Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 790: The Non-Hilarious Haren

Episode Date: January 5, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about dress codes and the recent lack of rumors, then discuss Dan Haren’s revelatory tweets.

It's not that funny, is it? I don't know what it is But you can't get enough of it It's not that funny, is it? Good morning and welcome to episode 790 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from the Baseball Prospectus, brought to you by the Play Index at baseballreference.com. I was just using it today. I was just, yeah,.com i was just using it today i was

just yeah i might i was using it today ben hi ben hi 538 hi i'm sam miller hey ben i'm sam miller i know i was just using it today and i might use it for i might use what i was looking at for the play index tomorrow or i might write about it i haven't decided but uh it's just it continues to blow me away at how like i can have some little eye like little question and then it can do like you know like thousands of thousands of you know man hours of labor in like two and a half seconds yeah it's an amazing thing an impressive tool it really is all right how are you i you? I'm okay. Anything to talk about? Trying to figure out whether your outfit that you wore all summer would pass the dress code for the Hall of Fame press conference tomorrow.

I think it would. I think it would. It doesn't really specify your exact outfit. So the press conference is being held at the New York Athletic Club, so there's a dress code. So there are many items of clothing that are prohibited, but not hoodies specifically, so you might be okay. Yeah, I could always take the hoodie off if it came to that.

The polo shirt underneath would have covered me, right? Yeah, collared shirts is listed under requested attire, so you'd be fine. Now, I have seen corduroys referred to as jeans before. I assume, though, when I see jeans, there's probably a lot of people out there who are gobsmacked right now thinking you have. And so, sorry, but I have. I have also. I think when people say jeans in this context, they generally mean denim. And corduroys are considered nice. They're at least as nice as dungarees or whatever were allowed. It does say.

It says denim of any color. And then it says pants that resemble jeans of any color. So that could include corduroys. I don't know. My pajama jeans are definitely out oh my gosh what as seen on tv hang on as seen on my browser in a second pajama jeans yep oh my goodness why though so comfortable for where uh i don't are they pajamas that just look like jeans yes or are they they're not denim no but they're very convincing yeah but why why do you want them to

look like jeans like they're all they are is pajamas that they've basically like painted and stylized to look like jeans right there's nothing right so why why would want that? I mean, I'm not saying you wouldn't want it. Who cares? But why would you want that? I definitely do want it. Yeah, from afar, they look like real pants. So if you're in a situation where you want to be wearing pajamas, but you don't want to look like you are, they're perfect.

But only from afar, Ben. Yeah, that's true. But only from afar, Ben. Yeah, that's true. So what situation are you in where you want people, where you're concerned about how people will see you, but you are confident they won't come within 30 feet of you? I guess that doesn't happen that often.

Okay. Interesting. Did you buy them yourself or did someone buy them for you? No, they were a gift. But I think I had mentioned at one point that I wanted some. All right. All right. So, Ben. Yeah. Yesterday, there was a rumor by John Heyman. Desmond Camp and Padres are expected to speak this week to see if there's anything to talk about.

Very preliminary. to see if there's anything to talk about. Very preliminary. And I am not calling this a non-revelatory rumor. What I am calling it, though, I'm now doing a spinoff just for this season. It's an ad hoc category because we've been talking about the strangely quiet hot stove in January for a bunch of star players. I'm now going with the revelatory non-rumor. There are no rumors yesterday.

No rumors at all. Like Justin Upton is just hanging out in January, and we're not hearing things. It's fine that he hasn't signed. He can do what he wants. But isn't it especially weird that you just don't ever hear his name? You hardly ever hear his name you hardly ever hear his name or sesba's name or chris davis name until ian desmond news kind of started up again

yesterday you weren't really hearing his name yeah has the rumor has the rumor died then it doesn't it doesn't it sort of feel like like we don't really hear rumors the way that we did five years ago uh no okay maybe maybe yesterday maybe in the last couple weeks i don't really hear rumors the way that we did five years ago? No. Maybe yesterday, maybe in the last couple of weeks. I don't know. I wouldn't have said that there was any decline in rumor frequency over the last few years. Yeah, it might just be that I'm not checking for them as much or that I have my focuses elsewhere.

So maybe I'm just not seeing them. I used to be hardcore refresh, refresh, refresh. Yeah. It felt to me like you used to get a lot more rumors for every free agent than you do now. And also that there were a lot fewer surprise transactions. A lot of transactions surprise me these days. And I know that they, what, didn't they, a few years ago, didn't they kind of crack down on clubs leaking information?

Yeah, that was in the new CBA, the current CBA that you weren't supposed to leak terms at least. And a lot of stuff still leaks. So I don't know how much difference that made. Uh, yeah, I don't know if it made any difference. There was that rumor about the White Sox wanting Cespedes and Gordon but only being willing to go three years, which great. Good luck, guys. Well, great except it's January 5th. Yeah.

So – And there's four guys out there. There's four outfielders. Yeah. I mean, so like this – Dan Rathman pointed out in the thing that he wrote today, Ian Desmond is a really good example of the scarcity illusion that we sometimes talk about on here, where it seems like you want to be the only free agent at your position. you're the only free agent at your position, it probably means that only one team just lost its,

that guy, right? And Ian Desmond is the only shortstop on the market. Essentially, he has been the only free agent shortstop on the market. It ought to be this just huge bidding war for the one good shortstop. And yet, as Dan pointed out, there's really only one team in baseball that needs a shortstop

and has any interest in spending money right now, and that's the Padres. And even there, maybe not, because who knows what their budget is like, who knows whether they are doing another round of buying at this point. We don't really know where they are, but they're the most plausible. So even though Ian Desmond theoretically could look at this off season and go, perfect, no competition, going to get a little bidding war going between me and three teams. Well, the problem is that, you know, Xander Bogarts actually had a really good breakout year and Dede Gregorius turned out to be a really successful shortstop and Corey Seager

matriculated and the three big teams who didn't have, you know, really didn't have good short necessarily have good, sure shortstops a year ago, uh, all do now. And so it doesn't really matter how many other guys are on the market with you. If there's only 30 teams and you know, 29 of them aren't interested in you, then you're sort of stuck anyway. Yeah. And so anyway, so now I don't know if that's where we are with these outfielders. I don't know if that's why these corner guys aren't getting signed, like we talked about, if it's at all related to that. But real quick, I'm going to make some predictions.

Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to say that Cespedes, Upton, and Davis will all sign for exactly the same years and dollars that Shinsu Chu got. Okay. I'm going to say that Alex Gordon ends up the guy who gets squeezed and signs a deal that's shorter and for way less than you think. And I'm going to go crazy and say that it's gonna be the rays that get them wow that this will be the biggest signing in rays history and it'll be like three years 42 million dollars and everybody will be like like blown away that they got alex gordon for that much and then i'm

going to say ian desmond four years 75 san die Wow. Okay. That's more predictions than we usually make in weeks. I was driving around today, and I just felt inspired to predict some things. There are some bold predictions in there. All right. Paul DePodesta. Yeah. So there's news about him, at least. It probably is going to be easy to make too big a deal out of him going to football,

as though this is a huge paradigm shift. Uh, he, he has a football background. He played football. He got his start almost kind of in football, uh, although at a very low level. Uh, and so probably it's not as though, uh, we should necessarily talk about this as a huge example of a non-expert going into a sports franchise running position. However, it is, I think it's interesting. This is not the topic, by the way, still banter. It is interesting. I think two things about it. One is that we tend to think of these guys as smart baseball minds. And I think that in both directions, we should think about both the people who do them

and the positions that they're filling as management positions. And if a big part of Paul DePodesta's value initially was that he was an outsider, a person who was not your classic baseball guy who was 99 out of the 100 applicants you were going to get for any position we're going to be this sort of archetype of a baseball man uh that um that now that that we have you know 13 14 years of all these people staffing front offices you could make the case that they are their own homogeneity and that it's maybeter, not just people who fit a very specific demographic profile or who come from a very specific subset of universities. And that's definitely part of it. I think that you could make

the case that it might be time though, to also start thinking about having a broader, you know, to also start thinking about having a broader, you know, disciplinary background. And I sort of have been kind of, for the last three or four years, I've kind of been expecting the next semi-revolution to be that teams are hiring non-baseball academics or non-baseball scientists or non-baseball researchers or non-baseball expertise to handle a lot of these issues that I think are too big for baseball people to deal with. So it's interesting, A, for DiPodesta to now kind of in that sense be going over to the football realm where he brings less football expertise and more management and creativity expertise. And B or two to see him recognized.

I forget where the B was, but something. There's a B in there as well. So that's interesting, I think. I also think that his title, Chief Strategy Officer, we don't know what that title will be or what that job will be exactly or what he'll do. But it sounds an awful lot like logic enforcer, which is, of course, my dream job. Yeah. So common sense, kind of a cool job. Common sense consultant, logic enforcer, chief strategy officer. They're all basically

mad libs. So did you have any thoughts about Paul DePodesta leaving baseball? Do you think he will come back? Do you think that it is time to write his baseball legacy and baseball obituary? There's some cross-pollination of sports executives. I'm trying to think of basketball examples. I know there have been some analytics-side basketball examples, but of course there's Billy Beane's well-known interest in soccer and the Yankees' former pro scouting director went to work for MLS as an executive sort of business development guy or player development guy.

So it's only natural, I think, that there would be some movement across sports and people get bored probably doing the same thing for a really long time. You never know. You might wake up one day and we'll be talking about the Cleveland Browns. It'll be a Cleveland Browns podcast all of a sudden. Actually, I guess there is one of those, right? It was on Hang Up and Listen. But it's a sport with more opportunities maybe for analytical thinking at this point. Or maybe it's easier to differentiate yourself,

as you said, and it's kind of a growing field or a field that's becoming more sophisticated instead of one that already is very sophisticated, and maybe it's hard to set yourself apart. And we don't know, maybe he just got a huge raise. But it's not totally shocking to me that someone would move from one sport to another. Long, long ago on this podcast, we talked about how many of the 30 best GMs in the world are currently in baseball, are currently doing baseball jobs. And whether, you know, if you had some sort of like omniscient way of judging who would actually be the 30 most successful GMs, like whether like, you know, Rahm Emanuel would be one of them or whether like some like superintendent of New York City schools will, I think chancellor, whatever, would be one of them or if, you know, guy running, you know, guy running a feed store in, in Hollister would be

one of them or what. And I uh, I think we decided that we kind of thought that it was still the case that most of them are in baseball right now. They might not necessarily be GMs, but they're in baseball right now. I think that's what we said. Uh, do you feel like we're any closer to getting a non baseball chief executive, uh, of baseball operations in the future? Well, if it ever happens, then by definition, we are closer to it now than we were last time we talked about it. But I don't think we're very close. I don't think it's imminent. I don't either. I probably think that for baseball operations job, you would want, I think you still would want the baseball person. I think mainly that, I think that what I mostly think is that some of these issues

that teams are dealing with now, like for instance, chemistry, it has never made sense to me to try to tackle chemistry from a baseball perspective. I would want to tackle chemistry from an academic workplace management perspective. And so I think that there are positions where non-baseball people who have essentially no baseball expertise could still be better than the people who are currently trying to work on those issues in baseball,

but probably not GM. I would say almost certainly not GM. In fact, I will say certainly not GM. Yeah would say almost certainly not GM. In fact, I will say certainly not GM. Yeah. There's a lot of sports specific expertise that comes in handy there. And maybe DePodesta felt that he wasn't going to get another shot to be a GM or he had already been one. So he'd reached the pinnacle of the baseball executive world. Unless you want to say that president is that. And that was a while ago and he hasn't gotten another shot. I don't think he's been reported to have interviewed for a job recently.

So maybe he felt like for whatever reason, that opportunity was behind him and he wanted to go somewhere else with more upward mobility. He was kind of seen, I think, as being the heir to Sandy Alderson in New York. And Sandy Alderson is one of the older GMs, but maybe he, maybe he was seen, maybe he was wrongly seen as the heir there. And maybe Sandy Alderson is not that old. Yeah. Well, he would have a better sense of that than we would. He would. I wonder how much, I wonder what he does now to prepare. Like, I wonder if he's been, I wonder what you do to get ready to be a football team if you've not been immersed in it before. I can't imagine doing it in baseball.

I can't even imagine following a sport. I've wanted to become a hockey fan again for years, but it's so daunting because I haven't watched it since I was a kid and I love watching the highlights are a really big game, but the idea of learning a league and getting to know it the way I know baseball is just so intimidating that I'll probably never do it. So yeah, actually working and having a position of responsibility in another sport. I mean,

I'm sure he has been very plugged into football, but not to the extent that you are if you work in it. All right, so that's most of an episode. But the topic now, I wanted to talk about Dan Heron's tweets. Okay. And first, I'm going to go really grumpy for a second. And mostly I want to go grumpy in order to praise Andy McCullough. There is a misconception out there that baseball players

are funny. They're not. They're the least funny people in the world. Everything they try to do that is funny is not funny. And I think that one of the things that really sets Andy McCullough apart as a beat writer more than any other writer out there is that most beat writers, I believe, writer out there is that most beat writers, I believe, uh, they dutifully report baseball players attempts to be funny. Uh, and they think that that is the funny thing. That's the funny stuff. So it's like, Oh, you know, guy came into the clubhouse wearing a banana hat and that's not funny. That's, that's a guy trying to be cute. Not funny though. Like there's nobody ever heard that and went, ha ha. Yeah. You know, like it's not another baseball player maybe. And so, so Dan Heron, whereas Andy, what Andy does

though is he finds the ways that they are actually funny. And to when Andy covers a team, they are a funny team. They are constantly saying and doing funny things and they don't realize it. They are funny in the way that humans are funny. The way that God looks down at us and laughs at the weird, funny shapes that he has created us in and the things that we do. And he, Andy recognizes that baseball players are shaped funnily and that they do things, uh, in essence, the same way that toddlers do, which is to say unintentionally cute and charming and funny all at the same time. I believe that Andy would never be suckered in by a bad baseball meme.

And that's why I appreciate him. So Dan Heron tweeted yesterday a bunch of things. And I don't think Dan Heron was attempting to be funny. I think Dan Heron is an interesting and smart person and he was trying to be uh he was sort of giving you uh insight i don't think that he would think that he was like killing uh like a comedian would and yet i'm looking here at the uh at the descriptions at the headlines of of various aggregators who uh pulled Heron's tweets together. All right. Former Cubs pitcher Dan Heron tweets hilarious stories about career.

Dan Heron reflects on his career during hilarious Twitter rant. I did not search hilarious, by the way. I searched Dan Heron. All right. Dan Heron, let's see. Former Cubs pitcher tweets hilarious. Retired pitcher goes on funny twitter tell all dan heron gets hilariously retrospective these are 10 results five of them either say hilarious or funny for say hilarious not hilarious okay it's not hilarious interesting stuff you guys will

hear these and you'll go oh interesting so the topic is Dan Heron overrated on Twitter. No, these are great tweets. These are A plus tweets. They're good tweets. They're not hilarious tweets. All right. I want to talk about these tweets, though, each of them. OK. All right. We're just going to because they are an interesting they are an interesting insight into the game, playing the game, career in the game, etc. By the way, I think Dan Heron is somewhat funny. Oh, Dan Heron is funny. Dan Heron is a very funny person.

He's one of the funnier baseball people. Okay. So these tweets specifically are not funny is what you're saying? But he has had funny tweets? It's not that they're, I don't know. I don't know quite how to put it. They're not comedy. They're not, I don't feel like they're.

They're honesty. Yeah. They're they're the aspiration is not hilarity yes that's true but he that's what i aspire to be funny with some tweets and sometimes they are yeah he does his oh his handle is funny i throw 88 yes that he he is funny he is one of the funnier baseball okay uh tweeters and these tweets are a are A plus and it is not his fault that they have been mischaracterized in my opinion. All right. So his first tweet, I'm on an exercise bike board. So here are some things about my baseball career that come to mind. I went into almost every start the last few years thinking, how the hell am I going to get these guys out? It is interesting because I think that there are two kinds of veterans out there. One kind refuses to acknowledge their decline.

And I think that that is a very noble position to have. I've written about this with Albert Pools and Brandon Phillips and probably others. There is no prize for being the first person to acknowledge your limitations. And if you do, then they will just kick you out of the sport and then you never get a chance to be back in the sport. And so if you have to delude yourself into thinking you're very good, even when you're not, I think that's fine. Sometimes when veteran players will seem to be, seem in their quotes to be oblivious to the fact that they have declined, they are no longer the superstars that they once were. We tend to mock them.

And and I think that's inappropriate. I think they're doing what they need to do to keep going. And then you have the Dan Heron ones who are very, very aware of their decline and they just keep going out there. very aware of their decline and they just keep going out there. And it's interesting that these two types of personalities can both coexist in the same world and thrive. And I wonder if anybody on Dan Heron's team knew that he felt that way. And if he had tweeted this three years ago instead of now, I wonder what the reaction would have been. Yeah. If he had tweeted this instead of now, he, I would guess he would not have pitched as long as, I mean, if he were public about this attitude, I would guess that even that might be enough for some team not to sign him in that last year when he was talking about retiring anyway. Cause you don't, you know, like, I like him more, because he said this,

and I like self deprecating people. And so it makes me identify with him more, it makes me sympathize with him. But I don't know if it would make me want to hire him. I mean, probably he is exactly as effective as he would have been if he were one of these guys who convinced himself that he was still an ace and he hadn't lost anything because he would have lost something. And maybe this is the way he cop him, when you're pulling for him, you don't want to be thinking that he has a sort of defeatist attitude. Maybe it's not a defeatist attitude, but you don both talked to Stompers, about the idea of surveying them to have an idea. I mean, teams are trying to collect data on their players all the time. Russell Carlton has written about how you could measure chemistry theoretically if you wanted, but you'd have the whole, you know, tapping on the glass problem. And when we've asked, when I asked players, you know, about whether, you know, it would be reasonable to survey their happiness, there was a feeling among some, not all, but some, that there is no point in acknowledging the days that you aren't A+.

There's no point acknowledging that you have ups and downs that they need to continue to tell themselves every day that this is their best day even if they feel that it's not and uh you know deep in their heart they can't admit it they can't acknowledge it and i wonder if there's any benefit to that or if it's the dan heron model is actually kind of better that being realistic about what you're feeling and about what your limitations are is the only way that you can really adjust to them and you know to some degree dan heron in his final three years is a huge success right i mean he was not very like like he says his physical decline was obvious uh in terms of ross raw ability raw stuff raw strength and he managed to put together three years where he

qualified for the ra title all three years he basically didn't miss any starts he was a roughly league average pitcher overall through those three years and i don't know we don't know what the alternative is we don't know how sad dan heron would have done or i guess not sad dan heron the opposite uh delusionally bullish yeah yeah exactly we don't know how that guy would have done uh but there is probably uh you know something to his ability to adjust to his weaknesses that I don't know that I would speculate the honesty helped. Yeah. Well, you wouldn't want him challenging guys with his 88 mile per hour fastball because except I'm going to skip ahead. All right. I'm going to skip to another one. I gave up so many homers because I didn't want to walk people that and because i threw 85 mile per hour meatballs sometimes uh sometimes there's another one sometimes when the

count was three one i would just throw it down the middle and hope for the best people pop up in batting practice right and uh you laughed it's uh dan harron's strategy could he have tweeted that let me ask you that i guess maybe that's the question is how many of these tweets could he have tweeted three years ago and everything would have been fine as opposed to it would have either hurt his earning potential or people would have criticized him when things went wrong or people would have called him soft or stupid or something else. Are those positions that he has that I throw 85-mile-per-hour meatballs and when it's 3-1 I throw it down the middle and hope for the best, would those have survived if he tweeted them in the middle of his career?

Well, the 85-mile-per-hour meatballs doesn't say he intends to do that. He just does that sometimes where the other one has intention to it. He's intentionally basically throwing meatballs when the count is 3-1. So I don't know whether acknowledging that he makes bad pitches would have hurt him really because every pitcher makes bad pitches and everyone knew how hard he threw. So I don't think that would have killed him. makes bad pitches and everyone knew how hard he threw. So I don't think that would have killed him.

And the other thing I think, I don't know, maybe someone would have talked to him. Maybe his catcher would have talked to him about not doing that. I don't think either one would have been a career killer. But I like that he acknowledged that because sometimes pitchers throw weird things. And you wonder, why would he have thrown that pitch there? Why would he have missed by that much? Why would he have not thrown his best pitch in that situation? And we assume that they're always throwing the optimal pitch and that they might just make a mistake sometimes, but they had the right idea. Whereas probably a lot of times they didn't. And they were probably just making a bad decision as well as making a bad pitch. So I don't know, maybe the hitter is so not expecting Dan Heron to throw one down the middle on 3-1

that it actually works more often than you would think. But probably not a great idea. Yeah, it'd be interesting to play it out and see how much you can pitch it right down the middle on 3-1. Like, can you do it to, like, the bottom 60% of hitters? Can you do it to, you know, as long as there's nobody on base? I mean, it does seem like, I mean, yes, guys do pop up in batting practice. Guys foul it off in batting practice guys

aren't that good at hitting home runs even when it's right down the middle yeah sometimes all right i gave up 11 runs in toronto and got the win one time uh-huh he did not oh yeah he actually did not do that he gave up nine in toronto one time and he got the win. What do you make of the fact that he got this wrong? Yeah, baseball players don't ever check their facts. There are so many stories. And often it's some 80-year-old player remembering a game that was 50 years ago. And maybe he doesn't know how to find that game on baseball reference or something. So that's understandable.

Or maybe it was before those things were even, you know, like Glory of Their Times has lots of stories and people have done tracers to see if they were accurate and sometimes they aren't. And there was no way to look that stuff up at the time. So fine. But this is a really easy one to check. And Dan Hearn's already doing internet things so he could have checked this one probably could have just googled it in five seconds even if he didn't want to go look up the box score so i don't know i don't know why you would not check

that i would check that intentional or hyperbole i mean uh unintentional or hyperbole? I mean, unintentional or hyperbole? What was the actual outing? He gave up nine. How long did he go? He went five, and they won 12 to 10. So the A's didn't even allow 11. He did allow 11 hits. He went five and two-thirds that game.

And by the way, nobody since at least 1980, play index, nobody since at least 1980 has allowed 11 in a game and gotten a win. Russ Ortiz allowed 10 and got a win. That is the most since 1980. Interesting. Well, yeah, maybe it's a little bit of hyperbole. Having a double digit run total makes it more shocking. Having a double-digit run total makes it more shocking. All right. Let's see here. I only hit like five to seven people on purpose.

I would have probably actually thought fewer. I'm surprised that it's that many. If I had to guess, I would have guessed that Dan Heron hit one person in his career on purpose, that the average major leaguer hit two and that, you know, you'd have to go like three standard deviations from the mean to get to like, uh, like, uh,

higher than say seven. And, uh, so five to seven seems high to you. Does that seem high or low to you? Uh, it didn't seem that high to me when I saw it. So how many,

so how many hitters has he hit overall? Something like 60. He hit 67. So it's a very low percentage of the batters he hit. And he pitched for 13 years. So he hit one intentionally every couple years, basically. It doesn't shock me, especially because Dan Heron's not going to hurt anyone

that badly when he hits them he doesn't throw hard enough uh-huh i wonder of the five to seven i wonder how many were retaliatory and how many were uh preemptive strikes yeah well maybe i wonder he'd tell you what what do you think what would be your guess of all the intentional hit batsmen in baseball not like i was trying to pitch him i was trying to back him off the plate and it got away from me, but I was trying to hit the guy. How many do you think are retaliatory?

And how many are, basically how many are retaliations against accidents versus how many are actually the intent that retaliation then sees in everything. Yeah, I'd say 70% retaliation of those half are accidents. Uh-huh. 70, okay, all right. I would count out the days about a month in advance

to see if I was going to pitch in Coors Field. This, I mean, I think we all, everybody knows Coors Field is a bad place to pitch and the pitchers probably don't like to pitch there that much. But this sort of puts it into perspective how difficult it must be for the Rockies to ever hope to get a free agent pitcher. And so in the baseball annual this year,

the essay is, you know, about how the Rockies are trying to get pitching by, you know, X, by whatever, whatever the way is that we've identified this year. And I was actually thinking like, we could probably have just filled out the entire essay by block quoting from the previous 19 years, essays of the Rockies are trying to find pitching by doing this. And then the next year it's by doing this. And then the next year it's by doing this. And then the next year it's by doing this. And it's been 20 years. Is it just going to be impossible?

Like when Dan Heron puts it like this, are they at such a disadvantage for getting pitchers that they will just simply never, ever be a franchise that can compete? Is this a bigger disadvantage, for instance, than being the Rays and having no payroll? Well, it definitely makes you think that they can't compete by signing free agent pitchers. And so I guess they've tried to compensate for that by developing their own. And then that hasn't worked very well either. And you don't know whether that's their player development process that doesn't work well, or whether's just colorado that doesn't work well if i were the rockies right now i would

probably just try to build the blake street bombers again and just just outscore everyone on the road as well except that they have the the on the road hangover effect also so that is counting against them too so i mean they definitely have the on-the-road hangover effect also, so that is counting against them too. So, I mean, they definitely have the biggest institutional disadvantage of any team in baseball, I think, at least as far as geographical location comes in. So, I mean, you have to have someone pitch, so it does make you think that they should develop their own pitching and keep trying to figure out what works in Coors Field

better than other stuff works, even if none of it works that well. The problem is that developing pitching doesn't work. It's not a great way to build a team, no. So, yeah, I'd probably just do the Cubs thing and build a great position player prospect group, except that the Cubs have then been able to supplement. Sign John Lester. Yeah, people like that.

So you have to get a lot of good position player prospects and then do the Jake Arrieta trade five times. Then you'll be fine. Next year's essay. All right, and let's's see i think this is the last one there was at least three to four times i thought the team plane was going to crash now we have a guy who emails us every few months asking us to please answer his question uh which is all about what would happen all the sort of scheduling things that would have to happen if a team plane actually crashed.

And so Dan Heron tweeting it brought it up again. This guy emailed Dan Heron's tweet. And the question we always have is, can we actually talk about that? Would we actually talk about that? We can't, right? Well, it hasn't been talked about. It was on Seinfeld, as he pointed out. I don't really want to talk about it.

Okay. All right, so Dan Heron has not given us permission to do the team plane crash. Well, I've probably been on three to four planes I, on some level, thought were going to crash. The last one I was on, I was convinced. I think I've been on two that I thought was, but the last one i was on i was convinced i think i've been on two that i thought was but the last one i was 100 sure like i i was i was definitely like i was calm and i was getting in my space uh to die yeah it was very and then it just and then it doesn't no and then it's it's a weird thing you just oh it just doesn't and then you go about your life and you forget that you ever felt those feelings.

Yeah. And then you get on another plane probably pretty soon. Well, I mean, of course you get off. You have to get on another plane. Yeah. Yeah. I take a lot of flights. I've never not taken a flight because I was worried about the flying.

not taken a flight because I was worried about the flying, but flying is probably the, uh, probably the only time in my life when I routinely think I'm about to die. I just don't, you know, the thing is that the, I'm fine talking about, I think I'm fine talking about dark things. I think you, I don't, listeners would agree. I don don't think though i think that what makes me uncomfortable about this and why there's no point to it is that it's essentially asking us to talk about a dark thing through the frivolous lens of scheduling yeah and i just don't feel like there's any real need to do that like even if it ever happens my first question is not going to be well what are they going to do about the schedule? It's not going to be any of those sort of details of,

well, what happens to the league now? It'll be awful and horrifying. And so I kind of don't want to have on record me talking about that stuff in case it does happen. And then all of a sudden like... MLB trade rumors cites Sam Miller's take on what happens next. Yeah. So I'm going to say no to that. But I do, I always feel, you know, Ben, I always have a feeling when I leave, anytime I leave for a work trip or anything like that,

a feeling when I leave, anytime I leave for a work trip or anything like that, I always do feel a sort of nervousness, a scaredness, because I don't know why, but it sort of feels like if an accident is going to happen, it's going to happen while you're on, I don't know why, but while you're outside of your comfort zone, even though most accidents happen at home and, you know, close to home, home and you know close to home it feels much more likely that like if i'm going to um you know die in a car crash it feels more likely that it's going to happen when i'm driving 450 miles away from my family than when i'm driving two miles from my family and so i imagine that for a baseball player there is a certain amount of constant existential dread because you are just constantly leaving your home you're constantly leaving your family. You're constantly flying, getting on that big tin box that goes up in the air. And there's probably something that is a relief the last day

that you, you know, the day that you actually retire and you realize that you can go home and you don't have to feel that anymore. Yeah. Yeah. I feel the same way about going places just because I work from home and often don't stray far from my home. I'm just sitting around in my pajama jeans writing or something, which is not a high risk activity. So if I'm getting in a car, I'm probably exponentially raising my death risk, even if it's still still tiny it's another reason to dread going to Coors Field too because those flights into Denver always very bumpy yeah that's why he was counting the days maybe maybe uh Chicago was where I was flying into the last time where I was convinced and I've never flown in Chicago but it was you know it's all windy and all that so is it always

like that in Chicago that's where you get stranded a lot of times. So, yeah, the weather is bad often. So, anyway, the reason I like these tweets as a whole is that— We didn't talk about his Imodium tweets. No, he also takes Imodium to settle his stomach, I guess. On the days that he pitches, yeah. On the days that he pitches, and he has two glasses of wine the night before he pitches. Just another admission of fear, I guess.

He was, BJ Upton hit really well against him and he's not sure why. My threat to retire didn't quite work last offseason, which is a very interesting tweet and could have been on its own. And I think that's all. You know, this is a good, I think this is a good string of tweets because it's important i think to remember to keep in mind that baseball players uh have stressful jobs but they're different stresses than we have uh in some ways they're very similar to the stresses we have in

some ways they're very different and there are coping mechanisms for all of these things and it's probably important to kind of view a lot of what we watch through the lens of omnipresent stress and omnipresent coping mechanisms. There's, of course, the game is, you know, home runs and line drives and good plays and everything like that. But the subtext to it, the undercurrent of it all is that these are human beings dealing with stress and coping with that stress in ways that get them through 18 year careers. So it was really interesting to see these little details that I think you can pull the strings on and see a lot deeper into both Dan Heron's psyche and the baseball player's psyche.

And I appreciated them a great deal. Yeah. Not hilarious, but still worthwhile. Thank you. Okay. All right. So we'll do an email show tomorrow, we think. So send us some emails.

NotAboutTeamPlanesCrashing at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. And rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes. Support the Play Index. As we mentioned at the top of the show, the most useful baseball analysis tool that the public can use. Use the coupon code BP when you subscribe to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. We'll be back soon. I don't think it's funny, honey.

My skies are not so sunny. Why don't you make up your mind?