Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 637: The Interviews, Ejections, and Injuries Edition

Episode Date: March 18, 2015

Ben, Sam, and guest Jake Silverman banter about Tommy Lasorda and franchise players, then answer listener emails about interviews, ejections, and MLB information-sharing.

🎵 Yeah, I'm saying yes joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello, Sam. Hello, Ben. And we have a second guest today, or a first guest, third guest? I guess we're not guests, so it's a first guest. We have a guest today. He is Jake Silverman, and some of you might remember about a year ago at this time, we had a guest on for a listener email show. It was actually Ryan Sullivan, who now hosts the banished to the pen podcast and ryan donated to the saber seminar the excellent baseball conference that is in part hosted by our friend dan brooks and this year another offer went up co-host the effectively wild listener email show

with a donation to the saber seminar andinar and by extension to the Jimmy Fund. And this year's donor was Jake Silverman. Hey, Jake. Hello, Ben and Sam. Hi, Jake. Hi, Ben and Sam. So tell us about you. So I'm at Brandeis University.

I'm studying international relations and behavioral science from New York. Yankee fan, you can hate on me for that. Sam? I don't hate Yankee fans. I've been one of the, I might, I would say I've been one of the few people in the mainstream media who has defended the Yankees as a great American underdog story. I'm not sure about underdog story, but I'll take great American story. I'll send you the link. I wrote a lot. On what grounds? Me? You're asking me, Ben? Yes ben yes do i know this did i edit this yeah you did it and then you later linked to it at one point uh it was um oh right right right it was during the playoffs when you were doing the the yes the uplifting stories from from the yankees for people to root for

not the yankees as a franchise, it was individual Yankees on the roster at that time. All 25 Yankees had, in my opinion, something that made them underdogs and that made them impossible to root against, even Alex Rodriguez. Right.

Yes. We are glad that you could join us And grateful for the Donation to the Saber Seminar And Dan's behalf I don't know if I should show favoritism But it's my favorite of the many Nerdy sports conferences

Unfortunately I guess I won't be able to make it This year because I'll be in Sonoma With Sam But hopefully it will be as good as it always is and people can go find out about the Saber Seminar at saberseminar.com. Tickets are not on sale yet. There are some pre-release offers there.

You can donate to the Saber Seminar. You can see what's going to be there and what's been there in past years. And if you are anywhere near Boston, I recommend that you go. It's in Augustust august 22nd and 23rd i assume that jake silverman will be there you can meet jake silverman is that right yes i'm actually i will be there and then i'll be going to china in like two days after that

very excited it was like not after i left for china that's that is fortuitous timing all right today's a listener email show. Jake, do you have any banter? Well, I was going on deadspin before because I wanted to bring some banter here. You would have felt very useless otherwise. And I found a vine of Tommy Lasorda

sort of dancing kind of, and then he awkwardly says, turn down for what? But in a very old man voice and it's very strange and i don't know what to do about it and i just kind of wanted to giggle about it on a podcast oh you could giggle at this to me this was the saddest thing ever this was to me this was the uh this was like the moment when you're at the zoo and you see into the hippopotamus's eyes and there is no joy i thought it was going to be a zoo analogy because it it is a very performative thing he is

he is dancing for us essentially and looking off screen for approval that's the sad thing is that is when at the very end just as it cuts so this is the image that sears into your brain, he glances off screen at his keeper, as though asking, was that good enough? Was that good enough? No, it wasn't good enough is the saddest thing. It will never be good enough. Tommy Lasorda dancing while singing turned down for what will never, ever be good at. Tommy Lasorda dancing while singing turned down for what will never ever be good at. And, you know,

you can only train a hippopotamus to do so many things and unfortunately feel intrinsic happiness at his own sense of existence is not one of those things you can train. I just really enjoyed the massive ball of chew he had

in his right cheek. Let me see. It's hard for me to tell whether that's a massive ball of chew or Tommy Lasorda. It's just his cheek. He's not svelte. His cheek may be deformed permanently in the shape of chew, just from holding chew in it for decades. permanently in the shape of Chu just from holding Chu in it for decades.

I think that this is... I think somebody thought this had the potential to be funny and it turned out to be way worse. The thing is that it's one of those situations where the performer

is in on the joke but doesn't realize that he has transcended the joke and become a separate joke and he is not in on that one there are there is a joke that tommy lasorda is very much not in on and that's what made this video get shared because otherwise it would have just been branded uh meme fuel and we all would have like looked at it and hated it and it would have ended up on cut four uh nothing against cut four which is very good but that's where it would have ended up on cut four, nothing against cut four, which is very good, but that's where it would have ended up. It ended up on dead spin specifically because in the middle of this, something went terribly wrong.

I think you made a great point, Sam, that he's looking for approval. That means there are probably multiple takes of this. Oh, gosh, you're right. There are definitely multiple takes of this, aren, gosh, you're right. This is, you're right. There are definitely multiple takes of this, aren't there? I didn't even think about that. Nobody hits the, you know, drop kick basketball shot from across the court on the first try. It's the result of production. He has been doing this all day.

The other thing is that the approval, I never realized before this that Tommy Lasorda needed approval. He had always managed to make his heel shtick look so natural. But now it puts everything in perspective. When he fell over, now I think, was he doing that for approval? When he wore the Tommy Lasorda jacket, was he doing that for approval? When he wore the Tommy Lasadra jacket, was he doing that for approval? Is this whole Tommy Lasorda shtick been a 40-year, 40-year, 60-year quest for our approval? And that makes the whole thing exhausting. Well, so that leads to a really important question about the time he attacked the Philly Fanatic. Because I adore the Philly Fanatic as a wonderful example of absurdity. But other people, because it's from Philadelphia, hate it.

As like, oh my god, Philly fans are crazy. So does that help your argument or hurt it? I don't think that... Huh, it's interesting. I would have never considered Tommy Lasorda to be doing anything on behalf of me. And so I would have probably previously thought of it as just him being nasty and wanting to hit something that couldn't hit back. But this actually now does make me see, just like with the Yankees,

I feel like now I see into Tommy Lasorda's cravings. And now I do wonder whether he was seeking approval. Everything is now in a different light. It's all Saturn. If you read the blog post about his animosity toward the Philly Fanatic, which was republished in whole, I believe, at Fire Joe Morgan, it does seem to be genuine animosity. I enjoy the blog post description of the incident more than the actual incident. All right, I wanted to ask you about one thing before we get to questions. There was a thing that circulated on Twitter earlier, and I missed most of the reaction to it, but there was the MLB.com story that Lyle Spencer wrote where he surveyed a bunch of gms or managers or executives

about which players they would want to start the team with and there were certain things that provoked everyone's ire but you mentioned that there were eight a solid eight ridiculous vote there. Okay. What were the most ridiculous votes or what were the underrated ridiculous votes? Well, let me find this article and open it up. So I have to, I will admit something. When I said that, I hadn't yet read the introduction. I didn't realize that each GM or official had picked three. There are perhaps, you could make a case for, some of the things I thought were ridiculous as number one, like putting Kluber over Kershaw, for instance, would be ridiculous. But it's conceivable that the person put Kershaw number one and Kluber number two, and he put

Kluber over Trout, which would be also ridiculous, but not quite as ridiculous. So obviously Blake Sweetheart is ridiculous. Miguel Cabrera is ridiculous. And I'm not saying that because, like, I think that you can take these sorts of questions in a lot of different directions. And so, like, I'm not going to say that Cabrera two years ago would have been ridiculous. It wouldn't have been my pick. It would have been a bad pick. But sure, maybe you only care about the next year, and you think that building your franchise three years from now is folly

because the whole thing is anarchy anyway. But Cabrera right now, under any possible sort of way of measuring value for the even medium-term future wouldn't be a top three pick. Adam Jones, of course, over Mike Trout is the obvious one. Wait, can I say something on that? Sure. The quote in the piece is, I love Trout, but I just love Jones a little bit more. That's from an NL't know i obviously don't know who that is but i'd be terrified of that gm is my gm my team's gm i think that's the point i understand is there is there a an alternative explanation like the time we talked about

what the diamondbacks said about being a what-first organization or not a stats-first organization when they were talking about James Shields, and you suggested that maybe they were just selling themselves that way to James Shields, portraying themselves that way to James Shields. In this case, of course, it's an anonymous GM, so it doesn't help sell his organization as one thing or another.

And neither player is actually available. Right. So there's seemingly no incentive to dissemble. You're not going to muddy the waters here and get Trout to be underrated so that you can trade for him by saying that you like Adam Jones better. So it doesn't seem to be much motivation. No, I think it's clear that this GM doesn't believe this that he's saying.

But this GM is just simply not capable of answering a question. You ever go on one of those online polls and the question is like, what do you like more, pizza or ice cream? And the options are pizza, ice cream, and not sure. And some people will vote not sure. You know? Like, just close the tab, you know? You don't have to vote.

You can just go to another internet site. Well, this is sort of the opposite. Some people just refuse to pick. Like, they want to, like, write in ice cream on pizza. You know? Like, they're just jerks, you know? like write in ice cream on pizza. You know, like they're just jerks, you know.

So this guy got a question and just refused to give the answer that he believes. There's no way that if he had Adam Jones and Mike Trout in front of him and he got to pick one, there's no way he would have taken Adam Jones. He just realizes the stakes of this interview are extremely low. realizes the stakes of this interview are extremely low and therefore he's going to i don't know find this opportunity to do something that makes him feel iconoclastic so that's i think the the rationale for this i don't know the bum garner kershaw one the quote was by the way the quote starts with i was on to bum garner even before the postseason hipster hipster gm you guys remember in like mid-october when we discovered who madison this guy knew him even before uh anyway the quote then goes on love his attitude the way nothing bothers him and his stuff is tremendous kershaw is, but I'd have to go with the big guy in San Francisco.

So this is another one. He's picking Bumgarner over Kershaw. And to me, that one is just as bad a pick. Maybe worse? I don't know. Is Jones better than Bumgarner? Trout's clearly better than Kershaw, but not by a ton. Is Jones better than...

Anyway, it's close to just as bad. But to me, that one, I believe... With Bumrunner, it's the recency bias? That's what I would say. And the postseason, I mean, just the bright lights kind of way that affects

baseball men and other sportsmen disproportionately. So that's the reason why I think that that one's more dangerous because i think he believes it like i actually think that that guy might take bum runner over kershaw and that was a manager it's not a gm so it is a manager fortunately he doesn't have the choice probably not probably not uh nobody has the choice nobody gets either one of them you get to know only one person in. Nobody has the choice. Nobody gets either one of them. Only one person in the world has a choice,

and it's the guy with Kershaw, because nobody else would have had it. The Dodgers wouldn't have played. So that one's crazy. Sal Perez, not a good pick, but I do like Sal Perez a lot. I think, I don't know, Jose Fernandez, if you only had three

picks probably crazy if you figure there's a there's a what is it what are we at like 81 success rate for tj yeah it depends how you define success rate but but yeah it usually usually is defined as pitching at the level that you were last at and so that that essentially means that there's like a one in five chance that fernandez is just basically nothing now and so to use one of your top three you you know, you can, it's like that old saying, you can't win your draft in the first round, but you can lose it. So I would say that unfortunately, Fernandez probably is a crazy, crazy pick. And he finished, I think, fifth in this. And I don't know, the Seager and Correa are both big reaches, but once I learned that there were second and third places,

I was less offended by them. And then Chris Bryant, a reach, but again, I could sort of see that. He's the best prospect in baseball. My biggest question with this was where is Bryce Harper? Because he is nine months younger than Chris Bryant. Yeah, but he gets hurt every year, and he's kind of a pain, and he's coming off of a year where he had a 7-10 OPS. I mean, I could certainly see a case for picking Bryce Harper.

It wasn't 7-10. It was 7-70, which is a lot better. But I don't know. I wouldn't pick him in my top three. I see the case for not picking him. I don't see the case for picking Bryant and not picking Harper. Well, you've got... Yeah. Yeah, I think that's fair. Harper would be a higher prospect.

If Harper were still in the minors, if Harper were somehow given prospect eligibility right now, he would be higher. So that is fair. Harper has... Wait, but on the other hand, if you're looking at contract stuff, Harper's burned two years of service time as well. Okay, but are we?

Because we have Kershaw and Trout as the top two. I don't know. I think some people are and some people aren't. Okay. It was not the most scientific survey ever conducted. Probably more scientific than the pizza ice creamer, not sure, but only slightly. Yeah. All right.

Well, we will link to this article in the usual places so that you can dissect it yourself. Yeah. I read this recently. It was like Harper has never professionally faced a pitcher younger than he is, which I just thought was insane. Yeah, which must end soon, right? That can't go on much longer. Let's see. Yeah, I mean, it's true.

He'll be 22 this year. So, yeah, I wonder who he'll face this year. I wonder who will be the first pitcher he faces as a professional who will be younger than him. faces as a professional who will be younger than him Hernandez is younger probably is younger how did they not face each other how did they not face each other I don't think they must yeah it can't be younger they must they're the same age they're the same age by year so July 1st, 1992. July 31st, 1992. And Bryce Hubbard's October.

Yeah. So let's see. The youngest pitcher who pitched in baseball last year was Tywon Walker, who is also older than Harper. Sorry, that might not be true. There were six 21-year-olds, and we've already ruled out Fernandez and Walker, and I'm going to look up the others. Brandon Finnegan is younger. I don't know if they play each other this year.

Aaron Sanchez is older. Sam Tuivalala? What? Nailed it. He lives six miles from me. He lives in San Mateo. He is, what day is Harper born? October 16th.

Okay, so he's younger than Sam Twibalala. And did I say Aaron Sanchez or did I say Daniel Norris? You said Sanchez. Okay, and Daniel Norris is younger. So Norris and Finnegan are both younger, but they're also in the other league. So it would have to be probably a rookie unless there's an interleague opportunity. I mean a new rookie, a major league debuter. All right.

Well, that was an unexpectedly long banter. Wait, I have one more thing. All right. I'm on Bryce Harper's baseball reference page, and you know how they have the players' nicknames next to their name? Is it Bam Bam? Does it say Bam Bam? Of course it is.

Is it Bam Bam or Mondo? Mondo. I have never heard those used about him ever. Well, A, I've never heard Mondo. And that is an odd one. Let's see. Ed Moxie was also nicknamed Mondo. He's the second Mondo.

But Bam Bam, as I recounted in one of my favorite early articles for BP. It's got to be Flintstones, right? Well, every player in baseball is nicknamed Bam Bam. Oh, okay. You're also nicknamed Bam Bam. It is the most used nickname. Ben will post this article on the Facebook page, and finally some people will read it. Facebook page and finally some people will read it. But Bam Bam is, there are like literally

dozens, literally dozens of Bam Bams in baseball and they're almost all misspelled, including Bryce Harper's. I was going to say it made sense because he was a baby and he hit really well, so from the Flintstones it kind of worked.

Well, that's what they're all, everybody who's young and swings a big bat gets nicknamed bam bam and everybody's young at one point so mike trout's dad was nicknamed bam bam you know that no unless it was in your article which i edited so i knew it at one time yeah everybody anyway i love this piece this this piece. I like how you hold out hope that your underappreciated early BP work will have a big second run someday. You always hope that one of these days it's going to be discovered, one of these articles that you like that didn't catch on at first, and it's going to have a revival. I hope it does.

Yeah, there's three or four of those that I'm always hoping for. Jake, you sound a lot like Joe Sheehan to me. I don't know whether you've heard that before, but I feel like the Joe and Rani show is back from the dead and is doing a crossover show with us. Maybe some other people listening were thinking that, so I wanted to say it. Never heard that before.

I don't remember Joe Sheehan's voice off the top of my head, but I do like Ronnie Jesse Yearley's work quite a lot. Yeah, well, you and Joe are both from New York, as am I, but I don't think I sound like Joe Sheehan, but you sound like Joe Sheehan. Okay, emails. Sure. Okay, I'll take it. My favorite thing, can I just say my favorite thing about Bryce Harper

being nicknamed Bam Bam, as recounted in this article, is that he has actually twice been nicknamed Bam Bam completely independently of each other. He has actually nicknamed Bam Bam and also Bam Bam for different reasons. What were the reasons? The first

one was God, this is such a great piece. At least it's having a revival with you. I don't remember what the God, this is such a great piece. At least it's having a revival with you. I don't remember what the... I think the first one was when he was young and then the second one was when he hit himself in the head with a bat.

Remember when he hit himself in the head with a bat? Like he hit the dugout with the... He hit the wall with the bat and it bounced back and hit him and he got stitches. So that was the second one. As I recall. All right.

Here we go. Email show getting underway. Okay. Since we were just talking about people being interviewed about baseball, let's take Jeremy's question. He says, what? Go ahead. First time he was called Bam Bam because his initials are Bryce Aaron Max.

Oh. As good a reason as any. Yeah. Okay. Jeremy asks, what do you think the batting average is of getting an interesting interview when interviewing a current player? As in getting an interesting interview is a hit And a boring one filled with stock quotes Is an out

I have a theory that from a stat head perspective It's the equivalent of sack bunting A player from first to second with one out Already in the AL It's just a bad idea Your odds of getting a good interview are so low That it's not worth it And your article or podcast would be better filled

With nearly any other material. This feels very passive-aggressive. Well, Jeremy includes a note at the end. He says, by the way, I make note of it being a current player purposely. I think former players are more likely to give good interviews as they have less to lose by being uncouth. Can we pretend Charles Barkley is a baseball player for a second? Do you like hearing Charles Barkley give interviews? To me, the worst, even worse than

the stock quote is the repetitively antagonistic interview. To me, the ballplayer who lives up to this negative stereotype that we already have of ballplayers is actually like less interesting to me because the stock quote, those things, they're boring for us to hear, but the players believe them and there's a reason that they get repeated so much. They're not, in a lot of cases, they're not actually trying to dodge things. That is how they view the world. They view their sport and particularly the motivations and demands of their sport, in very simplistic but easily repeated phrases. And they get repeated particularly because they are high on their hierarchy of what is important. So even though it is boring and you're getting nothing new out of it, it does reflect something of the ballplayer's personality.

But the guy who just wants to get in public fights a lot and to insult people who he doesn't respect, to me, that's even worse. So I would put Barkley less interesting on the quote meter than Jeter or anybody else. Okay. Well, do you have an estimate of batting average? I guess so a hit is just an interview that adds value, I guess. It's better to have it than to not have it, than to have dead air or no words where those words would be. I think that context is important, sort of like a park factor. If you're in the scrum after the game and there's nine people who are doing the three-minute hit with the star of the game,

your batting average would be about 0-0-5. That was the first number that popped into my head, too. 0-0-5. One in 200. If it's a one-on-one with a player you don't know,

picked at random, I would say not a lot better. But maybe if you're reasonably good at drawing a guy out, you might get up to, say, 0-60. If it's a one-on-one with a ballplayer you do know and have talked to before and he recognizes at least that he has dealt with you once, or knows your name, or at least maybe knows your outlet and has worked with it before, I'd guess you'd get up to about 130. And if you're same rules, but you're actually good, maybe up to 275. And if you are a magazine writer who has access to the player that goes beyond, say, six hours total over the span of multiple days, I would say that you have about an 85% chance of getting something good. Okay.

have targeted this player because you noticed something interesting about the player and you're going to talk to the player specifically to ask about that thing, I think the batting average is very high. I mean, occasionally you might get someone who doesn't tell you anything that the stats don't already tell you. And then you're just kind of padding it with quotes to show that you have a press pass and you talk to this player. But I think in that case, the batting average would be if you've noticed something really interesting and maybe something perplexing that is difficult to explain, that seems like something where getting the player's perspective would actually illuminate the numbers, which tends to be the the times that i talk to players because i don't have to cover a team day in and day out so i go to talk to a player when there's something specific i want to talk to a player about and he happens to be in town so i

would say the batting average is is quite high in those cases i think there's like two i think there's two things that need to be taken into consideration here. The first is the dichotomy between looking for a quote to fill a game story or looking for a quote to say elucidate a... or to actually contribute to an article that you're writing. We may think these are silly, but the first thing pops in my head is if you're writing like we may think these are silly but the first thing pops in my head is if you're writing a thing on like unwritten rules in baseball and so you'll get a quote from a bunch of different players about unwritten rules in baseball and those actually are helpful productive legitimate quotes outside of and they're not and they're more than

you know we took it to take it one day at a time whatever i'm seeing the ball good today whatever and then the all the other thing is that for game stories you actually have to look at is it worth it like for the on the off chance you get one is the ratio of good of good ones enough that it's worth all the crappy ones. I think that with the game story ones, nobody thinks they're good. The writers don't think they're good. The readers expect quotes, and your editors expect quotes because they also are readers. And so you go down and get them, and the reason that they're so bad is partly because the writer needs them really quick and knows that this is not going to be the time that you get information.

You are filling a slot in that article that is just expected of you. If I were editing a sports section, it would be tempting to say, don't bother getting the quotes. We can use those three column inches better. Although the manager sometimes does explain things. You get decent stuff from the manager sometimes because he can explain why he did something or what he saw. You learn things about what they saw. It might not necessarily be good quotes, but you do learn what the manager saw, and's useful. But you go down there, you're down there, you spend eight minutes there. It's a very low investment of your time because you're probably already down

there for the manager's thing. You do eight minutes, you hit two guys, you put some dumb quote in, you waste an inch and a half of your story. It's not great at all, but it's not really supposed to be. It's like going, what percentage of boxes of mac and cheese are going to be really good? Well, the answer is zero, but do you know how much macaroni and cheese I cook for my toddler? I cook a lot of it and I'm never disappointed with the process. Is she? No.

She's perfectly happy with it. That's what she wants she wants garbage calorie filler and you know that's kind of what it is so uh if that's all we ever got out of players yeah it wouldn't be very good and you'd want to think about doing something else with your career but that's just like you know it's just a thing you check off at the end of your day. I don't think it's a huge loss on anyone's time. By the way, one day at a time, you just said take it one game at a time. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten in my life

that advice, but not in those words, but more thoughtful and more specific to the situation. But basically someone saying the equivalent of, you know, just take it one game at a time. And it's true. You should do that in your life. You shouldn't dwell on the past and you shouldn't worry too much about the future. You should have an appropriate amount of perspective on each of those things. And taking it one game at a time is probably about the best advice possible. So yeah, we don't really need to

hear it, but if they need to keep telling themselves good no you're right those the cliches are cliches for a reason they make some amount of sense yeah do you think that looking for quotes is a relic of the journalistic idea uh ideal of like hearing from both sides in a story uh It could be. It could be. I think that if I had to guess, I would say more than anything, it is a, I'm going to say remnant instead of relic, or maybe remnant's not even the right word, but I think it's that reporters are constantly feeling like

they have to prove how much work they did on a story to justify it, because there's really not much about a game story, for instance. That's true about a a story to justify it because there's really not much about a game story for instance. That's true about a lot of journalism is that there's not much there and that's okay. There doesn't have to be much there. Somebody just wants the score and somebody's got to give them the score and you're that somebody. But journalists are sensitive to this feeling that what they did doesn't really prove that they did anything and they want to show that they were there, they want to show that they talked to people.

I always, when I was a journalist, a news journalist, a news writer, I always had this compulsion that if editors knew they would have beat it out of me. But I always had this compulsion to get a quote from every source I talked to in the story just to prove how many people I talked to. And so there just would be, like if two sources said the exact same thing, then I would always make sure I used the source who I hadn't used before. And I'd shoehorn things in very awkwardly

just because I wanted proof. Like, look at me, I work. Yeah. Or in baseball, I mean, at a certain time, the player was the only way that you could get some information that we can get without the players now if you wanted to know what pitch a guy hit or what pitch a guy through and you happen to

be looking away from the field at that moment or you were seated so far away from the field that you couldn't tell what pitch it was or there was no pitch effects there was no replay so if you wanted to get details like that you had to get it from the player you couldn't go back and watch it yourself or look it up online 10 minutes after the game so in some sense it was probably more valuable in the past than it is now that makes a lot of sense uh this question is a second question that was in an email that I answered the first question from last week. It's Lillian in Hanover, Germany. How would baseball change if any position player, except pitcher and catcher, that was ejected could not be replaced until the next inning or even the next game?

Would player ejections disappear? As you probably know, this is the rule in soccer. ejections disappear. As you probably know, this is the rule in soccer, yet often the penalty is worth it considering the alternative to breaking a rule. Would that ever be the case in baseball too? Well, in soccer, like ejections haven't disappeared. So I would say ejections would not disappear. So in, first of all, if you get ejected in soccer, you're gone for the game,

not for the next five minutes or whatever, but for the game, correct? It's the game and the next game, I think. I think it depends on whether you have and what kind of ejection it is. I think there's some differential between the various colored cards. Yes. Okay. But anyway, I guess, do you guys think that relative to the other sports, playing one man short in baseball is a bigger or smaller deal?

Let's compare it to football, American football, basketball, soccer, and the one that we get to see a lot of for penalty reasons, hockey. Where does baseball fit? And let's assume that we're not talking pitcher or catcher But that was stipulated Yeah so well the More players on the Field presumably the

More expendable any one Of them is although in some Sports yeah In some sports it depends On the position there might be A position that is way more valuable than another position, and that's kind of what we're talking about with pitcher and catcher, and we're saying that that doesn't count.

I would say in football, losing a left tackle is a lot more important than receiving one of the receivers. Right, well, yeah, so maybe the football equivalent of pitcher and catcher is quarterback and left tackle or whatever. I don't know anything about football, but say that there is an equivalent to that. So it still seems like losing one of the, what, six guys on the field who are eligible to be lost in baseball would be a bigger deal than losing someone in football. But you would think that losing someone in basketball or hockey would be a bigger deal, right? Well, so the thing is that in roughly 30-ish percent of baseball plays, no defender matters. percent of baseball plays, no defender matters. Whereas in every football play, arguably every player matters, and in every basketball play, arguably every player matters. They're all somehow engaged in the play, whereas the shortstop just can literally do nothing on a strikeout,

a walk, or a home run. So then you've got 70% of the plays that remain. Babbitt is 300. What do you think Babbitt would be if there were six defenders on the field? 350? You think that high? It depends where the fielders would be. Well, they'd get to stand wherever they want. I know. Presumably they'd get to stand wherever they want. I know.

Presumably they'd play in the alleys, the outfielders. You think it would automatically be two outfield, four infield? I'm not sure. I'm not sure that you wouldn't. Like, for instance, teams are fine leaving half the infield unguarded for a shift. And so let's just assume that instead of the shift, they just left half the infield unguarded for a shift. And so let's just assume that instead of the shift, they just left half the infield unguarded. Like, why not just have three infielders and three outfielders,

particularly for certain hitters? Or have two outfielders and then, you know, a rover who stands, say, 25 feet out or like 35 feet out in right field. So instead of leaving the infield completely unguarded maybe you just move your second baseman way out and then ditch the right fielder well you need a first baseman so that has to stay there do you i'm gonna say yes well i mean you don't the pitcher can't cover no the pitcher can't cover a throw from third base in time but do you need a i mean how far could how far could the third

for the first baseman play could the first baseman play 45 feet off if he's running in and therefore the play is in front of him as he's running in could he get get away with 45 feet away in which case he would essentially be a second baseman depends on the first baseman uh-huh like we stuck i don't know carlos delgado or todd helton in first base it might be different than if we stuck, I don't know, Carlos Delgado Or Todd Helton in first base It might be different than if we stuck Jeff Bagwell there I'm not sure which one of those is good and which one is bad Jeff Bagwell was known for being fast As for a first baseman

And Todd Helton, but Todd Helton was fluid And Carlos Delgado was a catcher So you could just move him back to catcher Well maybe if you subtracted a fielder Would it automatically Put a higher premium on first baseman? Would the value of the importance of first base as a defensive position increase more than the other positions would? Because you could potentially use a really fast guy there who could make it to the bag quickly and cover a ton of ground on that side? Well, I think the biggest benefit would have to be a center fielder who could cover a lot

of ground. Yeah, but we're not building our team roster around this. This is a one-off situation. You've got the men you've got. You're stuck with your seven. You're stuck with your six. So I think that you, you know, assuming a normal distribution of defensive. The other thing is that you can't really get rid of a first baseman

because so much of the time there's going to be a guy on first and you're going to need someone to hold him on. So probably you're stuck with a first baseman. I don't know. I think you go back and forth. But I still like my second baseman in deep right field or my third baseman in deep left field situation. Although third baseman in deep left field doesn't really matter because he won't be

able to throw a guy out at first anyway. I think the second baseman is the answer. So what would your BABIP guess be, Sam? Yeah, like 340, 332. Between 332 and 352. So it's 340. So did we, we have not come close to answering Lillian's question yet, really? What was the question?

If ejected players could not come back into the game, if they couldn't be substituted for, would ejections disappear? No. You'd still have the occasional hothead who will just get ejected no matter what the penalty is because he will lose the capacity to to rationally weigh the cost of getting ejected so you'd still get the occasional one of those but it would it would probably decrease drastically right well it's a

pretty hefty penalty i don't know do you think the penalty for losing a defender for an infielder is more or less than one base runner reaching first base like on average is it more or less than that and the reason i bring it up is because uh having a guy on first you know having a guy who gets hit by a pitch go to first base hasn't stopped headhunting or green balls yeah and well does it could it it could actually i mean if you if you don't lose the out when that guy's lineup slot comes up, then if he's a bad hitter, then you're improving your, your lineup, right? what the average win probability is at the moment that players get ejected. I bet you that most ejections come with like 90% plus win probability

on one side or the other, which would suggest that players are already in control of themselves and that ejections come mostly when they don't matter anyway. You don't think it's that tensions are high because the game is close? Nope. It's just a hypothesis. I don't think it's that tensions are high because the game is close? Nope.

I'm just a hypothesis. I don't have any data. Maybe manager injections are higher then. Could be.

Maybe you will have an answer for us on a future show. Play index? Sure. So simple one.

Very simple one. I wanted to see who had the fewest pitches per start since 2000 which is when we have this data.

And so I simply went and looked at who had the fewest pitches per start. That is a stat that you can search. And the answer is Jose Lima. If you set a minimum of 10 starts, Jose Lima was very, very bad one year and had a 7.77 ERA and only threw 71 pitches per start. And while doing this, I wasn't really planning this, but while doing this, it became kind of apparent to me that this is actually, if you, this is not the stat that you would choose if you could only have one stat.

However, in the same way that Mountain Dew is not the drink you would choose if you could choose any drink, but if you were in a desert and needed something to drink, you would happily drink Mountain Dew, probably. And in the same way, simply knowing pitches per start gives you a pretty good idea of how good a guy's season was. So I took all the pitches per start for 2014 and then mapped it against ERA. And there's a pretty good correlation. The correlation is like about 0.5, a little bit below, between that and ERA.

And ERA is already a little bit of a flawed stat. You might even be better if you looked at something like FIP or something. So anyway, if you look at this leaderboard since 2000, there's a few exceptions. There's like a Joel Pinero who was like a kid and they brought him up and they treated him very gently or there's a guy coming back from an injury or whatever. But mostly it's all guys who are terrible. It's like Chin Ming Wong with the year he had a 9 ERA and Josh Towers the year he had an 8 ERA and Ross Ohlendorf the year he had an 8 ERA and Greg Reynolds the year he had

an 8 ERA and all these all the way down the line, that's what it is. It's the worst guys are at the top and the best guys are at the bottom with one exception, which is a beautiful exception. Greg Maddux is just all over this thing. And his ERAs were always good during these five years. He's five of the 75 lowest pitches per start years since 2000 were Greg Maddux. And all five of those seasons were better than average ERAs. All five were in the top 35. And the best example of this is Greg Maddux in 2002 had 78.8 pitches per game. And in 2011, Brian Mattis also had 78.8 pitches per game.

And this is the highest and the lowest ERA in my 200 names at the top. And they had the exact same pitches per game. So they also have almost the same name. I don't know if you ever noticed that. But they're almost the same name. One of them, his name became a nickname for efficient excellence, and the other one had the worst season in Major League history. But they had this one thing in common, and so I guess that's the play index, is Craig Maddox.

And I actually wrote up a little bit more about this because I wanted to put it on a chart. And so if you want to, you can go look at Baseball Prospectus. It's an unfiltered article. There's a little bit more detail on this, and you can see what I'm talking about. But that's it. That's the play index. So you can do that with play index. Can I ask you a question about the – do you have the thing in front of you?

I have the 200 since 2000 in front of me, yes. So I just remember towards the end of his career because obviously like i'm 20 my baseball knowledge is not like of like my personal experiences are not super deep but i just remember like end career end career pedro that like when he was like ending with the red socks and with the mets of him just becoming like a six inning pitcher where he just was, for some reason, the seventh inning, he just collapsed. And I mean, that could just be totally anecdotal.

But is there anything in there that shows like 2006 Pedro being weirdly low with a good ERA? Let's see. So 2009 Pedro, by the way, makes it in, although he only had nine starts, and my minimum was supposed to be 10, but I just cheated to get you, Pedro. And he had a good ERA that year. So 2009 Pedro has a little bit of the same thing. Maddox, the year that I chose, the year that I mentioned with Maddox,

and I had this in mind too because I also remember Maddox being a guy who would pitch short games later in his career. But 2002 Maddox, he was still relatively young. He had four seasons of 210-plus innings ahead of him. He had 2.6 ERA that year. He was still a super ace. But I'm going to now do another play index. I want to see what Maddox's ERA was by inning and i'm trying to think of the best way to

do this tom tango has written about the pedro martinez hundred pitch threshold in the past and his conclusion i think was that there wasn't that much validity to it maybe maybe there was at the at the tail end of pedro's career after he'd been hurt a bunch and wasn't as effective anymore. But early in his career, I think there wasn't a whole lot to the idea that there was a big drop-off at that point. Like, even Grady Little era, it wasn't as clear-cut

as some people have made it out to be. I mean, that's totally possible. I have no idea. That's why I asked. I have an answer. Okay. So I mean, that's totally possible. I have no idea. That's why I asked. I have an answer. Okay. So I can look at Greg Maddux by inning from ages, I think, from 2005 to 2008, which I think is ages like 37 to 41 or something like that for him.

And so I don't know. He did have a, over the course of those four years, he did have a bad seventh inning, generally speaking. But his sixth inning was right around normal. He didn't have a good fifth, but his fourth was fine. And his eighth was fine. So it's always hard to know with these things because you have a much shorter leash and you arguably have less time to get yourself in trouble,

and you're only going to pitch the eighth on those days where you are, quote-unquote, feeling it. And so maybe he should be much better in the seventh. I don't really know. But I guess there's a little hint of a collapse in the seventh inning. He had 53 seventh innings over those four years, and he gave up six runs per nine. So that's pretty bad. He was worse in the first, though. His worst inning was the first during that stretch. Isn't that the thing?

You've got to get to the good pitchers early. That's what they say. You know, you've got to take it one day at a time. Every day is different. Momentum is only tomorrow's starting pitcher. Oh, God, so true. All right. We should do one more because we always do one more after play index have we talked

about whether teams have a moral obligation to disclose injury research with pitchers i feel like we've talked about that have we talked about that no but this sounds like something that is enjoyable to talk about all right then this is jeremy a different Jeremy, who says, with more and more teams losing pitchers to torn DLs, the team that is able to keep its pitcher healthy is going to have an enormous advantage over everyone else. However, if a team were to develop a system that was proven to prevent elbow injuries, would they be under any ethical obligation to share their information with the public? It would seem cruel to allow pitchers to continue to suffer from torn UCLs, especially high school pitchers, if you figured out a way

to prevent it. Would Major League Baseball put pressure on the team to release their information, knowing it damaged the sport when so many of its stars are hurt for a year at a time? The first thing that popped into my head is, so obviously they have the competitive advantage of not having their pitchers hurt, but I think if you're talking about pure morals, then the moral benefits of not having 16-year-olds go under the knife whenever possible is certainly important and probably where the obligation would come from.

I mean, if baseball teams can agree to share HFX data, which has no particular common good other than that everybody wants it and so they share the expense, then it seems like they ought to be able to just agree that they will share this stuff. My guess is that, Ben might correct me on this, but my guess is that teams aren't really in a position where they're driving research or knowledge on this stuff anyway. That there are actual doctors all over the world who are experts. Most of them, for instance, outsource these surgeries to doctors who aren't exclusive to them. There's universities and there's researchers and there's all sorts of people who are probably doing

a lot more research on these things than teams. It would seem to me unlikely that a team would stumble on something that than teams. So it would seem to me kind of unlikely that a team would stumble on something that was significant. Like you might have little benefits here and there that I wouldn't think would rise to the level of needing to share or changing the world. But you're probably not going to have, you know, the team trainer's not going to discover

the cure for, you know, elbow existence. So I guess in the, I answered that both ways. And then in the middle of it, I just, I switched. I guess I would say that, yeah, if this were a realistic possibility, if there was a great value coming out of this, I think that they should definitely, it shouldn't be hard for them to agree that there is a greater good and that they should share. I mean, as Russell wrote about when Rob Manfred briefly entertained the possibility of getting rid of the shift, that's like a strategy that some teams have. But, you know, they're also maybe if everybody has it, then it just means that that's something you don't have to worry about chasing anymore. Or if everybody can't have it, it's something you don't have to worry about chasing anymore.

And as long as the rules are even for everybody, then it's not that bad to lose that potential edge. Most teams probably should be aware that they're not going to be the team that discovers this secret. And they're not probably going to be the one that gets a great benefit out of this secret if it's ever discovered. And they're not probably going to be the one that gets a great benefit out of this secret if it's ever discovered. So why not go ahead and vote that you'll share your research if they'll share theirs? Yeah, maybe there could be privacy issues that come into play with health data that might not come into play with other types of data like PitchFX. of data like PitchFX. This came up on a Sloan panel and Nate Silver was suggesting that teams release all of the information that they have available on injuries and put it out in the public sphere and let public analysts dig into it and find things and discover things as they have with other types of information. And the GMs on the panel mentioned privacy issues.

They mentioned competitive advantage issues. And these were like hockey, a hockey GM and hockey teams don't divulge anything about injuries. They say what side of the body there is a problem with, and they don't get any more specific than that. And he mentioned that that's because you would make players targets or you'd make them vulnerable. If people knew in real time, anything about what was hurting them, people would would check them in the part that is hurting to to get an edge. And maybe that is true and relevant in more sports or in other sports much more so than it is in baseball but you could still do it the year after once those injuries have gone away you could release well i mean we have very good injury data in baseball we we know from the the tireless work of cory dawkins at bp

every time anyone missed a game with some nagging injury, or even if he didn't miss a game, Corey records that someone had soreness that didn't actually cost him time. So we have really detailed injury data for the last decade or so. What we don't have is medical records and x-rays and MRIs and things that can't be shared publicly and that most of us wouldn't know what to do with anyway. But I don't know if someone did have the cure to all elbow injuries. The thing is that some team probably thinks they do, right? Like we always talk about how teams probably inflate. They have an inflated sense of their own prowess at whatever it is they maybe they think they're above average at scouting everyone probably thinks they're above average

at scouting or have above average statistical analysts maybe they think the same thing about their medical staffs and their training staffs the the dodgers certainly seem to think that they have figured out something that other teams haven't since they've signed an entire starting rotation full of injured or injury-prone pitchers this winter. So if you have one holdout, maybe that's a problem, but maybe everyone else can get together and share. I think you're right there. And maybe there is more sharing than we know or acknowledge, right?

When we had Stan Conti on in episode 455 or something like that, that the Dodgers head of medical services and trainer, he is very forthcoming about things or at least has been in the past. And he talks to trainers with other teams and they coordinate and they run studies together. So it could be that there are still holdouts

and that they have advantages that they are not sharing. But you're right, there could be more sharing than there is currently, probably. All right, we've talked a lot. Jake, you've gotten your money's worth, hopefully, or at least as much as you could have expected to. And the listeners certainly have also gotten their no money's worth. I am glad that you joined us. This was fun. I had a great time. Thank you very much. Is there anything you would like to plug anywhere people can find you, writing or Twitter or anything?

Actually, yes. Go ahead. So totally not baseball related. Okay. But I am the co-president of the Brandeis International Journal, which is an international relations publication, entirely student-run. And we're putting up a website this semester.

And if you're interested in reading college students write about international relations, then this is where you should read. Where? Where can people get it? So we don't officially have the website yet. We're working on that. Currently in the process of getting it built. I suppose I will post it in the group when it is a thing.

All right. Please do. So that is it. Thanks again, Jake, for helping us with the show and supporting the Saber Seminar. And we will be back tomorrow with the Giants Preview Podcast and the great Grant Brisby. The first time I ever did a podcast was on Carson Sestouli's. And the first time I ever did one on Skype, I should a podcast was on Carson Sestouli's and the first time I ever did one on Skype I should say was on Carson Sestouli's

and I had never really used Skype except for video calls with my sister who lives out of the country and I believe that I did the whole thing on video but he was not on video and I think that I just thought that my video wasn't enabled even though it was and I've never really asked Carson

But I do wonder like what the whole time what was I do because I I definitely don't I Didn't believe that I could be seen at the time and it's possible that I couldn't I might not have done it It's hard for me to know but I've always possible that I couldn't. I might not have done it. It's hard for me to know. But I've always worried that I could be seen, that Carson was just sort of too embarrassed to point out that I could be seen. I don't know. I feel bad for Carson too because once when I was a kid, I walked into a porta potty and somebody was in there and hadn't locked it and I went, oh God,'m sorry, and I left, right? And I remember thinking as I walked away how unfair the world was that that guy screwed up,

that that guy's the one who was seen sitting on the toilet, and yet I was just as uncomfortable as him. Like, why was it fair that I was uncomfortable? What was good about that situation that I had to be also made to feel uncomfortable? I was probably more uncomfortable than he was. And so I feel like that's maybe why Carson might not have said anything, and it has never come up.

I don't even know what to say to that. That was a long story. Yeah. It's happened to all of us. Don't worry. Yeah. Yeah. story yeah it's happened to all of us don't worry yeah yeah i feel like i'm always more embarrassed than the person who's embarrassed in this story i am too getting a look at how the sausage is made here it's not made under sanitary conditions