Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 835: The River of Banter Edition

Episode Date: March 9, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about a T-Pain tweet, two famous phrases, Ray Searage, and the final results of their contracts draft, then answer listener emails about the Cubs, a baseball broadcast from Better Call Saul, redistributing salaries, and more.

I don't even know how many carrots in my chain. Yeah, do I have to explain? Got nobody on the corner got swaggin' like us and you got your spunky pain. I got my own style. I got my own style. I got my own style. I got my own style.

Good morning and welcome to episode 835 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Ben Lindberg of Fiveindberg of 538 joined by sam miller baseball prospectus hello hey taking our weekly break from the team preview series to do some emails and perhaps catch up on some banter anything you want to discuss no i'm eager to get to the play index oh that's a good one huh all. It's a pretty fun one. Any banter to discuss? So you and I have different ways of handling banter backlog.

For me, it just flows right past my life, and I never remember it when it's time. You save up. You collect. Yeah. So you just don't have a backlog. It's just gone. Yeah, exactly. It's just a stream running in front of my house, and I go out and like i can go out with a net and i can scoop what's there but all the all the good stuff

has already flown past there's just nothing yeah well i've got a couple things first thing as was brought to my attention in many tweets last night t-pain came out as a supporter of the lindbergh burrito method or maybe it's more accurate to say that i'm a supporter of the Lindbergh burrito method, or maybe it's more accurate to say that I'm a supporter of the T-Pain burrito method. He tweeted to his 1 million or so followers last night, MFs trying to tell me I'm the wrong one because I eat burritos sideways. I'm not going to be a part of your liberal society, which is interesting because you'd think that a more liberal society would accept the sideways burrito'd think that a more liberal society would accept the sideways burrito eating method. But he not only adopted this strong stance,

he defended it against criticism. Some people doubted that it would work. He said it absolutely does. And as evidence, he cited, quote, the many burritos in my effing lower intestine, end quote. He also followed up by announcing that he eats hot dogs the same way. And I have to admit, I have done that. I saw that one of the responses to T-Pain's first tweet kind of captures my feelings about this matter. It was from Jared Shanker, who covers college football for ESPN.com. And he said, like I'm supposed to let that critical first bite be exclusively folded up tortilla wrap? Question mark, question mark, question mark.

My thoughts exactly, Jared. So T-Pain and I keep in close company burrito-wise. Okay, I've got a couple other items to get to. One of them is actually from a listener email. And it's from Anthony or from AJ, I guess he goes by. And he says, as a German teacher and a big soccer fan, I read a lot of articles on German sports sites. Unsure if this has been pointed out to you before,

but when German soccer sites talk about coaches in danger of losing their jobs, they use the term Sein Stuhl wackelt. Literally, his chair is wobbling. Thought this was an interesting linguistic connection. Der Frust sitzt tief beim FC Bayern. Nach dem Schalke-Schock im DFB-Pokal-Halbfinale wackelt nun der Stuhl des Trainers Louis van Gaal. And this is of course the saying, we've looked for an alternative to hot seat. This was early in the show. We didn't want to say hot seat, so we started saying wobbly chair. And we thought it was just an idiosyncratic, unique to effectively wild term.

And now it turns out years later that we've been copying a German idiom the whole time. And at first, you didn't believe this because it seemed so improbable that we would have just independently invented the saying and that no one had ever mentioned mentioned to us. We've gotten emails from German listeners before. I don't know whether they just thought that we were saying this because it was already a saying that existed, but I had my girlfriend look this up in the Oxford Dictionary and the dictionary definition for Seinstuhlvakelt literally means his chair wobbles or his position is threatened or no longer secure. Jesse, my girlfriend, also has a friend, a German speaking friend, and she asked him about this. He confirmed that it's a thing.

It means that someone is in danger of losing their job. He says it's not exclusive to sports terminology either. An unsuccessful artistic director can also have a wobbly chair. And he says there's another saying involving chairs and getting fired, which is zeit und deinem Stuhl, which literally means someone is sawing at your chair, which means that someone is trying to get you fired. So this is a whole thing that exists. This is one of the most surprising discoveries, I think, in the course of this show.

I mean, this goes to my point about the banter. How could I have forgotten this? This just happened yesterday. It's the most banterable topic that we've had in quite some time. And I just drew a blank. Yeah, well, that's what I'm here for. It's interesting. It's good. Yeah. Very cool.

Yeah. I feel less original now, but okay. It's good to know. Anyway, thank you, AJ, for belatedly bringing it to our attention. It's a bummer because if I ever do succeed in getting Wobbly Chair fully immersed in baseball lexicon, it won't be totally clear that the baby was mine, so to speak. Yeah, nothing original, I guess. And we also got a couple emails about our Ray Searidge discussion from last week. We bantered about a couple pitchers that Searidge, the Pirates pitching coach, is working with this year and talked about his reputation for being able to make pitchers better. And we got an email from Garrett Garrett Who works for Baseball Info Solutions And by coincidence just the day before Had written a long Analytical piece about the Ray Searidge

Effect ran a bunch of numbers I will link to it in the Facebook group He concluded that there is a Searidge effect that I'm quoting now When a pitcher joins the Pirates we can Come to expect on average a 7 point decrease in opponent batting average, a six-point decrease in opponent true average, a 10-point decrease in slugging percentage, a three-point decrease in isolated power, and a 4.2 decrease in DRA minus. These aren't mutually exclusive, but collectively they demonstrate the effects one could attribute to Ray Searidge and his theory of coaching.

And we emailed a bit back and forth with Garrett. And as he was quick to acknowledge, it's really hard to isolate the Searidge effect. If there is one, we actually got an email from another listener named Dan, who pointed out that it's really just as plausible to interpret the Pirates pitching effect as not a Searidge effect, but a Jim Benedict effect. He's a special assistant to the GM who's been working with the Pirates since 2008 and worked with Searidge on a bunch of those reclamation projects. And the Marlins hired him away to be their vice president of pitching this offseason. So who knows, maybe it was Jim Benedict the whole time, or maybe it was

the Pirates getting good defensive catchers, or maybe it was the ballpark, or maybe it was the pirates getting good defensive catchers or maybe it was the ballpark or maybe it was the pirates front office knowing to target pitchers who were ready for a resurgence so all sorts of different factors that could explain it but garrett ran some numbers and it's interesting and i'll link to it okay hey can i interrupt with some new banter? Yes. All right. So the Royals unveiled, I guess, on their scoreboard, a big banner type thing, I guess it is, that says 2015 World Champions. Congratulations to them, by the way. That's big news. And Royals Review, the great Royals blog on SB Nation, Photoshopped this to change 2015 world champions to say,

suck it, Pakoda. And I see also that somebody, that the Royals Review retweeted somebody who suggested a Royals tattoo and T-shirt design of a crown, like a crown, like a royal crown with that self-same expression on it. And so this got me thinking about this expression. And so I went searching to see who coined this phrase, if it was perhaps the Germans, for instance, who had previously. So I went searching and the phrase is especially, is especially common, uh,

among Royals fans over the past 12 months or so, even going back to before last season, even going back to September, 2014, big, uh, big praise to BSR podcast that was on the anti-Pakota pro Royals bandwagon, even in 2014,

uh, in the middle of the season before the, uh, the sort of truly outrageous projections began. Uh, but, uh, I've kept going back, back, back further, further, further. And, uh, the reason that I I'm bringing this up is because I just want to make sure that the appropriate person gets credit. The first person, the very first person, uh, in internet history to tell Pakoda to do that to it uh who was our friend grant brisby in 2006 on uh comparing his projections to actual giants performances uh he got omar vizkel's home run total in 2005 exactly correct sorry. Sorry, was it 2005 or 2006?

It was 2006. He got Omar Vizquel's home run total exactly correct. What was Omar Vizquel's home run total? Four. And Grant says, suck it, Pakoda. I don't remember being so bearish on Vizquel, he says. I'm glad he proved me wrong. All right.

So there you go. Grant Brisby. A trailblazer. Trailblazer. Even today. Yeah. All right. And lastly, we briefly discussed Austin Jackson being signed by the White Sox with RJ in the

White Sox preview yesterday. But we didn't mention that Austin Jackson's signing brought to an end our off-season free agent competition. He was the last unsigned player that we had wagered over in our Jim Bowden free agent contract predictions draft, where we each selected 10 players and took the under or over on Bowden's predicted contract total. It was really a rout. We've each had convincing victories in the past. I don't know convincing of what, but this might be the most lopsided of all. We ended up with a differential of $195.7 million. I ended up with plus 123.7, and you ended up at negative 72. That was a bad one.

Yeah. All right. You got the over on Zach Granke's contract, and you got the under on Daniel Murphy's contract or contract prediction, really. But other than that, it was bad news for you. Yeah, I'm sorry. I got some glee out of it. Yeah. All right.

Let's do an email from Drew. Drew says, I admittedly am a huge Cubs fan, and all I want is for them to win the series. But don't we all? Not all of us. Cardinals fans probably don't want that. As I look at how bad the NL is in general, with six out of the 15 teams

totally just giving up on the season, and specifically the NL Central has two of those teams in it alone. So given all the games against teams that will be downright terrible, how crazy am I to think that with all the depth of talent that the Cubs have, that if they play like they could

with the magic of Joe Maddon managing all of them, that they could win close to 110 games. By the way, six teams in the NL, and specifically the NL Central has two of those teams in it alone. There are only three divisions. So that's an appropriate number of teams in it alone. Good point. So the projections do take this into account, theoretically.

They're projecting every team. No, that's not true. Well, is it? I mean, it depends what you mean. Strength of schedule is not taken into account at this stage. When we do the playoff odds. Playoff odds do, yeah. They will.

And so we'll get, you know, you can see the Pocotas projected win totals right now for teams. And that sort of does treat the teams in a vacuum to some degree. It's basically looking at their talent, but not looking at their schedule. Now, I guess if the rest of the league were really bad, like the rest of the majors were really bad, like much worse than usual, then a team that kept its same talent level would look better because these are like every player's value is stated relative to the rest of the league's talent, basically. But the distribution of said talent among the other 29 teams that are not you would not be relevant at all. Yeah, that's true. So in that sense, we have to wait until the playoff odds.

And once the playoff odds come out, then strength of schedule will show up. Although it's been noted by many people that Pocota is fairly bullish on the Brewers relative to expectations, seeing them not as a 62-win team or whatever, which might be the average that the fan would predict for a rebuilding team, but sees them as a credible fourth-place finisher. And even the Reds, I think, are projected for like 72 or 73. So neither one of those is exactly pushing the 2013 Astros off the ledge or anything like that. That's true.

Yeah, I don't know whether the projections at other sites are taking strength of schedule into account at this point. They might be, I mean, the fan grass ones have the Cubs is the best in baseball. I think Dakota still has the Dodgers as the best, right. But even the more bullish on the Cubs projections have them at 96 wins, not positive, whether that's taken into account. I think it is taking into account the schedule. I think it's not. Might be, but... Whether or not it is, it's still a stretch to say 110, but obviously some teams get lucky and some teams get unlucky,

and that can be by several wins in either direction very easily. And some teams outperform. Some teams just get better. Some teams are better than we think. Yeah, definitely. So if you think that the Cubs are a true talent, I don't know, 99 win team or something. I mean, I guess I question whether Drew can be objective about the Cubs and that he is admittedly a huge Cubs fan who wants them to win all the games, but maybe he can, lots of fans can. So if you think that they are a true talent, I don't know, 98 or 99 win team or something, you could figure out the odds that they would win 110 by chance.

They'd be pretty small. 110 is, is always going to be pretty small. By the way, Pakoda, with the Fowler signing and the updated depth charts, Pakoda now has the Cubs at 94, which matches the Dodgers for the best in baseball. Yeah, I mean, we talked after one of the Cubs moves earlier this offseason about just how unbelievably good they look. And so it's probably easier for me to believe uh that they would win 110 or whatever than that the dodgers would even

though the projections are the same the cubs do seem like a team that well i mean we know for instance last year they won what 97 they had a run differential that supported i think 99 they are a young team so they should be moving into their peak they seems like there are a lot more things that could go wrong for the dodgers than the cubs and and the cubs then added you know a lot of really good players yeah um and didn't really lose anybody except for starlin castro and the cubs do i mean every like the dodgers for the last few years have been in the 90s, but I think there was one year where they were like 97 or 98 or something. And we, we talked about how unusual

it is for Pocota to project something so high. And that's probably why the Cubs at 94 seems a little low because we're talking about the means there's things that could go wrong and the Cubs could very easily win 88 or, you know, I mean, if you look at what the Nationals have done alternating years, for instance, in the last four years, it's pretty easy to just have a really great team that wins 85 for whatever reason. And so you have to allow that, yes, the Cubs could win 110. They could also win 80, possibly. But the strength of schedule argument, though, doesn't seem to be

because that's really what this question is about, right? The question is about, right? The question is whether the Cubs in a league that has zero parity are in a position to just completely destroy a bunch of very, very, very bad teams. And it could happen in certain situations, particularly when divisions are so lopsided. But I don't really see the Cubs being in a position to take an extraordinary amount of advantage here that like i said that two bad teams but two extremely good teams in their division

two teams that could very easily win you know the basically what the two best records in baseball last year outside of the cubs or including the cubs what didn't the pirates and the cardinals have the two best records in baseball last year so So if I'm right about that, then you have arguably the best two teams at the top of the division to compete against. And the Brewers and the Reds aren't comically bad or anything like that. And the rest of the league has bad teams, but they also have good teams. It's not that the whole National League is horrible. In fact, there's reason to think that the NL has improved as a whole over previous years. Pakoda, for instance, had to... This came up when I was looking at, I don't know, somebody in the American League who had like a 270 projected true average last year,

and then had a 270 true average last year, but then his projected true average last year and then had a 270 true average last year but then his projected true average this year was like 266 or something and i asked rob mccune how that can be and i'm getting the details slightly wrong but basically he said well pakoda has adjusted a little bit because the nl is better than it thought the nl was going to be before last year. And so taken as a whole, the lack of parity doesn't seem to be that much of a factor for the top team's total wins. You're right. By the way, it works the same way at Fangraphs where the strength of schedule is not taken into account

in the depth charts, but is in the playoff odds. So yeah, I guess we haven't yet seen the real projections for the Cubs that take into account their schedule. But you're right. They have a couple of good teams and a couple of bad teams and it sort of balances out. So Ben, time traveler from the future comes back from a year from now and says,

oh yeah, yeah, no, team won 112 games last year. It was crazy. Are the Cubs your first guess for who that team is? Yes. Okay, now, who is your second guess? Probably would be the Dodgers. Yeah, okay. So, no, exactly.

Now, but who's your third guess? This is where I think the question is interesting. Who is your third guess for the team most likely to win 112 games this year? Hmm. I guess I would probably say the Mets. You would say the Mets. I would probably say the mets you would say the mets i would not say the mets the mets is not they're a good team they're obviously one of the teams that you could consider for this i don't see a way for them to hit enough to do that like i i think they they don't need to hit enough to win the

division like they don't you know that the way that they hit could definitely be plenty for them to win 98 i don't see them hitting enough to win 112 yeah maybe not just uh you know in the perfect world scenario where none of their pitchers gets hurt you basically want for this you want to have a bulletproof offense and enough potential upside in pitching, right? Because pitching is the much more volatile, you would say. It's much more likely that a team that you didn't think was going to have great pitching would for a single season than that a team that you didn't think was going to have good offense would for a single season, I would think. So like for instance, like, you know,

the Blue Jays have the offense for that. You could make the case that the Blue Jays, although the pitching is, it's really even hard to see enough volatility there. Although Ryan Watt wrote a piece at BP about the, whether the Blue Jays actually have more upside in their rotation, which doesn't project to be very good as a whole, but seems on the surface to have

much more upside and i still think that you know he was inconclusive but i still think you could make the case that the blue jays don't have a great rotation but do have a rotation you could kind of dream on in one you know in a some some percentage i think you could make the case that the giants could have that rotation a rotation that would be much better than the mean would indicate, right? Like if Cueto is back to what he was before the trade, if Samarja is back to what he was before the trade, well, now you have like two number ones and a number two. And then you're relying on, you know, Kane, who could be, I don't know.

I mean, we're talking about an unlikely scenario. You know, Kane, who could be. I don't know. I mean, we're talking about an unlikely scenario. The Mets are projected to have the best offense in the National League other than the Cubs and the Dodgers. Goodness gracious. Well, how about that? I don't know whether.

I mean, maybe you could say that's because Dakota doesn't believe in the Giants players who broke out last year or whatever, but they are supposed to be good. Yeah, I would probably pick the Astros, though, if the question were posed to me. To bury the lead, I would pick the Astros as the third most likely team. I don't think that the Astros are the third best team in baseball, but I do think that if you told me that someone won 112

and it wasn't the Cubs and the Dodgers, I would pick the Astros. All right. Okay, question from Marcus in Arlington. In the last episode of Better Call Saul. It's actually the last week's episode, episode three of season two, a character named Mike, who is the same Mike from Breaking Bad. If you haven't watched Better Call Saul, while on a stakeout listens to a baseball game. Be careful. No spoilers. Really? You just told me that Mike listens to a baseball game on a stakeout. I can conclude some very... Oh, wait.

He listened to a baseball game. Mike listened to a baseball game on a... Not quite a stakeout, but close to a stakeout in season one of Better Call Saul. When he's eating the apples off the tree outside of the accountant's house. Oh. He listens to a minor league game. I think it was a minor league game then, too. So let's just... Yeah, okay. It is established that there's a character named Mike who listens to baseball minor league game. I think it was a minor league game then too. So let's just, yeah.

Okay, it is established that there's a character named Mike who listens to baseball games on Stakeouts. No character development even has been spoiled. All right, but be careful. Okay. The clearest thing that can be made out is the phrase, Murphy has gone 13 for 29 in his last eight games. Considering this show is based in 2002,

is there any chance that this was a legitimate call or did the writers make it all up? And I listened to this. I will play the clip right now. It's just a baseball broadcast and Mike crinkling a brown paper bag. So no spoilers other than that. He puts his sandwiches in brown paperbacks. Okay, so you can make out a Murphy, you can make out a Lewis, and then there's a name of another pitcher and a name of another outfielder that you can't quite make out or it's difficult to make out.

So that suggests that it wasn't a major league game. There was no minor league team in Albuquerque in 2002. There was like a two or three year period where the Albuquerque AAA team was not there. So there was no minor league team there. Anyway, I put this on Twitter, asked people if they could listen and hear the names of those players that I could not make out. And as happens on Twitter, sometimes you get connected to people who actually have answers with these things. So Tom Schnauz, a writer for Better Cross All

and was a writer for Breaking Bad and X-Files and lots of other things, said that it was scripted by a production assistant, Ariel Levine, and he added her on Twitter. And then she spoke up too. And she identified the names of those players as Weston, Atbat, and Yanez in the outfield. Those are not real players. So it was a fictitious game. And so that is the answer. So Ben, knowing that it was fictitious that the writers got to choose all of these details, do you think that there is some significance to those details?

If there is not, are you at all disappointed that they chose so cavalierly what to put into this little dollhouse they've created? A little bit. It would have been nice if there were some sort of inside joke or something. And as far as I can tell, there isn't. Maybe those are just people they know. It doesn't seem to contain any joke or something. And as far as I can tell, there isn't. Maybe those are just people they know. It doesn't seem to contain any joke or anything amusing. It's just a standard call. It sounds

more realistic than a lot of fake calls in TV shows do. So I appreciate that. And you can understand why they wouldn't want to use an actual call. I mean, it's 2002. You'd have to go back and get like a Diamondbacks radio broadcast from 2002 or something. It's a lot of trouble and no one except me is going to pay any attention to whether it's a real call or not. if it's a period piece like this, to some extent, it's always easier. Unless you're talking about a famous game or something, it's probably always easier to just have someone record something. Yeah, the most interesting thing about that is the Murphy again working quickly. That is the one giveaway that this is scripted that this is fake and they even because that pitcher went way too quickly like we went from fly ball hit by the previous batter to first pitch to the new batter in like probably

like 15-20 seconds and what's great is that they addressed it in the script they addressed that that like they it's while you're right that nobody is paying attention to this except for you they nonetheless made sure that there was an acknowledgement of the physics of what was happening in this play it is a i don't know if it's exceptional attention to detail or if it was ad-libbed by the broadcaster who for all we know, it doesn't say who they didn't say who the broadcaster was, right? No, it's quite possible. Not, not necessarily true, but it's quite possible that to get this, they actually had a local broadcaster, you know, someone who calls a university of New Mexico games or something like that read this the way that,

for instance, like The Onion has real former news anchors do their news videos. And that guy might have been like, that might have been him actually calling this fake game and commenting on what he found notable about a game that doesn't exist that he was calling like that. Now I feel like you need to follow up on this. I'll do some more research.

All right. That's now I'm really I was not into this. Particularly like I didn't really care about Murphy, but now I am. Yeah. Well, attention to detail is a hallmark of Vince Gilligan shows. Can you tell, do you have any idea from that episode what time of year it was? I'm curious whether, I'm partly curious whether they were consistent. Like if Mike was wearing a jacket, then I might be somewhat suspicious.

I don't know what Albuquerque Knights are like, but I wondered if they were consistent with the season. But also I wonder if you can tell whether this was early or late in the season. But I wondered if they were consistent with the season. But also, I wonder if you can tell whether this was early or late in the season. Because this guy, Murphy, is hitting a blistering 343, which now I kind of want to figure out how much of that 343 is weighted by the 440-something that he's hitting over his last 29 at-bats. Right. Does 29 at-bats in his previous eight games seem right to you, or is that a little light? Well, it is a little light if he's a starter. But maybe not if he's a big walker.

Yeah, could be a bench guy, part-time player. Murphy, or Lewis, still working quickly. Interesting. All right, Ben. All right, question from our friend and Stompers broadcaster Tim Livingston, who says, One of the biggest issues facing team building is that free agents are getting overpaid for past performance, something that has been happening basically since its inception.

Jose Bautista's recent talk of wanting a big contract in what would be the waning years of his career got me thinking about how the majority of players think of past performance as future indicators, regardless of how old they are. They did well, and they want to get paid for it. So what if there was a system in the major leagues that awarded player salaries based on present performance? Say if you took the revenue sharing idea and combined all the team payrolls in MLB into a giant performance pool in which to pay the players, and then as league revenues increase year to year, or teams want to add to it themselves, you keep adding to this pool in which to pay players.

All 30 teams would be able to use money in the pool, as it would allow small market teams the ability to keep their good young talent without future salary growth getting in the way. Take Mike Trout as an example. Initially, he was paid the league minimum for a rookie for his first two seasons before he got his big extension, but obviously he performed to a much higher value. What if instead you were to take that baseline rookie salary and then use some metric, such as war,

to measure how much a player was worth and pay him a salary commensurate with his performance? It would shift the strategy of team building to be based more around player development and drafting. While free agency rules could be made around this system, it would reward the teams who do a good job of bringing up young talent so that they can be contributors to the big league club from the start. And if it sounds familiar, this is what most of the European soccer clubs do

with their academies, which means a transfer slash loan system could be a possibility as well. For a player, you have a built-in incentive to do well from the start. And if you go with a normalized performance curve or even are a late bloomer, the better you perform, you'll still have the opportunity to make some money for having a great season. And of course, all the players who are complaining about their pre-arbitration salaries this year, whether it's Garrett Cole or the Rays players, Kevin Kiermaier and Jake Odorizzi and Voxberger, all those guys who were not happy that they are being paid what players are paid at that point in their careers would be happy to be paid more. Of course, you know, that's a collective bargaining thing. And veteran players are overpaid,

which compensates for being underpaid earlier in your career if you make it that far. All right. So Ben, I'm a huge fan of unions, right? Just in general, I feel like unions served just this incredible role in our nation 100 years ago and continue to in limited ways throughout parts of the country today. And unions are great because of course, the incentives that management has differ very strongly from the incentives that the laborers have. And the union represents the laborers in a way that otherwise they wouldn't be represented. That is very good. It is also, it seems undeniable that the union, especially once it has established itself, begins to have its own incentives as an organization that must propagate itself. All organizations after a period of time begin to

become, you know, oriented mostly toward keeping their own existence intact, right? So that is, that is true of a nonprofit that is providing clean drinking water to Cameroon. It is also true of the Republican National Committee. It is true of all organizations. Eventually, they want to propagate themselves. And that can be a good thing because those incentives can still be perfectly or largely aligned with their users. And that is generally how they stay in existence by serving their members or serving their clients or serving whoever it is they exist to serve. But of course, the incentives start to

get a little bit misaligned in various ways. And it seems to me clear that an important thing for the Major League Baseball players is that they get in the aggregate as much of the revenue of the sport as possible, as well as other perks, but they want to get as much as they can for their players. That is what they exist for. And so Tim's suggestion that you put all the money into a pool, keeping that, presumably keeping that money at a level commensurate with what it is now. In that sense, it would serve the group as a whole just as well. It would distribute the money differently, but the same group of 1,000 or so players would get the same access to whatever million dollars is available, billion dollars is available to players. Okay. So that's good.

However, the distribution of that money to the Okay, so that's good. However, the distribution of that money to the players to the members of the group would now differ from what it is now. And while it might seem good to Tim Livingston, that the players that are making more are the ones who are actually better, the power in the union is likely going to be skewed toward those who have the longest service time in it and the ones who kind of through their experience have more leadership roles, who perhaps have more stability in the union because of their about the greater good of all the players when that is an important thing, but not necessarily the only important thing. And that's why I think you consistently see that while the industry as a whole doesn't treat players all that well, unless something like collective bargaining forces them to, the union itself doesn't always treat

something like collective bargaining forces them to, the union itself doesn't always treat young players or amateur players or rookie players or minor league players in a particularly good way either because there is nothing forcing them to. Is that a fair summation of the obstacle of this plan? Yeah, I think so, or at least one of the probably many obstacles. I guess the owners wouldn't like this either, right? Because, I mean, Tim said that it would favor a team that is good at drafting and player development,

but isn't that the opposite of what it would do? Because under the current system, if you can draft and develop good, young, cheap players like Mike Trout, who are worth much more than you pay them then that really pays off for you. Well I don't think it would benefit teams that develop players better or that draft players better. I think though that if teams knew that they were spending the same amount of money under the system that they currently are I think they would opt for the system that

gives them a more predictable return on that money. I don't think that teams love the idea that they're essentially throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into these enormous gambles where the odds are not particularly aligned to predictability. You know, they would they would much. I think they would probably like if you told a team that they were going to spend $160 million, the same $160 million, but well, would it matter? In this scenario, you're getting paid after the fact. And so a team basically would pay for their wins afterward. So if you ended up with a team that was very poor, if you thought you had a good team and then they underperformed by 30 wins, you would not spend very much on that team, right? Whereas if you were the Royals and you had a team that overperformed, you would be on the hook for many, many wins at the end, right? And so would you be happy? I would think that owners would be happy with that, although

it would create this weird incentive for a team like the Royals to not want to win too much if they can't afford it. Like I think the Royals can, but if you were the Rays, I'm not sure the Rays could exist in a sport where they actually had to pay for their wins. Even if they never had to pay for a win they didn't get, I'm not sure the Rays can actually, like, it's like, you know, like it's like buying Rolexes, right? Like when you buy a Rolex, you know, you're going to get your money's worth. It's, it's not, it's not a risk that you're going to buy a Rolex and take it home and up. It's a time X. Like I thought I was buying a Rolex and it's a time X, but even with that, even knowing that when you buy a Rolex from a Rolex dealer, you're getting a Rolex. I can't buy a Rolex. It is not something that I can buy.

Yeah. Certain teams always pay more per win. They pay more for a win above replacement. So if you do like, uh, people periodically do those, you know, ranking the best general manager by dollars per win or whatever. And it's always like, you know, the Yankees are the worst because they just spend more per win because they can really. Whereas, you know, the Rays or the A's or some other small market team is always at the top of those rankings because they just don't pay much per win. And that's the only way that they can survive. So in this scenario, everyone is paying the same amount per win. Yeah, that's probably not doable for a lot of teams.

Instead of playing baseball, we should take all 30 teams and have them bid on wins and then that's the standings you basically say how much you pay for one and how many you want and so if you're the yankees you say well i want 114 wins and i'm willing to pay seven and a half million dollars a piece for them so you get your 114 first because nobody else is paying that much for them uh and then whatever's left over at the low end that's the end and that's the standings we don't even have to play no more injuries ben think about that think about a game where there are never any injuries that'd be nice no suffering yeah i uh i mean the like the the scenario outlined here isn't

going to work for a lot of reasons but i like the compromise is simply that you move to a sport that is extremely heavily based on incentives that instead of paying team paying players in advance you give them a series of incentives that they can reach and if they hit them then they pay for them and players don't seem to want that for probably valid reasons. If the incentives were high enough, if owners were willing to pay an extra premium for the certainty of knowing they only have to pay it in the event that they come true, then there's probably a price where it would make sense. And that price might eventually phase out teams like the Rays, but then they would adjust by doing some other thing. It's conceivable.

I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if we went through an incentives phase in the game over the next hundred years at some point because whatever the market is going to do to create more revenue for players in their own interests and more flexibility for the teams in their own interests uh could work out wouldn't shock me doesn't need to it doesn't even need to be bargained just you know a player could just decide like hey i'm willing i'm willing to bet on myself that's the that's the thing is that we haven't seen any real movement in the 40 years of free agency toward players betting on

themselves and you might even except for opt-outs, maybe. Yeah, I guess opt-outs, although it depends how much players are giving up to get those opt-outs. We don't really know how much Jason Hayward gave up to get his opt-out, how much in guaranteed money he had to sacrifice. It doesn't seem like it's much, though, eyeballing it.

It doesn't really feel like those opt-outs are costing players much. So they're getting the benefits of both but yeah it's certainly before the opt-outs it feels like length has always been the most pressing concern for players in negotiations which is a not not betting on yourself and then the movement toward pre-arb extensions was a the opposite of betting on yourself so there isn't really a lot of evidence that players want to bet on themselves. It wouldn't shock me if that switched at some point, it just isn't really happening yet.

By the way, Tim, I, I will, an update on the Snoppers and Tim is that Tim wasn't certain to come back as the broadcaster this year, because he's going to grad school and he just got his acceptance to one of his choices and it is the one that allows him the most stompers action

and so he will actually be calling stompers games for pretty much virtually all of this season which is great news because tim is one of my very favorite broadcasters at any level of baseball and i'm really looking forward to listening yeah he's really good and if you read our book you'll see lots of tim calls in there all right you have been waiting patiently you want to do the play sure ben all right so this play index is inspired by by the way can i i i forgot to give the exam i want to go back to the union thing i had an example and i kind of got away from myself, but I was talking to a third grade teacher who a few years ago was a first year teacher. It was her first year and she got this terrible assignment.

It was like the hardest assignment in the school. Like it was a split class and a combo class and like multi grades. And it was like a very hard teaching assignment. And it was her first year as a teacher. And so they take the hardest assignment and give it to the least experienced teacher, which seems like kind of torture. And at the time there was much commiseration about how weird it is that schools do this and how unfair it is. And it doesn't make any sense. Well, now she's going to be a fourth year teacher. And the school is creating a new combo class that's even harder

and even worse and like is the worst possible assignment you could get in the school. And she is just like, I'm I don't really care. I'm just really super glad that because I now have the seniority, I won't get it like it'll go to a first year teacher. And she is absolutely thrilled with this. Now that she is an established member of the union, everything is good for her. And so this is what I mean. Like, this is why, this is why Barry Zito is not that interested in this plan that Tim Livingston has and why the union, you know, basically serves Barry Zito's. It doesn't serve first year teachers. First year teachers wash out. Who cares what they think? Yeah. Yeah. If Garrett Cole said, when I'm a free agent, I will accept less than I could get then in exchange for more now. Not

that that would work because it might be a different team he's playing for at that point, but that's the thing. No one gets to that point, that seniority in the union where they're earning more than maybe they're worth and says, I'm going to give this back because I'm not worth this much. So players definitely can try to make more money and maybe should because they're not really getting a cut of the appreciation in franchise values. And if they're going to collectively bargain that, then you might want to start with those young players who aren't making much money but the way the system currently works that's just the way it's set up and some guys have to suffer temporarily and the hope is that they will eventually get more play index yes so this is speaking of third grade teachers this play index is inspired by a third grade class assignment. The assignment was to write about one day in your life,

and the student chose to write about a future day in his life. So this day goes like this. I'm reading it directly, okay? Someday I want to have a major league debut. I will go five for five with two homers a triple a double and a single with four rbis four runs and a walk that would mean i hit for the cycle i want everybody to think i am the best player the teacher wrote at the bottom if you do that you'll go down in the books and then drew a heart. Um, and, uh, so I wrote that that's mine from third grade. Uh, I am a little embarrassed at the cycle. However, uh, I want to give, well, I do want to give

myself credit though. I did not just give myself a cycle. I also hit two home runs and a walk. So I did acknowledge that a cycle is not the end of the story, that once you've hit for the cycle, you have in no way concluded your possibilities for contributing to the game. And so I think that I did get to the point that a cycle is not the end of the story, okay? However, I found this line very interesting.

Five for five, two homers, a triple, a double, a single, four RBIs, four runs, and a walk. My first thought was, if that was your line, four RBIs and four runs seems a little disappointing. Like I would think with all that, you'd want to contribute more. But then secondly, well, secondly, I'll go to secondly second.

All right, so first I went to Playindex. I wanted to see if this line has ever happened before. And so I went to the play index game finder and set it for any game in which a player hit for the cycle. I then sorted by total bases, which gives me the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven seven eight times in which somebody hit for the cycle and homered twice so eight times five for five with two homers a triple a double and a single so already it's happened eight times craziest thing of those eight joe dimaggio twice huh is right the other thing is that five of the eight are by Hall of Famers, which is interesting because it's an impressive line. But your teacher was right.

You really do go down in the record book. First of all, no, because no. Second of all, don't step on it. But all right. So five of eight who did this made the Hall of Fame, which is kind of interesting because if you just I mean, like it's a good line. It's not like it's not it's not that unthinkable it's not that rare like i'm looking at the the people who hit for the cyclone had 13 total bases which is basically the same thing except you doubled twice and had six hits or you tripled um and it's like no hall of famers and then if you're gonna end 12

which is like basically the same thing except you doubled doubled. There's one Hall of Famer, I think out of like 15 or 14 of those. So you don't have to be a Hall of Famer to do this, but for some weird, weird reason, a lot of Hall of Famers. Anyway, of those eight, did any walk as well? You're wondering. Yes. One did walk. Uh, actually three did walk. Joe DiMaggio walked, Carl Ustremsky walked george brett walked of those did any of them do it in exactly six plate appearances yes ustremsky did and joe dimaggio did so we've got two times ustremsky and dimaggio both went down in history went five for five with a cycle two home runs and a walk how many runs and rbis did they each have, though? Good question.

DiMaggio scored four and drove in seven. Ooh. Too good. And Jastrzemski drove in five and scored two, which is just not right either. Greg Colbrun had exactly four runs and four RBIs with this line, except he did not walk. He, in his last, in his sixth plate appearance,

he struck out instead of walk. Otherwise, would have done it. Gil Hodges had four runs and four RBIs. He also struck out, though, in a sixth plate appearance. So he did not walk. And Ed Lennox had five, went five for five, four four runs four rbis but no sixth plate appearance could have done it but didn't didn't get the sixth plate appearance ed lennox did it in 1914 by the way which is extra impressive so uh this exact line has never happened it has close to happened so it's not that unrealistic now none of them did it in their first ever major

league played appearance uh their first major league game so uh it has not been done in a major league debut obviously but uh what i wanted to know is the teacher's remark if you do that you'll go down in the record books uh is that true so i wanted to ask you ben do you know who had the best major league debut ever alternately can you think of anybody who had the best major like do you have a guess do you have i don't want you to guess because then you'd be like i don't know mickey mantle babe ruth maybe i don't know i mean do you have one in mind i don't i'm sure at at times i've read about great debuts but it kind of just goes out of my mind? I don't. I'm sure at times I've read about great debuts, but it kind of just goes out of my mind because it doesn't really mean that much, especially if the guy went on

to have a long career or something. The only major league debuts I can even think of that are notable for hitters are a few guys who I remember homering in their first at-bat. Like probably Will Clark homering in his first at-bat against Nolan Ryan is one. And then Willie McCovey went four for four with two triples, which is not nearly the same. But that's a good debut. There's a guy who there's a no-hitter in a debut game. Yeah, pitchers is a little different.

If you throw a no-hitter in your debut, you'll go down in the record books. But I didn't write that. So I wanted to go see who did have the best debut ever to see if they went down in the record books and so first of all technically speaking i'm looking this up in a record book so yes it they did go down in the record books as did did Tim Tuffle for going one for four with a single and a caught stealing in the second game of a doubleheader in 1989. It's all in the record books. But are they in the record books? Really?

Yeah. One way of looking at this is to look at total bases in a major league debut. The all-time total bases record for a debut is J.P. Aaron Seabia. Interesting. I would have guessed that. Went four for five with two homers and a double. 11 total bases. Drove in three.

It was a blowout. His win probability added was only.14. And the fact that nobody guessed that on this call kind of suggests to me that it didn't go down in the record books. Another way to do this is to look at win probability added for a major league debut. And the champion of that is a fellow named Maurice Van Robes, who in 1939, playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates, had a win probability added of 1.022,

the greatest Major League debut ever. And Van Robes batted cleanup, so that helps in his Major League debut, one of very, very few batters to ever bat cleanup in his debut, as I've written about before. First at bat, ground out in the first inning with a runner on first. Second at bat, fly out to lead off the fourth. Third at bat, ground out to the catcher with a runner on second and his team trailing – sorry, his team ahead by –

sorry, trailing by two. So he represented the tying run at the time, but he grounded out. So, so far he has done nothing. Third at bat, sorry, fourth at bat, trailing by one with one out in the seventh, he doubled. Uh, so that helped, although only a little bit. Fifth at bat, game tying single with one out in the bottom of the ninth inning. And sixth at bat with runners on first and second and one out. Trailing by one, he singled to left, drove in one run, air on the left fielder, scored the winning run. 67% shift in win probability.

Robes gets credit for that, even though it was the throwing air by the left fielder that really made the huge difference. So Robes is the champ in this, but as you can tell, no real reason for that to go down in the record books, right? No. He also gets credit for having named the Ephus. Oh, no kidding.

Yeah. What did he name it after? He said, an Ephus ain't nothing, and that's what that pitch kidding. Yeah. What did he name it after? He said, an Ephus ain't nothing. And that's what that pitch is. Nothing. There might be more to that story. I don't know. Oh, he's alive, Ben. No, he's not.

No, he's not. He's very dead. He's been dead for 51 years. Yeah. 51 years this week. All right. Wow. So anyway, neither of those is very helpful to my teacher's position

but as though this is gonna it's not gonna turn around number two on both of these lists though seems to me a better answer because aaron sebia doesn't quite count to me and van robes like i noted doesn't seem to quite count to me but number two on the same on both of these lists is the same guy it's mark quinn who went three for four with two home runs and a double in 1999 for the Royals. His win probability added in that game was 0.715, which would have been good enough for one of the highest win probability added in a game that year. And he hit a, basically he hit a game tying home run in the eighth. He doubled to lead off the fourth down by one. And then he hit another game tying home run, three run homer in the sixth.

So that's his day. So pretty big day. Did a good job. And so then the question is, did Mark Quinn go down in history? To some degree, he did. I'm looking at, for instance, the Mark Quinn Award on Royals Review. Another Royals Review mentioned today on this podcast. Royals Review in 2006 debuted the Mark Quinn Award.

The Mark Quinn Award goes to the player who annually most excites Royals fans with his promise only to regress horribly. So he's in history for exciting Royals fans with his early performance and then regressing horribly. Quinn's homers are on YouTube. MLB Classic has put this up. Wow. Of all the highlights, Mark Quinn's homers are on YouTube. MLB Classic has put this up. Wow. Of all the highlights, Mark Quinn's homers. He was the third player in history to homer twice in his debut. Aaron Sebio was the fourth, so maybe that's why.

It has been viewed 1,768 times, though, which is not many times. No. There was one last thing about Mark Quinn going down in history. With 45 home runs, by the way, the two homers in his debut get one sentence on his Wikipedia page. This achievement, though, historical achievement, gets two. Quinn's 45 career home runs surpassed fellow Royals alumnus Jamie Quirk's total of 43, giving him the second most home runs all time for a player whose last name begins with a Q.

Carlos Quentin has hit 154 as of the end of 2014 with the San Diego Padres. So Mark Quinn is in history, however, more for the Q thing than the other one. So if I had written in my homework assignment, someday I hope to have the second most home runs ever for a player whose last name starts with Q. And the teacher wrote, if you do that, you'll go down in the record books. I would say she would have been slightly more correct. And also her disingenuousness would have shown through immediately.

This teacher was telling me a lie. Yeah, I'm sorry your childhood dreams haven't come true. One more, by the way, one more Mark Quinn. His penchant for free swinging and refusing to take walks led to a fireworks display over Kauffman Stadium in his final season when he drew a walk. They let off the home run fireworks because Mark Quinn drew a walk wow, I love that alright, the Royals value walks they had a whole fireworks show for it

okay are we finished? sure alright, you can send us emails for next week at podcast at baseballperspectives.com I will save some of the good questions that we didn't get to and join our Facebook group at facebook.com i will save some of the good questions that we didn't get to and join our

facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild rate and review the sponsor that sam just used for those play index tidbits use the coupon code bp when you subscribe to get the discounted price of 30 on one year subscription and we'll be back tomorrow with the next team in our preview series the the St. Louis Cardinals. © transcript Emily Beynon