Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1509: To All Hosts Other Than Ben Lindbergh

Episode Date: March 5, 2020

With Ben Lindbergh on vacation, Meg Rowley and Sam Miller answer a few very special listener emails on Shohei Ohtani, what they want to know about the 2020 season (complete with a twist), and how we treat umpires. Plus, a Statblast! Audio intro: The Police, “Message In A Bottle” Audio outro: Letters to Cleo, “Cruel to be […]

I'll send an S.O.S. to the world. I'll send an S.O.S. to the world. I hope that someone gets my... I hope that someone gets my... I hope that someone gets my... Message in a bottle. Message in a bottle. Message in the bottle Good morning and welcome to episode 1509 of Effectively Wild, the baseball podcast on Fangraphs.com, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN, along with Meg Rowley of Fangraphs.com. Hello, Meg. Hello.

Meg, we have a problem. Oh, no. A terrible thing has happened. I'm sorry to tell you this, but we were going to do an email show, and then I got today, just before we started recording, I got a cease and desist from a lawyer representing Mr. Ben Lindbergh. Uh-huh. So I'm going to read you this cease and desist order, okay?

To all hosts of Effectively Wild other than Ben Lindbergh, it has come to our attention that you intend to answer listener emails on an upcoming episode of Effectively Wild since roughly episode 391 when the Play Index segment was inaugurated. My client, Ben Lindbergh, has had the responsibility of selecting and reading listener emails for the show's hosts to answer. This longevity gives him sole and total ownership of email reading duties, as established by an appeals court ruling in Cepeda v. Cowles Magazines and Broadcasting, Inc.

It is our position that the accounts and descriptions of these emails may not be disseminated without the express written consent of Mr. Lindbergh. Sincerely, Buddy Bam Bam Chuck Esquire. So this is a problem. As I understand this, we are allowed to answer emails, but we are not allowed to read the questions. And I thought that would be too confusing, too confusing. I thought maybe with a little more prep i can make that bit work but i don't think i can make it work so instead i have a different workaround which is that we are going to answer emails okay but these are emails that i wrote and sent to you only ben has nothing to do with them so you think we can make it work yeah all right i mean i don't have to speed read a play-by-play of an old game that no human person who's alive has seen this is

an easier one so this is easier just by default this is a simpler task exactly so you might check your email inbox i think there's one there now. Since zero minutes ago. Hey, look at that. It's an email from one Sam Miller to one Meg Rowley. You know, we encourage Ben to go on vacation because it's important for him as a human person. Yeah. And he'll live longer. And, you know, it's just good.

You got to recharge and spend time with people who aren't colleagues. But I always, I wonder if he has regrets sometimes you think he do you think he listens to this yeah i goof i i think actually based on my conversations with our co-co-host that he quite enjoys listening to effectively wild when he is on vacation because he sort of really gets to just be a listener and he likes both of us very much but i i do wonder if he feels a little nervous yeah yeah i don't know so am i reading this email you're reading it okay i got an email today sam from a guy named sam miller and i thought we could talk about it so here's one of those emails on monday andy mccullough tweeted this greetings

from angels camp where charles barkley said do not compare otani to bo jackson my first response was no doy how do you say no doy can you give a no doy line reading a no doy very nice who would compare otani to bo jackson it'd be like if mike trout had a 43 game hitting streak and instead of saying do not compare him to joe dim it'd be like if Mike Trout had a 43-game hitting streak, and instead of saying, do not compare him to Joe DiMaggio, somebody was like, do not compare him to Ornel Herschel. Ornel? Ornel. God. What did I just do? I caught it too late. Ornel? Who's Ornel? Never been a human person named that. You've been doing very well in this episode so far and i have not been so i'm going to take responsibility for that do not compare him to totally different accomplishment but then i started thinking is it i know being a baseball pitcher and being a baseball hitter are both within

the same sport so we don't think of him as a two-sport star but are these two roles not just as different as football player and baseball player? One is a target game. The other is a stick and ball game. One requires balance and precise repetition. The other requires speed and improvisation. One is largely solitary. The other is part of a team pursuit. One requires a superhuman elbow ligament. The other requires superhuman cognition. So pretend these are two different sports that pitching and hitting have never been merged into one league isn't it just as unlikely that a person would be born with the athletic skill set necessary to thrive in one of these sports as that they

would be born with the skill sets necessary to thrive in both baseball and football or even more unlikely considering we have had three prominent two-sport stars during the 1990s alone, but then went an entire century between Babe Ruth and Shohei Ohtani? Great question. That's a great question. That's a good question. Smart guy, that Sam. He should fire the actress playing him, but it's fine.

All right, so if I read this right, it's basically basically saying that otani's two different skills are just as i kind of like non-overlapping as bo jackson's two sports skills were correct so i read this as this is not simply a difference of degree but of category right okay yeah yeah exactly wait so so charles barkley i is whatley, what is Charles Barkley? How did you read him saying do not compare Otani to Bo Jackson? Do you think he was merely saying that Otani is not as good as Bo Jackson was? Or that he's saying that what Otani is doing is not as hard as Bo Jackson was? I think that there is, I think it's the second one.

Yeah. Because it would be odd to comp it to Bo Jackson just as the part of Bo Jackson's baseball job that was the same as Otani's, right? That would be odd because there's so many, there's just so many. The thing that makes those guys remotely related to one another is the duality of their role,

granted, as we've noted across different sports so i think it has to be that what otani is attempting is less difficult than playing two discrete sports and that is my argument that is what i am arguing against i do not think that it is more difficult than playing across two discrete sports. Yeah, I would tend to agree with that. Would I agree with that? I'm not sure I agree with it either, to be honest. I'm trying to decide if I agree with it, because on the one hand, I think that they are both incredibly difficult tasks. And I think pitching is just like a great miracle. And it's insane that anyone does it, just a truly wild endeavor and pursuit. And I think it's truly wild that anyone ever hits a

baseball. Both of those things are just loopy, but to achieve a level of excellence in two sports simultaneously to such a degree that you can play both professionally is also really, really quite difficult. There is a reason that apart from the money, although the money was a big part of the reason, there is a reason I would imagine that Kyler Murray was like, I'm just going to focus on the one thing because I can excel at the one thing and I can be more competitively compensated right away for the one thing and the odds of me getting injured in the one thing or the other thing, and then not being able to do either thing are high. And so I should just focus on the one thing. It's hard. It's hard to do and be expert in multiple things. You know, we all made fun of,

uh, of the Dodgers when we learned that one of their spreadsheets was like named crimes because that's silly in an obvious way but also being good at like constituting a baseball team and naming stuff those are different skills it's hard to be good at a lot of different things it's true they are not clever tab namers that's not what they're hired for they weren't selected for their ability to name a tab no they were like they were selected for their ability to constitute a baseball team. Obviously, you're right. It's very difficult to do both, and that's why. But it's just as difficult.

The Kyler Murray example that he chose to focus on just one because it's really hard to play two, that's true. That's the premise of this being rare and amazing and why we love them. Like that's true. That's the premise of like this being rare and amazing and why we love them. But that also applies to pitchers and hitters who choose to specialize in one rather than try to become professionals in two. And it is just as rare. And there are just as many examples of pitchers who gave up hitting at some point along their development rather than, you know, try this extremely unlikely and unrealistic and difficult to master and labor intensive pursuit that Otani has been doing. So how do we know which one is? I mean, to me, the question is, which has more overlap? Because the whole, like what we are rewarding here is that you do two different things, right?

These are two different circles. But of course, of course, all sports share some quality. There is Venn diagram overlap of all sports. Mike Trout hit the golf ball over the net. Mike Trout is a great athlete, and therefore, it is fun to watch him hit golf balls. He is not a great golfer. He's not like he's not a professional golfer. And yet, because he's a great athlete, he can do all great athlete things. There is some Venn diagram overlap between being Mike Trout in baseball and also being, you know, able to hit a golf ball a long way. And all sports have some overlap with all other sports. I think it is fair to say that every physical sport, every kind of like, I mean, it depends where we're drawing the line on sport, right?

Like there's probably actually some overlap between eSports and regular, right? Regular. I'm sorry. I feel really bad that I just did that. Traditional sports. I need a better, thank you. I needed a better adjective than I came up with. Traditional sports.

Traditional sports. Athletic sports. Can we say that? Physical sports. On a field sports. On a field sports. So there's some overlap between. On a playing surface sports.

Exactly. All right. There's some overlap between esports and all of those sports as well. sports as well. And so the question that Barkley's kind of forcing us to answer with this, with the Otani versus Bo Jackson comparison, is which two sports or which two pursuits share the least overlap? And so my question is, do football and baseball have more overlap, or do pitching and hitting have more overlap? And so that's the question. And I can sort of I mean, I don't have a way of measuring it.

But like I think you can wander around that question a little bit and some things emerge. So can I introduce a thing for us to contend with to help us try to answer this question? I don't know that it will, but we can try. to contend with to help us try to answer this question i don't know that it will but we can try so you are uh familiar sam with the phenomena of you know of like say young projectable prospects who are who are position player prospects who maybe have not excellent bat to ball skills but a lot of arm strength and a thing that scouts will say is well you should just put them on the mound totally should just put that kid on the mound look at that arm strength just put that kid on the mound when when the pirates were trying to decide what to do with o'neill cruz who is six seven and play

shortstop there were a lot of scouts who were like shouldn't that kid just be on the mound because look at him really they did yeah i mean they were they didn't end up winning and now oh i see they were in the past there were there were scouts who were like, shouldn't he maybe be on the mound? Like, look at this guy and look at the arm strength. He should be on the mound. Yeah. There were some scouts who said that, and they didn't end up getting their way, and I don't even know if they were, like, within the org,

but there were scouts that were like, hmm, 6'7", you know. That's hard when you're shortstop. So I wonder if that's a data point in the favor of baseball and football having less in common because one of the base athletic skills is such that people with familiarity with baseball and that set of athletic skills who aren't able to do the one hitting thing super well, it's like, well, this is transferable to maybe pitching. they have um give it a shot and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't you know yeah it's a great point i don't know if it's a great point but it is a point it's interesting because it almost always goes that direction right it almost always goes a

hitter is a hitter and then someone says well why not put him on the mound he's not hitting well enough very rarely the the other way right and i wonder if that's because pitching is simply a very simple skill that you don't need to have you don't even really need a lot of training like you don't need 25 years of experience to become a pitcher you don't need to have like you you have to master like i mean you need to master you need to master feel and command and things like that. But really it's like one act over and over and over again. It's not like learning a playbook and it's not like developing pattern recognition over the course of decades. And so maybe the reason that Otani is not Bo Jackson is because what Otani is doing on the mound is actually very simple. Not quite kicker simple, but pretty simple.

Maybe, I don't know, maybe cornerback simple. Is cornerback? Cornerback feels like a pretty simple position. Simpler than many others? I mean, like, simpler than quarterback. How about? Simpler than middle linebacker, probably. What is?

Okay. I'm going to get myself in way too deep trying to figure out what the pitcher is. We're both going to wade into waters that we end up feeling nervous about when this episode goes to get out of shape. But maybe pitching is simply too similar. I do wonder whether the reason that batters and pitchers sometimes can cross that bridge and go into the other category is because they do have a lot of experience. Growing up, because these two positions, these two roles do take place on the same field and you have them both on the same team and you might have the chance as a precocious athlete to do both of them a lot because you're such a better athlete than your peers. You have familiarity with it.

And also you have like the coaches are right there. It's all very close. sports and they did not co-mingle with each other i don't know how many 25 year old hitters would suddenly become major league pitchers or vice versa the way that we do see in real life just because they wouldn't be as close to each other they wouldn't be like culturally aligned in the way they are so i i you've i don't know you've what is but how would they be different sports? Maybe I think maybe the answer to this is to simply reject our assumed premise in the comparison and to say they're both very hard and they're hard in different ways such that while there is a lot of they're similarly difficult, they can't really be compared to one another because i think part of the difficulty of switching between football and any other sport is even am i gonna regret saying this because it's not like pitchers are healthy very much but i guess like the the But I guess the threat of catastrophic injury is so high in football. But sometimes your arm just blows out and then you're like...

But then you're showing you can still hit. Can I suggest that maybe the key thing is that baseball... A key detail here is that baseball hitters and baseball pitchers tend to have similar bodies. Whereas football players don't tend to have similar bodies to other sports. And basketball players don't tend to have similar bodies to other sports. And in fact, a lot of sports have very specialized body types, either large or small or lithe or girthy or whatever. and so the fact that pitching and hitting tend to be associated with fairly similar body types is part of what makes it very easy for a person to do both even though it is not obviously easy for a person to do both because you have to be you know well like literally 99.999999th percentile

i believe in each of them which is unlikely, but you can do it. Whereas like, I don't think there is, there are very few people who are, who can be strong enough to play football at an NFL level, like with that body type, while also maybe, I don't know, flexible enough or fast enough, or I don't know what it takes to be a baseball player. And then there's basically no basketball players. I mean, there are a few, but there are very few basketball players that have a body that could succeed in football or baseball. And so it becomes hard to intermingle.

Well, and this was part of the concern with Murray from a football perspective is that he is little for football. And he isn't just not super tall, although he is not super tall. He is slight in a way that has been at times concerning to football observers because he just doesn't look like a dude who can take a bunch of hits and he's playing behind a somewhat questionable offensive line.

So people have had this concern, right? Whereas you look at him and you're like, well, that guy could play the outfield. That's fine do you find yourself generally over estimating or underestimating Bo Jackson's career production before you go to his player page well I've I mean I've just been to it so many times so this doesn't happen to you anymore right I've I mean I he wasn't very good. And I'm always somewhat surprised by how not very good he was, because, you know, people act like he was much better. I mean, Brian Jordan was a much better baseball player is my recollection, but not the same cultural force. I think it's one of those things where, I hope this doesn't betray something weird about my brain, because he played football and football is a game of intense regular action. For some reason, I think I have his general level of production reasonably pegged, but I always picture him, even though I don't have a good reason for this,

I think because of the football thing, I just assumed he'd be a better defender than he was. Yeah. Michael Jordan was a good defender, they say. But a lot of that war is really propped up by the bat, which again, it's not- People don't like it when you say that though. No one's having fun when you talk about how prosaic bo jackson was in fact i mean like here's the thing about it great fun great fun yeah bo jackson's 57 good gravy uh so in conclusion then charles barkley said do not compare otani to bo jackson i would

say do compare otani to bo jackson but conclude that he comes up just short. But that it is the appropriate comparison to make that Otani, what Otani is doing and what Bo Jackson is doing are in the same category, can be compared, but that probably Otani is doing something a little bit easier and thus far, not quite as well. That's where I would land, I think. Sure. Okay. I think that that's a reasonable, I think that's reasonable. I'm not offended by that answer. All right. To your own email. Email two. Oh, I've gotten another email from another Sam Miller. This weekend, my family spent a bunch of time talking about what we would do if we knew it was our last week of living. While this conversation spun off into many directions, I got to wondering about something I think about a lot when it comes to my mortality, which baseball storylines I would never get to see the end of. So here's my question.

If you knew that you would never get to see the 2020 season, but a mysterious stranger could tell you any three things you want to know about what happens in the 2020 season but a mysterious stranger could tell you any three things you want to know about what happens in the 2020 season what three things would you want to know these can be objective or subjective but subjective questions will be answered only from the perspective of the mysterious stranger the mysterious stranger is for some reason jeremy giambi this is another good question another smart sam i love this question but i don't have any sort of answer for us i am interested to hear if you have any answer for this and i think if you do then you might convince me of a lot of things my first thought was like oh there'd be so many things and then my second thought was actually would I really care about any of it? Like, is there anything at all? And I

think you could even expand. Maybe we will come up blank on one year storylines that are so important that we need to know them and go beyond that to like 20 year storylines. but in the one year like okay so give it a shot so a couple of things come immediately to mind the first of which is i would like to know i'd like to know what kind of baseball 2020 saw oh yeah that's such a great one oh yes i'd like to know what kind of baseball 2020 ended up seeing how long do we think we live in 2020 like in this hypothetical when is your end date well i mean we were this was a one week discussion okay that we were having in our house so so we got to so we get to see like the beginning like we get to see opening day maybe no no no a week from now oh gosh wow okay well so i'm trying to decide if that changes my answer why would it change my answer why would you want to i agree that what the ball is is

really feels like an important thing to know but why why do you want to know what do you care why do you care do you need to know do you need to know every ball for the rest of time or is it just this one year and then if they tell you it's juiced then what have you learned what what can you take with you into the afterlife with that knowledge sure so i think that the reason it's interesting to me is because like i think that if arrested development were being rewritten as a baseball comedy that the commissioner's inability i should say the league's but he is the face of the league the league's inability to control the baseball would be like a central plot point to to the baseball version of arrested development there is something about it that I find so deeply funny and troubling

simultaneously because it is just like the single most important piece of equipment on the field. And yeah, we've had variation in the past and things have moved around, but it feels like things that were stable spawned wildly out of control. And then We're talked about in the goofiest Possible way And now I want to know I want to know if the decision Decision is probably more active Than is accurate

But we're going to go with it because I only have a week to live If after the last Season and the response to the last Season and all the Appropriate public analysis of it and then and then public hand-wringing and fussiness and sassiness at times on the league's part if their decision after all of that was to say let's maintain the status quo so that like people get used to a new normal or if they decide to go fast in the opposite direction so i just think that it says

it would say something about a deeply goofy and disturbing plot line in our sports history and i think it's the sort of thing where like the the the commissioner has to be very bummed about the whole astros banging scheme because he seems keen to talk about just really anything else at all. But he also probably on some level is grateful because I think that we would have ended up talking about the ball a lot this winter had we not had this much, at times literally louder distraction. And so I don't know, I just want to know about it. Your answer to your extended answer implies that you sort of see agency in whatever happens this year. That whatever happens in 2020 is to some degree at the hand of the commissioner's office. Do you think that's true?

And do you feel that way about what happened to the 2019 and previous baseballs? I don't know. I want to be careful know i want to be careful you want to be careful that implies that you have some knowledge no no i have no knowledge oh gosh no so then if you have no knowledge you can say whatever you want like no but i don't want to like yeah i don't want to i just i i appreciate the uh the wanting to be responsible but i feel like if you say i have no idea everything that I say is no better than a random person on the street's opinion. It seems very silly that when you own part of the company that makes the ball, and it's really important that the ball be reasonably consistent, that you can't sort that out.

consistent that you can't sort that out like once i think that part of baseball's problem just as a sport right now is that we've started to be able to do and measure things with such precision and such small moments in time that once we stop being able to do things that seem simpler than that it's very easy to assume that there's some, you know, nefarious intent and control at play. Because like once you can measure the precise number of rotations the ball takes in a minute, it feels really silly that you can't then make that ball pretty consistent year to year and even game-game. And so I think that baseball, like, got really smart, and now that baseball is really smart, when something goofy happens, it's very easy to think that something's fishy.

There's fishiness afoot, is what I think. Okay. You noticed how I didn't actually answer your question. No, but I think I heard what i needed to hear yeah okay okay so that's one oh gosh that's one i would like to know you tell me if this if this is cheating if this is like an aladdin when aladdin cons the genie into getting him out of the cave by insulting his capabilities and he didn't wish it i never i never said i never said it so you tell me if this is cheating i want to know both

whether the astros reach the world series and then the reaction to the outcome of that world series i want to know about that is that cheating well how many things am i allowed to pick oh three things oh see this is a lot like the wishes i'm gonna give it to you okay i'm giving i'm giving it to you they're very closely related well you could i think you could phrase it like this you could say what is the reaction to the astros world series victory there you go and then and then the person would go aha there was no world series victory and you wouldn't you would know and There you go. that the Astros hitters are all going to be worse this year? I don't think that's going to happen. I would be interested to know though, for sure. And so I would probably ask like, how many Astros underperformed their projections or something? Like I'd phrase it better than that. I'd find a better question than that, but I would want to know, did they get worse? Did the Astros get worse?

So that's one Astros related one. The other one is I would like to know, I have an expectation The other one is I would like to know, I have an expectation that the Astros are going to be very good this year. And that as they stay very good, they are going to get more humble and apologetic about 2017. Interesting. Once they have established that they are truly good, I think that will make it easier for them to feel less threatened by what the banging schemes revelation might say about them. Like right now, I think they're all like they're apologetic, but they're also a little defensive. They don't want to admit they don't want to give in to this suspicion that maybe the Astros aren't actually good. So they've kind of dug in a little bit and they're like, no, we are good.

And I think once further events seem to validate them, they will be able to say, all right, you guys are good. And I think once further events seem to validate them, they will be able to say, all right, you guys are right. Now that we all know that we're really good, we can be a little bit more humble about all this and admit that it was as bad as you think. And we really regret it and we feel sad. And I think that that message maybe will get is totally, totally speculative, but that message will maybe get a little bit more sincere as the season goes on. And I don't know how I would ask that. But I would like to know, yeah, kind of along the lines of yours. I would like to know the state of the Astros' heel-ness as the year goes on. I would like to have maybe just some resolution.

I mean, we all have strong emotions about these people right now based on the the drama that's being played out and so maybe i would just like to know uh how i'm supposed to feel you know yeah how does how does everybody feel about the astros in november is maybe that's a tough one to answer especially someone like jeremy jambi yeah but how what what is the general feeling about the astros so yeah i'm along i'm along with you on that one what is the general feeling about the Astros? So, yeah, I'm along with you on that one. What is the reaction to them winning the World Series? Yeah, I just, and I'm curious. This is, I don't know that I would waste a thing on this,

but I got a question about this in my chat this week about how long fans are going to be able to, opposing fans, I should say, are going to be able to opposing fans, I should say, are going to be able to maintain their frustration with this team and how long they will act upon that frustration by booing or bringing signs or otherwise engaging in public in expressions of dissatisfaction with the Astros. And I said in my chat that I think it really depends on when in the season it is and sort of what the state of the team is at the time. I think that if they start really strong or if they are just slow out of the gate and maybe lose five of their first 10 or whatever, people are going to take that as license to

either think that they are still cheating and so be angry or that they were only good because they were cheating and then be kind of petty about it but beyond the initial sort of lush of recognition in the beginning part of the season i don't i think it's a lot harder to to say because i don't think that we are particularly good at emotional stamina when the thing we're reacting to is sort of even keeled so i don't know i don't know but like if they are really really good and then at the deadline they like make a big trade and then they're even better then we're gonna get it again or if uh you know they go into the last month of the season and they're jockeying for, you know, home field advantage throughout the playoffs. We're going to get it again because then we're going to be worried

about them cheating at home. And so I'm just really curious, like what the commitment level is going to be and what is going to be motivating that commitment if it's going to be something on the field or if it's going to continue to be reacting to prior bad acts. So I don't know, something on the field or if it's going to continue to be reacting to private acts so i don't know i'm just curious how people are gonna like you know they're gonna they're gonna go to opposing cities they're gonna have a day off in in an opposing city sometime and you know jose altubi is gonna go get coffee how are people gonna be in the coffee shop to him i don't know yeah i'm curious about that like don't have people on the street is probably what i would't know yeah i'm curious about that like don't have people on the street is probably what i would say but um i'm curious like is somebody gonna come up to him and say a

boo or like take their coffee lid and bang on it yeah you know i i don't think i would use one of my questions on this but i probably the thing that i feel the most suspense about i hadn't really thought about it yet before this but the thing i maybe feel the most suspense about, I hadn't really thought about it yet before this, but the thing I maybe feel the most suspense about this year or the most tension or the most like sort of nervousness about is will an Astro get hurt because of this? Will an Astro actually be injured and presumably by, you know,

Nick Marcakis, but, but who, like a lot of the, a lot of people are mad. Right. And we'll, I,

and I don't, I don't want them to. And I don't think that if I were preparing for my life to be over, I don't think one of the last things I would want to learn is like someone hurt the Astros. Man, I forgot about the stakes of this question for a second. But I am kind of curious to know, will an Astro be, I don't know, in any way actually like assaulted this year? Although some people think that it's already happened don't know, in any way actually assaulted this year? Yeah.

Although some people think that it's already happened in spring training. Not hurt, but assaulted. Yeah. Although, I don't know. I have not looked into the hit-by-pitch data that closely, but my understanding is that it is not very convincing. But I might be wrong. All right.

So you've chosen how does the ball play and how does the world respond to the Astros winning the World Series if they do? Yeah. And do you have a third? I want to know what Chris Davis' average is. Okay. We still care? No, I take it back.

I don't think it would be. Okay, how interesting would it be? Scale of 1 to 10. Let's say that him hitting.247 last year would have been a 10. What would it be this year now that he's a lot he's totally blown it that's like a two i think it would still be kind of cool if he found his way back to 247 it'd be a little bit like nemo you know getting back to his to his dad oh i guess that's true but not nearly i think like it'd be like a seven or an eight i mean it would in a way it would almost be weirder if he left it for a long time, traveled the world, wandered around, and came back to 247.

It'd be like, yeah, I mean, it'd be like that. The homing mechanism on that would be very strong, but not as cool. Yeah. I think I've thought of three. I think I have settled on three, including one that I've already said. Give me your other two, and maybe I'll come up with a third one. So will the Astros get worse is one. How does clayton kershaw do in the postseason oh yeah it would be nice for your last your one of your last living thoughts to be satisfaction about clayton

kershaw's postseason yeah you don't know if it's final and you might just be told oh he got blown out in the division series. And that was that. Although in finding this out, you would also know how deep the Dodgers went. So you might sneak. You might sneak in who won the World Series. Like you might discover that roundabout. And the third thing, this is very small and I don't expect anybody to nod vigorously with it. anybody to nod vigorously with it. But I'm going to say I would like to know the wars of all the White Sox starting pitchers.

Because I feel like there are in Giolito, in Dylan Cease, in Lopez, and in Michael Kopech, we have four longtime storylines, four pitchers who we've seen rise and fall in various ways. Four pitchers whose futures could be virtually anything at this point. And since they're all bundled up nicely there for me, I feel like it's a fitting thing to ask. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I don't think I have a third one i don't care about

geo gonzalez war just for the record what's a third one i think that my third one probably would have something to do with how mookie bets. But that feels kind of petty. It feels like I'm using one of my last wishes and thoughts on earth to stick it to a model of baseball team construction that I don't care for. And that's a thing to do, I guess, before you go. But I don't know if that's one of the last things I want to spend.

I guess it's a bummer because the Mariners have no suspense so there's no point in asking are you you could find out how jeff's team did do you care do you could find out how jeff did you could just find out like how's jeff doing how's my how are my buddies maybe i'd uh you know what i'd like to know what felix's war is. Oh, okay. There's an optimism in saying he has one. That might kill you. That might be how you died. Finding it out.

I'd be going out thinking about a thing I love. So there you go. All right. I'm going to do a stat blast. Stat blast. Okay. Okay. 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 D still past So the other day I was looking at Gary Templeton's career and Gary Templeton, he won a silver slugger. He won two silver sluggers. And I remember Gary Templeton being a pretty good hitter. I remember his baseball card had some bold ink. And sure enough, you know, when he won his first silver slugger, he was pretty good hitter. In fact, he led the league in triples three years in a row in his early twenties. Then after that, they invented the silver slugger. He won the first one at shortstop, but then he won it again

four years later and he hit that year 258, 312, 320, which is a 633 OPS, which is a 633 ops which is a 79 ops plus he won the silver slugger award with a 79 ops plus now i thought that was outlandish and this got me wondering a few things and and while wondering this i did sort of get steered to a reddit thread on what is the worst who was the worst player ever to win an award which is i think i don't think they mean the worst player i think they mean the worst performance to ever win an award and in parentheses they put gold glove silver slugger cy young etc and there are 356 comments but like essentially no mention of any silver slugger in this whole thing like there's lots of talk about mvps and cy young's but basically silver slugger in this whole thing. Like there, there's lots of talk about MVPs and Cy Young's, but basically silver slugger awards,

no matter how bad they are, they don't really get, they don't get mentioned. I think the only mention in here actually is someone saying that DJ LeMay, who's 2016 silver slugger. And DJ LeMay that year was like incredible. He won the batting title. He had a, you know, I think he was the best hitting shortstop in baseball or in the National League that year.

I don't know why the person's so mad about it. But anyway. Oh, and also didn't win the Silver Slugger. So maybe that's what he's complaining about. So it's someone else could want it. Anyway, doesn't matter. So then I wondered, is Gary Templeton the worst player to win an award? So the way that I looked at this was, obviously, shortstop.

It's not fair to say, well, this player had a bad hitting line because maybe he's a catcher or a shortstop or, for that matter, a pitcher. And he's being compared to others at his position. And so you don't have to be as good a hitter as a short stop to win a silver slugger award. So what I did is I compared each hitters adjusted OPS to the adjusted OPS of all players at their position that year. And I wanted to see whether there was anybody who was worse than their position's average. And I'm going to first tell you,

Gary Templeton was not worse than the average shortstop that year. He had a 633 OPS. But NL shortstops in 1984 were really, really bad. And if you look at it, he wasn't that outrageous of a pick. In fact, there really wasn't a bet. There was a better shortstop. There were a couple of shortstops that you would have picked over him, but nobody who had kind of played as much. And there were like low batting averages and even the ones who hit better than him at low batting averages. So Gary Templeton is a worthy answer to this, but not the answer. I wanted to

see if there's anybody who's actually worse than the average player at their position. And so I found four players, not counting pitchers, four players who were worse than average at their position. So they were silver slugger. They're only going up against other people at their position. And yet they somehow managed to win the award despite being worse than the average person at their position, which suggests that they were probably a lot worse than the best at their position. So fourth one, the best of the four, is Pete Rose, who in 1981 won the Silver Slugger Award at first base despite having how many home runs do you think?

I don't know. I don't know. You're clicking. What are you clicking? Nothing. You can't click when you're thinking of an answer. That makes me think that you're clicking to find the answer. It's zero.

He had zero home runs. He didn't hit any, Sam. It was zero. He slugged. He slugged with a bat literally made out of silver. It was so hard to hit with that he could not get enough bat speed to hit a home run. He had zero home runs. But he wasn't actually all that bad.

He was a lot worse than other first basemen in the league that year, but he was a 118 OPS plus. The league average was like 119 or like 118 plus some decimals. Keith Hernandez that year should have won. He had a 142 OPS plus, but he also didn't have that much power and Pete Rose had a better batting average. Pedro Guerrero was better that year, but he didn't have that much power and Pete Rose had a better batting average. Bill Buckner never had that much power and Pete Rose had a slightly better batting average. And the power hitter of the group was Dave Kingman, who had 22 homers, but was not very good overall. So you could sort of imagine with 1981 sophistication coming to the conclusion that Pete Rose,

who did hit.325 and did have.391 on base percentage, was worth commemorating. Partly he was worse than the league average that year, partly because it was a very good year for hitting first baseman. All right, but still, Pete Rose, that's one. Number two is Joseose canseco who won the silver slugger award as a dh in 1998 despite having an on-base percentage of 318 edgar martinez was a dh that year yeah and he he led the league in on-base percentage with 429

yeah i have no idea i do know how jose canco won this. The answer is that he hit 46 home runs, and that's it. That's the entire thing. He hit 46 home runs. He was a.237,.318,.518 hitter that year. He led the league in strikeouts. Edgar Martinez, meanwhile, hit.322,.429,.565, led the league on base percentage and had a.993 OPS and a.158 OPS+. Eric Davis was very good that year with

a 151 OPS plus. Tim Salmon was very good that year. Darryl Strawberry was very good that year, although did not play the full year. Matt Stairs had his best year that year, would have been a much more worthy player. Jose Gonsego finished 11th out of 15 DHs that year in adjusted OPS, but he hit 46 home runs. Nobody else hit 30, and to win a Silver Slugger, everyone knows that it's all home runs, or else it's the player who hits zero home runs. It's one of those two things. It's either zero home runs at a hitting position or 46 home runs. Those are the two ways you win a Silver Slugger award. So Jose Canseco. home runs those are the two ways you win a silver slugger award so jose can say go number three is carlos lee who was an outfielder now they don't split outfielder up and so lee okay lee benefits too because he's he's being compared against all outfielders for this exercise including center

fielders but even with that the left fielder carlos lee finished 24th in OPS Plus among National League outfielders. He won the award. In fact, 10 players that year, 10 outfielders in the National League, played full seasons and had higher batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage than Carlos Lee. They beat him in all three, 10 of them. I don't know what you're looking at, but apparently Carlos Lee had it. He led the league in sacrifice flies.

That could be it. Otherwise, he didn't do it. It doesn't make any sense. So Miguel Cabrera won one of the other ones. And Andrew Jones, that was his MVP year, led the league in home runs. He won the other one. But like Ken Griffey Jr. had a higher everything than Carlos Lee and also hit more home runs than him.

I guess it's RBIs, but, like, Jason Bay. Jason Bay, holy cow. 306, 402, 559. Hit 32 home runs. He was fantastic. Stole 21 bases and only got caught once. Give him the award. There's a lot of players here who should have gotten it over carlos lee

but carlos lee got it 24th in the national league in adjusted ops among outfielders but the very worst of these is benito santiago whose adjusted ops was only 90 as high as the league average so he's by far the furthest away from the league average he hit 248 282 so 282 on base percentage 362 as a catcher in 1988 he won the award and truthfully there is not a attractive candidate here there are better candidates but there is not a attractive one alan ashby was the only catcher in the National League who was above average as a hitter that year, and he only played 73 games.

Mike Lavallee had the best on-base percentage of any of them, but he only hit two home runs. And then you've got Tony Pena had a very similar year to Benito Santiago, but a little less power and a little more on-base. Anyway, Santiago shouldn't have won it, did win it. Worst award winner ever, whatever that Reddit question said. He's the worst, Benito Santiago.

There you go. So that's the stat buzz. All right. Should we do one more quick one? Sure. All right, quick one. I have sent it to you. Sam, it hasn't come through. Well will i mean it's only one edit either way whether we

have to wait for 30 seconds or 45 seconds it's just one edit maybe i didn't maybe i'm and maybe i didn't maybe i'm stalling so i can look at the election results it came this is very short do you boo umpires? Because I imagine that you're not generally a booer. Like you don't probably boo a lot of players just because you're mad at them or they failed. Yeah, no. And so yet with umpires, are you? Do you boo an umpire that you're mad at and or who failed? I have both for reasons professional and because I worry greatly about how it makes other human beings feel, have tried to just like stop booing in a baseball context generally. I don't know if I have told this story on this podcast before, so if I have, forgive me, but I went to a

game a couple years back with a friend of mine who was a team employee, and he got us some very nice seats. Not right behind home plate, but, you know, like nice behind home seats. And he was wearing his team badge. He was wearing his credentials. And I was there as a civilian. Like, you know, I wasn't working. I drank a beer.

So I was just there hanging out. But also I'm sitting next to my friend who had, you know, team identification on. And it was late in the game. It was a close game. And the team that I preferred was up to bat. Did not ask for help from the first base umpire on whether or not the batter had checked his swing. This was on the first swing. And then my friend could tell I was getting agitated by that because we have talked about this. Like, you should just ask for help. Just ask for help. They don't get overruled very often.

They agree. Generally, it goes around all the time. It does the hand. But like, ask for help. You should ask for help from a person who has a better vantage. Did not do that. So I got frustrated and my friend had a nervous look. And so I thought about booing and instead I yelled, ask for help. And then batter went again. I thought checked his swing, although admittedly I was not at a good vantage to know. And so then the home plate umpire did appeal down and the first base ump signaled that he had gone around

and I yelled, be a better helper. And my friend looked less stressed after that because I think that he was thinking that that one beer had done a great deal more work than one beer should and that I was going to be sassy and embarrass him. he was thinking that that one beer had done a great deal more work than one beer should, and that I was going to be sassy and embarrass him. But I just encouraged people to ask for help in professional settings. And that's the last time we teach kids, like really early.

So I think it ended up being fine. I don't really boo umps that often, like in a serious way. Sometimes when everyone in a ballpark is booing, especially when fans are booing because they don't like close calls on sort of called strikes where they can't visualize the strike zone. And so they're booing, but they don't know if it was a good call or not. They just don't know. They can't see it, but they're going to boo anyway because they want to stand up for their guys. Sometimes I will boo in like a mocking way, but not very loud in case the umpire can hear it. I think that I will not boo at all once the robo umps come,

even for moments that have nothing to do with calling the strike zone, because I find it just like horrifying that we are going to take away this most important part of an umpire's job and then ask them to sweep up the plate i just find it awful i think it's cruel so i'm not gonna boo then at all just like because i feel really bad for uh i feel bad i'm gonna feel bad about it i think that we read umpires as not as judges but like as cops who are there like bust up a. And so that's why people feel comfortable doing it. Even though it's a really hard job and they actually do it incredibly well considering how difficult it is. But they don't read as judges in like a dignified way to us.

I wonder if it's because their tummies end up looking kind of sweaty when it's really hot. So they don't seem distinguished. I do not notice the sweaty tummies. You will notice it forever now because what happened- But the ballplayers are sweating like- Yeah, but the problem is that the umps wear, it's a washed out black. And it's not wicking. It's not a sporting material in quite the same way that a uniform is.

Come on. Nobody is uglier than- I don't want to name a particular pitcher, but nobody is uglier than a sweaty pitcher. Right, but- Nobody wears their sweat worse, I should say, than a sweaty pitcher. They have, you know, human stomachs of various sizes. And when it's really hot, what will happen is their warm tummies lie on their, you know, they bend over and they make the fronts of their pants. I do not accept this at all. I think, I do not accept that there is a...

It makes them look like they pee their pants. I do not believe that we are booing them because we look like they're they pee their pants i do not believe that we are booing them because we are mad they're unathletic no no i don't accept this theory no no i think it's not that they're unathletic it's that they're not distinguished like if they stood back there and wore like a wig like you you know, judges do in English courts. I think we should look at that. Everyone knows Americans love an English judge. Hey, man, that's like, you know, they have a whole cheering section predicated on this in the Bronx,

even though they have a lot of them and they look like they're sitting in a jury box. So that part doesn't make any sense. I guess I just want there to be some integrity and legal metaphors. But I think there's what he laughs. I don't have a good take on whether I should be booing umpires. Before I sent this question, I had not really thought that much about it. And I think I have traditionally booed umpires, although now I don't care about anything enough to yell. Like in life, I've just run out of emotion.

But if I had to guess, I think that the key detail why we somehow are comfortable booing umps, but generally frown upon booing players because we know it hurts players, is that we see the players booing umps. Like they're constantly, they're not booing, they're not going boo, but they are constantly yelling at how bad the ump is doing. It's just a running thing. And whereas nobody's yelling at players on the field telling them how bad they are, it is not part of the game to yell at players, either opposing players or for the umpire to yell at the players and go, Ah, you failed. Why are you failing all the time? You failed again.

No one does that to players they're very supportive and so we just get this message that that the players are trying hard and need our support and the umpires are awful and everyone should hate them and it comes from the dugouts i think yeah i think that the dugouts are a really big part of it i think that that's like that's like 99 of it but i think that the part of it that isn that that's like that's like 99 percent of it but i think that the part of it that isn't that is the sweaty laps like you should you should uh oh i sent this to the wrong thing like i just i just sent you a piece that i wrote about a red sox royals game from august this this this is like a great fantastic article i tweeted I tweeted this article. I love this article.

Well, you were very kind to read it before it went to print, and you gave very helpful suggestions. But look at his sweaty lap. It's almost making a face. This one looks less like he peed his pants and more like there's a face. Boy, I just do not think that the average fan. Do you mean to tell me that i noticed a thing that is not relatable to the common baseball experience and then put it in an article you just knocked me over with that we don't talk enough about how there's a human being whose last name is love lady who pitches

professional baseball innings we should talk about that every day i think if we knew how much the umpires were sweating we would boo them a lot less. Aww, that's such an optimistic view of humans. I like that. That's good. They oughta, in fact, that's what they oughta do. They oughta really ham it up. They oughta like constantly just be like acting like slouching and talking about how hot it is.

Complaining. I don't think we'll like them more, but I think that we would just be like, I'll just let them be. Yeah. Look at that. look at that look look at that guy he's sweaty all over all right well we did it we didn't we didn't infringe on any copyrights i'm so relieved we made our own content yeah we did we did a good job ben got to be on vacation we will be back later on in this week with an episode doing a team preview with the red socks and the giants so people should look out for that.

But hey, Sam, thanks for hanging out and writing emails to yourself. All right, well, I wrote them to you. I'll talk to you later this week. Sounds good. All right, that'll do it for today. Thank you for listening. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon

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Christian Patrick Michaels, Bobby, that's just Bobby. And now I only want to try them. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. And you can rate review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and other podcast platforms.

Keep your actual questions and comments can rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your actual questions and comments for me, Sam, and Ben coming via email at podcast at fangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. We promise to respond to a few real listener emails soon. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. Might want to edit that, Dylan. Sam and I will be back with another season preview pod a little later this week. Until then, have a great week and remember to wash your hands. You gotta be cruel to be kind