Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 983: The Non-Endless-Lockout Edition

Episode Date: December 2, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about an endless lockout and an A.J. Ellis rumor, then answer listener emails about odd MVP votes in Japan, peak Pedro vs. peak Koufax, what they would bid for Charley Kershaw’s baseball career, and mo

I was right in the fire, I was on my knees, peace signs Take it back, I felt no wrong views I had nothing to do, I was so you, peace sign, I was already you Peace sign, I was already you Peace sign, I was already you Peace and I was already you Hello and welcome to episode 983 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus 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 I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined as always by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello. Hello. So as we record this, we've just learned that there will be baseball next year and for the four years after that. So that's good for people who like baseball. Did you have any stress in your life over this? No. Not at all. I mean, even if there had been some sort of delay, we're nowhere near the season and it seemed very unlikely that there would be actual games canceled. So I don't know. I was sort of surprised that people were kind of pushing the story that there might be a risk at all. We'd heard for so long that it was just going to be smooth sailing and no one was going to want to jeopardize the prosperity on both sides. And then suddenly reputable reporters were

writing stories about how maybe that wasn't the case and maybe there wasn't going to be a deal. And I don't know, I certainly don't think that someone like Ken Rosenthal or Buster Olney or experienced people like that would just sort of allow themselves to be played by one side or the other trying to take a harder line in the negotiations. But I don't know. It just always seemed very far-fetched that there would be any real risk. I also see that the Astros and Norie Aoki managed to avoid arbitration. That's big, big news. How nervous were you about that?

I did have some anxiety about that. Yeah. I'm always happy when a team appreciates an area. Okay. Yeah. So that's good. Anyway, that's good. I certainly don't want there to stop being, being baseball. No, that would be awkward. How long, how long could you write about baseball for a living if they were on um sort of work stoppage without end how long do you think until your editor said how about not any more baseball yeah i don't know i'd be i'd be happy doing my non-baseball stuff all the time i think but i if i actually had to write all baseball i could. Like how long would baseball prospectus exist if the game just stopped being played? And they never said we're done.

They never said we're done. It's not like the league is out of business. Players are still like, you know, theoretically tweeting and in the public eye and kids are still playing baseball. The Stompers are still winning championships and so on. The Stompers are still winning championships and so on. But every major leaguer is on strike or locked out for indefinitely. How long does baseball prospectus survive?

Two years? That seems maybe a little long to me. But not too long. I think that's close. I probably would go like a year and eight months maybe. And how long would I survive? You'd transition to full-time minor league coverage right would there still be minor leagues would there still be games going on professional games i mean i guess there would be i guess there would be and you'd still assume that baseball was going to come back sometime soon so you'd just devote all your resources to covering prospects and people would pay

attention to the miners more than they do usually because it would be the the best game in town so i think you could keep it going for a couple years plus you'd have reporting about the deadlocked negotiations and you'd have historical retrospective pieces you could really dig into that 2016 data into in a way that you normally wouldn't be able to. Okay, so you got two years then. What about how long would—let's say that I saw this coming, and I decided I'm going to transition into writing baseball history. Maybe it'll be like a biography of Barry Bonds, or maybe it'll be a biography of Branch Rickey,

or maybe it'll be something about walk-off triples throughout the game's history or whatever. But I continue to write about baseball as a past tense thing. I'm not even trying to make it applicable to Josh Harrison's contract status. I'm just writing about baseball as a past tense. How long until people quit reading those things? Quit like until you cannot sell a biography of Ty Cobb anymore. Like even Jane Levy can't sell a biography of Bob Feller anymore. Yeah, well, initially there'd probably be an uptick of interest, right?

Because there's no new baseball going on, so let's read about old baseball, I would think. I mean, baseball fans will be craving baseball, and that's the only way they can get it. So I would say that for a while you might do even better, or I don't know, not better, but you could keep going. But then, yeah, there would come a point where it became clear that baseball was just over. And that, I think, would make old baseball somehow seem insignificant, right? So, I mean, you know, I'm sure there would be baseball books for a really long time just as a historical, cultural artifact. But I think probably, i don't know it

would just uh 35 years yeah i guess so like would my daughter be getting me uh jim tommy biographies for father's day in 2052 i think not i mean there would be like a whole cottage industry of this is how baseball ended books and that could go on for years. Sure. But the previous baseball, yeah, I think you might get 15 years out of that. Would you like to collaborate on a Jim Tomey biography with me? That sounds amazing. You know about Jim Tomey's family, right? I don't. So Jim Tomey biography with me? That sounds amazing. You know about Jim Tomey's family, right? I don't. So Jim Tomey's got a very large family of athletes. They're all slow-pitch softball legends.

And he's from Peoria. And all of his family members, there's like five Tomes in the Peoria Sports Hall of Fame. But Jim is not. Even still, I just checked like three weeks ago to see if he had been inducted yet, and Jim is still... Is he not eligible yet? He might not be eligible, but yeah, like his dad is like an all-time slow pitch.

Maybe not slow pitch. I can't remember. I was very... Back when I was doing the annotated box score, I somehow got very knowledgeable about Jim tommy's genealogy but uh yeah he comes from a family of uh of sluggers uh-huh yeah well sure that'd be fun we could we could do that in year eight without baseball that'd probably be a big one uh who who's gonna be the best biography from this era 30 years from now?

Who will Jane Levy write about in 30 years? I wonder if Mike Trout will have said an interesting sentence by then. I don't think so. I mean, the problem is that these guys are so well covered. She wrote about Mantle, so she should take on the Trout geography. But yeah, he's not quite the carouser that Mickey Mantle was. Yeah, how do you find... The problem is that actually...

Unless he secretly is. Well, here's the thing. There's a secret side to trout. So this is the problem, is that if you're graphing biographability, you've got on the x-axis, you've got... I don't even know if this is the proper use of x and y axes but you've got uh how much is still unknown about the player right that is that is the news that you're going to be

able to break like how carrie fisher was able to break the news that she had an affair with harrison ford and that is what she has to offer to a publisher and so if you're a biographer trying to write about somebody 40 years later uh you want to have some news that you can break to the public. So that has to be unreported, but it also has to be accessible. And unless the player is giving it to you, players these days are much more guarded. And so I don't think that you have the same way that like, I think everybody in the press box in the fifties knew everything Mickey Mantle was doing, and they weren't reporting it. And so you've got this goldmine of unreported information that lots of people know. And the way it is now is everything gets reported, except for also nobody knows anything. So you've got every word that Mike Trout has ever said in public is easy to find. And probably there's a video of it on MLB.com. But nobody knows the dirt.

Nobody knows the good stuff anymore. Even secretly, even off the record. Nobody's drinking with Mike. No reporters are drinking with Mike Trout, who probably doesn't drink. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's a good point. So in theory, there should be more interesting stories that come to light. And I won't be able to tell you right now whose stories they'll be because we have no idea. would like to but uh bonds with uh a few decades of historical perspective will be i think an all-timer i i would probably read it i think that even even the decade since jeff wrote his probably

has been useful looser lips more people out of the game yep all right uh can i tell you two things things. Sure. One is I found an old tweet of mine. Okay. I've tormented him. I found an old tweet of mine about how Garrett Jones was nicknamed Bam Bam. And somehow this did not make it into my Bam Bam article, which came after the tweet. Huh? So yeah, I missed an opportunity to have one more letter sent from Winston Beauregard. I love that piece. Secondly, there was a tweet rumor, I guess, that was summed up by Rotoworld. Mutual interest between Philz and AJ Ellis. And I wanted to just see what your thoughts were on that. It seems really weird that this team, there's 30 teams and there's 800 players. And the Phillies did

not take AJ Ellis because they had a pre-existing affection for AJ Ellis. They took him because the Dodgers needed to get a guy off the roster. That's it. The Phillies were not competing last year. They knew he was a free agent. They just had to take somebody so that the Dodgers could make the trade. And that somebody was AJ Ellis, who went kicking and screaming. And it just seems like a coincidence beyond belief that they would also happen to want to re-up this for many years now or for even one year now. Doesn't it seem really unlikely? There is no reason that AJ Ellis should want to be a Philly and no reason that the Phillies should want AJ Ellis beyond the

fact that there are now like a month and a half, there's a month and a half of familiarity between them. Is that really all it takes for the human brain to choose against the unknown? Is, well, I've spent a month and a half in a Philly hotel. I think this is where I want to be. Well, he slugged 500 as a Philly. Oh, so maybe that's it. Do you think it's that the Phillies have a recency bias here? Maybe, maybe, maybe he thinks he's a good hitter if he's a Philly. I don't know. Maybe that increased the sort of positive associations that both sides had about their brief time together. And I mean, I guess for a young team with a young pitching staff and young catchers or a young catcher, I don't know.

Maybe it makes sense to have someone like that, but I don't know. Isn't everyone interested in AJ Ellis? Everyone loves AJ Ellis. So maybe just being around him for a month and a half is enough for his whatever it is to take effect and for you to fall under his sway so huh so you're saying anybody that got him would like that you're saying that this is the nature of intangibles that until you are around them you can't possibly appreciate them and so whichever team he is not with is going to almost by definition underrate him. And whichever team he is with is going to be the one that can see this wonderful thing that he brings. So that

really on any given day, there are only two teams that could possibly have mutual interest in AJ Ellis being those two teams that he has played for. Yeah. Or, you know, unless there are team teammates, former teammates of aj ellis who can testify to how great he is to be around but but yeah he's only ever been with the dodgers and phillies so maybe no one else knows just exactly how wonderful it is like like this headline despite catching depth bringing back aj ellis would make, which is like, what if he hadn't, if he'd been traded to the Tigers, do you think that Comcast Sportsnet Philadelphia would have written, despite catching depth, bringing in AJ Ellis would make sense?

Probably. Well, if it's like a kind of a team on the rise, he seems like the sort of guy that you write an article about how it's helpful to have that sort of guy around i mean like all all the phillies pitchers are in their 20s and pretty pretty new to baseball so i would think that that's the kind of guy that you would at least write that article about i don't know whether it makes sense but yeah all right yeah withdrawn then okay all right so uh maybe we'll talk about cba details later in the week. It's a little too soon to do that since the dust is still settling and seeing a bunch of kind of contradictory tweets. It does sound like draft pick compensation has survived in some form, unfortunately. I'm sure you would have liked to see it go completely. It's the worst. It's the stupidest rule, Ben. It keeps getting rolled back and picked apart bit by bit. So one of these CBAs, probably. All right.

So we're going to do some emails. So let's start with one that's just something that a listener wanted to bring to our attention. Kaz Yamazaki says, I've got something for you guys to banter about. In 2014 Central League MVP voting, that's in NPB Japan, Yomiuri Giants pinch running specialist Takahiro Suzuki, he of the 25 plate appearances in 69 games that season, got a total of 20 ballots,

including three first place ones, in order to finish 10th in the MVP voting with 40 points ahead of Kenta Maeda, who had 6.2 wins above replacement. In NPB, the voters named three names on the ballot, of which first place gets five points, second gets three, and third gets one. The consensus was that Suzuki's late-inning base running helped Yomiuri win many games to finish atop the league seven games ahead of the second place Hanshin Tigers. I saw multiple writers with years of experience covering the game stating that. It's by the way, it's only writers with multiple years in the game cover and multiple years covering the game that would ever say that.

Yeah, that's right. If you were new to baseball, you would say this is crazy. I am getting there myself, in fact. yeah that's right if you if you were new to baseball you might say this is crazy i i am i am getting there myself in fact like i i am finding myself increasingly drawn to opinions like that so it it just is the nature of uh of seeing the same things over and over and wanting to see something new and make a lot out of it though Though he went 11 for 13 in steal attempts, he was, of course, far from qualified to even be considered an MVP candidate. How would the American stat head community have reacted to that vote?

I wrote a piece arguing for Don Kelly to be the MVP one year. What was the rationale for that? I did your, it was your plausible hot take MVPs. And I had, if you didn't want to vote for the obvious MVP in whatever league you were in, I gave you plausible alternatives, which by the end devolved into Don Kelly because the Tigers had like a 680 winning percentage when he played. He played like 100 games and they had this insane winning percentage when he played and otherwise they did not. So where are we going with this? So how would the American community have reacted

if this player had existed and finished with first place MVP votes. I mean, it doesn't even seem like 11th or 13th. It's not even that good. He did hit 350 with a 480 on base percentage. I wonder if that part played a part of it, a part in it. But yeah, I mean, he pinch ran either, assuming he pinch ran all of these times and wasn't a defensive replacement. He pinch ran 44 of these times and wasn't a defensive replacement, he pinch ran 44-ish times, maybe a couple more if he stayed in.

And he only stole 11 bases. He was caught twice, which just knowing those two things, his stolen base running added would be basically zero, unless the were just throwaways uh that didn't matter for the context at all i mean who is the who would be a comparable mvp candidate and let's get away from the pinch running uh but like like a loogie who Played on a good winning team And well I don't know and like came in at Important times or something and

I can't even Don Kelly it would literally be Don Kelly like played a lot of positions Pinch hit off the bench Good clubhouse guy Leland liked him Swiss army knife hardly ever started like that would be kind of comparable bad stats uh yeah in doing it it's a it's amazing

what i wonder if he was so what's going on here this has to be what's going on here ben i don't i don't know i mean is it it's not a it could it it's not a lifetime achievement thing because he he wasn't he wasn't that good right like he wasn't he had played for a while he played for a while but he wasn't he was 36 it wasn't an extremely distinguished career no he'd been around since 2002 and this was 2014 so quite a while but he was not ever good. Was he always in this role? I mean, he always stole a lot of bases. So lifetime, he had... He was a starter when he was 28.

He played normally. Yeah, lifetime, he had 228 steals and only 47 caught stealings. I mean, that's very good. If you look at his games and plate appearances yeah like 26 years old 57 games 59 plate appearances and then he had two years where when he played he played and then he basically goes 96 games 124 plate appearances so bench guy maybe more pinch hitter but maybe both and then 61 and 26 yeah so like 2010, he was the exact same role. 61 games, 26 played appearances. 2012, exact same role.

91 games, 21 played appearances. Basically the same stolen base rates in those seasons. I was going to suggest, I was reading in the Bill James Historical Abstract about the development of relief aces and how there was a point earlier than you and I have acknowledged when relief aces became a thing that every team had to have. And in some cases, even good pitchers were used as relief aces. And there was definitely a time in that era where they were getting crazy MVP votes in some cases

presumably because it was this new role it seemed highly leveraged it seemed very exciting at the end of the game when you have to you know when you're when your lead is hinging on whether this guy can can get the final three outs uh it seems very important and it was new it was novel you didn't realize that there were a million people who could do it because there hadn't been anybody who had done it before. And so I was going to suggest that maybe this was that, that Suzuki represented a new strategy that felt very exciting to see in play and that you remembered the ways that it worked and they talked it up. But he's been doing this for years. Yeah, it's a weird one.

He's been doing this for years. Yeah. It's a weird one. The only thing different about this year, maybe Yomiuri just, maybe this is the only year they won, but the only thing different is otherwise that in his plate appearances, his 25 plate appearances, he hit.350 with a.480 on base percentage. And I wonder whether that's what it was.

Doesn't Yomiuri always win? They're like the Yankees of Japan. Like the year before, they were even better than they were in 2014. So I don't know. Must have been a great clubhouse guy. Huh. Weird. Yeah. And he also, Kaz pointed out in the Facebook group that there was one weird outlier vote

in this year's MVP voting. Of course, Shohei Otani in this year's MVP voting. Of course, Shohei Otani won the Pacific League MVP award, and he missed being a unanimous selection by one vote because someone thought that Naoki Miyanishi, a lefty reliever, was more valuable. And Miyanishi actually had a really good year for a lefty reliever. He had a 1-5-2 ERA in 47 innings. But obviously, Otani is amazing. But that's just one weird outlier vote.

There's always one weird outlier vote. What makes the 2014 example so strange is that it was pretty widespread. Three first-place ballots. Ben, we didn't we didn't actually answer the question how would the american stat head community have reacted to that disgust you think disgust not amusement yep i think disgust really yep it's so it's not even trying though like it it is i get what i'm saying is it's not even trying to play by the rules where you can actually like adjudicate it it is one of those it this this vote exists in one of those

dimensions that can only be proven with math and so i don't know how to even be disgusted about it i think you i think it would be more like yeah, no, I was just going to make an analogy to politics, and that has mostly led to people being disgusted. So yeah, I think you're right. All right. Okay, so question from Anthony. He says, it's a second generational dispute. We answered the first one a couple years ago at the holidays about whether Barry Bonds is a bum. So Anthony now needs assistance persuading his dad that Sandy Koufax is not the greatest pitcher of all time. I usually try to win this argument by comparing Koufax to Pedro, as they had similar streaks of dominance, with Pedro being convincingly

better at his peak. My dad rejects any comparison to a pitcher with A, a lesser peak, or B, a normal career length because of Koufax's injuries. So is peak Pedro better than peak Koufax? Or put another way, would Koufax's career match Pedro's if he would have had the advantage of modern medicine? It's almost an axiom of fans from the 60s that Koufax is the greatest ever and had a career shortened by injury. But looking at the numbers, it seems clear to me, a fan of the 90s and 2000s, that Pete Pedro is better than Pete Koufax, meaning, among other things, that even with modern medicine, Koufax would still lag behind Pedro,

assuming modern medicine solved all of his problems and let him pitch a normal career for a superstar. How do I convince my dad of this? He saw Koufax throw like 15 shutouts, his numbers not play indexed, against his beloved Clemente era pirates so stats alone have a hard time doing it and if I recall correctly your answer

to the last question about generational disputes yes you can't actually try to persuade the person of your argument you just have to live your life in such a way that that person will admire you and become convinced that you know what you're talking about. Yeah, but within that, through four against the pirates, by the way, three saves against the pirates.

But it's a little different than with Bonds because there's really nothing rational about finding Bonds to be. I think the original question was like the guy's dad thought Bonds sucked. bonds because there's really nothing rational about finding bonds to be i think this is the original question was like the guy thought the guy's dad thought bonds sucked like he wasn't good at baseball and that like that is a that is a position that has chosen to be irrational uh it's clearly just i i didn't like bonds i'm not gonna go i'm not gonna go there with him i refuse i refuse to even engage with uh him on the terms that he wants me to there with him. I refuse. I refuse to even engage with him on the terms that he wants me to engage with him on. Kovacs and Pedro, I think this is probably pretty common. I think that probably most people in the 60s think that Kovacs was as good as you could get and maybe have never

really thought to do the stat by stat or the really detailed comparison between Sandy Kovacs and Pedro Martinez. And probably the average baseball fan hasn't really either. Like they're both really awesome. And unless you start getting into era adjusted numbers and things of that nature, which most people don't, the overwhelming majority of baseball fans are not doing that. And they have opinions and they might very plausibly be convinced to change their opinion if you present a clear case. And since you have made the case for Pedro over Koufax's descendant, Clayton Kershaw, how would you make the case to somebody

who's maybe only, well, maybe almost entirely unfamiliar with advanced stats, but certainly capable of following along with a well-reasoned argument. Well, so the argument that you could make for Koufax is that he threw 300-something innings in his best seasons. Now, if you go by war, I think Pedro's best war season is still better than Koufax's best war season. But that's a tough argument because, right, I mean, Koufax's last season, he had a 1.73 ERA. And Pedro's best ERA season, he had a 1.74 ERA. So if you're talking to the typical fan, they will say, you know, considering the the era or underrating the effect

of the era they will say well both of those guys were equally good at preventing runs except that pedro pitched 217 innings that year and kofax pitched 323 innings that year and that's an enormous difference obviously so and affects the affects the rate stats In ways that make it hard To hold Koufax to the same standard As Pedro Martinez The change in pitcher usage Means that unlike with hitters There just simply is no stat

That you can use to I don't think I've never felt to compare starting pitchers From era to era because the rate stats Greatly benefit the modern pitcher Even adjusted for league they do For era they do starting pitchers from era to era, because the rate stats greatly benefit the modern pitcher, even adjusted for league they do, for era they do, and the cumulative stats, for the most part, benefit the starting pitcher of the previous era. Yeah, and you could certainly say that if Pedro had been pitching in an era when you had to throw this many innings, maybe he wouldn't have been able to do it. I mean, he broke down at times as it was even being used as a pretty modern pitcher. So I don't know that you

can win this one. I think I would try to point out that even though their best ERAs ever are essentially the same, Pedro was pitching at that you know, at that time, the highest offense era ever in a great division, in a hitter's park, and Kopecs was pitching in a pitcher's park in the 60s when offense was much lower. And I'm sure that Anthony's dad would accept that argument. I'm sure he would acknowledge that those are different environments, but I don't know that he would give that as much credence as I would. Just, you know, like I'm sure he would say, yeah, yeah, that's true. There's something to that, but it doesn't move the needle all that much. Whereas I would say it moves it quite a bit. So I don't know that you can win this one. You could say,

I think, I think you could argue, you could probably convince him that Pedro, at his best, was better on a better per better basis than Koufax was. I think you could probably convince someone from that era of that. But they could then come back at you with the 320, 330 innings, and that's a tough argument to answer. 20, 330 innings and that's a tough argument to answer. And if his dad were to say with modern medicine who knows what amazing things he could have done would you even bother to try to refute that? No. I mean we read the arm and we read Jeff Passan going and talking to Koufax about all the things that his team's tried to help him keep pitching. And that was pre-Tommy John and pre the surgeries we have now. So that's not a unrealistic argument, I don't think. So I always had a problem putting Nolan Ryan in context because Nolan Ryan would seem to be a very flawed and in many ways always felt like a somewhat overrated pitcher.

He had a lot of wins. He also had a overrated pitcher. He had a lot of wins. He also had a lot of losses. He had a lot of strikeouts. He also had a lot of walks. He had a lot of no-hitters. He also had a career ERA plus of 112, which is not extraordinary. But he was insane. Like he was throwing 200- plus pitches in starts sometimes.

I saw, let me see if I can find this. I want to find, I just came across this old tweet of mine. Let me, all right. I could not find it. Although this is pretty good. In the minors, Nolanyan once struck out 21 batters but lost two to one both runs scoring on steals of home wow that is wow but uh 112 is just not a very good era plus but you know he was throwing 180 190 pitches in a lot of starts and you know

you just can't like think about what he was like in the eighth, ninth innings. So Matt Cain, for instance, has an ERA plus of 111. Jared Weaver has an ERA plus of 113, but in a much different role. So what would be your guess if Nolan Ryan moved his entire career? You know, forget about things like player development and nutrition and all. Just if he pitched his entire career in the role that Jared Weaver and Matt Cain have pitched, you know, five man rotation, you know, go seven innings and call it a day, maybe go six and and so on. What would you guess his ERA plus would be? And I this is sort of a little bit of a test, not of you, but of somebody else.

little bit of a test not of you but of somebody else i'll say 120 okay so you think that justin verlander is a better pitcher than nolan ryan uh yeah okay yeah i don't think i do and i uh have a hard time under the current conditions at least like i don't know if verlander could have done what ryan did in that era but you also don't think that you also don't think that ryan could do what verlander has done in his era which is a 123 era plus right i think ryan's freakish strength was that he was always healthy and he was just an incredible workhorse and so if you move him into the modern era you just sort of take away that strength and i think it probably makes him A somewhat better pitcher if he doesn't have to do that

But I don't think as good as Verlander Okay, alright Alright, you want to do a play index? I do, play index Alright, speaking of Sandy Kovacs And Pedro Martinez and Nolan Ryan And Justin Verlander And closers in the 50s and all that

We talk frequently about our belief, which I don't think is that controversial among people. We know that players today, in a vacuum, in absolute terms, are considerably better baseball players than those of far previous eras, that if you put them both in a time machine and had them play on a neutral field in 1860 or in 2075 or here in 2016, that Justin Verlander would, for instance, be a much better pitcher than Warren Spahn and that Mike Trout would be a much better hitter than Frankie Frisch. Should I go with Frankie Frisch? Sure. And so on. That is just the nature of human progress

and advances in medicine and training and building on the work of the generations that have come before you and so on and so forth, et cetera. And that's why Soundgarden is better than Beethoven. All right. I, though, would like to, first of all, acknowledge that I am not arguing that Soundgarden is better than Beethoven. I would like to use Playindex, though, to go in two directions. Both are going to be horrifyingly bad use of statistics. So forgive me. This is just for fun. So forgive me, this is just for fun. But in defense of Frankie Frisch, Walter Johnson, Babe Ruth, and their lot,

in their defense is that back then there were 16 teams. Those 16 teams used a lot fewer players. There were therefore a lot fewer players in the major leagues. And so I wanted to see exactly how big a difference that was. So I just play indexed how many people played every year. And I went to, I went to 1910 because that's fake baseball. I went to 1950 because that is when I consider the modern, just to, by the way, to clarify, because I think I've misrepresented this sometimes and I see it misrepresented sometimes in the Facebook group. 1920 is when real baseball started. 1950 or 47, usually 47, is the modern era. And 1988 is the current era. Okay. Okay. All right. So

1910, fake baseball, there were 508 players. 1950, still no expansion. And surprisingly to me, no real change in how many players churned through the league. So there were 530. So only 22 more players that year. 1988, after expansion and with a lot more players being used per team there were 973 and with only 14 this is kind of amazing only four teams have been added since 1988 and yet so many more players get used that they have gone from 973 players in 1988 to 1353 in 2016 so an increase in, I think, 14% by 14% in teams, an increase by 40% in players used. And if you just look at the number of players appearing for a given team in 1910, for instance,

the team that used the most had 44 players. In 2016, the team that had the fewest used 41 there were teams that had 27 players in 1910 there were teams that you in 1910 there was a team that used eight pitchers eight pitchers eight pitchers the whole year uh whereas at the high end it was 21 or 20 mostly most were in the low teens of course now the cardinals last year only used 21 pitchers. That was the fewest in baseball, and most teams are in the high 20s. So lots more players. And so to put this in perspective, I looked at the war leaderboard to see what the cutoff line would have been among 2016 players if they played with sort of previous generations Major League Baseball player pools, if that makes sense. So like last year, oh, I actually didn't use war.

I used plate appearances because I feel like in this sense, a plate appearance is a better proxy for or a better guide of talent than war is once you want to get down to the low levels, right? Once you get down to the guys who have few plate appearances. At the high level, if we're only dealing with people who are qualified for the batting title, then war would be a much better sorting mechanism. But since we're using people all the way down to one plate appearance, it seems pretty clear that it's fair to say that Eric Young, who had one plate appearance, was 1,35rd out of 1,353 players in activity,

is a fair worst player in baseball last year, right? Major League teams did not want him playing for them. So if you go to 1988 rules, everybody worse than Joey Gallo would not have played. So there's 400 players who is, I'm sorry, Ben. This is a little complicated because I'm, I've been using the number for all players, but I've actually broken it down by, by player and pitcher. So anyway, there are 80, 75 hitters who played less than Joey Gallo. And in 1988, Greg Maddox pitching in 1988 would not have gotten to face any of those pitchers. He would have only faced

Joey Gallo and better. In 1950, Warren Spahn would not have gotten to face any of those pitchers. He would have only faced Joey Gallo and better. In 1950, Warren Spahn would not have gotten to face anybody worse than Juan Uribe, who had 259 plate appearances this year. Everybody worse than Juan Uribe. Out of the game. Not playing. No, you don't get to pitch to them. You don't get to strike them out. They're not there.

And in 1910, that line is at Martin Maldonado Nobody worse than Martin Maldonado got to play It's trickier with pitchers to do this Because relievers don't throw that many innings But like By 1988 rules Nobody who threw less than Sergio Romo Would have been in the majors last year

Again it's sort of tricky with relievers Because Sergio Romo is good So that is in defense of them They did not get to face hundreds. There were hundreds of major leaguers who are bad, who players today get to collect stats against, who would not have been in the league back then. You would have only faced Martín Maldonado and better.

You would have only faced Juan Uribe and better. Now, of course, that leaves out an important consideration, which is that the pool from which those players were drawn from was much smaller. And so here now I have gone and done very rough estimates of the number of human beings alive who these would have been drawn from. and global world, nationwide populations for relevant nations. I have estimated that there were 81, 82 million eligible, I guess, eligible human beings in 1910 because only white people in America were allowed to play baseball, basically. By 1950, you were integrated.

You were still primarily an American game, but integrated. So that would have been 165 million. Of course, the population was also growing, 165 million. By 1988, I'm now including everybody born in America, plus Canada, plus Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Mexico, but no Pacific Rim. And I can't remember. I don't think I counted Cuba at this point. So now you're at 201 million. It seems low. Did I do my math wrong there? It seems a little low. That's got to be low. What happened here? Doesn't matter. The key is that 2016, that's way too low. You know, I think I might have forgotten to have them. Was I trying to have them?

I don't think I was trying to have them. I don't remember. Anyway, 2016, you've got everybody in America, Canada, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Puerto Rico. I think I counted Antigua. I think I counted Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. I think I counted Cuba. And now there's 730 million people. I did not count things like China, where there is apparently a team, or Italy, where a guy got drafted once. But even still, 730 million people. So the players who play today represent basically one in 1.2 million people. And the players in 1910 represented one in 267,000 people. Similarly, the pitchers, it's similar. It's about

the same. It's about what you would think given what I just told you. So there you go. This advantage that we gave to Babe Ruth and Frankie Frisch was extremely fleeting. In fact, they're far worse than we ever estimated. Never speak of them again. All right. I won't. That it? That's it. It's the play index. All right. So if you want to Erase every player From prior to 1947 or so from your memory Just subscribe to the play index You can do it too Use the coupon code BP when you subscribe To get the discounted price of

$30 on a one year subscription I think I halved 1988 and no other So I think it should be 88 I think was $402,000, I think. But then, yeah, that seems about right. I don't know. This is a very poorly done spreadsheet

based on horrible principles. All right. All right. I guess let's do one more. So this one's from Jeff. If you were running a team, how much would you pay to control Charlie Kershaw's rights through, say, 2046? Charlie Kershaw is Clayton Kershaw's, what, newborn son?

How old is Charlie Kershaw? I don't know, but he's a young person. Ben, I have to ask you this. Would you rather have the rights to Charlie Kershaw or Pedro Martinez's son? Hmm, Pedro's? See, I thought for sure you were going to say Kershaw. It was sort of I thought I was going to trap you because it certainly seems like it should be Kershaw. Pedro's, you know, six feet, and that's a bad starting point, whereas Kershaw is a big, you know, Texan dude. But, of course, Pedro's brother made yeah made the major leagues

and was very good and so you've got uh you've got the great picture jeans yeah exactly where are we going with this uh oh yeah it's a great question charlie kershaw is a a newborn human being i don't know if this is relevant but eight pounds two ounces 21 inches birth weight. Big kid. That sounds like a fairly big baby. And it actually is a fairly big baby. Yeah, yeah. So going to be a big human being probably and is the son of Clayton Kershaw. So I don't know. You've written pretty extensively about sons of major leaguers.

I have. And so for the people who are just joining us, I took, I one time went through, I went through everybody who played in 1978 and spent, oh, forever looking to see if they had kids who had been drafted or played in the majors. I did, I took a random sample of one fifth of those players. So that's 118 players. And of those 118 players in the majors that year, 27 had at least one son drafted. And that doesn't count the ones that I missed, which I must have missed. So, so this is the mid article conclusion. If you are a major league ball player, you have about a one in four chance of producing a son who becomes a pro ball player.

And that, by the way, I didn't even know which of these people had sons. So it doesn't even matter whether you have a son or not. You still have a one in four chance of producing a son who becomes a pro ball player. That's even more incredible. And as I put it, that is half as likely as my chances of producing a son. So then I further look to see, a lot of these guys are drafted. Some of these guys at least are drafted for nepotism reasons,

either as favors or because maybe there's a more familiarity of a prospect because he shares his dad's name, or maybe major league front offices are irrational and think that there is more in these genes than otherwise. So I then look to see how many of these were clearly nepotism picks or were not really maybe legitimate picks. And let me see if i can find the answer i found of those 27 nine made the majors and i think we can rule out nepotism getting you to the majors uh that seems pretty obvious that you don't get to the majors on nepotism i think so nine legit major leaguers out of 118 players. So there is, you know, about a, almost a 10% chance that you will produce a son who makes the majors. Uh, there was another seven players who were either very high picks or, uh, made it to the high minors. And so those are presumably not

nepotism picks. And so there you go. I also, by the way, looked at the 38 players in history who produced the most war. And of those 38 players, they had 50 sons, 13 of whom were drafted or played pro ball. So for Hall of Famers, almost 30% chance of having a drafted kid. All right. So knowing that about Charlie Kershaw, you know that there's maybe a 10% chance he plays in the majors, but you still don't know what kind of ball player he's going to be. So you have to figure out how much he's going to be worth,

how much his career is going to be worth. And I don't know that I would say that. We had a really great genetics conversation once. It was around episode 400. It was around the time that Andy came on to talk about A-Rod hitting 763 home runs. It was when I was sitting in my backyard, not in the garage, not in the fit, but in the backyard. That was a very good conversation in which we probably answer this. Maybe you can dig that up.

Maybe you can't. But it doesn't seem like, from what I found, there is a good chance that you're going to produce a major leaguer, but not necessarily that you're going to produce a great one. Barry Bonds is the obvious exception in this group because Bobby Bonds was part of my sample. But otherwise, we're not talking about great players or anything like that. Jose Cruz Jr. is the second best player and Gary Matthews Jr. is the third best player. So you can't say that the odds are that good. So I guess now we've got 118 players across the whole spectrum of players. So these are not 118 Kershaws, but 118 major leaguers at least. And they produced basically one superstar and one very valuable regular, one not so valuable regular, and a

couple of role players, a couple of bench players. Now, if you had, maybe Kershaw gets extra credit though. Maybe Kershaw because he's so good. I think that I haven't read this all the way through, but I think that I found that there wasn't, okay, let me read this. One pattern that emerged while I was doing this was that the further down the list I went, the list being sorted by plate appearances, a marginal proxy for player quality, the scarcer these sons became.

The full-time position players, the guys getting 600 plate appearances, produced a nearly 40% rate of draftees. Oh, hey, you're in this. Produced a nearly 40% rate of draftees. Ben Lindbergh and I once wondered about this on effectively wild ah do the effects of bloodlines get stronger based on the quality of dad or do you link nope okay but it was uh june 4th 2014 so you've you're you've narrowed it down to 500 episodes it's i know when it was it was when we did was right it was like five or ten

before or five or ten after andy came on that one time and like gabe capler came on and uh jason came on to talk about the accounts and description of the game that i think that was the golden age of the podcast okay ben and i once wondered about this on effectivelyively Wild. That was 252 is when Andy came on. All right. July 2013. Ben and I once wondered about this on Effectively Wild. Do the effects of bloodlines get stronger based on the quality of dad or do a low A washout and a Hall of Fame big leaguer pass on the same genetic advantages as their children?

I guessed that they did. That the difference between Tony Gwynn and Chris Gwynn is irrelevant at a genetic level. I started to second guess my hunch while going down this list though, and seeing the hit rate taper off. If better big leaguers are more likely to produce big leaguers, then the very best big leaguers should produce the very most big leaguers. So I ran down, and this is where I get to the Hall of Famers. Okay. So having read that now, I think you're qualified to answer this question. All right. So 2046 is the year Jeff picked. So Charlie Kershaw will be 30. And that means we're basically reserving the right to his pre-free agency years. So his arbitration years also. So the chance that he becomes a big leaguer, you're saying, is like 10%-ish.

The chance that he becomes a really good big leaguer, I mean, being a big leaguer at all is valuable. I would say I would put Charlie Kershaw on retainer between now and then. Are we worrying about inflation and that sort of thing? Can we not worry about that? Sure. Don't worry about it it's hard enough to project charlie kershaw's career without also projecting the economy 30 years from now so i'd say i'd pay him maybe in the present value of money like uh three hundred thousand dollars per year from now until then whoa for 40 for 40 years? 30 years. So you're willing to pay him $9 million? Yes. Wow. Because if there's a 10% chance that he's a big leaguer and what, like a 5% chance

that he's a good big leaguer or something, and the surplus value that you would get in that period from him you know like how much was Clayton Kershaw worth to the I mean not that we're saying he'd be Clayton Kershaw but how much is a really good player worth in surplus value over the first six seven years of his career to a team that would be like probably tens of millions of dollars and we're saying that he has a 10 chance of being worth that so maybe it's a little high but probably like millions of dollars right i think that i i think that i mostly begrudge you the premise that making the majors is valuable. There's a lot of money spent getting them to the majors. And I don't think, like, I know that it would be like, you'll sometimes hear a scout or a coach or a player say that making the majors counts as a successful draft pick. And in the

way that like, in the sense that a, you know, a dream has been brought to fruition, everybody feels happy about it. Those memories last forever and so on. That is true, but it is not cheap, I don't think, to raise a fringe major leaguer, especially because that fringe major leaguer is going to take the full length of time that he is probably allowed to get there. So if you're getting 30 plate appearances out of a guy in a wasted September,

sure, that's not a failure. And for the player's sake, it's definitely a clear success. But I just don't think you would really want to... I think that in addition to your 9 million, how much do you think it costs? How much do you think team drafts a player out of college and loses him as a six-year minor leaguer, minor league free agent when he's 27? Okay. And this is a player who is prospect enough that they put effort into him. He gets coached. He's not left behind when they run out of space on the bus, but he also is, you know,'s just well i guess i that's that's the premise so how much do you think would be spent on that guy from from uh day one on well i mean you're not like hiring anyone because of him you're doing what you would do anyway because you have a whole

team so the expense for just that one guy i guess you could divide it by 25 or something at each level that he plays at. But you kind of, I mean, that's just a cost that you have no matter what. Well, I mean, don't do it that way. Like, what do you think is the entire budget of everything that they spend on all the minor leaguers divided by the number of minor leaguers that they have? I have no idea what teams spend. I don't either. I'm just asking for a guess.

I would guess that that player, I would guess that they're spending, well, they don't house them. The food is not very expensive. They have to pay for the coaching staff. They have to pay for travel, a lot of travel. I would say that you're spending maybe $450,000. Okay. Which doesn't seem that much. That sort of undoes my point. Okay. So I think nine million is a little high, but I think in the millions. All right. Do you think it's in the millions? Nine million dollars. So would you... Or just, just I think in the millions. All right. Do you think it's in the millions? $9 million. So would you- Or just, is it in the millions?

Wait a minute though. $9 million. I mean, I know that draft and international bonuses are not subject to a fair and free marketplace. And so they don't represent how much they actually would pay, but you're basically saying that they would pay, that you would pay what, you know, Steven Strasberg got. Well, not quite that, but what, you know, Brady Aiken was asking for, plus more. That's a lot. Yeah. But you, maybe you think that they should. Maybe you think that, I mean, Brady Aiken, if he'd been a free agent, probably would have gotten 25 or $30 million. Right.

So Clayton Kershaw's kid, sight unseen, 20 years away, you're betting on as being a quarter of or a third of what Brady Aiken would have been worth to you? I have to check out his elbow. Maybe he has a normal elbow, unlike Brady Aiken. Yeah, I think nine is high, but I think it's in the millions. I would pay $2.1 million. Okay. Sounds good. All right. We will end there. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already done so.

Hannah Miller, Chris Ruppar, Michael Sweeney, Rick Bunch, and Phil Cowan. Thanks to all of you. You can buy our book, The Only Rules It Has to Work, our wild experiment building new kind of baseball team. Go to theonlyrulesithastowork.com for more more information and please leave us a review on amazon and goodreads if you liked it you can join our facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild and you can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on itunes keep your questions coming you can contact me and sam via email at podcast at baseball prospectus.com or via the patreon messaging system.

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