Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 608: Unsolved Mysteries of the Mailbag

Episode Date: February 4, 2015

Ben and Sam discuss why the league is looking less clutch and answer listener emails about time-released rumors, a cryptic comment by Buck Showalter, Rick Porcello’s salary, and more.

Isn't it time for us to fly into life's mystery? Time to go somewhere we've never seen. Fly into life's mystery. Fly into the mystery. Life's mystery, fly into the mystery. Good morning and welcome to episode 608 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 Perspectus. Hi, how are you?

That was smooth. I am fine, thanks. Good. How are you? Pretty good. Okay. Anything to talk about? I don't think so.

I wanted to note that I did not mention Joe Savory in last year's minor league draft. But you did mention Aaron Pareda, who at the time you had texted a scout trying to get information for your minor league draft. True to form. Even then I was over-preparing. Not that it helped me at all. And he recommended Aaron Pareda. even then I was over preparing not that it helped me at all and you he recommended Aaron Parada

you couldn't take Parada because he had already been signed by a team and we did this earlier last offseason when signed players were off limits and so you couldn't take him but you did call him your Neil Kotz candidate for 2014 and he did face

97 batters which would have been a big deal for you if you'd gotten those 97 batters he did not pitch that well he has a 5.91 era but a much better fit and good peripherals across the board and certainly would not given what what he did last year it wouldn't be surprised at all if he were a very good reliever for 60 or 70 innings this year. He could be Neal Cotts still. Had to pitch in five years. Five-year layoff.

Pretty good call by that scout. Very good. Although those— He had pitched in the minors a little bit. Those 90-something batter's face would not have made the difference, I don't think, so I don't have to feel too bad about that. Right. Can't believe you went back and listened to the 2013

minor league free agent draft, or the 2014 one recorded in 2013, after we did the 2015 one. That is dedication? I don't even know if that's the right word. I listen to about one episode a month for whatever reason. In this one, I wanted to see if I'd mention Joe Savory.

Okay. Well, I'm glad you set the record straight on that. Today in pitcher comeback news, old pitcher comeback news, Mark Mulder is not coming back. Yeah. Comeback news old pitcher comeback news Mark Mulder is not coming Back yeah So that concludes a couple years Of talking about Mark Mulder coming back Probably Yeah it's too bad

What did he say he just couldn't get himself to where He wanted to be yep Which is I mean that's why people retire Yeah so Totally Legitimate and understandable reason. It is. It is, in a way, a non-revelatory retirement statement.

That's right. Okay. Anything else before emails? No, sir. All right. Then emails. This one is from Julian. Hi, Ben and Sam.

Ever since reading Grant Brisby's piece about the winter meetings and his attempt to find a scoop, I've been wondering what would happen if all of that widely available but off-the-record information and rumors were released to the public. Obviously, it would have to be at least a year after the fact, and it should probably only be the big moves, but what if every winter all of the rumors and almost blockbusters were released? Would teams be okay with this one, three, or five years out? Would it be interesting after the fact? On a related note, do you think MLB should be more involved with the stat-inclined section of the fan base? I don't know how that's a related note.

It seems like a completely unrelated note. On the one hand, it's a small percentage of total viewership, but on the other, the analytical depth and detail of baseball is one thing that no other sport really has. Could MLB find a way to market the sport that way, and would it be worth it? So first question, first. How long would it be interesting, first of all? Would it be interesting indefinitely? If you could get trade rumors from you know 30 years ago 40 years ago would you sit down and read them all or would you only be interested if they involved some big player who would have altered the course of a franchise or something yeah even uh you know frankly even two years old i don't think I would read very much.

There's something interesting. I did a piece, you might remember it, Ben, I don't know. Let's see, was it last year's winter meetings were held in Nashville? Like 2000 and Two years ago, I think. Not this winter, but the winter before. Or something like that.

It was, I think, three winter meetings ago. I don't know. Two winter meetings ago. There don't know. Yeah, but two winter meetings ago. There was one in between the current one and that one. And something like six years before that, there was also winter meetings in Nashville. If I'm remembering this right. Yeah. And so I went back and looked at all the rumors that came out of those winter meetings. Oh, that's right.

looked at all the rumors that came out of those winter meetings. Oh, that's right. And then they were, I don't quite remember exactly the gag, but they were close enough to rumors in this year. Like they fit sort of various rumor archetypes. And so I wrote them up in a way that would be ironic, right? And it was interesting. It was interesting to some degree. I thought it was a fairly fun piece,

but it took a lot of work to frame that in a way that would make them at all interesting. And it's definitely fun to go back and see who Brandon Wood was, who the Angels wouldn't trade Brandon Wood for and who the Dodgers tried to trade Matt Kemp for and all those sorts of things. But so there are definitely nuggets within them.

On the other hand, there is so much Woody Williams talking to the Cardinals, Woody Williams talking to the Rockies, Woody Williams not interested in going to the Red Sox, Woody Williams not interested in going to the A's unless they pay him more money than the Padres. And those aren't very interesting. And so you would really, really have to read a lot of things that aren't interesting to find the nuggets. So I think it's the sort of thing that would be good fodder for some pieces. But if it was a data dump, it would get very old very quickly. The other thing is that what is described in this email as widely available but off

the record information and rumors that Julian says and that Grant talks about is somewhere between 90% and 10%, depending on who you're listening to, of all that stuff is probably garbage non-truth, right? It's more interesting if you're getting it straight from the source, if it's like the Astros ground control leak. Wouldn't that, yeah. If you're getting that and you can actually see the team's internal notes and it's verified, you know what they talked about. It's not just someone blowing smoke.

That's interesting for a longer period, I think. There'd still be a lot of Woody Williams, but you'd at least get to see maybe how the team thinks. see maybe how the team thinks. I think it would be interesting as long as the current, as long as the same regime was controlling the team, maybe as long as there was still some consistency on the roster. I'd be interested in that for, I don't know, five years or so at least. I'd be interested in seeing like, I mean, say it's like Billy Bean. We're always trying to read the tea leaves with Billy Bean.

So what if we got Billy Bean trade notes from a decade ago? It'd be interesting to see what he was thinking then. Yeah. If it were that, if it were like the Astros thing, I think I would find a way to be interested in that for up to 20 years. Because that would be data. And I am interested in this as data. I'm not interested in it once it becomes so polluted that it's sort of garbage as data. So it would be fascinating to see, to try to, I don't know, to try to design some inquiries into the sport if

you could trust the information. But I think that what is going around the winter meetings, some of it gets reported and some of it doesn't, but a lot of it is tainted for various reasons. And the stuff that doesn't get reported, I would assume is less true than the stuff that does get reported. I think the one thing that would be interesting about it is just to get a clearer sense of how long it takes or how long it doesn't take for some of these moves to come up.

There was one of the biggest moves made this offseason, which came as a big surprise to people. I have been told since then that it was done three weeks before it was announced. And we were all shocked by it. And it had somehow been kept secret for three whole weeks. And it would be fascinating just to see the process of how these moves get maybe agreed upon in principle, the big parts, and then they spend three weeks talking about the fourth depth piece at the bottom of it. But they kind of know.

know the fourth depth piece at the bottom of it but you know they kind of know and it would help you to assess other moves that were made by the same teams during the time where they kind of had this trade in escrow or whatever the case may be yeah and julian's other question about when teams would stop caring that this stuff would be released i think is pretty much the same answer your our degree of interest in these rumors would be would be very, I think is pretty much the same answer. Our degree of interest in these rumors would be very closely correlated with the team's degree of discomfort with these rumors being released. So as far back as it would take for us not to care about these rumors, that's probably about as far as you'd have to go for teams not to care. And the closer, the more recent it was, the more they would care and the less they would want it to get out.

If you are a GM and you're retired and you're out of the game, then maybe you don't care what comes out unless it paints you in a very negative light. But that's probably the case. I doubt that even a few years after or five years after, most teams would want to see anything like that leaked. And his ostensibly related question about what MLB should do to appeal to a stat-inclined section of the fan base and whether it could do more, I think it actually does a fair amount, I would say. I wouldn't say they're holding out. I mean, just PitchFX existing is kind of amazing.

It didn't have to necessarily. It was released to the public. And I know that people who study that data have been a big help to MLB Advanced Media in finding problems with the numbers and working out the calibrations and everything like that. So they've gotten some benefit out of it also. or things that show up on TV, you know, the K-Zone stuff or just how fast someone's throwing or what breakdown of pitches he throws. All that information is pretty useful. So I don't know that they could do more. I mean, individual broadcasts could maybe do more to integrate that information into the telecast, but that's not necessarily

MLB's responsibility. So I don't know. We'll see what happens with StatCast and how much of that is made public and how much that shows up on TV screens and computer screens over the next couple of years. But there is a wealth of information out there and available for free. Yeah, I think they do great. The only thing that I can think of that I wish that MLB would give us that I don't see a particular disincentive for them or cost to them giving us, and I don't think they've ever been asked, so it's not their fault that they haven't, but I also don't think they would, is think that scouting reports should be like copyright. After a certain amount of time, they should become public.

And so, I mean, they can't compel necessarily the Red Sox to release their scouting reports, but I would like all scouting bureau reports to be public after 25 years. And I mean, they did. The Diamond thing, what was that thing? The dump of Scouting reports was very fun that they had a few years ago. But it was a couple per player. I would like to have 80 per player if there are 80 That are out there Yeah sure that'd be nice Okay Let's take Francis in the Bronx This is from last week

And he writes last night we knew Yorkers went to bed Expecting a tremendous overnight blizzard But we woke up to a Brian Taylor level Disappointment As a teacher I was hoping for multiple days off But now it's clear that I'll be returning to work tomorrow. What current issues in baseball are we making way too big a deal about? It feels like we might be treating the rise of defensive shifts as a blizzard now,

but it'll correct itself and turn into no more than a six-inch snowfall in the long run. So that's a good example. That's probably the example that I would have come up with if Francis hadn't given us that example himself. A lot of people including me wrote about shifts last week when Rob Manford made some comments about them. Are there any others that

seem similar? The other big issues right now are pace of game and making games go faster and contact and reducing strikeouts. And those seem like serious things that we should be paying attention to. Neither of those particularly seems that important to me.

I mean, nothing about baseball is truly important, but relative to other baseball matters? Relative to other baseball matters, I don't know. I think that both of them are fine to talk about and fine to address, although I don't think that – I like the strikeouts. But neither one is something that you should spend much of your life thinking about. To me, the thing that the biggest, probably the biggest issue that people look at that maybe you could have added to your list and that I wouldn't have been able to argue with is pitcher health, pitcher arm health. And that, I mean, nobody's, I don't

think anybody would say that the pace of game stuff has risen to Blizzard level. It's just a thing people talk about. It's not PEDs or anything. There are no Senate commissions on pace of game. Nobody's going to be kept out of the Hall of Fame over pace of the game or anything like that. It's a fairly small thing. It's just sort of bylaws and regulations and things like that. It's a fairly small thing. It's just sort of bylaws and regulations and things like that. It's pretty boring.

Yeah, I mean, there have been hot takes about how it's threatening the future of the game and the next generation. There have been takes, but I don't think anybody has been able to make one hot yet. People have kind of rubbed their hands together to try to warm them up, but they're kind of just tepid still. I think that the elbow stuff, though, people see as Blizzard, potential Blizzard. And I don't know if I could talk myself into thinking that that's not as big a deal as it is. I think that it, well, I don't know. Maybe.

I could talk myself into it not being a bigger deal than pitcher injuries have always been, which has kind of always been a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. I'm not prepared to talk about Tommy Johns right now. I wrote a big long thing on Tommy Johns. That's right.

Someday people will see it. Yeah. Someday people will see it. Yeah, someday people will see it. But right now I've forgotten what I wrote and I don't want to say anything that would contradict what I wrote. Or maybe I'll change what I wrote. So I have to just kind of pass on that. Anything else? What about, well, let's see.

Do you think that PEDs turned out to be a blizzard or a 6 inch snowfall in the long run I mean do you think that eradicating PEDs changed the game as much as the hot takes calling for it

suspected it would I think so yeah I think more. Yeah. Yeah. I think more than, we don't have proof of it, but I think that the feeling probably generally that you have and I have is that it did more than probably the stat head position was at the time. Yeah, I said that on a show recently that I've been kind of re-evaluating the standard

sabermetric position, which was, we can't really tell what the PEDs do and what's the effect of the ball and the ballparks and all those things. And it's not safe to assume that this is a direct result of that. And there's still an element of that. And if there are people who think that, you know, you just take PEDs and suddenly you're a superstar, and clearly that's not the case. There are people who think that you just take PEDs and suddenly you're a superstar, and clearly that's not the case. There are plenty of examples that prove that not to be the case. But on the whole, just looking at the kind of significant changes that the game went

through in an era that happened to coincide with a lot of PED use, as far as we can tell, certainly strongly suggestive. And the fact that things have more of that going on. And those things seem to have calmed down. Yeah, I have always, though, been sort of uncomfortable with that because the, uh, outlier performances were also guys. They were just as,

just as outliery for Pedro Maddox, Randy Johnson, and yes, Roger Clemens. Um, but I don't, I don't hear any suspicion of those three guys I named. And so then it's always made me think that Roger Clemens

no I said the three the three names Clemens, Pedro, Randy Johnson and Greg Maddox Clemens was the one that I yeah you hear Pedro stuff sometimes do you really? I do

no kidding anyway I've always wondered. I mean, you know, my hypothesis has always been that expansion does that. Mm-hmm. So. Yeah, that could be part of it, too. All right.

Wait, let me ask you one more about those. Do you think that line drives that hit pitchers in the face is a six-inch, Is a blizzard that is being treated like a six inch snowstorm potentially? Or do you think it is appropriately considered? And I guess the same for batter head hunting or batter head health or however you would call it. Are we not doing enough for the inevitability that somebody is going to die on our TV screen? That's, it's tough. It's a really hard issue because the second, if it ever happens once, then of course, in retrospect, it will look like we should have done everything possible. And who cares how awkward and boxy the helmet looked or how uncomfortable it

was because it could have saved one life. On the other hand, baseball has been played for a really, really, really long time. And that hasn't happened yet to a pitcher. And it's, it's,

it might happen at some point, it is clearly a very very remote possibility and there's the argument that people can take that risk if they're willing to take that risk and they certainly know that there's a risk every pitcher has been hit by a ball or seen someone else be hit by a ball and if they want to risk that and decide that they don't want to compromise their pitching performance to be a, you know, slightly more safe, then that they should be allowed to do that. I don't know. It kind of comes down to how, how strictly you think the league should mandate that and how much control players should have over their own safety and comfort i don't know it's easy easy for us to say that pitchers should just wear the most

protective gear possible because we don't have to pitch with it and that way everyone will be safe and we won't have to worry about it and no one will have to feel bad about watching baseball if something happens. But pitchers don't seem to agree. Okay. ago that was one of those pre-spring training check-ins, this time on a new guy, Rick Porcello. It focused on his reaction to the Scherzer deal and the idea that he could hit it big on the market next year. It was full of implications of unrealistic salaries for Porcello-like. Porcello joked that now Scherzer has made all those big dollars, he may not have time for him anymore with another strong season. Porcello figures to put himself in a similar situation next offseason. So here is my question. Is there anything Rick Porcello could to put himself in a similar situation next offseason. So here is my question. Is there anything Rick Porcello could do this year to get Max Scherzer-like money next year?

Any set of numbers or Cy Young MVP postseason MVP wins? 225 innings, 250 Ks, ERA under two, walking practically no one. In general, what would a middle-of-the-road starter with pretty good pedigree have to do in his final year before free agency before you would offer him $200 million? Would you dare do such a thing? Would I or would anyone? Would anyone. So I'm going to, let's see, I'm going to call up a comp if I can. So Porcello's last four years, which in this comparison arguably undersells him a little because he was pitching as a, he was making 30 starts for two years beyond

that. But all right. So Porcello's last four years, 740 innings, a 97 ERA plus and 8.1 baseball war. Baseball reference war, okay? So I'm going to another guy, 745 innings, 112 ERA plus, and 7.9 baseball reference war. So the ERA plus is better for the other guy. The war is the same. The innings are the same. And Porcello has a couple of other advantages in that he has a longer track record and had a pretty good year last year, right?

Yeah. Fair enough. Maybe he was a ground ball pitcher on a bad defensive team for all that time. Yeah, had his best year of the four last year, so there's some reason to see that. All right, so that guy who I just named was Mike Hampton. And he went 22-4 in his walk year with a 155

ERA+, a fifth that was worse. He finished second in Cy Young voting and 21st in MVP voting. And I would say that adjusted for inflation, his contract was probably max Scherzer sized. So that might be precedent for somebody getting it with a phenomenal year. I don't think that Hampton would be judged the same this year in this day and age if he had that year. I think that the peripherals would be a big red flag. And, oh, you know what? I'm actually wrong. That was not his walk year. He then went 15-10 with a 3.14 ERA and did not make the all-star team, but was very good, had a very good 142 ERA plus. So maybe that's not quite a precedent. But I think that, like I said, Hampton also,

it's not like Hampton was pushing any boundaries of human achievement. If Porcello had Corey Kluber's season this year, would he get Scherzer money? Well, the one thing he has going for him is youth. He just turned 26, so he will be entering Pre-agency as a 26 year old Still

So that will help I don't know if he had Exactly the same season This year that Scherzer had Last year What percentage of Scherzer's contract Do you think he would get Scherzer got 210

Are we going to call it 210 Or are we going to do the inflation math? Yeah, it's hard to say. Let's say 180. Let's just call it 180. Multiple sorts of financial adjustments to figure out what the actual value of that one was. So if he had what Scherzer did last year, which was good but not, you know, finished fifth in Cy Young voting, had a 120-70 RA+, had a better fifth, I think he had one of the best fifths in the league,

and 5.5 baseball reference board. And he'd be, what, three years, three years younger at least, three, four years younger? He would be, yes. I would be surprised if Porcello, I think that would push Porcello into the, If Porcello, I think that would push Porcello into the, at the high end, the six-year 144 range. The classic contract that all these pitchers sign their extensions for when they have five years of service time. That's what I would guess that Porcello would get. So that's a pretty high percentage of Scherzer.

Pretty high. But yeah, and it'd be easier for me to say that if he had Scherzer's 2013 season, where not only do the peripherals all line up, but so do the glam stats. And so there's some benefit, I think, to those still. But yeah, I think if he had Scherzer's year he'd get Pushed way up high Okay so if he wins The Cy Young award and has a

Strong Cy Young Award season Then maybe he could come close Just the combination of performance Plus age because he is Unusually young for a free agent. Do you think that really matters a whole lot for a pitcher? I think so.

I mean, the fact that he debuted at age 20 and already has over 1,000 innings pitched, it's not like he just started and has a fresh arm. So probably doesn't make as big a difference as it would in some other cases, but I think so. I think there'd be some difference. Okay. All right. Do you want to do a full Playindex? Yeah.

It's actually a very short one, though. Okay. So I got to thinking about, well, I got to thinking about clutch statistics and trying to measure a league-wide clutch statistic. I'll try to explain this. a batter who consistently hit way, way better, consistently way, way better in so-called clutch situations like late and close or like postseason games or something. Eventually, he would have a public narrative about how clutch he is. And eventually, he might even convince you and I. If it lasted long enough and it was sustained and there was a huge body of work, you and I might be convinced

that this guy was just flat out clutch or the opposite. Just flat out not clutch, maybe. Now, I want to see whether the league's clutchness or whatever you want to call it, whatever thing this is that I'm trying to describe, whether it has changed over the years. this is that I'm trying to describe, whether it has changed over the years. And so I wanted to see whether the difference between the league's performance overall hitting in some spot would be different in 2014 than it was in 1960, or whether this gap between high stress and normal situations was consistent. And I don't know exactly what I'm measuring. I keep using the word clutch because that's what the splits in this type of setting are classified under in baseball reference. But whatever I'm getting at, it doesn't really matter. So I wanted to do this, but I couldn't

think of what situation I could use. Because if you measured late and close, if you just looked at how the league performs in late and close situations, that wouldn't really tell you anything. Because now in late and close situations, you're facing Craig Kimbrell. And in 1960, in late and close situations, you were facing the number four starter going through the lineup for the fourth time, right? And so any time, every clutch type situation, I thought I could find some reason that it didn't work. So finally, I just decided to go with runners in scoring position with two outs, which is

clutch enough, right? I mean, it's the one situation where you know almost certainly that a hit is going to score a run, and you know almost certainly that an out is going to end the rally completely. No good can come of an out, and almost no bad can come of a hit. So I figured that's a pretty big swing, so we'll do that. So I looked at what the league as a whole hit in those situations in every year since 1960, and then what they hit overall. And then I looked at the difference

to see if the gap between the stress situations and the non-stress situations had grown or shrunk. And strangely enough, I wasn't expecting anything. I was just tooling around and I maybe didn't find anything. But strangely, 2014 was the second biggest gap in those 55-ish years at 28 points of batting average. There was one year that was 29. There was one year that was 26. But otherwise, it's never even been above 25. And in fact, if you look at a chart,

if you lay these out on a chart, there is a growing of the gap over the course of that time. It's not steady and it's not severe, but in the 60s, it was around 15 points of batting average. And then in the 70s, it was around 20 points of batting average. And then in the 70s, it was around 20 points of batting average. And then in the 80s and 90s, it's been in the 20s, in the low 20s. And then last year, well, last year was the record, or not record, second highest, 28 points. And so I'm wondering whether you have any hypothesis for what's different about the game today that might be causing this gap. Or if you think I've stumbled on nothing more than a lucky hit on a play index search. Okay.

Well, so my first question, you didn't do it as a proportion of batting average, right? I didn't. Just raw points? That's correct. However, because batting average is down, as a portion of batting average, right? Just raw points? That's correct. However, because batting average is down, as a proportion it would actually be higher now. Because batting average is down. So I didn't. I thought about it and I forgot to take that step.

Yeah, that makes sense. And the other thing is I would like to see some power or something. Isolated power maybe over the same period. Just to see some power, something, isolated power maybe over the same period just to see if maybe it's an approach thing where guys used to cut down on their swings with runners in scoring position, two outs, try to get a single, keep the rally going,

whereas maybe now hitters aren't as willing to adjust their approach or are incapable of adjusting their approach and continue to swing away more so than they used to in these situations. And so maybe the overall production in those spots is not different. Right, and so basically what we would be looking for is

does the isolated power differential, has the isolated power differential shrunk in that same time yes where the okay okay so i have done that and um it does not seem to be the case so the uh the gap between just to just to rease, the gap between batting averages has grown, and the gap between isolated power has also grown. And so, in fact, hitters are also slugging much less in these situations, or isolated slugging much less in these situations. So, in fact, they are arguably, they are either changing their approach more nowadays,

or the same thing that keeps them from being good hitters for batting average in clutch situations now, also keeps them from being good power hitters in clutch situations for now. So it could be either one of those things. Huh. Interesting. Or it could be that these pampered players today just choke in the clutch. Not like the golden age of baseball

when players worked in a warehouse over the offseason and had grit. Yeah. So the other thing that you might think is that if there are more defensive shifts on um do you think let's see do you it's hard to say because there are certain situations where you can't do a shift in certain situations where you can and so we see you have seen sort of growing gaps between various base scenario splits for some players and league-wide because of this.

But is two outs with runners in scoring position a shifting situation or a non-shifting situation? It's probably more likely a non-shifting situation. I would think so. In which case, you ought to be hitting better. Yeah. Assuming shifts work. Assuming shifts work.

Yeah. So, huh. Uh-huh. All right. Play index. We don't always have to solve the mystery. We just have to raise one. I don't know. We just have to raise one. Could it be that teams are more likely to put in a fresh pitcher in that situation

because you have more pitchers? In the late innings, you're more likely to have a tough matchup. But I don't know that, I mean, in the same way, you might be less likely to have a base runner in the late innings. So the times when you're going to see a reliever come in, you're more likely to have already had a reliever in the game and be pretty good. Let's see. Pinch hitters, the lack of pinch hitters, that doesn't seem like it could possibly be enough. Yeah, probably not.

I'm not even convinced that pinch hitters work all that well when they are used. Yeah. Hmm. It's a quagmire. It's framing. Must be framing. Yeah, I don't know. If you have any theories, let us know at podcast at baseballperspectives.com.

It's also not like a massively huge effect either, so feel free not to. But it's not just 2014 was low and the years before that were normal. There is some progression, some trend over time, seemingly. Yeah, I'll send you the chart and you can look at it. But yeah, it's not a hugely steep line, but yeah, it's definitely higher by, like if you just sort of blocked it off by decades, you would see some trend. There's a slope.

Yep, I'm looking at it and I can confirm that there appears to's a slope. Yep. I'm looking at it and I can confirm that there appears to be a slope. Rest assured. Okay. Well, interesting. Everyone subscribe to the Play Index at baseballreference.com When you do so, use the coupon code BP to get

the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. Explore your own mysteries. You could come up with many mysteries and answer some of them. Okay, let's take one from Sean. Now you both have during the course of the podcast made reference to the teams you do or used to root for specifically, but I was wondering if it was possible to go back in time to the moment you decided to root for the team you did and instead give yourself an alternate team to root for for the duration of your life up to this point, who would you root for? For example, I'm a Phillies fan and wouldn't give seeing them win a World Series for anything,

but looking back to as long as I've been alive, I'm turning 29 in May, I think it would be fun to be a fan of either the Rays or the A's for obvious reasons, but also maybe to be an Indians fan. You get the Bell, Baerga, Tome, 1990s, they're always kind of relevant, etc. So I was wondering, just for the overall fan experience, again, the Rays and A's haven't won a World Series, but I'm sure there's some pride in continued success with low payrolls. What team do you look at during the course of your life and say, man, I wish I could root for that team? I mean, the literal answer to this would be, well, no, my dad would still be the fan of the same team. And so I would not want to root for a team that deprived me of the experience of getting to root for the same team as my dad.

deprived me of the experience of getting to root for the same team as my dad. There's something about living. If I chose the Orioles and I was a kid growing up not in Orioles territory, that wouldn't be very fun. So the fact that I was a Yankees fan at the time that the Yankees were winning World Series every year, it would be hard to top that. You don't feel any – there was no kind of banality of being a Yankees fan during that time when you just felt like you were punching down all the time?

I mean, was there any of that? Did you feel any of that whatsoever, or was it just complete joy every single time they won a game and won a World Series? As I recall, I was pretty happy every time. I don't think it really faded. And you, with the Giants, have had a pretty good run lately. Well, I barely care.

I don't know if I barely care because of that, but after the first one, all the tension was gone completely. But that's not really the question. I think that the Yankees would be good, not so much just because of the winning. The winning would be fun. I mean, they'd be top six or seven in my mind just from the winning. But getting to have Mariano Rivera would be untoppable. And then getting to like Derek Jeter would probably also be really fun. Like, I would like to be the person who likes Derek Jeter.

But the rest of the country is deprived of that, you know? Yeah, I don't know. I grew up rooting for the Yankees and I never was as attached to Jeter as I was to Rivera or Bernie Williams or even some other players. Yeah, it'd be amazing to have Mariano Rivera in your storybook.

But I think I would pick the Red Sox. Right, it has to be the Red Sox. If you're a 28-year-old, it has to be the Red Sox because you're old enough to have known what not winning felt like. You get to claim the ownership of that. Right. And? And then you get the other depression.

You get the lowest lows. You get the highest high in this period. You get subsequent highs as high as any other team. So it would be hard to top that. Plus you get Pedro. You get Pedro. Very fun team, too. I mean, a lot of fun teams.

They've always been teams that have been compelling in not-quite-played-out ways, in my opinion. Yeah. Annoying to fans of other teams at times, but probably not to Red Sox fans. You get David Ortiz. You get lots of fun stuff. And you get Fenway Park.

Oh, yeah, you do. It's hard to top. All right, last one. This is another baseball mystery that we are being asked to solve. This is from Phil, and he wants to know why managers say the things that they say. He wants us to explain this one statement by Buck Showalter. He says he pastes from MLB Trade Rumors, and MLB Trade Rumors pastes from Masson.

And here's the quote. It's on whether the leadoff spot is Deaza's job to lose on the Orioles. I wouldn't say that, Showalter says. If you asked what is a more important spot in our order, one or nine, I'd probably say nine, because that allows you to do a lot of things down there. If you look at your seven, eight, and nine hitters, and fourth and fifth starters compared to other teams, and your non-closer and setup guys, you have a real good idea how good you are compared to other teams. Over the long season, it is about fourth and fifth starters

and the bottom of your order. Every team, especially in the East, can run six hitters out there. It's the other things that allow you to win 90-plus games. And Phil says, Showalter is a smart man, so he is purposely saying something nonsensical to make Deaza feel better when he bats ninth, right? I mean he can't really believe this or can he? well, I would say that

That buck show Walter and you and I we all have a fairly consistent view of reality. We all basically know How the world works how we see the, and how other people see the world. And so when you say something like this, what you're basically saying is not that the ninth spot is more important than the first spot, but that given our shared reality, you think the ninth spot is more important than other people give it credit for, and perhaps that the first spot is less important than other people give it credit for. You're just subtly shifting the balance of importance. Another way of looking at it would be to say, if you have a team that has a typical guy batting first,

a typical guy batting second, a typical guy batting third, all the way down to nine, all the way through your roster, and you had a chance to upgrade in one area, that you might consider it more important to upgrade from the bottom or just as important to upgrade from the bottom. Because, as they say, the weakest link is the thing about the weakest link being the thing where the chain breaks, however that goes. Right? That old, that old, that old saw. Yeah, right.

So he might just be saying that that is kind of his philosophy of building a roster is to make sure that you don't have any weak spots. And when maybe he's saying that when he and the guys in the front office get together, they don't say, well, geez, how can we make our ace be better? Maybe the first conversation they have is how can we make our fifth spot be better? So I do agree that managers do say things that are aimed at an audience of one a lot of times and we laugh at them and i do wonder whether it's really important to to say those things i don't know if the players buy it any more than we do uh if the audience of one buys it any more than the audience of millions does uh but i will both both say that sometimes that's it

and that makes a certain degree of sense. But that in this case, particularly, specifically, I will back Showalter as making a bit more sense in elegantly than that. I mean, does it make more sense if you're not talking about someone who's already on the team? Because if he's already on the team and you're just deciding whether you want to put him in one spot or the other,

I don't know whether it makes as much sense as if you're saying that you would rather have a really good ninth place hitter. ninth place hitter in that like you could have if you're if you have a really good ninth place hitter I mean that almost implies that you also have a pretty good leadoff hitter because that's usually the difference between good and bad teams it's not it's not so much that that one of them has a better ninth place hitter and just has a terrible leadoff hitter it's that the the good team has a good leadoff hitter and also has a good ninth place hitter which is sort of what are you saying like the replacement the replacement level of that lineup spot is so low that if you have a really good ninth place hitter then that's great that's a big boost it's like a relative advantage that other

teams don't have. But that also sort of presupposes that you're not giving back ground in another area where every team has a good hitter. So I agree. Okay, so I'm going to I focused on the wrong part of this quote, I think, or maybe I focused on a different part of it. I focused on the second paragraph that you read about 789 hitters in the fourth and fifth starters and over the long season and all that stuff. And you're... That is one way. I mean, you can look at certain teams and say, oh, this team is good, not because it has better superstars than this other team, but because at the bottom of the roster, it has better players. It doesn't have holes.

Yeah. because at the bottom of the roster it has better players, it doesn't have holes. Yeah. However, the sentence that maybe is being reacted to here by people in this conversation who aren't me is basically the idea that you would put Diaz in the ninth spot instead of first, even though you think Diaz is better. That's the kind of implication of the first half of the quote. And the implication of the second half of the quote is so different. It makes no sense in that context at all, because by the logic of the second part of the quote, if you look at your seven, eight and nine hitters and fourth and fifth starters compared to other teams and your non closer and set up guys, you you would then be arguing is that you should take your ace and make him your fifth starter. And I know that Buck Showalter doesn't believe that.

That is impossible to believe. Not just you'd have to really be dumb to believe it, it is impossible to believe. It does not make any sense whatsoever. Because if he believed it, he would do it. The Orioles' best pitcher would pitch the least. Yes. So now I'm going to say that he said this because he was dodging the question or he was trying to avoid a situation when Diaz does lose the job. And so the first part is an audience of one, and everything beyond that from about, I'd probably say nine onward, is a pivot.

He's trying to change the subject to something else. Yeah, okay. That makes sense. All right, and lastly, you already answered this question from Marcus, but I will share the answer because it's kind of a fun question. Here's a question I talked with a few friends about recently. What are the odds that Corey Seager, Dodgers shortstop prospect, overtakes his brother Kyle Seager in career war? There's all kinds of downside risk, injury, bust, et cetera, and Corey has a head start.

Do you want to share what your answer was and how you arrived at it? One in 4.5 and through no particular magic. What is your answer? I tried to come up with a different answer, but you anchored me with your answer. And at that point, no other answer seemed more reasonable than yours. phrase it, if we could restart Kyle at zero, then what would you say the chances are that Corey is simply

better than Kyle from this point on? Because what is Kyle? Kyle is currently probably the 25th or 30th, 25th maybe best player in baseball, would you say? But without with enough sort of pedigree deficiency

that there's still a little skepticism about it. Yeah, not so much. He got a pretty decent extension, but yes. Well, pedigree, yeah. I just mean, yeah, I kind of just mean that probably still underrated. I just mean, yeah, I kind of just mean that probably he's still underrated. It wouldn't shock anybody if he never had another four-win season again. If he were actually the 60th best player instead of the 25th,

it wouldn't shock anybody, I think, is all I mean. But let's say he's the 25th best player in baseball. What are the odds that the 7th best prospect in baseball becomes the 24th or better best player in baseball? Probably not good. Maybe 20%. Okay. So if we're talking about, let's see, the elder Seager is 27.

The younger Seager is closer to 21 than 20. So we're just talking about who will be, if we reset Kyle Seeger, his career war to zero, and we say Corey Seeger from age 21 on or Kyle Seeger from age 27 on, that maybe makes it a little more interesting. True. So do you have a new answer?

Are you revising your answer at all? If that's the way the question works, that they're both at zero and we just say who's better from now on, then I'll say it's 2.5 to 1 against

Seeker overtaking or Corey overtaking Kyle. Okay. All right. So that's it. Someone else asked about when we're starting team previews. If you didn't hear yesterday, we are starting team previews next Monday, which means that we'll be back to five shows a week. But we have another show coming up this week before we do that.

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