Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 605: Emails for the Asking

Episode Date: January 28, 2015

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about a world without the minors, bigger bats, Ernie Banks, and more.

I need to know how you feel. How am I to know if you don't tell me so, tell me so, tell me so. Good morning and welcome to episode 605 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectus. Hello. Howdy. Howdy. How are you? I am okay, thank you. Good. This podcast is the only thing between me and a sled and a hill with snow on it. Where's your hill? Central Park, a hill with snow on it. Where's your hill? Central Park, Pilgrim Hill. It's a sizable hill. You own the sled? I have a couple of those cheapo plastic things. One of them, a circle that you have no control over, and one of them that you have slightly more control over. And so when, as a father, I've learned that you're actually not allowed to hang out at a playground if you don't have kids, which is fine because I have kids. But if you don't have kids, you're definitely not allowed to be there. The same rule does not apply for sledding? I don't think so. I deliberately

avoid going during the day, especially during a snow day, because then it's just packed. So if you go after it's dark There are no kids around and it's not really an issue Is it well lit? Yeah, there are some lampposts It's just inside the park Good place to go If anyone is in Manhattan

Alright, any other banter? No I'm deciding whether I want to go forward With more night sledding banter But I think we can just go on. Okay. It's been a slow week for banter material. It's been a slow week for baseball. It has. We all wrote our articles about the commissioner and his comment about shifts that he later walked back, and that was all any of us has to talk about. All right. So fortunately, we have emails, us has to talk about Alright so Fortunately we have emails

And we can talk about those So I will Pick out a couple from The bottom of the mail bag These are back when we Talked about minor league salaries Both of these questions were prompted by that episode This one is from Sean

He says let us imagine that an attempt To curtail global warming backfires and results in global cooling that while short of catastrophic makes it cost prohibitive for MLB teams to support minor league baseball. But Ben, what do you think it would be like if it was catastrophic? Like would there be a train involved, would you think? There should be a train involved. People are going to be so happy about a Snowpiercer reference. Too expensive to keep the grass green or something. What would MLB be like without the minors?

Let us assume that all amateur baseball survived unscathed. How would the play in the field be different from what we are accustomed to if MLB were just like the Pro Football League and that drafted amateurs went straight to the top pro league? Our current low minors provide little insight because they have no veterans were just like the pro football league and that drafted amateurs went straight to the top pro league. Our current low minors provide little insight because they have no veterans and the games they play are not the products parents' clubs are selling,

as Sam has frequently pointed out. I also wonder how the average MLB career would differ in longevity and productivity. And Mike D in St. Louis, our pal Mike D, asked a similar question. Could a team compete if they got rid of their minor league system? Could one team supplement their injuries

and lack of talent by trading with others or picking up free agents? How many minor league levels would be a minimum to compete? Do you think that the premise requires us to assume that if it's cost prohibitive for MLB teams to support minor league baseball, that independent baseball wouldn't exist?

Probably. Amateur baseball exists, he says. So I don't know. How much difference does it – I guess it makes some difference. I think that you would have – so let's say – well, all right. So Mike Trout would have gone to college. And so that would be the solution to Mike Trout, right? Mike Trout wasn't ready to play in the majors when he was drafted,

but he just wouldn't have been drafted until after college. But still, you have the average college player is not obviously ready to go to the majors. And yet, if you're a team that wants to have, who's a good, Justin Verlander or something, he was very close to major league ready. I'm trying to think of somebody who, just anybody. There are a thousand people. Why can't I think of a name?

Somebody who went to college and then went to the minors and now is really good at baseball. It's pretty rare. Think of one. Just off the top of your head, that's a tough one. A player who went to college. Dustin Pedroia. All right.. A player who went to college. Dustin Pedroia. All right. So Dustin Pedroia went to college.

And when he got out of college, he wasn't ready for the majors. And yet, if you're the Red Sox, there's enough incentive for you to keep Dustin Pedroia around, probably, and reap the huge MVP-like rewards of his maturation some years down the line, it would be tricky because there'd be a lot of guys who didn't turn into Dustin Pedroia. And so probably everybody who's drafted in the third or fourth round or lower maybe wouldn't really justify an immediate assignment to the majors.

But a lot of guys would, certainly like Barry Bonds would have. And so you'd have a whole bunch of these guys who wouldn't be good enough to play in the majors and yet would still justify a roster spot. And so you would think that the quality of play would go way down to some degree because you'd have to carry some of those guys. And you'd also have, in a way, much shallower rosters because you wouldn't really be able to get much use out of your Pedroias

and your Bonses, and therefore your 25-man roster might be, you know, effectively something like 19 to 22 usable men. And so probably the game itself would change quite a bit. You wouldn't be able to burn through relievers as much. And so in a way, the quality of play would come down for that reason too and bring it a little bit closer to where the college draftees are. Hard to imagine that some sort of minor league substitute wouldn't spring up. I mean, the condition is that there's no minor leagues,

but we're not. You would think that if teams did this, the problem is you'd want to play those guys. You wouldn't just want them to sit on the bench like bonus babies or something. You'd want to play them so they could get better. the bench like bonus babies or something you'd want to play them so they could get better and yet i mean this would it would kind of you'd always have to be balancing things because teams that just went all veteran would be really good probably just in the short term but they'd be

killing themselves long term right they would be like the battered bastards of baseball, playing guys who maybe have less future promise and therefore don't justify a spot on some team's short season minor league affiliate, but are 25 and clearly way better than their competition. So you'd have yeah, certainly you would have teams

that would probably go heavy. You might have a lot less parity. You might have 20 win teams. If you were really tanking in this regard, you could imagine a 15 or 20 win team because you could load up on those guys. A guy like Albert Pujols, I guess Pujols emerged early enough

that he probably would have emerged by the fourth year of college. But your typical guy who graduates, goes a level at a time, and then at 25 or something breaks out, let's say like Corey Kluber or something like that, would they just never be discovered? Is it conceivable that they just wouldn't exist? Their career would never happen? Probably, yeah. They wouldn't even know that they were ever going to get good?

Maybe so. I don't know. I mean, it's the... Wait a minute. Wait. Wait. Why don't they play in domes? That's a good question. I don't know. I guess they'd all go to Japan and play in domes. Not enough resources to build domes in the U.S.?

Or power the domes, power the air conditioning and the like. So yeah, if you weren't good enough, if you weren't some minimum level of present ability where a team could carry you on the roster, you would just fade into obscurity, I guess. I mean, right, if there's no if there's no independent leagues there's no like holding pen where you could go to which is effectively what the minor leagues are then yeah you'd have to go support your family in the post global cooling

environment so i i'm gonna try to say this and we might edit it out because i might not be able to say it correctly but so in football uh when you get drafted say this and we might edit it out because I might not be able to say it correctly but so in football when you get drafted you're more or less keep going you're more or less expected to contribute you know fairly quickly almost immediately

so football is the example of this or maybe basketball is the example of this so football and basketball have different aging curves than baseball. But still, there is an aging curve. Players, I assume, get better as they get older. And you can probably chart that curve as a multiplying effect or something like that. And so you could extrapolate from that and assume that if all players at age 21 are X percent better by age 27, then you could sort of extrapolate how many players aren't worth drafting at 21 in those sports

and yet should be good enough to play in the professional leagues, the top leagues, by 27, assuming they follow the same aging curve. So I wonder if in those sports, those undrafted players are underrepresented compared to the same group of kind of not ready for the majors, 21-year-olds in baseball. Does that make sense? Do 21-year-olds in baseball matriculate at a much, much higher rate than 21-year-olds in the NBA and NFL who aren't ready to contribute? Yeah, that's a keeper. I'm keeping that in the podcast. All right. All right. And Mike D's tangentially related question.

So the minor leagues do not disappear, but one team loses its minor league system or just we start taking away minor league levels from that franchise. we start taking away minor league levels from that franchise. How many minor league levels do you think you could take away and still have a team have a reasonable chance of competing? So this team is going back to pre-Branch Rickey, pre-Cardinals, pre-farm system, while everyone else gets to keep theirs. I think you could probably get rid of two levels without it being apparent to the naked eye that the big league club was any different over the course of 20 years.

I think if you cut A ball, so you just skipped from low A to high A and then maybe cut high A to triple A, that would probably work. Maybe you cut triple A and keep double A or something like that. But you need the depth, that's one issue, and you need the place to store all of your penny stocks in the hope that one of them will turn into a very valuable stock. The idea of taking all of them away, I just wrote about the value of the best farm system in baseball. So I found that if you have the best farm system in baseball, I've done this three years

in a row, I've taken the best farm system in baseball and looked at what the franchise turned that into over the next nine years plus. You're really stuck in a rut. I like those articles. So how many wins above replacement you get from those guys as well as from guys that you trade those guys for if you treat them as assets, how many wins above replacement do you get from them? Of the top 30 prospects for each of those three teams, the three organizations I've looked at, the top 30 prospects have produced roughly 100 wins above replacement at below market rates over the next nine years. All three of them are still getting some value out of them, even 10, 11, 12 years later.

The Brewers, it's hard to assign at this point because how much of Carlos Gomez do you give credit to J.J. Hardy? Because they extended Carlos Gomez. But still, the Brewers still have Carlos Gomez as a result of that class. The Angels have now Andrew Heaney and Tyler Skaggs and Santiago as a result of that class. And the Diamondbacks have like 16 guys as a result of that class. So let's say it's somewhere between 100 and 120 wins. So that's just from your top 30. You also end up getting surprised by one or two guys outside the top 30. You also end up getting surprised by one or two guys outside the top 30 who

produce. So maybe you're gaining from a very good farm system, maybe call it 10 to 15 wins a year. And that doesn't even include the depth issue of having a sixth, seventh and eighth starter down there and half your bullpen probably starts the season in the minors. So even excluding that, you're probably docking teams 12 wins or so a year. So if there was no farm system, that's a very good farm system, but if there was no farm system, it would be hard to obviously compete. I mean, we knew that. Everybody knew that was going to be the answer, but I just gave you some numbers. compete? I mean, we knew that. Everybody knew that was going to be the answer, but I just gave you some numbers. Yeah. That makes it sound much more authoritative. Yeah. So I don't know. You

start stripping away minor league levels. It's like downgrading to a smaller market or something, maybe. If you take away a couple of minor league levels, you're the Brewers or something in terms of long-term expectations. If you have no minor league system, if you are stuck in the Snowpiercer world while everyone else gets to have a minor league system, then you are in big trouble. Then you will never win probably. Okay, question from Michael. I read the following story in Ben Bradley's recent biography of Ted Williams Late in his career, Williams, who had always struggled against the shift Or at least lost some hits pulling the ball into the shift

Switched to a heavier bat at the beginning of one season Suddenly he started hitting the ball to the opposite field Something he had rarely done before despite the shift This was accompanied by talk that Williams was getting older and could no longer get around on the ball. At some point, defense stopped shifting, and Williams switched back to his regular bat and went back to pulling the ball, going on to hit.388 for the season.

So is this a way for hitters to try to beat the shift, or would it mess up hitters' swing mechanics to the point where it would be counterproductive? Just because the greatest hitter ever could do it doesn't mean any hitter could. Or is this whole story overstated or apocryphal? You don't hear that much about baseball players' bats changing sizes. Every once in a while you'll hear that somebody went to a heavier bat or has a heavy bat or whatever. But I don't really know whether they're tinkerers with that or not. And I don't really know how much an ounce matters to them. If they picked up a bat that

was off by an ounce, I wonder if you'd see it in their numbers at all. Or if your body just would intuit it and you would immediately adjust slightly. I mean, when you're a kid, you might change bats three times a game and have different sizes three times a game because you're just superstitious or tinkering or whatever, some dumb scheme. different than that. But I never noticed particularly a huge difference in what you had to do when you were up there. Like when you go up there as a kid and you've switched from the 25 to the 27 or whatever, you're not thinking start early or you're just swinging the bat. Just swinging it. It's like when you're hammering a nail and you get a bigger hammer, it's not very cognitively challenging. Yeah, I don't know. I guess it sort of sounds persuasive.

I mean, if you have a heavier bat, then you swing a little more slowly and yet there's more momentum. So there's more force applied, so you still hit the ball harder, but maybe you're slower to the ball. So I don't know whether it cancels out, whether you would just hit the balls, the same balls that you would hit otherwise you would still hit, but the trajectory would be changed a little bit, or whether you would just miss some balls that you otherwise would have hit i don't know we should have alan nathan on to answer this question but yeah or a hitter because

i feel like a hitter no i'm that wasn't that wasn't trying to be glib i would actually be very interested in finding out from a hitter what it's like yeah i don't know it's it it reminds me of my failed gary sheffield theory that i used to have or that i don't remember. It reminds me of my failed Gary Sheffield theory that I used to have, or that I don't remember whether I had it or just everyone had it, and I liked it at the time, but that Sheffield hit just so many, he was so quick and he pulled so many balls foul, so many line drives foul, that it just seemed like if he lost a little bat speed at some point, he would suddenly start hitting more balls fair really hard. And I don't think that really happened. Although maybe I should check, but I don't know. Ted Williams,

the season that Michael is referencing is 1957 when he was 38. And that was maybe his best offensive season rate rate stat wise or second best perhaps but uh williams i mean williams struggling was amazing like the you know a couple years before that he had had a 200 209 ops plus and the year before that 201 so he was if he was really getting hurt by the shift so much, he was still the best hitter in baseball despite it. So I don't know. It's an interesting question. Maybe we can email someone and get a more informed answer at some point. All right, let's take Francis in the Bronx. The Bronx. In the podcast with Dirk Hayhurst, he mentioned the concept of momentum in the pitcher-batter struggle. Ben's Grantland colleague Bill Barnwell has dismissed what he calls momentum, or no-mentum, in the NFL. Meanwhile, Russell Carlton and others have said similar things about momentum among baseball teams.

Do you think that meaningful momentum exists in any aspect of the game? Does the ball really look like a balloon to hitters who found a groove is success up and down the lineup really contagious to what extent does momentum matter when have we seen it recently so i don't have it before we answer this it's you just inhaled which implies that you have an answer which i'm glad about maybe but um i i want to real quickly tie this to the previous question because the question of does the ball look like a balloon is kind of like, does the bat feel lighter after you've had a hitting donut on it? It does feel lighter. It's not lighter.

You're not stronger. So far as I can tell, it's just an illusion, I think. Yeah, scientifically it shouldn't work, right? I think I've read that. Well, logically it shouldn't work. How would it work? Well, I mean, right. But by swinging a heavier bat, you actually tire yourself out

and make yourself less able to swing quickly or whatever. Yeah, so it is very – I believe that the ball looks like a balloon, like a balloon when you're, when you're up there, it is unfortunately not a balloon. It's a baseball traveling very fast with much resistance and you're going to have a hard time hitting it. Well, I, which is not an answer to this question. It's the balloon question. Which is not an answer to this question. It's an answer to the balloon question. Yeah.

I don't know. Most of the cases where people mention momentum, I don't really differ from people who have looked at it and not found anything. The ball looks like a balloon is, I don't know, I wouldn't call that momentum. I guess you could call it momentum. I would just call it, I don't know, a hot streak or being locked in or whatever. And I do believe in that to some extent. I don't know. When we talked about things that we believe about baseball without evidence sometime recently, talking about that Ken Arneson essay where he listed things he believed in without evidence, and I couldn't really come up with anything at the time. I guess this is one where I believe it. The evidence is that every hitter will tell you it's true, but it's hard to find statistical evidence, at least that definitively proves it. But I do

believe that some hot streaks are at least partly the result of a hitter having a true talent level during that streak that is higher than his normal true talent level for whatever reason his mechanics are practiced at that moment and nothing is amiss and maybe he's healthy at that moment and he's not bothered by any nagging injuries and it's's not as if guys suddenly become 450 true talent hitters over the course of a hot streak where they hit 450. But I do believe that even if it's not predictive, even if we can't look at how a guy has been hitting lately as a guide to how he will hit even the next day,

I do believe that there are times when hitters are better prepared to maximize their abilities than other times. I just don't know if we can ever really tell from looking at numbers. Yeah. I think that there's kind of two different ways that people phrase this question. One is, does the hotness feed itself? And that is not what you, which is one way of phrasing it. There's another legitimate way of phrasing it, which you answered, which is, does the hotness feed itself? And that is not what you, which is one way of phrasing it. There's another legitimate way of phrasing it, which you answered, which is, does performance cluster for various reasons? And I would believe that performance clusters for various reasons, some of which are identifiable, some of which aren't, and many of which are prone to false positives. And I am inclined to believe that there is a small

and perhaps not useful, but nonetheless, real effect of the hotness feeding itself in some way for some skills to some players. Because, again, not a major leaguer, never was. And my level of performance is not, well, any mental deficiencies that I have would probably be weeded out by the weeding process. But I used to shoot 100 free throws every day and you'd hit nine in a row and then there would just be this trigger in your brain that said, not this one, you know, you'd hit nine in a row, and then there would just be this trigger in your brain that said, not this one, you're not hitting this one, and you'd shank it.

And it was undeniable, and it was never false. And I'm much more weak-willed than the average elite athlete, but elite athletes, there's got to be a weak will or so in there. Yeah, I would believe that, But elite athletes, there's got to be a weak will or so in there. Yeah, I would believe that, but I would also believe that just about any time anyone ever makes an argument based on that or cites it as a reason for someone's performance, that it's probably overblown, that it's just one of those things that might exist on a very small level or maybe a larger level for the very rare athlete. But on the whole, if you're praising a guy for having that quality, you are probably over-praising that particular quality.

All right, Play Index. Sure. So I got to have dinner with Doug Thorburn yesterday And while Doug and I were having dinner The conversation of best pitcher ever came up Do you by chance have a pick? Who is your best pitcher ever? Pedro for peak

And Maddox or Clemens Oh my gosh, you're the worst at this game Ben, there's only six people that one could pick You've named three of them And Maddox or Clemens? Oh my gosh, you're the worst at this game. Ben, there's only six people that one could pick. You've named three of them. We know who the six are. The point is to make a decision. Pick one.

Is it peak or is it career? And if it's career, which one is it? Okay, Maddox. All right, so I say Pedro. Because I'm a peak guy. And Doug says Randy Johnson. Yeah, Johnson. Peak is great, but for pitchers particularly?

Oh, it's not. If your peak is three years, I don't go peak. But if your peak is a decade, then I go peak. It's just so impressive when a pitcher lasts, no matter how he pitched, while he's lasting. So if you can combine elite and lasting, that's just amazing. I agree. And I also, I mean, you might get me. Most days I say Pedro.

Some days I say Clemens for the longevity reasons. But there's like six guys you could say. It's the ones we've named plus maybe Seaver and maybe Lefty Grove and maybe Walter Johnson. And that's pretty much it. And so I said Pedro. He said Randy Johnson. And that got me thinking about something. And what it got me thinking about was our Corey Kluber discussion.

Corey Kluber is not going to turn into Randy Johnson, I'm pretty sure. But when I was naming all the guys who had unexpected breakouts and then did not keep it up, I could have also given the counterexample of Randy Johnson, who, like Corey Kluber, was not very good through age 26, had his first kind of breakout, or had a semi-breakout at 27, and then was very good at 28, I think, or maybe 29, something like that. Around that time, and same time as Kluber, he was sort of putting things together. And so, let's say 29, when he was 29, he basically had his first year with under 100 walks. He had 99. But he struck out 308. His ERA was well above average for the first time. He finished second in Cy Young voting. Before that, he'd been pretty bad. And of course,

Randy Johnson is the same guy who Doug Thorburn thinks is the greatest pitcher of all time. So something obviously changed. And if you had taken the under on his projections going forward, you would have been wrong for a very, very long time. And so I wanted to see just how extreme Randy Johnson's career was to get him from there to where he ended up. So I looked at where he ranked in career war at each age from 27 to 45. And so I have those. Here it goes. So it's pretty much just a pretty awesome curve. So age 27, he was the 813th greatest pitcher of all time, which actually sounds way better than it is because he had, I think, five war. And so if you think about guys with five war, like, I don't know, that's probably somewhere like maybe Charlie Morton.

I'm not sure. But that's the kind of name that you find at 5.3 war through age 27. So through 27, this is not through 23. Through 27, which is the same age that Kluber was in 2013. Charlie Morton, no. I was going to look also. All right, so 813. This is, by the way, since 1920,

because before that everybody threw 65 starts and 550 innings a year um all right age 28 he goes from 813 up to 670 still very poor age 29 his biggest jump he goes from 670 to 334 basically cuts in half wow pitchers in history who were better than him how valuable a season was that uh age 29 that was the one i said where he was second in Cy Young voting. Although, probably didn't deserve to be. He still walked a ton of guys. But no, yeah, he deserved to be. 6.8 war.

And then age 30, which is when he finished third in Cy Young voting, but had a better year, he went from 334 to 213. And then age 31 was his first Cy Young, and this is by far his best year up to that point. Maybe arguably the best year he ever had, maybe not. It was the year he went 18-2, the strike semi-shortened season. It was the year he pitched in-2. It's the strike semi-shortened season. It was the year he pitched in relief in that game and everything. So from there, he went from 213 to 118. And so now he is in the conversation. By the way, 213 through age 30, just to put that in perspective,

Ubaldo Jimenez is 30 right now, and they were tied. So through age 30, he was Ubaldo Jimenez is 30 right now, and they were tied. Okay. So through age 30, he was Ubaldo Jimenez, and Ubaldo Jimenez was Randy Johnson, which kind of makes you think. It does. All right, age 31, 118, that's the same as John Lackey was through that age. To put that in perspective, Lackey, a very good pitcher, one of the best number twos, I would say, in the game through that age. And that's what Randy Johnson was.

Age 32, he actually backslid slightly because he got injured. He was very good but injured. He only started eight games. So he falls back to 128. And now he's basically Dan Heron's career, which is also very good. Not a Hall of Famer, but very good. Age 33, he's 85th. And you know how I said 813 at the beginning is actually worse than it sounds?

85th is better? 85th is actually a lot better than it sounds. So he was 33 and 85th. Zach Granke basically tied with him right now. Granke's only 30, so three years ahead of Randy Johnson's pace. Kershaw is ahead of him considerably at 26. So Kershaw is well over seven years ahead of Randy Johnson's pace. Kershaw is ahead of him considerably at 26. So Kershaw is well over seven years ahead of Randy Johnson's pace. So it sounds good, but it's still below Hall of Fame for sure.

Age 34, he goes up to number 63 all-time, which matches Javier Vazquez. Age 35, he's up to 37th all-time through that age, which is about where Tim Hudson was. Age 36, he finally catches up to Curt Schilling, which is interesting because Schilling also kind of a late bloomer. Had a lot of years of wandering. But by 36, he's the 22nd best pitcher of all time through that age. He ties

Schilling. He was just behind. He ties Schilling at 37. It's 15th. 38th. Moves into the top 10. 39. 7th. 38th, moves into the top 10. 39th, 7th, just a tiny bit behind Pedro Martinez. Age 40, he passes Steve Carlton. He's now 6th. Age 41, he's now 5th.

And then he, when's your 5th? It's very hard to keep moving up. It's Grove, Clemens, Seaver, and Maddox ahead of him. And so he's trying to close the gap, and he just can't quite do it. He manages to get to within.3 war of Greg Maddox in his career. So he ended up fifth all-time,.3 wins behind Greg Maddox, starting at age 27 at 813, which is an amazing, amazing, amazing career. And he is the best pitcher in history from age 30 on, from age 31 on, from any of those sort of ages you want to check.

Incidentally, from age 31 on, the 17th best pitcher of all time is Jamie Moyer, and the 16th best of all time is David Wells. So they're kind of like the Raul Abanezes of pitchers, where they're not Hall of Famers, but they had Hall of Fame 30s. They had Hall of Fame-level decades. Yeah, I was going to make a Raul Abanez comp at the beginning of this Play Index segment. I'm glad I refrained.

That's a good one. Good Play Index. All right, so use the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. Okay. Ernie Banks. We got an Ernie Banks question. I was wondering if you guys think Ernie Banks was the greatest player in the modern era to never play a postseason game. If not, who? That question is from Neil. And it's really a Three man race I would say Baseball reference helpfully Has a list on its homepage right now

Of players with the most games played With no postseason appearance Ernie Banks is at the top of that list 25-28 games 19 seasons So when you have a Hall of Famer At the top of the list Who also played the most games It's pretty hard to beat that.

The only guys who really, I think, have a case are his longtime teammate, Ron Santo, and Luke Appling, who is second in games played without making a postseason appearance. And I think Banks takes it. Appling actually has a higher career war, but Banks' peak was just ridiculous. It blows away Appling's peak, blows away lots of players' peaks. I guess he is the anti-Raul Labanez, or really he's the anti-Randy Johnson

Because his 20s were amazing But Santo though Santo's peak was pretty amazing too I mean Santo only played like 14 years didn't he? Yeah that's true Let's see Santo I will see what his peak war score in Jaws is

He played 15 years, 22, 43 games. And yeah, he ended up with actually a higher war, very slightly higher war than Banks. His peak was 53.8 war in his seven-year peak. And Banks had 51.9 seven-year peak, and Banks had 51.9, seven-year peak. So, yeah, I guess Santo has just about as strong a case, unless you want to give Banks extra credit for just playing longer without somehow running into a postseason appearance.

But best player, it is pretty close. So Adam Dunn made the playoffs technically. Yeah, he's actually on this list. Is that, yeah, I don't know if we would count him or not. Do you have to appear in it? I don't know. It's a good question. But anyway, let's move beyond that.

So Dunn was like a 17-war career. What do you think going forward, assuming that the playoffs will never be scaled back, they will be as is or expand, and player movement presumably isn't in danger of being scaled back anytime soon. So it's hard to imagine there's not going to be a Santo or a Banks who spends an entire career with one team and that one team manages to never make playoffs.

Very unlikely. So going forward from now until the end of our lifetimes, what do you think will be the highest war that anybody ever produces without a playoff appearance in their career. It seems like it would be tough to get beyond about 10 seasons at this point. I'm looking at the list of active guys other than Vernon Wells, who is technically still active. Alex Rios is the next highest guy at 11 years and obviously hasn't played most of his career

in the 10-playoff team era. So it would be tough to get beyond that probably. So, I mean, if we're talking about 10 years-ish, and the better the player is, probably the less likely he is to be on this list so i don't know for two reasons for like his teams will presumably be a little better because he's good and also he probably won't stop playing after 10 years right yeah it's good so i don't know i'll say 50 oh wow that's way higher than I would have said.

I might bet that there is never another player who produces 35, maybe even 30. I guess that makes sense. Yeah, okay. All right. Yeah, Banks, if you haven't looked at Ernie Banks, his baseball reference page in the last few days, which I'm sure many of you have, his peak, his 20s were really amazing. He hurt his knee and moved to first base just like starting with his age 31 season. And after that, he was just kind of an average-ish player sometimes.

But before that, he was amazing. There was just no one doing what he was doing. At the time he moved off of shortstop, I think he had 277 home runs, something like that, as a shortstop, which was the most anyone had ever had. And over that span, like 53 to 61, when he was playing shortstop regularly, he tripled the next closest shortstop in terms of home runs he was just kind of one of a kind and a good defender

too according to the stats that we have and also just an amazing hitter i wonder why he moved to first so early? Injury. Oh, is that what it was? Yeah, he had a knee thing. So he couldn't even play second or third. Yeah, that's an unusual transition probably, especially at that age. All right.

Unlike Appling, who played shortstop forever. He actually moved. He first moved to left field. Did you know that? Banks? Oh, yeah. I read that briefly. Briefly.

Very briefly. And Willie Mays occasionally played second base. Did you know that? Yeah. I tweeted it not that long ago. It's every... Wait. Maybe I have that wrong. Maybe it was Hank Aaron.

Willie Mays did not ever play second base It was Don Mattingly Don Mattingly played one out at second base Hank Aaron played five Appeared at second base in five different seasons Would just show up at second base For a game or two Okay Have we fulfilled our obligation different seasons. Would just show up at second base for game two. Okay. Have we fulfilled our obligation

as Carson Sestoli says? I have fulfilled mine and you have fulfilled yours and we have both fulfilled Carson's. Great. Alright, so that is it for today. Please join our Facebook group. It's EverswellingRanks at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild.

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