Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 933: Your Most Elite Emails

Episode Date: July 29, 2016

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about player development what-ifs, Aroldis Chapman and elite relievers, a team that could control the weather, Mike Trout and Barry Bonds, and more.

Saturday, wait. Sunday always comes too late. Friday never has a date. I don't care if Monday's black. Tuesday, Wednesday, heart attack. Thursday, never looking back. It's Friday, Monday, not a day. Hello and welcome to episode 933 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast for Baseball Perspectives It's Friday, I'm in love to the email show today. Anything you want to talk about before we do? Nope. All right, so straight into emails. We've got a bunch of good ones. We can get through most of them today. Let's start with Corey, who says, branching off your Aroldis Chapman discussion earlier this week,

I wanted to further the conversation on elite closers slash relievers. Prior to the All-Star game, a few media members went on rants that centered around relievers and closers slash relievers. Prior to the All-Star game, a few media members went on rants that centered around relievers and closers, with 40 to 100 innings pitched of good to great performance. While I can understand the argument, where's the cutoff? When do we call them elite? Yesterday, when mentioning elite-level closers, you brought up Chapman, Kimbrell, Jansen, and Davis. You aren't the only ones who use this group as the Mount Rushmore of closers, but what would it take for you to replace a Zach Britton with a Kimbrel, for example? Seemingly going under the radar, Britton has progressed from two great seasons in 2014 to 2015 to having one of the best seasons

of all time so far in 2016. Just wanted to hear your thoughts on what sample size you need for great and or poor performance to change the faces in your groups of elites. I do feel like we use, at least on this podcast, we use elite reliever in the sort of squishy, not actually literal necessarily, more symbolic than anything, perhaps way that, you know, number one starter is sometimes used. Yeah. And that you are, i don't know that it like for instance craig kimbrell you know is one of the names that we listed and would i swap out

the next inning that zach britain throws for the next inning that craig kimbrell throws is a somehow a different question than whether zach britain is elite and whether craig kimbrell is still elite because there's like the whole point of relievers is that lots of them are elite today yeah like they're all capable today of it like i always felt this way when i was golfing i i i would um like i could i'd probably use this probably used all of them but i i would hit a perfect shot you know like i, I would hit a perfect shot, you know, like I was capable of hitting a perfect shot, you know, like the perfect shot, like, you know, sticking a, you know, an approach with a four iron, you know, six

feet from the pin or hitting a drive right down the middle of the fairway or sinking a, you know, 35 foot putt or whatever. Like I was capable of that shot. And so theoretically then I was very capable of shooting like a 64 because if you hit that shot over and over and over again, 64 times in a row, you will shoot a 64. And yet I never, like I never shot a 64. Like the best I ever shot was like 82. I wasn't ever close to a 64. And yet you could always say, well, I was capable of it. I was capable of making each individual shot that would go to a 64. So in that sort of way, like there are

like 45 relievers, maybe more, but like 45 relievers who look on a good day as good as any other reliever looks on a good day. And what sets you apart is not just that you have a lot of good days in a year, but that you have a lot of good years in a row because that's really the thing that separates Mariano Rivera from a whole bunch of relievers who were, like how often was Mariano Rivera really the best reliever in baseball in a single year? Probably not that often.

It's the fact that he stuck with it, that he didn't break, that he didn't ever really go through down periods and that he didn't have a three year peak. And so Kimbrell has the lasting power, assuming that he is closer to an ERA, you know, a low twos ERA than he actually was this year.

He has the staying power where he's, you know, I think atos ERA than he actually was this year. He has the staying power where he's, you know, I think at the top of that list, I think Craig Kimbrell is probably the greatest reliever ever through age 28. Okay. Yeah. There's, there's always some new entrant. I mean, there's always someone with 20 innings who you may not even have heard of, but he has the most incredible stats you've ever seen. Like, uh, like Edwin Diaz with the Mariners, who has thrown 22 innings this year and has struck out 45% of the hitters he's faced. So his strikeout rate is second in the majors among pitchers with at least 20 innings pitch, right between Batances and Miller.

And he's basically been unhittable. So over those 20 innings, maybe Edwin Diaz was the best reliever in baseball. I don't know. But who knows how long Edwin Diaz will be a great elite reliever. So you don't include him in that group yet. And so Corey's asking how many innings it takes essentially for someone to make it into that group. And, I mean, Britton has been very good for a long time. So it's not like he's a one-year fluke.

So, I mean, you could put Britton in that group. I mean, he's been great since, what, I guess this is his third year of relief greatness. So is that enough? Britton suffers from our prejudices against fit beaters, I think. Yeah. And so I think we it took a while well for one thing he's still way better than his fit but it took a while for his fifth to even look elite and we that was our it was probably i don't know we won't we still won't

know until he keeps repeating but probably at this point with 200 innings of this, it's probably fair to say that our missing that was our fault, not his. And so it sort of slowed his elite service time clock a little bit. But, yeah, I mean, if I were going to six or seven, Britton would definitely be on it. And then probably at this point, if I were going to five, he'd be on it. And if I were going to four, I don't know if he'd be on it. If I were going to five, he'd be on it. And if I were going to four, I don't know if he'd be on it.

But the elite reliever conversation, as annoyingly vague as it is already, is also kind of annoyingly vague because you don't like how many can there be? How many elite relievers are like the whole premise of the elite reliever is that they are sure while other relievers are not sure that they are going to last that they are not that they have what they have what it takes they've got the right stuff they can come in in game seven of the world series uh and they're going to have it and there's a feeling with relievers there's always been a feeling with relievers. There's always been a feeling with relievers. It's what the closer mentality has always been about, which is that there's a thin margin between the guy who comes into the game in that situation and with everybody operating at, you know, like 100% focus isn't good enough to get it done.

And so if you think that there can only be four, then you're going to have a different standard than if you think there can be seven. Or if you think that, in fact, there is no line, which is probably true. There is no red line where you say that's as many as we can take. There's no quota. So I think Zach Britton is there. It also depends. I think the how many innings does it take? We have different standards for different pitchers based on different things.

If you throw hard, I think it happens faster. Ken Giles, for instance, I think was being talked about in that way much faster than, for instance, Cam Bedrosian is or than some other pitchers are. Right. Maybe if you're a lefty like Chapman or Miller, you get an extra boost if you're like... Or the opposite. I think if you're a lefty as a ninth inning guy, I think people are suspicious of you. True. That could be, yeah.

But yeah, I mean, Britton is like a 80% ground ball rate guy, which is insane. But he doesn't throw 100 and he, you know, he strikes out a lot of guys, but he doesn't strike out anywhere near as much as the league leaders strike out so it's just some bias against that type of pitcher and maybe it's a reasonable bias maybe those guys actually don't manage to last as long but I think you'd have to include him you'd have to include Miller and Batonsas. Batonsas throws more innings than most relievers do, which makes him more valuable. And he still has those stats. So yeah, I think once you get to three seasons of being

among the, say, five best or something, then you get admitted to that group. So Britton probably deserves to be, I mean, we went four names deep. And as you said, if we'd gone five names deep, then maybe his would have been the fifth so he's right there all right so next year say we were doing a reliever league draft uh next year give me your top five picks in order and we're gonna say we'll just say runs allowed runs allowed all right so it doesn't matter if you're a high strikeout guy you don't get extra credit for striking guys out. Okay. We're not talking about total runs allowed. We're talking about rate runs allowed.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I'd take Batonsas and Miller, I think, Chapman, Jansen, and Britton. Yeah. Those are my five too.

Slightly different order. I go Miller first, Chapman, Jansen, Batonsas, Britton. So by our standards, Kimbrell and Wade Davis are both out of the club. Yeah, well, that makes sense, I guess. I mean, Wade Davis still has the one ERA, almost, but his other peripherals have taken a bit of a step back. So it doesn't take much to be kicked out of this group either. You could have one half season where your

velocity is down or your strikeouts are down or something. And there's going to be someone who will overtake you because there isn't that much separation really here. Yeah. I'm swapping Batances and Jansen. Jansen now number four. So the three Yankees, not anymore, but the three Yankees are the top three, which is remarkable. Yeah. I wish I'd watched a lot more Yankees baseball this year. Actually, I wish they'd made the playoffs with those three. Yeah, that would have been kind of fun. We kind of got robbed of that. They didn't really use them in an interesting way, though.

I know. We talked about that in our Yankees preview episode, I think, whether they would do something weird with them or swap them around or use them for multiple innings or bring them in early or whatever. And they really didn't. It was just kind of seventh inning guy, eighth inning guy, ninth inning guy. But it worked pretty well for them. It would have been nice to see more experimentation.

All right. Question from Trevor from Vancouver. Was listening to Sam banter about ballplayers not being funny. That could have been many episodes of this show Which I agree with So many things are not original And jokes get less funny each time they are done However, something I've been watching for weeks now

Is legitimately funny And not baseball funny, in my mind Robbie Ross has been trying to catch home run balls With his hat from the bullpen And I think he's already caught five Tommy Lane said that they had a bet That he wouldn't get four the entire season and Ross is clearly going all out on these catches. Something about seeing a player in the bullpen rush to catch a ball in his hat makes me laugh,

especially considering that I could see him getting hurt, which could make the whole thing ridiculous. As far as originality goes, I can't remember seeing a player be so dedicated to something like this, so I say it passes the baseball player being actually funny test would you say so if not please banter more about baseball players not being funny because it's wildly entertaining well i replied to trevor because i wasn't sure if you'd choose this so i'll just read what i wrote back okay to trevor extremely funny especially because it is not trying to be funny it is just him doing his thing baseball players are hilarious in the way that all people are unintentionally hilarious, the way humanity itself is unintentionally hilarious.

It's when they try to tell jokes that they suck. This will be extremely unfunny in two years when every team has somebody trying to do this. Yeah, that's right. I mean, there are a lot of funny things that players do. We're not claiming that they never do anything funny. It's just the intentionality of it often ruins it. Yeah. That's why we liked Andy McCullough so much. Yeah.

Liked, past tense, liked. No, present, always liked, because he has a great eye for the quiet funniness of life in baseball. All right. Question from Eric Hartman While not confirmed There was some discussion of Aroldis Chapman agreeing to Or negotiating for an extension with the Cubs Before the trade with the Yankees was Completed. In deals like this

I've often seen analysts Specifically in this instance Keith Law Postulate that teams would be foolish To consider this factor when providing Compensation, even if the acquiring Team wouldn't complete the trade without the Keith Law, postulate that teams would be foolish to consider this factor when providing compensation, even if the acquiring team wouldn't complete the trade without the extension. I struggle to wrap my head around this viewpoint and believe it may be conflating two separate things. They're right that theoretically the selling team is only trading away what's on the

contract, so they should theoretically not get more than that would be worth. However, the buying team really is getting more. As always, I'm curious for your thoughts. Yeah. And Keith's point is that if you're paying free agent prices for a guy who is about to be a free agent, you're not actually getting any premium. You could have just as easily waited for his contract to expire with his old team or with some other new team and then signed him for whatever that extension is that you're signing him to. And so that's close to true, but I think that there's, I think it's harder to sign players than we think that there is just because you want a guy at $40

million doesn't mean that you can go get him at $40 million. Closing a deal is still somewhat uncertain. And there are not an infinite number of baseball players available at the prescribed $9 million per win that we sometimes analyze these things. If there were, then you could say, well, yeah, you could always go get another player who is going to cost that much. And so there's no actual benefit to getting your player, getting this player. But there's a very finite amount. And I think that for a club that's trying to plan things, plan a roster, and that doesn't want to get stuck with Pete Cosmo playing shortstop in an LCS game for them or a World Series game for them. an LCS game for them or a World Series game for them, you have to appreciate that there is some value to getting that guy to write his name on a contract for you. And I don't know how much value

that is, but there is some value to it, probably considerable value. And I think that most teams do place value on the ability to sign an extension with a guy before they have to compete with 29 other teams for him. And you get it out of the way, you can pencil that guy onto your depth chart, or you can pen that guy onto your depth chart because you actually have him. Then you can focus on other things. Maybe there's some opportunity cost when you're trying to put together a team. You know, if you have certain areas taken care of, you don't have to worry about them. You don't have to spend time researching what you should do. You don't have to spend time talking to agents. So you can put all of that time that you save into negotiating

with other people or looking for other undervalued players in other parts of the roster. And you just get it taken care of ahead of time and you can focus on other things and yeah you don't have to compete and who knows you once you're on the open market either you might have to outbid more people for his services so you might end up paying more or you might lose them even if you pay the same amount just because someone else has a better pitch or whatever there There's some soft factor they like about that other team more than your team. So yeah. There's also the scenario where you go to the guy, you say, we'll give you $40 million. His agent says, I'm going to get you

60. So they say, well, we'll go to 60. You say, no, he goes to a bunch of other teams. They're having this conversation with a bunch of other teams. the meantime you now don't know if you're going to be able to get him so you go sign another guy and then that guy the original guy might end up signing for 20 but not to you because you already signed a closer right okay i guess i'll get all the chapman related questions out of the way early so So this question is from Jen. She says, Was listening to your discussion about Eroldis Chapman and the convoluted incentives teams face when signing players like him. What if, in addition to the current fines and suspensions of players,

teams incurred a penalty for having players with major infractions on their rosters? For example, Chapman's domestic violence suspension triggers a $500,000 yearly penalty to the team he plays for, paid to the league and earmarked to support efforts to prevent domestic violence. It's clunky, but the idea is to force teams to always consider the character factor because it has an explicit price. What do you think? I am a little uncertain. I go back and forth on this. I really like the idea that the team has to, as she puts it, to consider the character factor because it has an explicit price. To me, that is

very sharp because you can't ignore it. And you are explicitly telling your fans that we have weighed the fact that he has this on his record and we have decided that we will pay for that. And here is how much we are going to pay for it. And it makes it in some sense easier for us to judge them because they can't just dodge the question. You can't like, they can't just avoid that question at press conferences when they have done a transaction acknowledging that history. So I like that. I like that it makes them think about it. The problem is that if you set a price for carrying a bad person, then it in a sense might absolve the team for carrying that bad person. It's like, well, we, you know, we paid our price. We served our time basically. So if Major League Baseball is basically telling you, or, you know, if the law is telling you and the law, you know, the rules, the sanctioned rules, as, you know, a representative of our shared feeling about how things should be run is

basically telling you that it's okay to sign a Rodas Chapman or to trade for him as long as you pay $500,000 to a charity, then instead of really thinking about it, instead of really thinking is, do I want to be associated with this person? You just think, well, is it worth $500,000 to me? And that makes it in some sense, a colder calculation that has, that it almost explicitly takes morality out of it. Like you're, it is the law imposing a moral choice on you, but your choice is no longer grounded in morality.

It is now grounded in economics. And so in that sense, I think I would rather, two things. I think I would rather depend on people in baseball to have to listen to their consciences instead of just their, you know, the economics of it. It doesn't seem to be working that well. It doesn't seem to be working, but I think that I prefer, I'm not sure that it's not entirely working for one thing. It doesn't seem to be working in this particular moment in time.

But, you know, the arc of the moral universe and all that. But, you know, the arc of the moral universe and all that. I also just would rather, like, I would just rather, I always like to trust people to do the right thing. To me, it's much more rewarding when somebody does the right thing without having to be forced to do the right thing. And I, you know, that gets me in trouble sometimes, but I like to have faith in people. So I don't know that I would rather take the moral choice away from them. And I wonder also how long this would last, because it almost implies that you can't change and that you can't become a better person

if you carry this penalty with you forever. Like, you know, maybe it's a, there was an episode of Invisibilia about that recently, about how, you know maybe it's a there was an episode of invisibilia about that recently about how you know people's personalities change over time and it's not necessarily as static as we think and so you know how many years does an offense carry this penalty with the player 10 years later is the player the same person would he do the same thing that he did that first time so that would be a complication too. It is very complicated. It's very complicated. And of course, it would have to be collectively

bargained and all of that. So good idea, though. Interesting proposal. All right. Question from Evan Haldane, a Patreon supporter, who says, let's say the Angels do dismantle the team for dozens of prospects, as we discussed last time, leaving Mike Trout to act as 25-year-old team dad with 20-ish replacement players. Does he break Barry Bonds' walk record sometime in the next three years? I wonder how much of Barry Bonds' walk record, I wonder how many fewer walks Barry Bonds would have had if he were capable of stealing 30 or 40 bases a year, which, you know, I think Trout probably still is. He's 17 for 18 this year, which sort of suggests that if he really wanted to, he could probably go 30 for 36 or something like that. Yeah, because that was something Bonds said earlier this year about

Harper, that if people were going to keep intentionally walking Harper, he should just learn to steal bases and make did that. Of course, you know, when he was walking 200 times, he was no longer a big base dealer, still an efficient base dealer, but he didn't go that often. Yeah. The difference between 151 though and 232 is what we're talking about here. I could imagine maybe Trout getting to 151, which is still 80 short of the record. So no, I don't, I don't think that will, for one thing, I don't think, I mean, I think that the sport just got collectively feverish when Bonds went through the, that four year period. Like I think, I don't think that if there was a new Bonds who like bonds and even had edgardo alfonso and benji melina and pedro feliz as his line of protection i still don't think that guy would walk 232 times again i i just think there was something weird going in

baseball that just it turned into i've i've you know talked about this but it turned into, I've talked about this, but it turned into this almost like mass panic. And I don't think we'll see it again for even Mike Trout with no line of protection. Secondly, Trout is not close to what Barry Bonds was as a hitter. I mean, his OPS plus is 100 points lower than Barry Bonds. Like 100 points. But Barry Bonds had Jeff Kent or whoever hitting behind him. No, no. Yeah, that's true.

So he did have Jeff Kent through 2002, and he walked 198 times. Although I think in 2002, the first year this really went crazy, I think that was the year that they swapped Kent and Bonds. So Kent was actually batting. Yeah. Yeah. They actually moved Bonds down to fourth. And I guess that was partly to try to create, I believe I've talked about this too, but I believe in the concept of line of protection where the guy in front of you gives you line of protection by getting on base. And I think they were trying to capture that. And so, yeah, so Jeff Kent was good and was getting on base and he still walked 198 times. So that is relevant,

but still there's a huge, huge difference between what Trout does and what Bond says or what anybody does and what Bond says. I mean, it's a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge difference still. You'd have Albert Pujols and you'd figure out a way to get, you know, at least one or two other league avocators. So to answer the question, I don't think the record would get broken. I would say that Trout would get close to 150 walks, maybe even 160, but he would not get close to the record. Okay. And that's assuming he feels no pressure to be the one person who hits in the entire lineup and try to swing more than he should or something because if he gets on base and everyone batting behind him is a replacement player then maybe he

never scores anyway all right play index yeah hang on I'm looking at the 2004 Giants to see who batted cleanup behind Bonds just because it's a fun list so So actually, Bonds was bad in cleanup. So in front of him to start the season, Michael Tucker, and behind him to start the season, Edgardo Alfonso. As the season progressed, in front of him, Marquise Grissom. Marquise Grissom at the time was 37, and in his penultimate season. Behind him, A.J. Pruszynski. And then, let's see, I see jeffrey hammonds in front of him uh then we got uh okay so then we have grissom in front of him and pedro feliz

behind him still then we have pedro feliz in front of him and edgardo alfonso behind him and then we have jt snow in front of him and mostly Alfonso behind him back to Grissom then back to Snow Pruszynski behind him Tucker now behind him and Alfonso in front of him uh Davey Cruz in front of him and then back to Feliz and Feliz and Feliz in front and Snow in back. And then finally Alfonso in front and Snow behind him. And Edgardo Alfonso that year had a 95 OPS plus. Coming off a year with a 90 OPS plus. Yeah. No one who really strikes fear into your heart.

No. All right. Play index. So this one is from Samuel who says it took Tyler Duffy 22 pitches to record an out last night versus the Mighty Braves. Baseball reference confirmed that's the most this year, but play index is required to see farther back. Would love to hear you guys chat about this. Apologies if this has already been discussed. I love that Sam is worried that we've already discussed Tyler Duffy.

Yep. love that sam is worried that we've already discussed tyler duffy yeah so i went to see the most number of pitches for each length of pitching appearance since 1988 where length is determined by how many outs you got uh because i wanted to see what some of the worst pitching performances are basically since 1988 the most pitches for an outing in which no outs were recorded, none at all, was Paul Wilson, poor guy, July 10th, 2003, started a game against the Cincinnati Reds. No, he was on the Reds, against the Houston Astros. He threw 41 pitches. He did not record an out.

It started with an error on the shortstop. Then he went single single walk double single single wild pitch single and then that this the cruelest thing about it they pulled him and they pulled him right before the opposing pitcher came up to lay down a sacrifice and i just there's such it doesn't don't you think there's such a difference maybe between getting no outs and getting one out yeah in a start infinity era and the actual era yeah i mean he literally didn't even eat innings he didn't even eat a fraction of an inning for them he did not advance this team one microsecond closer to the end of

its season because there are no outs recorded and i'm sort of like, it's not like he was wild in this game. He was giving up line drives, but he only walked the one batter. And that was Lance Berkman, which probably threw, you know, a bunch of pitches on the corners, uh, and just couldn't get Berkman to swing at him. And so he could have had a semi-productive game. And instead they pulled him just as Ron Vallone was coming up to lay down a bunt. So he had 41 pitches, no outs. One out the most is 51 pitches. I wondered whether we would see these numbers go up with each out or if the measure for a manager is just how bad you look. And so even if you get one out, you're not going to get a longer leash. But in fact, they keep going up.

So one out, Bryn Smith, 51 pitches, two outs. So this is the most for a person who did not finish an inning. Bartolo Colon threw 61 pitches to get two outs on April 9th, 1997. Threw 61 pitches to get two outs on April 9th, 1997. For three outs, Wade Davis, who threw 69 pitches on June 29th, 2013. Four outs, 74 pitches. Five outs, 73. Matt Moore has the record for six outs.

He threw 86 pitches for two innings. 86 pitches for two innings. Never was the same again. Actually, he was never the same again. You've just heard it out. This was on in June, June 4th, 2013. So let's see where Matt Moore was on June 4th, 2013. He entered that game with an ERA of 2.18. The previous year, he had been a rookie. He had a 3.93 FIP, nine strikeouts per nine, and then starts 2013, has a 2.18 ERA going into that game, throws 86 pitches in two innings. The next start after that, he allows nine runs in five innings, then five in five. And so not counting the terrible start, let's see here. Let me see if it's corner turned

or not. Not counting the terrible start. Actually, no, he was fine. Yeah. After that, he was fine. He struck out a batter an inning. He had a 3.54 ERA the rest of the way uh so that is not what did it all right all right would have been a nice narrative all right if you include the bad start then it looks like that's what broke him but you cannot both broke be the thing that breaks and also be the symptom of the breakage that would be cheating the johan santana no hitter a few years ago where he was you know he broke not that long after that but he was good for a while after it too. So it wasn't really something you could tie directly to the no hitter, but a lot of people did.

All right. For seven outs, Randy Johnson with 95. Randy Johnson is on this list a lot. Young Randy Johnson, I assume. Yeah, yeah. He's like second or third or fourth or fifth on a lot of these. Charlie Huff threw 101 pitches that we have our first 100 pitch outing and he only got eight outs. Two and two thirds innings, 101 pitches. Pete Shurick, 102 for nine outs. Steve Avery, 111 for 10 outs. Charlie

Huff again, 112 for 11 outs. And then here we have, I think this is maybe the one that other than Paul Wilson and maybe Cologne, the ones that most stood out to me, I don't know why, are Darren Oliver, who threw 121 pitches in four innings, which maybe it just stands out because it's nice. It's nice. They're not half numbers. It's not three and two thirds innings. It's a nice clean four innings, and it took 121 pitches. He threw four straight innings of basically 30 pitches an inning, which has to be exhausting. And Victor Zambrano, for four and two-thirds innings, threw 133 pitches.

Nobody throws 133 pitches anymore. If you're cruising in a no-hitter, there are pitchers who are not allowed to throw 133 pitches anymore. If you're cruising in a no-hitter, there are pitchers who are not allowed to throw 133 pitches. If you are on pace to strike out 21 batters in a game, they will not let you throw 133 pitches. Victor Zambrano, in 2004, was allowed to throw 133 pitches, and he didn't even make it out of the fifth, which has to be the most exhausting pitching performance of the last 20 years. And he was never the same after that. And he was never the same after that.

Oh, yeah. You know, I was reading this as Carlos Zambrano the whole time. Let me make sure that I have the right Zambrano. It would be great if we found a there was, and he was never the same after that. There were. 2004, May 20th. He allowed six runs in one inning the previous start, 72 pitches for four

outs. So wow. Over the course of, over the course of 18 outs, Victor Zambrano through 205 pitches, six innings, 205 pitches over two starts. He was never the same before that as it turns out uh but um yeah i mean we talk a lot about how pitchers are used differently these days and you know like we talk about guys not being allowed to throw shutouts and go 133 pitches to complete a game and all that but really i think where you see it is in these like the three four five inning outings where you get really high pitch counts these are almost all from the early to mid 90s and that is sort of interesting because like we know that we know you're not allowed to go 160 pitches like they used to do in the early 90s but a little bit more quietly, you're also not

allowed to go 100 pitches through, you know, through three innings like you used to be. So other than Victor Zambrano, everything over 75, every number, actually, other than Victor Zambrano and Matt Moore, every number I said over 75 is from the 90s. So this high pitch short start outing is fairly endangered, which is good, I think. Randy Johnson could handle it, but most pitchers probably can't. Okay, play index. Coupon code BP. When you sign up, get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. Okay, one more moral question from Steven M. Which team committed the most morally grievous sin? The Cardinals for hacking, the Red Sox for packaging international prospects, or the Braves for bilking taxpayers? The problem is that those are different departments.

Well, right. You mean that it's not the baseball operations people who bilk the taxpayers? Yeah, yeah. True. And, you know, the Cardinals may have just been one member of the Cardinals who did that. But, okay, well, we can just say which is the worst sin. All right, the Braves. Yeah, I guess so.

You could say that the taxpayers agreed to it. Well, they didn't really, but someone agreed to it. They couldn't have done it without someone else facilitating it. Whereas the hacking, for instance, was just an intrusion and the bilking taxpayers was, you know, approved by some local politician. But it probably does. I mean, the most damage is done certainly by the Braves. Yes. Just because the consequences for the Cardinals hacking was just, you know, maybe the Astros lost some secrets. Maybe it hurt them in some way.

The Red Sox packaging international prospects, you know, maybe it helped the Red Sox. And in helping the Red Sox, it hurt everyone else a little bit with other teams. But it's not that big a difference. And probably lots of teams are doing this and just didn't get caught. So I would say The Braves is the worst for the world At least Alright, question from Trevin

Last week there were quite a few rain delays Around baseball The Tigers Twitter account, like many other teams Continually insist that they cannot control the weather So if a team could control the weather Would it provide any competitive advantage Over the rest of the league? How would a team use this newfound power? So it would be massive. If you can control the weather at home and on the road, you could, I would guess, but not in domes, I would guess that even a bad team would win 135 games. So what form does the advantage take?

Well, anytime you are playing a game that you're losing, you rain it out before the fifth inning. Okay, that's true. Right. And then anytime you're facing the team's best pitcher, you simply don't start your best pitcher. And then you let the game go three innings. And then you have a four hour rain delay, and he can't come back. And you've burned him certainly for that game, but maybe, you know, for the whole series, and you've still got your ace. So that gives you an advantage. The problem is the real question there, there's one problem and one question that I have, I'll start with the question. The question is how many runs ahead, if you could control the weather, how many runs ahead

would you have to be when the fifth inning approaches to go through with it? Because you, if you have such an extreme advantage because you can control the weather that you, if you wanted, if you had the patience, you could only play games where you're up seven in the fifth and everything else you don't even play. And over the season would take, you know, hundreds of years to finish, but you would go 162 and 0 because you would only be playing games that you're winning seven, nothing in the fifth or up by seven in the fifth. And those are games you win all the time. by seven in the fifth. And those are games you win all the time. However, the question is, what would the cost on your team be as far as attrition? How many extra innings your team is playing? How many extra innings your staff needs to cover because you're raining out so many innings? Then it might end up being, I think you could work with it, but it's probably more disruptive. Like you'd have to have, like you probably would throw, if an average team throws 1,500

innings, this team that controls the weather would probably throw 2,200 innings. And so it's a lot of innings you'd have to fill. So you'd have a lot of, a lot more bad pitchers. Yeah, true. On your team. Right. There's no other advantage. I mean, I guess if you could control the wind, if you could control.

Oh, if you could control the wind, sure. Oh control... Oh, if you could control the wind, sure. Oh, my goodness. I didn't even think about that. Yeah, if you could control the wind, that would be huge. I mean, wasn't there that big controversy or... Aren't there conspiracy theories about dome teams turning the air conditioning on? Yeah, sure. Who's batting? If you could control a 30-mile-an-hour wind, you're in Coors Field when you're batting

and you're in Petco when you're pitching. mile an hour wind you're in Coors Field when you're batting and you're in Petco when you're pitching you also could do you know you could just anytime you're up you could make it really really cold right it's a much more low offense environment yeah anytime I mean you could have the the wind blowing out when you're batting and blowing in when you're pitching yeah exactly right yeah it was really effective in Captain Planet when Linka would summon the wind, and I think it would also work in baseball. So there's that. It depends on you. Could you control – you couldn't control the placement of the sun, though. Like you couldn't move the sun into a guy's eyes,

and you probably couldn't create wind. How quickly do you think you could create wind? Because if you could create wind every time your team hit a pop-up, but that's probably not realistic. Like the rest of this. The rest of this is highly realistic. You could control the weather, but only if it's on a daily basis instead of a minute-by-minute basis.

Yeah, I don't know. It would be a little different. If you could say, today I want it to rain, then that wouldn't really help you because you'd have to play in the same conditions that someone else had to play in but if you could control it minute by minute hour by hour then i agree you could probably be the best team ever ben if you had a strategy this is not this is not obviously realistic, and it would not be fun necessarily to win a baseball season by this method. Because you would essentially be God, and if you were God, no matter what players say after games, you probably wouldn't take that much joy in your favorite team winning a baseball season. Yeah. So probably this wouldn't be fun. However, if there was another strategy that you could employ,

and a more honest strategy, one that really was more rewarding and beneficial to you, and you could deploy it to make your team super good, win the World Series, you, Ben, you specifically get to be the GM of a great, historically great baseball team that wins the World Series. You get to lift

the trophy and be in the parade and get elected to the Hall of Fame and celebrate and make $8 million when the Dodgers sign you to be their GM the next year, all of that. But your strategy is so off-putting to fans, to the aesthetics of baseball. You are making baseball so unbearable to watch, like this strategy, which would have rain delays. Jeff Luno, sorry, strategy. But this is so unbearable to watch that literally no fan shows up. You have no fans.

No fan watching the games. Yes, because that's your zero tv rating right no i know they had a zero they had a they're they have fans right now they do they're winning baseball and fans are cheering right so you're winning and people still don't want to watch yes so you're the indians in the rain out scenario i'm not sure how many fans would want to show up to see a game that had a 78 chance of getting uh washed away and never having existed because it got rained out in the fourth after a two-hour delay plus you get wet you also do get wet yeah it's true that's true uh so would you take this deal you're you're the richest man in the world but you have no love yeah i don't think i'd want it i want the glory and i wouldn't

get any glory really because well you get glory from the sport at as a whole i don't know if i would as a whole would would admire you would they i think they'd despise me i i don't know it's hard to know yeah i don't want it all right last question emmet says i was thinking about player development and the different ways in which players find success. While there are many instances of players thriving from the moment they're drafted, such as Mike Trout being Mike Trout from day one, there are other times where nobodies make certain adjustments or tweaks and turn into stars. or on their way to the majors. You often hear about guys needing a change of scenery or certain player development staffs halting the progress of players. The Orioles and their pitchers immediately come to mind. So how much of player success in general do you believe is circumstantial? That is, if every major leaguer started their professional career over with a completely different organization, how many would still reach the majors? 80%? 85%? There doesn't seem

to be any quantitative way to attack this, but how much of a player's success should be credited to their organization's development as opposed to their innate talent and personal approach? I read this and my first thought was to forward it to Russell and see if he would write about it because it's the kind of thing that I think he would find a way to attack and it'd be interesting. I'm interested to hear your answer. I mean, sorry, I have an answer, but I'm interested to hear yours. So I want you to go first.

I think the number's very high. I think, I mean, it's funny if you started this before professional career, if you said at any point in their life, then it might be, you know, a hundred or close to a hundred, right? Because you have to have enough money, you have to be born in a part of the world where they play baseball, you have to have enough, you know, support from your family to afford to play baseball, you have to have a coach who taught you to play baseball, you have to have someone who taught you to like baseball. So if you wanted to start from day one from birth, I think probably a very high percentage of major leaguers becoming major leaguers is circumstantial. By the time you get to the pro ranks, so you're already good enough to get drafted, I think the number is obviously a lot lower.

I think it would probably be something like 95%, I think. Maybe you wouldn't be quite the same player. Maybe you wouldn't be quite as good. Maybe you'd be better. But I think most guys, once they get drafted and they've been good enough to get drafted, I think they would get to the majors regardless of organization. Obviously, there are cases where that's not true. There are cases where one conversation with someone made someone much better, like the Zach Cozart example that we've talked about where Barry Larkin said something to him and he suddenly became a better player or, you know, Brian Bannister with Rich Hill, sort of the same thing. But those guys were already major leaguers. They were just worse. So I think it's going to be over 90%. Yeah. So you're saying that the percentage of players who would make the majors is very high, not the percentage that is circumstantial is very high.

Right. You could take 90% of major leaguers and swap their original organization around, and they would still make the majors. Of course, you've got players who were blocked by people in a certain organization, or maybe someone, an evaluator in the front office didn't like them for whatever reason or didn't appreciate their skill set. And so, you know, maybe they didn't make the majors just because of that, not because they were a worse player or something. But anyway, I think it's probably 95%. Yeah. I think that if you replaced the players, player development organization with a summer camp staff, then a lot of them wouldn't make the majors. I think that player development is incredibly important and that the growth that we see from players from the day they're drafted to the day they appear in the majors is, I've

come to believe, massive and far more important than I used to realize. I just think that all 30 teams are really good at it, that they're not competing against a summer camp staff. They're competing against each other. They're all very confident. The same way that I, it's not that I don't think that when we mock pitching gurus, pitching coach of the week, you know, that idea of the pitching coach of the week, it's not that I don't think that when we mock pitching gurus, pitching coach of the week, you know, that idea of the pitching coach of the week. It's not that pitching coaches aren't brilliant and don't do a ton.

It's that there's probably more than 30 great pitching coaches in the world. And 30 teams get to choose from those, you know, 31 plus. And so they all have good ones who do a lot of great work. so they all have good ones who do a lot of great work. And if they weren't there, another pitching coach would do that great work, which is, it seems almost like it's demeaning to what they do, but it's not. They're really super good at it. And because of that, they've all invested a lot. All the teams have invested a lot in making sure they stay really good at it. And they're competing within a very narrow band, I would guess, in terms of how much they can make a difference. So that said, I think a large part of players making it or not making it is based on luck, is based on circumstances that aren't really

predictable or controllable. I don't think that it was fate that Howie Kendrick had Howie Kendrick's career. I think that if you played it out 20 times, you'd have 20 extremely different careers, some of which he stalls out at AA and some of which he's a Hall of Famer. Maybe not quite that broad if it were only 20, but if you had 2 million million and I just don't necessarily think that that is based on him being in the organization he's in so much as it's based on the nature of small details causing big changes in the world. Yeah. All right. So this was a good one. Fun one. Lots of good questions. Thank you. Please keep them coming. And we will end there. good questions. Thank you. Please keep them coming, and we will end there. You can keep the podcast going by supporting us on Patreon. Go to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support are Tom Ahn, Jonathan Judge, Brian Parsons, Isaac Stevenson, and Samuel Pickard. Thanks to all of you. You can buy our book, The Only Rule Is It Has To Work.

Go to the website, theonlyrulesithastowork.com for more information. And if you've read the book and liked it, please leave us a review on Amazon and Goodreads. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild or rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Baseball Perspectives is having a ballpark event at Miller Park in Milwaukee on August 27th. A bunch of BP writers will be there. A bunch of Brewers front office members will be there. There will be food. There will be baseball. BP ballpark events are always a good time. I went to the one at Citi Field a few weeks ago.

So you can buy tickets to the Miller Park event now on the website. Keep the questions coming to us at podcastatbaseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon. That's it for this week. We hope that you have a wonderful weekend

and we will talk to you next week. And it will brighten up my day La la la la la