Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1326: Hall of Flames

Episode Date: January 24, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan discuss the Hall of Fame results, including why (and whether) the Hall matters, Mariano Rivera’s unanimous election, the greatness of Mike Mussina, the stagnation of Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, the perplexing case of Omar Vizquel, and other topics, then banter about the spread of multi-position players, the Braves bringing […]

I heard about your face Saw your name You stand out here And I'm so insane How the press Is cultured I saw your name And you came out here

And I'm insane I don't want to Go down on you I just need to to, I don't want to, I just Jeff Sullivan of VanGraphs. Hello. You changed your avatar. Please don't do that anymore. Yeah, it's like redesigning a website, I guess. When someone changes their avatar, it's sort of disturbing. But I figured I was using this one with a neon green background that they asked us to

use when The Ringer started. But that was years ago, and no one still uses that, and they don't want us to still use that. So I had to get a new headshot for the book the publisher made me, so I figured I might as well use it. Yeah, I understand. It's just, you know, it's jarring. I feel like I accidentally followed some new person, and I try not to follow anybody, or maybe somebody unfamiliar has been retweeted into my timeline. It's like, I don't want to read somebody else's baseball article. So anyway, I think I've already adjusted to it. But at first, I didn't care for it.

Still the same me. It's just a slightly prettier photo. So we are going to answer some emails today. Can you feign interest in the Hall of Fame for a few minutes? Well, let's make a compromise. Before we get there, can I at least point out that Williams Estadio played his first game as a mercenary in the championship for the Cardinales de Lara.

And they won game one of the Venezuelan championship. I guess the Leones del Caracas and Astadio batted third as the DH for the Cardinales. And he went three for five and scored two runs. Unsurprisingly, he did not strike out. Okay. Unfortunately, too late to pad his MVP case, but he can still win a title. So that's something. So Hall of Fame results came out on Tuesday.

They were not particularly surprising if you've been following the excellent work that Ryan Thibodeau does to collect all of the public ballots before the announcement is made. So that has sort of sapped some of the excitement, I guess, if you were ever excited about Hall of Fame voting results. excitement, I guess, if you were ever excited about Hall of Fame voting results. But I think that it has been more than worth that sacrifice because it's given us all this great data that we can go on and look into and do analysis based on. So four guys got in. Mariano Rivera, first ballot. Roy Halladay, first ballot. Edgar Martinez, last ballot. And Mike Messina, belated ballot. The only real uncertainty, I think, on the final day was about whether Messina belated ballot. The only real uncertainty I think on the final day was about whether Messina would get over the hump and he did. 76.7% just cleared the 75% threshold. I wrote a couple weeks ago about how it seemed like this might be one of the more

unobjectionable classes we've seen in some time, at least from a statistical perspective. I don't think anyone in the Sabre community really has a problem with any of these four guys getting in, and I don't think they're really that divisive when it comes to even old school people. I guess Edgar was because it took him 10 tries and he was a DH and all of that. But these are four really good players who deserve to get in. They are great people, as far as we know, for the most part, and people we can all sort of just feel happy about seeing enshrined. And there's other stuff we can break down about the vote totals

and the down ballot and all of that, but generally big class and great class. I know we've talked about this before on the podcast, and it's essentially the same conversation we have about the MVP and the Cy Young word. I just have, it's hard for me to, I guess, bring myself to be really happy that other people are really happy. And that's, I don't know, that sounds kind of self-interested. And that's all a championship is for your favorite team is you're rooting for your team to be really happy because they're the last team to win a game but for whatever scent people get really really

passionate and argumentative about the hall of fame this is it's not first of all there's there's no decision decisions haven't been made so one decision has been made but like if somebody is out there saying like oh i don't think mike messina is a hall of famer it's not over just because mike messina is in the hall of fame people are not going to have their minds changed the people who are i don't know messina truthers or whatever you want to call them are still going to say no he's not good enough he doesn't belong there this denigrates the hall of fame and by the way it doesn't do it any more than harold baines did it does it a lot less than harold baines did but in any case yeah it's no one the voting results don't determine this guy had a good career or he had a bad career. We're looking at players who are like three standard deviations above the mean.

And we're saying, okay, either Mike Messina had a very, very good career or he had a very, very, very good career. And enough writers have decided that he gets that third extra very. And therefore, Mike Messina gets to go in this special room in the Hall of Fame. And so I don't know. I don't know how I'm supposed to feel. Maybe I'm just really jaded. But like even when I was the bigger like baseball fan, more emotional baseball fan, I just never they never clicked with me. And I don't want to take anything away from people who think that do find this to be a really emotional moment,

a really powerful moment. I know that Mariners fans all over the place are just overjoyed that Edgar Martinez has finally gotten into the Hall of Fame, which he deserves. More players deserve to make the Hall of Fame, and that's great. I feel slightly happy that people who deserve to be in the Hall of Fame are going to Hall of Fame, but there's just been so many things that have cheapened the experience to me, and even foundationally. I don't know. It just seems kind of strange that such a big deal is made out of the opinion of a bunch of baseball writers, many of whom don't know. It just seems kind of strange that such a big deal is made out of the opinion of a bunch of baseball writers, many of whom don't even write about baseball anymore. Right. I mean, it is sort of silly. Mike Messina, I think, is a clear and obvious Hall of Famer, and I have thought he was one since the day he retired. And so the fact that it took this long to get him in, I mean, I'm happy because he's probably my favorite pitcher ever, at least

favorite pitcher that I watched extensively. He was just a lot of fun to watch and just kind of a fun person to follow. He was kind of, I don't know, crappy and cerebral, and I just liked him a lot. And he had so many pitches and such great control. He was just a really fun pitcher to watch. And he was always the guy I would choose in baseball video games because he had so many pitches to choose and they all moved in ridiculous ways. And it was a lot of fun. So I'm happy that he is being recognized. I guess it's just that if you think someone is good and you appreciate their career, you want their career to be appreciated. Not everyone. Some people might say, well, I know what I think of him

and that's all that matters. I don't care what other people think and that's fine too. But if you want his career to be remembered by future generations and for people to see his plaque on the wall when they go to the museum and for him to have that luster of Hall of Famer, I think it still means something. And I think also you see every single year, seemingly, I see people declare, all right, that's it. That's the final straw. I don't care about the Hall of Fame anymore because they put this guy in or they didn't put that guy in. And I don't know whether anyone ever actually sticks to that. Like, this is the end. I don't care. I'm not paying any attention to the Hall of Fame anymore. Like you are sort of saying that, but you were never really that into it to begin with, it sounds like. So if someone is really into it, I don't know if they can walk away just because someone got in or someone didn't get in.

It seems almost like when some media person declares that they're done with Twitter and they're suspending their Twitter account and they're not going to tweet anymore. And then next thing you know, they're back and tweeting again because you can't stay away. So it's just sort of like that, I think.

And really, I mean, the surprising thing, the most surprising thing about these results is that Mariano Rivera got 100% of the vote. He was named on all 425 ballots. This has never happened before. All of the great baseball players in history, none of them has ever gotten unanimous support. And so I didn't expect Rivera to be the first person to get unanimous support, and he did. And so that I think is good because we can maybe stop having one of the dumbest debates in sports about whether anyone should be unanimous or why no one is unanimous. It is so just brain cell destroying to have that conversation. And I've been sort of surprised to see the number of reactions from people who are aggrieved that Rivera was the one to snap that streak it would be Rivera. And granted, like, Mario Rivera is not the best baseball player of all time,

and so he is not the most deserving player of unanimous support. But finally someone has gotten unanimous support so that we can hopefully stop having this really dumb discussion every single year. And now when a player is good and should get in the Hall of Fame, people will just vote for him and not hold out because no one has ever gotten 100% support. It's like, don't compound the dumbness of the previous debate about this by then being upset that Rivera was the first one to get 100%. Be happy that anyone got 100% so that hopefully we can stop having this conversation every single year. we can stop having this conversation every single year because in my mind there are probably a hundred guys who are like tied for equally deserving of getting unanimous support like

if a guy is a hall of famer and is clearly and obviously a hall of famer then everyone should vote for him barring i don't know too many players on the ballot and you just have to do some strategic vote or something but it is very I think, both to keep someone out because no one has been voted 100% before and to be upset about someone finally getting 100% who is not the best baseball player ever. First of all, I agree with you. Second of all, I agree with Grant Brisby's, I think, maybe sarcastic tweet,

but still he made a reference to being a Rivera unanimity truther or something like that, because I believe there was at least one, and I think there were three voters who didn't submit ballots. Now, that doesn't mean they submitted blank ballots. That's different. Had they submitted blank ballots, that would be a submission. Rivera would not have been unanimous. But I believe, without having checked, I believe three voters did not turn in their ballots, and I think, again, believe three voters did not turn in their ballots and i think again unconfirmed but i'm pretty sure that i read that at least one person didn't send in a blank ballot because that person didn't want to be the center of attention for not voting for someone like mariano rivera in any case rivera

unanimous election among those who returned ballots but if everyone didn't return a ballot was it really unanimous scratch Scratchy face emoji. Third point. Mariano Rivera, first ever unanimous election into the Hall of Fame as a one-inning pitcher, a part-time player. Edgar Martinez scratches in in his 10th and final vote as a part-time player, designated hitter. It doesn't make any sense to me. Of course, Rivera is more memorable than Edgar Martinez. Mariano Rivera had more playoff moments than Edgar Martinez Edgar had one maybe two that people will never forget Rivera a more I guess illustrious career but nevertheless I just don't

understand that we can have a part-time player conversation with one guy and not a part-time player conversation with somebody else it doesn't add up there are a lot of inconsistencies and because of the number of inconsistencies that go into the election and induction process it's just it's too it's not it's not going to save me if somebody is out there across the board if someone says passionately and urgently i no longer care about x because of y the people who say that and say it publicly, those people are, like, of course, they're in, they're in forever. Those people care deeply about whatever X is and so you'll never lose them. It's the people who

just quietly shrug and don't make a scene about it. Those are the people that you're going to lose and something like Harold Baines getting into the Hall of Fame, that does diminish any chance that I'm ever going to give a shit about the Hall of Fame because I can't, chance that I'm ever going to give a shit about the Hall of Fame because I just can't do it.

So listen to the silent minority of people like me, even though you can't listen to us because we're not saying anything because we don't care. I almost admire, who was it, Bill Ballou of the Worcester Telegram, who just attracted such a huge response when he wrote that column about how he was abstaining from voting because he didn't want to vote for Rivera, but also didn't want to be the guy who cost him unanimous support. And so his column was passed around and everyone was burning him in figurative effigy for a few days.

And I'm sure he got lots of clicks, which maybe was his goal. I don't know how much traffic matters at the Worcester Telegram. But then after all of that, after all of that hubbub, he just ended up voting for Rivera anyway, and then wrote another column about how, no, actually I decided to vote for Rivera. So he kind of just gamed the system. I feel like that's what everyone who writes their, you know, justifying their Hall of Fame vote that's kind of controversial column, he really maximized the return there. You want to get like the initial, just flare up about how terrible your decision is, and then change your mind anyway, so no one's actually all that mad at you at the end. He really just masterfully handed the grandstanding and attention-getting approach to the Hall of Fame vote. But yeah. I don't know if you know this, but the incentive structure in media is broken. I think it's been broken for all time because everything you're just incentivizing to get

as much attention as possible. That is the fundamental truth of what we do. If you write, you can be the person who always writes really, really reasonable takes, but unless you have a snappy headline to bring people in, you're going to fail. So anyway, you can resume the point you were making. So everybody knows, though, everything sucks. Yeah. So hopefully that is the end of the 100% nonsense. And it was nice if you saw the reaction video of Rivera. He was with his family, and he seemed happy to have gotten elected, but they seemed even more overjoyed to have been

the first unanimous selection. As silly as it is that he had to be the first and that no one else was, anyway, we can put an end to that, I hope, and that no one will be mad about Rivera being the one to get it, because obviously a hundred other people should have gotten it, and the fact that someone finally rectified that mistake does not mean that that in itself is a mistake. So please don't make that argument. The other people on the ballot and other down ballot stuff that was kind of interesting, Curt Schilling made something of a jump and Roger Cummins and Barry Bonds made very small

jumps and they are now all clustered very close to 60%, all three of those guys. And it's going to be really interesting to see what happens with those guys. And by really interesting, I mean horrible and terrible. And it's going to be a terrible discussion for the next three years, because as other people have pointed out, the 2022 ballot is going to be the last year of eligibility for Schilling Clemens and Bonds assuming none of those guys has gotten in before then and it's also going to be the first year for A-Rod and David Ortiz so it's going to be just like the perfect storm of PED and character claws and angry columns, and it's going to be horrible. So I don't know. I mean,

they haven't been making big gains. Schilling made something of a large leap here, but Bonds and Clemens just kind of keep inching up and inching up. And the fact that they've gotten to this point, I think Jay Jaffe has pointed out that now that Lee Smith is in, no one has gotten to 50% in the writers voting and not ultimately gotten in via some method, even if it's the Veterans Committee, I think, except for Gil Hodges. So the fact that they're as high as they are, I think they'll get in someday, some way. But also, I think that to have gotten this high with still three years of eligibility remaining makes you think that maybe they will just inch across that finish line. And I think their support is very high among first-time voters, and I will be a first-time voter soon voting for those guys. And so that

will help a little bit. There's still just an enormous gulf between their public and private support, and that's because the private voters who still don't release their ballots just tend to be a different kind of class of voters and in many cases are not covering baseball and maybe never really covered baseball. And they just seem to be extremely set in their ways when it comes to these guys. So I don't know if their minds can be changed. Did you so Jeff Fasson had an article that he put up at ESPN. That's still weird to say, but Jeff Bassett had an article at ESPN on Tuesday night where he sent out emails to 60 non-Bonds and Clemens voters, the 60 public ones, at least according to the ballot tracking. And he received responses from 18 of them.

And 15 of them suggested that there was absolutely nothing that could change their mind and then i think after his article went up he heard from three more who who agreed with that i think i'm getting these numbers correct so that's still a relatively small sample that's 39 non-responses but still 18 out of 21 of the non clemens bonds voters saying like no there's absolutely no way that I could have my mind changed. I believe that they both need something like, assuming they continue to get the support from the people who have already voted for them,

then they need something like 38 or 39% support from the other people in order to get over the threshold. And I don't know, if 18 of those 21, if that's a representative sample, then that means they're only getting about 14% potential support from people who haven't voted for them. So I don't know. It seems like they could be hitting a ceiling pretty soon.

Like you said, they made progress, but they made very little progress. considerations here are of a very different sort than, for example, Kurt Schillings, who does not deserve to have who he is as a person held against him as a baseball player, because there are a lot of really terrible people who are in the Hall of Fame. It just seems like a strange standard, and you can at least, the people who don't vote for Bond and Clemson, etc., at least have, you could say, baseball reasons for doing so. I don't know. Did you read that article? And even if you didn't, what do you make of the idea if 18 of 21 people say nothing could ever change their mind, but they still have a few years for the minds to be changed? Do you think that that is still a pliable position? Yeah. I mean, there are plenty of people who have changed their

minds about things after saying that there was no way that they could change their minds about those things. So I wouldn't rule it out if you get a few more years and who knows, maybe they make some sort of public statements in the interim that change things, or maybe there's just a peer pressure thing that happens when they get even closer to 75%. So I could see it happening. I mean, I think they'll get in someday via some method regardless, but I think it would be better if they just got in via this method and we didn't have to keep talking about this. It's so silly that even, I mean, 10 years is a lot fewer than 15 years, which it used to be, but it's still, why do we do this 10 times after nothing is changing about these players, I understand allowing some time for historical perspective to set in and, you know, new stats come along and maybe improve our understanding of players. And there is some benefit to waiting, but you already have the five-year waiting period before they even become eligible. So it seems excessive to put people through this year after year after year.

to put people through this year after year after year. But I kind of wonder just if we went to like one year, all of these incremental gains that we see and guys just slowly creeping up, I wonder how much of it would happen just in an accelerated timeline if it were say five years instead of 10 years. Anyway, I think that those guys will have a tough time, but it'll kind of come down to the wire.

As for other people on the ballot, Larry Walker made a big jump, a little smaller than it looked like he might based on the public ballots that came out before the announcement, but still big and it would be tough. He'd have to get another 20 percentage points of support to get in next year. That would be difficult, but it's not that strong a ballot. I think Derek Jeter is the only no-doubt guy who's coming on to it, so it's possible that he makes that final leap. I hope he does, and as for everyone else, I don't know. There wasn't that much movement elsewhere. It continues to perplex people that Omar Vizquel is getting the level of support that he got. I think what he was at like 37 or something last year, and now he's at 42.8%. And he is clearly not as good as people who are getting less support, particularly Scott Rowland. I get the Vizquel case. I understand

what people are looking at. They're looking at a guy who won 11 gold gloves and played shortstop forever and also had 2,877 hits. That sounds like a Hall of Famer kind of when you just put it that way, that he got on base a lot of times and got a lot of hits. And yes, that's because he played 24 years. But if you don't look at it that hard, you just know, oh, great fielder, got almost 3,000 hits. That should be a Hall of Famer. So I understand. It's just when you dig a little deeper, then you see that he really was not a good hitter at all by the standards of his day and was just kind of compiling the career counting stats. So it's hard to be super mad about it because I like omar fiscal like that's another thing like all the guys who got in i think rivera got a hundred not because he is the best

baseball player ever but because he just seems like a really great guy and no one has anything negative to say about marion rivera and no writers seem to have had any clashes with him and he just seems like a really good person off the field too. And that really shouldn't come into it, but obviously it does. So between that and maybe between a little more agreement among voters and some of the silliness about can't vote for this guy being washed away with people who no longer have ballots, that is where you get that kind of unanimity. So there's stuff you can quibble with, but I think overall things moved in the right direction in this ballot.

Lance Berkman got 1.2% support for his first Hall of Fame candidacy. That will also be there for his last Hall of Fame candidacy, 1.2% of the vote. Vladimir Guerrero, his first time around, got 71.7% of the vote. His second time around, 92.9%. Vladimir Guerrero, of course, joined the Hall of Fame last year. According to Fangraphs, Vladimir Guerrero was worth 54. Career wins above replacement. Lance Berkman was worth 56.

I'm not—that's all I got. Yeah, no, I've seen people make the comparison. Now that Edgar is in, you look at lance berkman and you look at gary sheffield who got only 13.6 percent support now in sheffield's case i think that has far more to do with pds and maybe with people's perception of his attitude at times than it has to do with his career as a player but also he's not a slam dunk statistical candidate because his fielding was so bad. But you can look at both of those guys and say, well, what if they had followed the Edgar career path? Or at least what if they had spent more time as DHs? Because Berkman was an NL player. And so he had to play out of position. He was blocked by Bagwell for a while. And so that kind of cost him in terms of his fielding runs. And, you know, other than his very brief stints with the Yankees and the Rangers at the end of his career, he was in the NL and he didn't get to DH and he ended up with negative

fielding runs. So I don't know, particularly with Sheffield, because you look at Sheffield's fielding runs and it's like super negative. So what would have happened if he had just DH'd instead? Maybe he's a guy who even with the DH penalty, maybe he looks like a better statistical candidate if he had just DH'd. I don't know. I just, I think Sheffield should be in probably. He might not be on my 10 personperson ballot, but he'd probably be on my 11-person ballot this year just because he was such a great hitter. And Berkman was a really incredible hitter too. And now he's one and done. So you look at guys like Berkman and Lofton who just fall off the ballot after one time, and then you look at guys who hang on there forever, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I think the main argument for Vladimir Guerrero over Lance Berkman is that Guerrero batted 1,200 more times, and that matters. He played longer, I guess.

He also came up at 21, and Berkman came up at 23. Berkman actually played until he was 37. Guerrero played until he was 36. Guerrero batted about 1,500 times between the ages of 34 and 36 at the end when he just wasn't a really useful baseball player anymore, so he just kind of piled on. I don't know. I like the fact that Vladimir Guerrero is in the Hall of piled on. I don't know. I like the

fact that Vladimir Guerrero is in the Hall of Fame. Loved him as a player. I'll love him forever. I love the fact that his son is going to make the major leagues this coming season and might pick up where his dad left off. But I just don't understand. I don't understand at all how you can have 70 percentage point difference between Guerrero and Berkman the first time around. And this probably, I'm going to guess that there would have been at least 5% of voters who would have voted for Berkman if they weren't limited to 10, which just brings us back down to one of the fundamental questions. What is the idea of limiting?

Why 10? Why do we do this? Why do people have to think about strategic voting and say, maybe I won't vote for Rivera because everybody else is going to vote for him? Why is that a part of the conversation? I genuinely don't know. When you have so many people, when you have, what was it, like 60% of voters or something like that, at least more than 50% who are maxing out their ballots, don't allow them to max out their ballot. There doesn't have to be a maximum. It doesn't make any ideological sense to me.

No, it doesn't. There doesn't have to be a maximum. It doesn't make any ideological sense to me. No, it doesn't. And the writers, to their credit, have tried to expand the ballot limit and have tried to make all the ballots public. And the Hall of Fame rejected those proposals for whatever reason. So that is why we keep having these discussions every year. Anyway, you can drive yourself crazy looking at why did this guy get that and that guy got only that? And why did Roland get a third of the support of Vizquel or, you know, a little more than that? But these are all, I think, relatively insignificant points compared to the fact that four guys who got in who should get in. And the Hall of Fame is better with those four guys in.

And we were better as baseball fans with those guys to watch. And so this is good. I think it's nice. It kind of makes you feel old when players you grew up watching for your entire childhood get into the Hall of Fame. But it's also kind of nice to see those guys enshrined with everyone else who you never got to see. So I think on the whole, there's a lot of positive here. And, you know, six-player class getting in, even if the other two are Baines and Lee Smith, it makes for a fun induction ceremony.

And we have seen a whole lot of players getting in lately, like an unprecedented number of players being admitted via the writer votes. And that's because there was such a big backlog built up that you had to release that tension somehow. But anyway, pretty good results, pretty encouraging. Nothing to get as mad about as we have gotten mad about things in the past. And I guess at least from my own perspective, I should allow for the fact that maybe as I get older and more and more of these players or players I've seen throughout their

entire major league careers, maybe I will care more. I think the odds are strongly against the idea that I will care more. I think my mind mind is made up not a whole lot of people change their minds as they get older as adults but anyway i don't know it's a possibility if you want the today's little stat blast is mariana rivera related so i can just get that out of the way now if you'd like yeah sure go ahead great let's do that So, Mariano Rivera, let's do a summary. Mariano Rivera is great, was great, and is now in the Hall of Fame. He was a very good closer for his career. I think I'm going to, I don't like to make too many assumptions,

but I assume many of the people listening to this podcast are familiar with Mariano Rivera as a former baseball player. So let's do some Mariano Rivera numbers. He played from 1995 until pretty recently, until what was it, 2013? I believe it was his final season. Let me just double confirm that. It was 2013. Of course it was because he's eligible for voting. Anyway, so I have looked at this in a few different ways.

I'm going to introduce, I think, five statistics. So looking at fan graphs, we have batted ball data going back to 2002. So let's just look at Rivera between 2002 and the end of his career. So we'll start off in this way. At fan graphs, since 2002, you can pull up ERA-, FIP-, and XFIP-. These work kind of similar to ERA+, where 100 is average, and what you want here is actually a number under 100. So, ERA-, everyone should be familiar, is just like ERA. Park adjusted, put on a scale of 100. FIP-, that's fielding independent pitching, and XFIP- is fielding independent pitching, but also adjusts for home run rate. So, Mariano Rivera, from 2002 on, had an ERA- of 44. That is exceptionally good. As a matter of fact, it's the best out of everyone who's thrown 500 innings

since 2002. It's the lowest ERA- in baseball. But what I am most interested in is the fact that Mariano Rivera had a difference of 25 points between his ERA minus and his ex-FIP minus, implying that he did a great job of avoiding home runs and avoiding hits on balls in play, all that stuff. So out of all the pitchers on this list, Rivera's 25-point difference between ERA minus and ex-FIP minus is fourth best. Now, he's behind three presumably non-Hall of Fame pitchers in Craig Breslow, Darren O'Day, and Jesse Crane, but still, point number one that I will raise, Mariano Rivera, 25 points better than his XFIP minus. Let's move on to something that's a little less annoying to say out loud. There is looking at

home runs per fly ball. That one's pretty easy, right? It's easy to understand. And we know home runs per fly ball tends to fluctuate around like anywhere between 10 and 12%. Rivera, of course, playing in Yankee Stadium. But since 2002, looking at there are 444 pitchers who have thrown at least 500 innings. Rivera allowed home runs on 6.5% of his fly balls. That has been the lowest out of any of those pitchers. That's almost half the league average, a little higher than half the league average, but 6.5% home runs per fly ball. Rivera, the best. We can look at hard hit rate. Now for this, I looked from 2002 to 2013 because hard hit rate has climbed. It's more of a subjective statistic but Rivera out of now a pool of 315 pitchers allowed a hard hit rate of 17.3 percent which was the best it was the best not only the best but

also the best by more than four percentage points over the guy in second place now the guy in second place you would probably not guess is Fernando Rodney but let's just ignore that part and say Rivera avoiding hard hits so if you look at now I'm going all the way back to 1995, switching to the baseball reference play index, because this doesn't need the same advanced batted ball statistics. I'm looking now from 1995 on the start of Rivera's career, looking now at all pitchers with at least 1,000 major league innings. Sorry to keep changing things up on you, but we're now at a pool of 252 pitchers with at least 1,000 innings since 1995. And Mario Nervera allowed a batting average on balls in play of 265, which is second lowest in the sample. Now the guy in first place, Chris Young, which is kind of interesting, maybe not super surprising if you remember watching Chris Young, extreme fly ball pitcher.

And extreme fly ball pitchers tend to run lower batting averages on balls in play because fly balls are easier to field than ground balls. Anyway, Rivera, second best as a more of a ground ball pitcher. And finally, 1995 on, again, minimum 1,000 innings, same pool of pitchers. I looked at isolated power, and that is slugging percentage minus batting average. So basically looking at how well a guy has avoided extra base hits, Mariano Rivera out of the pool allowed an isolated power of.081, which is the best out of the entire sample, rounding out the top five. Rivera, Kevin Brown, clayton kershaw brandon webb and jason isringhaus and marion rivera again isolate power against of 0.081 guy in second place 0.097 which is all to say take a breath jeff which is all to say when we talk we have so much stat cast

information now when we look at exit velocities and launch angles and you take a guy like i don't know dallas keitel for example and we we say, here's a guy who maybe his strikeouts aren't through the roof. And I should say Rivera's strikeouts were never extraordinary. They're good, but he was never like a Craig Kimbrell of his era. We look at so many guys and say, well, this guy looks like he's a soft contact pitcher. He just doesn't allow the ball to be hit very hard. And generally speaking, when we bring that up, it regresses or we just say, well, this is going to regress. It's not a real skill. We keep looking for soft contact pitchers and it regresses so heavily. And it seems counterintuitive because you'd think there should be qualities that

allow for a pitcher to get softer contact than average. And we do see that like Dallas Keuchel is a softer contact pitcher than, I don't know, like Robbie Ray or something, who just seems to allow line drives every time somebody hits the ball. But even now, if we talk about a guy who seems to generate soft contact, I think you and I would both agree that it's a hard skill to actually buy into. But Rivera, almost by himself, is proof. I mean, he pitched at the height of, if you want to call it the steroid era or the smaller strike zone era, and he stretched into the more modern day pitching and rivera was in arguably a soft contact pitcher he allowed softer contact than pretty much anybody

else and if he could do it that means it is possible and so i think that's one of the main reasons why we keep hunting you're desperately searching for guys who actually are soft contact pitchers we don't know what makes them. You think, you would think that if you have a guy who has like four or five pitches, that maybe the little differences in movement between the pitches will allow for a pitcher to avoid the barrel. But again, I don't need to remind many people, Mario Rivera, basically a one pitch pitcher. He would mix in a regular fastball from time to time, but he just threw a cutter and he would throw it to different sides of the plate. And that was it. And he got soft contact.

And the fact that he could do it is why it's one of the main reasons we are all just kind of chasing the unicorn of the soft contact pitcher even today. Still kind of unclear what makes one, but I guarantee you most teams out there are trying to figure it out. They're trying to just like put Mariano Rivera's stem cells or blood in a centrifuge and just kind of distill what are the qualities that allow for a guy to be a soft contact pitcher? Because it's still kind of a mystery, but it is clear based on the Rivera example that it can be done. Yeah. People sometimes ask me what's an article you want to do that you haven't been able to do or someone you want to talk to that you haven't been able to talk to.

For me, one that comes to mind is Ray Durham. to talk to. For me, one that comes to mind is Ray Durham. I really want to talk to Ray Durham about going 0-26 against Mariano Rivera with only three strikeouts. So if anyone knows about getting soft contact off Mariano Rivera, it would be Ray Durham. I've tried twice now. I tried when Rivera was retiring. I tried again now. I have texted and emailed and called Ray Durham. Poor Ray Durham. I understand why he evidently is not interested in talking about going hitless against Mario Rivera. Probably not happy memories, but I would love to talk to him about that. And I wish he had a sense of humor about it because, A, Ray Durham's a really good player. And it's always endearing, I think, when someone can laugh at their own

failures and mistakes and acknowledge the ways in which they came up short. So I would like to hear him talk about how he failed against Rivera, and there's no shame in that because Rivera is the only unanimous Hall of Famer ever. So it's almost a badge of honor to have been bad against Marian Rivera. Anyway, maybe someday should point out that uh ray durham not a meaningfully inferior major league player than harold baines yo no not at all ray durham very good i think yeah actually when i did my my hall of baines for uh looking up which players would be in the hall of fame if we use the positional standard of harold baines relative to outfielders and i I think Ray Durham was the new

bar for second baseman in the Hall of Baines. So he is very much equivalent to him. Another thing that I want to mention about Rivera, you noted the other day when I think we were talking about Adovino, that the Yankees have just had a lot of super bullpens, and our listener and Patreon supporter Mitch McConaughey was inspired by that comment to look up the Yankees' bullpen win probability added level, the Yankees are in first by such a wide margin. We love leaderboards where one team or player is leading by a ridiculous degree. Yankees have 126.3 WPA since then. The second place Angels have 75.7. So the difference between the Yankees and Angels in bullpen WPA over this period is, I think, equivalent to the difference between the Angels and the 21st place Pirates. That's the gap between the Yankees and the next best team.

It's not all Rivera, obviously, but it is to a large extent Rivera so yeah that is uh one indication of how great he was and if you just isolate it to the Rivera era which is basically the same but 1996 to 2013 uh then again looking at team bullpen win probability out of the Yankees at 96.1 and the second place team, the Twins, at 70.5. So another enormous difference. This is, again, Mariano Rivera, kind of proof of concept of so many different things, which is really wonderful. And I'm reminded by looking at his baseball reference page that, of course, Rivera was the cousin of Ruben Rivera. And when they were coming up to the minors, which one of those players do you think people thought was more likely to end up in the Hall of Fame? Yeah, I mean, Rivera was briefly a prospect. I think

he was on one Baseball America Top 100, I think, right, as a starter. But yeah, no one expected this, obviously. I don't know. I guess maybe my colleague Michael Bauman wrote about how this class sort of sets a new template possibly for the modern Hall of Famer in that you have your closer. Now, Rivera was an outlier among modern closers, but you have Roy Halladay who sort of maybe recalibrates the new standard for starting pitchers, which you have to do because starters are just not going to be winning 300 games anymore. And then you have Edgar, of course, the DH. going to be winning 300 games anymore. And then you have Edgar, of course, the DH. And so lots of arguments about he didn't have enough wins or he was a one inning pitcher or he was a DH. These are all parts of the modern game. And so if we're going to memorialize the best players in the

modern game, you kind of have to do this. And I understand when people are like, oh, he was just a closer. I would feel that way about a lot of guys. I wouldn't have put Trevor Hoffman in my Hall of Fame, I don't think. I don't think I would put Billy Wagner in my Hall of Fame, even though Billy Wagner was really great at what he did. But Ryan Rivera is just, he's in a class of his own. I mean, you put the postseason record up with the regular season record, but even just the regular season record, the length of time over which he did it, the consistency with which he did it. I mean, he was, according to baseball reference, a 56.3 war guy just based on his regular season record. I mean, he's just like a good, deserving statistical candidate. I feel like you don't

even have to compare him to other closers, but you do it's even more obvious anyway rivera was great and as a hitter he uh he batted four times and against francisco rodriguez in uh in 2009 june 20th 2009 mario rivera came up with the bases loaded against francisco rodriguez in the top of ninth and drew a walk seven pitches so drove in a run mario rivera got an RBI as a closer as well You wrote an article You wrote an article about baseball I was going to get into this when I mentioned your avatar Because that's the only reason that I noticed

That you had changed your avatar But you recently finished writing a book about baseball And now you have the opportunity to write a much, much shorter I assume much shorter article About baseball How was it to write something brief? It was great. I was just saying this to you before we started recording, but when you finish a book, the nice thing is it's like warming up in the on-deck circle with a

donut on your bat or something. After you take it off, everything just feels so much lighter and easier. And that is very much the case with writing a book-length thing and then going back to writing an article-length thing. And you realize that, oh, this is something I can complete in a day and I can start it and I can finish it and it's over and it's a fraction as long as a single chapter in a book. It is just a great relief to go back to writing non-book-length things. But yeah, I did want to briefly bring this up because I think it's something that has come up on the podcast a few times this off season

where we've sort of puzzled over why a team acquired a player at a particular position, despite apparently already having a pretty good player at that position. Like when the Mets got Robinson Cano and then they also got Jed Lowry, despite also having Ahmed Rosario and Jeff McNeil, and where are they going to play all these guys? And you can make jokes about, well, it's the Mets, and they don't know what they're doing, but it's the new Mets, a new Mets front office. I don't think we should necessarily saddle it with the sins of the old one, even though ownership is the same. But I think in that case, or in the case of the A's who traded for jerks and profile despite having Franklin Bredo, or the Braves went and got Josh Donaldson, even though they had Johan Camargo, who just had a really good season at

third base. And there are others like Ian Kinsler. I don't know why the Padres signed Ian Kinsler necessarily, but it's even more perplexing because they have the top prospect in baseball at second base, Luis Urias, and also shortstop, Fernando Tatis. So that is kind of perplexing. But I think we're seeing this sort of trend of teams not being constrained by already having a player who can play a position. DJ LeMayhew is another one. He's a Gold Glove second baseman, and now he's going to be probably playing some third and first in addition to second. It's just the rise of the super utility player, the multi-position player. This is a trend that I think has been going on for a while, but really seems to have accelerated lately. There are some numbers and graphs in my article that

show this. Just if you look at just the average number of games played out of a player's primary position on a per-game basis, it is at a record high in 2018 by far. And if you look in the minor leagues, there's a higher percentage of players in the minors who are playing three-plus positions and four-plus positions. That is also a record, at least as far back as baseball prospectuses data goes. There's just more guys who are playing more positions just as a matter of routine. And I think there are a few reasons for that. A, there are many more pitchers. So there are just fewer bench spots and you have to have guys who will play multiple positions. B, there are fewer balls in play and there are also fewer grounders because we've got like a record fly ball rate or at least record low ground ball rate this past year too. So you can kind of get away with having someone at a particular infield position because they're going to get fewer opportunities per game than they would have some time back. And then also there's shifting and

positioning and, you know, maybe everyone benefits from that to an extent, but maybe you can bring some bad fielders up to like a minimum acceptable level of competence where you're okay playing them somewhere where maybe in the past you might not have been okay playing them. So I think that is a trend that we're seeing a lot of teams just having to have the zobrist type and it's kind of funny because marwin gonzalez was expected to draw a ton of interest this winter because he's that guy and you could forecast you could say well marvin gonzalez fits on every team because he plays all these different positions you could sort of say the same about josh harrison Those guys are still unsigned,

which maybe is just because it kind of seems like teams just feel like they can make almost anyone do this now. It's like if you have some reasonable level of athleticism, teams are like, well, he plays second, but why can't he just play first or third or left field or something? Why not?

He could probably do that. So I think that's kind of of a piece with what we've seen with more two-way players and more position player pitchers and guys like Williams Estadio and Isaiah Kiner-Falefa, like with these weird positional profiles where they're catching, but also playing other positions all the time. There's just a blurring of lines between starters and relievers, between guys at one position and guys at other positions. I think we're just seeing that breakdown all across the game. And the Diamondbacks say they want to use Cattell Marte now as a center fielder, which he's barely never done. He's been a shortstop and a second baseman.

And the Reds, they don't have a center fielder, and they might end up using infielder Nick Senzel to be their center fielder. For all I know, it seems like a possibility, which is interesting. And it's also interesting because just last year we were talking about the Mariners doing this with Dee Gordon as he was an infielder, and then he went to center fielder. At least statistically, it didn't work, at least at the beginning. So you do wonder if we're ending up in a situation where teams are maybe out thinking themselves, just trying to think of, well, let's push the envelope of what's possible but i i think i don't know i might write about the diamond back soon just about the fact that they're going to move marte to a new position

they're going to install wilmer flores as the everyday second baseman jake lamb is moving from third base to first they don't have jeff mathis anymore like this is a team that was competitive in 2018 in large part because of their team defense and now they've just basically pulled the rug out from under it except for the nick ah part. So I don't know exactly how that's going to go. But it is interesting. What was it like? So you, as part of writing the book, you conducted, I think you said more than 200 interviews with people. And by the end of it being a book, it has to be very thoroughly and exhaustively researched. And you get a lot of access, a lot of special access writing a book that you might not get if you're just doing an article.

What was it like to write a baseball article where I'm sure you reached out for the record. I haven't yet had a chance to read it because you published it and we do this podcast early in the morning, West Coast time. But what was it? I'm sure you reached out to some people, but like, does it feel freeing or somewhat empty or a mix of both to put something up and know that you haven't checked in with every single possible person that you could have checked in with for background? I would say freeing. That was one of the most arduous parts of the book project was it's such a broad topic like player development and modern player development. There was just like a limitless number of people we could have potentially talked to who might have had something interesting to say on that subject. And so

we talked to tons of people, but we always felt like we could talk to someone else. And so in addition to the writing, it was just like constant interviewing. So it was very much a relief to only have maybe a few people I could talk to for this article or felt like I had to talk to. And actually, some of the interviews I've done for the book have been useful in non-book work too, including this article. Because I wrote in this article about Eli White, who was recently an Oakland A's minor leaguer. He was traded to the Rangers in the pro-far trade. But he is emblematic of this trend in that he's a minor leaguer and he's played like five or six positions.

And I talked to him in the book about something else because he like redid his swing and he used some technology. But I also talked to him about his multi-position play, which was not really a focus of that section in the book. So I got to use some quotes from that interview in this article as it happens. So there's some benefit there too. Thinking about that, that sort of swing change in the future of player development, so much is probably going to be informed by new technology that's coming into the game.

And there are a variety of different devices. I mean, for God's sake, we have StackAss now and there's Rapsodo and TrackMan and all that stuff. But there's going to be more. There already is more. And it's going to be interesting to see what baseball writing looks like in like three or four or five years i don't know how quickly this is going to go but you know already there are sort of jokes that oh if the dodgers get some guy in the cheap you think well they must they must see something that they can do with them and that's going to spread it's going to be like that more yeah and more and so from an analytical side of

course it's not going to change as fast as one might think because teams just aren't as smart as they say they are, and the data isn't as useful as they say that it is. But it's just going to be like that. You'll see a trade, and you'll say, well, here's a guy who's good. And this team, I don't know, it looks like they kind of got a light return, but maybe they think that they can make this guy throw 95 or he can learn to throw strikes, and maybe they see something in his biometric data that they can adjust,

and then they think that they're going unlock his potential this team actually might have gotten a steal because they bought low on this prospect and it's just going to be like that over and over and over again except for i guess like the royals yeah well we've talked about how it's harder to write about transactions now because you always feel like teams are smart and they probably have some rationale for making this move even if if it's not obvious to us. And yeah, as there are more and more player development successes, then it's like you can't even look at the guy's past stat line and say, well, here's what was good about him. You have to then say, well, maybe they see something about his pitch or his swing that they can change this and suddenly he'll be good. And it's sort of frustrating because this data is not public like StatCast is, but wearable data and swing sensors and other technology that players can use, it's not out there in the public. In many cases, it's not even available to other teams. And so there really is this information imbalance where we're constantly like, well, do they see something? And maybe you can talk to

people if you're connected enough to do that and they'll tell you something, but not always. And yeah, it's hard not to just hedge and say, well, we don't know what this guy's going to be because we've seen so many guys go from being bad to being good or being okay to being better. So it does change things. I think you're right. And I guess we probably shouldn't even pretend that this is a listener email show at this point. I don't think we even said that it was going to be. Yeah, I said we might do some emails, but we're not going to do some emails, it seems like, because we don't have too much time left here. And there are a couple other things I guess we could talk about briefly, right? There was a little bit of baseball news. You wrote about the next generation Omar Vizquel Hall of Fame case, Nick Markakis, right? Nick Markakis is back with the

Braves on a one-year $6 million deal, which might seem like a small deal if you knew nothing about Nick Markakis except for his 2018 season. It's so hard to care about re-signing Nick Marquecas. I think there's like an opportunity cost thing here. I think if you're a Braves fan, you think, well, why didn't we make a trade? Why didn't we go, I guess, even if we're not going to sign Bryce Harper, why not sign AJ Pollock, who's a free agent who seems to have no market? And Nick Marquecas last year was good. Now I understand that he was good for a couple of months, and then he was Nick Markekis again, but he is a consistent contact hitter,

and he's not a bad outfield defender, and you know what you're going to get. You're going to get a guy who's one of the lower strikeout rates in baseball. He's going to draw his walks. He kind of looks like when he's going well, he looks like a good version of Michael Brantley, and when he's struggling, he's like a poor man's Michael Brantley, but it's the same kind of skill set,

and a lot of people connected Brantley to the Braves earlier in the offseason. That, of course, didn't happen. There is an impatience, if I could just gauge the temperature of Braves fans from the replies I see on Twitter. Never a good idea, but I did it anyway. There is an impatience for the Braves to make a splash waiting for Corey Kluber or JT Real Muto or sign Craig Kimbler or something. And to a certain extent, they should be able to do something because they have the prospects and their payroll is still a little bit below where it was last year in the year before and of course they're coming off winning the division so there should be room to do something but i will also remind the the room that the brave signed literally

josh jonathan who is one of yeah at least when he's healthy one of the better position players in the world he at least according to steamer projections on a per 600 plate appearance basis he is the 15th he projects as the 15th best position player going into next year the health of course is a major concern but he was a big splash just a one-year move but 23 million dollars he's uh he could and should be a really really good player maybe even there's the chance he's the best player on the team depending on what you think of him and depending on what you think of Acuna anyway though the Braves do have more to do and I kept thinking the Braves and the Padres made a bunch of sense as trading partners because the Padres have like eight outfielders and the Braves had two and so it seemed like there was a trade to

be made but I mean when you can sign Nick Marquecas for a year and six million dollars what's the motivation to give up a prospect for an outfielder you just don't have to do it you see someone like Azdrubal Cabrera signing for three and a half million dollars nobody's like really excited about getting Azdrubal Cabrera or Nick Marquegas but like these are fine players maybe even league average players and they're signing for such small commitments that not only does this do something to the free agent market, but it also kind of impacts the trade market as well because there's just less incentive to go trade for like a decent young player when you can get like a stopgap veteran player for so cheap. Yeah, right. And Markekis is, of course, coming off his first all-star season and I guess not quite a career year. He had, well, he had a fantastic year in 2008 that maybe was underrated at the time. And then he hit very well in 2012 too. But this is a really good late career year. But he is also 35 and he kind of tanked down the stretcher in the second half, as I recall, he started really well. And I think we

debated whether to talk about his hot start or you debated whether to write about his hot start, because it wasn't clear that anything that significant had changed. And so after that, he then kind of fell back to earth, but overall was still a really good above average player. And you have to hand it to Nick Marquegas. He's been extremely durable and consistent and not great. Like he's headed for a Harold Baines type war, but he is also still has a realistic chance of 3000 hits. And so he is the current player that everyone is wringing their hands about.

Well, if he gets there, what will the debate about him actually be? I don't think that he would have any real chance of getting into the Hall of Fame, even if he got there. But then again, Baines is in. So, yeah, the only other news, I guess, is that the Mariners have signed Ichiro to a minor league contract, a $750,000 minor league deal. That's if he were to make the majors. And this is not unexpected because he has always intended to try to play again and to play in the Japan series. And so I guess they will use him in that two-game series in Japan. The team gets to carry a 28-man roster for those games. And then we'll see whether he retires again or goes to play in Japan, or I don't know what will happen.

Maybe that will just be it for him. But obviously he loves playing. I guess if we can make this technically into a listener email show by answering one email, technically into a listener email show by answering one email. This is a question from Dennis who says, the following question is taken directly from a Cespedes family barbecue tweet. I was curious as to your position, especially Jeff's as a Mariners guy, assuming he doesn't retire,

how well does Itro have to play in the Japan series for the Mariners to give him playing time or keep him on the active roster once their season starts up in the States? How well does he have to do in two games to compel the Mariners to give him playing time or keep him on the active roster once their season starts up in the States. How well does he have to do in two games to compel the Mariners? If he went 10 for 10, do you think that it would change their minds at all? I mean, the Mariners have Malik Smith, they have Mitch Hanegar, they have Domingo Santana. I guess for the moment, Jay Bruce is their backup outfielder, which isn't much. I don't know if Dylan Moore, who was in our minor league freedom draft. I don't know if Dylan Moore is going to be much of an outfielder this year. There's a lot to figure out. So I guess in theory, you could keep Ichiro as a fourth outfielder,

and it wouldn't really hurt the team too badly. But you can't draw it out anymore. There's no – he could go 10. If he went 10 for 10 with 10 home runs, then the Mariners might be like, we should probably see this through a little bit more. But assuming that we're not talking about the extreme and the impossible,

there's just not. And I was thinking, I thought maybe the question might come up of like, do you think that this demeans the integrity of competitive baseball they have each were on the roster just because they're playing in Japan to which my response was going to be no it doesn't demean anything this is exactly how his career ought to end I think unless it could have ended after he hit that game-winning home run off Mariano Rivera that people love watching the video of because that was sensational but no he's he's going to play the two games which is great especially in a non-competitive season for the Mariners it doesn't matter it's going to be fun I'm But he's going to play the two games, which is great,

especially in a non-competitive season for the Mariners. It doesn't matter. It's going to be fun. I'm glad he's going to get to do it. And there's nothing he can do to stay on the roster because it's just, it's simply too complicated. Because he's not just another player in his mid-40s. He's not just Omar Vizquel.

He's Ichiro Suzuki. And having him on the roster means something. It has a lot of ripple effects, many of which are negative. If he is not really contributing or playing very often, it just doesn't make any sense. So there's nothing realistic he can do to stay on the roster. Right. And they were in the same situation last year. So there's no real reason why it would go any differently this year, right?

I mean, they didn't have outfielders at all. Like they had to trade for Denard Spann. And there was a period where they just really kind of ran out of players. And still, they didn't really want to keep Itro, and he was a year younger then, and of course he's a franchise legend and everything. So if they were willing to kind of coax him into retirement and inactive status last year. I don't know why that would be any different this year, really. So we'd all like to see Itro keep playing. So I almost hope that he would go back to NPB or something

and have a homecoming final send-off. Maybe that would be fun. Maybe he'd consider it if he wants to play enough. But yeah, pretty unrealistic to expect that he will play beyond this Japan series in the majors. Will you get up for the Japan? Isn't the Japan series at like, it's like at five in the morning, my time or your time? It's, yeah, it's extremely early.

We should, maybe we should do a live podcast. No. Okay. All right. No, I will not. When I wrote about the mariners i they this is not the first Japan series they've opened the season with so they they played the A's some years ago they played at west coast two in the morning and then three in the morning and i did get up and it was dreadful i didn't care for it at all and uh and so i i do not intend to do that

no maybe if my mind will change but you know it's easier for you not only because you're on the East Coast, but also because you, I don't think, have slept in your, I don't know if you even know what it's like to sleep. So I think it would be less of an obstacle for you. But there is something we haven't brought up in this podcast. Are you sticking to the conventional wisdom that we don't talk about the Reds? Well, we've broken that trend a couple times recently so no go ahead well so the reds made a trade i mean oh yeah i think we we talked about sunny gray i think last week because it was inevitable that he was going to be traded i don't think i'm making that up i think we talked about sunday great we did great on our last episode yep perfect

so yeah he's with the official trade to the reds he's going to cincinnati the reds gave up shed long one of their top 10 prospects and also also the number 36, I believe, overall draft pick next year, which is this year, I guess, which is significant. So a heavy price to pay for the Reds, but they also are getting Sonny Gray for four years because he signed a contract extension worth $30.5 million, et cetera, with some escalators and a club option. And so the Reds have continued their push, and I think that they're probably going to make another move. They could use a center fielder. They could use something.

I don't know what they're going to do. But the Reds have put themselves in position where they don't look like they're a great team. But as I was looking at the numbers yesterday at the NL Central, at least according to the very conservative and regressed steamer projections, the NL Central is extremely tight. And the separation between the projected first place team and projected last place team is one of the smallest projection uh smallest separations in recent history both by preseason projections for divisions and also by the way that seasons played out so the reds are in a position where they you and i talked about how they're probably the fourth or fifth best team in the division still.

But they're also, if the numbers are in any way accurate, they're also like kind of astonishingly close to being the best team in the division, which I don't think would be true. I don't think that the Reds are as good as the Cubs or the Cardinals or even the Brewers, but they're close enough that for them to make some moves like this is in that important part of the wind curve that exists in in theory in baseball right where they are at the point where for every additional win that they gain is inordinately valuable to them because it improves their odds right in that sweet spot of going from we're not going to make the playoffs so we actually have a real chance to make the playoffs so to the reds credit i think you and i both kind of poo-pooed their chances when we talked about the great trade last week but as i I look at it more closely, I still don't fully agree with the direction they've gone in. It does still seem hasty.

And getting Roark for one year and giving up resources is weird. And trading prospects for Wood and Puig and Kemp and their walk years is a little bit weird. But if you look at it all together, the Reds have at least put themselves in a position where fans can kind of think they have a fighting chance going into the season, which is not something the Reds have been able to say for what feels like forever. Yeah, well, I'll link to your post so people can check that out. Because yeah, we were pretty pessimistic when we talked about them the other day. I do still think they would have to do more to give themselves a really realistic shot. I think in addition to the more obvious shortcomings of the roster, the defense looks like it'll be pretty lousy. We were just talking about how they don't really have a center fielder, but that's not the only problem.

So I don't know if I quite see it, but they have put themselves closer to my being able to see it, and they have made themselves more interesting. And it sounds like they are not done or they're willing not to be done. So we'll see what else they do. not done or they're willing not to be done. So we'll see what else they do. And one other thing I wanted to mention, I was on Hang Up and Listen yesterday, the Slate Sports Podcast, and we were talking about Harper and Machado and the slow market. And I brought up a Boris analogy on the show that I don't think we have talked about here. And Josh Levine, the host, was just like baffled and sputtering. He could not understand this Boris analogy. And this is like not even top 10 bad Boris analogies. This one almost makes sense, I think. But this was from,

I think, 2013 was when he said this. He said, people call me all the time and say, man, your players aren't signed yet. Well, it doesn't really matter what time dinner is when you're the steak. Which, I don't know if that really makes sense, but you can kind of understand what he's saying. His players were the main course, and so dinner wasn't really served

until he was ready for them to sign. I don't know. Anyway, it's not the most flattering comparison. But I wanted to bring this up because we did get a question about this that I wanted to end on. This is from Edward who said, As everyone is painfully aware, during the past several seasons, the free agent market has been slow,

with big-name players being unsigned late into the offseason. While there's much talk about the new CBA and teams tanking as reasons, one question I would have is how much is Scott Boris responsible for this? Over the years, he has built a reputation for taking big name free agents deep into the offseason. If the big names of the last few seasons had signed earlier in the offseason, would the discussion be different? And I think it's kind of an interesting thought experiment about how much one person could

be responsible for this. Spoiler, I don't think that much, really. But obviously, Harper is a Boris client. It's nothing new for a big Boris client not to be signed at this point in the winter. Obviously, last year, there was Arrieta, J.D. Martinez, and Eric Hosmer, who all signed well after this point. That was a weird winter too. But even before that, you had Chris Davis signed right around this time. Wei-Yin Chen, Max Scherzer signed right around this time.

Michael Bourne, that was, I guess, a qualifying offer issue. Prince Fielder is the big one. He signed on January 24th, 2012 for a lot of money, obviously, $214 million. And he kind of took that to the brink and appealed to ownership. And Adrian Belcher was in January. He has a long history of taking contracts into January, February. And so he has done that these last couple of winters too. Do you think that he has contributed to our perception that the market is slow by his usual tactics here and taking everything up to the last minute? Or is he really just sort of a symptom of the underlying illness here? I think from the public perception, he plays a significant role because he's represented so many of the bigger names.

And so when they're available later, then it feels like the market is going really slowly. But as you've demonstrated in your own research, the market has been slower by a lot more than just the Boris clients. And I think one of the contributing factors here is that the old Boris business model, which worked for him forever, was, as we've talked about, going straight to owners and being like, look, I'm going to pitch to you because you have the money and you're less baseball smart than the people you hired to be baseball smart. So Boris understood it made sense for him to go above the baseball people and go to the rich billionaires. And what has, I think, happened over the last few years is owners have removed themselves more from the baseball decisions. They're still, of course, involved. They have to sign off on everything.

But they have delegated more they've put more trust in their front offices to make these decisions and so you have boris being less successful in his appeals to the really really wealthy people and we're going to try to sell them on the 200 and 300 million dollar contracts and pay can still work especially you look at a case like prince fielder can still work when you have a team's designated hitter out for the year all of a sudden because of a knee injury, I think it was. And so at that point, I think Mike Illich was like, well, we need a guy who can do what that guy did. Well, it just so happens there's one out there. So let's go pay $214 million for it. But when you don't have a Mike Illich, who's out there and the owner, I mean, you can look at how many times people have referred to John Middleton's quote about how they're going to

spend money and maybe be kind of stupid about it this winter. But at the end of the day, I don't think it's John Middleton who's actually making the decisions for the Phillies. He's just the one who's going to sign off on it. But pretty clearly, Boris has not been able to appeal to the Phillies to get as much money out of them as he would want. So that has been part of it, though. Yep. Okay. Oh, I meant to mention this when we did our stat blast, because this is timely. Obviously we got a question from Joey who wanted to know about the worst season by Hall of Famers, which was prompted in part by Roy Halladay and his 2000 season. I will just quickly read off the worst seasons by Hall of Famers.

If we're looking at batters, position players, worst season by Hall of Famers. If we're looking at batters, position players, worst season by Hall of Famer is Craig Biggio's 2007. That is when he was 41 years old and just kind of hanging on. He was worth negative 2.1 war in that season. Yeah, he hit 251, 285, 381 that year, and he played in 1411 games And I'm guessing the defense was Not great at that point either And then just reeling off The rest of the Worst ones here, Reggie Jackson's

1983, Lou Brock's 1978, Wee Willie Keeler's 1907, Carlton Fisk's 1986, Ron Santos' 1974, Max Carey's 1926, and hey number eight, Harold Baines and his 2001. They were all at least a negative 1.2 war or worse. Actually, also Travis Jackson, 1936, and Alan Trammell, 1996, something all of those seasons have in common. They are all from, like,

Something all of those seasons have in common. They are all from like late in those players' careers. Unsurprisingly, guys get worse when they're old, even if they're Hall of Famers. And then on the pitching side, the worst Hall of Fame seasons, Bob Feller's 1952 is a negative 2.9 war at baseball reference, which looks very strange because it wasn't that bad. He's 191 innings and like a 4.74 ERA or something, a 71 ERA plus. It seems like, I don't know, maybe there was some weird defense thing going on there that he was being penalized for because that doesn't seem like the worst season. But the one that prompted the question, Roy Halladay's 2000, is the next worst on this list. Negative 2.8 war, according to baseball reference, in 2000 when Halladay had a 10.64 ERA in, of course, only 67, Jim Bunning, 1971, Warren Spahn, 1964, Chief Bender, 1916, Steve Carlton, 1986, Herb Penick, 1915. And I guess we can end on Jack Morris, 1993, with the 10th worst season, negative 1.5 war. Lots of old player seasons on that list as well. Five War. Lots of old player seasons on that list as well. And I'll just point out that in 1952 for Bob Feller, he had that

ERA of 474, which isn't terrible, but he also allowed 23 unearned runs, which was quite a few. And so his runs per nine was quite bad. Alright, so we will leave it there. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild,

signing up to pledge some small monthly amount to keep the podcast going, as have the following five listeners, Chris Schreiner, Simon Pincus, Nathan Bodnar, Chris Rupar, and Michael Sweeney. Thanks to all of you. You can also rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelyw wild. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming. We'll do a more full-fledged listener email show sometime soon. You can reach us via email at podcast at fancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system. If you are a supporter, you can pre-order my book, The MVP Machine, coming out late this spring.

Go reserve your copy right now. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back to talk to you very soon. And after the last song, I'll leave you with a parting word from my mother on the topic of Yankees newly admitted to the Hall of Fame. to keep your song. Don't, don't, don't Don't play the chords of fame. Ben, you loved Messina, right? Do you remember that time in San Diego? It was like the weekend before.

It was like 10 days before 9-11. Do you remember any of that? Yeah, the time he was one strike away from a perfect game. He's like the intellectual, right? Member of Mensa. I'm surprised he got in, though, aren't you? He was good, but not great, right?

Yeah, he was great. Oh, he was? You saw that Rivera was unanimous? Yes. Is that a first? Yes. Would you have voted for him? Do you mean because of the way he lost the series that time?

You never seemed to have much confidence in him. I you mean because of the way he lost the series that time? You never seemed to have much confidence in him. I bear a grudge. Well, would you have voted for him? Yes, you would have voted for him, right? Yeah. And did he deserve unanimous? Well, I think if you're clearly great enough to get in, you might as well be unanimous. And do you, you know, I had wanted to go find his restaurant in Yonkers or wherever it was and see him. I remember every time he came in, you would go, oh, Mariano, here he comes again. Well, I had a reason, didn't I? Because he lost one time? He lost a very important time.

I don't mind if he lost a hundred times, but that was a terrible loss, right? I mean, it had an effect. So isn't he allowed to make one mistake? Yeah, I allow him one mistake, just not big mistakes. Oh, come on. Anyhow, I gotta run.