Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1330: Rough Drafts

Episode Date: February 2, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about rumors and the offseason, then answer listener emails about forming a team from remaining free agents, the definition of “Baseball IQ,” small-market teams banding together, the best thing for a team to be bad at, incentivizing teams to win, and whether front offices are planning for a work […]

Hello and February stars So we are going to do emails today. I'm saying that and we're going to stick to it this time. We are definitely doing emails. And then you have to depart to do a chat and I will talk to one of our listeners, Anne-Marie Chouet-Lee, about baseball anime, a few series in particular that you might be missing out on. Personally, I have very little to nothing else to talk about. Do you have anything you want to get to before emails? Here's just a fun of the rumor mill. This is from January 26th, which is less than one week ago.

John Marossi of MLB.com reports that the Marlins want catcher Francisco Mejia to be part of their return in any potential trade of JT RealMoto to the Padres. January 26th, Marlins want Francisco Mejia. February 1st, John Marossi of MLB.com reports that the Marlins' interest in getting Francisco Mejia from the Padres as part of a JT RealMoto trade is, quote, not especially high. Five days. Five days separated. Same reporter. Same sources, presumably. It's a nice racket, getting a lot of mileage out of that rumor that is then retroactively a non-rumor. So you just put a rumor out there and say that Team X is interested in Player Y,

and then that just germinates for a while, and then you can come back and say actually not really that interested and then you get two stories out of it i know i know i've already brought this up before but this always it kills me this would have been i think 2008 whenever the trade happened it's from roto world there were consecutive captions one is i'm just gonna make numbers here i think it was like december 7th tiger's general manager dave dombrowski says that he will not trade cameronabin December 8th. Cameron Mabin traded for Miguel Cabrera in that whole package with the Tigers and the Marlins.

Just always, always gets me. The rumor season is bananas. And I just keep coming back to the fact, again, as we've talked about this before, are people mad at the offseason? I know it feels slow. I know it seems slow because Harper-Machado is still out there. But I've really, really strongly come around to the fact that, yeah, this is tired, but at least it's tired, but we know that something is building. And I still so and there are probably some of the same underlying causes for certain things happening or not happening. But there have been more moves made than there were last year.

I mean, we'll see how long it takes for Harper and Machado. It just seems like we are kind of lumping together Harper and Machado and the entire offseason. And yeah, those guys are taking forever to sign. But there has been a decent amount of action. I mean, it's not as if the baseball offseason used to be nonstop action every day. January and early February, that was always a dead period for baseball. Nothing was happening. So it's not really a 12-month-a-year sport in the same intense way. So there's going to be a dead period at some point. Yeah. In the same way that people talk about how there are too many teams tanking or not

competing. It's like, well, teams have been rebuilding forever. We just have used different words now. There was never a time when 30 teams in baseball were trying to win at the same time, or at least not in any sort of recent memory. There were always teams that weren't in very good position. But I don't know. Someone out there is getting their message across, and someone out there is losing the messaging game. And maybe if you want to make the argument that maybe teams are starting to lose the messaging game, and I don't know if this is true, maybe it's because teams keep hiring writers.

Yeah, could be. All right. So we should do some emails. I'll start with an email that is relevant to what we're talking about. This is from Eric. He says, pitchers and catchers report in about two weeks. As of today, how good a team could you construct using only remaining MLB free agents? I feel like this team would project to win the NL East or AL Central. AL Central. This was a very popular exercise around this time last year when there were a lot of people unsigned and you really could build a legitimate team out of free agents. So Fangraphs very helpfully has a free agent depth chart. If you look at that and you just add up all the projected wars for every free agent hitter and pitcher, you get 46.1 projected war which would put that team right between the nationals and the indians so yeah pretty pretty good team if you do it that way

that would suggest that yeah that's not really a good way to do it you if you did that then you would think exactly what eric is saying that they project right around the best team in the NL East or the AL Central. But that's like three rosters worth of players probably on that list. I'm looking at the depth chart. The catchers are projected for 1,344 plate appearances on this team. Your first baseman is just Logan Morrison. Your shortstops are 1,750 plate appearances. You've got right fielders over 2,000 plate appearances, maybe most important. You've got right fielders over 2000 plate appearances maybe most important you've got pitcher starting pitchers projected for 1700 innings uh you've got relievers projected for a lot more so yeah here's here's a you could maybe you could get a decent bullpen out of that

because you have someone okay the best players kimbrel in the bullpen right you've got keitel in the rotation by the way drops off super quick Keichel in the rotation. By the way, drops off super quick after Keichel in the rotation. I mean, what's your outfield? You've got Bryce Harper, of course. Maybe Adam Jones and Marwin Gonzalez? Would that be your outfield? It's like, okay, with Harper, it's playable. You've got Mike Moustakis at third base.

Yeah. Mike Moustakis at third base, Man currently yeah mike mizog is the third baseman of a tryout shortstop second base josh harrison i don't know like maybe we'll use logan morrison at first base in this exercise and i guess probably martin malden out of matt weeders you could have a competitive team absolutely you've got your two star position players and you've got someone who's at least like passable everywhere else but i don't know the bullpen is still kind of thin the rotation is really quite bad because after Keichel, what do you, I mean, are we leaning on Clay Buchholz here for 180 innings?

What are we doing? Yeah, no, it's not a great group. Gio Gonzalez, who's the subject of a lot of rumors right now. Yeah, it's not a division winning team. I don't think it could be a competitive team. division winning team. I don't think it could be a competitive team. But I mean, most of the free agents on this list, a lot of them are like zero war guys, 0.1 war guys, negative war guys. So you could just lop them off and it wouldn't really make your team any worse. But still, there are a lot of like 0.2, 0.3s that go into that 46 war number that I cited, and you just can't fit all of these guys onto one team.

So it wouldn't be the worst team in baseball, I think. It would probably be competitive, but I don't see it being a division winner. Yeah, that sounds about right. Okay. Question from Tanner. Is there a consensus around the definition of the term baseball IQ? Are there specific actions that a player can make

that give them the reputation of having a high or low baseball IQ, or is it as simple as not making errors, physical or mental? Personally, I associate the term with well-timed base running, daring do, and unusual defensive plays like throwing behind runners. Could it also be extended to more subtle things like identifying pitch sequencing, properly anticipating pickoff moves, or always hitting the cutoff man? Yeah, their baseball IQ is generally just baseball awareness, right? They're trying to stay one step ahead of the game. And I think, though, that if, at least on the public side, if you see, like, what was that, Andrew Simmonds' deke that went

sort of viral the other year, or you see someone who, some infielder who will deliberately drop like a line drive so that he can turn a double play or retire faster run or something like that i think that in the public you will have a player end up with their reputation for having a high baseball like you based on very limited anecdotal evidence you basically need one clever play and then people will be like if you pull off the hidden ball trick or williams astadio just making a no-look throat had to shoehorn him into this podcast somehow making a no-look throw to first base like oh look at the high baseball iq to be able to to pull that off but i mean in a sense someone who is

really good presumably has a high baseball iq because some like if you have a really good hitter let's say i don't know mike trout he's up there and he's also has high baseball skills, but he is just able to anticipate what's going to be thrown to him. So I don't know, baseball IQ is generally being aware of what's going to happen in the situation in which you find yourself. Yeah. I think it's probably easier to get a reputation for having a low baseball IQ than it is to get a high baseball IQ because all you have to do is throw to the wrong base a couple of times or maybe have a couple toot blends and get thrown out in really obvious and embarrassing ways on the bases. And then suddenly you're a low baseball IQ guy. But yeah, I think that it comes down to not making mistakes and then also just doing something clever that sticks in people's minds. And maybe it could be, be you know throwing to a base that

you're not expected to throw to and getting someone napping just because they're not expecting that throw to come or you know you apply a tag or something before you throw like a lot of it i think is probably defensive decisions and maybe catching the other team unaware of something that you're doing and then i think you get that. And there are probably aspects of real baseball IQ that go underappreciated, like something, you know, pitch sequencing or anticipating pitch sequencing. As Tanner said, that could be baseball IQ that we don't even realize is happening. We probably all think that Joey Votto has a high baseball IQ, but it's a little bit different in that it's applied to hitting and, you know, knowing the strike zone and knowing the umpire and the pitcher and where he's going to be pitched and just having a sense of what he wants to do and what people want to do to him.

That's a form of it, but I don't know whether that is what you would typically be referring to when you use that term. you would typically be referring to when you use that term. There are these levels. So if you take someone like Joey Votto and he has a plate appearance against, I don't know, Wade Miley. He's been in the news because of some reason. So if you talk to Joey Votto before he goes up to hit against Wade Miley, Votto can probably talk you through what he expects in that plate appearance. He has a high baseball IQ because he can anticipate a pitch sequence that's going to be coming

his way and then he can do whatever he's going to do with it. And then if you have something like that Simmons deke or someone who just makes a really clever throw or play in the moment, that's sort of a different form of baseball IQ in that it's not something I think you think about ahead of time. It's just sort of your developed baseball instinct, kind of a subconscious baseball IQ that takes over without you maybe even realizing that you're about to do something really clever or intuitive on the baseball field. So there are levels of baseball IQ. So you've got your very thoughtful baseball players who are able to think themselves through

a problem, and then you've got your players who are just able to do something really good on the fly. And so those would be, I guess, the two categories. I don't know who's really good at both. Let's just say my tribe. Yeah, sure. All right. Nathan, Patreon supporter, says, as a dual citizen in Brewers and Royals land, the Lorenzo Kane travels had me thinking along these lines. What if two small market teams entered into a partnership to aid each other for mutual benefit by matching competitive cycles? So Team A is currently rebuilding, agrees to send all their established

players who are useful to Team B exclusively as long as B wants them, and Team B sends back top prospects timed for Team A's likely ascendancy, the idea being there is minimal haggling and both teams send their best. Then as Team A ascends, the direction of exchange is reversed. Would this be any better for those teams than the standard approach? It would also allow for interesting dual fandom opportunities. You know what would be a really good thing to do if you're one, let's say that you're taking the Brewers and the Royals, and let's say that you're starting from, I don't know, scratch, and then you're going to say, okay, I'm going to be the team that gets good first, and then we'll help you second. Then you act as the team that's going to get good first, and then you just say,

Pull the rope up after you. Yep. Sorry. Pull the rug out. So I think what you were referring to is the textbook definition of collusion between between two baseball teams which is against the rules uh to do collusion doesn't need to involve all 30 teams it can be as few as two so even though it's it's a neat idea in theory these things are so non-projectable. Like your plans go, you know, man plans, God laughs, whole aphorism, I think.

So you can try and it's cute. But then wouldn't you also, if you are, if you're two small market teams, like Brewers Royals, I guess they're still separated by quite a bit of geography. a bit of geography, but if you had two, I don't know, nearby small market teams, it would be more fun to be competitive at the same time as opposed to one being up and one being down. I don't know what the incentives would be for these teams to get together in such an arrangement because you would also, if you were trying to time your cycles, you would be altering your market in terms of what you were, whether you're trying to get good or trying to get bad because you were trying to make these exchanges with one other team, not exclusively one other team, but one other team, and that one other team might not really have what you need or are looking for. So it's restrictive,

and it's definitely colluding, and it's altogether not good. Yeah. Yeah. We've seen things like this. Well, there have been situations like this in the past, like the Kansas City Athletics and the Yankees, not too small market teams, obviously, but where one was just almost a feeder team for the other. And that kind of behavior was more common in early baseball history and is not now. Fortunately, there are still teams that deal with each other more often than they deal with other teams, just maybe because their GMs have a good relationship or something. But yeah, I bet you'd be surprised about how infrequently two teams match up in ways that would really benefit them like this, because you get more out of, I think, trading with a wide selection of partners who have a lot of variety and players in

stock, and you can kind of pick and choose what you need, whereas one other organization might not really have what you want. So I'm not sure how much it would help. All right. Question from Colby. Almost every non-Yankees fan has had to suffer through a year when their team stinks. Let's pretend that a bad team is above average in two of the following three areas, hitting, starting pitching, or relief pitching. However, the team is so bad in the third category that it causes the team to lose 90 plus games. My question is, which category is the best

to be bad at from a fan's perspective? Again, the team is going to lose the same number of games no matter what. It's just a matter of which category would be most frustrating as the primary culprit for losing these games. Oh boy so it's not relief pitching is not the answer because then because of human nature you would just go into all these games where you're in the lead and then your relievers blow it and you hate it you absolutely hate it right that would be so terrible yeah there's nothing there's nothing in the same way that i mean your own mom thinks that mariana rivera was a bad closer like the the expectations for for bullpen are so unreasonably high that i think if bullpens are the last thing you want to

be bad which is funny because it's also maybe the least important part of the team so so we're down to what was it hitting and starting pitching yeah he said hitting i mean he said we could throw defense and base running or something in there but it would be maybe tough to be so bad at base running, for instance, that you lose 90 plus games, even though you were good at everything else. So defense, I guess we could throw defense in there. I would take defense first. I would rather just my team be really, really bad at defense because I think it's the hardest to see and it's the easiest to just kind of write off as like, well, I don't know why this is happening. Our team has got so many strikeouts and it hits so well and the bullpen's good. to see, and it's the easiest to just kind of write off as like, well, I don't know why this is happening. Our team gets so many strikeouts, and it hits so well, and the bullpen's good.

But again, it's hard to have a defense that's so bad that you lose 90 games if you're good at the other stuff. Like the Phillies had a terrible defense this past year. Yeah, the Phillies were trying. Yeah. So this is – I don't know if I have a good answer to this. I remember like the Alex Rodriguez Rangers had no pitching at all, and they had a really good offense, and they were competitive,

and all the Rangers fans hated that they couldn't pitch. But I also watched the 2010 and 2012 era Seattle Mariners, who had some of the worst offenses that have ever been on the field, and that was dreadful because you'd go into a game thinking, well, our pitchers better limit them to like a run or none, or else and there's just so little to watch so it really comes down to would you rather watch a high scoring game or a low scoring game and i think people would prefer a high scoring game because there's just more of interest but i yeah i honestly don't know i think you would be most tolerable to have a worse starting pitching yeah i think so too i think uh well yeah i think a low scoring, the advantage is that it's over quickly. So you just lose less time watching this bad team. But in terms of entertainment, I think I would rather have the bad pitching and the good hitting just because it's fun to watch good hitting and scoring runs and I think that I'd rather be in the position of feeling like well they could come back

then oh they're gonna blow it I think that's just it probably is a little more fun to watch even if your pitching is terrible you have such a great lineup that in theory you could always just rally and come back from that deficit even if it doesn't end up happening that often so yeah I'll go defense if we're counting defense and then bad pitching. And offense, I think, would be my top priority. I'd rather have a good hitting team. Yeah, that sounds right. Well, now we're kind of looking at the recent iterations of the Cincinnati Reds, right?

They've had decent bullpens. Yeah, true. Pretty good offense. Couldn't do crap on the mat to start a game out. And now we've seen them work to address that. So I don't know. Would you have wanted to be a Reds fan relative to being, I don't know, who's been, I mean, the White Sox have been bad at everything.

Well, anyway, we'll figure out the Reds later. All right. We've gotten a bunch of questions about incentivizing winning. So I don't know if there's a way to fold all of these together. Let's try maybe. So Tom says, is there a way that the MLBPA could push to incentivize being in the middle third of baseball? There are clear incentives to be the worst team in baseball, but I think MLB should give organizations motivation to be Oakland and Tampa Bay, teams that are in good divisions with lower payrolls and terrible markets markets but try to compete every year.

Maybe some sort of tiered lottery system for the draft or compensation that takes into account winning and market size and spending. If nothing else, maybe this helps middle and small market teams increase their window to compete. I'll just read a couple other questions that we got in this vein. This is on everyone's mind apparently. Bobby says, what do you all think about putting a win-loss factor into the revenue sharing system? Soar every team that receives revenue sharing by their record and give the most to the team with the most wins and so on. You'd have to scale it enough that it will really hurt to be at the bottom and give an impetus to compete harder the following year too. It seems like that would help

with the teams don't have to try to win because they are All but guaranteed profit before the season Ever starts problem and Then last one in this vein this Is from Henry who says How could winning be incentivized What if the MLBPA or The owners themselves in an alternate fantasy

Economic universe created an annual Fund that would pay out a huge lump sum To the World Series winner and loser. The owner's award, it would work like this. The players put aside $150 million to be awarded to the winning owners. World Series winner gets $100 million. Loser gets $50 million. Boom, write you a check.

Go buy a yacht. The flags fly forever. And the question continues, if an owner is balking at $300 million for Bryce Harper, it's easy enough to imagine him getting you to a World Series. So it's really only $250 million or $200 if you think Bryce will win you one. So these are all questions in the same bucket here. How do we give teams more incentive to try to win? agree that the incentive structure as it is is not built in a way that demands uh competitive behavior this is what we were talking to neil demas about not too long ago and and as he pointed out the the money that is available to owners now is just it's been almost decoupled from success on the field which is something that you would in theory want to see turned around because that's not how you would want to see it now one of the problems is and maybe this is being too theoretical but let's say that right now everyone's just

incentivized to win at 50 and now let's say that you change the rules and now everybody is incentivized to win at 100 which is exactly what you want everyone is trying to win all at the same time but again as we've talked about before there are only so many wins available in a season. There are always going to be last place teams. There have to be. Not every team can make the playoffs. So then you're going to end up penalizing teams who, even if they tried really hard, still just because of bad decisions or bad luck or injuries or whatever you want to say, are going to end up having lost 95 or 100 games. And then what are you going to do? Because now you have hurt that team's ability to bounce back even though they really were trying so one of the ideas that has gone around is you

know whether when you talk about maybe a draft lottery or just like inverting the draft so that non-playoff teams get better draft position if they're better after they're eliminated from the playoff picture i get the idea but i don I don't know how much the performance of the players on the field, I don't know how much they care about the draft position the next year. Those players are going to move around. If you take the starting left fielder on a last place team in the middle of September, he's not going to play better because it's going to help his team get the second overall pick the next June. He doesn't care. He might move on and play for a new team. So I don't know. There are any number of ways to do it. And revenue sharing would be one area that you would touch. I don't know enough about it to speak

in great detail. You could expand the playoffs, of course. That would be one pretty easy way to incentivize winning is to just have another round or another play-in game, whatever you want to do. Because that way, when you lower the... Right right now teams are targeting, I don't know, 88 to 90 wins to be a playoff team. And you've got some teams who are kind of planning for mid-80s and hoping to get lucky. And if you lower that threshold more and more, then it becomes more and more achievable to get into the playoffs. And of course, once you're in the playoffs, anything can happen. We all watched the Royals win the World Series and try to win another one. So the easiest way might be expanding the playoffs again, just having another play-in game. But I don't know, what has been on the tip of your tongue? Yeah, I don't know. It's complicated

because a lot of these measures that seemingly have de-incentivized winning or removed some of the incentive to be competitive have also been intended, at least partially, to help with competitive balance. And so you have to be careful whenever you make one of these moves that you're not inadvertently then giving the teams that are already wealthier a bigger advantage. I mean, we know already that having a high payroll doesn't win you a World Series automatically or anything, but it does give you a better chance to be good and to make the playoffs and to have a chance at least. And so if you're talking about tying revenue sharing money to like how good the team is or something like that, then that gets into risky territory where

you're going to just be giving rich teams yet another way to enrich themselves and be better than the other teams. So it's tough to find that balance where you are encouraging everyone to try to compete, but you're not giving the teams that institutionally have that advantage yet another leg up. So it's a a tricky equation i don't know exactly the best way to do it yeah well so the important thing is there are ways and it's up to baseball to figure figure them out i would love to maybe if i had access to all 30 teams just kind of get a sense for how much teams are trying because teams are trying i remain and i think you and i talked about this last year because this is when this conversation began my sense is that we've always had a landscape similar

to this where somewhere like maybe a third of the teams in baseball in any given year think like we could actually win the world series a third of the teams think like okay we could have a pretty positive season maybe sneak into the playoffs and the third of the teams are like well we know we're not good and i i have to think that that's been true almost forever. Teams aren't dumb. Of course, we have more information now than ever, but teams have always had a sense of when they're in an upswing or a downswing. It's not like the idea of a cyclical franchise fortune is a new one.

So we have a difference in terminology right now, but there have always been good teams. There have always been bad teams. And I'm getting pretty tired of seeing people go from 10 teams aren't trying to win to 12 teams aren't trying to win to half the teams in baseball aren't trying to win. Like every team is trying to win, except if you have a team like the Marlins, where what do you want them to do? They are just trying to do what's best for them. Now, granted, I think that you could make a convincing argument the Marlins should just go sign Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, but I'm people mean is like, well, if Harper and Machado aren't going to cost as much as 400 million or something that we thought one day that they might cost, then

in theory, every team could afford them. And so if they're not interested, then they're not trying to win, which is kind of a strict definition of trying to win. If you're not signing the top region available, then you're not trying to win. But there's an argument for that in that given what we've talked about with baseball economics, teams are all pretty wealthy. And in theory, they could make room for a Bryce Harper or Manny Machado. So I don't know. That's, I think, what people are saying when they say that. But I think in general, to insist that lots of teams are not trying or that they don't care about winning. I don't know.

To me, it's somewhat ahistorical. As you're saying, there have always been teams that are not pulling out all the stops at the present time. And let's make this much clear. Manny Machado and Bryce Harper are going to get enormous contracts. They aren't going to get a half a billion dollars, but they're going to get a huge amount of money. They're going to get close to what they've wanted. Maybe they might even exceed it.

I don't know. But in the same way that, like, what is it, the Orioles and the Marlins didn't even really make a pitch for Shohei Otani because they're just like, why would, realistically, is he going to pick us? And no, the answer was no. Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, probably, maybe. I don't know if Machado would want to play for the Marlins.

I'm going to guess he wouldn't want to play for the Marlins. I don't know that for sure. But, you know, players like that are going to more likely want to go to a team that's on the upswing. And the Marlins are maybe not. They're looking at the ladder in front of them, but they're not quite all the way down the, I don't know, hallway? Sewage corridor? Sewer? Whatever you want to. that's not an expression.

But they're going to get money. You can see, like, if there are rumors that the market has dropped, well, look what happens. Now the Padres are in on Machado and they're meeting with Harper. They met with Harper on Thursday evening. When the market drops, more teams get involved and then the market rises. We cannot judge these sweepstakes until they are complete. Offers have been received. Teams have said, look, here's what we're willing to do.

It's not only Major League Baseball's fault that Manny Machado and Bryce Harper are still on the free agent market. One of those players is represented by Scott Boris, and one of those players is represented by an agent who hates Scott Boris. So it takes like five to tango in this case. And there are teams that would have loved to have already signed Machado and or Harper, and it's not just up to them. All right, stop blast. So I sort of have one here, and I will start with a non-StatBlast question first because it will help inform our answer to the StatBlast question. So this is from Mark in San Bruno, California.

He says, I was just looking at the remarkable career stats for the number six overall pick in the 1973 amateur draft, Johnny LeMaster, perhaps best known for once wearing a game jersey where his name was replaced with Boo, a common greeting he received from the San Francisco faithful over his 12-year career, LeMaster amassed an outstanding war of minus negative 5.4 for his career. So my question is this, which is the worst way to waste an early first round draft pick, picking someone like LeMaster, who spends over a decade on your MLB roster as a sub-replacement player, or someone

like Glenn Tuft, who was taken with the pick right before LeMaster and spent four years in the minors, barely made it to AA, and left the game. So would you rather have someone make the majors and be bad and be sub-replacement or never make the majors well okay so when you do a historical study of uh of draft picks sometimes the people's threshold for when the draft pick was successful or not is whether that player made it to the majors so if a player makes the me i i guess i could speak to dustin ackley as we've talked about his back in the mariners system and having been through that series of mariners drafts where like dustin ackley made the majors and it didn't work out jeff clement made the majors and it didn't work

out but then you can think of player i will never forget ryan anderson uh top prospect could have been the next randy johnson never made the majors and didn't work out. At least in the case of Ryan Anderson, you can convince yourself. It's been, I don't know, 15, 20 years now. I can convince myself that if not for Ryan Anderson's injuries, he would have been one of the best pitchers of modern baseball history. He was a modern day 2019 starting pitcher, 17 years before we had modern day starting pitchers. So I can convince myself that Ryan Anderson was going to be great. And it just kind of makes me feel better about the team that I root for in a weird way. And it kind of feeds into that whole like, oh, no one's as unlucky as we are kind of

mentality that fans love to have because fans always like to think of their team as an underdog. When you have a player like Dustin Ackley come up and just plateau and then get worse or Jeff Clement come up and plateau and get worse, it makes you hate your team. It makes you think that why can't we turn good players into good players? So having been on both sides of this, because I don't know if the Mariners have had draft pick work in the past 15 years, I would take someone who I would rather have someone who didn't make the majors because I would figure, okay, there's, it's more about bad luck. Something just caused that player to stall out in the minor leagues. And if they make it to the majors, then I would

just think, why couldn't we just get this player over the hump? And it would, it would be more eternally frustrating. I would, I would, I would feel like something failed with a, with a bad major leaguer, whereas I could convince myself in the minors it was just bad luck. Yeah, that makes sense to me. So that leads into the more StatBlast-related question. This is from Matthew, and he was looking at some Padres stuff after we did our Padres episode recently. And he says, here are two things that happened to the Padres in the MLB June draft that I found interesting. that happened to the Padres in the MLB June draft that I found interesting. In 1999, the Padres had six first round picks and none of them have a positive career baseball reference war. Also, that same year of the first 19 players they selected, only two made the majors and both

have negative career war. Pick number 21 was Jake Peavy, so I guess this draft was a success. I wonder, has any team ever had a worse first round? Now he also adds in 1996 the Padres had what seems like a worst case scenario draft Zero total war produced of the 40 players drafted two played in the majors one was worth 0.1 war the other negative 0.1 war I'm not a Padres fan, but this made me appreciate them a little more So the question basically is what's the worst draft in history, I suppose. And you could define that in multiple ways. You could define it as no one making the majors, or you could define it as just the lowest

career war from all of those players. So I have an answer courtesy of Dan Hirsch of Baseball Reference, who sent me some stats about every draft from 1965 to the present. He sent me the number of major leaguers who were drafted and signed from every team's draft in every year, the number of first rounders that that team had, and the war that was produced by all of the players drafted in that year for that team and for their entire career. So basically everything we need to answer this question. So I'll look at it the first way. The first way is just no one makes the majors. And that is actually a little more common than I would have expected. So the Padres are actually not outliers in this respect. So I just limited it to pre-2014 or 2014 and earlier. And there are still some guys from, say, 2014 who were drafted then and haven't made the majors who might still. But most of the real prospects would have made it by now. So I looked for major leaguers who were signed and made the majors. I

looked for drafts with zero signed major leaguers. So there are actually 12 drafts in history in which no one made the majors. And these are mostly not recent. The most recent is the 2007 Astros, but just read down the list. 75 Brewers, 72 Reds, 83 Twins, 71 A's, 83 Orioles, 67 Phillies, 2001 Reds, 1973 Reds, 2007 Astros, 1980 Blue Jays, 1967 Angels, and 1981 Braves. So 12 times that has happened that no one has made the majors now i guess you could adjust it for like the number of first round picks that you had in the draft which is another data point that dan sent me here so all of those drafts that had no one make the majors had one first rounder or in the case of the 2007 astros no no first rounders. So that's a mitigating circumstance, I suppose, but it's not that unusual to have one first rounder. So, you know, you could look at like the

1996 Reds who had two first rounders and they only had one make the majors or something like that. But I don't know. We don't need to get too cute about this. I think 12 times, good to know that has happened, that there's been no major leaguer. Let me step in with something here about Johnny LeMaster. Johnny LeMaster, sixth overall pick in 1973, made the majors in 1975. And then he was traded by the Giants, the team that drafted him, to the Indians in May of 1985. So let's consider 1975 through 1984. That's a decade of Johnny LeMaster in the majors and as I mentioned

he was traded by the Giants in 1985 meaning Johnny LeMaster was with the Giants for a decade after making the majors Johnny LeMaster from 1975 to 1984 was according to fan graphs worth five wins below replacement over about 3,400 plate appearances. Now, it's no secret that Johnny LeMaster was bad. Not a good major league infielder. But I'm looking from 1975 to 1984. Johnny LeMaster among position players was the fifth worst position player just by sorting by wins above replacement. Like, he wasn't as bad as Doug Flynn. Doug Flynn batted 4,024 times.

He was eight wins below replacement. Easily the worst player in baseball over those 10 years. But here's the thing. Doug Flynn played for, over that stretch, he played for the Reds, the Mets, the Rangers, and the Expos. You can look at Dan Meyer, who was also bad. He played for the Tigers and the Mariners and the A's over that stretch of time. Of all the really, really bad players with horrible wins above replacement marks over those 10 years, Johnny LeMaster was the only one who played for

the same team the whole time. So as much as you can say that Johnny LeMaster didn't work out, and maybe he just wasn't as good of a player as the Giants thought when they drafted him, or whatever you want to say, the Giants never gave up on Johnny LeMaster until their 11th year of having him be bad in the major leagues and for anyone. Because this is, look, Johnny LeMaster's career mostly played out before I was even born. But his career high WRC plus was 79. His career mark was 58. His best season by wins above replacement was 0.8. That was in 1978 when he was 24 years old.

I know that the definition of the shortstop position has changed over time, but Johnny LeMaster, never good. Giants still stuck with him for that long. So kind of a multiple parties at fault here. Yeah. So the other way to answer this question is to sort by the least war produced by a draft. And that way, the answer is the 1974 Cubs, who produced negative 5.6 war for themselves, for the drafting team, and negative 6.6 war overall in terms of career. So 1974 Cubs were the worst in that way. They actually did have three signed players make the majors,

but one of them was Scott Thompson, who was worth negative 5.7 more in his career. That was their first round pick. And then they had two other players make the majors and both of them were sub replacement. So you add it all up and those guys were worse than zero. Now, obviously, if you are the player, you'd rather make the majors and be a sub replacement player than never to make the majors. But you could make the case that it's worse for the team to have someone actively dragging you down than never making it at all. They did draft Bob Welch that year in the 14th round and Bob Welch ended up being very good, but they did not sign him. So he signed in a later draft, so he doesn't count. So 1974 Cubs would be the worst

draft ever in that way. And some other terrible ones, 1990 Astros, 1994 Phillies, and 1973 Braves all produced negative four wins or fewer for the drafting team. So last thing I will say about this, and I'll put the whole data set in a Google sheet if you want to go play around with it. Don't see why not. I just figured I might mention the baselines here because I think that's something that we all think about and wonder about. What is a good draft?

How do you define a good draft? How much talent does the typical draft produce? So I limited this to 1965 to 2000, just because players drafted in 2000 are, you know, mostly done with their careers, perhaps not quite in some cases. But the average output from a team's draft in one year, the average number of major leaguers drafted and signed is 4.3. So think about that. I mean, the draft for a lot of this time was 40 rounds, and the average team gets four major leaguers out of that. So, you know, one out of every 10 picks maybe makes the majors, obviously concentrated toward the early rounds. The average war produced for the team by its drafted players, 11.7, which is not a ton, obviously. And the average career war produced by all players in a team's draft round, 24.5. And that's their entire careers over all picks in the draft. So that makes you think maybe that kind of calibrates your expectations. I mean, you get one superstar or one really great player, and you're

already ahead of the typical draft. And maybe this has changed over time. If you looked at it in more recent years, perhaps teams would be better at this than they used to be. But really, it remains a pretty low probability exercise, even though it is an important one. Speaking of, as long as we're focusing on prospects, how old do you think Jesus Montero is right now? Oh, gosh, maybe like 28. He's 29 years old. Jesus Montero is only 29 years old. Anyway, I do have a pseudo very quick stat blast, if you wouldn't mind a completely different story interjection. So last year, I had written about how much I liked Quetel Marte

as a breakout pick, and he had a fine season. He did improve. He got up to 2.5 wins above replacement, according to Fangraphs. But let me sell you one more time on Quetel Marte, and here's what I like I like okay so the league average you might be familiar when we when we talk about pitchers at Fangraphs we like to look at strikeout rate minus walk rate it's uh it's better than strikeout to walk rate ratio because that I don't need to explain that so the average in major league baseball the average strikeout minus walk rate was about 14 percent last year so So for pitchers, of course, you want a higher rate. That means you're better. For hitters, you want a lower rate, like Joey Votto was one of

the rare players who had more walks than strikeouts. So Joey Votto's strikeout minus walk rate was negative. It was quite good. So here's what I like about Quetel Marte. So Quetel Marte last year, he hit, according to StatCast, he hit his fastest batted ball, 115.1 miles per hour. That ranked him 23rd in baseball, according to StatGast, 115.1 miles per hour. And at the plate, Quetel Marte's strikeout minus walk rate was just 4%, which was also better. That's 10 percentage points better than the league average.

So what I did, this is just stupid sorting, but I took all the players who hit at least one batted ball at least 115 miles per hour so that selects for like peak peak batted ball contact is what i like so that's a small group of players who hit at least one batted ball 150 miles per hour and the player who is out of that group the player who had the best strikeout minus walk rate was mike trout that's not surprising he's a freak he's good at everything player with the second best strikeout minus walk rate was Mike Trout. That's not surprising. He's a freak. He's good at everything. Player with the second best strikeout minus walk rate out of that group, Cattell Marte. Cattell Marte, who is a very fast player, also drew a better than average rate of walks last year, a far better than average rate of strikeouts last year,

and showed a lot of peak batted ball contact ability. He also had a well above average contact rate it feels to me for the second year in a row like cattell martin could be on the verge of breaking out of course now the diamondbacks are having him learn a new position so maybe that'll hold his offense back i don't know he's going to be a center fielder but i will just say the second year in a row cattell martin 25 years old i think he is he has the skills to be a phenomenal breakout player, and I like him quite a bit. We'll see if he can be a center fielder, and it seems like you're somewhat optimistic about that too. Yep, just like I was about Dee Gordon, who was a bad center fielder. I was reminded after

the fact, I was looking for middle infield to center field conversions, and I put this in the comments below that post, but I was reminded after the fact that Oduble Herrera is another player who converted from the middle infield to centerfield. He was a Rule 5 pick by the Phillies a few years ago, and they decided, well, let's make him a centerfielder. And he has been good ever since. So good conversion there. Not everyone has gone the Dee Gordon route or the Craig Biggio route. That whole career was weird. Yeah.

All right. Let's see. We can squeeze in one more here. This is from Damian. Yeah. All right. Let's see. We can squeeze in one more here. This is from Damian. to spend because there is going to be a work stoppage? Have we begun to enter a vicious circle? I've been assuming that players don't get paid during a work stoppage. Even if that were true, though, when talking about a contract like Machado's or Harper's, a work stoppage in the near future would cost you one of the early surplus value seasons that offset the expected losses from the later seasons at or below their typical level. It seems like your degree of

confidence about a coming work stoppage would influence your pursuit of either player, and your prudent lack of pursuit would make the work stoppage that much more likely. It's in the interest of baseball for some team to pay both players a bunch of money, but it's not in the interest of that many particular teams to be the one to step up to do that. I haven't, in whatever conversations I've had with front office people, I haven't heard anyone be like, oh yeah, no, there's not going to be baseball in a few years. Like that hasn't, that hasn't come up. And to a certain extent, I think that front offices are sort of divorced from these conversations because they're, they're doing whatever they can do,

but really front offices are generally going to spend up to what they can spend. And they will frequently request the ability to spend more. Like I would imagine the Padres have probably had to talk to ownership about like, hey, maybe we can get Manny Machado or Bryce Harper. So like, let's, if you give us permission, let's get in there. So work stoppage is going to be about the players. It's going to be about the owners. Front offices are obviously a part of that.

But I think every front office in baseball would love to spend a billion dollars if they had the opportunity, and they don't. So that doesn't directly answer the question because front offices still have to act as if a work stoppage might take place. But I haven't been given any reason to believe that it's actually affecting their behavior in any way. I think that front offices are generally work stoppage skeptical because, again, this is a $10 billion industry. that front offices are generally work stoppage skeptical because, again, this is a $10 billion industry. Players are still apparently getting 55% of revenues that are going to the teams by whatever calculations those are. But those numbers aren't in dispute. And I think front offices also have teams know what needs to change in terms of player compensation.

Teams know that free agency is not going to be what it was. And teams also know that what needs to happen is for money to be distributed more evenly to players when they're when they're younger when they're actually better so teams understand that and i think maybe by having that understanding and and hoping assuming that the union is on the same page that some sort of compromises some agreements can be reached so even though there are a lot of writers out there who are sounding the alarm because the union is upset, I personally also remain a work stoppage skeptic. I think most front offices are work stoppage skeptics. And I think front offices are just so consumed by what's right in front of them that they realistically just aren't thinking that far down the road. I would be surprised if they were. Yeah, we're almost three years away from

the CBA expiring. There's just a lot of uncertainty about it. I don't think it's implausible that there could be a work stoppage, but it's just hard to operate a team in that way. I mean, you're thinking about this season and next season, and it's really hard to be thinking that far in the future. You don't know what your budget's going to be. You don't even know if you're still going to be employed by the team at that point. So I think there's enough instability in the situation that probably, you know, unless you were really looking hard for reasons not to assign someone, I don't think that would be a deciding factor for you. So we can probably squeeze in another one.

We still have some time. Well, I was going to say a couple things to end. One is that I just got a message from my wife, Jessie, and she relayed a message from one of our longtime regular listeners, Ashley, who listens to the podcast. And she is a coworker of Jessie's. And Ashley said that she just had a very intense dream that she was at some kind of conference and she was

crying and Jeff gave me a hug and talked me down and called me chief, which is hilarious. Would you call someone chief? Have you ever called someone chief? I have come around to the idea that I think it's inappropriate to refer to people as chiefs. And maybe I'm overthinking this. I don't know the actual origin of the word, but it's kind of obnoxious regardless. So I have this vivid recollection. I played inline hockey in high school because I was a cool kid in Southern California. And I remember one of the presumably like volunteer referees was, look, I don't know, but he might have been Native American or he might have just

looked Native American. Now, let me say right now, I was not the one who called him chief. But there was a teammate of mine who was upset with a call and made a derisive remark and then referred as the ref skated away, said something like, oh, great call, chief. And the referee turned around

and pointed the finger at my teammate and said, well, you're out of the game now. Now he didn't say it that politely, but the player was ejected. So the message that I received at a very impressionable age was, let's just not call anybody chief. Let's just kind of stay away from that term entirely. So no. So one problem with the dream is I would not refer to anyone as chief,

but one very strong and striking accuracy about the dream is that I do love to give people hugs, probably too much. Some people are not huggers. We have converted some of our good friends into huggers, but still, I might be an over-hugger. So that part I think is accurate. Now, I don't know if that's been conveyed before in podcast lore, so that makes me a little bit uncomfortable, but good, accurate, on the mark, anyway. Yep, nice of Dream Jeff to make that gesture anyway. And the other thing I wanted to close on because people have been asking is the season preview series. We have gotten there.

We are ready to start the season preview series, I believe, next week. We're still working out the details, but people have been asking if that's starting soon, and yes, that is starting soon. It's always a milestone that marks the approach of the end of the offseason, so that's nice, and we have mixed feelings about it, and just because

it is, you know, it's a slog to do all the scheduling and get all those guests and prepare questions about each team and everything. But I think it's a valuable exercise in a number of ways. A, I think it really does prepare me for the season just to think about every team in that way and come up with things to ask and figure out where the questions are. So that's good. I think it helps prepare the listeners. I think it's good for the podcast because we have guests on we might not normally have on and then they promote the podcast and

then new people find us. I've heard from a lot of people that they found the podcast through the team preview series and then they just kept listening. So that's another advantage, brings in some new blood. And it seems like listeners really like it. Like I hear from some people who think, you know, I like when the podcast is weird and off the beaten path and you do these unexpected interviews. And the season preview series is sort of the opposite of that. It is just a very set schedule. It's more regimented than we ever are at any other time of the year. But it seems to be extremely popular.

Whenever I see a thread about it in the Facebook group, people say, I like the team preview series. I'm looking forward to the Team Preview series. A couple of years ago, I actually did a poll in the Facebook group because I wasn't really sure whether people liked it or not. So I said, you know, should we do this again or not? And it was like 98% of respondents were in favor of us doing the Team Preview series. So I was like, all right, then We're going to keep doing this I guess so Yeah so I don't know We haven't talked about the details of Order and guests and all of that We'll be working that out shortly but this is An early opening day this Year so we have to start now To be done in time and

Of course maybe Harper and Machado Won't be signed by the time we Get to the team that eventually signs them who knows So there's still stuff that's Not settled, but I guess there's more settled than there was at this time last year, and we did it then. And I guess, like, if you want to talk about marketing here, the team preview series works well for us because it means that we're getting retweets from 30 people out there who might not ordinarily retweet this podcast, but 30 prominent writers or media people, whoever they are,

whoever we end up interviewing to talk about their baseball team, those people will then call attention to the podcast they were featured on. So it's just opening doors for more people to come here and listen to us talk about how Mike Trout could play baseball on a horse. So that's what we got. So it's good for everybody, except for us. what we got so it's good for everybody except for uh except for us well it is it's it has some advantages for us also in that once that starts we don't really have to come up with topics i mean we still do banter but we don't have the the question of oh boy it is february 10th and nothing is happening what are we going to talk about today it's no we're going to preview the giants or whatever so it does take some of the decision making off of our plates that's true all right so you have a chat to get to so we will end the email portion of this episode here

and then i'll be back after a quick break for a short chat with ann marie chua lee of baseball anime not a baseball enemy. I'm big in Japan I'm big in Japan I'm big in Japan I'm big in Japan So I'm joined now by Anne-Marie Chua-Lee. She is the one-person proprietor of Natural Pop and Etsy Store. She is many things. She's a gamer, a cosplayer, a music enthusiast, and an Effectively Wild listener and Patreon supporter. She is also a big baseball

fan and anime fan, and I wanted to have her on to talk about the union of those two things. So welcome. Hi, thanks for having me. Yeah, so I wanted to talk about this because I feel like this is maybe like a market inefficiency when it comes to baseball media. We all lament the lack of baseball TV shows, RIP pitch. We talk about how there aren't that many baseball movies these days. And right now we're still in the dead zone where we're all looking for ways to entertain ourselves with baseball related content. And there's this whole gold mine, a wealth of baseball anime out there that probably a lot of our North American listeners aren't familiar with. So you are a big anime fan.

Can you just kind of convey how common are baseball anime? Because I know the history of some of these shows goes back 50 years, but even right now, there are a bunch that are currently airing. Yeah, I would say that there's constantly at least a manga about baseball going on at any given time. Anime varies. Maybe it'll be every few years, but there is tons of it. But it doesn't always come out here is the thing. It's not always easily accessible.

is the thing or it's not always easily accessible but with media streaming like crunchyroll or hulu it's a lot easier to access so we probably have more access to it than ever even if it's not all available yeah and i mean it really runs the gamut i would guess i i've seen some things i haven't seen nearly all things but i imagine that you can find baseball anime that touches on just about every aspect of the game. Is there a really wide range in the type of series that are available? I would say that the series that exists, they're mostly shounen, so they're aimed at boys. Most of them are about high school teams or just kids playing baseball. It's, I think, more rare to have seinen, which is aimed at adults playing baseball. But, I mean, it's not like that doesn't exist.

I mean, there is everything. There's girls that play baseball. That's my personal favorite whenever there's a baseball anime about girls and so there's always like the koshien tournament is somehow involved but it's not just about a series that will focus on baseball a lot of times there will be a series about something else for example silver spoon is about an agricultural school but there's a whole storyline about how one of the students is a baseball player and he's trying to go to Koshien. And there's also anime like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure or Polar Bear Cafe, where there's a single episode that's totally dedicated

to baseball. Because it's so ingrained in Japanese culture, I think that it actually might be more popular over there than it is here. Yeah, right. And I was introduced to Gurutsune Money Pitch, which is based on a very popular and long running manga. And another Effectively Wild listener actually tipped me off to it. And there are two seasons on Crunchyroll. I've seen the first season and I have not yet caught up with the second because it all came out while I was in media blackout for the book, but I'm really looking forward to binging it sometime soon. I love this series and it seems like something that was made for me and for this audience. It focuses on, essentially it's presented from the standpoint

of a loogie, a lefty reliever who is playing at the highest level of Japanese baseball. And it's not so much your typical sports narrative about a star player or a team. You hardly even know how the team is doing, honestly. It's focused on all of the little minutiae of an athlete's life that we talk about on the show. on all of the little minutiae of an athlete's life that we talk about on the show. It's very focused on money and how much you're compensated and relations between players and players in the media and clubhouse stuff and off the field stuff. It's like all the stuff that we dwell on on this show is covered in this series. And because it focuses on economic concerns, it's kind of the perfect show to watch right now so i don't know if you've seen the entire thing if so you're ahead of me but

yeah sing the praises of of gurzetti if you agree with me which i think you do because i've seen you post about it in the facebook group i 100 agree with you this anime was made for effectively wild listeners because I think some baseball anime not anyone could just get into but this one I feel like if you're gonna watch any baseball anime it should be this one it's very it's so different from every other baseball anime too because baseball anime usually focuses on kids or like a whole team or a pitcher-catcher relationship. That is very common. This one is great because it sounds kind of shallow because he's just like obsessed with his salary. Right. It's really funny. It's like genuinely amusing.

I've watched it with my wife. She likes it too. It's great. my wife she likes it too it's great yeah he is just has this uh hang up about how there are people who earn more than him and therefore if they earn more than him that that must mean that they're better than him so he'll get all nervous when he tries it i mean you know the drill but i i am i haven't finished the second season i've gotten gotten through most of it. It's not the same as the first season. I think you like the first season is just more about the game and, and not that the second season isn't, but you're just learning a lot of information in the first season and the second season, it kind of slows down a little bit.

It doesn't make it bad. It just is a little bit different. And it's just very personal because it's just about this one guy and you don't really know anybody else on the team. And it's also great seeing the life of a baseball player and what they do outside of playing baseball. Cause he just like hangs around a local restaurant and you know he's got this broadcaster friend and he hangs out with him and so yeah i definitely recommend it all the contract stuff is is yeah very relevant and interesting yeah it's great i there's so many times watching it i thought

i can't believe this is a show this is like something that i would be obsessed with and most people wouldn't be and yet it's a pretty popular thing. So please do go check that out. I really recommend it. It's on Crunchyroll, which if you're not familiar with it, it's just kind of like a Netflix for anime, and you can watch it for free or you can get a premium account and watch it without ads. But I think there are 24 fairly short episodes right now, uh it's just really good i think if you like the show you will like that show but there are a couple other shows on crunchyroll baseball shows that i have not watched yet that i think you have so there's major second right there's ace of the diamond what are some of the other very easily accessible maybe currently airing series that people could check out?

So I actually don't know what baseball series is currently airing, because Good As Any just finished. And I'm not sure if there's going to be another season of that. They could easily do it because the first round of the manga is already completed. And then their second one is ongoing. The manga is already completed and then their second one is ongoing. But yes, Major Second is available on Crunchyroll as well. And by the way, Crunchyroll subscription is really cheap. It's like $7 a month. But Major Second is the sequel to a series called Major, which I unfortunately have never seen. And so I don't know.

I don't get all the references to the original but this is still a very enjoyable series it's about the son of the main character of Major and he's a kid and it's just a good wholesome anime about kids loving and learning baseball and one of my favorite aspects of the show is that he's in this baseball crazy family. His father is in the majors and his mother also played baseball and his sister, who I believe is in high school, is also playing baseball. And he has this couple of friends, And he has this couple of friends, one being the son of another baseball player in the majors and one being this young girl who has to go to her parents and say, I want to play baseball. And they're like, no, you don't. She's like, yes, I do. And so it's just this like great heartfelt anime about kids loving baseball. It may not be for everybody because, you know, you're watching kids and maybe that's not relatable, but I love it.

I think it's adorable. Also available on Crunchyroll is Princess Nine. This is an anime that is from 1998. It has a great 90s aesthetic. And anime back then was a little bit different it's a little bit simpler but it just focuses on a pitcher who is the daughter of a former nbp player i believe and she puts together an entire baseball team of girls who then try to work their way to the koshien tournament which is like the high school world series of japan that's great too yeah have you seen ace of diamond because that's on crunchyroll also i believe there's many episodes of that yes

there's too many episodes i have gotten through maybe i think 70 episodes of it i i don't remember exactly how many there might be a hundred. And this manga is still going on too. And I like Ace of Diamond, but it's very slow paced. It moves almost at the same pace as a real baseball game. So it'll take you six episodes to get through an entire game. And that can be actually pretty tiring. But it's also great because you can see what's going on inside the player's heads as they're playing. And you can also see, you know,

the pitcher catcher relationship developing and there's, you know, it's a whole team. So there's a cast of characters, much like princess nine, it's slow moving. And also the animation is like, there's a lot of stills.

You're just like scrolling across a still. And then you're hearing some guy going like, what kind of pitch should I do? So it may not be for everybody, but it's still good. It's still pure baseball. And it's mostly on the field. I once heard it lovingly called a bunch of kids standing around in a dugout, the anime. That's pretty accurate and are there any others that you particularly like whether they're new or old or easily viewable here or not or you know whether it's a baseball centric series or just a baseball cameo in another series just anything that sticks out in your mind so as

previously mentioned polar bear cafe which is also on Crunchyroll, there's a baseball episode of that. And the plot of that anime is that there are zoo animals that live in our world, and they work part-time jobs at the zoo. And they go to a cafe, they drink iced coffee and lattes. And there's an episode where they all play baseball and there's this whole thing about the red panda and how she has a small strike zone and so they're having like trouble with her and that's a really amazing episode uh again Jojo's Bizarre Adventure they have a baseball episode where they're actually playing a baseball video game, but they're somehow like inside the video game and their magic personas stands, they call them, are playing the game. That's a lot of fun.

Another great baseball anime, which isn't easily accessible. I think it was available on Hulu for a time, but it's on iTunes for like 15 bucks. It's called Taisho Baseball Girls. Again, not for everybody, but it's kind of neat because it's just a really cute historical fiction about girls trying to play baseball in the 1920s in Japan and all the obstacles they have as girls trying to do a boy's sport. That's only 12 episodes as well. There's also an anime called Big Windup. That's all on Hulu.

That one I'm not as crazy about, but it's about a pitcher and catcher relationship again. And you follow them throughout their baseball time in school. So yeah, that's all I can think about on the top of my head. The ones I've seen anyway. Yeah. Well, and for people who are intimidated to dive into anime, they've just never been exposed to it. They think it's something completely different. I mean, I'm not that experienced in anime. I mean, I've seen, you know, Full Metal Alchemist and Cowboy Bebop and Gurd Zenni, but I'm

far from an expert or someone who sees a lot of things. But there was no, you know, impediment to my enjoying it. I mean, yeah, you have to get used to a certain animation style or maybe a certain sense of humor, but it's not as if the culture shock is so significant that if you're not used to it, you couldn't enjoy any of the things that we're talking about here, I don't think. That's true. I think that some anime is more outlandish than others. What you mentioned, Cowboy Bebop, if anyone has never seen anime before, I think that's a really good start. But yeah, some of it is it. For me, I feel like when I first started watching it, which was a really long time ago, it was over

20 years ago, it was kind of shocking to me. But it's, you know, the stories and the characters are all, you know, it's all it's a very unique kind of media to enjoy. And yeah, people shouldn't be a job when it comes to producing baseball content. So if you're interested, there's this whole world of really great baseball material out there that can help you pass the time in these doldrums of the winter and the off season. I mean, I can't think of a better recommendation if you're bored and you like baseball. There's just a whole lot of baseball out there. It just happens to be produced in Japan. For sure. All right.

Is there anything else that we haven't touched on on this topic that you think people should know to get introduced to this world? There is baseball anime available on Prime now, if people have that. There's a couple of titles, but they're actually escaping me, and I haven't seen them as well. But they're pretty much on all streaming services. You just might have to dig around a little bit. All right. We'll start with Gurdjieff. You'll like it, and then maybe that will be the gateway to other stuff. But hopefully that's something that more listeners can get into and enjoy because there's been some discussion in the facebook group with you and others from people who have seen those

shows but not a whole lot so maybe we can have a little facebook group discussion thread or something but yeah everyone check that out i will link to where you can find it and you can find ann marie on twitter at leachy loves that's l-i-I-T-C-H-I. You can find her store, Natural Pop, at naturalpop.net. And on Etsy, I will link to all of these things. Thank you very much for coming on and telling us about this. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. All right, that will do it for today and for this week. Thanks again to Anne Marie. She has a couple baseball items in her store, if you're interested interested that I know some of our listeners have bought, including a Bull Durham pin. So go check it out. In other news, voting is now open for the 2019 Saber Analytics Conference Research Awards. Jeff and I are both

nominated, so if you'd like to, you can vote for both of us. We're in separate categories, so we're not competing head-to-head. It's nice to be nominated. It would be nice to win. But regardless of how you cast your vote, go check out all the nominees. Most of them are effectively wild guests, at least. There's a contemporary baseball those pieces, but you can vote at Fangraphs and Hardball Times and Saber.org and Beyond the Boxscore and Baseball Perspectives, everywhere. You can vote, vote, vote, and you'll were talking about players facing a death penalty if they didn't do well. Well, we got an email from David Rogoff, who is a Mesoamerican archaeologist at UPenn, I think, which just confirms my belief that we have a listener in every possible field. We spent 30 seconds on the Mesoamerican ballgame and we get an email from a Mesoamerican archaeologist. He says that in addition to the human sacrifice stuff that Jeff already read on air, I'm quoting now, we aren't sure of the rules of the game, and it's very likely that at least three variants existed, but most probably centered on keeping a ball in

play a la handball or racquetball. The ball was made of dense rubber, imagine an eight-pound spherical hockey puck, and players used their hips and elbows to play. Despite extensive padding, there are colonial accounts of players dying from injuries sustained while playing. Certain Maya creation myths center on the Hero Twins, who traveled to the underworld to defeat the gods who lived there in the ballgame. This imbued the ballgame with a deep spiritual meaning that goes beyond anything we generally have with modern sports. Some Maya kings even used a specific ballplayer title in their names. And lastly, some ball courts, like the famous one at Chichen Itza, have impossibly tiny and high stone rings along the sides.

Propelling the ball through one of those stone rings immediately ended the game and entitled the player who made the shot to the clothes and jewelry of all the spectators in attendance. That would make you think twice about attending, so thank you to David. You can join Anne-Marie in supporting the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already done so. James David Paul, Adam Crow, Daniel Wilson, Andrew O'Hara, and Jeevis. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild

on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. The book I wrote with Travis Sawchuk, who, by the way, is another Safer Award nominee, is now available for pre-order. It is called The MVP Machine. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. Fuck for me, fuck for me,

sign across the line. Fuck for me, fuck for me, sign across the line. Fuck for me, fuck for me, fuck for me. Fuck for me, fuck for me, fun for me Fun for me, fun for me Fun for me Fun for me, fun for me