Episode 1164: The Names of the Game

## Summary

*Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan answer listener emails about rebuilding teams absorbing bad contracts, bad teams signing good players, an MLB amnesty clause, fans switching team allegiances, pitchers wearing jackets on the bases, how to maximize playing time with a limited number of hits, baseball on an Olympian schedule, how catchers could transition to a world with robot umps, and the effect of facing two pitchers simultaneously, plus a trio of Stat Blasts on the most valuable baseball names, "Mickey Mantle's Legs," and extreme batted-ball changes.*

## Topics

* Should rebuilding teams take on bad contracts?
* When should bad teams sign top free agents?
* What if MLB had a contract amnesty clause?
* Should I switch team allegiance to follow a favorite player?
* How cold would it have to be for a pitcher with a jacket on the basepaths to be as valuable as an unjacketed position player?
* Impact of robot umpires on catcher development
* How to maximize playing time with only ten career hits
* Most successful baseball names
* Players who lowered their ground ball rates by 10 percentage points or more
* If batters had to face two pitchers at once (with only one of them throwing a ball), how bad could pitchers be?
* What if baseball were like the Olympics, where only one in four baseball seasons counted, and the other three were just exhibitions?

## Banter

* Teasing upcoming guest Jeff Passan who will talk about baseball's stagnant labor market and economic outlook

## Email Questions

* Gary (Baltimore, MD): Recently I've seen a lot of articles talking about the recent explosion of rebuilding teams. I get that as a rebuilding team, it doesn't make sense to spend extra money on free agents beyond respectability. But shouldn't rebuilding teams use the extra space in their budgets to acquire bad contracts from contending teams and get extra assets out of the bargain? The Padres seem to do this with Chase Headley to get Brian Mitchell recently. Why doesn't this happen more often? A team like the White Sox who can surely afford a payroll higher than $70.8 million can take on Jacoby Ellsbury and get someone like Clint Frazier out of the bargain. Thanks. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

* Denis: How does the added value of winning compare to, for example, one or several marquee additions on a perpetual losing or non-competitive team. In other words, if a team had $30 million to spend and opted to sign a player like Bryce Harper, despite him adding no real chance of winning at all, or even being competitive, is there any value to this? Is the 3-4 year rebuild with a shot at potential competitiveness later worth more than 3-4 years of increased attendance, merchandise sales, fan hype, etc. on a mediocre to awful team caused by one or several major acquisitions?

* Jeff (San Francisco, CA): I was wondering how this offseason would have been different if baseball had adopted an amnesty clause in the current CBA. The concept of an amnesty clause originated in the NBA, a sport with a salary cap and a luxury tax for teams that go over it. In short, a team can cut a player and have his entire salary not count towards the salary cap for all the remaining years of his contract. The player would still get all the money owed on that contract, however this type of accounting exercise meant for teams to get salary cap space to either sign free agents or make trades. Of course, there are also restrictions: Each team can only use the amnesty clause once during the life of the CBA, it can only be applied to the contracts signed before the current CBA, the player can't sign back with his old team. So how would the off season be different if MLB had such an amnesty clause? Would getting further under the luxury tax threshold facilitate more signings and trades? Which players would be most likely to be amnestied under such a scenario?

* Matt: I was born in 1988 and have lived in Pittsburgh my entire life. While the Pirates were good until 1992, I obviously have no memories of them when I was four years old. The next 20 years of my life were filled with memories of horrific embarrassing baseball until Andrew McCutchen saved the franchise and led my favorite team to the 2013 NL wildcard game and the best sports atmosphere I've ever experienced. My question to you: Is it permissible to switch allegiance to the San Francisco Giants for the upcoming 2018 season and return to my inexplicable lifelong commitment the Pirates in 2019?

* Justin: To build on the question about wintertime baseball, I'd like to consider the question of pitchers' baserunning jackets. At what temperature does a pitcher wearing a cozy jacket have an advantage over his non-jacketed but more offensively talented teammates? If the next position player due up in the next inning were to Waxahachie-swap in as pitcher for the third out every inning for the purpose of gaining jacket rights during their next at-bat, how cold would it need to be for this to be a competitive advantage?

* Steven: A recent discussion about the future of the catcher position, if and when a human is no longer calling balls and strikes. got me thinking. I can see how the benefits of framing ability will fall away, and it will become a bat-first position with robot umps. I'm curious as to how far that will reach. Will colleges install these systems? Will high schools install these systems? At levels with human-called strike zones, catchers will still be rewarded for framing abilities. I'm thinking about the Matthew effect: The kids who get the best training early get an edge that accumulates over time. Even in Little League, the first kid to be willing to sit back there let alone show any talent for catching is going to get a ton of reps. Will we get a glut of minor league players who were glove-first catchers and now can't hit enough to keep up?

* Sean: Last year, Phil Gosselin led all position players in games played with fewer than 10 hits. He played 40 games with a robust line of .146/.180/.188. Now let's say you make a deal with the devil (or a benevolent third party or god) where he/she/it gives you the opportunity to get 10 hits over the course of an entire Major League season, and you can decide how you spend them. How do you spend them in a way that maximizes your time in the majors? Certainly, you can't wait too long to use a couple of them because then it would be back to Triple A with you. But if you spend them all early in the season, you might be out of luck by the time important September baseball comes around. What say you?

* Chris: Over the holidays, I was enjoying some drinks and food with my wife's brother and his wife. We were discussing popular names and what names for kids seemed popular now. To make a long story short, we discussed the most successful names. For our example, money or power was used as a definition of success. This leads me to think about baseball and the most successful baseball names. I assume the name Mike will be one of the top names in WAR accumulated throughout a career. Mike Schmidt, Mike Messina, Mike Piazza, Mike Trout, all worth a couple hundred WAR. What is the most successful baseball name?

* Adam (Patreon): In a Japanese game show, where Bonds, Giambi, and Bernie Williams had to hit in a bunch of weird circumstances, one of the challenges had a left-handed pitcher and right-handed pitcher both on the mound and winding up but only one actually throwing the ball. Even though they were throwing about 50 mph, it was a bit of a challenge to the hitters. How good would a pair of pitchers doing this need to be to perform at an average MLB level? What ERA would you project for a Kershaw/Kluber combo?

* Clay: How would baseball be different if the sport operated on a schedule similar to the Olympics? Players would train and play exhibition games with their team during the three off-years, but every fourth year was the season that actually mattered. Assume the other structures are similar. The draft is still held every spring, players can sign contracts and be traded, etc. What would GMs do differently to ensure their team was prepared to win the gold?

## Stat Blast

#### Most productive player first names

* Ben uses FanGraphs data to answer Chris' question about the first names with the highest cumulative career WAR totals.
* The most successful name in MLB history is Mike with 1,862.9 WAR. There have been 439 players named Mike.
* Bill is the most common first name at 546. Second is John at 474. Mike is third.
* By average WAR, the most productive first name is Honus, at 138.1. There has been only one major league Honus, namely Honus Wagner.
* With a minimum of 10 players, the most productive first name is "Babe", at 7.8 WAR per Babe.
* Spreadsheet with full data is linked below.

#### Most game appearances with at most ten hits

* Sean's question inspires an impromptu Stat Blast about players who appeared in the most games in a season with at most 10 hits.
* In 1965 Ross Moschitto played in 96 games and finished the season with 5 hits, batting 28 times. He only ever appeared as a defensive replacement.
* Jeff struggles with how to pronounce Ross Moschitto's last name. He eventually settles on a pronunciation that rhymes with "mosquito".
* Ben finds what appears to be Moschitto's Twitter account, but it is covered in pro-Trump hashtags, and they decide not to attempt to cold-call him.
* Moschitto had the nickname "Mickey's Legs" since he was often used as a pinch runner for Mickey Mantle. Despite that, he never attempted to steal a base.
* Jeff reads from a newspaper article about Moschitto and learns that an Achilles tendon injury led to the end of his baseball career. Ben quips that Moschitto's replacement would have been named Mickey's Legs' Legs.

#### Players who lowered their ground ball rates by 10 percentage points or more

* Jeff recently wrote an article on how Colin Moran drastically lowered his ground ball rate by 11 percentage points in two seasons, and 12.9 points over four seasons, from 46% to 34%.
* Other players with major decreases are Logan Morrison, Jed Lowrie, and Yonder Alonso.
* Astros AA prospect Antonio Nunez dropped his ground ball rate by 18 percentage points in 2017.

## Notes

* Jeff agrees with listener Greg's suggestion that rebuilding teams take on bad contracts. Ben notes that owners do not "carry over" unspent payroll budget into future years, so the front office should spend what they have when they have it.
* Jeff says it doesn't make sense for a rebuilding team to go after a marquee player. There are a lot of teams interested in the player, and the player will probably not choose to play for a losing team. Jeff reads from an article he wrote when Eric Hosmer signed with the rebuilding Padres. Ben feels that the economic boost to a bad team of having a star player will not make up for the cost. Jeff agrees, arguing that fans follow success, and once a team is successful, the fans will look for a player to latch onto.
* Ben, on the amnesty clause: "This is one of those questions that we could probably answer more intelligently if we knew more about other sports."
* Jeff's first reaction to the amnesty clause: "Goodbye, Albert Pujols. Hope you had fun with your baseball career."
* Jeff realizes that the team is still on the hook for paying the amnestied player's contract; it just removes the charge to the luxury tax. So the only real savings is removing the luxury tax associated with the contract. This significantly reduces the value of invoking the hypothetical amnesty clause.
* In response to Matt's question, Jeff says that he thinks he and Ben are in agreement on the answer, so he suggests that they each take turns saying one word Jeff: "I." Ben: "Think." Jeff: "That." Ben: "Matt." Jeff: "Shouldn't." Ben: "Switch." Jeff: "Oh, not where I was going."
* It turns out that Jeff and Ben were in agreement after all. Jeff: "Don't let anybody tell you how to consume your entertainment provided nobody is hurt by it."
* Ben: "Fandom is silly and irrational to begin with." He notes that most people would not be able to switch allegiances that easily, but if Matt finds a way, he is more than welcome to do so.
* Ben: "There is something to be said for sticking with a team when it's bad, because you can enjoy it when it's good again."
* Ben wonders whether position players are actually forbidden from wearing jackets. Jeff searches the MLB official rules and finds no references to jackets. He reads extensively from a Wall Street Journal article on player attitudes toward pitchers wearing jackets. Ben cuts to the chase and finds the actual rule later in the article: It is in the Umpires Manual. "A pitcher may wear a jacket while a baserunner. A pitcher may not wear a jacket while batting."
* Ben says that the benefit of a jacket is so slight that you would have to go to life-threateningly low temperatures for it to become significant. "If a pitcher can wear artic-rated cold weather gear, then that might make a real difference because they would be alive and the [other] batters would be dead."
* Ben, on playing baseball at life-threateningly low temperatures: "This question is silly." Jeff: "At the end of the day, no matter what, maybe the pitchers die a little slower, but everyone's dead in these circumstances. The field is littered with the dead. It's a game played before corpses. It's a very grim scene."
* Jeff finds that the jacket, if worn, must be buttoned, and that no one else is allowed to wear a jacket, not even the coaches. "If anything, coaches should be *more* encouraged to wear jackets so they don't resemble the players."
* Jeff asks Ben, "At what temperature would you rather have Bartolo Colon pitching than Chris Sale?"
* Ben, looking for a non-silly question: "No, that's silly. This is very silly. Also silly..."
* Ben wonders if a de-emphasis on framing in the majors duo to robo-umps would trickle down to the lower levels, even though it is still valuable in lower leagues, just because the skill won't help you reach the majors.
* In response to Sean's question about how to distribute 10 hits, Jeff simply replies, "I'd pitch." Nobody cares how well a pitcher hits.
* Ben and Jeff agree that it would be very hard for a position player to last long with only ten hits, certainly not until September. Ben chooses to spend the hits early to look like a breakout (maybe have a .500 batting average), so that the team give you a long leash.
* Inspired by Sean's question, Jeff looks up the player who had the most games in a season with at most ten hits. He tries to find it live but gets frustrated and tells Ben to just move ahead to the Stat Blast segment. Ben predicts it'll be an obscure player who was a defensive replacement or pinch runner. Jeff finds the answer in time to add it to the Stat Blast. **Editor's note**: Ben's prediction was correct!
* Jeff on the pitching pair: "I'm going to say that it would be enough that any pitcher in affiliated professional baseball could be in the majors."
* Ben realizes that batters could just guess which pitcher has the ball, taking the zero if they guess wrong. This cuts their performance in half but at least prevents it from going to zero.
* Ben, on baseball on an Olympics schedule: "This would completely destabilize baseball." Revenues would plummet, the talent pool would shrink.
* Jeff thinks that if only every fourth season counted, then teams would focus even more on pitching. They could take more time to develop pitchers and give them lighter workloads in the three off-years.

## Links

* Effectively Wild Episode 1164: The Names of the Game
* Baseball name data