Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 978: Broken Bones and Broken Records

Episode Date: November 17, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about four pitchers with a broken bone, then answer listener emails about Ichiro, Bryce Harper, catchers, throwing games, whether players are making the most of their skills, and more.

Four cards that made a million Four cards that made a million, million, million Four cards that made a million, million, million Hello and welcome to episode 978 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. Hey, how are you?

I'm okay. How are you? All right. Can I tell you what I stumbled across today? Please do. This was from the Los Angeles Times in 1927, I believe. And it is headlined, pitchers break bone while tossing ball. Pitchers, plural. Yeah, okay. So the reason I bring this up is because we just talked about a poor,

who was it, Tommy Holmes or something like that, who broke his arm mid-throw in high school, and we talked about how painful that would be to watch. And so this headline got me because it's apparently two pitchers breaking a bone while tossing a ball. So I read more. And the headline's a little misleading. But again, the headline, Pitchers Break Bone While Tossing Ball by Al Damari,

and then in parentheses, former pitcher, New York Giants. Got his byline. Okay. I'm just going to read you the article entirely, okay? Okay. All right. Whole thing. I'm going to read you the article entirely, okay? Okay. All right. Whole thing. I'm going to read you the whole thing.

All right. All right. Pitchers suffering injuries to their arms by being hit with pitched or batted balls is not uncommon. But for pitchers, chipping or breaking bones in their elbows by the simple act of throwing the ball in their regular delivery is unprecedented in any club, much less on the same team. But it is a fact that Charlie Robertson, Red Faber, Reb Russell, and butcher boy Joe Bentz,

all pitchers on the Chicago White Sox, broke or shattered bones in their elbows in this manner. It drove Benz out of baseball and sent Russell to the minors as an outfielder. Benz's arm was rendered so helpless that he couldn't even saw meat. That's very debilitating. Robertson and Faber both were successfully operated on by Dr. Bruchger, the club physician, and particles of chipped bone were removed so that their old effectiveness returned. So what do we think is going on here?

I was just about to ask. I can't figure out the timeline here. So yeah, I think it was actually even earlier than I said. I think it was early 1920s. it was actually even earlier than I said. I think it was early 1920s. There was a picture of a human elbow in a drawing, almost like a cartoon drawing to illustrate this of a human elbow where a surgeon had marked an X on the elbow. And that's it. That's all the clues we have, Ben. Do you think they discovered bone chips? Or do you think that all four of them actually threw baseballs and their arms cracked? That was the implication, right?

It was. I'm going to remind you, the headline was, pitchers break bone while tossing ball. Yeah. Maybe they were conjoined twins and they all broke the same elbow? Conjoined quartets? I mean, what is... So it started out by saying that it was unprecedented for this to happen at all, right? Like it's never happened to anyone before? Again, I've got what you've got.

But that is, yes, I'll repeat. Pitchers suffering injuries to their arms by being hit with pitched or batted balls is not uncommon, but for pitchers chipping or breaking bones in their elbows by the simple act of throwing the ball in their regular delivery is unprecedented in any club, much less on the same team. Now, those last couple clauses don't make any sense. What does unprecedented in any club, much less on the same team mean? What does in any club mean? And how does much less on the same team contradict that? It sounds like they're saying it's unprecedented on any team, much less on a team. team yeah i think it's just a couple unnecessary clauses added for emphasis that don't really actually add emphasis but so it's saying that it's never happened wait did it say it's unprecedented for four pitchers or unprecedented for four pitchers as in for or for you are for the number

four okay so it's unprecedented for wait wait wait. Wait, wait, wait. Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Hang on. But four pitchers chipping or breaking bones is unprecedented in any club. Okay, the number four. All right, so, okay, well, that sounds right. I don't know how you would verify that, but it seems unlikely that four would happen. But, yeah, they all happened in the same season? Again, it's not made super clear. Right now I'm looking through the Chicago White Sox season log,

so let me see here. We got red pitched this year, but none of the others did. It's not Maine. Something you can close? Nope, I don't all right it just is just accept it people there's a dust buster going on that's all all right all right so who did i say i said uh so charlie and red and then uh butcher boy and uh and reb russell so i still have not found any year in which all four of them have pitched. Well, maybe they didn't pitch because they all broke their bone. Yeah, maybe. Was it Butcher Boy who couldn't saw meat? Yeah. Oh, okay.

That makes sense. All right. Anyway, I don't know. I can't tell. All three of these pitchers pitched together in 1921, or three of them pitched together in 1921. But otherwise, I don't know. I'm not sure. I haven't put all the details together. If I submitted this draft as is, I would get quite a few questions from my editor,

not to mention fact checkers and copy editors. There's a lot going on here. Yeah. It's also written on here. Yeah. It's also written on deadline. He just had to get this story about the four guys before some other paper beat him to it. You should try turning in a three-paragraph article someday.

That makes no sense. I wonder if Passan would know anything about this. Sounds like a good story, but I need more information. I did Google around trying to find some information on Dr. Brusker, the club physician. Couldn't find anything on him. Too bad. This is pre the era of pitchers we can call.

Yeah. Oh, well. So it goes. All right. Can't wait to find out what all this deep archive digging you're doing will lead to. You're just saying because I found this article? Yeah, and you tweeted a headline from an old article. You're reading old tweets.

It's all connected. It's all part of something you're doing. No, the tweets are a different thing. Okay. All right. So we're going to do emails now so start with an email from chris long time listener first time emailer like so many of your fans no doubt i'm a british guy living in tokyo like so many of like so many of your no doubt fans he's a british guy living Tokyo, too. No Doubt is huge in Tokyo.

Yeah, I played a No Doubt song last week. So being in Japan, I am treated to lots of live baseball featuring Japanese players and relatively advantageous time zones for watching games. East Coast games start at 8 a.m. After broadcasting every Marlins game for what felt like forever as Ichiro crawled to 3,000 hits. One of the networks is now showing every one of his MLB hits so far. They are doing so in 50 minute commercial free chunks, 500 hits per show, one after the other by my math or maths. In this case, that means they show an each row hit every six seconds on average. I watched two of these programs, so I've now seen enough infield singles to last quite a while. If you had to watch a

similar program, which hitter would you most and least want to see and why? I saw another tweet from 2011 where I was trying to figure out why a YouTube video of every Jared Weaver strikeout

ever existed. And I watched that whole thing. You watched that whole thing. How many strikeouts is that? He had a lot. He was great. Jared Weaver was great. Yeah.

Well, strikeouts, I'm trying to think. I think strikeouts are more fun to watch than hits, I think. Just generic hits because singles are often not very fun to watch. Itro is the one person that you would say. Yeah, definitely. My first

thought was like Yvonne Rodriguez throws to second. Yep. I don't know. What else? Maybe every Vlad Guerrero outfield assist. Yeah. Well, he's asking specifically about which hitters we would most or least want to see.

Yeah. But other things we would most or least want to see is maybe even a better question. Yeah, I'd probably enjoy, speaking of Vlad Guerrero, I'd enjoy seeing Vlad Guerrero swing at pitches outside the strike zone or Pablo Sandoval maybe hit pitches outside the strike zone. I don't know. For actual hits, I'd probably say Jean-Claude Stanton for hits just because he hits the ball harder than anyone. Although, I don't know. If you only have six seconds per clip, I don't know if that's enough to appreciate the majesty of some of his moonshots.

So here's, okay, here's one. Here's my answer. You can pick anybody, but anybody who's a great hitter. But I'll just say Tony Gwynn, where the hits are sorted by angle of direction. So he basically starts on the left field line and you see all 3,300 hits or whatever in order from the left field line to the right field line. And you just see the whole thing like sprinklers. Yeah, that'd be fun. What else? I don't know if there's a hitter whose hits would be more boring than anyone else's.

All hits kind of look the same unless you're like a huge power hitter or a speedster who beats out lots of infield hits. I guess if you have a nice, aesthetically pleasing swing or a weird stance or something, that would help. But otherwise, I don't know. I mean, it would just be people who look like each row or do things like each row, like Billy Hamilton or something, or the opposite end of the spectrum with Stanton. I don't know what else would appeal to me hits-wise. I'd like to see a highlight package of every line drive caught by the pitcher. Yeah, that'd be fun.

I could watch that. I'm trying to think of what act I could watch on repeat for 50 minutes. what act I could watch on repeat for 50 minutes. And I'm not sure I could do better than Ichiro hits, especially if I were an Ichiro fan or if I was in Japan. I think that would actually be a lot of fun. And I would watch that. But I would also watch pitchers catching line drives.

Yeah, I used to watch Jose Molina frames over and over and over again when I was looking for the best ones or whatever. I'd cue them all up. So that was one I used to do. You could probably do the same thing with Asmani Grandal or whoever. So I don't know. Anything else? I'd watch a highlight reel of every line drive hit into the dugout. Yeah.

Well, if you get the reaction shot of guys. I'm assuming you would. Yeah, sure. that'd be fun. I'd be interested in seeing every pop-up that hung in the air for more than 7.5 seconds. I think that'd get pretty boring. I mean, every now and then you'd get a dropped one, but 99-point-something percent of them would be caught, so you'd just have eight seconds of guys standing around. I'd watch a highlight reel of pitchers failing to get the bunt down on two strikes.

I think that's a particular subgenre of strikeout face that I'd be interested in examining. I'd like pitchers reacting to giving up home runs maybe. There are sometimes good ones. Yeah. I'd like runners who run through first base and then the throw gets away from the first baseman but not far enough for the runner to advance. But the runner has already sort of made a move to second and so now has to scurry back to first. It's very specific. I would like to see a highlight reel of all the instances where a catcher gets crossed

up and has to go out to the mound to go over the signs again. But I just want to see the pitches though. I like watching catchers get crossed up. I think that's one of my favorite things to watch in baseball. It's a catcher who like sort of gets out of his crouch thinking it's a curveball or something of that sort. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll probably keep thinking of some as we go.

Emergency catchers are good oh oh i like uh i like plays that third baseman make on balls uh that hug the line but have been called foul okay but they still go through they still go through the motions yeah and i like i think those are those are some great plays too because if you really if you pull it off it's always an out because usually the runner hasn't bothered to keep running the whole way. And so it's basically seeing like, you know, Brooks Robinson make play after play after play and get the out every single time. Oh, you know what I like? I like the play where the third baseman dives for the ball and can't get it, but the short stop goes into the hole and gets it.

I like that. I like the sort of the look like the battlefield is collecting bodies, but this like lone shortstop is going to make it. Oh, I interpret it differently. I look at it as just a very nonchalant kind of thing, like the guy in front of him dove and gave all his effort and came up empty, and then the shortstop just doesn't even have to dive to get it. All right.

Should I move on? I feel like you're going to be coming up with these for the next 10 minutes and I'm going to have to keep stopping. Do you want to get any more out of your system before I move on? No, we can go. Okay. If you get some more Save him for the end Alright Danny says did Bryce Harper's Down year cost him any money

In free agency And in case you are worried that Bryce Harper is actually A free agent right now he is not He is not a free agent until After what 2018 So He still has a couple more seasons But he's wondering if the fact that he had a much

worse year than last year when he became the best player in baseball will cost him any money a few years down the road. I mean, like, as opposed to what else would he have done if he had had, like, I think it's fair to say that if he'd hit 85 home runs this year, that he, that would have been worth more money to him than what he did. Yes. So what are we comparing this to? Well, I guess, I mean, he had – it all depends, obviously. If he returns to a higher level, like – Well, first, no, first let's say what we mean by a down year.

A down year as opposed to what? He hit his pakoda so yeah but i think everyone would have said his pakoda was too low of course everyone did literally every single person who played it literally every person who played the game yeah did however in one sense you know it wasn't even a quote unquote down year in like that very weird narrow sense uh but if like we're saying that he was worse than the year before when he was the best non-bonds hitter of the last 15 20 years well by baseball reference he was a 1.6 war player so yeah so what are we saying the average at best

what are we saying would have been expected for him? I think anything over, say, five wins would not have been considered a down year. All right. So we're going to answer the question of whether this cost him money relative to a five and a half win season. Yeah. Okay. Boy, now, yeah, I still can't answer it because it's so hard to know what he's going to do in the next two years yeah i think there's potential for it not to cost him a penny right there's still a chance that it won't cost him anything because if he comes back in the next

couple years and is you know the best player in the league again for two years in a row and three out of four years i don't think anyone's going to hold this against him. They'll probably just say whatever he was heard and had a shoulder thing or whatever it was. And that's that. And it's far enough in the rear view mirror that we don't need to care about it. So I think that is still a possible outcome for him. Okay. So now let me lay out a scenario where he is the five win player each of the next two years. So he is not the MVP. He is not the best player in baseball.

He is, however, you know, he, he's one of the best hitters in baseball. He produces 11 wins over the next two years. He finishes a sixth and, um, and 14th in MVP voting. Uh, and then he hits the market. Does this year cost him relative to whether, you know, to if he had done the same thing? Yes, I think it does. Okay. I think it doesn't. Okay. Yeah, I think if he returns to close to his previous level and stays there for the next couple years, then he won't suffer at all. And if he doesn't get close to

that previous level so that people are already thinking, well, what is this guy? He's not the guy he looked like in 2015. He's very good, but there's still downside that he might not be very good because he wasn't all that good in 2016. I think that would cost him relative to being worth five wins every year. Because if he had been worth five wins in three years in a row following the 10-win season, then you'd think, well, the downside is five wins and only a handful of players actually come into a season projected to be worth five wins. So he's still one of the very tippy top elite players in baseball. Whereas if he was average or so within the last few years, then I think it's easier to imagine that happening again. We know that most teams have some projection system that they use internally.

We know that his season this year will affect those projections. Do we think that teams actually follow those projections for players as high profile and as sort of as obvious as Bryce Harper? Or when it gets to free agency, are they basically just going with emotion and what's sort of obvious and in front of them and what they need and how the rest of the world is treating Bryce Harper to the point that the projections don't matter. Because it is undeniable that Bryce Harper's 2019 projection is affected by this year. Yep. I would think that with a player like him, you're more likely to get ownership intervention. With a player like him, you're more likely to get ownership intervention.

And because his contract will probably be enormous if he rebounds over the next couple of years, it's the kind of thing where Scott Boris will talk directly to the owner and maybe the owner will rule in favor, even if the front office isn't totally on board. So I think in that sense, he's the kind of guy who could just bypass the projection system. But I think if it were left entirely up to the front office, it would still play a role. How long does the timeline, does the time frame have to be for you to rather have Bryce Harper on your team than Rich Hill right now? If you could only have one for the next week, the next week. I mean, obviously, there's no games, but Rich Hill right now. If you could only have one for the next week, I mean, obviously, there's no games, but Rich Hill is healthy. And so if a week of baseball were about to be played, would you rather have Rich Hill than Bryce Harper? Yeah, I think so. If we could continue.

That's all I need. I just needed you to grant me this premise. Now, how far out would you go? Well, I definitely don't go to all of 2017. I take Bryce Harper over Hill for next season. So are we talking, we're just talking continuation of this past season? Because it could be different, I guess, if we're talking about like next year, because once the calendar flips and, you know, like maybe Harper heals and works on his mechanics or whatever, like I think I'd probably take Harper over Hill on opening day next year. Oh, you would? Even for a game? Yeah, for five days. I think I would. Okay.

Well, then you won't give me the premise and it's not worth doing this. Okay. All right. By the way, I'm not totally sure that this year will Pakoda has even taken the last five years at times, and waiting them by recency, I would bet that a baseball team, given stat cast, given exit velocity, given defensive stats that they can get through stat cast, I would think that going back three years, maybe we're at the point where going back three years doesn't improve your projection. I don't know. Maybe not. But I would think that you could get reliable enough with the stats that are stable in small samples that we have now that

maybe it wouldn't matter so much to go back three years. And I'd also say that I think Harper's struggles this year made us look more closely at his 2015 season, which could also impact his future earnings, right? Like the Jeff Sullivan article, the Rob Arthur article, I had them on Effectively Wild and talked about how he probably got a little lucky last year. As good as he was, his results were much better than you would expect based on how he hit the ball. was his results were much better than you would expect based on how he hit the ball so i think the the increased scrutiny of his struggles this year made us go back and reappraise what he did last year and now we might not think of his season last year as a totally legitimate 10 win season maybe we we discount it slightly and so we don't even give him that peak potential yeah i think that makes sense all right question from sean given the rise in data collection pitch fx stat cast uzr etc

what bit of data would you want to collect to be able to more accurately assess the defensive value of catchers it can be something currently measurable or something more sci-fi. Well, this is your area. Well, I think I would record their conversations. I think if I could record all of their conversations. You couldn't do anything if you had their conversations recorded. I couldn't. I couldn't.

But I think smart people could. had their conversations recorded. I couldn't. I couldn't, but I think smart people could. I think if you measured all of their interactions with a pitching staff over the course of a season, you could somehow just surveil them. And whenever they started talking to a pitcher, you'd just automatically get a transcript or whatever. And you could feed that into some sort of language analysis algorithm, I think you could probably classify the way that they talk to their pitchers, the way that they interact with their pitchers, even just how regularly they interact with their pitchers, and what do they say when they go out there during a mound visit, you could maybe put them into different categories and you could start to sort of correlate what they say

and the language that they use with the pitch calling stats that Harry and his crew have come up with, which are kind of crude right now. They're just like everything that's left over when we account for all the rest of the value. Well, you could pair those with what they say, with how they relate to their pitchers, and you could start to say, well, this is how you manage a pitching staff, and this is why he's good at that.

So I think that would be my choice. Obviously, I personally could not do a thing with that information, but I bet there are people out there who could i'm not i'm not sold okay well it's the best i got because i almost everything else you know like if you could measure command fx does measure the the glove position and so that's already a measured thing it's not publicly available but uh that's, you know, I think a somewhat flawed thing just because the target isn't always, where you hold the glove is not always actually where you want the ball to go, especially with non-fastballs, but that data exists. So I don't

know that that really counts here because it's already being collected. So if we're already measuring that and we're already measuring how hard they throw and how well they frame and all that other stuff then uh i don't know what what's left over what would you want well i mean you're i agree with you on like the track you were on i just don't even know what i would what i would actually want to collect for that i mean i agree that the that the blank space is about how they affect their pitchers as far as their pitcher's ability to make it through a game, their pitcher's ability to manage themselves, and the catcher's ability to work with that pitcher

in a way that the right pitch is being called, the pitcher feels confidence in that pitch. So I agree with all that. I just don't think that I would trust the literal words that are being said as data. So I guess I probably would want something that was more like fMRI related, I guess. Well, all right.

How about if you could record every pitch called, every pitch signaled for, so that you could match that up with the pitcher's actual pitch, and you could see how often the pitcher shakes off the catcher or follows the catcher's recommendation, or you could just evaluate the catcher's pitch selection sort of independent of the pitcher, because you would know what the catcher wanted the pitcher to throw. I don't know that I would consider it a plus that the pitcher doesn't shake off the catcher. I think if the pitcher has got a good plan and the catcher is fine being shaken off, depending on the people involved, I don't know that there's an objective answer to whether that's bad. I mean, I know that it is anecdotally talked about as, you know, a bad thing when a catcher is getting shaken off a lot.

But, I mean, it really does depend on the pitcher. Like Sean shook a lot. And Sean shook a lot partly because he liked to shake. He didn't really care about the pitch. Like Johnny Cueto shakes off before Buster puts the signs down. Have you seen that? It's one of the greatest things in baseball right now is Johnny just like, he likes to shake and he likes the batter to see him shake.

And so sometimes he'll shake two or three signs off before Buster's even put his fingers down. It's very funny. It's true. Dustin Palmatier has documented it. Anyway, that doesn't discredit what you just said. But I don't think that I would consider it a bad... I mean, I have friends who I argue with and I have friends who I don't argue with. And if I started arguing with the ones who I don't argue with, then that would be a

bad thing. It'd be a sign of tension and a source of tension. Whereas if I argue with the ones who I don't argue with, then that would be a bad thing. It'd be a source, sign of tension and a source of tension. Whereas if I argue with the ones I do argue with, that's, that's healthy. That's why we're friends. Well, you would have this data for every catcher and pitcher combination, right? So you, in theory, you could figure out, you know, does the pitcher, you could plug it into Jonathan Judge's mixed model and do his advanced stat stuff and find out, okay, this catcher makes the pitcher shake off more often than he would with another catcher. Yeah, I don't know, though. It's like it's their relationship, too. I don't know. I mean, what I really want is at the end, after each pitch, I would want the pitcher to fill out a form that says how confident he was

during that pitch and whether he thinks in retrospect it was the right pitch. And then I would want the hitter to fill out a form saying how difficult the pitch was to hit and also what he was expecting. saying how difficult the pitch was to hit and also what he was expecting. Rob Benfred would not approve of this in the impact on pace of game. Yeah, but I mean, if we're getting sci-fi, I think it's the perspective of the batter that you want to get into. You want to see if you are actually in his head and or outsmarting him. And it's the perspective of the pitcher that you're interested in,

whether he just feels better out there, whether he feels like the plan is strengthened by the presence of another person on his team or in some way kind of the catcher is an obstacle. All right. You cheated a little by expanding it to everyone, but I'll accept it. All right. Play index?

Sure. A few years ago, Chris Jaffe, the great writer and I think history teacher who writes at Hardball Times, wrote a thing that blew my mind about franchise records. And so this was, it was like 10 things he learned by digging into franchise records. And number three, the part that blew my mind, number three, every single expansion franchise has a losing cumulative record, which is crazy, right? Like it makes sense as Chris writes, it makes sense that you'd sort of dig a little bit of a hole early on, but we're talking about teams that have 55 years of experience now. You'd think that they would have overcome that. At least some teams would have overcome that. But when Chris was writing this, it had not happened. There was some institutional disadvantage to being an expansion team

or maybe to being in the cities that were less prime, perhaps, for expansion that created decades-long holes that none of them had yet come out of. And this was five years ago franchise's all-time record, and it is mostly still true, almost entirely still true, but for a little tiny, tiny, tiny exception. So the best record in history, the franchise with the best record in history since 1913 at least, is the Yankees by 41 points of winning percentage over the second best. Right? The Yankees in a 162-game season would average 93.3 over a century. Wow.

Yeah. So anyway, the Yankees and then the Dodgers and then the Cardinals and the Giants and then the Red Sox and then the Indians and the Tigers and then the Reds. So the top eight teams are all non-expansion teams. And then the 10th team is the White Sox, a non-expansion team. And those are the only 10 teams that are at 500 And actually technically the White Sox aren't at 500 They're 5 games under It rounds up to 500 But they're 81 8-1-1-5 and 8-1-2-0

So in fact only 9 teams Out of 30 have a winning record As a franchise Which is sort of significant We might have been looking at this wrong We might have been thinking Oh well this is about how hard it is to be an expansion team. But it might actually be something about the way that success in baseball is so lopsided to certain teams

that really only one in three teams even is a winning team, even though theoretically it's all zero-sum. The one exception to the no expansion, no winning expansion teams is the Angels. They have crawled up. I was monitoring it closely when I was there because they had gotten to within like 18 games of it. I think when I left the Orange County Register, they have since gone over it. They are 4,477 and 4,465, 12 games over 500 with a 501 winning percentage. They could very easily drop below that this year. All they have to do is what says go is 74 and 92, and they would drop back under 500 and we would be back. On the other hand, the Blue Jays are climbing toward it. The Blue Jays are now within 21 games of 500 with a 498 winning percentage. Then you have to go down a ways. The

Astros are about 200 games, 201 games under 500. The Diamondbacks with a shorter history have a winning percentage, but are only 72 games under 500. So I guess three or four good years could get them there. The Royals are 230 games under. The Nationals slash Expos are 230 games under. The Mets are 330 games under. The Rangers are almost 400 under. And the Brewers are about 350 under. And then the Mariners, the Marlins, the Rockies, the Padres, and finally the Rays. And then the Mariners, the Marlins, the Rockies, the Padres, and finally the Rays.

Still the Rays with the worst winning percentage of any franchise in history at 462. So if the Yankees win an average of 93 games a year over 162 game season over the course of their history, the Rays win an average of 75. So again there, you sort of see how the worst teams are not as bad as the best teams are. The Phillies, in fact, if you take out the Yankees, this might all be a Yankees effect because they're so far ahead. The only non-expansion team that is close to the bottom is the Phillies, who are still just barely ahead of the Rays and the Padres and way down. But if you take all the expansion teams, we're talking about 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 teams played, I don't know, 100,000 games or so, 120, 110,000 games,

thousand games or so 120 110 000 games which means that they have played cumulatively some 680 seasons 679 seasons which is i mean even if you grant each of them a five-year run-up to get kind of good uh that only accounts for uh you know 70 of of almost 700 seasons. They still, though, have a cumulative winning percentage of just 482 over that time. So they're bad. Being an expansion team hurts you for a very long time. And I don't think that this is an accident. I also don't think that it's the Yankees effect that I was saying. I think that it really is about being an expansion team.

I think that in ways that are sort of small and undetectable, how good you are does have ripples that last for many years, decades even, on the personnel you have in the front office, on the players that you have that you develop, on the revenue that you get, probably on the reliability of your market. If you have generations of fans, my guess is they're probably a more stable market than if you only have one or two generations.

So anyway, the point is that Chris's amazing finding from a couple years ago is slightly, slightly broken now by the Angels, but still basically true and still basically interesting. All right. Baseball has long-term institutional disadvantages. Yeah. Just like society in many other respects. All right. Shall we move on? Well, you can all subscribe to Playindex using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription at baseballreference.com.

All right, couple more questions from Ken Maeda, our pal and Patreon supporter, who says, I'm not sure if you could run with this scenario, but it strikes me as potentially hilarious, so I had to pitch it. Say a crime syndicate coerces some key, low-paid players to throw the World Series. Somehow it gets to a game seven, and the favorites have become underdogs. Now an unwitting rival syndicate coerces the other team's key low-paid players to throw the one game. Assume both starters are in on it. What happens when each set of players realizes the other is trying to lose? What kind of plays would be most problematic and farcical? Maybe a runner tries to get picked off, but the

pitcher overthrows the ball, but the runner stumbles, etc. What strategy would you use if you were only worried about your own life? If you take out the Yankees, then all the non-expansion teams have a 502 winning percentage. A lot of that, of course, is because they were playing before expansion and against each other. And with the Yankees in the league, they would be below 500. So maybe that's actually misleading, but they also are not that far. Okay. Anyway, I told you this and I told Ken this, but when I was in college, I tried to write it like a novella and my novella was about two boxers who had both taken money to throw the fight, but did not know that the other had, and they walked into the ring and were sort of ambushed by circumstance and had to figure out a way to lose or else their families would be killed or something. I forget. So this is a topic

near and dear to my heart. And you finished it. I did. I got to the end. I wrote to the end. It was the only thing I've ever written, the only work of fiction I've ever written that had an ending. Still have it? Yes, I do. Okay. You're not proud of it? Did you say not proud of it? I'm asking.

I mean, I'm proud I wrote it and finished it. I was like 20, 19. I did it in the summer when I could have been, you know, playing ping pong for four hours a day instead of three. And so I guess it shows a certain amount of grit. It's garbage. It's total garbage. I would not be able to read a single paragraph of it right now. Okay. So what's the question? So I guess the question is what happens in this situation.

How would you do it? It'd be easy. Wouldn't it be easy to throw a baseball game? Well, yeah, I think so. Depends how obvious you want to be about avoiding detection. But if the other team is also throwing the game and you don't know that But first before we Do the what do you do when the other

Team is trying to lose two Let's just it would be easy To throw a baseball game Without being detected I believe Like I don't think anybody would ever be Caught because you don't have to Do much you don't have to hit 130 To make sure you lose you have to do much. You don't have to hit 130 to make sure you lose.

You have to throw, you know, one crucial ball on three, two that misses by a couple of inches. I guess you have to hope they don't swing, but nobody finds it suspicious when you spike a curveball and you only have to do a few of those. You could still be, you could definitely still make the hall of fame and cause your team to lose. I think you could probably make the Hall of Fame and still cause your team to lose pretty reliably. Yeah, I guess if you pick your spots. The problem is that if you're a pitcher, you'd take a lot of Ls. And you can't make the Hall of Fame if you take a lot of Ls.

And if you're a hitter, then you don't have the same kind of power. You don't get to throw that pitch on 3-2. And simply striking out doesn't do enough if you're a hitter because great hitters go 0-4 in games that their teams win constantly. And you can't make the errors. You cannot make errors. Whatever your strategy is for throwing a baseball game cannot depend on you making misplays in the field because those add up. You get literally 20 errors a year. If you're blowing three of those trying to throw a game, it's going to show up

quickly. You've really got to figure out a way to do this on the edges of the strike zone. Yeah. I would think you'd almost need your catcher to be in on it too, to get away with it for a long time. I mean, I could be wrong. Obviously pitchers miss their spots all the time, but I wonder whether a catcher would sort of intuit that the pitcher was not giving his full effort. I mean, if you did it, you know, once every several games or something, then probably not. But I wonder if it were a pattern, then I would guess that the catcher would start to suspect something, even if it was just almost an unconscious body language based thing. I'm giving my game fixer more credit than that.

Okay. All right. I think that you need to have the pitcher in on it though. I'm now rethinking everything I said. I think that it'd be the easiest thing in the world for the pitcher to do it. Could lose pretty easily on command, but a hitter could not.

It'd be really tough. At the most, I think as a hitter, not uh-huh it'd be it'd be really tough at the most at the most i think is a hitter because you can't even i don't even think a hitter could ground into a double play if it was like going to be particularly damaging to ground to a double play i don't even think a hitter could do that and everything else that is bad other than making outs so making outs is common you can make outs for days without anybody noticing anything's up, but there's going to be a lot of outs made and one is usually not going to swing the game that much. And all the things that are otherwise bad, like you getting thrown out on the bases or making an error, those stand out because they are relatively, well, they're very rare. So I think

that you either need a lot of hitters Which is not how you want to do this Someone's going to talk Or you need the pitcher So now this question is tough Because we don't know which positions are involved in this Do we need to ask Ken to specify? I think we need more details Can we get Ken to flesh this out a little bit better?

Yeah, he says key low-paid players But key, I mean, I don't know what key could be. Yeah, unless it's the, we need to know, I guess, if it's the pitcher. So let's see. Mike Trout, for instance, I'm going to see something real quick. This is going to be bonus play index. So I'm going to Mike Trout game finder. I'm going for any game in which he has at least three plate appearances

and he has zero hits and zero walks. So all Mike Trout can control is whether he gets on base and whether he makes errors in the field. I've already ruled out errors in the field. He might get away with one, but most likely it's probably not going to come to him at just the right moment. And he probably can't get away with it a lot. It'd look really stupid to drop balls, but he can make himself go 0 for 4 without anybody noticing. So Mike Trout in games where Mike Trout goes 0-4 in his career, the Angels are 44 and 73. So that's pretty good.

Just with no real suspicion at all, he knocks his team's winning percentage down from around 500 to around 376. Now, partly he's going 0 for 4 because he's facing really good pitchers. The pitchers that make Mike Trout go 0 for 4 are probably having good days. And also, he's probably not batting five or six times in those games.

He's a lot more likely to go hitless in a game where he only bats three times or four times, and that's already a game where we know, by definition, the Angels have not scored many runs so this is probably wildly misleading but i would guess that by simply resolving to go oh for four today instead of hitting like he normally would mike trout can lower his team's chances by something like eight percent and that's just not enough to keep your head if you're if you're taking money from the mob yeah no not really if you took the least clutch player in any given season i mean no one knows who that player is probably i mean jeff sullivan has probably written an article about

him but other than that i don't think the world at large knows, oh yeah, this guy has had the least clutch season of anyone. Maybe his fans are aware that he hasn't come through in those spots, but no one is suspicious. moments and you could do that as much as anyone ever does that and it would not arouse any suspicions but it also just wouldn't matter all that much unless you were just bad all the time you'd still be helping your team win and it's just uh yeah it's it's tough to do for your position player yeah i don't even think the clutch thing matters because assuming that you're not throwing every game because if you did then then you'd have to get a lot more complicated. But I mean, I'm assuming that this is just one game a year or a couple games a year or something like that where you can tuck an 0 for 4 without anybody being the wiser. I don't even think that it's a matter of like making sure you fail when it's a clutch situation.

You just go 0 for 4. Just get all the outs. Like it's really easy to go over four i think even if you're mike trout without it looking odd so it doesn't even particularly matter whether you can leverage your your throwing of the game with a with a dropped fly ball if you know you've got maybe one that you can get away with then you could leverage that. But for the outs, just get all outs. Yeah, right. Is this a good line, Ben? This is Tommy Lasorda on Mike Socha. If he raced his pregnant wife, he'd finish third. Yeah, I kind of like that, I guess. Okay. Yeah, it's pretty good. All right. I mean,

obviously, you either finish first or third. There's no middle option. That's true. But still, pretty good. Yeah, it breaks down as you think about it. Yeah. All right, so Ken, maybe send us some more details. Obviously, you could get some Keystone Cups kind of plays where people are just competing to see how much they can kick the ball around or get picked off or flub plays. So it could devolve into a very obvious spectacle where people would realize that you were getting caught.

But if you're the pitcher, you can, I mean, you know, you'd have like a, it depends on how hard you were trying to throw the game. But if you were really trying, then you'd have pitchers throwing balls outside the strike zone and hitters swinging at them wildly. I don't even know. I mean, I guess in that case, if you're the hitter, then, well, huh. So if you're the hitter, you kind of have the power to lose, right? If the pitcher is throwing balls way outside the strike zone,

hoping to walk you, you have all the power in that spot. It depends if the catcher's in it and on it. Although, no, yeah, because even if the catcher lets strike three go to the backstop and then doesn't chase it, if the batter leaves the batter's box without making an attempt at the base, he's automatically out. So, yes, if you're the hitter, you have the ultimate. So yes, if you're the hitter, you have the ultimate. Well, no. You could, if they hit you in the face with the baseball,

you could swing at it and then it would be a strike. But I don't know that that's better than dealing with the mob. Like, I think if they're going to throw baseballs at your face that you can't dodge, then ultimately they would have the greater power, the pitcher would. But he's got to hit you, and he's got to hit you without you getting a swing off. And so probably we would have to simulate this. I would guess that the hitter still has the power a little more of

the power than the pitcher in that situation but it's a little bit less clean than yeah we were just saying yeah that's interesting because we were just saying that the pitcher has all the power to throw the game but that depends on the batter also not trying to throw the game so if they are matching up well if you but if you want to do it without oh yeah if you want to do it without looking suspicious though i guess i guess it's just as common for batters to swing at pitches outside the strike zone as it is for pitchers to miss however however to the degree that you can throw a pitch that a batter can't reasonably swing at. It's easier for a pitcher to do that. Like it's easier for a pitcher to miss by three feet twice on accident

and have everybody believe it than it is for a batter to swing at a pitch that misses by three feet twice on accident and have nobody notice it. Yeah. Especially if you're not throwing pitches like, if they're not sliders low and away, like if you're throwing it high, if you're, you know, just if you're throwing it to the backstop as a pitcher, you got to you get a few of those, I think, before it looks weird. No, he was swinging at some pitches that would be consistent with that. So it would look like that except even more extreme, I suppose. All right.

I was going to finish with one more. Should I finish with one more? We didn't give a full answer to that one. That one's still pending further details. So let's do one more. This one is from another Sean who says, here's a fun tweet. And it's a link to Mitchell Litchman, the sabermetrician. And this is a string of tweets from last month. He says,

I firmly believe that an exceptionally smart pitcher with average stuff would be a well above average pitcher. I say that from watching so many strategic errors by pitchers and especially from the complete BS I hear from ex-pitchers on TV, give me average MLB stuff and I guarantee I'd be a number one starter. And later in this exchange, he clarifies that he is defining number one starter as a top 20% starter. And Brandon McCarthy replied to that tweet and just said, okay. And Sean says, what do you think? He argues that his knowledge of game theory would allow him to far exceed his physical limitations. How good do you think Mitchell Lichman could be in Major League Baseball or anyone with average stuff, but well above average smarts could be in Major League Baseball if he had average stuff? He includes

that his command would be average As well what is the upper extent That game theory could improve a pitcher You know Ben I don't know And one of the ways that I feel like That I try to get ahead in this world is by Not speculating irresponsibly About things that might hurt people's feelings That's this whole podcast

Not for the last part Yeah the last part is significant I genuinely have no idea and I don't, yeah, the last part's significant. I genuinely have no idea, and I don't want to. Whose feelings is this? Is it going to hurt anyone's feelings? We can disagree, I think. We are irresponsibly speculating. I guess Mitchell is speculating too, because he's never been in that situation.

But, you know, he was saying that he would look at game theory. He would look at optimal pitch locations. He would break at game theory. He would look at optimal pitch locations. He would break down batter weaknesses. Essentially, he would come as close as humanly possible to throwing the optimal pitch in the optimal location to every batter, but he only has average stuff and command. So I don't even know how to answer this question To me it seems like a stretch I think to be an average starter talent-wise And then to have your intelligence bump you up to the top 20% Sounds like a lot But on the other hand I would guess that

Well, I don't know I was going to say I would guess that a lot of pitchers don't come close to the Optimal selection and location in every pitch. On the other hand, maybe a lot of them come closer than we would think, except that you then see examples of like Rich Hill type people who just suddenly got way better because they started throwing a different pitch more often or mixing their pitches differently, and suddenly they're an ace or something, and that happens every now and then. So there are at least some cases where a major leaguer gets to the majors and is not nearly fulfilling his potential. So hard to say. I think I didn't really necessarily mean to say that it would hurt someone's feelings

so much as that it is something that other people care about the answer. So like Mitchell might care, Mitchell might care seriously about what the actual answer is. And so to then come and speculate wildly about a thing with no, you know, with no grounds for saying would be maybe disrespectful, but also, you know, like a pitcher, a pitcher might have a strong opinions about this and know a lot more than me. And so to speculate with, with none of that expertise also feels disrespectful and pointless. However, that said, and pointless. However, that said, there was a, Jason Kidd went to Cal when I was following Cal basketball. And I remember reading like a magazine article that it was the weirdest magazine article,

or maybe it was a TV profile or something like that. But it was the weirdest thing because it was all about how stupid he is. Like what a bad student he is. Like it was all about like what a terrible student he was, but how he is a genius nonetheless, because of like he is a genius on the court. It was really weird. I remember thinking that's an odd frame that you guys have chosen for this puff piece. But I think that baseball players are incredibly smart at what they do. And so I don't think that a way of defining intelligence so narrowly does nearly enough credit to what is going on in their cognition, what goes on in their preparation, the amount of experience that they have and the amount of wisdom that builds up

consciously and subconsciously through all that experience. And so my guess is that all of us who think that we're smart are probably not anywhere close to as smart about somebody's area of expertise as they are. And that baseball pitchers have this as their area of expertise. So I don't buy it. Yeah. I mean, I know that I couldn't improve on a pitcher's usage, I don't think. But I would say that players are selected to some extent for their ability to make the most of their physical gifts. And obviously they're selected for their work ethic and their dedication, as well as just can they have this inherent ability to throw a fastball or hit a fastball. But I think they're primarily, or they're more

selected for those gifts than they are for any other one thing. And so I think if you took like a guy with, you know, 80 game theory skills or 80 ability to determine what the right pitch to throw is in any given situation, I would bet that in most cases that person would be better at that one thing than the player is. Like I would guess that the average player is not like a 99th percentile decider of how to do things in the most optimal way. I could be wrong, but I think that would be the case. Like if, you know, there are people who are probably as skilled in that aspect of things as the baseball player is in the physical aspect of things. And the baseball player is also good at the other stuff because he can't just be completely terrible at making those decisions and still make the majors. But I think you could improve on it. on it so i don't know whether mitchell is that person but if you say there is such a person i would buy that that you could be better than uh than the typical player is at those things but he's not but the pitcher is not out the pitcher is not an island as it is that the pitcher is surrounded by many people who are already trying to be that person and who do put a lot of mental

energy into providing the resources and the thought processes around these things and that also have decades of experience trying to do this well and living it in various ways. If somebody raised John Lackey in a room all by himself and all he could do was strengthen his arm and eat bread until he was ready to go on a major league mound and then nobody told him what to throw, nobody told him what to do, he probably would not have optimal game theory in that situation. But there's a lot going on, I think, that is supporting John Lackey, that's training him, and that is creating a sort of a system that goes out there with him on the mound. And I think I generally have faith that that system is providing some value and probably a significant amount of value and more value than I would promise as an outsider to be able to bring into it based on how good I am at Sudoku. Yeah, right. So I agree. Yeah, right. So I agree. I definitely wouldn't make this claim about myself, but I think that it's possible that it could be true about a person that, you know, you could have someone who is not a baseball player, who does not have the physical gifts that a baseball player does, but has studied the game for their whole life and really devoted themselves to this aspect of it and has data crunching skills that the player doesn't have, although someone with the team would have them. I think you could be better than an average pitcher with average stuff, but I don't think you could go from average to ace. I think it would be a fairly small advantage unless you were really some sort of prodigy who

could just a savant who could evaluate all of these many factors in real time. And from talking to John Baker and Brian Bannister on my other baseball podcast a couple months ago, it seemed like they were pretty convinced that there's a lot of room for improvement in that support structure. Bannister, for instance, was the one who was able to turn Rich Hill's career around or played a big part in it. So maybe once every team has a Baker or a Bannister, there'll be less room for improvement. But I think there's probably still some ground that could be gained there.

All right. So 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 already done so. Gordon Christen, Mark Sands, Doug Lemoine, James Leary, and Nick Seavers. Thank you. You can buy our book at theonlyruleisithastowork.com. The name of the book is The Only Rule Is It Has To Work.

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