Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 602: These Emails Are Marked As Important

Episode Date: January 21, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about their favorite regular-season games, then answer listener emails about player relocation, bidding for top prospects, transaction crowdsourcing, and more.

From us I heard the Yankees lost to the Braves Santa Mala Key Shut up and go to sleep Give me an answer Give me an answer Give me an answer Good morning and welcome to episode 602 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. Yo. I just declared a game was my favorite regular season game ever. Do you have a favorite regular season game ever? Hmm. Off the top of my head, no.

I could probably come up with one. What's yours? The Giants home opener in 1993 because like three months earlier we were convinced they were moving. They had been sold and they were moving. Have I ever talked about that? Have I ever talked about me being at the game the day that they announced they were moving

and the local TV news crew was there interviewing people? Doesn't sound familiar. And so I was 12 years old and I really wanted to be on TV. So I just started, like wherever she would go in the stadium, I would kind of get with an earshot and just start yelling,

put me on TV while she was interviewing people. And she finally interviewed me and, you know, obviously just to get me to shut up. But then she used my clip. It's ironic that you really wanted to be on TV at age 12. Me and Brandon. It is ironic, but nobody knows why you said that. Me and like Brandon Crawford, I think.

I think Brandon Crawford was on one of those too. I think he was like crying on some news broadcast. Do you remember what you said? No, honestly, I don't know if anyone has footage of 12 year old sam miller on tv talking about the giants anyway yeah anyway the very existence of that home game was it felt like a miracle it felt like they had saved baseball and uh bonds was playing his first game as a giant and and as I recall, I think he hit like a home run in the first or the second, and it was awesome.

Yeah, I don't know that I can... I mean, I could probably come up with some pretty good games, but as a kid who rooted for the Yankees, there usually wasn't a whole lot of suspense or stakes in most regular season games. I don't know. Maybe the regular season game that I remember very clearly is Mike Messina's almost perfect game that Carl Everett broke up with one strike away. That was a painful ending at the time because Messina was one of my favorite players and that was fun to watch.

But that comes to mind can it just be the doesn't have to be a game that we were rooting for one way or another maybe I'll just pick the Dan Johnson game the crazy crazy end to the 2011

season was it yeah 2011 season where everything came down to that last day and the Red Sox game was going on at the same time, and there were pennant races being decided, and Dan Johnson hit another memorable home run. That was probably the most fun I've had on a regular season night. so the Giants game that I'm talking about we were driving home from a vacation and so we were in like a three or four hour drive and we were listening to it on the radio as we always would do and it was me and my mom

and my dad and we heard the Beach Boys sing the National Anthem, sorry the Grateful Dead sing the National Anthem and Bonds Homer did his first at bat and it was a great game it won extra innings, Giants won and at the end of it my mom revealed that after six years of listening to baseball on every car trip we ever taken, that in fact, she hated it. And I was just completely

shocked as a narcissistic 13-year-old, 12 or 13-year-old at the time. It would never have occurred to me that other people had opinions that differed from mine. And I was shocked. And so from then on, we had to, because me and my dad are good guys, we would kind of parcel out the baseball segments in any car trip so that it was not nonstop. How long does a grateful dead national anthem take? Is there a jam in the middle? It's still Matt Albers' birthday, his 32nd birthday in the time zone where you are right now.

So we should wish a happy birthday to Matt Albers. All right, so anything else before we dive into emails? Did you say play index? Yeah, I think so. I jumped in pretty quick tonight. Mm-hmm. All right. So let's start with a question from Francis in the Bronx.

Now that Ben Zobrist has fulfilled his destiny and become an athletic, what player would you move to a new team and why? Here are my three examples. A selfish one. As a Yankees fan, I'd make Mike Trout the club's latest famed center fielder. A funny one. I'd stick Joey Votto on the Royals to watch people freak out as the team tried to get him to cut down on his walks and homers in the name of turning him into a singles-hitting run producer.

And a purist one. I'd put DJ LeMayhew on the braves to see him make sweet baseball music with andrelton simmons i'm sure you guys can come up with some better ones nope no i wouldn't wouldn't be sure yeah there aren't really that many possibilities for this because even he named three and two of them i can't even really co-sign. Like the selfish one is just a selfish one. Everyone wants the best player in baseball on their team. That's not a fun one particularly. And the Votto Royals one, people have been freaking out about those things with Votto on the red.

So I don't know how much that would really change if he were on the Royals suddenly. Don't know how much that would really change if he were on the Royals suddenly. So how many situations are there where our appreciation of a player could realistically be altered by the team that the player is on? I guess he is named one of them, a double play combination. That is a good one. If you think that a particular shortstop in second basement would work well together and make a lot of web gems if they played side by side. That would be a good one. Maybe if you think that a player is underappreciated on one team and if he could get away from that team, he would blossom and get a ton of playing time. Or there could be some sort of park effect where you think that a player's most entertaining quality would be enhanced by a particular park.

Mine would probably be Giancarlo Stanton to Coors Field, which I've written about before. You haven't. I've written about it. You didn't write about it. I did write about it. No, I wrote about it. When did you write about it? August 24, 2012. It was headlined, The Rockies and Real Home Run Hitters.

When, 2012? August. I wrote about John Carlos Stanton. We must have both written about it that month, prompted by that crazy home run he hit. Yeah. It's funny because you and I were both editing each other at the time and neither one of us remembers.

Yeah. Well, almost every time Stanton goes to Coors Field, he seems to hit just an extreme home run. And he hits some pretty crazy home runs as it is, no matter what park. But the best thing about Stanton is that he hits really, really long home runs. And if he were in Coors Field all the time, he'd hit even more really long home runs. So that would be fun. Yeah, it would be. But it actually wouldn't be that fun anymore. I think that the strength of the era has conquered the strength of Coors Field.

And so even if you put Stanton there, you know, he'd hit 55 home runs. It'd be like, you know, it'd be fun. But we've seen guys hit 55 home runs. I mean, I want to see someone hit 85 home runs it'd be like you know it'd be fun but we've seen guys hit 55 home runs I mean I want to see someone hit 85 home runs I don't even know how many more he would hit than he already hits I mean he would hit more but he well you could read the article I just sent you

which is explicitly about that and how many did you conclude that he would get I didn't for Stanton but seems like one of those guys who his home runs so often would clear the fence in any park. Although, of course,

anyone has boundary homers that would go out in some places and not in others. Of course, Clayton Kershaw playing for the Cedar Rapids, whatever they are these days, Colonels, I think. We had a question about that one time.

I would still like to see that. But that's not really an option. I would say in... It's not that Stanton would hit more home runs. I don't really care if he hits more. It's that his longest home runs would be even longer. Yeah, but, you know, who cares?

Like, it's just... I care a little bit. It's just math. You're not actually seeing any... They're not more impressive. I think they are. They're not. They're just in lighter air, Ben.

You know how it works. But visually, they go farther. They're majestic. More majestic. I find home runs to actually not be majestic. I know you do. We talked about this when we talked about Our MLB TV

Must watch players and I named him Stanton And you disparaged me and then Immediately after that He hit a fun home run And I promised an article about it and I haven't done it It's on my tickler file My tickler list It's going to be good because I do have a good angle on it

But my answer To this question would be A-Rod to Seattle because I don't believe anybody in Seattle ever hated A-Rod while he was there. A-Rod in Seattle was non-controversial. He was likable. He was liked. He was Mike Trout, more or less. You know, a little stiff, maybe not quite, you know, not quite, certainly not Jeter necessarily. But as far as I know, well-liked and a superstar. And it was, you know, if you were making the biopic, it's clear that the decision to go to Texas was the moment that everything changed for A-Rod and the public. to go to Texas was the moment that everything changed for A-Rod and the public. And so I think it would be a nice bookend to the A-Rod story if he went back to Seattle. And I assume that Seattleians probably hate him more than anybody because he left them for Texas at the time. But it'd be interesting to see if he had a good year and redeemed himself and 29 cities would still hate him but at least he would have this one little city where he was

always happy yeah like barry bunt has san francisco i guess yeah i guess that's a good solution to this question is some some homecoming although i don't know how fun the homecoming is beyond the initial reception like how fun was ken Ken Griffey Jr.'s homecoming? That was not very fun. He would have to be pretty good. He would have to be pretty good for it to work. Yeah. How about Billy Hamilton on the Royals?

I think I would like that. Billy Hamilton is, he plays for the Reds and Great American Ballpark has one of the smallest outfields in baseball in terms of square footage. And Kauffman has the most, I believe. So if he went to Kauffman, which is a good place to hit triples and stuff, we would get to see Billy Hamilton run more. And they're also aggressive base-stealing-wise. So he would run in that way there as much as anywhere else.

So the thing we like about Billy Hamilton is that he runs fast. And if he were on the Royals, he would run in that way There as much as anywhere else The thing we like about Billy Hamilton is that he runs fast And if he were on the Royals he would Run fast more often Okay Alright this one is more like A comment it comes from Kenny He says I remember a while back Sam delved into who was the best player

To never make an all-star team Or receive MVP votes and if I remember Correctly he settled on Nick Markakis as a clear number one. However, I'm struggling to remember if there were any other parameters for this title. The other day I read that AJ Burnett has never been an All-Star, which came as a slight surprise to me, possibly due to his high profile as a multiple-time World Series winner and a former Yankee. In addition to the All-Star Game snubs, further research indicates that not only has he never received any MVP votes, he has never received any Cy Young votes either.

Therefore, barring any other parameters I might be forgetting, I would like to nominate A.J. Burnett and his 38.5 and counting Fangraphs War as the best player to never make an All-Star Game or receive any major award votes. Side note, in case only position players are eligible for this imaginary yet awesome title, David DeJesus is sitting at 24.7 FWAR, which is a rounding error more than Marquecas. Please let me know if I'm onto something here or if I'm totally forgetting a major part of the exercise. Well, we didn't talk about pitchers, and I think it's a lot easier for a pitcher to make this list, I would think, because Cy Young ballots are much shorter, and pitchers have a great example off the top of my head, but this is not a good example because he got one,

but Mark Burley, for instance, has almost 60 war on baseball reference and has appeared on, I think, one ballot as a third place vote in his career, something like that. And so it's harder for a pitcher to qualify. So I think that it wouldn't be fair to compare pitchers and hitters in this category. But Burnett is a fine candidate for the pitcher half of it. I don't have a better one off the top of my head. And the other thing about pitchers, by the way, is that there was only one pitcher on the ballot until, you know, some year, like 1970 or something. And there wasn't even a Cy Young before like 1955 or whatever.

I'm just making updates, but roughly. And so you don't have the historical advantage that MVP offers where it goes back to 1930. And again, pitchers just don't get MVP votes at the same rate. As to DeJesus, my issue with DeJesus is that he was never really good enough to qualify for either one. He is a compiler in this regard. I think his best year was maybe a four or five win year, which could get you down ballot votes. But as I wrote earlier this year with Utley, there's certainly no guarantee of it.

And it could get you an all-star appearance, but also not a guarantee, especially if you don't have a great first half. I think the reason that we noticed Mark Akis and I think the reason somebody else noticed Brett Gardner later on is that each of them had a seven or eight win season where you're like, geez, just that is shocking. How did they not get recognized in any way for that one season?

The strength of the career just adds to it. DeJesus is in a different category altogether. Maybe there needs to be a third category. The best player who never got an MVP vote appeared in an All-Star game or deserved either.

Yeah, okay. We should probably make that one of the conditions. Alright. Let's do this one from Robert. He is referring to our podcast yesterday. If the Nationals were to heed Sam's advice and trade Steven Strasburg, wouldn't that shed a different light, not in a good way, on their decision to hold him out of the postseason a couple of years ago? Surely looking back, they'd wish they'd not chosen to save his arm, no? they'd not chosen to save his arm, no?

Sure, they can defend the decision in regard to his health in the immediate years following, but at the time they made it sound as if they were sacrificing one postseason for a career. Given the landscape now in which even rich teams are willing to Billy Bean their rosters and trade stars a year or two before threat contracts expire, or their contracts expire, and no one is ultimately untouchable,

perhaps we won't see another team hold out a young star again. What do you think? Do you think that, geez, I don't know. I mean, you certainly, well, for one thing, if your plan is to cash out Strasburg, you know, two years later, you've got to get him to two years later. And if he gets hurt between then and two years, he's worth nothing to you. And you maybe could convincingly argue that it's not like teams have these injuries so well calibrated. I mean, they have them completely uncalibrated. They don't even know if the innings and the pitch counts would have hurt him, let alone when it would hurt him and at what pace it would hurt him.

So it's a very difficult thing to estimate. And presumably if it ever became more easy to estimate if we had greater precision in what this was doing to a guy's arm, it might hurt his trade value. Probably wouldn't if he'd made it two years healthy, but it might somewhat. And you don't know you're going to do it. You don't know that you're going to want to trade him at that point.

So it's a very hard thing to plan. But I guess maybe a better question, a simpler question, is simply this. Do the A's hold Strasburg out of that situation, knowing that they are almost certainly going to trade him before he gets to free agency? Do you think that the A's and the Nationals, ignoring all the other aspects of the team that separate them. The fact that one had Strasburg and one didn't. Yeah, and I mean obviously that.

But ignoring all those, would the A's, knowing that they were going to trade him almost certainly at year three, four, or maybe five. Probably not even that. Would the A's have held him out? I doubt it. I don't think most teams would have, even most teams in the Nationals situation. Well, Ben, I have an article topic for you. Oh, yeah?

Well, the A's know that almost nobody on their team is going to be there in three or four years. Right. And so is there any evidence that the A's have taken any particular stances to preserve their pitcher's health? Like, I don't know if this is evidence, but I'm just spitballing here. Sonny Gray, of course, was pitching well into October, and that was the year after he got drafted.

So that was his first full season in the pros, I think, maybe. Although he also wasn't that young at the time. No, I'm wrong. I'm off by a year on Sonny Gray, aren't I? Anyway, the point is that Sonny Gray, nobody... I mean, have you ever heard of the A's shutting a pitcher down or doing anything of the sort? I'm guessing that fatigue is fatigue and all the things that would hurt you, that would make you an injured pitcher, would also make you an ineffective pitcher. And I also think that the A's are not necessarily governed by sociopaths.

And I think that probably the case is that you wouldn't find anything. But that seems like the sort of thing you look at. Are the A's looser with pitch counts? Are the A's looser with any of these things? Knowing that they don't have the same incentives as a team like, say, the Tigers or whoever you think is a team that is likely to keep its players for a long time. Yeah, Gray was drafted in 2011, debuted in 2013. So, yeah, I can't call to mind any obvious examples

of the A's overworking people. They don't have that reputation, really. And you probably don't really want to be known as the team that overworks players because you know that they're disposable or that you're going to dispose of them soon. Not that it really matters if you're

drafting the players, they don't really have a choice of where they're going. But if you do the same to people you trade for or, or free agents, then that's probably not the greatest rap to have. Although maybe there are some players who just want to play a ton and aren't worried about the health ramifications and so would welcome that. I don't know. Worth looking into, sure. All right, one more Strasburg tangentially related question from Troy. On Tuesday's show about the prospect of trading Steven Strasburg,

Sam said something I've heard a number of people say. Strasburg could be traded for any prospect. Taking a break from the debate over the wisdom of trading Strasburg, this has merged with a recent Effectively Wild question slash trope to form a new question in my head. Suppose for a moment that MLB introduced a golden ticket available for one team to buy that could be redeemed at any point for their choice of prospect from another team's system. At any point? So you could do it in five years? Yes. It's the endless ticket. It's the timeless ticket and the golden ticket in one. The ticket would be awarded to the highest bidder and they could use it in any year to effectively kidnap any player from any franchise who had not yet accrued Major League service time. How much do It's interesting because this is the, in a lot of situations, the timing of when you acquire a player is very important. If this were the opposite, if it were that you could acquire any player,

so you could theoretically get Clayton Kershaw when you're tied for the division lead on July 31st, he would have more value to you than any other time you could think of maybe. But with prospect, you're probably not necessarily getting a guy who's going to be ready to step in the next day and so you would do this when you're rebuilding i guess but not really because i don't think that rebuilding teams i mean everybody would like to have prospects so probably timing almost doesn't even matter yeah it doesn't even have to be it doesn't have to be a guy who's far away from the majors often the the top prospect is the top prospect because he's

not only promising and talented but he's close to the majors which means there's less of a chance that he will wash out before he gets there so you could i mean often the number one prospect is a guy who contributes in that season, right? Or at least at times. Yeah, but you're not going to count on an MVP-type performance. No. Is what I'm saying. You might get a bust. You might get jerks in pro far

and doing nothing really for you for the first few months. And would you say it's safe to say that if a team had this ticket, they would not use it on any player currently in the minors? That there is no prospect right now who rises to the level of uber prospect that Bryce Harper or A-Rod or, I don't know, who else you might say, Justin Upton or something like that seemed to be at the same time. Yeah, I think that's right. I don't know if there's anyone on a prospect list right now who looks like a hall of famer in the making as those guys you just named did rightly or wrongly. So the, so the, I mean the expected value for a number one prospect, uh, I'm looking at a

Neil Payne thing from five 38, although this has been done in lots of places at lots of times. The expected value is 17 wins, or it was early this or early last year over the first period of team control. So you could just multiply that by whatever you think the value of a win is to get the baseline for what teams would pay for this. But it's more than that because you can control whether it is an extraordinary number one prospect or just a pretty good number one prospect. There's a difference there. So you can wait. As you just said, you can. I mean, if your team is

desperately in need of a short stop and yeah the guy happens to be a short stop he's worth more to you yeah you you can time it when you want you can get the guy when you need him when you you can pick the position that you want him at so you get all this choice and you can take him away from any other team. Right, which if it's, I mean, it's not quite zero sum, but if you could take the guy from your division rival, it's almost double. Right. If it's the right team, it's almost double. Yeah.

So, all right. So I guess the timelessness doesn't change the value that much. Like, it's not like you're going to buy this thing expecting, I mean, there's a realistic time when you can expect to use it, right? Cause what's the average life expectancy of a front office regime? Is it five years? I don't know. Something like that. They would, other than, yeah, I think if it weren't right now,

I think almost every team would, in this situation, would use it almost immediately in almost any year of baseball's existence. I don't think they would do it right now because right now we have a particularly odd crop of top prospects, I think. But any other year, I think they would just use it immediately.

Like, I think maybe they would have used it last year, I think Buxton would have been worth using your golden ticket. And maybe next year, he will be. It's just like right now at this particular moment, there are question marks even about the number one guy. Okay. So would a team pay, is it crazy to say $200 million? I wouldn't have gone that high, but maybe it's not. I'm trying to remember, KG did that thing, right? On what Harper or Trout would be as a free agent. Yeah, I think so.

Someone did that. Yeah, I think so. Someone did that. Yeah, it was. Let's see. I think it might have been... Here it is. Oh, I inspired it. Oh, really? Second paragraph.

My good friend Sam Miller of the Orange County Register asked an interesting question via Twitter that has been bouncing around in my head for some time now. How about that? Not planned. What was the conclusion? This was February 2012, so this was before Trout's big year. The results, average offer for Bryce Harper, who is a free agent, eight years, $113 million.

Best offer, eight years, $150 million. Trout was $120 was the best and $102 was the average. Moore, Matt Moore was $83 was the average, $144 was the best offer. I think that it's fair to say that those probably, you would assume those would be a little bit lower than reality. Yes. Because I think that these, even in an anonymous poll stressing the terms of the question, I still think people are going to be thinking, they're going to go low because they've never done this. It's out of their wheelhouse. If they actually

had to price it, I bet they'd go a little higher. And that was a few years ago, so prices go up a little bit and this is timeless, so we're factoring in some further inflation. On the other hand, there maybe haven't been three prospects in history that were more hyped than Bryce Harper. Right. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm— So you think you're saying $200 million still sits well with you, seems right? I don't know that anyone would pay that.

It seems like a difficult thing to swallow or to persuade an owner to do. And it doesn't actually... Well, see, these also, though, those cover their salaries. And this golden ticket wouldn't cover the player's salary. So by year three, you're paying him money anyway. True. By year six, you're paying him what he's worth. So this is theoretically the golden ticket would only capture surplus value.

Like when you talked about the Neil Payne piece, that was surplus value. Okay, yeah, that's right. I would have a hard time seeing anything over maybe 110 and even that seems kind of extremely yeah i think i would i would go a little over that for the red guy okay okay play index uh so jeff bannister uh who i believe i i think i read his name the other day in one of your Grantland pieces. The Rangers manager, Pittsburgh's former bench coach, right? Do you know anything about Jeff Bannister's playing career? Nope.

Jeff Bannister's playing career was one plate appearance. was one plate appearance. I feel like the world seems more full of these guys than it really is because every one of these guys, in any reference to him,

the writer is going to make sure that he notes he only got one plate appearance. It feels like you're just constantly running into these guys in articles. Except me, in my article. You't mention it that's right uh but in fact they're you know there haven't been that many there's been like 150 or something like that but that's still i guess that's still a lot um so i started wondering though about how these guys had done and so i looked up every player in history who had one plate appearance i actually started in 1910 because well it's complicated but so since 1910 and there are 134 players who

had one plate appearance pitchers are excluded from this only okay um you want to guess the slash line? Well, all right. There's so many errors in this sample. So I don't know. I'll say 230, 280, 340. So far off. You are so far off. It's 195 162 so they have a 350 OPS not one of the 134 ever hit a home run and in fact let's say yeah that's all that's all you need to know not one hit a home

run they were terrible they were horrible but so what you need to know. Not one hit at home run. They were terrible. They were horrible. So what I wanted to know, though, is then did these guys who only got one plate appearance, did they only get one plate appearance because they made one out and their manager overreacted or put too much emphasis on that, and so therefore they never got another chance? Like, should they have gotten two basically? I mean, obviously they shouldn't have had a full career. They would have earned a full career if they'd, if they deserved one, but should they have at least gotten two or 10 or 20 or whatever?

If they had gotten a hit, would they have, would they have gone further? Cause they, so these guys hit worse than the average pitcher hit over that spin then, right? Uh, probably. Yeah. then the average pitcher hit over that spin then, right? Probably, yeah. Pitchers used to have like 400 of them, I guess. Probably. So then I looked at two plate appearances. Do you think it goes up much?

Just curious, do you think it goes up much? How big is this sample? Good question. It is 98 players, and so therefore 196 play-based. I would guess no. It doesn't go up much. You're right. It goes up 22 points of batting average. It goes up 14 points of on-base percentage,

and it goes up 33 points of slugging, although still no home run. No player who hit a home run was drummed out of the league after one or two played appearances. So hitting a home run does seem to buy you a third, at the very least. So when you get to three, there are guys with home runs? When you get to three, there are two home runs in the group of 80. No, there's one home run, sorry, in the group of 80 no there's one home run sorry in the group of 82 players

and they actually drop down they're lower than the two plate appearance guys of course this is because of sample issues right who's the one guy who hit a home run and didn't get a fourth player appearance Luke Stewart 1921 okay and

so these guys drop 17. No wonder Luke Stewart didn't get a fourth plate appearance. Look at his baseball reference player photo. Okay. He is actually, he is a connected dot of a campground. He's a Rorschach test. Everyone go look at Luke Stewart's page, reference page.

I'm going to send this to Jeff. Yeah, Jeff needs to do an article on this guy. I got it. Okay. You don't have to send it to Jeff this second. We are recording a podcast. All right.

So the three plate appearance guys dropped 17 points of batting average. They're actually lower in batting average and on-base percentage than the one plate appearance guys. But thanks to that one home run, they have a little bit of a boost in slugging percentage. And so i was wondering basically what i wanted to see with some sort like what you should see if you had a sample that was big enough is that you would see the tiniest tiniest bump upward right they like every plate

appearance would go up but very very small and if you saw a big gap then you would you would conclude that there's uh that baseball teams were over were overreacting to single-plate appearances or maybe three-plate appearances. But you don't actually see that. It is as it should have been. The climb seems to be fairly slow, fairly steady. Guys with four-plate appearances hit 145, 203, 190, so they're still garbage. They still don't belong in the the league and they're just basically as bad as the one plate appearance guys but slightly better 10 plate appearances finally gets you a little breathing room you're up to beyond pitcher levels here 176 257 231 25 plate appearances actually lower than the 10 10 plate appearances so that's kind of interesting.

But once you get up to 50, you're talking about utility and field types, 271 on base, 296 slugger. And by 100 plate appearances, you're talking about almost major leaguers, 284 on base, 301 slug. So the system more or less works. I didn't find anybody behaving notably irrationally or any particular patterns that were that interesting except for the pattern of these

one plate appearance guys being really, really, really, really bad. And so that makes you think that most of them were probably not, they had one plate appearance and then got in a car crash on the way home, they probably didn't deserve the one. I was just reading Luke Stewart's Sabre bio. It's kind of surprising that he has a Sabre bio, but I guess it makes sense in that his home run was actually historic. He was the first American leaguer to hit a home run in his first plate appearance. So it came in his first plate appearance, and then he actually got the start the next day. And he went 0-2, and that was it.

Pretty short leash. But the home run was off of Walter Johnson. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Pretty good. Walter Johnson used to, you know, that's suspect because, you know, Walter Johnson would sometimes lay one in. You think he did that for Luke Stewart? I'm not sure if he did or not, but he would lay in.

I took pity on him because he looks like a Rorschach test. I think Walter Johnson did throw a pipe shot or two in his life and was known as a very nice man. All right. That was a good one. That was one of my favorite play indexes. Do your own play index segments at baseballreference.com. Remember to use the coupon code BP when you subscribe to get the discounted price of $30.

All right. Let's wrap up with, okay, this one's from Cody. Several times a year, though less frequently since the Phillies' win cycle turned, there is a trader signing to which the unwashed masses are nearly unanimously opposed. Whether in terms of dollars or players given up, the cost is considered exorbitant. So he wants to know, could a GM float rumors of an impending deal to gauge public reaction? How bad would the public be at this? And is there any value in doing this? This game was lost.

Walter Johnson won this game 16 to 5. And so you have to assume that his one-played appearance came late in a game that was a massive blowout. Yes, we can tell you that. Or we don't have play-by-play for that. And so, you know. Okay. I'd be interested to see if Walter Johnson,

if you could find in his record a greater than normal number of home runs that made for nice stories. Okay. Well, you could probably do that with the play index. All right. So Cody wants to know, could a GM leak a move that he is intending to make in order to gauge the reaction?

Yeah. And should he? I saw, yeah, I've had times where I've seen a reaction to a move be so loud that I wondered. that I wondered. Like I had sort of cashed that move in as made and then I start to feel that nervous tension that now it's not going to get made because everybody can see what's happening.

You could probably do it. Would you want to? Would you want to, Ben? I mean, you've got... It's not as though... See, the thing about it is that if you have, assuming you trust the people around you at all to not be horrible sycophants or plotting to

steal your job, it's not as though you have no other opinions in your life. There's not necessarily a huge wisdom of crowds benefit here, because if you wanted to, you've got 20 people in the office. You could ask those 20 people, and I think i remember from statistics class that 30 is enough to to predict an election presidential election so you could probably get a pretty good sense of what the reaction is going to be before you do it i mean do you think that tony regans uh turned on his computer that night after vernon and was like, what? I mean, he probably knew, right?

He knew that they were, that he probably knew he probably didn't care what those people thought. Yeah, I guess so. I've been kind of thinking of trying to come up with like the internet's most disparaged moves and like a retrospective to see how often they actually turn out to be as bad as the internet thought like like the ryan howard deal yes that turned out to be as bad as everyone thought but the james shield trade james shield's trade maybe did not turn out to be as bad as everyone thought

or or the bernard wells trade did turn out to be so i i wonder it's easier to recall the ones where the internet turned out to be right but especially especially with howard's case because yeah so much of the howard so much of what i don't remember i don't remember having an opinion about the howard move at the time i didn't i wasn't in a point in my life where i had to have opinions so maybe that's different yeah yeah it'd be fun you had to figure out an objective way of determining what the Internet's... I've thought about that, too. It's hard to think about. How do you measure the Internet?

Yeah, I don't know. If there were a way for a GM to gauge the public's reaction without making the move public, then yes, that would be worth it. public, then yes, that would be worth it. If you could somehow have a sample of people that was really large and also pretty informed and yet there was no downside to leaking, then sure, I would bet that there would be some value in doing that, at least in avoiding the worst moves, maybe. I mean, if you're really that uncertain about whether this move is good or not that you need to pull the internet, then it's conceivable that, I mean, you probably think you're winning the move. So what if you do this and you think you're winning the move? And so by doing this, you're simply going to create an internet movement to mock the other guy, right?

If you think that you're ripping off the other guy, right? If you think that you're ripping off the other guy, then maybe you worry about tipping him off. You wouldn't. None of this is realistic. It's not how adults necessarily behave. But I also think that there's some benefit to not being in a team that is known for leaking trade talks. You just don't want to be that team sure and right and and i don't know you kind of if you want the move to happen you probably don't want to introduce anything that could potentially complicate the move so and you don't want to maybe give your you don't want to give your rivals the chance to outbid you and swoop in at the last second and and get the guy

that you're going after, that sort of thing. So I would guess that those things would outweigh the value of doing this. If you could somehow do it secretly and to get the value, then yes, I bet there would be value. But giving away the secret probably would wipe that out. All right. Is that enough? It's enough for me. wipe that out. Alright. Is that enough? It's enough for me.

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