Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1290: Circling the Wagenen

Episode Date: November 1, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Boston’s outfield rotation during the World Series, the significance of declining World Series ratings, the Orioles and the difficulty of classifying “tanking” teams, Manny Machado’s public persona and whether his reputation will hurt his free-agent appeal, and the Mets’ hiring of agent Brodie Van Wagenen as their new […]

There's a place I'd like to go When you get there, then I'll know There's a place I know you've been There's a wagon, get on in Baby, why don't we Baby, why don't we? Baby, why don't we? Why don't we? Hello and welcome to episode 1290 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Ben Lindberg of The Bringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of FanCrafts. Hello. Hello. So we're going to do some emails today, I think. We're going to kind of get into off-season mode maybe next time and next week. And there's some drafts we have to do and some sort of themed episodes and guests. But today, I think just some banter and some emails. You know, I meant to mention one thing that we didn't talk about during the World Series,

which was Alex Cora's willingness to move outfielders around, rotate outfielders in corners. We didn't talk about that, but he did that in game three, I guess it was, which was the first game in LA and the game where J.D. Martinez maybe was hampered by his ankle injury. And in that game, Mookie Betts went from right field to center field to right field to center field to right field to center field to right field. And Jackie Bradley Jr. obviously was rotating with him and also with J.D. Martinez, who was going from left to right, and Bradley was going from center to left, back to center to left. I guess it's not quite what we had talked

about in the spring when the Phillies were thinking about doing something similar just on a regular basis because they had some bad outfielders and it seemed like maybe they would just want to do that based on who the hitter was. In this game, I guess it happened just because Martinez was A, Martinez, and B, not 100% of Martinez, because it didn't really happen in the other games. I think in Game 4, Mookie went from center to right once, but that was pretty much the extent of it. Or game five, I guess that was. But it was a one-time thing, but it was weird and sort of notable.

Yeah. And when it happened, maybe it's just because I've curated my feed. I didn't hear anyone really pipe up to say, this is weird and you're overmanaging and all that stuff. Plus, you're not going to say that about the Red Sox anyway but i was just waiting for it so then i could throw gabe kapler in the face but i didn't get the chance and also it doesn't really matter but yeah it was a neat thing to see them do and even though it was presumably because jd martinez wasn't a hundred percent that's still i mean jd martinez not at a hundred percent is effectively reese hoskins in the outfield i. So it's kind of the same concept,

even if the reason was not just you're bad, but you're bad, plus we have a less insulting reason than that to do this. Yeah, right. And there's some precedent for this sort of thing happening in the infield. I know there are examples of old games that I remember documenting in an article earlier this year when I was writing about unorthodox defense, there are times when someone was hurt like a regular infielder. And so you would see the second baseman and the shortstop just rotating or this third baseman or second baseman, whatever, just going back and forth many times in a game. I think there was a recent instance of that where the Mets did it with, what, Mastrobo Cabrera, maybe. So that happened. So it's not quite the same, but maybe someday we will actually see this thing semi-routinely. And Martinez seemed fine. I don't know that his ankle

hurt him any in the field unless it caused that one play where he just lost the ball in the sky. But I don't know what his ankle would have to do with that. And that didn't end up costing the Red Sox anyway. Yeah, right. It was in what was it, game one, when Martinez rolled over on his ankle and we all saw it. We all saw the replay. We all saw several of the replays because that's how sports are televised these days. And then it didn't seem like there was much made of it at the time.

He kept playing and it didn't seem like there was much made of it at the time he he kept playing and it didn't seem like oh this is a fact that could decide the rest of the series and then i was it was almost a relief to me to hear oh yeah he actually is sore because if you weren't sore after that then i don't i would have had to change my mental estimation of what jd martinez is because ankles aren't your ankle isn't supposed to be where your, I don't know, upper thigh is, but he found a way to do it and then he stayed on the field. Yeah, right. And one other serious thing, we didn't talk so much about the ratings, but that was a storyline as it usually is at this time of year. And I thought Craig Edwards wrote a good post for Fangraphs about that, where he looked at the reasons behind the ratings decline. And really what we need, it becomes clear from Craig's piece, is like some kind of era-adjusted ratings stat like ratings plus or whatever because this is silly how we all just wring our hands every single year about, oh, the ratings are down.

And that's because the ratings are down for everything, like almost everything. I mean, in football, it was the same thing where everyone was saying, oh, the ratings are down because football players are kneeling or something when it seemed just as likely, if not more likely, that it was just that people were watching less football for other reasons. They're watching less everything. So Craig had a good chart of the World Series ratings by year going back to the mid-'80s compared to the top TV show ratings going back to the same year, and it really does very closely mirror each other. It's just even the most popular show is no longer nearly as popular as it once was.

You read about shows that were canceled 20 years ago, and the ratings then today's showrunners would kill for. And it's just there are so many more channels, there are so many more shows, there are people cord cutting and streaming, and the ratings for this World Series don't, Cutting and streaming and The ratings for this world series don't I don't think take into account Streaming ways of Watching they don't take into account Alternate language broadcasts

Which are maybe becoming more popular And also just the ratings Are kind of what they were Exactly before 2016 and 2017 Which were just two outlier years In terms of the greatness of the actual series and the matchups and the storylines. And so in that context, it doesn't really seem all that

concerning. I mean, maybe it's just concerning that people are watching less TV, but in terms of baseball itself being prone to this sort of decline, it doesn't really seem like that's the case. I think, yeah, I think we knew people are watching less TV, and I don't know, I don't really wring my hands over the ratings. In fact, I don't even, I'm not even aware of what the ratings are until somebody writes about it at Fangraphs. I don't seek them out.

I don't read other articles about it. I personally don't care about the ratings. It's the World Series. Ratings are going to be there. In the way that, you know, you write about the playoffs as being an indicator of where baseball is going, and I think that's useful because we'll talk about that in the stat blast, I guess, but you can see a lot of the future trends in the World Series, but at the same time, the World Series is also going to lag behind.

If there's going to be a decline in baseball's popularity, that's going to be quantifiable. I think the World Series is not where we're going to see it because people will generally tune in for the championship of a sport even if they don't care so much about the sport so i would think that if baseball were dying and etc and all those things then we would see that during the regular season with attendance plummeting and ratings plummeting and trying to measure streaming frequency plummeting i don't know how you do that must be a way there must be a way to do that, right? If we can track when people are watching ads and how long they listen to ads and when they're listening to podcasts and how many people download

a podcast, you can measure streaming. Maybe you can't measure the illegal streaming. I don't know how popular that is, but I feel like the World Series will be the last thing to die if baseball is dying, but it doesn't really matter because even if baseball's dying, we are all dying faster. Yeah, yeah.

And the local ratings for baseball are still really strong. And this is a story every single postseason because people don't realize that you can't just compare baseball ratings to football ratings or basketball ratings. It's just not the same because the sport is more regional versus national, which, you know, is not a good thing in every way. But baseball has a lot of fans and football has so many fewer games every year. And they're all nationally televised. And it's just a different situation that you can't really compare. But that doesn't stop columns from being written very much, comparing them every single year as evidence that baseball is dying. But this is a case where even Rob Manfred was bringing it up and saying, you know, we're looking hard at it. And he seemed to be disappointed by the ratings and coming on the

heels of the attendance decline in the regular season, which was not enormous, especially once you factor in the weather and some of the accounting stuff about teams counting attendance differently. There was something to it, I think, and probably some of the teams that weren't really competing. But all of these articles, I think, have blown it a bit out of proportion. So coming on the heels of that, the ratings scare seemed to be a problem, but I don't see it as a huge one. Also, just the World Series, as Craig showed, it only went five games, and generally you get

ratings boosts for like a game six and a game seven, so that's part of it. If you just get a seven-game series, it skews the whole thing by making it look like more people were watching all along, and maybe this matchup just wasn't all that compelling. Another thing Craig mentioned is that we think of the Red Sox as like a big market team that are going to draw a ton of fans. But that hasn't really been the case in like 2007 or 2013. Those ratings weren't spectacular either. Those ratings weren't spectacular either. So you kind of need the storylines to bring people in, like a long drought or some kind of historical rivalry or something,

and it just wasn't there this year. When the Red Sox and the Dodgers qualified, all those sarcastic Twitter comments like, oh, baseball got what it wanted. It got its two big markets into the World Series and et cetera. I understand, but yeah, because you can go back and you can look at how the ratings for the Giants and the Royals weren't great. But like the markets are not that different.

And as you can see, if baseball was in any way concerned about these ratings, these are like two of the, what, three, four biggest markets in the league. But yeah, you just didn't have the compelling storyline. The Red Sox winning is the opposite of what most of the country wants in a given year. And the Dodgers aren't fresh. If you had some sort of fresh, big market, like, I don't know, if the Mets made the World Series, maybe it would draw more than the Yankees. That's a stupid thing to say.

Okay, no, it wouldn't draw more than the Yankees would make. But the difference between the ratings for a gigantic World Series like this one and something that, I don't know, take the Astros and the Brewers, if they had made it instead, I don't think the ratings would have been that much worse. I wonder how many people would care about tuning in for a fresh underdog like the Brewers because it would feel like the Royals, and that wasn't enormous. But yeah, the idea of the league just conspiring to have the Red Sox and the Dodgers in the World Series, it's just evidently stupid. But also you can see in that piece is that no one expected the Orioles to be one of the worst teams of all time they underperformed at literally every position

by an abnormal amount I mean we all I think we kind of thought the Orioles would be bad but no one was saying that they would be that bad. Just everything that possibly could have gone wrong, everyone who could have played worse than expected did. And that's how you ended up with this terrible, terrible team. But I think that's something we should keep in mind as we head into the winter because I think people probably think of the Orioles as a team that tanked, you know, one of the tankers. And that's how they ended up with so few wins. But they weren't. They were a team that thought they were contenders. I mean, maybe they were unrealistic, but they thought they were. They signed Alex Cobb. They were going for it, I guess, going for a wild card or whatever.

I mean, the odds weren't great, but they were not a tanking team. And so I think we should try to remember that as we look at what teams do this winter. Now, I guess the Orioles today are a tanking team just because things went so terribly and they finally acknowledged that they had no hope and they had to start over belatedly. But I think we have to be careful about how we classify them because I got a message earlier this month from someone in a front office who was pointing out that really the teams that tanked this past winter kind of outperformed the teams that were said not to have tanked and were in kind of the

no man's land but made an effort to upgrade. So, you know, he sent me to an article that Jeff Passan wrote in January about how baseball's economic system is in trouble. And in that article, Jeff identified, I think, eight teams that were tanking or had recently tanked. And so it was the Braves, the White Sox, the Reds, the Tigers, the Marlins, the A's, the Pirates, and the Rays. And not unfair, I guess, because the Rays, the A's, the Pirates, I mean, they didn't spend. They were mentioned by the Players Association, like, hey, we're keeping an eye on you guys because you aren't spending any money. So they were looked at, I guess, or Jeff classified them as those teams. And then there were another

eight teams that this front office person, in conjunction with other people in his front office, had identified at the time as non-playoff teams that made an effort to upgrade. So that would be the Orioles, the Brewers, the Padres, the Giants, the Phillies, the Cardinals, the Angels, and the Twins. And this person followed up with me recently to say, hey, if you take the teams that Jeff said were tankers, they finished with a 475 regular season winning percentage. If you take the teams that we identified as non-playoff teams that are actually trying and are spending and attempting to upgrade, they finished with a collective 469 winning percentage, which I think highlights the fact that, well, A, baseball is unpredictable,

which I think highlights the fact that, well, A, baseball is unpredictable, but B, maybe we're a little too quick to apply the tanking label to certain teams. And if you just look at tankers versus non-tankers purportedly from last winter, there's just like no difference between how their seasons actually turned out. Like the Braves were tankers, I guess, and they made the playoffs, and the A's and the Rays, the A's made the playoffs, the Rays were competitive, the Pirates were not terrible, they thought they were good for a while there. And then, you know, on the other side of the equation, yeah, you had the Brewers who made great strides, but those other teams, things didn't work out for most of them. So the so it's been a while since

i uh had read one of these tanking articles and so i it's hard for me to understand how in retrospect one could have designated the a's and braves as tankers as opposed to that now i guess there's a difference between tankers and teams who aren't paying to get better yeah i don't know if i don't know what term jeff used in that, but teams that weren't trying, at least in terms of spending. Teams not exercising their financial might, as it were, to try to get better. Okay, so yeah, that makes sense. Teams who were, I think, tanking implies one certain kind of action, similar to what, let's say, the Marlins did. The Marlins were clearly tanking.

And it seemed like the greater conversation was less about tanking and more about, yeah, teams not actively trying to get good. That seemed to be the bigger concern because, you know, tanking is just another word for rebuilding. We've talked about this a million times. But if last offseason was seemingly characterized according to the mainstream media as teams just trying not to get good. And then, yeah, OK, so that's something we've talked about pretty often.

Obviously, the A's very successful. The Braves very successful. The Brewers successful in a different kind of way. And, yeah, this is something that is worth coming back to over and over. Now, if you look at the teams who who got deep the astros tried to get good the red sox tried to get good the dodgers tried to get good the brewers tried to get good like the teams that actually lasted in the playoffs were teams who made a pretty concerted effort also three of them spent a lot of money the brewers trying to have a payroll but

the astros the red sox the dodgers there no secret there. So you could say that the really, really good teams are teams that made a considered effort to get to the World Series. But, I mean, what were the A's going to do to try to become one of the elites of the elite? What were any of those teams going to do to try to match up with the Astros or the Yankees or the Dodgers or the Cubs or the Red Sox or et cetera? There wasn't really anything for them to do, not if we're going to be realistic. And so you had these teams who I keep coming back to the fact that even I know that when you talk to people who work for teams, you are getting a biased perspective. People who work for teams are not people who necessarily work for players. They're not union representatives. And so you're going to get a certain standpoint.

not union representatives. And so you're going to get a certain standpoint. But to an individual, every single person I've talked to all year long, even going back into last offseason, is like, no, of course we're trying to win. We want to win more than anything else. If we don't win, we're going to lose our jobs. Like every single person who works for a team is trying to make that team as good as possible. Now, that doesn't mean that the ownership is spending to its maximum. But just because teams are looking for a different way to get better or to not spend money to not get better, it doesn't mean that the team isn't trying to be as successful as it can be. And now it's really easy to point to a team like the A's after the fact

or the Rays after the fact, but pretty obviously these teams were onto something because their seasons were so good. And that was while having their starting rotations, both of those teams in particular, depleted by Tommy John surgeries or or in andrew triggs's case some other kind of what thoracic outlet whatever andrew triggs is the reason the ace didn't go deeper in the playoffs but you can yeah you the free agent market is changing this is something i'm sure we're going to be talking about more and more it is not going to go back we're going to have a lot of the same articles that we had last winter except that this year won't come as much as a surprise. But the market is changing. Last year was the greatest

potent indicator of that. It's not going to go back. But that doesn't mean the teams are less interested in winning. It just means that people need to figure out a way to get money in the hands of players when they're younger, because the free agent market is not going to be that salvation. And I guess it's too soon to say who would be in which camp this year. We kind of have to see. There are some teams that don't even have GMs yet, so we have to see who spends and who doesn't. But just heading into the winter, I guess you would –

which teams would you kind of expect to sit on their hands this winter? I mean, you've got the Orioles, presumably. You've got the Rangers, I guess, maybe would be in that camp. You've got the Giants, probably. They don't even have a GM yet, but maybe, I mean, I don't know whether they're going to try to make one more run at it or whether they're going to go tear down now. It either is possible. There aren't that many other teams. I mean, I don't know. Probably the White Sox may not feel like they're quite ready to go all in yet. And the Royals, I guess, are not going to make any splashes. Although in their case, I think they

just got bad unintentionally. And I don't is there anyone else like even the marlins i mean they signed the maces i don't know how much they'll do at the major league level but that's something i think it's this is a little pet theory of mine i think it's very unlikely but i have this little theory that maybe the marlins are going to be like a dark horse candidate to throw money at like a manny machado or bryce harper i you know, maybe, especially in the case of Machado, where maybe the Marlins are like, oh, we don't really care that you're kind of a prick. We just want to give you all of our money, and then you can be the superstar, build a ran for you, you'll be popular in the neighborhood.

Anyway, so I don't actually expect the Marlins to do that, but I do think that they're going to try to be active in free agency. I think that, you know, God knows what the Reds are going to do. They're probably not going to throw money at people, and maybe the Pirates are like, well, that Chris Archer thing was kind of a, we shouldn't have done that. But think about what teams might, so we're talking about the teams that might not try actively to get a lot better. But what teams might try to get worse this offseason? And I think one candidate, even though I think it's unlikely one candidate could be the mariners who could decide now that well it's time we should just blow it up and try to start over because this isn't going this isn't working and outside of that you have the diamond

backs who are in a similar position as the mariners so that's a some sort of possibility but is that it i don't really see another candidate. Yeah. Giants, I think, would be the only one that stands out to me, maybe. But otherwise, everyone has already embarked on that process already or is past it. I don't know who else. I mean, Rangers? Did Rangers do that already? I don't know. Right. The Rangers sort of already got there, whether intentionally or not intentionally. There's not a whole lot for them to do at this point. So they have admitted they're in the midst of a rebuild.

Yeah, so we'll see how that develops, but just something to keep in mind, and I'm sure we'll be talking about this again, but when spring rolls around, we shouldn't be too confident in which teams belong to each group because the season can play out much differently from what we expect. So you just alluded to Manny Machado. That's a frequent talking point this week as free agency begins. talk briefly about Manny Machado and the idea that he cost himself this postseason reputationally and by extension free agently? Do you think that there is anything at all to that idea? I'll just say like I like Manny Machado less than I liked Manny Machado a month ago, I guess, but that is something that is completely without stakes. And I am not in a position to commit money to Manny Machado either way. So that does not matter. What matters is

whether it will actually take teams out of the running for him or lower the maximum offer that he receives. That's a different question. No no wait well i don't know what i just responded to i don't know if i'm responding to should we talk about this or is it going to happen so we should talk about this and we'll talk about it more i don't think that he cost himself very much i think that in the league where one of the best teams in baseball can trade for a player who's still waiting for a trial date for domestic assault i feel like we're not going to see much of a problem with someone deciding they want to throw 350 million dollars or whatever at man machado who's a great player in the prime of his career robinson cano did not struggle to get money when he had a reputation for

not running out grand balls who cares now robinson cano did not have a reputation for throwing baseball pads at opponents at third base so that's something to consider in machado's case of course there's him stepping on jesus aguilar and of course there's him saying well i'm not johnny hustle but you know you can what one of the problems with machado look he's he clearly has like a temper he doesn't really know how to control himself all the time none of us know how to control ourselves all the time but only manny machado stepped on somebody's foot in these playoffs he had his bad looking slide where he grabbed what Orlando Garcia's ankle so there it's pretty clear that the other time after the Brewers game example there was the one in the World Series right where

the no one made that big a deal of it because it happened at the end of an inning and it didn't blow up and it didn't cost anyone anything but one of the replays showed that it looked like he had kind of done it again. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like he basically stepped on, I guess it was Pierce's foot probably at first base. And, you know, his foot came down on top of the other guy's foot. And it showed that very clearly. And with someone else, he might have figured, oh, it's an accident.

But with Machado, it looked like a pattern and so to do it again i mean there's there's a difference between the hustle stuff and the actively risking injury to another player stuff that kind of elevates him into a different tier in my mind yeah and not in the way that like chase utley would have put second baseman in danger because that was in theory because he was hustling and not because he's just kind of a dick so it could be both but yeah it could be both i think it's it's funny because a few months ago when machado was traded i think it was dan connelly uh for the athletic you wrote an article talking with people who have known machado for a while and saying that even in this like lost season for the orioles machado had finally learned maturity he'd finally become like the leader and

then the the the full-grown man that he was supposed to be all this time and he'd put the past behind him and very obviously that's not entirely true I think though when you are a team that is looking at the market you are thinking well who are the great players who are out there there's Manny Machado there's Bryce Harper and then there's a few others, but maybe Machado is a better fit. There are not many comparable players in baseball period, but certainly not who are available to acquire, and I think that's ultimately going to rule the day. I think that a team that would be willing to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at Manny Machado is not going to be deterred by issues that they will convince themselves can be coached out of him whether or not that's true i certainly don't know and given that machado has grown older and

is still doing things like this it seems like it's less likely it'll go away it's not like he's going to get faster over time if anything he's probably just going to loaf more and more step on more and more angles but i think that it is a team that sees stars in man and machado is going to be able to trick itself if not convince itself into believing that machado can get better from this or that at the end of the day aguilar wasn't hurt pierce wasn't hurt and machado is like a sixth win player who's on the market and can play a couple positions and you know he's he's a difference maker even though he wasn't really a difference maker in the playoffs so i think when when you have a star a rare kind of star that could land on your roster it seems like the the wins above replacement is

going to win the day over the uh the soft factors whether that's right i can't really tell you but i mean it's going to come down to a bidding war between however many three, four teams really want me and Machado. And then the team that signs him is going to be the team that decides that those soft factors are the least important of everyone. And so I think at that point, it's likely that team's factoring them in 0% and then Machado gets the same contract. Yeah, it only takes one or maybe two, I guess, to set up a bidding war. So if there are some suitors who are kind of turned off or would lower their maximum offer, I mean, as long as he is kind of going where the money is, which is understandable and probably what most free agents do, it really only takes a couple teams that don't see it as that big a concern for him to get exactly as much money as he would have gotten otherwise. And I mean, the whole hustle thing, you know, I know that A, often there's a racial element to perceptions of players and hustle and who's gritty and a lunch pail player and all that. And I'm not saying that doesn't play some role in Machado's case. But of course, in Machado's case, he came out and said, yeah, I don't hustle. So it's not purely a perception issue in his case. And it's funny because in this postseason,

we saw him hustle a lot at times, and then we saw him hustle not at all at other times. Notably, the most recent example was when he hit a single off the wall. That didn't look great, and there were other examples that were maybe more costly than that. So in general, I don't think hustle matters all that much. I think a lot of it is eyewash. I think in some cases, guys who don't hustle, they get that reputation on plays that don't matter that much anyway or they're not going to beat them out. Now, if you're in October and you're having meaningful opportunities to hustle, then I think you want to see it in that case. And Machado didn't say like, well, I'm trying to conserve my strength or I'm trying to avoid injury or I think this is better in the long run or something.

No, he just kind of said, I don't run and I should run, but I've always done it this way and I'm not Johnny Hustle. And that was it. He wasn't particularly apologetic about it. And so I think we're talking about like, you know, plus or minus like five singles a year here generally between your super hustle guy and your lollygagger. I just I don't think it makes that much of a difference from a performance perspective. And obviously Machado has been playing this way for his whole career by his own admission. So everything he has accomplished thus far has come as a sporadic hustler and he's been fantastic. He's been like a hall of Fame level player. So even if he were to suddenly hustle,

it would be just a bonus on top of everything else he already does. So he is worth an enormous contract regardless of the hustle, unless you think there's like some extra negative to the hustle where it hurts team morale or something. Or if you think it's indicative of like, well, you know, he's not hustling now and maybe that extends to his preparation for the game and his conditioning and he's young enough that it hasn't hurt him so far, but hey, we're looking at committing to him for seven or eight years and into his thirties. And maybe the fact that he's not hustling in his early to mid twenties, maybe that indicates that he won't age as well as someone

else. And, you know, I don't know, maybe there's something to that. It's not unreasonable to think that. And as for the other stuff, it's like, I mean, his teammates don't seem to hate him, and other teams do. But if he's on your team and he's good, probably teammates are going to be fine with him and probably his fan base is going to be fine with him. Like Orioles fans love Manny Machado, regardless of the bat throwing incident. I don't think all Dodgers fans turned on Manny Machado for the Jesus Aguilar incident, even though Machado was clearly a rental who probably wouldn't be sticking around so do I root for Machado a little less than before do I have like less warm feelings about him than

I did before yeah I guess so but if I were running a baseball team and just wanted to win and that were paramount all else being equal like if there were an equally good player out there who did not step on people's feet and try to trip them and throw bats at them, like I would prefer that guy. But there aren't many free agents ever who are available who are as good and as young and have the track record of success that Manny Machado does. So there's a scarcity there where it's not like you can say, well, we'll just take this other guy who is just as good but less problematic you if you want that superstar you're gonna have to either sign Machado or Harper and Machado is your infield option so there's just not a whole lot of other ways to go there that's where it comes down you look at Machado's career he he just uh stole the second

most bases he's ever stolen his career he tied his career high for triples over his career he's been like a slightly below average base runner he's got a league average batting average in balls of play also most importantly over what six plus seasons he's been worth 30 wins above replacement he's measured as like a incredible defensive third baseman when he's been able to play third base he got better at shorts up with the Dodgers like you Mny machado presumably couldn't be this good if he didn't care or if he was coasting and i think that's that's kind of what you you worry about is that this is a guy who just isn't like channeling his energy toward being the best player he can be and maybe there's been a little bit of that i don't really know but there have been enough interviews with

machado's teammates or former teammates saying that they actually like playing with him and that he seems like he's a good dude coaches and other players have said that machado's a good guy and sometimes he just you know things get the best of him on the field but if it's if it means anything you can look at machado debuted in the majors in 2012 and it was starting in in 2012 that the Orioles became this weird, rampant overachiever. Like 2012, 2014, 2016, the Orioles were way better than anyone expected them to be, and Machado was a part of those teams. So if you're worried about sort of the team chemistry aspect, at least you can't use that as a negative indicator. The Orioles exceeded expectations with Machado as a core part of the roster. Now, if it were 10 or 15 or 100 years down the line and teams had figured out some way to quantify a guy's clubhouse impact, then I could see maybe, and this is a complete speculation on

my part, maybe if Machado were some sort of net negative in the clubhouse, that's something that you factor into his win estimate. You're like, well like well actually he's worth six wins on the field but he's he kind of costs you a few wins and cohesiveness or whatever the weird sentences are that people are going to be using when we get the science so then it would make sense to dock him money because he would be less valuable but right now i think the teams just wouldn't be able edf teams wouldn't be able to convince themselves that that's true there's not a whole lot of evidence that it's true. I mean, you know, the Dodgers traded for Manny Machado when they were in a tight spot, and they had a good September.

They made it to the World Series. Now, that's a great baseball team. They were supposed to be a really good team, even without Manny Machado, but he didn't seem to make them worse. I mean, the Orioles, for their part, they didn't get worse after they traded Manny Machado, which is weird, but, you know,

this was just an exceptional Orioles team. I'm not going to hold Machado responsible for that, given everything that he did. So in conclusion, wasn't it not even that long ago that people thought Bryce Harper was a little too much of a jerk for teams to want to sign? Like who's worse? Who's less appealing? I don't really mind either one of them in that, like, of all the faults that some players have in Major League Baseball, yeah, I don't. Machado doesn't look good when he loafs it or when he tries to step on somebody's ankle.

Those are bad things to do, but there are so many worse things that players do or have done. There are so many worse things that players do or have done. I know Manny Machado threw a baseball bat, but he didn't. This is a weird thing to justify. He didn't come close to hitting a guy with a baseball bat. The guy was far away. Manny Machado has never thrown a 100-mile-per-hour fastball at somebody's neck. You know, Manny Machado, as far as we know, hasn't been – he hasn't had any off-the-field arrests, right?

I'm not just forgetting something. I don't think Manny Machado has gotten in trouble with the law that we know, hasn't been, he hasn't had any off-the-field arrests, right? I'm not just forgetting something. Like, I don't think Manny Machado's gotten in trouble with the law. No. Yeah, that we know of. So, like, there are actual criminals who are in Major League Baseball, and I just, I don't, I don't care. I think, like you, I don't, Manny Machado wasn't quite to my taste as a player,

but that is subjective on my part. And he is a really, really good player, and teams are going to reward him for that. He is only 26 years old. I had quirks that are no longer true about me. When I was 26 years old, I was less good of a human being. I wasn't stepping on ankles, but I could see myself trying to do it in the heat of the moment. Well, the last thing I guess we should talk about, we're not going to get to that many emails today as it turns out, but one of the people who will now be faced with the decision

of whether to sign Manny Machado, realistically, he's probably not one of those people, but technically one of those people, new GM for the New York Mets, Brody Van Wackenen. new GM for the New York Mets, Brody Van Wagenen. I guess we should talk about this hire because it is not your typical hire. Brody Van Wagenen was the co-head of CAA Sports. He was a very high-powered sports agent, and now he is the general manager of the Mets. And there are a number of things to talk about here. A, there is the question of whether it's a smart hire from the Mets perspective, whether he will be a good GM or whether there's reason to think he will. There's the separate issue of whether it even matters who the Mets GM is as long as the Wilpons are their owners. And then there's the other issue of whether it is unethical or

whether we should be uncomfortable with the idea of an agent going from agenting to general managing. Do you have any thoughts about these three things? Some. So I guess the first thing to acknowledge, I don't know anything about basketball, but my understanding is that there was a player agent who became an executive for the Golden State Warriors and so that has happened. The Warriors are really good. In baseball, the most recent example is that Dave Stewart who had an agency took over the Diamondbacks.

That was a catastrophe but not for agency reasons so much as the bad GM reasons. And Stewart of course did not represent like half of the Diamondbacks roster at the time that he made that switch. And I think Joe Garagiola Jr., who had been a GM of the Diamondbacks earlier and also an agent, I think both of them had had some front office experience prior to that, whereas Van Wagenen has zero. He has been an agent.

He has not worked for a team before this. Yeah, Stewart was an assistant and assistant gm for at least one team maybe a few he was also served in some coaching roles anyway stewart more made a little more more sense now looking at van de wagon let's let's take the take this as birdie van de wagon versus high and bloom the uh assistant gm for the race and the way that i i think about this this is clearly a very volatile decision that the mets have made and in the same way that I think about this, this is clearly a very volatile decision that the Mets have made. And in the same way that I think you and I both think about pitcher hitting, I wouldn't want my favorite team's pitchers to hit, but I'm really glad that it happens, you know, because you get to study it. And if I were a Mets fan, I wouldn't be happy that they hired Brody Van Wagenen. But as an observer, I'm very happy that this is happening because i want to see how it goes which is not to say that this is a certain catastrophe because i don't think that it is if there's one thing that brody van wagon has demonstrated it's that he can work with the will ponds it's that he can

kind of get along with one of the most meddlesome and troubling ownerships in major league baseball so that's that's something he uh he might not be afraid to take them to task there was his whole statement about jacob de grom in a long-term contract in the middle of last year uh i would assume and i think it's pretty clear that like the the mets players have given this the okay those who van wagenen has represented and and i think he went assess but it's just like well he just wants to win you know empty empty statements but he's divested from all of his interests with his old agency which i mean of course he has that would be a weird extra conflict if he hadn't so i i can sort of i can talk myself into seeing the upside here but i

high and bloom would have been so easy and safe and i'm it's easy to say smart. I mean, we can't really know, but it seems like he would be smart. He's had a hand in one of the more successful organizations relative to their budget in Major League Baseball for the last several years. He's got a lot of experience. He's been in like every department besides the active roster that the Rays have in the organization.

And it would have been so simple to hire high and bloom and sell it as look we're moving into the 21st century or whatever teams say like we're well into the 21st century by the way it's 2018 yeah well most teams are yeah yeah so i i think like if for me if there was any concern it would have been whether high and bloom wanted to work for the mets because of the ownership he no one wants to be a gm when you have both your hands side behind your back but it seemed like bloom was quite interested and still the mets went with vanna wacken and so it's it's an oh it's a wild decision they could have it would have been so easy to go the other way but i don't think it's a definite nightmare but it has a lot more nightmare potential than i think

bloom would have yeah and you know there's the, the temptation is just to say, oh, you know, Lowell Mets, the Mets did a Mets thing. Again, they took a situation that could have just made them better. And now it's this wild card and who knows what will happen. But from what I've read, I don't know Brody Van Wagenen, but he seems to be respected and competent, was clearly very successful as an agent. There are, in theory, advantages to having that background as an agent. I mean, you're not bound by convention, front office traditions. You're going to be original in a sense because you're not coming from that background. You're going to be original in a sense because you're not coming from that background.

You have interacted with every team, with every GM, with every ownership group. You probably have a decent sense of how most teams operate and you have some relationships there. So that could be beneficial. reportedly, you know, and according to his own comments, pretty analytics friendly. And to the extent that the Wilpons will allow it seems to be interested in expanding their resources and hiring people, which is good because they're lagging way behind in that area. So, I mean, all of that, I think, says it could be fine. It could work out okay. Maybe it's even an intriguing, it could be fine it could work out okay maybe it's even a intriguing smart out of the box hire that will pay some dividends or something so the question is whether there's some benefit to that institutional knowledge of having been with a baseball team whether when you actually get into

that situation and suddenly you're having to deal with i I mean, contracts, obviously, he's dealt with. That was his job. But just all the administrative stuff, all of the unanticipated challenges of taking over a baseball operations department and hiring people and putting them in place. I mean, any job that you just haven't done at all before, there's going to be a learning curve there. And there are going to be things that you didn't even realize would be hard. And he's been in the game. He's been in the industry. So it won't be all new to him. But there's some risk there. And as for the conflict of interest or potential conflict of

interest, right, he did, as far as we know, divest from all of his financial stake in his agency. Presumably, he like actually did as opposed to like Donald Trump did, where who knows and probably not. But I think if we assume that, yeah, he has no financial stake in those things anymore. And yeah, he's not going to like

enrich himself somehow by giving extensions to his players, like something super obvious like that. I know that the Players Association has still made some comments kind of like wary and leery just because when an agent goes from agent to GM, especially in this case where he represented Cespedes and DeGrom and Todd Frazier and Tebow and others on this team. It's like, you know, your agent's kind of your confidant and knows things that your team doesn't know. He knows what your goals are, what needs to happen to get you to sign an extension. Like there's a lot of personal knowledge there

because these are close relationships and you can't forget about that. So in theory, you're kind of at an advantage when you go into a negotiation having represented someone in negotiations before. You know what they're thinking, what their priorities are. So I don't know. As far as we know, none of these players objected to this.

We have to assume that there have been conversations that we haven't been privy to. I just don't know. That's all kind of private. But you could see why people would be a little uneasy with that. On the other hand, maybe it actually benefits them in some way. It's possible that that happens too just because they have a rapport and he likes these people. And frankly, I don't know whether Jacob deGrom was going to get any money out of the Mets previously.

And maybe now the odds of that have actually gone up. So I don't know. Sheryl Ring has written at length about this and the fiduciary duties of agents. And, of course, Scott Boris has chimed in to say that, well, he's been offered many GM jobs. I'm sure. He hasn't considered them because it's such a clear conflict of interest. That is how he feels or at least what he's saying. And you can kind of understand that, but I don't know.

We don't know how the players feel about this, and you hope that that information and knowledge is not exploited somehow. And if you're a Mets fan, you also hope that the Wilpons just give the guy free reign, because if they don't, it doesn't matter who the GM of the Mets are. It only matters that he's not going to be allowed to spend anything because of the Wilpons. When do you think is the most recent year Scott Boris was offered a GM position? wonder I mean it probably has happened at some point like he's he's clearly sharp and astute and knows players and cares about players I don't know

if caring about players is a benefit to a GM or not but I mean and he his agency obviously like has analytics people like his Boris Corp is like a team almost with a whole baseball operations infrastructure essentially. Plus, he has all these relationships with owners who he goes around the baseball operations department to get giant deals for guys who aren't all that great at baseball anymore. So it would not at all surprise me if one of those owners had pretty recently said, hey, Scott, come work for me. Or maybe teams were so sick of having to give so much money to him and his clients that they figured we'll just hire him and then we won't have to worry about that anymore. So the Nationals. So three points in order. One, speaking to your most recent point, it is absolutely true that brody

van de wagon has information about several mets players that an executive might not otherwise have because like you said they are they do serve as pseudo confidants now if there is an upside to that downside it's that he's not gaining any more information over time like he'll it'll never be more of a disadvantage than it is right now, because with every day that passes with Van Wagenen as the GM, he's not getting that same information that he used to get from his players. And that's temporary. Those players won't last forever on the roster. Now, Van Wagenen might not last forever in his executive role. Well, I can assure you he won't. He will die. But with DeGrom, it's maybe the most visible case.

And that one will be interesting because Van Wagenen has the best understanding of what DeGrom actually wants. Because, you know, he's represented DeGrom through this entire season with through the Mets being bad, through DeGrom talking about an extension or a trade. So he knows what DeGrom's priorities are. So if, for example, DeGrom really badly wants to stay in New York, Van finn wagon might be able to know that he can low ball him and still get a contract a better contract than he might have gotten otherwise so you know that's that's a possible factor but it's for at this point hypothetical or theoretical because we just don't know what kind of advantage that might actually confer or disadvantage depending on your perspective second point there is the benefit had the mets hired high and blue it would

have been like right okay well here's another one of those GM types. A guy who is obviously fit to be a GM is now a GM. Great. We have another sharp, well-educated white dude. And now Brody Van Wagenen is not a diversity hire in any way, but the professional background way. So this is at least a change, which is a different thought process in the front office, which is a good thing for baseball, even though, and I'll say it again, not a diversity hiring. Brody Van Wagenen is very clearly a white man. So we've got a lot of those, but at least he's got a different background. More of a white man, really. Really good. His name is Brody Van Wagenen. so there's we've got a lot of those but at least he's got more of a white man really really good his name is brody and wagonhead uh and the third point this goes back to i think one of the first things you said one of the real hiccups here and arguably the biggest potential hiccup is is like

you talked about there's all this administrative stuff that happens behind the scenes the gm has so many responsibilities that as fans you just think well he gives statements and then he makes trades and signs players that's what the GM does he builds the roster and it's like what it's a dream job he's playing fantasy baseball with millions of dollars in real people's lives hanging in the balance which comes with upsides and downsides but there is you have to build out a staff you have to build out several departments and and I know obviously Brody Van Wagen knows a lot of people in the game and he has presumably assistants or other people who have worked with him at his at the agency but he doesn't have those connections he doesn't have like his his people you know if the mets hired

heimblum he would come with his people some of his people from the rays people that he's worked with before analysts that he trusts and assistant gms or special assistants that he trusts and has developed relationships with. And Brody Van Wagenen probably doesn't really have that. So he's going to have to build out a staff from either people he knows who don't have much experience, or he's going to have to kind of do this almost blind. You know, maybe he'll be helped by Omar Minaya. Maybe that's good. I don't know. I can't tell you if that's good. Maybe he'll just inherit what Sandy Alderson has had in New York and he'll just make do. It's not the worst thing in the world, but when you hire someone who doesn't have those connections, then it does make things a little more difficult.

It makes it harder to get up and running. It just makes it harder to get your feet under you and really get things implemented quickly. So it could be a little era of a lot of false starts and slow going for the Mets before they really get rolling. I don't know how that's going to manifest, but it can manifest in a lot of different ways. Missed paperwork or missed deadlines or you just kind of overlook something

or you don't properly analyze something during the offseason. So the Van Wagenen front office, as it were, is probably not going to be at, I don't know, full steam for a year or two, if then, because it's going to take a while to get set. Not that excited about having to say Brody Van Wagenen this many times. I guess it's the same number of syllables as Alex Anthopoulos, but it doesn't run off the tongue quite as smoothly. but it doesn't run off the tongue quite as smoothly. So got to get used to that. Well, you prepared a stat blast and I don't want it to go to waste.

So let's do the stat blast. Okay. So, you know, would you be happier if they hired Bean Stringfellow instead of Brody Van Wagenen? Would that make a big difference to you? I like that name too. Yeah, it's a little shorter.

They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to Deist-a-plast. Amazing ways, here's today's stat blast. Okay, so for this stat blast, I decided I would just present the final playoff statistics. I like to look at this every year to see how things changed in the playoffs. Now, I will tell you ahead of time, one thing I haven't yet calculated is the percentage of innings thrown by starting pitchers in this year's playoffs. That is harder to grab from baseball reference than most other statistics. So I haven't done that yet. I can tell you basically guaranteed starters through fewer innings than ever. I think that we know that

just because of Liam Hendricks and what the Brewers did. I mean, I'll figure it out while you're talking about other stuff. Perfect. Okay, so what's your resource? Are you also using Baseball Reference? No, there are MLB.com and ESPN.com have postseason stats where you can look up splits, starter, and reliever. So that makes it a lot easier.

It's just annoying because they don't let you go show multiple years at a time, which is irritating when you want to go back to 1995. Anyway, so I have prepared a bunch of the final playoff statistics. This year there were 33 playoff games, or if you want to think of it, 66 team games, because there are two teams in each game. That's 10 fewer games than last year. Last year, the playoffs were more dramatic.

So I don't know. What statistic do you want to know first? Well, time of game, I guess, is the one everyone wonders about. Great. Okay. So I have game length per nine innings. I have it right here in front of me. So in the playoffs this year, the average game length per nine innings was three hours and 40 minutes. That's a lot of time. So that is an exact tie with last year's playoffs, three hours and 40 minutes for nine innings.

But this season in the regular season, the average time of game was five minutes faster. So you could say that the gap between those numbers grew by five minutes between last year and this year since 1995, which is as far back as I've gone. That measures the wildcard era. The average gap between regular season games and playoff games per nine innings is 30 minutes and the gap this year 40 minutes that could be related to this next point i will tell you you probably have a good understanding you're looking up how little

starting pitchers worked in this year's playoffs and unsurprised so i calculated pitchers used per nine innings last year tied the wildcard year high with 4.7 pitchers used per nine innings and this year 5.2 went up a whole half of a pitcher a whole one arm of pat venditti was extra in this year's playoffs so that would help to explain some of the delay not of course the entire delay so one thing that would work against that, if you want to look at runs per nine innings this year in the playoffs, 3.9 relative to 4.5 in the regular season. That's a pretty normal drop-off. Again, over the wildcard era, in the playoffs per nine innings, there's been a half run less in the playoffs than during the regular season. This year, the drop was six-tenths of a run, run so pretty close but back under four runs per nine innings that's a drop of a half run from

last year's playoffs where of course there were a lot of runs especially in game five of the world series a feature from last year's playoffs is that there were a lot of home runs you remember all those home runs i do so last year in the playoffs 51 of all runs scored scored on home runs which was a lot it was a higher than the regular season total which is already an all-time high of 43 percent so uh this year in the regular season it went down only 40 of all runs were scored on homers so that's a return to 2016 levels and this year playoffs, 42% of all runs were scored on homers, which is far more in line with the averages. That's right back with 2016, right back with 2015, right there with 2011. So you might've had the sense that home runs weren't out of control in

the playoffs. And that's true. Home runs were a little more normal during the regular season. And then again, in the playoffs, what else can we look at? Strikeouts would be a good thing to look at. So this year in the regular season, the strikeout rate was an all-time high. You can edit that line and repeat it in every one podcast every year for the foreseeable future. It will never not be true.

Batters struck out 22.3% of the time during the regular season, and in the playoffs, they struck out 24.7% of the time. That is a quarter of the time that batters came up in the playoffs, they struck out 24.7% of the time. That is a quarter of the time that batters came up in the playoffs, they struck out, which was an exact match with last season, 24.7%. Now, those are all-time highs, but at least it shows that the gap between the playoff

strikeout rate and the regular season strikeout rate was not quite as big. It's in keeping with kind of the average gap between the regular season and the playoff strikeout rate was not quite as big. It's in keeping with kind of the average gap between the regular season and the playoff strikeout rate. Normally, strikeouts go up about two percentage points. So just a couple other things to point out. We did, at least in the wildcard year, we did just see the lowest ever batting average. It's slight, but the playoff teams as a whole batted 218, which is down from last year's 223, which was down from 224, which was down from 227, etc. Batting average, of course, usually low in the playoffs, but we've never seen it quite this low. And the on-base percentage was pretty normal at 303, but team slugging was down at 357, which is lower than normal.

at 357, which is lower than normal. So I will just tell you that the league OPS in the playoffs was 659. In the wildcard era, the average playoff OPS was 703. So we see a drop off, but this puts us right back where the league was in 2016, right back where it was in 2014. We've seen a lot of low offense playoffs lately. Last year was sort of the exception. And one thing I like to point out every single year, one of the reasons that playoff performance is so low, anyone listening to this is aware that the league average batting average on balls in play is around 300 every single year.

We know that to be true. And in the playoffs, it's not true. The average BABIP over the course of the wild card era has been all the way down at 282 and this year in the playoffs it was 268 last year in the playoffs 266 before that 274 before that 271 batting average on balls in play drops by a lot in the playoffs now some of that is probably colder weather some of that is probably better defenses some of that's probably optimized defenses and some of that is probably having relievers throw more innings and having pitchers throwing harder you

just everything is working against hitters in the playoffs so you see batting average and balls in play suffer and that is one of the reasons why as you and I talk about all the time around this time of year, that's one of the reasons why it's actually good to lean on the home run in the playoffs because it is so hard to string base runners together. The only thing that really worked in the haters' favor in the playoffs this year is that the walk rate was 10%, which is the highest it's been in the playoffs since the year 2000. So at least batters were finding their way on base, in part because Ryan Madsen wasn't warm yet this year. The league leader in pitching appearances in the playoffs was Ryan Madsen. I'm sure the Dodgers don't regret that at all. Have you figured out your statistics? I have, yeah.

And I have the percentage of innings pitched by relievers in every postseason going back to 2000 because I just did this year and I had done back to 2000 for an article earlier this year. So this year it was 49.7%. That was the percentage of postseason innings pitched by relievers. Of course, that doesn't count openers or bulk guys or whatever. It doesn't classify those guys differently. So that is a record, certainly a record in this time period and safe to say a record forever, at least in the era of many playoff rounds. So last year was also a record, 46.53.

And the year before that was also a record 43.23 so we've seen now for three years in a row unprecedented percentages of innings pitched by relievers in the postseason of course we have also seen that during the regular season where it's gone up from 35 percent in 2015 to 36.7% to 38.1% to this year 40.1% in the regular season. Innings pitched by relievers. This has fluctuated a fair amount in the past, like before anyone was talking about playoff bullpenning or whatever from 2000 to 2014. from 2000 to 2014 like at the low there was 31.2 percent in 2001 that was the year i guess where all of the innings were pitched by kurt schilling and randy johnson and then 2004 i don't know what happened in 2004 but 43.1 which is very high almost as high as it was a couple years ago that year so it has fluctuated

and like 2007 was over 40 percent 2011 when Tony La Russa kind of bullpenned his way to a world series that was over 40 percent 2014 was over 40 percent so obviously like the mix of teams in a postseason and whose starters are available and just who pitches well is going to dictate this stuff pretty heavily. It's a pretty small sample relative to the regular season, but it's very safe to say that now that we're at essentially 50%, that is not an accident. It's not random fluctuation. It is teams choosing to do that. Thank you for reading that math. And it's funny to point out, you can talk about the percentage of innings thrown by starters,

but then there's the innings thrown by starters as starters. And then of course, there are the innings thrown by starters as relievers, which is something we've seen that's anecdotally on the rise, but not even counting like Nathan Uvalde, who just became a reliever, but is a starter. But of course we also saw like Chris Sale working out of the bullpen and

David Price working out of the bullpen, et cetera. We saw this last year. It happened again this year. So it's different. but is a starter. But of course, we also saw Chris Sale working out of the bullpen and David Price working out of the bullpen, etc. We saw this last year. It happened again this year. So it's different. And there are so many interesting ways to try to build a pitching staff. Like you think at the deadline, for example, you can say, well, relievers are at a premium

because everybody wants good relievers at the deadline. And nobody really needs a fifth starter. Well, the Red Sox went out and traded an interesting pitcher in Jalen Be beaks to get nathan uvalde and uvalde was a starter for them but then in the playoffs he was a shutdown reliever for them for the most part and so you could think at the deadline well why pay retail price for a good reliever when you can pay a lesser price for an interesting starter who could become a good reliever. So there's just so many ways to navigate it. You think like the Nationals paid for regular good reliever Kelvin Herrera.

The Astros paid for under-the-radar good reliever Ryan Presley. And the Red Sox paid for under-the-radar good reliever because he's a starter, Nathaniel Valdi. And now two of those teams made the playoffs and one of them won the World Series. But it's just so interesting because you know at the deadline everybody wants more relievers, but it turns out they don't necessarily have to be relievers at the time that you get them.

Yeah, there have been the article I originally did that research about the percentage of postseasonings pitch. That was an article on August 1st, I think, where I wrote about the trade deadline and how there have been more trades, more relievers traded, more total war from relievers traded at the deadline in the last couple of years than had been in the two decades before that. So it's definitely the case that more relievers are being traded. Now, there are just more relievers period in baseball everyone's a reliever at this point and as you're saying some guys who are not relievers

at the deadline are relievers by the time october rolls around but yeah we do see more of that now so do you have time for one email so let's do one email okay all right gary from baltimore says when i lived in northeast ohio one of the most common complaints i would hear was lamenting the indians breaking up the great teams from the 90s despite the fact that those beloved players would have been mostly terrible by that point what if astro's owner jim crane were to take this fan advice to heart and extend everyone on the 2018 Astros 40-man roster lifetime contracts and never change the 40-man roster again. Assuming the players couldn't retire and that the Astros would never have so many injuries that they couldn't physically field a

team, which season would you guess the Astros wouldn't be division favorites? When would they be projected as sub 500? When would they challenge the 2003 Tigers? When would they be Pecos league quality? Oh man. Okay. So Jim Crane, by the way, congratulations on being fantastically wealthy to do this. Cause everyone's going to be so,

okay. You're going to, Hmm. You're going to run into some pitcher injuries pretty quick, but I mean, so for the, Hmm. For the short term, I don't even know the best place to look at like what the astros roster situation is but whatever let's just just open

this up so they everybody on the 40-man roster okay so it's not an old team for the most part right and you look at the stars like Altuve should have another several years Bregman Correa Springer they should be good for a while and right there like those are players good enough to carry a roster to say nothing of like Justin Verlander I would say has at least two more years and Garrett Cole could have a while if he doesn't get hurt and oh man this okay and you have you know like josh james is on yeah right i mean you have like guys who are i assume there's like what kyle tucker and you know top prospects who maybe haven't fully established themselves yet but you get them for

their whole careers okay so the the advantage for the astros is that other than the a's it's not a tough division like the mariners are average and the Angels are average and the Rangers are bad. The Astros are the clear favorites. And now for the sake of continuing this conversation, does this include like they've extended Dallas Keuchel, who's a free agent, and Charlie Morton, who's a free agent? Like they're sticking around too? I think so, yeah. Right. All the 2018 Astros.

Okay. So they have, let's see, they move forward and they have zero flaws? No flaws on the team. Yeah. I mean, I still think the Astros just going by true talent were the best team in baseball this year. Results wise, Red Sox, definitely the best, but in terms of, I don't know if you simulated the season a million times or whatever, I think the Astros are the best team. So yeah, you're starting from the pinnacle. Yeahacle yeah okay so it's another hundred win team next year uh and i think just because of the way that time works players decline randomly players get hurt i think you have to start docking wins starting in like 2020 but i mean the mariners are not going anywhere good

the angels are going to take a little while. Plus, they're going to lose Mike Trout potentially down the road. Rangers are going to take a long time. The Astros would definitely be the favorite in 2019, probably the favorite in 2020. Right. And it's not just taking the Major League roster. That's the thing. It's taking also Kyle Tucker and, well, Josh James is in the majors now. But some of the top prospects, I don't know who.

There are guys on the 40 men who have not played or barely played in the majors who are promising players. And so as guys on the active roster decline and get older, a few of those guys at least will be getting better and replacing them. So they kind of have some internal replacements i mean maybe you'll have some pitchers who have like career-ending injuries and that sort of thing but you're getting some some reinforcements arriving for a while here yeah there's i mean and they have marwin gonzalez so they have like sort of like a backup shortstop but also the backup of the backup shortstop because the backup shortstop is alexregman, and then they have J.D. Davis and A.J. Reid, and they have, like, Francis Martes. Okay.

I think maybe, oh, man. I'm going to say 2022 would be the first year they wouldn't win 90 games. And then from there, you know, they'll just get worse. But even that, I'm not, that's just, I can't point to anyone in particular. That's just guessing that, you know, enough pitchers will end up hurt and worse, because that's just i can't point to anyone in particular that's just guessing that you know enough pitchers will end up hurt and worse because that's just the way that pitching works but there's also the chance and maybe this is true maybe it's not but if there's one team in baseball who's probably like starting to figure out biomechanics it's the astros so like maybe

they're even better than the average team at keeping their own pitchers healthy lance mccullers junior aside so something to keep an eye remember we haven't even mentioned the name Brad Peacock and he's had like one of the best strikeout rates in baseball and was left off the playoff roster because they're so good so yeah it would be a long time I'll say like 2020 man I'll say 2024 would be the first year they're just not a good team okay yeah so this year the Esters had a slightly below league average batting age, and they had a pretty old pitching staff. Actually, their pitching staff was 30 years old on average. You know, you have Verlander in there. You have some guys like that. season age averages perfectly represent their current 40 men but 2024 okay i mean if we say like including the 40 men their average age right now as a team would probably be like what 25 or something like that so you know you figure like in 20 years, they're like 45 on average. They're all Bartolo Colon age.

And assuming they're not all as well preserved as Rafael Palmeiro, like they're going to be 2003 Tigers. They're going to be worse than that at that point. You're going to have lost a lot of players. You're going to start to have trouble actually fielding a full roster for a team or a season. So there's probably like a point where Pecos League, if we're talking like lowest level of indie league, I mean, we could be going like 20 years, right? At least because there are issues. I mean, there are guys who will not be major league quality there will guys who will be super old but most players in the pecos league even though

they're in their 20s they were never close to major league caliber to begin with and so even 40 year old astros are going to be better than a lot of those guys so i i guess all right so you're saying 2024 is the first year they're not good did you say and then they will be bad be bad okay and maybe a couple years after that to like truly terrible replacement level yeah so you know by like 2027, so we're saying like 10 years basically, if you just took the Astros' current 40 men and kept it together for 10 years, they would go from being the best team in baseball to the worst team in baseball. Yeah, the clear worst. Clear worst, yeah, the Orioles.

But yeah, okay, so 10 years to that, and then I don't know how many more years you have to go till they're like bad for just any level of professional baseball like another 10 at least probably more so yeah I guess that that sounds about ballpark right to me god that's do you I know you're looking at the numbers right now but guess yuli guriyev's age uh he's he's older right he's got to be like what early 30s right he's 34 years old yeah okay that's a little older than i thought yeah but you know the astros have ag reed and tyler white and judy davis so you know they'd be able to plug in now they would really be leading on max stassi as the

catcher because brian mccann is the alternative he is 34 years old because what garrett stubbs is not on the 40-man roster yet. There are a lot of good prospects in the Astros system who are yet on the 40-man roster. But, I mean, if you let them sign everyone. Maldonado. Do they get to keep Maldonado? Oh, yeah. He's 32 also.

Yeah, there you go. So, like, if you said, if you wanted to take this to the extreme, as if we haven't been at the extreme yet, what if they signed everybody in the organization like everybody that they have right now is theirs and they can get nobody else or can wait can they still make moves no i don't think they can make moves i think they're just rosters frozen yeah if they could have anyone that goes back to the question of like what's the average expectation for a farm system in any given year? How many major leaguers? How many war do you think you're going to get out of that?

And I have seen articles that answer that question, but I don't remember the answer right now. But the Astros don't have an average farm system. They have one of the best, if not the best at this point. I guess it's not quite Padres quality maybe, but it's up there. And yeah, you're right. Then you'd never have to worry about depth because that could really sink you more quickly than we're saying. Like if you had an injury stack where you just, right, you didn't have a catcher or you just couldn't run a rotation out there because everyone shredded their arms or something. Like if you could have everyone in your organization then you'd at

least have warm bodies to throw out there to fill any hole yeah now all the players presumably under this hypothetical the astros try to keep the same 25 or 40 man roster together as much as they can and so you wouldn't really get a replacement unless you had a major injury because we're just dedicated to keeping it all together so which would start to work to the team's detriment if for example like i don't know tony sip gets hurt and then he misses a few months and his replacement is a lot better but then tony sip is healthy again and by rule you have to put tony sip on the roster instead of the replacement so the people in the minors would start to grow furious pretty quickly so there would be some sort of like team discord because people would be like we're not getting chances please trade us yeah so maybe like the

mutiny would bring that a team from the inside yeah i wonder what yeah would the clubhouse chemistry be incredible because everyone has been playing together for decades or would it be terrible because they've been together for so long and they have no ability to go anywhere else and they're just prisoners of this team and they hate each other? So I'm not sure which would happen. Right, because you could look at it, you know, they could become like 25 snippy old members of a giant polyamorous married couple in the sense where they're just like can we talk to anyone else they would really start to value their time away from the ballpark yeah all right so that is that no i had one other astros related question set aside so i'll just answer that while we're on the subject this one's from earl from portland he says what the heck is up with all the grounded

into double plays that the astros piled up this season? Not sure if there's a stat blast in this, but has a team this good ever been this bad at avoiding double plays? And Earl is right. Baseball Perspectives has a stat called double play percentage, which is just your number of double plays over the opportunities for double plays. And the Astros led the major leagues this year in that stat. They had a 13% double play percentage. Looks like the league average is around 10%. So I went to look for comps, and you don't have to go that far back in history to find another team like this. The 2011 Cardinals, whom we mentioned earlier in this episode, according to Baseball Prospectus,

their offense was almost exactly as good as the 2018 Astros. In fact, they had the 2011 Cardinals as about two points better by true average. And those Cardinals had an even higher double play percentage, 14.6%. So it's not unheard of that these Astros were as good as they were and grounded into as many double plays as they did. Now, it's not just because they're putting a lot of guys on base, because again, this is just out of double play opportunities. And it's kind of strange in that they were not a big ground ball hitting team. But there's not a huge range between teams in double play percentage. So there's

probably a lot of randomness at play. There are only so many double play opportunities. Some hard hit balls can turn into double plays. So you might hit a ball really well and it just won't work out well. And good hitting teams aren't necessarily fast teams that can beat out double plays. So I think that's all it is. Kind of weird, but not the weirdest. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. And five listeners who have recently signed up to do so include Matthew Niederer, Jonathan Sieg, Rob David, Aaron Schaefer, and Joel Gillespie. Thanks to all of you.

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