Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1408: The Best Players of the Decade

Episode Date: July 24, 2019

Ben Lindbergh, Sam Miller, and Meg Rowley banter about “minimum innings,” striking out the side, and an anecdote about Barry Larkin bunting, then spend the rest of the episode answering a listener request to name the five best hitters and five best pitchers of the decade—but to make matters more interesting, they do so without […]

🎵 Music 🎵 In our hearts, I am battle master This mystic decade, we're finishing This mystic decade, we're finishing Good morning and welcome to episode 1408 of Effectively Wild, the baseball podcast from Vandrafts.com brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN, along with both my friends, Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and Ben Lindberg of The Ringer.

Hello, you both. Hello. Hello. How are you both doing? I'm sort of sick. I'm pretty okay. And I got some good news about a Halloween candy stash. So you're doing great.

Yeah. So that's where we all are you a couple days ago you both recorded an episode where you talked about this concept of kind of the opposite of the immaculate inning the three pitch inning and i'm kind of loading the lead in here but in lieu of a better name for it i I think you settled on economical inning. And it's not my thing. I wasn't there. It wasn't my episode. Meg wasn't there either.

Yeah, I was like, I don't remember having that conversation at all. Wait, you were there, Meg? No. Oh, that's right. That was the post. That was the post. All right. Stat blast appended to the end of the episode.

That's right. All right. But the economical inning was the listener's suggestion, and I just took it. Yeah. The economical inning was the listener's suggestion and I just took it. Yeah, you gave some sort of nod to approve economical inning or economic inning. Economical inning. Well, anyway, I listened to that and I thought I would like to suggest a different name for it. I realized that I might be overstepping and if Ben and the listener in their little conspiracy here don't want to take a different name, that's fine. But I thought a lot about this, and I have another option.

And I want to name this. This is, again, this is an inning where you get three outs on three pitches. I would like to call it a minimum inning. And I am going to make my case for it in three points. The first point, minimum inning. Okay? Five consonants,ants five syllables all five nasal occlusives it is a beautiful sounding phrase minimum inning

argument two you can sing it to monomena so i'm gonna sing it are you ready no are you ready okay here we go all right so you get the point okay third is it is my hope and my dream that if this ever catches on that it will eventually just become one word and i i just want you both to look at this in text at how beautiful it is okay is that not a beautiful looking word looks like it should be a palindrome it's not but it looks like it could be it's a fabulous sequence of letters and and i the fourth argument for it is that an immaculate inning, which is its sort of cousin achievement, it is not called a very good inning. We don't call it like a super great inning. We call it an immaculate inning to denote perfection. It is immaculate. There is no blemish. And economical is an adjective. Sure, it describes something that is economical, but it does not capture the extremeness of the inning.

The only way that you can do that is to say it is the minimum. It is the minimum inning. So I'm saying let's call it a minimum inning. Can I? I really hate disagreeing with you, but I think it's good for the podcast for us to not always agree. And I don't know that I've ever disagreed with you more strongly than I do in this moment. And my issues are twofold.

First of all, I do not think that minimum inning is pleasing to say. I think it is akin to trying to say Arnold Palmer, which is hard to say without slowing down in a way you don't slow down when you say words in conversation. You say Arnold Palmer and you sound like you're having a stroke or perhaps have been over served and also I had just gotten monomena out of my head from like being a five-year-old and you have reintroduced it and now we are feuding and we will remain enemies for 15 seconds and then we will get over it but I cannot believe that I'm going to be thinking of Menomina. I'm going to start singing it during this episode. I really liked it when I heard Sam say it

the first time but I've been rehearsing saying it in my head since then and I've stumbled over it every time as Meg sort of did when she just said it. It's kind of like a rural juror type of thing to actually say. Minimum inning. Arnold Palmer. Minimum inning. Arnold Palmer.

Minimum inning. Does the visual not sway you at all? M-I-N-I-M-U-M-I-N-N-I-N-G. It's a beautiful word. No, this is going to be like how I've never spelled Cincinnati right on the first try. Oh, neither have I. Ever in my entire life. Professional baseball writers over here.

Cannot spell Cincinnati. It's two Cs, right? No, it's two Ns. I'm pretty good at spelling Cincinnati. It's two Cs. I guess there are multiple Ns. Yeah, there are two Cs, there are two Is, there are two Ns, two a lot of things.

It's like how vacuum is impossible. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, when I was a kid, I couldn't even say vacuum. I also couldn't say museum. What did you say instead? Museum. Now you really sound like a Muppet. Speaking of Cincinnati, so that's been rejected.

Do we have two votes against? After I went through the whole economic lending thing on that answer, I just figured why do we even need a name for it? Because the emailer called it a three-pitch inning, and we all call it a three-pitch inning. Three-pitch inning is pretty easy to say, and it says exactly what it is. Yeah, it's evocative i mean you need something i guess to to pair with immaculate because immaculate's not a nine

pitch inning that doesn't tell you what it is but three pitch inning that just that tells you everything you need to know really what what song does it go to though does uh does it does it count if you that's the important thing does it count if you give say, a single and then get a double play? This is like the retiring the side in order, striking out the side conversation that could derail the rest of this episode. What's the song that the banker sings in Mary Poppins? It should go to that. I don't know this one. I always felt like retiring the side side in order you had to get all

three batters out but three up three down you did not you could get a double play right but striking out the side you can strike out everyone and it doesn't matter what happens yeah well i mean obviously the thing about sorry we've not we've i think we've specifically avoided this but look the thing about striking out the side is that it means what it means. It means how it is used. And it is worse for that. It is worse because people use it for any instance in which you strike out all three batters. But the fact remains that that is the definition of it.

And almost everybody knows that. And almost everybody uses it that way. And you can't argue. Now, it shouldn't be. It's weaker for that and i would never go even knowing that i personally would not use the phrase unless it was at the very least a scoreless inning uh-huh okay because i don't feel like the an inning otherwise deserves any sort of praise right allowed runs so i will avoid using uh um you know a sort of a complementary phrase to describe a pitcher's inning if he's allowed runs but um but it is what it is that

it is and i don't mean like it is what it is in the way that like people go it is what it is i mean literally it is like the word the phrase means what the phrase means, and you cannot fight that at a certain point. Sadly. Because it's a much worse phrase for it. Fidelity fiduciary bank. Yeah. Should go to that. The song in Mary Poppins.

Oh, okay. About the bank. So my smooth Cincinnati segue has been lost. But can I tell you guys both something about something that I saw this week, which is the most unbelievable story that I've ever read. It is literally unbelievable. I do not believe it. But it relates to a topic that Ben and I discussed on Monday, which was batters bunting despite their team not ordering them to bunt or even wanting them to bunt this came up in

a topic uh about fernando tatis bunting on saturday well not one hour after that i happened in my research for another article to read this article from 1995 it is a glowing profile of barry larkin who is that year's national National League MVP. It is in Sports Illustrated. And the lead into this is Barry Larkin saying that he will do anything he needs to do to help the team win. He will, quote, assume any shape to help the team. If the team needs someone to lead by example, I do that. If it needs someone to steal, I do that. If it needs someone to bunt or move a runner from second to third, I do that. And here comes the story that is absolutely not possible to be believed. I do not believe it. I'm going to read it anyway. He'll do it even if the team wants him to do something else. Knight, this is Ray Knight, who was the third base coach for the Cincinnati Reds at the time. Knight recalls a

recent game in which Larkin came to bat in the first inning with no outs and runners on first and second. As Ron Gant waited on deck, Larkin glanced at Knight, who gave him the hit sign. Larkin bunted. Strike one. Knight put on the hit sign. Larkin bunted. Strike two. Knight flashed yet another hit sign. Larkin bunted strike three.

This is in a profile about how great Barry Larkin was. They put this anecdote. Barry Larkin, he would take any shape? Yes, he would take any shape, including the bunting into a strikeout with two on and none out in the first inning when he was the team's best hitter and then this is the on the dugout steps red manager davey johnson shook his head

in disbelief later he told knight barry shouldn't have done that wait what quality is this supposed to illustrate his well so ray knight brings it home quote barry knew we were having trouble scoring and he wanted to get runners in scoring position for Ron, says Knight. The point is, Barry's thoughts are pure. What? Okay. That's Barry.

Well, that backs up your thesis that you really can't go wrong by bunting. You cannot. I mean, I don't believe this actually ever happened. I think that this story has been mangled I went looking for it and it does not seem to exist so it could have happened in spring training or some significant

details could be wrong so you know but it is really incredible that they went to Ray Knight and said tell me the most complimentary thing you can tell me about Barry Larkin and he said well let me tell you about the time he failed to get down a bunt three times when I was screaming at him, hit Barry, hit.

Is there a possibility? I still don't know why it would be the story you would pick if you don't then share. Remember a couple of years ago when Branky fooling around, I was like, I'm just going to throw all breaking balls in a spring training start to make a point about fastballs. I'm probably misremembering some of the details of this story, but it sounds like a thing that Frankie would do. Do you remember this? Yeah. This rings a bell. There was something.

Yeah. Like they were questioning the efficacy of the breaking ball or I'm going to, we're going to have four different people email us about this, which is fine. He was just like, all right, I'm going to fool around. Then he only threw breaking balls for a start just to prove a point about the efficacy of his breaking ball, I think. Is it like that? Except then why would you still tell the story and not say he was having a laugh about something? Right. You would think he would.

You got to tell the second half of the story. Otherwise, you're just telling a weird story. Right. You would think that you would- You got to tell the second half of the story. Otherwise, you're just telling a weird story. Yes. No, midway through this turns into a profile about Ray Knight and what Ray Knight values. Because he did, right, the way that he chose to frame and edit this story tells you a lot about what he admires. Yes.

It's unusual. It doesn't make a lot of sense that it would be spring training because Barry knew we were having trouble scoring. Is that a thing in spring training? No, I'm sure that this was happening in a real game. I'm just a game that counted for something. I'm just wondering, is there a little wink and a nod that we're not seeing in print,

but that was there in his eye when he was telling the story? Great question. Probably not. I believe it did happen in spring training, and some other details are wrong. I can't imagine any other explanation. Although, maybe I'll find it. Maybe I'll find it in the fourth inning. Maybe he just got the inning wrong, and everything else is exactly right.

Right. I have found Zach Granke purposefully got rocked in spring training game to troll former Royals pitching coach. Oh, maybe that was it. Yeah. I don't remember this story. Decided to throw 85 mile an hour fastballs just to prove that speed meant more. Oh, I'm misremembering.

But I do like this. I'm misremembering the details. I have now, Zach Granke is now my favorite player. Because I am furious every time I hear someone talk about how velocity, you know, like some pitcher loses four miles an hour of velocity and he has like a 7.80 RA, but he carries like a two hitter into the third and the broadcaster will inevitably be like, well, it's not just about velocity.

If you can move the ball. And I like that Zach Granke went out there and said, nope. Yeah. You know, there are other things Zach Greinke has done too that are pretty good stories. There's more where that came from. So if you like this Zach Greinke guy now, I'll send you some links later.

All right. Any other banter from either of you? Don't think so. No, I'm just trying to excise monomona my brain Meg I'm sorry it's okay I love them I am going to sing it again this episode

oh I am too I mean I love the Muppets I have one of the pigs from Pigs in Space like a little Funko figurine on my desk. I'm holding it in my hands right now. No kidding. Yeah.

Oh, my word. All right. They don't sing Menomina, though. It's Wednesday. It's an email show. And the hope here, the goal here, and the reason that all three of us are gathered today is that we're going to answer only one question. Hopefully.

We don't know for sure if that'll survive. But we have one question that we all thought would be interesting to talk about. And so we're going to answer it. And this question comes from Marcus, who asks, Effectively Wild, now that we're in the last season of this decade, who are your top five pitchers and top five position players of this decade? And we decided that we were going to answer this, each of us, without looking at war at all. We are going to answer this without the wars. And then after we

have all answered it, we will look at the wars and see if, I don't know, see if the difference between our answers and the war answers is revealing or to see if anything else interesting comes up in the meantime. I don't know what each of you looked at. I looked at nothing. I decided that I was going to approach this entirely from a experience and memory and what I know position. And so I looked at nothing. I sat and I thought and I listed every player that I could think of and I stared at their names and then I thought yes he is one and then I came up with five but neither of you had to follow such strict restrictions so what did each of you choose to look at the only thing so I I made my list

and then the only thing I looked at and I did not look at wars but the only thing I double checked was that my memory of when guys debuted and entered the league was accurate yes that is exactly what I did so that was the only thing that I looked at just to make sure that I wasn't thinking

oh yeah that guy's been around since and it was like no it's much more recent than that. All right. So you looked at years active, but you did not look at anything else about them. And so like you would not have, for instance, said, well, like when Ian Kinsler, for an example, we know that Ian Kinsler was good for a long time. But it's maybe hard to remember what years he was good. Did you like would you have looked to see which years Ian Kinsler was was good when his decline started no i like held a piece of paper over that part of player pages

because i was nervous that i would look at war on accident yeah all right so i held up a piece of paper over the player in that part of the player page i went to baseball reference for this exercise because you can't really look at war by accident there. It's in a different box. And I figured that would be safer than going to fan graphs where it's right there at the top. Yeah, we are keen on you seeing it. Yeah. We're like, hey, look at that.

It's war. I looked at exactly one thing by accident besides what I said that I looked at, which I said that I looked at nothing. I looked at, while I was doing this, I happened to see one thing, which ended up being very relevant to the way that I was thinking about this. I was trying to figure out, well, I can sort of estimate a player's war for this decade, I think, but I don't know what it takes to get in the top five. And around that time, I happened to be at Todd Frazier's page and I saw Todd Frazier's war. And this really messed me up. Not on my list.

No, not on mine either. But this really messed me up because I'm going to ask you both a question first, which is what do you think it takes? What do you think a war for the decade takes to get you maybe not quite in the top five because i don't know probably between five and eight there's or five and ten i don't know there's going to be some disagreement but what does it take to be a credible contender for this i would say like 40 ish yeah yeah 40 ish that's exactly what i thought and how many does todd frazier he does not have 40 Todd Frazier has 25. Really? Todd Frazier, which means that I could definitely stumble into somebody by accident who is lower than Todd Frazier. Yeah, I'm definitely afraid that I am going to admit the most obvious person. Yeah.

And it'll be very embarrassing for me to have not even considered one of the five best players of the decade. Yeah, I hedged a little bit by making a list of 30 names, and I'm going to state up front that I have 30 names, and I'm listening to hear if either of you names a player who is not in my 30. But going 30 deep, I feel like I should be pretty safe. I have not decided on my fifth yet, so hang on. I'm looking at them. I have decided. All all right there we go we didn't actually say which war we're using to decide this and there's at least one player on

my list that that might actually make a difference for so i don't i might answer the same either way but i don't know do we have to say i mean i think we'd probably look at both but i don't think there's a right answer i think we're going to look at the wars to see what the wars say we can look at both but i don't think that the wars are going to tell you that you're wrong so todd frazier could be the right answer i don't like any version of wars helping him out that much but i did not choose to do this with no research because i was testing myself i chose to do this with no research because i wanted to answer this question from my own experience and memory as a baseball fan and so if mine are different than the wars that's fine and i might reconsider having looked at the wars but i don't feel like this is a test i don't feel like we need john chenier in here to

score how close we hewed to the wars. Okay. All right. So what we're going to do, since we figure there's a lot of overlap, is we'll just start. One of us will start with our number one. And if everybody else has that name, then we'll all say, I also have that name. And then we'll cross that off.

So we won't talk about players three times. And then we'll progress down from one to five as we start to see probably different names. So does anybody want to start? I can start. I mean, do we want to do pitchers or position players first? Let's do position players first because I believe that pitchers are boring. I think that the pitcher exercise to me was quite boring.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll get to that. I guess I feel more confident in my five for the pitchers exactly yeah i don't know that i feel yeah well we'll wait i'll wait to say those always say those words until we're talking about pitchers so we all had trout at one i had trout at one i did have mike trout how many so trout debuted in 2011 the big part of this exercise is timing your debut right right and mike trout debuted in 2011 and got really good in 2012 and so that was good if he had debuted in 2016 do you think he would have been your number one no no 20 hey it still would have been about 40 yeah close yeah

i think he would have been in the top five still but i don't think i would have had him at one right okay so top probably top five though so do you think that 40 in four years would be better than 50 in 10 years for this exercise in terms of your inclination to include them i don't know that that would make a huge difference to me there's probably only one player for whom that question will matter and i do not have that one player on my list so i guess i will see whether either of you yeah if i'm thinking of players of the decade i would prefer for it to be a player who was there for most of the decade. Yeah. But if the player was so great that he was better than everyone else in half the decade, then I guess he should count.

And obviously he would have been an indelible part of that decade because he would have dominated that half decade. All right. Mike Trout. Duh. All right. Ben, who do you have at number two? Joey Votto. Joey Votto.

All right. Votto's on my list too, but I have him at four. Joey Votto is the person that I decided on a minute and a half ago at number five. Okay. So I talked to two people on my G chats and asked them this question with without them looking and neither one of them had vato and in fact there was a real i think that there was a a fear of the wars i think there was a fear that like oh no i'm gonna get warred i'm gonna get i'm gonna end up with like it's gonna be it's like one of the answers was Ben Zobrist.

I don't know if either of you had Ben Zobrist. That's not crossed my mind. Yeah, but I didn't think that he would be a top five guy. He seemed more like a sneaky like top 10 guy to me. And I also remembered him being really great in 2009 with the Rays and that wouldn't count. That's right. I mean, he still had good years in this decade too. The 2009 aspect did not cross my mind.

And so I had him in my 30. Jason Hayward is the one that I got really scared of. I kept thinking it's going to end up Hayward's going to be number three on this, right? No. I don't think that's true. He must be like sub Todd Frazier. Oh, get out of here. No way.

He debuted on opening day of 2010. Okay, that's true. Perfect timing. So he's got prime coverage. Yep. And Hayward. I was really good in that season. Yeah, he was great immediately.

He was a great rookie. Yeah, but that was his best year by far, right? No. I mean, there were good defense years too, but that was still his career year, I think. But I don't know. We can't check any of this. No.

Normally we would just pull up the stats. year i think uh but i don't know we can't check any of this no i would be shocked if jason hayward's career war which is this decade's career war is lower than i would be shocked if it's lower than 35 and if i had to guess i would guess 41 or 42 oh i would take the under on that on reference all right let's we're gonna record okay Okay, we're going to check soon. So what did I say? I said shocked at 35. I would guess 41 or 42. Ben said I would take the under. And Meg said monomina.

All right. Please note that I said that with some confidence okay hang on let me know let the record show with some confidence do you prefer confidence or conviction I like conviction

hang on let me delete conviction didn't the Braves make the playoffs by like one game that year isn't Hayward why they made the yeah that was his best offensive year by far right playoffs by like one game that year isn't it isn't hayward why they made the yeah yeah yeah i mean that was his best offensive year by far right he may have had a maybe he had a better warrior because of defense but i'm not i'm not even confident it was his best offensive year i think that he had a sophomore slump and i think he came back in his one of those braves years i

think was pretty good and then i think right before the contract was pretty good because people remember he was a six war six war guy i mean he was the like when when jeff passon was doing the the mvp war columns it was alex gordon and jason hayward we were so worried we would not be able to fill an episode with this topic and we have spent this long talking about a guy who wasn't on any of our lists i chose i chose vato over him at the last second he was there with three other names i think i think i think k word had a career high in homers that year at least because he was like a power hitter that year and then never really a power hitter again anyway that's enough about jason so can i say something about vato which i think was sort of the one because i like you sam wanted to try to do this from memory but then was also deeply afraid that i was going to miss some guys because you know like we all have we all have some stretches in our sports engagement where there are gaps

and the beginning part of this decade was like firmly in my Goldman gap. And so I, you know, I knew stuff. I watched baseball, watched, you know, the postseason and all that. But like the minutia was not quite what it's clearly what it is now. So I was nervous similarly. But I had, you know, it's like Votto has this reputation among sabermetric types of being perpetually underappreciated by fans

who rely on traditional stats to understand things. So I thought, oh, he's probably sneaky really high up on this list. And then with Trout, the thing, I mean, I don't think any of us had a doubt about Trout being probably number one, but you just think about like, oh, he passed this Hall of Famer. And so then you're like, well, he has to probably probably be number one so you could just logic your way to it yeah some of those yeah well i mean i'm trying to say words that aren't i assume trout has a lead of at least 15 yeah wins i i might take the over on that.

Trout right now has his career war yesterday was 70.4 and of course that's all this decade. Could someone have 55 this decade? I think that's right.

That's probably the outer limit of what we would expect from anybody else on here. Sam, who did you have? Number two. By the way, to conclude the thought, I was worried that Votto, because he's a first baseman, it's hard to rack up wars as a first baseman. I've looked at Votto's page often enough

just to check in on how close he is to Hall of Fame caliber. And how close is he? And also, when he debuted, hang on, close he is to hall of fame caliber and how close is he and also when he debuted hang on let me try to guess when he debuted because 2010 was his mvp year right or was it the year he finished second he finished first in 2010 and then second in like 2017 he was around before 2010 so he was around before 2010 and so my thinking superstar oh see my thinking was that vato was pretty good like he debuted he was pretty good and he i don't think he was an immediate mvp candidate and so i figured well maybe there's 15 wars there before he won mvp and he's not like people don't talk about him as a no doubt hall of famer and in fact i think he's probably about 50

career war and so then if you start doing the math, like what with my with my assumptions, it's like 50 minus I don't know, 12. Is he 38 for this decade? He's had a couple of seasons that were downer seasons, but he's had some great ones too. Right. So anyway, Votto is my number five, my number two, I only have two that I'm confident about. And one is Trout. And the other, i'm confident about and one is trout and the other i'm confident about this one partly because i do not care what the war say it's buster posey buster posey to me is is is an easy take here obviously he's my number two i imagine that the war's gonna do well by me and i think if you adjust for him being a catcher which you know the standard for hall of fame

catchers is lower because it's hard to rack up war as a catcher, which, you know, the standard for Hall of Fame catchers is lower because it's hard to rack up war as a catcher, traditionally, then it's even higher. So, Buster Posey, you know, he's he just, he's an MVP, he's a rookie of the year, he's a superstar, he's a batting champ, he's a gold glover, he's even better if you

go to baseball prospectus, where you have, although, again, I can never quite tell who's doing what with the framing and the wars these days. But I know that he does really well at baseball. Everyone except B-Ref. They all have it. Oh, okay. So, fangrass.

All right. So, good. Two out of three are going to tell me. Buster Posey, to me, is my number two. No doubter. I had him at three. I had him at four. All right.

Oh, I guess I have to tell who my second one is huh we can talk more about Posey oh yeah we should talk more about Buster Posey I'm just saying out loud I need to remember to say mine yeah Posey was the one I meant when I asked earlier about whether we cared which war we were talking about here but

I had him on my list regardless and he is also a player who his rookie year was 2010, so he perfectly covers this decade. I mean, these are going to be his 10 best years, and they cover the decade exactly right, even though this is not going to... I am shocked, by the way, that watching him,

I was just watching him a couple days ago, I've had this thought 50 times this year. I am shocked to think that Buster Posey is not going to make the Hall of Fame. There was like a year or two ago, there was nobody I was more certain about. And I'm watching him now. And I just think, oh, I can't believe it. He's not going to make the Hall of Fame. It's hard to imagine.

And that's how I felt about Joe Maurer at a certain point. When Joe Maurer was so far ahead of everybody else when you looked at active players war at that age. He was so good, such a star, such an absolute superstar. And then just like, that was that, and he didn't get there. Yeah. Well, I would vote for Maurer as is. I think he should be in the Hall of Fame. I don't know if he will be.

Posey. Yeah. I mean, it depends it depends to know without knowing his floor yeah it's also hard to know i mean like he's in this he's like mired in this horrible season-long slump this year but like you know you could see him pulling out of the skid and then playing first base for a while and yeah he wasn't he wasn't good last year he had the hip thing yeah but he had the MVP he won

lots of world series he won three rings caught a bunch of no hitters he was literally changed a rule he did yeah if he had done almost anything in his 30s and hopefully he still will but really he just had to sort of show up and be you know 30% worse than he had been and instead he's been more than that worse

yeah all right uh well so we have uh let's see do we have everybody's number two no i have to go okay i put i feel like this is aggressive now i feel like it was too aggressive but i've made a choice i have to stick to it i had beltray too oh i did not name beltray on my list of 30 no me neither and i'm with your list of 30 no i think that's a good thing i think i think beltray is definitely should be in the top 30 what i had to bid by 30 i am not saying that i didn't have him in my 30 to make meg feel bad as to admit that the thing that i set up at the beginning to humiliate myself has come crashing down yeah i don't understand how listing 30 is makes you less likely to make an embarrassing oversight are you just gonna make it anyway i didn't think i'd forget okayre, okay? Well, here was my thought process on Beltre. So the last decade, you know, so starting in 2009,

and 2009 was the Mariners' year, the last Mariners' year. Oh, it was 2010, really, the Red Sox year? I think. Oh, what? Wow. I mean, what a monster he was. Yeah, the whole, oh, I think that's a good pick. And, you know, here's the thing you always say about Adrian Beltre.

You're like, hey, remember how he ended up having this weird Hall of Fame career, like in the last 10 years of his career? So, yeah, 2009 was that Mariners year. I'm not looking at his war. And so I'm scaring it with my hand. You're just going to have to believe me. And so I thought, hey, you know who ended up being really good? I'm scaring it with my hand. You're just going to have to believe me. And so I thought, hey, you know who ended up being really good and now we talk about him like he should probably be in the Hall of Fame

is Adrian Beltran. You know when that started? 2009. So that was why I thought it. That's a great pick. Okay, so Beltran's career war is around 90 or 95, Okay, so Beltre's career war is around 90 or 95, and it's hard for me to imagine that he had 50 of those before he left the Mariners.

He did have more than you would think or more than people at the time thought because he started super young and the defense was great the whole time and he had the one big offensive year. Yeah, he had that one really good Dodgers year. Right, so nine that one really good Dodgers year. Right, so nine that year with the Dodgers and then let's say maybe two for the other five years as a Dodgers. That's 19.

And then he wasn't terrible with the Mariners as far as wars go and so then maybe that's 15 and so now you're up to 34. 34 to 40 and so that leaves you with a 55 war player, which is what we stated might be the maximum that anybody would have.

Beltre is a great pick. That is a good pick. I'm scanning my, oh, no, look, I do have him in my top 30, types furiously. Yeah, with only two years left in the decade to spare. And yeah, I've written whole articles about how underrated Beltre is and when we all realized that Beltre was great, and yet I didn't really even consider him for my five, so I made the same mistake.

All right, great pick. I don't think he has 55, though. Eight years, he can't possibly have more than 50. Two might be aggressive. I feel good about him being in my top. He's got to be in the 40s, though. He's got to be in the 40s. I feel good about him being in my top. He's got to be in the 40s though. He's got to be in the 40s. I feel good about him being in my top five. I think I would in hindsight reorder

this but I'm not going to do that because it would be cheating. Wait, hang on. You had him number two. Yeah. Trout and then Beltre and then Posey and then Votto. And then Ben has Trout and then Votto and then who's your number three?

I have not said yet, so I should say that now. We're asking you that. Miguel Cabrera. Miguel Cabrera. I do not have Miguel Cabrera. He was one of the four options for my number five spot. Miggy is my five. Okay.

Wow. Meg, it's great having you. You want me to sing Menomena a couple more times uh i i thought that miguel cabrera i thought long and hard about miguel cabrera and i decided that he has been too bad for the last few years and that i just know even when he was good we we were all bad-mouthing the war. And so I thought- But the war was like eight. Well, when he-

We were bad-mouthing it because Trout was better. When he won the Triple Crown, it was like six and a half. I think the next year it was close to eight. And those were his two big years. And I think he was fours and fives in his good years before that. And then he went away. And so I got him around 40. I got him like right around there. He's close for me, but I ultimately thought that

it wasn't going to get there. I could see it though. My three and four don't look as good to me right now. Yeah. I think he did enough early in the decade, but we'll see. Yeah, I think he did enough early in the decade, but we'll see. So let me ask you this. Is Miguel Cabrera a player who, if the wars show him at eight or nine, you will stand for anyway? Because if we're just naming historically significant figures of the decade, isn't he there? Isn't it like like he's there among the three

or four like i would say that if you're if you're doing historically significant figures from the 90s you're talking trout david ortiz miguel cabrera and you know maybe maybe posey or maybe bryce harper yeah i think he won two mvp awards even if he shouldn't have. He won a Triple Crown. He won batting titles. Obviously, he won at least one batting title. I think he won multiple batting titles. He was a part of most of the previous decade as well, because he was a rookie on that and good, but his best and best known years were in this decade. He's known as one of the best hitters of all time in his prime. I would say that he would be on my list even if he just loses out to someone. Okay. What if he loses out to my number three pick, Robinson Cano?

Oh, Robbie's a good pick. Oh, yeah. Now I want my Miggy pick back. Yeah, me too. Robbie's a way better pick. Yeah. Robbie's a way better pick. Oh, yeah. Sam.

Drat. A way better pick. Than Cabrera, you think? Yeah. Not than the other ones. Not than Beltre. He's not a way better pick. No, I'm confident you think? Yeah. Not than the other ones. Not than Beltre. He's not a way better pick. No, I'm confident in the other ones, even if I'm squishy on the order.

But I am mad angry at myself. I think that Robinson Cano, my guess is that if you look at any three-year period from 2010 through 2017, maybe 18, any three-year period, any three-year period, I think Canoe is in the top three in war. Yes. Yes, or at least the top five. Yes. He had good star level seasons before this decade,

I think, in New York. But yes, he's a Hall of Famer right now. And most of that career is in this decade. So yeah, he has to be on here. So when did he debut? He was, when did he sign with the Mariners? 2014? Yeah, before the 14 season.

So basically 13, 12, 11, 10. I mean, that means two full years before this decade. So the bulk of it is in this decade. Such a good pick. All right. So I should go. So we have Ben's number five left and my number four left. So I'll go to my number four. My number four is Andrew McCutcheon.

That's also a good pick. And that's Ben's five. All right. And McCutcheon is probably, along with Posey and maybe Trout, is my favorite superstar of the decade. I just think he was perfect. He was a perfect franchise player. I love him to death. And there was that five-year run where he was basically a top five MVP guy every year.

And I do not know how much he has given away in this race since then. I also don't, let's see, when did he debut? It's hard to know when he debuted because he signed an extension, so you don't have that easy free agent and count back six years. Right. When did he debut? 2008, 2009? I don't know.

Seems like his peak was definitely fully contained within this year. His peak here's what I know about his peak. His peak overlapped with Buster Posey's peak because they were going back and forth. It was 2009. He played 108 games in 2009.

I'm not liking it as far. My guess though unfortunately my guess is that McCutcheon is another player who people don't say is a lock Hall of Famer. And as I remember from doing my Hall of Fame 50% war threshold thing a few years ago, he was extrapolating from that. I think he's like mid 40s for his career. So if we assume that 2009 was a sort of limited number, then he's going to be

probably low 40s, if I'm right. And low 40s probably gets you there, but it's not Beltre, and I don't know if it's Miguel Carrera. So while I like Andrew McCutcheon in that spot, or I liked Andrew McCutcheon in that spot, hearing Adrian Beltre's name has made me think that he might be number six. Yeah. Yeah. If I had to reorder my list right now, I'd keep Trout. I'd keep Vado. I think I'd keep, I don't know if I'm more confident in Cabrera and Posey, but I think I'm more confident in Cano, certainly. Cano would be my two or three if I redid this.

And I'm pretty sure I might put Beltre over McCutcheon even. I would definitely put Beltre over McCutcheon. So I'd keep, yeah, I'd go Trout, Cano, Votto, Beltre, and either Cabrera or Posey. I'm not sure which. I feel like Posey probably beats out Miggy just when you think about the defensive value, right? Probably.

So we have, nobody has disavowed any pick though. No, I'm disavowing the Miggy pick. You are. I'm disavowing. I mean, I think he's probably still in like the top 10. I don't think that he's, he's not Todd Frazier. Just a pick on Todd. By disavowed, do you mean, I mean, I'm changing, If I could change, I would put Canoe on my list for sure.

Well, no, I heard you say that you would put Canoe on, but then I heard you say that you didn't know that you would take Cabrera, Posey, or McCutcheon off. I'd pick McCutcheon off, and then I'd kick either Cabrera or Posey off. I'm not sure which. I guess Cabrera. If I were to redo my five, I'd go Troutrera or Posey off. I'm not sure which. I guess Cabrera. If I were to redo my five, I'd go Trout, Posey, Canoe, Vado, and Beltre.

So should we look at the wars? Yeah. All right, play the music, Ben. Play the music. Do we have music for this? Not that music. Statblast music. We're statblasting.

Okay, statblast. Stop last music. We're stop lasting. Okay. All right. Stop last. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to day step last.

So why don't you look up fan graphs and I'll look up reference. I'll get fan graphs. Oh, the suspense. Wow. I'm so excited. All right. We were none of us very bad at this exercise. Oh.

That's good. I don't think. Oh. I don't think we were any of us very bad. Pretty good. We did pretty well. We did pretty well. Folks, we did pretty well.

Do you want me to do- Professional baseball writers. Yeah. We know about- Are able to name the best players of this decade. Ian Kinsler does pretty well. Folks, we did pretty well. Professional baseball writers aren't able to name the best players of this decade. Ian Kinsler does really well. Ian Kinsler is ahead of people who have been named. Not named on lists, though. I don't think he's ahead of anybody

that we actually had a time for. He's ahead of people in your 30? Yeah, he's ahead of people that we've named, which is to say he's ahead of Jason Hayward, who on this list is 36.4. Ben, were you saying you would take the under on my guess or on my shocked at? Well, definitely the guess, but the shocked at, yeah, his best WRC plus was his rookie year. His power year and his power speed year was in his third year. And I don't know. Yeah. 6.4, 5.5, 5.8, 6.6. Had a bunch of good years.

All right. So, but you should say who the top five is. The top five, the top five on baseballreference.com are Mike Trout, who today is at 70.5. Robinson Cano at 53.3. Joey Votto at 51.2. Adrian Beltre at 51.0. And Miguel Cabrera at 43.4.

So those are all five. We only named like eight players, right? One. Yeah. Two, three, four, five, six, seven. We only named seven players and we got five of them. That's pretty good. Yeah, that's it.

And our misses were near misses, at least when it comes to Fangraph's War. Yeah, give us the Fangraph's. Yeah, give us Fang fingers so fangraphs trout is first was 71.5 posy comes in at second with 52.7 vato is third at 52.3 mccutcheon is fourth at 49.8 cano is fifth at 49 flat hang on so So I got on fan graphs, I got all five. Yeah. Wait, are we starting with 2010? Oh, I have 2009, right?

No, no, no. 2010. You want me to do 2010? Okay, never. Hold on. Hold on. New five. New five.

I mean, I imagine a lot of this is going to be the same. Hey, look, it didn't really change at all. Trout is still one at 71.5. Posey comes in at 2nd again with 52.9. Votto is 3rd with 47.7. McCutcheon is 4th with 46.4.

Canoe is 5th with 45.4. Miggy is 6th with 43.5 and Beltre is 7th. Wow. We named seven names and we got the top seven. Yeah. Wow.

Go us. We did it. We can all keep our jobs. And I got the top five, so I can keep my job especially. But I blew it on the other one. So on reference, Posey is eighth, and on reference, McCutcheon is tenth. And so on that one, your lists were stronger and my list was definitely weaker. That McCutcheon difference is really interesting,

and somebody could probably write an article about it. Yeah. So other names, we'll go on to pictures real quick, or in a second, but Josh Donaldson was the other name that I was really on. He was my sixth. Yeah, he was one of my final names. Ninth by Fangraphs War. Evan Longoria is maybe the name that would surprise people. He is sixth on baseball reference.

Sixth. We just missed him. We just missed all of us missing him. He was sixth on baseball reference. He's 11th by Fangraphs War. And yeah, nobody mentioned John Carlos Stanton. I thought about him. He's 12th on reference. He's 11th by Fangraphs War. Nobody mentioned Giancarlo Stanton. I thought about him. He's 12th on reference.

10th by Fangraphs. I gave some serious consideration to Jose Bautista. Yeah, I did too. He was beautiful. He was a beautiful part of the decade. He broke out right at the beginning of the decade too. He was 23rd on reference.

He's on another page entirely on Fangraphs. Mookie Betts, the player that I suggested, would be the toughest challenge for the peak versus longevity difference. He was 13th on reference. Oh, wow. I guess he's 19th on Fangraphs, so it's not so far off. The other one that we probably should mention is Yadier Molina, who is eighth by Fangraph score.

Oh, wow, 31st on reference. Wow. Framing. Framing, yeah. Yeah, and it's all framing. Yeah. Let me see. I did not write Yadier Melina on my top 30.

Yeah, I don't have him. Oh, I didn't do a top 30. I was lazy. I did have Longoria, though. All right. So that was fun. So now the thing about the pitchers, and I don't know, I'm giving it all away here, but the reason that I thought the pitchers were kind of boring or maybe kind of easy is that

it seemed to me that there are four extremely easy, impossible to miss, totally uncontroversial picks. And then there are like six almost equally equal to each other, equally valid picks for number five. So you almost cannot miss one, two, three, or four, and you really can't go wrong with number five. And so that was also Meg's experience. Ben, was your experience similar to that? The pressure's really on not to miss one of these top four now. Well, I think the top three are like that.

The top three. Okay, I will be interested to see who the fourth is. So I have not actually ranked these, so I'm going to just rank them. All right, i'll go first my number one is clayton kershaw yes yep and so clayton kershaw of course is an all-time great i think that there's a weird thing where at the time i did not realize that pedro martinez was actually as good more or less as baronds was, that his baseball reference, well, baseball reference didn't exist at the time.

Neither did ERA Plus, neither did FIP, neither did all sorts of things that I would come to know. At the time, I knew Pedro Martinez was the best pitcher in baseball, and I also knew that Barry Bonds was the best hitter in baseball, but I did not realize at the time, in 1997, 98, 99, that 20 years later, I at pedro martinez page with perhaps even more awe and affection and i do not currently feel that way about clayton kershaw's page relative to mike trout's but i am open to the possibility that in 20 years i will have reassessed things and thought that clayton kershaw was actually every bit the superstar during his era that

mike trout was particularly because it is so hard to judge pitchers, especially over the last few decades, as the role of the pitcher changes. It is so hard to judge pitchers in their era when you have been brought up on previous eras, ideas about what a pitcher looks like, what a pitcher is and does, and to weigh the value of an inning pitched versus a run suppressed is very hard.

To look at Nolan Ryan, for instance, and see that he has, well, mediocre innings, mediocre ERAs, but he has just this incredible innings load. And you know that that hurts his ERAs because he's pitching so deep. And then you look at Kershaw and you think, well, how do I scale that down to 198 innings and figure out what it's all worth? So anyway, the point is that over this period of this decade, really almost exactly this decade, if you were to pick a Koufax-like peak for him, it would have started in 2011. But from 2011 to 2017, he was considerably better than Sandy Koufax was. And Sandy Koufax is in the Hall of Fame because of a more or less a four-year or a six-year peak and kershaw's seven-year peak was even better it is just nothing but black ink here nothing but black ink he has every bit the

black ink on his page that mike trout has and he has the three cy youngs he has five seven straight years finishing in the top five. One of those years, he only threw 149 innings. Otherwise, he would have had... Well, I mean, you could make the case. In fact, I once tweeted that it's kind of weird that the only reason that Clayton Kershaw doesn't have four consecutive Cy Youngs is that R.A. Dickey bunched all of his good starts in one year.

And you could make the case that Clayton Kershaw could have seven Cy Youngs in those seven years. There's an argument for him. Obviously, there's an argument for him every one of those years because he got first place votes every one of those years. So Clayton Kershaw, absolute incredible superstar, probably underappreciated by me relative to how much I appreciate Mike Trout. And he seems to me an easy number one. relative to how much I appreciate Mike Trout. And he seems to me an easy number one. Yeah, me too.

I think I wrote about Kershaw earlier this year, and I think I had a stat in there that Clayton Kershaw's 20s are the only pitcher to have a better decade of his 20s and debut after 1908 is Roger Clemens. So that's more than 100 years of pitchers in their 20s. And none of them except Clemens has been better than Kershaw. That 20s for him doesn't perfectly map onto this decade because he started in 2008. So it's like 2008 to 2017. But yeah, that decade was about the best decade of pitching there is, at least for a young pitcher and most pitchers are at their best when they're young so yeah that was i didn't have to think about that as my number one

pick any more than i thought about trout i don't have anything dad all right so he's all of our number ones meg who's your number two i had verlander at two yeah I put very little thought into two versus three but I had him number three yeah yeah I had Scherzer then Verlander yeah and well I mean that's fine because I'm about to say that I had Verlander then Scherzer

and I was like I just like you know he's he's he has been good enough in the good years, even with the down stretch. I think he's very good. Yeah, I also do. So what, was 2009 his MVP season? Sounds right. I was thinking, I put Scherzer just ahead of Verlander because I was thinking

that he peaked later or closer to where we are now, or that Verlander got good sooner. It took Scherzer a while to get to this otherworldly level, and so maybe it's recency bias, I don't know, but I figured that Verlander had more good

pitching years before 2010 than Scherzer did. His MVP was 2011. Oh, okay. Right. That was because he did both, right? Yeah. And that's right. And so then 2012, he was still phenomenal.

And then phenomena. So he's still phenomenal. And then he signed his extension. And so then like, what, 13, 14, 15 or some combination of those were the down years. And then he signed his extension. And so then like, what, 13, 14, 15, or some combination of those were the down years. And then he started coming back. And all right. Yeah, with Verlander and Scherzer,

if you asked me to, from memory, pick a career, I wouldn't be able to do it. And so I fell back on trying to guess the years, trying to place their careers over this decade specifically. It was an inconsequential distinction. They're both incredible. They're essentially equivalent. Since Ben talked about Kershaw's 20s, I would like to read something that I wrote recently about Max Scherzer's 30s. So Max Scherzer signed with the Nationals after his age 29 season and is currently in his age 34 season so

these are his 30s his 30s are with the nationals all right from ages 30 to 34 only nine pitchers in history have ever produced more war than he has but this was only june 28th at the time but of course it's only june 28th in his age 34 season scherzer has a whole half season to keep climbing sometime in the next couple of weeks he'll pass roy Roy Halladay and Kevin Brown on that list. By the end of July, he should pass Bill Hutchinson, a 19th century guy, and Carl Hubble. If his second half is typical Scherzer, he'll pass Gaylord Perry and Lefty Grove and finish the season fourth all time behind Bob Gibson, Joe McGinnity, who played in an era when starting pitchers threw 400 innings a year, and Cy Young. Cy Young, we had to go back to before the first World Series to find more than one pitcher who

was as good from 30 to 34 as Max Scherzer has been. So that was fresh in my mind. So he was my number two. Okay. All right. My number four is Chris Sale. And if I had to guess, I would guess that Chris Sale has the best ERA plus of all of them. Maybe not as good as Kershaw, but better than the others. I don't know. So 2010 or 11 was his rookie year when he was a reliever. And so the coverage is pretty good. But he does miss at least one, maybe two years of kind of starters innings in this decade and he he hasn't quite been as durable as the others in my

recollection although he hasn't been not durable i mean that's like one of the whole jokes about chris sale is everybody's been predicting he would get hurt forever and he never does but my guess is that he has if i had to guess he has a better ERA plus than the other guys except maybe Kershaw but fewer innings than the other guys and so I ended up having him number four but it wouldn't surprise me if he was number two I had him five I had him six

whoa oh my goodness this is quite the shock but but it was because of the innings thing alright we're gonna have a so I had him at six But it was because of the innings thing. Uh-huh. All right. We're going to have a- So I had him at six. We're going to have something to stat blast after all.

Stat blast. All right. All right. Meg, why don't you do number four? I had Granky at four. Me too. So I had Granky at four, and I feel pretty good about about cranky being in the top

five but i may end up flipping him down well i'm not because of who i picked at five but i'm realizing that i might be thinking that his really good i might be thinking his good royals year was really good royals year was his last royals it was 2009 though his his his good Royals year was, really good Royals year was his last Royals year. It was 2009, though. His really good Royals year was 2009. Okay. So I'm okay. Well.

No, because we're not counting that. That's not this decade. No, but it's 10 years prior, so I think that's where I was getting. But I also think I thought that that was 2010. Oh. Maybe. So, but I picked Granke. I think he's a sneaky war accumulator.

He really is. He's just been so consistent. He's been so consistent, and he throws so many innings when he is not. He's had some bang-ups and everything. So I had Granke. Can I tell a second Grany story that i might be partially misremembering but i fact checked it uh over text while we were talking to make sure that i actually remembered it better please share this uh story came to me via eric longenhagen who

thinks that it roots back to eno so congratulations everyone for having heard this story but apparently uh when they were both with the dodgers, I guess it probably would have been 2015, you know, Granke is an odd bird and loves baseball very much and apparently offered to Zach Lee to like watch his bullpen and give him some pointers. And Zach Lee was like, yeah, man, that'd be awesome. Thank you. That would be so great. And so, you know, he throws his bullpen and grinky watches very intently and comes back sometimes later sometime later and says you know i think

what would really help is if you threw three miles an hour faster so it's just there's no shortage of good grinky stories yeah i love delightful weirdo well they're great because just him being blunt you just don't know whether he was joking or not right and that's what makes that especially good because it is funny if he was dunking on zach lee and it was also funny if he was being totally zach granky caricature yeah and the ambiguity there is what makes you uncomfortable and humor comes from discomfort. So that is a perfect anecdote. Yes. About a year ago, I had on my kind of list of articles that maybe I would write was that

I thought at that point that Zach Greinke was going to finish his career with Hall of Fame War and absolutely, he was going to be the first player who had Hall of Fame War and nobody was going to, like the stat heads were gonna be like yeah yeah it doesn't really feel right like that it was gonna put be a brink in the stat head adherence to war sorts for hall of fame and then he just kept pitching and now i think that he's gonna make it without a doubt and everybody's gonna love it so this is maybe two or three years that i thought this because he is definitely gonna get there and i feel like the momentum for him as a hall of famer has picked up and he's going to get there.

And he'll go in as a royal, I guess. He'll be a no hat guy probably. Yeah, let the mane flow. Seven years ago, I had as a thing I wanted to do was I wanted to do a who's on first built entirely around the name Zach Lee. And it'd be like, who's the starting pitcher tonight? Zach Lee. No, isn't it that prospect on the Dodgers? Zach Lee?

Zach Lee. You know, like, exactly. It was a terrible idea. No. Never, never, never punched it up. Never finished it off. Never regretted it. I got a Zach Lee pun into the annual.

Did you? Was it about how his name sounds like exactly? Yes, it was. Oh, there we go. I was like, he might be exactly what the Mariners are looking for. And then he didn't throw, I think, a single inning. I had Zach Granke sixth, and I had him sixth. If you asked me, Sam, predict the wars, I would have had him six i if you asked me sam i predict the war predict the wars i would have had him

fifth but i decided that i was going to pick my fifth off war um which is i'm going with madison bumgarner who if uh he also debuted uh i think he debuted in 2009 but i don't think he was good yet 2010 was basically his his i think his good good year. Maybe he debuted in 2010. And I think that if you look at, my guess is that he's going to be pretty close for wars, probably. He gets hammered on park factors, but I think he's got like a 125 or so ERA+, which I think is up there with the other guys. I think he threw a lot of innings.

But I think that his contribution with the other guys I think he threw a lot of innings but I think that his contribution to postseason effort is historic it is uh second the third maybe only to Mariano Rivera and maybe Curt Schilling and for that I think that his impact on the decade is greater than Zach Granke's and he is to me he is a great pitcher he is a great pitcher who will be in the hall of fame and so I'm picking him even though I fully expect him to be like seventh or eighth or ninth on wars exactly traded for Chris Taylor is that right yeah bad one wow yeah Jerry wants that one back oh you know the the Joe Posnanski Zach Granke story right he's he was written about that probably multiple times, but that's another

one in that genre. It's like, I think it's 2007. It was Alex Gordon's rookie year and Alex Gordon was this highly touted prospect and everyone expected him to be great right away. And he was top prospect and phenom and he was terrible. He was really, really terrible for quite a while, striking out, low batting average, everything. And when it was at the worst point for him, Zach Greinke went up to him and said, Alex. And he pointed to the video room and he said, follow me. I want to show you something. And Greinke has this reputation as like someone who knows a lot about baseball. And he's like a scout. He scouts For the Diamondbacks now and people think

That he picks up on all these things And so Gordon was excited he thought Grinke had found some hitch in his swing Or something was going to show him Some little simple fix for his Mechanics that was going to make everything okay And the video He followed Grinke to the

Monitor and Grinke Put on the video and the video was Zach Grinke to the monitor and Grinke put on the video and the video was Zach Grinke hitting a home run and Grinke watched it and he said do more of that now I gotta look for a Jeff Solomon tweet but in the meantime who are your guys number five?

That's a solid story. All right, who are your number fives? Sale was my five. Okay. I had Felix at five, which I swear is not just like a, but you think about like the timing of his Cy Young award and just the sheer number of innings. Yeah.

Just a lot of innings that were good. They were really good innings is the other thing and he arguably could have won a second cy young in 2014 i think he could have won a second for 2014 it's fine so i had felix but he was sort of in that uh that tier you were describing sam where it's like you know felix and like uh cole hamels was in that group for me and Sail. Yes. John Lester is in that group. Sure.

Sabathia is in that group. Sure. Although, I think I had him much- I had him closer to the bottom of the top 10 just thinking about when he started. Yes. Felix probably had a higher war for this decade three years ago. Yes, he really did so this is a

this is basically the exact this is a tweet that Jeff did years ago and it's almost the exact same joke except that Jeff made it fictional and Joe Posnanski made it real life and it is him calling I don't know I can't I'm not going to describe it and Joe Posnanski made it real life, and it is him calling...

I don't know. I'm not going to describe it. Oh, is this the Jeff Mathis one? It is the Jeff Mathis one. It's a picture of Zach Granke and Jeff Mathis. This is a terrible way to tell a tweet. What am I doing? This is like stomping on the Jeff flag.

Vic Monday should come out and rescue it. All right. Zach Granke standing at the mound with Jeff Mathis and Granke's got sort of a smug grin and this is fake dialogue and Granke says hey hey come here I want to tell you something Mathis jogs Mathis arrives what is it and then the punchline is that Zach Granke has a better WRC plus than Jeff Mathis in his career, which I think is what, I don't know, that's the best part of it. I don't know why I did that. I'm sorry, Jeff.

It's hard to tell that tweet with words. It's a really good tweet, though. It is. It's probably still true, right? Because Mathis is hitting even bad for Mathis this year. And Granke's gotten better. Hasn't Granke gotten a lot better? Even better?

Am I mistaken that Zach Granke has become an even better hitter? I don't know, but Mathis has become even worse. I'm going to say that this does not qualify as breaking our rules because I'm going to look at his batting page and not his. Let's see. What do you guys think Zat Grinke's WRC Plus is this year? Well, he's got... I don't know what it is now,

but as of two months into the season, he had like a 1300 OPS. So if I had to guess, I would guess that his WRC Plus is like 125. He has a 113 WRC Plus. Jeff Mathis has a 113 wrc plus jeff mathis has a four we've now like gone all the way back to the beginning of jeff mathis's career where it's still baffling that he gets two-year deals and plays a lot because at this point he's betting He's batting 155 with a 210-ish OBP and slugging. So even if he's framing really well, it's other stuff too, but oh boy.

Yeah, you figure that this is rapidly not rosterable. Yes. So where are we? So Granke must have opened up a sizable lead here because Mathis is at 47 career, and he was at 49 when Jeff tweeted that. Granke's career WRC plus is 58. So Granke has raised his WRC plus by six points since that tweet, and Mathis has lowered his by two points.

Oh, no. Ben, who did you have number five? Sale. Sale. All right. Interesting that, I mean, obviously he was not going to be named, but, well, Tim Lincecum would have been, like, if we'd done this halfway through the decade,

he would have been number one, probably. He definitely would have ranked. This is like when Pitchfork does, like, their top 100 albums of the decade, midway through the decade, and then you go back at the end of the decade and like, you know, something like that. I don't know.

Who are some of the other, like Kluber was outside my top five, but he was on there. Kluber was close for me. Yeah, Kluber was on. He was my six. Yeah, I couldn't figure out if he pitched enough but i figured five cy young contending seasons yeah gets you in there i thought about strasburg oh sure stress yeah yeah because strasburg debuted in 2011 right 2011 because trout was 2012 and harper was 2012 and

so strasburg must have been 2010 i think yeah 2010 all right so he covers the day wow incredible that strasburg does not get on this list probably considered sabathia but i i figured probably he had too many good years before yeah and too many decent years at the end right shall we to the wars play the music. Again. Okay. All right. All right. Okay, I can do the fan response first because I have it up. Kershaw is number one, 58.7. Scherzer comes in at two with 53.5. Verlander is three at 50.1. Then Sale at

4 with 44.3. Then David Price. Oh, David Price. With 40.4. Granky is 6 with 39.7. Then we get Hamels at 7, Felix at

8, Kluber at 9, Lester at 10, Felix at eight, Kluber at nine, Lester at 10, Strauss is 11th, and then Gio Gonzalez is 12th. Oh my goodness. You could have given me a million dollars and I would have whiffed on that.

I picked a guy who's below him though. Yeah, Bumgarner's 13. Yeah, I'm still picking Bumgarner over Gio Gonzalez though. Yeah. Wow, Sabathia is really low. I can't believe I said his name. It's hard to know.

Matt Latos is 30 so sometimes stuff is really weird although he's only got like 19. I thought about saying Craig Kimbrell's name too even though he is obviously not going to be on the war lists because he is the second greatest to be on the war uh lists because uh he is the second greatest closer of all time probably maybe and you've removed postseason he might be the

greatest at least through this age all right reference i would like to stress through this age okay i'm gonna stress through this age not through later ages. All right. Number one, on reference, Clayton Kershaw. Not by that much. But number two, Max Scherzer. Number three, Justin Verlander. So we all did well. Our top three are the top three. Number four, Cole Hamels.

Wow. None of us got it. Number five, Chris Sale, just behind him. And number six, Zach Granke. Granke's six on both. We did all right. Yeah. And number six, Zach Granke. Granke six on both. We did all right. Yeah, but that's pretty good. You guys did better than I did.

Price, seven. Kluber, eight. Felix, nine. Cueto, Johnny Cueto, 10. John Lester, 11. Madison Bumgarner, 12. Wow, Cueto is 21st by very interesting well surprising

to me that we actually did not get the top 4 that we didn't do as well Cole Hamels didn't I write a thing for you Sam about Cole Hamels that one time he did, hall of famer he'd be a hall of famer if he'd gotten

more run support than he would have gotten more Cy Young support, which would have gotten more Hall of Fame support. So everybody, that article was saying that everybody is going to be smart enough to look past the wins, but they're not going to be smart enough to look past the lack of Cy Young. Yeah, I was worried about that. All right. So that's pretty good. Pretty good. Surprise, a little bit humbling on the pitchers. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, thanks to Marcus for that question. Yeah, that's a great question. This exercise, I think it reinforced how much I rely on war as a crutch. Like it was painful for me not to look at these wars. I really wanted to look at the wars and I felt naked without them. And I guess it's, I mean, like my ability to just conjure who's the best player in baseball off the top of my head has sort of atrophied, I think, because I can always consult leaderboards. I don't know if that's a bad thing because, again, I can always consult leaderboards. They're always there as long as Sean Foreman and David Appelman are doing their job and paying the bills. I can always check those things in a second wherever I am.

But still, maybe I should think about these things more often because, yeah, it was tough for me. It was like a phantom limb that I just could not move. Yeah, it was tough for me. It was like a phantom limb that I just could not move. Yeah. Well, I think you do better when you can do Sam's thing, when you're like, who are the 30 best? Because you probably would get them.

It's the precision of the ordering that I think gets tricky. And that's fair because the differences between a lot of these guys are not huge. I mean, they start to, they're, you know, sort of tears and they jump and whatnot, but they're not enormous. Some of the time,

some of the time they're, they're pretty close. I mean, what the difference between, uh, well, it's a little more pronounced on the pitching side, I suppose.

Once you get past the top guy. Yeah. I, I think that it, the ideal situation is to look at the leader you know to look at a list to look at a bunch of names in an order that has already been pre-ordered and then go oh no i i think this is i think this is a little different and this is a little different and no madison bumgarner is actually better than geo gonzalez in my head and i'm fine saying that even though the list says that they're basically right there

with each other. But the problem is that once you get the list, it is hard to then unforgettable list. Right. Instead of forgetting what you thought when you were coming in to look at the list. And it sort of feels like an act of hubris sometimes to be like, ah, well, I'm smarter than that thing that I trusted. And so it's a tricky thing. and so uh it's a tricky thing i agree it's a tricky thing to both need the list but also want to somehow have an independent mind apart from the list yeah all right well anyway we did it yeah this was fun this was fun

we had a whole episode yeah did not Did not, in fact, take 10 minutes, as I feared. I'm going to wake up at 3 in the morning singing that song. All right. Hope you all had fun playing along and scoring at home. I know none of you cheated and looked at those wars while we weren't able to. Show some solidarity. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already pledged their support. Patrick Gordon, Craig DeLucia, Elisa Gale, Ethan Lutzky, and Ben Llewellyn. Thanks to all of you.

You can buy my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players. Leave us a positive review at Amazon and Goodreads if you're so inclined. You can join the podcast Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. And you can send us your comments and questions and other forms of feedback via email at podcast of fan graphs.com or via the patreon messaging system if you are a supporter thanks to dylan higgins for his editing assistance and we will be back with one more episode a little

later this week talk to you then Manamana! Manamana! Manamana! Manamana! Manamana! Hello? Okay, just a second. It's for you. Manamana. The question is, what is a manamana? The question is, who cares?