Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 975: And Here’s the Pitch from Trout

Episode Date: November 12, 2016

Ben and Sam review listener responses to their skepticism about Cubs-celebration attendance figures, then answer emails about the offseason outlook, changes in closer usage, Times on Base, Edwin Jackson, identical Andrew Millers, Mike Trout and more.

Well, I got five on the five and I've been taking time doing it all alone Oh, oh, if we keep it alive I'll ignore all those times I keep running home Oh, hey Hello and welcome to episode 975 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by our Patreon supporters and the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined as always by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello.

Hello. Doing some week-ending emails, ending on a multiple of five, just how I like it. Do you have anything to say before we get to questions? Well, I would like to round up the Cubs emails, the Cubs 5 million emails. I was going to ask you if you wanted to, because we got a lot of responses. Yeah. And some really good ones, some really helpful ones. So I'll try to go through them quickly if I can. But Bob was the first out of the gates with extremely crucial information. In case people don't know what we're talking about, a few days ago, we sort of, we put the Cubs 5 million person estimate.

Well, it wasn't their estimate, but the estimate that 5 million people had gone to their World Series parade and rally under the microscope and determined, really based on nothing more than the layout of the article announcing it, that it was nonsense. that it was nonsense. And so Bob says the Chicago Police Department made the five million person crowd estimate, all caps, before the parade started. This is very significant because of course that is true. Usually these crowd estimates are actually made, frequently they're made before the event

and they're made specifically so that, you know, city services and other services can be prepared for it. And so they obviously have an incentive to estimate high. Maybe I'll even get slightly more conspiratorial, but the staffing of this parade for the police might have, in fact, even been based on the estimate of how many people were there. And so that, you know, means more overtime hours for them. But even that's a, I have no idea if that's true. That's a bridge too far. But the fact that they're estimating beforehand, I think puts this in perspective. Bob goes on, New York Police Department quoted a crowd estimate of 2.5 million for the 96th Yankees parade. That was obviously very high. Going by the length of that parade route, if you assumed people stood

with just two feet of space, which would be extremely uncomfortable, you would need people lining up 134 people deep on each side of the street, which won't work. And if you just think it's people at the festivities at the end, then you are expecting that a population greater than the entire city of Chicago could fit into one section of one public park in Chicago. I really hope they had enough places for those people to use the bathroom. So that's good. That's a start. We're going to keep going. David says, I can't imagine there were even 5 million people in Chicago that day. The parade route was certainly packed. I was along Columbus Drive near Balbo, just north of the Hutchison Park where the rally was, and I couldn't get closer than about 50 feet from the street after getting there an hour

and a half in advance. But once you got about two blocks away from the parade route, sidewalks were clear, you could walk quickly without having to dodge people, traffic seemed normal for a workday in the loop, the L trains down from the north side and back up were busy but not as jammed as some ordinary rush hour trains I've been on. When they announced the five million number, parentheses, before the event, he says, I was expecting to wait for five or so trains to go by without being able to get on one and then have to elbow through crowds for six blocks to get the parade route.

But the real slowdowns only came once people got to the bottlenecks that organizers had set up to check bags. Matt Trueblood, he has three paragraphs. I won't read all of them but he agrees no chance it was five million he says it he does believe it was the biggest parade in sports history if he had to guess the number he would guess three million um and he goes through the math of the parade uh as well as the parade uh the the space of the rally itself. And it's fairly convincing. After reading Matt, I'd go, I would probably guess something like 1.8 million after reading Matt. And if somebody with a drone counted every person and told me it was like 2.3 million, I would not call him a liar.

So that seems very reasonable to me. So that seems very reasonable to me. And lastly, from Andrew, not quite $5 million, but $1.1 million took the L for the Cubs parade. Still missing $3.9 million somewhere. That is genuine data, Ben. That is a computer-counted people and found $1.1 million, which sets a very nice floor for us. And I don't know what percentage would have taken the L, but to me, half seems about right, which gets us back to around two. Yeah. I'm not totally sure what that means. I mean, take the L to a specific station. Everyone was, that's all the people who were riding the L.

I don't know exactly what that means, but I assume that, I mean, I don't know what percentage of people going to it would have taken the L, but I could, I mean, if it's only, that's just over a third of the people Matt is saying were there. So I would guess that, I don't know. I mean, lots of people probably walked, lots of people probably drove. Okay. This is significant too. I just dug into the L story, because I'm looking to see if it is like that exited a certain range of stations or something like that. But this is a crucial paragraph. People took more than 1.1 million rides on CTA trains and subways for the Cubs parade, breaking a record. Those 1.1 million rides mean November 4th was the busiest day the CTA has had on its rails. It said

the next closest day, October 28th, when more than 900,000 people use the rails for game three of the World Series. So that means we're really like almost indistinguishable from game three of the World Series. And how many extra people came into the city for that? A lot, I trust, and a lot traveled and maybe went across the city and so on. But I don't believe that the seventh largest gathering of humans in history was in Chicago for game three of the World Series. So that now really lowers my estimate a bit. I still don't believe anything beats Rod Stewart, 94. You don't even think the rally in India beats it? I just can't imagine what could possibly be a bigger draw than Rod Stewart in 94.

In Rio. Were you at that show? Did you go to that show? You probably went. No, I was a little young. So you went to Old Chela. If I replaced any of the six acts on that bill with Rod Stewart, would you have been more, less, or equally excited about going?

If you replaced Dylan, I've seen Dylan before, and he's not very good live. So if you had replaced Dylan, it would have been a wash, maybe even an improvement because I haven't actually seen Rod Stewart. Anyone else would have been worse. Okay. So you would rather see, would you have gone though if instead of McCartney it had been Rod Stewart? Would you have still gone? Probably not.

Yeah, okay. That's what I wanted to get to. All right. Thanks. Okay. All right. So that is all we have to say on the Cubs attendance question. What if it had been the faces?

What if instead of Rod Stewart, it had been a faces reunion? That would have been cool. Ron Wood was there. Okay. Yeah. All right. Kyle says, do you think this offseason will be more exciting because of the lower rated free agent class?

Should we expect to see more trades compared to normal years? Do you think the free agent class affects how teams operate in other ways besides signings? So we've talked in the past about how supply and demand, we don't really think that having fewer free agents available means that there's more scarcity on the market. Because when there are fewer free agents available, that means that fewer teams are losing players to free agency. And so it should kind of work out the same either way. But it's possible that if teams can't get what they need on the free agent market, I mean, you could say maybe they have what they need already, but a lot of teams don't and would be looking to upgrade at certain positions. And if there's nothing available at those positions in the free agent market, then you'd think they would be more likely to look at other types of transactions. I was talking a few days ago on a different topic.

I was trying to figure out which teams were in full punt mode right now that if they signed any player, you would be surprised this winter. And over the past six years, there have pretty much always been at least one team and really a few who have been aggressively doing that. And as of a week ago, I couldn't really identify a team like that. I feel like all the teams that have been in that cycle, there were a bunch of teams that were in that cycle last year and maybe will continue to be but aren't necessarily that you could see almost any team deciding like you know you could i think grant maybe grant i think grant wrote today about how the phillies could be you know a big could they could emerge this obviously they could decide

that now is the time uh the Braves signed Bartolo Colon today. For all we know, the Braves are going to sign six guys. So that would be a second. If there is an impact on the trade market because of the weak free agent market, it might be somewhat suppressed by the fact that there's not any obvious sellers. But I think that more likely there will be some sellers. There's great incentive to be a seller. We've sort of started to hear about the Tigers and the White Sox,

both perhaps breaking everything down. And not only, those are two good teams to be sellers because not only might they decide to go bad for, you know, but it's the first time that they've, like, they're not at the, this is not like the Cubs were in 2013 or the Astros in 2013 where the cupboard was already bare. There's a lot of big names on both of those two teams. So I would guess that this will be a perfectly exciting offseason. I would guess it'll be almost as exciting as any other for those reasons.

I also believe that I was disproven with a almost identical thesis statement at the trade deadline. Well, all right. I mean, yeah, I would assume that we will see more trades than usual. I don't know whether it would lead to more players signing extensions. Maybe in part we're in this situation because teams have signed players to extensions. But I don't know. I mean, I guess if you have money to spend and there are no free agents to spend it on, you might be more willing to spend it to lock up the guys you do have. So, yeah, sure. I would think so.

Uh-huh. All right. Cubs question from Mike. Going off your recent discussion of the last move the Cubs made that was a mistake, I think Edwin Jackson is a good example. But then consider this. Apparently Theo Epstein at the Cubs victory rally said, let's be honest, for a couple of years there we forgot the not in try not to suck.

Which, did he actually say that? I guess he said that. Somebody has quoted him. It's a guy emailing a podcast email address, but somebody. And he then uses that quote to say, do you think it's possible the Cubs knew what they were getting with Edwin Jackson and signed him with that in mind? So I guess the theory here is that they knew he wasn't going to be very good,

but they needed to spend some amount of money to appease the Players Association, but they didn't want to win because they wanted to get the high draft picks, so they signed Edwin Jackson. This is a real quote. For a while there, we forgot the not in Try Not to Suck. Forgot. Do you think that forgot is like, do you think he's ascribing intention to that? I don't.

Because it kind of reads like that potentially. It does. I, I, it's the email clearly reads it that way. And I first read it as somewhat conspiratorially. Yeah. But I don't think that,

I think it's perhaps slightly inexact language, but it also works on the, I think, does it also, can you, can you read it literally and have it mean that it was like by accident? Yeah, I think. We forgot.

We forgot. It can be a self-deprecating. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I don't think he is admitting anything there. No. I think that, I think it's a Kinsey gap. I think it is exactly what he means.

Yeah. Like in his heart. Yeah. Right. So would a team do this? I mean, there has been a team from time to time that will just sort of sign generic guy. And it seems like it's to keep the players association off its back. Like what was it?

The team, the Marlins maybe at some point because the players association actually complained about the Marlins. So they signed someone. So I could see a team making a move for that purpose. But would the team make that move thinking that we can spend money on this guy and he won't be good? I mean, I guess you wouldn't want him to be that great because you do want to be bad at baseball, right? But yeah, I think there's probably a middle ground there where you can sign a guy you expect to be decent, fine, you know, contribute something, but not push you into the upper echelons or anything, but still expect him to be somewhat worth the contract. Yeah, I think that if you're the Cubs, you didn't – there was definitely an incentive to hope that the chips would land with you in the low 60s instead of the low 70s. There's, you know, that's six draft picks. That's a few million dollars in bonuses money.

And so probably if it happened that you won 73 games, you could probably on an intellectual level appreciate that those extra 10 wins sort of hurt you. But Edwin Jackson is a, you know, there's been good and bad outcomes for Edwin Jackson are one or two wins. And I don't think that anybody is thinking the difference between 63 and 64 wins is what's going to determine the 2016 World Series. So it would be extremely clever to start mapping out Edwin Jackson's war totals and how they're going to leave you picking in the 2015 draft. But more to the point, Jackson, A, if anybody you sign immediately becomes trade piece. And if you're the Cubs or you're a team like that that's rebuilding,

it's much more likely that you're going to do the – And if you're the Cubs or you're a team like that that's rebuilding, it's much more likely that you're going to do the... Wasn't it like they signed Scott Feldman and somebody else that offseason? Help me with the details here. Oh, right. And they traded them. Right. They traded them at the deadline. And so they were like collecting assets at the beginning of the year from the free agency.

And then they traded Feldman for Jake Arrieta. And that looked like a pretty good move in retrospect. And so when you sign, you know, when you sign a guy like Edwin Jackson, even if it's just to keep up appearances, even if it's just to field a, you know, a roster that you can introduce at FanFest without losing everybody, you're also still hoping that they do well, because if they do well, that makes them more valuable when you try to flip them at the trade deadline. The other thing is that Jackson was signed for five years. And as I recall, the thinking was like, my memory might be off here. But as I recall, the thinking was, oh, so that's interesting.

So maybe they think that in three years, they're going to be good. And rather than have to go out and find five starters on the market, they're sort of slowly locking them in when they can find guys at good prices. I think I vaguely recall thinking the Edwin Jackson move was good for where they were going and what they were doing. Obviously, it turned out horrible, but Jackson was at the time, again, my memory might be off on all this, but as I recall, Jackson was a very, you know, he was a steady, reliable number three starter who signed for a long deal, but not a very expensive deal, and seemed at the time like a guy who could quite possibly be good enough to start the third or fourth game of your postseason series three years down the line. He didn't seem like he was on the verge of collapse or anything like that. He was a durable

major league starter. And it's hard to sign 18 players in one off season when you're ready to, you know, to take that next step forward. You kind of have to, you might have to kind of do it a couple years in advance. You have to start thinking about how to collect those guys. And as it turned out, everything went incredibly smoothly for the Cubs, way more smoothly than you could have imagined once they really got to being good. But there was a sort of a logic to the Edwin Jackson move But the emailers including this one Who pointed out that that is a move that the Cubs Regret

Are accurate Alright question from Angus This is generally This is genuinely perplexing to me Why isn't times on base a more Prominent statistic considering its Integral role as the numerator in calculating On base percentage I'm surprised it isn't

On every stat line, right next to total Bases and extra base hits. If OBP has taken precedence Over batting average, Why hasn't times on base Overtaken hits in importance? Why do we continue to be impressed by 200 Hit seasons, while 300 times

On base seasons barely get mentioned? And don't you think 300-300 seasons would be noteworthy accomplishments? Seems like they would be a nifty reflection of a player's combination of power and on-base ability. Mike Trout, unsurprisingly, was the only member of this club this year with 302 total bases and exactly 300 times on base. I've got an answer. I want to hear your answer first. I don't really have one other than you have to do math to get times on base. Well, that would... It's not just one. I mean... That's why you would have it. That's why you would have it as a column. Yeah, right. So I don't know. I

mean, it does sort of blend different things and you might only want to know one of those things but people still ascribe different importance to hits and walks and other ways to get on base but obp is is taken much more seriously now he's right so you would think that a corollary would be that times on base would be too there's no there's no history for it, I guess is one, one reason like a 200 hit season means something because it's always meant something. Here's my, here's why I believe. I think that knowing how many hits a guy has is important because you might, you might want to do the math. You might want to do the math in your head for batting average. And in order to do that, you need to know how many hits they have. And so people who want to calculate batting averages or who wanna have more information about batting averages,

appreciate that hits are there so that they can do that quick math for themselves. Like when I was a kid, I would have been grateful for hits totals. You can't though, so for people who like batting average, it's useful. For people who like on base percentage though, times useful. For people who like on-base percentage, though, times on-base is not actually useful because on-base percentage is times on-base divided by plate appearances minus sacrifice bunts.

And it's that last little thing where sacrifice bunts don't count as plate appearances in on-base percentage, but they do count in plate appearances as a whole. That makes it already too difficult to calculate on-base percentage. It's not really something that you can do in any sort of 11-column stat sheet. You need the 16-column stat sheet in order to do it. And so for that reason, the people who would care about on base percentage more don't actually need to know or care to know times on base. And the people who care about batting average more don't want to see times on base. They want to see hits because that's what's valuable to them. Yeah., makes sense Okay, we got two Very similar questions

One from Jacob, a Patreon supporter One from Jesse So Jacob says Was 2016 the last time we saw this Discussion got me thinking about Save totals, if we are going to see A more sabermetric inspired use of bullpens That would probably see individual

Save totals go down as those top relievers Would be used in a more flexible way than a rigid ninth inning roll. Juris Familia had a 50 save season this year, and both 50 save seasons and 40 save seasons are still happening at about the same rate they have for the past couple of decades. How long do you think it will be until the 50 save season becomes a thing of the past? Will that happen in our lifetimes? And Jesse actually did a play index and looked for seasons since 2003. He's found every season since 2003 has featured at least 11 relievers who finished the season with 35-plus saves. And so he wants to know whether this will continue will we continue to have 10 plus relievers finish with 35 plus saves when will that streak end so basically the same question

if we fast forward into the future and we're talking about the the fallout or the ripples from how terry francona used andrew miller uh year. What is the conversation going to be like, do you think? Like before we get to the 50 saves and the 40 saves, just do you think we're going to be talking about this thing that took over baseball, this thing that three or four teams experimented with, this thing that even the Indians abandoned and like it's like totally unthought of in 2017, this thing that every manager does in the postseason, but nobody does in the regular season,

or maybe some fifth option that I haven't thought of. I think it will be everyone does it in the postseason, and there's some slight movement toward it in the regular season. When you did your article this past season trying to find some sign that the closer role was being eroded or changing in some way or evolving, and you basically couldn't find anything, I think if you were to repeat that next season, the season after, season after that, I bet you would find something. I don't know how dramatic it would be, but you would find something. But you would find something So I don't think it will turn out to be You know the bright line that everyone

Points to like they point to Dennis Eckersley in 1988 Totally changing how closers were used After that I don't think Miller Will be the guy everyone points to And says he undid everything Eckersley did but I think he could Start the process I think there

Will be a tangible effect I mostly agree with that I think that the big change that might spread from the Andrew Miller usage is that your eighth inning guys will be used like Andrew Miller. I don't think that your ninth inning guys are going to be used like Andrew Miller. And I still think that for the most part, for the foreseeable future, teams are still going to put their best, the one they perceive as their best pitcher in the ninth. So I don't think save totals will be affected. I mean, I wrote that thing about Miller and Cody Allen, but the thing that made Andrew Miller, that freed Frank Kona up to use Andrew Miller the way he did is that he had a closer who he used as a closer. And he didn't

really use Cody Allen all that unusually, a bit more in the postseason, but in the regular season, Cody Allen was a straight ahead closer. And I think that managers almost all, for reasons both strategic and psychological and public relations wise, really continue to and will continue to value the ninth inning role that they use. And so I would expect to see a lot more instances of, you know, like if Miller, like we talked about, if Miller were to get traded or Cody Allen were to get traded, I think the one who remains would still be the ninth inning guy and that you'd see Brian Shaw coming into the occasional fifth or sixth inning. And I would think maybe some more of that would happen.

I think it might be telling how the offseason plays out this year, particularly with Kenley Jansen and Aroldis Chapman, since both of those guys are going to get bigger contracts than any reliever has ever gotten. It will be fascinating, I think, to see whether their usage plays any role in where they go or how much they sign for, whether it even comes up when we're reading rumors about they went to see this team and that team. Will any team even broach the subject of, we want to use you like Andrew Miller, we want to use you like you were used in the playoffs

last year? And will they decide where to go based on who bugs them about that and who doesn't? I don't know. It would be pretty interesting. It could be kind of the next domino if that is actually a factor in their negotiations this winter. Hey, Ben. Yeah. If you were signing one of these guys, one of these three guys, would you you and you planned to try to use this guy as andrew miller uh was used would you ask in advance would how would you handle it in the negotiations

or would you just act like everything's normal and then game two of the season so you know have the manager call down and go chappy you're up in the seventh inning. Yeah. And just be like, well, what? Last time you pitched, you were in the seventh, right? So I mean, that's just what you do now. Yeah. I guess another way of asking is given, having worked with baseball players, do you believe that the old thing about better to ask forgiveness than permission?

Yeah. Because everybody is i mean nobody nobody dude nobody says yes to anything if you ask them if they have any power it's it immediately becomes bargaining it immediately sounds they start seeing it as a slippery slope and and the ones who do say it like when we ask people if they would like i remember asking a guy if he was interested he had been uh he was on our spreadsheet as a hitter and a pitcher and we were like you know you it'd be great to use you as a two-way beast you know have you do that have you play first base and then pitch and you could you know we could even do the swap where you come in for a batter and he's like yeah i'd do that i'd sure

and it was like he just wanted me to sign him so he was he was giving me a concession now And it was like, he just wanted me to sign him. So he was, he was giving me a concession now because he either, it was not a, he was giving me this concession to get something else out of me in exchange. And, or he knew that when the time came, that would be the time he would fight the battle and go, this sucks guys. I don't like it. And so, so if you ask Chappie this, I only call him Chappie now. If you ask him this, he will either, there's three options. One is he's really into it and he tells you he's really into it. Two, but he would have been really into it anyway. So you don't even need to know that now. He would have been into it. Two is that he's not into it, but just like, I might get some details wrong, but didn't he tell them he was going to apologize for the domestic violence thing?

And then when he got traded and a reporter asked him, he's like, I don't remember saying that. Yeah, there was something where he had a phone call with Theo and maybe Ricketts or something. And then they asked him right after what had been said on that call. And he said something like he had just woken up and he couldn't remember or something. And then I think later on he, you know, clarified or it came to his mind all of a sudden or something like that. But yeah. All right. So anyway, the point is that he can tell you whatever you want to hear to get his $100 million contract.

But then, of course, he still has all the power that he would have had otherwise in April, and he can make your life miserable if you try it. And three is that he follows orders. He follows marching orders. He does what his boss asks him to. But if you ask him, he's going to make it seem difficult just so that you don't walk all over him. Yeah. I wonder who has more leverage if you just, if you try that in spring training and you've, you've just signed the guy to a five-year deal. I guess he has all the leverage at that point. I think he has all the leverage. I think he has. Yeah. I mean, there's some like, you know, he doesn't want to, he doesn't want to be at odds with his employer for the next five years. I mean, you know, he just got a big contract.

Maybe he wants to make people happy and doesn't want to be fighting the whole time he's in town. But yeah, I think most of the leverage is his. So I guess if I really felt like I needed him and only him and I had to have him, I probably wouldn't even bring it up before signing him. And then I would just hope for the best. I'd probably just act like it was understood that he was going to do this. And then if he balked, I would try to talk him into doing it. And I don't know, hope that that worked.

But if you have, you know, Melanson available and Jansen available and Chapman available and you can pick one, I mean, other teams are obviously courting them also, but if you have your pick of the three and you think one might actually be really into this and the others might not be, then maybe there is some advantage to trying to figure out which is which beforehand. to figure out which is which beforehand. There might be some advantage. If you were confident that one of the three was gonna be into it, and that you were gonna be able to tell which one of the three was genuinely into it by the answer, and if you were confident

that you could actually sign the one of the three, that once you've identified him that you can get him, then I think you ask each one, and then you just gauge how sincerely they seemed to be excited about it. If one of them comes up to you and goes, that is what I've always wanted to do. This is why I want to be a, you know, a cub. Then maybe that convinces you. If none of those things are true though, then you just risk it seeming like, so say you ask all of them and one guy goes, yeah, I'd be into that. And another

guy goes, yeah, I'd be into that. And the third guy goes, absolutely not. And the first and second guys get signed by the Red Sox and the Yankees. And now you've got the absolutely not guy. Now you may have boxed yourself in where it seemed like you asked for consent when you don't need consent. That's like the premise of not even bringing it up is that you're their boss. You don't need consent. And maybe it won't work. Maybe he'll pull a power play, but he's less likely to do that if he hasn't previously told you, no way, no how I'm not coming here if you ask me to do it. Right. A lot of people are willing to do a lot of things that they would not have thought they'd be willing to do. And vice versa. It's really hard to

know what you're going to be willing to do until it happens. This is why I would always go into the trade deadline or the off season and I'd be like, I am going to write, like I know Josh Hamilton is going to sign this off season. I know he's going to be the biggest move. I'm going to write like i know josh hamilton is going to sign this offseason i know he's going to be the biggest move i'm going to start writing that transaction analysis right now and i had nothing to say and then the second the signing happens all of a sudden i know like i know i know how i feel and you can ask these guys how they're gonna feel about it but I don't even think they know about it, how they're going to feel about it yet. Yeah. All right.

Play index? All right. Play index. So I read a blog post yesterday from like July that didn't age very well because of how baseball works. So this was a blog post that I stumbled upon because it was like linked in some other article, and it was about how there used to be a lot of guys who would hit 30 home runs, but with below 1.5 war, I think. And those guys had become extinct.

And in 2014 and 2015, there were, I think, none after an average of a few a year before that. And this year, Mark Trumbo might get there, but might not. Otherwise, it looked like there'd be none. And then there was just this flurry of guys hitting home runs and being bad at baseball, and I think there ended up being like seven who did it last year. Which, anyway, that's not really the point. It's just bad. Baseball does to all of us when we write things.

But this got me thinking about the sub replacement player in general and whether baseball is any better now at avoiding giving lots of plate appearances to sub replacement players so um i looked at how many players in every season were at zero war or lower and at 400 plate appearances or more. So treated as a regular basically the entire season, despite being theoretically at least easily replaceable by any AAA hitter. And so I just checked to see, I just did this to see if there would be any sort of trend. And in fact, last year, Ben, I stumbled upon something. 2016, the lowest percentage of players in history that were sub-replacement regulars. The lowest in history.

This is not a gradual trend downward, in fact. There were 10 in 2016. There were 24 in 2015. There were 23 in 2014. There were 19 the year before that. There were 17 the year before that. So in a very short way, it was going upward. But basically for the last decade before last year, there was an average of 22 per year. Last year, there were only 10. And if you look at this as a percentage of all players who reached 400 plate appearances, only 4.9% were below replacement level last year, which is the lowest, sorry, the second lowest in history. 1985 was the lowest in history, but then comes 2016. And no other year in the top 10 is from post-2000 even. Yeah, it is interesting, isn't it?

Yeah. I would have expected it to be low, but I also would have expected to see a trend toward lowness. Right. Same here. And so there's three things that would affect what percentage of players are below replacement level. One is how good teams are at having actual replacement level or better replacements on hand. If you have a guy who's at negative 0.2 war,

but you've got the world's worst double and triple A rosters because you never bothered to sign any depth in the offseason, well, you're actually acting rationally while still adding to this tally. So that is bad planning, rational decision. Two is that you are making irrational decisions, that you do have a better player available, but you continue to play the worst guy out there. And three is that it's all about sort of syncing your own personal player evaluation with war, with the model of war that I'm using. So perhaps the more teams, you know, teams all have their own model.

I would guess that most models are pretty close to baseball references, at least in the broadness of it. I mean, there'd be certain ways that they would differ and you'd have different inputs, but in a broad way, I would think that they would correlate pretty highly just as the three public war models, which are all somewhat different, also correlate very highly to each other. And so it might just be that more and more teams, you know, all teams maybe use a war model and maybe use a war model, actually listen to it and actually follow it instead of just having it. So those are the three factors that would lead to teams getting, you know, quote unquote, better at not having regulars who are sub replacement level.

But like you say, it's odd that there wouldn't be any trend line before a record best season, if that record best season were anything but a fluke, which leads to option four, total fluke, next year goes back up to the low 20s. And this was just a completely accidental blip. So of those four, do you want to rank those four explanations? Run through them again. All right. We've got the war model, the rise of the war model is one we've got the uh better at having depth having better at having depth on hand is two uh better at actually assessing your players in general like aside from the war model conflation is three and stone cold Fluke is four. All right. I'll say better depth, one. Better evaluation, then randomness, then war model.

Okay. I will go randomness, one. And therefore, all the others are just at the margins. But if you told me that it was not random at all and that this was real, I would rank the other three thusly. not random at all and that this was real, I would rank the other three thusly. I would say war model emergence, number one, depth, number two, and overall player evaluation improvements, three. All right. One last thing. I am going to, I don't know, I'm going to just put you through hell right now. 10 players got 400 plate appearances sub replacement by baseball reference war this year how many you want to try to guess okay this is gonna be appreciating for

everyone i can tell you that no fewer than six of them have been all-stars in the past i don't know ah not even one guess you can make one guess it doesn't matter if you're wrong just guess you got him okay you got him he's one the 10 are yonder alonzo eric ibar chesler cuthbert oh wait wait uh mark to share mark to share he's on there. Yeah, he was bad. Matt Kemp, Matt Kemp, Adam Lind, Andrew McCutcheon, Alexi Ramirez, and Ryan Zimmerman. Andrew McCutcheon, boy, oh boy. Yeah. I guess this is a very, very small one,

but when you mentioned McCutcheon as well, and I personally don't think Andrew McCutcheon was below replacement level this year. I'm somewhat skeptical of the sheer volume of negative runs he racked up defensively. I buy that he was not good. I get that the contours of his defensive metrics are honest and accurate, but I don't buy that, at least at a gut level, I don't really buy that he was that bad. And so this would be an example of a player who might be marked as replacement level, but maybe wasn't actually quite replacement

level. And so a fifth possible explanation for why the number of replacement level regulars would go down is if the defensive metrics, if defensive runs saved basically is it gets better over time and the methodology for defensive runs saved is more or less unchanged but the people who are doing it get more experience at it and perhaps get better at it so it'd be anyway this was this is a i guess maybe a free article idea for somebody if you want to try to figure out whether defensive runs saved is getting better and better and better and better as the method ages. Yeah, I've wondered whether it might be getting worse because, or at least UZR, I forget how both of them handle shift plays, but at least one of them just throws them out. Throws them out, right. So it's smaller samples.

Yeah. So you'd expect it to fluctuate more from year to year. Yeah. All right. Play index coupon code BP. Get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription at baseballreference.com. All right. Question from Patreon supporter Aiden Jackson Evans.

Let's say Mike Trout is a free agent this offseason, and not being fussy about avocados will happily sign anywhere. However, he has one contract demand that must be met. In order to fulfill a childhood dream, the team that signs him must allow him to pitch the final inning of any potential clinching World Series game. How much money does Trout lose

because of this contract demand? How different would his contract be if he only wanted to get the final out instead you don't necessarily know what the clinching inning is like for one thing for one thing if it's what happens if it's what happens if it's three to nothing in game seven and he pitches the ninth and allows three runs without getting an out and then you bring in a reliever gets out of the inning, and then you go ahead in the 10th.

Does Trout have to go back out to center field for the 10th and then come back in to pitch the 10th? And then, I mean, of course, if you win in a walk-off, then there's no chance at all. But you'd have to potentially let him pitch in as many as four games. If he blows all of them, he could just keep blowing win after win after win. He could end up pitching to more batters than your closer would in that postseason.

Ask me a question again. Ask me this question. How much would Mike Trout have to give up? How much does he lose? Yeah. Well, if you're looking, the odds are you're not winning the World Series this year. So in like

90 even with mike trout you're probably no matter what team you are if we pick a random team you're probably like 94 likely to not win the world series so in 94 of simulations of this universe you get everything you wanted and more out of mike trout It's just as good as if he didn't have this clause. Now, in those final maybe 6% or maybe 3% or maybe 4% of universes, then you've got a little bit of an issue. And so what are the odds that Mike Trout will lose you a World Series that you would have otherwise, well, I guess that you would have otherwise won but yeah if you yeah we'll assume that you otherwise would have won it because you signed him to to win it so all of his good performance is already baked into your expectations so so you're gonna lose a world series he would

otherwise win how many world series is does mike what percentage of world Series is that Mike Trout's teams would win, no longer win because of this? They certainly would have lost if the Cubs had been in. Yeah. He almost certainly blows this one. But this is one of the all-time closest World Series ever. The number of runs was the same. So, yeah, what do we think Mike Trout's ERA would be? What's the average position player pitcher ERA?

Do we know that? Yeah, it's like I think around seven. Yeah. So his arm's nothing special. It's nothing special, but he apparently pitched in the low 90s in high school. Huh. All right. So would we assume that he'd be a little better than the average position player pitcher?

I don't know. But probably not significantly. So if you have a 7 ERA guy. Let's say average. Yeah. So if you have a 7 ERA guy instead of, you know, a 2 ERA guy in that spot probably. He will save most two run games. In fact, it's only one out.

He doesn't even need to. Now, again, there's risk here. What if you bring your closer in for the ninth of a two-run lead, three-run lead, four-run lead, whatever, and he gives up a hit and strikes the next guy out, and then you're going to have him strike the next guy out, and then Trout comes in except he gets a double play. What do you owe Trout there? How much money do you have to give back to Trout?

Or does it not even count because you violated a law that was signed into full force in these United States of America? Well, the question asks about him pitching the final inning. Oh, it does. Also asks how different would it be if he only wanted to get the final out. So two different questions. Okay, so even if it's an inning an era of seven you will save better than 50 of two run leads and three run leads and four run leads are even better and better in most games most world series are not going to be won the one run

lead in a do or die game so most of the time you're still going to win the world series that you would have otherwise won i would say something on the order of 80%, maybe, maybe higher. So you're right. So if say you sign trout and 95% of the time, you're not going to win the world series anyway. And in the 5%, 80% of the time you are going to win it anyway. So you're losing one in a hundred simulations. You're losing a world series and So you're losing one in a hundred simulations, you're losing a World Series. And otherwise you're totally unaffected. So I would say if a World Series is worth $100 million to you, he only has to give up a million bucks.

All right. And it'd be a cool way to win the World Series. Yeah, that's true. Better than having Chapman get the final out. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. It's just, it's so far away when you sign him and you're just hoping he'll get you there. And it's very easy to put off the actual bill that comes due when you have to use him in this spot. So I think that's true. I think he would not get an appreciably different contract. All right. Question from Kyle in Boulder, Colorado. If you had two

identical Andrew Millers, in what roles would you deploy them? Same question for if you had three, four, five identical Andrew Millers on your team. I guess, how many Andrew Millers do you have to have before you stop using additional Andrew Millers the way that you use your first Andrew Miller? I wouldn't necessarily use my first Andrew Miller that way. I might, I don't know. Okay. So if I had two identical Andrew Millers in what roles would I deploy them? Probably like they did, except for the second one would be like Cody Allen. and i would probably and i would be able to do that a little bit more aggressively because i could swap them days depending on who's

tireder and uh you know who might be kind of reaching the end of their limits of multi-inning games how many how many andrew millers would you have to have if these are all literal andrew millers how many would you have to have to put one in the rotation on opening, you know, coming out of spring training? Maybe like six. Oh, see, I think like, I think at most the fourth one and maybe the third one. I think that if you're using Andrew Miller's like Andrew Miller, there's probably going to be a real decline in value by the third, but certainly by the fourth. And I am, I am a believer that Andrew Miller is not the same pitcher that he was three years ago. And that there's at least a 50% chance that

he is at least a league average starter. But if you have, I don't know, those numbers I just gave are totally made up and I don't know if they make sense in the math so for don't yeah take that literally if you have many andrew millers though you can do the postseason andrew miller schedule all season long because you don't have to worry about resting them so you can have designated days where certain andrew millers are off and then the next day it's it's their day to throw so you could make sure that you have like two or three Andrew Millers available for two innings whenever you want them every night if you had that many. And I think that might still be more valuable than having a starter. Yeah. three andrew millers you could also use if and you use the fourth one as a starter you could also have him be like a four or five inning guy and know that you have an andrew miller coming in

to replace him so then you might have then the odds of my starting andrew miller being a great starter are even higher uh-huh uh yeah you might be right it'd be if you had six what if you if the orioles had their rotation which is a bad rotation right horrible rotation yeah they had their rotation but all six relievers in their bullpen were andrew miller how many games would they have won this year they in fact won 89 so you give them a bullpen of six andrew mill. How many do they win? Well, they already had a really good bullpen, for one thing, but this would be better. So I'll say they win 98. So that doesn't seem to me enough of an advantage

to give up on the idea that Andrew Miller might be a great starter. And I've got so many Andrew Millers that I can burn one trying. I can gamble on it because he's my fourth reliever. Yeah, I mean, you might as well try, I guess. You can try in spring training. If you have six Andrew Millers, you can see what happens. If you could get, if they all promised that they would be used exactly how you wanted them and there was going to be no tension,

If they all promised that they would be used exactly how you wanted them and there was going to be no tension, would you rather sign Kenley Jansen, Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller, and Zach Britton, or would you rather sign Clayton Kershaw and Chris Sale? Kershaw and Sale. What if it was Bumgarner, Jake DeGrom? Then I might take the closers. Okay. I wonder how you would tell the Andermillers apart You'd have to make them wear

Different uniform numbers They literally wear numbers Ben They're baseball players You make it sound so You make it sound so sinister Alright Shall we end there? Sure

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