Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 579: Chase Headley, Pablo Sandoval, and the Red Sox

Episode Date: November 24, 2014

Ben and Sam talk about the curiously large gap between the rumored contract terms for Chase Headley and Pablo Sandoval, then discuss the reports about the Red Sox signing Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez.

But my feet got caught in the middle And I thought I'd see a light But oh no I was just stuck on the puzzle Stuck on for life Good morning and welcome to episode 579 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from the Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by the Play Index at baseballreference.com.

I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Hi, Ben. Hello. I did a thing a couple days ago about how much Hank Aaron would make if his career were modern, if he were basically born the same year that John Carlos Stanton was. And I used the Play Index constantly throughout that, just so you know. Yeah, well done. Like over and over and over, just nothing but Play Indexing. over and over just nothing but play indexing uh-huh uh play indexing is great for many things but finding comps is about as good a of a use as uh as as as you can imagine unless you just

want to use the baseball reference most similar players list uh yeah well but you know the most similar have you ever looked into how the most similar lists come up? Not really. I don't know. It's what, at the same age? No, they have three different. They have total, they have, maybe they only have two. They have total and then they have through the same age. Yeah. So the formula for doing that is actually was created by Bill James years and years ago.

It's Bill James similarity score, I believe. And it's like you start with like 1,000 points for any two players. And then there's a certain amount of points subtracting. So for every home run difference that they have, you subtract X points. So it's actually a... Bill James really likes those convoluted systems where you add things for certain things and

subtract things for other things. It reminded me a lot of his crime scores in his crime book. How he decided whether a person was likely guilty. It kind of reminded me of that formula. So those are fun they're

interesting i used them i used them for my uh my piece about how there's only been one twin pitcher remember that one yes right the that brad radke trade tree or brad radke family tree yeah exactly i think that that was like this was that like the second thing i wrote for you or something it was i was early on something anyway uh so it's fun, but it's A, not era-adjusted or park-adjusted, and B, it's based almost totally on stats that were available to Bill James in 1982. So it's a lot of playing time, home runs, RBIs, that sort of stuff. Yeah. What were we talking about nothing this

is the beginning of the episode hello hi uh you got any uh you got any hot hot non-rumors for me i do well we received one submission from a listener named nick and this is one that was tweeted before we started this non-revelatory rumors segment, but it was noted at the time, and it seems right that we should note it now. Nick says that he can't imagine an ongoing discussion of non-revelatory rumors from this offseason without perhaps the least revelatory rumor of the entire offseason being mentioned, season without perhaps the least revelatory rumor of the entire offseason being mentioned. And that is this, which, although it was from November 6th, presumably still applies. And this was a John Marossi tweet.

And he said, a source says Hiroki Kuroda, who turns 40 in February, is mulling over three options, another MLB season, a season in Japan, or retirement? So this rules out Korea. This rules out perhaps playing in Europe or Australia or staying in the U.S. but playing just softball in the park on Saturdays. It seems to rule out that he'll do all three at once. Yes, it does. So presumably he is still mulling over those three options. So it was nice to get confirmation of that from a source.

So that is clearly non-revelatory. I, as an editor, which I am, and as you are, I find that reading these a lot of times, the information itself is fine And he goes, it is a very difficult decision. As you know, I have three options that I think would all make me very happy. It's difficult because I don't want to retire and give up another chance to play. I don't want to leave the States. But on the other hand, my heart is in Japan, and I might make more money. It is a very difficult decision, John Paul Morosi.

And I continue to mull it over with great seriousness, and I just can't decide yet. So now, if you take that and tweet what John tweeted, that's exactly true. All of those words are totally true. But what you want to say, what you want to get into this short 140-character narrative that you're crafting is that he is laboring over this decision. We know that those are the options. We know that he, well, you want to note that he has options because you don't need this tweet for Matt Harvey, right? Matt Harvey's not going to retire.

Matt Harvey's not going to go to Japan. I guess you don't need to tweet about Matt Harvey at all. But you don't need this tweet about Chase Headley either. He's not going to retire. He's not going to go to Japan. His options are 30 Major League Baseball teams. So you note that Corotta has these options. That's a good thing to note. And then you say this is a difficult decision, and he is not closer yet to deciding. And that is it. That is worth a tweet. That is the incremental

process of news gathering that history is made up of. Uh-huh. Right. Or if you could assign percentages, perhaps, probabilities to each of the options. That's, I would disagree with that. Those probabilities would be completely fictional. Unless you have Bill James create a way of calculating those probabilities using a set of 18 to 40 data inputs.

I don't want to hear it. Okay. And I have one more submission for this segment. I'll take leaning. Leaning, yeah. One more submission for this segment. And this one is from Sunday, late Sunday night, actually. And it's from Scott Lauber, who is the Red

Sox reporter for the Boston Herald and this is the tweet source on whether Red Sox has reported agreement with Hanley Ramirez will impact offer to Pablo Sandoval, quote let's see unquote

again, we can't rule out that that is not actually a useful tweet that he that came out as he did not intend it if he's if the point he is making is that the red socks are being coy or that this usually uh open source has suddenly been uh has gone dark on him and will only give him generalities. That is interesting. If the team is acting cagey or not, that is interesting. It is not presented in a way that you know what the information is, though. And so you're left to assume that there is no information,

in which case that one right there is a great one, a really great one, like one of the best. We'll see. I don't know. It's hard to beat that just it is in isolation standing on its own it is almost the uh right it is it is almost meta it is like it is what we're talking about here it is a source saying that there is no information let's go tell that yeah okay that's all i've got today. I would like every time a reporter gets a non-response from a source or maybe doesn't even get a reply.

Maybe I'll text somebody right now. I don't have any, so I have a couple people who are not sources. Nobody ever gives me anything, but they might be somebody's source. And then that person will not reply to me, and then I will tweet so and so not replying to texts about everything right and just do that all day could imply that they're so busy negotiating a deal that they don't have time to answer your text hundreds could be taken many ways because you have to imagine like at what point does and uh like i'm gonna i'm gonna say rosenthal because rosenthal is the best

in my opinion he's the best and so if i if i make fun of of him it it it is clearly not intentionally making fun of him because he's the best uh but i like at what point does a non-response in my scenario become newsworthy because then what if rosenthal tweets uh not tweets uh texts um andrew friedman and asks about some player ed friedman doesn't reply can he just can rosenthal just keep on tweeting over like like a constant stream of no reply no reply it's like 75 or 80 for every unreplied text? You could. He might lose some followers.

Yeah. Yeah. He might. Yeah. I don't know. I don't think he would. No, he probably wouldn't. My theory about fame,

my hypothesis about internet fame, fame in the internet era, is that you can tell if you're famous because if you do something offensive or horrible you gain followers whereas if you're not famous like if i tweeted something horrible then i would lose followers right but whereas uh you know like uh not that keith ever would but like if keith law did he would just gain follower like keith could tweet anything in the more like if it were horrible and awful and totally out of character

he would get followers out of it so that's famous okay actually I want to see if Keith gained any followers since the thing 3,000 not as many as I thought

yeah alright so I was going to talk about Not as many as I thought. He was on the first. Yeah. Anyway. All right. So I was going to talk about Chase Headley today, and I think that we'll end up talking more about Pablo Sandoval and Henry Ramirez in We talked about how Headley was, what do we call him, the generic alternative to Pablo Sandoval, the generic. And then a couple days later, we thought that you picked him for your Great Jim Bowden Challenge. You thought that the estimates for how much he would make were way low. Yes, three years, $27 million it was. Exactly. And by the way, that contest

is going to be my version of your $200 million team. I think all five of mine actually end up being wrong and all five of mine end up being right. It's looking good so far. The Sandoval rumors, you went with the under on him

and that's not looking great. And I went with the over on him, and that's not looking great. And I went with the over on Hanley, and that's looking pretty good right now. Pretty good. Anyway, so I wanted to, though, get a little bit more into this. Because Chase Headley, it seems to me that everybody has written a piece this week, it seems to me, about how Chase Headley is an undervalued free agent. Some of them are more strenuous in their arguments than others. that his Zips system would basically... I think, I might be misreading, I think I remember that he tweeted that Zips likes Headley more than Sandoval contracts ignored?

Yeah, that is definitely the case for Steamer, the Steamer projection system, I think. Okay, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Has Zips run? Maybe Zips hasn't even run yet. I don't think publicly. I think Dan can run it for whoever he wants when he's writing about someone.

But, right, the only, like, widely available public system at this point in the year is Steamer, and it has Headley at 3.8 war for next year and Sandoval at 3.6. So... In, like, the same playing time. at 3.6, like the same playing time. And so basically everybody that you follow has written or believes that Headley at the estimated 30 million or so is a huge deal compared to Pablo at the estimated 90 or so who doesn't seem to even be that significantly better as a ball player.

And it feels like the opinion on one side is so overwhelmingly that this is the case. And yet you don't hear any particular sense from the league that this is the case. I mean, nobody thinks that Headley's going to get $100 million from a team, right? I haven't heard that. So I'm trying to just establish that it is a fair premise to note that there is a huge gap between what the industry is, what is at least being reported about the industry versus what is being pundited about by the punditry.

Yes. Huge gap. pundited about by the punditry. Yes. Huge gap. So I'm trying to figure out what this could be because there is very rarely a huge gap anymore about any of these things. Usually the punditry sort of falls in line a little bit

and looks a little closer and sees that there's a reason or they maybe will defer a little bit to the experts or where there are disagreements, they're usually about small players like Casper Wells or Reed Johnson or some reliever or something like that. You very rarely see a huge, huge discrepancy anymore. And with Headley, it's huge and I feel like it's to some degree acknowledged but probably under-acknowledged. It's huge, and I feel like it's to some degree acknowledged, but probably under-acknowledged. If there is really a discrepancy that big, like a $70 million discrepancy between two players who we generally don't think of as being dissimilar, that seems interesting and worth looking at. So basically then the possibilities here are that in fact the interest in Headley has been wildly underreported. And in fact, Headley is going to get a big contract.

Maybe not $100 million, but a lot. Like, I don't know, what would be a big contract for Headley? 68? Let's say 68. Let's say a Victor Martinez or Melky Cabrera type contract. So that would be one possibility one possibility is that uh the stats that we have are somehow wrong uh or the third is that the stats that we all have are right but we're misinterpreting them or we're ignoring some key detail and so I wanted to know what you think is likely and whether you've reevaluated, I guess, whether the fact that Bowden has him going for three and 27 has changed your opinion.

I mean, assuming that Bowden has some insight into what he's going to get paid, does that change your opinion of Headley at all? Does it make you second guess yourself at all? And finally, Will, put it in the context of what the Red Sox are doing. Well, maybe it influences me a little bit in that all of the people who put free agent predictions out are the ones who actually report on this stuff. Presumably they are talking to sources and front office people about what players are going to go for much more than I am. So they would have some insight into what the market for those players is.

So sure, I guess it influences me a little bit. But I would guess that he still ends up with at least a Victor Martinez type deal. Ends up with at least a Victor Martinez type deal. I mean, it's hard for me to see why he wouldn't, which is kind of what we're talking about. But is it the fact that he has followed a different trajectory than Sandoval? Is it that Hedley is sort of seen as a disappointment in a sense in that he was an MVP candidate, a strong MVP candidate a couple of years ago. And now he's, you know, like half the player he was then, which is still a really good player. But so is Sandoval. Right. I mean, well, right. Sandoval essentially had the same.

Well, he had he had two years, I guess, where he was offensively what Headley was in that one year. But it was still even longer ago. It was 2011, the last time he hit like that. And 2009 is the other one you're referring to, which, you know, yeah. Yeah, it's a long time ago. And so, right, in the last couple years, I mean, even last year with Headley being just a career-worst hitter, at least when he was with the Padres, kind of bounced back with the Yankees. tricks had him as being better than Sandoval in total value. That's giving a lot of credit to his defense, although it certainly passes the eye test. Just watching Headley after he was traded to New York this year, he does appear to be a really good third baseman. And so I don't know, he's two years and three months older than Sandoval,

which is maybe why he wouldn't get as many years and wouldn't get as high a total value. But I don't know. He's, he's also better conditioned. So maybe some teams would believe that he would age better. Do you think that, yeah.

Do you think that the two years and three months gets discounted some because of that? I mean, what do you think is the math for every 30 pounds overweight you are, how many years? Yeah, I think with Sandoval, it's almost that, well, one, I guess it's that he has played a somewhat defensively demanding position. If he had been a first baseman this whole time, maybe people wouldn't worry about it as much, but he might have to move at some point. And if he moves, then he is no longer really much of a hitter. I mean, not much above average by the standards of DH or first base. And I feel like in his case, maybe the fact that he fluctuates so doesn't seem to have the ability to keep the weight off maybe that makes you worried about like his discipline and whether as he gets older and his metabolism slows down he just won't have the the ability to regulate his weight and it

could get completely out of control like movon Mo Vaughn style or Demetri Young style or something. So I would say that I don't know if that makes up for the whole gap in age between them, but at least half of it. Yeah, at least half of it seems right, which then the difference between a 20- and a 30-year-old, so I guess 28 and 31. So the difference between 28 and 31 seems pretty loud, but the difference between 28 and 29 and a half or whatever is not really.

I guess 29 and a half and 31. I don't know. I'm not sure that I – I guess if I had to bet on who would be better in five years relative to what they are now, I – God, he's fat. He's really a big guy. He has been at times. And it's not like – he's not a – he doesn't seem to be a, you know, like, he's not a comfortable fat. Like, it's just a constant source of anxiety and stress with his team, with him. Like, you hear about it all through the season, all through the offseason, every year.

Like, you don't get the sense that, well, he's just a big guy. You know, that's just his body type. You get the sense that... Like, Prince Fielder kind of is different, right? Prince Fielder is different, yeah. No one ever really talks about Prince Fielder needs to lose weight. Prince Fielder is losing weight. Or Sabathia.

Yeah, maybe a pitcher is a little different in that fielding the position is not quite as important. And you've had your David Wells types who seem to age pretty well but but yeah i i think fielder is maybe a good counter example um do you believe that uh these uh to get sandoval ahead well okay so there's not a big difference between their bat in the past even in the past two years even if you even if you editedley's best year, which is 2012, crop it out, they're close to the same hitter over the past two years, and over the past three, and over the past four.

So to get Hedley ahead of Sandoval, you need to basically believe that Hedley is a very good defender, just like Sandoval has been a pretty good defender Sometimes a great defender And so One thing that you might Think is that clubs Have better information Than we do on that

And think that Headley is a very poor defender Fra, the baseball prospectus Sorry, Fra is the pitching one what do we call fra you just have to hold the a of a little bit longer fielding runs above average uh the baseball prospectus defensive metric uh is very very negative toward headley on defense i think he's he's been rated negatively every year of his career with the only exception being uh the 58 games he played in new york last year the ones you're describing uh where he passed the ai test uh he rated quite quite well there like very very very well but otherwise it is all red from rookie year on down

nothing but red uh and that's different from other systems so like baseball reference has him um you know above average for his career with occasional great seasons and and really like since he turned 26 it's been almost all positive uh and you know suggests a uh maybe a gold glove finalist quality type defender whereas if you go to baseball prospectus, it's like he's negative 31 runs in his career. So that's a reasonable possibility. Do you think that that is it or is it not it? Is it possible that some of it is park effects? I mean, it always seems silly to suggest

That teams are ever fooled By park effects at this point When most writers Are not fooled by them anymore But it is interesting in their Case because they've Both played in Pitchers parks

But Sandoval has hit much better At home Whereas Headley has hit much better at home. Whereas Hadley has hit much better on the road. And yeah, Sandoval has been eight 53 OPS career at home. Seven 71 on the road. Hadley has been seven 11, seven 11,

seven. Yeah. And seven 99 on the road. So I wonder whether... And they're both getting a benefit from park-adjusted stats, whereas you could either say that Sandoval shouldn't get that benefit from park-adjusted stats that most players who play in San Francisco do, most hitters who play in San Francisco do, most hitters who play in San Francisco do,

or you could say that he is such an amazing at-home hitter that he would have been even better at home had he played in a better hitter's park. So it's tough. With Headley, you are projecting that he would be better if he played a full season outside san diego and with sandoval the stats are sort of saying that but his actual splits are not really saying that so i don't know what that does to team's perception of their offensive abilities yeah i what you just said makes me think that Headley is even better.

Right, it could be, yeah. Mike Kruko was on KNBR this morning, and he was talking about how if he were the Giants, he would be using the Giants park and the NL West, all the parks in the NL West, as part of their pitch, which I'm not sure would work, because the pitch is basically that these are offense-suppressing parks. Your numbers will get worse. But Krukow's point was that they affect Sandoval less than other players and that Sandoval actually benefits from them, relatively speaking, because he doesn't have a lot of elevation

or loft in his swing. And he's got sort of this line drive gaps power that plays really well in wide open ballparks like that and so i don't maybe that's true maybe the numbers that you just cited are some evidence that it's true but if you're not one of those five teams in the nos or if you're not one of the three that plays in a wide open park, or four that plays in a wide open park, then that would seem to make him even less appealing. But yeah, that's the other part. So that's interesting, because you were sort of saying maybe clubs are fooled by park effects,

whereas I was thinking maybe they have more insight into park effects. Yes, and yet having more insight would seem to work in headley's favor unless you are unless you are the giants they have more insight they you you can't judge their insight based on your insight the point is that they know things you don't know uh-huh i mean don't you i'm sure that's true you you basically have to to say one of three things right either the reports of head lease value are way way off two clubs know more than we do and they're making this decision based on factors that we somehow have not had access to and three an entire industry has this one blind spot where they're being very dumb uh i guess four would be like two.

Was I doing letters or numbers? Numbers. Okay. Four would be like two, so let's call it 2B, which is that we're just wrong. Like, we've been given the right answers right in front of us, and we're just dumb. You know, we're getting it wrong.

And so that's also a possibility. And frankly, if you look at Pocota, And so that's also a possibility. And frankly, if you look at Pocota, which this is not a ready to publish run of Pocota yet, it's the next year. And if you, for instance, don't count Panda's weight against him, and so you basically have a 27-year-old against a 30-year-old, or 28-year-old against a 31-year-old, who starts a win ahead per year, that doesn't quite make up a $30 million to $100 million difference, but it gets you pretty close. Over a five-year period, that's probably a $30 to $50 million difference depending on how you want to age each of them. That's the other possibility. Well, if I had to pick one as the most likely, I'd probably go with number one.

Yeah. That the reports are off. Yeah, you're just hoping, man. You're just rooting for it. I do have a small stake in the matter now. A small stake, yeah. Pablo just got so hungry thinking about a small stake. It's the best kind of stakes.

All right. So the Red Sox apparently have signed Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval. Do we know the latter? We know Hanley seems done as we record now. What the latest is that Sandoval is going to make a decision today, but it's not final yet,

but it was initially reported that he had signed with the Red Sox, so we're not exactly sure right now, but that seems to be the most likely outcome. Yeah, exactly. So which of these surprises you more, and how much do the two coming in tandem multiply in the surprise fashion? Yeah, I don't think either in isolation would particularly surprise me. It's the combo deal that sort of does, just in the fact that you, I mean, it's almost impossible.

I mean, it's almost impossible. If it is both signing with the Red Sox, then it's almost impossible to talk about it without forecasting future moves. It feels like we won't know the complete picture for weeks or months, in that if they are both on the team, then literally there is no position for some players, and there have to be some sort of trades because either either Hanley moves

to I mean if if Sandoval is there then Hanley can't move to third presumably he is not going to continue playing short unless the Red Sox were also to to tradearts, and then there's got to be a Middlebrooks move in there somewhere, and then you're talking about moving Hanley to left field, presumably, which would probably work just fine in Boston in a small left field. Given his defensive struggles, you're not really losing all that much in the positional adjustment alone. If he goes from shortstop to left, that will be counteracted somewhat by the fact that he would presumably be an okay left fielder, whereas he is one of the worst shortstops. So that works, but then you also have to forecast a trade of Cespedes or Betts or someone. forecast a trade of Cespedes or Betts or someone, there has to be room made somewhere. And you're still not getting any clarity on the fact that they don't really have a starting rotation right

now. So presumably that would mean another free agent signing or a trade. One of these guys would be traded for for pitching and that is a non-revelatory analysis right there but so this is even if it's both of these moves it's just sort of the first or second domino of other dominoes but you could see why why they want these guys is napoli an under-discussed potential trade piece yeah sure probably what he's is this his last year under contract or and uh yeah he signed uh next year for like 16 million uh-huh so yeah yeah i guess he would he would have some value but then then, so what would you do at first base then? He would... Sandoval. Sandoval.

Yeah, that seems like you're wasting some of Sandoval's value, doesn't it? Only if you think that he's A, actually a really good defender, and B, likely to be. I mean, sometimes he is and sometimes he's not. And he's a year older and probably a year a little bit fatter. Probably. But, yeah, are you excited about Pablo Sandoval first baseman? Sure.

Offensively? I mean, he's not as good as Napoli. Right, but you wouldn't sign Napoli for this much money, would you? If he were 27. You might. I mean, they're giving him 16 million. Napoli, 16 million right now. They seem to be happy

enough with that. That was a short-term deal, though. Yeah, two years for an old man. With a hip condition. It depends how oh i i doesn't stand up to me to be a well yeah okay uh do i i don't know it doesn't seem optimal but it doesn't also seem like there's nothing about having pablo sandoval at first that would make them incapable of winning a World Series or anything like that.

I mean, he hits enough for a first baseman. It's not like a Brewers first base situation or anything. Yeah. I mean, they're going to have – somebody's going to be playing somewhere that you're surprised to see them at this point, it seems to me. Is Xander Bogarts to AAA an under-discussed possibility? I haven't really seen it discussed much, so if it's a possibility, it's been under-discussed.

Why shouldn't it be a possibility? He's a poor defender. I think most people agree with that, although showing some improvement. He was not good last year. He's going to be 22 this year. I know that it is not a thing that is generally done, sending players back down after you give them a full season, particularly when they're as heralded as he is. But at this point, he's the worst player on the depth chart by quite a bit. Not on the depth chart, but in the starting lineup. He on the depth chart by quite a bit. Not on the depth chart, but in the starting lineup. He's the worst player by quite a bit.

So you could trade him at perhaps his low value, or you can just pretend that he's still a prospect. If he'd never come up and he were 21, it wouldn't be that weird to have a 22-year-old in AAA. I'm not saying this is a great idea, by the way. I'm not defending this idea, great idea by the way, I'm not defending this idea but it seems like discussable

yeah, it could be it seems strange in that he was regarded as such a polished product who was going to be great immediately and seemed to be good in the playoffs as a rookie and everything but that surprise has already

happened that he wasn't quite as ready to excel as everyone expected him to be so so perhaps but then that means continuing to play Hanley at shortstop which we don't know if they would be willing to do and their entire lineup really right now with with the Sandoval situation still unresolved as we record is right-handed. I mean, their only hitter at this moment, if we assume that the Hanley deal is done but Sandoval is not, their only left-handed hitter is David Ortiz. is David Ortiz, and maybe that doesn't matter quite as much as it once might have in a shift-heavy era, or maybe it doesn't hurt as much in Fenway as it might other places, but it still seems like a situation that would have to be addressed at some point,

and maybe Sandoval is part of that answer. dressed at some point and maybe Sandoval is his part of that answer. But yeah, I don't know. It's, it'll be interesting to watch the rest of the moves that they make because right now it seems like they have maybe one of the best lineups in the league with either, with either, either one of those guys really, let alone both of them. them. And not that type of pitching, not that caliber of pitching. So it seems like there would have to be multiple pitching moves made for them to contend right away. So it'll be an interesting rest of the offseason. Yeah.

Progress, final 85 games, 199-30 offseason. Yeah. Bogarts final 85 games at 199-30-300. Yeah. So yeah, maybe you could play Hanley for a while at short unless Bogarts really turns it on in AAA and then you can consider

a move at that point. Maybe you have the freedom not to trade someone until the deadline. But right now you can consider a move at that point. Maybe you have the freedom not to trade someone until the deadline. Yes. But right now you've got a rotation fronted by Clay Buchholz and Joe Kelly, so something needs to happen there. Yeah, sorry, I was just tweeting instead of doing it like this. I'll tell you what I was tweeting about, though. Okay.

I'm just reading the article about Pablo Sandoval as a left-handed pitcher. What article is that? Well, you know he's ambidextrous, right? Uh-huh. And you know he always wanted to pitch. You didn't know that, but I'm telling you that.

And so in August, in August, the Mercury News filmed him throwing a bullpen session as a lefty and published that. I see. So that seems to be the plan. So he can be a two-way player. Or one way. Just the one, maybe.

And one more thing about Sandoval that listener Matt Trueblood noted on his blog, Matt recalled a presentation by Vince Gennaro, who is the president of Sabre and a consultant to teams, the author of Diamond Dollars. A few years ago in Minneapolis, I was not at this presentation, but I'm pretty sure I saw the same presentation at a different conference where he looked into whether certain hitters are able to hit high caliber pitching better than others, whether there's any tendency for certain guys to, say, feast on bad pitching and punish good pitching, that sort of thing. And Sandoval was the example he found of a player who hits good pitching. So perhaps there's something to that. Maybe teams have looked into that further and found that there is something to that maybe teams have looked into that further and

found that there is something to said of all that his hot hitting in the playoffs to this point is not completely a fluke and that he would be expected to be a slightly better postseason hitter relative to his usual talent level than headley something to mention probably not a huge factor but this is a puzzle, so we're trying to collect all of the pieces we can. Okay. Alright. So, some news will break immediately after we stop recording

that perhaps will clarify the situation slightly, but probably not all that much. So, we will be back later this week, right? We'll do a Wednesday show for the most busiest travel day of the year people will need podcasts on the road and then we will take Friday off presumably but we'll be back later this week we encourage you to support our sponsor the play index by going

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