Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1344: Something Old, Something New

Episode Date: March 7, 2019

Ben Lindbergh (re)introduces new co-hosts Sam Miller of ESPN and Meg Rowley of FanGraphs. Together, they explain the show’s new format and schedule, pay tribute to departed co-host Jeff Sullivan, and answer listener emails about a team made of clones of Ken Griffey Jr., how to reacclimate to baseball after taking an offseason off, and […]

You were always on my mind You were always on my mind You were always on my mind You were always on my mind I'm not at all I got in the partner riding with me I got in the partner now Hello and welcome to episode 1344, a historic episode of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, and it is finally time to end the suspense.

I am joined today by the old and also new co-host of Effectively Wild, Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello, Sam. Hey, Ben. I am also joined by the new second co-host of Effectively Wild, Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. So Sam and Meg are my co-hosts, and I am their co-host, and they are each other's co-hosts, and we're all just kind of co-hosting together and turning Effectively Wild into a three-person

podcast. And now that this is official, I just want to say how happy I am to have both of you on board because, Sam, we wrote a book and started this show together and it is wonderful to work with you again. And Meg, it is wonderful to work with you for the first time and it's going to be great to have you here often, not because you got a new job or because we're doing a Mariner's preview or because Jerry DePoto did something at an inopportune time, but just because I like talking to you and people like listening to you. So, Sam, this is making me feel like old times, and Meg, this is making me feel like new and exciting times, and I could not be more pleased to be teaming up with both of you.

Yeah, Jeff. Get out of here. Go. Good riddance. He couldn't be more happy, Jeff. You never made him as happy as he could have been, Jeff. Can we just clarify, though, Ben? Because you, I think probably everybody thinks, oh, it's a three-person podcast now. Yes.

And it is, but the three people will be distributed somewhat, almost evenly. Well, not evenly. Disproportionately, disproportionately actually throughout the week yeah i'll explain loosely how this is going to work as we are envisioning it right now so we'll figure it out as we go but basically the show is staying at fangraphs and you'll get it the same way you've gotten it all this time and sam is going to be here typically twice a week usually for the first two episodes, and Meg will be here once a week, typically for the third episode, and that may vary a bit from week to week, and at times

we'll all be here together as we are now, or maybe I'll even take an episode off if I can convince myself to step away from the microphone at some point. So without getting into all the details, we've been discussing various permutations of this arrangement since we found out jeff was officially leaving and we considered the idea of one or the other of you co-hosting full-time but for various reasons this timeshare turned out to be the best solution both in terms of your other obligations so that sam can keep writing for espn and meg can continue to do episodes of fangraphs audio and also have time to ensure that she and Fangraphs publish posts. But also because every time I thought about doing this with one of you,

I was sort of sad about not getting to do it with the other of you. And so now I don't have to choose. And judging by how many listeners hoped and predicted that one of you would do this, I think a lot of people will be pleased that both of you are. No one will miss Jeff, not even a little bit. I have also informed Jeff of what is happening here, and he gives it his approval and blessing, and he is equally pleased. Not that we needed his say since he deserted me. Has he begun his job yet? He has.

He's not traveling or anything like that. He's actually knee-deep in TPS reports. Yeah. Well, he traveled to spring training, I suppose. But yeah, he has been given the keys to the secret Rays database and he's learning a lot and seems like he's enjoying himself. And did he leak you 72,000 old Red scouting reports? Yeah. The Rays just had those lying around their front office for some reason.

So Sam, we spent most of the time you were away talking about Williams Estadio. So in your absence, this has kind of become a podcast about a Twins utility player that occasionally touches on other topics. But Jeff did a good job of making morbid observations often enough that it seems sort of like you never left. And I feel like I should say this

because I told someone last night that you were coming back. And his first question was whether you were reluctant to come back. So I do want to make clear that not only did I not have to coerce or cajole you to come back to the microphone, but you actually suggested this. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it was good. You know, it wouldn't have made, it would not have worked for me to have continued doing this in January of 2017. But it does work for me to resume doing it in March 2019. And, you know, I think that, I don't know. What do you want me to say, Ben? Just that you're not here under duress, basically.

What kind of weird relationship would people be presuming that you have with me that I could be here under duress basically what kind of what kind of weird relationship would people be presuming that you have with me that i could be here under duress do people think you're like imbued with police powers that we're unaware of you two have seen the facebook threads in the past couple weeks people have had theories about what's been going on here so yeah i don't know what people think but no we're all we're all happy to have each other here we are we're making this uh we all have i think we all have happy situations and we have decided to uh to bring that happiness into this podcast and and that's as that's as uh it's not any more complex than that so we're good yeah yeah and meg i was listening to your parting podcast with jeff on which you

were discussing your chronic sleep deprivation. And I was wondering if I was going to kill you by making you do more work. And I'm still wondering that actually. No, I think it'll be fine. Because, you know, what's one episode a week talking with friends about baseball? I do that, you know, several hours a week, just no one records it. So this will just be a redistribution of my baseball chatting. So, no, I think it'll be fine. I think so. And I feel like this is now both a podcast and a support group for friends and former colleagues of Jeff Sullivan. Because, Meg, I think you and I, along with maybe David Appelman, were the people most directly professionally affected by Jeff's departure.

And, Sam, you were basically Jeff's biggest fan or tied with the two of us for that status. So I know he's been on vacation for longer than he's been working for the Rays at times, but it still seems so strange not to read his writing and to have a Jeff Sullivan post or multiple Jeff Sullivan posts per day. It is very odd not to have his voice commenting about baseball. Yeah, it was when Harper finally signed. And, you know, I should, of course, say that, like, I was very pleased with our coverage at Fangraphs of that move. Very rapid response.

Yes. That Craig, he had it ready. It's almost as if we thought he might go to the Phillies and prepared some things in advance. But yeah, like, I was very happy with how that went. But it was strange to not have Jeff commenting on Harper signing with the Phillies. Although we did get a Machado post out of him before he left. So it wasn't a complete offseason loss. The real difference is going to be, I think, when sort of, so there is a kind of article that not that many people, or a kind of, I should say, a kind of news that not that many people will write about, but that Jeff will definitely write about.

And that, you know, probably to some degree, all three of us would like to write about. of us would like to write about. And it's in a way the last few years, I would say, especially since Jeff went to Fangraphs and his work load somehow went up and he got, he wrote even more and he wrote even faster. It's sort of like a thing would happen and you'd like, you'd start to think like, how would I write about this thing that just happened like i don't know like like the chris coglan slide uh at home or the four-man outfield that joey vato faced from the cubs things like that where they're just like sort of small little things that are going to be dated by tomorrow night but that you kind of want to examine and and you just knew that jeff was had already filed yeah and that there was really no point in writing and not only that he had filed but that like he had just posted because

jeff i mean i don't want to give away behind the scenes fancraft's editorial process generally you you have a lot of oversight over everything but i think Jeff, my understanding is that he kind of had his own deal where because he was Jeff, he could just sort of post things and maybe someone would come along later and give it a read. But, you know, he was Jeff, so it probably was going to be pretty good. Where Sam and I might have to pitch something and then get it on the schedule and then there's copy editing and fact checking and it's like a day-long process to get something on a site. Jeff would just write it and it would be there by the time I had even thought of how I would even want to write about it. Exactly. And those are actually kind of obvious examples that generally I think I couldn't think of any examples off the top of my head, but generally even less kind of uh obvious article ideas that

you just already knew that jeff had done and so now with that with him being gone it in one sense is freeing because you know that he's not gonna already have written it uh and in another it feels like there's a little bit of pressure because now you've got to write it or that thing will not be memorialized for the world. Although, Sam, you performed the worst scoop on a thing I was going to write this past year when you found literally the same beer guy I did in Brandon Belt's very long At Bat Against the Angels. That's why. You know what?

Sorry. Yes. I feel bad about that. No, you don't. Because the beer guy was actually the reason that I wrote that entire article. Like I was watching the Brandon Belt at Bat and it just occurred to me that the beer guy was the clock in that at Bat. And the whole idea came out of the beer guy. And I, yeah, I lucked out. I lucked out. I can't imagine how mad I would be.

I was pretty upset. I turned on my internet and you had written the beer guy article a few seconds before I had. Yeah, I was pretty upset that I had gone to sleep. So really, Ben, you don't have to worry about me being sleep deprived because Sam did that and then I never wanted to sleep ever again, lest I be scooped on another beer guy. It would make a certain amount of sense if we all did try to communicate with each other about this. But there are a couple of problems with that. One is that I don't ever believe that any article I'm writing is going to come together until it's already done. Like I'm convinced that there's no way this is going to land. It's going to be terrible. And so I don't ever want anybody

to know that I'm working on something because then it sets in motion the, it sort of confirms the failure if a thing doesn't develop. Like if nobody knows I'm working on it and it doesn't come together, it's like, oh, well, I was working on a thing and it didn't come together. But if I've said, hey, I'm writing about the beer guy, everybody back off, and then there's no beer guy, then everybody knows the process that I went through in the last few, you know, in those hours. And so that's one big problem. The other is that I don't trust any of you. And if I tell you I'm working on the beer guy, you might press publish a little faster. Yeah. There were a couple of times during the period when we were podcasting together that

Jeff and I did collude because it would just become so obvious. Like we would stumble across something while doing the podcast and it was like, you writing about that? Yeah, I'm writing about that. And then we would sometimes try to time it to minimize the unpleasantness for both of us. I think there was at least one time when we kind of just made a pact to post like at the same time or something, or we would try to come up with different ways to write about the same thing so that maybe he would do one approach and I would do something longer or try to talk to someone or come along later with like a different look at the same sort of subject. So that was nice. And it is kind of liberating to know that he is not there taking all the post ideas, but also there are a lot of post ideas he had that I will not have and that you will not have and that no one will have and that will never be written. So all the posts that he would make about some reliever I never heard of who just struck out like 30 guys in 10 innings or something and is the new miraculous reliever, you do that sort of post sometimes, Sam. But Jeff would come across those guys before I ever did.

Or various midseason adjustments. He was extremely perceptive about writing about players who were doing something differently and how they were doing it differently and whether it was going to last, which is unfortunately probably a big part of why the Rays wanted to hire him. But it was handy to always have a Jeff Sullivan post

on that subject so that when I wrote about it two months later, I could just drop in a link to his post rather than have to summarize it myself. Maybe he just wanted us all to enjoy a greater sense of surprise in our professional lives. Thought he'd go to the race so that we could delight in finding some new reliever after the trade deadline. It was incredible. Could be. All right.

So we didn't have a very set plan for today. I think we're just going to chat about a few emails perhaps, and then we'll get back to team preview podcasts and actual topics in future episodes. But we wanted to start with an email that I was sent after Sam and I discussed the inevitability of being sent this email. So this comes from something I wrote this week. I've been working on this series of articles about scouting and about these old Cincinnati Reds scouting reports that I talked to Steve on yesterday's episode about. And one of the reports that I quoted in my first article on this topic was a Reds report from 1999 written about Ken Griffeyr. Just before the reds traded for ken griffey jr

And here is the report from the scout best all-around player in baseball can do it all Is the michael jordan of baseball that sentence is in all caps michael jordan was Of the michael jordan he was He is the baseball michael jordan. That's interesting. I I. Just change the order of those words around slightly, and you've got a do not acquire. Yeah. It could be a real burn. Scouts love all caps, by the way.

I have discovered that while reading these. They just love to put everything in caps. Continuing, will personally sell more tickets than Maguire or Sosa, which I guess it's not what you typically expect a scout to weigh in on, but I guess that makes sense in Cincinnati since Griffey was from there. So can hit, hit with power, run, field, and throw. Now here is the relevant line. Get 25 of this guy and you will have the best team in the history of baseball.

And Sam, you singled out this line to me when you wrote the article. I was very angry at an old scout yesterday or two days ago. I mean, I don't know. Do you? Obviously, you're not going to share this information, but do you know the scout? Was anything redacted here? Do you know the scout's name? Yes, I have that all.

I have redacted that. But you have redacted it, but it has not been redacted for you, though. And so do you happen to know if this scout is still living and active? I don't, but maybe I can look while we're speaking. And can we call him? I got very mad at this scout, and we'll talk about the second reason that I got mad about this scout. But can I just divert the conversation to the first reason i got mad about this scout sure which is let's say everybody knows it's effectively well everybody knows we're going to now imagine a team of 25 kangaroo news i'm fine got it yeah but i'm giving the scout the

benefit of the doubt and assuming that what he means is if you have a team of 25 ken griffey junior level players then you'd have the best team ever which is this is the like most unnecessary thing to say and i i just think that sometimes when people try to use hyperbole their scale gets so often they end up being extremely underwhelming the a team of 25 ken griffey juniors where the entire bench is filled with ken griffey junior quality players and bullpen, every member of the bullpen is a Ken Griffey Jr. quality player, and literally you have 25 nine-war players, that would be the best. But now that you mention it, Scout, we should acquire him.

That would be a pretty good team. I mean, if your goal is to convince somebody to acquire Ken Griffey Jr., you would not say a team of 25 players like this would make you the best team ever. You would say a player this good can make an average team a great team. You'd try to convey that, right? Or you'd say that it's the team that puts you over the top or something. Or say like a team of 25 DJ LeMayhues would make you the best team ever or something. Right, because, well, that is the thing.

So you figure basically 50 war gets you into the playoffs, and you have 25 players. And so if you manage to be so deep that you did have, I mean, who isn't – how many players in the majors could you say that a team of 25 of them – 25 of them, mind you, I'm not saying starters and rotation. I'm not saying 14 of these guys, but you have all 25, down to the last guy you've got an average player how many players do you think in the majors you could say that about probably well if you're okay this scout said the best team of all time he didn't say make the

playoffs but you figure there's probably 60 players 40 players who 25 players of that quality would make you the best player of all time so what is this guy saying really is the first question and i have this he he inspired me to add an article to my tickler file which maybe i'll get to maybe i won't i've got dibs though haha uh unless we talk about it right now which we might talk about it now, is what would you put in a scouting report about peak Ken Griffey Jr. to try to convey to your GM something that he doesn't already know and to somehow try to move him toward your desired result, which is acquiring Ken Griffey Jr.?

And before you answer that, or if you don't, I don't know if we're going to answer that, but I would just very quickly like to note that not only do scouts use all caps, but I helped a friend who was putting together a grant for like a neuroscience project or something like that. I don't really know. I didn't know any of the words in the grant, but I was sort of like helping him with the writing of the grant. prepared me for what was uh in fact quite a shock which is that in his grant as in apparently a lot of science grants there's a lot of all caps underlining italics bold and permutations of those four things in different combinations i think they may he may have even had like comic sands in parts of it and the idea was just it's like blunt force like we're gonna try

to get like these guys are gonna be reading 500 grant proposals they're only gonna skim for the keywords and we have to do all sorts of bells and whistles to get you to notice the words we want you to use so that we could get our desired results and it occurred to me that this scouting is sort of the same way you figure your you know, your GM is probably seen this form letter basically 9 million times and you want to somehow draw his attention to the two words that might like spark his interest and get your desired result. that more in our writing all three of us is what i'm saying but uh do we care to answer the question of what you would actually how you would approach a scouting report for peak ken griffey jr did your friend also prepare you for how many scientific writers to space after periods uh i'm buying time now to think about your question i don't think he did in his, which was pretty impressive because you're right, they all did. What an angel. Yeah. Yeah. I think I'd probably only file the report if I had something negative to say. I don't know. Otherwise, I'd feel almost embarrassed because

I would feel like I was insulting my GM's intelligence if I were trying to sell him on Pete Ken Griffey Jr. as opposed to just saying, we all know how good Ken Griffey Jr. is. You don't need me to tell you this, right? Ken Griffey Jr., unchanged. Yeah. You can sort of say the same thing about like peak Prince. And yet, if you're a great writer, a music writer, and you understand music,

it's great to read that person right about what made peak Prince great. And if we, I mean, a scout really does understand baseball in a way that, you know, gives them some insight into how this seemingly impossible thing is possible. So I would think that there's probably a lot that you could say, but of course we can't answer the question. We can't say, oh, we'll just make the scouting report really good. Like that's not an answer. You could say but of course we can't answer the question we can't say oh we'll just make the make the scouting report really good like that's not an answer yeah you could say a lot we could

write an article about it but i don't know if a scouting report is the place to explain that's true but but you're not trying to you're not trying to sell a music audience on the idea that prince is good you're trying to describe how as opposed to filing a scouting report with the idea of a trade in mind where you're like hey go get this guy and then it's like well yeah he's pretty good yeah it's not like do you want to listen to prince one time is prince worth buying an album of that would be a the equivalent of a scouting report i guess if you were a great scout in that situation of course you would have somehow perceived perceived that Griffey had like one good year left. That would have been the real value if you could have somehow known that he had one year as a star left, and then

he was just going to be injury plagued and less effective. And he actually was worse that last year with the Mariners. And I guess You were watching him at that point Meg probably And I don't know if there was any Sense at all that he was like Slipping at all in retrospect You could look and see that he was not quite At his ultimate peak level And given what came after

We could say that maybe his decline Had begun a little bit but like no one was Thinking of him that way so I think i would give all the scouts a pass for basically just saying yeah he's ken grivey jr he's the best but it would be immensely valuable if you did have a scout who could tell that a superstar was about to not be a superstar anymore i guess the thing that would have been the the really useful scouting report in this situation would have been on how the kingdom's outfield was essentially concrete painted green that was the that was the report they really needed it's like

i don't know about how this guy's legs are gonna do he's been running on asphalt for yeah 10 years well that is i mean that i think you guys are both by the way i checked it two space you're right he did do two spaces space. And certainly I have not spotted it, but certainly with 100% certainty, I can say at least one three space. The basic knowledge, like the world as we, the point of a scout is to give you some insight into the world that is not readily apparent, right? In most cases, a scout is either looking at a player who is not fully developed and saying what he will become as the physics of the world change right as the physics of the player change it is anticipating the thing that you can't see

yet or if it's an advanced scout then maybe it's like looking at the player and imagining his performance under how he will respond to certain stimuli or how he will respond to certain pitches or certain styles of pitching and with a player like griffey the world as you see it is he's great everybody knows he's great that's why we're talking about him and to have some insight into whether he's going to continue to be better or worse than the norm whether like something about him is different than the obviously visible would have a great deal of value and so i think meg you're right that noting his environment and the effect it might have on him noting things about the way that i don't know he plays that might augur something anything about the future would probably be really valuable and i would guess that that's the the point of the job i wonder if the i mean did this scouting report did it get

read why did it get read was it merely like the gm wanted to read something to confirm the obvious is it just reassuring i'll sometimes send sometimes i send an article to meg because i'm nervous about it and i'm not sure if it's good. And I say, Meg, what do you think about this? And sometimes what I want from, from Meg or from somebody else I send it to is to, for them to tell me where it fails and, and why, what I should do in a second draft. And sometimes what I want is just reassurance because I've already sent it in and I just want to be told that it's good and one of the great things about my gchat contacts is that all these people seem to always intuit which one i need and

maybe the scout intuited what the gm needed yeah which was just like hyperbole should we discuss the actual hypothetical question that was emailed to us by listener Evan who wants to know he says upon further inspection this statement appears to be very very false if we interpret it literally this brings me to my question how bad would a team with 25 Ken Griffey's junior be assume that the Ken clones must play all nine positions including pitcher and catcher it seems that the team would be the best hitting team ever with great outfield defense, bottom-of-the-barrel framing numbers, and Astadio-esque pitching numbers. Astadio-esque pitching numbers.

What does that equate to? Astadio, he did not pitch particularly well, right? He pitched, what, one time and didn't do well. He didn't strike out anyone. Yeah, he gave up five runs in his one inning of work and two home runs and five hits. So that's bad. That's a 45 ERA.

Sam, way to give away that you have not listened to the podcast since you left. He's not going to say anything about that. Nope. So should we discuss what this would look like? Meg, you brought to our attention that this has actually been considered before. Yes, the Mariners, every spring they do their commercials to tell people in Seattle, hey, go buy tickets to watch the Mariners. And presumably that was just a really easy sell as opposed to, you know, what it might be now. They decided to take advantage of the cloning controversy in American culture.

You remember when American culture was like really worried about cloning? We were very concerned. I'm still worried. They are. Yeah, this has been a thing lately. It's a real thing now, kind of. We were particularly concerned. There was a frenzy.

We were worried about sheep and stuff uh the thing is that at this point now i guess clones clones are our only possible defense against the singularity though so now it's taken on a different the only ones that can take on alexa in all her various forms but so they they did a commercial about cloning junior where uh he is playing a hypothetical twins roster and he is occupying all of the positions and we actually don't get to see him even in commercial form try to frame a pitch because pitcher griffey uh pitches to contact puts the ball in play yeah realistic that was the most realistic part of this is that the pitcher threw one pitch and it got smoked yeah luckily third baseman griffey uh performed admirably

was able to snag it griffey makes a leaping catch throw to griffey at second gotcha another victim griffey working on a shutout gets the sign from griffey don't shake me off here's the wine and the bitch i smashed the third time he stopped by grippy to throw to grippy at first i'm dead set against this human cloning thing yeah i mean if you have peak griffey you can put him at any position and he's going to give you above average value right any position other than pitcher i mean maybe not catcher but maybe catcher i don't know if he's hitting like pete griffey because he was what a nine win player or something so even if you take a defensive hit and he's not the asset he was in center field he's still going to be perfectly fine everywhere except possibly catcher that is going to help you

a lot but you're you're really going to be hemorrhaging runs everywhere else so this is going to be a liability although if you have 25 well of course they wouldn't all be pitchers but if you have you know a position player side of your roster peopled with griffies do they have to stay on the roster the whole year because those are valuable trade assets so then you could go get some pitchers you still don't you won't have 25 griffies after that but uh you know the question doesn't specify so i'm taking a liberty yeah it's against the spirit of the question i think to move away from the 25 griffy construction i think you're bound by that regardless i have uh two questions for you guys that are both i don't know useful to answering this useless question one is um what do you think

well i guess maybe i might have three i'm sure. But realistically, let's say that all the pitchers were replaced with position players. What do you think the league's ERA would be? And we've all either written or read articles that have looked at how position players do when they're pitching. So we sort of have a sense, but if it were not all mop-up innings, but actual position players trying to pitch, what do you think their ERA would be like in the first week? What would the league's ERA be in a week of that? What are the self-selected, the selectively sampled? It's like seven-ish? It had been seven-ish. It's gone up slightly, but yeah, I wrote a piece earlier this year

about how there's a real, in small samples, hard to say conclusively, but there's a huge difference between their numbers in blowouts and their numbers in those extra, extra, extra inning games where it matters. And the ERA basically goes from like, yeah, high 7s over the last 15 or 20 years. High 7s, yeah, it was like seven seven four or something like that in all games i think low sevens and blowouts and then like 11 in extra innings but the the extra innings is like 15 innings or something and everything goes crazy like all the all the slash stats go go bonkers when it matters if it helps i'm i can give you ken griffey jr's arms grade this is not what you're asking but uh well he had a he had the problem with griffey i believe that this scout if his scout were asked to scout griffey knowing what uh scouts say about uh position

players and pitchers arms i think he would note that uh he would as an outfielder his uh his arm action is not conducive to pitching you want to have a an infielder or a catcher's arm generally speaking because you've got a little a shorter arm stroke or something like that as i recall as i've been told well the 25 griffey's reports writer only gave griffey 65s for arm velocity and arm accuracy on the 20 to 80 scale. He did get a few 70s and 75s from other guys. So good arm, but not the best arm anyway. Like 12? 12 ERA? Okay, 12. Perfect. Now, Ben, do you agree with 12? Can we move on from that first question? Sure.

All right. Second question. Let's say that these pitchers had to keep doing it and that we were all position players pitching all the time, but they have pitching coaches and they get to practice on the side and they do bullpens and they have armbands and so on. Three years from now, and again, somehow we're going to keep the pitchers from seeping back into the groundwater. So it's all position players, all position players. But they're pitchers now for three years. By year three, what's their ERA?

Eleven. See, I think like eight and a quarter. Like I think that there's not that much difference. Not that much difference between hitters and pitchers. I mean it there is but but that it's like that it's like 70 percent what they what they work on and what they've always chosen to do and where they've been funneled and like 30 physical differences which 30 is a big difference like obviously the difference between the best major league baseball

player well i guess the difference between the 10th best major leaguer and like the, like the hundredth best is almost imperceptible to the, to the human eye in the grand scheme of things. And so 30% difference between pitchers and hitters is big, but like, I kind of think that with experience and coaching and the right kind of training that within three years, I'm thinking like, like down to eight, maybe, maybe, maybe in the, maybe as low as like the

high sixes. I don't know that I will grant that dramatic of an improvement, but I will say I think you would have like a historic washout rate. I think that there would be some percentage of players encountering that set of circumstances who would feel so bad at work so consistently that they would just stop playing baseball altogether yeah well you definitely have right you'd have the the worst guys because you'd be able to build pitching staffs out of i mean you'd have more potential pitchers than you needed even so right so you'd sure you'd you'd have to use a lot more position players to pitch than you

do currently but you could also not use the very worst of them you would probably not have to throw like the i don't know who's someone with a you wouldn't have to have like your terrible weak armed outfielder who can't even make the throw from left field you wouldn't probably have to use him so that would help a little bit but but I just don't know. I mean, there are velocity building programs that are pretty effective even with career long pitchers. And these guys would presumably have bigger gains to make because they just wouldn't have been doing it. So I could see an improvement, but I just don't know. Like velocity is one area where you can only improve so much and so some of these guys are are just going to have pretty low ceilings well it comes to yeah

they're not going to throw 99 most of them but as it is most of them are in the mid mid 80s when they come in there as it is mid 80s like that's a that's you're pitching in the world series in 1981 with that kind of velocity and uh so you you know you add a few ticks and the i mean the big thing is just like they go out there and they haven't stood on a mound they haven't pitched from a mound they haven't tried to repeat a delivery they haven't been coached in any way at this skill by any for for you know decades for for a long a long, long time. And certainly not at that high level. I think that to me, the only way I think that the amount of the room for growth is definitely from 12 to eight. The only question is whether 12 is the right number,

because like I could, I feel like the room for growth is massive, massive. I mean, these are like, they're really good at baseball. And the skill of pitching is very, you know, very similar to the skill of baseball. And the refinement is all that's needed, I would think. Think about how long games would get though. I mean, you would have a limit clearly to how many pitching changes you could reasonably affect you could reasonably affect because these guys theoretically still have to hit some of the time. But think about how long games would get. That could be nightmarish. like one inning at a time just about yeah so if you then need to fill nine innings every game with them that is really gonna to pump up what is already an ugly stat line okay so then the other question that is relevant here is do we think that there's much variance between position players pitching i know that there is the occasional guy who is really good at it relative to his peers but

do you think that 99 of position players pitching are more or less replaceable or do we have to grapple with whether griffey would be notably good or notably bad at it i think that there are guys who sort of stayed two-way players longer right so the i think there could be an appreciable difference, and you likely would get, as time went on, and this weird hypothetical persisted for reasons we don't understand, you would have, I think you'd see the general level of play improve as more of those guys are prioritized from a drafting perspective. So yeah, he could be appreciably worse. I think he could be. Yeah. Or what if you just did it positionally speaking? What if you compared, I don't know,

second baseman who are position player pitchers to third baseman and right fielders or something in this scenario? There'd be a pretty big difference in arm strength and effectiveness, presumably, right? So I think there's still a fairly wide variation there catchers right fielders third baseman etc all right so we're saying an era of 12 we're going to leave defense out of it for a minute an era of 12 but nine griffies in the lineup uh the baseball musings lineup analysis says that a lineup of griffies would actually only score seven runs per game, which is light. That's interesting.

I gave him a 385 on base and a 560 slugging percentage and only seven runs a game. Can that be right? That seems wrong. That seems low. Doesn't that seem low? Yeah. Yeah, it seems low to me, folks. Okay.

All right. Well, I think we can agree that it's lower than 12. It's not close anyway. Yeah, it's low to me, folks. Okay. All right. Well, I think we can agree that it's lower than 12. It's not close anyway. Yeah, it's lower than 12. And then you haven't even done the defense. Obviously, it's a net loss defense. Even having three Griffies in the outfield would make for a net loss defensively because you have the left-handed Griffies, you have the inexperienced infielder Griffies, and you have the Griffie catcher. It'd be a disaster.

Probably a team of 25 Griffies would be, what do you think? Would it win 15 games? Well, if we're talking about being outscored by an average of like four runs a game or something like that, that's, yeah, that's a lot. So maybe. Okay. All right. So yeah, this team is not only not the best team of all time,

it is probably the worst team of all time if we take it literally. Baseball is so hard. Yep. Scouting is harder than you thought, people. I am not a scout, but when I look at Griffey, just looking at Griffey, just the way that Griffey is smooth lefty, I think pretty good breaking ball. Yeah, I mean, like he was at his prime, like physically impressive if he had been developed that way.

It's like, yeah, I could see my way to thinking that that could be league average some of the time. I think Griffey would have made the majors as a pitcher if he'd been a pitcher from age six. if he'd been a pitcher from, you know, from age six. That's my, that is my, after years and years of following baseball, that is my position that most, most hitters are among the, have like this sort of latent pitching ability of like top 5,000 pitchers in the world. Yeah. And vice versa. Very bullish on position players.

And vice versa. Anyone could do it. Well, you can't convert, converting is very difficult, but as far as the sort of specialization process goes. Yeah. And also, the 5,000th best pitcher in this scenario is not making the majors, is not very good, but is better than any person that you and I have ever signed.

Sure. Sure. Yeah. Well, we signed some pretty good stompers, but I don't know about that. So I wanted to answer an email or two that I've been saving for a while. We have a little time left here. This one is from Dario in Brisbane, Australia. And he says, I decided at the end of last season that I was going to completely abstain from all baseball news during the off season. I realized that my life had become too serious and I needed to spend more time on frivolous things like my faith, family, and career. I have made overtures about doing something similar in past years without lasting more than a week into November, but much to my shock, this year I have prevailed so far. No awards announcements, no trades or signings, no rule changes, no front office moves, no fat player photos, nothing. I live in Australia with

zero baseball content in any mainstream media, so that has made it much easier to avoid any inadvertent consumption. To the point, I am asking for your direction on how I should break my baseball fast. There are a few factors to consider. I won't consume anything baseball-related until opening day. I, of course, have resource constraints, but I'm willing to countenance any options regardless of resource implications. Probably read definitely not flying to the US for games, but I do have access to MWTV with no blackouts, thanks to being in Australia. And I'm a Mets fan, and I primarily view the game through that lens, but consuming intelligent baseball analysis and its idiosyncrasies also makes up a big part of my baseball enjoyment. its idiosyncrasies also makes up a big part of my baseball enjoyment. At this point, I'm thinking that I'm just turning on the Mets opener and seeing who is on the mound and in the lineup and catching up with everything else by osmosis.

That would be fun, but maybe that's just a quick, cheap thrill. Should I article binge, read a couple of seminal pieces, listen to every Effectively Wild episode from that period, baseball reference rabbit hole, avoid MLB completely this year, and follow IndieBall? G gifts. I am in your hands. I appreciate that as people who make their living from consuming baseball content, you may not want to encourage this type of behavior,

but if it's any consolation, I've been continuing my quest during the off season to listen to every effectively wild episode. Who's to say that I am now up to no, he went back to the old ones. So he only got up to episode 1056 so he still has no idea what happened this offseason so how should he reintroduce himself to baseball so does he not know that jeff left dario i have some news for you friend yeah i don't know what he's gonna hear

this answer it might be after baseball starts or else he might inadvertently hear some baseball yeah, let's just assume he is listening to this answer only and nothing else. I was thinking before I came back to this podcast that if I had just turned away from baseball for the last two and a half years rather than simply like not doing a podcast, what would be most shocking to me? And I don't know if it would be most shocking to me, but in retrospect, the incredible thing is that uh about the day that i left was that the orioles were really good and they basically had the same team this year and they lost 115 games um and not only were they apparently really good like they had just made the playoffs they were the winningest team in baseball or the american league over the previous four or five years but like the the projections all said they were going to be terrible but we had been we had been conditioned that we were not allowed to trust them anymore and so they were at the time projected to be the third worst team in

baseball but if you'd asked me on like january 1st of 2017 which was i think the first day that i didn't do a podcast i would have been i would have been very, very bullish on the Orioles out of instinct. All right. So back to the question. Back to Dario. I think watching the Mets' first regular season game would actually be pretty wild for him because he doesn't know, for instance, that Robinson Cano is now a Met or Edwin Diaz either. He does not know that the Mets open in D.C.

He does not know what happened with Bryce Harper. That's going to be surprising. I assume Patrick Corbin won't take that first start, but he's going to look at the dugout and be like, hey, Patrick Corbin's in there. What's going on with that? look at the the dugout and be like hey patrick corbin's in there what's going on with that i'm sure that they will say a bunch of things on the mets broadcast about the new gm that he will be very confused by that could be quite the i don't know if this is a very kind answer on my part because i might be anticipating and then enjoying the disorientation of a stranger a little too much but i would enjoy watching him watch that game just to see all of the revelations sort of take place and change his face a little bit.

I totally agree. You know, he has a phrase in this email where he ponders just that scenario that Meg lays out. And he says, but maybe that's just a quick, cheap thrill. And I feel like he's gotten it exactly wrong. This is the best way to space things out. He is going to get thrills like into June. Like little things are going to pop up that he somehow managed to not avoid. Like I have, there is a period of my life from like 19, when I was a kid basically.

When I was a kid, I didn't get to consume that much media. When I was a kid, basically, when I was a kid, I wasn't, I didn't get to consume that much media. Like I had somewhat strict parents as far as like PG-13 movies. And I didn't get to, I didn't listen to much pop music. I wasn't allowed to listen to the, you know, pop radio when I was, you know, a kid. And I had very limited access to TV, you know, relatively speaking. And so like, I have consumed almost everything that's been created since 1992. And I have, and then when I went to, you know, college and all, I consumed almost all the classic stuff, you know, the 60s and the 70s and the 50s and so on. But I somehow, but by the time I went to college, the 80s were kind of tacky. And you didn't really like, you don't, you didn't watch 80s movies to like learn film when you're you know in 1999 and so i have this huge gap of the 80s where now it is like this never-ending series of surprises where i get to discover that a great thing happened and there are still things even now even 20 years after like i was kind of thrown out into the open world where like

i've never seen top gun and i'm gonna get to and i feel like the um the the way to to break a fast like he has is to just let it let it happen over the course of a long period of time and yeah like there will be something like he probably won't watch a lot of Orioles games this year. And something about the Orioles will surprise him in late June. And I think that's great. I would encourage that. Yeah, because clearly he just took the whole offseason off. So he has no pressing need to be up to speed about baseball. So if you wanted to get up to speed as quickly as you possibly could, there are ways that you could do that that would not be very fun but would be efficient. You could just pull up the roster resource page for every team and skim it or something and spoil all the surprises for yourself.

But because he has no urgent appointment with baseball, he can just kind of take his time and just follow wherever it leads, I suppose. So I don't know, listen to this podcast and you'll hear some things that you don't understand and you can look up and that will prompt something or just watch a game and you'll get to see who comes in and out of the frame and that will be fun. But that does sound like kind of the best way to do it. I mean, I guess I might want to know, like, did I miss any really good writing over the winter? Because you might not encounter that. So there are probably certain things that I might make a concerted effort to see. But otherwise, I'm fine with the wash over me kind of approach.

I was just going to say, you know, some of the discourse this off season has been uh a bummer yeah this is not a bad winter to miss yeah it's been a bummer like a necessary bummer right like you know i'm not here to say we should not engage the bummer but uh what a weird little gift to get to just like tune in on opening day and hear the sounds you get that wooden bat sound back in your life. Crack of a bat, the green of the grass, et cetera. And then you're like, I don't know, why is everyone still vaguely grumpy? This is very confusing to me. Seems like all the free agents signed.

Yeah. Man, I'm kind of envious of Dario in some ways. Yeah. I did a fast like this once in, I guess, probably 2006 or 2007. And it wasn't as absolute. What I did is I would only look in the newspaper the next day to find out what had happened. And so I'd get basically the AP recap of any transactions. And it was delightful. Every morning, I was really excited to find out who had signed on the Pirates. And then I would just move on until the next day. And I wouldn't

necessarily want to do it all the time. But as a one year thing, it was pretty fun that you get a different rewards system. I also printed out, I printed out every BP article and put it to the side. So I'd come in in the morning print them all out put them in the side and i had by the by the end of the off season i had this stack that was probably like four inches tall of bp articles and then i got on a plane to singapore and i read every single one of them on the flight to singapore and i just i guess that's a great way to travel to where you get to throw away what you're reading as you go so that you're shedding as you travel. Yeah, Dario has this all figured out.

We should all be more like Dario. Well, I think we have about 10 more minutes and I have a similar question I think that was maybe prompted by what we were just talking about by this offseason sort of being a bummer. This is from Aaron who says, this has been a particularly depressing offseason sort of being a bummer. This is from Aaron, who says, this has been a particularly depressing offseason for my favorite team, the Cubs, who are literally doing everything possible to get me to switch fandoms. And it has been a generally depressing offseason as a fan who wants to watch good players play baseball while I'm working between March and September. So to distract me from all of the non-news and genuinely upsetting comments from GMs, etc., I'd love to hear some things you're excited to see this season. I'd love to hear some things you're

excited to see this season. I'd hate to step on any previews early, but particular players to watch for, fun new trends, how about that new Marlins logo? Wouldn't it be cool to see blank? Sorry, I'm low on ideas. That's kind of why I'm asking the question. Thanks for having a bright, shining podcast in the middle of the dark winter. So I don't know, maybe this is something we can talk about again before opening day, but is there anything that you two are particularly anticipating? On the spot, that's a tough question to answer. And I would like to think more about it. The thing that, the first thing that came to mind, as well as the thing that I was thinking a lot about yesterday as I was walking around is just how how to put into perspective the nl east and nl central

races where you have uh it's like such a breath of fresh air after the i mean it's a breath of fresh air after the last few years of like sort of predetermined outcomes but also even relative to historically how often do you have four you have four good teams in one division and arguably five good teams or five trying teams in one division? And I think both of those races have the that are, could be in the playoffs in the National League this year. I don't, I don't know. That's something that I'm looking forward to seeing. It's also something that I'm trying to figure out how to make a compelling, how to kind of write about it compellingly as it happens. Cause it feels like potentially this is going to be like a really like a really valuable thing for a writer

good content yeah good content yeah a lot of hashtags i'm excited so this is this is gonna seem like a very obvious answer and then hopefully that the reason i'm excited for it will make it a little less obvious. Although, I don't know how clever we ever need to be with these. But I'm very excited to watch Vlad Jr. after, you know, he miraculously fixes his defense in three weeks. But the reason I'm excited is because this is going to make me sound kind of like a maniac, but I remember, so like you guys remember like peak Felix's changeup. You remember when Felix, remember when Felix Hernandez was like really good at baseball and he had that changeup

that was like really amazing. So watching him throw that pitch was like a physical sensation. Like I felt that pitch in my fingertips and like behind my eyeballs in a way that made me like really worried about the relationship I have with the sport, but then it ended up being fine because then it was my job.

But that doesn't happen for me watching a lot of players. It has happened other times. Like the first time we all watched or I'll just chat and throw that really crazy fastball. You're like, oh, wow, this is like a different thing. And I'm engaged with this on a very visceral level. And I suspect that watching Vlad Jr. hit is going to lend itself to that kind of experience of baseball. And I don't have it very often and I enjoy it, even though it's pretty weird and makes my mom worry about me. So I'm excited to watch him to see if he lives up to that expectation.

And, you know, given how he has lived up to all the other ones, at least so far, I'm pretty optimistic. So I'm excited for that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's no one thing or one person I think I'm as excited to see as I was to see Shohei Otani at this time last year. Yeah. There's no one thing or one person I think I'm as excited to see as I was to see Shohei Otani at this time last year. And so in that sense, everything else pales in comparison. I really was worried at this time last year or when he started playing and was good that I would never be as excited about anything about baseball again as I was about that. And I'm still sort of worried about that. I am probably more excited about just half of Shohei Otani this year than I am about most whole players.

I want to see how good a hitter he can be when he's hitting every day. But I think aside from that, I was going to mention the division races and the NL generally also, but I think if there's one AL storyline I'm excited about, it might be the Royals. I think I'm really looking forward to the Royals. I think that they're probably going to be terrible, but I think they might be terrible in an extremely anachronistic and entertaining way because they have collected all of the stolen bases and seem to be really embracing that approach. I don't know whether they will commit to it or whether they will run as often as I hope that they will run,

but I think it would be a lot of fun to have one team that is just trying to play 1980s baseball when everyone else is playing 2019 baseball, and I don't think it will go well for them, but I think it might be very entertaining but would they beat 25 griffies i think they would beat 25 griffies but it might be close they have that to hang their hats on they're doing great yeah i agree with you about otani i think that that the hitting half of otani is definitely more than a half as interesting as the full otani was like this the the i'm very i'm interested to yeah to

see how he i don't know i i i like i kind of want to see him run i'm hoping that he'll run a lot i'm i'm excited to potentially see a really good base running shohei otani without the pitching yeah his home run trot is very speedy. Uh-huh. That's how run trots go. But yeah, we didn't really see him very active on the base paths last year. No. So precious.

He's a fun first to third type runner. He really gets going. He's got the long loping stride and all of it. So he's very graceful and also fast. So yeah, I uh that is pretty high on my list and i don't know as for like individual other players i i don't know that there's anyone who stands out in my mind other than maybe vlad and otani i i'm interested in seeing like a full season of soto and a full season of akunya, of course. But I don't know.

Players come and go. I feel somewhat, I don't know. Yeah, I feel the same way basically. I don't know that I'm going to be that interested in actuality. But German Marquez strikes me as being somebody whose first seven starts I'm going to watch. All the Padres padres young prospects yeah that could be fun well we've got a couple weeks to think of more things we're excited about maybe

we'll reconvene before opening day and talk about some more but that was pretty good because that is something that i do keep trying to remind myself that baseball is pretty good and uh baseball players are really good and better than they've ever been before. And that is exciting. I think even if the game itself is arguably in some ways, less exciting, the actual players themselves are more exciting from an individual skills perspective. So even though there's a lot of negative discourse going on these days and and in some cases needed it is uh it's been a tough hang baseball has been a tough hang this this winter but it is about to be a better hang once it actually starts you guys think we'll see a bartolo cologne start i was wondering that i'd

like to think so yeah i do think so probably people get hurt. whether there is a plausible position, like whether you can write articles about his Hall of Fame candidacy. And one of the things about him that I thought made it a potentially plausible conversation is that if he can outlast CeCe Sabathia, I think he's one win ahead of Sabathia right now, there's a chance, not a great chance, but there is a chance that nobody who was ever born after Bartolo Colon will win more games than Bartolo Colon won. And that's not like a famous baseball stat or anything,

but it seems like you could build a Hall of Fame article out of that stat. And so he needs to probably win a few more games. And so now I've become somewhat invested in him winning those few more games. Yeah. Yeah. I think that, I think that Bartolo Cologne going like 13 and seven as a 51 year old makes him a hall of famer. Even if the war isn't there, if he can, like, I think that,

that he has done enough in bulk that, and he has done enough in kind of uniqueness that if he can do a few, just a few more things that nobody else has done, then he's there. Then he's potentially there. And going 13 and 7 at a certain age, like being the greatest old pitcher ever, more or less, would possibly be that. So anyway, so I'm hoping for him. All right. Well, we have come to the end of our first podcast as co-hosts. This has been fun. A figurative group co-host hug, I guess. I

don't know. This is going to be great. This was great. I enjoyed it. I agree with you both. Oh, wow. That's just how we always do things. We always agree about everything. Wasn't that a thing? Didn't we used to get really early on? Weren't we made fun of because we always agreed on everything or maybe we made fun of each other for always agreeing on everything? It would be better for ratings if one of you were the designated disagreeer and we just had really acrimonious episodes and then the other ones were friendly and it was just like a shouting match. That'd be good. But I don't think any of us is wired that way. I will say this and I don't know how this will work. I don't know how the three of us will be,

but one of the things that I don't like in some podcasts where people are talking like we talk, like where the podcast is essentially two or three friends talking, is a lot of times you hear them agreeing about everything, but you don't actually think they're agreeing. You feel like the agreement is reflexive, like they just don't want to be rude. They don't want to, like, they don't want to contradict each other. That's what it is. It's not that they agree. It's that they're not contradicting each other. And I genuinely feel that like Ben and I and Jeff and Ben, the agreement

felt real that like, it felt like a conversation about finding shared values and that it was not just a civil you know forced civility and so uh so we might agree about everything the three of us might agree about everything but i i feel like it's it's natural i think it's i think it's true and maybe we don't maybe we won't agree about anything i do agree about that i agree about that too although you never know sam because i am one of your designated isn't this okay i've already sent it in people so who's i don't know a new dynamic could emerge yeah it could i looked up the scout by the way not dead i will tell you who the scout was so you can go berate him off the air. All right. Wait, wait, still working?

Still working. He is, well, he's an employed person. I don't know if he's, he's not employed in the same way that he was then. Oh, wow. Wow. So it could be, wow. Interesting. I wonder if it could be nailed down.

Anyway, this scout probably did a great job. I don't, I don't have any issue with this scout. Okay. He's a scout, not a writer. Talk to you both soon. See you guys. Bye. All right.

That will do it for today. I hope you're all as happy as I am and as happy as we are. It's nice to have this resolved and resolved so satisfactorily. So I hope it was worth the wait. I really want to thank our Patreon supporters for sticking with us, not just sticking with us, but actually increasing their support during this time of uncertainty, which I really appreciate. There is no way we could continue to do this podcast without your support. Sam and I are paid exclusively through Patreon. Meg and Dylan Higgins and Fangraphs, which pays for our hosting costs, they're all paid indirectly through your Patreon support. And I thank all of you for being so vocal about who you wanted as co-host, especially because who you wanted was basically who I wanted. So that worked out well. I think we're all on the same page here.

And I'm really looking forward to this era of Effectively Wild. So you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already pledged their support. Chad Post, Dustin McDonald, Sean, Scott Kramer, and Colleen Barr. Thanks to all of you. Dustin McDonald, Sean, Scott Kramer, and Colleen Barr. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group,

which I'm sure will be buzzing today, at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can also rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. If you're pleased about this change, please go leave a rating and review and tell us about it. You can keep your questions and comments coming, and now you know who they'll be coming to, at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter.

Megan, Sam, and I will see all of your messages. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. You can preorder my book, The MVP Machine, which comes out in less than three months now. And we'll be back with another team preview podcast very soon. Talk to you then. either.