Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 371: Listener Emails: The Mariachi A-Rod Edition

Episode Date: January 24, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss Baseball Prospectus 2014 and Mariachi A-Rod, then answer listener emails about quality of competition, contract clauses, PED placebos, and more.

I wish my eyes could always see Everything exactly as it used to be It's too late, so late So late You're giving us a play Good morning and welcome to episode 371 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you doing? Okay. Good. Ben, how are you doing?

Okay. Good. You spent the winter co-editing a book, and that book is now shipping. Tell people. Use the massive platform that we have built here. Spread the word. It is actually shipped. It has actually arrived in some people's houses.

Some people are holding it right now, which i don't know how that happened i don't think i have anything to do with this but i am um it's come out a month earlier than it did in previous years like like actually on an entire month earlier than some years yeah this is very strange so uh this is like uh when we had kevin corrine on and i refused to say what book he wrote. You should say the name of the book. I don't know. What is the name of the book? We refer to it as the annual, but I don't think the annual is actually on the title page, is it?

It's just called Baseball Prospectus 2014. Is that right? That's right. That is the name of the book that you co-edited uh but uh right but we don't um like we don't italicize do we italicize it on our site what uh i do if i mention it in an article anyway it's on amazon amazon does does. Baseball Perspectives 2014. It is the reason that we exist, more or less. It is one of our signature products. So if you are a podcast listener but you are not a consumer of all the things that Baseball Perspectives does,

in addition to subscribing, you should know that this is a pretty special thing we do. should know that this is a pretty special thing we do. And Jason Wojtkowski and I edited it this year for the first time, and we're both really proud of how it came out. We would have been really proud of how it came out, even if it had turned out horrible, because it's such a huge process that by the time you're done, you're really impressed that you got through it. But we're also exceptionally proud of the product itself. We think you'll like it a lot. So this is probably the first of many times you'll hear me mention that you should go buy it. And tell people what is new and exciting about it. All the words are good. And you recruited many leading lights of

the baseball writing world and baseball broadcasting world and other aspects of the baseball world to write the chapter essays this year and that's true and they turned out quite well well i think so have you read it uh i have read some of it i've tried not to read too much of it because i want to read it once i have it in my hands. But what I've seen has looked good. I'm excited. Can I tell you my favorite line in the entire book? Okay. This is a line out.

I have a lot of favorite lines in the entire book, but this is a line out in the Tigers chapter, and it is for a pitcher named Brenny Paulino. And his line out reads, Brenny Paulino. And his line out reads, Brenny Paulino went another year without throwing. Time is still on the 21-year-old's side, figuratively, but a bad shoulder is still on his side, literally. That's good.

That's my favorite line in the book. It's so simple. There are many lines that other people will consider better than that one, but that's my favorite. I like Vic Black. Yeah, Vic Black's great. Vic Black's is very good. Should we read Vic Black's? Sure. Have it in front of you? Yeah. Victor Black. Black was the player to be named in the deal that sent Marlon Bird and John Buck to Pittsburgh. He immediately endeared himself by asking for any number they will give me, taking the 7 train to Citi Field and showing an upper 90s fastball with a devastating 12-6 power curve.

Black was so impressive that one or two closer-to-the-future stories popped up. He's battled control problems his entire career, but when the ball is down, he's close to unhittable. One negative, a guy named Vic Black should have to pitch in a dark suit and sunglasses and take his glove out of an attache case the real vic black looks like he'd make you a mixtape in his free time you couldn't even read it right no just i mean you read it right but you were it was hard to hear you you laughed all over your punchline yeah just but can i read one can i read one more i like sure all right uh toolsy third rounder keon broxton lost his power stroke quit stealing bases moved from centerfield to the corners and was kicked off the 40-man roster just wait till next year he tells people when they ask him when x-men days of future past is coming out good stuff good stuff uh all right yeah so that's just a little taste

of there's an there's thousands of player comments in this there's a really great essay by grant brisby that's not about a team uh that's just about general baseball and there's a really great essay by dan brooks that um i loved and there's a really great essay by Dan Brooks that, um, I loved. And there's, uh, two great essays by Russell and the whole thing is great. We should stop talking about it,

but, uh, really good stuff. So please, uh, please, um, buy it,

read it, and then find, uh, the writer of your choice from, from within and send them a compliment. All right. Okay. Uh, emails. Yeah. Uh, first, uh, in reference, of your choice from from within and send them a compliment all right okay uh emails yeah uh first uh in reference by the way uh better than fat player photos or skinny player photos are mariachi band photos right did you see the mariachi band photo no how do you never see these photos i'm always breaking breaking i was doing

oh you were editing the annual i was doing work for you ben um well i just sent it to you yeah it's not there's nothing actually funny about mariachi hats all the humor is in his face uh we're we're talking about alex reggie is of course who was who was photographed uh in a mariachi band from multiple angles. I just sent you another angle with the same expression on his face. So I'm hoping that this will be a staple of the coming year. oh boy you're doing the squeaky laugh that's only come out like three times on the podcast so if he doesn't become a broadcaster who rips the yankees as one of the snur suggested i hope that just every now and then he'll be photographed in some improbable situation with this expression

on his face he looks like he's in the uh in like the foyer between an art museum and its bathroom. Yeah. So, yeah. There's no visual component to this podcast, unfortunately, but if you're following along at home, just Google A-Rod Mariachi. You can laugh along with Sam. All right. We can do emails now.

All right. All right. So in reference to what we talked about yesterday, very, very briefly about incentives being generally boring, Matt, friend of the show Matt, wrote that he once got assigned the 10 weirdest incentives ever. He says, it was brutal. I only remember two good ones. The Houston Astros gave Charlie Kerfield 37 boxes of orange jello

to head off a rumored holdout. To what? To head off a rumored holdout. There's a better one than that? No's not there's not these were these unfortunately were out of order sorry okay i uh i don't even want to read it uh george brett got partial ownership of a rental property in memphis and the bat from the pine tar incident in his 1984 deal with the royals which is not as funny, but is actually very interesting. The idea that the club owned that bat and was able to give it to him as

compensation and had to negotiate it probably. Yeah. Oh my gosh. A-Rod. All right. We should have Andy on to ask him how that picture was taken all right so that one's that one's uh that one's done um all right so uh i lost the one i wanted to read okay so mick uh writes and in fact a couple of a couple of questions somewhat kind of were along these

lines uh but mick writes suppose there was an employee at Tony Bosch's lab who idolized A-Rod and made sure that every pill, every injection, and every gummy he ever received was nothing more than sugar water. A-Rod never fails a drug test, true, and he feels stronger because of the placebo effect. Since MLB can't prove he took steroids other than Bosch's word, does his suspension hold up is this like buying oregano from an undercover police officer and what does this do to public opinion of a rod of mlb do you remember if we've ever talked about this hypothetical i don't recall you don't because when i i definitely talked about this with Jason when he was writing about the arbitration proceedings.

And we had him on around that time. But I don't remember if we had him on to talk about this. But I found the chat that I had with him at the time. I'm just going to read it as a script. So Jason says, yeah, if I recall correctly, Jason's a lawyer, by the way, in case people are wondering why we care. Yeah, if I recall correctly, intent to a lawyer, by the way, in case people are wondering why we care. Yeah, if I recall correctly, intent to possess is not a violation, only use and possession and facilitation. And I say, fascinating. And then Jason says, this is a whole topic in regards to

criminal law and torts. Bad intent without a bad act. Bad act without bad intent is easy. It's typically a lesser punishment or else if all, if it falls below some threshold, not punishable at all. The other way, well, it's funnier for one. There are these great cases, hypotheticals about a person who thinks he's smuggling drugs, but it's chalk. Um, so you, you, so Jason's understanding, actually, Jason specifically said in regards to the CBA is it would not be a violation. If, if A-Rod bought steroids that were not steroids, it would not be a violation under the CBA. However, A-Rod was not suspended under the CBA. A-Rod was suspended under the, whatever the other thing, the Bud Sealy did the work around. And this goes back to what we said yesterday, which is that anytime they want to Major League Baseball will just

enact whatever rule they want to and do whatever they want with it and I think it's I think it's fair I would say with almost 100 certainty that if um if if if they if Major League Baseball knew that these drugs were not drugs uh if they had proof if it was in the journals if it was in the diaries if bosh testified it would not change his penalty uh by one game i think they are uh they are interested in penalizing players who attempt to cheat and the um the uh this the uh the the uh efficacy of their attempts is irrelevant um and the more they attempt i mean you know like with well i guess milky didn't get punished anymore for his website did he uh i don't think so okay so but a rod is being punished according to what they say uh he's being punished extra for essentially going to extra attempts to cheat even more. Basically, his attempts to cover up are what they're using to justify the greater penalty.

So they seem to be all about effort. They are like a manager who judges you on how hard you hustle rather than how good you are. They're Tony La Russa and and and a rod is their second baseman and they're mostly interested in hustle uh cheat hustle steroid hustle and i think they would have spent them just as much as they did do i don't think it would necessarily affect public opinion all that much maybe it might not 15 off of how much people scorn him, but it would add 15% to how much people mock him. It might help a little bit, at least in that people would question his performance less. Maybe.

Yeah, well, I think if all the drugs A-Rod had ever taken were found to be placebos, that's the case. In the most recent case, I i mean he hasn't been right right all that yeah all that great yeah so probably not much of a change uh yeah probably not all right uh scott asks uh basically i'm gonna skip the part where he um explains and just skip to the to the question what percentage of players deserving to be on an MLB roster are not? And has that number been in steady decline over time? Basically he's saying have all the advances in scouting, development, analysis, medicine, and the near complete opening of the international player pool plus other factors,

is it safe to say we've cleared every hurdle uh that um yeah every hurdle that would keep a player from making it to the majors or being in the majors if he deserves to be um so then he says are we really just talking about a few cubans and asian players obviously there are athletes in other sports who could play baseball at the mlb level good point not a bad point but for the purposes of the question let's consider only people who are actively playing organized baseball somewhere in the world um so that's the question how many players currently playing baseball are better than um let's say well i mean i don't want to say the uh 1200th best player on a 40 man roster but can we say maybe the 900th best player or the 600th where do you want to go well 40 men or active active you can take your pick you can sounds

like he's talking about active i mean people who are actually on a roster on an active roster all right so there's 750 of those guys plus injureds um so but you know a lot there's guys coming up and down who have been in the majors in the last year but aren't currently so basically let's say uh how many players in the world currently are better than you want to say um john mcdonald sure um it's not a not a huge number i would say that they're they're always ahead you know at least probably more than a handful of guys in the minors just uh guys who are blocked by someone in their organization but would be perhaps better than the weakest player in another organization or guys who are being held down due to service time stuff or guys who are top prospects and maybe they could you know uh they could be good right now but

you're leaving them down a little longer to work on something before you call them up or conceivably you could, you could say, you know, like the, the top X pitching prospects, top X starting pitching prospects in the minor leagues would probably be better than,

you know, how many guys in the back of bullpens right now, if they were relievers. Um, yeah, definitely. So if you count all those guys, plus, I don't know, uh, a smattering of, of international players, um, not a, not a huge group anymore. I wouldn't think, um, wouldn't think. I'm going to say 50. 50 in the world. Yeah. I don't know that I disagree with that. It's a pretty efficient promotional system, I think. I mean, it's a meritocracy for the most part. Yeah. I mean, you could maybe, yeah. I mean, geez, it's, it's really hard to imagine that there is a guy out there who's 27. Like I could imagine that there are, you know, 16 year old, well, not, not even this anymore as much, but,

you know, 16 year old Italian kids who are underscouted and are good enough to be signed, you know, but that's not the same as saying they're as good as a major league player. They might be as good as some 16-year-old right now who is going to someday be a major leaguer. They might belong in that pool that gets winnowed down to the major leaguers. along in that pool that gets winnowed down to the major leaguers but we you'd have to be talking about somebody who's in his 20s still playing baseball at a major league level presumably i mean what would that guy hit in like a dutch league right you know yeah it would be insane so i don't know i'd guess that there's yeah maybe like three guys in independent leagues, and maybe you've got a small handful in Cuba. You've got guys in Japan who either don't want to play here or haven't been posted. And you've got the minor leaguers.

It's hard. And then you've got the NFL guys, but he's not counting those. I can't really think of where else anybody would be hiding uh maybe is it conceivable that there's some guy who's in prison like who like when he was 17 was good enough to be drafted but you know robbed a liquor store or dodged the draft or something like that and like the joined a mariachi band and so is in prison and is currently playing in a prison league and is good enough to to go to the majors probably not conceivable maybe i and maybe they're well they're know, like where is Elijah Dukes today, for instance, right?

I mean, like he's kind of, you know, got in tons and tons of trouble and just terrible makeup and all of that. But talent-wise was probably good enough to keep playing. So probably a few guys like that. I'm ignoring anybody who's played in the majors, though. I think once you've been in the majors though i think once you've been in the majors you're eliminated from this competition so what you're looking for is the elijah dukes who didn't hold it together for six years yeah uh-huh right yeah not so not a whole lot of these guys 50 seems reasonable to me uh i don't really know how many the number is in in

japan or maybe in you know korea um but i would say it's low i think that the the gist of the numbers in in japan or maybe in you know korea um but i would say it's low i think that the the gist of the question is is correct there is virtually nowhere to hide and i doubt anybody is particularly hiding uh that that's what makes the toe nash story so uh what made it so interesting at the time and what in retrospect makes it so sort of funny that we all got kind of duped and why like in retrospect it looks so unrealistic uh okay um so there's i think we got three questions that are all along uh the same line or there are three different twists on this question when we talked about the 1927 yankees and how good they would be uh today if they were transported via time machine um so benjamin says

jeff francour or delman young would be the nth best player on the 1927 yankees uh i'd say they'd probably be the I'd say they'd probably be the seventh best. Seventh best, really? Yeah. I think that's too low. Well, I don't know. Well, I would take Ruth and Gehrig over them. Do you think Lou Gehrig is better than Jeff Rancourt?

Yeah, I do. Okay. But yeah, seven was too high. Yeah, I don't know maybe I mean I wouldn't take any other position player maybe well

I mean there were other Hall of Famers on that team Earl Coombs and Tony Lazeri were on that team but I don't know that I would take either of them really i um i i don't know where uh i don't know where i wrote this so i'm not going to be able to find it

um but at one point i looked at babe ruth swing like i I gift Babe Ruth's swing. And it's horrible. You look at him and he looks like an amateur. He looks like a high schooler who's never been coached. And then also, I want to just bring this up. So Babe Ruth, this is a tweet of mine from July. Babe Ruth took nine years off from pitching, then started a game when he was 35

and threw a complete game victory. I have a hard time believing that Babe Ruth took nine years off from pitching, then started a game when he was 35 and threw a complete game victory. I have a hard time believing that Babe Ruth at 35, after not pitching for nine years, was actually anywhere close to a major league caliber circa 2013. Like, I don't even think close. Like, this is why I think the average high A team would wallop him. Because the Babe Ruth stuff, Babe Ruth is basically what gives me conviction about this position babe ruth was not a particularly good athlete he didn't have a particularly good swing and yet he

managed to be like an all-time great pitcher and hitter simultaneously and also nine years after the last time he pitched, he came in through a complete game victory, like on a win. And I just think that baseball was like, just completely not real then. Like this whole thing was like, you know, like, like, like the, you know, like, I don't know. I don't exactly know what it was, but it was weird. So, so I just think that, Francor might be 30 times better than Babe Ruth. I don't think so. Do you remember Jaime Ceballos, the swing mechanic guy who was the coach who was credited with turning Ben Zobrist into a good hitter?

Yeah. I forget. I don't know what he's doing now um but i remember reading he had he had this uh he had this uh it was uh tommy tommy rancel the uh writer about the rays and other subjects who listens to the podcast uh wrote an article about cracking the zobris code for d rays bay and he wrote about savallos and his philosophies and everything and And he described his rating of how good a hitter's swing was, was called the CIR, the Savaios Impact Rating. And the part I liked the best about it was that he provided a list of like the highest CIR scores of all time. And it was like the best hitters of all time,

which I thought was very convenient. So Babe Ruth had the highest CIR of all time, according to this swing mechanics rating. So I don't know. I mean, I agree that his swing looks weird and it doesn't look like the kind of swings that we see today. And his body doesn't look like the kind of body we see today. But I have to imagine that, I mean, just relative to his peers, he was so much better. That's my point.

Like that guy was so much better. That's my point. Like that guy was so much better. But that doesn't really make me think that everyone else was awful so much as it makes me think that he was just some sort of freak. Yeah, no, it makes me think he was, that everyone else was awful. It makes me think that the quality of competition was lower, that he was able to stand out to that degree. But I don't know that I look at Babe Ruth and, I mean, when you look at Lou Gehrig, he looks like a person who would be good at hitting.

So I don't know i think i mean i think ruth kind of looked awkward compared to players at the time even um but he was just really good for whatever reason had the highest savalios impact rating of all time yeah i i uh i would take ruth and Garig over them, but that's probably it. Yeah, I mean I find it frustrating that I can't ever settle this because there's just something about Ruth that doesn't add up to me. I have a hard time taking him seriously. I have a hard time taking any of it seriously because it doesn't feel right. It just feels like a first draft and somebody didn't go through and fix all the plot holes.

And I'll never settle it. I'll never actually know the answer to this. But I just don't know. It doesn't add up, Ben. It doesn't make any sense. And the numbers are so – like their bonds in 2001 to 2004 good like they're they're hauntingly good uh-huh but why why how many people i mean how many people were really playing baseball at that point and how many of them were really playing it in any sort of concerted

way and took it seriously at any point in their life like do you even think that those guys took it seriously it doesn't seem like they really did well i don't think babe ruth did from what i've read um but i i don't know uh what was the u.s population in in 1927 400 well that that would explain it i didn't i don't know um to me they were so much better than everyone else at the time that i would i mean as you said didn't you say when we just talked about this recently that like the the very top guys should still conceivably be as elite talent wise as the top guys today well not exactly well uh or should be major league caliber at least well in their in their true talent ability that should be the case but you know that was that was us that was when you asked me to assume that they had years of training and nutrition and all that to catch them up.

They didn't have that. 119 million was the U.S. population in 1927. Yeah. Well, I don't know if you're, well, if you're saying that Babe Ruth would be a joke today, then are you saying that, uh, just every, every single baseball player then tricky thing about this, although maybe a guy whose game was all speed, it might translate over a lot better. But here's the problem, it really actually is really hard to imagine, well, if he was a joke, then was Jimmy Foxx, because they played together. And if Jimmy Fox Fox was, well, then was Ted Williams because they played together and Ted Williams was just good.

And if Ted Williams was, then what was Mickey Mantle because they played together and they were, you know, roughly the same. And if Mickey Mantle was, and you go, well, okay, so when does it go from black and white to color and switch over? And so this is this question. Matthew asked this question. If you had a time machine, what is the last team that won a world series that you could transport to present day that you would reasonably expect to make the playoffs? I mean, you wouldn't say

that the, uh, 2003 Marlins wouldn't make the playoffs, would you? No. So would you say that the, would you, do you think the 93 Marlins are as good as the, you know, roughly as good within the margin of error as the 2013 Red Sox? Or can you, can you see a difference there? Or can you see a difference there? Maybe you could draw some sort of cutoff at, I don't know, like when modern training methods became prevalent or something, when guys actually started working out and lifting weights and taking those sorts of things seriously. working out and lifting weights and taking those sorts of things seriously.

Maybe that was kind of a break. And I don't know. I mean, we were watching baseball then. It's hard to think that the baseball that we were watching during our lifetimes was significantly lower quality than the baseball we're watching now. Significantly lower does seem like hard to accept. Maybe that's because we don't want to admit it, or maybe it's because it's true. Significantly harder is hard to accept,

but I certainly, significantly worse. But, you know, I think that you can very easily make the presumption that, well, I mean, we know that, well, we don't know. I guess we don't technically know this. We've debated this, but we, we presume you and I both presume that guys throw harder now, for instance. And I've mentioned that guys play with a great deal more speed and strength in a way that actually frightens me for their health. Um, and I mean, I just, in my head, think about Jeffrey Leonard, who was the first star of my childhood. Um, and does Jeffrey Leonard really look to me, uh, like, um, you know,

well, I don't know who a comparable player to Jeffrey Leonard is, but do I actually think that he was as good as, um, uh, you know, or something i don't know no i don't but i don't know it's hard to they they everything looks i'm watching the godfather part three right now which is a whole other situation yeah uh but i mean everything looks sort of cheap there too like that like just watching on video on you know watching a video that was shot in 1990 everything feels kind of slower and lame you know like the color is just off it doesn't feel as vibrant so i might be fooled by the medium it might be that this is all about uh better broadcast yeah it could just be the the quality of the cameras. I don't know. It's a tough question.

It is very tough. I don't know. I would be comfortable saying that any team in the 90s is at the level of, or at least a World Series team of the 90s would be a competitive team today. All right, so just, we'll start naming teams. The, you know, 87 twins? Well, I don't even want to, I don't want to, I i'm not really you're only willing to go to the 90s i'm not commenting on the not commenting on the strength of the particular team yeah question i'm just talking about the the quality of competition of the league at that time and i'm gonna say i'm gonna say 1993 i'm just gonna say 93 and leave it at that i think that 93 is the last year that a world series team in general that i would that 93 is the last year that a world series team

in general that i would feel comfortable saying that they would be an upper echelon modern team yeah it feels feels right somehow um i don't know i i'm thinking of all the players who were playing in 1993 who also played later and were really good and also played before and were good yeah it's a good point I don't know how to handle that I don't know how to deal with that fact

yeah yeah but sure I'll go with that year I guess alright yeah i wonder if you could i wouldn't well hmm i don't know i mean if players aging patterns in baseball were were different than like say like runners where runners are basically right i mean there's a whole there's a whole bunch of either sports or um activities within individual sports where the player is essentially playing against himself that it is you know there is no defense essentially you

know so for free throws there's no defense and field goals, there's not really a defense and all that. So it might be that you sort of see universal rhythms in aging for all these athletes in these areas. And so maybe if baseball's aging curve were different, we might actually be able to conclude that the era is aging alongside them and throwing off the rate. That's a possible way of thinking about it. But I don't know if that's true. All right, Lex. Expansion has to play some role, right? It does, yeah. In 1993, there were 28 teams.

In 1927, there were eight teams. Or no, there were 16 teams. That's a really good point, Ben. Yeah, I mean, yeah 16 teams um so really good point ben's yeah i don't i mean yeah it's a really good point so like yeah because in 92 that was before that was 26 teams so you would think that it would it's actually completely insane that i would say yeah you're right if it's right after an expansion year 98 is probably the worst year you could pick because it was right after two expansions but yeah uh yeah i mean if 93 is it then 92 certainly would be good point point by you yeah all right last one um matt different matt i think this is the third matt we've gone to. All different Matts.

Player signs contract which pays him differently. He's talking about incentives again. Player signs a contract which pays him differently based on team payroll, i.e. $20 million if a team has a payroll less than $100 million, but only $5 million if a team spends $150 million. I love this idea because I always have wondered why, and I guess the union plays a big part in this, and for good reason. I don't begrudge them that. But I've always wondered why players who get to a certain point in their life and really want to win a World Series don't make themselves considerably more valuable by taking very little pay.

And I would think that one reason they don't do it is because they're essentially in an adversarial relationship with ownership, as all employees are with all capital throughout human history. So basically, you don't want to just let the owner get rich and keep his money. And so this actually, the incentive is kind of, it goes both ways, but basically the player is incentivizing the owner to not only get a good deal on him, on that player, and therefore be able to sign more players, but to actually have to sign more players. I think this is actually the sort of most brilliant thing I've ever heard. Like imagine if, cause, cause think about a team that's like a mid market team. Um, like, so imagine that the, well, the raise, the raise are going to carry a $65 million payroll this year.

So imagine that next year, Max Scherzer went to them and said that he, and let's say Max Scherzer is a $30 million talent. And he says, I'll sign with you for $2 million if your payroll is over $100 million. Do you think that the Rays would do that? Basically, would the Rays agree to spend $35 million on, more than they planned, to get $33 million worth of players plus Max Scherzer? So essentially get a half price on $35 extra million. Because if they would, I mean, you think they should. If they could possibly do it, if there was any way possible to do it,

they should and they would. And then, therefore, Scherzer all of a sudden finds himself And then, therefore, Scherzer all of a sudden finds himself not on a raised team that has, you know, $35 million plus him, but rather has, you know, $100 million plus him. Basically, a $130 million team. He has forced them to become a big budget team while also enabling them, making it significantly easier for them to be a big budget team. And it's kind of, it's a great idea. And you might even imagine, you might even, you might stretch and imagine that the union would not mind this because you are creating incentives for teams to spend money elsewhere.

creating incentives for teams to spend money elsewhere. Every dollar that they spend to reach the new payroll floor that you've dictated for them is a dollar that they weren't planning on spending and so you've actually pumped more money into the player pool by requiring them to do this. So the question then is how much lower is the typical payroll than it conceivably could be? Yeah, and whether conceivably could be is even a real thing. Like the raise – I mean the raise ownership could take a loss. I mean they're rich people. If they want to do it, they probably could take a loss.

So it's not necessarily that they have to be in the black every year. And there's more revenue for this. It's hard to know exactly how much more revenue you're going to get when you don't know for sure that you're going to make the playoffs or what. Yeah, I guess that's the question. It's not really even that so much is it's how much could you it's really more how much can you get teams to compromise on what they are willing to spend like how much um how much can you pressure them to spend more by making it in their financial interest too god it's it would be so fun to be a player and to to go do that i i i'm surprised

players don't do that partly because they want to win the world series but partly also just because it would be seems like it would be so fun to be um you know a 37 year old like if you're cliff lee uh i mean you know look 20 million dollars a lot so maybe you maybe maybe as a human you just never get tired of wanting 20 million dollars like maybe that never seems unnecessary uh but if you were cliffley wouldn't it be fun to be making the minimum on the raise right now and just to be that kind of hero who goes and takes the minimum to to help a team win its first world series and meanwhile you know the Rays to spend more money. Cliff Lee and Ubaldo Jimenez go to the Rays

for a combined total of $17 million. You'd be an instant fan favorite. You would be and I think it would be fun to be an instant fan favorite. That's the kind of thing I'd be into. I like fans. Yeah.

Alright. Clever idea. kind of thing i'd be into yeah i like fans um yeah all right clever idea this is a very clever idea thanks matt right again okay uh so that's it for this week uh please join our facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild please rate and review us and subscribe to us on iTunes. You can send us emails for next week at podcast at baseball prospectus.com. And you can go to Amazon through baseball prospectus if, if possible. And, and by the annual baseball prospectus 2014.

And we have writing in there and Sam has more writing in there and editing in there. So have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back next week. Good morning, and welcome to episode 371 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Biss... Can we start again? Yeah.