Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 881: The Big Unit’s Perplexing Punctuation

Episode Date: May 11, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Bartolo Colon’s likeability, then answer listener emails about Colon, Randy Johnson, the Cubs, prescient managers and more.

Sometimes I hate the road, but it's the only life I know. But I'm living the life that I chose. So I'll live out my life on the road. Give me life on the road Good morning and welcome to episode 881 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by the Play Index of BaseballReference.com and our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight,

joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Howdy. Washington, D.C. inhabitants, I am your neighbor today. I am in the city. I am going to an event this evening at 630 at Busboys and Poets on 5th Street Northwest. I'll be there with Barry Svrluga, and we'll be doing a little moderated discussion and then a Q&A and then a book signing. So come see us. Come talk to us. And I know it's Bryce Harper bobblehead night, and I know it's Max Scherzer versus Jordan Zimmerman,

and that's probably a bigger draw than I am and than Barry is, but hopefully you'll have fun. Not everyone can get a Bryce Harper bobblehead, but everyone can come see me. And tomorrow in New York, I'll be at the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse on East 11th Street at 7 p.m. And Sam, on the other side of the country, will be at Book Passage in San Francisco at the Ferry Building at 6 p.m. And you can find those details by Googling or by going to our website, theonlyruleisithastowork.com, and clicking on the event tab.

Anything you want to discuss before we get to emails? I think I do want to say one thing. Okay. Did you listen to Hang Up and Listen? Yes. About Bartolo Colon? Yes. So we all love jolly, fat Bartolo Colon.

And Hang Up and Listen talked about why we love him. And Josh Levine's theory, based on much research, is that he's fat. And I think this is largely true, that he doesn't look like a baseball player at all. And it's a miracle when he does. It seems like, it's not a miracle because he's a great athlete, but it seems like a miracle when he does these things that we normally expect athletic-looking guys to do. It still seems like a miracle because of course he is a great athlete, but everyone else is a great athlete and is in great shape. So even if he's a great athlete,

you still wouldn't expect a great athlete who's not in great shape to be able to do the things that great athletes who are in great shape can do. So it's still just visually, it's very striking. So it's still just visually, it's very striking. All right. So why are we not horrible for this? Like there's a, I feel like there's this part in Of Mice and Men where George and his friends are laughing at Lenny and Lenny thinks that they're laughing with him, but of course they're laughing at him. And George ends up feeling tremendous guilt over this.

And I think that the reader also feels guilt over it. The reader has also perhaps laughed at Lenny along the way, but certainly knows the feeling. And I mean, you know, clearly Bartolo is not Lenny. But, you know, Benji Molina was this guy to some degree. Not to quite the same peakji Molina was this guy to some degree for not to the same, quite the same peak. But he was this guy we loved. Like Benji had a period where he was beloved because he was so slow. And then, you know, one day it was revealed that Benji Molina hated this joke.

Like he took a ton of offense to it. And, you know, he I think he I think he yelled at a reporter or maybe made his sadness known to a reporter. And even Bartolo Colon has expressed unhappiness with being the butt of jokes. I forgot about this and rediscovered it when I was looking at the piece that I told you to link to about Bartolo Colon never touching first base he does not like being thought of as a fat ball player so why do

we not feel tremendous guilt over this should we probably I think I mean we we do appreciate his expertise so it's it's I don't know if it's that condescending I mean it's, it's, I don't know if it's that condescending. I mean, it's almost, it's an appreciation of how good he is, despite not fitting the mold of the typical ballplayer. So it's not like a, I mean, it is derogatory, I guess, but it isn't accompanied by contempt, because what he does is so impressive at his age and also at his weight, but, and, you know, at his diminished stuff and all the rest of it, the fact that he is

so good and succeeds with this pinpoint command. I mean, there's a healthy respect there alongside the other stuff, alongside the fact that he Looks kind of comical on a field With all of these chiseled people If he has made comments That suggest that he doesn't like this He doesn't look like he Doesn't like it he doesn't look like he cares At all about what we think

Which is something they also touched On in this episode he You know he looks very happy To be doing what he's doing and It doesn't seem like he is trying to Yeah. been noticing or, or, you know, courting it or reacting to it in any way, which I guess is maybe an inaccurate perception. Yeah. I mean, in, in April, 2014, he, uh, he and his teammates went on a mini media strike because, um, a writer had made fat jokes about him. And of course, uh, you know, fat jokes are, are awful. Uh, and, uh, we should all be staging strikes all the time. But it feels like while we're not necessarily making jokes about it, it is clearly the subtext of this grand joke that we all have agreed to. And I think that the reason that we don't maybe need to feel guilt

is that this is actually recognition that Bartolo is us. I mean, he's infinitely more athletic than us and in much better shape probably, well, certainly, but physically fitter than us uh and so this is we see in him uh ourselves only um a godlike version of ourselves that has crashed this party maybe maybe yeah but i i don't know i'm not sure i don't the other thing about bartolo and i i remember this being the case when uh i this was the case some time ago. I assume it still is, but I can't swear to it.

So people who know him now might know otherwise. But he is or he was just completely petrified of on camera interviews like he he didn't want to do him. He wouldn't do him. He hated to do him. He was he was terrified. And I think that part of it might have been the language thing and part of it might have just been that he just didn't like being on camera that he was he was camera shy which brings another element to this i think a little bit like we don't necessarily think about bartolo cologne being emotionally vulnerable and yet he is he is emotionally vulnerable yeah i don't know i don't know

why are you trying to take all the fun out of bartolo columb i don't know you can delete this whole thing if you want i'm not sure i'm not sure i have a good uh you know it's also it's not just that he is large that is a part of it certainly but it's that his helmet falls off it's that his helmet falls off which is not really a product of his size i don't think i mean he does have a large head but he could probably have a bigger helmet if he wanted to or you know he could swing in a more controlled fashion or something so that is not directly related to it and the fact that he carries his bat all the way to first base is not directly related to it yeah so there are elements to his you know physical performance that are not directly weight related but are still delightful there's also the fact that we had that that he disappeared

from the game and that we forgot that he existed and that this is all this is all this is all gravy this is all like just this awesome like bartolo cologne after there was supposed to be no more bartolo cologne and uh so maybe it's it's just we're all reveling in the fact that life gives you second chances sometimes um if you have a weird enough german doctor i don't know i don't I don't know that it... Look, I'm not saying anybody should feel bad, and I am saying that I think it's fair to judge me. I am not sure that I'm doing right here.

I don't know. I do like Bartolo Cologne a lot, and you're right. I don't want to take all the fun out of it. I feel like now I'm really being the bad guy. Everybody's got a good thing going, and now i'm coming in and being all mean yeah that's doesn't seem right either yeah i don't know i'm not sure this conversation is a good one to have i'm not sure that i am glad i brought this up the hitting aspect too is you know he's he's a terrible hitter

which i mean i guess is kind of indirectly weight related. But I think even if he were, you know, I mean, if he were the same size that he is, and a good hitter, I think we would enjoy it less. It's that he is terrible, and he still does this thing. And then the pinnacle of that was that he did something that only elite hitters are supposed to do. And he did it despite having no track record of success whatsoever. So partially it's that he's lovable because he is a loser in that sense, right? He's a winner in life, a winner on the pitcher's mound, but very much a loser in the batter's box. And yet he seems to go about it with good humor. And occasionally he succeeds And we all root for the underdog Yeah I'm not totally sure this is a question

That needed to be grappled with I think it's worth grappling with And I will start with another Bartolo related Question from Sam who is A Patreon supporter And he says the Mets broadcast pointed out That Bartolo has set the record for oldest Player at the time of hitting his first career home run.

This made me wonder, say you are a player from some remote location and you lie about your age in order to sign with a major league team, pretending to be three years younger than you actually are. Note that I don't hold it against players who do stuff like that. Say that you then have an outstanding career, probably short of the Hall of Fame, but that you're still reasonably productive at what people think is your age 40 season. Being a productive 40-year-old is pretty cool, but being a productive 43-year-old is amazing. My question is, do you spill the beans or does no one ever know that you might be the best mid-40s player ever? Definitely spill the beans.

Yeah. spill the beans yeah assuming i would consult with my lawyer to make sure that i was not in in any sort of danger of crossing homeland security or uh or ice or whatever the agency is that might care if you forged a document long ago but there is definitely uh statute of limitations on the public's judgment on this uh to the extent that the public should have any judgment i i if if they do if they should by the time you get to be miguel tahata or vladimir guerrero's age uh it is at at most a one day story and a um three birthday cake celebration in the locker room uh when your teammates razz you about it uh you completely like vladimir guerrero was it vlad or was it miguel tohada who yeah tohada admits to being two years older than he said i think with vlad it was like like he was with vlad

it wasn't even a a secret in his life like it was a secret in baseball but in his life he was signing all of his documents and putting the correct birth date and that's how it was discovered is i think the great la times writer billakin happened to just be in court on some, like, Vlad Guerrero, like, merchandising lawsuit or something like that and noticed this birth date, and he asked Vlad, and Vlad's like, yeah, no, that's my birth date. I have a different birth date than in baseball. And that was, as far as I'm concerned, the sport forgave him,

and I would definitely want credit. I would lie, you know, frankly, if I hadn't lied about my age when I was young, I would lie about it when I was old. I'd wait for post-retirement, I think. Just, you know, you don't want any ageism creeping into your career. want any ageism creeping into your career. And even if you have been the same player and just as successful, you're less likely to get another job or to get a lot of money if you're 43 instead of 40. So I'd wait, and then I'd drop the bomb.

Once I finally was out of the game, I'd say, hey, by the way, I was even older than you thought, and I was still schooling all of you. So I'd wait, But I would definitely do it Alright Danny Says this is on one hand Dumb but on the other hand it's kind Of an amazing situation on the Marlins broadcast a few nights ago while Ryan

Howard was at the plate they said he had Hit 39 career home runs against the Marlins which is second all time to Chipper Jones's 40 home runs against the Marlins by the end of the 2011 Season Howard had played essentially six and a half seasons for the Phillies and had hit 34 home runs against the Marlins. Naturally, Ruben Amaro then gave him $125 million to hit home runs against the Marlins for another five years. Ryan Howard has hit five home runs against the Marlins since then.

In his defense, Chipper Jones has hit zero home runs against the Marlins Over the same period. Anyway, this is The last year of Howard's contract Assuming the Phillies don't exercise the option for next year And they have 17 more games scheduled Against Miami. He has maybe 60 more opportunities to hit two home runs Are you betting that Ryan Howard

Does or does not break Chipper Jones' record? You might be surprised to hear this But this is actually not something I'm betting on. I know. I find other bets than this one with my money. This reminds me real quick of a terrible fun fact I heard not long ago, which was that David Ortiz hit a home run against the Yankees. And the announcer said with great amazement and admiration,

something like, that is his 48th home run against the Yankees. That is tied for the third most against any other team. There's four other teams in the division. He's tied for last in the division. The Yanke He's tied for last in the division The Yankees are tied for last in the division It's obviously going to be one of the Bad fun fact Bad fun fact

So how many home runs does Ryan Howard have to hit And how many at-bats against which team? He has to hit two more home runs Against the marlins in 17 remaining games to break chipper jones's record so uh currently uh let's see over the past three years overall he's homering in every 22 ish at bats 23 ish 24-ish at bats so i'll say uh plate appearances i should say so i'll say yes he will and i will that my answer my my reasoning is literally as simple as you just heard i'm gonna say he won't because one he's not playing full-time right so

even if he's has 17 scheduled games against the Marlins, he probably won't actually play 17 games against the Marlins. But then he kills the Marlins. Well, true. He hasn't killed the Marlins in the last few years, though. And there's also the fact that the Marlins are playing in a ballpark that's probably even harder to hit home runs in now than the one that they were playing in when he was first hitting home runs although that one wasn't easy either so i'm gonna say he

does not get there but uh some intrigue for the rest of the philly season the pursuit of the record right howard chase's history what was the wait what was the park before i said joe robbie was it joe robbie pro player Was that just Joe Robbie renamed? It was, right? I think it was. Yeah, it has been called Pro Player Park. Okay. Let me ask you this about Ryan Howard.

Okay. Is he aware of this record chase? I would say no. I always wonder about some of these stats. I wonder if they know. I mean, they know. Announcers and former players will tell you that they know uh the teams that they've hit well against the ballparks they've done well in and the pitchers that they've hit well and i believe that do you believe that yeah yeah i

basically believe that would they know about a record? This stuff is... Huh. I mean, this stuff gets put in the press packet. Yes. And the writers who need their B story do go through the press packet. And then they do ask the players about these things. I don't know how much sticks. And I don't know if this is something that would rise to his attention. Uh-huh i would guess that ryan howard does not know about this chase if he ties it he will find out so here's the thing ryan howard has

fewer home runs against the marlins than he does against any nl east team any other nle's team so it just got even less exciting he has 39 home runs against the marlins he has 50 against the braves 45 against the mets 42 against the nationals so probably does not know about this record if if i told you that a guy who was, say, a 900 career OPS, how many played appearances does he have against them? He has 678. 678, okay. So let's say I give you a guy who has a 900 career OPS in the majors. And in 678 played appearances against one team, he has really hit them well. And we're going to say that there's nothing about this team, the ballpark is neutral, the team is average. There's no reason to think that this team is

any outlier for any real reason. How high would his OPS against that team have to be for you to believe that he is truly a true talent 1000 OPS player against that team, simply on account of their jersey, good feelings, the batter's eye, whatever. Whatever it is that for some reason strikes a chord in him. How high would his 678 plate appearance OPS have to be for you to believe that it is truly, even regressed, a true talent 1000 OPS? 100 points higher than average. Probably like 1,300. I thought you might say 1,700. Yeah, I'm trying to think of, yeah, I mean, I don't know.

It could be a batter's eye thing that just wouldn't show up in park factors for everyone, but he feels comfortable there. Or it could be they just have a terrible scouting report against him for some reason, and they've never changed it And they've always pitched him the same way Yeah, I don't know Statistically, it'd probably have to be even higher for it to make sense Ryan Howard, the highest OPS he has against any team is 1329

And that's the Twins in six games Any team that he has seen a significant number of times 1098 against the Cardinals in 68 games. He's nowhere near 1,300 against any of the other teams, really, that he has faced a significant amount of time. So I don't know. It might be significant, a full season of his career. I mean, that would be, that's like a 13th of his whole career would be that much better against that one team. That might mean something. All right.

Question from Kevin. How many runs would the Cubs have to spot their opponents to be a 500 team going forward? Meaning instead of 0-0, the score starts at opposition X and Cubs 0. Oh, interesting. His guess is 1 because these always matter more than we think a single run otherwise he would say two or three so how many runs per game have the cubs outscored their opponents by so far uh like a hundred plus well total oh yeah so in 30 games so it's a little more than three per uh-huh and we the other day we gave them a 100 win true talent so that would be in 130 remaining games 0.617 times 130 they would

go 80 and 50 80 and 50 is 30 games over 500 10 10 runs per win. So 300 runs would be their expected run differential over those 130 games. So is that right? Can that be right? Yeah, that could be right. So they'd end the season at like plus 400. I think that's what we're saying. Does that happen? Is that a thing that ever happens?

Hang on. I'm looking at the 27 Yankees. 27 Yankees had a run differential of 385 uh three sorry 376 uh give me another team uh 91 mariners 2001 mariners 2001 mariners had a run differential of 300 and a but only 109 pathag record so uh so i guess the 10 runs per win doesn't quite hold up in this but uh let's say it's 250 250 over 130 games so that means that they could spot their opponent almost two runs and still have a 500 record do you buy it yeah i guess i don't see any reason not to buy it that's how it works yeah actually rob arthur just tweeted that the Cubs are on pace for a run differential of plus 538.

They won again today. They sure did. You rooting for them? Yeah. Yeah, me too. I'm rooting for greatness. First thing I do, first thing I do when I go check scores is see if the Cubs are winning. Yeah.

If they start to lose, then I'll stop rooting for them. But for now, this is fun is fun yeah this is really fun we haven't had this in quite a while we haven't had a hundred win team except for last year's cardinals who seemed kind of fluky to get there and before that it had been a while before any team had been even that good and now we have a team come along that so far looks like they might challenge all sorts of records. So, of course, that's exciting and I want to see it. Okay, play index? Sure.

So I wrote an article that is going to be up on Wednesday and that is essentially this play index. And it is about what I'm calling the no-path, which is the no-played- no plate appearance pinch hitter okay okay no path also the nobellium protactinium phosphorus hydrogen uh-huh uh in breaking bad terms um no path no plate appearance pinch hitter this is the batter who comes up to pinch hit inspires a pitching change and is immediately pinch hit for okay and this is not a rare occurrence of course this is a thing that happens right and when i was growing up it happened a lot it was a regular part of the game in fact uh happened 140 times in 1990 happened well over 100 times a year for most of the 90s. So I wanted to see, I had a feeling

though that this was going away. And particularly the feeling that, the situation that gave me this feeling was a Cubs game recently when Ryan Kalish was allowed to bat against a lefty after pinch hitting. Instead of having a right-hander coming in pinch hit for him it was the biggest moment of the game he's ryan kalish virtually nobody in baseball has less of a claim on the batter's box than ryan kalish at this point but he was allowed to bat anyway and it got me thinking that uh it seems like i see the no path an awful lot less these days than i used to make sense bullpens have crowded out those bench roster spots it does yeah right and so i uh looked to see what the history of the no path is and um as you as i thought and as you say makes sense they have dropped the the history basically goes like this they never happened and then in the 60s when small

balls started to be a thing it started to happen more and more. And then there was a brief spike in the 70s, in 1970, but basically it was a straight lineup. And then in the 80s and the 90s, it just became very common, where you would regularly see 100 plus of these a year, sometimes 120, sometimes 130, peaking at 149 in 1990. And then in 2003, there were 114, and that was the last year that there were 100. So I don't know if there's any great story here, but what's interesting about this is that you identified the reason that it's gone down. Crowded bullpens have made it so there are far fewer pinch hitters available than there used to be. But crowded bullpens, or at least the bullpen specialization that led to crowded bullpens, is also what led to the rise of it. As you saw more specialization, as you saw

situational lefties coming in to face guys, It created more opportunities for managers to basically try to, well, I don't exactly know how to put this, but when the pitching specialization era sort of began, there was a shortage of pitchers to staff it. And so when in the 90s, you would do this double pinch hitter move and you would do it because you knew that they didn't have enough pitchers that you could you would you were sort of trying to entice them to use their pitcher and that way they burned a pitcher they probably only had five relievers maybe they had six uh and you were making them burn maybe they're only lefty of the game and so you would you would gladly sacrifice a hitter to do that and yet this same general trend toward pitcher specialization

Eventually, it was like almost like this invasive species that at first they provided You know richness to the ecosystem and then they just kept on getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until eventually They crowded out everything else and so that's what happened to the no-paf. There were only 57 last year, which was the second lowest of what you might call the bullpen era. This year, we're on pace for slightly, slightly fewer than that. And to put this in perspective, to give you a sense of how endangered it is. The all-time record for no-path plate appearances, for career no-paths, was Dave Hansen, who had a 66.

And the active leader, if you were hoping to root for somebody to break this record, is David Ross. He has six. I don't think he's going to get get there i don't think he's gonna get there either um and uh it just it's i don't know the the reason i wrote about it it's kind of revealed in the final paragraphs but i mean clearly this is not that important a thing to notice but i love that this no path which didn't have a name until today, it existed. Like it was a thing. It was part of real life.

It had a family. It was, you know, it had an identity and it was part of baseball. And now it kind of doesn't. At least it does much less than it used to. Eventually it will probably go away. And this is happening all the time to unimportant parts of baseball. These things that you just take for granted that they're part of the game. You don't really love them.

You barely even notice them. Maybe you name them. Maybe you don't. But then the game changes and they disappear. And it's only when they disappear that somebody like me thinks, I should write a eulogy for that and name it. And I'm a little sad. I liked that move. I mainly, I think more than anything, what I liked is the,

I preferred the scarcity of pitchers to a scarcity of hitters. When there's a scarcity of pitchers, for one thing, it really felt like you were changing the games, the end game odds by making a team use its relievers. Like you really would look, it'd be a tie use its relievers. Like you really would look, it'd be a tie game in the eighth and one team would have, you know, two pitchers left and one team would have three. And you'd really feel like the team with three had a big advantage. Now all the teams have all the pitchers. The other thing was that you would really want to get the starting

pitcher out of the game. And it wasn't just because the bullpen, the relievers were bad. I mean, that was, I think that was to some degree, always a myth. Relievers have always been, you know, pretty good, but there just weren't that many of them. And if you could make the bullpen throw pitches, they really would run out of pitchers. They'd run out of pitchers in that game. Or if it was early in a series, they'd run out of pitchers in the series. And there seemed to be a real benefit to doing that because they would run out of pitchers. And if they do that, you're probably going to win. And I liked that being the scarce resource in baseball. Whereas now you don't really hardly even notice. Like most people hardly, in the average game at an average moment, if you said how many guys are available on the bench still, I wouldn't have any idea. I wouldn't know how many they started with. I wouldn't know how many they'd used. It's sort of a scarcity that's a scarce resource that's a little bit more hidden

and less upfront in the strategy of the game. So I don't know. There's nothing you can do about it. It's just the way the game changes. But I missed the no path and I'm sort of rooting for it to come back. All right. Well, the name is definitely going to catch on.

No path. No path. Very catchy. I'll link to the article so that people can read back. All right. Well, the name is definitely going to catch on. No Path. No Path. Very catchy. I'll link to the article so that people can read it. All right. Use the coupon code BP. Get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription to the Play Index. All right.

This question came in since we started the show, and I think it's an important discovery made by a listener named Daniel, who says, I was recently showing a friend Randy Johnson's brilliant logo slash watermark for his post-playing career as a photographer when I noticed how oddly punctuated Johnson's bio is on his site. And I will link to his site, but it is rj51photos.com. There appears to be no spacing after the punctuation, although the trend is not consistent Is Randy Johnson the punctual

Forebear to Mike Trout's own Odd punctuation style what do You think happened here I'm looking at Randy Johnson's website and it's a It's a slick looking website there's Not much on it there's this One bit of text the about Explaining who Randy Johnson is

And then there's a portfolio where you can look at Lots of nice Randy Johnson photos But there is something amiss With the punctuation in this Bio, namely the spaces Throughout most of it The actual text is okay While attending USC in Los Angeles

For three years, 83 to 85 On a baseball scholarship I majored in photojournalism At that time I got hands-on experience In the art and craft of photography Etc, etc All sounds fine Except that there are no spaces

After periods or commas In almost that entire paragraph Except for one space after a comma And then things get kind of Also one space after a period After Los Angeles Right, and then things get kind of normal for a paragraph or so. No.

There are sort of spaces for a while. 2010, I shot motorsports concerts, people. People and places. Yeah, okay. But he does put a space before and after the ampersand. Yes, he does. And then for the rest of that paragraph, it looks pretty normal. Uh-huh. And then he regresses. This is like reading Flowers for Algernon, sort of. It looks almost exactly like that. Like this is clearly a professionally built website.

He has a web person. He sent someone text. Maybe they didn't edit that text. He also has kind of odd hyphen use, which, as you and I know from editing, is often a major hang up. Hyphen usage can be Wrong and strange in ways that No one ever could have anticipated And so he hyphenates Good eye, he says always shooting with my

Good eye closed, good eye Is capitalized G and E and also hyphenated He hyphenates websites Also capitalized So there's some odd Choices going on here, but particularly the punctuation. But it does seem as if he knew or knew at some point as he was writing this,

how to punctuate with spacing. But at other times he didn't. I don't think it can be a formatting issue because it's not as if he copied and pasted it and the spaces were stripped out or something. Because it's correct too much of the time for that to be the answer. No, although the forced justification of this makes for some weird spacing in general. And that was my first thought, but I don't think that could be it either. Sometimes it'll have a space and not a space in the same line. Do you think it's that? I would think that maybe the best explanation is joint authorship. Could be, and then no effort to synthesize.

You know, when it comes to Randy Johnson's website text, I'm an Oxfordian. Yeah. I don't know. 40 and yeah i don't know this is this feels like an important discovery in the continuing ball player punctuation annals of this podcast but i don't have a theory at least with trout we've had many theories that might make sense in this case the only theory really is that he doesn't care about his punctuation and he pays attention to it sometimes. And other times he doesn't and he didn't have an editor. Anyway, I like it. Good discovery, Daniel.

If anyone has any theories, then let us know. I will link to it in the usual places. All right. Question from Kyle. You're a manager for a major league baseball team. You are partially clairvoyant, allowing you to look into the future and foresee every major hot and cold streak for your players. For example, you know exactly when your Six War superstar is going to be mired in a 2-for-22 slump,

and when your backup catcher will hit four homers in 16 plate appearances. Do you take advantage of this superpower by sitting your superstars for a week at a time and playing the hottest bench player in his stead? That's really tough. It is. He's like the managerial equivalent of Ghani Jones in that he could always win, but he is aware of his power and it comes at a cost. win, but he is aware of his power and it comes at a cost. At a certain point, it would become clear that he has this power, but it would take a while, right? Because there are managers who've become known for playing their hunches and they have a reputation for playing them well. But if you actually took advantage of this fully, then I think it would quickly become clear that you had some sort of ability. Well, the only way to play this is that you couldn't have any stars. You'd have to work with your GM, with your front office,

to get a team with no stars. And you basically would tell them, look, give me one shot at this. I want a team with no stars. You give them some lie about chemistry or whatever. You say, you got to trust me, okay? No stars, no stars. And then you just do it perfectly because did you read that new yorker article about the bridge cheating

scandal no but i heard the author talk about it on hang up and listen actually apparently there's a huge cheating scandal in competitive bridge and um one of the ways that, really the way that you get caught cheating in games like this or in activities like this is that you make too many unconventional moves that work out too often. You can make good moves and the world will just think you're good. But when you make the wrong move,

it's like if you go into a casino and you hit on 19 and it's a two, that's gonna get you noticed, right? And if you do it four times, you're done. And so you just, even if you go into a casino and you hit on 19 and it's a two, that's going to get you noticed, right? And if you do it four times, you're done. And so you just, even if you could do that in Blackjack, it's the long-term smart play is to still not hit on 19 and take two. To just lose the hand in order to keep the power. So I think in this case, you would want to do whatever you could to uh to lessen the number of of suspicious moves you'd make and i think if you had a whole team of players who you

could justifiably say are role players you could probably still get a you could you with clairvoyance with clairvoyance you'd be undefeated anyway right if you always knew who was gonna get a hit you could do it you could do it. You could do it without anybody really noticing. They would think you were a genius baseball mind. But yeah, you can't do it if you're benching trout three days a week. But what if it always worked? It wouldn't matter.

So it matters. What? They'd legislate a rule. They'd make a rule. They'd say you can't be a manager anymore. They'd put you in a lead box. They'd take you to the CIA. They'd torture you. They'd poke at you. They'd prod you. Your brain would be like in 15 pieces sent to universities around the world. That's not a good outcome.

No, it's not. But your players probably would be okay with it, right? Before you were dragged away to be studied in a secret government institute, your players wouldn't revolt because how could they complain? The results would always be great. I mean, they'd look at the lineup card and they'd think, well, that was weird. But then when your backup, you know, fourth or fifth outfielder who's playing instead of Trout goes three for four, whenever you put him in. I mean, when a guy has a good game, I feel like the team would be like, all right, well, that was odd, but we can't really complain because it worked out and then it would work out every time.

I'm not convinced that your team would be okay with it. I'm not convinced that they wouldn't be, but I'm not convinced they would be. I could see – I'm trying to think of who the superstar is that I'm benching. And it partly depends on who that superstar is. Your superstar would still be in the lineup most of the time. If it was Trout, I think he'd go, that's really neat. And he'd be cool with it. If it were Pujols, I think he would say, come on, dude. I am not – I'm not here to sit on the bench i don't i don't you know i came to play i want to play i came to play baseball

put me in the game and if you said if you told him well no i know with 100 certainty that you're going to go oh for four i don't think that he would i don't think that that would even i don't think it would get through i don't think that that would even, I don't think it would get through. I don't think that even if you proved it a thousand times, it would get through. I think he would still say, no, there is such a thing as free will. And I have the ability to go out there and do something differently than you're telling me. And I don't think it would play. And I don't think it would play. I don't think that I think that you could probably win over the fans and you could win one wants to look like the selfish player publicly, everyone wants to say it's the team performance that

matters. Ben, you're 100% right. Albert Pujols would look very selfish. How does that help the team? How does it help the team for there to be internal friction because one guy is seen as selfish or maybe 10 guys are seen as selfish. They would all turn on each other. This would be a total disaster. What about the fact that everyone's stats would be awesome? They might appreciate that, right? Well, but what good does it do them? It's not like they're going to get more money. It's not transferable. Right. It's not transferable. It's like when your house goes up in value and you're like,

all right, my house is worth $300,000 more than it used to be, but I can't sell it because I'm going to have to buy a new house or I'd have to go somewhere else. They can't go to another team without a clairvoyant manager and take those stats with them. And if they stay on that team, they're just a system quarterback. They don't bring any value. Yeah. All right. So there's really no good outcome here you'd have to suppress the power no you just don't get any superstars you don't get any stars at all how good how how good would you be though that's what i don't know yeah i mean if you because you

still only have you only have 13 guys to choose from every day to fill out your lineup yeah and if you have a really bad lineup top to bottom, then there aren't going to be enough guys who are hot at that moment. If you knew every game, though, like if you knew what they would do in every game, if you had 13 guys to choose from and every single one was between 80 and 90 OPS plus, how many runs would that team score? If you could pick with 100% accuracy

the right eight guys to put in the lineup. I don't know the answer to that question. I don't either, but I think pretty good. Plus, you'd have them in the right order. You'd have the lineup in the right order every time. So you could put... I mean, there's not that much value to that, but you'd at least be able to sequence...

I don't know. You wouldn't necessarily know which at bat they were going to get the hit or the home run. Yeah. I mean, there's not that much value to that, but you'd at least be able to sequence. I don't know. You wouldn't necessarily know which at bat they were going to get the hit or the home run. Yeah. But I think you'd do okay. But yeah, the question that you mentioned that I just walked right over way back when is an interesting one. How often would McCutcheon get benched in this scenario? I mean, Pujols all the time, but how often would Trout get bench get benched i mean you again you have 12 or 13 guys to choose from trout's going to be one of the nine or eight

best guys most days and even the days when he's not you know so he goes over four are you there's probably other guys going over four maybe you only have 5 outfielders. Maybe you only even have 4 outfielders. Also defense to consider, of course. Uh-huh. Yeah. And so how many games do you think Trout plays in this system? Yeah.

Well, Trout was bad to start this season. But still probably better than David DeJesus or whoever the Angels are putting in the corner. The question from Kyle originally was not that you could predict every single game outcome, but that you could tell extended hot or cold streaks. So, I mean, Trout had an extended cold streak to start the season, enough that people were writing articles about it, and we were confidently saying that Bryce Harper was the better hitter. So I still don't know whether he would have been benched for most of that time because there were probably other Angels who were slumping. The

Angels aren't all that great. Their offense is sort of Trout and some guys. So I would guess that Trout still plays. I mean, how many offers did Trout have last year in total? Or, you know, how many games where he didn't reach base? Probably 30, 20 or 30. Yeah, maybe. And they were probably not in sustained streaks. They were here and there for the most part. So I would guess that he still plays 140. Yeah, probably. And so then maybe you take the hit on 10 more, you take 10, 10 of the 0 for 4s just to keep from being noticed

and then uh but i guess maybe trout's not the problem maybe yeah it's maybe cole calhoun is the problem maybe maybe it's those guys who are good enough that they're completely non-controversial starters everyday players near all-stars but not so good that they don't have you know two replaceable days a week that are dragging you down when you're omniscient yeah it's tough call very tough so this is why they get paid the big bucks yeah all right we have spoken enough on the subject of baseball today so again go to the website the only rule is it has to work come Come to our events. Come meet us. Say hello. Get your book signed. All right. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild.

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