Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1317: Alphabatical Order

Episode Date: January 3, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Yankees signing Troy Tulowitzki, Whit Merrifield’s vaguely worded optimism about the Royals, and the necessity of unrealistic expectations, then answer listener emails about holiday sports conversations (featuring Ben’s mom’s hot take about Mariano Rivera and the truth about Rivera versus Edgar Martinez), players who are literally in […]

I've been accused of stealing all your plans But they're not there for speaking of foreign times Just to keep the demons in their place The endless senses needed to invite the case Hello and welcome to episode 1317 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs Presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello.

Hey. People really liked our Hall of Fame game from yesterday. I think that should be our new full-time format, just reading artifacts and you ranting about them. They're so... We're not going to do it again. Eduardo Nunez. I look forward to the next one. Okay. All right. So we not going to do it again. Eduardo Nunez. I look forward to the next one. Okay.

All right. So we're going to do emails today. A couple of quick things I guess we should touch on. Troy Tulewitzki, now a New York Yankee. Bujays fans not thrilled about this. Probably not very significant in the long run. Who knows if he'll even enter the season as their starting shortstop, depending on what happens with Manny Machado and other potential shortstops. But what do you think?

It's just insurance, right? Yeah, no, I don't have much in the way of interesting thoughts. I think that with a player like Tulewitzki, what is difficult, not only did he lose all of 2018, he didn't play. If you have somebody who has a really big name and then he has a bad season or just an unproductive season people will sour on that player pretty quick when you have a big name player who doesn't play because of injury then it takes a longer time i think for people to realize that maybe that player isn't just going to bounce back now i know tula whiskey wasn't great the season before when he played half a year, but he missed a whole season, which means he wasn't bad,

but he wasn't good Troy Tulewitzki. He certainly got a year older. I understand that he went through some exercises for a bunch of scouts the other week and his mobility looked good, but, I mean, a bad version, like a 43-year-old version of Troy Tulewitzki would still look good moving around by himself on a field in front of scouts. to lewiski would still look good moving around by himself on a field in front of scouts like he'd still be a really good athlete right so not to diminish what the scouts observed anyway look i want troy to lewiski to bounce back i want all baseball players to be good even though if they i guess if we made all baseball players 100

better the numbers would be the same because someone would still have to get outs or allow hits. But I think Troy Tulewitzki, the response here is outsized due to his name value. But in terms of what's actually likely to happen, I think this is just a neat little thing the Yankees get to do to keep Gleyber Torres in one position for the season because he should be their second baseman. And it's hard for me to care, but for a team to be able to get him to the league minimum, that's pretty handy. Yeah. And it sounds like there was interest in him from multiple teams. I don't know whether that means that the Blue Jays were wrong to just release him instead of trying to trade him. I mean, it sounds like he probably just didn't want a backup role, didn't want to be there in that role. So maybe they just had no choice. I don't know whether

they could have actually gotten some value out of him since they're paying him anyway but probably not a ton for all of the reasons that you're saying here and as for any implications this has for many machado signing with the yankees it's probably right around on par with machado liking and unliking the Yes Network on Instagram in terms of what this means for his eventual destination. So that's like the new non-revelatory slash revelatory rumor genre is now guys just liking and unliking things on Instagram. That's what we're all watching these days. Don't follow anyone. It's just not worth it.

Leave. Your resolution should be to leave the internet. Keep listening to this. Just like set this to auto download or something. But leave the internet. Certainly leave social media. What I do like about the rare case like Tulewitzki is where he is under contract, but he was released. So he's going to play with the Yankees for the league minimum.

But of course, he's still going to get his money. What I like about these cases is that when the player is available on the market, teams can't use money as a separator, right? Because even if the Yankees offered Tulewitzki more money, then that's just less money the Blue Jays would have to pay because he's going to earn a fixed amount. He can't have two contracts at the same time. So he chose the Yankees out of however many teams were available, they were all going to pay him the same amount of money, and he chose the Yankees. Now, I believe he's wanted to play for the Yankees, and a lot of people want to play for the Yankees. It's a neat place to play. The team has a lot of history. You know, the Yankees background, the uniform, and pinstripes, and all that good stuff.

But the Yankees must have made this, I mean, aside from being an appealing place to play, the Yankees must have made the strongest promises to Tulewitzki that he is going to be given the kind of role that he wants. So I don't know whether that's the fact that the Yankees have a clear vacancy at shortstop to begin the season and they're good. Not a lot of other good teams can say the same thing, but for all the questions about how this might affect the Machado pursuit and how it probably doesn't affect the Machado pursuit, Tulewitzki himself must not think that Machado would get in his way because if he thought that, then he probably wouldn't have done this. All right. I was just reading an article on MLB.com about Whit Merrifield and the Royals, and the headline says, Can Casey Steal 250 Bags in 2019? Wit thinks so. And then it's a bunch of quotes from Wit Merrifield about how the Royals can do that and why the Royals might actually be good.

We talked recently about why the Royals will be exciting and all the speed guys they've collected. There has not been even a 200 steal team. I'm looking, I think, since the 2007 Mets, they stole exactly 200, and I believe they were the last team to get to that threshold. The leader last year, I think the Indians had 135, so even to get to 200, let alone 250, would be extraordinary in this era. I don't know that they can do it. It looks to me like the last team to steal 250 was the 1992 Brewers who had 256. So I don't think the Royals are going to get there. I mean, they have all the reason in the world to not care about stolen base efficiency because they're just going to be bad anyway,

so why not be entertaining? There is a line that says Royals officials have theorized that Terrence Gore, even if just used as a late game pinch runner, could get 100 or so opportunities in a full season to steal bases. If Gore were to get 70 steals, and Merrifield gets 40 to 50, and Hamilton and Mondesi get 60 to 70, it's easy to see where that projection of 200 to 250 team steals comes from. It's not easy to see all those things actually happening, though. but what i really enjoyed about this article was the quotes from merrifield just these extremely generic platitudes about how the royals could actually be good which what is he gonna say he's in a tough spot right now the royals are projected to be the third worst team in baseball by fan graphs behind the orioles and

marlins and someone calls up merrifield in january says, hey, is your team going to be good? What's he supposed to say? No, we're going to be completely terrible. But the way that he justifies it, he says, we could have an offense that would be hard to contend with. He says, I like what our young pitchers were able to do last season. If we get a couple of guys who suddenly break through, whether it's in the rotation or the bullpen, we could sneak up on some teams. I don't think a lot of people are thinking too much about us, but at least in the clubhouse, we know there is talent there. We know how good

we can be. We have weapons on offense. We have that potential with the pitching staff. I think it will be really important for us to get off to a good start. That's kind of what killed us last year. But if we get off to a good start. That's kind of what killed us last year. But if we get off to a good start, hey, you don't know what can happen in our division. Well, that sucked. Is that really what? Okay, so let me just quickly review. Was it a bad start?

Was it a bad start that hurt the Royals last season? So they got off. They started. Oh, boy. Okay. Well, do you wear? Tell me. I want you to tell me. The Royals played in September and they went 15 and 13. Is the start the first five months?

Right, that's the problem because they were pretty terrible in like June and July and August too. I mean, maybe by that point they figured, well, we were off to such a terrible start. We might as well just give up. Maybe if they'd just had that 15 and 13 in April, then they would have played harder and they would have won every month. I was going to make some joke. Hold on. Terrence Gore stealing 70 bases out of 100 opportunity. I will, maybe I thought that sounded absurd, but as I look at it in his career, Terrence Gore in the majors has had 46 stolen base opportunities. He stolen 27 bases that's a 59 conversion rate so at least something in that vicinity is possible so that would be fun if you have a guy who never hits but does steal

a bunch of bases uh but it's not going to happen i just like how he he just he didn't mention any specific players or any specific strengths. It was just like, there's potential with those pitchers. And if we get a couple guys who break through, never know, we could sneak up on some guys, especially in this division. And it's like the old, everyone's writing us off. No one believes in us because the Royals are really bad. You were really bad last year and you're gonna be bad again but hopefully fun and interesting and whitmerafield is is not bad i always like the argument if just a few guys break out and have big seasons we can surprise

you every team is like three breakouts from at least being on the fringe of the race. The players don't just do that. Also, Brad Keller's not going to have a.308 ERA again. We have weapons on offense. What is that? How many? The nine guys hit. At least they're going to make some joke about how they won't reach base enough to steal 250 bases, but I guess I don't have a quick enough wit.

Pretty good. Yeah, pretty good. Yeah, usually you get this, you can find this genre of article about every team, but usually it waits till like pitchers and catchers report or like midway through spring training when the beat writers have to write something and they don't know what because nothing is actually happening.

So then you get the stories about, oh, people are counting us out and you never know if every possible thing breaks right. And also things that we can't even anticipate right now. And every other team gets hurt and plays poorly. Well, we could sneak up on some people. Anyway, you can find that for every team every year. It's a new year. Why not be optimistic about your team? When you go to spring training and your team is together, all the kids, all the veterans, and you're just doing like intra-squad stuff and you're seeing your guys take batting practice, you're seeing your guys throw bullpens. As a player, you must think like, oh, yeah, we got a lot of talent.

We're going to do it. We got a lot of talent this season. Look at these players. This is some of the best players in the world. And they are by like the best thousand players in the world. Best players in the world, and they are by, like, the best thousand players in the world. But the problem is when you go play a game against the Red Sox in, like, May, and you see your pile of crap Royals team going up against, like, Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez and Chris Sale and Xander Bogarts and all the other—Andrew Benintendi

and then all the other pitchers and the hitters. Eduardo Nunez. Eduardo Nunez and his game used bats although I understand he's down one from his previous collection. I don't know how you then so where you are now the Royals are about as far away from playing a good team

as you can be. Like they've all the memories from last year now are gone. They've faded into a fog and you always remember good things. You always remember things as being better than they were. Yeah.

Like going to the dentist. 15 and 13 September. That's right. And on a high note. Yeah. Great way to finish. But they're also, like it's just the new year,

the holidays are over, you're in a good mood and you're like, not even thinking about how things look for the next season. But holy crap are the Royals

going to be bad. They're going to be a bad team. They're going to get destroyed unless, I don't know, seven? Seven players break out and have all-star caliber seasons. Then they might be in the thick of the wildcard race. I don't know.

They got some weapons. They got some potential out there. Oh, man. All right. What would a team have to be? What would the players have to be in a What would have to, what would the players have to be in a roster for someone to be like, actually, no, we don't have potential. What is that? Where is, what is potential? Yeah. Everyone has potential, but if you were a player, would you

look at things this way? Cause this is how you approach hockey, right? You're a hockey fan and you don't look at hockey projections and advanced hockey stats. You just want to appreciate it as a fan and not know too much. If you were a player, if you just suddenly had the talent to be a player and yet you were still you and you had all your knowledge, would you just stop looking at stats and stop looking at projections? Would you want to be able to convince yourself that, hey, we got a couple guys that they could break out? Or would you just be sitting there in the clubhouse thinking, oh, we're projected for 63 wins this year? Now, I think you have to convince yourself. I mean, you should have some understanding of how your team is perceived, whether you're in the highest year, the middle tier, or the lowest year. But you can't, I don't think you can go

into a season just thinking like, what does it even matter what I do? Because that's just the wrong way to be motivated. You have to think that you're working towards something. Because look, Whit Merrifield is going to have five and a half months of acknowledging that his Royals team is terrible. Like at least give him the first two or three weeks of being like, maybe we won't. Uh-oh. That's when the game starts. Yeah. All right.

I just went to MLB Trade Rumors. Wasn't Jairo Diaz your guy From the minor league free agent draft? Wasn't he the guy who you said was out there? He's one of them Yeah, he's no longer out there He was signed by the Rockies to a new Minors contract

Does not include an invitation to spring training That's a scary sign Won't need it You know, the team that Jairo Diaz plays for in spring training has a lot of potential. There are some real weapons in that lineup. And don't be surprised if that collection of AAA regulars is better than next year's 2019 Kansas City Royals led by Whit Merrifield and others. The Rockies' potential is more real than the Royals' potential. That is for sure.

All right. Jared says, during the holidays, my family members always bring up sports to me, with some being more knowledgeable than others. Usually there are a few ridiculous opinions in these conversations. This year, the best was that the Yankees should trade judge for Steven Strasburg and then sign Bryce Harper. Is this something that happens to you as writers and what's been the most ridiculous one you've heard? Trade proposals or just general baseball conversations? General opinions. Is this something that happens to you when you go home for the holidays? Nobody in my family cares about baseball like at all and so no one even tries. Like I think my mom and stepdad toured Petco Park

once on like a work thing, but that was it. They have a vague understanding of what it is that I do. But other than that, at least that covers the family. But does anyone in your family care? No, not at all. Yeah, no one in my family cares about baseball. No one in like my immediate comes to Christmas with me family really cares about sports at all. So we occasionally have conversations that are just like, how do you do fellow sports fans kind of conversations where they'll just, you know,

try to make a connection with me by bringing up baseball or something. And it's always like the most surface level conversation. But I think they've grown to understand that they don't need to do that because I can talk about other things and in fact would prefer to talk about other things when I'm not talking about it professionally. And so we don't need to maintain this charade of them being interested in baseball and that family friend is into baseball. And then it's like, oh, you should talk to Ben. You know what Ben does? Something with the internet and baseball. Something he talks. There's a podcast.

How do you get that? So we get that kind of conversation, but nothing too forced and no real ridiculous opinions. The only one I can think of, my mom is like a very superficial baseball fan, Yankees fan, I think mostly just kind of to connect with me. And she had a brother who was a big Yankees fan. So she maintained and probably still maintains to this day that Mariano Rivera was bad. That if she had a Hall of Fame vote mariana rivera would definitely not be unanimous because she would not be casting one for him it was the most infuriating thing during his entire career when rivera would come in and we'd be watching or listening to a game together she'd

just be like oh here comes rivera here we go again it was was like the sort of reaction that you would get when, I don't know, like Fernando Rodney comes in or like Armando Benitez or something. Like someone who deserves that kind of reaction, she would do with Rivera, which I don't know how that started. I think it was because like she doesn't watch baseball that regularly so she watched like 2001 game seven and like you know the 97 game when he gave up the homer to sandy alomar so like she saw like the the couple times when he actually blew one in the like many like hundreds of opportunities he had and so she formed this impression of marianaiano Rivera as overrated and like not dependable, which is the furthest you could possibly get from the truth. And so we would have these arguments where I would explain, no, he's actually like maybe the best who's ever done this thing. And you're criticizing him. Anyway, this probably tells you a lot about my mom and about me. And this is why I insist on podcasting every single day and don't take Christmas week off because I was raised by

someone who criticizes Mariano Rivera. I have never once in my life even considered the possibility that there was one person on the planet aware of Mariano Rivera who thought that he was bad. I can't imagine the impossible standards that have been set for you from the very beginning. Just so you know, you write about baseball and video games on the internet. You didn't get there, Ben. Whatever it is that your mom wanted you to be, you are leagues short of the goal. And you don't have the youthful ambition anymore so you get to go to every family gathering it's just a colossal disappointment relative to your mom's

unreasonably exorbitant standards for human performance mariano rivera is bad quote pretty shaky yep can't trust that guy. He is a failed starter. Even in the game seven. Even in the game seven against the Diamondbacks, he wasn't even bad. It was just like bloops and stuff

and like a throwing error. He had a throwing error. He threw that ball away. Yeah. Oh, man. Anyway. Yeah. Put that opinion

in the Hall of Fame over Eduardo Nunez's bat. It's an extremely hot take. It is probably the hottest take ever that Mario Rivera is a choker. I've never – I thought it was absurd when we had the opinion expressed on this very podcast that Bryce Harper is better than Mike Trout. I thought that was over the top by a professional international comedian. Not the hottest take. This is, I mean this, this is not hyperbole in the moment. I mean this with sincerity in my heart. This might be the hottest baseball take I've ever heard.

Maybe I should have my mom on to defend this take when Rivera gets into the Hall of Fame and she's dismayed. Ugh, alled. Ugh. All right. Continuing. I should say that even though no one in my family cares about baseball, my fiancé's brother is a Mariners fan, and so I've talked to him. And, you know, he's a pretty smart Mariners fan,

so we've talked about them on more than just a superficial level. But my fiancé's dad is a tough nut to crack, and I did not do a very good job of making a first impression because I almost cut my thumb off with an ax. So we don't talk about a whole lot but he lives outside seattle and is aware of the mariners used to take the kids to mariners games and stuff so i was finally i've known this man for six years to whatever extent it is that i know him as an individual and we've never had like a real conversation but i was able to get him to like to crack a little bit with this this little pearl i got in las vegas when by complete surprise i needed a rest from the the media room so i went to the men's room and i had the the distinct

privilege of using the urinal next to edgar mart And that was the thing that got him to raise his eyebrows and be like, oh, really? Oh, you peed next to the greatest designated hitter, except for apparently Harold Baines in the history of Major League Baseball. So it had absolutely nothing to do. I guess it's somewhat related to me and my work because if I didn't work to have my job, I wouldn't have been able to pee next to Edgar Martinez. But then again, if I'd just been some deadbeat who was in Vegas on like a Tuesday, then I could have still been in the Mandalay Bay and used the same restroom, I guess. So it was somewhat my responsibility.

Did he ask for details or was that just a raised eyebrow? I am glad that he did not. You know who probably also doesn't think Mariano Rivera is that good? Edgar Martinez, right? He's a 579, 652, 1053 lifetime hitter against Mariano Rivera in 23 plate appearances. Maybe my mom only saw Mariano Rivera's plate appearances against Edgar Martinez. That could be the explanation. Can I address that real quick? Because there is, look, I love that fun fact as much as anybody else. Being a Mariners bias guy, I think it's great. But I mean,

you've looked at this, right? You've examined why that happened, how that happened. I haven't looked pitch by pitch or anything. Is there a caveat here? I mean, he has a couple homers and what, four strikeouts, three walks. pretty good what's wrong with this line so yeah edgar martinez in his career 19 at bats against mariano rivera 11 hits just phenomenally good because you'd imagine that the average hitter would have like 11 hits and 100 at bats against mariano rivera but if you actually dig into this, in 1995, the first season that Edgar faced Mariano Rivera, he went five for six with both of his home runs. Mariano Rivera in 1995 was not good. Yeah, he was a bad pitcher and he was like a... Padding the stats. Exactly. And so

take that away. And all of a sudden, Edgar is six for 13, which is, of course, still good. But then the next season, he went two for two with two doubles. And Mariano Rivera's zero. And both of the homers were a 95, too. Both of the homers were a 95. So from 1997 through 2004, the last time that Edgar faced Mariano Rivera, he went three for eight, which is fine. But it's three for eight with three strikeouts and no extra base hits.

So Edgar Martinez was really good against Mariano Rivera. That is plain as day. I see it right here. He homered the first time he ever faced him. Edgar Martinez's first four plate appearances against Mariano Rivera, all in 1995. Home run, single, walk, home run. Did pretty good.

Edgar Martinez, though, through the end of his career, did much worse because guess what? Mariano Rivera, phenomenal. So it was stat padding this fun fact to everyone i have if i ever see i i've i've met your mom before now that was before i was on the podcast but she was there when you were doing a book signing at that Staten Island game event. That was a – All right, yeah. And I am glad that I met her before I knew this about her because I would not have been so polite. Okay.

Continuing on, Zach says, I was putting some baseball cards in sleeves and I got to 1991 Braves outfielder Tommy Gregg. On this card was greg fouling a bunt straight down in the dirt my question is what would be the worst cover pick for a baseball card adam lynn's baby powder fart comes to mind for me okay fouling a bunt straight down it's pretty bad now okay there's there's embarrassing there's the uh well i shouldn't say the word but there's the there's the ripken card that everybody knows and that's that's embarrassing in its own way there now there you could you take a game picture of someone but then you just so happen to get a picture of him like getting hit in the back or like the butt i guess with a pitch that would

be pretty bad a foul bunt that says a lot, right? That's revealing. If the best action you could get was a dude bunting, there must be a group of worst possible pictures, but this is one of the worst that I can think of right now. One that comes to mind for me, maybe you've seen this, is Bill Pakoda's 1991 Fleer, which you can quickly Google to refresh your memory. And this one, I think this is worse because in this pick, Bill Pakoda has just swung through. He has clearly just swung and missed at a pitch that is now behind him. I don't know how this ends up being his baseball card, but right? I mean, there's nothing I'm missing here. He just clearly missed the pitch, and that's what they chose.

So Bill Pakoda, Pakoda's namesake, that's not a flattering pick. And when I just Googled to see that, I saw that Bill Pakoda's 1992 upper deck card is him falling backwards and gliding with someone as he catches a pop-up, which is not very flattering either. But yeah, 1991, Fleer, Bill Pakoda. That is my pick. Yeah, okay, that one is genuinely terrible. And the only thing I can't figure out is whether it would be worse to have a picture of you swinging and missing or take that pop-up picture and say that maybe the ball is below his glove as if he hasn't caught a pop-up that might be more embarrassing because you're supposed to catch pop-ups but at least there you could say well the sun was in my eyes when you're swinging and missing like i bill picota must have

at least like taken a pitch at some point right there's got to be a picture of it you would think all right question from bruno in brazil this is a question related to free agency and the perception of economics and baseball he says in general there seems to be a perception shift in major sports compared to some decades ago when talking about finances player salaries and money It seems today that many, maybe most fans, tend to side with owners and management who are billionaires making more and more millions off being baseball owners and against the players whose careers are usually very short,

the odds of making it are very low, and who are the ones we actually enjoy watching play the game at high levels. Whenever there is talk of a strike, collusion, or player salaries, all I seem to hear and read is that players are millionaires complaining that they don't make enough millions, that they should be thankful, etc. I've even had a fan tell me that the owners are the ones allowing the players to play, so they should be compensated more than the players. Why do you think that is? What changed it? influence on this of player salaries being public knowledge and their collective bargaining being somewhat public on the side of the players while the team's financial situation and profits are

secret and their negotiations are always behind closed doors well that last part is really difficult for me to try to explain on the podcast i don't know why we have access to some i know we're not technically supposed to have access i don't think to player contract information but it just always comes out anyway like but i'm pretty sure it's like when you get a press release from a team that's announced like i got a an email from the mariners just today a few hours ago announcing that we they officially have signed yusei kikuchi and what it says in there is that the mayor signed him to a four-year contract but it doesn't mention the terms they never the official releases never mention the terms it always comes out right official releases never mentioned the terms. It always comes out somewhere else.

I don't know who's responsible for that, but clearly it's not like this is hidden privileged information. It would be nice to have access to the team's books, but guess what? We don't. We've talked about that before. I would imagine, now, first of all, I don't know to what extent the conversation has actually changed.

I think that when the chips are on the table, the majority of people are still going to side with the teams and the owners. And I think the primary reason for that is that people generally watch sports because they root for teams. And you want the teams to do well. And when the team is not active because there are no games to be played, you think, well, why want just take their jobs everyone is paid well because everyone is paid well and why won't they just play and when it comes to uh to free agent signings fans of teams want their teams to be as good as possible so they don't want them to throw money away or overspend on a free agent and so just the way that baseball has been written about and the way that baseball has enjoyed and consumed leads one to have uh possess a sort of like i'm i i don't

want to say pro owner or anti-labor perspective but a team first priority it's the same reason that when your favorite team trades away the best player that they have generally not the case always but the case for most people generally you will keep rooting for the team. You will lose touch with that player and you'll find somebody else that you love currently on the roster. Now, I don't know, do you think it's changed significantly in the last little while or is it just that we exist in a bubble where we are more aware of the people who do write about the importance of salaries. Yeah, I don't think it's changed certainly since the strike, the last strike. I mean, I think what has changed is sentiment has swung in the other direction among media members. I would say certainly it's much more common to hear writers and pundits have a pro-player stance more so than pro-ownership stance. So I think that has changed as maybe the sports writing profession and makeup has gotten a

little more liberal. But I think that it's partially because of the salaries and because player salaries did not used to be public. And then people like Murray Chess and I think Ron Blum at the AP were instrumental in reporting that stuff. And then it just became standard for it to be reported. And as you said and as Bruno said, we don't know exactly what the teams are making, and so it's easier to pretend that they are not making money hand over fist,

which of course they are, whereas the players, we know for sure that they are, and we know exactly how much it is. And maybe it's just, you know, it used to be that players were somewhat well-paid relative to the average civilian, but not that much more. They still had off-season jobs. They were still sort of in the same general tax bracket, and now they're in a completely different one. And so I think it's partly that. It's partly also, I think, that people perceive owners to have earned the money in some business way. Like they, you know, rags to riches,

they work their way up, which of course is very often not the case with baseball owners and sports franchise owners. Whereas players are playing a game. They're playing a game that we all play. None of us necessarily understand how people who own baseball teams got to the point where they could own a baseball team, but I think we've all played baseball and it seems like such a silly endeavor

that people think, well, it's just a game. Why would they even hold out for 20 million instead of 18 million? They're doing something that's fun. I would do this for free. How could they insist on making more money? And, of course, it's because they're generating tons of money, and that money has to go somewhere. But I think that's a big part of it too. I think at a certain point, the average fan just kind of tunes out. When it comes to player salary, if the league minimum is, what is it, about $525,000 a season right now, somewhere around there, the average salary is somewhere between $3 and $4 million, I think. I don't know where the median is, but it's somewhere in the seven figures, I would imagine. these people be concerned about not making more money. It's so much money. It's more money than almost anyone will ever make in a year.

So fans just see that. They know what the numbers are. They know certainly what the highest salaries and biggest contracts are. And they think, well, it's ridiculous that these people are asking for more money, that they should want more money. Now, what has not been done well and what should be made abundantly clear as often as possible is that when the teams spend less the owners make more money and people not enough people i think look at these things as you either want money to go to the millionaires

or the billionaires because that is the that is essentially the the math of it now you can say it should go to the thousandaires by sending it to the minor leagues but that's a different conversation i think that if you asked people individually and if you framed the question right people would say no i support the players but because again fans are are fans of teams more than they're fans of anything else they don't want their team to be the team that overpays the next player because they want their team to be as good as possible and as efficient as possible because people have come to understand that teams have to be as efficient as they can with the resources if they want to be complete and versatile and all that stuff so i think it's one of it's kind of like i don't know affordable housing a lot of people support it but

few people want it next to them it's like uh if you fans would probably like players to make more and take more money from the billionaire owners but they don't want their team to be the team to overpay because they know that's going to lead the team to be worse in the future so i don't know how you resolve that but it should at least be a point for the media to make clear that you know the money is going to go somewhere and just because it's not spent on players doesn't mean that money doesn't then end up somewhere end up in somebody's pocket it just ends up in far deeper pockets than you realize all right right. You have a step list? A little bit. 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 days still past. And as you might be able to guess, it's about our favorite player in the world, Williams Estadio, because the Venezuelan Winter League season is over. Now they're going to go to the playoffs. So that's one thing to consider, but Winter League season is over. Now they're going to go to the playoffs. So that's one thing to consider.

But the regular season is complete. And thanks to our friend Octavio Hernandez, I have become aware of the website Pelotabinaria.com. I don't know if you've ever been there. But it is essentially a slightly inferior but still incredible source of information for the Venezuelan Winter League. It's like the Venezuelan Winter League baseball reference. It even has a play index, which is incredible. So, William Testadio, who we discussed the other day that he finished very strong in the last 10 games.

He had five home runs. I saw a tweet from DirecTV Sports Venezuela. It's a verified account, so whatever. But they have a poll here. With the numbers in hand, this is now, I'm posting this in English or reading this in English. With the numbers in hand, who should be the MVP of the season? A, Delman Young. B, Williams Astadillo. C, Franklin Barreto. D, other. And then they ask for responses. I have a tweet from a verified account, Grunfeld Marcos.

I have a tweet from a verified account, Grunfeld Marcos. Marcos Grunfeld M, I guess. I don't know why that is the handle. It doesn't matter. But it says that, I think that for me today, the MVP of the Venezuelan Winter League is between Franklin Barreto and Williams Estadio. The thing about Delman Young is, well, this is now paraphrased because this is a bad Google Twitter translation. But the thing about Delman Young is that, you know, you have to think about defense and he plays bad defense. So Barreto and Williams Estadio play defense. And we have from our friend Octavio that he would also support Williams Estadio for MVP. So Estadio first appeared in the Venezuelan Winter League in 2014-2015, that brief winter. So I went back using the multi-year combination feature

on the website to look. I was able to grab, since 2014-2015, the top 100 players in plate appearances in the Venezuelan Winter League. I couldn't get all of the players above a certain threshold, but I got the top 100. So overall, over the past, what is this, five years, Williams Estadio has batted 705 times

in venezuela that is a lot and in those plate appearances do you want to guess his number of strikeouts boy maybe nope okay 15 15 15 strikeouts So just out of this list of 100 players, the 100 players who have batted the most often since Astadio's first time playing in Venezuela, I created a column for strikeout rate. Now, I will say the highest strikeout rate in the sample is 28%. The average strikeout rate in Venezuela is a little bit lower than you see in the major leagues just for a variety of reasons. But I guess I will read. The average strikeout rate in Venezuela is a little bit lower than you see in the major leagues, just for a variety of reasons. But I guess I will read.

You might remember that during the summer we were annoyed by a Breivik Valera fun fact because he made a lot of contact. He wouldn't go away. So he has posted the third lowest strikeout rate over the past five years in Venezuela. 6.3%. Third lowest. Diamondbacks forearm hand, Ildemar Vargas is second place. 6.1% strikeout rate hand ildemar vargas is second place 6.1 percent strikeout rate ildemar vargas first place of course williams estadio 2.1 percent strikeout rate it's uh he's basically a third of the next lowest strikeout rate in the entire sample 2.1 percent strikeout rate i'm going to be posting at fangraphs i think on on thursday just a

sort of heads up update everybody knows williams astadillo doesn't strike out that's like the thing and a bunch of the walks that he drew this year turned out to be intentional i think half of them were intentional so it's not like he's suddenly a guy who walks a lot but it's interesting i think to notice that this winter and even last winter a little bit in Venezuela he has turned on the power without striking out this is like the latest turn by Astadio that as uh as mentioned the other day he is turning into something of a one true outcome player as opposed to the zero that he was before so anyway uh it doesn't strike out and he is some sort of record holder in Venezuela almost certainly he's amazing and he might well win this Winter Ball season's MVP award. Yeah, Octavio told me that last winter's

MVP award was announced on January 14th. So we are close to finding out whether he wins that. Of course, we are rooting for him. I have a couple stat blasty answers of my own here. So this one comes from Ed in St. Paul. He says, I was looking at John Jaso's career, former Effectively Wild guest, and I noticed that he never had enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title. Is he the position player to have the best career despite never playing a quote-unquote full season. I was able to look this up using the wonderful leaderboards at Fangraphs. I just exported all of the careers since 1876, and then also exported all of the qualified seasons since 1876, and I looked for guys who had the highest career wars,

but who never appeared on the single-season qualified spreadsheet, and I arrived at an answer. John Jaso is not the best such player. In fact, he is only the 62nd best player who never had a qualified season. John Jaso, 9.4 fangraphs were never qualified for the batting title. As you might imagine, many of the people ahead of him were also catchers all the time or part of the time. It is harder for catchers to qualify for the batting title because it's harder for them to play lots of games because they get banged up and they need days off. So the best

player in terms of career war never to qualify for the batting title in any individual season is Rick Dempsey, catcher, of course, who was worth 27.7 war in his career. I just scanned the top 25 guys on the career war list, and all but five of them were catchers, either all the time or part of the time. So the best non-catcher on this list is Bernie Carbo, who was a 1975 World Series star and also known as one of the first players to bring a blow dryer into the clubhouse. Important boundary breaker. So the only five players who were not catchers in the top 25, Bernie Carbo, Gary Reneke, Cliff Johnson, Rance Mullenix, and Manny Mota. So that is the answer to that question. And that's pretty simple. Now, this one I'm excited about. I like this one. And this was beyond my ability to answer on my own. This one

comes from Evan. Has any team ever started a lineup whose nine hitters were in alphabetical order by last name? My internet skills are not strong enough to answer this question myself, but I'm hoping you guys can find an answer. With nine players, there are nine factorial possible orderings in a given lineup. That's 362,880. Only one of them is in proper alphabetical order. There have been about 217,000 MLB games and about 434,000 lineups, so it's possible that we've never seen an alphabetical lineup, which is pretty interesting, because if you just asked me about this off the cuff and I had no time to think about it, I would have said, yeah, sure, we've definitely seen an alphabetical lineup. Think about how many baseball games there have been. But it's actually, odds-wise, not overwhelmingly likely that we have. So this one I could not answer on my own I sent it to stat blast

specialist Dan Hirsch of baseball reference and I thought this one might be tough and I didn't know whether it would be worth his time I'm always weighing whether to send him these things or not because I bug him enough as it is if I could just bug him about everything I'd probably email him every day

I try to restrain myself so this this one, I just said, this might be more trouble than it's worth, but if you feel like it, he emailed me an hour and a half later with the answer, of course. And I don't even know how long it took him to see the email. So for all I know, it took him five minutes to actually look this up. So he says, apologetically, just a note note We have lineups for more than 180,000 games We don't have them for most 19th century games So this isn't complete I forgive you Dan Hirsch for not having all the lineups

For 19th century games He says among the 360,000 540 lineups That we do have Just one was in alphabetical order By last name. Just one. Yeah, that's kind of incredible, right?

So the magic alphabetical order lineup occurred on May 12th, 1934, Cincinnati Reds versus Boston Braves. I bet the, let's see how many people were in attendance that day, not given. So I bet the not given people who were in attendance that day probably didn't even realize what they were seeing. But the Cincinnati Reds lineup on that day, here it is. It actually includes a couple of Hall of Famers, although not really good Hall of Famers, but here we go. Sparky Adams, Link Blakely, Jim Bottomley, Chick Hafe, Mark Koenig, Johnny Moore, Bob O'Farrell, Gordon Slade, Alan Stout.

And this is interesting because Bob O'Farrell was actually the manager too. He was the player manager. So he made up this lineup and he put himself in it and he made the alphabetical order lineup happen. And he was fired later that season. So this did not give him any job security but that is pretty cool Totally happened once in Recorded baseball history and The first eight

Then he went above and beyond all I asked Was for alphabetical but he says just because I was curious I checked to see the Number of occurrences through each lineup spot So through the first eight There have only been 14 occurrences Through the first 770 and then it gets bigger from there but yeah only one time they say you see something new in a baseball game

every day and that was the new thing for that game i was actually going to guess that it's happened something like five or ten times not because of probability but just because of you know those games where like a guy plays at all nine positions and you think like toward the end of the season, managers would just do it on a lark. But one, that is the perfect amount. Either one or zero was the perfect response to this question. And I'm glad that it was one of them. Yeah, me too. All right.

Well, thanks to Dan and thanks to Evan for the question. Taylor says in episode 1316, Ben said the following. Hopefully Joe Maurer himself will one day be in the Hall of Fame or at least a plaque with his likeness. This got me thinking, what if when players were elected to the Hall of Fame, they themselves had to physically stand in the Hall of Fame for everyone? There would be no plaque, just a nameplate and the actual player either telling you some fun facts about himself. Either telling you some fun facts about himself. This would be required by law. Somehow I'm not sure how the law works. What would their work schedule be? Would they just be required to stand in their booth during the baseball season?

Or would they have to be in Cooperstown a certain percentage of the time throughout the year? Also, would players actively campaign against themselves getting in on the basis of not wanting to stand in a booth in Cooperstown until they die. Would Hall of Fame players try to play into their 70s so they would have less time to spend in their booth? Well, Pete Rose would be the only player in the Hall of Fame, as would be his punishment. Yes, he'd be just signing baseballs all day in the Hall of Fame. I've thought about this premise before which is just absurd uh i've thought about like they should at least like players should have windows of availability where they actually do show up for at least like eight hours or however long the well they show up for the induction ceremony but but that's about it yeah and they should like every day of the year some living well maybe

that's too many look i don't know but every day of the year, some living, well, maybe that's too many. Look, I don't know. But every day of the year, there should be some sort of, like, historical baseball figure of significance available in the Hall of Fame just standing around like an item. Like, Eduardo Nunes is there by his bat being like, one day, I swung this bat at a pitch out of the zone, and I missed it. That was the first pitch of the bat. It was a slider. The next pitch, I swung again at a slider out of the zone. I tipped it, but I struck.

Anyway, but I never thought about the eternal punishment aspect of this. And I think what would... So there would be a few things that would happen. You would have players campaigning against themselves for sure. You would have players refusing to end their careers for sure. You would have players who flee to other countries and never return. You would have – you wonder. There could be players who play worse because they don't want to end up in the Hall of Fame.

And in the Hall of Fame, were this to be the way that things work, only would you have i would say common murder of players just so players could go spend their time in actual jail instead of baseball jail but they were not like you couldn't like i don't want to get grisly aside from already talking about murder but like you wouldn't be able to let players have access to rope. Right. Yeah, this sounds like an absolute nightmare because as Nate Fryman, former podcast guest, was saying to me the other day, everyone, well, you hope at least

that you are a former player longer than you were a player. And so if you are a Hall of Fame player, you would be in the Hall of Fame literally for a lot longer than you were not. And that is no way to spend your golden years. So yeah, this would be a life sentence. I mean, literally, this would be like that. And not only could you, you'd wish for solitary confinement after some period of time of just like kids coming up to you and asking you about yourself and

throwing things at you this would be a living hell you would never see your family your children they would be stripped from you because you wouldn't even you would players would become divorced like in a hurry uh without any question and then there's no possibility of parole that's just you're in the hall of fame you get no custody of your children because you were just you were an absent father figure best case scenario you get to sleep in a cooperstown apartment or hotel or even luxurious house look i don't know you've made your money you've played baseball but then you have to go back cooperstown visits maybe i don't know how that would work. How, okay, how could we make this livable? If every great baseball player who goes to the Hall of Fame, oh, actually, you know what would happen? Steroids. Every player would take steroids. That's the answer. Forget everything we've already talked about. Next question comes from Daniel, who says, I was recently thinking about how baseball has been trying to increase fan engagement, and the thought occurred to me, what if fans were able to have input on in-game decisions?

Let's say they were able to vote in via text on their smartphones and could make one managerial decision a game. Let's say we start with pitchers. The vote would be on when to take out the pitcher or who would relieve the current pitcher or what pitch limit they would have or when to intentionally walk a batter what kind of nonsense would occur and what would be the most common silly decision fans would make could you imagine mike trout being intentionally walked every time or would there be much difference between fans and current mlb managers so there are a couple historical precedents for this of famously, Bill Veck did this for one game in 1951, I believe it was, August 1951. This was one of Bill Veck's gimmicks with the St. Louis Browns, where certain fans behind the grandstand, they were able to hold up placards and vote yes or no on certain decisions. This game was actually started by effectively

wild legend Ned Garver. And Ned Garver, I guess, has been the only pitcher probably in Major League history to have had his fate determined by fans. Ned Garver gave up three runs in the first inning of that game. And so the fans voted on whether to pull him or keep him in. And they voted to keep him in the game, which was smart because he only gave up three more hits the rest of the game and held the athletics scoreless for eight innings and ended up pitching a complete game. So this happened, the grandstand game. This was a one-time thing. There was also a case in 2006 where there was an independent league team I know this because

A Patreon supporter Derek emailed us about this not long ago The Schomburg Flyers Of the Northern League Were trying to crowdsource Something it was called like Fan Club Reality Baseball And the idea was that you would have

Fans vote on decisions And the batting lineup and positions And the pitching roster. And I don't actually know how this went. I couldn't really find much of a follow up. Obviously, this didn't really catch on. So it's more possible than ever, just because technology makes it easier than it was in 1951. technology makes it easier than it was in 1951. What's that famous quote that's floated around? It's not actually by Winston Churchill, but it's been attributed to him. The best argument against democracy is the five-minute conversation with the average voter. I think there's a little bit of that that would play in here. You would have – baseball would be pulled in some interesting directions because on the one hand, you would have a lot of people who were – to whatever extent you want the game to change with the times,

a lot of people who were like to whatever extent you want the game to change with the times it would change even more glacially slowly than it already has because people would be generally wedded to the ideas the traditional ideas they already possess but you would also have some younger fans baseball does have some of them who would be like yeah you know what make everything weird just chaos vote third party and then you would have whatever the result of that is but i think because most people who would be present and who would be participating in this are going to be older you would have starting pitchers well the starter would definitely have returned starters would almost never be pulled until it's entirely too late and then the fans would have no one but

themselves to blame so starters would be out there the best relief pitchers would pitch entirely too often because you had to have no understanding of when someone isn't available now whether the players would have some opportunity to say no don't use me i can't pitch today i'm very ill or like you've already had me try to close 47 games in a row i need a day off i don't know if players would be able to say no but he would have overuse of the best players without question i mean how how much do you open this up do you have fans elect whether or not to shift how far you shift with the lineup order like how many different tactics the game would slow down by oh my god a lot of amount of time every if you open this up to like shifts i mean teams change

shifts between pitches never mind between batters coming to the plate so i don't know how you how quickly you were able to accumulate the data but every poll would take i think at least 30 seconds between polling and implementation because you just need to collect the data so i mean that's 30 seconds all the time so i don't know i don't know how you implement this and it would it would just yeah i mean you could have an app that would work like hq trivia or one of those things where it would just be almost real time you'd just i don't know you'd have to prompt people though you'd have to like the browns i think had someone come up and hold up a sign and

ask them to vote on certain things so you would need that or you could do certain things in advance like who's going to be in the lineup like the the Browns game I think the fans made good calls in that game they had catcher Sherm Lolar who was typically a backup and the fans voted him in to the starting rotation and he hit a three run homer to tie the game, and they also started backup Hank Arft at first base over Ben Taylor, and he had a good game too, and I think Bill Vec ended up certain wisdom to the crowds, as we know. And so it's possible that certain decisions would be better. But if you've seen like fan voting for all-star games, it's not the best. So I think that would probably also apply to this. And yeah, as you're saying, like workload concerns and everyone would not take into account previous games

and subsequent games because they would just want to win that game, especially if it's an in-ballpark experience. So yeah, you'd be running guys into the ground. It would probably be not a great idea. And if you believe that managers and coaches know something about their players, which I think they do, then you're losing all of that insight that you get from actually having people who are around the players all day. Granted, sometimes their proximity probably skews their thoughts in some way that makes them less good at decision making,

but on the whole, this would not be a competitive advantage, I don't think. Next question. Yeah. Ted in Washington, D.C., Patreon supporter, says, I wanted to get your thoughts on a proposal for timed baseball, that is a running game clock instead of nine innings. I should mention that I'm a Red Sox fan, and this proposal is very much inspired by watching David Price grow older between pitches. The basic outline of the rules are game time 120 minutes, outs, innings, strikes,

and balls work the same way home team bats first game goes until 120 minutes is up the team with more runs wins if tied put 10 minutes on the clock and continue do so until the game is resolved the clock runs at all times with the exception of between innings home runs pitching and injuries. So I guess you treat the end, if an inning isn't complete, then you just treat it as if the end bits never happened, because otherwise you're advantaging someone, right? Because you have to give teams an equal number of innings, or do you? Do you? I don't know.

Well, I don't know. I think one obvious problem, which Ted actually points out in his email, is that you could have some gamesmanship. So if a team has a one run lead and there are a few minutes left, you could just sort of stall and bleed that time off there. So there would be limits to how much you could actually stall. But still, you could kind of drag and that would be a bit of a problem. So you did not have lights in the parks. And so the game would get suspended if it got too dark to play. And so that was just extra incentive to kind of keep things going. Of course, they played lots of day games, but that was one reason to hurry things along because there was just a natural limit. And now we don't have that anymore so if you were to impose a clock i think it would make things faster i don't know that it would make things better yeah that's that's where i come down i i don't think the game would be ruined but it does run counter to the favorite essence of baseball being the sport that doesn't have a clock etc i don't think that in terms of like who the best teams are, who the worst teams are, I don't think it would change very much about the standings or about how the season plays out. But you would definitely end up with some really unsatisfying conclusions of teams and pitchers just intentionally going as slowly as possible to drain the clock. If you if a pitcher has to throw up, let's say you've got a stressful situation

batters up, and the pitcher is in a two andand-two count or something, and he has a minute left. He can just take his time. He can throw balls on purpose. He can go as slowly as possible, and he can lob pitches way out of the zone just to drain the clock. And I know that draining the clock is already a thing in other sports, so it's something that fans have, I guess, come to terms with. in other sports. So it's something that fans have, I guess, come to terms with, but I don't think that we need to introduce that into baseball because it's not a plus, not a positive use of the actual time of play. Yeah, you'd have to legislate things like throwing over to first an endless amount of times, something like that. As Ted mentions, it would be kind of entertaining if you are losing,

then you have incentive to really hurry up. So you'd be seeing the losing team like quick pitching the other batter and just sprinting here and there. I guess the clock has stopped between a clock counting down. So if there's like a video game level and there's a timer on the screen, I enjoy it less. I like having a leisurely path through the level and getting to explore a little bit and the clock just makes me anxious. So I would not want to see a countdown in baseball just perpetually on the screen. I mean, I think that is overly romanticized, perhaps baseball's non-clock nature. I don't think the pitch clock jeopardizes that. I think the pitch clock is good and fine, but there is something to be said for that. Unfortunately, it gets out of hand at times.

And the downside is that you do have games going on forever, but on the whole, I would not trade what we have now for this. I did have over the holidays a family member bring up The 7 hour World Series game So I guess we did talk about baseball a little bit Over Christmas because that was the sort of thing That transcended ordinary boundaries People become aware of a baseball game that never ends

Yeah Alright last question This comes from Brendan And is actually related to our favorite league The Venezuelan Winter League. How would baseball be different if the playoff teams could draft two additional players from non-playoff teams, like what happens in the Venezuelan Winter League? That is actually what is happening right now.

Happens every year in the Venezuelan Winter League. When the playoff starts, the playoff teams get to draft a couple players from the non-playoff teams. We may have discussed this scenario before in relation to Major League Baseball, but it actually happens in the Winter Leagues. Octavio Hernandez actually told me every Caribbean league does it, and the Dominican Winter League takes four reinforcements per team, which sounds like a lot. My primary objection to this idea is that you just develop this bond and this attachment to this team and these players, and it's part of how you get to the playoffs is you have to build a certain team, and then you're stuck with that team, and you just ride or die with the guys who got you there. And so if you had a couple guys come in who were not with you all year and suddenly they helped propel you to a title, wouldn't it be tarnished just a little bit if that were the case? Do you remember the movie Miracle? Did you ever watch the movie Miracle?

Don't think so. Okay. It was about the U.S. men's Olympic hockey team that beat the Russian team in 1980 in the Olympics. So at some point during that movie uh the coach herb brooks was trying to narrow the roster down to 20 collegiate players and at some point he introduced like a ringer i remember i don't remember if it was a player who had been previously cut or just someone who became available later in the process but the players who had grown together had noticed that uh oh who's this like extra guy now one of us is going to be cut because of this interloper who just showed up.

Like this isn't fair. This isn't fair at all. And I believe, I could be completely wrong, but I believe the way things wound up is that that extra player was not actually used. The players made a convincing argument

to, I don't know, stay together or something. And then everybody moved forward and then they, you know, won politics. And every conflict in the world was resolved because of a hockey game where we showed the Russians who's boss. And so that is basically just me making the point that you just made players grow together. And it would feel really strange, not only for the players, but also for the fans to just, you go into the playoffs and you're like, oh, well, now one of us is Mike Trout.

Like this changes the complexion of the entire team. Oh, and well, there are 10 playoff teams. So that means we also whoever the worst playoff team is. Right. So the worst playoff team in this last year's case, that would be I don't know. I guess it probably would be by record. So in this last year's playoffs, the worst team was the Braves, I guess. The Braves won 90 games, although they won the division.

So I don't know. Well, regardless, either the Braves or the Rockies would have been able to draft Mike Trout. Or I guess the Indians, they also won 71 games, but they would draft Mike Trout. And then there's 10 playoff teams. So then you get an 11th pick so then you're taking i don't know the 11th best player from teams that didn't make the playoffs and not only does it kind of disrupt their teams would be incentivized toward the end of the season to be worse so that they could then get better in the playoffs so then this this whole like good teams tanking at the end i don't know it kind of

warps things i like that it exists i didn't actually know that it existed in the caribbean winter leagues i think that's interesting and the fact that it does exist and has existed indicates that it's not a threat to like the league's integrity or anything but i think that this would make for far worse stories i don't think ringers are fun. And I don't think fans would treat it as very fun. It's a novelty. Yeah, it sounds good on paper because, of course, we'd all like Mike Trout to be in the playoffs. We'd have liked Felix Hernandez to get his shot in the playoffs.

It might sound like it would be good for baseball because you could get the stars on the biggest stage. But on the whole, I just don't care for the playoffs. It might sound like it would be good for baseball because you could get the stars on the biggest stage, but on the whole, I just don't care for the idea. I think it just kind of cheapens how you have to struggle to get there. And, you know, once you get there, you just are kind of stuck with the players that you built and the team that you assembled, and you just have to win or lose with those guys that you've been watching all year. So maybe it's different in a winter league where the season is shorter and it's not really the guy's primary full year teams anyway. In a lot of cases, maybe there's a little less continuity in who's playing for which team from year to year. So I could see it working better there. And like you, I'm glad it it exists somewhere but i would not want to see this come to baseball either i guess it's a minor point but

there would also be the concern if you one of those if some of those playoff teams are just drafting pitchers or something from from the bad teams then not the the pitchers are going to go back to their original team after the season is over so the teams that drafted them are in no way incentivized to have their health in mind in fact you could even say well i'm gonna draft from a division rival who didn't make the playoffs and just like run their players into the ground this october and threaten their health etc gamesmanship and strategy and i i wouldn't care for it at all all right so we will end there you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already done so, signed up,

and pledged some small monthly amount to keep the podcast going. Tony Johnson, Tom Lloyd, Nathan Kruger, Jacob Barak, and James Walker. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Please replenish our mailbag. Keep sending us questions and comments via email at podcastwithpancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back with one more episode this week very soon.

Talk to you then. I won't say you're wrong. I know what you want. And it's what I want. So let's go out. I'm ready to go out. I'll show you around This alphabet town I'll show you around

This alphabet town