Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 962: Buck, Britton, Bonds and Boredom

Episode Date: October 5, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about an aged usher, Buck Showalter’s decision not to use Zach Britton in the AL wild-card game, and Barry Bonds, then answer listener emails and talk to Saber Seminar raffle winners Armaan and Ishaan about the Red Sox and whether baseball bores kids.

There's a time and there's a place It's not now, it's time to pace Things I'd say but just can't face All it means to say that I could believe the things I feel That tomorrow will be the same deal Am I acting on something real? Or am I blowing it again?

Hello and welcome to episode 962 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by our Patreon supporters and the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Devin Berg of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello. Hello. So we're going to have a slightly unusual email show today. We're going to take a few emails, we're going to do the play index, and then we're going to talk to a

couple of youths, Arman and Ishan, who won the Saber Seminar raffle in Boston in August to appear on this show. And so they are now collecting that prize, if you can call it that. And we're going to talk to them about their generation and their introduction to baseball. And we'll see whether everyone who's worried about baseball being doomed is right. So before we get to that quick banter, I sent you an article yesterday about this usher in PNC Park, Phil Coyne, who was written about in ESPN. And he is 98, and he has been ushering for 80 years for the Pirates. And so I wondered whether he is a candidate for someone who has seen more baseball than Vin Scully, because we talked about whether anyone has seen more baseball than Vin Scully, or anyone alive, certainly, and we couldn't come up with anyone.

But we also allowed for the possibility that there was just some unknown person who's just been working concessions or maybe being an usher for a really, really long time and that somewhere out there that person might exist. So Phil Coyne, 98, 80 years of being an usher. Has he possibly seen more baseball than Vince Scully? No, no, not even close. No. Yeah, even he I don't think has a case because, I mean, he started working as an usher in 1936. So that is well before Vince Scully started attending games regularly or at least professionally. But A, he missed some time while serving in World War II.

He should have been going after the Vin Scully record instead. He was in the service. But he missed some time there. think what really disqualifies him there is a a caption to an image in this article that says he's been at the ballpark a lot more since he retired back when he worked in a machine shop it was more of a weekend gig so i'm imagining that for most of that 80 years this was a part-time job and he was only maybe going to a couple games a week something like that so there's no way if he had been a full-time usher i'm no well even if he'd been a full-time usher he would only be doing home games right and so he would have he'd be decades behind vin but as it is you've described

a guy i'm not sure has seen more baseball games than annie mccullough yeah plus the usher the usher is paid to not watch the game as well so So even if he has been to a lot of games, he has not seen nearly the pitches. But that's not the question. But all the same, it is there. Yeah, right. Although I don't think Andy watches many pitches either. I liked Pedro the other day when they were talking about, well, what, Pedro was at a game where Matt Shoemaker got hit by a comebacker, and Pedro admitted that he was in the middle of reading a five-part L.A. Times series about a PTA mom.

Yeah. Yeah. Most people are just refreshing Twitter over and over and over again. So he's using his time more productively than most baseball writers. But before we get to emails, we should just do a little bit of obligatory Buck and Britton banter. You made your ESPN debut today writing about Britton. It was a really good article and you even managed to link to our book three paragraphs into your ESPN career. So that was well done. I don't know whether either of us has anything unique to say about tech Britain other than just to

pile on about what a wacky non-move that was. Yeah. I mean, it's, I don't know. It, I guess it's somewhat personal for us. Yeah. And like, I mean, the first 15 attempts that I made at a lead all began with some version of in 2015, an independent minor league team called the Sonoma Stompers. I don't know if it was, was it? Well, I guess it was familiar. I mean, we had a winner take all game, spoiler. We had a winner take all game and we decided that

for that game, we were basically just going to start with our best pitcher, and then when he wasn't our best pitcher anymore, we would go to our second best pitcher, and when he wasn't our best pitcher, we would go to our third, and then we'd go to our fourth. And if we'd had to, we would have gone to our fifth, or sixth, or seventh. But we were not playing what inning is it when we played that game.

We just thought that it makes the most sense to use your best. And we were sort of lucky because our three best pitchers had all relieved extensively for us and had also all started for us and had experience starting. And so, you know, we were a little lucky in that sense. And they were all stretched out and so on. But, you know, the basic idea was, well, you have 27 outs and you should make sure like that's it. It's 27 outs and then there's no tomorrow. So there's no point in keeping anybody fresh for tomorrow or saving anybody for tomorrow.

So you just, you know, get the outs with the best guy you can possibly put on the field at any given moment. given moment. And so I, you know, I wrote at ESPN about all the chances that Buck Showalter had to bring in Britton and including the first out of the game. He could have had him start. He could have brought Britton in as the starter, had him throw his inning and then brought in. And that was, you know, like, I don't think, I don't expect many readers to like take that too seriously because it's so unusual and it's more unusual than you you need to be you have a lot of chances to use zach britain but all the other all all the arguments for not having britain start that game depend on you being really committed to him getting into the game because if you if you're not committed to that if that is not your an no matter what, he's in the game, then you're choosing a worse pitcher instead of a better pitcher.

And so, like, I wouldn't expect, I mean, you know, the Blue Jays didn't start Roberto Osuna, for instance. And that's okay, because Roberto Osuna pitched. And an inning or two, whatever you plan to get out of him, in a game like this, where there's no point holding anything for leverage because that's it the entire universe of baseball for those 25 guys is now that one game um it doesn't really matter whether it's the first the third the fifth the seventh or the ninth but it's got to be somewhere so to you know that i you know we're not saying anything that we haven't said before i think we didn't we have a conversation like this about the 2012 wildcard game? Well, we definitely had one about the 2014 NLCS when Mike Matheny brought in what Michael

Waka instead of going to Trevor Rosenthal or whatever it was. And we were talking about maybe what could have been going through his head. And then I think as we were recording, the quote came out from him saying basically that it just wasn't a safe situation because it was a tie game on the road or whatever it was. And I was just flabbergasted. I just didn't know what to say because it seemed so insane that someone would still think that. And maybe what makes this different and maybe even more shocking is that it's Buck Showalter. This is not like one of the managers who, you know, we use as punchlines for their tactics. And some of those guys, you know, then go on to be much better managers, like Ned Yost used to be the punchline, and then he adapted. But this was not

Matheny or someone who is known for bad bullpen usage. This is Buck Showalter, who, if anything, is known as one of the, what, two, three best tacticians and bullpen managers in the game, a guy who's managed to get much more out of the Orioles than anyone has expected over the last several years, in part because of how good their bullpen has been and how well he's handled it. And so for him to do this, it's just amazing that someone so smart and

experienced and capable could watch Zach Britton put together an all-time great relief season and be there in the dugout watching that every day and then get to this moment where you absolutely need not to allow a run and just empty out your bullpen before using Zach Britton. I mean, when I saw Brian Densing, I wasn't even aware that Brian Densing was a major league pitcher, which he wasn't for much of this year. So for Brian Densing. Well, he's, yeah, you know, he's 33. I'm sure he, I'm sure he had a big career leap forward in the last 40, you know, 40 days. It's just crazy. It's just amazing. And just watching the press conference after, it was like, he didn't explicitly say it was because of the non-save situation.

He just, he sort of talked up the other pitchers more so than explaining why he didn't use Britton. He said that Ubaldo has been as good as anyone lately. And maybe, I mean, Britton's allowed like four runs all year. He said that Ubaldo has been as good as anyone lately, and maybe. I mean, Britain's allowed like four runs all year, so I don't know how anyone could have been better than he's been. Anyway, it's just amazing. I can't imagine what Orioles fans were thinking. I looked up Ubaldo's numbers before, you know, his game logs, I should say, before I wrote.

And maybe I didn't look closely enough, but there was like nothing going on particularly. I mean, he's been good lately, right? I mean, he's been better, but like he, you know, in September, he had 35 innings, 31 strikeouts, 11 walks, three homers. That's, you know, that's your basic number three starter, more or less. And that's, you know, that's his, that's his good month. He had a, you know, he had a 5-4-4 ERA this year. I mean, it was better in September, but this is not, I guess

what I'm saying, maybe that's, maybe that's not generous of me, but it's not like you look at Ubaldo and you go, oh, wow, it's like 2014 Kluber all over again or 2015 Arrieta all over again or 2013 Ubaldo all over again like there's nothing like that jumps out at you about his last you know his I guess his five good ish you know his five good starts in September like his last outing he walked three and he struck out five and six and two thirds pretty good innings it's pretty good doesn't make you reevaluate everything. He walked four the game before that. So again, I'm probably ungenerous, but like I wouldn't have been screaming for Ubaldo before the game if I'd looked at those game logs. Yeah, I don't know.

I would hope, well, okay, I'll just say two more things. One is, as I mentioned in the piece, Well, okay, I'll just say two more things. One is, as I mentioned in the piece, on July 31st, it was a tie game in Toronto. The Orioles and the Blue Jays tied 2-2, and he went to Britain in a tie game. And Britain got three up, three down, and so he was able to come back out for the next inning. And he threw another scoreless inning. And then some ways down the road, the Orioles scored some runs, and they held the lead. And those are basically the two reasons that, more than almost anything else, it comes down to those two things that can happen. One, you use your best pitcher in a tie

game, you might get two innings out of him, use him in a save, you only get one. Two innings from your best pitcher is better than one inning from your best pitcher. And the other thing is that when you finally do get your lead, it's quite likely that it's not going to be a one run lead. It's going to be two, maybe three, maybe four. And then you don't really need your best pitcher anymore. Like the, whatever extra anxiety you think that the last out of the game brings, it's probably not so much there in a four run lead. And so you're waiting for, you know, you're waiting for a situation that might not happen because you might never score, but also might not happen because you might score three and then you don't really need your closer anymore. And, you know, Showalter got it right once and then he got it wrong, you know,

in a game where it made a lot more sense to get it right. I mean, I hope that we talk about this a lot for one day. And then I hope that next year Buck Showalter does some good things. And nobody makes the mistake of judging his career on this one move as sometimes happens with managers. I don't think that Showalter, I certainly don't think Showalter deserves that. And, you know, it's out of character and so odd that does. I mean, there was a part of me that was a little gun shy about writing because I thought, yeah, maybe, I mean, they kept saying he's not hurt and Britton was sad and Baldo was confused, but maybe he was like, it doesn't, it just doesn't add up. So that's conceivable. But yeah, you know, we had a lot of time to watch this bad decision manifest itself. of year and cited some of the examples in previous postseasons where we've all wondered why player X is not playing and manager is crazy for not using player X.

And then it comes out that player X had some sort of issue the whole time. But after you've been eliminated, I can't think of any reason to continue to hide something or not reveal something. So I just can't come up with anything. I don't know. Every time one of these things happens I kind of think well this will be the last time like this I mean he's just getting killed he's getting crushed everyone is coming out against this move it's not like anyone is really holding up the show alter side of this argument or saying it was the right move so I keep thinking that

after one of these high profile losses in this fashion that will be it and we won't see this anymore at least in the playoffs but keep seeing it yeah i don't know how to explain it all right so our condolences to orioles fans should we move on to questions well i guess we should just acknowledge that the Barry Bonds era in Miami is over. And we, I don't know if I ever, you and I, I think, talked about how wrong I was. But we were wrong. I was wrong. I think I said that it was the most likely outcome was that he would be gone by the end of spring training and that I did not think that he would make it to the all-star break.

And, you know, I don't know. I was clearly wrong. It went really well. It seems like it went really well relative to my expectations. It really is amazing how a hitting coach could be fired after his first year and yet without any, and it's Barry Bonds, by the way. It's Barry Bonds, no less. And yet I didn't hear any real controversy during the season.

I didn't hear of really much, if any, tension. It snuck up on me. It seemed like it was going so well until the day they fired him after one single season. Right, and then some stuff came out that John Carlos Stanton didn't like him, I guess, because Bonds said something critical about Stanton, maybe where other people could hear it. And then, I don't know, his commitment to the team, he kind of slacked off later in the season after Mattingly called him out on maybe not working hard enough at hitting coaching i don't know so it does sound like his commitment definitely dropped off in the way that we expected it to but he was just kept around by jeffrey lauria anyway but he didn't walk away he could have just voluntarily voluntarily left at any time and he didn't do that so he still exceeded expectations i I feel like it went generally better than I expected. I also acknowledged that I was wrong.

In setting the over-under, clearly I was on the wrong side of that over-under. However, I also think that we did basically say how the season was going to go. We were only off by a little bit, really, if you think about it. We were off, but only by a little bit really yeah think about it right we were off but only by a little okay will he get hired again as a hitting coach i don't think so as any anything in a uniform will he ever wear a uniform again will he ever have a job in a ballpark again i could see him working for the giants in some sort of ambassador capacity, but in a uniform, I'm going to say no. All right. Question or submission?

Interesting fun fact. Part-time usher. Yeah. Machinist on the side. From Darius Austin, who is a writer for Banished to the Pen and a Patreon supporter. He says that he came across an interesting

Play index fact and It is it's a very good one he Said he was talking about Whether you could play index player Winning streaks or team winning streaks In player appearances and You can and he discovered that John Smoltz once appeared in 73

Consecutive regular season victories Or you know 73 Consecutive games in which the that John Smoltz once appeared in 73 consecutive regular season victories, or, you know, 73 consecutive games in which the Braves won between June 2002 and May 2003. There was a postseason game he lost in the 2002 playoffs, which screws it up a little bit, but still, regular season records. No other player is close. Dennis Eckersley is second at 53, so 20 fewer games, but there is very little mention of this record. I found a few snippets in game recaps, newspaper articles, and a couple of

interesting stats columns that made reference to it after the streak ended, but no comments from Smoltz or Atlanta about it, and no indication that it was noted when he passed Eckersley. Were people generally aware of this at the time? Do you think Smoltz's teammates cared about it, particularly in a superstitious sense? The Cubs winning 23 consecutive starts by Arrieta drew a decent amount of attention earlier this year, so if this didn't, why not? The closers just appear in so many wins anyway that players and fans take little notice if it's 80, 90, or 100 percent% And yeah, that's a fun fact I was on MLB Network with Smoltz last week And Darius sent this just too late for me to mention it to him

Otherwise I definitely would have But I'm guessing that's all it is I don't remember this record, I wasn't aware of it And Darius has done the research and didn't come across much So I don't have anything to add to that as far as the contemporary reaction but i would assume that yeah it's just it's a product of being a closer in this era where most of the time you pitch you your team wins and so if it happens to be every time maybe that could just kind of slip under the radar it's cool though i'm actually uh the most surprising thing about that to me is that there was writing about it at the time, that anybody noticed it.

I would have thought it would have been completely unnoticed, but this was in a newspaper. Yeah, I mean, there was no play index in 2003. I remember an equivalent fun fact appearing in one of the earlier annuals that I read of a pitcher who had been in, you know, X losses in a row or, I don't know, it was something like, you know, like it was to demonstrate his, the leverage that he was being used in, the role he was being used in. And, you know, he had pitched in like, you know, six wins all year or something like that. And the rest were losses.

So I am now, Ben, going to ask you to guess. What do you think is the longest streak of appearances in losses? Well, I had Andrew Triggs on the Ringer podcast last week, and he, at one point this season, had appeared in 22 games, and 21 of them were losses. And that was pretty amazing. So the fact that that happened makes me think that maybe some mop-up man could have gone, I don't know, I'll say 30. It's 33. Okay. Clay Meredith and Jeff Shaw, both of whom would have moments of greatness in their careers.

Andrew Triggs had the fourth longest streak of this year at 16 straight losses. longest streak of this year at 16 straight losses. Silvino Bracco, who I touted as my, as somebody asked me in a chat before the season, who my reliever league dark horse was this year. And I said, Silvino Bracco. And he had 23 and he also had a 7.3 ERA this year. And a 7.04 FIP. 7.04 FIP. He allowed 2.6 home runs per nine. That's a lot. That's not good. No.

All right. Question from Giles. Okay, guys, your talk on the batting title's illegitimacy immediately following Trout stats got me thinking. Colorado manages the deal of the century and acquires Mike Trout. Assume that the offensive talent there remains arenado blackman lemahew story cargo etc does trout have the greatest offensive season of all time does sam need a new bike lock code uh i uh i well you know i don't know maybe he knows this maybe he doesn't but But probably a lot of people know and some people don't that Baseball Reference has this little tool that will translate your stats for any season into any park in any season. And I referred in an article not long ago to what Trout's adjusted, Coors' adjusted stats would be. But I don't have them in front of me.

Do you? You'd have to pick 2016 to be fair, but you might as well do 2000 while you're at it because that's the fun year. That's the NAFE year. If you translate Mike Trout's career stats to 2000 Rockies, he is a 376, 483, 685 hitter. That's a 1168 OPS. Pretty good, but his best single season is, what, a 1202 OPS. His 2015 season translated to 2000 cores would be a 1200 to OPS.

So, I mean, he's still not anywhere close to peak Bonds. No, he's not. So you do not have to change your bike lock code. Let's look up Barry Bonds to see what he would have done in 2000 cores. I've looked this up probably 75 times in my life. 2000 Rockies. Barry Bonds. Let's do year...

Can I have some seasons? No, I can't. 2000... 2001. He would have hit 383, 576, 1015. With 94 homers.

And in 2004, he would have hit 412, 659, 928. There you go. All right. You want a real quick fun fact? Sure. Jose Leclerc is a reliever for the Texas Rangers. He threw 15 innings this year, 22 years old, late call-up. So 12 appearances, 15 innings as a reliever.

Had a 1.8 ERA, so he's good. Had a 3.75 FIP. So he's even legit. He had more walks. He had more walks than Clayton Kershaw. Wow. Two more walks, in fact. Good one. All right.

We are going to wrap up then with two questions from Fangraphs writers, as it happens, one of whom is August Fagerstrom. He says, would like to hear your takes on something a buddy and I discussed at the bar last night. Suppose a team that typically draws an average number of fans plays all 81 of their home games in a completely empty stadium. Zero fans all year. How does their record change? Does it? Do fans matter? Well, I mean, on a basic level, to the best of our knowledge, home field advantage is mostly related to having the crowd on your side, and particularly the effect on umpires and referees, right? Yeah, that is the most likely

answer. That is the one that has the most evidence behind it. It is probably not all of it, and it might also be wrong. But based on what we know, there seems to be fairly good evidence that umpires are friendly to the home team because of the home crowd, or maybe just because of the home team, but probably the home crowd. So taking that away would take away most of the home field advantage and would get you down from 54% to maybe something like 51%. However, question then is whether playing in front of no fans is itself discombobulating and would be a greater home field advantage. Oh, I see what you mean. The visiting team will be disoriented because they're used to playing in front of fans. Yeah. Or maybe there's a home field disadvantage where it's just depressing to play

in front of no one every day so yeah it's presumably though it wouldn't be it's not like you're being rejected if nobody is showing up then you know probably it's like the gate is broken or something and yeah so you wouldn't feel that sort of sense of shame about it it just it is just how your how your how your life is it would be just a trick of geography i will say as to the home field advantage being based on your fans i have always found it strange and inexplicable uh that home field advantage doesn't seem to be any stronger when there are big crowds compared to small crowds, and it also doesn't seem to be any stronger in games like postseason games where the crowd is exceptionally loud and extremely into it.

And you would think if this was mostly a matter of the crowd affecting the umpire with their volume and mob mentality, that the more people you pack in there and the louder they scream, the greater the advantage. And yet that's not true at all. And postseason home field advantage is exactly the same as regular season home field advantage. And so that is makes you think.

Yeah. And so if yeah, so if if it turned out, but I think the answer to August's question as best we can say is I would say they would win about 50.8 percent of their games okay so you don't yeah maybe higher maybe slightly higher maybe 51.2 uh-huh so you don't think there's an advantage to the other team not being used to this condition no i was just being cute okay i don't disagree all right and the next question is from Neil Weinberg, who says, let's say we took a person who looks the part of an early 40s baseball man, assume he knows the game and is familiar with the lingo and procedures, and we make him the minors, never made the show, bouncing around as a coach for several years, of which no one on the team will have firsthand knowledge. In other words, this man is a total fraud. How long until someone on the team, one, gets suspicious, two, makes an

accusation, three, does actual research to verify, assume that no one in the media figures it out and tips them off, how long until a journalist notices? I would think that a journalist would notice Immediately Right, because Well, I would think I mean, there are beat writers for AAA teams I would think that you at least

Look up the guy's baseball reference page Or something at some point I would think that someone notices that Very quickly Hmm, okay I had not thought about the or something at some point, I would think that someone notices that very quickly. Hmm. Okay. I had not thought about the obligatory baseball reference page lookup. And you're right.

I've probably looked up every manager's baseball reference page for no reason. And I probably would have noticed at some point. Yeah. But let's say that part of it... I mean, I wouldn't notice a random AAA manager. No, not a random AAA. But if I were covering that team, I would. Right, yeah.

If you were dealing with that AAA manager all the time, you would be interested to know what kind of player he was. Yeah. And how long he played and where he went. You'd want to know if he was ever in Durham so that you could ask him about Durham. So I guess that is the problem. We expect—like, there are long paper trails supporting the careers of everybody who's had a career what about if we could just what if there was a fake baseball reference page and imagine everything else is the same but there's a fake you google him you get

they've they've gone to the trouble of inventing a baseball reference page and inventing a Wikipedia page. In that case, I think it could go quite a while. I mean, if I were in that position, I would never think of the fake baseball reference page, so I wouldn't do any digging. I mean, you'd have to make the stats on there, the fake stats, really boring, so there wouldn't be anything interesting that I would want to dig into and look up newspaper accounts or anything. So, yeah, I think if you had the baseball reference page, that would be enough corroboration that I probably wouldn't go out of my way to check. So I could see that lasting a season.

Yeah, it's tricky because then I feel like I'm almost going too far in the other way. If you research the guy and like if you are going to – if you suspect he's a fraud and you go looking to see if he's a fraud and there's a whole bunch of stuff to convince you he's not, that doesn't seem to be in the spirit of Neil's question. in the spirit of Neil's question. And yet, but also, so I kind of want to get an in-between scenario where there's a house of cards that does the basic, it's a Potemkin village, but all it takes is a little poke for it to fall over.

My answer to that scenario, whatever that scenario is, sorry that, Neil, but your scenario wasn't convoluted enough. My answer is I think that if you made it through the first like four days, you'd be home free. But I don't think you'd make it through the first four days necessarily. Because of the media or because of the team? Because of the team. I think that there would be basic things like you would just, like remember Romy? Like this isn't even, like we had a pitching coach, we've probably mentioned this before,

Jerome, who had never been a pitching coach before. He'd been a baseball player. He played D1 baseball. He had been a pitcher as well as a center fielder. He had been around the game a long time. But he'd never been a pitching coach, and he kept on walking out to the mound for pitching changes wearing a hat. No, not wearing a hat.

He would forget his hat. And it was just like the team never missed that like they every time he did that or he did something like that they could just like tell he was a he was a fraud and i feel like there would be lots of things like that where like the guy would use the he'd use a word wrong like he would would just, it'd be like, I don't know what word he'd use wrong, but he'd use some word wrong and you'd be like, do you know what that means? And I think that there would be enough, like this is a sport that is filled with jargon,

filled with ritual. It's all meant to keep outsiders out and make insiders feel special and to keep the pack tight, to keep outsiders out and make insiders feel special and to keep the pack tight to keep the pack exclusive and so i think there are a lot of little time bombs just waiting for him but i think that mostly he'd figure it out after a week or so uh and he'd he'd be able to at least look the part most of the time i think that he he'd really, really struggle the first couple days, though. So I say that this guy does get found out just by his behavior, I think, within like three or four days.

Yeah. I mean, it depends on the preparation. If this is like Daniel Day-Lewis and he's, you know, doing like method approach to this and he's in character 24-7 and, you know, he's taking it so seriously that he like shadows another AAA manager for a year just to see what that guy does and then try to apply it. In that case, I could see it happening. But if you just took like a knowledgeable baseball fan just, you know, and had him wing it, I don't think he could see it happening yeah but if you just took like a knowledgeable baseball fan just you know and had him wing it i don't think you could do it i'm not a hundred percent sure that i know how to put on a uniform like i i probably i think i could like i'm i'm i'm imagining in my head what they're wearing and it seems like basic clothes but like there are enough little things where they do things weird just because it's baseball. Like I'm not totally sure that I could get this, you know, the socks right or the belt right.

I would go out without a belt. That's what I would do. I would go out without a belt. I'd be wearing like a brown leather. I'd go out wearing a brown leather belt from Banana Republic. Like that wouldn't seem weird to me That would give me away Yeah, I couldn't do it

So it depends on Your commitment to the role Basically If you want to shadow someone and live this for a year I'm assuming that's not an option Yeah, well We ran a baseball team for a year Someone could do this as a book deal too, right?

This would be a fun book. Pretend you are our baseball man and be a manager for a year. The thing about Daniel Day-Lewis is that if he actually had to do this, he would actually go have a career. He would get drafted in the 12th round, play seven seasons in the minors, never make the show, bounce around as a coach for several years and then he'd become the manager yeah this would actually be a this would be a fun project do you think that there is currently well there's not but of the 30 of the 30 major league managers if i told you that one was an imposter and like you pretend you've never seen any other but you know nothing about them just thinking about him who would you put your money on jeez it would i'm trying to think of whether it would be like the most stereotypical baseball guy like yeah like the

manager on pitch who's just like yeah the baseballiest baseball guy yeah and it would seem like he was almost trying too hard. So who would that be? There aren't that many of those guys around anymore. There are so many young, recently retired managers now. You don't really get the lifer. But who's the closest to that now? Terry Collins or Dusty Baker?

Dusty Baker has the toothpick thing thing that's like an affectation that's taking it a little bit too far it's so uh yeah maybe maybe one of those guys yeah i i would say that you're right there are two ways you could go with this i andy green is the manager who looks most like you yeah and so he's you know he's he's a real contender like how many how many like you look at Andy Green and you go that guy's 28 how many 28 year old managers are there it's suspicious uh Craig Council is the manager who looks most like me and the least like an athlete or an ex-athlete uh although I'm sure he's actually in great shape, very muscular. But I've always gotten a weird vibe from John Gibbons. Yeah, okay.

I'm looking him up. You're not making any accusations. I'm looking up the baseball reference page just to answer Neil's question all the way to the end. Did John Gibbons really play? John Gibbons, 18 games, 1984 and 1986. 18 games, that's it. 18 games, yeah, which is just how many you would put to fill out a baseball reference page if you had a fake page. No reason to remember him.

Nobody would go, I definitely remember that guy not existing. They'd just go, oh, yeah, wow he i missed him all right he does have game logs so sean foreman is really covering all his bases here yeah all right okay so we're not saying just saying maybe someone someone look into that all right play index oh yeah sure a real i guess a real quick one we don't even have to discuss any Just saying. Maybe. Someone look into that. All right. Play index? Oh, yeah, sure. I guess a real quick one. We don't even have to discuss any of this stuff. We all know that one-year defensive metrics are a little shaky, shady sometimes, both shaky and shady.

And so just out of curiosity, I wanted to see who the worst defenders at each position are over the past three years. And so I set a minimum of, I think, 70% of games played at that position, which would require that you not only be bad at the position, but stay at the position. Your team just keeps throwing you out there. So I don't, you know, even three-year defensive metrics, as Colin Wires, I think, would point out, if you have a metric that is missing on a player then three years is just three years to bake in the same uh the same blind spot so uh you know i'm not necessarily saying any of these guys are uh deserve to be kicked out of the club or anything

but for the record the worst fielding catcher by defensive runs saved over the past three years is travis darneot at minus 26 runs. And I'm going to ask you at the end if any of these seem wrong to you or if any of them seem exceptionally right to you. Worst first baseman over the past three years, Ryan Howard at minus 28 runs. Worst second baseman, Rugned Odor at minus 27 runs. Worst third baseman, Nick Castellanos at minus 50 runs. Worst shortstop, Brad Miller,

minus 41. Worst left fielder, Robbie Grossman at minus 19. Worst center fielder, Andrew McCutcheon at minus 47, of which I think like 27, I think, are this year. And worst right fielder, Matt Kemp, minus 56, the worst defensive runs saved for any position, and he is playing at one of the least demanding positions. So I guess you would say that Matt Kemp is the worst defender in baseball over the past three years. So does any of that seem egregious to you? Wouldn't have thought of Odor as the worst second baseman. And I wouldn't have even, I mean, Robbie grossman like it's not like he has a reputation uh but yeah odore is the the one that most surprised me you know escobar minus 46 is close at third base and i'm always i'm always amused by that because before this three-year run as a worst in the league third baseman he was an everyday shortstop like one year earlier yeah anyway but he does

genuinely seem to be bad i don't think there's a lot of disagreement about that maybe there's okay so now we're gonna talk to arman and ishan guys good to have you on yeah so good to be on the podcast yeah okay so the the higher pitched voice is ishan and the lower pitched is Arman. Yeah I think so. Definitely. Okay that won't always be the case but that's the case for right now. Yes. So you guys grew up in Boston have you always lived in Boston were you Red Sox fans from the start? Yeah we've always lived around the Boston area but we've moved around in there a couple times. Was there ever any doubt that you were going to be Red Sox fans?

Have you ever had any crisis of faith or anything like that? He used to like the Rays. And back when I was in Little League, and I remember, I used to play for the fake, what was it, the Reds. And I used to like them. Yeah, same year with the Rays. i stopped yeah same year right after that like point when i got in the double a triple a yellow reds not like actual double a little league yeah they know yeah when you're one time when i was a kid i was at a garage sale and somebody was selling a little ice cream uh like a like one of those helmets that you would get ice

cream in, like those little souvenir helmets. And it was... Helmet ice cream stuff? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And I forget what team it was, but I decided that I was also going to love that team from that point on. But as long as you've got the one that you stick with, I think all the way, you'll get a lot of joy out of this sport so when did you make the final decision was there some moment or some season that uh made up your minds for good 13 yeah same in 2013 we watched like every game well actually i so if you guys know the app at bat, the whole 2013 season, I watched every day, every single game recap every day. Did you do it like in the morning?

Like would you wake up and that would be what you did before school? Yeah, basically. Did you do that knowing how the game was going to end or did you have to sort of keep the result a secret so that it would be exciting? I try to keep my eyes barely open. I don't want to see the score. I just want to see the video so I can click on it and then I watch it. I don't like knowing the score until the end. Who is your least favorite Red Sox player ever?

In history? Sure. Or in your history. J.K. Ellsbury. he went to the Yankees. Uh-huh. Both of you? Is that both of your answer? I don't know exactly.

Basically, anybody he wanted to decide to go to the Yankees after. I mean, he used to be my favorite, so it was kind of like heartbroken when he went to the Yankees. Mm. Do you feel, wow, so that's a real thing that that's a real, that's a real thing that happens when kids find out that their favorite player is going to a rival. Like it really does break their heart. Yeah. I wouldn't say I was like completely broken up, but I was, I've always booed him after that. Do you think that players shouldn't do that because they know that it's breaking a child's heart? I mean, at least at their point,

they're making millions and millions of dollars. And I don't think, you know, me being unhappy for like a day is worth millions and millions and millions of dollars. That's a good perspective, because a lot of columnists who write angry articles when someone leaves their city wouldn't actually understand that. I don't think so. What drew you to baseball? Because there's so much talk about baseball not appealing to kids and baseball's fan base being old and getting older. And how is it going to appeal to a younger generation?

So what was it for you guys? That's not really us. We watch a lot of baseball. Yeah. Why? Why do you think? What drew you to it? Just playing it, I guess.

I mean, I watch a lot of other sports too, like football. How would you guys, what would the scouting report be for each of you guys as players? I'm really, I'm really, I'm a really good pitcher, but not that very, not a very good hitter. What's your repertoire? Do you throw, do you have multiple pitches or you just throw the heat? Multiple pitches. Oh yeah. What do you throw? I throw a knuckleball. I throw a change up and a fastball and like a kind of like a knuckle curve. Oh, wow. I guess I'm a power

hitter, but not as much for consistency. Like if I get my bat on the ball it's gonna go but otherwise not really and you know I pitch too but I'm a really bad fielder. Are managers always telling you that you shouldn't strike out as much and you say strikeout's not actually that damaging and it comes with positive benefits on the offensive side? Uh not so much but you know my coach is he's a little biased though because you know when my pitches are working he'll be like he won't question them but when they're not working he'll be like never throw it again and he wasn't the best of coaches because he always he like even if my arm was hurting i'd be scared to tell him because he'd be like, so? And then, you know. Wow. This guy sounds like a nightmare.

Yeah, get Keith Law in this case. So actually last year we both played for AAU Minute Men teams. It's an AAU team around here. And actually, so we took a trip to Long Island to play a few games there. And Armand hit his first dinger there. And then we came back here, and then finishing off the Little League season, he had two more. You just referred to his as our first dinger.

You guys are, like, are you really close? Do you share dingers? I'm pretty sure I said his first dinger. No, yeah, we're not that close. Just today, he tried to lock me out of my room, and we had to spend like 20 minutes getting it open because it was locked from the inside. Yeah.

And how did you guys get into statistics? You wound up at Saber Seminar, which is, you know, for the hardcore nerds. So how did you guys get there? I mean, I guess we just liked baseball, and then my dad found Saber Seminar, and then we just kept going. How many years have you been going? It's three now, right?

Three. No, four. You went four. I've been going three. He wasn't at the first one that I went to. And you've written. You've done some of your own research, and you've written some of your own reports, right? Yeah.

That is correct. And will you guys miss Ortiz next year? Have you developed an attachment to him? I think, yeah, he's a great player. And I think they say that he's put up the best final year of anybody over 40 has ever done. Yeah, I found the same thing. And, you know, at least according to the spreadsheet I made,

he's getting underpaid 18 million dollars so i'm probably gonna miss that too yeah well you did some research about salaries and payroll on the red sox right what did you find out i can share mine if you want me to sure uh so basically i basically did overpaid and underpaid one of the most underpaid players. He's actually on the Red Sox and has been doing outstanding. His Mookie bets. His salary is $600,000. Now, I just updated this today. So, of course, you guys know it's the end of the season.

So, his batting average was 318. His OBP was 363. His slugging was 534. His OPS is 897. His ISO is 216. And his war is 9.60. And then I think one of the most, and actually his value, basically what we did was took the war.

Multiplied it by 7.5 million for extra win. Yeah, so for Matt Kemp, his salary is $21.5 million. His value is $0. Because his war was a zero. Should I go through all the stats again? No. Yeah, we agree with you, Matt Kemp. Not a great deal.

Would you... I'm just curious. Mookie Betts, like you said, he's a great player who would be worth, you know, $40 or $50 or more million dollars. And Matt Kemp is not a great player, and yet he's getting paid. You know, he's getting all of Mookie's money. Do you think that baseball... Like, would you like it more if they were paid after the fact? Like, if they were paid for what they did?

Does it bother you that there are guys who get paid way, way more than they're worth and that there are other guys who get paid way, way less than they're worth? Or is it fine that that's just how it works out and everybody agrees to it? I think a good idea, like you just said, was paying them after the season and see whatever they did because injuries out for a season, they still get paid that much. And it doesn't really concern me about the salary because some players, I mean, that's the GM's fault

or whoever makes the salary contract. I mean, it's definitely, I mean, my brother thinks that it'd be a better idea, like you just heard. But actually, I'm going to be a bit of a devil's advocate here. And I don't think that's actually true, though. Because if you just, well, for one, you know, you really think players would want to play as much if, you know, they didn't play as well? They'd probably make it to that per extra win in war. They'd probably want to get paid more because they're taking the risk that they're going to lose a ton of money because they're going to have a bad season. So altogether, it might end up being worse for the teams because they could end up paying more.

Yeah, that's a really good point. If you didn't know for sure that you were going to get paid, then you might expect to get paid a lot more when you actually delivered. Like if you actually got to say, that's sharp. That's a sharp idea. You said it better than I did. I don't know why I started trying to repeat it worse because you said it right. You got to watch Mookie Betts play every day this year. Mookie Betts is my favorite player to watch,

but I don't get to watch him play as often as you guys do. What is it like to watch him play? Can you just sort of describe the feeling that you feel when Mookie Betts is out on a baseball field? Well, I mean, we've actually haven't, we've been to a lot of baseball games, but this year we haven't been to many. And we moved into a new house and we haven't been to many and um we like moved

into a new house and we don't have um we don't have nesson so we don't watch actually all that much so you're saying i should tell you what it's like to watch mookie bets play because you've been deprived i mean we've watched so we have at bat and um but you can't of course you can't watch your team so we're trying to trick the tv that we live somewhere else so we can watch, but it's only worked a few times. I'll admit it, I don't watch baseball that much. I do find it kind of boring to watch. Us too!

Yeah, a couple years ago I didn't think that, but this, definitely. So, you know, I guess I like analyzing it more than I do actually watching the data kind of get made in the first place. I love baseball. Like I love baseball more than anything in the world. But there's 162 games and they're three hours long. And it just seems like too much of my life to commit to watching. And so I try to find, you know, I think I've found ways to make it part of my life, but without actually, you know, sitting down and watching every game like I used to. So what is it about baseball that you think could be, I don't know, maybe improved so that you would want to watch it or at least be more inclined to watch it?

Because you are, I mean, you're the prime market. You're a guy who loves baseball and they can't even get you to watch. That seems like an obstacle. Yeah, I know most of my friends, they don't watch baseball. You know, unless it's like the World series or something where people will watch it but i guess it's really hard though to make these games more interesting because you know if you think about it nobody's getting tackled nobody's getting you know dunked on or anything i mean definitely making it so that there's more so that there's a limited time in between pitches that might help

speed up the game a little but i don't think it really will fix the underlying problem that watching baseball isn't as dramatic as any of the these other sports where you see people jumping like seven feet and like michael jordan and of course it's a bit of an exaggeration but you know i think um that i think it's a good idea about um the pitch clock between pictures and stuff that's kind of my dad's idea but um also i also think that maybe people can make it more dramatic by diving and sliding a lot more because that's what we like to watch yeah yeah and tackling i think i heard you say you want there to be tackling okay oh yeah i don't want that i don't want that.

I don't want our baseball players to end up getting chronic brain disorder. But because, you know, actually a couple years back at Saber Seminar, there was actually this entire section on CTE, and now I'm, like, really, really cautious to not get hit in the face with something. So, you know, I definitely wouldn't want that to happen to our baseball players. Like, there was this one player that, like, many, many times he had to, he used to dive so much that he had to be, like, carried off. I think it was, like, the most in history off the field.

I also think that hurdles every once in a while would also be cool to watch. Hurdles? Yeah. Hurdles, I agree. Hurdling, like, the first baseman when you're trying to get over him but he's in your oh okay all right not like hurdles in the baseline we talked about a week ago about having hurdles in the baseline that would be really weird because then you'd have to be like it like david ortiz would never get to first base do you think you would watch

more baseball if there were say half as many games and do you think you would watch more baseball if there were, say, half as many games? And do you think you would watch more baseball if it was, say, seven innings long, like Buster Olney suggested? Or does that stuff not really matter to you? I think both of those would make me watch more. I think it's like football, where since the games are like once a week, people aren't just like, oh my god, there are so many games. They're just like, oh, there's Sunday night football, Monday night football or whatever it is. I don't watch football, but I would probably make more people watch it. Definitely. I think, and shortening the games would help too. So I have, I have one more question. I'm a little hesitant to ask this question. I don't,

I'm worried that this is, that might be doing a bad thing right now, but I'm just curious. You guys, what years were you born? You were born in like 2000 and like 12 and 2014 or something like that? No, I mean, I'm sorry. I'm in 2002 and 2004. No, no. I was of the deep voice guy here, Armand. I was born in 2003. Sean was born in 2006. Yeah, I was born in 2006. All right, so do you know that David Ortiz tested positive for steroids once? Yeah. Yeah, I do.

Okay, good. All right, good. I'm glad that I'm not revealing that to you, but I'm curious to know about your generation and as a Red Sox fan and as somebody who's seen David Ortiz's like great, amazing career and particularly the great, amazing latter half of it. Do you have any feelings about that test that happened 13 years ago? Well, I'm definitely not particularly happy that this happened because it kind of ruins a bit of david ortiz and then you know actually when i was talking with the yankees fan they're the ones that told me this it was my babysitter years ago uh and he was like and i was like well we have david ortiz i think it was what i said something like that and he's like yeah but he tested positive and i'm like oh oh yeah he told us a story about he's like

he so someone a reporter asked David Ortiz one year. He says, what do you think? What should happen to people who take steroids? And David Ortiz answers like they should be kicked out of the game. And the next year he used steroids. But you still love him. Yeah. Why do you why do you still love him? Because he's he stopped taking steroids and he's still really good. Actually, that's a little misinformed, I think,

because there are some suspicions that he's still taking steroids, but I was reading there's this one person that thinks, I think he's like a big shot. He thinks that the tests then weren't, you know, as good, so they wouldn't really be able to prove that he did anything because i think they only took one yeah rob the commissioner rob manfred uh just said yesterday that he does i don't know what he said he said it not necessarily reliable is what he said yeah all right so my last question do you guys have any playoff predictions,

any World Series picks you want to share with the world? I think it's possible the Cubs might make it to the World Series. Yeah? You think so? Possible. Possible, though. Plausible. Plausible, okay. I mean, the old, actually, I'm not sure how old it is, but Rookie of the Year came out a while ago.

We watched it. It's about this kid that gets his arm broken, and then his arm's like an elastic band. Tell me more. And he was on the Cubs. So I kind of want a situation like that, except without somebody having to break their arm for it. I think my favorite thing about you two is Is that you did not take the bait.

And give us some sort of hot take. You went with the least controversial prediction possible. The Cubs might plausibly make the World Series. That's good stuff. Yeah. All right guys. Arman and Ishan. Good talking to you.

Thank you for coming on. Nice talking to you. Thanks for having us. All right. That will do it for today You can support the podcast on Patreon By going to patreon.com slash effectively wild Five listeners who have done so already

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