Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 206: When Does it Make Sense to Fire Managers?/What We Think about Hot Streaks

Episode Date: May 20, 2013

Ben and Sam talk about the circumstances under which they’d feel comfortable recommending that a manager be fired, then discuss different beliefs about hot streaks.

Good morning and welcome to episode 206 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. I am Ben Lindberg, joined by Sam Miller. How was your weekend? Fine, how was yours? Pretty good. I went on a Star Trek The Next Generation binge. Cool. It was super cool. Okay. So what do you want to talk about today? Hot streaks. Okay. And I want to talk about a couple different managers who are kind of under scrutiny right now. And something that we had sort of planned to talk about in the email show last Friday but didn't, which is whether we would ever recommend firing a manager knowing what we know.

I believe that you're contractually obligated to say hot seat. Yes, that is right. Well, only one is really on the hot seat. The other one is kind of just drawing fire for one particular issue. Okay. Yeah. Why don't you start? Okay. So the one of those two managers who is really on the hot seat apparently is Don Mattingly. Ken Rosenthal wrote a story. I think it was late Sunday night or, yeah, at some point Sunday, who said, he says, Now I'm convinced that Mattingly is going to get fired, and the sooner it happens, the better. He seems to think that Mattingly has this one series coming up. The Dodgers have Kershaw and Granke and Roos starting against the Brewers,

and he thinks that if it doesn't go well for the Dodgers, Mattingly will be out, just sort of based on on obviously how the team is playing and how it was expected to play um and just kind of mattingly's comments and and just seeming to be frustrated and and a scout telling him that he's not the right guy for the job because he's laid back and this team needs a guy with fire and all that sort of thing. Also, he predates the new ownership group, so that doesn't help. Yeah. And then the other guy who is not on the hot seat, I would say, but is kind of coming

under fire just for his bullpen usage, I guess, in the wake of Johnny Venters and Eric O'Flaherty's Tommy John surgeries, or Venters definitely Tommy John surgery, O'Flaherty's likely Tommy John surgery. RJ Anderson wrote something for BP that is up now on Monday that you can read about. He talks a bit about how much both of those pitchers were used over the past few years. And that's kind of the typical reaction to the venters and O'Flaherty stories I've seen lately, where someone will post something about how their elbow is not right. And then all the commenters will say, Freddy Gonzalez is reaping what he sowed, and this is what he gets for using those guys so much. And so I've been kind of thinking about whether we can really hold him responsible

knowing what we know and whether what he did was or how he used them was irresponsible. And so this was just kind of tied back to a question that we got last week from Dane in Kansas, who asked, does Ned Yost need to be fired? The Royals were off to a good start but have faltered lately. This was six days ago. Kansas City seems to actually be trying to win this season, and I'm wondering if a new voice might help the team not drop out of contention. I understand that a manager probably does not affect that much in terms of wins and losses, but a move could signal a heightened sense of urgency. So you and I were

both responding to that and thinking about whether we would ever recommend that really anyone should get fired, not necessarily just Ned Yost, but I think you said you had a relevant anecdote. I think you said you had a relevant anecdote. So, yeah, a couple of weeks ago when Angels, well, the Angels, I guess, blog community, the Halosphere, as they call it, is hotly debating the Mike Socha situation and whether he is or deserves to be on a hot seat. And so at Halo's Heaven, somebody started circulating a letter to, I think, Artie Moreno or maybe Jerry DiPoto, probably Jerry DiPoto, that was sort of petitioning for Socia to be fired. And so this person sent it to me and asked if it was something I wanted to sign. And while that is not something that I would probably ever want to sign.

That's definitely how managers or how owners make their decisions about how to fire managers. And to do it is because circulated a petition. Yeah. You know what, though? Obviously, haha, lol, etc. haha lol etc but also um i bet you that there are man there are owners who at least at least it might have some i could see it possibly having some effect uh even if they consciously they would laugh at it and say uh what a bunch of buffoons they i wouldn't surprise me i mean you know it seems like a lot of times we judge people,

and we judge especially, I think, famous people based on whether we sense that the conventional wisdom is for or against them. If you start hearing bad news about a guy, I think it does seep in even if you aren't intending it to but i mean obviously yes uh not not the way that normally these things happen um not the way that uh billy martin for instance got fired in in 1981 i don't think it was a group of yankees bloggers um but even if that were the sort of thing i was likely to sign um that's the specifically with a manager is like the last thing that i would ever sign because uh i just i i mean i i just find it to be like the one uh you know the one maybe the one area of the game where we don't have uh anywhere near actionable information we were

we are completely for the most part for the most part, I would say, incapable of evaluating a manager. And so I said, thanks. But I think that probably somewhere between 2% and 6% of a manager's job is visible to us. And even if you were the beat writer, I think 2% to 6% is a fair amount. It feels like a fairly arrogant thing to tell a GM or an owner how to handle a personnel matter. The guy's job is essentially to do things that only GMs and owners can see. So you have to at some point allow that those guys know more than we do. Yeah, I don't know. I would find it difficult in most circumstances to recommend that a manager get fired.

I guess the only time that i can think of and it's not with a guy who bunts too much or whatever i mean mattingly's tactics probably leave something to be desired but i don't know i don't know how he interacts with his team and rosenthal even says that he seems to be a a pretty popular guy this isn't one of those says that he seems to be a pretty popular guy this isn't one of those situations where the manager has has lost the clubhouse and people are openly defying him i think the only recent example where i felt like a guy just had to go is bobby valentine yeah that was just i mean i even even if he was doing things well behind the scenes that i couldn't see and even if he was making fine tactical decisions it was just day after day the story of that team was bobby valentine and how he was not getting along with the team and how people didn't like him and

how people were rebelling and even if it was even if some of it was exaggerated, it was just such a, such a distraction. Like, I don't think that if it ever gets to that point with a manager, then it's probably just more trouble than he is worth for the team to keep him around. Yeah. I have a hard time measuring the value of the value or the, the negative value of a distraction exactly. But I do think that in that case, and another example would be Terry Collins when he was with the Angels in the late 90s, the clubhouse pretty openly rebelled against him and move on, as I have read since, kind of like led a charge to get him removed. And in that case, I, I think it, it gets pretty close to being, um, uh, something that we can judge because then you have people who do know being

very candid, very rarely do we get that sort of candidness from people who are intimately involved. Um, and you know, you still don't know, you don't know, you don't know what, what move on is like, and you know, you don't know, um, whatn's like. You don't know what... Obviously, there's a lot of things in these relationships that you don't know. At least, I would say, in that case, it gets from 2% to 6% to maybe 30% of what the manager is doing is visible to us

and evaluatable by us. I would feel more confident in that case. With Socia and Mattingly, though, in both cases, if you dig around, you can find a scout to say something, or maybe if you're lucky, even a player to say something on or off the record. But basically what we're talking about is the team is underperforming by

a 25- 30 win pace. And so you figure, oh, the manager must not be doing well. But it's not as though the manager is, in anybody's opinion, actually able to swing a team by 30 wins. So once you allow that those 30 wins are mostly not him, then you have to start asking yourself if any of them are him. What you're basically seeing is a thing that is outside the manager's control and it's hard to know whether even one of those wins is tied to him or maybe

nine of them are. Who knows? It's really hard to say. But the 30 or whatever they're underperforming But the 30 or whatever, whatever they're underperforming by, the next three games or win the next three games or win two out of three of the next game. I mean, that doesn't really change. I mean, how much new information does that give you about whether he's the guy that you want for the rest of this season and the rest of or coming seasons? And he's Mattingly is in the last year of his deal. or coming seasons. And he's, Mattingly's in the last year of his deal. But, I mean, there always does seem to be that sort of idea that, like, if a guy is off to a bad start or a team is and the manager's on the hot seat, it's like,

well, we'll give him another few days to turn things around. And I never understand that because... Well, I think that Dane basically makes the case for that when he says that it probably doesn't actually mean anything but it might create a sense of urgency, which you're saying might create a psychological turning point. And a three-game sweep also can be a psychological turning point. I mean, you figure the Dodgers are going to play roughly

like their true talent level going forward, and if you start to see any indication that that is happening, then, you know, you lose the incentive to create some sort of psychological turning point. Maybe it already happens. Maybe it's just, you know, a big walk-off victory. I mean, I doubt that a big walk-off victory is the turning point either. I think typical regression to the mean is the turning point. But if it's just optics, then you can find less violent optics, I think, to go for. The last time I remember thinking a manager should be fired, and this was largely emotionally driven, was 2010, July of 2010. And it was Bruce Bochy. And the Giants were playing terribly. They were in, I think they were under 500, and all the Posey stuff, Posey had been kind of buried under Benji Molina

to some degree, and was playing first base, wasn't playing enough, etc. And there was a game when the Giants were, I'm going to probably botch some of these details, but the Giants were in extra innings, and Posey had a leadoff single or something like that. And Bochy pinch ran for him with Eli Whiteside, which was a weird choice. And Eli White, I mean, you know,

it was like runner on first with two outs or something like that. and so the value of even a good pinch runner would have been small but the value of Eli Whiteside was minuscule and uh so then like two or three innings later they you know the Giants get some runners on and there's like one out and a runner on third to go ahead run or something like that and steps Whiteside because posey's out of the game and i i was just i just couldn't believe that it happened and it it you know the giants were doing so poorly they hadn't really done anything under bocce and it just felt like the all-star break was coming up and i really thought like they're gonna fire this is it they're gonna fire him at the all-star break he's not gonna make it past the all-star break and then there was um basically they had this big series against the brewers and like posey had like a six rbi game and hit a couple home runs and

from that point on they were just like on fire for the rest of the year and now bocce's like uh total managing legend so uh you know that was dumb of me and uh sure enough there was uh you, you know, who knows? Maybe they were going to fire him. Maybe he really managed the heck out of that next series against Milwaukee. Or maybe just I was being dumb and Sabian had a lot better perspective on things than I did. But one way or the other, it has kind of worked out. So you didn't think that about Valentine last season then?

Yeah, I just didn't care that much. But yeah, I mean, the thing about Valentine is you don't have that about Valentine last season then? I just didn't care that much but yeah the thing about Valentine is you don't have to call for it I mean it was so obvious he was just absolutely a lame duck and I mean if the Red Sox had been in any sort of position to make a move in the second half and like make the playoffs then I imagine they probably would have

fired him a lot earlier but you know who cares about Valentine it's like it just didn't feel like it was even worth thinking about imagine they probably would have fired him a lot earlier but um you know who cares about valentine it's like it just didn't feel like it was even worth thinking about it was so obvious so if there had been like some big movement to keep valentine then i probably would have gotten agitated about it and said no he needs to go but i didn't think that much about it rosenthal says something uh he says i wrote last week about how a bad bullpen can create a bad manager. And he talks about how Sunday's game was another bad game for Brandon League. And he has a quote from Mattingly who says, people clamor for one guy, then they clamor for the next guy, and then somebody else.

You'd like to get the thing the way you want it to work and keep guys in roles so you don't get disarray. the way you want it to work and keep guys in roles so you don't get disarray. So I don't know whether a bad bullpen can create a bad manager, but I guess a bad bullpen can create the perception of a bad manager, maybe. It does seem like if you just kind of have a – there was something Jim Leland talked about during the playoffs last year about how he likes to have a set closer because he doesn't get second guessed because he has one guy who everyone knows will be out there in that situation. And nobody says he shouldn't have been. And it's different when you kind of have to mix and match.

And, of course, we talked over the winter about how little we like the Brandon League deal. And it is so far turned out worse than even we expected, I think. Um, so I guess if that is, I mean, maybe that's contributing to some perception of, of Mattingly being inept, just that he doesn't have a, an established closer or hasn't had one. And I guess it's not his fault that that that Brandon league is signed to that contract unless it is unless he said let's give this guy three years and 22 and a half million I don't know yeah uh of the two to six percent of the manager's performance that we see I'm trying to think of like how that would break down I would guess that like 30 to 40 percent of that two to six percent

is is bullpen success bullpen I guess i want to say bullpen management but that probably gives us too much credit just bullpen success and then probably uh starting pitcher abuse would be like 25 to 30 percent and then amount of bunting would probably be like 10 percent and then general uh general ticks would be maybe 10 percent Line up, I guess, is a little... Yeah, like 2% of that, and then strong jaw is probably 8-12%, and then maybe a little bit of colorful post-game quotes slash team-building experience.

Handling the media is an important part of the job, and that's the part that we can see. It is, but I don't know that you can really necessarily judge it. I mean, as a guy who's nice to the media doing well, or as a guy who's strict with the media and keeps them in line doing well, I mean, it's really hard to know what the strategy is. I mean, there's probably about a billion different ways

to work with the media and to work on the media. So, yeah. So do you have thoughts then about Gonzalez's bullpen management? Like, is it just a reflexive, well, he used these guys a lot and they got hurt, so we should blame him for their getting hurt? Or is it just, I mean, over any particular period of time, there's always going to be one reliever or one bullpen that is used most heavily uh so should we always say that that the manager of that team is is abusive of that bullpen or did he take it to a point that is abusive i mean we have no idea whether these guys would would be hurt anyway

what if they had been used less heavily uh maybe it's just something about their mechanics or i mean this is venters second tommy john surgery um so i i mean do you agree to any extent with that kind of reflexive blame of him or are you completely agnostic about whether he deserves any um i i guess i don't i mean we don't have a great sense of why anybody gets hurt but it i guess i'm not as as uh up to date on what we think hurts relievers as i am what we think hurts starters it's not it seems much less clear and you know relievers inventors is a little bit of an exception but but for the most part, relievers, they basically have no value except to get worked to death for the four months of their life that they're effective. You could make the case that that's the smart thing to do.

I would destroy, yeah. If I had a good reliever, I would destroy him with glee. It would be like a four-year-old roasting an ant with a microscope. I would just torture him. be like a four-year-old roasting an ant with them with a microscope i would just torture him and maybe that would be good for the team not i guess not if no one wanted to come to the team and play for you because they know that you're going to do that but uh as far as magnifying by the way not right not microscope magnifying i don't think that relievers probably ever feel overworked i mean maybe in some in some Maybe in some cases they might, but for the most part, these are not guys who have a ton of career in them. I think that they're probably thrilled to be getting leveraged work. That's how you get your money in the four months

that you actually are going to get paid, is by getting a reputation for being able to pitch a lot and pitch in high leverage. So I bet these guys were thrilled. Again, Ventures maybe is a little bit of an exception. Which doesn't mean that it's the right thing to do necessarily, that they were thrilled about it, because players often, it seems like, do sort of silly things. I'm just disputing the theory that people are going to come play for you okay just out of curiosity what do you think hot seat is supposed

to mean as a like it i know what it means but like why is this seat hot is it is it he's not he can't he's not comfortable he can't sit comfortably on his seat because it's because it might be it might be pulled out from under him what what why would a hot what is a hot seat have to do with being pulled out from under you like what even is a hot seat the only hot seat i could think of is if you went to like a wedding and it was a really hot day and the sun were roasting down on the seat and you sat down on it and you went, ooh, hot, hot seat. But that's not, I mean, hot seat does not refer to people who are new and can't find

comfort. It usually refers to somebody who's been there and is growing uncomfortable in his seat. It feels very weird. Like, is it supposed to be, is it hot because it's supposed to be motivating them or is it hot because they're – who heated it? I think it's just an uncomfortable seat. It could be a cold seat or it could be a slippery seat. It's just a seat that you can't sit in.

We should look. Okay. We should look at the origins. It should be a wobbly seat. Yeah. Like, okay. It should be wobbly. One of the legs is shorter than the others and

a wobbly seat yeah it might tip over okay all right well we'll start that then don mattingly is on the wobbly seat there you there you i love it i love it it sounded so good just then okay what's your topic you told me uh so actually I was going to talk about this, and then, well, okay, so I wanted to talk about hot streaks. Hot streaks, not hot seats, hot streaks. Because the kind of, as I understand it, the conventional stat head orthodoxy on hot streaks and cold streaks is that they're mostly not real, that they mostly are an illusion. weeks is that they're mostly not real, that they mostly are an illusion. And if they are real, what realness there is in them is difficult to identify in the massive data that we have. And so I was going to talk about that. And then lo and behold, tonight, Keith Law and Brendan McCarthy got in a little bit of a Twitter spat when Miguel Cabrera was intentionally walked to face Prince Fielder.

Keith ridiculed it. People said, hey, come on, Cabrera's locked in. And Keith said, no such thing. And Brandon McCarthy said something along the lines of, that's contrarianism just to be contrarian. And so then they went on for a while and they made jokes about Olive Garden. And so this actually comes up

because when I was at the park a couple days ago, I talked to a couple players casually about this. And in my head, I've always thought that one of the reasons not to use hot and cold streaks in your analysis besides it being hard to identify is that it feels to me like a kind of lazy, not even lazy, more like an arrogant sports writer thing to do where you're putting yourself into the player's brain and assuming that you know what's going on there. You're like saying, I know you. I'm inside your head and I know what's going wrong. I always think that it's bad form when sports writers presume to know what's going on in a player's head.

And so I've kind of thought of it as being an anti-player thing to say. And yet the players who I talk to are like, oh, no, totally real. It's super-duper real. Hot streaks are like the realest thing. Cold streaks, totally real. It's super duper real. Hot streaks are like the realest thing. Cold streaks are super real. And like I asked Mark Trumbo, he said, you know, a lot of times it's not real, but a lot of times it is. And I asked if, you know, if he hits a ball hard, if he smokes a ball in the first inning, let's say he's a 270 true hitter and he smokes a ball in the first inning, what does he think his average is the next at bat?

He said, ah, it's a lot higher. I said, 320? He said, yeah, probably at least that, maybe higher. Now, I'm assuming that's not true. I mean, nothing against Mark because he does seem to get hot and hit the ball well when he's going well. And, you know, there are mechanics for why you would think this would work well why you would think players would would would bunch up good and bad but the reason i brought it up is because the um there there have been some studies recently which

the new york times wrote up uh looking at the hot hand in sports and lots of science in the past has looked at the hot hand and found nothing to it. Like for basketball players, if they make five shots in a row, they're no more likely to make the sixth than anybody else. And that seems to have been basically true around all sports. And there's been some new research that has looked at more complicated data and broader data and found two interesting things. broader data and found two interesting things. One of them is that, in fact, there does seem to be some evidence of hot hands, um, looking at basketball free throws, looking at bowl. Seem to be, uh, and, uh, what was the last thing you said? You cut out for a second after this free throws volleyball players and also, bowlers oh so there does seem to be uh some evidence that hot uh the hot hand is real that a player actually is better uh after

he's made the last shot that there's something that carries over and yet this is the interesting part there's actually an anti-hot hand uh that comes out of, where the player who is presumably playing at a slightly higher level, having made his last shot, is actually less likely to make his next shot if it's a field goal, if it's not a free throw, but a field goal, because he psychologically is too confident and takes a more ambitious shot. And he's also more likely to get the ball from his teammates because they think he's hot. So in fact, it has a negative outcome for what seems to be perhaps an actually positive thing. How did they tell that it exists in that case? I mean, the results?

So, I don't know. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I'm reading secondhand stuff. Right, okay. But let's just assume, I just want to assume that these's true about baseball players, that baseball players are actually – do go through periods of being slightly better and slightly worse or maybe greatly better and greatly worse. And let's also assume that it doesn't show up in the statistics because there is some sort of – I mean, well, we know that it basically doesn't show up in the statistics. Go ahead. To clarify, I mean, no one says that, or at least I don't think statistically you can say that there aren't periods where players are hot or locked in, right? I mean, I believe that there are such periods. It's just that the studies seem to

say that they're not predictive, that a guy who has been hot is not any more likely to continue to be hot than a guy who has been cold but but that doesn't mean that he hasn't been hot or cold no it well it does if you mean hot and cold as actual things and not as clusters of events well you could be hot for for over a certain period of plate appearances and then still have it not be predictive of future plate appearances well if you're if you consider them independent events that bunch up against each other then there was no actual hotness there was just clustering if you consider it real then that player was more likely to get a hit the next time. Yeah, I believe that retrospectively, I think. It's just looking forward, you can't say that a guy, right?

I mean, I believe that if a guy has hit 500 over his last whatever at bats, that he was more likely to get hits during that period. I mean, I don't think it's mutually exclusive. I don't think it... I mean, you can say that and also say that a guy who has been hot likely is no more likely to continue to be hot, right? You can say both of those things. No, you can't.

Because let's say that... Okay, so Marco Scudero is, say, 25 for his last 50, which I think is actually true. And you're saying that that's a real phenomenon, that Marco Scudero is hot, that he has actually been playing better, that there's something in his brain or approach or mechanics or stance that have made him better. So now, yes, it could dissipate at any time.

So it might not have predictive value to you right now. However, by allowing his real hotness, you should have been able to go back to 10 plate appearances ago and say he's hot. A certain number of players, if they're demonstrating a hotness ability, then the first 40 would have been slightly predictive for the next 10. Because obviously, I mean, not... If you could

tell that he was in a one of those periods where he was locked in like if you if you knew his his mental state and you knew that his mechanics were you know perfectly aligned or or whatever it is i mean i i don't think that i can tell that no but if you're if you're allowing that it's a real phenomenon then you would simply regress you would you would regress based on how likely it is to be a hot streak how many of these hot streaks are um are outside of the statistically predictable pattern and you would just regress so if you knew that uh that of if you knew that over the course of a season that randomly 15 people should have 25 for 30 stretches and in fact 25 people have 25 for 50 stretches, then you know that basically a decent percentage of these are hot streaks.

And then you would predict going forward that half of those guys or 40% of those guys are in a real observed and true state, right? And you would just regress. You wouldn't say that it's a it's a it's a lock that he's going to be good but you would say this is like a lot i mean well it depends how how real this is i mean players would probably tell you that it's almost all real and that you shouldn't regress at all right yeah i wouldn't go that far no uh i mean we don't know but the basically that it seems like when people have looked at this they found that it's not that you basically ignore it

that it's not a good uh indicator at all and that i mean like keith was saying you just ignore it it's it's garbage it's it's uh it's totally i mean keep obviously you know keep on twitter and uh you know when he's when he's dealing with these sorts of issues uh in 140 characters. You know how he is. Lovable, delightful. And so he basically boldly said, meaningless, ignore it, don't pay any attention. So if that's true, then it would only be true because hot streaks are never real

or virtually never real. Right? I mean, look, obviously these clusters happen. The question is whether there was actually something at play or whether this is just... I mean, I'm sure many of the clusters are just independent events that happened to cluster together. The guy was no more likely to get hits during that period

than at any other period. But I do think your true talent level changes somewhat throughout the season as you, I don't know, maybe you got a good night of sleep or you're at 100% health instead of 90% health. I mean, I think there are factors that make you more likely to succeed on any given day than on some other given day? There are lots of reasons why this should be true. And so it should show up. There should be a correlation between one and bat in the next. That's all. If it's real, there should be a demonstrated correlation between one and bat in the next. And I don't know if that's proven or

not. I would expect it to be. And yet I read things that suggest it's not right so anyway i guess the point is one is i was gonna ask if you where you fall on this and i guess we both well i guess you said where you fall i don't think i don't think i've said do you feel like i've said where i fall uh you sort of said that you think it should be true Or you would have expected it to be true Yeah, I think I'm pretty agnostic about it But I think I probably think that it's more true than not true It's like the clubhouse chemistry divide It's not actually worth 20 wins or whatever

It's not actually meaningless, probably It's somewhere in there and i guess it's probably closer to the nothing than to the it means a lot but but it probably does mean something okay so then the second question is is there an equivalent to the anti-hot hand in baseball do you think uh where i mean obviously you don't get more balls passed to you in baseball and you don't uh you're probably not going to get all greedy and swing from the on-deck circle because you're so confident. But do you...

Go ahead. Well, that was the possible that I was going to say, that if you're in one of those periods where a hitter will say that the ball looks like a beach ball or whatever and he's seeing the ball so well uh that maybe you would become overconfident and think that you could hit a pitch that you normally wouldn't try to hit and and then you would make weak contact or miss it or something yeah i would think that it would be either expanding the strike zone or um perhaps swinging for a home run, swinging kind of for a bigger outcome.

Right. Trying to do too much, they might say. Or I guess if you're a pitcher, maybe you would challenge a hitter that you wouldn't normally challenge if you feel like you have your best fastball or something. And then you would just kind of throw one over the middle and think you can get away with it, and you can't actually get away with it? Yeah. You might lean too much on one pitch or you might throw your third best pitch too much

thinking like you've got everything working when you actually don't. Or maybe you do have everything working but you should still go with your best pitch instead of your third best pitch. So it's possible that in fact Brandon McCarthy and Keith Law are both correct it's possible that in fact a hot hitter is a better hitter is more locked in and it's also possible that he is self-sabotaging

and that's why it doesn't show up more in statistics yeah that's interesting all right that's all all right we yelled at each other this was pretty close to us yelling at each other yeah that was more more conflict than than the typical episode more conflict than the previous 205 combined yeah uh okay email us at podcast at baseball prospectus.com so we can talk about your emails in two days uh we will be back with a new show

on tuesday