Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 791: Brewster’s Emails

Episode Date: January 6, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Justin Upton and answer listener emails about baseball movies, rap lyrics, restructuring divisions, free-agent demands, and more.

Good morning and welcome to episode 791 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hiya. Heya. So I read a Justin Upton rumor. We've got proof of life on Justin Upton. Yeah.

John Marossi tweeted that the Orioles are staying in contact with Justin Upton as a fallback if they do not resign Chris Davis. So he's still a plan B, but at least it sounds like someone's checking on him. Someone is aware he exists, although it is still we plan to talk to him if we need to at some future point kind of a thing. Yeah, it's a staying in contact. There's no signing no signing imminent no you're right that it is proof that they have not forgotten that he exists but it is also a uh it is a it is a a planning rumor not really a signing rumor yep that's true poor guy guy's supposed to be he's supposed to be like, you know, by this point in his career. It's crazy because Justin Upton was supposed to be like a superstar by this point in his career,

like a future Hall of Famer. And he's not, but he's very close to it. Like he only missed, he missed by like 6%, right? Like he just missed his best case. And yet he's just hanging around and nobody wants him. Like imagine if he were that 6% better, how much news there'd be about Justin Upton. He'd be the guy everybody was waiting on.

Yeah. Well. He's sort of lost. Probably doesn't need our sympathy. He'll probably be very rich soon. Richer. We'll see. Wasn't one of the questions on the jerry krasnick mlb executive

survey a justin upton versus jason hayward comparison let's see uh let's we should find that out all right let's quickly go back over the krasnicks should we always a good time to review the krasnicks which staff ace would you be more comfortable giving a nine-figure deal, David Price or Zach Granke? Granke 19, Price 14. One executive called it a push. We had to debate who actually got more because of the terms of the deals. And so let's call that one a push with maybe a little bit more.

I don't know. I would say Price maybe got slightly more. But all right. Which will be the better performer, Upton or Hayward? And that was close. Hayward 20, Upton 14. And it seems like, I mean, only one team paid for Hayward, technically. So we don't know what the industry consensus was.

But yes, the responses were close. And the market has been very different. Yeah, okay. And then Davis, Chris Davis or Ewan Cespedes, that was also a push. They're in the same spot. Still undecided. Murphy versus Desmond. Yeah, I think it's too early to respond, to check in on these.

Okay. Oh, if the Cubs trade an infielder to ease their position player logjam, who is more likely to be moved? Starling Castro or Javi Baez? Castro 20, Baez 11. All right, executives. Nailed it. Good for them.

Which pending free agent has the best chance of returning to the Royals? Ooh. Gordon, Cueto, or Zobrist? Do you remember? Oh, right. They said Zobrist, right? And we were very critical

they said gordon by oh they did oh okay yeah that's right we were critical but wrongly yeah completely wrongly because gordon signed today with the royals they had 25 for gordon seven for zobrist two for cueto i think we said zobrist yes we did uh. And they were right. So they're doing well. Shaping up to be a good year, a rare good year for the executive. Yeah. Okay. Anything else before we get to emails? No. All right. Let's start with Sean. The other night on MLB Network, the Richard Pryor vehicle, Brewster's Millions, was on TV. I thought it was a bit curious that it was considered a baseball movie. Now, of course, they play baseball in the movie, and Brewster himself is a former minor league pitcher

who wants to pitch for a major league team. However, I don't think baseball is the focus of the movie or central to the plot, which is actually spending $30 million in 30 days. When you think about movies like Rookie of the Year, The Rookie, Major League, etc., they all have a significant amount of on-screen time designated toward baseball, and baseball is central to the plot. A young kid breaks his arm and then becomes a dominant closer and helps the Cubs to the pen, and a former minor leaguer turns high school teacher,

earns his way to the major leagues, a new owner takes over a ragtag loser club that turns things around etc what do you think is the minimum amount of time or plot focus in time or percentage of time to have a movie officially become a baseball movie i used to tell a joke that my my favorite baseball movie is the godfather and the baseball happens off screen uh So I think... I don't think Brewster's Millions qualifies. I do. Really? Yeah. So it's based on a book that had no baseball. I think the baseball is all added to the movie. And I just watched the original trailer, which is about a minute and a half. And there's one second of baseball in that trailer there's richard pryor playing catch in his hotel room and that's the only baseball other than the

fact that he's wearing a cubs jersey so i would say that baseball is not even close to central to the plot i mean there is a baseball scene in the movie ben Yeah. Does Dave Dombrowski work in baseball? Yes. Do you ever see him holding a glove, throwing a ball or swinging a bat? No. Well, so it's baseball. He's in the industry. He's in the world.

Baseball is a world. Baseball is not, baseball is not 2,430 games that take place over three hours. It's, it's all the time. Right. thing it's everything sure it's the pennant that you hang over your bedroom wall if you have a pennant hanging over your bed in the movie baseball movie no yeah i think so if someone ever goes if there's a kid and they go, and they go, Hey champ, how you doing? And he goes, good. And they say, who's your favorite ball player? He says, Don Drysdale, baseball movie. So interstellar baseball movie. There's that one scene where the future Yankees play in the Dust Bowl world of interstellar. So

baseball movie, baseball movie. Baseball movie. I think that Brewster's Millions, when I think of Brewster's Millions, I haven't seen it in a very long time. I'm not sure I ever saw it in full. But the two things I remember are Richard Pryor and the Cubs. Like those are the two things I remember about that movie, right? I mean, it's baseball content is higher than the typical movie. So in that sense, baseball movie.

Well, if you were MLB Network's programming director, would you say we've got to get Brewster's Millions? We got to get this on our air? Yeah. You would. Okay. Well, I don't, I haven't. So like I said, i haven't seen it and so i don't in in such a long time that i might you guys have seen it more recently or kind of

uh so i don't know if i have i've probably seen part of it at some point on tv it's conceivable that that it's it's uh that there's less than i remember but the description of it the literally the description of it begins a minor league baseball player like you don't just it's not like they just like spun a spun a a what would you spend a bottle or spun a wheel and it landed on that for career a writer chose to make him a baseball player the writer sat down and said what attributesributes am I going to invent For this character and the Attribute they invented is he's a minor league

Baseball player that's not like a Random thing he decided to make Him a baseball player so it's a baseball Movie true but If they had decided on a different Career it wouldn't change The movie at all I don't think I mean it would it would be exactly the

same otherwise okay so all right so maybe that uh let me think about that because i i want to say on one hand that that is compelling that if you take the baseball out of the plot the plot doesn't change that is that is a fair standard to hold a movie to a baseball movie, if that is the standard. Like if you decided to write down the requirements for a baseball movie and that was your standard, I would not say that's wrong. And you could be consistent with that and it would be fine. I personally, though, would not choose that standard because I think that the – what was I going to say? I'm having a harder time keeping my head together for some of these sentences lately.

I'm really looking forward to this book being done. Me too. All books being done. Yeah. Never doing another book. That's what everyone says. But I think that – I don't choose that standard. It's a fine standard, but I don't choose that standard.

To me, I'm mostly looking at what the, I mean, look, when a person sits down to write or direct a movie, they're only giving you a very limited, a limited view of the world, right? Like they're editing out almost everything. Like that's kind of the joke about The Godfather, my Godfather joke is like, they've chosen to, a movie can only show you a limited number of characters, a limited number of scenes, a limited number of actions. And everything else in the world is edited out. So yes, baseball exists in the Godfather world. But we don't see it because that's not the story they're telling us. And so when you take a movie, I think you have to look at what the screenwriter and or director has chosen to keep in.

And to me, everything that is in the scene, you have to remember that everything in the scene has been put there. These are little dollhouses. And so the pennant over the wall, over the bed on the kid's wall was not put there by, you know, by evolution. It was put there because a human being said, let's put a baseball pennant over his bed because it says something about our story, because it has relevance to our characters. And so the standard I would hold it to is different than the one that you are. I don't begrudge you yours. But to me, a person has chosen to put baseball into this movie. He is with the clear agency of an omnipotent creator.

The screenwriter has chosen to make him a baseball player, make baseball a central facet of his life. And so therefore, I give him, you know, I'm sort of, I feel like you have to give the screenwriter credit for that. Well, I don't know. I guess I'd be okay with applying the Justice Stewart pornography standard of I know it when I see it, except that I guess the two of us would have different conclusions with this movie. If I were running a baseball-only channel, I would not put Brewster's Millions high on my list of movies that I have to add to my rotation. have to add to my rotation. Do you remember the Saturday Night Live sketch where, you probably don't, but where there's a kid in bed and his closet door opens and some baseball player comes out. And it's like, it's sort of like the dream sequence in the Sandlot where Babe Ruth comes

and like talks to the kid, right? I think that's probably what it's an allusion to. Maybe. I'm not sure. Except the joke here is that after the ballplayer is... I don't remember exactly how it goes. Okay, so the ballplayer comes out, and maybe it's Wade Boggs. Let's say it's Wade Boggs. And then after Wade Boggs come this long stream of ballplayers.

And so there are like 40 ballplayers in this guy's closet. And after Wade Boggs, they're like, it's like Jeff Blouser and like random guys that you've never heard of or that you have heard of, or maybe you haven't heard of. And then the last one, the joke, the punchline is that Will Ferrell comes out and he's like some like archetype of like a hard drinking with ario ball player southern ball player and uh and so there's no obviously there's no baseball in that

but if you were running an all baseball channel would that qualify as baseball content to you i mean it is a completely like meta joke about baseball uh dream sequences or something. It's weird. But it has baseball players. Is that a baseball sketch? Yes. Okay. Yes, it is. All right. Janet Maslin in the New York Times called Brewster's Millions a screwball comedy minus the screws, which means it's a ball comedy. It's a ball. Ball player. It it's a baseball movie ball game ball player ball club ball movie yeah what does that mean though i don't yeah i was i guess that means that yeah i don't know what that means does that could it mean that it's not i wonder what huh is it saying that it's not well put together that it falls apart yeah maybe okay max says i grew up as

a montreal expos fan as a kid i was frustrated that montreal could not compete with the big market teams to give them a chance i had the idea that mlb should create a small market team division montreal pittsburgh kansas city Milwaukee, Minnesota. By doing this, at least one small market team would be qualified for the playoffs every year. Now, what if divisions were based on team payroll? The league could be divided into six divisions with the top five biggest payroll teams in the same division, then the sixth to 10th biggest in another division, and so on. The divisions could be set by using the previous year's total dollars spent. A more geeky version could be to have the division reset every day based on the current team

situation. Please discuss how baseball would be different under this system. Yeah, the tricky thing is definitely that it's hard to keep these divisions accurate in real time because, because payrolls are constantly changing and it'd be easy to tank one year and get into the easy division and then spend all your money. And so you'd have to figure out a way. I also had, I also liked this idea at one point when it seemed like, I mean,

it's hard to remember probably for a lot of people, it's hard to remember that there was a time where this seemed like an existential crisis in baseball. That this idea that small market teams could not win, that you had entire generations go by where small market teams were getting, you know, just crushed every year. That like there didn't seem to be any possible way that the Pirates could ever be good. And, you know, that was a huge problem for baseball. That was a bigger, that was the pre, that was probably the major pre steroids problem, right? Uh huh. Yeah, probably. I mean, yeah, for that period where, where Bud Selig kind of made that, that his main crusade pretty effectively as it turns out.

his main crusade pretty effectively as it turns out. Yeah, yeah, exactly. He did. And so it probably seems sort of odd to a person who has mostly followed baseball post money ball or in the last decade where you look around and you don't really see a huge disadvantage. And so this is to some degree a solution in search of a, of a problem, but it also does like, I think even no matter how many, uh, no matter how low the correlation between money and success gets, it is still,

I think everybody senses intrinsically unfair that some teams have more money and some teams have less money. Now, not necessarily something that needs to be litigated away or anything or legislated away or anything like that. Maybe you're perfectly fine with the world having some people born rich and some people born less rich and, you know, having them compete on the same terms. And, you know, it mimics life in that sense.

And so I'm not saying that you have to do something about it, but the fact that the Yankees have this territory that allows them to spend six times as much as another team's territory simply by nature of how many people live in the surrounding area, uh, is intrinsically unfair, right? Yes. And so if you think about that as a problem and you want to solve it, one way is to shuffle money around and redistribute it in a way that baseball has done to some degree, not enough to obviously to level the playing field, the spending field completely, but somewhat.

And some combination of that plus rules put in place to benefit rebuilding teams, plus the sort of natural challenge of staying good when you're already good. Like the worst thing that can happen to your 2018 team is to be good in 2015, right? Yes. And so there's already a natural pull toward the mean for everybody. And so maybe that, I mean, that's what baseball has done. And it seems like it's worked. I wouldn't, I don't really feel like in 2015, there is much need to do anything beyond that. Now, that's not to say that some separation might not occur as teams adjust and adapt and as money changes and all that. And maybe in five years, there will be a problem. And I mean, this seems like a logistical nightmare, but this does seem like the most

fair way to solve it, right? Yeah. I mean, it's right. It's a scheduling problem. The schedule is hard enough to create now. So you'd have to have different divisions and unbalanced schedule. Maybe this is easier if you don't have an unbalanced schedule, but that and the travel, obviously. I mean, some of the divisional assignments are somewhat arbitrary and strange, but for the most part, there is a geographical component to them. And if you had teams on the East Coast and the West Coast in the same division, having to play each other a bunch of times a year, that would obviously be a problem. But yeah, this is more fair than a completely random collection of good teams and rich teams and poor teams.

The most appealing thing about this from my perspective is that it creates another layer of game theory, sort of, of gameplay. And I like the idea that you can spend as much as you want, but you have to figure out whether each dollar that you spend is making it more or less likely that you win. As it is now, there is none of that calculation. Every dollar you can spend theoretically makes it more likely

you'll win. Now, maybe that's not to say that every dollar is well spent and you can use your resources unwisely by spending money on, say, Carl Crawford or whatever. But just in a vacuum, every dollar you add to your payroll is improving your chances of winning over a team that loses a dollar from their payroll. And this makes it a much more complicated calculus where you have to decide, do you want to be the rich team playing against other rich teams or do you want to... I rich team playing against other rich teams? Or do you want to,

I guess the, the challenge would probably, I wonder how many, probably the players would hate this, right? Because the union would hate this because this seems like it would create a, you'd have less incentive to, to spend less already in the low division,

then you wouldn't have to compete with the high spending team. So yeah, as it is now, we kind of have a race to the top. Every team wants to spend as much as they possibly can. And GMs, I assume all 30 GMs are walking into their owner's office every day and subtly or not subtly trying to make the case to give them more money to spend. And you could really very easily imagine this being a race to the bottom where GM see it as in their interest to cut payroll as much as they can. And so in that sense, that would probably be the unintended consequence that would probably end up ruining the game. Yeah. Okay. But other than that, we like it. Okay. Kit from Seattle. This question might

require a brief play index before the play index. Kit from Seattle says, a few weeks ago, Sam mentioned that one of his specialties in coverage was rap music that mentions baseball. I too love rap and get giddy anytime baseball is mentioned. I'm most likely a neophyte in comparison to Sam, but one of my favorites is Buck 65. If you are not familiar, Buck 65 is a Canadian rapper with a more diverse and eclectic style, and he makes constant references to baseball. One of his biggest hits, such as they are, is titled 463, and its video shows Buck 65 as all members of two baseball teams facing each other, which sounds like a

listener email question that we might answer. The mystery I am referring to, however, is in his song 50 Gallon Drum. In it, Buck describes what would possibly be heaven to him, and he mentions a batting line for a game that seems all too specific, three for four with a double and two stolen bases. Given Buck's age, 43, and his being from Nova Scotia, I would imagine that this is a famous Expos stat. I am hoping that Sam could do a live play index in hopes of solving this nagging suspicion. I'm going to play a sample from 50 Gallon Drum

so you can hear this line. It's the underneath of Paris It's New York City from the back Mount Yumiak in the fall Okay. Well, unfortunately, I can't do a live playing index because I just went ahead and did it in advance. Okay. Sorry. So it is very specific. It is also very banal.

That's, I think, the most suspicious part of it is that it's not the kind of line. Like, this is not messed around and got a triple-double. This is messed around and made an out and didn't hit any home runs. It's a very routine game. The only thing that really sets it apart is from 15 or 20 batting lines that go unnoticed every day is the stolen bases. It is a somewhat high number of stolen bases um and so anyway to answer the question it's easy enough to look this up so i went to play index i went to the game finder i went to uh i set it for 1997 to 1994, based on Buck's age, Buck 65's age, figured that this was not going to be a game that

came after his 21st birthday, if it had any emotional resonance. So from 77 to 94, four at bats, three hits, I put at least one double just to be safe, and two stolen bases and uh and then limited it to expos and so there are five games that meet this this uh filter i think we can throw out the two that are marquise grissom oh i was gonna guess marquise grissom uh he had two within a week of each other in fact oh so why would we throw that out? Maybe that made a big impression on Buck. Because he homered in each game. Oh, okay. So I think that we can throw out those with the homers.

So that leaves... Yeah, because earlier in the song, he says a home run every time would start to get boring after a while. Okay, so then we have three more. I'm going to throw out Tracy Jones on September 19th, 1988 and Delano DeShields on April 21st, 1991. These both match it exactly. They also both threw a walk, but I don't think

that's a deal breaker, but, uh, but they also both came in losses. And I'm going to say that if this game, if this batting line was significant, it had to have come in a win. And so the best guess is the last one remaining. And I think it's the best guess for the reason that Tim Raines did it as well. I would guess that if you're going to have an iconic batting line, if you're a 43-year-old Nova Scotian who likes the steals, it'd be a tim raines line and so tim raines on may 22nd 1986 three for four with a walk a double two stolen bases in a 5-2 win

over the los angeles dodgers okay that's the obvious answer we should have called jonah carry again all right you familiar with with buck 65's work? I'm actually not. Oh, you'll have to check it out. Reigns also scored the winning run that game. Should we annotate Rap Genius? Oh. To add this reference, which is obviously the reference. Yeah, sure.

Okay. Just genius now, though. Oh, that's true. Yeah, there's only one annotation about a uh mountain in nova scotia it's unreviewed but we'll now had that tim raines is the only one to have this game before 1994 or 95 yeah this is a very unannotated song isn't it yeah all right you want me to do another play index or is that? Yeah, sure.

Go ahead. All right. It'll be a quick one. One of the splits you can do on pitching splits is days of rest. And so I just looked at all active pitchers who have thrown at least 15 innings on no days rest. Okay. And then I looked at their ERA in those games and then compared them to their ERAs in overall. And I then divided. And so basically it's like an ERA plus except for

just for yourself and it's bad to be higher. Okay. So if your ERA is higher in this split, then you're going to have a positive and over 100 ERA plus. So high is bad. Okay. Yep. What's your hypothesis for what I would find about guys pitching on no days rest? That they are worse than usual. Absolutely. And so like Alexio Gondo, for instance, 27 career innings on no days rest, 733 ERA. He's the worst. Two more than double his his overall era uh and that's his overall era which means that this is wrapped into that era he's actually uh probably closer to like triple or more over his non-zero days rest era cj wilson 729 era on no days rest in 45 innings uh sergio romo uh 100 career innings on no day's rest 375 era that's 46 percent higher than his era overall houston street 392 era on no day's rest 40 percent higher than his overall era

etc okay yep however strangely then i scroll down scroll scroll down, and I see that of my 230 whatever in the sample, only 93 have a worse ERA on no days rest. That means that 140-ish have a better ERA on no days rest. And like Koji Uehara, 66 career innings on no rest, 0.96 ERA, 39% as high as his ERA overall. Tony Watson, 133. David Hernandez, 216. Darren O'Day, 1.3. I mean, I'm picking out the guys who have the most innings here to make it more believable.

Dennis Reyes, 2.69, so on. Grant Ball, 4, 245. Joeyes, 2.69, you know, so on. Grant Ball, 4, 2.45. Joe Nathan, 2.0. So 50% more pitchers have a better... That's my smoke detector. Sorry, Ben, you caught me while I was browning short ribs. Oh, wow. Okay. So 50% more pitchers have an ERA better on no day's rest than on some days rest. So now that you know this, I don't have an answer for this next question, but now that you know this, what is your hypothesis for why? Well, I guess, I mean, when I see, when a reliever comes into a game and I know that he pitched the day before, I don't necessarily adjust my expectation for him. I mean, some of those relievers would have pitched four days in a row or something.

And if that's happened, then I do, I think he might be tired or something. But if it's just one day, I don't really think anything of that because relievers are conditioned to do that. I mean, Joe Girardi doesn't like to work his guys, I think, what, three games in a row, three days in a row. But I don't know if most managers even have that rule. And so if you're in the bullpen, you have to be prepared to do it pretty often, pitch on back-to-back days. So it makes sense that in a lot of those games, you would pretty much be your usual self. I don't know why you'd be better.

Right. That's the thing. I mean, I would think that you would be pretty much your usual self, except maybe some guys would be a little worse. And on three days rest, I would think that most guys would be a little worse. And sometimes you pitch on four and I would definitely think you'd be worse. I mean, it's like the NBA with back to back games like you have to do it regularly. It's not like when they play a Saturday after a Friday, they come out and they're just like laying on the floor in a pile of exhaustion.

But they are worse. They do lose those games more often. Yeah. And so it would make more. I mean, it'd make more sense that there'd be some degradation. But even if there wasn't it's hard i can't figure out why they would be better and so it must be somehow a like a selection issue right where yeah guys who are pitching on back-to-back like maybe you won't maybe you do it more during your career

when you're good so maybe the years that they're bad um they're less likely to do that and so their eras will be higher those years and a greater number of their innings will be concentrated on non back-to-back days, perhaps. Or maybe if you're pitching, one thing it could be, I could have looked deeper into this, but maybe it's that if you're pitching back-to-back days, you're more likely to pitch partial innings. And if you pitch a partial inning, you're more likely to come in with outs already recorded. And therefore you're more likely to not give up runs, even if you give up hits. So that could be it. It could be, I don't think

it's this because I, the personnel, I, you know, if you, I glanced at the people and there's not enough of these cases, but some of these innings do include starter innings like latroy hawkins for instance include some starter innings from early in his career but not many that's a pretty rare case here but that's maybe a little bit of it i guess the next thing to do would be to use something better than era and see whether their fips or their you know whatever are also better yeah okay i like your selection answer yeah okay all right play index okay coupon code bp get the discounted price of wait wait let me ask you one more thing you said that when a guy comes in you would not think oh he's going

to be worse because he pitched the day before the guys at the top of this you know like ogondo but also like rex brothers jason mott sergio romo houston street uh ollie perez maybe well ollie prez is a bad one because he was a starter for so ignore ollie prez edward muhica trevor rosenthal tony sip craig kimbrell let's end there. Of those guys at the top, we're talking about 50-ish to 100-ish innings and fairly substantial differences in their ERAs, all of them at least 30% worse than their overall numbers. Now that I've told you that, will you think when Houston Street comes in, will you glance to see if he pitched the day before?

Will that be relevant to you? Yeah, very slightly, maybe. Okay. It's still a small sample, obviously. Yeah. Okay. Eric in Millbrae. Here's the plan. All major league managers are now elected by popular vote. They campaign in the off season, hold debates, and are swept into the office with a mandate from the people. I don't really care about the particulars,

but let's say that managers are elected for three-year terms and that election cycles are offset so that there are 10 open seats each off season. Baseball wins because it adds an interesting feature to its off season. Owners win because they can no longer be blamed for a bad managerial hire and fans win because their voices are heard. Managers lose their guaranteed long-term contracts, but whatever. In this world, do you think the traditional or the sabermetric types would control the seats?

Do you think the pool of managers would become more or less diverse? And if you're running for manager, what's your platform? Okay, I'm going to answer. I can answer this very quickly. Okay. The type that would control the seats would be the best player in your franchise's history. Yeah. Or the second best.

Presumably you have to run, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or the second best or the third best or whoever the best is who's willing to run. Yeah. The pool of managers would become much less diverse. They would always be the best player in your franchise's history. Right. Well, that could be more diverse if we're talking about racial.

Hang on, hang on. And I think that in most cases, they would be American and English speaking. Yes, probably. If you're running for manager, what's your platform? My platform would be I won the 1979 MVP award. I'm Don Baylor, vote for me. That would be my entire platform. No matter who I am, it would be I'm Don Baylor. Vote for me. That would be my entire platform. No matter who I am, it would be

I'm Don Baylor. Vote for me. That's how it would go. You would never get the AAA manager into the job. Tim Wallach would be a manager by now. Actually, maybe he wouldn't because there's no Montreal contingent. Mike Socha

would be a manager. Would you get non-baseball celebrities? Because some, well, I guess if you're a celebrity, you're not going to want to be a baseball manager for three years. But- I think a lot would. Yeah, no, I think you would. Maybe you would.

I think a lot of people would. Okay, so if some famous actor with local ties runs for this job. I would say, okay, so let's say that, for instance, I'm hung up on. Like a celebrity fan, like who are, you know, Paul Rudd or whoever was at Royals games every day during the playoffs. Yeah, okay, so Billy Crystal. Yeah, Billy Crystal runs for manager of the Yankees. Yeah. Okay.

Well, the Yankees is tricky because the Yankees have so many. But let's say what Charlie Sheen runs for manager of the Yankees. Yeah. Okay. Well, the Yankees is tricky because the Yankees have so many, but let's say what Charlie Sheen runs for manager of the Indians. Okay. Well, yeah. Okay. All right. I think that there are maybe four or five retired Indians who could beat Charlie Sheen and they would. And so I, depending on the franchise and depending on the celebrity, the celebrity would be over every other person in the world who could run for that. They'd be over the AAA manager and the bench coach and also over Kelly Gruber. But there would be some number of famous players for that franchise that they could not beat and so you'd have like a line of some some number down depending on the franchise and the celebrity where the celebrity then takes the next spot yeah i've and you could you could use a maybe a more reliable more more trustworthy person as i'm imagining yeah i'm imagining more like like more than six years ago, Charlie Sheen. Because remember, he was a baseball fan. He bought all those seats that one time and he was in the movie, even if they were baseball men. But at some point, you still want

your team to win. That's still your primary goal as a fan. And the non-baseball person probably isn't seen as the best person to win. And the entertainment value is pretty low after the initial thrill and strangeness of it. I mean, he's just a famous guy standing in the dugout like any other manager. And I guess he does the post-game press conferences and maybe they're more entertaining, but that's about it. It gets boring after a while.

So yeah, I would agree that the celebrity with the actual baseball credentials is still the most likely candidate. Would a celebrity get any bump for being in a baseball movie? Yeah, I think so. That's so sad. Kevin Costner, if Kevin Costner runs, I think he gets a bump. Oh, my goodness.

Okay. What about Richard Pryor? No, he doesn't. Okay. All right. Last one from Matt Trueblood of BP. I was thinking about Randy Johnson's 1998 free agency, which came the winter after his 35th birthday. And at the end of his first fully healthy season since 1995, I was wondering what people thought of the Diamondbacks' choice to commit to him for big money over four years and about what I thought they should have thought.

That all went nowhere, as did the first part of this question. I mention it purely because the subject still interests me. And so you can see why I landed on the week in quotes at Baseball Perspectives for the first week of the 1998-99 offseason and found this quote from Mo Vaughn. I'll take less money, but they have to give me my years. I'm 30 years old and want a five-year deal, no four years in an option, a solid five-year guaranteed deal, a base deal, and maybe they can throw some options after that.

Anyway, my question based on that quote, is it unbelievably blunt to anyone else? Do you suppose more guys should be so forthright about what they're looking for? Or would today's front offices find clever ways to give them just that while withholding other things they could be getting? How much do you think the preference pattern and general savvy of the average big ticket free agent has changed over the last 17 years? Well, we get a version of that quote pretty regularly. I feel like we just it just doesn't come directly from the player on the record we get it from his camp or from someone close to him or paraphrased

uh but we get i think we get an awful lot of players crazy salary demands uh-huh yeah you have you know it's usually looking is looking for. It's phrased as is looking for. And there's a little mocking when they get crazy. And there's always, of course, it's very easy to mock the construction of that tweet. The classic looking for Papelbon money tweet that Chris Crawford parodies reliably. We're all looking for those things that baseball players are looking for. But it's gentle ribbing, I think. And I don't think that, I don't think Mo Vaughn is an exception here so much as Mo Vaughn was always very talkative.

Yeah. And maybe it would help if you could bypass the back and forth and the posturing somehow and just really come out and say, this is what I want. This is what I'm signing for. And it were realistic also. But basically, it's just your opening sally in the negotiation, if you say it. I mean, if that's actually what you want, then you should start higher so that when the other team counter offers then you can meet in the middle where you want it to be so i don't think anyone takes it seriously really it's just uh yeah just all negotiation and posturing right so like it's not like like i don't even think in

this case it's not like mauve on how to buy it now button where you could give him that fifth year and then he'd he'd just sign like he would if someone else was willing to give him that fifth year and then he'd just sign. If someone else was willing to give him six, he would take the six. And if no one was willing to give him the five, he'd sign for the four. I think it's more than anything just a fairly generic quote that happens when a player or an agent gets in front of a reporter and they're talking about what they you know what what sort of where they sort of place themselves in the market and it's a way of positioning the terms of the deal it's a way of kind of creating an expectation opening sally opening volley slash opening salvo yeah i think i guess that makes more sense opening yeah opening sally

could be a sally are we we could just we we could say that sally is now what we call a salvo just short for short for salvo is is opening salvo even a thing yeah yeah it is the first yeah that is and then opening volley is of of course, a thing. So, yeah, you just blended them. I like it. Good. Save time. Yeah.

You could have said them both. Sure. Okay. I'm starring some questions, leftover questions for next week. Please continue to send them at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and rate and review and subscribe to the show. It helps us attract new people to the show. We will be back tomorrow.