Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1385: Ask Not What WAR Can Do for You

Episode Date: June 6, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the paucity of pitchers selected at the top of the draft, the Hall of Famers Mike Trout passed in career WAR in May, Trout’s quietly impressive season, whether WAR has helped Trout’s reputation more than Trout has helped WAR’s, the surprising names at the top of the 2019 […]

Now it begins, let it begin Clean up time, clean up time Clean up time Train of time Train of time I am joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello, Sam. Hello, Ben. So I think Meg and I will be talking to a draft expert or two on the next episode. So we'll talk about individual teams and players that time. But Travis Sacek and I were on MLB Network on Tuesday promoting our book, The MVP Machine, which I am promoting now by mentioning it. Go get it. And we were taken by surprise because the draft came up and neither Travis nor I really a draft expert who is qualified to talk about that under the best of circumstances thing. I'm kind of interested in the draft from that perspective, like the strategy and what types of players get picked more so than the individual players, because I don't know that much about the individual players and we don't

have to know most of them for three years or so, if they even get good then. But first six picks in the draft this year were all position players. And I think of the 32 players picked in the first round only 10 were pitchers and they were mostly concentrated toward the back half of the first round and I'm not sure to what extent that's a long-term trend or whether this is just a one-year thing and I know that the perception was that this year's draft was kind of weak on pitchers but it sort of makes sense that things would be headed that way right do? Do you think it makes sense? It could be a small sample blip, but like long-term trends would suggest that you'd be more likely to spend your top picks on position players, right?

For a few reasons. Yeah, you know, I was talking to RJ about something yesterday and some phenomenon, some trend that we noticed. And I said, you know, it makes sense. And then we talked about why it made sense. And then I said, of course, if it were the exact opposite, that would also make sense. And we'd be able to talk about why that would also make sense. Whatever teams are doing, if they're doing it, you can say, well, that makes sense. Otherwise, they wouldn't be doing it. And you can find the reasons why it makes sense. And it does make

sense. I mean, if you sort of think of the cubs model of building a team which was to invest in a lot of young position players to really build the young position player part of their farm system in their future and try to get all those guys to be ready in a few years and then when you're ready then you go out and get the pitchers this is a and now of course the braves did the exact opposite but let's focus on the cubs which has you know I guess it has like two or three benefits one of which is that you're if you're good at hitting right now you're much more likely to be good at hitting in three years than a pitcher who's good at pitching right now is necessarily likely to be good at pitching in three years so if you're if you're thinking about getting players

that are, you know, three years away, then you, you focus on the hitters. I mean, it makes sense that you basically would want to invest more in pitchers that you're going to use right away and invest less in pitchers that you have to count on keeping healthy. Uh, so that makes a lot of sense. And I guess that's the main reason it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Well, I mean, on one hand, it's probably easier to project or at least evaluate in the present pitchers than it is hitters, because it's just I mean, it's just generally easier, I think, to scout pitchers where you can see exactly what their stuff is, and that's kind of all you need to know. Whereas with hitters, you can see exit velo and launch angle and all that stuff. But mechanics come into play, and the quality of the competition comes into play. Whereas pitchers, you're just looking at what do they throw and how well do they throw it. And in theory, that should transfer over.

So you could argue that you should be more confident in your evaluation of pitchers than hitters. And so you would be more inclined to spend a top pick on a pitcher whom you're confident in. On the other hand, you're a lot less confident in the long run just because pitchers get hurt. And that has always been the case. It's maybe even more the case now with pitchers throwing as hard as they do. So that's one reason why I think it would make sense to concentrate on position players. And the other one is just the trends in pitcher usage. And I mean, there were, what, 13 pitchers last year who threw 200 innings in the majors. I mean, that's the best case scenario is that you become

a top of the rotation starter. And top of the rotation starters don't make as big an impact as they used to because they don't throw 250 or more innings so i think if you're looking for a franchise cornerstone type player which you are early in the first round then you'd want to go for a position player and the other thing that we talk about in the book and that comes back to the whole data-driven player development movement is that i think it's probably a little bit easier to build a pitcher, to make a pitcher, than it is to do that with a position player at this point. So if you see a pitcher who is maybe not polished, but he's got some raw stuff that looks promising, or whatever, he's got something that you like and you think you can get more out of him,

maybe he's doing something inefficiently but has good arm speed or something like that. And you think, well, we'll take this guy who needs some molding and development in the second or third round, and we can make him into what would be a first round talent. So I think all of those reasons suggest to me that this might be a real thing, but maybe we can talk about this on the next episode when we know the actual pitchers involved. Yeah. I also have something that I've kind of been treating as true. I haven't really tested it, so I could be wrong about this. But if you look through baseball history, expansion, whenever you expand the number of teams, what we find is that it turned out that, how do I put this? Expansion creates more pitcher scarcity. And when there's no expansion, the pitchers catch upansion creates more pitcher scarcity. And when there's no expansion,

the pitchers catch up and there is less pitcher scarcity. And it's been a long period of time without expansion. And I feel like at this point, pitchers aren't very scarce. There's a lot of pitchers out there, which is one reason that teams are able to use so many of them in relief and build their pitching staffs around bulk, around the concept of having lots of pitchers capable of pitching effectively for an inning or two. I mean, that's partly because relief pitching is easier, but I think it's also partly because every organization except for one right now has enough pitching, you know, kind of to get through 1,500 innings. to get through 1,500 innings.

And so if you just feel like the draft is an opportunity for you to get something that isn't readily available, impact hitters are right now probably scarcer than pitchers who can dominate for an inning in relief, which is how you're probably going to use them. I wrote something in February about how the old saying, there's no such thing as a pitching prospect, is almost looking literally true on public prospect lists for professional players. So if you look over time, there are fewer pitching prospects at the top of public prospect lists in the past few

years, which I think could be because of all the trends we've been talking about here. So it makes sense that if that's the way things are trending in prospect rankings for professional players, that might also mirror the way things are looking on lists for amateur players. So maybe that's what we're seeing here. All right. Well, another month has ended and a new month has begun. And so you have published another piece on the Hall of Famers that Mike Trapp passed last month. So who are they?

Roberto Alomar. Good one. Ernie Banks. Very good one. And Fred Clark. You know. Not quite as impressive. You know, Fred Clark. Sure. Fred Clark was a deadball era pre turn of the century era outfielder who was probably maybe more famous as a manager. I was aware of him as a manager because he has some he's on some leaderboards for managing he was a player manager from the age of 24 it was a very different era he was a 24 year old manager

and player and um yeah fred clark he's better than fred clark everybody yeah so were there any interesting factoids that you turned up in this time well a factoid as you know is a uh seemingly plausible sounding fact that turns out to not be true what you mean is fun facts uh well uh yeah i forget which ones um they were i liked that fred clark who was considered by many to be the best out defensive outfielder of his time made 45 errors in a season because that's how baseball was which was kind of the the point of trying to write about fred clark is just like well who knows yeah i don't know yeah okay there were some things i'll link to it it's a fun series i'm glad you're doing this yeah me too and i feel like ernie banks i don't know i kind of felt this way about duke schneider and i kind of feel

this way about ernie banks as those being the guys who really make like drive home that like we have now crossed into a new level of hall of famer nothing against i mean obviously all these players are at the same war level so robbie alomar was as valuable as ernie banks but you know within the margin of air that war provides but uh ernie banks is like a, Ernie Banks to me feels like an inner circle Hall of Famer. Yeah. And he was when he was a shortstop. First half of his career. For the first half of his career, he was outrageously good. So yeah. So like,

so okay. So here's, here's a thing from 1957 to 1960, the second best shortstop in baseball had an OPS of 738. The second best offensive shortstop had an OPS of 738 in those four years. And Ernie Banks went almost those entire four years in a row, 22 consecutive months without a single month that he had an OPS below 800. And so he was just so much better. that he had an OPS below 800. And so he was just so much better. I just, given like sort of time machine capabilities and watching baseball players

who were most outrageous against their peers, I feel like Ernie Banks might be like a top six or seven destination for the time machine. Just because the way that shortstops were at the time, it was just, he had over those four years, he had more than 40% of all the home runs that the league's shortstops hit. Wow. Yeah, that's a pretty fun fact. Yeah. So there you go. Ernie Banks.

All right. Yeah, this has been such a quiet Mike Trout lead-leading season, which I think is probably because of Bellinger. We talked about whether Bellinger was overshadowing other Dodgers hitters. I think he's overshadowing all hitters and all league-leading hitters. So Trout has a half-win or more lead right now in Fangraph's War, and I think he's also leading the AL in Baseball Reference War by a significant amount, by about the same amount. And you just wouldn't really know it i guess because this is

kind of a new mike trout again but or a more extreme version of last year's new mike trout who is just walking a ton and maybe that's a little less obvious that stands out a little less in a non-war sense and it's defense and we've probably talked about this but between more eye-catching seasons that are happening from guys who've been better in Belger's case or guys who are newly great like Joey Gallo, for instance, and because of the way Trout has gotten to his league-leading total this year, it's sort of an under-the-radar Trout season, I guess, if you can call it that. And also the Angels just being where the Angels are, but they're where the angels have been for the last couple of years. Yeah. One of the things that's interesting about this series is that whenever, anytime I mention a player's war, especially if it's an article that is built around the concept of war. So like when I wrote about Cody Bellinger's war, I got some replies like, ah, who needs war, right?

You expect that. That's common. That's fine. Other people like articles based on other statistics. And i'm glad that there are people writing those articles i don't think that these articles would appeal to everyone and that's normal but one of the weird things is when i write about mike trout's war that i still get those replies about how war is is no big deal and it's like you're going to use Mike Trout to make him look good. Right? Like you're going to use Mike Trout as the example of how war is no good. So like I got this from a man

named Lonnie, who was talking about how war isn't a good measuring stick, and how Trout has been bad in RBIs in four of the last five years or something like that. But then he says this, I think if you lead the league in an important category, that matters. Leading the league in runs matters. Leading the league in batting average matters. Leading the league in an important category that matters leading the league and runs matters leading the league and batting average matters leading the league and on base percentage and home runs matters and like it's mike trout he led the league in on base percentage last year you just said it he's done it four years in a row he leads the league and i mean this is maybe this is asking too much but he's led the league in ops plus five years in a row he leads the league in walks every year he's led the league in runs four times he's led the league in i mean it was a while

ago but stolen bases he's led the league in rbis before yeah he hits 30 to 40 home runs every year it's not like this is not an alex gordon quiet mvp candidate kind of story. It's Mike Trout. Yeah. Like Mike Trout does as much for war, more for war. In fact, I think I one time used that as the kicker of an article, like that Mike Trout, if you're on the fence about war, Mike Trout is like a big shove in the direction of war because he leads it every year. And like that's mike trout

like it if it were a good stat then you would think well i wonder if mike trout leads it every year and he does so uh it feels weird to me that like that i still like i again like i i get it if i'm writing about how jason hayward should get a big contract because he has a good war like i can see why that would be or when i say that roberto alomar is you know if i look at roberto alomar's war and you say that underrates him his defense was way better than that i know it with my eyes that makes sense but is there anybody whose eyes don't tell them that mike trout is also awesome i don't think so except there are people who just don't watch mike trout that much there's their eyes don't see him because they're not watching the Angels. I do think that war has burnished Mike Trout's reputation, right?

Even if that has also worked in the other direction, I don't think Mike Trout would be as widely appreciated today if not for war, because there's a whole segment of the baseball fan base, maybe it's a minority, but it's our portion of the fan base that reveres Mike Trout to the extent that we do because we have war, I think, right? Because we can say that he's the best ever through this age, et cetera, et cetera. If we didn't have that, then we would maybe still make that case, but it would be a more tenuous case because we'd have to say, well, he's this good at hitting and we think he's this good at defense and base running. And so he's kind of good at everything. So if you add it all up, maybe he's this good at hitting, and we think he's this good at defense and base running, and so he's kind of good at everything.

So if you add it all up, maybe he's really good, but we wouldn't have the number that showed it. And I think early in his career, it was controversial because he was the main competition for the title of best player was Miguel Cabrera, who did have the superior traditional stats at that time. Not that Trouts were bad, but Cabrera's were better. And so we had this war weapon that we could say, yeah, but look at the defense and look at the base running and all of this stuff and add it up. And here's the number that says

he's actually better. And probably people are still sort of upset about that. Yeah. So do you think it's plausible that if there was no war, if we had nothing but the same stats that we used through 1994 or whatever, that Mike Trout would be widely seen as the best player in baseball? Like putting aside the question of whether we'd be saying things like he might be the best player through age 27 in history and stuff like that. Do you think that it would be controversial to say he's the best player in baseball? Yes, I do think it would. I'm sure it still is in some circles, but I think it definitely would. Because there are a lot of fans now and media people who it's just not even a conversation. I mean, we won't even entertain the idea that someone might be better at least over the period of his career in any individual year you could quibble, but you can't make an argument that I would consider credible. I don't think that there has been as good a player as Mike Trout over the last several years. So if there weren't that number that we could default to, and if it weren't a number that

makes sense and is based on actual results and is validated, then I don't think I could as conclusively demonstrate that he was the best. And so it would be more arguable. Yeah, I am looking at the all time, the sort of inner circle of career war leaders. And I'm trying to figure out if anybody because most of these guys predate war, and I'm wondering if any of them are considered underrated or were considered anything less than all-time greats at the time. And I think that you probably have to go down to number 26. Well, and he's in the war era, but I think Adrian Beltre is a guy who without war would not be seen as the 26th or maybe even one of the 75 greatest players of all time. I feel like Roberto Clemente is an example of a player who he's 27th in career war.

And everybody kind of knew that at the time. Everybody appreciated that. He was a consistent top 10 to often top five MVP candidate, despite not being like a massive run producer or even a base stealer or home run hitter. Now he did win batting titles. And so maybe he would have, I mean, he, he obviously was seen as great. It didn't take war for people to see like, oh, this guy is incredible and well-rounded and an all-time great. And he did it despite nobody having more. so that would be a case that mike trout's genius would have come through there are a lot of guys who are in the

top say 100 or 75 who without war would would probably not be seen and even with war not seen that way like carlos beltran i think is a an example of that and scott roland is an example of that and there are there are various but i mean when you're talking about the players who were in the top 20 or top 30 players in history it seems like they're all pretty uncontroversial and so that leads me to think that mike trout would also be uncontroversial but yeah i could see it i mean he does it's not like again it's not like he hasn't got incredible traditional stats i mean his he's one of the best batting average hitters in the league right now and has been his whole career he's one of the best power hitters and has been

in his career he's one of the best power speed threats and has been in his career he plays a premium position he probably in fact gets. He plays a premium position. He probably, in fact, he probably plays a premium position with a better reputation for defense than, I mean, he is a good defender, but he probably has an even better reputation as a defender than Ward gives him credit for. He's led the league in runs four times. I mean, his bold ink is, let's see, his bold ink is already 55th all time and so i i think you're right that he gets a bump into this conversation that we have about him but i don't think it would be controversial

okay i'm not sure he gets intentionally walked more than anybody else but yeah so envy all right so his mvp results in his career. Second, second, first, second, first, fourth, second. So two wins, four seconds, and a fourth. Yeah, that's pretty hard to argue with. But I could see that being affected. Like Meg wrote an article one time about how Cole Hamels was, what was that article about? It was about how even in an era of kind of general disregard for

wins and so on that we still underrate cole hamels because when you glance at his page you don't see the cy young finishes that you would expect from a guy who wins if he were winning 20 games and so the fact that he's had bad run support in his career and has a series of 16 win seasons will affect his Hall of Fame case, even though we're all like kind of not looking at his wins that much. And so if Mike Trout didn't have that series of MVP finishes, that might be pretty significant. And the question is whether those would survive in a world without war. Yeah, that's a good point. in a world without war. Yeah, that's a good point.

Yeah, because there are some seasons there where the Angels have been way out of contention and it's been somewhat controversial if you don't give Mike Trout the award, but in other years, you might have just really ruled him out for a top one or two or three finish just because of where the Angels finished, whereas now when you see that he is leading

every leaderboard in perhaps the most important or all-encompassing stat and everyone knows that now when you see that he's leading every leaderboard in perhaps the most important or all-encompassing stat and everyone knows that and draws a lot of attention to that it's it's almost indefensible not to give him that unless you want to go purely based on well you can't be valuable if your team doesn't make the playoffs because no one could be valuable that way yeah yeah like 2015 he had his career high 41 homers but like yeah he finished second in mvp voting he had 9.4 war he led the majors in war and you could probably imagine that in a warless era that you just look at those numbers and see 90 rbis a team that didn't make the playoffs only 11 steals that year a career low only a 299 batting average, which psychologically is lower than 300, didn't even lead the league in on base percentage, and maybe he'd finish like sixth.

At the top, very predictably, Max Scherzer, who I think you could make a case as having his best season yet. He's just getting better every year, not in terms of ERA so far, but everything else is just sterling. So that is the most predictable result you could imagine. The consensus, I would say, best pitcher in baseball is leading all baseball in war right now. But after that, it gets pretty wild. all baseball in war right now. But after that, it gets pretty wild. It's just the rest of the top four, Matthew Boyd, Hyunjin Ryu, and Lucas Giolito.

Not three pitchers anyone would have predicted to be anywhere close to the top four in war this year. Well, that's the- It's two months, but- And that's the other side of the draft thing is that it feels to me that there's, you're more likely to get a sudden breakout from a pitcher than you are to get a sudden breakout from a hitter and so it feels like it just feels like you're a lot more likely to stumble into a great pitcher than you are to stumble into a great

hitter yeah meg and i talked about g lito last week and boyd is a driveline guy and Ryu we probably should have talked about Ryu at some point because he's just having an incredible season but yeah and then you've got uh Lance Lynn at number six no you don't naturally no you don't yeah this is a test no you don't this is one of those uh baseball reference versus fan graphs pitching war questions because Lancelin has a 4.5 ERA right now, but his other numbers look good. Then you've got Mike Miner at number 10. I think Mike Miner is actually like the top pitcher in the baseball reference war right now.

He was at least a couple weeks ago. Oh, like a week or two ago. Yeah. Frankie Montas. Is Frankie Montas there? Yeah, he's next, 11th. It's quite a leaderboard right now. Is there anybody

besides scherzer that you looked at and said yeah when i i've really just got to be up there right or verlander's got all those home runs strasburg is fifth and i feel like strasburg has been kind of on a career level underappreciated probably we need to reappraise steven strasburg i think our hopes were raised so high by his Breakout and his prospect pedigree and Everything that maybe we've overlooked him A little bit he's been really great but Yeah and then Herman Marquez is number seven which

Not that he is a staple of the leader Board but he's someone who I think after Last year you would have expected to be up there He was a trendy sort of Like Cy Young Sleeper right yeah And then you know you've got Kyle Hendricks And Jake Odorizzi which He was a trendy sort of like Cy Young sleeper. Right. Yeah. And then, you know, you've got Kyle Hendricks and Jake Odorizzi, which I guess it's not until you get down to like 12, 13, 14.

Charlie Morton, Garrett Cole, Justin Verlander. You have to go down pretty far to see the obvious names. So fun leaderboard this year. Mm-hmm. All right. So fun leaderboard this year. half of his career here because there was the year where I guess he was hurt he had knee stuff right and we all kind of wondered whether he was just falling off a cliff and prematurely aging and to be clear he is not the superstar that he was but he's been incredibly consistent for the past three seasons just as like a 20 to 25 percent better than league average guy and even as some

of his other skills have eroded he has retained his sense of the strike zone and he's become a good on base guy i mean he already was a good on base guy but he walks and he's a good guy to have at the top of your lineup and he's been a boon to the phillies even though his contract was i think somewhat questioned that they invested as much in andrew Andrew McCutcheon at his age as they did. And it looked like it was paying off until his injury because he's actually been the second best regular hitter in the Phillies lineup after Reese Hoskins. And Phillies have been good this year. They were my preseason pick to win the NL East, not with any high degree of confidence

because I thought that division would be really tight. But they have played as a first-place team thus far. I mean, they're tied in the last column with Atlanta. But they haven't really done it the way that I thought they would do it, which I kind of thought they would slug, and they haven't really done that. Their lineup has been kind of a league-average-ish lineup, if even that good.

So losing McCutcheon is a pretty big blow for them, aside from any leadership qualities or whatever he brought. He's just been one of their best players and hurts them defensively. They are already shorthanded because, of course, Oduble Herrera is suspended. And now I don't know what they do. They traded for Jay Bruce, who hit two homers, which I guess that's a good way to begin. And it sounds like they will continue to be very active in the trade market. But that will be a fun division race, even if it's just a two-team race instead of a four-team race, which I'm not sure of yet because I still think the Mets and the Nationals could kind of contend here. But this was already an interesting division, and now it's going to be a really exciting one because this narrows whatever gap existed i think and i'm sorry it just had to come at the expense of mccutcheon who we all like having around yeah scott kingery is back healthy and he's been fantastic for them

and he plays some outfield yeah all right you have anything no okay then we will answer a few emails here this one is from Ethan. He says, MLB opening day, but while the sentiment is familiar, this specific claim is certainly bold. If you were to become sports czar, how many days of baseball would you allot a national holiday to? Would this make your top 30? Mike Trout, by the way, his on-base percentage has now gone

up each of the last five years. Yeah. And it didn't start... And the links has gone down, right? And it didn't start low. Yeah. No it didn't start low yeah no that's true and and he keeps lowering his strikeout rate as the league keeps increasing his strikeout rate he's he just keeps getting better and the angels do not i hope they catch up with him at some point so holidays all right well i personally so i would say all fridays should be holidays anyway i think okay you know i think in the coming automation era,

I think we need to figure out ways to make it the norm that all people work less. And so I'm going with three-day weekends anyway. Sure. So all Fridays is my pick. So that's 26 holidays right there. I don't know if I've got... I'll be honest.

I think that baseball is... One of the nice things about baseball is that when it takes place during work, I think that rather than having more holidays to have baseball days, I think there should be more baseball during work. Yeah, because I was thinking like thinking like well maybe the trade deadline is a national holiday but i always really enjoyed having the trade deadline during school or during work or something because it was this constant distraction now maybe if everyone is distracted and refreshing mlb trade rumors or whatever then that's a good day to have a holiday because no

one's productive anyway but i kind of enjoyed that as a distraction and as just kind of like sneaking away from whatever you were doing to see if you missed some blockbuster that went down. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. There's something nice about a Memorial Day where you've got a whole day of baseball and everybody can kind of kick back and relax. So that does add value.

But the romance of like sneaking out of work and going to a day game at Wrigley field or cutting school like Ferris Bueller and going to a day game at Wrigley field or, or anywhere else, the very welcome to me. I, I mean, I used to just, when I was working in non-baseball stuff, I used to love like Wednesdays where you just go in and I'm on the West coast. So like at nine 35, there'd already be a ball game on. And it was just a whole day of watching baseball when I was supposed to be

at work. And, um, I don't know who am I answering this question for? Am I answering it for my boss? Because in that case, not my actual boss, but my abstract boss, uh, in a, actual boss, but my abstract boss, then yes,

I wouldn't want to admit this, but I don't know. I like baseball during work. But that's not the spirit of this question. So the spirit of this question are what are the days when there is the most cause for collective? when there is the most cause for collective. Again, though, if the goal is to build collective baseball viewing, which I think is the premise of this question,

I, again, feel like it's the day game on a weekday that creates the most collective watching because we're all trying to distract ourselves from the same thing, whereas if you have a day off, there's so many things you can do. And your friends don't all want to watch baseball when they could be going to the beach or, you know, building a rocket ship and flying to the moon. So like, it seems like the putting everybody in the same prison sort of, and then having baseball as the thing that can collectively take you out of that prison is how you really get everybody watching it it feels like that's the the day game especially when it's uh there's only a

couple of day games that feels to me like when you see somebody do something weird that you get the most like twitter saturation on that play it's not so much much the Tuesday evening game where attention has been diffused. Yeah. I mean, I don't know whether we're talking about this from the perspective of what would be the best for baseball fans. I guess that's what we're talking about because I don't know if it makes sense to have a national holiday because of an activity that only a fraction of the people in the country watch, even if it's ostensibly the national pastime. But, I mean, you give a national holiday to everyone and say it's because of baseball,

I guess that would increase the favorability ratings of baseball just because people get out of work. And maybe some of them say, I'll check out this baseball thing because I don't have to go to work today. But most of them probably wouldn't. Anyway, I think opening day, of course, that's the one where people say this already and that is the best one and then i think that first

day of the division series round of the playoffs that's a good one because you've got every team in action sometimes you've got baseball like literally all day almost is on at times and so it's that's a lot of baseball to pay attention to when you're juggling work or school or whatever. And that's also a fun day to just park yourself in front of the TV and watch baseball nonstop. So those are probably the best ones. I mean, I guess you could have, like, I don't know,

provisional holidays for certain days that could be big, like the last day of the regular season in case you get like a 2011 end of the season scenario but that's pretty rare or you could carve out something for like a game seven of the world series or something in case there is a game seven but even then it's going to be a night game anyway so you don't really need the day off and then there's the trade deadline which you know i just said i don't really need the day off. And then there's the trade deadline, which, you know, I just said I don't particularly care about. But that's kind of the only, like, notably busy day unless you want to talk about, like, the All-Star game or something. But that's, I mean, the baseball schedule stops anyway for All-Star games and All-Star festivities.

So you don't necessarily need a national holiday for that. But I don't know. You don't necessarily need a national holiday for that. But I don't know. I mean, personally, when people get nostalgic about like playoff games happening during the day and you were just saying that you like baseball happening during the day. But I hated that as a kid because I wanted to watch my team in the playoffs and my team was always in the playoffs. And if there was a day game, I couldn't watch it. And that was terrible. And if there was a day game, I couldn't watch it.

And that was terrible. So I think when people talk about whether it's kid-friendly to have games start at 8 o'clock or whatever and it's bedtime, I think that's true. But it's also true that it's not that kid-friendly to have day games either, at least during weekdays, because you can't see it. So I didn't like that either. They should play the playoffs in the summer. Yeah, sure sure then it'd be very kid friendly yeah yeah i don't know this is a tough one the other thing too is that a day off is only a day off for certain people in certain jobs a day off if you give a day off to the if you declare something a holiday and you work in retail, now you're certainly working. Those are the days that retail employees have to work because everybody goes out and does their movie watching and their shopping at Banana Republic.

Yeah. So anyway, I'd like to say that there would be a lot of days that should be national holidays, but the baseball season doesn't really work like that. It's not really structured around big days. There are only a few in any given year. I mean, the thing about baseball is that it's on every day and there's always baseball to watch and that's the most comforting and wonderful thing about it, but you don't really have to, there's no particular day that you would set aside. I don't think I'm having a hard time coming up with one. So if this announcer is saying that the first day of the NCAA regionals should be a national holiday, that probably is in your top 30. That's probably in your top 10 because most people don't care that much about college

baseball, but it is a day when there's a lot of baseball action. I would say that presumably this person who's asking this question has a job that is uh Salaried and not wage work not not hourly and in that case He could take this as a as a vacation on his own and I would enjoy it much more if I were the only person Who had the day off like there's something special about it being your day off In the middle of a week where everybody else is stuck at work. You should do that. All right.

Question from Haim. So this question is inspired by a rumor of a clause that is in Marcelo Zuna's contract. Apparently, he has a clause in his contract that mandates him to only hit cleanup. Now, I will just interject here. Do you believe that? I will interject to say that I don't believe that. Yeah. He has only hit cleanup this year.

And actually last year, I think he hit cleanup in all but three of his starts, like 144 times he had cleanup. So like the Cardinals hit him cleanup basically every day. But I can't imagine that, you know, he's on a one-year ARB deal. I can't imagine that a team would consent to that. I don't think a team would consent to that for anybody ever. I don't even know if you could do that. But there is a pretty bright line between telling your manager what he has to do with you. You can ask for money, and you can ask for sweets, and you can ask for money and you can ask for sweets and you can ask for plane travel for your family. But I don't think that there's any sort of consensus that you can ask your team

to guarantee the manager has no authority in how he uses you. I don't think culturally that that's there. Even if they are already hitting in cleanup every day, which they are, they just, they wouldn't want to set that precedent and they wouldn't want to be bound by it because what happens if he's not good? Then you're stuck with it. So. But that emailer was very confident. Well, I guess there's a rumor out there. I have no idea whether there's any reporting that is the basis of this. I doubt it. But the question is essentially, what if that were real? Haim says, this got me thinking, how much value would it knock off, say, Max Scherzer, if he demanded to hit cleanup? So I guess you could talk about it with a pitcher who, of course, is only hitting,

you know, when he pitches, or maybe some other guy who's in there for defense or something, but he's starting every day, and he's not much of of a hitter and he wants to hit cleanup every day. So if Max Scherzer, best pitcher in baseball, says I hit cleanup on the days that I start, so 32 times a year or whatever it is, you have the worst hitter in baseball, one of the worst or would be the worst regular hitter in baseball hitting in a prime spot of your order. You can make it cleanup. You can make it two or three, whatever you think the most important lineup spot is. If you had to do this, if you were a manager and you were forced to abide by this, would it still make sense, do you think, to bat your best hitters for second and third?

Or would it make sense to bat them like six seven eight nine yeah and cost yourself extra plate appearances with your best hitters but but also maintain the clustering effect of offense yes that's a good question because usually you want your good hitters at the top of the lineup the good on base guys because a you want good hitters getting the most plate appearances possible but also you want them on base and setting the table for the guys who are going to drive them in in this case you're setting the table for Max Scherzer who's just going to end every rally immediately so yeah I would guess in this case that you'd probably want the clustering effect right instead of even if it means fewer plate appearances for your good hitters i think you'd probably want your good hitters in a row to drive each other in would you

use would you uh since max scherzer is playing hardball and doing i mean like at this point bridges are being burned if he's demanding that he back clean up for some reason uh so would you then take it a step further and say all right that's fine you'll back cleanup but we're now going to use you as a three inning pitcher for you know on a three or four day rotation and then pinch hit for you the second time that you come up or would you even use an opener and bring him into the second inning where he's now batting cleanup, but it's the de facto ninth if you could do that, I think you'd do that. Let's say the spirit of the question is that you're stuck with him hitting cleanup

and you have to keep using him the way that you have to use him. He's back-sharer, except he hits fourth instead of eighth or ninth or whatever. It's a significant cost. We don't make that much of lineup orders because most of the analyses show that it just doesn't matter that much.

Because mostly with lineups, you're not talking about lineups where Max Scherzer is hitting fourth. You're talking about lineups where the pitcher is ninth. And maybe the big problem is that the guy who should be hitting second is actually hitting fourth or hitting fifth or something and over the course of a season that just doesn't add up to that much so if you're talking about the difference between an optimal lineup and a slightly suboptimal lineup i think most of the numbers i see suggest that's you know two three runs a season or something on that order it's a a fraction of a, which doesn't mean it doesn't matter. It's an unforced error to have a lineup that is not the best lineup it could be because you get to just choose the order.

And so that's why people get frustrated when it's wrong or perceived to be wrong. But this is not the difference between optimal and slightly worse. This is the difference between optimal and actually having. This is the difference between optimal and actually having your worst hitter in an important spot. So it's not nothing. All right. So I put this all into a lineup calculator and it wouldn't hurt much. As you said, it wouldn't hurt much, but it would really not hurt that much. If you had max scherzer or let's say a pitcher who had a 140 on base and a 200 slugging percentage uh in a normal-ish lineup they would score well the normal-ish lineup that i put out there would score 4.35 runs a game if you move everybody down one but then put scherzer

fourth uh they would score 4.284. And so over the course of a whole game, which he won't even play the whole game, he's only going to bat twice. And so probably you could roughly have this as it is. It would be about 0.066 runs per game or one run every 16 games, basically. 16 full games, if you have that, then one run every 32 games, which basically means that it's one run, since he's only going to start 32 games,

it's basically one run. And so Max Scherzer allows, what, 50 runs a year or so? Now he would just make that the equivalent of 51 or 61 or whatever, add one to his normal runs allowed. So you're talking about a tenth of a war. Not a big difference. half a win, let's say, if you're holding all these other assumptions the same, and that would be worth considering. But since it's only 32 games a year or whatever, you're not even going to really think about that one run. I mean, the big cost probably comes in the clubhouse discord there, because you have your ace and the leader of your team or one of the leaders of your team is insisting on actively hurting the team for selfish reasons so that might cause some strife but in terms of actual results yeah but i mean at least in theory not that significant huh why would he want to do this i don't i don't know he

really likes hitting wants to hit more often and uh he just wants to be the rbi guy on top of everything else max scherzer does like hitting right isn't he one of the guys who when the the dh debate comes up he's he's anti dh because he likes hitting so there you go he really likes it yeah okay all right stat blast uh yeah all right max scherzer, 188, 219, 212 in his career Had 12 RBIs one year Okay I don't know, seems like a lot Joey Votto has 11 RBIs this year

All right, stat blast They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS- So I've been tracking something of sort of a thing that I look up every couple days, which is that Michael Brantley, who is 32 years old, is currently 16th in the majors in war, in baseball references war among hitters, 32 years old, 16th. And he is the only player in the top 20 who's over 30. Everybody else's age starts with a two. In fact, Tommy Pham is 25th. And if he drops out, then it would be only one 30 year old in the top 25. But we're going to focus on the top 20 because it seems to me that the top 20 is a pretty good shorthand for like the superstars, the best. Those are your superstars, the 10 best players

in each league. Those are the guys that every fan will come to know and that you'll market them and they're going to be on the cover of the team calendar next year and you get a bobblehead and everything. And 19 of those 20 players right now are under 30, not even 30 or under, but under 30. And so this seemed really odd to me, and I have been tracking it. And I wondered, well, how odd is it? And so I built a spreadsheet of the top 20 players in war every year since integration in 1947 and look to see how out of the ordinary this is. And so the answer is that it's very out of the ordinary. This is the first year, if it holds, this would be the first year ever that there was only one. And so if Brantley falls out and it drops to zero, it would really be the first year that there's nobody. But even at one, it is a first time ever sort of a thing.

Only two years have there been as few as two. One was 1975 when the old representatives on the list were Joe Morgan at 31 and Davey Lopes at 30. So they were both pretty young for over 30. So that was a pretty interesting year. And the young stars of that day were Mike Schmidt and Fred Lynn and Bobby Gritch and Johnny Bench and Dave Parker and George Brett and Dwight Evans and Steve Garvey. So that was a pretty fun, you could see like that was a bunch of young stars there somewhat like this year the other year that this happened was 1982 well this didn't happen but that there were two over 30 years uh was was 1982 doug descensus doug descensus never learned how to cover the angels never

learned how to pronounce his name doug descensus doug descensus doug descensus doug de cinsays doug de cinsays doug de cinsays doug de cinsays yeah and uh mike schmidt who shows up again now as an old guy and that was just looked at his baseball reference page and it's none of those none of the versions doug de cinsays doug de cinsay doug de cinsay evidently no s at the end. No, it's silent. Doug DeCense. That's what it says. All right.

I can say that. Okay. All right. And so then you had young Cal Ripken, young Wade Boggs. You had youngish Robin Yount. And what year am I in? I think I might. Yeah.

Youngish Robin Yount, youngish Andre Dawson. Anyway, so there were two that year, but so that's interesting. Something's happening here. Obviously we've talked about how they're young, more young players, young players are better than ever and so on. But this is another way of looking at it because it's not just the league wide. It's not the bulk of like 200 young players who are collectively better than young players have collectively been before, but this is actually the stars as well are young. So then I looked at the average age of the top 20, and this is the youngest average age of the top 20 in any year at 26.5 years. 1975, aforementioned,

was 26.6. That was the closest year. And usually though, it's about what you expect. It's kind of mid 27s. And in 1947, the average was 30. And in 1952, the average was 30. So if you look at the youngest years on this list, 2019 is the youngest. 2017 was the fourth youngest. 2018 was the seventh youngest. And 2015 was the sixth youngest. So this is confirming a multi-year trend that we're all kind of aware of, but puts in a different perspective. But this brings up the question that I've been thinking about with the reason I keep looking at this is because when we talk about how young players are better than they've ever been, the thing about any of these things is that you're not actually seeing any of these cohorts in a vacuum, isolated.

You're comparing them to the other cohorts. It's all ratios, right? And so young players are better today than they've ever been relative to old players. And old players are somewhat worse today than they've mostly ever been relative to young players. But does that mean that the young players are getting better? Usually we assume that we do. When we talk about this conversation, we're usually looking for reasons why young players are better,

why they're coming up more advanced, why they're more athletic, more precocious, stronger, more developed, have better approaches at the plate, better trained, I guess. And so I keep wondering,, if this, if, if we are all, if there's also reason to think that old players are worse, if they're disadvantaged in this modern style of play, not just relative to young players, but if they're actually disadvantaged, if the old players are collectively worse. And so that's kind of why I'm focusing on this, this Michael Brantley fact, because if there are

no old players, no older players who are able to break through and be really good, then I don't know. I don't know what that means, but it sort of maybe suggests that there's two forces at work here, one that's making young players better and one that's potentially making old players worse. One that's making young players better and one that's potentially making old players worse. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on this, any hypotheses. But the styles of play, the style of play that we see right now is more velocity. So maybe you would think that as you get older, bat speed would be one of the things that would differentiate you from your younger self,

and you might be especially prone to higher velocity. I think the fact that the strike zone has moved up and that the average pitch has moved up, that you're seeing higher pitches in addition to higher velocity, but actually higher pitches seems like that could be something that older players might find more disadvantageous than they did when they were younger. players who could be either more set in their ways or just simply like less native to this technology than younger players who were raised with a lot more of this stuff as being commonplace for them so that seems like maybe something the one contradiction to this is that you might think that with strikeouts higher league wide that yourwide, that the share of your value that would come from defense would be smaller because there's just fewer balls put in play,

and more of the balls that are put in play are home runs. And so we know that the aging curve for defense is particularly steep and unforgiving. And so we're looking at war. That includes defense. And if your defense is not as much of a liability in this era as it was in previous eras, then that might help the older players war, but that's seemingly not happening. Less dealing too, less trying to take the extra base, less being on base in the first place.

Yeah, that's a really good point. So that seems like it would help the older players wars, but maybe there's other forces. Do you think of anything else that might explain why older players even even even not in comparison to younger players but just on their own skill levels would be worse in this era than they were five five years ago no those are the best ideas i have and joshian has put forth that theory about velocity and it's just hard to catch up to pitches. And Rob Arthur and I wrote about that a few years ago for FiveThirtyEight, and we at the time couldn't confirm or couldn't find evidence that that was the case, that older players were suffering from velocity more, or we couldn't

forget exactly how we looked at it, but maybe it's worth revisiting because that seems like it intuitively should be true. But that's kind of the best on the face of it theory I have. I don't know. Otherwise, I mean, you'd think that older players, even if they're not taking PDs, which maybe they were a couple decades ago, there are ways that you could keep them in shape, maybe older and conditioning.

Of course, younger players are doing that too, but maybe it would be more helpful to older players, helping them stay on the field and stay closer to their optimal performance. So that'd be something that would benefit older players, you'd think. So I don't know. Nothing else comes to mind. Is it, this seems like a stretch, but do you think there's any case that the game is more tiring because it's not, games are slower that you spend more

time on the field and probably see more pitches and that simply from a fatigue perspective i mean it it wouldn't be probably something that you would notice exactly that it would be so obvious that you would notice it but if you're playing say two percent more baseball now than to get through a season than you did 10 years ago uh that that that two percent would be a very slow slow a slow drain but a drain that would have more impact on older players than on younger players could be although i guess there's also more time between pitches so there's more recovery time in games but also more cumulative wear and tear so i don't know how that would the time between pitches though if for half of the game you're standing up during that time in games, but also more cumulative wear and tear. So I don't know how that would... The time between pitches though, if for half of the game, you're standing up during that time.

Yeah. I think Rob also has written for FiveThirtyEight about how older players take longer between pitches, which I don't know if that's because they need the recovery time or because there's more going on in their heads.'re thinking through the strategy More I don't know but That would suggest that older Players like longer breaks Between pitches or benefit from it Or think that they do so I don't know Yeah alright well

Still thinking about it Okay I have one last one here This is from Henry he says Something I've consistently noticed since the Introduction of the mound visit limit is Radio and TV broadcasters paying lots This is from Henry. He says, Thank you. which broadcasters also love discussing and which I also find laughable, at least plausibly could impact a game in dramatic fashion. Can any other stat challenge mound visits remaining when it comes to the ratio of time spent talking about it to relevance? And I'll just mention here because I asked MLB about this

when I was writing about rules changes this spring because the mound visits are going to be reduced to five or already are reduced to five. I forget. Yeah, they are, right? So only 33 times last season did a team use all six of its mound visits. So that's like in only 5% of games does even one team use all of its allotted mound visits. And of course, they may cut back on mound visits that they otherwise would have made because they know about the limits. But very rarely does it come into play where you actually run out or would be in violation of this limit. So I agree that it is mostly inconsequential, and yet you do hear about it fairly regularly. I don't, to be honest, I don't notice hearing it

that much. I'm surprised that you and the emailer have both noticed this so often. But when I- It's on some scoreboards too. Yeah, it is on scoreboards. I feel like if you're telling me that they've used two mound visits because it's important that I am doing the accounting, then yes, I agree. It's almost, I'm not keeping track of it. I don't care to keep track of it. Tell me when they run out. When they run out, then I'm interested. But I feel like when I hear it, it's usually in the context of like, like just noting that this thing that is, is restricted is, there is a limit on it that a team has used a couple of them. And it tells you something about just the way the game is going,

the way that the pitcher and the catcher are not working together. The fact that the pitcher is in enough trouble early that his team has felt the need to twice go out and address him. So it's significant just for pointing out like in the same way that if you point out the pitcher's body language is different, like that's part of your job as a color commentator to say like, you know, he just doesn't look like he's in a good rhythm right now, or he and the catcher are shaking each other off a lot. Or, you know, the the base runner is having a hard time getting a read on his pickoff move, all those sorts of things where it describes the color of the game. In a way, it's not a super significant thing. And certainly if they use their fourth one to like talk to their lefty reliever

about you know who's gonna feel the you know a sacrifice bunt and whether the third baseman's gonna stay at the bag or or or not like that sort of thing it doesn't really matter like the the scarcity of the mound visits is not significant to me but i i do kind of feel like I'm always a little surprised. So if a pitcher is struggling in the first inning, I do kind of pay attention to like, oh, how long until they visit? And I wouldn't have thought that in the past because you just, you go out and visit all the time. But I do sort of think, oh, well, the first three guys are on. Now do they do a visit? So that seems to have some value yeah okay all right you've made a case for the mound visit is there anything else that comes to mind that you

do hear about that you don't need to hear about nothing has come to mind yet no you know what i would here's something that i feel like this is a totally different answer to a different question but what i would like to see done what i would like to see added is as soon as a pitcher gets up and starts throwing in the bullpen, I would like that information to be on the screen. And I would like a clock to be on the pitcher who's warming up, how long he's been warming up. And I would like it to be common knowledge how long it takes a typical pitcher to warm

up. I want to know when he's ready i want to have a good sense of like because i feel like you oftentimes you don't know whether the pitcher's been up for 10 seconds or for three minutes and when he you know how a how long has he been warming up is he ready but b i don't know how long it takes to get ready for the most part and And so I would like it to be common knowledge, and I would like to have that information during a broadcast. I'd also like to know about relievers who get dry humped, as they call it, you know, relievers who warm up and don't come in, which is something that teams track, but it's something that broadcasts could easily track

because they usually show the guy on the screen or they tell you when someone is warming, and they could keep track of times that someone warmed but did not enter the game so that'd be an interesting stat too if you could tell me that so-and-so has warmed up this many times and has only entered up this many times or you know this guy is leading the team in times warming up without coming into the game or something i mean that might have value, but it might also have descriptive value in just telling you like, you know, what this guy's season has looked like and his manager trusts him enough to get him up all the time, but hasn't brought him in all of those times. So

that's a stat that is not mentioned that I wish were mentioned. But other than that, I mean, there are a lot of useless stats that are cited on broadcasts, but there's not like one category that stands out unless you want to talk about like batter versus pitcher. You know, if it's very small sample, I think you hear that less than you used to. And even then, I don't mind it so much. Yeah, I'm not against knowing it. It's all about like, are you telling me that it's meaningful or are you just telling me that that's what happens? Because I'm fine with knowing the history just as long as you're not suggesting that a three for five tells me something. Yeah.

All right. I think that's it. Let's see. We had a couple of people write in response to our strategy from last week that we mentioned the strategy that we have advocated or suggested that a team might want to start pulling its pitchers in the middle Of plate appearances to take batters by surprise No one has adopted that Strategy in the big leagues yet it's been a whole Week although some people have tweeted Us about college teams who are

Doing it but we had Someone mention Kieran wrote In to point out something that we hadn't Mentioned which I think was a good point he said I think the fact that relievers are Frequently subbed out for relatively better relievers could potentially help them in a game theory kind of way. If you have a worse reliever on the mound and the team has a mid-count pitching change policy, the batter might press to make something happen before the degree of

difficulty increases. So if Justin Wilson is on the mound and Batances is ready in the pen, and you know that they're going to bring him in at some point, you might try to press, expand the zone, etc. The asymmetry may end up helping the first reliever. Just another way it could make batters generally uncomfortable. We hadn't thought of that, but yes, the strategy, even more viable now.

Yeah. A couple people asked us how it would fit in. Justin and Nathan asked how this would work with the new batter's face rule that goes into effect next year. Have you thought about this at all? Like Justin said, how would the strategy of pulling pitchers mid at bat interact with the batter's face rule that goes into effect next year? If throwing one pitch counts as a batter, you could have a situation wherein your loogie gets in trouble and allows the two guys on who he was meant to get then is forced to face the next guy he could throw one pitch then get pulled mid-plate appearance which could get you around the rule which i think is also the the point that nathan made so is this

like a life hack for the the batter's faced rule too or is this a problem for oh i just i don't know what the rule is yeah they haven't haven't explained that exactly, what counts as a batter's face. But if that's true, then that's another point in favor. Well, I don't, as it is, I don't know the rule now, but I assume at least that if you were brought into a game as a lefty to face the lefty and they pinch hit the righty and you have to face one batter before you're allowed to leave, that one batter means one batter and not one pitch. Yeah, you're right.

I've never seen anybody take advantage of that loophole. True. Yeah, okay. I think you're allowed to leave that one batter means one batter and not one pitch. Yeah, you're right. I've never seen anybody take advantage of that loophole. True. Yeah. Okay. I think you're probably right about that. So, right. So then if that stays consistent, then you would expect that one pitch would not count as a batter's face and it would not be a way of getting around that restriction. But it could count as a batter face the other way. If you throw the last pitch of an at bat, that might count for one of your batters. Yes. Okay.

All right. A lot to consider here. Well, we just have to know the rule. It's pointless to think about it without the rule being known. But it is definitely something that will factor into that equation. It's brilliant either way. It is. Yeah. Okay.

All right. So that will do it. I will talk to you next is. Yeah. Okay. All right. So that will do it. I will talk to you next week. Okay. Nope. All right. That will do it for today. As mentioned, my book, The MVP Machine is out now.

You can order it. In theory, you can stroll right into a bookstore and buy it. We hope that you will. These week one sales mean a lot to us for getting on bestseller lists, which would be great both for our egos and for raising awareness of the book. It's also like, you know, when a team will print out a column from someone who said that they weren't contenders or the preseason pakodas that said they weren't good, and they'll use that as motivation. If we make

some bestseller lists, I'll go back and look at the publishers who turned us down, revel in the book succeeding despite them. Does that reflect well on my personality? No, probably not. But we're really gratified by the response. Thank you for everyone who has gotten the book already and has tweeted at us or left a comment in the Facebook group, sent us a picture of your book. I personally never tire of receiving those, and I'm glad that a lot of you who started the book already are really enjoying it, it seems like. So again, please go get it. If you think you're going to buy it at some point, don't wait. It'll help us a lot if you pick it up now. Leave a positive rating on Amazon and Goodreads. And thanks to all of you for your feedback.

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