Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 468: Questions of a Questionable Nature

Episode Date: June 11, 2014

Ben and Sam banter about unpredictability, then answer listener emails about Google Glass, split seasons, time travel, Austin Hedges, and more.

Good morning and welcome to episode 468 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. Hello. Howdy. How you doing? Okay. Cool.

Good. Good. Yeah. So there was a fun fact shared in our Facebook group, facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild that I know will upset you to your very core. Because of the type of fun fact it is or because of the information it carries? It is. I guess it's your second least favorite type of fun fact, but it's a particularly egregious example of it. So it comes from, this is from listener Asa Beal.

He was listening to Chip Carey, and Chip Carey shared this. According to Asa, he quotes him saying, I just saw a stat on Chris Johnson, Joe. Man, this is a great one. In every game in which Chris gets at least three hits, the Braves are 19 and one. Well, that'll do it. That's just overkill, three hits.

Because, I mean, usually it's one event, right? Usually it's in every game in which he homers or every game in which a team homers or something. This is, I mean something this is i mean this is three hits you might as well just say you know in every game where the team scores lots of runs then they win a lot that's that's what this is it's a great one is this the it's also this is a this is an interesting one too because um you're much more likely to get three hits if you get say five at bats or yeah or even six at bats which means that uh when he's doing this the braves have likely already

piled up massive numbers of hits uh so he um he doesn't have four hits this year wait oh so this is in his career as a Brave? Yes, probably. I'm surprised they lost one of those games. It's not even a perfect record. So that's a bad one. That was actually fairly recently that they lost the game. So my guess is that Chip Carrey has been... Maybe not, but my guess is that this one has been in the Braves media book for a while, and they had to decide whether to keep it after the lost one, and they did. Probably whoever wrote that, the intern who wrote that, is kind Marlins. Do you have an updated record? Because I do.

No, I don't. So you should go ahead. was our May 9th episode. Since then, the Rockies have played 28 games. I'm counting the one that they are currently playing as we are recording their losing. I'm assuming that they will lose that game. That will be their 28th game since that podcast and their 21st loss. So seven and 21. Yes. Since you expressed some reservations about whether the Rockies were in this for the long haul. I will say this, though. If you had asked me to predict the Rockies' record over the next 28 games, I would have probably said, I don't know, 12 and 14, maybe 11 and 15. maybe 11 and 15. And their winning percentage at the time would have been, say, 15.

Is it 28 games? Yes. So it would have been maybe 16 and 12 or maybe 15 and 13, probably 16 and 12. And so, in fact, what I was saying would not happen is the 16 and 12. And what actually happened, however, is as far away from my prediction as the 16 and 12 is. So in fact, I'm no more right in my prediction than I would have been if they had gone 16 and 12. Does that make sense? Yeah, sort of. It is. I am still as far off from predicting what actually happened or I would

have been if you'd asked me to be more specific than than I was. I have one for you, though, an update. Well, since that episode, I will also say that since we talked about the Marlins in that episode, too, the Marlins are 14 and 14 since that day. They have gone 500 and lost Jose Fernandez and everything. So that's not so bad. Not so bad. So when we did our comeback player of the year draft, I had Albert Pujols, right? Yeah. And I think at some point, I think that we looked at, we updated those picks and I think I may have gloated a tiny bit about Albert Pujols because he was leading the league in home runs and seemed like a good bet.

And I don't know, maybe he is still a good bet. He'll probably get to 30 or 35 by the end of the year, and maybe that's enough. However, his true average this year is one point better than his true average last year. He might be an all-star. And it's basically the exact same year that he had that was so disappointing last year.

His on-base percentage is 303. Can you believe that? Albert Pujols with a 303 on-base percentage. What has the world come to? And this year is largely seen as a successful year. Because of the way it started. Yeah, partly because of the way it started and partly because he's hit a bunch of dingers. Speaking of weird things, the Astros have a better record than the Red Sox in the race.

I have another. Wait, I'm not sure if this one is still true. I'm going to check. Hang on. I hope it is. It probably isn't because the Giants lost yesterday. However, I'm going to look anyway. Do you have another one?

No, I didn't really come with just endless material here. No fun facts to stall with. All right, so let's see. Is this one going to work? If it works, it's not going to work. Dang it. For like 10 seconds, there was a moment where the Dodgers were as far out of first place as the Cubs. Ah, uh-huh.

But not the Astros. The Astros haven't quite gotten there. There was a moment there, it was close. I think they were within a game and a half of the Dodgers in the standings. Which, that'd be fun if that happened. Yeah, the Astros have, what, I mean, what have they been, the best team in baseball since our Everything's Going Wrong with the Astros podcast? Since some arbitrary date, yeah. what, I mean, what have they been the best team in baseball since our,

everything's going wrong with the Astros podcast? Since some, some arbitrary date. Yeah. Um, I mean, yeah, this is just, this is the problem whenever we, we have no choice, but to do these things, right? We have to talk about the surprise team, whether it's a good surprise or a bad surprise. And the more surprising the surprise, the less likely it is to continue to be surprising in the same way. So we are kind of caught in a trap where we have to talk about whatever, whatever the not predictable thing is.

And the less predictable it was, the more we want to talk about it and the more people want to hear about it. And the more likely it is to just sound silly in a few weeks. There's no way out. This is why they play the games. It's a phrase I coined. And we're fairly responsible. I mean, this is, I think, the thing that sets us apart for the most part.

And not only that, but I think that baseball in general is fairly responsible. When you look at the media coverage of each successive game in an NBA playoff series, it's incredible. I mean, you would think that it was like every game was apocalyptic. Like, you know, like legacies are built up, torn down, and rebuilt twice as high over the course of three games. Like, whoever won the last game is just widely assumed to be winning the series, no matter what. Even if they were down 3-0 and they win the fourth game,

well, there's no stopping them now. You see that last game? The other team just couldn't hang with them. No way they'll hang with them now. It's incredible. I wonder why baseball is better. I don't have the perspective. I don't know if he watches it.

It's so boring. It's like how energized can you get? It's so boring. Well, on that note. It's not that it's boring. Of course it's not that it's boring. It's that there's no game in the regular season that matters at all. And so that's why we've been conditioned to not overreact.

I mean, can you imagine overreacting to losses in baseball? I mean, where the greatest team in history still lost like 44 games or whatever. I mean, how would you handle those losses if you were prone to overreact? Let's have Dan Benchnessy on and ask him. I don't know what that means. Remember his must win for the Red Sox? Oh, right. Must win in game two. To be fair,

maybe he was right. He was. They lost a lot of games since then. Did they win the must win game? They did, yes. But as you pointed out correctly, every subsequent game necessarily had to be must-win. So they've lost a lot of those. All right, so today's the listener email show, so we will answer some.

Let's start with this one from Chris who says, Wouldn't a random generator for pitches, which is something we talked about recently, wouldn't a random generator for pitches be the natural entry point for Google Glass? Pitcher, catcher, and manager receiving the generation simultaneously and then agreeing or disagreeing by the same system of gestures they already use. No chaos. Also, would a random pitch to look for be helpful for batters? Who and when? If ever yes, should the third base coach be involved? So Google Glass is something that, I don't know, I've written about or maybe we've talked

about as an umpire aid, just being fed pitch effects information or having a buzzer go off as one option, but just kind of having the parameters of the strike zone set up in such a way that they could see whether something was a strike, see the real-time data that we get when we're watching game day, except maybe even faster, and get the call that way. So I suppose if you decided that a random number generator for calling pitches was optimal, then sure, I guess you would need that to be generated on the fly. You'd have to pipe that into the player in some way, or else he'd fall into patterns. to pipe that into the player in some way or else he'd fall into patterns. Yeah, but the default right now in baseball, and probably in most sports, but certainly in baseball, the default is that new technology is prohibited, that technology in general

is to be left off the field. You can't have an iPad with your bench coach, for instance. And so the default is that it's not allowed. And so I think the only way that you would imagine it being allowed is if it somehow benefited the fan experience. And I think a random number generator, a random pitch sequence generator, I should say, is enjoyable to talk about strategically, but not good for watching the game. I would much rather they not do it.

So I'm just going to go crank the old man here and say I don't like it. Okay. But yeah, sure, it would be natural, except I don't like it. Well, that's a deal breaker. All right, this one comes from Danny. Since these types of questions seem to be your specialty. Hang on, Ben. Okay.

Well, since you said that, let me ask you this. Okay. If they had asked us to be joint commissioners after Bud Seely. Which they still might. There's no replacement level for commissioner, but I mean, how badly do you think we could screw things up? I'm trying to think if it's more like being a first base coach or more like being a third base coach.

I feel like you could be a really good commissioner. You could be really innovative and have great ideas and be great at building a consensus and getting everyone to do things. I don't know. It seems to me like there would be a pretty high floor on how bad you could be. Because you have so many lieutenants, right? The commissioner has lieutenants. That's what we always hear. You've got lots of people who are helping you make decisions. You've got all the owners who are recommending things and asking for things. So, I mean, there have been commissioners in the past who've made bad decisions that were not good for the game. But I feel like now everything's so profitable,

I think we wouldn't be able to screw it up too terribly. No, right. To screw anything up as an executive, you basically have to be dumb and you have to have power. And the commissioner's power is not automatically really granted to them. If we started coming in with dumb stuff and not making sense, they just would ignore us and then remove us. It'd be pretty quick, pretty easy. It is a job that is completely surrounded by grownups. There's no button you can press that would just detonate anything. Probably, you couldn't really do much at all. Is there any chance, though, that we could do good? I mean, why not?

Yeah, I'd like to think so. Yeah, I do too. I feel like we could. I feel like we could. All right. All right, well, we're available if anyone wants to give us a call. But only as a team. Yeah, right. Only two-headed commissioner. Okay, this one comes from Danny. A number of minor leagues award playoff berths for first-half division champions.

For example, no matter what happens with the low-A Kane County Cougars in the second half, they'll still be playing in the Midwest League playoffs in September. What if Major League Baseball adopted this practice? How might it change how teams operate? Might we see more top prospects contributing in April and May for teams that get off to a hot start? Would we see less action at the trade deadline if a few would-be sellers stumble into a playoff berth after a strong start? Or perhaps we would see those teams

that clinch in the first half loading up on impact players for the playoffs do you think first half winners would rest their stars more in august and september um so i guess one one way to answer this question might have been to go back and look at what happened in 1981 when this was the case after the strike um i don't really, I don't know. I don't know whether there was a dramatically different pattern in terms of players being rested or deals being made at that deadline. That might be instructive. Then again, that was only a, that was an anomaly. That was a one-season experiment. Yeah, there was no time to sort of build up around that strategy,

and it was such a condensed season that it probably would have changed all sorts of things anyway. Yeah, so what if this were permanent? Yeah, so, well, I mean, I think that whether you'd see prospects contributing in April and May, I think you would. I mean, certainly everybody would feel like there was a big advantage. Whether you'd see prospects contributing in April and May, I think you would. I mean, you certainly, you would, everybody would feel like there was a big advantage. Well, you know, I was going to say, everybody would feel like there was a big advantage to winning the first half. Because A, then you can, you know, take the rest of the season off, however you deem that strategically sound. And B, if it doesn't work out, you get another chance.

Whereas if you load up for the second half, you only get one chance. However, don't you think that they would very quickly establish a narrative about how teams that win the first half lose their edge? Yes. And basically after like two years of the World Series champion coming from the second half team, it would just become established wisdom among writers and traditionalists and broadcasters that you've got to win the second half. Yeah, well, that's already a narrative, right?

For teams that clinch early, teams that clinch in September or something, there's always the, it matters how they finish the season and it it doesn't there's that j jaffe article that that i rerun it pp seemingly every year to try to counteract this argument where he actually looked back to see whether there was any difference in playoff performance among teams that clinch early versus teams that have to play right up until the wire and he didn't find any difference so yeah we already we already have that narrative so it would be probably even more extreme. I don't think that there would be fewer buyers at the trade deadline or fewer sellers.

Well maybe fewer sellers but not many fewer sellers. But except for one thing, uh, if, if this were so actually, let me think about this. If this were determined by a half a season, if, if let's take away the confusing part of there too. So just imagine the baseball season was only 81 games on the one hand you in 81 games, it's much easier to keep an insanely hot streak going. Like for instance, the Giants right now are so far ahead of the Dodgers that if this were an 81-game season,

the Dodgers would have folded. Everybody in the NL West would have folded, right? Because there's 17 games left or whatever, and the Giants are nine games up. It's done. They ran away with it. No drama whatsoever. On the other hand, you have less time to pull away.

So my initial thought was that what would happen is that September would potentially be a lot less interesting because in a shorter season you'd have these examples of teams pulling away and not regressing over the course of a long season. But maybe that's not true. Maybe over the course of 81 games you have less time for good teams to separate themselves from the bad teams. So if it was the... Well, of course, it'd be so interesting because the trade deadline would come three weeks into the second half. And so nobody would... If you didn't win the first half and now basically you're all starting over at zero-0 for the second half,

and you have to decide within three weeks whether you're a buyer or a seller, well, everybody's a buyer, right? Right. I mean, even like the Rays, the Rays would be buyers in this year's market. All sorts of that. There's probably five teams that are under 500 right now that would be buyers in that market. So yeah, I don't think it would so much be that there would be fewer sellers because some junky team flukes their way into a first half championship, but rather it's just that there would be no more teams punting than there are in February, basically. in February, basically. Yeah.

Yeah. True. Do you like the idea? I don't think I would recommend it on our first day as commissioner. It's eh. So there's basically two ideas about, if you're forming a league and building its rules, you have two competing schools of thought. One is that you want the champion to be the best team, and two is that you want the champion to be determined in the most entertaining way possible.

And so baseball, of course, has gone further and further away from the former and more and more toward the latter, and there are a lot of people who don't like that. They don't like that the 83 win Cardinals can win the World Series and that you just keep adding series that make it more about winning a bunch of all in head to head showdowns. A single one. Yeah, yeah. In case of the wild card game. Yes, exactly. I've staked out territory on the opposite side.

I like the entertaining tournament style. I think we're far enough away from the merit system that there's no point pretending we have one. And so for me, anything that makes the tournament more interesting is fine with me. So this would clearly not do the former, right? This would clearly not benefit the people who want to see the best team win the World Series, correct? True.

Because now instead of having 162 games to separate yourself, well, I guess it wouldn't. I mean, if you were a great team, would you rather have two chances to win the division in 81 or one chance to win it in 162? Zachary Levine could tell us what the correct answer is. Mathematically, what's your gut tell you? Probably the one. You're the Dodgers. You're five wins of true talent better than anybody else.

Which one do you want? The one? You think the one? I think the one as well, but I don't know if that's true. Okay. Of course, the way it is now, there wouldn't actually be any more teams in it,

though. So the way it is now, you have the 162-game season to separate yourself, and also you have the fallback position of being in second place, although then you have to win the coin flip game. So the way it is now, I think, clearly benefits 162. Okay, so now as to the entertainment factor,

would you rather have, I mean, there would be something enticing about having this incredible pennant race in the middle of June, right? I mean, you'd have two pennant races. Like two-thirds of the season would be pennant race in the middle of June, right? I mean, you'd have two pennant races. Like two-thirds of the season would be pennant race, and then the other third would be April, which everybody loves April. So it does seem like it could be very exciting. It does. I think I might actually be all for it.

The problem is it makes no sense, you know? It's just an arbitrary way of dividing the season it doesn't actually intuitively make any sense yeah it's you might as well just have two different seasons yeah like having the four round tournament schedule that we have now it it uh dilutes the uh the chances of the best team winning, but at least it intuitively makes sense. You win to get there. You know, like, that's a classic way of determining a winner.

You beat other people one at a time until you get to the end. Fine. It doesn't necessarily serve that purpose, but it makes intuitive sense. This makes no sense. It's totally arbitrary. However, so that might be the problem.

I do like the idea that the rules are supposed to mean something, that they were chosen for a reason. But I'd probably be down for it. Maybe I'd be down for it once every 10 years. For some reason, they had to do it every 10 years because the lead year. I think I probably would enjoy those years more. Yeah, sure. I'd be okay with it every now and then. Every few decades when there's a strike, it's okay. Better than having just a first half and no second half as an hour strike.

Yes. Okay. Would you care to do the play index segment? Yeah, sure. So we've been doing the cycle recently a lot of the play indexing has been cycle based hitting for the cycle and uh i think dan brooks and i were talking about how similar the cycle is to a no hitter basically a cycle is it like a no hitter it is a particular cluster of good events that takes on kind of an outsized importance in baseball history. So it's not actually better than hitting two homers and two doubles,

but because it clusters in a particularly funny way, we've decided that that's the thing to go for. And no-hitter is basically the same way. And so then what is a perfect game? Well, a perfect game is hitting four home runs, right? Basically, that would be more of the equivalent. It's super rare. It's basically as good as you can do. It's legitimately impressive in a way that nobody can really dispute.

It's an awesome event, and I like four home run games a lot. I like them more than I like anything other than 21 strikeout games. So the thing about four home run games is they're especially cool if they're done in four at bats because then that is truly perfect. They're still good if they're done in five, but technically not perfect. But then I started wondering if there's ever been anybody who's had a perfect game as a hitter you know four home runs except they didn't get four at bats so they only got three at bats and then for some reason they were robbed of the opportunity to

have a perfect game which would be the equivalent of like say a six or seven inning perfect game as a pitcher which in case you're wondering has never happened uh there's never been a perfect game thrown uh greater than five innings but less than nine did you know that i did not nobody has ever had to leave a perfect game for reasons uh flukish accidental or intentional after the fifth or before the ninth there have been a couple i won in the three in the fifth i think uh three through five innings uh and two were rain were rain outs they were rained out after the fifth the third one i couldn't figure out what had happened my

guess is injury but i didn't look anyway so i wondered about these uh the potential of a of a of an abbreviated perfect hitting game and why those games would have happened. So I looked up in the game, the play index game search, I looked for all games in which the hitter had exactly three at-bats and exactly three home runs, and I found exactly three of them. And so I'm going to tell you about those three briefly. Do you by chance know any of these?

Not off the top of my head. Maybe I'll remember something when you say it. I knew one. I've actually written about one of them before. And another one is probably familiar to a number of our listeners. Not most, but some will remember it and probably have already remembered it and are already thinking about it. So going backwards in history, Bo Jackson in 1990 did this. And so he actually had three home runs and then he was pulled, I think, in the fifth inning. And so he

would have had two more chances. The guy who came in for him went two for two. In fact, he would have had two more chances to get the fourth home run and the fifth home run. And he might've done it. He was Bo Jackson. If there was anybody who would have hit five that you would have, uh, expected to hit five, it might've been Bo Jackson. Um, but he didn't because he separated his shoulder diving for a ball. A few things that are delightful about this. One of them is that the ball that he dove for went for a home run and inside the park home run. So three home runs and three at bats and couldn't go for a fourth, but in doing in eliminating himself contributed to a fourth, uh, more delightfully that home run was hit by, any guesses? You want to guess? Name a guy?

Pick a guy? Willie McGee. Deion Sanders. Oh, wow. Right? Crazy, right? That's good. That is good. And I watched the play on YouTube.

So far as I can tell, Deion probably not safe at home, but this was pre-replay. Probably not safe at home, but this was pre-replay. And so Bo missed a month, came back, first at bat after six weeks away, homered against a young Randy Johnson. I think it's fair to conclude that he would have homered. I mean, you can credit him with that homer. He definitely would have done it if he'd gotten another at bat because that's how events work. So we were robbed. He didn't homer in his second at bat because that's how events work uh so we were robbed he didn't

homer in the fifth he didn't homer in his second at bat back though he homered in his first at bat back we were robbed not his second at bat back so he would not what's that we were robbed of so much more bo jackson yeah we were although the crazy thing I mean, Bo Jackson, not a very good baseball player. I feel like people forget about that. He played for quite a while. He had a pretty long career and wasn't that good. Heresy. Well, it's true, though. Everyone is hanging up on us i know but what i am saying is true yes uh he he had uh you know he played eight years even if you even if you just uh look at the pre-injury years there were six of them he was in his late 20s before injuries really hit him his total war

was 8.3 uh his on base percentage was 309 he didn't steal that many bases he didn't hit that many home runs i mean he was i don't know who he was he was jermaine died basically so pretty good ball player but not a not a superstar his peak was was star level he had one star level year however and i don't know what it's i, the whole thing is a what if, right? If he had devoted himself to baseball full time and earlier, would he have peaked earlier? Would he have peaked higher? It's conceivable that that's the case. Yeah, no, it is conceivable.

Maybe it's better this way. I don't know. Maybe it's better that it was only half a career or so. Yeah, I don't mean to suggest that bo jackson couldn't have been an all-time great if many things had changed many significant things had changed like you know if he never had played football in college even uh then yeah i i'm i'm not i i am fine with the idea that Bo Jackson was born one of the, say, 50 greatest babies ever at baseball. Like starting from day one, there probably weren't 50 players better than him in history. I'm fine with that hypothesis.

But what I'm disputing more is the idea, this memory that I feel that we have all collectively burned into our hard drives of Bo Jackson being a great player, I feel like most of us remember that, and that didn't happen. That doesn't exist. And when you say his peak was good, his peak was, it depends which year you're looking at. By baseball reference. His age 27 year.

His age 27 year, he was a pretty good hitter. Yeah, that's right. That was his best year as a hitter. But 3.5 war, so not a superstar by any means. 4.5 at PP. Okay, good ball player, though. Good ball player, not a great ball player. And I know there are also highlights of him playing baseball that we can look back at,

and those reinforce the notion that he was a great player. And those are pretty impressive highlights, when he did the throw, and when he did the catch and ran up on the wall, and when he beat out a grounder to second. I'm not saying that every player has three great highlights from his career, if you look hard enough, that are equivalent. But I see those three highlights a lot. You know, like, I don't see four. I see those three a lot. Like, if it's Rain Delay Theater, it's pretty much a loop of those three. So, I don't know.

If he had been playing in a more gift saturated era if he were playing today i'm sure he would have been caught doing other notable things probably he was a good ball player and i would have liked to have seen him uh you know commit to baseball and all that i'm just saying i'm just saying i'm sorry to derail the play index segment continue all right number two is art shamsky. Does the name ring a bell? Uh-huh. Art Shamsky I wrote about for the score for Getting Blanked, the Getting Blanked blog.

If you want to search Sam Miller and Art Shamsky, I'm going to double check and make sure that it comes up. Already doing it. Yeah, there you go. It shows up under the annotated box score, the greatest loser of all time. Art Shamsky had the greatest game ever by win probability added. He came into a game. This is the best game. He came in. Sorry, I'll just throw out the punchline at the beginning too. The greatest game ever by win probability added.

And his team lost and he didn't start the game so two pretty incredible things about him our friend and listener michael bauman also wrote about art shamsky and that game for bp last year oh really yeah it's a great game it deserves to be written about it's that and the time that a 17 year old girl struck out babe ruth and luke eric i feel like those are the two things that eventually we all get to. We all discover and then we all write about them. And we're all just giddy with the idea. Anyway, so it comes in in the bottom of the eighth.

Pinch hits. His team is down by one. He homers to give them a lead. They blow the lead. He comes up again in the tenth, trailing again by one. He homers again, ties the game. And then in the 11th, trailing by two, he comes up with two outs, a runner on. Homers again, ties it.

Then the Reds' bullpen blows it again. And so they end up losing he ends up uh he finished the game in the hole didn't get a chance for the fourth home run but enters the game in the eighth homers and all three at bats win probability added that day 1.503 win probability added the rest of his career negative 0.5 since the uh the all of the value of his career in one day. So Art Shamsky, go read what Michael Bowman wrote about him. Go read about what I wrote about him. Art Shamsky is a great story,

great game. The final one is Del Wilbur, 1951. Here's what I found that's interesting about Del Wilbur, and it's not much. First of all, he was one of two Dells in the lineup that day. This was a different era, Ben. There were two Dells in every team.

Is there a Dell Crandall in there? Probably. That sounds right. All right. Two, he went three for three because he didn't make it through the fourth time in the order. Why not? Well, nothing really interesting. His team scored three runs, but they were all on his

home runs they otherwise didn't get that many base runners and because they were the home team they didn't bat in the bottom of the ninth um and so i mean really i guess the answer to why not is that he was the number eight hitter and uh so now now the question is how many number eight hitters have hit three home runs in a game at all uh in as many at bats as they want uh play index search blah blah look around for it 10 there are 10 there are 10 number eight hitters uh not counting al hitters in the dh era there are 10 number eight hitters who have hit three home runs uh in a game most recent was drew stubs most recent before that was edwin incarnacion um and. And one final note about that. I guess two final notes about that.

One of the two final notes is that Art Shamsky is, who we just talked about, in case you just got it for caught. Good callback. Cash was playing automatically. Art Shamsky is one of only four players in the ninth spot to do it. AL or NL, one of only four players in the ninth spot to hit three home runs. Of course, he was a pinch hitter. The other two were DHs, and the final one was a World War II-era pitcher,

which is when everybody sucked. And one last thing, Del Wilber hit 19 career home runs. Okay. That concludes the Play Index section? It does. All right. Well, we recommend that you subscribe to the Play Index and use it yourself using the coupon code BP

to get the discounted price of $30. There's a listener in the Facebook group, Matt Simmons, who posted earlier tonight and said that he finally subscribed to the Playindex. I assume he used the coupon code BP. And he's asking other listeners for help using the tool. Not that it's so difficult that you need to, but he's making use of the resources. And if you want to get in on that, then you should jump in on this thread. You subscribe right now and you'll get all the answers that Matt is getting.

It is intuitive. I mean, the Play Index is easy to use and it's intuitive, but the great thing about it is that the more you use it, the more of the non-intuitive stuff you find. I mean, there's so much you can do with it. And while it only takes you about 10 minutes to get up and running and get 90% of your queries answered, you'll find that it takes many years to really feel like you've mastered it. To me, that's a benefit. The more you know. Okay, this question comes from Ricky. I have two short questions. Should there be an isolated power, that's slugging percentage minus betting average,

adjusted number based on position? Think of it as a shortstop with a 225 isolated power is more valuable than a first baseman with the same isolated power. And will Austin Hedges be the Padres catcher to begin opening day in 2015? He's a stud on defense, but he won't provide much bat value. Thoughts? So you could, if you wanted to, just do a positional baseline for isolated power and say that the average isolated power at shortstop is X

and the average isolated power at first base is x plus 100 and and then you could compare to that if you wanted to so so sure you could do that if you if you are just looking for a way to compare overall productivity in the way that you know warp or war or any of these win value stats does then then there's a a more sophisticated way to do that, just using the positional adjustments that are baked into those systems. And people have used offensive positional adjustments, but that can vary from year to year. Some years, I don't know, a second baseman might hit better than third baseman, or left fielders might hit better than right fielders. It varies from year to year.

People have settled on using defensive positional adjustments. A catcher gets a 12.5 run boost, and a first baseman gets the same amount subtracted. That's how people work around this issue. That's clearly the right way to do it. As a kind of storytelling, I don't know how to say this, but there is something that Vorp, for instance, Vorp used to do as the question asks. It would compare players' offensive production

to all the other players at the same positions' offensive production, and that's how it would get value. There was not a positional adjustment. It was that you were compared to the average at your position. And it is, like I said, the positional adjustment as it is now is the correct way to do it. However, it would be kind of nice to have a couple stats that we're still adjusting. Not adjusting, comparing to the position. Because it is true. You do kind of want to know how much better is Angel Pagan's line because he's a center fielder than somebody else's line because they're a right fielder.

And Vorp told you that. And we don't really do that anymore. So you see it in the war or you see it in the war. But if you just want to look at the offensive side of it, the offensive production side of it, that's not in any of those, in really anything, unless you go look at Vorp, which is still up, right? Yes. So you can look at Vorp. That's why you should look at forbes which is still up right yes yes you can look at

forbes that's why you should look at forbes still and as for hedges uh we are we are not the prospect experts but um but he he was listed with a in 2015 eta on on the padres preseason top prospects list he was was the top Padres prospect. And at the time, at least, Jason Parks, who did the rankings, had pretty nice things to say about his offense. He gave him a future 5-plus hit tool, suggesting that he could be an above-average hitter, which as a defensive catcher, as a great defensive catcher,

would be really good. If he could be an average hitter or as a as a defensive catcher as a great defensive catcher would be really good if he could if he could be an average hitter or even slightly above that would be fantastic jason said he has some offensive qualities with a sound swing and good strength and it's not a stretch to envision a 275 hitter with 15 home runs with 15 homer pop a formidable profile given his near elite defensive projections he has not had a great minor league season. He's in AA, not really repeating the level. He was up there briefly at the end of last year, and he's got a 700 OPS coming into tonight's game. He was mentioned in a minor league update by Jeff Moore

at Baseball Perspectives a couple days ago. Jeff said Hedges has had an underwhelming season offensively, but his defensive skills are so impressive that he only has to be an average hitter to be an above average overall player. So same sort of takeaway. The interesting thing is that the Padres are very rich in good defensive catchers right now. So I mean, they, in good defensive catchers right now. So, I mean, they, looking at our team framing or receiving report at BP, they are on top of that by eight runs.

They are in first place by a wide margin with 26 runs above average saved through framing this year. And that's been written about and talked about, and they've made that an emphasis going into this year. So that's been written about and talked about, and they've made that an emphasis going into this year. So that'll be sort of interesting. I guess you could argue that Hedges' defensive skills are maybe less valuable to them than to most teams, given that they are already excelling in that area. So I don't know if they deem him ready opening day 2015. Maybe they will look to deal someone like they did with Hundley, or I don't know, they deem him ready opening day 2015. Maybe they will look to deal someone like they did with Hundley.

I don't know. Maybe they'll just have an embarrassment of catching riches. Okay, let's do this question here. This one comes from Sam in Denver. He says, Major League Baseball just announced that a team of Major League Baseball players is going to play a five-game series against the Japanese national team in Denver. He says, Major League Baseball just announced that a team of Major League Baseball players is going to play a five-game series against the Japanese national team in November. A couple of questions,

not knowing any more detail than that. Who might be the best players to go? I could see stars like McCutcheon and Trout being interested in playing, but maybe their clubs would limit their participation. And then, this is a good question, how bad will the Major League Baseball pitching representatives be? Since this is after the World Series, presumably all the Major League Baseball pitching representatives be?

Since this is after the World Series, presumably all of the MLB pitchers will be in hibernation, softly massaging their elbows, and not wanting to fly to the other side of the world for one or two appearances. I imagine they'll have to dig deep to find representatives, barring some outrageously handsome compensation. And I just, I looked up the press release about this. So it's interesting. It's six games. It's five contests and one exhibition game. And I'm not really sure what the difference is. The Japanese team manager Hiroki Kokubo says,

the past Japan-US games were more like exhibitions, but this time we play competitive games against the MLB All-Stars. So I don't, I don't know, you kind of have to be competing for something, right? So I don't know what the difference between the contests that they are playing and the exhibition game they are playing is, but, but that does seem like an issue, right? We, we talked about those, uh, ASMI elbow preservation recommendations recently that that told everyone that it's not a good idea to pitch year-round and to play winter league so uh it is sort of hard to imagine teams sending stud pitchers to pitch after the playoffs particularly if if they didn't make the playoffs and they've been just resting for a month already

they're i can't imagine they're going to want to stay in shape and throw and stay stretched out for this six-game series. And it's not like they would know who's going to make the playoffs. I assume that these tickets, for instance, I mean, it takes six weeks to get a passport. So you'd have to figure they're going to have to know before the playoffs. Well, I guess all baseball players must have passports. Well, Ben, I was joking about the passports that was i see uh uh i don't think that the i frankly i don't i don't know that anyone would consider this pitching year round it's uh a week out season ends they just have

four months before they come back however uh yeah it is hard to imagine that anybody would really qualify. You're either going to have pitchers who have thrown a tremendous number of innings already, and teams are already very worried and wary and nervous about that, especially with the idea of the next year hangover that the Giants in particular have popularized in the last few years for pitchers who have to work through October. So those guys are out. And like you said, nobody's going to want to take a month off. So I don't know.

Maybe you get fall league minor leaguers, that sort of a thing. Or maybe you have, I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah, there still are a lot of major league pitchers who play in the Caribbean or Dominican or whatever. So maybe some of them would be willing to go and allowed to go. I don't know. All right. So let's imagine that we agreed on a ranking of the 500 best pitchers in the world, in America.

And so I want you to tell me how good on that list, what is the highest ranked number that will go to Japan? So what are there? I guess there are about 400 pitchers in the majors at any one time. So I'll say, I mean, I feel like there are. Can we, I mean, there's going to be, unless it's all relievers, let's just count this as starters. Okay, sure.

500 best starters. I'm interested in who the best starters are going to be that are going over. If a reliever goes over, whatever. Relievers are made to break. Yeah. I don't know. There could always be one outlier who insists on going and screws up everything but i'll say uh i'll say the 60th best starter goes so the 60th best starter

would be like the worst number two starter in the league or basically like a number three on an average team so you're talking about something like not quite mike minor like a number three on an average team. So you're talking about something like not quite Mike Miner, like a little worse than Mike Miner. Is that fair? Yeah. Like maybe a Jose Quintana sort of a thing. Yeah, sure. A legitimate starting pitcher.

AJ Griffin might qualify. Uh-huh. So people we know, people we stream on our fantasy teams. Okay. Yeah, I was going to say like 80-something. So that's not that different. We probably pretty much agree. Okay.

And as for... I don't know, though. I mean, it seems like it'll either be major leaguers or it won't be major leaguers. And so I wonder whether it won't be major leaguers. And the correct answer is that they'll only be major leaguers or it won't be major leaguers and so i wonder whether it won't be major leaguers and the correct answer is that they'll only be minor leaguers well the team is called mlb all-stars so i feel like that would be but the problem future all-stars might be implied i mean time is relative it's an illusion it's right yeah i don't know all that is all that has ever happened is happening right now.

These are competitive games. These are not like exhibitions in the past. So it sounds like the sort of thing where the league will apply pressure for people to go and someone will go. The winner of the series gets to put Vladimir Balentine in their Hall of Fame. And as for particular players who would be good, I don't know. The winner of the series gets to put Vladimir Balentine in their Hall of Fame. And as for particular players who would be good, I don't know. The players who we find exciting to watch are the people that other people would find exciting to watch. Oh, and Stevie asked a question about time travel.

If you could take a star player from one era and transplant them to another, who would you choose and why? He said that he would choose to send Pedro back to 1968 because his father refuses to believe that Pedro's peak was greater than Koufax's peak, so he would send Pedro back to prove it. My question is, would you send someone back or would you send someone forward? Right, I know. You could prove the exact same thing by bringing Sandy Koufax to 1999. Right. So would you have a preference? There's a question that I've been thinking over for years now, which is, would you rather be a person who makes, let's say, we'll pick a number, but let's say it's $75,000 a year, which qualifies you for upper middle class status right now.

You're comfortable. So would you rather live in 2014 and make $75,000 a year, or would you rather live in 1914 and make $75,000 a year? Or would you rather live in 1814 and make $75,000 a year? Basically, would you rather be insanely rich in a world where like everybody dies of the flu? Right. And there's nothing to buy anyway? Or would you rather just be here but like iPhone? Yeah. I think probably here just because it would be disorienting

to go somewhere else other than as a visit. I'd be at a disadvantage having to learn the customs and such. And yeah, I mean, I do feel like that certain luxuries and amenities are just more widely available now than they ever have been before. On a middle-class salary, you can get all sorts of things that in the past might have been reserved for only the elite. Yeah, almost everybody says that.

You are not the minority here. This is what almost everybody has ever said. I think I would choose the 1914, but only because my preferred lifestyle is the cowboy way, which is not feasible in my life. I will never be a cowboy. I can never be a cowboy. I can never be a cowboy. I can never be a rancher. I will never be a rancher. My ideal world would be around 1885, Texas, cattle man. Just for that, I would probably do it. Otherwise, I think that

the question that... In the spirit with which the question is asked, then yeah, I think that the question that – the answer that the – in the spirit with which the question is asked, then, yeah, I think the correct answer is always modernity. So I think I would rather see – well, you just wouldn't even notice Sandy Koufax in 1999. You probably just – maybe he'd be good. I don't know how big a difference it is between 67 and 99. But based on the idea that baseball is getting better and better and better and better, I don't know if it shows up between 67 and 99. But based on that idea, if you think that Kovacs would just be like a good pitcher, like maybe an all-star, maybe just below an all-star, something like that, you wouldn't even notice.

It would be just like you just forget him. He'd be out lighter. Whereas if you sent Pedro back there, you'd see something like a John Boyce idea. Breaking baseball. Breaking baseball, exactly. Given those choices, I would want to send Pedro back.

I'm not totally sure that's what I would want to do if I had that choice. I don't know. I'm not sure what I would want to do. I'm not sure what my goal would be with this, so I don't have an answer personally, but I would rather send Pedro back than bring Koufax forward. Yes, I don't know, I'm not sure what I would want to do. I'm not sure what my goal would be with this. So I don't have an answer personally. But I would rather send Pedro back than bring Koufax forward. Yes, I think you're right. All right, well, we'll think about specific players.

Maybe we'll come up with an answer for that next week. So please send questions to podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Join the Facebook group, as I mentioned. Please rate and review the podcast and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. And we'll be back with a new show tomorrow. You'll probably think of something when you have to. And not a second before. Sometimes seconds after.