Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 747: Important Playoff Questions Answered

Episode Date: October 20, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about Johnny Cueto and the differences between the most boring parts of baseball and other sports, then answer playoff-related listener emails.

Good morning and welcome to episode 747 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, welcome back. Thank you. I might be flying on a 747 today. I thought of making that not very good joke. No, I'm trying to see if i can figure out which uh that'd be rare a cross-country oh what is 747 is that too big i think so all right so i accidentally watched a couple minutes of football last night for the first and probably last time this season because i wanted to watch the Star Wars trailer two minutes before it was everywhere else. And I guess it was the end of the first half and it was very slow. It was,

you know, I guess the way that things always get slow in football and basketball right before the end of a quarter or a half or whatever. And I was trying to think about whether there is a baseball equivalent to that, because I hate that. It's like the worst viewing of any sport, those clock management minutes when there's timeouts and, you know, there's like a two second play and then there's a foul and then there's a free throw or there's a timeout and the clock's running and then the clock stops it's really pretty bad and I'm grateful that baseball doesn't have that I guess the closest thing baseball has to that would be late inning pitching changes which is pretty bad I guess it's equivalently bad yeah it's pretty close to being as bad um because well there's a couple things

not only do you have the pitching changes but you have an increased number of mound visits and in particular catcher mound visits i feel like catcher mound visits are a sleeper worst part of baseball canada yeah those should be legislated against there's just no reason why you ought to be able to go every time no if you want to and um they're they're boring you know nothing is going to change you have no that there there's no pop to them because they happen seemingly almost seemingly at random um whereas like it's not like when a pitching coach comes out, uh, it's usually, well, you're in trouble or we've got the most threatening guy out here or something is askew. And it is in it, in a way, at least it kind of amplifies the situation.

Whereas when the catcher goes out, it's just like, like the feeling I have when a catcher goes out more than anything is the feeling that a parent has when their kid didn't go to the bathroom when you stop for gas. And then 10 minutes later, he has to go to the bathroom. You're like, dude, just left. Yeah. So I feel like that's pretty bad. I'm trying to remember what I wrote. I need to stay consistent.

One of my goals is to not completely contradict myself every time I record a podcast. I wrote about problems. I tried to quantify every aspect of baseball's boringness to see what was most to blame. And I did compare baseball's play stoppages, the pattern of baseball's play stoppages in commercials, with the pattern of football's and basketball's. And, oh oh yeah, this is actually different. Okay, so I think this fits in the conversation you're having. It's kind of the opposite though. What I consider to be three percent of the cause of baseball's boredom is that the commercials come at the boring parts. And so then I write, every sport has its

commercials. Football has its breaks the quarters, which are context neutral. They might be at an exciting part of the game or a boring part of the game. And it has its timeouts and two-minute warnings, which often come at the most exciting parts of the game. The timeout is called specifically because the team is driving, a scoring chance needs to be preserved, the clock has become a ticking threat, and so on. Basketball timeouts come because the team is on a run or because the game is hanging in the balance. In other words, their commercial breaks are cliffhangers. If they didn't exist, some screenwriter would invent them. Most baseball commercials, meanwhile, come when the tension has been alleviated. They don't come with two on and two outs. They come 45 seconds later with none on

and no outs. They come when your interest in the in-game scenario is at its lowest, when there is no threat or promise present, and no threat or promise looming. They are basically post-coital cigarettes. They are a boring reminder that you have other things you could be doing now. By that way of defending the football timeouts and the basketball timeouts one might say that the mid-inning pitching change is itself a kind of cliffhanger that makes the game better and because I'm trying to be consistent I will stay with that position all right I also wish that baseball had a more drastic late game strategy that you could do when you absolutely needed a run or you absolutely couldn't afford to give up one kind of like a pulling the hockey goalie which is happening

earlier and earlier in games and is exciting and i guess the closest equivalent to that would be either bringing the infield in or bringing an outfielder into the infield which happens occasionally in extreme situations the intentionally walk the bases loaded yeah like once you get a guy at third with less than two outs intentionally walking the bases loaded so you have a force at home is always a good one yeah nothing's as good as pulling the goalie what so how much earlier are they pulling the goalie a couple minutes oh i was thinking like a second period no there's an optimal point to do it and now that hockey teams have hired lots of stat blogger types they're doing it closer to

that optimal point it's not nearly as extreme but bringing your closer in in the eighth is kind of that i mean that is it is exciting when the closer comes in in the eighth it's so predictable in the playoffs now that now you don't get the jolt but in the regular season you get the jolt and it opens the possibility that somebody's gonna bring their closer in the seventh someday and that's gonna be really exciting i was also thinking when i was watching football because the referee is mic'd up and he gets center stage he gets the spotlight whenever he makes a call he's on the pa system and he's piped directly into the broadcast and you always know exactly what's happening which is nice there aren't that many times in baseball when you just have no idea what the rule was or or what's happening it's more common when

you're at the stadium on the broadcast typically you know what's going on but i wouldn't mind if umpires were mic'd up and actually declared what they were doing like announced the the you're not talking about like the uh you know like the nfl films you, where you hear their candid conversations in between, or you get the sound of the game. You're talking specifically about, you know, having him turn around and say, that's, he didn't tag him. Right, right. Whatever rule applied. I mean, it's clear that I think there are certain circumstances throughout the season. They're rare, but there are occasions where it is obvious that someone needs to announce certain rulings and nobody does announce those rulings and the people at home watching on tv know what's going on and there's just no way for the people

in the stands to know because there is no announcement and that's really weird that they don't have even like this the the PA guy can't announce it that's weird because there are times where you just have zero chance of knowing yeah and I also remember writing about box in great detail a couple years ago and there are times where a box is called and multiple batters pass before the even the TV announcers realize that there's a balk that like they just think huh that's weird there was no throw yeah uh or they don't even notice that the runner moved like in in one case that i remember but those are rare too i mean it'd be kind of nuts to have a an umpire turning around and explaining more than one call every 20 games, 50 games. Yeah.

Although the NFL film style thing that you were talking about also came up last night because John Hirschbeck, who was umpiring the Blue Jays game, was mic'd up for the Fox broadcast and he was at the center of some dispute late in the game. He ejected Troy Tulewitzki, possibly somewhat prematurely, and then he got into some debates behind home plate with Russell Martin, and Joe Buck actually acknowledged on the broadcast, yes, Hirschbeck is mic'd up, but you're not going to hear what he's saying to Martin because that's not the purpose of this technology, and I guess the purpose of it is pretty much no purpose they they played him at the beginning of the game coming into the batter's box and saying hello to to perez and asking how his hand was which i guess was sort of interesting to know what an umpire says to

catcher just what the routine greeting is but obviously would be far more interesting to hear how he justifies a call and you'd think that as long as they vetted it and made sure they got the non-fcc permitted language out of there that it wouldn't be so bad to at least hear how an umpire justified something or hear what the player said to the umpire a lot of times obviously there would be language that you couldn't broadcast but sometimes there wouldn't be it wouldn't destabilize baseball if you heard that sometimes if you heard a bad word you mean no just if you heard the debate assuming there was no bad word oh yeah no i agree the debate would be great yeah umpires would hate it so I guess they wouldn't consent to being mic'd up if that were the case.

Who would hate it more, the umpires or the managers? Or the players. I don't think the players would care. Yeah, I think probably the umpires would hate it most, just because it would focus the attention more on the times when they did something wrong or when people think they did something wrong. Yeah, the umpire is almost always on the defensive. Yeah. It seems like, as it is.

For good reason, because everyone else is always on the offensive. Yeah. Okay, are we doing emails? If you'd like to. All right, I've got some emails. Is there anything else you want to say about game three? Nope. Okay.

I talked to Craig and Matt on Friday when we were previewing it and just said something about how it seemed like the Blue Jays were a team that could match up well with the Royals in that they could score some runs off a somewhat suspect starting rotation and then take the Royals' bullpen out of the game to a certain extent, and that's kind of what they did last night. The Royals' bullpen was good, and they ended up scoring a bunch of runs, but by the time they did those things, it didn't matter anymore. You must have been excited to watch Chris Medlin, though. Uh-huh.

Well, I didn't watch. Well, you would have been excited to watch Chris Medlin, though. Uh-huh. Well, I didn't watch. Well, you would have been. I was tuned in by radio. However, less tuned in with each pitch. Yeah. It was nice to have a game that you just didn't have to pay that much attention to. It feels like it's a relief when it happens a little bit. So let me ask you this about johnny cueto okay free agency let's say he was a free agent on july 31st like there

was a work stoppage yeah and he was a free agent going into this off season with nothing after july 31st and then another version of the universe where the Royals miss the playoffs and he's a free agent after October 3rd or whatever. And then this version here where let's say that he doesn't pitch again. The Royals, I don't know, get swept or something. He's a free agent right now. How much money is lost from July 31st to each of those two other scenarios so if the first scenario is a hundred percent the stoppage scenario then the season ends after the regular season scenario

i'll say he gets 90 and playoff scenario he gets 83%. Wow. Okay, so first of all, it's such a bad break to be Johnny Cueto in a way. Not specifically Johnny Cueto, but every once in a while there are guys like Johnny Cueto who – like Cueto was a good prospect. He was a very good prospect. So it's not like he's a Corey Kluber or anything like that. But we have talked multiple times on this show about how Johnny Cueto never seemed to really get the credit he deserved for being arguably the second best pitcher in baseball over a long period of time. And that sort of sucks when it's happening, when you're like, geez, man, I'm really good. And people are only acting like I'm pretty good.

But where it really sucks is how quick people are to declare you dead and i i feel like if cueto you know like i wouldn't even though cueto and say chris sale are kind of have been more or less equivalent pitchers for a long time i feel like if chris sale had the same aug and September and October, and I asked you that question, it would be like 99% and like 99%. Nobody's reassessing Chris Sale. And yet there was always a little distrust about what Johnny Cueto was doing. And I don't know, maybe it's the peripherals thing. Maybe you can make a case that guys who outperform their peripherals are just as undervalued now as we used to think guys who overperform their peripherals were overvalued 15 years ago in the pre dips era uh but uh yeah i think that 90 let's see that would go from say one let's say from 140

down to 126 seems yeah it seems plausible because it's not not just that he struggled a little bit it's also that he lost velocity yeah and it kind of comes and goes but he lost a significant amount and there is some research there was a jeremy greenhouse piece a while ago that looked at velocity aging by height and smaller pitchers tended to lose velocity earlier and Cueto's on the shorter side for a right-handed starting pitcher so maybe that concerns you and then you could draw the conclusion that he gets rattled in big games if you saw his wild card performance a couple years ago or last night in a very loud roger center i don't know whether that would be fair to conclude but you could conclude that

and maybe someone would so between those two things and just maybe the fact that he doesn't want to pitch on short rest which is non-ace like yeah and so people want your ace to be your horse so you don't really want to pay number one starter money for a guy who's not going to do some of the things that lots of number one starters do so yeah i wouldn't normally adjust it down any for the postseason like if i said 90 in scenario two i probably say 90% in scenario three as well. But I do wonder whether he gave that narrative the theme it required to stick by choosing to, basically choosing to let Jordan Oventura instead of him start game one and opting not to pitch on short rest. And opting not to pitch on short rest, which is, I think it's the right decision generally for managers not to pitch their guys on short rest. And so I don't know that I can fault Johnny Cueto, but I don't know.

I guess it's probably, unless he's worried about his health, which I don't think there's a good reason to be, I don't think it's probably the player's job to opt out of a usage that his manager or his front office deems best for the team. I mean, you can say he knows himself better. And maybe we don't know what the conversation was like. Maybe he said, yeah, I'm happy to do it. But, bro, I have pitched on short rest or I guess he hasn't. But like I know how my arm feels and I just don think – I mean, I'm happy to do it, but I know my arm, and I got to tell you, man, I don't think it's going to be the best for you. If it's that, then it's probably a great choice that he made, and yet it still probably hurts him.

Andy McCullough described it at least once in print as refused, which is somewhat stronger than that. Uh-huh. So. Yeah, yeah yeah all right all right so emails okay well you were listening to a baseball game last night so i will ask you austin's question about listening to baseball games i am a cardinals fan in kansas city and greatly agree that the royals broadcast is not good. I am currently listening to Toronto's broadcast, and one thing I like is how audible the stadium announcer and walk-up music are. I wish more broadcasts incorporated this. Can you discuss what makes a certain broadcast good versus another? Boy, I don't know.

It's so different than TV, where with TV, it's really a production. And the graphics matter and what slow-mo you have matters and what pitch tracker you use and how often the pitch tracker is there. And really more than anything else, whether your center field camera is directly behind the mound or off center. All those things matter a great deal, how your sideline reporter is. But with the radio, it's basically just one guy, two guys, or three guys talking about the game, and then there's some bumper music. And that's the entire experience. And so it's really hard to say anything beyond whether the one guy, two guy or three guys has feel. And if they have feel, then that goes a long way. And if they're annoying, then you just don't want to spend any time in their mental headspace.

I think that having to me, too, is the appropriate number for a radio broadcast. Even like I think that Dave Fleming is as good at radio as any broadcaster in the world and i much prefer him when he's with john miller than when he's alone and same with john miller i think john miller does john miller probably does the solo better than anybody other than in schooling uh but i also would rather hear him talking to somebody when i can and then there are other guys who i like a great deal in a pair and I actually dislike when they're solo. So I think two is the right amount of people. And I think ideally I like a broadcast, which is kind of like this podcast where the conversation is likely to be free enough to go in different directions to occasionally surprise you. I think that

if you have a crew that can kind of tuck in little jokes or asides or patterns that become like little Easter eggs, that helps. One of my favorite examples of great radio broadcast was in i think 2013 might have been 2014 where the giants had the like uh it's like the honda home run tracker or something like that i think it was the honda home run tracker and so the home run would get hit and then they'd fire up this home run tracker that they had and they'd you know like a couple minutes after they'd go all right well that the home run tracker says that one was 434 degrees uh 434 feet and then sometimes though like after a couple of days then it started to get kind of like you're like wait really because they talk about how like well the the home run tracker hasn't we haven't warmed it

up yet hang on it we'll have it for you in a few minutes i was like what what is this like i really wanted to see a picture of this home run tracker like what is this software they're using that takes a few minutes to warm up and at one point they went back to back and they're like oh well it's gonna take a little while and then finally after like two weeks i I finally realized like an idiot, oh, they're the home run. They're just making this up. This whole thing is a fiction. They've created a universe where they have this special tool that Honda bought for them and only they have access to.

It might have been the Hawaiian Airlines home run tracker. I don't know. And like they had just slowly built like almost an entire sitcom that played in 12 seconds bursts uncommented upon. And to me, if you can pull that off, you're a good broadcast. And otherwise, I don't really care. I mean, some guys are better at describing the action than others. describing the action than others uh the you know jerry coleman the padres announcer for instance uh who um was a legend for a long time and partly a legend for how long he'd been in the game partly a legend for how lovable he was and partly a legend for his um malapropisms he uh people people liked that i found his and the malapropisms would basically be like, he'd be describing

something and would just totally lose control of the action and would describe things that were not happening. And that was part of his charm. And to me, I found it completely confusing and distracting and I didn't like it. And so in some ways, it's a matter of personal taste. But most, almost all broadcasters are capable of describing the play with like 96% of the same words and efficiency. So it's not really that generally, it's more how you fill the blank space and whether I like you and your voice. And there aren't that many strangers that I want to hear talk for three hours. And the ones who you start to really want to hear talk for three hours become great. It's a lot like a podcast. I've told people that my favorite podcast is the three-hour podcast that John Miller and Dave Fleming do every day during the season.

Did you like the piped- pa audio on the blue jays broadcast it was jarring the first time i heard it but not in a good or bad way at least immediately i think that i'm good with that yeah i don't i don't think jarring isn't the word i i would describe it with uh as i think it's. I think that generally speaking, yeah. All right. Brian says, in the final game of the Cards Cubs NLDS, Mike Matheny pinch hit for Randall Gritchuk with Greg Garcia. He did this because Greg Garcia was 3 for 4 versus Pedro Stroop,

whereas Gritchuk was 0 for 4. This small sample size thinking drives cards fans nuts we call it and also his bullpen usage methene-edging. That's bad. You should not call it that. It looks better in print than it sounds. Garcia is a career quadruple A player and that is one of his two home runs in the major leagues ever. Gritchuk has 20 homers and 433 MLB at-bats, and he was drafted in front of Mike Trout. Can you think of a situation where this would ever make sense? Would Matheny pitch hit Garcia for Trout or Harper if the numbers were the same?

Would 0 for 20 with 20 strikeouts by Gritchuk make it okay? Can someone explain small sample size to MLB managers? I wonder how many of these cases there is something beyond the small sample size stats that the manager is taking into account, whether he should be or not. You know, like he knows that the player was uncomfortable in those at-bats, or he thought the player looked uncomfortable in those bats, or something, some other factor that might or might not mean something, but you could at least convince yourself that it means something. Because if it really is just the 0 for 4, 3 for 4, that's nuts.

But if it's 0 for 4 and the guy came back to the dugout after his last at bat and said i'll never touch a pitch that pitcher throws and i'm not seeing his baseball throws at all and that's how players talk when they come back to the dugout and the other guy was saying it looks like a beach ball up there, and I could hit this guy's baseball throws, then maybe in that case it would make some sense, or at least you could talk yourself into it. So I wonder in what percentage of cases there's more than meets the eye. The questioner doesn't say how he knows that this is why Matheny made the decision? No, I would assume that there was an explanation, but... The questioner doesn't say how he knows that this is why Matheny made the decision. No.

I would assume that there was an explanation, but. Yeah. So it might be that there was an explanation. It might have been that Mike Matheny went in and immediately yelled at the writers preemptively for second guessing him. Right. By saying three for four. He just yelled three for four. And so you described one scenario that they might have been thinking but there are

also conceivably other scenarios i'm looking at this game i don't know if i have the same game but for instance you might be planning to make a defensive move anyway to replace that guy with the guy you're bringing in that that is not the case with gray garcia it looks to me like gray garcia pinch hit and then was out of the game and i'm trying to think if there would be any potential reason to pinch hit for gritcha no if you're already going to pull the guy out of the game no so that's not it you could also arguably say that again assuming that matheny didn't explicitly or even if he did explicitly say it it doesn't necessarily matter people say things but assuming that this was not Matheny's stated

explanation you could argue that Mike Matheny actually showed the opposite of small sample size because Greg Garcia is left-handed and Randall Gritchuk is right-handed and the pitcher was a right-hander. And if you consider them, and you know, Greg Garcia is not a bad hitter. I don't know how much different they're projected. They're projected batting numbers would be going forward, but it's conceivable that they're not so great that you wouldn't rather have the platoon advantage in that situation. But Greg Garcia, in his short career, actually has a crazy reverse split. And actually, Randall Gritchuk, in his career, also has a reverse split. And it might be that Mike Matheny is so smart that he went, I'm not going to fall for that. I know that most hitters have predictable

splits. I'm going to regress. He pulled out his copy of the book, did the regression with the number of plate appearances they've each had against left-handers, and said, yep, forget the small sample. Garcia's my guy. So that's plausible. Yeah. You could do a projection based on how a guy hits certain pitch types and what pitch types that pitcher throws.

I mean, it could be an incredibly advanced calculation that is going into this decision that is masked by the 0 for 4 and the 3 for 4. Do you buy that, the pitch type? I know that that has been one way that smart people have hypothesized or tried to square the challenge of making these decisions based on very small samples with the appreciation

that in fact some guys do see some guys better than others and that it's a worthy goal but given where we are now when you see that someone hit x on sliders or on similar pitchers i see this a lot on by the way like this is always the one sign that this is not a way of statting that you should take seriously i see this a lot on yahoo's player notes like you've got like you know jason hayward's on your fantasy team or whatever and there's a note and you're like oh i wonder if he hurt his knee or something and you click it and he's like hitting 283 against similar pitchers and it's like no yeah but i that yahoo aside for instance vince genaro i know has been working on this, right? Yeah.

On bucketing pictures by type. And when you see it generally, or when it's mentioned generally, how seriously do you take it at this point? I take the concept very seriously. I don't really take the applications of it that I've seen very seriously. I think it should make sense that you could look at arm angles or velocity or pitch types or some combination of all of those factors and come up with a profile and project how a player would do against a pitcher who had those traits but i think probably just saying that he hits x on sliders and y on sinkers or something is too simplistic and probably doesn't tell you much yeah okay wait did we answer the question oh can you think of a situation where this would ever make sense would matheny pinch hit garcia for trout or harper no if the numbers were the same no he would not but would over 20 with Ks by Gritchick make it okay?

I think we've, at some point, we must have answered this because we talked about the Ray Durham, Mariano Rivera example that sent you on a years-long reporting quest. Fruitless. Fruitless. Ended where so many years-long reporting quests do. Yeah. Ended with unanswered messages on Ray Durham's voicemail. Should have just asked Ned Garver what he thought about Ray Durham's challenges against Mariana Rarrow.

I don't know. I mean, again, with Garcia and Gritchuk, it's not a move I would make, but I mean, I basically like Greg Garcia. And off the top of my head, given the platoon splits, it doesn't strike me as necessarily – like on its face absurd without having seen the 0 for 4 and the 3 for 4. So I don't know if this is the perfect example, but do you remember what we've said when we start taking it seriously? I know I've given the Ricky Weeks example. Yeah, right. when we start taking it seriously.

I know I've given the Ricky Weeks example. Yeah, right. Where Ricky Weeks was so bad against Sergio Romo that the numbers had nothing to do with it. He'd seen something like 20 sliders, and all of them were out of the zone, like all 20, and he'd swung at like 18 and was 0 for 6 with six strikeouts

and had never fouled a ball off, something like that. It's probably less about, I don't want to say it's less about the size of the sample and but size and sample is not the only or maybe not even the most pressing how ugly the sample was yeah it's the extremity of the sample it's it's the amplification of the results. And I mean, I think as much as possible, you want to get away from how many hits he has and how many at bats. And if you can look at how often he has,

if you could just look at how often he squared the ball up, how often he swung and missed and maybe what his O swing rate is against a guy. Just knowing that, I would probably feel comfortable making borderline playing time decisions after 20 at-bats maybe. And I really mean borderline. I wouldn't put our spin for Mike Trout. But if you have two guys who are more or less close to equal players, I would use that as relevant data to deciding whether one is actually better in this scenario than the other. affect how he does because players know who they own and they've been owned by and maybe if it's

enough ownership you go up to the plate or you go to the mound thinking about that and even if it was purely random you have less confidence than you would otherwise and maybe that affects how you do so if i thought it had gotten to that point, I might do something. So say a major leaguer has faced, I don't know, 250 pitchers who are currently active in his career at some point in his career. Of those 250, how many do you think that hitter has a strong mental feeling one way or the other about his experience against the pitcher? I mean, he probably knows roughly how well he's done but how many is he thinking ownage one direction or the other say 50 right so yeah for those 50 it's not irrelevant that he feels that ownership one way or the other one direction or the other i'd say so all right do you have a play index? Yeah, sure. All right. Let me get this was inspired by a question.

In fact, Tyson emailed to say, I was on Steve Buschel's Wikipedia page. That's it. Enjoy the rest of your week, everybody. The show is over. Hang on. Now I got to go to Steve Buschel's Wikipedia page and see if there's anything interesting here. Presumably, he was looking them up because he's the bench coach of the Rangers and this came in during a series that the Rangers were still playing in. Let's see. Traded by the Rangers to the Pirates following the emergence

of Dean Palmer. Always good when your Wikipedia page exists primarily as a reflection of someone more famous's Wikipedia page. Stanford roommate of John Elway. Is that right? Mm-hmm. Wow. That's a pretty good one. Son was drafted by the Giants in the 14th round. None of his children seem to have been named after any professional football or baseball players.

All right. Not a good Wikipedia page. All right. I was on Steve Bus Buchel's Wikipedia page, and it claims that Buchel was known for hitting solo home runs. What player do you think has... I missed this. Oh, that is interesting. What player do you think has the highest percentage of solo home runs

versus home runs of the men on base variety? Tyson, there's a way to answer this question. And the way is the play index, baseballreference.com. Use your promo code BP and you can get a senior subscription for $30. So what I did is I went to the split finder and I sorted by players since whatever year I started counting. I forget what my boundaries were. I sorted by how many home runs they had with no men on base. And then I used the option that allows me to also show their total for whatever stat I'm searching that runs alongside the split.

And then I was able to just copy all that, put it in a spreadsheet, add a column, divide column F by column G for my solo home run percentage, and sort by age. And so I have, let's see, I think I went a little further than 88 this time. So I have a, uh, I have a group of players with that is 727 names long that had at least 50 solo home runs in their career. Um, and, uh, of those players, uh, Steve Buchel number 84, which is fine. He hit a lot of solo home runs relative to everybody else, but he's in like the 88th percentile or something like that. He's not extreme. It's not Wikipedia worthy. It's not Wikipedia worthy. That's exactly right. A Wikipedia editor should have cited this.

Well, based on our history of talking about players and then having their Wikipedia pages be edited to reflect what we said, I'm guessing that Steve Bichelle's Wikipedia page will not stay the same for long. Now, here's the thing, though. You can maybe imagine what the— You want to guess? Just guess. And I'm asking you not because you have any chance whatsoever of getting it right, but because I want to hear your guess. Who do you think is number one?

All right. Just go ahead. Just who do you think? Pick someone that you think has a slightly better chance of being number one than every other person was there a minimum number of homers 50 solo homers greg vaughn greg vaughn see no no feel then no there was no process in your guess that's what i wanted to see i wanted to see if you had any process. What I should have done was... Break on is 618th, by the way. So what you would want to do is get someone who played for bad offensive teams and someone who hit slightly more than the minimum number of home runs

so that it would be a better chance of having some strange, fluky result. No, Ben. What you want to do is name a leadoff hitter. That too. Yeah, because if you're a leadoff hitter. That too. Yeah, because if you're a leadoff hitter, then guaranteed a quarter or so of your played appearances are going to come leading off. If you're an ambush leadoff hitter, a esky type, you might say, who swings at a lot of first pitches, you're likely going to get the pitcher's, you know, grooved fastball to start

the game. And so those those might be that might be your best chance to hit a home run and if you're a leadoff hitter you're also probably batting almost certainly in fact certainly batting in front of the number nine hitter and the number eight hitter number seven hitter so you're likely to have the worst part of the offense batting in front of you so the number one guy by like a huge margin incidentally is Eric Young. Not sure which, the first Eric Young because EYJ, no way EYJ hits 79 home runs. So Eric Young Sr. hit 68 of his 79 home runs for solo shots, which is amazing. Even by, you know, by leadoff hitter standards. That's amazing. I'm going to see what percentage came. I'm going to see what his home home runs for solo shots which is amazing even by you know by leadoff hitter standards that's

amazing i'm gonna see what percentage came i'm gonna see what his home run rate is in his first at bat of the game to see if it's mostly that so i'm going to this is not a play in x this is just classic free baseball reference awesomeness all right so first greg von made 38 plate appearances as a leadoff batter. Not really, though. He has a pinch hitter, I assume. Started seven games as a leadoff hitter. Incidentally, Eric Young's... So Eric Young homered about every 60 plate appearances

when he was leading off the game, and about every 65 when he was leading off an inning. Over his career, though, about every 85 total. And with men on base, he homered every 220 plate appearances. I wonder, I mean, that's got to just be a fluke, right? I mean, some of this is explained by, I mean, obviously, he had a lot more at-b on than, than most hitters, but his home run rate with nobody on really is like completely bonkers compared to with men on. And I'm trying

to think if there's any reason for that. I mean, he doesn't kind of guy who wants to get the guy over, get the guy over. Yeah, it could be, but it's not like he did. You can't explain it with sacrifice bonds. You certainly can't explain it with sacrifice bonds you certainly can't explain it with intentional walks by the way that was the other way i thought you could go is if you could pick a guy like bonds who so when he was hitting home runs was so rarely allowed to bat with men on uh and barry bonds is above the median but not an extreme above he's just barely above the median. Anyway, Eric Young at 86% is the highest. Number two is Dexter Fowler at 78%. Number three is Phil Bradley at 74%.

So you go from 86% at the top to 78% to 74%. So that gives you an idea of how extreme this is. It's 12 percentage points between Young and number three. Whereas from number three, if you drop 12 percentage points, it drops you all the way down to number 150. So there's a huge, huge gap for him. But anyway, back to Steve Buchel. One of the things that makes Steve Buchel's solo home runs notable is that, in fact, he never batted leadoff.

He batted three times. He batted five times in the leadoff spot all of them entering the game late so he never once led a game off and so he did actually hit a lot of solo home runs relative to everybody else if you look at it that way so just looking at what he did with men on versus no men on with men men on base, he homered 2.2% of the time. Without men on base, he homered 3.3% of the time. So, you know, a 50% increase in his home run rate, which doesn't seem that extraordinary. Even over the course of a career, it sort of feels like just a statistical fluke, but it's also a lot. And I think think it merits if not a mention on his Wikipedia page at least perhaps a reputation among some of his teammates the thing about it too is that poor Steve Buchel

he's been out of the game like 20 plus years and still has to hear this tied to his name and this is not a positive thing you're saying if his teammates said it or if his broadcaster said it or a writer said it or whatever it's it's a knock right like we're clear that this is not a positive thing you're saying. If his teammates said it or if his broadcaster said it or a writer said it or whatever, it's a knock, right? We're clear that this is a knock. This is an insult. I mean it's not for Eric Young because Eric Young, it's his role. Well, it's kind of his role. But mostly it's not.

But for Steve Buschel, it's basically going, oh, here comes old stat patter coming up. Nobody on. All the pressure's off. Now he gets a home run. Put two guys in front of him and he'll just choke it all away. Yeah. Poor Steve Buschel. Mike Socha.

Mike Socha is real high on this. Obviously not a leadoff hitter. Almost all leadoff hitters, though, when you're looking at this. Ichiro's high and Kenny Lofton's high. Shannon Stewart's high. I guess you'd have a – Buschel was a frequent number eight hitter, and you would expect a number eight hitter to be at a disadvantage because he is going to lose a lot of plate appearances with men on base

because he has the pitcher behind him and they're just going to pitch around him. But not enough to explain it. Derek Jeter very high on this. Famously unclutched Derek Jeter. Steve Buchel has a career average clutch score. So if he was unclutched with home runs, he must have made up for it with something else. Put that in his Wikipedia page because he deserves, this dude deserves to have his legacy re-evaluated now that we have access to this play index information. All right.

I predict that there will be an edit made. By the way the uh at the very low end second from the bottom is kevin euclid and fourth from the bottom is paul goldschmidt so if uh if we're looking at this as in any way uh proxy for clutchness you can tell those guys they're super clutch ryan howard is like 15 from the bottom. So most of his home runs come with runners on base, which one of my favorite things about baseball is that Ryan Howard is actually a huge RBI machine and not just like a media-generated RBI machine, that he actually is like a billion times better with runners on base.

And I've written about why that is because of defense positioning, but he also hits a lot more home runs with runners on base. And I've written about why that is because of defense positioning, but he also hits a lot more home runs with runners on base than without. So good for Ryan Howard. Good for him. You really should hit more home runs with nobody on base, if you think about it. In fact, Steve Buschel, I'm going to go further and say that Steve Buschel is a hero, because a single with men on is a tremendously valuable thing. And if there is a clash between an approach that hits a single and an approach that hits

a home run, well, hey, with a runner on third and two outs or with a runner on first and one out or a none out even, getting a single is like, it's awesome. It's tremendous. Now, getting a home run is obviously better, but we're assuming there's a trade-off that makes some situations more valuable for a home run than others and some situations more valuable for a single than others. And the one that is most valuable for a home run is always going to be nobody on because if there's nobody on and you single, the odds are that that's going to still produce zero runs. And if there's nobody on and two outs, the odds are especially that that's going to produce zero runs. And you should be trying to hit home runs with nobody on. That's the way that you really move the run expectancy needle. So I always kind of find it frustrating that hitters who come

up with two outs and nobody on don't take more obvious home run approaches. You should be pretty much dead red going for a home run. You should be guessing pitches, cheating, doing whatever you can because your single doesn't mean squat in that situation. Your home run means a big deal. So in fact, Steve Buschel, he's smart enough to know that. He doesn't mess around when he comes up with one or two out and nobody on. He does what he needs to do to get his team on the board.

Not only that, but home runs with men on kill rallies. It's true. So he's really just optimizing his approach. That's why they call him Old Rally Maker. Smart player. Steve Old Rally Maker Buchel. Put that on his Wikipedia page. Just rally for short.

They just called him Old Rally. Let's rallies live. All right. Steven says, let's imagine for a moment that the playoffs in baseball were very different from the playoffs in baseball and more like war. That is, once you've conquered an army, the troops that you have just defeated are then drafted into your army, which isn't always the way war works, but I'll go with it. me, which isn't always the way war works, but I'll go with it. Now that we have only four teams left, it's a little easier to think of such things without it being too underwhelming. So what if, under the rules of baseball, you were allowed to replace up to two players in your usual starting lineup with up to two players that played for the team that you've just eliminated? You'd be under

no obligation to replace anyone, but you could, and you would lose the player that was being replaced. You can't just give up a bench guy and bring in two stars from the team you've just beaten. You should probably exclude pitchers in this scenario because it seems obvious that you'd just take the best pitcher and build up the playoff rotation. So who would be the different players, if any, in the starting lineups of each of the championship series teams based on the teams they've just beaten in the division series? I don't like let's throw the wildcard games out to keep it even. Because to me the interesting question about this is in this scenario, would you actually rather be the wildcard team? Risking, obviously, an elimination in round one, making it much more likely you won't get to a division series, but setting yourself up to be that much better in later rounds. I wonder if it's

conceivable that the math would actually work out. If the advantage that you gained over your later opponents would be so much greater that in fact you would overwhelm the odds disadvantage of having to play one extra series to get there yeah you probably could depending on the right on the team matchups because i don't know i was chatting with rob arthur last night just about how much adding mike trout would improve a team's odds in a seven-game series if he were replacing an average player. And we came up with a very large number because Mike Trout is a lot better than an average player. And what did we decide? I think, yeah, we came up with something like a 500 team with Mike Trout instead of an average player would be like 580 to win a seven game series

which sounds crazy but I think might actually be true because if you think about it like Mike Trout over an average player is like a 88 win team instead of an 81 win team. And that's a 543 winning percentage. Instead of a 500 winning percentage. And over a 7 game series. And you know. Not every team has a Mike Trout level player. Who you could replace someone with. Not any team.

Yeah. But your point is. I mean there are a lot of players. That are not as good. But similarly good. So I'm trying to think so you can take two teams so so the cubs would get mccutchen and yeah well it depends on the player they're replacing maybe yeah but you'll always you can always use the elite center fielder like that's that's an easy one because you know that you can either bump someone to a corner or bump him to a

corner and even if you have awesome corners you can bump someone to a corner or bump him to a corner and even if you have awesome corners you can bump someone to first base maybe to third yeah cubs would get mccutcheon and if we're counting wild card game yeah and maybe can you he said no starting pitchers but you could use you could take melanson if you wanted, I guess if you can take a bullpen guy. It's dumb that you can't take starters, too. I don't like that. Let me take a starter. Then you'd just take Garrett Cole.

Well, you would because he's their second best player. Yeah, that's not bad. You wouldn't have to take Garrett Cole, though. It's not like you would take Garrett Cole and Liriano, for instance. You're not just taking pitchers. No, but you'd probably take one pitcher almost always. Usually, but not necessarily from the Rangers. Maybe with the Rangers too.

But so what? You take one pitcher and one hitter. You would only take one pitcher from the Blue Jays. Yeah, okay. And not necessarily even that. Not necessarily even both pitchers from the blue jays yeah okay and not and not necessarily even that not necessarily even both pitchers from blue days oh not even necessarily even one pitcher in the blue days you could make a case for donaldson and one of their other three i mean you can make a case for donaldson and tulowitzki on a lot of teams not all teams but on a lot of teams and then the cubs

would also get to take cardinals but would they i, I guess they would take Carpenter and they'd put him at second base. And maybe they'd take Hayward. Maybe they'd take Johnny Peralta. Or maybe they'd take Yadier Molina because he's worth infinite wins on any team he plays for. Yeah. yeah i would guess that once they had so they would have who do we who are we going with mccutcheon and whom for the pirates if they can't take cole then probably it would be melanson i don't know if i don't think there's another position player they would take okay all right and then the cardinals they yeah so probably at this point they yeah, they take Carpenter for sure.

And then either Hayward, Molina, or Rosenthal, probably. Okay, and then the Astros would have taken... We don't need to worry about who they take. Yeah, okay, we don't care about them. So the Royals, now would the Royals take Carlos Correarea and replace escobar or would they choose to keep esky magic they oh i think they would keep esky magic can't they they can't trade huh could they yeah because what they'd love to do is have esky just bat the first time and then immediately pull him yeah just one even just one pitch yeah

and then pull him but if it's a roster thing like you can't replace Cologne with with Correa and so okay yeah I think no anyway they would take Correa I wonder how often the chemistry concerns would prevent a team from making a move just of getting a mercenary who was on the team you just beat instead of the guy who's been with you all year i'm not totally sure the astros oh the astros would take miller and batons from the yankees and so now would you take that guy are those guys available like would you could the royals then take batons and korea sure okay so that's it okay so the royals would have batons in Correa. Alright. And the Mets...

Wait, the Blue Jays. Okay, Blue Jays. The Blue Jays beat the Rangers. That's a tough one. I guess they would take Odor. And... Man, there's not a lot there. No. Chu? Maybe. And what would you...

Where would you put him? A corner, like left field? Yeah, you would take Chew over Ben Revere. Yeah, poor Ben Revere. Doesn't, no magic, no hashtag magic for Ben Revere. No. And the Mets, what Dodgers would the Mets take? They would take Seager.

Yeah, yeah, they'd take Seager. Yeah. Yeah. They'd take Seager and maybe they'd take Kendrick too. They might. Yeah. They might. Yeah. That's probably, that'd probably be it. Oh, Jansen, Seager and Jansen. I mean, the Mets could really use an 8-inning guy. That would look good on the Mets. Yeah. So Seager and Jansen. Okay. Yeah. We're done. Okay. Yeah. That's right. We're done. Alright, we've got a couple other good ones. I'll star them. Save them for next time. You can keep sending them at podcast

at baseballperspectives.com and you can join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. Rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and we will be back tomorrow.