Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 632: Super-Rotations Revisited, Perplexing Projections, and Other Emails

Episode Date: March 11, 2015

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about the Nationals’ rotation, team projections they disagree with, the most interesting eras to cover, and more.

Cry my cry my baby when the grass is very high I'll keep on crawling till the day I die Crawling can't stay and I rule my death You better give me what I want Bonacron no more Good morning and welcome to episode 632 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives.

Hello. Joined, as always, by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Yeah, just about. Usually. How are you? Pretty good. How are you? Okay. It's a listener email show, our weekly break from the Team Preview podcasts. Do you have any banter before we begin?

I have a, yeah, this doesn't count as banter so if you have banter you can banter but i but do you have any banter a little bit yeah go ahead you got much okay well it's been a long time since there were actual baseball games going on so it's also been a long time since our most popular segment, Ben and Sam Watch Video, that no one else can see. And so did you see the Jose Iglesias play today? Uh-uh. Okay. I am sending you the Jose Iglesias play.

So longtime listeners will recall that Jose Iglesias made a play in August 2013, a diving throw. Josh Fegley was the batter, and it was like a dive slash scoop in one motion. Got the runner at first. We watched it. We were impressed. I think we argued about the merits of that scoop as opposed to some other scoop by a first baseman perhaps and you were much more impressed by this one it it was much more impressive anyway iglesias had another scoop today it's on the right side of the infield whereas the last one was on the left so he had to go much farther for this one and he sort of scooped and sprawled and threw in one motion and he did not get the runner at first but still a pretty play yeah i like this one a great deal i like this one much more than i like the uh other one yeah this is a nice one and it's kind of a shame because

when the guy doesn't get the out i i think the, what's the shelf life of a WebGem quality play where the out isn't recorded? I feel like even if it's exactly as impressive a play, the odds that that play will be remembered by the internet will be much lower. Yeah, you ever think, Ben, I can't, I was telling this to somebody recently, so if it was you on this show, you can interrupt me. But you ever think about how somewhere along the line somebody came up with these arbitrary rules for a sport that a small portion of the population is extremely good at and makes tons of money doing it and gets to be famous and feel special? And think of all the sports that weren't invented that you might be the best in the world at and would be just as valid as sports. I'm not sure those sports exist. There's probably something.

There's some combination of demands that one could put on a human being that you would be really amazing at and if if 180 years ago people had decided that that was the thing that they were going to prioritize in the world for no real reason but that was the the collection of activities you could be that amazing thing so it's it's really, sometimes we think like that you want to be born lucky in this world, like you want to be the guy who's born with the good genes

or born with the social privilege or born with the whatever. But really what you need is for the world to have first shaped itself to your own genes because your genes are not important. Your characteristics, your temperament is not important. It is whether in the 180 years preceding your birth,

the world shaped itself in preparation of you. I'm really good at making drumming sounds with my fingers and knuckles. My girlfriend has a master's in music and she's very impressed by my ability to make drumming sounds with my fingers and knuckles. So if that were a sport, I feel like I would probably be among the best in the world. Anyway, my point is that that's what it's like to have a web gem that doesn't matter because there's no out made. A little bit. A little bit a little bit yeah okay well

think about think about all well no don't think about that all right i like this a great deal and the thing i like about this a great deal is that it sort of feels like just before the throw comes it sort of feels like the whole everybody slows down like the pitcher's running and then he kind of gives up and the second baseman's running and he kind of gives up. And even Iglesias is sprinting, sprinting, sprinting. And then he sort of has to slow to pick it up and he's toppling over and decelerating. And the umpire is very lazily in the background and everything is just kind of coming to an end.

And then all of a sudden this thing just shoots out like a potato gun. Mm-hmm. And by the way, I don't actually want to deprive people of the experience of watching this as we discuss it so whenever we do this this popular recurring segment i do post the video in the facebook group and often in the blog post at bp so you can go find what we're looking for that way it'll be preserved in case the internet forgets about this early March non-out recorded by Jose Iglesias. Who is the pitcher? It looks like David Price, doesn't it? Does it?

No, he's right-handed and not remotely an athlete. He is the least athletic human being ever. And this goes to my point about the arbitrariness of who gets rich in this world. Look at him. Look at him. He looks like the hound in full armor. He's tall. He's got that going for him.

And sluggish. Yeah. Well, being tall as a pitcher is a good thing. And being sluggish is not as bad a thing. Yeah. We'll find out who it is. We'll look it up. Okay.

What was the other thing that you were going to say? Jake Mintz of Sespa's Family Barbecue has hand-delivered to me an email question. Okay. And so I promised to answer it. Sure. We got emails from both of the Suspice authors. We do. And this is only the second time I've ever agreed to answer a question

that wasn't actually emailed to the podcast email address, but I'll do it for Jake. Jake wants to know, what if lineups were operated like snake drafts? Huh. Where would you put all your good players? By the way, it must be Alfredo Simon, right? Wow, is Alfredo Simon that tall?

6'6". Probably. I mean, what inning was this? Does it say in the gif First I think Oh yeah probably then Yeah 31 number 31 Checks out

Yeah so snake draft lineups So So your number Your number one hitter Could end up getting the fewest Played appearances Right Or the most

Yeah And your number nine guy could get the most. And your number nine and number one hitters obviously will never, like they'll never see each other. They'll be like two guys working on different shifts. They'll never cross paths. It'll be like the voice actors in an animated movie. They'll be like, what was it like working with Sean Penn? And they'll be like, voice actors in an animated movie they'll be like what was it like working

with sean penn and then like i never met him except in rango i think in rango they all they voice acted together for camaraderie sean penn wasn't even in rango no johnny depp insisted on having the cast together that was a great movie that is, that's like a top 15 animated movie of all time. Yeah, it's a rare, not terrible movie for Johnny Depp lately. Okay, so snake draft. So the question is how would it matter? How would it affect lineup construction? How would it affect scoring?

How different would baseball be if baseball were different in that way? No, the first question is how would you set your lineup? The second question is because obviously you'd have to have a ghost runner provision the rule that Jake told me had been agreed upon is that you may pinch run with

anybody who's not in the game if you need a ghost runner. And so for that reason, you'd obviously have to roster a couple of Terrence Gore types, and Terrence Gore types would thus be worth more money. That's good. I like those guys. Yeah. And that would have other implications on the rest of the roster, probably. Like you might carry one fewer pitcher.

Is this how they play baseball in Division III? Is this how Jake's baseball team works? Oh, my gosh. Jake's? I've never seen Division III sports. Yeah. Oh, no. Sorry. I'm not going to talk about Jake's Division III pitching career.

Okay. I'm not going to go off in that direction. We're going to keep this on topic. So do you have thoughts on lineup construction? Boy, it's really a gamble, isn't it? I guess you'd have to figure that

if you bat five times in a game, you probably have won. Most of the time, if somebody gets five plate appearances in a game, that team probably wins. In fact, I can do this. I can do a simple play index. That must be average for a leadoff hitter, right?

What, 162 times 5 is 810, but very few players play 162. Yeah, right. I don't know. If you're a home team. If you're like Ichiro or something, you probably do that, but then Ichiro has been on good teams. I don't know. Are we going to then say that, in fact, it's normal,

that the default is to assume that you'll turn it over four times and just barely start inching up on the fifth? I'm going to see. I'm going to do a play index. Okay. So players, I'm going to see. I'm going to do a play index. Okay. So players... Prompt your play index. I'm going to do find all matching games for plate appearance equals 5 for batting order position first.

And I'm not going to bother with home road, although I should. I'm not going to. So plate appearance is 5, and we'll do since 2000. not going to bother with Home Road, although I should, I'm not going to. So, played appearances, five, and we'll do since 2000. And we're going to see how many of those took place in wins for their team. Okay. And we're going to see how many took place in losses for their team in wins and we've got

15,314 take place in losses. So, that's not very compelling. So, let's say then that, let's put it this way then. If you, certainly if you turn the lineup over five

times, then you've won. Right? If you're basically leadoff Certainly, if you turn the lineup over five times, then you've won, right? If you're basically leadoff hitter, whichever direction you're going, your leadoff hitter gets six at-bats, you've almost certainly already won. So in that case, there's no real benefit to having your better hitter get the extra plate appearance because you've probably won. And if you, you know, I don't know, where would your pitcher bat? I think you bat, I think you keep your lineup exactly as it is. That's what I think.

Yeah, my initial suspicion was that it might not matter all that much. It might not matter. You might want to have your, if you think that it's good to get your on-base guys in front of your power guys, then you might want to have like, you might want to sort of clump your power guys, well, like maybe at 3-4-5, which doesn't sound all that radical. And then you're, I guess, really that wouldn't even change anything. But you might want to kind of have on-base guys coming both directions. But otherwise, yeah, I don't think it really matters. I would keep it exactly how it is. This will not change baseball. Okay.

All right. All right. Well, I always enjoy an answer that involves an impromptu play index, even if it was not definitive in this case. It's a good demonstration because you never know what these canned play index segments that you prepare in advance. Who knows how much time you spent laboring over those but when we can do a real time play index

that is a real proof of concept. Could be that like a producer is just feeding these play indexes. Could be that Sean Foreman himself is putting together a package and just handing me like a press release. Things you can't even do with play index. He's just handing me a press release. Things he can't even do with Playindex.

He's just pretending you can do them. Yeah. Okay. All right. Let's take one from Aaron. I remember when the Nationals signed Max Scherzer, Sam decided he liked the deal under the assumption that the Nationals would be trading a starting pitcher, possibly Steven Strasburg, as a consequence.

Now that the Nationals seem content to hold on to their super rotation, would the two of you care to revisit that deal? Well, I like it less for that reason. I guess in a sense, is it fair to say I like it less and rather, instead of just saying that I like their non-move, I don't like their non-move? No, I don't think it is. I think I like it less and rather instead of just saying that I like their non-move uh I don't like their non-move no I don't think it is I think I like it less I don't really see them having a need for Scherzer this year and I get that he's a nice replacement for Zimmerman if Zimmerman leaves next year or Pfister leaves next year and so there's benefit uh going forward but

you know the safest uh the safest assumption is that Scherzer will be good this year. And to me it feels like a lot of commitment to take on just to get this year. To me it doesn't really – to me the Nationals long term, when you talk about whether it's good for them long term, you're not really talking about this year, next year, or the year after. To me they're in a really, really good position. And I would have liked to see them do something that would have set them up long term, you know, beyond that. And so to me, it kind of feels like a missed opportunity. I would have maybe recommended that they do

something, but I actually like that they didn't. I think I said at the time that however much sense it might make for them to make a trade, I hope that they wouldn't, just because I kind of enjoy the super rotation, or at least the idea of it, because in practice, it never really pans out. Guys get hurt. Other guys just have weird, bad seasons, and it's not the just juggernaut that you think it's going to be when you look at the depth chart and from top to bottom it's a really good pitcher every day but the Mets and the Nationals both have sort of sort of super rotations or at least rotations that go beyond five deep and without a big drop off in quality. So I'm hoping that if both of those stay intact,

and those are both rotations for the same reason that people expected there to be a trade from at some point this winter, and there hasn't been. But if they both make it to opening day intact, then maybe one of them will actually pan out into a super rotation that will be fun to watch. One of them will actually pan out into a super rotation that will be fun to watch. First of all, the Mets are not a super rotation. The Mets are a good rotation with young players. The Mets could develop into a super rotation in time, but they are not. Let's not throw super rotation around like this.

There have been like six super rotations in our lifetimes, and the Mets ain't one. Okay? So shut up. Second, second, here's my question to you. Are the nationals better in 20, are the nationals better in 2018? Uh, then they would have been if they hadn't signed Scherzer. Do you think, I mean, obviously Scherzer will probably be better than the non-player that they have not signed right now. But I mean, the state of the Nationals in 2018, with that commitment and that pitcher, do you think it makes them better or worse for 2018? I guess I'd say worse. Just because between now and then, there would be other opportunities to add pitchers

who maybe would be at a better point in their career, more favorable point in their career for not more money. Yeah, that's what I think. And that's kind of what I mean. I mean, 2018 is the median, the middle year. There's three years after that. And I mean, I always like it when teams get good players. That's always fun.

I don't think they should feel ashamed of themselves or anything like that. But to me, it takes a team that's already really good and makes them a little better now and then takes a team that I'm not sure about but probably is going to have a lot of holes three years from now and makes it a little worse for them. And so that's all. Okay. Question from Brian. In light of today's developments, specifically the Cubs' big three prospects homering back

to back to back and Marcus Stroman's ACL tear, I have a hypothetical question. Imagine the baseball gods smiled down on you and offered the choice of either flawless scouting, for instance, knowing a player's true ability after an afternoon of close observation, or flawless training that would prevent all non-contact injuries. For instance, this hypothetical would prevent a pitcher's UCL from tearing, but would not have prevented Giancarlo Stanton's fractured jaw. The ability would last for a finite period of time. Is one of those abilities more valuable to a team? Does it matter if the interval is one year, five years, or ten years?

Is the choice dependent on the team you work for? I don't know whether the scouting ability extends into the future. I don't know whether the flawless scouting lets you see exactly what the player is going to become or lets you see exactly what the player can do right now that might i'm gonna say i'm gonna i'm just going to declare that the finiteness of this is until you're no longer gm okay that it just as long as you're the GM of the team you can have one of these And I think it's Not remotely close I take the training And I don't think that

If I had to guess I would guess it's like by a factor Of three Okay alright well Even if this even if the flawless Scouting extends to players Of any age and Extends into the future i mean if it if it allows you to flawlessly scout future outcomes as well as present performance so that you could

just draft incredibly efficiently and promote prospects at the right time and trade for other teams undervalued prospects and trade your own overvalued prospects and no one would know that you have this ability maybe they would catch on eventually when you never made a bad move but for a time you could prey on everyone you could just raid every system and trade your guys that aren't going to be as good as the the market thinks they're going to be and raid every other team's system. I mean, it's possible that Brian is not using this definition of the flawless scouting, but if it's just flawless present scouting,

that's not all that valuable. I mean, it's good. You're right. If it's actually flawless to the point where you can just go down the... Like, you can get the... I mean, if you get every good pick in the draft, if you had Mike Napoli in the 16th round and you knew that Mike Napoli was the one guy in the 16th round,

if you could get all of those guys with total omniscience, then yeah, sure, I think I'm wrong. Okay, and you wouldn't be able to predict luck, obviously. Guys would still have fluky good or bad seasons. You'd only know their true talent. And you wouldn't be able to predict the kind of contact injuries that we're talking about, so that could still hurt you. But yeah, it would be a huge advantage

to be able to see what every player would become so the i remember the power glove yes right the power glove i never had the power glove neither did i oh you didn't okay i assumed you you would have so no as i understood the power glove you had the duck hunt gun well that that just that's like saying that you had the Duck Hunt gun. You had the Duck Hunt gun? Mm-hmm. Well, that's like saying that you had the Nintendo. It came with the Nintendo. Like, did you also have a controller? I did have a controller. Was there a cord going from the console to the wall?

No wireless in those days. Didn't even have the arcade controller. So my understanding is that the Power Glove sometimes would make you invincible. You could just run through the entire game without dying and you were unbeatable. But sometimes it would just give you a strong benefit, like in Tyson's Punch-Out!! It would give you unlimited stars, so you could throw the Power Star Punch as many times as you wanted. But that's not the same as being invincible. You could still very easily lose to Tyson with unlimited stars.

lose to Tyson with unlimited stars. And so this question and really anything like if this question is says flawless and I don't really know how far to take that. Does it mean that I am godlike or does it just mean that I have a 35% edge over my competition? And in real life, if you were to take this to real life, it would just be a matter of prioritizing one over the other. And then you're probably talking about maybe 3% to 5%. And those are all sort of different questions. So it's hard to say.

I think realistically, using real life, the stakes that real life teams are operating on the margins, I would rather have a team that could draft 10% better for health than 10% better for scouting than the medium. And I think that that's where I would say that it would be a significant difference. Okay. All right. Eric wants to know which team's Pocota projected record we disagree with the most? Well, the Royals, me and Rob McKeown spent two hours going over it just to make sure that we had not done something wrong. So the Royals is the one that I most wanted to see change. 72 and 90.

We just kept running it, hoping it would change. And I'm not that high on the Royals, but I would have liked to see something like 78 or 79. And that still would have raised people's eyebrows, but I would have maybe said, oh yeah, no, that seems rational and realistic to me uh and i can see why it gets to 72 i really can't but i also see why people think it's bananas was there something about it that i mean was there one point of departure in particular where you disagreed or where you were surprised that it said someone was worse than you thought or whatever um well it basically uh it's interesting because um somebody else who has a projection system was talking to me about this and looked at it and said well well it basically just looks like

it hates every royals hitter and you know if put it like that, that's fair. There's no reason that any projection system should like any Royals hitter. There's basically, as Rob put it, who's their second best player? Alex Gordon is a great player, but then who else has been good in regular season play? And the answer's really not not really anybody lately um but actually what if you really look at it the offense is a little bit below average but the real thing is that it really hates their pitching and uh like guys like guthrie and vargas are just not going to get good projections. And there's, I mean, those guys are a big part of their rotation. There's a lot of, well, there's a little more now.

There isn't a ton of depth behind them. And it just so happens that Ventura isn't a big favorite of Kodas. And when you take that out, it just sees the rotation being not really good. The way Davis projection we've talked about, I don't think any system currently can do justice to starters converting to relief, at least the outliers like Davis. And so there's probably a fair win and a half there that it's not giving them credit for.

But the bullpen is fine. The lineup is actually not that bad. a fair win and a half there that it's not giving them credit for. But the bullpen is fine. The lineup is actually not that bad. The lineup projects to have about the same cumulative warp as the Tigers does. And so it looks, with raw numbers, it looks like they hate their hitters. But they don't really hate them that much. It's mostly the pitching that they hate. And D you know, Duffy had the bad peripherals and was completely absent in 2013, so you could see why

a projection system wouldn't like him. Guthrie's not very good. Vargas is fine. And, you know, it didn't like Ventura. And when you don't like Ventura, it looks like a terrible rotation. Yeah, it's hard to find another projection here that

strikes you as off by the same amount. I mean, like there are some that maybe seem a few games too high or low, or maybe the Dodgers at 97 maybe seems a little high, just like the Dodgers last year seemed a little high, although they ended up winning 94. And I don't know, maybe the R raise at 86 seems a little high even though i probably like the raise more than the the vegas odds which are like total long shots but but 86 seems seems a little optimistic and i don't know it's it's tempting to just reflexively recoil against the Orioles' projection of 78 wins

just after the last few years of the Orioles being under-projected or at least exceeding their projections for one reason or another. But you look at the Orioles and I guess, I don't know maybe that's the one but you kind of have to to buy into certain luck-based things to to think that they are really as good as they were last year but I I guess Orioles at 78 does seem a little light just given the guys they're getting back and maybe more Gossman and the rotation is I don't think it's as good as it was last year but it's not awful anywhere really so maybe I'll take the Orioles not that I'm super high on the Orioles but I don't have a problem with the Orioles I uh maybe a little, but I think the White Sox would be my second one. 78.

78. To me, that feels like they feel like a good team to me. They feel like a good team to me. Go under their gut. Jeez. They are a good team. They have good players. They have good pitching.

They fixed the problems in the bullpen. They have good players. I mean, problems in the bullpen. They have good players. I mean, they have some very bad players, too. Yes, they do. They have some very bad position players. Yeah. All right. Play index?

Sure. So, do you have a favorite split? Favorite split. Like a weird one? No, not a specific example of one player's split, but if you go to a guy's split page, do you have a favorite thing to look at for any reason whatsoever? I mean, the most useful one is always platoons, right?

All right, so is that it? I suppose that's my favorite. It's not very creative, but it's the one that is of the most analytical use probably when i'm my favorite split is after o2 for particularly for pitchers yeah that's a fun one when i when i'm sort of drawing a blank on what to write for a guy's comment in a bp annual and i'm i'm just sort of i i find my way into the split section of the world and and i'm looking for something interesting i don't often use it but i often find like i you i go to the after o2 count to jump start my

creativity and after o2 count um creates some some really like it is the the most lopsided split i think of all of them i i mean if there was a split like what you hit on home runs, that would be a bigger split, but I don't think they have that on baseball reference. So it is the most lopsided. I think it's probably the most lopsided, right? There's no other split that so tilts the

playing field in one direction. You mean in terms of it being opposite for pitchers and hitters? Or just different from your average stats? Yeah, different from your average stats. one direction you mean in terms of it being opposite for pitchers and hitters or no i mean like different from your average stats yeah different from your average sets it's like a guy could you know give have an 800 ops normally and then have like a 140 ops after oh two like after oh two you're just so much different of a ball player and so it creates these incredible facts. And so over the years, I've had some fun facts in my life that were after 02 fun facts. For instance, I always loved that in

2010, after 02 counts, Cliff Lee struck out 105 and walked one. So you get that. You get after 0-2 is the only place you ever see a 105-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio, right? And you get that Pedro Martinez in 2000 after 0-2 held batters to an 0-73, 0-88, 0-96 line. Like a 184 OPS. That's the only time in the world you see a 184 OPS in baseball's natural habitat. I was looking at some after O2 stats

on the play index split finder. I have a few of the after O and two outliers of recent or non-recent example. The king of the after O2 walk is currently Ubaldo Jimenez, whose walk rate after O2 is worse than the league average walk rate. Career?

Not career, unfortunately. Just last year. And so, of course, there's a... It was 12... All fun facts lie, as you say. As you say, yeah. 12 out of 116 batters he faced walked. So a little bit higher than 10% of batters that he got to 0-2 on ended up walking.

Steve Traxell once had a season in which he struck out 5.6 batters per nine after 0-2. Now, 5.6 batters per nine, I mean, the nine is obviously an artificial grouping of batters based on how many outs he recorded. But basically what it is is if Steve Traxell lived in a world where every batter came up 0-2, he would have struck out 5.6 batters per nine that year, which is also good. Since 2000, I guess, probably maybe 1988, I can't remember, the all-time worst season for 0-2, after 0-2, seems to be Hector Noesi, who allowed a 3-30, 3-54, 5-82 line after 0-2. So Miguel Cabrera's triple crown year, kind of. Mike

Trout's career slash line after 0-2 against Hector Noesi. And Noisi, for his career, is a 7-10 OPS allowed after O2, which means that if you spotted him O2 for every batter, he would still be a worse pitcher than Aaron Crowe. Aaron Crowe. Aaron Crowe is not very good. No. Worse than Hector Santiago, worse than Chad Qualls. The king of O2 is Jose Fernandez, whose career, granted, his career is essentially one season, but his career line after O2 is even better than the Pedro one that I gave you. The Pedro one was Pedro's career best season. It was his career best season after 02 as well. There has maybe never been a better season by a pitcher in history. And

Fernandez after 02 was even better than that. He has held batters to an 064, 073, 089 line, which is a 162 OPS. Well, I'm going to error adjust that so that pedro will still be better you will i'm gonna read your grant i i wanted to see who had the which pitchers were most or least uh affected by having an o2 head start and it probably doesn't surprise you that it tends to be guys who are power pitchers or who have good strikeout pitches or put-away pitches. So like Yu Darvish's, for instance, Yu Darvish's OPS allowed after 0-2 is only 44% as high as his overall, which is like the ninth lowest ratio, the ninth best or whatever with O2 relative to his normal.

The top 10, Fernandez is number one, 30%. He basically sheds 70% of batters production when he gets ahead O2. Then Tony Singrani is number two, which is interesting, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And partly it helps to be a fairly short career if you want to be the outlier on our leaderboard, and Tony Singrani's had a short career. But still, Singrani number two.

And also, doesn't Singrani only throw fastballs? Well, slight exaggeration, but yes, he is known for that. I think something like 70% or three-quarters of the time this season. Wouldn't you think that it'd be the guys with a killer breaking pitch that would be better on after 0-2? Because they'd get that punch out? Yeah, you'd think. You'd think.

All right, number three, Rex Brothers. Number four, Nick Vincent. Number five, Zach Britton. Number six, Chase Anderson. Number seven, Pedro Stroop. Eight, Delon Batances. Nine, Hugh Darvish. Ten, Kenley Jansen. Eleven, Gene Munchie. Number seven, Pedro Stroop. Eight, Delon Batances. Nine, Hugh Darvish. Ten, Kenley Jansen.

Eleven, Gene Munchie. And 12, Matt Shoemaker. All right, the other side, Noesi is the worst with O2. He only sheds 12% of batter's production when he gets ahead of O2. He is 88% as bad as Hector Noesi when he gets ahead 0-2. Jake Odorizzi is kind of an odd one because it's mostly bad pitchers at the bottom, but Odorizzi's good, and he's the third worst. Fernando Rodney in his career, these are all career by the way,

is sixth worst, which is surprising to me, although having seen Fernando Rodney, always seem to have better stuff than the strikeout suggested. And Kevin Gossman, number 10, is an odd one too. But there he is. So those are the outliers. But really I just wanted to get to Rob Nen, who had the single greatest season ever for an after-02 pitcher.

And it came in 2000. So as long as you're era-adjusting, this will – he is Lindbergh-proof because he pitched in the era that he adjusted to. And in 2000, he faced 65 batters with an 0-2 count after an 0-2 count. Those 65 batters, 45 struck out, none walked, and one got a hit, a single. And so... Pretty good. 65 batters, and cumulatively, they hit 0-16, 0-15, 0-16.

He held them to a 31 OPS. A 31. A 31, man. 45 strikeouts. This is my bad. I'm going to adjust it for ballpark. I'm going to adjust it for first time through the order. I'm going gonna adjust it for

catcher maybe we're gonna get it above pedro somehow if you'd asked me who had the greatest relief season in history uh before kimbrough i would have said gagne i would have said eckersley and i would have said that year from Rob Nen. And the numbers don't really support me, but I was just a kid then watching him with that slider and that fastball. And it was incredible. All right. Good play index. Coupon code BP.

Get the discounted price of $30 on a one year subscription at baseballreference.com Alright Question from Mike This is kind of an old one I've been starring it and saving it for a while Hoping I'd come up with a good answer I don't think I have but it's a good question So I will deploy it now

Mike wants to know If we had to choose any year in baseball history That we could have a Baseball podcast or widely read blog, what would it be? He basically wants to know what year we would want to cover. So covering the DiMaggio hit streak or Ted Williams 400 season of 1941, the strike season for analysis on the gap between management and labor and how baseball could fix itself, the steroid era for all its interpretation and implications. I'm not asking this as what is your favorite season of all time, but more so what provides the best food for your thought as analysts.

What aspects of the game get your juices going as writers and thinkers? What season would provide the most juice? And that's, I mean... 47. It's Jackie Robinson. Well, right. But, I mean, it kind of depends what sort of writer you are, right? Like, if we were writing during the time when integration was going on, we would presumably be writing about that.

That would be the hot topic of the day. And we would do that. But is that the kind of writing that we want to do, right? Like, do we, I mean, if you're a labor writer, you would want to cover the site's decision and unionizing and free agency. Or if you write about social issues, you would want to write about integration. And of course, you know, everyone dabbles in everything. But we kind of gravitate toward, you know, the sort of statistical stuff. And in that sense, there's no better era than now. I don't know whether mike is presuming that we have the same information in any era that we have now so we would just have all the stats that we have

and we would you know have mlb tv or whatever because if if you actually had to to cover the game the way that writers at those times covered the game i would not choose any era, I don't think, because I like being able to sit in my office and watch MLB TV and not go anywhere and have to pay attention to every pitch and get quotes on everything or else you miss it and it's gone forever and you can never watch it again. That sounds awful and difficult and I wouldn't want to do it. So I swinging for the fences. And you would have hot takes about how it's a corruption of the game to try to hit home runs over the fence. And you could use numbers to show how much more valuable it was when you did that, that sort of thing. you could use numbers to show how much more valuable it was when you did that that sort of thing maybe big changes like that would be ripe sources for for analysis fodder for analysis

or yeah you could say that that maybe you would just want to cover like if you could cover bill veck when he was integrating the american league and signing Satchel Paige and doing that kind of thing, that would be great. I'd have loved to have covered him, but I don't know if there's a most interesting era analytically speaking. Is there one that, that you can pick out that would be the most interesting to apply modern analysis to in real time?

Well, I, I, I think that the... Personally, I don't know if I'm answering your question here. But I think that the early 80s, early to mid 80s, would be a fun time to cover. Partly for the extreme styles of play that some teams were playing. Partly for the cocaine. extreme styles of play that some teams were playing, partly for the cocaine, and partly just because I feel like that's this transition where, I mean, you know, I set my modern era in 1988, and those were the transition years where we were getting, I think in a way that

didn't exist before, we were getting really large athletes and closer to true modern elite athletes. But they didn't quite have the grace yet. There was something clunky and not yet refined about them. So I feel like for Giffing, era of people running through walls, of funny slides and bloopers. That was probably the high point for bloopers, in my opinion. Yeah, and guys running a lot, huge stolen base totals, and more contact than there is today. and more contact than there is today. There's a lot of fondness for that era,

and I've never known how much of it is just the fact that, I don't know, the high-profile baseball writers of today came of age during that time, and so naturally they are fond of that era as every generation is fond of the era that it grew up watching. There was almost a baseball prospectus book about the decade of the 80s that was being worked on at one point, and that kind of made sense because everyone at BP at the time kind of grew up watching baseball in the 80s

and reading Bill James at that time, and so that was the time that they remembered fondly from being kids and growing up with that style of play but also as someone who was born then and didn't and thus wasn't watching baseball then it does sort of have an objective appeal yeah i don't i can't think of a reason to really choose any other they're the extremes but i get i mean the 20s would have been fun right yeah that Yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking. Like, I was looking at Walter Johnson today for a

play index that did not come together. But one of the things that struck me about Walter Johnson that I didn't really... I guess I never really realized or thought about it this way, but Walter Johnson, when he was 22, led the league in FIP. Not that anybody knew this,, led the league in FIP.

Not that anybody knew this, but led the league in FIP with a 1.39 FIP. And then when he was 37, he also led the league in FIP with a 3.68 FIP. Basically, league offense tripled in one guy's career. And he never stopped being the best in the game during that time. That would have been a fascinating thing to see, to see some guys, almost like silent movies, right, going to talk. To see some guys just continue to dominate through the transition. I assume a lot of guys that for some reason or another

didn't dominate through the transition. I assume a lot of guys that for some reason or another didn't dominate through the transition. And just to kind of see like all the numbers get blown up and reset with new numbers would be interesting. I mean certainly just to see – like I've said here before, Babe Ruth was – it doesn't seem like – I still kind of feel like it's a hoax because it doesn't really make sense that like what he did, you know, especially because he's a big fat guy. And and so to see that transition would be interesting statistically as well as just to watch. That was also a much better era for scouting stories that right would have some appeal i mean if you were if you were a writer i mean you could you could probably even have heard about players before the teams did at that time there was such a such a rudimentary scouting network and guys were just not being

found you could have gotten a tip and and found some hot prospect before teams even heard about him or they're just constantly stories about about guys just you know owners sending train tickets to someone that someone tipped them off would be good and they could just show up and try out and be amazing and so there were constantly stories like that and you'd also get you know you'd get like the beginning of branch ricky and farm systems and that would be interesting and so yeah that would that'd probably be a pretty good time all right all right resolved the 20s okay choice good all right so uh that's enough probably for today one quick thing lillian in hanover germ, wanted to know what stadium you would pick if you could name a stadium after you or your company. Do you have a quick answer for that? I'm assuming that the standard is that you would want to get the rights to Yankee Stadium, that would probably be the most lucrative naming contract, but you'd have to pay the most. So I guess we're looking for a

market inefficiency in stadium naming rights. Well, I wouldn't want to, I wouldn't want to tarnish a stadium I loved. Um, and, and I don't like attention too much. So I'd probably would just go, I probably would like name, I guess I would name the Brewer's Park Miller Park. You don't want to be intrusive. You would just change the mascot to someone who looked like you. I might put a really small S, like a tiny, tiny, tiny S in front of Miller Park, so it would be like S Miller Park. Very tiny S. S in front of Miller Park. So it'd be like S Miller Park, very tiny S.

Lillian's idea was to just pick one of the extreme parks, which probably makes sense. Like if you could rename Coors Field or Petco Park or something, you would, you'd probably get more mentions per, per dollar than you would otherwise, at least you'd get more mentions than the team quality or the market size would dictate. Right. There's no Dodger Stadium effect, but there is a Coors Field effect. They talk about Coors Field hangovers and things like that. Yeah, so it would be constantly the Lindbergh effect. You'd get good bang for your buck that way. Good point. Okay. All right. That's it.

Sticking with my joke, though. Good one. Good point. Okay. All right. That's it. Sticking with my joke, though. Good one.

Somehow we got two questions today, which we are not going to answer, about baseball and volleyball and what would happen if baseball players rotated positions like volleyball players, which baffles me because we got this question on May 28, 2013, and we answered it in episode 212, an email show. And two years went by year and a half went by no one asked this question on the same day two people asked almost exactly the same question again is that is there something in the air is volleyball in the news uh how that would happen random events cluster in ways that appear non-random. That's true. All right. So that is it for today. We have a team preview podcast tomorrow. It's the Tigers. So that's what we'll be doing. You can send us emails for next week's show at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild rate review.

Subscribe to the show on iTunes. And as we have already asked you to, support the sponsor, the Baseball Reference Play Index. Use the coupon code BP. We'll be back tomorrow.