Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 738: The Playoff Draft

Episode Date: October 6, 2015

Ben and Sam give an update on ongoing competitions, draft playoff teams, and answer emails about play-in games, Clayton Kershaw, a Tigers scoring mystery, and more.

What's the guy to a non-believer who don't believe in anything? We make it out alive, alright, alright, we're church and wild. Good morning and welcome to episode 738 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. Hello. Hello. How are you?

Pretty good. All right. What do you want to talk about? I've got a wild card game to go to. I don't have anything to talk about? I've got a wild card game to go to I don't have anything to talk about Particularly Well I've got a couple things We're going to do an email show But we're going to give a quick update On some of our ongoing competitions

A couple of them I guess have come to a stop Or at least one of them has With the end of the regular season And we're going to do a two-minute draft of playoff teams, and then we're going to answer emails. So the competitions, as always, updated by John Chenier, the Effectively Wild official scorekeeper and statistician.

You can check this Google Doc that he keeps updated at any time through the files section of the Facebook group. But the one that just came to an end was our 2015 Minor League Free Agent draft. So this was the second time that we have done this. We drafted guys who were signed as Minor League Free Agents, and it's just a plate appearances and batters-based competition. So it doesn't matter how they got, how they did. It's entirely based on playing time. The more playing time the players that you drafted got, the better your score.

So when we did this the first time last season, we were both bad. I was worse than you were. But we drafted, how many guys did we draft? We drafted 10 each last year. And I ended up with a total of 93 plate appearances or betters faced. And you beat me pretty soundly. But you only ended up with 353. So this year, we both did much better.

We obviously learned from our first experience doing this. You learned from having John Axford right in front of you. Yeah, so this was a case where the number one pick was pretty important, and we knew it at the time. This was like the number one pick in the amateur draft is like twice as valuable as the number two pick in the amateur draft this was the case with the minor league free agent draft too when we this year this year normally it's not necessarily but this year yeah it was by kind of a fluke the the rockies closer

yeah yeah we looked on the list and most of the names we didn't know or we vaguely knew and then it was like john axford is on the list so I drafted John Axford with my first overall pick and he ended up with 250 batters faced and that was the difference but we both did much better we I got 629 plate appearances or batters faced and you got 560 so Axford did make the difference but we both did very well your your best was rafael bettencourt and you got some playing time oh you had you had pat vendetti and you had david ardsma yeah six out of ten six out of ten not bad pretty good year before you got one out of ten right two two out of Yeah, but one of them was like two plate appearances or something. Yeah.

Yeah. So our hit rate was much better this year. And you had Radames Liz. So you really made your bones off the relievers. And I had Axford and Jonathan Herrera and Clayton Richard and Mike Baxter. So yeah, all right. We did better. So next year, I expect even higher rates.

All right, what other competitions? We have the TJ avoidance. We still have six months for them to have TJs. But at the moment, we do at least know how many starts the guys made that's right uh and nobody had had every single player we we picked has avoided tj thus far yeah this was the draft we did before opening day where you get 10 points for every pitcher start and you will lose 300 points if any of them has tommy john surgery so we did this with doug thorburn and jeff zimmerman and doug is in the lead by a couple hundred points with 2230 i am in second with 2040 jeff is in third with 1720 And you and Randy The random number generator

Which you use to make your picks Are in fourth at 1690 So Three starts behind Jeff Not bad Randy Three starts behind one of the smartest injury Expert types In the field today

Three starts behind But how about Doug I don't think Doug picked a pitcher who missed a start, which is amazing. He picked seven pitchers, and they averaged 32 starts between them, which is mind-blowing. I mean, what is it?

Isn't it like half of pitchers will miss time, will go on the DL in a given year? i don't know if it's dl but yeah it's it's like a third i think it's it's high and yeah that's impressive i guess his his mechanics knowledge really came into play or he had luck on his side so yeah that ends on opening day next season so we could come down to someone having tommy john surgery in spring training or something and getting a negative 300 but if nothing changes doug will win that one and then we have the ongoing under 25 starting pitcher drafts there are three rounds we've done them in three different years now and i am running the table in the under 25 starting pitcher dress these are like my my calling in life it's just a draft

guys who are 25 or younger yeah these aren't even wow they're not even close uh for the most part although uh very bad job by i guess it's because every year the pool shrinks yeah so that explains why uh we did a overall a fairly poor job but strangely not uh i actually would be doing in a weird way i would be doing quite well in the newest one except i have a lot of guys who are way below replacement level which is unusual you not many people are this far below replacement level but like eddie butler Michael Lorenzen and Kyle Lobstein were like three of the worst pitchers in baseball by warp. But I did get strangely the best and second best in this draft so far. And they're Kyle Hendricks and Erasmo Ramirez, which is surprising. Yes, we were drafting big names and

then anyway you kill me in all of them you're almost doubling me up in the first one we did yeah well i had kershaw in that one i think yeah yeah and there are some other ongoing stuff there's the how many of the next five post seasons will include the pirates i said two you said zero you gave me something to root for tomorrow yeah so this is this is defining postseason as beyond the wild card game so if the pirates can beat jake arietta tomorrow then you will have been wrong and i'll be closer to being right yeah so that's something and then we we have an ongoing bet about home runs for jacoby Ellsbury over a five-year period. I lost some momentum on that one.

I had good momentum after last year, lost some momentum this year. Yeah, I said 50, you said 66. He's at 24. The Cardinals and Astros have not made a significant trade. Yeah, we made a bet about that one this summer. Four more years until I win that one. We made a bet about when the last Tommy John surgery will be performed. John does a good job of updating this one.

We're still about 25 years away from the closest estimate, but we're tracking that very closely. And I think that's about it. But as I said said you can go review past competitions and current competitions in the Facebook group. Click on the file section. I have a small edge in the 2015 debut players draft. Yes

that's true. We've got six basically six more years though to let that one settle itself and I have about a two win lead okay uh by the way the article at bp today by uh jeff quinton reminded me about one red sox factor that we didn't talk about yesterday which was the christian vasquez factor i was expecting big things out of christ Vasquez this year. And

then I think the day after I made my predictions for the division, he had Tommy John surgery or the news came out that he was going to. And he was projected to be the best framing catcher in baseball and like the best running game prevention catcher in baseball. and then suddenly they had to promote swihart and have hannigan and sandy leone and all these other guys and i think they've had about average defensive catchers this year not not the super live defense that i was expecting so i don't know maybe that's something not that that was like a an eight wing eight win swing or something but maybe when you lose your catchers at the end of spring training and you have to bring in new guys who haven't worked with the pitchers,

I could imagine that potentially being a bigger setback than if you lost them when you had a backup ready to go in the middle of the year. Anyway, another thing I meant to mention. Before we do emails, I just wanted to do a quick draft Of playoff teams Another thing for John to add to this Competition spreadsheet This was something that Joe Sheehan did

On ESPN Radio A couple weeks ago with David Todd The radio host And then Joe followed up on it In his newsletter And they did a written version of this So this is just they drafted teams by their likelihood of winning the World Series. So the matchups and their path to the World Series matters.

It's not just team quality. And I suggested we do this on the show, and you said that we should make it total playoff wins. So it's not just a binary won the world series or didn't win the world series i guess the teams that you would draft would be the same the strategy would be the same yeah it's more about having a nice clean scorekeeping method that doesn't just depend on one final series right okay. Okay. So we're going to pick playoff teams, five each. How do we? I'll flip.

Okay. Okay. So I'm going to flip and then you call it. Okay. I'm flipping. Call it. Tails. It is tails.

All right. All right. With my first pick, I'm going to take the Dodgers. Blue Jays. All right. I will take the Dodgers. Blue Jays. All right. I will take the Royals. I'll take the Mets. Okay.

Mets. I'll take the Rangers. Cardinals. Pirates. Yankees. Cubs. Astros. All right. pirates yankees cubs astros all right so what now why would you take the pirates and the cubs i guess you think that the cardinals are well you had taken the cardinal before no i know but but you're basically betting into the cardinals instead of betting into the royals

right you're saying that whoever wins the nl wild because you picked them both so you're basically betting into the Cardinals instead of betting into the Royals, right? You're saying that whoever wins the NL wildcard. Because you picked them both. So you're not saying one has an advantage over the other in the wildcard game because you picked them both. I mean, obviously, a little advantage for the Pirates. I took them instead of the Yankees. I took them instead of the Yankees because all those teams are in the wildcard game and I figured that both the Cubs and the Pirates are better than the Yankees and are more likely to

win games beyond the wildcard game if they make it that far. Okay, even going up against the Cardinals. Yeah. You think the Cardinals are worse than the Royals? I'm sorry, do you think the Cardinals are worse than the Royals? As a team. If they were in a thousand game series, who would win? Yeah, I think probably the Royals would win. It's close. I don't think the Cardinals are as good as their record. They were kind of lucky and then they're missing Martinez

and may or may not be missing Molina or might have a compromised diminished Molina so Piscati so they're kind of injured and not quite as good as their record suggests I think but the Royals are missing Omar Infante that's true so I bumped him up a bit that I have uh I we have run the odds for one playoff game so far we'll have all of them at some point but we have run the odds for today's game. Do you want to guess who's favored and by how much in tonight's game?

I would guess that the Astros are favored, and I would guess 57%. You knew I knew this, and you knew I picked the Yankees first. That's true. Well, maybe you don't believe the projections. The Yankees are favored 60%. 60%? Wow.

Yeah. That surprises me. Yeah. I mean, I guess Pakoda has that. Maybe it doesn't like Keichel as because he's wasn't good before last year or something maybe let me uh let me yeah because the i mean home field would be 54 to 30 to 46 if it were just that so let me i'm going to check real quick pakoda's projection rest of season projection for Tanaka would be 2.

Wait, is that? I can't tell if that's preseason. That's preseason. Hang on. Do we still have? Yeah, we still have. Rest of season projection for Tanaka is 3.12 ERA. It's rest of season projection for Keiko.

And I assume you're correct because this is Ke Keiko is exactly, is 3.76. Yeah. So Keiko is exactly the kind of pitcher who we will usually think we're ahead of Pocotone. Yeah. Because not only is he a short, not only is it a fairly short history of this outright dominance, but you don't have to go that far back to find a career that was completely unexemplary and no different than one of, you know, 2000 other pitchers.

And I mean, you only have to go back like two years to find that. And the Astros have been better than the Yankees this year run differential wise. this year run differential wise and i guess you could knock them down if you want because they're on the road and they've played very poorly on the road and keichel is pitch poorly on the road but i don't know how to much to buy into those things so yeah the answers have a have one of the if not the highest but certainly one of the highest uh home field advantages over the past decade. Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking into this now because there was a study by Nate Silver in like 2008 that showed that home field advantage is higher in domed stadiums or for domed teams. And then I think Matt Swartz wrote something about that a year later and found that there was some

advantage to playing in domes or retractable roof places when the roof is closed. So trying to see if that has held up over the last several years. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, even if they're better at home, I mean, they've been like 600 at home and 400 on the road or something. That's enormous. But that can't be real uh no it's you're not saying that's real but you're saying that they're um that their season stats somewhat overrate what they are as a road team yeah right well because it because the things that they do

at home become somewhat irrelevant. Yeah, if you believe it's not just a random thing. If you believe it's not just a random thing. And that's why I say that over the past decade, they have one of the highest, if not the highest, home field advantage, and therefore road, well, it's not a road disadvantage, it's just that their home field inflates their ability slightly more than other teams do. Okay. All right.

So emails. Well, all right. We got a wildcard play-in-game-related question from Simon in Portland. We've probably talked about this before, but I don't remember what we said. So with the wildcard play-in-games-fest approaching, it's the time of year, again, to speculate about what the optimum approach might be to winning such a high stakes game where an entire season rests on the slimmest of margins last year the royals threw their impressive bullpen it was at what was widely perceived as a superior okanase team and the resulting victory opened the door for kansas

city to begin its march to the world series and achieve what looks like a franchise resurrection with all that's at stake what do you think the best approach to winning in this key game is? Would you do anything differently in a wild card game? I mean, it's kind of, it's sort of obvious, but, so I almost don't want to say it. I don't know. Would you, I mean, obviously the answer that has been said, that we have probably said at various points, is that you should treat it as a bullpen game. Even if you don't end up having to treat it as a bullpen game, you should basically be have the mindset that that all roles are out the window and that you're going to essentially line up your five or six best pitchers in decreasing order of goodness and plan on using them in each in as in a more limited role so that they don't have any penalties

going through the order a second or third time so they don't get tired and so that you can essentially treat it like an all-star game where every all your best pitchers come out and fire 99 for two innings and get you to the end that's probably the answer but i mean on the other hand like i'm not totally sure that keitel for instance through five isn't better than the fourth reliever in the Astros' bullpen. And so there's some benefit to getting extra innings out of your best pitchers. Yeah, it depends on the team. If you have Keichel and he's one of the best pitchers in the league

and then you have the Astros' bullpen, which has been terrible for at least a month or so. Yeah, I mean, it's just... Let me rephrase this because we're both talking about the same thing so let me let me ask you this you're the yankees you're joe gerardi and you've got batantes and miller how many outs in your head are you planning on getting out of them because you do kind of want to make sure especially if it's any sort of a close game, you don't want to keep, you don't want to, the big danger is that you try to get too much from everybody else and end up underutilizing Batances and Miller. You don't want it to be the sixth inning and you're thinking, it sure be sweet to get one

more inning out of Miller or whoever. And then all of a sudden you're getting a nine pitch outing from Matances and it's the game is over. And so you, you do kind of want to get them in early enough that you can maximize them. So like, if you were really thinking about this, uh, in a, in a novel way, you probably would just start Matances. Because that way you make sure that you get as many innings out of him as possible or as many pitches out of him as possible. You leave nothing on the table. And the only reason you don't do this in every game is that you can't do it.

You can't get through a whole season throwing only your best pitchers as much as possible or throwing only your best pitchers as much as possible every game. And so that's why leverage dictates these things. It's a way of conserving your resources and getting them in the situations where they're most important. But in this case, there's no real penalty to that. You're going to get to reset after this game. They don't play again until Friday.

Even if Paton says through, I would guess 45, 50 pitches, he probably would be OK Friday. Now, I'm not saying you would want him to, 45, 50 pitches, he probably would be okay Friday. Now I'm not saying you would want him to throw 45, 50 pitches. Maybe by pitch 50 he's not as good as – is it Wilson or Miller? It's Wilson. Miller is the other guy. Justin Wilson is a guy also. Justin, yeah. Wait, which one is the Yankee?

Both. They're Justin Miller and Justin Wilson? Andrew Miller and Justin Wilson. I was thinking of Justin Miller, though, the other reliever, Justin Miller and Justin Wilson? Andrew Miller and Justin Wilson. I was thinking of Justin Miller, though, the other reliever, Justin Miller. Oh, no, he's not a Yankee. All right. All right. So anyway, you don't have to worry about that, though, for Batances right now.

So you could probably start Batances. So you could probably start Batances. You probably would save Miller till the end just because I think you would kind of freak everybody out, even your own team, if you had nobody at the end. And you can probably still manage it that Miller pitches 8-9 if it's at all close. It's not that complicated at that point. You just bring him out in the eighth so uh you have batantes go one two or one or one two three four or whatever i'm you're going to decide because i'm asking you and then miller go you know eight or nine or seven eight nine or

whatever and then in the middle you use tanaka and or your best options probably tanaka and hope that you can get four out of them so anyway anyway, which is just a way of asking, how many pitches would you in your head have Batances and Miller throwing if you're a Girardi? I think I would go in thinking four innings from the two of them. And I would just try to get Tanaka through five and hope that he was good through five. And even if he was good through five i'd probably

take him out i don't know i i think uh it's not like those guys let's see so miller has maxed out at two innings this year he actually had three two inning outings in september three of his four i don't know whether that was just because those were important games against toronto a couple times or because they were actually trying to stretch him out for October, but he is maxed out at two innings and 42 pitches in an outing this year. And Batances has maxed out at two and a third and 33 pitches. So I wouldn't try to push them beyond what they have done this year I'd go in thinking that it was those guys from the sixth inning on basically And then I'd get Tanaka as far as possible

So that's about it And I think teams do this to an extent They don't do the all bullpen game But your best relievers do pitch a higher percentage of your innings in the postseason. So teams do adjust their strategy somewhat. They just haven't quite gone all in on the all bullpen game. But you can imagine why the all bullpen game might not be ideal to just spring that on a team for the first time ever in a really important game. to just spring that on a team for the first time ever in a really important game.

Otherwise, there's not that much you can do here. Because winning baseball games, there's not much about winning a baseball game in August that isn't exactly the same in October. The reason this is different is because you have a different schedule, sort of a spaced out schedule, and a no tomorrow schedule, or tomorrow doesn't matter if you lose schedule. So you can use your scarce resources differently. And the only two scarce resources are basically bullets in pitchers arms and roster spots.

So you can if if you get to reset your roster and you do right you get to reset your roster for this game. If you get to reset your roster then you you wouldn't have three other starting pitchers on there, and you could carry a couple more tactical guys. But as we've talked about before, too, tactical guys, most teams don't actually go that deep in valuable tactical guys. You could have extra left-handed hitters off the bench, but most teams don't have extra good left-handed hitters.

It's not like the guys you have in AAA are actually all that great. And so you probably would have a couple of tactical guys, tactical weapons on your bench. You might choose to carry an extra center fielder so that if you're up two in the eighth, you can go with a three center fielder's that if you're up two in the eighth you can go with like a three center fielder's defense something like that and you know you'd have if you have a terran score you carry your terran score but it basically baseball is just the same it's unfortunately unrewarding

to creativity sometimes right okay a couple kershaw-related questions I think I know your answer to the first one But there are a couple others These are from Colin And he asks How confident are you in advanced pitching stats That show Kershaw as at least marginally better Than Granke and Arrieta this year Despite some more traditional numbers

That might say otherwise Such as ERA or home runs allowed And he cites their deserved run averages And CFIs from this year. As DRA goes, Kershaw is at 2.13. Granke is at 2.12. Arrieta is at 2.29. And the CFIP difference is even greater.

Kershaw is at 58. And Arrieta is at 74. And Granke is at 84. And lower is better in that. So I know that your answer is very confident, right? Yes. Okay. All right.

And he also asks, what do you think Cy Young voters ought to be looking at to justify their vote? Should it be 80% deserved run average or strikeout rate or ERA or what would you, if you, you would, you would vote for Kershaw as your Cy Young, you have already said. So that's,

I suppose what you think other people should do. Yeah. I mean, I, I would vote for Kershaw for Cy Young because I think that he's been the best pitcher and it's, I don't know. It's,

there isn't a consistent answer here. It's not, it's, I don't know, there isn't a consistent answer here. It's not, I don't think you always vote for what Kevin Goldstein, I think, complained is what should have happened. You don't vote for what should have happened. And if a guy has a great FIP and a bad ERA, then one way of looking at that is to say, well, you're voting on what should have happened. He should have allowed fewer runs. of looking at that is to say, well, you're voting on what should have happened. He should have allowed fewer runs. But another way of phrasing it is just saying that you're voting based on what the pitcher did. That's what FIP and those things try to do is they try to isolate the pitcher's effect, the pitching effect. And it's not that ERA is not the only thing that a pitcher

can be judged on. Runs allowed is not the only thing that a pitcher can be judged on. Runs allowed is not the only thing that a pitcher can be judged on. Yes, ultimately the goal is to allow fewer runs than anybody else, but it is a team effort. There is a defense behind you. There is a ballpark behind you. There is a catcher in front of you. There are umpires there. And to recognize that all of those factors uh have a different share of the runs allowed allows you to to say well yes even if the pitcher's job is to avoid runs and to win games uh he's not in total control and therefore can't be looked at just with that one thing and so i would, I mean, I think that ERA or runs allowed is often quite compelling. And I think that FIP is often in some ways not compelling enough because I know that it doesn't quite capture that pitchers do differ in their ability with men on base.

Pitchers do differ in their ability to suppress BABIP. Pitchers do differ in their ability to suppress home runs on fly balls and all those things. And so it's one of the rare cases where I actually do think that blending them as it feels right seems kind of perfectly fine for this era. Maybe 30 years from now, there will be a more exact way of looking at it. And maybe 30 years ago, we had an exact enough way of looking at it, flawed and wrong, but good enough. Maybe this is a man with two watches never knows what time it is situation. But so it is. Pretending to know everything about these pictures is not really how I tend to look at these things. And, you know, to me, the answer is made much easier by the fact that Kershaw's edge in the pitcher-controlled

parts of this is very high, and that Kershaw's disadvantage in the ERA is very low. And so it's not a particularly hard decision for me this year. Some years it is. Last year, I have no idea who should have been Cy Young in the AL last year. Right, that was a tough one. No idea. I don't remember what I said. I don't remember why I would have said it.

And I could look at it now and probably find six different people. But I feel pretty comfortable with Kershaw to me. It's the more pleasing answer and the clearly right answer. And his last Kershaw-related question was, if Kershaw retired tomorrow, do you think he gets in the Hall of Fame? With the obvious caveat that he's not allowed. They could make an exception. I mean, if he voluntarily retired, I don't know if they'd make an exception, but if he got gangrene or something. So two answers then.

So it requires two answers. One, would they make an exception for him as like a... I mean, yeah, would they make an exception for him if he got gangrene? That was the most realistic scenario I could come up with. Yeah, I know.

You don't want to say anything else. You don't want to say anything else. You don't want to say the thing. So I'm not going to say the thing either. If he were forced to retire by glaucoma, would he what? That's not better. No, it's got glaucoma and gangrene are the cheap ways out of this. We're both thinking the same thing, Ben. We're not going to say the thing, but we're both thinking about it.

We don't want to contemplate it. If he were retired by Glaucoma, would the Hall of Fame make an exception for him? Yes. Would he get in? Yes, first ballot. I agree. He's not even that far from being being in for a full career and he's only played eight years all right play index sure um so dylan bundy so dylan bundy pitched in the

majors when he was 19 years old um he didn't pitch in the majors when he was 20 or 21 or this year when he was 22. And so he will probably pitch in the majors again, probably. But maybe not. I mean, first, what do you think are the chances that Dylan Bundy never pitches in the majors? I mean, given that he threw 25 innings or something like that this year, he had shoulder problems this year on top of yeah he threw 22 innings he had shoulder problems on top of his previous tj uh he's still quite good when he pitches and was quite good in in double a this year but 22 innings and over the past he's now in the past three years thrown a total of 63 innings it only i mean if he's healthy

it almost makes sense for them to put him directly well in fact there he's out of options so it makes lots of sense for him to be directly in the majors but we have seen pitchers who simply never threw again you know yeah great web and so on so what are the chances it like 85 90 percent that he in the majors at some point? Yeah, I'll say 80%. Okay. Maybe he'll get on the Brett Anderson plan, throw 180 innings next year. He could, yeah.

So this got me wondering, has anybody ever pitched in his age 19 season in the majors or played in his age 19 season? Which if you simply appear in the majors when you're 19 you've got like some absurd chance of making the hall of fame yeah like absurdly high like i forget what it is but it's high um and so uh it would be hard to appear in the majors at age 19 and then never again um and i wondered if dylan bundy would be the first and it turns out that in fact he would not be the first. Got to be some bonus babies in there.

There's a ton of bonus babies. So the bonus baby era in the 60s, basically if you signed for a certain amount of money or more, they had to put you in the majors, which is just the worst, dumbest rule. And who knows how many great major leaguers never happened because they had to spend their age 19 season playing or not playing in the majors. John Sanders.

John Sanders is a Dodger scout and one of the great scouts. And Nate Silver, he's the scout in the baseball chapter of nate silver's book uh you know what was nate silver's book signal in the noise yeah exactly uh he's the scout in that anyway he i think was one of these guys he played uh at age 19 and got one game as a pinch runner and never played again wow age 19 man anyway uh bonus babies yeah so uh lots in the 60s so like from 19 well let's just say from 1950 to 1969 there were 39 players who played in the majors at either 18 or 19 or even 17 jay doll played one game for Houston at age 17, never in the majors again. Jim Darrington played 20 games for the Chicago White Sox at age 17 and then never played again. Rod Miller

played one game for Brooklyn. Dave Skogstad played two games for Cincinnati, all at age 17, Dave Skogstad played two games for Cincinnati, all at age 17. Never again. Alex George in 1955 played five games for the Kansas City A's at age 16. Wow. And never again. Dude played in the majors at 16 in a non-war time. Kind of slightly war time, but basically a non-war time and never made it to the majors again which is amazing they send him after that year when he he played five games had a hit uh

struck out seven times in 11 plate appearances drew a walk playing shortstop they sent him to class d and uh he never got higher than double a after that and was out of the game at age 24 you should call him he's only 77 it's his name is unsearchable yeah thank goodness uh so a bunch of these anyway so that's pre-modern baseball though doesn't count right all sorts of crazy things were happening in – oh, jeez. I can't even say his name. I can't even – I almost said a guy's name and now I think that it's a racist nickname. I think.

Hang on. Yeah, probably. Probably this guy's got a racist nickname. All right. Glad I didn't say that. Anyway, he, that guy, that just proves my point. This is not real baseball. Guys with racist nicknames are not modern baseball.

We can just throw them out. That's a good rule of thumb. Yes, yes. So let's look at modern baseball. Since 1988, this has never happened. So Dylan Bundy would be the first in my definition of modern baseball. You don't have to go into the very, very, very dark ages to find somebody, though. The last player that this happened to was Ricky Seilheimer.

Ricky Seilheimer played 21 games for the White Sox at age 19 in 1980. He was a catcher. And you might remember that that was a bad time to be a catcher if you were in the White Sox organization because they had Carlton Fisk. But they didn't have Carlton Fisk in 1980. So he did get to debut. And then the next offseason, they signed Carlton Fisk,

sent Ricky Seilheimer down to AA, and he never played again in the majors. He was fine in AA, and then he just sort of stuck there. They sent him to AA. I think he hit well. He was okay, and then he was okay in AAA and just never got the call. All right, so that's Ricky Seilheimer. He's the last one to do this.

There were two other guys in semi-modern baseball post-DH. Roger Miller played two games for the Brewers in 1974. And then Brian Milner. And Brian Milner is a little bit of a more interesting one because Brian Milner in 1978 played two games for the Toronto Blue Jays. And in those two games, he had four hits. He scored three times. He was a catcher as well.

And the crazy thing about Brian Milner that is different than the other guys I said is that those were actually his first two games as a professional. He was drafted in that year's draft by the Blue Jays in the seventh round. But as a signability guy, he had already committed to Arizona to play baseball and football. He told teams, not sign in, not going to do it. The Blue Jays offered him, I think, a quarter million dollars, which is actually a ton for 1978. And so he decided, eh, I'm never going to get this much anywhere else. So he said, sure. He said, yes.

He signed with the Blue Jays. And the next day, they're like, well, you're here. They put him on the roster. And he was on their team at age 18. They sold 2,500 extra tickets to the next day's game with the publicity of him maybe playing, but then they didn't let him play. And then the next day, or maybe a couple days later, he finally did start.

They didn't want him to be nervous, so they didn't tell him he was starting until 45 minutes before the game began. He had a hit, and then three days later, starting until 45 minutes before the game began. He had a hit, and then three days later, he played in a game that was a final of 24 to 10. He had three hits, including a triple, and he became historically notable, as Jason Stark noted later, for, let's see, in the fifth inning. Let me see if I have this right. I think this is right harlow and hendrix hang on i want to double check to make sure that i understood this fun fact correctly

i must not have yeah i did yeah this is true wow this is amazing this was the fifth inning of this game it's weird that this was the fifth inning anyway all right in the fifth inning of that game he became the first player until 2013 and i think the only player until 2013 to make two outs in an inning against two different position players see they brought a position player into the fifth inning. They brought two position players into the fifth inning. It was at the time 19-5. And they used position players for the rest of the game? Let me see here. So it goes Harlow Hendricks.

Yeah, Elrod Hendricks threw two and a third scoreless as a position player. And then Dan Stanhouse, a real pitcher, came in and threw the ninth. All right. Anyway, so that's why Brian Milner was interesting. Anyway, he retired. Well, he didn't retire. He was sent down with a.444 career batting average, a.667 career slugging percentage, went down to the minors, and never made it back.

He had a lot of injuries. He eventually was let go. He left the game for seven years, heartbroken by it. And then after seven years, his friend Trey Hillman put him in touch with a couple of teams, and he became a minor league coach, and he is now a scout for, I put him in touch with a couple of teams and he became a minor league coach and he is now a scout for, I believe the Yankees and his son, Hobie Milner is a prospect with the Phillies and, uh, is legit played in double a this year and, and looks like he has a pretty good chance of

getting more playing time, uh, than his dad ever did. So, uh, that's Brian Milner. I do have his phone number. He is, but, uh, he is, uh, he has given interviews about this, and I don't want to talk to him. Yeah. Well, I was just Googling Alex George while we were talking, and good thing we didn't call him also because KCUR, the public radio station in Kansas City, talked to him last year. So if you want to hear Alexorge describe his first big league at bat at age 16 you can google that and find it on the kcur site yeah i will one last semi-interesting thing is that ricky seilheimer the first guy i mentioned uh i found an article written about him

in 1981 during the strike and it is weirdest, it is such a weird article. Like it's a local columnist writing about this minor leaguer who's like kind of a big deal. And the hook or the kind of romantic notion behind it is that this guy got sent down to the minors because of Carlton Fisk, but Carlton Fisk was on strike and this guy at least got to play. And so getting sent down was actually arguably good because if he hadn't been sent down, he wouldn't be playing. And now he is playing.

And it's really weirdly written. It starts with like five paragraphs about the heat and doesn't even mention the player. And it's kind of a, it almost feels like a ripoff of like like there's this line in Tom Sawyer where they talk about how it's so hot that you have to like take three baths an afternoon or something like that and it's sort of like it's obsessed with showering and the heat like it's all about how you get out of the the shower and then toweling

off is too strenuous and then you start sweating and then you have to take a shower again and it's like weird and the other thing is that it refers to this player by his full name about 45 times. Not every time though. Like a bunch of times it doesn't, but almost always it does, which is a weird stylistic choice to make. I don't know what he's getting at here. Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because this was by a young Tim Layden. Tim Layden is like one of the all-time great magazine writers now. He writes for Sports Illustrated. There's like almost nobody better. And this was when he was probably, I don't know, 25 and writing for the Schenectady Gazette

and wrote a piece that was ambitious about a very unambitious topic and kind of missed. But it was kind of fun too. Anyway. Okay, good. That's all. So there's an aging curve for writers. Yeah, it's interesting. Alright, go ahead. Alright, so that's the Play Index. Use the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of

$30 on a one-year subscription. We got a couple questions. one from Scott and one from Mike about the economic impact of the Papelbon choke. How much money did he cost himself? They're asking if he was a free agent,

which he's not, although I suppose he will be if they just decide to cut him or something. But if he were a free agent, how much do you think he cost himself with the harper choke nothing really i mean he's already every he didn't change anybody's impression of him i mean everybody already knew that he's true yeah right they traded for him knowing that he had that reputation maybe not for actual choking or maybe choking, but inside the clubhouse choking as opposed to on TV choking.

And remember that, didn't we talk about this with Brian McCann when McCann wouldn't let Carlos Gomez touch home plate? Yeah, I think so. And we talked about how it, you know, in a way, even if around baseball they might not think that was a good thing to do or a good decision or they maybe they were all laughing at him the same way we were laughing at him and yet it also does kind of reinforce a positive characteristic of a guy who's strong and and um and uh and and wants to win and is serious and and all that So, like, I don't know. It's not the same. What McCann did is quite the same, but it's not, like, super far off.

Well, there are a lot of former players in front offices, and we know what former players think about Papelbon, evidently, or the ones that CJ Nipkowski talked to. Yeah. This guy, he was four years out of college At the Schenectady Gazette So he was probably 25 when he wrote this Good for him

Alright This one's kind of puzzling Paul says Just now browsing I came across the fact that the Detroit Tigers Finished first in batting average Second in on-base percentage And fifth in slugging, yet they were only 16th in actual runs scored. This seems like an aberration. Do you think other

real skill factors like base running coaching and a third thing I can't figure out are this important in run creation, or is this more likely bad sequencing? I am a Tiger fan who has been in Los Angeles for a decade and has yet to become a rich screenwriter. Please give me hope in any form. And so I looked just at the site with Clusterluck on it, and Clusterluck is basically sequencing what he's talking about, just not getting hits with runners in scoring position. as the unluckiest offensive team with like 62 fewer runs scored than they should have had so that would seem to be the answer except then when you look at the tigers splits they didn't really hit poorly with runners in scoring position like at all so i'm not sure what is going on with the tigers this year i don't't know. With runners in scoring position, they had a 768 OPS, which is actually higher than their OPS with the bases empty, which was 730.

And with men on, they had a 771 OPS. So they did better with men on and with runners in scoring position than they did with the bases empty which is usually the thing when a team is unlucky it shows up there so that's not it but it's got to be something it's uh they let's say they were a bad base running team they were second worst in base running runs at bp negative 22 so that could be part of it not advancing on hits and outs but that can't be all of it if you finish first in batting average second in on base percentage and fifth and slugging it seems like you should score lots of runs hmm let's see i was thinking that maybe they hit a lot better with say two outs and not none out

so they when they hit they had less chance for rallies to develop and that's somewhat true like with two outs and nobody on their ops dropped by like 70 points with one out and nobody on dropped by like 70 points oh wait that's the opposite the opposite is true they were worse so yeah that's not it they were really good with two outs and runners on third that's not it no good question ben yeah good question paul i don't know it's really weird i don't know uh it's not the usual things that you would think it is. I don't know if you can be so bad at base running that you would hurt yourself like six wins worth or something. That seems like a lot.

Good question. Hmm. Maybe they had an extremely generous home scorekeeper and a lot of errors reached on, were instead labeled base hit. Maybe. By boosting both their batting average and their slugging percentage. Could be. Could be.

Thank you. Was Comerica crazy this year or something? Why would that matter? I don't know why that wouldn't really matter I'm stumped I'm stumped too Alright, we'll give this some more thought We'll talk to some experts

I don't know who the experts are But if you have any thoughts About how this happened to the Tigers Email us, we'll continue to look into it Oh, double plays I think that probably had something to do with it They hit into a lot of double plays The second highest double play rate in baseball Highest in the AL

So if you hit a double play with the runner in scoring position It only affects your slash line as much as any other out But it counts for two outs Alright, last one from Wes. How good a player would have to go missing before game seven of the World Series in order for the game to be postponed? Jeez.

I'd imagine. Oh my gosh, is this the Kershaw question continued? Yeah, I'd imagine that if Clayton Kershaw was slated to pitch and just never showed up, that they'd have to postpone the game just in case he was kidnapped or something. Dan Marino in Ace Ventura style. What would happen? Or something.

Name some of the or somethings, Ben. I don't know. Yeah. I think Wes is a Dodgers fan. Like completely missing, completely incommunicado. Yeah. No one knows where he is. I don't think there's a player— I don't think that the quality of the player matters all that much,

and I don't think there is— He's the Game 7 starter? I mean, I guess the show must go on, right? They can't—they've got national TV audiences to please. So I don't know. I don't think. Let me ask you this. How long?

Well, a better question, because I don't think if he just didn't show up at the park, I don't think they would cancel it. What if there was a ransom note? But I think a better question is, what if he had been missing since game five? So this is now, it's basically going on three days that he's missing. There's a national manhunt.

So he's an actual missing person at this point. Yeah. Then do they? Probably not. I don't think. What if he, how long would he have to be missing before i don't know what if he did get kidnapped if he got kidnapped it'd be postponed right if he were if there was a ransom there was a ransom note yeah it would be so it would definitely so if he was kidnapped it'd be postponed

so if you were considering this don't bother um but i mean if he's missing for three days then it's almost the same as being kidnapped he's he's missing something has happened no he might he could have just run away yeah the pressure got to him he's like uh you know he just dave chapelled it yeah um yeah i don't know i guess if a player just didn't show up, the game must go on. I don't think they would cancel a game if a player were missing and there was no indication of tragedy yet. Okay. Yeah. My heart feels a little empty right now. I don't feel good.

Yeah, that wasn't a great note to end on. Yeah. But you probably don't want to do another. No. Okay. All right. So that's it. I'm about to head off to Yankee Stadium.

We'll probably talk about the wild card game tomorrow. We're transitioning into the mode where we actually talk about baseball games on this show. So that'll be fun for some people. And you can send us emails at podcasts at baseballperspectives.com. Join our Facebook group, which will be a fun place to experience the postseason, at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild rate and review the show on iTunes. And as I've already said, support our sponsor, the Play Index, by using the coupon code BP. We will be back tomorrow.