Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 959: Mike Trout’s Highest Hurdle

Episode Date: September 29, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Rich Hill, Clayton Kershaw, and Shohei Otani, then answer listener emails about Mike Trout, playoff formats, inflated homer totals, their introductions to baseball, and more.

Hello and welcome to episode 959 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast on baseball perspectives But like a man, it's rare and new news and Shohei Otani news. And also, before we get to that, two mea culpas on my part. So first of all, I do want to confirm what our guest on Friday said. Joe Buck did say that the runner was going on the pitch, and so the wild pitch where he advanced two bases makes extra sense. Although I

had no problem with that as it was. However, because I did smugly, I think, act like I knew what Joe Buck's play-by-play had been, I owe everybody an apology. I was wrong. Okay. That's in the show pitch, by the way, if anyone didn't hear Friday's episode, which you should. The other thing is that on Monday's episode, I referred to Tony Canigliaro as Rocky Colavito.

Those are two different people with extremely different careers, and one was used as an example. That is what I think I like least about a podcast, man. It's so easy. It's so easy to just slip in a mistake like that and have it just go right past everybody. You can always edit it if either of you notices the mistake at the time. Yeah, and so now it's there forever, everybody. You can always edit it if either of you notices the mistake at the time.

Yeah, and so now it's there forever and I imagine that anybody who heard it thought a little less of me and I appreciate that. Both C names with lots of vowels, so I understand why your brain did that. Okay, so before emails, just the Shohei Otani

update as reported by Kazuto Yamazaki in our Facebook group. He threw a one-hit complete game shutout with 15 strikeouts and one walk in a game in which his team clinched the league's pennant. So he evidently is not batting and pitching on the same day for blister-related reasons, just to tie the Otani and Rich Hill banter together. Apparently, the blisters are a common link between the two. So that's something you have to take into account, maybe, if a team is deciding whether to use him in that dual role. Blisters may be more of a problem if you have to hit every day and take BP every day. I don't know. I forget whether he is a batting gloves guy. But anyway, impressive. I assume baseball references updated his pitching stats. And if so, his ERA has now broken to it is at 1.99. And his OPS is

still over 1000. Just the legend grows. All right. And Rich Hill's legend is also growing because he is now something of an evangelist of dropping down and varying your release point. Did you see Clayton Kershaw's experiment? Jeff Sullivan wrote about this at Fangraphs. With an eight run lead against the Rockies, Clayton Kershaw broke out essentially not quite a sidearm fastball, but a much lower angle than he typically throws from, and actually

threw his fastest pitch of the year, which you would think is probably related to the arm angle, right? Maybe he gets a little more speed if he drops down, but not as much movement. Perhaps that's how it works. Anyway, he said that he was inspired by Rich Hill and that he thought he would try it. And so this makes Rich Hill even more exciting. If Rich Hill spreads the gospel of Rich Hill to the rest of your pitching staff, I don't know whether, like if you said,

okay, Clayton Kershaw is willing to listen to Rich Hill and do things that Rich Hill does, would you then project Clayton Kershaw to be even better? Or would you say, eh, you know, he's already the best pitcher in baseball, one of the best pitchers ever. Probably he couldn't be much better just from picking up some stuff that Rich Hill does. Or would you say, oh man, now he's going to be even less predictable. He's going to take the best of Rich Hill. He's going to have Rich Hill's versatility and experimentation and combine it with Clayton Kershaw's stuff, and he'll be completely unhittable now.

I'm just not going to answer that. You have two pitchers who I am incapable of talking about without hyperbole, and you're asking me to create a super group with them. I don't want to embarrass myself. How much would you pay Rich Hill if you know that he is your ace and your pitching coach and he can make other pitchers into Rich Hill? How much would you pay Clayton Kershaw if you know that he's learning at the feet of Rich Hill? You know, I want to change the subject a little bit to talk about Clayton Kershaw again. Earlier this year, I wrote a piece at Baseball Perspectives talking about how the 162 inning qualifying threshold for pitchers is outdated. I showed

with science and math that it is a relic of an earlier era and no longer reflects what it attempted to reflect at the beginning, and that you could fix all the issues with it and make it much more equitable and also stay true to the original vision by lowering it to, I believe, 130. And this, you know, was not taken up on. So the minimum is still 162. Clayton Kershaw has 142 innings. He's going to end up with, you know, 150. And for that reason, we are going to miss out on the strikeout to walk record, which was going to happen. Also, the all-time whip record was most likely going to happen. Also, the all-time whip record was most likely going to happen. Clayton Kershaw was most likely going to set, well, I mean, he's

four or five strikeouts ahead of the record for strikeout to walk, right, I think? Yeah. He's 168 strikeouts and 10 walks. But he also has, that is something probably only we would notice. But I think that the whip record, as we discussed, I think it would have gotten play. It would have been something that might have been mentioned in the newspaper. And because of the 162 inning minimum, it's not going to happen. It'll be like this never happened. And that's a little disappointing to me. Yeah, we got a question from Josh who said, with just one more to start, with just one more start to go, Kershaw is likely to finish fewer than 15 innings short of a season that counts. It's frustrating because it's possibly his best season. According to baseball reference, his war is the best, the greatest strikeout to walk ratio ever. Yeah, it's possibly the best season ever. Yeah, great. It's very possible that this is the greatest season of all time. Yeah, so that was his very possible that this is the greatest season of all time.

Yeah, so that was his question. Is there a better record in baseball for a season that almost counts? And I don't know how we can answer that question, but maybe this is the answer, is that it's this one. Yeah, maybe. All right. Matt says, I was thinking about the whole playoff regular season structure, and I had an idea that is probably terrible, but perhaps worth at least mulling it over. What if instead of ranking teams based on the standings, every team that reached 90 wins made it to the playoffs? 90 wins feels like a playoff team, right? Yeah. I took a quick look at the last 10 years in both leagues, and of those 20 instances, 19 of them would have resulted

in between two and six playoff teams per league. The 2006 Mets were the only NL team to win 90 games, so they'd get to go straight to the World Series for that. I'm happy for them. is if you have two teams, you have a best of 11 championship series. If you have three teams, you have a five game divisional series. Best record gets a bye followed by a seven game championship. If four teams, same as above. And if five or six teams, one or two wildcard games, then same as above. So I guess the two questions are, how would the 90 game entrance impact the regular season? And could a wacky playoff structure like this work? So, I mean, first of all, I love the imagination. I think that this, my first thought was that sounds fun. So that's a good response to have to a crazy idea. Now, I will say that I don't consider it to be a pressing issue that bad teams are making

the playoffs. Like we know that there's not a big difference between 85 and 90 wins as far as true talent. It's quite possibly a fluke. Like, to really understand a team's true talent, you'd have to play a lot more than 162 games. And if I see a team sneaks in with 85 or 86, which rarely happens, but if I see a team that sneaks in with 85 or 86, it's very easy for me to say, oh, well, maybe they're really a 90-win team. And similarly, if a team wins 90, I'm not convinced that they really are a 90-win team. And so I don't actually think that we, I would not take action on my own to prevent teams from making the playoffs because they don't clear some bar of excellence. However,

that said, the question is always, how does it affect the regular season? Cause I think again, like we talked about the post season is very exciting and doesn't necessarily need to be improved upon. And because it is tournament designed artificially to create a champion, it seems like it's doing just fine, but how would it affect the regular season? You wouldn't, if you were the giants, you wouldn't care if the Dodgers won. And so there would not be really much scoreboard watching. I guess in a sense, you would want fewer 90 win teams in your league. But otherwise, you wouldn't

have the sort of same excitement of, you know, like the if the you know, the Orioles and the Blue Jays are playing for the last playoff spot, then it's extremely exciting, intense. And if they're not, then they're not. And I don't see how you gain much excitement as it is 90 almost always gets you there. And if you're around 90, your games are exciting anyway, so you're not really gaining anything. So I'm, I guess there'd be the benefit of like having best record gets a buy in a three times team situation where there might be, you might have sort of like side bets more or less that would be keeping things interesting between playoff bound teams. But I think you

would lose the pennant chase. I think that there's something about not just rooting for your own team, but rooting against another team that doubles your excitement this time of year. Yeah, it's basically like going from a head-to-head league to a points league in fantasy, I suppose. When I played fantasy, I always did head-to-head league to a points league in fantasy, I suppose. When I played fantasy, I always did head-to-head leagues. I don't know. I think, well, I don't know. I was going to say that you'd have teams that had gotten to 90 wins fairly early on and then just coasted or didn't really have any incentive to try the rest of the way.

But you could say that about a team with a huge lead in the division also. So maybe that doesn't apply but yeah i think the the head-to-head aspect you'd also just have fewer playoff teams which i think is probably bad i know that some people want a more exclusive playoff group but i think baseball has a pretty decent percentage of all teams making the playoffs and if you have some years where you only have two playoff teams, you know, maybe that worked many, many decades ago when there were fewer teams,

but you have 30 teams now. So, you know, almost every fan base would just be out of it and not have much to root for at the end of the season. So I think that would be a downside. And, right, I mean, scheduling headaches would be a problem. So I kind of like it, or I like aspects of it, but I don't think it's an improvement over what we have now.

I also am not sure I would want to watch a best of 11 league championship series. Uh-huh. Yeah. How many games before you start getting bored of the series, do you think? Huh. Well... And how much do you think your answer is just reflecting your experience? And if you were designing it from scratch, I guess, and you didn't have a history of knowing how many games it's supposed to be, then what do you think would be ideal for you? Yeah, well, I mean, 7 is great. No one gets remotely bored if a series goes 7.

If the stakes are high enough, maybe you wouldn't get bored for quite some time. I mean, we watch 162 game regular seasons in which every game matters only a tiny bit, really, in the grand scheme of things. So if we get to the postseason and it's determining who wins the World Series, is there really a point at which you would get bored? I'm not sure. I mean, it could be as long as the regular, I mean, you'd get bored just because it's the same people every day, maybe, but then again, fans watch the same team every day. You don't get bored of that. So I don't know. I think you could at least double it and I wouldn't, I wouldn't mind. It's not, if you had a best of, say just hypothetically, you had a best of 17 series,

it wouldn't get boring because it went 17 it would get boring if a team was up eight games to one and that's true so i think that the way that the best of seven works brilliantly is that really the only time you ever think and do i need to watch this game is when it's up when a team is up 3-0 which doesn't happen that often and even then it's still not that unlikely. I mean, even though it's never happened, it's not that unlikely that a team could come back from it. And of course, it has happened now in seven-game series,

not in the World Series, but it has happened now in seven-game series. So there's a proof that it does happen. But also, in that situation, that's the clinch game. And so it's almost impossible to have a game where there are not high stakes in a seven game series. If you get to nine and you have, you know, up 3-0, you start to, I think probably everybody starts thinking it's kind of over if you're up 4-1. And if you got, certainly if you got up to 17 and a team was up 7-0 or, you know, 7-2 even, it would seem fairly daunting. And you probably would just be like, well, call me when it gets close again.

Which, like, I'd still, like, probably a lot of us would still watch those games. But I think a lot of people would say, call me when it gets close. And a best of seven series, you never have to have the call me when it gets close conversation. Yeah, good point. All right, question from Miles. The league is out to finally take Mike Trout down a peg. To do so, they've successfully petitioned MLB to install a hurdle exactly halfway between each base. However, they are retractable and are only deployed when Mike Trout is either at bat or on the base paths, and only the hurdles that would affect him at any given time. It's only one hurdle for each base path, but all four paths are affected. How much

less valuable is Mike Trapp with this obstacle in his way? It's the opposite of a pit. It's a protuberance. Couldn't he just go around it? Well, let's say it's wide enough that he can't without going out of the baseline. I mean, he couldn't steal, and he would probably lose four singles a year, maybe, on infield hits. Yeah, maybe more than that. How many infield hits does Mike Trout have this year? Let's look. Let's see who looks first.

Mike Trout. We're having a race. We're having a... I win. 18. we're having an 18 so he's had uh yeah he's had you know roughly 20 to 25 infield hits every year essentially so if you have to hurdle that really affects your speed assuming i mean he can practice hurdling he can become a great hurdler probably because he's mike trout okay so but the 18 i would i would hypothesize because i have written about

i've written about well sometimes i've i've written about timing players to first and i need to find an example of them really uh hustling and to do that you usually have to get an infield hit or a double play ball potential double play and what you realize when you do that is that most infield hits are not bang bang they are like the shortstop dives and knocks it down that's an infield hit or it ends up in you know no man's land and it's a hit or whatever like it a lot of times it's there's a there's a partial misplay or or whatever and so i long way of saying of those 18 i would be surprised if more, more than half were bang bang. And I would not be surprised if it was something like four or five. And so, so yeah, I'm not, I'm just not giving up entirely on

my four singles a year, I guess. But so, all right, so call it half, call it, he loses nine singles a year. He and his base running, what is he a plus four plus five base runner? Right. It's not that significant. So, I mean, he's like a plus five base runner? Right, it's not that significant. So, I mean, he's like a plus eight maybe this year. That's his best since his first full season. But, yeah, it's half a win-ish a year. So that gets sliced considerably probably, but, you know. Well, it might even go to minus half a win.

So call it a win of base running and a half a win of singles. Okay. And that to me is on the high end. He's player in baseball yes with a hurdle yeah every base bat okay so there's no stopping him on the other hand he is gonna lose some doubles that turn into singles and triples that turn into doubles so maybe we're underestimating the impact anyway question from our old pal zachary Levine. On our regular baseball group text, my friend and Double Speed podcast listener Paul said someone should put together a list of this year's career highs in home runs to drive home how ridiculous a season

this has been home run wise. That might be boring in audio format. We'll find out. So would you guys do a short draft of your favorite individual home run totals from this season? They don't have to be career highs, just the ones that get the biggest wow reaction. We haven't prepared for this in any way, but just scanning a leaderboard of home runs.

Are we drafting? Are we going to do a quick three-round draft or something? All right. I haven't done my usual hours of prep that we do for our meaningless drafts't there's not even a way of winning we're just picking our favorites yes right all right okay and so what is this we're any home run totals we're allowed to pick any home run total any home run total that makes you say wow like a fun fact okay so we're doing home run totals that made us say wow that's what this is yeah all right uh who's gone first now is this home run totals that would have made us say wow that's what this is yeah all right uh who's going first now is this home run totals

that would have made us say wow in the spring yeah or is okay so it's not uh mark trumbo has 45 homers everyone knows that that's crazy but it doesn't really make me say wow now because i've been aware of mark trumbo leading the league in homers all year but in the spring that would have made me say wow okay so uh okay so are you picking mark trumbo um i suppose i am okay i i don't know that i i don't know that he would have been my uh my wow okay i mean you know he he hit 34 in anaheim three years ago yeah now he's in baltimore and it's not that many more. Yeah, I think, I don't know, we'd all kind of given up on Mark Trumbo. I mean, the wow-ness of this year's home run totals isn't so much at the high end because it's not like anyone is challenging any single season home run records.

It's like just that everyone has hit homers and infielders are hitting homers. And so maybe there are fairly low totals that make you say wow because it's not someone who ever hit homers before but still i think if you told me that mark trumbo would have 45 or more home runs and be leading the league that that'd make me say wow all right uh okay well the my my first pick for wow would be brian dozier yeah sure uh and that's uh that's my pick right okay i think. I think Brad Miller might be my number two pick. Brad Miller has 30 home runs. What? How's that happen? That makes me say wow today, let alone six months ago. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of guys. I don't know what Brad

Miller is doing overall right now, but my understanding of Brad Miller throughout the year, and I might be wrong about this, but throughout much of the year was that he was hitting home runs, but without being an extraordinary hitter. And so like, for instance, there are a lot of guys like that. That's exactly like, so Rugned Odor, it has 31 home runs too, which totally makes me say, wow. And then I look and his OPS plus has dropped this year from last year. So it's not like, and Mike Napoli, 34 homers. I was like, oh, like, wow. And then I look and his OPS plus has dropped this year from last year. So it's not like I'm and Mike Napoli, 34 homers. I was like, oh, like, wow. And it's his the second lowest OPS plus of

his career. And really, if yeah, and you know, barely that. And so yeah, Michael Bauman wrote something for the ringer last week about Freddie Galdie galvis who has 20 home runs wow as a there it is as a shortstop and has been a terrible hitter even for a shortstop like he's he's hitting 242 with a 274 on base and that's bad and yet he has 20 homers which which normally, Freddy Galvez, 20 homers, that's crazy. So that's an example. Yeah, Brandon Moss, 27 homers. You're like, wow, career resurgence. And then you see 299 on base percentage.

Yeah, right. Harper Weaver sent us not really a question but a comment. He said, one of my friends was looking at Chris Carter's numbers this year and was stunned by how he had 38 homers, but a lower than 500 slugging percentage. I took a look at the play index and I found that that has only been done 13 times ever. Wow. And three times this year. Wow. Chris Carter, Chris Davis, the Orioles one, and Todd Frazier. Yeah.

And Pujols last year. And yeah, that's becoming a more common thing. So it was 30 homers and a sub 500 slug? Well, 38 homers is what he was looking at. Oh, 38, okay. Yeah, 38 homers and sub 500 slug, which is getting more possible now because home runs are way up,

but nothing else is way up. Strikeouts are way up. And so batting averages aren't really up. OBPs aren't up that much. And so it's just a power spike. So you can still be a low batting average guy with tons of homers and have a low slugging. I don't even know that anything makes me say wow anymore.

Like my next wow is going to be Mookie Betts with 31 home runs, which like I never saw that coming. Like Mookie Betts was going to be a great all-around player, and yet he's got 31 home runs. And then I think, yeah, yeah, but who doesn't? Right. Yeah, I mean if you had told me adam duvall would have 33 home runs i would have said who is adam duvall so that would have been a that would have been one i guess i'll say yasmani grundahl with 27 makes me say wow uh partly because he was playing so poorly midway through the year or at least was seen as playing so poorly midway through the year and or at least was seen as playing so poorly midway through the year. And he has 27.

Yeah, so that's a lot of homers. There's a lot of wows on here. Like Randall Gritchuk. Randall Gritchuk, it's just like a known fact, was having a terrible year, got sent down to the minors. 24 home runs. Wow. Yeah, yeah. Ryan Howard.

Ryan Howard doesn't even play. And he has 24 home runs. Ryan Howard is hitting 196 with a 259 on-base percentage, and he has 24 home runs. That's a lot of home runs for a part-time player. 300 plate appearances with a 259 on-base percentage, and he has 24 home runs. Yeah it's crazy this draft fell apart well now there's it's it's just wows i know all the way down the board okay but no wows now well so now that you have like the ryan howard in mind then all the wows are like wow paul goldschmidt

has 23 home runs like how does paul goldschmidt only have 23 home runs? Mike Trout only has 29 home runs? Yeah. How are Andrew McCutcheon, Miguel Sano, and Ryan Howard tied? Yeah. Huh. All right. Weird year. Yeah, it is a weird year.

Play index? Like Matt Carpenter and Freddie Galvis. Just tied. Tied in home runs. All right. Play index. Yeah, sorry. Ryan Schimpf is hitting 218, 317 plate appearances. Never heard of him.

And he has 19 homers. Yeah. All right. Yeah, I didn't do a play index today. Sorry. But I will give you, I have an update on a fun fact that was driven by the play index a long, long time ago. You remember my 50% probability test? Yes. So a couple years ago, a few years ago, I wrote about the 50% probability line, which basically is, if you have this many wins above replacement by this age, you are 50% likely to make the Hall of Fame, which is not the same as saying the average for a Hall

of Famer, but rather that of the X number of players in history who have had this many more through this age, half made it and half did not. So at age 20, for instance, there's, you know, a hundred or so, I'll just get you the right numbers. Through age 20, for instance, there's, you know, 100 or so. I'll just get you the right numbers. Through age 20, there are 40 players in history who have had at least 2.1 wins, which is not many. And that's the point. But 40 players have at least 2.1 wins and half of them made the Hall of Fame. So just by having two wins through age 20, you have a 50% chance of making the Hall of Fame. And the higher you go, the more players we have in our pool,

and so maybe it's more convincing. And then there comes a point that I acknowledged where it starts to get a little bit deceptive because, of course, if you're 50% likely, if you have a group of players of whom half are going to make the playoffs, not the playoffs, the Hall of Fame, not all of them have the exact same number of war, obviously. So if 100 people have more than 40 wins above replacement, and 50 make the Hall of Fame and 50 don't, but some of those players have 110 war,

and some have 40, well, then they're barely in the same cohort at all. However, it's a fun, I think it's a fun fact, it's a fun, interesting way of thinking about it. You're in a group where half the players made the Hall of Fame, right? So when I did this, Mike Trout was in the group that was 50% likely to make the Hall of Fame. I did this when he had just completed his age 21 season. He is now completing his age 24 season. And at the time, I wrote about Trout that I'm going to, I'll just write this age for, so Trout was 21 at the time. And I wrote for the age 26 players that the 50% threshold was 19.9 wins through age 26. And only one active player through his age 26 season that year was on pace. That was Andrew McCutcheon. And I wrote, you might've noticed incidentally that we still haven't reached Mike Trout's career total yet. He had, Trout had 20, 20 point something,

and you needed 19.9. There are, so Mike Trout, as I put at the time, could spend the next five seasons waiting in line for a movie and still be on pace to make the Hall of Fame. And so I want to update that. So Trout now has 48.5 and he is 24. The Hall of Fame 50% line for age 27 is only 23 wins. For age 28 is 26 wins. For age 29 is 29 wins. For age 30 is 32 wins. And just to put that in perspective, in case you're sort of skeptical, at the time I wrote this, age 30, 97 of 194 players with at least 31.6 wins through age 30 made the Hall of Fame. There were five active players who were 30 at the time and met that threshold. They were Miguel Cabrera, David Wright, Robinson Cano, Joe Maurer, Jose Reyes. And basically half those guys are going to make it. Two are definitely going to make it, I think Cabrera and Cano. One is definitely not going to make it, Jose Reyes.

Wright would have, I think, certainly made it if he had managed to have anything like a normal 30s. And Maurer is still kind of on the bubble, although I think, unfortunately, unlikely to make it, but was a no, sort of a no doubter at this point in his career. So these are not, this is not a inconsequential threshold that I've set here. So age 30, 31.6 wins. Age 31, 34.1 wins. Age 32, 36.3 wins. Age 33, 38.0 wins. Age 34, 39.4 wins. Age 35, 34, 39.4 wins. Age 35, 40.4 wins. Trout is ahead of all of them. So I quit at age 35.

And so you could say now that Trout could quit playing for more than a decade and still be in a group that, if he started playing again, he would still be in a group that was 50% likely to make the Hall of Fame. And I don't know, that's, for the reasons I stated, that's a little bit deceptive, but not that deceptive. I actually think that if you took Trout and you put him in a shipping container for 10 years, and then, but he could work out and he could stay fresh. And then you brought him back at his normal career arc for his age 35 season and had him pick up his career at age 35, even without bonus points for peak.

I still think he clears 65 or 70 war for his career, which is a Hall of Fame outfielder. Wow. All right. Should we draft Mike Trout? Wow. Fun fact. Yeah, that could be a whole episode probably.

Go ahead. Okay. Wow. Fun facts. Yeah, that could be a whole episode probably. Go ahead. Okay, question from Brandon, who is a Patreon supporter, and he says, Congratulations, you have just been named Baseball Philosopher for a 2016 non-playoff team. You are tasked with defining success for the 2017 season. Today, what are the first three things you look at within or without the organization? Hmm, I don't know. They'd be different for everybody, right? Yeah, I mean, it would depend if you were expecting to be good next year or not. I don't know. I guess you could evaluate probably some common things in each organization, maybe,

just about your sort of process or some less used word that means the same thing, just about whether you are proceeding as planned. I don't know what that would be. You'd look at your farm system and how that ranks. And, I mean, you'd look at your, every organization wants to win. And we are talking about how there are different ways to evaluate your season in retrospect, and I guess in advance also. But if you're looking ahead to next season, most teams are still going to go into 2017 wanting to win and thinking they have a chance to win. So that is still probably going to be your primary goal in most cases.

But where you set that expected win total will vary from organization to organization. And you want to make sure that your front office and your field staff are all working well together, that sort of thing, and your player development pipeline is all functioning great. I don't know how you, we evaluated success or failure for 2016's non-contenders in many, many different ways. So it is hard to come up with constants. Yeah, I would like to think about this more. This is an interesting question that I would like to think about this more. This is an interesting question that I would like to think about more. But I think on assuming that when the division is out of the question, or at closer, a very young catcher and a very young

shortstop that I thought were all good enough to be starters or, you know, like to be in their role on a playoff team. And I don't know that there's any real necessarily correlation between having those spots filled and being a playoff team at some point, but I think I would just feel good about it. Like I would feel good knowing that I had those pieces to build on uh and i would like those seem like the positions that in a weird way even though like closer should be easy and probably should be out of this entirely but in a weird way those feel like the things that are uh that a gm has to spend the most time anxious about either because they're the hardest to fill, or they take the most preparation to fill,

or there's the most scarcity, or in the case of Closer, because if you don't have one, then you end up thinking about it all day, every day, and stressing out about it. So just having those would, I think, make me feel pretty good about the franchise. All right, last one, question from Brendan, who says much of the talk about Jose Fernandez's passing discussed how you can tell he was a player who absolutely loved and enjoyed playing baseball.

In honor of that, what made you fall in love with baseball? And what has been your favorite moment or memory from watching baseball? For me, it was the home run chase of 1998 that made me an obsessed baseball fan. My favorite moment has to be game 162 of 2011 or David Fries' game six walk off that same year. I remember especially falling in love with baseball over a couple month period in 1987, in which the Giants traded for Kevin Mitchell, Craig Lefferts, and Dave Trevecky. And it was a mid-season trade, and it was immediately a huge success. I mean, they traded a lot of people for them, guys that I knew as I was just learning the team. These were guys that I knew on the team.

But I remember having adults tell me what a great trade it was for the Giants, and then watching the Giants immediately win, and the guys that they acquired immediately become great. And I just really like attached myself to that roster with those guys in particular. And of course, Kevin Mitchell would go on to become an MVP for the Giants and to have one of the all time great highlight plays ever that I got to watch live. all-time great highlight plays ever that I got to like watch live. And Dave Drovecki went on to become one of the most iconic Giants from a narrative standpoint. And that specifically his comeback game is probably the greatest moment of baseball in my life. And Craig Lefferts was also very good.

And the Giants made the playoffs that year after like a very long time of being horrible. And just for those couple months, I remember like falling hard for it. I think that was really when I was totally all in on listening to baseball games. So you're what you described in the book about how you liked using baseball as a way to talk to adults and know what you were talking about. That came after that was moments that yeah, that would have been 8889 summer of 8, 89 especially was when I had the baseball card memorization thing going on and I was more comfortable. Yeah, 87 was the first year that I – 86, I got a couple of packs of cards and became aware that baseball was a thing. 87 is when in the summer I started listening to it and following it.

And then 88 was when it was just everything all the time. Yeah. I don't have a great memory of this because no one in my family really cares about baseball. Certainly no one in my immediate family. So it wasn't something I was instructed in early on. And I don't know, I'm what, five or six years younger than you are. And my first baseball memory is probably five or six years after yours. And I can remember like 93 World Series. I remember watching that on kind of a grainy, snowy TV in the Adirondacks. And that was cool and great moment and all that. But I wasn't really a baseball fan at that point, just casual. I didn't follow any particular team. I went to a couple games over the next couple years, I think. But

again, I didn't really have any fan affiliation. So I remember the 1996 World Series. I was, what, nine or something. And I was kind of jumping on the bed when Charlie Hayes caught that pop-up to end it. And I don't know, maybe that's what made me into a fan. Basically, I was just a bandwagon fan because I happened to live close to Yankee Stadium when the dynasty was just starting. So I became the fan of the team that won the World Series every year. And so that made me love baseball because they were just the best team ever maybe at the time. And so that was a nice place to start. So I don't know.

My favorite baseball moments are maybe Stompers moments. But other than Stompers moments, probably like the Aaron Boone game was the most thrilling moment I have witnessed in person in a ballpark. I was talking to somebody about my worst baseball moment the other day. And it was, um, when I was, I think 13 or 14, I was playing like winter ball, which not like good winter ball, but just like little league stopped. And then they started a winter ball league, which was no score was kept, but it was basically all the same people doing all the same things with no uniforms. kept, but it was basically all the same people doing all the same things with no uniforms.

And one night, one day on a Saturday, it was very damp and dewy. We had a morning game. I was, it was the year, like we had, I don't know if it was like this for Little League. We, I played Pony League. And so it'd be like seven eights and then nine tens and then 11 twelves and so on. So if you were in 11, 12s and you were 11, you were horrible. And if you were 12, you were good. And I, my birthday was like two weeks before the deadline. I was the smallest kid in the world. And so when I was 11, I was really, really 11. Like I was the, like the, the least athletic kid. And then the next year it would all be redeemed because I'd be, you know, bigger and good. So this was a younger year though for me and the manager of the team was out that weekend. And so my dad got named, like he was asked to just fill in as the manager and he had me pitch, which was really nice. Like I would not have, like, I think it probably in winter ball,

like it was a lot looser and probably everybody got to pitch at some point in winter ball. And that was the time I got to pitch. But I think I got out there and just immediately started getting crushed and hit after hit after hit. And I think my dad didn't want to pull me because I'm not sure why. I meant to, I've been meaning to ask him. I don't think he'll remember this game at all though. been meaning to ask him. I don't think he'll remember this game at all though. Uh, but I think that he probably didn't want to pull me because he didn't want to look like he was pulling me cause he was my dad. And so he wanted to just treat it like a normal coach, but I think he went way too far in the other direction. And like 12 guys in a row got on to start the game against me.

And finally he pulled me. And after everyone, I would just look over at the dugout, like begging him to pull me from the game. Uh, so that was probably my worst me. And after every one, I would just look over at the dugout, like begging him to pull me from the game. So that was probably my worst moment. But now I get to talk about it on a podcast professionally for, you know, people who like this podcast. And so it has been redeemed. All right. So we will leave it there. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild.

You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have already done so, Casey Olney, Jeff Gaddis, Matthew P. Calhoun, Chad Goldberg, and Tony. Thank you. You can also buy our book, The Only Rules It Has to Work, our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team. Check out theonlyrulesithastowork.com for more information. Please leave us a review on Amazon and Goodreads if you liked it. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. We'll see you next time. the Braves, about the many GMs he has hired over the last couple decades with a few different teams. We also talked to Sam's successor at Baseball Prospectus, Aaron Gleeman, about the Twins' new GM and the direction that team should go.

You can reach me and Sam via email at podcast at baseballprospectus.com or by messaging us through Patreon. That's it for today. We will be back later this week. Falling, falling, falling from the medium Falling, falling, falling from the medium Falling, falling, falling from the medium Falling in love Falling in love Falling in love Falling in love Falling in love

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