Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 665: The A-Rod Breakout Breakdown

Episode Date: April 27, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about the NL DH and then discuss A-Rod’s newfound patience and oldfound power.

All I needed was patience But I didn't have time Taken stock in the box office late at night For the millionth time Lindberg, how are you, Ben? You said daily with such relish. Yes, I did. I also said play index, which I'm mid-play index right now. Right now, as we're speaking. I was in the middle of it when you rang and I haven't finished. It's a simple one, but I am looking to see how many players have hit 184 or more home runs from ages 36 to 40.

And the answer is one uh-huh is this is this an a rod related query so yeah i mean it is but i'm afraid to yeah it is why do you say that i'm just just guessing i know that you have a lot at stake you have a personal stake in a rod success i do so a rod this is i'm going to change the subject to a slightly different A-Rod query For a second but We talked about how A-Rod had In order to set the record he needed to hit More home runs from whatever age

He is now onward than Any player in history Even more than Bonds did I think that's what you said Last time we talked to Andy McCullough With whom you have a $1 bet about A-Rod breaking the... A $30. A $30.

Oh, right, yeah, sure. Depends on how you... From my end, it's a $1 bet. From his, it's a $30 bet. But I found that... I mean, I was optimistic, though, because even though he had... Nobody had done what he had done even bonds some lesser

players had come extremely close like daryl evans and carlton fisk uh-huh and um i don't know it's it's not going to be long so he let's see he now needs he now needs 104 what does he need? 763? Yeah, he's at 659. So he needs 104. And that now puts him... Granted, a little bit of this year has passed. So he's got an advantage. But Bonds hit 104 from ages 39 onward. So if you still count A-Rod as 39 onward, he now only has to match Bonds.

That's all. That's all. Okay. But, I mean, even Bonds, though, like, he, 39 onward for Bonds, let me put this in perspective, 39 onward for Bonds, yeah, okay, we know Bonds is the greatest late career hitter in history, but, A, he was getting walked 200 times a year true he missed an entire season with injury and he didn't play that long he

retired at 42 or he was retired at 42 so that's only you know that like there's a guy i mean he had let's see so he had 1100,100 at-bats from 39 on, and I imagine that there are lots of hitters. I would expect A-Rod, for instance, to get more than 1,100 at-bats. Of course, he hit a home run every 10 plate appearances. But, you know, Bonds is sort of also a person who, I don't know, maybe if you stretch, you can say helps the case. Because, you know, Bonds hit 104 despite basically having half roughly half

of his plate appearances taken from him either by injury or by intentional walk or semi-intentional walk uh so yeah like let's just see 1104 at bats is how many bonds had so i'm gonna see if bonds is unusual for that yeah i Bonds is only 31st all time in at-bats. I mean, Pete, well, Pete Rose is a bad example. Pete Rose got 3,200 at-bats. Pete Rose got as many at-bats from 39 on as Russell Brandian in his career. Oh, that's a shame. Don't remind me. But like, you know, Omar Vizquel hung on for 2,200 and Dave Winfield $2,100 and Jastrzemski $2,000 and Rice $2,300 and Molitor $1,700 and Biggio $1,700. So Abania $1,600.

So if A-Rod homered every 20 at-bats, he would only need $2,000 basically at-bats. And a number of guys have done that. Every 20 is a lot, though. He doesn't homer every 20 times. He didn't homer every 20 times when he was 36 or 37 either. He did when he was 34, but not when he was 35 or 36. He hasn't homered every 20 at bats in a while. He's walking a whole lot all of a sudden, too.

Now you're stepping on our topic oh okay a rod banter oh the topic for the show is a rod oh really i know he's bantering oh i didn't realize we don't plan these things yeah so uh i have non-a rod ban Yeah, go ahead. So it seems like the pitcher DH Drumbeat is building all of a sudden, doesn't it? We talked about it last week for no particular reason. Yeah, well, Adam Wainwright is out probably for the season. He seems to have torn his Achilles on his way out of the batter's box. And as someone, I tweeted something earlier, someone said, well, he could have done the same thing covering first. Or, you know, which is true. Certainly there are other ways the pitchers could get hurt.

But having them hit and having them run the bases increases the risk somewhat. And so Max Scherzer made some comments about this. He is all, He is pro DH. He is basically using the argument that pitchers are terrible at hitting, which is what we've been talking about. I think they were down to negative 39 weighted runs created plus yesterday when I was looking. And so Scherzer said people want to see Victor Martinez hit. They don't want to see me hit. Maybe he just wants to get out of hitting for the rest of his contract. I don't know. But he wrote that.

Craig Calcaterra wrote that. Lots of people were tweeting things related to Wainwright. And someone responded to my tweet and said that he doesn't care how bad pitchers get at hitting, that he still finds the strategy rewarding and worth it and that's a valid opinion to have i guess i don't share it do you have any sentiment like that like the decision about whether to pinch hit or whether the manager is going to pinch hit speculating about that debating whether he should have is that something that you would not be willing to lose? No. I find that the decision about whether to pinch hit for a pitcher or whether to call for a pitcher to get a bunt or whatever, that to me is generally not that interesting. There are

a handful of cases a year where you have to make a decision, but you have to make decisions all the time. It's not like adding 30 decisions to the major league season gives it a much richer topography or anything like that. So you have to make some decisions, whatever. That's what you do all the time. I think that where I do find that it changes the strategy, and I will say without thinking that much about it that I think it changes the strategy and i will say without thinking that much about it that i think it changes the strategy slightly for the better although i'm not i don't know maybe i could be convinced i haven't thought that much about it but i do think that if you are facing a lineup with a pitcher uh it does definitely add an element of uh consideration to know that the that the lineup is um like not nearly as flat as it is in the AL,

to know that there is this position looming that is worthless, affects things for both the offense and the defense. I do think that there's something particularly somewhat interesting about an eighth-place hitter batting in a possible run scoring situation that you lose. And to me, it's just like to have the pitcher is kind of like having weather where like in California, we have beautiful weather all year round, but eventually everybody complains that there's no weather. It's all the same.

It's year in, year out, or month in, month out. And when it's negative 14 in Manhattan, you guys are all complaining with good reason, because negative 14 is the pitcher hitting of weather. It's horrible. And yet, it is something that I think a lot of people miss when they come to California. And that's sort of how lineups feel to me in the AL. It's just like, you know, it just becomes this loop. It's like a gif that runs constantly. And to me, pitcher's batting is like a gif constantly running except every nine batters, the Raptor on rollerblades falls and his tail flops down.

Like the pitcher is the tail flop. It is the moment of ecstasy where the tail flops. 700 people who have any idea what I'm talking about. Everyone who's read John Boyce's gift brackets say you mean when the pitcher gets a hit, it's so exciting that it's worth not getting a hit?

No, just having him there. Just having the lineup, having the nature of it change. Having to know that there is a winter's coming. just to know that that is coming, it makes it interesting to me. Once you get down to the bottom of the lineup, it changes the nature of the advance in a way that each inning doesn't feel completely replaceable with each other inning. But it's so deflating when you get a two-out rally and the pitcher comes up. It's like you built the whole rally for nothing.

I know, but the game does not exist to avoid deflation. I mean, there are moments of deflation constantly throughout the game. Yes, it is deflating. It does suck. It also sucks when you get the bases loaded and the cleanup hitter grounds into a double play. I'm not going to outlaw cleanup hitters grounding into double plays. Yeah, but there's a chance it's still a rally the pitcher comes up and it's like the rally's over before it's officially over oh if it was a one in 40 chance that he gets a hit

then that would be true but there's actually your chances of getting a hit when the pitcher's up in that situation are you know better than certainly better than hitting trips on the river i mean it's not that bad of odds. You do have to figure out a way to get that guy out. He certainly does a better job hitting than you and I would. And I don't find it to be too predetermined an outcome at this point in time. I mean, you know, look, I don't have a strong opinion. My only opinion is to not have a hot take on this.

But, you know, I probably, if I had a choice, I would rather have a DH. Okay. By the way, you'll never catch me complaining about weather in the Northeast. I live in an apartment, so I don't have to shovel. And I say bring on the precipitation. What were you going to add? I misspoke. I misspoke.

What did you say? I said I would have a DH. I would have not have a DH. Oh, really? Yeah. That changes everything. But not so strong. Whatever.

Huh. Okay. I do like, though, I like watching pitchers hit as a person who makes content. Yeah, sure. I mean, how many pieces have I written about pitchers hitting? Well, let's see. I wrote about the Mets going hitless last year early in the season. I wrote about the Padres going hitless for their first 45 or whatever at Batson 2012.

That was a piece that I liked a lot. That was a good one. I wrote about whether Bartolo Colon ever touches first base or whether he always steals off. Something about how pitchers pitch to pitchers? Was that something you wrote? I did. I wrote about pitchers pitching to pitchers. Matt Harvey pitching to pitchers.

I wrote about, was it Ross Detweiler who had the most extreme spray chart in the game? Do you remember that one? That was a good one. He only, every ball he'd ever hit out of the infield had been directly to the right fielder every single one he had never managed to pull a ball or even go out the middle they and so i was i was proposing like uh that everybody just stand there and let's see i've i mean oh i've well the pitchers retaliating against pitchers one is about pitchers hitting

i wrote about ian kennedy and when he had a better walk rate than Albert Pujols. Okay, so you're saying that your career will be over if there's a DH at the NL, essentially. Yeah, I like writing about pitchers hitting. So that's another thing. I don't find it to be a, I don't know,

I don't find it to be a creatively void thing. Like I know that it's, I know that they're not good, but neither is Zach Cozart. And like I don not good but neither is Zach Cozart. I don't have a problem with Zach Cozart. It's just part of the game. I also don't care the other way.

It's fine too. DHs are cool. They're fine. They hit. Yes. The problem is that if DHs were more interesting as a group like if the dream that they had long ago I mean, especially, the problem is that if DHs were more interesting as a group, like if the dream that they had long ago that DHs were all these, like, enormous fat guys who, like, could not play the field at all,

like if it was all just Eddie Martinez, Esteva, just, like, in the majors on every team, that would be fun to me. But there are very few of those guys. There are very few. Billy Butler is basically the one thing. And then Ortiz would play first. If there was no DH, he'd be playing. It's not like we're getting David Ortiz where we otherwise wouldn't get David Ortiz.

But anyway, nobody uses the DH that way anymore. So it's not, to me, it's not entertaining. I'm just saying it's not entertaining for me to see ryan rayburn dhing or to see like james looney dhing because it's his day off from the field like that isn't that interesting to me it doesn't add anything to see those guys um and it does add a little bit pitching anyway though everybody else has good opinions too. All your opinions are super good. Okay. And finally, since we've been reassessing points to the Royals over and over,

we have to assess points because we found out since the last show that Matt Albers was injured during last Thursday's brawl with the Royals. He hurt his finger punching someone or being punched at some point in the altercation. So the royals have now taken out matt albers it wasn't personal before but now it now it feels that way yeah i do like matt albers yeah all right so a rod back to a no is there no video of him i haven't seen any any zap router style breakdown of how Matt Albers got hurt But I haven't, maybe that's the thing that I should do

Alright So back to A-Rod Alex Rodriguez Pretty good Pretty good at baseball again Homer'd again Homer'd again Five homers

This year, leads the majors in that category. That's not true. Mark Teixeira has more. Other people, I'm sure, do too. Nelson Cruz has more. Nelson Cruz has more. But he's doing well, and I wanted to talk about two things that were written about Alex Rodriguez recently and about his season this year.

Because both of those details were interesting, and they both give a nice way to talk about A-Rod. So one of them was at BP Bronx, which is Baseball Perspectives' local site for Yankees coverage. Some of you who are listening, I just realized, are not subscribers and thus don't know that we have a BP Bronx recently started. BP Bronx, BP Boston, and BP Wrigleyville. And I'll just do a quick plug. They're all free. There's no paywall for any of these things. And they're all great. And the coverage has been wonderful. So if you're a fan of any of those teams or hate reading about those teams. Like if you are a hate reader,

like hate reading, yeah, you like hate reading. Yeah. Of those teams. Uh, go do it. They're great.

Anyway, Nick Ashburn, uh, had a piece this weekend about, uh, the new extreme in Alex Rodriguez game. Uh, and,

uh, he sort of points out that Alex Rodriguez plate discipline stats this year are extremely similar to, uh, Adam Dunn's. And he focused on the whiffness of this, that A-Rod's contact rate has gotten crazy low, like Adam Dunn low, and that he thinks that this is potentially troubling. And I think there's a good case for that. I will note, though, that there is another aspect to being like Adam Dunn which is that his plate discipline

has gotten ridiculous this year. Alex Rodriguez has never been a particularly prolific walker. He walked a bunch when he was a superstar but even by superstar nature standards he didn't walk a ton. He never led the league in walks.

I think he only had 100 walks once if i'm not mistaken and uh just wasn't that much of a walker this year he's currently leading the league in walks but more than that his swing rate is is dramatically different so i'm going to give you a few numbers so in 2012 which was his last semi-full year, he swung at 46% of pitches, which is about normal. So it's a little, yeah, oh, it's almost exactly the median, okay? He was 65th out of 123 qualifiers that year. So he was basically a normal person. This year, so that was 46%. This year, he

is swinging at 38%, 37.5%. That is like the sixth percentile for swing. He's 11th out of 177 with a minimum of 200 pitches. Wow, you and I both picked the same minimum. It's a good minimum right now. That's weird. Yeah, so it goes like Brett Gardner and Ryan Hannigan and John

LeCroy and Alex Rodriguez. He's like 11th, right, like you said. Very, very, very low. And his swing rate on pitches outside the strike zone is also phenomenal. Out of 177, he is 17th. He's been swinging at less than 20% of pitches outside the strike zone.

It used to be 29%. So he's basically taking one out of three pitches that he was swinging at out of the zone, he is now taking. Like 130 is cut by 50 and uh in the zone he used to be at 64 percent uh he is now at uh 60 so he has been almost as aggressive on pitches in the zone which is kind of what you look for right you you sort of want to see a guy who is fairly aggressive in the zone or not too passive in the zone, but really good plate discipline outside the zone.

Selectively aggressive, as all the hitting coaches put it. And these are stats. These are the type of stats that we generally say stabilize very quickly. Basically, the fastest thing that stabilizes are these plate discipline stats, swing rate and things like that, right? As Russell Carlton has found. Like within about 50 at-bats, you start to get significant stabilization. And so, I mean, we have been led to believe that for the most part, patience is not something that really develops very often in hitters. And you certainly wouldn't have expected it from A-Rod at this point in his career.

And particularly at this point in his career, and particularly at this point in his career, you wouldn't have expected to see this weird thing. And yet, here we are. He has become, he's almost become like Jose Bautista or something like that. He's just become phenomenally patient. And I love this development, and I want to know whether you want to throw a bucket of cold water on it well it's i mean one of the ways that hitters compensate for slower reaction time i feel like is is getting more selective right like i you don't you don't uh you don't see guys go from carlos gomez to you know adam dunn often they don't make that kind of transition but you see i mean it's one of the things that tends to peak later i think relative to you know batting

average or something it's one of the ways that hitters compensate for not having the same reaction times they've seen many many millions of pitches, thousands of pitches, hundreds of thousands of pitches, and they know which ones to take maybe better than they did when they were 20. And they also maybe know that they can't hit as many as well. And so they are more judicious about which ones they swing at. But yeah, it's not extreme. It's not like everyone goes from what A-Rod's 11% career walk rate to his current 20 career walk or 20 walk rate so that's a lot i guess you could say that it's compensating for something that he knows maybe that he can't hit those pitches outside the strike zone with the same authority that he once did or

he doesn't have the same mobility or flexibility. He can't reach them. Something like that. And he is aware of his limitations. And maybe this would stop working at some point. Like right now he is seeing a lower zone rate. Than his career zone rate. Or at least the zone rate that we have for him. Over the last several seasons.

Pitch effects wise. He is seeing fewer pitches in the strike zone. Than he has in the past and maybe he will start to see more and more and the taking pitches won't work as well and yet he's also clearly capable of hitting for power he hit that like 470 foot no is that treading on the rest of your topic? Yeah. Okay. Well, forget that he did that. He clearly has some power left, so it's not like he is Luis Castillo or someone who is hoping to get to first base. He can clearly punish some mistakes,

so it seems like it can't be a bad thing if he's taking lots of pitches that he can't hit and won't be strikes. That seems like a good thing. Yeah. The reaction times thing is interesting because you would think if your reaction time was slower that you would have sort of a worse swing rate. Like you'd swing at more pitches out of the strike zone because you'd have to cheat in order to catch up to them or maybe your eyes aren't as good or maybe you don't pick it up as fast as well.

And so you would think that slow reaction times would be something that would actually be very hard to compensate for because the skill that you need to compensate is the thing that you are trying to compensate for. It feels like you'd be doomed. But maybe not. The other thing, though, is just that if he were being more selective, I would expect to see a large drop on pitches in the zone as well. Because, I mean, no matter how good you are,

you kind of don't ever want to swing at pitches outside the strike zone. There's never really a good game theory reason to swing at a pitch outside the strike zone. Unless you're Pablo Sandoval and you hit those pitches just as well. Yeah, except for even Pablo Sandoval, the ball helps, you know, because walks are freebies, so you'd rather have the walk. But the problem is that it's generally hard to distinguish between pitches that are just outside the strike zone and just inside the strike zone. And so you end up swinging at pitches that are just outside the strike zone and just inside the strike zone and so you end up swinging at pitches that are just outside the strike zone it's you know most guys most hitters aren't that good at telling the difference and the fact that

a rod has managed to cut so many uh wild swings out of his um out of his out of his plate appearances while staying the same in the strike zone, to me it seems impossible that he has actually made that development. That just seems like you don't get that good all of a sudden at a thing that you had never demonstrated a particular ability to do. Speaking of Barry Bonds, remember who A-Rod was training with

during his year in the wilderness? Yeah. Yeah. Wow, you could be. Yeah. I'm going with that. Okay. I accept this.

Yes. Yeah, sure. You're right. Bonds taught him. All right. And now your odds of his breaking the record are astronomical. Yeah. All right.

Okay, so now speaking of astronomical, Alex Rodriguez hit a ball that went into the cosmos, into the astros, into the whatever it is. I can't really make that segue. He sent a ball into space. Yeah. Still traveling. Yeah.

So Alex Rodriguez hit a ball 477 feet and Dan Rosenheck wrote a piece for The Economist that looked at this particular swing to see whether the simple fact of hitting one ball that far is enough to quiet small sample size concerns. And basically using the Bill James concept of the signature achievement, signature, what is the signature, what? Significance. Say it again.

Signature significance. Signature significance. We have talked about signature significance before. It is a concept that I like and struggle to name on command. But I remember, the first time i i remember hearing about signature significance was that um on bp there was a case made for kyle davies superstardom i believe because he had like struck out 13 and walked nobody in a game yeah it was like is this

a signature significance and i think he also had a 71 pitch complete game. I'm exaggerating and getting details wrong, but these are things I recall vaguely. So Dan looks at whether a 477 foot home run is a signature significance achievement. Long story short, and we can make the short story a little longer as we go, but long story short, I think Dan buys it, and basically his conclusion is that, well, I'm going to say, I'll just finish his piece. The fact that Mr. Rodriguez propelled, Mr. Rodriguez, I love the anonymous.

The fact that Mr. Rodriguez, Mr. A-Rod, propelled a single baseball 477 feet means there's a very strong chance he is not the player we thought he was. Guys who are washed up just don't hit 477 foot homers, not even once. Now there's a lot more math behind this. There's also, there's short math, there's short form math and long form math. We can maybe get into both, but I want to know, you read this piece. What's your take on it? You buy it? Yeah. I mean, he mentioned a couple guys who, who was it?

He mentioned Vladimir Balentine and Cameron Mabin, right? So occasionally there's one who's not exactly a superstar. Although, as he pointed out, Balentin went on to be a superstar in Japan. So you're referring to the short form math, and the short form math is that 22 players have hit a homer at least 477 feet over the past eight years, 15 all-stars,

and a whole bunch of star hitters, and basically, like, Maven is the exception, and Valentin is the exception, but mostly these guys are good. Now, I'm going to very quickly say that the short-form math doesn't convince me, because A-Rod hit one 477 feet, and he took all home runs that are over 477 feet,

and this is the classic statistical trick that I hate. This is like the equivalent of X pitcher is 94 and 0 when he gets five or more runs of run support. But if you say five or fewer runs of run support, because he's gotten five, if you say five or fewer, now all of a sudden he's got a losing record. The implication is that you've just cleared the level where the significance has kicked in. And maybe 477 feet isn't the level maybe it's 460 and so if you look at 460 foot home runs uh or more like just last year there were a whole grip of players who weren't very good who hit 460 foot home runs or more i don't have that list i used to have that list in front of me. But okay, so some guys who hit 460 feet or more last year are

like Ricky Weeks and CJ Krohn and Willen Rosario and Oswaldo Garcia and Abiceo Garcia. I mean, guys who are good but not historical. Most of those guys I just named are within 10 feet of an A-Rod home run on the downside. So I thought that picking 477 and declaring it magic, maybe 478 is magic, right? Maybe A-Rod is just short of the magic. Now, there is better math later on, right? Yeah. In which he finds that, I hope this comes across on a podcast, buried within the noise was a powerful and highly statistically

significant trend for each foot beyond the distance of a league average long ball, which is about 400 feet, that any individual home run travels. An additional 0.06% of that batters other line drives and fly balls that season become home runs. So basically, if you hit long home runs, it makes it more likely that the other balls you hit are also home runs. By only a very small amount, but adds up. I'm somewhat skeptical, maybe without having done any work to justify my skepticism, that this is a completely linear growth. I wouldn't think that a 401-foot home run is quite significant the way that like 400 and you know what I'm saying. But anyway, the work has been done. It seems like it's good work and A-Rod certainly hit a ball a very long ways. And I'm fine with it. I can

buy it. I can accept it. But to the larger question, which both of these things are getting at, I think, is do we look at A-Rod, what he's done in the first three weeks of this season, and treat it different than we would treat another hot first three weeks of the season? If Danny Espinosa were doing this, I would not blink. If A-Rod is doing it, I am blinking. I mean, I am blinking frantically. You'd blink if Espinosa hit a 477 shot, probably. I don't know. Honestly, like, until, well, I would now, more now that I've read Dan's piece, but I mean, I remember the first thing I thought of when I heard about this piece was Cameron Mabin. Like, I saw that home run. It was 485 feet.

Cameron Mabin sucks. Justin Maxwell hit one 470-plus feet, and he sucks. I mean, you have to be strong, I guess, but, like, a ton of guys are strong. But this piece convinced me more than I otherwise would have been. But I don't know, I just feel like with A-Rod, there's contradicting elements here. One is that he's very old, and so that makes it less likely that he is the A-Rod of Yor, even if I remember the A-Rod of Yor is in there. But all the same, I do think that, I don't know, there's just something that's more convincing. I feel like there's a, I haven't checked this, but I would imagine, or I would want A-Rod's 90th percentile projection to have a greater variation from variance

from his 50th percentile projection than I would a normal player because he's A-Rod. So when I see this, I sort of, I don't buy it completely, but I'm much more willing to entertain it. In A-Rod's 90th percentile forecast, he hits 14 home runs. Oh, but that's only 372 plate appearances. He slugs 479. Yeah. I mean, A-Rod is a difficult example to give for Pakoda because I think that after a couple years of not being around, Pakoda just didn't know what to do with him. Most of A-Rod's Hall

of Fame level achievements are now more than five years ago. They're just going to be mostly a distant memory for Pakoda. I don't think that the 54 home run season of 2007 is not i don't think it's in its memory at all anymore yeah but it's in mine i mean that's the funny thing about pakoda is that i laud it for having a longer memory than me but at the there comes a point where now i have longer memory than it huh a rod's top pakoda comp was mike schmidt, and Mike Schmidt at age 39 hit 203, 297, 372, and retired mid-year. Mid-year. Still played in the All-Star game, though.

Yeah. Well, I'm enjoying it. By the way, you're right. That's the 14 homers, but his slash line in the 90th percentile is 288, 372, 479. And so I'm just curious. That's a good line, right? I mean, that's a 314 true average. That's like a 4.5, 5-win player almost in a full season.

In a full season. So that started the year as his 90th percentile projection. If you were doing projections by hand and I gave you that slash line, what percentile projection would you put it out now? If you were doing projections by hand and I gave you that slash line, what percentile projection would you put it out now? Having seen him for these three weeks, knowing about the plate discipline, knowing that it stabilizes extremely quickly, and knowing about the 477 feet, which might stabilize before the ball even lands,

where do you put that on his percentiles? Probably put it at 70. That's about what I was gonna say yeah i mean if it was like if there was like 66 on here i would probably put it at 66 yeah because at least we know now that he is intact he is capable of playing baseball for at least a few weeks he is not broken down yet there's no no worrisome sign about his durability. So that alone makes me more optimistic than I was coming into the year. So I don't know. I'm enjoying it. I probably, I was going to say that I buy it more than the typical 39-year-old player, but like if you're a 39-year-old player who is starting regularly, you were probably a really great player in your prime

so there really isn't such a thing as just kind of a mediocre guy who gets to 39 and is still playing full-time probably or not often but i am enjoying it i hope it continues i buy it a little bit we do okay see ya all right so send us some emails at podcast at baseball prospectus.com we will get to them one day in the middle of this week and support our sponsor the play index by going to baseball reference.com using the coupon code bp and getting the discounted price of 30 on a one-year subscription