Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 726: How Many Fingers is Mike Trout Holding Up?

Episode Date: September 16, 2015

Ben and Sam read responses to previous topics, then answer listener emails about Mike Trout, questionable bullpen decisions, what WAR is missing, and more.

I put the finger right on you. I put the finger right on you. You put your finger on me too. I put the finger, I put the finger, I put the finger, I put the finger on you. Good morning and welcome to episode 726 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus, presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectus. Hi. Hi.

Doing an email show. Yes, sir. Anything to say before we start doing the email show? Well, I have two emails that I'd like to read that are not questions but are answers about things that we previously talked about. So I don't know if we wait for the email segment to get to those or if those are considered

banter email. I'm just going to start the email segment with those so I think we can just blend them together. Okie doke. You want to read one? Yeah, sure. So I'll start by reading Michael's who replied to our conversation about Andrew Heaney and Phanteks. And we wondered what happens if Phanteks goes out of business and if, in fact, Heaney was simply betting on the possibility that they would and he wouldn't have to pay them back. Michael is a bankruptcy lawyer.

Am I reading that right? I didn't think he said what he was. He was an authoritative emailer. Wow, yeah. Who sounds like he knows what he's talking about. Yeah. I assume he emailed because he has some sort of specialized knowledge. I assume he is a lawyer, but he didn't claim to be one.

I would like it if, in fact, he just did all the legwork for us and called seven or eight sources and put together a report that we could read. Anyway, he answers that condensed answer. If Phanteks goes belly up in the next six to ten years, it enters bankruptcy, and Heaney probably gets sued for the $3.4 million by the bankruptcy trustee. and Heaney probably gets sued for the $3.4 million by the bankruptcy trustee. Presumably, if Phanteks goes out of business, it will go into bankruptcy or be forced into involuntary bankruptcy by its creditors. Once this happens, the trustee handling the bankruptcy will file what is commonly called clawback actions. Basically, there are a bunch of ways a bankrupt company can claw back payments it made before it went bankrupt. The idea is that all the creditors of the company should share the gain, sorry, should share the pain equally, and it shouldn't

be that the creditors who got paid right before the company goes bankrupt make out like bandits, while the others have to fight over the crumbs left behind. Instead, the company, via the trustee, claws back money from people who received payment from the company within a certain amount of time, depending on the statute slash theory, 90 days or two years or six to 10 years for some state laws. This maximizes the amount of assets that can be spread to the creditors, and then all the creditors get in line and receive a pro rata share of the money left in the bankruptcy estate, depending on priority. Obviously, because this is an incredibly arcane area of law, there are a bunch of ifs, ands, buts that go into this, and I'll spare you the even more boring details, but that's the short answer. Heaney would probably get sued by the bankruptcy

trustee in a clawback suit and would have to either pay the money back or, more likely, settle the claim for a portion of the $3.4 million. In other words, betting on Phanteks going out of business tomorrow is probably not a smart wager on his part. And that's probably true, although there are a couple of details here that might benefit Heaney, one of which is that I don't know what happens if it's six to 10 years. Mike, please continue to do the legwork and let me know if he has any exposure in that case. And B, he to some degree doesn't have, there's at least some portion of the outcomes of this would not have the downside to him because if Phanteks goes out of business, he doesn't then have to pay 10% of all future earnings, just the $3.4 million. So in the scenario where that happens, yes, I guess it just undoes it. I don't know if that helps him or not.

It just makes it as though it never happened, I guess. So maybe that wouldn't help him. Mike's short answer is pretty long. That email could be the rantings of a madman for all that we know. But it sounds totally true i'm treating it as fact okay all right i'm gonna read an email about tanking this is an email from matt trueblood who says not to kill the buzz but the 2012 cubs traded ryan dempster and paul mahalam let matt garza's season end with an elbow issue in late July when he could have returned around mid-September, and shut down Jeff Samarja after his start on September 3rd. Those Cubs were 43-59 on July 31st and finished 18-42, with a starting rotation of roughly

Travis Wood, Jason Birkin, Justin Germano, Chris Volstad, and Chris Rousen. They were 3-13 over their final 16, including two one-run wins. Wood was pushed back a day so as not to pitch in their third-to-last series of the season in Colorado against one of only two teams who stood to draft higher than the Cubs. The Rockies swept that series and never had a chance to get back underneath the Cubs' eventual win total. In short, the Cubs tanked their way to Chris Bryant. So it's happened once at least. That does seem plausible. It does. And we got a couple other emails about ways that a team could tank, because I said something about how it's hard to intentionally tank without outright benching your

best players. And Mike suggested you could play your platoons every day for evaluation purposes and rest your lefty masher against righties instead of lefties start a younger reliever to see what he's got jerry manual did this with bobby parnell in 2009 though not for tanking reasons pinch run for your best player with scrubs leave struggling relievers in way too long this always happens anyway so no one would seriously buy into the tanking reasons. Teach your starters a new pitch and tell them to go ahead and throw it in games. Mess with your rotation so that one or two good pitchers go against an ace more often so you rarely have the matchup advantage.

And another emailer named Matt also suggested a similar bullpen thing. Just use your September bullpen call-ups in the most high leverage situations. It seems like we blame managers for bad bullpen strategy all year. So we're at least acknowledging that they have some ability to cost their team games without doing anything that would get them in trouble with the players union. So they could continue to do that in September. Yeah, some of those would be, ideally you do something that's not obvious, but yes, some of those would probably be too obvious and you'd have to explain yourself

without acknowledging what you're doing. And some people don't like to do that. It's nice because GMs don't have to face the media every day. And so to some degree, one of the reasons it's easier to tank an entire season than a month is that the entire season is all done at the roster level and you know gm he's in an office he doesn't have to talk that much to the media uh and the manager has to talk to him twice a day for like 40 minutes uh while they outnumber him badly so it's harder for him uh to pull off the uh the off the defies belief non-answer. And some of them do put players in positions to fail. And I think that you'd have a hard time getting people to hurt their own numbers.

Like the throwing, experimenting with a pitch, for instance, is a good way to be bad. But then that pitcher's going to have to wear that for the rest of his life, and they're going to really fight that. I still do think that 98% of what motivates these guys is avoiding embarrassment and putting up good numbers, and in fact that the team aspect is only like 2% of it, or maybe it's slightly more, 4%.

The long-term team aspect of it is like a half of a half of a half of a percent, which is an eighth of a percent. So they're probably not going to want to do that. They probably just wouldn't. They just would look at you and say, no, what? You're great. I don't throw that pitch. That's weird.

All right. Shall we move on to new business? Yes, please. Okay. Dominic wants to know, On Sunday, Zach Greinke was cruising against the Diamondbacks. He had a pitch count in the low 90s after eight innings, so I was quite surprised when we returned from commercial

to see Kenley Jansen on the mound warming up for the ninth. When explaining the move, the sideline reporter said that Don Mattingly felt that this was the time of the year that you go for it, meaning using Jansen in a four-run, non-save situation as you would in the playoffs. So I was confused. Does this mean Mattingly thinks a fresh Jansen is better than the league's ERA leader with 90-95 pitches? Am I wrong to want Grinke protecting that four-run lead 10 times out of 10 over Jansen?

Jeez, that's a softball, Ben. Go ahead and answer it. I would say yes, you're wrong. I'm sort of surprised that Mattingly said that or that he felt that that was going for it because you do hear so many people say that closer in the non-save situation is not liable to be as effective as he usually is you did a play index segment on that once that showed that that wasn't really the case but that is a pretty persistent belief and Greinke has been great Greinke never has a bad start Kershaw never has a bad start either.

But after not only the 90 to 95 pitches, but the three times through the order or whatever it was, Kenley Jansen, fresh, first time facing a batter, would be better at least by the projections. So if you think that Greinke has just reached an entirely new plane of existence and a new plane of pitching, and he is that much better than even Greinke the third time through the order compared to a really good closer, one of the best relievers in baseball over the last several years. the last several years if you think grinky is just leveled up to the extent that he is better than that then then no but i don't think so i mean jensen's numbers are basically grinky's numbers right like i'm looking at at their stat pages but and i'm pretty comparable and i will just note that that this year grinky's third time through the order is, by one way of looking at it, almost identical. It's a little worse, but not by much. By fielding independent levels, it's much, much worse.

And I don't, I mean, with these sample sizes, you probably would have to conclude that that's a fluke and not a skill, but, you know, maybe not. But you probably would have to conclude that that's a fluke and not a skill, but maybe not, but you probably would have to conclude that. We're only talking about 250 played appearances per split, but the OPS against is fairly consistent throughout,

but he strikes out... What about over his career? Well, I'll look at that in a second, but his strikeout to walk rate in the first time is 11. The third time it's 3. And he's allowed more home runs in fewer at-bats the third time than in either the first or the second.

There's a BABIP thing going on the third time. Which, again, if you wanted, you could maybe argue that he's doing something differently. But probably with those... Cult of Grinke. Cerebral pitcher. He can make pitches better than anyone else, which I don't know. Maybe he can, but yeah. In his career, pretty much identical.

686 OPS the first time, 689 the first time, 686 the second. But all the peripherals are fairly consistent in that case. So that's interesting. Now, that's interesting. He has essentially no penalty as an individual person. Hmm. Hmm is right. Yeah, that's interesting.

I mean, there's always a survivor bias with these things when you get to the fourth time. Yeah. Because you're likely only going four times through on the days when you really have it or you're facing a bad team or you know for whatever reason factors are making you a much better pitcher the third time though that he makes it the third time almost all the time he doesn't necessarily make it all the way through every time but like he's made 320 starts in his career and 310 of them he's at least faced 19 batters so gotten to the third time through and he's you know it's like 88 as many at bats so there's a little survivor ship bias there uh but not a lot and so that's interesting he doesn't seem to have that penalty

much if at all. it has not been even with that 234 his career average is 299 so he has made some changes this year and who knows maybe he's smarter now and he figured something out but 234 is crazy no one can do 234 consistently so if his wait a minute no one can do 234 consistently relievers can is even Rivera's that low I don't think I don't know if Rivera's was but no but Pat Neshex is and I think Tyler Clippard's is there's a couple of pitchers who were that low I thought the the bottom level was like somewhere in the 250 260 range for like big sample guys Tyler Clippard's career yeah he's down there he's he's at 232 and check 233 of course that's uh smaller that's 332 innings so i'm not i'm not really buying it but mariano rivera always got a lot of credit for

having a low babbitt and his is 263 over 1283 in3 innings. So anyway, maybe a reliever can come close to that. I still think that over a large enough sample, it'd be hard to do. But if you buy that his FIP and over the course of his career, his ERA and FIP are almost exact matches. So if you buy that his 2.69 FIP is maybe a better reflection of who he's been than his 1.61 ERA, then Kenley Jansen has been better than that in every year of his career. I'm going to give you two more things that I would like to say about this.

One is that I've always had a hypothesis that I've never gotten around to, but it's only, I don't have a prediction for whether this is right or not, but a hypothesis that when you bring a new pitcher into a game, just knowing what we know, for instance, about the first inning effect for starters that we talked about one time, where there's a lot more variance in the first inning for pitchers, there's guys who you need to get to early, right? A lot more variance in the first inning than in the fifth or the third or any other that while we know that Kenley Jansen in the aggregate is better than Zach Greinke or virtually any other pitcher on an inning by inning basis. What we don't know is whether he's better that day because there might be a much higher kind of standard deviation of performance

on any individual day. Like that day, he just might not have it. And, you know, because you're like at a certain, if you're going to say nine pitchers who all have a three ERA as one inning guys, or one pitcher who has a three ERA for nine, you know, for all nine innings. Well, I mean, there's the, there's the fatigue factor in the times of the order. So he might not be as good in the ninth, but, uh, imagine a guy who, who is like a starter and has a three ERA. I would speculate that the range of runs,

the number of runs that would be allowed in, say, a million trials with each of these structures would be a lot wider for the one-inning guys, right? Does that make sense? I think so. Nine one-inning guys or one nine-inning guy, and they're all three ERA true talent guys. I would speculate, I would hypothesize,

that the 9-1 inning guys would have a lot more games where they give up 10 and maybe a lot more games where they give up zero. And so if you're looking at the ninth inning of a game you're up by four, you don't, like if you had to get, say, a strikeout, say there was a runner on third and it was the go-ahead run and there was nobody out. Well, Kenley Jansen probably is more likely to get those two strikeouts or three strikeouts to get out of the inning. But in a four run game, he's also probably more likely to come out and just have absolutely nothing. So maybe that's one reason that you wouldn't go to Kenley Jansen

instead choosing to stick with the kind of relatively safe answer that's already in front of you. Two, though, and I think this is why I would not bring Kenley Jansen in, I feel like bringing in a closer to a four-run game, I think that the great danger there is that once you bring him in, you can't really get him out of the game if he's your closer until the lead is blown. It's very, very difficult for managers to pull their closers once the closer is in the game, even... And he did come close to blowing the game.

He gave up a three-run homer and then finally got out of it. And so the odds are very likely that Kenley Jansen is not going to allow four runs. However, if he does, if it starts to happen, you're kind of stuck, and there's not really anything you can do, and that's the way that your closer ends up throwing 46 pitches and you can't use them for the next two days either, which is that's the primary reason I would never bring my closer in

to a four-run game or a five-run game. Even if he needed work, I wouldn't do it. I would do it for nine because then you're not going to leave him in to blow a nine-run lead. If I needed him to get work, I'd throw him into a nine run game i would never throw him into a four or five run game though because i've i just feel like that's the way that you lose your closer for three or four days when something when everything goes wrong so in conclusion you let granky go out there you give him at least one for heaven's sake probably two base runners knowing that the margin is very large,

and you don't really worry too much about who's better because it's a four-run lead. You don't even want to use your best reliever in a four-run lead, whether you're going for it or not. Yeah, right. With a four-run lead, I wouldn't have minded, certainly, if they would let Greinke in. Either way is fine. Their win probability is you know 98 either way i would not have minded

if they had gone out and acquired ronald belisario and let him pitch yeah i think they've tried that once all right question from andrew patrick i found on baseball reference that there was a baseball player named sam miller in the 1970s he pitched for one year in the senator system before calling it a career he's now 67 years old and lives in norfolk virginia this is a clear attempt to convince us to call sam miller don't call sam miller but the actual question is who do you think is a better baseball player currently? Sam Miller, the person hosting this podcast, or Sam Miller, the 67-year-old former minor leaguer? So this is one of two questions that we have that is basically a variation of how bad does a major leaguer have to get before you're

better than him? Yeah. And we might get to the other one. I guess we probably will. So who is a better player currently, me or a 67-year-old former major leaguer? Not even major leaguer. He topped out in APOL. Okay, me by a lot. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm terrible, but me by a lot. I saw Mike Jackson, famous reliever Mike Jackson, throw out a first pitch the other day.

Yeah. And it was not the first pitch of an athlete no like you lose athlete status through a combination of of age and inactivity age and inactivity you lose athlete status somewhere between i would say by like an inactive player by 44 or 45 ceases to be even high school level now if you stay active and you stay in shape then you can obviously some guys have have done it and even the guys who just hang on like who just who aren't good and don't have careers but just hang on and what it like is an indie league or they go down the mix or whatever i think just staying active gives you another you know two or

three probably years and then the the outliers can go into their early 50s even. However, if you stop playing at 35, by 44, I feel fairly certain that in 90% of cases, you are worse than a high school player. Now, that's 44. Even if I'm nuts, then I feel very confident by 54. And even if I'm not as good as a high school player now that's 44 even if i'm nuts then i feel very confident by 54 and even if i'm not as good as a high school player i feel very confident that by the time you get to 64 you're worse than me and this dude's 67 and he was never a major leaguer in the first place and he was a minor leaguer in a era where you can't really guarantee that that meant anything either like he was there for one

year presumably because he was not very good and who knows why he got first round pick yeah we have absolutely no idea how good they were at selecting talent back then in the 31st round uh he might have been a friend of a friend 44 walks and 43 strikeouts in 57 career innings. Yeah, so I feel 100% confident that I am better than Sam Miller of Norfolk, Virginia. Yeah, I think that's right. I'm kind of shocked by how quickly former athletes go from the mound to in front of the mound when they throw out the first pitch. You'd think that it's one throw. You can put all of your effort into that and

just the muscle memory ingrained from hundreds of thousands of throws over the course of your life you'd think you'd be able to make the mound throw i mean at what age do you think you'll you won't be able to make the mound throw i geez i i don't know i would not even think to go to the front but i would guess i'd have to be so decrepit to to move in front of the mound i i don't think i would voluntarily go to the front of the mound before 70 yeah but by the way middle-aged former major leaguers and maybe if you're a major leaguer you want to camouflage the decline by going in front of the mound just taking all the pressure off and not even trying to match the picture of you that everyone in the stands has in their mind's eye so you just go and you

you know you mug that you're an old man and you laugh and everyone laughs and you toss it in there. Maybe because you don't want to compare yourself to what you were before. But it is sort of shocking to me. You see middle-aged former major leaguers don't even attempt to throw from the mound. I want to point out, by the way, that I'm not talking about the physical decline of Norfolk Sam Miller lightly. I know from experience, and I think a lot of people listening who are younger than me, even just a little younger than me, don't appreciate how badly our bodies break down. It is incredible how much worse of an athlete I am now, I think, than I was five years ago. Like I tried to catch a pop-up in batting practice with the stompers. Just that simple act and I pulled a muscle in my neck and shoulder

and it hurt for a month and a half. And I don't think I'm capable of sprinting the way that I used to. Like now I just sort of – like I look like I'm walking on cans that have been tied to my feet. That's at 35. I can feel it coming. I'm hanging in there. If I were a major leaguer, I would still be a major leaguer. I'm not that far gone, but it's really, really close. I'm almost out of my whatever level I was able to play out at 27. You must have to watch a lot of baseball to distract yourself from these signs of your mortality. By 65, I mean, you just, it's not even, like it's unreal what happens between 35 and 65.

So all you young people who are overestimating 67 year old Sam Miller out there, knock it off. It is not close. I would destroy him. And yet, despite all that decline, you'd still make it to the mound at his age. I think I have faith he would too.

Okay. Well, we won't call him to find out. All right. All right. The other one comes from jake of the cesspitous family barbecue and they have discussed this question on their podcast before which almost made us rule it out but we're going to answer it anyway we've talked about this before but i'd be interested in your take how many fingers would mike trout need to lose for you to be better at

baseball than he is a zero fingered mikeout is almost definitely worse than both of you. Almost. But a nine fingered Mike Trout is probably better. Where's the line for you? I don't think we need either of those caveats. We don't need almost and we don't need probably. Well, technically he would be better because technically, if we had to play, if we were both forced to play center field and bat four times a game, then yes.

I think that zero-fingered Mike Trout would be worse than me. However, if we just had to be on the roster, I would have zero use on a roster. Like I could not, I couldn't do anything at all. I would just be a complete war suck. Whereas Mike Trout could pinch run. I couldn't do anything at all. I would just be a complete war suck. Whereas Mike Trout could pinch run. Yeah. He would be the world's,

he'd be a terrible pinch runner in that he's like not like you don't carry a pinch runner, a designated pinch runner and he's no longer like elite speed Mike Trout that he was anyway. I mean, but at least he could do it right. Like he could, he could probably add i don't know a run a year maybe two runs a year three runs a year as a base runner maybe and i could not yeah so in that sense he's even zero fingered in that sense it would take you'd have

to cut off you'd have to start cutting off feet uh And so in the scenario where we both have to play, though, an entire year, it would be... I'm assuming that you can remove the least valuable fingers. Yeah. So you can choose which fingers you can spread them out. They don't have to be on the same hand, and they don't have to be thumb. Yeah, and I'm presum like that we live in a world where you can make a glove that would work yeah so you'd probably would get like for instance if you cut off five on the left hand you'd probably would have full defensive value still and there's

an argument i mean if he lost all the fingers on one hand he could could still pitch, and he'd be a better pitcher than you. Yeah, but would he be a good enough pitcher, though? Probably not a major league pitcher. Would he be a good enough pitcher to produce less negative war than I would as a left fielder batting four times a day? And yeah, I think, well, yeah. Yeah, I think yes. He would.

Yeah. I expect that you could use him as a reliever. So yeah, so very minimum five. Yeah. And probably. There have been three-fingered pitchers who were good. But I assume they learned. They were raised this way.

They didn't just lose them mid-season. Right. And what if you lost them mid-game? I would probably be much better than him if he lost a mid-game. Like probably only two if he lost a mid-game and I might be better than him. Right. Until he gets anesthesia, between the injury and the painkiller, you would be better? I think the answer is probably seven.

Didn't we just say the minimum was five? He'd have to lose seven. Oh, he'd have to lose seven. Okay. If he had three. If he had two, it's hard to see him doing any baseball activities. Yeah. I think he needs three. I think so, too.

Even three is... Three, I'm giving him 90% defensive value. Yeah, that's true. And my hitting is no better than his anyway our hitting will be equal no matter what i mean he couldn't throw if he's playing defense he'd have to be like randall gritchuk was in center field for the cardinals the other day just if he had just giving the ball to the right fielder to throw it and i feel like i could probably outdo that with probably you could out throw someone who couldn't throw but i like i could probably outdo that with probably you could out throw

someone who couldn't throw but i think i could out defend somebody who couldn't throw who if somebody who could not throw at all like could through like they were throwing uh you know like a box of shoes like that was their throw yeah i feel like i could out defend that guy i don't know if he's a really good center fielder i don't know i'm not sure either i but i i'm going with the answer that i can now i would still be a worse offensive player because we would do the exact same thing at the plate which is draw one walk every 16 at bats and then he'd be a better base runner once he got there yeah so it's not totally clear that even if he had two fingers and couldn't throw yeah that i wouldn't be a worse overall

player so the answer is either he the answer is either uh he would have to lose eight for me to be better or he would have to lose 10 and he would still be better there's only two answers there's only two possible choices here i think that's right okay play index all right so um i wanted to know whether older pitchers are more likely to outperform their era or sorry to outperform their fip or or worse okay i think at certain points i've hypothesized both sides of this yeah we were it's okay to hypothesize man it's okay hypothesis is not saying it is true it is just saying that i would like to get to this someday yeah so there's the the argument that we were almost making about grinky earlier the hypothetical argument that you get smarter and craftier and you figure out how to keep

batters off balance and then you get weak contact. So there's that one. And then there's the Lincecum case that we've talked about before. Maybe the Cece Sabathia case where you have a good strikeout to walk ratio, but you also throw lots of meatballs and you give up lots of home runs. Yes, I've argued before that or hypothesized. I'm going to stick with hypothesized, not argued. I've hypothesized before that for pitcher collapses, FIP is a lagging indicator. Yeah.

All right. So baseball reference lets you sort by age by 25 and under, 26 to 30, 31 to 35, and 36 plus. And so I went five years, the past five years, as one solid block of data for each of these major league wide. That gives me around 50,000 to 50,000 innings for age 25 and under, 40,000 for ages 31 to 35, 100,000 for ages 26 to 30, and 13,000 for ages 36 plus. So big, big, big samples. Okay? Mm-hmm. All right. So first off, their ERAs as groups are all pretty close to each other,

which makes sense even though 36-year-olds aren't generally as good as 26 year olds the fact that clubs only have to employ the people that they want to employ is probably going to generally keep a fairly consistent uh quality of play no matter what age group you're in right because if you're bad at 36, you just get kicked out of the league. So 25 and under is a little worse ERA-wise, and 31 to 35 is a little worse than the others, and 26 to 30 is a little better. But they're all pretty close. Now, as to the FIP ERA differential, do you want to have a guess? I will guess that the old guys are worse, but not by much. Worse than what?

Worse than their ERA? Worse than their FIPS. Worse than their FIPS. So you would guess that their ERAs are worse than their FIPS? Yes. Okay. I didn't guess before I looked, unfortunately. But you could guess that the old guys would be worse than their FIPS. You could guess the young guys would be worse than their FIPS. You could guess that there would be no difference whatsoever, no discernible trend. And I'll let you decide whether there is a discernible trend. The 25 and under have a 398 ERA and a 396 FIP. And with decimals, it's even less than that. It's one and a half points

difference, which is essentially nothing. Ages 26 to 30 is almost the same. It's 1.4 points of FIP, 384 to 383 with rounding. So that's essentially nothing. Ages 31 to 35 is 9 points of FIP, 395 to 404. And then ages 36 plus is essentially the same. It's 2 points of FIP, 391 to 393. So the only age group that we see any real deviation is 31 to 35, which is 9 points. And much, I don't know if nine points is a lot or not. I know that it's a lot more than one point or two points, which is what we see with the other ones. And by the way, nine points worse. Both of the younger groups are slightly better. Both of the older

groups are slightly, sorry, the other way around. Both of the younger groups, ERAs are slightly higher than their FIP and both of the older groups's ERAs are lower than their FIP. You could, I don't know. I don't know. What do you think? Do you want to? I mean, how many innings are we talking about? It's a huge number.

Yeah, yeah, huge number. We're talking about 41,000 innings for this group. Yeah, I'm going to say that's real for the old guys, for the moderately old guys. So we're saying that young guys actually do underperform their FIPS slightly, and old guys actually do overperform their FIPS slightly, and perhaps more than slightly in this age 31 to 35 group, which is kind of your not quite prime, but still healthy, still physically able age where you have experience. Yeah. I don't know if I'm going to buy the one and a half point difference for under 25 guys or whatever it was But I'm sure if you plug the Other one into a Statistical significance calculator

It would say that it was significant Which doesn't necessarily mean That it is reflecting something real But I would guess that it Probably is Okay now let me point out one other thing Which is this Where does this come from

How does a FIP generally outperform or underperform an ERA generally? Most common, BABIP. Pop-ups, yeah, BABIP, yeah. BABIP. All right, so you would expect then the 31 to 35-year-olds who are outperforming their FIPs to also be better at BABIP. In fact, they have the highest BABIP of any group, which then suggests to me, and I don't have this in front of me, but suggests to me that if I looked further, it is probably sequencing. Not pitch sequencing, sequencing delve into psychology they probably aren't as prone to uh to beginnings which would make sense right yeah sure okay so there we have

it okay sign old guys sign old guys everybody sign old guys yeah all right patrick says i was Patrick says, I would love to. Wow, Ben. Yes, what? John Lester, 46 seconds ago, picked a runner off first. Really? Really. Wow. Long con. It was the long con. I knew it. I knew it all along it was the long con.

Was it a high leverage situation? Well, they're playing the Pirates, and it's the 15th. So, yeah, it was. All right. Who did he pick off? He picked off, it looks like Starling Marte. I'm trusting Twitter here. Oh, right.

Yeah, we just got tweets about this. Guys, Jon Lester completed a pickoff throw, catches Marte off first, makes the throw over there, and they get him in a rundown. Big play. All right. Somebody tweets, Lester has arrived. He earned about $15 million of that pickoff. Good for him.

Okay. I cannot wait to see this gif. Yeah, me too. All right, Patrick, I am curious about what you guys think remains unaccounted for by war or warp if anything that might be discovered upon measurement to have as outsized in effect on player valuation as catcher framing did i'm not sure i can come up with any plausible areas where this might be the case ability to foul pitches off mustache grooming or some such clubhousey thing but with game calling turn out to be relatively small potatoes

i wonder if there are any more grand revelations to be had or if we're sliding headfirst down the era of diminishing returns well the question of whether we'll ever get to it is is complicating but i think that a lot of coaching is player to player and i would guess that there are some players who who can i don't know if they can persistently have a lot of value but have at least for some period of their career had a tremendous amount of uncounted value by coaching or in some way making a teammate or multiple teammates better. I think that has probably been a real thing that has happened a bunch of times. Yeah, although you wouldn't take that value away from the player that the coach made better, probably,

because the player is actually that good with that coach, unless he's only good while he's playing with that coach, and if he goes to another team afterwards, he will backslide and lose all of it. It depends what you mean by take away that value. If you're signing a free agent, then you might pay more. If this guy was reliably able to make guys better, then you would pay him more.

And if the point of war or the point of projections is to figure out how much a guy is likely to be worth and therefore how then you would pay him more. And if the point of war or the point of projections is to figure out how much a guy is likely to be worth and therefore how much you should pay him, then you would, you know, you might have to take that credit away in that sense, since you wouldn't take it away from the guy when you're looking at Hall of Fame voting 30 years down the line. But if you're looking at who brings value to a club and who's likely to next year, you'd have to portion that win somehow. But he does bring the value he still he still does those things he's still capable of doing those

things the guy well if you'd pay the player more but you i mean you'd pay the coach more definitely if you could prove that he had this ability but you wouldn't pay the player less unless i guess you unless you're saying that he can do this with any player no you wouldn't pay the player less unless i guess you unless you're saying that he can do this with any player no you wouldn't pay the player less because let's say there's 500 wars that are created in major league baseball and that that is let's say that because we know that well okay so we know there's 2430 wins every year yeah and so i i forget what replacement i don't know the math off the top of my head. But let's say that that's 700 wars over replacement level, right? Okay. Because replacement level is a certain number of wins that are just going to happen.

So then maybe the league as a whole produces 700 wins. And let's say that player A produced eight of these wins, and player B fixed his swing because he can always fix swings, and you somehow reliably knew this, and made him four wins better. Now, in retrospect, it doesn't really matter whether you give those four wins to player A or player B because 700 is still going to be the same for that year. You know, you could. It doesn't matter.

You could. Maybe it matters to you, but it doesn't matter to me. But next year, you know, there's also going to be 700 wins, and you have to figure out where those 700 wins are going to come from. And every win comes at the expense of another player because you're performing against other players. And probably the guy who is now an eight-win player, if you think he's still going to be an eight-win player, will still be an eight-win player. But if player b can turn another four win player into an eight win player those four wins have to come from somewhere someone the pool of wins is always going to be stable and so yeah you probably give him those wins again if they were reliable and they were real and you knew how to count them and predict them and everybody else in the league

would lose a fraction of a win simply because the standards would be slightly higher right yeah i guess so i don't i don't know about what other it's getting harder to imagine areas that could definitely be worth this you know something on this order of magnitude well so wow so okay so marty left before the throw like like an idiot and then Lester ran at him, and he stopped in the middle, and then Lester did manage to throw to first base. It was not a pickoff throw. Okay. This was absolutely not a pickoff throw.

And if Marte—I don't think this changes anything. How far was he from first when he made the throw? Lester? Yeah. Normal amount, but not the same angle. He takes the steps. He just sort of lobbed it to first. He didn't step and throw.

It wasn't a pickoff throw in any way. Marte runs, Lester runs at him, and eventually Lester turns and just kind of flips it to the first baseman so you know 60 feet I mean he managed to not throw the ball backwards but it doesn't make you think that he cured what ails him he didn't throw a pick off this is not a pick off and so I'm saying this changes nothing I think Marte and Marte didn't have a it's not like Marte took such a big lead that Lester eventually threw it over. Marte just took off before Lester had moved.

So. Okay. Changes nothing. All right. All right. What are we talking about? Are there any other areas? Pick off throws.

The ability to not pick off throws is the other thing that war can't get. pick up is the other thing that war can't get um i mean you know the the whole like i i don't think that i i don't personally think that a clutch will ever be found a clutch gene will ever be found at the major league level do you at least i don't i don't think there will be i don't think there will be one that is worth that much the The argument for clutch is that, I mean, you can't really argue that a guy gets better in a clutch situation because then that would be like, well, why doesn't he always be good?

You should just be good all the time. In that formulation, being clutch would actually be a bad thing. It would be that you're underperforming, right? However, the argument that makes sense is, well, everybody else chokes a little bit in pressure. And if you can manage to not choke in pressure, then you'll be better, which makes sense, except then you'd have to have, we've already sort of had trouble finding any evidence of clutchness or chokiness. And so then

the idea that it is actually present in 90% of major leaguers all the time and that we can't see it feels like a stretch. You would need to have the whole league be choking for this to matter, right? More or less. And so anyway, I don't really think that a clutch gene will ever be found. I think at lower levels, I would think it would be. I don't – and I wouldn't yell at you if you did find it. I wouldn't be mad. I'd be happy. I'd be happy.

It'd be fun. But I'm not optimistic. If we get to the point where players are wearing heart rate monitors and neurological sensors and stuff, I'm sure there would be some variation in them. I don't know whether you could necessarily say that an elevated heart rate means that he is unclutched or that he's less likely to succeed. Maybe he's functioning more optimally because he's pumping blood faster or he's got heightened awareness because of whatever is going on in his body. But you could probably detect some

differences. But even that, even if there was a clutch, I don't know how much it would be worth. Just relative to other major leaguers, it doesn't seem like it would be many wins a year. Although, I don't know. When you're in those clutch situations, everything you do is more valuable and matters more. So you wouldn't have to be that much better in those clutch situations for it to be worth something significant. But it seems like a stretch for it to be worth that much yeah the i mean he's asking us about a thing that could compete with the 50 run catcher yeah and i don't think that i'm just i'm not optimistic that that's going to happen anything else about that i can't think of anything else about that either there are many areas where you could find a few runs here or there but but yeah i mean there there are aspects of a player

that make him better but those things are generally captured in his value it's basically saying what is what parts of offense and defense are we just not observing yeah and what are we misallocating to someone because if catcher value if it should be subtracted from pitcher value which is something that is still being debated and discussed so if there's something else that we are counting toward the value of pitchers or hitters or defenders that we should be counting towards someone else's ledger. And it would be swings of several wins each way. It's hard to come up with a good example.

I'll think about it. If I think of a better answer, I'll tell you tomorrow. I want to walk around with this one. Okay, so that's it for today. We could use some questions. We just got a deluge of questions after I asked for some in the facebook group but i ask for questions every day you could send questions at any time to podcast

at baseball prospectus.com facebook group is facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and you can rate and review and subscribe to the show on itunes you can also support our sponsor the play index baseballference.com. Use the coupon code BP, get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription, and we will talk to you again tomorrow.