Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 854: The Opening Day Edition

Episode Date: April 4, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Opening Day games, the Astros’ closer situation, Albert Pujols, and more, then discuss some of the BP staff’s standout preseason predictions.

I wander the earth, but now I've come back here To live with the seasons, and to be with you I ponder the worth of our lives on this sphere But I don't need reasons When I'm here with you Good morning and welcome to episode 854 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

Thank you to each and every one of you. And by the Play Index at baseballreference.com. I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight. Hey, Ben. Hi. How are you? All right. Did you watch any of yesterday's games?

I did. In between five hours of WrestleMania, I watched the Cardinals-Pirates game in its entirety, and then pieces of the other games. I made it back from WrestleMania in time to see Jonas Espedes strike out to end the Mets-Royals game. Really, I was hoping that my attention to baseball during this podcast would be interrupted by people randomly talking about pro wrestling. So it's just like I'm there again. Yep.

If I start singing Full Rider right now, it'll be just like my Sunday. I enjoyed the baseball yesterday i watched all three games and but i did i kind of found it frustrating to go straight from in a sense to go straight from postseason baseball to yesterday because yeah the game the mets and the the royals game for instance was a very you know like in a sense it was just as exciting as as exciting as a playoff game. You know, you had, you know, the teams starting their number one or two starters. You had this close game, this really, you know, phenomenally close game toward the end.

You had all this excitement and suspense. And yet you also had a game that was managed very much like a regular season game instead of like a postseason game. And it is kind of nice to get to the postseason and have managers do things that they don't normally do, but that I wish they always would. And so to get thrown right back into this long season where they, you know, have to leave their starter in for a long time and, and don't do it. Like, you know, for instance, the primary that I noticed this in the car in the Pirates Cardinals game too, where it felt like starters were left in too long, but only too long by postseason standards. Like if, if this were a random August game, I would have completely forgotten how the postseason works and I wouldn't have thought anything of it, but you kind of get spoiled in the postseason when you see starters pulled earlier, which is

how I would like it to be. And then in the eighth inning, the Mets were rallying and they left Soria in for a while and there was no lefty in the bullpen to come in and get the Mets three lefties in a row with the game on the line and certainly not even any thought of Wade Davis coming in with two outs in the eighth inning in the tying run on base. I just sort of miss October for just a moment. It's sort of like, I don't know, being taken out of the hot tub and thrown in the pool a little bit. Yeah. I'm here seven months. We'll be back.

Yeah. Less than that. We're, we're a 10th of a percent of the way through this season. It's almost over. Yeah. Six months. Yeah.

I don't know. I'm I, I, I wanted to feel like that was a playoff intensity kind of atmosphere last night, but it was betrayed by the lack of Wade Davis in the bullpen. You really need to have Wade Davis warming up in the eighth to give me that playoff intensity. Yeah. Well, you got Wade Davis eventually, and you got a nice showdown with

the big Mets marquee signing, and Wade Davis did what Wade Davis does. So it was a good ending. Yeah, it was. So I've been thinking about the Albert Pujols Cardinals discussion. And I think that I've been really trying to reconcile it. And I think that what I've decided is that the question, the very premise that we were allowing ourselves to think about is just unfair. It's just an, it's kind of an illogical question to ask. If you take away every team's best move, then they're all worse. And, you know, like, it's not really fair to identify the team's most successful move and then say, well, what if we take that away? How good are they now? Because it's almost tautological at that point. If you look at how a team does, but ignore all their good moves, then yes, they don't look like

they have as many good moves. And that's true. And I figure with, it is very easy to look at the Albert Pujols drafting and conclude that, well, sure, that kind of, you know, they kind of got lucky. Like, they picked him, which is good, but they also sort of got lucky that he was there for them and all of that, and that he turned into what he was. It doesn't necessarily show, like, this great prophetic ability to find Albert Pujols'. And so, like, in the very specific way of looking at that move, it's hard to say that that yes, the Cardinals showed something with that move that was really worth 100 wins. But like every team's got one of those,

every team's got some moves where you could very easily pull one thread and say, oh, well, they were really lucky to have him or they were really lucky that he didn't break or, you know, they were really lucky. Like the Giants, you take away Buster Posey and the Giants don't have any World Series probably. And all it takes for them to not have Buster Posey is the Rays spend $50,000 more and take him instead of Tim Beckham or whatever it would have cost, a million more, who knows. But in that case, even though the Giants wouldn't have done anything differently, they have no World Series right now, probably.

And you just have to kind of live with the fact that that also could have happened. It doesn't mean the Giants weren't good or that the Giants weren't smart. And I think it's very fair to say that every team's got a move that worked out extremely well for them. And taking away that move doesn't necessarily make any sense. So if there's anything, I would say that I'm pulling back from the acceptance of this premise that maybe the Cardinals lucked into this run. Of course they lucked into it, but every team, it's all a combination of luck and good moves. And the idea that the fact that you could take away the Cardinals very, very, very best move, and there's still a better than 500 team over the course of a decade is

probably better than you can say for most teams and they've all benefited from some some fortunate move like that so to really to take away the cardinals credit for that you'd you'd really fairly have to take away every team's best move and then see how the cardinals stack up against every other team minus one but you would think that if you could go back to 2003 and rank every team's best move at the time, and that'd actually be a fun article to do in the present day rosters, maybe I'll do that at some point. But if you could rank every MLB team's best move in 2003, or that led to their 2003 team, getting Pujols in the 13th round would probably be the best move in baseball, right? Because he was the best player in baseball and they got him as a 13th round draft pick, which

is not where you expect to get the best player in baseball. So in terms of a move outperforming expectations, getting Pujols in a middle round of the draft is probably the best move of any move at the time. And so if you took that away from the Cardinals, I think it would hurt them more than taking away any other move could at the time. I mean, he was the best player, so taking away the best player and a guy who was acquired in such an unusual way, obviously would be a big blow. Yeah, it would. In in this exercise the cardinals would probably lose more than just about any other team although maybe the giants at that point i

mean barry bonds was not a 13th round pick and yet maybe his value over his 18 million dollar salary was even greater i'm not sure but uh so yeah the cardinals would would it would bring them closer to the pack but i think the cardinals would still be ahead of most teams if you took away every team's best move last year you know around this time i did look at every team's worst move uh if if if i i presumed that every team could undo one move that they had made uh one trade or one signing mainly those mainly those were the options and um i was curious to see how big a difference it would make and and really like it's the the one of the fascinating thing or i guess one of the takeaways from that is that every team's got some move that you know through no necessarily fault of their own or

through some fault of their own they made that was just horrible right like they the ryan howard signing is a horrible arguably arguably unforced error. Extension, I should say. It's a horrible, arguably unforced error. Or through no fault of their own, you know, the Padres trading away Corey Kluber before Corey Kluber was anything remotely, you know, valuable.

And those are big moves that cost their teams, you know, some years down the road, I don't know, five-ish wins apiece. But one of the takeaways was that the Cardinals had none of those. Like there was, you could not find a mistake. You couldn't find one move that they would undo. trading for Justin Masterson at the trade deadline in 2014 because they gave up an okay-ish kind of prospect for Justin Masterson and then he left as a free agent. And so they were down one okay-ish prospect and that's it. Like the best you could say is the Cardinals could have one okay-ish more prospect in their system. Otherwise there was simply not a move that they would undo years later

that was still in any way harming them. And it was really remarkable. So I guess that's the flip side of this. The Cardinals have been an almost infallible team over the last... Like, they don't... Obviously, they don't win every game and they don't win every World Series. But in the sense that you could look at all their moves and essentially not find the mistake uh was pretty impressive yeah i talked to my wife about fried squid okay and uh because i really wanted to pin down the the syntax of this

i still had trouble with the syntax of it and she uh she and i talked to her dad as well, who knew the phrase. I think it's actually a Cantonese, of Cantonese origin. And her dad knew the phrase very well. And so my wife teaches Mandarin to third graders. So she is particularly attuned to questions of syntax. And she says that, in fact, we have identified something that is difficult to teach this particular syntax, syntax of this phrase. She says there is a syntax pattern in Chinese where something is done to you that is very hard to translate. She says that there's essentially this word in there, like if she were to translate it, it would, she would translate it as he was fried a cuttlefish. But there's no such thing in America that corresponds to the was in that sentence. The word is be, be, like B-E-I.

She says the word roughly means was, but it means he had it done to him. He was handed the situation of being a stir fried cuttlefish I asked her if it would be like in the sentence I am become death and which I don't even know what that like that's just something

that I think I what took from a Werner Herzog movie or something I'm not sure but she said not really so I don't know why I'm telling you that. But she says, there are a few sentences like that that use this passive voice. Like, for instance, I to the book put on the table or I to my mom made the phone call

or I to you gave the present. She says it's something that her students struggle with in Mandarin. They always use the active voice instead of the passive voice in writing. It's a recurring thing trying to correct them, and it's very difficult to explain. But she said that you could use it in either. If we wanted to use it in English, you could fairly say that Sam was fried squid if he was fired, or the boss fried Sam's squid. Okay. Either way. All right. I could use one of those you got anything by the way ryan webb gave up a two-run homer to joy to toowitzky and

i'm now downgrading his chances of getting a save to 25 yeah not real encouraging the way he was used either no it was he was well it was what the eighth and they were down 31 i think it was, he was, well, it was what, the eighth and they were down 3-1? I think it was the seventh when they brought him in. And yes, they were down. I mean, you know, that's not, that is the Ryan Webb role. That's how he gets, that's how he finishes games that he does not save. He's the guy that you bring in when you're losing by not too much. So he's the, you know, fourth or fifth man on that depth chart, it looks like, maybe six if they're using him there. You saw that the Astros named Luke Gregerson closer?

Yes. Instead of Ken Giles. And I will first give the allowance that we don't know that, you know, we don't actually know like all that went into this decision. It's, there's, it's always very possible that there are explanations to any decision that we're not thinking of, that the people involved or the situation involved might be more complicated than we think. However, it is hard not to look at it and think that this is a case of the Astros doing what some other teams have done, the Rays, I think most notably, of using their best reliever in a non-save role so as to keep him from getting saves and therefore keep him from getting more money in arbitration. That is the most obvious takeaway or the most

obvious conclusion, simply because Ken Giles is a player whose wages over the next four years, five years will be heavily determined by how many saves he gets as an arbitration eligible guy in those years. Yeah. Um, and with Luke Gregerson, it doesn't really matter whether he gets saves or not. He's got a guaranteed contract. He can get 50 or he can get one. Uh, it won't really affect the Astros, but every save that Ken Giles gets the Astros will kind of be paying for. And so it, it's, I think, reasonable to conclude that that is the math here, especially

because Ken Giles, I think everybody thinks is the superior pitcher. He is the guy that they went and invested a lot into as far as trading for him. They gave away a closer's type of return for him in trade, and he's the better pitcher. Everybody would choose him, right? If you had one inning and the season was riding on it, you would go with Ken Giles, not Luke Gregerson, correct? Correct. And that is a completely uncontroversial opinion that 99 out of 100 people would agree with uh so if we assume that that is why this decision is made i again they're not the first team that's done this and so i'm not talking so much about this move as the this

trend of moves but it it really is this situation where clubs want to be able to use their relievers in the best way possible. They want to be able to use them however they can without being limited by this arbitrary stat. And they don't want their closers to be saying, no, you can't bring me in the seventh. I only pitch in save situations or no, you can't bring me in in a tie game. I only pitch in save situations. Clubs all wish that they had that flexibility. Managers all wish that they had that flexibility, but the players don't give them that flexibility by being kind of petulant and demanding this specific role and the specific stat. And so we all kind of are annoyed that the culture doesn't allow that. The player's culture doesn't allow that. But then it feels like teams that do this are encouraging that attitude from the players, right? Like they're making it very

explicitly a business decision who gets the save. So by essentially telling players that the save is currency and we're going to make business decisions around the save you have to you're kind of condoning players saying that the save is a business asset and they're going to demand saves right yeah you are sort of perpetuating the system there you go that's the phrase yeah if you uh if you were to be bold and break with the way that closers are currently used and just you you know, use Ken Giles as the closer, but bring him in in non-safe situations, that would be a better, faster way to destabilize the system. But it would also come with costs and more objections,

I guess, or different objections that would maybe be harder to overcome. So this is kind of the easier way to work within the system without really trying to change it. Well, right. It is trying to make the best of the situation, the best of the system, trying to exploit the system in a sense. It's actually, that's what it is. It's trying to exploit the system as we have it now instead of overturning the system. And I guess that's sort of the tragedy of the commons, right? Is that you can't ask one team to bear the cost of trying to overturn the system. They are, you know, a team is going to see it in their interests to do that thing, which helps them a little bit, even if by doing that, they're perpetuating a few years ago with Cody Allen. I think they had Chris Perez closing at the time. Cody Allen was clearly the better pitcher. Of course, he did eventually become the closer.

I mean, most guys who have to wait like this probably do eventually end up getting saves, but they cost themselves arbitration money, and you never know when a young reliever is going to get hurt and not have the opportunity to get saves again. So yeah, it's probably that. Unless there's some kind of clubhouse concern with Gregerson being the incumbent and having been the closer on a playoff team. Personally, I don't think any players would mind if Giles were to unseat Gregerson

other than Gregerson. Yeah, that's part of the details that we don't know. And although I yeah, I think that you're right that in general, like that, my I kind of feel like in situations like this, there is some in a clubhouse, the veterans stick up for the veterans, but only kind of at the initial moment of conflict. Ultimately, they all know who's better, and they will complain just as much if the inferior pitcher is closing. And so yeah, there probably would be some friction initially. My guess is there now will be some lingering friction perpetually if Gregerson isn't as good as Giles is. The A's were basically in this

situation a couple years ago where Doolittle was their best reliever and he wasn't closing. And I think when they traded for Jim Johnson, as I recall, I might have some details wrong, but I think there was talk about how Johnson was costing them a lot, but he would help keep Doolittle from getting saves and therefore he would keep Doolittle's salary down. And the A's sort of resolved the Doolittle situation long term by simply signing him to a long extension that made it moot whether he was going to get saves or not. And you can't just say, well, the Astros should have signed Giles to an extension and then freed themselves up to use him however they wanted without having to worry about it costing them money. But of course, it's not that easy. Both sides need to want an extension to make it happen. But I do

remember a couple of years ago, four years ago, five years ago, maybe four years ago at a BP book signing. And somebody asked me whether the classic closer model would ever fall apart. And we talked about the Johnny Venters, Craig Kimbrell situation in Atlanta. And at the time, those guys were both like top five relievers in the game. It wasn't totally clear at the time, which one was even better. One was from the left one was from the right. Neither one had the sort of long incumbency of being a closer in the game. They were both pre-arb and it seemed like the perfect situation to have tandem closers and bring them in depending on the situation instead of who had the ninth inning. But I remember saying that the key thing is that you can't have either one feel like you're

manipulating them. I think that players are willing to accept that the club makes decisions that will cost them money or might cost them money, but they're not willing to accept the decisions that a team makes in order to cost them money, specifically to cost them money. You don't want to have it look like you're doing it to screw them. And with Ventures and Kimbrel, to make it work, you would have had to have sent a signal to them that one way or another, they were going to get paid. And maybe that meant you give them both extensions, or maybe, I don't know, that's probably the best way to do it. But you have to send the signal that this is

not about suppressing their salaries. And that in fact, you're very sensitive to the effect that it has on their salaries. And so I don't know. I don't know if even without an extension, there's a way to signal to Ken Giles that you have every intention of him getting paid what he's worth, regardless of whether it's in the eighth or the ninth, and, you really just truly do want him pitching in the eighth. And there is a case for him in this non-closer role in that the non-closer can be used a lot more flexibly. You can bring him in earlier in the game. You're not kind of bound to this one specific situation when he's allowed to pitch.

Ideally you would want it to be a role where you can use him flexibly earlier and flexibly later. As it turns out now, they can't use him in the ninth inning because he's not the closer and Gregerson is going to be expecting to save that one inning, one run save, even though Ken Giles might be the guy that you'd rather have in in that situation. So ideally, you would want to have a role where he's flexible early and flexible late. But, you know, if you assume that maybe the Astros do see a benefit to having Giles in a more flexible role and they actually do prefer him as something closer to,

you know, like the fireman role instead of the closer, that's well and good. But you have to signal some way to Ken Giles that the decision is strategic and very clearly not meant to suppress his salary. And, you know, the problem is that it probably is meant to suppress his salary. Yeah. Well, this seems like a system that maybe will be in place for a few years as teams try to negotiate this. We're kind of in this weird in-between space

where teams seem to be dissatisfied with the way things are, but haven't gotten together the will or the capital or the organization to change it. So at some point you would think they will, there will be some trailblazer that'll just change the way closers are used, and then everyone will follow because that's how things tend to work in sports,

and then they won't have to play these games anymore. But right now we are in between this stage where teams use closers for one-inning saves, and we're perfectly happy to do so, and maybe some brave new future where teams are more flexible in the way they use their pitchers. But right now, this is the best way to go about it, I suppose. All right. So that's my banter. Last call for banter, Ben. That's it for today. All right. Well, that's a pretty good show. So we'll just quickly do the topic. The topic today is going to be our BP staff predictions. Hey, did anybody make you predict this year? years, I guess I've always been at a place that made me do predictions of some sort, which I

always did grudgingly because I don't feel like I am particularly good as a prognosticator. It's not like my skill set. It's not why I'm employed to do what I do. I know what the projections say. And so there's no way to divorce my own projections from the projections projections. And so whatever I say will be heavily influenced by what they say and probably should be. And I don't think I'm better than projections necessarily at predicting the outcome of a baseball season. So basically I do it because people click to see what people predicted so they can get mad about it usually. But I never thought it was something

that I was especially adept at more so than anyone else. And if I happen to hit on a non-consensus pick that won, I assume that I probably just got lucky and wouldn't continue to be good. So I'm happy not to predict if no one makes me predict and no one did. This is the first year really since you've been a writer yes probably you haven't had to yeah so congratulations on that no one can pin me down on what i think i assume you have a uh a secret notebook that you have uh written all

these predictions down anyway just just between you and the desk drawer nope Nope. I guess I know generally which teams I think are good, but my memory is malleable, and maybe I can convince myself that I thought something that I don't once the season is over. You want to do a... Last year, you and I did Stompers predictions between us before the season started on opening day. Maybe this year, you and I should do that again.

Yeah, we can do that again. That'd be kind of fun. Sure. All right. So the rest of us were not so lucky. We all did predictions at Baseball Perspectives, standings, World Series champ, and individual awards. And so those are published over the site. And I wanted to know, first of all, if you found anything in there counterintuitive. I guess the tricky thing about predictions, and I think this is also the case as far as projections, is that they generally follow the conventional wisdom. And so people can just say, well, you know, what do I need you for? Like, you know, like you're just saying what I already know is out there in the atmosphere. But then if you somehow get away from the conventional wisdom,

then people go, oh, this is a crazy prediction. So, you can't really, and most crazy predictions are bad predictions and most actual events end up being crazy, right? Yeah. So like if you had had Victor Martinez last year, if you'd predicted Victor Martinez, because wait, Victor Martinez, two years ago, it was the year that he was like MVP runner up or something, right? Uh-huh. Yeah.

And then last year he was just disastrous, right? So in both cases, you would have projected like a 780 OPS going into the season. And he ended up at like, you know, 970 and like 660 or something like that. And if you had gotten either one of those predictions actually correct, it would have been incredibly suspicious. You would have been burned for being a witch. And you probably would have been bad at predicting. Like most baseball predictions that are right,

that are counterintuitive, require you to be crazy. Yes. Like you have to, like they're so far off from common sense that only an insane person would have ever predicted anything close to them. Right. And some writers kind of pursue that strategy because people remember the weird ones that you got right, maybe more often than they remember the weird ones that you got right maybe more often than they remember the weird ones that you got wrong. So you could kind of dine out on having some weird

pick that no one else had that turned out to be right. And meanwhile, sort of sweep all the weird ones that were wrong under the rug. But yeah, I mean, especially in the projection system era, where these projections are easily available and well publicized and in most cases are not going to be so far off from what an informed person who probably looks at projection systems thinks. Maybe in the 80s or 90s when you didn't have that kind of consensus, I mean, you still had sort of a consensus, but you could come to your conclusions more independently than you probably can now. So then going back to my question, you have, it's a, it's a tall mountain to climb to surprise you with a, with a, with a group

wisdom prediction. It's very unlikely that we're going to do anything shocking. That said, anything surprise you? Well, I'll just read the, you can go click on this article. If you want to see the staff predictions, I will link to it. And this is based on, I guess, 38 responses from the BP staff. And just quickly, the division winners were Blue Jays, Indians, Astros, and Mets, Cubs, Dodgers. I would say the most surprising thing, and the thing that always gets people angry in the comment section, is that, you know, like 36 of 38 picked the Cubs to win the National League Central, which is, you know, lower than certainly the playoff odds would say, or lower than their probability of winning that division is. But it's kind of a weird thing where everyone picks the favorite. And so it turns out that it looks like

it's just this unanimous thing where there's no chance for any other team to win. But that's not really it. It's just that every one person is picking the most likely outcome. And so on the page, it appears to be that no one's even giving another team a chance, which is not actually the case. But yeah. So I guess what surprised me maybe is the Blue Jays, the degree to which they were the consensus AL East pick. They got 27 out of 38 first place votes. And that sort of surprised me in that if I had been forced to make predictions this year, the AL East probably would have been the most agonizing division to decide on a winner,

just because it seems like you could make pretty good cases for four teams to win. And, you know, the Red Sox and the Blue Jays seem like very strong picks. Of course, Pakoda thinks the Rays are the best team in this division. So it seems tough to identify a consensus team. And so I'm sort of surprised that there was a clear consensus team in the picks. The Red Sox have obviously been a popular preseason pick the last couple of years that have burned everyone. And so maybe there's just some unwillingness to pick the Red Sox and look dumb again going on here. I don't know. But 27 out of 38 is more than I would have expected for the Blue Jays, I think. Yeah. So if you go over to the AL Central, you have the Royals finishing in second place with a little bit worse than that. Like their average finish was 2.2 2.2 okay and so the royals when about them two months ago

when i polled the staff to see how many wins they thought the royals would win uh before we released pakoda because i wanted to have something to put the pakoda projections alongside the average response was i think 88 wins and the most common response was 89. And essentially, nobody had them below 85. I think one person had them below 85. And then when Pocota came out, or when we had Pocota, like a couple days later, I asked, well, does that change any of your minds? And the overwhelming consensus was no, I know what I think about the Royals. And they stuck to those to those predictions. And then a couple months later when we asked, well, how good are the Royals?

It feels to me like these don't reflect an 88 or 89 win team. I know the Indians are good, but most people don't consider the Indians a powerhouse. Some projections do. Some people consider them the best team in the division. Some people consider them the best team in the league. But it's not like the Indians are, you know, they're not the Cubs of the AL. They're just another good team in a slew of good teams. And yet the Indians were projected to finish or predicted to finish in first, uh, the Royals, um, were, you know, not. And so to me, this sort of

suggests that like, even though we, uh, even though everybody told me that the projections didn't influence them, uh, I think that they did. I think that over the course of a couple of months, they, they did actually subtly influence them and that these reflect a lower, a little bit lower, uh, forecast for the Royals than many of these same people would have said two months ago. I can't prove that I didn't ask for wind totals or anything, but that's sort of how it looks to me. And that's perfectly normal, right? Like it should. I judge them harshly for not having adjusted their predictions to me two months ago, even

a little bit, you know, even a win. Just give it, you know, it is new information unless you think that it's completely worthless and it should influence you a little bit. And so it influenced them a little. That's good. But anyway, I'm bringing that up because that goes to your point about the Blue Jays. The Blue Jays are projected by Pakoda to finish third and projected by our writers to be probably the dominant team in the American League. The Astros had a slightly higher average finish, but in a weaker division.

And I would guess, looking at this, that if I polled... Well, actually, I can look at the World Series. But I would guess that... Well, the World Series is kind of weird. People do weird things with their World Series picks. Yeah. I was just about to bring that up.

I would guess that the average writer would have picked the Blue Jays as the best team in the American League. Even though even though Pakoda has them as an 85 win team, third best in the AL East. So that's, uh, that's an interesting, it's weird because you do see, like, I, you do see situations where clearly the projections I think have led the writers, uh, in a direction. I think that our writers, for instance, have the Rays higher than the conventional wisdom does, and probably the Indians higher than the conventional wisdom does. And maybe a couple of other, I don't know, maybe a couple of other teams higher than the

conventional wisdom does. And I think that that's probably because like you, everybody has seen the projections. They incorporate those into what they think is going to happen. And that is a healthy way, I think, of looking at baseball. But there are some instances where it feels like the writers went their own direction. And I wonder what it is. I wonder which ones, like what sort of factors go into a writer choosing that. I guess probably the most... NL West, right? NL West, the...

choosing that i guess probably the most nl west right nl west the uh pakoda has the dodgers still as the i guess second best or basically tied for best team in baseball and you know like nine wins ahead of the giants yeah whereas the writers have the dodgers just barely ahead of the giants they have essentially a dead heat yeah 1.6 average finish and the Giants at 1.7 yeah and I I would guess that that has to do with this recurring drumbeat of injuries coming out of Dodgers camp which if you look at the depth chart and you look at the changing projections doesn't really do much to the Dodgers I think it knocked them from 94 to 93 I think and maybe maybe even that only briefly because you you know, the injuries that the Dodgers are dealing with, uh, you know, Grandel will miss a couple of days. Kendrick

will miss a couple of days, but it's not like, you know, like you hear injury, but it's not like they're out for the season. Ethier might be out for the season, but they, Ethier didn't project very well to begin with. And Dodgers have a lot of outfield depth. And who's the other? Oh, Brett Anderson. Yeah, that one hurts. Certainly the fifth starter, whatever the Dodgers have to do for their fifth starter is hurt by this recurring injuries.

But it's, you know, the Dodgers have this great depth. They're not actually losing their best players, you know, assuming that Grondahl's only out for a couple of days. And so it's probably, P a couple days and so it's probably pakota would say that it's not nearly as bad as the headlines said you know sort of imply uh but i would have to imagine that's part of that because i mean yeah the dodgers are that is a very big differential between how pakota sees that division and how the writers see that division yeah the nl

oh my gosh i had to i inputted all these by hand. And the NL, like we all know no parity in the NL. Yeah. But like every ballot, exactly the same. Like there are, there is of the 38, 36 had the Marlins in third place. I think that there were of the 38 ballots for the nl central 36 were one of four orders they all they all had until the very end like two of the last ones i've inputted so like i was 35 in and of those 35 all 35 had the cubs in first all 35 had the pirates and the cardinals

two three in one order and all 35 had the brewers and the Cardinals, two, three in one order, and all 35 had the Brewers and the Reds, four, five in some order. And that's it. That's the entire, and it was basically the same in the West. I think there were three ballots in which, if you set the default Dodgers, Giants, Diamondbacks, Padres, Rockies, okay, there were three ballots out of 38 that had any team two spots away from any of those, right? In every other ballot, the team was no more than one spot away from that default. And the only three where there was a difference was the Diamondbacks winning. And honestly, I would bet that now all of those three would undo that pick because of the AJ Pollock injury. Yeah.

Yeah. And then in the NL East, it was essentially the same thing. The only, literally the only variance in the default Mets Nationals at 1-2, Marlins at 3, Phillies Braves 4-5 was, I think there were two that had the Marlins, two that had the Marlins in fourth and one that had the Marlins in fifth. Everything else was straight down the line. Which do you prefer? Do you like the easily identifiable hierarchy league

or the league where everything is a muddle and a mess? Well, I like the muddle and the mess, except that I also know that these divisions are not like, we're not going to do that well, even in the NL. Like I, we're going to get things wrong, even with the, you know, absolute and utter certainty of these three divisions. There's going to be one of these, one of these teams that's winning the division is going to finish in fourth or fifth.

And there's going to be one of these, you of these bottom teams that is going to be playing for the division or for the wild card into the last week of the season and probably multiple. So I'm not worried about the lack of muddle and mess in the season as a whole. So it doesn't really matter. But yeah, I mean, you definitely have team entropy is rooting for the al right yeah yeah and some other interesting things the the twins have the three top al rookie of the year candidates buxton barrios and park according to these predictions and yet they are still predicted to be the worst team in the division which is not an inconsistent position i don't think but it's it's, at least that they're going to be

bad with so much good expected, which is, I mean, that is a fair thing to say about the Twins, I think, which is nice for Twins fans, I guess. That's the silver lining. The other kind of weird thing was the Rangers being the second most likely World Series pick, even though the Rangers were not even close to the most likely AL West winning pick. Only eight people picked the Rangers to win the AL West, and I assume five of those eight picked them to win the World Series, which is surprising, I guess. I don't know if there's something about the Rangers that people think is particularly well-suited to the playoffs, or whether, I don't know, the people who liked the Rangers just really liked the Rangers that people think is particularly well suited to the playoffs or whether I don't know the people who liked the Rangers just really liked the Rangers yeah like you could maybe argue that they're a team that will be much stronger at the end of the year than

they are at the beginning because you Darvish will be back and because you might have you know you might have no more Mazzara by then you might have uh you know, you might have no more Mizarra by then. You might have, you know, maybe Jerks and Profars established himself again by then. That's the nice thing about having good farm systems all the time is you can reload. So maybe they are thinking that. I did sort of feel while I was inputting them that I was being, like, pranked or that there's an inside joke that I'm not aware of. that I was being pranked or that there's an inside joke that I'm not aware of. Because I agree it did feel strange that the Rangers would be the most favored World Series winner in the AL and like fifth or sixth most likely to win their division.

And I'm not a big Rangers. I don't know. I'm not. I think I was the low man on the Rangers. So that was especially odd to me. But yes, that was another odd thing. Yeah. Dallas Keuchel getting no respect.

None. AL Cy Young award winners. We talked about this on the Astros preview, whether he's someone we should discount more than the typical Cy Young winner. And it appears that the BP staff feels that way. He is tied for seventh, I guess, in the standings. And there were six players who got first place votes for that award, and he was not one of them. Well, slightly as surprising is Sonny Gray, who, you know, they were within the margin of error of each other last year. Sonny Gray could have

won the Cy young uh got votes and sunny gray doesn't have some of the same baggage that keitel does you know like keitel i can get why even now even after two very good years and one extremely good year you could still be like well i don't know i'd never heard of him two years ago he's you know he's a ground ball pitcher those guys how often is the best pitcher in baseball a finesse lefty? Well, he's not really that finesse-y, but a ground ball lefty. And so I could see why he would have to keep proving it. But Sonny Gray, you know, Sonny Gray was a very good prospect,

a high draft pick who's been good since his debut. And he's young and ascendant. And there's no reason to think that like people would have some bias against him and yet he also is very low uh on these you know down he's basically tied with keitel way below you know carasco and even below felix which seemed odd sort of surprised that the mariners got zero first place votes. I don't know that I would have given them one, but I would have considered it certainly. And I'm surprised that of the 38 people who responded, not one of them saw them as a division winner and they finished third on average. I agree. I think if we'd had RJ fill out a ballot, I think there's a decent

chance that he would have picked the Mariners. I'm not sure, but he mentioned, I think if we'd had RJ fill out a ballot, I think there's a decent chance that he would have picked the Mariners. I'm not sure, but he mentioned, I think that he would pick them over the Astros, if not the Rangers, I'm not sure. But we didn't. A number of people, can you, there is, look, there is no explanation other than, you know, the curse of the pundit to have Mike Trout not winning your predicted MVP, right? Right. Like there's none. There's not. It's the same with Kershaw, really. Yeah. It's not to say that he's 100% to win it, but there is nobody who has got a better chance

to win it than he does. He's so far above everybody else starting out. Yeah. so far above everybody else starting out yeah and i you could say that he's not going to play for a winning team necessarily you might think that he's that he has an uphill climb because he's not playing for a team that you think is going to win but like the runner-up is manny machado and of the of the 13 first place votes that didn't go to him, a couple went to Machado, a couple went to Miguel Cabrera, one went to Jose Abreu. So it's not like... Correa, Betts.

Yeah, well, yeah, no. At least you could say they might be on... Those might be internally consistent because they might be on teams that were projected or predicted to be winners. But even with that, Mike Trout has not been on a winning team in three of his four seasons or a division winning team or playoff team three of his four seasons,

and yet he's finished in the top two all four years. There's just not a – you can't make an argument other than, well, I just don't want to. Well, yeah, I mean that's not such a bad argument right because the one time trout won he was great he deserved it but the angels won 98 games and made the playoffs and he has been nearly as great or even greater in other years and did not win the mvp even though because the angels were not as good or maybe because there was better competition in those years, but largely because the Angels were not that good. So if you

think that Trout won't win unless the Angels are good, I think, you know, expecting the Angels to be bad is very reasonable and the staff as a whole expects the Angels to finish fourth. Okay. That's fourth. Okay. So fair. Yeah. So there's almost nothing. I mean, he,

he, you wouldn't expect him to be better than he has been in the years when he has not won the award because the angels were bad. So you could defend the same thing happening again. Yeah, that's fair. Then the question becomes, there's two questions. And one is,

do you think we are actually precise enough that you can identify a MVP runner up, but not an MVP winner? Like, can you look at him and go, oh, that guy's going to finish second. And the second is actually significant that he is more likely to finish second than he is first or third. And so maybe you can, maybe you actually think that there is something, some intelligent, collective intelligence in the voters that will funnel him towards second place specifically if his team doesn't win. And maybe I could, maybe I could see that being the case. Yeah. Like an acknowledgement that he is the best player in baseball, but he can't win

because he's not on a good team. Exactly. And that the voters are actually so refined in their collective technique that they actually can do that, that they, that they do have the collective ability to move him, you know, to push him toward that spot. So, okay, that seems fair. My objection is half removed. And so then the second question is whether you think that within that you can actually identify the likely winner uh in the first two years that he lost it was to Miguel Cabrera which you could say was fairly predictable last year it was to Josh Donaldson which was probably not very predictable I doubt anybody picked Josh Donaldson before the season last year and so then you maybe you well, congratulations, baseball prospectus predictor.

You have, you have wisely figured out that Mike Trout is going to finish second instead of first, most likely. But now do you actually have the ability to pick the person who is going to finish first? And if you don't, then your odds are still probably better just going with Trout. But that said, fine, you have talked me into it. And to be clear, it's not like Trout wasn't the overwhelming consensus pick. Trout got 25 of 38 first place votes and has three times as many total points in this way that we had of counting it as any other player. So we did collectively all agree that Mike Trout is going to be the MVP. However, I'm,

I was side eyeing the 13 non Trout picks and, and now I will not, my eyes are back straight ahead. All right. I, let's see. I think that's all that I noticed. Me too. I guess the same I think that's all that I noticed. Me too.

I guess the same thing. You could maybe argue that even more criminal than picking somebody other than Trout to be MVP and maybe even more criminal than picking somebody other than Kershaw to be Cy Young because at least there is really legitimately fantastic competition in that race. You know, going into the, into like there are a lot of really great nl pitchers and if you think that you know like i can see i can see it fine but the 10 people who didn't pick cory seeger to be rookie of the year uh i don't think that there's anything there like cory seeger is the best prospect in baseball he has a full-time role in a prominent spot on a winning team.

And he has already demonstrated fantastic ability at the major league level. So I don't know that there's any argument for picking Trey Turner over him, but voters going to vote. Okay. Corey Seeger is also the overwhelming, I'm talking about specific ballots, but as a group, we overwhelmingly pick Corey Seeger to be rookie of the year. I don't want you thinking that we picked Trey Turner. All right, go. So a listener named George compiled the current whereabouts of our minor league draftees from the minor league free agent draft earlier this offseason. I have two draftees on active rosters, Blake Wood on the Reds and Jimon Choi on the Angels.

You have one Mets reliever, Jim Henderson. I have five players, five other players on 40 man rosters and you have none. However, I only have two players who are not on 40 mans, but who appear to be headed to AAA, according to George's research. whereas you have seven such players. So you do have a lot of players who are a phone call away from the majors. And then I have one guy in DFA limbo, Emilio Bonifacio, who I believe was the first overall pick, right? And you have one player who's in Japan and one who I believe is retired, Clay Rapata. So I think we're both doing better than we have in the past.

I don't know. Just both of us having players on the opening day roster seems like something that hasn't happened before. Jarrett Groob was really good in spring training, by the way. I'm going to see. I don't know what his final stats were. I'm going to look it up. Jarrett Groob led the team in ERA. Nine innings, scoreless.

Seven strikeouts, two walks, and a save. Uh-huh. So I think he'll be one of the guys in AAA. Maybe he'll be the first player called up. All right. All right. That is it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild.

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