Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 444: Questions of Science and Progress

Episode Date: May 7, 2014

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about replay and umpires, home field advantage, picking a front office to follow, and more.

It's such an easy question, why can't I get an answer? Oh yeah, it's such an easy answer to such an easy question. Why can't I get an answer? Good morning and welcome to episode 444 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I'm Ben Lindberg, joined by Sam Miller and his keyboard. Howdy. Hi.

How are you? Uh, okay. Any banter? Uh, no banter. Just doing some last minute, uh last-minute play indexing. Very good. Very good. This is Listener Email Show, so we'll be answering some emails, getting to the play index segment.

I did see, do you remember when I read maybe a week or so ago a quote from an anonymous executive who said something about talent getting worse in baseball? I don't remember that exactly. Well, it happened. And Peter Gammons wrote an article about changes that he would recommend to speed up the game. And there was another quote from an anonymous executive who said much the same thing. from an anonymous executive who said much the same thing. He said, a club executive said,

we are also dealing with a lack of impact players coming into our game. The talent pool is shrinking. We focus on Mike Trout and Bryce Harper and some of our great young players, but after that it becomes problematical. Look no further than this year's draft, Gammon says, no impact position players, especially at the infield and outfield corners. I had a conversation not that long ago with a former player development guy who was very, very strongly believed that this is the case too, and he blames it all on showcase culture. he thinks that nobody learns how to play baseball uh there it's basically like he thinks

that showcases for high schoolers uh and younger i think maybe even uh it's like essentially like building glam muscles instead of strength you know so uh guys are really good at at like oiling themselves up and looking looking hot in a in a in a g-string but uh not at like lifting heavy things interesting that's a uh i should just be clear speaking metaphorically bodybuilding comparison yeah that's actually not part of the game just to be to be super clear i've never been to a showcase so it could have been uh-huh yeah uh but i don't i mean i don't believe that like i don't believe that at all i don't believe that even a little bit so okay so that's one player development guy and two anonymous club executives that have said this to us recently.

They should know. No, I mean it's also – it's not just those guys. It's also everybody who's ever been involved with the game over the last 140 years. Yeah. Has been saying this. It's not the typical like retired player saying kids today don't know how to play the game or maybe maybe it is it's not it is that's what it is that's well well this i mean this club executive isn't saying that it's just talent without refinement he's saying that there's no talent that the talent pool is shrinking

and i can't i can't i mean, why would it be shrinking? Just other sports stealing talent? Other than that, I mean, there are more people. Well, the thing about it, too, that it doesn't seem like, like nobody's saying that Clayton Kershaw isn't great or that, I mean, they're pointing to this year's draft, right? Yes. It seems like a very quick turnaround.

If there were impact players a few years ago and there just aren't this year, that seems pretty rapid. But how would you even know? How would you even know? I mean, they're all relative to each other. So, like, nobody hits 400 anymore?

Is that the idea? Or they just, they don't, I mean, it can't be that they don't look as good. Because they do. They throw hard. They throw harder and better. I mean, pitchers now are, you know, obscene. And, you know, guys hit the ball far and they run real fast and they do crazy slides. Uh, they're good at defense as we've talked about. They're setting all sorts of

individual records for, for defense according to advanced metrics. Uh, so I, you know, I have a hard time buying this. Yeah, me too. I don't know. Do you think this is just an extension of there's no great power hitters? Is that all they're talking about? Because I don't really buy that either, but I think that relatively speaking, there are just as many strong hitters as there ever were. The game itself, various factors suppress home runs but you know but anyway even if that were true which it could be i don't discount i don't totally

disregard the possibility uh even if it were true do you think that that's just all that they're talking about are they just basically complaining that there's nobody who hits dingers anymore and that's what they really want maybe because no one really complains that there's nobody who hits dingers anymore and that's what they really want? Maybe, because no one really complains that there's no good pitching anymore because it would be pretty hard to argue that position. So maybe it is just an overreaction to changing offensive environment. Yeah, or it might just be an overreaction to one specific draft, and drafts fluctuate wildly from year to year. There are drafts that are deep

and there are drafts that are extremely deep in one particular part of the game and then there are other drafts that are shallow and this is a different kind of a draft there's some good high upside pitching at the top and there are very few uh high level position players at the top so it's just one of those years but i don't I don't think it was the case. I'm trying to remember who was drafted last year. Can you name two people who were drafted last year? If I thought really hard about it. Well, there was, I mean, a few years ago was like the crazy pitching draft, right?

We haven't had a draft in a while that I can recall where everyone was raving about the quality of the position players as much. But, yeah, I don't know. I'm not buying it. Yeah, I mean, conceivable that more players are choosing to become position players or pitchers kind of earlier for some reason? I don't know. Conceivable, maybe?

Eh, all right, well. Probably not. Let's do some questions. I mean, unnamed scout will say anything. Like there are so many scouts that there's always an unnamed scout who believes something. Not as many unnamed club executives not as many but it's a it's a it's a it's a spin-off genre yeah all right um brady wants to know and we already sort of answered this via email because he was conducting a poll of

writers at the time but maybe our answers have changed or we can at least explain our answers, which we didn't really do. If you could shadow with any MLB front office, who would it be? So I'm assuming that he means all access pass, that we actually get to see the stuff that's going on. It's not just a guided tour. It's not just follow people around and they'll show you a thing or two. It's you get to see the stuff that's going on. It's not just a guided tour. It's not just follow people around and they'll show you a thing or two. You get to see everything that this team is doing. So you made a pick. I chose the Dodgers.

Yes. Why did you do that? Without much conviction. But first, why don't you say who you chose? But first, why don't you say who you chose? I chose basically the default super advanced sabermetric team. And it's kind of a stereotypical answer, but that tends to be the stuff I'm interested in. So if I only have a day and I can get access to everything,

then I want to see all the crazy stat stuff that I don't know about. So probably the Rays, but very close second I think would be the Rockies. Yeah, the Rockies would be interesting. I chose the Dodgers for a few reasons. One is that Stan Kasten, who is the president, is I think one of the geniuses in the game. And so I would like to... If I could only choose one person, for instance, and this is sort of along the lines I was thinking,

there are maybe, I don't know, 10 or so people that would come to mind. And at least two of them are in the Dodgers system, Stan Kasten and Logan White, the amateur scouting director, who has some reputation for being the best in the game at scouting. And Bob Engel, who is also a legendary scout, one of the great scouts of the last three decades, was one of their big, sort of snuck in there when they were signing all these players for big money.

Bob Engel was one of their big, kind of relatively big money front office poaches. They stole him from, I think, the disgruntled Mariners organization. He was part of that Jeff Baker article about how the Mariners were losing brains. So I'd kind of be interested in those three individually, but also I just think it'd be much more interesting to see a team with money because we don't talk about those teams' approaches nearly as often, for one thing. We're so focused on little things like whether you can pick up a tenth of a win by bunting in some particular direction or whatever.

But to me, it'd be interesting to see how a team with all this money treats baseball intelligence. But also just there'd be a lot more action. There'd be a lot more kind of drama. It'd be like watching a blockbuster instead of watching a Terrence malick movie which uh actually i much prefer terrence malick so i don't know why i chose to use that analogy well you're probably in the minority there so yeah i don't know if i would choose the dodgers

did i feel like that's a well i know you wouldn't choose the Dodgers. I feel like that's a... Well, I know you wouldn't choose the Dodgers. You chose two teams already. Yes, you would know. But that's a team sort of with a reputation of ownership dictating a lot of stuff, isn't it? Sort of, I think. Really? Yeah, I don't like those big monies. I mean, to me, I feel like it would be less interesting to follow a team that has all the money.

The other thing is that Ned Colletti has a reputation for having a particular kind of, I don't know if I want to say genius, but a particular skill set. Which is that he is not the great baseball mind. And we could see that for like the first seven years when left to run a team, it seemed like he was doing a fairly poor job. And you never got the sense that he was the smartest baseball mind or even an average one, maybe even an adequate one. I don't know. But he is really good at calling people.

Like he is the hustler. He's the guy who gets things done and lays the groundwork and closes deals. Once he had the purse strings loosened, he was able to let his skills shine.

You could very easily say, he's outbidding everybody by 40%. How much skill does that take? I'm not choosing this team because I love them and I just want to have my love crush vindicated. I would actually be curious to see how he does his job and to learn about what he does well and what he doesn't and what works and what doesn't. So I think it would be interesting to see Ned Pelletti as well do his hustle.

I'd like to see the Rockies split front office system in action and the co-GM with an office on the clubhouse level and near the clubhouse and all of that really, really unorthodox stuff that sometimes you hear murmurs about not working so well, but they have stuck with it. I'd love to see how that works on a day-to-day basis. You know, how you manage that, how one GM hands off to another GM when it's an issue that could concern the split, like the major league team and the minor league team, but obviously those interact all the time and influence each other and so it seems like something that would be complicated in practice and i'd like to be a

fly on the wall the other thing is that the dodgers front office has as their senior vice president of corporate partnerships uh michael young who is almost certainly not that michael young but how great would it be if it was and you got to see Michael Young schmooze Budweiser? Yeah, he'd be great at that. He really would be a great corporate partner person. That's what he should do if he's not already doing it. The senior vice president of stadium operations is Steve Ethier. Oh, can't be right. Interesting. Ethier. Oh. Can't be, right? Interesting. Reverse nepotism? You get to be, I don't know, it's not that common a name. No, it's not that common a name. Do some research. All right. All right. Ken asks, home field advantage in Major League Baseball has long been in the low to mid 50%

range. If you had control over it, would you make home field less pronounced so that the game would come down to talent and strategy, or would a bigger advantage make for a more interesting narrative, or at least justify the narratives that we already get? Ethier has a brother named Steve.

That makes it more likely. The question is, do we think it's more interesting if there's a greater home field advantage or less home field advantage yes i think uh more i choose more one because i i think that um it's just good for the amount of happiness in the world. Like this is a, this feels like a, a waste of happiness. Really. If, if we've got 50,000 or 30 or 20,000 fans who go to watch a baseball game and almost half the time they go home sad,

uh, for no reason, it seems like a distribution that was like 70% home field advantage, uh, would just create a lot more happy fans. Right? Sure. But also, I like, I mean, I'm assuming that this wouldn't be just increased home field advantage for no reason at all. Like, I would like it if home fields could be sort of manipulated a little bit or played off of, built around in a way that added a strategic element.

To me, it's frustrating that this is such a small part of baseball. It feels like it should be a larger part, certainly larger than it is. seem to me and it doesn't seem like really any teams have managed to turn their home fields uh into a clear and decisive um kind of 26th man so to speak um like the rockies for instance uh they you know they win a lot more games at home than um you know then their true talent level would suggest but on the other hand it has negative effects on them as a franchise, and for that reason, it seems like their home park is a curse that will keep them from ever winning a World Series. And the Padres have the most extreme park in the other direction,

and yet, despite all of the amazing bullpens, they never really did seem to be able to turn that into post-season appearances and post-season success. I would love it if there were teams that were able to. To me, it would be... It's funny. If you create this idea that the park is not just a setting, but itself a character, I think it's delightful, and that's lacking. It's probably more Fenway, probably more than any other, especially when you think about the Fenway effect that everybody in the league thinks that they get on umpires calls.

It's probably the best example of a true home field edge. But, yeah, otherwise, I mean, you know, you go to Angels games, it's like you can't it could be anywhere yeah well how high would you want it to go before it starts interfering with your appreciation because i'm fine with it yeah you want suspense yeah right i mean the the more uncertain the outcome probably the more interested i. Or I don't know, if it's 70% or something, that strikes me as too much. I want more uncertainty. I want less predictability in the outcome. I don't mind it being 54%. That's not even, as it is now, that's not so

high that you'd even notice necessarily. But I wouldn't want it to go much higher than that well uh so in the nba it's 61 percent so somebody who follows the nba will have to let us know if this is considered a problem uh in the nba um nfl 57 which surprised me i would have the way that it's talked about uh you i would have guessed it was higher yeah that's what Ken is saying it would at least justify the narratives that we already get I don't know beyond

70 then I would start feeling like yeah it would take away suspense it would feel you know too certain the outcome would feel too certain but anything up to 70%, I could still see being fairly entertained. Yeah, sure.

I don't like it being... I guess I don't like it being quite... I don't have a problem with it being as low as it is, but again, if I go to a game, I want to see the team win. This question comes from another Ken, a different Ken. I would like to hear your thoughts on replays and how you think they might impact the job security of major league umpires. I know that umpires outwardly endorse replays, but it seems that challenges are an in-game test for them,

a very public trial of their abilities. Without naming names, I can think of one umpire who was always finding himself in the middle of skirmishes before replays were introduced. You were very upset that he did not name names. Do you think MLB will use replays or challenges as a way of grading umpires and making changes based on them? I would say it will be part of the evaluation that MLB is already using pitch FX to grade umpires ball strike stuff. And and they already did their own review of calls. I don't know how comprehensive it was. But when we heard about the replay announcement from MLB, they kept spreading those stats about how they had reviewed all the calls to determine whether they were right or not.

And they came out with whatever it was. On average, there's a blown call every three games. It was something like that. So presumably they've already done some sort of review. And maybe they'll just have to do less work now because it's done already. But I'm sure if there were one umpire who's, you know, he blew every call and every time there was a challenge against him, it went against him, that might factor into it.

But even so, how many challenges total are we going to get this season? We're only up to about 230, it looks like. about 230 it looks like so so we'll probably end up with something like 1200 challenges in the regular season roughly and considering how many umpires there are it doesn't seem like you'd even get enough of a sample at least in one season to to statistically say that an umpire is worse than any other umpire based on his record in challenges? Well, yeah, you're right that it will create data, although that data was already being collected in anticipation of this, and that data would be useful in assessing umpires to some degree. But I think that a better way, maybe a way of looking at this, Ben, is basically asking,

Maybe a way of looking at this, Ben, is basically asking, does Major League Baseball want fewer replays, or do they like replays? Do replays add drama to the game? I would say that this first year, they are a novelty. They're entertaining. Every single one gets a highlight on MLB TV and a cutaway on MLB Network. I don't know if that's actually true. I don't get MLB Network. But, you know, they do seem like an interesting novel thing.

The Pirates won on a walk-off replay review tonight. I was going to ask you, actually. Do you know if that's – is that the first walk-off replay? Yes, I believe it was, or at least the broadcasters were saying that it was. I think it was. I think there have been games that have been walk-offs where the play was replayed but not overturned so i think this would be the first walk-off overturn it was they celebrated as if there had been no break whatsoever i was wondering as i was watching how will they celebrate this is the is the joy will it wear off during this replay review and apparently it didn't

at all because they they reacted exactly as they would have really if if he had just been ruled safe at home from the start well but so the play though it was marty with a triple scoring on an e uh on an air so so normally what would happen is he would score and then they would chase him. They would have to run out of the dugout and get him. And if he chose, knowing that he's going to get punched, he might flee and then they would tackle him around second base. But in this case, he would have been sitting next to them already. So it would have been, if nothing else, it would have been just they would turn to him

and shake his hand like a 1930s gentleman would. Right. That's what I was wondering. But no, there was less chasing because he was sitting in front of the dugout in the dirt sort of by the on-deck circle waiting to see what the outcome would be. And then when he was ruled safe, he sort of ran toward the rest of the team and then ran toward the rest of the wait where was he he was like sitting sort of right right beyond the fence that leads into the dugout kind of not quite on the on deck circle but in front of the the fence in front of the steps about so like 10 feet away yeah probably so this sounds like this the way you're describing

it sounds more like uh guy gets drafted in the nba on tv and less like a brazilian scores goal in a soccer game yeah there was less running but there was just as much of a pile up um so anyway the point that i was getting to is uh if after a couple years we'll probably get i don't know maybe we'll get sick of these replays or maybe baseball will just consider them to be too time consuming even though as russell showed in his uh article on fox news uh fox sports sorry uh yesterday they were they're only adding on average about one minute per game i think uh but anyway the point is if if they're a burden and any and major league baseball thinks that they suck then yeah you could definitely see a case where the umpires that are responsible for this thing that baseball doesn't like uh that would be part of their evaluation and if you are

adding too much of an unwelcome thing into the game uh as though major league baseball has the power to fire umpires but you know if they could they would uh as it is now i don't think mlb considers these a bad thing at all i think they are adding color to the game and they while you don't want to see calls be wrong the replay itself i don't think is considered uh a problem at this point would you care to do play index now i would love to do play index all right right now uh so this actually was inspired by a question uh that somebody asked us um and i'm gonna see if i can read the question uh so brett says uh today's podcast about intentional walks reminded me of my favorite baseball fun fact every time a team has intentionally walked a batter with the bases

loaded the pitching team has gone on to win the game uh which is interesting and of course there's a it's deceptive right because the they didn't win because they intentionally walked a batter with the bases loaded they presumably walked the batter with the bases loaded because they were already well ahead in the game and were playing it safe essentially in that, it's playing it safe to protect a larger lead. Anyway, can the baseball reference play index do searches like this? What's a team winning percentage when they hit a grand slam, for example? I don't think I can answer the grand slam question because grand slam is a fake thing. It's a made up idea. It's possible that I can and I just didn't figure it out in time.

But I did run a couple of others, and I wanted to have you guess them before I move on to the second half of this Playindex search. But I went to the Team Game Finder for batting, and in the Team Game Finder you can search for any game in which the team did x or rather i guess you you can say you can do all sorts of things you can look for the game where some team hit the most home runs in franchise history or you can look for which team in history had the most doubles in one game or whatever but another thing you can do is

filter for a certain act or certain event, and then you can see how often they won and how often they lost. So, for instance, Ben, what percentage of the time does a team with zero RBIs in a game win that game? What is their winning percentage with zero RBIs? Five? game win that game what is their winning percentage with zero rbis um five it's actually uh it is uh 7.5.075 so basically they win every what is that 14 games uh so there that's what we're doing for instance uh uh what about when they hit one home run but exactly one home run so not two and not zero they hit one so you tell me is hitting one home run in a game a positive or a negative indicator for that team um no i suppose it depends on the era. What years are you using here? All of them.

All of them. I've got 104,000 games here. I'm going to say it's a slight positive. You are exactly right, Ben. It is a slight positive. It is a 540 winning percentage. So that is about it. It's like home field advantage.

Yeah, that's right. It's almost exactly home field advantage yeah that's right it's almost exactly home field advantage it's a 88 win pace for a season uh nicely done uh all right uh with one or more intentional walks one or more intentional walks you mean drawing yeah drawing i'll say 70 good you're good it's actually uh 736 so i found my calling yeah all right uh sacrifice bunt laid it down one or more and this one is only since like 1960 because before that sacrifice hits and sacrifice bunts are lumped together. All right.

And I'm trying to think of the typical sacrifice situation. Are you trying to come back? Are you trying to? I'll say 45. It's actually, you missed this one considerably. It's 638, so basically better than 100 win pace. And yeah, I think that it's because if you're down by, say, three or more, you're likely to lose and you're unlikely to bunt.

say three or more, you're likely to lose and you're unlikely to bunt. But also, while sacrifice bunting is usually a counterproductive strategy, the situation that leads to a sacrifice bunt, you're already in an advantageous state. We already know that you have base runner, parenthesis, S, close parenthesis, on, and that they're in a position to score. So, yeah, that one makes sense. A quick thing before I move on to the second half of this, more caught stealings, the better. So, if you have one caught stealing in a game, you are the favorite, but if you have one caught stealing in a game, you are the favorite. But if you have two, you're the substantial favorite.

If you have three, you win more than two out of three. So strangely, a caught stealing is a bad thing to have happen, and a caught stealing erases... I mean, the only thing you know about this game is that there was a runner on first and that now there's not that's it and so it should be you would think it'd be 50 50 except that guy got on first he got a hit and it's quite possible that he got a hit when somebody else was already on i'm not because he didn't get a hit and then just erase his entire contribution. He got a hit and might have advanced other players, right? So the total bases of that single might actually be two or three or four or five.

And so he only erases his own existence on the bases, but not the advancement that he's already pushed people toward. So that one took me a little while to think through but all right so here's the last uh the last one and then i have a little thing after this i'll list after this left-handed left-handed starter if you have a left-handed starting pitcher what is your winning percentage Oh, man. I'll say you lose more often. You actually don't. It's a 5-0-5 winning percentage.

It is a slight advantage to have a left-handed starting pitcher, which surprised me because I've always thought that the left-hand fetish that baseball men have is probably led them into some dark alleys. But it doesn't. In fact, left-handed pitching is an advantage. And this is particularly notable. I mean, we know that the field favors left-handed pitchers and that the game favors left-handed pitchers. But, you know, I would have, I'm surprised that baseball hasn't reached a point of not just equilibrium, but kind of backlash. They actually, I mean, 30, roughly 30% of games since 1914 have been started by lefties.

And that's obviously far more than the general population is left-handed. But so then I looked at this last one. I looked at it by decade. And would you – well, actually, the pattern is too hard to make you guess. So from 19 – in the first half of the century, it was a 502 winning percentage. And in the 50s, it was a 502 winning percentage uh and in the 50s it was a 502 winning percentage and then in the 60s and 70s it actually sort of jumped up to 509 and 511 uh which was its peak and that's that's also the peak of left-handed starters the more left-handed starters were

starting games or a higher percentage of games were started by left-handed starters were starting games, or a higher percentage of games were started by left-handed starters in those two decades than ever before, which is kind of interesting that they became both more frequent and also better. And then the 80s, it dropped to 505. The 90s, it dropped to 501, barely an advantage. And then in the 2000s, all of a sudden back up to 508. And then this decade, 2010 to now, is on pace to be the first decade ever in which lefties have a losing record. They are currently 47 games under.500 with a.496 winning percentage. And so, Ben, here's my question.

See, my answer was influenced by the recency effect. Sure. I had noticed that in recent years. Yeah. So, Ben, here's my question for you. We're talking about huge numbers of starts. We're talking about 13,000 or so starts per decade. So clearly this is not the case that, oh, Randy Johnson retired or whatever, right?

So can you think of any reason why this would fluctuate from decade to decade? Can you think of any narrative for why the 60s and 70s lefties would do better? Why in the 90s lefties would do worse than in the 60s and 70s? Or why right now we would be at an all-time low? Can you think of any possible reason for this? all-time low can you think of any possible reason for this maybe teams being more or less willing to platoon or to or more appreciative of the platoon effect and and loading up a lineup against a lefty with righties or something like that could be do you know when the platoon uh the platoon decades were i know that like the 80s were a platoon decade do you know i were the 90s a platoon decade or the 70s

yeah i don't know the numbers on that by decade i don't really either i just know the 80s the 80s are good and right now we're pretty good right now now it seems like there are certainly teams that are doing that and emphasizing that, but on the whole is it? I mean, given all the relievers and the fact that there are fewer position players on the roster? I think so. Yeah, I mean, I think that it's not to 80s levels, but I think that we're at a pretty good platoon rate right now.

I think. I might be wrong. Does the fact that lefty relievers are such a huge part of the game now that more lefties, you would think more lefty starters, like basically the lefty starting pool would be diluted by lefty loogies, who, you know, there's not a total overlap. A lot of guys turn out to be loogies because they're not good enough to be starters. But certainly there have to be some that if given a long enough opportunity, I mean, look at C.J. Wilson, right?

For a long time, C.J. Wilson was just a lefty reliever because we need two or three lefty relievers on every team. So it could be that it's been diluted by the increase in loogies. Plus the talent pool is shrinking. That was my callback. I was going to punchline with that. You did it. Good work.

Thanks. All right. So by all means, please sign up for Play Index. We will feel happy when you're happy because it is really an amazing thing to have at your disposal. It's a product we like. Yes, and use the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30.

That way you will save money and Sean Foreman will know that you got the idea from us, which will help. That's less than the price of 14 cups of coffee. Yeah, that's less than the price of, like, four cups of coffee where I live. All right. This question comes from Matt Trueblood. Brandon Warren mentioned on Twitter Monday that Scott Casimir made his first start of 2013 in AAA before joining the Indians.

Brandon wondered why that didn't disqualify Casimir from being given a qualifying offer. He didn't get one anyway. The answer is that as long as a guy is with the same franchise all year, it doesn't matter where he pitches. Brandon then sarcastically asked so he could have made 10 starts and still stupidly have been offered a qualifying offer? And of course he could have, but he never would have, right? And so Matt wants to know, how good would 10 starts have to be from Josh Johnson or Scott Casimir or Ubaldo Jimenez to merit a qualifying offer as far as you guys are concerned? An ERA of 1, a 30% strikeout rate. Is there any realistic amount of success a player could have in 10 starts

if he had done nothing else over the previous two years to make you pull that trigger? So we're talking about Kazmir last year, and I guess Ubaldo last year, and Johnson... Johnson in the future, maybe? And I guess Ubaldo last year. And Johnson. Johnson in the future, maybe. Last year, this year, the year before, next year, all years. Yeah.

Johnson. You know, Johnson. Yes. All right. So, gosh. Because Ubaldo was as good as anybody could possibly be for like, well, I mean, he was extremely good for 27 starts, I think. And really as good as anybody in the game for his final 10. final 10 i mean he had the 10 that are as almost as good as you could imagine plus you know a very solid 17 before that plus a history uh in the short term wasn't good but a history before that

yeah being an ace of being like a legit ace um and he didn't get one but because i mean he didn't get one from the Indians, though. Mm-hmm. Conceivable that he might have gotten one from another team. He certainly got paid enough that it would have been a borderline call. Mm-hmm. He got paid more than some guys who did get qualifying offers. Wait. Ubaldo got one, didn't he? Did he?

He did get one. Oh. Yeah. He got one. All right. So, well, then, a lot of the logic that was going into that answer. Yeah. So he's not quite the same case as Matt is asking about because he had been pitching. He had been healthy, at least.

asking about because he he had been pitching he had been healthy at least so what if a guy comes off of two years of nothing maybe injuries casimir yeah basically casimir yeah so what would he have to do uh in 10 starts uh if he just showed up because if he were in triple a he would be producing things that would give us information. So we have to throw out AAA too, right? So let's just say he just showed up. He recovered from surgery, did two rehab starts. Shows up in August. Shows up on August 1st.

And in his final 10 starts, he... I'd say it would have to be something like strikes out 11.5. Basically Max Scherzer. I would say if he did something like Max Scherzer's peripherals, he'd get a qualifying offer. Assuming that the ERA was also solid. So what's that? Like 11Ks, 2.5 walks kind of a thing. And you'd have to have the stuff obviously to go with that it it wouldn't work if he just had a a jeff lock like from the

beginning of of last season couple months it would yeah it would have to be throwing 97 and you know nasty secondary stuff it would have to he have to look like, he'd have to do everything like the kind of pitcher who would get a qualifying offer. Well, I mean, he's got 11.5 strikeouts and 2.5 walks per nine. I honestly don't know that he would do that with being a junk baller. I mean, Jeff Locke didn't do that. Jeff Locke got a strikeout per walk. Yeah, you're right.

But I would do it. I don't think it would be crazy. Maybe it would be crazy if he had missed the two years because he is a habitual injury guy. If he is Josh Johnson and he's never had a healthy season really or hasn't lately and he's coming off serious injuries, then maybe you wouldn't do it just because you figure he'll break down and you'll never get a full season out of him.

But if he's coming out of nowhere, if he's just – he showed up at a tryout camp one day or something like that or he retired and he came back after two years of inactivity, then sure, I would do it. I will say that now I actually am talking myself down to a lesser performance. I think that $14 million in one year is actually a very low investment. I think in the past, have generally criticized clubs for not offering more offers than for offering more offers.

And I mean, you're basically asking a guy to be a league average player on a one-year commitment. So, you know, I mean, yeah, maybe I stand by what I described, but maybe I don't. I mean, you could maybe add a half a run of FIP to that and I would still take him if he, you know, if he passes physicals. All right, let's finish. This was a two-parter from Matt, although the second part doesn't really have anything to do with the first part. from Matt, although the second part doesn't really have anything to do with the first part. Let's wrap it up with his second part, which is, I'm getting a great and growing number of complaints from my more casual baseball fan friends and family about the length and pace of games.

There are various ways to address that, and we've talked about that on the show, but I'm most fascinated by this dichotomy. Would you guys rather, if you had to choose, shorten games to six innings or shorten the regular season to 100 games? Hmm. Hmm. Strongly against either. I would shorten games to six innings. I wouldn't like it.

But I, you know, like as we've talked about, I need, you know, like when you get, when you become dependent on caffeine and you're drinking like three cups of coffee a day or whatever. And, you know, you're really dependent on it. And you'll feel a little lousy if you only have one cup of coffee. But you won't get the crash. You won't get the headache. I mean, all you really need is a crash. You won't get the headache. I mean, all you really need is a Pepsi to keep from getting the caffeine withdrawal headache the next day.

And so basically, I need a little bit of baseball every day. And I could survive with two-thirds as much baseball every day, but I could not survive with 62 or 70 more off days in a year. with 62 or 70 more off days in a year. If you were a bad team hoping to gain an advantage on the good teams, would you choose one of these over the other if you had a choice? So is a team that sucks more likely to fluke their way into winning in a 162-game season, but where all the games are one-third more decided by chance, or by a season that is itself one-third more decided by chance?

That's a good question. Well, you would need fewer players. So in the... Well, wait, which one would you... I mean, you'd need fewer players in both, but you'd need particularly fewer players in the six wait which one would you I mean you'd need fewer players in both But you'd need particularly fewer players In the six inning universe And yes So would that help

Yeah maybe it would Depend if you had good starting pitchers And a terrible bullpen Or a really good bullpen Yeah I would guess that... I would think that you would want the 100 games if you were bad. I think that...

I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't know if it matters. It would be interesting if someone just showed that mathematically it's identical. Is this sort of like we... Is this at all like when we talk about how the playoffs change things? Because if you're a team that has a really good starting pitching and weaknesses in some other area, then theoretically at least it seems like it should favor you because you get more days of rest and you get to pitch your your ace a couple times in one game so in this case if you have more off days you'd you just wouldn't have to use your

fifth starter anymore we're not sure you'd have more off days though the season might start a month earlier and end a month uh start a month later and end a month earlier. Yeah. We don't know the distribution of the games. But certainly your roster in the six-inning situation would be much more top-heavy. The question is, who does that benefit? I mean, the Astros, to name a team that's not very good, and the A's, to name the team that is, the A's have considerably better stars than the Astros, but they also have considerably better scrubs than the Astros. So,

if you created a league where only 18 players at any given time could be rostered from your 25, then who would that benefit? So, do the good teams have a greater edge over the bad teams?

At the top or at the bottom. Yeah. Do they have more stars or do they just have deeper rosters and fewer bad players? Yeah. We're asking a lot of interesting questions here that we don't have answers to. Somebody should start a podcast that simply answers the questions that we

kind of dawdle off on. That's a good idea. It'll be like effectively in control or something. All right. Well, if you have answers to these questions that we haven't answered, please let us know at podcast at baseball prospectus.com, where you can also ask other questions that we will't answered, please let us know at podcast at baseballperspectives.com where you can also ask other questions that we will answer next week or attempt to answer. And you can also respond in the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild.

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