Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1588: Full Nelson

Episode Date: September 9, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller discuss the backstory behind the Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio trade, break down a clichéd postgame quote by Gavin Lux, and marvel at the historic excellence of 40-year-old Twins slugger Nelson Cruz. Audio intro: Todd Rundgren, "Cliché" Audio outro: Chip Taylor, "Santa Cruz" Link to the Chicago Reader on the Cubs and […]

One more go, one more chance, one more orchestra to sing and dance Be a friend and speak his piece and it's for a time To put their heads together and try to make the night unwind to make the night unwind. And it's late, it's almost time to make his move or it's time to turn and walk away. So he plays now. Oh, he's here. Good morning and welcome to episode 1588 of Effectively Wild, Please share First, wanted to mention that, of course, we lost another Hall of Famer over the weekend, Lou Brock, shortly after the passing of Tom Seaver.

And one of the first things I did when I saw the news about Brock was to go look up their batter versus pitcher stats, as I think a few other people did. And as others have noted, they were each other's most common opponent. So they faced each other, I think, 157 times. Brock was the most common batter Seaver ever faced. Seaver was the most common pitcher Brock ever faced. And Seaver definitely got the best of it. He had a 636 OPS allowed against Brock, which was not much different from his 626 OPS allowed career against everyone. So he kind of had the upper hand in their head-to-head matchup. But they were kind of linked in that sense and also in the sense that they were both nicknamed the franchise.

But I wanted to just mention something that Sarah Sanchez, the writer and podcaster, tweeted after Brock's death. Podcaster tweeted after Brock's death Because when Seaver died We were talking about how circumstances Dictate players' careers And the way that they're remembered And in Seaver's case It was free agency and the draft And that weird derby

That there was just a lottery To sign Seaver after the Whole mix-up with his initial Signing and drafting And in Brock's case It was a more nefarious force, I think, that shaped his career and how we remember him. So Sarah was tweeting an excerpt from a Chicago Reader article from 2014 that I will link, but it says,

There was an unwritten quota system in baseball Buck O'Neill wrote in a 2002 essay in Baseball is America, a book published for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, they didn't want but so many black kids on a major league ball club. O'Neill was a Cubs coach in 1964 when the team had five black players. One of them was a young outfielder named Lou Brock. When O'Neill heard that general manager John Holland was planning to trade Brock, he advised him not to. I don't think we'll have our best ball club on the field, he told Holland. O'Neill wrote in his essay that Holland then started pulling out letters and notes from people, season ticket holders, saying that their grandfather had season tickets here at Wrigley Field or their grandmother and their families had come here for years.

And do you know what these letters went on to say? What are you trying to make the Chicago Cubs into? The Kansas City Monarchs? The Cubs traded Brock to St. Louis that summer for sore-armed white pitcher Ernie Broglio It's regarded as one of the worst trades in baseball history Brock helped the Cardinals win the World Series that year And went on to set many base-stealing records And total more than 3,000 hits on his way to the Hall of Fame Broglio won seven games for the Cubs before his bum arm forced

him to retire in 1966. And it continues, Banks told me, the author of this article, he recalled the club trading away many young black players. They were with us two years and then we'd trade them. I don't know why. Maybe they just wanted more veteran players. Banks said the early black major leaguers often expressed regrets to each other about missing college. We played the game He said he and William still joke about it when they get together I'll say, Billy, where are those scholarships Our kids are going to get? So everyone knows the Brock for Broglio

Trade that was in every Obituary that comes up Every time Brock is mentioned But the backstory for that trade Probably a little less well-known So wanted to mention that. I didn't know that. I think I had always filed the Brock for Broglio trade kind of like the Bagwell for Larry Anderson

trade and the Smoltz for Doyle Alexander trade, where it's like a sort of a young player who years later made you really regret it. The Ryan Sandberg trade. Those are the sort of ones i i think of and in all those cases sandberg bagwell smoltz player was not a really a major league or a major league regular at that point brock i did not realize that he immediately unlike those other ones he immediately humiliated the cubs and made them look really really really, really, I mean, just atrocious. So he got traded mid-season, and he had.2 war with the Cubs and 5.7 war with the Cardinals that year, which makes it actually his best season.

That was his best season. He was 25 years old. After the trade, he became an MVP candidate and ended up finishing 10th in MVP voting that year, despite playing two months with the Cubs. The MVP vote entirely reflects what he did after the trade. So I mean, really like an immediate all-time disaster for the Cubs. And it's good. I mean, karmically, I'm glad that the GMs didn't get three years of distance from him doing that.

Right, yeah. And so when people talk about the Cubs curse and the Red Sox curse, a lot of that curse was self-inflicted. I mean, those teams had legacies of this sort of thing long after the color barrier was ostensibly broken. There was still sort of a quota system, and some teams were more rigid about that than others. And they paid the price because they they didn't have the best talent and uh you know they sort of deserved it they brought it on themselves in that way although it is interesting that uh i was also looking at the post-dispatch obituary for brock by rick hummel and in that piece it's mentioned that

the cardinals hated that trade. The Cardinals players initially at least didn't like it at all. It quotes Gibson as saying, we thought it was the worst trade ever. And Tim McCarver said, we were so close to Broglio, our friendship blinded us to what kind of effect Lou would have on the team until we saw him run. So that's kind of interesting. Like maybe the Cubs players may not have liked it because they knew how good Brock was, but the Cardinals players didn't know what they were getting either. You know, in those days, I think players didn't have maybe as great a sense of how good players on other teams were. And I think it's just a natural tendency that players get attached to their teammates.

And that's one reason why you wouldn't necessarily want players running the team, you know, because they get attached to their players. It's something that we went through with the Stompers too, where we saw that, you know, players didn't want certain moves made because they liked guys or they didn't like guys and they weren't able to look past that. Or we were affected by that ourselves because we grew to like guys or not like guys and sometimes that can make you miss you know the the talent and the performance and they didn't know i guess that broglio wasn't going to last very long of course yeah and on a lighter note i saw a quote in a game

story which i don't often read these days but but Craig Calcaterra linked to it. This was in an AP story about a Dodgers game, and Gavin Lux, the rookie, hit two homers in that game. And here was his quote. Anytime you help the team win, it's always good. Just going up there, looking to have a good a good at bat trying to help any way i can i got a pretty good pitch to hit that's his only quote in the whole story and i can't really think of a more bull durham cliched cliche quote than that teach me something new man i need to learn teach me something well you got something to write with?

Good. It's time to work on your interviews. My interviews? What do I gotta do? You're gonna have to learn your clichés. You're gonna have to study them. You're gonna have to know them. They're your friends. Write this down. We gotta play them one day at a time. Got to play...

It's pretty boring. Of course it's boring. That's the point. Write it down. One day at a time. All right, I'm just happy to be here. Hope I can help the ball club. I know. Write it down. I just want to give it my best shot, and the good Lord willing, things will work out. Good Lord willing, things will work out. Yep. I think that might be like the platonic ideal

of the baseball cliche post-game quote. That's like the one that people point to when they say we don't need game stories anymore because players don't say anything revealing. This is like exhibit A. Crash Davis or maybe by a media relations person coming up or maybe he just you know picked picked it up by osmosis maybe he picked it up from Bull Durham from all I know or from teammates and veterans but this is just such a quintessential example he strung together like three different cliched quotes just into one quote anytime you help the the team win, it's good. Just going up there, looking to have a good at bat, trying to help any way I can. I got a pretty good pitch to hit. And I feel like, I don't know, if I were a baseball player, I think I understand why they default to this because people are always asking them, what was that pitch you hit? What did you

do there? And there's only so much you can say, really. And I got a pretty good pitch to hit often is actually the case. And just going up there looking to have a first at bat and I took this one because of this and then I thought this was a that but it was at this like there's usually not anything all that interesting to say it's just well I'm a baseball player I've swung it hundreds of thousands of pitches I'm pretty good at this I happen to hit this one well but uh I don't think I could bring myself to to do this if I were a baseball player or if I were a rookie even. Like, you know, it's not like he's been doing this for 20 years at this point. Like it's all new and fresh and exciting to him, relatively speaking. I feel like it would take me a few years of being asked this in big league games to sort of pound away my will to answer in an interesting way.

Yeah, you don't have a lot of time to think. You know, like someone asks you the question and then they're immediately looking at you to respond. And the safe thing to do is to definitely repeat the thing that the 37-year-old veteran said a few days earlier. To just, you know it's okay to say, I'm just trying to help the team win. And I wonder if in general, if these players had say, we're given the questions in advance and then had 30 minutes to think about them and then come back and answer them. If you would get

a collectively, a more interesting group of responses or a less interesting group of responses, because the, the, the immediacy of the reply, I think probably makes them, you know, like almost go lizard brain and just be extremely cautious. And like, there's just not even really any incentive to think about the question because in a lot of cases, all that might do is make you accidentally say something bold and, you know, regrettable. I should say bold and or regrettable on the other hand some players are interesting and that's specifically because they they answer the

questions like spontaneously and if you gave them 30 minutes they might talk themselves out of the good answers that you get from the good players so you would probably would lose the the good answers from the players who give good answers now. But you might get more thoughtful. I think you would get a more thoughtful answer from, I don't know if Gavin Lux would or not, but there are probably players who, I bet there are players who go home and think of what they should have said and want to go back and Costanza it the next day. Yeah, probably. But you know you're going to get that question, right?

If you hit the two homers in the game know you're gonna get that question right if you hit the two homers in the game you're the the offensive hero someone's gonna come up and say what did you see or what did he throw you or what did you do out there and he's gotten that question many times in the past which i guess is why he answered this way but yeah like he's not gonna get in trouble he's not gonna unintentionally slight the pitcher or something and say something that would offend anyone or be used as fuel by the opposing team or something. But I don't know. It's just I think I would feel a lot of pressure to say something interesting. I guess maybe what's surprising about this isn't that he said it, but that it was printed.

It obviously adds nothing to the piece whatsoever. So maybe you're more likely to get one of these cliched quotes into a story now just because you don't have access to the clubhouse and only certain players are available and you might not actually get to ask a question. And so if you're tasked with writing a game story, which fewer people are these days, but if you are, then you have fewer quotes to pick from, I guess. But you know, Lex has been a top prospect for a while now, and he's been a professional baseball player for four years or so. So he's gotten this sort of question many times before, I think. And I guess he's just decided, well, I'm not going to devote any portion of my mental energy to answering this. You know, I've got all these other things on my mind. I am just going to pass basically on this kind of question. Just give a stock rote answer.

And either I won't have to think about it or ideally they'll just stop asking me this question in the future. The closest I can come to this from personal experience, I've never been interviewed as much as a major league baseball player has and certainly haven't been asked the same question as many times as Gavin Lux has been asked some form of this question. But closest I can think is when The Only Rule and The MVP Machine came out and our publicists scheduled these radio block interviews where it was like 20 or more radio interviews in a single day or half a day, just back to back to back to back.

And they were with hosts all over the country and none of the hosts had read the book. So they just, you know, they were looking for guests and they just booked me because I had a book out. And so they got some fact sheet about the book same answer to multiple hosts who asked me those questions. But that was extreme circumstances, I would say, in that I was losing my voice by the end of it. And also I wasn't giving cliched answers. I was just giving the same answers that would have ideally sounded original to people in different markets who were not hearing every interview I was giving. My favorite cliched answer recently was when the

Fox broadcast had Fernando Tatis Jr. mic'd up. And it's a similar thing where he's being, you know, the audio is cool and charming, but also there's a lot of pressure on him. He's in the middle of a game. He was playing shortstop. And so there's a lot of pressure on him and he's in the middle of a game he was playing shortstop and so there's a lot of i mean if you wanted someone to be clever and like tell you a funny joke in that scenario it would be a lot to ask and so you know you probably even more than usual default to uh safe uh safe answers and i don't even know how how maybe it was even hard to hear the broadcasters for all i know in the earpiece but at one point they uh they're a runner gets on first and the broadcast says so all right walk through this. How do you prepare for this double play situation? And he says, you know, just try to be myself. Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot to ask. I think

an in-game interview for a fielder, like There was some discussion about that in the Facebook group and about whether it was appropriate or not because on the one hand, of course, we all want Fernando Tatis to talk and speak and get exposure and that's great and I think we all like when players are mic'd up and you get to hear

them, whether in an exhibition game or after the fact when they put together some clips that the players were just naturally saying, but expecting them to do an interview while they're on the field. It's one thing to have the manager do an interview between innings or something, but to have someone who's on the field, I know there's downtime between pitches, but still, that would kind of take you out of it a little bit, right? I mean, I saw some kind of get-off-my-lawn-type comments or tweets about that, and other people saying, well, it's great, any exposure for Tatis, any, you know, interaction with the players is a positive for baseball. for baseball. And I'm kind of torn between those two things because I certainly agree with the second. And yet, if I were doing that job, I don't think I would want to be interviewed in the middle

of the game. I guess it's up to the player. If the player's comfortable with it, I guess that's okay. But if I were running the team, I don't know that I would want that either. So speaking of Tatis, a year ago, I wrote an article about the most watchable players every year of the past 20 some years and declared that Tatis was the current champion of that. And I think we discussed, I think that that should be an award. And so I have been revisiting it for an article that I'm working on right now, looking at who the player is this year. And I mean, look, to be obvious and upfront, it's still Tatis. Like, there's no doubt about it.

But in the act of kind of arranging my thoughts about this, I ranked every player who has appeared. I ranked like 300 players by most watchable. And I just like, who is this? Is this one higher than this one? Okay. And until I had a spreadsheet with all of them ranked. And so Nelson Cruz is a player yeah and i uh i had to rank nelson cruz so ben i want to hear what what

are your thoughts about nelson cruz tell me like when you hear nelson cruz at this moment in in his career what what significance do you attach to him how How watchable do you find him? Is he someone that you would flip to? Is he someone you would flip away from? Is he someone that you would recommend a baseball fan check out? Is there anything new under the sun for him? What's your sort of general sense of the Nelson Cruz storyline? I'm pretty in awe of him at this point. I mean, he is the best hitter in baseball this year, right, by WRC+.

He is tied with Trout and Tatis for the home run lead. And he's ancient, and he's 40 years old. So it's incredible. I wrote an article five years ago, more than five years ago now, for Grantland about Cruz, where the headline was like how Nelsonelson cruz beat the aging curve to become one of the best hitters of baseball that was five years ago and he's gotten better he's had a lot better he had his best season ever last year and so he all this is not even like a oh well it's 42 games in a short season he had his best season last year and now he's having his best season this

year. And he is, I mean, yeah, he's outrageous. He leads the American League in on base percentage. He leads the American League in slugging percentage. And so as I was making this spreadsheet, I was shocked that Nelson Cruz was like, he's floating somewhere between number three and number six in all of baseball for me right now in terms of players that i want to watch players who i think are going to reward me over the course of a game uh with a something interesting to see so i just thought we we should talk about him because uh it has been five years since you wrote that article nelson cruz is not a player i mean he has existed throughout this entire podcast's history as a regular, as a star, as something like a star, but we don't talk that much about Nelson Cruz. And I feel like he is doing, he has switched over from doing something that's worth an article to maybe doing something that is really like historic.

something that is is really like historic and so i'm just gonna give you i'll give you maybe well first okay so first i'm gonna give you a fact and then i'm gonna give you a list and so the the fact is i mean i could do this with any age really like like i'm gonna pick from age 28 on but uh you could do it from any age after 28, and it actually gets more impressive. But from age 28 on, he's 10th all time in home runs. So the only players who've ever homered more from age 28 on are Bonds, Ruth, Aaron, Palmeiro, Ortiz, Tomey, Mays, Sosa, McGuire, and Cruz. And you'll notice that Sosa, McGuire, Palmeiro, and Bonds, they all had these incredible late career surges that were, you know, tied to the PED era. Oh, and, you know, David Ortiz, too, although I think that it's while David Ortiz has a PED connection, it's I think less suspected that that relates to his late career longevity, just as Nelson Cruz had a PED suspension, but I don't think that it's part of the storyline that people talk about right now. So anyway, if you look at 35 on, he's going to be third by the end of, basically, if he plays another year, he'll certainly be third behind Bonds and Aaron. And if he plays another two years, he'll probably pass Aaron. So probably from age 35 on only Barry Bonds you know famously jacked Barry Bonds will have more home runs from age 35 on and now here's a here's a list these are

players who were Nelson Cruz's age contemporaries when he was 28 so at the start of this run when he basically got his first starting job in the majors as a 28 year old with texas uh these are some of his age 28 contemporaries in baseball that year hank blaylock uh garrett jones mike jacobs mike jacobs remember him haven't thought about him in a while kevin kuzmanoff was actually a year younger than him. Jorge Cantu was a year younger than him. Remember Ben Francisco? And do you remember Lance with a Y, Lance Nix?

Yeah. He was a contemporary of Nelson Cruz. Ryan Garko was a contemporary of Nelson Cruz. Wow. Those guys have entered, remember those guys' territory. They totally, I mean, these are players who are 10 years out of the game. You know, Micah Hoffpair,

our pal John Baker is the same age as Nelson Cruz. We couldn't talk him out of retirement to play on the Stompers five years ago. And he's the same age as Nelson Cruz, who's the best hitter in baseball. And by the way, Bill Hall, Bill Hall was a contemporary, Ronnie Paulino, Jeff Kepinger.

I mean, I love these players, but they're old, they're old. They're from another era. And Nelson Cruz is from this era. The other thing about Nelson Cruz, by the way, Fred Lewis, is that he's born on July 1st. And so this is his age 39 season.

And all those players I compared him to were the same baseball age as him. But he's born on July 1st, which means that he is the oldest 39-year-old you can possibly be. He's actually 40 now. If he'd been born one day earlier, then this would be his age 40 season, which I believe David Ortiz retired at age 40. And if you bumped this up from age 29 onward, he'd be even higher on all those leaderboards. So yeah, I mean, I think that we have talked in the past about how one of the

good things about war, obviously, is that it organizes a lot of information and makes it so that you can process it in a kind of orderly, rational way and so that you can compare, you know, a player like Adam Dunn with a player like Juan Pierre, or a player from one era to another, a player from one ballpark to the other, and all those things. But the downside of it is that because it does all of that, it can make it hard to look beyond that one column. It can be hard to say that other things might matter as well. And you sort of end up getting a little lazy. And when it comes to, say, the Hall of Fame, it's hard to justify going against the war leaderboard. And Nelson Cruz, I feel like, has become for me an area where I am much more impressed by the things he's done than by the war.

And, like, it's a good war. He's a good war player. He's had a great career. He's been an extremely valuable player. There's no knocking his war or anything like that. But I think in the last couple years, like maybe the last two years since he became a twin, he has crossed over from the other 40 to 50 war careers in my mind to maybe something elevated a little higher as one of the dozen or so most memorable players of this era. Yeah. I think that's fair because he has an extraordinary elite

performance on one side of the ball, right? I mean, he's less watchable than Tatis in that he's only watchable in the batter's box. So he doesn't really do anything on the bases that is watchable, and he's literally unwatchable in the field because he's not there. So it's only when he's batting that he is entertaining, really, whereas Tatis is entertaining at all times or potentially entertaining at all times. But what Cruz is doing is equally impressive in a way. It's not as valuable. I mean, you're not disputing that War is is appraising him pretty accurately you're not saying he's actually more valuable than the stats say he is you're just saying that it's more impressive than the war alone would indicate which i i think is true because the fact that he has

sustained this performance not even sustained but enhanced this performance at this age is pretty shocking. I mean, he's in like all-time great territory for a player this age, as you were just describing there. So given that this skill is completely intact and actually improving with age, I am pretty blown away by that, even as I acknowledge that he is one-dimensional in the sense that he's only valuable as a batter, although he is valuable in many dimensions as a batter. I mean, right now he has a.398 BABIP, which is pretty lofty for a player like Nelson Cruz, although it was.351 last year. So it's not like he's usually a low BABIP guy. last year so it's not like he's uh usually a low babbitt guy it's just that you know he probably can't be a 400 babbitt guy with his speed but still he's uh just really good he you know he strikes out a fair amount but not much more than the average these days and he walks a pretty fair

amount and i guess he just hits the ball so hard or in a way, in such a way that he ends up getting a lot of base hits. And of course, he hits a ton of homers. And I guess it's less impressive that he hits all these homers in the sense that he's doing it at the highest home run rate point in the game's history. Although, you know, he hit 40 in 2014 before the ball was juiced. So it's not like he is a product of the juiced ball or something. before the ball was juiced, so it's not like he is a product of the juiced ball or something. But it's a little less impressive if you're stacking up home runs after a certain age against players who were hitting home runs in less home-run-rific eras, but also more impressive in that he's totally going against the aging curve trend of this time.

And unlike Tatis, who's sort of the face of baseball and that he's part of this youth movement that has really reshaped the way players age. They seem to get to their peaks earlier and descend from their peak sooner. And Nelson Cruz is just the glaring exception to that. He is totally going against that trend. Yeah, he's also going against, by the way, the launch angle trend. His launch angle was never particularly notable, but has actually been going down. And so like the average launch angle for balls that he's hit this year is eight degrees, which is one of the lowest in the league compared to like, say, Mike Trout is 23 degrees and Joey Gallo's like in the high 20s. And so he's not like a pure fly ball hitter. He's not even a fly ball hitter, really, which I don't know, that probably helps his Babbitt

in a lot of ways. And you wouldn't expect it to help his home runs, but maybe the combination of his strength and the juiced ball and the type of contact that he makes gives him enough home runs. So yeah, I guess what I'm saying when I point out the launch angle thing is that he doesn't seem to be in any way representative of the era. Like he's not a product of the era in the same way that maybe some other hitters are. He hasn't really changed with the era. He just seems to be hitting more balls hard. The percentage of balls that he hits hard is getting better. And as strikeouts continue to rise, his strikeout rate hasn't

gotten any worse. And so that helps. But really, he's just a strong hitter. He hits the ball hard a lot. And that's a fun profile for a baseball player he's not like there are i will i will say that there are home run hitters in the game right now that i don't particularly care to watch that i don't particularly consider watchable and maybe i did at one point but i've kind of gotten old of the shtick but watching a to me watching a dead pole uppercut swing has kind of lost the charm. And the sort of more controlled swing of just of a naturally strong hitter is a little bit more fun for me. So anyway, I'm looking at Nelson Cruz's baseball prospectus comments from over the years. nelson cruz's baseball prospectus comments from over the years and so like as late as 2008 the smart opinion of him was that he's quote probably another quadruple a talent as late as 2011

the smart opinion was that he probably isn't a middle-of-the-order hitter for a championship-caliber team. So there's something about his age that is an incredible part of his story. And there's also, I think, something about his unlikelihood, the fact that he not only is lasting a long time, but that he bloomed late. He not only is lasting a long time, but that he bloomed late and was, I mean, if you think about Nelson Cruz, I guess, in some way, if you just look at his career, every team that has signed him has gotten an incredible surprise and an incredible bargain. So the Rangers, of course, picked him up for nothing. He was floating around at that point. Was he getting waved? He might have even been getting waved. Like Nelson Cruz was an athletic.

Do you remember Nelson Cruz was an A? So 2000 traded by the Mets to the A's for a minor leaguer. 2004 traded by the A's to the Brewers for Keith Ginter. 2006 traded as a throw-in by the Brewers to the Rangers in the Carlos Lee Francisco Cordero deal. But he was just a throw-in to that. And then spends a couple of years in the minors. So the Rangers obviously get this like total Batista-like late bloom superstar in the middle of their order. And then he hits free agency. And remember, do you remember that this was 2013 and he wanted a four year deal?

And there was like at the time there was almost like a little I don't even know if it was a little, there was some mockery of it that this DH, aging DH who had just come off a steroids suspension or PD suspension was looking for a four-year deal. And that was considered very excessive by the off-season writing. And he didn't get a four-year deal. He ended up settling for a one-year deal for like $8 million with Baltimore. And then he wins the home run crown in Baltimore. And then he gets the four-year deal. And so at the time, I think everybody went, wow, Nelson Cruz sure showed us. But the four-year deal was still seen as even kind of more silly because now he was a year older.

And he was a very good hitter but that was all he was and it's not like he was he wasn't hitting like peak Miguel Cabrera or anything like that and so the Seattle deal was I think widely panned as Seattle falling for it and you know I think at the time Seattle was having trouble landing the superstar that they were trying to get like they had kept on being involved in trade talks and or free agency pursuits with players who just wouldn't, who wouldn't sign with them. They had, they had the money to offer, but the players wouldn't sign with Seattle. So they had to settle for Nelson Cruz. And no, I don't think anybody really thought that deal was going to go super well for Seattle. And then

they, you know, he, he averages 41 homers a year for four years. And then he hits free agency again, and now he's 38 and he signs a two-year deal with the twins for $26 million, which is just like shockingly low. When you think about even what he had done the previous two years, if you thought that he was going to repeat those, then it would be a tremendous bargain. But of course, he was 37, turning 38, really turning 39. And so you didn't expect much. And this was sort of the low point of defensively, oh, I don't know, maybe we're not at the low point, but of defensively limited free agent sluggers getting paid on the market. There was just not

that much demand for that type. And so he signs a two-year deal. And now, of course, he's turned it into a massive, massive, massive, massive bargain for the twins. So as of now, Nelson Cruz, who is the same age as Adam Dunn, and Adam Dunn retired five years ago. Did you know that? Adam Dunn retired five years ago. Did you know that? Adam Dunn retired six years ago. Six years ago. He has not played 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. This is his sixth year of being retired. So Adam Dunn retired six years ago and really hasn't been good for a decade. His last really good year, arguably 2012, but also maybe arguably 2010,

was close to a decade ago. Adam Dunn made more money in his career than Nelson Cruz has made yet. Nelson Cruz still hasn't caught up to Adam Dunn. So now he's going to be a free agent again this year. And I wonder what, now what do you think? What happens? What is the market for 40-year-old, really almost 41-year-old Nelson Cruz? So what's the market for him? production and probably would have been dinged less for the other things that he doesn't do. So I hadn't really thought of that. This is kind of the wrong era probably for him to maximize his earnings. But I think probably at this point, I mean, he could get a two-year deal, I think, right? That's what he's on now, right? Two years 26 is what he signed for. And at that age, I just, I don't think anyone would go beyond that. I don't know if even he would want to go beyond that. So probably two, right? Like if he wanted to go year to year, then I think a lot of teams would

be happy to do that. And he could cash in, right? I think a lot of teams would be in the Nelson Cruz market for one year, but for two, which I think is probably the most he could realistically get unless we're talking about just some longer-term deal where it's more of a fiction about bringing down the average annual value, I would guess that he'll get probably more than his current contract, which would be pretty incredible if it happened because he'd be 40 years old signing it instead of 38. But I don't think he could eclipse that by a lot because there's just going to be a limit just inherently when you're that age. It's so easy to imagine an injury or a quick drop-off in performance but the fact that not only has he not declined but he just keeps improving makes me

think that there are certainly teams that would be happy to sign up for a couple years and elson cruz plus there are twice as many teams with openings at dh Yes, it was a setup. That question was a setup. Because I wonder, I'm now going to transition quickly to that question. How much do you think that that will matter? It's been a very, I mean, it's kind of an odd experiment this year where every team has a DH,

but only half the teams planned to have a DH. Like the fact that they made this rule change basically after rosters had been frozen created this weird scenario where half the league didn't plan to field someone at this position and i don't know whether i i am unclear whether doubling the number of teams that have a dh or that need a dh doubles the number of buyers that have a DH or that need a DH doubles the number of buyers for the DH position. I don't know if that would have, you know, a real upward effect on DH salaries or whether the number of DHs that are kind of like full-time DHs is constant, is held constant by the supply of players who are good enough to take up a roster

spot in that role full time so like if you look at the dhs in the majors this year let's see seven teams that's this if you if you look at players who who have batted as dhs you know how many played appearances everybody has batted at DH? The seven players with the most playing time at DH are all AL teams. So they were all more or less planned. These were planned DHs. So Nelson Cruz, Miguel Cabrera,

Fran Milreis, JD Martinez, Shohei Otani, Jorge Soler, and Edwin Encarnacion. So that's you got your seven. And then you start getting into the NL teams where you have, you know, Marcel Lozuna has become close to a full-time DH, and Jesse Winker has become close to a full-time DH, but they weren't intended to be full-time DHs.

They aren't exactly full-time DHs. They still play from time to time, and then you start really getting into the players that are just part-time or that are not really that where the team is is cycling players in and out and the rest of the al teams are kind of in that in that range so after you're seven you know after edwin and carnosio you have a lot of teams that didn't go into the season with a full-time DH or that plan to use that position to, you know, give players to cycle hitters in and out of the

lineup, to play platoons, to give players a day off, to, you know, be a spot where a player who, you know, suffered a running injury early in the season could end up. And so it's not as though there were already 15 teams shopping for 15 DHs every year or that we're planning to have 15 DHs every year. It could just be that there are seven good DHs in the world, maybe slightly more. Maybe Marcelo Zuna is a good DH and shouldn't really play the field. Jesse Winker seems like a good DH who maybe shouldn't play the field. Maybe there are a few more than that, but that it's not as though the demand drives the number of DHs that exist. You know, like the league has kind of just decided, well, there are like seven to 12 good major league quality hitters who can't play a position in the world.

And we'll sign those players. But then otherwise, we're happy to treat that roster spot as one for flexibility or that's kind of always fluctuating or at the very least, where we're not going to invest a lot, where we're not going to go spend 12% of our payroll on a player there. Yeah. I mean, I think this year, of our payroll on a player there. Yeah, I mean, I think this year NLDHs have a 93 WRC+, ALDHs have a 100 WRC+, so they're just clearly better hitters, I think. Wait, wait, say that again, because I think I maybe had an opposite. What did you say that again?

NLDHs 93 WRC+, and ALDHs 100. Huh, that's interesting, because I did not find, when I did this last night, I found that there was like basically no difference between the leagues. There was like two points of OPS between the leagues. I don't know. Maybe ALDH has had a big night. Maybe. I'm going to- There's a difference now, I think. Go ahead. I'm doing something wrong. But I think, yeah, for this one off season, I think it does help the market. I think there are more teams in that market because, as you said, they did not plan for this. Other teams might have someone who's a good fit for that role already just sitting around, but other teams don't. And I think when you have a player like Nelson Cruz, like Nelson Cruz would obviously make any and every lineup better.

Now, there's no team that wouldn't want to have Nelson Cruz, you know, all else being equal. And so some teams won't have an opening for him, no matter how good he is. So some teams won't have an opening for him, no matter how good he is. He's probably better than whoever their DH is because he's really the best hitter in baseball this year so far. So no one really could be better than that in the DH spot. But other teams just might have too much of a lock jam there are fewer players like that now, I think there is more of a market than there would have been last year, just because in theory, every team would want a hitter like him. And there are certainly some NL teams that have had very bad DH performances this year and who have otherwise been competitive teams and could easily look at the DH as the problem. Another thing that occurs to me that might be boosting Nelson Cruz a little bit is that he is one of the most often shifted right-handed hitters. And the evidence seems to be mounting that shifting on righties is just counterproductive, either in most of the cases or across the board. So this year, let's see, among 137 right-handed hitters with looks like maybe 50 balls in play or something, I'm not sure what the minimum here is, but he is 12th. He has been shifted on 64% of the pitches

he's seen. And I'll just look by year to see how that has increased because I imagine that even in the stat cast period it has probably increased quite a bit and as I mentioned at the end of our last episode last week Russell Carlton followed up on his research on the shift and he found that it helps with most lefties but hurts with most righties that is helps and hurts the defensive team and Tom Tango had a blog post just over the weekend where he looked at it and you know he adjusted for everything and he accounted for the hitter and the batter and the situation and all of that and it's all weighted and he did it in in the optimal way that you could study something

like this and he found that for left-handed hitters and these are huge sample sizes the batter had a 341 weighted on base average with no shift and with the shift the same batter pitcher matchup had a 317 weighted on base average so So 24-point drop because of the shift with left-handed hitters. But for right-handed hitters, 38-point gain, the batter-pitchers, if you have the same batter-pitcher combinations, it's a 38-point gain for the right-handed hitters. They get way better. And Tango concluded, I thought maybe some right-handed hitters deserve to be shifted, that maybe those shifted over 50% of the time are obvious candidates, while

those shifted less often are the ones bringing up the average. No dice. Across the board, regardless of how often a right-handed hitter was shifted, they had a huge gain with the shift. My point remains, why are clubs shifting right-handed hitters at all? So it's starting to seem more and more

like teams just fell in love with the shift so much and found that it worked with lefties and thought, well, why don't we try this against righties? And I know there was some evidence that seemed to suggest that at least for some righties it would help, but now it's really looking like, no, it does the opposite. And look at this. So shift percentage nelson cruz this is his percentage of pitches on which he's been shifted 64.1 percent this year last year 23.7 percent and and that was the highest on record in the stat cast era so the rate at which he's being shifted has gone up it's almost tripled this season and meanwhile his babbitt is way up which

i haven't compared his stats personally with and without the shift but if what's true for seemingly all righties is true for him then it seems like teams are actually taking it easy on him i like to think that maybe he actually isn't defying the aging curve and he's not actually getting better it's just that society Is getting worse around him and He's just steadily just moving on Being himself yes and And this entire thing is really like A decline of like baseball front offices

Story as told through Nelson Cruz it sort of seems like that And I think also One thing that's kind of interesting with him Is that it seems like He has had also an En also an enhancement in his reputation as a mentor and clubhouse presence. Like you hear all the time now how good a guy he is and how much everyone loves him and he's a leader. And I don't think I used to hear that as much about him, whether that was because he's become a better guy or just because he is a more famous player now.

I don't know. Or whether, you know, he's grown into that role. I don't know what it is. But I feel like I hear that more about him now than I used to. And I think there's almost like a Nichols law of catcher defense equivalent when it comes to clubhouse reputation. clubhouse reputation. Like, I think there's an inverse correlation between offensive abilities and perceived chemistry value, which might be real, unlike the Nichols' Law of Catcher Defense, which says that, you know, a catcher's defensive reputation is inversely proportional to their offensive abilities. And there's no really great evidence that that's actually the case. If a

catcher gets better at hitting, that doesn't mean that he got worse at defending, but you just sort of assume or many people have assumed that that's the case because often, I guess, when a catcher can't hit, it's the case that he's a defensive specialist. That's why he's on the roster at all. And so if a catcher can hit, then you assume that he probably can't catch, but sometimes that's not the case. With the clubhouse mentor thing, there's probably some truth to it usually, because if you can't hit or if you're not valuable in some other way that the numbers pick up, then yeah, probably you are

adding some off the field unquantifiable value. And we've talked about that with like the Jason Giambi type, type you know their skills decline as they get older but they hang on for years and years because they are mentors suddenly and cruz has kind of done both similar to david ortiz i guess who was looked on as a beloved leader type even as he was still a great hitter cruz has pulled off that transition too, where he is now not only great and a great hitter, but also beloved and revered just as a person and an influence as well. Do you think that he has improved? Is this mostly about him getting better or is it about him getting more opportunities or being healthy or being evaluated better?

Is this an Edgar Martinez type thing where he didn't get the opportunities that he should have gotten earlier? And we shouldn't actually be talking about Nelson Cruz as this great old hitter. We should be talking about him as just a great career-long hitter. And it took too long for him to establish himself because he wasn't giving the opportunities that he should have like is it a banyes or edgar type career where he was denied opportunities that he should have had or do you think he is just better now and that if 40 year old nelson cruz could go back and talk to you know 26-old Nelson Cruz, that he could impart some lesson maybe that would actually make him better, that he is just an improved player now. Forgive me if I'm not

totally understanding the question, but I think I'm understanding it. I think there's probably a little bit of he could have been a major league regular earlier than age 28 um yeah but that no i think probably he he got better i mean if you if you look at it you know he wasn't good in you know he got 500 plate appearances at age 25 and 26 in a hitter's park and didn't succeed he wasn't doing anything like a transcendent in the minors. But then more importantly is that when he arrived with the Rangers, he was, he was really good at age 28 and he was a fantasy darling and everyone loved him and went, wow, this guy came out of nowhere. And then he, he did keep getting better.

I mean, he's, he was better at 33 than he was at 31 and then he was at 29 and 28. And so like, it's not like he wasn't getting opportunities from 28 to 32. He was a regular with Texas and played every single day. And then he still, he still got better when he went to Baltimore and then he got better when he went to Seattle and now he's better when he went to Minnesota. So we, these are, these are not like obscured statistics that have been hidden from us. It's 12 years where he's continued to show that improvement. When he was 25, 26 with Texas, as you mentioned, 471 plate appearances, and he had a 72 OPS plus. That's in the majors. But that was sporadic playing time.

I assume that that was just about not earning the job, not injuries. I don't really remember the specifics. But in those years, so his age 25 season, 2006, he had a 907 OPS in AAA, you know, PCL. In the PCL. Yeah. Not spectacular. Right. And then 2007, his age 26 season, while he was putting up a 671 OPS with the Rangers, he was putting up an 1125 OPS in, you know, 187 plate appearances again

in the PCL. So if you put together his minor league work in those years, it's far, far better than his major league work by probably, what, like three, 400 points of OPS. So that suggests that he was probably better than the major league stats that he was showing at the time. And so whether that was just a small sample, bad luck, or whether it had something to do with the sporadic playing time, like maybe I don't remember if he was like given the job on opening day in those years and lost it or whether he was just kind of fighting for it and was up and down throughout. up and down throughout. I'd have to look at the game logs. But if you could do that over and somehow give him two full seasons where you said it's your job and you have it all year long for both of those years, I bet in most repetitions of that scenario, he would do far better than he did. But you're right. Still, he has gotten better even after that. Even after he established himself as a regular, he has continued to get better. So that's the Nelson Cruz episode. We'll do another one in five or six years.

That will do it for today. Thanks as always for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon. Help keep us going as long as Nelson Cruz 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. Benjamin E. Van Winkle, Mona Shaw, Sean Taggart, Andrew Stockman, and Steve French. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Sam and Meg coming via email at podcastfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins, as always, for his editing assistance, and we will be back with another episode soon.

Talk to you then. We all change from time to time. back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. San Cruz Bravest lion With a gentle roar I've never seen This place before But tonight On this distant shore I will not turn away.