Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 713: The Mysteries and Strategies Edition

Episode Date: August 6, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about Joe Girardi’s strategy and Dave Stewart’s stories, then answer listener emails about a Martin Prado mystery, deadline trades, Nick Markakis, and more.

Oh, I got a system that's guaranteed. I got a rock and roll strategy. It ain't no science, but it works for me. It's just a rock and roll strategy. Get in my car, head downtown. Turn up the radio, roll the windows down. It ain't no science, but it gets me around It's just a rock and roll strategy Turn it up!

Good morning and welcome to episode 713 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by The Play Index, BaseballReference.com. My name is Ben Lindberg, I'm a writer for Grantland, and I'm joined, as always, by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello. I can't make this ad stop auto-playing, Ben. It won't stop. What are you trying to play? I'm trying to read a Nick Piacoro article.

That's good. I see. That's possible. All right. Nick's got to get paid. How are you? How are you. All right. Nick's got to get paid. How are you? How are you? All right.

I want to ask you about a baseball mystery, but we have an email show coming up after that, but this will be brief. So there was a strange occurrence in the seventh inning in the Yankees Red Sox game on Tuesday. So the Yankees were up a run against the Red Sox. It was four, the Yankees-Red Sox game on Tuesday. So the Yankees were up a run against the Red Sox. It was 4-3 Yankees. They ended up winning this game 13-3 because the Yankees scored nine runs in the next half inning. But at the time, it was a very high leverage situation.

So Tanaka, Justin Wilson, who's a good lefty reliever Came in to replace Tanaka And he Let a couple guys on, but he Got a couple outs, and so It was two outs Jackie Bradley was up Very bad left-handed hitter Who is hitting 102

This year, with no power And some walks Which is kind of what he did last year So, bad lefty hitter up Good lefty reliever with no power and some walks, which is kind of what he did last year. So bad lefty hitter up, good lefty reliever, and Wilson gets to two strikes. So they're two strikes away from getting out of this inning. And then Rusny Castillo, who was on first, stole second. So the tying run is on second, one-two count,

and Joe Girardi comes out to take Wilson out and bring in Delon Batonsas and so this is a unusual move to take out a good reliever with the platoon advantage who's one strike away from getting out of the inning and Wilson after the game said I think it's odd just because it was in the middle of the at bat and batanza said it was kind of strange but i'm ready for whatever so they thought it was strange reporters asked gerardi about it and they said why did you do it and he said strategy yeah and he said so they asked what was the strategy he said i'm not telling you you can write what you want i'm not saying anything it is a strategy thing you can surmise what you want, etc. So he would not explain why he did this other than to say strategy.

Do you have any theories for why he would make this move at this time? I've thought about it. I've tried to come up with a rationale. Betances is obviously one of the best relievers in baseball, and even against a lefty might be better than Wilson, but it's very close. And so I've been trying to think of what it would be that would make you want to make this move. And, I mean, you know,

maybe Wilson is a little bit more of a ground ball pitcher, and maybe with a guy on second, he was worried about a grounder sneaking through the infield or something. Or maybe I was going to say maybe it was like the one-two count. Like they thought that, I don't know, that Batances just had some pitch that Jackie Bradley wouldn't be able to hit on two strikes or something. And it's some kind of pitch type thing, but I don't know. know i've asked around but i cannot come up with a great reason for this so in the pitch type scenario that that would be the that i that would mean that the stolen base proceeding it was just coincidence that he always planned to come get him with two strikes i i don't know because he would

you would i mean the tying run was on already and so if you don't want to allow the tying run Batonsas was Just as good an option Going into the at bat You'd think as he was With a two strike count So there's a guy at second So how does that change things

I mean it makes you more nervous Maybe Maybe he just got scared. It's like, oh, we got a guy on second. We don't want to give up a single, so I'm going to go to my best reliever. And I don't really know. I mean, by the way, I think he's done a pretty good job of running the bullpen generally and using Batances at important times and everything. But I'm curious about this strategy. Well, I mean, I guess if you think, I don't think that there's any evidence of this in Justin

Wilson's history, but I mean, a lefty on lefty matchup, you figure there's a better chance that he's going to sort of go the other way with the ball, you know, slap a, like, you know, that's how you kind of lefties hit tough lefties is they, you know, stay back and line it the other way. So maybe you figure he's very unlikely to get a double or an extra base hit off the lefty, but more likely that he'll get a single, which you kind of said. Yeah. That's plausible, I suppose. more likely that he'll get a single which you kind of said yeah uh plausible i suppose it seemed like it it would have to be more than a little tiny infinitesimal advantage because

you not only are you running the risk of showing up wilson but you are bringing in Batonsas at a time when he's not expected to come in. So you're bringing in a guy in the middle of a plate appearance. You'd think that maybe it would disrupt him enough that, you know, if it's like a tiny, tiny advantage you're gaining, maybe you wouldn't actually gain it. And I think, and Batonsas ended up coming in and throwing three straight balls and walking bradley yeah and then and then he struck out brock holt to end the inning but you would think that it might rattle a guy a little bit to come in at this time when he hasn't

done that before so it would have to be you know for me to make that move on one two instead of at the beginning of the event it would have to be a pretty significant difference lefties have half the isolated power against baton says that they do against wilson this this year just this year and uh he's like the best reliever he's one of the best relievers so great is it conceivable that baton says wasn't warm at the beginning of the at-bat? Yeah, I thought about that maybe. Maybe he got a call in the middle of the at-bat.

I didn't see this. We were probably at a ballpark or something when this was happening. So I don't know. You'd think that would be something that was mentioned in the game story. Well, you would, but not necessarily. I mean, if someone spotted it, yes. If someone figured it out, then you'd think that the writer who's talking about this would have pointed it out.

But you wouldn't necessarily expect Girardi to say that because A, it makes him look like he didn't have the pitcher he wanted ready, which is like 85% of managing. And B, it allows him the opportunity to create this sort of La Russa vibe about himself where maybe the other manager thinks, well, you're thinking three levels ahead of me and then you psych them out. I mean, it's good for Girardi to be able to have this seemingly like unexplainable decision

that claims he has a secret explanation for. Right. Yeah. It's possible. I mean, you'd think that he would have found that out through the bullpen phone. Right. And then it would have been,

it would have been on TV, right. He would have been on the phone and then he would have come out and make the move. And there would have been an obvious connection there. I don't know wasn't watching but you'd think where's their bullpen in the outfield uh so he can't see it it's behind a wall yeah i don't think you could see it there's a little yeah i don't think you could see it it's a tough one i don't know but i i really like the response i really like the explanation.

Just the one word strategy. If he said... Because you could use that for any situation. Any kind of trouble you get into, any crime you commit, you could just sagely say strategy. Yeah, if he'd said, I don't know, then we wouldn't probably be talking about it. No, this is all strategy. love it i'm gonna use it somehow okay uh anything you want to talk about yeah uh i do i want to talk about this is old news but i've been thinking about it because i just read you know saris's chat and he mentioned the goldschmidt kimroll quote unquote trade proposal uhunquote trade proposal and said he is 100% sure that the Padres were joking.

If you Google this trade proposal and the news around it, then there will always be people in the comments saying that they are 100% sure that he was joking, that the Padres were joking. And then there's even a second tier of people who say that they're 100% sure that Stewart was joking. That yes, this trade offer was made as a joke by the pirates, and Stewart relayed it also as a joke and just didn't clarify. And lots of people are just assuming the best of everybody. There's a lot of assuming the best of people in this situation. It started with assuming the worst and then now a lot of people are assuming the best. And as a person who doesn't like it when you assume,

I think that everybody could quite possibly be wrong here. To me, the joking thing doesn't make sense. Uh, I can't make the, I can't formulate that conversation. I can't formulate a dialogue where that makes sense because if say they called up, uh, the angels and said, we want Mike Trout or say they called up the Astros and said, we want Carlos Correa. And it's like, well, those guys aren't available. They're not being shopped. It's like, it would be ridiculous, kind of,

to think that either of those teams would trade those guys. And maybe even if they called and asked about, who's untouchable? Is anybody close to untouchable on the Padres? No. Okay, but it doesn't have to be Trout or Correarea but if they called uh let's say they called the giants and asked for hunter pence who is not you know he's not it's not unthinkable that a player pence's caliber could be traded but you know the giants like him and they're competing they're not in a selling position then you could imagine the gm going yeah sure i'll take know, and then naming something absurd because it's like we're not really engaging in these discussions.

The Padres were shopping Craig Kimbrell. Their goal seems to have been to trade Craig Kimbrell. Now, maybe they were asking a lot, but they were having serious conversations with multiple teams about trading this player. And so if Dave Stewart called and asked for Craig Kimbrell, it would be really weird if they responded with a joke answer, right? Why would you do that? That's just not a conversation that's – you know, it's possible. I don't know how these people are in real life. I don't know what their relationship is.

Maybe they did. Maybe they're just always joking. Maybe these guys are just jokers. Maybe he replied with a reference to Anchorman. It's escalated quickly. Some people respond to everything with an Anchorman reference. Maybe A.J. Preller responds to everything with, give me Goldschmidt.

Maybe that's his catchphrase. Maybe when the Yankees called and asked for Kimbrough, he said with give me Goldschmidt maybe that's his catchphrase maybe when the Yankees called and asked for Kimbrell he said give me Goldschmidt maybe he has one of those office phone systems where you just pick up the phone and it immediately connects you to somebody and he just yells into it

give me Goldschmidt I don't know what the joke was specifically however the basic idea of this is a joke doesn't really make a lot of sense to me because it was a time to actually talk about trading Craig Kimball. So I am going to say that there are, to me, three realistic narratives for what happened. One is that Dave Stewart made this up up that in fact the offer was never made that he was joking and the radio i don't know the radio host didn't quite get it or maybe he was i don't know i don't know how this story would have gotten started in dave stewart's head but somehow uh it's fiction, okay? One explanation.

Two, it was a serious offer. As we've talked about, unrealistic trade offers get made. You don't have to be ashamed of them. The Padres were mocked after, and so now, like Nick Piacoro has a Padre source who says it was a joke. But, yeah, of course, now you're going to say it was a joke. So, who knows? Serious offer seems going to say it was a joke. So who knows? Serious offer seems more likely to me than traditional joke. And I think the most likely, though, is that – and this actually kind of bleeds into joke territory where a Padre source could say joke without it being a total lie.

But this one doesn't make Stewart look good. My guess is that Stewart's offer was comparably lowball, that Stewart called and asked for Kimbrell, and they said, what do you give us? And he said something like, Aaron Hill. And they're like, yeah, okay, here's our counteroffer, Goldschmidt. In fact, the villain in this trade proposal, if you think that offering unrealistic trade proposals is villainous, is actually Stewart and that he just started the story too late. He selectively edited the parameters of this story to make him look like the smart one.

But in fact, I would bet – I'm not 100% certain. Anybody who's in the comments saying they're 100% certain of what happened is wrong. I would say that I'm more certain of this explanation than any others. I would put my confidence that this is actually what happened at somewhere around 35% to 40%. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that's fair. One other thing, because anytime I think about Paul Goldschmidt, I think about Chris Long's tweet from the spring of 2013 asking, who would you rather have for the next eight years, contracts excluded, Goldschmidt or Albert Pujols?

And it seemed like a virtual tie at that point. And it's gone such a different direction. So anytime I hear Goldschmidt, I always think of that tweet, and I always think of Albert Pujols. And Albert Pujols, everybody knows, has turned the corner, and he's having a great year, right? Mm-hmm. Sure. So I just assumed that was true.

He's actually not having a great year. He's having a fine year but he's basically uh he's got he's on pace to have his second or third best season as an angel out of four years and the only one clearly worse was the one that he was injured and only played half the season so in fact this is like he's been really incredibly consistent as an angel, and this is the same level that he's been playing at. There's nothing to be ashamed of. He's been a good player. He'll be worth three or four wins this season. But if you don't like the previous year's Albert Pujols, then you wouldn't really like this one either.

And if you like this one, then you liked them all. So surprising. I mean, he's got a lot of home runs, but that's about the only thing. really like this one either and if you like this one then you liked them all uh so surprising i mean he's got a lot of home runs and but that's a that's about the only thing he's also got a 316 on base percentage yeah he must have slumped lately right because for a while it seemed like every day i was hearing about a pool holes homer and i haven't lately so yeah he does have a lot of home runs i mean you yeah he might he might hit 40 i bet he will hit 40 he's on pace to hit more than 40 uh although yeah he's got yeah he's got a 538 ops in his last 14 days 668 in his last 28 days with uh one homer in the 14 days and four in the 28 days

so he has cooled down when when everyone was talking about albert pool holes i think he was having a better season and now he's not yeah okay yeah okay all right so emails i have some selected there were a bunch of responses to our conversation with zachary about hit by pitches and bean balls and how you can discourage them. And I'll read one by Jonathan Judge, who is from Baseball Perspectives. We've had him on the show before, but we got many similar suggestions. So Jonathan said, I think the best approach to preventing bean ball wars is to make all hit byby-pitches worth two bases. This would have multiple effects. Teams will be more careful about pitching inside, leading to fewer hit-by-pitches in the first place.

Teams will be reluctant to retaliate because they really benefited from the hit-by-pitches in the first place and don't want to give the opposing team a runner in scoring position. As teams pitch less inside, offense will go up, which most people seem to think would be desirable. This rule could be softened in various ways, only making a hit by pitch worth two bases after a team hits a batter for the second time, analogous to the bonus rule for free throws in basketball, and or only making a hit by pitch worth two bases if a team has hit a certain number of batters in a certain range of recent games to target teams who pitch inside despite

having pitchers who have poor control. As somebody pointed out to me, the rule against batters leaning into pitches or making a reasonable effort to get out of the way of pitches would have to be strongly enforced. I wonder if you think this would help. I suspect most hitters would be strongly in favor, but pitchers would be very opposed. We got that suggestion from a few people, just the two bases, at least selectively in situations where you think that someone is throwing intentionally or might throw intentionally. Yeah, so there's two questions. One is if you personally like the solution, if it, if it would please you. And two is whether it is a, uh, logical solution within

the way that other things have been solved in baseball history. And, uh, and yeah, I mean it, it, to the second question, uh, it is absolutely consistent with, uh, other baseball rules. The whole point of the hit by pitch was to create a penalty so that pitchers wouldn't hit batters and to create a reward for the hitter and a discouragement for the pitcher that would kind of fit in the balance of offense and pitching and accomplish the goal without doing something ridiculous. And if we've decided that after these 150 years, if we've decided that one base is not enough or if one base has become not enough, then yeah, there's nothing objectionable about adjusting the penalty. It's like the fine, for instance, the fines for doing things wrong on the field are not the same now that they were

in 1985 they probably charge more money i don't know that's actually true but they probably charge more money uh we adjust with time based on the actual context and then while it does seem weird to just get to skip to second base instead of going to first we do have the rule which is never ever ever ever in play, but that we've talked about on the show, of if you throw your glove at the ball and hit it, they get three bases. So there is a precedent for having a multi-base penalty

for doing something against the rules. And it does feel weird that if you hit a ball with a glove, you get three bases. And if you hit a ball with a glove, you get three bases. And if you hit a human with a ball, you get one base. So it would be fine with me. Now, whether I would enjoy it, let me think about that. So say there's a runner on third and you hit a guy, then the batter just goes to second. But if there's a runner on second and you hit a guy then the batter just goes to second but if there's a runner on

second and you hit a guy then the runner goes to first does everybody advance two bases or only if you're forced forward i guess only if you're forced forward just like only if you're forced forward i don't think it would be like a buck okay so then if there was runners on first and second there would now be runners on second and third and a run would score okay you're okay with it i yeah i don't have a great i don't have a great grasp on how i'd react to it i would probably get used to it and some people suggested fines big fines instead of suspensions but the the numbers would have to be very very large to to actually discourage a player who's making a lot of money. Well,

depending on what the player earns. And the original question was what could you do that the union wouldn't fight, or that you could get past the union? Yeah, that's a big condition. I wonder if you could get the hit-by-pitch two bases past the union.

I mean, it would be divided because hitters would like it and pitch two bases past the union i mean it would be divided because hitters would like it and pitchers would all hate it so it would be split down the middle yeah i don't know if the union i don't know how much the union they have to they have to approve yeah they have to approve but i don't know how much i don't know how much the game strategy incentives affect union voting. It might be a lot. It might be that you would absolutely have a hit or pitch or divide in union voting. But, I mean, the point of the union is to protect, I guess, to protect the workers for everything, but mostly we think of it as protecting their right to employment, protecting them from employee, uh, employer overreach as far as discipline and, um, and to make sure that they get paid and to make sure jobs protected and to make sure there are more jobs and, you know,

all those sorts of things. They're not usually like, uh, to protect your ERA. So I don't know how those conversations would go when you're voting i would like to think that the union uh heads on each team would say come on grow up we're voting on employee rights here not era rights yeah someone also uh someone also wondered whether if you did have the, like, you know, 20-game suspensions or something, whether there would be bullpen goons. So Dan emailed us and said, The discussion about harsher penalties for beanings made me wonder if that could lead to hockey-style goons in the bullpen. A lousy pitcher who comes in to mete out justice that the team doesn't mind losing for 20 games. What do you

think and i think not i think even though there are huge bullpens today you probably wouldn't want to carry guy just with this purpose in mind because you're not unless you're the diamondbacks you're not hitting people intentionally enough to have a sacrificial pitcher in the bullpen. Although, I mean, you might bring in your worst pitcher if you really, really wanted to do it, but I don't think you would carry a bad pitcher just so that you could do it. The most compelling solution to me still seems to be, this was suggested, that if you're ejected or suspended for an act of violence, that just like in soccer, you don't get to replace that guy on the field, just like in hockey.

And so you'd have to play with eight. And I think if you had to play with eight, that would be hugely disadvantageous and nobody would do it. But you do get to bring in a pitcher and take someone else out yeah you get eight you just you i mean you can have your eight be anything you want but you only get eight okay all right we got another baseball mystery this one has a visual component by the way i said i said that is most. It's also unrealistic because of the sanctity of stats across generations. Yes, right.

Never happened. So Danny emailed us this question, and it has a couple of pictures that go with it. So I will post the pictures in the Facebook group and at the podcast post at BP as usual. So Danny says, while watching Marlins games this year, that's a mystery right there. He watches Marlins games. He's a Marlins fan. And he's from Calgary. Danny from Calgary watches Marlins games.

While watching Marlins games this year, I found myself obsessed with the dirt stains on the back of Martin Prado's uniforms. I've scoured the internet, but I found nothing. Any idea what's causing them? And how would you, how would you describe? They're just, they're just roughly baseball sized dirt stains that are on the back of Martin Prado's uniform above his name, just kind of at the same level as the little mlb icon that is sewn on there it's just uh i you know it's like it would if he were wearing a scarf or something it would cover them but they yeah they're very well the thing is too that they're at least pictures he sent they're consistent and they look symmetrical

they look intentional they kind of look like how i imagine uh people in biblical times marked their doors for passover i was thinking of it as like like night eyes you know how uh some dogs have markings above their actual eyes that are supposed to look like eyes when their eyes are closed so that a predator would or you know like a butterfly has markings on its back that look like eyes so that if it's you know it would scare away a predator that thinks it's some big animal or something that's kind of what it looks like to me like martin prado put eyes on his back just in case anyone was thinking of preying on him while he's his back was turned so i you didn't have a theory right away, right? I didn't have a theory right away.

It's very mysterious. I've never seen that I can recall markings on the back of a player's uniform like this. So I contacted the expert in player uniforms, Paul Lucas of UniWatch, and I sent him this picture and I asked him if he had any theories and he responded with one sentence in about two minutes. He was not fazed at all by this mystery.

He said, pine tar from his bat which he often rests on his shoulders. And I think if you look at if you look at Martin It is very strong. If you look at Martin Prado's batting stance, and I just sent you a slow motion video of Martin Prado from above while he's in the batter's box, and you can see that when he's in the batter's box, he bounces his bat on that part of his shoulder. It's probably

high up enough on the bat that if you had pine tar a little low on the bat, it could end up exactly where we are seeing this spot. So that to me looks like the answer at least to one side of the uniform. The curious thing is that He's not a switch hitter He's a right handed hitter And when he bounces his bat When he's in the batter's box He's bouncing it on the right shoulder So that explains how that one gets there

I don't know how the left one Gets there I also don't feel like This video that you've sent me Corresponds to The me corresponds to the marks. To me, the marks are further back. This would be top of the shoulder, maybe top front of the shoulder. This is clearly the back.

You would need to have the bat angled downward to get to this spot. And so I thought when you said pine tar on the bat, to get to this spot. And so I thought when you said pine tar on the bat, I was thinking that maybe he rests it on his shoulder when he's in the on-deck circle, and that he just sort of does it casually, and it is angled downward. Yeah, so that's possible too.

And that would maybe explain why it's on both sides. Maybe he casually rests it on both sides. My initial, I didn't say that, you said that I didn't have an immediate theory. I did. I don't know if it's a good one, but I mean, I assumed that this was teammates screwing with him.

Ah, okay. So just that's what it looks like to me. But I'm probably wrong. I mean, I would bet against my, I would say with no greater than 4% confidence that that is the i would the explanation ben is clearly strategy that's right that's the best answer i'm derek hall president and ceo of the arizona here it comes should have closed this tab wow this website is extremely aggressive about showing you its content.

Okay, so I will post the video and the pictures online, and you can all go and tell us if you have a better theory. All right, Playindex? Sure. So a bunch of good players were traded this year at the deadline. And the best players so far this year, of all the players who were traded, the one who's having the best year this year

by baseball references measure is... Do you want to fill in that? Of all the players who were traded this year? Yeah, hitters only. Oh, hitters. Although I think maybe pitchers too, but let's say hitters only for this. Cespedes?

Yes, good. Good one. Okay, there weren't that many choices, right? There was Cespedes and Zobrist and Tulo, who's not having a great year. Tulo and Cargo. Cargo, that's true, but he's having a bad year too for him. Cespedes is the fourth best player of those guys. He's having the best year, but he's the fourth best player of those guys, and so that's why I thought that it would be difficult for you to get it.

Anyway, he's actually having the best even if you include pitchers. You want to guess the best pitcher? Cueto? No. No. Oh, Kazmir? Yes. Just barely ahead of Price.

Ah, okay. All right. So then, so I wondered what's the best year of a player who was traded midseason and where Cespedes ranks in this. And going back to 1988, Cespedes right now has 4.2 wins. And so if he were to add another win, that's 28th best of all time since 1988. If he were to add another win, he'd be tied for 11th

best player who's ever been traded in a season. And if he were able to add two more wins, he would be 7th. He would crack the top 10. The best is Ricky Henderson who had 8.6 wins in a year.

And he was traded in June. Speaking of, as we were about good players not getting traded enough in June, he was traded in June 1989 from the Yankees to the A's, and he produced more than five wins for the A's. You'd think that baseball is filled with copycats. You'd think someone would have seen that and copied it since then. But nobody does. Nobody copies the trade for the guy in June move.

Number two is Mark Teixeira, who produced 7.8 wins in 2008. And after he got traded to the Angels, he played exactly one-third of a season and was producing at an 11 win pace. He was really good. So this list doesn't distinguish between whether you were good for your first team and bad for your second, or bad for your first team and good for your second, or good for both, but both of these guys were good for both.

And so too was the number three guy on the list. And I just wonder if you have any chance of getting number three. You don't. No. The answer is you don't. But name a name. Just name a baseball player. The third best player traded at a deadline.

And it's not a pitcher or it can be a pitcher, or it can be a pitcher? It shouldn't be a pitcher, although I will tell you that I looked at the pitchers, too, and there's two guys who have exactly 0.1 win more than the guy you're looking for. So the pitchers are generally a little lower. Colon and Tom Candiotti, by the way, are tied for the best pitcher ever midseason. Sabathia, who everybody's thinking of, was number four. I want the number three hitter.

I don't know. Just name a human. Name a... I can't. I don't know any strategy. It's the young Randy Velarde. No way. It's on the tip of my tongue yeah uh so a few things

about this first of all uh before i get to the young randy velarde uh there are four players um ahead of cesspit is on the list twice they are henderson to shara both traded mid-year in great seasons okay okay i'm with you. Yep. The other two are Scott Rowland and Carlos Beltran. So of the 27 spots ahead of Cespedes, four guys managed to be there twice. All right. So the young Randy Velarde, who Wikipedia notes, quote, is best known for turning the 11th unassisted triple play in Major League Baseball history.

Do you agree? No. Well, to me, I don't know. I don't know him for that. I know him because I watched him sometimes. So, granting that you can't say he's a baseball player, Velarde is best known for playing baseball. But beyond that, what would you say

the most people in the world know Velarde for? I don't remember much. I don't know. I don't either. That's,

I mean, I'm wondering, is that a realist? So there's, I mean, I guess if he did that, then, then sure,

maybe now more people will remember that he was the third best position player traded at a deadline. I don't know him for the triple play. I know him for being in the Mitchell Report. Okay, I forgot that. He might be more known for that than the triple play.

I know him for being named, weirdly, in an Action Bronson song. Okay. That might be more common. Maybe I just know him because he was on the Yankees. Anyway, so Velarde was traded in 1999 from the Angels to the A's at the deadline. This was the year that the Angels, just everything was a total mess. They had a clubhouse revolt against Terry Collins. Randy Velarde was part of that.

And Collins got fired. Joe Maddon became the interim manager. Mike Socio was hired the next year. And the Angels became a totally different franchise after that. But this trade is interesting to me more because of who he went to. He went to the A's. Billy Bean traded for him. And Billy Bean had taken over as GM the year before. And they had been very bad. They won 74 games, I think, in 1998. And then in 1999, they weren't expected to

do much. This was still before anybody knew that they had any kind of strategy. So they were generally seen as the favorite to finish last in the AOS. Instead, they were very competitive at the trade deadline. And Billy Bean, just a few days before the trade deadline, he traded Kenny Rogers, who was one of his starting pitchers. He was in the rotation. He traded him for prospects in the middle of a pennant race. And this was controversial at the time. And as Art Howe said, for about four or five days, everyone was on our case. But the Rogers deal was more like a matter of getting the stone out of your shoe. Once we made the deal, it freed up some money to get players like Randy Velarde.

Mm-hmm. Randy Velarde. And Velarde was... By the way, this was also right before he traded Billy Taylor for Jason Isringhausen, which became the sort of classic Billy Bean trade for a couple of years. So Velarde was a 4.2 win player, I think, at that point in the season. And you could probably say, yeah, 4.2 wins. You could probably argue that this was a pretty savvy value assessment on Bean's part. Velarde has roughly the same number of wins above replacement in his career as Nick Marcakis, and yet never made an all-star team, never received a single MVP vote. So good player,

very good ball player, but overlooked because he did a lot of the things that we talk about getting overlooked. He had a good walk rate. He was a second baseman who could hit. He did a lot of the things that we talk about getting overlooked. He had a good walk rate. He was a second baseman who could hit. He had a lot of versatility, and his defensive numbers were generally good. And so Billy Bean gets this guy who is much less famous than the people right below him on my best season split between teams leaderboard, but who is nonetheless number three. So the other thing about, well, a couple things about this trade.

One is that the Angels got nothing, really, in return, as it turned out. They got Jeff Devanin, who of like a very very fringy role player for a few years and then they got uh some prospect pitching prospect who was in a ball and never turned into anything and the key piece in the deal was nathan haynes who was a toolsy outfielder uh who was 19 years old and actually in double A. Well, he was in high A. The Angels sent him to double A. And so he was the last first-round pick before Billy Bean took over.

And he is the kind of player that if you were around the Angels in that era, you know that the Angels always fetishized and um he wasn't quite uh a real prospect uh by prospect rankings but he had some of these markers of a prospect he was young he ran really fast he stole bases at a bad clip he had a good batting average um and he never turned in anything and so uh bill Bean, I don't know if it was, I don't know if I'm making it sound smarter than it was, but he traded a guy who, he found the team that was probably most likely to like this guy

and traded him for value just before his career more or less fizzled. He got rid of a player who, based on what we know about Billy Bean in that era, Billy Bean probably wasn't a huge fan of. And he got Velarde, who is the kind of a player that, based on what we know about Billy Bean in that era, Billy Bean would have been a huge fan of. Except one little twist is that Velarde was not a fan of Billy Bean.

They did re-sign him after the season, but you wouldn't have thought that they would have because there's a bunch of newspaper articles at the time about how Randy Velarde just wasn't happy. He wasn't happy even though he was in a pennant race. There's this LA Times article that talks about how happy Omar Olivares was. He went over in this deal. He really did some deep, deep dive on Velarde.

So Omar Olivares was so happy that he got to leave this horrible toxic angels clubhouse and go to the A's where he was in a pennant raise. Olivares, this is so much overriding here. Okay, I'm going to read because the overriding is great. A week before the return trip, Olivares was sitting at his Oakland locker, eating potato chips and marveling at his good luck. Baseball's fun here, Oliveras says. He opens his arms as if to embrace

the whole wonderful world of the Oakland A's, even the grim and empty seats on a night when barely 6,000 people have come to watch a young team continue its chase for a wild card berth. You do not find Velarde licking potato chip salt from his lips and speaking in giddy riffs about his freedom from the Angels. Where's Velarde?

Quote, he's probably stretching, Oliveira says. No, he's probably lifting, a clubhouse attendant says. I think he already lifted, someone else said. He might be outside running. If you voted for stretching, you'd be right.

Velarde has beat all his teammates out into the hot afternoon. If Velarde is licking salt from his lips, it is sweaty salt. Wow. The Los Angeles Times. That's how you know someone is happy. If they're eating potato chips, they're happy. Yeah, this is the Los Angeles Times, frankly, at the peak of their loss. I mean, they were a really great paper.

They were a dynamite paper, and they let, if Velarde is licking salt from his lips, it is sweaty salt, into the newspaper. When Velarde agrees to talk about his team's old and new, the words are spoken slowly and seriously. He was not relieved to leave the Angels on July 29th. He was sad. I'm trying to skip. While Olivera spoke in wonderment about the joy and funny

he's found with baseball in Oakland, Velarde is more subdued. There are a lot of similarities between this Oakland team and last year's Angels. Nobody expected us to do what we did last year. But he basically says, like, I don't know where I'm going to be next year. It doesn't sound like he was going to be with the A's.

And then he did resign with the A's. And in Moneyball, he appears one time on pages 154. Eating potato chips in his locker? No, not eating potato chips. Pages 154 and 155, in which he complains that he complained often to reporters that the team was run from the front office and that the front office wouldn't let anyone bunt

or steal. So, classic Joe Morgan situation. Player that Stathead loves and uses evidence to suggest is underrated and actually great hates Stathead. And then he was later busted for steroids.

Right. Okay. Play Index. You can use the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 when you go to baseballreference.com and subscribe to the Play Index for a year. Wait, one more thing. One quick thing. and subscribe to the play index for a year. Wait,

one more thing. One quick thing, a letter to the editor by an angels fan who was upset about the trade credited, uh, Randy Velarde with saving 10 wins just by turning double plays. Oh man. 10 wins with his double play game. I've had my eye out for those estimates.

You have to send me that one. I'm more looking for people inside baseball, but that's one of the things that I think that having win stats has been helpful for. We've probably talked about this before, is that you would see these just crazy high estimates about what players saved in the outfield on defense or something or what they were worth to

the team and it was like you know more than Mike Trout is ever worth in a season it's like this one aspect of what the player did is worth double digit win totals and that's something you don't really see anymore because now we have a better handle on what things are actually worth, and nothing is worth 10 wins except Mike Trout in a full season doing everything. So I've had my eye out for quotes like that, just huge overestimates, and I haven't actually come across that many. But I'm collecting them. If anyone knows of any, send them my way. Okay, Nick says,

Do you think there is an upper limit on how many trades A team could pull off in a given amount of time Like simply based on manpower How much internal vetting Do you think goes into each trade And is it difficult to do things simultaneously My hunch is it's pretty high And he says it was inspired by A Buster Olney tweet that says

It behooved the Tigers to move fast On the price deal because they have other work To be done with Cespedes and Soria. Soria wants to know how many trades, how many balls do you think a front office can juggle at the same time? I have a question. Yeah. I have a question before we answer that. I don't know if you know the answer to this. So the Mets trade for Carlos Gomez and then he fails the physical or whatever.

Yeah, right. And then they trade for Cespedes 11 minutes before the deadline. Do they get to give him a physical? Well, I guess Carlos Gomez didn't take a physical. No, they just sent over his medical records. So if you make a deal with 11 minutes left, do you just only have 11 minutes to look at his medical records? And or can you undo a trade after the fact after the

deadline has passed if you see something in the medical records i don't i think maybe you have already seen the medical records i think at that point i i don't know i don't know if that's true i remember being at in the office one time during a deadline, and there was an intern who got a call to fax over medical records to someone at the last minute for something. So maybe you get a chance to see them. I don't know if it can be contingent on that. I don't recall a deal being annulled because the team got the medicals after the deadline and didn't like

what they said, but maybe. And what if you make a deal with 11 minutes left or one minute left or two hours left and the player's on the field, who knows, but he has a no trade clause? Can he go a trade after? Do you have to get

it approved? You have to submit the paperwork to the commissioner, right? Or you have to, to the MLB office Do you have to get it approved? You have to submit the paperwork to the commissioner, right? Or you have to to the MLB office, or you have to approve it in the system, at least, before the deadline. So, I... You don't think it can be just all parties have agreed to terms

and now we sort out the details? Maybe it could. I mean, they only have 11 minutes to actually fill out the paperwork? Like, actually fill out the paperwork. How complicated is the paperwork? Is it conceivable that you could trade for Cespedes with 11 minutes left, but then you keep writing the wrong date? I think you just go into the online system called Ebiz or something where all the MLB transactions happen.

I think you could probably just do it there and it wouldn't take that long but i don't know the mechanics of it that would be an interesting question to ask someone who has been involved in more trade negotiations than i have in my life uh so nick's question about how many teams that trade or how many trades a team could pull off at a given time Or be considering at a given time We talked about this In the winter meetings last year When the Dodgers had that crazy day

Where they made four or five moves And I wondered whether It was because they had a front office Full of former general managers And were able to delegate Okay, you work on this trade Because you've been the lead person On trades before so you can just kind of handle

This one and I'll handle this one And I asked Stan Kasten about that later And he said that wasn't A factor but he would say that If he thought that was a big advantage to the Dodgers So There's got to be some of that like Jonah Carey did a piece at Grantland this week

Where he talked to Alex Anthopoulos about how the Bougies deadline developed. And Anthopoulos mentions that at one point he was on the phone with Jack Zarensik talking about Mark Lowe, the reliever that they ended up acquiring. And then Dave Dombrowski called while he was on the phone with Jack Z. And Dave Dombrowski was calling to talk about David Price. with Jack Z and Dave Dombrowski was calling to talk about David Price and Alex Anthopoulos was more interested in talking about David Price but he didn't want to hang up on Jack Z so he kind of hurried the conversation along so that he could hang up and call call Dave Dombrowski back so there is a theoretical limit there's a point where you're talking about too many trades to give them all your full attention so it probably depends on what your front office is like, what your

management style is like, if you're comfortable delegating trade talks to your assistant GM and how many assistant GMs you have and that sort of thing. But I would say if they're... And the other thing is that these things happen over a long period like the tulowitzky trade evidently was just a month's long process and it came together fairly quickly at the end but it had been discussed for months and so all of the research had been done i mean the rockies had gotten to research blue jays prospects and blue jays has gotten to research the Rockies And there was no last minute Probably you know intel That needed to be gathered So that's probably the case a lot of the time

And yet That deal didn't happen until just before the deadline It's crazy I mean if ever a trade to pull off in June Yeah sure It doesn't totally make sense to me That they all wait for July 30th Or 31st.

But the point is that it's not like they first heard of it on the 31st and now they have to go figure out what prospects they want or something. They've had time to do this. And, I mean, sometimes it is like that. So I don't know. I wonder how many feelers a team has out at any given time. Feelers a team has out at any given time to you know Like realistic has expressed interest in a specific player or another team has expressed interest in one of their players Do you have any guess? We'll never know which is right unless we ask someone which we could do but I would guess at any time

There's you know, depending on the team, but I would guess there's probably like five to ten things in the works and most of them will never happen. And most of them maybe will never be brought up again, but they've been discussed at least. There's been interest expressed one way or the other in a specific player or need. So you maybe have it in the back of your mind

or in the front of your mind and you assign your baseball operations assistant or something to tell you what prospects you would want on that team or whatever but actual like you know on deadline day talking to other teams back and forth there's got to be a limit with trade talks i don't know a few sure yeah sure nick also asks would you ever acquire a player in earnest with no intent to flip him and then flip him let's say price got traded a week before the deadline to team x who's two games out of first place the team then proceeds to go oh and seven over the next week while their close division rival goes seven-0,

would you then turn around and flip that guy again, assuming you are now nine games out? Oh, yeah, of course. I mean, yeah, hasn't Billy Bean done this? I feel like there was a year that Billy Bean did this. Yeah, I think this has happened. Yeah. And in fact, if you think about it,

like one of the reasons not to trade cavalierly, one of them, is that it kind of sucks if you've got a guy who's got a house and has put down roots and his kids are in school. And you'll make that trade. It's a business. They've got to go. They know they've got to go. But you don't do it just to torment them. You don't do it, like I said, cavalierly. And in this case, it's sort of at first glance you think, oh, well, that seems insensitive.

The guy just got here. Now you're going to trade him. But it's actually the lessons. It's the least insensitive way to trade a guy. He probably is just in a hotel, probably hasn't packed up his stuff. So, yeah, that is the time to move him, I guess, respectfully. Yeah, okay. Anyway, yeah, I would.

I would, and Ben would, too. Hire us. Sure. All right, one last quick one, I think. Yeah? I'm cooking grilled cheese, so you don't mind grilled cheese being cooked. I don't know who uh courtney our scout taught me to make grilled cheese like the the right way oh yeah so i knew the secret okay he's taught you a lot in the kitchen yes

all right aaron says i knew the podcast so there's a chance you've already gone over the subject but if you didn't here it goes i I was watching the Orioles Braves broadcast tonight, and the subject of Nick Marquegas came up, as you would expect in an Orioles Braves broadcast. The announcers discussed his amazing consistency. In looking at the baseball reference page of

Marquegas, I was amazed at the fact that at the age of 31, he already has 1,668 hits. By most indications, he has a real shot at 3,000 hits. No, he does not. As we all know, the 3,000 hit mark is one of those magical statistical marks, etc., etc. And then what amazes me about Mark Akis is the fact that he has never made an All-Star game and has never finished in the top 10 in MVP voting.

We should talk about that sometime. We should bring that up. top 10 in MVP voting. We should talk about that sometime. We should bring that up. Aaron, I'm sorry. This is a podcast meme that you have missed out on. Other than a sixth place rookie of the year finish and two

gold gloves, he is essentially void of any awards that would reflect all of his career. It's amazing. It's good that we have made this into a thing we talk about because Aaron was struck by it. We're going to get an email from him in three weeks Going, now let me tell you about Mark Ellis So, a couple of questions

Is there a Hall of Fame player that is comparable To Mark Akis? I don't think so If he gets 3,000 hits, is he a Sure Hall of Fame bet, or is he the first 3,000 hit player that doesn't make the Hall of Fame Other than PED users Would Mark Akis have been a Hall of Fame Shoo- the days before saviormetrics oh or does the way we evaluate players now make us look at mark akis differently would he have garnered more accolades 20 or 30

years ago no no no yeah mark i mean if mark akis stuck around so when did he debut? He debuted... 2006. He was 22. Okay, so he debuted at 22. So if he somehow just doesn't have an aging curve and he stays at his current level of slightly above average hitter with not much power but pretty good on base ability, if he stayed at this level until

he's 40 or something then he would get there he's more than halfway there he's played 10 years if he plays 20 years he'd get there but a he won't get there almost certainly i think i don't know what the odds would say but he is unlikely to get there because he is not that far from not being playable. He's playable now. He's maybe an average player. And if you're an average player at age 31, you're not going to be a useful player, probably at age 35 or 38 or whatever. So he's not going to get there. But even if he did get there and he somehow just managed to stay where he is right now for long enough to squeak past the the finish line and have 3 000 hits he would still he's got 27 war right now at baseball reference so

even if you doubled that he would be a pretty bad hall of fame candidate he'd be yeah he'd be he'd be kind of close and maybe it would come down to his divisive defensive ratings some of which are what his his defensive ratings say he's not good at defense but he wins gold gloves so if you thought he was a really great fielder then maybe but even if he managed to just be a total aging anomaly i don't think he would get there and i don't think that people were dumb enough 30 years ago that they would think he was better and if any i mean if anything they would think he was worse right because he's a guy who's on base ability is a big part of why he is still useful. Markekis through age 31 is 99th in career hits.

And there are obviously not 99 guys with 3,000 hits. I'm looking below him. Maybe the only guy below him, maybe, I'm not sure if he is or not is is Raphael Palmeiro and Lou Brock actually got there by 23 hits

and he was below him oh and Wade Boggs did as well and did Ted Williams have 3,000 hits? No, he didn't. 2,600. Oh, because of the wars. Anyway, the point is,

my point is that I've been waiting for the 3,000 hit, the champion of the 3,000 hit hater, the guy who is going to get there even though he's not very good. I've been waiting for that guy since 2003. I remember driving home from lunch with a couple of colleagues

and telling them that all Johnny Damon had to do was average 128 hits a year until he was 41. That's easy enough, right? I mean, especially because this year he's going to have 185. And it just seemed like Johnny Damon was going to do it. And it seemed like Edgar Renteria had a chance to do it. And Juan Pierre seemed like he had a chance to do it. And these are all guys who don't get there.

Jimmy Rollins seemed like a guy who had a chance to do it. And Jimmy Rollins is actually better than all those guys I named. Jimmy Rollins, if he did it, he probably would make the Hall of Fame. But he's not going to do it. Nobody does it. It's really hard. So Carl Crawford was well ahead of him at this stage. So anyway.

Johnny Damon got close. Johnny Damon got close. Johnny Damon got close. 27-69. This guy, who are we talking about? Nick Marcakis has three more hits than Harold Baines. And Harold Baines is, or was, at least, the non-Hall of Famer with the most hits, correct? Career hits?

Sounds right. So anyway, there's always guys who age through age 31. You think, oh, well, all he has to do is age well, and he'll get there. But most guys don't. I mean, Andrew Jones, at the same age as Nick Marquegas, Andrew Jones had 30 more hits, and he ended his career with 1,933.

And Andrew Jones won a gold glove when he was 30, so it's not like he was Fat Jones yet. Right. Adrian Beltre will get there, or probably will get there, and some people will probably think Adrian Beltre is the guy that you were talking about, who just debuted at age 19 and just kept chugging along until he got to 3,000. People will think that he is the undeserving Hall of Famer who has 3,000 hits, but he is very much a deserving Hall of Famer if you appreciate his defense

and other things, parks he played in and such. So, yeah, no one should say that about him. One spot ahead of Marquecas, Keith Hernandez. Two spots ahead of him, Steve Garvey. Both guys who probably at that point in their careers, people actually did think were going to get there. These are guys who were career 300-plus hitters, who had been MVPs, who had been frequent All-Stars,

who had won Silver Sluggers. These are guys who it actually would have seemed like were going to. And Hernandez ended up with 2,182 hits, and Garvey ended up with 2,599 hits. Garvey led the league in hits his age 31 season and ended up coming 400 short. So Markekis ain't getting there. I would bet that Markekis does not get 2,400 hits. All right.

Okay, so that's it. Long show. You can send us more emails for next week at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. You can join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. Rate, review, subscribe to the show on iTunes. And as we already told you, you can support the sponsor of the show, the Play Index, by going to baseballreference.com and using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. We will be back in the near future.