Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 811: 2016 Comeback Player Predictions

Episode Date: February 4, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Alvaro Espinoza and Kenta Imamiya, then draft candidates for the 2016 Comeback Player of the Year Award(s).

And I've waited so long for my sun to shine, shine, shine, shine. Well, I've waited so long trying to put it in song, where the rise and fall. Living in quite sped after all. Hello and welcome to episode 811 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus, presented by the Play Index at baseballreference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectus. Hi.

Yo, how are you? Okay, great. This morning, Craig Calcaterra, whose job is to write about baseball every day, wrote, it's a profoundly slow day in the world of baseball. But here we are, because we have to talk about baseball every day, wrote, it's a profoundly slow day in the world of baseball. But here we are, because we have to talk about baseball every day too. So a couple follow-ups from yesterday. The intentional walk that shocked and appalled us.

Some additional evidence was uncovered by a Twitter user named Jeff Good. And this was the 1989 intentional walk of Alvaro Espinoza by Roger Clemens to get to an excellent left-handed hitter, Ken Phelps, who pinch hit. And we couldn't understand why this happened. There were two outs at the time also. And Espinoza was not good, although he was a decent singles hitter. And Jeff Good pointed out that Espinosa was 0 for 9 against Clemens to that point. And all of those nine plate appearances had come in that season. So it wasn't even like the weird, like Enrique Wilson owns Pedro Martinez sort of thing that happens every now and then, where some scrub just happens to be really good against

an all-time great and people talk about how he's I don't know uniquely suited to hit against them or something so it wasn't even as if Espinoza was four for eight against Clemens or something and the other Joe Morgan manager decided that he didn't want to face him anymore over nine against Clemens in that season so he had sat there and watched Clemens get Espinoza out nine times already and didn't think he could do it a 10th time. So even more shocking. Yeah. And he was due. Yeah, I guess so. And since we were talking about sacrifice bunts, the sacrifice bunt is sort of an endangered tactic in the majors i wrote about that earlier this winter and we've talked about it before sacrifice bunts are at an all-time low and so in the last three seasons the most sacrifice bunts by anyone is 33 that's cumulative

all three seasons by elvis andrews so that's you know, 11 a season or something. I mean, that's what it takes to be a guy who bunts a lot in the major leagues. But in Japan, the sacrifice bunt is alive and well. And Kazudo Yamazaki, who is a listener and reader of ours, and also now a writer for BP Wrigleyville posted in the Facebook group about Kenta Imamia who is the sacrifice bunt king in Japan and he plays for the Softbank Hawks and over his last three seasons his first full three seasons in Japan, he has sacrifice bunted 159 times. He led the league with 35 last year, and for him that was nothing. He had back-to-back 62 sack bunt seasons in 2013 and 2014, and he is a type of player who doesn't really exist in the majors anymore, I don't think. He's 5'6", 148 pounds.

He is a shortstop. I hope he's a good fielding shortstop because his career batting line is 240, 291, 319. So he is as old school as they come. He doesn't get on base. And he sack bunts in about, I don't know, a tenth of his plate appearances are sack bunts or something like that. So he is a creature that does not exist in the major leagues. All right. Anything you want to talk about?

I could talk about Till versus Untill, but I think most people don't want to hear me talk about that. No, I don't have a problem with Till. No, AP Style doesn't either. So I take it back. Someone also posted about that in the Facebook group. And evidently TIL was the original form. And until is like a bastardization of TIL. Which isn't necessarily relevant.

But what is relevant is that TIL is still acceptable and AP style allows either one. Okay. All right. So we're going to do something today that we've actually done twice before. And I guess we've just about done everything at this point after 810 episodes. But we are going to do a draft or a prediction of comeback players of the year for 2016. We've done this twice before. We did it in episode 286. We picked the comeback players for 2014. In episode 530, we picked the comeback players for 2015. So we shamelessly repeat ourselves. This is the second draft this week that

we've done twice already. The odd thing is that we've done it in September both times before. I don't know why we did it in September, but we are looking ahead to 2016 and we're talking about players who didn't do much last year who we think will do something this year. And unlike the minor league free agent draftees, you will actually have heard of these players. And the weird thing about comeback player of the year is that there are still two awards given for comeback player of the year because there's the sporting news award which has been given out since 1965 and you can understand why the sporting news would want to continue that tradition but major league baseball started giving out its own Comeback

Player of the Year, I guess the official Comeback Player of the Year award in 2005. So now we have two identically named Comeback Player of the Year awards, which are given out at roughly the same time each year and are almost always awarded to the same players. So there's some redundancy in this award. I guess it's nice that there are two methods. I think the sporting news version of the award is voted on by a panel of players, like 200 players select. So it's a jury of your peers. And then the MLB award is voted on by MLB.com beat writers. I think there's one candidate from each team and they vote on who gets to be the top dog.

So I don't know which one we are drafting for. I guess we're drafting for the official one. Although in practice, they're probably the same people. Over the last five years, they've picked nine of the same 10. The only difference was 2012 when Adam Dunn won in the sporting news vote and Fernando Rodney won in the official. Well, all right. So we're, we're drafting official, I guess. And last year's comeback players of the year were very boring. I'm not sure I like the way that the Comeback Player of the Year Award

is developing. Yeah. It's kind of just becoming an automatic you miss a season with an injury and then you come back and are good again, which is a comeback, but it's not very interesting. The guy coming back from cancer is the ideal, right? It's not ideal. Not even that, but, I mean, yes, a heartwarming story.

Yeah, like, yeah, any, any, like, for instance, if you got hit by a line drive, and everybody, you know, was like aghast and didn't know if it was gonna ruin your career or end your career or or be worse and then you come back and we all like stand like like when prince fielder came back to the field i'm sure rangers fans were happy to see him on opening day but it's not like there wasn't a like a three and a half minute standing ovation because like the courage you know yeah right you want some courage ideally there'd be some courage involved yes but courage or at least like a really long shot comeback because yeah prince fielder and matt harvey won the award last year and i mean they you know it's it's just at this point a guy who has tommy john and comes back i mean it's it's great it's nice that he comes back everyone's happy he's back but it's almost routine at this point because there's so many Tommy John surgeries.

Right. I mean, going away for Tommy John surgery is like, you know, taking a year off from grad school and then saying that you were unemployed. Like, you know, you went and you did a thing that everybody does, you know, you, you took your sabbatical. It doesn't feel like you're special. Now, that said, I think you're overselling this. That was one year. Last year's were boring. Are you sure that this is a clear trend? I mean, the year before was Chris Young and Casey McGee. Yeah, Casey McGee's a good one. Right. If you leave the country, it takes courage to come back to the country that you fled, like Roman Polanski coming back to get his Oscar or something like that.

Comeback Director of the Year. And so, yeah. So, like, Chris Young was – I didn't realize – like, the equivalent to Chris Young would be like if Cody Ross won it next year because you're, like, you're shocked that he's still in the league and that he could have a contributing season is kind of inspiring and encouraging and a reminder of days past Aubrey Huff is making a comeback I believe is that true wow yeah I don't I haven't heard anything about it lately but at least it was news in November that he was trying to come back.

And he has obviously been out of the game for years. And he had social anxiety and depression problems. And that contributed to the end of his career. So if he were to come back from that, I mean, he's a guy that was just retired for years and had a struggle. And he's 40 and he's not going to come back and be an all-star and win this award. But if he did, that would be a great story. He doesn't. Yeah. Well, so there are three there.

There are basically three guys who win, maybe four, four, four profiles of guys who win. There's the star who missed a year for an injury and then came back like you thought he would and played like he used to be. I mean, Prince Fielder didn't even have to have his best year. Prince Fielder didn't even have to have a great year. He just had to do 80% of what Prince Fielder used to do. And Matt Harvey was like the most predictable thing ever, that Matt Harvey would come back from a surgery that has a very high success rate and pitch almost as well as he used to pitch. And so that's one guy. And then you have the, uh, the, the Huff, uh, you know, the Huff or the McGee, the guy who, you know, basically you thought his career was done. And then he either went away to another country or retired or just hung out,

barely playing or was in triple A or whatever and then has a surprising career resurgence and so those are good and then you have the veteran who simply has a bad year and then and then comes back and plays at the level and that is I think probably what comeback player of the year was intended for originally like my guess when this was invented it was the guy who had a horrible year, but refused to die and came back and had another good year. And those are okay. I like those more than I like the Tommy John. I feel like that's a legitimate vote. And then you have the, this is maybe not a full fourth category, but then you have the guys who have the inspirational

thing for whatever reason. Some awful bit of bad luck happens in their life and they fight back. And those are very rare. That would be like the Andres Galarraga is, I think, the classic of that. But those are very rare. And thank goodness they're very rare because it's better that people don't have tragedies in their lives. And so those are really the four categories you're choosing from yeah right and yeah and i'm trying to think of

who would have been a better or more interesting choice last year i mean if you're if you're going to do the injury and comes back someone like ryan madsen yeah. Just because he was so injured and so long gone. And then he came back. Of course, he came back as a good setup man, which is not as valuable as an ace of a World Series team. But still, just the improbable nature of his comeback was more impressive to me than Matt Harvey coming back. Or Alex Rodriguez. Yeah.

Alex Rodriguez, uh, I think was a finalist maybe for the sporting news version or something. And he was, I think the most interesting comeback story of last year. And if you know, don't want to vote for him because you just can't root for him anymore, or you don't want to encourage his comeback because his disappearance was largely self-inflicted and cheating related, that's fine. I can completely understand if you think Comeback Player of the Year award should be sort of an inspirational or motivational award, then fine if you don't want to give it to Alex Rodriguez. But in terms of the, I don't know, improbable nature of the comeback and how captivating it was, I think that was clearly the best last year. So I think that I think, yeah, I agree with those. Those are similar categories. Well, A-Rod I think probably is just excluded in a lot of people's minds because there's a certain moral hazard to giving it to the guy who misses every year from a suspension. Of course, he also had major injuries too.

Hanson would have been a much better version of Matt Harvey and Prince Fielder. You're right. It's much more unlikely. The comeback, he didn't perform at his high level, but he came back from a much darker level, and I appreciate it. I would have probably voted for Mark Teixeira over those guys. Yeah, that'd be good. Because I do like the guy who just seems to be on a clear career decline and then reverses it and to share

i had a great year yep he also had i mean he was coming back from an injury too but yeah he he was also coming back from just not being very good anymore yeah so all right so we're just gonna pick some guys i i guess we can do it as an actual draft. The problem is I don't think they really released the full results, so we don't get the vote totals for everyone. There were some vote totals for the Sporting News version, but I didn't see any other than just who the finalists were for the MLB.com version. Anyway, I got the first pick in the last draft, so you can just take the first one in this one. All right. Well, I mean, Will, the clear favorite by a mile is Yu Darvish, right? I mean, by forever. He is a favorite like Clayton Kershaw would be the favorite for Cy Young or, you know, Mike Trout would be the favorite for MVP. Only even more so because his competition is like 20 other guys at most so uh clearly you darvish is the favorite and you know again that's

kind of boring like nobody is like particularly anxiously wondering whether you darvish will ever pitch again or whether he'll be good again uh he might not be but so might i mean you know if you darvish uh if any pitcher comes to camp in perfect health this spring, they're probably not much worse a bet than you Darvish to, you know, throw 200 innings. And Darvish is probably going to be a very good pitcher. And so he'll win it. It'll be boring and he'll win it. Yes, I think he is the clear number one pick, unfortunately.

And he has, I mean, I don't know. If we're not drafting, the more fun, if you want to stop me from taking another one, you can. But the more fun version of this, but the same genre, is Adam Wainwright in the NL, who is probably the clear favorite in the NL. And he has a better comeback. And something about just

being old like it's weird because if you have Tommy John at 26 and you come back it's like okay but if you had Tommy John at 38 or 39 or something and came back then I would be perfectly fine giving it to you because to me coming back from Tommy John at 38 when it's I mean that's a really grueling recovery a really grueling rehabilitation for pitchers physically. Like it's not a particular long shot, but it's really a lot of work and a lot of annoyance. And you could see an older guy saying, well, you know, I've made my money. There's not that much upside left for me going through this. I'm going to go into the next phase of my life. And so to there, there is a certain amount of perseverance in that rehabilitation for an older player that i think you can appreciate but i don't know that i put adam wainwright at that level of

age but it is still more and also the fact that adam wainwright it is not his first extended absence you know like he he has done this before with a different injury and uh there's something about i don't know i don't know why but it seems more encouraging that adam wainwright might come back and be a great pitcher again it's easier to give up on it like when darvish went down it was like oh how annoying we have a year without you darvish with adam wainwright when he went down you sort of wonder okay well wait is he ever going to be stargan so he's a little more fun but I still think falls into the somewhat unsatisfying. Yeah, he was going to be my pick, so he can just be my pick.

But I don't know. I haven't done extensive research on what it takes to win this award. I don't know whether you hurt your chances when you do come back before the actual year. I mean, he came back in somewhat diminished form. I mean, he was pitching mostly out of the bullpen, but he did pitch in seven games and he pitched well. And then he also pitched in a few postseason games and pitched well.

And he clearly wasn't ace complete game throwing Adam Wainwright. So maybe he still has a good shot at this. If he comes back to his previous level, just not sure whether working your way back in any, in any capacity, especially since he wasn't expected to come back last season and everyone said he was done votes.

He could have gotten votes last year. Yeah. For coming back. Right. So maybe that saps his case. I'm not sure whether he's still a strong candidate, but I think. Similarly, I think clearly Jose Fernandez came back too much. Yes.

So I don't consider him a candidate. And yet, strangely, Marcus Stroman pitched. I was wondering about him. He pitched, what did he pitch? A third of an inning less than, oh no him he pitched what did he pitch a third of an inning less than oh no he pitched one inning less than Wainwright did and yet I consider his comeback uh arrow fired like I don't I don't think that Stroman is a legitimate candidate and maybe that's because he was pitching in the postseason at uh as a starter and at a high level. And so it doesn't, like, it sort of feels like he already peaked.

Yeah, I mean, he was being treated basically as the ace of the best team in baseball. So, yeah. He also isn't coming back from as high of a peak. Yes, that's also true. An important factor in all of this voting is how famous you are and how good you already were. None of these votes I think are necessarily done. They're not fair votes necessarily. They reward a certain level of fame and previous accomplishment more than the absolute value of your comeback. Yeah. Chris Youngris young and casey mcgee aside those two are both

outliers if you look at the last 15 years of these those it's weird that they came in the same year because those two really stand out i'm not sure that there's a another example of a player uh of that kind of lack of star power and really lack of like all-star level performance coming in neither one of those guys was particularly great uh in their years maybe it was a weak year i guess maybe fernando tatis in 2008 might be the only thing close to that uh-huh or fernando rodney maybe yeah anyway all right who's talking now you are all will, um, I will say that it is not a prediction, but it is who I am maybe most voting for because it is the vision of the award that I liked the most that, uh, Carlos Quentin, uh, as a, as a, I mean, obviously as a long shot, Carlos Quentin

probably won't be good. He might not make it out of spring training, but I like the guy who retires and then comes out of retirement. Casey Kochman. No, Carlos Quentin is, you know, he, well, it felt weird that he was retired last year because it did still seem like he had value to an American league team. And it was kind of by bad luck that, well, not necessarily, but it was kind of by bad luck that well not necessarily but it was kind of by bad luck that he just kept on being on nl teams where his value is so uh so much less because he just absolutely cannot field or stay healthy uh and you it seemed like he still hit at a level that would justify uh spot as some teams dh or at least a shot as some teams dh and now he'll, he'll get that. Uh, and I would, I really like Carlos Quentin, even though there are, when you watch him, you hate him. It's hard

to, you know, there are times where it's hard to like him. He seems both to, uh, be, uh, annoying and his teammates, uh, his opponents all hate him. And, uh, I'm not sure how I feel about his hit-by-pitch game. But I generally like him. He seems smart and he seems, if sometimes misled, thoughtful. He's got an interior life and I value that. And he's a really good hitter. He's a really good hitter. Carlos Quentin is definitely a really good hitter who probably didn't get enough credit for being a really good hitter because he wasn't ever healthy, because he was so bad defensively, and perhaps because his later years were in San Diego where his really good hitting was camouflage okay i'm going to go with hanley ramirez i think and i i don't

know i mean there i can see a case against picking hanley ramirez but i think his left field defense was such a spectacle and such a public embarrassment. And there was so much attention paid to it that the combination of moving to first base and, you know, presumably he'll be able to handle that. I mean, he kind of had everything and he had a little bit of everything that contributes to a player winning this award. And I'm not sure whether that's a good thing. It might, he might be a better candidate if he had just missed the whole season or something, but he had very public defensive struggles. He had his worst hitting season ever, and he also had an injury. He had a shoulder problem and, and that probably contributed to the poor hitting so he kind of had everything

that could result in this award and it was just a a nexus of awful play and performance and embarrassment and if he comes back this year and it's like the old Hanley Ramirez and is a decent first baseman and the Red Sox are good again. Maybe he wins this award. I would, of in that category of disappointing Red Sox free agents, I would pick Pablo Sandoval over him. You would, okay. Partly because he's younger. Partly because there's a pretty good BABIP argument made to be made. I mean, basically, if you just give him his career BABIP or like his BABIP in the three years before he left were 301, 301, 300, just pretty consistent.

And so if you just bump him 30 points of batting average, he has almost the exact line that he had in his last two years with the Giants. And so that's still a drop because he's changing ballparks. But give him his BABIP, give him a little bit of a bounce back, give him maybe even better than average here. And he could very easily be, you know, a three or four win player. And I think he's more popular. Okay. Yeah. And I mean, he was even worse. He was by some measures, literally the worst player

in baseball last year. And so that is a point in his favor here. Are you, so are you just taking him then? Yeah. If we're taking, are we really taking? Sure. Yes. Okay. All right. Okay. I'm sure yes okay all right okay i'm gonna take cc sabathia i don't feel great about it just because i don't think cc sabathia is likely to come back and play at the level that you kind of need to play at to win this award and who's the worst recent winner of this award well how bad can you be and still win this award well like i mean what did chris young do in 2004 uh 2014 chris young i hate googling chris young all right chris young in 2014 uh threw 165 innings within an exactly league average ERA. All right.

So he was a two-win player, exactly, on baseball reference. Okay. Casey McGee was probably worse than that, but in the RBIs, he was better. Yeah. All right. So that makes me feel better about the Sabathia pick. Yeah, but the thing is that Young didn't have to, like Sabathia to come back would have to get closer to what Sabathia does, right?

Probably. I don't think CeCe Sabathia, league average ERA, would get much notice. I don't know. I think, I mean, given what he's coming back from, which is multiple years of declining performance, serious injuries, you know, knee problems for a giant pitcher, and, of course, rehab for alcoholism. I mean, coming back from all of those things,

I think if he came back and had a Chris Young season, I mean, it depends on the field. It depends if there are other really strong candidates. I don't know if CeCe Sabathia came back as an average major league starter and Yu Darvish came back as Yu Darvish. Who wins? Yu Darvish wins. Yeah, probably. The thing that one thing about Sabathia, hang on a second. I'm going to try to give you a quick fun fact. So Sabathia last year, actually, he pitched more innings than Chris Young did in his comeback year. And if he had, he actually only allowed, basically, if he allowed 11 fewer runs,

he would have had the same ERA as 10, maybe 10 fewer runs, the same E as chris young in his comeback season so basically the difference between cc sabathia and an average pitcher if chris young's season was defined as average was pitching the same number of innings but allowing 10 fewer runs and i don't know that that's going to show up now that said what helps sabathia is that he has been i think fairly open about how difficult it has been for him to go through this decline, for him to lose the velocity on his fastball, for him to get hit. And he's been unusually open about discussing those challenges. And so to see CeCe Sabathia go through three years of struggles, I think, in the way he has, has made him very sympathetic uh made him a sympathetic

character and a comeback i think would be somewhat of a an emotional high for for a lot of people and so he i don't i don't think he has to win a cy young or anything like that but he probably needs to be a good pitcher who has a very good winning percentage. Yes. Like I would say, you know, if he throws 185 innings and has an ERA below three, say three seven, and also has a winning, a good winning percentage and wins say 14 or more, then he probably beats a regular Darvish.

Uh-huh. All right. All right. I really want to choose Ichiro just because I want to... How Ichiro always said he could hit home runs if he wanted and he could always be a pitcher if he wanted. I want him to be able to win the comeback player of the year at age 41 if he wanted. That would be an awesome thing to be able to do. But it's probably too unrealistic to pick him. So I'll go with Puig. That's my next pick.

And Puig was neither injured nor disappearing nor in any particular way a good story. And he didn't necessarily perform bad enough that you'd call it a total bottoming out um but there's a combination of all that stuff if as part of his good year uh he and i think i think if he plays well this will happen regardless but uh i think that uh if if as part of his good year he, there are articles written about his maturity and how the Dodgers clubhouse has rallied around him and how he's a leader now. And he has learned to become a leader and all that. There are already people saying it's a fresh start.

They're giving him a fresh start. And yeah, so if he comes back and isn't late to batting practice or whatever. And yeah, and this is a guy, his wars in three years, 4.9, 5.3, 1.1. So if he just bounces back to his five-win talent, which is I don't think at all unlikely, if not inevitable, that would be a huge upgrade, I mean a huge improvement. And he's, of the people on here, he's probably the most likely, other than Darvish, to win a non-come he's of the people on here he's probably the most likely other than darvish to win a non-comeback player of the year award as well like he's an mvp candidate right

yeah and uh so he's he seems like probably the best bet on here of the guys who had bad years just bad years he's probably the best bet to have a great year. And yeah, people, it helps to start from a position of people hating you. I agree. It also helps to start from a position of people loving you. If either one, either extreme gives you narrative potential. Yes. Okay. I'm going to go with, I think I'll take Anthony Rendon.

Yeah. Just because I don't know if any player declined by as much in value last year. I mean, he was coming off a six or seven win season and was basically replacement level. Missed a ton of time with injuries. And when he played, he was a below league average player and just really didn't contribute anything and was kind of part of the whole Nationals collapse.

And so the problem with him is that maybe he's not old. I mean, he's going into his age 26 season. So it's not like people have written him off or something. And he only had one year as a star level player. And of course, injuries have been a problem for him in the past, and maybe they'll continue to be a problem for him. So maybe he's not a great pick for those reasons. But he just had such a steep drop off that he could have an equally steep recovery. I'll take Ian Desmond.

And I think that this works either way. If he signs a short deal and is playing for his next free agency, then that's a big storyline. If he manages to get a long deal and does great in the first year, then that helps. Either way, it helps. His free agency, I think, really helps him because if Ian Desmond just had this year in the middle of, if he was already in the middle of a five-year contract, then it'd be notable, but it's just a guy having a bad year, a down year. But the amount of money that he potentially cost himself with it has, you know, brought it to everyone's attention. The only issue with Ian Desmond is that, you know, he, he did hit 19 home runs. He did have a pretty good second half. He was a useful player,

some, you know, arguably a valuable player. And so he wasn't necessarily as bad as probably the story goes. And also when you look at whatever he does next year compared to whatever he did last year, there are going to be areas like home runs and maybe RBIs where you don't see a big difference anyway. But I think everybody knows that Ian Desmond had a horrible year and probably cost himself quite a lot of money because of it. And this will be the year that he gets to come back and get that money. Yeah. All right.

This might be an out-of-the-box pick. I'm not sure this even fits the definition of the award, but going to take Jerickson Profar. And the problem with taking Jerickson Prof profile is that he can't really come back from being a productive major league player because he never was one he only got into you know 94 total games in 2012 and 2013 and wasn't particularly good in them so if you have to be returning to a level of previously demonstrated major league performance, then that could be a problem for him.

But he was the number one prospect in baseball heading into 2013. Consensus everywhere, Baseball America, MLB.com, Baseball Prospectus, all had him as the number one prospect in baseball. And we've reached a point where a top prospect in baseball almost feels like a star in Major League Baseball because there's just so much attention paid to prospects these days. And we've seen so many top prospects go on to be stars very quickly. And so it felt like Profar was almost inevitable at that point. And he has fallen so far off the radar, missing two complete seasons with serious injuries. And as you know, I don't even know, I guess he would people still call him a prospect now?

I don't know. Or is he completely written off? So if he were to come back and obviously it's very unlikely that he will be a star all of a sudden. to come back and obviously it's very unlikely that he will be a star all of a sudden but if he were to come back and play a whole season and be playable maybe that gets him into the into the ring i'm not sure but just to have been so promising and then to have fulfilled none of that promise in a way that threatens his future to come back after that might might just do it yeah there's uh there's right there's no precedent for a player like that winning it yeah but you're right that there's also that the awareness of the top prospect like especially the top prospect is so much higher now that it is as though he had a full career before it's happened it's not like

he came up and we all learned who he was he had a full career before these injuries happened in a sense he was he was more famous probably i don't know was he more famous do you think jerks and pro far was more famous in 2013 than casey mcgee was and chris young was yes yeah so so he that can come back all right there's two guys who fit the same profile that you could choose from. The star corner outfielder in his mid-30s who played okay, played pretty well, but was injured on a competitive team and now will be back, hopefully healthy,

and back to leading a competitive team. So those would be Hunter Pence and Matt Holliday, who both had kind of the same year. Holiday's a little older. Holiday's also been a little bit better in his life. And either one of them could very easily not only lead their bat in the middle of the order of a division winning team. Both of these guys could be the sort of guys who get into the MVP conversation if everything goes right. And so I guess of those two, I think that probably Pence is a better bet because of his age, as well as probably Pence's, I think maybe it's West Coast thing, just where I am, but I kind of think that Pence's injury last year got more attention

and was more noticed, and so will seem as though he is coming back more. So I will go with Hunter Pence. Okay. I guess the problem with those guys is that when they did play, they were pretty good. Maybe not quite what they usually were, but Hunter Pence, when he was not hurt hit like hunter pence basically so i don't know whether there's precedent for i don't know whether you have to have missed

a ton of time and been bad or whether you can just miss a lot of time and be good when you were playing and still win the award they were on my my list, but I was steering away for that reason. All right, I'm going to take Josh Hamilton. Josh Hamilton has never won this award. He seems like this award was created for Josh Hamilton. I don't know how he didn't win this award. Who won this award in 2007 and 2008 when he was 2007 was carlos pena 2008 was cliff lee carlos pena yeah so i don't know yeah carlos pena was coming back from really nothing right

carlos pena is the closest thing to a jerks and profar comp yeah i guess that's true right because was that his first big year 2007 it was the year he hit 41 home runs that was his first you know 46 yeah yeah 46 home runs he'd he's not profar because he was an established major leaguer who you know been playing regularly for a number of teams but had never been that great but you know never made an all-star team never got an mvp vote but more than anything i mean in my mind at that point carlos carlos pena was a little bit of i don't know i'm probably remembering this wrong but a little bit of a post type guy who was such an elite prospect yeah uh and uh had never put it together and then finally put it together. I mean, it felt more like a breakout than like a comeback.

Yeah, right. So I guess Hamilton didn't win because he only played 90 games that year maybe. Maybe it wasn't seen as enough. I mean, given what he was coming back from and just being there seems like enough to win and he was really good when he played. But maybe he didn't play enough to win that year and then the next year he was great but it was just more greatness because he had already been great the year before so i don't know maybe he just slipped through the cracks somehow this would be like this so this would be like scorsese winning finally winning the best picture

for the departed yeah right everybody recognizes the greatness of his early career comebacks more but those were overlooked and now they have to find a way to recognize him before he retires exactly and if he were to come back i mean this would be maybe not quite as big as the initial comeback but in a way it i mean he's he would be coming back from a relapse, so same problem that he was coming back from the first time. Oh, yeah. In addition to injuries and decline, which obviously makes it unlikely that he will come back to be good enough to win this award. But if he did, then I think the sentiment, the popular support would be there. I think if he had had his fifth best season last year then he would have

won it in a walk yeah as is now i think he needs to have a bit of strangely the fact that he was so bad last year but played maybe makes it that he needs to even be better i don't know maybe maybe not depends how much people remember how bad he was last year yeah he needs to be good uh-huh uh how long are we going by the way what have we we done six i don't know i think it looks like we've done a lot i think we should keep going really okay at some point i'm gonna be taking like miguel cabrera uh all right i'll go with victor martinez all right has he never won it either how does he never won it yeah he seems like he should have won it you know if he hits really well after not hitting really well that would be a comeback okay that's my yeah i'm surprised i bet he finished high in 2013 the problem was that he was too good in 2013 for his mvp runner-up year in 2014 to have looked like a

big comeback and he was not good enough in 2013 necessarily to get credit after missing all of 2012 just didn't quite work out for him although you you also could have made a case for him in 2009 when after missing half a season and having by far his worst year to date he bounced back was an all-star got mvp votes and um you know hit 300 and all that uh so three years he had a plausible case yeah that was i believe your seventh pick with my seventh pick i'm gonna take homer bailey i was gonna pick him yeah just i don't know he's the i guess the closest national league equivalent to darvish although obviously he wasn't nearly as good as darvish i don't think he is i don't think he's that I think he's the closest equivalent to the

guy I'll pick next Matt Cain as guys who were you know top of the rotation guys a couple years ago and I think with both of them you can see a loss of performance and then injuries in whatever order and neither of them seems like in any way a very good bet to come back which i think will make their comebacks more notable than darvish's comeback or you know alex cobb's if alex cobb comes back or even wayne writes they both seem like extreme long shots right like right now if homer bailey was a free agent right now he would would get like, what, one year and 10 million with some incentives? Yeah, I think he might get more. And you think so?

I think maybe he could. Huh. What about Kane? What would Kane get? I would think like one in seven. Yeah, I think Kane would get less. Uh-huh. So both of them, though, are, you know, they're not just coming back from absence, from injuries.

They have to prove they're healthy. They also have to prove they're still good. Bailey less than Kane. All right. So I guess we can cut it off at eight. So this will be my eighth pick. And I think I'll take Matt Wieters. I'll take Matt Wieters.

Matt Wieters obviously kind of had the initial prospect pedigree. He was expected to be the best, and then he wasn't. And then he's coming back from an injury, and he hasn't played a full season since 2013, although he was good when he did play in 2014. Matt Wieters was an all-star in 2014, and he played 26 games. That's impressive. Is it?

Well, I don't know what it is, but it's surprising. So, yeah, I mean, he missed most of last season. He wasn't great when he played played so if he comes back and he's one of the best catchers in baseball or something maybe that would do it other guys that i bothered to write down uh jason worth yep who went from mvp candidate to one of the worst players in baseball yep just one year ago zach wheeler who i think gets extra credit for being absent from this great mets run yeah uh if he if zach wheeler were uh were on the um diamondbacks i'm not sure i would consider him a candidate but because he's on the mets i think he is joe nathan as a old guy long shot yeah uh especially because relievers can do anything.

You don't have to be that good to get 46 saves. Yeah. Robinson Cano seems like a stretch if you look at his numbers, but not if you take the measure of public perception of him, not if you're talking to Andy Van Slyke. And Kobe Ellsbury. Yeah, I had him on there. He's a former winner,

and I think probably his winning comeback would be more impressive than if he were to come back again. And very long shot, but Jonathan Lucroy. Yeah, I had him on there too. And I had Alex Cobb. I had him on there too. And I had Alex Cobb. I had Marcelo Zuna.

I had Devin Messaracco. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. Probably should have just taken Devin Messaracco. Jay Bruce. And I had Joe Maurer, who I'd love to win this award. Oh, yeah, no, Maurer could easily hit an empty batting title and win it well not easily i would be very surprised if he did but but yes i mean i don't know that first baseman joe mauer could possibly be good enough to win this unless oh i definitely do unless he

really has been dealing with concussion after effects or something and and they go away, then maybe. But I don't know that he has it in him. I think if he hits 314, he wins it. Yeah, 314 with no power as a first baseman. I think he wins it, yeah. Look, this is not, if you look at the comeback player of the year winners, it is not a war leaderboard sort. Yeah, right. That's true. All right. Well, I hope he does. I hope neither

of us wins this draft because Gilmour wins it. All right. That's it for today. You can send us emails at podcasts at baseballperspectives.com. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes. Support our sponsor, Playindex at baseballreference.com. Use the coupon code BP comeback, the comeback. Let's call this the comeback, the comeback. Let's call this the comeback. Let's call this the comeback.