Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1322: Read All About It

Episode Date: January 17, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Ben and Travis Sawchik finishing their new book, The MVP Machine, Willians Astudillo‘s MVP voting results, the Kyler Murray baseball/football decision and why it’s unusual for players in his situation to have leverage, Manny Machado rumors, and Yasmani Grandal‘s comments about the contract he didn’t sign, then answer […]

And all my readers sing All mid-list offers You're never the best, but you're never the worst Why even bother? You'll never be last, but you'll never be first Maybe one more glass of wine Hello and welcome to episode 1322 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Van Graffs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Van Graffs. Hello. I understand you are very tired. Explain, if you will, to everybody why you are so tired. This has

been a big week for you. Oh man, big week, big weekend. I have barely slept since our last episode and it's been longer since our last episode because of what I was doing, which is finishing a book. Travis Sacek and I were finishing our book, finishing the revisions to be precise, but it is basically done aside from some minor adjustments. And so yeah, now I can tell everyone that it is actually going to be a book and it's a real thing and you can go pre-order it now, which I haven't really said until I delivered it. I didn't feel like I could guarantee that it would exist, but now I can. So go get it. It's called the MVP Machine, and it will be out on June 4th. June 4th.

So is it named after any particular MVP, or is it just the idea that baseball will be creating future MVPs in part through its player development and information era systems? Yeah, that's the general idea. It does feature some actual MVPs. There's some stuff about Jose Altuve in there. There's some stuff about Mookie Betts in there, which has not been previously reported. So there are actual MVPs in the book, but really, it's just about the idea of players becoming more valuable and people becoming more valuable. I guess I've alluded to it, but I can just give you the quick elevator pitch for the book. It's

basically that we're in sort of a post-Moneyball era now, the idea that you can just evaluate players more efficiently than other teams and go get these undervalued guys who are already good and other teams don't realize that they're already good. That's just over now because everyone is smart and everyone knows who's already good. And so the big advantage now is being able to build players who are good, to take players who were not good before and make them good. Guys who would not have a great projection, for instance, because projections are based on what they've done in the past and to find a way to make them exceed that projection. And so there's really a whole movement that's going on now, not just in the majors, but in the minors, in amateur ball, in international leagues. There's new data, new technology, new tools that players are using to make themselves better at baseball. And it's kind of an exciting idea because we're all familiar with the swing

changers and the guys who add a new pitch or they start throwing a different pitch more often and suddenly they're a completely new guy. It just comes up all the time on this podcast. Even when we're not talking about the book, it seems like we're wrestling with these themes. So I'm excited that we wrote a book about it. I think it's the right time to do it. And everything that's happened since we started working on it has only made me more confident that there should be a book. Yeah, I was going to ask, you've probably seen that special counsel Robert Mueller meme where he's like facepalming himself and the caption is like, can the president stop breaking the law for one second so I can wrap this up? And of course, there's some profanities in there.

Does it work to your benefit or detriment that even as you've been in the process of writing this, like just Monday or Tuesday, there was news of like another guy from Driveline got hired by the Giants. At a a certain point does it matter when the list is expanding just provided that there's a list in the first place of these non-traditional advisors getting hired by teams yeah i was just talking to travis it seems like half the people we talked to for this book have just gotten a job in baseball while we were working on this like even literally the last day that we were submitting the revised manuscript, we were like, oh, this guy got hired here. Got to put this in the book. So it's definitely like

this wave is kind of cresting. I feel like this is the right time. Like we both felt like we had to get this book out, finish it, get it out this spring, because this is the moment, I think, when a lot of this is still new to a lot of people, but it is really all happening right now. This is, I think, the moment when this will kind of break through into the mainstream public consciousness, and hopefully our book will be there. So I hope that this is the right time to kind of tie all these threads together into one project. And we're really relieved and pleased, I think, just with the depth of the information we got. I think just with the depth of the information we got because when you're trying to chronicle something that is kind of on the cutting edge obviously teams don't want to give away any advantage that they think they have so when we started pitching this project we sort of had a

you know you write your book proposal and you say oh we're going to talk to this team and that team and who knows if they'll actually talk to you and there were moments where I was thinking man what if we don't get anything what if no one talks to us what if we don't get anything? What if no one talks to us? What if we don't find out anything? And as it happened, we ended up with way more material than we could even fit in the book. There were certainly people who didn't want to talk to us about certain things, but we were just able to find enough people who would that I just really learned a lot from this process. I think we got a lot of good just behind the scenes details that I haven't seen anywhere else. I hesitate a little bit to tread this ground, but would I be right to assume that Trevor Bauer is featured somewhat heavily in this book?

Trevor Bauer is in the book. It's not a book about Trevor Bauer. He is one of many players featured in the book, but you really can't chronicle this movement without talking about Trevor Bauer, because whatever you think of him as a person and as a person on Twitter, he has undeniably been very influential when it comes to players using data and technology and going to these independent facilities and figuring out how to make themselves better. And I will say that Travis has done the talking to Bauer because he's in Cleveland, but I have definitely developed

an appreciation for his work ethic. He is an extremely hardworking player. He is sort of obsessive about everything he does, whether it's baseball or whether it's responding to someone's tweet for days on end. I think whatever you think of him, he's an interesting character. I mean, you may not like him. I don't know whether the book will make you like him more or less. We didn't really set out to make him a sympathetic character or make him the hero of the story. But he has clearly been innovative here. And yet he has also been alienating and has had problems interacting with people over the years, which I think is partially a product of

how he has adopted all of these ideas and partly a product of just how he has gone about that. But I hope he will be interesting to read about, whatever your opinion of him. The other thing is he will just sort of say anything. A lot of players are kind of buttoned up and closed off and won't talk to writers. Bauer will just say things that most players wouldn't. He will also unfortunately say things on Twitter that most players wouldn't. And we definitely devote some time and attention to those things too. But I am hoping that he will focus on baseball because that is something that he is pretty undeniably good at. Okay, so just talk about the process. You have, at first, i was impressed by you having written or i should

say co-written one book and then you doubled that you are now having co-written a second book which i think now gives you credit for writing one full book i think that's the way that that works so obviously these are very different projects and it would be difficult to compare the two anyway but the you you would have arrived at this point right in the first book where you have submitted your your final draft so so to speak. So how does the feeling right now compare to the feeling from the first time? Gosh, I mean, I think a similar level of relief that we did it and excitement about what it is. I hope.

I mean, every writer, I think, is just constantly in fear about what they've written and whether people will like it and whether it's any good. And so my level of confidence kind of fluctuates by the hour. Currently, I'm feeling pretty good about the book, but who knows how I'll feel tomorrow. I think really this book was just a more grueling process overall than the last book because the last book was sort of our story to a certain extent. I mean, Sam and I were characters. We were narrators. It was first person. It was not easy to do what we did to, you know, while doing other jobs, go and move out to California and spend all this time with a baseball team and then write a book about it. It was not easy, but it was something that we had personally experienced. We were just telling a story that we were the witnesses to. There were long stretches of the book that were our

emails and text messages and everything, whereas this book was entirely researched and reported. So there was almost no part of it where you could just sort of sit down and say, okay, here are my thoughts about baseball. I will just bloviate about what I think about baseball for a few pages. It was all kind of, all right, got to go interview this person, figure out how that happened, got to run this query, got to figure out what the numbers say about this. So every page really was just the product of hard labor by writing standards. So in that sense, I think we ended up interviewing 200 people or something for this book in like a six-month process that also included writing the book

and doing our day jobs and this podcast. So it was really rough, I will say that. I don't think I could embark on another book without just taking a hiatus from other activities in the future because it's just too much to do all at one time, even with a very able co-author. That's kind of the reason that I've been doing these co-authored books, both because I like Sam and like Travis and it's fun to work with other people you like, but also because you can just finish faster. It's just nice to have a book done in six months or so instead of potentially taking years to do it. And it's kind of also nice to just have someone with you in that foxhole just so when all the doubts and insecurities are creeping up and you're wondering how you'll ever finish,

there's at least one person in the world who is feeling the same way you are. I know that when we talked to David Appelman last week, you and I were both concerned that it might come off a little self-promotion-y. And when, I mean, we're already talking about the book now. And when the book is available, I am virtually certain that we'll have an episode with you and Travis talking about the book. So that will be maximum self-promotion-y. But in line with talking about your book so that will be maximum self-promotion but in line with uh with talking about your published works i will bring to your attention phelan lentini in 2016 for the long island ducks had an 819 ops in 2017 with the long island ducks it fell to 608 his career appears to be over as a player yes that is true although he was still a stolen base demon until the end. But yeah, he had a long, impressive career.

But I hesitate to talk about it too much, I guess, except that I feel like our listeners will really like the book. So I don't feel like I'm hawking something that they won't want to read. It just touches on a lot of things that we touch on on the show. And I think there's probably at some point something about every team in there so there's a lot about the Astros and how they got so good and how the Red Sox won the World Series this year and just how the coaching ranks have been completely overturned by some of these new methods and how scouting is in danger because of all of this new technology. It's kind of about, I hope that it's

sort of an uplifting, inspiring book and that it's focusing on all these players who were really, really great at what they did and then figured out ways to get even better when it seemed like there was no way for that to happen. So I think that that will be a inspiring message for people that this is not just something that can happen in baseball. We can all get better at whatever we do. But we also do talk about some of the negatives, some of the side effects of this process, that players are getting so good

that it might actually be bad for baseball in some ways. So I hope that it's a very comprehensive look at this movement and just generally where baseball is today and where it's going in the future. I feel like if you want to know what baseball is going to look like for the next few years, this would be a good place to start. As I think all of our listeners can tell, this is an email show, so we might eventually get to one email. But there was a recent tweet thread that I think it was Ken Rosenthal, but it was also retweeted heavily and a lot of people offered support where he was talking about how scouts are feeling increasingly marginalized and that there are organizations that might not be listening to their scouts

at all and that, you know, the true optimal organization listens to scouts as well as their analysts and so on and so forth. I mean, that trope on its own is old. Every successful team knows that you need the blend of scouts and statting i don't know what that was stats and scouting but like you you just said in your answer the scouting is endangered in this era and now it it seems like of course there would be no excuse for any organization having literally zero scouts because there are parts of baseball that are just not covered by technology. But it only makes sense, right, that when you're getting so much data from almost all available areas

that you don't need so many pairs of eyes actually observing and inputting what would therefore be redundant information, right? Like you still need people to scout the lowest levels and, and amateurs, but in terms of higher level scouting or advanced scouting, it, it seems like there would be very good and obvious reasons for there being a dramatically reduced necessity for scouts in, in those areas. So you still need sort of the, the foundational scouting, but once you get to a level where there's data covering everything maybe you only need like one guy just kind of like watching to confirm that yeah no the everything is properly calibrated but what did what did you find when you were dealing with scouts or or dealing with people talking about scouts in in this era how how would you have responded to Ken Rosenthal's tweet

thread, if you will? You want me to spoil the book? Is that what you're asking? Is a question I will ask you again in five and a half months when the book is available. No, I mean, it's definitely things are heading that way. There is one organization that has been at the forefront of that effort and that movement. And we talk about that at length in the book, but I think that is definitely catching on. And having talked to some scouts who've been let go as part of that process, they're not happy about it. But a lot of them, I think, almost sort of understand it. They're like, yeah, I mean, you know, you can't really argue with the results. And I think that maybe some teams have potentially taken it too far. And there's been some division on those teams about just internally, how many scouts do we want to have? How many scouts would it be beneficial to have? But I don't see how you can argue that when these tools are able to mimic what a scout

can see, what a human can see, often with more accuracy. Not about everything, but a lot of things. It's just an area where it's kind of hard to make the case that you need just as many people as before. On the other hand, there's so much money in the game that is not going to players right now. You could also make the case that why would you downsize in any area of baseball operations, since if you just find one player who would have somehow slipped through the the dragnet otherwise that kind of pays for itself well are you comfortable putting that conversation aside now until we have you and travis on down the road because we have some other important information to get to yeah i guess so

i'll just say it's such a relief to look ahead and not have the book in my future. It's been so many months now since like there was a day where I wasn't worried about this. So it's just like a constant. I mean, I get that it's I'm writing a book about baseball. I've only ever had two ideas about baseball that I thought were book worthyworthy, and I've gotten to write both of them, which is really cool, and I'm lucky, and I'm very happy with the product. But just for like a six month period to whenever you're not doing your regular work, to know that you have to be doing this other work, or to feel like if you're not doing it, then it's going to come back to haunt you later. It's just a daunting thing, And I'm very glad that that part of the process is behind me and excited for other people to see what came of it. So yes, let us talk about baseball. What happened in baseball for the last few days? Well, I was just completely buried and paying attention to nothing. Oh, nothing happened to baseball. I can assure you, I can't wait for the sensation in late April as soon as we're at the day after the day of our wedding.

Because then, you know, in a similar way, the wedding has just been occupying our consciousness just like the book had. Whenever you're not concentrating on work or whatever is right in front of you, then it's all wedding planning, wedding planning, wedding planning. And as soon as it's over, it's going to be like, what in the hell did we used to think about before we were engaged? Anyway, that'll be the closest I think I'll ever be to understanding your relief because I don't ever want to write a book. It sounds absolutely terrible. I don't know how you write a book and have a job and you've done it twice. It's inconceivable to me. It is pretty terrible.

And it's almost like the, you know, how we were talking about how Oliver Drake's wife suffered maybe more than Oliver Drake because of his work. how Oliver Drake's wife suffered maybe more than Oliver Drake because of his work. I would say that my wife has just been patiently waiting, like, can we watch this TV show? Can I watch this show without you? Should I just go on? Like, can I still have fun at times, even though you are not having fun? So thank you to Jesse for putting up with me and helping me for the past several months. Thank you to Jesse for putting up with me and helping me for the past several months. And Travis has not just a wife, but also a family. Yes, yes. He has a child who depends on him.

So that probably makes it even harder. So thank you to Travis too. Yep. I want no part of any of this. So here's one thing that happened over the last several days when you were not able to pay attention to baseball because you were spending too much time talking about baseball in the venezuelan winter league of course the playoffs have continued but we have an mvp and i was tipped off by our friend octavia hernandez who pointed out to us williams astadillo a very close race so near miss second place second place mvp was delman young who two years ago was out of baseball entirely, went to Mexico, went to Venezuela. There's a good story to be written, I guess, about Delman Young, but I don't want to write it.

I don't want to talk about it because what lets me down, of course, and what lets you down is that Williams Astadillo did not win. Even though Astadillo played the field, Delman Young did not. But in any case, Young got 23 first place votes, Astadillo 22. Young got three more votes for second place astadio two more for third place any uh any thoughts on the venezuelan mvp race not something i expected to care about or know about a few months ago but i was pretty invested in it as it turned out yeah 178 to 166 that is a a really close race. And I don't know. We don't have war for the Venezuelan Winter League.

So I guess we can't say with certainty that Williams was more deserving than Thelma Young. Thelma Young was quite good. I'm happy that he gets to win an award too. But yeah, I'm disappointed. It would have been a nice little additional feather in Williams Estadio's cap to have an MVP award of some league. And I got an email. We got an email from a listener named Chris who said, Two episodes ago, you guys were discussing Estadio and how much of a shame it would be if he weren't giving playing time.

Twins fans have been talking about this all offseason because, A, everyone's in love with him. If he were traded, there would be riots. And, B, there's a definite fear that he won't make the 25-man roster. There's a detailed breakdown on Reddit covering the state of the roster, and the conclusion drawn is that he'll miss by a spot or two to start the season, but likely get called up later on as injuries or changing needs affect his status. And like you said, the fact he has options works against him, considering other players without an obvious role to fill, like Tyler Austin, do not.

The only way he starts the season on the opening day roster is some combination of the Twins opening with a four-man rotation and keeping 13 position players instead of 12. Both feel unlikely. So that would be just such a letdown if the season started and Williams-Estadillo were not part of it. While we're talking about letdowns as well, the other day Estadio struck out in the playoffs it was his first strikeout in the playoffs he's got 41 played appearances so far in the playoffs one strikeout but anyway he also has a 967 ops in the playoffs so that's pretty good here's what surprised me i'm going to assume that there were 50 voters for the venezuelan mvp because delman young got a total of 50 votes 23 for first place 18 for second place nine for third place williams estadio 48 votes two people left williams estadio off their ballot entirely or at least for the first three places i don't know how the voting is conducted down there

anyway franklin baredo was third place and then the heralds castro and ramirez and fourth and fifth we did alejandro de aza showed up with one third place vote. Congratulations to him. Recently, also, we were talking about Estadio. I had read a Google Translate of a Spanish language game recap. Ah, yes. And I thought it was funny because it referred to Williams Estadio having received 99 chocolates, not even 100 chocolates.

And I thought, huh, what a funny translation that would be. But then the more I thought about it, the word for chocolate is chocolate, not really a word that would get mistranslated. And so we were tipped off by a listener, Eduardo Landa, who tipped us off on Twitter. I will just read his words back to you and also to everybody else. Hi, Jeff and Ben, I want to help you with a translation from Google If you let me In Latin America, strikeouts are known as chocolates And the story about it goes this way There was an American team that used to play local teams in Cuba

Players from the American team worked as sailors In a boat that transported chocolate And every time one of the sailors struck out The crowd yelled Meaning he was given chocolate In Mexico That saying was popularized by Pedro el Mago Septian, the wizard. His logic was that chocolate was something that can be sweet for the pitchers

and something bitter for the batters. In Spanish, there is not a literal translation to strikeout, and another common word used is ponche, as in eggnog. Ponche is the Spanish word for eggnog. That word was coined by Pancho Pepe Croque, I don't know how that's pronounced, who used to narrate the Venezuelan League in the 40s. Mr. Croque used to advertise the eggnog every time someone struck out, and every time the word ponche, and eventually I should say, eventually the word ponche became synonymous with a strikeout.

This all led to me reading an article from the Chicago Tribune written by Hugh Delios, reading an article from the Chicago Tribune written by Hugh Delios, the Tribune's Mexico City correspondent from March 2006. And it's called Baseball's Universal Language. And it's an article I would recommend to pretty much everyone because it talks about, in English, how Spanish language broadcasters have come up with their own terminology. And it is a lot more, broadcasters have come up with their own terminology and it is a lot more i don't know floral and evocative than the way we usually talk about baseball in english for example a uh is a cannon shot that's a cannon shot which is like a line drive home run of course a pitcher is a lancer or a launcher i don't know i'm not i'm not going to go through this entire article because it's a long article everybody should read it but it is a much more fun way to describe i think the action

on the field than what we've gotten used to or maybe it only seems that way because we're not used to it but it's uh it's worth checking out i have learned a lot and now i have a new appreciation for the fact that there's a picture of max scherzer in uh in 2015 after a start where he struck out 16 opponents and there's a picture of him being interviewed after the game covered in chocolate syrup. And maybe, just maybe, there's a little bit of double meaning in that image. Yeah. Would it be cultural appropriation if we just borrowed some Spanish language baseball terms and used them in English? I don't know, but there are probably some good ones that would make our language more colorful. So maybe we should start using chocolates.

Do you remember in that famous clip from recently of Estadio hitting that tie-breaking home run? And what I think a lot of people grabbed onto was the announcer, was the emotion in the announcer and what he was saying. And when Estadio's ball cleared the fence, I remember he said, And I was like, what? What's profound? I guess it's profound that he hit a home run, but those are apparently famous words in Latin America. A lo profundo means a literal translation would be to the deep,

which I like. Deep fly ball, long fly ball hit to the deep, into the dark, whatever you want to say. Yeah, that's a good one. I like it. All right. What else we got what else is there derrick holland signed a contract does anyone care about that derrick

holland was kind of good obviously aiel garcia signed is signing i don't know if it's official yet contract with the rays what else is what else has happened has anything happened there's hall of fame stuff kind of coming up but we're not there yet. DJ LeMayhew. We talked about DJ LeMayhew, I think, last week. So what we don't have to talk about is Manny Machado or Bryce Harper, except for whatever nonsense Bob Nightingale is tweeting about with regard to either of those two. What was that tweet? The Phillies have visions of signing.

The Phillies have visions of signing. Was it Harper and Kimbrel and Keichel They've got visions I think That might be the least Revelatory tweet Of all time visions Would you say that I mean has every

Front office had visions I guess Probably not every front office has Envisioned signing all three of those Guys but their Visions do not bring that into reality. So, yeah, not one of the higher value rumor tweets I've seen this offseason. So do we have to say something about Kyler Murray? Kyler Murray. Oh, right.

Yeah. Kyler Murray, you were reading about Kyler Murray previous to us beginning to record this podcast. And in your reading, you have learned more information than I probably have on the top of my head. So Kyler Murray is declared for the NFL draft, which does not mean that he is going to commit to football. That's somewhat of a formality. But a decision point is coming up somewhere within a month, whether he's going to go to the Combine or report to spring training with the A's. to go to the combine or report to spring training with the A's. And the latest rumor, I believe, is that, I don't know if the $15 million is official, but that Kyler Murray is looking for money from the A's, as is his right. He's looking for more money in order to convince him to play

baseball. What have you read? What do you believe? Yeah, well, it's interesting. This is such an unorthodox situation. And really all it is is the fact that he has more than one option, which is like for the people at the first job who want you have to pay you more to do that job, which normally they don't because we have this draft system that in sports just subjects athletes to conditions that we would all find loathsome in our own jobs and lines of work. So it's like all you need is one option, one bit of freedom, and suddenly the guy's going to get paid one way or another. So I don't know. A lot of people are blaming the A's. I think it's fair to question the A's for what they did here, which basically it doesn't seem like they priced in the risk that he might end up playing football when they drafted him high. Now, you know, a lot of teams will draft someone who might end up playing another sport and you just won't give him a top pick or you won't give him a huge bonus and it'll be kind of contingent on whether he actually ends up playing for you or not. And that's not really the case with what the A's did here. They said, yeah, we'll take Kyler Murray, we'll take him with a top pick, we'll give him a top pick bonus, and then we'll just kind of hope that he doesn't end up going to play football. And now it seems more likely than

not that he will because his football prospects have improved in the time since the baseball draft. He basically made himself into a leading contender to be the top pick in the football draft. And so you can't really blame him for considering his options here. I mean, I'm sure that some A's fans are blaming him, but really, how can you? It's the same decision any of us would make if we had Kyler Murray's talent. As we talked about, I think it was last week, it is important to understand that when the A's drafted Kyler Murray, they did not know that he was going to go on to win the Heisman Trophy as the best player in college football. So even if they did price in some risk, this is one of those situations where it's really easy to be critical after the fact,

because Kyler Murray had barely played quarterback when the A's drafted him. He was going to be the starter in Oklahoma. They knew that. But they probably didn't expect him to be literally the best football player in college last season. So the of course now looks like the aides didn't price it in enough but at the time you figured what were the odds that murray was going to be that good i don't actually know i don't watch college football i know nothing about collin murray but probably no more than 10 and even now murray i i've seen some reports saying murray is a end of the first round kind of pick some reports saying well he could go first overall so i don't know football teams are kind of stupid it seems like a lot of them first round kind of pick. Some reports saying, well, he could go first overall. So I don't know. Football teams are kind of stupid, it seems like, a lot of them.

So that could lead them to have very irrational thoughts, whether they think Murray is not big enough to draft as a quarterback or whether it doesn't matter if Kyler Murray were a foot and a half tall, he would still go first overall because look at his numbers. So I don't know what football teams are thinking, but this is a situation I guess we will continue to follow. And there is some concern i i think so in the talk that the a's would give kyler murray more money there have been tweets and reports to the effect that even though kyler murray has not played a game as a professional baseball player teams other teams even wouldn't see this as a circumvention of

the existing rules if kyler murray were to given money, because he would be given a major league contract. And this is a major league contract. He would be given by the A's after he's been drafted. And when at the time of his being drafted and signed, there was no conversation then about giving him a major league contract. So the idea is that this is all be done in good faith. And because the major league baseball has recently in the past few years, instituted a rule where draft picks can no longer get major league contracts. Bryce Harper got a major league baseball has recently in the past few years instituted a rule where

draft picks can no longer get major league contracts Bryce Harper got a major league contract right a lot of players used to get major league contracts out of the draft and and baseball decided no let's not do that anymore as another way to shift money away from the players but anyway Kyler Murray would be given a major league contract and a 40-man roster spot that goes along with that and he wouldn't be major league ready for at least a couple of seasons, so that's a little bit of a detriment to the A's, but there has been some concern about whether this would be a circumvention or whether this would set a bad precedent,

but at least as far as I can tell and as far as a few people I've talked to can tell, the precedent would be good. Baseball would benefit from bringing in more talent not that there are a whole lot of situations quite like this in the first place players don't have that much leverage unless they're really really good at another sport but if baseball decides that actually we should make it more possible to give these players more money if they are otherwise going to stay away from baseball it's good for baseball to incentivize that, to try to keep those players in the sport. So I don't know exactly how this is going to work out, because if Murray plays football,

then so be it. That's the last we'll see of him probably playing baseball. But while I understand this would set some kind of precedent, I do not think that that is on its own a bad thing. I think that maybe, maybe the recently implemented rules were a little too strict. I've seen a lot of discussion about this almost as a referendum on the state of football and baseball in the culture. Like if we can't keep this talented guy, if he goes to football, that means that baseball is falling behind or baseball is dying or whatever. And I think, I mean, A, it's one guy and maybe he just likes football better. There's been a lot of reporting that suggests that maybe he just enjoys the game of football

more and maybe that is playing a part in his decision. But, you know, I think there are compelling arguments on both sides that he might end up being better off choosing one or the other. In baseball, the argument is, A, he's probably not going to damage his brain severely as he might in football, and his career could last longer, and he might end up making more money in the long run. The pro football financial argument, at least, is that he's going to be a top draft pick and he's going to get paid, and then he's probably going to be in the NFL really quickly, whereas in football, you'd have to just slog through the minors for a while. He doesn't have a ton of experience, so it's going to take some development. And he's going to be living in crappy hotels and staying with host families or whatever and making no money. And it's kind of a tough sell. It's like, do you want to be the star quarterback for an NFL team in a year? Or do you want to spend the next few years in Peoria or whatever?

No offense to Peoria listeners. But there's just a different structure for top picks. There's a lot less chance. I guess the success rate, at least for making the NFL, is much higher for a top football draft pick than for a top baseball draft pick to make the majors. So you can totally understand why you might choose football, even though it might ultimately give you severe injuries and mental problems. Storytelling tip for people out there. Never use one person's decision as a referendum on anything. That's a bigger story.

Think of it. We co-host this podcast. You love to be inside or in the city. That's where you are most comfortable. That's where you have the things that you enjoy. I prefer to be outside far more than I prefer to be inside or in the city. I like the wilderness. You like the comforts of home and the biggest city in the world or the biggest city in North America.

So if you were to conduct an interview with either one of us, we would give you very different answers on what it is that we enjoy and what we seek out. But that doesn't help to answer any sort of referendum on anything, the human embrace of technology or the longing for the outdoors and the wilderness that's supposed to be innate in all of us. So one person is one person. Kyler Murray is going to make his decision based on whatever it is that his heart tells him that he enjoys the most that is there's going to

be money thrown at him from all directions all two directions i guess yeah that's still more directions than i'm currently receiving money from at the moment so he's going to end up making a decision based on his heart which is the way that this is probably supposed to go because either way he goes he's going to be rich i do like the outdoors it's just how am i supposed to play video games out there it's like if i could do all the things i do indoors but be outdoors at the same time that'd be nice maybe a compromise do you like those like treadmills or exercise devices where you can like see a video of walking a trail or climbing a mountain while you're doing it does that do anything for you i i've never used i don't think my uh my building's exercise equipment is fancy enough to have video simulations it's uh it turns out when

you when you're watching one and then you turn your head to either direction the uh the illusion it shatters and you realize oh i'm in a gym uh by the way we have a tweet now from buster only uh the white socks offer there's nobody signed the white socks offer to manny machado was for 175 million over seven years in some ways their approaches like boston's with jd martinez last winter the red socks offered 100 million and waited for two months if the white socks offer emerges as the best a big question is would machado and the yankees re-engage? I am looking, against my better judgment, at some of the Twitter responses. And it's just, I mean, from two individuals, like, oh, why isn't Team X in on this? Why isn't everybody in on this?

Collusion is real, etc. Some people are casting doubt on the rumor itself. But this seems, it's like when you hear in, let's say, like JT Rail Motor trade negotiations, you hear, oh, the Marlins are asking for too much, and this team is wanting to give up less than that. It's like, yeah, we know that things aren't at a point where there would be a reasonable agreement because no agreement is in place. Of course the Marlins are asking for more than anyone is willing to give up because if that weren't true, there would have been a trade. What we have a report of, if this is accurate, is that the White Sox have made an offer to Manny Machado. At this price, I think you and I would both agree, $175 over seven years is lower than he should probably get as a free agent. Well, guess what? He hasn't signed for that money,

and the winning offer is almost certainly going to be considerably larger than this. So it feels like when you report negotiations, it's interesting to follow, but it doesn't mean anything because all negotiations are disagreeable until they are agreeable. That's the way that negotiations work. Yeah. I mean, there have been probably more contracts signed lately where the final number looks like it should have been a preliminary number and that you look at the final terms and you're like well why didn't this team sign him for that much that seems like it's a pretty good deal but yeah i mean machado if he doesn't get more than than this that will just be the the latest just a sign of the apocalypse so he certainly should i mean all the concerns about many free agents that they're

you know past their prime that you're paying for past production i mean harper and machado are 26 they should be good for quite a while so all of the the aging curve kind of concerns you know they apply a little if you're talking about a an eight year deal for a 26 year old but not the way they do when it's someone who's 30 or 31 or something. So, you know, let's sign these guys. Did you see the tweet thread from the other day about Yosemite Grandal's appearance on LLB Network? No, I did not. Okay, so Yosemite Grandal was on LLB Network, and I think it was also kind of Rosenthal Twitty about this, and Grandal was asked why he turned down the reported offer of roughly $60 million over four years from

the Mets. And Grindahl was saying, oh, I thought I wanted to do right by my peers and by the players who come after me. I thought that players like Yadier Molina and Russell Martin and Brian McCann set the market. And I wanted to, I'm paraphrasing now, but he wanted to make sure that future elite catchers, he referred to himself as one of the top catchers, which I think is not untrue, even if it sounds a little weird for him to say that about himself.

It is true. He's very good. He basically didn't want to accept what he thought was a blow market or unfair deal because he didn't want to hurt future really, really good catchers, which is a noble thing to say and to feel in your heart. And then he signed for less than a third of that money

by signing with the Milwaukee Brewers. So on the one hand, I appreciate what Grendel was trying to do, or at least what his agent was trying to have him do, because it only makes sense. Of course, you go into the market, and you're like, well, who was a comparable catcher who was in his 30s, who was a free agent recently? And that's Russell Martin, who signed for five years and $82 million or $80 million with the Blue Jays. And I remember writing at the time that that contract seemed fair. Martin was really, really good in a lot of the ways that Grandal is really, really good. And Martin at the time was even two years older than Grandal is now. On the other hand, you have to have some awareness of the fact that the market has changed.

That is just an irrefutable truth. And so you're chasing after something that is just no longer achievable. And I don't know whether this was a problem with the agent telling Grandal about what the market was or wasn't, or I don't know exactly where this all came apart. And again, Grandal will have an opportunity to try to make more money a year from now, depending on how his 2018 season goes. depending on how his 2018 season goes. But to turn down a four-year contract and end up signing a one-year contract, it seems like at a certain point you realize, oh, the market has changed.

I need to adjust to that and maybe take the big commitment that's actually out there because obviously there was no other big commitment that was out there. Yeah, right. I think you can talk about two different facets of this. You can talk about the team side of things

and whether they should be offering more money. And then you can talk about the player and agent side and maximizing the money you can get given these current constraints. I mean, I guess there's some nobility in saying, no, we will not sign for less than we are worth and we will hold out and we won't accept this offer. Except that if you then ultimately accept an even lower offer, I don't know that that really benefits anyone. So I think if there is this new reality, at least for the time being until the next CPA perhaps changes something, then yeah, I think it's really incumbent upon an agent to understand what the market looks like these days and try to get

their clients the most they can get under the circumstances. I mean, Molina signed his most recent contract was three years and 60 million. Brian McCann had signed that five-year contract with 85 million. And I think from the player perspective, if you're Grandal, you go into free agency and you think, this is my chance to make big money. And it only makes it, you always compare yourself against the most comparable players. That is what makes sense. So if you're Grandal, maybe he hasn't been paying that much attention to free agency before, because why would he? He was just trying to do his best as a player and try to put himself in the best situation. So you could understand if Grandal were not informed, not fully informed about how the market has changed because, of course, he would look at guys like Martin and

Molina and McCann and think, well, I want $17 to $20 million a season. That is what similar catchers have made in the very recent past. Why would I not be worth that? But that's where the agent has to come in. You have to be advised to pie your agency. The agent is supposed to know how the market works. The agent is supposed to put you in the best position to have success and get the most money that you can. And if Grandal wasn't advised of the fact that, look, I know it seems like it's not fair, but that money just isn't out there or those contract lengths just aren't out there for you anymore. You have to, as an agent, you have to make sure that your player understands that. And maybe the agent was giving Grandal that advice and Grandal just wasn't listening to it. I don't know where this broke down, something Clearly broke down and it's not all

The market's fault Alright shall we take a couple Of notes here I guess I guess we have time for two or three Alright well this one is Along the lines of what we've been talking about here So this one is from Lewis He says this NFL season

We saw a couple of successful and talented Football players Earl Thomas and Le'Veon Bell, refuse to play some games unless their team offered them a salary more commensurate with what they probably, and probably correctly, saw as their free market value. I assume they believe that the act of playing football had a higher likelihood of decreasing their ability to realize their market value by causing them bodily harm and wear and tear and then refusing To play etc etc this happens In football a bunch my guess is That NFL players are incentivized to take

High stakes negotiation strategies because The violence of NFL football means players Have a high risk of career wrecking injury But what about baseball Would it make sense for A baseball player and particularly a pitcher To make this argument and do an NFL style holdout

in a world where Wade Davis is paid $18 million for a steamer-projected 3.83 FIP in 2019 and Edwin Diaz is projected to be paid $545,000 for a steamer-projected 2.36 FIP? Does it make sense for Diaz to refuse to come to work in exchange for money until the Mets offer to pay him more money? Should he do that, both Diaz and his employer know his surplus value greatly exceeds his current salary. Well, that's what surplus value means. And he would retain much of that, even if his salary were increased. So should Diaz hold out? This is a question I am unprepared to

answer because I don't know what is in the contract language or the CBA language or the uniform player contract language that allows for or more likely prevents a player from holding out because you just don't see player holdouts in baseball like you do in other sports. Of course, in the NFL, there are holdouts all the time. William Nylander, I believe, is holding out from the Maple Leafs for the first few months of the season because he wanted a new contract. I am not sufficiently informed on baseball contract holdouts, which gives me some hope that because you brought this question up, you have done some research or have an answer off the top of your head because otherwise, this is all going to be edited out of the podcast.

Well, I mean, holdouts used to be pretty common in baseball. I mean, Stars would hold out every spring. Joe DiMaggio would hold out and Babe Ruth would hold out. It was kind of a common thing because that was under the reserve clause system. That was before free agency, before arbitration. course for a player they had to hold out because if they didn't, then their team could just say, well, here's how much money you're making or you're not playing at all. And that was kind of their only leverage was just saying, I will not play for you, which is not the greatest leverage because obviously it hurts you probably even more than it hurts the team. But that doesn't really happen anymore in baseball and hasn't really happened much for decades, I think, because of the arbitration system, right? Like now players in their first three years of service are not eligible for arbitration and Edwin Diaz is not yet eligible for arbitration, right? So he currently has no recourse.

Because there is that sort of safety valve there, because you know that at some point at least you have a chance to argue in front of some supposedly impartial source that i should be worth more so i think the arbitration system has kind of killed holdouts in baseball this okay so i understand that by saying this i put myself in the position of being just like everybody else i am not a baseball authority as i'm saying this right now i am just a person who's talking about baseball on a podcast. Let's say that who's a great player who's, let's say, Mookie Betts just got like $20 million. Mike Trout is now in his years making $33 million. He's unlikely to hold out. So let's say, I don't know, Alex Bregman, for example.

Let's say Alex Bregman decides to hold out this spring, which, you know, he won't do. Baseball players don't hold out. They're not Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale anymore. But if Bregman were to hold out, what would happen? And I don't know. After this podcast is over, I'm going to try to do some more research on this and maybe ask around because, of course, players are disincentivized to hold out because no one wants players to be able to hold out.

It acts against the league's best interests but if just one player held out like that the league has so much leverage because you can't baseball is not a position where it can all of a sudden decide oh now we better we better pay the players exactly what they're it would just change the structure of the league completely like a team like the a's or the rays would all of a sudden have a massive bloated payroll that they couldn't afford in theory if they had to pay their players what they're actually worth if everybody were on the free market. Now, someone like Alex Bregman is not on the free market, but if he held out and demanded more money, eventually he and the Astros would come to an agreement that is well below what Bregman would be worth as a free agent,

but he would still make more than whatever he's going to make in 2019, presumably, if he is even allowed to hold out because the Astros couldn't go into the season without Bregman. He, I mean, he's one of, if not their single best player, and they could threaten to just move forward without him and say, well, we'll just sign Marwin Gonzalez or something, and we're going to be competitive even without you, and then Bregman's out of a job, but he's so valuable. Let's say Bregman held out, and I don't know what he's going to be competitive even without you and then Bregman's out of a job but he's so valuable let's say Bregman held out and I don't know what he's going to get next season but let's say he and the answers agreed for like five or ten million dollars which is still very very low for Alex Bregman but more than he would be expected to earn I believe then what the precedent has now

been set such that every single really good young player making the league minimum or close to the league minimum would therefore want to hold out for more money and everything would be disrupted and baseball wouldn't function anymore so there is clearly something that's very powerful in place to prevent this i don't know exactly what that is it might just be what you said that players are given an understanding that they will make their money through arbitration and then eventually free agency but it does make you wonder if there's going to be another baseball holdout and what it's going to look like. Yeah.

I mean, maybe that's the ultimate recourse. If the next CBA fails to fix this situation, then players will have to start taking matters into their own hands. I guess that's another reason why maybe baseball players are less incentivized to hold out is because baseball has a pretty powerful union or has at least you know relative to other sports in the past and so there's a sense that there is someone there who is kind of seeing to your best interests and you don't necessarily have to take that risk personally because you'll have someone competent who is helping you at the negotiating table but if that turns out not to be the case,

if this next round of bargaining doesn't actually produce any meaningful difference, I mean, maybe we'll end up having a strike or something. But if not, then yeah, maybe you will see it. It would have to be a really elite level player, obviously, because if you're just a fringe guy, team will just let you sit there all season if you want to, because they're not if you want to because they're not going to want to set that precedent as you said and they're going to be facing pressure

from other owners telling them not to cave because if they give in then every team will have to give in it would just be a mess and it would be really difficult but i think those are the reasons why it has not happened in baseball for a while but it's not to say that it couldn't happen again the way things are headed. Yeah. All right. Patrick says, what would a prime Ricky Henderson look like in this modern era? Would he be able to steal more or fewer bases than he did? Obviously, Ricky gets full autonomy in all baseball decisions involving Ricky. We also got an extremely similar question from listener Zach. Given the growing wisdom That base stealing is often not worth the risk Would we have to assume that Ricky Henderson

If he played today would not have nearly As many steals or were his skills At such a level that the normal risk calculation Wouldn't apply meaning he would have been Given the same number of opportunities So apparently a lot of our listeners Thinking about Ricky Henderson these days And how he would be playing if he were still around

Okay so let's look up a few Num while we have the opportunity. Because my initial, my inclination is to say that Ricky Henderson would not steal as often now as he did back then, even if he reached base the same amount of time. Do you think that is true or not true? Or like, do you think he would have steal more, fewer or the same? You give an answer while I look up some numbers. I think if you were to just transport Ricky Henderson from the past into today, or just put the real Ricky Henderson back in uniform, which I'm sure he would like because he wanted to play forever.

I don't think his mindset would adjust to the current atmosphere of baseball. I mean, he's Ricky. He's the greatest of all time. Of course, he's going to go. So I don't think you could convince like 80s Ricky Henderson to steal less. So I think if you somehow had a time machine and you brought 1983 Ricky Henderson into 2019, he would probably be stealing, you know, 100 bases or trying to. If he were the same guy with the same skill level and talent coming up through today's game, he would not. I just, you know, you get groomed based on the environment that you are raised in. And if you're raised in today's game, you're not thinking I'm going to steal 130 bases because no one is even coming close to that. So I don't think it would even occur to him.

I mean, he would have to buck convention. Like at the time, he was the leading base dealer, but there were other guys stealing 100. This was like the Vince Coleman era. Everyone was running. So he wasn't such an outlier, whereas today he would be an extreme outlier. Right. Okay. So who's the clear base running guy in the major it's billy hamilton right you figure whatever billy hamilton is on base then he's going to he's a threat to steal okay so you you understand the premise that billy hamilton is going to be our guy we're looking at here billy hamilton in his

career to this point has attempted a stolen base in about 40 of his opportunities opportunities. 40%. So Ricky Henderson, I'm not going to look at his entire career because he played until he was 73, but Ricky Henderson through age 30, I think that's fair. Ricky Henderson through age 30 attempted a stolen base in 43% of his opportunities, which is, I think, pretty close. Close to Hamilton in the recent eras. And I don't know exactly, We don't have stat cast for Ricky Henderson's early career because I don't think that there were even cameras for Ricky Henderson's early career. But I think just based on that alone, there's reason to believe that Ricky Henderson would have attempted to steal pretty much just as often. Of course, the big difference between Ricky Henderson and Billy Hamilton is that Ricky Henderson got on base more than 40% of the time. And Billy Hamilton has trouble getting on base 30% of the time. So if you accept or if you think that Ricky

Henderson playing today would still get on base with a very high OBP, his career OBP was 401, I will remind you, which is exceptionally good. If Henderson could reach base at a similar percentage of the time, then it seems like, yeah, he would have stolen 100 bases every so often. He would have easily stolen more than 50 almost without even trying. How old do you think cameras are? You don't think cameras were around when Ricky came up? I think they had cameras. I'm not going to lie to you.

I don't, I have tried, I've tried to understand this several times. And I know this is going to come off as some sort of ICP magnets kind of statement here, but I still don't understand how cameras do what cameras do. It's indistinguishable from magic to me. I read about cameras. I don't understand any of the technology that I use constantly. I have no idea how I'm talking to you right now, how it's being recorded, how other people are listening to it. It is all mystifying to me. I saw a picture from, I think it was like a horse-drawn carriage in some street in New York City from like 1893 or 1877 or something the other day. And I looked at it and I just looked at it

for like 10 minutes, just thinking like like how and the picture looked like reasonably clear and i thought i didn't know we could do this time travel it's the past preserved it amazing destroyed it destroyed me to look at that like that's those horses are so dead right now because they're like 130 years old anyway yeah, no more dead than the people in the photo. But yeah. All right. So yeah, the thing, Ricky was an efficient base dealer. I mean, not like Carlos Beltran efficient, but he had a 81.2% success rate for his career, which is good. So, I mean, if you're going, if you're successfully stealing 81% of the time, you should be going a lot.

successfully stealing 81% of the time, you should be going a lot. So it's not like he was a guy who was, you know, getting caught 40% of the time or something and hurting his team. He was really good and fast. And so would it be any less optimal for him to run as much as he did? Like maybe the run environment has changed in certain ways where, you know, we're in such a home run heavy era and such a singles averse era now. So often the best thing you could do is keep a guy on first base and hope that the next guy hits a homer because if he does steal, your odds of getting a single are lower than they used to be. So in that sense, it maybe is not the stolen base friendliest era, but it's not like he was a guy you'd look at and say, oh, his success rates were bad. He was costing his team's run. Yeah, right. Also, I'll remind you, because we had talked to Terrence Gore not too long ago, Terrence Gore in his brief major league career has attempted to steal in 67% of his opportunities.

So Ricky Henderson would look at that and think, I could do so much more. So I think he would, especially him being Ricky Henderson, he would just take off. He would just take off all the time. I don't know if the players behind him would be like, look, it's distracting when you take a second base when I'm trying to hit because that is something that appears to be true in the numbers that stolen bases can be distracting to the hitter and be detrimental.

But if he just went for a second, third pitch, with his access to video now and understanding like all the pop times it just becomes a math problem right and if he can get to second base in three seconds flat he's going to go constantly yeah did you prepare a stat plus at all for this sort of Okay, so we've talked about one-hit wonders or attempts to calculate the biggest one-hit wonders before, players with just big outlier seasons, and I wound up calculating something like that in a post I wrote about ObviousILGarcia at Fangraphs on Tuesday. Here's what I did. I looked at every player since 1900. That's a long time ago.

They had cameras, though. I'm giving them to sand in 1900. That's a long time ago. They had cameras, though. I'm giving them to sand in 1900. Going all the way back to 1900, I looked up every single position player who has battled at least 2,000 times. That was my minimum. And I said it there because obviously I.O. Garcia has exceeded that. And Garcia, in his best fangraph season, was worth 4.2 war.

In his second best fangraph season, he was worth 0.4 war. That's a difference of 3.8 war so i decided what i did before when i did the stat blast for this podcast was i looked at the players with the biggest differences between their best war and their career war this is similar but this is the difference between their best war and their second best war i think that's a better definition of a nat liar season so i wound up with a sample of 2,422 players. And obviously, El Garcia has a difference of 3.8 war between his best and second best season. That, it turns out, is quite substantial.

That is tied for 19th biggest difference of effectively all time. So Garcia is indeed a historical outlier in that sense. But 19th place is not the same as first place. I will point out that within the top 20 there are current free agents or recent free agents obviously al garcia aj pollock and brace harper all in there harper has a difference of 4.5 war between his best and second best season aj pollock 3.9 war between his best and second best season but the player i brought up before cito gaston you remember uh cito gaston had Gaston had seemed to be a big outlier. And indeed, he is in second place.

His best season, he was worth 5.5. Or his second best season, he was worth 0.5. Or that's a difference of five wins above replacement between his best and second best season. But the actual winner, if you want to call it a winner, by these calculations, and this is something that I think I should have remembered, but I didn't. Darren Erstad in the year 2000 was worth 8.7 war. 8.7 war. Darren Erstad, amazing season.

2002, his second best season, he was worth 3.6. So the difference between his best and second best season, 5.1 wins above replacement. That is the current all-time leader. Wow. All right. I have sort of a quick stat blast we could end on. But by the way, did you see, I had a little Twitter thread that I was climbing onto that Sam and Grant were tweeting at each other. Did you read Grant's article about how many war he would be worth if he won Little League?

Yeah. Great article. Very effectively wild, very effectively wild email show. He calculated his war. effectively wild very effectively wild email show he calculated his war what did he calculate calculated for like a 16 game minor league season he said he'd be was it for war in 16 games yeah so so fun exercise but what totally mystified me did you see how grant announced that he had written that article so he initially wrote this article, which was just recently published. He wrote it in mid-June, and he wrote it in anticipation of the Little League World Series, which is in mid-August. So in mid-June, he thought, I'll write a Little League World Series related post. I'll write about Little League. So then he writes this post. He pre-schedules it for two months later, then forgets that he ever wrote it and it was never published. And then he discovered

it at the end of the year and had no memory that he had ever written it. And then he published it. Among the most mystifying things I have ever seen, Grant is a friend. He's a former colleague of yours. He is in the same line of work we are. None of this could ever conceivably happen to me. Both the pre-writing two months in advance for an event is something that I would never even consider. That is so foreign to me that one would ever do that. And then forgetting that one wrote the post. Now, I've certainly had articles where I'll go back after a few years and think, oh, yeah, I'd forgotten about that. I haven't thought about that article for years, and maybe I'll reread it and I won't remember the specific information in it, but I'll generally remember, yeah, this is a thing I spent some hours of my life doing. So the forgetting that he wrote the article is one thing, but the pre-scheduling months in advance, because it's the combination of how industrious you have to be to pre-write a Little League World Series related post two months before the Little League World Series.

The combination of that and then forgetting that you did that is the most amazing combination of character traits I have ever heard. Can you conceive of doing this in your own life? Absolutely not. I think if you're pre-writing two months in advance, you're writing a book at that point. So the only conclusion I can reach is that this is the result of some sort of like weird editorial meeting where like the higher ranking members of the Vox Media Corporation were like, look, we got the Little League World Series coming up in two months. We need to hit this hard.

We need to put all of our guns, we need to put on this beat because we need to just blast that Little League World Series traffic. So Grant, you're our baseball guy. What can you do on the Little League World Series? We need you. And so he's like, oh man,

I better write something now to show off to the bosses. And then ultimately, maybe he just didn't really care about it. He just wrote it to please them. And then when it was never published, it was never published. But no, I absolutely could not conceive of that at all. Maybe he had just been listening to Mitch Hedberg recently. Yeah, I don't know.

Grant, come on the podcast. Explain yourself. I will never understand this. All right. Well, I was going to end with sort of a stat blast. This is from Steven, who not only provided a stat blast, but also an article topic for me at a moment when I badly needed one because I was trying to finish a book.

So thank you very much, Steven. He sent us an email with the subject line. The Yankees are tall. And he wrote with the signing of DJ LeMayhew, the Yankees have a very tall roster. My question is where do the Yankees rank historically in terms of height? As a follow-up, is there any significant correlation between height and wins? I think this is almost as mystifying to me as the fact that Grant pre-wrote a post and then

forgot about it, is the fact that, do you know, I mean, you probably, you just wrote about him, but do you know how tall DJ LeMayhew is? No. Six foot four. Really? Well, that's still not tall to me. Well, no, not to you, I guess. But still, for a player like DJ LeMahieu, for a second baseman who has stats like DJ, he's like, you think of him as, oh, he's a good glove guy. He can make some contact. He's not that at all. He's a giant. He is literally the tallest person ever to play second base on a regular basis. Really? Yeah. There's never been a taller second baseman. So that is amazing to me.

There's never been a second baseman, at least, who has spent the majority of his time at second base and has been taller than DJ LeMayhew. So that is amazing to me. But the Yankees are extraordinarily tall. So they had a guy who was tied for the tallest second baseman ever last year, Neil Walker, who's 6'3". So they went out and they got an even taller second baseman, the only taller second baseman available in the world ever, actually, as it turns out. On their roster, the guy who would pose for photos Between John Carlos Stanton and Aaron Judge And not look like a member of the same species He is gone, he signed with the Twins And then of course they also signed

Troy Tulewitzki, who's 6'3 I guess he's technically replacing Dede Gregorius, who was injured and is also 6'3 Anyway, Yankees are Gigantic, other than Brett Gardner, really, who is listed At 5'11, but is definitely not 5'11, they is definitely not 5'11".

They are all huge, almost uniformly huge. And I wrote an article about this. I asked Dan Hirsch to run some numbers for me, and he did. So first of all, first thing to know, teams are getting taller. Hitters are getting taller over time. Not very surprising. They are still getting taller. very surprising. They are still getting taller. So the average hitter height weighted by plate appearances and excluding pitcher hitters has increased in each of the past five seasons.

It topped six foot one for the first time ever in 2016. So hitters are about five inches taller than they were when baseball began, when Major League Baseball began. They're like three inches taller than they were when Babe Ruth broke into the league, and they're like an inch taller than they were when Hank Aaron debuted. So the pace just going by raw, just unadjusted height. Actually, seventh. Seventh. That is not adjusting for the league height in that year or anything. The tallest team of all time, 2016 Orioles, as it turns out, led by Matt Wieders, among others. The late 60s Senators were the tallest of all time relative to their league.

late 60s Senators were the tallest of all time relative to their league. Anyway, seems like the Yankees are probably going to be even taller than they were last year when they were the seventh tallest team of all time because they went and got LeMahieu and Tulowitzky and Gary Sanchez will probably play more and no Toreas and they're just giants. So it looks like they will be one of the tallest of all time. The really interesting thing, at least to me, that they could do is have the tallest individual lineup ever just in a single game. So the tallest lineup that has ever lineupped, both of the tallest lineups belong to the 2005 Diamondbacks. So two games during 2005, the Diamondbacks had an average lineup height Excluding pitchers Of 6'3.5

That was a lineup with Tony Clark The almost tallest hitter Ever tied with Nate Fryman Former guest for the tallest hitter ever The shortest guy in that lineup was Royce Clayton who was listed at 6'0. No one else was below 6'2. So giant lineups

The top 40 Individual game lineups ever in terms of average excluding non-pitchers are all 8-man lineups, NL lineups. Just, you know, that makes sense because if you're looking for outliers, it's easier to get 8 above average height hitters than it is to get 9. So the tallest 9-man lineup ever is the 2016 Tigers on May 22nd. They had an average lineup height of 75.11 inches. It seems like the Yankees could fairly easily exceed that by like as much as half an inch potentially they could. You can construct a roster, like if you go, you know, Sanchez, Bird, Tulewitzki, Gregorius when he comes back, LeMahieu, Stanton, Hicks, Judge, Voight. It's just giants top to bottom. Obviously, that requires, like, Brett Gardner to be not starting that day and, you know, Tulewitzki not to be hurt and Gregorius to come back and both Bird and Voight to be hitting enough to play first in DH. And anyway, you can come up with a bunch of combinations where they could very easily be the tallest team that has ever hit.

So that is interesting. And I tweeted about that and Lindsay Adler was responding to me on Twitter about just her trial of having to cover this enormous team as a person who is not also a giant. It's almost like if you are in a clubhouse trying to cover this team, you have to like hold your recorder over your head to talk to these people because they're all enormous. And Lindsay and I were just saying that the BBWA should get like a step stool installed next to the lockers or something so that the non-athletic people can actually talk to the giants in that clubhouse. I understand this is coming from a place of physical privilege, but I have never before

in my life, at least as an adult, have the experience of having to look up to talk to somebody. I just don't even know. It's something I absolutely take for granted. And when I was in high school, I was the second tallest kid in my class and I dated the second shortest person in my class. I just have no conception of what that must have been like from the other side. And look, I know how this sounds. I'm sorry. I didn't choose this. I was just born this way and I grew

this way. But when you were even average height, but if you're shorter than average height and then you're talking to somebody tall, do you think about it? Is it there? Do you feel imposed upon? Do you feel intimidated having to look up or is it just something that people immediately get used to? I haven't had to do that since I was literally a child. Aaron Judge or John Carlos Stanton or something. I mean, those are people that even you would have to look up to. And Lindsay was saying that her neck is like strained from just constantly like having to talk to CeCe Sabathia or whatever. So when you're in a baseball clubhouse, at least for me, like that's the only time when I do kind of feel small. Like remember oh yeah there are people who are just a different order of magnitude of size it's because like and even regular sized baseball players are just bigger

than you think even if like they're not super tall they're just like large people they're just larger than the people in your life generally so you might see that someone is listed at 5'10 or whatever. And if he's a baseball player, he's probably not actually 5'10, but he's still like big and muscular and just takes up more space than your typical 5'10 person. So being around clubhouses, particularly the Yankees clubhouse, I think it can be for a reporter who is not selected for size. It can be a reminder that, oh, there are just super beings in the world who they get to play these games because they're just not made the same way that we are. I mean, if I were in John Carlos Stanton's presence, I wouldn't have to look up to talk to him. He's just an inch taller than I am.

an inch taller than I am, but I would absolutely feel just like so inferior as a member of the species, just like being, being near him. And I know that if I'm talking to someone who's just like ripped out of their gourd, that I, I feel it because I am not ripped out of my gourd. I am very much within my own gourd as a, as a muscled individual. So maybe, maybe it's a little like that if you're, look, for the shorter listeners out there, I apologize. I really am trying to learn, but maybe it's a similar sensation where I've been around muscular people enough,

but even now I still know when I walk up to one, it's like, oh, you are much stronger than I am. I should stay on your good side. So maybe it's the same with height. I don't know why it would be any different. In closing, I will point out that among 141 qualified hitters last season, among 141 qualified hitters, John Cutler stand tied for the tallest.

That's only true because Aaron Judge was not qualified. He was hurt. But the four shortest, based on official listings, the four shortest qualified hitters last season, Jose Altuve, Ozzie Alves, Jose Ramirez, and Mookie Betts. Excellent players, all four of them. It turns out, when you make the majors and you're short You've been selected for your talent And you can be great, even if you're little

Mookie Betts just won the MVP Yeah, I was just going to end on that note Because I ended my article on that note It's kind of funny that the Yankees have assembled This lineup of giants Because it does seem like now More so than any time for decades There's just less of a connection

between how big you are and how good a hitter you are, or at least how good a power hitter you are. The correlation in 2018 between height and isolated power, so slugging percentage minus batting average, was only 0.23, where zero is no connection at all and one is a perfect connection 0.23 that is the lowest correlation between height and isolated power since 1954 so height and power have just not been as divorced as they are in baseball currently since the 50s it's been a really long time now maybe it's just one year that there has been a bit of a larger downturn there lately but i think you can point to the baseball is obviously one factor if the ball is carrying better you don't have to be as big to hit home runs and so that sort of benefits the guys who

might have warning track power more than it does the stantons and judges of the world who have like outside the stadium power and then the second point I think is that there's just more craft. There's more technique. There are more tools being applied to hitting. And those guys you mentioned, whether it's Betts or Bregman or Ramirez or Lindor, they have all seemingly found ways to maximize whatever power potential they do have by changing their swings,

swinging out in front of the plate, making contact out in front where the plate, making contact out in front where the power really comes, pulling the ball more, just getting the ball in the air, doing things to maximize their power so that even if they're not hitting the ball 450 feet, they're hitting it 400 feet with greater regularity. Are you, we can close this down, are you familiar with Marlins relief pitcher Tehran Guerrero? Does that name mean anything to you? The name means something in that I know that he's a baseball player, but that's about all it means.

Okay. So here's what I know about Tehran Guerrero. Or here's what I knew until about 10 seconds ago. I knew Tehran Guerrero was a Marlins reliever, and he threw his fastball like 100 miles per hour. And that is the reason that he has been written. That's like the only reason he's been written about in any struggles is because he throws super hard and so last season he struck people out i guess maybe maybe this isn't a great question for you because you uh you don't know much about tehran guerrero but if you're to guess is tehran guerrero six foot

eight or five foot eight i would think that maybe i would have heard more about him if he were tiny than if he were gigantic. So 6'8"? He is 6'8". He was tied. Last season, there were seven pitchers in baseball who pitched at least 10 games and were 80 inches tall. Tehran Guerrero, Tyler Glasnow, Brandon McCarthy, Chris Martin, Dylan Batanzas, Doug Pfister, and Chris Volstad.

Now, I knew many of those players were tall, or in the case of Chris Volstad, I knew nothing about them at all and didn't care. But the idea, I knew Tehran Guerrero threw really hard, but the idea that he throws that hard and throws a hundred miles per hour makes him so much more interesting to me because he just sounds absolutely terrifying. And that guy who's six foot eight

and throws a hundred miles per hour just put up a 5-4-3 ERA. He's not even good. so it's just uh baseball doesn't make any sense anyway let's all go to try to solve baseball good luck alternative coaches getting jobs right all right so we will wrap up there okay one more word about the book since we talked about it earlier it really does help us a lot if you do think that you will be buying the book at some point down the road if you pre-order it. The earlier the orders come in, the more optimistic the publisher is about sales, the easier it is to get people to stock the book, the more likely they are to commission additional printings,

and of course, the more likely we are to appear on a bestseller list, which then helps other people find out about it. So if you think you might want to read it at some point, it would be a big help to us if you were to order it even before it came out. I know we're asking you to buy before you try, but I learned a lot writing this book. I thought I knew a fair amount about the subject of player development and baseball. I knew a tiny fraction of what I know now from having talked to so many people and written about it. And the great thing is you don't have to do any of the work we did. All you have to do is click one button, pay a little money, and you can find out all the things we learned without having to do all that annoying research. By the way, I have to thank quite a few Effectively Wild listeners who helped out with transcription for the book.

They will be thanked in the acknowledgments of the book itself, but I wanted to thank them here too. Because as grueling as this was, it would have been way worse without their assistance. And I should also say, getting book deals is not really just like getting a raise at work, where if you write one successful book, you just automatically get a bigger deal the next time. It's kind of a case-by-case basis, unless you are some sort of literary superstar who's just always a bestseller. lists and it was pretty well received. And of course, Travis wrote Big Data Baseball and that was well received too. So if the two of us team up, well, surely we'll do a lot better than we did the first time. Eh, not exactly. Got a considerably smaller bonus for this book than I did for The Only Rule, but that was okay. We weren't doing it entirely for the money. We just both felt really strongly about the subject and were fascinated by it. And we felt like someone should write a book about this and we didn't want someone else to be the one who did so i think we're both happy that we did it and proud of it regardless

of what happens next but it would be very vindicating and wonderful if the book sold and were well received the thing that kept us going through the hardest times and the toughest deadlines was just thinking about what it comes out and all of you get to read it so i look forward to that day and again i hope you'll pre-order if you're interested and I will attach a link to the show page at Fangraphs, which you should also be able to see in your podcast app and in the Facebook group. And of course you can just search for my name on Amazon or Travis's name and you'll find it. It is again called the MVP machine. Thanks as well to those of you who have supported the podcast by going to Patreon at patreon.com slash effectivelywild.

The following five listeners have done so. Corey Halsall, David Goetz, Brian Renfrew, E. May, and David Bosniak. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes

and other podcast platforms. And you can keep your questions coming for me and Jeff via email at podcastfancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We're a little late with our start to this week, but we will catch up. Be back to talk to you very soon. ignoring your own deadlines but now you've got to write them all again

You think she's an open book but you don't know which page to turn to do you? You think she's an open book but you

don't know which page to turn to do you, do you, do you