Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 594: The Year’s Last Listener Emails

Episode Date: December 31, 2014

Ben and Sam end the year by answering listener emails about Barry Bonds, baseball in pop culture, Wil Myers, and more.

Truth be told, it happens once again in seven days. On New Year's, you can't view the moldy spikes in which Ruth played. And also on Thanksgiving, though I guarantee you all. On any other day, a fan can stand out in the hall So Merry Christmas, Cooperstown, and Happy Brand New Year Good morning and welcome to episode 594 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello.

Yo. How are you? Good. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to everyone listening, especially those who've listened to us all year. This is the end of our second full year. We've been doing this thing for two and a half years. It's a scary thought. Yes.

What do you mean? What is the significance of it being the end of our second full year? I don't know. It's not like we started. It's a time for taking stock. Why don't you just say this is our third New Year's Eve show? Okay. I mean, I'm not saying that's not like anybody's going to nominate that line for the podcasties, but...

Are we doing New Year's resolutions as we recommended that beat writers do last show? Or predicted that beat writers would do what would be your new year's resolution then go back to five a week as soon as possible yeah i'd say go back to 10 minutes a show okay as soon as we as soon as possible uh no likely to stick to that as most people are to stick to their new year's resolutions okay so as it happens this is a listener email show i don't really have anything to say before we start answering emails so should we begin yeah that sounds good okay question comes from francis he says i've been re-watching the Wire this holiday season and in the second episode of the last season. Wait.

Have you ever re-watched The Wire? I have not. I have only watched The Wire. I have also only watched it except once. I happened to be flipping through TV channels and I came across like the last eight minutes of some random episode from season three and just those eight minutes were so enjoyable that I have since checked out seasons

like I don't know maybe 15 times from the library but I've never re-watched it. I just check it out and then return it at the end of three weeks. There's so much new TV to watch. Who can go back and watch the old TV? But yeah if I were going to re-watch something other than Freaks and Geeks, which I've probably re-watched four or five times, because that's just one season.

But anything else, it would probably be The Wire. Yeah. Okay. So Francis says, in the second episode of the last season, an Orioles home opener figures into the plot. There was a post about that right was it a i think it was a cesspitous family barbecue post perhaps trying to find out what game that was as the baltimore sun reporter mills around outside of camden yards whose name do you think the announcer dropped that's right effectively wild celebrity nick marcakis so my question is this What is your favorite random baseball pop culture reference? Oh, well, oh, I can't use this one.

I was going to use the Action Bronson. Oh, yeah. Well, why can't you use it? I was going to say that some of the ones that you dug up there were good. It's kind of only a reference within this show already. It wouldn't count. If someone said, tell me a great joke, and you just told them the last joke that person told you,

it wouldn't count. Yeah, and I would probably say the scene from Elementary, which I've written about, so I probably shouldn't be able to say that either. I don't want to get too deep into this. I like the scene in Interstellar. Did you see Interstellar? I didn't see Interstellar.

There's a baseball scene in it? Yeah, there's a baseball scene in Interstellar. Yeah, there's a baseball scene in Interstellar. You know, it's set in the future and the world is kind of post some apocalypse and the population is much reduced. And so there is a scene where there's a traveling team called the New York Yankees. And it's just a bunch of guys who are really bad at baseball because at this point the talent pool has shrunk so much that there are no good baseball teams anymore

it's like it's like the 2015 major leagues no great teams so i don't want to get too deep into this uh because i someday still intend to write about this but um i i believe it's the first season of cheers there are some uh some games that are playing in the background on the bar. And one of them is central to the plot of an episode. And so you get to hear quite a bit of audio. And the broadcaster at the time, this would have been early 80s, I guess. The broadcaster, you can clearly tell, is John Miller. early 80s, I guess, the broadcaster, you can clearly tell, is John Miller.

And I noticed something about those games that seemed particularly significant to me. And I have ever since intended to write something, but it will take... I get the sense that this is not something that I can tackle in less than 6,000 words. And I would like to actually... I feel like it's important also that I talk to John Miller about it. And so I have thus far not gone anywhere with it. But that would be near the top of my list, just hearing John Miller. I also, anytime you hear an announcer you recognize, I remember hearing Ted Robinson once when he was the Giants announcer. And he was on like an episode of Law and Order. And I just like lost it.

I was so excited. Hearing an announcer is almost better than a baseball player reference. I don't have a good one off the top of my head. There are so many. Anyhow. Yeah. Okay. So that's that question all right we got a few i think yeah we got a few questions about barry bonds everyone enjoys barry bonds

questions so these are from ivan and i think it's ivan could be ivan i think it's Ivan. Could be Yvonne. I think it's Ivan. He says, as I am sure you are aware, Hall of Fame voting season tends to lead to a lot of bonds talk. You know what? I actually am going to now reverse my stance on the previous question because my favorite pop culture baseball reference is this. Can I send you this? Yeah. All right. This is what i've just sent you this is a commercial for something called blisberry and blisberry is what appears to be a small town

frozen yogurt shop and uh randomly in the middle of it, Barry Bonds shows up. And it's not clear why. Oh, right. Like, he was just walking through or something. I've seen this. Probably Grant linked to it at some point, and I saw it. And it's like, it's 21 seconds in, and he's just guy in yogurt shop. in and he's just guy in yogurt shop like they don't they don't flash big barry bonds script or anything like that nobody's they're not uh showcase girls around it just barry bonds eating yogurt along with a whole bunch of other people eating yogurt and his name is barry and it's a

blizz barry is the name of the company and he he's gone. A half a second passes, he eats yogurt, and then it's gone. And, like, nobody mentions it. So that's my favorite reference. Okay. The first YouTube comment is, question, how did the last guy having the yogurt pay for his cash or credit? I don't know. I will link to this so that everyone can watch it hall of fame

voting season tends to lead to a lot of bonds talk because of the man's body of work reputation and general character there have been three questions that have been chewing at me for quite some time all right i will take these one by one first are his single season walks and intentional walks records and i suppose his career marks in those categories, up there with Cy Young's career wins as unbreakable records. Okay. What's the next question? Should we answer and then move on?

Well, like, so the thing is that, okay, so he intentionally walked 120 times in a season. And before he broke the record, before he walked 68 times in 2002, I think the record was like 45. I think it was maybe William McCovey had 45. And so let's say that sometime after William McCovey, but before Barry Bonds, let's say that, I willie mccovey but before barry bonds uh let's say that i don't know george foster had walked 78 times and like the previous record was 45 nobody had ever come close nobody

was near him if he'd done 78 we would have said well that's unbreakable like that's absurd who would ever walk anybody 79 times because we did not have the uh breadth of imagination necessary to imagine the sport being played the way that it was played around barry bonds and so he crushed 78 just crushed it and so i'm always hesitant to say any record is unbreakable with very very very few exceptions because you you just don't really know how the game is going to be played yeah at some point in the fair so like for instance even the Cy Young record is unbreakable in the sense that nobody's gonna win 500 games while throwing you know complete game starts but maybe someday down the future in future, in an all bullpen scenario,

maybe the win is now given to whichever reliever pitches best because nobody's throwing more than two innings in a game. And then maybe over the course of his career, one of these pitchers who makes 900 or 1,000 appearances will get that many wins. It's possible. So is Bonds... I would say that Bonds' 120 intentional walks are difficult to see being broken.

That one I'd almost give the same kind of credence to or the same kind of untouchability to. But 232 walks in a season i would not say i think somebody could walk 233 times in a season in some scenario yeah the intentional walk seems seems less likely not only do you have to have i mean it's obviously less likely, but I think it's probably up there in the Cy Young stratosphere. Not only do you have to have someone as good as Barry Bonds, which is a once-in-a-century occurrence, but you have to have a fairly weak hitter, you know, fairly weak lineup and fairly weak hitter behind him, or at least relative to the usual guy who would be batting behind the best hitter ever.

And intentional walks have gotten less common also, as teams have maybe recognized that they're not a good idea in almost all circumstances. So that would make it less likely to so i would i mean cy young's record i i think is is virtually unbreakable under the current rules as you said the rules the definition of a win could change under the current definition i can't imagine that being broken, but I can't imagine the intentional walk record being broken either. I guess maybe the intentional walk record is easier to imagine being broken

because it's a single season record and you would only have to have one totally insane season to break it. Whereas with Cy Young at this point you would have to have many seasons that are almost unimaginable currently in order to break a career wins record George Foster maxed out at 75 walks in a season unintentional plus intentional bonds only uh Bon's only Bon's only started 139 games That year Left some on the table Left some yogurt on the table

Left some yogurt in the cup Alright second question About Bon's assuming he was indeed Using performance enhancing drugs Does his run from 2001 to 2004 Represent the ceiling For what a hitter can accomplish With PEDs.

I guess whether or not he was using something that might represent the ceiling for what a hitter can accomplish with or without, I guess with PEDs, I don't know. If you had given every great hitter in baseball whatever Bonds was taking, I mean, the thing is he was already just about the best player in baseball before that. But if you had given the same thing to every player in baseball at the same time, would someone have experienced the same boost that he did probably probably not so uh so i would say with the same with the same sort of substances probably i don't know it's the best we've ever seen anyone be yeah he uh yeah he uh was so i i always want to say oh well you know you to some degree

you just have to discount because the walks it was like this fever took a hold of the rest of the league and nobody was behaving quite rationally and i mean yes he he deserved a lot of those walks, but really, 232 walks, it's like he just stood there for those. But then he had an isolated power of 450. There was a reason for those walks. Yeah. I'm not sure exactly what the question is. Is the question, can I think it's that... Is the question, can anyone hit better than that?

Yes, pretty much. I mean, well, technically it's with PEDs. Could anyone hit better than that? I would say yes. I would say somebody could. Probably. Without? No human being who has ever lived could.

But some human being that could be created could. In the multiverse, there is a hitter who has 1424 OPS somewhere. Okay. This question comes... Hang on. Hang on. I'm checking his BABIP. I want to see what his BABIP his babbit 310 okay so that wasn't the reason all right this question

comes from nathan what's wrong with will myers he was a top prospect and he gets traded he was a rookie of the year and he gets traded he was traded with jake of the Year, and he gets traded. He was traded with Jake Odorizzi, Patrick Leonard, and Mike Montgomery for Shields and Davis. It wasn't thought of as a huge haul for the price. He was traded with Ryan Hannigan for Jake Bowers, Birch Smith, and Rene Rivera, and Steven Souza and Travis Ott. Who? What's wrong with Will Myers? You are the expert on Will Myers being traded. Well, I don't know about that. I wrote that thing the first time he was traded, trying to make sense of why he was traded,

and the explanation was that he wasn't as good as we thought he was, that he was overrated based on the prospect ranking. good as we thought he was that he was overrated based on the prospect ranking and then i look back at the history of players who had been top 10 prospects he was a top 10 prospect at the time players who had been ranked that high and then were traded i don't remember how i defined it before before the the following season i guess maybe um and And he was, it's not a huge group because those guys don't tend to get traded all that often. But looking at what the guys who were traded ended up producing, it was like half of what a top 10 prospect who doesn't get traded produces, which would suggest perhaps,

might just suggest small sample, but it might also suggest that there's a reason that you should be suspicious when a team trades a top 10 prospect because maybe they don't think he should be a top 10 prospect. Can I interrupt, though? Yeah. A lot of the, any answer that you're going to give or any answer I'm going to give is going to basically be a twist on that. We're going to say, well, you know, maybe something with his makeup or the teams that know him best or whatever.

But the Padres are trying to trade him, apparently, or rumored. Like, there are rumors that they are also trying to trade him. I don't think the Padres have gotten to know him so deeply in their four days together on this cruise to assign them extra insight into Will Myers.

Maybe Preller called to welcome him to the team or something and he there was just a terrible conversation he was listening to some terrible music in the background doesn't like his taste in music uh i don't know i don't know what it could be but but well you mentioned makeup right there have been reports rumors surrounding him in both places he's been there was was some report about his work ethic being lacking in Kansas City before the trade.

And then he himself has made some comments about how he came into this past season perhaps not having worked as hard as he should have and taken his place for granted and everything. And maybe he has realized that and mended his ways but maybe not maybe it's an innate thing so i don't know that that is one possible reason the other reasons i guess if you wanted to just say it was you know reasons based on his profile as a player uh i don't know at the time people pointed out that that he was just a corner guy and not an elite defender or anything and and not the best bad in the world so he wasn't gonna be maybe you know he wasn't the best player in baseball or anything and and last year uh he hurt his wrist and that's sort of scary so i don't know that's the best i can do without reaching for something about makeup personality so he's now played for the royals the rays and the padres is this the smallest market player in history?

Probably not. You don't think so? What would be your trifecta? What would be the ideal small market trifecta? A's and R's? A's, R's and maybe in Pirates? Yeah, A's, R's, Pirates. That'd be good. Royals?

Not in the three? Well, they're I Rays, Pirates, that'd be good. Royals, not in the three? Well, I guess historically, yes. They're kind of spending out of that bracket right now. But yes, historically, sure. It's a good collection of small market teams. Three of the bottom six probably right now, right? Yeah. And what would we consider a trade

to the Marlins? If he were traded to the Marlins, are we counting them as small? Probably should, yeah. Okay. All right. That sets some parameters for the inevitable piece that one of us will write. Okay. All right. So that sets some parameters for the inevitable piece that one of us will write.

Okay. All right. Do you want to do a play index segment? Feels a little early for that. Yeah. Well, keep them guessing. We don't want to fall into a rut in our second and a half year. When I was a kid, my dad taught me the bet that you will never lose. And you do have to find a sucker for this bet. But as I found immediately the next day after with a fellow named Andrew Sanui, it's easy to find a sucker for this bet because it sounds so tempting. So the bet goes like this. You play the part of the sucker. So we bet, you pick a team

and I pick a team. You pick a team and I pick a team. And what we're going to do is for this entire baseball season, you're going to multiply that team's runs scored in each game, and I'm going to add my team's runs scored in each game. And so if you pick the Giants and they score three in the first game and two in the second game, then you're at six, and if I pick the Giants and they score three in the first and two in the second, then I'm at five. And of course, the multiplication will destroy the the addition and you sort of have to like multiplying by two doubling no you multiply you just multiply three times two and then if they

score eight the next game oh okay yeah so uh so you sort of have to like if they're you have to find somebody who's not too smart, obviously, because it's just such an obvious win to be the multiplier that the person will smell or add. So then I had to convince Andrew. Well, no, because if... I forget how I convinced Andrew. But anyway, I did convince Andrew.

Oh, yeah, I convinced him that... Andrew, the guy I bet. Were you listening to the beginning of this story? I hope Andrew's not a podcast listener because he just impugned his intelligence. Well, he was in eighth grade. We were all a little bit dumb. You were slightly less dumb. I convinced Andrew.

I think I convinced him that, oh, well, I would be the addition team, and I'd make it up on all the times the team scored one because then I add one, but if you multiply by one, it doesn't go anywhere. And anyway, Andrew thought I was an idiot and took the bet. But of course, the problem is that as soon as you get shut out, you're at zero and you're never getting off zero. And so that's the sucker. That's where you get the sucker, right? And so I got Andrew for this one.

I think I made $5. After a lengthy negotiation over whether zero counts as a score or a lack of data, which was cheating on Andrew's part, and I convinced him that he was wrong. So I did get the $5 from Andrew. My dad will be proud to know that his kid was out gambling his peers out of money. Anyway, where was I going with this? I don't know. Unlosable bet, right?

It's unlosable. All you need is one shutout in the entire year. Uh-huh. I sense where this is going. I wondered whether this bet would ever lose. Uh-huh. Does any team ever not get shutout? Okay.

Do you think teams ever don't get shutout for an entire season? No. Never? The premise of the bet is that they do not, of course. Right. Do they not? 162 game seasons? I would say no.

All right. Well, I went back to 1920, and I found 2,072 games. That's 2,072 seasons. 2,072 seasons, 2,072 teams seasons, and of these 2,072, you're saying zero? Hmm. So now we're bringing in 154 game seasons.

That changes everything. And even 110 game seasons. I did not discriminate against strike-shortened seasons. Man. All right, I'll tell you what, though. No strikes. The strike-shortened seasons are clear of any of these. So I could have excluded strike-shortened seasons. Okay.

We are, however, bringing in 154 games. Well, it seems like if there were never any, then this Play Index segment would not really go anywhere. Play Index segment takes you where it goes. Sometimes it doesn't go anywhere. Well, if it were not a

Play Index segment, and I weren't suspicious that this was going to have a twist ending, I would have said no. You would have been close, then, but not quite right. Because there have been two of these seasons in Major League history. Two out of 2072. Those two are the 1932 Yankees. Really?

Good team. Wow. Good team in a huge run scoring environment. Yeah. They had Babe Ruth. They had Luke Gehrig. good team in a huge run scoring environment yeah they're uh they had a they had babe ruth luke garrig those guys were hitters uh they had five six guys in their lineup six of the eight had an ops plus over 125 that's a line uh They scored 6,400 runs. They scored 1,002 runs. So they're a 1,000 run offense

in a 154 game season. Massive team. Did not get shut out. And the second one was in 2000. The Cincinnati Reds. What? The Cincinnati Reds. Legendary 2000 Reds. What? The Cincinnati Reds.

Legendary 2000 Reds. They were a below league average offense. They scored fewer runs than the league average. They had their best hitter was Ken Griffey. And as you recall, Ken Griffey playing on the Reds. What was Ken Griffey playing on the Reds? This was not, he wasn't that great at that point. He was pretty good.

Sean Casey was their second best hitter. Dimitri Young was on that team. John Shett was on that team. It wasn't a bad team. Barry Larkin. Barry Larkin was on that team. 36-year-old Barry Larkin. Barry Larkin was on that team. 36-year-old Barry Larkin. 35-year-old Benito Santiago.

29-year-old D.T. Cromer. That's prime D.T. Cromer. 27-year-old Camara Bartay. 31-year-old Ed Tovensey. Best hitter minimum 100 plate appearances. Alex Ochoa.

316, 378, 586. 28-year-old Alex Ochoa. So, okay team. Good team. Average team. Basically an average team. And in fact, they were 9th in the league in one-run games, scoring exactly one run. And so this is a total fluke.

Just like the, just whatever. Just a thing that happened one time and probably was not acknowledged. I wonder if anyone benefited from this bet in 2000. Well, so, okay, so I took Andrew Sanoe in 1995. I like to imagine that he went to college and he talked some guy into this bet and he picked the Reds and lost, Somehow lost.

The only man in history to lose both sides of this bet would be amazing. So anyway, that's weird. I just found that to be really weird. I wonder if this is a thing you can bet on. I wonder if you can bet on teams not being shut out in Las Vegas. Oh, right. Maybe Zachary Levine would know and can tell us what kind of odds you would get and what kind

of payout there would have been for someone who bet on the 2000 Reds. Well, you need basically 1,000 to 1 odds. So Vegas probably gives you 40 to 1. Right. Don't bet on baseball. It's not a good idea. All right. Good play, Index. Thanks. Very good.

So please support our sponsor. Come up with fun facts. Find ways to beat your friends at betting every once in a thousand times you try it at Baseball Reference by subscribing using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. By the way, it dawns on me now that we only answered two of Ivan's three Barry Bonds questions. I don't know why we stopped, but we did. Never got to the third one. Wait, before you get to that, I remember how I tricked Andrew.

I sold it. I had to have a compelling storyline for why I was going to do this bet. So Andrew was a Dodgers fan, and I was a Giants fan. He wore a Dodgers hat every day, and I wore a Giants hat. But he was out of country. He was from L.A. And so I sold this as bluster. I was like, the Giants are so much better than the Dodgers that they will.

And so that's how. It wasn't like I'm just a dumb math idiot. It was I'm a dumb math idiot because baseball fandom turns us into dumb math idiots, and you're about to take advantage of one of them. That's how I sold it. Well done. All right. Ivan says, do you think the backlash

against peds and the ped era began when it became apparent that bonds was going to break hank aaron's home run record i'm sure there are other factors but i can't help but think that if the mid-2000s rolled around and it was say ken griffey jr as we all expected at the turn of the 21st century or even if we're rewriting history, a more well-liked player like Jim Tomey or Frank Thomas challenging the mark, there would not be the kind of radical action and revision that we wound up seeing. I don't remember the timeline of those events well enough to say. Because Bonds broke 73, broke 70, before there were really allegations

or before there were a lot of allegations, right? Right. So what if we just change it to what if it hadn't been Barry Bonds setting all kinds of crazy records? What if it had just been McGuire and Sosa and then other popular players? I don't think so. I don't think it was about bonds. No.

I think if Maguire and Sosa had battled to 57 home runs, if one of them had hit 57 home runs, and that's as far as anybody got, and the record was still 61. I could see accepting the premise. But that would have nothing to do with anybody being unliked. It's just the... Yeah, well, right. If the numbers hadn't gotten totally ahistorical

and unlike anything we'd ever seen, and people were using Peds at the time then then yeah there wouldn't have been such a such a backlash if the peds didn't appear to work so well then maybe we wouldn't even have noticed or or cared all that much but but so yeah i mean it was there was there was a bond backlash but i think I think it was more about the fact that all of these records were getting erased than it was about the fact that it was Bonds specifically. So let me ask you this. What if there was never any steroids in baseball and Bonds had broken the record clean? Right now, nobody particularly cares that Bonds has the record.

It just sort of felt lackluster when he broke it. It doesn't feel like a number that most people have committed to memory right now. Do you know it? You know it, right? Yes, but yes, I agree. I think at this point people have either decided that it doesn't count and have thus disregarded it, or they're not the sort of person who finds or cares who holds records. So would it be this way anyway? Is this just a recency thing, like all records are boring once they were set, you know, once they're not old.

Like are all records pretty much at least 20 or 30 years away from being interesting to us? I think, well, with the all-time home run record, that kind of carries the weight of decades of mattering and being important so i think i think that becomes important immediately no matter who holds it or how long it's been there was i mean there was more fewer or at least probably more than again i mean when hank aaron was breaking the record they were not selling out every game or anything, I don't think. So I don't know. But there was a lot of attention paid to that record for similarly negative reasons. People responding in racist ways and sending death threats and everything.

I don't know how the positive attention compared to that paid to Bonds. But I don't know. I think if it had been someone else and there had been no suspicion attached to it, I mean, the 1998 home run race was that generated incredible excitement immediately at the time. generated incredible excitement immediately at the time so okay let us answer one from eric hartman he has two questions which are related first in the next 30 years will the padres score the most runs in the league at least once and two in the next 30 years will the rockies allow the fewest runs in the league at least once um no the

the Rockies one again 30 years is 30 years a long enough time period that I have to uh defer to my earlier comments about our lack of imagination probably not 30 years I think is fairly predictable I think that the ball will still be round in 30 years. Could be a different ballpark in 30 years. Definitely could be a ballpark. So I was willing to rule out the Rockies, certainly. I don't think you can do anything to Colorado baseball to make it not be weird. So I will rule that one out completely.

I won't rule the Padres one out because, like you say, if they built a ballpark that was small. Well, Petko's newer than Coors Field. I mean, not that Coors Field is a ballpark that anyone talks about being replaced or remodeled. I'm saying you could not build a stadium in Colorado that would be hitter unfriendly. You couldn't do it. Impossible. We could do it on this show.

Yeah, the Colorado Springs ballpark is crazy too. Although playing roughly league average these days. Really? Yeah. Maybe I should take it back. But Padres, you'd have at best, I think, a new stadium there in

18 or 20 years at best. Then you've only got 10 years. It's not like the Padres have any history of being a great team, really. It could happen, but it's unlikely. So, I mean, the question is, what is the question? Could you envision it in any scenario, or would you bet on it? I guess he's asking if we would bet on it.

I would not bet on it. Mm-hmm. But it could happen. Preller might make several more acquisitions before the end of this winter. Could happen this year, next year. My favorite thing about the Hank Aaron thing is that the day that he broke the record, they drew 54,000 fans. And the next day they drew 11,000.

And then the next day they drew 11,000 and then the next day they drew 6,000 and a week later they drew 3,000 wow they were not interested in him breaking his own record oddly although I guess back then

they counted attendance I think they counted attendance by people in the park, not tickets. So I have always kind of thought, wow, nobody was even buying tickets on the chance that like, I mean, because they didn't know it was going to happen that day. Yeah. So you would have thought that there would have been a bunch of people who bought tickets for that whole week thinking it would be that later in the week. But now that I think about it, if they were counting people through the turnstiles, then yeah, sure, those people just wouldn't use their tickets. Maybe.

But, okay, but they were selling out at least a little bit on the way. One game. That was the first home game of the year. Okay, right. And the Yankees' attendance on the day that Roger Maris hit his 61st home run was not very high. The year before their final four home games were 10,000, 6,000, 18,000, and then 41,000, but that was, of course, fan appreciation day

back when that mattered. Right. back when that mattered right um all right let's take this question from dustin who says has there ever been a bigger apparent discrepancy between the value a player perceives himself to have and the market than steven drew's case two years a row, it seems like his demands are completely out of line with the offers. I know it's Scott Boris, but you never even seem to hear a real rumor about anyone coming close to signing him. Just seems like a really strange case to me. Even Kendris Morales got paid this year. This was maybe in response to a report earlier today. I think it was Joel Sherman, maybe, that said that a bunch of teams are interested in Stephen Drew

as a second baseman, perhaps, but he is asking for $9 or $10 million for a year, and teams aren't interested in that because he never looked like a major league hitter at any point of last season. And this is coming off last year, of course, where he waited the first couple months of the season out because whatever he was not expecting was not what he got,

or whatever he was expecting was not what he got. So has there ever been a bigger discrepancy? Yes, probably. Probably last winter,elson cruz right do you believe the nelson cruz five years 75 million dollar offer exists do you believe it it's real not really i believe it about as much as i believe what's that what's that trade rumor that we are always the Brett Anderson for Will Myers. Right, yeah.

Which maybe, I don't know, maybe now that we're finding out more and more about Will Myers, maybe that is less insane. The thing is, though, that later in the year, there are also good rumors that Nelson Cruz accepted a one-year $8 million deal for the Mariners, or was it maybe 2-16? I can't remember. I think it was 1-8. And that everything was good.

It was all agreed on. Jack Z and Nelson Cruz agreed to it. And then ownership mixed it because they didn't want to spend that much money on a PED guy. because they didn't want to spend that much money on a PED guy. And it's just hard to imagine that Jack Z would offer a $75 million offer to a team when he couldn't even get approval for $8 million for the same guy with no new information coming out. Like that seems implausible to me. Doesn't it seem implausible to you?

It does. It does. coming out like that seems impossible to me doesn't it seem implausible to you it does it does and it's is it possible that one team could be so far out of line with the entire league that the best other offer he could get was one year and eight million where the Mariners were willing to offer him many, many, many times more of that? Not really. Yeah. I mean, it's possible. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but it's hard to believe. It is. Hank Aaron played a game in front of 738 people tonight.

Did he break the all-time home run record in that game? He didn't, but he carried it with him. Yes. Like a torch. He could have broken it. Could have broken it at any time. He could have hit 42 home runs. Yeah.

Well, every home run he hits had a new record. If I had been the Brewers marketing director at the time, I would have been all over that. I would have tried to talk people into seeing history every day. So clearly there's been a bigger discrepancy between what a player was looking for and what he got than Drew. I mean, if Nelson Cruz was looking for five years and $75 million, I would imagine, or maybe had an opening, that was his opening bid or his opening gambit in any

negotiation, perhaps at some point in the winter. So he had to come down very far from that. so he had to come down very far from that. So, yeah, there have been bigger discrepancies. But maybe there have not been players who were unwilling to adjust their expectations as much. That's probably not true either. There have been a lot of players over the years. A lot of negotiations, a lot of contracts. All right, we'll take one more from...

Really? Yeah. End of the year blowout. Why did the Play Index start so early then? It wasn't that early. It was. It was 25 minutes ago. You normally do one question after the Play Index.

So if you wanted to have a bunch of questions after... That's true. I was worried about about the quality of the questions so this one comes from scott hypothetical scenario for you imagine for a moment that the naysayers are all correct baseball is dying in an effort to appeal to a young fantasy sport minded short attention span fan base mlB has decided to hold a fantasy draft every five years. Any contracts signed between 2015 and 2020 cannot exceed the end of the 2020 season. Prior to the 2021 season, everyone is dumped into a free agent pool and redrafted auction style, with every auction

dollar having a real life salary equivalent. Fans would love it, because even sad sack franchises get to reboot every few years, plus the draft would be can't miss TV. The Players Association would have grievances, but guaranteeing all players free agency every five years would have to quiet some of their concerns. Owners would love it, because they would be reviving the business so why not do this what are the major flaws to this half-baked idea and how might the idea be improved so think about what the year before the draft would be like um let's just be i might ignore all of this except to ask you whether the year before this fantasy draft would be the most fun year or the least fun year to watch baseball. Because everybody's contract is expiring.

There's no need to even... I guess you can't even... Could you trade them for anything? Because you could sell them. But you can't even carry a player over the next year. So you couldn't even really trade them for anything, could you? Well, prospects. Are prospects outside of this?

We're talking only major leagues? I would think so. Doesn't say explicitly. Doesn't say, but I would think so. It doesn't say explicitly. It doesn't say, but I would think so. So would that be a fun year of baseball? Or would that just be completely frustrating to watch? Yeah. I mean, at the end of the year,

you would have about 11 or 13 teams that include all the good players. And then you'd have 16 to 18-ish, 19 teams that have no usable major leaguer. Would those games be fun? Nope. You don't think so? I don't think so.

Would the games between the contenders though I mean would it be more fun to have super teams in the postseason where they're all like every good player is in the postseason and they're essentially five all-star teams in each league

playing against each other would those games be fun or would it just be so cheap and mean I think it would just devalue everything i think this is not a good idea i think yeah we've we've talked about in the past the idea of loaning players long ago we discussed that and we wondered whether it would even be satisfying if your team won with a bunch of just loners who came over and helped you for a few months and then went back to another team this i think i mean the other problem with this is that it would it would probably hurt parody right he he he says that it maybe would be appealing to fans of losing teams because they could reboot but you'd

just this would heavily favor favor the rich teams right because the the small market teams that drafted and developed good young players would just lose them all constantly so that would be depressing and i don't know if the the Players Association would go for it either. Because even though you are guaranteeing all players free agency every five years, you are also guaranteeing that everyone will be free agents at the same time every five years, which would keep the prices down. That was like the owner's original proposal for free agency, right? Or that was one of the things was discussed that was just like everyone would be a free agent every year

so that you would have the freedom to go where you wanted, but the market would be so flooded that you wouldn't have scarcity, you wouldn't make much more than you were already making. So I don't see any advantage other than that the day of the draft would probably be pretty exciting. That would probably be the number one sports draft watching day of the year, right? I would think that this would immediately be more interesting than the NBA draft or the NFL draft, and those are very popular events. This is drafting everyone at the same time.

So that would be a popular event, but not worth it. No, I mean, the thing about it is that everybody knows this from 80% of the fantasy leagues they've ever been in. The draft is the best day of the year. And then you just lose interest immediately after that. Right. And sometimes you get a league that is not like that. And those leagues are rare and precious.

Uh, but most leagues are half abandoned by June. Uh, cause you almost don't want to have a draft that's too good. You don't want to have it be too good at the beginning, because then it's a letdown at the end. And so the system we have now, which is the player acquisition process mirrors the season itself

in interminability and sloggishness and relentlessness is good. There are no highs that are too high. There's never really a day of baseball that's so good that you're like, well, tomorrow's sure going to be disappointing. And this draft would probably be that. You'd be bored by three weeks later. Okay. All right.

Also, the mechanics of it make no sense. Also that. I'll just note that. Sure. All right. So that's the end of this show. It's the end of this year. Thank you for listening to us all year.

We hope that you will continue to listen to us in 2015. Please, as we mentioned, support our sponsor so that we can keep doing this. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Leave us ratings and reviews to help us attract other listeners. Join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild.

Someone in the Facebook group gave someone else in the Facebook group a Ryan Webb autographed baseball card for Christmas. It was touching. And please send us emails for next week at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. That's it. Happy New Year.

Have a nice New Year's Eve celebration. We will speak to you in 2015. That was the most depressing opening. Do it again. Start over. I'm better than this. I don't know if you are.

It wasn't that different from our usual opening. No, but it was. We have a very little margin for error. We are like Josh Hamilton's swing.