Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 237: Stats That Won’t Last/No-Hitters and No-Walkers/The Worst Shortstop Ever/A Pitcher Who Can Hit/The All-Bunting Team/Trading Top Prospects for Trout/Pint-Sized Power Hitters

Episode Date: July 3, 2013

Ben and Sam answer the most listener emails they’ve ever answered.

I have so many questions. I have so many questions. Well, if there are many unanswered questions... Good morning, and welcome to episode 237 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller. Today is Wednesday. It's our email show. I think this may have been my favorite email week ever.

email show. I think this may have been my favorite email week ever. There are a lot that I want to talk to, and we'll get to some of them. So I picked out a bunch. Sam has not read them, or at least he may have read them when they initially came to our inboxes, but not since then. came to our inboxes, but not since then. So I'm just going to start. This is like an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyways? Every episode is like that, kind of. Okay, so this question comes from Robert. He had a long intro that had to do with our discussion of FIP from, I guess, last week or recently,

and about how maybe it isn't working as well anymore. And Robert wants to know, given the relative newness of sabermetrics, do you think there's a point down the road where we look back comically at what we're using now? Will defense ever be universally quantified, or will we shake our heads at how much we relied on war? In short, what do you think the biggest weaknesses are in sabermetrics and where will we be 10 to 20 years from now? So basically, I think his question, he wants to know what stats that we are looking at and consulting and citing regularly now, we i guess regret doing so later or or look back and think how how not advanced we were uh are there any that you can think of that were uh that we were using 10 years ago that are laughable no uh i don't know i mean i I guess it seems like there were a lot of less advanced versions

of what we have now. Right. Like, I don't know, like range factor or runs created or something like that where it's just a less. Yeah, when Warp would have guys who were like, you know, regularly 12 to 15 wins. Yeah, right. Trying to think of a stat that we've just totally discarded.

Nothing coming to mind right away. I guess I would say the answer for what we won't be using or what we'll have left behind would be probably anything that relies on a subjective human classification, probably. Any sort of batted ball stats, line drive, ground ball, fly ball. Anything with fielding zones, probably. Yeah, I think that it's a lot more that they're going to be refined to the point that they're sort of unrecognizable. Maybe, like, I think that Babbitt will essentially be probably replaced with either expected Babbitt or Babbitt broken down by hit trajectory, maybe.

Like, I don't think that you'll ever see, like, oh, he's got a 272 BABIP, like, in 10 years. I think that you'll see he has a, you know, he has a 272 BABIP and a 320 expected BABIP a lot more than you would just see the number in isolation. Or you'll see all three. Like, you might see a BABIP slash line where it's, like, ground or line drive fly ball, maybe. where it's like grounder line line drive fly ball maybe um and yeah i mean like war i don't think war can really seems to me hard to say that war would ever be right outdated because it just it's a thing that that is being refined it's like yes i mean it's like saying recipes will be outdated yeah it's like like tom tango draws a distinction between the framework of war and the components of war. So the idea of putting all these things together and weighing them appropriately seems sound. So it's just the refinements of the individual components and maybe replacements of the individual components but

the idea of including all those things and trying to figure out how to weight them seems like something that won't go away. FIP seems to be too blunt to be of much use except that it holds up so well. Like it doesn't seem nearly complicated enough it just feels like that'll be gone right i mean like how could you possibly look at just those three things in isolation yeah and yet it just it it holds up so well like i mean it's you people put so much work in doing a better job i mean we do we put work into doing a better job and yet it you know they're it's really probably like i don't know that i don't know that at this point anybody has really created something that has much added value to more than maybe 1% of baseball fans. expected era estimators which is the latest thing and just constantly refining uh these measures of how what a pitcher's era should have been based on his peripherals and all those things

um i wonder i mean colin thinks that most of those things are unnecessary really because you'd always kind of rather just have a projection of what the pitcher's going to do than you would have a single-season FIP or XFIP or whatever, which kind of makes sense. I mean, we look at FIP to, I guess, kind of identify what pitchers are going to do for the rest of the season. Like, their ERA says this, but they've actually pitched this well, and theoretically they'll continue to pitch that well, but their ERA will start to look more like their FIP. So why even look at that if you can just look at a projection,

which is updated daily and incorporates both the latest things that a pitcher's done and things that he did in the past, which are still predictive. So maybe that's something. Yeah, I think it has entertainment value as a retrospective stat as well. I mean, so maybe it only does now because we're in this, as Robert alluded to, we're in this zone where we're seeing massively impressive FIPS. So maybe I only like them because they're big, awesome numbers. But I just wrote about Scott Feldman, and I like looking at his FIPS more than I like looking at his ERAs over the past two years.

I've kind of turned a corner where I'm not even, to be honest, all that interested in ERA as a description of the past. And to be honest, all that interested in ERA is a description of the past. I've actually moved to a point where I would rather look at an imaginary version of the past than the actual version when I'm evaluating a player. Just for a single season or two, I guess. I mean, if you're looking at a whole career, I would rather look at ERA if it's a long career. Right. I think probably at three seasons and on. I would say two seasons is my max for fit, not for analysis, but for enjoyment.

Two seasons is my max. And then beyond that, I like a nice neutralized ERA beyond that. Love a neutralized ERA. Can't get enough of a plus stat. I am all about plus stats. I think throw everything out but the plus stats. Or minus stats. I actually don't like the minus stat. I know that they're more statistically rigorous, but I don't like them. I don't care for them. I like a plus. Who wants to say minus? You're a positive person. I like a plus. Who wants to say minus?

You're a positive person. Yeah, exactly. You're just looking on the bright side of neutralized ERAs. Right. I mean, you always hear like, oh, this guy's going to hit 30 plus home runs. You never hear somebody say he's going to hit 25 minus. You know, it's more fun to say plus. Wait, quick question, though. There's a – I would say that there's like a simmering tension between OPSers and non-OPSers because we all know that OPS is a weird kind of patched together stat that is not nearly have the usefulness of like a true average.

And yet it's just so simple and it's so – it's such a nice, easy way to write to a larger audience. And so, you know, I, I use it quite a bit and I know a lot of people. broadcast he just noticed and was wondering if we thought that was dumb or not basically not to yeah not to show obp and slug but just to show ops sure exactly see he's and he's right i mean you know like i mean i uh my friend riley breckenridge is one of these guys and i think if i'm not mistaken i believe keith law is one of these guys and And it is clearly, I think, the right way to do it when you're talking about analysis. But, you know, I think that there's a point where a lot of times the best stat isn't necessary. And just like the best, well, I don't know what just like it is. But, you know, a lot of times there are multiple stats that you can choose. And as a writer, which I consider myself a writer, not an analyst.

And so as a writer, I find that OPS has a communicative value that often exceeds the better stats. And it doesn't come at the expense of truth because I'm using it in situations where OPS covers the truth. You don't need to go deeper than that. And so I still use it. I don't feel any guilt whatsoever. If I were actually doing deep analysis, I wouldn't. But I feel no guilt generally when I do use it. And I feel like there's a little bit of a simmering tension that has not really emerged

yet. But at some point in the next maybe 10 years i i do worry that ops is going to uh tip over into uh completely uh mockable territory and it will be like using rbis and that kind of makes me sad well uh you would rather see a slash line though right i mean mike is mike asked why they wouldn't just show the slash line. And I don't know how much real estate there is on the screen for stats. You want to show other things too. Real estate is important in a lot of, in a lot of communication. You know, there's, you, whenever you're writing an article, you're somewhat cognizant of how many numbers you have

in there. And you know, if one column is better than three columns columns when you're doing a lot of graphs sometimes, or tables, I should say, sometimes. And if you're doing a – I mean, there are a lot of instances where I think OPS has a brevity benefit to it. And so you would not necessarily rather have that. There are times when batting average does you know is enough there's there are times when the the worst stat in the world is enough uh if there aren't necessarily a lot of times but there are occasionally times and i think the ops you know covers a lot of basic writing okay uh this question i have a couple questions in here that are more just looking for factual answers than discussions, I guess. This one is from Kyle.

He says, Homer Bailey threw another no-hitter last night but walked a guy, which is the same as throwing a one-hit shutout with no walks, which is not exactly true, but in a way. Wait, it is to me? Well, okay, we can talk about that. This leads me— It's actually, to me well okay we can talk about that uh this week this leads me it's actually bet to me it's it's to me it's more impressive right if you're if you're if you're talking about which pitcher you would rather have going forward knowing only that one thing if you're talking about anything other than the stupid tradition of like idolizing no hitters then i mean to me the guy who gives up one hit and no walks, he got beat by a world-class

athlete. Whereas the guy who gives up no hits but one walks, he failed. He just outright failed. A batter came up and he failed. He failed to do his job. Hate him. I can't stand that guy. Get him out of my sight. This leads me to my question. How frequent are no-walk shutouts? I can tell you that. No-hit shutouts. I can tell you that no hit shutout you can yeah i i can tell you off the top of your head off the top of my head yeah since 2000 there have been 28 no hit shutouts and 263 no walk shutouts there might there's a couple of top of your head there's a little it is there's a little there's a little overlap there because of the perfect games i ran a i ran a play index search because I had to use that crutch. I didn't have the stats in my head.

What'd you find? Roughly the same thing. Okay. Does it surprise you at all that the difference... So they're what? They're about 10 times more of the no-walk variety. Does it surprise you that it's that different, given that hits are only three times more common than walks?

Well, and also there's a huge incentive for a pitcher with no hits to get to finish the game but there's really no incentive for a pitch with no walks i mean if you looked at if you looked at seven inning shutouts you know seven innings no runs no walks you'd see about a billion if you looked at seven innings no hits and no runs you'd see like two right because everybody gets to keep going unless they've thrown 145 pitches uh so in fact there's a there's a real bias that uh that should narrow the gap even more so uh it doesn't surprise me but i don't know why it doesn't surprise me yeah i'll have to think about that some more um uh, really, hits are only three times more. Well, hits are only three times more likely than walks maybe league-wide,

but no-hitters and, to a lesser degree, no-walkers are the result of kind of extremes, you know? You're talking about a pitcher who's pitching at his max performance, and so you're going to be looking for outliers in the first place. And I would say that among pitchers who are good, who are likely to throw no-hitters, they probably, or no-walkers, there are some pitchers who walk very, very few batters, right? Like a pitcher like Curt Schilling, it's probably like an 8-to-1 ratio, right? So Curt Schilling probably has a lot of, let me see,

Schilling has three no-ers and zero no hitters. Or does he have no hitters? He might have no hitters. I don't really know. I don't remember who has no hitters, but I don't think. Kuroda. Hiroki Kuroda has four no walkers. Should we do a Halliday?

Halliday has nine no walkers. That's a lot of no walkers. Yeah. Kurt Schilling, I don't think he has nine no walkers. That's a lot of no walkers. Yeah, Curt Schilling, I don't think he has a no-hitter. Pedro has four. So on and on we go. Okay, next question comes from Derek. Hypothetically, if Jose Molina, or someone similar, was allowed to play a full season at shortstop in an alternate universe

what would happen what would his drs or uzr be how many wins would it cost his team uh this made me wonder you you wrote something once or many times maybe about how slow players are faster than we think right uh well melina is zach zach levine made a uh what what oh i yeah zach zach is it levine or levine levine i think okay sorry zach uh zachary in fact yes zachary levine uh i uh i don't get out much uh so zachary Levine answered a chat question asking something along the lines of, was there any facet of baseball performance at which he is better than any current player? And he answered that he could outrun a Molina. And I responded that he's insane, that we vastly underrate how fast catchers are

compared to normal people, that they are still, that we vastly underrate how fast catchers are compared to normal people, that they are still, even the slow catchers, are legitimate, healthy adult males. And as proof, I offered the 4.7 home to first that I clocked Jose Molina at. And then I went outside and I paced off 90 feet and I took a swing and I sprinted a few times and I timed myself and it was considerably worse than 4.7. Now I'm not, I'm not a, I'm not a super fast human being by any means, but I'm a, I'm above the median in my softball league. I'm the number two pinch running option on my team. And you know, and I, you know, I'm like a five or a five one home to first. So, uh, and you know, I'm 32 a 5 or a 5'1", home to first. So, you know, I'm 32 years old, for goodness sake. And I haven't caught since I was 11.

So my knees are great. So, yeah, Molina is probably a better athlete than you give him credit for. I mean, the thing is, though, that, like, I mean, you should see Eric Ibar up close. That guy is absurd how good an athlete he is. up close that yes right sir how good an athlete yes i i mean last week jose molina uh hit a ball that that one hopped the wall and he ended up at first and then there was that just incredible double play that he grounded into where robinson cano took i don't know like three seconds to get rid of the ball uh and just he was out by two steps anyway. So that's in my mind. But so, I mean, Jose Mourinho compared to the typical shortstop.

So the typical shortstop, on average, a shortstop gets half a chance per inning. So chances are assists plus put outs plus errors. So if a shortstop plays 150 games, 159 inning games, he'll get something like 675 chances, an average shortstop behind an average pitching staff and all those things. So shortstops are involved in a lot of plays. 675. Yes. So a man who had no arms and no legs would cost his team well and i mean molina wouldn't be involved in that many plays because he wouldn't right get to nearly that but i'm saying that the very max that you could be worth is 675 lost plays uh yeah essentially 675 singles basically

yeah is the very max and some number of those would probably be taken by the third baseman but for the most part uh a very small number so yeah some pop-ups i figure he jose molina i would assume could could get most balls hit within a within a step of him uh i mean i don't i don't know but just i'm just judging by the fact that he's a great defensive catcher i would think that he's— I'm trying to set the max first. Yes, right. Okay, so then how many fewer plays would Molina get to compared to the typical shortstop or compared to the worst shortstop for that matter? I'm trying to think of any relevant data that we would have on this.

I can't—I mean, what relevant data could there be? I don't know. I mean you could do the – Guys being out of position. See, the problem is that Molina is a catcher, and so the positional – you could theoretically do this for Adam Dunn maybe by doing like the positional adjustments. There have just been no catcher to shortstop no catcher to short stuff conversions i mean yeah ever yeah and even if there was it would be uh a player who had that skill set and there wouldn't really be any like there wouldn't really be any similarity like if

let's say buster posey who was a shortstop in in college let's say somehow he he he converted to catcher it wouldn't actually tell you anything because you couldn't then compare his catching to Molina's and say that that's any way apples to apples I mean that you're comparing him to Molina on defense with a completely different skill set that has no relationship whatsoever to to shortstop uh I get y'all uh yeah i don't really know dude there's no way you could have there's no way you could have a winning team with a shortstop i would guess i mean if you had an above average defensive team at every other position i would feel comfortable saying that melina uh is a is at shortstop is a 100-run differential with the average shortstop.

Yeah, that sounds reasonable. So if that were the case, then last year's Nationals would have still won 90. Yeah, I guess so. Seems like there's a better option out there it has to be a better option uh okay uh next question and this is another interesting question from adam and dallas there's no way that this could happen which never stops us uh but it's no less ridiculous than infielders crowding around the batter's box, so hear me out. Let's say Justin Verlander wasn't just an awesome pitcher, but also a pretty awesome hitter, and Detroit needed a DH. Hypothetically, what would Verlander's true slash line have to be

to justify him playing DH when he's not pitching? I'd have to believe that at a certain point, the bat would be too tempting not to have in the lineup Or is the break-even point so extreme that he would be permanently moved off the mound to play only DH Or I guess it could go the other way possibly What if it was a more marginal pitcher? Why wouldn't he play DH? I feel like I'm missing the reason that he wouldn't be the DH If he were the if he were the best hitter on detroit they'd play him there right i mean for starters if he

were that good a hitter yeah i mean when a player is a two-way star coming out of college they virtually always put him at position because it's a much more it's a route that's much more likely to lead to long career and success uh but if he were still an awesome hitter even after taking you know a couple years off from hitting uh i mean i guess the idea is that what he he would get he'd get injured and get injured and get fatigued he wouldn't be able to pitch as well so here's the here's my here's i guess here's my answer to that i mean you sure you don't want him to get injured, but teams let their pitchers hit. And they could like, you know, the typical pitcher is going to get a hit every 10 times up,

and it's not going to be a very useful hit. In a lot of situations, he's going to go up there, and even a single won't really do much for you. And so if you were that worried about, if you really thought that hitting was that likely to injure pitchers, then teams would probably forfeit that plate appearance a lot. Because the incentive to using that guy is virtually nil. Whereas if you're talking about a guy like Verlander who has a slash line of like a 900 OPS. See, I just used OPS. If he has a 900 OPS, the incentive to use him use them is, you know, a lot higher. So I,

I don't know why they would shy away from injury. I mean, pitchers don't get hurt hitting that much, right. And they, you know, they're allowed to run the bases and I mean, they're allowed to do these things, uh, even though they contribute nothing as is. So, uh, you're right um i mean certain pitchers have been used as pinch hitters uh and they weren't great hitters they were just good for pitchers really and they weren't as good pitchers as verlander so there wasn't as much at stake i guess but but yeah i think i think you're right if he were if he were an above average major league hitter or an above-average DH, I mean, he probably wouldn't play every day. Probably not.

How tiring do you think it is to DH? I don't know. I don't know either. I think if you DH the way Travis Hafner DHs, where you're running a 5K in between every at at bat under the tunnels uh then that's probably tiring but i i would think that i mean i mean i guess the the real reason is because it's not so much how tiring it is in game it's how tiring it is between games and how much time you have to spend honing your skills and taking batting practice

and all those things which is why you would never have a really great pitcher who is also a really great hitter that's true so assuming he has somehow reached this point and been able to do all of those things he's just really good at multitasking um then i guess he could keep doing that so here's a question then let's a question then. Let's say you already have, let's say you already have, let's say this is Verlander and he's doing this. Let's say he hits like, you know, he hits like David Ortiz and he pitches like Verlander and he blows out his shoulder. Now, do you take a year off from having your star DH in order to get your star pitcher back too? Or at that point,

do you just say, well, fun while it lasted and then move into first base permanently? And you're saying he could hit through the injury? Yeah. The shoulder doesn't affect any of his first base, first basing or, or hitting. Uh, I guess I keep playing him probably. Yeah. Probably at some point in his career career he would just have some sort of, you know, the pitching would get in the way of the hitting, I guess. It's amazing that we haven't had this. Like, it really goes to show how hard baseball is. I mean, these guys, a lot of them were the best hitters on their college teams and could have legitimately been drafted,

you know, both as a hitter and a pitcher. And yet they take a couple years off and they don't work on it, you know, at the same level and they don't get used to that faster speed. And then they get up and every single one of them is terrible. Yeah. Okay. Next question comes from Tyler. Okay. Next question comes from Tyler. Okay. Here in Vancouver, BC, where I will be in a month or so, there was a legendary semi-professional team of Japanese Canadians. Ben, why do you take all your vacations in the same place? it's a great place I like Vancouver a lot

here in Vancouver there is a legendary semi-professional team of Japanese Canadians known as the Asahi that played from 1914 until the outset of war in 1942 in order to make up for their lack of size compared to their competition the Asahi put a strong emphasis on OBP, unique

base running strategies and defensive prowess in one particular game, in which the Asahi were facing a former professional pitcher who could be described as Verlander-esque, the team's manager decided to utilize a new strategy. Knowing that his batters were unlikely to get any hits against this powerhouse pitcher, he instructed every one of his batters to bunt. Each player then utilized a different bunting technique that would force the infielders to run as much as possible. Much like the rope-a-dope, the intended effect of this strategy was to wear down the opposing team with the added bonus of frustrating the hell out of them.

In the end, the Asahi won the game, scoring runs through a combination of walks, errors, and squeeze plays. The opposing pitcher recorded a no-hitter but still lost the game. still lost the game. With this in mind, I wanted to know if you think this could be an effective strategy for an underpowered slash speedy team to utilize against the Tigers or a similarly sluggish team and whether you think the Tigers hitting would suffer as their infielders became increasingly fatigued from chasing after balls. This is a heck of a slate of questions. This is only like the fourth weirdest question we've had. Yeah, this week is great. People really stepped up. Do you believe this story? Did you do any background?

I mean, I looked up the team a little bit, but I didn't look for this particular story, no. I'm going to say that there is no way that this would work. Yeah, very skeptical. Yeah. Well, I'm not skeptical that it would work uh in in that league right maybe it worked in a in a semi-pro league but uh even with the tigers even with you know cabrera and fielder charging in from the corners or whatever uh i think major leaguers are are so good that that there is no way that this would work at all it would be yeah terribly

terribly uh ineffective strategy yeah you can i i like in college they bunt um you know they bunt like like 12 times a game and i know that there's some complaint that they're playing too much small ball but as i understand it their fielders aren't good enough to actually get the out that often and so what it ends up being kind of and it's really effective yeah and the run environment is is lower so uh yeah yeah and so but anyway so you can see how against uh a non-2013 major league team uh you know it's harder to make uh you know a couple of you know to to make a lot of these plays, you know. Pardon me. So I wouldn't think, though, that I'm trying to think if there's any way,

because the thing is each player then utilized a different bunting technique that would force the infielders to run as much as possible. And I'm trying to figure out what that would mean, because, like, where do you bunt it? You bunt it to third. There's only a couple options. And then you sort of can bunt it to second. You could try to bunt it to short. But in that sense, you're sort of spreading out the running.

Like, if this were going to tire them, you wouldn't think it would. And the other thing is that, I mean, outfielders run. Well, I guess there's a wheel play that would be on kind of so everyone has to run it's not just the fielder that you direct it to uh if you oh right because the second the second baseman would have to cover first but uh uh but i mean when you think about a i mean uh you're you're talking about if they're recording these outs like before they get before you have a chance to tire them out if they're presumably recording these outs um you're talking about having to run like three times every every 10 minutes which is like what

some outfielders do when a fly ball pitcher is on the mound and what it seems to me that what would really happen is that because you'd probably be bunting the first or second pitch a lot and you'd probably be making a lot of quick outs, that your team would be on the field all the time getting tired. Because it's a lot more tired to be standing on the field than sitting in your own dugout. And so it might have the reverse effect. I mean, time of possession is not a concept that has much relevance in baseball. But in this case, it might. I could see it backfiring. I also don't think that, as he asks if Verlander would or the pitcher would just start hitting batters on purpose, I think the pitcher would not start hitting batters on purpose at this point. I think the pitcher would be throwing fast

balls right down the middle. I don't know. I'm trying to, like, do you think, there's not really that much you can do with a bunt. The strategy is intriguing, except that baseball's field is so limited. There's just, there's a lot of guys covering a small amount of territory that close to the batter. Plus, if you're doing this every time,

I mean, the reason why a bunt works usually or the expectation that it will work is because the defense isn't expecting it so if you're doing it over and over and over again then they're just going to play in they're not even going to have to run that much um yeah i don't think it can work we had a similar question a couple weeks ago that asked whether it's's whether an all speed team that was just nothing but like Alex Sanchez's would have a like a building effect where, you know, every single guy was stealing second, stealing third every time and whether like the catcher would get tired and start throwing the ball away and whether the pitcher would just be so mentally exhausted from holding them on and whether it would build on each other.

And I thought about that one for a long time, but we didn't answer it. But it's sort of a similar question. I guess both questions follow the same basic idea, which is, is there an equivalent to the full court press or the hurry-up offense in football, in football where you take control of pace of game in a way that makes the defense, which is presumably in this scenario not as conditioned as you are, not in quite as good a shape, to sustain the speed, whether the defense becomes off balance. And I just think baseball's pace doesn't allow for it. I think it probably can't be done. So I will keep thinking about it and see if there's an equivalent in baseball, but I can't

think of one right now. Yeah. Okay. Jacob wants to know how much young talent do you think would be fair in exchange for Mike Trout or Bryce Harper? Would all of the top 10 prospects in baseball be enough? What about the top 15 or 20 yes more so more i would oh i sorry i didn't hear you yes i'll take the 20 you think it would you would top 10 would not be enough for one it would it would be it would be but if someone were offering the top 20 i would take that oh well yes yeah so i'm gonna hold out i'm gonna hold out for the best offer will you go how much how much higher will you go? Will you go to 50? Sure.

I'll take the 50. So how much do you require to do it then? I mean, it varies, I guess. Depends on whether you have a Trout or Harper in the top five prospects in baseball. Yeah, but even, I mean, even, maybe Harper's a little bit of a different case, but I don't think before Trout, it seems to me that – I do remember people saying like, oh, Trout is one of the best prospects ever before he had come up last year. But I feel like I hear that every year, and so I don't take it that seriously. I don't think there's a huge – there's some difference, but I don't think there's a huge difference between the top prospect at any given time from year to year.

Some, but not a huge. But there's a huge difference between Trout or the best young player of 1978 or whatever. Some years have a better version of Trout than others, right? So that's a, gosh, that was, where am I going with this, Ben? Uh, what I'm saying is that Trout specifically is so good that, uh, you know, I would probably ask more for Trout than I would probably any other young players, uh, a year and a half in. But, uh, I would say that at this point in time uh i would certainly take the top four for trout i would almost certainly take the top three and i the top prospect in baseball

becomes a star like half the time i think yeah and you get the sense of it right and you get the extra year and a half that trout's already given up of of free you know of minimum minimum salary so uh but i mean you don't expect anybody to play like trout trout is the best first year and a half ever yes uh so uh i mean yeah i would take the top three. Two, I wouldn't take. Off the top of my head, I would not take two. Yeah, I wouldn't take two. And it might vary by year. There might be years when I wouldn't take the top three and others when I would.

Uh-huh. Would you always take the top four? Definitely take the top five. probably take the top four, but might vary a bit. Also always take the top five. What about, what about one, three, five, seven, nine? Um, it, it, oh no, I don't care. I don't care about your answer. I have a new question.

Okay. Uh, starting at a hundred and counting, uh, or counting down a hundred, 199, I don't care. I don't care about your answer. I have a new question. Okay. Starting at 100 and counting up or counting down. Okay. 199, 98. Starting at 100, how low do you have to go? Probably 75. Yeah, that's a good one. one time for the Orange County Register about whether the top, whether you would rather have the top 10 prospects in baseball or the 11th to 100th or all the others. And it was really fun to do.

And I don't remember what my findings are. So I'm going to see if I can find it right now. But I don't know if I will. You might. Yeah. You might run into problems just developmentally. If you, if you, if you took 25 prospects, uh, and a lot of them were at the same level, you might have trouble actually finding roster spots for all of them. Um, but yeah, I think that's okay. You look for that and I'll read oh i found it okay what what's better 10 elite prospects or 5900

non-prospects so it was uh who will provide more value by war this year uh and uh i don't you know what they changed the site so i can't even read it it's completely destroyed disappointing yeah all right okay well look up the look up the word document at some point uh okay last one from saxon who is a california exile in brooklyn i was watching a padres game the other night when 5'7 150 pound alexi amarista came up to bat his stats appeared on the screen and under home runs the number four was listed. Alexi Amorista, whose growth seemed to stop somewhere around eighth or ninth grade, has four home runs. Four, all caps. So I just went over to the ESPN home run

tracker site and only two of those home runs were deemed just enough. None of them considered lucky. In fact, even one of them was over 400 feet. My question is how? How does a guy like Alexi Amorista have four bombs this year and someone like JB Shuck, your favorite, who is 5'11 and 195 pounds, or Elvis Andrus, who's 6'200 pounds, not have any this year, let alone someone like Shuck having none in his career? I understand that guys like Shuck and even Andrus are probably not trying to swing for the fences they aren't that type of hitter but clearly neither

is amerista how are there players who are so much bigger than alexi not able to knock one out and yet someone so small as alexi can hit a handful of home runs this is weird right uh etc etc then he asks if there's ever been a giant man of a player who didn't hit home runs, sort of the anti-Amorista. And I guess, he says, this weird discrepancy seems to make all scouting evaluation of a player's body crumble before me. Please help. Did you do a play index search on this? I didn't. Well, I did in January when I was doing a transaction analysis on Ryan Sweeney. Uh, Ryan Sweeney is, is kind of my go-to example of a big guy who doesn't hit home runs. He is 6'4",

225 pounds, and he has hit 18 home runs in over 2000 plate appearances. appearances. He's actually, he has four this year in 121 plate appearances. So he's slugging 527 somehow, but his career slugging, even including that, is 387. His career ISO is just over 100, and he is a very large person. And when I looked that up in January, there was one player who was as tall as Sweeney and weighed as much as Sweeney, had received as much playing time as Sweeney, and had an isolated power as low as Sweeney's. And it was Larry McLean who played in the dead ball era and was a catcher also. So Sweeney is kind of an outlier in that respect um I don't know what I haven't looked in the opposite direction to see what the I don't know whether it would be like Melot or someone um who was tiny but hit for a lot of power uh so I I guess it I guess there are a lot of factors that could account for this, right?

I mean, there's approach. There are some guys who don't try to hit home runs, and maybe if they did, they could hit as many as Amarista, but it would cost them in some other aspect of their game. And then there are a lot of things that just aren't, I guess, aren't very well correlated with size. Like, you know, your approach at the plate and what pitches you swing at and even how strong you are isn't perfectly correlated with your size. And there's bat speed and just a whole lot of other things that I guess could play into it.

And your swing plane, do you have a level swing? Do you have an uppercut swing? Do you hit grounders all the time um so i i mean i agree i i'm kind of uh also surprised when i see some small people just be slap hitters or just hit everything on the ground and never hit a home run and then other people the same size will hit a home run every now and then and i kind of wonder why that is is one guy just that much stronger than the other but I think I think there are various factors that add up to an explanation there yeah I think that it's not as much as base running and throwing on but to some degree your bat speed is just something that

you're kind of born with and it doesn't necessarily i mean greg maddox can throw the ball a lot harder than big fat guys can you know then virtually everybody who's ever been alive who's bigger than him uh can throw it uh it's just one of those things that you know happens with your body with your you know your what do you call those your fast twitch twitch muscle fibers or something like that. And yeah, I also remember vaguely that my grandfather imparted this lesson on me when I was young that Fred Couples at the time hit the ball further than anybody in the world as a golfer. And he, his swing was so smooth and soft soft looked like he was doing it in slow motion

And he he would always explain that it was timing it wasn't about it wasn't about swinging hard It was about having perfect timing having that you know that ball hit that or that club hit that ball at just the moment of maximum speed so I don't know that doesn't help that doesn't help at all Fred couples, everybody. Yeah. So, I mean, in Chuck's case, you wrote about Chuck and you've watched Chuck. I mean, he only has 275 plate appearances in the majors and over half of his batted balls, I guess, go on the ground.

So that cuts down on his home run potential. What do you think the primary factor with him not hitting home runs is uh i forget i wrote about it so you can just google it just google sam miller jb shock it's on there it's all there on the internet it's half-hearted i mean i put a lot of heart into that article yeah you did i edited it i should remember what you said and i don't um okay so maybe we can maybe we can ask the four people who read it right that was to write in and tell us okay uh so we're done for the week uh bp is not publishing things on thursday and friday so we are not podcasting on thursday and friday we'll be back on Monday, and we hope you have an excellent mini

vacation, if you have one, and a nice Fourth of July. Kyle, the person who asked us the question about the no-walk games and the no-hit games, said at the end of his question that he would be sure to think about reviewing the

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Pennies a day. Pennies a day. The most compelling argument is that really if you're wasting your time listening to me and Sam talk, you could be reading what we write instead, and I think it's better. Yeah, exactly. We're not good at this. No, this is the thing that we are worst at in the world. Right. So if this clears your bar for what you will spend your time on, listening to us talk.

We are like, yes, this is like pitchers hitting. We were not selected for this site for our podcast ability. We were selected for our writing ability. And this is supposed to be the awful part that you barely make it through. So just imagine how good we are on the mound, on the bump. Yes. Right. We're in our element. Okay. We'll be back next Monday.