Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 582: Pablo Sandoval’s Special Skill, Your Special Emails

Episode Date: December 3, 2014

Ben and Sam talk to Robert Arthur about what makes Pablo Sandoval uniquely valuable, then answer emails about eating contracts, baseball abroad, and more.

Good morning and welcome to episode 582 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hello. Hi. How are you? Okay. Good. Okay, good.

Yeah, it's a listener email show. We're going to enter a few emails. We will do a play index segment. But before we do, we have a guest for the first segment of the show. He is Rob Arthur of Baseball Perspectives, whom we've had on before. You may remember him as the Batcrack Man. And he wrote something that is relevant to a topic we discussed twice last week, the Chase Headley, Pablo Sandoval value gap and why teams were rumored to be and actually were willing to pay so much for Sandoval and are rumored to be willing to pay much less for Headley. And we

talked about the difference between them and whether there's anything we're missing. And Rob wrote something that might be a potential explanation. He wrote it for Fox Sports, and we have him on to talk about it. Hey, Rob. Hey, how are you? Okay, so we know that Sandoval is a strange hitter, that he is a bad ball hitter, that he will swing at things in the dirt, he will swing at things above his head, and often he will hit those things, which is the even more fun part of Sandoval. But you did some research, and it turns out that that is not the only way in which Sandoval is unique. So explain what you did. Sure. So I was intrigued by this property of Sandoval and I thought it might somehow make him a steadier hitter, one who is

less sensitive to the competition that he was facing. And people have argued this before based on like playoff statistics and things like that. But it's really hard to do any kind of rigorous sabermetrics on the small sample of the playoffs. So I was trying to think of a way to get around that issue. And I had the idea of looking at it on an individual pitch by pitch basis instead of at bat level. So the idea was to sort of take every pitch that's thrown to every hitter, and then model how well the hitter should do

against that pitch based on how hard that pitch is to hit, based on essentially three properties, the velocity of the pitch, where it is, and how it breaks, how hard it breaks in particular. And so I went ahead and made this model, and then I looked at how well the model predicted the hitter's results for each hitter in MLB, and I found that Sandoval had this unique ability

that the model couldn't predict what he would do with the pitch at all. So he could hit a pitch that was thrown very hard to the edge of the strike zone, you know, for a home run, whereas most hitters would have a lot of trouble with that. Yeah, so you mentioned that for 90% of hitters, they get worse, their results get worse as pitches get nastier, whether it's the location or the speed or the break. They are not as able to handle more difficult pitches, which makes perfect sense, but that for this small minority, that is not the case. And so for Sandoval, you're theorizing then that it kind of doesn't matter

who he's facing. So it doesn't matter whether it's a game in August and he's facing a fifth starter on another team or he's facing an ace or something. I mean, he would still be worse against some pitchers, presumably, at least based on handedness, but he is theoretically less susceptible to good pitching. So that seems like a valuable skill. susceptible to good pitching so that seems like a valuable skill yeah so i mean if you think that good pitchers are going to be the people who throw these good pitches most often then he should be able to do better against them on average than um than your average hitter who or it's your sort of regular hitter who should suffer when he's trying to face a really nasty pitch. Uh-huh. And who are other hitters who have this Sandoval skill? And where does Headley

rank on this spectrum? There's very few hitters that have it consistently. So it tends to fluctuate a lot year to year. He's one of maybe five or ten that had consecutive years of sort of not being insensitive to the quality of the pitch, essentially. So another hitter like him is Elvis Andrus. Another hitter is Ike Davis. So by and large, not very good hitters except Pablo Sandoval. And you mentioned Andrelton Simmons, who was one of the worst hitters in baseball last year. Right. And that kind of makes sense because basically what this is saying is that hitters not reacting to a meatball down the middle, like a softly thrown pitch in the center of the plate, the way that they should be. They're not hitting it any harder than they hit a really tough pitch.

So it makes sense that for the majority of hitters, this is going to be a negative trait. This is going to be linked to hitters that aren't so good on average. So like I said, Sandoval is unique in this. Headley is basically middle of the pack. He shows correlations in both years that are significant. So he's not really anything special in regards to this trade. This is actually really interesting to me too, because I wrote a piece a couple, maybe a year or two ago about how

Sandoval's, uh, Babbitt is basically exactly the same when he swings at pitches outside the strike zone is when he sings swings of pitches inside the strike zone as when he swings at pitches inside the strike zone, which I sort of wrote it as a curiosity on McCovey Chronicles, actually. I think. Maybe I didn't. But it was just sort of like kind of this weird, crazy thing about Sandoval. It didn't occur to me in any way that that would be a skill, that that would be applicable to anything i mean we know what his overall numbers were i didn't think it made him particularly better or

particularly worse and this suggests that it might actually make him in a way better um so but the question maybe might be um that i might have is how sure are we that pitches in the postseason are harder um i guess they're probably more likely to be better in the sense that it's better pitchers throwing them. But is it a significant difference in October in terms of velocity where we think that this might actually be a big explanatory factor in his postseason success? Or is it still probably only enough to explain like

you know some small portion of his postseason numbers at best would you guess so i think it's probably only a small portion um i mean when you're dealing with the tiny sample the playoffs the majority of you know the difference between a hitter's career or seasonal line, and the playoff is going to be luck. But it could be a small input into it. So I wrote in the piece that the average fastball velocity increases by about a mile an hour between the postseason and the regular season. So you're seeing hitters that are, on average, throwing faster. I didn't look at the other characteristics like the location or the break,

but I would also expect those to be on average a little bit different between the regular season and the postseason. And we saw some really dominant pitching performances this postseason, for instance, by Madison Baumgartner that would tend to kind of anecdotally reinforce that perception. So I don't expect a precise answer to this question, but if you had, say, Sandoval and you had player B, who has the same projection overall, he's an equally good hitter and an equally good fielder. In every respect, he's as good as Sandoval,

except that he doesn't have this ability to hit good pitching particularly well. And you're a team that expects to make the playoffs like the Red Sox presumably do. How much more would you be willing to pay, just say same number of years or whatever, but average annual value for Sandoval than player B who can't hit good pitching particularly well? This is a really tough question. And you touched on one of the reasons already, which is that the value would be a lot different to a sort of perennial postseason contender versus a team that's not so good. Assuming that you are a perennial postseason contender like the Red Sox or the Yankees or one of those other good teams,

I mean, it's really tough to tell, but maybe like a few million additionally a year. The thing is that it's a very inconsistent skill. So it changes a lot year to year. Sandoval in particular seems to be the rare hitter who consistently shows this between years. And so, you know, maybe you treat that a little bit differently, but you still regress it to the mean a lot because it doesn't seem like something that stays very consistent. And I guess there's no way to really project what impact this might have on his aging progression, for for instance because he's the only guy who does it so so we don't know yeah yeah and you could you know potentially make an argument that it's going to be bad um he's maybe he's not gaining plate discipline as much uh as older hitters usually do or something like that so it could have negative effects as well in terms of aging.

And I also wonder how much this, I mean, we don't know how much, for instance, Sandoval's postseason success is already a factor. We'll never really know whether it's already a factor. It's conceivable that, in fact, this suggests that he should be paid a little bit more than his regular season stats would be worth. And yet it's also conceivable that he should be paid a little less than he's already getting paid because for all we know, front offices are already somehow reacting to the postseason success in a emotional, perhaps slightly less than rational, but perhaps slightly more rational than we gave them credit for way. Yeah, that's certainly true.

So it might already be priced in. Yeah. Aren't you glad that I made sure to get that in? All right. So I don't know if this explains the discrepancy between Sandoval and Headley, but maybe it gets us closer to figuring it out. It's an interesting thing about Sandoval regardless, and an interesting article which we will link in the podcast post at BP

and in the Facebook group. You should just go read Rob. He's one of our favorite baseball writers, and follow him on Twitter at nolittleplans, underscores between no and little and little and plans. And thanks for coming on, Rob. Thank you. All right. Thanks again to Rob. today, although there was one that did reveal something from Chris Cotillo, who revealed via

a source that Matt Albers is rehabbing and plans to throw a bullpen for teams in February before signing during spring training. So that's the Matt Albers news. No Ryan Webb news to report. No Ryan Webb news. Eric Hartman, by the way, reminded me that we never did mention the Nick Markakis MVP news. Nick Markakis did not get an MVP vote. It was the first thing that I looked for. Well, I guess that's a lie. It was the second thing I looked for. Yes, you were looking to see whether Chase Utley got an MVP vote.

Exactly, and he did not. And the second thing I looked for was to see if Nick Markakis did. He also did not, despite a gold glove and an above-average OPS on a division-winning team. So that's good news. So he remains, what, the best player, what, ever? I don't even remember. Why are we following this story he he has the he has

a i would say a strong chance of becoming the best player ever to not make an all-star team or get a single mvp vote and uh there are at the top there it's, there are a couple of people who can contend for this. I think that probably the best answer right now is Mark Ellis, who has 33 career war. Mark Akis is at 24 career war, I believe, right now. 25 career war, and he's only 30 years old. So even if he has a couple more seasons as an average player and then a couple more seasons as a bench player, he's got a real chance at passing Ellis.

And I think he passes the sniff test more than Mark Ellis does. I mean, the dude had a seven-win season. That's crazy, yeah. A seven-win season, and he didn't get a single MVP vote for that seven-win season. And he's get a single MVP vote for that seven win season and he's had a four win season I mean he's had multiple seasons better than like Ryan Howard's

like top three finishes have been so and to not even get a single 10th place vote do you have any sense of whether Nick Marquegas is a likable guy the kind of guy that a writer will throw a 10th place vote to? I guess if he were going to get a 10th place loyalty vote, hometown vote,

it probably would have been in Baltimore where he's been brought up from infancy. And so if he changes teams, that probably my my yes you're right he was robbed okay it was although i guess i don't necessarily want him going to a team that's likely to be very good no i don't care it's not even the first thing you checked when the results came out was only the second thing. Chris Medlin, by the way, non-tendered. And as you know, Chris Medlin is my perennial favorite player. Have you submitted a bid?

I'm scraping together my resources. I would say that in the language of non-revelatory, non-revelatory tweets, I would say that I'm considering all my options, but I haven't decided whether to make a move. Have you established contact? I would say that I have neither established nor not established contact. Okay. Well, keep us posted. All right. So we will answer a few emails. This one comes from Jason in Miami.

And he says, given the current MLB climate where teams in major markets like the Red Sox have money to burn with only a finite number of options to spend it on without giving away hordes of precious future value in prospects. And teams like the A's are so constrained budgetarily, despite consistently being in contention that they have to jettison their best players year after year, even when said players are still earning relatively modest salaries. Why is it that you don't see attempts by teams such as Boston to lure teams like Oakland into dealing their next in line to go talent to them by not offering the usual package of prospects and up and comers, but rather by assuming most, if not all of the remaining money

of current above average major leaguers that may not be essential to the current lineup. For example, while Shane Victorino at $13 million is almost certainly a losing money proposition in 2015, how much would Shane Victorino be worth to Oakland this year if his contract this year were free? I know it's well within the rules as teams eat money on players with bad contracts all the time, and Victorino might not be the ideal poster boy for my point, but with the current market so valuing top-tier young talent and big league players on club-friendly deals, why is it that a team that can afford to eat $10 million

not exploiting this advantage by simply creating great contracts out of average or bad ones by assuming the majority of the balance themselves? I think it's an interesting question. I mean, it does seem like there have been instances where it would make sense that, so to the point that it's surprising that there aren't really a lot of examples of it happening. So for instance, and I hesitate to bring this up because it's one of the low points of my career, and really one of the low points of your career,

to bring this up because it's one of the low points of my career. And really, one of the low points of your career, because you were my editor and you passed off on this, and because we both benefited from the massive insanity of page views that it got. But when I wrote my John Carlos Stanton mock trade, fake trade, hypothetical trade suggestions piece, remember that one? One of them involved Alex Rodriguez and the Yankees basically using his sort of talent to get something back. It wasn't straight up or anything. It might have been straight up, they were all stupid. I don't remember what it was. The point is that, for instance, the Yankees could have traded A-Rod, taken his whole salary, and then probably gotten something out of it.

That was the concept behind that trade proposal. And so it's surprising that there haven't been some of those. There are players who get traded and their contract is paid for by their old team, but usually out of necessity, not as a way of sort of sweetening the deal. So anyway, what I'm saying is that it's surprising that it hasn't happened at all. But I think the reason that it rarely happens is just that the teams that are capable of doing this, like he mentions the Red Sox, the teams that are capable of absorbing payroll like this are the teams that want the players. They're the teams that have the money to pay them, that are competing, that see a player like Shane Victorino as

crucial surplus in their pennant push. And those teams are kind of in hoarding mode. They're trying to get any talent they can possibly get their hands on. So it just doesn't a lot of times make sense for them to do anything that would weaken them. And so they're always trying to trade from the position, trade out of their resources that wouldn't weaken them. Yeah, I think it's a pretty small subset of guys who fall into this group. It's guys who are making a lot of money and are not worth that money or there's no surplus value after you pay them, and yet they're also still pretty good players that a team would want, and yet they're not really wanted by their current

team who has a better option at the same position so yeah there's there aren't that many cases where that is true but yeah but maybe the red socks right now is is a pretty good example so this email was perfectly crafted to get Shane Victorino in it, but it's hard to think of another situation, like in all of baseball, where it's hard to swap in another team and another player other than Red Sox and Shane Victorino. And that just goes to show

how rare it is that a team capable of paying a player like Shane Victorino would want to trade a player like Shane Victorino to a team that can't afford to pay Shane Victorino would want to trade a player like Shane Victorino to a team that can't afford to pay Shane Victorino. But yeah, it makes sense. It'd be interesting to see if the Red Sox do something like that because it does seem like, I don't know, maybe there's, I don't know that teams are necessarily creative enough with their money. It's like they have

their money, they sign players when they can But I feel like there's like a second level Of using your money that we haven't really seen And this is an example of that But right, like we said, it's hard to find A situation where it works perfectly Alright, this question comes from Vinit, he says

In Monday's episode, Ben mentioned transactional Losses that the A's have had Over the years in all their trades. It's hard to measure them. However, if you think of signing a free agent who has rejected a qualifying offer as a trade, there is a quantifiable loss since the incoming pick is worth considerably less than the outgoing one. And his questions are, why are teams okay with that loss? The outgoing one and his Questions are why are teams okay with

That loss why wouldn't the teams Losing the free agent be better Off signing the player to an extension Earlier as early as required To circumvent sign and trade Rules and then trading him And then finally are prospects Valued more than draft picks because

There is a name or face attached I.e. the George Carlin syndrome Of my shit is stuff and your stuff is shit. Explicit tag. Is that the first time you've ever sworn? I think it is. Maybe. I don't know.

You tricked me in swearing once. Yeah. But I think that that's the first time you ever have. Could be. 582 episodes to get there. You don't even swear in gchat no never ever ever not really but if someone sends me an email

with some stuff in it I'll read it I never get the sense that you're uncomfortable with it you just never became part of my vocabulary somehow Vanite by the way good emailer. Yes, excellent emailer. Not enough talk about Vanit. Vanits are always gamers.

We kind of mentioned this with the Kadir move, didn't we? It's sort of interesting how the Mets give up the 17th pick or whatever and the Rockies get like the 36th pick and it's odd that I mean that seems like a big enough gap in value that you would think that two teams would value Kadir more or less within a a range that's narrower than that gap yeah and

and they don't and I always i always do find find that a little bit interesting it's also the case where like for instance um i don't know that it'll be the case this year but we've seen instances where teams wouldn't sign free agents because of the compensation pick uh that they would have to give up but you would think that there would be some team that's already given away their compensation pick and maybe their second round pick too and would look at it as, oh, it's only a third round pick. So you basically have two situations where one team is giving up a third round pick and another team is maybe giving up the 11th overall pick.

And that seems like a huge enough value that the free agent would have to go to the team giving up the third round pick. And yet they don't, which always strikes me as slightly interesting and which always is a good reminder that these free agent signings are usually not decided on the margins so small as we're assessing them. All right. What was the question? Well, that was kind of the question. Why are teams okay with this loss was one of the questions. And yeah, maybe there's something to the idea that actual players are valued more than draft picks,

or at least that teams are more willing to, or less willing to lose a guy. Because once you draft a guy guy your own reputation is sort of at stake you have picked this guy you've made a bet that he's going to be a worthwhile player and so you have some stake in his success and you also maybe got to know the guy and have sunk some resources some player development and coaching hours and effort and nutrition dollars into him. And maybe all of that makes you less willing to trade an actual player than you are to trade a draft pick who will become a player someday. I don't know what the magnitude of that effect is, but maybe there's something to it.

I don't know what the magnitude of that effect is, but maybe there's something to it. You'd think there would also be the opposite effect, though, where you draft a guy thinking he's some version of a player, and then he shows up and you live with him for six months and he's not that guy. You'd sort of realize, oh, to use an analogy, he leaves big toothpaste stains in the sink or whatever the case may be.

And you're just sort of disappointed because you had this idealized version of the guy when you married him. And then as you spend time with him, you realize that the idealized version of him is not the one that is real. And 29 other teams might still be able to maintain that idealized version of him is not the the one that is real and 29 other teams might still be able to maintain that idealized version of him but you can't and so uh i think you're right i think that

the uh that that the tendency to love your guys is stronger than the tendency to be disappointed by your guys um but i'm i'm not sure why that is i don't know that it has to be disappointed by your guys. But I'm not sure why that is. I don't know that it has to be. I guess maybe you have to. You know, it might just be that you have to be relentlessly optimistic to be a successful player development department. You have to accept that these guys are all badly flawed and that you're waiting for the five years of various progress

to get him to where you need him to be. And if you start getting disappointed by the things he can't do, you'll never get anybody to high A. And so maybe there's a bias to picking player development directors that leads to relentlessly optimistic and energetic guys, like our friend Gabe Kapler, who is, you get the feeling that if you were around Gabe Kapler,

you would feel infinitely better about yourself because he is such a positive guy and sees the good in everything. Maybe that's what it has to be in player development. Maybe the, I wonder, I would love to, in fact,

if I were ever an insider, like if I were ever the kind of journalist who was like a true insider and I wanted to do a big project, it might be personality portraits of scouting directors versus player development directors. Because they have to have completely different skills, right? For just that reason? Yeah. have completely different skills, right? For just that reason? Yeah. I mean, yeah. When I was at scout school, I remember they used to talk about how we should focus on what the player can do instead of what the player can't do, which you could kind of take it the other way. You could say focus on what he can't do, but they chose to emphasize the can-do portion

when telling us how to write up reports on players that we should focus on their abilities rather than their weaknesses. So maybe there's some of that in both camps. Yeah. Could be. I don't know. Why do you feel the way you do about Chris Medlin and Sergio Santos? I don't know, man. I'm looking at this tweet right now from the Dodgers, Why do you feel the way you do about Chris Medlin and Sergio Santos?

I don't know, man. I'm looking at this tweet right now from the Dodgers, and it's a picture of Dodger Stadium that's drenched in rain, and the tweet is, Beautiful as ever, wither the weather, and then a hashtag, rain in LA. And one of the replies is, just says, What? In Spanish, please. which is a reply in English. And why does it need to be in Spanish?

Why would there be an expectation it would be in Spanish, please? There should be a second Dodgers Twitter account in Espanol. This guy who asked for it to be in Spanish, all of his tweets are in English. So what is he asking for? He's just considerate. Anyway, I don't think wither is the appropriate word there. I don't think wither actually makes any sense there. Maybe, yeah.

No, I don't think so. Okay. Play index? Sure. Play index. So I'm stealing this from listener Paul, who asked this question. Hey, Ben and Sam, while traveling through a baseball reference wormhole, I came across Pat Mahomes' 1994 season in which he pitched 120 innings

with a 103 ERA plus, which is to say it was better than average when adjusted for league and park, and a 6.21 FIP, which is to say that he should have had an ERA around 6.21. This seems like an insanely lucky season. I was wondering what starting pitcher has had the luckiest season or who had the largest gap in these two stats. Thanks. So I wasn't sure exactly how I wanted to tackle this because, like, for one thing, FIP is not park or era adjusted.

So a guy who has a high FIP, a guy could have a 5.6 FIP in 2000 Colorado and have a 100 ERA plus that had no luck at all. It could just be that, like that that's what Colorado was adjusted. And so at first I just looked to see who had the biggest multiplier, I guess, of fit to ERA plus. And I didn't bother with the adjustments or anything like that. And the answer is that Pat mahomes is actually a really good answer like he is probably one of the two best answers if you're setting a any reasonable innings pitched limit he and dwight gooden are the only two players with at least 50 innings and a FIP that is, well, this is, this is complicating things to say this, but

so I did a multiplier of 0.06. So a FIP that was 0.06 or higher times ERA plus, which is because of the decimal points, that's not very intuitive, but basically just think of it as being like roughly six times the ERA plus or a FIP that's roughly six times as high as ERA plus if you took the decimals out of it as being like roughly six times the era plus or a fit that's roughly six times as high as era plus if you took just the decimals out of it so anyway pat mahomes and dwight gooden in 2000 both of those are right in the middle of the uh the offensive era uh gooden struck out 55 walked 44 and allowed 23 homers in 100 innings it's just such a brutal season and really dwight gooden man like if you ever like look at for a great pitcher uh to see how he rates you know through the age of 27 or

through the age of 25 or through the age of 29 dwight gooden is always at the top it's always like dwight gooden burt bligh levin uh maybe Frank Tanana if you're young enough Kershaw is always up there but Dwight Gooden is always on top and then right around age 27 was it that he gave up the three home runs to Tuffy Rhodes and was never good again

it's incredible how far he fell with like a bunch of ERAs over six he had four, three seasons I think with ERAs over six you get had four, three seasons, I think, with ERAs over six. You get a long leash when you start your career the way he did. And so then this season was actually one of his, I guess, better late seasons. But even still, I don't know that even this one quite captures what Paul was asking, because it was 2000, he was pitching in hitters' ballparks,

and he had a 4 point seven one e r a so the six to eight that and the four point seven one e r a there's a little bit of a clash but it's not like super massive uh... brian franklin has a good one because brian franklin at three point five seventy r a m three point five seventy r a m looks pretty good i had a one twenty one e r. Oh yeah, just to explain why

I got to Ryan Franklin, I upped it from 100 ERA plus to 120 ERA plus to try to get truly good seasons. Franklin in 2003 in Seattle, which is a pitcher's park, seems like pretty good. However, none of these seemed all that, none of them seemed much better than pat mahomes so i i just kept lowering the innings basically until i found something interesting and um what that got me was dan straley and i like dan straley because it was oakland which is a pitcher's park it was 2012 which was a pitcher's year he had a 3.8989 ERA, which was a 101 ERA plus. So he was above average as a starter and he had a 6.48 FIP. And so that's, I think, almost six and a half times. And he struck out 32, walked 16 in 39 innings

Which is actually not that bad But he allowed 11 home runs I like that because 11 home runs are just You can't Like you can walk a bunch of guys and not have them score You can not strike anybody out But have a bunch of ground balls or line drives hit to your infielders But a home run is a home run

There's nothing imaginary about a home run He allowed those home runs He allowed a home run every three innings. There's nothing imaginary about a home run. He allowed those home runs. He allowed a home run every three innings. That is Hunter Strickland-esque. And still managed an ERA of 3.89. So that's good. So then I lowered the innings some more.

I went down to 10 innings just to see how extreme I could get. And I raised it from.06 as a multiplier to.09, and there's only one, and his name is Robert Manuel. Do you know who Robert Manuel is? Nope. Robert Manuel pitched in 2010? Yeah. I know that.

Is it Phillies? No. He pitched for the Reds in 2009 for four innings. He pitched for the Red Sox in 2010 for 11 innings. He was in between traded for Vladimir Balentin

who is a friend of the show if I'm not mistaken. So the Mariners traded for him Vladimir Ballantyne, who is a friend of the show, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know about that. So the Mariners traded for him and then put him on waivers, and the Red Sox claimed him. And he allowed, in 13 innings for the Red Sox, he allowed five home runs. He allowed six runs. So already you know you're dealing with something pretty impressive.

Five home runs, six runs, five strikeouts, and seven walks. So in 13 innings, he walked more than he struck out. He allowed as many home runs as he struck out. He also allowed five other hits in between and somehow only allowed six runs. And none of them unearned either. I thought this might be a case of unearned, but there were no unearns. So Robert Manuel, 6'3", 205 pounds from Bel Air, Texas, signed as an undrafted free agent. And as it turns out, the undrafted was wise.

The signed was not. Robert Manuel has the most lucky season in Major League history, I feel confident saying. I was thinking of Robert Person. Oh, yeah, sure, Robert Person. Well, Robert Person was a big deal. Yeah, Phillies pitcher. Okay, so Robert Manuel, luckiest pitcher ever,

and yet didn't help him all that much. Robert Person. Still don't know his name. Robert Person, least helpful surname ever. Yep. Bob Person. Mr. Person. Okay, so that is the Play Index segment for this week.

We urge you to subscribe using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. We will wrap up just with a couple quick ones here. This one is from Simon in London who says, as there is increasing talk of having a London-based NFL franchise, what are your thoughts on the future potential of having an MLB team outside of the U.S. and Canada? Do you think it could be viable? Which current team would you pick to make such a move?

And what city would you select to move to if you were bankrolling this transition? So the obvious obstacle is baseball schedule and the flight time. This is something that works pretty well in football because you play once a week. And even then, as I learned on Hang Up and Listen, you get a bye week, right, if you are the team that plays in London that week. On one side. You don't get a bye on the other side. Right, right, right. Yeah.

So there's just no way that this would really work with baseball's schedule with the transportation options that we currently have. Well, I mean, that is the huge obstacle. That is probably the obstacle. But, I mean, theoretically it could work in Europe, right? Because Europe is only—how long does it take you to fly to London? Like six hours from where you are? Yeah, five, I think.

Yeah, so it's five hours from New York to San Francisco. I mean, it would be 10 in San Francisco to London. So it would be hard. It would definitely put pressure on the schedule because you probably couldn't have a team go from the West Coast to London straight away. But if you did it right and you had them stop in New York for a series or whatever, it's conceivable. But nobody plays baseball in London. They play baseball in Japan, which is 12 hours away from the West Coast and even further from

the East Coast. And they play baseball in Australia, which is I think like 19 hours from the West Coast. And where else do they play baseball? They kind of play baseball in Australia, which is I think like 19 hours from the West Coast. And where else do they play baseball? I guess they kind of play baseball in Israel a little. But so then the answer is Mexico City though. It would be Mexico City. The population is there. The money isn't there probably.

You wouldn't be able to charge an average ticket price of $55 for a 55,000 seat stadium if it were in Mexico City, I assume. I don't know if that's true, but I assume. But it's 30 million people and a flight time that's not too bad. I assume the longest travel for any major league team if there was a team in Mexico City, but not by that much. Yeah, that's what I would have said. yeah that's what what i would have said and if you're picking a team i guess it would be whatever team has the the least uh enthusiastic or large fan base or attendance just like the

the expos used to play some home games in puerto rico so you'd you'd want to have it be i don't know the rays or something like that some team that or oakland or i don't know, the Rays or something like that. Some team that, or Oakland or I don't know. I guess I was going to say the Yankees. Yeah? Yeah. It seems like maybe the Yankees would be good. I don't know. I mean, they probably would be pretty popular in Mexico.

I like the idea of moving the Yankees to Mexico because Yankee specifically refers to a American. In most of the world, particularly, it refers to an American. So to put the Yankees in Mexico would be fun. All right. And lastly, this is one of those good questions that the questioner answers very well himself. And so we might not have all that much to add, but I will ask if you disagree with anything. This is from John. Pretend for a moment that you are allowed to choose four current MLB franchises to reside in the same division as your team for the next 30 years. You have the liberty to realign your favorite team's division,

however you may wish, with no changes for that time period. Which four teams would you want in your division and why? This is hugely important because winning the division gets you straight through to the LDS. I'm an Indians fan and the four franchises I would feel best about being in a division with for the next 30 years would be, in no particular order, San Diego, Colorado, Minnesota, and Milwaukee. And he says that in his honorable mention are Miami and Arizona. Is there a dark horse in this race that he is missing? Well, do you think that there's any, do you think there's a loss though in having boring teams as your rivals? I mean, maybe it isn't. Maybe a division makes four exciting games no matter what.

Maybe if those teams were your division rivals, your fans would be really excited to see you play the Padres if you were the Cleveland Indians. But it seems possible that it would just be a lot of boring games. And the Giants sell out every game against the Dodgers. There's got to be value in having that. Well, I guess the Giants sell out every game. But even back when they didn't,

they sold a ton of tickets against the Dodgers. So it seems like there would be some value to having interesting teams as well. It seems like there would be some value to having teams that were not long travel destinations as well. I mean, I guess at the end of the day, winning the division is the most important thing. But I think if I were choosing, I might, I don't, my, the entertainment side of me might win out. And I might actually pick the teams that I would want to play for various interesting reasons. So if that were the Giants,

I might say that I would most want to play the A's, the Dodgers, the Mariners, and the Cubs. Yeah, well that that's one that's one approach i i don't know i would guess that eventually whatever team was in your division would become a rival and eventually one of those teams would be pretty decent at some point. So it's not like they would all be awful every year. And if you were a lock for the playoffs every year, I'm sure that would be pretty beneficial in terms of season tickets and attendance and revenue, not to mention home games in the postseason, all of that.

So I don't know. I don't know how that works out. But if we stick with the premise of John's question, do you disagree if we're looking for the least competitive teams over a 30-year span? Obviously we have picked Milwaukee before as the number one. I would pick Milwaukee. I would pick Colorado.

I would pick Cleveland, and I would pick San Diego. And Minnesota makes sense too, I suppose. A little bit. Not as much to me. Minnesota's roughly mid-sized market. I mean, they've been cheap for a long time because their owner's notably cheap among owners, but I don't think that their fundamentals

are as bad as some of the other teams. I don't think, someone could correct me on that, but I don't think their fundamentals are that bad. One might pick Cleveland if John were not an Indians fan himself. I am neither an Indians fan nor a John fan. I like John. I like John too. Yeah. Okay. All right. So no real quibbles with his picks.

So that is it for today. We encourage you to join the Facebook group. Join the discussion, as people say, on the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. I will give one plug now to the effectively wild listener website that is starting. I think it's starting next week or maybe the week after the winter meeting. So there are people who have banded together in our Facebook group to create their own site, which will be populated with writers for every team. It's a very ambitious plan.

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