Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1892: Keeping it 100

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the impending premiere of Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, the projection-system verdict on the Braves’ extension of Michael Harris II, the White Sox signing Elvis Andrus, the possibly underrated, could’ve-been-Hall-of-Fame career of José Abreu, and the sophomore improvement of Ha-Seong Kim, then (25:06) answer listener […]

Everybody know what I'm saying, from here to the Himalayan. If you don't know, you must be doo-doo, this is what I'm saying. About the dragon. About the dragon. About the dragon. About the dragon. About the dragon. Hello and welcome to episode 1892 of Effectively Wild, a Fangrafts baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangrafts, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer.

Ben, how are you? I'm doing just fine. How art thou thee? Worried that I'm like underdressed for my podcast fine how how what just trying something new i don't know house of the dragon comes out this weekend i'm getting into a medieval mindset not that they talk like that necessarily do i do i need to watch this show have you seen it yet you don't have to i know you probably have like an embargo if you have i have screeners i have not fully consumed them as of yet but i'm optimistic anyone who liked game of thrones i am also optimistic for this series i'm a reader these books, so that kind of colors my reception to them.

Sure. Yeah. I don't know that it will be the level of phenomenon where even if you're not that type of person, you feel like you have to be just to keep up or you feel like you can't avoid being that just because it's everywhere. But if you liked Thrones, I think there will be a lot to like here too. Okay. I mean, and when you say liked Thrones, like what, when of Thrones? Most of it.

Most of the Thrones. Not necessarily. Not the very end of the Thrones. Right. They will not be trying to emulate that, no. It's not the same creative team behind it? It is not. It is the same author of the source material, of course.

Yeah, I mean. Fortunately, he is more involved in this production than he was in the latter stages of that one, which may help. But no, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are safely ensconced elsewhere in the Netflix ecosystem currently. Oh, they're not doing that bad Civil War thing they were going to do, right? They are not doing that, no. They're working on the three-body problem. Oh, oh, we're trusting that to the... Anyway, that's not the point of this podcast.

That's kind of concerning too, but... Yeah, like, I mean, I will say, I've only read the first one of that because it's a trilogy, right? The three-body problem. And it is, you know, it's lovely. I mean, lovely is kind of a weird word to describe it, but like, it is just, it is a really cool, it's just a very evoc kind of a weird word to describe it but like it is just it is a really

cool it's just a very evocative and interesting piece of fiction and we all know how their adaptation of game of thrones ended so you know i wonder how anyway that's not the point of this podcast but here we are at that point they were coming up with their own story so that was maybe the issue but i love that george rr martin was like we're not doing this again i'm gonna be on set right i did not intend to start this way we're sort of crossing streams here if you want to hear me covering tv and nerd culture you can do that on the ringers prestige tv podcast or ringer verse or in my writing at the ringer but that's not what this is this is effectively wild the fancrafts baseball podcast, as we said at the start. Yeah, brought to you by our Patreon supporters,

some of whom probably feel burned by the end of Game of Thrones, much like King's Landing. Oh, there you go. Okay. So we've got a few emails. We're going to meet some major leaguers. I may have a stat blast or two and a pass blast, of course, but we have maybe a couple of follow-ups from our last episode.

So we discussed the Michael Harris II. At least we have some seconds here. That's a very Game of Thrones-ish thing. We have some monarchs who are second. That's one thing. Get used to a lot of names that sound very similar to other names in this series. So that could be a bit of an impediment to your enjoyment. I can't just be like, this is Ralph.

There's precedent for that in the Game of Thrones universe, right? Where there are folks with just like regular ass names and they probably are like, I feel like I was shortchanged here somewhat. Yes. But Michael Harris II, protector of the realm and king of the Andals and the Seven Kingdoms and so forth, he just signed an extension with Atlanta for eight years after this one. And when we discussed that yesterday, we noted that Dan Siborski was working on a reaction to that, which has been published now at Fangrafts, and that he was going to turn the old Zips machine on Harris and see how the terms of this extension stacked up to what Zips would have spit out.

So what did Dan conclude? Right. So we'll remind everyone some of the specifics of the actual deal that Michael Harris II signed. So this was a minimum of eight years and a minimum of $72 million. Atlanta also has a $15 and $20 million club option for 2031 and 32, each of which carries a $5 million buyout. So in total, he could make $102 million over 10 years if the Braves exercise both of their options. And Dan, you know, like you said, he turned the Zips machine on and he ran Harris through the full version of Zips,

which is more complicated and sort of robust than the simpler in-season model that we run like every day. It takes more stuff into account. So he did that with full knowledge of Harris's 2022 season, including his minor league performance. And Sips doesn't quite expect Harris to maintain his current level of performance. I think we talked last time about how there's some swing and miss in his approach at the plate. And so it doesn't give him a huge peak, but the sort of total package of skills, especially superlative defense and center field gives him a pretty robust floor and so he still projects to be an excellent player who turns in some all-star appearances and dan noted that like how zips interacts with harris now is a little bit different well the zips of it isn't but how it that translates into a potential contract is a little different under the new cba

versus the old cba because if everyone remembers there's a provision under the new cba versus the old cba because if everyone remembers there's a provision in the new cba that if a player finishes in the top two in rookie of the year voting kind of regardless of when they were called up and harris was called up in may i believe they get a full year's worth of service time in recognition of their rookie of the year. And Dan's award estimator model, he just has all these great little tools, right? Gives Harris an 85% chance of finishing in the top two. We also talked last time about how it seems like it might be him and Strider. Those are kind of the guys who are going to be shaking out to the top of that race.

And so if he does that, he will hit free agency a year earlier than he would have just based on his service time from this year. And so with all of that, Zips estimated that the Braves would have to, and here I'm quoting, shell out approximately $41 million over Harris's six cost-controlled seasons, and then $57.5 million for two years of free agency, totaling $98 million. And then if you think he's going to finish in the top two for Rookie of the Year voting this year, that brings the system's estimate up to $123 million. So if you kind of split the difference rate, allowing for the possibility that he doesn't finish in the top two for Rookie of the Year, but also noting what he would get regardless, Dan had that at sort of $120 million over eight years. So that's obviously more than what he's going to get under the terms of his current contract, both in dollar amounts and in a shorter amount of time than he would realize over the course of this. But it's not egregious, right? And I think we do this thing

where like Ozzy Albee's extension is the worst possible outcome for these sort of either pre-debut or early career extensions, certainly pre-arbitration extensions, where Albie signed a seven-year $35 million deal, and it has two very friendly team options. And we all look at that and are like, maybe your agent should not be able to be an agent anymore, right? It feels like a tremendous underpay, even when you factor in like the recent injury and some of the performance that has been up and down like Ozzy Albee should be making more money than he is and so I think that there's this instinct to sort of comp every extension to that

and that's like a useful downside scenario but you know it doesn't have to be Albee's to be an underpay and maybe a gross one, but I don't think we're thinking of Harris's deal as sort of falling into that area. Cause there is still, you know, limited track record. He has some approach concerns. So this is definitely a team friendly extension, but not one where we have to like try to run his agent out of town, I think is where Dan landed.

And I think that that's a reasonable thing to say. Although I will continue to remind people like, you can make a lot of money in ARBs. Have it yourself. It's funny. By signing Albies to that extension, not only did the Braves get Albies at a very team-friendly rate for a long time, but they also lowered the bar for like what constitutes an egregious extension, I suppose, or raised the bar, I guess, as it happens.

So that if they sign other players to extensions that otherwise we might be saying, oh, this is particularly team friendly. I mean, of course, if you're a team, I guess your goal is to sign a team friendly extension, right? Hopefully without completely screwing over your players. But they have so established a standard for what constitutes a team-friendly extension that now if they merely just get a good deal, no one who is sort of looking out for players and players' earnings and prioritizing that over team savings will take them to task because at least it's not as notable as the other one that they already signed. Yeah, and this is why I'm saying we should certainly acknowledge the Albies deal at one end of the distribution, but don't shortchange guys by only comping it to that. That's why it's useful for us to have, you know, tools like zips and other projection systems to help us gauge sort of independent of what the market has set previously, like what these guys might be able to expect or should expect. And then we can kind of calibrate from that in addition to the Albies deal or like, you know, Ronald Acuna Jr. There are a number of those deals, both on the Braves and not,

that allow us to kind of evaluate these things. And, you know, at the end of this, like Harris is going to have, you know, $72 million at least. And as we said last time, like he's still a pretty young guy. So if he ends up needing to take another bite at the apple, that not be terrible but if he's really good then they're going to exercise those options so yeah yeah the Braves have sent so many players to extensions that we can use some Atlanta Braves extension as a comp for almost every future extension yeah oh this is like the Olsen extension oh this is like the Riley extension but yes we can expand our our palette yes and talk about

other teams too one other follow-up from last time we talked about that vesting option that albus andrews had and the a's decision to play him less seemingly in an attempt to avoid triggering that and having it vest and then their decision to just outright release him. Well, subsequently, he has been picked up by the White Sox. So that makes sense, I suppose, and that the White Sox are without Tim Anderson for the time being. So Andrews should help them there. They get him just for prorated portion of the league minimum, and the A's still pick up the tab for the bulk of his contract. And I believe that the vesting option, even if he were to get four or five plate appearances every day for the White Sox the I think that that's just out the window. So good luck to him in Chicago. I did just make a loosely related observation when I was perusing the White Sox infield, which is that I think I have underrated Jose Abreu. And I think maybe we've all underrated Jose Abreu because of how his career started, because he's continued to be really good, right? Like he had a great debut year in the majors. He won the Rookie of the Year award. And then I think, you know, he had some

down years by his standards. He's never had a bad year where he didn't hit but like 2018 2019 he was maybe 15 20 percent better than league average as someone who is not adding a ton in other areas i mean he's he was an all-star in both of those seasons anyway but often he's been like you know he's been a big rBI man. Like 2019, he led the league in RBI and his actual slash stats were not that great. Whereas 2020, of course, he won the MVP award and caveat 60 game season, et cetera, but he was great that year. Anyway, the point is he has a 135 OPS plus career, I think 134 career WRC plus. He's really been one of the best hitters in baseball since he arrived in the majors. And I think that if he had started his career here,

I think we would be talking about him at least by the end of his career, the way that we talk about Miguel Cabrera right now. Because he's over 30 war, at least according to baseball reference, he's at 31.2 war as we speak. And, you know, figure if he's at like 32 war by the end of this season, let's say that's his age 35 season and he's still going strong. He's hitting about as well as he has in any full season since, I guess, five years ago or so. So he's still got a lot of life left in the bat. Now, he wouldn't have made the majors at 16, but he was hitting really well in Cuba by 18 and he was totally offensive player by that point. I think he still played more pro seasons in Cuba than he has in the big leagues. That's how young he started. He was there for 10 years. So if you did some sort of with, you know, how he does those time warp posts for like Eric Davis or Ken Griffey Jr., you know, players who had injuries or declined unexpectedly or something like that.

And he just spits out what zips would have estimated that their career would be. I really wonder like what the estimate would be for an all in MLB full career Jose Abreu. Because, I mean, just like based on his pace, you would have to think that he would have something like a Miggy-ish war and that maybe we would be talking about him as just like one of the best right-handed hitters of this generation. Like I think we would be thinking of him as a Hall of Famer,

and probably we won't because half his career was in Cuba or a good deal of it when he was already a really elite offensive player. So if you just add it in, you know, I guess his first year in the majors was his best offensive year. I don't know that you can just copy and paste that several times and say that he would have done that up to that point. just copy and paste that several times and say that he would have done that up to that point. But because he hit so well from like 21 to 25 and even a little bit before that, if you just extrapolate, like we would be looking at someone who would probably be closer to 50 or 60 or potentially by this point with maybe a few years to go. So it's kind of the way I'm thinking of him. I guess I've maybe not given him quite the credit that I should have just because there have been a few years where he was more of an RBI guy than an actual elite hitter.

And because some years of his career were elsewhere and were not very visible at the time. Yeah, it's just, just you know it's amazing like how big an effect waiting for the other shoe to drop can have right like and that's not fair of us at all because you know i think we can acknowledge that there is age-related decline for players but somehow like when it came to nelson cruz we were willing to say like for years and years like father time won't come for him and then it's like this year it's like oh maybe father time is like hello i am here now how are you all sorry nelson and like

we didn't grant that same consideration to abreu which is so funny because you're right. Like he, he's never been like a, a bad hitter in his MLB career. He's had years that are better than others. And he's had some peaks, like you said, that came, you know, I wonder how differently we would think of him. If the one 65 WRC plus year had happened a year earlier or a year later, right. If it had been in a full, you know, 162 game season, then like, that's kind of an obvious and dumb question on my part,

because it's like, I don't know, we'd probably think he was better. Because he had more war, and he would have done it over 162. And like, that's very different than any year, except as you mentioned his his first year in the majors. But I don't know, like he's 35 and he has a 146 WRC plus and has been worth almost four wins. And he's just like a really good hitter. Like he walks, he doesn't strike out a ton. He's, you know, he has what, like 14 home runs. So he's not like thumping, thumping,

but he's thumping fine, you know, by 2022 standards. So yeah, I think he's just a really good hitter and we should appreciate him more i'm glad you said that i think i agree yeah and you know even though he won the mvp in the asterisk season he has gotten mvp votes in five other seasons he's been an all-star a bunch of times like yeah i yeah, I just, you know, if you look at his last season in Cuba before he came over, it was basically indistinguishable from his age 21 season in Cuba. He had a few even bigger years in between those two. But again, if you assume that he was roughly the same guy at 26 that he was at 27 or 25 at 27, and then you just tack on a few years because he was hitting really well by 21. I mean, just, you know, think of what the numbers would be.

They would be really impressive in a career level as opposed to just on a rate level. So I'm just mentally adjusting the way that I think of Jose Abreu as, you know, good slugger, you know, to like, oh, this guy, probably a Hall of Fame talent. If his career had played out differently, he would probably be in the MLB Hall of Fame. So I think that's how we should think of him. And he gets a lot of credit as like a leader and a clubhouse guy and a mentor, right? And, you know, it seems like people at this stage of his career give Cabrera that kind of credit too so you could give him that as well I mean give credit to the White Sox too right because they signed him to that contract that I think a

lot of people at the time probably me included I don't recall but thought was maybe an overpay for him right that like he was already sort of on the downslope age-wise and performance-wise. And that has not turned out to be the case. Like he's totally still lively and still a good hitter and really important to that team, which has lost like so many other players to injury, right? Like so many of the other younger guys who have surrounded him have been missing a lot of the time. And he's kind of been a constant in that lineup. He's someone who going back to 2019 really has not missed any significant times. So that's pretty important too. And now you look at him and, you know, is he making like 16 million, 13 million, 17 million? I guess this year he's up to 20 million, but well worth it even now. So that worked out quite well,

I would say for the white socks we should have more respect for pure hitters you know i think that we like you love a you love a guy who can like really field and also really hit and that's its own special fun but we should have more respect for the pure hitters i think we can acknowledge the relative value without being so dismissive of what they bring. Because it's like, you know, sometimes what you need, Ben, is a hit. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, his offensive ceiling was not as high as Mickey's just because I've been making that comp.

Cabrera had better years. And you could argue, I guess, that maybe his war was dragged down by the fact that he was not playing first base his whole career. And so he had really negative numbers at other positions. So, you know, I'm not saying he is Miguel Cabrera. I'm just saying, you know, by the time Jose Abreu is 39 and kind of coming to the close, if we were to backdate his big league career to 21, the way that we do with Miggy, who came up at 20, might be sort of similar, sort of in the same range. And I don't know if they're thought of that way. Anyway, just an observation. Yeah. I also wanted to make another observation about another international player, Hasan Kim, who has turned out to be really important to the

Padres this year because they have not had and will not have Fernando Taizis Jr. this season. I am heartened to see the season that he is having too, because I had higher expectations for him last year. I think the Padres did too. I remember speaking of Dan and Zips, Zips loved Ha Sung Kim as I recall. That really looked like just a great signing by the Padres coming off of his huge KBO years. And then his first season in San Diego did not go so well. And he ended up with a 70 WRC plus. And that was sort of sad and not what I was expecting to see from him. And this year, you know, he's not going to make anyone forget Fernando Tatis, but he's been pretty important to that team. He has been an above league average hitter. He's been a constant in that lineup. He has not had the kind of power that he had in Korea, but, you know, he doesn't strike out a ton. He walks a decent amount. He's got a little bit of pop. He plays good defense. He's got a little bit of pop. He plays good defense. He is not riding any motorcycles that we know of, or at least not breaking any bones when he does, and not using any antifungal creams that are laced with something that will get you suspended. So he's been there, and he's been pretty good, and I'm happy to see that signing paying off now. Not that he's a superstar or anything in this league it looks like but he can more than hold his own well and you're right that like he he is not exhibited the same

thump that he did when he was in korea but he also you know like he seemed to have a a pretty protracted adjustment to big league fastballs last year. And if you look at his performance against fastballs and the sort of pitch values there, it was like, uh-oh, that's not great. And it's not superlative, but he has seemingly made the adjustment, right? Yeah. My last Kim thought is that last year

he was maybe more of a multi-position player. I know he's played a little third this year too, but now more established as a shortstop than he was last year all the defensive systems love his love yeah love his defense there yeah okay and in a way that like you watch it you're like hey that's a that's a good big league shortstop yeah you know you know it really it's nice when the metrics and and your experience of a player match up. Yeah. And sometimes that gets funky because, you know, small sample defensive metrics and even two thirds of a season is still kind of small sample-ish can lead to funky results. But that one you're like, yeah, yeah, House of Tim's a good big league shortstop. That's cool. All right.

Shall we answer a few emails and then we can transition into our segments? All right. So here's one from Alex, Patreon supporter, who says, I believe you've talked previously about Albert Pujols' quest that he's probably not even aware of to finish his career with 100 baseball reference war. It's obviously been touch and go for a while, but maybe you've noticed that after a strong couple of months, he's now at 100.1 and just needs a replacement level finish to stay above 100. But what I find really amusing about this chase, with parentheses, question mark, is that he's actually at 100.2 position player war

and negative 0.1 pitching war. Thanks to that outing on the mound earlier this season when he allowed four runs in one inning, which means it's entirely possible that he finishes with 99.9 more, at least until the formulas tweak next, because they put him in to pitch in that mop-up role. Oh, no. I didn't really intend this as a question, but I guess if I were to make it into one, it would be, if Albert Pujols finishes with 99.9 career war overall but 100.0 as a position player, can we still count it? I mean, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, yeah. We can still count it. note right now as we record this podcast to like bring this up with jay jaffe to make sure that when he writes his albert bull's hall of fame treatment that he makes special note of this because yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean i do think that we should count like pitcher offensive performance for past years when pitchers actually hit. Sure. Some pitchers distinguish themselves in that area.

But that was part of their job description. Yes, it was. It was not what they trained for or were recruited for, but it was part of their job. Yeah. Yeah. So this, this was just on a lark. This was just for fun. So I'm not suggesting that they back it out of the formula for him

or anything. War just works the same way for everyone. We need that consistent formula and standard. But I think it would be okay to focus on the fact that he has 100 position player war as a position player. I think that's okay. And really, like, I guess, yes, you could say that he was a sub-replacement level pitcher in that inning, but also it didn't matter at all. I don't remember what the score was at the time. 20 billion to something smaller. Right. Approximately. Which is why he was pitching in the first place. Right. There were no stakes.

Yeah. If anything, look, all of this is silly, so I'm going to make a silly counter argument because that's what this calls for. If anything, he should be credited with some sort of positive bump because he spared an actual arm from having to pitch in a moment that didn't matter at all. Mm-hmm. How about that? Yeah, that's the philosophy that teams operate under. It has been fun to follow the Pujols flirtation with 100 War because he's been hovering around this threshold for so long. Like 2016 to 2022, Pujols has accrued, if you can call it that, 0.2 baseball reference war.

That's over a span of more than 700 games and more than 3,000 plate appearances. So he's just been a bit over and a 700 games and more than 3,000 plate appearances. So he's just been a bit over and a bit below and back again. But I can't get that invested in the Pujols chase for 100 War just because it hasn't really been established as a thing like the 100 War club. Like, you know, I couldn't even, it's not like I could reel off who's in the 100 war club. I could make some educated guesses. And I do think it's a standard that really limits you to, quote unquote, inner circle greats, right? Because you have a lot of Hall of Famers who are not at or even near 100 war. So 100 war, it's a pretty handy cutoff for, oh, this guy is not only really good, but

just like a total all-timer. But I think because there isn't a lot of history associated with it, maybe at some point there is. And so maybe we should establish this. We should ingrain it in people's minds. Oh, 100 war is something to aim for. But also, as we've discussed and as the questioner even acknowledged there, it's just hard to get attached to any particular war total down to the decimal place just because it's going to change. Inevitably, it's going to change. We know it's going to change because park factors are calculated retroactively once we get new data. So it's just built into the system. And then, of course, periodically there are revisions in other ways, too.

And defense changes. Not that that would affect Albert Pujols that much at this point in his career. But if he were to end on exactly 100.0 war, I couldn't necessarily celebrate that because odds are he's not going to be there in two years or 10 years or whatever. Or maybe we get stat cast war at some point and then that's completely different. And I don't know what his fan graphs were is currently, but not the same, obviously. So again, I don't think it's a terrible thing that we have multiple wars, but it just it does make it hard to really use it for milestones. In fact, he's at 87 fan graphs. Yeah, 87.4, Ben. Yeah. So between the multiple war systems

and just the mutability of war, which again is in some ways a feature, not a bug, but it does make it tough for milestone purposes. And with Pujols, there's so many other milestones that he has or is still chasing and all these big round numbers. And, you know, he's at 690 home runs right now, right?

Like, I don't think he's going to get to 700, but he's given us a lot of chases and milestones and landmark moments already. So I don't feel like we really have to reach for an extra one here. Well, and it's like, you know, there's also just, there are just the error bars on war. Like, even if it weren't altered at all going forward, we know that like, there's a, you know, there's sort of a range on either side. It's like those political surveys. Plus, I think you're right that not only does he have more sort of impressive traditional milestones to point to, like, not that we have to assess guys' careers purely with this in mind, but it's like, those milestones, I feel comfortable speculating matter a great deal to

Albert Pujols. And he probably doesn't care about 100 war, like, strictly speaking, you know, like, he probably knows that that number is high but when you think about the the milestones that players point to amongst themselves you know when david lorla goes into a clubhouse and asks guys like who are the best teammates you've ever played with the best players you've ever played with like i doubt very many of them are like and he had 100 war so get out of here. You know, that's the guy like that's not, you know, and so I think that when you're thinking about legacy and sort of career achievement, having an understanding of their sabermetric resume is important and

valuable. And I also think it's nice to know, like, what matters to these guys? This is why I can't fully discount the All-Star game because it matters to those dudes right yeah yeah it is really kind of cool though that pool holes is hitting this year right because it's so fun it's such a cool thing 128 wrc plus right now that's the best he's had since yeah 2012 like obviously in a lot less playing time but i think we talked about like when they signed him it was cool that he went back to the cardinals and everyone got to appreciate him again in a nice farewell tour where he started and everything but we did allow for the possibility that he just would not hit at all just be bad that right and that the cardinals like expected to be and are in a tight playoff race. Like there might come a time when it was kind of awkward to be carrying Albert Pujols on your roster.

And we wondered, like, well, if he's not hitting, would he walk away like Mike Schmidt did? Or is he going to play out the string and then do things end badly again the way they did in Anaheim? But no, that has not happened. That has not been a big concern. the way they did in Anaheim. But no, that has not happened. That has not been a big concern. He has hit, whether he's been rejuvenated by returning to St. Louis or just knowing that this is the last gasp. He's gotten a second wind or a 15th wind or whatever wind he's on at this point. But it's really nice to see. And I thought it was because he was crushing lefties, and it is because he's crushing lefties. and it is because he's crushing lefties. I mean, his OPS against lefties is like double his OPS against righties.

It's like he's hitting lefties to the tune of a thousand plus OPS, but he has still faced more right-handed pitchers than lefties by a fairly wide margin. It's not as if they have been using him in solely a lefty pinch hitting type role. If they did, then his numbers might be even more impressive. He might have another couple of years left. I mean, if we still had like dedicated pinch hitters, if they limited the number of pitchers on active rosters enough that we could just bring back like someone like Albert Pujols to be on a bench and come out to pinch hit against lefties like he might be able to continue doing that for a while which is nice to see because like even in his later years with the Angels I don't think he was really raking against lefties either which is why I think when the Dodgers picked him up I was like okay well even if they use him against lefties I don't know how great he's going to be against even them at this point but this year he has he's got the mojo back and it's been fun to see yeah i think that it is like

you know quietly one of the cooler signings we've had in a while particularly when coupled with the season that he's had where he's gonna get this you know he's not as good a player or as consistently good a player as like Ortiz was when Ortiz went out. But it's so rare that these guys get to have like that one last campaign where you're like, wow, what a time, you know, and you get to appreciate it in more of a happy way than a sad way. So often, you know, players final season are like, okay, should be like it stands i don't want to pick on him but it's it stands in pretty sharp contrast to like cabrera where you're like okay yeah like so it's it's just very cool and for him to get to do it in front of a crowd in st louis and

and have that be his final act i think it's just really cool it is just really cool. It's just really cool. All right. Here is a question from Linder, Patreon supporter. How many MLB players do you think have lost more baseball games than they have won in their lifetimes, from T-ball to MLB? I imagine that most have won far more total baseball games than they have lost since they were likely outstanding players throughout their upbringing. The two cases where I think this may not be true are players who grew up playing in extremely high-level leagues such that their skill didn't lead to many wins, or players like Joey Votto, where their losing MLB record may have offset all of the banked wins from their youth.

Do you think an MLB player having lost more total baseball games than they have won is extremely rare, or might this be commonplace i have never pondered this question before when it came into the mailbox i was like i don't know and then i moved on but i remain i remain unsure like on the one hand i think that it's right to assume you know there's certainly exceptions to this, but we always say he's been the best player on every team he's been on his entire life. That's a cliche, but it's often like sometimes cliches are true. These guys, they've been the best player on a team, and I'm sure they have elevated their teams. And if you watch a lot of amateur baseball,

like baseball is a team sport and we harp on that a lot and we talk about how it's not like in the NBA where you can sign like two superstars and then your entire team's like outlook is different. But here's a place where that is not true. Have you ever watched a future like MLB draftee play on a field against a team that had no such luck then you're like oh that guy's just gonna power this team like all by himself you know like i remember watching

i didn't get to i didn't watch a lot of like corbin carroll play when he was an amateur but like i got to see corbin carroll play against like not very good amateur talent in the pacific northwest like it can be really variable up there how good the like amateur talent is and you were just like oh that seems not fun for other teams that they have to just like you know he only hits he doesn't pitch but it doesn't matter you know so i i would imagine that you have quite a on average you have quite a buffer going into pro ball if you are a guy who ends up playing pro ball. But then, you know, the longer your pro career, I think the less, even if you're exemplary, like the less your individual talent can carry a team, right? Like you just have to look at Mike Trout know can be the you can be the very best guy the best one and doesn't matter yeah right so at lower levels in amateur ball even if you're

like as great as that i wonder like because you know people will dominate to such an extent there that it does break the rules that we think of for Major League Baseball, where, yes, you can maybe be the best ever and you can still be on a losing team. I wonder how much that is true on, say, Little League, if there is a real prodigy there. There's still only one player. They can still only get so many play appearances and reach so many balls and everything. And obviously, like, they're not then as good as they're going to be one day, you know, if you were to drop a big leaguer into Little League now and figure out what their war would be. Wasn't there an article about that? Wasn't there like a Fangraphs post about like war in Little League? I got to find what I'm thinking of. I will find it. But I wonder,

if you could extrapolate like a Little League schedule over 162 games and then take the best player in that Little League. Because the lower the level of the league, probably the wider the range of talent levels. Sure. You could potentially have a future big leaguer and then you could have someone who has never picked up a bat or a glove or a ball before and never will again right and because of that range you can get some really weird funky outcomes right you can't assume the result of any play i mean that remains true all the way into college where you can't you know assume that like a clean a double play will be turned cleanly right you just can't or you can't assume that the catcher is gonna catch the ball sometimes you're like i don't know exactly so yeah that's

that's a fair sort of counterpoint to my assumption i guess where it's like your range of outcomes on the field for any given player is super wide and that means that like weird stuff can happen yeah i found what i was thinking of it It was our pal Grant Brisby in 2019 for SB Nation wrote, how many war would I be worth if I got to play Little League again? So this is adult Grant Brisby playing Little League currently. And he calculated that he would be worth about four wins above replacement in a 16-game season, which would translate to a 40-war season over 162 games, roughly. So is adult Grant Brisby better than the best possible actual qualified Little League player? I don't know how much credit to give Grant. But once you get into that range of

war, then you might actually be just so good that it would be hard to lose games. Like Trout could be worth 10 war and be on a losing team. If he were worth 40 war, then he would not be on a losing team, I think. I don't want to underestimate the Angels, but I don't know that they could do it if he were that good and that dominant. Although, let's see. I mean, I guess the worst seasons that they've had during his time there have been when he wasn't available for most of the season. So they probably have not finished like 30 games under 500 when he was actually there every day. So I'm going to say, yeah, it is probably quite rare. And it's not just that. It's not just that you would dominate your competition and therefore help your team win games. But also, the better you are, if you have pro aspirations and you're getting scouted and you're getting groomed to be a big leaguer someday, odds are you're going to gravitate toward the better programs at whatever level you're at too,

right? Like you're going to want to play for the powerhouse team in your area and you're going to go to a big college or something that has a great baseball program. Like if you're that level of talent, then you can pick where you want to play to some extent. And so odds are not only are you going to be making your team better, but you're probably going to go to a team that is already good or better than average, I would say, which I guess is kind of true in the majors. on the whole, not just because of a preference to win on their part, but also because probably the better teams, the teams that hope to contend would be the ones who would sign those free agents and be willing to spend that money. So yeah, I would say that all of these factors, and I guess the question is though, what's the ratio of big league games played to non-big league games played in a lifetime for, let's say, a long-tenured big leaguer, right?

And it might be different for someone like Joey Votto because of where he's from. But if someone were kind of coming up and playing Little League their whole life or someone who's coming from the Dominican, let's say, and is basically playing baseball from the time you can walk in a lot of cases, right? And I guess it's like, are you counting league games in whatever league you were in at that time? Yeah, what are we counting? Yeah, are we picking pickup games with your friends? You're playing stickball on the street, does that count? You're playing wiffle ball in the gym or you're in your backyard with your siblings or something, right? Like it's hard to draw the line there, but I guess if you were

going to count actual league games, you don't have 162 game seasons in lower level leagues, typically, right? I mean, you have shorter little league seasons and college seasons are shorter and high school seasons are shorter. And then even coming up through the minors, if you're in the lower levels of the minors, you're playing fewer games. So if you're a longtime big leaguer, then you'll probably be in the big leagues longer than you were playing baseball before you were in the big leagues. And also you will be playing more games per year at that point if you're counting official games. So I would say that Winter's right, that it's rare, but probably not unheard of. I wish we could stat blast this, but unfortunately, the databases don't go down that far. Or fortunately,

perhaps. Yeah, I think it's okay. All right. Well, and this is a related question then from Michael, Patreon supporter, who says, I was listening to your recent conversation about teams that lose a lot of games when playing above their talent level and got to wondering how far you'd have to go down the hierarchy of levels until you would expect a team drawn from that level to win zero games across an entire 162-game season if they were subbed in for a major league team? Or another way of saying this is, do we think it's possible to predict in some way what the expectation value of MLB wins is for teams from different levels in the minors, for different

tiers of college teams, et cetera? So he's saying, how far down do you have to go before you get to a level where if you took a team out of that league and plopped it into the big leagues, it would not win a single game over the course of a season. And I don't know whether we're taking a representative team or we're taking an elite team from that level. Right. Are we talking about like Jack Leiter, Kumar Rocker, Vander from that level right are we talking about like jack lighter kumar rocker vanderbilt or are we talking about well maybe current vanderbilt that's been as good that's a college baseball joke ben which you you need it explained to you because of your

lack of affinity for college baseball right so maybe we can just take it as like a representative team from that level, I guess, because, you know, the worst major league team obviously is still going to win 50 or more games, hopefully, in a given season. happened. So how far do you have to go down before you would not even luck into one win over the course of a full major league season? Like does your typical AAA team win a game if they're in the big leagues for a full year? I think so. I think so. Like for wins above replacement, replacement level is set at a 294 winning percentage, which is like 47-48 wins. So in theory, if you had a team of replacement players, they would win 47-48 games in the majors. Now, replacement players are your best freely available players at the AAA level, not an average AAA player, probably a good deal better than an average AAA player. But still, if a team of the best freely available AAA players could win that many games in the majors, then you'd think a typical AAA team could win some games in the majors.

It's also like, I mean, you know, if you have a AAA team or a AA team that has some major league ready ace pitcher on it, right, then the games that that guy pitches, they're going to win some of them, even though they're not going to hit much and the defense is not going to be as good. Still, like if you have one elite starter on your team, who in many cases might be about big league ready already, then I think you have a decent shot to win a handful over the course of a year. So I guess like once you get down to like A ball or even high A, like there's no such thing as a major league ready, major league starter, probably, right? Like no one really makes the jump from like high A to the big leagues without the intermediate stages and just like walks onto a big league team and is awesome immediately, that kind of thing would be really difficult to do.

So I feel like a AAA team would win a few probably. A AA team, at least if you have the right AA team with the right player on it who could be dominant in that way way I think it really would depend on whether you had like an ace or not if you didn't have an ace and you're a double-a team do you win a game against a big league team maybe maybe I would still say one at that level so I think you'd have to go down to to a ball or even high a I say, where the talent mismatch would just be so wide that... Right. Where even like...

This feels so mean. Where even like the current nationals are just going to be able to get you. Right. Clay Davenport, one of the founders of Baseball Prospectus, did some research that I refer to from time to time. This was five years or so ago, so it's probably slightly out of date, but he looked at the relative league strength at all levels of professional baseball from indie ball up to the majors, including a bunch of international leagues. I'll link to it on the show page, but this was all relative to the NL and the AL. So

at the time he had the National League at 1.0 and the AL was the stronger league so it was like 1.1 and then the NPB leagues were the next highest and they were like 0.8 something and then he had AAA at like 0.76 or 0.8 depending on the league and then the KBO and then some winter leagues and then AA was like close to a 0.7 depending depending on the league, roughly aligned with the Arizona Fall League. And then the Mexican League was right below that. And then the highest level Indy Leagues. And only then did he get to high A, which was below 0.6. So yeah, that's getting down there. And by the way, I think this is all based on how players performed when they went from one league to another and what the penalty to their stats was. So there's a big gap between the big leagues and any other level or league. But once you get down

to high A, it's a gaping gulf. Now, you know, if you take the best team at that level and the worst major league team and a bunch of things break right or wrong, depending on your perspective, maybe, maybe at that level, there's a chance. But I think that's about where I would draw the line to like, you don't have a hope here. Right. Any further down than that. I mean, if you're going to like short season ball and rookie ball and college, like, you know, obviously, like there are a lot of great college teams and college programs that, or so I've heard, have, you know, a bunch of future big leaguers and top draft picks on them. But even so, like most of those players are years away from the majors, even if one day they will be there. So I just don't see that happening.

Yeah, I think that that's probably right. All right. So we've got Meet a Major Leaguer. Shall we go to Meet a Major Leaguer first? Sure. Meet a Major Leaguer. I am very eager to meet this nascent Major Leaguer. It's the thrilling debut of somebody new. leaguers this season because that's why we do this segment. There are just so many major leaguers in this era that it's hard to keep track of all of them.

And we're now up to, so far this season, through August 17th, 226 players have made their major league debuts this season, which actually puts us, I think, on a record pace. Generally, this has been a record-breaking thing every year at this point. But last year through August 17th, there were only 202 major leaguers. In 2019, through the same date, there were 211 major leaguers. So we are ahead of that pace,

probably because rosters were expanded at the start of the season and you didn't have any pitcher restrictions or anything. So maybe this will end up being the high watermark when it comes to new major leaguers in a season. But that's where we are. So we each brought a big leaguer. Who you got? I brought Wynton Bernard. Wynton Bernard. Yeah, this feels like show and tell.

It's like bring your parent to kindergarten days. I brought Wynton Bernard. Wynton Bernard. Yeah, this feels like show and tell. It's like bring your parent to kindergarten days. I brought Wynton Bernard. Which feels weird to say about Wynton Bernard because he's 31. Yeah. Should I? Shall I? Shall I? Yeah, please.

Are we going to say something nice about a Rockies player here? Oh, we sure are. How about that? All right. a Rockies player here? Oh, we sure are. I challenge anyone to look at the life and career of Wynton Bernard and not come out wanting to root for this guy. He is very easy to root for. For the uninitiated, he's an outfielder who recently

made his big league debut for the Rockies, as probably was made obvious here. He was born in San Diego and went to high school in California and attended Niagara University. And in his freshman year, led the team in stolen bases and hit 293. But he transferred to Riverside Community College for his sophomore season after his father had a debilitating stroke. And he wanted to be closer to his family. And sadly, his father passed away after his sophomore season. And he actually plays with images of him with his mom and with his late father on the knobs of his bats, which is just, you know, a really lovely thing. And he ended up transferring back to Niagara after his sophomore season and was selected by the Padres in the 35th round of the 2012 draft. He was released by San Diego in 2014 and caught on with the Tigers and eventually was named MVP of the Midwest League.

And then he played with the Giants in 2017 and the Cubs in 2018 and 19. He's also played winter ball in Mexico and Venezuela and the Dominican Republic and Australia, and ended up playing 23 games for the Sugarland Skeeters of the constellation energy league in 2020. Cause obviously there wasn't a minor league season for him to play. He signed a minor league deal with the Rockies in January of 2021 and spent two seasons before his call up with AAA Albuquerque this year, he was hitting three 25,

three 74, five 88 for a one 33 WRC plus and 17 home runs. before his call-up with AAA Albuquerque. This year, he was hitting.325,.374,.588 for 133 WRC+, and 17 home runs, and 26 stolen bases with Albuquerque before being called up on August 12th. And for those doing the math at home, that is after 11 years playing in the minors for five different affiliated teams, not to mention the winter ball and independent ball he played.

And in describing his call-up, and here I'm quoting from a piece in the athletic before he knew what was about to happen. Bernard figured he'd be able to go through his standard pregame routine with AAA Albuquerque. He planned on taking a pregame nap in the clubhouse after watching some videos of that night's opposing pitcher and some of his favorite hitters like Miguel Cabrera. Then isotopes manager Warren Schaefer called everyone together for a team meeting. Oh my gosh, we got another meeting, Bernard remembered thinking when telling the story in the Rockies clubhouse. Here we go. I'm trying to take a nap right now. And Schaefer says after 11 hard minor league season, Wynton Bernard's going to the show. I was just like shaking the emotions it's indescribable I was just pumped up all my

teammates which meant the most to me they truly care it was just a special moment just to know like after how many years I've played I'm finally here this means the world to me though endearingly he said he also didn't remember much of what happened immediately after learning he had been promoted I was just in shock and guys were telling me what I did afterwards said Bernard they were like did you know you did this and you did this? And I was like, I did that? I guess I picked up pitcher Julian Fernandez and I was hitting my chest and hitting the ground.

It was almost like I blacked out for a second there. And he made a really lovely call to his mom saying, I did it, mommy. I did it. I love you so much. Good video. Yeah, we'll link to that. Thank you for everything.

Thank you for supporting me. I couldn't have done this without you. He credits his mom with inspiring him, especially having watched her care for his late father in the year between his stroke and when he passed. Mom, I'm going to the major leagues. I'm going, Mama. I'm going, Mom.

I promise. I promise, Mom. I'm going. When you I'm going, mom. I promise. I promise, mom. I'm going. But you worked hard. You deserve it. You deserved it. Mom, you don't know how many times I would think about you taking care of dad

and it would keep me going. Cause I'm like, if she could go through all of that, if she could go through all that if she could go through all that then I could do this I can I can do it and you give me you give me a lot of inspiration mom and I promise I'm gonna keep working just as hard when I'm up there I'm gonna be working just as hard and his mom said in a in an interview during his debut on the Rockies broadcast that like she didn't know he felt like that until this call. And so it's just like a really lovely moment. He debuted on the 12th against the Diamondbacks. He played center field and went one for three

with a stolen base and a run scored. And his hit came in the bottom of the seventh against Chris Davinsky, who I did not know was playing for the Diamondbacks. So that was a fun little thing to learn in the course of this exercise. And it was just a little tapper up the third baseline that was originally called an out but as you can probably tell from his stolen base totals like he's a fast guy and that out call was overturned on replay and

in the in the highlight you can just hear like all of Coors cheering for him that he had gotten his first major league hit like everyone there was very excited, and the Rockies won that game 5-3. He's played in two games since, one of which was an 0-4, but with an RBI groundout, and then more recently, a two-hit, two-RBI effort in St. Louis that also featured a stolen base. And as of today, I think he's still up with the big league club. So that, after 11 long years, is Wynton Bernard. Awesome.

Yeah. And I just read the fun fact that according to Stats Inc., at 31 years and 322 days old, Bernard became the oldest player to get a hit and steal a base in his Major League debut since the Cardinals' Joe Delahanty on September 30, 1907. Awesome. That's pretty good.

Yeah. See, that is a legitimate fun07. Awesome. That's pretty good. Yeah. See, that is a legitimate fun fact. Fun fact. So we tend to go with older players here. So Wynton Bernard, he was the third oldest player to make his Major League debut this year. And I'm going to be going with the sixth oldest, Brennan Bernardino. And I'm going to be going with the sixth oldest, Brennan Bernardino. Before I get to Brennan, did want to note in the genre of player unlikely call up calls his parents and gets it all on video for us to share in the joy.

There is a great one in that genre. I also want to welcome to the major leagues Stone Garrett of the Arizona Diamondbacks who just debuted this week. Stone Garrett, which is a wonderful name, obviously. Now, he's not super old. He's only 26, but he is, I think, the first stone in Major League history. So that's something. Of course, his actual name is Gregory. He is Gregory Stone Garrett.

Can't blame him for going by Stone. And I don't think there's been a Stone. There have been many people with the surname Stone. There have been Stoneys, but no Stone. So that's something. And also, he has a really interesting backstory. He could have been a main guy for Meet a Major Leaguer, but there's a little publicity about him we tend to go with the obscure players on this segment but there's a mlb.com article that i will link to

and the headline is he got a job via linkedin major league player that is his job that he got via linkedin you get it but it's a story about him he was selected in the eighth round of the 2014 draft by the Marlins. And so he was working his way up the ladder for several years. The Marlins released him in 2020 during the pandemic. So he thought he was done with baseball and he was interested in real estate. So he got his real estate license. He had already gotten it by that point. And so 2020, he just started, he thought, his real estate career.

And it was going okay, but he still had the baseball bug. So he signed with an indie league team for the next year and he had joined LinkedIn when he got his real estate license because video coordinator from the Gulf Coast League who reached out and just like congratulated him on the start of his successful real estate career. And he was like, hey, you looking for anyone who needs an outfielder? I feel like I could still be an outfielder. And then he got signed by the Diamondbacks. They had a former Marlins person in the front office and they invited him to spring training and he started out at double A and hit well and the rest is history. So now he's a big leaguer. So that's pretty great. Stone Garrett. Where's mom at? She put my insurance somewhere.

Can you ask her? Can you go get it real quick? I'm lying. You know why I'm calling you? Why? I'm going to San Francisco tomorrow. I'm going to the big leagues. Oh! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Thank you. Yeah, book your flights. I am not on LinkedIn myself, which just came up the other day because someone asked me if they could, whatever it is, friend me, add me on LinkedIn. Connect.

Yeah, maybe. I realized that they could not because I was not there as far as I know, which maybe I should get on there. I don't know. Maybe someone would make me a big leaker if I got on LinkedIn. See, I haven't had to apply for a job in a while. I've changed jobs, but without applying or going through some process that would require LinkedIn. And so I don't have a LinkedIn. But maybe I should get in there and people would just be offering me jobs left and right. Maybe they don't know that I'm out there because I'm not on LinkedIn. Who knows? I never, look, this isn't the

point of this story, but I never fail to regret being on LinkedIn when I remember I'm on LinkedIn. And I say this not because anyone is particularly annoying, but because everyone is at least a little bit annoying. And like, that's not anyone's fault. Like you everyone is at least a little bit annoying and like that's not anyone's fault like you're trying to get a job you're trying to make professional connections and i appreciate all of that but i don't actually really want to do it and i do it so infrequently i i and by do it i mean log in so infrequently that whenever i do i have like a bunch of messages from people very earnestly trying to use the platform in the way it is intended. And then I feel guilty because they must think I'm ignoring them.

And I'm like, I'm not. I just don't. Anyway, that has been my don't use LinkedIn. I will stay away from now. But check your messages. Someone might need a AA outfielder. Yeah. Brendan Bernardino, my actual major leaguer to meet. So he is 30 and he made his debut earlier this year with your Seattle Mariners. He was with them briefly, really. He was up and down a couple of times. He was called up and then he was sent down and then he was called back up for a double header, I think, and then he was sent back down again. So I believe he is not currently with the Major League Mariners, but he's pitched a couple of games for them.

And he, like Bernard, is a former Indy leaguer. So I'm always fond of former Indy leaguers. And he played for the Winnipeg Golden Eyes who have come up on the podcast before he was with them in 2018. He is also a former teammate of now Phillies pitcher Bobby Rossman, who, as you may recall, was the subject of an earlier Meet a Major Leaguer segment on episode 1875. We met Bobby Rossman. Little did I know that he had been a teammate of Brendan Bernardino. This was in college when they played for Cal State Dominguez. So Brendan Bernardino, he's a left-handed pitcher and he is 6'4", 180, and he's been bouncing around for quite a while, as you might imagine. So he was a 26th round pick by the Reds in 2014.

And I'm going to miss when we stop meeting major leaguers who were picked in rounds of the draft that don't exist anymore. And it's going to come so much faster than we're ready for. I know. It's like everyone waiting, you know, oh, who was the last Expo? Like, you know, there was that period of waiting to see who would be the last Expos player who was still kicking around. It's going to be like who was the last after 20th round draftee. Well, Brendan Bernardino has just recently arrived. So he was a 26th rounder and he was in the Reds organization for some time. After the

Reds, he was, as I said, with the Golden Eyes after they released him. And then he was in the Mexican League. He has done multiple stints in the Mexican League. So he was with them initially in 2017 to 2018. Then he was with the Golden Eyes. Then he was with Cleveland. So he was with them initially in 2017 to 2018. Then he was with the Golden Eyes. Then he was with Cleveland. So he was with Cleveland in 2019. And then he didn't play in 2020, at least not here because of the pandemic. So he was back in the Mexican League again from 2019 to 2021, or even the beginning of this year, I guess. And then he was signed by the Mariners who put him in AAA and he pitched like 15 innings there with a 0.6 or so ERA. And then they called him up. So, I mean, he was playing for Tijuana this season in the Mexican league,

and now he's with the Seattle Mariners. So that was a pretty quick come up. So good job by Brennan for sticking with it and playing all over the world and all over the country and the continent and just signed with the Mariners as a free agent on June 27th. And now he's a big leaguer already. He basically went from the Mexican League to the big leagues with just a short stint in AAA. And one other thing that drew me to Brendan Bernardino is that he got a rude introduction to the majors when he made his debut on July 31st,

because he started the 10th inning pitching in relief for the Mariners. And there was a zombie runner on second base. And they intentionally walked Jose Altuve. The Mariners were playing the Astros. The zombie runner advanced to third on a sack fly. And then Jordan Alvarez comes up and hit a grounder to left off of Brendan Bernardino to score the zombie runner and end the game. So as Scott Service said, tough place to make your major league debut in. Tough situation when they start with the guy on second.

And here comes the Astros top of the lineup. So I would imagine that Brendan Bernardino probably hates the zombie runner as well. So that sucks. It was a 3-2 win for the Astros. So trial by fire, trial by zombie runner. And that kind of made me feel for Brennan Bernardino because he was immediately plagued by the zombie runner that has been plaguing all of us and also by Jordan Alvarez, who has been plaguing opposing pitchers as well. So tough introduction, but great story and seemingly has come from many a league and country to make his major league debut. So congrats to Wynton Bernard. Congrats to Stone Garrett. Congrats to Brennan Bernardino. It's just a cool thing.

It's got its moments, this sport, I tell you what. It sure does. All right, stop blast. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA minus or OBS plus. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. All right. The Stat Blast segment, as always, is brought to you by the Stat Head tool, powered by Baseball Reference. There's been a new development with Stat Head just this week. I have mentioned before, they're always upgrading it, they're always adding new functionality.

And this week, they have updated the Team Season Finder on Stat Head Baseball, so now you can use it to look up team stats over a single season or multiple season, including postseason stats. This goes all the way back to the first World Series in 1903. You can search for single year postseason accomplishments by a team, as well as multiple years or all time accomplishments. This is in the team batting and team pitching season finders. Quoting from the Stathead blog, for instance, did you know that the 2021 White Sox had the best Babbitt by any team in postseason history? I did not. Or that the Yankees have the most postseason innings pitched by any franchise since 2000? I did not, although I'm not surprised to know that. But that's the kind of thing that you can look up with the StatHead tool.

They've also souped it up to make those searches run faster. So just recently, they updated this, they updated the player season finder, the player and team game finders. And that's just baseball. Obviously, they're always tinkering with the tools for other sports, too. If you want to get in on this hot stat action, go to stathead.com, and you can use the coupon code WILD20 to get a $20 discount on an $80 one-year single-sport subscription. And in the process, you'll let Baseball Reference and StatHead know that this sponsorship is working. So today's StatBlast, let's start with this one.

This comes from Alex, Patreon supporter, and this is related to draft picks. So this will be a nice little segue from our 26th round draft picks to our first round draft picks. So Alex says, can we talk about former first round draft picks? And he's making a reference here to when we talked in a pedantic corner about whether you can say that someone is a former first round pick or whether they're just a first round pick, even if they were picked a while ago. We did wonder about that. Alex said, listening to those episodes,

that was multiple episodes, I got to wondering which team had the most first round draft picks in its starting lineup. This seems like a good step last. I agree, Alex. It seems like the peak Washington Nationals were a contender with Harper, Strasburg, Turner, Rendon, Zimmerman, and Brian Goodwin at six.

Has there ever been a starting lineup where everyone was a first-round draft pick? Not a former first-round draft pick, unless you choose to go that way. So I asked frequent StatBus consultant Ryan Nelson, whom you can find on Twitter at rsnelson23, about this one. So he gathered some draft data, and he determined that the most players drafted in the first round to appear in one game for one team was 12th wow yeah which has happened exactly once and i don't know if we even noticed may 12th 2021 the reds ran out 12 different players against the pirates who had been drafted in the first round.

Alex Blandino, Nick Castellanos, Sean Doolittle, Sonny Gray, Jonathan India, Wade Miley, Mike Moustakas, Tyler Naquin, Nick Senzel, Lucas Sims, Tyler Stevenson, and Jesse Winker. Wow. Yeah. 11 has happened 12 times. Okay. Four times by that same team, the 2021 Reds. Sure, makes sense. Three times by the 98 Astros, twice by the 99 Astros, twice by the 89 Rangers, and once each by the 1987 Padres, 1990 Giants, and 1992 Giants.

10 has happened 82 times. Ryan says, now, obviously, by definition, this is all players to appear and not just the starting lineup. By definition, this is all players to appear and not just the starting lineup. If we want just the starters to count, as was asked in the original question, then the record is eight, which has happened 57 times. The most common team to do this were the 2005 to 2007 A's, who did it 27 times across those three seasons. These lineups had some combination of the following players who were all drafted in the first round. Joe Blanton, Hiram Boca Chica, Eric Chavez, Bobby Crosby, Scott Hadberg, Jason Kendall, Mark Kotze, Jay Payton, Nick Swisher, Barry Zito, Frank Thomas, Travis Buck,

Jack Cuss, Shannon Stewart, and Todd Walker. Some other common teams were the 91 Brewers six times, the 77 Padres three times, the 91 Angels three times, and the 91 Giants three times. Seven first round starters has happened 602 times and six has happened 3390 times. If we look only at players that were drafted and signed in the first round, he says none of the records change, but the totals down the list change marginally. So I will link to the spreadsheets and the results there. Cool. All right.

And then another question comes from Nate, who says, I just finished watching the Rays-Brewers game on August 9th and noticed something potentially noteworthy. The Brewers defeated the Rays in Milwaukee by a score of 5-3 for the third game in a row this season. The first two games in Tampa also ended with a 5-3 Milwaukee win. I'm not sure if this is a particularly long streak of this sort, but it got me wondering, what is the longest streak in which a team has defeated the same team by the same score in consecutive games? As a Rays fan, I hope to see the streak end tomorrow, but I'm also curious to see how long this thing could go. So Ryan determined, for the

question of most consecutive games, one team has beaten the same opponent by the same score. The answer is actually four, which has happened once. In 1945, Cleveland beat the St. Louis Browns two to one, four games in a row. Two of those games went to extra innings as well. A team has beaten the same opponent by the same score three times in a row, 54 times. For the question of most consecutive games one team has had against the same opponent with the same score, regardless of win or loss, the record for that is five, which has also happened once. In 1910, the Giants and Pirates ended five consecutive games two to one. The Pirates won the first and fourth of the five and the Giants won the other three. Four such streaks has happened nine times. Finally, for the question of most consecutive games, one team has won or lost by the same score regardless of opponent, the record for that is also four, but this has happened three times. scores of 2-1. Two Mets victories were walk-offs. July 4th to 7th, 1961,

the Giants lose to the Cubs and the Reds twice, and the Cardinals by scores of 3-2. And then September 19th to 22nd, 1958, the Senators lost to the Red Sox three times, and the Orioles by scores of 2-0.

Three of those has happened 139 times. Oh, and has happened 139 times. Oh, and there's one more thing. For the question of most consecutive games one team has had and with the same score, regardless of winner loss and regardless of opponent, the record is yet again 4. This time, however, the record is a 19-way tie. Most recently, the 2014 Reds from May 4th through May 9th,

beat the Brewers in a 4-3 walk-off, then lost to the Red Sox in a 3-4 walk-off, then lost to the Red Sox 3-4 in a non-exciting non-walk-off way, then walked off the Rockies 4-3. So hopefully that answers every question that you could potentially have had about streaks of games ending with the same score. Do you think that you would start to worry that you were haunted?

Yeah. That you had been haunted or cursed in some meaningful way? That there had been a curse laid on you? It does seem like you'd get a Groundhog Day vibe from this at some point. Yeah, you'd be like, oh no, I'm going to have to learn lessons. What are they? Yeah. Boy, escape.

Right. So just to bring this back to the question from Nate, he noticed that the Brewers had defeated the Rays by a score of 5-3 in three consecutive games. He hoped the streak would end the next day. So did it? Yes, indeed. Instead of losing to Milwaukee 5-3, the Rays lost to Milwaukee 4-3. That one was a walk-off when the zombie runner scored in the bottom of the 10th.

So one run away from getting into more historic territory. All right. And the last one is from Chris, who says, I'm a Yankees fan and see a lot of people hemming and hawing over Aaron Hicks' legitimately awful year. One stat I saw thrown around today is that he has the lowest win probability added for any position player at negative 2.91.

This doesn't come off to me as a great criticism. It means he's been bad in some consequential moments, but doesn't really mean that he's the worst player in baseball. He's a one win above replacement player, and you can go look at the Angels fan grass page to find major leaguers with a significant number of at-bats who are well below that mark. Don't I know it? My question is, who is the player with the most war who still has a negative win probability added? I will leave it to the smart people to come up with reasonable qualifiers. Are we the smart people? I hope so. But I didn't really set any qualifiers here. I just look for

players who had a negative WPA and then I sorted by war. So this is win probability added, which takes into account the game state and the situation and the score. And if you want to call it clutchness, you can maybe too. So that takes into account the sequencing of when you did what you did, whereas war is sort of context independent or agnostic and just counts a home run hit in a blowout the same as a home run to win a walk-off. So I sorted here, and it's true that this year, it's not that notable that Hicks has a bad WPA and also a positive war. If I just search for players in 2022 who have a negative WPA and have higher wars, significantly higher wars than Aaron Hicks. JT Real Muto leads the list of players with negative WPAs by war.

So he has a 3.9 war and a negative 0.35 WPA. So he's up there. Wilson Contreras, also negative 0.7 WPA, 2.9 war. Ian Happ, also his teammate is there. And oh no, Ha Sung Kim, whom we praised earlier on this episode. He has a negative 0.4 WPA to go along with his 2.8 war. war. And then you've got Jerks and Profar and Kyle Raleigh and Dalton Varshow and Ahmed Rosario and Carlos Correa. The list goes on. Tim Anderson, Marcus Semyon, etc. But I looked because Fangraphs has WPA data going back to 1974. So I'll put the spreadsheet online here. But the leader for negative WPA by war, or I suppose I should say the war leader for players with negative WPA in a single season, Adrian Beltre in 2010 had 6.4 war, right? He had a legitimately fantastic year. He had a negative 0.03 WPA.

So just barely negative, but he squeezes in there. And I was flummoxed by how that was possible. I mean, it's hard to be that good and have a negative war. He is the best to have done it in this period. And he was a top 10 MVP finisher that year and an all-star, et cetera. But there are other players who have had really good years. Just looking down the top of this list, again, all these guys had negative WPAs, although not by a whole lot. Devon White, 1992, he had 5.9 war. Jonathan Lucroy, 2011, he had 5.8 war. Matt Wieters, 2011, 5.7 war. Jackie Bradley Jr., 2016, 5.6 war. Alex Rios, 2008, 5.7 were Jackie Bradley Jr., 2016, 5.6 were Alex Rios, 2008, 5.5 were Mike Cameron, 2002, 5.5 were. So there are a bunch of guys who had really good years and still managed to have

slightly negative WPAs. But I was confused about Beltre's because I figured, okay, he must have been unclutch that year or he must have had bad timing, however you put it. That does not seem to be the case or it didn't appear to be the case when I first looked. So, and I should note, he did have a 0.1 WPA via baseball reference, slightly different baseball reference model. So you could exclude him based on that if you wanted to, but he's slightly negative according to the fan graphs. And even if we, he's slightly negative according to fan graphs. And even if we say he's 0.1, how did he get up to 0.1 with a 6 plus war? I thought he must have been terrible with like runners in scoring position.

Nope. He had a 1012 OPS with runners in scoring position. And I figured, OK, well, maybe like late and close situations he was terrible. Nope. 921 OPS in late and close situations he was terrible. Nope. 921 OPS in late and close situations. So he seems to have been kind of clutch or not unclutch at least. And I was talking to a couple people about how this might have happened. I didn't fully dive in deeply. But Zach Cram, my colleague in Pilot the Ringer, I think he has a good explanation here.

He says, I think it's because he hit into 25 double plays. And Zach says, and he links me to a baseball reference page that I will link as well. If you look at his most pivotal plate appearances of the season, it's homers on top and then a decent number of grounded into double plays. So maybe a lot of his outs in crucial situations were multiple outs because they were double plays. And I guess that could get you. So that's tough. I didn't even, just looking at his surface stats, it was like, how did this happen? I don't know. But he did have a lot of grounded into double plays that year. It was a career high for him, 25. So I guess that got him. But that's your answer.

So you can be a whole lot better than Aaron Hicks and still have a negative WPA slightly technically. And I don't think it's unfair to point out a player's WPA. I agree that it's not the best way to evaluate them on a pure performance level, but it does, I think, speak to the frustration that fans might feel toward a certain player, because if he happened to come up short in a lot of important situations, even if that's not necessarily something that you should hold against him from just a pure evaluation perspective, it's still something that it's tough to forget if you're a fan and you were rooting for him to come through in all those situations

and he didn't so i would guess like if we could somehow assess this like there's got to be some break-even point there's got to be some point where like it's better to have a higher wpa than war right or like you will get a warmer reception from the fans if you have yeah like a high wpa and a negative war than the other way around i don't know like if you're like a six win player or something maybe that makes up for a bunch of double plays or even making a bunch of outs with runners in scoring position. But if you're not a superstar MVP type player, then maybe it would be better to have a higher WPA and a lower war than the other way around just in terms of public perception. Yeah, I think that that's right. All right. Let's end with the pass blast. And we're up to 1892 here. Now, I did want to just shout out someone who made a little pass blast of their own.

And that is new Phillies manager Rob Thompson, who made a player comp here that I would not expect to see. So he comped a player to Ed Delahanty. That's a pretty deep pull, I think, at this point to me making Ed Delahanty comps. Now, Ed Delahanty, probably better known for the way that he died than the way that he played because he had sort of a sad, tragic ending while he was still a player. He was also a Hall of Famer, but most of his career was in the 19th century. So the Phillies, they've been shorthanded in the outfield and they've been trying to find solutions there. And they traded Mickey Moniak for Brandon Welsh and they released Herrera and Bryce Harper is not quite back yet, although should be pretty soon. Anyway, Nick Maton, the infielder, played left field on Wednesday of this week.

Marsh left the game and Maton came in on Tuesday after Marsh departed. So it was the first time Maton had played outfield in the big leagues. And he played like less than one game's worth of innings in the outfield in the minors. But he played OK. On Tuesday, he made a diving worth of innings in the outfield in the minors, but he played okay. On Tuesday, he made a diving catch and a catch in the corner. And Philly's interim manager, Rob Thompson, said he looked like Ed Delahanty out there, which like I can't imagine many people were thinking that. First of all, who knows what Ed Delahanty looked like out there? Delahanty looked like out there. He last played in 1902. So we don't have great game footage of Ed Delahanty out in left, which is just interesting that he would go there. It's almost like

showing off your knowledge of baseball history or Phillies history to just drop a Delahanty like that. I was looking, I Googled like best left fielders in Phillies history, which I wasn't sure whether that post would exist, but it did. There is a 2020 MLB.com Phillies top five left fielders. This is by Todd Zielecki. And he actually excluded Ed Delahanty from the ranking on the grounds that he played too long ago, basically. So he's like, you know, that's not real baseball. So he excluded Ed Delahanty and the original Billy Hamilton just because they played so long ago. And so he had Sherry McGee at the top of the list, who played not that much more recently than Ed Delahanty, Del Ennis, Greg Luzinski, Pat Burrell, and Gary Matthews. Now, some of those players you probably would not want to comp from a defensive standpoint, you know, if you by Rob Thompson dropping an Ed Delahanty.

And also, it's perfectly timed because we're up to 1892, which was Ed Delahanty's first star level season for the Phillies. And also, he was a star on the 1900 Phillies, whose sign-stealing scheme was alluded to on the last Pass Blast. So there we go. I managed to tenuously connect these observations. The actual Pass Blast here comes, as always, from Richard Hershberger, historian, Sabre researcher, and author of Strike for the Evolution of Baseball. And Richard, reporting from the Sabre Convention, writes, Two reports connecting baseball of 1892 with baseball of today. The first comes from

Sporting Life of February 20th, 1892, discussing John Montgomery Ward's spring training plans for the Brooklyn team. Ward's arrangement for his spring visit of the Brooklyn team to Florida exceeds anything that has been arranged for several years. Last spring, the Brooklands and Chicagos had to pay $700 between them for the use of the St. Augustine grounds. The club was compelled to pay $3 a day per man for hotel accommodations. This year, Ward gets the Ocala grounds free of rent, and the Ocala people secure hotel accommodation for the team at $1 a day per capita. The city also furnishes the entire team with round-trip tickets for the trip down and back.

The grounds are in good condition, well-fenced, and have plenty of seating capacity. Richard writes, this is the earliest example I know of a direct government subsidy to attract a baseball team. It is only spring training, but a portent of greater things. baseball team. It is only spring training, but a portent of greater things. So if you want to look at public funding for ballparks and so forth, maybe this is the first example, 1892, given the team a steep discount and free travel to come down and play spring training. So that's precedent setting. The second one comes from the Sporting Life's Pittsburgh correspondent in the May 14th issue. This is our second straight or almost second straight pass bus.

We're talking about hotel pricing in the 1890s. This is big. But May 14th, this is a little bit different. The refreshment receipts are big, but all the proceeds for this go to Harry Stevens, who has put up $600 for the privilege and will make six times that amount through his hustling. One day recently, this stand took in $76, and you know there was a great profit in that line. There are a good many kickers about the price Stevens charges for his liquors, but Harry meets them by saying in a pleasant way, And Richard observes there are two connections with the present day. The obvious one is the complaint about inflated ballpark prices.

The less obvious is the person of Harry Stevens. He was a real go-getter, rising from steel mill worker to selling scorecards to holding the refreshment concession in many major league parks. Harry M. Stevens, Inc. survived his death in 1934 until it was published in 1994 by Aramark Corporation, which sells overpriced stadium food to this day. All right. Thank you to Richard and to all of our StatBl angel storylines these days. It's Shohei Otani, it's broadcasters screwing up Taylor Ward's name, and maybe on Friday it'll be Mike Trout returning, if that does actually happen, fingers crossed. But to recap, earlier this season we had many instances of broadcasters confusing Taylor Ward and Tyler Wade, calling one of them the other's name, or maybe mangling one of the names so that

it was some hybrid of both. Well, Tyler Wade is no longer in the Angels, but as we have covered, that didn't completely stop the screwing up of Taylor Ward's name. So I have two examples here. We were alerted to both by listener Jeremy. Thank you, Jeremy. And they both come from the Tuesday, August 16th game between the Angels and the Mariners. So this first one is from the Mariners radio broadcast. End of the top of the first. Take it away, Rick Riz.

Now the set and the 1-1 to Winker. Swing and a hard hit. Ground ball right side. Diving. Stop by Ward. The first baseman gets up. Fires to the pitcher. Suarez covering first on the play to get Jesse Winker. That's going to retire the side. An outstanding play by Taylor Ward at first base. And that will end the inning. No runs, no hits, no errors. Well, actually, Rick, there was one error. Did you catch it? It sounded like he said Taylor Ward just fine.

What was the problem? Oh, well, the problem was that that wasn't Taylor Ward. That was Jared Walsh playing first base and making that nice play. So this is more a case of mistaken identity than problems with pronunciation. making that nice play. So this is more a case of mistaken identity than problems with pronunciation. As we have observed, Walsh and Ward, that's become the big problem in the aftermath of Tyler Wade's departure. So that was the top of the first. We had Walsh mistaken for Ward. Now we change over to the Mariners TV broadcast. We move to the top of the sixth. Take it away, Dave Sims. So here's a new entry in the genre, Turner Ward. There's no Turner on either of these

two teams, so I don't know where the Turner came from. This is the second time that we've documented Dave Sims running afoul clip where he mistakes Jared Walsh for Taylor Ward, and here's what I said the first time I recorded it. Okay, you ready? This is still gonna sound like just me talking, but this is gonna be me talking a little while ago instead of right now. That was Brandon Walsh playing first base and making that nice play. See, I screwed it up too. I made the Brandon Marsh-Jared Walsh mistake, even though Brandon Marsh is no longer an angel. And I was even thinking to myself as I was saying this, now if you're going to get all sassy and call out Rick Riz for saying there were no errors when he made an error, you better not make an error yourself. And yet I did. And I didn't notice until producer Dylan let me know. And Rick Riz was talking live,

so he didn't have a producer who could tell him, hey, you just said Ward, that was Walsh. Just trying to be accountable here. If I'm calling out other people's mistakes, got to own up to my own. Turns out talking is hard. My daughter's more than 10 months old. She still can't do it. You know, I think we need like a FCC seven second delay situation for Ward and Wade and Walsh and Marsh.

So someone drops an inadvertent F-bomb, you can just cut it out. If someone makes a Ward, Wade, Walsh-bomb, you can just cut it out. If someone makes a Ward-Wade-Walsh-Marsh mistake, you just have someone standing by. Maybe we need to start imposing fines. Although that could cost me money. The FCC doesn't regulate podcasts, so I'd probably be okay. I know I've screwed up Ward's name in the midst of this segment about screwing up Ward's name before, though. This is not the first time for me. These errors are very relatable. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com

slash effectively wild. Following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, get themselves access to some perks, and help us stay ad-free aside from our stat head sponsorship. Ross Lambert, Joe Kavchinsky, R.O. Shapiro,

Dustin Caruso, and Daniel Rudell. Thanks to all of you. You can contact me and Meg via email at podcast.fancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. 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. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod,

and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you next week. But I don't think he killed himself I think some strange notion Drew into Niagara Falls Across the great curve of day and night Like the perfect arch of a high fly ball

Big head don't let them weigh you down We'll see you next time.