Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 981: The New-GM Job Check

Episode Date: November 29, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about a baseball TV trope and a Roger Angell passage, then discuss how they would have asked and answered interview questions for the Twins and Diamondbacks GM jobs and what they thought of the Mariners’ and Diamondbacks’ Jean Segura-Taijuan Walker trade and the Twins’ Jason Castro signing.

We need to tell you to step into my office, baby. Want to give you the job, a chance of overtime. Say my place at nine. Good morning, and welcome to episode 981 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by The Play Index at baseballreference.com, and our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN, along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer.

Hello, Ben. Hello. How are you doing? Doing okay. All right. You got anything to talk about? No, there's something I want to talk about, but I think it makes more sense for a listener email show, so I'll wait for next time.

All right. I guess I have two things. One is real quick, and this will be relevant to very few people. But remember we talked about the Jose Fernandez five-hour energy commercial? Yes. We spent a disproportionate amount of time talking about the amount of dust popping out of the glove. Right. The other day I rewatched the Windows 8 Scouts commercial, which you remember, we probably talked about here, which you remember as the... ERA against lefties.

ERA against lefties, right. I wrote about it at the time with Doug Thorburn. We looked at his mechanics to try to figure out if this pitcher actually was worth scouting. I forgot about this, but I had a whole little section about the amazing amount of dust coming from the catcher's glove when he caught that guy's pitch too. So apparently dust popping out of a glove is like a trope, a cinematic trope among baseball commercial directors. So something to watch for, just like, you know, the Wilhelm scream of baseball commercials. Just keep a close eye on your baseball commercials for dust popping. And I guess, send me them. You'll do a big ESPN article on dust popping out of catcher's gloves? It's certainly possible. Feels like more of an unfiltered, but those days are behind you.

Yeah, it's true makes sense because how else would you convey velocity unless you you know show the radar gun and show the triple digit reading or something you can't tell on screen whether it's 92 or 96 so how else are you going to do it yeah facial expressions no you got to go with the the dust dust yeah yeah it's a powerful visual the second thing is that i uh stumbled across a passage of the summer game, Roger Angel's collection, the summer game that is incredibly relevant to our listeners covering as it does, I think, three of our listeners' favorite things, Roger Angel, Vin Scully, and bad fun facts.

So, I'm going to read this passage. Before I do, there's one vocabulary word that it will help to know. That word is peroration, peroration, P-E-R-O-R-A-T-I-O-N, which is a noun for the concluding part of a speech typically intended to inspire enthusiasm in the audience. So we'll just get out of the way that there's a line in here involving a dandruff that I accept, Ben, I accept your chuckle and nod of approval in advance. So we don't need to stop for it. Okay, sure. Alright, so this is describing the 1963 World Series, in which none of the games were very close. And this game in particular was not very close. So I'm going to read one paragraph. By the middle innings, shortly after 2 o'clock, these zealots were all back at their desks.

The Yankees were down 3-0, and I was lonely as a cloud in the Charles. Johnny Padres, the veteran Dodger lefty, was unbelievably pitching even better than Koufax had. He was less flashy, but more efficient, working on the premise that it takes 5 or 6 pitches to strike a batter out, but only two or three to get him to pop up or ground out to an infielder. This had become a nice, dull pitchers series. The TV announcers, Vin Scully and then Mel Allen, tried to disguise the fact that the fall classic was laying an egg by supplying me with a steady stream of boilerplate news. A dandruff of exclamation points fell on my shoulders as I learned that Dick Trushefsky and an umpire named Joe Paparella came from the same hometown,

that Tommy Davis was the youngest batter to win the NL batting championship two years running, that Al Downing had been 12 years old when Jim Gillum played in his first World Series, and that the Dodgers' Ron Paranowski and the Red Sox' Dick Raddatz had both attended Michigan State. There was still another non-news flash from Al Allen, but his peroration, something that means nothing but is nonetheless interesting, was so arrestingly metaphysical that I didn't catch the rest of the message. So there you go.

Thought the town was going to be War Road, Minnesota. Yeah. Well, Roger Angel, 1963, ripping on Vin Scully for unfun fun facts. Mostly ripping on Mel Allen for unfun fun facts. Yeah. All right. All right. So I wanted to talk about the Diamondbacks and the Twins,

who both hired new general managers for this offseason and who have both made, you know, sort of their first big moves. The front offices have made sort of their first big moves as front offices. But what I really wanted to ask you was about the process. If you were hiring for these jobs, if you were the person in charge of hiring a general manager or a president of baseball operations or whatever Derek Falvey is called, what you would ask, what your questions would be in an interview for each of those teams, what would be particularly relevant to know for each of those teams. And then we'll talk about that. And then we'll talk about the trades or the moves

that they made. But first, I guess the question is, would, before you give any interview questions that you would ask, would they be different for each of these teams? Probably not. I don't really think so. I mean, maybe if I thought there was like something special about the culture of that team that you really had to know and get along with. Well, yeah, you know the teams. Do you think there is something about the culture of these teams that you really have to know and get along with? Yeah, I mean, it seems like there has been over the last several years. I don't know whether that will change now that they are hiring new people, that they have hired new people. But yeah, I mean, the Twins have had the same people there forever and the Diamondbacks have been the Diamondbacks.

been the Diamondbacks. So if I were bringing someone into the same regime, I guess I might ask, hey, how do you feel about working with the same people for the next 30 years? Or how do you feel about drilling guys? Because we got to drill some guys. I said not to give the questions. Yeah. All right. Well, something of that nature. But yeah, in these situations, I don't know that I would ask anything because I probably wouldn't want to scare off the potential candidates by making it sound as if they have to conform to a certain way of doing things. Do you think either of these teams was in a position where they had to worry about scaring off potential candidates? Yeah, I would think so. I mean, well, Tearing off potential candidates?

Yeah, I would think so. I mean, well, the Diamondbacks, depending on La Russa's role, probably, in that he was hanging around. And so I'm sure that Hazen and anyone else who interviewed would have had to get some assurance that he wasn't going to interfere. He wasn't going to outrank them and that they weren't going to continue to have the problems that they have had under the previous regime. Or, you know, maybe the sort of meddlesome ownership in Arizona also. And with the twins, I don't know, I guess I would want to know if I really had the freedom to clean house if I decided that that was the best way to go, given how reluctant they've been to make changes. So yeah, I would think, you know, both not unattractive positions, but some reservations, I would think, coming into either job.

If you were a prospective GM and two clubs were offering you a job and there was nothing to separate them except one club had Tony La Russa and the other did not, would you consider Tony La Russa's presence to be a strength or a warning? Probably a warning. I mean, if he had always been in a subordinate role, I'm sure Tony Russo is very smart in some ways and could really help you out in a lot of ways. But if I were worried that, you know, he wasn't going to accept my authority or he was going to be butting in all the time, then it would probably be a negative for me. Okay. All right. Give me, so then let's figure out, you only get three questions. We'll say team unspecific. What would you ask? I feel like we talked about this once a long time ago, but I don't remember what I said.

I'd like to think that you've been learning since then too, that we're a lifelong student, that you aren't simply the same person that you were three years ago when AJ Preller was hired or whatever? Well, I think probably a non-team specific question. I'd probably ask, where have we gone wrong? Why are we in this situation now where I am hiring a new general manager? And that might be an enlightening answer for various reasons. I mean, obviously, whoever is doing the interview would maybe have a better firsthand perspective of that than the person being interviewed. But on the other hand, you'd get a sense of that person's context, maybe, and how plugged in he or she is to the game and how much they sort of know what the scuttlebutt is in baseball front offices and how much they know about your team's operations. And then you'd also see how they would critique the way that the team has been built and moves that were wrong or philosophies that were

wrong. Of course, it's easier to second guess and say all that in hindsight, but I think that would still be an answer that would probably reveal a lot about the candidate. Okay. And then I guess you would want the forward looking question, right? If you just have three questions, which obviously you don't, but I do right now, you'd want to know where you think the team is in its competitive cycle, how it's positioned for the future. Are you going to start rebuilding my ball club or are you thinking that we're ready to compete? Obviously, you know, the answers could be very different for the Dimebacks and the Twins, but they're two teams that seem to have enough talent around that they are not embarking on a rebuilding right now. But I mean, that is probably

the single most revealing question, right? Because it tells you how that person evaluates your entire organization and basically what the plan will be as soon as that person starts. So I can't think of a better question than that. And for a last question, I don't know. I don't have a great third one. I'd have to think about it a bit. But let me propose one for a third, and then we can move on to the next stage of this. For the third, how about what would you do in the first 100 days with this organization? Yeah, sure. You probably covered some of that, at least in the answer to question two.

Maybe, although I don't know that that's totally... I mean, if you're thinking broadly, for instance, you know, the first hundred days for the Twins might be hire 25 new minor league coaches or something like that. Your answer for the Diamondbacks might be find a really important secret assignment

for Tony La Russa in Europe. Maybe. All right, so we're going to say these are the three questions. One, where did we go wrong that we need a new GM? Two, what is the first year you expect us to be a favorite in the division? Okay. Does that seem fair? Yeah. Okay. And third is first 100 days. Sure. All right. So then let's answer these briefly. We don't have to go into a lot of detail. This could be lightning round if you want, or you can go into more depth, but pick a team and you can answer one and then I'll answer the other one.

Okay. I'll take the twins. All right. Ben, where did we go wrong that we need a new GM right now? that we need a new GM right now? I'd probably start with the continuity over the years and how that seemed to make the Twins slow to be on the forefront of various baseball movements. You know, there have been a bunch of articles written

about how the Twins have been the worst pitch framing team over the last several years. And now the first move that Falvey makes is signing Jason Castro, who's a pretty good pitch framer. So it seems like that was just a kind of low hanging fruit that he could do almost on day one and correct this very glaring weakness that the twins have had for years now. And that is maybe a symptom of just how little turnover, how little new blood there has been. Of course, I don't know that you should just bring in new blood for new blood's sake if you're doing well.

And continuity is a word that normally a business would— A positive, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I would say, you know, got a little complacent, didn't take your continuing education courses in baseball analysis and just had some strange lack of synergy on your roster between your no strikeout pitching staff forever, which is just another seemingly obvious example of a place where they went wrong and your

poor defense and pairing that with a no strikeout pitching staff. So there's a, where did they go? Right. Is maybe a shorter answer. It really is hard to, yeah, there's, you could talk for a long time because you just named most of the things about a baseball team. Why do you think it is that they paired no strikeouts with bad defense? Like that? I don't know. That seems like, like it's, you don't have to be playing, to be playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers to figure out that these two parts of your team are somewhat related and that you can sacrifice one if the other helps you cover that up. But these are two areas that it seemed like they really didn't see as related at all. areas that it seemed like they really didn't see as related at all? No, no one could figure that out. So I'd love to hear their answer, unless it's just being bad at evaluating defense. But

even so, I mean, just traditional methods of evaluating defense probably would have tagged them as a pretty poor defensive team. So it's a mystery. And this is the team that also had Ryan Domet catching, you know, for a while, and that had Kurt Suzuki, who has been, you know, who has positives as a catcher, but is one of the worst framers, has been one of the worst framers. Do you think that a good framing catcher is more important if you are a pitch to contact team, a finesse team or a strikeout team? I think more important. You think more important because you're like on the edges more. Yeah. And trying to get called strikes more. Whereas on the other hand, there's going to be fewer pitches that are called by the umpire.

Yeah. Partly because you're probably going to throw fewer pitches. Partly because there's going to be a lot more contact made on those pitches. Okay. Okay. All right. How long until the Twins should plan to be favorites in their division? Or at least, you know, at their peak?

Yeah. I'd say pretty soon, like 2018 even would be a realistic expectation. Okay. You do? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That. Yeah. That's what I would say in my interview, I think.

I mean, and I think I'd believe it too. You know, they have the young, talented core and the ways in which they were bad were just so inexplicable that it seems like you could get up to speed fairly quickly by just correcting those obvious oversights. They have the young, talented core, but it's not like any of the young talented core has fully manifested at this point. It's not like you've seen, okay, well, we've seen what the core looks like when it's clicking and now we just have to fill in the parts.

Like there's still a lot of development or there's still progress that needs to be made before you can even say, oh, yeah, this is that core. I mean, the Padres had that core. It was just in double and triple A and it never became anything. Right. And I don't know. The twins are sort of in between, I think, in that sense that you don't get the feeling that, well, at least we know for a fact that in 2018, we're going to have three stars and an ace. Yes.

Right. But Byron Buxton looked pretty good there at the end. So yeah, okay. All right. And lastly, your first 100 days, what do you do in your first 100 days? Where do you focus as a organizational leader? I think probably focusing on getting some pitchers who strike guys out. I mean, you know, if you're actually there, then you have to worry about like who works for you and everything, which is a pretty important thing that you have to straighten out immediately. So realistically in your first hundred days, you're probably going to be just getting a sense of everyone at every level and interviewing them and talking to them and figuring out which ones to replace and how to replace them and that, that sort of thing. But other than that, I think probably just getting some guys who strike people out

just seems like something that wouldn't be that hard and would be the biggest gain you could make over one offseason. When Jerry DiPoto took over the Angels, I think basically one guy on the masthead survived and the rest of the front office was turned over. And I believe, I think in the first year, I might be getting the details slightly wrong here, but I think in the first year, like half of the minor league coaching staff was either replaced or put into new roles. Would you promise something like that if you were to take over as the twins general manager? I don't think I would want to be nailed down to doing anything specific. I mean, I might

get there and find out that I loved everyone and it was not their fault all along. So I would want to, I think, prepare the owner or whoever I was talking to for a possible bloodletting. But I don't know that I would commit ahead of time to firing everyone or firing no one. Okay. All right. Now you ask me. Okay. So I'm doing the Diamondbacks now?

Yeah. Okay. So where did we go wrong? Why am I interviewing you right now? on what they know. And that has led to a sort of insularity of thinking. It has led to trades that didn't reflect the rest of the marketplace that cost the team opportunities to get more value when they had things to trade that led them to invest in players who a sort of more humble person might have thought weren't as valuable as they had determined that they were. I think this has been a problem with the last two general managers, even though

each of them might have had strengths. And certainly Kevin Towers has had success all throughout the game. But in a lot of individual moves and in an overall mindset, there seemed to be a reluctance to learning from the rest of the league and in an overall mindset, there seemed to be a reluctance to learning from the rest of the league and from taking the temperature of the rest of the league. And I think that that probably also shows up in the levels above the general manager as well. I think that it is organizational and starts at the top. So that is where I think you went wrong. Starts at the top? You mean me? I do mean you. Yeah. I think that-

How dare you? Get out of my office. I think that the ownership of a team and the executive levels of a team need to know their areas of strength and need to be able to hand over baseball operations to the people that were hired to run baseball operations. All right. I don't know if I like the sound of that. I don't know if I want to work for you. All right.

Next question. When are we going to be good again? When are you going to be good again? Well, I think that there is not a huge vacuum on this roster at this point. And with a few moves, it would be easy to see 2017 as a bridge year, but I'm not sure that I see where the bridge is going to. I don't think that there is a necessarily a long-term outlook toward 95 wins anywhere here. And right now you get to choose whether you want to be competent and competitive for a few years or whether you actually ever want to overtake this

behemoth that is the Los Angeles Dodgers. At this point, I would probably be patient with things and I would not expect to be a preseason favorite until 2019 at the earliest, but I think you can still field a competitive team in that time and look at 2017 and 2018 as limbo years where when opportunities come up to make trades or to invest in the long-term future, you take them somewhat like maybe like the Yankees have done, but without radically reimagining this team's outlook in the short term. All right. Impressive answer, except you said bohemoth, so I can't hire you. What is it? Behemoth? Yes.

Behemoth. It's a schwa for the E. Behemoth. There's no O, is there? Well, there's just the O at the end. Yeah. I'll E's otherwise. Behemoth. You're right. Yeah. Good. Thank you.

I'll let that slide. And last question, first hundred days, what will you be doing? That's a good question. I think that if I can, I'd like to cash out Gene Segura for some young pitching. I actually, I think that that's a, that, well, we can maybe transition that. But in terms of organization as a whole, I think a lot of the, it's interesting because a lot of the people in that organization, you know, up and down actually come from, well, a lot of them are still there from the Josh Burns era and they've been through a lot of GMs. And so I think that to some degree, it's not like the twins where you can say, well, these guys had their chance and we need a new culture. I sort of feel for the people who have staffed the Diamondbacks as an organization because they've gone through so many different front offices that have had so many different philosophies in the last seven years or so.

And to some degree, I think that might be a strength that you have, you might have a staff that's very versatile, agile, incorporates some of these philosophies that maybe were not implemented properly, but still have a lot to add. And so I would probably look at myself as taking over a ship and not rebuilding a ship. So I don't think I would do much from a personnel, human resources standpoint. What has value on this team? I mean, I don't know that, I don't know, I don't know. I feel like you should have prepped for this interview a little more. Yeah, you're right.

I thought I might have gotten the twins. I thought I was going to the twins. I wore my lucky dress. Did you watch the Gilmore Girls? No, not yet. Oh, all right. Well, that's a Gilmore Girls reference. Yeah, I don't know.

I think that I, I don't know. It's tough because I just said that I don't want to radically reimagine the team's short-term future. But there are players like Segura, because I'm doing this interview a month ago, and that I think are maybe at peak value. And there are players like Granke and maybe arguably Tomas, who I think are good enough to contribute to a decent team right now, or even a very good team in Granke's case, but that I think that I don't really want to be paying for them right now. And I don't really necessarily see them as being at their peak in 2019 or 2020. So I think that I might be quiet. I think this might be like my, what, the Brewers from like two seasons ago,

two off seasons ago, I think it was, when they just sort of didn't do anything. They held on to everything and then they were just there when a thing opened up. Yeah, I want one of those Diamondbacks employees to write a book. I don't as the Diamondbacks owner, but Ben does. That'd be a fun book. Yeah. All right. So then let's talk about Castro and let's talk about the Segura trade.

We'll start with the Segura trade. I think this is a very good trade for the Diamondbacks. I also think that to some degree, it's amazing to me how like Gene Segura was awesome last year. And there is a feeling like the Mariners, I think there's a feeling like the Mariners lost this trade because we all know Segura isn't that good. But he was really good last year. A middle infielder, you know, who hits eight home runs on the road, who hits 20 home runs overall, who has an 850 OPS on the road, who has a reputation of being a good defender, who is, you know, fast and versatile, is a player who, for most of our history, we've just been able to accept that, even if it was only for one year. And I think that

it's right to expect some regression for Segura. I also think it's perfectly acceptable for the Mariners to go, well, this is a player who took a big leap forward. I mean, he never had this sort of power before. He has developed this power without any obvious decline in his other skills. He's peaking and he's going to be a very good player. And you give up quite a bit for that. And it seems like from the Mariners perspective, Tywon Walker has stagnated a little bit that, you know, maybe you could imagine that one more kind of half year like he just had and his value would plummet further. This was the last time to cash him out and get a star player without having to go deep into your farm system to get that star player seems like a reasonable way of getting better next year without costing yourself too much. It might not make them better next year. I imagine that when Pakoda comes out, that Walker will project to be better than

Segura all on his own. And then you've got the other, you know, you've got more to the deal than that. You've got the money and you've got the years and you've got everything like that. But I don't hate it from the Mariners perspective. And I've seen some hating on it from the Mariners perspective. But it seems like a really good move for the Diamondbacks. They have a pretty good rotation set up for the next three years. It seems like the hardest things to fill if you're a team that's either on the brink of being good or a team that's

rebuilding are a starting shortstop and five good starting pitchers. And they've got the five good starting pitchers right now. And while they trade Segura, who on many teams would probably be that good starting shortstop, for them, he was only a part-time shortstop. But they get Marte, who is, I don't know, at least interesting and keeps them from being in a position where, you know, a Pete Cosma is their shortstop. And that's an area of, you know, a relatively low, sorry, a relatively high floor for them right now anyway. So I don't know. I like it. I like the move.

What do you? Yeah, I like it too. My initial reaction on seeing it was very positive for the Diamondbacks. And when I dug into it a little more, it didn't change a whole lot. I agree. I don't think it's a disaster for Seattle or anything. And maybe I'm higher on Tywin Walker than I should be. I still sort of believe in him and think he's going to be good. And I could be wrong about that. going to be good. And I could be wrong about that. And there is a way that you can interpret Segura's career as Joshian wrote. You know, he had a family tragedy and that may have affected him for quite some time. And you could say, well, maybe he bounced back and he's just actually really good now. But I think there's no way to forecast him to be as good as he was last year. And yeah, I basically agree. I think you're trusting Hanager to turn into something which seems like a long shot. I mean, he really didn't have the minor league performance that would typically suggest that

that guy would be great. So I agree. I think there's a much higher upside on arizona's side of the deal and possibly a higher floor too or at least the same floor so agreed yeah it's hanager i i'm sort of baffled by the attention to hanager i should probably listen to the people who are giving him more attention but he barely even seems like a guy you name in the trade write-up to me. So, I mean, he's a, what, 26-year-old minor leaguer who's hit for a couple months in Reno.

Mm-hmm. Feels weird to me. So the Diamondbacks right now have a rotation of Robbie Ray, Zach Granke, Tywon Walker, Patrick Corbin, and then some combination of Archie Bradley, Shelby Miller, Ruby De La Rosa. Does this make it more likely that Shelby Miller gets traded? Does Shelby Miller make the rotation? I think the fact that there was a regime change, so now you can trade Shelby Miller without his failure. Without admitting defeat. Yeah, right.

So yeah, I think so. I mean, it's still a guy that you might like to have come back and look like an actual major league pitcher, even if it's just in spring training, so that you could get more value for him. But yeah, I mean, I could see either way. So that rotation that I just named, the best ERA of anybody I named, and also I could add Braden Shipley, the best ERA of anybody last year was 4.26, De La Rosa. And all of them, you know, were basically like Ray's ERA plus was 89, Corbin's was 85, Bradley's was 87, Shipley's was 84, and Walker's was I think 93 or something like that.

Do you think that this is an above average rotation, though? I mean, I know that it'll be easy to say, well, they have a lot of upside, there's a rotation with a lot of upside. And that if you had a competent defense behind them, a lot of these ERAs would be a lot better. Do you think in the aggregate, this is a rotation that we talk up in the days leading up to the season as potentially one of the very best in the league? Or is there a sort of a distressing amount of recent failure on it? Yeah, it's not anywhere near the upper echelons of super rotations that we've seen in recent years, but it's pretty strong. Maybe you could even, could you make the case that it's the best in

the division? Maybe you can make that case. So yeah, I mean, it's an asset, but I won't be marveling at it, I don't think. Okay. All right. Jason Castro, three years to the Twins. This is a move that it seems like the old Twins regime would have also made, but for like Kurt Suzuki reasons. would have also made, but for like Kurt Suzuki reasons, like this is the rare deal where you could totally imagine any GM making it for any number of reasons. And yet the consensus seems

to also be that no GM should have made it. Do you accept that his framing value is great and that he is a great framing catcher and that great framing catchers are worth three-year, $24 million or whatever contracts? Yeah, generally. I mean, I think Jeff Sullivan has pointed out that there seems to be less and less variation among teams in framing every year, and partially that's because the worst teams keep getting someone competent, and that's what this is. So if the Twins didn't have someone competent in-'s what this is so if the twins didn't have someone competent in-house then this seems like a good solution and his framing values according to bp have been pretty consistently well above average for the past few years seems

like something he's good at i think a lot of us still sort of think of that year when he was really great and he hit really well too. And so maybe he, that was, you know, 2013. So that's a while ago now and wouldn't really expect it to come back. He's been a pretty lousy hitter for three seasons now, but if you go by BP's stats, he's still been about an average player each of those years anyway, and he's getting paid a perfectly reasonable amount for an average player. And the Twins seem like they need an average player at that position more than most teams. So it seems like a nice little stopgap. Dave Cameron pointed out that he thinks that the value of framing is possibly in jeopardy because the strike zone is possibly going to be kind of readjusted upward and that all these low strikes

that Castro has been making his warp out of might not be possible anymore. If you were a team, would you be nervous about investing three years in what is essentially a fluctuating strike zone that you don't know how it's going to fluctuate he is, then I would say that might worry me. Like, you know, Luke Roy in the past has been that guy. There have been other guys who are good at framing pitches in some specific area, and so if you're taking away that area, that might concern me. I don't know if he's that guy, but I don't think the fact that the strike zone is getting adjusted or might be getting adjusted means that framing isn't still valuable so right because the whether the whether the strike zone is the size of a pomegranate or you know much larger there's a pomegranate right in front of me okay handy right here yeah but there's not unfortunately there's not anything

bigger than a pomegranate. So that's why I couldn't come up with the end of that sentence. Orange juicer. The zone of uncertainty wouldn't necessarily change, right? No matter how big the strike zone is, the umpire's limitations in determining whether it is on or not on a line would be consistent. It seems possibly to me. Now there might be the bigger the strike zone, maybe the less you have to go to the edges and maybe the, the more that you can, I don't know the,

the less the marginal value of a gain strike might be potentially mathematically, but if they adjust the strike zone, one inch outside the strike zone is always one inch outside the strike zone. Although I guess technically it's not. If the perimeter of the zone shrinks, then the perimeter of one inch outside the zone would also technically shrink.

The total area of the disputed margin would be smaller. So maybe it's, maybe that's not true. I'm sad about this trade because I remember in 2014, I could only find two players who had their team name in their name, Jason Castro and Alfredo Simone. And now neither one of them is on their team. And so I have to go looking again. Sorry about that. I know. All right. I think that's all. So do you want to put like, I don't want to ask you to put a grade on it. I don't want to ask you winner and loser. I guess I would say if you are the boss who just hired the Diamondbacks GM, me, how are

you feeling about me right now? And if you are the boss who hired the Twins GM, you, how are you feeling right now? Feeling good about both. Feeling good. Feeling good about both feeling good feeling good about both all right yep good what if you're the guy who hired the Mariners GM less good yeah yeah less good but yeah not not a not not time to reevaluate him I don't think yet but probably not quite all right all right so that will do it for today you can support the podcast on patreon by going to

patreon.com slash effectively wild. Today's five listeners who have already done so. John Wybie, Keith Rader, Tom Lasko, Annie Maroon, and Nicholas Shaw. Thank you. You can buy our book, The Only Rule Is It Has To Work, our wild experiment building new kind of baseball team. Go to the website at theonlyrulesithastowork.com for more information. And please leave us a review on Amazon and Goodreads if you like it you can join our facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and you can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on itunes get the discounted price

of 30 on a one-year subscription to the play index at baseball reference.com using the coupon code bp you can contact me and sam at podcast at baseball prospectus.com or by messaging us through patreon please do so because we'll have the listener email show coming up we'll talk to you soon yes I'm good I'm good I'm good

I'm good I'm good I'm good