Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 699: Radio Producers, Cycles, and Dave Stewart Don’t Make Sense

Episode Date: June 25, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about baseball crimes, All-Star voting, and Diamondbacks GM Dave Stewart, then answer listener emails about perfect games, discuss stats about cycles, and more.

meaningless like when two fireflies fluoresce just like everything i guess bless us yes it was utterly meaningless even less a little glimpse of nothingness second meeting from the rest of the smash. Yes, yes, yes. It was thoroughly meat and wine. Good morning. No. Just yeah. Just yes. Say yes.

Embrace. Let's go. Hey, Ben. Yeah. How are you? Hi. Episode 699 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from a baseball perspective. I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of Grantland.

Hey, Ben. Hello. Brought to you by the Play Index at Baseball Reference, which we'll get into. Hey, real quick, and then we can do less quick, but I noticed that there's a debate about left-handed catchers going on on the Facebook page. And somebody says, at youth levels, there's often a single catcher's mitt and numerous fielding gloves. The catcher's mitt, if it's to be one shared by a team for long-term use, would typically be right-handed, so not many left-handed kids play catcher. My understanding is that actually Little League mandates, Little League the body mandates that every team, or maybe it's just some

Little Leagues. I know that the local Little League in my area mandates that every team have a left-handed catcher's glove. So I think that this comment is misinformed or i mean it's a reasonable supposition that he makes but i think it's not true okay you could register for facebook and leave a comment so anything else to talk about i have a uh i wanted to also talk about this softball player being charged for hitting the batter yeah we got a few emails about past instances of people trying to prosecute for baseball crimes? So this one is particularly relevant because it's current and because it's so close to a thing that we talked about, although also key differences. So this is, you might have seen this, people might have seen this.

A, I'll just read. Penn State Altoona softball player is discussing a plea deal with prosecutors on assault charges for hitting a batter with a pitch during practice. Faces one misdemeanor, simple assault and harassment. The sophomore is accused of hitting her teammate in retaliation at a practice. Police said that the pitcher suspected her teammate snitched on a coach for allegedly violating the school's alcohol policy. The victim was warned by a teammate that, quote, everyone knows she was the whistleblower when she arrived for practice. The friend told her she should leave, but she stayed and took her turn at the plate. So in the one hand, and so now she's she got charged and maybe she'll plea out. OK, so on the one hand, this is very, very similar to the thing that never gets charged,

which is a pitcher who is upset with a hitter, uses a spherical object thrown with great force to enforce a sort of makeshift discipline, a kind of a vigilante discipline, right? So that is very similar to baseball pitchers throwing at baseball players, which happens constantly. However, also, key difference, that this was outside of the established precedent. This was not team against team. This did not happen in the heat of combat, of competition, which we accept the heat of competition requires a great deal of adrenaline and intensity that sometimes leads to this self-disciplining mechanisms. This was very different. This was a teammate taking advantage of another teammate who did not presumably have to accept the same level

of implied risk that a hitter faces during actual competition. And this was a very deliberate, premeditated, and I don't know if this matters because it doesn't seem to matter in baseball, but premeditated and kind of forewarned assault. So I'm trying to figure out where on the spectrum this is. If this is closer to the normal way of hitting at batters, or if it's closer to punching a guy in a bar. Where on the spectrum is this closer to? It uses the same weapon as the throwing punching a guy in a bar. Which, where on the spectrum is this closer to?

It uses the same weapon as the throwing at a batter in a game, and yet, in cultural ways, it's very, very different. It seems like, in cultural ways, it would be like going to this girl's apartment after the game and hitting her with a pickle jar. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a tough call. And the reason that it matters is we're sort of trying to figure out which way the law is going on this, and if in 20 years it is more likely that there will be more charges brought

for the type of behavior that we currently see accepted as part of the game. I would think there would be more. Like if we've got, what, a until we are until starfleet is here and there is no violence of any kind right so in in starfleet world you would probably not be able to be in a batter i would think although there are still still some baseball fans around in certain episodes but did start wait did starfleet impose these rules, though? That would imply that it was a progression? Is Starfleet the result of or the cause?

Yeah, Starfleet is the result of, I think, and maybe partially the cause. But it's a peaceful world. Everyone gets along on Earth, at least at that point. So if you think we ever are going to get there, if you think we'll ever have a utopian future where people get along and don't fight, then at some point on the progression towards that, you would think that violence in sports would be also heavily discouraged or eradicated to the extent that the sport, that playing the sport itself allows, like you might allow actual hit by pitches because there's no way to legislate

against that really unless you send the player up there in you know full body armor or sumo suit or something you can't stop the pitcher from hitting a batter but you could stop them from doing it intentionally or make the penalties severe so i would say that that we get there at some point. We're on the way there. I think that it's, I think at some point with the routineness of 99 mile an hour fastballs, I think at some point, presumably, probably we will have the black swan event of a hitter getting killed in front of everybody. And I think from that point on, penalties will be extremely strict. I don't know if the penalties will anticipate that or not, but I think from that point on, penalties will be extremely strict. I don't know if the penalties will anticipate that or not, but I think once we see a person die, it's going to change things. I think that we'll get really dark in a hurry.

So I don't know that it's going that way on its own, though. I'm not sure. I also don't know what Starfleet is. My anticipated future is that of Deltron 3030. You and I are in different timelines. And Deltron 3030 doesn't, it's darker. It doesn't seem to have a clear stance on the existence of violence, but it needs a savior. Deltron 3030's future is in need of a savior.

So that would imply that there's still conflict. And also everyone wants to be an emcee. Well, our manager wants to be one yeah so uh i i have to think about what deltron's stance would be on penalties for throwing at baseball baseball players i think i agree i think that we're going toward more toward more charges and so i would think that this would probably this is closer on the spectrum to the de facto carve out, uh, behavior that currently doesn't get prosecuted and suggest that we are moving toward that sort of thing in some cases being prosecuted.

Okay. And we got an email from Matthew who thinks that we are missing something, giving short shrift to one aspect of the Royals' all-star voting situation. He says he's a Yankees fan. He doesn't usually vote for all-star games except when he's at the stadium, etc. However, this year he made an exception. Upon hearing news that the Royals were dominating the ballots, I immediately started filling out ballots with Royals straight down the ticket. What a fantastic opportunity to protest the fact that this exhibition game counts for something. Thank you. all-star game for the farce that it is. Two, I have some friends who are fans of good NL teams who think it means more

of a chance of getting home field for the World Series. Three, they honestly want to see what Ned Yost does. Four, it's pretty funny. So, in conclusion, I think this may have started as a genuine support from a devoted fanbase who's excited to have a good team for the first time in a long time, but it has been

sustained by protest ballots, sabotage, and people who love farce that sounds plausible yeah i think it's plausible i i did not i didn't embrace that personally like as i talked about um this didn't quite reach the level of cleverness that wanted to make me join a uh a rebellious uh uh kind ofchievous movement. Um, but I totally get the instinct and if it was, I mean, there, it could have, it definitely gets partway there. Uh, so yeah, there's probably some of that. I don't know though. We're probably overrating how many of that there is. I think that there are nine people who get offended by that sort of thing. I think the silent majority actually does not like vandalism and pranks.

I don't know what it's a... It's a protest of the fact that the game counts, I guess, except the effect of this is probably not going to be... I would think it's more likely that it will lead to some change in the player selection process than that it will lead to a change in the game counting for something. MLB seems to like the fact that it counts for something. I would expect it to just move to player voting, which will make people even more mad, or just stricter security or something on the voting totals, which would be probably a good thing.

I don't know. voting totals which would be probably a good thing i don't know it was i did a radio hit yesterday and it was one of those times where they tell you that you're gonna come on to talk about one thing and they only mentioned the one thing so i was going on to talk about max scherzer and i wrote an article about max scherzer i was all ready to talk about max scherzer yeah and then there were like five other topics that at any point the producer could have sent, you know, a five-second email. Hey, we're going to also talk about these other things. You might want to have an answer because you're going to be talking about these other things in front of lots of people listening. Maybe you'd like to be prepared, but no.

But did they at least ask you about Max Scherzer? It was like, we've got time for one more. Max Scherzer. There were like five questions. It was like Pete Rose, all-star voting, David Ortiz, is he a Hall of Famer?

It was just all these things that I had to come up with answers for off the top of my head. So one thing they asked me was whether I thought Rob Manfred would do like a best interest of baseball intervention and invalidate the Royals results

and whether I would be in support of that. I don't know what I said. I said something. Something wishy-washy. It's a good thing that you weren't prepared for any of these questions because if your responses had been slightly longer, you wouldn't have gotten to Max Scherzer. That's right. Well, we're out of time. They, yeah. Radio producers. I don't get it. Like bringing Matt Damon on at the end of Jimmy Kimmel. Well, let's ask you about Max Scherzer.

Oh, we got to go to. Don't they want the guest to be good? No? I don't know. All right. Radio producers. Okay. And then there were some comments about the Bronson Arroyo-Tucy-Tucy deal from Dave Stewart this time, who said that he is aware of the criticism.

And so his explanation is interesting. So this is from a Ken Rosenthal article. And Ken writes, others say that if the Diamondbacks wanted to trade Toussaint, they should have done it for players, particularly when they recently signed a new TV contract with Fox Sports Arizona for more than $1.5 billion. Here's Stewart. The truth is, we did not know what Tukey's value would be if we shopped him. There is a lot of speculation on that. People are assuming it would have been better, but we don't know. There was an opportunity to make a deal that gave us more flexibility today as well as next year. We took that opportunity. It's tough to say we could have gotten more. He was drafted at number 16, given 2.7 million.

In my opinion, that's his value. So he's saying that they didn't call anyone else, basically. Right? Like this is always the suspicion when a team makes a move and people say they didn't get enough. It's always, well, they could have gotten more from some other team, but then we say, well, they must have checked with other teams. They didn't just make this deal without checking around first, but Dave Stewart is explicitly

saying that they didn't do that. They just took the first offer. And he's also saying that the value of Toussaint is what he was drafted for, which is, I mean, maybe his stock has fallen. He's making the case that people are saying that Toussaint throws 96 and they haven't actually seen him throw 96 since he was drafted. So maybe he's not the prospect that he was when he was drafted. I don't know.

But the fact that his bonus was $2.7 million doesn't mean he's worth $2.7 million on the open market. He's worth much more than that. It's the draft. Or he could be much less. If you're saying that we've reassessed him since he's been in our organization and he's not good, maybe he's worth $40. Who knows? But $2.7 is completely arbitrary.

He was worth more at the time or he was artificially the draft artificially depresses what amateur players make so if if there's a loophole if there's a scott boris who comes along and makes one of them a free agent they make you know 10 times more or something so if they're accepting that as his value that doesn't make any sense and if they it's an interesting defense of the trade. People are saying he's worth more. Well, we don't know if he's worth more because we didn't ask. Like what if he had drafted you?

Yeah. Like he drafted you and then gave you $2.7 million and then someone – and then, you know, like he's like, well, you're clearly worth $2.7 million. That's what we paid you. Yeah. Does it make any – I what we paid you. Yeah. Does it make any sense? I don't get it. Yeah. And he's not saying that it definitely is because they wanted money for the trade on the deadline.

He sort of says that they wanted financial flexibility and maybe they'll make a move. And he's like, you know, he says, it's a surprise to everybody, not just the general public, but also to us, that we're playing as well as we are and that we're in the circumstance we're in. What circumstance? Like 500? A little below 500? Like extreme long shot to make the playoffs? Yeah.

So let's continue to give him the benefit of the doubt and ask the question that we always ask in this situation when a GF gaffes. Should we assume he's talking to somebody other than us at this point? Is it conceivable that there's subtext to these comments that is somehow important for him to get across? And is it possible that he's speaking to an audience different than us? Is it possible that he's actually just speaking like he wants his owner to read these quotes for some reason? Or is he signaling something? Can you imagine a way of signaling to potential trade partners that he's bad at trading?

They should all they should all offer him something. Yeah, he is. He is the he's hustling him. I guess so. Except I don't know that it actually works cause he literally will take the first offer, but I don't, I don't know.

I wonder, so this is always that thing in fantasy where one team makes a horrible, horrible trade and you're like, okay, that's the mark, but you don't want to do like two minutes after the trade gets announced cause that looks suspicious, but you definitely want to get to him before the other 10 teams

start making trades with him. Basically, I wonder how many calls Dave Stewart has gotten in the last two days or four days or whatever. Is it zero calls? Is it 18 calls? How many people have offered him trades, do you think, since Saturday? If this happened in a fantasy league, people would be talking to the commissioner about invalidating it.

That is not my question. No, I don't know. How many trade offers do you suppose? I'm going to say more than he would have otherwise. All right. All right. So this is actually an email show, although you wouldn't know it so far. I guess we've read emails.

Play index. All right, wait. Let's do an actual question first. So Lee wants to know, in your opinion, when is the appropriate time to start talking about a perfect game? When someone texts me to say Marco Estrada is perfect through six, my response is, eh, call me when he's perfect through seven. Boy, that guy goes, eh, too excited very quickly. I could see if he's like, it's the fourth,

call me when it's eight and two thirds. But the difference between the sixth and the seventh, from space, they look exactly the same. I have a personal answer. I mean, there's a personal answer. They're all personal personal do you have a personal answer to this well there's a there's probably a statistical answer to this what is the do you know offhand i feel like i've read this or looked this up or something but the the odds that a guy who has a no hitter or whatever through eight actually makes it it's i think we talked about this for a perfect game i think it's you have to go eight and a third before you're likely right and no hitters are obviously easier a perfect game, I think you have to go eight and a third before you're likely. Right.

And no-hitters are obviously easier than perfect game. But still, I mean, just if you had to guess based on what I just told you, you would probably guess like seven and two-thirds. Although it feels more like it. And the behavior of hitters does change. I think somebody else has shown that. That the behavior of hitters does change. The behavior of umpires changes.

You wrote something? Yeah, I showed that a couple weeks ago. that that the behavior of hitters does change the behavior umpires changes you right yeah i showed that a couple weeks ago yeah in the ninth inning of no hitters the strike zone expands and umpires start making more generous calls to the pitcher and hitters start chasing more which either it could be because they know that the umpire is going to expand the zone or it could be because they're desperate to get a hit or it could be good because the pitcher is throwing outside the zone more whatever but that's what tends to happen yeah and then i wrote about matt kane's perfect game you might remember do you not yet not yet you if you prompt me i might remember i wrote about how you could um if you

watched him uh very closely you could tell that he also was extremely nervous, that you could see it in subtle ways, and then you could see it in not so subtle ways. The spread of his pitches became much larger as he got closer to the end, and he threw a few of the worst pitches of the night, like he missed by like four feet on a couple pitches. And so there's also, you know, there is some element of the pitcher having to missed by like four feet on a couple pitches and so there's also you know there there is some element of the pitcher having to deal with nerves too so so i don't know if those cancel out or what but it feels to me like i at this point in my life i feel like a guy who is six or seven innings i almost feel like oh well that's another that happened that's done uh and it's it's not that but it sort of feels like that. But who cares?

That doesn't, whether it's likely to happen or not, doesn't necessarily have to influence your viewpoint. I mean, I watch, for instance, I watch a Giancarlo Stanton at bat because I want to see him hit a dinger, but he's not likely to hit a dinger. He's pretty likely. No, he's like 7% likely. That's not 50%.

It's 7%. And it's only like probably half that still that it's going to be an aesthetically pleasing dinger. Well, maybe. So it's not like 50% half, unless that's how you make your decision. Is that how you make your decision when it's 50% likely? Well Unless that's how you make your decision. Is that how you make your decision, when it's 50% likely? Well... You can't deal with a disappointment in seeing a no-hitter be broken up?

I'd say after seven... I mean, I don't know. What's the problem if someone tells you that it's happening? It doesn't hurt you. You can choose to tune in or not, unless, I mean, you don't have to drop everything and go watch this baseball game but i would i would want to know after seven i suppose just because if you told

me after eight then i might miss some of the ninth so um tell me after seven when it's likely and then i'll have time to to watch i i currently won't flip over to see a no-hitter in progress, even if it's eight and two-thirds. I'm just not interested in no-hitters. So that's a harder question for me to answer. Unless I have some reason. If it's Jose Fernandez, or if it's one of the eight guys that I'm already really predisposed to want to watch,

or if you tell me that there's something spectacular about it. At this point, probably if Max Scherzer has one going, I'll probably click over to it because, you know, like insane. But generally, it needs to be a perfect game for me to change my behavior. Now, as to a perfect game, I have two answers. One is if it is a game that I'm already watching, if I'm watching a game with you or something, I will notice a perfect game in progress through three. If you make it through the order the first time, I think it is fine

to comment to another person following that game, perfect game through three. Now, you're not changing anybody's behavior, you're not doing anything, you're just noting, well, he's a third of the way. And I feel like part of that is, if you watch a perfect game, you don't want to not notice it until the end. You want to enjoy the experience. Ideally, you would be able to enjoy it from the first batter on. And every batter that you don't acknowledge that something is happening

is part of this history that is wasted. Because in retrospect, the first batter was just as important as the 27. And you were just too dumb to notice. And so I like to notice early. When I was a kid, one time Scott Garelts got through the first inning perfect. And I went and I told my dad, Scotty's got a perfect game through one. I think he's going to do it. And Scotty made it until one out in the ninth when Paul O'Neill broke it up. And I can't tell you, that was the most fun I've had following a game. I mean, that was to then see the second and feel like there was weight to the second.

Because I had declared, you know what? We're doing this. We're doing history right now. Everybody come with me. It's a shared delusion,? We're doing this. We're doing history right now. Everybody come with me. It's a shared delusion, but we're doing it together. And I really enjoyed that. And so I don't see any harm in acknowledging very early, if you're watching a game, he's perfect.

Now, as for the public announcement or the, hey, everybody, come look over here. Again, just talking perfect games, I think six is good. Six seems right. You faced everybody twice, and it really feels like the last leg because you've got to go through the lineup one more time. The other thing about noticing it after six is that the best hitters are coming up. And once you get past those, then it becomes much more likely.

You know you're going to have 7, 8, 9 in the last inning. And so in a lot of ways, the crucial inning is the 7th or maybe the 8th, 7th and 8th for those. So to restate, 3rd inning or really as early as you want, but 3rd inning for a game we're watching, 6th inning for a game I'm not watching. Okay. And before play index, there's one other perfect game-related question.

It is from Elliot, and he wants to know the play that broke up the perfect game, the Marco Estrada perfect game on Wednesday was a slow grounder that Logan Forsyth hit to Josh Donaldson. JD barehanded it and made the throw, narrowly missing the out at first. Would JD have been more apt to airmail the tough throw or I guess would he have been smarter to airmail the tough throw over first, take the error and keep the no-hitter intact? Wouldn't that be 80-grade gamesmanship?

Would an error even be granted on the play? Should he have made an error intentionally to preserve a no-hitter? And would it work? This was the Estrada game? Didn't Estrada have a perfect game, though? He did, yeah.

So he's saying, should he have made an error, which would have at least preserved the no-hitter. I think that you've got to go for the out in that situation. Because, I mean, just even in the scenario that we're entertaining where this is realistic, that he would do this, even there I still think you've got to take the long shot for the out. The perfect game is just much more valuable than the no-hitter. So you go for the out.

Now, let's say he had just a no-hitter going. I also have thought that at times. I've thought, ah, can the fielder... Because really, you well let me think i i've another thing i've thought is that in a no hitter you could argue that a pitcher should walk the lead off hitter every inning and then that because that way he gets if he gets a ground ball he gets two outs for it and so he has fewer outs to get he has to get fewer hitters out plus it gives him it gives some of his fielders an escape valve on some plays in the hole where they can get the force, uh, where they might not be able to get the,

uh, out at first. And so if you really, like, if you really wanted to, yes, that would improve your chance of a no hitter. But this comes down to Russell Carlton's thesis that Americans don't like the appearance of trying too hard. And I don't think this would be something that would get a lot of respect, and I think it would probably backlash. Yeah, I thought I had something else, but I didn't. Okay. All right, yeah, I agree. There would be an asterisk attached to that,

if you could determine that it was intentional. If you made it look good, it could work. Yeah. Okay, play index. All right, before I do play index, I just want to do a quick little preamble about no-hitters again, because I don't want to be...

I don't think of myself as a no-hitter hater. I just... They don't emotionally move me. I've seen a lot of them. And I've chosen in my life to be more interested in high strikeout games than low hit games. And I do like a perfect game because the margin is ridiculously small. And you could nick a guy's elbow and there it goes. But it's fine.

I like that players get excited about no-hitters. I like that other people like them. Enjoy the game. Pay money. Do the thing. I have no problem about no-hitters. I like that other people like them, enjoy the game, pay money, do the thing. I have no problem with no-hitters. They just don't do it for me. That's all. Now, I will say this about no-hitters. They're a perfectly legitimate achievement. It's not, and this is a pre-em, because hitting for the cycle, which I also hate,

that one I genuinely hate. That is a stupid thing. Hitting for the cycle is stupid. That one I genuinely hate. That is a stupid thing, okay? I think that the cycle is stupid. I'm not against fun. I love your no-hitters. Cycles are stupid. They're stupid, okay? A no-hitter is saying, hey, I allowed no hits. You can't do any better than that. Like, you could do better, but not as an alternative, alternative you know it's not like you make the choice to get a no-hitter at the expense of a perfect game you just you do a thing and we determine that that thing is really good good enough to celebrate right whereas a cycle is saying you do a thing but not too well if you do it too well it doesn't count anymore it would be like if we ignore no-hitters but celebrated two hitters.

Like, can you believe it? He threw a two hitter. Oh, no, he only allowed one hit. Never mind. Right? That's the cycle. It's like, oh, he gets a home run. He gets a triple.

Oh, he's halfway to the cycle. He gets a double. Oh, he's almost there. He gets it. Oh, he gets another double. Never mind. People like variety. It's the spice of life.

It's so stupid. I hate like variety. It's the spice of life. Stupid. I hate the cycle. I hate the cycle. How do you feel about being a triple short of it? A triple short of it? You got three hits. Solid. Solid work.

You got three hits. Good game like everybody else has a good game. Oh, you got a fourth hit. Good game like everybody else who has a good four-hit game. It is not special that these things clustered in a slightly unusual way. So this is why I'm going to talk about the cycle for a minute, okay? So, of course, if you get four hits and the cycle, which is ten total bases, or more if you get a fifth hit, but probably, you know, you get ten total bases, probably.

Like, we know that four of your at-bats are dedicated to single, but probably, you know, you get 10 total bases, probably. Like, we know that four of your at-bats are dedicated to single, double, triple homer, right? Yes. So that's 10 total bases. Now, if I told you that a guy got four hits and more, you know, more than 10 total bases, well, A, you know he got 11. He got, he reached base just as many times, and he got more total bases. And because you don't know that they're necessarily single, double, triple homers, they could be four homers. He could have 16 total bases. He could have 14 total bases. He has 11 or more. Significantly better, right? All right. So I go to play index, and I look up all the cycles in history, there have been 243 that show up on Play Index. And I wanted to see how often a team wins when one of its players hits for the cycle.

So I look up all the games in which a hitter hit for the cycle and the team won, and the number is 207. And I look up all the games in which a player hit for the cycle and lost, and his team lost, and it's 36. So that means they win 85.2% of their games. You hit for the cycle, you are 85.2%. Now, that doesn't quite mean that you added 35.2% to your team's chances because you're more likely to hit for the cycle if you get a lot of plate appearances and your team might have already been scoring a ton, which makes it more possible for you to hit.

But let's just say, all right, 35.2-ish percent. That's what you move. Good job. Okay. So then I looked for four or more hits, which is what a cycle is, and 11 or more total bases. So better game. These would generally be better better games and i looked up the winning percentage now remember we're at 85.2 for the cycle so 11 or more total bases 82.9 i can't figure this out so then i do the same thing for 12 or more and it's 85.2 it's's exactly the same. So somehow,

somehow hitting for the cycle somehow is magically worth two total bases. So what is the number of 11 and 12 total bases games?

11 is 955. And 12 is 460 i see well so uh i guess there aren't that many cycles so it's small sample all right probably is though right i mean there's no there's no reason why a cycle should be better unless it like energizes the team or demoralizes the pitcher or something there's only three reasons and one of them the third one is pretty unconvincing uh there's three possibilities one is that i didn't look at this but because it takes a cycle is kind of harder to get yeah even it's not as good and so it's possible that more of the cycles took place in more plate appearances you can get your four hits and 11 plate appearance 11 or more total bases in any basically any four like say extra base hits or like a single two homers and a, right? And so maybe on average, the cycles took more plate appearances.

And so there was a sort of a selection bias here where teams that were scoring more were more likely to lead to cycles already. Yeah, I think I've got another one, I think. Probably one of your three is that you're more likely to stop at first or whatever and get the cycle, cross off that final box if you are already winning, if you have a comfortable lead. Exactly. Yeah, so that's another one.

That is my less convincing one. Okay. Because I've watched a lot of baseball. I've seen some cycles. But I've probably... How many baseball games have I watched, Ben? Or listened to? Probably 2,500.

Well, I can only confirm about 20 of those that I've seen you watch. Somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 baseball games in my life. And I can't say that I've ever, if at all, maybe once, maybe. If at all. Maybe once. Maybe. But I mean, we're already talking about, you know, like your odds are if you've done either of these, your team has probably got a ton of offense. So, I mean, really, how many of these cycles could have been engineered by the player? Although, I mean, maybe you don't stop, but maybe you aim for the single. Maybe you mark DeRosa up, you know? And you just sort of, you know, you change your approach and just sort of ding one or you run a little bit harder.

Well, maybe a little harder to stretch to a triple. Yeah, yeah, it's true. OK, I can see a greater percentage of these being engineered by the player because they want it. And you're more likely to do that. You're more likely to behave in an irrational way or an unnatural way if you're already winning. I think I'm still unconvinced. And I thought I had a third one, but I don't remember what it was. So I'll just say magic. Okay. All right. Well, I'm going to say that's not a statistically significant difference. By the way way 13 total bases Does finally surpass the cycle

Oh good 87.1% Alright so Playindex coupon code BP Use it get the discounted price $30 on a one year subscription Alright one more Let's take John's question

If you could have your favorite team A. Switch their ballpark with any other teams, including their TV broadcast camera angle, stat cast cameras, everyone has those, weird Rays medical camera that charts everyone's biomechanics, and concourse, and I suppose concessions would also be included in that. B, acquire any active player at their current contract status c steal away your preferred gm and manager and they do have to they don't have to come from the same team john specifies you you clarified you can pick someone who isn't employed you can pick from multiple teams d have all their games called by vince gully which would you choose so

this i'm a fan you are a fan this is your favorite team what we did ask for clarification on on one aspect but on that one that you mentioned but we didn't ask for clarification does this have to be our actual favorite team because like the my favorite team has the best ballpark in the sport yeah and really good broadcasters and the best broadcasters probably as a group or at least top two in the sport and so now if we're saying that i i am assigned an average team yeah yeah let's do that okay this will obviously change depending on which team is your favorite so if i, I could, any argument for the last one, for changing the broadcasters, you basically would have, you'd be saying, well, look, I'm going to be a fan of this team

for 30 or 40 years. That will be long past the six years that I get young, hot phenom. It'll be past the eight years that I expect my GM will be there. It'll probably even outlast the ballpark. And so if I could say start over at age eight with the perfect broadcaster, I could see the case for that because broadcasters have brought a huge amount of joy to my life. And specifically, Giants broadcasters have. And I listened to other teams' broadcasters. And in particular, there was a time where I wondered how many fans the Padres had lost by having the radio crew they had.

It was just you couldn't listen to their games. And I'm not sure if you can anymore. I haven't tried in a while. But they had this one guy who was just so, just so off putting as a color guy on the radio. Uh, and you know, frankly, Jerry Coleman legend, great guy for the game. But by the end, uh, his gaffes had become somewhat distracting and made it a little bit hard to, um, to follow the game. Uh, although he was, he was very likable, um, and you know, had history and all that.

So I could see as an investment in my life making a choice that I want the fan experience more than I care about an extra nine wins of marginal value. So in that case, if the solution wasn't, say, Vin Scully, but if I could have Vin Scully at 32... Yeah, and you'd have to know that he was going to stick around until 85. Exactly, and with that team and not change teams at any point. Yeah. Like, I mean, I could see if I had a...

Let's say I had an eight-year-old kid who was really into baseball, and I thought baseball was going to be a part of her life for the rest of her life. I could see choosing Dave fleming for her radio broadcast over say the best gm in the world but it's a it's a very difficult thing now that said we also don't know who the best gms are we're just mostly just faking it i mean i think we'd probably like would you take if you could you take friedman probably yeah probably i'd probably be more confident about my announcer choice than my GM choice. I'd be way more confident about my announcer choice. Announcers, it's like scouting.

You know within two games whether they're in the top tier or not. You don't know whether they're going to stick around is the only problem. I could sign John Schaum to a lifetime contract or something. Oh, my gosh, imagine. Yeah, just think about all you people out there who have like mediocre announcers for at least one of the four spots in your announcing crew tv and radio just think like john chambi instead oh so baseball just got so much better for you so much better so i that i was going to dismiss that possibly but that's that

might that's probably the one. Now, at this point in my life that I'm old and I don't have that much baseball left ahead of me, probably would take Mike Trout. Yeah. I would say I would take Mike Trout over a GM pick, mainly because of what you wrote three years ago, Keeping Up with the Freedmen. There are 28 GMs that I consider completely tolerable. I don't hate many GMs.

What if you go to games a lot? What if you have season tickets? Ballpark, if you're upgrading from one of the worst ballparks to the best ballpark. Yeah, but you're presupposing I have one of the worst. You have an average. Let's say I have the median. What is the median ballpark right now it's a city maybe no kansas city is nice um yeah they're all nice

it's we know philadelphia i don't know all right so cincinnati let's say cincinnati is median is it worth upgrading i mean i don't have season tickets, Ben. I'm not, I'm never going to. Those are expensive. And I don't have the time. So I'm not. I mean, when I was a fan exclusively, I went to four to six games a year. When I was a kid, I might go to ten.

So, wouldn't be enough. I mean, the broadcasters were such a more direct relationship than the park was. Look, I grew up in Candlestick, which is considered maybe the worst park in Major League history. And I never loved the game any less. Yeah, given the uncertainty about the broadcaster's future, assuming you can't sign him up to a lifetime appointment,

you probably take any active player at their current contract status and you go get Chris Bryan or whoever, the best young player in baseball, and then you get to watch him for at least several years and maybe he becomes a franchise player and you keep him and you get to see his whole career for two decades or something. player and you keep him and you get to see his whole career for two decades or something. But that's probably... I could see the case for GM.

If you knew that he was that much better, then he could just keep getting you that player over and over and then maybe you could get more player value than you could just by taking any one player, but it's hard to say. And there are so many good GMs that seem to be available, potential good GMs. I but it's hard to say. And there are so many good GMs that seem to be available,

potential good GMs. So I think it's the active player, barring the Vince Gulley four knowledge. I'd accept arguments for all four, but the stadium the least of all just because it doesn't fit into my lifestyle. But I could definitely see arguments for the other three. Yeah, all right, good question.

Okay, So emails podcast at baseball prospectus.com Facebook group, facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. You can leave comments on behalf of Sam and you can rate review and subscribe to the show on iTunes. We will be back.