Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 648: The No-Tommy-John Draft

Episode Date: April 2, 2015

Ben, Sam, and guests Doug Thorburn and Jeff Zimmerman draft the pitchers they think will make the most starts and avoid Tommy John surgery in the next calendar year.

And there's nothing more I can do I keep running the risk of losing you There's nothing more I can say I'm still running the risk of you walking away I'm running the risk of losing you I'm walking this tightrope You're my only hope Good morning and welcome to episode 648 of Effectively Wild,

the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined as always by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello, Sam. Can I banter real quick? Real, real quick? You can. We were talking yesterday about the effects of shortening the season,

and we couldn't figure out the TV thing. I believed that it would not cost much money, and yet I couldn't figure out the TV thing. And I think I figured out why it won't matter for TV. I don't think that baseball TV revenue has anything to do with ratings. It has to do with getting a certain number of die-hard people to subscribe to a cable company. And the irreplaceability of sports coverage in some people's lives is what makes them pay for cable. And so it doesn't really matter whether you have 160

or 130 games. I think roughly the same number of people would subscribe to cable. And so it doesn't really matter whether you have 160 or 130 games. I think the same, roughly same number of people would subscribe to cable. Furthermore, when we were talking about how if there were, say, 30 fewer games, I thought attendance would only go down by a much smaller amount. Not only that, but expenses, stadium expenses would go way down because you wouldn't have to have the stadium open all those games. And so in fact, it might actually be more profitable. All right, there you go. Okay. All right. You have justified your argument from yesterday. Okay. So today we are doing a draft. Everyone likes drafts. Drafts made the bracket of effectively wild things that people like. So we have two guests today. One you have heard before on this podcast, Doug Thorburn of Baseball Perspectives.

Hello, Doug. Hello. And a second guest, Jeff Zimmerman of Fangraphs and Hardball Times. Hello, Jeff. Hello. Okay, so we are doing a draft of pitchers, but not just any pitchers. This is a no Tommy John draft. pitchers, but not just any pitchers. This is a no Tommy John draft. So essentially we are trying to draft pitchers who we think are likely not to have Tommy John surgery or just to be durable.

The rules of this draft, which was proposed by Dan Brooks, are you get 10 points for every start that a pitcher makes and you get negative 300 points for a Tommy John surgery. And that is it. So you accumulate points as guys make starts, and if they get hurt, some other injury, then you just stop accumulating points, but there's no extra penalty on top of that, unless there is Tommy John.

And if there's Tommy John, then you lose basically a season's worth of points. Performance doesn't matter. It's just, did the guy start? And we are having Doug and Jeff on. Doug, because he is a mechanics expert, he has studied pitchers for many years, writes about pitchers at BP. Jeff also has done a lot of analysis on pitcher injuries. He does pitcher injury projections. He's done Tommy John analyses. So we thought we would get a mechanics guy and a stats guy, although in these cases, as usual, those distinctions are somewhat arbitrary as both guys do both things. Should we summarize what we know about pitcher injuries?

Should we talk about that? Do we not want to give away any secrets before we draft or just, just for the listeners so that they know what we have in mind or what, what the research has shown? I mean, Jeff, do you want to summarize what you've, what you've found? What goes into your projections of what makes pitchers healthy? Yeah, I, they can just read what I've done. It's no big secret. The three big keys I've found is age. The younger the pitcher, the less likely they're to be injured. Also, a previous injury. Any pitcher that has had elbow injuries in the

past will likely have them in the future. And then the final bit is actually being an established major league pitcher. It's like, can they handle the full workload of throwing as hard as they did? You know, they can continue to pitch like this for many years. Once you get about three years established, it kind of gives you a nice baseline. There's a few other things I've noticed where like high breaking ball usage can also cause injuries. And also one precursor to injuries I've noticed more and more is when pitchers just start throwing balls out of the strike zone, like they can't get their fastballs across, their mechanics are hurt by being able to throw. There's also a little bit of work that's been done, I've done, and I probably should expand

on it more on velocity. Just higher velocity pitchers seem to get hurt more often. So when you say younger, is there a point where it reverses? Because I think many BP readers will be familiar with the injury nexus, the work that Nate Silver and Will Carroll did about a decade ago that found a particularly fragile time in a pitcher's life from something like 19 to 23 or 22, before that. Is that old knowledge? Has that been reversed?

Or does the younger is better hypothesis or heuristic, I guess, start to break down at that age? The one thing that's working against it is they get a bonus for being young, but then they're also not established. So someone like Jordano Ventura only has like one season of throwing. He's still literally, even though he's young, he hasn't established himself to be able to do it year after year after year. So that's one of the caveats is those are kind of weighing against each other. If you can find someone that's young and been able to do it for those three

seasons or be able to kind of establish the workload, then that's kind of the pitcher i will be targeting okay as a giveaway right and yeah and russell carlton did some research at bp a couple years ago found essentially the same thing that you're saying that having been on the dl is is the big big thing if you've been hurt before you are likely to get hurt again or more likely, much more likely, and age also. Yeah, so that's what we're working with here. I guess we all have the same sort of basic understanding. Maybe you each have some extra expertise.

Maybe Doug has some mechanics tricks up his sleeve, some injury factors in the delivery or something that we're not picking up on, but we'll see how it works. Wait, I want to hear Doug's answer to the same question. Okay. You want the teams to announce their draft strategies before the draft. No, if he tells me something about a trigger

or a warning or something like that, I don't think I'm going to then immediately... First of all, I don't think I'm going to then be able to immediately apply it to 120 starting pitchers. But second of all, as you'll find out, it won't matter because I have a plan. Yeah, for me, the big one, the big precursor we found when it came to elbow injury is what we call elbow drag. And there's actually a lot of things that go into that. Typically, guys who are big on torque, especially upper body, or who have a pronounced delay after foot strike.

I often refer to it as the double-edged sword because by having a bigger delay, they allow their hips to open up. So they increase hip-shoulder separation. But the big issue is that sometimes the arm is so late that they end up experiencing elbow drag. So they're kind of dealing with they want to have more of dealing with, they want to have more, in general, they want to have more of a delay, a longer delay, but they get too far, and that's when they can be in that injury risk zone. So one example, a guy I won't be drafting today, Jordan Zimmerman, and I think I gave him the, he gets some of the highest mechanics in,

or some of the highest grades in all of baseball. I love his delivery when just looking at the grades on the report card, but there's a reason why he's had Tommy John in the past. The guy has elbow drag on almost every pitch, and on top of that, he throws really hard. And with velocity, that is something that I've noticed. So I tend to target guys who don't throw crazy hard. So if a guy throws crazy hard and has elbow drag, then I won't be touching him. So even though I really like Jordan Zimmerman as a pitcher, I wouldn't be taking him for this exercise.

I would have 100% been taking Jordan Zimmerman. I have a quick question for Jeff about the established at the major league level part of this. Is this because – I'm going to need to figure out a way to phrase this. But is this – does this only apply to pitchers who are in the majors? Like what I'm saying is, is it something about being in the majors that puts strain on pitchers? Like does this also apply to pitchers who are only in college or only in, you know, low A and therefore don't have the strain

of the full season workload? Or is the establishing the majors filter simply a way of saying that he's a Superman, that he's better than everybody, and that's true no matter what level he's at? I think there's definitely something with the workload. Because in college, you're pitching once a week, not every five days. And it just gives you a chance to show that you can actually pitch in the majors there's just some pitchers that just can't hold up to it and that's just I think part of the deal I'm kind of worried that I'm haven't totally separated out elbow and shoulder so I'm

probably going to nail a bunch of guys getting shoulder injuries but I'll have to figure that out as we go along here. So let's say that Yordano Ventura, for some random reason out of all of our control, had to spend the entire year, like maybe it's like an elaborate prank or something, but he had to spend the entire year pitching for like the University of North Carolina or in the Sally League or something like that. would he still be at an elevated injury risk because he hasn't established himself at the major league level? I would say not at college, but probably in the single A level.

Okay. Still, they're not throwing as many games. They definitely don't throw as long. I mean, there'll still be an extra month in camp while the major league teams are already starting to play. Okay, all right. All right. I've crossed all the guys with elbow drag off my list.

I'm ready now. We should clarify one rule before we go. The calendar does not end for this competition until April 1st, 2016. So this will include everybody who has Tommy John next spring. Yes, and as I found recently, spring is a big danger time for Tommy John, for guys who end up getting Tommy John, like a quarter of those injuries happen in spring training or in March.

So we want to include that in our sample here. And as you found one reason for that, seems to be that some pitchers think that an off season will help them, but the injury actually happened in the season, in the regular season, and they tried to pitch through it. And so we don't want to lose any, we really want to make sure that everybody gets as many 300 point penalties as possible. Yes, exactly. Okay. So we're going to do seven rounds, we think, four picks each, so 28 starters. So seven guys to a team,

which is clearly enough to establish our true talent at picking Tommy John guys from non-Tommy John guys. This will be statistically significant and conclusive in every way. So we have determined the draft order beforehand for once, instead of making people listen to us do that like we always do. So who goes first? Doug goes first. Doug goes first.

Okay. Go Doug. And if we want to give a little brief rationale for why we are giving these guys, then I guess that would be nice. Okay. Well, for my first selection of the Tommy John avoidance draft, I go with an old man, actually, Ari Dickey. And I kind of feel like I'm cheating by choosing Dickey,

but he has no UCL, so he's not going to get Tommy John. I am now rooting for Ari Dickey to get the worst case of pneumonia ever. I want him to step in a bear trap and not be found. That sounds fatal. He fails the age test, but not having UCL put him over the top for me. We definitely should have sent it's dirty it is but it's fair that's how you win all right he's a major league pitcher okay brady aiken had a little ucl right and he's still got tommy john so

maybe maybe ari dikki will decide that he wants to have a UCL for the first time in his life? Does that count if he decides to get a UCL? Oh, right. He's not replacing his old one. He's just getting one for the first time. I think that counts. All right. I'm supposed to go.

All right. I'm going to go with Rick Porcello. And I'm going to go with Rick Porcello for a few reasons. He's young, so he's got the youngness going for him. Youth is the word I was looking for there. He has a clean track record of injuries. He's not been

injured. And he's in his walk years, so maybe he'll pitch through some stuff that he wouldn't pitch through otherwise for getting me some extra 10 points. And he's in not a great rotation, so even if he's kind of bad, his job is probably safe. So I'm going with Rick Porcello. That's good. That's a good pick.

And he doesn't throw particularly hard either, so he's got that going for him. No elbow drag, right, Ben? Doug, what would you say about his elbow drag because i would probably worry he was definitely on my list i dig it exactly see i spotted his lack of elbow drag good thing all right jeff's up all right i'm going to go completely off my list and go with the man with the greatest injury history of all time and take mark burley wait wait why do you have a list you're the guy with the greatest injury history of all time and take Mark Burley. Wait, wait, why do you have a list? You're the guy with the list. We brought you here because you have a list.

You're going off it immediately. I will go off it immediately before he gets taken. He has never been on the DL. He throws. I may throw harder than he does. I love Mark Burley. I would have taken Mark burley at some point in this draft but at what point does the age cancel out like how old would mark burley have

to be for you not to draft him in this draft or with your first pick like if he if he maintained this level of performance until he was 50 and he was still pitching at this level would you draft mark mark burley as a 50 yearold just because he hadn't been hurt? I would probably start drawing the line somewhere over 40. There's a lot of weak throwers that have made it to about 40. I think about that point, I think they just get tired of it. Yeah. They're just like, well, I'm done.

I've made my money. I'm going to do something else. But if he's decided to pitch for this season, I will take him. And he just seems to go out there all the time, never gets hurt. So, like I said, he's the one guy that's just never been on the DL at that age. Pretty impressive. I'm somewhat surprised that he made it to the third pick. That's how obvious he is.

Well, Doug cheated with his pick. But still, I think you were smart. I don't think you would have made it past three rounds. I thought about having as a strategy guys who are old who wouldn't bother going through a Tommy John who would just retire before they did

that. That seems like a fairly safe strategy. There's got to be 10 pitchers out there who have no desire to rehab. I mean, it's a brutal rehab. They're not coming back. They would just retire. Like A.J. Burnett, I don't want to give anything away. I don't want to give you any hints, but A.J. Burnett ain't getting Tommy John. You know what I mean? A.J. Burnett is going home. Like, that's it. Like, there is no doubt that A.J. Burnett would just walk away if his elbow snapped. So I thought about that as a strategy. I also thought about doing only guys who just had Tommy John, but are on the mound,

you know, because it does seem like if you have Tommy John, it's no guarantee that you won't have another one in the next year. But once you're on the mound, it feels to me like you've got about four good years, generally speaking. But there's research to that effect, right, Jeff? There's like a grace period, honeymoon period after the Tommy John comeback? Yeah, you kind of – the rehab usually determines – you usually don't even make it back to the majors if you get the second one right away. It's like they find out in the minors that things aren't right. But once you get in the majors and make it about 30 innings,

you probably can make it for the season then. Yeah, exactly. All right. So I thought about those as strategies, but ultimately what I decided to do and my pick, my first pick is going to be Anibal Sanchez, just so you guys know. But ultimately what I decided to do is I took Pakoda and I sorted by projected game started and I took the top hundred and I put them in a spreadsheet and I went to a random number generator, and I put in 1 to 100. And I'm going to let Randy, the random number generator, pick mine, and I'll tell you why I'm going to do this. I feel like, to some degree, we've gotten to the cholesterol in eggs part of this research,

where every three or four years everything we thought we knew is uh overturned uh i don't remember who it was that i wrote uh that i read recently but uh wrote in i think a bp article some some like uh axiom along the lines of whatever you're looking at is the thing that you're over focused on. Basically, just anything you think is... Our brains are not capable of putting things in perspective. Anything you think is a factor, you are over focusing on that factor. This is sort of like the Time Magazine theory that if you want to know what not to invest in, just see what economic trend Time Magazine is reporting as the hot new thing.

Because once it gets to Time Magazine, it's almost certainly overexposed and wrong. And so that is nothing against Doug's amazing work, which is, you know, he's super smart. That's why he's here. And Jeff's incredible work, also super smart. I read it all. I love it. I take it seriously. But I'm going to go with the fatalistic, there is nothing we know and nothing we can predict. Incredible work. Also super smart. I read it all. I love it. I take it seriously. But

I'm going to go with the fatalistic, there is nothing we know and nothing we can predict, and see if my random number generator can beat you guys. So pick one, Anibal Sanchez. I've got to say, Anibal is kind of a reach at round one for Randy there. I agree. I kept doing myself. I'm giving myself one veto in case I land on Hiroki Kuroda. Or like Hugh Darvish. Hugh Darvish is on my spreadsheet. He's

number 51. I'm giving myself one veto in case Randy lands on something that I can throw away right away. Okay. Doug, you're up. You got any more guys with no UCLs up your sleeve? No, that was the only trickster I got. But I will go with

Jose Quintana. He's 26, so he's kind of in that nice little sweet spot where he's got consecutive 200-inning seasons. He's established himself at the major league level, but he hasn't thrown an insane number of pitches there. He's got like 536 innings in the majors. He throws about average. He averages a little over 92 miles an

hour on his fastball, and he has an absolutely clean injury record. So I like him mechanically. I like that he's big balance and kind of low on the power. So for this kind of exercise, I think he's perfect. Okay, and I'm going gonna take felix and i don't want to hear from any mariners fans if felix ends up having tommy john surgery i didn't jinx it it's not my fault i didn't break felix but felix is not old although he's been pitching forever so i don't know whether that makes him riskier that he started you so young and has a lot of innings on his arm even though they were managed pretty responsibly it seems like but fairly clean injury history no dl since 2008 and that was an ankle strain and he did have a did have an elbow strain in 2007 that scares me a little bit but i figure if he can get through

seven seasons after that and be okay. Probably all right. Doesn't throw very hard anymore. Throws change-ups over 30% of the time. Who's going to have Tommy John throwing change-ups 31% of the time? Because you throw a change-up just as hard as you throw a fastball, Ben. That's what Stan Conte told me this not that long ago. That's one of the issues is that everybody these days throws every pitch as hard as they can. There's no pitch other than maybe a curveball that you ease off of. And so, yes, the changeup doesn't go as fast.

That's because you're gripping it in an artificially, you know, a speed suppressing way. You're throwing it with just as much effort. Okay. My argument against that, not necessarily against that, but, you know but obviously Conte kind of knows what he's talking about. But when it comes to change-ups versus, say, breaking balls, with a change-up, you have natural pronation, and the arm always pronates after every pitch. So throwing breaking balls, the arm is supinated. So if you imagine like a karate chop kind of forearm angle. So to throw a breaking ball, in order to get to the natural pronation that occurs

after release point, the arm has to twist more on a breaking ball than it does on, say, a changeup. So it seems to me that mechanically a changeup is a little bit easier on the arm, but I haven't done any research to actually back that up. So that's total conjecture at this point. Yeah. My point precisely. No, you're right. And Stan Condi does not know what I am reporting he told me. I might be completely mangling whatever it was he said.

Don't listen to me. Even when I'm channeling somebody who you should listen to. Felix doesn't throw very hard anymore. Is there a velocity loss risk factor, Jeff? Do we we know that or once you have tommy john or no just as a warning sign for injuries or tommy john specifically no usually

i hate to say the velocity loss is a lot of times more with elbows usually the tommy john is just like it just happens there's not a lot of slowing down. The guy just decides to break. Okay. All right, Felix, it is. You're up, Jeff. I will take Mike Leak. Again, kind of going off your first one,

and with the Jose Quintana pick, young guy, no recent injury history, starting a lot of games, doesn't throw hard, just doesn't have a lot of warning signs, just seems like he's going to be my pick. Good all-around athlete, too. I don't know if there's any way of putting that into a spreadsheet, but I like a guy who's a good all-around athlete. Okay. It means he probably didn't specialize in baseball when he was nine years old. And I hear all the time about how bad it is to specialize in baseball.

Good point. All right. Well, Randy gave me Jose Quintana, unfortunately. And so I had to go to Randy's next pick, which is Jorge de la Rosa. All right. Good pick. Better right. Good pick. Better than the first pick. Time will tell.

Anybody like Jorge de la Rosa? I'm trading. I'm willing to trade. That's okay. You can have him. You're already losing starts. Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

Okay. Doug? I'll go with Wei-Yin Chen. Once again, a guy who doesn't throw incredibly hard, but throws hard enough and is big on the balance, low on the power in his delivery. He's a little bit older than, say, the Katana class, but still short of 30.

He pitched a bit more in Japan, but his combined innings between Japan and the majors is around 1150, something like that. So not completely over the top. So that's my next one. Okay. And I'm going to go with another Red Sox, Wade Miley, who is 28 years old, has never been on the DL, maybe in the minors. In the minors, he had a left shoulder strain in 2011. That's the only black mark on his resume, and he's been durable for the last few years. 29 starts, 33 starts, 33 starts.

So nothing scares me about Wade Miley. So I'm going with Wade Miley. Okay. Jeff. I am going to take, actually I'm more worried about him just not pitching because he's not that good of a pitcher, but I will go with Travis Wood. Oh, another good athlete. I like him.

I like them both. He and Lee, both good athletes. I like those guys. Are you on your list yet, Jeff? Are you still going off list? Because I want to know who is at the top of your list, but I don't want you to tell us until you do. I have Joe's list.

They've been stealing players from the top of the list right now. The top guy is not selected. Really? Right. He's a little bit worrisome. I will maybe take him toward the end, but, yeah, he's not. I have some issues with him. Is this list, this list is all injuries, not just Tommy Johns?

Is that right? Just DL, yeah. Okay. I wonder, huh, I wonder if I can guess who that is. That's a, huh, and he's worrisome, huh? Well. Is he worrisome because he threw 285 innings last year? He is a guy that we were on even before the playoffs last year

Well, no, Doug and I were talking about this Last year we had Doug on And we asked Doug to pick a pitcher who was the least likely to have Tommy John Do you remember that, Ben? Nope Because I had asked him that when we had had tacos a few days earlier, and he had said a few months earlier, I guess, and he'd said Jose Fernandez. And Jose Fernandez went and had Tommy John, so we asked him to give us a new one, and he picked the guy you're talking

about. And he also told me this week that he is no longer at the top of Doug's list because of the 285 inning. We are talking about Madison Bumgarner. Yeah. Yes. As we were doing even before. Before the playoffs. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Okay. All right. So my pick, and I'm curious to hear your guys' thoughts on my pick, is Trevor Bauer. Ah. Okay. What do we think about Trevor Bauer. Ah, okay. What do we think of Trevor Bauer? Trevor Bauer is a guy who is unusual,

and for that reason, well, for the particular reasons he's unusual, has tried to sell himself as unbreakable and so on. He does the long tossing. He does the wolf-worth and all that. What do you think of Trevor Bauer? I'm worried about his ability just to make starts. I think there's a lot for him to figure out,

and there's the possibility, whether it's injury or performance-related, I'd be worried about him taking the hill 30 times. All right. Fair enough. Me too. I don't need him to take 30 times. I don't need 30. I need 21 without a Tommy John.

You guys will get beat up on your Tommy Johns. As long as I get 21 out of everybody with no TJ, I'm good. Okay. Doug, you're up. My plan with De La Rosa is that his groin tightness will last until September. He'll give me six good starts with no Tommy John. You guys will all be in the negatives. This was your strategy in some other draft we did, right?

Like where you just wanted to avoid the big negative guys, and I was going for positive points. Yeah, this was the worst contracts. Right. Yeah. Yeah, right. The worst, yeah. Right, and I was drafting guys who weren't playing.

Yeah. Yeah. Your strategy in every draft is getting guys who don't play. Yeah. Okay. All right, Doug. My next one is Gio Gonzalez. To me, he's similar to Chen, same age, same velocity range, same workload. He had a bit of a barking shoulder last year, but his elbow has been sound so far.

Really like his delivery, so I'm going to go with Gio. Okay, and I think I'm going to take, I don't feel great about this one, but I'm going to take Ian Kennedy. He is 30 years old. He has pitched 200 or close to 200 innings every year since 2010 or so. And I don't know. I'm not taking any flamethrowers in this draft. Sort of scared of flamethrowers. Kennedy was on my list. Yeah.

Well, he was on Randy's list? Yeah. He's in the top 100. Okay. He was on my short list too. Part of that is he's a Tom House guy, so I know a little bit more about his conditioning and what he's doing to prepare himself. So I know that he's doing the necessary, whether it's backside shoulder muscle work

or flexibility work to make sure that he's as efficient as possible. There's a couple of guys that I know a little bit more about what they're doing in their training. And so with someone like Kennedy, I'm definitely going to trust someone like that a little bit more than somebody that I have no idea. All right. I feel even better about that pick now. Okay. Jeff? I am going to go for the win here with Clayton Kershaw.

Try to give me the starts. He has the one injury stint, but otherwise it's been perfect because he rode on the airplane and hurt his back or whatever it was last year. He's probably going to have to ride some airplanes this year, though. Yeah, hopefully that's Australia.

I've been convinced that Clayton Kershaw has been hurt for two years. I'm constantly seeing signs that he's hurt. Three weeks later, I'm like seeing signs that he's hurt. And then three weeks later, I'm like, geez, that's weird. He's still pitching well, but he's clearly hurt. I thought he got hurt two years ago,

and I've just been waiting for it to all fall apart. So, bad pick. Okay. All right. We're taking all the aces that everyone loves, so people are going to be mad at us if something bad happens to them. They will not be mad at me. Nobody will be mad if I jinx Jorge de la Rosa. Or my next pick, CJ Wilson. Okay. All right.

Mic drop. Are you confident that CJ Wilson is good enough to make starts yeah i don't i i think cj wilson has got uh perhaps the highest ratio of job security to velocity in the game what about jared weaver he's probably even higher yeah well jared weaver though i don't feel like he's ever healthy anymore but cj wilson never gets hurt yeah well come on you guys cj wilson good pick give it up all right well done randy it is randy's best pick so far so i will go ahead and go with bum garner i know he had the big increase last year and there's a weird one i've used this term before but uh double-edged sword with his velocity

increase the end of the year. On the one hand, he was healthy enough to throw harder in October than he had the whole rest of the year. But at the same time, it increases that kinetic toll. So I am a little bit worried, obviously, more so than I would be if he hadn't made the postseason. But everything else taken away, he would have been the number one pick, non-Dickey division. So those extra innings, they push him down, but not far enough for me to not draft him. Your choices, your rationale sounds so technical. Mine is like, well, he's pitched a lot.

28. He doesn't throw that hard, and you're all like kinetic chain and elbow drag. What else am I supposed to do? That's all I paid for. Yeah, that's why you're here, I guess. All right. Ben, you didn't call Tom House before the draft? Is this scalper information?

I called all my picks personally just to see how their elbows are feeling. You do have a history of emailing scouts in anticipation of our drafts. What did Kylie McDaniel tell you today? I did not email any scouts in preparation for this. I did get Jeff's list of entry, guys, but that was unrelated. That was before I knew that we were doing this draft. All right. But you have the full list, don't you even?

I've got everything. I've got everything that you know. All of your secrets. He've got everything that you know. All of your secrets. He's got the list you're putting out next week. Okay. All right. Well, I'm going to go with a guy who's pretty high on Jeff's list. He is probably a younger guy than I've taken thus far.

Willie Peralta who is 25 who has not had an injury other than some day to day stuff and yeah that's why I'm taking him Ben you can't use the list of the guy

you invited to the podcast that's just awful I can't unlearn what I know. I know who's going to be hurt this year. Yes, you can. You know how you do it? You get a spreadsheet, you number everything 1 to 100,

and you go to a random number generator. You can't use his list, Ben. You brought him on to be the guy with the list. There are multiple guys with the list. Oh, God. I'm sorry, Jeff.

That's fine. I was actually kind of expecting both of you to steal from it, so I am doing a little extra work here. All right. You're up, Jeff. I will take Jordan Lyles. He does have one injury knock on him, but it was just because of a player collision.

It wasn't really an arm issue. He's got quite a few starts. He's just going to keep throwing in Colorado. He's already thrown about three full seasons, so I'll just keep – I'll take him. He doesn't seem to have an issue right now. He doesn't throw real hard. I'm sure Doug has something against him, but I'll go have an issue right now. He doesn't throw real hard. I'm sure Doug has something against him, but

I'll go with him for right now. Doug, do you have something against him? I am a little worried about how many starts he's going to make just because I think performance could be an issue with him. Mechanically, I don't love it, but I don't hate it. I think that

balance-wise, he's fine. Repetition's a big issue. I'd actually be curious to find like if I send you my report card stuff, look at the repetition guys because to me that's recruiting different muscle groups and that could be an issue. I gave him a 35 on the 2080 scale for repetition and to me that's a potential risk factor. But again, I haven't run the numbers on that so I'd be curious to get your take on it, Jeff. Yeah, you guys should get together after the third, because I would actually be interested in that too. You should put those two things together and see if there's

something interesting there. All right. I was worried that this guy was going to get to me, but I'm going to take Cole Hamels. You guys want to tell me how bad that pick is or how good it is? I love it for the same reason that I like the Ian Kennedy. He's working with Tom House? What do you know? He actually wrote the foreword to my book. He's doing the back stretches? Yeah.

He's been working with Tom since high school. He's a San Diego guy. He was on the cover of the book that I wrote with Tom. I'm a big Hamels guy. I like his delivery. I like what he does preparation-wise. The biggest scare, obviously, is just the number of pitches he's thrown at this point. But other than that, I like it.

It's so weird. If a guy pitches and throws a lot of innings and stays healthy, you go, oh, well, he's proven it. He's going to stay healthy. And then like four seconds later, you're like, but that's a lot of pitches. That's why there's that sweet spot. I think everyone I've taken is between the ages of 25 and 29. That's not by accident.

Well, not counting Dickie, but yeah. Just like Jorge de la Rosa. He's actually much older than that. No, I'm kidding. He's much older than that. All right, Doug, you're up. I'll take Dallas Keuchel for the next one. Expecting to get a lot of PT and low velocity.

Dig it. Okay. All right, I don't know where to go with this next bet. I think I will take John Lester. I don't know why. Just going with John Lester. Alright. Why not? He's so healthy. He's really proven it. He never gets hurt.

He has thrown a lot of pitches. Yeah. Not particularly high on the list. Going off the list. But yeah, I don't know. The usual reasons. No DL stints don't know. The usual reasons. No DL stints since 2011. Makes lots of starts.

He's good. John Lester. Who can be against him? Mm-hmm. All right. Jeff. I'm going to go off the list again for a weak thrower and take Jared Weber. Ah, interesting. Interesting.

The guy who Sam just said is always hurt. Yeah, but it's never hurt like that. It's like he's always got dead arm. Well, dead arm is fine. Right, exactly. He's okay. It's a good pick. Why not?

I'd take Jared Weaver. Is it just a velocity slash angels rotation pick or what? Yeah, generally been healthy. I don't think the elbow's going out. He'll give me a lot of starts where I stand with him. Okay, so what? This is the last round, right?

No, I'm finishing up. Oh, yes, right, right, right. Okay, go ahead. All right, I'm taking Henderson Alvarez. Okay. Why did you laugh at that? What's funny about Henderson? There's nothing funny about Henderson Alvarez. Okay. Why did you laugh at that? What's funny about Henderson Alvarez?

There's nothing funny about Henderson Alvarez. Every pick is funny because it's decided by a random number generator. You know, I had to go off the list because Randy gave me Rick Porcello. Oh. Man, Randy is all over our picks. Yeah. Okay. All right.

So now... Seriously, if you put my six picks against any of yours like that we're completely within the margin of error with each other there is nothing other than de la rosa de la rosa is the one guy but i mean it's not like even he has any arm problems anibal round one oh yeah anibal that's true but anibal's a shoulder right it's all been shoulder stuff yeah well that's not good's not good. I'd prefer no stuff. No stuff would be the best. I know, but you get 15 starts and no Tommy John. It's better than getting 30 starts and Tommy John.

Yeah, although, I mean, what are the odds that any of us gets a Tommy John? There are, what, 35 Tommy Johns in a season, something like that? There have already been seven or eight, something like that. You don't count the ones that have already been because we're going to go through. Right, right, right. You're right. Yeah. Okay.

So, so yeah, so we're picking 28 pitchers out of, I don't know how many guys make starts, but, but what are the odds that we even get a Tommy John somewhere? You're right. This is a dumb draft. Let's start this show. Let's talk about something else. but what are the odds that we even get a Tommy John somewhere? You're right. This is a dumb draft. Let's start this show over. Let's talk about something else. You guys want to talk about attendance?

You guys think baseball's dying? It's okay. It'll be exciting when someone gets one in a terrible way. All right. Doug, last round. All right, my last pick is going to be Lance Lynn. He fits that age range that I've been looking at, and he has a perfectly clean injury history, so I'm going to go with Lynn.

Okay. All right, I'm going to take Sonny Gray for the usual reasons, although I guess he hasn't been around that long or that established but i'll go with sunny gray jeff i'll probably also take a less established guy a little bit worried but he doesn't throw hard is um the other wood alex wood yeah alex would he's uh he's on the list uh i got a little bit of a tricky one i have a you know i still have my one veto and um if i don't use it now i'm never gonna use it the thing is that i got matt cane and he i don't know enough about what his elbow injury was last year. I guess none of you have to help me, but is there any insight? Should I take Matt Cain or should I give him another spin?

Who knows what another spin might give me? I think you have to be worried with any elbow injury, potential recurrence, but I do think that people are getting a little too worried about Matt Cain, his specific case. So his surgery was to remove bone spurs and bone chips. So it's in the – I think it was the bone spur. I forget which one it was, but one of them – oh, it was the bone chips. It had been around for like 10 years, and it was just kind of pain he dealt with. So he finally had that taken care of. So I'm not as worried as if it was some other aspect with the elbow,

but you're always worried when someone has a previous injury to an elbow, even if it's just a cleanup like that. All right. That was not clear advice. You're welcome. I'm good with that. Just veto. Put your stamp on this draft.

All right. I veto, and it's, okay, Jorge de la Rosa. Hang on. I'm doing it again. Oh, so you veto, and he just reselects again, so you don't get to pick your own guy. No, goodness, no. Okay.

I'm going to pick again. Andrew Kashner. I don't like that. You guys gave me bad advice. That's a downgrade. But so it goes. At least... Does he work with Tom House?

Eddie Tom House going on there? Not that I know of, but hey, he's in San Diego, so there's a chance. Yeah, that's why I asked. Okay, well. All right well probably not high on the list might not even be on the list I'm a big Kashner guy but he wasn't on my list printer might have run out of ink before it got to Kashner

second on the list Bartolo Colon for most injury. There's literally no chance. There's literally zero chance Bartolo Colon would get a Tommy John. Literally. How did you guys not take him? Why wouldn't you take him?

He's the second highest injury risk on the list. Oh, he's on that side of the list. Yeah. Johan Santana and then Bartolo Colon. There's also, though, zero chance that Bartolo Colon will get Tommy John. You don't think he could come back and pitch at 43? I don't think he would. He went to get weird blood treatments in Germany or something.

That's how much he wants to pitch. When he was 36. And plus, weird blood treatments in Germany, dude. Everybody does that. That's like called being in college that's not Tommy John surgery that's fun that's getting the good stuff alright

we done here? I'm done okay so we have determined which pitchers will be saved and which will not which will be doomed. Sorry, guys who didn't get drafted. And I guess we will reconvene in a year and we'll see how we did. And you guys can do some research about mechanics and injury risk in the time being. And we can do this again next year and you can pick even more accurately. And this will probably be tracked on

the Effectively Wild page on Facebook. There's a file section that links to a Google Doc with every draft we have ever done, maintained by John Chenier, the official statistician of Effectively Wild. So you can check there. Not that this is a particularly hard one to keep track of. So thank you for playing, guys. Thanks for having me on. Thanks again.

All right. So Doug is on Twitter at Doug underscore Thorburn. You can read him at Baseball Perspectives. Jeff is on Twitter at Jeff W. Zimmerman. You can find him at Fangraphs and Royals Review and Hardball Times Sometimes. Excellent analysis to check out. Please support our sponsor, the Baseball Reference Play Index

By going to Baseball Reference And subscribing using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price Of $30 on a one year subscription And that's it for today We will be back tomorrow That balance work I guess I mean 300 points that

That kills you Yeah you don't so that's yeah don't don't draft tommy johns you're missing the point