Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 458: Listener Emails Don’t Need Explainin’

Episode Date: May 28, 2014

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about the Scouting Bureau and scouting departments, stats and the mainstream media, genetic testing, and more.

🎵 Good morning and welcome to episode 458 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, presented by the Baseball Reference Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller. How are you? Good. Ready to play index some stuff. Yeah, well, don't get ahead of yourself.

I'm not getting ahead, but I've got four play index some stuff. Yeah, well, don't get ahead of yourself. I'm not getting ahead, but I've got four play index items. Wow. Yeah, but they're quick, but they're all... Play index was extra fun tonight and extra helpful. Wow. We don't get four times the sponsorship money for doing four times the play indexing, but we just can't help it.

Ben Revere hit a home run tonight. That seems notable enough to mention. Not our story. No, it never was. That's not... We never owned that one. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, other people got to that well before we did.

But still, 1,466 at-bats, 1,500-something plate appearances into his major league career. He hit his first home run, and it was the longest stretch to start a career since Frank Tavares in the early to mid-'70s. Yeah, these sorts of never-having-done-something records are just so precarious because now he's nothing. Now this doesn't exist. What did he do? Nothing. He did nothing. If he had hit it in his first home run,

in his first plate appearance, it would have been basically the same. He didn't set a record for the longest into his career. And he doesn't currently have any sort of record. Nope. It's nothing. It's nothing. He's dead to us now.

He is. They should release him. Yeah. And it was hit into the first row, but the fan who caught it in the first row was standing, at least. So it wasn't a total wall scraper. How tall? He looked like a fairly large gentleman. He was holding it, you know, maybe caught at shoulder height or so.

That's a good poke. Got over with a few feet to spare. And it was a good day for pitchers and elbow injuries. We haven't had a lot of those lately, but we had two scares in recent days with Jordano Ventura and Noah Sindergaard, who both had elbow pain and had MRIs, and they came back clean. They came back with no structural damage. Of course, we know that once you've had any sort of elbow problem on your ledger, you are at a higher risk to have a more serious one in the future. So maybe they're not ever completely out of the woods, but they're okay for now. So that's

good. You know what I just noticed, Ben, is that if you say MRI, it sort of sounds like you're saying slurdly, I'm all right, which is the opposite of an MRI. That's right. But these two guys are all right, so that's nice because we've talked about our fatalistic attitude toward elbow injuries, and as soon as someone feels something, we assume that they're gone for the next 12 to 18 months. I would bet a dollar that one of them has Tommy John in the next year. Yeah, I don't know that I would bet against that.

Also, there was some Smash Mouth news today. After we talked about Smash Mouth's Astro Lounge, someone made a mashup of All-Star and the Shawshank Redemption, where they cut in All-Star into the scene where Andy Dufresne breaks into the warden's office and plays a song on the prison PA while everyone listens. And they made it All-Star. That was a thing on the Internet today. Yeah. Well, Lemon Demon, who's a i don't do you know lemon demon no lemon demon is like a internet celebrity from like a decade ago i mean that's when he's originally from he's famous i would say mostly for uh ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny do you know that well lots of people do anyway uh He now makes various mashups, and he did an entire album of Smash Mouths.

I believe it's All Star. I believe every song is mashed up with All Star in some interesting way, and it's really fairly brilliant. I mean, it's a pretty amazing album. It's available online. It's free. You can find it. Yeah, someone posted a mashup of uh all-star and

float on in the facebook yeah that's that's pretty good yeah that's part of that's him that's him yeah so hey i have a question by the way yeah um i uh i was uh out and about today and i somebody drove past me uh bumping very loudly the offspring song song, Why Don't You Get a Job? And I was just wondering if you still listen to Americana. No. I did have an Offspring phase, like a brief one. I think it was when Crazy Taxi came out for Dreamcast, and the whole soundtrack was Offspring, so I listened to some Offspring for a while.

Okay. Smash Mouth update done for the day. Right. All right. So listener emails is what we're doing today before we do Play Index. So let's start. Well, let's start with a couple scouting-related questions. This one's from Mike, and he says,

I just finished Dollar Sign on the Muscle and was intrigued to learn about the MLB Scouting Bureau. It says, If so, are there still teams that opt out? And if so, which ones? And are there teams that still buy in and the teams paid a certain amount for access to the scouting bureau's scouting reports which funded the scouting bureau it is now uh it's a a centralized it's been brought into major league baseball it's it's a centralized scouting organization within the baseball office office of the commissioner to quote its website and so every team just automatically is subscribed to it and funds it collectively. There are not teams that opt out and there are not teams that rely only on the Bureau and do not have their own scouts. And it's still, I suppose it's a

cost-cutting measure still in a sense, and it's a labor-saving measure. The Scout Bureau has many scouts, and they file reports on lots of prospects in every area of the country, and they collect biographical information and medical information, and teams don't have to expend as much effort to do that. They don't have to worry about missing a guy completely, because generally the scouting bureau will file reports on pretty much anyone notable. And so that's the purpose that it serves. But I want to connect that to a question from Vinit in Milwaukee, who says,

Russell Carlton wrote today about the amateur draft and how MLB teams are pretty bad at picking winners. This is nothing new, but it's always fun when Russell uses math to prove things. And Russell's article shows that the correlation between draft bonus money and career production is not particularly strong, and it gets much less strong after the first round, that after the first round teams are are kind of guessing in a sense or at least on the whole it appears that they are guessing maybe some of them are terrible and others are really great but it kind of washes out on the whole and so

vinit says how much money would major league baseball teams save by firing most of their area amateur scouts and buying a subscription to Baseball Prospectus and going off Jason Parks' prospect list. So let's say that they have a subscription to BP, they have a subscription to any prospect content on the internet, and they also have their scouting bureau info. So they get reports from the scouting bureau scouts. How much of a competitive advantage do you think they would lose

or how much of a competitive disadvantage do you think they would be at from relying on a combination of the best available public information and the Scouting Bureau and putting the money that they would pay for their scouting department to something else? I don't know what. You're asking me? I'm asking you. I don't want to answer

because I don't want to play into any caricature. I mean, I think that the publicly available information seems to me to be very good. It is not coming out of nowhere. It is largely sourced from all 30 teams. And we talked about this with Kevin Goldstein, actually, in episode 100, a very special episode 100 with our first special guest. And these reports are so well sourced that

in a way, you could argue, we challenged Kevin on this, you could argue that possibly Kevin was actually better sourced when he was at Baseball Prospectus and had access to a limited amount of data from all 30 teams as opposed to all the data from one team. And that's essentially what the publicly available scouting is. And so I— Coupled with some people who actually have scouting abilities and might get hired as scouts at some point. Yeah, definitely. People have had baseball perspectives, yes. Exactly. And many will.

So, yeah, I mean, I don't want to say that it'd be an advantage. Because I think if it was an advantage, one team might have tried it. And so that seems to be some indication that you wouldn't have an advantage. I also don't want to say it would be an advantage because that sounds wrong. That sounds dumb. That sounds like you're dismissing the value that scouts bring. And that's not my indication at all. However, I do think that there's probably some wisdom of crowds benefit that you could get.

And secretly, I would never say this on a podcast, but secretly I might think that a team could get an advantage. That certainly I might think, I might think, I'm not saying I do, I would never say I do, but I might think that it's reasonable that one might think this, and I'm one, so I might think this, that the worst teams, when it comes to scouting, would benefit from ditching their, and so if you agree that, as one might, if you agree that the worst team could benefit from ditching their scouting department, then you're just negotiating how many teams would do it. And it becomes somewhat less radical to say that they would.

So I would say that the point is valid. I don't think the point would have been valid 20 years ago. I don't think the point probably would have been valid 10 years ago. I think that the point would have been valid, though, certainly within the past five years and quite possibly right now of course uh teams as it is have access to all that information so they can still if they want to they could they could come up with some kind of wisdom of crowds that also factors in their own scouts and and also weights the publicly available information to some degree, right? So then you'd just be better off. So the question is then, is the money that you're

spending on those scouts, is there something you could be doing with that money that would give you a greater return? And I'm not sure what that would be. Well, it's partly the money and it's partly the sort of bias, the personal bias, the confidence we have in our own opinions, and it could be that teams that have scouts that they're paying money for overvalue those scouts' opinions over the opinions of those scouts they're not paying for. I mean, these are people that they hired

because they thought that they were special. And not everybody is special. A lot of people are bad. So, and, you know, if the teams knew they were bad, they would have fired those guys. And so they obviously don't know that they're bad. There's got to be at least, what I'm saying is, there's got to be at least one team that just sucks at this.

Yeah. And doesn't know they suck at it and is overvaluing the degree to which they don't suck at it. So the money is not a huge deal, but it's not totally insignificant. I mean, I guess it's comparable to what they spend on some decent players' bonuses, but of course teams seem to have more money than they can spend on these sorts of things they have less money than they can spend

on josh hamilton but they have more money than they can spend on things like scouts and nutrition so uh yeah probably the money isn't all that significant yeah okay that seems fair of course there as regards the scouting bureau i I mean, Major League Baseball Advanced Media is essentially the new Scouting Bureau, right? I mean, this is all 30 teams that are collecting data that they all get to share. Same arrangement, yeah. So anyway, go ahead. Okay. All right.

Let's talk about this question from Matthew, who asked us a couple a couple questions but we'll answer this one he asks whether we think the mainstream baseball media as in most baseball writers of America association members have a responsibility to explain advanced statistics he is he is jumping off of the the Bob Ryan piece in the Boston Globe where he says that most fans don't care about this stuff and therefore it shouldn't be a topic of discussion. And so he wants to know whether we think most fans would care about advanced statistics if they were reported. Do you think the mainstream media has a responsibility to use and explain advanced statistics to more accurately explain what happened to the average fan? more accurately explain what happened to the average fan. And he cites the example of Jason Hayward and Jose Molina,

who might look worse using traditional statistics, but it's clear based on advanced data that they are worth roster spots and they're valuable players. And he says that this sort of thing would be common in pieces in the New York Times dealing in economics or science, and it seems odd that sports is lagging behind in that area. So I would say... Well, the average person doesn't read stories about economics and science. That's the big difference. I mean, we're talking about a readership that is so large as to encompass many people who would never ever read anything

about economics or science and so that's a big reason that you wouldn't do it in baseball yeah i mean half of your audience is like children right i mean that's who people who watch baseball a lot of them are children they're like eight sure so i'm sure that the new york times i'm sure the new york times doesn't have't have the eight year old market in mind when they're writing about economics, explaining GDP or CPI. advanced statistics or have a way of translating the concepts of advanced statistics into, you know, into easy to understand forms that can be consumed by anyone without necessarily having any familiarity with these things beforehand. And I think, I mean, that's clearly the way things are going where the big writers of tomorrow, I think will will mostly or a greater percentage of them will be people who are at least conversant with these ideas, at least don't don't reject them. And I

think really, I don't know whether whether the media has a responsibility to, to explain these things or to evangelize or anything. But I think you could say that they have a responsibility not to, you know know to be aware of them right because that's always the issue with with the bob ryan piece or with any of these you know uh bah humbug sabermetrics pieces that pop up from time to time is that they always sort of have these rhetorical questions like you know whoa what would a stat guy say about you know so and so and what his war and, you know, just like questions that could easily be answered if you actually asked someone or read a glossary

somewhere. And it's clear that they really have made no effort to understand these statistics or concepts. And they just sort of rely on the easy punchline, you know, just cite the, cite the complicated looking formula or the, the acronym name and sort of go for the, the easy laugh track. Um, whereas you could, you could actually dig into these things and it's, no, it's not, it's not, uh, it's not anything that, that a person who's familiar with baseball couldn't understand. So I think there's some responsibility if you have a big platform and you're paid to tell people about baseball. I suppose if you're entertaining the people, if they want to read what you write, then you're doing what you're being paid to do. People are paying you to get

clicks or to sell papers or whatever it is. So if you're pandering to people who don't want to read about this stuff, then fine. You're maybe doing what your employer wants you to do. But I would say you have some responsibility to be aware of the research and maybe not to outright contradict it unless you have a good reason, you know, to have some sort of factual basis to what you're saying, the argument you're making. Yeah, I think you're right. That's a key point that you have an obligation to be aware of the research. And I think that you have an obligation to say things which are true and to explain them in the best way possible so that other people will know what you're talking about and also know that they are true, partly because it's good to spread knowledge and partly because

if you don't, then you're going to lose everybody and you're going to fail as a writer. I don't think, though, that you have any obligation to look at the long term. I don't think that you need to make it a point to educate the entire world so that two generations from now, everybody will know what all these stats are. I don't think that you have an obligation to make this into any sort of point. I don't think you need to make it a point. I don't think that it needs to be your ideology or your position that these stats are important. I think you should just only say things that are true. It's pretty easy to do that without

making a show of it. I would say that's true on both sides. I think that it's pretty easy, if you don't buy into this stuff, to write about players using traditional stats. I wouldn't read them, but you can write about players using traditional stats without making

a show of it. The problem is that a lot of writers like to make shows on both sides. Or you can even write without using many stats at all. There are many great writers who can, I mean, you know, I tend to. Like the Bible. There's only like, I mean, I guess Numbers and Deuteronomy had a lot of stats. Lots of lifespans in there. There are, yeah. And I question some of the accuracy of it but I mean, I don't know.

But the, yeah, I mean, there are many writers who just kind of focus on the human interest angle or the aesthetics of baseball and how things look and, you know, green of the grass and the crack of the bat and all that. And some people are really good at that and can do that in a compelling way. And they don't necessarily need to shoehorn any sort of stats in there. Although generally I tend to gravitate toward the people who do. Yep. All right. You want to take us on this play index odyssey? All right. So they're all, they're all fairly quick, or at least, uh, or at least some of them are fairly quick. And there are four because I got a bunch of questions that were fairly answerable, Play Index-related questions. So the first one is actually very easy.

This was asked of me by the Twitter user Spodeotis, which is a great name for a Twitter user, who wanted to know, LaVarnway was announced as a pinch hitter and then pinch hit four. Can Playindex tell us the career leader in that category? And yes, the Playindex can. The career leader in pinch hitting and then being pinch hit four is Dave Hansen. Somewhat predictably.

I'd say if we were in a car on a long car trip trying to figure this out, we probably would figure it out by Barstow. So his 63 times, Dave Hanson pinch hit and did not get a plate appearance. That is a huge lead over Lenny Harris. That was my next guess, yeah. At number 44. And the active leader, in case you're wondering, do you want to guess the active leader?

Where was, where's John VanderWaal on this list? Number three, 35 times. Man, active leader. So the great thing about the active leader. There's no such thing as like a dedicated pinch hitter anymore, it seems like. Well, just yesterday, somebody tweeted about the active leader that the active leader, whose name I'm not giving away yet, his most valuable skill is pinch hitting and then being pinch hit for.

And this person didn't have, as far as I know, a play index up on his screen. So it was quite the wonderful coincidence. But you don't have a guess, huh? I don't. Yeah, well, it's Greg Dobbs. But he is way behind Dave Hanson, way behind. He's not even a third of the way. And the Dave Hanson, that really is a relic of an era.

It existed for like 15 years where there was a ton of pitcher specialization and hence a lot of matchups and pinch hitting and yet not 12 and 13 man pitching staffs yet and so you could carry that pinch hitter that you could burn and now we have all the specialization but you just don't have the player to burn my my guess is that dobbs my guess i don't know if this is true i can look in a second my guess is that Dobbs, I don't know if this is true, I can look in a second, my guess is that Dobbs hasn't had, even his 20 haven't come all that recently. The next highest for the active leaderboard is Lance Nix at 13, and I was wrong, Dobbs has three already this year. So I guess he's actually speeding up.

He might have a shot. No, he had like six in 2008 and six in 2009, one in 2010, two in 2012, two in 2013, and three already this year. All right, so that's one. Second thing is I've already forgotten one. So I might have to – anyway, second thing, Dan Brooks had this question because Nelson Cruz today was pulled from a game a triple shy of the cycle, and Dan said that he saw some complaining about this,

that Nelson Cruz wasn't given the chance to get his triple. And Dan just wanted to know, not related to Nelson Cruz exactly, but who are the leaders in being short of a cycle? Or I guess since everybody is shy of a cycle. So I guess who are the leaders in being shy of a cycle? Nelson Cruz has eight career triples. Uh-huh. Okay.

Thanks. Did you look that up on Play Index? No, I could have. You sure could have. All right. So single, I'm going to start with the easiest one to be shy of. Triple shy of the cycle, the leader historically, Lou Gehrig, 42. And I'm going to tell you a couple others because this is building something Babe Ruth is next with 41 and the active leader

is A-Rod at 38 so when A-Rod comes back if A-Rod comes back that will be something for you to root for he will have a shot at this record slim but he will have a shot at this record double shy of the cycle leader Lou Gehrig 15 uh number two babe ruth nine and uh

active leader grady sizemore with with five uh single shy of the cycle number one tie babe ruth lou garrig uh each with only three. Nobody's ever topped three. They each had three. And active leader with two, young man, Mark Trumbo. So there's a shot there. Oh, wow. And home run, shy of the cycle, not Gehrig, not Ruth. It's Paul Wehner with 27.

Active leader is Jimmy Rollins with 10. And Gehrig had six, and Ruth narrowly edged him with seven. And so if you add it all up, because you would, let's see, it looks like Gehrig beats Ruth by six. Six times he was one hit shy of the cycle. But here's my favorite thing about this. Babe Ruth, who, again, second all-time shy of a triple, a shy triple, second all-time shy of a double, first all-time shy of a single, and a fair amount shy of a home run. Never hit for the cycle. And here's why I really love that. The all-time leader for hitting for the cycle, the all-time leader, hit for the cycle more than anybody else three times. Do you know who this is?

the all-time leader hit for the cycle more than anybody else three times do you have do you know who this is this is a bit of trivia babe herman which is essentially babe ruth's name except he was the he was the what what is that joke from the simpsons the non-union low-cost mexican right right equivalent or whatever babe babe herman is the low-budget equivalent of Babe Ruth. It looks like the Babe Herman that you would put in your unlicensed comic book about the 1927 whatever you would call the Yankees in your unlicensed comic book. And he has three. Babe Ruth has none. You really brought that fun fact home.

I wonder what the odds of Ruth not cycling at some point were. Because, I mean, it's a pretty improbable event, but when you have a player as good as Babe Ruth, who hit as many home runs as Babe Ruth, and hit for a 3.42 lifetime average, and played for 22 years, I wonder what the odds are that he would not do it at some point yep calculate that on the spot please uh all right the third part i have completely forgotten i have no idea what it was i just don't know i'm sorry okay all right fourth fourth fourth play index segment of the night uh this is the the primary one um Do you know my least favorite fun fact? This is a staple

of team press handouts. It's my least favorite fun fact. I do know this because you wrote an article about fun facts and I'm pretty sure you mentioned it in there. I did. Yeah, I did.

It wasn't anything having to do with Billy Butler. No. Remind me. in there i did yeah i did and it wasn't anything having to do with billy butler no um remind me oh oh well is it is it the it's the it's the it's the is it the one with the the record yes in game it is it is team's record when x happens right yes and And I just despise these. There are two kinds of them that are most prevalent. One is team record when they score five runs or more, which you'll get once they score their fifth run.

That'll pop up and, oh, they're 62-8 when they score five runs or more. But they all have losing records when they score five runs or fewer. It's not like five runs guarantees wins. It's like five or more. But five or fewer just kills me. But the other one that I really can't stand is the team record when player X homers or team record when player X steals a base or whatever. Because yeah, if any player in the lineup does a good thing, that's a big head start. If any player in the lineup homers, they're going to win like 70-some percent of their games

or something like that. And this was very common with the Angels, with Jeff Mathis specifically. It came up, it was in every press packet. And I understand, Jeff Mathis did not have a lot of things that played well in press packets you know is he uh he has your era only goes so far exactly steady hand behind the dish is hard to it's hard to put into numbers less hard now than it was then less hard now than it was then so i constantly was

hearing about how what the angels record was when jeff mathis homered or you know what the Angels record was when Jeff Mathis homered or what the record was when he didn't strike out five times or whatever. So I wondered whether anybody has been worse in their team's wins than in their team's losses. Because obviously, you're going to be better in your team's wins because that's why your team won. Your team won because you played better, right? So I went to the Play Index Split Finder where you can split by record in wins versus record by losses. I filtered for all active players, minimum 600 career played appearances.

for all active players, minimum 600 career plate appearances. And then I looked at the split OPS plus, which is basically your OPS in that split relative to your OPS overall. And it was pretty easy. This was a very easy play index search. So of this group of 420 players, there are actually two players who were worse in their team's losses. Sorry, worse in their team's wins than they were in their team's losses. Emmanuel Burris, friend of the show. Podcast legend.

Yes. And Donovan Solano. And the thing about this fun fact is that, like, a lot of fun facts... Was there, like, a minimum number of games played here or something? What was the... 600 played appearances. Okay, okay. 600 played appearances within the split, I believe.

So most of them have, you know, considerably more than that. So 600 within the split. And so the thing about fun facts, a bad fun fact, is that it is numbers that are presented in a way that is disconcerting enough or lopsided enough that it seems like something is happening, but you're not quite sure what it purports to be saying is happening. And the Jeff Mathisis fun fact but the angels win 80 of their games when he homers it's supposed to be saying that jeff mathis is particularly

valuable to his team winning because when he hits a homer they win and so you know like he somehow is crucial to their winning but of course most days he doesn't homer. And so you could say, like, well, he's much worse when they lose. So he's especially bad when they lose. Therefore, he's especially damaging to the team when they lose. I mean, none of this makes any sense. None of these numbers mean anything. They're just sample size nonsense.

But, like, what it purports to say is not even clear. But I would just like to say that I'm going to forget what I just said and say that Emmanuel Burris did less to make his team lose than any player in baseball history. Because when his team was losing, he was absolutely bringing it. He was at his best. And he did not contribute to his team's losses. And I will say, for further evidence, that of the 420 players, the 36th lowest,

so in the 90th percentile, or I guess the 10th percentile, and by far the most played appearances for anybody that low. I mean, everybody who's on the low end of this is just a sample-sized flute. Burris and Solano barely played. But the one guy who has a ton of played appearances and is at the very far end of this, so essentially was almost as good in losing effort as winning effort, was Derek Jeter,

the ultimate winner. Of course. And you would think that it would show up by him performing in his team's wins. Oh, no, it does not, Ben. It shows up in his team's performances in losses. Jeff Mathis, by the way, his split OPS plus is almost identical to the average. He is no better in his team's wins than the average player is in his team's wins.

team's wins than the average player is in this team's wins um and um uh i i also i don't even know if i need to get in this but i also ran this for pitchers who have much fewer plate appearances because i had this hypothesis that maybe pitchers would uh do worse when they got a hit because they would have to run the bases yeah and the the average split for the average split ops plus for pitchers is actually lower. So there's maybe something that's worth looking at, but probably not. I remember my final Play Index thing. It's extremely, extremely quick. Ah, good.

Extremely quick. I was promised four, and I expected you to deliver four. As you know, Play Index now has a walk-offs filter, so you can look only at games that are decided by a walk-off. a walk-offs filter, so you can look only at games that are decided by walk-off. So Matt Albers and Ryan Webb, of course, have finished a lot of games. I was worried that they might not be mentioned on this episode. Presumably, some of these games, a few of these games would have been in walk-offs, and I wondered which pitcher was better in walk-offs. So I looked at all pitchers who have decisions in walk-offs to see who had the better record, who had more wins, who had more losses.

And as it turns out, Matt Albers is the walk-off king. He is 8-1 in walk-offs. Far more likely to be on the mound, well, far more likely to get the win when his team walks off than to give up a walk-off. Only won in his entire career. Webb, 5-6. Not a walk-off only one in his entire career, web five and six, not, not a walk-off hero.

So score one for team Albers, which is my team. Uh-huh. And, uh, knock one off for team web, which I assume is nobody's team. Cause who would ever want to Ryan web?

I still haven't picked a team. I'm still thinking that over. Um, all right, well, good, good, good play indexing

if you want to do the things that Sam did or other things I wonder when we answer reader requests for play index we are in a sense enabling them not to subscribe to play index it's kind of a conflict there but

but hopefully they'll be so excited by the possibilities when they actually hear the answer that they will be convinced to subscribe using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one year subscription. So please everyone do that. All right. So let's wrap up with, well, I got a couple of questions from our friend Dan Brooks. He gets very upset when we don't answer them, so I'll just answer them. Last week, you answered an email about what would happen if the manager took a roster spot, but could otherwise be replaced by a regular player.

What if, and I think we basically concluded that every team would take the player, or the player manager, or most of them would, if not immediately. What if every in uniform personnel, so essentially everyone except the medical staff, took a roster spot and could be replaced with a player? So first base coach, third base coach, bench coach, pitching coach, manager, bullpen coach, etc. Does any of these guys remain? Would we see see manager third base coach super coach guys and regular players in every other spot would the astros just feel the team of 24 coaches and one guy what would happen i think that you would have some i think in this scenario you would have some some real bona fide coaches i think that that you need to have some instructors around.

For one thing, being a pitching coach is very laborious. Being a manager is as it currently is constructed, but it doesn't need to be. You could be a player manager. Talking to the media takes some time, and talking to your GM takes some time, and filling out the line-up card takes some time, and studying things takes some time.

But if you delegated a lot more of that to your coaches, you could do it. You could kind of redefine what a manager does pretty easily, I would say. But being a pitching coach is very laborious. Being a hitting coach is very laborious. And if there's one thing we've learned from pitchers hitting in the majors, where all these guys were super great in high school, but then their skills atrophy because they don't work on it at all, um, coming up through the majors, uh, it takes a lot of work to stay major league caliber ball player. It's just, you know, it's too hard to do, to, to do both at one time. It's

too hard to, uh, to stay, to keep your skills sharp if you don't have the time to do it. I would think that, for instance, you wouldn't want to have your pitching coach and your hitting coach be major league caliber ball players who are distracted. I would say that you would still have some coaches. The other thing is that there's just such, I mean, I don't even, 26th man is just barely valuable to me. 27th, even less so. By 2930, it's just, it might come up once, you know, over the course of a year. You might, there might be a time where you think that

having a 29th man is worth a tenth of a win. But I wouldn't guarantee it. Bring back Dave Hanson, John Vanderwaal. Yeah, but at this point, you're basically bringing in worse players. There are very few guys on the team who you're going to pinch hit for and want to pull out of the game for the sort of caliber player who would be able to make a 29- or 30-man roster. Although I feel like the smaller the job description,

the more players are capable of filling it without necessarily being worse at that job. I've always kind of thought that pitchers today, there are 13 pitchers on a roster. Those pitchers aren't as good. The talent gets watered down when you expand the league or you expand the number of pitchers on a roster. Each of the pitchers is therefore not as talented. But I think it was Matthew Leach who made the argument on Will Leach's podcast that maybe I'd thought of before

but had never really framed this way that, that now that say we have one inning relievers and we have one out relievers, those guys are, are less talented in a sense. They, they could not be starting pitchers, but they are not necessarily less talented at, at doing the thing that they do. You know, they're not necessarily less talented at getting one out or getting three outs. There are guys who only have one good pitch or, you know, maybe two pitches, but they throw really hard and it wouldn't work if they had to go through a lineup two times, but they don't have to anymore. That job now exists for a player like them who can be elite at that job, which didn't used to exist. And now

that it does more, more people are capable of doing that job because you, you get your Sean Doolittle or whatever, a guy who just, you know, throws, throws one pitch a whole lot, uh, and can be really good doing that one thing. So if you had 29 roster spots and you had, you know, each of the, the bench players roles would be much more specialized so you'd you'd be able to have a guy who's just a really good base runner and can do nothing else and you'd be you'd have a guy who can catch the ball and can do nothing else and and maybe a good pinch hitter and can't play any positions you'd you'd be able to carry all those extremely limited players and those extremely limited players, and those extremely

limited players might be very good at their one task. So maybe you would actually want to use them. Yeah, you're right. But I, well, which kind of coach or manager do you think is the most important to pitching? Yeah, that's my sense also. The rest, yeah, I guess you could get, the rest you pitching? Yeah, that's my sense also. The rest, yeah. I guess the rest you could give away, maybe. So maybe I was just responding thinking about pitching coaches. I mean, certainly I'd be fine having one of your relievers be the bullpen coach.

That seems easy enough. Those guys are barely working most of the day, as it is. And certainly the base coaches doesn't seem like a challenge, although maybe guys want to get off their feet. Yeah, of course. Those guys often double as infield instructor, outfield instructor, or stolen base coach or something. That's true.

That's true, and they often do. You're right. And, of course, somebody's got to hit the fungos, and somebody's got to hit infieldgos and somebody's got to hit infield and somebody's got to do all those things. So, yeah, I don't know. I guess the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. I would, I don't know, maybe three. Maybe you carry three extra. Maybe four extra.

Yeah. All right. And last thing also from Dan. Suppose doctors discover a gene that predicts a weakened ulnar collateral ligament that will lead to a greatly increased chance of Tommy John surgery in pitchers, say 500% increased likelihood within the first 10 years of their career. It's detectable with a simple blood test, and the results of the study are completely accurate. What does baseball do? How does the Players Association react if this is suddenly

discovered mid-season? Do we end up with a weird Gattaca-like baseball? Are players tested and then converted into position players? Do players test themselves and convert themselves to position players? Do players just not want to know? And this seems like something that we will deal with eventually down the line. I mean, uh, you know, people are already talking about genetic testing of players and, um, eventually that, that process will get refined to the point where you'd be able to tell whether a player had a certain predisposition to, to a potentially career threatening injury. Um injury. And so, yeah, the question, will we just go all in on that and everyone will have access to that information

and the people whose genes say they won't hold up will just be out of luck? Or will we move to preserve the surprise and the secrecy somewhat? Will we not want players' futures to be determined by what the the blood test says and uh will want to remain ignorant uh there's going to be a synthetic ligament before it gets to that and this won't be an issue anymore i mean they're like they're going to fix tommy john at some point they're going to fix to John at some point. They're going to fix Tommy John before they figure it. I would say they're going to fix it before they figure out how to, uh, identify the gene.

My guess is that, but they're going to fix it. 15 years from now, Tommy John probably won't be an issue is my guess. We predicted dates for when it wouldn't be an issue. I know. I've now, whatever,

whatever I said at the time is I've now, I think you just, you moved up the timeline a little bit. I have. I think I said 2039 and you said like 43 or something like that. Yeah. You know, I know it's extremely, extremely, extremely risky to quote Chris Rock jokes. But you know that joke he has where he says if you want to cure cancer, you just give the president cancer and they'll have a cure like tomorrow.

I feel like there's a – now that everybody is talking about epidemics and stuff, there's – I don't know, there's a mobilization at foot. I mean, I don't know. It just seems so easy, right, to create a synthetic ligament. Doesn't that seem really easy? I feel like they're probably already doing that for our troops or whatever. And now it's just a matter of convincing baseball to accept it. It's probably being done in Europe somewhere. It's just not approved by the FDA. And there doesn't seem to be any party with power in the game that would have any sort of

desire to stop that. So yeah, I'm guessing synthetic ligament. of desire to stop that. So yeah, I'm guessing synthetic ligament. Okay. All right. So that is the future. Genetic testing will be beaten out. We won't need it because we'll be able to replace everything that breaks.

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