Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1618: Robinson Canózolol

Episode Date: November 20, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Representative Cedric Richmond’s retirement from the Congressional Baseball Game after a Ruthian two-way career, discuss Theo Epstein stepping down from the Cubs (and at least temporarily leaving baseball) and Robinson Canó getting suspended for the entire 2021 season after testing positive for steroid use, and share a Stat […]

I'm working too hard, working too hard Please you and your friends, you don't need me now So why don't you say goodbye to me? You know you never drive Why don't you say goodbye? You know you never drive Say goodbye, you know you never die baseball game news this week. I don't know if you saw it. Everyone's talking about it. Cedric Richmond, the Babe Ruth of the congressional baseball game, will no longer be playing in the game. He is a congressman, Democratic congressman from Louisiana, and he announced this week that he is resigning from Congress before the new administration takes over to join the administration as a senior advisor to Joe Biden or assistant to the president and director of public engagement. So that means he will not be able to play in future congressional baseball games.

And that's huge news if you care about those games, because he is the Babe Ruth of the congressional baseball game. I'll give you his stats here. He has played in nine congressional baseball game. I'll give you his stats here. He has played in nine congressional baseball games. I believe the Democrats have won eight of those, maybe eight of the last nine, largely because of his dominance. So he ends his career with a 6-15, 7-30, 10-38 batting line and an 8-0 pitching record with a 2.45 ERA, eight complete games and 66

strikeouts in 60 innings pitched. I think the games are seven innings. And that's your basic 2.6 wins above replacement as calculated by 538's Nathaniel Rakich, who joined me and Meg for an episode, episode 1396 last year. So he's calculated war for the congressman. And Richmond had 2.6 in nine games. That's a 47 war pace over 162 games. So pretty good. There are some oddities in that line.

There's just a real shocking lack of walks in his batting line, right? You said he's hitting 6-something, 6.15, and only a 7.30 on base. You'd think if someone were hitting 6.15, you'd walk that person a lot more. And then eight complete games, but only a strikeout per inning? Yeah, a little more, but not much more. Which also feels low. That feels low for the best pitcher at any kind of low level. Because the spread of talent is so great the lower you get.

I mean, I certainly remember, I know that the Congressional League is not my little league, but the best, you know, the Babe Ruth of a youth league will strike out, you know, two and a quarter batters per inning. And so that's sort of interesting as well. I don't know, maybe he's pitching to contact. And you can understand why he wouldn't want to take walks. Maybe they're trying to walk him and he's just swinging at everything because he's batting 615 with a thousand plus slugging percentage. The other thing is how do you create a replacement level when the population of players to choose from changes so much every two years? players to choose from changes so much every two years. Like every two years, there's a new election and you might have 230 people to choose from, or you might have 170 players to choose from. So you would think replacement level would just be like, like outrageously swinging from one side to the other, right? Yeah. I forget how Nathaniel did that, but we could go back and listen to that

interview or read his article about it i assume he figured out some way but yeah richmond he was a college baseball player he was a pitcher for morehouse and so that's why he was so good although it's not like he was you know jim bunning or something like he's he's not a professional pitcher in the past and yet he totally totally dominated he's he's not i i imagined that he you know i i guessed like 37 and then i look him up and he's uh what he's almost 50 isn't he almost 50 yeah i guess uh when he started well yeah he was born in 73 so yeah when he started i guess he was still in his 30s probably. And that's probably still pretty young for that game where the average age has to be pretty old. In my, yeah, in my softball league, I've mentioned this before, but the only thing you needed to know was age. Like the correlation

between age and performance was like a correlation of like 0.98. And so you might have been the worst athlete in your high school, but if you were like 24 on a team of 40 year olds you were the fat you were the pinch runner you were the you were very good you play a premium position and there are younger congress people although i guess there are many older and then also this is what this is the senate as well too so that you have a median age that's even higher when you include the Senate, and probably because of the prestige and longevity of Senate careers, maybe you even have a disproportionate number of senators on the team. So, yeah, I guess 47 is probably younger than the median. Yeah.

And certainly 38 when he began his career. So he said, the good news is I get to retire 8-0, and then he downplayed his baseball dominance. I'm quoting from a tweet here saying he didn't need to be Hank Aaron or Willie Mays to do well in the game because he was playing against congressional Republicans. That's mean. Yeah, it is a little mean, but accurate. Yeah. And he said that ex-NFLer Colin Allred from Texas could be a replacement pitcher for the Democratic team. So they'll still have some talent in the post-Richmond era. Okay. All right.

All right. Well, end of an era. There was actual big baseball news this week, and we can talk about that too. Cano's PD suspension. But the bigger news probably, or at least the earlier news, was Theo Epstein stepping down as the Cubs president of baseball operations. After, what, nine years in Chicago, he had one year left on his contract and he decided not to serve. He is walking away and it sure sounds like he will just not be in baseball for a year. Of course, the teams that have openings, the Mets and the Phillies, will be trying desperately to recruit him, I am sure. But he seems committed to taking a summer off. The first, I guess, summer of his adult life off. He's been doing these jobs for a long time.

Sounds like he wanted to walk away and recharge a little bit. And he said that he does have another act in him with a baseball team So this is coming on the heels of the news that Billy Bean might be walking away from the A's Or from baseball management altogether That's still not a done deal as far as I've heard But in this case, Theo is not swearing off baseball As it seems like Billy Bean would be to work in other sports or maybe some ownership-related role. And maybe that's what Theo will gravitate to.

But sounds like he is not done with baseball. He's significantly younger than Bean, of course. But this is an interesting move because we have talked in the past about what Theo could possibly do next. In fact, I think we may have talked about it multiple times. I know way back on episode 856, we talked about what Theo's next career move would be. And this was actually in April of 2016. So it was before the Cubs won the World Series. But we got a listener email that said, okay, if the Cubs win the World Series, then how can Theo top that? What would he do? And I listened to a little of it, and we were talking about, well, he could be commissioner. He could go into ownership. He could walk away from baseball entirely. He could become a mainstream celebrity in some way,

as opposed to a sports celebrity. He could write a book, he could become a business person or a guru of some sort. And now I guess he's facing those decisions. I think there was also an episode of the Ringer MLB show right after the Cubs won the World Series where we drafted teams that Theo should take over next or something, or where should Theo go to win another World Series? Because I remember talking about what would be the biggest challenge that he could take on now after ending the curses in Boston and Chicago. Should he try to end the drought in Cleveland? Should he do it with a small market team and prove that he could do that? I think maybe we came down or I came down on the side of he should go win with the Rockies. He should try to win in Coors Field and be the first person to do that.

Anyway, we'll see if he does any of that. But for now, he is just probably going to be out of baseball for a little bit and get to, I don't know, be around his family and read a book and take a breather and assess what he wants to do next. I think politics was another possibility that we talked about for him in the past. So I'm curious to see what his next act will be. Uh-huh. Yeah. I guess we've already discussed what it could or should be. I think, yeah, when he tells us what it is, I think it'll be interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I'm interested in why he

decided to do this now. And it seems like there are a lot of good reasons why this would have been an okay time to do that. A, he's proven everything that you can prove really as a leader of a baseball operations department. He's won the two most- Has he though? Well, I guess- I mean, I'm not saying that he hasn't he's a hall of famer he's had a great career he's one of the you know he's he's one of the three kind of gm types from this era that will will probably be most historically significant and fantastic everybody would love to have him fantastic but i mean it's not like he broke the game it's not

like his team wins 113 games every year and no like well there's just like it's not like he broke the game. It's not like his team wins before the build-up and then it was like well how do you top that this incredibly memorable world series when all you can hope to do is to keep making it back year after year and basically turn into the dodgers and they haven't done that they haven't made the playoffs every year they haven't had deep playoff runs the teams have kind of gradually gotten less dominant it seemed like the cubs were maybe a little bit behind on the player development year. They haven't had deep playoff runs. The teams have kind of gradually gotten less dominant. It seemed like the Cubs were maybe a little bit behind on the player development revolution and had to overhaul their approach to player development over the last year or two. So they've hardly been a huge disaster post-2016, but I think it's fair to say that it's been a

little bit of a letdown given the core that they had and the perhaps slightly inflated or unreasonable hopes or expectations that they would turn into a dynasty. And maybe that's part of it. I don't know if part of it is just that he, I don't know, didn't have the same motivation or energy to tackle the current problems or do another rebuild, which might be in the offing here. I just mean, you know, he's won the two titles that were there for the taking that were really the most prestigious or historically significant. And I could see why after that you might feel like, well, I could win another one, I guess, you know, that would be nice, but it's not going to give you the same buzz as the first one did. Maybe that's always the case, but particularly in his case where you're just going around being the curse breaker, how can you possibly top that,

especially if you're just sticking with the same team? Yeah. It's interesting because I don't think that you would ever phrase achievements in the same way or frame them in the same way for players that you just did for Theo. A player would never start a career saying, my job is to do two discrete things and then search for a third thing to do. Like you wouldn't say, like my job is to hit five home runs in a game or my goal is to hit five home runs in a game and win a World Series. And if I do those two things, oh, well, now what do I do? Like, it's much more about maintenance of a career and about recognizing that the challenge is never, never ending.

Like, you win the World Series, but then they just restart. Like, by definition, they just have a new World Series for you to win the next year. So there's a constant, like, kind constant river of challenges facing you. And so I wouldn't think, I guess you could say in the same way that a person who writes a bestselling novel might feel this artificial pressure to do something new with their next novel or their next thing that they're going to do. That's, I think, largely artificial. Like, I don't think that there are many other places in the sport where you would set the goals so, like, I don't know, so well-defined and then feel the need to, like, improve upon those goals,

if that makes sense. So I guess, like, Theo Epsi might be the only person in the entire sport who we would frame success around that notion. And I don't know that, I doubt that he looks at it that way. Right. And I think he's talked before about the Bill Walsh theory of leadership, right? And how you shouldn't stay in one place more than 10 years or it'll sap some energy or creativity from you. And this is kind of what he did in Boston too. He left with one year left on his contract, I think, after having been there for one or two more years. But it's the same sort of thing here.

And I think he had sort of forecasted that he might not stay with the Cubs beyond next season. So it was something of a surprise that he walked away when he did, but also not really because of the situation that the Cubs find themselves in and also just all of baseball finds itself in right now. Like I think part of this is that his longtime second-in-command, Jed Hoyer, is right there. So it was an easy transition for Hoyer to take over.

And they're probably on the same page about a lot of things. And he said at least that as the Cubs are entering perhaps a time of transition, it might make sense for the person who's there for the long haul to have the number one say in those decisions. to have the number one say in those decisions. And also the Cubs, like a lot of teams, even including the Dodgers, who you'd think are doing as well as any team possibly could right now, they announced that they're laying off a lot of employees on Thursday. And the Cubs have already done that. They've laid off tons and tons of employees. And Ricketts has really tightened the purse strings in the past couple of years to the extent that we're reading stories about how the Cubs can't go get a reliever or whatever because ownership said no. So that could have been an issue with Bean too. Of course, he's been working under those kinds of constraints his whole career.

and then ownership issues with paying minor leaguers or paying scouts or whatever it is, then when you're at that exalted point where you're just a celebrity or as much as a baseball executive can be, you might just feel like, well, I put up with this in the past. I was okay working within these constraints then, but I don't need this now. Or, you know, this is just not worth the headache or worth the work to me. It's also just a job that requires a ton of time and attention and labor. And you might imagine that as fascinating as it could be for you, as challenging as it could be, you might get burned out eventually. I mean, he's been doing this job or basically this job since, eventually. I mean, he's been doing this job or basically this job since, I mean, you know, almost two decades. And he was in front offices before that. So you could see why you just might need to rest and recharge at a certain point. And it's not like if you're Theo Epstein, you can't

step away for a year and not come back and have everyone wanting you. And I'm just looking at previous discussions that we've had on the podcast about Theo. And back on episode 1077, Jeff and I were talking about something that had come out about Theo Epstein reportedly working 18-hour days, which, you know, maybe he's wired that way. But after doing that for decades, maybe at a certain point, that just becomes too much for you. So you could see how, you know, if the Cubs kind of have their hands tied, if this core that he put together is sort of splintering now, then you might say, well, I don't want to embark on this under these circumstances with the pandemic and not knowing what our budget is and are we going to have fans in the stands? Do I want to be the one who has to figure out how to trade Chris Bryant or resign people or whatever it is? It just – it seems like a headache, a headache that a lot of people would be happy to have. have but if you're Theo and you've been able to pick your spot and you know you've built this team into a world series winner do you want to stick around for a whole nother cycle in the same place

I get it yeah I don't think we need to we don't need to overthink this there are literally millions of reasons that a person in his position would choose to not do it next year like literally millions and they all make sense and we don't know them. Yes. And he cited his salary, you know, $10 million salary as part of the consideration in that, I guess, a lot of people from that organization are being let go. And I don't know if there was some guilt there or whether he felt like, you know, freeing up his salary would help retain some people. Not that like, you know, freeing up his salary would help retain some people, not that, like, you know, whether we have to pay Theo or not should be the determining factor. I'm sure the Cubs could make it work if they really wanted to, but perhaps personally he felt some burden

there, so maybe that was part of it too. The other interesting thing, and this was something that I think Hannah Kaiser from Yahoo asked him about, she said, Theo Epstein said he was interested in a baseball job that allows him to help address some of the more existential threats to the game. So I asked him what he thinks those are. And then she quotes his response as, it is the greatest game in the world, but there are some threats to it because of the way the game is evolving, and I take some responsibility for that because the executives like me, who have spent a lot of time using analytics and other measures to try to optimize individual and team performance, have unwittingly had, you know, a negative impact on the aesthetic value of the game and the entertainment value of the game. I mean, clearly, you know, the strikeout rate's a little out of control and we need to find a way to get more action in the game, get the ball in play more often, allow players to show their athleticism some more, and give the fans more of what they want.

So this is what Meg and I talked about on the last episode with Patrick Dubuque and Dan Saborski about the effect that sabermetrics has had on the game. And here's Theo echoing that and saying he feels some responsibility for that. And I think Joe Posnanski just wrote about this too, this idea that Epstein is kind of a traditionalist and a storyteller and he doesn't like a lot of the trends in the game but had to accelerate them because of what his job was. And I think Joe has suggested both in the past and in the present that he would be sort of a good fixing baseball czar, like figuring out how to get baseball back to whatever the ideal is if you subscribe to the idea that comes with that. But it seems like he is motivated by the idea of trying to be on the side that is fixing

baseball as he sees it, rather than sort of exploiting it maybe to the detriment of the entertainment value. All right. Well, I suppose that's all I have to say about Theo. It's very significant because of how he has changed just the whole course of baseball history, really. But it seemed like this move was coming and maybe it came a year earlier than some people had anticipated, but not a total shock. So I'm sure that we will talk again about Theo Epstein many times in the future. about Theo Epstein many times in the future. All right, so the other big news was Robinson Cano having his second suspension for PD use, which means that he is out of commission for an entire season, 162-game suspension. The first suspension a couple years ago was for a diuretic that is often used as a masking agent. And I think it was reported by TJ Quinn that probably there was evidence that he was actually using it that way

in order for that suspension to go ahead. But he was not directly linked to a certain substance. This time he was. This time he tested positive for a steroid, an old school steroid, Stanozolol, Winstrol, it goes by a couple of names. And this was, I think, why it was somewhat baffling that it happened this way, because this is a steroid that has been banned by the Olympics since like the 70s or something. This is, you know, what Ben Johnson used in 88. This is out of vogue. This is not a designer PED that you can use to try to elude a positive test. This is a very, very detectable one. And so it's kind of confounding how and why this happened. And TJ Quinn tweeted, this is the ESPN investigative reporter, he tweeted,

it's one thing to use after you've been busted. It's another to use stenozolol, a drug that is insanely detectable. It defies any logic. Can't wait to hear this explanation. He then continued, I can almost guarantee there's going to be a whale of a story behind this. Canoe is rich enough to afford drugs and regimens that would easily escape detection. Taking Stanozolol is bonkers. Poor kids take it, not bazillionaires. So there's part of me that's disappointed, I guess, not to make it like a say-it-ain't-so Canoe kind of thing, but Canoe came up when I was still a fan of the team that he was playing for. I was still in high school at the time. And he was a really exciting player. That was an era when the Yankees had gone a little while without a homegrown star, you know, being developed. And here came Cano and he was so

smooth and just an all-around good player who quickly blossomed into a star. And, you know, I'm almost more disappointed that he cheated in such an obvious, counterproductive way. You know, I'm almost as, I guess, miffed about that as I am about the cheating itself. But it stinks because, you know, this is his legacy now. I think after the first suspension, he would have had a tough time getting into the hall, but now it's just out of the question now that he's a two-time offender in the post-PED rules era. I just don't think there's any way he could get in, and people will, of course, question his whole career and all of his accomplishments because he is now a two-time offender here. And it's funny, TJ Quinn said, you know, I look forward to the explanation. Well, as we record here on Thursday afternoon, you know, more than a day

after this news came out, there hasn't been one yet. Cano hasn't said anything, which is unusual because usually when a player tests positive, there's the statement that comes out. And, you know, usually it's, I'm going to fight this, or I fought this, or I took a tainted supplement, or I don't know how this happened, and somehow it happened. But this time, nothing. And maybe because there's just nothing to say. I mean, he said all of that last time. And if that's your excuse the first time, like, I wasn't careful enough, or I took something I shouldn't have, you can't really use that twice because no one is going to be forgiving of it twice. So it's sort of sad and disappointing and also confusing that he would get caught multiple times and get caught using this at this point in his career.

Yeah, the sort of galaxy brain positive way to think about it. I mean, obviously not not a positive way to think about this. But if you want to feel like a little bit good instead of like bad, like you feel bad. So I'm going to offer you a way to maybe feel slightly good that there was there's always been and particularly, well, I mean, I particularly when free agency came around, but I think that this sort of attitude has always existed that like, oh, well, once, you know, when you give players, you know, $100 million, they're gonna like lose their motivation. Like that was like one of the fears that was offered by like owners and writers when free agency was coming around. And when salaries started to get real high, and when draft picks were starting to get paid, you know, not close to their market value, but more

like life changing money and all that. There was the idea that like, well, ballplayers like it was really a very sort of cynical and and like, I don't know, reductive way of thinking about them as though they're only motivated by money that like the only reason that willie mays ever bothered to play ball was because you know he he was he was getting paid and i mean i guess in in some sense like probably like if they weren't getting paid then probably you know ball players wouldn't play ball but it implies that every home run is like the market at work and that you have to like like give players the financial incentive to do it but not too much financial incentive because then they won't be motivated anymore anyway yeah the point is that like whatever sort of somewhat kind of i don't know a cynical or or

like um you know material motive that you would give robinson cano at this point in his career it's it's clearly not money because not only and not just he has a lot of money, but he's under contract for a long, he's under contract beyond any, you know, any year that he's likely. Two years after the coming year. Yeah, exactly. He is unlikely to be, you know, he's not an impending free agent. He doesn't have, his next contract is not on the line. He probably won't play after this contract.

Pretty good chance. You know, he, he isn't desperate to win a World Series. He's won a World Series. He's not on the cusp of being kicked out of the league. It's not like he's playing for, you know, like, like, you know, his last gasp to wear the uniform. I mean, he was going to wear the uniform for a few more years. So you take away all those sort of kind of obvious,

somewhat superficial self-interest. And what you're left with is that he really wanted to play baseball well, and he didn't want to be embarrassed. And like in a way, that is reassuring, that that is really the core. Like that's the mitochondria in these ballplayers. I don't know, mitochondria. Mitochondria is the thing that produces energy in the cell, right?

Yes. And so at the core, you drill down in what's providing the energy for these baseball players' careers. They go out there. They're in front of a bunch of people, and they really want to play well, and theyring new information about like Cano getting tricked into this or something like that, presumably Cano just like it was, that's what was driving him. He wanted to play baseball well. No self-interest other than he wanted to play baseball well. And if the Cano example is not the encouraging example, but you can extrapolate from that, that that is really what's happening in a baseball game. These baseball players are out there and they are

what you thought they were. They are what you hoped they were, which is people on a team trying to play well. And it's as pure as that. So again, like Canoe is like, you can still feel bad about the Canoe example. And that, you know, like it's always a sort of a little bit. Anytime someone gets popped, you have that like on the one hand, oh, good, the testing's working. On the other hand, you know, oh, bad, it's still part of the game. But in a larger sense, it's a reminder that ballplayers from, you know, from age eight to, you know, age 40 who have $300 million, they all basically want the thing that

you want them to want, which is to play baseball well. That's the motive. Yeah, I think that's true. I agree with that. And that did cross my mind also. I was trying to put a positive spin on it in my own mind. Really, I think I'm disappointed less because I'm let down by Cano or like he fell short of my standards for baseball players character or something. But because this is all anyone will remember about him now, probably, he'll be Robinson Cano, the two-time PED positive tester. And that's a shame because I really enjoyed just his career and and his play and now it's just you know the way that i think manny ramirez is remembered that way i think kano will be remembered that way too and it will kind of overshadow his skill as a player and of course a lot of people will say well his skill as a player was that he was juicing or something you

know a lot of people think that and i guess i'm more in the camp that doesn't draw the direct relation to there where if a good player tests positive, I don't immediately conclude, well, he was only good because he was taking the thing that made him test positive, which is possible, of course. But I just tend not to make that immediate connection. Certainly it may have helped him and certainly it may have helped him age better, you know, because that's one of the things that's been notable about his career is that he has remained pretty productive even at advanced ages. You know, he's 38 now. He was a very good hitter in the shortened 2020 season at age 37. He hit really well. Well, maybe he hit really

well because he was taking the thing that caused him to test positive here. But you're right. He's on the opposite end of the spectrum of the person you would think would have the most motivation to take something. The person who's on the fringes, on the margins, just trying to stay in the league, trying to get that big contract. Cano has the big contract. He has been a superstar. He has no known reason to do this except that he wants to be as good at baseball as he possibly can. And it's just strange that he is so bad at cheating, I guess, or that having been caught before, he didn't realize, hey, I better be careful not take the most obvious thing that I could take. The only thing I could think is that there was reporting by Joel Sherman that PD testing was dramatically reduced this year.

Evidently, PD testing didn't happen at all during the baseball lockdown prior to the start of summer camp. And then it was really reduced throughout the season, too, because it was just hard to get, like, the test samples. Like, the lab that they used to do the PED test was, I think, doing the COVID tests. And also, like, you know, it was hard to get testers to go into these places because they weren't essential personnel or whatever. So there were fewer tests performed. A lot of players were tested once or didn't get tested at all. So there was still some threat that they would get tested. And it wasn't publicly announced that there wouldn't be testing or anything,

but I think it was pretty clear that testing was not happening at the same rate. And so maybe he figured, well, I can get away with it now and I need it at this age. Who knows? And if this had happened earlier in his career, if he were still a young player, I'd be more sympathetic. Coming up in the Dominican Republic, there has been, and to some extent perhaps still is, so much pressure on kids there to take PEDs, to attract the attention of major league teams. And with the whole Busconi training system that's set up there, it has reportedly been pretty prevalent at times. And there's a lot of financial incentive and some substances available over the counter. I know MLP

has recently started to put some programs in place to try to cut down on that, but Cano is far removed from the point in his career when he faced that pressure and had those incentives. We'll never know exactly what the motivations were here, but it's really like the way this happened, you just kind of have to scratch your head and say, how could you allow this to happen? Like, if you're going to cheat, be smarter about it. So anyway, we'll see how the Mets, you know, for the Mets, I guess it's not really the worst news, even though Cano is still a productive player. He was in line to make, you know, $24 million, almost all of which would be paid by the Mets, I think all but $4 million. And of course, it seemed like they were about to be in spending mode anyway. And so now with that

money freed up and a spot in the lineup freed up, they have a lot of options. They could shift Jeff McNeil back over there, or they could just play other guys in the infield that they already have, or they could go after LeMahieu or something. I don't think it's a devastating blow to them. And maybe in one way, they're almost relieved by it. So I'll be curious to see if Cano even plays out the rest of his contract with the Mets or whether they just kind of cut ties because, you know, after sitting out a year and assuming that he will be clean next time he plays or at least maybe that he would continue to cheat, who knows? Maybe they'll just say, well, we don't even want to hang on to 39-year-old Robinson Cano because this regime didn't trade for him anyway. So the Kellnick trade looks even worse now, I suppose. But this Cohen administration, they weren't the ones who made that trade. So they

don't really have to be bound by it. And maybe they'll just wipe the slate clean. But it's kind of ironic because I think one reason why that trade happened was that Cano was still productive. He was not the centerpiece of that trade. That was about Kelnick. It was about Edwin Diaz. But the fact that Cano had kind of beaten the aging curve up to that point for the most part I think enabled that to still be a trade that was workable

without the Mets paying all of his salary, which they wouldn't because it was the Wilpons. So anyway, here we are. So that's Kano. Do you want to do a stat blast? Sure. All right. as your OBS plus. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to Dastyplast. All right, Ben, who's the first loogie? Oh, boy, I don't know.

Who do you, who is the first person you think? Maybe loogie is too strong a word. Who's the first lefty specialist in your head? Who do you have to answer? You're on the weakest link, and that's the question. Jesse Orozco. No, Jesse Orozco was a lefty reliever, but I wouldn't say that he was a lefty specialist during his best years.

And by the time he became a lefty specialist, I would say that he was not the first. And so I understand why that would be an answer. He is maybe the most lefty reliever pitcher that I can think of as well, but not the first and not originally a specialist. So I got to wondering about this question. And so I went looking for the first lefty specialist. And if you want to talk about the first really like, really, really extreme, like, lefty specialist where, you know, you're talking about someone who's pitching half as many innings as outings, I think that that probablyandenberg of the Mariners in the early 80s. But I think that neither of those is the answer because it just, it feels to me like you have to

go back a little bit earlier to find the first, like obviously before those players pitched, if someone else was a lefty specialist, they would have been the first. So I looked through the, I looked further back than this, but it quickly became clear that the answer was going to be someone between 1960 and 1985 or so. Somewhere along that line, it changed. There's nobody before 1960 who fits into that role. And by the 80s, there's kind of a bunch of burgeoning usages of that. So from 60 to basically 1980, we'll say, I looked at players whose platoon advantages were at or near 50%. Well, I guess I looked at all relievers, all left-handed relievers. And I looked at their platoon advantage, their innings per outing or batter's phase per outing, and their number of one batter appearances.

And I think there are five kind of answers. And I'll just go through those kind of quickly explain why they're an answer and something interesting about them. So the five are the first one is Joe Horner, who he is on the list because like by this quick and dirty metric that i came up with his 1976 season was the loogiest season ever by that point he had a platoon advantage about 55 of the time which was the third highest platoon advantage in that stretch and what's really kind of notable about him is that he had like four years in a row where he ranks pretty high on this list for four different teams. So that either suggests that he really had a clear identity of pitcher who was a one

out lefty, or it means that that was not a valued skill and that teams were constantly getting rid of him. This was late in his career. He had been a relief ace earlier in his career, like a real relief ace earlier in his career. And then this was the tail end. And he was just kind of hanging on without a lot of success, but he was being used as a loogie. I think that if nobody came before him, he would be the answer. But I think other people came before him. He is very, very interesting. He has a very interesting career and life, but I'll just note one detail about him. He is very, very interesting. He has a very interesting career and life, but I'll just note one detail about him. According to his Sabre bio by Brian Cooper, late in his career, Joe Horner

hit a batter with a pitch. The batter charged him. Horner punched him in the face, landed the punch, and there was a brawl. And then totally unrelated to that, he never threw another pitch in the majors. That happened to be his final batter in his final appearance in his final season. His final act as a major leaguer was punching a guy in the face. So that's Joe Horner. So that's one answer. A second answer is a guy named Jack Spring. And Spring is the opposite.

He is not quite as clear of a loogie, but he's probably the earliest on this list. So in 1963 with the Angels, he had more outings than innings. And this is, I think this is the first time that ever happened in any substantial usage for a pitcher. And so if you think about a loogie, a lefty one out guy, what defines that pitcher is partly that he only faces lefties, but it's really that his outings are short, that he's brought in not for an inning or multiple innings, but for a batter. And so in that sense, I guess Spring was that. He faced half lefties, which is the first pitcher I found who had the platoon advantage at least half the time, the first left-handed pitcher, I should say. And he definitely predates Horner. He's not my favorite answer, even though he ranks high on my list, because he wasn't that good. The Angels used him

this way, and then they traded him. And then another, you know, he got traded again. He was quickly out of the league. So it isn't as though he made a career out of this usage. It was really maybe just one year in which his limitations reflected his usage more than that his team really saw a strength in that. And an interesting thing about him is that he was one of the managers who managed the Portland Mavericks of the battered bastards of baseball fame. All right, so Joe Horner and Jack Spring. The third one is a guy named Paul Lindblad. And he's on this list of five because he had 16 one batter games in 1970, which is the most that any pitcher had ever had at that point. And it would be the most that any pitcher would have for about a decade more. So he really was a one batter pitcher more

than anybody else had ever been. His platoon rate is actually kind of low. He's like about a, I think about a 40% platoon advantage, which is kind of low, but that's partly because the rate of left-handed hitters throughout the league was very low in that year. And I got to looking at the rate of lefty batters and that era, there was like a five-year period, six-year period where it

was quite low. But I noticed another thing, which is that in World War II, the rate of left-handed batters plummeted. It was in the years leading up to World War II, 36, 36, 35, 35, 35. And then 1943, when a bunch of major leaguers were gone, it was 31. And then in 1944, when a ton of major leaguers were gone, it was was 24 so that's kind of interesting isn't it yeah that like when the war came and all the good players left they were stuck with righties they were stuck with a bunch of righties that there's something there's an interesting article in where the lefties all went during the war anyway paul lindblad 1970 was the year that he had those 16-1 batter games so he's right in the middle and i

think that's a fine answer but that was also the only year that he was really used in that extreme way um so i don't love that answer the fourth is bill henry do you remember bill henry oh yeah yeah okay uh bill henry famous on this podcast and and elsewhere for having the imposter yes pretended to be him later in life. So we've already talked a lot about Bill Henry. Bill Henry was an ace closer early in his career. But later in his career with the 1966 Giants, he had 35 games and 22 innings, which is the lowest innings per outing rate that anybody would have until 1990. So he was like a quarter century ahead

of the trend. And that's impressive, but it was only 35 games. It wasn't even a full season. And small samples can lie in all sorts of different categories. I feel like Bill Henry wasn't used this way for long enough to really believe that he was a dedicated lefty. On the other hand, his manager that year was Herman Franks, and Herman Franks was later credited with inventing the also been a bullpen trailblazer for this other specialized bullpen role. So I think Bill Henry is maybe, I think he is maybe the person who gets this title more than anybody else from this era. And let's see, I have an article, I think there's an article in the Hardball Times that called Bill Henry the first loogie at one point. So that's a fine answer. And the fifth answer, this is, I know this is a long stat blast, but the fifth answer is a pitcher named Jack DeLaura.

And he's actually who kind of got me along this way because Jack DeLaura was on the Mets in 1969. And then he got selected by Houston in the Rule 5 draft before 1970. And so this is a quote from his Sabre bio. Instead, the Houston Astros took DeLauro in the Rule 5 draft. The Astros were in need of a left-handed relief pitcher for the 1970 season. So Houston personnel director Tal Smith fed scouting reports on 300 lefties available in the draft into a computer in their business office. And DeLauro came out on top smith told the sporting news that quote the value to the scouting department is in getting a

30 second answer in summary to evaluations that done manually used to take all winter last winter was the first time we used it and we used it for all positions and angles for ready references on trades and deals and i don't think that you've ever written about this example of an a proto computer for that's a long time ago front office yeah so 1970 astros computer telling them who to pick and they picked jack deloro and he was he was the first reliever ever with like a really crazy ratio of innings to games other than Henry. And as we talked about, Henry only appeared 25 times. DeLauro had 42 outings that year.

He only threw 33 innings. And so that really is a modern lefty usage. And that was the lowest rate really until Candelaria and others in the late 80s and early 90s. Candelaria and others in the late 80s and early 90s. So DeLauro was really, I think, ahead of almost everybody except Bill Henry by that measure. He also had the second highest number of one-out games. He doesn't rank quite as high on my dumb spreadsheet because, again, 1970 was a year where there were very few left-handed hitters. So he ended up having to face a bunch of right-handed where there were very few left-handed hitters. So he ended up having to face a bunch of right-handed batters anyway,

but he just basically walked them all. Like his split is like walk all the righties and then face all the lefties, which is also fairly loogie-ish. And so Jack DeLauro is the answer that I kind of like. Unfortunately, let's say that he did create that role or that he was the first in that role. That was the only year he did it. He was out of the league after that because this wasn't a role that was well accepted everywhere else.

Nobody else was looking for loogies. Even his own team didn't really want a loogie. And so that was his final season. He was fine that year, but he did not get another chance with the Astros or anyone else. And that was his last appearance in the majors. And he later, this is from his Sabre bio. He later told Maury Allen, quote, I left baseball with a bitter taste. I guess I think about those days too much. I was used. I was only 29 when I was finished with baseball. I didn't have anything to do, any place to go, any training for anything else. I never

made any money in baseball. So it was all very hard for me. I got this job at a sporting goods franchise and became the manager a few years back. We're all right now. I have a nice house on a lakefront site. We're comfortable. I wanted more of the game. I didn't want to leave so early. I wished I could have gotten along better with the managers and the front office people. Hardly a day goes by that I don't think about something relating to the 1969 mets i guess i always will and so in a way if he had been the first loogie you know if he i guess if he had been the thousandth loogie it's quite possible that jack delora would have pitched into his like late 30s like he had the skill set of a pitcher who would hang on for 10 more years these days but

back then he was just too ahead of his time and and the role hadn't caught on. And he might have been partly responsible for helping create the role, but it was just too soon. The three batter minimum didn't completely drive out the Lugis who were still around. But even the Lugis who were still around were not really the Randy Choate extreme Lugis. Those had kind of already been on the way out to some extent. So Oliver Perez is still with us, fortunately, somehow. I looked at the Lugis from 2019 and then at 2020, and it's not a a big difference to be honest like most of them were still most of them still around most of them still the the difference in the ratio of batters they faced wasn't wasn't that great i had a theory that this would affect fringy righties more than it would end up affecting loogies i have not looked at whether that was the case but it

seems like the loogies they have to face face an extra right-handed batter oftentimes, but you know, you now, now we've got the pocket now, instead of the one batter loogie, we got the pocket loogie where you're looking for the, the lefty righty lefty sequence in the lineup. And I think there will always, I think there will still always be that there are just too many, too many good left-handed hitters in the middle of a lineup that you're not going to have someone in your bullpen to face that. Yeah. All right.

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