Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 530: Predicting the Comeback Players of 2015

Episode Date: September 8, 2014

Ben and Sam banter about Ben’s encounter with Roger Angell, then discuss Comeback Player of the Year candidates for 2015.

Have us a catwalk on the street we grew This cripple knew someone else's shoes Who knew? Mind you, I never had to stand in line You did For the ballot of the combat Yeah Good morning and welcome to episode 530 of Effectively Wild.

Wait a minute. Didn't Cy Young win 130 games? That doesn't sound right to me. He won 511. That sounds right. Mickey Mantle hit 530 home runs? Or maybe Mel Ott. Mel Ott hit 530 home runs.

I think Mantle hit like 536, maybe. Hang on. Mel Ott hit 530 home runs. I think Mantle hit like 536 maybe. Hang on. Mel Ott hit 511. It's the same number as Sayu. Hang on. We're going to get to the bottom of this. And this is the show today. We'll just play index things until you find something.

Mike Schmidt. Mike Schmidt hit 530? I don't know. 540. Yeah, Mantle hit 536. It would be nice if you could play index a number, and it would tell you all the things that were that number. Yeah, like the 10 most interesting.

If there was some sort of algorithm. I'm just going to cheat. All right, 530. This is active. I don't need to see active. That's gracious, Sam. 530. Nobody has 530 home runs.

All right, well. Brought to you by the Play Index at baseballreference.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg of Grantland. Ben, how are you? Very well. I hear you met... Derek Jeter Day. I hear you met Roger Angel. Yeah, he came over and paid his respects.

To you. Mm-hmm. Seriously, how did that happen? Did you actually say words to him? I did. I did the Chris Farley, Paul McCartney interview sort of thing. You asked him if he remembered when he was in the Beatles, and he's like, you've gotten me confused with a Beatle.

Right. Remember when you wrote that profile of, no, I just, I don't know. I just went over. Did he have people around him? He did at times. I waited until he was alone because I didn't want to introduce myself awkwardly when other people who actually knew him were there. And I don't know. I just said who I was and that I'd been reading him a long time and liked his work a lot and that it was an honor to meet him.

He looked at you, heard the words long time, and just laughed out loud. I actually don't think I said long time because I was very conscious of the fact that nothing in my life is a very long time to him. So I think I said since I was a kid or something. Yeah, you recently, for instance, you recently wrote an article about his essay on catcher defense from um 1984 for which you did not exist that's right but that was a pleasure that was an honor i mean i've seen him from afar from time to time in the yankee stadium press box but never got the courage up i guess or i don't know today felt like the right time to do that. So I'm happy that I did that. Although I then realized that he would probably be writing about Derek Jeter Day and I have to write about Derek Jeter Day.

And knowing that Roger Angel is writing about the same thing that you're writing about is a little bit intimidating. He'll write about it in about four and a half months though. No, I mean, that's what Roger Angel does. He writes the uh i always love his recaps of the baseball season because they come out in late january which i sound like i sound like i'm that sounds like it's uh it's a petty complaint but no it's it's actually really nice you're in the middle of the winter you've completely given up on baseball like you you

forgot you're not totally sure it was real. And then here comes this history from the past that tells you it was and that you were alive once. Only one player in history has 530 hits. Does that surprise you? Not really. Like six have 529. Five, I guess.

Okay. What's his process like when he's watching the game? Could you tell? Was he keeping score? Was he tweeting? He was not tweeting. I sat next to him in the press conference in the interview room when they were trotting in various Yankees dignitaries. And so I was surreptitiously spying on him taking notes.

And he uses his famous notebooks that he has been using forever and that he really likes this special kind of notebook and they don't make them anymore. So he's now writing on the back of the pages that he has taken notes on for previous stories. So I was watching him do that. And then I think he just sort of sits and watches the game. I wasn't sitting next to him in the press box. But he just parks himself in a seat and watches and has his notepad. He's not tweeting. He's not watching on game day.

But I guess he's taking in other important things. It's amazing that there's any notebook that ever existed that isn't currently being manufactured. Because when I go to the notebook section of any stationary store, it's its own wing. There are so many notebooks out there these days. And plus, with the internet, you're not limited to one store. Isn't it shocking that there could be any possible order of paper lines and ink and binding that doesn't exist anymore? Yeah. You'd think you'd at least be able to get it used or something if you're Roger Angel.

I guess there are advances in notebook technology over time. The old ones are obsolete. I like walking around a press box and watching everyone work. Half of them are tweeting at any given time. But I like watching everyone with their drafts and they're working on their game stories and they're all watching the same game but they're all typing up different versions of game stories. I like watching that. I am, surprisingly,

I'm buying a Roger Angel book right now. Cool. As we speak. I am actually clicking right now uh i don't want to tell you which one it is because if i do then you will write about it first but i i feel like this is a book that i want to all right well you can write about it first but i met him first that's true uh anything else about the cheater uh cheeter day that you want to share or i mean i'm not pressuring you i don't actually want to hear much about it and i'm sorry that you have to write

about it it was sort of my idea so i i'll write about it something will be up at grantland today it was mostly what you'd expect uh all right um so ben a couple things. One of our contests came to an end. It was a one-year contest, and it's over. The year has passed. This was the under 90-mile-an-hour contest. You, me, and Harry Pavlis. Why was Harry on the show that day?

We were talking to him about his pitch fx tagging process i think i don't i don't remember if there was a specific reason why we had him on that day okay uh we all drafted um from the list of pitchers whose average fastball was uh under 90 miles an hour uh we each drafted five pitchers and the contest was whose whose team could produce the most warp over the next calendar year. And it's over. So Harry won that one. Let's see. It's not a huge margin because I was in it up until the last couple starts. Yeah.

Harry got 3.4 warp. Ben got 2.8. I trailed at 1.6. Let's just very quickly decide if there's any... How many guys did we draft? Five each. So you got... So they were not very good as a group.

Well, it's interesting because you got two of your 2.7 game from Mark Burley although 1.5 were docked because of Marco Estrada if we had been using a different version of war baseball prospectus war pet Estrada at negative 1.5

the others had him right around replacement level so that might have changed things but something else might have changed too so Burley was your big winner estrada was your big loser uh harry's big big big gainer was uh travis wood which is sort of surprising he got i think he had the first pick didn't he and he took jared weaver or maybe he didn't uh but jared weaver was his first pick weaver was a positive contributor but travis wood was his big gainer. And it looks like Dylan Gee probably was his trailer. And my big one was Jason Vargas. If my whole team had been Jason Vargas, I would have done okay, but I got docked because of Bronson

Arroyo and because of Wandi Rodriguez. And let's see. John Chenier, our scorekeeper, put together a team of his own, which was the, he picked the best five of the rest. I forget what he used to base that on, but top five qualifiers. And that actually beat us all. That was Tite, Tommy Malone, Carlos Villanueva, Andy Pettit, and Mike Fiers. So even though Pettit retired and Fiers does not pitch much, he still beat us. Uh-huh. Yeah.

So that's one contest. But now today we're going to talk about it. We're briefly going to talk about another contest that we had, another draft that we had, and then we're going to redo it for a new year. So I don't know. I don't even remember it really being a draft at the time. Maybe it was. But it was who would win Comeback Player of the Year this year. And we did this last September.

And I think it's pretty easy to rule out some of these guys probably right now, so we can just go over who we picked. You at the time said Matt Kemp, who will not win, although he is coming back strong right now. He's having a good month, which probably eliminates him from next year's award. Mark Teixeira, who will also not win, and CeCe Sabathia, who will certainly not win. And then my three were Albert Pujols, who, well, I don't know what.

Will he get a vote? He'll get votes, right? He probably shouldn't. He hasn't really been any better, particularly than he was last year. Not much better, but he'll get votes. He's been a good player. And it was sort of perceived that he was very poor before. Derek Jeter, who will certainly not, although just in terms of war added, he might have a shot next year. That's true. Oh, that's cruel. on derrick cheater day no less and uh last one i

picked was josh beckett who actually seemed like he was the front runner he was he was the clear front runner until he was downed by injury and i don't think 115 innings is probably going to be enough to get him the award so uh six tries, and it looks like we got none. A couple votes in there probably, but no winner. So just to recap, the thing about the Comeback Player of the Year Award is it's sort of threefold. One, you have to be famous before. So this is not a guy who breaks out.

This is a guy who really was definitely famous before whatever made him have to come back. So like Nori Aoki, for instance, is a good ball player, has had some really good years as a major league ball player. He's having a terrible year this year and could very easily produce a four- season last year which probably compared to some guys who win the the up down up is probably enough but nori aoki is not going to win it he he wasn't famous enough he doesn't qualify um you have to uh be really good when you come back. So it's not just about coming back,

but usually it's somebody who performs at an all-star level. Usually it's someone who gets some... Almost everybody who's won, in fact, has either been an all-star or has gotten some prominent votes. Not everybody, but almost everybody. And the third thing is that usually, not always, but often there is a narrative involved. So I'm looking at the list of winners.

This award is in its 10th year, so I'm looking at a list of the winners. So here are some keywords from their kind of comeback bios. Knee surgery slash endured a variety of health problems, including an inflamed knee infection intestinal parasite infection and benign tumor uh next one multiple elbow injuries appeared in just 59 games batted 205 and was traded uh next one uh released before the 2006 season um uh next one uh missed the first month of the season with an abdominal strain and was sent to AAA mid-season, collided with a teammate, suffered a serious concussion, did not return to the majors, manager commented that, quote, sometimes people don't come back from concussions,

missed the entire 2007 season and was limited by injuries the next two years, so basically three years, Collision, Fernando Rodney. That's enough. Mariano Rivera, the batting practice injury. Griffey Jr., serious injuries for five years. So it seems like you don't win for just missing a year, right? Like if you just have Tommy John surgery and you're just out for the year and you come back healthy, that's not necessarily enough.

You need to either – it seems like all these guys who had injuries also played for part of the year, which you would think would make it less likely that they would win because at least they played for a while. would make it less likely that they would win because at least they they played for a while but like you know Rivera wins but he had played part of the year most of the other guys you you named either had missed part of a year or had missed multiple years not just one so are there any cases there of someone who just cleanly missed a year and came back? Well, there is, kind of. First of all, I will note that you're right.

It does seem like for some reason Tommy John surgery just doesn't count for this. It's not. There is an example. Tim Hudson had Tommy John, uh but he let's see so he uh let me check this because the description is kind of vague but uh thudson had tommy john uh didn't miss an entire year at any point missed almost all of 2009 and then won it in 2010 um so he's a tomm guy, and then Chris Carpenter is a Tommy John guy, but he missed two years because he had the shoulder, and I think the shoulder is really the key thing.

So that goes into what you're noting. It really does seem to be the case that Tommy John does not count as an obstacle. So like Jose Fernandez, you would think would fit. You'd think that Carvey would be the number one pick possibly because he missed the entire year. And because of the timing of his surgery, he will be coming back not just a year after,

but I don't know how long it'll be, 16 months after, 18 months after. So you'd think that he'd be just about at full strength and ready to go and be back to being Matt Harvey again. But yeah, or maybe it will change. Maybe there have been so many Tommy John surgeries recently that it will become an acceptable way, or maybe it will be less acceptable because everyone has Tommy John surgery. Yeah, it's really hard to say. It's also the case that most pitchers who have Tommy John, it's like, oh, that sucks

for them. It sort of sucks for his team. It might suck for some people. But Harvey was, at the time we did a show about it, Harvey felt sad. And having a sort of sense of sadness about what knocked them out helps, it seems to me. So for instance, Brad Lidge is an example of a guy who just sucked. Like, he's not an injury guy, but he sucked in a particular way. He, as it describes, some attributed his lesser performance, he had basically 14 blown saves, some attributed this lesser performance to the game-winning home run Albert Pujols hit off him in the 2005 NLCS. And

I don't know that he gets it without the game-winning home run Albert Pujols hit off him in the 2005 NLCS. And I don't know that he gets it without the game-winning home run Albert Pujols hit off him in the NLCS. It might, but there's a sadness really helps. Demetri Young, this is an interesting one, several personal issues including divorce, treatment for substance abuse and depression, and pleading guilty to assaulting his girlfriend. See, I would have thought that that might not be one that people would like to see a guy come back from, but he

won it. He was released that year as well. Certain injuries seem to count more than other injuries. You know, if you're injured on the field in a collision and it's kind of a traumatic thing where everybody shakes their head and says, oh, that's awful, that seems to help more than other injuries. But there's no total rule here. Lance Berkman, knee injury, knee injury slash OPS of 781, which isn't particularly bad. And he won. Of course, Buster Posey won. Classic injury. Francisco Liriano's won it twice.

But you're right. It does seem like there are some injuries and some lengths of injuries that get rewarded more than others. Two years gone is certainly better than one year gone. Freak injury is certainly better than injury that we've seen before. And some sort of extra factor like you were released or you were sent down or you were shamed in some way, maybe the president insulted you during the State of the Union, that sort of a thing really helps. So anyway, we've each brought some ideas for who it can be. The other thing is that it does seem like,

I don't know that, so Harvey was an established superstar, so I don't know if this would apply to somebody like him, but you're usually not talking about a young player either. So like Eric Hosmer, I would say, probably doesn't have a shot. Jed Jerko probably doesn't have a shot. There's usually a minimum number of years. Francisco Liriano is an exception to that. And I don't know, maybe Aaron Hill was an exception to that.

So who you got? and I don't know, maybe Aaron Hill was an exception to that. So who you got? I guess I'll start things off with Prince Fielder. Yeah, Prince Fielder is the, I would say, is the first, well, the first name you would think of, I think, is Alex Rodriguez. Now I'm not saying I'm picking Alex Rodriguez, but first name you thought of, right?

Well, I thought of it and immediately dismissed it because I can't imagine him being given any sort of award. And I'm not a big believer in him coming back at that age and being really good again. Well, but the steroids they've got today though. I mean, science has had a whole year to come up with something to help him out. But, right, so Prince Fielder after A-Rod, Prince Fielder is the first name you think of. So he had the down year in 2013, and then he missed most of this year and didn't hit very well while he was playing.

So he's got it all. Yeah, the problem is do we think his injury is enough? very well while he was playing. So he's got it all. Yeah. The problem is, do we think his injury is enough, was sad enough, was interesting enough? I think so. Maybe we aren't confident that he'll be a superstar again. Maybe he won't be good enough to win the award again. But I think the injury satisfies all the requirements.

Really? Even though it didn't happen on the field? Yeah. It's not even... I bet the average fan doesn't even know what it is. Yeah. Maybe. And he didn't disclose it right away.

Maybe it got worse because he didn't disclose it. But I don't know. I think maybe it helps worse because he didn't disclose it but I don't know I think maybe it helps that he's a ranger just that the Rangers entire season was kind of blown up by injuries and maybe maybe if the Rangers as a team come back next year it'll be sort of a bonus effect to any of their injured players yeah I think there are some factors in his favor. One is that he was already seen as having had a down October the previous year. And we know now that he claims he was playing injured through part of 2013 too, right?

Yeah. So if he comes back and he's a star and some of the details of his narrative become more well known like that he was playing through the injury in 2013 uh didn't he what there was that weird thing where tory hunter said it was good for him to get out of detroit because he had like personal issues there and then he's like i don't have any idea what tory hunter's talking about yeah he said there was off the field stuff i don't remember if it was specifically Detroit related. Uh-huh. So there are, yeah, there's enough there to create a narrative. Also, the fact that he had the game streak,

that he had been playing for four years in a row without missing a game before the injury. And so he's, I mean, obviously that's not, you know, 2,600 or anything like that. But there's this, you know, he was the closest thing to an Ironman, and that's partly why he was playing through the paint, and so it becomes easier to write a nice story in your head. So yeah, Fielder's a good one. Last year when we did this, I don't remember this being true, but there are so many famous players who are below replacement level right now um and so this is just a list of players who who i think would qualify have enough fame behind them i guess that they would qualify for comeback player of the year and that are not so

far gone that it's impossible to imagine that they would have a good year. Dom Brown, Nick Swisher, Jay Bruce, Aaron Hill, Mark Trumbo, Carlos Gonzalez, Billy Butler, Justin Verlander, Jim Johnson, Justin Masterson, Shin Suchu, Carlos Beltran, Clay Buchholz, Grant Balfour, CeCe Sabathia, Joe Nathan, Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum, and one more that I'm holding back just in case I use him. And last year I don't remember that being used. You've used everyone. No, there's one more.

Oh, okay. Last year, I don't remember that being the case, that there were this many. So just in performance alone, you could make a case for any of those guys, really, to be sunk low enough that just in performance they could be a redemption story. So I will go with a different one.

I'm going to go with Bryce Harper. And it's a little tricky because you can argue, I think that he's, I think he has established a baseline that people will think it's a comeback and not just a breakout. If he, it's almost like if he's too good if he hits like 64 home runs then it just looks like a breakout but i don't know

he's there's this very weird way that people thought of him as a star a year ago and they don't think of him as a star now even Even though very little has changed. I mean, some things have changed. He hasn't been that great since he ran into the wall for a fairly long period of time. But it's not as though he missed the whole year. It's not as though he's been sub-replacement level. It's not as though his OPS has dropped to 610. And yet there is a feeling that Bryce Harper was,

you know, at the end of April 2013, he might have been like leading the MVP race. And everybody sort of thought of him as one of the five-ish best players in the game already. And right now, they, I mean, you know, obviously this year, they talked about sending him down to AAA, right? When. Well, a radio host talked about it. Well, a radio host talked about it.

And then once. Matt Williams did not immediately dismiss it as crazy. And once it was out there, then everybody talked about it. I mean, half the world is stupid. So you're going gonna expect that but um it was it's a thing that people will remember about this year don't you think yeah yeah and so uh if he comes back and is an mvp um next year i think it will be seen as a comeback and not just a player who's been doing okay all along doing better again. I mean, you don't see the dip. If you just look at his numbers and you don't know any of the story,

you don't see the huge dip that is normally required for this. However, I just think that there's enough of a shift in how people have seen him, talked about him, and will remember this year as one of, for the most part, struggle for him. I mean, he has 29 RBIs, and look, that's a thing that people will fixate on, right? If he has 104 next year and 29 this year, that's a thing that people will say. Yeah, it's not crazy. I think there's a lot working against it.

I don't think it would have been on my board this high. But, okay. Okay. All right. How about Jay Bruce? Jay Bruce. Was Jay Bruce on your list? He was. He's on my list of things I named.

So he's coming off four straight seasons. Well, I'll just read off his OPS pluses. 124, 118, 121, 120. He topped 30 home runs in the last three of those seasons. And right now he's hitting 216, 289, 369 with 15 homers. He recently said, it's been miserable. It's honestly been the most embarrassing year of my life. It's definitely humbling, et cetera, et cetera.

Almost as if he's angling for the comeback player of the year narrative for 2015. He's trying to tell us how awful it was. So he's really selling it as a miserable year. So miserable that he could only

come up with etc., etc. Yeah. That's really the sign of a broken man and he only turned 27 this april next season is his 20 is his age 28 years so it certainly wouldn't be surprising to see him come back and hit 30 homers again and if he did that i think he has got a shot I don't know whether he was Yeah he does He wasn't star level He was always kind of close to star level

And people expected him to Take the jump to star level I don't know whether he ever quite got there But I think he established A high enough level That it probably counts And he had knee surgery Not a serious one just a meniscus thing that didn't even cost him all that much time but he did miss some time and he had that

injury thing so there was that possible explanation for why he's been so bad so i think he's a contender yeah that's a good one. I was going to argue on the grounds that he doesn't have. I mean, he's been so consistent over the previous four years that I almost rule out any possibility that he's going to take some next step forward. And beyond that, and I was thinking, well, what he's done in the previous four years probably isn't loud enough to get him uh comeback player of the year attention um because it always seems like it's slightly disappointing you know it's always like the 330 obp it's always the sub 500 slug it's never the 45 home runs that we expected but he

finished 10th in mvp voting two years in a row so if you can finish 10th in mvp voting that's definitely good enough to get comebackback Player of the Year. All right. I'm going to go with... I'm going with variety in mind, as you'll see. I'm going to go with Daniel Hudson. Okay. And I think that Hudson, the bar is lower for him.

Now, the question is, is he capable of even that bar? I mean, probably the minimum you need is something like, you know, 14 wins, 15 wins, and, you know, a sub 3.6 ERA. Is he capable of that in a full year? I don't know if he is at this point. I don't know if he'll even start next year. We will find out next year if he does that uh but the um i mean he's been gone for so long he's young and so it was especially sad that he was gone for so long um and uh i'm going with the kind of comeback the i'm trying to put the comeback in comeback player of the year uh here so, I mean, he has literally come back.

I don't know. That's probably it. I think probably the most likely thing is that Daniel Hudson next year will have a pretty good year. It'll look like something Wade Miley might have done. It will make for good copy, and it will help the Diamondbacks, and nobody would ever think of voting him comeback player of the year because it's just not enough.

It's not flashy enough. But whatever. I said it. All right. Maybe I'll take Kane. I think Kane seems like a pretty safe pick. He's coming off two down years, sort of, which kind of helps. He has the injury this year, but last year was also a disappointing one.

I'm not sure whether he's been bad enough. He's been bad. He's 2-7. He's 2-7. The things that matter are going 2-7. I mean, look, just to be clear, I've cited RBIs, wins, and now record. And that's because I'm thinking about the voters here. I'm not thinking about the analysts.

But 2-7, that's it. That's solid. Yeah, that's pretty good. And he only pitched 90 innings this year. So if he comes back from the elbow cleanup and turns into old Matt Cain again, that would probably be enough to get him the award. So, all right, so I get one last pick.

And I'll go through a few that I'm going to reject. I want to go with a guy like Ichiro or a guy like Ryan Howard, where the bar is also lower. They are clearly superstar famous and have been gone for so long that it would be a great story if they could just put together a fluky Babbitt year or some sort of resurgence, make the all-star team and contribute two and a half wins and one good flashy triple crown stat. So I want to go with one of those, but I can't. I just don't think either one has it in them.

I would love to go with a guy like Andy Marte, who just disappeared from the game completely. Or if not Marte, I was trying to think of who's the Scott Casimir, for instance, of this year, you know, Mark Mulder kind of a thing. But I just don't think those guys get the love that we think that they're going to get. Ryan Vogelsang, for instance, was an all-star,

I believe, the year he came back from, you know, even worse than Casimir, just gone for like five years uh and he didn't win he lost to uh somebody not even that exciting um i forget who but it wasn't even that great of a person to lose to uh so i'm going to just but he hadn't been good before oh that's that's part of it that's that's true but uh but nobody who's been good i mean unless it's molder nobody who's been good before has really been gone that long and i mean i don't know maybe somebody is and they're planning to come back and we just don't know it but i guess we just don't know it

uh he lost he lost in the berkman year bogus long lost in the berkman i mean he did come back though like he came back that gives me that he should have won uh there's in the same vein as hudson there's other two tommy john guys out there um there's there's medlin and beachy are of course perennial guys that i like um there's uh let's see probably from performance level uh from performance alone on the hitter level, I probably would have gone with Carlos Gonzalez. But I'm going to... Oh, and Tim Lincecum is a tempting one

if you imagine that he's going to be a closer somewhere and is going to get way too much love for his saves. The story is already written, half written, but I'm going to go with Verlander. One, what I think of as one relatively safe pick for obvious reasons. Yeah, Verlander's a good one. It'll probably just be Matt Harvey after all this.

Who else? Matt Harvey in all this. Who else? Matt Harvey in the NL and then Andy Marte in the NL. Shinsu Chu? Yeah, he's there. Barry Zito. It's going to be Barry Zito.

Justin Masterson? Yeah. Maybe, I don't know. I think Jim Johnson's got a solid shot. Of the closers, of the three closers, Johnson, Balfour, and Nathan, that would come to everybody's mind, does one of those stand out to you?

Balfour, I guess. Swisher. Swisher's been the worst. Swisher's been, yes. Of all the players that we've named, Swisher was the worst. Yes, and then he had surgery on both knees. Both knees.

Both knees, which helps a lot. Yes, that really helps. That's a good story. The Academy likes to see that. And because of that, it gives you maybe the best, he might have the best case for saying, oh, well, from an analytical perspective, we can write off this season.

It doesn't really tell us anything about his true talent level. He was badly damaged. He won't be damaged anymore. The problem is that Swisher's never had a great year. Yeah, he's kind of always in that two and a half to four win range, somewhere like that. Yeah, he's never gotten an MVP vote, for instance. Not a single one.

If it weren't for that stupid 2010 season, it'd be him and Marquecas. In fact, he and Marcakis are almost the same spot, although Marcakis is younger than he is. Sabathia, I guess we're just not buying. Sabathia is tempting. Jason Kipnis

probably not. Brandon Phillips. You know Brandon Phillips has like seven homers and two steals this year. He used to put up numbers. He was good too but he used to put up numbers. That was what you could count on Brandon Phillips.

He would give you numbers. He's not hitting behind Joey Votto being on base all the time. Not getting the RBIs. Andrelton Simmons has been one of the worst hitters in baseball, but that probably doesn't do it. He's just too good defensively to qualify, I would think. Yeah.

I wish I'd said Carlos Gonzalez instead of Daniel Hudson. And instead of Bryce Harper. I wish I'd said Carlos Gonzalez twice and then reaped the benefits when I won doubly. All right. All right. Orioles? Wieters? Wieters was maybe too good before he got hurt.

Machado? Machado, no. Too good. I mean, what? What's his story? He's been okay and he missed half a year? Yeah. Okay.

Not that hot. Not compelling enough. All right. 40 minutes, Ben, on the Comeback Player of the Year for next year. All right. Well, delayed gratification on this one. Machado's been better this year than last to the fan who's looking at his offensive stats. Okay. So that's it for today. year than last to the fan who's looking at his offensive stats. Okay, so

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