Howdy and welcome to the Three two Outcomes podcast presented by Baseball Perspectives. I'm
your host, Ian Leftwitz, and joining me as always from suburban Michigan,
it is Ben Murphy. Ben, how are you doing. I'm doing well.
Ian. It's good to hear from you. Thank you, you too.
Um it is baseball season. Do you get a baseball fever? I've
had a couple of fevers so far in the last month, but none of
them were related to baseball. Hey fever? Oh no, okay, muskrat
love. Well, we'll work on that until then. Joining us from our
nation's capital as always is Jared Wise. Jared, how are you doing?
Is muskrat love of fever? I assumed that it was like a scratch of
some stort. I never feel like maybe I should check this like genius dot
com and see if they annotated the lyrics with some behind the scenes one would
assume. I guess the fever that I had doesn't have a name except for
fever. When you have a little kid, you just get sick a lot.
So I've only had a fever twice in twenty nineteen, So doing great.
That's good. Yeah, Jared, how is your baseball fever. Baseball
started only for some of the teams. Jared, No, it's been it's
yeah, it's really high, super high. Do you think we did not
record last week because the Orioles were in first place and I ran out of
material? I'm recently certain. Yes, I was waiting for the call and
you guys just to show no interest in I assumed. Yeah, there's a
room on those bandwagon still if you guys want to Japan. Yeah. Yeah,
I could think of a couple of players who like thrown out of a
bad wagon. We'll get to that though. Uh certainly saved groom. Um
so yeah, any any impressions of of the first week as as a baseball
fan from your end, I'm glad it's back. Glad it's back. Yeah,
uh, right in a way. And and that first so that you
you did have the first series against the Yankees as as uh an o glorious.
Oh that was so good. Probably isn't there? Yeah, yeah,
feeling pretty confident that's going to be the highlight of twenty nineteen. But it
was, it was worth it. Uh. Yeah, I've been watching I've
been watching a lot of baseball. I've been watched Um, I know shocker.
UM. So far I've seen UM, I've seen about uh seven right
games, and UH, I have some thoughts we'll get We'll get to that
in a second, because I have a couple of overall impressions. But first
I wanted to obviously lead off by talking about UM. The top. The
number one topic that I think, UM, I think audiences love more than
anything is us talking about our own fantasy teams. So we are going to
get to that before we start. UM. Mailback, Captain, I have
a question for you. Yes, did you write into scoresheet a Baseball perspectives
dot com to ask your question? No? I didn't. Did anyone else
know? That's bad news. We'll answer questions no matter how silly. Probably
probably better chance if they are sillier. Gotta be honest. So, uh
baseball or not, we are. We are looking for feedback and love.
It's the only thing gives us validation. Please scoresheet at Baseball Perspectives dot com
feel free to send us a question. Happy to talk on or off air.
UM. So before we UM, before we dive into the season.
So we we came up with a strategy, let's say, UM not entirely
for content development for this podcast, but not not for content development for this
podcast before the season, Um, where we would do something different. Um,
do you want to do do you want to introduce the concept? Um?
Yes, we So we run a bunch of teams together, and we
decided that we are going to each separately own a team, or Ben and
I at least will each separately own slash run a team. Yeah. I
think in our collective names that we will take control. I guess, I
don't know. This is our opportunity to be very explicit about the fact that
Ian does everything, like literally everything for all these teams. And that's why
you agreed, so that realize and appreciate just how much he does reach one
of the teams. Yeah, at least. And I think part of my
motivation was because I would like to have an opportunity to be a little bit
more connected to baseball and I think do something to alleviate a little bit of
my guilt that Ian does everything for us. I think it's also a little
bit exciting just to have a little bit more flexibility. So one of the
things that we've always done for all the teams that we've run together is like
check with each other on stuff, and that includes you know, any trade
offers and things like that. And I think sometimes, well almost all the
time, that leads to like better decisions for us because we balance each other
well and we have a variety of perspectives on things. But sometimes we're a
little bit too thoughtful or at least like it takes us a while to get
back to people when we're tossing around the relative merits of different options. And
I think, you know the other part of this is, you know,
Jared and I each have one team, They're still a handful of other teams
where Ian's doing literally everything and it's sort of like a little sandbox for a
yard tonight to try to make a sandcastle or keep the neighborhood cat from peeing
in it. So yeah, and I would not say I do literally everything.
Like any decision that we make that I think would be fun to discuss,
we discuss in just about every league. Like like I said in the
past, I think we enjoy running teams together because it gives us a chance
to talk to one another about a thing. But you know, this is
our We just wanted to change things up a little bit, and you know,
I think give you all, I think a little bit more hands on
work with at least some teams. So we have chosen a couple of teams
in leagues that we feel are closest to one year leagues. Actually that I'm
thinking about it, yep. It mitigates our opportunity to really running into the
ground from Yes, well they're also they were also our lower performing teams at
the time that we made the decision, UM, which you know, so
I I think for each of these leagues we want to go into it and
UM check in throughout the season on these leagues and just see, you know,
you can tell you can tell us as the season goes on, what
your strategies are, UM, how you're planning to kind of attack what you
see is the problems of the team, or UM build upon successes. UM.
But let's let's get into specifics. And I think this is the point
at which anyone listening can follow along by either I think clicking perhaps on a
link that we will provide in the notes to the leagues, or UM you
can probably just google it as well. So one of our teams is in
the league bl kings UM. And then we will start with you, because
this is your team. We actually have talked about this team on the draft
on this podcast before. Yeah, during the draft, so we expansion draft
of this team. Uh. And for for anyone who wasn't listening, maybe
recap that draft process and our decision that went into it. Mike Trap,
Mike Trout, Mike Troup. Uh. We went into a dispersal draft so
that we could get Mike Trout, and we did that, and then we
renamed the team to three true trout comes and we haven't looked back day.
In the process of doing that, we gave up a bunch of draft picks
this year, so we're sort of punting this year. UM. So the
strategy is pretty straightforward Mike Trout and twenty twenty. So we traded down a
bunch of times in the spring draft. We drafted young guys or guys for
upside. Well, we ian drafted young guys guys for upside, guys that
are hurt this year but might be coming back and be useful next year.
UM. We've tried to pursue trade targets that fit similar criteria and it's perfect
for me because I don't really have to do anything. Um. We were
joking before we started that like Ian still went in and set up our lineup
cards for US. Jared and I both um and so I was looking at
the lineup card that Ian set up. An Ian, I have to give
you a quick shout out. Everything is the same versus lefties and righties,
except for Conforto and or US swap between the five and six spots in the
lineup like what like they both bat against both handedness, but apparently Confortos at
a little bit better against righties. Um, that's not going to this team.
This team is gonna lose so many games, so many games. We
have so far gone zero and nine and we have an eight twenty five er.
This is a team with Mike Trout on. With Mike Trout on it,
we are hitting two twenty two, three, eighteen, three fifty six.
So yeah, it's bad. It's a bad team. Uh, and
we hope it's less bad next year when we have a full compliment of draft
picks and you know, maybe healthy Lance mc colors or something like that.
Right. So, UM, just to be like a little more specific about
what's happened to the team since the expansion draft, Um, we have we've
taken a team that I would say did not just have Mike Trout, to
be clear. So we took Mike Trout, we got Gia Carlos Stanton back.
I think we uh we redrafted Adam Eaton. Was that true? Um,
Michael, I think Eaton came from the other team, but we picked
him up in the dispersonal Okay. Um, so we have Wander Franco,
who I actually saw last week, which is very exciting. I know I'll
get to that later. Um, Sander Brogards during the draft too, I
should have mentioned that. Yeah, so we took a couple of players and
then um turn them into Xander Brogarts. Right, I'm trying to pull up
that trade as well. So I think if we're talking about that, so
our strategy behind getting Xander Brogarts, I think pretty clear for rebuilding team.
Um. You know, positional needs are not important, um, and we're
just trying to get I think, literally the best players we can, right
and if we move, Um, I have the trade up. If you
want me to read it, Yeah, go for it. Joe must Grove,
Jake Lamb Adam Eaton around twelve pick and around nineteen pick for Xander Bogarts.
Yeah. So which definitely like losing Joe Musgrove, a fan favorite of
this fan that definitely hurt. You know. I think Adam Eaton I still
liked Jake Lamb, I think was a player we drafted. Yeah, we
had drafted him really early. I think our first draft pick in the pre
it's like a soft ten, and we drafted him in like the eighth round
or something like that. Yeah. I think we did a very good job
of pressing the aboard button at exactly the right time on Jake Lamb. But
you know, I think we see Xander Bogarts as a first round talent.
We were willing to crush our team even more in order to go for it.
But yeah, that leads us with one pick, sure, which is
probably not a great sign for our success this year. Uh. And then
we drafted a couple of players like Lensmo Collars that you said, like Seanmanaiah,
who I think are potentially coming back mid season. Well, we also
traded for d D. Glorious. Oh, we did trade for Ddy Gregorius,
right, So uh, you know, I think this is probably going
to become clear because we did trade for d D. Gregories before Xander Brogart.
But now that we have both. I think there's a very strong chance
we will nurse D. D. Gregorious back to health and then looked to
flip him almost immediately, right, Yeah, as soon as we had a
local maximum for his value. I think, yeah. Um. And you
know, I I do feel like this team is in pretty solid shape for
UM fenty twenty, which is um. You know, I don't think we
are. I don't think we want to stay in and rebuild forever. I
think we want to be competitive it since next year. Yeah, I think
we just sort of felt like missing ten of the well ten draft picks off
the top basically eleven through twenty one, made it so that it was basically
impossible to compete this year anyway, and it was very foolish to attempt to
compete in the face of such long odds. Much better to do everything we
can for twenty twenty, when we'll have that full complimented draft picks and hopefully
even more talent. Right. And you know, something that we've kind of
said often on this podcast, both in the current incarnation in the past,
drafting with a goal in mind is a great way to you know, it's
a great way to see it even in competitive leagues, if you could just
vary the time window off where other people are, you know, I think
you have something. I think you have a better chance of success drafting.
Mike Trout. Also, it definitely helps accelerate your mic trout Mike Trout.
Um, Yeah, what I'm really excited to listen back to is how the
sound balance manages to take care of that. Yeahing quick anecdote. So we
got a tip from front of the pod Eric Moyer that like the volumes a
little low, so I try to boost the volume. And I was like
listening to it to see how well it went. And I've been sick basically
NonStop, and my already nasily voice is like super nasily now that I'm sick,
and I will never listen to the podcast over again. I'm sorry.
So if you want me to try to fix it, I can, but
I'm not ever going to check to see how well it went. Hopefully the
volumes a little higher though. Um we're working on Yeah. We don't want
to be terrible. We just don't want to have to work to not be
terrible. I have made it to the point where I could actually listen to
the podcast again and not hate myself. It's been a challenge, it's been
a real ride trying to do that. So thank you for going on that
journey. But I did want to I do want to point something out just
because this is a This is a useful feature that I think maybe not everyone
has seen, but friends of the Pod, Rob mccun if, for those
of you who are Baseball Perspective subscribers you may have you may be familiar with
the Scorcy Draft Aid, which we have highly recommended and the Scoresy Team Tracker,
which we also highly recommend as great Scorcy tools. This year, he
has added a taken Players report on the Draft Aid And I think this is
just like an incredibly useful benchmark that I've been looking at repeatedly throughout the season.
What is that It's a very simple concept. I mean there are a
number of different um, there are a number of different concepts, different panels
on this report, including um, you know, projections for all players on
your team versus righties versus lefties. That helps you build and set a lineup.
There's the list of top prospects taken the mock draft list as well,
so you can see who has taken whom. The section that I find the
most valuable is league ss SIM totals, where you can measure at different keeper
levels the amount of talent that's on your roster for this year versus other teams.
And so with Kings, you know, I think what I've been looking
at is something that I should have said about half hour ago. Kings is
a soft, soft ten league, so that means there you can keep up
to ten players, but you do not have to keep ten players, which
means that the value of your top keepers are really the most important things,
the very top keepers, because you can kind of fill in the rest later.
So I've been looking at the top five keepers where we are third in
the league, top eight, we are sixth in the league, and we
were in there. We were in the twenties of the twenty fourteen league before
the draft, so before we the expansion draft. So I've I think this
has been a real win for us, the ninety nine keeper version. We
are not in first place. We're not a second place. No, no,
no, I would keep going, I would keep doing the happy birthday
thing, but but we are dead last on the twenty four teams. So
but you know, I think that's one of those ways where you can say,
um, Okay, here is this horrible, horrible team that is going
to win I think like an extraordinarily few amount of games, and yet there
is a sleeping giant here there. The top five keepers are about as strong
as anyone in the league, and there are a number of ways to get
there. This way, you can just kind of ballpark it with your eyes.
So I think that's an interesting Uh, it's interesting. I think we're
gonna use it if we get questions about your league. It's something that I'm
definitely going to look at to try to quickly figure out where your team is
in relation to others. I suggest at everyone again, if you if you
like having scores sheet tools, I think having a scoresheet a baseball perspective,
fantasy fantasy membership is really valuable. Saying that, not just as a or
not even as as all perspective play, just as a person. It's a
really helpful for a score sheet in particular. Um, I think that's enough
about Kings. Let's pivot to Jared uh So. Your league is bl d
W. Murphy or Dwayne Murphy. I guess in the car and severer times.
This is a venerable league that has been around for a very long time,
and it is a soft eight league. We've talked about it on the
podcast Off and on, so very similar lineup. M Jared, Do you
want to introduce the team to us? Um? Yes, by name?
Sure, we'll start there by reputation, but I would say by major concept
and if not, I'm happy to take that part and magic. We want
to win. We want to win, yeah, okay, yeah, I
think that's fair. So we want to win this year. So it's a
little bit of a different situation. Yeah. Well, I mean you already
introduced it as mostly a one year league, which is sort of kind of
right, right, A soft date league in many ways functions as a one
year league. In a few key ways it does not, and we'll go
into that and how it affected our strategy. But yeah, I think mostly
we've been looking for immediate success. Yeah, it's hard to play like this
for three years down the line. It's hard to do that. So yeah,
So what do you see as a kind of your goals for this team
as the owner? Other than winning? Winning is the only goal that is
okay, I needs life, that is everything. Um, how will you
how will you achieve that? Goal. I have to say, whatever I'm
doing is working out really great because we have the second best record in the
league at the twenty four teams. So I'm doing so many things right that
why would I change anything? Reasonable? Reasonable answer? Thank you? Just
the steady hand on the tails. Yes, yeah, you don't have to
do too much is the key in fantasy baseball. I I feel like we
have to spoil this that like ten minutes before we were starting to record,
Jared's like, which league is my league? So good work, good work?
All right? My plan for this league is great? Is have you
continue to all the work. We just take credit for it explicitly. I
think it's a brilliant plan. Everyone should do it. M Yeah. So
I think this is an interesting team, and I think it's a team that
has a lot m really a lot in common with some of the most difficult
questions we get because it is it is really a team where the choice is
between going for it and rebuilding, and it's kind of stuck in the middle
a little bit. Yeah, you know, I think we've had a strong
core that has, um you know, helped us win some regular season record
winning team a couple of years ago and obviously, Like who cares about the
playoffs? Right? Those are random anyway, Like I don't bother looking that
up. But yeah, we've won a couple of regular season you know,
most wins. But now now the core itself is aging. So we have
players like Buster Posey, you know, Andrew McCutchen, who are within a
couple of years of being out of probably out of let's say eight soft eight
keeper status. I think Steven Strasburg for instance, fits there as well,
and we don't have those younger players behind them. And yet, you know,
I don't think when you hear a team in twenty nineteen based around Buster
Posey, and Andrew mccutcheen and Streeven Strasburg, that you're thinking, well,
that's going to win the league. So you know it, we're kind of
caught between two masters here, and so it's it's going to be very interesting
to see how we make it and whether we can either guide this team to
win or you know, if we were build and how we were build in
this league one that is exceedingly tough to rebuild in. Um So I would
say one of the things we did during the draft, because this is a
one year league, because this is a twenty four team league. As with
the other this is also a blum We did concentrate a lot on up the
middle talent. You know, we drafted should we keep Travishaw? We may
have kept Travisshaw, but we also drafted Marcus semi and early. We drafted
Chad Pinder early. We have Buster Posey. We drafted Jeff McNeil relatively early.
And I think it leaves us with a very interesting team because it's it's
a team that feels like ours because basically it has nine players who are like
roughly equivalent in offensive talent, so we don't have like stars, but everybody
is like, yeah, pretty good hitter. I think our pitching rotation is
theoretically a little more shaky, but we may have We may have hit Drew
Pomerands, who I was looking at, who kind of picked up velocity in
the offseason, who I'm interested in. I think Trevor Richards has looked pretty
good early on. I'm hoping Tyler Skaggs is a breakout. I'm hoping Mike
Minor is a breakout. This doesn't sound like any sort of Pennant winning team.
I have to be honest, saying the name is back. But you
know, with a twenty four team league, sometimes you have to recalibrate expectations
a little bit. You just don't have the same kind of talent base that
you might in a ten team. Al Right now, and I've got those
draft results up, it looks like we did keep Shaw. We took McNeil
in the ninth round, Skaggs in the tenth, Richards in the thirteenth.
I'm not sure if there's another player you wanted me to check. Yeah,
I think we took Wilmore Flora's relatively early. Yeah, second base. Yeah,
so again, like I you know, maybe Jeff McNeill will turn into
a keeper. Certainly he's looked very good in the early going. And some
of it was like looking at a player like Jeff McNeil whose challenge is really
finding playing time on the roster on a very deep Mets roster and saying,
Okay, you know, maybe the thing that is de valuing him is that
he doesn't have enough playing time and his um and he may not be able
to, you know, provide ninth round value this year. But given a
year, given an offseason, maybe you'll be able to get that in a
future year and so while still getting value this year. I think we tried
the same thing with fran Bille Reyes, who so far this season, very
early, it's just not looked like does not look like that it's going to
be paying off super well for us. But again, you know, get
a player in a crowded situation, see if just the innate talent is going
to help us in a year to come, and then just pretty swing pretty
wildly on some breakout picks. You know, I think chat easy Chad Pender
in this league. We have Jackie Bradley junior in this league. Those are
a couple of just straight stat cast darlings, I guess of the moment and
just to see if they kind of break out. You know, we had
our April We had our April draft. So far we have it a little
earlier in this league than in others. In this league, we uh kind
of looked to shore up the offense a little bit. So we had Chris
Owings batting as our platoon third baseman, which is probably not ideal to have
Chris Owings in your starting lineup. So we ended up drafting let me just
check to make sure we drafted Oh Mark Reynolds to replace him. Oh,
we had Chris Owings as the DH, which was really not good. We
still have Chris Owings in our lineup, at least now he's in the field,
which is a little better. But you know, as as I said,
it's really hard to fix when you make a mistake like that in the
spring draft, because, especially in a deep league like this, there is
you know, there's nothing left in the positional for position players after a spring
draft in this league. Hopefully this something that the twenty sixth man next year
is going to fix a little bit um because you know, just with short
benches everywhere, there's very little you can do to make up for that except
in a trade. Um, Jared, who have you looked for so far
as a trade candidate? Well, first of at Chris Owings, the DH
feels like an indictment of just our general strategy and approach to this thing,
where we say, well, anyone can play first base, anybody can DH,
and then you end up with Chris Owens Owings. Yeah, it's not
great, it's not a great job, but um uh yeah, well we'll
see how this league goes. I think the challenge for this team is really
going to be able to is going to be to find a direction to go
with it. Um, you know, we drafted a couple of rookies.
Actually this year we drafted and Hayes Um and we drafted Adlie Rushman. In
this league, a team like that really plays to Jared's strengths of his decisive
decision making this and his decidedly Yeah, I'm out of decision making words,
but I made a harp. Yeah, you know, we probably need to
help Jared with figuring out the direction of this team. Then. Yeah,
Um, I think there's a chance that we may see the writing on the
wall in a couple months and then try to pack it in early. I
was gonna say when I loved Surprise, it seemed Yeah, it seemed like
the pitchers were over their heads a little bit. I know you called out
their early season performances. Do you expect them to keep it up? And
and if we aren't at the top of the division in a month, do
you think it's going to be because of the hitting or the pitching. Um.
I think it will probably be the lack of top end talent, to
be honest, on both sides of the ball. UM, I think if
we aren't at the top of in the month, it'll probably be because of
the pitching. But I am looking more for the pitching to surprise and hold
up. And I think if we are at the top of the month,
it will probably be because the pitchers are continuing to play over their heads a
little bit. Okay, interesting, but you know, this might be a
pivotal year for our team, because maybe this is the year where we pulled
the trigger and trade Buster Posey and Andrew mc cutcheon for whatever we can get.
Everything falls all the way apart, yeah, or George Springer and just
see you know again, we're just not going to get value back because this
is not the league where you get enough value back to usually make those kinds
of trades worth it. But are we going to Are we going to try
to do maybe one or two fallow years as we did when we first joined
this league. We're even in a soft eight we were keeping I think we
kept Buster Posey for instance, in the soft age a couple of years before
he made the majors and just like took a loss on that position over and
over again for the chance to pay off, which is again, if you're
keeping young stars, you know, that's something that's a little more appealing than
keeping, um, you know, potential prospects. I would say, so,
so it's interesting. We'll check back in maybe in a month, see
how see how well the decision making process is gone. It'll be going great
what we're landing on. But you know, this is I think also a
case where you can look at our teams to give us advice. If you
have thoughts on our team sentence scoresheet at Baseball Perspectives dot com, we will
read it and try not to feel bad about ourselves. Already passed that point,
I have no probably left in my ability to play fantasy baseball. So,
um, I'm okay with being bad at this. Yeah, so um,
speaking of being bad at things, Um, Jared, you've been watching
the Orioles for a week. I'm good at watching the Orioles. Yeah,
No, you're good at watching the Orioles. I was going to pivot to
talking about a player who's maybe had a rough week, and it is perhaps
the story of baseball a moment I was gonna say, even I know about
this, That's what I'm able to deal it is, um, And I
don't mean to pick on him, and I will try to pivot off Um,
but you know, hopefully hopefully by saying this, I am actually just
chasing him to get a hit tonight. I haven't checked the results yet,
but no, Chris Davis is over the season so far. Chris Davis was
over most of last season, especially the end of it. Has now set
a record fourth most consecutive at bats without a hit. Is that is that
correct? Shared? Yes, okay, Um not played appearances, but at
bats twenty nineteen Orioles a team of five distinction. I think he's went away
from played appearances to something like that. He's close. Um, what is
the remaining contract? I'm sure it's over at the end of the year.
Yeah, yeah, I mean you don't want to like cut bait before the
season ends, but yeah, I think you're coming pretty close to the end
of the rotten right. Surely, how could he possibly be under contract for
any longer than the end of this year? I mean that would be he
was the worst playing basebaster. How could it be being that doesn't make any
sense, like it was another three years and ninety two million dollars that would
be. I was gonna say they at least getting like a good below market
deal on him. He got that extension because it was like a low per
year rate, right right, Well, I am looking at him now,
and six million dollars of it is deferred each year, So I mean the
new Bobby buddy a deal. But I think the thing that he is like
the silver lining if anything, is that it did not cost them their best
player. No, I mean, why on earth would you give up your
best player to hold on to Chris Davis. That s Mark Trumbo a functionally
equivalent player. The deferred money only goes through twenty thirty seven, so I
don't that's quite Bobby Budnita. Wait, I was on because I was coughing.
What twenty thirty seven? Yeah, so he's signed through twenty twenty two,
but the deferred money only goes until twenty thirty seven. So that's that's
gonna be exciting. That's a fun article that writes itself. Bro, my
daughter's going to be in college when Chris Davis is done getting paid by the
Oils. Although possibly my favorite I'm looking at Cott's contract now. My favorite
bullet point outlining the contract is that there is only limited no trade protection.
He doesn't have full no trade protection is just limited. So well, well
he kind of has fallowed no trade. There's a difference between being untradeable and
having no trade protection, right, He's really ensured that. In another way,
it's not true. I mean that's a sign of his love of Baltimore.
So I genuinely I don't mean to pick on him because if anyone is
going to uh and also strike, players who strike out a lot just look
horrible when they are slumping because they were just not making you know, noctis.
Yeah, so you know, I think it looks even worse than it
is. Um, of course, what it is is the worst player in
base so it's not like a feather in his cap. But um, you
know, I think this is the year when players are just not getting hits
anymore. I was thinking about this because I you know, I was looking
at the first week. Um you know, I was watching some games and
um, just over and over again. I was just watching like really average
pictures just take no hitters. It's like the fifth inning was it was David
hess who had no. Six. It was seven and then seven yeah,
yeah, I uh god, almighty. It was like, um, you
know I saw Chris Paddock, uh, you know, making his debut.
That was a no hitter through four Matt Moore had no hitter through five innings.
Hey, Matt Moore is still good, right, And you love Chris
Paddock, Yeah, and Srud Thornton matched him. Um, but you know
in his first start, I saw Brad Peacock throw a bunch of hittings.
You know, it was just um and just up and down. All sorts
of teams are um just you know, average to bad pictures or throwing two
hitters, three hitters left and right. Um, and something has like just
I don't want to say like broken in baseball, but um, you know,
I think it's a sign that something has uh formidably changed when we're seeing
things like that. And you know, I was thinking about what that means
a little bit for U our team and for Scuorti in general. We were
talking us just a little bit off fair about some concepts around this. Um.
You know, there is an article in Joe she Hands Valuable Newsletter.
Again, That's another thing I would suggest that anyone listening to the subscribe to
about the death of the single. And I've seen some pole up conversations around
that on the Internet, But the gist of it is that the single is
almost gone as a offensive weapon, and it does more than just like,
okay, it's a three tro outcomes game. Now everyone knows that. It's
been great branding for us. Yeah, we pop up all over the place.
It's great. How apprescient was one of us. They're both effective marketing
tool certainly not anything else that we do. Yeah, our one bit of
genius. It's just getting up the SEO rankings there. Um. But you
know, I think, um, it's not just seeing the three child comes
game, uh going, it's you know, the single just all of a
sudden, It makes sacrifice bunts pointless. It makes things like stone basis pointless
because it requires you know, moving the runner over and then moving the runner
over again. Um. You know that. Um. Basically, any you
know, any strategy that kind of moves the runner along is really relying on
a hit that is in all likelihood never going to come or be an extra
mace hit if it does. Um um, thus rendering the initial moving the
runner over and right right. Um. And you know, I think it
has moved the game, uh inexorably towards this U batter picture confrontation that either
ends and strike out or victory with an extra mashter a home run, and
this kind of all or nothing thing that is has a lot of m kind
of ramifications for the way that baseball is being played. And you know,
just thinking about that, because score sheet is a league that is kind of
the underlying engine. Probably it has been built and settled in a different offensive
era, to say the least, you know that there is still a bunt
column and a steel column and those are really the actions that you can take
and pinch hitting, and none of those really happen anymore. You know.
There isn't like a shift column or that kind of you know, reflects the
decisions being made today. But you know, on the other hand, there
are fewer decisions being made today. So um, you know, I'm looking
at these two hitters one hitters and saying like, okay, how are you
building a team this way? You know, are we looking more even more
towards slugging that over everything else? If the system is expecting hits that just
aren't going to show up in a in a simulation, And then I guess
the question is is that okay? Because the system is really keying on ear
and balancing everything else around it is that kind of the natural the natural safeguard
to avoid breaking the rest of the simulation. And Ben, if it's okay,
I'm going to turn it over to you in a second, because I
think you had a couple of thoughts on like, Okay, if you're building
a simulation, what is important? Yeah, yeah, And I think it
gets to some of what you were saying about how score sheet was built and
designed in a time when you know, baseball as a whole was just played
differently. You know, the frequency of events was different and the style was
different. I hadn't thought about the last part of what you said about how
like the era matching sort of keeps the run environment in check in a way
that might cure some of those other ills. A lot of what I had
been thinking about when I sort of brainstorm about this sort of thing is,
you know, one of the things that happen in real life that need to
be tracked by the sims so that people that are playing appreciate, you know,
some some realism and also some fantasy, right, Like, we don't
actually want it to be perfectly tied to reality, because then we'd just be
roto essentially right, it would be completely deterministic, so right, or strat
or something like that. Yeah, And so finding the balance between you know,
just one hundred percent replicating reality and something that deviates so far from reality
that it doesn't feel like our abilities as fantasy players to evaluate talent or whatever,
you know, have a bearing. We want we want the thing that
we see played in real life and our ability to evaluate players as they play
actual baseball to be something that informs how well we play the fantasy game.
And so you have to start a pick, you know, and I think
you could you could come up with a ranking or something like that where you're
like, well, home runs are probably more important than triples, right,
because home runs are happening more often, they have a more significant driving force
on run expectancy and team performance and all these other things. So you know,
you could go through through the different ways that a plate appearance can end
and have a sense for, like, you know, which things are the
most important in terms of how closely they track between fantasy and reality. And
my sense is that singles, unto themselves, probably wouldn't be They'll probably be
like in the middle third somewhere. It's like my hunch, right, it
wouldn't be at the bottom because again maybe something like triples are down there or
depending on how finally you want to break it out, like the nature of
you know, ground out versus lineout versus flyball pop up, that type of
thing. You know, the type of batted ball out matters a little bit,
but you know it doesn't matter as much as maybe single versus double versus
home run types of things. So yeah, and I think one of the
things that is interesting to me conceptually about this is that, um, there's
a real break point between something like single, double, home run and ar
right, because era is something that's measuring outcome as opposed to like the result
of it at bats. It's this overall result of the game. It's this
abstract concept, right, So you know, if a if a pitcher,
uh, let's say a J. Burnett's it and allows let's say nine hits,
nine walks, strikes out seven and no runs, I think it's scoresheet
there are going to allow no runs, yeah or something. The fact that
they allowed no runs is way more notable than the fact that they allowed nine
hits, right, right, And in this world where let's say a pictures
pitch for five innings allowed two hits and two runs both by home run.
The thing that is most notable is the two runs right picture strike at its
functionally don't matter. Yeah, I think that's generally true. The way that
the batter gets out is not is not that significant, and it's becoming even
less significant, right. That's part of what you're getting at with Like the
decrease in singles is also like the increase in strikeouts, and the fact that
you know, the groundball to the right side that used to advance the runner
is less and less consequential as the ability for that base advancement to have a
difference in the sequencing and how many runs are scored. Right, and you
have batting averages essentially collapsing in real baseball, mitigated somewhat by the home runs.
So you know, I think what's interesting in building a simulation or something
like that would be this balance of like, Okay, do we want to
preserve this run environment that exists, or do we want to try to simulate
this batter picture outcome as the funk as the key unit. And then you
know, if you do that, I think you're a little bit more susceptible
to these types of changes in league. You think tying it more directly to
the batter picture interaction leaves you susceptible when the run environment changes. Yeah,
Or I think as the batter picture, you know, if you haven't modeled
let's say singles correctly, you know there's no countervailing force that's saying, Okay,
well, I don't care how the team needs to score run here,
it just happens, right. I think also, if you did it correctly
and the sims programmed to track to reality closely enough in terms of the batter
picture interaction, it would automatically correct itself, right. And I think I
think part of what we've talked about is you sort of want to get to
the lowest level that you can if you're really going for realism, because it'll
have a tendency to correct itself and you won't see weird anomalous results that don't
seem to track based on what you would expect to happen, right, Like
that example that you gave with like the A. J. Burnett start doesn't
and shouldn't probably happen very often, right, right. And I think some
of what we see in the like run balancing or luck balancing types of things
that happen in score sheet are situations where like, this player's this batter's performance
has to be like at a certain level in order to sort of track to
you know, they're like key perform indicators from real life, like on base
percentage or whatever. But because the picture that they're facing, you know,
has some luck and run balancing, that means that they're gonna artificially suppressed run
scoring. You get these sort of like weird combinations of things where a lot
of runners get stranded or the sequencing as such that you know, things end
up looking kind of wonky and you're sort of like, well, you know,
I guess you can chalk some of that up to the randomness of sequencing,
but at some point it's it looks too weird to be believable. Whereas
if you could really track to like the nuts and bolts of the batter picture
interaction, I think all that would take care of itself, or would come
much closer to taking care of itself. So yeah, Jared, I'm just
curious what you know between the two, Like do you think kind of preserving
the run environment might be more important or you know, do you do you
think this like fundamental unit is enough to kind of carry a simulation through or
is that something you'd be looking towards. Let's say, do you how do
you want your David has start reflected David has should only pitch no hitters.
Um, I leaned towards the fundamental unit. But may I ask a I've
been thinking about like a somewhat related question. I don't want to. I
don't want to. They've hurt the conversation. If you guys said more that
you want to come on, Jo, this is a very focused exploration.
Well, I've just been thinking about it from like a more like one level
up in terms of like interaction with the sim And so my bias here is
that I've never found the managing part of stuff as interesting as the GM aspects.
So like, I didn't play STRAT, but we had this board game
called Superstar Baseball that was spec similar of STRAT basically, and it for to
me it was more fun it was drafting the cards of the Hall of Famers
rather than actually playing the games against my brother. But it seems sort of
deal. But so I guess my question is and I think it's related because
it seems like that's part of the appeal of something like UM scoresheet is that
you get to be the manager too, and you get to you know,
just all other strategies that every every battery decide steal or bunt or whatever the
case may be. But it sounds like, you know what we're talking about
in this in the sort of environment that the role of the manager, both
in real life and in something like scoresheet, is um plays less of a
role in the SIM. And like, how how should how deep? What
plays less of a role in the SIM managerial strategy? Yeah? Right?
Like if the single? If the single is less important, then stealing and
stealing and bunting are less important. Then what are the lovers that a manager
is has to pull? And how much does one need to think about that
when thinking about the SIM? Right? And a manager is pulling? Like
if we talk about a major league manager, the things that they are most
doing are well, frank, listening to the general manager, a like executing
their will. But I would say major league manager's biggest decisions are kind of
setting the lineup based upon batter pitcher interaction effects, right, so you usually
handedness, but things like that, I would say defensive positioning, and this
would be the magial unit, right, including the bench coaches, defensive positioning,
and then bullpen management. Sure, it seemed like the three big levers,
and I would say you're right that none of those seem particularly well reflected
right now. I think bullpen management is the low hanging fruit there. The
like picture substitution should be something that are easier to have a fine tune wrench
around, where like shifting and positioning and stuff like that, it's going to
be much tougher, Yeah, because especially and you're already dealing with results shifting,
so you can't like so shifting the defense and then on top of that,
dealing with shifted player results. I think that's extremely messy too. Untangle.
Sure, yeah, but you know it does seem like that is the
way that you know material decisions are going, and it's kind of tough to
say, like, Okay, this player needs to bunt to the sixth ending
when and have that be your decision when you know so much energy is being
focused elsewhere in the real world. Yes, I agree with that, all
right, Yes, so I think it's interesting. I think we might pick
that up. We're coming to the end of our our audio recording window right
now, though. I do want to hivot and you know, if we
have more to talk about on a subject, that's great because you know what
that means. That's a podcast topic for next time. Um. But until
then, UM can I I want to tease the thing that we're going to
talk about next time because I think so Jared, you've talked about this before.
It was like how realistic do you really need it to be? You
know, like what's the driver of how fun it is? You know,
because I think everything we're talking about here is like, how can you gear
it to be as realistic as possible? But maybe the better question is like
how can you gear it to be as fun as possible? And when are
those the same thing? Yeah, and for anyone who has made it this
far and cares to share their thoughts, we want to hear them. Baseball
Perspectives dot com. If you don't have a good scoresheet, team question,
at least chime in with your opinions on sim stuff and we can share those
on there. M Yeah, and you know again, we'll probably ask that
a little more upfront in the next podcast. But until then, Ben,
what is the best thing you saw this week? I was gonna go with
the Chris Davis stuff. Yeah, first, and then I was like,
well, I can't do that because like and then you said, like you're
gonna tease chat about that anyway, So I couldn't go there. And one
of the things that happens in the timing of like when baseball starts that matters
a little bit more in the northern climates is the start of spring. So
I was gonna go at the start of spring. It's been wonderful weather around
Michigan, and it's gonna be opportunity to take a lease outside and it's fun
to watch her like run around and just sort of be outside for the first
time when she's able to walk. We're outside today, I was like taking
the dogs out or whatever, and like a huge gust of wind came like
completely shocked her because you know, you don't you don't think about her like
she's spent her entire life indoors. Basically, right, is really strange,
right, right, Like, and so like this is the thing about being
a parent that is like continually rewarding. It's like you're like, oh wait,
Like I never thought about what it would be like to experience wind for
the first time. So she has just like very bewildered look on her face,
like what is going on? It was awesome. Yeah, definitely looking
forward to spring, getting outside more, going on walks, that kind of
thing. So you next time by blowing on her. Yeah, so,
and I have actually they have. So babies have this reflex. You may
may not be aware. I think it called the diverse reflex. So like
if they're crying and you blow on them and it'll like startle them for a
second and they'll stop crying. So if you're willing to like hyperventilate yourself,
you can sort of like mitigate really terrible crying fits. So she definitely had
like people blow on her face before. I won't say that, you know,
let's a go to move of mine or anything. But uh, it's
not like the wind itself was completely for like the notion of having like air
moving around her. It was just like, you know, of course there's
a feeling on her and then like all the trees are making all the noise
and the leaves are kicking up, and it's just anyway, Can I just
say if if I were crying and somebody blew on my face, I would
be pretty startled too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they grow
out of it after a while. But um yeah, so it's a good
s tragy for really, anyone who's crying just get all up in their face.
Um. So, Jared, what is the best thing you saw this
week? I'm gonna stretch the limits of one thing and turn it into three
things. Okay, but but no vers real quick. Um. I don't
know if you guys remember last podcast. I was like, man, Yankees
are so good. Even if they had two injuries to their hitters and two
injuries to their pictures, It's still be just fine. I'm just gonna leave
that there for a second. Um, but the best thing I saw this
week was I'm gonna get two things. It's it's uh interaction between fans and
players. So going back to the Chris Davis, I want to bring it
up before. I was watching the game last night when Chris Davis broke the
record, and um, sorry, I just love that. It's like the
Cal ripping game. You know, were you there with Chris Davis broke the
record? Wait, Jared, weren't you also there when Cal broth the record?
So you're like witnessed all kinds of oil records. I wasn't I wasn't
in Baltimore yesterday. I was on catch because there was only sixty five hundred
people was the announced crowd, the lowest attendance in Kenny Yards history. No
get broken a few times this year, guys, but just them. And
maybe this is maybe me was casting it onto that. But the way that
the fans treated um, Chris Davis when he was up to tie and then
to break the record was really positive. It felt positive. At least it
felt like this is a situation where they could have gotten on his case.
And there are certainly tons of people who are like, oh man, you're
getting paid twenty three million dollars to be absolutely terrible and and literally anybody else
could do what Chris Davis is doing because he's not doing anything. But at
least in this one moment, it was it felt kind of nice that the
fans were, h we're not on his case with this one at that,
which must be a really truly terrible moment in somebody's life. It's like the
Rudy moment, right, sort of yeah, you know what the opposite something
well, but then he doesn't look like he find he's getting a lot of
money but like to be have all this attention on just how terrible you are
is gotten kind of rough and it was somewhat supportive, you know, Yeah,
it is a Bombers like I do genuinely like as much as he is
a rich person, I do genuinely feel bad for him because I think there's
a confluence of factors that yeah too at this point. And it was actually
kind of exciting watching it. I gotta say, just you know, whether
he's going to get a hit, and I don't know if you guys saw,
like on the last one he actually hit the ball really well. As
soon as he hit it, I was like, oh man, he did
it. And if you if you look afterwards, like the hit probability on
it, I was fifty eight percent or something. Got unlucky. It was.
It was kind of crazy. But then just yep, unlucky. It's
a good word for Chris Teas. That's gonna be rough one we make all
the records move over to stack cast. I was at the Nats game when
I was last week, when I was that, uh, Bryce Harper came
back for the first game. Um, I managed to get free tickets and
then because it's the Nats, their beer concessant stopped working, so I got
free beers. There's I mean win, but uh uh yeah. Just to
see the reaction that that Bryce Harper got when his first time up, I
don't know if it was good or bad, but it was just a thing.
And to see NAT's fans passionate about something I guess was nice, but
it was. It's just kind of interesting being there and seeing both the Nuts
and the Phillies fans and there was so much emotion there. It was fun
to be there. I guess. I don't have a judgment on him.
Who was the person on Twitter that wrote, like, why are you people
booing? You were all Oriels fans fifteen years ago. It's just such a
remarkable troll. I appreciate it. Yeah, No, I mean it's it's
clearly fair. But I guess if the Nuts are going to build their fans,
you know, build their history of something, this is sort of how
it starts. That. Yeah, and that was definitely a remarkable game.
Um. You know, I was gonna stretch the definition of best thing I
saw this week because the best thing I saw this week was not the Bryce
Harper Nationals game. It was the first Bryce Harper home game where he hit
a home run in the eighth inning and then was it the or late in
the game. Um, So you know, he came up and was just
getting cheered by Phillies fans who are obviously noted for their uh passion and love
of the hometown craw hometown nine. Um. And then you know, I
kind of in his last bad of his first game of you know, his
Philly's career, he hits a mammoth home run. He I mean, obviously
he's been looking okay part of the season. Yeah, I know. And
the thing the thing that got me about that well, to youth so one.
You know, just uh, the moment, the passion, the excitement
in the standard you know, him coming out, and it was like,
oh, this is you know, this is what makes sports exciting that you
you know, you can't script things and it just makes things all the more
enjoyable for the fact that you know, when it does happen, it feels
electric and alive. Um. But that wasn't the best thing. The best
thing I saw about that was that ad as he was hitting the home run.
On the replay, you could see in his swing you see a bunch
of fans rise and in the middle of the fans looking like blend close in
the natural is the Philly fanatics straight to cabin with what I can only describe
as a shocked expression. And everyone is moving, and the Philly fanatic is
just like staring at you dead on with like surprise, joy, all the
emotions that you can expect from felt. And you know, as everyone rises
and uh, you know, eventually you see this Philly fanatic just get ready
to do his thing, his thing, obviously being less enjoyable, staring likely
straight to camera. Uh you you just appreciate, like, oh, this
is this is amazing, This is a moment, This is like wonder Boy
all over again. I knew there was a twist coming. I didn't see
that one. That was pretty good. Maybe there is some magic in baseball
after all. All right, So on that note, please send us your
thoughts, questions, memories other Philip fanatic to Scoresheet at Baseball Perspectives dot com.
Until then, on behalf of Ben Murphony Jaredwis I mean Leftgwitz. Thanks
again and have a great day.