Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1246: A Brad in the Hand

Episode Date: July 20, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about beard grooming, the indy-league exploits of Rafael Palmeiro, Patrick Palmeiro, and the Chinese national team, the Padres-Indians trade involving Brad Hand, Adam Cimber, and Francisco Mejía, the Orioles’ commitment to rebuilding, post-publication regrets about articles, the worst example of umpiring they’ve ever seen, and the state of the […]

I'm running down the street of life I'm never gonna let you die I'm never ever gonna get old I'm never ever gonna get I'm never ever gonna get I'm never ever gonna get old Hello and welcome to episode 1246 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I am Jeff Sullivan, Fangraphs, joined as always by Ben Lindberg in pre-pod.

We were talking about grooming ourselves, beards and trimming. Thinking maybe we have to launch a new podcast. We should podcast about how the male human should groom himself because I was never taught anything. Were you ever taught anything? I was just left to the wolves. No.

Well, neither of us really had fathers at home to teach us those things at the age when we started shaving. So I don't know if that is why, but I never learned. So I'm trying to learn from you and it doesn't seem like you know what you're talking about. Sam has a beard. How did you not ask Sam? Yeah, it's kind of scraggly. I don't know that I want to take beard pointers from Sam, but he probably knows better than I do. You know that just because Sam has a scraggly beard doesn't mean that you would grow beard hair in the same way or formation. That's true, but maybe it's because of the

grooming. I don't know. Anyway. Nope, there is no anyway. This is our first ever episode of whatever this podcast series is called. Well, we have actual notable news to talk about today because there was yet another trade, but before we get to that, can I give you a Rafael Palmeiro update? I don't know whether you've had one since spring, but it turns out that there is something to tell you about with Rafael Palmeiro. So you remember how Rafael Palmeiro said he was coming back and he wanted to get back to the big leagues. He is 53 years old. And so mostly people mock this, even though he seemed to be in good shape and seemed to be serious about this and wanted an invite to spring training. Did not get one, but he ended up playing with the Cleburne Railroaders of the American Association.

That is a mid-tier independent league. Pretty good league. It's roughly high A quality, I would say. That's probably the closest equivalent. So in this league this year, Rafael Palmeiro at 53 years old, 27 games, 105 plate appearances. He is triple slashing 291, 419, 523. That is a 942 OPS with six homers in 105 plate appearances. Now here's the thing. He has the best OPS on the team and

everyone else on the team is under 30. He is leading this team in hitting. And here's the other thing. One of his teammates, Patrick Palmeiro, who is Rafael Palmeiro's son. Now, Patrick Palmeiro, this isn't really just nepotism here. He's a legitimate baseball player. He is 28 years old. He was drafted by the Pirates in 2008. Didn't really pan out, just topped out in rookie ball. But for the past few years has been in the Atlantic League, which is the highest independent league. Wasn't great there, but held his own. So here he is, 28, and Patrick Palmaro in 53 games is hitting 261, 317, 424. That's a 741

OPS. His 53-year-old father is out OPSing him by 200 points. Can you imagine the life of Patrick Palmeiro? I don't know how he thinks about these things, but Patrick Palmeiro for his entire life has been faced with the shadow of Rafael Palmeiro, right? He's growing up as the son of a famous name. His dad has 3,000 hits and 500 homers. And the only reason he's not in the Hall of Fame is because of the steroid stuff. And so he probably figured, well, at least I have professional baseball to myself now because my dad is 50-something years old. Surely he's not going to un-retire, be on my own team, and out-OPS me by 200 points. I can't imagine.

Like, maybe he was thinking, well, this is great. I get to play with my dad. You know, our careers didn't overlap. I didn't make the majors. Now we get to be in pro ball together, and this is fun. Except that now his 53-year-old old dad is out OPSing him by a whole lot I don't know how Patrick Palmeiro feels about this but I wouldn't feel great so for for reasons that you you mentioned earlier I didn't ever have that experience of like finding

out at what age I could beat my dad in basketball or or whatever but I would have assumed it would have been when I was younger than 28 my dad also, there was a wider age gap than 25 years between Patrick and Rafael. But there are two ways you can look at this. Maybe on the one hand, Patrick Palmeira is grateful to have this role model, to have Rafael Palmeira show him how to prepare and how to take everything seriously and how to have a disciplined approach at the plate and all the things that go into having a baseball playing mentor. Who has a better mentor than your father but on the other hand i don't know where he hits in the lineup whether he's in front of his dad or behind his dad or batting

leadoff or batting ninth or what but i can't imagine being able to focus on anything when you look up the scoreboard or whatever you do in the American Association and you realize that you're getting out hit by a 53-year-old man who you're going to see for like most meals. And there's no way, there's no way Rafael Palmeiro is so good of a person that he doesn't bring this up like every single freaking day. I mean, this is a guy who like lied to the government. So, you know, he's already kind of a dick. And I would not let Patrick Palmeiro go one day without knowing, hey, you ever know what OPS

is? I'm going to teach you about statistics because here's another one where I'm whooping your ass. Yeah, you don't even need OPS. You can cite any other stat and Rafael Palmeiro's been better. Now, we don't even need OPS. You can cite any other stat, and Rafael Palmeiro's been better. Now, we don't know. I'm pretty confident that the American Association and the Cleburne Railroaders, probably not

a stringent drug testing policy here. So if you already thought the worst of Rafael Palmeiro, this is probably just further confirmation. But I don't care if he's taking something. If he is taking something and he's hitting this well at age 53, then I don't know. We should all be taking that thing because he's still evidently really good at baseball. Okay, so I'm looking up the leaderboard for this league, and Rafael Palmeiro is 10th in OPS. Todd Cunningham is another guy here in bold print. So Todd Cunningham has been in the majors. Logan Watkins, Reggie Abercrombie is in this league. Adrian Nieto is in this league.

Louis Durango, Zach Walters, Dave Seppelt, Joe Benson. I'm just scrolling down. It gets worse from there. But 10th, 10th in the league. Now, he's no apparently Dylan Thomas, who's OPSing 1.037 But I wouldn't be surprised if, I don't know What's his team? The Texas Air Hogs?

I don't know where they play Grand Prairie? That sounds like it might be an elevation What is an Air Hog anyway? I guess it does sound like an elevated environment If the pigs are flying I don't know Anyway, this is strange

And so yeah, he's easily out hitting then probably if he's 10th, easily out hitting some fairly recent major leaguers, right? I mean, the guys that is slight. Todd Cunningham seems like a bad-bep thing. He's only hit one home run. I have to ask you, because you have some experience in the independent leagues. I'm looking now. I'm still on the Texas Air Hogs, who also have Greg Golsan and Carlos Contreras and Pedro Hernandez and Tyler Metzik. Oh, look at that. There's Tyler Metzik.

His ERA is over six, even in that league. But on this roster, I certainly don't want to offend anyone by pronouncing names wrong, but just going down, I'm seeing some of the following names. Chen Chen, Luan Chen Chen, Chu Fujiya, Hao Jiaqi, Yang Jin, Luo Jinjun, Chen... I mean, look, it just goes on from there. I'm probably brutalizing this, but there are like two dozen seemingly Asian-born players on the Texas Air Hogs. Can you think of any reason why this would be true? Interesting.

So the roster is majority Asian players, you're saying? Yeah, I'm just going to send you a link to this right now so that you can look at this for yourself. But this is, I have to assume, really unusual. Yeah, there must be a pretty interesting story there, I would imagine. I don't know what it is, but, you know, in the independent leagues, there are all sorts of unusual origin stories, and, you know, there are even, like, traveling teams and teams from the Dominican and some levels that get added to these leagues and

kind of barnstorm around, but I do not know why the Texas Air Hogs have so many players who appear to be from China. Evidently, I'm reading now a story about the Texas Air Hogs, and it says the Texas Air Hogs will add 13 players from the Chinese national team to their roster for the 2018 season. That is interesting. I had no idea. That seems like cheating. Not cheating, but I mean, if you get to add a baker's dozen players from a national team,

now you might say that on the other hand, the Texas Air Hogs this year are terrible. So 16 and 40. Working out so well. But I, well, I don't know where to go from here. I guess here's another independent league story for you to report from the ground. Oh, here's one place you could go. Fangraphs.com, which earlier this week ran a story. Technically the Hardball Times, but a summer palace in Grand Prairie, the Chinese national team joins the Texas Air Hogs.

I'll be goddamned. July 18th, 2018. Here I was getting so caught up in all the trade stuff, I didn't even think to read enough of our own website. Well, I will link to that story, which I'm sure explains this in depth. So there you go. Good editing job, Meg Rowley, to anticipate this bit of banter and pre-publish an article about it that probably answers all our questions. We would have been so much better up to speed if not for Manny Machado getting traded. Would have read this article and not worried about writing articles about trade rumors

and whatnot. But no, now I just look like a horse's ass. Well, so we've learned a lot. Rafael Palmeiro, still playing, still good at playing, better at playing than Patrick Palmeiro. And also the Texas Air Hawks have most of the members of the Chinese national team. So there we go. Shall we talk about more pressing baseball news? More pressing.

I assume you're referring to Brad Hand. Has something else happened? Tell me now. No, no, that's it. Yeah, so we talked about Manny Machado on the previous episode episode and we surveyed the landscape of the trade market after that. And we weren't impressed, but we said the best player on the market, probably Brad Hand. Now no longer on the market because on Thursday, the Indians acquired both Brad Hand and Adam Simber. I have been practicing saying Simber all afternoon because the first time I read his name, I read Clymer. And so I've been thinking that Adam Simber is Adam Clymer for I don't know how long. So I kept saying to myself, Simber, Simber, Simber, just to get it in my head. Adam Simber, not Clymer. And they have both of them, two good relievers, perhaps the best reliever on the market in hand. And it cost them. It cost them a top prospect,

Francisco Mejia, the catcher, who is going back to the Padres, who now have a heck of a farm system, or already did, but now have an even better one. So fairly momentous move, I guess, in that it falls into the category we were talking about yesterday, where every trade can be analyzed by saying basically the same thing. Team gets good player, team is better, team gave up player to other team, and that team will be better in the future because of it. But this is interesting because it is a big prospect and not rentals. And even if it doesn't make much difference in the regular season because the Indians are shoo-in, the playoff implications are somewhat significant. Yeah, I was trying to run some numbers, and I'll just save this until October. But looking at the Indians' pitching staff right now, you have a forward realistically five deep good starting rotation. Now I assume Cody Allen is going to be better. Andrew Miller will be better when he's back and healthy.

You have Brad Hand. You have Adam Simber. They're not going to have to give playoff innings to anyone who's even like average everyone is good on this on this pitching staff it's uh it's an unusual trade because i don't i don't remember the last time we saw a team trade assets certainly multiple assets trade major league players for specifically one prospect usually you'll see teams at least throw in like some some low-level flyers just to kind of fill it out i don't know if that's for optics or for

any other reason but now the optics of this is that if you are the san diego padres you put everything on francisco mejia now when you get to put everything on a consensus top prospect that's a it's a good move especially when you were trading two relievers but i was surprised there was really i think we all knew brad hand was going to get traded in the same way we knew manny machado was going to get traded but there was not much of a lead up to it and yeah it's just further evidence of how the actual trade deadline is likely to be super boring because hand is gone i didn't even know simber was going to be on the market he's a rookie this season but i guess that they the indians wanted him Padres saw an opportunity, got a prospect. And if you're the Padres now, I guess what you have to do is market Kirby Yates. He's been really good. It

sounds funny. I know it sounds funny, but Kirby Yates has been really good. Craig Stammen, I don't know. He's been really good. That's about it. Maybe now Austin Hedges is on the market because they have Mejia, but I guess Hedges isn't really a deadline impact move for a contender to make. But fun trade. I like it. Yeah. And we were talking when we discussed the Machado deal about how you're not going to

get a real blue chip prospect for a rental, but that's not what happened here. Because as you mentioned, Simber is a rookie. He's under team control for a while. And Brad Hand has, what, one more year at least after he's got he's got he's under control through 2020 and there's a club option for 2021 all right well yeah so that's that's why you get the good prospect going back and mayhia is a high enough ranked prospect that i didn't even have to google him like we had to Google half the Machado package because he has already reached a high level. He was in the majors briefly last year. He is a catcher or at least has been a catcher. He's 22 years old and he's seen as sort of a

bat first guy, I think, because he's not big and there are concerns about his durability as a catcher and there are concerns about his game calling and receiving. I will note that his framing stats for this year in AAA are quite good according to Baseball Prospectus, so that's something. He also has a really excellent arm and he gets dinged for his aggressiveness at the plate and not the best pitch selection. So he's not like a sure thing, can't miss prospect, but he's pretty highly regarded. I think on Baseball Prospectus' recent mid-season top 50, he was ranked number eight. And I think Baseball America had him high too. So he's a good prospect. And if you have Austin Hedges as the Padres do, maybe there's some kind of

offense-defense platoon sort of arrangement you can set up there. I think Mejia will go to AAA for some more seasoning. But the Padres have a really excellent system now. I think, let's see, J.G. Cooper of Baseball America tweeted about this earlier today, I think, that the Padres will have 10 players in Baseball America's top 100, including the number two prospect. And JJ said this is a 2012 Royals or 2015 Cubs type of farm system at this point. So they haven't yet proven that they can develop those guys into good major leaguers but the talent is definitely there for the Padres to be pretty scary in a couple years I know I I personally feel like I'm a little bit of a low guy on on Mejia I think his stock is is dropping in part because he might not actually

stay as a catcher but also because of his approach he's he's really aggressive and given his arm you can see a little bit like Jorge Alfaro there, except that Alfaro has more power, whereas Mejia has the contact. So I don't know. I mean, Pablo Sandoval was a catcher, right? And he has a different kind of body, but there's a similar approach. He has one of the highest swing rates in the International League this season, which means he also has one of the higher out-of-zone swing rates in the International League. And when you have hit hitters who chase and Mejia does not have

like plus plus power he just has some power but when you have hitters who chase that has a tendency to to stick and it limits the quality of of hittable pitches that you're actually putting in play so I don't think Mejia is an elite prospect myself. I am also admittedly not a prospect expert. I am prospect expert adjacent and have done my own research. But I think this is a trade. You look at it, I think it's easy to say, wow, the Indians got really good in their bullpen or wow, the Padres got a steal because they traded two relievers for this excellent prospect. But when I look at this, all I see is risk everywhere i still like it i like i think it's a completely sensible move for both teams given their their positions but mejia might not catch in which case he probably wouldn't be a very useful major league player

brad hand is a guy who throws sliders like all of the time and his control is not is not perfect and i think there's a risk that he breaks down and then adam simper is just like a funky rookie who i i like but if his absolute perfect upside is darren o'day and he probably won't become as good as darren o'day and even darren o'day took a long time to emerge and become good and his his peak was only a handful of seasons there's there's a lot going on here but i like it for the indians more than i like it for the Indians more than I like it for the Padres, even though I know it gives the Padres that sexy prospect list. And separately, you did mention he is likely to go to AAA for more seasoning. And we all say that when players go to the minors,

but under what other circumstances do we refer to players as food? Well, probably tasty prospects. I've probably described a player as tasty. Have you? Have you really? I'll have to Google myself and see. Maybe not in speech. That would probably sound strange. So the Indians had a sub-replacement bullpen, according to Fangrass, before this move was made. I mean, everyone has kind of pointed out that that's been their weakness this year. Whatever stat you want to cite, it's been bad, and they've been missing Miller for much of the season. And of course,

there are people contributing to those stats who would not be pitching in the playoffs, but it just wasn't the good group that we've been used to seeing in Cleveland. And we've seen what Terry Francona can do with a good and deep bullpen in October. So this makes the Indians better for these playoffs and gives them some insurance in the event that Miller and or Allen leave after the season. So it makes sense. It usually does. Trades almost always make sense these days. So we end up saying it makes sense and we all nod and agree and yes teams are not irrational and doing things that don't make sense at least this was a fun one in that it is like you said it is fundamentally just a trade that makes sense for both sides but i it it happened quickly that's one two i had no

idea adam simber was going to be moved and three certainly had no idea mehia was going to be moved uh just even by himself so it is a normal trade but also an interesting trade and what a great way to spice up a dead day on the baseball calendar although now that i say that i realize there are games today on thursday frequently there are not so i guess i guess the dead period's over yeah one game right just one game is it just the one why do that it's just cardinals and cubs i think it was some cba thing maybe anyway, baseball teams, just getting us out of the all-star break doldrums. And not even Jerry DiPoto. If you had to bet on someone making an all-star break trade, it would have been Jerry DiPoto.

But no, other people picked up the slack. So that's nice. I also wanted to mention that you wrote an article about relievers, which I have not read yet. But you did some research that I am interested in hearing because it pertains to what we're talking about. Good relievers, do they hold up? Do they?

Yeah. So this is, I wrote that article, but I've also followed up on it with, I can just do my stat blast because it is essentially a follow-up on that. Okay, early stat blast. Yeah, let's just knock it out

they'll take a data set sorted by something like e r a minus or obs plus and then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit discuss it at length and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to day step last. So I was curious. I have had this instinct. I don't know if I share it with you, but I think of all relievers. I have thought of all relievers as like you get them, you use them. They're short-term assets

and then they you just you don't rely on them moving forward so i i saw this as the indians for a lot of cost control and team control and hand and simper but i thought well yeah sure they have them for the future but i mean they're relievers who knows what they're going to be in a year or two you're doing this for 2018 only so i thought, I should test that. And the article that I wrote, I was looking for essentially repeat performances. So for an example, I looked at, I examined 10 years of baseball and I looked at position players who were worth at least three wins above replacement according to Fangraphs. And then I looked for how many of them were worth at least three wins above replacement the next year. And then I looked again for the year after that. So I looked two years out.

I did that for position players. I did that for starting pitchers, also using a three-war threshold. And I did it for relievers using a one-war threshold. And relievers did show up being the least reliable, but by a lot less of a margin than I expected them to. Like position players, if you take three plus war position players in year one, only 48% of them were worth at least that much the following year.

For starting pitchers, it was 52%. And for relievers, I forgot the numbers right in front of me, but it was like 45%, I think. Well, yeah, I wrote something about that recently when I was talking about the 2018 free agent class that didn't really pan out the way that we were all dreaming about it panning out a few years ago. And in large part, that's because players who are good in one year are often not good in two or three years. It's kind of

amazing how quickly the turnover happens at the top of the leaderboard. So I found almost exactly the same thing. I think just, you know, about half of the, I was looking at four war players, but about half of them one year are just not repeats in the next year. Yeah. Yeah. I think I had that article in the back of my mind as I was doing this, thinking that hopefully this doesn't just completely and entirely repeat what Ben just did. So what I did for the stat blast was I realized after I did the analysis for the Fangraphs post, there are other ways to do this research. And so I just went over the same period.

I'll try to explain this quickly, but look at the top 500 position player seasons over the decade. And in year one, they averaged 5.0 wins above replacement. The next year, they averaged 3.3. And the year after that, they averaged 5.0 wins above replacement. The next year, they averaged 3.3, and the year after that, they averaged 2.9. So they lost 34% of their value, and then they lost 42% of their value. I repeated that with starting pitchers.

I looked at the top 250 starting pitchers this time. Year one, they're worth 4.8. War, year two, 3.5. Year three, 3.0. So they lost 27 percent of their value and then in year two 38 percent of their value so starting pitchers again look a little better than position players which i did not expect given that they are pitchers yeah and then i repeated it with the top 300 relief pitchers these numbers of course are smaller but year one 1.7 war year two 1.0 year three 0.8 so

in year one they lost 43 percent of their value and then by year two they had lost 55 percent of their value so these numbers look a little worse for relievers than the numbers i put in the fangraphs post not so dramatically that i think i got it completely wrong but i wish i would have included both analyses in the post. Nevertheless, the point is clear. Relief pitchers are the least reliable of three kinds of players, but it's not so dramatically so that they're not long-term investments at all. But maybe I'm most surprised that starting pitchers fare as well as they do. Maybe this comes down to how war for position players leans on defense and our defensive measures are not perfect, but starting pitchers apparently somewhat of a better investment than I thought, at least among the really good ones.

That's fun. Yeah, that's interesting. What percentage of posts would you say that after you publish, you think of something or someone points out something and you wish that you had included it? Because for me, it's a pretty high percentage, I feel like. Is that true? Because when have you ever, when has there ever been a fact that you didn't include in a post about something? That's true.

Well, that's, when I do like a feature that's really long, I feel like if anything, that just increases the odds that I probably forgot something along the way that I would have wished that I would include it. I mean, it's I see it and my editor sees it and a fact checker sees it and a copy editor sees it. It's like, you know, maybe four or five people see the thing before it goes out in the world when suddenly many thousands of people see it. And so they're going to find something. Maybe it's something I did wrong.

Usually not. Hopefully not. going to find something. Maybe it's something I did wrong. Usually not. Hopefully not. But often it's just some connection I didn't make or just some fact that I hadn't realized or sometimes I had planned to put in there and just forgot because I was keeping track of so many other things. That happens to me fairly often. I don't know. I'd say almost half the time there's something. And sometimes it just occurs to me like hours after the thing goes up. I think, oh, I should have said that. Oh, well. and you can't really dwell on it because there's something else to write. I take you at your word, but you are the most thorough regular baseball writer that I have ever met. So you might, this is just, this is hunch, you might hold yourself to a very impossible standard.

Well, thank you. It's possible. So I wanted to mention something I read in the Baltimore Sun, which was a quote from Dan Duquette. And Dan Duquette was explaining The Orioles' decision to trade Manny Machado and I think it was Probably for the most part an encouraging Message for Orioles fans Like Duquette didn't come out and say wait till next year

We'll be back because that just would have Been delusional and it would have felt like They were trading Machado for no reason Instead he came out and he Said that no you know things are Going to be bad for a while. It's a different message, I think, than we've heard from the Orioles because the Orioles just have been reluctant to say rebuild or to commit to a rebuild. And now it seems like they are.

So there's a quote in this article from Duquette. He says, we had identified the areas that we needed to improve in. Then he lists them. Technology, international scouting, facilities, the draft, strengthening our analytics, investing in international scouting. That's the second time he's mentioned that, which is probably appropriate because they don't do any of it. Investing in more front office staff to be more in line with our competition, expanding our nutrition and wellness resources at every level of the organization. Those are areas that we identified that we could improve in, and the ownership understands those are areas that we need to put more resources into. That is basically everything. So everything then is the areas that you've identified that you need to improve in is every area, essentially. Not inaccurate.

Yeah, you can't blame him for telling—I mean, he's not lying to you, Orioles fans. No. He's saying exactly, here are the things that we need to improve, and then he just unfurls this gilded scroll. Giant scroll, right. It's a tapestry that takes up the whole wall. Here's what we need to do better. Yeah, it's a tapestry that takes up the whole wall here's what we need to do better yeah it's a long to-do list so i don't know whether i buy it i don't know whether i believe that peter angelo's own team is suddenly going to invest in international scouting and actually use their bonus pool money but it would be a start anyway at least they're saying that they need to

do those things so that's a positive step. The Orioles have completely avoided the standard international market, right? I haven't gone into detail. When do you think they make their first signing? Now, we talked about before, they've signed some players from the Pacific Rim, right? But those were different circumstances. They haven't gone the usual July 2nd route. No, not at all.

In fact, this article, which is by John Maioli, it says, they're the only team listed on Baseball America's international signings tracker for this year's period, which began July 2nd, that hasn't signed a player yet. One of their best international prospects to make it to the United States, Leonardo Rodriguez, was a clubhouse attendant at their Dominican Republic facility who hit a gross spurt and started throwing in the low 90s. So I guess it's good news that they had a facility. Yeah, why do that? What is it for? Who's there? Just a clubhouse attendant, like a janitor who keeps it clean and happened to turn into a good pitcher i don't know night guard yeah anyway it's uh pretty bleak but sounds like they're

taking steps in the right direction although they haven't taken them in this international signing period but maybe next year i would like to now i don't know if you have anything else to say about the orals but there i would like to talk to you about something that I don't know if you saw it. I don't know how much this went around because it is on Spanish language Twitter. So somebody, I wrote about, as I do every All-Star break, I wrote about the worst called ball and the worst called strike of the first half. Yeah. Okay, so someone responded to my worst called ball post,

which is, of course, only concerns the major leagues, worst called ball post, which is, of course, only concerns the major leagues. But he responded with a link to a tweet from Memes LMP, LMP referring to probably Liga Mexicana del Pacifico. Great. Okay. So this is clearly just some like humorous Mexican baseball league Twitter account. And I'm now going to send you this tweet. I would like you to watch this 47 second video

in its entirety Ok, here we go Ulises Domínguez. Vamos a verlo y aquí vean ustedes cómo está protestando enérgicamente y aquí la repetición vean ustedes cómo hace el swing por completo y el umpire marcó bola. Increíble esa situación. Vean ustedes cómo hace el swing pero sin lugar a dudas

y el umpire principal aunque usted no lo crea, marcó bola. I know this is your line, but wait, what? So the hitter swings at a pitch that's more or less down the middle. And the umpire just stands there completely impassive. Does not make a move. Does not signal a strike, either called or swinging. And everyone is very confused, as am I.

So, okay. So, yeah, we have the pitch from the pitcher to the batter. The batter swings. The home plate umpire doesn't seem to do anything. The catcher appeals to first base, and the first plate umpire doesn't seem to do anything the catcher appeals to first base and the first base ump signals no swing it's a ball i have never we've talked before about what it would look like if a game were rigged i think maybe i've just imagined that i don't know if this game is rigged it's you know it's probable but how blatant i can't the only i think that if we want to give them the benefit of the

doubt and say that even if the game were rigged they wouldn't do it in such a just like clearly stupid way that they clearly were not paying attention there was there's just they must have had their minds on something else i mean that for now these umpires wear purple shirts so maybe they're just their vision is averted because they feel embarrassed but i have no i i sent this to you because i i had forgotten about it i want to write an entire article about this because i just i don't understand and i want to talk to some i don't know sources my spanish is elementary but it's functional maybe they speak some english but i i have never, I've never, ever, ever, ever, ever seen anything like this. I've seen like bad check swing calls, but that's not, this wasn't it.

This was a full swing, like the batter wrapped around and everything. Full swing on a pitch that probably should have been a strike anyway, if he had taken it. So really a double strike. Yeah, Double strike. Oh, man. Wait, so he goes to first base, right? It's not even like the umpire refused to consult his colleagues or something. He checks, he points down to first base, and the first base umpire signals no swing.

What is happening here unbelievable my spanish is not as good as it once was either but i do know enough to translate the first tweet in response to this tweet which is from the same account and it says in spanish what happened here and it is directed to luis alberto ramirez who is the director of umpires of the Mexican Baseball League. As far as I can tell, he has not responded to that tweet. Oh, man, that's a good one. That deserves more than 450 retweets. Yeah, right. I hesitated to even bring it up on this podcast,

and I don't want to retweet it because I don't want somebody else to write about this first. Cause this is one of those, like this is something that every baseball fan should see, I think honestly. But now we just have this like, I don't know, weird article anxiety where I want to get something written about it before it

like, I don't know. I just, I can't, I've never, I like the, you have the, the Jim Joyce or Mono Galarraga mistake or whatever, but at least there you're like, well, it happened quickly.

Maybe his eyes were somewhere else, but full swing, ball one. Yeah, yeah. Never seen that before. All right. One last thing I want to mention. This is supposed to be an email show. We're not going to get to a lot of emails, but I teased this earlier in the week that we would sort of do a quick little survey of the standings. So since I wrote that article for The Ringer, which you can go read on Friday, which it is now if you're hearing this,

most likely, I looked at just sort of where we stand as far as the competitive picture compared to previous seasons in the double or quadruple wildcard era because coming into the season there is the perception that everything is horribly unbalanced and stratified and people were writing that there's no hope and faith left in Major League Baseball because there were the six or seven super teams and everyone else was doomed and the season didn't really start that way. It took until April 19th or, I guess, April 20th for even one of those six preseason favorites to be in first place in its division. But things have normalized somewhat since then, and you look at the top of the standings, and it's mostly who we expected to be, except for maybe the NL East. But there are still interesting races here. And I tried to compare, I looked at one metric, which Gerald Schiffman invented a couple years ago at the

Hardball Times called Hope and Faith, the Hope and Faith Index, which basically just looks at the distance that the current non-playoff teams are from the closest playoff spot, and then just, you know, sums those differences and divides them by the number of teams so basically the higher the hope and faith index number is the farther away teams are from contention on the whole and if you use that metric then this season does look unusual there is a spike this season the thing is, that that is largely driven by the Orioles and the Royals, who are 30 games back of the wildcard spot. So the second wildcard spot, that is. So that kind of skews things a little bit when you have two teams that are 30 games out from the race all that much. I mean, they could be only 15 games out or something and they'd still be done. So the fact that they're 30 games out is sad and dismaying to fans of those teams, but it doesn't really change how exciting the second half is. So if you look at playoff odds,

I went back, I looked at baseball prospectuses, playoff odds now and at each of the previous all-star breaks since 2012 And really, it doesn't look all that different from previous years It looks quite a bit better than last year's All-Star break When you had four divisions basically decided At last year's All-Star break, there were four teams with greater than 90% division odds The Astros, the Nationals, the Dodgers, the Indians Those divisions were all locked up This year, you don't have that quite to the same extent greater than 90% division odds. The Astros, the Nationals, the Dodgers, the Indians,

those divisions were all locked up. This year, you don't have that quite to the same extent. I mean, yes, the Indians are still locks very much, and there are other teams that are very likely to be playoff teams or division winners, but there's still more uncertainty. There's definitely uncertainty in the wildcard race, thanks to Oakland pulling almost even with the Mariners now as we start the second half. So there are different ways you can assess the excitement level of a playoff race. But based on all the metrics I looked at, and you can go and read the article if you're interested in diving into the details, it looks like this is neither a very exciting perspective pennant race or a very

unexciting one. It's just kind of blah. It's probably better than last year's. It's probably worse than a few of the ones before that. I think maybe there is a tendency for the division leaders to be further in front lately, which could be, I guess, because teams are kind of either going all out for the division or just kind of rebuilding or settling for the wildcard or not really trying as hard as they can because I think they realize now that the 50-50 play-in just isn't something that's worth really giving up a whole lot for. So there's some differences here. The big one being, I think, that there are just more teams whose fates are decided than there usually are at this point in the season. There are 18 teams whose odds of making the playoffs one way or another are either greater than 95% or lower than 5%. And this is the

first time in this era that more than half of the teams have already been sorted into one of those camps at this point. But even so so the remaining races are about as exciting and suspenseful as they usually are i think the fears about how this was basically over before the season started were kind of overblown i think so many of the talking points coming into the air were a little bit overblown i know though that uh tony clark i don't have his exact statement in front of me but he tony clark said that uh last year's offseason was what was it like a direct attack on free agency which of course you would think that a player representative would use language like that when something like that happens but i think that there's it's a little more nuanced than that but hey at least we know that everyone's gonna get along as they continue

to negotiate the next cba and now this just reminds me this is unrelated but as long as we're talking about potential conflict between uh league people and baseball player people did you see mike at the next CBA. And now this just reminds me, this is unrelated, but as long as we're talking about potential conflict between league people and baseball player people, did you see Mike Trout's response to the commissioner? Because apparently he issued one. Yeah, I did. I already forgot it because it was kind of boring. But the fact that he responded was notable. I mean, he just basically tried to diffuse this controversy, right? He was like, let's move on. Or he said he does spend time marketing or promoting or whatever. I think, I'm not sure he even said that.

I forgot. It was pretty dull. It was essentially along the lines of, hey, we're fine. I don't care. Let's play baseball. And that's probably how it was dictated. Yes. I can also pass along, as you might have seen, Bryce Harper issued a quote where he was asked if Mike Trout is the best player in baseball. And Harper said, if you don't think he is, then you're not watching. Do you think that any year before this year, Bryce Harper would have said that? Yeah, maybe not. I wonder whether he had to swallow his pride a little to say that. I know that Joey Votto has certainly said that. And if anything, Joey Votto has a stronger claim to the title than Bryce Harper does. But I would say that, yeah, I mean, the Harper-Trout rivalry was a thing. It's not so much a thing anymore, but a year or two ago, it was, and probably he wouldn't have said that yeah i don't have

anything else on mike trout but i don't know shohei otani is clear to start a throwing progression so there's there's that right that's yeah that's good dude exciting i guess sort of yeah it's it's a little harder with the angels out of the race but we let's do email it's time yeah we'll we'll try to squeeze in a few here all right brandon says says, what the hell is wrong with Gary Sanchez? He's obviously having a very down year. He touted a 130 WRC plus on the back of a blah, blah, blah slash line last year versus a 96 WRC plus. Not awful, but not good this year. And Brandon goes through lots of research he did.

He says he couldn't really find anything that stands out Not anything very different in his batted ball direction The pitches he's seeing He seems to be just hitting breaking and off speed pitches worse across the board His eye hasn't seemed to change in terms of chase rate or in the zone swing rate Nothing really seems to be causing this tremendous downturn in a young player. And he speculates about maybe the shift is having something to do with it. And then he says, is there an explanation for how a player can become so bad at hitting

against a normal non-shifted lineup for a pull hitter while remaining relatively level against a shift? And why is he so bad? Is there anything that pops out to you that I have missed? Yes. Okay. Pretty simple. Gary Sanchez has a batting average of balls in play of 194.

That's very low. Last year, it was 304. He's actually walking more than he walked last season. His strikeouts are the same. His power is the same. His ground balls are the same. His exit velocity is the same. His launch angle is the same.

Gary Sanchez, his expected weighted on base average is a little bit lower than it was last year. He has hit some more pop-ups, and that's part of it. He's gotten under the ball a little too often. But the long and short of it is that Gary Sanchez is a good hitter, and he's fine. Yeah, he's fine. Yeah, his weighted on base average last season was 368, and his expected weighted on base average this season is 369. So he's fine. And, yeah, I mean, a a sub 200 babbitt is extremely low

and you might wonder whether something is happening that is different they're positioning themselves differently or something but it's half a season and he's a catcher and he was hurt so it's not even really a full half season these These things happen. Even as it is, he's been almost a league average hitter and better than a league average hitting catcher. So he's fine. And I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of the season, his numbers look essentially the same as they did last year. Yeah.

And if it means anything to anyone, it turns out the last year and a half, Gary Sanchez has actually been a worse hitter with no shift on than with the shift on. So there's that. Yeah. All right. Well, this question, which is anonymous, it actually comes from someone who works for a team. That's all I'll say. But it is in response to the article you mentioned, the worst call of the first half piece. So this front office was discussing this article and raised these questions. If and when a robot strike zone is introduced, what if balls and strikes no longer had to be integers? Baseball Prospectus uses a called strike probability model. So in theory, the league could accomplish the same thing.

You could get roughly half credit for borderline pitches. And in theory, a batter could reach a count with, say, 3.05 balls and 2.95 strikes, and then the pitcher would only have to kind of get the ball near the plate to strike you out ball. It is 52% likely to be a strike or 52% likely to be a ball. And so if you are tallying up the difference that say a catcher makes, for instance, then you kind of give him partial credit for getting a strike or not getting a strike based on what the probability of that pitch was. So this question is suggesting that we actually call pitches that way. So I have a strong suspicion this question did not come from the Baltimore Orioles front office. That is true. So I mean, let's acknowledge from the get-go, nope, you can't sell that to people. It's not going to take off. But it does get get weird right that if if you have the

automated zone which is in some way inevitable that there will have to be an absolute boundary to the zone and that's going to be strange just to see it implemented and to see how people respond to that but how would you why would you have a gradation in it? You could program in these partial strikes and partial balls, but what are you solving when you do that? That's a good question. Yeah, I mean, I think that if robot umps come, I should probably say when they come, you'll probably just have some sort of probability. become you'll probably just have some sort of probability i would assume that it's like you know if it's 50.1 likely to be called a strike or something then it's a strike i i don't know how they would do it exactly i guess if any part of the ball touches the rulebook strike zone then it's a strike and so it wouldn't necessarily matter what the percentages are because the percentages are based on human umpires.

It's, you know, a 51% likely strike is saying that in the past pitches like that one have been called a strike 51% of the time. If you have robot umpires, you don't need that because it doesn't matter how often an umpire would call it. The umpire is the technology and the technology will say that this was in the strike zone or it wasn't. And that will be that. So it would be interesting. OK, so let's say hypothetically you have wide boundaries. We know where there are 0% strikes and we know where there are 0% balls. But let's say let's say that a pitcher is ahead in the count.

I don't know, like 1.7. let's say that a pitcher is ahead in the count i don't know like 1.7 i guess we're doing like he's up ahead in the count 1.7 and like 2.95 to use the number that you brought up so now to get a strikeout the pitcher only needs 1 20th of a strike so the pitcher could in theory throw a ball that is in the five percent strike range which means it's way, it's like a good margin off the plate. And then the batter would then need to respond to that and protect against that, which granted might make him more likely to strike out anyway. So I would love to see one game played.

No, I would love to see one month. Do it in the AFL. Do everything in the AFL. Do everything in the AFL. Just make those young players who are trying to have a career, make them participate in science just to see what happens. Because you need more than one game because you want to see how players learn and respond to the system.

Acknowledging, again, it would never sell to anyone because nobody likes decimals. I don't even like decimals. I like some of the potential implications of it, of being like, well, the pitcher just needs to get 1 20th of a strike to make Mike Trout go away. Yeah, and people might be surprised. I've spent a lot of time digging around

the baseball prospectus called strike probability stats. And like even a 5% strike, it's not going to be like two feet outside or something because we're not talking about Mexican League umpires here. And so in the current era where umpires are generally pretty good and consistent, an unlikely strike still kind of looks like a reasonable pitch. Like it's not going to be a ball in the dirt or something like a ball in the dirt that bounces or something. That's going to be a 0% strike because that pitch never ever gets called really. So you're still going to have to get it somewhere within hitting distance, although maybe

not quality contact distance. But yeah, this would be weird and fun for a while, but not better. Definitely not better. All right. Since we were just talking about Mike Trout, as we always are, I suppose I should answer this question about him. Bobby says, with all the talk about weird contract structures and Mike Trout wanting to avoid the spotlight, what are the chances that a team would offer Trout extra money in free agency if he agrees to be more marketable? Surely any team that signs Trout will want to show off their newest asset. But if the best they can do is print his giant face on a white T-shirt, they're probably going to have trouble attracting new fans. So do you think a team would be willing to offer him an extra 50 million or so in PR incentives? And do you think Trout would agree to it?

Maybe he could skydive or bungee jump while wearing a Superman costume, wrestle a grizzly bear to avenge actual Trout everywhere, or just appear in a few more commercials every year. Why would you offer Mike Trout 50 million extra dollars so that he could wrestle a grizzly bear? Yeah, that sounds like something your contract should prevent. Yeah, everything is void. And also, you're out of a job. So, okay, I think if I were to answer for mike trout in general i think that

we've talked about mike trout enough that we're basically in his head now right we're we're brethren i don't think he would care i don't think he would i don't think he would take it because if you're mike mike trout if he were a free agent whenever he's a free agent he's gonna sign for so much money that what does he care about another 50 million dollars i don't think i mean clearly based on the contract that he did sign mike trout is not about maximizing his income necessarily i could be wrong i mean you can do a lot of good with 50 million extra dollars or whatever if that 25 is left after taxes but i don't think that he would be swayed by that because he's already going to be making like at least half of 1 billion dollars from this contract so So what does he care if, I would assume,

the reasons that he doesn't put himself out there more. And to be clear, we've seen some anecdotes these last few days of how Mike Trout, like he helps a lot in the community and he like talks to kids and he engages with young fans at the ballpark like on a regular basis. So he's already going out of his way when he's on the job but if he were to have to do more you're talking about he's he's losing more of his free time he's getting more distracted he's relatively newly married i'm sure that he loves his wife and

would like to spend more time with her and just doing that he wants to go crabbing or whatever it was so i don't think that it would uh it's just he's not he's not the one he doesn't care enough to throw money at him to try to make just take that money and spend that 50 million dollars on another good player who could help you make your team better and then you can just market your team right yeah i i wonder usually we talk about this from the perspective of the sport like if mikeout were a bigger star, it would be better for baseball. We don't usually talk about it from the perspective of his team. I don't know whether the benefits would be that big for the team, because if you're in the target demographic for Angels fans, you're probably already well aware of Mike Trout. It's more of

an issue of trying to reach non-baseball fans or non-Angels fans, I would think. I don't know how much extra benefit you'd get as the Angels or any future Mike Trout team from having him do more promos for your team. I mean, I guess it couldn't hurt, but would it be $50 million of extra value to you? I don't know. Do the Angels have team commercials? Because if they do, I assume Mike mike trout is in them right because like i would think the best players on every team are in their commercials he's not like a recluse he's not like a hermit who just what if like the the guy from last week's email show who just is anonymous and mysterious he's

not that guy he is a pretty prominent player. He is just not all that gregarious. Okay, so imagine it's the year 2025, and the Angels have this, like, the best player in baseball, his name is, like, Halibut Joe. And Halibut Joe, he's like a 15-war player on a regular basis,

and he has absolutely zero visible presence anywhere. He doesn't have a social media account he like this he doesn't answer questions after the game he's not necessarily the guy who like plays in a mask like we talked about the other week but he just he you know his identity but he refuses to be a person he's just plays baseball not in it he doesn't do anything he's not like an he's not an ass he doesn't like slide into people he doesn't get into. He's not an ass. He doesn't slide into people. He doesn't get into fights. He's just a very, very good baseball player, like Mike Trout, maybe a little better. And then that's it. No one gets to know anything about him.

Would that make him more or less appealing or more or less well-known than Mike Trout based on, I guess, the Q score? Right. Less appealing, but probably better known. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe Trout should go the other way and just refuse to ever speak or show his face when he's not on the field.

Vow of silence. Yeah. All right. Ben in Silver Spring says, I know Nick Markakis has been a semi-regular topic on the show this year, but David Lorela's article at Fangraphs this past weekend got me thinking about this player I was already a big fan of. While in Baltimore, his looks and Save the Bay ads were one of the very few things which could convince my wife to

join me for a few minutes of baseball, and you know, he was good for that team for a long time, Lorela attributes much or at least some of Marquecas' success this year to his timing. Marquecas attributes his timing to studying film of pictures and committing the various deliveries, etc., to memory. It seems reasonable that this could be a skill with a measurable effect. Do we know much yet about how these types of mental acuity can contribute to an aging player avoiding decline and even improving? It's one of those things that feels a little too ephemeral for mathematic analysis, but

nonetheless, it can't be nothing, can it? Can you imagine the sensation? You're not only the center fielder in Angel Stadium and you look around and there's a stadium full of people wearing your face on their shirt. Not only that, but for the rest of Mike Trout's life, there's a chance he's going to be walking down the street and someone's going to walk by and it's going to be his face, like two feet tall, his face walking in the other direction on the street. That's bizarre.

And how could you ever, how could that happen to you? And you'd be like, I want my face out there more. His face is out there. It's on people's bodies. It's gigantic. Anyway, what? Nick Marcakis? Okay.

Yeah. romantic anyway what nick mccake is okay yeah so i think that just if he's attributing it to timing it i i think it it makes sense that if if there were pitchers by studying video of the pitchers whether it's before a series before a game you just go over the deliveries of the pitchers on the other team it shouldn't take you very long you can watch like 10 pitches in 30 seconds with a software that teams have and then you can just look at the next guy and it's not too complicated but most deliveries i think are pretty ordinary there aren't a whole lot of guys who have like weird hitches or deliveries that are particularly deceptive so i don't know how much this would matter except in certain cases like maybe you learn that oh marcus strowman has like a hitch that he uses sometimes like inspired by johnny

but most guys just have regular deliveries so I don't know really how much of a difference this could make I can't sit here and say that Nick Marcakis is wrong about himself but it doesn't really do a whole lot for me yeah it's never what I want to hear if I'm writing something about a player and the explanation for why he's suddenly better is timing it's's like, all right, well, can I quantify that? Can I show it? Because if not, this is going to be a really boring article, which doesn't mean that that's not the reason or part of the reason. But I don't know, hitters often say, and I've heard from hitters, that no matter how much video you watch, there's just no substitute

for actually standing in the box and seeing it from home plate. So that's part of it. But you and I have both written about Lorenzo Cain this year, who has really dramatically raised his walk rate and lowered his chase rate. And in both cases, I think we're sort of struggling to explain how that happens all of a sudden at age 32. And I talked to Brewers hitting coach Darnell Coles and he kept saying, well, he's got his timing down and, you know, he's getting in a good hitting position. And I was sort of fishing for, well, you know, can I see this on video? Is it like something that would stand out? And he was saying, no, it's more subtle than that probably. And so both of us sort of defaulted to, well, he's batting leadoff a lot this year, and he seems to have really taken that to heart, and he wants to take more pitches.

But all the stuff about timing was, well, I don't really know what to do with that exactly. So sometimes, yeah, like if it's obvious you've added some timing mechanism that is now a part of your stance and your swing, that's easy to see. If you have the big leg kick or you subtract the big leg kick, sure. Otherwise, it may exist. It may matter. It's just hard to tell exactly from gifs. I hate the timing answer. I mean, all hitting is timing. The difference between hitting 100 and hitting 300 is, well, you timed when you swung and hit the ball. Right. Sure. Yeah. So why is her timing better? It just kind of leads to a secondary question.

Anyway, Nick Marcakis is a mystery and a riddle. Speaking of which, I know we were talking just yesterday about Mike Trout's outfit for the All-Star game. Did you see Nick Marcakis' outfit for the red carpet? I just sent you a link yeah

what are you making this what what is he's wearing a suit that appears to be made out of a shirt no it's not what it it's a collared shirt and sl, but they're both made out of the same material, like a checked pattern that looks normal for a shirt, but not so much for pants. And he's wearing like white sneakers with it. He kind of looks like Borat. This is his first All-Star appearance. So when people say like, act like you've been there before this is not how to do that i guess maybe he's trying to make an impression he figures this is one and only

all-star game he's waited long enough he's going to make a statement style wise and i guess he did he panicked i mean he's had 15 years to think about what it would be like if he made the all-star game and he's just he went too far because this is this is bad in every it's bad the top like they're like what are those like untuck it or whatever shirts that like have different cuts at the bottom and the top is like whatever you look at him as like boring dad who's like right just greeting you at the front door and it's a weird looking shirt that he should probably tuck into his boring ass chinos but then you scroll down and it's pajamas he's wearing pajamas and white sneakers i don't know the lighting it's blown out i'm sure the white sneakers are fine but i don't know what the word is for this outfit but yeah i don't want to see it anymore it doesn't really fit either like i don't know whether he has the sleeves buttoned or not but they're like covering

half of his hands just uh man and the pants are all like bundled up at the bottom it's just off the i'd say it's off the rack except i don't know where what store you find this on a rack so yeah so it's poorly it's not tailored to him at all. Like it's too broad for his apparently very narrow shoulders, something I didn't know about Nick Marcakis. But it's something that it's tailored so poorly you think, oh, he got this in a hurry. But it's also so unusual that you figure, well, this probably actually cost a lot of money for as bad as it is.

And now like I hope that, I hope this wasn't like a gift from some relative who's dying and then they listen to the podcast. I don't want this to go sour on us, but I recognize it's weird to talk about a bad-looking man on a podcast where no one else can see it. But if you're listening, you've had long enough now to look this up on your phone or on your screen,

wherever you're listening, to look up this picture of Nick Markakis, and you can follow along and see how weird this is. Yeah, I'm not going to be asking Nick Markakis for beard grooming advice, either based on this picture or fashion advice. Oh, all right. Anyway, we're getting catty about baseball player fashion these days. It's kind of like he's, I don't know, the wondrous dear leader of the Republic of Barbecue. The wondrous dear leader of the Republic of Barbecue. Yeah, I wouldn't have put it that way, but that is the perfect way to put it.

All right. Let's see if we can squeeze in a couple more here. All right. Tim says, take an average team from any given year with a true talent level of exactly 500 going into the season. This team is average in every way except injuries and fatigue they play a game and wake up the next day like it's the first game of the season and everyone is in the best shape of their lives and healthy at the beginning of each new day what is their record at the end of the season so they are constantly refreshed now i assume when we say first of the season like the pitchers their arm strength is built up so evan's just like 100 is the point here yeah i think so yeah so 81 81 team and they always feel

good they don't they don't get injured like they never get injured right i guess they never get injured i'm i'm almost more interested in the fatigue aspect i mean if you never get injured that's gotta be what what would what would you guess is like a is that like a 10 win advantage just like having no dl stints not having to call up replacement players you just have your best players playing all the time what is that worth yeah i mean at least five i would assume so there's that but the fatigue element is interesting because you hear about the grind and you hear about how even if guys aren't hurt enough to disable them, they're hurt enough to hurt and impair their performance in some way. And by the time you get to the end of the season, everyone is banged up in some way except for this team. Yeah, I'm comfortable going to 90 and I might go as far as 95.

I don't know. 100 feels aggressive, but 95 wins feels doable to me. I mean, you don't have to worry about wearing down the bullpen. I assume at some point this team would learn it about itself. They'd be like, I thought we'd be more tired than we are,

but we're not. So I guess now true talent 500 team, does that mean it's a true talent 500 team given that they don't get, I don't know, it gets a little complicated. Probably aside from that, just in terms of their performance. Yeah, kind of complicated. They would be a 500 team if they played under regular conditions, I guess.

Yeah, right. I'm comfortable saying 95 to 100 wins and they take their division. Yeah, I think I am too. All right. Chris says, when we discuss how long a starting pitcher should stay in a game, the conversation always seems to center around 100 pitches being a good measurement for when they should be taken out. However, this feels like a really good example of round number bias and thus an inefficiency

in game management. Even with all the scrutiny that's paid to pitch limits in Youth League and concerns over wearing out the rotation, we still gravitate toward the nice round number as being the limit, no matter who the pitcher is or what their throwing style is. Is this a case where round number bias is hurting analysis on a non-trivial level, or is the math just imprecise enough that using 100 as a baseline is close enough? I think it's a useful coincidence that 100 pitchers has been roughly when a pitcher would have worked the order about three times,

which was, I guess, when it would have been a great idea to remove a starter from the game. Now, of course, people are removing their starters when it's more like two times through the order or some such. So I think being anchored to 100 and being anchored to any random upper is always bad. It does have the upside of being easier to sell to someone just being like, look, you're going to get a clean 100 and that's it. But it sounds like you would like to interject. Well, I think there are probably guys out there who, you know, their baseline should be 105 or 110 or something. And, you know, maybe they get pulled a little before they should because of the round number bias. But on the whole, we keep finding that it's usually

beneficial to pull starting pitchers earlier. So at this point, I don't know that it actually matters that much anymore. Yeah. I don't know what 100 means these days, but it did. It was an anchoring point. I think that it was just sort of a coincidence that it was also a round when it was right to pull them anyway. Yeah. I mean, anytime you have a one size fits all rule like that, you're probably have some sort of inefficiency somewhere, but maybe it's more efficient just to think of a hundred than it is to ask your pitching coach and your manager to try to think of every guy as an individual person and have to make a different decision for every guy, in which case maybe you end up pushing people too far and then it backfires. So on the whole, maybe 100 when you talk about the human communication aspect of it might be the best anyway. Nick Markakis might

want to invest in some one-size-fits-all tailoring. Michael, last question. I've been thinking about this for a few weeks and thought it might be a good question for you guys to delve into. What drives a team to adopt the model of the Rays as in a team that runs low payrolls while trying to construct roughly 500 rosters, hoping for a good year? What makes a team follow that model versus, say, the tanking and rebuilding model of the Astros, Phillies, etc.? Obviously, payroll is a factor, but at the same time, we see teams like Cincinnati and Kansas City following the latter model. My other question is, what would it take for, say, the Royals to pivot to this middling success model?

How does a team just start doing this? And do you think it would require a successful campaign for other teams to start copying, like, say, a 2019 World Series Tampa Bay team. I feel as though the bleak future of the AL Central should make this a tantalizing option for one of those non-Cleveland teams. So how many teams like the Rays are there? There's the Rays and maybe the A's. Yeah.

Sort of the Pirates a little bit. They feel like the three. And of course, it's the Rays who lead the way With their constant churn I think you need to have Smart is too broad of a term And cruel to other teams But you need to have a coldly intelligent front office in place To get those Wall Street people

And they're just constantly I'm just going to start throwing words out there Arbitrage, that's a word that matters something to the Rays You need to I think the Rays would explain it Where they would say maybe we can't, in the same way that the A's do, they would say we can't afford to completely tank because we have such low margins. I don't know if that's actually true, but that's something that the A's believe. Billy Bean has talked about it. The opposing view is that if you're not drawing anyone anyway, then you have less to lose by

doing the full rebuild. Yeah, right right because i i mean it's like if you're the a's and you're looking at the revenue that you get you're already beyond what should be the tipping point so i don't know i'm sure they've thought about it more than i have it might just be a philosophical thing where i like the idea i go back and forth because when you have the the second wild card the of course the threshold to reach in the playoffs is lower than it's ever been. But you also have an extra round in there. It's harder to make it to the World Series. So if your goal is to make the playoffs, it's easier.

If your goal is to make the World Series, then it's more appealing to have a strong team instead of a decent team. Like this year, it looks like the Mariners or the A's will technically make the playoffs in the American League for about three and a half hours. And then it will have been a wondrous journey and it will be complete. I don't know. I guess I don't know what drives it aside from if you were the Rays and knowing how the Rays operate, you are constantly on the search for players that other teams might overvalue on your team and players on other teams that they might undervalue in your opinion because you have so little flexibility to work with because of whatever reason let's just go ahead and say

ownership that you need to seize those advantages when you can and you need to have the cold capacity to constantly shuffle a bunch of human lives yeah and i don't think like the royals they they operate with more money than the rays do but it's not like it's dramatic the royals aren't in like a vastly better financial situation than the rays probably they're both owned by billionaires but i don't know is it just that the royals have more of a soul or is it that the Royals are just in a bad place because they suck now? I don't really know where to go with it.

The Rays want to be good. They're building to be good. I think that they've just kind of bided their time without ever dropping all the way to the bottom. Yeah, the Royals, I don't know that they've really set out to do the full rebuild. They just were good, and then they didn't replenish the players that they lost, and then they were bad. So in theory, if you want to put a positive spin on it, the Rays are not capable or willing

to spend a lot, so they're not going to be great unless everything goes right for them and they have high draft picks and they hit on a bunch of trades but they're also not going to be truly terrible because they are bringing along undervalued guys and don't have a lot of replacement level or sub-replacement level players on their team. So it's probably a positive reflection on them that they are not sticking to Royals, Orioles-esque levels. Like they've managed to remain pretty respectable. And, you know, if not for some bad luck or timing, they might be very much in contention. Or for that matter, if they were in the AL Central, they would be very much in contention. So I think that reflects well on them and their front office so maybe it's partly that it's like

you're not good enough to get great but you're also not bad enough at running a baseball team to get truly terrible and i don't know maybe if you feel like you're just never going to be able to spend, like the Astros spend now, the Cubs certainly spent a lot. So they were bad for a while, but they knew that when they came out the other side, they had big markets and deep enough pockets that they could afford to supplement those teams. Whereas the Rays, the Pirates, the A's, as they're currently run, wouldn't. So maybe it's just not even worth kind of trying to start from the ground up. Yeah, I like that actually, now that you've talked it through and explained the point for me.

The Rays, in theory, or the A's, they could try to put in the work to build like a juggernaut, do the full rebuild and get everything lined up. But then you could only keep those players together for a few seasons before you'd have to start trading them away because you don't have the money to afford them. So the Rays and the other teams are constantly trading players as they begin to get expensive. Not even the really, really expensive ones, but Steven Souza Jr. was traded,

Jay Cotarizzi was traded. These weren't super highly paid guys, but they made too much for the Rays because of how low their budget is. They don't have super highly paid guys, but they made too much for the raise because of how low their budget is. But they don't have to think about we're trading guys when they're going into their last season of team control. They have to think about training them as soon as they're eligible for arbitration sometimes. And they presumably just feel like they can't afford to actually pay a bunch of really, really, really good players on the team at the same time. And so they're just sort of hoping that they catch lightning in a bottle with a bunch of

pre-arb and maybe arb year one guys. Plus why tear down and rebuild again when you're just going to burn all your players alive in your translucent stadium? All right. We've cracked the case. We've answered the question. We will stop talking. By the way, one more thing I want to mention.

You may remember Michael Mountain, the Effectively Wild listener who joined me and Jeff on episode 1169 back in January. We brought him on to discuss his planned 35-day, 30-ballpark baseball road trip for the summer. Well, that road trip is about to begin. So if you're hearing this on Friday, Michael is about to set off on this trip. He's leaving on Friday. His first game is at Yankee Stadium on Saturday. And he wants you all to know that the best way for people to follow his travels is to join the Effectively Wild Facebook group and to follow him on Twitter at MLB Road Trip. I'd encourage you all to do that. I know he'll be posting lots of updates in the Facebook group. I know he has plans to meet and possibly even stay with

other Effectively Wild listeners on his travels, and maybe we'll have him back again to talk about the trip after it's done. So bon voyage, Michael. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild, signing up to pledge some small monthly amount. The following five listeners have already done so. James Morris, Daniel Tilling, Jennifer Dow, Tom Dwyer, and Reid DeWolf. Thanks to all of you. You can join the aforementioned Facebook group. We're just about 8,200 members. You can find it at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. For me and many other members, it is both the best thing about Facebook and possibly the only good thing about Facebook. You can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and other platforms. Lots of ratings coming in, not so many reviews. Always happy to have them. If you have a moment, you can keep your questions and

comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. And as always, we thank Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. So we hope you have a wonderful weekend. We will be back to talk to you early next week. He don't mind policemen Leaving trail of ripped up citations Roadman, slow it down And you will get there safe and sound He says no, no, no The show must go on Three, two, one Hello

I don't know What was that? I was just thinking if we had a grooming podcast Two, one. Hello. I don't know. What was that? I was just thinking if we had a grooming podcast. All right. Three, two, one.