Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 459: The Dan Uggla Anti-All-Star Team

Episode Date: May 29, 2014

Ben and Sam banter about elbow injuries and then, in honor of Dan Uggla’s displacement, discuss the least-productive teams at each position.

You shouldn't stick with me. Trust me too much, you'll see. Take all the pain. It's yours anyway. Get out, kid. Get out, kid. Good morning and welcome to episode 459 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller. Howdy. How are you? Okay. Anything to report?

Nope. Okay. I should mention, just because we haven't mentioned, a lot of people send us questions about getting into baseball or ask if we can do intro to Sabermetrics stuff from time to time on the show. And we try to do that when we introduce a new topic, but we're not really trying to start from scratch or anything because we have lots of people who listen who are familiar with all the things we talk about. But if you are interested in picking stuff up from scratch

or just learning more about Sabermetrics, a good opportunity to do that would be by taking the Sabermetrics 101 course, which is being offered free online. It starts today. It's a six-week course offered by Andy Andres, who's been teaching the Sabermetrics class at Tufts for many years, and that has produced many baseball writers and people who work in baseball. And now you can essentially take that course without having to go to college and go to Tufts and pay tuition. It's free and you can just audit it. It's something that takes

eight to 10 hours per week if you actually do all the coursework and take the classes and, you know, do the tutorials and everything. But it's supposed to teach you about the, you know, and everything, but it's supposed to teach you about the, you know, sabermetric concepts and fundamentals and also some introduction to basic programming that will be helpful in baseball. So consider taking that. There's a link. Someone posted a link in our Facebook group, and you can just Google sabermetrics 101, and it's the top result.

So get on that if you're interested my girlfriend is taking it excited about that oh your girlfriend yeah i think i think i'll be i think i will audit it also because there will be things that i don't know certainly so looking forward to that uh good opportunity to learn stuff for free and uh the other thing I just wanted to mention quickly, it was not such a great day for elbow injuries. Yesterday was a good day for injuries. Today was not the best. Matt Perk, the Nationals minor leaguer, is going to have Tommy John surgery today, I think.

McGurk's going to have Tommy John surgery today, I think. Sean Burnett is unfortunately having his second Tommy John surgery, or it seems like he will. He has a torn UCL, and he just worked his way back from another elbow surgery, not the Tommy John, which he had a decade ago. And he threw something like three pitches and had to be removed from the game, and it was the worst case. So he's having that, and Henderson Alvarez be removed from the game. And it was the worst case. So he's having that.

And Henderson Alvarez was removed from the game with a stiff right elbow. And there was a position paper released by Dr. James Andrews and Dr. Glenn Fleissig at the American Sports Medicine Institute on the Tommy John epidemic. They called it an epidemic. And it includes some common misconceptions, many of which we talked about last week with Stan Conti. And it also includes some recommendations. There's a nine-point recommendation list for teams to take into account and also for coaches of amateur players to take into account also. The number one recommendation is to optimize pitching mechanics. And it also says to do

biomechanical analysis, which if you wanted to be cynical about it, I guess you could point out that ASMI is a place where you go to and can pay to have your mechanics analyzed, and lots of teams do that. So they have some incentive there. Not that I think they're saying that for that reason. But the number two recommendation is to not always pitch with 100% effort, which is something that we talked about recently when we discussed Zach Greinke's comments about how he does not do that. And we talked about whether that was acceptable, whether that was against unwritten rules,

whether that would get him in trouble for saying that he does that. That is the number two recommendation here. And another, or the number three recommendation, which is also something we talked about recently, is open communication between a pitcher and his coaching staff and medical staff. So if he feels something, he should tell them about it is the number three recommendation. And then four, pitching coach needs to watch for signs of fatigue in games and in bullpen sessions. Number five is that, you know, everyone on the team who is involved, the trainers, the coaches, the medical staff, the front office should share their knowledge, should pool their knowledge and communicate to minimize the risk of injury.

Number six is similar to the second one is that when you're doing throwing drills and bullpen sessions, those also should not be at maximum effort. Number seven, do not pitch in winter leagues, which is interesting. I wonder whether we will see fewer pitchers pitch in winter leagues because it says that the UCL and the body needs time to recover. So you should have that period built in when you're not pitching. Number eight is just exercise, rest, and nutrition are important, which seems like something people know. It also mentions that PEDs, quote, may enable the athlete to achieve disproportionately strong muscles that overwhelm the UCL and lead to injury. So don't do that. And then number nine is that pitchers with high ball velocity are at increased risk of injury.

The higher the ball velocity, the more important to follow the first eight recommendations. So it'll be interesting whether we see teams emphasize not pitching at maximum effort, not going to winter leagues, and maybe going after soft tossers or people who don't throw quite as hard, at least being more willing to take the risk on someone who doesn't throw quite as hard because, of course, it's difficult. I got a question in my chat today about whether teams would be going after Burleys and Bronson Arroyos, and it's kind of hard to say that all teams should do that because I guess it's hard to tell the difference

between a guy who doesn't throw hard but has such great command and pitch ability and sequencing that he can survive at the upper levels doing that or even thrive and the other type of soft tossing pitcher who has success at lower levels but then gets eaten up the higher he goes up the chain. So it's always sort of a risk to bet on someone being a Burley or a Bronson Arroyo and not one of the many other pitchers who don't make it because they don't throw hard. And so the less risky path is also always to go with the guy who throws really hard.

But depending on the injury rates maybe that's not the case anymore um i actually got a question in that chat from dan rosenson who writes for bp sometimes and he asks what i thought uh what the effect of of having a lot of injuries to high-end players or high-end pitchers is in terms of parity um does it does it promote parody does it hurt parody or does it have no effect on parody do you have any thoughts on that uh i feel like we tried to solve this one time it might have been in the mike trout clone conversation i can't remember uh it was around that time but i don't think it was about the mike trout clone conversation but we did have a, some question was like, basically if you lop off, I don't remember.

I don't remember. I don't, I don't remember, uh, us solving it though, is what I'm saying. Like, I think that we thought through this and couldn't figure it out. Um, so, oh, you know what I think it was? I think we were imagining like 16 16-man rosters or something. Oh, yes. Right, right, right. So I would think that it... I think it promotes parity. I don't think there's any doubt at all.

In this case, it's serious. The unpredictability of players promotes parity. So what we were talking about was actually a different question. parity. Right. Now, so that, that, what we were talking about was actually a different question. Anytime you add unpredictability to players where, especially when teams are spending money on what they think are, you know, predictable beings, then it helps the underdog, I would say. Yeah, that seems to be the case to me. It's like playing in snow, right? I mean, the UCL is basically like playing football in snow. It's this total equalizer. Yeah, unless there's some kind of connection where the teams that are smart enough to get the talented players

are also the teams that are smart enough to avoid or mitigate the injury risk somehow. that are smart enough to avoid or mitigate the injury risk somehow. Like if the good teams or the smart competitive teams are disproportionately healthy or they have fewer of these injuries than other teams, then I suppose that potentially could hurt parity. Yeah, that doesn't happen though. But they might be able to field basically twice the teams.

If you were rich enough, you could basically just have a team and then a shadow team ready for when you get struck. Or if you're the Oakland A's. If we were seeing a massive depth advantage for rich teams,

but it doesn't seem to be that that's how baseball teams build. Baseball teams don't seem to build from the bottom of the roster up, especially once they have funds, when they have resources. I think smart teams do, and I think the A's do, but it seems to me that when you give a team $50 million, their tendency is to spend it on the first 10 spots on their roster, and $50 million extra dollars. And so those guys are, you know,

I guess what I'm saying is that you see the payroll advantage more at the top of the roster than at the bottom of the roster. So it's not like, it's not as though the Yankees have 13 competent starters. Occasionally, you'll see a team that stumbles into having way too many starters or something like the Dodgers did last year, and it kind of helped them out. But you don't see it really consistently, I don't think. Yeah. Every time I see the A's make some kind of comment about how their strategy is depth

and having eight starting pitchers because they build they project in some some injuries and they know not everyone is going to stay healthy and they're not comfortable unless they have seven eight guys who can do that it's i can't decide whether depth is is a is something that you can really tell teams to do like have have depth just have a lot of really good players just just be able to find more good players than all the other teams. That seems like, it doesn't seem like that actionable an item because you actually have to find those players, and that seems to be the secret.

Although the A's, I guess, have done it on the offensive side, at least by mixing and matching and platooning and finding guys who are undervalued because maybe they couldn't start, but they can be good in a part-time role. Anyway, today's topic, I thought, in honor of Dan Ugla, who is now being replaced, it seems, as the starting second baseman for the Braves by Tommy LaStella, who is sort of his polar opposite, offensively at least, that we could talk about the worst, the least productive positions, or the least productive teams at

each position. So the Braves and second base were actually the second least productive, or Braves second baseman were the second least productive at that position but I put together a little list using our year to date stats report at at baseball prospectus the the visual year to date stats which is one of my one of my favorite little reports we have at BP where you can look at each position on each team and it will give you that position's collective performance in various various stats whether you want to look at true average which is just offense or or fielding or base running or or wins above replacement player

which is all those things put together um you can you can look at those in one handy place and you can also look at the projected stats for each of those positions. Yeah, so while you're looking at the 2014 to date stats, I have the projected stats up. So I'll have a completely different color chart in front of me. Okay. mouse over the numbers here, you can see who has played that position, who's had how many number of plate appearances for that team at that position, and how they've done.

So it's a convenient little thing. You can find it at BP under the Depths Charts drop-down button at the top of the page. So I guess we'll just go in the order that they are listed here. So the least productive position at catcher or the least productive team at catcher and actually this is the least productive position in the major leagues at any position is oh can i guess yes well i was going to say rangers nope rangers rangers have some some pretty bad ones on here. But it's another good team. But it's the Rays. The Rays catchers have been abysmal. It's tough to come up with an adjective that does them justice.

They have been so bad at offense. Going into Wednesday's games, they had hit as a group 184 with a 255 on base and a 263 slugging. And it's been a team effort between Ryan Hannigan and Jose Molina, two players we are both very fond of. And Molina... I'm only fond of one of those guys. Yes, you're right. I am fond of and melina i'm only fond of one of those guys yes you're right i am fond of both of them um hannigan now i i have to say hannigan is out hitting just on raw stats hannigan is out hitting let me check yeah hannigan is out hitting robinson charinos and melina is only slightly below uh jpr and sebia and when you do

the park factor in there i have to say like i'm i'm guessing there's some very sketchy early season defensive catching metrics involved here because i think i guess part of of the Rangers managed to get 22 awesome plate appearances out of Chris Jimenez. So maybe that's skewing things. Yeah. Yeah, so Jose Molina has yet to have an extra base hit this year. He only has something like 76, I guess, plate appearances now. But he does not have an extra base hit. He has hit, going into the night,

he was hitting 129, 164, 129. I believe he went one for two with a single and a walk on Wednesday. So he really boosted those numbers. And I think, you know, Rays fans have been sort of sick of the Jose Molina offensive experience for a while

now and I think to some extent even the Rays who value what Molina gives them are probably sick of watching him hit at this point and if you don't know if you haven't read you know the framing studies then you probably can't believe that this guy is playing you're probably

so upset that this guy is playing you're probably so upset that this guy is playing um so he's there has been getting some criticism for this i i retweeted some something from yesterday about how madden said he didn't even know what molina's batting average was he reiterated that his value comes from the defensive aspects um and we we talked uh when melina signed we talked about how you know his unusual career curve and how he was a backup catcher for so long and then became a starting catcher at an advanced age which is something that really never happens and it seems like it was it was clearly attributable to this greater appreciation for his defense. And so we talked about why he doesn't make more money if his framing, if his receiving skills are so great. Then why hasn't he really cashed in? And my answer to that, which I feel like maybe didn't completely satisfy you, was that he is just awful at everything else.

He doesn't hit at all. He doesn't block. He isn't necessarily the most durable guy. And he's very old. So all of these reasons conspire against him, where at this point, hitting as he is, it's an accomplishment that he has a major league roster spot, I think, which is a testament to his defensive abilities.

But you kind of wonder, if this continues, how long they will put up with this. At what point is the break even reached where his offense is just so bad that his defense is not worth playing him for? And you're right,annigan has not been completely terrible he hasn't really had the bounce back that that i was sort of expecting after last year but he's he's at least walked enough to to get on base over 30 percent of the time which is something he's now on the disabled list with a hamstring thing and so the rays called up to replace ryan's hannigan ali solis who is uh he's a 26 year old guy he he had been in the majors very briefly with the 2012 padres and other than that

was just a career minor league guy he was hitting in triple a durham before he was called up 186 213 245 so he is uh he is not helping this situation um he's a career 251 283 55 hitter in triple a um and he is known as an excellent receiver also like last year when i looked at the the estimated minor league framing stats i think he was at the top or somewhere near the top so so they have gone all in on these receivers who cannot hit a lick and it's just sort of ugly you're over you're overstating the badness that of molina's offense i mean it's bad this year but it's been 70 played appearances that that means nothing and while he doesn't hit enough that he should that he would typically be starting, since 2010, since he went to Toronto, which is before Tampa Bay, obviously,

he's got a better OPS plus than Lou Marson, better OPS plus than Chris Stewart, better OPS plus than Mathis, obviously, and basically the same as Gerald Laird. I mean, he's got a backup catcher's bat. Yeah, I suppose. he'd have a roster spot i mean yeah he was he was pretty bad last year um i mean those stats are maybe sort of propped up by like i mean 2011 he was really good but you know these are all small sample seasons so

you're right to to aggregate them um but at his age, you wonder whether this is, you know, whether it's fair to do a multi-year average or whether he has just lost something now. Yeah. Anyway, so that's, that's the worst position in the majors,

productive production wise, offensively alone. I think it's funny that I brought up Lou Marson is that that's like, yeah, right. Lou Marson. Wow. Like an accomplishment. Yeah. and jpr and tb like these are people who are not in the major leagues anymore because

they were so bad at hitting if i were a lawyer i would probably be a very bad lawyer but my goal would hope would just be like saying a bunch of things and hoping the jury didn't bother to process whose side they benefited so um anyway so that's that uh so their true average and again true average is just this all-in-one offensive stat that we have at bp um it it weights everything you do on offense the appropriate amount and adjust for park and and it's uh scaled so that 260 is always the average, no matter what the league's offensive environment is. And so the race catchers have hit 191, which is bad. That's the worst number we are going to say here.

So first base, obviously the best hitting position. Hang on. My part in this. Oh, yes. Worst projected going forward for the rest of the year are the Blue Jays and the Red Sox in a tie. Really? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Okay. So, Pocota has some faith in Jose Molina, turn things around. Hannigan, actually. It has Molina sub-replacement level playing three quarters of the time. Okay. That makes sense. I mean, Molina playing only a quarter of the time sub replacement hannigan it likes uh-huh okay uh worst worst production at first base is uh the padres at 216 this is a team effort mostly yonder alonso um

who's at 208 and then a bunch bunch of stray plate appearances from four other guys. And, I mean, the Padres are all over this list. RJ Anderson wrote a good article from FBP a couple weeks ago about how the Padres were just all underperforming their projections and were not hitting at all, and this is an example of that there's there is uh only one position really where the Padres have hit at all there's only one position where they're actually even close to average they're well above average at left field where Seth Smith has hit well um and that's that's it everywhere else they are like 20 points below average at least over 20 points below average um and uh first base is not their worst position we are going to get to

to another bad position so uh do you want to give the projections there i don't know what the sometimes sometimes there are obvious solutions to, to these problems. Like, uh, the second worst production at first base is Houston with Mark Krause. And I think Mark Krause's main occupation this year, from what I've seen is, has been answering questions about Jonathan Singleton, which, um, kind of, kind of shows you what the obvious solution there, whenever the, the Astros want to get around to it and the Super 2 deadline passes and they want to promote Singleton, that's the sort of move that you can say, well, that just solves that problem right there.

Not every team has that top prospect at the weak position waiting in the wings. There are five teams whose first baseman project to be worse than the worst catching projection which is interesting um uh the worst is the uh is it my turn did you ask me sure yeah okay the worst is the brewers but um at at point one warp for the rest of the year but as as we know that's a huge upgrade from last year and qualifies mark reynolds slash lyle overbay now you're looking at overall production i am yeah it's only so i know i don't know why you would because i don't know it's more fun because small sample defensive stats are and um well yeah but mine is twice the sample. Yes, yours is projected. Because it's projected, yeah.

Right. All right. Okay. Padres. Yes, Padres again. So I mentioned... If you asked me to predict... If you asked me to guess who has the worst true average in baseball,

I would guess without knowing that it's Jed Jerko. Uh-huh. Well, Jed Jerko has a 193 true average, or at least... Yeah, he does. The Padres as a whole have 193 true average, or at least, yeah, he does. The Padres as a whole have a 194 true average. He's played almost the full time there. So I mentioned that Ugla was the second worst.

The Padres are the worst. And so, so far, the curse of San Diego extensions has continued, right? Who were the guys that they extended before may have been humbly yeah and uh and uh lukey right yeah so they they seem to be this team that is you know doing the the extension thing or trying to do the extension thing that all the other teams are doing and seems to be generally working out for people but for whatever reason the players the padres have picked to extend have have not turned out to be great extension candidates in retrospect um so you know it's a little early to to lump jerko into that group maybe but but yes he has been quite bad um i don't really i haven't you know seen jerko enough or dug into his stats enough to say whether this is a very worrisome thing or an only slightly worrisome thing or a disastrous thing or what. The worst projected is the Rangers.

Yes. Well, that's not including profar then right because pakoda was pretty low on profar because of his defensive projection so that's correct but that far is not projected to play a game for them um so yeah the rangers by the way are also projected to be like the fourth worst at first base and like the seventh worst at catcher so this has not been so good for them not so good at all no and we we mentioned the the number of dl days they've had and how they've blown everyone away and there have been some there's been a lot of uh you know hot takes not so hot takes on whether they should be buyers or sellers and john daniel saying that the team is

not giving up so we're not giving up but uh. But they have a lot of holes to fill, and their projections are not so great at this point. When I looked at it after the fielder injury, like the day after the fielder injury, their playoff odds went down something like 10%, and down to like 5%. So at this point, not looking so good for them. All right, third base.

This is maybe someone you have seen a bit. David Freese. The Angels are at 215 overall, and that's part Freese, part Ian Stewart, part a few other guys pitching in. But the David Friese rebound that some people were expecting or hoping for, others were very much not expecting that. But those who were expecting it have thus far been disappointed.

Nick Castellanos was the worst projected. Yes, he had a very poor projection to begin the year. One, I guess, positive here is that the second worst after the Angels is the Orioles, who have had Jonathan Scope play some third base and Ryan Flaherty play some third base and Manny Machado play some third base and Ryan Flaherty plays some third base and Manny Machado plays some third base and not hit yet. So if you're an Orioles fan and you're, you know, thinking they can contend and looking at just some larger trade rumors, then one thing that you could be excited about is that they haven't gotten any offensive production out of third base yet. And you figure that they would. They currently project to have the fourth best third baseman yeah going forward so

that's something to be happy about i think third worst actually was chris johnson who's a guy that pakoda really didn't like coming into the year um which i thought was fair you know he had a really good year last year but before that he was sort of regarded as a platoon guy and he had a crazy babb up year and he got an extension right i think but he is he has not hit yet and then after that of course there's another padre there's always another padre in this case chase headley uh who who is really seemingly hurting his upcoming free agency by not hitting this far this year all right uh shortstop is probably a pretty predictable one. This is on the shortlist for worst positions overall.

Tiger's shortstops have a 198 true average, and that's some Alex Gonzalez, who, of course, was jettisoned early when it became clear that he was not going to be able to play that position. And since then, Danny Wirth, who when he is not pitching, has not been good, and Andrew Romine, neither of those guys has really hit at all, which is exactly what everyone expected, probably what the Tigers expected.

I'm sure they show up a little better in the overall value rankings because they're both regarded as good glove guys, but offensively the production has not been there. And yet the Tigers are nine games over 500 and have a four-game lead in the Central. And I think last time I looked, still had maybe the highest World Series odds. And that was sort of the expectation when Iglesias got hurt, was that the replacements weren't going to be any good, but that the Tigers would probably survive that

because they were good enough and better enough than the next best team in the division to weather not having a shortstop who could hit. And obviously they were tied to Steven Drew a lot. That didn't happen. So I don't know what the solution there is now, whether they will just continue to go with the glove guys who aren't hitting at all

and continue to hit everywhere else in the lineup and survive anyway, or whether they will look for some sort of offensive upgrade. But you want to give us the projected totals there? The Marlins are the projected worst. They are one of four positions across baseball that project it to be sub-replacement level. Okay. Left field is the next position. And left field, the worst position is actually the Phillies, who have a 2-11 true average in left field, mostly because of Dominic Brown, who has not hit at all.

Seemed like a guy who was put on the trade market over the offseason somewhat surprisingly. A lot of people were surprised that the Phillies were kind of talking about dealing him. were kind of talking about dealing him. I don't know whether they were not as high on Dominic Brown as other people were and thought it would be a good time to cash out or not, but he has not hit so well. And really that's kind of been the pattern for the Phillies, I guess, is that the old guys have been fairly productive and the young guys, such as they are, have not.

And we sort of all laughed at Ruben Amaro when he said, you know, when he expected good things out of guys like Utley and Howard, and they have not been the problem so far. It's been, you know, the non-old guys. So that's the Phillies. The Astros, of course, are also on this list. I think Astros left field might be one of the most just nondescript, just boring positions in baseball. Just lots of Alex Presley and LJ Hose and Robbie Grossman and just, you know, that kind of caliber of player.

And the Diamondbacks are also a close second there. Even though Trembo has hit okay, Cody Ross has dragged him down. The only team that really projects to be bad going forward in left field is the Reds. Uh-huh. Okay. All right. And center field is the Red Sox, where they have a 217 true average, mostly because of Jackie Bradley,

but Grady Sizemore hasn't helped. Sadly, Sizemore seems to have now moved out of the injured or great classification and into the just not really good anymore classification. Maybe he was there already. I don't know. But he has been so far this year. So there have been lots of Red Sox centerfield trade rumors and understandably so because they have not gotten much production out of out of that position. The Mariners, who I guess Pocota does not like James Jones as much as Seattle currently likes James Jones. Not only was he snubbed by being left out of the annual, but Pocota is not a believer.

Apparently not. All right. And the Sucks, I don't know whether people tied them to the Dodgers outfield surplus, but I continue to feel like if they can manage those personalities, and I know it got a little dicey there when Matt Kemp was benched for a few days and he was saying, I just want to play. And that was always the concern with them, that they'd reach the point where all of their outfielders were healthy and all of their outfielders were used to being starting guys

and eventually someone would get upset. Whoever drew the short end of the playing time stick would get upset and start carping to the media and demanding a trade that sort of thing and it looked like you know we were headed that way with Kemp and then Karl Crawford got hurt and went on the DL so it seems like if they could just keep these guys around maybe uh convenient injuries will keep cropping up so that they can actually fit all of these guys into the lineup. Because you can't feel comfortable about dealing any one of them and being left with only three. Although maybe you can because you've got Vince Lyke and you've got Jack Peterson and all the depth they have in that position. All right.

And finally, right field is the Cubs. Nothing all that exciting to say about that. The Cubs have a.218 true average in right field, mostly because of Nate Sheerholz, who's generally a pretty good hitter. But Nate Sheerholz and four other guys have not really hit for the Cubs. The Twins are right behind them with Chris Colabello. And the Red Sox are actually third on that list.

So they've, they've really just, uh, had kind of an unproductive outfield all around. Sizemore has also played some left, um, and, uh, and right. It's been, it's been mostly Shane Victorino who has not hit very well. And also Daniel Nava, who has not hit very well. And the worst projected is the white socks okay all right so that takes us through all the terrible positions and uh that is it for today i bet baseball players think that we're all so weird because we just always want to focus on who the worst is right that must seem so weird to them like it's not like there are art

galleries in this world dedicated to the worst art uh-huh and yet that's like 80 of what we write is who's doing worst yeah i mean we do our fair amount of appreciation of the best also we talk about the mike trouts of the world or the mike trout of the world especially what yeah especially when he's doing poorly yeah true true um yeah well we talk about players when they have been bad and are now good then we have lots of things to say if they're just all sample ben that's a small sample you know that guy's regressing yeah if uh if they're just always good then you kind of run out of things to say other than just generic appreciative noises about that player, which is maybe not the best podcast material. So, of course, we want to point out the weak points, the places where players can or where teams can improve, where they need to do something. I guess that's our value as analysts, if we have any, is that people talk about how managers just have to push buttons.

They have to make moves to justify their presence on the bench. So they have to call for hit and runs and stuff so that no one gets the idea that they're just sort of sitting there not doing anything. So we're the equivalent of that. We have to point out when teams are doing something bad or when players are so that we can justify our analysis. All right. So that's it for today. Please support our sponsor, Baseball Reference. Go to baseballreference.com. Subscribe to the Play Index using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. We will be back with another show tomorrow that will end on a multiple of five. Talk to you then.