Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 950: The Triple-A Chemistry Edition

Episode Date: September 7, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Yasiel Puig’s clubhouse qualities, Giancarlo Stanton’s comeback, and Anthony Rizzo vs. Wily Peralta, then answer listener emails about Kershaw and Trout, the Hall of Fame, roster sizes, young cores and more.

Cause there's nothing like the element of surprise The element of surprise The element of surprise The element of surprise The element of Surprise The Element of Surprise Hello and welcome to episode 950 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, brought to you by our Patreon supporters and the Play Index at Baseball Reference. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello.

Heyo. We're going to do an email show. I by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello. Heyo. We're going to do an email show. I have a bit of banter to get to before then. I don't know about you, but I thought that I would point out this quote from a story about Jose de Leon's debut for the Dodgers on Sunday. I was just reading it, and it was your standard stuff about how he was emotional and his family was there, and it was great and then he was talking about how he also appreciated that julio or yes was there too because they pitched

together in the minors and they became best friends so it was a boost to his confidence to have or yes there too and then i got to the part of the story where he says how happy he was to have yasiel puig there and how he got so close to puig when he was in the minors for a month or so with puig and then he says having guys like puig boosts the team chemistry which is not something that anyone has probably ever said before but i really like that because it kind of uh explains guys' reputations change over time. Like maybe if you just promoted the entire Dodgers AAA team to the majors right now, Puig would be the clubhouse mentor veteran guy. Like maybe if he's too immature to get along with the Dodgers veterans,

maybe the AAA players were more his speed. And so he fit in well with them. And so as the younger generation comes along and reaches the majors, and as Puig gets older and maybe more mature, and not necessarily talking just specifically about Puig, who knows how long he'll even be in Los Angeles, but this is kind of the way it often happens with people who are seen as clubhouse problems early on, some of them actually do just wash out of baseball because of those problems, but other guys go on to be accepted and respected, and it's because the younger generation comes along and sees them differently than the old generation did, and maybe they change too. And so to at least one or two members of the dodgers right now

yasiel puig is the guy who helps team chemistry yeah i mean puig so pedro asked andy if you i don't know if you listen to that podcast but uh andy uh has been a pretty bearish on puig's future uh relative to pedro and uh so pedro Pedro asked Andy if he was at all surprised that... Andy McCullough, Pedro Mora, Los Angeles Times podcast, Sportswriters Blues. That Puig is hitting so well in AAA. And Andy said, no, not really. And sort of cited some scouts that said that he's got a AAA swing right now. He's got a AAA bat.

Capable of hitting pitchers who can't bust you hard inside with mid-90s fastballs, more or less. And I wonder if Puig has, I mean, just speculating. Look, I don't actually take this seriously. So don't take this seriously. I'm just talking through semi-whimsically. Mainly because I want to get to a pop culture reference. through semi-whimsically, mainly because I want to get to a pop culture reference. I wonder if Puig has AAA chemistry, where if you take him out of the sort of spotlight,

if you put him in a junkie bus and give him a crap per diem. Or you put him in that party bus that he was Snapchatting about. Yeah, or you put him in a party bus for one day. Then whether he, you know, whether it just suits his his uh his temperament more i don't uh actually i don't i can't even get that specific without uh reading way too much into puig as a person and all that but it is uh yeah it's conceivable i guess but mainly i just wanted to say that puig is mike dexter from can't hardly wait to the triple a guys you love can't hardly wait i do love can't hardly wait references and so uh you know he shows

up and he's you know that he's like uh he's a hero he doesn't have to worry about stepping on adrian gonzalez's toes or hanny ramirez's toes or clayton kershaw's toes everybody's worried about stepping on his toes and that maybe when you don't have to prove what a big shot you are, you quit acting like a big shot, I guess. And again, just to be clear, I don't know. I don't know anything about Puig. I don't want to actually cast dispersions on Puig by assuming any of this actually relates to him.

But that's what you're bringing up. Yeah. And I mean, that can come with age and experience with other players, not just Puig too. That feeling that you don't have to prove yourself or you just feel more comfortable. Everyone knows that feeling from their own lives, whether it's, I don't know, starting school as a freshman and then being completely comfortable by the time you're in senior year, that kind of thing can also apply in a baseball clubhouse. So yeah, I don't know. It was interesting because

you don't hear that about Puig ever. You hear the opposite about Puig. But maybe this is the first sign, the first little rumble on the train tracks that down the road at some point, Puig will actually fit in in a clubhouse. I was also thinking last night that baseball has really been missing the surprise DL activation. Like Giancarlo Stanton coming off the DL yesterday when no one was anticipating that is something that I wish were a regular part of baseball. Like looking at the Roto World updates for Stanton,

September 5th, Marlins still hopeful Stanton will return. And there's a quote from Don Mattingly. And the text says the best case scenario is likely a return for the final week of the season. Mattingly said he's making progress. And then the very next day, Marlins activate Stanton. I love that. I want to see that more. I want to see guys just sandbagging and saying, oh, yeah, I'm hoping I'll be back for the last week presumed that this was not a surprise to us,

but was a surprise to Stanton. And that they like, they like, it was like a surprise. I had just gone to a surprise birthday party. So it was like a surprise birthday party. They walked him into this room blindfolded. They took it off and everybody yelled surprise. And he's like in the batter's box. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. Anyway, there are good reasons why that doesn't happen. But usually, it works the other maybe if you want to keep the fans interested in the season, you don't want to say that, you know, everything is sunk and we're all done. But I can't imagine. You don't want to discourage the player. Yeah. I mean, you could tell the player something different in private and just say, oh, we're,

we're just saying this in public, but still, if the player's hearing, he's not going to be back. Okay. Maybe it's demoralizing. Maybe, yeah. But yeah, I see what you mean. Anyway, I understand why this never happens, why it was surprising when it did happen this one time,

but I wish it were a regular thing. Surprise comebacks would be a nice addition to baseball. And another thing that happened yesterday was that Anthony Rizzo homered twice off of Willie Peralta. And Anthony Rizzo's career numbers now in 37 plate appearances against Peralta, 32 at bats. He has hit seven home runs. He's hitting 500. He has an 18-18 OPS. And I wonder whether that rises to the level that you would consider it interesting,

that you would tune in for Willie Peralta versus Anthony Rizzo round 38, which I think might actually happen later this season because they're facing each other in the middle of this month. That doesn't seem that outlandish to me. I'm sure if you gave me a half hour, I could do better than that. Yeah, maybe. I mean, it's pretty good, 7 homers and 32 at bats Yeah, it is It's only 32 at bats I bet you I only say that

because for Playindex reasons, I spent a lot of time trolling through ever smaller splits for this show. And my kind of gut calibration tells me that good hitter in 37 plate appearances for that sort of a split is you're not shocked by 18-18. Yeah, it's impressive. Give me a name. Give me a name.

Let me see who I could – let's say – who's a good hitter? Mike Trout's a good hitter. He's a good hitter? Mike Trout's a good hitter. He's a great hitter. I'm going to see what Mike Trout's best comparable pitcher ownage is. Because that's... I mean, Rizzo has actually hit Mike Fiers harder, but in fewer plate appearances. We're going to sort by OPS. We're going to choose plate appearances over 20 for Trout.

And we're going to see if anything shows up. No, nothing shows up. All right, so so far it holds up. His best against any pitcher with 20 plate appearances is only 13-13. All right, I'll put you on hold for that, maybe. Okay. I think it's more, I'm usually more convinced the other way because a home run can, you if you hit if you just happen to

have a four home run game or you know if you happen to have three home runs off a guy that's gonna put you in crazy land for a long time but for a pitcher to have the same ownage over a batter really takes like you have to be perfect all the time for a sustained period of time uh and you know Rizzo has made a lot of outs he's's only hitting 500. Yeah. I don't know. I don't mean to look, I don't mean to, I'm jumping to conclusions. You might be 100% right. So I'll get back to you. So is it enough that you would revise your estimate of their performance in the next plate appearance if you had to do an expected production of Rizzo versus Peralta? Miguel Cabrera against Steve Traxell hit 545, 643, 1182 in 28 plate appearances. But that's still not better than Rizzo, and Rizzo has still nine more plate appearances

than he had against Traxell. No. Okay. I would say no. All right. Anything else? No. I want to look up one more name. Give me one more. Give me one more good hitter. Yeah. Trout and Cabrera are better than Rizzo, so that's kind of cheating too. I'm going David Ortiz.

Okay. Cano would be a good one. Would he? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. Nobody above 17.06 for Ortiz, and that was an exactly 20-plate appearance. His best against, wow, his best against any pitcher with as many plate appearances as Rizzo has against Peralta is against Jamie Moyer, lefty, crafty lefty, Jamie Moyer.

David Ortiz hit 395.49, 1,053 for a a 1542 OPS Alright, fine I will concede Anthony Rizzo Has ownage over Willy Peralta and I will revise My estimate slightly upward I would say 4% up Okay, alright, question From John Krause

I can't remember whether we've answered this Or some variation of it, but if we did It was years ago, he says To be eligible for the Hall of it, but if we did, it was years ago. He says, seasons and then died tragically, and some of the players who came over from the Negro Leagues, Monty Irvin and Satchel Paige, and perhaps a few others, who played fewer than 10 only because they were barred from doing so. These are obviously special cases for different reasons, but it got me thinking. Assuming a player was not barred from playing and did not meet a tragic end, how good would that player have to be to be elected to the Hall after playing a career of under 10 years?

If Mike Trout retired tomorrow, after only six years, to pursue a career of under 10 years if mike trout retired tomorrow after only six years to pursue a career on the weather channel would the hall waive its requirement to enshrine him anyway how about kershaw who is pitched for only nine seasons i quickly before i answer this cano has an 18 17 ops against joel pinero but again only 20 played appearances so a lot fewer than rizzo but against james Shields, he has an 1176 OPS. He's hitting 411, and that's in 97 plate appearances. So if you had the choice between revising Cano against Shields upward or Rizzo against Peralta upward, Rizzo's more extreme,

but Cano's in like two and a half times the plate appearances, like almost to a legitimate sample. Who would you choose? I guess I'd take Shields. I would take Shields if this was over the same period of time. But the nature of these is that Shields is, I mean, a lot of these, some of these plate appearances go back to 2006. Some go back to 2007, obviously. Some even go back to 2006. Some go back to 2007, obviously. Some even go back to 2008.

Some go back to 2009. Every year, in fact, since then. And so I would, for that reason, I would still go with Rizzo Peralta because you know that it's relatively recent. All right. Here's what I believe, Ben. I believe the 10-year minimum will be waived as soon as it needs to be. That there will be very little friction to removing it if ever a Hall of Fame deserving player shows up eligible or near eligible with fewer than 10 years. I think that somebody had the idea early on that they should restrict people on the ballot to that length. And it

makes sense if you have a ballot, you know, you don't want to, you have to figure out something to limit it, but it's never really been tested. If it were tested with a player of Mike Trout or Clayton Kershaw's caliber, I think it would just immediately be removed. I don't, even if, even if, even if Trout, if Trout quit today to become a, you know, a sitcom actor, maybe there wouldn't be as much. I mean, it'd be hot take land if a player like Trout quit by choice. But even then, I think probably. But certainly if he got glaucoma or if something worse happened, I don't think there's any doubt at all that they would remove it immediately.

So I think that would apply. I think think trout would make the hall of fame if he retired today and i think kershaw would make the hall of fame if he retired today i think those are the only two players that you could say it about uh yeah even if it were like felix we talked about felix yesterday and how he's definitely had a hall of fame pre 30s or through 30 career but you'd have to be at that level still, I think. Kershaw and Trout are as good as they've ever been. Felix is already declining, and I think that would probably take him out of the running. He hasn't been surpassingly great for the entire time, so I don't think that would do it. But Kershaw and Trout are in the best ever conversation,

so I think that gets them there i would guess that there's no more than i would guess something like maybe 18 ish players in history would have made it with fewer than 10 years if they'd retired at nine or sooner but trout and kershaw are two of those yeah you can't just be on a hall of fame trajectory you have to be like on on path to be maybe the best ever to be considered. And I think the exit would have to be involuntary. I don't think if you just didn't like baseball enough to keep playing, then I think many voters would perhaps fairly penalize you for that and say, well, he didn't care enough to keep playing and earn this honor, so we won't give it to him.

But if you had to retire because of an injury or whatever it was, then I think that would do it. So I agree. All right. Question from Andrew Patrick, who is a Patreon supporter. And this is maybe sort of similar to what we were talking about last week with the Rockies Cy Young discussion. He says, let's say that the Pirates were to decide to go all in on Ray Searidge they vow to turn their entire Minor league system into a pitching factory They trade all relevant position

Player prospects for pitchers abandon Hitting and fielding coaches at all minor league levels Other than a couple roving instructors For rehab and stock their entire System with pitchers and pitching coaches Games are played by good defenders slash good Clubhouse guys filling out the lineup card And they plan on simply trading from their excess of good pitching for good hitting at the major league level do you think this would work would hyper specialization

would hyper specialization at the minor league level produce more prospects of value than divesting their interests across many positions oh let's let's, let's, uh, I don't, well, okay. So first of all, you'd have to believe that Ray Searidge is a, is a magic factory. Right. And which we've, uh. Maybe not even supported by this season. Yeah. And secondly, if Ray Searidge is a magic factory, then you invest less in pitching and more

in the other things where your money plays better. I mean, arguably where your money is more necessary, because if Ray Searidge really can turn mediocre pitchers into stars, then that's great. You don't have to invest in good pitchers anymore. But so let's put Searidge aside and just ask, would hyper specialization at the minor league level produce more prospects of value than divesting their interests across many positions? And this seems like an interesting question that might be true. Yeah. I guess it depends whether you think that there is much room for hyper-specialization. If you think that there is a better way to develop certain skills than what teams already do and whether there are secrets to be had or whether there are a finite number of coaches capable of bringing it out of them or something like that. If there was though, it makes sense, right?

Hyper specialization works for developing every other quote unquote product. So the problem is that as we sometimes talk about that the trade market is inefficient. There seems to be like you can't count on getting 100% value out of a player that you have to trade. Like you can win trades by just sort of hanging around and waiting for a good trade to arrive. But if you have to trade a player, or if it's time to trade a player, or if you're really intent on trading a player, you can't really count on getting 100% return on that, I don't think. I think that there's sometimes timing doesn't work. Sometimes uncertainty around everybody's roster doesn't work.

Sometimes the fact that the other 29 GMs are not rational and hold on to their own pieces more than they should makes it so that you... I think if you start with 100 points of value and you say, I'm going to go trade these, you're likely to get something like 94 back. And so if your strategy is to focus on developing one thing and then trading that one thing for everything else you need, it's probably not great unless you can somehow afford to overpay like with money. Like if you're saving so much money by doing this that you can afford to overpay maybe, but I don't know. It seems like it's mostly working right now. Probably there's niche skills, I think, where this would make sense. And the Knuckleball Academy,

a team periodically tries, seems like the most obvious way. You can't really have, it's very hard as Bill James, I think, talked about it, Saber Seminar or something a few years back. Where was that? Saber Analytics. Yeah. As he talked about, it's very hard to develop knuckleballers in isolation because you don't have catchers in your system that can catch them or that want to catch them or that you want catching them. And so it really makes a lot more sense if you're developing knuckleballers in bulk, like antique shops. You don't want to have the only antique shop in town. You want to be one of 20 because then antique buyers will come to your town.

And so it's a little bit different. Shout out to my mom's antique store. Lady Jane's Antiques. For real. What was I talking about? Antiques Knuckleballers, yeah, so it would make sense For knuckleballers, and I think that's why Aren't the Rays doing, don't the Rays have a bunch of

Knuckleballers right now? Wasn't it the Orioles had a bunch of knuckleballers In spring training? Yeah, periodically a team will come to this conclusion And they'll do it Well, I see a blog post, the Rays and the return of the knuckleball Rays debut first to their new the return of the knuckleball. Rays debut first to their new stockpile of knuckleball pitchers from four days ago.

Dan Johnson returns to Rays as knuckleballer. There's a lot of knuckleballers in the Rays' system right now. So, yeah, periodically a team will conclude this and try it. And so far it hasn't really paid off probably. But did Stephen Wright come out? Do you know if Stephen Wright was the lone knuckleballer in the Red Sox organization? Because for a while it seemed like if I was aware of a knuckleballer in the minors, he was a Red Sox prospect. Yeah, they had some too. Yeah, so maybe then Stephen Wright is the result of that.

I'm not sure somebody could write about that. But that would have certainly paid off for the investment. So are there other hyper-specialized skills that this would make sense for? I don't know. I mean, most teams probably think they're already doing everything they can to develop both pitchers and batters. And other than just focusing on acquiring one or the other, like we talked about in the Rockies example, where you just draft all pitchers, at least in the early rounds or something, you could do that. But as far as improving the talent that you already have, pinch runners, sort of the Royals Academy kind of thing, where you could do that with base dealers maybe.

Yeah. And it seems like there are a lot of coaches and there are a lot of resources and there are a lot of facilities to go around. And so, there's probably not a real case that you can't just do everything you want. But, you know, bandwidth is an issue, I guess. So, if you wanted to have a sprinting academy like the Dodgers had, what, last year? Or if you want to bring the cricketers over and have a whole camp that goes on all year of former cricketers, there's probably benefit. I mean, there's certainly, I would say, certainly benefit to having 10 of those guys at once instead of just having one of them working alone with his own dedicated coach

and his own dedicated facility like Jesse at the end of Breaking Bad. I am reading RJ actually just wrote about this. The reassuring news for Gamboa is that he should get a legitimate look from the Rays, and not just because they lack competitive aspirations. The Rays spent the winter stocking up on knuckleballers, even hiring former big leaguer Charlie Hager as a pitching coordinator. It seems as though the organization is intent on testing whether the wind-free Tropicana Field is the Idyllic butterfly garden

It's made out to be Cool. Yep. Alright Question from Eric in Millbrae Who is also Springboarding from that Rockies discussion He says, following up on the question about The best way for the Rockies to get a Cy Young winner My first thought was just trade for

Kershaw, and yet you both dance Past that as if it were a complete impossibility. Is it really the case that the Rockies could not acquire Kershaw, even if it was their only goal and they put every available organizational resource behind it? What if they offered the Dodgers their top 20 minor league prospects, any major league players they wanted, plus any cash allowable in a trade? A broader question, how many MLB teams could have acquired Clayton Kershaw before the deadline this year if it was their only goal? Zero? A few? Trout for Kershaw? Well, Kershaw is a special instance, right? Because doesn't he have a clause that as soon as he gets traded, he becomes

a free agent the next offseason? Yes. So simply by... Gets a cash bonus also. Yeah. So simply by trading him, you have increased his cost to the team that acquires him far more than, you know, the cost of the Dodgers for giving up those years, right? Well, yeah. I mean, you'd still have to give up the same. You just wouldn't get as much. Yeah, right. The Dodgers- It would be a worse, you'd have to be willing to get a much worse return to do it. The gap between what the Dodgers can expect to get out of clayton kershaw if they keep him and what an acquiring team could expect to get out of kershaw if they acquired him

is probably insurmountable by any return unless he just wanted to do something stupid yeah like like right yes if you it right that is true i i forgot that if you if you do want to do something stupid. Good. Great, great point. But so can we still answer this? Well, we could just pretend that it's just generic best pitcher in baseball or generic best hitter in baseball and doesn't have a weird contract clause. All right. So how many teams could trade for Mike Trout? Are we doing that? Sure. I would guess that if you really, how many GMs could give up what it would take to get Mike Trout and, you know, not lose their, not lose the room, not lose the public, not lose their owner, maybe is a different question.

Because I'm not sure that if the reds got mike trout i'm sure that it'd be exciting but only to a point like you if you traded literally 200 prospects away from mike trout and you had to shut down your seven minor league system for the rest of the year i don't know that the city would like that or that the fans would like that so they might i don't know if they would but let's just talk about how many teams could put together a package, politics aside, that would get Mike Trout. And we're presuming that the Angels would listen because they would, right? No matter what they say, if you put together a package that was, for instance, Bryant, Russell, Baez, and the Cubs top 10 prospects, they would take that.

Yes. No matter what they say. So I would guess that there are 26 teams. Well, especially if you're trading, like if you're the Tigers, could you get Mike Trout by trading Justin Verlander, Could you get Mike Trout by trading Justin Verlander, Miguel Cabrera Justin Upton Jordan Zimmerman And Nick Castellanos and taking all their salaries You could right

Yeah sure I think you could Because Trout's only Signed for 4 more years after this I think So you need To get 40 wins Probably 30 to 40 wins out of that group's entire careers going forward and you'd also save 120 million in the process

so i think that you could do it so i'll say every team could if yeah if we're if we're not dealing with anything realistic which this question does not ask for it to be realistic i think every team could except maybe the Angels. They maybe couldn't trade for Mike Trout if they didn't already have him. That's true. Would you take, if there was a fire and you had to save Mike Trout or the entire rest of the organization? And not caring about the human cost in terms of like lives saved?

Yeah, right, of course. Just baseball talent? Yeah, it just baseball talent yeah it's a it's an analogy it's a metaphor gosh i i think i take trout i think i take trout yeah probably take trout but i think just about any other team could do it uh- right. Play index. Yeah. So this is the time of year when teams call up a bunch of minor leaguers and they carry 35-ish active rosters. Before I get into it, a lot of people would like to see this rule, this roster loophole or whatever, changed. And I'm fine with that. I think it's perfectly appropriate for people to say that it's really weird that in the final games of the season when everything matters the most and the

pennant races are being decided, that all of a sudden we're playing by different rules and by baseball games that don't always look like normal baseball games because there are unlimited players. And so I think it's perfectly appropriate to say this is weird. I think it's the idea that you can bring everybody up and keep only 25 active for a single game also seems like a good fix. I would be in favor of that without strong emotions, but I'd be in favor of that. Seems like a nice fix. But I thought I would just look into, briefly using Playindex, look into the two of the common complaints or two of the common objections to this sort of thing and i should note that russell carlton wrote a piece today uh at baseball prospectus looking at whether these call-ups uh swing pennants pennant races

specifically more or less russell looked at whether teams benefit by facing junk rosters like whether like to put it i'll give you one of the things he found. Last year, the one team I think the Blue Jays faced, only 1% of the batters they faced were September call-ups, whereas the Pirates, 13% of the batters they faced were September call-ups. And if you consider September call-ups players who were not good enough to be on the roster on August 31st, but are good enough to be on it september 1st uh therefore they are worse than the average major leaguer you could say well what the team like the pirates really benefited so

russell took a swing at that question of whether they're swinging the pennant races and found that not really it's not a big deal uh is what he found. So I'm looking at two other things, two different things. One is quickly, I'll go through quickly. One is whether the 25-man limit for an individual game would change things. And two is whether September creates this weird world where the competing teams playing against non-competitive teams, where, for instance, if the Nationals are playing the Phillies tomorrow, and the Nationals are really going all out and using 38 men from their 40-man roster, but the Phillies, who to use these big, huge, giant benches to try to win games than teams that don't. So I went back to 2012. So I covered the wildcard, the second wildcard era. And I just counted how many times a team in September used 22 or more players in a game. And of course, one third of major league teams

make the playoffs, two thirds don't. So if this were not a factor, if this were not being driven by teams competitiveness, we would expect to see twice as many playoff miss teams using 22 players in the game than playoff made teams. And in fact, that is not the case. Many more teams that make the playoffs are likely to use 22 players in a game than that miss the playoffs. 33 instances of a playoff bound team using 22 or more players in a game in that time period. Only 21 examples of teams that missed the playoffs using 22 or more players in a game in that time period. Only 21 examples of teams that missed the playoffs using 22 or more players in that time period. And many of those, if not most of them even, are teams that were pursuing the playoffs and were competitive until the end, but still count as missing the playoffs in this. So it really does seem like teams that are competing are playing with a different rule book than teams that are not competing. And so it is a fair,

I think it is a fair complaint that, that for instance, if you're the nationals and your final 12 games are against the, you know, the, the dregs of the league, you have an extra, an extra advantage, not just because you're playing bad teams but because you're playing teams that are not making full use of the rules while you can make full use of the rules compared to a team that is maybe playing another competitive team in the final game so that seems fair does that make sense did i explain that clear enough yep all right so the second point is whether the 25-man roster in a given day would fix this. And the thing about having 25 active players for a game as a limit that you can reset

every day is that you're still really changing the game because you don't have to carry your four non-starting pitchers of that game. So everybody would be available. So you really could go and use all 25 players on your team. You know, so the change, it's kind of a half measure. So I look to see how many games in September have used 26 or more players, which are basically the games that we're trying to eliminate. And these games are actually extremely rare. There was one last year in which both teams did it. There was one in 2014, one in 2011, two in 2008. And so we're talking about one game every two-ish years. If you go back all the way to 2000, there are only 11 of these games. And if you go back to

1990, there are only 15 of these games. So we're really talking about a rule change. If you decide to make it 25 and you let teams reset every game so that they can really play with all 25, we're really talking about eliminating one game every two years, which doesn't seem that important. It's still a fine rule fix, I think. It would make people feel better. But these games are extremely rare that 26 or more players are actually used, and it's not really solving a problem that is pervasive in baseball. So there you go. I think it's fine how it is. I think it's fine if you fix it. I will also note one other thing, the record for players in a game. We actually talked about this game last year. Last year in September, the Dodgers played the Rockies. The Dodgers were

in a playoff race. The Rockies were not in a playoff race. The game won extra innings. The game was wild. The Dodgers used 28 players, which is the most for a playoff-bound team ever. And it seems kind of unfair to the Giants that they got to face this team that was just phoning it in, that the Dodgers got to face this team that was phoning it in, while the Dodgers got to use 28 men and really abuse the rule. Except that the Rockies used 30 that game. The Rockies did take it seriously. Russell noted this. We've noted this. There does seem to be an unwritten rule, for the most part,

that teams that are out of it do try when they're facing teams that are in it, that they treat it like real baseball. They don't roll over. The rollover game is the one after you clinch. And that one is sort of a, if you want to talk about non-competitive baseball in September, those games are really the shame of the sport where teams just absolutely do not care. Even if there are playoff implications for their opponent, they'll bench every starter and treat it like a joke game. But those are competitive teams.

Non-competitive teams really do seem to take their role as spoiler seriously. The Rockies did. They had 30 batters in this game, or 30 players in this game. Uncompetitive teams really do seem to take their role as spoiler seriously. The Rockies did. They had 30 batters in this game or 30 players in this game. That is the record, 30 players in one game, and it was by a team that was, you know, who knows how many games out, probably 35 games out at the time. And I think games might get longer also.

Four minutes. Yeah, someone in the Facebook group asked just recently, and Andrew Perlman looked it up using RetroSheet information. He found that last year the gap was about six minutes in nine-inning games only. And so it's probably partly because of all the call-ups. It's not necessarily all because of that, though. I mean, games are maybe more important, and teams are taking longer in crucial moments and making more pitching changes and all that sort of stuff. So, might be other factors at play also,

but probably also some dead air added to games. Alright, so you can subscribe to the Play Index, get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription using the coupon code BP. And we did get a question about roster size that kind of asked about the opposite. If you removed all restrictions on the

roster, not just for one month, but all the time, Rich Thomas asked us, what do you think would happen if restrictions on the 25-man roster were removed at the major league level? There would still be roster restrictions at the minor league level, so the Rule 5 draft would still be a thing and players could not be hidden away at the minor league level. But what positions would be added to the bench? Would it just be a bunch of extra leavers and one-out specialists? At what point would there not be enough talent for these extra roster spots? After five years, what would be the average size of a major league roster? I guess that's the most interesting question.

We answered this once. Did we? Yeah, which is always pressure on us to be even close to the right. Yeah, I believe that there are not more qualified. I don't believe that there are that many more qualified major leaguers than are in the major leagues. Like you can expand your roster, but you're expanding them with players who aren't the ones that you really want to use. There's almost

always every, every team already has at least one reliever junk man who you don't really want to give innings to anyway. So it's not like that is missing in major league bullpens. So I would guess that you get one extra reliever, one extra speed guy, and one or two extra pinch hitters who are sort of more one-dimensional. So 29? Uh-huh. Yeah. I mean, the more guys you have, the more expenses you have, the more trouble it is to keep track of them, the less time you have to coach them and pay attention to each of them individually. And so there's just no reason to keep adding unless you think it will actually help you. And I mean, everyone can add as many as they want.

So even if the overall talent gets diluted, it doesn't necessarily change your standing compared to other teams. But still, yeah, you could just look at, I guess, how many commonly get used when teams have the ability to do this during September, which is what you were just talking about, essentially. So it's not as if teams are routinely using many, many more in a game if they can. And it's a little different if you're talking about for a full season and you could rest guys more and that kind of thing. But even so, I think that's probably right, just talking about a few on average.

Maybe if you're a team with just a ton of minor league depth, there might be certain cases where you'd have more. Yeah, and you might see the rich teams build more minor league depth. Maybe that would be something that you would prioritize. Maybe that would be something that you would prioritize Maybe the Yankees And the Dodgers would have 33 Because they actually Pursued 33 useful players Alright

Question from Peter E In Champaign, Illinois He says, my question today Which team's core of young position Players would you rather have for the next 3, 5, and 10 years? The Cubs Or the Red Sox? And he limited it to 7 players on each team who were all younger than 28.

You can look at the players he picked. But for the Cubs, he has Bryant, Rizzo, Russell, Schwarber, Baez, Contreras, Soler. For the Red Sox, he has Betts, Bogarts, Bradley, Benintendi, Moncada, Devers, and Travis Shaw. Hmm. Hmm. Both very strong groups. And you could figure out some systematic way to answer this. You could look at Pocota projections if you wanted to. But I think just glancing at the list, probably I would take the Cubs.

Me too. Yeah. Yep. Me too. Yeah. Yep, me too. Yeah, I think I might take the top of the Red Sox list over the top of the Cubs list, possibly. Just because I like bets so much. I had the Red Sox through two. Yeah. And then the third, I switched over on the third.

And then I liked the Cubs more at three, at four, at five, at six, at seven. I like, yeah, I think I, in fact, honestly, if you match them up and line them up and make them play like Ryder Cup style, I think it's narrow for all these. These are two extremely good cores, but I think I take the Cubs in six of seven. Yeah, the bottom of the Red Sox list is a little light. Travis Shaw doesn't excite me much as a core player, but yeah, it's close. Both great. Good question. All right. And lastly, Kyle Phelps says, I was watching Matt Moore's near no hitter get broken up by a bloop single, and it reminded me of Scherzer's near perfect game that ended because of a hit by pitch. My question to you is, what is the worst way to lose a perfect game?

And he lists the contenders that he thought of. He probably included just about every possibility. A weak hit, a bloop of some sort, a walk-off inside the park homer, an error on a routine play, an E1, an incorrect call, a reversed call. We've obviously seen that happen. We've seen the incorrect call. It was pretty bad. Hit by pitch, drop third strike, catcher's interference, getting relieved or pinch hit for. I don't know how that would happen, but that's one.

Rain out, ejection, injury. And lastly, game is protested and upheld. Game is protested and upheld. So, like, for instance, rainout. If you had a rainout at, you know, two outs in the fifth, then the game gets wiped away. And that would be pretty painful. But also, you probably, you know, you probably weren't going to throw a perfect game. If you had it rained out with two outs in the ninth, don't. I think that the, I think baseball would remember you.

So, I don't, I think that would. It would remember you yeah so i don't i think that would count as a perfect game right no you have to they change the rules sometime back and you have to go nine now uh-huh uh so but i think that that one would be okay i think that might be... The one that, as you know, because I replied to this, game is protested and upheld would be just incredible. On the other hand, you got all 27 outs. True. Presumably. Like, you know what you did.

Like, at least you know. And this goes to whether the benefit of retiring 27 batters in the game is primarily external. You know, like Jiffy Lube wants you to read their ad copy during radio broadcast next year. That's like $2,000. And, you know, your grandkids can look you up in the baseball encyclopedia and see that you did this thing and all that. Or if it's mainly internal saying, I did it. Like, I retired 27 batters in a row. And if in game is protested and upheld, I think you could still feel the latter. Like, you know that you did it.

Ejection depends whether you deserved it. Yeah. And, you know, maybe that's a learning experience. Learn for your next time. Injury, depending on your injury. Didn't Phil Hughes? Hughes, he had a hamstring thing, I think, in, wasn't it perfect? I want to say he was like seven and two-thirds innings into a no-hitter

in like his seventh Major League start or something. And I have no idea how close that is. His second Major League start. Yeah, second Major League start. Went out in the seventh. So major league start went out in the seventh so yeah one out in the seventh and pulled his left hamstring yeah so i don't think that's close enough but if you were eight and two thirds and you pull the hamstring i wonder how bad a hamstring injury you'd have to have not to try to throw through that but uh that would be pretty bad. I mean, we've already seen the worst, right?

Incorrect call was maybe the worst, and it happened. Yeah, but just, I mean, Armando Galarraga, like, he's a- He's still well known for that. He is very well known for that. His no-hitter, his perfect game is a thousand times more famous now than it ever would have been. Everybody knows that he got it. Everybody knows that he got it. He knows that he got it. There's no real loss in the sense that anybody goes,

well, I always said Galarraga was the kind of guy who didn't have the heart to finish a perfect game. Nobody says that about him. And he came out of it a legit hero. The way he handled it, it gave him an opportunity to demonstrate his character uh and 100 years from now they will be talking about that they will not be talking they won't be talking about phil umber and so i actually think that it's easy for me to say this because i'm not there i'm not him but objectively speaking if i was his you know his therapist

i would be trying to tell him that you know this was a way that a good thing happened to you in an unexpected way. Yeah. Okay. Now, if you're, you could also imagine a scenario where he, you know, pitches a fit and is exposed as the, you know, fragile, sensitive person that most of us are and everybody hates him for it, maybe, but probably not i mean and he wasn't so i don't know i i'm i'm not i don't think i can it just that turned out so well didn't it yeah i guess there are ways in which it did even the umpire got a book out of it right i think air on routine play isn't because you can still throw a no hitter and baseball players

treat no hitters as almost as good as perfect games. Uh-huh. Hit by pitch is just what that's just a hit by pitch. Actually, they both got a book out of it. Armando Galraga and Jim Joyce co-wrote a book called Nobody's Perfect. See, where's Phil Lumber's book? I don't know. You might read it one day. I love Phil Ember. Dropped third strike. I'm going to drop third strike because it's the stupidest rule. Yeah, drop third strike. It is the stupidest rule taken to its most extreme stupidity. I was perfect and I was so good on this pitch that this guy swung at a ball that was in the dirt like an idiot. It was so good. It was such a stupid pitch that even the catcher couldn't catch it.

That's how good it was. The batter still swung at it. And yet he gets on base for no reason. I mean, look, I'm going to just, I'm going to go, I'm going to read what I wrote about this rule because I hate this rule. I don't think I've ever read it on this podcast,

so I can do it now. And then I'll be officially on record for why this is the stupidest rule. All right, I'm going to read for a while. This was, I wrote about Francisco Liriano in 2012, throwing one of the three best pitches of that week. I'm not going to quit watching baseball over it, but as far as dumb rules in baseball go, the uncaught third strike has to be up there, right? Maybe the dumbest. The point of pitching is to get outs. The most reliable way to get an out is via strikeout. And the best way to get a strikeout is to get the batter to swing at a pitch he can't

possibly hit hard. So here we see Francisco Liriano throw perhaps a perfect pitch to Jeff Francor and beat Francor so badly that the rules allow Francor to go to first base. Why? That makes no sense at all. Does a running back who jukes a defensive player have to stop if the defensive player loses his balance and falls to the ground? Is a basketball player's three-point shot declared void if the shooter is too far behind the line? If a hockey player does a thing that's something about the other guy's thing, does the thing get unhockeyed? No, of course not. And yet here we are watching Jeff Francour run to first. Does anybody in baseball pump his arms while running more than Jeff Francour? Parentheses, open parentheses. Note,

according to the Dixon Baseball Dictionary, quote, the rationale comes from the principle that the defense has to make a proper fielding play to record an out, end quote. Except for all the exceptions, the many, many exceptions, Such as, infield fly is called. Foul bunt with two strikes. Batted ball strikes a runner. Fan interferes with the fly ball. Batter runs into his own batted ball while out of the batter's box. Batter steps out of a batter's box while swinging.

Batter obstructs catcher's throw on a stolen base attempt. Runner leaves the baseline. Batter swings the two-strike pitch that hits him. Fielder intentionally drops a line drive or fly ball in the infield. Runner collides with fielder attempting to field a ball. Or batter has too much pine tar on his bat. Jeez, the rule is just so arbitrary. You could put any stupid obstacle in front of any player during any routine play and call it colorful, but why? Why do that? Stupid, stupid rule, which doesn't actually lessen my enjoyment of baseball at all. All right.

There you go. So that would be the worst way to lose a perfect game. Okay. And it almost happened to Phil Umber. All right. We're finished. All right. For a while, we have teased a book-centric episode and said we'd have Stompers GM,

Theo Fightmaster, on the show to talk about the team and answer your questions about the book. It looks like we are finally going to do that later this week, so if you have questions for Theo, if you have questions about the book, please email them to podcast at baseballperspectives.com as soon as possible. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have already done so, on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have already done so. Sanjay Markin, John Thompson, David Campbell,

Matt O'Donnell, and Jack Wheatley. Thank you. You can buy our book, The Only Rules It Has to Work, our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team. Check out the website at theonlyrulesithastowork.com and leave us a review on Amazon and Goodreads if you like it. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild and you can rate and review Effectively Wild on iTunes. email us at podcast at baseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon.

And we will be back later this week. We run around spending most of our lives trying to have a good time just to stay in the light. Whoa, I want to break this thing with all that we have. And we'll give it a shot Cause you're all that I've got Whoa-oh-oh In the end In the end I am your friend