Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1182: Turning the Corners

Episode Date: March 1, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Rangers’ Tim Lincecum signing, the Phillies’ corner-outfield experiment, and the Royals’ Lucas Duda signing, then follow up on a knuckleball question and answer listener emails about relievers’ and starters’ quality of opponents, an Albert Pujols basestealing challenge, the post-signing aging patterns of free agents, a Rusney Castillo […]

None other than our favorite pitcher, good old Tim Lincecum. He doesn't get too many L's, W's his favorite letter. He's been compared to Roy Oswalt, except Lincecum's a heck of a lot better. He's got a wild, wild wind-up And some wild, wild hair And a look that says I just don't care But he does care, he does care Hello and welcome to episode 1182 of Effectively Wild,

a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Today we will be doing an email show. Before that, Binter, Tim Lincecum is a major league pitcher again. How about that? Yeah, it's fun. It's fun for reasons I don't probably need to explain. Could go poorly, just like the last time. Last time he pitched in in 2016 he was absolutely dreadful his era was over nine if you prefer era minus it was 225 which means it was 125 percent worse than league average now incidentally i believe that year he actually tied alfredo simone so him once come not alone

as the worst pitcher in baseball that season but he's uh he's back they say he's throwing harder they say he was throwing harder they say he was throwing harder last time he tried to come back so maybe this time will be different maybe it won't but it's like a one million dollar uh base salary he's getting from the rangers which is hardly any sort of uh problem for them to afford and he could he could end up closing because their current closer is either a guy who was kicked off the team last year for disciplinary reasons. It's either a guy who missed most of last season with surgery for colitis. What's Jake Diekman's affliction?

Ulcerative colitis. Yes, right. Yeah. And the other option is Alex Claudia, who, if memory serves, throws 85 miles per hour. So Linscombe, as unconventional as he might be as a closing option, could be the Rangers closing option. And he's going to be joining a pitching staff that's pretty full of older pitchers who have atypical stories. So the Rangers are not really trying to make the playoffs with a young up and coming pitching staff. It's a pitching staff with Tim Linscombe on it and Mike

Miner on it and Doug Pfister and Bartolo Colon and you might not realize this but Matt Bush who is trying to convert to starting right now after being a reliever is 32 years old yeah so the Rangers pitching staff not young but it has its own kind of upside I guess yeah the Rangers have added like most of a really good 2011 rotation this offseason I think like not just Lincecum but also Mike Miner, Bartol Cologne, Matt Moore, Doug Pfister these guys were really good six years ago or so but it seems like they're trying to go for some sort of flexibility first pitching staff where maybe guys will be in fluid roles and someone like Miner, obviously he had success out of the bullpen most recently. He might start, he might be back in

the bullpen. Same goes for Lincecum. I would assume that he will not be starting. He probably should not be starting. It seems like his velocity has bounced back to some extent, but only to some extent. He's not throwing as hard as he was in his prime. He's obviously been working at driveline baseball, and he's been really airing it out, but he's still getting into the low 90s at the peak, it seems. So, I mean, it was always said about Lincecum when he started to struggle that he should just move to the bullpen and he could be really good there, and never really did it in the regular season aside from a stretch I think at the end of 2014 but obviously he did it quite a bit in the postseason and looked really good at times doing

that so if he does that now yeah there's a chance that he could come back it'd be great if he had a second act as an actual valuable reliever because i've missed him lincecum he was fun i think he was a jerry krasnick tweet where he said that some scout or observer said that uh referring to lincecum's new body he's no longer the uh the waif that he once was right someone said he he looks like a rock climber and first of all it would not surprise me if Tim Linscombe spent a lot of his time off climbing rocks. But also, I started to wonder, and I can't remember if we talked

about this before, but I wonder if rock climbing might not actually be a bad activity for pitchers if they want to get stronger. It's great for your forearms. It's good for your shoulders. You have to have a good core if you want to climb rock. Now, of course, if you're a team,

you don't want your pitchers getting in trouble. You don't want them like busting ligaments in their fingers or whatnot, but you don't need them climbing rocks up to their red point. You don't need them climbing

where they're putting themselves at any sort of risk. But I rock climb and I feel stronger in a way that isn't like, you know, conventional giant bicep strong, but it's flexibility strong. And it's like the kind of strength and flexibility you want for a pitcher.

So I don't know. It's probably not allowed per pitcher contract, but pitchers should do it. And I don't know, maybe Tim Linscombe was doing it, in which case I will root for him even more. Yeah, maybe that'll be the new yoga regimen for guys who are looking to not bulk up but be more flexible. I climbed rocks all offseason. Maybe. I like it. Good idea. One other thing I wanted to mention, the Phillies are experimenting with outfield corner swaps, and I was alerted to this by BP's Matt Trueblood, who actually emailed the show in 2013 about whether teams should do this. And Russell Carlton, also of BP, has a book coming out very soon, The Shift, go get it.

He then heard that email response and wrote an article about this idea of like a corner outfield inefficiency. The idea being basically that you know that a batted ball is more likely to be hit to one corner or the other. So if you have a mismatch, if you have one fielder who's better in an outfield corner than the other, you should swap them or align them such that the better fielder is more likely to be where the ball is more likely to go. And Russell wrote about this. Again, this was 2013 and he ran the numbers and he calculated what this might be worth to a team. So I will read what he concluded. If we always had the better fielder in the opposite field, it would mean that 55% of the time we would have a better fielder in a position to catch the ball compared to 50% now, because we know that hitters, when they hit the ball in the air, tend to hit it to

the opposite field. So Russell continues, we also assume that he would be 5% better than the other guy at catching balls and that the value of turning a hit into an out is about 0.8 runs. So for each fly ball to either left or right, the benefit of always making sure to station the better fielder in the batter's opposite field is.002 runs. From 2003 to 2012, the average team had 1,114 such balls over the course of a season, meaning that this strategy would be worth about two and a quarter runs over a season. If the fielders were 10 percentage points apart in their ability to catch fly balls, the strategy would be worth four and a half runs. We're starting to get into half a win territory simply by having the left and right fielder change places every once in a while, and it costs nothing. He came up with some downsides here. Obviously, there is the fact that you need two corner outfielders who have some sort of mismatch.

A lot of teams might have roughly equal defensive left fielders and right fielders, and then there wouldn't be much point. There's also the value of the arm to consider. If you want the stronger arm in certain situations in right field, then that's another cost because maybe the guy with the better arm isn't also the guy with the better range. There's also the fact that it would be a lot of running in a game. Russell calculated that if you actually did this and swapped corners every time the numbers said you should, it would be like eight times per game, which would end up being like half a mile of jogging. So I don't know, maybe the guy gets tired or maybe it adds to game time, which no one wants.

And then there's also something that I don't know if he mentioned in the article, but it's also kind of a very public acknowledgement for one guy that he is worse than the other guy. And, you know, maybe that's sort of a blow to the guy's ego who is having to change positions many times. Obviously, where you are to begin with has something to do with your defensive ability, but still, it's a very open acknowledgement many times a game that you are worse at something than another guy. So he pointed out that there may be

other drawbacks, and maybe there are reasons why it doesn't happen. But it looks like the Phillies are actually trying it. So this is from a Matt Gelb article at The Athletic, and I will read it now. The idea was planted a few days ago when Gabe Kapler told Colin Cowgill, a non-roster outfielder in camp, to be prepared. Tommy Joseph, a converted catcher who plays first base, learned Sunday that he would see time in the outfield this week. He had never played in the outfield. Then on Monday, Kapler told Joseph that there was going to be some sort of swap. The two players were summoned during batting practice Tuesday for a message. It's in full effect, a coach told them. Then just before the game against Detroit, the specific details were unveiled. If Victor Reyes, a 23-year-old

switch hitter who had never played above AA, batted left-handed against the Phillies, Cowgill and Joseph would switch positions in the out outfield as a mid-inning pitching change happened they did just that cowgill went to left field joseph to right they were the test subjects a blueprint for how the phillies will rethink their outfield defense emerged i think it'll happen a lot cowgill said i think it's great i love it i would think that you would absolutely do this if you were a team if one of your corner outfielders was tommy joseph but i don would think that you would absolutely do this if you were a team, if one of your corner outfielders was Tommy Joseph. But I don't think that we should also read too much into what the Phillies are doing

when they're playing around with Colin Calgill and Tommy Joseph in the outfield. This is a team that's going to have their corner outfield is going to include Reese Hoskins, Aaron Altair, Nick Williams, maybe somebody else. Now, Reese Hoskins is sort of an outfielder, but he's also a first baseman and he's going to be playing the outfield because they signed Carlos Santana. So it only makes sense that you could see this happen during the season just to sort of spare Hoskins a little bit. But yeah, you're right.

You can just imagine the first time that you see this happen between batters and then the outfielder who moved to the stronger position makes a misplay or something and then it just turns into a highlight or low-light video. But, you know, it makes sense that a team like the Phillies would be the ones willing to try this. It makes sense that a team like the Phillies would be trying to shield a corner outfielder, maybe, like Rhys Hoskins.

Now it is still February, so who knows if this continues. But, you know, this is one of the reasons that you hire someone like Gabe Kapler. You figure, well, we're going to try some things that were sabermetrically interesting four or five years ago. And so, you know, there's no reason to root against this continuing. I'm skeptical that we will actually see it very much in meaningful game action. But, you know, how many meaningful games are the Phillies really going to end up playing? Yeah, right. I don't know if this will actually happen in regular season games. Obviously, as we've discussed, lots of things are tried and said in spring training and then never carry over into games that actually count. So even the fact that they're experimenting with it, I think,

is new. And obviously, we've seen many extreme shifts and increased outfield shifting in the last few years. And the Phillies seem to want to be at the forefront of that. And not only do they have Kapler, who, by the way, is or at least was an effectively wild listener. Who knows? Maybe he got this idea from Matt Trueblood's email on the show. I don't know. But they also have newly hired Sam Fold, who, of course, was a good defensive outfielder himself. And he's working in like a player information capacity essentially selling this sort of idea to the players and so if you have someone like that who is recently retired and is able to convey the value of something like this then maybe you can get players on board and maybe you can approach this more precisely than Russell

was in his article where he was just looking at whether a ball is more likely to be pulled or hit to the opposite field. And obviously if you have precise spray charts and you have an even better idea based on the pitcher, then you can maybe do this when it really makes the most sense. And you can see that based on in this article. It was very specific. Victor Reyes, if he batted left-handed then it would just be victor reyes so they must have looked at his spray charts or something but yeah i mean this is the time you would condition guys to this sort of thing and get them used to it and whether it actually happens in game still something of a mystery so we we haven't watched

tommy joseph play the outfield. In fact, nobody has. How old do you think Sam Fold would have to be to be worse than Tommy Joseph as an outfielder? Like, is Gabe Kapler, we can assume, is better than Tommy Joseph as an outfielder right now? Yes, probably. Right. I mean, well, we know Kapler stayed in shape. I don't know about Sam Fold, but he was pretty good and he's not old. I mean, how old is Sam Fold now? He's got to be like mid-30s or something right i mean yeah but you know tommy joseph sort of has the physique of a barber right so uh sam fold is presently 36 yeah and you know recently played yeah i'm taking sam fold over

over tommy joseph i think i guess one thing that I recall was not present in Russell's article the first time, and it couldn't have been because there just wasn't the data, was more fly balls are hit in the air to the opposite field, but what do we know about the difficulty of fly balls to the opposite field relative to the ones pulled? It stands to reason that the ones pulled will be hit harder, maybe more difficult to field, pulled it stands to reason that the ones pulled will be hit harder maybe more difficult to field so that could be something that argues against putting the stronger fielder in the uh in the

opposite field because my guess is that many or most of those are routine sort of cans of corn where you would trust even tommy joseph to make the catch so i don't know something that could be reinvestigated now with the benefit of StatGast. I think, than a fly ball, at least compared to balls hit to the opposite field. So I think he found that balls hit in the air to the pull field were more likely to fall for hits, presumably because they're harder hit. But I don't remember how that played into the calculations. But yeah, he did take that into account in some form. Anyway, it's one of the more interesting team experiments in spring training. So we'll see if it gets carried over into April and beyond.

Anything you wanted to touch on? No, not really. In terms of actual baseball news, like the Royals signed Lucas Duda, which is only interesting because he didn't sign for very much, but Logan Morrison also didn't sign for very much. But one of those two players expressed a strong desire to play for the Royals, and it wasn't Lucas Duda. So I don't have anything further. I am sure that the Royals, then it wasn't Lucas Duda. So I don't have anything further.

I am sure that the Royals have their reasons. But it's weird to see Logan Morrison sign for $6.5 million and Lucas Duda sign for $3.5 million. And Morrison's the one who wanted to go there. And the Royals decided to sign Duda. I thought when they passed on Morrison that their explanation was, well, we're just going to give a chance to Hunter Dozier and Chesler Cuthbert. And they will start every day. And we will deal with that reality as we move forward.

But clearly, they went for a veteran anyway. They made room by designating Billy Burns for assignment, and he will be featured in the upcoming StatBlast. Oh, good. All right. Well, one follow-up from last week, we talked about a flamethrower adding a knuckleball, whether that would make sense, whether it would make him better. And listener Charles wrote in to say, after hearing the listener email question in episode 1179 about star pitchers adding a knuckleball, I did some research because I remembered that Satchel Paige had a knuckleball in MVP Baseball 2005. Turns out I was right. In addition, according to Bill James and Rob Nyer's Guide to Pitchers,

direct quote, since 1920, many major league pitchers had thrown a knuckleball as part of a standard repertoire. The knuckleball, as a part of a mixed repertoire, essentially disappeared after 1960. They go on to explain that pitching motions got more streamlined starting in 1950, probably eliminating the possibility of this happening again. So it was not an unknown thing for someone who was a hard thrower and had many other pitchers to also mix in a knuckleball from time to time. Whereas today, generally, if you throw a knuckleball, you are a knuckleball pitcher. Yep. All right. Let's answer one from bobby he says if albert pujols decided next season that he was going to try to steal as many bases as he could and he did so by stealing

every single time he got to first with no runner on in front of him would he reach 10 stolen bases assume the angels are for some reason willing to put up with this and play him as much as they would if you were not doing this. On one hand, he's very slow and other teams would pretty quickly know he was going. But on the other hand, I mean, plenty of catchers probably screw up the throw, right? So we know that Pujols is the slowest non-pitcher in Major League Baseball according to MLB's sprint speed stat. So what do you think? Well, you don't get a stolen base for a throwing error

right or do you no i don't think so okay so you just need the throw to be offline but yeah we're talking about like 10 throws that would be offline but not like wild into the outfield right yeah yeah i could see it opponents would figure out almost immediately that for some reason this is happening every time. And we're going to, I guess, I mean, pitchers wouldn't even attempt to pick offs. What's the point? You know, like Pujols wouldn't be taking a big lead. He'd just be running anyway and hoping for a throw that's to either side of the bag.

Although if the throw were up the first down the first base. Oh, no, not that again. the first base? Oh, no. Not that again. If the throw were wild to catcher's right, then the second baseman or shortstop

would be catching the ball, but probably still in Pujols' path because Pujols would not have gotten to the base yet. So, you know, tags could still be applied. But we're talking about 10 times.

How many times is Albert Pujols going to reach first base with the base open in front of him? More than 100, maybe 100? Oh, actually, maybe there aren't enough opportunities here. Now I'm starting to go the other way because, of course, we've seen like Jose Molina would steal bases, but that was the element of surprise. Pujols would immediately lose the element of surprise. No, I'm going to no.

Yeah, I mean, I think the predictability is a bigger problem than the lack of speed even. the predictability is a bigger problem than the lack of speed even. We've seen lots of slow guys just have the sneaky steal, but he's not getting any sneaky steals after the first few games really. So, I mean, you could just – with any runner, I mean, unless you're Billy Hamilton or something, it's really hard to steal if everyone knows in advance that you're stealing. And so if the pitcher is going to do everything he can. Even if he can't pick you off, he is fully cognizant of the fact that you're

going. He's going to slide step. He's going to get the ball in as quickly as he can. He's going to throw a fastball outside, just setting up the catcher perfectly. The catcher is going to be totally prepared to shift into a throwing stance, so he's going to have a really quick pop time. So everything is working against you, and if you're Albert Pujols and you have no speed, I mean, there is, I guess, a certain percentage of the throws that will be offline even if everything is in your favor, even if the catcher is fully prepared. But I think that percentage really goes down

if both the pitcher and the catcher have some forewarning here. So last year, okay, so baseball reference has stolen base opportunities listed. Those are defined as plate appearances through which a runner was on first or second with the next base open. And Pujols had 190 stolen base opportunities the two years before that, 168 for that 231. So we're looking at, call it, I don't know, 175 stolen base opportunities next season, whether that's on first or whether that's on second. Now, of course, if he's on second, that's even worse. I think he'd have a far better chance of stealing 10 bases if

he didn't go every time. Yeah, I think so too. All right. I think the odds are against him doing this, and that's without even factoring in the possibility of him hurting himself because he's attempting steals every time he's on pace. So, yeah, I don't think he does it. All right. Question from Chris. This concerns Chad Green, who we touched on in our Yankees preview. He obviously is a dominant reliever. There's been some talk of him potentially moving back to the starting

rotation, at least occasionally. So Chris says, obviously Green was much better as a reliever than a starter. And this is true about most every pitcher in his situation, I can recall. It's assumed that in a relief role, the pitcher can just let it fly and therefore has his stuff play up somewhat. But isn't it likely that a sizable chunk of the decrease in performance as a starting pitcher is due to an overall higher level of quality in opponents? After all, every start sees a pitcher facing the first through fourth batters likely twice, whereas any number of relief appearances involve facing the sixth to eighth hitters, the seventh to ninth hitters, etc.

Is there any way to quantify this? And yes, turns out that there is. I would say that, yes, it's true that sometimes if you're a reliever, you're facing only the bottom of the order, that sometimes if you're a reliever, you're facing only the bottom of the order, but you're also sometimes facing only the top of the order or the heart of the order. So in theory, one would expect that to balance out over the course of a season. Probably doesn't for every guy, but it should. I don't know if theoretically there's really any reason to think that starters would face a higher level of opponent. In fact, I would assume that for a late inning high leverage reliever like Green, he'd be called in more often to face good hitters in tight spots. So I would say the degree of difficulty goes up in that respect.

Anyway, I checked this out using Baseball Perspectives' quality of opponents report, and I divided pitchers from last year into two groups, exclusively starters and exclusively relievers, and I weighted them by the number of batters faced and looked at their average quality of opponents, and the reliever group's average opponents had a 103 RPA+. Don't worry about RPA+. It's essentially a BP stat that means the same thing as OPS+, or WRC+. So 100 is average.

Anything over 100 means that the hitters they faced were better than average. So the reliever groups, their hitters were 103. The starter groups were only 101. So the starter groups' opponents were slightly worse than the reliever groups' opponents. So I don't think there's any evidence that starters face harder hitters. In fact, only the opposite. It's true that Chad Green himself did face slightly better opponents in 2016 when he mostly started than in 2017 when he mostly relieved, but not enough to make much of a difference. So, yeah, for most guys, it's going to be because you can air it out.

You don't have to save anything. You can use all your best pitches. Plus the fact that you don't have to face the order multiple times. That's the real source of the starter-reliever split. Yeah, and of course, if you're a reliever in the National League, you're pretty much never facing a pitcher, even though the starters will. And I've noticed that oftentimes, like closers, late-inning relievers will face tougher opponents than the average based on that same number at baseball prospectus.

And presumably that has to do with the fact that not only will that be called in for sort of those fireman opportunities against the middle of the order but teams will also pinch it if somebody good is on the bench whether they get the day off or they just have a good bench bat that guy will show up in the ninth inning because that is the last chance yep all right another question from the debunking department this one is from leo he says i was discussing the rumor of the Indians trading Edwin Encarnacion with my grandfather. My grandpa didn't like this idea because he thinks Edwin will improve this year. I asked why, and he said he thinks that free agents improve in the second year of their contracts because they are more comfortable in the home city and clubhouse.

Is there any validity to this? So with all due respect to Leo's grandfather, no, I don't think there's anything to this, at least in most cases. Certainly there could be individual cases, of course, where a guy acclimates to his new city and team and performs better because of that. But on the whole, definitely not. You would not expect this because free agents tend to be in their late 20s, in their 30s, at the age where you don't really expect any hitter to get better. So you would think just based on age and their part of the aging curve that they would get worse as a whole. And in fact, that is what we see. I probably could have looked up any number of stories, but sticking with Russell Carlton, he wrote something just earlier this month, actually, where he looked at the patterns of free agents after they sign. And I think he was looking at particular free agents. He was looking at guys who were good, like in the top five at their position over the previous couple of years, something like that. But good, like in the top five at their position over the previous couple

of years, something like that. But he found that in the first year after they sign a free agent contract, this group was worth about 4.9 wins a pub replacement player. Then in the second year after signing, it goes down to 3.5, then 3.1, then 2.5, then 1.7. And he even had a different group like the Truly Truly Elite players later in the article, and they showed exactly the same pattern. And they would, whatever free agent group you choose, you would find that they just slowly and steadily get worse as a group after they sign. Don't sign long-term contracts. Well, yeah, not unless you're getting guys super cheap. But Leo says that he ran this answer by his grandpa because I answered via email first

and his grandpa said, what does he know? Fair point, Leo's grandpa. I don't know. In this particular instance, I think I know many things. I don't know. In this particular instance, I think I know many things I don't know, and I would trust Leo's grandfather over me. But in this case, I've done the research or other people have. I don't know. There's freedom in having the same perspective as Leo's grandpa here.

Just stick to your gun. Who cares what the evidence is? The evidence isn't accurate. Sure. What does the evidence have to do with Edwin Encarnacion? This is one guy. Maybe it took a while to get comfortable in The evidence isn't accurate. Sure. What does the evidence have to do with Edwin Encarnacion? This is one guy. Maybe it took a while to get comfortable in Cleveland, wouldn't you? Yeah, I think in any individual case, you could certainly argue that this is true.

All right. Trevor says, before Tim Britton left the Providence Journal, he had mentioned something interesting about Rusny Castillo a while back. Castillo's money doesn't count toward the luxury tax, but if he gets called up to the majors, then the money will count, and the Red Sox will be over the $237 million limit. Obviously, unless the Red Sox go over it in the coming weeks, Castillo is pretty much guaranteed to stay in the minors the entire year, no matter how well he does.

Tim had an interesting question that I wanted you guys to answer, though. How many hits in a row would Castillo have to get to begin the season for him to finally get called up to Boston? I feel like it would have to be something extraordinary because it seems like the Red Sox are going through a lot of effort to avoid the top penalty. Well, I guess at this point, it doesn't matter anymore because they have exceeded the luxury tax. So Castillo, you're free, sort of. You would still cost more than your salary because the Red Sox would be paying taxes on his salary. Yes. Above and beyond, but that is not the question.

So, number of hits in a row. Of course, there are hits and then there are hits. But we can assume that if Ruzny Castillo is batting 1,000, then he's hitting the crap out of the ball. Not just hitting singles. So, it would take, hmm. Red Sox wouldn't change their plans. If this is a team that was still concerned about not exceeding the cap, so this is basically last year's Red Sox, I guess, then they're not going to change their plan early,

not when they have an outfield of Benintendi, Bradley, and Betts because they're still going to want to play those guys. They're all very good and good defenders. So you're not going to have to play those guys. They're all very good and good defenders. Yeah. So you're not going to have a change within a few weeks. But, you know, two weeks into the season, people would be like, hey, I don't know if you've noticed what's going on in Pawtucket, but there's a guy who's batting 1,000. He's slugging like 2.655 or whatever he's doing.

And then so when attention goes on, I don't know when the minor league season starts relative to the major league season, but they're around the same time. So you would have two, two and a half weeks would pass and then a few articles would be written first on blogs and then in the newspapers about like, hey, Castillo's hitting pretty well down there. And then people would start paying attention and they would become like a Twitter thing and have some sort of trending Ruzny Castillo situation and all I like you would start to have people paying attention to what's going on in AAA because this would have already been a compelling case specifically because of the weird salary and luxury tax circumstance around Castillo's position in the first place. So people would be interested in this to a greater degree than they'd be interested in like, I don't know, Matt Haig, some other guy in AAA. So they'd be looking at it almost like daring the Red Sox to call this guy up.

And so then you'd have people paying attention for a week. Castillo would go three for three, four for four every single day. Manager would give him a day off and fans would be disappointed because they're like, what are you giving him a day off for in AAA? This is a waste of everyone's time. So I think by the end of one full month of Ruzny Castillo batting a thousand, the front office would no longer be able to ignore it. They'd be like, all right, we don't know what's going on, but we can't not bring this guy up.

It's worth whatever the overage fee would be for us to just find out. They would probably regret it almost immediately. Yeah, I don't think he ever ends up playing for the Red Sox, even in this scenario. I think he gets traded, maybe, just because it would be different if Castillo had been signed by the current regime because signing a guy for seven years and 72 and a half million and then getting almost nothing out of him. That's somewhat embarrassing to the team that signed that player, but he was signed before Dave Dombrowski was hired by the Red Sox. So it's not really a reflection on him. He doesn't have his own reputation or job security at stake. So I don't think he has that much incentive to salvage the deal from the Red Sox perspective.

And as you mentioned, outfield defense and just outfield production is really the strength of this roster. And you have a whole bunch of guys who are really great and are foundations of the team for the long term. So I don't know where he gets the playing time. Of course, they have JD Martinez now, so you can't even DH him or something. So there's just no spot for him. And factor in the luxury tax considerations, too. I think you just trade him. And I think there would be interest in a guy who's batting a thousand in triple a after a few weeks so i don't think it would be all that hard to move

him so that's what yeah yeah that's i think that would happen i think you're right i didn't i didn't really consider the trading perspective i thought red sox are bust but of course it makes the most sense for him to be traded and i don't know if you would trade him for value but the red sox could at least trade him to clear even the chance of his salary coming up and you could get some sort of prospect back or i don't know maybe a reliever i forgot how old rusny castillo is he's not young 20s yeah no he's 30 yeah great okay so he wouldn't he wouldn't probably trade into like the tigers or maybe you would i don't know the tigers don't care about that money but you would trade him to you know the let's call them the braves braves could i don't know if we're talking again about this year or last year but the braves could use that sort of ability in the

corner outfield the sort of a a pseudo project but also a guy who might just be good look i don't i don't want to sit here and talk about the braves anymore trade it would have been a trade all right cory says in the interest of giving you some non-economic stuff to talk about, here's a follow-up to the question about how unlikely an outcome has to be before you'd be surprised by it. One of the things you pointed out in your answer was that even if things go as projected, they can happen in a surprising way. While folks might have expected the Yankees to be a wildcard contender last season, no

one expected Aaron Judge to be such a big part of that. In addition to this, I think the projected outcomes themselves can be surprising. For example, someone who believes in the Brewers' breakout might think they're better than the projections are saying, and so would be surprised if they turned out to play to their projection. To turn this into a question, last year it seemed like you were surprised by how well the Dodgers projected. Are there any teams whose projections surprise you this year and zips the second projection system has now been folded into the team projections at fangrafts is that correct so yes yeah so we've got a blend of steamer and zips so the fangrafts preseason projections are

more or less final aside from injuries and playing time shifts. So just scanning that list, are there still any teams on there now that you look at and think that you would have pegged them much higher or lower? Right now the Brewers are at 79 and 83. I think that the projections are a little too low on them. I would say by, I don't know, three or four wins, I think the Brewers are fairly solid. Maybe that's not a big deal, but looking elsewhere. So the current projected standings on fan graphs are not,

this is annoying, they're not going to be like the official projected standings because these standings don't yet take into consideration the schedule. And usually that will not make a big difference, but I suspect this year it will make quite a big difference for the indians and the twins because the indians and the twins have three terrible teams in their division the white socks the royals and the tigers they are three of the four worst teams in baseball by the projections right now only the marlins are worse so i expect that the twins and the indians will get like like a two or three win boost in the standings.

But, you know, that will eventually be reflected in the projections. So maybe that's not fair to bring up. I would say, yeah, Brewers are the team that surprised me the most of the teams that I'm looking at. And, of course, there's reason for optimism. I'm sort of on the A's and the Phillies bandwagons right now. But I don't think the projections are wrong. I just think those are teams that have more upside than average. Yeah, just scanning the list, I was sort of surprised that the Blue Jays are as high as they are. The Blue Jays have the

ninth best projection in baseball, 87 and 75, tied with the Cardinals. So actually, I guess, basically, tied for the eighth best projection more or less so that's a little higher than I would have thought and maybe they're a team that will get bumped down a bit because they have to play the Yankees and the Red Sox a whole lot so maybe when the schedule is factored into this that will hurt them a little but I would not have expected them to to see them say above the Angels for instance and the Twins and the Diamondbacks and all those teams. I mean, I would expect them to be in the wildcard running, but maybe not quite that high. That was one that stood out to me. And I'm also sort of on the

Phillies as a possible surprise team train. So to see them as low as they are, 74 and 88, I think they are what the ninth worst projection. So that, uh, it doesn't really shock me. I, you know, I don't know if I would say that that's wrong or off, but as you say, just that maybe they have some potential to exceed that and they're a young team and maybe more volatile than the typical team so i i'm with you there but on the whole not really and maybe it's just because we pay such close attention to the projections now year round even fangraphs of course has projections constantly and for the bulk of the offseason it's just the steamer projections but those don't generally diverge wildly from any other system so i mean this is just something that we're always looking at it's

not like in the past where you would just have the projections go dark all offseason essentially and you know then you'd tune in in february or march and look at Pakoda or something. And maybe at that point, something would surprise you. But we're just monitoring this page so often that we're not going to be taken aback by any sudden swing. Yeah. I'll say also looking at things that I think I like the Diamondbacks better than 82 and 80. I think that they have limited starting pitcher depth. And look, we're going to have our team previews. We've already had half of them, so we don't need to go into this at length. But I think that the projections are low, unlike Gerard Dyson and Steven Souza.

And provided their starting pitchers don't all get hurt, I think the Diamondbacks are going to be better than this. I would take the Diamondbacks, for example, over the Giants this season. The Giants are projected for an identical record. All right. Stat blast? Stat blast! This season, the Giants are projected for an identical record. All right.

Stat blast. Stat blast. So as mentioned earlier, Billy Burns was designated for assignment by the Royals, and it was good timing for me because every Wednesday I think, what the hell am I going to do for a stat blast? And then baseball gives me some sort of inspiration. I'll tell you why Billy Burns is interesting in a, let's call it a bad way. He was interesting coming up because he was very fast as a prospect and he drew a bunch of walks, made contact in the minor leagues. He was one of those no power, high OBP, speedy types that you figure.

This guy has a pretty high floor. He's probably not going to be that bad of a disappointment. Well, he kind of has been. You know, things go awry. And what I like about Billy Burns the most as a major league player, and by like, I mean, I guess be critical of statistically, is that he's been very unusual in his profile. Maybe you already know what I'm getting at.

Maybe you don't. I don't know how many times you have obsessed about Billy Burns' Fangraphs profile page, but I've been there. I do this every day. Of course, we have bad ball information going back to 2002. That is now 16 years of full coverage of ground balls, fly balls, line drives,

all that stuff. Here's what's fun about Billy Burns. Billy Burns has been a ground ball hitter for his major league career. That's not surprising. 51% ground ball is not extreme, but more than the average player, and that's because he's fast and has no power.

We know he has no power because his rate of home runs per fly ball is 2.5%. That's very low. It's not the lowest. Well, actually, Kyle Loesch, Johnny Cueto, Brett Myers, Tim Linscombe. Turns out these are all pitchers. The only non-pitcher to have failed to hit a home run with a minimum of 500 plate appearances is Reggie Willits. Reggie Willits was sort of Billy Burns before Billy Burns.

But anyway, also, fun fact, just because he's in the news, the highest ground ball rate in this entire sample, Tim Linscombe, 76.2%, highest by four percentage points. So Rangers, if you want a ground ball, I still wouldn't bet Tim Linscombe because he strikes out a bunch. Anyway, back to the point. So Billy Burns has been a ground ball hitter and that's because he has no power and he's fast. Hardly surprising. Now, what's more surprising is that Billy Burns has been a pop-up machine. There's also, just as there's a rate of home runs per fly ball, there is rate of infield pop-ups per fly ball. This is, of course, that where Joey Votto has been amazing. Joey Votto has the second lowest pop-up rate in this entire sample. The lowest rate belongs

to larry bigby which is i don't know who knows what larry bigby was all about but he looks great by this metric he uh had a infield he had a pop-up rate of 0.5 percent joey vato's at 1.2 percent howie kendrick at 1.5 percent but anyway bill Burns, 21.7% of his fly balls have been pop-ups. And that's very unusual. You would think if you can picture sort of a plot of batted ball trajectories, you expect lower pop-up rates for ground ball hitters because their batted balls are distributed down. So you would think that there would just not be a whole lot of activity at the higher launch angles.

You can see this if you look up any sort of launch angle chart on Baseball Savant. In this way, Billy Burns is sort of the exact opposite of like Alex Avila, who hits a bunch of fly balls but almost never pops up, which I take to be a good indicator of like batted ball control. Or maybe instead of making bad contact, Avila just makes no contact. So Billy Burns makes ground ball contact, but also just like gets too far under the ball way too often 21.7% pop-ups now this is the fifth highest rate in uh in the entire sample that I looked at but instead of just looking at a at pop-up rate I decided to look at the difference between home

run rate per fly ball and a pop-up rate per fly ball just to see who's getting the most out of their fly balls. And if you sort this in descending order, then Aaron Judge, of course, is at the top with a home run rate 28 percentage points better than his pop-up rate. In second place, Domingo Santana. Third place, Ryan Howard. Fourth place, Keon Bruxton. Not pop-up hitter. Not much of a hitter, but not much of a pop-up hitter. Anyway, if you sort in the other direction,

Billy Burns, fourth worst. He's got a difference of negative 19.2 percentage points. The name in front of him, Johnny Cueto. Name in front of Cueto, Kyle Loesch. Two pitchers. And at last, first place or realistically last place with a difference of 24.8 percentage points. Do you have any guesses?

No. Old friend Lenny Harris. Wow. Lenny Harris, 30.3% pop-ups, 5.5% home runs, difference of about 25 percentage points. Lenny Harris, the worst hitter since 2002. By this metric, he was a ground ball hitter with no power, also no speed. Poor Lenny Harris. Just a million pop-ups, just countless, infinite pop-ups. So Billy Burns, a fast Lenny Harris,

but now currently looking for a job. Well, Lenny Harris by that point was in his late 30s or 40s, so somewhat more understandable, whereas Billy Burns is not. And yeah, often pop-up rate, like if someone is mysteriously bad, like they just have a really low BABIP or they're just a bad hitter and it seems like they should be better because they put the ball in play a lot or something, look at their pop-up rate because there are some guys who kind of have these hidden high pop-up rates and a pop-up is just as bad as a strikeout essentially. So if you hit a lot of those, it's almost an automatic out. And that can often be kind of the hidden thing that is holding someone back. So, yeah, you would expect someone like Billy Burns to have a higher BABIP than what 308 is his career rate. And he's a speedy guy, obviously, but can't beat out pop-ups. So that is holding him back and probably will continue to. Yep, probably a good measure. If you look at the difference between fly ball rate and pop-up rate,

it's probably a pretty good measure of bat control. And, of course, we have other measures of same. But, you know, if a guy like Alex Avila or Joey Votto hit fly balls but they never pop up, that can only be a good thing. It just means that they're not making contact in sort of the bad launch ankle ranges. Billy Burns, the complete opposite of that. Lenny Harris, though, worse. All right.

We talked yesterday with Alex Spear about JD Martinez's contract and how he has three opt-out clauses in his five-year deal. Jonathan is asking about that. He says, after reading many comment sections, why I would subject myself to that I can't explain, I've heard a lot of opinions that think opt-outs are team-friendly, especially about the J.D. Martinez contract. I know the Sabre argument is no, opt-outs are always player-friendly, but can there be specific circumstances where they can help teams? Let's say J.D. opts out of the final $60 million over three years, and his market value would be something like $70 million over three years. So if he hadn't opted

out, he would be a small bargain to Boston. But Boston doesn't want to resign him at $70 million in three years because they would rather allocate that money to, say, a Mookie Betts extension and sign a cheap DH in a buyer's market for $5 million. I know the argument is that JD has surplus value, and this would bring back something positive in a trade if he hadn't opted out, but if the surplus value is small and not super obvious, and other big spending AL teams don't have an opening at DH, it could still be hard to move him. Thus, Boston is happy because they're able to extend bets,

and able to replace most of JD's production cheaply, and aren't left with an expensive contract that they would have a hard time moving. Is this correct or is there something else I'm missing? Well, I guess JD wouldn't really have surplus value if no one else has an opening for him. I mean, there's like theoretical war-based surplus value and there's actual surplus value where if JD Martinez perceives that he can't get that $70 million in the market because nobody has a DH opening, then he doesn't have surplus value at all. So there are circumstances, of course, where a player can opt out and then it works out for the team. But going into it, just no. It's a player option.

That's all that it is. It's a multi-year player option. You can dream up situations where the team might not hate it now the one thing we're we're missing in every single case is what the contract would have looked like without the opt-outs right yeah where without that information then you can't really prove anything but i think i don't remember who did the research but i i think that opt-outs have been valued somewhere around like 15 or 20 million dollars i I think that it probably diminishes when you have a contract with like eight opt outs like Jeannie Martinez's new contract has. I think that

each subsequent opt out means a little less. But yeah, it's a lot of money. And so if you figure that if you're the Red Sox, you give Martinez, he's got an opt out after year two and his contract is kind of front loaded. But if opt-out weren't in there then there would have been what the contract would have cost more but then if Martinez is if you're the Red Sox and now if Martinez is really good the first two years then he's going to almost certainly opt out and the Red Sox are going to lose some value there because if Martinez is really good the first two years he would have projected really good over the following three years. And now the Red Sox will miss out on that. And of course, if Martinez is bad, he will not opt out. And then the Red Sox

will be stuck with someone whose money does count against the luxury tax, unlike Roussini-Castillo. So no, I think there are cases where it can maybe be more team friendly than others, but it's just a player benefit. That's it. Yep. I think I'm with you. All right. Sam says, I have a question that comes from playing out of the park baseball, the computer sim. Recently, I've been playing as the Rockies. Due to some lucky player improvements, I have been over the 85 win mark for five years and reached a high of 92. Unfortunately, these five years have coincided with a phenomenal Dodgers team that hasn't dropped below

105 wins during that time. What? This got me thinking. I am a team built to win now, but I'm competing against a behemoth. Meanwhile, the Marlins are tearing down and so don't mind playing the Dodgers regularly. In fact, it'll help their race for a first overall draft pick.

I'm aware that I'm probably about to give the Marlins too much credit here. I could trade my place in the NL West to the Marlins, along with a few prospects, and we would both benefit. My question is this. If you could trade division spots, would teams do it? What is a division spot worth? Would the Red Sox or Yankees eat the remaining years and money on Miguel Cabrera's contract

in order to move to the AL Central? That's an interesting question. the remaining years and money on Miguel Cabrera's contract in order to move to the AL Central? That's an interesting question. Let's, are we just going to, we can ignore like travel considerations, you know, divisions are arranged how they are for a reason. It would be a hassle, obviously, but. Does matter. Your travel secretary would be kind of pissed off having to redo everything. But if you were, well, let's see, do you think that overall the reds let's take the red sox it doesn't

matter which one we choose would the red sox rather be up against there are no big spenders really anymore in the al central the tigers are not what they were none of those teams are like huge market teams at least as we understand them to be would the red sox rather benefit from no longer having to compete against the Yankees directly. Or is it worth more to the Red Sox to compete against the Yankees directly? They're sort of intertwined. Well, do you mean because it spurs them to try harder? And I think that fans like the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry.

And it's good for the story of the season that every single year the Red Sox and the Yankees are competing for first place. Yeah. And, of course, both teams can count on big draws, lots of tickets sold because of that rivalry. Now, not every team has a really compelling natural rivalry, even though MLB always tries to sell some interleague matchups as rivalries that no one really cares about. But I mean, Yankees-Red Sox is one of the most storied rivalries in the the two wild card era where you get a lot from winning the division as opposed to winning a wild card so you get to bypass the play-in game that's worth a lot to teams in theory so i mean if you were allowed to do that i don't

know if it would be looked at as cheap or the coward's way out. You're kind of gaming the system like the Olympic skier who was just good enough not to fall down and managed to make it to the Olympics. So probably it would be looked down upon a bit. I don't know if it would totally tarnish it for fans. bit like i don't know if it would totally tarnish it for fans i mean if you won a world series because you switched to the al central or something and you won the division because of that would that ruin it for everyone would you feel like you just sort of snuck in and didn't really earn it i guess certainly you'd be criticized for doing it i don't know whether it would impact fans' joy all that much, because you could certainly say there are teams that spend a lot more than other teams and have bought their way to a title to a certain extent, and that's not totally fair either. is level and of course divisional distributions and how good your opponents are is somewhat random and out of your control so if you can take advantage of that i i see the argument for it but

i don't know it would be a a destabilizing force i think obviously it would feel a little bit chaotic i'm not sure baseball would be better in any way if you had this system, but if you could do it, yeah, teams would probably do it, I guess, depending on the cost, because there is a lot of incentive and potential benefit there. Yeah, there's probably more competitive benefit. If we're taking the Red Sox or Yankees, there's probably more benefit if they can sort of... Historically, the AL East has always been like one of the toughest divisions if not the toughest division in baseball and historically the al central has been pretty bad and a lot of that just has to do with payroll you don't see the high payrolls in the central

that you do in the east payroll over the grand scheme of things will determine success so there are competitive reasons for one of the juggernauts to move to the central and that is worth a whole lot it in fact might be worth so much that it would be difficult to come up with a trade because if you're i don't know you know you have to trade places with someone so then who wants to go up against the yankees and give up their glorious spot where they're not really competing against any high payroll uh let's say it's the i don don't know, the White Sox. But then, if you're the White Sox, you don't want to go to the East because you'd be

competing against the Yankees instead of the Indians. But on the other hand, you also want to be amenable to a trade because if you ask too much, then one of your rivals will go away and then you have to compete against the Red Sox instead of keeping central. So I don't really know how you could make a trade with such great long-term considerations it would be weird to be like

white socks well let's see who'd be giving up value here the red socks would be trading value to the white socks in order to get an easier division so you know if you're the white socks you're like well we'll take jackie brad Bradley Jr. And then that makes up for everything. Because, you know, Bradley's around for, what, three more years, two more years? So it'd be hard. So you'd attach a term to it, right? It would be, you know, you can be in this division for two years, and then we get to swap back when we're good again, something like that.

So it would be pretty complicated. I wonder, I guess, it's probably not allowed. I don't know who's in charge of divisions, but I doubt that teams could do that. No, definitely not. All right. Jordan says, I have a hypothetical question about advanced stats and specifically shifting. If a very progressive thinking player, say Zach Greinke, were teleported to the early 1910s to play on an MLB team and tried to implement an advanced strategy such as the shift or launch angle increases, how do you think it would be received?

Would that old school brand of baseball be totally closed-minded? With his skill set, he would probably be one of, if not the best pitchers in the league. So how would that help his case? What era could he be teleported back to and have success? So we've answered over the years many similar questions about if we were the GM of a team in that era, or a manager were transported back to that era, or one from the past transported to the future, how big a difference would it be? Or just how much better are today's players than players in the past? Many related questions, but this one is

specifically about the politics of it and trying to sell players on this sort of thing. And I don't think it would be possible, really. I mean, we saw how difficult it was when teams started to introduce this stuff in the 2000s and the 2000 teens even was not that easy to sell then so to go back to a much earlier era in baseball before the sabermetric movement before anyone was aware of advanced stats i don't think a player could sell anyone on this now if you went back and you had a dramatically different playing style and you were immediately amazing that would change some minds just the same way that say babe ruth coming out and hitting a ton of home runs after years of players not really trying to hit the ball over the fence that slowly but surely rubbed off on the rest of the league and so if you had someone come

back with a completely different swing or something and, you know, lay waste to the league, that would be a pretty good advertisement for whatever his playing style was. I don't think the necessary infrastructure is there, even for a player who might have an easier time selling this sort of thing than just a wonk in the front office who's never played or something. But even so, I think it would be an extremely tough sell up until the very recent years of baseball. Maybe that's the better question. What would a team do with a modern-day analytics department in like 1912? Right. You'd have to generate your own data. If you're a Zach Greinke and you're going back, you've got a couple options. One, you perform first and you give yourself a season. And now Zach Greinke would be unhittable in the 1910s. He just wouldn't allow runs. He would strike

everyone out. And when there was contact, he would probably be sprayed to the opposite field. So he wouldn't even have evidence to compel a shift in the first place. But more people would be open minded if they watched Zach Greinke pitch super well for a season, win awards if there were awards, and then they think, oh, this guy's a wizard, we should probably do what he says. But if Zach Greinke teleported immediately back one century, and he's like, all right, we're gonna shift, he would almost certainly be beaten to death. Yeah, I'm not sure Zach Greinke is necessarily the best ambassador either, just on a persuading other players level. Not sure that he would be the best guy to do that. But I think, yeah, like if he's throwing a new pitch or something that didn't exist back then, you know, like if

someone's throwing a nasty slider or something or, you know, whatever, a splitter or something that didn't have a direct analog or maybe had some kind of precursor pitch at the time, that would be picked up very quickly. But I just, I don't really see a team level strategy getting adopted very easily, even if a superstar is trying to sell it. It would be fun to, you you know right now we have like league equivalencies where we have triple a and the majors and we have major league equivalencies we can say triple a is i don't know 15 worse than the majors or something and then we have the understanding japan is like a quadruple a league talent wise but it would be interesting

to know like what year of baseball like if you take Major League Baseball in 1915, would that quality be like this year's AA, rookie ball, college ball? Or like is our current AAA, the Pacific Coast League and the International League, what year of the majors is that roughly equivalent to? I have no idea how you would look this up or come up with a date, but, you know, there's probably some major league year in the not so distant past where the average talent level was about what is in AAA right now. Yeah. That'd be fun. We talk about Mike Trout and independent ball seemingly every week. So how many years back would he have to go where it's even easier in the major leagues? All right. Question from Sam in Seattle. We're seeing a rise in the three true outcomes, which some say means a decrease in excitement. If you could pick any three outcomes

as the only possible outcomes to every plate appearance, what would they be? He actually says at-bat, so maybe he means at-bats and not plate appearances. Go small ball with single, double, and ground out. Go big with home runs, doubles, and fly outs. Go weird with foul outs, infield singles,

and dropped third strikes so what do you want the three true outcomes to be if they are the only outcomes can i go boring and just kind of well okay so i don't want walk strikeouts homers that's just that's not interesting what you wouldn't even have a game. You wouldn't need defense. There's no point of defense. All right, so I'll take singles. You want some singles. I guess, are we just going all batted balls?

Because you wouldn't choose non-batted balls, I don't think. No, I don't think you would, no. So, no, I'm going to cheat. Ground balls, fly balls, line drives. Go to hell. Yeah, that's definitely cheating. I think. Okay. I don't know.

Singles. I'll say singles first. Where do you go? I guess I'll take triples. I mean, triples are exciting. If they're really common, they're less exciting. Part of what makes them so exciting is the rarity. But they're exciting because there's like a wide range of possible outcomes on a triple. You can imagine him trying to stretch it into an inside the park homer. You can imagine him just staying at second base. It's often a close, exciting play. So I'll go with triple. Okay, and I guess line out is probably too specific,

but just some sort of out, I guess, would be the third outcome. Yeah, you obviously can't have three positive outcomes. Yeah, right. Yeah, you have to almost build in something boring just to preserve the sport, essentially. Yeah, but I wouldn't want it to be a strikeout. You want the batted ball, so you have just like the extra split second of drama. Yeah, so I guess a line out would be or like an infield ground, like, I don't know, something where there's a close bang-bang play at first maybe is exciting or as you say, a line out.

Oh, yeah, sure. Especially in a league that wouldn't have any home runs. You'd be like, how do they just only hit the ball six inches over the fence? It's always caught. Right. Okay. Yeah. By the way, what you were saying about, you know, just how much worse baseball used to be, the level of play, there's another tidbit from that pages from Baseball's Past, the recent edition about Bob Death Defying Things Ferguson.

He says, by the performance of a 22-year-old player. Chapman sent the young man a telegram asking him to join the team and promising him a $175 per month contract if he proved satisfactory. The kid scouted only through newsprint turned out to be Huey Jennings. He quickly became the team's regular shortstop and was the club's second best hitter that season. So Huey Jennings, Hall of Fame shortstop, really great player. And he was signed because someone read a newspaper account of him being good in a game and sent him a telegram saying, hey, come play for us. And no one else knew who he was, I guess. So that's how baseball worked in 1891. There was a lot of talent that was just out there not being found. And that is

obviously not the case today i love the idea of here's here's the great contract terms we'll give you but only if you prove like prove that you're good because if you're ewe jennings you show up and you think i don't really have a guarantee here it's sort of an opportunity but you know they could easily just be dicks about it i guess but yeah baseball market was tough for players in those days Alright let's end with Related to some Here about the Waxahachie swap so

Dirk says I was reading Tom Tango et al's the book the other night And was intrigued by the section where He argued that one could create more value By having a platoon at pitcher Playing matchups and Waxahachie swapping The pitcher in and out of a corner outfield position. This is, by the way, the term for this maneuver that Rob Nyer

popularized several years ago. Dirk continues, I love this notion. The Angels are not primed to do it, obviously. This is an Angels-related question. Their best lefty is Tyler Skaggs, and he doesn't project a throw nearly as well. However, I was thinking that if the Angels did a five-man rotation without Otani, instead he would platoon with Skaggs and Haney, their two best left-handed relievers. Would his number of batting appearances increase this way? Would this affect the war he generates positively or negatively? So this is essentially a Shohei Otani-Waxahachie swap question. Chris writes in with an Astros-related Waxahachie swap question.

On their 40-man roster, the Houston Astros have two corner infielders who were also pitchers in college, J.D. Davis and A.G. Reid. Davis, a righty, can hit for power and play a passable third base. Last year, he got three strikeouts and two scoreless relief appearances. Reid, a lefty, has yet to prove he can hit in the majors, but he was an acclaimed two-way player in college, winning the Golden Spikes Award. He was arguably the Astros' top prospect as recently as 2016, and he is reportedly in the best shape of his life this year in spring training. The presence of these two players on the rosters opens up the possibility of a Waxahachie platoon.

Davis and Reid could switch back and forth between pitcher and first base, functioning in effect as a switch pitcher. And Uli Gurriel is injured, right? Having surgery now, so opens up a spot. Of course, the Astros would have to forfeit the DH to pull this off or happen to be playing an interleague game on the road. But still, what are the chances of the Astros doing this in a game? How good would Davis and Reed have to be for the Astros to do this regularly?

So I guess it's sort of a general question about the Waxahachie swap and its efficacy. And this is also an area where Russell Carlton wrote an article last year about whether to do this, why it doesn't happen more often. And again, he found that there probably is an advantage to be gained by doing this at least in certain spots but of course you are running the risk in the case of a pitcher version of this of having the pitcher be in the field it's kind of hard to calculate how bad a fielder a pitcher would be because we just don't have a lot of data. But Russell makes some educated guesses, and then he also points out that you have the possibility of losing something offensively. So Russell writes,

The real difference maker is something that you might not expect. At the end of the Waxahachie swap, the original pitcher comes in from left field to resume the pitching mantle, but the original left fielder is now out of the game and someone has to take his place. Most of the time that means swapping out a team's starting left fielder for a replacement level bench player. Because left fielders are generally chosen for their prowess with the bat, it probably means an offensive downgrade. The distance between a backup level left fielder and a starter over one plate appearance is about 0.02 runs. So poof, there goes all the profit. And he also points out that with the giant bullpens that

teams have today, you might just be able to burn three pitchers or something to get the platoon advantage and not cost you all that much. So it's maybe worth a little less than you think in general circumstances, which is one reason why it doesn't happen all that often. The other being, of course, that maybe it disrupts the pitcher to do this, or maybe it just ends up embarrassing the manager because the ball happens to be hit to the pitcher at the wrong time. Not to be forgotten, the Astros also have Anthony Gose on the roster. So you've got Gose, you've got Davis, you've got Reed.

You have all these players, these position players, but also pitchers who A.J. Hinge probably would have gone to all of them before he ever went to Ken Giles in last year's World Series. Yeah, true. Yeah. So, you know, to do this with someone like Otani, obviously, I mean, problem is that you need someone who's going to be good at pitching. You can't just pick any old guy who throws with the opposite hand and expect this to help. So you would need someone who is good, who is not costing you that much in the field, who is helping you on the mound. So it has to be someone who's better than the typical pitcher, even with the advantage of the platoon, right?

And so we think Otani is a good pitcher. So even if he has a platoon disadvantage, he's still a good pitcher. So you'd need pretty good pitcher still to come in, even if it's someone who throws with the opposite hand and, you know, all the risks about maybe playing someone out of position and do they do as well, which is, by the way, another consideration with the corner outfield swap. We just, we don't really know because like balls in the air break differently there's like slicing and pulling and a left field fly ball can look different and behave differently from a right

field fly ball so maybe if you're switching from one side to the other it makes you worse no matter where you are so there's that kind of consideration that maybe you don't take into account yep you think of a pat venditti was supposed to be sort of like the a key just a a fun player to watch for whatever he could try to take advantage of and pat venditti hasn't been very good he uh allowed us in 778 ops in the majors era of almost five even though he could face righties as a righty and lefties as a lefty uh incidentally i'll say that he has faced 24 righties as a lefty and he's faced eight lefties as a righty i don't know exactly i guess i don't know i don't know exactly i guess i don't know i don't know what happened in those times uh switch hitters or something i forgot what the

rules the pathetic rule is but yeah ultimately it's one of those things that probably isn't worth it unless you're in the you you would have to test it but you could it's something that you could try to pull off in the national league mostly in some sort of crucial situation but mostly there's just too many unknowns. And teams have such good relievers all the time now, any way that it's really just not practical. It's something for a team with a thinner pitching staff to attempt. But I mean, the Astros have so many. I mean, the Astros have so many good pitchers that Brad Peacock isn't even starting. We've been over this. Colin McHugh isn't even starting. They have too many pitchers so that

they don't need their third baseman to do it as well Right So we're actually going to have a bonus episode of the podcast this week That should be up very soon Like later today Try to squeeze in a couple guests amid all of these team preview episodes And then we will have the next team preview podcast Also later this week So four podcasts this week

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So we'll be back very soon with an extra interview episode. And then we will get to the regularly scheduled team preview podcast later this week. Talk to you then.