he can be like the seventh guy in the bullpen or something, he'd probably be about as good as the seventh guy in the bullpen would be. So that's fine. But if you have to stick him in the starting rotation, that's going to be killing you in a way that Bryce and his presence will not make up for.

So, nope, I don't think so. But it couldn't hurt to bring up Brian for part of the season or something if you do want to keep Bryce Harper. And maybe there's, I mean, you know, if it's a potential Hall of Fame player, homegrown, drafted by our organization, could be a legend. There's some extra value maybe to keeping him around. And the Nationals, you know, are about to lose a bunch of people potentially and they're good now, so maybe he's more valuable to them than the typical team. But yes, I generally agree with you. Okay.

Do you have a play index slash stat blast? I do. I have two. They're both very brief. Maybe not totally in keeping with the format of this event, but I have two they'll take a data set sorted by something like 3 or a minus or obs plus and then they'll tease out some interesting data discuss it at length and analyze it for us in amazing ways So earlier this year, I wrote about Robert Gesselman's inability to swing last year in 2016.

For people who didn't read this, he had a hurt shoulder. He needed surgery at the end of the year. And so the Mets had told him, or maybe he was, maybe his body told him that he could not swing. And so he literally could not swing. So for a whole summer, he batted every time he pitched, but he would go up there and he would act tough and pretend he was going to swing, but he couldn't swing. So he would either take pitches until the plate appearance ended, or he would try to bunt for a base hit. And I wrote a piece about this because it was fascinating to watch. So year two, Robert Gesselman has surgery, comes to spring training, swing in the bat, looks good. He's got a good swing. People have told me he's got a good swing. I think he gets a hit in spring training and sure enough, he's swinging. He's a swinger.

So a couple of weeks ago, I was looking at baseball prospectus leaderboards. And I noticed something odd about this, which is that Robert Gesselman, who swung like, you know, he was a normal batter this year, a normal pitcher batting this year, had the highest contact rate of any batter in baseball, Ben. Wow. contact rate of any batter in baseball, Ben. Wow. 95.5% contact rate. He saw 172 pitches. I set the minimum at 40. And usually the top of the leaderboard is going to go to somebody with 40 on the nose, but he has much more than 40. He has more than four times 40, a 95.5% contact rate, which tops Daniel Robertson and Ben Revere, Jonathan, Luke Roy,

Eric Sogard, and every other major league baseball player. He also, Ben, had the absolute lowest O-swing rate. He had the lowest O-swing rate rate in baseball he has the best eye in baseball what was his overall swing rate extremely low did he was i mean he did swing sometimes it was low in fact he had the 11th lowest swing rate on pitches in the strike zone and everybody lower than him is a pitcher so he was very uh he was very patient even on pitches in the strike zone and everybody lower than him is a pitcher. So he was very, he was very patient even on pitches in the strike zone, but not, you know, unprecedentedly. So he was a very patient hitter though. And so he had, I think you would say that he was patient,

but also had a very good eye. Like, so for instance, the lowest Z swing rate is you Darvish who swung at 26% of pitches in the zone, but he swung at 29 out of the zone because he can't hit, right? He's bad at hitting. The reason he doesn't swing at strikes is because he doesn't know that they're going to be strikes. And the reason he swings at balls is because he doesn't know they're going to be balls. He's just overall bad. So Darvish swings at more balls than he does strikes. And then the next is Dylan Peters, who is actually, uh, maybe we would put a pin in him. He's at the, uh, Alex Wood, you know, swings at very few strikes, who is actually, maybe we'll put a pin in him. Alex Wood, you know, swings at very few strikes, but you know, does swing at pitches outside the zone. Jose Urena,

35% Z swing rate, but 37% O swing rate. Bronson Arroyo, 38% Z swing rate, but 40% O swing rate. So these are not people who have great eyes. They're patient as pitchers, but they don't have good eyes. Geselman, 38% Z swing rate, which is low, very low, but 5% O swing rate, 5% O swing rate. He also, he also compared to all of those people that I named and pretty much every other pitcher, he has a very good O contact rate. now we're probably talking about four pitches here is my guess but he i think he swung at four pitches outside the zone and made contact with three of them which is very you know that's very good that's a that's a hitter and then his you know contact rate of course in the strike zone is extremely high and in fact his contact rate on pitches in the strike zone is fourth highest of all batters so it is a combination of great eye never chasing

and then having incredible contact skills on pitches in the zone and this by the way does not include bunts bunt attempts are not considered swings. That is how we discovered Geselman last year. So this is not even counting the times he just lays that down there and taps it. I wonder if he was able to fake it so effectively because he knew that he would be capable of doing it if he were healthy. He had the confidence knowing that he could make contact if he were able to swing. And so he could fake it convincingly. Although I guess you could say the same thing about Yu Darvish, who drew that great RBI walk, the bases loaded walk against the Cubs and the NLCS. And he is bad at hitting, as you just said. So maybe that doesn't really hold up.

I'm going to ask you a quick question. I have known about this since the last week of the season. And because I'm I had such fun writing about Robert Gesselman's plate discipline before I thought, Oh, I can't wait to write about this. And I just could not figure out how I could not find an entry to making this a story. And so I decided to just give it to this audience right here. But you've heard it. Was there an article there, Ben? For the main MLB page of ESPN? Yeah, with no gifts. I don't know. Yeah, that's tough. Would have been a great unfiltered at Baseball Prospectus, but I don't know if you could have built a nationally intriguing article out

of that tidbit are you so you're saying i made the right decision i think so okay the second stat blast is this is a quick one it's and i'm just going to lay it on you because i want to ask for your hypothesis here okay since 1993 all teams in the major leagues so we're talking about 12 million i think plate appearances here, something like that. ERA in games within one run. So both teams, the team that's ahead and the team that's behind in a one-run game, okay? Combined. ERA of 4.29, all right?

Okay. ERA in two-run games, 4.27. Okay. ERA in three-run games, 4.28. So. ERA in three run games, 4.28. So these are basically the same number three times. ERA in four run games, 4.28. So that's the same number as the others. Okay.

Yes. All right. So those are all the same, which is what more or less what you'd expect, right? I think so. Yeah. All right. Greater than a four run lead, 4. Yeah. All right. Greater than a four run lead 4.37. So whether you're winning by four or more by five or more or losing by five or more, your ERA goes up to by, but you know, by a lot,

right? By a 10th of a run. Yeah. Does that make sense to you? Does tie game era of 4.37 so the same as in blowouts now what do you figure could explain this i don't know if i have a theory that can explain that i was going to say i mean obviously in blowouts a maybe the blowout games are more likely to come in higher scoring eras and stadiums. So that could be part of it. And it could also be that if there's a big margin of difference, you put your worst pitchers in and so the margin gets even bigger. The ERAs get even worse.

Yeah. So that makes sense. But the tie games being the same as the blowouts, I don't know that i have a theory that neatly explains both of those things to you i do i think i do well it's two theories they're separate from each other uh you've got the one for the for the blowouts that uh that one is it seems the obvious one i and the tie game it's actually i think disappointing i think the answer is pretty simple i think it's that uh every game starts. And so the first inning when the top of the order is coming up for the first time, that game is not tied because of anything we know about the teams or anything we know about the pitchers or anything

we know about how they're playing that day or the weather or the ballpark. It's tied because you start every game tied. And so I think that scoring in the first inning tends to be higher, tends to be higher because you have the top of the order up and you also have starting pitchers in instead of relievers. So I have not tested to see if this fully accounts for it, but I think that that's it. And I think it's a, it's somewhat disappointing. And the reason it's disappointing is because I only made you think about it for about 45 seconds. And so you're like, oh, maybe this is interesting. No, it's not. That was like the whole story for you. I thought about this all day. And so for me, it was kind of cool. Yeah. Well, I'd like to think I would have gotten it eventually, but

it's a satisfying answer. Also, Babbitt, by the way, is higher in tie games, which again, makes sense with my first inning explanation. And it's much lower in blowouts, which again makes sense with my uh first inning explanation and it's much lower in blowouts which also makes sense but that's the other interesting finding here is that in blowouts it does seem like runners quit hustling more than fielders quit hustling perhaps right because in blowouts maybe you just don't run out the grounders. Yeah, or you take out your starters, so you've got worse hitters. Worse batter guys. Yeah, but worse pitchers too. And it's both sides.

Oh, well, yeah, I guess it's both sides. But yeah, maybe. Maybe, yeah, you could be right about that. Yeah. Could be. Okay, that's fun. All right. All right.

Question from another Patreon supporter named Hans. I saved this one for a little while because I thought maybe you'd have a good answer to this. So there's no actual question in this question, but I think there's an implied one. So Hans says he is working on a retirement plan. He is a lifelong baseball fan living in the Netherlands. So he says, I've always dreamt of living in an MLB town

and experiencing a complete season as a season ticket holder. I have started to save money to execute this plan when I retire in about seven years. It seems quite a long time away, but I have only one thing on my bucket list, and I don't want to mess it up. I feel it's a time to get serious. First and foremost, I love the game of baseball. Everything else comes second. As a Mets fan, I think any team could do, really. I guess that means he's not married to the idea of doing this with the Mets. He could go anywhere

because maybe the Mets season won't be that much fun. He says, stadium-wise, I've been to Citi Field, Yankee Stadium, and Safeco Field. I would love to live in New York City for six months, but that may turn out to be too expensive. Also, what are the chances the Mets will not only be lovable, but also good in 2025, which means that the most important item on my list is atmosphere. If my wife doesn't want to come, by the way, I like how he just sprung that he has a wife here after announcing that baseball is the most important thing in his life. Hopefully his wife's not listening or she's exempt from that somehow. If my wife doesn't want to come, I will live alone. And although that won't be a problem, I will need a certain level of comfort to be happy.

Living and working in Amsterdam, I am used to a laid back and cosmopolitan atmosphere, which I love. I'm not rich, so I'll be looking for a humble abode. When I picture my game days, I see myself walking or riding a bike to the stadium. I guess during the season, the weather should be good enough in all mlb cities and that's where it ends there's no question but i assume he's asking for advice here about where he should spend his retirement season ticket year so he uh and what i'm sorry what's the timeline seven years or seven years from now he will retire in about seven years and he does he have to decide now? Well, I guess not.

I guess there's no reason to decide now, but he's daydreaming about it, maybe. And I don't know. He's got to find a place to live. He's got to make arrangements. He should probably wait to make a final decision until you know which teams are going to be good that year. I guess that would factor into your decision. going to be good that year i guess that would factor into your decision but uh and he doesn't so far as we know he this is his first year living in the united states or perhaps in canada he's been here he's visited he's been to baseball games but this is going to be his american

experience though right yeah oh boy it's a lot of pressure and so i mean obviously the answer would be it's not just atmosphere like it'd be heavily influenced by who's going to be playing a compelling season. And I don't know much about the city of Cleveland, but relative to some of the other cities I do know a lot about. But for instance, I could see Cleveland being a top five answer for 2018. Cleveland being like a top five answer for 2018. And, you know, as a person who's grown up in the West Coast my whole life and has lived in some big cities and some coastal cities, Cleveland might be my answer if it were one year for 2018. Although if he envisions himself walking or biking to the park every day,

that's going to be an issue in April and October potentially. Yeah, again, I don't know anything about Cleveland. I don't know if they have a train system, for instance. I love trains. And so to me, if you have to take the train for two homestands in April, that'd be worth it. But also, you could bike in, come on. You put on a jacket and a muffler.

Don't you think? You could, but this is his perfect perfect year this is what his whole life has been building up to here he shouldn't have to compromise yeah and well anyway cleveland wouldn't wouldn't be my answer except that i think they have probably you know they're they're probably the the best bet for the most compelling season in in 2018 from a baseball standpoint them or or maybe the yankees, but not even the Yankees. Yeah, I think they could. They could, but-

That offense is going to be fun. I know you don't like home runs. So let's just say, Ben, let me rephrase this question just to get, I don't know, a couple of details out of the way. But let's say that this question was that every major league baseball team wins the World Series this year in a different dimension. Which would you recommend he spend this season in? So, I mean, we're weighing affordability here. It sounds like he's not sure if he can afford New York. If he can afford New York, then it's New York because A, he's a Mets fan for one thing,

and B, it sounds like he would like to live in New York, he said so, if he could afford it. So I guess if we knew that the Mets were going to win the World Series in this dimension, then you would want him to be in New York. So let's take the Mets out of it because for some reason we're, presumably because it's not realistic to live in New York, he has gone beyond the obvious, which is that he is a Mets fan. Okay. So otherwise all we know that is he wants warm weather and he wants a laid back and cosmopolitan atmosphere. I mean, and he wants a nice ballpark experience.

Maybe San Francisco, San Diego. I mean, weather wise, I guess you would go with San Diego and ballpark experience-wise maybe you'd go with San Francisco although that can be cold but west coast yeah presumably so yeah and it's a great walking city and it's got trains that can take you to places that are you know somewhat affordable but not not really. Like most of the Bay Area is as expensive as most of New York. Yes, right. So he's already going to be taking a train in if he's going to be living somewhere affordable.

So maybe San Francisco has to be off limits for the same reasons the Mets are. Yeah, the team's away half the time, so obviously we're just almost ranking cities here at a certain level because he has to have things to do what are we doing ben no we're trying to plan we're retirement planners for hans i don't want to screw this up i feel like i'm gonna ruin his life if i give him bad advice here i think our main advice is to not decide this for a while, right? Wait until as late as you possibly can, which, I mean, presumably you can wait until the offseason before, right?

Because you can find a place to live. So you can wait. You can look at the projections. You can look at how the roster is stacking up. You don't have to plan this thing in advance. And presumably you have a short list. Like, you know, Shohei Otani was theoretically interested in all 30 teams, but it seems like in practice he was only interested in several teams.

And I'm guessing that's the same for Hans too. So I bet he has a decent idea of what he wants to do already. But I don't know. I just feel a lot of pressure to plan the perfect retirement for him here but i would say just wait don't commit too soon there's no need to yet so uh there's a lot of there's a i would also say that there are a lot of really good cities and the more i get to go to them the more i realize that almost all the cities are good now there's there's one there's one city that's bad in the majors,

and I'm not going to say what it is, but I was talking to a friend about this the other day, and boy, we were just owning this city. It is not a good city. But the others are pretty much all pretty good. For one summer, if you've never been there before, you could probably have a decent time anywhere 29 of them yeah there's a so yeah i think that they're like don't uh yeah don't uh i would say don't don't set your filters too strong i i would be willing

to go just about anywhere uh and have a really good time or maybe even a different city maybe you don't even have to do baseball. You can go to Santa Fe and spend the summer there. That's a great city. Beautiful city. Get MLB TV. You can watch baseball from wherever you are. You can even do it from Amsterdam.

Not even do any of this. Yeah. All right. Well, Hans, if this podcast is somehow still going in seven years. Ask us again. Ask us again. Yeah. Ask us again. Give, ask us again.

Give us a way to like, I need to ask you some questions before I can answer this. We need to know more about Hans and his tastes and preferences. Yeah, what's your take on Vietnamese food? Avocados, fresh fruit. Yeah. All right. Question from Ryan. Oh, still going.

These episodes are pretty long these days. Ryan, this is kind of a Sam question, so I saved this one too. Are baseball fields the correct size and shape? In all other competitive games, the most valuable thing a player can do a bullseye in darts. Even a scratch-off lottery ticket follows this logic. Why is baseball the outlier? Shouldn't the fields be constructed so that singles are most frequent, followed by doubles, triples, and finally home runs? In 2017, there were approximately seven times more home runs than triples. Maybe MLB's home run issue is just a product of difficulty not being properly scaled to value. To pick arbitrary numbers, why not 370, 450, 370 across the outfield instead of the standard 330, 400, 330? Fans enjoy home runs, but would the increased activity and excitement make up for the reduction in home run rate?

Hitters would be appropriately incentivized to balance contact versus power. Obviously, there are a lot of other variables in play, but do you think the game would benefit overall from having these outcome percentages be more linear? Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, this has never really occurred to me, which is one sign maybe that it's not a problem in the current state. I don't think it has ever occurred to me that it is strange and singular that baseball has more valuable things that are much more frequent than other things if we thought about this harder would we come up with things in other sports that are i'm sure ryan has devoted more thoughts to this than we have but i will say he mentioned

darts and darts has this weird thing where in order to make the incentives a little bit more complex the most points is not actually a bullseye, right? It's like a triple 20. And you do that not by getting a super duper bullseye, or even close to a bullseye, but this thing that's quite a ways away from a bullseye. And then then the next best thing is like a double 20, which is like almost a miss. And the reason that they do that is because games put in quirks that make it more complex, that add elements of decision making and game theory. Otherwise, all sports would just be that thing at the fair where you smash a hammer down and try to make the thing go up, right? It'd just be a sheer measurement of force or speed. And so in that sense, he's wrong. But in the other sense, he's right. And if you look at 1903, which I'm looking at right now, there were 151 homers, 543 triples, 1,485 doubles, and approximately 8,000 singles, which means that they did intend this to be this way. And it's not this way probably in part because they wanted to sell tickets that were closer to the action. Yeah. Well, I mean, doesn't the fact that it evolved to be this way suggest that this is better, that this is more desirable?

Well, it would be if it were determined that it is more entertaining and that that's the reason. The reason I brought up the stands is because I'm cynically suggesting that the reason it evolved this way might be because they like money. True. But also the game can't have gotten so much less entertaining because of that, that it counteracted the fact that you're not as far from the field. far from the field. Yeah, could be. Yeah, I mean, it happened in stages, obviously. Like I went to 1903. If I'd gone to 1923, when the measurements,

the dimensions had not changed, only the ball had changed. Well, now home runs have almost passed triples. They're basically equal, home runs and triples. So it happened in stages, right? The rejiggering of ballparks came later. The ball came much earlier. So, I mean, I don't know. Is everything about baseball then by definition better now because it evolved this way? I'm not saying it's not. I'm asking if that is a premise that we're signing on to.

Probably not because, I mean, better in some ways, but maybe not better from an entertainment standpoint. We've talked about that on this podcast, how the efficiency of modern baseball may in some ways be less entertaining, but better from the perspective of trying to build a team that's good at baseball, but maybe not better, you know, in part because of more strikeouts and, you know, in part because of more strikeouts and all the things that the sabermetric era has brought into vogue, not always the best from a spectator standpoint. So I would say that, I mean, the game has gotten more competitive and more skill-driven and more impressive in certain ways, but not necessarily better in the way that Ryan is talking about here. I personally am not big on home runs.

Well, I don't know if I actually should. I don't know if I believe that. I'm now confusing. I think I'm conflating different opinions I have about different things. I don't like, I don't think home runs are particularly interesting. I don't like the home runs themselves.

Like I don't like home run highlights. I don't like home runs, but I do think that the threat of the home run makes all the other baseball interesting. I don't know if I, and I do think that the threat of the home run makes all the other baseball interesting. I don't know if I, and I don't yet know whether I like the threat of the home run, right? Like the home run is implicit in everything else that happens. It's the reason that they choose the pitches because they don't want to allow mistakes that are going to be hit for home runs. And so maybe I do like that, but on the other hand, that's why they nibble. Maybe I don't

like that too complicated, too complicated to say where I am on that. but on the other hand, that's why they nibble. Maybe I don't like that. Too complicated. Too complicated to say where I am on that. But right now I'm leaning toward this is the best question we've ever had. It is a very thought-provoking question. The fence thing is the problem, right? Because, I mean, if baseball were purely a TV sport, no one was actually in the ballpark, then I'd be much more likely to sign on to this. But no one would want this, right?

No one would want to switch to those field dimensions just to have more triples relative to home runs. I mean, I think a lot of people, maybe most people, would agree that triples are fun and there aren't enough triples. That's a common complaint you hear about baseball. there aren't enough triples. That's a common complaint you hear about baseball. But if the price is that you have to sit way far away, I don't know that anyone would make that trade unless you're not going to games in person. And most home runs, maybe not most, but a huge portion of the home runs that you would lose would not be turning into triples. They'd be turning into outs. And San Diego baseball is fairly boring or was, and that's why they changed it. I don't know that you

could, it's not that easy to create triples because outfielders, you know, there's a lot of plays where the outfielder is standing there watching the ball land six feet behind him over the wall. And the dimensions are, are not going like you can't change the dimensions and make that a triple. Just out of curiosity, how far back do you think that the that you'd have to move the fences uniformly? How far back would you have to move the fences to have more triples than home runs? And is there a number or would you is is whatever distance back would you end up getting more inside the park home runs offsetting at a certain point? Well, so as you pointed out, there used to be many more triples than home runs, but that was with a dead ball.

So with the juiced ball, would you ever get there? You'd have so many more singles for one thing. I mean, assuming the outfielders play back. Yeah. Well, okay. And if they don't play back, if they play in to prevent the singles, then there's probably a place you could put the fences to increase triples, but still make it manageable to get to the ball fast enough to prevent the inside the park home run. So I don't know, maybe somewhere between where he's setting it here, he said 370, 450, 370.

If we split the difference between that and, as he said, the more standard 330, 400, 330. So if it's like 350, 425, 350, that doesn't even seem, I don't think that's deep enough. I don't either. No. So yeah, I guess you'd have to go as far back as he's saying here. So 370, 450, 370, maybe that would do it. 450, that's a deep sitter field. I don't know. Do you think that would do it. 450. That's a deep-sitter field. I don't know. Do you think that would do it? I mean, the ratio is so skewed now toward home runs that you really have to make

up a lot of ground. Yeah. I'll tell you this. I don't mind home runs. What I think is most profoundly broken about baseball and is from the very founding, I think, is broken is the single, the way that singles happen is that they're so many singles are singles because they're hit poorly you know that what statcast and ellen nathan have have given us is the donut hole where if you hit the ball poorly it's an out but if you hit the ball a little worse it's a hit and that i hate that i mean i i don't hate i don't hate it and when i'm watching it it's fine Base hits are suspenseful and so on. But that idea that you get constantly rewarded for doing the wrong thing and constantly penalized for doing the right thing seems much more illogical than the skewed home run to triple

ratio. And if you started to change the dimensions in a way that would cause the outfield to move back, then you'd be increasing the donut hole. And the donut hole is what I hate. Yeah, this would be a big donut hole. And then, of course, the infield might be tempted to then move back a little bit. And so then you'd have more weak grounders for hits if that happened. And those guys so mad yeah i ever told you my the the my my

least favorite sentence in baseball i've have i ever told you i've tweeted it and you follow me so technically i have but i'm going to tell you anyway okay my least favorite sentences in baseball is not hit hard enough for them to get the double play. Oh, that one kills me. Yeah, I think I'm keeping current baseball over linear reward baseball and the sacrifices we would have to make to bring that about. It's a good question though and it's worth thinking about.

I mean, we have not spent more than a few minutes on this issue and I think it's fair to assume that fixing baseball might take longer than that, might take more than a few minutes. And so maybe we'll give it a little time and we'll see if next year I've got an answer for you. Okay. Would you care to come back for the minor league free agent draft

in a month or two or whenever we do that? As long as you promise to get me a list that we're all using. Yeah, that can be tricky. I don't even know. I have a vague sense that you won, but I don't know if the numbers were ever added up, but we'll review that when we do that, I guess. So I will talk to you again fairly soon then.

Thanks for filling in. Sure thing. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Sam still gets a slice of that Patreon money. Along with me and Jeff and the sites that have hosted the podcast, Thank you. dot com slash groups slash effectively wild closing in on 7000 members you can also rate and review and subscribe to effectively wild on iTunes thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance keep your questions

and comments coming please replenish our mailbag of the top Ryan's best question ever according to Sam you can submit those questions via email at podcast at fan graphs dot com or via the Patreon messaging system I will be back with another couple guests to talk to you later this week. to the devil's radio and it went na na na na na na

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