Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 722: Cold-Calling Ned Garver

Episode Date: September 10, 2015

Ben and Sam answer listener emails, come across a baseball mystery, and get answers straight from a primary source.

Say, I know. Let's take an old-fashioned walk. I'm just bursting with talk. What a tale could be told if we went for an old-fashioned walk. Let's take a stroll through the park, down a lane where it's dark. And a heart that's controlled may relax on an old-fashioned walk Good morning, and welcome to episode 722 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives,

presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller's creaky chair. From Baseball Perspectives. From Baseball Perspectives. That's the thing about the microphone, is now you're getting desk recording by Sam Miller's creaky chair. From baseball perspectives. From baseball perspectives. That's the thing about the microphone is now you're getting desk recording instead of kitchen recording,

near the oven recording. And desk has a creaky chair. Put the microphone on the floor. Wow, that chair is creaky. It wasn't creaky two days ago. It was. Yeah, it was. It's a 120-year-old chair and it's been creaky for It wasn't creaky two days ago. Yeah, it was. It's a 120-year-old chair,

and it's been creaky for 119 years. So now I have to buy you a non-antique chair and send that to you, too. So this is our second attempt at episode 722. We had some technical difficulties the other day when we tried to record. We talked for half an hour or so. I would say it was a fringe average episode, maybe a solid average episode. And at the end of it, my voice was the only voice on the recording. But you were actually there, right? I was talking to you.

Yeah. And I know there's a lot of outrage out there on Twitter about Ben and what he did, how he messed things up. And I know that people are calling for he messed things up. And I know that people are calling for him to be fired. And I stand by Ben. I stand by you. Thank you. I would consider you on probation.

Okay. That's fair. If it happens twice, I'm out. Yeah. Okay. You would be. I wonder how many times in a row would you have to record and have it not record before you quit? It's one of the most demoralizing feelings that I experience in my daily life. It's not like a traumatic, it's not a family loss or something, but just in my day-to-day work life, something not recording that I thought was recording is one of the worst feelings. When I was working on a story recently, I talked to a guy for about 25 minutes, and it was great, and I was all ready to transcribe it, and then the same thing happened. On a different computer, I know why that one happened. I don't know why our one happened, but it was pretty terrible when you open it up and you're all ready for those juicy quotes and it's gone forever. And then what do you do? You can't, you can't be like, so let's say all of those things exactly the way that you said them the

first time again. So there's no good answer. Find a new article to write. Yeah, pretty much. So we're maybe going to talk a little bit about what we talked about because i think it's still worth talking about but first we'll do a couple emails and a play index and we'll see where we stand so question from tom your discussion about how much you'd play pay matt harvey to pitch out the season and postseason got me thinking, what if a pitcher agreed to sign for the minimum with a playing time bonus that paid him X dollars per start? This would be highly unorthodox, but doesn't seem like it would violate the CBA, which allows playing time-based bonuses. The team would have to deal with payroll uncertainty, but would have

much less exposure to injury risk and could shut him down to save money if the season was lost. The player could probably get substantially more per start than on a guaranteed contract. Do you see this ever making sense? Ignoring league or union objections, how much could an ace like David Price get per start? This is similar to the question maybe about why guys don't get one-year contracts.

It's a more extreme version of why don't players sign one-year contracts for $40 million? Yeah, I mean, the math that he alluded to would be more complicated, but these teams are absolutely capable of doing that math. They have smart people who can kind of game out the scenarios, and the players have smart agents who can do the same and figure out where the, I mean, this is what people who do transactions, financial transactions do. They weigh the risk and they

figure it out, right? So the complicatedness of it need not be a problem. I think two issues with it, the, well, three issues, one which I hadn't really thought about, but which is a very good one that he brings up is that clubs don't want to deal with the uncertainty. $30 million, not knowing whether or not you're going to spend $30 million is actually really tricky. I mean, I know these clubs are rich and can spend $150 million on players, which boggles the mind, but they also do have budgets and it isn't as though they have just cash floating around. have budgets and it isn't as though they have just cash floating around, I think it would

be harder than maybe you might appreciate to have this much uncertainty. But the two other ones, the big ones, one is as we've talked about with a lot of contracts with extensions and all those sorts of things is there's an imbalance between the amount of risk that a club is willing to take on and the amount of risk that an individual player is willing to take on. He only gets one career, he only gets one chance at this. There's a big premium on certainty, certainty that he will be rich forever, certainty that he will be rich forever. Certainty that he will never have to coach college baseball if he doesn't want to. Certainty that his grandkids can grow up spoiled little jerks. So I think that there is a, I mean, you can, obviously you can put kind of a price tag

on that. You can figure out a way to value the certainty on each side. But I think the imbalance between those two things might make it so that a deal in the middle that makes sense to both just literally doesn't exist, can't exist. The club might have to so overpay to get the start-by-start payment that it wouldn't be worthwhile for them. They wouldn't be getting the discount that they need. The second thing is that you create a difficult clash of incentives between the player and the team where the player and the team are no longer necessarily on the same side. The team doesn't want you to start if they can avoid it, right? They want you to start when they need you to start. And if it were September 28th

and they're down by a game and you're good, they absolutely want you to start. And if it's September 28th and they're bad, they absolutely don't want you to start. And so you have like each potential situation, like opening day. Yeah, they probably want you to start. May 14th down by eight games, probably want you to start. July 31st down by 27 games, probably want you to start. July 31st, down by 27 games, probably don't want you to start. And you could see situations where, like, from late May onward, when a team knows it's out, or even when a team is way, way up, like, would the Royals want this guy to start for them right now? Probably not.

They don't need to pay a million and a half a start for David Price right now in September. And so you'd have this constant negotiation and this constant tension. And finally, while this deal would be novel and might work for you as a team, the other 29 teams might think that it's bananas and it might be hard to trade that guy, particularly if you're trading him at the trade deadline and the cost. I mean, a team might have to, if you're overpaying for a guy,

now all of a sudden instead of cashing in a guy who you paid $25 million to and now looks like a bargain for the final two months plus the postseason, well now his pay is still really high and maybe teams don't want to take on that amount of money. That was a very thorough answer. Thanks. I don't have a whole lot to add to that.

Well, so the question, though, was how much would David Price get per start if this were just the norm? Yeah. And probably, let's see, David Price is what, like a six or seven win pitcher? Yeah. So if you had total certainty that he was, if you were paying start by start and there was no long-term risk, and you could cut it off at any time, you would probably pay that guy like $45 million a year, or at least he would be worth that.

I don't know if you would pay him that because it's unprecedented and teams don't like to break precedent but say he's worth 45 or 50 million dollars a year is that fair yeah i think so so then i mean if you divide by 30 you get a million and a half per start but again you don't necessarily need him like how you have to figure out how many years you're going to actually want him pitching for you at the end of the year. The thing about it, say you sign David Price for $30 million and he's awesome. He earns his contract by staying healthy and pitching like a Cy Young. Say you're a bad team and you're out of it by the end of August, you're still kind of happy you have David Price, right? You're not being like, dang it,

wish we hadn't signed David Price because we're not competitive. What a waste it was to sign a good player this year because we weren't competitive. You'd still probably be pretty okay. You'd be like, hey, we signed this guy expecting certain performance. He gave us that performance. We're happy. But now if you're remaking this decision every five days and trying to sort of relitigate your happiness every five days, you might really resent that you have to keep paying him. And it might not be fun. Here's a question. If this were the arrangement and he had this flat rate for a million and a half or whatever, how many starts would he make, do you think?

If the team were convinced, I mean, if the team agreed to this rate and he's on this team and he has to start for this team, and when he does start, he gets that much money, but the team doesn't have to start him, how many times would they actually elect to pay that price i wonder because there are starts at the end of the year maybe where you don't need him because you're you have a comfortable lead you could start someone else and yet you also want to maybe keep him prepared for the postseason or if you fall out of contention

then you're not going to use him at all maybe maybe you wouldn't use him down the stretch to any extent so if a guy like price i mean if he makes 30 starts in a regular season with a guaranteed contract how many starts would he make for the the typical team with this kind of contract it's hard to say what the typical team with this kind of contract. It's hard to say what the typical team is. Yeah, I guess it depends. If it's a competitive team in a close race, then he makes every start. I think he makes every start as normal. I don't think he makes more.

Maybe he doesn't make the last one or two. It's weird, too, because if you think about it, I mean, I talked about how you'd have this clash of incentives between the player and the team. In a way, you would, like in a kind of abstract way, you might actually expect that it would be the other way, that the way that we do it now creates the clash of incentives, because the team has already paid for the guy and now wants to squeeze as much as possible out of him and doesn't have to care about him, right?

Because he's theirs. They bought him. They can do with him what they want. And so you could imagine, like in an alternate universe, this being like, hey, well, we don't care about you. We're going to have you start 65 times. But they don't. There's been a negotiated, socially acceptable way that pitchers are used that everybody more or less agrees with, and there's very rarely any argument about it. You start every fifth day. You do it until the end of the year. We only skip a start if we have reason to believe that you're young or frail or tired or something like that, and everything works out. And this, the way that is being proposed, is actually the kind of more true economic model where there's a very direct performance for compensation system set up that should fairly compensate the player for what he's done and that gives everybody kind of extra agency in the situation.

And yet that's the one that seems like it would be troubling. And I guess maybe it would be, maybe it's simply that instead of making one agreement and deciding that you guys are in bed together and you're going to be partners. And so let's make the most of it. It's deciding that we're going to have a negotiated transaction every five days that will lead to more tension.

To answer the question, though, to answer the question, how much would David Price get paid if it were a per start basis? I would say that he would get paid one and a quarter million dollars per start. Yeah, it'd be interesting if it were like variable pricing, like yes, like teams use with tickets where it's it's an appealing series and they're going to draw a lot of fans. So they raise the prices a little bit. So if you had that with David Price, it would be kind of cool to see the differences, like just even using his season right now. Like, I mean, at the beginning of the year, the Tigers were contending.

Like, I mean, at the beginning of the year, the Tigers were contending, and so you would pay him a certain amount, but maybe you'd pay him more if you were playing, you know, the Indians or the Royals or the Twins or whoever than you would in a non-division opponent or an opponent likely you think you are to win that game without David Price, depending on the other team and the other team's starting pitcher know down the stretch now when he's pitching for the blue jays and they're facing the yankees and they're trying to win the division then you would pay him i mean if you're if you're saying the average would be one and a quarter million how much do you pay him in september when you're facing the yankees and you're essentially tied in the division race? Then you'd pay him three times that or something. I don't know. Yeah. So let's, for instance, take Matt Harvey, who we talked about how much you would pay if you could buy his services for the rest of the year right now. And I forget what we said, but a lot, like $17 million. But given where the Mets are right now, for instance,

his next scheduled start is, I think, Saturday. If I could negotiate a payment to him with all my other pitchers available for the same negotiation, how much would I pay for Matt Harvey to make that start on Saturday? Probably like $30,000. I would spend almost nothing on it. They're going to win this division, probably. And I have other guys who I think can get me there. It'd be like pitching Harvey with a nine run lead in the ninth. You know, sure, he'd be better than the other guy, but I just don't need to use him. So maybe $30,000 just for just to watch him. Just that when I die, I could say I watched one extra Matt Harvey start.

Maybe I'd pay $30,000 if I were the owner of the Mets. Now, if it were game seven of the World Series and it were Matt Harvey, or even better, if it were Clayton Kershaw, what would you pay for Kershaw to make game seven, to start game seven for you? Playoff choker, Clayton Kershaw. I would pay him, man, 20 million. Yeah, I was about to say like between 20 and 25. And that might be low. I was, yeah, I was probably going to say like between 20 and 25. And that might be low. Yeah. The only reason, I mean, a win, a World Series win is definitely worth more than that.

But, of course, he's only a part of a win. It's not like he single-handedly wins a game that you would otherwise never have won. I mean, he might pitch and you might lose. He might not pitch and you might win. I don't know. I'm not doing the math right now, but it depends who you have as an alternative. If it's Kershaw over Granke, then maybe I don't know, like 6 million?

And it's probably almost always going to be something like Kershaw over Granke or Kershaw over somebody pretty good. But if it were Kershaw over Aaron Horang or something like that, I probably would go $20 million for that. Yeah, and Aaron Horang has been so bad. I was looking at his stats since the end of May, I think it was, and he has about an ADRA since May, and it's like an earned ADRA. It's bad. Wow.

When we, when we started the stompers, he was well, as I said, Aaron, hooray, got up there. I've done it again.

I've said something dumb because I haven't followed the season close enough and I got it right. I actually got this one right. Awesome. Yep. Um, so let's see when stompers spring training started, he had almost exactly when he had a, he had a 1.82 ERA the day that Stomper's spring training started.

Yeah. All right, so Wes wants to know, what's the highest ERA an undefeated starter could have and retain his job? If you're 10-0 in 10 starts with a 7 ERA, are you still in the rotation? 8? 9? job if you're 10 and 0 in 10 starts with a 7 era are you still in the rotation 8 9 at what point does the era stop mattering and you just get to start every fifth day no matter how terrible you look 14 and 0 15 and 0 more i'm gonna say that well the answer to this question is much different from the answer i would give 10 years ago or 20 years ago oh it's interesting to me it's 10 years ago or 20 years ago oh it's interesting to me it's i'm if it's undefeated to me i'm not sure the answer is different i i don't know i mean maybe undefeated is different from rarely defeated but there have been there have been some examples this year of guys who were let go or were

demoted even though their surface stats or their era or whatever were were very good so jason fraser was dfa'd by the royals in july even though he had a 1.54 era in 26 appearances and 24 innings but he had walked 15 guys in those 24 innings and so he had not been good but he had a 1.54 era and you'd think that that would be enough to let a guy keep a middle reliever job but it wasn't he was dfa'd and then there were a couple other instances like with the blue jays daniel norris started the season with them and he had a respectable ERA after five starts or so. I mean, he made five starts in April and he had pitched not very well, but he had a decent ERA. I can see what it was. And he was demoted to the minors. Of course, he was a young guy who didn't have much experience but still

you'd think in an earlier era maybe they would have let him go he had a 3.86 era after five starts you know in the al east in toronto which is fine but he also had in 23 innings he had 12 walks or you know he hadn't hadn't pitched particularly well so they demoted him and then they also did that with Hutchison recently because he is kind of the closest to this sort of guy who has a high era but a good win-loss record because the Blue Jays score a ton of runs. And so Drew Hutchison is 13-4 right now with a 5.33 ERA. And he was demoted to the minors not long ago, which I think was more of a roster thing and they didn't need him at the time than it was a purely punitive thing. But it was not the sort of thing you do to a guy who's 13-4 if he actually has other stats that support the 13-4.

So I think clearly over the last few years, there's been a lot less tolerance of high ERAs with poor win-loss records. Or win-loss record matters less. Teams are clearly taking it into consideration less. Voters are too. So does it matter that he's undefeated i don't know i maybe but if you have a 70 ra 80 ra 90 ra and you're undefeated i don't know that you get a start if there's anyone else good this is a risky we're risky right now because this could very easily go into a Johnny, a Ghani Jones discussion. Yeah, that's true.

I think that it does matter to me whether, so the spirit of the question, normally I would take the spirit of the question to be how much would you weigh ERA against win-loss record. would you weigh ERA against win-loss record? But I'm not sure, since this is an effectively wild question, if he's specifically talking about undefeated in the Ghani Jones sense. And so I will answer it as though this pitcher is literally undefeated and not simply has a good record. I think that you would almost have to... Now, I would, as an analyst, analyst say yes get him out of there i don't i don't care if it's i don't even care if it's like something reasonable like 4.7 era and he's you know

seven and oh if i have a pitcher i think we'll have a 4.6 era and i think you have a 4.7 era then yes i would bet on the 4.6 pitcher going forward, obviously, or not obviously, maybe, but I would. Okay. However, if I were running a team, I think you have to let him lose. I think, I don't think it plays well if, so baseball players are a little different because our job is to predict results. Their job is simply to get results. And I wrote about this with Brandon Phillips. Remember when Brandon – yeah, the Brandon Phillips article that we once talked about that I had forgotten I had written. And then I reread it and I thought, oh, yeah, that was interesting.

One of the things about that article was that Brandon Phillips was talking about how he was still good. Like he was still proud of how good he was even though everybody else was criticizing him. And he he mentioned his RBIs and the internet's like, blah, you know, like RBIs. But like the dude's job is literally just to drive in runs. Like he doesn't, his job is not to predict whether he's going to drive in runs. It's just to help his team win. And if you, if sure, if all your hits cluster around lucky sequencing to make you look like a better run producer than you actually are, that doesn't necessarily foretell great things in your future. But you do get to go home proud of yourself, right?

You were a part of a win. And it doesn't really matter how you're a part of a win. If your team wins and you did a thing in it, even if that thing was just luck or whatever, whatever, you were the agent of just luck or whatever, whatever. You were the agent of the luck. You were the agent of the win. And so I think that this pitcher would go home every night with his 7.1 ERA and he'd be like, boy, I'd really like to start pitching better. And boy, I'm really happy that we're winning and we've got a good thing going on.

And I kind of think his teammates would sort of be the same way as long as he's undefeated. And I think that you basically tell yourself, well, we're going to probably sacrifice a win at some point because we're throwing this guy out there. But we've got to give him one loss before we pull him. And we sort of had an experience along these lines with the Stompers. And I feel like probably you and I drew different conclusions from that, which your conclusion is also very legitimate if I'm projecting your conclusion correctly. And so I absolutely see that point too. The get him out of there, we're not here to be nice business

is not to coddle guys, but to make sure that we win. And it does the team better in the long run to have the best pitcher on the mound. So that's a very legitimate point and a fair point and one that I wouldn't necessarily argue with. However, I think that my position would not be necessarily be that. I think that I would, I would have, I think, I do think to some degree it is the player's game and you don't want to do anything too extreme to shake them of their sense of ownership of the game and being stakeholders in the game.

So I think I'd let him lose one. Yeah. If it were 10 and if his ERA was 10 but he were 13-0, first I would ask how he got there. Because by the second start, he's only 2-0. And I would definitely, if he were 2-0 but he had an ERA of 10, I'd yank him. No doubt about it. Like I'd pull him from the – we're assuming that somehow this guy got to at least 6 or 7 or 8 starts, I guess. Yeah.

With a bad ERA? I don't know how he goes that deep into games because he's got like an 8 or 9 ERA. So he's in five innings. He's giving up tons of runs every time and yet he is winning every time so so if he's going i mean he's he's going five every time i assume and then this team has ridiculous run support and bullpen so every time he leaves the team probably comes back and wins in a miracle so i don't i don't know if he gets credit for it, like if anyone on the team really gives him credit for that. I mean, you'd have to be, it'd have to be total superstition because it's not even,

in some of these times it might be like a pitching to the scoreboard thing or like, yeah, he gritted it out and, you know, he gave up six runs, but we scored seven and he did what he had to do and that sort of thing. But a lot of times he's going to be leaving down by several runs, and it's going to have to be crazy comebacks. And he's not really going to get credit for the comebacks that happen after he leaves the game, I don't think. Baseball players are quite that superstitious, but maybe. Yeah, I don't know. I don't feel very strongly about my position here. And if I had your position, I think I'd feel a lot stronger about it.

And that might mean that I don't agree with me. That's generally what it means. You feel better about the other person's position than your own. I wouldn't want to keep throwing the guy out there. Every single time I threw him out there, I would be like, this is not good. What am I doing? Why am I doing this? Come on, we've got to make a change. But I think I'd ride it. I don't know. I just think I'd ride it. This is probably, I don't know. I don't know, Ben. months ago i would not have said ride it three months ago i would have said get him out of there and i think that right now i'm in a a period of uh contemplation and so i don't want to say what i would do tomorrow okay well three months ago we did sort of face this decision and i i guess i won't spoil anything for the book but yeah i won't spoil anything for the book. So my favorite high ERA season of a guy who did not get pulled or demoted or anything

and just kept doing his thing is definitely 2004 Sean Chacon, which is just a crazy season. Just insane. 7 ERA and 31 saves. 35 saves. Yeah, so 66 games and a 7-11 ERA. And granted, this is Coors Field. In 2004, that was post-humidor, right? But still, Coors Field, 63 and a third innings pitched, 52 walks and 52 strikeouts.

And yet, so he's got a 7.4 strikeouts per nine, 7.4 walks per nine. And yet, and 12 home runs. And yet he was the closer all year. He was the closer. I don't know if that's like the most progressive thing an organization has done or the most regressive thing. I don't know which it is. But that's the go-to example if you think that a closer has to have a two era sean chacon he couldn't have even blown that many

how many games did he blow that year it must have just been like a crazy he must have had three run leads every time he came in for a save situation let's just well he lost he lost nine games okay so there's that um but yeah that's like everyone talks about like joe borowski 2007 with the indians who had a five something era this is way beyond that so he he blew He blew nine saves, and he saved 35. Was this an era? Remind me or tell me if I'm misremembering this, but it feels to me like this was an era where teams would just make their starters the closer. Chacon, the year before, was their ace.

He was their all-star. He was a 25-year-old starter who had had a 108 ERA plus the year before. He basically had three years under his belt as a full-time starter with basically a league average ERA adjusted for Coors. And then they just made him the closer. And he was way worse. And then the next year, he was a starter again. And I'm thinking like Ryan Dempster was like this brett myers was all of a sudden a closer for unknown reasons uh one of the reds did this with either scott williamson or danny graves yeah i was thinking of danny graves yeah this was just like an era where they're like

you're a starter nah now you're a closer which i guess we've gotten past that right who's who's the we have there is definitely still an ongoing issue maybe arguably where prospects get introduced in the bullpen and then never escape but who's the last legit starter that you can remember moving to the bullpen like like zach britain was a bad starter who moved to the bullpen. Good thinking. Wade Davis was a bad starter who moved to the bullpen. Well done. Who's the last league average starter who just randomly got assigned to the bullpen that you can think of? Yeah, I don't know.

I'm thinking of guys who went the other way, like Wainwright or something. But, yeah, it's been a while, I think. I don't know. Someone will tell us an example from last year or something but but yeah it's been a while i think i don't know someone will tell us an example from last year or something but yeah and like tannerow are guys who get squeezed out they don't they don't count yeah or guys who move for medical reasons like john smoltz or something that that's a little bit different yeah danny graves nickname baby faced assassin that's not that is not that Yeah. Danny Graves' nickname, Baby-Faced Assassin. That's not, that is not, that is absolutely his Wu-Tang nickname generator. That is, baseball reference one day should just replace everybody's nickname with their Wu-Tang nickname generator, now that I think about it.

Yeah, you can't have a nickname that's the same number of syllables as your full name, including last name. I wonder how many times people actually casually referred to him as Baby-Faced Assassin. Byung Hyun Kim was another guy who arguably fits this. Although at least he had an established career as a closer before He wanted to go into the rotation. He was pitching quite well, as I recall, as a starter. And then all of a sudden, Boston acquired him and decided after five starts that he needed to be a reliever because their bullpen was no good. So they moved him to the bullpen. Yeah, that's another one.

All right, play index. But then he went him to the bullpen yeah it's another one all right play index but then he went back to the rotation play index sure uh so zach granky and others the other day were complaining about the uh september game the i say september game because it's a category a descriptive game the game in which like 16 pitchers or whatever were used, and the game went four hours because of the expanded rosters. They were complaining about how awful it was, and Zach Granke said, hopefully somebody will do something so this doesn't happen again or keep happening.

So September games, September call-up games, expanded roster games have been around for a very long time. I don't know exactly when, but certainly when I was a kid, even in the 80s, there were expanded rosters and you'd have these games where all the rookies would get to come in and play. And so

it's not like this is a new invention, the expanded roster, but I wondered whether there's something about this era that makes teams make use of it more. And so I looked to see whether the number of games in which September Colubs play such a huge part of them or where the number of players gets out of hand is a modern invention. And so I went to Team Pitching Game Finder. I set pitchers used for nine.

I figure nine, you almost can't use nine pitchers in a non-September game. You can, but you almost can't, right? Because you would have to have a 13-man bullpen, and you'd have to use every single reliever, or you'd have to use a position player. So it'll happen from time to time, but very rare. And so I looked to see the number of games matching this criteria by year, and unsurprisingly, or somewhat surprisingly to me,

this is fairly modern. And not just modern, but kind of very modern. There were 22 games of this sort last year, which is an all-time high. The next highest was 2012, two years before that, with 16. And in the year in between, there were 14. And if you look even in the 90s, when we had specialized bullpens, when we had expanded rosters, there was, for instance, in 1992, one game like this. 1993, one game like this. 1996, one game.

98, 99, 2000, one game each. 2001, two and three, a total of five games in those three years. 2004, five games. 2005, two games. So it actually was very uncommon, even though all the pieces were in place for it. Before that, extremely rare. For instance, between 1949 and 1985, about almost four decades there were seven such games total uh so that's not that surprising because you wouldn't use in the 1940s you wouldn't use all your relievers it's actually kind of amazing that there were any yes so let's i'm gonna look at this 1949 game how is this

possible 1949 game st louis browns against chic White Sox. Nine-inning game. Nine-inning game. The White Sox used two pitchers. Bill White went eight and got the win. Ed Kleeman got the save with a scoreless ninth. But the Browns used Ned Garver, Joe Ostrowski, Cliff Fannin, Tom Farrick, Carl Drews, Bill Kennedy, Al Papai, Red Embry, and Dick Starr, one inning apiece, which is very, very odd. I wonder what the story is there. I mean, I get that maybe they didn't have a starter and so they had to do a bullpen game, but they didn't have that many,

like nobody was carrying that many pitchers. So why? This is the last day of the season and it was the first game of a doubleheader. And so I wonder if any of these pitchers were actually not pitchers. But you don't have a tomorrow to worry about so you can probably use all your starters.

The second game of the doubleheader only went five innings. And the Browns got a complete game from their starter, Ed Albrecht. I was going to say maybe it was some kind of Bill Veck stunt, but he bought the team two years after that, so it was not. Although it was a really bad team. They won 53 games that year. Yeah, the White Sox only won 63, the team they were playing.

This is a mystery. So I'm going to first, are all these, well, they actually pitched well. They only allowed one earned run. They did lose four to three, but I'm guessing these are all actual pitchers because they all pitched effectively. They're mostly guys who have careers, like Red Embry had an eight-year career. Dick Starr had a seven-year career. These aren't even September call-ups or random one-off guys. So weird. This is a weird game. I'm going to have to explore this game on

my own time. It's like From the Future or something. Some kind of time travel game. some kind of time travel game yeah carl drews pitched 11 or 8 years and was a starter for the team that year tom farragh pitched nine years and was a pretty good reliever for the team that year averaging two innings per outing there's not not... That's so weird. This is such a weird game. Not like baseball is a weird game. I mean, this game is weird. And so, if you can solve the mystery of October 2nd,

1949, at Sportsman's Park 3, please, go ahead and do it. In the meantime, I will attempt to do it sometime. Anyway, so these games were obviously very rare, and then the Specialized Bullpen came around and they became conceivable, but still very rare.

And then we've seen something of an explosion in the last few years. There were 15 in 2006. That was the year that it really jumped. To the year before, 15 in 2006. And then since then, we've been kind of averaged around 10 per year. And in the last three years, it's averaged about almost 20 per year. And so this year has got some making up to do because it's September 10th and we only have eight.

And of those eight, only two of them were actually even of those eight only yeah only two of them were even september games the rest were random games in the season uh a 19 inning game a 17 inning game a 13 inning game a blowout uh 17 to nothing game and so there have only been two this september so there's a a lot of ground to make up maybe this year we're seeing the september call-up game. Not as prevalent, but my guess is that it probably will be, and by the end of the year we'll probably be at 20 or 25. So that's it.

If you want to do an oral history of that 1949 Browns game, you've got a couple options of those nine pitchers. Two are still with us. You've got Ned Garver, who is a sprightly 89, and you've got Dick Starr, who is 94 years young. All right. So you've still got time. Reach out to Dick Starr.

Find out what was up that day. Yeah. I reached out to a pitcher from the 40s one time, and I called him at his home in Utah and I talked to his wife and he never called me back so now I'm scared of that generation the greatest generation you can't call him on the phone

Ned Garber there are what's his middle initial? Franklin F I got it, I got a number what? yeah, I got it i got a number what yeah i got it google kind of okay all right well we should call him live not google but internet

let's call him live like that guy we called about the daylight play should we that'd be that'd be good radio you want want to try? All right. Okay. I'm going to give you a number. Okay. You ready? We're calling Ned Garver. Okay.

That was my plan coming into this podcast. Just answer a couple emails, do Play Index, call Ned Garver. So it's all going according to plan Alright, now are you ready for this Or are you so Scarred by the previous 40s pitcher experience No, it's going to be a wrong number

He spent most of his career in the 50s anyway So he's alright Okay, calling Ned Garver Hello, is Ned there Hello? Hello, is Ned there? This is Ned. Ned, is this Ned Garver who pitched for the St. Louis Browns in 1949? It sure did.

Oh, sir, I'm thrilled to talk to you. My name is Sam Miller. I'm a baseball writer with a site called Baseball Perspectives, and my partner, Ben Lindberg, is here too. And we were looking at a game that you pitched in 1949, and we had a question for you about it. Do you have a minute? Yeah. Yeah, I have a little bit. All right. So this game was the last game of the season, and it was the first game of the

doubleheader. And you started the game, and you guys used nine pitchers for one inning each. And that was so unusual at the time. We're trying to figure out why the pitchers were used that way that day. Well, I don't know why. I don't know why it was, but I think we, you know, we would talk about things like that, and we would say, well, maybe that would be a way to do it. You know, you just come in and pitch one inning,

and then the hitters don't see you the rest of the day. They see another guy. Really? Because that's, yeah. And so I think it was really the idea of the players. And so I think it was really the idea of the players. I mean, I think us pitchers were the ones that really thought it would be fun to do that. But it wasn't anything that the management was thinking up because they wanted to put in as a practice. That's really interesting because that's the way that pitchers are used today,

at least much more so than then, that relievers will come in and they'll just pitch an inning or not even an inning and then they'll get removed from the game. And people always suggest if there's a wild card game or one game that you really have to win, that you should use your pitchers that way and just put your starters in for a couple innings. And you're right, that way you avoid letting the hitters

see the pitcher a couple times. And theoretically, it seems like it should work. So it's really interesting that you tried that so long ago. Yeah, well, we weren't, you know, we had an active mind. You know, we would think up stuff just like they do today. But it was unusual to do that. But I thought, well, what the heck? I thought that wouldn't be too bad of an idea.

You could pitch one inning every day. Yeah, I mean, it seems like it could work. And I guess you have to have a manager who will go along with it. What kind of manager was Zach Taylor? Zach Taylor was a guy who went by the percentage you know i mean he didn't want to do and he wanted to do something

that uh... that we go against the percentages because he didn't want to be criticized and as long as you go by the percentages, they really can't criticize you. They say,

well, you know, that was the percentage thing to do. But then when you take a guy like Billy Martin or somebody like that, you never know what they're going to do. Which kind of manager do you like more?

The percentage guy or the one who goes with his gut? No, I like the guy that would go with his gut feeling. What was the name of my manager out there? Rigney. Bill Rigney. Last manager I had out in California. And he would do stuff like that, you know. And he would do the unusual thing. When the bunt was in order, he'd have the hit and run or something like that, you know.

So I guess the fact that that was not a very good browns team i guess there weren't many very good browns teams ever but uh they went 53 and and 101 that year in 1949 so maybe at the end of the year you guys were out of contention and you were playing the white socks and they were out of contention so it was probably probably a good time to try it if this was something that the pitchers had been talking about, and it was the first game of a doubleheader, so I guess it was the perfect opportunity to experiment. Yeah, I would say so, you know, but we would get eliminated about in July. eliminated about in July.

And it was so anything wasn't too delicate after that. But, you know, you had to be a little careful. I know the manager, he couldn't fool around much because

he didn't want to have the newspaper people criticizing him, you know. But that ball club, in 1951, the year I won 20, that was the same way it was then. We were playing the White Sox. We had both been eliminated from contention. And so it wasn't that the pressure was off. Yeah.

So you won 20 games despite playing for a team that won 52. That's pretty impressive. You were the only 20-game winner for a team that won 52. That's pretty impressive. You were the, the only 20 game winner for a team that lost a hundred games. Maybe you still are. Yeah, that's right. I'm the only one.

But you know, you gotta be lucky. You know, the year before that, I was, I was, think of that. I was second in the league with,

on the, in the earned run average. And with the team that, I didn't have a star player at every position like the Yankees did or some of those other ball clubs. I had, you know, I had a makeshift lineup

a lot of times. But anyway, I had... In 1950, I had the second lowest earned run average in the American League, and I won 13 games. The next year, I had a good earned run average. I completed 24 games, but I was just lucky. I got runs scored when I played, when I pitched.

So I was able to win 20 games and i didn't pitch i didn't pitch any better in 51 right than i did in 1950 yeah and so bill bill veck was there by that time and so he wanted you to to win 20 for attendance reasons i guess well he helped me well i don't know what all the reasons you know, but Bill Beck was a good guy for the players. And so he got the manager, Zach Taylor, together with me and Bill, and he said, now, Garber's got 16 wins, and he said we've got to get him four more starts before the end of the season so that he's got a chance, a shot, at 20 games.

Now, I'm pretty sure that that wouldn't have happened unless Bill Veck had called that meeting. happened unless Bill Veck had called that meeting. But because at that time of year, most of the ball clubs have bringing up, they're bringing up some of their top minor league players to give them a shot at it. You understand? But that way, this way now, we, Bill Vecht, and our manager, Zach Taylor, they mapped out a plan that included me to pitch on the last day of the season. So I pitched four times.

And so I happened, luckily, the odds against that were pretty high, but luckily I won all four starts. And so I just am very grateful to Bill Vick for what he did there. Did you, you said that you and the other pitchers would sit around and you'd dream up some of these ways to play the game a little different, and one of them was having everybody only pitch one inning. Do you remember any of the other ideas that you guys had, and were they put in play,

or were they just ideas that you couldn't get a manager to go along with? No, I don't know. You didn't really have too much of a rapport with your manager. You know, the manager, he was by himself. What I mean is players were players, and during the ballgame, on the bench or in the bullpen, that's where we would talk about stuff like that. But I mean, I don't know that we did a whole heck of a lot of that, and we weren't many Thomas Edison's in the bunch, we weren't too many guys that could invent stuff, you know.

And so we were just reading something about how you wrote a letter to Major League Baseball about a pay plan idea that would help players make more money. And this was 25 years or so before players actually ended up getting free of the reserve clause so could you tell us a little bit about what your proposal was? Sure, I can tell you. I forget, Cuellar or something like that was the man that was in Washington that was looking for information. And so they were talking about, you know, letting people be released or go from one club to the next.

And I just, I said, well, if one club doesn't give you a chance to play, you know, a certain number of games in a year, then you don't have the opportunity to make too much of a salary. So if they're going to do that with, I forget what I said, maybe three years or something like that, then they had to either pay you the going rate for that position or else let you go. And you see, I tell you the truth, I never was for the reserve clause. I never was for the idea. They wanted me to come to Washington because they said, you're the ideal guy.

If you would have got to go someplace else, you would have made a lot more money. But you just proved the Browns had taken me off the farm and given me a chance to play ball. They had invested some money in me. They had done a good job of finding me out. So now I think they deserve to be considered there. I don't think the ballplayers should have all the rights. So now, you see, heaven takes the ballplayers.

If they all decide that they want to go to Minnesota, then next thing you know, you're going to have the best ballclub in Minnesota. And if they all want to go someplace else, next thing you know, you've got the best player, the best team in Miami or whatever. I don't, personally, I think the setup is flawed. I don't like it. All right, well, thanks for letting us know about that.

I was also just noticing that you really could hit early on in your career in that 51 season when you won 20 games. You hit.305 with some power, too. So that was a pretty significant contribution also. I could hit. Yeah, I could hit. The first year I played ball, I hit.407. I played some other position on some days, and I pinch hit a lot. And in 1951, although pitchers don't get much chance to take batting practice, and the longer you go, the less chance you have, I think, of

being a good hitter. Well, anyway, the Browns didn't let me take batting practice, but in 1951, on some occasions, I hit sixth in the lineup. And I batted three, so I led the team in hitting at 305.

And I did, I pinched three, I led the team in hitting at 305. And I did, I pinch hit 10 times. Yeah, in your career you pinch hit 19 times and you hit 313 with three walks in 19 tries. Well. That's pretty good. Yeah, that year I got four hits out of 10, which is hitting 400. Yeah. get four hits out of ten which is hitting 400 yeah so i and i you know i when early wind about

took my head off that kind of that kind of shut me off as a hitter is that right scared me it scared me i i almost got hit in the head and uh dogg be honest, I thought I wasn't making the dime as a hitter. They never paid me anything extra for batting good and pinch hitting and stuff like that. So I said, you know, if I get hurt, if I get hurt, then I won't be able to pitch and I won't be able to earn my living, you know. So that kind of scared me. What year was that? Do you remember? Yeah, it would be in the next year.

In 50, 52? Yeah, I would say in 52. So, yeah, up through 51, you hit 269 in your career. And then from 1952 on, that dropped way down. Well, yeah, I mean, I didn't even try to hit. I'm telling you, I just stood there with my feet close together and made sure I could get out of the way. with my feet close together and be sure I could get out of the way.

The only time I would really bear down is if we had a man in scoring position or a man on third base with less than two out where I would try to get him in. But otherwise, I just went through the motions. Yeah, 184 after that in your career. But you did draw a lot of walks. And you were a pinch runner quite a bit, too. You pinch ran quite a bit. Yeah, I could run. You could do it all.

Wow. I'll tell you one thing. One of the highlights of my career was I was put in to play left field one day at Detroit. I was put in to play left field one day at Detroit. I mean, at St. Louis. I guess we had some people thrown out of the ballgame, or I don't know why. But anyway, he put me in left field. We were playing the Yankees. And now here, listen to this.

The Yankees put Allie Reynolds in as a pinch runner. Now, here you've got one of the best pitchers in baseball being used as a pinch runner. And now listen to this. As the ball, the guy hit a ball that signaled to me, left field. And I charged the ball, and it came up in a nice hop. I got the ball and I just came up and I threw a strike to our catcher.

And Allie Reynolds, the man, the coach threw it, sent him home and he had to try to slide in the catcher and the catcher tagged him out. Now, if Allie Reynolds would have got hurt, you know,

I mean, that's what, they never do anything like that now. I mean, they know, I don't know what they do. These high-priced pitchers now, I don't know if they, where they keep them in between starts, but I know it's so that they don't get hurt. Well, you were the highest paid player in Brown's history at one point, so people were probably saying that about you. Oh, high paid Ned Garver making $25,000 this year.

Probably don't want to risk him. Yeah, that's right. I made talks after that. I remember that winter and one time, you know, I mean, some guy in the audience, he said stuff like that. You know, well, you're overpaid and all this. But, you know, gosh, a ball player, your career don't last too long. You know, and so you really have to make some a ballplayer, your career don't last too long.

And so you really have to make some money pretty quick or you don't get ahead very much. Well, you can go to work in a factory. You might work 40 years there. Yeah. One more question. I'm looking at all the hitters you faced over the years and you did really well against some great hitters, like Bobby Doerr couldn't touch you, for instance,

but Ted Williams wore you out, which I guess is not unusual. He wore everyone out, but you must still have nightmares about facing that guy. You faced him 114 times, and he hit 419 with a 767 slugging percentage and you know you know uh ted always said like he was in a having an interview faye vincent the commissioner was interviewing demaggio and williams and in this And in this, it's documented. You can read it. Where Williams said to DiMaggio, how did you hit Garver?

And DiMaggio said, oh, I guess I hit him pretty good. And Williams said, well, that SOB could throw his glove out there and get me out. Really? Really. And he said, I saw him down in Florida one day. We were playing at a golf outing, and he was being interviewed in the locker room there. And that son of a gun said kind of the same thing. He said, that little right-hander over at St. Louis, that's one guy that could

get me out all the time. He said I couldn't pick the spin up on the slider. So I'm telling him, Ted Williams did more for my career. I mean, he said such nice things that makes you think that I was a pretty good pitcher. And yet, he hit you better than anyone else hit you. By a lot. Well, I don't know if it's better than anybody else. But I mean, he hit me good. But a guy like Vic Wirtz

was the guy that I couldn't get out. Mandel, I didn't have any trouble with Mandel. But anyway, they were all tough. But I liked out. Mandel, I didn't have any trouble with Mandel. Anyway, they were all tough. I like to pitch against people like that because if you got them out,

you felt like you did something. If they got a hit, so what? They were supposed to get a hit. Let me tell you now, I'm going to be on an interview with St. Louis Browns have their reunion

today. And a little bit after two here, I've got to call there and be on a conference call and speak to that reunion bunch. So I've got to get ready,

and I don't know what I've got to do to get ready, only it's going to happen in about 10 minutes. Okay, well, thank you very much, Ned. It was great talking to you and great hearing that story about that game in 1949. Thank you very much, and I hope you have a great interview today. Okay, call me anytime.

Where did you serve in the war, by the way? I was in the Naval Air Corps, but I never served out of this country. Uh-huh, I see. I wasn't in there for very long, but never, you know, I enlisted, and it was quite a while before they called me i enlisted while i was still in high school but they didn't call me for quite a little while but then then when they did uh you know they didn't take you if you were blind you know they were they the war was kind of uh the war was kind of getting over with. So anyway, I never took a gun and went over there like my brother did. He was over there battling the boats and going out there in the night

trying to look for somebody to shoot. Holy crap. Yeah, I had a brother also that was in the Navy trying to look for somebody to shoot. Holy crap. Yeah, well. Yeah, I had a brother also that was in the Navy over in Japan, in Japan, that area. So all three of us boys were in the service, but I didn't get into the real action like my brothers did. Uh-huh. You had better timing.

Okay, well. Okay. Well. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks again. I told them I didn't want to go. I don't blame you. Well, thanks for your time.

This was great. All right. Thank you. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. How about that? That's done.

We should cold call pitchers from the 40s more often on tomorrow's show we'll call Dick Starr that's the end great thing is if we had called about 15 minutes later he would have been on another interview

the two interviews he's done in the last 40 years it's a busy day For Ned Garber But that was great Glad we could do that Much better than the daylight play call No offense to the daylight play guy Alright

That's it You can send us emails Podcast at baseballperspectives.com You can join our Facebook group At facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild rate review subscribe to the show on itunes and maybe tomorrow we'll get into a little bit about what we talked about the other day when we couldn't record correctly but maybe we'll call dick star who knows we'll be back tomorrow