Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 856: The Biggest Baseball-Watchers Edition

Episode Date: April 6, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Rich Hill, a controversial game-ending call, and bad baseball ads, then answer listener emails about unfun facts, Theo Epstein’s future, and who’s seen the most major league baseball.

I've got too much to lose. No one can fill my shoes. Think I'll leave the blues over the hill. Hello and welcome to episode 856 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus presented by The Play Index at BaseballRe reference.com and our patreon supporters i am ben lindberg of 538 joined by sam miller of baseball prospectus hello yo we're starting a little late because you had a reddit ask me anything and i realized that that's every day for me i get to ask you anything whenever i want it's really a privileged life I lead. How did that go? It was good. Their questions are better than yours. Well, fortunately, we're doing a listener email show, so we are taking other people's questions. It's really just a continuation of your Ask Me Anything. We should probably talk about Rich Hill

for a second. Just take your temperature on old Rich, who was a popular topic last year, and his earning potential seemed to fluctuate by many millions of dollars from one start to the next, or at least it did in our minds. six million dollars which i think you were you were surprised that it wasn't more right or it seemed like someone who was so good at the end of last year could command more from someone and he didn't and perhaps we are now seeing why so i want to i want to ask since we did our little check-in and since it seemed like a single rich hill start late last year could derail him from suddenly ace potential to not even worth the league minimum, he has now gone through a spring training in which he struggled. He made four starts, 12 innings, 12 hits, 15 runs, 15 walks, and nine strikeouts. So more than a walk and more than a run per inning. 15 walks and nine strikeouts.

So more than a walk and more than a run per inning. And in his opening day start, which to be fair was something of a surprise start. He was filling in for Sonny Gray, who was ill, although he was on full rest. He lasted two and two thirds and he walked one, hit a guy, struck out a few guys, gave up four runs, only two of which were earned. So what are you bidding for Rich Hill right now? Yeah, it's interesting because the fact that he only went two and two thirds is sort of paradoxically good and bad at the same time. Like, ah, he only went two and two thirds. On the other hand, he faced 14 batters.

How are you going to bury a guy over 14 batters? And he wasn't that bad. I mean, he didn't do, he didn't, you know, he didn't do that well either. So, but, but he wasn't that bad. Like, you know, he, he walked one, he had the two hit batsman. So he, you know, had some clear issues with his control, but it wasn't like nightmarish or, or anything like that. He got some struggles.

He basically was good for two innings, and then he was bad for almost an inning. Like that's the start. He was good. Like for two innings, I was like, that's my Rich Hill. That's good old Rich Hill. Just keep being Rich Hill. And then he had one bad inning.

So RJ was chatting with me during this and he said, Rich Hill's going to be, I forget exactly what he said, but he said something like, it's going to be same old Rich Hill and we're all just going to pretend that those 10 starts last year never happened. And I was like, it was actually only four starts. I guess he had a few good minor league starts too. actually only four starts. I guess he had a few good minor league starts too. But I would say that in the off season, I would have been willing, if I'd been a team that was bidding for Rich Hill, I forget exactly what I said. I'll probably contradict myself, but I would have been willing to give him like three years and 30 million or three years and 35 million,

if that's where the bidding took me. And now I would say that I would not want to commit more than 22 and a half million. Oh, okay. So he's dropped like somewhere between 25 and 33% of his career earnings in my mind, his career value in my mind have dropped. So you're still willing to commit roughly four times more than any team in the majors was. Yeah. Although it's not totally clear that, I mean, he signed a one-year $6 million deal and we don't know if he'd wanted a two or three-year deal. We don't know what sort of offers he would have gotten. I mean, obviously a team would have given him two years and 6 million total, right? Because they were willing to give him one year and 6 million. So they would have done two years and 6 million.

So we don't know if they would have gone, you know, two and seven, two and 10, three and 12, three and 14. We don't, we don't really know. Maybe he wanted the one year start because while he would, I'm sure like to get every penny guaranteed that he can, he also probably has to know that he's one year, one good year away from maybe making $75 million next year if he had a full good year. It's a little bit of a gamble on himself. We don't exactly know what his conversations were like, which is just to say, I don't think we can say that nobody would have given him $12 million. But yes, I'm still, even after this, I am still the high man in the industry on Rich Hill. All right. Well, it's good to know you have faith. Someone still believes.

Yeah. Did you have any reaction you care to share to the ending of the Rays Blue Jays game on Tuesday with the somewhat controversial ruling on the Batista slide to break up the double play? I find it somewhat predictable that it's going to be murky and uncomfortable for everybody for a while. feel like the problem it's good that there is a better slide rule that there is a better uh the baseball has decided that the way that it used to be played where you get to terrorize the defender in exactly one instance of play uh with physical pain uh is is no more like i think that i just don't it's not like that i think oh like these guys you don't, it's not like that. I think, Oh, like these guys, you know, like, yeah, it's not like a, like, I just, it's not even that I'm worried about them getting hurt. I just feel like it's inconsistent with the sport. Like there are not other places where you get to go disrupt a defender by hurting him. Like that's the only, like it's the only part of

the sport where that's allowed. So it just feels completely out of place, incongruous with the other rules, all the other ways that they play the sport. And so I'm glad that they're moving away from the terroristic second base slide rule. But like, this is, this sort of goes to the problem of trying to define such imprecise actions via a one-sentence or even eight-sentence or even 30-sentence rule in a rulebook. It seems to me like it's pretty obvious that you are not allowed to grab the fielder's foot when he's throwing. That's a rule that does not need to be even put in the rules. The umpire ought to be able to make that rule on his own. And I think they would have. I think that the umpire, that's an easy call for an umpire.

But to get into this like day long debate about the legalese in the rulebook just makes it all murkier and like a little bit less satisfying for everybody else. I just let, I, I feel like I'm comfortable letting the umpire just make that call. Um, but, uh, you know, it was a weird, dumb play by Jose Bautista. Yeah. And it, I mean, imagine A-Rod doing that by the way. Right. I think he, I think he clearly violated the rule as written, I think. So if you want to complain about how it's written, you can do that, I think. But I don't think it was an incorrect application of the rule.

It's a little bit confusing. So you have to begin your slide or make contact with the ground before reaching the base. He did do that. You have to be able and attempt to reaching the base. He did do that. You have to be able and attempt to reach the base with his hand or foot. And that's kind of a tough one. I assume you have to be able to and you have to attempt to. So even if you're right next to the base and you aren't trying to reach for it, that still is a violation of this rule. You have to have both of those things. And I don't

know if he had both of those things. He was certainly within reach of it, but he was reaching for the fielder more so than he was reaching for the bag. I don't know if he was actually in contact with it at the time. It's kind of hard to tell, but it looks like not really. And then you have to be able and attempt to remain on the base after the completion of the slide. It doesn't look like he did that really. And then you have to slide within reach of the base without changing your pathway for the purpose of initiating contact with a fielder. And he was within reach of the base, although I guess you could still say that he did change his pathway for the purpose of initiating contact because he kind of did do that. So it's still a little tough and clearly this wasn't like an extremely violent

attempt. This wasn't really the, I don't think it was exactly the textbook case of a slide that this rule is meant to prevent. And maybe you could say that it would be nice if it were left up to the empire's judgment. Of course, we had that system where these things were left up to the empire's judgment and they didn't seem to exercise that judgment very well or very often, which is why we needed a rule in the first place. So they could have, I mean, the reason that they could have, the reason that they didn't, I feel like the reason they didn't, that they had a hard time exercising that judgment is that it was accepted that when you're a base runner and there is a fielder at second base who is trying to turn a double play, you get to physically assault him. then once you've allowed that assault is the game, that assault is the rule, then yes, you're probably going to err on the side of not calling runners interference or whatever the specific call is,

because the runner is just doing the thing that the runner is trying to do. How are you supposed to say that he's not? Now, there are limits to how far that assault is allowed to go. Although for the most part, runners don't really violate those limits. I mean, you have to be able to, in the old rule, you have to be able to touch the bag. That's a pretty broad, like how often have you seen a runner who like literally was not within reach of the bag? Like there's six feet human beings with long arms.

They can go a long ways. The problem is that it was allowed, you know, basically the, the act itself was allowed. And so umpires couldn't say, well, your act makes no sense. I don't think you should do that. It's allowed. Um, and you shouldn't be, it shouldn't be allowed. I think it shouldn't be allowed. You, you have the right to slide into a base because you have the right to possess that base, to reach that base without overrunning that base. So you slide because you're trying to get to the base and you're trying to stop. That's why you slide. I don't see how you have the right to tackle or in

any way, you know, physically disrupt a base fielder throwing a baseball. Like you don't have that right anywhere else. You can't run out to the right fielder and kick him. It's like, that'd be dumb if you could. And, uh, so I don't know. It just seems like it's fine if people like seeing, uh, you know, some contactors or whatever in the sport, that's a fine position for you to have. It is not the position I have simply because it's not consistent. I I'm perfectly fine with there being contact in football and no contact in baseball. And so I like it. But like this, this just is the first instance where the specificity of the rules is going to probably let us down a little bit. It didn't let me down. I feel like the umpires got the call right and I don't have an issue with it, but I do see a lot of people arguing and they feel like the specificity of the rules let them down. And imagine if, for instance, I mean, an umpire has the right to throw a pitcher out of the game if it believes that that pitcher threw a baseball intentionally at a hitter with the intention of hitting him.

Right. deciding that this rule also needed more specificity and that they had to define exactly what constitutes intent and what constitutes too close to the batter and all that. I mean, it's just, it's impossible to define it with a rule. It would be a total mess. And so this is, this seems like it's an okay application so far, but there's going to be more instances where we are picking apart the wording of the rule when, for the most part, we're all pretty capable of looking at it and knowing in a split second whether it was clean or not clean. Yeah, and even if you care more about the spectator perspective than the player preservation perspective,

I don't think it matters that much. I mean, it's kind of weird when a play ends on a replay review and one team is celebrating because they think they've done something good. And then there's an awkward wait and everyone's standing around and then suddenly the game is over and the team that was just celebrating is now the loser. And the team that was just deflated is now sort of halfheartedly celebrating because they won on a replay review and it's not really an organic celebration. But I don't think it affects the viewer enjoyment of double plays particularly. And double plays are very exciting

plays, particularly in a situation where the game is on the line like this one. But I think most of the excitement of the double play just comes from the timing and the execution of the fielders and being able to make the transfer and an accurate throw and get rid of the ball quickly and all of that. And the runner getting down the line. And I don't think what the guy at second base does to break up or not break up the transfer is that much to do with my enjoyment of that play it's sort of hard to appreciate in the moment anyway because you don't really get a great look at it so i don't think we'll miss it in the long run there will just be some hiccups yeah i agree hey um i think i have the first andrelton Simmons highlight as an angel. Oh, okay.

So I'm going to send it to you. You didn't see it because it is not like an all-time great Andrelton Simmons. But it is sneaky great, so I thought I'd show it to you. All right. I am watching. It's pretty good. It's pretty good, right? Watch the replay, too, because the replay really, in sort of slow motion,

shows you the unlikeliness of him getting that much on the throw at the angle. You really sort of appreciate the way that momentum was working against him here. Yeah. And so I'll link to this play as usual so you can watch it. But this is from Monday's game against the Cubs, seventh inning, a fielder's choice, although maybe we wouldn't all prefer to call it that and it's a chris bryant grounder in the hole and simmons sort of dives to the backhand

and then he recovers and gets up and makes a little short arm throw to second with enough on it to get the runner in yeah as he he is spinning his body is is revolving clockwise uh-huh and so the throw is going like he's basically yeah anyway i i don't like this is not one of the most visually impressive anderton simmons highlights but i think that it is notable in that i don't think there's another shortstop in baseball that makes that play yeah i've as great as his range is, it always seems like the combination of his range and how much he gets on the throw after getting rid of it really quickly is the most impressive thing about him. Yeah. Like other guys could maybe get there

and keep it in the infield or something, but that he manages to get there and then be getting up at the same time he gets to the ball and then somehow have something on the throw with his body going the other way all of that coming together that's kind of classic simmons the range is good but the arm and the improvisation are what make for a typical simmons highlight uh do you remember a couple hundred episodes ago when i was going on and on about the ad on the radio of giants for giants games of the law firm where the guy's talking to his daughter and his daughter his little his little daughter maybe four years old or whatever it says what's it mean to hit 300 you remember

this yes and the dad tells her it means you got to hit one out of three times uh and uh that is not what it means but then which is fine but then the guy came back with a follow up commercial where he was basically just like yelling at all the haters who were mad at him for teaching his daughter bad math. And it was just this really weird like you never hear a commercial like this ever. uh they're back you know they they never left they they always have ads uh but this year's ad is an on one because the girl the little girl says something like she's looking forward to the season and the dad says why or something and she says well it's that second year magic and of course what she means is it's like it's an even year. The Giants win the World Series when it's an even year. We all know this. But she says it's that second year magic, which is not a phrase. And I wondered whether the Giants, this is an indication that the Giants have trademarked,

have somehow trademarked even year. Because a couple of innings later, there was a commercial where Denard Spann refers to it being an even year in a ad for the Giants, but they couldn't, apparently they couldn't use, I don't know, maybe they couldn't use, or maybe they chose not to use this extremely common phrase and instead used an extremely uncommon non-phrase. And I'm not convinced that it was a trademark thing, partly because, can you trademark that? But also because I feel like the commercials for this law firm

with the girl and her dad, there's always something wrong. And it almost feels like they're putting something wrong in it. Yeah, for attention. Yeah, so that I'll obsess over this ad because I listened to it every time with fire in my heart because there there's this wrongness. And so I wonder if they actually like, they start with a clean script and they're like, all right, how do we, how do we put a blemish on here? Um, so anyway, the second year magic, what? Um, so anyway, the second year magic, what?

All right. One other thing, uh, a lot of people like me, um, have seen this ad for a cell phone, some cell phone a billion times because it's the first ad that plays at every commercial break on MLB TV this year. Uh, and this is an ad, uh, in which Jason Statham is, uh, looking at his cell phone and then all sorts of wonderment happens around him. And everybody in this world is Jason Statham. And so it's like Jason Statham is the waitress. He's also, you know, the bullfighter and he's also the pop music dancer. It's this, you know, crazy world that exists on your cell phone, right? Because you're doing the YouTube

and you're playing the games and you're doing everything. And they're all Jason Statham. So when I was a, back when Tumblr was a thing, I thought about having a Tumblr that was just focused on unnecessary legalese at the bottom of commercials. So like, like it'll show like a guy driving his car 25 miles an hour down a street, which is just normal driving, right? But it's like professional driver closed course. I think it's okay if people drive the car like that. That's what you're selling it to them for. And so anyway, you'll start to notice a lot of these now that I've told you, but this Jason Statham ad, there's a point where Jason Statham is fighting Jason Statham in a subway car filled with Jason Stathams. And at the bottom it says, dramatization. Didn't really happen.

Good to clear that up. Yeah. All right. There you go Okay Emails from listeners Let's start with one From Brian Hayworth Who has noticed a

Type of fact that he does not Consider fun He says I was listening to the radio broadcast Of the makeup game for yesterday's Red Sox Indians opener. Shortly after Mookie Betts' home run, Red Sox radio broadcaster unleashed the following declaration. Mookie Betts just became the first Red Sox player to homer in multiple opening days before

the age of 24. We have in this statistic the following. Use of arbitrary point in time for considering opening day more important than any other game. Limiting the scope of that stat to a single franchise. Use of additional arbitrary factor. Age and how they decide on 24 is even more puzzling. Perhaps there was a 25-year-old who had done it. Am I overreacting to how bad this is? Are you aware of any stats or bits of trivia that are worse no i have i have noticed this genre of opening day stat the last few days and it's pretty terrible yeah that's right i i completely agree i thank you for bringing it up because i didn't i hadn't really put it together as a as a thing but yes opening day fun facts are the worst fun facts they're there is one i tried to like i i saw a Bryce Harper one. Of course, he has hit home runs in all of his opening days,

four opening days, which is kind of cool, I guess. I'm okay with that. Yeah, that's a pretty good one. Yeah, I mean, ESPN Stats and Info tweeted, Bryce Harper hit his fourth career opening day home run. That's the most in the modern era by a player before turning 24. All right. You see that,

that, that ruined it. Well, I kind of like it because it, it conveys how accomplished he is at such a young age. I like to, I mean, to hit four career opening days before you turn 24,

you have to be some sort of Bryce Harper to do that. So that is kind of cool. don't know yeah so i think that the act is cool that bryce harper is homered in four straight opening days is cool i feel like turning it into a a he's the first to do this and adding extra parameters is where i mean because fun facts are very much like like jokes where the you know the shorter the better in a lot of cases is you you do want them to be tight sometimes you don't sometimes you you know that the expansiveness adds to it like it's a good uh what do you call those jokes the ones that dustin parks tells they're like super long and they play off of the longness of them like the longness becomes part of the joke. Shaggy dog, shaggy dog

story. Anyway, but generally speaking, yes, you want it. Brevity adds to it. And in this case, telling me that nobody's ever done it adds nothing to it. Like I, you want to limit the details you put in the fun fact to those that are necessary or even especially necessary for putting a thing in perspective. And telling me that Bryce Harper has homered in four straight opening days, I already know how old Bryce Harper is. I already know how good he is. I already know how young he is. And the fact is just it reinforces those things that I already know. Adding that nobody has done it by age 24 or 23 or whatever,

now I just have to spend more time thinking like, well, what does that mean? Is that relevant? Are they cherry-picking details to exclude people? And none of them are doing anything other than what I already knew to be true. So they're not adding any perspective. So I was interested when you told me that Bryce Harper had done the four homers in opening day. I was not interested once you told me that they

were trying to sell this as some sort of new achievement in human experience. I will give an allowance for starting pitcher opening day. Fun facts, because there is something significant about being the opening day starter. It is something unique in the sport. Everybody plays on opening day, but only a certain type of pitcher. That's overstated, obviously. I mean, Edmondson, Volquez, and all that.

But only a certain type of pitcher gets to start on opening day, particularly repeatedly. It isn't irrelevant. It is its own sort of form of bold ink on a player's career. And so I'm perfectly happy to hear your Felix Hernandez, Clayton Kershaw, fun facts about opening day, but don't really care about position players. It's just a game as far as I'm concerned. All right. Question from Gordon. Is Vin Scully the person to have seen the most major league games? I'd think 60 plus years would win, but he's cut down his workload lately. Maybe the post-seasons he called make up for that. The only person I can think of would be Connie Mack, but I'm probably missing some candidates. Does the answer change if we include games watched

on television? This is obviously a very difficult question to answer definitively. I sent it to John Thorne, who's the official historian of Major League Baseball and is great. And he said the answer to that would probably have been Connie Mack, but Scully could still see some games after his impending retirement, and he may well have seen them before he called his first game for the Dodgers in 1950. I'm sure he did. Well, I'm not sure he did. You don't think he had seen any major league games before he called them?

Of course I think he had seen some, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was in the dozens. Certainly not 150 a year. No, no. surprise me if it was in the dozens uh-huh no certainly certainly not 100 and you know certainly not 150 a game a year no no so and uh john also said if even if mac played in the first big league game he saw that would have been on september 11th 1886 with his last game seen sometime after his retirement as manager in 1950 maybe as late as 1954. That gives him at least 64 and maybe 68 years. So the answer is not certain if the question posed contains the verb seen, and Scully is still with us, for which we may be grateful. He also added that the full Major League

Baseball season did not reach 154 games until 1904. So Scully may have seen more games per season. In 1886, the season only ran 120 games. So do you think the answer is different? I mean, I would take the field over either one of these guys, I think. I'm not sure. Counting or not counting TV? I think if you're counting TV, you take the field. But if you're not counting TV, there is almost no mathematical way for somebody other than a professional to have done it. Because even if you're a season ticket holder your whole life and you live to 100, you're only getting half the games. There's really no mechanism by which you've seen all the road games except by TV. seen all the road games except by TV and TV hasn't existed long enough to make up the ground. Now, I think in 40 years, counting TV in 40 years, some schmo, maybe it'll be you

will have passed him because TV will have made it possible. And it will then become mostly a test of how long you live and how much free time you have. Well, I guess, but some people just, it's a hobby. I mean, I, you know, a test of how long you live and how much free time you have. Well, I guess, but some people just, it's a hobby. I mean, I, you know, a lot of people watch a baseball game a day. I don't, I don't feel like, I mean, you play games, you play video games, right? So just transfer that time to baseball. Like I don't, to me, it's not, I don't feel like we need to shame people for their, for how they spend their leisure. Um, but it'll basically be who lives long and who lives long. And among the subset of people

who live a long time, who's a ball game a day type of person. And someone will pass Vince Scully. But you can't do it right now. You can't go back further than Vince Scully as a TV watcher. And you can't really match Vince Scully unless you're watching multiple games a day. And then I think you can shame the person for having a bad picture. Yeah, it's tough because the major league condition, I mean, you could say it would be some, you know, grizzled old scout. It could be Art Stewart or something who's seen the most baseball games. But major league games, that would not be the case because most games scouts see are not major league games. It could be a writer. I mean, it could be Roger Angel, for instance, who is 95 and has been seeing games since the 1920s.

I mean, he saw Ruth and Gehrig. He was at Lefty Gomez's first game in 1930. And he was a professional baseball writer for many of those years going to maybe not a game a day, but, but many, many games and books about baseball and how many games it goes to games. How often do you think Roger Angel went to games in his prime? Do you think he would have, would you guess more than a hundred a year? I would think so. I think he was a fixture for, for that period. I don't know how long that period lasted. Of course, he was not covering baseball for the New Yorker immediately. So I don't know. But he was a fan and was going

to games all those years, albeit not every day. So someone like that or someone like Shirley Povich or someone who was covering baseball forever or Seymour Seywaff, who works for the Elias Sports Bureau. I think he's 95 and I think he is still working regularly I don't know how regularly he goes to games but he's I think the oldest or longest running BBWA member since 1952 so someone like that it's possible but it is it's tough to beat the broadcaster who has to be there every day yeah yeah i yeah beat writers uh beat writers definitely the sleeper here huh yeah there's some old beat writer who's who just just did it for 70 years yeah right of course no one's a beat writer at scully's age really by that point you're a

you're a columnist or you're an emeritus or something, so you're not seeing quite as many games in person perhaps. Or it could be just some stadium personnel type person, like some behind-the-scenes person we don't even know about. I was thinking like Pete Sheehy, the Yankees clubhouse guy who was a clubhouse guy forever. He died when he was 75, so it's probably not him, although he had been doing that job since he was a teenager but home games yeah mike murphy for the giants too but it right

mike murphy goes back almost as far as vince gully but home games only same with bob shepherd home games only yeah so it's possible if you know there are a lot of teams there are a lot of people who work those games and you don't necessarily know about them, at least until, you know, there's an article about how they've been doing whatever thing they do for several decades. So maybe one of those people, but yeah, Scully's probably your best bet at this point. Yeah. I would guess that it's more comfortable for Vince Scully to go to a baseball game than it is for almost any other man of his age. And I mean, he has to work. So in that sense, it's like less comfortable. It's, it's laborious, but like he gets a good parking spot and he probably has a comfortable chair. And I'm,

I would guess that if you're in your seventies, that would be significant. Like it's, it's like the human body does not necessarily want to be sitting and watching a baseball game in a public space for three and a half hours uh and all the inconveniences of going to the park of which there are very very many uh probably would keep you from going to games unless it was you know unless it was required of you and so yeah probably vince scully is like yeah he's like barry bonds maybe or hank aaron maybe where uh he was already probably you know ahead of ahead of most people uh well into his career but then really pulled away toward the end because because he kept going every day or at least for him. He does home games and West Coast games.

So even for the last few years, it's 100 plus. He's compiling. Yeah, yeah. Well, he's peak and compiling. He's the guy who did both. He's totally good at it, but yeah. All right. Well, if anyone has any other candidates in mind,

either current or historical, please let us know. There's probably some guy who sells peanuts for both the Yankees and the Mets. Oh yeah. That's possible too. Or yeah. Or who, yeah. Basically who sells peanuts. Although that would still be, I mean, that'd be the same as someone who travels with a team, right? He'd be going to both home games, but that's, you know, the same as going to one team's all games. Right.

But once you allow that somebody can keep pace with Vin for a year, then it just becomes a longevity issue. And it wouldn't surprise me if somebody could have more longevity. I think the reason that I'm so confident in Vin or Connie Mack is that it's almost impossible in person to match them on a year by year basis. Yeah. almost impossible in person to match them on a year by year basis. And so just by, just by every, you know, every year they're building a lead on you. And so then even if you keep going to baseball games into your nineties, well, they've doubled up for most years. But if you're the

peanut guy at both parks, you're keeping pace each year. And all you have to do is last one year longer than Vin. All right. Unfortunately, we can't play index this, but we can play index many other things. Have you play indexed something? Yeah, very, very quickly. Somebody mentioned the three-inning save to me the other day. We got a listener email about it. Yeah, that's who I mean.

It wasn't some other guy. What was the question? I have it. Yes, it's from John, who says, how rare is the three-inning version of the save relative to more noticeable performances, such as no-hitters, cycles, or three-homer games, and should we care?

Well, to the second question, no. It is nothing like a cycle, or it is a negative indicator of how good you are, generally speaking. Yes, and you are no fan of cycles. No, that too somebody else uh ian fraser in fact yesterday alerted me to matt albers coming into a save opportunity yesterday yeah throwing gas 96 yeah it was the seventh it was the seventh inning this is every once in a while somebody will notify me that there someone's in for a safe situation

whoever albers it is not a save situation in the seventh inning. That is not how relievers are used, generally speaking. Usually the three-inning save is not a one-run game. It is a 15-run game, and you get the save because you happened it. It's a weird rule. That you can get this save in this for this performance is very weird it doesn't really fit the spirit of the save at all uh it probably used to back in the day if goose gossage came in to the you know fifth inning up by four and you're like well that's not

fair that he can't get a save you know he saved the game but that's not it's not really in any way comparable to the classic save, where you have emotion and adrenaline and the tying run on deck and so on. So they probably shouldn't call it a save. It needs another word other than save. But for now, we've got the word save. So the question that was asked was, how common is it? How common do you think it has been?

was asked was how common is it how common do you think it has been oh i would guess it happens uh i'll say every uh 50 games okay so every 50 games so that would mean about 50 a year like 46 a year yeah i was gonna say 45 a year i was too but then i felt like i'd just go with the round number all right so this is what i imagined and in fact, this is how it was for much of our upbringing throughout the nineties, for instance, from 92 onward, 52, 42, 35, 52, 46, 37, 38, 54, 40. So it was pretty much exactly 45 a year throughout major league baseball. And then quietly, while we weren't paying attention, it became almost extinct to the point that in 2010, there were only four in all of Major League Baseball. And so since then, it's come back a little. Four was the outlier. But since 2005,

it's been in the teens every year. Last year, well, the teens are lower. Last year, there were 15. The year before that, there were nine. The year before that, 18. The year before that, nine. The year before that, 10. And the year before that, four. So at this point, over the last six years, we're averaging 11 per throughout all of Major League Baseball. And in one sense, this makes sense because we see more and, the bullpen is a place for specialization and one batter and, uh, you know, the seventh inning is Kelvin Herrera's and all of that. But I would have guessed that with this specialization, um, long man itself would become

an even more ingrained specialized role. Uh, and it sort of surprises me that you wouldn't see an uptick in these, because if the whole point of your long man is to keep from having to use anybody else in your bullpen, I would think that, you know, anytime you're up by six or more, you'd bring him in and say, all right, finish it off. Let's give the rest of the bullpen the day off. And, you know, that doesn't seem to be happening. Basically, there is no such thing as a three-inning save guy in the league right now. In fact, I looked at, since 2000, everybody who recorded a three-inning save, how often they did. And there is no active player. Actually, there is, sorry, Brett Anderson is the only active player with more than two of these in his

entire career. And Brett Anderson got all of his, I think, in the same year, probably when he was with, was he with Colorado or with Oakland the year that they made him a reliever? I guess it was with Oakland. And in the span of, actually in the span of 10 days, he got all three of his. They were all exactly three innings.

And so he is, by those, just because of those 10 days, he is the active leader in three inning saves, which sort of goes to show how non-specialized the three inning save is. It has resisted specialization. Only one pitcher active other than him has two uh sorry two pitchers active have two jesse chavez who's now a starter and adam warren who is also now a starter or they use him as reliever anyway so adam warren is i guess maybe the the most the most prolific three inning saver who's still going. But there's essentially none of these. It has become almost extinct.

They happen entirely by accident, I guess, is a way that you could say it at this point. And I don't know that that will always be that way. I could see them bouncing back, but they have not at the moment. So that's your three-inning save rundown. All right. A thing about which you shouldn't care, but now you know a lot. Yeah. All right. A thing about what you shouldn't care, but now,

you know, a lot. Yeah. All right. Use the coupon code BP and you too can subscribe to the play index for the discounted price of $30 on a one year subscription. All right. Question from Nick. So let's say the Cubs do win the world series this year.

What could possibly be next for Theo Epstein in the long term? You've ended the two most famous title droughts in the sport Maybe in all of sports For two of the marquee clubs in the majors You are a team president Is there anywhere left to go? Do you just stay the Cubs president forever and bask in the glory? Do you wait for some other long-suffering team to come along

And offer you a ton of money to try and win them a championship as their president? Do you ditch baseball and try to end famous title droughts in other sports? Jump to Google or some other non-sports company to conquer their issues? Theo is only 42. He could easily have another 25 to 30 years in front of him in his career. And if he manages to win one with the Cubs, I'm having a hard time thinking about where he goes from there. What say you guys? If you were Theo, what would you consider a worthy next challenge?

Hell, what would you even consider a promotion? I forget who it was, but there's some soccer coach who's like a famous soccer coach for some, you know, English Premier League team. And he wrote a book. And I don't know if anybody out here would have seen the book. I don't know how well it was distributed here. But if you travel anywhere else in the world and go to a bookstore, like for a, you know, for a while, it was like, it was just this massively displayed book. Like anywhere I would go in a bookstore, like in an airport or in Singapore or all the many other countries that I go to.

It was this, it was like the book like on display at the front of the store. And I don't know if baseball, if it's possible to be that for baseball, but that is sort of what I would imagine. Like I would kind of imagine that the next challenge is just to be come super famous, to be, to write a book that people still read 50 years from now, uh, or that, you know, sells 6 million copies, uh, and to, uh, join the circuit because Theo is extremely well regarded in the sport, but he is still second to Billy being in the public consciousness. And I could see, I don't know that he would want to not be, but he is still second to Billy Bean in the public consciousness. And I could see, I don't know that he would want to not be, but most people would like to have hundreds of millions of dollars. I could see the challenge just being to become the face of

baseball in a sense. Yeah. I mean, he could put an ownership group together and buy a team. I mean, I don't even know what the point of that is because he already, he has the visibility and he has all the baseball operations power. So I, and more, I guess if he wants business power, he has that too. Like the equivalent, I guess the equivalent in a sport that we follow would, like Phil Jackson would be the sort of highest achieving

non-player person in basketball over the course of the last few decades. And he became something of a guru and moved up in the front office and also went to different, I guess he ran out of challenges as a coach. And so he went, I might be talking foolishness right here, but he became, he went and joined management. He became kind of a guru. He became kind of a celebrity.

And then Mike Krzyzewski stayed where he was and just kept doing it, but did coach the Dream Team. And is there anybody in football? I wouldn't know. Theo could just go to Major League Games for the next 40 years and challenge Vince Scully's record for most games seen. It's one thing he could do. I don't know.

There's nothing like there's no greater highlight. Like there's no better first sentence of your obituary that you can generate while staying in baseball than general managed the Red Sox and the Cubs to their first World Series in forever. I don't know how you could improve upon that while staying in baseball than general managed the Red Sox and the Cubs to their first World Series in forever. I don't know how you could improve upon that while staying in baseball. You could become commissioner or something, but I don't know. Maybe would that be as fun? I don't know if that would be as fun. It wouldn't be as fun and you couldn't, eh. It wouldn't be as fun and it probably wouldn't be something where you could achieve anything in the same sort of vein. It's not like you would top your...

It's not like the natural progression is to win a World Series with the Red Sox, then win a World Series with the Cubs, then negotiate the collective bargaining agreement. There's not a real progression of achievement there. How about the Branch Rickey precedent, which is goes to St. Louis, invents the farm system, builds a great franchise, goes to LA, integrates the sport, builds a great franchise, goes to Pittsburgh. It might just be that we're thinking about this all wrong. I mean, when Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs, he didn't go, well, I'll never top that. He came back the next year and played as well as he could. Mike Trout goes out every year and plays as well as he can. Yogi Berra won a bunch of World Series. It's not like he's like, well,

now they need to come up with a Super World Series for me or I'm not playing. He just went out and tried to win the next one. And so probably he'll stay in Chicago, enjoy that atmosphere until 10 years pass and his 10 year limit kicks in. He supposedly follows. Was it him that follows that? Didn't he cite the Bill Walsh line about how you should leave in 10 years or something? Yeah, I think so. Anyway, and then he'll go to another team and he probably won't think so much about having to amp up. He'll probably just say, well, I've got a season in front of me. I'd like to win this one too. Yeah.

Well, if he wanted to do a DePodesta, I'm sure someone would give him a chance to do that. If he wanted to go become a CEO somewhere, I'm sure he would have that option. He already does. Yeah. He doesn't have to win the World Series. He already has the option. Yeah.

Right. He does. He doesn't have to win topping those achievements if he does achieve the second one in baseball in a different position. But he may be perfectly happy continuing to be really great at what he does and be celebrated for that. All right. Let's take one more maybe from Eric Hartman who says if you were offered a bet where you can bet on as many teams to win the World Series as you want with your opponent getting the field what is the minimum number of teams you would feel comfortable taking BP's playoff odds have the top five teams combining for a greater than 50% chance of winning the championship, but I think I would still take the field. Well, I'd like Eric to explain why. Does he just not believe the World Series odds, the playoff odds, which is fine,

but is that why, or is it less fun? Is it more fun to take the field, or does it feel like to him that while individually each of these teams might have this chance, in fact, they're mutually exclusive in a way that you can't sum them or what? I'm not sure. I think I would take five in the typical year. Some years five would be better than others. But I think five seems like about right.

But then I'm looking, let's see, the Royals would not have been one of those five last year. The Giants wouldn't have been one of those five the year before. The Red Sox wouldn't have been one of those five the year before that. The Giants wouldn't have been one of those five the year before that. The Cardinals probably would have been one of those five in 2011. The Giants wouldn't have been in 2010. That's only six years, but in those six years you would have lost.

Before that, though, you probably would have done okay it's hard to know you could study this and explore it but five seems about right doesn't it like don't you think that the uh there's only there's 30 teams you can at this year you can pretty much rule out seven or eight. And so then you have your five against a field of 17. So just matching up, like ignore the playoff odds. Pretend that you haven't seen them, Ben. All right, so say your five. I'm going to pick your five for you. One of your five is the Dodgers.

But the Dodgers aren't that much more likely than the Giants. So just as far as matching the field to the pick, like the BP writers essentially chose the Giants to be as favored in the NL West as the Dodgers are. Yeah. So maybe you're only getting a little bit of an edge there against the field. The Mets would be your pick, one of your five.

But I picked the Nationals over the Mets, and so that's almost a push between those two teams. The Cubs would be your pick, and that's a really strong one. There's no one team that can match them. But do the Cardinals and the Pirates combined match them? I mean, you figure the Cubs, maybe they do. So maybe you've got a match there. The Indians would be one of your five but

you know the indians playoff odds seem too high to me and then there's no team in the al east that you could pick that would have a sizable advantage over the other teams in the ales and then the astros the astros seem kind of clear in the aos but again by much. And we had a lot more writers pick the Rangers. So just there, I mean, I've managed to find, almost match the five with the field and I still have like nine teams left. So maybe I require six. Yeah. Five instinctively feels a little low to me. If you do add up the five top playoff odds or world series odds this year. You get, I think, 55.4% right now. So you get a little extra margin above 55, but it does feel low. Just going by gut, it seems low, but I don't statistically necessarily have an argument

for why it wouldn't make sense. an argument for why it wouldn't make sense. But if I hadn't seen those odds, if Eric hadn't included the factoid that five gets you over 50%, I probably would have said I would want more than five. Historically, if you just picked the Yankees, you'd have like a one in three chance. That's true. Yeah. So maybe this is just a current parody environment of baseball thing where it feels tough now, but 20 years ago, it would have felt like an easy decision. Yeah, probably that. I am not getting to some good questions, but we'll get to those next week. You can keep them coming at podcast at baseball prospectus.com or by message messaging us through Patreon. If you're a Patreon supporter, by the time most people hear this episode, I will be holding a physical finished copy of our book in my hands,

which I'm extremely excited about. I knew it. Not the, not the cheapo paper advanced reader copy, but the one with pictures and the dust jacket. The one that you will all have in a few weeks if you want one. Yeah. I knew it would be at some point this week. We were told we would get it at some point this week, but we weren't told which day. And yesterday I got a book size package and I couldn't immediately account for it. So I thought for sure it was our book and I tore it open like Christmas morning. And it was a copy of one of my former Grantland colleague, Louisa Thomas's biography of Louisa Adams, which I'm looking forward to reading.

But there was a moment of deflation when I realized that it wasn't our book before I then got excited about being able to read that book again. So I am really looking forward to getting this book unless I open it and it's missing a chapter like the 1996 annual or something, but our editor says it is not, and then it looks great. So you can go pre-order a copy now and you'll have one soon. The book is called The Only Rule Is It Has To Work and it comes out on May 3rd. And it's the story of how we ran an independent league baseball team last summer. You can support the podcast on Patreon

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You can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. And you can hear us here tomorrow, which is when we will be back. There are more questions than answers. And the more I find out, the less I know. Yeah, the more I find out, the less I know.