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Welcome Welcome to wharton money ball.
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Welcome to a full hour of sports analytics
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Here on the wharton podcast network.
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This is kate massey hosting this week With
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two of my longtime collaborators and good friends
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eric bradlow and shane jensen Our fourth co
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-host oddy weiner Is away this week doing
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oddy weiner.
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Thanks.
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He'll be back As you guys know some
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combination of us are here almost every week
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of the year Pushing 49 50 weeks of
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the year have been for more than 12
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years now delighted To roll in here and
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get a little time Talking sports analytics with
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these guys It's tuesday afternoon The show will
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go up sometime wednesday.
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This is our usual slot.
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We're going to flip it this week We
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usually do guests in the first half hour
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this week.
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We're going to do guests in the second
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half hour that guest jay jaffe One of
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the best sports analytics oriented baseball writers out
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there for fangraphs We'll talk with jay in
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the second half of the show talk more
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baseball in the second half of the show
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Um till then open lines as we used
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to say when we were running this thing
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live Gentlemen afternoon to you.
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How are things eric from points unknown shane?
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I think from home and i'm coming in
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from austin.
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What's up guys?
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All good great time to great sports time
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of the year a lot going on with
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nba NHL mlb's in full swing.
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We have the french open tennis going on
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right now Of course the world cup's about
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to start so a lot of good things
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going on Well shane shane and I need
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to talk about hockey shane.
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I this back to adult adulting.
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Um, I don't know if this is adulting
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or not, but I I had this exchange.
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I have a buddy in uh, Durham who's
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a hurricanes guy.
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Um, he's kind of a come to it
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lately hockey guy like me He's a hick
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like me grew up playing football and basketball
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and not hockey now he's into it It's
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not the most natural sport for that particular
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region No, it's not nor is it for
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west texas?
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But we love it now and we were
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talking last night because he was suffering through
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this game as carolina Couldn't quite get it
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past the canadians until late and i'm like
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totally enjoying it because I only marginally care
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about the outcome and the thing is here's
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the weird I I 100 no question enjoyed
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that game more than every sabers game or
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penguins game I watched this season like this
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this playoffs like yeah, you know, I cared
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about the pins in round one I cared
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about the sabers in round and you feel
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like that degrades kind of yeah It's the
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worst viewing experience.
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Yeah I mean this is what i've suffered
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through as a patriots fan for the last
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20 years No sympathy from you guys, by
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the way that i've had to watch all
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these super bowls that have really mattered to
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me Another way.
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Yeah.
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Yeah Audie weiner has arrived.
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Let's say a little unexpectedly sliding in here
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from god knows where I think he's way
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overseas But audie good to see you good
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to be here Hey, we're gonna have jay
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in the second half of the show.
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So we're talking a little hockey to top
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to top the show Sorry to follow up
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on what you were saying.
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I I have found uh, I found like
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this this hockey uh playoffs has been Extra
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delightful for me and I don't know if
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it's it's partly the level play which I
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think has been excellent I've really enjoyed the
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games themselves, but it's also, you know, I
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I don't dislike any of the teams remaining,
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you know like I could I would be
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kind of fine, I mean, I guess I
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i'd sort of uh Built in my mind
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this like carolina colorado finals, which it doesn't
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look like we're gonna get after all but
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uh, but you know I'm, i'm fairly I
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i'm fine with everything now that the oilers
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are out of it You've had two bad
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seasons because the oilers have been there to
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the finals I I don't you know, it's
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like, you know, it's kind of I kind
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of celebrate oilers elimination day in the same
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way.
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I celebrate yankees elimination day every year Unfortunately
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with both those teams it often is very
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late in the game that I celebrate that
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right?
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Okay, eric's been trying to jump.
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No.
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No, I was just going to point out
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that I find it interesting That you're as
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excited as you are about hockey, but you
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also made another statement, which I wouldn't make
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about most sports I find it extremely difficult
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to watch most sports, but maybe hockey less
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so when I don't actually care about the
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outcome of the game So there's something I
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agree with you.
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There is something exciting about hockey, especially two
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two games late in it, etc where Like
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except for the super bowl, like if you
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just show me some random nfl game I
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don't know.
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The texans are playing the panthers or something
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like that.
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I love football I mean, it's probably my
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favorite sport, but I don't know I'm, not
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that excited to flip on the texans and
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the panthers or you know, some random nba
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game in the middle Hey, don't be so
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harsh.
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Don't harshen our boy.
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Eric eager.
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Come on.
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You care about the panthers now now you
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care about Now we do now.
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Can I ask you a question because i've
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always had a hard time watching hockey on
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television And found it just a delightful game
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to go to more than delightful.
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It's super exciting to be at it's actually
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easier to follow it on You know, like
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I feel like unlike some sports it's easier
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to follow it in person like you can
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track the puck better Yeah, it's just it's
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a huge gap.
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It's hard on tv for some of that
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Yeah, it's a very big gap and I
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think it's interesting because you know One of
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the things about football the ascendance in america
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of football as the national sport Basically parallels
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the growth of television because it is ideal
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I mean i've been offered tickets to go
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see the eagles games and i'm like no
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I think i'm gonna watch at home on
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my big screen and not have to worry
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about two hours of leaving the stadium and
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It's just like i'm gonna watch it We
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have to get you to a college football
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game because the atmosphere of a college football
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game is an entirely different thing And that's
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back to hockey the the game last night.
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The carolina montreal game was in montreal.
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It was the first Montreal game of this
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round and they have been incredible throughout the
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playoffs whenever they play at home.
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I mean Obviously the montreal folks Quebecois or
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whatever they're called are like phenomenal for hockey
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and that atmosphere is just unbelievable So oddy
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every now and then it's worth going forget
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about the view or whatever It's just the
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atmosphere of the game and that happens with
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college football Well, I have to say i've
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been to college football not big college football
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But as a student I used to go
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to the yale games, of course I would
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sit there and discuss math problems with my
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friends.
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That's what we would do.
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But when we went True, it's a true
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story Um, but when we went to the
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hockey games, which were which were we did
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not do that those were super exciting Um
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the hockey the yale hockey game.
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Yeah at the whale at the whale Fantastic.
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I think it also helps that the ivies
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are kind of more Um, they're competitive in
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hockey.
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Um, well last night one one thing that
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jumped out last night carolina won it was
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the third game of the series carolina supposed
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to you know be the big favorite montreal
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goes down to raleigh and takes the takes
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the first game takes the first game and
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um, and uh They go so carolina.
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They outplayed them last night.
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Remember they had a 10-day rest and
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we talked about what the impact would be
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and they Seriously outplayed them last night by
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the end of the game.
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The expected goals was like 5.1 to
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one point something.
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Yeah Think about yeah, the game was tied
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2-2 deep into the first period of
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overtime and carolina wins at 3-2 The
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expected goals by the end of the game
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was 5-1 That's how badly the hurricanes
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outplayed the canadians but just barely squeaked by
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No, it's I it's made me because I
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feel like carolina in general has been I
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mean, they're on a dominant looking run if
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you just look at outcome 10 and 1
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in the playoffs.
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Yeah, but for those It's like they're like
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that's based on a 4-0 record in
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overtime Yeah, and you'd kind of think like
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in part of you know, most of me
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i'm like, oh well overtime is just completely
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random It's a coin flip right but maybe
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carolina montreal like it's like carolina if you're
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like a lopsidedly good team And you're having
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trouble getting ahead Maybe you just need more
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time in the game to kind of for
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that like those Difference if we saw that's
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a nice realize, you know, it's a nice
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point.
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Yep, right just i'm gonna jump in I
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know eric has had his hand up, but
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i'm learning more about hockey and there's this
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and the depth and the differences in the
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lines does suggest that maybe there's There's less
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of a coin to flip in overtime because
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Because of that you can basically have your
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top lines play more often Maybe they don't
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I don't I don't I don't know enough
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to know exactly how the details go But
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that would be my hypothesis.
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Yeah, I don't I don't know if that's
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true because This is something tolsky told us
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whenever we talked to him a couple of
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months ago We were talking about that what
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seems like special, you know playoff overtime hockey
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feels special and he's like I don't know
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guy basically these are my words.
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I don't know guys The players are so
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tired by that.
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Yeah, they can't be working as hard as
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you think They're just worn out lines more
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exclusively in overtime.
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You better you better end that overtime quick,
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I guess, you know, exactly But both teams
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are kind of going through that same exhaustion
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kind of level.
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Uh, You know kind of performance to grade
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I guess Eric, yeah, you're um, you're five
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to one expected goals question asked made me
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think of something metric statistically So I assume
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expected goals in hockey are based on location
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and shots taken correct Yes, assuming that's true
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Is there any reason we would need another
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metric to measure goalie performance than the difference
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between expected goals and actual goals?
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Well, yes Because I don't think expected goals
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Takes into consideration the position of other players
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and the position of other players has a
00:09:18
lot to do with goalie performance So guys
00:09:20
get guys get blocked all the time.
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Do you think if we got more sophisticated
00:09:25
in measuring expected goals?
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Then the answer like in the limit would
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be no Yeah, right.
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It seems like in the limit if you
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could traject like track the trajectory of the
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puck And kind of have like a real
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value.
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Yes, I think then you'd probably get almost
00:09:41
all the Residual outbated like that would that
00:09:44
would I think be basically well as long
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as you have to have some sense of
00:09:47
what the goalie Can see and what he
00:09:49
can't see so if he's got a clean
00:09:50
unobstructed view, that's one thing but if he's
00:09:53
got The other team's got a big guy
00:09:55
in front and he and some one of
00:09:56
their guys is trying to lean on him
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And he can barely look around or the
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puck comes over his right shoulder to even
00:10:00
see it that happens all the time Yeah,
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I guess i'm thinking of a 3d model
00:10:04
of all Players and puck right like like
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if that's kind of the limit Kind of
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of both on the data and kind of
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modeling side.
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I feel like that would get Essentially all
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of it, but you're right.
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That's a good point eric I think you've
00:10:19
basically defined, you know you have the perfect
00:10:21
uh expected goals model whenever you can take
00:10:24
the residual against actual goals as the mark
00:10:27
of goalie performance and I think we're some
00:10:29
distance.
00:10:29
Well, I don't know about some that was
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my point You said it much better than
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I did.
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I like how you said that can I
00:10:34
just interject about some of the talks i've
00:10:36
seen about expected goal in um Soccer professional
00:10:42
highest level soccer is it doesn't seem to
00:10:44
be much residual Value attributable to the shooter
00:10:51
In other words, if you look at expected
00:10:53
goals versus expect actual goals and look at
00:10:56
it from the offensive side you'd expect some
00:10:59
players to consistently outperform their expected goals and
00:11:04
the bottom line is conditional on location Yeah,
00:11:07
everything you would put in stuff like that
00:11:09
the kind of random effect of player is
00:11:11
not there's no players that really see So
00:11:13
in soccer, I wouldn't say no.
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I didn't i'm about to make my one
00:11:16
exception Um, okay after controlling for everything.
00:11:19
Basically, there is no player except for one
00:11:21
and he sticks out like a sore thumb
00:11:23
and that's messy So he's just great and
00:11:26
everybody else is great at taking shots.
00:11:29
I mean getting to make them That's where
00:11:30
their genius is, but they don't seem to
00:11:33
score them more frequently Guys, you're the statisticians.
00:11:38
How well can we say something like that?
00:11:41
We can say there aren't reliable individual differences
00:11:44
and that's a population level conclusion That's different
00:11:48
than saying there are no individuals.
00:11:50
It's much harder to say Right these guys
00:11:53
fall so far outside.
00:11:54
They're beyond what we'd expect I mean, there
00:11:56
is a statistical test that we can use
00:11:58
to say that but that's what it would
00:11:59
take, right?
00:12:00
That's a great it was exactly what I
00:12:02
was we're done eight because let's let's imagine
00:12:04
we had However, many let's I don't know
00:12:06
15 20 15 players on a hockey team
00:12:08
whatever times 30 So let's imagine we had
00:12:11
roughly 450 to 500 players each with a
00:12:14
low power effect Because it's there's low maybe
00:12:16
low statistical power to assess this or even
00:12:19
in soccer And the problem is every one
00:12:22
of them shows this effect to a small
00:12:24
degree So there's a population level effect, but
00:12:27
it's hard to detect any single player with
00:12:29
that effect And that's what you would expect
00:12:32
matter of fact, my guess is there are
00:12:34
most phenomenon in life where individual Individual level
00:12:39
measurement is hard to say This player or
00:12:42
this person is so extraordinary But there is
00:12:46
an effect when I look at the population
00:12:48
distribution.
00:12:49
Well, adi's saying something else.
00:12:50
Adi's saying population level.
00:12:51
There's no effect Well, there's a random distribution
00:12:55
Population is so let's start be clear here.
00:12:57
This is the top players Oh, I thought
00:12:59
he was talking about players I thought he
00:13:01
was talking about there were no players that
00:13:02
show and observe goals more than they're expected
00:13:05
except for lino messi He was talking about
00:13:07
a player level effect.
00:13:09
I'm looking at a player to get more.
00:13:10
I mean, I assume Plenty there's plenty who
00:13:13
have positive plenty of negative and i'm actually
00:13:15
just repeating.
00:13:16
I haven't done this analysis myself I should
00:13:17
be making that quite clear.
00:13:19
Um, this was a talk given at nessus
00:13:22
Which is a new england sports conference that
00:13:24
takes place every other year at harvard And
00:13:26
this was one of the featured talks And
00:13:29
um, it was using a lot of bayesian
00:13:31
statistics as you might expect to do this
00:13:33
kind of problem It's the this the the
00:13:35
standard approach.
00:13:36
Um, yeah, that was the conclusion that was
00:13:39
uh, that was presented to the at the
00:13:41
conference No, it sounds like methodologically the right
00:13:43
thing.
00:13:43
I would kind of feel like that and
00:13:45
this is coming back to hockey I think
00:13:46
the similar problem hockey is that once you
00:13:48
start conditioning on shot Location and a lot
00:13:51
of the other type of stuff you'd like
00:13:53
to resize lights out even for players like
00:13:56
messy that play a lot I feel like
00:13:58
you all the time you're really reducing your
00:13:59
your sample size if you're then going to
00:14:01
be like Here's sort of like a rat,
00:14:04
you know looking for player Random effects on
00:14:07
top of that already complicated model So I
00:14:09
I just don't know how powerful with the
00:14:11
amount of data We have we how much
00:14:13
power we really have to detect that kind
00:14:16
of you know, sort of In other words
00:14:18
you're saying that there's so much noise because
00:14:20
the model is so So is not so
00:14:22
perfect by any stretch.
00:14:23
We don't know what xg is.
00:14:25
We only have xg up to the Factors
00:14:27
that we're putting in it and that introduces
00:14:29
an enormous amount of residual Independent noise and
00:14:33
that makes whatever signal you're trying to find
00:14:35
just that much harder to spot and detect
00:14:37
But he's also i'm also hearing or at
00:14:39
least i'm projecting onto what he's saying another
00:14:42
consideration, which is the ability to create xg
00:14:45
itself Is a skill can be an is
00:14:48
an individual difference and let's not condition out
00:14:50
xg without knowing that that's happening because That
00:14:54
could be what is reliable is the ability
00:14:55
to create more xg Um, by the way,
00:14:57
this question about the population doesn't seem to
00:15:00
have any reliable differences, but maybe one individual
00:15:03
or two Does is something that comes up
00:15:05
with nfl draft?
00:15:07
So this is goes back to one of
00:15:08
the first papers I submitted to the mit
00:15:10
conference It doesn't seem like teams are better
00:15:13
and if you take it down to the
00:15:14
general manager level That people aren't better than
00:15:17
each other at the nfl draft That doesn't
00:15:19
mean that there's not one or two who
00:15:21
outperform but you have it's a different statistical
00:15:23
test to ask whether one or two Hey,
00:15:26
if I just be since we're a business
00:15:27
school, my guess would be the same would
00:15:29
be true of people picking stocks, right?
00:15:32
I mean, this is the classic thing.
00:15:33
It doesn't mean there's nobody that's better It's
00:15:36
hard to be systematically better also from year
00:15:39
to year I think what adi's also pointing
00:15:40
out potentially is that messy maybe has repeatedly
00:15:44
done this It's not it's not a one.
00:15:47
My guess is it may not be a
00:15:48
one-year statistic that he's talking about and
00:15:51
you know, that's another possibility is that Lionel
00:15:55
messy could stick out this year, but not
00:15:57
for the previous 10 years.
00:15:58
That's not what you're saying.
00:15:59
I think no, I doubt it But the
00:16:02
thing is, I mean, this is where you
00:16:03
you touch on statistical techniques So everyone in
00:16:07
statistics is trained to try to do what
00:16:09
we call family-wise control So that when
00:16:11
we do have positives, we know that we're
00:16:13
controlling the false positive rate at whatever what
00:16:16
level we call that in statistics now we
00:16:19
typically use um false discovery rates and those
00:16:22
are Better ways to look at a population
00:16:24
level um characteristic because you don't have to
00:16:28
have the stringencies of family-wide, um Error
00:16:31
rates which are which basically take away most
00:16:34
of your power So when I did like
00:16:35
the hockey putting I couldn't find the one
00:16:38
the one putter golf Sorry, i'm getting mixing
00:16:41
my sports the golf putting I couldn't find
00:16:43
putting is even more Yeah, hockey pucking.
00:16:47
Um the uh, I couldn't find the the
00:16:49
the actual three or four putters who were
00:16:52
better and name them I could give you
00:16:54
a group of five or six and tell
00:16:56
you Of these five or six four of
00:16:58
them are are are going to be better
00:17:00
than everybody else with a control of the
00:17:02
error rate Of about five percent.
00:17:04
So in other words, it's kind of a
00:17:05
funny statistics It's like looking at stock pickers
00:17:07
and saying here's a bunch of people One
00:17:09
or two of them might actually just be
00:17:10
lucky but on this group most of them
00:17:13
That's exactly we want to be able to
00:17:14
say things that we can actually say and
00:17:16
no more And so you're saying we can
00:17:18
say this and no more which is fantastic
00:17:21
and I remember that about your putting paper
00:17:24
Um guys one last thing on hockey.
00:17:25
I just want to say we had a
00:17:26
note I had a note from a longtime
00:17:28
listener and good friend.
00:17:29
You've all wrote in strike He really ought
00:17:31
to get associate producer credit on this show
00:17:33
He gives us so much feedback and so
00:17:35
many good ideas But and i'm gonna probably
00:17:37
misrepresent what he said, but i'm gonna i'm
00:17:39
gonna use it to ask a question I
00:17:41
said last week that hockey had this quality
00:17:43
seems to me hockey has this quality Because
00:17:46
scoring is rare And that it can turn
00:17:49
on a dime guys can go from behind
00:17:50
the net to scoring a goal It happened
00:17:52
this in this past week in like four
00:17:53
seconds That there's there's there's higher frequency changes
00:17:58
in win probability than in other sports And
00:18:01
I I said that as a positive thing
00:18:04
It is something that keeps me kind of
00:18:05
it's hard to not pay if you care
00:18:07
about the game at all It's hard to
00:18:08
turn your attention to anything else because of
00:18:09
that quality And you've all wrote and said
00:18:12
yeah, I I said basically said I I
00:18:14
think that may be true And that's why
00:18:15
I don't like it as much as I
00:18:17
it's not it's like I I want I
00:18:19
don't want it to be as As like
00:18:20
a constant hazard rate that the wind problem
00:18:22
is going to change I want to see
00:18:23
it build up like you see it happens
00:18:25
in football or basketball It's interesting because I
00:18:28
you know, I can we group can we
00:18:30
group sports that way and it's it's and
00:18:32
and do people have preferences for the type
00:18:34
of Sport on that dimension that well, I
00:18:37
I think the most popular sport in the
00:18:38
world is definitely more like hockey in this
00:18:40
I mean, I think the hockey just because
00:18:42
it's even more end to end and like
00:18:44
deflections and stuff probably has an even greater
00:18:46
instantaneous rate of change but soccer is like
00:18:49
that too like one penalty or one like
00:18:52
kind of like I mean, I feel like
00:18:54
the probability can really change a lot in
00:18:56
soccer Uh kind of in like you're describing
00:18:59
but it does have a build soccer Soccer
00:19:01
does have this you see guys build up
00:19:03
over the course of a field now.
00:19:04
It doesn't always happen Continually, but when it
00:19:07
does like oh, they're getting closer.
00:19:08
There's something happening, but it's slower build than
00:19:11
a you know American football drive down the
00:19:13
field I mean do y'all find I
00:19:16
think it's less predictive.
00:19:17
I mean, maybe I that shows my soccer
00:19:19
naivete, but I feel like During a drive
00:19:23
down the field soccer wise because it's back
00:19:25
and forth like i'm I I can less
00:19:27
understand Understand.
00:19:28
Oh, something's really building here versus not.
00:19:31
It seems more random He wears it like
00:19:32
football because it's stop and start and because
00:19:35
there's underlying fundament like, you know How much
00:19:37
garbage they're getting and stuff?
00:19:39
I feel like you can kind of get
00:19:40
like a lot more sort of like how
00:19:42
this is going Information before the outcome is
00:19:46
realized necessarily.
00:19:47
Yeah All right, so i'm no big reactions
00:19:51
from oddy or eric on that dimension it's
00:19:53
not resonating real strongly one way or the
00:19:55
other All right.
00:19:56
Um, well, they're baseball guys.
00:19:57
I mean What is baseball?
00:19:59
How would you characterize baseball in this respect?
00:20:01
I mean Unless the score is tied or
00:20:04
you know, you're you're within a you know
00:20:05
Distance that you can and late in the
00:20:07
game and late in the game.
00:20:09
It doesn't have that at all It has
00:20:10
a sobriety about it So no, yeah, I
00:20:13
feel like it's probably gone it's got the
00:20:15
most bimodal bimodal, uh kind of distribution of
00:20:20
these rates of win probability where For for
00:20:23
for many game states, you know, you can
00:20:25
turn it off in the fifth inning and
00:20:27
you you know It's over type of thing
00:20:29
For like what does this what does this
00:20:31
say about me and oddy that?
00:20:33
Hockey and baseball differ in the degree of
00:20:36
sobriety Hockey as this example is just completely
00:20:40
off the rails I think both oddy and
00:20:43
change point is if you have baseball How
00:20:46
what how hard is it?
00:20:49
Let's say in the first seven innings of
00:20:51
a game for a baseball game to be
00:20:56
Considerably beyond 90 win probability pretty hard.
00:21:00
I'm just saying, you know I don't think
00:21:03
baseball games get that like another way to
00:21:06
think of it.
00:21:07
Kate is like almost like a control chart
00:21:09
You put some error bounds and then you
00:21:11
we can I mean this would be easy
00:21:13
to do right?
00:21:14
Especially with things like speaking of jay jaffe
00:21:16
and fan graphs coming up Imagine you had
00:21:18
win probability charts over time for various sports.
00:21:22
You could talk about first time to hit
00:21:23
the boundary The number of times to hit
00:21:26
the boundary all kinds of things I want
00:21:29
to make just maybe a technical distinction here
00:21:31
We're talking about change in win probability not
00:21:34
necessarily win probability exceeding like 95 But like
00:21:37
we're not talking about like kind of the
00:21:38
game bearing guaranteed or not because I still
00:21:40
think baseball though.
00:21:42
It's true that Probably there's very rare kind
00:21:44
of game states where one team has more
00:21:47
than like a 95 Chance of winning at
00:21:49
the seventh inning to go from that like,
00:21:52
you know, 95 You know to actually kind
00:21:55
of build in the other direction is still
00:21:57
going to be probably pretty incremental They got
00:21:59
to get guys on base and you know
00:22:01
It's like they can't just hit like three
00:22:02
grand slams in like a row or something
00:22:04
like that, right?
00:22:05
so so I I think I I think
00:22:09
you know sort of I still think baseball
00:22:11
is kind of on the slower in terms
00:22:13
at least like kind of the Instantaneous rate
00:22:15
of change in that that that win probability
00:22:19
Unless you are all you know It's except
00:22:21
for those kind of really close games at
00:22:24
the end where it can swing like crazy
00:22:25
based on one at bat, you know Yeah,
00:22:27
you got to take yourself time.
00:22:28
You got to get that walk.
00:22:29
You got to get that bloop You got
00:22:30
to get that error.
00:22:31
You got to get that i'm describing the
00:22:33
2001 world series.
00:22:35
I'm sorry right now but It's a series
00:22:39
of events Yeah I mean or we could
00:22:42
you know, you got you you got you
00:22:44
got to get that walk You got to
00:22:45
get that stolen base.
00:22:46
You got to get that hit off.
00:22:47
Mariano.
00:22:47
I feel like we're also describing the 2004
00:22:52
So, hold on hold on eric, let me
00:22:54
jump in real quick because oddy just used
00:22:56
the term crescendo Yeah, and it reminds me
00:22:59
that our friend and former dean.
00:23:01
Jeff garrett had a whole theory of crescendo
00:23:04
sports Do you remember this?
00:23:05
This is like going back to our very
00:23:06
first year in operation 2014 So jeff is
00:23:10
now the big dean at the marshall school
00:23:12
of business at usc and we need to
00:23:14
be reminded of what jeff's crescendo theory of
00:23:16
sports was because he definitely had a Notion,
00:23:19
he's a political scientist.
00:23:20
We had this notion about crescendo nature of
00:23:23
sports.
00:23:23
I hadn't thought about it in a while
00:23:25
um, okay, eric, you were gonna jump in
00:23:26
no, no, I was just gonna build on
00:23:27
shane's point that Is the following seems mathematically
00:23:31
plausible, but I don't know if it's true
00:23:33
which is Since baseball, which we all agree
00:23:36
has lower incremental change in probability It probably
00:23:41
is not uncorrelated with the fact that it's
00:23:43
hard to get outside certain bounds within a
00:23:45
short period of time And so that was
00:23:48
going to be my point is that those
00:23:49
facts are related to each other in some
00:23:52
way And if you think in the limit,
00:23:53
this is what I if assuming you agree
00:23:55
This is what I tell students all the
00:23:56
time.
00:23:56
Let's imagine that the increment at any particular
00:23:59
time was really tiny Then by definition you
00:24:02
couldn't get outside the bounds And so it
00:24:05
helps to build intuition if we think about
00:24:08
in the limit if baseball has slower increments
00:24:10
or smaller increments It probably also means It
00:24:14
will have less It'll take longer to hit
00:24:17
the boundary.
00:24:18
Maybe it's hard to get farther out of
00:24:20
the boundary, etc It's the summary of it
00:24:23
is that it has greater sobriety.
00:24:25
I think I think that's I know Quantitative
00:24:31
term a measure It might be though it
00:24:36
might be why people I don't know that
00:24:37
this is directly true or not might be
00:24:39
why people Stay at baseball games longer.
00:24:43
Yes, because you know, the win probability is
00:24:46
never totally out of reach and You know
00:24:49
in some sense.
00:24:50
I don't know.
00:24:51
I'm just saying I think there's lots of
00:24:53
things that are implications of small increments That's
00:24:56
okay.
00:24:56
Okay.
00:24:56
So one of these days We'll have a
00:24:58
bunch of win probability charts over the course
00:25:00
of a game within game changes in win
00:25:01
probability And we can compare these things and
00:25:03
see whether they match our intuitions in the
00:25:05
meantime.
00:25:06
Jay Jaffe Is joining us jay's based in
00:25:08
brooklyn.
00:25:09
He's a senior writer for fangraphs You baseball
00:25:11
guys know what fangraphs is if you're not
00:25:13
a baseball guy, but you love sports and
00:25:15
likes you I don't know what fangraphs is.
00:25:16
It's a terrific site.
00:25:17
It's exactly where I go if I want
00:25:19
to find out what's going on in baseball
00:25:21
Jay's been there for a while.
00:25:22
He's also written before for the baseball prospectus,
00:25:25
of course And a contributing writer for si
00:25:28
he's a recurring guest on the mlb network
00:25:31
He's a member of the bbwaa And he's
00:25:34
been a hall of fame voter since 2021
00:25:35
notably and it's going to come up.
00:25:38
He's the creator of jaws That sounds like
00:25:42
war the jaffe war score as you've heard
00:25:45
us talk over the years There's multiple ways
00:25:47
to do war.
00:25:48
There's not one way and there's apparently a
00:25:50
jay jaffe way The boys are going to
00:25:53
be interested in that jay welcome back good
00:25:55
to see you.
00:25:56
Hey, thanks.
00:25:56
Great to be back Love having you.
00:25:59
Um My challenge in this half hour is
00:26:01
to see how long I can keep the
00:26:02
conversation going on topic other than hall of
00:26:04
fame We want to talk hall of fame,
00:26:06
but before we get there Can you give
00:26:08
us a little bit of your perspective on
00:26:10
the season so far?
00:26:11
We're far enough in to have some thoughts
00:26:13
on things.
00:26:13
I know you wrote about the phillies I
00:26:15
think last week or earlier this week the
00:26:18
philly is experiencing a nice little turnaround with
00:26:20
mattingly.
00:26:21
Um Um, i'd be curious about the braves
00:26:24
or the braves.
00:26:25
What do you what do you what chances
00:26:26
do you give them against the dodgers?
00:26:28
Um, so yeah, what else you see?
00:26:30
Yeah, we've seen you know, as with every
00:26:33
season I think we've you know We've seen
00:26:34
some surprisingly strong starts and some surprisingly weak
00:26:37
ones.
00:26:38
I mean the strong ones this year.
00:26:39
Uh, the braves are obviously uh, one of
00:26:42
them, um the uh, uh The phillies, uh
00:26:48
turn around after a Atypically, uh weak start
00:26:51
we're firing the manager and then suddenly going
00:26:53
on a roll with don mattingly Uh big
00:26:55
story, uh, the red sox stumbling out of
00:26:58
the gate and then firing.
00:26:59
Alex.
00:26:59
Cora.
00:27:00
Um, Maybe we should have already lowered our
00:27:02
expectations for for boston Uh given what's transpired
00:27:06
there over the last half decade, but they
00:27:08
did make the playoffs last year Um still
00:27:11
this feels more like an extension of what
00:27:12
we've seen Uh in what i'll call the
00:27:15
post mookie bets era than uh, uh, you
00:27:18
know, then the uh, uh the the powerhouse,
00:27:21
uh uh al east rivalry era Um that
00:27:25
preceded it.
00:27:26
Um Uh dodgers off to another strong start
00:27:30
although again being given a chase by the
00:27:32
padres um You know, it sets up a
00:27:36
I think a very Compelling, you know continues
00:27:39
a very compelling rivalry that has so far
00:27:41
withstood Uh the padres instability over the last
00:27:45
few years when it comes to managerial changes
00:27:47
and now a pending ownership change um That's
00:27:52
that's interesting there.
00:27:54
Uh At times we've had everybody in the
00:27:55
nl central above 500 and everybody but the
00:27:58
leader in the al central below 500 We
00:28:00
seem to be witnessing a changing of the
00:28:01
guard in the al west where the astros
00:28:04
Uh are looked like they've reached the end
00:28:07
of their uh long run atop the division
00:28:10
Uh, but the mariners have stumbled out of
00:28:12
the gate as well.
00:28:13
Um, and the you know, so it's uh,
00:28:16
Uh a bit interesting what's going on there.
00:28:18
Um And uh, I guess the mets, uh
00:28:22
struggles, uh this year Uh being an extension
00:28:26
of uh, the struggles they had after june
00:28:28
the start of june last year.
00:28:30
Um I think uh, uh, you know, we're
00:28:34
seeing a lot of things go wrong there.
00:28:36
Um Those are some those are some of
00:28:38
the stories that i'm that i'm following isn't
00:28:41
the cardinals the biggest The cardals, I think
00:28:44
the car.
00:28:44
I think the cardals are a nice surprise.
00:28:46
Yes Um, you know, we thought this would
00:28:48
be a a year of rebuilding for them
00:28:51
Uh as as well, but uh, you know
00:28:54
They've had they've produced a lot of young
00:28:55
talent in recent years that just had not
00:28:57
hit its stride and suddenly you know jordan
00:29:00
things are coming together for jordan walker, for
00:29:01
example, and uh, um, you know, they are
00:29:04
looking like uh, Uh a reasonably strong team
00:29:07
in a division where I think you know
00:29:10
one of the expected leaders the cubs have
00:29:11
had uh, pitching injuries galore and uh, A
00:29:15
lot of problems on the offensive side as
00:29:17
well So let me jump in with one
00:29:19
follow-up before eric jumps in here On
00:29:21
the phillies you mentioned in the article.
00:29:24
This is one of the best stats i've
00:29:25
come across in a while You mentioned the
00:29:27
don mattingly start whenever he came in as
00:29:30
a replacement Manager ran 16 for like the
00:29:33
first 20 games 16 and 4 This is
00:29:36
the best first 20 games for a replacement
00:29:39
manager since 1880 It's almost 150 years It's
00:29:46
absolutely unbelievable that baseball goes back that we
00:29:48
have a stat.
00:29:48
We have a first time since 1880 almost
00:29:50
150 years Jay, we talked about this a
00:29:52
little bit on the show last week.
00:29:53
Can you tell us from your?
00:29:55
wise baseball history perspective What happens when a
00:30:00
guy comes in and The club responds this
00:30:03
way like how much of it is the
00:30:04
manager effect?
00:30:05
And why does the manager have an effect?
00:30:07
We thought the baseball managers didn't do that
00:30:08
much.
00:30:08
They just turn in a lineup card Yeah,
00:30:11
I don't put a ton of stock into
00:30:13
the idea that this is sudden you know
00:30:15
that that maddenley is suddenly doing things that
00:30:18
are different than uh, Uh than what rob
00:30:20
thompson were doing was doing.
00:30:22
I mean maddenley was the bench coach there
00:30:24
He should have been a better bench coach,
00:30:25
uh for this first, uh uh 28 games
00:30:28
of the season or whatever it was, um
00:30:32
But you know, I think Managers wear out
00:30:34
their welcomes and sometimes I think there's a
00:30:36
tendency, you know to tune guys out uh,
00:30:40
and you know for there to be I
00:30:42
think Small fissures in the clubhouse where you
00:30:46
know, you're just not connecting the same way
00:30:48
that you did Uh, we know that there
00:30:50
was at least one personnel conflict, uh that
00:30:53
rob thompson had with nick castellanos uh who
00:30:56
uh uh the phillies let go at the
00:30:59
beginning of spring training or just before he
00:31:01
reported to spring training because they couldn't find
00:31:03
anybody to Take his 19 million dollar salary
00:31:05
uh, but there may you know, there may
00:31:08
have been other stuff going on behind the
00:31:10
scenes that we haven't heard about and um
00:31:13
You know, but the reality is is that
00:31:16
the phillies did very well under thompson 158
00:31:18
percent of the time since he took over
00:31:20
in early 22 Uh won a pennant under
00:31:23
him Um looked like they were bound for
00:31:25
yet another playoff berth.
00:31:27
Um And just weren't up weren't playing up
00:31:31
to their potential and so a lot of
00:31:32
what's happened since mattingly took over It's just
00:31:35
positive regression and it's maybe guys, you know,
00:31:38
uh Hearing a different voice or just you
00:31:43
know, not thinking about the the conflict they
00:31:45
have with the last guy or not thinking
00:31:47
about you know, uh this shit again, you
00:31:49
know, whatever you're just the way, you know,
00:31:51
you're You you tune somebody out when you're
00:31:53
just kind of sick of hearing What they
00:31:55
have to say even when even when you
00:31:56
know that they're right.
00:31:57
Um You know, so I think that's part
00:32:01
of it Uh, I I think the other
00:32:02
thing that and we really should not overlook
00:32:05
this Uh with regards to the turnaround is
00:32:08
that the phillies right around, you know, just
00:32:10
before thompson was fired Uh, zach wheeler returned,
00:32:13
uh from a recovery from thoracic outlets Syndrome
00:32:17
surgery and he replaced taiwan walker who had
00:32:20
a nine plus era Uh, and wheeler has
00:32:23
pitched like an ace with a 167 era.
00:32:25
I mean that's a huge swing Uh once
00:32:28
every five days and it has downstream effects
00:32:30
because of the way, you know, you're getting
00:32:32
you know You're you're you're getting better relievers
00:32:34
in there.
00:32:35
Um, you know, you're pitching beeper into games
00:32:37
You're not using your bullpen as much with
00:32:40
that And so, you know your bullpen is
00:32:42
able to cover some more, you know, some
00:32:44
more more ground You've also got christopher sanchez
00:32:46
suddenly on a on a roll 37 and
00:32:48
two-thirds scoreless innings.
00:32:51
Um You know, so just the phillies suddenly
00:32:54
are getting great pitching and and that's the
00:32:56
real difference.
00:32:57
Okay, great Eric wants to jump in i'm
00:32:59
just gonna have a comment on what jay
00:33:00
said by the way Um the binomial probability
00:33:03
back to your regression issue of a 9
00:33:05
and 19 team if their true strength is
00:33:07
roughly around 500 That's only 3.8. It's
00:33:11
not that rare.
00:33:12
Let's just say so nine and it's not
00:33:14
like they were 2 and 26 Right all
00:33:17
of a sudden so that's just one comment
00:33:19
But the second thing I was going to
00:33:20
ask you is you going back to the
00:33:21
dodgers?
00:33:23
Did they have a luxury as two-time
00:33:25
defending champions in the sense of all right?
00:33:28
So the padres beat us in the regular
00:33:30
season who really cares like as long as
00:33:33
we're healthy And our lineup is set for
00:33:36
the postseason.
00:33:37
That's what we should care about Should they
00:33:40
be maximizing a different objective function maybe than
00:33:43
other teams that aren't sitting there with both
00:33:45
the quality of the team they have And
00:33:47
two championships in the bank Yeah, I think
00:33:50
we saw that last year I mean the
00:33:51
dodgers were not nearly as strong a regular
00:33:53
season team last year as they were in
00:33:55
2024 and they didn't they didn't push themselves
00:33:58
as hard their focus was on getting their
00:34:01
starting pitching Healthy for the playoffs and you
00:34:03
know, they they really slow walked the rehabs
00:34:06
of both.
00:34:07
Tyler glasnow and blake snell um, and they
00:34:10
wanted they wanted to make sure those guys
00:34:11
were available down the stretch and they were
00:34:14
um, they actually had such a surplus of
00:34:16
starting pitching, uh by the end of the
00:34:18
season with shohei otani also rehabbing from his
00:34:21
uh, elbow reconstruction that uh, they were sending
00:34:24
starters to the bullpen, um, you know, I
00:34:27
think they They are I feel like the
00:34:29
dodgers.
00:34:30
I don't know if it's an organizational strategy
00:34:32
or if it's just the way it is
00:34:33
But I think they are more tolerant That
00:34:36
they'll sign 14 guys that like seven of
00:34:39
which have real injury like histories instead of
00:34:43
just avoiding those and You'll have those seasons
00:34:45
like a couple years ago where they barely
00:34:47
made it to the postseason within these starters
00:34:49
and then last year it ended up the
00:34:51
luck was better with them and they had
00:34:52
a surplus but with even in signing people
00:34:54
like glass now snell you're kind of You're
00:34:56
signing up for that like, you know, only
00:34:58
half these guys are going to be Because
00:35:01
they because they have uh Because they can
00:35:04
spend so much money and they're not afraid
00:35:06
to spend so much money because they're practically
00:35:07
printing it over in japan um, you know
00:35:09
with uh, uh the benefits of otani and
00:35:12
yamamoto and sasaki Um, you know, they can
00:35:15
take on more risk and they've done that
00:35:18
and you know at the same time they've
00:35:20
also continued to produce Uh useful major league
00:35:23
pitchers from their farm system from their drafts,
00:35:26
uh and to trade for some as well
00:35:28
And so, you know, they've they've got decent
00:35:30
filler guys to you know to help them
00:35:33
ride out the leaner spots um You know
00:35:36
last year we saw the padres give them
00:35:37
chase for for most of the season And
00:35:40
you know the dodgers they didn't go out
00:35:42
and make a huge deadline deal.
00:35:44
Um, they didn't go out and You know,
00:35:48
they didn't panic and they you know, it
00:35:49
ended up being that they had to win
00:35:51
an extra round Of playoffs, you know, they
00:35:54
they you know waxed the reds in the
00:35:56
wild card series but I think they got
00:35:59
kind of lucky with the with with the
00:36:01
draw with the phillies who didn't have wheeler
00:36:03
who were suddenly without Wheeler and who had
00:36:04
some other built-in flaws and you know
00:36:07
had never figured out how to get a
00:36:09
productive outfield on that team uh last year
00:36:12
and then of course you've got um, you
00:36:15
know the the the kerkering play and the
00:36:17
uh, the great wheel play that uh defensive
00:36:20
play that they put in and And you
00:36:22
know that series was closer than the final
00:36:24
three games to one outcome um, and from
00:36:28
there the dodgers just rolled, you know, I
00:36:30
mean they just they just didn't look like
00:36:32
they they had uh, uh much trouble in
00:36:35
the uh Excuse me the nlscs the world
00:36:38
series was you know, one of the all
00:36:40
-time Uh classics and that one, you know
00:36:43
could have gone either way down to the
00:36:44
final pitch.
00:36:45
So You know, it just worked out for
00:36:48
them odd okay, so, um, you know, we
00:36:52
united did a nice overview of the season
00:36:54
but one of the things that that and
00:36:56
We always ask ourselves is why what makes
00:36:59
a team a perpetual winner?
00:37:01
And uh caden, uh, you talked about you
00:37:03
know Maybe the general manager the manager the
00:37:05
manager doesn't count who does this but the
00:37:07
the theme for me right now is Something
00:37:10
that I that I point out every year
00:37:12
when I teach this to my students where
00:37:13
we do a payroll adjusted Team quality score
00:37:16
over the last 25 years And if you
00:37:19
do that, there are three teams that just
00:37:21
stick out leading starting with the a's Followed
00:37:24
by the braves and the cardinals and there
00:37:27
they are again Doing it again.
00:37:29
You didn't mention the a's you I reminded
00:37:31
you about the cardinals.
00:37:32
What do you think about these teams?
00:37:34
you were talking about I mean There's so
00:37:36
many years of not every year, of course,
00:37:39
but but just on aggregates so frequently I
00:37:43
thought the guardians were in there as well.
00:37:45
Are they not the guardians?
00:37:45
The guardians are not quite for 25 years
00:37:47
They're more recent So if you go back
00:37:50
to the start of my my my data
00:37:52
set goes back to um after the last
00:37:56
strike So 95 said the rays I might
00:37:58
have said the rays and the rays are
00:37:59
also and but the rays are also much
00:38:01
more recent They were horrible for the first
00:38:03
you know, so those those are and so
00:38:05
what is it about these teams?
00:38:06
Is it analytics?
00:38:07
Is it farm system?
00:38:09
Is it ownership?
00:38:10
What what I think it's I think it's
00:38:11
different I think it's different in the in
00:38:13
in in those cases.
00:38:14
I mean, I think the a's You know
00:38:16
the name of your podcast I think is
00:38:18
still a reminder of what of the a's
00:38:20
got Uh a huge advantage from being early
00:38:23
adopters, uh when it came to analytics in
00:38:25
the so-called moneyball era um, and they
00:38:27
have you know, they have uh, always Done
00:38:31
their best to try to get uh, you
00:38:33
know as much of an edge as they
00:38:34
can despite being underfinanced and despite now You
00:38:38
know being nomadic um, you know and they've
00:38:42
and they've uh, They've had to invest in
00:38:44
you know, you know perpetually turn over the
00:38:47
roster and invest in young talent And right
00:38:49
now they've got some of the best young
00:38:50
talent they've had in a while um, you
00:38:53
know, there's there's still only 27 and 27
00:38:55
in an al west where um, the astros
00:38:59
and Mariners are having you know, serious problems.
00:39:03
Um But uh, you know, they've done well
00:39:06
for themselves.
00:39:07
I mean the cardinals I think are are
00:39:09
Maybe less analytically inclined Uh more farm system
00:39:14
oriented.
00:39:14
Um, we've seen that farm system.
00:39:16
I think Dry up somewhat in recent years.
00:39:20
Um, you know, uh, jordan walker and nolan
00:39:23
gorman and uh, uh, you know, I think
00:39:26
we're until this year pretty much busts in
00:39:30
terms of what they'd given to the cardinals
00:39:32
at the major league level the last few
00:39:33
years and uh, That really held the team
00:39:36
back um you know in the the free
00:39:39
agent investments they made or the the uh,
00:39:41
veteran acquisitions that they uh, uh stuck stuck
00:39:46
out for like, um, yeah paul goldschmidt and
00:39:49
nolan arenado Uh kind of went south, uh
00:39:52
a little bit more quickly than than we
00:39:54
would have expected um Braves though.
00:39:57
They're a great example.
00:39:58
I mean they've they've done a magnificent job
00:40:01
of uh growing Uh, you know through the
00:40:05
farm system they always seem to come up
00:40:07
with more pitching Uh, they've done they made
00:40:09
some great trades.
00:40:10
I mean, you know, it was a shock
00:40:12
when they let freddie freeman, uh jumped to
00:40:15
the dodgers um But the uh, the braves
00:40:19
made a great trade for matt olsen.
00:40:21
Who's a guy who?
00:40:23
um You know can it can hit 50
00:40:25
bombs in a season and plays better defense
00:40:28
than any other first baseman in the majors
00:40:29
probably Um, you know, they gave up talent
00:40:32
for that including the a's uh, uh, shay
00:40:34
langoliers, uh the catcher Um, but uh, they
00:40:38
came up with another catcher of their own
00:40:39
in in drake baldwin last year's nl rookie
00:40:41
of the year um You know and they
00:40:44
they had a bad year last year.
00:40:46
Uh, but they are you know, right back,
00:40:48
uh in contention this year and uh, uh,
00:40:51
despite uh, uh some injuries to the pitching
00:40:54
staff they've been without uh, Uh spencer schwellenbach,
00:40:57
uh, they've had uh, you know, they were
00:40:59
they were without spencer strider for a while
00:41:01
Uh, they had some other injuries in there.
00:41:03
Um, yeah, they look uh Like they're back
00:41:06
to being you know, the professional contenders that
00:41:08
we assumed they were coming into last year
00:41:11
Jay, let's chat a little bit.
00:41:13
I know the boys want to ask you
00:41:14
hall of fame questions And let me just
00:41:17
start with a simple question for the least
00:41:19
hall of fame oriented person here What is
00:41:21
different about your war model?
00:41:23
So the jaffe war model jaws, what yeah
00:41:27
So it's not just it's not just war
00:41:29
war is the war is the currency that
00:41:31
I use but I measure players uh using
00:41:34
both their career war Uh and their peak
00:41:37
war which I define as a player's best
00:41:39
seven seasons at large not necessarily consecutive um
00:41:42
because uh Peak ability and peak, you know
00:41:47
peak performance Uh really is I think what
00:41:50
separates the goods from the greats?
00:41:51
Um, you know those those those huge seasons
00:41:54
that that help propel a team towards a
00:41:56
pennant Can I react real quickly?
00:41:58
Why seven?
00:41:59
I might have thought peak would be more
00:42:01
peaked than seven Well, you know, I I
00:42:04
it's a it was basically a sweet spot
00:42:07
that I that I kind of found Uh,
00:42:09
I originally when I when I started with
00:42:11
jaws, um back in 2003 when I was
00:42:14
at baseball prospectus Or early 2004, I guess
00:42:17
I should say.
00:42:18
Um I was using best five years consecutively
00:42:23
Uh with some minor adjustments for injuries and
00:42:26
military service because you got a lot of
00:42:28
guys who missed a few key prime years
00:42:29
there Uh, I changed that to best of
00:42:32
seven Uh, I moved on from baseball prospectus
00:42:35
and switched to baseball references version of war.
00:42:38
Um Seven seemed to be a good spot
00:42:42
early on Uh when it came to differentiating
00:42:46
Differentiating between career value and and the peak
00:42:50
value Um, you know, you've got a lot
00:42:53
of guys who had a few great seasons
00:42:55
um, and you've got um A lot of
00:42:59
guys who had great careers, you know You
00:43:00
you want to try to find a a
00:43:02
measure that gives you a slightly different answer
00:43:05
from just going by career war Yeah that
00:43:08
helps to explain You know your short career
00:43:11
high peak guys like some of the ones
00:43:13
who are you know Like sandy koufax is
00:43:15
a good example and the system doesn't work
00:43:17
quite as well now um Because the baseline
00:43:21
for replacement level changed when I moved from
00:43:23
bp to baseball reference Um, but i've stuck
00:43:26
with seven because it still works pretty well
00:43:29
Um, the more years you add to peak
00:43:32
The more it tends to resemble Your career
00:43:35
measure anyway, like if you're going 10 years,
00:43:38
for example, you might as well You might
00:43:40
as well just be measuring by 10 years.
00:43:42
Um And if you go five you don't
00:43:45
differentiate enough seven is just a convenient sweet
00:43:48
spot, okay Okay, very good.
00:43:50
Uh, shane has a question here Well, I
00:43:52
guess I guess I mean since we're talking
00:43:54
about hall of fame Now anyway, my I
00:43:57
have a general question How many current hall
00:44:00
of famers are or how many hall how
00:44:03
many hall of famers are currently playing?
00:44:05
And is that number kind of small or
00:44:08
big relative to historically?
00:44:11
What it's been I mean Though that's kind
00:44:14
of lead into maybe talking about pitching.
00:44:15
Yeah, so okay.
00:44:16
So the long long if you look at
00:44:18
the 150 plus years of major league baseball
00:44:22
uh, what we see is Roughly when it's
00:44:27
all said and done you get about one
00:44:29
and a half to two major league hall
00:44:33
of famers per team per season um just
00:44:37
in in terms of like It could be
00:44:39
as little as a few as one appearance,
00:44:42
uh, or as many as playing 162 games,
00:44:44
but That's the long-term average and in
00:44:47
the 20s to the 40s um, you've got
00:44:51
uh well above two and briefly above three,
00:44:54
um what you see when you get to
00:44:57
the 1990s and onward is uh, that level
00:45:02
dips below one and well below one and
00:45:05
a lot of that just has to do
00:45:07
with the fact that you know that uh,
00:45:10
uh the post bbwa eligibility format, uh, by
00:45:15
which I mean the era committee and before
00:45:16
that the veterans committee, uh, Just has not
00:45:19
had its chance to admit all the players
00:45:22
that it's going to uh at any given
00:45:24
point So these are not settled numbers yet.
00:45:27
Um But it's also true that they're just
00:45:31
not and they're even with the writers electing
00:45:34
more players than ever In in their history
00:45:37
over a longer term, uh, the era committees
00:45:40
are not electing as many players um and
00:45:45
we're missing a whole bunch of players because
00:45:47
of uh, steroid related uh, uh, you know
00:45:52
performance and infractions and so we've lost some
00:45:55
so my assumption generally is that we're probably
00:45:58
looking at uh, Roughly one to 1.3
00:46:02
hall of famers per team uh So we
00:46:06
should be looking at about 40 future hall
00:46:08
of famers at any given time now I
00:46:10
don't think we're actually going to get to
00:46:11
that number Um, I think you're probably looking
00:46:14
at somewhere closer to 25 or so future
00:46:18
hall of famers and many of whom we
00:46:20
can name off the top of our heads
00:46:21
and some of whom I think will come
00:46:23
out of the pack and uh, uh surprise
00:46:26
us with their you know, incredible resilience or
00:46:29
or or whatever and and Um, just so
00:46:33
you know shane I had a feeling you
00:46:35
might ask this question Only reason I say
00:46:36
that is because I literally have up on
00:46:38
my screen because I was thinking someone might
00:46:39
ask this because I was Going to ask
00:46:41
j related question.
00:46:42
There are currently 15 major league players with
00:46:45
a war Of 53 and above and by
00:46:49
the way that 15th right now is jose
00:46:50
altuve Who I think most of us think
00:46:53
is likely to be a hall of famer
00:46:56
Um, yeah, but then you have guys Yeah,
00:46:58
for sure, but then you have guys like
00:47:00
oh as this is jay's other point like
00:47:02
juan soto who's not there yet But he's
00:47:06
very obviously very likely to get there But
00:47:09
i'd say for me I was gonna ask
00:47:11
j a similar question shane I think there's
00:47:14
a lot more hall of famers right now
00:47:16
than i've seen in the last 10 years
00:47:18
I mean, I think there's easily I would
00:47:21
have thought i'm glad you told me her
00:47:22
historical numbers I would have said the fact
00:47:24
that there's 20 to 25 guys now playing
00:47:26
that are Very likely to make the whole
00:47:29
of them.
00:47:29
I thought that was a big number, but
00:47:30
you're saying that's not wouldn't be a historic
00:47:32
Historically speaking.
00:47:33
It's not I mean, I I don't know
00:47:35
how it compares exactly to recent years because
00:47:38
again, you know, we're working with uh, uh
00:47:42
about a 30 year lag, uh when it
00:47:44
comes to that stuff even for You know
00:47:47
for to get a I think a usable
00:47:49
number.
00:47:50
Um and uh You know even so, you
00:47:57
know when you're talking about, you know, a
00:47:59
five-year waiting period and a 10-year
00:48:00
eligibility period You've got a minimum of a
00:48:03
15-year lag for for some of this
00:48:05
stuff to resolve itself um So it's a
00:48:08
it's it's tough, you know, I think I
00:48:11
think we have changed the way that the
00:48:13
bbwa functions in terms of recognizing Good candidates
00:48:18
soon, you know for the hall of fame
00:48:19
sooner.
00:48:20
We had a swell.
00:48:21
It was something like 22 Players elected over
00:48:24
a six or seven year period there Which
00:48:27
was the largest surge in recent history and
00:48:29
that was even with um, you know so
00:48:32
many candidates being rejected for their ped connections,
00:48:35
um You know, we saw guys we saw
00:48:39
guys get in on the strength of War
00:48:42
instead of just their career offensive totals, uh
00:48:45
guys who maybe did not Get to play
00:48:48
until they're 40 and approach 3 000 hits
00:48:50
guys like larry walker and scott roland and
00:48:53
todd helton who put up elite numbers Uh
00:48:56
in part because they were very good defensively
00:48:59
as well um You know, they didn't necessarily
00:49:02
reach the major offensive milestones that would have
00:49:05
put them into the hall, but the error
00:49:06
committees You know function differently and and largely
00:49:11
outside of the bbwa is uh, uh purview
00:49:14
that we contribute um, you know a few
00:49:16
voters per cycle, but uh, the hall of
00:49:19
fame itself is who's choosing that voting body
00:49:21
and its behaviors as i've documented before are
00:49:26
quirky to say the least and Uh subject
00:49:28
to the hall's heavy hand when it comes
00:49:31
to picking who actually serves on those committees.
00:49:33
So You know, I don't think everything, you
00:49:38
know things have changed, uh quite as much
00:49:40
there in in that way, okay odd All
00:49:44
right So I have a a bunch of
00:49:46
things to talk about Um, i'm going to
00:49:47
go backwards in time and point out that
00:49:49
I I also think seven is too long
00:49:51
But I would also say that I think
00:49:53
it probably needs to differ by position so
00:49:55
that that um, particularly say starting pitchers, I
00:49:58
would imagine a shorter period of dominance is
00:50:01
is It could define the the peak as
00:50:04
opposed to maybe a hitter where you might
00:50:06
want to have a little bit longer um,
00:50:08
I built my own hall of fame metric
00:50:10
for starting pitchers, um, And we call it
00:50:13
based on grid war which is a a
00:50:15
war calculated on a per game basis It's
00:50:17
only for starting pitchers and the couple curiosities
00:50:20
that come out of it is Um, well,
00:50:23
i'll just say i've talked about this in
00:50:24
our show.
00:50:25
Um, There's one pitcher that is so firmly
00:50:28
in the top group.
00:50:30
I mean in the deserving pile that's not
00:50:31
in it And it's not roger clemens because
00:50:34
of other reasons That's kevin brown and I
00:50:38
always I want to ask you about that
00:50:39
because people will say the pde usage Yes,
00:50:42
he was in the mitchell report but he's
00:50:44
certainly not in that top tier or even
00:50:46
second tier of known kind of abusers of
00:50:49
of um of performance enhancing drugs so He
00:50:54
was blown away on his first round and
00:50:56
most people point to the fact that he
00:50:58
never won.
00:50:59
Cy young's he's He's so good because of
00:51:01
modern analytics.
00:51:03
It goes back and looks what he did
00:51:04
at the time He did it and say
00:51:05
my god I mean, he's not pedro But
00:51:07
but he's he's not that far behind at
00:51:10
least in terms of his peak in the
00:51:11
late 90s And he had a wonderfully long
00:51:13
career.
00:51:14
He was terrific Put together a huge career.
00:51:17
I enjoyed him immensely on the o4 yankees.
00:51:19
Yeah, you did that was past his priority
00:51:21
past his prime But what what do you
00:51:23
so I guess I want to reflect on
00:51:24
kevin brown and then my guess my next
00:51:26
question would be Um, what which starting pitcher
00:51:29
is most deserving that uh, that is not
00:51:32
in the hall of fame Yeah, well let
00:51:34
me preface that by saying that starting pitching
00:51:36
is an area that is kind of in
00:51:37
a crisis when it comes to the hall
00:51:39
of fame stuff and that's why I think
00:51:42
one more reason why we're going to fall
00:51:44
short of the historic averages is because The
00:51:46
way that pitcher workloads have changed these guys.
00:51:49
I mean we're seeing the disappearance of the
00:51:51
200 inning guy uh to say nothing of
00:51:53
the 20 win guy, um And so we're
00:51:57
getting shorter careers.
00:51:59
These guys are throwing harder.
00:52:00
They're more susceptible to injury There's all kinds
00:52:02
of stuff going on there.
00:52:04
Uh, and traditional, uh, my even my traditional
00:52:08
jaws, uh Does not do a great job
00:52:12
because it's kind of over balanced towards these
00:52:14
heavy workload guys.
00:52:15
Um I've sort of adjusted for that.
00:52:18
Um by capping Uh each player's peak season
00:52:22
at 250 innings and scaling down for that
00:52:25
and even then after uh after clayton kershaw
00:52:30
Uh, justin verlander mack scherzer and zach granke
00:52:33
disappear from the scene It's not obvious who
00:52:36
the next hall of fame starting pitcher is
00:52:37
going to be um And I chris sale
00:52:42
Chris sale chris sale is probably yeah, I
00:52:45
would have said garrett cole before the tommy
00:52:47
john surgery now I think chris sales probably
00:52:49
surpassed him but sales probably not going to
00:52:51
get to 200 wins And we haven't had
00:52:53
a starting pitcher elected with fewer than 200
00:52:55
wins, you know pitcher wins are not a
00:52:57
great measure of value and and Excellence, but
00:53:01
uh just as a common benchmark Um, I
00:53:04
think we're seeing we're seeing a big change
00:53:06
there now back to kevin brown uh brown
00:53:09
had The mitchell report working against him.
00:53:12
He also had um Kind of a crash
00:53:15
and burn with that seven-year 105 million
00:53:18
dollar contract Um because he was injured so
00:53:21
often Um before that yeah, he was one
00:53:23
of the top pitchers in the game.
00:53:24
The other thing though.
00:53:26
I mean, you know besides the uh, uh
00:53:30
Turning his hand into a morocca during the
00:53:32
uh, the the 2004, uh, alcs collapsed by
00:53:36
the yankees um is brown Loathed the media
00:53:41
and vice versa and wasn't going to get
00:53:44
an inch of slack from the voters um
00:53:47
And so it really wasn't that surprising uh
00:53:53
Particularly just because of the mitchell report that
00:53:55
he went one and done um andy pettit
00:53:59
on the other hand perceived as a nice
00:54:01
guy also in the mitchell report nowhere near
00:54:03
as good a pitcher as Uh as kevin
00:54:05
brown was at his peak but you know
00:54:08
had uh longevity had a lot of postseason,
00:54:11
uh accomplishments to his name and has stuck
00:54:14
around long enough that You know, I don't
00:54:17
I wouldn't predict him for the hall based
00:54:19
on the fact that uh, he does have
00:54:21
still have the ped I would put I
00:54:23
for me, but don't listen to me.
00:54:25
I would put jacob degrom And I would
00:54:28
put king felix in the hall of fame
00:54:29
Yeah, you know, those are shorter career guys
00:54:32
and it's gonna it's it's going to take
00:54:33
that i'm it's it's good It's you know,
00:54:36
it's it's going to I mean we saw
00:54:37
felix get above 50 this year It's going
00:54:40
to take you know It's taking a change
00:54:43
in the electorate's thinking to start to come
00:54:45
around to these shorter career guys And I
00:54:47
think we're seeing the the the the tip
00:54:50
of it here I don't know that it
00:54:51
gets down to jacob degrom and fewer than
00:54:53
100 wins But it may well get down
00:54:55
to felix hernandez and what is you know?
00:54:57
150 wins give or take with you know,
00:54:59
the excellence that he had I think I
00:55:01
think the thing is though is you have
00:55:03
to go back is is once you get
00:55:05
once you start Electing those guys you have
00:55:08
to rethink all the guys From the last
00:55:10
40 years who came and went who were
00:55:12
every bit as dominant as felix um and
00:55:15
didn't have as long of careers as The
00:55:18
300 game winners who did get elected i'm
00:55:21
thinking about guys like johan santana.
00:55:23
Yeah Who went one and done come on?
00:55:25
Dave steve.
00:55:25
There it is.
00:55:26
That's the man steve who was you know
00:55:28
It was probably the best pitcher of the
00:55:30
1980s But never even won a cy young,
00:55:33
uh, david cone Uh, even dwight gooden ups
00:55:36
and downs, uh all in there, right?
00:55:39
Um, these are all there are a lot
00:55:40
of great pitch and and there and the
00:55:42
way that the error committees are set up
00:55:45
There is really no way that we can
00:55:47
equitably reconcile that lost generation or two of
00:55:53
pitchers, uh, and whether they're fit for the
00:55:57
hall with Whether we're talking about andy pennant
00:56:01
or felix hernandez or jacob de grum You
00:56:04
got guys that are that are clearly superior
00:56:06
to them that we're never going to get
00:56:08
a chance to vote for Because they went
00:56:10
one and done on the error committee on
00:56:13
the bbwa ballots and those guys Generally don't
00:56:17
get reconsidered by the error committee and when
00:56:19
they do it's they're long shots.
00:56:21
They're rounding out the ballots.
00:56:23
Um, you know ted simmons is the only
00:56:25
one to go that route and get in
00:56:27
the hall of fame and he had uh,
00:56:29
a significant booster on the error committee in
00:56:33
rick hummel the uh, uh long time, uh,
00:56:37
Uh beat writer for the cardinals and it
00:56:39
takes it.
00:56:40
It takes almost a miracle to get in
00:56:42
But you have to you have to present
00:56:44
it as like a rethinking like so Oh,
00:56:46
yeah No, we are you have to present
00:56:47
it like like kevin brown was was not
00:56:49
considered obviously He was an he didn't like
00:56:51
the media and mitchell report but he didn't
00:56:55
I mean you look at his career and
00:56:58
He he was never considered the dominant pitcher
00:57:01
of his era until you recognized that he
00:57:03
had no run support and that all of
00:57:04
a Sudden wins wasn't the only way to
00:57:06
judge a pitcher Um, and it's like a
00:57:09
reflection on how we actually think of pitcher
00:57:11
quality has to be retroactively moved backwards I
00:57:14
mean you can't I mean you can't think
00:57:15
of jacob degrom as good as he is
00:57:18
Santana was better.
00:57:19
I mean, I mean, yeah, but I think
00:57:23
It's not that we didn't recognize that kevin
00:57:25
brown was not a great pitcher I mean,
00:57:27
you know, he had won two era titles
00:57:29
uh was second third And Second and third
00:57:34
and a bunch of sixth in the cy
00:57:35
young award led, uh led the league in
00:57:37
war twice, uh b war that is um
00:57:40
You know, he was in those conversations he
00:57:43
just you know, it was there were also
00:57:45
there were other great pitchers at the time
00:57:46
like randy johnson and uh, uh and mike
00:57:49
messina and Whoever that you know that helped
00:57:52
steal the thunder.
00:57:53
Um But I do think that some of
00:57:57
it just still comes down unfortunately to personality
00:58:01
And Because the error committee can be selective
00:58:05
or because the committee that makes the ballot
00:58:07
for the error committee to be to to
00:58:12
process Can be as selective as they want
00:58:16
I don't see that they're going to cut
00:58:17
kevin.
00:58:18
I don't see that they're going to give
00:58:19
kevin brown a shot That's the problem.
00:58:20
Um, you know, they they can look at
00:58:22
kevin brown and say yeah, he's a mitchell
00:58:24
report guy He's never going to get in
00:58:26
because we keep voting down all these all
00:58:28
these guys You know who who tested positive
00:58:30
or who were in the mitchell report or
00:58:32
whatever?
00:58:33
They have every excuse to not put him
00:58:34
on there and just recycle somebody else and
00:58:38
it's i'm not saying that's fair I'm, just
00:58:40
saying that's the reality that i'm up against.
00:58:41
We'll let jay go We've got him up
00:58:43
here longer than we expected to have him
00:58:45
and it was great talking to you Jay,
00:58:46
appreciate you making time for us.
00:58:48
Jay jaffe senior writer for fangraphs author of
00:58:51
the cooperstown case book creator of jaws the
00:58:54
jaffe war score um hall of fame voter
00:58:57
member of bbwaa Often guest on mlb network
00:59:02
great gotta follow if you're interested in baseball
00:59:05
and baseball analytics That's been the show that's
00:59:07
been this week's show appreciate your being here
00:59:09
for the whole crew.
00:59:10
How do you want her?
00:59:11
Shane jensen eric randall This has been kade
00:59:12
massey for aaron tran running the board today
00:59:15
for us d patel The boss lady in
00:59:17
here in the studio with us appreciate it
00:59:20
and marissa reyna our producer Thanks to you
00:59:23
guys the listeners come back and join us
00:59:24
next time between now and then enjoy your
00:59:27
sports
