Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 621: The Moncada Contract, Win Expectancy, and the High-Five Hypothetical

Episode Date: February 24, 2015

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about Yoan Moncada, sabermetric broadcasts, the replacement-level high-five rate, and more.

And then we can do anything we want. And then we can do anything we want. Good morning and welcome to episode 621 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus, presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectus. Hello. Yo. Yo. How are you?

Okay. So we intended for this to be the Brewers season preview podcast. Turns out there are not a lot of Brewers writers. and preview podcast turns out there are not a lot of brewers writers so your options are are more limited when you're trying to schedule brewers guests from what i understand than with most teams so we should have the brewers podcast tomorrow and then we'll just do listener email show today instead and get back onto the team preview podcast schedule tomorrow. So before we start, we want to do a quick plug. It's a subject close to our hearts lately.

We talked last week, if you listen to Friday's podcast, we announced that we are serving as the baseball operations department for the Sonoma Stompers, an independent league team in Sonoma, California this summer, and writing a book about it, which will be out at some point next year. And some people in the Facebook group were talking about buying Stompers gear. I know some people already did. If you are interested in supporting the Stompers by wearing some sort of apparel that says Sonoma Stompers on it. The homepage link is stompersbaseball.com. When you go to the homepage, you'll see a big image that says it will take you to the store. It's not lying. It will take you to the store if you click on it. There's also a store link at the top. And there are all manner of baseball items there including actual baseballs and and trucker hats and probably the the number one item on sam miller's wish list would probably

be the black hoodie that says oh sonoma stompers i think that would be i i do like a black hoodie yep and wearing one right now not a stompers one but wearing a black hoodie. Yep. Wearing one right now. Not a Stompers one, but wearing a black hoodie right now. Yeah, I thought so. I've been wearing it for about seven weeks straight. Same one. That takes it off. Yeah. Take showers not in it, right?

That's true. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. And the GM of the Stompers, Theo Fightmaster, has arranged things such that you can get a discount on these Sonoma Stompers items. And it's the same discount code that you have heard us say hundreds of times for the Baseball Reference Play Index. It's BP. And you will save 15% on Sonoma Stompers merchandise if you would like to purchase some.

And if you do, let us know how it looks. Send us a picture of you wearing Sonoma Stompers gear. A lot of people have asked about whether we'll be doing some event. I am sure that we will have some sort of effectively wild night at some point during the season with people who are in the area. But we have not discussed any plans for that yet. But you can show your support for the effort by wearing something that says the team's name, and the team will be grateful and will be happy because we are grateful that the team is doing this with us. Indeed.

Yeah. All right. Anything else before we get to questions? Nope. All right. Well, let's start with something that's in the news, says Simon. There was a thread on this on the Facebook page, but I would like you two to weigh in. The observation was made that Yohan Mankata is like a top draft pick, but because he was an international signing, he was treated like a free agent and compensated, in theory, at a much higher rate.

and compensated, in theory, at a much higher rate. At age 19, he is unusual for an international signing in that he's a year older than a domestic high school draftee would be, and ostensibly more developed, which would make him just a little closer to Major League ready. But he also doesn't have the track record a Jose Abreu or even Puig had. So how much did the Red Sox ultimately overpay or underpay? And why did no other team with a greater need to restock their minors, and he lists the Brewers as such a team, open the change purse and blow

Moncada away a la Arizona with Yasmany Tomas? And we should probably say how much the Red Sox actually spent on Moncada. They spent $31.5 million on the signing for him, bonus, and that means that they have to pay 100% penalty. So they will end up spending $63 million and then of course they will have to pay him salaries at some point. They will have to pay the usual arbitration salaries for a player. But I was sort of surprised that it wasn't more because we had been hearing $30 million, $40 million, and I kind of figured that if everyone was throwing that figure about, that maybe that was what teams were actually valuing him at. And then if everyone sort of saw him in that range,

then someone would want him just a little bit if everyone sort of saw him in that range, then someone would want him just a little bit more than the other teams. And that team would outspend the other team. And then he'd end up higher than the figures that were being discussed. But as it was, he ended up right in that range or even sort of lower than some of the figures I had read. So let me ask you a question. Let's say that there was a player who was exactly like this in the exact situation once a year for 10 years. And, you know, Moncada is the first in that sequence. But the next nine are valued exactly the same way and they have all the same situation.

By the 10th one, let's not let inflation and things like that get into this, but by the 10th one, how much do you think he would get paid? Do you think that some aspect of his price was suppressed just because this is an unusual situation and people just were kind of not used to paying this much for a player of this age and status? Yeah, I would think so i mean it would depend what happened to the player in the in that intervening decade i know but shut up shut up okay so just how much of that do you think like what do you think would would his you know what where would it find its level i think it i mean it is maybe a tougher sell than I was thinking. I mean, there were a couple of teams that were ineligible, right? Because they couldn't sign players because of previous spending and exceeding bonuses. But there were still the big teams, the Yankees,

the Red Sox, the Dodgers were all reportedly interested. And I sort of thought just that enough would be, just those teams would be enough. But I guess it's kind of a hard sell in that even if he is really good and everyone is saying he's, you know, roughly the 10th best prospect in baseball or somewhere in that range. He's 19, and so it's not like when you pay for Tanaka or someone, or Darvish, who you're expecting to contribute right away, you're paying all this money for him, and then he will go to the minor leagues and he's only 19, so maybe he'll spend two, three years in the minors, and maybe he won't succeed there. I don't know whether his risk level, his bust chances might be a little bit higher than some other 10th ranked prospect just because he hasn't played in the minor leagues.

He hasn't played in the U.S. He hasn't faced pitching here. Maybe that increases the uncertainty a little bit so i guess that just takes a lot of teams out of it and i'm kind of answering simon's question more than yours right now but if you are the brewers then i mean first of all you have to be confident that you're going to be still with the team if you're the GM in three years or so, and that you're not going to blow your budget on Moncada now and then lose the next couple of seasons and not even have your job when Moncada finally shows up. And then it's probably just a tough sell to ownership to

convince them to spend this much money on an unproven player who won't contribute for a few years. So I would guess though that not counting inflation and everything, just the fact that it has happened now, if it were to happen again, I'd guess it would go up to say 40 at least for a equivalent player. I have been kind of operating under the assumption that a lot of teams would love to have him and might even love to have him at that price, but coming up with $65 million on short notice is hard even for super rich people. And that it just is simply a matter, like if this had happened maybe, I mean maybe even

if it had happened in October, maybe there would have been more bidders. Because as we've talked about with other free agents, with more traditional free agents, sometimes it's hard to find teams that have that budget flexibility this close to the season and this late in the offseason. But also, it's a lot of money. I wouldn't know where to go to get $65 million in the next week. But then it occurred to me that maybe it's really easy. Maybe if you're a billion-dollar company, it's really easy to get a loan for that and you just pay interest on it. I'm not sure. It did seem like some teams were using that

as an excuse today to explain why they didn't sign him or why they weren't able to sign him. And I think I still believe it's true, but it wouldn't surprise me if somebody emailed and said, nah, it's just the easiest thing in the world if you're a rich guy to get more riches. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe that's it. But it also just seems like even if you wanted to do it

or that it would be hard to convince someone that that was the way that you should spend your money. But I don't know it seems it seems like a a pretty good bet on their part and i'm going entirely on what people write about moncada and tell me about moncada but seems seems like it it has a good chance of working out in their favor but only so many teams could take on that risk, I suppose. Hey, I got asked a question today that wasn't emailed and that you haven't heard of.

Okay. I'm just going to start saying it, though, okay? Yep. All right, so Tim Lincecum. You know Tim Lincecum? You know his dad? You know the thing about him and his dad? Is it teaching him how to throw that way and everything?

Yeah, yeah. So Tim Linscombe's dad used to be very public around here in the Bay Area. Like he'd be on KNBR, the radio station, all the time talking about Tim Linscombe and how awesome Tim Linscombe was and how awesome he was, how awesome he, the dad, was. And during Tim Linscombe's golden years, his dad was, as I understood it, kind of his pitching coach. And his everything coach, his life coach, you know, the son in his solar system. And then I guess something happened. They had a falling out.

You quit hearing his dad on the radio. They quit interacting so much. I'm not sure of the details. I might be misrepresenting somewhat. I'm trying to undersell, though. I think it was a falling out. Anyway, Tim Linscombe got very terrible at baseball for many years. And then this offseason, started working with his dad again.

I heard his dad on the radio just two days ago. Maybe it was five days ago. And his dad was talking about all the work they've done and and how like his dad was talking about how his towel drills are so much better than everybody else's towel drills like he was really going on about towel drills and how inferior everybody else's towel drills are so everybody else just washing windows like that sounds like if you told me that you were the one washing windows maybe that would sound good washing windows i don't know if that's a good or a bad thing like watching windows sounds like mr miyagi to me so anyway his towel drills are better and he was

throwing into a net they didn't even have a gun on him and i don't know the long thing about tim lynch comes off season and so now people are getting optimistic because he's back with his dad you know and not just because his dad was his coach but because his dad was his, you know, if you had a – yeah, I think a lot of people maybe if they had a falling out with a family member that might affect them, this is two questions. Do you give any credence to this being a factor in his career? And if he wins the Cy Young next year and you had to put a number on how significant a factor it was, what percentage of the improvement was due to his dad, what would you do? If I'm back from a year from now in a time machine and I tell you, oh yeah, you didn't hear Tim Lincecum on the Cy Young, how much are you giving credit to his dad? Man, that'd be great. I could claim that my article from last year where I wrote about how

Tim Lincecum was back was just ahead of its time. Every now and then you hear those stories about a player who is just all out of whack and his pitching coach couldn't help him or something, so he broke it all down and he went back to his high school coach who had built him up from scratch or something and they watched video of what he had looked like in high school, and he got back to basic principles, and suddenly he was great again. And you never really hear the story of, yeah, I broke it all down, and I pitched like I had in high school, and I was awful. I was even worse, and my coach completely screwed me up. You don't hear that story as much. screwed me up you don't hear that story as much i would multiply his pakoda by 1.01 or 0.99 i guess if i'm saying it will it will be lower his era you're giving him one percent yeah all right now be happy he's talking to his dad again. All right. Now, talking to Time Machine Sam, how much of the, how much, let's say there are 100 units of improvement.

How many of those 100 units are you giving to his dad? Well, I guess probably a lot, I think. It depends on how he did it. how he did it, like if he were suddenly throwing a lot harder, and he had noticeably different mechanics, and he said his dad told him to do that thing, then

I'd give him a lot of the credit. I don't know. Do you need to know that? Assuming that this isn't just Babith luck, or something, like assuming that there's true improvement, then improvement can come in all

sorts of ways it could come in command it can come in velocity it could come in sequencing it could come in uh stamina it could come in all sorts of ways right but what what would the other explanations be for how he got better at those things random fluctuation and he was always and you know and he had uh he had shown flashes even in the three years of struggles that he had i mean he threw he's thrown like four no hitters during his terrible seasons so i guess that or dave or getty you know anything Yeah. Well, of course, there would be such a narrative surrounding it that we would know what he credited it to. But I don't know. I'd say 30. 30 improvement units. All right.

Potentially more. Potentially less. What would be the potentially more? What sort of improvement would you most credit to a personal pitching coach? Well, I mean, I don't know. We talk a lot about mechanical adjustments and how I never know whether to believe them or not. But if Tim Lincecum suddenly started pitching like a Cy Young winner again, I'd probably believe it if he were actually doing

something demonstrably different and it were something that his dad told him to do and he wouldn't have done otherwise. I don't know what that thing would be. It would involve towels. If he comes out with towels, if he pitches the whole year with towels and wins the Cy Young, you'd have

to give his dad a lot of credit for that, right? Yeah, I'd give the towel 10 units and give Mr. Linscombe the rest. Oh, wait, does it come out of Mr. Linscombe's 30? Yeah, I think so. He didn't do it himself. The towel played a part. He gets 20 of the 10. Is that right? Yeah, I think so. He didn't do it himself. The towel played a part. He gets 20 of the time. Is that right? Yeah, I think so.

Well, speaking of fathers, that was my father's question, and now I don't have to get him anything for Father's Day. Next year you can get him our book. Or a black hoodie. Yep. Yep. Okay. All right. All right. Well, this is a question from Tim Livingston, the Stompers broadcaster who set all of this in motion by contacting Sam. So what sabermetric aspect do you feel doesn't get talked about enough during a broadcast? Since the Pacific Association doesn't have much in the way of advanced metrics, I leaned on OPS, BABIP, and strikeout walk rates a lot last season. But do you think there is something from a game theory perspective or another advanced metric realm that could educate the fans

while also not having the information go over their heads? That's a good question. I don't know that I have the best answer. I imagine that there are better answers than this. But the first thing that comes to mind is that I think that win expectancy win expectancy yeah right yeah yeah like i would i would talk about winning i would probably i would probably mention win expectancy roughly as often as the score uh-huh i yeah i that came up i was at a espn mlb summit sort of thing a few weeks ago and i was talking to a producer of

baseball telecasts there and that came up at some point and i don't know someone else in the conversation didn't think that that would appeal to a lot of people or that it wouldn't personally appeal to him to know what the odds are. And I guess I can see that. Like you usually have a sense. I mean you know who's favored to win at any given time pretty much. And you have a sense if it's a real long shot or if you're likely to win. So the numbers are cool to see. It's nice to have exact, precise numbers and know what happened in previous games in these circumstances,

but it doesn't really shock you, right? It's cool to quantify after the fact, maybe, even more than during the game. I guess it's nice if you're... Oh, see, I find it completely uninteresting after the fact. Like, oh, you mean for analysis? Well, yeah. To me, once the game is over,

the sort of narrative value of a win probability change is not that interesting to me. I have never been a person who looks at the graph after the fact and sees the game you know like it it's like uh it doesn't it doesn't chime in my brain to see a chart after the game now as the game is going i do and to feel a swing as it's happening and to know you know what a swing it was uh is is good and and certainly for analysis if you're talking about i do use it for analysis it's useful but i didn't mean to if that's what you were saying i didn't mean to argue that yeah well i don't i like looking at

the graph i i mean just to see if there are a lot of swings then you but again you kind of know if it was a great game or not. And well, so how would you want it to be used on a broadcast? Would you want, would you want it on the, the Chiron somewhere? Like this is the number of outs. This is the number of strikes. This is the win probability. Would you want it at the top of the inning?

It's three, two giants and they have an X percent chance of winning the game. Or would you just want it after a big hit where you say, before that hit, the odds were this? No, no, not the change. I'm not as into the change as much. And this is going to not endear me to everybody, but I would like the world to get to the point where we talk about win probability instead of

score. I'm actually more interested in the win probability, especially within innings, you know, within an inning when there are runners on, I'm, I actually am more, I know what the score is. I mean, you know, that's, I guess you have to know what the score is. You have to know what that run means, like literally, but, um, but I want to know, I love it when a team is behind but ahead. If you're down by one but you have the bases loaded and nobody out and you're technically kind of ahead, like I love that. That's great. To me, that's more accurate than knowing the score.

Because the score, look, what is the score, Ben? The score is, at the end of the game, the score is the the score, look, what is the score, Ben? The score is, at the end of the game, the score is the final word. So I understand that. But the score isn't a counting. It is an estimate for who is going to win at the end. It's a way of keeping score of who's ahead, right? And so while runs are the unit of measurement for winning, at the end of the game, obviously, runs are all that matter because they're the unit of measurement for winning.

But as the game is going on, not everything that... I don't quite know how to put this. Not everything that changes the estimate of who's going to win is a run. There are sort of sub-events that also affect it. And so I think that if the score is, if somebody says who's winning, why isn't it the team that has the higher winning expectancy? Like, why wouldn't it be that? There are more to

win. Right. Well. So why not? I mean, if you said who has more runs, then it'd be the team with more runs. But if you said who's winning, it'd be the team that's more likely to win, yeah? Yeah. There aren't that many times when the team that is winning does not have the higher win expectancy. Sometimes, though. Yeah, that would be interesting if you had a team that was down by a couple runs, but they had the bases loaded with no outs or whatever.

I'm going to argue a little bit, because there are millions of times, thousands of times, when we say the game is tied, and it's not tied. I mean, every first inning. Every first inning is tied, and yet, as long as one batter has batted, as long as one pitch has been thrown, it's not really tied. So then you would, I guess, want this on the screen then at all times, right? I would, well, I don't, I guess, I'm trying to think. I guess the score, is the score always on the screen these days?

Yes. Yeah, I don't particularly need that. And I don't need... Tim's talking about radio, and I also like radio. And you get the score a couple times in anything. And I'd feel okay getting the score a couple times in anything and the win expectancy a couple times in anything. I wonder if broadcasters are afraid that it will make people stop watching

if they know the odds. Oh, right, because 97% is like a three or four run lead in the ninth or in the eighth. Which sounds doable. People think three or four is pretty close but people don't think 97 is close that's true yeah that's true there isn't much upside there is there well i don't know i don't i mean yeah i don't know if anyone's tuning in because this broadcast has win probability on the screen maybe Maybe. I don't know if it's something that would drive people away. I mean, some percentage of people are always going to just react viscerally

to math in their baseball broadcast and not like it, even though it's hardly math. It's based on previous baseball games and what happened in those. I guess the other problem is that your basic win probability is based on just league average everything, which can be quite different from an individual situation if you've got the best hitter in baseball up against the worst pitcher in baseball. That can swing the odds considerably. So I don't know. When I worked at Bloomberg Sports,

we did some sort of real-time win probability thing that I think was used on some playoff broadcasts at some point. And that was kind of cool. It was like a projection system sort of thing with the odds ratio of the hitter and the pitcher. And it kind of fine-tuned the win probability. So if you could do something like that in real time, that would probably be even better.

But yeah, that's, I don't know, that's my go-to example. Fair enough. Okay, play index. All right. So I started thinking about this idea of guys who get intentionally walked more than they get – who get intentionally walked a lot. But they might also get walked a lot or they might not get walked a lot. But a high percentage of their walks are intentional.

And I don't know why. This is not the case. But for some reason, I was sort of thinking of this as like the way to measure most feared hitter, right? Because you fear them so much that you intentionally walk him, even though they, I don't know why I thought this. Or he bets eighth in the National League. Shut up. Okay.

Spoilers. So then, so I, this is just step one of this though, because we are going to get to that. So I wanted to see who has the highest percentage of of his walks coming intentionally and um so i just i went to the play index i looked up the using the proportion tool i looked for intentional walks making up a quarter or more of your walks and that gets you that gets you with all the great players right that gets you barry bonds and albertujols and Ernie Banks. And Hank Aaron is just barely right under there.

So there's a bunch of really great players who are at 25. That's about where you cut out all the people who get tons of walks. And then you start getting kind of more to the point. So if you bump it up to 30, then you have Ichiro, which is cute. I like that. I like that Ich row is on there um and then you have a bunch of number eight hitters and then you have one guy one one true true feared hitter and i'm going to give you a chance to guess who is the one hitter since 1900 who has 30 of his walks coming of the intentional variety who hit more than 115 home runs.

And it's not Bonds? It's not Bonds. It's not Bonds. It's definitely gettable. But if it's not Bonds, then you know that you've got to come at it from a different direction, right? Because Bonds is one kind of guy who gets on this list, and then there's another kind of guy who gets on this list for the opposite reason. I don't know.

I don't feel like putting that much effort into this one. All right, Vlad Guerrero. Ah, okay. Naturally, right? Yeah, swings at everything, sure. Doesn't walk on unintentionally. So that's 30%, and I kept going up just to see who's the highest.

And Gary Templeton is close. He's number three. But the highest is Manny Sanguian. And Manny Sanguian, yeah,uine yeah yeah manny sanguine was what was my next guess was the was basically a league average hitter who hit eight and i'm gonna just i'm gonna look this up but i would guess that uh of his he and he was intentionally walked 96 times, which I believe is quite a bit more than Jim Rice, just for the record. Yeah, that was the whole thing with Jim Rice, right?

Everyone said he's the most feared. No one wanted to face him, but that wasn't actually the case so much. Actually, it's interesting. Sang-Yin, I'm going to withdraw him. He is actually the champion for legitimate reasons because of his 98 intentional walks, only 14 came when he was batting eighth. And he got two batting third. He got six batting cleanup.

He got 17 batting fifth. So he was a hitter. You and I don't remember this because we're young, but apparently he was good at baseball. So he's the champ. He was in reallyter. You and I don't remember this because we're young, but apparently he was good at baseball. So he's the champ. He was in really bad lineups. Maybe he was. So then we're going to call Gary Templeton

the number eight hitter champ with 144 intentional walks. And so anyway, that's not the point of this. That's a boring thing kind of. But then I got to wondering whether the fact that there were a bunch of guys on here who batted eighth, but they're all from an era that like, they're all guys who I basically don't even know about. Like I know Gary Templeton,

but then there's a bunch of guys named like Doug Flynn and like John Bateman. And like, those guys are really Doug Flynn. What did I say? Doug Flynn. Did I say Doug Flynn? Yeah. And John Bateman and a bunch of guys who are from like the seventies and right. man and like those guys are really doug flynn what did i say doug flynn did i say doug flynn yeah and john bateman and a bunch of guys who are from like the 70s and right so on so i wondered whether we're seeing any change in the rate of uh number eight hitters getting intentionally walked

if uh if it's risen or fallen over the years intentional walk rate overall is is down it is you're right uh yeah it is and only partly because Bonds retired, although also partly because Bonds retired. All right, so I looked at the rate. I started just by sampling five-year samples in each decade to see, and there does seem to be a peak in the 70s and 80s. There was very, very, very few in the 40s. In the 40s, hardly anybody ever walked the eighth hitter to face the pitcher.

And then in the 50s, it got up to about 1.6% of the time. And then up to 2%, 2.2, 2.2, 2.2. And then in the 2000s, it started dropping a little bit. And now it's down to 1.9%. And so that gave me enough to go looking and see whether there is, in fact, a clear slope. And there's not that clear a slope. There was definitely a peak in the 70s, I should say. And in one year, 19, it looks like 60, it might be 68, which would

make sense because everything weird was 68. More than 3% of 8 hitters got intentionally, sorry, 8 hitters were intentionally walked, more than 3% of their plate appearances. That's the high watermark. And approached again in the mid-80s, and a bunch of years in the mid-80s that are around 2.5 or so. And it's definitely going down, but not real steadily. There are years that are high, years that are low. Not a great trend, but it's definitely going down. So this strategy does seem to be fading somewhat with time. So this strategy does seem to be fading somewhat with time.

And by the way, I only looked at National League because, of course, the American League is a factor. And I did adjust for interleague play because nowadays number eight hitters in the National League spend something like 6% of their games playing in the American League where they would not be batting in front of a pitcher. So I did control for that. And so there is a trend, a subtle trend away from this strategy, which is somewhat surprising because pitchers are much worse hitters nowadays than they used to be. But maybe it's somewhat unsurprising because there is more, I don't know, there's, like you said, intentional walks are down overall. Teams seem to be aware that intentional walks aren't always as strategically sound as they might appear at first.

And so maybe, I don't know. I don't know if I would say teams are wising up because I think that intentionally walking a hitter to get to a pitcher is probably a pretty good idea a lot of the time, especially with pitchers being as hapless as they are now. But maybe someday there will never be a number eight hitter intentionally blocked. At this rate, around $26.50, if my math is correct. All right. I hope I live to see it.

Me too. Okay. Cool. Play index. Use the coupon code BP. Get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. It was not 68. It was 1967. 3.1%. Okay. Record. A record. All right.

Oh, hey, can I real quick answer Dana's question from a while ago? I don't know what it is, but please do. Dana wanted to know if there's ever been a game in which a offense reached all 24 base out states. Oh yeah. There are 8 different ways to have runners on base, and then there are of course 3 different

ways to have some number of outs. So there are 24 base out states. Nobody on with none out, nobody on with one out, runner on first with one out, and so on. So he wanted to know if this has ever happened, but really he wanted to know if this is a thing that happens a lot. And I also didn't really have an idea whether this is something that happens a lot or never. And so I had Rob McCune of our stats team look it up for us,

and I wrote about it. It's up on the site if you want to look at it. But as I wrote in that, I would have guessed that it has happened never in history or that it happens a few times a year because that seems like what most things are. But it's not. It's about once every 15 years this happens. The last time it happened was in 2007. And I looked at that game in a little

bit of detail to see how it happened. It's hard to find a reason to write about that game otherwise. There's nothing particularly notable about it. I was thinking, oh, it'll be 26 innings or they'll score 24 runs. But it was just a game. They won 8-3. Nothing really exciting happened. There were a couple of slightly unusual plays on which these opportunities pivoted. And so that was, I guess, my revelation. But it just happens sometimes. That's all. You might not even know. It's happening right before your eyes. You might not. Believe it or not, some people might not even notice it happening. You and I would. Everybody listening would. But there are some fans who might not even notice all 24 base out states happening in one game.

We have our base out state bingo cards. I was going to say exactly that same thing. I was going to say exactly that same thing. Once you get to the eighth inning, you cross out all but one of your base out state. Yeah, the beat writers have a pool going to see who will get the last base out state. I guess it's probably a lot less likely to happen these days with fewer people getting on base. Fewer people getting on base base but also fewer people scoring they're just they're just when they do get on base they just pile up out there sometimes there's six or seven guys on base nobody can score runs anymore so

might might be easier all right this question comes from john this is a little bit like one of those stereotypical tech company questions where they bring you into the interview and they ask you to calculate how many, I don't know, how many somethings are in McDonald's in the whole country. Right, or the manhole cover one. I don't know the manhole cover. I know the how many McDonald's are there. What's the manhole cover one? The manhole cover. How many manhole cover one? I don't know the manhole cover. I know the how many McDonald's are there. What's the manhole cover one? The manhole cover. How many manhole covers?

No, it's wire manhole covers round. Oh. You don't know the answer? No. It's the only way that it can't fall in. There's no way that you can turn a manhole cover that it would fall in because it's a circle, you know? So you can't, no matter how you tilt it or turn it or tip it on its end, it can't fall in any other shape you could.

Very clever. Those manhole cover makers really know their stuff. Yeah, that was, I think that was a Google one or an Apple one or something like that. Anyway, yeah, what's this one? So this one is, how many high fives does an average replacement level high fiver give out during a season

from day one of spring training until game 162? Think for just a minute how many hand slaps a player gives every single day. It might make you sick. It probably makes them sick. Yeah, right. It passes germs, right? So how many high fives? So how many high fives Okay so day one of spring training

Until game 162 is How many days roughly That's I mean it's February Through September So it's you know seven months So it's like 210 days Something like that

200 days let's say Because you don't report until Halfway through September, and then you end in the last couple days of September. So 200 days of baseball season in which you could be high-fiving. So how many high-fives a day do you give? Obviously, there are some off days in there when you might not high-five. There's the all-star break.

Let's say it's i don't know 180 high-fiving days so how many high fives do you give in during a day of baseball i don't think that you give any that aren't in the game i i'm i'm sort of going back in my memory and i don't think they give high five like you might see you know if your pal comes out of the batting practice cage you might do an like sort of an ironic high five or like are we counting fist bumps did fist bumps get mentioned he said hand slaps okay so yeah and we're not counting we're not counting handshakes because there's a lot of handshaking like i've said on this podcast baseball major league baseball is a handshaking sport yeah i don't know let's just i feel

like the spirit of the thing is just all all forms of hand on hand interaction i don't want to count hand shaking not a not a shake not a greeting the subject line was high fives slash hand pounds okay so that's a we can go with that if you want if you want. So how many a day? How many a day? Well, let's see. You figure certainly every run for sure. Right. So that's at least four on average. Yeah.

I mean, if you're the player scoring or you're the player hitting the home run or something, you're racking up. 25. Yeah, you're racking up. 25. Yeah, you're racking up 25 right there. So that's right. If you're the leadoff hitter, you've already got 2,500 in the bank, and that's just, like, that doesn't even count your sack flies. Man.

And then, of course, at the end of every game, you've got another 25. Yeah. Maybe 35. And you've got greetings when you get to the dugout, maybe. So I guess it is mostly in-game, and it's mostly in-game events. So it's a replacement-level high-fiver. So I guess that would probably be a replacement-level player, right? Because the more, I mean, the better you right because the more i mean the better you are the more high fives you give or at least there's a correlation there

do you think albert bell gave fewer high fives than his teammates like how many high fives if if uh if the average oriole gave 100 high five you know what had it gave x high fives and we did a high five plus uh where would albert bell be do you think you and we did a high five plus. Where would Albert Bell be? Do you think you can get out of high five duty is what I'm saying. Is it like where, like if I go to a party, for instance, and I hate being around people, I will find ways to disappear for 20 minutes. Do you think Albert Bell sometimes just slinks off? Like he sees a high five train coming and that's when he goes to bone his bat

or whatever that thing riley said was right um yeah i think so i think if you're if you don't like physical interaction with others certainly some players are to continue him some players might like it more than others so i know i know that there are some like i know that he might not go out of his way but do you think he avoids the home run line i don't think you can completely avoid it i mean certainly that the guy at the plate at least is going to give you one i'm saying um i'm saying for a guy who's playing i'm not talking about a bench guy because a bench guy is only going to be giving congratulatory high fives rather than receiving them so i'm talking i'm talking regular so yeah a regular regular major i'm saying 70 to 80 a day okay well so you figure

your team scores four runs a game that's roughly the average now so you're you're getting up every one of those times right and sure and one some of those times you're going to be the guy. Yes. Who scores. Yeah. So what's the average? The average replacement level player who is playing every day scores, I don't know, what, 60 runs or something?

50 runs? If you're playing every day, yeah, 60 to 80, I would say, if you play a full 162-game season. Yeah. But you're not good, so you're getting up less and you're getting on base less. Well, are we saying you're playing every day, though? If you're playing every day.

Roughly. All right, I'm going to look up Alex Gonzalez. Which one? Exo Marx or without Exo? Alex Gonzalez per 162 game average was 67 runs, and nobody was worse than him. And he batted at the bottom. Well, one guy was worse than him. Nafee Paris.

Alex Gonzalez, I was going to say. But he, you know, 290 on base percentage, bad at the bottom of the lineup. The other Alex Gonzalez per 162 was 72 runs. Okay, so just there. Did you know they have the same OPS plus? Wow, no, I didn't. 79.

I discovered that the other day. Okay, so maybe we can just use him as the baseline for just positive events where he would be high-fiving the whole team. So runs scored, sacrifice flies, productive outs of all kinds, home runs. Well, that's counted in runs. home runs well that's counted in runs um so so looking at his 162 game average how many roughly how many events in a full season would require a full team hand pound of his own yes where he's the guy who is getting all of them all right so we're saying we're saying 67 runs. We're saying 10 sack hits, 4 sack flies. We're up to 81.

And some number of grounders the other way. Certainly. Let's call that another 12. So we're up to, did I say, I think we're 93. And then we've got good plays to end an inning. Sure, yeah. You figure there's short stops yeah maybe 30 i mean does he get one for every double play yeah i don't think so let's say 30 okay uh all right so we're at 123 yeah uh And then we've got, I guess, you know, even if you get, like, sometimes you sting a line drive, you know, and it's caught.

You might get some high fives. You know, you get caught stealing. You know what? You get caught stealing, you go back to the dugout, you get high fives because you got on the base. You know, because you got a hit in the first place. That's true. By the way, by the way, I mean, there's 100 and there's 200 times he reaches base. That's one from the first base coach every time, guaranteed.

Oh, man. This is like a, this might be a thesis or something. This is pretty complicated. So we're up to, we're up to 120 plus my stolen base My pot stealing theory You know you get on it You get a hit and then you get forced at second That's a high five That's a dugout high five

That's not a full team I mean if you're making the last out of the inning You're not getting the full team Because some guys are heading out to the field Or whatever Probably not going to get everyone Certainly not if it's the last out of the inning that's true yeah i'd say i'd say you're the star of the show 175 times so let's let's call that it's not 25 because the bullpen guys from the bullpen

and some guys are on base some guys batting so let's call it 14 per. So you've got 2,450 right there. Okay. So now we've got to account for how many you're giving out. Right. So your team scores 600 runs or something. By the way, that's 2,430. My initial estimate of 70 per only gets you to 11,000. And so now you just have to figure A, is there another 9,000

that you give out? And B, is it fair to use Alex Gonzalez as our standard? I don't think it's unfair. By the way, no, I said 20. That's right, but then also 162 games plus the high five line at the end of the game.

So that tacks on another 4,000. Oh, man. So now we're halfway there. And that's not even talking about the ones that he's given so generously, which he has to do in order to stay in the league. Because if you're as bad as Alex Gonzalez, you're staying in because of your... That's a possible bias, right? Because if you're a replacement-level player,

then you are probably high-fiving disproportionately just so you can be known as a high-fiver. So replacement-level high-fiver is not necessarily a replacement-level player. Man, there are a lot of factors to consider here. So if we've established that Alex Gonzalez is getting more than, I mean, Alex Gonzalez, who's bad, and he's getting more than one high five line a game,

then that means that Alex Gonzalez could anticipate that he is giving, on average, all of his regular teammates at least one a game. on average, all of his regular teammates at least won a game. And so that would be at least a minimum, including the relievers who pitch an inning or face batters. A minimum of what? I mean, we're talking 13 guys who are getting at least an Alex Gonzalez worth of high fives. So that's another 2,100.

So I think this is all conservative, but we're up to 9,000. And I mean, we're basically getting to my number, my original number, 70 a game, 70 a day, which works out to 12,000. Okay. Well, it seems reasonable. 11,340. Hmm. All right.

Yeah. I mean, I guess you're not... Yeah. I guess... Does fan interaction count? What are you, Cal Rifkin? Breaking Lou Gehrig's record? How often are you high-fiving fans?

If you're Lasting's Millage, you might high-five fans on your way out to the corner. I don't know, if you're signing autographs or something. Do you see them giving high-fives? They hate the fans. They don't hate the fans.

Alex, he's always loved the fans. Alright, I guess. You're not giving reporters any of these things. I mean, maybe, I guess coaching staff is mostly like butt pats or back pounds or non-hand interaction. So, seems reasonable. What about if you go home and give your wife a high five? Are we counting that? That should count.

All right. Your kids? Oh, if you have kids. Oh, man. What if you're... No. What if you've got five kids at home? What if you're Melvin Mora and you've got octuplets?

You're high-fiving all of them. Dude, we're in the 11,000s a day. I mean, it's not going to move the needle. You high-five your kids three to 12 times a day at most. So, well, all right. So let's say six. All right. So that's another 1,000.

That's substantial. Okay. All right. A first base coach, though, every single, every walk is one. Right. So how many times has a guy on base in a season when the first on first maybe it yeah i mean 300 well i know i'm not talking about the player anymore i'm trying to figure out the first base coach how many oh well so he does he's going to do 12 a game plus

the rope line at the end right so that would be 37 although he might also do he might give one to the pitchers who come in mid-inning because he's already in there probably not though i'm gonna count 37 so he's at 6 000 first base coach gets away with half that's why he doesn't get paid as much i think i am gonna have to find a player who will keep track of his high fives for me settle this just a day in the life of one high fiver get us some empirical data on this all right well this is one of my favorite email show questions ever good job john all right well we like that question so much that that took up a lot of time that we could have devoted to other questions but that's fine because those other questions probably wouldn't have been as entertaining as that for us anyway

it's gonna be weird everyone listening isn't it gonna be weird when our book is nothing but that question answered it's gonna be that's right we are in a position we're gonna be seven we're gonna get 71 games into the season the 78 game season and realize all we've done is count high fives and we really have to speed things up on the rest. We're going to be calling for sacrifice bunts just to jack up the high five rate. Definitely going to be gathering data on this at some point during the season. All right. That's enough. I will save some of the other questions that I have set aside here, and we will answer them next week. Please support our sponsor. We've already told you that.

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