Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1171: Take Me Out With the Crowd

Episode Date: February 2, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about bullpen-cart feasibility, a listener crowdsourcing project to fill out the Effectively Wild Wiki, and the effect of starting an inning with a runner on second, then follow up on player volatility and knuckleball hits and answer listener emails about the historical significance of the Marlins’ latest firesale, the […]

How could I move the crowd? First of all, ain't no mistakes allowed Here's the instructions, put it together It's simple, ain't it? But quite clever Some of you been tryna write rhymes for years But weak ideas irritate my ears Is this the best that you can make? Cause if not, and you got more, I'll wait

But don't make me wait too long Cause I'ma move on the dance floor When they put something smooth on So turn up the bass, it's better when it's loud Cause I like to move the crowd Hello and welcome to episode 1171 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters and by me and Ben. I'm me, Jeff Sullivan, writer at Fangraphs,

joined as always by recently, again, baseball writer at TheRinger.com, Ben Lindberg. How are you? You've touched on an old beat lately, which is the sport that we discussed. Two baseball articles this week. Two in one week. Can you believe it? I say to you who writes two a day, but yeah, still, it's like getting back on a bicycle. Or as we'll discuss in a moment, getting back on a bullpen cart. But yeah, you used a different number pronunciation format there. So for anyone who worries that we might be getting stuck in a rut after 1171 episodes, evidently not. We're just trying new things, experimenting constantly.

So we're doing an email show later in the week than usual. But I was just reading in this ESPN article about MLB's proposal to the Players Association. Essentially, MLB seems to be saying that if you hurry up, then we won't have to implement a pitch clock. So they're extending an olive branch slash threat at the same time, sort of saying if you keep games under two hours and 55 minutes, then we won't have to have a pitch clock. Players don't want a pitch clock, even though pitch clocks seem to be just fine and they probably wouldn't mind if they had it. But the most interesting part of this proposal is this little bullet point here.

MLB is ready to accept the union's proposal to study the feasibility of bullpen carts and would introduce the use of carts where feasible in 2018 and 2019 how do you think the study of feasibility of bullpen carts will proceed i'm imagining lab coats sterile settings dry runs of like bullpen just people out in the bullpen timing themselves with stopwatches how fast can we bullpen cart this is not like a new technology carts generally bullpen carts aren't even a new technology what what do you think will determine the feasibility how would you design a bullpen cart feasibility study yeah right so this is this is going to be a racetrack test and in one lane you're going to have nick vincent running or jogging i should say and on the other track there's going to be a vehicle that's going to be driven by a person and uh and it'll leave nick

vincent in the dust uh but the idea here is probably not to have bullpen race carts just bullpen carts i have not been a baseball fan long enough to be able to recall the heyday of these things existing they were clearly phased out for some reason that stephen goldman could probably tell us or maybe you could you've read more about baseball history. But I guess I've never thought that pitchers were too slow to jog in. Now, I know that the TV generally cuts away when someone is coming in, but you're not going to have a cart that speeds out of the dugout. There's just going to be a safety concern. So the cart's going to go at a slow speed.

So you're saving, I haven't done any math but like you know seconds i think the word is seconds now maybe maybe the pitchers are like a little bit extra tired because they jog in so then they take a little longer to warm up i'm not saying that it's not right it's gonna explode because pitchers just just leisurely riding in on the bullpen cart they're gonna have extra speed to dig deep. But then on the other hand, maybe they won't warm up enough because instead of a nice warm-up jog, they're just going to sit on their butts. They're going to go from pitching to sitting to then pitching again.

So I don't know. It's going to be a weird thing to study, but like you said, there's really nothing to study at all except maybe to see which bullpens are and are not cart accessible right i want extremely rigorous studies i want double blind experiments done i want precision down to the tenth of a second whoever is in charge of the bullpen cart feasibility study please get in touch we want to have you on i want to ask you about how you're designing this study and what might make or not make bullpen cards feasible. I mean, you have pitchers coming in to songs. You have

players who wear baggy pants or tighter pants, who care about the way that they present themselves. They play with a certain flair. They use their eye black in certain cases. They have really cool hair sometimes if they have hair. There's a whole vanity aspect to baseball, and it's part of being entertaining, it's being showman, that you want to look good while you're doing the thing that you're really good at. But there is nothing that would make a player just instantly lose his cool factor than arriving on the field in the back of a golf cart. There's no better. It's just so lame.

It would be a very lame thing to see. And what do you do with an entrance song? You can't have Hell's Bells play while Trevor Hoffman gets wheeled into the mound, for God's sake. It doesn't make any sense. No. I like the throwback potential. I mean, it's very 70s and kind of quaint, but I just love the idea of a bullpen cart feasibility study. I just love the idea of a bullpen cart feasibility study.

It's not like driverless bullpen cart technology or something where we have to test to see if it can find the mound from the outfield wall. It's a golf cart. Those work pretty well. There's a pretty long history of golf carts working. But, yeah, you're right from an entrance and intimidation perspective. I mean, maybe like a loogie can write a bullpen card and who cares. But if you're someone who's, you know, the fire-breathing flamethrower who's coming in with whatever, the music that's supposed to pump up the crowd, writing on the back of a golf cart might sort of sap that effect. And why stop there? Why have a bullpen cart? The outfielders need to cover just as much distance. Why not have three outfielder carts or just one that does like a carpool system right it just goes from left to

right field or right to left depending on the dugout orientation just drops them off yeah right you keep the dart by the dugout you can use it for whatever other needs maybe maybe the uh the ball boy can use the car to go retrieve foul balls if he wants to and you just see it constantly motoring around like it's mario kart i don't. But it seems like if you're going to implement one, you might as well just go and implement as many as possible. Because you're going to look ridiculous. Kenley Jansen is not going to want to come in the back of a golf cart. Yeah. There will be certain closers who disdain the kart.

Anyway, I want to know more about the feasibility studies. I hope the full test results are released whenever the testing is complete. So there will be a warning. If you get to the man within 20 seconds, we won't implement a cart in 2019. Right. So a couple of quick things, some house cleaning to mention. One thing I'm very excited about, there is a project that is being spearheaded by a trio of longtime listeners, Brandon Lee, Ken Maeda, and Darius Austin. They're doing a crowdsourced Effectively Wild wiki, essentially. And this wiki has existed for some time, but it's been pretty dormant.

But what's happening now is that there is a Google Sheet sign-up where, in theory, people will claim episodes. I know there are a lot of people who like to regularly go back and listen to old episodes just for old time's sake. There are some people who've joined the show recently and haven't really had an incentive to go back, but maybe have thought about it at times. Maybe this is the opportunity. So essentially, you will sign up for episodes if you're interested in participating in this project. And there are some instructions on the sheet that Ken and Brandon and Darius have left there. And the idea is basically just to have a sort of reference. We have a lot of episodes. There's a big back catalog here. It

can be intimidating at times. 1171. Exactly. So each episode will be tagged with the topics discussed in that episode. So if we want to say, when did we discuss Lenny Harris, then there will be a big database of tags where we can see which episodes we discussed Lenny Harris. It was quite a few. So if you claim a listener email episode, then you would transcribe the questions that are asked in that episode. And ultimately, we will have a big database of questions because that's a big concern that comes up. We get a lot of repeat questions. And I always try to point people toward the episode where we first answer that question. But there are hundreds of listener email show episodes at this point, probably, so it's hard to pinpoint them. So in theory, there will be a searchable database here. It doesn't have to be a comprehensive summary recap of the episode, but just the basic information. There are instructions in the sheet, so I will link to that in the show page for this episode at Fangraphs in the Facebook group as well. And I hope that people will help those guys out with that. I hope it will be fun. I'm really, well. And I hope that people will help those guys out with that. I hope it will be fun. I'm really, I'm gratified that people are doing this and I hope it goes well. I look forward to the results. That is an extraordinary undertaking. And I will look forward to seeing how detailed the notes are after one day and after seven months.

Yes. Yeah. The Facebook group is incredible these days. Another listener named Arthur Rudolph, who's already created lists and playlists of every song ever played on Effectively Wild, just recently found a way to come up with data on the Facebook group, like every comment, every like, every reaction to a post that has ever been started. So there's now a Google sheet with a leaderboard of all of the contributors to the Facebook group with their output, essentially, over the years that the group has existed, as well as data about the posting frequency on various days and times. It's the most effectively wild thing ever to have

sabermetric stats about a Facebook group, about a podcast, about sabermetric stats. So I love it. It's great. But Facebook group, facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. And again, I hope that people will help out with that project. I'm really looking forward to seeing the results. Agreed. Something I noticed today for no good reason, but we have talked before a few times. We'll see when it gets indexed in the

archive specifically when we talked about the ottawa champions but we have talked about the ottawa champions before and i don't think we mentioned this but i have become re-interested in wilmer font dodgers farmhand previously texas rangers farmhand previous ottawa champion font pitched for ottawa made 21 appearances in 2015 pitched for Ottawa again in 2016 they were going to the playoffs but then he got signed by a major league team so he went over there but what I did not realize is that when Font made three not very good appearances with the Dodgers late in the season he was the first Ottawa champion to reach the major leagues so I do not have anything else to say about Font right now I was thinking maybe I'll write about

him but right now there's really no good reason to. But right now there's no good reason to write about anything. So we'll kind of see where that goes. But Wilmer Font, first Ottawa champion to make the major leagues. All right. The true champion of the Ottawa champions. So I have a few emails that are either informative or follow-ups, not necessarily questions. So I suppose we'll start with them.

So there was some research also done in the Facebook group by a listener named Mark Arduini, and he wrote about the MLB proposal to put a runner on second base starting in, what, the 11th inning, 12th inning, any inning after the 11th, to try to shorten games. And for now, MLB is just talking about doing this, I think, in spring training and exhibition games, the All-Star game. They did do it in the WBC and

Rookie League games. And one concern I've seen some people cite, evidently everyone just bunts. I haven't checked that, but evidently people just bunt to get that guy over and score the run which is not fun if that's the case but the stated goal obviously is to have games end more quickly so that you don't get super long games and we can talk about whether we actually like that or not i like super long games but the idea is that the game will end sooner and i've seen some people ask well why does it end sooner does it actually end sooner because if I've seen some people ask, well, why does it end sooner? Does it actually end sooner? Because if both teams get to start the inning with the runner on second base,

then don't you just get the same probability of extending the game that you would anyway? It's the same conditions either way. So Mark did the math. I am not necessarily qualified to assess whether he did it correctly, but he seems to think he did. I ran it by one person who knows better than I and said it looked reasonable.

So good enough for me. If other people want to dispute this, I know probability can be tricky at times. Feel free to write in. But Mark took the probability of the number of runs being scored from a given base out state based on data over a long period of time, 1957 to 2015. So it might be a little different if you looked at just the current run environment. But here's what he says. In extra innings, the game only continues if both teams score the same number of runs in the inning. So if probability zero is the probability of a team scoring zero runs, then probability zero squared, I'm going to try to avoid reading too much math, is the probability of both teams scoring no runs and the game continuing.

You can sum the probabilities for each number of runs to get the total probability of the game moving on to the next inning. If you add up the numbers for the base's empty state, you find a 70% chance the game will continue to the next inning. For the man on second state, you only have a 42% chance that the game will continue to the next inning. For the man on second state, you only have a 42% chance that the game will continue to the next inning. So that means that 28 percentage points higher chance that the game will end if the runner is on second to start the inning. So based on that, at least, this would adhere to MLB's stated goal. And he took this a step further to look at game length, and he says, according to Baseball Reference,

the average nine-inning game length was three hours, five minutes, or about 20.6 minutes per inning last year, I assume. This round number doesn't account for the extra length of the late innings or the fact that a walk-off will end an inning short, so the problem could get more complicated if you wanted to. But to figure out the length of the extra inningnings or the fact that a walk-off will end an inning short. So the problem could get more complicated if you wanted to, but to figure out the length of the extra inning games, I just multiplied the inning length by the probability an inning would get played and added up totals for all the innings until the probability was basically zero. The sum for a bases empty game was about 48 minutes,

but for a man on second game, the sum was only 29 minutes. So by my rough math, starting each inning 12 and up with a man on second game, the sum was only 29 minutes. So by my rough math, starting each inning 12 and up with a man on second would save about 19 minutes per 12 plus inning game. So it does sound as if this would work in theory. I don't know if it's worth it personally. It's tough because like a 13 inning game isn't fun particularly. You'd probably rather have it just end in nine if it's going to end in 13. But when you can go to 13, then you get the possibility of going to 18 or 19 and 20. And then at a certain point, it becomes fun and memorable and kind of an endurance exercise.

And so I would hate to lose that. I wish we could somehow lose the 11 inning game, but keep the 21 inning game. But we can't do that, obviously. And I'm not sure it's worth it to me. But if MLB does go ahead with this, and it has in certain levels of the game, then according to Mark's math, it would work at least to a certain extent. And according to real math it also can work i will read from a story from cbc referring to this rule about putting a runner on second quote baseball experimented with a rule last year at the rookie level gulf coast and arizona leagues

putting a runner on second base starting in the 10th extra inning games and those two leagues averaged 27 minutes longer than nine inning games down from 43 minutes for all other minor leagues so there's a implied 16 minute advantage which aligns very nicely with the calculated 19 minute advantage so theory meets practice baseball has proposed starting a runner on second base at the start of the 11th inning of the all-star game and each additional inning and they also would use this in the 10th inning of spring training games according to a january 9th proposal obtained by the associated press spring training games would be capped at 10 innings so i don't quite know what the point is if if you're capping it at 10 and you're also

putting it right around second and the 10th then yeah i think pretty clearly then this is just a proposal to try it out and try to win minds because this is not doing anything to actually save time in spring training or in the All-Star game. So this is pretty clearly another step, even though it says explicitly in here that baseball is not looking to do this in any games that count. You can still kind of feel yourself getting surrounded. And so I agree with you to an extent of i think it's a silly rule and just let the games go it hasn't really been a big problem i don't think anyone i've never heard anyone say that they're not a baseball fan because the games just have too many extra innings i think that if you can't stand baseball for that you just can't stand baseball

at all you would say baseball has too many innings period which is probably true for people who don't like baseball now i will say just like everything else and because i know that i'm pliable and i'll consume whatever people force feed me i would still watch baseball and everything would still be fine and even though we wouldn't get as many 18 19 20 inning games which are already a rarity we would probably develop a a new kind of appreciation of like a 13 or 14 inning game where either teams fail to score or they keep trading runs back and forth just like in a like a college football game where the the teams just keep scoring over and over in the overtime format if that's still the overtime

format i don't know anything about college football anymore but i would think that 13 and 14 inning games would become more interesting i agree with you right now that like 11 inning games are just stupid they just feel like a complete waste of time they're just so disappointing falling right in the middle yeah what's the inflection point where it moves from you rooting for the game to end to you rooting for the game not to end assuming you're right now you know in an extra inning assuming that you're not like on deadline or you don't have work in three hours or something so i'm not live chatting the game yeah game seven of the 2016 world series yeah oh my god um i for me i think i start to actually pay attention to a game around the the 14th and

i know that the 14th is is pretty deep but i just don't care. Otherwise, I'm not going to turn on a game that's going on because, whoa, it's in the 13th. Padres-Pirates is a real burn. No, like I'll turn on the Padres and the Pirates in the 34th inning. Yeah, right. Yeah, I'm fine with this if it actually were just an exhibition measure. No one really cares about a spring training game going 20 innings but yeah it seems almost inevitable that the more that this is tested in various other places the more likely it'll be that it will eventually make its way to major league baseball and the runner will be put on second by way of a cart and uh and maybe maybe down the line and down the line the runner on

second will then get to run the bases in a cart. All right. Next follow-up. This is from listener Kevin. This is in response to a question from Colby that we answered last time. This was the question about Carlos Santana and his consistency and whether we thought that consistency was predictive of future consistency and whether teams would pay a volatile player or a predictable player differently, assuming they were equally productive on the whole. So Kevin wrote in, just heard that email podcast. He says, I actually wrote my senior thesis on that topic a few years back.

We have a lot of smart listeners is the theme of this episode. The results were not 100% conclusive, but they indicated A, that past volatility is predictive of future variance, and B, teams pay more for players with high variance, at least in short-term contracts. The hypothesized reason, which has some basis in economic theory, is that teams have flexibility. If a high variance player dramatically overperforms, the team gets all the upside, but if he dramatically underperforms, the team can bench or release him and find a replacement. This might also explain why the pattern only exists for short-term contracts, because eating a longer-term contract is less feasible. Of course, a simpler theory is that teams are simply too optimistic in free agency, paying for good years while ignoring bad ones.

Certainly this is plausibly true of the highest bidder. Volatile players have higher upside and thus get higher offers. But that is the answer, at least the best answer we're ever going to get. So I will post Kevin's thesis if anyone is interested in digging into the math. I will also post Mark's spreadsheet about the extra inning probabilities if anyone wants to take a look at that. But yeah, we have a lot of very intelligent and dedicated listeners who school us on a lot of things. One day these answers will be archived. That's right. All right, next follow

up. This is in response to a question we answered last time about batted balls knuckling and whether there could be such a thing as a knuckleball hitter essentially and whether that hitter would be good so i got a few responses to this question the first one comes from listener tim who writes in your conversation on knuckling hits reminded me of a past article on quote unquote future batting champ howie kendrick the second paragraph has an anecdote from Torrey Hunter about knuckling a ball. This is from a Chris Ballard Sports Illustrated feature in the spring of 2008. And so it begins, in this era of jacked up power hitters and on-base specialists who work deep counts, Angel's second baseman Howie Kendrick's foremost skill is almost quaint. He hits hard

line drives where there are no fielders. In doing so, he rarely alters his swing, tries to crank moon balls, or jerks one down the line. Neither does he lunge, teeter, or lean. Just one short, efficient cut after another, hand slicing through the hitting zone. Outfielder Torrey Hunter, who joined the Angels this offseason as a free agent, was taken aback. Anytime you hit the ball so hard that it knuckles, that means you squared it up, says Hunter. The first time I saw him take BP, he knuckled it like 10 times. I don't think I did 10 times all last season. So Howie Kendrick is a knuckleball hitter, or the closest that we are going to get in Major League Baseball. And I think that actually sort of makes sense because I was getting also some replies from Andrew Perpetua,

who writes for Rotographs and the Hardball Times and elsewhere. He also runs the site XStats with stat cast data and predicted results and actual results. Very smart gentleman. And he thinks that essentially you could only knuckle a ball if the bat and the ball line up almost perfectly. So the pitch plane and the bat plane need to be pretty much the same or at least pretty close. And so when those two planes are equal or close, the spin of the ball gets chaotic. And so if you're a tiny bit above the ball, you get topspin. A tiny bit below the ball, you get backspin. There's sidespin if you're a tiny bit above the ball, you get topspin. A tiny bit below the ball, you get backspin. There's sidespin if you're inside the ball.

But if you line it all up, theoretically, you should have no spin. So what he said is that he thinks this is only feasible. There's that word again. If you hit the ball roughly at like six to seven degrees launch ankle, so just like a low line drive, essentially, he says like maybe on a rare batted ball, you could get the knuckling effect on a slightly higher hit ball,

but you're not going to get like home runs that are knuckled. They're probably going to be short line drives, you know, low line drives. They can be hit hard, certainly, but that's basically a limitation probably on how you can knuckle a ball. And then one more email on knuckling from Joe, who says, I have experience with knuckling batted balls.

It is possible for them to knock. Interestingly, I've never seen a softly hit ball have knuckling action. So again, hitting it hard seems to be a theme here. I have experience with this from two vantage points, behind home plate and at shortstop. Behind home plate, at shortstop. Behind home plate, I was a catcher in college. Occasionally, a batter will rip a line drive that has practically zero spin. It's fascinating to watch. The ball, when hit in this fashion, will not always knuckle, but sometimes a knuckling action is visible. To be honest, I don't know who else on the diamond

would pick up on it except for the catcher and the position player at whom the ball is most directly hit. It's a line of sight thing, I guess. And then he also says, from shortstop, I play slow pitch softball. I've seen more balls hit with little to no spin in slow pitch than I have in all my years playing baseball. Balls move slower and are easier to see. Also, I was wrecked by a knuckling line drive at shortstop. The shot came right at me very fast.

I'm used to fastballs, 90 plus miles per hour and this ball was crushed with no spin the ball was knuckling a lot i stepped forward to the line drive and the ball knocked around my glove it struck me in the upper portion of my left pec the ball then launched 10 feet past straight up i caught the then pop-up for the out the left side of my chest was brown slash purple slash yellow for two weeks thereafter. So if you are a hitter, I guess like Howie Kendrick, who hits a lot of line drives, low line drives, not a lot of power, you could somewhat consistently hit with a knuckling action, but you'd hit the ball hard. You'd have to hit it hard and on a live drive trajectory. And again, it would be difficult to do very consistently.

I do not have a single follow-up for this. All right. Well, again, our emails inform us. So thanks to everyone who supplements our knowledge. Question from Jason. This was a little while ago. As of the typing of this email, the Marlins have moved 19 wins above replacement from their 2017 roster with

trades of Dee Gordon and Marcel Azuna, Christian Jelic, and John Carlos Stanton. If they trade JT Realmuto, it will bring the total to 22 and a half more. Has there ever been this large a migration or exodus of talent from one team before? Sometimes you just have to answer a listener email with a full article, which I did. So my second baseball article of the week was about the Marlins' latest fire sale, putting it into historical's perspective. Got a lot of help from people at the Baseball Gauge, Fangraphs, Baseball Reference, etc. Could not easily do this myself. But essentially, this is, at least by one definition, the most extreme fire sale ever. And Daniel Hirsch, who runs the excellent Baseball Gauge site, he just looked at October 1st to opening day, going back to basically the beginning of baseball history,

and he counted up the war that teams traded over that span. So a single off-season fire sale, and he was using baseball reference war. So the numbers are slightly different. The Marlins are at 20.3 baseball reference war from 2017 traded. And that is actually the most war ever traded in a single off-season. The only time that more war was traded was the 1899 Louisville Colonels who only get on there because of a technicality. Essentially, they just like transferred half their team to the Pittsburgh Pirates because their owner, Barney Dreyfus, bought the Pirates.

So, and then the Colonels dissolved. So it wasn't really the same sort of situation. So you could define fire sale differently, maybe. But by this definition, at least, even though the Marlins have only traded the four players, those four players were so productive last year that this is now the most extreme one winter trade exodus ever. So it was fun to look in the article and see on the table that the Marlins have shown up twice before. There is, I guess, something of a misconception. A lot of people think that the Marlins tore it all down after 2003

when we have been reminded on multiple occasions that they didn't actually do that in quite the way that is remembered. And it is interesting that we have penalized them retroactively for something they didn't do. But nevertheless, they have been on there twice before. And to be able to assume at least the biggest sell-off in 118 years, more or less, with an asterisk, it's pretty incredible. I don't know to what extent I want this to move forward. I mean, like, if you're JT Real Mudo right now, what do you...

You can't... You know you can't get out because, you know, Christian Jelic got out, but you know that you don't actually have that leverage. But on the other hand, Christian Jelic got out, and he would have been more reasonable to build around, right? Because he was under team control longer, and he's just kind of better. And Real Mudo being a catcher means he might not age quite so well. So you think, well, why not move me too?

And then if he goes, then if you're, I don't know, Dan Straley, you could think, well, what if I also want to go? And then if you're Justin Boer, you might be like, somebody please know who I am. So he probably doesn't mind an opportunity to play because there's so many first basemen in the free agent market, he's not going to go anywhere. But if you're Adam Conley, you might think,

I bet some teams could use my arm. So how far? I think with the free agent market being so stuck i can't tell if it works for or against the marlins but you know they've already made the the obvious trades and maybe some moves that weren't quite so obvious i have gone all the way around now to hoping that this works for them i think that they uh i think we talked about this briefly before recently but i would think that they should just go maximum full. It's almost like a cleansing.

You want to bring in young players who have never been with the Marlins, who are enthusiastic, just to have an opportunity. And you want to keep someone like Real Mudo just because he's so good, but the Marlins are going to leave a bad taste in his mouth. He is part of what they were, which means he's seen the Marlins when they had a lot of talent which means he's going to be super bummed out going ahead with like rafael ortega playing three outfield positions so i would think if i were the marlins i'd be motivated to just have a complete separation from the product that was on the field last year just

be like look we know that we're new we know that we've just taken over this team we know that you don't trust us and hey players we know that you didn't want to be on this team anymore so you're all gone we've replaced you with other younger players but if they could just have a completely clean break like lewis brinson is probably excited right now to have an opportunity he could make the opening day roster so could braxton lee so could magni uris sierra so could jt riddle is going to be a starting freaking shortstop in the major leagues which is unbelievable like the marlins can make themselves i can't quite think of the word not execrable to players on the team and i would think just in the interest of i know that they're already first place on your table technically but just in the interest of like really letting them hold on to it forever

just move everyone just do it just do it now just do it actually starting monday not not right now right yeah there was a report in the mi Miami Herald this week that said essentially that Boer has not requested a trade that Real Mudo has, but they haven't prioritized trading him the way that they did with Jelic basically because they thought Jelic would make more of a stink about it if they didn't trade him. I don't know if that's the real reason. He's also just extremely valuable, but he had directed his agent to make a public statement and RealMudo hasn't, so he seems maybe more resigned to his fate, but certainly plenty of potential here. I mean, we've got two more months for the Marlins to make moves and add to this total, but if you're interested in the details, I've got a whole Google sheet linked from that article and it has just every offseason ever essentially with the amount of war traded so you can look up your favorite fire sale and see where

it ranks but yeah i mean a lot of the teams on the list are repeat offenders because you know you get teams with terrible financial situations and they're just constantly selling off players and marlins are no exception, but, you know, the 97 fire sale did kind of help lead to a World Series and not too long a time after that. And post-2012, sell-off did not. But still, I mean, on the spectrum of fire sales, like there are some much more depressing ones on this list probably than the Marlins, even though theirs is at the top now.

Just because, like, some of their moves were more about talent than salary relief. I mean, kind of ran the gamut. Sure, Stanton was getting out from under the contract, but Jelich was affordable and he brought back a great package of prospects. So it's not quite as terrible as it looked very early in the offseason. There are some redeeming factors to this record fire sale. Now, what if they had an about face and the ownership is just like, we see an opportunity, they sign you Darvish, they sign JK Arrieta, they sign JD Martinez, Greg Holland, whoever else is out there, and they're just like, psych, we actually do care. And we're going to, I mean, the team would be a nightmare because those are bad investments. But I will say that for the pitching staff, if they do get to look forward to an outfield of like Braxton Lee, Magnero Sierra, and Louis Brinson.

Look, I know these are not really familiar names. Brinson may be accepted. But that outfield could run down a whole lot of fly balls. I think that second half Marlins could actually be, I don't want to oversell it. I think that they could be interested. I like Adam Con conley's arm i think the outfield could play some good defense dan straley is fine and this guy brian anderson is an interesting third baseman they they have a lot of problems they're not a good baseball team but i they they are just a team that is tearing down and rebuilding and given the association with the brand of course they get some

crap thrown their way but i don't care they're out from under the stanton contract for the most part they needed to do that because it just wasn't a good fit for them in the first place i've come full circle go marlins i guess well i had a semi fun fact in the article which was about their outfield so marlins led the majors in outfield war last year according to fan graphs and baseball reference and baseball prospectus really great outfield which they have entirely traded this winter and according to the fan graphs depth charts they now project to have the worst outfield war in the major leagues in 2018 so i was curious to see if this had ever happened before if the team had ever gone from best outfield war in the major leagues in 2018. So I was curious to see if this had ever happened before, if a team had ever gone from best outfield to worst outfield in the span of a single season.

And it was shaping up to be a great fun fact. So it happened once in like the 1870s. I mean, there were, you know, six teams at that time. It doesn't even count. So in baseball's modern era, it has only happened one time, which is good. you know, if I could say this has only happened one other time, except that the other time that it has happened was like two years ago. It was the Diamondbacks going from 2015 to 2016. So let's see, they lose AJ Pollock, Peralta gets hurt, and they play too much Yosemite Tomas. Yeah, I think so. Yep, that'll do it. So that kind of spoiled the fun fact.

It's almost unprecedented, except that the precedent is extremely recent. But anyway. All right, let's do one more here. This is from John. So this is almost a stat blast of his own. So he says, Didi Gregorius and Andrelton Simmons are around the same age, were both called up in 2012, have mostly been thought of as glove first shortstops,

and are now seeing steady improvements at the plate in recent years. Since 2014, Gregorius, whose WRC pluses have been 75, 89, 98, 107, and Simmons, whose respective numbers have been 71, 107 and Simmons whose respective numbers have been 71 81 90 103 have both seen their WRC plus numbers rise by at least nine points in three straight years with only Gregorius's 2014 season of 80 games and 299 plate appearances being a shorter season of work which player would you give better odds to make another nine point leap in W WRC Plus in 2018, and how likely do you think it would be for either player? Related random findings. I found this while looking at the projections for Didi this year and wondering if he was going to continue his streak and realized that Simmons has a strange streak going. I looked up player seasons since 1961 with at least 200 plate appearances,

and there have been 57 different player seasons in which the player has increased his WRC Plus at least nine points in three straight years. In the same time frame, the longest streak of WRC Plus being increased by at least one point was seven straight seasons by Garrett Anderson. Simmons and Gregorius could be just the fifth players to, or I guess fifth and sixth players, to raise their WRC Plus by nine in four straight seasons, joining Craig Biggio, George Foster, Maglio Ordonez, and Mike Stanley. So who has the better shot to extend his WRC Plus raising streak? Simmons. Yeah.

Is that just because he's coming from a slightly lower bar, or you just think that he has more potential in him to improve? He's better. Yeah. I think Gregorius has kind of maxed out his skill set, and that's never a safe thing to say about any player, because players get better really quick. But he's not a... He's been the biggest beneficiary maybe from park plus ball changes yeah for sure so uh gregorius's power is pretty much

maxed out he's in the right era the right ballpark he's a he's a very aggressive hitter he already hits the ball in the air now with simmons simmons makes more contact he is a more patient more disciplined hitter and he has not really been that much of a fly ball hitter so far. But last year, he did post his lowest ground ball rate since 2013. The Braves tournament is something of a grand ball hitter. And the Angels decided, let's not do that anymore. And I think that Simmons, when you see Simmons really get into a ball, I think that he just gets it more than Gregorius.

I know that that is a very subjective thing to say, even though i'm a man who's sitting 30 seconds away from a satcast query if i want to do it i'm not going to do it i'm just going off memory i think simmons has more natural power and power is the surest and easiest way for a player to improve his wrc plus so yeah i think that simmons has more power he could get into he hit more fly balls in the second half last year than he hit in the first and he just uh he's such a good contact hitter that when you get the bat on the ball like that as we've talked about a million times you just don't need to hit the ball that hard anymore for the ball to go somewhere else i shouldn't say somewhere else that's stupid for the ball to go a far distance the ball always always goes somewhere else i have a quick interjection

uh for you because i just uh clicked on roto world while you were talking and i saw according to this is going to be a quiz for you according to fan rags john hayman the blank blank blank and blank are among teams looking at free agent melky cabrera what you know right now john hayman is linked four teams to free agent melky cabrera who are those four teams if you were to guess this is not a trick question these are not surprises these are probably the first four teams that would come to my mind imagining a very extremely boring free agent pursuit. Orioles? That's the first one.

Okay. Let's see. Rays? No. Not the Rays. Okay. Alright. I think the Rays would look for free agent upside and there's just nothing there. That's probably true. Royals? Yeah, that's there's just nothing. That's probably true. Royals?

Yeah, that's number two. Okay. A's? Nope. No? All right. Hint. Think about best to worst outfield.

Marlins? That's number three. And we've got one to go. Huh. Let's see. Well, the Giants are probably not going to do that again. Maybe Tigers? see well the giants are probably not going to do that again um maybe tigers actually the tigers would be a good guess this is the least obvious one it's the pirates because i don't know they have room the tigers are a good guess because i don't even know what their outfield is yeah

except i guess maybe nick castellanos is in it but yeah just seeing orioles royals marlins linked to melky cabrera this is yeah i know know that every morning I wake up and I'm like, baseball, please do something for me. But this moves the needle backwards, if anything. It's like, oh, Andrew Kashner is rumored to be pursued by probably the same teams.

Alright, stat left. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to Dastablast! Here's today's stat blast Stat blast. Let's do a stat blast. And this is, I guess, most numbers are stats, right? And records of things are stats. But this has no OPS with pluses or letters around it. This is just a payroll stat blast that I was putting together.

I sort of wrote about it in a post on fangraphs thursday afternoon this is a numbers i was very hastily putting together thursday morning when i thought that you and i were podcasting and i was in a stressed out hurry and then i remembered nope that's not what we're doing but it got me working fast so i was just looking at uh using beloved reference kotz baseball contracts which is hosted by Baseball Prospectus. It has for every team payroll information going back to 2000, and it goes all the way up to having projected opening day payrolls for 2018,, the league average team is expected to have an opening day payroll lower by $11 million. Now, the very obvious point to make there is, well, no free agent has signed a contract yet. So that will change. If you figure that league-wide spending is projected to be down something like $330 million league-wide, well, there's, what like a hundred and more free agents available some

of them are going to get paid a lot it would not be too hard to see those free agents signing for three to four hundred million dollars in this first season so i don't know if there's anything to projected payroll being down lots of players still need to find homes but question for you who do you think who do you have to guess has the lowest payroll right now in baseball. This is not for tax purposes. This is just straight up what they're paying for 2018. Hmm. Is it the Marlins? It's not the Marlins. Somehow their payroll is $87 million.

Wow. Well, it was pretty high before, but... Yeah. Yeah. Wei Yingchen, I think, is getting paid $78 million this season. So, yeah, they can't really move him. But the Marlins are actually... Their payroll right now is only seventh lowest huh okay is it the a's it is the a's okay so the a's maybe not surprising their payroll is projected to be down by 23 million

dollars from last season that's quite a bit but i think a very surprising team is in second to last can you guess the very surprising team in second to last in projected opening day payroll? I'm trying to think. Is it the Brewers? No, the Brewers are actually just above the Marlins. They have the eighth lowest payroll. All right. I wonder what it was before their recent moves.

Maybe it was down there. Hmm. Well, White Sox? socks white socks are a third lowest okay that wouldn't be surprising i guess so that's probably not a great guess so maybe i should say what else is surprising surprising given what they could spend not surprising given the team's situation oh phillies it's the phillies the philadelphia phillies in uh let's see for example 2012 they had baseball's third highest for example, 2012, they had baseball's third highest payroll. As recently as 2014, they had baseball's third highest payroll.

Right now, they're second from the bottom, sitting on a projected opening day payroll of $63.7 million. I did a little analysis that compared current projected payroll to the five-year average of 2013 through 2017. projected payroll to the five-year average of 2013 through 2017 and for that five-year average the phillies ranked uh what did the phillies rank the phillies ranked in 10th place they're around the blue jays and the cubs it's a five-year average of about 135 million dollars payroll they're down to 64 their payroll has dropped from that average by 71 million dollars that is the projection the team that's dropped the second most is currently the dodgers but of course they're doing it for a very different reason the phillies are just way down there and this is even factoring in the fact that they signed

carlos santana which is kind of a weird fit but you can clearly see they have money to move now the team that has most dramatically increased from its five-year payroll averaged this season unsurprisingly it's the houston astros who are up 78 million dollars second place is the mariners quietly i didn't know that it happened up 38 million dollars but the i think the thing that i notice here the most and i'm going to go back to the phillies but you look at there are some teams that have dropped payroll substantially because they're bad the phillies are bad the tigers are bad the white socks are going to be bad the a's probably kind of bad padre's bad rangers worse maybe bad so lots of teams in not great positions who have trimmed payroll but you think what is one of the things holding up the free agent market right now you darvish according to annie mccullough would like

to resign with the dodgers if you could dodgers want to stay out uh stay under the luxury tax so they could stand to lose some money well what's the deadest of all dead contracts in baseball it is matt kemp's contract matt camp might actually even be a dead person right now i don't know but he's still getting paid 43 million dollars and it seems like there's no shortage of teams that could get matt kemp this is what all got me looking at Willmer Font because I think that teams could stand to buy a prospect by taking on Matt Kemp's dead money getting value along with him and that's what got me looking at Willmer Font but there's any number of other players in the Dodgers system who would be interesting so I have this whole table of payroll information that goes back 19 years I don't know what else needs to be said about it for this stat blast segment, but I've got data, and if you want some of it,

I don't really know what the means are, but I got it anyway, and I'll save it, and you can email me, I guess, if you want some stuff, or just go to COTS. It's a lot quicker. Yeah, I was just looking also at the Fangraph's depth charts, which have their own section for free agents, so you can click on by division, by team,

and just free agents as if they're their own team. And right now there is a projected total of 57.5 war available via free agency. And to put that into perspective, the best projected team in baseball is the Astros. They are projected to have 52 war. So free agents combined have about five and a half wins more talent projected for 2018 than the best team in baseball. Obviously, there are many more free agents on this list than there are players on a single baseball team. So it's not really an apples to to orange comparison or it is an apples to oranges comparison that's a fruit analogies work but that kind of underscores just how much talent is still available on the free agent market i don't know what the equivalent like average total at the beginning of february would be in a typical year but i'm gonna guess significantly lower than that yeah i had completely forgotten that Greg Holland is,

I know that I just mentioned him a few minutes ago in context of the Marlins, but yeah, looking, I think we all know the free agent market right now is kind of sad, kind of bad. Jason Vargas is out there just waiting for his call from the Orioles, I'm sure, but he'll be competing with Andrew Kaschner and maybe they can re-sign Chris Tillman.

I don't know, but yeah, I can easily see about $350 to $400 million being spent on these free agents for the season ahead, they can resign chris tillman i don't know but yeah i can i can easily see about 350 to 400 million dollars being spent on these free agents for the season ahead which would then lift league wide payroll over last year's mark but i don't know i haven't run the numbers but it could be a photo finish and the last time that there was a drop in the average opening day payroll was 2009 when payroll went down about 1%, which barely counts. And in 2004, it went down 3%, which counts more. All right.

Well, let's take a related question then from Jeremiah, who says, will the relatively icy temperature of this year's hot stove make pending free agents more likely to sign extensions with their current clubs? Or in fan language, will kershaw sign an extension with my dodgers and i responded to jeremy i said that i think one of the reasons we're in this situation is that a lot of players have already signed extensions i think sam wrote an article about how it's mike trout's fault that this year's free agency is so slow because Mike Trout could have, would have been a free agent this winter, except that he signed an extension with the Angels and did not become a free agent then. So that's been happening for decades now.

So I think that's part of why we have a weaker market. But the question is, will players be even more likely to sign extensions now that they've seen what can befall a free agent today? You go either way, because if you don't sign that extension, you get the free agency sooner, which means that you get to it when you're younger. And I'm not sure that there's, I mean, of course, teams look at free agents and they value talent the most, but age is just such an enormous secondary factor. It's why Eric Hosmer has such a big contract out there waiting for him it's why jason hayward signed for his terms teams love to get these guys

when they're in their mid or maybe kind of mid late 20s if that's a term this narrows down to one specific age but in any case but again we come back to the fact that teams and players have different incentives and players just the first 10 million dollars to a player is so massively much more important than the second 10 million dollars but for player is so massively much more important than the second 10 million dollars but for a team that it just really doesn't matter that much you're just trying to maximize every single cost and you get to make a lot of these decisions so you know the john singleton's contract is one of the only long-term young player extensions that hasn't turned out to be super team friendly but i mean john singleton still what did he sign for about 10 million dollars yeah and that's just life-changing money especially if you look at where he is now the

news just came out that marco pell is taking a break from baseball somewhat unofficially retiring now he made six million dollars i think is a signing bonus but you can't really do that anymore so there's so much money out there that the players deserve as a slice of revenue. But I don't know how you get them to actually hold out to get the most. Of course, there are free agents who do it, but there needs to be some sort of insurance policy, which I know Dave Cameron has written about before, before he was stolen by a baseball organization. And I know we have seen players dabble in like some sort of selling of stock which seems to have either gone away or it's just not making headlines anymore but if players could proceed with the knowledge that they have a security blanket security net i'm losing my expressions here with security if players could move forward knowing that an injury wouldn't ruin their livelihood then you will see

fewer of these extensions and more players hitting free agency which would i think that would be good it depends what you're trying to get but right now players need that that money that money that you're offered when you're a good second year player is just too massive yeah i mean in theory there should be a cyclical element to it where if a bunch of guys sign extensions then they don't reach free agency when they're still desirable players. And then each additional future player has more incentive not to sign an extension because he could be the one great free agent who could really cash in on a weak market. But if teams just aren't signing free agents, period, if that proves to be the case, then there's just no reason

to wait. And as for like Kershaw, Bryce Harper, that type of player, I'm not sure that this sort of slowness will apply to them. Like with every player on this year's market, basically you could point to a reason not to sign him to a deal that he would want, you know, whether it's that he's just not that great or he's too old or whatever. Like with Bryce Harper, there aren't really a whole lot of negatives about him. You know, maybe he could be a bit more durable, but that's about all you could say. So if he gets to free agency and as young as he is, I mean, I don't think that he will be affected by this. I think he's sort of exempt. Now, Clayton Kershaw, I mean, really depends how he does this season.

If his back issues recur, then he might have a tough time getting a long-term deal too. But someone like Harper, I just, I don't think that he's such a, you know, close to a unique player that I don't think anyone will hesitate to sign him. There's just so much Bryce Harper scarcity. No, there's a 0% chance that Bryce Harper doesn't hit free agency. Scott Boris would not allow him to sign because you just have to see what can happen here. You have to as an agent. Yeah. And I don't think he will really be adversely affected by this trend if it is one. All right. We are close here. Josh says in episode

1165, Jeff made a comment about the market needing career-extending steroids to fix the current lack of free agent signings. My question is, is the end of the steroid era actually a possible explanation for the lack of movement in the current market? Looking at the leaderboards, 12 players over the age of 35 were worth at least one and a half war in the 1997 season. 20 players were in the 2007 season, and then only five last year. Could what we're seeing now be a market correction by front offices who in the past were more willing to pay older players expecting them to have steroid era-like career paths? Could what we're seeing now be the result of players signing team-friendly extensions, there we go again, thinking they'd still be able to sign big deals when they eventually hit free agency in their

early 30s, discovering that's less likely now because the possibility of a player performing well into his late 30s is even lower now than it used to be. And I have an essay sort of on this topic coming out in a book in May. Mike Peska, host of The Gist at Slate, put together a really fun book called Upon Further Review, The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History. And it's just a collection of essays by various authors. And I wrote one in there about how baseball would be different, essentially, if steroid testing had started earlier. And I considered a bunch of things. But what really becomes clear, not to give away the whole thing, you can go pre-order that book now if you want, is that that era was unusual. I mean, lots of smart people have pointed out that we

can't necessarily draw a direct line between steroids and homers, and there were lots of other things going on at that time, smaller strike zones and ballparks and expansion, and I totally agree with that. But at the same time, the aging pattern in that era was just unlike anything else, really. Older players were more productive than at any point, you know, unless you were comparing like the end of World War II where the league-wide war was coming from older players. I mean, it's very suspicious, you know, and I think that, I mean, when you look at guys who hit 60, 70 home runs, then you could say there was probably something going on with them given their aging pattern, even if the typical player who was taking something was not turning into Barry Bonds. But anyway, I'm ranging far afield here. The question is about the market and the lack of steroids or relative lack of steroids. Yeah, now we're just looking at numbers between

1998 and we'll get to the question in a minute. Between 1998 and, I don't know, 2002, call it a five-year window, players who were 33 years old or older league-wide averaged about 115 or 120 total war each season, and last 61 yeah so yeah it's uh it's plummeted but uh yeah i think the long story short i think that right now agents are bad i think that agents have been too slow to respond to the market teams just obviously have more and better information also teams know what teams are doing and agents just haven't been able to keep up same with the trends and so much of earning contracts obviously through arbitration it's all about precedent your own and other players precedent and in the free agent market you as an agent also point to precedent

because it's the easiest case to make this guy got 80 million dollars so why should my guy get 80 million dollars but you can't really use a lot of recent precedents because the agent curve was just very clearly different and so of course teams were not only were teams just more irresponsible worth of money just because they understood baseball less but yeah older players just weren't the risks that they are now or even if you don't think that older players are risks per se younger players are just better they're more suited for the game as it is now they're quicker they're more athletic they throw harder yeah they come up you know in more prepared state, maybe to play baseball at young ages, they've been playing baseball year round, they've gotten excellent instruction from a young age.

It's not just necessarily that older players are tailing off more quickly, although it may be that, but it's also that younger guys are coming up and being more productive quickly. And teams are probably getting better at identifying the right people to promote and when to promote them yeah and you i don't know if this is true but you could probably figure that younger players are probably a little more analytically open-minded maybe they're more pliable and so they're you know they're a young pitcher coming out of the farm is not gonna complain about like shifts shifts he's not gonna be like bud norris or whatever with the astros just complaining about the infield all the time Yeah, so there are so many reasons to prefer younger players And so you have this whole era of free agent contracts that were signed that just are in no way reflective of contracts

That would be available now. So agents need to catch up now. JD martinez is going to sign for a lot of money He's not that young jake arietta is going to sign for a lot of money. He's not that young These players are going to get big deals but Yeah, you can't you can't get to free agency when you're 31 and think that you're going to get eight years because teams just aren't going to do that. You need, you would need to be exceptionally good. All right. And last question from Luke. I know the new idea is that you want your best hitter hitting second. I understand that. My question is what do you do with the

three and four holes? Say you have the following four players in their prime. Ichiro, Bonds, So I think the number two hitter has gotten a lot of attention. It's not necessarily that you automatically want your clearly best hitter in the number two slot. I think it's more like the difference between the new understanding of who should be batting second and the old understanding of who should be batting second is the greatest because, you know, leadoff hitters have often been good and certainly three and four hitters have traditionally been great hitters, whereas number two guys were just sort of your bat control slap hitter types. And so their their reputation their expectation has probably been upgraded the most i think but basically you want your best three hitters i think in the number one number four and number two spots in some order and you want the on base guys higher in the order and the power guys lower in the order as as generally a rule of thumb so i think really in the leadoff

slot you can't go wrong with the best leadoff hitter of all time probably i think ricky can continue hitting leadoff in a in a modern lineup i think that is just fine he gets on base didn't have a ton of power relative obviously to bonds and pool holes so i think you still put him at the top and then i guess you know i think you put each row three because you want a high average guy there who can drive the guys who are getting on base in front of him on so i think you would put the guy who's hitting like 390 in that spot probably and that guy comes to the plate I guess you you need less power from that slot than you would from the others so I think each row would make most sense there but as for number two and number four I mean bonds and poo holes in their primes are two of the

best titters ever so it it hardly makes a difference but i guess i would go with man i mean i was gonna say bonds is more of an on base guy but bonds is also more of a power guy no one has ever been more of either than peak bonds so i don't know how you go wrong with either i i guess maybe you put bonds higher up just to get him more plate appearances and get that OBP up there. I don't know. One thing that I have wondered, and I'm not quick enough to research this now, but there was all the conversation 10 years ago or 15 years ago about wanting to get better hitters in the number two slot because they bat the most often and they bat with runners on base.

And the guy who bats third comes up pretty often with two outs and nobody on but i wonder now if that has shifted since number two hitters just had like their best season ever that now if you have more emphasis on getting the first and second guy on base all of a sudden maybe the third slot actually becomes more desirable this is just a theory that i have not investigated i was just trying to investigate it while you were talking and i didn't get to where i wanted to go so i don't know it's something to think about but i can at least tell you that number two hitters were just phenomenal they just had a 108 league average wrc plus which is the best in modern history so that's pretty good but as far as bonds pooh holes would not love to have that choice in 2018 would have loved to have that

choice in like 2004 bond second pooh holes fourth whatever yeah by the time to get to the fourth place the pitcher is going to run away he's going to go into the witness protection for god's sake yeah i'm reading from an old sky cockman post at beyond the box score about optimizing your lineup according to tom tango and mgl's the book and says the number two hitter comes to bat in situations about as important as the number three hitter but more often that means the number two hitter should be better than number three guy and one of the three best hitters overall and since he bats with the bases empty more often than the hitters behind him he should be a high obp player then the cleanup slot the book says the number four hitter comes to bat in the most important situations out of all nine spots but is equal

in importance to the number two hole once you consider the number two guy receives more plate appearances the cleanup hitter is the best hitter on the team with power so i guess that's bonds that's bonds i don't it's really i mean they're both on base and power guys so that this is not the typical choice that a manager faces so can't go wrong with either but yeah i think ricky lead off each row number three and then take your pick of the other two guys. My God. Then you could have the Marlins outfield fill out the rest of the lineup.

Yeah. All right, we are done. By the way, meant to bring this up in the banter at the beginning of the episode, but we have arrived at the sixth annual Effectively Wild Season Preview Podcast Series. We're going to be doing that starting next week. So for those of you who have not been

on this journey with us before, in the couple months leading up to opening day every year, we do a team by team podcast preview series. We're going to stick with the same format that we used last year, which is going by the Fangraph's depth charts projections as they stand today. We'll be taking the best projected team and the worst projected team, talking about them, We'll be taking the best projected team and the worst projected team, talking about them, and then working our way inward. So we'll end with the two middle projected teams right before opening day. And on each of these episodes, we will have a guest, some subject matter expert in each team to talk about that team. We'll put them together and make them a podcast. We'll still have some brief banter and discussion before the preview part of the episodes,

and we will still be doing listener email shows on Wednesdays or our middle of the week shows. So it won't be all previews all the time, but we have found that it's a good primer for people, gets everyone excited for the season, informed for the season. A lot of listeners have found us through the team preview series. So it's a little bit different from what we typically do. But I remember running a survey in the Facebook group last year asking people if we should do it again. And the response was overwhelmingly in favor of, yes, you should do it again. So we will do it again. So twice a week, team preview pods from now through almost opening day. And also, I want to put in another plug for the Effectively Wild Wiki crowdsourcing project. I would really love it if this comes together.

I think it would be a great resource for the podcast community. So again, I will link to the signup sheet, which will have instructions and places to claim episodes. We'll also link to the thread about it in the Facebook group. You can find that in the show page at Fangraphs. You can also find it on Effectively Wild's Twitter at EWPod, or you can find it in the Facebook group, which you don't have to join and be a member of to view, but you should join at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. If you want to claim one episode, great.

If you want to take 10 episodes, great. Hopefully it'll be fun. There are a lot of listeners, so it might not take that long if everyone takes a small part of it. There will also be pages for guests and inside references if you're confused by some effectively wild meme. There will be a page that will explain it for you. And again, hopefully we'll have big databases that you can search for topics and teams discussed in certain episodes or email questions asked before. So it'll be a lot of fun to watch this all grow. You can also support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already done so include Michael Berger, Brandon Kuhn, Warren

Margulies, Brian Beyer, and David B., who says in parentheses, Hi, Mom. Hello, David B.'s mom. You've raised a fine son who has excellent tastes in podcasts. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Thanks, as always, to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance.

Keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. So have a wonderful weekend. We will be back early next week with the first two teams in the season When I'm in the crowd

When I'm in the crowd