Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 953: Banter Goeth Before a Mailbag

Episode Date: September 15, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Shohei Otani and answer listener emails about Rich Hill, tanking in the season’s last series, interleague play, Jose Bautista’s ballpark ownage, and more.

I called you up at 102 We just sat there for ages talking about that boy what was getting onto you Hello and welcome to episode 953 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You

You You You You You You You You

You You You You You You You You

You You You You You You You You

You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You Anything you want to talk about before we do? Nope. Well, today's Shohei Otani update is that he broke a record. I suppose he broke his own record for fastest pitch in NPB history. He touched 164 kilometers per hour, which is about 102 miles per hour. So he throws really, really hard.

Goodness gracious. Yeah. How's his bat doing? It's doing very well He still has a OPS over 1000 I don't know how it's done Since the last time we gave a Shotei Otani update which was not long ago

But he is hitting If baseball reference is updated 326 425 611 With 22 homers Wow And 7 steals in nine attempts let's see here he still has the best ops in the league by about 70 points so doesn't it seem like uh japanese baseball has has managed to continually up the hype for whoever the next guy is in a way that sort of feels like a bubble. But this really seems untoppable. How do you top best hitter

and best pitcher in Japan? Maybe best pitcher that they've ever had. This is going to be really incredibly disappointing if he comes over and disappoints, isn't it? Or if he doesn't come over soon, for us at least. But yeah, I think Japanese baseball, as far as I know, has managed to avoid the huge talent drain that, say, Cuban baseball has. I mean, it's really hard to tell what the talent level is of Cuban baseball. I talked to Kevin Goldstein about that on a Ringer show. of Cuban baseball. I talked to Kevin Goldstein about that on a Ringer show. And you look at last year's stats for Iulieski Gurriel, and he literally hit 500. And there's just no way to tell how good the league is. And it seems clear that it's a lot worse than it was

several years ago before so much talent was signed. And PB has avoided that to a greater extent, probably just because of the system they have in place where, I mean, no one's defecting. It's just you play for a while and then you leave. If you ever leave, there's a certain amount of time that you essentially have to stay there because of all the pressure not to just sign with the MLB team right out of high school. So because of that, it seems like they've been able to preserve the level of play there. I haven't seen that determined statistically, but I haven't heard anything about it falling off too much. And so, yeah, I think his accomplishments are every bit as exciting. I don't know if he'll be as hyped as, say, Hideo Nomo was, just because

there's a lot more precedent now, and we've seen many examples, but this is something new. So the best pitcher and the best hitter in the league in one combined human form coming over will be just amazing. I wonder what a team would pay for him if not for the posting system, if there weren't a max and a $20 million fee and all that, if he were just an unrestricted free agent somehow, I wonder what a big league team would pay for Ohtani. We still haven't decided whether a big league team would use him in a two-way fashion. Right. And that makes all the difference. I still think the high bidder would.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, maybe he would. Probably. Probably. Like every day. I don't know. Every day. Like it's really hard to imagine. There's just no precedent at all for, you know, in modern times in the last many decades, but especially now of not allowed to catch a pop-up if you're a pitcher. And so it's really hard to imagine a team letting a pitcher bat every day. Not hard to imagine in the sense that if you told me it happened, I'd call you a liar. If you knock 200 points, I'm looking at the guys who have hit in the same league as he has this year and like i

don't know what do you think carlos pagaro would hit in the majors right now like just give me an ops he's 29 600 600 all right what do you think uh rent moral moral morel would hit in the majors if he were there right now he's he's also 29 well what did he hit the first time? 601 he did in 717 plate appearances. So, yeah, I'll say, I mean, I don't know. I guess there are more runs being scored now, but I'll say 550. Okay. And what do you think Brian Bogusevic would hit?

He's 32. I don't know. All these guys seem like a 600-ish to me. Okay. Well, they are, in fact, one has an 870. Morrell has a 680. And Bogusevic has a 601. So let's say that you just knock 200 points off. And that's your adjusted, like, obviously, that's not right.

But let's just say you knock 200 points off otani still has you know an 840 ops which is like what what that's got to be like buster posey right like who has an 840 ops this year good good hitters do uh yeah so buster posey is 801 this year but 850 career and of course he wouldn't catch but buster posey is 801 this year, but 850 career. And of course he wouldn't catch, but Buster Posey is a very good hitter. Hunter Pence. Let's see what Hunter Pence is. He's got 830 this year. He's at 811 in his career. So you're talking about a guy who is a all-star corner outfield hitter. Yeah. So if you go every day with, like, you could, you could make the case that if he signed as strictly an outfielder and he wasn't allowed to pitch, that he's a $20 million a year player. And so it does feel hard to imagine that you just let that go past. But on the other hand, what is it every day?

Is it two days a week? And I still forget where I was going with this. You draw a conclusion for me. Well, would he get the biggest contract we've seen so far? If he were just available? That's right. So if he were just available as a pitcher, then he would probably get less than you, Darvish, right? So on the one hand, he's only 21, and he's gotten better every year, which is not terribly shocking. And Darvish was 25 when he came over, so you've got that benefit.

Darvish didn't throw 102. Darvish didn't throw 102, but he was, unless the, I don't know what the offensive environment has been like over there and how it's changed, but Darvish's stats were quite a bit better. Darvish had an ERA that was a half a run to a run lower. He had a lot better control. He had similar strikeout rates, but much better control. And so I don't think if he were just a pitcher, he would get more adjusted for inflation than Darvish did. And so to be the record breaker, I mean, he'll probably break the record. He probably would break the record. Well, for one thing, the posting fee is no longer nearly

so onerous for him, right? It's almost a non-factor, but for another inflation. But would he get more than Darvish would get today as just a pitcher? I't think so so then it becomes how much do you pay him and then it's how much are you using him uh and if you're only using him as a DH he's still valuable but not at not nearly as valuable uh-huh like as a DH an 840 OPS in the majors is probably like uh like Billy Butler ish like Kendry's morales in that like that's what the a's and the royals probably hoped they were getting from those guys so then you're talking about you know 33 years and 30 million that's that kind of hitter maybe a little higher so i don't know is this our topic today no but he's 22 and he's both of those things in one person oh and that's

yeah that's the other thing, is that, like, you might not expect his pitching to get any better, because pitcher aging curves don't necessarily work that way, but his hitting quite possibly would. And if he is a 21-year-old with an 840 OPS in the majors, then you, you know, your mind might boggle at what, or be boggled at what you could imagine him doing at 26 27 so he could be david ortiz by the time he's um you know in his mid-late 20s conceivably

conceivably right all right i can't wait to watch it yeah on a regular basis this should be part of the cba negotiations like i don't know who would be taking this position But they should just decide That Otani has to play in the majors Otherwise there's a strike It's gotta happen right now Alright So a follow up

From listener Justin Who was responding to our topic On the last email show About the worst ways to lose a perfect game he pointed out that we missed one that actually happened lack of run support in 1995 Pedro Martinez got 27 outs and ended up giving up a hit in extras because the Expos could not muster a run that's brutal it is brutal I would not put it at the top of the list, though, because to me, Pedro and Harvey Haddix's performances both are more memorable than, you know, Tom Browning's was because they are so unusual. So I'm sure that I think it would be maybe a stretch

to say that it's better for the individual pitcher to not be on the perfect game list because your team doesn't score and you have to get pulled in extras. But, you know, historically speaking, as far as long-term thinking and how historians will judge you, I think it plays pretty well for the pitcher. All right, and then follow-up question from Neil, who says, Thank you for doing the Emergency Weekend podcast, a true public service.

I have two questions about Rich Hill's game That didn't come up on that episode One do you think it made it psychologically Easier for Dave Roberts to pull Hill After Puig's catch As in Hill was playing with house money at that point So he can't be that mad if I pull him And second

Yeah no that's what it looked like in the dugout You could see Hill was like glad i cashed in that that those chips now i'm gonna go get some uh some uh some chow mein and hang around the casino for a little bit and then go home and get a good night's sleep that's seemed like what hill was thinking yeah well we can answer that before the second question i think i did kind of think that at the time like it almost devalues the perfect game when a guy makes a really incredible catch to save it, because then it's about the guy who made the really incredible catch to save it. I mean, in most cases, that ball that Hill allowed probably would fall for a hit, certainly if the outfielder was positioned where Puig was. And so that was more a positive for Puig than it was a

positive for Hill. That ball probably should have been a hit, probably would have been a hit usually. And so that kind of devalues it in the way that a no-hitter is devalued by the fact that the defense plays such an important part. So I was thinking that a little bit, like, you know, whether it's a perfect game or not depended on Puig here, not Hill. And so in that sense, who really cares if Hill can get six more outs? But on the other hand, I think probably it made it even more difficult to have him pull him. I mean, obviously, now you're taking that away from Puig. Yeah, that is, well, obviously, it would have been much easier to pull him if Puig hadn't made the catch, if it had been a hit. But if Puig had just made a routine catch, if it had been a routine fly ball, I think it probably would have been harder because that just made it more of a moment.

and Puig did it and all the baggage Puig has. And so it was this really nice moment. And it was like everyone's going way out of their way to preserve this thing. You know, Puig is the guy who people complain about not giving complete effort was giving complete effort to preserve this perfect game. And then right after that, Roberts just pulled him. So I think it probably made it more difficult. I would guess that if Hill completes that perfect game 50 years from now, Puig's catch is still considered one of the 25 greatest, most famous

plays in baseball history. Yeah, then it's like the Steven Souza catch, the Dwayne Wise catch. Yeah, it gets that extra bump. And even, yeah, it gets that extra bump and even more so because of Puig and because the aesthetics of that catch are so particularly nice. But instead, it will go down as a play that many of us remember, but not one of the most famous catches in history. Right. And the second question, if the Dodgers bullpen had completed the first ever combined perfect game, what would have been the appropriate on-field celebration? None, None. Yeah, we've never discussed combined perfect games on this show because they don't exist. But we have discussed combined no-hitters, and they're not interesting. They're not notable. I could see, conceivably, if you had a situation... Look, I think there was a game where Roy Oswalt went three innings perfect and then got injured. I think I might be making this up.

And then got injured and somebody came in. Now, if you had a situation where the guy who came in went the next six and was perfect through those, then that's worth celebrating. I think then it's close enough. One guy really, you know, the bullpen was, it's easy to focus on one guy. They weren't playing matchups or anything like that. And he did something sort of Herculean as well. And so I could say I wouldn't think that it would be as big a deal. It wouldn't be as big a deal as a regular perfect game, but still worth, you know, congregating around him and, you know, hitting him in the head with your glove as ballplayers do.

around him and, you know, hitting him in the head with your glove as ballplayers do. But I don't think that a normal bullpen game, or even one where Blanton finished last two, would get anything more than normal handshake line. Okay. Jordan of Cespedes Family Barbecue asks, Say there was a Bryce Harper-esque generational talent presumed to be the clear number one overall pick in the 2017 draft. Let's also imagine the two teams, Twins and Braves, for example, fighting for the right to draft this player in next year's draft have the exact same record heading into the final weekend of the regular season, and they are scheduled to play a three-game series to finish out the year.

Would there be any noticeable difference in how these teams play this final series to determine who gets superstar x in next year's draft or would they just play their regular bad players and quietly hope they lose at least two of three you could you shut you know you you use that last weekend uh maybe shut down your regular starters starting pitchers uh and you know there's maybe a couple of guys on your team that like i don't think you could whoever the home team is can't, if say the Braves are at home, it'd be hard for them to bench Freddie Freeman for the whole weekend when it's fan appreciation weekend, um, or whatever. Uh, but you know, he gets a day off, maybe he leaves another game in the fifth, but certainly there is no precedent for, or I think

allowance for the players on the field, trying hard like if you were if you were in any way suspected of as a player of not trying to win the game that you're in or not trying to get a hit in the in bat you're in it would be very bad for you in your career so i think that you're fairly limited in that in that way um but you know just swapping out your best starters, your best starting pitchers for three AAA scrubs is not nothing. It's not a huge deal if you're that bad of a team, but it's as big a move as you can probably make. And it probably, you know, costs you a tenth or two tenths of a win in expectancy in each of those games. Yeah, I think you could get away with using worse relievers. Like if there's some high-leverage spot and, you know, whoever your best reliever is, you'd

usually bring him in in that spot. I bet you could get away with bringing in a September call-up or something and just saying, well, you know, we're looking ahead to next year and we want to see what these guys can do and we want to put them in a pressure situation or whatever, I think you could get away with that kind of thing. So I think your reliever choices could be affected without arousing too much suspicion, probably. But yeah, it'd be tough to really bench your regulars. Maybe in one of the games you could do that, but you can't really argue that you're resting someone because what are you resting them for? It's the end of the season and you're not

playing for anything anyway. So your hands would be tied to a certain extent, but you could maybe get your starters out of the lineup earlier. It's a long season. The funny thing is, let's say that you and this other team are exactly equal and you've got, is let's say that you and this other team are exactly equal and you've got you know what i swear this asian pear it's not an asian pear that's why it's an apple pear have you ever heard of an apple pear no i bought what i thought was an asian pear and i've just been looking at it and thinking not too dense too shiny not not an not an asian pear what is wrong with this it's an apple pear i've never heard of such a thing apple pear crunchy crunchy one fruit i like and one fruit i dislike so it's the pluot of apples and pears i guess yeah i've never been a pluot fan love plums love apricots don't like pluots ben yeah say there's

two teams that are 50 50 and one wants to um to lose that game and so they you know they take out a starting pitcher and they well the it's the the kind of funny thing is that uh you can the more the other team does the more you can do as well without being shamed or without it looking like you're turning it into a farce so in a sense you're you're limited by what the other team does. I think you can do like one or two things to cost yourself chances to win. But if the other team doesn't also do things to cost themselves chances to win, you're sort of stuck. Whereas meanwhile, if the other team starts doing stupid things, you can do those stupid things too. So my guess is that if you were 50-50 to win that game, you couldn't really, without raising suspicion or annoying everybody,

you probably couldn't get your odds lower than like 39% in an individual game. Yeah, I was going to say 40-60 if you asked me. Okay, playing decks? Yeah, sure. So first I want to just knock out a real quick one because I was asked specifically to answer the question of the worst game scores for a perfect game, a no-hitter, and a complete game shutout. And so I will just go through those very quickly.

The worst game score for a perfect game, the only variable that is up for discussion is strikeouts because all the other variables would be defined by it being a perfect game. So the worst perfect game, the worst, I guess, quote-unquote, worst perfect game ever was Dennis Martinez's in 1991, when he only struck out five batters. And yet, because it's a perfect game, he still had a game score of 92. To put 92 in perspective, that's actually what Tyjuan Walker had last night when he threw a complete game, shut out, allowed three hits with no walks,

and struck out 11. And that is the seventh best game score of the year. So even the worst perfect game ever is still obviously extremely good. For the worst no hitter ever that would belong to a fellow named ed lafit who in 1914 threw a no hitter but walked seven struck out only one also allowed 200 runs for a game score of 77 in the modern era the worst worst would be Francisco Liriano's. He walked six and only struck out two in his 2011 no-hitter. And so his game score was 83. A game score of 83 is equivalent to, let's say, Carlos Carrasco, who had eight innings, allowed four hits, no runs, and struck

out nine. So very, very, very good start. 50th best start. 49th, actually, best start of the season. So even a terrible no-hitter does pretty well by game score. And the worst complete game shutout ever would belong to Milt Gaston in 1928, who allowed 14 hits, walked two, struck out only two, and had a game score of 59 in his complete game shutout. A game score of 59, on the other hand, is actually genuinely not that great. There have been 101 starts this year with a game score of 59. A typical game score of 59 would be like

Irvin Santana, five innings, three hits, one run, two walks, four strikeouts. Or, you know, David Price, six innings, five hits, two runs, two walks, seven strikeouts. It's a good game, usually wins, but it's not a great game. So there you go. Now that's been answered. Made you all listen to that because one guy wanted to know the answer. The real play index, though, I hopefully I'm not treading on what you and Michael and Jeff and Dave talked about the ringer. But I noted the other day that the AL was again trouncing the NL in interleague play. Brian McPherson of the Providence Journal asked me what the AL's record was in home games, speculating that the AL had a huge home field advantage because of their DHS. This is

one of the more, I find this to be one of the more interesting questions in baseball, not because the answer is necessarily that interesting to me, but because a lot of people swear that the AL has a huge advantage. And then a lot of people, some people certainly swear that the NL has a huge advantage in their own ballpark. And there's like a constant debate about whether interleague play as well as whether postseason baseball favors one league or the other. And people are just really convinced that it is outsized in one direction or another. I think, Dan, I mean, the premise that the AL has a big advantage is pretty obvious that, you know, you have a DH, you've invested in a DH. And so you're not throwing out Edwards Guzman to be the DH because he's, you know, the guy who's on your bench.

You actually have David Ortiz there. And that seems like a big advantage. Dan Evans, I believe it is, thinks that there's a huge advantage the other way because NL pitchers are just used to running the bases. NL pitchers are just used to running the bases and that having pitchers who are asked to, to, to hit and run when they have no experience or training in it, it's just such a liability. And of course it's conceivable that both of them have huge advantages and that maybe they cancel each other out over the course of a, of a season series or a post-season series. each other out over the course of a season series or a postseason series. And so I note, Brian asked, I let him know that oddly, in fact, the home field advantage was very small this year.

It was actually much smaller than it is in games overall. And that the AL's interleague advantage is that they've been destroying the NL on the road more than they've been destroying them at home. But I wanted to go back and look at all of interleague play. We've now got thousands and thousands of games. Well, I guess we have thousands of games. We have thousands. We have, yeah, five. Almost 5,000. So that is thousands and thousands, barely.

So we should have some idea. And so I look to see how the home teams have done, both the AL home teams and the NL home teams. It's actually really hard though, because you're comparing a league's home record to their road record, but their road record is the other team's home record. And so it's hard to control for the advantage that the other team might have at home. But if each team has a big advantage at home, each league has a big advantage at home, then the overall winning percentage at home should be much higher than the normal home field advantage. The normal home field advantage since 1998 is 539. Okay, so that's a big number to remember.

539, that's the winning percentage. 539. Okay. So that's a big number to remember. 539. That's the winning percentage. Just slightly shy of 54% to 46% is the home field advantage in baseball generally. That's 7.8 percentage points. Now, AL in interleague play has gone 1,425 and 1,043 at home in interleague play, which is a big advantage. This is all the way back to 97? This is actually all the way back to 98 because I forgot that they started in 97. The AL on the road is 1202 and 1265. Those are hard numbers to do the math in your head. So I'll tell you that if you combine all this, what you get is that all interleague play,

home team wins 54.5% of the time, which means that they have an 8.9 percentage point home field advantage, which is a little less than 1%, which is to say that if all of baseball took place in interleague, the home team would win about one extra game over a hundred than in normal baseball with normal home field advantage which uh to me

is fair is well it's real it's there and it's true it's also very small and it to me is fairly convincing that anybody who thinks that there is a big advantage in one direction or the other is probably wrong because probably both teams have some little advantage. Whatever the advantage is cumulatively is small. So the advantage of one home park over the other home park must therefore be even smaller. And I think that's right. I would guess that if you had a, I think that's right. I would guess that if you had a, say, 100-game series between an NL team and an AL team, and they each had 50 games in their home park, even if one home park structure suited the other team more than the other home park structure suited the other team, I would guess that it is something on the order of like one hundredth of one win over 100 games. Okay. And I think that it makes sense that it is that small because yes, you have a DH,

but you have had to pay money for that DH. You have invested in that DH. And since your owner's probably not giving you more money because he knows that cost of having a DH is higher, you're having to work with the budget that you now have to spend a bunch of money on a DH. Not have to. I mean, you get to, you use him, it's fine. But that's, say, $10 million you're not spending on a reliever or your second baseman or a backup catcher or whatever. And so even though you have that DH, you probably are a little weaker at some other

part in your roster, or you should be a little weaker in some other part of your roster. And also, like one, the difference between the average AL DH and the average first guy off the bench in the NL is not that significant over the course of one game. It's, you know, it's probably a hit a week. And similarly, the advantage that the NL pitcher has at the plate over the AL pitcher at the plate is also real, but over the course of a week, it's probably very small. It's probably like a half a hit a week or something like that. So we're talking about small margins in baseball games that are not usually decided by one seventh of a hit. Okay. Play index. Coupon code BP. Subscribe. Get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. All right. A couple more. Question from Dave. Here are some quick

Jose Bautista stats at Target Field. In 21 games at Target Field, Jose Bautista has hit 14 home runs. He has more home runs at Target Field than singles or strikeouts. He has the highest career OPS at Target Field with a minimum of 35 plate appearances, and he has done it over 98 plate appearances. He's tied for 12th all-time in homers at Target Field, despite never playing in the same division as the Twins. This is some serious ownage of a ballpark. Obviously, there's a lot of noise going on in Bautista's numbers at Target Field,

but it got me thinking, how many plate appearances at this level of production would Bautista need for you, the new co-GMs of the Twins, to sign him this offseason at any cost? And by any cost, I mean you're the guy at the auction draft who, no matter what the bid is on Bautista, goes another dollar higher on him. What's the slash line? Well, I don't know, but he has a 1324 OPS. Okay, so that's about 400 points higher than he has had as a Blue Jay overall.

Yeah. Wow. Manny Ramirez in Arizona at Bank One Ballpark had a 1424 OPS, which is great, but also that's what Barry Bonds did in a season. I don't think that there's a great, there's just not really a mechanism by which I would think a ballpark would suit a player all that much. I guess there are factors. There's the hitter's eye. There's whether the dimensions suit you in your swing in particular, or the surface, playing surface suits you in particular. But there's also the fact that the Twins pitching is terrible. And I mean, I would say like an

absurdly high number, like maybe 650. Yeah. The other thing is that with StatCast And with all the data we have now You could park adjust someone's performance In a much more accurate, granular way Than you could by just looking at the whole league's performance And entire teams performing there and performing elsewhere So you don't just give Batista the one- fits all park adjustment, but you could say, well, what if he hit exactly the same balls that he hit in Roger Center, but he hit them all in target field but you could really come player hits a disproportionate number of fly balls right in that little range where it wouldn't go out anywhere else but it

would go out there and maybe there are a few cases like that here and there but i can't really come up with a reason why someone would be so significantly better in one park like that, other than just where he hits the ball or whatever. So unless you talk to Bautista when he was a free agent and he said, you know, man, I never felt alive until I walked into Target Field for the first time. And I saw that Target logo and it gave me something to aim for. And now I'm just a much better hitter when I'm there. If you had that kind of testimonial from a player and you also saw that the stats supported it, maybe.

But just based on the 1324 OPS there, I don't think I would pay a dollar more than I would pay for him anyway. Yeah. All right. Question from Adam S. in Tel Aviv. A couple weeks ago, you guys started to wonder how Noah Sindergaard might perform as a reliever. It was kind of a tangent. And it got me thinking. If the Mets needed one high leverage inning, let's call it the ninth, but it could be any three important outs to win the wildcard game,

who would you want on the mound? DeGrom, Sindergaard, or Familia, or Reid? Does this change if it is Game 7 of the World Series? Assume they are all rested and healthy. So we don't have to make this Mets specific necessarily. It could just be generic playoff team with generic high-level closer and generic ace. Yeah, although with the Mets, you have the little twist of Syndergaard and DeGrom, where Syndergaard is probably the better pitcher but

maybe DeGrom is I don't know you could argue more experienced more maybe as more of an ability to adjust the situation we saw DeGrom pitch in the all-star game and we saw him add a whole bunch of velocity maybe maybe that matters or guard pitched in relief in the playoffs last year yeah but did he yeah did he add a whole bunch of velocity i'm i don't i don't know but maybe maybe it maybe three extra miles an hour for de grom beats you know two miles an hour for the average pitcher or for for cinder guard uh maybe de grom is specifically you know what i'm saying he's maybe all right but cinder guard, I take, I take, unless you have, unless you have a super ace reliever and a not good ace bullpen guy, I'm taking the, I'm taking the ace starter, taking

that guy. Like Syndergaard is, is super, super, super good. Like Syndergaard is maybe the guy I would take. Syndergaard might be the guy I would take over any pitcher in baseball for an inning right now. Huh? now. Maybe, maybe. I mean, over the last three seasons or so, Familia is probably, what, a top 10 reliever? Yeah. So I'm not sure what I would do. I think if I could have Sindergaard for a full season as a reliever, I'd definitely take that over Familia.

I mean, I wouldn't want to have him in the bullpen instead of in the rotation, but I'm saying that if I could convert him full time, I think he'd be better than Familia. But for one game, I'm not sure. Because this goes back to our Zach Britton episode, but how much better than a top 10 reliever can a converted starter be, especially if it's the first time in a while he's done it and he doesn't have extensive experience doing it? If Familia's true talent ERA as a reliever is about two, which is where he's been in each of the last few years, then how much better than that could Cinderguard be in his first relief appearance of the year? It's just how much of a penalty is the lack of familiarity with that role, and that will obviously vary by player. So I don't know. I guess I'd take

Cinderguard, but it's not a no-brainer for me. Yeah, when I did the how I would manage the All-Star Game piece earlier this year, I looked at how the starters have done in their relief appearances, and the best starters pitching in relief unexpectedly and out of rhythm have pitched almost exactly as well

as All-Star relievers have. Uh-huh. And so I think that that is that suggests definitely to me that Syndergaard would not be as good in his first relief outing as he would be in his 50th relief outing. But since it's still Syndergaard, I would still take Syndergaard. Like, I think that that is true of a, only a handful of starters over the very, very, very, very best relievers. Like, I would probably have Andrew Miller as, like, the fourth or fifth guy I would take. But since Syndergaard is one of the three or four starters that I would first choose, I would take him.

All right. Like, okay, so let's do, quick, do your list. Just give me your top ten. You've got one inning. You've got one game that's going to go ten innings, and you can only use a pitcher for one inning at a time. Give me your top ten in order. Okay, well, everyone's healthy, so I'll take Kershaw, I'll take Jose Fernandez, I'll take Sindergaard, and maybe I'll take Scherzer. And then I think we might be into Andrew Miller territory.

So Andrew Miller, I might put Batantis right there. And Chapman, I would have taken Chris Sale before this year, but I'm not sure I would take him now. I think I might only take the starters I've named so far. Yeah, I mean, we're pretty close. Off the top of my head, my 10 would be probably in order, Kershaw, Fernandez, Syndergaard, and then I'd go Miller, and then I'd go Sale, Scherzer, Chapman, Arrieta, Bumgarner, and then either Jansen or Britton. Yeah, okay. Depends how Arrieta's been doing lately, because he's been shaky at times, but obviously the excellent Arrieta, yes. All right, so yeah, we're roughly on the same page there.

Okay. All right, I was going to stop there. There's a jackhammer right outside my apartment that hopefully you can't hear too clearly, but I just got an answer to one more question, so I'm going to take that one. This is from Jeff, who says, there's something I don't understand, and I know you have access to some pretty smart people, so maybe you can help me find the answer. I like that Jeff didn't even entertain the

possibility that we were smart enough people to answer this question, but we might know someone who was. No, that's accurate. I just saw this tweet from Darren Willman, which says, Adrian Beltre's home run from his knee last night was 108 miles per hour with a 25 degree launch angle. That's a home run every time. It then shows an image with all 43-ish balls that meet those criteria overlaid on a baseball field.

And sure enough, they all clear the wall. Here's what I don't understand. In my mind, balls hit the same speed and at the same angle should travel about the same distance. But you can clearly see on the image that they don't. The homers have been hit to all fields, and they all travel about the same distance beyond the fence, but it looks like the actual distances vary from about 350 feet to 440 feet. Basically, a ball hit at that speed and angled to center is going to go far enough to clear the wall in center by 10 to 20 feet, and a ball hit at that speed and angled to left is going to go far enough to clear that wall in center by 10 to 20 feet, and a ball hit at that speed at an angle to left is going to go far enough to clear that wall in left by 10 to 20 feet. I know it can be

easier to generate power when you hit it to center, but I assume that the power is some combination of exit velocity and launch angle. This makes me think that there is something inherent about hitting the ball to center field that makes it travel farther, but I have no idea what that would be. Am I crazy? So I sent Jeff's question to Alan Nathan The physics of baseball expert Who has been on the podcast before And Alan just got back to me He says I have access to lots of the StatCast data

From 2015 and I looked into your question Regarding the variation in distance For given initial speed and launch angle There are several possible reasons for that One important one is wind Even a wind speed as low as 5 mph Can make a huge difference Another is the carry of the ball possible reasons for that. One important one is wind. Even a wind speed as low as 5 mph can make a huge difference. Another is the carry of the ball, which is quite sensitive to very small

differences in the surface from one ball to another. I wrote about that particular effect for Baseball Prospectus. One has to be very careful about drawing conclusions based on home run data since the sample is biased. That is, home runs hit to center field necessarily have to travel farther, on the average, than those hit to left field or right field, given that the fence is farther away. I know you tried to control for that by looking at distances beyond the fence. Still, I prefer to look at an unbiased sample. So I looked at flyball distances for exit speeds in the range 101 to 105 miles per hour, and launch angles in the range 25 to 30 degrees. I looked at how these distances depend

on direction, averaged over 15 degree buckets. The result is shown in the attached plot. It looks completely flat, and theoretically I would not expect a very large effect. There might be a very small effect due to how the spin axis is oriented, mainly backspin for center field and a backspin side spin mixture for left and right. I hope this answers your question And it does The answer is that there's nothing magical about balls hit to center That makes them go farther Assuming they have the same launch angle and exit speed So there's just some selection bias at work here

So thanks to Alan for that answer So we will leave it there You can support the podcast on Patreon By going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild Today's five listeners who have already pledged their support Michael McClellan Parashar Bisset You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Today's five listeners who have already pledged their support. Michael McClellan, Parashar Bisset, Justin Jabs, Zach Wirtz, and Andrew Nguyen. Thank you.

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