Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 649: Our Most-Anticipated Storylines of 2015

Episode Date: April 3, 2015

Ben and Sam update the results of their ongoing contests, bemoan the predictions process, and discuss the storylines they’re looking forward to this season.

It doesn't matter what I do, I just can't seem to win. But here I go again. And I said, hey, that's the story of a lie. I had a good plan, but it didn't work out. Oh, no, I'm overdrawn. I checked my account, and the money's all done. Why me? I don't know what to think.

I finally get aboard, and the whole boat sinks. Seems to be the story of my life. Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello. So when BP style is a lowercase letter after a colon, even if it's a full sentence after the colon. Yeah, that's been an adjustment for me because Grantland style is capitalized. Everything I ever, everywhere I ever worked was also capitalized. But here's my question. Everywhere I ever worked was also capitalized. But here's my question. Style is also everywhere is to not start a sentence with a number, right?

So you write out the number no matter how big it is. But if it's after a colon and you're going lowercase because you're not acknowledging that this is a sentence, you start with the number or do you write out 15? Huh. Huh. That is a conundrum. That's kind of a catch-22. Yeah yeah so what would you do probably just use the number all right yeah okay editing banter anything else nope okay well we're going to give an update on our completed and ongoing contests and drafts, since we did a draft yesterday, the No Tommy John draft, the official scorekeeper of Effectively Wild, listener John Chenier, emailed us an update.

And all of these things are in a Google Doc in the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. You click on the files section, you open up the Google Doc, it shows every draft and bet we've ever had. But we'll update you on the recent ones and the ongoing ones so the the offseason one we talked about the predicting free agent contracts one that one is done that's been done for a while but the odds movers draft which was on november 11th we each picked five teams and we guessed on the direction that their world series odds would go over the course of the offseason and the winner of this contest was just the person who picked the most teams that went in the direction that that we guessed the the magnitude of the

change in direction did not matter just the change in direction did not matter. Just the change in direction. And so you won. Oh, good. So I picked the Giants to get worse, the Rays to get better. And this is just odds, not the actual team. So I picked the Giants, who were 12-1 at the time, to get worse. The Rays at 50-1 to get better. Cubs at 16-1 to get worse. Tigers 10-1 to get worse. rays at 50 to 1 to get better Cubs at 16 to 1 to get worse Tigers 10 to 1 to get worse Mets 33 to 1 to get better the Tigers and the Giants were right so the the

Giants are now longer odds than they were and the Tigers are now longer odds than they were but the rays went in the under other direction theays were 50-1 I thought their odds would get better They got worse They're now 66-1 And the Mets and the Cubs have not changed at all They are identical Although technically I guess I still have a couple days I've got two days

Mets and the Cubs can move in the right direction And tie this thing for me You pick the Marlins 50-1 to get better The Yankees 20-1 to get better The Reds 33-1 to get worse Astros 50-1 to get better, the Yankees 20-1 to get better, the Reds 33-1 to get worse, Astros 100-1 to get better, and the Braves 25-1 to get worse. And you were right on Marlins and Yankees getting worse. I said Yankees better.

I got the rest right. Okay, you got Yankees wrong and everything else right. So, yeah. I got the rest right. Okay, you got Yankees wrong and everything else right. So yeah, so unless there's a dramatic change in Cubs and Mets odds in the next day or two, you take that one 4-2. If anyone laid down a bet in Vegas on me beating Ben in this competition, congratulations. And then we've got two ongoing under-25 starting pitchers drafts. This was something we did in may of 2013 for the first time and then may of 2014 for the second time and it's just the the most wins above replacement

player over the next five and ten years each time different group of starters i am currently in the lead in both of these. I am winning 37.5 to 24.72. John went to two decimal places on this. And that is in the 2013 one. And then in the 2014 one, I'm leading 11.5 to 9.9. And there are six competitions that have finished already. I've won three. You've won three. Harry Pavlidis won one,

which I think was the under 90 mile per hour starting pitchers draft. And there are also a couple other ongoing bets, right? There's Jacoby Ellsbury. We bet in podcast 280 in September, 2013. How many home runs over the next five years Jacoby Ellsbury would hit? over the next five years, Jacoby Ellsbury would hit. You said 66. I said 50. He is at 17. So I am the leader in the clubhouse there.

And I guess there's the Pirates postseason ones, postseason one, which maybe I won already. No, you lost. They didn't make the playoffs. That didn't count. Oh, right, right, right, right. Okay, yeah. Podcast 304.

This was October 2013. How many of the next five postseasons will include the Pirates? You said zero. I said two. But postseason was defined as everything beyond wildcard play in-game. Huh. Okay. Still feeling all right about that one. Your lead in the first under-25 draft, which is substantial,

is essentially one Clayton kershaw like that's that is both how close we could have been uh if clayton kershaw had been like two years older and uh and also how good clayton kershaw has been because it's not even close okay feel all right about that okay so that's an update on all of our things. Some of you have joined us after these bets were made, so now you know that those bets were made. And if you want to go look at the ones that have been resolved already, you can do that in the Facebook group. Okay, so this is the last show before opening day.

We've made it through the offseason. And so I thought we could just do a basic, what storylines are we looking forward to this season? And we were chatting earlier. I said we could just do five or ten storylines that we're looking forward to. You said three, and I said four. And then you said four is more than three, so no. And I said, okay. and that's why our partnership has worked so well compromise so we are doing three each storylines that we are looking forward to who's going first uh you go first all right three yeah okay all right um okay i think mine, I don't look forward to individual teams as much as I look forward to trends, since I'm not rooting for any team in particular. Certain teams are more interesting than others, but I don't know.

The teams are kind of like the monster of the week episodes of the X-Files, and the trends are like the mythology episodes of the X-Files, And the trends are like the mythology episodes of the X-Files where they actually give you some information about how things work, even if you're more confused at the end than you were at the beginning. But you feel like you're getting a glimpse of behind the curtain. You're not just it's not just a one season thing. individual team, but I think if I can get away with it, I'm going to pick the group of teams that either expectedly or unexpectedly just took a leap forward this offseason. So like the Cubs, the White Sox, the Padres, the Astros, maybe the teams that have just been out of it for a few years, weren't even trying particularly Some of those we sort of expected That they would do something this winter

And maybe compete this year Others, White Sox, the Padres No one really saw that coming So I think that is going to be My thing for this year Those teams that have taken us Out of the era when there were teams That were tanking sort of intentionally

because right now it doesn't seem like anyone is doing that there are a couple bad teams but unintentionally they're not really trying to be bad they've just done it inadvertently and so I'm curious to see how much progress they make in a single offseason. With the Cubs, obviously, it's the prospects. And with the Padres, it's this weird disjointed roster that is just kind of cobbled together and has lots of talent but doesn't fit together well. And then the White Sox, I didn't foresee any of what they did this winter. And the Astros are kind of competitive now. So I don't know.

I put them all into a category of teams that have been non-factors for a few years and suddenly are very much factors. And I'm curious to see how good they can get in one winter of really trying to be good. Does your job require you to predict standings? It does. I've got to do that.

Oh, you haven't done it yet? I've sort of done it. In these division previews that we've done, I have ordered the teams in the order that I thought they would finish, but I only did half the divisions. I do have to pick some. Grantland will have its predictions on Monday. Do you have any predictions that are not just straight down the conventional wisdom line? Do you have any that aren't just what the projections say or what basically everybody agrees on? I know that there are some things that we don't quite agree on, but we basically do, everybody basically does. Do you have anything that you feel exposed on? Not particularly. That's how my predictions

are every year yeah which is why i hate predictions and uh i tried to tried to get out of it i tried to tell my editor that my predictions are so boring that no one would want to read them it didn't work but but yeah i don't i mean the thing is that, if you're making a World Series pick that makes everyone go, what? Then I feel like on the whole, you'll probably be wrong more often. Not that the... Sure. No, it's true. And maybe the goal is, I mean, no one is good at this.

We're not any better than the projection systems and the projection systems aren't very good so maybe there's there's value to whatever outlet you are writing for just to come up with a wacky prediction and try to justify it and then people link to it on twitter and get mad at you and they click on your stuff and that's everyone does that you know once once in a while someone someone does it every year right so i expect that other people have done it or will do it, but I can't make myself do it. I don't know. No, I mean, you shouldn't do it for the good of your publication, right?

Like the world is worse when people are lying, particularly people who are paid to essentially who readers expect to be honest and then they just lie in order to get attention. That's not good. You shouldn't do that. But it does seem like, I don't know, this sort of goes to, I think, what we've talked about before, the Hall of Fame voting issue, where it's horrible to just go down the war

list. like uh the it's it's horrible to just go down the war list like it just it's the worst possible thing you can do is just go down the war list and vote the guys at the top except every other way is worse yeah like there's no better way to do it than that and so you just kind of have to do it and then maybe just for your own conscience you like swap eight and nine or you swap like 12 in for number 10. But basically, you're not smarter than war and you're not really smarter than the projections. If you were smarter than the projections, then you would just put out projections with your own gut and everybody would pay for them. But nobody would do that. So yeah, it's very hard

to justify not going with either the projections that you choose, whatever projections you choose, or like some amalgamation of the projections. But on the other hand, geez, like some part of your brain has to at some point just say, oh, I don't really believe this one. I believe something else. And then just go with that. I feel like putting in something idiosyncratic for attention is rotten and evil, but not really pushing yourself to get past your opinions is fine. That's all people want. People want your individualism. They want to know what your gut tells you, what your brain operating through your gut or your gut operating through your

brain tells you. They think that you're a smart person with interesting opinions. Even if you're wrong, they don't really care that much because they want to know what you think. It's sort of like I remember my dad and I were talking one time about psychology, psychiatrist, a psychiatrist, going to a therapist. This was when I was young, like 19. I remember saying, I'd be worried that if I ever went to a therapist, I would be lying to the therapist because I wouldn't want to admit my weaknesses. Even if it was not admitting them to myself. I was trying to be honest, I wouldn't want to admit them. My dad, who has a psychology masters, I believe, said, no, it's okay because the lying, that's all part of you. They see through your being a liar too. They see through it all. They're assessing what you lie about and how you lie

and how you lie to yourself. It's all relevant data. I feel like readers don't really care if you get your order right. They just want to see you, Ben. They want you. They want some of you in these things. I say you, but I mean all of us. I'm the same way with you. Your predictions and my predictions most years are exactly the same and it's disgusting and uh so anyway uh this year i have one division that i just i just said forget it i'm going with what i think the rest are all right right down the line right straight down the list do you want to say what it is the al central okay i have the white socks the indians the the Tigers, and fourth, and then the Twins. Okay.

Well, I mean, I feel like at this point, there's almost no such thing as a weird pick because every team is like an 85-win team, right? So other than if you were going to like not pick the Nationals or not pick the Dodgers or something, like in the Central, I mean, what do the projections say about the Tigers and Indians and White Sox are they're all like within a few games or something uh yeah well if you're looking at Pakoda then the Royals are way behind oh well yeah and the Tigers are like four or five wins ahead of the of the White Sox I believe it's Tigers at 83 White Sox at 78 uh Indians right in the middle, and then Royals at 73. Yeah, I guess that's unconventional. It's the best we can do. It's the best I can do. Yeah, it's hard.

I mean, because if you don't pick, how can you not pick the Nationals to win the World Series or the Dodgers? You have to pick the team that you think is that has the best chance of making the of winning its division yeah because that is a big deal if you can get past the wild card game that's i mean if you have to play the wild card game your odds of winning the world series just went down by 50 so if you don't think that the team is gonna easily win its division then you shouldn't pick them to win the world series and like if the nationals or the dodgers seem to be the teams with the best chances of winning their division because they're good and their competition is not as close as the competition in other divisions so i don't know how you can not pick them unless you really believe

and i don't even know what other like you can't even if you're one of those people who think like pitching wins championships and you have to have the best pitching or something they have the best pitching too so i don't know how you can not pick them unless you think there's some inherent weakness in them spiritually and that's why they haven't won yet yeah it's this comes up whenever ESPN does their expert picks. And there will be some, like it will be the postseason, the experts will all pick. And they'll have like 650 experts, you know?

So it makes for this massive graph of predictions. And all 650 will pick one team. And then the other team will win. And then the other team will be like, see? Idiot. Idiot. So you thought there was a 650 to nothing chance. That's not what it is.

If all 650 think that there's a 52% chance, then you have to pick 52. 52 is always bigger than 48. You can't pick 48. It's not allowed. pick 48. It's not allowed. And so unless you're a troll or an attention whore or you don't see the 48 and the 52,

you have to do it. And so the 650 to 0 doesn't actually mean anything. It's not an overwhelming show of anything. It means that... It means that... Right. That team convinced everyone that they were better. And they probably were right

but that doesn't mean they're gonna win they're still only like you know some x percentage chance likely to win and x isn't usually that big yep yep so anyway yeah i think i who did i pick for the world series i'm gonna see who i picked for the world series uh the washington nationals The Washington Nationals. Good pick. Thanks. Okay. You have a storyline? Yeah. I guess my storyline is the, I'm going to say the Red Sox and the Yankees, both of those teams.

I'm curious to see both of their trajectories, mainly because I would like to see another team that could rival the Dodgers on the market. Like, I would like to see another team that could rival the Dodgers on the market. I feel like all these teams or a lot of these teams could be spending more money than they are. If you look at how much the franchises are actually worth and how the value of the franchises keep going up, these guys are making so much more than just revenue, and they don't really have to stop spending where they do. And I'm kind of curious to see if either the Red Sox, this trade deadline, will just go crazy and add three aces, or if the Yankees can somehow get back. I don't know what it would mean for the Yankees. Either maybe it would mean

sinking so bad that they're able to shed $90 million at the trade deadline or maybe it would mean getting back and winning the World Series. I don't know. But I would like to see, I mean, neither one of those teams has been a huge factor since the Dodgers arrived in August of 2012. The Red Sox were a big factor this offseason, but you know. They won the World Series. No, I mean on the market. On the free agent market. Like Red Sox were a big factor this offseason, but you know. They won a World Series. No, I mean on the market, on the free agent market. Like they've signed a bunch of good players. The Yankees signed a bunch of good players last offseason,

and the Red Sox signed a bunch of good players this offseason. But neither one has rivaled what the Dodgers have done, where like there will be weeks at a time where you just think they're never going to stop adding players, and you still feel like the Dodgers, Moncata being the exception, you still feel like the Dodgers can get any player they want. And Mankata might be the exception that proves the rule in that if we take what they say at face value, they bid for him, but they saw a real penalty to signing him and giving up two years of international spending.

So I don't know that we've seen a team outbid the Dodgers yet, really. And I kind of want to just see what happens if there are three powerhouses that are all pushing $330 million, what that would do. So I'm just basically curious to see whether the Red Sox will replace the Yankees as the Dodgers of the AL at the trade deadline, and whether the Yankees will figure out a way to be a relevant factor again. Because right now, it sort of feels like the opposite direction. You sort of don't expect the Yankees to sign anybody right now. You're looking for them to get bargain moves like Chase

Headley. And so that's, I guess, the story. Yeah, and a related one which I wasn't going to bring up. It's not one of mine, but I'm curious to see whether this is the year that the NL takes the crown back over the AL. Oh, I think they could do it. I know. I think this is it. I think they could do it. I think they could do it. I almost tweeted it as a prediction, and then I thought,

they lost like 55% of games last year. What do I have to go on? I know. Shields a prediction, and then I thought, they lost like 55% of games last year. What do I have to go on? I know. Right. It doesn't seem like there was a huge imbalance in the way that the market went this winter, but it seems like all the best teams are in the NL. The Dodgers are there, and if that old theory about how the AL was superior because the Yankees were pulling everyone up by spending so much, then maybe the Dodgers are now having the same effect on the NL, and I don't know.

I mean, it's been, what, it's been like since 2004 or something that AL has won interleague every single year, and this, I don't know feels like feels like this could be the year that that changes not that that really matters i mean it doesn't doesn't really matter what league is is better but it's something you have to keep in mind when you're forecasting players going one way or another teams facing each other in the playoffs or whatever but that's something i'm curious to see um okay so i guess my second one is just all of the strategic cat and mouse stuff that we talk about. The shift, bunting. Wait, your story is strategy?

Your story to watch is baseball strategy? Well, yeah. I'm curious to see. I'm curious to see who will win games like i'm no i don't care about that couldn't care less see who will win the 200 2430 games i just remembered last year before the season began i asked if anybody wanted to predict every game with me and somebody replied yes and he he managed to take me like 90 games before I finally gave in and said, all right, I was just joking. Well, yeah, I mean, the shift is the thing.

I've been looking at that for a couple of years now. I'm curious whether this will be the year that there will really be an explosion in bunts against the shift. There's been lots of rhetoric this spring about guys you know working on it in camp but there were some of that last year too and i at some point looked and there are always a few guys who say yeah i'm gonna do it and they don't actually do it once the season starts so i'm curious to see if that will be the thing uh there were 124 bunts against the shift last season according to inside edge which was up from 66 in 2013 so it almost doubled of course shifts became much more

common also wait so that's so the rate of bunt to shift basically held steady i think so yeah pretty much interesting isn't it well Well, I mean, you would expect that there would be more bunts over time. Right, you'd expect given that bunts were at just about zero when the strategy caught on and now

it's very much in people's minds and it seems like something that you need to react to, I would expect that bunts to far, far, far outpace shifts as growth. You'd think. And so I'm curious to see if that actually happens. I don't know. Prince Fielder laid one down this spring.

Who knows? If he can do it, maybe anyone can do it. So I'm curious about that. And I'm curious about the number, the rate of shifts. Obviously, I mean, that's a related topic, but I don't think they are close to getting to the ceiling yet. I mean, it's been, like, doubling for the last couple years, and John Duan at BIS says that he thinks it's, like, a third of the optimal shift rate right now. So there could be more shifts and more bunting. And so I'm curious to see how that goes and still whether we see any actual difference in BABIP if there are even more shifts.

So I guess that's one. I was going to tie the strike zone into it, but I guess that's a different topic. But I don't want to use that as my third topic. Is that going to be a strike zone into it but i guess that's a different topic but i don't want to use that as my third topic is that going to be a topic for you the strike zone yeah okay well i'm curious about that too because it's been sinking for the last few years it's been getting larger and it seems like teams have at least have sort of said that they are building themselves around that being the case. Like the Pirates with their emphasis on pitching low in the zone and the Red Sox getting a bunch of low in the zone pitchers. I don't know. It's not like if they suddenly stop calling the low strike, those teams are going to be screwed.

Because, I mean, pitching low in the zone is probably a good thing anyway. Getting ground balls is generally a good thing anyway. But if teams are kind of counting on this and pitching guys differently because of it, and there's that theory about the A's getting fly ball hitters because their swing planes line up with low pitches better. And you would never get them to admit that, of course, but that's a thing that people have speculated about. So if teams are actually adjusting strategically or, you know, building their rosters with the expectation that strikes are going to be called low, we will see. I don't expect there to be any huge difference this year. I mean, Manfred has talked about it and said that maybe they will look into doing things in 2016, or there is a Jeff Passan report about the league possibly adjusting the strike zone in 2016.

So I'm curious. There's a lot of awareness about it, of it, clearly. And will that sinking that we've seen for the last few years continue? Or now that it's on everyone's mind, will it stop? Will it reverse itself and will that have some effect on offense because it seems like about a third of the decline in offense is related to the expansion of the strike zone so one one kind of moves with the other and it's not really clear whether it's all umpires or whether it's partially defensive catchers too, which is something I'm trying to figure out how to separate.

So that's something I'll be watching. Snuck in an extra topic. Do we know why? I mean, you just said we don't know if it's all umpires, if it's some of its catcher. But was there something that caused the strike zone to go down that we know of like was there an order from mlb at some point was there a redefinition of the rules is this completely coincidental or do they just are they just following each other do we know i don't think we know whether there was any mandate but the

the theory and it seems pretty clear is that it's pitch fx because it happened like between 2009 and 2010 when when umpires started being evaluated with pitch fx info and and the strike zone is more accurate now is the thing like it's not like they're calling it wrong they're calling it right and it's well it's kind of the bottom of the zone is very i mean it's i mean it's a very loose it's hard to say yeah but but technically if the if the bottom of the zone is the the hollow of the the knee or whatever that's that's pretty low and that that pitch wasn't getting called before and now it now it is so i don't i i think technically I mean, the accuracy is higher than ever now. The way it conforms to the rulebook strike zone is closer than it used to be.

But as it turns out, when you do that, guys can't hit the ball very hard. So that is the theory, that it's the zone evaluation system that they are using, that they're holding umpires to that standard, and umpires are trying to be more accurate and this has been the unintended byproduct alright I will say

stat cast and I will say stat cast mainly because I still have no idea what it is going to be for us like we still don't really know what the policies are going to be for us. We still don't really know what the policies are going to be for releasing it. We don't know what we're going to see. We don't know when we're going to see it.

We don't know if it's going to be a thing where you can access the whole thing in virtually real time. Like with PitchFX, we don't know hardly anything. It sort of feels like this thing that is massive and going to change everything and yet, like in Independence Day,

when, like, they just woke up and all the spaceships were just there, like, they didn't see them coming? Like, how did they not see them coming for days and months? I mean, these are huge spaceships. How come nobody saw these? I feel like StatCast is this thing that we're going to just wake up and it's going to be looming over us, and then we'll respond to it and things will explode.

And right now, I don't know. I have no idea what it's going to look like. I'm very curious. I'm very interested and I think it's also plausible that at the end of the year we'll look back and go, huh, we didn't get anything from StatCast. It was on a lot of broadcasts in certain places and nothing else. It might change nothing for us that it might change nothing for us it might change nothing it might be no better for analysis than xmo you know we don't know yeah it's weird isn't

it kind of weird that we don't know it's not for lack of asking i know right i've i asked uh i asked manfred directly lots of people have asked him and and they're playing it pretty close to the best and it seems like I don't know, from what he said at Sloan they're talking to broadcasters we're going to see it in broadcasts more you'll see it in MLB at bat, your apps

it'll show up there somehow I'm sure there will continue to be videos released but I'm not optimistic about getting anything that we can use for analysis. He said, you know, over the long term, they will release more of it. But I would guess for this season, I would think the best we can hope for is maybe like some leaderboards on mlb.com or something that tell you max speed leaders or something like that i wouldn't wouldn't expect the whole thing to just

be dumped on the internet as nice as that would be i'm breaking my silence ben i have seen now that the finals in the banished to the pen ew tournament uh-huh uh they are d-backs headlines versus web albers yeah d-backs headlines was my pick from the beginning it was the non-number one that I promised I I liked more than any other and that I I worried was going to lose to web albers like everything else and sure enough we have them in the finals and um people should vote how they want but I'm gonna vote five times for D-backs headlines wow you're trying to influence the vote the voting voting is open until what midnight midnight saturday or something all right

ben you tell everybody to vote for web albers so that it's equal well i voted for well velvers all right you guys can do what you want um okay so my last storyline is harper and trout, which is, I guess, two storylines. But they've been a package deal in the past, so I'm going to make them one again. So Trout, for the obvious reasons, because he is the best and he's the best through this age ever, but also because of the things that he did differently last year and more strikeouts and more homers and lower batting average and fewer steals. And is he going to just be that type of player now? Are we going to see the trout that we saw a couple of years ago?

Or is he just going to continue to progress more toward the slugger mold? I'm interested to see that. And obviously the high fastballs thing. And I wouldn't be surprised if the high fastballs thing and i i wouldn't be surprised if the high fastballs thing just turns out to be a complete non-story like uh when i looked at this when he won the mvp and i wrote about it then i i looked for like the biggest changes in high fastball scene percentage over the last several years and then looked to see

what happened the year after that and it seemed like it just sort of regressed like the guys who suddenly started seeing a lot more high fastballs didn't continue to see them so i don't know whether that is just guys threw them high fastballs accidentally or whether they adjusted i think i looked at i don't know whiff rate or something and that didn't change it was kind of confusing but I don't know, whiff rate or something, and that didn't change. It was kind of confusing. But I don't know whether Trout will see even more of those, whether he will just hit them really well, and people will stop trying that. But it's an interesting thing.

Wouldn't be surprised if he just makes it a non-story one way or another. But that's Trout. And then Harper, of course, just because this feels like the year when he's going to bust out and be a monster. And I wouldn't say it's definitely not a make or break year or anything close to that. But I would say it's a make or break year for people predicting that he's going to be a monster in spring training. Like if he just goes out there and gets hurt again and hits 20 homers or something and is, you know, kind of looks like Harper sometimes and looks ordinary at other times. I doubt people will be predicting the 50 homer season with the same enthusiasm next spring, which doesn't mean that that's the time that he might suddenly do it. But I would say this is probably the last year, unless he does it, that people will

really count on him to do it. And I hope he does it. It was fun to watch him in the postseason, hit lots of long homers. And I hope to see more of that this year. So we used to wonder who was going to have a better career, Trout or Harper. So we used to wonder who was going to have a better career, Trout or Harper. Let's say that the question is who will have a better career right now between Trout and Harper. How many wars do you have to penalize Trout to make it an even bet? Starting now. Starting now.

Everything that's happened in the past is gone. I guess I'll say 15. Oh, geez. I think way more. 20. If I had to say, I would say that Trout is probably good for – I would say if I had to project, if I were projecting their careers right now, I would project Trout for somewhere between 75 and 85 wars from now on and harper for probably between low 40s and low 50s as a median, as a mean average, as a mean projection.

Right. Could certainly obviously win, could do 100 wars but to me it's like a 30 war handicap. I'm going to check the 10 year forecast. Do 100 wars. But to me, it's like a 30-war handicap. I'm going to check the 10-year forecast. Bear with me. Let's see what the 10-year forecast is. Okay.

Like 44-ish for Harper in 10 years. That's only 10 years. And he still projects to be a good player at the end of that. So 44 would not be his career projection. Pakoda would say that I was pessimistic. That'll be his age 32 season, his last one that you're counting. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, it wouldn't project a lot more after that. But I would say that it's got a good 20-ish, probably beyond that, if you took it out further.

All right. So now Trout, in the next 10 years years projects to like 59 or 60, about 60. And he, of course, would only be a year older than Harper at that point and is about twice the ball player at age 32 that Harper projects to be at the same time. So the difference is 16 over the next 10 years and then... Yeah. So I think 30 is fair. All right.

You've got a last one. I'm just curious to see if the Dodgers can, what seems to me, walk this very narrow tightrope with their pitching health. Yeah, me too. It really seems like... It just sort of seems surprising to me that the one place that they don't have depth is the one place that is least predictable and most prone to injury. And particularly them, because particularly they went out and got guys who

are, you know, injury prone and even the depth is injury prone, you know, like their depth is like Brandon Beachy and isn't exactly injury prone, but he's Freddy Garcia. It's just sort of interesting to me because they've got almost $40 million spent on their bench and a lot of that is Andre Ethier, but a lot of it is not Andre Ethier and it's guys who they specifically went out and either signed for non-negligible money or offered arbitration to, which means that they wanted him. Ellis and Barney were both offered arbitration, and Heise was signed. They've got $40 million or $36 million in bench expenses. It seems to me they just didn't really have, as a goal, the same sort of depth for pitching.

And indeed, when Allen got Brett Anderson, who, like, if I'm setting the over-under, it'd be like maybe 45 to 65 innings. And Ryu, who's already kind of hurt. And really, frankly, like anybody, like Kershaw or Granke, the odds are probably, you know, 50-50 that at least one of them is unavailable for a significant portion of time. And so it just feels like this is a team that is so good that it cannot possibly miss the playoffs. And yet, just even relatively bad luck, like Sigma 1, 1 Sigma, sorry, 1 Sigma bad luck,

could put their rotation in a bad enough position that they missed the playoffs. And that all feels kind of strange and odd to me. Maybe they just figure, well, we can always get pitching if we need it. Like there will be pitching available if we just make it to June and all of a sudden a whole bunch of people are available. And maybe they like Zach Lee or maybe they think, you know, Rios can come up at age 17 or whatever he is right now and

hold it down or whatever uh but yeah you're agreeing so yeah I'm fascinated by that that whole thing when I wrote about the Dodgers a couple weeks ago and like tried to come up with ways that the there could be a downfall for the Dodgers. That was my first one. That's the thing that I'm looking forward to the most. I mean, those are the guys that every team is afraid of, and they just went out and got all of them. Just McCarthy and Beachy and Eric Bedard, who's hurt already, and Joe Weiland from the Padres,

who's had Tommy John like once or twice maybe. And yeah, Beachy, I mean, it's just a whole, it's a whole like shadow rotation of guys who just might not pitch at all. And they didn't have to do that. Like they could have, for the money that they spent on McCarthy and Anderson, they could have just, you know, gotten James Shields or something. Like someone who's as dependable as any pitcher is and they chose not to do that they chose to get those guys which is i mean it seems to indicate that they are really confident in the fact that that they can they've done the research and they can keep these guys healthy and it will be really fascinating to see whether that actually is the case i mean if if like if brendan

mccarthy and brett anderson if brett anderson pitches 180 innings this year can we just like assume that the dodgers no injury magic or is there any like brett anderson durability level that would convince you that it's not a fluke and like they actually identified some reason why he wasn't as risky as everyone thought like all of his fluke injuries actually were fluke injuries the whole time and it wasn't part of a pattern or or they were a pattern but they figured out how to prevent it from happening again one year would not would not convince me of anything uh one pitcher would not convince me of anything but it would be notable I mean I saw the spring training game I went to a couple days ago. Anderson was pitching.

He looked pretty good. Every time he had to cover first and then walk back to the mound, I'm like, looks ginger. I bet he's coming. Then he'd just keep pitching. Midway through, I started getting actually angry at the thought that the Dodgers might get 210

innings out of Brett Anderson. I mean, good for them if they do. It's a nice group of guys. Stan Conte is the best in the business and all that. But it just doesn't seem fair that they could get 210 innings out of Brett Anderson. It just doesn't feel right. Brett Anderson seems to be a good guy too. I mean, I wouldn't be unhappy except that I would be.

For just this year, I will be unhappy. And I'm in a bad position here. They have every other advantage. They should not be the ones with the pitching advantage. If there were any fairness, it should be like the Reds or something. It should be the team that knows how to keep pitchers healthy. And if it's the Dodgers, then they are just untouchable if they are the team that can spend all the money and keep all the pitchers healthy. Yeah.

Exactly. Okay. So that's it. So thanks for getting through the offseason with us. And we're looking forward to the season. We will talk to you about it next week. You can send us emails for next week at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Rate and review us on iTunes.

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