Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 876: The Thanks for Buying Our Book Edition

Episode Date: May 4, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about book events and answer listener emails about baseball’s Leicester City, the batting order, Rich Hill, Manny Machado and more.

Well, Martin Perez was effectively wild today, or wildly effective, one or the other. It's like a compliment from your right hand. It's like Jonestown all over again. Ups and downs and there you go. It's the highs and lows of being number one. Ups and downs and there You're always the highest And those that beat number one 538 joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hey Ben. Just a quick note if you are in the New York area there is sort of a low key launch party for the book tomorrow Thursday May 5th at 6pm

at the Corner Bookstore on Madison and 93rd. You can just show up and get a book signed or say hello or eat some cheese cubes or something and if you're not in the New York area then you're out of luck. But at least your rent is low. Anything you want to bring up?

No, I like that, though. I'm neither in the New York area, nor is my rent low, though. Yeah, that's true. You live in the one area where you can not be in New York and still have rents just as high. You have an event coming up in Petaluma on May 20th. Tell me about it. I don't know much about it. I know it's at Copperfield's Books. I guess that's an important point. It's at Kentucky Street in Petaluma, 7 p.m. on the 20th, and you will be there reportedly, and you will be joined by a few Stompers. Yeah, yeah. I think subject to change, but I believe Theo will be there,

and I believe Sean Conroy will be I believe Sean Conroy will be there Sean Conroy will be at the event tomorrow No kidding No kidding Oh man, stealing my thunder Yeah And there are a couple intervening events There's an event in Washington next Wednesday

And another one in New York next Thursday You can find the info as well as everything else About the book on the website at the only rule is it has to work.com. Is the one in Washington a joint book event or is it just you? I believe it is going to be some kind of Q&A at Busboys and Poets that will be moderated by Barry Sverluga, who wrote The Grind and writes about baseball for the Washington Post. Cool. That sounds really fun. Barry's great. Yep.

Barry's worth going for. Yeah, I'm just a bonus Great writer, great reporter Great understander of the game Alright, anything you want to banter about? Not today Then we will launch right into the email show And we'll start with A couple responses to

One of our topics from yesterday About juiced baseballs and how if MLB were to tinker with the baseballs They should just come right out and say that they did that And then there would be no subterfuge and no suspicion and we wouldn't mind And Michael emailed about something that I knew about Although I didn't bring it up on the podcast yesterday He said the NCAA actually did this Last year, to near universal

Approval. They deadened the bats in 2011 and overshot the mark a little So the college game entered an Extreme dead ball era out of nowhere for Four years. It became next to impossible To hit a ball out at the new ballpark in Omaha Which was built with the gorilla ball bats In mind, and therefore is huge

And faces into steady headwinds in June So they lowered the seams on the ball In 2015 To roughly the standard for the minor league ball And home runs and to a lesser degree Strikeouts shot up So they came out and said they were going to do that And they did that and it worked

And I guess no one minded too much Although they were kind of Counteracting another change that they had made. So I don't know if that changes anything. Like they had tampered and everyone knew it. And then they tampered again and they fixed it and everyone knew it. But I don't know if the NCAA has, obviously it doesn't have the same weight of tradition and the players are not paid. And so there isn't as much attention,

there isn't as much other stuff that surrounds these sort of decisions. And another listener named Matt wrote in sort of about that and said, I completely get behind your reasoning for why the league should be comfortable with admission of altering the ball should it be true. Everyone gets the same ball, every team would be affected in the same way. But what if the one group is going to object aspect of it is something that I meant to bring up. And we should have, one of us should have said it, because that might be the case. And, you know, it's probably, yeah, I mean, they would complain. Pitchers would complain. I don't know. I don't know how much political capital you need to get something like that

through. I don't know how much, I don't know what the union stance on this would be. I don't know how much political capital you need to get something like that through. I don't know how much, I don't know what the union stance on this would be. I don't know how long the pitcher's objections would persevere, but it would certainly complicate things. Would you care if you were a pitcher and every pitcher had to play with the same ball? I mean, it doesn't. Well, no, I wouldn't. But I, you know, I choose very carefully what to care about. And I feel, let's see, would I care? I'm trying to think if I've ever been in a position that was so, that was anything remotely like Major League Baseball. I don't think there's an analogy in any of my jobs.

Yeah. I mean, I would prefer to be a pitcher in a dead ball era than a juiced ball era. I mean, there's no real reason. It doesn't affect you and your status relative to other players. It shouldn't affect your pay. The only thing it really affects is just kind of, I guess, how powerful you feel and just how good about yourself you feel, the kind of positive or negative feedback you get from each pitch. I mean, maybe it's just demoralizing to watch someone hit a 450-foot home run, even if the new standard is higher, even if that's not any higher above the average home run. It still probably feels a little bit worse. Yeah. I don't think I would mind, probably.

It's really hard for me to say that. I don't know. I don't think I would mind, probably. It's really hard for me to say that, I don't know, the psychology, I can't think of a good comparison for it in life or even really in baseball. And so I have to think more about the psychology of seeing more home runs but having them be, you know, in a vacuum, no real change. It's a hard question. Ben, it's a hard, it's a, Ben, it's a hard question. It sure is. All right. Question from Andrew. Tonight on CBS Evening News, Scott Pelley was reacting to Leicester City winning the Premier League with preseason odds of 5,000 to one. He then stated that 5,000 to one was quote, as unlikely as a minor league baseball

team winning the World Series. Now, I think the fallacy of this statement speaks for itself. I mean, by definition, a minor league team can't win the World Series. However, I know you guys like to go deep. So I was wondering, let's say one minor league team got invited to the playoffs based on some level-weighted calculation of overall performance. They would obviously be the best team in the minor leagues that season, but how could we assess their odds of winning the World Series? And so I was just chatting with our friend, baseball prospectus,

author Russell Carlton, who is good at doing back-of-the-envelope calculations like this. And so we started with the assumption that a replacement level team wins around 47 games and that this is a replacement level team, that this is the best team in AAA. And so it's the closest kind of thing. It's a team full of replacement players who you would promote if the 25th man on your major league roster got hurt. So I would say it's a replacement level team. Interesting. You guys came to a different conclusion than I did just on that i would have probably put them higher than a replacement level but good fine i don't think i would i don't because that would imply that

well i guess there could be better teams than a replacement level team but if you use that assumption then most wins above replacement methods treat replacement level at around a 47 win team. And Russell just assumed that playoff teams on the whole are around 90 win teams. So it's a 294 winning percentage team playing a 555 winning percentage team. And so Russell calculated that the replacement level team would win about a quarter of the time and your chance of winning a five game division series with that sort of odds 10.3 percent and your chance of winning a seven game series is 7.1 percent and you'd have to do it again in the world series with the same odds so the probability of all three happening rus Russell calculated, is about five hundredths of a percent or one in 1940.

And that is not factoring in that's not factoring in home field advantage, which the better team would have. So he thinks it would be something like a one in 2000 shot for the minor league team. And that's assuming no wild card game. If you had a wild card game, you multiply that by about by about three. And so now you're at one in 6,000. And the average playoff team is maybe a 55% winning percentage. But at some point, you're assuming that there's some logic to who advances in the playoffs. You're not going to face the average all the way through probably. It's more likely that you're going to face a better team later on and so while your chances of playing the worst playoff teams that bring down the average might go up a little bit uh your chances of beating the better playoff teams that bring the average up a little bit would be worse and i believe the way that math works is that that would actually make the odds longer. And so I'm shocked that it is comparable.

Well, I'm shocked that it's comparable. I would have guessed much lower. Like if you'd asked me to just guess, I would have probably said like one in 80. That's how far off I am. And I don't even know whether Scott Pelley Meant this like if he said A minor league team winning the World Series Maybe he was assuming that they'd have to Play the regular season first which

If that happened the odds would be Astronomically against them Because so many games Well except there is no playoffs In the Premier League And so in fact the analogy Would be only the regular season what are the odds that they would have The best The analogy would be only the regular

What are the odds that they would have the best record at the end of the regular season And then again The odds would be infinitesimal Yeah That would be like a replacement level team Is significantly It would be basically like Well it would be worse than the 2013 Astros odds

Of having the best record in baseball Yeah right So it's a decent comp worse than the 2013 Astros odds of having the best record in baseball. Yeah, right. So it's a decent comp. Yeah, well, it's actually not. It underrates how difficult it would be for the minor league team to do this. Right, yeah. The other thing is that that 5,000 to 1 odds that get passed around, I don't think that that necessarily actually reflects in any way

how likely they were to win. It's an odds. It's like nobody's like really calculating it at that degree of specificity. They're not, I don't think they're running Sims, for instance. And once you get past, even once you get past, you know, one in 300 or something like that. There's between one in 300 and one in, you know, 10 million is fairly small to the human eye. And so I wouldn't really assume that they had any actual idea. I mean, when you hear the comparison that, you know, like bookies would take 5,001 on them and bookies would also take 5,001 on Elvis being alive, sort of puts in perspective that these are not empirically derived odds at that level. At that level, they're just willing to take your money. Yeah. And who knows what they really think the odds are. My guess is that they, if you asked a

bookie really what they think the odds are, they would be much lower because they're just trying to get money. And I think that once you get to 5,000 to 1, they see it as basically free money. And probably a bookie would have really estimated something like, I don't know, 1 in 30,000. I mean, like the Elvis one is essentially impossible. Or some of the other ones that get brought up, they're impossible. And so 1 in 5,000 is a synonym In bookie terms for Impossible

So maybe that is Maybe then that does make the minor league team comp Good because we're Concluding that it's much worse than 1 in 5,000 Yeah It's probably also the case That they weren't really 1 in 5,000 Odds Probably there's a fundamental probably it's probably also the case that they weren't really want five thousand one odds that

probably there there's a fundamental misunderstanding about the level of talent on the team or whatever and that really if you had some sort of god bookie uh they would have been much better but that's also beside the point although it's not beside the point with the minor league analogy with the minor league analogy we basically do know if analogy, we basically do know. If I had done an estimate, I probably would have underrated how difficult it was also, just because we are so used to talking about the playoffs as if anything can happen and it's just random and it's a crapshoot. But that presupposes that every team in the playoffs is pretty good, and they're all roughly as good as any of the other teams in the playoffs. Whereas you have one that's way, way, way worse and is essentially from a different league, then it's still enough games that it would

be very difficult to do. Yeah, I wrote about that when the Royals and the Orioles were marching through the playoffs in 2014. And I think I might have been responding to Zachary Levine, And I think I might have been responding to Zachary Levine, who was saying that I think he was using that as evidence that the playoff system is sort of dumb and pointless. And we took the playoff odds and ran the simulations. And when you have teams that the system sees as clearly worse, in fact, seven games is pretty good for figuring out who's best if there's a and at the time pakoda for instance thought that the pakoda and the royals of course but pakoda thought that the angels were considerably better than the royals and that whoever the other team was in the playoffs that year was considerably better than the orioles uh and that seven games in almost in most cases seven game series and five game series would be enough.

And that what the Orioles and Royals had done wasn't a matter of the playoffs being pointless and true coin flips and no fun. But in fact, the Orioles and Royals had managed to do something that combined were like, you know, like a one in 40 shot or something like that, which one in 40s happen. And you have to kind of be cautious about drawing too many conclusions when the one in 40 does happen. All right. Question from Sam, who is a Patreon supporter. There is a five hour energy commercial on MLB TV featuring Jose Fernandez where he the 5-hour energy and goes on to throw a pitch to some anonymous batter. While releasing the pitch, you can see he has a four-seam fastball grip on the ball, which then rolls up off the top of his two fingers. Definitely a four-seamer. Then they show the pitch in flight in slow motion, rolling with backspin and with all four seams turning over each time around. Good, definitely still a four-seamer. Then they show the batter preparing to swing,

and before the ball enters the frame, I'm thinking, please get it right. But no, the ball dives down almost on top of the plate, and the batter swings over it out in front. How do we think about this one? Obviously, this requires more detailed knowledge than can be looked up on Baseball Reference. Even baseball fans who know the difference between a fastball and a curveball on TV might not realize the mistake from the grip or the spin. I'm a nerd, so I noticed.

In other words, whom do we blame and how much? I have seen this ad, but I have not seen it since this email. And so I'm now watching it. Hang on. Boy, it is. Hang on. Okay. Boy, it is.

I think that the four-seamer versus slider movement, for people who haven't seen it, the shot goes first facing Fernandez. As he releases the ball, the camera is facing Fernandez. So it is not from behind the mound. Fernandez is essentially throwing the ball at the camera. And then it's from above. And then it cuts to, uh, basically a,

the check swing cam, you know, the one that you see from the first base camera well, yeah. Uh, that's facing the batter. Okay. And so you really only see the ball for six feet. And so you don't see the full flight of the ball. It isn't like you see the movement of a full pitch. You just see the fly to the ball for six feet. And so I would say that the, because of that, if it were from behind the mound and you were seeing the pitch as you normally see the pitch, then I would think that it would be a little bit more important that the movement would be consistent throughout with the grip. But in this case, I do not hold the commercial to that standard. I will only so so that to me is not a problem it almost doesn't matter what fernandez's grip was to me i do think though that this is just a bad

a badly acted swing and this is a sub genre of bad baseball uh understanding is just that people who are handed a bat and told to act like they're playing baseball, who are not baseball players, have a very hard time doing it convincingly. I wrote, I don't know, do you remember the piece I wrote about baseball in non-baseball movies? Yeah. I liked that piece. You should link to that piece. I analyzed the baseball play in the movie Hook In the TV show

High School Musical 2 I believe was a baseball themed High School Musical And one other And this is The mechanics of the swing aren't bad But it looks like he's swinging It almost looks like they photoshopped

The ball in after It doesn't look like the guy is swinging at the ball. He's just taking a cut. And in fact, this is such, I think that this is, I don't think there was a baseball. I don't think a baseball existed in this commercial. I think this is green screen baseball or something. Okay. Digital baseball.

George Lucas baseball. It's a very quick, sharp eye too, because it's only the shot that is in dispute is like a frame, maybe two frames. It's very quick. They do not linger on it. But yeah, he's just not swinging at the ball. He is way behind it. He is miles behind this pitch. So at least the velo they got right.

But it's just a Bad swing all right well That's hardly rates on the Spectrum of bad baseball ads They did they did pop for the umpire Though they spent an extra 80 bucks to make sure They had an all right well good eye Sam But most people do not have your

Eye so they probably can Get away with that very easily you know I'm not sure that the they show a close-up of the guy's hands too as they move from load to swing and then they so they then cut from that to the full shot of the swing and i'm not sure that it's the same swing i'm not 100 sure it's the same guy all right mark wants to know if Manny Machado is the best shortstop in baseball. Manny Machado, of course, is playing some shortstop now with J.J. Hardy on the disabled list. Is Manny defensively? Is that the question?

Well, he actually doesn't specify. I assumed that that was what it meant, but he doesn't say. Yeah, well, sure. I think the answer is probably yes. Overall, yes. Overall. As long as Andrelton Simmons exists, there's no reason to say anyone else is better. There was a post at Tango's site recently where he looked at just how great a third baseman Manny Machado is, and he really has been great. says that but tango kind of did a an almost like a dumb version of advanced defensive stats and just looked at outrates with certain pitchers with machado and without machado and it was very clear

that machado really is great and maybe even so great that he takes some balls he steals some balls from the shortstop playing to his left so he is probably still an elite defensive shortstop playing to his left. So he is probably still an elite defensive shortstop, I think, even moving over there. I mean, we've talked before about how you shouldn't necessarily assume that someone switching positions will just make that switch seamlessly. Of course, he has played plenty of shortstop before, but it might take a little time to adjust to the new angle. But there's no reason to think that he's not among the best shortstops in baseball, probably. I mean, just purely defensively. But overall, I don't know,

who else would you even make a case for over Machado? Yeah, the I mean, the basic idea, like in a very simplistic way of looking at positional switches in a very basic way, practically speaking, different players have different skills and it doesn't work out this smoothly. But a guy who moves from one position to another, if he's moving to a harder position, his defensive rating will drop, but his value will rise in coordination because he's going to the tougher position and he gets the higher positional adjustment. And theoretically, those more or less should match. If you have the skills for the position, those should more or less match and it shouldn't really matter, right? That's kind of a premise of positional adjustments. And so Mike Trout, theoretically, playing left, center, or

right should basically have the same value. And if he can handle it, Manny Machado playing short third or second should basically have the same value, right? I think we would probably generally agree that if that is going to, if that's not true, it's true. It's not true in the sense that a player who moves down the defensive spectrum might have a harder time keeping his defensive value if he's playing at a less demanding position just because he's not going to quite have the same number of chances and you're losing the positional adjustment. So if Manny Machado can play shortstop though, then there's no reason to think that his war would go down because of it.

And everybody, I think, pretty much agrees from a scouting perspective that Manny Machado does have the skills to play shortstop, that he's an absolutely qualified shortstop, that he's probably a good defensive shortstop. level unless you think that Francisco Lindor or Carlos Correa is the player that they were last year over the course of a full season and perhaps even improving with age and I'm just not there yet but there's also a by the way there's a there's a shot of the ball hitting the catcher's glove and then it immediately cuts to a close-up of the catcher's glove with the ball now eight inches away from it so they're showing the they're showing the ball land in the catcher's Glove kind of twice and those Are two different pitches being caught

By two by the catcher The catcher's arm is in completely different positions So I don't think that We can trust this commercial I'm not giving this commercial Any any benefit of the doubt All right Christopher says about three Years ago Byron Buxton was supposed to Be the next Mike Trout.

If not the next Willie Mays, right? He had all the tools, was going to be the next No Doubt twin superstar, and was projected to be one of the most exciting players in the game. But in the majors, he's completely lost at the plate, and he's been terrible. I understand that he had a couple of injuries that might have slowed his progress, but he still hit very well at every level of the minors. So what are the odds he ends up never making it? If I were to take a bet just based on their tool sets, I'd say that Joey Gallo is much more likely to end up a bust. But is there any basis to that? Are contact slash speed

slash line drive guys more likely to live up to their promise than strikeout slash home run guys? Or is this mostly a case of the twins jerking him around and not giving him a chance to fail? I don't even know if it's a chance to fail or whether he didn't even have that much of a chance to succeed. He was promoted very aggressively and he did hit. But, I mean, you know, he played 30 games at high A. He played 59 games at double A. And then he played another 20, 25 at triple A. games at AA, and then he played another 20, 25 at AAA, and he was good at each of those stops, but not overwhelming. Not, well, he clearly has nothing else to learn here. There were some

high BABIPs and things. It seemed like, you know, he had a 500 BABIP at AAA in one of his stops there, and the 385 BABIP at AAA and his most recent stop, I guess that's since his demotion this year. But I don't think he necessarily demonstrated that he was ready for a promotion. I mean, I don't know that we've seen a trend in recent years toward teams just seemingly being smarter about promoting their prospects or maybe just players being so prepared by the increased sophistication of amateur ball that they are now ready earlier. But there's been research that showed that aging curves have kind of changed and that you don't really see the typical arc where guys come up and they struggle and then they

get better and then they reach their peak and then they decline again. They just kind of are productive almost from Day one and it seems like that Might have something to do with teams getting smarter About player development and Knowing when players are ready But in this case I don't know I mean Buxton

The comp that That scout Jason Parks talked to I think it was that got all the attention And he said he was the next Willie Mays and that his floor was Torrey Hunter, which is a pretty good floor for a prospect who hasn't arrived yet. So I wouldn't doubt that he's still going to be a very good player, but I think you could make a pretty good case that he was rushed. Yeah. I think that he's the kind of player, well, if I were to rush a player, it would be the guy who's an elite defender with great speed. Because that's the closest thing to pitcher stuff in the sense of the aging curve.

He is right now, Pocota would say, and maybe others would say, that he right now a a valuable baseball player even if he can't really hit uh because he brings so much value with his defense and that is largely a large part of that is due to his speed and that's going to just go straight downhill it's already probably going downhill um and you don't want him to come up and have an OPS of 460 or whatever. And at that point, then yeah, you have to do something else maybe. But I don't think anybody expected that kind of struggle from him. Even if you didn't think he was going to hit like Torrey Hunter right now, he still has the potential to be a valuable player, just like Billy Hamilton is largely a bust and also largely a valuable player. And I think that the, you know, I still think that the floor is Drew Stubbs, probably, which is a perfectly adequate ballplayer. Now, the counter argument is that he's not the guy you rush,

because you have the potential to develop a true superstar who wins MVP awards. And if you're doing anything to imperil that, then you shouldn't do it. And so maybe he has the kind of skill, the tools profile of a guy that you rush, but the actual overall profile of a guy that you take it a little bit easier with. But if I'm looking at players who are likely to be a bust, depending on how you define bust, Who are likely to be a bust Depending on how you define bust I would take the elite defender At a demanding position Probably as the safest prospect in baseball

Floor wise And so a guy like Gallo Would not be that By the way, one other thing It seems clear to me that the reason they cut to the glove For the second shot Is that the glove Explodes in a cloud of dust.

Yes, you just sent me a screenshot and you can barely tell that there's a glove in there. It's just sort of dust or chalk or something just surrounding the glove. I just wanted to make sure that I'm not crazy. That's not what catcher's gloves do when a baseball hits them, right? I don't think so. There might be a slight puff if there's something on the glove or the ball, but I've never seen anything like that. This basically looks like a cartoonist's caricature of a hippie van.

It's just a cloud of smoke around it. It's like Pigpen, the Peanuts character, but as a catcher's glove. It's like Howl's Moving Castle. Right. I will put a picture of this screenshot in the Facebook group. I'm almost sure that that's my last thing. Okay. Then why don't you do a Play Index segment? All right. So this Play Index was inspired by a question that I was asked about play index yesterday by Mike. I'm going to guess scope. And he wanted to know how rare the catcher batting leadoff is because what, maybe JT Realmuto did it? I'm not sure. And so he said, how many others? So I did a play index, and over the past decade, not counting Real Muto, who I'm going to trust actually did it, there have been eight catchers who started a game in the leadoff spot. John Jaso is 60 of them, Russell Martin is 38, and then Kurt Suzuki, 25, Pudge, 20, Kendall, 16, Derek Norris, 4, John Lucroy, 2, Gerald Laird 1. So it is very rare. And I just started thinking about how we talk about batting order, batting lineup, optimal batting lineups. In terms of where you put your best hitters, we very rarely, for good reason,

but we very rarely think about the connection between certain positions and lineup spots. The only exception to that is pitcher. Pitcher is always bad at ninth until recently when pitchers sort of stopped hitting ninth. And some of them started hitting eighth. And last year, 284 times a pitcher batted eighth, which is the most in history. And in fact, is that through the through the first you know 80 years of baseball I think it had happened about 20 times and then it started picking up with Tony La Russa in the 2000s and last year 284 this year it's on pace to have even more than that and so that one clear

connection between position and lineup position is sort of falling away. And so nonetheless, though, there are some positions that, just because of the skills required, are more likely to bat in different positions in the lineup, spots in the lineup. And it also seems plausible to me, if not necessarily confirmable, that there is some tendency of managers to see a player as suited to a particular spot in the lineup because of his position. That given the choice between two batters who are otherwise similar, you know, one might be more likely to bat in one spot because, specifically because he's a's a catcher specifically because he's a first baseman and that just kind of clouds the manager's assessment of that player and he sees it as a variable even though it is maybe not a good one so i want to play a game with you ben i want to play uh the game the old price is right game in which a person was given five numbers and had to put them in the order that he thought the price of the car was. And then he had to ask, gentlemen, do I have at least one number right in the price of the car? Gentlemen, do I have at least two numbers right in the price of the car?

Do you remember this game? It wasn't a big Price is Right watcher. You're kidding. No. Oh, I was a big Price is Right watcher. So the point is that the contestant had to order the numbers correctly. And if he didn't order it correctly, then he got one more chance to get it right. But he was not told which ones he got wrong. He was only told how many he got wrong, which made this the most frustrating game, I think, in the world. Because you could get three of the five right, but you don't have any idea. So then you do it again. And you might, it's like, it was almost like Mastermind.

It was like the, a little bit like the game Mastermind. Did you play, did you play Mastermind, Ben? No. You're kidding. You didn't play Mastermind? No. Great, great, great board game. It's kind of a pocket size board game,

almost a travel game. Great game. Anyway, so I want you, Ben, I have deduced the most common batting order by position for the years 2015 and 2016. So for instance, making things up, if first baseman batted lead off more than anything else, and third baseman batted second more than anything else, then those would be their order. Okay. All right. So I've now got the most typical batting order in this day and age. And I want to see if you can put the positions in the right order.

Okay? Okay. So go. All right. So do I have to start with anything in particular? No, just who's leading off or whatever. Okay. I'm going to say first baseman hit third okay and by the

way one quick detail only i'm only looking at games where the dh rule is not in effect okay so i'm giving you the ninth spot the ninth spot pitcher all right and no dh don't worry about dh okay so i'm just kind of guessing these based on the ones i feel most confident about. So first base, third spot in the lineup. Short stop, eighth spot in the lineup. Catcher, seventh spot in the lineup. I kind of have an association in my mind between second baseman and second hitter. Maybe that's an outdated one

because the second spot has sort of changed or seems to be evolving now. So I'll say leadoff hitters are center fielders. I'll say left fielders bat cleanup. How many? That's five. You've got two spots left, fifth and sixth, and you've got third base and right field remaining. All right.

Well, I will put them in those spots. So I'll just say right field fifth and third base sixth. All right. Ben, you have got Four correct plus the pitcher So five correct plus the pitcher Alright which ones did I get? I mean including the pitcher I don't tell you that's why this game is the worst

But here's the one Redeeming factor of this game Is that you only get One second chance If you had as many chances as you want You'd go forever And we would all just Hate it but you're only gonna

We're only gonna have to put up with this one more time So you have five correct Four wrong try again Alright See I could have gotten some wrong In ways that are almost indistinguishable Right I could have I'm gonna give you a hint.

Okay. That is the case. Okay, then. All right. So I'm going to say that third basemen are not sixth place hitters. They are, in fact, fifth place hitters. And I'm going to say that... I said left fielders are cleanup.

I'll say right fielders are cleanup. And I guess that means left fielders now cleanup i'll say say right fielders are cleanup okay and uh i guess that means left fielders now have moved to sixths in the lineup okay and uh-oh now you've rotated three around now you can't move one without removing another one well that's not good where did i put second basement before did i put them in the second spot? You did. All right. I don't know if I'm comfortable with that. Maybe I should move second baseman to leadoff and center fielders to second. Mike Trout has batted some second.

He's a center fielder. Okay. All right. Do I have to do anything else? Well, now you've changed five. Oh. And you already had five correct. You only had to change four.

Well, I guess I'm screwed. Okay. All right. Did I get better or worse? Let me check. You got overall, you're the same. You've got four wrong. You were on the right track, and you kind of got, you kind of, the moving three around and not having a, you were very close, okay, to getting it right.

But the actual – you said center fielder first. That's correct. Yeah. And in fact, center fielder batting leadoff is the most common position lineup order spot combination. No position is more likely to bat in one spot than center fielders first. Second baseman second is still true, although just very narrowly third basemen have edged up very close to them. First basemen do not bat third. Right fielders, well, okay. So this one,

Ben, I should give it to you because first basemen do bat third more often than right fielders, but only by a little bit. But first basemen bat clean up more than right fielders by a lot and so i had to give third the third spot to right field because it was truer than the uh having them in in the cleanups but but you were close i could almost give you this because otherwise yeah i could almost give this to you because otherwise you got it right um in the second round third baseman do bat fifth most left fielders do bat sixth catchers do bat seventh short stops do bat eighth all right uh and short stops batting no catchers batting seventh oddly is the second most third most uh common first baseman batting cleanup is the second most and then catchers batting seventh is the third most which third most common. First baseman batting cleanup is the second most. And then catchers batting seventh is the third most,

which is weird because it seems like catchers, there's a pretty wide distribution of talent. And a lot of teams' catchers are really horrible. Maybe they don't, maybe managers don't like to put them in front of the pitcher, though, because if a catcher gets on first, it's harder to sacrifice them over because they don't have the speed. Hatcher gets on first. It's harder to sacrifice them over because they don't have the speed.

All right. Going back to a couple of previous generations, actually just one, I went back to 1978 to see what it was like back then, and it was very different. Back then, not center fielders, but short stops batted leadoff, and by a huge margin. Center fielders batted second, not second baseman, but center fielders batted second by a huge margin center fielders batted second not second baseman but center fielders batted second by a huge margin all right right fielders batted third by a huge margin left fielders batted cleanup by a huge margin first baseman batted fifth fifth of all places by a

wide margin and then it narrows six seven eight but catchers batted sixth third baseman batted seventh and second baseman batted seventh, and second baseman batted eighth, which is kind of weird because I always think of, I think of this generation as being more in touch with the value of third base defense. I mean, certainly learning positional adjustments a decade or so ago changed my view of how important the position is defensively. to my view of how important the position is defensively. And yet, in fact, it looks like we're moving toward a more offensive oriented position in practice. So there are a lot of changes. And the biggest change, though, is that left fielders have been moving steadily down from

the clear cleanup hitter in the 70s to the number five hitter in the 90s and to now the number six hitter today. Looking at left field offense, it has actually been going down. It's not a perfectly smooth line, but in the 60s or I guess in the 70s, left fielders generally had a OPS plus relative to the rest of the positions in the you know 115 ish range uh in the 80s it was kind of in the 112 ish range uh in the 90s it was about the same in the 2000s it went up for a brief period you know why right yeah it seriously like I think it's just Barry Bonds because it went up to like 116, 117, and I think it's probably entirely Barry Bonds. As soon as Bonds quit playing every day and then retired, it dropped down to about 110.

And then now, in this decade, it's in the 1-0s. Really, for the first time, left field offense is barely better than league average. This year, they have an OPS plus of 105. Last year, it was 104. That's the second lowest in our timeframe. The lowest was in 2011, 102. So strangely, left field, which is generally seen as almost the equivalent of first base for defensive reasons, that's where you would put your slowest guy Has in fact become a lot less of an offensive position And I could see that being one of two reasons One is that teams have reassessed the value of left field defense

And we do see that with speed guys like Crawford or Gardner Or even Alex Gordon They produce tremendous value in left field And so maybe teams have realized that left fielders can add a lot of defense value. Or maybe it's that teams are using left field almost like a second DH, where you just don't plan for it. You treat it as a position that you can fill rather easily from replacement level sources or from whoever needs to move off a position or whatever. And so it's become a little bit more of a cycle spot

and therefore not as high a caliber of player is being slotted in there at the beginning of the year. All right, cool. Use the coupon code BP, get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription to the Play Index. All right, so we do have a couple Rich Hill questions. I know you would enjoy those. They are both pretty interesting. Let's take this one from Andrew Patrick, who is a Patreon supporter. I have a theory about Rich Hill.

Let's say that Hill, having earned $3 million before this year and having invested it wisely, doesn't care too much about money and just wants to win a World Series. When pondering which team to join, he is approached by the A's. He immediately rebuffs their advances, saying that the A's don't look like competitors this year. I know Bean explains, and that's the great thing. Sign with my team for one year and $6 million. I will guarantee you a rotation spot, and when the trade deadline rolls around, I will trade you to the competitor of your choice.

Rich Hill wins in this scenario because he gets to see which teams are for real and which aren't and maximize his odds of winning it all. And Billy Bean wins because he gets prospects to load up on for next year when he trades what looks like a dominant starting pitcher. How close do you think this is to the truth? Hmm. Well, I'm a little bit skeptical just because it's kind of complicated. And I don't know that Rich Hill, in the position he was in, with a fairly uncertain career ahead of him, and potentially this being his last real chance at getting paid, was thinking about anything other than setting himself up for a nice retirement if it came to that. paid was thinking about anything other than setting himself up for a nice retirement if it came to that. That said, I think the one benefit that isn't mentioned here is that if this scenario were semi-agreed upon and came to pass, he also would not be eligible for a qualifying offer when he hits free agency. As it is, does Rich Hill seem like a plausible qualifying offer candidate? Yeah. Uh-huh.

I think so. Yeah, even though he's maybe not going to be in a position to get a very long deal anyway and so might just take the $15-16 million. That's true. And the A's not wanting to. Yeah, I mean, totally contingent on the rest of the season. But if he were to pitch something approximating a full season at his current level of production, then I think he'd be a pretty strong candidate.

Do you think that if you were a pitcher and you were, this is basically saying that Rich Hill had something like the Roger Clemens model in mind, except he's not Roger Clemens But that he was going to Kind of maintain this Flexibility and See which team is The best to play for when July comes around Right Well if the point Is to get on a competitive team

I mean all non-competitive teams are likely to trade Him at the trade deadline right True I guess Bean has maybe been more Aggressive about doing that Than other teams And all competitive teams are what Rich Hill Would want to be on anyway I'm not sure I see it

Maybe the key is I will guarantee you a rotation spot But I don't think that Billy Bean Would guarantee him a rotation spot Any more than any other team would I think most teams would have found a place for Rich Hill In their rotation Rich Hill is certainly capable of looking at a depth chart and seeing which exceptions there might be to that. And I doubt that Billy Beans' quote unquote promise would extend past five bad

starts anyway. So I say no. Okay. Is there any scenario in which Billy Beans' reputation for trading and does that help him in any way with any pre-agent So like the question being If Rich Hill didn't care about anything else If everything else was More or less equal but he was deciding Between going to the A's a team that he's Confident will trade him if things go belly up

And maybe Diamondbacks a team that He's not confident That he's worried would be On a 75 win pace, but still be holding on to pieces. Would he? Yeah, I could see that. Okay.

The other Rich Hill question comes from Brian and he says, knowing what we do about Rich Hill, how much do we blame the Red Sox for letting him walk away? Given the fact that Dave Dombrowski is supposed to be very good at scouting players and knowing which of his own guys are good. And given that a or the major advantage that scouts have over numbers is the ability to spot a skill before it creates numbers that are statistically significant, and given that Hill probably improved because of something the team itself identified and fixed, isn't it reasonable for a Red Sox fan to expect his team to have identified a little better that Hill was worth $7 million flyer,

even if we on the outside had the right to be skeptical. But Dombrowski wasn't there. He was there, I guess, before Hill left, but he wasn't there. Right. He wasn't there. Like none of his scouting acumen would be any more relevant than if he were the GM of the Phillies. And you're blaming him for not having scouted Rich Hill and signed him. Of course, he would have had access to the Red Sox scouting reports and a lot of people who had been there when Rich Hill was doing what he did.

I think that there's a little bit of conflating. I think it's an imperfect scenario for this question. But do you think that the Red Sox are more to blame for letting him go? If we assume that Rich Hill keeps pitching well and turns out to be this incredible bargain, do we blame the Red Sox more than we blame for letting him go. If we assume that Rich Hill keeps pitching well and turns out to be this incredible bargain, do we blame the Red Sox more than we blame the other 28 teams? You do? Yeah, I think so. I mean, the front office turnover that happened at the same time sort of affects the answer a little bit.

But yeah, I mean, in theory, they knew more about Rich Hill or they had the opportunity to know more about Rich Hill. And so they should have been able to project him better. Do you think that there's any chance that they fell for like a sort of fallacy of wanting to cash out their winnings and like sort of the opposite of the gambler's fallacy where they thought, well, that was great. Not wanting to be a sap and fall in love with the guy who was good before he starts. Yeah, you take your win like I've heard people at the poker table say you got to have a limit on your losses in a day, but you should have a limit on your wins too. Like basically you should know when to declare victory and walk away. And that's not necessarily true.

That seems like a fallacy. So if the Red Sox were like, well, that worked out really great. We can pat ourselves on the back In our memoirs we can talk about how great we were on Rich Hill But if we now commit more to him And he bombs Then we lose our win If that were the case

Which no evidence that it is And I suspect it's not So it's probably not But if that were the case Then I think you could also blame the Red Sox I think that would be a bad process Alright so that is enough for today. While we were talking, Deadspin put up an excerpt from our book. It's a fun chapter about a heist that we pulled off

at the tryout. Mostly Sam pulled off while I quivered and shook. We will also be doing a chat at Deadspin on Friday at 1 p.m. Eastern. So you can read the book in the next couple days. And a lot of people, it seems like, are staying up and binging it, which is nice to hear. Although, take your time. Savor it. Okay, so that is it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon at patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Today's five very special Patreon supporters are Jason Dondlinger,

Jared Hosid, Tim Livingston, I know that guy, Ben Lasher, and Harris Millman. Thank you. Again, the website for the book is theonlyruleisithastowork.com. Go there to find out everything you could ever possibly want to know about the book. Once you've finished, I'd encourage you to poke around the team tab and the photos and video tab. There's a lot of stuff that I think you'd enjoy seeing if you've only read about it. It is the best-selling baseball book on Amazon today, and we'd love to keep that going for

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