Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 802: The Podcast We Put Away Wet

Episode Date: January 21, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Chris Davis and Target, then answer emails about David Price, Yosemite Tim, requesting trades, true talent, and the most average player.

You walk up to me and try and look shy The red round your eyes says that you ain't a child Get out and ride on baby, ride on baby, ride on baby, ride on baby Well I've seen your face in a trashy magazine You know where you're going but I don't like the places you've been Hello and welcome to episode 802 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives Presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com I'm Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives.

Hi. Howdy. Email show. Anything before emails? No. Okay. I've got a couple things, follow-ups to things we've talked about. Listener named Scott emailed us to point out that we didn't mention the suspension that Chris Davis got at the end of 2014 for Adderall. Scott says, I'm no PED scold.

If it were up to me, these guys would be shooting up in the on-deck circle. But given the rules as they are, don't you have to be concerned about the true talent level of a guy who got busted for using? And I did mean to bring this up and just got sidetracked by all the other factors surrounding the Davis deal. But after thinking about it, I'm not sure that it really influences my outlook for him at all, one way or the other. The suspension was for Adderall. He had a therapeutic use exemption prior to 2014 and then didn't have one in 2014 and evidently didn't know it or didn't pay attention to it or ignored it and was suspended for 25 games, which means that he actually violated the policy twice, that would maybe

make you more pessimistic about his future, except that for one thing, that was his bad year and he was continuing to use it. So if his ADHD or whatever it was, was part of the problem that year, then that doesn't really fit the timeline because he was continuing to take Adderall. And then he got the exemption again in 2015 for a different form of stimulant and presumably will continue to have it going forward. So I don't know that it really affects anything. Does it sway you one way or the other? I mean, it's weird to say this in a conversation that about a conversation that is entirely speculative. So forgive me for that. But I find that things like this are even

too speculative for me to speculate on. I don't, you know, there's the, there's so many factors that I just don't know how to measure the worth of them, like how much Adderall matters in general or to him, what his, you know, what his legal situation is going to be going forward, what caused him to be in the situation he was in in 2014, you know 2014, what he was or wasn't using before and what he was or wasn't using after. It's just, I mean, it is at most I can sort of think about whether in a very general sense a player with his profile of being either careless or otherwise in trouble is likely to repeat. And we have talked about that, but, uh, I just don't, uh, that, that all, everything you said

seems reasonable to me. And, uh, so I guess the short way of saying is that it doesn't really change anything. I think about Chris Davis right now. Uh, it's, it's probably there's, it's, there's a decent chance that there's significance, but in which way, I don't know. And it could go in either direction. Yeah. It'd be one thing if you could even just make a tenuous unsupported link between his struggles and his not taking something. Like if he had, if he had failed to get the exemption and had not taken the substance

that year and had a bad year, you could at least say, well, maybe it had something to do with that substance. And if he doesn't get the exemption at some point in the future, maybe it'll affect him in the same way, but you can't even make that kind of causal link. So Scott in his email says, why would you give $150 million to a guy who can't be bothered to pay someone to do a little paperwork? And I would say because he hits lots of homers. Not really paying him based on his ability to pay someone to do paperwork. Although it'd be nice.

I mean, he was coming up on a playoff appearance and wasn't eligible for most of those playoffs. Maybe you'd think he'll overlook some other important thing in the future, but really it doesn't make much of a difference to me. Other updates. We've got a couple of target-related updates. Last week, we talked about Buck Showalter's quote about Chris Davis and how Showalter said that as long as Davis could walk into a target

and buy anything, he didn't really have to worry about money. That was the standard by which earnings and salary should be judged. So Gordon emailed us and he was listening to an old episode of Aaron Gleeman's podcast. This was from March of 2014. And they had a guest on who used to host a baseball show with Jack Morris. And she says, Jack Morris asked him, Buck Showalter, what's the best part of your job? And he said, winning.

We laughed, but he said, no, honestly, I can walk into Target and get a soda and a popcorn and I can go to the travel aisle and get all my travel supplies for the week. As long as we're winning, I'm good. So Gordon in Durham points out that the Buckshaw Walter Target link goes back farther than we thought. Yeah, that's huge. It almost makes you think you might be clandestinely sponsored by Target.

It'd be a clever little placement if you hired a major league manager to just bring up Target in an organic situation over and over. Are you more likely to shop at Target because of this? No, there's no Target near me. Targets are great. I like a Target. I think if I were in Buck Showalter's position, I would also mention Target a lot. I didn't know Target had a travel aisle.

A travel aisle? A travel aisle, yeah. You mean like for things that you would buy for travel? I guess it's like toiletries, like little things you'd put in there. Little mini Purell bottles, mini shampoos. They have that. Okay, sure. We also got another Target-related email from Yancey in Fort Myers, who is in management at Target, where he's worked for nine years.

And he's talking about our speculation about whether Chris Davis could buy an entire target. And Yancy says, I can't give a precise dollar figure as far as how much buying one of each item that we sell would add up to, but I can tell you from past inventory results that in a given calendar year, we sell 700,000 to 800,000 unique items in our store. That's the total amount of distinctly different items sold in a fiscal year, and it includes all unique DPCIs or SKUs. This can be a little misleading, as the same shirt can have a different DPCI in each size it comes in. And also because our inventory changes drastically throughout the course of the year as seasons change, we obviously don't carry Christmas decorations year-round, nor do we have summer corn or kumquats in the middle of winter. decorations year-round, nor do we have summer corn or kumquats in the middle of winter. Our sales floor normally resets about four times per year with the new items replacing good chunks of the old. So one quarter or approximately 175,000 to 200,000 items are in our store

on any given day. $10 to $15 as an average price per good seems to be a pretty sound educated guess. Surmise what you will from this back of the napkin math. And Yancy also points out that the most expensive item actually in the store, because I was browsing the website when we were looking for most expensive items last week, but the most expensive item in the store is a Threshold Harrison sectional for only $12.99.99. Very low price. Buck Showalter, career 524 winning percentage at target field huh what's his career winning percentage elsewhere uh i can tell you that let's see it's relevant

well i can only do in the in the the years that target field has been opened because otherwise it would right of course that would skew things of course target field is the road park for him oh yeah so let's i'll do all road games yeah quality of competition probably also relevant but 458 458 on the right what's the sample here how many games thousands okay well that makes sense it's a target tie-in gamblers can factor that into their expectations for next year's Orioles games at Twins. All right, emails. Let's start with Daniel in Boston via London.

The statistical models utilized by BP to project players assume that there is an ideal version of a player. For example, the first best or 99th percentile outcome for next season for player X is that they slash 272, 367, 538. That's Giancarlo Stanton's baseball reference projection. In the macro sense, these models appear to assume that there is a latent best version of a player, which that player may or may not actually achieve due to injuries or other countervailing factors. I can understand the utility of these projection systems as a team can more easily construct a roster by accounting for the range of a player's 25% to 75% outcomes, etc. What I want to know is if you guys believe that the model assumptions are true in reality, is there a latent best case skill level that all players innately hold, but that they may not achieve due to the specific context of their lives? In this sense, I'm asking if you guys believe that there is an absolute truth to the specific context of their lives. In this sense, I'm asking if you

guys believe that there is an absolute truth to the skill level of players. What do you think that means? I think, I mean, the percentiles are, I guess he's asking whether the skill level changes in the percentiles or whether it's just the results and the outcomes, because in a best case scenario season, a player doesn't sprain his ankle as he hits the first place bag and he doesn't miss that time and he has luck on his side he his batted balls land more often and fielders don't catch them so when everything goes right he hits the 90th percentile projection and when everything goes wrong it's the 10th percentile projection and when everything goes wrong, it's the 10th percentile projection. But I guess he's asking whether his skill is the same in both of those projections or whether the skill might actually change in some way because of some factor.

So I think, well, okay. So the 10th and 90th percentile projections are, I don't think are aspiring to capture the player's best or worst skill levels. They're trying to just show the range of outcomes if you were to play this season a million times, knowing that there's going to be variance. And part of the variance is going to just be your Babbitt block, or part of the variance is going to be whether the ball that scrapes the wall gets caught instead or like you say you sprain an ankle or you're just not locked in um now the question is is part of that also will you develop a new slider or will you i don't know will something in your in your neurons change that make it slightly more difficult for you to uh you know pick up a fastball, something that will actually innately change

your ability to play baseball. And I don't think that it matters that much. Well, I guess, I don't know. I guess it matters. I think the answer is that yes, it does. I mean, these percentiles are basically based on the comps, the player comps, you know, a player's mean projection, a player, you know that that players mean well okay when we're talking about pakoda uh you're talking about a projection that is based largely on what he's done in the past and then also influenced by what players who are most similar to him have done in the past from that point forward and similarity is defined in a lot of different ways but you do your best to get players who are a guide to how that player is going to perform going forward. And so that's the projection that you get

for things like the long-term projections and the percentiles. My understanding is that those are even more heavily influenced by the comps. And so this is really a way of saying not just that the players in general did X, but that the spread of their performances was, you know, this volatile or this broad. So that should capture everything because it's, it's, it's observational more than predictive. It is used as a predictive tool, but at its foundation, the methodology is observational. It's just describing kind of what has happened to players that were most similar and therefore maybe the best guide for what's going forward. So in that sense, it should capture everything from, you know, Babbitt-Block to Chris Davis's Adderall.

It should be all of it, right? It's just a way of describing how the world has worked for 150 years in baseball. Yeah. Right. Okay. So does that answer the question of, do you believe there is an absolute truth to the skill level of players? Well, I think there is at any one time, but we don't know what it is. I don't think we have a read on what that absolute truth is. We have a decent estimate. Well, let me, if say you could somehow, say you could somehow have a Giancarlo Stanton bat, you know, his third at bat of the game on April 16th of this year, uh, against, you know, whatever pitcher say you could somehow have him do that 1 million times without, you know, without aging or without anything changing,

it would be, you know It would be the exact situation, the exact scenario played out a million times. You would get a slash line. You'd also have, and that slash line in the aggregate you would take to be his true skill level. But do you think that there would be much variation in those million simulations? or would you largely see him do the same thing every time it's almost like what we were talking about when i listened to you know

episode 40 of effectively wild uh for two minutes and my brain is making all the same comments that it actually made three years ago like there's something like kind of creepily permanent about the way that my brain works and the way that I communicate and the way that I listen. So even though I don't remember what I said, I'm still reacting in almost the same way. And so if you had me record episode 40 of Effectively Wild a million times in isolated experiments, there would probably be like a massive, massive overlap. Yeah. Lots of times when i finish an episode and then immediately think oh i should have said that thing or i think of some better comparison or analogy or something so in some percentage of episodes we would think of the better analogy and in others we wouldn't

but yeah it would be the same a lot of the time so then the question is with stanton like in any 10 at bat sample for stanton you maybe you going to have a home run and you're going to have three strikeouts. You're going to have two singles or maybe a single and a double. You're going to have a walk. You're going to have a ground out, fly out, line out, etc. in each of those 10 at bats the same do you think or was he actually better for five minutes when he hit the home run than he is for the five minutes when he struck out if you replayed the strikeout a million times would he actually hit a home run in a hundred thousand of them if you replayed the home run a million times would he actually hit the strikeout have the strikeout in a hundred thousand of them or or is the variance that we see less about rerunning trials of individual events and more that the variance is taking place in our lives in our brains in our bodies constantly and what we see is the aggregate performance of you know

thousands of discrete events that really have some relationship to each other. Obviously, Stanton is more like Stanton in his next at bat than he is like, you know, Gene Larkin in his next at bat. But are they actually different? Are those different Stantons each time? Well, in this hypothetical simulation scenario, maybe he's the same every time because we said it that way. But right. That's what I'm saying. So if he's the same, but it's, is he the same each time? Or would you expect to see the same range of outcomes that you see in all Stanton at bats? Yeah, well, in real life, in a single game, for instance, he has essentially the same skill level in every at-bat. It's the same day.

It's the same few hours. His body, you know, his body fat percentage is the same and his muscle mass is the same. All of those things are just about the same. And I would imagine that most of the fluctuation in the results, if you could simulate that game a million times, would be just randomness or luck or whatever, but not all of it because he might be in a better, I don't know, headspace in one of the at-bats than the other, or maybe his blood sugar is a little higher or lower, or he's in a better or worse mood

or feeling slightly less or more confident. So you do fluctuate at any given moment. I guess you have a true talent skill level that is fixed, but from moment to moment, it might shift in some small way. It's, it's hard for us because we're, so like when I, if I shoot free throws, for instance, I think I maybe have mentioned this before, but, uh, my, the way that I most relate to athletes, uh, when they talk about the hot hand is when I, if I shoot free throws, if I go out and shoot a hundred free throws, there are definitely shots where I'm like nearly a hundred percent sure before I shoot them that they're going in. And then there are

shots where I am certain that they are not going in. And I'm almost always right. Like I can, you just know when you get a little off, you just know when your brain is telling you, you're not going to make this one. Right. But I'm not a very good athlete. And these guys are. And so presumably, you could suppose that they've evolved to beyond my brain frailty. So the equivalent to me might be reading. I'm a pretty good reader. I do it a lot. I've been selected by society to continue reading. I'm a reader, right? And yet, even in the course of a single page, I would say that my true talent level for reading fluctuates. There are paragraphs where for reasons having nothing to do with the paragraph, my eyes don't focus as well,

my brain gets distracted, and I have to reread them. And then maybe the paragraph before the paragraph after, it's not that. And there are times it's the same with books for reasons that seem to have nothing to do with the book. Sometimes I just can't ever really get in a groove reading. And so to feel like my brain does not cooperate consistently, my eyes don't cooperate consistently in very subtle ways that affect my skill as a reader, makes me sympathetic to the notion that maybe John Carlos Stanton, when he strikes out in the fifth, was just gonna strike out. And we don't know why. It's a mystery why. I mean, obviously, it doesn't show up in the hot hand research as much as one might have hypothesized 50 years ago. And maybe there is nothing there. Maybe my reading experience is completely

abnormal. But it does seem like there might be some mystery to this that is far more significant than we've ever been able to show. And maybe one day we will, or maybe one day we won't. All right. Question from Mark. When Andy McCullough was on the show this week, he very briefly brought up the way the Blue Jays used David Price in the ALDS. McCullough was on the show this week. He very briefly brought up the way the Blue Jays used David Price in the ALDS. Both he and Sam expressed some lingering disbelief that John Gibbons would have used him

that way. Does the benefit of knowing Price has signed with another team do anything to change your interpretation of his usage? It's hard not to imagine that they all knew they weren't going to be able to make a competitive offer to retain him. The inimitable Blue Jays podcast, Birds All Day, has a fondness for saying Gibbons would ride him hard

and put him away wet. Is that pretty much what's going on here? Can I request that Ben read this email? Because I think it would be funnier to hear him say the phrase, ride him hard and put him away wet. Ben always reads the email. It's a good phrase. Yeah, it is.

Are you not supposed to put a horse away wet? Probably not. It might catch a cold. I mean, what are you going to do, though? What's the alternative? Horses get, it seems to me that, oh, this is a Hawk Harrelson, by the way. It's a Hawk Harrelson phrase. I think it predated.

No, no, sure. But I mean, when I Google it, the second result is Hawk Harrelson. So what happens if you put a horse away wet? Oh, care and management of horses, page 281. Okay. Make sure his body temperature is back to normal and his hair fluffed up and drying. If you put him away wet with hair plastered down, he may become chilled. I think the key thing is that—

It's like a William Henry Harrison scenario. Yeah, I think— You don't want to get wet and cold. Well, I think the key thing is that you don't have to dry him, but you should fluff his, his main fluff, his hair so that it will dry. You don't want it matted where the water is sort of trapped and he's going

to be wearing like kind of damp clothes. Basically. I'll keep that in mind. We're going to get an email from a horse groomer tomorrow. I wonder how many, you know, you have to have like 23 people in a room to have a 50-50 chance of two people having the same birthday. I wonder how many podcast listeners

you have to have to have a 50-50 chance of someone having the occupation that you're target management, whatever it is. I would guess we have someone who works with horses. it is, I would guess we have someone who works with horses. There's probably not that many more than 365 jobs, especially depending on how you want to classify them. I bet you could pretty much cover every job with a high degree of specificity in 365. However- Of course, our listenership is demographically skewed. That and jobs are not evenly distributed

across all 365s. So some jobs, for instance, I would say diamond grader is probably a job that is held by, what, 75 people in the world and not quite like a retail manager. Yeah, right. Okay.

Also, a key thing too is that you, uh, you look ahead, you don't, it's not all about what you do after the ride, but, but making sure that you plan your rides early enough in the day to finish and get your horse cooled down and dry before sundown. Of course, winter days are short. Temperatures can drop quickly. If a horse is wet from sweat, he will take longer to dry. Hmm. All right. The The more you know. Yeah. So does the fact that they didn't re-sign Price coupled with his usage in the playoffs make you think that one had something to do with the other, that they used him that way because they felt that their chances of bringing him back was not that high? Yeah. I mean, they didn't ride him hard. It's the opposite.

They rode him strangely. So the question is whether they put him away wet. And I don't remember, was David Price's happiness a topic of reporting at the time? Because it does seem like it is plausible that they were less concerned about what it would look. they were less concerned about what it would look a lot of, I think a lot of, not a lot, but some things that a manager does with his pitchers are intended to send signals that, Hey man,

you're the ace. You're my horse. You can do anything. I'm letting you go out to finish this ninth. Not because I need that inning. Not because, you know, it's,

it's eight, nothing. And I've got a mop up man. And, uh, you know, I could send him out here but i want you to finish it because by sending you out there to get the complete game i'm pumping you up

i'm reinforcing that you are an ace that you're great and you can do anything and so uh maybe treating him as though he's the fourth starter basically treating him like he's jason hamill uh might be a lot more significant if you were worried. Now, the thing about that, though, the only reason that I think that's not probably true is that it's not like they did things after the fact. They were in the middle of their most important week of the franchise's past 20 years. And if you're going to do something that ruins David Price, you don't want to do it right then. Any more than you would want to do it right then if you had him locked up to a seven-year contract, right? I mean, if whatever you do to David Price leads to David

Price making a scene or feeling unconfident or walking out or complaining to the reporters or feeling unconfident, or walking out, or complaining to the reporters, or telling rookies these guys don't care about us, whatever. Anything that he could do that would hurt you for six years would probably be just as harmful in those couple weeks as any other time. Unless it's like starting on short rest or something. Oh, no, riding him hard. Maybe it could hurt him long term, but helps you now because you get David Price. And maybe that's the same with using him out of the bullpen, Oh, no, riding him hard. share of the downsides come in the future, in the long-term future. And there is a sort of cynical

usage that you could imagine for a pitcher who is going to be a free agent. For this though, this was not about riding him hard. I guess what I'm saying is any deleterious effects would be front-loaded basically. And so they would come while he's still on your team. And therefore, there's not a real incentive for John Gibbons to treat him this way if he actually thought it would be harmful. Okay. Question from Tim. I was born and raised in Yosemite National Park. Oh, I like this guy already.

Not because of that, but because we already dealt with him. I truly believe I am one of the most talented baseball players alive, but undiscovered due to my isolated location. Probably not a lot of scouts hanging out in a national park. What can I do to get the attention of a major league park, of a major league club? P.S. Trust me.

I know how insane this sounds. Roast a pig. Make a video of it. P.P.S. I am a genuine five tool player. 6'1", center field, attributes, elite hand-eye coordination, athletic frame, extremely flexible, great bat control, natural pop, strong glove, good speed, high baseball IQ, broad shoulders, elite outfield throwing arm, weaknesses, upper body strength, lack of experience, mild coffee dependence. PPPPS, in my summer rec league, I had a 1,085 slugging percentage

and nine home runs in 27 at-bats, small sample size I know. PPPPS, I generally find this kind of self-confidence off-putting, but it seemed necessary given the context. We do get a lot of questions from people who ask something like, what are the chances the best baseball player in the world is not playing baseball or the best player in the country is not playing baseball because he wasn't discovered or he just didn't feel like playing baseball or whatever it was. And so Tim from Yosemite National Park is claiming to be one of those players. Yeah. And this is like an email right out of our last year, right? Yes. Right. We were getting emails that were a lot like this for a few months. We were getting emails that were a lot like this for a few months. People who wanted to play for independent league. So go ahead.

Ask me the question. What's the question? The question is, well, I guess the question was, what can he do to get the attention of a major league club? And we told him there's a Pacific Association tryout. He could drive a few hours in a couple of weeks from now and find out. But I guess our question. Wait, wait. Really, though, that sounds – it is interesting how that is exactly the right answer.

Like it is – it's hard. I mean I'm not saying that baseball is – like I always thought that there was a big difference between acting and music, for instance, because with acting, my guess is that in an acting on an acting level, there's not really that big a difference between, you know, say Bradley Cooper and the guy who is the lead at the local community theater. They're probably kind of fairly close. And the difference between the two is uh one extreme luck like like extreme luck i bet every person who has made it in hollywood has without knowing it had an incredibly lucky break uh two things that have nothing to do with acting like how big your muscles are or how cute your dimples are uh and how aggressively, but not just aggressively, but I guess more effectively you pursued this dream. And so if you wanted the best actors in the world, my guess is that if you

wanted the thousand best actors in the world or the, you know, the hundred best actors in the world, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that four or five of them are people you've ever heard of. And the other 95 are people you haven't. Either they're off doing soap operas in Columbia, or they're doing theater in Salem, or really they're not even actors because it's not that easy to find out you're a great actor. I'm trying to think of whether I should go on a secondary tangent right here, because this reminds me of another thing, but I think I'll save the second

one because it'll probably be useful also. Whereas with music, I think that if you are a great rock band and you're performing rock and roll music and writing rock, if you're writing great rock and roll songs, I think that those generally do get noticed. It seems to me that it's kind of hard to be the Rolling Stones and not get noticed. probably almost immediately, but eventually your dynamite, awesome writing and recording skills are going to get at least a small following. Small followings always get press in local music media and then eventually larger media and so on. So my guess is that for instance, the best hundred rock bands in the world, like 98 of them are famous. There are very few that are truly undiscovered that didn't get their chance, right? Okay. So where was I going with this? I don't know. Baseball. Baseball. I think baseball is not just on the rock band side of it,

but like way past rock band side of it. I think that there's something to be said for the 12-year-old. If you truly could go back and reverse engineer the greatest baseball players by going back to when they were 12 and getting the best, not the best 12-year-olds, but the most potential 12-year-olds into the system that currently exists where you get the travel teams and all the exposure and warm weather opportunities and great coaching and all the things that, you know, cost a lot of money and require a lot of effort and get, you know, get you a lot of attention. So yeah, I think there's an inefficiency with 12 year olds.

But once we get to say 22, I would be very surprised if it is possible for somebody to get from ages, say, 16 or 17 to 22 without really getting their fair look. There are guys on the fringes, guys who you could imagine a few things breaking right, and they turn into a major league quality ballplayer out there. But I don't think that there's really a way for a star to get overlooked um because it's as we saw with the stompers you a good player could would obviously have the opportunity to spend a hundred dollars on a tryout they would definitely get signed by an independent league team if they were good they would definitely destroy the independent league and if they're destroying an independent league they would definitely destroy the independent league and if they're destroying an independent league they would definitely get signed there are at least 10

teams or so scouting indie leagues there are connections every which way and uh you know we had one guy get signed out of our league by a major league team by an affiliated team uh and our league is about as hidden and out of sight as you could possibly imagine. Lots of guys move up to higher leagues where there's plenty of scouts. So if this guy were even as good as a AAA player, which is not what he's describing himself as,

but even if he were as good as a AAA player, I believe that he could go from Stompers tryout to signed by a big league team in very most 18 months. Well, the older you are and the less experienced you are, the harder it is, obviously, just because you haven't seen the pitches, you might not catch up to everyone else's experience. But how often do you think there is a person who has the potential to be great at something or at baseball specifically and just doesn't feel like it? I mean, just isn't inclined to pursue that path. I mean, if you're good enough to play baseball, then you are probably one of the most athletic kids in your class or in your town or whatever it is. And you probably knew that.

And just about every kid plays sports or has the opportunity to play sports. And so you must have some sense that you would be good at this. And maybe if you're very good at it, then you're more likely to enjoy it and you're more likely to think you could get something out of it. So you're more likely to keep doing it. But there must be some number of people who have the potential to be great at it. And maybe they even know they could be good at it, but it's just not where their interest lies. They just don't, they just don't feel like it. I mean, I think there are certain people who are so innately good at something or so well suited to something that I wouldn't say they're meant or destined to do it, but it's just almost inevitable that they're going to do it. Like, you know, Stephen King

talks about how when he was a teenager, he just had so many stories just bursting out of his head that he felt like he was going to go insane if he didn't get them out somehow. And so it's kind of hard to imagine Stephen King not being a writer or if it's Paul McCartney or Keith Richards, you know, who wrote Yesterday and Satisfaction in their sleep or something like if these songs are just coming to them in their dreams, then maybe there was just no way it was going to stay in there. But most people are not that gifted and are not like that. But there could be some people who could, you know, certainly be a good baseball player, but just didn't want to be a baseball player.

Did you ever, when you were out here last summer, did you ever hear about Brandon Paulson, the guy who got signed by the Twins out of Healdsburg? Yes. yes. So this guy, Brandon Paulson, was basically pitching for like kind of like I want to say a Sunday men's league, but like nicer than that, but definitely not even close to the Stompers level. Okay, not even close to the Stompers level. not even close to the Stompers level. Okay, not even close to the Stompers level. And he somehow started throwing.

He had gone to an art academy in college, and then he's a big dude, and he started throwing 100. And my understanding is that he wasn't throwing 100, and then one day he was. And so he starts throwing 100. He's a big guy big athletic guy pitching for nothing pitching for nobody like no exposure at all like again i can't stress this enough this is in the uh about an hour from sonoma at a level way but like we wouldn't have signed a single player from his team for the stompers yeah And the Twins, some teams found out about him and came

out and there was a bidding war and the Twins signed him for a quarter million dollars. And all it took was basically him to throw a baseball hard. He didn't even have to go through a lot of proving himself stages. And then, you know, he ended up in the twin system and they sent him at age 24 to short season ball. And he had an ERA of eight and pitched seven innings. And then I think he had arm surgery right after that. And so it's not like they found even this story. It's not like they found Roger Clemens or anything like that. They found a guy who, you know, might be a live arm at age 24. And it didn't take, it wasn't that hard for him to get signed. Yeah. So Yosemite kid, they're out there. So Tim, maybe you're one of them. We hope so. Yeah. Okay. All right. So

you have a play index. I assume I also have a brief play index in response to a listener email. I don't know whether you have also answered this email in your play index, but this will just take me a minute. So this is a question from Marcus who says, perhaps this has been answered before. Who's the first inductee to the baseball hall of average who lies squarely in the middle of production of all guys with 10 years of service time, five years retired? So this is a pretty quick play index, or at least one way to do it is a pretty quick play index. You can go to batters, you can search for multiple seasons or careers, and you can search by wins above average, which is just a built-in stat in the play index. So I set the wins above average like between one and negative one for a career

and set the playing time minimum at 3,000 played appearances. And there are four players going back to 1914 or whatever it is, who have a 0.0 war in at least 3,000 plate appearances. And those players are Drew Stubbs, who is at 0.0, 3,049 plate appearances. Hoot Evers, who played in the 40s and 50s. Elmer Smith, who played from 1914 to 1925.

I would say none of these guys totally does it for me. Stubbs is a below average hitter and an above average defender. And Evers and Smith were above average hitters and presumably below average defenders. So they weren't just average all across the board. And Stubbs also has very rarely actually been average. average all across the board. And Stubbs also has very rarely actually been average. Yes, that's true too. And so I think the fourth guy is the best candidate, at least based on baseball references stats. And the fourth guy is someone whose name you've probably heard if you watch The Wire. It is Gus Triandos, who was a catcher in first baseman in the 50s and 60s. He has the most career plate appearances of any player with 0.0 career war, 4,424.

And he was basically a league average hitter, 103 OPS plus. Basically a league average everything. I think he makes sense. coverage everything that I think he makes sense. He's obviously in the The Wire season three episode where Herc talks about what man he would have sex with in order to have sex with any woman of his choice. And he chooses Gus Triandos because Gus Triandos caught Hoyt Wilhelm for years and caught that knuckler and had a very hard time catching that knuckler, but he continued to catch it. This is a hard one for anybody to understand. I mean, it's got nothing to do with sex.

It's about sympathy. It's about giving a guy a break. Yeah, okay, okay. Gus Triandos. Who's Gus Triandos? He was a catcher with the Orioles back in the day. I mean, my brother had his card. Sorry-looking motherfucker, man.

I mean, he looked like this little kid who got left at a bus station by his parents. You know why? Because he had to catch Hoyt Wilhelm's knuckleball. Five fucking years. The worst gig in baseball. It was like trying to catch a greased pig with wings. I mean, he even told a reporter once, will him nearly ruin me?

Gustriandos, big slow guy. Good choice. And that's actually an interesting thing because we now have BPs blocking and throwing stats that go back to Gus Trandis' career. And I worried that he would be way above or below average in those new stats and that that would screw this up. But not really. He's actually a slightly below average blocker. And theoretically, that accounts for Hoyt Wilhelm's difficulty to catch. So he's like a negative five blocker and a plus nine thrower.

So he's like a five run above average catcher. So I guess if you factor that in, that very slightly pushes him above the 0.0 career war. But he's close and he has a wire tie-in. So I'm going with Gus Triandos. Great. What's your plan next? Nah, I'll save mine. Okay. I'll save mine for next week

It'll be good next week too It's evergreen All right So I did the play index Okay One more quick one Scott says I saw the other day where Jonathan Lucroy told the press

That he thought it was time for a trade Which got me to wondering What's the advantage to a player to do such a thing? He's asking his employer for a favor And making it as onerous and costly as possible for said employer. And the timing is terrible, too, given that he's coming off a season in which he stank, like, markedly worse than A.J. Pruszynski. And this was a pretty plain, pretty candid trade request. He said, I'm not going to sit here and say we're

going to compete for the playoffs this year. If I did that, you'd call me a liar. I'd lose credibility and respect. I probably wouldn't have called him a liar. I want to win and I don't see us winning in the foreseeable future. I want to go to the World Series. That's what all players want. Rebuilding is not a lot of fun for any veteran guy. And then the article goes on to say that he thinks it would be best for all concerned if the brewers do what they've done with many veteran players since last july trade him so the question is does it help the player who wants to get traded to come out and say that he wants to get traded because you have the public pressure that is now applied to the team because people know he wants to get traded.

But you also maybe make it more difficult to make a deal in that you're less likely to get a good price because you have less leverage. On the other hand, you might have more suitors, more people making offers. So would it be more effective to just quietly go to the team and request the trade? Or is it better to do it through the media so let me uh first ask you if if he did go quietly to the team and said all these things or even maybe said more directly i don't want to be here and i'd like you to trade me what are the chances that that news does not get out i think pretty good i think more than 50 50 it seems like that news often it does get out and so i guess i guess although does it come out after the fact sometimes

maybe i don't know i don't even know if it often comes out it only seems like it often comes out but let's say it often comes out and let's say that the team doesn't it gets no benefit it provides no benefit to the team to have it get out so then we might presume that in that sense the player and his representatives are making a more calculated decision that it does help yeah i mean it's like with luke roy you can't say that there's a we can't say that there's anything calculated about this maybe he uh just was uh you know loose lips for a couple of minutes. So we can't say that he's got some grand plan and that it proves anything. But if agents were leaking this, they sort of are pretty skilled at their jobs and know where they want to put pressure.

And so maybe if we thought that agents were likely to leak such a thing, that it would say that. But we don't know. We don't know if agents are leaking this. All right. So would it be better to tell them in private? First? I don't know that it's, I just don't know that most people are necessarily capable of having that conversation in private. It's a lot harder to go look your boss in the eye and say, don't like you don't want to be here. Uh, in the meantime meantime please continue to treat me well it's there's something that is easier even if it's not technically any less damaging to the relationship

with your boss it's probably actually much much more damaging to the relationship with your boss and yet it seems so much easier less friction to just tell the reporter for the newspaper. So if a player wanted to do it, I think it's maybe giving us all a little too much credit to think it's as easy as saying, well, you should have gone and done the mature thing. Of course, we should always all do the mature thing. We fail to do the mature thing all the time. And maybe that's always going to be the case here too. Would it be more effective? always going to be the case here too uh would it be more effective yeah i don't think so i think it's more effective to put public pressure on the the team by basically shaming them humiliating them making it seem like a failure a failure on their part uh that you're still there making yourself i mean it's not i wouldn't recommend a player this. I don't think it's necessarily great behavior, but to make yourself a nuisance probably is better. And if they don't like you,

if you've done something that is really kind of backstabby, they're probably more likely to get rid of you to go, Oh, well, this guy's disloyal. He's not on the same page as us. He's throwing us under the bus. He, we, who knows what he's going to say next? He's a loose cannon. Even though it's a worse time to trade him, now we've got more extra incentive to trade him, both professionally and personally. So probably I think that Luke Roy did the quote unquote right thing for his, if that is actually his. Yeah. And it could also be, I mean, if a player has this desire and the team wants to accommodate it, it might be better for the team if the player comes out and says it

because if the team were the one to solicit offers, a team would just have to contact every team and say, hey, Lucroi's available. And that really makes it look like you're willing to get rid of him. Whereas if the player comes out and says it, then everyone will still know that he is possibly available or that he wants to go somewhere, but the team could still kind of posture and take the position. Well, we don't want to trade him or we don't have to trade him. We're not going to give him away, which would be a little harder to do if the team is the

one to reach out and say, send us your offers for Lucroi. So maybe it gives you a little more leverage if you're the team. I don't know. Maybe it gives you less, but I agree. Players continue to do it. Agents presumably continue to approve when players do it. And so I would think they have a pretty good handle on whether it works or not. I generally don't think that there's much leverage movement based on any public proclamations. Like you basically just said,

if you're willing to trade a guy, then you're willing to trade a guy. And teams are capable of looking at your situation and figuring out a lot figuring out a lot of it anyway. Uh, they know that the brewers have a valuable asset who is less valuable to them because of where they are competitively right now. They know when they know how old Lucroy is and when his window is going to be. And yeah, like you said, if they, as soon as the brewers call and offer him to anybody, they're communicating most of the same information. Anyway, and even if they know that you have to move him, you don't have to move him to you. There's 29 other teams and a huge part of the team's leverage, maybe almost all of a team's leverage, comes from the fact that they have 29 buyers. And also that they don't actually ever technically have to trade you.

And so if you don't make a offer that is the best offer, they'll go to somebody else. I mean, look, I know that Target has to sell that, you know, has to sell that shampoo. Like I know that they bought that shampoo and now they got to move it, but I can't go in and be like, give you a buck. Like they'll go, go no someone else will come buy that shampoo you idiot chris davis buck showalter lots of baseball on a road trip to lots of baseball lots of baseball players ready to swoop in and pay the full 399 retail yeah so you know leverage what is leverage okay all right lots of good questions i'm saving for next time which given how this part of the baseball offseason goes, could be as soon as tomorrow. We'll see. and subscribe to the show on iTunes and support our sponsor,

which we used for the Play Index segment. Go to baseballreference.com, subscribe to the Play Index, use the coupon code BP, and get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. We'll be back tomorrow. Thank you.