Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1164: The Names of the Game

Episode Date: January 18, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan answer listener emails about rebuilding teams absorbing bad contracts, bad teams signing good players, an MLB amnesty clause, fans switching team allegiances, pitchers wearing jackets on the bases, how to maximize playing time with a limited number of hits, baseball on an Olympian schedule, how catchers could transition to a […]

Hello and Letters, your warning stands clear. Pay heed to your heart and not to your wit. Don't say the letter, what you can't in my ear. Hello and welcome to episode 1164 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. My name is Ben Lindberg. I'm a writer for TheRinger.com. I'm joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, who, like me, has nothing to talk about today. How are you? I'm doing well. My name is Jeff Sullivan.

I'm a writer for Fangraphs, and I guess I'm like Ben. I do write about baseball sometimes. That's right. Yeah. I'll be back someday when baseball's back. But yeah, we're doing an email show today, so it's okay that neither of us has anything to talk about. Of course, much of the discourse about baseball

in the last day or so has been about its economics and about a big article that Jeff Passan wrote about free agency and arbitration and why free agents haven't signed. We're hoping to just talk to Jeff about that in an upcoming episode, so we will save that topic for now and hopefully get into it with him

or with us one way or another we will but today is for emails and we haven't done one of these in a while so we've got a bunch of emails to get to and you know what's going to happen before we have jeff passing on is that eric cosmer and jd martinez and they're all gonna they're all gonna sign giant contracts yes that is quite possible all right let's start with an email from Gary from Baltimore. This is a bit about the current market, but it won't encroach too much on what we'll be talking about next time. He says, recently I've seen a lot of articles talking about the recent explosion of rebuilding teams and how that's potentially helping to kill the free agent market. I get that as a rebuilding

team, it doesn't make sense to spend extra money on free agents beyond respectability, but shouldn't rebuilding teams instead use the extra space in their budgets to acquire bad contracts from contending teams and get extra assets out of the bargain? The Padres seem to do this with Chase Hedley to get Brian Mitchell recently. Why doesn't this happen more often? A team like the White Sox, who can surely afford a payroll higher than $70.8 million, could take on Jacoby Ellsbury and get someone like Clint Frazier out of of the park and thanks i'd love to hear your thoughts do you have thoughts yeah nope

he's right they should do that when teams like okay so there's a quote that just came out i think it was today i saw it tweeted by stephen j nesbitt but it was a garrett cole talking about how excited he is to be on the astros and how he's thankful to be playing now for a team that is committed to building a winner it's all quite hilarious now but a team that is uh that invests and is committed to winning etc clearly throwing some shade at the pirates for you know not doing that but what was interesting to me it's not very surprising i think we knew it but this past season was the first time the astros had a higher payroll than the pirates in like six years Because you know the astros were cheap and they did not really invest much in the roster

Now granted they had a lot of young talent didn't require it But when teams cut down look, I think the pirates payroll right now is sitting at something like 70 or 72 Million dollars something that's laughably low given where they've been before Clearly they have room to spend more money and if you don't want to spend it on free agents for whatever reason there's really no good excuse not to spend it on bad contracts if they're available now teams don't always have someone like a chase headley or a i don't know a matt kemp just dangling and terrible and that they want to get rid of and i know that when you are tearing down your rebuilding you're expecting lesser revenue because your team is bad

now and people aren't going to want to watch it or come out to pay to the ballpark and go to see it but yes teams should do that i think teams have been generally willing to do that maybe not all the time owners of course have every reason to love the idea of a rebuild, at least when the finances come into play. But yep, teams should do it. Some teams do do it and some teams should do it more. Yeah, because it's not really like one of the benefits of rebuilding is saving money so that you can spend more later. I mean, maybe that comes into play a little bit. But generally, I think baseball operations departments, GMs, get a budget for a year from ownership. And I don't think if that budget is low for a few years while they're rebuilding, it will

necessarily be so much higher down the road. Like, okay, you saved us money for a few years. So now we have wisely invested that money and we are even richer now. And now you can spend for a few years. I don't, it probably should work like that, at least to an extent, but I don't think it typically does. So I think that, yeah, you should probably just, I mean, I think that's often why you see teams just sort of spend up to the budget that they're given, even if they don't necessarily

need to, just because the money's there. And it's not like if they leave it lying around, they can just use it later. So I think in that sense, yeah, there's probably something to be said for this strategy. Why do you think it doesn't happen more often? Well, owners, I know that we've been, if not talking directly about this, there's been a lot of hinting at this. I think there's a lot of widespread increasing anger at rich people uh right now in in the country and the baseball conversation does get funny because we're talking about billionaires versus millionaires as opposed to people who are in actual need but in any case

i'm sure owners love cutting costs but like there was a what ron fowler i think it was padre's executive had an interview that was linked by mlB Trade Rumors and actually sourced by somewhere else. And he was talking about how, so there's the Headlee trade that was mentioned. And Fowler said that the Headlee trade was specifically about getting Brian Mitchell. So he admitted, and it's not really much of an admission, but he said like, yeah, of course we got Chase Headlee, former Padre. People like him. And he costs something, I think $13 million. But he said, yep, no, Headlee is peripheral to his own salary. And it's basically like we paid that money to get brian mitchell so that is at least one owner who

is uh happy to do it happy to make that investment and i would imagine that we'll see more of it i think i don't know if the whole packaging a bad contract with a prospect idea is even that old it feels like it's a more recent conversation maybe that's just because we've been paying different attention but probably it's because of how front offices operate and they feel like well if this contract is 30 million dollars underwater we should package it with a prospect who's 30 million dollars over water is that is that a word and so it feels like it's happening more and i would expect that it's going to happen more and more because baseball transactions are now impossible to remove from the financial considerations of them.

Yeah, so I guess it's just a matter of selling your owner on, I mean, you have to explain why you want this money. And if the answer is not because this famous player whom you've heard of is good and will make us better this year and will make the playoffs and'll make you more money, then I guess maybe owners might be less receptive to that. So you have to convince them that, no, this is going to make the team better in the long term. It's going to make you money in the long term, but you have to kind of expect some delayed gratification there. Next question. All right, we've got a couple related ones. This one's from Denis. He says, how does the added value of winning compare to, for example, one or several marquee additions on a perpetual losing or non-competitive team? In other words, if a team had $30 million to spend and opted to sign a player like Bryce Harper, despite him adding no real chance of winning at all or even being competitive, is there any value to this? Is the three to four year rebuild with a shot at potential competitiveness later worth more than three to four years of increased attendance, merchandise sales, fan hype, etc. on a mediocre to awful team caused by one or several major acquisitions?

trying to win right now be interested still in signing a famous player a top free agent for reasons other than getting to the playoffs marquee value ancillary value so it's the eric cosmer conversation deciding between the royals and and the padres two teams who are presently bad and who hope to stop being bad uh sometime in the nearer term future so i think when it comes to talking about this in reality the one of the biggest complications is that the the really good and expensive free agents will generally have many teams who are interested in paying them a lot of money and some of those teams will be good now teams or players want to play for good teams which is why this doesn't happen very often so you kind of need you need cases where uh what the the precedent is long, but the one that comes to mind is Jason Wirth.

The Nationals gave Jason Wirth a big contract before they were good. And that was supposedly to change the perception of the team to a certain extent, to convince other players, okay, this is a place where people want to play, or change the narrative sort of about a team that had been bad for a while yeah i uh when i wrote about hosmer gosh when was it this internet link tells me december 19th so let's go with that so uh i wrote about hosmer and fitting him in san diego because that was the idea and i did some uh some research so why don't i just pull from this paragraph this will be helpful you expect this is now me quoting myself so i guess forget the quotation marks this is just me you expect big money free agents to sign with good

teams those are the teams that can make the best use of them yet hosmer might not have that choice to make it's possible i'm going to stop myself right here because we probably shouldn't be talking about eric hosmer as a premium free agent anyway he's i don't think he doesn't belong in the same conversation as bryce harper but look we're just dealing with what we have here so it's possible he'll end up choosing between a rebuilding situation in Kansas City and a rebuilding situation in San Diego. The Padres could be poised to offer more money, and this wouldn't be an unprecedented outcome. Barry Zito signed with a Giants team coming off a 76 win season. Zach Greinke signed with the Diamondbacks, who were coming off 79 wins.

Robinson Cano signed with a Mariners team coming off a 71 win season. Jason Wirth signed with the Nationals when they had just won 69 games. And of course, Alex Rodriguez signed with the Rangers team coming off a 71-win season. Those contracts aren't all success stories, not from the team perspective, but these things have happened before. Hosmer could be San Diego's Wirth installed in advance of the competitive turn. So, these things have happened. Alex Rodriguez, a great player, didn't really work out in Texas. Robinson Cano has, I guess the Mariners have been better since he signed.

But I mean, you know, you know how things look. So I think from the player's perspective, if you don't care that much about winning or if the rebuilding team offers you more money then sure you can take it but it's hard for me to see how in any reasonable sense it would make the most sense for the rebuilding team to to make a move like this but you know with a case like the Hosmer situation right now where there's just such a limited market that it does make sense for bad teams to get involved because otherwise what are you going to do with your money but this feels like a fairly unique circumstance right yeah and i think most of the studies that have been done on this have shown that the marquee value of players like they're just a very few players who really do

put butts in the seats or whatever people say about signing a player that just doesn't happen usually obviously there are certain cases where it does some sensational starting pitcher who will attract more fans on the days that he starts that sort of thing but for the most part i mean you have to be one of the very very elite few or fascinating stories to do that sort of thing to make a meaningful difference in attendance particularly if it's a team that's not winning to begin with. And so I just don't think that it would make a lot of economic sense to a losing team. For the most part, it's probably still going to benefit the winning team that will get that extra attendance boost from this great

player because maybe they'll make the playoffs with this player or they'll get deeper into the playoffs, that sort of thing. So generally, it just doesn't make the most sense maybe there are specific cases where it could i think ultimately also it's the success that brings eyes to a team and when you have a team that's good people will figure out players to like and when you have a team that's bad people will stay away and so they'll pay less attention like i know jean carlos stanley was popular in miami but he would have been a lot more popular in a team that wasn't terrible. And if the Marlins were good and if they didn't have Giancarlo Stanton, the fans would have fallen in love with Christian Yelich or Dee Gordon. People will find someone.

Probably, I would feel like maybe it's more commonly a homegrown player, but I don't know. That's a separate conversation. And we've also talked about what qualifies as homegrown before. I'll stop. You can move on to the next question. Okay. Jeff in San Francisco says, qualifies as homegrown before i'll stop you can move on to the next question okay jeff in san francisco says i was wondering how this offseason would have been different if baseball had adopted an amnesty clause in the current cba the concept of an amnesty clause originated in the nba a sport

with a salary cap and a luxury tax for teams that go over it in short a team can cut a player and have his entire salary not count toward the salary cap for all the remaining years of his contract. The player would still get all the money owed on that contract. However, this type of accounting exercise meant for teams to get salary cap space to either sign free agents or make trades. Of course, there are also restrictions. Each team can only use the amnesty clause once during the life of the CBA. It can only be applied to the contract Signed before the current CBA The player can't sign back with his old team

So how would the offseason be different If MLB had such an amnesty clause Would getting further under the luxury tax threshold Facilitate more signings and trades Which players would be the ones Most likely to be amnestied under such A scenario This is one of those questions that we could probably

Answer more intelligently if we knew more about other sports that have already done this. So say baseball's worst contracts, current worst contracts that were signed before the current CPA could just be wiped away, but you could only do it once during the life of that CPA. So once know once every four years or so yeah goodbye albert pooh holes i hope you had fun with your baseball career he's gone but the angels are not up against the the luxury tax threshold so of course if the angels didn't have pools on the team they would be able to spend a little more so that would help i don't think that the dodgers i mean i guess technically they have matt kemp now or something i guess guess they... But the Dodgers don't really...

They've been trying to save money, but they don't really have a contract that they would be looking to dump. Or I guess they already sort of did do their dumps. Look, it's been a while. I forgot what happened. But anyway, the question, I guess, is the Jacoby Ellsbury contract bad enough for the Yankees to cut him out, right? Because he's still a somewhat decent player.

I know they're trying to save money, though, and this would be a good opportunity for them. So I don't know if they would use it on Ellsbury, but that would be a question because it's really only the Dodgers and Yankees who are most eagerly trying to save money. Maybe the Tigers would cut one of their terrible old players, but, I mean, they also suck, so what does it really matter? Yeah, right.

I mean, Ellsbury is still useful to some teams, not to the Yankees particularly. He just has no spot there really, but they have obviously been talking about packaging him with someone to get out from part of that contract. So he still has value to some teams. So maybe he's not the best candidate, but we can think of the obvious ones that teams would have been happy to use this on. I mean, I guess it would increase spending if an owner knows that there's always this sort of safety net where they can get out from under a disastrous contract once every four years or so. I mean, how often do teams sign really really big and terrible contracts not not all that often so if you could do this once a life of a cba that would be pretty sweet so i would think that would help boost the market if teams knew that they had a an escape clause essentially now of course you get out from under the contract for payroll or luxury tax concerns, but you still have to pay the money is my understanding. So even like if the, we'll do the Yankees and Ellsbury anyway. If the Yankees cut Ellsbury, like the Yankees have the money, they could circumstances, you can cut Ellsbury and that saves you room under the luxury tax, but you still have to pay that money. And so any extra money that the Yankees then use to sign a free agent is essentially similar to signing a slightly smaller deal and then paying a luxury tax penalty on top of it. So you're still paying more money. So it would be a modest, it wouldn't be a one-to-one gain, I don't think is

the point now. Yeah. As Jeff has written about, and maybe we'll talk to him next time, not Jeff in San Francisco, but Jeff Passan about the fact that maybe the luxury tax concerns are kind of overblown because really it's not that much extra money if you think about it it's like a very increased taxation but only on an amount over a very high number so it's it's just not that much in raw dollars so yeah i mean to the extent that teams are trying to stay under that limit obviously this would make them worry a little less about that but yeah it probably wouldn't dramatically change things the luxury tax conversation is annoying but i think like jeff bastin has talked about how getting under the luxury tax is not that

big a deal and then uh this morning buster only tweeted about how the dodgers could save like nine figures in the future if they get under the luxury tax and i think that teams and owners benefit from the system being just complicated enough that people won't willingly run through the numbers because it's there's so many details and it puts me off but i think yeah i think the reality is that the teams do have a vested interest in in selling this luxury tax threshold it's like yeah we have to get under that because there's huge financial reasons and it's really they're not i don't think they're that huge i know they do roll over because the benefits are more than just one year but compounding

but yeah nevertheless i mean you're talking about look i just to pull a number off the top of my head maybe you're saving 30 million dollars over the next three or four years if you dip back under the tax for a one-year blip and that's not nothing but if when you're talking about a team like the yankees or the dodgers come come on. Just pay the money. All right. Let's transition away from economics for a moment here. Matt says, I was born in 1988 and have lived in Pittsburgh my entire life. While the Pirates were good until 1992, I obviously have no memories of them from when I was four years old.

The next 20 years of my life were filled with memories of horrific, embarrassing baseball until Andrew McCutcheon saved the franchise and led my favorite team to the 2013 NL wildcard game and the best sports atmosphere I've ever experienced. My question to you, is it permissible to switch allegiance to the San Francisco Giants for the upcoming 2018 season and return to my inexplicable lifelong commitment to the Pirates in 2019. Or is this cheating? So can he essentially go with McCutcheon in this trade to the Giants for the year that he is still under contract, root for McCutcheon and the Giants, abandon the Pirates, and then go back to the Pirates after that? Okay, so I think that you and I are going to have similar answers to this.

So what I would say, let's alternate one word at a time. I'll go first. Okay? Okay. We'll try it. I think that Matt shouldn't switch. Oh, not where I was going. Not where I was going.

We deviated. Okay. So you can, I guess we already know what your point is. I'm not actually sure that I believe that i don't know okay i was trying to improv i was going along with where i thought you might be going maybe we both thought we were going in different directions but yeah you're taking a laissez-faire attitude to this just saying he can do what he wants yeah don't let anybody don't just general rule don't let anyone tell you how you should consume your entertainment provided nobody is hurt by how you choose to consume said

entertainment i agree i think that if he can do this and not feel bad about it in any way then he should i mean fandom is silly and irrational to begin with. So if he can convince himself that he should be rooting for the Giants this year the way that he thought he should be rooting for the Pirates last year, and then if he can go back to Pirates mindset in 2019, then good for him and he should do it. couldn't pull this off very convincingly. I don't think I could have when I was a fan. And I don't know if that's just the societal pressure that you have to be rooting for the same team through thick and thin. I mean, there is something to be said for sticking with a team when it's bad, because you can enjoy it when it's good again. I mean, if you just abandon the team during the tough times, then, you know, that's part of fandom. Now, it's been a huge part of Matt's fandom, which is not fair to Matt, really. He didn't choose to be born in Pittsburgh and to, I guess he chose to become a Pirates fan, but probably he was influenced by family and friends.

So in that sense, he shouldn't be forced to suffer, but the suffering is valuable. I mean, the eventual success is better if you stick around for the suffering, I think. So I would say that Matt should follow his heart here. And if he can really talk himself into being a Giants fan for this year and then go back to being a Pirates fan and not feel as if he had been fickle, great. feel as if he had been fickle great but i i worry that maybe he won't be able to pull it off that maybe he will end up feeling bad about this decision in retrospect yeah i i agree with you i think that the ultimately your your gut will tell you how you actually feel and you can you can say whatever you want about how you're going to approach the season but if you can't convince yourself that you actually like the giants that much and that you only care about andrew mccutcheon

then it's going to be a very different experience. So what I I'm not going to say that this is what I suggest, but what I figure is probably going to happen is that our friend here is going to still remain a Pirates fan. Also, I think it's going to be a better season for the Pirates than people are giving them credit for. But that's a different conversation. And I think that you're just going to have a little bandwagon team on the side, which is totally reasonable. I have teams that I bandwagon every year. It's not always quite as fervent as it used to be but i remember in like 2008 which as far as i'm concerned was the worst mariners season that's ever been played that year i got extremely into the rays they had just become the rays and it was their first good

year and then they made it to the world series and i bandwagon the hell out of that team and it felt great because the mariners were unwatchable but I still recognized that was a bandwagoning and I was still rooting for Jeff Clement and Vladimir Balentine and all that garbage yeah right yeah and you can just root for McCutcheon to have a good season personally and for him to experience success I just you know I don't think it can be as enjoyable, as rewarding if you're just following a team that you've never followed before or never rooted for before just because of one player you like. You know, I don't think that the emotions can be there. Giants win this year Matt's not going to feel for them what he felt for the Pirates in 2013 or or any of the years that the Pirates have lost in the wildcard game but I think that he should do whatever makes him happy and if he can do this in a way that makes him happy then I will not be

throwing stones at him for forsaking his team now what if the giants are bad again and the pirates surprise and around trade deadline time they find the need a corner outfielder if if the circumstances were aligned because i think i mean look if if tyler glasnow for example figures that strikes boom there's there's your ace and then that makes a huge difference and i'm not going to go through all the things that can make the Pirates good. We'll probably do a team preview episode that talks about that. But, you know, teams overachieve. And I wonder, I really wonder what the chances would be if the circumstances were aligned. Would the Pirates do that and then almost force themselves to have to say goodbye to Andrew McCutcheon again at the end of the year?

I wonder how that conversation would go. Huh. Yeah. That's an intriguing, if unlikely, storyline for the 2018 season. All right. While you were away, I answered some emails from Michael Bauman, and we talked about baseball in wintertime and how it would be different. We both agreed that it would be bad. But this question is a follow-up to that sort of Justin says,

to build on the question about wintertime baseball I'd like To consider the question of pitchers base Running jackets at what temperature Does a pitcher wearing a cozy jacket Have an advantage over his Non jacketed but more offensively Talented teammates if the next position Player due up in the next inning were

To Waxahachie swap in as pitcher For the third out every inning for the purpose Of gaining jacket rights during their next at-bat, how cold would it need to be for this to be a competitive advantage? So first of all, what I'd say is, can anyone wear a jacket? What are the jacket rules? Do pitchers just, do they have a special dispensation for jackets or are they just the only ones who want to wear jackets?

I'm going to the rules. They want to keep their arms warm i control f jacket does jacket show up in the official baseball rules 2017 no there's no jacket in the rules but it's not the cba let's see wind break no do i have a copy of the cba do you have a copy of the cba well not handy it's out there right all right i want to find this thing yeah i don't actually know i would assume that pitchers just have more incentive to keep themselves warm because they have to use their arms in a unique way so uh i the reason i'm asking obviously is that if it were cold enough, I mean, we never see position players wear. Do we ever see them wear jackets on the bases in cold weather?

Obviously, we see them wear, you know, face masks and things. But do we ever see them wear a jacket? I feel like this is something we should know. Yeah, I feel like I've seen. Oh, gosh. I feel like. Okay. What can pitcher jacket running?

Let's see what shows up here on Google. Ah, hold on. A pitcher... Okay. World Series. There's a Wall Street Journal article about this. Okay. A pitcher may...

Gosh. Okay. Where is it? I'm just going to... Okay. I'm just going to read this. Okay. This is Matthew Futterman.

This is from October 28th, 2010. Headline, you'd be cooler without the jacket subhead baseball lets pitchers button up on base but some balk at the idea quote you're an athlete yeah okay whatever texas rangers pitcher colby lewis says he's one of those guys who sweats a lot so he's not a devotee side note obviously colby lewis is kind of one of those guys who sweats a lot dave righetti the pitching coach for the san francisco giants says you're an idiot if you don't while former pitcher ron darling says you're basically a wuss if you do quote if you're a pitcher you're supposed to be an athlete so you ought to act like one mr darling now a tv analyst said recently if josh hamilton can run the bases

without a jacket you should be able to do it too the world series is back this is an outstanding article world series is back in this famously blowy city by the bay and famously blowy city by the bay and thursday night's forecast is for wind drizzle and temperatures in the mid 50s because this is a national league ballpark where pitchers from both teams take their turns in the batter's box the scene is set for one of the most idiosyncratic some would say dorky traditions in sports pitchers wearing jackets on the field we've already seen some of this during game two of the national league championship series philadelphia phillies starter roy oswalt could be seen acting plenty macho in the seventh inning by ignoring the third base coach's hold sign and sprinting toward the plate all while wearing a red phillies jacket snapped

up to the neck but if many of the younger pitchers in this series and in this game in general are to be believed there's a rebellion underway i don't think it works said giants starter jonathan sanchez incidentally not in baseball anymore not a coincidence when asked for his take this article is going to answer our question here eventually i do believe when asked for a take on jackets you're hot out there you're running around you stay warm it's not for me. Baseball players and coaches, like any professional athletes, prefer to convey an image of toughness. Badgers. Okay. Where's just the rule?

Tell me where the rule is. I just Googled this and I got an excerpt from this article that I think answers the question. So it says, Pat Courtney, a spokesman for Major League Baseball, said it goes back more than 50 years and is in the official umpire's manual. A pitcher may wear a jacket while a base runner. A pitcher may not wear a jacket while batting. The manual states. So I guess it does specify the pitchers do this. I wonder whether we would see position players do this if it were cold enough, whether it would overcome this silly macho jacket wearing nonsense.

whether it would overcome this silly macho jacket wearing nonsense. But that's why I wanted to ask, because if position players could wear jackets if it got cold enough, then obviously this advantage would be erased. But not the case. Only pitchers can wear jackets, it seems. So at what temperature does a pitcher wearing a cozy jacket have an advantage over his non-jacketed but more talented teammates? I guess the next question I would ask is whether there are any limitations

on the jacket wearing. Like can you only wear jackets of a certain size or warmness? We generally only see pitchers wear light jackets. But, I mean, if it gets cold enough, because it has to get cold enough, I don't think there's any, like, windbreaker weather where I would take a pitcher over a hitter. It's just not going to affect the hit cold enough. I don't think there's any like windbreaker weather where I would take a pitcher over a hitter. It's just not going to affect the hitter enough. So we have to be getting down to like hypothermia inducing temperatures here, I think, for this to become relevant. And if a

pitcher can only wear a windbreaker, I don't know. But if a pitcher can wear like an Arctic rated cold weather gear, then that might make a real difference because they would be alive and the batters would be dead i think i've forgotten the original questions now so the pitchers what the idea is that the pitchers are wearing the jackets when they're running the bases but then they also hit and so what was what was the question, but in a simpler way? How cold would it need to be for this to be a competitive advantage? So if the next, basically, I guess, I mean, the problem here is that you can't wear the jacket while you're batting. Regardless, it's only when you're on the bases. But that's still relevant, I guess, because if it gets cold enough, base runners would die without jackets, which would make it difficult to score runs.

So, I mean, in that sense, I guess you'd rather have the pitcher if they can wear a warm enough jacket. This question is silly. So the idea is that the pitchers are warm on the base pads so that they have lingering warmth when they go to the plate, even though they're playing at like absolute zero? I guess so. I mean, there is a period, obviously, during which you lose body heat. So it could be a killing temperature, but you would not be dead yet. So I guess at whatever that temperature is, you would rather have the pitcher who has been wearing a jacket over the position player who has not and is now expired or unconscious i mean at the end of the day no

matter what maybe the pitchers die a little slower but everyone's dead in this in these circumstances the field is littered with the dead it's a game played before corpses it's a very grim scene it's interesting you got the the pat courtney quote there's a little more uh it does continue no other player is permitted to wear a jacket while a base runner a batter a defensive player or a coach on the baselines if worn the jacket must be buttoned so there's a there's a lot of jacket rules i was looking so there's nothing in the the cba nothing in the official baseball rules as mentioned mentioned, it is in the umpire's manual. But why can't a coach wear a jacket? What if it's cold? I know.

I mean, I guess is the concern that like someone could jump out of the stands and masquerade as a coach if you can't see the jersey? Just anyone could be a coach? I don't know. I can't imagine that being a legitimate concern. I feel like there are things in place that would prevent that from happening, namely the coach. Right. I mean, if anything, coaches should be more encouraged to wear jackets so that they don't resemble the players, right? Yeah, sure. Let them wear jackets. i think if it's cold enough to kill then you would rather have the pitcher wearing the jacket than the position player not and also we agree that coaches should

be able to wear jackets and they should advocate that for that in the next cba i don't know if the coaches are part of a union but but they should be question for you relay the question for you at what temperature would you rather have bartolo Colon pitching than Chris Sale? We're assuming that Colon has enough insulation to keep him functional here, whereas Sale is just feeling the wind whipping through his frame. Yeah, I mean, I guess, I don't know, is it, I guess that's true, right? I guess a very skinny person would be more susceptible to the cold, perhaps I mean, they still have skin, right? They are both exposed to the elements in the same way

But I guess your core heat perhaps would be preserved better So, huh, we should probably look up their their weather splits or something but i don't know i'll say uh i'll say 30 i want to say 10 okay 10 degrees fahrenheit i think that chris ale is very good unlikely to die that's true if we're talking about current cologne in sale there's a quite a talent gap there so i wonder i wonder if you uh went through the baseball history of colder weather teams have averaged heavier players or if maybe they should. Yeah, competitive advantage. Listen up, Minnesota.

Let us answer another question. Let's see. Can I take a slightly less silly question just to break things up a bit? Is there one? Hmm. All right. Let's do. No, that's silly.

This is very silly also silly all right how about this one this is from steven who says a recent discussion about the future of the catcher position if and when a human is no longer calling balls and strikes got me thinking i can see how the benefits of framing ability will fall away and it will become a bat first position with robot umps i'm curious as to how far that will reach will college install these systems will high schools install these systems at levels with human called strike zones catchers will still be rewarded for framing abilities i'm thinking about the matthew effect the kids who get the best training early get an edge that

accumulates over time even in little league the first kid to be willing to sit back there let alone show any talent for catching is going to get a ton of reps will we get a glut of minor league players who were glove first catchers and now can't hit enough to keep up so that's kind of interesting i think we both think probably that robot umps are inevitable i mean maybe not soon but someday so you will get some sort of transition period where you'll have robot umps at the major league level, maybe even at the minor league level, but you won't have them in amateur ball. And so kids' early baseball experiences are not going to be with that. It's going to matter getting extra strikes. And so you'll get a bunch of catchers maybe who will suddenly have whiplash because they'll be going from a skill being valuable to a skill not being valuable. Yeah, that is interesting.

You're still going to have it's still going to be important to stay in good defensive position and all that stuff because you need to be able to transition to making throws or to not let pitches get by you. But yeah, it will be interesting to see if we get a bunch of Ryan Domets down the line who just kind of... I mean, think of the way that pitches will be caught when we're like three years, five years into an automated strike zone. I wonder, even when framing ceases to have any benefit at all, and even when it's like the first pitch to a batter and there's no one on base. it's like a the first pitch to a batter and there's no one on base so there's i mean in those cases the catcher is only even there because a catcher has to be in the box per the rules but he doesn't have to do anything if the strike zone is automatic except maybe keep the ball off the ground if he is in the interest of sustainability and not wasting baseballs but i wonder if catchers will still try to kind of pseudo frame just for the sake of not looking like complete idiots you know because you don't want to there's always going to

be style points and we see outfielders catch balls in non-fundamental ways all the time because they want to look good and which is fine because usually they don't drop the baseball but it is it's really hard for me to visualize exactly how well catchers are going to continue to catch when it ceases to really matter yeah i definitely think you'll see some domits i guess the question is just like will there be the jeff mathis of college who is like about to be drafted and then suddenly robot umps are installed and he's like damn it they it actually mattered how you could frame for hundreds of years and here i am the great framer no one wants me anymore because i can't hit or something so inevitably you'll you'll get some guys who are just out of luck under this new system i wonder whether it will just kind of trickle down like

if framing is not emphasized at the major league level, it might just not be at any level. Like even though it might still help you in little league or high school or college, I wonder whether just because the majors are the model and those are the players everyone looks up to. need to be good at that to make the majors someday, then maybe it just won't even be a part of people's training. So there just won't be any good framers at any level unless they're just instinctively great. So that could happen too. But there will be a strange, jarring transition period inevitably if it does happen. Well, I guess if it does happen, then the good young framers will get the comeuppance that bad young framers have gotten in the last few years. So, you know, what goes around comes around. Yeah, they've had it good for a while. All right. Let's take one more here.

This is from Sean. Last year, Phil Gosselin led all position players in games played with fewer than 10 hits. He played 40 games with a robust line of 146, 180, 188. Now let's say you make a deal with the devil or a benevolent third party or God where he, she, it gives you the opportunity to get 10 hits over the course of an entire major league season and you can decide how you spend them. How do you spend them in a way that maximizes your time in the majors?

Certainly you can't wait too long to use a couple of them because then it would be back to AAA with you. But if you spend them all early in the season, you might be out of luck by the time important September baseball comes around. What say you? I'd pitch. Yeah, that's right. You could easily go a whole season, probably be better than the typical pitcher if you can get 10 hits in a season. So yeah. But if you're not a pitcher, I mean, I guess the best thing to do, I mean, if we're only talking about maximizing your time in the majors, then we don't really care if you're still around in September. We're not talking have like a sensational week or two in April, then you might get a longer leash than if you say, you know, just kind of strung together like a hit or two for five weeks or 10 weeks in a row. I could be wrong about that, but like, you know, if you're hitting 500 or

something after two weeks in the season and everyone's talking about you, then maybe you can just go over for weeks and weeks and teams will still keep giving you a chance yeah especially if you could come up with a few clutch early hits right i guess but there's really there's really no good way to use 10 hits if that's all you got it's not enough hits yeah because you have to you of course would want those 10 hits to matter come down the stretch be in the playoffs but if you only get 10 hits you're sure as hell not going to get the opportunity to deliver those hits in the first place unless you're, what, Travis Ishikawa. But this question is maybe curious,

who has played the most ever games with fewer than 10 hits? Yeah, play index that sucker. We're just going to try to find out here. Any non-pitcher? And we're going to see what we find out here. Any guesses? Yeah, I mean, well, no. I guess like a defensive replacement,

probably like someone who is great at defense or pinch running. It would be someone like that who gets into a lot of games for non-hitting related reasons and just managed to get enough hits to stick around. But it'd probably be someone obscure, I'm guessing. Well, I'm having trouble excluding pitchers from this, which is irritating. So I could always go to the fan graphs leaderboards which is something that my boss would probably compel me to do uh so what i'm going to do is uh is do that while ben very helpfully

buys time for another 30 seconds okay well i mean i guess we could just get to the stat blast. We have a few stat blasts, I guess, to get to. So let us make this the official time for the stat blast segment. Great. Yeah. You know what? Because forget the... I'm not going to look this up. I don't care anymore. So we're just going to stat blast it. I have something separate. And you, I'm very proud of what I think that you did for the StatBlast. Yeah, a rare Ben Lindbergh StatBlast that I have today. Yeah, if you want to keep looking up the fewer than six thing while I talk, then please feel free. My curiosity is semi-peaked now, but this is a question, the listener request for a StatBlast.

now, but this is a question, the listener request for a stat blast. This came to us from Chris, who says, over the holidays, I was enjoying some drinks and food with my wife's brother and his wife. We were discussing popular names and what names for kids seem popular now. To make a long story short, we discussed the most successful names. For our example, money or power was used as a definition of success. This leads me to think about baseball and the most successful baseball names. I assume the name Mike will be one of the top names in war accumulated throughout a career. Mike Schmidt, Mike Messina, Mike Piazza, Mike Trout, all worth a couple hundred war. What is the most successful baseball name?

So this is an actual answerable question, which I also used Fangraphs for. So what I did here was I just exported every career. So I took all non-pitchers and I took their offensive career lines, just going back to the very beginning of professional baseball, major league baseball. Then I did the same for pitchers. I just exported all the pitchers. I removed the duplicates. So I didn't want to duplicate position players pitching, essentially. So I removed the dupes there. So then I just added them all together. So I have war for each of these guys.

I have either plate appearances or total batters faced for each of these guys. And then I have their names. And in Excel, I just separated out the names. So I took their first names only and just made a little pivot table. And I now have for every name in Major League Baseball, I have a sum of war produced, a sum of plate appearances or total batters faced. I also have the number of each name that has been in the majors. So I am able to, with a sum of 1,862.9 war. There have been many Mikes.

There have been 439 Mikes in Major League Baseball, and those Mikes have produced 4.2 war per Mike. This is not the most common name in baseball history. Do you want to guess what the most common name in baseball history. Do you want to guess what the most common name in baseball history is? It's just a common name in history as well. John? John's number two. Oh. Mike is number three.

Chief. Chief. How many chiefs have there been? There have been 11 chiefs, mostly from a bygone era of baseball. What I should specify here, of course, is that I'm separating names. So, you know, Michael is separate from Mike, I assume. Let me confirm that that's the case or maybe. Yeah, so there are 40 Michaels here.

And so I'm not lumping those in with Mike. I'm making no attempt to combine variants Of names but I will Just tell you Bill is actually By far the most common Baseball name there have been 546 Bills in Major League Baseball And John the second most common

474 that's a very Big gap because From number 2 to number 3 it's 474 to 439 so Bill Bill, by far the most common baseball name, maybe name in general, I don't know. But the most successful by accumulated career war names in baseball history, Mike, Joe, Bill, Jim, Bob, George, John, Jack, Johnny. So, Bob, George, John, Jack, Johnny. So, you know, John, Jack, Johnny.

Those are 7, 8, 9. And then Frank. No huge surprises here, obviously. Mike is actually the most playing time. Most played appearances and or total batters faced is by Mike, even though Mike is the third most common baseball name altogether. Now, I looked at war per name So if you Just take war and then

Divide it by the number of people who have had that Name the most common or the Most productive baseball name on a Per player basis is Honus which is Perhaps for obvious reasons There has been one Honus in Major League Baseball

history. He was pretty good at baseball. So Hannes right now, if you name your kid Hannes, all past Hanneses in Major League Baseball have averaged 138.1 war. Pretty good bet. And then you've got Triss, Gaylord,

Christy, Chipper, Fergie, Arky Pud, Andrew with a U Harmon Etc. Those are all For obvious reasons but if we Raise the Minimum for number of names

To have had that name just so we don't Get these singular ones so If we specify that you have to have had at least 10 players with this name, the most successful name in baseball history on a rate basis is Babe. What do you know? 17.8 war per Babe. And second, Barry. 15.6 war per Barry. Then you got Willie, Jimmy, Richie, Kurt, Charlie, Frankie, Chief. Chief is actually the ninth most successful baseball name per Chief. And then Ty, Mickey, Roger, Reggie.

So no enormous surprises here, really. If you are wondering which of our names has been more common or more successful i can answer that question too and the answer is jeff is just a better baseball name in uh in every respect essentially there have been oh now we've got jeffries showing up here get out of here jeffrey i'm interested in you jeff there have been 15 151 Jeffs in Major League Baseball history. That makes it the 20th. 20th most common name in Major League Baseball history is Jeff. Jeffs have produced 567.1 war and 3.8 war per Jeff,

whereas Ben is only the 65th most common name in baseball history. There have been 67 Bens. They've produced 224 war. That's 3.3 war per Ben, pales in comparison to the 3.8 war per Jeff. If you have any questions about names in baseball history, I can answer them. I will also put this online, I suppose. I'll just throw this in a Google Doc if you're interested in where your name ranks in baseball history. I will link to this in the show page and the Facebook group if you want to explore. So that is a perhaps more thorough than anyone wanted answer to this question from Chris. All those Jeffs and only one Jaff. Jff decker is the only jeff in the history of major league baseball that that shows up okay

so the answer the answer to the uh the other question the person who has played the most games in a season while ending up with fewer than 10 hits he is uh as you might expect a player who when i look him up on baseball reference does not have a pronunciation guide but does have a very unfamiliar last name so sorry ross uh for this but the answer most games fewer than 10 hits in a season ross mosh moshido ross moshido mosquito ross m-o-s-c-h-I-T-T-O, a last name I have never seen before in my entire life. In 1965, he played for the New York Yankees. That is a Yankees team that that year went 77-85. I didn't know the Yankees ever had bad years back then.

But anyway, that was a Yankees team that did have players such as Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, other and ross moshito mosquito i'm gonna go with moshito moshito roser his first name is roser roser alan moshito so hold on roser has there been any other okay so he's the only roser in major league history and perhaps unsurprisingly the only moshito mosquito also in major league history i want unsurprisingly the only mosquito mosquito also in major league history i want to stop saying that name i feel like it's going to give us an explicit label for this podcast in 1965 mosquito maybe mosquito 1965 he played in 96 games with the yankees and finished with five hits he batted just 28 times. Here's where this gets interesting. In the minors, his first year in the minors, playing in Johnson City, he was 19.

He had 20 home runs. He had a 9.81 OPS. No idea what the league average was back then, but I bet it wasn't 9.81. He showed a little bit of promise, hit a little bit, and he was in the major leagues in 1965, the year that I just mentioned. And in 1965, played all those games, didn't hit. I'm just going to let you know, Mosquito Ross played again in 1967. He played 14 games. He had one hit.

In his major league career, spanning, I guess, two seasons, Ross played in 110 games. He had six hits. One was a home run. And he never started a single game. He only ever appeared as a defensive replacement. That is the only thing that Ross ever did. He played left, center, and right fields.

He committed only three errors. I have no idea if he was any good. But according to the fielding numbers that do exist, no, he was not. But in any case that was uh that was his job and so he uh he played his first game and on april 15th and he did nothing and then he did he did have his first plate appearance on april 18th of 1965 and when he did that he came in in relief of mickey mantle which is a pretty good thing to be able to do. Oh, he actually pinch ran for Mickey Mantle.

Mickey Mantle walked in the top of the seventh. And then Ross came in to pinch run. He advanced a second on the line out. Then there was a walk. Then there was a triple. So the first time he ever got the bat, he did score a run. But old Ross, who is currently 72 years old and alive. And in, I don't know, maybe he's still in Fresno.

He went to school in Fresno. I never know where these people could settle. But he never started. I have some news about Ross. So he, according to his Wikipedia page, which he does have, oddly enough, he is one of only seven players to have more career game appearances than plate appearances. This is a possibly outdated fun fact it seems to cite a decade old list but he is uh obviously unusual in that respect now i think he is either the player or one of the players who had the nickname mickey's legs

which i believe came up once maybe or we at least got an email about it when we were talking about player nicknames that had other players' names in them. So because he was a caddy for Mickey Mantle, he was Mickey's Legs. And in fact, I have found on a sports memorabilia site here, a signed baseball signed by Ross, which he has autographed and below written Mickey's legs in quotation marks, but with an apostrophe between the G and the S on the end there. Don't need an apostrophe there, Ross. Oh, no. But I don't know if that makes it more or less valuable.

So that's something to know about him. Another thing I know about him now is that I searched to see if he had a Twitter account, which seemed unlikely, but I have found a Twitter account for Russ Machito. whether this is actually him or not obviously but the uh profile the bio here hashtag trump hashtag maga hashtag military hashtag men in blue hashtag liberal destroyer hashtag no fake news msm hashtag drain the swamp i hope this isn't ross oh no ross joinedined October 2017. So if this is Ross, he has just joined Twitter and he has some political opinions to share. What are the god dang odds that he would show up on Twitter and in October of last year? Right. I can say that he did. I was going to suggest that we cold call ross but now i'm feeling a little less

enthusiastic about that idea yeah look it would it would maybe be a memorable podcast i don't know uh fun fact about ross moat i don't care how to pronounce his last name anymore he he pinch ran 40 times in his major league career and he ended up with zero stolen bases and zero caught stealing bases and of course zero triples no evidence that he was actually fast i don't know what his deal was but he uh he did go into run when mickey manil didn't want to anymore and as i uh searched his name i can tell you that uh found another article from the rockland county times that's rockland's official newspaper since 1888 it's published weekly there's a picture caption picture it does not upload a former yankee outfielder's rockland's official newspaper since 1888 it's published weekly there's a picture

caption picture it does not upload a former yankee outfielder and rockland resident ross m gives anne blanda strati of palm city florida some advice on her golf stroke that's uh down here where the flowers bloom in the spring tra la la that's the lead of the story you won't find erstwhile new york yankees outfielder Ross Machito at Tradition Field following the Mets, nor a nearby Jupiter at Roger Dean Stadium checking in on the Florida Marlins or the St. Louis Cardinals. Neither will you find Machito, who spent 20-plus years in Garnerville running a security business up the road in Vieira at Space Coast Stadium, wondering how the Washington Nationals are progressing. Tell me, Mark Matura, where will you find Ross Moschito?

Rather, you can usually find the tall, still trim, still athletic, personable 68-year-old from Fresno, California, where he was a teammate of the Hall of Fame pitcher Thomas Seaver at Fresno City College at his busy, updated St. Lucie Golf Range. I have lost interest. All right. Well, this has taken us to some strange places, as stat blasts often do. Did you have a third stat blast that you wanted to do quickly? that recalls mishito who i will remind you never stole a base in the major leagues he says i could quote fly parentheses run thanks mark and had a cannon for an arm but once i was injured i hurt my arm by trying to compensate what on earth happened you can't be mickey's legs if your own

legs are non-functional you'd need like a mickey's legs legs you'd need another player to back him up which would be probably a inefficient use of roster space he popped his achilles which hurt his game even though he never stole a base and then he hurt his arm compensating for his hurt achilles which i look i know that there is such thing okay so i'm just going to do the other stat blast okay so uh this is just really quick so maybe 30 seconds, but I wrote about Colin Moran just yesterday and how Moran started to hit a lot more fly balls than he had before. So that's nothing too unusual. We've talked about these adjustments a million times.

So between the last two years, Logan Morrison, for example, pretty well known for hitting a lot more fly balls, he dropped his ground ball rate by 11 percentage points. That's big. Yonder Alonzo, another guy who did the same thing, he dropped his ground ball rate by 11 percentage points that's uh that's big yonder alonzo another guy who did the same thing he dropped his ground ball rate by 10 percentage points jed lowry and colin moran tied having dropped their ground ball rates by 13 percentage points that's enormous that's why moran was able to tap into his power and it is why jed lowry had a strong offensive season but

while those players had large decreases in ground ball rate, they are not the players in professional baseball who had the largest drops in ground ball rate. The player in professional baseball who, between 2016 and 2017, dropped his ground ball rate the most was one Antonio Nunez. Antonio Nunez being a player, maybe not coincidentally, in the Astros system. He is a second baseman, it looks like, and in 2016, he had an above-average WRC+, playing between high A and double A,

and that was when he was hitting a bunch of balls on the ground. In 2016, this is Nunez's third professional season, he hit zero home runs. In 2015, also as a grand ball hitter, he hit zero home runs. In 2014, he hit zero home runs in 2015 also as a grand ball hitter he hit zero home runs in 2014 he hit zero home runs antonio nunez had never hit a home run as a professional and in 2017 he dropped his ground ball rate by 18 percentage points he hit ground balls just 39 percent of the time playing for the double a affiliate of the Houston Astros. And he slugged 270. He had his first two career home runs and he was absolutely terrible.

So Antonio Nunez, I don't know what the deal was. But as a ground ball hitter in 2016, between levels, he slugged 298. He had a 672 OPS. This past season, he had a 586 OPS and he was bad. He also stopped running quite so well. So I don't know what happened with Antonio Nunez he's not a quality prospect so he's not the kind of guy who I could get any information on while googling but clearly something happened with Antonio Nunez I don't know why he's listed here as

5'9 165 so maybe the Astros thought Jose Altuve could do it that means any little dude could do it and you know what? Maybe if Nunez played at the major league level, those balls would carry over the fence. But in AA Corpus Christi, they most certainly did not. So big change. Antonio Nunez, not any better for it. All right. That was a lengthy StatBlast segment.

Three StatBlasts. So this has already been a long episode. Let's see if we can cram a couple more in here. Adam, Patreon supporter, says, in the Japanese game show where Bonds, Giambi, and Bernie Williams had to hit in a bunch of weird circumstances, one of the challenges had a left-handed pitcher and right-handed pitcher both on the mound, both winding up, but only one actually throwing the ball.

Even though they were throwing about 50 miles per hour, it was a bit of a challenge to the hitters. How good would a pair of pitchers doing this need to be to perform at an average MLB level? What ERA would you project for a Kershaw-Kluber combo? So you have two guys on the mound. How bad can they be individually in order to be major leaguers in combination, essentially. So the deception aspect here, the element of surprise, not knowing which of these guys is going to throw the pitch, how much does that help?

How bad can you be and get away with that? That's really hard to answer. Okay, so just to walk this back, they're throwing one ball, one ball between the two of them? Yes, only one of them is actually pitching. Only okay but you don't know which one that that answers a lot of questions that i did have probably should have paid closer attention okay because right if it's two get out of town okay so one of them one of them is throwing they can they're gonna be standing probably on opposite ends of the rubber you don't know who to focus on oh my gosh okay so i'm gonna i'm gonna say that that advantage is worth 20 runs.

20 runs over the course of a full season as a starting pitcher. I wonder, I'm going to guess that the pitcher who is pitching is going to have some sort of tell. I can't imagine that if you don't have a baseball in your hand that, I mean, as the ball comes out of the glove, it should be apparent to the hitter you can see a white thing so the timing won't be exactly maybe 20 runs is too aggressive the timing won't be hold a ball oh no throws it well uh the what those players are going to get hurt yes it's bad to throw a ball without throwing it so yeah i mean the batter is going to get hurt probably

just for not being able to react in time but uh aside from that well so the there's an article on the athletic just the other day about the cubs presentation to showy otani and they were talking about how they had a virtual reality system where you could put on these goggles or something and then you could pretend like you're looking at any pitcher who exists so i think the example given was clayton kershaw and it would be interesting to then put hitters in a virtual reality situation where they're seeing two pitchers on the mound and uh and they don't know who the ball is going to come from but although then you might cause chris bryant to have nightmares and ruin his career this would be an enormous advantage i think this would be huge yeah i mean just so much of it is being able to follow the ball out of the hand.

And, I mean, there's so little time between the ball being released and the point at which it's just too late to be able to adjust to it. Now, the question is asking how bad can you be and get away with it. So we're not talking about, like, like i mean if the question asked if you take like kershaw and kluber and they can do this together i mean does a run score like i guess a run like you know just kind of taking swings almost at random you'll eventually hit a home run or something just because but like you know i, the stats would be otherworldly, obviously. But like, you know, if you if you're us or like if you throw like because at what point does your lack of stuff just, you know, does that essentially make up for from the batter's perspective for the inability to see it and anticipate it out of the hand. I'm going to say that it would be enough that any pitcher in affiliated professional baseball could be in the majors. That's going to be my barrier.

Okay. That sounds reasonable, I think. So, you know, you're not just taking like guy off the street soft tossing. No. No. You and I could not do this. Yeah. Uh-huh.

Yeah. You and I could not like tag team a major league hitter. I wish that I didn't say that. You and I could not be on the mound because you're right-handed, correct? Uh-huh. I don't know if you have to be opposite-handed to do this. Probably make it easier. There's not that much room on the mound and on the river.

That's true. That's another problem. The pitcher could feel crowded and maybe make himself worse. Yeah, true. Yeah, no, I think that's a pretty good rule of thumb If you're already a professional pitcher in affiliated ball Then you could be a big leaguer under this I think that's about right Okay

I'll go with that It's simple Do you think the Stompers could beat the Tigers If the Stompers got to do this And you don't lose another guy on defense I mean, I think so because like the stoppers could get guys who throw 90 you know like not a a great 90 but they could collect a bunch of 90 throwers with poor control if they wanted to and if you can throw that hard i think you're

throwing hard enough that there's still not enough time to adjust to this i mean i don't know if hitters would just like the way that hitters now sit fastball sometimes, like would you just sit right-handed or something? Like just assume that, you know, just pick one essentially and at least you'll be good to the half of the time that you're right if it's random. Maybe, but I mean, that might be better than just sort of dividing your attention.

Like it might just be literally impossible to hit the ball if the guy's good enough if you're not picking up the ball from the first moment so you might just have to pick one and and like be half as good as you currently are i guess so uh that might be one strategy but yeah i think stompers could be big leaguers if you took the hard throwing stompers and put them together on the mound. I think so. Yeah, I think that players would stop grinding the plate. Yeah, probably. All right.

Clay says, how would baseball be different if the sport operated on a schedule similar to the Olympics? Players would train and play exhibition games with their team during the three off years, but every fourth year was the season that actually mattered. Assume the other structures are similar. the draft is still held every spring, players can sign contracts and be traded, etc. What would GMs do differently to ensure their team was prepared to win the gold? So I guess, I mean, this would completely destabilize baseball. Obviously, like, the revenue wouldn't be there. You wouldn't be able to attract the talent that you do now. The player pool would be a lot shallower because unless every sport is doing this, you wouldn't get guys going into baseball if they're just playing exhibition games are the majority of your games like does that make sense really if you're

just if you're still playing other teams then how would they even be different i i don't know like a lower level of competition or something but like it would just be a less appealing career path i would assume so baseball would be worth worse and less lucrative in every way. I'm going to guess that this would cause a shift for teams to prioritize pitching even more. I think that in the exhibition years, you could back off your pitchers. Of course, you still need your pitchers to develop, but you wouldn't use them as much. I think you could work to keep them fresher. There would be a reduced injury risk long-term for pitchers just because they wouldn't have that much asked of them for the three interim years, I'm i'm gonna guess and because maybe the hitters wouldn't be facing the really good pitching quite

as often their development could be a little bit slower and so maybe they don't work out quite as well so maybe this is all speculation maybe i'm wrong maybe i mean even now if you have pitchers in the minor leagues it's not like winning is the goal so in theory you should be able to back off them as well but because you wouldn't have guys having, let's say, major league workloads for 75% of the seasons, then I think that it would make pitchers safer and therefore teams would like pitchers more. And so we've had the conversation before about whether the Cubs rebuild style or the Braves rebuild style is better.

And I think that this would make the Braves maybe a little better. Those pitchers need to develop. But also, if they don't get hurt, then that would make them better as well. All right. So we will wrap it up there, I suppose, and we'll be back later this week. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners have already pledged their support include Tom Ruzzo, Andy, Joe Camerata, Thomas Schiavone, and Steven Rush. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Help replenish our mailbag. Keep your questions and comments coming for me and Jeff via email at podcast at fancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We will talk to you soon. When we are dead We all have wings We won't need lace to stand

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