Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1212: Three Radical Ideas

Episode Date: May 4, 2018

Ben Lindbergh, Jeff Sullivan, and ESPN’s Sam Miller banter about James Paxton’s 16-strikeout start and the elusive 21-strikeout game, why no-hitters are becoming more common but are also endangered, how to familiarize oneself with newly minted major-league relievers, and Albert Pujols’s evaporating walk rate, then discuss Sam’s radical proposals to change baseball’s playoff format, playoff […]

The episode you're about to hear originally ended with me excitedly saying something about Shohei Otani facing Ichiro Suzuki this weekend. Unfortunately, we won't get to see that, because Ichiro, on Thursday, transitioned from fourth outfielder to special assistant to the GM. So he is done as a player for 2018, likely done as a Major League player, period. Although he has not officially said so, Ichiro was a special player, remains a special person. The news broke after we recorded this episode, so we didn't get to talk about that. But we've talked about him recently, and we will talk about him soon.

Ichiro, of course, once famously said that when the day finally comes to retire, quote, I think I'll just die. Really hope that's not the case. I hope that Ichiro is with us for many years to come, and he is not officially retired. So if not retiring is what it takes to keep Ichiro around, I hope he never retires. And with that, on with the episode. Fanatical, when you throw radicals, but you're not so radical, when you're not so fanatical, fanatical Hello and welcome to episode 1212 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, and also joined by friend and co-host Emeritus and ESPN writer Sam Miller. Hello. Hello. How are you? How are Jeff? How are both of you? Jeff, yeah, Jeff told me a couple minutes ago that he's doing well, and I told him that I was also doing well. Great. Okay. Well, that's established. You were there, Ben. You were actually there. Yeah. Oh, my mind was elsewhere. How are you? Oh, I'm doing okay. Thank you for asking. Only okay? Yeah, I've been better, but I'm all right. I'm happy to have the two of you together. So we are here because we want to talk to Sam about some articles he wrote this week. They are radical ideas. That is how they have been branded. Some call them tubular.

They're pretty gnarly ideas. We have maybe talked about one or two of them on the podcast long ago before, but you've considered them in greater detail here, and they were fun to read about. A few things I wanted to bring up before we get to the radical ideas. First, Sam, we used to talk all the time about the 21 strikeout game potential. Yeah. And we had one on Wednesday night. Yeah. Fittingly, this is almost the 20th anniversary of the Kerry Wood game, which is Sunday, I believe. And James Paxton struck out 16 batters on Wednesday and was pulled after seven innings with a legitimate chance to get there.

He had thrown 105 pitches. I went back and looked, and I was kind of expecting the Kerry Wood pitch count to be something obscene, like 160 or something. Let me guess. 20 years ago. Yeah, go ahead. 134. 122. Oh, wow.

Pretty efficient. You could maybe even get away with a 122 now but what did you were you following this in real time were you rooting for it were you disappointed i i think i started noticing it at inning four uh but i wasn't super interested uh because i as we um we did a play index on on 21 pursuits and that's stuck with me ever since. I think I might actually write about 21 next, so you can have me back on. But the rule of thumb that we came to at the time was that it's not a legitimate pursuit unless you're at about 5.5 pitches per K. We all tend to focus on outs remaining plus strikeouts acquired as though that's the main indicator of

potential and once upon a time that was the main indicator of potential but the cory kluber precedent just totally shook that uh that idea uh and it you know i think it's it's much much more about pitches these days especially because with with the Corey Kluber precedent, we don't have any indication that managers give their pitchers long leashes to chase this, which is very odd. They give long leashes for no hitters and certainly for perfect games, although you generally need one for a perfect game, but not for 21 strikeouts, even though that's a better, more, you know, more unprecedented thing.

And so to get to 21 in like 117 pitches, I think I should back up a little. I wrote a piece a couple last week about how no hitters are more common than they've ever been. But but also, I think that they're about to fall off a cliff. Like I think that they're even though they're super common, they're like very endangered. And it could be that we have like a record number of no hitters in 2019 and then zero in 2020 yeah because there are fewer hits but also guys not finishing games yeah basically it's two there's two lines that are are crossing one is how many pitches per plate appearance the average batter takes which is going. And one is the number of pitches that managers basically let pitchers go in like the extreme cases, like the 95th percentile pitch counts.

And that number is going way down. Just a couple of years ago, that number was 117 pitches, which is where I just got 117 from, which I mentioned a minute ago. But now it's this in the past, I think last year, the 95th percentile pitch count was 111. And like 10 or 15 years ago, it was like 125 or 122 or something like that. So right now the math just works out because there's a ton of strikeouts, which means there's not many hits. And so if you're allowed to, you know, throw in a pitches, the math just just barely works out. to throw enough pitches, the math just barely works out. But if you add an extra two pitches to how many it takes on average, and then you remove an extra two pitches for how many managers

generally allow their pitchers to go, then it gets too far away and it becomes almost impossible unless you're perfect. And as part of that, I also noted that the leash has gone away it used to be that even when the max pitch count was like 125 or 130 they would let you go 140 for a no hitter or sometimes even 150 for a no hitter and that has really faded in the last few years we've seen sort of record numbers of pitchers being pulled with no hitters that's a long way of saying that a lot of this is manager allowance and managers don't seem to have made any allowances for 21 strikeout chases and so so if you say you get 117 pitches you you might get a little bit more than that but it might also take a few more pitches at the end for some reason so if you have 170 pitches you need 5.5 pitches per batter

paxton was was was well above that not super above that but he was at like six and it's really hard to to do it when you're a little bit over six so that is all to say that i was keeping an eye on it but never nervous uh-huh well that makes sense i also wanted to bring up because you wrote earlier this month or last month, I guess, about relievers and how you keep track of new ones because they're just constantly new ones. And you could come up with whatever fact to present that information that you want. I think we're now at almost 40% of innings being pitched by relievers. This is relevant to what we were just saying about 21 strikeout games.

That is a new record. It's always a new record. I think there have already been more relievers used this season than there were all season 30 years ago, certainly. So do you have any strategies for making sure that you have heard of the baseball players? Because there are so many more baseball players that it's hard to keep track of them. And you wrote something about like your eight favorite relievers that people may not know. And this came to my mind a day or two ago when we got an email from a listener named Reginald who pointed out that there were two relievers called up on May 1st, one by the Angels, one by the Dodgers. The Dodgers one is named Edward Paredes, and the Angels one is named

Eduardo Paredes. So we're now at a place in baseball where the relievers are coming up with almost identical names, and it's just even more hopeless, especially for me as an East Coast person. West Coast bullpens have always been a blind spot for me. So now there are two Ed Paredes in West Coast bullpens that I will never, ever be able to keep straight. A few days ago, I was at an Angels game where Eduardo Paredes pitched and I went, oh, I've never heard of him. And then I realized that I had actually been standing in front of his locker and seen him

that day. So you had seen him naked by that point, probably. No, Ben, don't push these things to places where somebody might start stumbling and stammering with their speech. I don't have a strategy for that. That is actually every year, the beginning of the season,

I try to come up with strategies for that and I always fail and I'm always amazed at Jeff Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Jeff always finds them in like 10 innings when they strike out 30 guys he has the post up and I don't know how he knows Here's what you need. You need post quotas

You need quotas that you have to meet so that you get sufficiently desperate to investigate every single roster that exists in Major League Baseball. And also, then you can take over the depth charts that are behind the websites that you have. You don't have depth charts, but if you had them, and then you had to do all of them, then you would know exactly who's the 10th man in every team's bullpen, including the Marlins. You think Tehran Guerrero is... No. Tehran Guerrero's uh he's good he i remember tehran guerrero because he pitched on opening day and he was throwing like 99 or something and i was still in my i'm gonna know

every reliever mode and so i i that at that point my strategy i had two sort of strategies that made it about two days this year one was that every player who made his major league debut i was going to look up and find something about. And so it was like every morning I was going to like go to baseball reference, click players first game, you know, of career, see who debuted the day before and then just do a little research. And like, so I learned a little bit about like Phil Maton, I think. And that was okay. And I made it about four days. Yeah.

And that was okay. And I made it about four days. Yeah. If anyone is looking for an idea for something to write, like if someone did a newsletter of just guys who debuted yesterday and just told me who they were and where they play and just, you know, the basic biographical info that I need to know to sound smart, I would subscribe to that newsletter in a second. Dang it. Phil Maton pitched 46 games last year.

He has one of those rising four-seam fastballs. He's actually pretty good. You know that. How do you know that? He had almost as many home runs allowed as walks last year. He allowed two point. It's hard to tell. He allowed 2.9 walks per nine and 2.1 homers per nine.

Oh, that's too many. Something I learned from your article which i which actually surprised me so congratulations to you here so in all of baseball history all of baseball history out of every single pitcher yeah during at least 100 innings the lowest era it's incredible and it's still true it's richard blier it's as you know uh because he's right there in front of craig kimbrell and and the very dead Ed Walsh. And it's getting better. Yeah.

And since Richard Blyer came up in 2016, out of every single pitcher who's thrown at least 100 innings, he has the lowest strikeout rate in baseball. He's lower than Justin Nicolino, who, by the way, is on the Reds now, I think. But he's sure. Here's a little, okay, here's a quiz for both of you. I'm looking at the Royals.com. I'm looking at their team depth chart. Never mind the starting rotation. It's got Eric Skoglund in it, by the way.

So they have a, like every other team, they have an eight-man bullpen. Between the two of you, name as many of them as you can. Wait, which team are we talking about? This is the Royals. I feel like we've done this with the Marlins. And the Reds, maybe we've done this also. An eight-man bullpen? Eight-man bullpen.

You know one of them. Yeah, Calvin Herrera is still there. Boom, that's one. Oh, you know who's... Blaine Boyer is there. Yeah, that's two. I'm not going to do this. I refuse.

I think if you gave me a day And nobody was recording my thought process I'd be willing But I'm not doing it I'm not going to do it It's too perilous Who knows what I'll say Wow, you subjected me to these impromptu quizzes

For a thousand episodes And now you're opting out I suffered through all of them I feel like generally speaking when i asked you these sorts of quizzes there was no there was no a no presumption that you should get it and b no real wrong answer like i'd be you know like the answer would be you know say the answer would be doug glanville but if you guessed ed walsh it would be like yeah well sure whatever it's like i'm basically asking you to pick random baseball names.

But in this case, it's very plausible that I'd be like, you know, that I'd pick the Cy Young favorite in the National League and people would know things about me. Like, for instance, I obviously I know Sean Minaya is on the A's, is a starter, is great, was traded for Ben Zobris, etc., etc., etc. But you could imagine a scenario where three years of baseball had cut, like that had been a blind spot and I still thought he was on the Royals and said him and then think how embarrassing that would be. Yeah, right. You are the what, senior ESPN baseball writer or something. I am definitely not the senior. Lead? National? Something.

I work in the same company as Buster Olney, man. You have some sort of title. I know it. I don't know. Anyway, yeah, that'd be a bad look. But I know one more Royals reliever because I believe I drafted him in our free agent draft, our minor league free agent draft. Yeah. Scott Barlow.

Just called up, I think. Yeah. Or something like that. That's why I know that. And that's all I know. One of them is named after a tree. That doesn't help. Birch?

No? Birch Smith? All right. Don't worry about it. We're done here. You want to list the others? Just so we... Wait.

One of them is Trevor Oaks. He is a... I think he's a starter now. I believe he's in the rotation. Yeah, he only made one start. He was bad. He gave up a lot of home runs. There's Brad Keller.

ESPN's lead baseball writer. Didn't even know Trevor Oakes was a starting pitcher. Yeah, also, that's two trees that we've got on this team. What else do we have here? Tim Hill. Did I say Kevin McCarthy? There is a Kevin McCarthy mccarthy he's actually listed second on the steps chart i don't know anything about him brian flynn he leads the

bullpen in innings i think we've covered them all now that's enough it's bad it's bad it's a bad unit yeah so did you say what your second strategy was already for keeping tabs on these guys it was actually going to be just any time a reliever comes in that I don't know to immediately, with no procrastination, immediately look him up and find two interesting things so that I would have some sort. But I think that the only strategy that actually has ever worked, and I might be wrong here, but this is how I've always assumed it works for Jeff, is you need to have a ton of leaderboards, like a million different leaderboards that you're constantly sorting for article ideas. And they don't have like, you don't necessarily have to tie the guy. Like if you want to write about Brian Flynn, it doesn't have to be because he's at the top of, you know, change up with rate leaderboard. But if you see his name at the top of a change up with leaderboard the name sort of sears itself into you and there is a some sort of performative reason why it does and so like you'll have

something some knowledge about him as a pitcher beyond you know he was called up to pitch for the royals and i i always assume that like since jeff is a little bit more database savvy than both of us and always seems to do more querying than we do as part of his beat management, I always assumed that's how he notices the, you know, Adam Adovino in 2014 when it takes the rest of us till 2016 kind of thing. Which team in baseball has used the most relievers this year? It's 16 is the number here, and it's not the reds it's not the royals no the royal oh god no the royals are one of the lowest the i don't know like the dodgers i mean look one of those things it doesn't i don't even know the race the race the race it's not the race the race are at 14 the braves have used 16 relievers so far but i just realized that doesn't tell me anything. So I don't care. It's working all right for them, I guess, so far. But yeah, if anyone out there wants to do the MLB debuts newsletter, please sign me up. That would be a nice resource, I think.

So one other thing I wanted to bring up, I don't know if you guys have anything, but Albert Pujols will probably get his 3,000th hit before the next time we podcast. And I guess this would be a nice time to focus on the things that he has done well and how great he is, but I'm not going to do that. I want to focus on his walk rate because I think that that has been the most fascinating thing to me about the Albert Pujols decline. And I think, Sam, that you were the one who first really drew my attention to it because you wrote an article about six years ago that was called Albert Pujols Never Walks. And it was about how Albert Pujols never walked. And Albert Pujols really never walks now. He has walked in 2.4% of his plate appearances this year. in 2.4% of his plate appearances this year.

He has walked three times on the season, once intentionally. So there are only a few guys who have walked less often than Albert Pujols. And that's always been the most mystifying thing to me. Like I could understand if he went through the normal aging process and just hit for less average, made less contact, that kind of thing.

But the way that his plate discipline just seemed to erode is the weird thing, because often that's something that will get better for players or at least not get worse as they age. Do you have any theories? Does either of you understand why Albert Pujols has aged in this way? theories? Does either of you understand why Albert Pujols has aged in this way? Well, I, geez, I don't necessarily, I don't remember what it was that I concluded when he was never walking six years ago. I know that part of the reason that he had big walk totals, obviously for any star, it's because they get pitched around. But Albert, in particular, was getting like 40 intentional walks a year. And so his unintentional walk rate was always like sort of lower than his walk rate would have led you to maybe think on first glance.

But yeah, his plate discipline numbers went down. His unintentional walk rate went way down. unintentional walkway rate went way down. But if I had to sort of speculate, and this is, this is going to be a little bit of an overreach on my part, I don't know this, and it might be unfair to conclude this about him. But I think that it might be that this is sort of part of how Albert Pujols views baseball that when he's asked about his performance, for instance, these days, every once in a while, someone will, you know, a reporter will go to him and talk to him about what it's like to be older and not as good as he used to be. And he will say, you know, hey, look, I still drive in

a lot of runs. And I think that he thinks that that's his role and that that's one thing that he's still good at. And so therefore, he has a little bit of an extra incentive to focus on that part of the game and to think about that as the dominant skill that he brings to the lineup. And you don't drive in runs by walking. And I wonder whether that's part of it, that Albert Pujols is a living legend. I imagine that there aren't a lot of coaches you know, coaches in his life who could say, well, let's look at this run expectancy table over here. I want to encourage you to get on first base a little bit more. And so he's sort of been, you know, raised to think and aged into

this period of his life where he thinks, well, this is still something that's really valuable. Baseball loves its RBIs. I'm good at it. and I'm just going to keep doing that, maybe. You know what's interesting? Because I believe that you are actually onto something, but this year, I mean, Pujols only has the three walks, and one of them doesn't count, but the two real walks he's drawn have been with men on base. With bases empty, he's got no walks and 12 strikeouts.

And last year, he actually walked more often with the bases empty, too. So I don't know what that means because i do believe that you are accurate in your assessment but he's just still not swinging away or wait maybe i got this backwards so last year i got it backwards this year it's not backwards edit all of this out there's also the fact that he is the three walks this year he is chasing 3 000 hits too and you wonder how much that's a a factor in his approach at all if if at all i don't know if it is i don't even know i don't even know to be honest the way the pitches come in it's really fast i don't even know if it matters what he's trying to do up there like i i really have come to believe that that we way

overestimate the amount of free will involved in batting so who knows who maybe he just doesn't see it or maybe maybe pitchers are doing something differently but uh you know if you're standing in the on deck circle and you're albert pools and you see that there's a sign out there that says albert pool holes 3000 hit bobblehead date tbd like they're advertising it but they don't have a date for it yet because they don't know when he's gonna have his 3000th hit and i look at that and i uh i think well maybe there's a little pressure on him because it's this looming this looming unknown and there's like a countdown in the stadium and on the broadcast exactly there's reminders everywhere that al Pujols is X hits away.

So he's probably in the on-deck circle, and he's probably not thinking about how cool a walk would be. He's probably thinking, oh, man, I want to get a hit right now. And you can't blame him for that. So this year, in terms of pitchers doing something different, maybe it's not so surprising, but Pujols is seeing fewer fastballs. Maybe that is surprising because he's the worst he's ever been. But his slider rate has taken off.

Pitchers are basically just throwing him slider after slider. They're at 28% sliders this year against Albert Pujols, plus 8% cutters, which are basically sliders. So in short, what you have is a guy whose chase rate is easily the highest it's ever been. He's seeing a bunch of sliders, have is a guy who's like chase rate is easily the highest has ever been he's seeing a bunch of sliders which is a chase pitch and he it would seem to suggest that he basically swings at them anyway he maybe he just is having more trouble differentiating between fastballs and sliders and so he's going after him i don't know what that means about his vision if there's anything going on with his vision, that would be one fairly obvious explanation.

But then there's also the theory that Albert Pujols is like 64 years old, which I don't know. I can't dismiss out of hand. Well, pretend this whole segment was a celebration of Albert Pujols on the occasion of his milestone in 3000. Congratulations, Albert.

We mentioned that he is about to have 3,000 hits. We mentioned that he still drives in a lot of runs. I think that his interpretation is that we've highlighted some pretty awesome things he's done. Yeah. He's had quite a career. I think that is why we dwell so much on the fact that he is not currently performing so well because he once performed better than anyone else. Do you know what's crazy? performing so well because he once performed better than anyone else.

Do you know what's, you know, what's crazy. I remember when I was a kid, Ricky Waters, I think was a NFL football player who I'm going to mangle some of these details, but he had like a thousand yards rushing one year. And then he got his thousandth yard. Everybody's like, yeah, a thousand yards. And then he got dropped for like a four yard loss and he was back under a thousand. So I don't remember if the story was that he, that was his last rush of the year and he ended at nine 98, or if he then

ran for seven yards the next play and got back over a thousand. And it was just something that only I noticed or cared about, but, but the idea of being over a milestone and then, and then having, especially a counting milestone. And then because of the existence of negative numbers you can then go back under has always been interesting anyway albert pools this is not a number that he is probably aware of or concerned about and it is probably a number that will even change over the next few years as things get incorporated into our baseball statistics but at the end of 2016 He had 101.3, I think, war at baseball reference. And then he was sub-replacement last year, and he is at zero this year. He is at 99.5 war. Will he get back?

Yeah, we've talked about that, I think. We talked about whether Adrian Beltre would pass him, and we talked about whether Pujols would end up like at 90 or something. I don't know how he could get back at this point, right? Well, he could be a half-win player. Do you need me to list the players who were half-win players last year? Yeah, he could hit a couple homers and retire, and he'd be there, I guess. But I don't know.

It seems unlikely. I guess I'm kind of dreading because once he gets past the 3,000-hit milestone, then I feel like it'll be like a career death watch kind of thing just because he will have gotten the big numbers and the milestones, and then people will just focus on what he is not doing. No, he's under contract long enough to get to 4 000 all right should we talk about some radical ideas either of you have any uh less radical ideas before that madison bumgarner as a hitter was

worth half a win last year he was probably a better hitter than albert pools brad miller brad miller 0.6 war remember. Remember Brad Miller last year? Barely. Yeah. He walked a bunch. Well, we don't need to talk about it. He did, it's true. Here's what's annoying about it. So, you know, we all like to look at how pitchers are batting on a year-to-year basis

because it's always funny to see them striking out more and more because they're hopeless. They shouldn't do anything. But Shohei Otani is going to spoil the numbers this year. Not that it shouldn't count, but I noticed that his numbers count toward, at least on Fangraphs, the pitching batting numbers. And that's going to warp things because he's going to be good and all the rest of them are going to be absolutely terrible and hopeless, except for Steven Brault.

So I just don't know. It's going to be annoying because we're going to have to have this Otani adjustment when we do our annual check-in on how much worse pitchers are than ever. Technically, he's never a pitcher when he's in the lineup and so he might depending on how you design your query you might be able to pretty easily get him out of there right all right so radical ideas this is uh i feel like we're all kind of in the business of suggesting changes to baseball that has always been the case it's always been a profitable thing for baseball writers to do. And I don't know whether it reflects any inherent imperfection in baseball

or whether we would always be suggesting radical ideas just because we want to see new stuff. But you came up with three and they're all up at ESPN this week. We'll link to them in the usual places. You want to summarize them? I guess we'll talk about each of them in turn, but maybe what was the impetus for this? And are these ideas so radical that you don't actually subscribe to them and you are suggesting them mostly for discussion sake? Or do you actually believe that they would make baseball better? Well, the idea was that we do make a lot of discussions about a lot of suggestions about baseball changes, but they tend to be incremental. And so we have probably collectively had about 5 million conversations about whether there should

be a pitch clock, which is a very incremental change, or whether there should be a DH in the National League, which is a very incremental change. And so the conversation around those changes becomes much more about could this be implemented? And how much would it change the game in the near future, but not really about the sport itself and what the sport means and what values the sport has and those sorts of issues. And so I wanted to pick ideas that were sufficiently unrealistic enough that I would kind of be free to get into the deeper questions of what baseball is for and who it exists for and what the structure is for. And so none of these things are about the field of play. They're all about the way that the sport is organized. They're about sort of who profits from the sport, how the sport is presented to the public, that sort of thing. And do I believe them? They are all ideas that I at first glance thought, thought that makes sense and then wanted to see whether, A, they made sense in a larger view, B, whether there's anything plausibly practical in implementing them, and C, just what sorts of interesting ideas would develop.

And the very, very impetus is probably, well, the impetus is this podcast, right? I mean, at least one of these ideas was discussed on this during an email episode because we got asked it about 75 times. Yeah, and are still getting asked it. Which was the one about what if players were paid based on past performance instead of predictions of future performance yes and that trying to fit that idea into a pro labor model and seeing whether who who would benefit and but one thing i found about all of these is that there's basically you you run into in each question there's like three seemingly conflicted interests or three seemingly conflicted parties that you want to benefit all of them.

And can you create something that will benefit all of them? So it was about taking this, like the should players be paid after the fact idea, I think generally comes from, ah, he sucks right but I don't I think Vernon Wells is a peach and I don't want to take his money I just want to make his you know everybody's life a little bit better and so can there can you take that that idea that is inspired by Vernon Wells grounding into a double play and make it actually palatable for everybody yeah so these all these ideas are like if baseball different, how different would it be? Yeah.

All these are pretty different. These are meaningful changes. I guess that was the idea, that baseball would actually be different and maybe better. So let's go one by one, I guess, in the order that you publish them. And you've kind of already done the work for us in that you have already suggested how it would work and how it wouldn't work and what the problems are. And so you've kind of been your own devil's advocate here.

But first idea, every MLB team makes the playoffs. Give us the pitch. The pitch is that most games don't count for anything. And this industry is selling literally hundreds of millions of baseball games a year. It is just so much product and most of it doesn't count. And so I wanted to talk about this as a playoff structure that would do the three things that any playoff structure should do. It should make the regular season more interesting. It should make the postseason more interesting. And a third,

less important probably, but still I think important idea is it should help determine who the best team is, or it should reward the best team in some way. Like you don't want to have a, or it should reward the best team in some way. Like you don't want to have a, you don't particularly want to have a sport where a 15 beats a two every year, right? Something would be slightly off about that. And so you want to kind of want to have the parade going to the best team, right?

And so this would do that. It would do all three of those things. As it is right now, a huge portion of games are played among teams that are literally playing for nothing because they are either out of it entirely or in some cases have already clinched. But even broader, more broadly speaking, they basically know that they're out of it. There were a half dozen teams this year that basically started with zero or one percent

playoff odds and a third of them combined now have about 10 percent playoff odds so they're basically playing for nothing but also even for the teams that are playing for something in a long season very few teams ultimate positions in the standings are determined by one game so the the the power of any individual game is heavily diluted by that. And so under this system, at the end of the season, every team would be seeded one to 15, the 15th and 14th teams would play in a winner take all game or playoff. That winner would go on to play the 13th seed and so on until you get all the way to the top and the champion of each league would then go on to the world series and so this is uh good because even a 14th seed would have a reason to keep

playing hard all the time because they don't want to be the 15th seed that would cut their chances in half well i guess technically it wouldn't but let's say i said 13 instead of 14 all right so they would cut their season and have any their odds in half and if they move up it would double their chances of winning the world series there are a lot of details as well for why it would be better but that's the basic idea you are guaranteed entry and your odds go up dramatically depending on how highly you're seated so even if you are the reds right now you you are in a dogfight with the Padres, I guess, to get slightly higher. And so you play hard all the time.

You got to play hard all the time. Everybody's playing hard. One of the things I like about this, even though it's not the central purpose, but for all the talk we've had about teams manipulating service time, this gives teams a reason to have their best roster on the field immediately and as much as possible so even though maybe it would make only an incremental difference you know like ronald lacuna might have been more likely to be on the opening day roster because all of a sudden those little individual wins matter no offense to preston docker but no one wants to watch him play very much instead of lacuna so it kind of solves another problem at the same time yeah yeah of all the ideas i mean i like the ideas, but this one I think is maybe the most persuasive or the one that I would just most immediately sign up for if we could switch to this

today. You mentioned this in the article, kind of, that there's this conflict between the long season and christening the best team and then the excitement of the postseason and maybe not the best team but still really exciting and this is a nice way to bridge that gap so that the best team wins usually maybe even more usually than it does now and yet there is still a legitimate chance for any team to win so this this is fun. I guess the consistent theme with these articles is that scheduling is an issue because all of your suggestions make the season less predictable in some way. And that's the case here too. And to a certain extent, you just say, they'll figure it out. But I guess that would be a complication.

Yeah. The first thing that everybody probably thought is wait. So the first seed in the league is going to just wait for two months until the playoffs catch up to them. And that's a really hard question. And so I have a solution to that, which I go into in a little bit more detail, which basically involves the playoffs coincide with the end of the regular season. coincide with the end of the regular season. And so you can keep climbing as the bottom tier teams are playing the bottom end of the playoffs. And then there's, like I said, since you're always pushing to be reseated, those games matter just as much. You still have a legit pennant race going

on. And so then I managed to get it so that the number one seed only had to take like eight or nine days off. But it's absurd. The scheduling is absurd. I created a Google Docs spreadsheet, and it's ridiculous. The schedule is ridiculous. So I agree with that. It's hard. And of course, not only is the schedule ridiculous, you know, I've got lots of double header playoff games, which I think is actually good because it should be hard to win the world series. If you're a 14 seed, you should have to play double headers. But also the great thing about double headers is if you put them at the end of the series, then it creates even more incentive to win the series quicker. And so then games matter even more. My whole goal is to make every game matter as much as possible anyway, but that's not even getting into the fact that you

have to like travel. You have to like travel you have to change you have to book hotels you have to have ballparks available you have to sell tickets to games with like 17 minutes notice it's it's hard to imagine but again i'm getting away from having to be realistic in order to talk about the central question of baseball or of playoffs which is does it fulfill these three purposes? And anytime we talk about things, those are probably the three purposes we should be talking about. I like it. All right. Number two, this is the paying players for their retrospective performance. So everyone, well, I'll let you explain the idea, which we've talked about long ago, but we continue to be asked about.

So the implementation of it probably has lots of holes, but in order to make it fairly simple and reasonable, you have a minimum salary. Basically, half of all revenue goes to players. So you're guaranteed to have half of all revenue going to players. It is pooled in a central fund. Teams contribute to it based on market size. And then that is divided by all the war in baseball or whatever stat you want to use. You can find something other than war if you want to determine how much a stat is worth and then at the end of it the players with the stats get paid from the central fund so that the rays for instance don't wake up one day and realize that they're in the world series and they have to sell their ballpark to pay for it yeah which might they might be okay with that but so that's that and then uh bigger market teams could uh pay more to players. They could try to attract stars by offering them more dollars per war, but that does not come from the central fund.

They have to pay for that on their own. And that is all also contingent on how well you play, which basically means that everybody is playing on commission, which at first blush seems like a pro owner anti-player move but every aspect of this plan was designed to get more money into players hands if possible and i think it does that and also to make players more happy which i think the current system has some flaws there it seems to me we've created a system where almost every player is either underpaid which sucks or overpaid and we hate them and no i don't think they want that i think they would rather get paid what they're worth and be liked for that i give the example of

vernon wells who got booed because he got paid out of order, and Ian Kinsler, who's been underpaid his whole career. And there's not an equivalent. There's not like an Ian Kinsler reverse equivalent of being booed. He is not a hero to the game because he's underpaid. Fans don't love him, especially because he's slightly underpaid. He doesn't get standing ovations at bat because he's underpaid. He's just underpaid, and we take that for granted. And I think that

if you move the money around so that it reflects actual performance instead of general manager predictions of performance, you create a less hostile, more sport and there are other good reasons to do this as well but it's also ridiculous it's way more i think it's way more ridiculous i mean there's probably there probably is an implementation for this that an economist could come up with given a few years and a lot of lawyers and collective bargaining. But the implementation impracticalities dwarf every team makes the playoff impracticalities probably. So you have a free agent. Mike Trout is a free agent, and then every team wants him.

You say teams can bid higher dollars per war, but how much were teams allotted? Was it by market size? Is that what it was? Or is it just all the same? What's happening here? There is no limit on how much you can, everybody can attract however many players they want, right?

So every team could go get Mike Trout and Bryce Harper if they could convince Mike Trout and Bryce Harper to play for them. However, the idea, the hope, is that teams would be able to attract, since teams are generally speaking, paying players comparable amounts based on how well they played, hopefully, theoretically. And since like, for instance, the Yankees have already spent $200 million to the central fund.

And so it's not like they have a ton of money just kicking around. We've already made them pay a Yankee sized budget, right? And so they have to attract players, not necessarily by giving them more money, but by giving them, you know, a role where they're going to thrive. You have to convince the player that this is where your war is going to be highest. We like you the most. Therefore, we're going to play you the most. We're going to play you, you know, have you bat second where some other team is going

to have you bat eighth. We're going to have you play center field where some other team is going to put you in a corner. We're going to have you start every day where some other team wants to platoon you. This is where you're going to thrive. Or we have the best hitting coach or we're, you. Or we have put the most investment into training facilities. All these things that are going to help you thrive. And so the players get to make these decisions based on those considerations,

hopefully, theoretically, in principle. And then two years later, if a player is no longer very good, then the team can say, well, we're not blocked by your salary because now you suck. So we're going to go get another free agent who's going to take your job and he's going to play here, and because you don't make anything, we can just cut you, and now you're off the roster. This is more

difficult than I thought at first blush. You are off the roster, that is true, but A, then you're a free agent. You get to go find the team that, again again is going to value you the most in that moment and is going to be the place that you are going to flourish and b it is kind of you know lousy to say but this would presumably make it so that the 750 best players in the world are playing instead of 750 of the 1200 best based on salary considerations and who's under contract and who's actually cheaper and and all these sorts of issues that that make it so that

it is not a perfectly efficient distribution of talent to roster spots that that we might aspire to yeah do you think this would increase the net happiness in the world? It's kind of hard to tell because, I mean, there are many ways in which it would. As you said, you don't have to be mad at Albert Pujols because he's making so much money. You can just appreciate him for what he is or just not be mad at him, and that's nice. On the other hand, he might not have a job or other people who are not like Albert Pujols and have not made hundreds of millions of dollars won't have that security. There's a you built in like a base salary. So it's not like people will end up making nothing or, you know, sub replacement level players will end up paying their teams back or something for how bad they were.

But I think maybe there's just less long-term security, certainly. And it's hard to say how much players value that or how much they need to value that, given that most of them are well enough off that they're not living paycheck to paycheck. Yeah, I kind of came to believe in working this out that there'd be a lot more guys making at least $5 million in their career. There'd be a lot more guys making at least $5 million in their career. There'd be a lot more guys making at least $50 million in their career. There'd be a lot fewer guys making $250 million in their career. Like, in other words, I think the system as it is right now benefits individual players more than it benefits the collective body.

And I think that this would have some really direct consequences for some individual players, but raise the overall compensation across the body. And it would more efficiently, more directly compensate the right players. And so I don't know if that makes me heartless. I mean, I'm dealing with abstract future players anyway. And so thankfully thankfully i don't have to necessarily think about these things but the idea is to pay better players more to just like that seems like the goal right the goal is that we've got a bunch of money it's the players not the owners money in my opinion or at least a lot of it is and more of it should be and this is a way of making sure that that's what the money does,

that that is what its purpose is, is to pay the good players. And I think this does it. I also think that it would, I hypothesize that it would lead to more spending by owners because they wouldn't have to deal with the risk involved. I think there are probably owners that if you told them, I guarantee that this guy is going to do X, Y, Z, and I'm going to pay him for it, they'd say, great. But instead, you're going to them and saying, well, I want to sign this guy, but you can't predict baseball. And you can't predict baseball is, you know, economically a big, annoying risk that you're asking people to spend money despite. people to spend money despite. And it seems like behavioral research shows that people are very risk averse, probably are spending less than they would if all of this stuff was tied directly to performance, maybe. But also, you take all the money that's currently being spent on insurance

policies by teams, that is money that they have demonstrated they are willing to spend on players, but not to players. We're going to take that money and get it two players because now there's no need for them to carry insurance policies Yeah, I don't know man The thing you mentioned in the article is like what war do you use and what happens when the war changes? I can't even imagine like first of all I mean both of us all of us have been kind of behind the scenes with war systems and seen that Occasionally there's a bug or there's a tweak or, you know, it just evolves every year. And sometimes guys retroactively get worse or better.

And that would be awkward if there were many millions of dollars at stake. you would hear, can you even imagine the columns about like the clubhouse leaders who are bringing the veteran presence and war is not accounting for it, which, you know, is a legitimate critique, certainly. So that would just be a battleground. It would be. And the nice thing too about all of this is that since baseball is collectively bargained, you can, as the writer of this article, you can hand wave it all away and go, well, I mean, of course they're not going to agree to something that they don't all agree is beneficial, right? So they can, there are a lot of different ways that you could model some sort of metric that would value players. After the fact, you could have some war model that incorporates win probability added, I think, so that the clutch aspect and the actual real impact of the performance on the game would be a little bit less pie in the sky. You could incorporate player share voting like they do for World Series shares, that sort of a thing if you wanted to. They could bargain this stuff, they could figure it out. was the hardest one to struggle with in terms of both implementation and and reckoning with the human consequences and i did not come away thinking it was in any way realistic and i enjoyed

thinking about the principles i think there are good principles here that might have application in some other baseball discussions but uh if i were to say, should players be paid on commission and answer that question, I would say, eh, no. Well, I'm glad you wrote about it just so I have something to link to the next time we get an email from a listener, which will probably be tomorrow asking about this. So the last one is about bidding for home field advantage. This i don't know you seem to think that maybe we had talked about it once i have no recollection of talking about it but this is uh this is one that is not discussed as often yeah and it's it's also not quite as as radical so

the idea is basically that a home game on your schedule is a resource and different teams would value that resource differently in different circumstances. And if one team values it more, then it might make sense to allow them to basically trade or sell that resource. So for example, the Rays are playing the Blue Jays. The Rays know that they can draw 12,000 fans and make $300,000 in ticket revenue. The Blue Jays know they can draw 38,000 fans and make $1.1 million in ticket revenue. It is more helpful to the Rays if you let them sell that game to something in between than it is to say, you have to have a baseball game now.

And so the benefits would be fairly widespread, I came to conclude. There would be a lot more money in the industry, which would mean more money for players as well as more money for ushers and parking lot attendants. There would also be a lot more access for fans in cities where the supply is not enough. So if you wanted to go to Wrigley Field, but it's always sold out, or if you want to go to Fenway Park, but the prices are always high because of ticket scarcity. This is pro-consumer and it is good for small market. It could be good for small market teams who have this valuable asset that they could use in clever ways to get more revenue and potentially turn their somewhat valuable resource into a more valuable resource which is

like kind of the central premise of every trade in major league baseball and the only downside is that it could be really super gross and disgusting yeah and I guess you'd get even more stratification of records and that sort of thing just because the best teams would buy the home field advantage and they'd be a little bit better and the worst teams would be worse. I mean, that's not any different from what is already happening with bad teams or teams that are not currently contending, selling players, trading players to other teams that are. But this would accentuate that, I suppose. But it seems fair that they should have the option to do that if they want to. It's something that is at their disposal that they could auction off, I guess. And I don't know,

maybe it'd be bad just kind of with your local market. People won't be thrilled if you're never playing games in your home park, but I guess that is what they get for not buying more tickets. I don't know. It could accentuate that, or it could be the opposite. I mean, the idea is that as it is right now, the Rays have these home games, which they can't do that much to turn into wins. This is like their problem, right? They host games, they get some money,

but it's not enough for them to be a winning team. This would theoretically give them more money for them to be a winning team this would theoretically give them more money to help them be a winning team and so in the same way that like we let the rays trade you know matt garza even though that makes them a worse team in the immediate because they figure that like with the flexibility to make rational decisions they can turn Matt Garza into what, like Chris Archer, right? And that's good for the raise. And so the ability to use your resources as resources is the basis of small market teams competing creatively. And so I think that, I mean, the idea is based on the hope that it would actually lead to less stratification. Although, of course,

the Yankees are also a rational team and would theoretically also be making decisions to benefit themselves. And you can increase total attendance in Major League Baseball. You cannot increase total wins in Major League Baseball. And presumably the schedule makers would hate you even more for this one than for the other one. Well, the schedule makers would hate you, although it's not really their problem. If you want to sell your game and the other team wants to buy your game, that's a decision between two parties that are independent of the schedule makers. They're agreeing to take on the extra logistics and travel. That's their problem, not the schedule makers' problem. However, the players would definitely hate you because you'd

suddenly be flying to cincinnati yeah i mean what would if you're if you're the yankees and you're playing the race you know the rays would maybe be happy to sell that series for whatever the number was that you arrived i don't remember but what would be the yankees incentive to bid more than like i don't know one dollar more than the Rays project to make with that home series? Like how much extra money could this actually bring to a team? Because just as the Rays are looking to make money, the Yankees are looking to pay them as little as is possible to get the home game. So then what is actually gained here?

Well, there are a few answers to that. I mean, the same question would be, well, what is the, if Matt Garza is offering, you know, nothing to the Rays who are, what's to force some team to actually, you know, give them good talent back? Well, the Marlins don't have to make a trade. That's how negotiations work, right? So you find some place in the middle where both teams can be happy. But also, it's not just the revenue. It's also the home field advantage. The Rays are trying to be a good baseball team.

And so you've got to buy them off of that home field advantage the rays are trying to be a good baseball team and so you've got to buy them off of that home field advantage you know you're asking them to be worse in that game and you've got to pay them considerably to be worse in that game just like if you want them to trade you you know bj upton you've got to pay them enough and if you don't guess what they keep bj upton until he hits free agency and then they lose him. So if you could snap your fingers and make one of these ideas reality today, would it be the first one? The first one is, I think, the best of them in terms of like it would change the game the most in, I think, almost entirely positive ways other than the logistics and that it

would solve a lot of the problems that have developed over the last 50 or 60 years. However, I think that the third one is actually pretty obvious and not that hard to implement. And so if I were the commissioner, I probably would start with that one. The second one's nuts. All right. Well, should we end there? Anyone else have any closing thoughts? Okay. Okay. Well, those were some really radical ideas, Sam.

Yeah. Did you have more? Like you were going to do Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but how many did you come up with before you chose to ran with these three? Hang on. Let me check. I don't know if I still have a... I don't know.

I had like eight, but the others are worse. Any of them worth mentioning? Slightly less radical ideas? I'm looking at them and they're not developed enough to be worth sharing. No.

I can see why they turned down like kill the bankers because it's a good idea, but what would that have to do with baseball i had one i had one that i never okay so this is the only one that i'll just mention and it's i don't even know i don't have any grasp of what how it would even work or why but there was a moment one day where i thought this would solve something and it was that you're you're playing okay so hypothetically the rays are playing the a's and the rangers are playing the angels okay i picked those teams because rangers a's sounds like angels rays all right so uh the angels are playing the rays well anyway Well, anyway, Team A is playing Team B.

Team C is playing Team D on the field. But Team A is playing Team D for the purposes of the score. And Team B is playing Team C for the purposes of the score. So that the game on the field is no longer a zero-sum matchup between two teams but in fact puts you up against other teams in other games and so so you wouldn't know if you won the game that you played until you knew the other game's result. And right, I know, I didn't write about this. But it's not just a what weird thing can I think of.

There was some reason that I thought it was solving a problem. I think I thought it was solving the strikeout paradox where hitters like strikeouts and pitchers like strikeouts. And so there's no breaks on strikeouts. And I think I thought that I could solve it, but then I lost it. And now I don't see how it could. And so it's just on a list. Okay.

Well, you workshop that one and come back when you do Radical Ideas Week 2. Yeah. Or maybe you could do, it could be a three-team game where you rotate. Okay. All right. All right. Thank you, Sam. Thank you.

I can't. Oh, God, I hate that idea, but it's fascinating. I mean, I can't tell you. It's unspeakably bad and unsatisfying as a fan, but I want like a weekend of it, just like, you know,

like they have players weekend, right? And then we have indirect team rivalry weekend where, yeah, A versus D and B versus... Maybe this wouldn't be collectively a bargain because nobody would want this, but we would want this. Yeah, I'll keep thinking about it. So that will do it for today. But hey, as they say on Twitter, some personal news. I'm writing another book.

This one with the great Travis Sochik of Fangraphs, former guest of this program and certainly future guest of this program. Sawchik of Fangraphs, former guest of this program and certainly future guest of this program. The book is tentatively titled The Makeover Machine with the subtitle How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Change Destiny and Build Better Players. And if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, that probably sounds like a familiar concept because we've been talking about it a whole lot. It is one of the most fascinating trends in all of baseball and all of sports today. The idea that players can remake themselves and teams can remake players, that the emphasis has shifted from player acquisition to player development, that being able to communicate information to players and

their ability to embrace it and put it into use is one of the biggest competitive advantages in the game today and just sort of an inspiring one too, the idea that you can remake yourself. So we've talked about this with countless players it seems like over the past year, but we'll be talking about the swing changers and the pitch designers and covering every aspect of this revolution, which I believe it likely is. And we'll also be exploring where the limitations lie. So we'll be chronicling some well-known players and their journeys to improving themselves and also some lesser known players, just sort of covering this whole idea top to bottom and bottom to top chronicling some well-known players and their journeys to improving themselves and also some lesser known players just sort of covering this whole idea top to bottom and bottom to top since it's often kind of a grassroots self-directed thing so travis and i are really excited to work

together we're happy that this worked out the book will likely be out via basic books next spring hopefully a little over a year from now so we'll be talking plenty about it and i will tell you when you can pre-order it if you're so inclined. It's not available yet, but I hope that you will all one day read it and enjoy it. And I will still be writing for The Ringer, and I will still be doing this podcast. So it's going to be a busy year, but bear with me. You can support this podcast, which will be even more important

as I embark on this book project, by going to Patreon and pledging some small monthly amount at patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have recently done so include AJ Adavale, James Stunden, Scott Rosen, Andrew Taylor, and Alex Nazer. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild, and you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Quick correction, as a couple of listeners have pointed out to me, I made the same mistake twice when talking about Eric Lauer,

the pitcher who made his Major League debut at Coors Field and got shelled and gave up a Grand Slam and kind of grinned about it. I said that that Grand Slam was hit by Nolan Arenado. It was, in fact, hit by Trevor Story. So sorry, Trevor Story, don't want to shortchange you. Eric Lauer, by the way, did much better in his second career start, which was not at Coors Field. Struck out seven over five innings in San Francisco.

We'll do an email episode next week, so please do keep your questions and comments coming via email at podcastandfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will talk to you early next week. Oh, change can happen And it usually does But I can't see anything Changing me now

Just heard a conversation on a baseball podcast, effectively wild, earlier today about batters not getting out of the way of balls coming inside. Because in the rule book, it does say that if you don't make an affirmative act, the umpire can decide not to give you the base. That's true, yeah. You don't see it all that often. In the dirt, three balls and a strike. So, Abreu the walk and now three and one on Nicky well you know the most obvious one of that remember when

John Drysdale had that scoreless inning streak and Dickie Dietz he hit Dick Dietz in the arm they wouldn't give him first with the bases loaded they wouldn't give him first base you gotta do it the real way you gotta do it the right way yeah you can't lean in