Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 508: Emails Wicked This Way Come

Episode Date: August 6, 2014

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about timing trades, breaking news, outlawing headhunting, prospect debuts, and more.

Don't ask me a mountain of questions When there is only one answer to it all One answer to it all editor-in-chief of Baseball Prospectus. Hello. Hello. How are you? Okay. I'm trying to, just before you hopped on, somebody tweeted, not to me, but somebody tweeted to somebody else. Okay, random question, but can either of you remember a bizarre Rockies game from probably a decade ago where they used a large amount of obscure, nearly out-of-the-game pitchers and still pieced together the win?

I'm trying to think if that's... Sounds like a lot of Rocky scheme. It does. I mean, I'm trying to play index it. I have to imagine that this isn't a September game, though, right? Because a September game barely counts. Like, there's a lot of games in September where they use 10 pitchers. But I'm looking.

I'm looking, man. Stranger. Okay. How are you? Okay. While you look, quick PSA. We have plugged the Sabre seminar before. We've told people to buy tickets, and many people did buy tickets.

It was sold out. But then it outgrew its skin, and it shed its skin skin and it has a new setting somewhere up the street now, a larger venue because of the demand and because it was going to be too crowded in this room. of running the event upgraded and moved to a larger room, which means that there are now a few more tickets available, last-minute tickets, if you want to attend the Sabre seminar. It's in Boston, August 16th to 17th. So coming up in a couple weeks, I will be there. I'll be speaking on various panels, and lots and lots of interesting baseball people will be there.

They cram a ton of really interesting talks and presentations into that two days. And I highly recommend attending. So if you are in Boston or somewhere close enough to get to Boston, August 16th and 17th, you can go buy tickets at saberseminar.com. But don't wait because it won't be long until it's sold out again. Did we plug this year's? Yeah, I think we did. Good.

Yes. I'm glad we did. All right. Anything to talk about before we get to emails? A couple quick things. Of course, as everybody knows, Adam Dunn pitched today. Do you know that, Ben?

Yes. Weren't we supposed to be tracking this? Not Adam Dunn's pitching. How many position players pitched? Yeah. I thought that was a thing we were tracking. For a while you were tracking it. It was.

I was. And then I don't know. I changed jobs and I lost track. But the last time we looked at it, it was already like the most ever, I think, right? Or just about. I think like 14 or something was the

most ever and it looks like maybe 13 was. And it looks like there are, if you don't count Jason Lane, it looks like this would be number 16. So it was on pace, but then we thought, well, a lot of things are on pace early in the year, and then they end up being not that interesting at the end of the year. So this still seems interesting.

There might be somebody pitching later tonight, too. The Rockies and, I mean, the Royals and Diamondbacks game is out of hand. And heck, for that matter, there's at least one extra inning game that's ongoing. So we could even see one of the more fun ones where the guy has to get out. one of the more fun ones where the guy has to get out.

The other thing is that I probably don't need to be, but I'm starting to get nervous about Nick Marcakis. What about him? Well, Marcakis, as you recall, is the greatest player ever or has a chance to become. It seems likely to become the greatest player ever or has a chance to become. It seems likely to become the greatest player ever to make zero All-Star games and get zero MVP votes. And, of course, he didn't make the All-Star game this year, although Buck Showalter suggested he should.

And I'm just starting to get nervous. It sort of feels like the Orioles are this really good team. Nobody on that team is standing out particularly. Nelson Cruz has fallen so far down to earth, and Machado missed all that time, and Chris Davis has sucked, and Wieters is out, and Steve Pierce doesn't count really, and there's no great pitcher.

There's not even a really great reliever unless Ryan Webb gets a lot of momentum, which I'd be in favor of. And so it really feels like there's going to be a narrative around an Oriole MVP candidate, or maybe three of them. This might be one of those years where six guys all get a 10th place vote and nothing more, but they all get a 10th place vote because the team wins,

and especially because the team is supposed to not win. Exactly. Could be Delman Young. Delman Young. Pretty good. Just so everybody knows, you're joking. Delman Young has barely played this year, although he is hitting well. And so Nick Markakis has, I have seen two references on message boards,

not team personnel saying this, not journalists saying this, but on message boards saying he's our MVP this year. And it only takes one vote for him to be off this list this is a perilous time for him um so i'm officially rooting for uh for nick marcakis to hurt himself he's not he's not having a very good year just to be clear he's 1.5 wins above replacement um he's got a 753 ops he's not even hitting like 300 or doing any of those things that get you votes he's you know batting at the top of the order and yet he's like fourth on the team and runs scored and i guess third on the team and runs scored so uh there's nothing special about his season

but i just really think it's inevitable that if he keeps it up at this pace, as the leadoff hitter, as I wrote last year, people love, and as I wrote recently as well, people love the leadoff hitter. The leadoff hitter is often a frequent recipient of MVP conversation undeserved, whereas like number two hitters, number six hitters are not.

People just love to vote for Rudolph hitters. So I'm a bit nervous. I just wanted to make sure that everybody was aware that we have something dangerous happening in Baltimore. Yeah, everyone be aware that Markekis hasn't been that good. Don't get excited. Right. Okay.

Maybe Darren O'Day will get the MVP love. Although, didn't Darren O'Day get Darren O hurt? Didn't that happen recently? Did it? No. Thank goodness. Okay. Good. So Darren O'Day. In fact, it's not enough to root for Nick Marquegas to injure himself.

We need to start talking about Darren O'Day as an MVP. Let's get this going. Darren O'Day, MVP in the conversation. I want every Baltimore writer and every writer who covers the AL East who might be tempted to throw a vote, a pity vote to an undeserving Oriole to have Darren O'Day on his mind. Let's put together packets, binders, PDFs. This is the summer of O'Day, people. I think Machado might overtake Marquecas by the end of the year because he was pretty, I mean, he missed April. He was bad in May.

But in June, he hit better than Mar Akis has hit over the full season. And since June, he has hit extremely well, as well as making a number of amazing throws seemingly every night. So give him two more months. Well, he's going to be lucky to get 125 games, though. And he's, I mean, it's possible, but everybody remembers that he missed all that time, and the numbers aren't going to be that big for him.

So maybe it's possible. Could happen. Did his bat toss, too. Maybe that'll cost him some sports writer vote points. That's right. Bad guy. Right. Okay, so emails.

Let's start with John, who says, Hello, Ben and Sam. Alphabetical order. I like you both equally. My question is fairly simple and straightforward. Hypothetically, if the A's and Boston Red Sox agreed to the Lester-Suspidus deal but chose not to announce it until 3.59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, that's a minute before the trading deadline,

would the Tigers still have acquired David Price? Didn't the A's cost themselves a potential advantage by announcing the deal so early in the morning? Seems to me doing so gave their opponent ample time to make their counterpunch. This is an interesting question because there's been some coverage of the back and forth kind of, I don't know, competitive ribbing, trash talking between the Tigers and A's who have probably the best rotations in baseball and both upgraded their rotations on the last day of the deadline. deadline and uh and i i did see some suggestion that that maybe dave dombrowski made that move partly in response to the a's move i don't know that that's the case but you you might speculate that he looked ahead and figured that they might match up in the playoffs and and if he wasn't completely sold on making that trade, maybe that pushed

him into doing it. Maybe that was the tiebreaker. It's not completely far-fetched, I suppose. So that's a decent point. If you're going to make a big deal on deadline day, then it seems like if you have it all worked out, then it's in your best interest for that information not to come out. Because if you're making a big move, it's not like you're going to make another one.

You're probably done. Whereas another team, theoretically, another contender in your division or a rival could see you make that move and get and get an extra incentive to, to do something. Right. Uh, I consider it much more farfetched than you do. Um,

because if the Tigers thought that this move made them better and they need, I mean, whether the A's get better or not, the Tigers want to be as good as they can. And it's not as though the Tigers had like 100% chance of winning the World Series and could absolutely do nothing and they were guaranteed to win the World Series. They were trying to get better. And whether the A's get better or not doesn't really change their calculus, does it?

I mean, it would in this case if, let's say, they had mortgaged the future to do this. You might be able to say, well, they got desperate, they really wanted to win this year, they thought this was their best chance to win it, and so they had to go all in this year. But they didn't really do that. They traded a guy who had like, what, five years service time and then, you know, a guy who had two years service time, but they get Price who helps them this year and next. And so it's not like a, it's not a real mortgage the future kind of a move. It's not a particularly present focused even kind of a move. And I just think that if they could get better, they would always get better. They would get better every day of the year if they could. So I don't particularly see,

I don't see it as a compelling hypothesis for this instance. Now, as to the larger question, I would be terrified that the team that I had the agreement with would back out of that agreement if it wasn't announced. And certainly you give four extra hours for another team to swoop in, in which the Red Sox have nothing to lose, really. I mean, the Red Sox, part of the reason that the Red Sox agree to this deal four hours early is because they don't want you to back out. And so if they think that they have a deal with you and they can just keep shopping while knowing they have you as a fallback, well, they might find something better out there. I wouldn't trust them.

But it's not the announcement that makes the move official, right? I mean, you have to send paperwork to the commissioner's office and everything of course maybe once you do that maybe you lose lose control of the story yeah yeah yeah uh i'm assuming that this would mean that the deal would not be official and that you would basically ask the club hey let's just sit on it until 12 59 because otherwise or whatever uh three what is it on the east coast three 599, yes. Because otherwise, yeah, I would expect it would get out. I would expect it would get out anyway. I mean, once it gets that close, these moves usually tend to leak, although less, I think, in the last year or so.

It feels like we've been getting surprised more. It feels like there are more teams that put a premium on secrecy and respecting their negotiating partners. But all the same, I would think that it would be too risky to do that. However, there are situations where it would make sense. I think that in some cases, yes, you might think that this is your best year to win. Another team in your division might think that it is also their best year to win, and you could actually cause them to change their behavior. If the Tigers change their behavior because of the a's

getting john lester they're dumb uh well they're not dumb then but that's a that's a that's a silly thing to do the tigers should change their behavior based on wanting to be their best you the ben sometimes you're ahead sometimes you're behind the race The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself. I mean, yes, I agree that if there were any uncertainty about actually getting the deal done, that that would not be worth whatever potential advantage you might glean from other teams not knowing about it. Got to get the deal done first. That's probably your priority if you think it will make you better. Okay.

I wanted to answer this question from Miles, if you have an answer. Javier Baez plays his first game tonight. How well do you remember the first big-time prospect from your favorite childhood team when he first came up? It's cool for me to think that there's a generation of Cubs fans that may someday say to their kids, I remember when Javier Baez played his first game. So is there a Giants prospect that little Sam Miller was excited to see?

There was, but even before I reveal my answer, I'm trying to think of how far back I can remember any prospects coming up. I remember from about 2008 on. I feel like I remember all the big ones. But before that, just in general, I don't really... Oh, I remember Ryan Braun. That was earlier. And I remember Andy Braun, that was earlier, and I remember

Andy LaRoche. So now I'm back to 2006, 2007, 2006, I think. I don't know if I remember anybody beyond that, other than Giants. My first one that I really remember in a major way was Solomon Torres. Uh, that was a big deal. Watching him was a big deal. Knowing about him was a big deal. Seeing him every start that year was a big deal.

That was the first prospect crush I had. I didn't really have, I didn't really know prospects at all before Solomon Torres. They were just guys who showed up. They might as well have shown up via trade uh or you know returned from the 60 day dl uh they were just new guys in a lineup i didn't know the difference between uh your steve scarsoni and your steve hosey uh for instance um but solomon torres was a big deal i remember him and i remember uh jr phillips quite well that was a big one for me. My favorite player for a couple of years. Always wanted, well, always, for like the 45 minutes he was in the majors,

I desperately wanted a Phillips 66 gas station sign to hang in my room, thinking that I would have it up for all 18 years of his incredible career. I had a hard time thinking of one because i i kind of just missed the the yankees prospect wave that arrived in the early to mid 90s or at least i i wasn't such a fan that i was like super pumped to see jeter or or bernie will Bernie Williams for instance um and then like right after that when I really got into baseball seriously uh they sort of stopped producing prospects almost entirely so it's hard to think of one like like the first one who came to mind was Ed Yarnall who was who is like the he's like the main example of a overhyped Yankees prospect that people use,

I think. And he was, I mean, he was a legitimate prospect. He was ranked, let's see, heading into the 1998 season, he was ranked the 60th best prospect in baseball by Baseball America, 60th best prospect in baseball by Baseball America and then skipped 99 and then 2000 was the 55th best prospect so I remember when he arrived in in 99 um but that was that was not exciting he ended up pitching seven games and starting three in his whole career so so that was that and uh I guess the it was a while after that until there was someone exciting like even when Robinson Cano arrived like he wasn't really even that exciting a prospect which is one of the things that made him exciting as a player when he turned into a superstar but there wasn't really that same prospect anticipation with him. So I don't know. I mean, I guess like not until Phil Hughes showed up,

which was I guess I was already in college, and that was just at the tail end of when I was still sort of rooting for someone. That was exciting to see. All right, Ben, trivia. I got trivia. Okay. I want to know if you can name the number one Yankees prospect in

1983 according to Baseball America. And I'm going to give you a hint which will also tell you how easy this should be for you. He's in the Hall of Fame. 1983 number one prospect. Don't click. No clicking. No clicking then.

No quiet clicking either. J.B clicking, then. No quiet clicking, either. Jay Buhner. He's probably in some Hall of Fame. No, it's John Elway. Oh, right. Okay. Really, number one prospect. Number one prospect, yeah.

I would not have guessed that he was the number one prospect. Jay Buhner was in 1987. Ah, okay. I'm trying to let's see so you would have been uh the ruben rivera era basically that would have been your big one yeah i guess um maybe eric milton yeah eric milton yeah uh maybe well nick johnson oh yeah i should i probably should have mentioned nick johnson not yeah he was he was one of my favorite players i don't i don't really remember anticipating his arrival or like looking at minor league box scores to see what nick johnson did every day or anything but yeah but yeah nick johnson was fun uh solomon torres who was like a top as i recall uh was a top

the i remember being told that he was the top pitching prospect in the game at the time i don't know that was true but not even the number one prospect in the giant system royce clayton was and uh i knew that royce clayton was hyped because I had his upper deck future star card. But I don't remember his debut exactly. J.R. Phillips, 1995, top prospect. Sean Estes. I don't remember Sean Estes coming up. At the time, I was much more excited about William Van Landingham,

who was also my favorite player for a spell. So Joe Roselli. Yeah. spell. So Joe Roselli. Yeah. Speaking of trade deadline, we got sort of another slightly deadline related question from Chris. And I don't know that I necessarily know the answer, but he says, how come when big trade slash free agency news is being broken, it often comes in stages. For example, it was reported that John Lester was being traded. Then it was reported he was being traded to a team on the West Coast. Then we found out it was to the A's. Then we found out Gomes was going as well and Cespedes

was coming back. And finally, we learned that there was a competitive balance pick going to Boston and cash going to Oakland. I just can't figure out how or why a source would be willing to tell a reporter some information regarding the trade, i.e. Lester is being traded to a team on the West Coast, but not that he is being traded to Oakland. Am I missing something here? That's a sort of thing that I can see why that maybe takes a little while to get the complete details worked out. But it is kind of a good question about how you find out that a guy is going somewhere or you find out what broad geographical region of the country he's going to

and not the actual team. Like you're on the phone with the source and he's like lester was traded gotta go and just can't figure out just can't finish the sentence or what do you have any any idea i have hypotheses i don't have answers but i have hypotheses one is that most of i think a lot of these rumors uh are broken are are given to the writer by a person who's not affiliated with either team so the red socks trade lackey to the cardinals and this gets around by you know various reasons texts from club officials to their friends maybe or um you know somebody in major league baseball who saw the paperwork tells somebody who works for the white socks or you know, somebody in Major League Baseball who saw the paperwork tells somebody who works for the White Sox or, you know, I don't know, somebody calls Ben Sherrington and says,

I need Lackey. And he says, I can't, I've traded him. And they, so when, okay, so if you're the Cardinals and you're talking to a reporter and you decide, all right, I'll tell him this stuff, I'll leak it to him. Well, you're within your right. It's like it's classified information, but you're the one who classified it. You can unclassify it at any time. You're the president in this situation. Whereas if you're like the Orioles, you're kind of being a jerk. Like you're, this is not your information to give. And you want to give some because it's fun to gossip and because you're this guy who's always calling you in a bow tie.

He's really hectoring you. So you want to give him something. You want to. It's fun, right? It's fun to tell. But you've got some conscience. You know that it's not really your place to ruin all these teams' plans. And so maybe you just go, and also you don't technically owe the guy in the bow tie anything.

It's fun to gossip, but you don't owe him anything. You can stop anytime you want. So this is kind of the compromise you make. So you tell him, you know, you didn't hear it from me. I'm not going to give you the whole story, but point, you know, point him in the right direction or, you know, you get to be the guy who tells him first, but you don't be the guy who tells him everything. So that's one hypothesis. The other is that, because again, a lot of this stuff is coming from a third party,

maybe the guy who is with the Orioles literally doesn't know. He knows that Lackey got traded because they tried to trade for Lackey, but nobody told him. But maybe the guy with the Nationals does know because he was trying to trade for Alan Craig. And so when the one guy reports that there's a trade, that might be all he knows. But once he puts that out there, well, now all the other reporters know that much. And so then they can start calling around and building the information. And so then another reporter finds out it's the

West Coast. But again, he only is getting what his source knows. And they're building on each other's with sources who don't all know the whole thing themselves. Yeah, those are good explanations. So maybe we can tell something about what the origin of the information was based on how the story comes out. If it comes out in dribs and drabs, maybe it is reporters piecing it together from talking to people who don't have firsthand knowledge. Whereas if we get the whole story fully formed or close to fully formed right away, maybe that means it's more likely that it came from someone who was actually involved. But we would have to confirm that with someone who breaks news, I suppose. Hey, Ben, this is something you don't know about me.

Okay. In my old place, where I moved from recently and where I'll probably move back sometime soon, in Long Beach, I live on the same street as Dante Powell, the Giants' former top prospect. Giants' former number one prospect, Dante Powell, lives on my street. I've never seen him, but I do see his kids. And I have it on good authority. Interesting.

Were you excited about Dante Powell one day in the past yeah definitely certainly i should i should say that i don't i don't live on the same street i live uh like my street and the other streets houses back up against each other so like if i hopped my neighbor's fence then i would be on his street although not his house because he's down that street. If you were looking from space, it would look like we were in the same row, but if you're driving in a car, you'd go, well, that's one street over, you liar. I think it's important to establish that, your precise position relative to Dante Pell. Mm-hmm.

Okay. Positions. precise position relative to Dante Powell. Okay. Positions. Hinch runner. You know that the career of the top prospect didn't work out when his positions are listed. Hinch runner. Yes, that's a pretty good indication.

They only turned to him when the game was close. that's how important he was okay matt and matt in philly wants to know why is placing a player on waivers and of course teams making claims on the same wave players not publicly recorded i cannot think of a valid reason not to have a page on mlb.com listing all waiver moves i realized that at first fans will overreact to some of the moves due to a lack of understanding of how waivers work. But once everyone watched for a season and realized that almost everyone from McCutcheon to sale is placed on waivers at some point,

everything would calm down. Then imagine the hot takes we could have with everyone discussing who was placed on waivers, cleared waivers. Why, why didn't team X make a claim? What team Y could offer in a potential trade on a claimed player, etc. I'm sure GMs would loathe the change because they

currently get to make all these moves privately, and the majority of the time the waiver placement amounts to nothing, but who cares if GM's lives are a little harder. It would be great fun to see players placed on waivers, take for example Marlon Bird or Alex Rios this year year and debate what team should make a claim and what each team could offer in return for the claimed player it will never happen but it still would be fun you have something to say about this i this email came in and i was i was i was kind of flummoxed i didn't really know what to say i have some thoughts but you might have better thoughts. Not particularly. I mean, a lot of the news does get out even as it is. MLB Trade Rumors has like a daily roundup of players who have been placed on waivers or who have cleared waivers, I suppose, at this time of year. I'm looking at one right now with close to 10 players listed.

So the information gets out, and I'm not all that interested in it. Yeah, I just don't know whether this is more... What is this information? Is it closer in spirit to guy gets traded? I mean, it's clearly not guy gets traded. Guy gets traded, he packs his things and he goes. It's a real move. Or, and it would be kind of awkward if Major League Baseball didn't announce that.

You just had to figure out who got traded on your own. That'd be super weird. Or is it closer in spirit to GM talks to another GM about what needs he has and whether there's something that would work to get this utility infielder into trade. Clearly, we don't have any expectation of having that information, but you might argue that that's not really the same information either because in that case, having it be private is part of what allows negotiations to happen. And if it weren't private, such negotiations couldn't happen. In all cases, the court would allow... This

is confidential information. The court allows business negotiations to be confidential. They're not public. Which one is it closer to, do you think? I think the first one slightly. It's like an official process. It is an official thing. You have to click on stuff. But it's not a real move. Nobody's moved. Nobody's moving. Nothing real is happening. It's still imaginary. It's still just talking. Since it's revocable especially, it's just people talking at this point. And I don't quite know what the downside would

be to it being public. I mean, I guess it might be a sensitive thing for players if they knew, although they ought to know by now, that their teams have put them on waivers. Certainly if you knew which teams were putting in claims, that would be too far, right? Because if the Giants knew the Dodgers were going to put in a claim, then they might make a claim. But if they knew the Dodgers weren't going to put in a claim,

they might not put in a claim. So you couldn't have the claims themselves be public. But why? I don't know that there's – in the same way that I don't necessarily see a downside, I don't see really any upside. The only people who would need to know, who would want to know, would be us for no reason whatsoever. And it just feels like at a certain point Major League Baseball gets to gets to decide, well, this information is not crucial for enjoying the game. And they get to decide whether it's in either the best interest of the sport or whether there's just any reason at all. If it's just more of a headache to have it out there than to not have it out there. So I wouldn't be that interested. I agree with you.

Knowing how the waivers process works, it would be totally uninteresting. However, if it didn't work that way, I mean, there's no rule that says it has to work that way. The game could have developed differently and maybe only 5% of players might go on waivers this month. In that case, it would be interesting. Yeah, I agree. Matt thinks it would be fun. I don't know that it would be that much fun for me. There's some potential for confusion and people misinterpreting what it means. I guess if, like Will Leach wrote a good essay in New York Mag last week about how we're

interested in things that take place off the field in sports now as much or more than things that take place on the field that we like talking about front office strategy and how teams are built and transactions more maybe than we like talking about who won or lost a particular game. And so if that's the case, then I guess you could say that having this information out there would make that a richer experience, that any additional information we had about what teams are doing would allow us to analyze and speculate and respond better but and again given given how the waiver process works and how meaningless most of these most of these uh moves are i i don't know that it would add a whole lot all right you want to do play index

so uh this one kind of got messed up because of events in the last hour, as you'll see. But I'll tell you all about it anyway. So one of the things you can do at Playindex is you can find a game, any game that meets a particular set of filters, so starts that have been seven innings or longer with three strikeouts or fewer and the pitcher got a no decision you can get. So part of this game finder is you can limit it to the batter's first game in his career or sometime in his first hundred games or whatever the case may be. So with Javier Baez playing his major league debut,

I wondered whether his batting line would tell us anything. I mean, obviously it wouldn't. The point of this is that you can find frivolous things too. But I wondered whether it would tell us anything based on people who had had this batting line before him. So this seemed like a pretty good idea because in the ninth inning, he was 0 for 4. He wasn't going to get another at bat. 0 for 4 with two strikeouts, that's a pretty normal line. And so I looked it up, and sure enough, he would be the 92nd player in history to have this line. 0 for 4 without reaching at all with two strikeouts. And in fact, the most recent one is Erismendi Alcantara.

Alcantara. Alcantara. Still playing with that name, which is his other highly regarded teammate. It just happened like three weeks ago. And so he was the 91st. Baez would have been the 92nd. And there's nothing you could, I mean,

I was going to go through and do something with these 92 names. On the top, if you just look at the last 20, it's kind of an interesting group because you have... I'm going to read you the famous ones. There's some guys who aren't famous, like James Darnell and

Scott Downs and various guys who aren't really characteristic of Javier Baez at all. But these are sort of the famous names. Kyle Seeger, Lars Anderson, Casper Wells, Fernando Martinez, Matt LaPorta, Cameron Maben, Brandon Wood, Alex Gordon, Edwin Encarnacion. Those are the big names in the top 20. And something that most of those names have in common is that they were all either big-backed flops, like huge prospect flops, like Laporta and Wood are two of the biggest ones ever,

and Lars Anderson, big flop, Fernando Martinez, big flop, or they're guys who took a long time to develop a may have been arguably flop or they're guys who took a long time to develop like Alex Gordon and Edwin Encarnacion and maybe Russell Brannion even but of course no that's irrelevant it would have been irrelevant but it's especially irrelevant because the game went into extra innings so so he did not have that line he got up a fifth time and in his fifth time up, he lined out, I believe. So 0 for 5, two strikeouts without reaching base.

How many guys have done that? Seven. That would have been the seventh guy in history who had ever done that. The most recent was Reggie Taylor in 2000. Reggie Taylor finished below replacement level, had a 650 OPS and about 600 at-bats in his career. Before that, Orlando Hernandez, which I bet there are not many pitchers who have had five plate appearances in their first time batting.

But Orlando L. Duque Hernandez. Randy Velarde, the most distinguished guy on this list with 25 war and one action Bronson. A little lyric about him. 760 OPS in about 5,000 played appearances. Leon Roberts in 1974, who was like a 12-win player in his career. Another pitcher named Dick Tomanak. And then Jim Busby, who is yet another 12-win player.

So then I started wondering. I just wondered briefly. I didn't wonder for very long. Randy Velarde, Ben, 25 war in his career, 6'190 shortstop who had to move off the position, just like Javier Baez is a 6'190 shortstop

who will probably move off the position. 25 wins, 760 OPS in his career, knowing nothing about Javier Baez's future. Would you take it? No. You think that it's a better than 50% chance that he tops 25 wins? I'll say probably not, but I would say it's the opposite. I know that probably some people would argue exactly the opposite because he has the most important tool in the game and he is the best at it. He is the 80 power guy,

which is like the one just thing that you cannot possibly hope to do better than. But to me it feels like the approach and all that makes him a better than average bust candidate. I mean, he could break himself on any swing, too. I think that's a not-irrelevant point. He could tear his side open and have his gut spill out that side of it on any one of these swings. So I would say I would take the 20.

I would take the Velarde. Given the Velarde, I would not take the door number two. I would take my Velarde, go home, pay my outrageous game show taxes on it, and just be happy I had my Velarde. I wonder how many hardcore Cubs fans would take Velarde. Yeah, we could ask them. Anyway, irrelevant. Do you know why? Why?

Javier Baez did not bat five times the game continued on he batted a sixth time and this time he homered while we've been talking just moments ago like three minutes ago ben he heard in like the 58th inning and so how many guys have started their career with a one for six with a home run and two strikeouts? None. He is brand new. He is a unique creation. God made him special. And now there is just nothing he cannot do. What is that term?

He went off the book. Is that what they call it in chess? I don't know. The book. You and me talked about this, right? Did we? The book in chess. I don't know the book you and me talked about this right the book in chess I don't recall how every move that you could possibly do basically has happened

the same with the second move and the same with the third and the same with the fourth but at a certain point usually around the 11th or 12th move you're playing a game that has never happened before you know well I'd like to see Randy Velarde do that. We never will. No, we never will.

All right, that's that. Okay. So another fine example of the capabilities of the Baseball Reference Play Index, which you can use yourself if you subscribe to it using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. This question comes from Josh. It's a sort of a two-email question. He updated his original email with a subsequent email. The original email was, I happened to tune into the Marlins feed tonight against the Reds solely to see if Cueto could get a win for my fantasy team, and luckily caught an epic rant in the eighth by the

Marlins broadcast team. An inning ending out at home was overturned because replay umps in New York said the Marlins catcher blocked the plate. That tied the score at 1-1, and the Reds scored two more in the inning. The Marlins broadcast hilariously went on and on about the horrible call, saying that it single-handedly will change the game of baseball as we know it. My question, is there a single umpire's call or a single play in a game that could actually alter baseball forever? And then his follow-up email update to my question. I've seen some articles saying that the Diamondbacks' hitting injuring of Andrew McCutcheon could change baseball forever in terms of an official written rule to outlaw baseball or beanball justice. Would that be the most significant change

to how baseball is played that a single play could make? So is there a way to outlaw what the Diamondbacks are doing? I mean, if the Diamondbacks, particularly if the Diamondbacks quit saying things publicly about how they're hitting everybody they can on purpose, would there be any way to stop them? Or would it be good to stop them? Is there any reason and or way to keep the Diamondbacks' bizarre violence in check?

Unless you, like, maybe if you start with the, I don't know. Maybe if a team has had a certain number of ejections or warnings or controversy around this, then maybe you change your threshold for how you determine whether a given hit by pitch was intentional. It's kind of a slippery slope, I guess. But if a team has this reputation and it's justified by some objective measure, like they actually hit more batters or they get more warnings or they have more brawls or or whatever it is that that lets us or or they've made statements outright made statements about how they're going to hit a lot of batters which the diamondbacks have done um maybe you you take that into consideration and you instruct the umpires to be more strict against that team.

I guess it's somewhat subjective-ish, and there might be individual cases where you end up throwing a guy out, and he wasn't actually trying to throw at anyone, and that's a shame. But maybe if you're trying to change this, frankly, dangerous behavior, that's a step that you would have to take. So you would be more aggressive about ejecting Diamondbacks because they've demonstrated that they have this tendency. Yeah. The thing is that, yeah, so when you, I mean, we have to assume that the Diamondbacks can very easily just quit talking about it, right? If you made any punishment contingent upon what you say, well, you would definitely end talking about it,

but you wouldn't necessarily end the practice. I mean, there already is that sort of, right? I mean, when a pitcher cops to having hit someone intentionally, he's more likely to get suspended. He is, but he's able yeah i mean he knows that and uh there's no punishment apparently for gms saying we're just going to do it all the time right um and so yeah i don't know but as to the so uh i don't think we've ever talked about it on this show maybe we have but i don't think we've ever talked about it on this show. Maybe we have, but I don't think we've ever talked about the, the Frank Robinson solution that Bill James proposed, um,

way back 20 years ago. And I will read the Frank Robinson solution before he was a manager and known for having the league's most antagonistic pitching staff. Frank Robinson had a solution that he liked to recommend. Forget all about the intent of the pitcher. If a pitcher comes inside two or three times, tell him to take the rest of the day off. The umpire doesn't need to make any judgment about what the pitcher has in mind.

He just needs to say, looks like you're a little wild today, son. We'd better get another pitcher in here before somebody gets hurt. And the idea behind this is that pitchers are not actually allowed to hit you with a pitch. Like it's against the rules. Whether it's intentional or not, it's against the rules. That's the batter's space. And that's why if you hit the guy with a pitch, he gets to go to first base. And so once you've established that there is a rule against hitting batters, which you are already penalizing, you can change the penalty.

And if the penalty can simply be – and there's no question of intent in that penalty. We give the guy first base, whether we think it was intentional or not on the pitcher's part. So once you get past the question of intent, you could simply say that batters getting hit by baseballs is not good for the game. It doesn't add anything to the game and it does detract from the game. And so just penalize it, penalize it more and penalize it by removing pitchers uh now the question is like you're not going to do it on the first one and it really only takes one to be the diamondbacks like the diamondbacks aren't necessarily making it a habit

of hitting two or three batters a game they're just hitting one really intentionally. And so maybe this wouldn't actually stop the Diamondbacks at all. Maybe they would just save their one every day to really make it matter. But it seems reasonable to say that if a pitcher hits two batters in a game, perhaps, or if there are... I mean, certainly with pitch-up pitch effects now we could even create a zone like basically the equivalent of a batter's box or a catcher's box or whatever where the ball can't go if it goes within that whether it hits the guy or not it's considered um a uh a wild one inside and say the third wild one inside or something like that, you're out of

there. And it would just change the game a little bit. It wouldn't change the game all that much because pitchers don't pitch very much anymore. They're all about four minutes away from getting taken out of the game anyway. So that, I think that I'm okay with that. Like I generally think that it's okay to treat pitches inside sort of the same whether there's intent or not. If you can't keep your baseballs from hitting players, then it doesn't really matter whether you're a jerk or just out of control, you're a problem. And so I don't mind taking steps in either case to get rid of the problem. Yeah, I'm imagining the hot takes and the reactions from former players. This might kill Bob Gibson. It would just be the end.

I mean, every pitcher who's ever made some comment about how in his day he dusted players inside or he sat them down or whatever it is. And pitchers talk about the importance of pitching inside and everything. And you can imagine that maybe there would be some ripple effect where hitters feel more comfortable and they lean out over the plate more and they have better coverage on outside pitches and everything but then again maybe that's not the worst thing in the world right now now that hitters can't hit if it improves offense a little bit that wouldn't be

wouldn't be a negative byproduct in the current era so sure alright alright so that is the end of this show So, sure. All right. Okay. All right. So that is the end of this show. I've already told you to subscribe to the BetBaseball Reference Play Index. I still think you should. And we will be back with another show tomorrow.

Join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild to discuss baseball and show-related topics. Please rate and review the show on iTunes and subscribe to the show on iTunes. And you can start sending your questions for next week to podcasts at baseballprospectus.com. Talk to you tomorrow.