Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 808: The BP Annual Guessing Game

Episode Date: February 1, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Billions, the amazing Willie Davis, and a strange Fox Sports article, then conduct a quiz show.

Good morning and welcome to episode 808 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by The Play Index, baseballreference.com. I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight. Hello, Ben. Hi. So, Ben. Yes. FiveThirtyEight. Yes.

Who's going to win tonight? I don't know. It's not really my specialty at FiveThirtyEight, but if you go to FiveThirtyEight.com, you can see some projections on the front page. I was hoping you had picked up a thing or two. No, I haven't learned it. Nate's knee. All right. I've got a couple of banters.

You've got a banter. Do you want to banter first? Sure. Well, I was watching the show Billions, the new Showtime show last night, which it turns out is a baseball show by your initial definition in our discussion of Brewster's Millions a few weeks ago. Multiple baseball related scenes in this episode. But the one I wanted to mention is one where Damian Lewis, who plays Bobby Axelrod, who's the billionaire, is talking to one of his traders. And he compares him to Brian Doyle, the former New York Yankee.

So I'm going to play a quick clip, 20 seconds. You're going to be our Brian Doyle. Who? Brian Doyle's a utility player in the 78 Yankees. He's a lifetime 168 hitter. Below the Mendoza. But in the 78 World Series, Willie Randolph got hurt. Doyle stepped in, hit 438, played like an MVP.

Legendary. You're going to be Brian Doyle. I'm going to be Brian Doyle. I'm going to be Brian Doyle. So I heard this and wasn't that familiar with Brian Doyle other than the name and 168 career average sounded very low. So I looked it up thinking if anything, if it was wrong, maybe it would be too low. In fact, Brian Doyle's lifetime average is 161. I wondered why you think this happened. As I see it, there are three possibilities. One, it's an unintentional mistake in the script.

So someone wrote down 168 and no one fixed it. And Damian Lewis read what was on the page. Two, it's an unintentional mistake by Damian Lewis, and it said 161 on the page, but he mistakenly said 168 and no one noticed or cared. Three, it's an intentional inaccuracy, and either the writers or Lewis thought that making a mistake would enhance the show's verisimilitude because real people often cite inaccurate stats. So what do you think is the most likely explanation? It's also possible that it was an unintentional mistake in the sense that they thought 168 sounded better, like it just had better meter. Uh-huh. Okay. Right? Sure.

You know, like Pesca's discussion of Piazza New York Catcher the other day on Hang Up and Listen, where he ultimately concluded that basically the numbers that might have made it more correct don't fit into song lyrics. It would be sort of more of a stretch to think that dialogue on a premium cable show needs to fit some kind of special meter that 168 would, but 161 wouldn't. But it's also possible, right? It's possible. I had wondered initially, because they raised his batting average. I wondered if they had calculated his career average including the postseason. I wondered that too, yeah.

But it's too high. Right. If you include his postseason, it's actually 184. Now, exactly. Now, but what if you include his postseason but not that World Series? So you include everything except that World Series. So then he would be 34 for 206. So let's see what that brings him to.

That's 165. Close. So accident in the script, accident by Damian Lewis, intentional for one reason or another. I don't buy your verisimilitude. Like that really seems like a stretch to me, especially because I don't think that people would miss in that way like i could see if this is a if brian doyle is a kind of defining example in his life i think he would get it right or he would exaggerate it or when you do miss i think you tend to miss with round numbers so if he'd said you know buck 60 i could see that

even a buck 50 or even a buck 75 but uh buck 68 seems weird and and really if you're gonna miss you'd say a buck saying a buck is like the classic i'm i'm i'm gonna miss just by a little bit here like it's it's a it's like kind of a a decoy i think if you say a buck 40 you're always off by a couple of points so so you're saying mistake unintentional error it's not possible that they had a lawyer who concluded that stats are copyrighted huh oh well no because he did mention his world series average was 438 and that is accurate hmm maybe that fell under fair use uh it was only part of it's only 16 fight appearances as opposed to 214 i would guess that it is a uh i would blame it on the script

yeah i would too i would think if damian lewis just said it wrong someone would have said cut the thing is another take. The other thing is that Damian Lewis is British. My guess is that he has very little understanding of how much you can change a batting average without throwing it off. Imagine if you were reading a script about cricket stats and you're like, I'm just going to tweak it to make it better. You'd have no idea. You might be like 80, you know, like he might be Brian Doyle, you know, hit 448 in his career. But then like he wouldn't know even which direction to go.

He wouldn't know anything. So it seems hard to me to think that. Do you think it's more likely that he screwed up than the Raiders did? No, no, no, no. Oh, I see. Because you're saying intentional. I'm ruling out the intentional. Damian Lewis intentionally.

Okay. Right. Okay. But he could have done it on accident. No, I think he memorized that line. Okay. Yeah. All right.

So you're blaming the writers. I'm blaming the writers. And it really does make you wonder why they don't even need to call us on this one. David Levine and Brian Koppelman calling you out. Those are the guys. Well, they know sports though, right? They do. Well, yeah.

I mean, they did that. Multiple baseball scenes in this episode. Yeah. And then what they did round. They did the ESPN. Didn't they do the ESPN show on poker? And then didn't they do the football show? They did rounders.

Didn't they do a football show on ESPN too? What are their names? Brian Koppelman, former Grantland their names brian koppelman former grantland podcaster brian koppelman they did tilt so remember you remember tilt the espn poker show it was kind of a spin-off of rounders but not really around the same time there was also a fictionalized football show on espn and i thought they had done that but they did not do that somebody else did that i don't know i don't know if we're giving them extra sports credit for knowing poker particularly well, but if there are multiple baseball, I mean, clearly they know baseball.

They know Brian Doyle, right? So I don't know, Ben, call them up. Have you called them up? You've already called them up. Haven't you? I have not. Running a show is hard. Sometimes you're going to miss someone's lifetime average by seven points. All right. Okay. So mine, I have two things. First, I was reading a book called Behind the Superstars, The Business Side of Sports, which is written by, I think it's Jerry. I never know how to pronounce G-E-R-R-Y.

But I think it's Jerryerry patterson who was an agent in the 70s uh sport one of the you know one of the kind of semi-first sports agents and marketing guys and um he wrote this book in the 70s about some of his clients in his job so page 33 i i believe i might have found the ultimate example of a phenomenon we have talked about before on this show and i'm going to read a quote this is after the nash at the uh expos traded for willie davis willie davis a great outfielder gold glove outfielder a speedy guy and so they acquired him in 1970 uh before 1974 gene mock was full of superlatives about willie davis uh well you know this one i know where you're going with this okay and willie davis was also full of superlatives about Willie Davis. You know this one? I know where you're going with this. Okay.

And Willie Davis was also full of superlatives about Willie Davis. Quote, in the 15 years that I've managed, Gene Mock said, I've never had an outstanding center fielder. Now I have the best. Willie can save us 30 games with his glove alone. Wow. 30 games in a single season. With just his defense.

Unless he's saying in the 15 years that he's had him, he saved him 30 games. No, because he didn't. He just got him. He had just acquired him. And Davis was 34 at that point. Now, granted, he was 34. He was a good center fielder. He was coming off of a gold glove season. And early in his career, he was really arguably one of the greats. His fielding runs by year from age 20 on, plus three, plus 13, plus 14, plus nine, plus 29,

plus three plus 13 plus 14 plus nine plus 29 plus 16 and then once he hit his mid-20s he became kind of inconsistent and from 26 through his final season on the Dodgers he was a minus six center fielder in aggregate no I'm sorry plus 25 in aggregate so that's uh eight years plus 25 so he was just he was a little bit above average but but clearly above average. But Mock said that he'd be a plus 300 center fielder, which is awesome. So that's 30 wins, Ben. Imagine thinking 30 wins with just your center field defense. And so I asked you, the reason you knew where this was going is because i asked about other examples and you uh reminded me of the quote from dollar sign on the muscle by a scout andre dawson's a better all-around player but moreno saves our ball club 50 doubles and 20 triples a year and uh so i did a little math and i think 50 doubles and 20 triples works out to like eight or nine wins.

So only a third of Willie Davis. Presumably there are a bunch of singles in there as well. Yeah. But I have a hard time thinking. Or maybe he gives up more singles because he's playing so deep. Could be. That could be. I'm guessing that even this scout would not go higher than 15 wins with Moreno's glove,

which makes, to to date Willie Davis, the all time greatest hyperbole center fielder. There's another example of this. We brought up this practice of wildly inflated player valuations. And I wanted to write an article about it. I asked people to send me some, but they're not that easy to find. But there was one that I don't remember if we brought up on the show or someone sent me, but there was a 1966 article about Whitey Herzog. And he said, a good third base coach can win 16 or 17 games a season for his club. So he's basically half a Willie Davis from a third base coach. Well, that's only a good third base coach too well yeah not even the best that's true that's one standard deviation

yeah so i think this kind of quote is the sort of thing that maybe advanced stats have actually changed a little bit because it was really hard at one time to say what a player was worth now if you've thought it through even before you had wins about replacement or whatever i mean if willie davis saves you 30 games then i mean you're gonna have just too many you don't have that many games in a season you're gonna have other good players who are saving you more games than willie davis and so it doesn't make sense if you think about it. But now that we have this sort of language,

we all know we're a really elite player. Mike Trout is worth nine or 10 wins. That's the outside limit of what you could possibly be worth in a season. So I think we'll probably see fewer of these, which is a shame. Willie Davis was one run better than average in his first

year as an expo the the expos in 73 won 79 games in 74 they won 79 games huh so what about i mean does maybe he means relative to no center fielder if you play without a center fielder at all not 100 convinced that that would hold up either yeah maybe not i'm genuinely not sure that there are 30 runs saved by putting 30 games yeah 30 games 30 runs yeah 30 games though yeah i mean if you took the cubs and made them play eight manned would they win fewer than 70 games this year i don't think so i don't i don't think so, especially if they could remove their worst bat from the lineup, though you can't necessarily do that. I don't think so either. Okay. All right, then.

Now, I think that if you did make them do that, there would be games where they would, or there would be batters, they would still play a center fielder. Right. You could put them wherever you wanted. You could put them, exactly. still play a center fielder right you could put them wherever you wanted you could put it exactly hooky doke ben my last thing is uh you i'm sure saw the deadspin post fox sports publishes comma delete bad royals blog i did so this was a post that uh apparently ran on fox sports briefly and then was taken down and there's been much speculation about what the heck. And so this post is hilariously bad.

The headline is, Royals are one of the worst AL teams to win the World Series since 2000, which is provocative. I could see Ben writing that piece. And then the subhead, though, only the 2005 White Sox had a lower batting average among AL champs. This goes on to then explain that since 2000, of the eight AL winners, ignoring the NL winners, of the eight AL winners, the Royals rank as one of the worst AL teams to win the World Series. And the evidence for this is a table that shows the batting averages for AL World Series champs since 2000. The Royals are the second lowest.

That is the end of the post. And it seems to me there's a lot of people who are like, what the heck, right? But in fact, this is filed to the category on Deadspin is what the hell is this? And I think I know the answer. I knew the answer almost immediately. I believe I know the answer. It's actually fairly simple. And if you've ever worked for a large newspaper, you probably also saw the answer coming.

Because this happens somewhat regularly. Anytime there's a new CMS or anytime a handful of new employees come in, there are trainings in which you learn the new CMS. And as part of learning the CMS for non-web publishers, the content management system. And in order to do this, they will have you produce a false article or two. And sometimes they might have a whole separate section of the CMS where you can play around and not worry about things getting accidentally published, but not always. And so this seems to have all the hallmarks of a false article

that somebody was just practicing with. It has a headline. It has a photo that is applicable to the piece. It has a caption to the photo, which is applicable to the piece. It has a headline. It also has not just text, but it has differently formatted text and it also has tags. And so these are all the things that you would put together for an article. So it is not as though someone just typed gibberish into a thing and accidentally hit

publish or anything like that, but they actually had to make it look sort of semi real. However, it lacks a byline, which is weird, and it lacks anything remotely like enough content for an article. And so this is something that you would put together over the course of 25 minutes before lunch to make sure that you've learned everything. And then you accidentally hit submit, and then they undo it. And at the Orange County Register, this happened from time to time. And then you delete it, and you don't really, you know, that's it. That's the whole story when that happens. And so I think that's what happened here.

Yeah. So I think that's a lot more likely than that. It was just a bad article that they published and decided not to run. So I would say lay off Fox Sports and resist the urge to put any effort into rebutting this article on the internet. Okay. All right. So Ben, the annual came out, the BP annual came out. Yeah. Is this early? I mean, I always forget when it shows up because the Amazon release date always says mid-February or something, and then it starts trickling into stores or people's homes.

It seems really early, but maybe this is when that usually happens. It used to come out in mid-February, and I think I bragged last year. I think you put me in a position to boast last year. I'll boast again. We are pretty good at editing on a schedule. It's a hard thing to edit. And my understanding is that for many years it was difficult to keep it on a schedule because particularly writers don't always submit when you need them to. And it's a very tight timeline,

but we got it down. We got it a week earlier the first year we did it. And then last year we got it in before February. I think it was the 30th last year as well so so this is just what we do now cool yeah and i'm proud of it i'm proud of that yeah should be you haven't gotten yours yet nope because you will get yours a little later we get ours a little later because they first get shipped to somebody at the company who then puts them in a box and ships them to us. And so we ironically get ours last. So it goes. So that means that I can play the game that's sweeping the nation, the Guess the Annual Comment game. So this, I first heard this game two years ago when Paul Boyer, I think Boyer, I think you pronounce the E, who is a contributor, a very good contributor to this year's annual, by the way. So I first heard Paul play this game two years ago with

Michael Bauman and Liz Roescher at the podcast Defensive Indifference. And I was delighted and I played along even though I had edited it and I found it to be great fun. And then last year, Matt Corey and Jason, Matt Corey organized a game between Jason Focacoski and I on their blog. And I always liked this game. It's always fun to me. So I'm going to now make you play this game. By myself? By yourself, yes.

Okay. I chose ones that are not. Usually there's a competition aspect to it. Yeah, but it takes hours to get for the competition. Yeah. And who am I going to have you play? Someone else who doesn't know the annual i don't know all right so i'm gonna just make you do like four ish all right not too many and uh guys that i think are interesting and that might be worth talking about okay all right first one baseball isn't supposed to be this easy

this guy names will always be replaced by this guy. This guy has gone from a breakout prospect in A-ball to a first division starter in two years, and he appears to be on the cusp of something altogether more. The then 22-year-old almost joined the 2020 club in his first full campaign, showing off more power than most thought he possessed. He displayed the skills needed to be a plus-plus defender in center, despite very little outfield possessed. He displayed the skills needed to be a plus plus defender in center, despite very little outfield experience. He also got better in the second half, demonstrating that he knows how to adjust. And he did all this with the quiet confidence and selective aggressiveness that defined many of the game's best players. Rather than go a few months without

dominating a sphere hurling sport, this guy spent his off season participating in the PBA's World Series of Bowling, proving that he's always hunting quality strikes. Whether you prefer this guy or this guy's teammate is a question of taste, but there's no doubt that this is what a franchise cornerstone looks like in today's game. Hmm. Okay. I did not know the bowling fun fact about any player. So let's see. So he is a center fielder and he is young and he was an A-ball and he almost joined the 2020 club. So I would say, hmm, is it Kevin Kiermaier? No. Is it? So he was in A-ball two years ago, it said? Yes. I was thinking AJ Pollock for a second, but yeah, he must've been 2020, right? So Jock Peterson? No. Surprised. I thought that, well, I was afraid the bowling would give it

away, but if you didn't know the bowling. No, I don't know the bowling. So probably the best, well, I don't know if it's a good enough clue but uh the last line whether you prefer this guy or his teammate is a question of taste these guys are both i'll give you a hint these guys are both very young they're not like pollock or kiermeier they're two guys who are both 22 and franchise cornerstone type players first year year in the outfield, how about very little outfield experience? Is that a hint? Oh, oh, oh, Mookie Betts. Mookie Betts.

It is Mookie Betts. So Mookie Betts a year ago, I mean, well, Mookie Betts was one of, I think, one of the projection systems' great hits last year because they were so bullish on him. And it was almost hard to imagine that a player that young and with that little track record at the majors, and really, frankly, without that much pedigree could be projected to be as good as he was. He was projected to be like a top 10 player in the American League last year. And I know that I think what, because the Red Sox were seen as perhaps being in the market for an ace pitcher,

there were trade proposals made on the internet in which, you know, bets would be traded for Steven Strasburg or bets would be traded for Matt Harvey. And I know that it was sometimes mocked when people would say, but no, you shouldn't. Mookie Betts is more valuable than those guys. And a year later, I'm trying to think if Mookie Betts is a clear top 10 player in baseball right now. Well.

He was 22. He produced five and a half warp in his age 22 season. And as noted, he got much better in the second half. And he's got every tool. Where does he rank in the Pocota projections for 2016? Let me see if I can find that. It looks to me like he ranks 11th in the AL for projected warp, and that would make him, I think, 20th in the majors for projected warp and that would make him i think 20th in the majors for

projected warp okay so that if you're asking me that then you're just gonna say no yeah i was asking you that but if he's top 20s and top 10 isn't that big a stretch what chance what what kind of odds would it take for you to bet that he will make the hall of fame right now or what do you think his chances are that he will make the hall of fame right now or what do you think his chances are that he will make the hall of this is one of my favorite games yeah you love this pick a 22 year old and i'll say uh 15 i was gonna say 16 okay i'm always i feel like i'm always lower than you on this game but not by much this time anyway mookie bets super good super awesome everybody's favorite player. Okay. Except for people who still prefer Xander Bogarts.

Yes, that's true. Also a defensible position. Alright, next one. This one might be harder or it might be easy. I don't know. There are very few clues, except for the entire thing is a clue. This guy is a Saturday morning, a cup of coffee, and the second chapter of your

new favorite book. He's the $20 you forgot you put in your winter coat. He's the sound of someone you love pulling into your driveway. This guy is a hand-knit afghan and a wanted kiss on the neck and extra thick socks on a cold day. He's the smell of a puppy's head. He's a bump up to first class when you could really use a drink. He's that eye twitch finally going away. class when you could really use a drink. He's that eye twitch finally going away. This guy is your favorite sweatshirt and your childhood swing set and a handful of jelly beans. He's that episode of Survivor where your least favorite contestant gets voted off. He's a four-day weekend and a

short line at the DMV and a pot of mac and cheese that you don't have to share. To see this guy swing a bat is to witness both a tornado and a calm winter evening. To see him field is an exercise in eye widening. His arm is a series of bungee cords wrapped around a Dead Sea scroll. His legs are two-for-one mad dog margaritas. A video of him barehanding a grounder is on display right now at the Louvre. This guy built the pyramids, and he wrote the first two seasons of Dead pyramids and he wrote the first two seasons of Deadwood and he invented the plastic thing that keeps your shoelaces from fraying. He talked George Lucas into selling the Star Wars franchise. This guy is a fist pump. He's

your best friend. I like the comment. Yeah. So he is. You can narrow it down to about eight guys, yeah so he is you can narrow it down to about eight guys right he is just an all-around yeah position player yeah that's about all you can say yeah i think the key things to note like you can pretty much narrow it down to about eight or ten guys based on the uh you know the superlatives and uh he's an infielder because he bare hands balls. Exactly. You've already eliminated outfielders. There you go. You've got it. I'll say Manny Machado. No, but you're close.

No, I mean, you're not close. There's like four guys at this point it could be, and it's not Manny Machado. Okay. Better, Ben. Better than Manny Machado. I don't know. That's a good question.

Is it Francisco Lindor? It can't be Lindor, probably, because Lindor's swing. I mean, we led with the swing. To see this guy swing a bat is to witness both a tornado and a calm winter evening. Lindor had a very good offensive season and better than anybody expected. But we would not lead with the bat for Lindor. And I think that you can pretty much rule out Chris Bryant because, okay.

And you've already, unfortunately gone through Machado and Josh Donaldson. Ooh, his legs though. We talked about his legs. Yeah. Probably a young guy. It is a young guy because we only love

young guys this much you know that it's got to be somebody under 25 or over 39 because those are the only people we love this much right and he is under 25 nolan arenado it's not nolan arenado i wonder if you've heard of this guy he He's kind of, he's fairly famous. Well, he's better than Manny Machado, apparently. He's better than Francisco Lindor by the vote of many experts. Many experts were asked to vote between this guy and Francisco Lindor, and they voted for this guy. Oh, Carlos Correa.

It's Carlos Correa. All right, Carlos Correa. All right. Good ball player. Very good. Didn't think that. All right. Carlos Correa. All right. Good ball player. Very good. Didn't think that. All right. Okay.

Let's see. This was probably a much harder game than I give credit for. Yeah, I'm not good at this game. There are a lot of baseball players. All right. Next one. Next one. If this guy were in a short stop and a very good one at that,

he might have washed out of the majors early or stalled on the way there. As it was, this guy's team was so impressed with his footwork that they rushed him up before he was ready to hit. This guy's swing was mechanically flawed, hindered by an arm bar and later by a tendency to drop his hands, blemishes that only outstanding defensive players can survive. But this guy's team was patient, figuring that they'd benefit from a vacuum in the middle infield while making their hitting coaches earn their pay. Then, before the 2015 season, this guy's GM went out on a limb, telling reporters that the former UCLA Bruin was on the verge of stardom. Executives don't often make bold proclamations about their major league players, but this guy's GM knew what outsiders didn't. This guy's batting coach and company had mended this guy's swing by lowering his hands to shorten his path to the ball. Sure

enough, this guy crushed hard stuff both in and away, batting 330 against sinkers and slugging 612 on four seamers. He led his team in big flies and might have helped the injury ravaged field, sorry, might have lapped the injury ravaged field sorry might have lapped the injury ravaged field if not for his own stints on the dl and he made his first all-star game appearance just as his boss suggested he would earning a six-year 75 million dollar extension by proving this guy's gm right lots of clues in there. Six-year $75 million extension. He's a shortstop who led his team in home runs. Yep. Are there multiple Carlos Correa comments? No, but this guy was, the quote is all about how he didn't have a good bat until very recently. And Correa didn't make the all-star

game either. So this guy probably started the season with his team. Also, it says that executives often don't make bold proclamations about their major league players. So you can rule out anybody young. Six-year, $75 million extension suggests service time around, what, four years? Exceptionally good defense. Short steps don't hit home runs. Yeah. This guy hit 21 on a team that didn't have many

home run hitters for reasons that aren't necessarily their fault all right oh brandon crawford there you go i feel genuinely bad hearing how much you hate this game i like listening to other people play it yeah yeah i wonder if other podcasts also edit out four minutes of silence so it seems to me that maybe the most i don't know i don't know how to put this but like one of the most important stories in baseball this year from a standings perspective is whether Crawford Duffy and panic are incredible regression candidates or the best in field in baseball because last year they were arguably that they produced 14 wins by baseball references model even though panic missed uh you know a good

portion of the season and Crawford missed a little bit and they were projected to to produce four wins so that was like 10 wins more than anybody would have expected from looking at their preseason projections and so Pakoda has them right now projected to produce I think seven and a half warp so to lose you know something like half of that value but to also be better than they projected the year before and uh it really seems like that team is either really awesome if they have three guys who are all producing you know down ballot mvp seasons uh or really bad if they're the group that we thought they were before last year it'd be interesting to see how much those were career years as opposed to growth or

how much they were growth as opposed to career years like i i don't know i don't like i guess every player what every player's ability to produce or not produce to his projections is a big story but it feels like those three in particular maybe because i can lump them together because they're all in the infield and because they're all, you know, developed giants who didn't come from huge prospect backgrounds and so on. That makes it easy to lump them together. But it feels like there's just sort of 10 wins there. Of course, they don't necessarily have to all do the same thing. Maybe one will be a star and one won't.

But it feels like there's just 10 wins floating around to be claimed or not claimed for them. And that's pretty much the NL West, it seems to me. Well, I guess Las Vegas believes based on those World Series odds we talked about. Good point. All right. claimed for them and that's pretty much the nl west seems yeah to me well i guess las vegas believes based on those world series odds we talked about good point all right let's see i will do this one next okay all right no he didn't repeat as an mvp finalist but this guy's 2015 campaign was as well-rounded as safety scissors. He stole bases without getting caught. He has the game's second best success rate since 2013, minimum 30 steals. And he played a confident left field while the rest of his team looked like they were fielding a greased up pig. He is a unique

and dangerous hitter with elite bat to ball skills. His 93% contact rate, the best in baseball last year. Cont controlled aggression on early count fastballs, and an overall approach that produced his first double-digit walk rate. Only three guys walked more than they struck out last year, and they comprise a strange trio. Joey Votto, Nori Aoki, and this guy, who has some of the best of both of these guys in his game. Naturally, he has some of everything in his game. He'll start has some of everything in his game. He'll start 2016 with a new challenge, off-season shoulder surgery, which puts the start of his season in doubt.

Michael Brantley. You got it. What gave it away? The shoulder injury and the rest of the team not fielding well. Yeah, I thought the rest of the team not fielding well would give it away because you wrote a great piece about, about that. One of my favorites last year. So Brantley,

in case you're wondering is projected to be a two and a half win player this year, which seems like another, it seems like kind of a, I don't know, maybe a little bit of, if you're looking for teams that could outproduce Pocota Brantley at two and a half feels a little like Lorenzo Cain at two last year, where probably he's penalized a little bit for not having

a very long history of being an elite player. But he does have some of that potential to be an elite player. He did it once before. And you could imagine Brantley very easily being a 5 or 6 or maybe even 7-win player again. For the Indians, that would probably bump whatever their team projections are from, I would guess, that they'll project to be like in the low to mid-80s. Could bump them up to closer to 90.

So he seems like a crucial player as well. Yeah. Relative to projections. All right. And he might miss half the year and he also might who knows if he'll be fully healthy and effective so yeah might produce nothing all right this guy recently donated five million dollars to build a baseball stadium for the university of illinois at chicago the largest one-time gift ever from a pro athlete to his

alma mater and based on his previous two seasons it wasn't clear how much longer he'd be good enough to crack even that team's lineup. Yet, this guy improved in every aspect of the game, which makes us think he was simply finally healthy again. Offensive adjustments come and go without fanfare, but one does not magically improve his outfield range at the age of 34. At the plate, he showed an ability to turn on the inside fastball while staying honest on off-speed pitches previously he had only been able to concentrate on one or the other of course it's no more than he deserves as the consensus nicest guy in baseball yes we said he was done a year ago file it under yeah but still i think that is curtis granderson it is curtis granderson who had i want to say and again like I've mentioned this before,

it might just be that I wasn't following the league as closely, but he had, it seems to me, the quietest great season in baseball last year. Yeah, it was really good. Chris Mosch wrote something about his defense, his throwing improving in left field or in right field, I guess he was playing. But yeah, I mean, his people wrote off that contract really quickly as just a disaster. Over 30, free agent, gets signed by the Mets and has a down year. But he wasn't terrible. He struck out a lot and didn't have a high batting average, but he still did some things and then he bounced back. So yeah, he had a very good year. Yeah. He had the second or third best offensive season of his career, the second or third best

overall season of his career. And you look at his career and it's interesting because he didn't really establish himself in the majors until he was 25. He was a college draft pick and he didn't really race through the majors, through the minors once he got there. And you could imagine a scenario where if by chance he had, you know, either come out of high school or just caught some scouts eyes and gone, you know, sixth overall instead of in the third round or something and raced through the minors and made it to the majors maybe at age 22 instead of, you know of basically at age 25. He'd be putting together a stealthy Hall of Fame career

given what is now the surprising longevity to it. I mean, honestly, we all kind of thought that Granderson was washed up. Granderson was seen as injury prone, as he had a bad first year with the Mets. He was just getting old. Like he used to do things that were, I don't know. Granderson's the kind of guy who he changes. It seems like these guys who change the style of play, the way that they succeed as they get older,

I think we hold it against them a little bit, especially when they're so dynamic. Like he was a guy who would steal bases and hit 20 triples, and he was the fast guy. And when he rebuilds himself as a power hitter- 40 home run guy. A 40 home run guy, yeah. It feels like a last gasp before he ages. Like I kind of feel like Andrew Jones is the example that you might point at as the guy who did exactly that. And it was his last gasp. Like Jones was that extremely dynamic, fast center fielder. And then as he started to slow down, as he got bigger, he rebuilt himself as a power hitting superstar, but he could only keep that going for like two or three years.

And then he was, you know, more or less out of the game until this weekend when he officially retired. And Granderson in some ways was that, except he kept it going for longer. He's now going to be 35 and he's still a very good ball player. And he has found a way to not continue getting slower and older, right? Like he, yeah, he, uh, I wondered those, those couple of years with the Yankees when he hit 40-something home runs and he struck out a ton. And I wonder if that was a Yankee stadium sort of profile where he was trying to hit home runs, which he did successfully. And maybe he was just trying to do that in a way that he hadn't been before and maybe in a way that he hasn't with the Mets because it's harder to do that with the Mets and so he's less of a strikeout guy now than he was with the

Yankees so it's a it is a strange sort of yo-yo progression yeah I love Granderson and I mean I'm not suggesting in any way that he's going to get close to the Hall of Fame he won't not even close but that's largely because you it's almost impossible to make the Hall of Fame. He won't, not even close, but that's largely because it's almost impossible to make the Hall of Fame if you don't produce any wins before you turn 25. He's the opposite of Mookie Betts, where you can ask, well, how much is he going to bank before he even gets to where Granderson was in the majors? I mean, Betts might be a 20-win player before he gets to 25, and Granderson, in a sense, starts 20 wins behind what probably a lot of hall of famers have at that point so he's you know if if he has a a gentle decline he could easily get to around 50 or so but that's starting late so i don't know kind of a bummer i wonder what he was

doing that kept him from the majors like i wonder if wonder if you looked back, if, if he, like with Utley, you could very easily make the case that Utley is going to be similar. Utley started later than most hall of famers do. And he'll probably miss out on the hall of fame because of it for a few reasons. He'll miss out on the hall of fame. But one of them is that he started a little later than most hall of famers

get to start. And with Utley, you can really easily make the case that, well, partly he was a college guy, but also you can make the case that he should have been in the majors at least a year and maybe two years earlier than he was, but he was blocked and other things. And I wonder if Granderson also was. All right, let's do one more. Okay. After a gaffe flooded 2014, this guy had to be thrilled to enter spring training with a fresh slate at a new position.

The hope was that his athleticism, don't laugh, this guy is more spry than his nickname suggests, would counterbalance his inexperience at the cold corner, eventually allowing him to become an average or close to it defender. Nope. This guy committed 23 errors, almost as many as he had in 2014. And this time he did it without the yips. Do you realize how difficult it is to air that many times at first base? Jose Abreu finished second in the majors and he had about half as many years. Casey Kotschman committed 18 errors in his career. This guy started almost all of his team's September games, but completed only three of them, which is like my favorite fun fact in this book. This guy's ability to smack 30 home runs and reach base at respectable rates should keep

him employed for years to come. But after his team non-tendered him, it was probably safe for him to turn his glove into a decorative planter. I think I have it. It's Pedro Alvarez. It is Pedro Alvarez. I'm surprised about the confidence about his longevity oh yeah well this was written before we saw no market develop for him at all i mean now you get

to you get to february and you start worrying that dhs that aren't signed aren't going to sign yeah and in december he looked like you know he's still a pretty attractive player. I mean, not the most attractive, but this is the kind of the classic guy that you'd think, well, he was probably two years from being the classic guy that you would think the Rays would sign if he was a little older than the Rays. And he's basically, because of that bad defense, has been like a replacement level player for two years. And exclusively because if you take away the defense, he's like minus 45, I think, in his career. If you put all that at zero, then he'd be basically an average player. Instead, he's been like about a win per 162 games. Yeah. Well, yes. I mean, that's the thing though. Even though he's a 30 home run guy or he has been, he's still not a

great hitter by the standards of the positions he could play. Like if he could play shortstop, he'd be great. But as a first baseman or a third baseman, he just, he strikes out so much. He doesn't get on base all that much. Yeah, I think that you're probably right about the confidence of the longevity prediction is probably too strong. You could easily see him having seven more years as a DH in this league, right? You could also easily see him having... Like Delman Young. Delman Young, yeah.

You could also see him having one more year and then being a minor league contracts guy or a spring training invite guy for the rest of his career, and he has to earn it. And he goes up and down, and he has a Russell Branion here and there, and then he has the other Russell Branion year here and there, and then he's out by 33. So I think he's already got more plate appearances

than Russell Branion in his career. I'm going to check that, but no, but if he plays a full year this year, he'll pass Russell Branion. So yeah, I'm still, I'm surprised that Alvarez is still, I mean, there's a guy who led the league in home runs three years ago and you'd think there would still be GMs out there that would want that. It's getting to the point now where you almost wonder whether the other prediction that he's certainly going to be in the AL might end up being wrong too. Because at this point, you could see him taking a bench bat platoon role if it gets bad enough, right? First baseman kind of platoon guy and defense, you know, gets swapped out for defense in the sixth or seventh inning every game. There's probably at least a team or two in the NL where he might fit at close to the minimum if it actually got to that point. Anyway. All right. That's the end of that game.

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