Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1467: Strasburg Back

Episode Date: December 10, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller follow up on (o)possums playing dead, discuss the Nationals signing Stephen Strasburg to a record contract for a pitcher and the implications for the Nationals, Scott Boras, Anthony Rendon, and Gerrit Cole, banter about the possibility of Shohei Ohtani hitting on the days he pitches, the elections of Marvin Miller […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1467 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Van Grasse presented If they only do how information about possums and also opossums different technically should be opossums right the ones we're talking about yeah technically yeah yeah all right so two things that that are key to this that i need to correct one is i thought it's so odd that they're the only animal that that does this and place dead and many animals have some version of playing dead yeah what you didn't say what they do so i was saying what they do but oh well they play possum uh many animals have some form of playing dead and some even do something very similar many many of the playing deads are are fake they're under the we're going to get to this but they're under the control of the animal but some it's somewhat automatic so for instance in the hog nosed snake a threatened individual rolls

onto its back and appears to be dead when threatened by a predator while a foul smelling volatile fluid oozes from its body predators such as cats then lose interest in the snake which both looks and smells dead one reason for their loss of interest is that rotten smelling animals are avoided as a precaution against infectious diseases so the snake is in this case exploiting that reaction newly hatched young also instinctively show this behavior when rats try to eat them so uh so to go back to the to the opossum specifically yes the uh the opossum here here there's a few things one is they are not playing dead at all this is an automatic response then they go into shock and so i'm reading this this is an article by bethany foster

at uh animals.mom.me uh i i get that i get the response i get the response but i i like i bethany is my favorite writer now this article is a is a triumph okay playing dead is an involuntary response the stress of the confrontation facing the opossum causes him to go into shock this shock induces a comatose state that can last from 40 minutes to four hours while dead the opossum's body is limp its front feet form into balls and drool runs out of its mouth it may even appear that rigor mortis has begun the opossum's guise of death goes so far as to produce a smell of decay from his anal glands the opossum's body emits green mucus that will discourage most predators from feeding on him while he's in his comatose state this smell leads the predator to

believe that the opossum's body is a rotting carcass. Unfortunately, being run over by vehicles is now the most common way in which opossums are killed. The smell does nothing to help them in this situation. Yeah. So that's pretty cool. And I vastly underestimated the design, the development of this adaptation. And it's fantastic. And I will never mock an opossum again.

Yeah. the development of this adaptation, and it's fantastic, and I will never mock an opossum again. Yeah, well, I will still mock the predators for falling for this, though, because my initial reaction to that was, but you just killed the thing, or you just had it in your jaws, and it was running around, and it was warm and alive, and then suddenly it excretes a foul odor or something, and you say, oh, I guess it's rotting. But I probably overestimated the intelligence of animals. Animals are pretty dumb for the most part. And I guess, I mean, I can't blame them for not wanting to eat something that is excreting foul smelling ooze from its anal glands. I guess I wouldn't want to do that either, but I wouldn't be fooled. I don't think I wouldn't assume that it was actually long dead but still pretty

unpleasant to eat now i think of the opossum as the avocado of the wild kingdom because similar to how an avocado is not ripe at like 12 40 and too ripe at 12 46 you think you have a meal and then it just goes bad on you and so you just just go, oh, well, I guess this one got sold past its expiration date or something. And so, I mean, yeah, if it smells bad, you're probably not eating it. You're probably not going to be like, well, rationally speaking, I know this is delicious. Yeah, that makes sense. All right. So Steven Strasberg signed and we start the podcast talking about possums,

but we had to get to old business first. Anything else you want to say before we get to Strasburg? No. Okay. So I've already written about this move for the ringer. You can go read it and look at the graphs if you want, but big news, big signing, big dollars, lots of years. Nationals re-signed Steven Strasburg for seven years and $245 million in guaranteed money with a no trade clause and no opt-outs and a little bit of deferred money, but not extreme. And it has to be paid pretty quickly after the end of the deal, and it will have interest as well. So not surprising, I don't think, that Strasburg

resigned, although obviously it was very possible that he wouldn't after he did opt out. But we talked about this before. He had already signed one long-term extension with the Nationals that would have kept him in D.C. through 2023. And then he opted out of that deal, of course, after his very strong season. But he had already envisioned himself as a National. He had already committed to be a National for years in the future. So it's not shocking that he still found that possible to envision. And of course, there is a long and fruitful relationship between the learners and Scott Boris, his agent. Never a surprise when a Scott Boris client signs with

the nationals. And then you have the fact that the nationals just won the World Series. They're in line for a revenue festival, as Scott Boris explained. And people, by the way, pointed out that there is a cherry blossom festival in D.C., which may be what Boris was actually alluding to there. So that makes it a bit more comprehensible, although still he went a long way for that one. And then finally, there is the trend or what seems to be a trend for World Series winning teams to bring back huge percentages of their roster just because they don't want to break up the band and maybe they have more money

to spend and there's good cheer. Mike Rizzo said a week ago that he had been drunk for a month. So he did get married after the World Series. So that was part of it, I guess. Although I don't know if you should be drunk for your whole honeymoon. That doesn't sound much fun for your new spouse. But anyway, that's what he said. And so be, which is always fun when a player can get paid and yet also forge that long-term relationship with fans. And of course, he was the top draft pick and he had that exciting debut and the shutdown and all the rest. So that and the postseason heroics, it's nice that he could stay there. But the surprise is the number of years and the dollars because he had been widely predicted to make a lot less than this. MLB trade rumors had him at 180, I think, and I think this just blew up my entire offseason contracts draft.

I think you win because I'm pretty sure I took the under on that, right? You did. It's over. Yeah, you weren't doing great as it was but not only did this just sink you way into negative but it also seems almost certain now that garrett cole will yes will get much more than the 256 and i needed the uh over on that yes so that's over you know at fan crafts the crowd had had him at i think 140 million kylie had had him at 150 so people were projecting him for five years or six years and instead he got seven with a higher average annual value.

And I believe this is the first time that a pitcher this old has signed a deal this long term since Kevin Brown in 1998. And that deal worked out fine, and Kevin Brown was really good, and of course the Max Scherzer deal with the Nationals has worked out splendidly. So these things can work out. But teams obviously have been wary of committing to pitchers this age for this long. But Strasburg put himself in a great position for a big payday. And obviously, the market seems to be back to some semblance of what it used to be.

And this is another example of that. Yeah. Did you know that? I don't know if you remember this, but do you remember that when Max Scherzer signed the deal, MLB execs voted it the worst free agent signing of the offseason? I remember Dave Cameron putting it on his worst deals of the offseason list or something at Fangraphs, but no, I don't remember that. Wow.

I didn't remember it being seen as uh as as as that bad i i can't remember what i vaguely recall thinking that it was good if they traded strasburg which is like a galaxy brain yeah right i remember that too yes it was like they they couldn't have both or something like that yeah they had too many pitchers they had to trade strasburg he wasn't going to re-sign with them anyway or something like that yeah but yeah I love the fact that he will be a one player a one team player just I mean I don't think it I don't I don't need every player to be a one team player by any means there are certain ones though particularly when the story starts so early in

their career when they're you know like with strasburg he was famous before he became a national and for him to you know be drafted first overall by this terrible team that's coming out of a terrible well it was still stuck in a terrible spot but he brought them into this era this golden age and then it seemed like it seemed like the nationals maybe were were past the golden age it seemed like maybe they weren't gonna win a world series bryce harper had left and you know things started to seem like they were on the decline and then he not single-handedly but i mean there were like three pitchers on that staff in october and he was the best of them so sort of single-handedly pitches them to the world series and now he gets to be a national for life so how many probably so how many number one overall picks would you guess spent their

entire career with one team so this is including ones who just were bad in never made the majors or barely no no if you never made the majors you don't get credit for being on the team this is and and if you signed somewhere else after but you never made the majors back then it's not gonna it's not gonna come against you so what are there they've been like uh 55 of them or something so far number one picks and of course some of them are recent draftees so So, oh gosh, I guess eight. Yeah, if you only count people who were drafted before Strasburg, there were only four. And there's basically Carlos Correa is I think the only, I think Carlos Correa is actually

the only one who currently has major league experience and who would qualify. Of course, there are others who don't have major league experience, but Correa could be the sixth. But yeah, Al Chambers, who played only 57 games in the majors, so he barely counts. Luke Hochevar, who was a Royal his whole career. Yeah. Not a Dodger. No. At all. That's who drafted him and didn't sign him, right? I think so.

All right. That joke will make a little bit of sense. I don't even know what the joke was. And then Joe Maurer and Chipper Jones. And Joe Maurer and Chipper Jones are both great one team players. You know, they were both local. They were both, you know, Hall of Fame caliber MVPs, batting champs, the whole deal. And so Strasburg fits into the category with, I think, Maurer and Chipper Jones as, in a way, kind of the most satisfying number one overall picks ever, along with, of course, Ken Griffey Jr. Yeah. So with any long-term deal, you have the generic, well, this could go bad because pitchers get old and they get hurt and anything can happen. And obviously in Strasburg's case, he's coming off a career year, I think you could say, once you put together his regular season performance and his superb postseason performance.

And he's lost some fastball speed. He's lost a few miles per hour, a couple miles per hour in just the last couple of years. And he has compensated and adjusted just fine. He's throwing more of other types of pitches, lots of curveballs, lots of sinkers. And he has made it work fine for him. And of course, the changeup is still a good pitch. So there's no real trouble on the horizon. It's always somewhat worrisome when pitchers lose velocity, but almost all of them do, unless it's Justin Verlander, basically. So Strasburg has tackled that challenge about as well as could be expected

And the big question with him is and has been and continues to be durability And he answered that question as well as he could in one year With a career-high single-season innings total when you combine regular season and postseason So the big risk is this is a guy who a year ago people didn't think he'd even opt out of the deal, which would have paid him four years, 100 million after this year. And he completely changed that perception in one year and it became an obvious decision for him to opt out. But if he changed it from an obvious no to an obvious yes in one year, then, of course, it could change back. He is someone who's been on the injured list in his career nine times. He is many years removed now from Tommy John surgery. So there's

always a concern there. He is not really an established workhorse. He's coming off a season when he was one of the best pitchers in baseball, but hasn't been that year in and year out necessarily, at least for a high number of innings So that's a concern But makes a lot of sense for the Nationals to bring it back Because they had the payroll room And they're in a really tough division And they needed to bring back at least one of Strasburg and Rendon

And we can talk about what this means for Rendon But this puts them right back into the thick of things really If you look at the projections on fangraphs for the depth charts of the NL East teams it's actually the Mets on top if you can believe it in projected war I don't okay and then the Braves and the Nationals are essentially neck and neck so if you believe that which we've established that you don't at least in the Mets case they would really need to make one more impact move to make themselves the favorite in the NL East. So yes, they just won the World Series, but the Phillies signed Wheeler and we're already a decent team and may make more moves.

And the Braves, of course, have been very busy and they've been signing guys left and right. And the Mets, well, the Mets traded for Jake Marisnyk, but they also have a full season of Marcus Stroman and a lot of other really good players. So it's definitely not like they have the NL East locked up. They have to keep making moves. They're sort of right in that sweet spot where every win might matter a lot. struggling with this question of whether his injury record is worrisome because he has missed you know a handful of starts in a bunch of his seasons or if it's really encouraging because he hasn't had a major injury in in almost a decade he had you know tommy john surgery when he was a kid kid a 22 year old and recovered from that very well and has otherwise not had any, uh, any, you know, real, like he hasn't had any major surgeries. He hasn't had anything that's been like real chronic or anything like that. He doesn't have like blister issues or like a bad back or, uh,

you know, degenerative hip or anything like that. And obviously you prefer your, your ACE to, to make 34 starts. But in this day and age, I wonder if being able to say, well, you know, 20, 28 on average is really all you really expect from a modern pitcher. And his history of not suffering major injuries, the sort of career altering injuries that would really ruin a deal is actually quite a benefit. And add to that the fact that, you know, because he's missed a little time here and a little time there, he hasn't been heavily worked. And one of the reasons, obviously, he proved it wrong,

but one of the reasons that people were skeptical of Scherzer as a free agent is that he had thrown more pitches than anybody in baseball for, you know, some time period before. He had thrown a lot, and people worried that the cumulative effect and it is true if you start to do the actuarial tables of 30 year old pitchers who've thrown a lot of innings they break down it probably is true of pitchers who don't throw a lot of innings either i wonder if steven strasburg is perhaps in the sweet spot of having neither thrown a ton of innings nor really shown any any fragility yeah i mean i guess his last surgery was after the

2013 season he had some sort of minor elbow thing i think just like a cleanup of loose bodies love the term loose bodies but i don't think he's had a surgery since then he has had some elbow strains or like forearm nerve things he's had a couple nerve injuries but yeah like obviously nothing career threatening i mean i guess that almost goes without saying because if he'd had multiple career threatening injuries he wouldn't be getting this deal i mean he is kind of like in that spot where he's durable enough to get a deal like this, but also pretty injury prone for a pitcher who gets a deal like this, right? I mean, I guess you could say that. If he had had a more severe injury recently, then he wouldn't get this deal, I guess.

But for someone who did, there are quite a few red flags or things that he's had to transcend. Yeah, it's hard. I mean, obviously not many pitchers get a deal like this not many pitchers are in position to get a deal like this i so it's hard to find a comp but you know you look at zach wheeler's deal zach wheeler is obviously not he didn't get 245 million dollars but he got 120 million dollars and he is, you know, not nearly as good a pitcher as Steven Strasburg and has a very recent injury history of major injuries that was only two or three years ago.

And he's still got five years and $120 million, which is more than we were expecting. And so it is true. You're right. It might be that this is a logical conundrum where I will never find a pitcher who has both major injuries and also a $245 million contract or a seven-year contract or anything like that. But I don't know. I guess I'm just offering the more optimistic take on his workload, on his history. Yeah. In 2018, he pitched, what, 130 innings or something, and he had a couple IL stints. So that was concerning coming into this year. And then he put those concerns to rest about as well as he could have.

Yeah, if there's anything to worry about, in fact, it might be that his innings this year, once you include postseason, are, you know, a lot. Like, what did he throw? 20, 20 30 like 34 postseason innings so he threw almost 250 more than 240 innings this year which is uh a career high and high for anybody i don't know what the current research is on the postseason hangover effect for starting pitcher workload but it is certainly something that people talk about and um and maybe you could say that it was his, maybe the thesis I had for his well-managed workload and sort of a beneficial workload, maybe that bought him this year. And maybe now that's all old news because he just threw 240-some innings. Yeah. So when we talked about the new Krasniks, the Rogerses, the ESPN poll of front office people and baseball insiders, 12 of the 15 that were surveyed said that Rendon was the more likely player to return to the Nationals.

And he's still a Knight, but Strasburg has. And I think if I were choosing between them, I don't know. Like on the one hand, Rendon is probably a better player and a more dependable player just as a position player even. But also I could see how it might be more beneficial for the Nationals to lock up Strasburg if they were only going to sign one, just because the Nationals top prospect and one of the top prospects in baseball is Carter Keboom. He played some third base in AAA this past year. He can play third base. So you have a ready replacement there. Obviously not like one-to-one for Rendon, at least not this year, but that's someone you could envision taking over that spot. Whereas if

Strasburg walks, then you can't really replace him with someone who's just as good without signing another big pitcher, or at least they don't really have one who's ready right now in the same way. So I see why this might be more vital. On the other hand, I just don't see why they can't do both. And I know that Mark Lerner, the Nationals principal owner, he said, he implied that they couldn't do both. And that was what Boris was responding to when he came up with his revenue festival but just looking at the the payroll right now even after signing Strasburg they're at a projected

payroll of 166 million according to roster resource at Fangraphs and that means they could theoretically sign Rendon for say 35 million a year and be below the competitive balance tax threshold still, pending other moves that they might make. But this team has been around the $200 million level in payroll the past couple of years. Rendon and Strasburg were making combined more than $50 million this year, so it's not as if they're getting enormous raises, really. So I just don't really see, especially given the World Series revenue boost, why they couldn't afford to bring both those guys back. So maybe Lerner was just negotiating

and trying to set expectations low, or maybe he actually meant it. But if they don't bring back Rendon, it seems like it would be more a case of just not wanting to spend the money than not being able to spend it. Speaking of quotes that you can interpret a little bit differently now that this contract is done, it was exactly one day earlier that the report leaked that the Yankees had offered Garrett Cole seven years and $245 million, which is the exact same deal that Strasburg got. And of course, you know, Scott Boris is both of those people's agent and presumably had a pretty good idea that Steven Strasburg was about to sign a

deal for something like seven years and something like $245 million and that Garrett Cole would end up signing something for much, much more. And so I've been thinking about who leaked this and what they were trying to get out of it. And so you have basically two possibilities. Either the Yankees leaked it because they wanted to be caught trying and they wanted to maybe create an anchor around that number 7245. And in that case, it's sort of hysterical

thinking that they were just so unaware of what was coming that they actually thought like, we're gonna leak 7245 and look like really aggressive and then like 24 hours later they just look like they're 75 and a half million dollars shy and uh it's like just it's like the scene where like you know the character doesn't realize that like the like the monster is like behind them and they just are like enjoying life or it's scott boris who or you know not necessarily boris himself but that it was the you know boris's side the agency side that that uh leaked this in which case it's kind of an

odd flex like yeah you know you're you're sort of like hanging the yankees out to dry you're because you know that the next day you're going to just blow that number up. And I don't exactly know what Boris would get out of leaking it, but he knew if he did leak that, I mean, if he was the source of that, I guess it would be, I don't even know if it's right to call these things leaks. This is like just part of the kabuki.

But if he was the source of that, he knew probably that the exact numbers were probably coming out the next day for a different pitcher it's kind of interesting because he knew them both he knew it all he knows too much for the teams to compete yeah i know he's he cornered the market this offseason it's a fantastic i mean they should really write a play about about scott bor Boris representing the top three free agents in an offseason. Yeah. So his quote on why Strasburg signed before Cole, which I saw in a John Heyman tweet, is markets are like flowers. The beauty begins from below.

Hang on. What? I don't know. I mean, I guess he means like he's starting low and growing from there. It doesn't really make any sense. Anyway, I think he's implying that the numbers are going to be a record contract only until Garrett Cole signs, which from the frequency of the rumors flying around might also happen this week. We'll see, but this will be a record for probably less time than Bryce Harper's contract was a record before Mike Trout signed his contract. But either way, a Boris client gets the record. But it's funny because Jason Stark had written on the day Strasberg signed that there might be a $280 million deal out there for Garrett Cole. And eyes boggled, and we thought, wow, $280 million. Now that looks like the absolute floor because, I mean,

Cole is more than two years younger than Strasberg. So if Strasberg gets seven years, you could imagine Cole getting nine years, but even if he gets eight, I mean, he'll obviously get eight. And even if he got eight and the same AAV that Strasburg got, that's 8,235, that's 280 right there. And that's the absolute minimum that he could possibly get now, I think. And so maybe he goes over the AAV. Maybe he goes to nine years, maybe both of those things. But it seems clear that it's going to be over 300 and possibly by a good margin. I saw a reference to the—I think this was—it might have actually been Jason Stark writing this, but a reference to now the race for—the chase for Cole and how, you know, the Yankees will put their best offer forward

and the Angels will see if they can like hang with the Yankees and the Dodgers will try to think creatively. And I, that, you know, harkens back to the Bryce Harper thing last year where they weren't going to give Bryce Harper 13 years and 300 some million dollars, but they were willing to, you know, break tradition and give him a four year deal with much, much higher average annual value. And I just wonder what the equivalent would be. I wonder what the Dodgers creative option would be.

I wonder what is left for creativity on contracts. I would like to see teams get more creative. I would like it to be there to be. Yeah, well, not as well. No, please no swell ups. But I would like to see a lot of different shapes of contracts so that you aren't simply going well is that number bigger yeah than the one i was thinking of like i liked the chase utley deal a few years ago where there were like three vesting options and one was a club option and then the next was a player option and then

the next was a club option but only if the player hadn't exercised his option and he had 300 plate appearances or something. And you just stared at it for like 40 minutes trying to figure out who was benefiting from each clause. I like those deals for variety's sake. All right. So that's Strasburg. A couple of quick things I wanted to mention.

Also, I don't know if you saw Fabian Ardaia's tweet. Joe Madden said that he would consider dropping the DH on days that Shohei Otani pitches next season, which means there's a possibility that Otani will be a true two-way player. And that would be fun for us, obviously, if Otani hits on the days that he pitches, which seemed like it would probably be an impossibility once he signed with an AL team, at least in non-interleague games. And I don't know whether this is smart or not. It would probably take some math and projections to figure out because, obviously, it depends

partly on how deep you think Otani can go into games and how good you think he will be. And he's coming off Tommy John surgery and it's hard to say. Like he's not going to be a workhorse. So will he go deep enough into games to make this worth it? Because once he is pulled from the game, if you don't have a DH, then your relief pitchers have to hit. And that might hurt you more than otani helps you so especially especially because the days that otani goes deep are the days that you need the least offense and the days that otani goes out that has to leave early and you're going to be going through

maybe a bunch of pinch hitters those are the days that you're probably trailing and need to catch up and actually need the offense a lot more and might need to stretch your relievers more, which would mean not wanting to pinch hit for them and take them out of the game. Yeah. And obviously it depends on, well, does this increase the stress on Otani? I mean, I don't think it would in a market way, but of course I don't really know. And Madden also said something to the effect of he doesn't want to treat his players like they're made of china or something, like he wants to use them.

And it's encouraging at least that it certainly seems like he's not thinking about untowaying Otani. I don't know that this is a recommended move, but I kind of hope it happens. It also is maybe dependent on like, well, do the Angels actually have any other starting pitchers next year? Do they sign Garrett Cole or someone? Because if they don't, then they're going to be piecing together a ton of use roster spots on bullpen pitchers instead of a pinch hitter because you'd need a good pinch hitter to make this work probably. And maybe that's more feasible because you have the 26th roster spot next season. So you could carry that dedicated pinch hitter who's kind of been retired and phased out of the game and could come back but again the angels just got through this past season throwing i think many more innings from their bullpen than their rotation so if they're going to try to do that again then they may just have to stockpile relief pitchers yeah and the dedicated pinch hitter that you have if you had one if you had a good pinch hitter if you invested in a player who was able to hit but not field because he was old or whatever, you don't have a DH spot for him most days because now Shohei Otani is your DH and also is batting when he pitches. And so it would really be somebody who would only pinch hit, presumably, if he were a good batter.

Yep. Yep. All right. So we will see if that actually pans out. Just saw some breaking news that the draft next year is moving from New Jersey to Omaha, which is something that was floated this past year, but it didn't seem like it would necessarily be a permanent thing. I think that's kind of cool. I don't have much to say about it, but it's nice because it might mean that more of the players will actually show up and there will maybe be a live audience at the event and it will have some energy as opposed to an MLB Network studio in Secaucus where almost no one shows up and it's not really

scintillating TV. So I think that's a positive. And the last thing is that Marvin Miller and Ted Simmons were elected to the Hall of Fame by the modern baseball era committee. Jay Jaffe and I talked about the Marvin Miller question on a recent episode, so you can go back and listen to that. The quandary is that Miller said while he was still alive that he did not want to be inducted, and now he has been. Jay thought, and I tend to think, that it probably does more good than harm to put him in, even though it was against his wishes. And even though it's so overdue and belated that it's almost comical that it took this long and it only took this long because of, you know, cowardice and resistance to Miller among people on the committee and maybe not wanting to be there to give a speech. And now it's like, well, he won't show up at the induction ceremony and excoriate anyone, so they'll put him in now, which it's not the time that they should have put him in.

But he's just been so important to baseball that I think a museum about baseball should have a plaque for Marvin Miller, and hopefully it brings more attention to what he's done. The Ted Simmons thing, I think Simmons is deserving. I think he's sort of on the lower end of deserving, but deserving. And it's interesting that he credited sabermetrics people for getting him in because he's not necessarily the number one cause of sabermetrics people. But I guess the numbers have helped him a bit. What continues to confound to me is the people who don't get in and the vote totals for other people. So

Simmons and Miller got 13 votes and 12 votes respectively. You needed 12 of the 16 to get in. Then you have Dwight Evans with eight, Dave Parker with seven, Steve Garvey with six, and Lou Whitaker with six. And it just seems very inconsistent. Like, I don't know that Simmons is better than Dwight Evans. I don't think he is. It makes no sense that Dave Parker and Steve Garvey got more votes or as many votes as Lou Whitaker. Lou Whitaker is such a clearly deserving Hall of Famer

that I don't understand how Simmons gets in and Whitaker doesn't, unless it's just kind of the people on this very small committee just happen to like him better or have seen him play more or have relationships with him or whatever it is so it's disappointing that those people did not get in but good that a couple people did who was the what was the voting body this time? It was executives. So Sandy Alderson, David Glass, the former Royals owner, Walt Jockety, Doug Melvin, and Terry Ryan, and then some media historians, Bill Center, Steve Hurt, Jack O'Connell, Tracy Ringlesby, and then some Hall of Fame players, George Brett, Rod Carew, Dennis Eckersley,

Eddie Murray, Robin Yount. So kind of a mix. Yeah Eddie Murray, Robin Yount. So kind of a mix. Yeah. Yeah, it is odd. I mean, I feel like Ted Simmons has been one of the names you hear about as a snub for a long time, but not, I don't know, he kind of had, I don't know, not fallen out of fashion, but he was not at the top of the list. He was not one of the first four or five names that you heard.

And so it would be interesting to find out what the rationale is for all these. If Ted Simmons is in for any reasons that you and I would agree with, or if the fact that Steve Garvey gets more than Lou Whitaker suggests that this is just, that they have a completely different process for deciding these things and it just so happened to sweep up ted simmons this time and harold baines last time and yes and not lou whitaker and but some you know but also not a bunch of other players who shouldn't be in there but yeah anyway yeah anyway no beans is this time so i guess we take what we can get. So this is chase Utley's deal from, from back.

Okay. So chase Utley's new deal is worth $27 million, but if he stays healthy, it can max out at $75 million received three vesting options, each worth $15 million on top of this two guaranteed years. Each of his options will vest at 500 plate appearances. Okay. So that all seems fairly simple,

but then it gets a little more complicated when you spell it out utley will receive 15 million dollars guaranteed in 2014 and 10 million in 2015 it's already kind of odd because he's now getting more money up front which is not very common but he did he can also earn an additional 5 million in 2015 if he is not on the dl for more than 15 days with a specified knee condition the contract also includes a 2 million dollar buyout and a full no trade clause the formula for his vesting options is straightforward he needs to reach 500 plate appearances in 2015 to guarantee himself a 15 million dollar salary in 16 the same math applies in 16 and 17 if he falls short of 500 plate appearances in any of those seasons, his option would then revert to a conditional club option.

The value of those options would range from 5 million to 11 million, depending on how many days he spent on the disabled list the previous season. Wow. You need a whole podcast to break that down. Yeah. My head is spinning. We did a podcast to break it down. Yeah, My head is spinning. We did a podcast to break it down. Yeah, I guess probably.

August 8, 2013. All right. Oh, and I just saw also that MLB will no longer be testing minor leaguers for marijuana use, which is good and sensible. That's always been one of these weird things where minor leaguers were not in the union, so they were subject to tests and suspensions, whereas major leaguers were not. What does that mean that they're not testing? Is it still prohibited? No, it's not a banned substance.

So even circumstantial evidence or like being like it's just a non-issue now. I think so, yes. And it's part of the program for testing for opioids, which will be more of a treatment program than a punishment program, which also seems good. Okay. All right. So I brought a topic I was not anticipating that we would have a Strasberg signing to talk about beforehand. So we may get through half of this, I guess, and maybe we can finish the second half next time, unless there's a million more signings to talk about. But I was recently sent a copy of the new Bill James Handbook, which comes out every year around this time, and it is mostly a reference book. It is stuffed with stats on the league and every player, defensive stats, pitching stats, every sort of stat, really,

many of which you can find online, but not all of them. And it's also kind of nice to have a hard copy because you can just flip through it and see things that you wouldn't have known to look for. Anyway, it is not entirely a reference book. It also has some essays every year. And Bill James always writes a few things for it. And he wrote a quite lengthy essay for this edition of the book, which he calls The Aesthetic Issues or 50 Ways to Stop Baseball from Being Swallowed Up by Home Runs and Strikeouts. So it is essentially a list of ways to fix baseball's aesthetic problems. It is not actually 50 ways. It is 30 ways because he ran out of ways at 30, but kept the title at 50. Does he address that fact?

No. There's an editor's note that says, well, he ran out of steam, so he doesn't get to 50. You know, here's my aesthetic fix for baseball. You only play six innings, and at the end, you say it was nine. Well, he talks about the shortening baseball games thing. So anyway, he weighs this out. I'll read a couple quick passages. Basically, he says baseball has economic problems and aesthetic problems, and the economic problems

are probably far more serious and also intractable. But the aesthetic issues, which are maybe not as serious, are more easily solved. And that is what he is trying to do here. So he says, I am not saying that baseball is currently selling an ugly game or an aesthetically unpleasing game. I will leave that up to you. You can like the modern game. You can hate it.

It's your call. The essence of the aesthetic problem is this, that as baseball players have gotten to be bigger, stronger, and better trained, two very narrow athletic skills have threatened to crowd out of the game a wider range of athletic attributes this is obviously nothing that we haven't discussed on the show he continues historically the essence of baseball has been the contest between fielder and base runner a strike out historically was the relatively rare event in which a batter failed so completely that he was

unable even to create the contest between fielder and base runner. The home run was the relatively rare event in which a batter succeeded so completely that he denied the fielder any chance to make the play. Over time, however, both strikeouts and home runs have been increasing in frequency. For 100 years, the marginal events have been becoming more common, and the central events have been getting less common and less important. So this is mostly about home runs and strikeouts and the ways that they are increasing at their highest rates ever. But he also tackles the time of game and the pace of play

and the fact that games are longer than ever too. So he says that up until about 1915, baseball regularly adjusted its rules to fix problems like this. But he says that at some point, it seems like he's saying maybe in the late 70s or so, by that time the problem arose. The idiotic, self-destructive idea had taken hold that baseball was a perfect game in which the rules never needed to be adjusted for new realities. This paralyzed the game for 40 years, which frankly pitched baseball into a

death spiral. We've just begun to escape that paralysis and try to fight to save the game. And then his last point essentially is that this isn't as hard as people think it is. People adopt radical and harmful solutions to problems, stuff like cutting the games to seven innings or going to three balls for a walk and two for a strikeout or banning defensive shifts because they don't see that there are transparent, non-invasive ways to address the same issues. Let's try a scalpel before we bring out the bone saw. So he's not saying that we should do all 30 of these things at once, but he's saying that individually speaking, he approves of these 30 suggestions. So I'm just going to go through them and you can give me a yes, no. And where relevant, I will mention anything that he points out to clarify what exactly he is suggesting.

So he starts with the pace of play, length of game stuff. And he says the big problems are batters stepping out of the box between every pitch and unnecessary and constant pitching changes. So his first suggestions are, one, prohibit players from stepping out of the batter's box after the at-bat has begun. And I should say, some of these are things that have been discussed ad nauseum. Some of them are, what? No one's ever said that before. This is wild.

So it really runs the gamut so Number one stepping out of the box You can't do it after the at bat has begun Or number two limit The number of times that a batter can step Out of the batter's box after stepping Into the batter's box to let's Say one per team per inning

And he says this is More of an umpiring policy change Than a rule change really because You're not really supposed to do these things And it more of an umpiring policy change than a rule change really because you're not really supposed to do these things and it's just that umpires let players get away with it and so if they stopped granting timeouts that would essentially fix the problem my feeling i have had this conversation recently and it's fine yeah sure i would not be opposed to it but my feeling is that batters don't step out of the box very often. It's a very small part of it these days.

I mean, most of the delay between pitches is driven by the pitchers. And I find that there's very little batter-driven pace still in the game. So I don't know if I'm wrong. I don't know if your sense is that I'm wrong about that. But I would consider this to be fine, but not really much of a fix like 10 years too late, because for the most part, there are already restrictions on when you can step out. And most batters don't do it. They go to the back corner of the box and they take a breath and then they get right back in there. Yeah, I do think that the pitcher is a bigger

problem. And he acknowledges in here sometimes that some of these rule changes would not really directly address the problem or would not fix the problem on itstrusive that these are things preferably that a fan might not even notice from the stands, but they will work their magic and have some effect. So now he's talking about pitching changes and he acknowledges the rule that seems to be coming for 2020 that a pitcher has to face three batters or finish the inning. He says he likes that. It's good. It will help, but let's see how much. So his suggestion here, or one of his suggestions, is a team may make as many pitching changes as they want in a game between innings. Also, any pitcher may be taken out of the game at any time after he has been charged with a run allowed in this inning. Beyond those two situations, a team may remove a pitcher from the game in mid-inning without

a penalty once a game and only once. You've only got one free shot to remove a pitcher who has not given up a run in this inning from the mound in the middle of the inning. And then to enforce that, there would be a penalty of some sort. He suggests that maybe just assessing a ball would be enough to do it because often you're bringing in a pitcher to get the platoon advantage and maybe giving the batter a ball would negate that. But he says he'd favor an even stronger penalty is that the next hitter takes first base and that all runners who are on base move up a base.

Boy, it is a problem. It's not a problem that it happens but if you have a problem with the pace of the game that is like a huge part of it and the fact that those pitching changes come at the most exciting moment and that they take us away into the land of like car commercials and it does kill the momentum i think it would be my ideal would be that there would be no warmups and that you could get the pitching change done in a minute and 20 seconds and never have to leave the field of play because then I feel like the tension would be potentially be ratcheted up as you're waiting.

But it's not my column. It's not my 50 ideas. Do I like limiting pitching changes mid inning to one per game? Not particularly. I don't like one per game things, generally speaking. Yeah. It feels like you're imposing that constraint in kind of a heavy handed way. Like that doesn't seem that different to me from now it's three balls and two strikes

or seven innings. I mean, it's less extreme, but philosophically speaking, it seems sort of along those lines. I would like it more if it were none per game than one per game. Yeah. But no, you don't want to have pitchers left out there. I mean, I like that pitchers can have, I personally like that pitchers can have very specific roles. I feel like they end up having well-defined careers

as a particular type of journeyman laborer. You know, like they're, I think that's a, was it you guys, was it this podcast here that we were talking about the gig economy and how relievers were the gig economy? I think so. Well, I thought that was an interesting idea. But I think of relievers as being like the different people on a construction crew. Interesting idea. But I think of relievers as being like the different people on a construction crew. And, you know, each one has their own craft, their own skill that they spent years honing. And making every pitcher have to get through an inning is not quite my cup of tea. some of the loogies and loogies have kind of gone away but there are still some who are more loogie like than others and i think susan slusser recently reported that the a's were not going

to bring back ryan buckter even though ryan buckter has been quite good because he has been one of the pitchers who would be most affected by the new rule about the length of outing so there will be some class of pitchers, presumably, who will be sitting on the sidelines next season because of this rule directly. So, all right, considering or continuing here, we have, we're up to number four. So four, five, and six, and seven,

these are all kind of rapid fire in that same vein. So limit a team to using three pitchers in the first nine innings of a game that's number four or number five limit a team to 11 pitchers on a roster or number six limit the number of pitchers who can be used in a series so a maximum of seven pitchers in a three-game series or 10 pitchers in a four-game series let's say with an increase of one for each four extra innings if there are extra innings. And then his seventh one is to prohibit any pitcher from pitching in consecutive games, period. Yeah, that's a strong one.

All right. I'm going to go back on whatever I just said about construction crews. I like the three per game okay per nine innings yeah to me that's a nice number and it seems like it would have a a good limiting effect and yeah and it would you i like counting pitches i'm really into counting pitches and it would force you to count pitches i also i do like the number of pitchers per series because i i like the idea that what you do in one game can have some benefit or true or harm for your next game i i like all sorts of things where the result of one game has some some carryover effect some ripple effect on the next

game yeah so i like that if i were to do that i would say unlimited pitchers and extra innings extra innings the no limits do whatever you want so you'd still only get your seven and three games or whatever in the first nine innings but you could have as many as you want in extra innings back-to-back games feels a little too i don't know feels like a little league rule to me it feels like it feels like you're protecting it feels more like a move to protect pitchers than to regulate them, regulate their usage. And I don't think that it's necessary to protect them. I don't think that's what Bill James is suggesting it would be for, but I think that's what it would be seen as. And then the last one was limiting to a certain number of pitchers on a roster.

Seems fine to me to do that. Yeah. I probably would be in favor of it. I don't know what the ramifications It seems fine to me to do that. Yeah. I probably would be in favor of it. I don't know what the ramifications on a, on an Otani would be with that. Right. Well, there's already, that's a consideration for next year, right? That you have to designate a two-way player and that player has to qualify for two-way status in certain ways. So that's, yeah. It's just that you couldn't use a two-way player as one of your 11 because it would be a disadvantage and yet if you allowed if you allowed extra pitchers if they were two-way

players you might see all sorts of chicanery where you know you start seeing pitchers who are you know put at second base for one game a month to get qualification as two-way status or something like that so it seems like it could be tricky to have clear definitions of who pitchers are. All right. Number eight is also an attempt to reduce pitching changes. So if a pinch hitter is announced and the other team brings in a different pitcher, the team at bat may withdraw the pinch hitter and may use him later in the game. In other words, being announced as the pinch hitter does not mean that he is in the game, does not mean that the other player has been replaced.

It merely signals an intention to put the other player in the game. He's not actually in the game until you throw him a pitch. And the thinking there is that managers wouldn't bring in as many pitchers because they wouldn't be getting they wouldn't get much benefit out of it couldn't guarantee the platoon advantage because you could just uh well you could pull back the the pinch hitter that you had announced uh right and so the the defense would say well if i bring in a reliever here they're just going to pull them back anyway and unlike the current situation where i know that they can pinch hit for the pinch hitter i'm not even making them burn two batters so in fact i'm making them burn no batters I don't have a good feel for how this would play out it seems I don't think you should be able to announce a players in the game

and then take them out of the game yeah I like the idea that in baseball you can be in the game and without it actually appearing that you're right you love those guys right yeah what are your whole outing uh no i don't think i do but we did a stat blast i think i might have done an article on pinch hitting for the pinch hitter and yeah the idea that you can show up get stretch you can stretch and uh work up a sweat and all that so that you can be a professional athlete and your job that day is to be announced and then leave. I like that. You appeared in a game. That's great. I want those. So I don't want him to be pulled back. pitcher is supposed to have his foot on the rubber when he delivers the pitch because he says there's been a creep here where people used to talk about pitchers throwing a 59 foot fastball which was considered cheating now it's a 57 foot fastball and he thinks this is part of the cause for the increase in strikeouts this is rule 5.07 that he says is routinely being ignored. And he explains that it's easy to see why it's

being ignored because you can just go bit by bit by bit and it's very difficult for an umpire to see and call in the moment. And so you get away with a little bit and you can keep going a little bit more and more each time. And so he suggests that to enforce this in the least intrusive way possible, you could have, say, special umpires, maybe replay umpires who look at the video of the games after the fact, and they see which in slow motion were illegal and track that data and publish it. And so if there's a pitcher who's a repeat offender and he's always not touching the rubber, then you can warn them, fine them, suspend them, etc. Or you could allow a protest during a game. So say once a game after a strikeout, the manager could protest that the pitch was illegal and you could review the tape and find

that he wasn't touching the rubber and you give him a do-over basically and so that would be a pretty effective deterrent in theory of the the 57 foot fastball can you throw a pitch and stay on the rubber i i assume so right i mean are any of them doing it well at this point i don't know that anyone is uh-huh and so we would be turning everybody into a 1930s pitcher? Yeah, basically. Which, I mean, I get it because you've got guys throwing harder than ever and they're bigger than ever. And so they're already getting that pitch on top of hitters sooner. So there's a benefit there. I don't have a problem with pitchers throwing the way they throw.

It's not clear to me. It's not obvious to me that this is as pervasive as James is saying. I don't doubt that it is, but it's just something that I haven't really noticed. And so it's hard for me to say that it's imperative that we ban it immediately, but I am generally in favor of getting hitters a better chance to make contact and if that comes from keeping pitchers on the rubber i'm not against that like it it wouldn't necessarily affect what they're doing that much i mean you could just couldn't you start from farther back or something like you wouldn't necessarily have to completely redo your delivery i don't think so so i'm this is a new concept to

me so i'm just gonna make sure that i'm clear on this pretty new to me too okay so the the idea is that when a pitcher a modern pitcher pitches he throws you know he's he's leaping off of the mound basically we're not talking about we're not talking about jordan walden here there's no skip going on there's no like double step or anything like that it's just that in the process of of you know firing their body toward the mound they come off toward the plate they come off the rubber before the ball has technically left their fingertips that they have kind of slid away from the mound so they start on the mound they do their stretch they they push off the mound and as they're

pushing off the mound their foot comes out of contact with the mound before the ball has left their fingertips. And presumably, almost every pitcher, almost every pitch. Yeah, so I'm looking at the comment to rule 5.07a. It says, in the wind-up position, a pitcher is permitted to have his free foot on the rubber, in front of the rubber, behind the rubber, or off the side of the rubber. rubber in front of the rubber behind the rubber or off the side of the rubber from the wind-up position the pitcher may deliver the ball to the batter or step and throw to a base disengage the runner if he does he must drop his hand to his side in disengaging the rubber the pitcher must step off with his pivot foot and not his free foot first or else it's a balk we know that so yes i i think that what you were saying is what James is saying.

And do you think that the reason that this change appeals to him is because there's already a rule in the book? And so it's easy to say, well, there is a rule, so just enforce it. Or do you think if there was no such rule, we would have an entry for make a rule that you have to stay on the rubber? Yeah, well, you'd have to have that rule, right? Or else you could just deliver the pitch from wherever you wanted right you could well you could say that you have to be on the rubber when you begin your you know when you make your move toward the plate yeah i guess so i think that the fact that there's already a rule appeals to him yes but we could just as easily solve that by taking out the rule. True. Yes.

Although that wouldn't solve the problem. It wouldn't solve the problem. But it's the question I'm trying to figure out is whether this is like a question of taking the rule book more literally and it just bothers him that there is an unenforced rule. Or if this is simply one of many. He's bothered by the effect, I think, which is that. The effect is to handicap pitchers in some way. To restrain. Well, the intended effect is to handicap pitchers in some way to, to restrain. Well, the intended effect is to handicap pitchers, but what's happening is right. Handicapping hitters. Right. And so we're trying to come up with a way to handicap pitchers and keep them from throwing

with full effort, uh, as they do these days. And I would say that I don't have a problem with them throwing through full effort. And if we just want to put some sort of restriction on them that limits their ability to pitch well, I think that I would have others that I like more. Uh-huh. Well, I think I like this next one more. We've talked about this plenty, but move the mound back. But James's suggestion is that you just move the mound back three inches because he says that any more than that would potentially be really disruptive. He says there's been some talk of moving the mound back by two feet. Whoever suggested that has probably never played baseball.

And he says his reason for that is pitchers spend 15 years learning to make a slider break at just the right moment so that it breaks across the plate. If you move them back two feet, every breaking pitch is horribly off target and you can't just fix that in spring training, which I'm not a pitcher, so I don't feel qualified to necessarily weigh in on this. But does that sound right to you? I mean, once you release the pitch, aren't you just trying to get it to break? I mean, you can't necessarily make it break such that it starts breaking or stops breaking at a certain time. Once you release it, you can't impart any force, any spin on it anymore. So in many cases,

aren't you just trying to make it break as much as possible? And obviously, you don't want it to be way out of the strike zone, so you have to kind of calibrate where you're aiming and where it's going to break. But if you moved it back farther, obviously it's going to mess with your control, just inevitably because you're farther away. But the calibrating the break so that it breaks at just the right time is something that I hadn't thought of at length. But in general, I agree with him. Like, let's start with just a small move back and see what happens. And he says if three inches doesn't do anything, then move it back another three inches. So I might say six inches just because it's already, you know, a six inch interval away, which is just sort of strange.

So just make it a whole number. But I'm on board with the principle of the thing. I think they should keep the mound where it is, but move the plate back. Yeah. Okay. I'm fine with that too. All right. Next one, 11.

If a starting pitcher is removed from the game before pitching five innings and before allowing four runs to score, that pitcher is ineligible to pitch again for eight days. Wait a minute. If he doesn't... Say it again. to pitch again for eight days wait a minute if he doesn't say it again if he is removed from the game before pitching five innings and before allowing four runs oh he's ineligible to pitch again for eight days oh so this is just simply coming up with like a anti-opener yeah okay so the rule is that everybody has to be able to pitch deep into games and that that has to be the default

unless you get unless you get blown out so we're not going to make you throw 270 pitches trying to get out of the fifth but you cannot as a strategy be expected to only throw three innings right and his point is uh basically he says in bold and italics baseball should be played in the way that fans most like to see it played. And he, I think, agrees with things that we've talked about in this podcast I've written about, that openers are not as fun, or at least bullpen games are not as fun, that I like the starting pitcher. It's nice to have that narrative protagonist who's in the game the whole time, and you're looking at the pitch counts, you love pitch counts so he is saying that on the one hand it's nice to allow innovation and he says that he's generally against any rule that attempts to change baseball but i'm often in favor of rules that prevent

changes to the game and this is a change that he doesn't like and he believes that most people don't like and so he says we don't actually have to let people do it. So we've always followed the policy. He says that if managers figure out a more effective way to do something and it changes the game, we allow that change to take place. And changes have in fact happened for 150 years. That's fine, except when it isn't. This is a case when it isn't this is a case when it isn't and he says that it forces the sport to sell anonymity essentially because you just have interchangeable bullpen arms coming and going and not as much focus on the stars and players you know it would be more of an issue in a future world where ace pitchers aren't still used as more or less the way that they are. If it got to the point where even Max Scherzer was only throwing three innings and they might come in the fifth inning or something, then I think that would be true. But as it is now, the pitchers that are only going four innings are not,

I don't feel like they're the pitchers that you're paying to see anyway. And while it's true that there might be some aesthetic deficiency there that you've picked up on and that he's picked up on, I don't think it's enough to merit stepping in and changing how managers do this. I would come up with a better solution to this problem, a more organic to me solution, less chase at least three vesting years options Kind of seeming solution And I think he already did it With the three pitchers in a game Yeah, I struggle with this philosophically speaking

Because on the one hand, it's an entertainment product And you should probably intervene To make the product entertaining If it starts not to be On the other hand, I really do value innovation And strategy and tactics and coming up with ways to sort of bend the rules or succeed within the rules, but in a novel way. And I think we generally agree on that. I mean, we briefly became obsessed with the strategy,

right, with removing a pitcher mid at bat to get an advantage. And it's hard to argue that after the initial intrigue that that would generate, that that would actually be good for the entertainment value of the game. Because if anything, if it worked, then it would just mean more strikeouts and overmatched hitters and more pitching changes, and none of that would be fun. And yet I am intrigued by the idea because no one's ever done it before and it might actually help. And so those two desires are kind of warring within me to encourage teams to try new things and find advantages and then to reward them if they do. And yet now we're at a point where you can argue that teams that have found those advantages are actually now making the game less entertaining. So I don't know where the balance is there where you still allow innovation, but also act to make sure that baseball is still fun for spectators because that is the more important thing.

Yeah. I don't think there are 150 interesting starting pitchers in the world. No, that's true. There's really only about, I don't know, somewhere between maybe 18 and no that's true there's really only about i don't know somewhere between maybe 18 and 35 that you even notice really when you're when you're thinking about whether to watch a game and so i just don't feel like it's that big of a loss as it is now and i personally really like relievers to me relievers are are a interesting part of how i consume the game and i like multi-inning relief stints a lot too and so i personally do not see a huge need, but I definitely allow that within a few years, it could be more appealing to me.

All right. Number 12, he again is trying to focus on known players and stop the roster churn. And there have been some rules that have already been enacted to try to do this, like increasing the amount of time that a player has to stay in the minors after he's optioned so that you can't just constantly cycle through people. But his rule suggestion, limit each team to one roster move a week, except that perhaps three times during the year, a team can use a free roster move. If you get two players actually hurt in the same game,

you can use your free move to deal with that. Otherwise, you've got one move a week. And let's say that you can save your move for one week only so that if a team does not make any roster move in one week, they can make two the next. use the carpool lane once a month when they really need it, whether they have anybody in their car with them or not. And so I think that the way that you do it so that you don't have basically people trying to get away with it every day until the one day when they're caught and they go, ah, it's my one day is that you just when you need to use the carpool lane because you're really late to pick somebody up and you know, this your work kept you there and like you're kind of desperate and there's no other way around the traffic except this is you just call you call a number and you register your driver's license. And for the next, say, you know, 120 minutes or so, you have free access to the carpool lane, whether you have anybody in it or not. And I feel like there's it's great that the carpool lane incentivizes carpooling.

And it's great that it gives a, you know, a benefit to people who have multiple people in the car. There's a way in which that increases the greater happiness in the world. I like that. But the people who really, really, really need it the most, I feel like they deserve a lane once a month. You should clear it out. I mean, people really need to get places sometimes. Yeah, sure.

Just think what a blessing it would be to once a month know that you can. Of course, probably what would happen is like the last day of the month, everybody who had an unused carpool day would all crowd the thing. All right. One roster move a week with a couple of extras thrown in there and you can save one. Yeah. So if you get a couple of people hurt, you aren't powerless to do something about it. I think that I think we just have to live with with the churn with the roster churn. I think it's probably a bad idea to tell teams when a player can or should or shouldn't be in the majors.

If there's a fairness problem with player compensation, it's probably something that should be collectively bargained and probably best handled that way. If it's just about wanting to have, like, again, the players that would be affected by limiting roster churn are not the players that most fans are learning the names of anyway. You know, we're already talking about the 28th player on the roster. And I don't think that you're going to like all of a sudden have baseball players in Nike commercials

because you've kept the teams from doing 26th man roster moves. All right. Let's do two more. Number 13 is limit throws to first base by pitchers. Now, he says that his actual preference is to eliminate the Bach rule and replace it with something better, which he doesn't specify. Well, if it's with something better, I have a hard time arguing. Yeah, right.

But I think if you eliminated the bach move then you would actually have a much slower game because pitchers would be doing all sorts of complicated you know deception that would take a long time so i don't think you can remove the bach rule and fix things but so he wants to limit it to two throws to first base per batter if If you make a third unsuccessful throw, then the base runner automatically advances. Yeah, and you're basically limiting it to one because the second one would be almost, well, I was going to say almost an automatic stolen base,

except we all watched John Lester for the last few years. But basically pitchers would not use their second one very often. And so you would have essentially one to, to, to throw over. And I like that a lot. I think that's a fantastic one. I think that the, the, the tension of knowing that a pitcher was out of throws or maybe had one left and had to decide, I feel like would add a nice element of, of interest. It's already kind of interesting when you're watching that split screen to see whether the batter, the runner is going to go but when you throw in limits on pitch counts i feel like

anytime a base runner is on that can steal it becomes a very very detailed chess match to watch yeah and this would theoretically maybe increase base dealing a little bit which would be nice because it's kind of at a low ebb right now. And I mean, he talks about it as if this is a huge problem, like people throwing over 15 times or something, which I don't think it is. There aren't that many really glaring examples that I see where the game just totally stops because someone's throwing over and over and again. But it does happen. It happens from time time to time and it should probably never happen and he says that it's just an oversight that they would have put a rule in the books to prevent this if they had thought that it would be a problem that you would have people throwing over that many times and that it just didn't happen and it makes sense because

like even just to prevent the theoretical possibility of someone stopping the game entirely by throwing over indefinitely, which obviously doesn't happen for societal reasons. Like you don't want to be the person who stopped the game and did that and everyone would hate you. But it's still just to get rid of that loophole, I guess, that you could make a game infinite by throwing over forever. You could also have it be that you get one freebie and then every one after that is a ball because it is considered a throw that is not in the strike zone. So it counts as a ball. I think the other thing, the beneficial thing of this is I think you're right that it would increase stolen bases a ton. I think it would increase pickoffs, paradoxically. I think there'd be a lot more pickoffs for one reason because there'd be a lot more base stealing and for another because you would have base runners

who thought well the pitcher's out of throws or maybe he only has one left and he's not coming over here and they would be a little bit more aggressive and so yeah yeah all right didn't jeff didn't jeff write an article one time about yes it was bruce chen bruce chen there you go that's one of my favorites yeah so good how many throws was that it was a lot 10 it was 10 times to it yeah 10 times all right and the last one for today this is uh in the same vein to prohibit the pitcher from throwing to first base unless the runner off of first actually has at least a six-foot lead. Six feet? You see it all the time.

The pitcher just isn't quite ready to pitch, so he throws to first even though the runner has no lead and is no threat to steal. It's annoying. Another thing you could do would be to draw a little line six feet off of first base as long as the base runner keeps one foot on the first base side of that line he's absolutely safe because the pitcher can't throw to first if he doesn't cross that line again it's an almost invisible rule to the fans apart from the little hash mark because the pitcher would almost never throw to first when he was not allowed to and you never give a thought to what doesn't happen are there many pickoff attempts where they're only six feet out i mean i'm getting hung up on the number six here. He could have written eight, and then I would have less argument.

Yeah. Well, I mean, you do see just like lazy throws over where you're not even trying to pick the guy off, and it's just like reminding him that you were physically capable of throwing over there or something. How many do you see, though? How many do you really see? We watch a lot of baseball, and we see maybe like 30 a year uncommon but i i don't know how many of those the runner is actually within six feet of the bag because he might still be taking it decently and so well one problem with having any number of feet unless you have that hash mark that he suggests

is that well how you're going to know that it's six feet in that moment and not five feet 11 inches or something so unless you have like that real-time stat cast thing that's telling you how far the guy is off the base then that would be tough but you could put a little mark and just say well if he's not actually seemingly making any attempt to steal a base, then why would you throw over? So don't waste everyone's time. Yeah, I would say that I don't need this rule, but it would be fine too. It would be fine. It's fine.

I don't know. I think you're talking about 20 seconds, like one every like 14 games. Yeah, probably. And if you just put in the limit on throwing over, then that would take care of it by itself. Yeah. All right. So the last 16 of these are more offense oriented and more related to the strikeouts and homers than pace of play. So I think they're probably a little more compelling. So we will get to that next time and whatever

moves have happened and maybe some emails, we will see how the winter meetings proceed. All right. You know, I'd be remiss in not mentioning on a day of a lot of good and exciting news for baseball, another little tidbit that came out of the winter meetings. MLB and the MLBPA and Sony announced that they have extended their partnership to keep making the MLB The Show video game franchise, which they've been making for decades now. keep making the MLB The Show video game franchise, which they've been making for decades now. It was originally called MLB, debuted in 1997, and as MLB The Show, it's been sort of the standard bearer for baseball video games for years and years now. But it also has been exclusive to PlayStation platforms, and according to this press release, the historic expansion of the long-standing partnership will bring MLB The Show for the first time ever to additional console platforms beyond PlayStation's platforms as early as 2021. So that's good news because Xbox owners,

for instance, have been without a baseball game or at least a good licensed baseball game for the whole of that console's history. So it sounds like when the new consoles come out, we'll be able to get the show on multiple platforms, which is good news for baseball and for gamers. So just passing that along for the gamers in the audience. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Maximiliano Burgess, Dan O'Loughlin, John Gilbert, Olaf Hong, and Greg Scarfo.

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messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back with our next episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. Stephen, Stephen He's a handsome man, his name is Stephen Oh, Stephen, Stephen He's a dashing man, his name is Stephen

Oh, Stephen, he's a dashing man, his name is Stephen. Oh, Stephen, Stephen, he's a handsome man, his name is Stephen. Oh, Stephen, Stephen, he's a dashing man, his name is Stephen.