Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 956: Gary and Gore

Episode Date: September 22, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about the Giants’ bullpen problems and Bryce Harper’s shoulder, then answer listener emails about Terrance Gore, Gary Sanchez, calling time, playoff formats, one-pitch baseball, and more.

You're always leaving, but you're never gone. You're everywhere at once, like a true phenomenon. Hello and welcome to episode 956 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by our Patreon supporters and the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hi Ben. So you've been watching the Bruce Bochy bullpen follies, or maybe just the Giants bullpen follies over the last couple weeks and Joshian wrote a newsletter entry about it so I was just reading about it and thinking about it what are your impressions from having followed it more closely than I have has

it been a Giants bullpen failure primarily or a Bocce failure primarily i think that you could i mean look certainly if you lose a whole bunch of games because your relievers blew the lead you had the wrong relievers in it's kind of its own evidence but like realistically the there's not there's just not an option he trusts right now and having a manager run a bullpen with nobody he trusts is going to lead to a few desperation moves here and there and some moves that you disagree with because you do trust that guy a little more than he does, but there's not really any option that's good there.

And so I have a hard time thinking that bocce is doing anything all that different than or i guess out of character for him like i don't think that i've re-evaluated him or anything but there does seem to be a little bit of a a little bit of a panic going on when it gets late in games uh just because uh he hates you know he hates he hates everybody um right now it seems to me like i don't actually know that like it's not he's not late in games, just because he hates everybody. It seems to me. I don't actually know that. He's not saying that, but it seems to me.

And so I don't know. There's probably, I can think of a few moves where I thought that was weird or why is he in. I thought it was very weird that Madison Bumgarner got pulled after the Puig stare down. It seemed like Madison Bumgarner got pulled after the Puig stare down. It seemed like Madison Bumgarner was going to go 11 innings in that game, if need be, because the bullpen had been failing so badly. So to pull him after seven and like 96 pitches or whatever was a big surprise. There was a game where he, I think the game before that,

he brought in Romo for the ninth and Romo like got the first guy out and then gave up a hit or something, and then he pulled him for Casilla, and that was a really weird move because if you think that Casilla's better, then bring him in to start the inning, and if you think Romo's better, then leave him out to finish the inning. It was a safe situation. It was very odd. And it's not like Romo looked unusual for him. So I guess that's a long way of saying that it hasn't looked good.

But also, I think that he's playing with junk cards right now. Yeah, I think Joe said that he's down to something like 2.7 batters faced per reliever in September, something like that. And he had been at 3.6, I believe, before this month, which was already low by big league standards. I'm sure it probably goes down league wide in September, but this seems sort of extreme. Has it been torture as a spectator slash listener to have basically two outs per reliever being the norm right now? It's not that difficult. Sorry, it's not that different when you're watching it than three point whatever. So no, not really. I mean, he was like the first half of the year, he was such an outlier as far as getting platoon matchups. I mean, he was all the way on the other side of the ocean compared to the other teams, and it was working, and it seemed like Bochy being brilliant. I don't... Yeah. And as Joe pointed out, he has guys it makes sense to act that way with, like Javier Lopez and Sergio Romo, guys who are cut out for specialty work. Anyway, I was wondering about it because someone was asking me about Manager of the Year awards,

and I was doing my usual disclaimers about how it's just a crazy award to vote for and how if you have a Hall of Fame manager who is generally acclaimed for his bullpen management, then I don't know why would he suddenly become bad at that. But this is a case where you could at least argue that maybe it's managerial pressing or managerial trying too hard. And so I always wonder just, you know, if you're a good manager, aren't you always a good manager? How does a good manager have a bad year? Or how do you even decide if he was better or worse this year than usual? I guess like, unless there's some big clubhouse blow up, or he says something regrettable

to the press or something like that it's pretty hard to say in a way that you know you can point out when a hitter slumps but if a manager slumps i don't even know what that looks like really but maybe this is one instance possibly it is really weird that a week ago he he said that Hunter Strickland was going to continue to get saves. And and I retweeted that with the snarky. I can't remember the exact wording, but I said, well, that's optimistic. The joke being that he might get save opportunities. But the way the Giants have been pitching, it's optimistic to think anybody's going to convert them. way the Giants have been pitching, it's optimistic to think anybody's going to convert them. And that was a week ago. And Hunter Strickland not only has no saves, but he's only been brought into one opportunity. And so I don't even know what the point of that announcement was. Yeah. I don't know. The only other thing I wanted to bring up before we get to emails,

did you read the Bryce Harper's injury story that Chelsea Janes wrote in the post? There's still speculation about whether Harper is hurt. I guess there was a second recent Tom Verducci report earlier this week that there is something going on with his shoulder. And according to Chelsea, there was a meeting between Rizzo and Baker and Harper and the team's trainer after this report came out to try to get to the bottom of this, either grill Harper on whether there really is something wrong with him or try to find out where these leaks are coming from or where the erroneous reports are coming from. And the upshot of it was that, according to Chelsea's reporting Harper Continued to deny that there's

Any problem although it's Odd that also according to her he hasn't Denied it publicly but From what she heard he denied it in this meeting And doesn't know Where the reports would be coming from And doesn't think anyone In his inner circle would

Be talking to Verducci because they all know Verducci from the cover story he wrote about him way back when and it's uh kind of an interesting story doesn't think anybody would be talking to verducci because they know him from the cover story back when right i'm confused i i guess you could say the the opposite yeah well i guess the i guess he's saying that they wouldn't have unintentionally said something that they didn't mean to say because they, I don't know, didn't realize who they were talking to or something like that. Is there any incentive suspect would be Harper's Often outspoken agent Scott Boris

Who would have incentive to suggest Harper's decreased production was the product Of injury Harper will be a free agent After the 2018 season Asked for comment about Harper's situation Boris declined citing Hipple laws so yeah I don't Know whether that makes it better

Or worse if Harper's hurt is is that good, I guess? At least you can say, well, he had something wrong with him, and if that something is fixed, then he'll be fine again. But it's another instance of Harper having something wrong with him, which has happened in the past. And if he's resisting anything getting fixed. Yeah, right. But, like, yeah, anyway.

I mean, if you had to bet, bet though if somebody forced you to bet you would bet that he has a hurt shoulder right like that's that's a fairly easy bet not that we know maybe it's not true but if you had to bet all the evidence would seem to suggest that he's playing with a hurt shoulder everything makes sense in this season if he's playing with a hurt shoulder well a makes sense in this season if he's playing with a hurt shoulder. Well, a lot of things do. On the other hand, it doesn't seem obvious that he's in pain in any way. Chelsea mentioned at the beginning of her article that in this most recent game, he's slid headfirst into second base twice, even though he didn't really need to do that and didn't seem to show any reluctance to do that. And the other thing is that the last time we were talking about Bryce Harper

and this report about his injury came out, or when Rob Arthur and Jeff Sullivan wrote about Bryce Harper and Rob speculated in his article for FiveThirtyEight that maybe Harper was hiding something. And then the first report came out, which seemed to confirm that. But then immediately after that, Harper went on a really crazy hot streak. And we all thought he was fine again. And so now he's slumped again since then. But I don't know if that fits. If you have a shoulder problem that isn't healing, then can you also have a really hot streak right in the middle of that and be hitting home

runs and everything i don't i don't know yeah it wasn't a hot streak mostly babbitt i mean he wasn't hitting many home runs even when he was hot he was hitting 400 but it was not with power maybe i remember a couple very long home runs he hit i think during that stretch yeah he did it wasn't a ton of home runs you're right that He did hit one very long one. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. Anyway, Perducci's great, so you'd think he knows something. But I don't know. I don't know if it makes sense.

Otherwise, maybe we'll find out eventually. Yeah, you kind of do hope that it's something that could just heal and he could be back to normal again. Because the depressing thing when I did the podcast with Jeff and Rob was the idea that maybe he just got lucky last year and there were ways in which he exceeded how well we would have expected him to do based on how hard he was hitting the ball and all that kind of thing. And I don't like the explanation that just says Bryce Harper isn't as good as he seemed to be last year. Anyway, we'll see. Probably needs Matt Williams there to motivate him. Yeah. All right. Emails, anything else? Nope. Okay. Scott just wants to know what we think the chances are that Gary Sanchez wins the Rookie of the Year award and is still eligible to win it next year. Woody, is he still, he's still, he's still not going to get to 130, huh? He's past 130.

I think the rule is that you have to be at 130 before September 1st. No, no, no, no. Playing time is September 1st. The 45 days or whatever it is on the active roster is by September 1st. At bats or at bats. Okay. All right. Well then the chances are zero.

Yeah. But, uh, as for winning. Yeah. But as for winning. Yeah. It was, you know, it's fun when he was, he had like 80 plate appearances and like, you know, 2.1 war or something like that. And it was fun because, you know, people have won rookie of the year with 2.1 war. But it seemed, it seemed he was doomed because there was a very good candidate. Michael Fulmer was a very good candidate for Rookie of the Year. And so there wasn't like some blank, some empty space that he was going to fill.

Fulmer had a very bad start in his last start. His ERA is now over three. He is more valuable by war, at least by some measures of war, and he has been up for a lot longer. by war, at least by some measures of war, and he has been up for a lot longer. But there is a, starting pitchers are usually very undervalued or underrated or whatever in rookie of the year voting. And the difference between 2.99 and 3.03 might actually matter. So I could sort of see, might actually matter uh so i could sort of see what he's got a week and a half left if fulmer had an era of like three two hours a day yeah yeah so that's uh if fulmer were to get hit is fulmer shut down he's not shut down is he if he were to get hit in his next start if he were

to go 10 and 8 with a 3.3 era yeah he's coming off his second worst start of the season which may have hurt him he had his worst start of the season in mid-august and then he's coming off his second worst start of the season which may have hurt him he had his worst start of the season in mid-august and then he's coming off his second worst which pushed his era over three so yeah i mean if he if he has another great two starts or something then that really might change something as opposed to two bad starts but like Gio Soto, when he won it, had 23 homers. And a catcher who has 23 homers, that's a very valid rookie of the year. And he had 3.3 war. And Sanchez has 19 homers and 3.0 war. So he is really one good week from matching Soto in both home runs and war.

I mean, I'd give it, I'd vote for him right now. Yeah, I think I would too. I would vote for him right now i yeah i don't think i would too i i would vote for him without like i i don't believe i don't believe in penalizing guys too much for being in the minors i mean obviously it's the the more they perform the more you can believe in their performance and the more it matters and it's definitely better to to have a candidate who has played more than 188 plate appearances but look it's not like he was taking it easy at home and decided to start playing baseball in august that is his he was bought he was a player exactly his boss said you're not allowed that's not his fault uh so uh

anyway is he what what is it if you had to bet on his chances at this point, you'd be like 30%? I think I would go higher, yeah. Is he 60%? Is he the favorite? I think he's the favorite. I mean, in value, I think BP has Sanchez and Fulmer tied, essentially. And I think the other win value metrics, or at least fan graphs, I think now has Sanchez ahead. The other win value metrics, or at least fan graphs, I think now has Sanchez ahead. And this is a weird year for rookies in that there's much more rookie war on the National League side this year than there is in the AL.

That just fluctuates a lot from year to year, but it just so happens that there are less high-performing rookies in the AL this year. There's no great candidate like there is with Seager in the NL. So I think it happens because if only just – there might be some people who would penalize him and just say, no, I won't vote for anyone who wasn't up for the first half of the season. So there's probably some percentage of voters who would think that. But I think the trajectory of the seasons probably highly favors him in that we've, I mean, Sanchez is going to end the season basically on a historic hot streak that he's been on since he came back up again. So I think that's in everyone's mind. We're watching Sanchez home run highlights twice a day these days. And Fulmer has a four plus ERA since the beginning of August and is coming off a not so good start. And so I think the Gary Sanchez fever is pretty contagious. All right. Yeah. I guess I'm with you. I think now you've convinced me. I mean,

look, I think that probably I'm still a week behind. And when people were asking this question and he had like 14 home runs, well, 14 home runs is not a full season, but, and so it, you, it really is sort of jarring to give it to somebody who hasn't reached, you know, even close to full, but 19 home runs for a catcher is a full season. Like he has reached full season milestones. He hasn't played a full season, but if you can do like, I had a friend who would go into the professor's office the first day of class and most professors would not let him do this, but every once in a while he would get one and he'd go to the professor and say, what do I need to do to pass this class? Give me the list and then I'll just get out of your hair. And he would like get, the professor would give him

the list. You got to do this, this, and this. I need papers on these, these, your hair. And he would like get the professor would give him the list. You got to, you know, do this, this and this. I need papers on these, these and these. And you got to test this, this and this. And he would do it all in like a week. And then he would just never go to class again. And I don't know why I'm using that analogy. That's I remember when he told me that thinking what an idiot you are. That sounds stupid. But I think what I was trying to say is that Gary Sanchez shouldn't be penalized for packing an entire year into a month and a half yeah so sure give it to him all right sure okay by the way gary sanchez gary sanchez features in this week's play index oh okay all right question from patreon supporter andrew o'h, and he wants to know about Terrence Gore, who was finally caught stealing last night, just barely, for the first time in the regular season.

He had that one in the postseason where he stole the base but then came off the bag a little bit. This was a replay review instance that was sort of sketchy, and probably he would have been safe in the past. That was sort of sketchy And probably he would have been safe in the past Anyway, question from Andrew Rennie Giserely recently tweeted That he thinks the Royals should keep Gore On their 25-man roster all next season And that he could be worth 2-3 wins

And that is what Rennie tweeted He said, I'm 100% convinced That the Royals should keep Gore on the roster All of 2017 His speed is seriously worth 2-3 wins a season Andrew says, that is the same estimate A friend and I came up with keep Gore on the roster all of 2017. His speed is seriously worth two to three wins a season. Andrew says, that is the same estimate a friend and I came up with when looking at his effect on run expectancy and how often he might be able to be deployed. Does this seem right to you?

Would win probability added be a better stat to evaluate his worth than war? Assuming his success rate is unsustainable, what does his success rate look like across a full season? I think the tough part of this evaluation is trying to quantify what you lose when you have to put him in on defense or when he actually has to bat when games go into extra innings. So let's say that Terrence Gore as a major league hitter is a 160, 205, 205 hitter. I don't know if he is, but let's say that he is. 205 205 hitter i don't know if he is but let's say that he is okay what did he hit this year in the minors okay so this year in double a texas league double a he hit 233 314 hit 249 yeah

yeah okay all right so let's say he's that he's a he's a 410 ops with i't know, I'll give him a little bonus for maybe being higher OBP and lower slug. So because he's not, he's not a fool. So if that's his true talent and he were on a 25 man roster in the American League, how many plate appearances would you guess he gets? Well, I mean, probably, do we know how good a defender he is? I mean, he plays left field mostly So I'm guessing not the greatest But you'd think someone that fast probably couldn't be that terrible

But I'm just trying to think, would you put him in? He actually played mostly center this year Ah, okay Alright, so you'd put him in late in games Maybe as a defensive replacement And maybe he'd get in a bad here or there You'd put him in late in games maybe as a defensive replacement and maybe he'd get in a bad here or there you'd put him in lopsided games i don't know i think in september games i think he'd probably get a hundred wow 110 plate appearances okay i was gonna say like i don't think 30 i don't i don't think you can hide him that much over the course of a full season.

Yeah, well, the question is how much can you not hide him? How much does he cost you by not being able to hide him? And how much do you, without realizing it, miss the 25th man on the roster who can do other things? So it helps that he's with Ned Yost because Ned Yost already doesn't pinch hit, already doesn't need an extra pinch hitter on the bench, and it hurts that he's on the Royals because the Royals already have Gerard Dyson. In a perfect world, Gerard Dyson. I know Dyson was doing better this year, so I might be out.

Is that outdated? Is Dyson considered a—let me check. Dyson, eh, nah. Nah, you want Dyson in that role too. Like, ideally, you have three outfielders who are not Gerard Dyson. And so in that sense, Gore is superfluous, more superfluous. I mean, Dyson is the fastest player in the American League, possibly, and is best suited to a role like this so if any team doesn't need terrence gore if any team has 96 of terrence gore as it is it's the royals so what what is the question exactly then question is what he'd be worth if you were to deploy him like this all season or as close to it as possible all right you want me to bring up the billy you want me to bring up the billy hamilton billy hamilton article okay i will just point out briefly that August Fagerstam wrote about Gore's career so far, such as it is. And his stolen base runs per 162 games rate is 22.8 runs, which would be the highest of anyone ever.

But obviously, I don't know that you could use him this way the whole year. Right, because that's with him playing quite a bit. Yeah. That's not with him coming in once a game, you know, four games a week. That's with him playing in something like a fourth outfielder role. So there's a lot more base running going on than he would have. So Ben, as you know, I wrote about this very question when Billy Hamilton was stealing 150-something bases in the minors, and the Reds were a playoff contender. And so I looked to see how much Billy Hamilton would be worth if he were brought up and used as a pinch runner in leverage situations, and in no way other than that.

So I didn't have to worry about what he would hit or how he would feel just pinch runner. And it depends on two things. One, Billy Hamilton is not, was not that efficient of a base stealer compared to Terrence Gore. And so if you, if you, if you assumed that Billy Hamilton would have a success rate similar to what he had in the minors, then the value of him was actually very low. Like over the course of a month, it was, I think, a tenth of a win. So that's not that exciting. And that is leverage because I was doing this by win probability added. However, if you assume that he never, ever, ever gets caught, Gore is close to that,

then it's better. It's still not that much though. Let's see. If he were a hundred percent successful, he'd add a quarter of a win in a month. So that would be a win and a half over the course of a year. And that is never, ever, ever, ever getting caught. Not even once. And once you start adding even single caught stealings, that number gets whittled away pretty quick because getting caught stealing in a high leverage situation is usually pretty painful. So let's say maybe I could see a win. The problem with, but then of course, if he's adding defense, more defense than his rare plate appearances cost, then maybe that gets him even higher. And a win for a bench guy is arguably

worthwhile depending on where you're losing elsewhere based on your lack of roster utility. The problem, as I found, and the way that I did the Billy Hamilton thing, is I literally went through every Reds game from a random September, and I pretended I was the manager, and I picked the moment that I would put Billy Hamilton in the game, and I had him steal the base. And that was it. That was pretty simple. And I looked at what the win probability was if he stole that base.

And it is actually hard to leverage a guy perfectly. Like if you do a perfect, if you know exactly how the game is going to go after the fact, then you can get his value up quite a bit more after that. But a lot of times it's the sixth inning and you're not sure if that's the moment or not, or whether there's going to be another moment. A lot of times the moment doesn't come at all. It's a one-nothing game and you need a stolen base. And yet the only guy who gets on is, you know, is Paul Goldschmidt. And then you have to decide whether to pinch run Paul Goldschmidt, a pinch run for Paul Goldschmidt, And then you have to decide whether to pinch run Paul Goldschmidt, pinch run for Paul Goldschmidt, who's already a pretty good base runner, and you're playing for a tie, and if you tie now, you don't have Paul Goldschmidt. And it's very hard to actually get the pinch runner in the right situation every time.

So a long way of getting to the point that if you think that Gore is a 93% base stealer, which I could buy, I would believe that, then I would guess that he is a useful player to keep on your bench all season long, and that he would be worth something between half a win and a win and a half based on win probability added, and that if everything breaks right, he might win you three one-run games and you win manager of the year. Okay. But that's if everything breaks right. If everything breaks wrong, he adds literally nothing.

Right. All right. Well, I don't have too much to add to that. I haven't looked at it in that sort of detail. So just instinctively, it seems like, yeah, if you have a guy who almost always steals a base, that should be really valuable. Especially on a team like the Royals that doesn't really use its whole roster. Yeah, right. Okay, question from Scott.

I have an idea for a postseason format MLB would never embrace. The first step is creating two 15-team leagues without divisions. We keep the 162-game season, but come October, we take the best four teams from each league and have them play every other team in a 21-game, three games against each of seven other teams, format. Teams with the best regular season records get more home games. Best record wins the trophy. The tiebreaker is run differential. While obviously this would deprive us of an actual World Series, would it be a better way to craft a postseason

that yields an outcome where the best team wins the whole shebang? There was a BP debate style article with one author recently, right? Like Henry Drushelle wrote something about this recently. He took both sides of this debate and he talked about a way that we could make the postseason just even more exciting and less likely to result in the best team actually winning. And then what Scott is talking about, essentially making it more likely that the best team will win. And there are definitely ways that we could make it more likely for the best team to win. Even if you don't just pronounce a winner at the end of the 162 game regular season, which is boring, you could do something like Scott is

suggesting here. And that would definitely give you a better chance to have the best team be a World Series winner. But this would be comparatively boring. This would be bad. I think that sometimes we talk about how to format the post-season, but the post-season isn't actually what drives the decision. It's how to make the regular season interesting is what drives the decision, I think. And I'm reading the Bill James historical abstract right now slowly but a few pages every day and he has a line in there that it's something like he's talking about baseball in the 1880s and attendance for the bad teams the bottom rung and why there was so much turnover and why the bad teams kept going out of business and he says, it's impossible to sell an 11th place team. I think that's true. The problem with any 15 team league, even if it is fairer for the teams at the top, is that there's a big difference between 11th place

and fifth or eighth place and third. And I just, I think that you create way too many teams that don't feel like they're in the baseball ecosystem at all anymore. Yeah. So I think that the divisions settle that. And every solution that I hear for making baseball more exciting that involves a 15-team league and the best records go, I think loses me. Yeah. And in the postseason, you want an enemy, right? You want like a villain. You want to have a five or seven-game series against one team where you get to hate that

one team and there's a narrative to the series and there's an arc to it. And if you're just every team is playing everyone else and it's like a round-robin type thing, that would be better at establishing who the best team is maybe, but it just wouldn't be nearly as entertaining. So I think the postseason is fine as it is. I don't think it needs to be fixed. There may be some ways you could make the regular season more fair without sacrificing anything like more balanced schedules that that sort of thing but as far as the playoff format

works pretty well right playoffs are fun playoffs are great yeah yeah i really like the playoffs all right play index all right the other other day I noted publicly in front of everybody that Mike Trout by war has more career war than every player in the world who's younger than Dustin Pedroia. And Dustin Pedroia is old. He's been bald for seven years. He is an old player. He has been like, he is a guy who has already gone through his

decline phase and moved into his, uh, surprisingly good grandpa phase. And that's what it takes. You have to get a 30, a guy who's eight years older than Trout to find somebody with more career war. And, uh, the reason that that is true is because Trout recently passed Evan Longoria, who is 30, and I think late last year, maybe early this year, passed Andrew McCutcheon, who I think is 29. Trout, of course, is his age 24 season. And so that's one way to think about how impressive Mike Trout's career war is. But another is to look at war per game. And so I wanted to see how his war per game stacks up to other people. Because some people have, for instance, only played a month and a half and been out of their mind the entire time.

And I wanted to see how he does against the Corey Seegers and the Gary Sanchez's and so on of the world. And so I took everybody who has at least one win above replacement in their career, dropped them into a spreadsheet with their games. All right. So, and I looked at how many games played per war, how many games it takes them to produce a win in their career. And so I have all these, and there are a few that I want to point out, a few things that I thought were interesting once I sorted this. But the most interesting thing about this is that when I did this yesterday morning, Mike Trout was number one. And that's like you expected Mike Trout to be at the top.

That was the point. But at the very, very top, when Gary Sanchez is doing what he is doing, it's really insane. is really insane. Gary Sanchez is a average to above average defensive catcher with a 1100 and something career OPS. And his war per game is lower than Mike Trout's. That's pretty crazy. That is pretty crazy. By baseball's perspective, because I was looking this up up earlier I think Sanchez is, well today After the two homers Would be on pace for an 11.3 War season

But maybe different by baseball reference Than before the two homers But yeah, just that it's close Yeah, no, it's about 11 more on reference too Let's see, it's 43 games By baseball reference's war It'd be 11.3 he's an 11.3 war per 162 but two things one uh is that he had a negative tenth of a war last year in two in two

games uh and uh two is that i did this yesterday before the two home runs so now live on this podcast i'm going to recalculate Gary Sanchez to see if he has taken the lead. And then if he has, this could be something we pay attention to if you want to. So he has taken the lead, Ben. He is now, Gary Sanchez is now the greatest player, the greatest active career at one win every 15 games, actually one win every 14.7 games. And he's actually got a pretty healthy lead on Trout after that two homer game, which is what happens when you've only played 40. Oh, wait, hang on. I have to add the game too. 15. He's at exactly one win every 15 games. So if he were to go warless

for the next five, he and Trout would be tied. But in the meantime, he is the champion. Gary Sanchez at the top, Mike Trout trailing him. Now. Trout is how many games then per win? 16.7. 16.7. That's crazy. So that's every less than three weeks, Mike Trout is winning your team an extra game that a AAA guy wouldn't? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You know, I went looking for the greatest five-year stretches ever, and he was a not great September, like a normal September-ish away from having, I think, the third greatest five-year stretch of anyone in the post-war era, which is already insane. Like that all the Mickey

Mantles and the Willie Mays and Ricky Henderson's and the Joe Morgan's and the Barry Bonds and all that. And he's got the third best, I think, but 20 to 24, like everybody else is doing it from like 26 to 30. Like their, you 30. Their peaks are their peaks. Or at least it's like 23 to 27 or whatever. Trout, it's his first five years. He doesn't even get to choose from his whole career for the best five-year peak. He's stuck with what he's got. And he hasn't even finished that five-year run yet.

And he's already ahead of everybody. And he played one of those five years when he was 20, and he played another one when he was 21. Everybody's bad when they're 21. He's so good. He's so good. All right, who do you think is number three? That's what – this is where we're going now, Ben.

What was the minimum here? One war. It is not somebody with one war, though. I can tell you that. Okay, so it's a player with a career. Alex Bregman is number 23. Andrew Toles is number 30. But no, it's everybody from this point on that we're going to— Well, everybody—I'll rule out Trey Turner for you.

Turner is number 13. I'm not promising you that it's going to be well, everybody, I'll rule out Trey Turner for you. Turner is number 13. Like, I'm not promising you that it's going to be, you know, Adrian Beltre or anything, but it is, yeah, there are no like good three weeks players that you have to think about. Is there any chance that it's still Pujols? Actually, no, but I did bowl Pujols because he is still number nine, despite five years now of being this guy, basically just adding games, which is partly a comment on how insanely good Albert Pujols was,

and it's always worth going back and revisiting that. But also a reminder that as disastrous as this deal is going to end up being, and as disappointing as Pujols has been, it is worth every once in a while remembering that he is a productive major leaguer on the Angels. That he is not Vernon Wells. He basically has been a three-win player for five years. You could do worse. you could do worse. And if you start looking at $10 million a win or something like that as the prorated value of a win on the free agent market over the course of that 10-year deal,

he's not going to miss it by that much. He's probably going to get, he'll probably be a 20 to 25 win player, even conservatively over the course of that 10 year deal. And, you know, at 8 million a year, for instance, that's 200. He's only getting paid 240 or 250, depending on how you do the inflation and stuff. So, I mean, there have been a lot of worse deals than the Albert Pujols deal. And it's probably important to remember that. Yeah. Okay. Is it Longoria? probably important to remember that yeah okay is it longoria no longoria is actually number 20 oh wow yeah he is at 27 games per win huh cabrera no thank you thank you think guys with no decline well cabrera all right think guys who can play a position uh let me see where cabrera is actually number 34 wait how is that possible well for what it's possible for one reason because cabrera has

no defensive value added and you know how war works okay it's also possible because they are really tightly bunched once you get to a certain point and like yeah so it's not like it's not like there's a huge difference between Cabrera and Paul Goldschmidt but Paul Goldschmidt is number 16. All right McCutcheon? No no younger Ben younger it's going to be somebody who's a lot younger it's somebody who's a lot younger. All right McCutcheon's in his prime still physically he should be. Yeah it least physically yeah yeah it's not that yeah it's not so much that mccutchen has a decline or that cabrera has declined it's that to be on this list you have to only have a career year under your belt like this is we're at career year

levels uh you know we're talking to win every 20 games. That's an eight-win player. So who is, to average eight wins a season? Poole is ninth with five bad years. Yeah. Well, all right. Is it then like Bryant? Bryant is number six. Uh-huh. Mookie?

Yeah! Okay. All right. It's Mookie Betts. Mookie Betts, number three, third best career in baseball right now. And if you take out sanchez mookie bets i mean he's 17 wins already he's only 23 years old and has basically played two full seasons number four is cory seager number five is josh donaldson wow which i thought was worth

commenting on uh number seven is uh where the uh machado? Machado is number 10. Okay. He had the post... I think it was the post-ACL year where he was just okay. Uh-huh. Lindor? Lindor is number 11. Okay.

You have Pujols and A-Rod right above them. A-Rod still active for the purposes of this query. But number seven is the first controversial uh war what is it good for guy because he's all defense kevin kiermeier okay and uh so let's see i want to scroll down uh some of the ones that jumped out to me number 22 is starling marte who i think of as a star and i think is generally thought of as an all-star and maybe even a star but if you buy this he is like a genuine superstar and i think he is a genuine superstar i think starling arte is fantastic uh number 29 is uh ender inciarte which i thought was worth mentioning number 38 and 39 i'm

mentioning because uh they're right next to each, and it puts both of them in perspective, I think, their whole careers. 38 and 39 are Harper and Springer. And I guess it is we fluctuate. We go back and forth on whether Bryce Harper is everything we dreamed of and more or disappointing. And I guess right now he's in the disappointing moment. And so I bring this up to reinforce that, yeah, kind of is disappointing. And I also bring it up because he's got 21 wins above replacement, and he's 23 years old.

But also just to point out how good George Springer is. And those are the only ones I bolded. If you want to know anything else, I'm happy to tell you. Where's Altuve? I guess Altuve had a few years where he was just... Altuve? Okay, Altuve is 63rd. He is one behind Jason Kipnis and one ahead of Alex Gordon and Jacob Ellsbury.

Okay. Nolan Arenado? Nolan Arenado. Josh Hamilton, by the way, is higher than I thought he would be. Arenado is number 25, one behind Troy Tulewitzki. Okay, that's enough for me. All right. All right, so play index, use the coupon code BP,

get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. Okay, question from Eric Westland, Patreon supporter. Do we, the baseball-viewing public, know anything about the unwritten rules of a batter calling time? In the relatively few years that I've been watching a ton of ball, I can't recall any dust-ups or disagreements about it. It seems like a batter will call time if he thinks

the pitcher is taking too long, and the pitcher doesn't take it personally. I doubt, but correct me if I'm wrong, there is a rule in the rulebook limiting how often a batter can call time, but I have to assume there is an unwritten rule mechanism that would kick in if they did it over and over again. And there is one dust up that I can recall, because it was one of my favorite Grant Brisby unwritten rules breakdowns. And it's, we just celebrated the first anniversary of this. It's the Kyle Seeger, Jared Weaver,

time calling. That was good. Dust up last year, which was great, which was basically boiled down to the fact that Seeger calls time with both feet in the box. So he steps in and it looks like he's ready, but then he calls time anyway. And in this particular instance, he called time in a very sassy way. And Weaver objected to that. And so that's one of them. That wasn't what eric's asking about exactly it wasn't that he was calling time so many times it was the way in which he called time i think there's definitely unwritten rules about it but i think that the first person that a pitcher gets mad at is the umpire for allowing it. I feel like it's really kind of an unwritten rule

of what the umpire is going to let you get away with, let the batter get away with. I think the pitchers, to some degree, respect that that's part of the game. The batters are trying to disrupt their timing and that that's intentional and it's in the spirit of competition. But the umpire has a responsibility

to keep the balance there. And so if an umpire has a responsibility to keep the balance there. And so if an umpire is letting it get out of balance, then it's first his fault. I think there is a certain point, though, where it becomes something that a player is known for and becomes a problem. Yeah. Okay. And last question, I suppose, from Aaron Hartman. Not Eric, but Aaron Hartman. I play in a one-pitch softball league, and it got me thinking, what would Major League Baseball look like if it were one pitch? So swinging strikes and fouls would be out, balls would be walks, and balls in play would stay the same. How would the game change? Pitch counts wouldn't be as big an issue for one. I think all

three true outcomes would increase in this format any take would be a strikeout or walk and i bet more fastballs would be pitched leading to more home runs what type of hitters would perform well i'm thinking powerful contact hitters would become very valuable and pitchers with high velocity fastballs and good command would become very valuable as well what uh assuming that there was no i i replied to aaron immediately that the strike zone will have to be a ton bigger i think that's that's true but if the strike zone were have to be a ton bigger. I think that's true. But if the strike zone were left exactly as it is now, how many runs per game in a major league where this was the rule?

More, right? I would think much. I'm thinking the average game would be maybe 14 to 11. Yeah, because pitchers would have to throw strikes pretty much all the time, and batters would know that they were doing so. Yeah. And you'd always be ready to hit.

You'd always be prepared to swing because you'd probably swing, I don't know what the swing rate would be, but it would be very high. So yeah, I agree. Lots of scoring. Is that it? I guess would games be,

games would be much more high scoring, but also faster, presumably. They would be. Probably less than you think, though. A walk is a slow play. Even if it's a one pitch walk, it's still kind of a slow play. Yeah. And there'd be a lot of them. Yep.

And just scoring runs takes time. Yeah. Okay. That'd be fun. I'd watch, I'd like to watch one game played under those rules with major league players. I would too. I would too. I mean, I, now I, I kind of, I kind of wonder if it could be, uh, if this could be adapted into the, the extra innings resolution strategy. Like people are always trying to figure out how to end extra innings

games before they get to 20 innings. If you think that is a problem with baseball, then you might have suggested having, you know, a runner start on second base at the beginning of an inning or something like that. And this is another way you could do it. Speed the game up and also push the game toward offense. Yep. All right. So that will do it for today.

All right. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already done so, Joe Kaminski, Adam Bechea, Dr. P, Jacob Michael Marsalisi, and Daniel Wilson. Thank you. You can buy our book, The Only Rules It Has to Work, our wild experiment building a new

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You're making it fine Or maybe I'm doing fine