Ron Shandler's 2019 Baseball Forecaster: & Encyclopedia of Fanalytics

Guides

Losing

by Ron Shandler

In the seventh inning of the final game of the regular season, Marlins outfielder Lewis Brinson stepped in against Mets starter Noah Syndergaard. It was a meaningless at-bat in a meaningless game for two players who would probably be spending October at beer fests or fishing tournaments.

But Brinson took an 0-2 slider and lifted a flare into center-field that dropped for a base hit. The stroke capped a forgettable rookie season in which he failed to get his batting average above the Mendoza Line. That final hit amidst a .232 September was not nearly enough to push him past .197 for the year.

But the innocuous flare elevated my fantasy team’s aggregate batting average by .0003. That was enough to lift me one spot in the batting average standings. That one point propelled me up a full place in the overall standings, helping me achieve the goal I had set for myself in mid-season when it looked like I had a chance. It was my first taste of the Promised Land all year, and I finally reached it as the books closed on 2018.

Sweet success!

But it was less a revelry in glory than a wave of relief. That mid-season goal was to avoid finishing in last place, something I had never done in any league in 34 years of playing this game. Brinson’s hit lifted me to 14th place, the Promised Land of Anywhere But Last.

The solace I felt in staving off that failure provided scant satisfaction. This was not the only league where I risked scraping bottom. In all, 2018 was my worst fantasy season ever. In my six leagues this past year, the results were arrrgh-inspiring:

In all, 2018 was a really crappy year for me, in many ways, but it got me to thinking about the whole concept of winning. We spend so much time talking about it. What it takes to win. How to get an edge. Heck, even the promotional taglines for this book and BaseballHQ.com over the years have always been about winning:

For winners only, please

The winner’s bible

Fantasy baseball intelligence for winners

More than three decades of winning

The fantasy baseball experts that know how to WIN

It’s a downright obsession. But when it comes down to it, only one team in each league is going to win each year. The rest of us are losers. Really, upwards of 93 percent of us are part of the Big Fat Fraternity of Failure. If elections were determined by fantasy league success, losers would run the world. (Wait a minute …)

Winners? You? You are the real One Percent. (Okay, 7-10 percent.) We revile you in your victory. How dare you set unrealistic expectations for the 93 percent of us who are destined to lose each year?

If we all go into each season with only a 7-10 percent chance of winning, what kind of odds are those? Yet we keep chasing those tiny odds, falling short and coming back to do it next year. And then again the following year. And then again the following year. Isn’t that the definition of insanity?

We often soften the blow by awarding money finishes down to 4th or 5th place, but really, those are just participation trophies. Those shares of cash say, I lost, but here’s some coin to lure me back next year. However, once you’re out of first place, it’s over. As Dale Earnhardt once said, Second place is the first loser. (Though at least you’re first at something, I suppose.)

So yes, I was the torch-bearer for futility this past year. Did I make mistakes or was this just a correction for all those years of success? I could easily attribute it to random misfortune, I suppose. Jimmy Buffet probably best expresses my path to enlightenment:

I know it’s nobody’s fault.

Hell, it could be my fault.

I know it’s my own damn fault.

Sadly, 2018 was not about a lack of booze in the blender. I was fully complicit. After playing this game for so long, I have found myself drafting teams on auto-pilot. I have far surpassed the benchmark for expert based on the often-debunked 10,000 Hour Rule, but longevity and repetition often breed complacency. Admittedly, I got a bit cocky and careless last March, making some rookie mistakes because I was so confident I could succeed in spite of them.

Baseball’s statistical environment was not kind either. The trends coming into 2018 were so sharp that I could not perceive of any direction other than regression. But some trends persisted while others pulled back. The fallout often produced shifts in the player pool that nobody could have predicted. How could anyone realistically project the game’s seismic shifts? Clearly, I couldn’t.

The smartest thing you can do when faced with failure is to try to learn from those mistakes. Well, boy did I learn. I learned about 379 lessons this past season. Reflecting on them won’t necessarily increase my odds of rebounding to rejoice with the reviled, but at least I’ll be more comfortable lodging with the laggards.

You can track the saga that weaves through the following lessons. Sadly, it’s all 100 percent true.

Lesson #1: All men(iscus tears) are not created equal.

When bidding on J.D. Martinez surged into the early $30s, I was already looking ahead to the next player. Martinez was not only crossed off my list, he wasn’t even on my list. Why would he be? After a career year in 2017 and two seasons of questionable durability, this is the type of player whose risk outweighed his potential reward. He’d be way overpriced.

The Mayberry Method concurs, cautioning us to be wary of players with an injury history and to avoid them on Draft Day. Research confirms that the system works, especially for those players who are frequently hurt. By filtering out players with elevated health risk, we reduce the vastness of the player pool to more manageable levels. It’s mostly sound advice.

But I discovered that it’s a short walk from educated filtering to maniacal filtering. Given that fantasy leaguers tend to have obsessive personalities, it’s easy to see how injury avoidance could make some of us OCD.

Okay, I’m just talking about myself.

I was so hell-bent on avoiding players with injury risk that I crossed off an All-Star team’s worth of talent from my cheat sheet.

• J.D. Martinez? A good place to start.

• Trea Turner? Show me 500 AB first.

• Trevor Story? Not interested in a post-injury .239 BA.

• Aaron Nola? Even 170 IP seems elusive. Pass.

• Michael Brantley? Don’t make me laugh.

• And there were more. So many more.

This is not to say that injury avoidance has no merit. The same exercise also warned against paying market price for players like Stephen Strasburg, Daniel Murphy, Danny Salazar, Yoenis Cespedes, Miguel Sano and many other players who likely went for $15 or more in most auctions.

In 2018, a full 60 percent of the Top 300 players ended up on the shelf for varying periods of time. That’s the highest hit rate since I started compiling the stat in 2009.

But, if we are to avoid all players with some injury risk, the remaining pool will consist of three backup infielders, a mop-up reliever and Chris Davis.

As J.D’s $41 season showed, even players who are frequently hurt can put up extraordinary seasons. History is littered with players who went through injury-prone stretches, only to become consistent first-rounders like Jose Reyes, and even Hall-of-Famers like Paul Molitor.

The question is one of extremes. It’s easy to make decisions when we perceive things as absolutes. But nothing we do in this game is solely black or white. None of the research in this book provides a 100% percentage play. Every tactic, every piece of advice, every strategy has to be considered a shade of grey. We have to view all these tools as general tendencies that can shape our approach to building a team.

Which means rostering some injury risk is not only okay, it’s necessary.

Lesson #2: Too many youths spoil the broth.

Last year, in this very space, I told you to eliminate the phrase, no path to playing time from your vocabulary. The skyrocketing use of the disabled list has accelerated the promotion of young talent, with every DL stint opening up new paths. The opportunity for even players buried on a depth chart to find at-bats or innings has become almost endless.

As we’d expect, the number of players making their major league debuts each year has been rising overall.

(Source of all league chart data: Baseball-Reference.com)

So, I saw this as an opportunity to target prospects with upside over risky veterans. Rather than settling for a Carlos Gomez or Mike Leake in the end game, I’d spend a few extra dollars to speculate that a higher skilled rookie would push his way onto a roster and into the lineup at some point. And I did it at every opportunity.

I tossed away all the garbage veterans who used to clog up the bottom of my roster each year. I spent real draft dollars and draft picks on Michael Kopech, Victor Robles, Ryan McMahon, Kyle Tucker, Dustin Fowler, Brandon Woodruff and Lewis Brinson. During the season, I traded for Austin Meadows and Raimel Tapia. I spent $213 of precious FAAB on Franmil Reyes’ first promotion (second highest bid was $0!). And if that masochism wasn’t enough, I spent another $57 on him when he was called up again three months later. I’m nothing if not consistent. At least I got it right the second time.

The problem with unearthing new paths to playing time is that it only solves half the problem. It’s one thing for a young player to get the at-bats and innings, but then he has to produce. Ahhh … right.

The only youngsters I hit on at the draft were Walker Buehler and Ryan Borucki. Ryan Borucki? Yes, I drafted Borucki on purpose, a player who missed the cut as a Top 10 Blue Jays prospect. In a league that drafts only 450 players, I made a conscious decision to draft a player outside of the Top 300 prospects. I’m sitting here typing this, thinking to myself, What possessed me to do that? and the only thing I can think of is, He must have looked good last spring.

Borucki had a 9.39 ERA last spring. I’m clueless.

But I can’t complain. His 3.87 ERA and 1.32 WHIP in half a season were better stats than Zack Godley gave me all year. So maybe I’m a genius. Of course, Borucki’s support metrics were pretty pedestrian, so maybe I was just lucky.

Look, it was a good idea. I just took it to an unreasonable extreme, assuming an excessive amount of risk on too many young players.

And I picked the wrong players. A lot of them. One of the things you learn quickly in this game is, even if you have the best information, projections and strategy, you still have to pick the right players. But I’d do it again. Just not as much.

Lesson #3: A switch in time saves the 9th.

There is a pseudo-scientific process called pasta-nalysis. This is where you toss a bunch of players against a wall to see who sticks. This is particularly prevalent in 50-player Draft & Hold (D&H) leagues where the preponderance of roster slots tends to encourage rampant speculation.

I employed my expert pasta-nalysis skills to building a bullpen in my two D&H leagues. I decided that saves were too risky to chase, so I’d grab a few cheap options at the draft and then backfill with a trove of high-skilled closer wannabes. Problem was, I’d wanna, but they didn’t.

So, how did that work out?

I finished 13th in saves.

Chasing saves in-season in 2018 standard leagues was a fool’s quest. Nearly two-thirds of drafted closers went belly up, and the 20 relievers who replaced them experienced turnover as well. Four of the most expensive free agent acquisitions in the Tout Wars leagues—each costing their lucky owners more than $200 in precious FAAB dollars—were Keynan Middleton, Kyle Barraclough, Nate Jones and Jose Alvarado. Nearly $900 in FAAB was spent for a total of 29 saves.

The bullpen market has become highly fragmented and tough to value. You’ll read Ray Murphy’s essay later in this book that shows a version of these notable statistics:

The top end of the pool is disappearing. Supply and demand dictates that you are going to be paying even more for potential 30-save closers in 2019 but with no less risk than before.

Given all this, I have to repeat my well-worn argument for replacing Saves with Saves-plus-Holds. Neither category is perfect—heck, they are both highly flawed—but Sv+Hld is a decent enough proxy for total bullpen contribution.

At minimum, Sv+Hld provides value to a greater number of pitchers, thereby spreading your saves dollars, and risk. Failed closers often move into roles that amass holds, and set-up men often back into 9th inning work, so there is less overall turnover and attrition. At the high end, the stat effectively doubles the number of pitchers that are worth some investment:

Number of pitchers

You’ll notice the drop in high-end output this past year. It could be an isolated outlier, but given how bullpen usage is evolving, I suspect that it’s not. In a 15-team league, four clubs would have gone without even one 30-save closer last year. So if you think you can go into 2019 with an easy shot at two 30-save closers, you’re deluding yourself.

Back in October, I polled the owners in the XFL (fantasyxperts.com) to see if they’d consider moving from Saves to Saves-plus-Holds and the proposal was defeated unanimously and vehemently. Similar polls in the past produced at least some support so I was surprised to see such a stark response. Maybe we are all exhausted from chasing any bullpen-based stat.

The fallout means we are just going to have to live within the skewed economics of the saves market. Here are the potential acquisition costs of rostering saves:

1. Overpay for them at the draft. Expect upwards of 60 percent odds of taking a loss.

2. Underpay for them at the draft. Expect the same 60 percent odds of loss, but the winners will be rostering mediocre or poor peripherals with their 1-2 dozen saves.

3. Throw low-cost or no-cost darts at random relievers at the draft and accept perhaps 10 percent odds of backing into an occasional bulls-eye.

4. Spend approximately 15-25 percent of your total FAAB budget, per player, for that day’s flavor, who might only last a few weeks.

5. Trade for them.

Trade for them? Nah, who are we kidding? Nobody ever trades away stable saves sources, and if they do, you’ll have to pay through the nose (which is a disturbing literal image).

Predicting which pitchers are going to fall into each category is an equally risky proposition. But there is one thing I can pretty much guarantee: Edwin Diaz will enter 2019 as one of the prime targets for potential saves, but the odds of him repeating anything close to his 57-save total is remote. History:

40-save closers

Over the past four years, the 40-saves threshold has been reached 17 times by 14 different pitchers. For all anyone can predict, the 2019 saves leader could be Koda Glover. Or Brandon Woodruff.

Lesson #4: Eight is (not) enough.

Back in 2013, the Los Angeles Dodgers entered the season with eight legitimate starting pitchers on their roster. Behind Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke, it was anyone’s guess who would end up slotting into the remaining three rotation spots on a regular basis. Josh Beckett? Hyun Jin-Ryu? Chris Capuano? Ricky Nolasco? Edinson Volquez? Ted Lilly?

However, the problem didn’t last long, as injuries and ineffectiveness quickly weeded out the also-rans. Within weeks, the Dodgers found they were actually short of viable arms.

In D&H leagues, it’s even more important to have enough arms since there is no access to free agents. You have to build that depth by the end of the draft. There are no second chances.

I have no idea what was going through my head when I thought it would be enough to draft just 10 starters in each of my D&H leagues. My starters in the 10-team league – where the pickings should have been more plentiful – looked like this mess:

Back in March, it didn’t look this bad, I swear.

In most standard fantasy formats, this is not as big an issue as the free agent pool always has some depth of talent to draw from. At least that’s how it used to be.

But we are now facing an even greater challenge – the sharp decline in the length of pitching starts. Innings per start were already tumbling before 2018, but with the additional variable of the new game opener, now we can’t be sure exactly what to expect. Innings, strikeouts and wins are all poised to take a hit in 2019.

This is interesting:

It seems that 100 pitches is a good proxy for an outing we’d want counted for our fantasy teams. With the number of them in a steady, precipitous decline, we can expect that the cost of pitchers who provide this skill will spike. Supply and demand, again.

I was just offered a $34 Max Scherzer in the XFL. Over the past five years, he’s posted 127 outings of 100 pitches or more, including 28 in 2018. A $34 price tag suddenly looks like an incredible bargain.

Last year, I advised that you would need to invest heavily in high-strikeout starting pitchers as they have become scarce. That trend has continued.

There are not enough stud 200/200 starters to go around in pretty much any standard league. If you want an anchor, you are going to have to pay up, big time.

Lesson #5: We can’t protect the environment when we don’t understand the environment.

Last year at this time, home runs and strikeouts were surging. Stolen bases were falling. We were drawing conclusions about juiced balls and still speculating about juiced players.

All of the bottom line stats were in the middle of multi-year trends with no let-up in sight. We expected at least some regression in 2018, but we said the same thing in 2017, and 2016, and we were wrong.

So, this happened:

Homers tailed off after a three-year surge and nobody was talking about the baseballs anymore. These short news cycles are annoying to those of us who have attention spans longer than a housefly.

Was this power drop meaningful? The home run decline was 8.5 percent, which is not insignificant. Of course, if I claim that they just fixed the baseballs, I’ll look like an idiot. So I’m betting on a number like 5,900 for 2019, which would normalize the trend to somewhere inside a more reasonable margin of error.

Then there was this:

Steals were down overall but the number of top speedsters saw an uptick. Last March, there were some who advised that you could still compete in the SB category even if you didn’t draft elite wheels. Given the above data, I’m not so sure that was easy to do.

I fared pretty well in the SB category in some of my leagues. I finished first in the XFL thanks to Whit Merrifield and his 45 bags, backed by Manny Machado, Aaron Hicks, Travis Jankowski and the late surge by Amed Rosario. However, if Merrifield was only half as productive on the basepaths, I would have finished 7th in the category. That’s the impact of an elite speedster.

And this:

Count ‘em … strikeouts have now risen consistently for 13 consecutive years, a nearly 35 percent increase during that time. That’s an amazing statistic. The distribution of high-end K artists reversed itself after last year’s lull, but we’re still living in rarefied air. However, as noted earlier, that does not mean it is easier to draft stud starting pitchers who combine big innings with big strikeouts.

The fascinating part is that it’s nearly impossible project the next data point. Regression and gravity may be the two strongest forces known to man, but they have been wrong for a dozen years.

A higher level look on the offense side:

So yes, home runs were down, but the three true outcomes continued to rise, with strikeouts the driving force. Singles were down 2.2 percent from 2017, but 7.4 percent from 2011.

This big question is, where is this all headed? Will these trends continue, or will some internal or external variable interrupt the trajectory?

I. Don’t. Know.

The best we can do is play the game with what we know, and feel secure in the fact that everyone is facing the same uncertainties. Perhaps an owner might fortuitously structure his roster to take advantage of some unexpected trend reversal. But really, the odds of that are no different from the probability that these four players would all go in Round 29 of the Tout Wars mixed draft last year: German Marquez (pick #427), Walker Buehler (#430), Miguel Andujar (#433) and Adalberto Mondesi (#434).

Stuff happens. You react.

Lesson #6: Despite assertions to the contrary, you can fall off the floor.

Regression and gravity wait for no man. No matter what a player does in any given season, odds are about 70 percent that he will fare worse next year.

Still, we try to find players who have reasonable floors. There has to be a baseline level we can have some confidence in, right? Odds are Jose Altuve won’t bat .250. Odds are Nolan Arenado won’t hit 20 home runs. Odds are Max Scherzer won’t have an ERA of 4.00. Right?

But those floors aren’t always realistic. We used to be able to count on Adam Jones for 25 HRs. We used to be able to count on Felix Hernandez for a sub-4.00 ERA. And as bad as Chris Davis is, we never thought he’d get over 500 plate appearances with a batting average south of .170.

During last off-season, I keyed in on small isolated news items that positioned some mediocre players as safe targets. I saw them as having floors that would not kill me, but also a limited ceiling. I reasoned that it would be okay for a few roster slots.

At least that was what I thought.

However, a low ceiling and a high floor don’t guarantee you anything. Any player can get hurt or slump, and those who are not established major leaguers have a higher risk of washing out.

So maybe I saw something in Randal Grichuk’s move to Toronto. Maybe I saw some playing time opening up for JaCoby Jones and Mikie Mahtook. In the end, it was one boring summer having to watch this trio slog through their mediocrity. Grichuk did show some life in the second half, but by then, I was already arranging the deck chairs.

Their ceiling was low. Their floor was a mirage. But here is the real challenge going forward … as you scan the players in this book, you will find a lot of bad ones. Tons! The ceiling benchmarks are as sweet as ever, but those floors are dropping. There is a sharp stratification of the player pool—there are the Elite and there are the Dregs. There is no middle class. This puts a great deal of economic pressure on the marketplace.

How are you going to draft saves? Is .240 the new .270? Where are you going to find a roster-worthy catcher? (A scout at First Pitch Arizona said, We are having trouble finding catchers at the MLB level so I can just imagine what you fantasy leaguers are going through.) The answer is: pay up for the elite or risk ending up with garbage.

This also means our tolerance for what we deem roster-worthy may have to drop. There are just so many elite players to go around. Once upon a time, you would never consider a .220 batter. Today, you can’t completely discount him if he brings some other plus skill to the table.

Jones suddenly becomes almost palatable in that context. And Grichuk is damn near a star.

Lesson #7: Don’t draft Byron Buxton.

Here are four steps to everlasting success:

1. Commit to believing that some player’s nice second half has a bearing on what he is going to do the following year.

2. Hang on when he gets off to a bad start because I know he is better than this.

3. Refuse to cash him in for a FAAB reclaim because maybe he’ll be back in the second half.

4. Keep him tucked away on your reserve all year because he is too expensive to cut.

As a 2018 Buxton owner, I successfully completed all of the above steps and can now report back that none of them worked. It’s time to re-read the chapter in my economics textbook on sunk costs.

There is always a Buxton every year. It could be Luke Voit. It could be Tommy Pham. It might even be Adalberto Mondesi (Hey, don’t say that!). I won’t venture a real prediction. Just keep your eyes open.

Lesson #8: They said there would be no math. There’s always math.

With my Tout Wars team floundering in last place, I shifted into desperation mode. On June 10, I posted the following to the league message board:

"Hello fellow Touts. I am in last place. I am not going to win. I am no threat to you. But I have a few really good players. I can finish in last place with the Vottos and Freemans and Carrascos, or without them. I have no particular affection for any of them. Not one sent me a birthday card this year.

Look over my roster and make me an offer. Everyone is up for grabs, but the really good guys will require a 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 deal. So yes, you can own Zack Greinke or Walker Buehler. You can gain some nice position flexibility with Yangervis Solarte. Or you can even go down the rabbit hole with Byron Buxton. I hate them all. Maybe one of them will send you a birthday card.

All reasonable offers considered. I’m not punting the season so don’t offer me a bunch of scrubs. I’m offering an A for some Bs or Cs to replace some of my Ds and Fs."

It is not always the case, but I did receive a bunch of legitimate offers. Two of the big names I dealt were Joey Votto and Freddie Freeman. At the time, I was in third place in OBP and figured I’d take a little hit, but it was worth it to bulk up in other areas.

However, I didn’t do the math.

Within three weeks, I plummeted 12 spots to last place in OBP, effectively wiping out potential gains elsewhere. Plummeted is being modest. In my entire life, I have never seen an OBP dive into the abyss as quickly as this team’s did. Picture a grand piano falling out of a 10th story window and crashing to the pavement, leaving a gaping crater that Edmund Hillary couldn’t climb out of. I never saw a glimpse of OBP daylight after that.

Those ratio categories are tricky and a lot more volatile than we give them credit for. So you gotta do the math.

Lesson #9: I’d gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

Seems like a fair deal. But when we make trades, we just don’t know what the future holds. Maybe you’ll get a hamburger. Maybe you’ll get paid. Maybe you’ll get a cookie (I don’t know, why not?). And what kind of burger will you get? A McDonald’s single or a LongHorn steakburger?

I thought I was trading for some juicy thickburgers this year, and ended up with a bunch of White Castle sliders². In a few cases, Tuesday never came. Some were bad ideas. Some were bad luck.

During the off-season in a rebuilding year, I traded Justin Verlander for Michael Kopech. That helped hand a title to the eventual winner and has left me with nothing for 2019.

On July 2, I traded Carlos Carrasco, coming off a DL stint with a 4.24 ERA, for Kris Bryant, also coming off the DL. But after making the swap, Carrasco won nine games and struck out 135 with a 2.59 ERA while Bryant went back on the DL, only netting me 3 HRs and 14 RBI in 113 AB.

On July 19, in an attempt to bolster my pitching, I dealt Xander Bogaerts for Ross Stripling and Amed Rosario. Before the deal, Stripling was 8-2 with a 2.08 ERA. After the deal, he went 0-4 with a 6.41 ERA.

Did I mention that I lost a lot of leagues this year?

Okay, I just pulled off the deal for Max Scherzer. I dealt a $4 Kyle Tucker, a $22 Starling Marte and a future draft pick. Like Kershaw in years past, owning Scherzer can cover up a lot of flaws. And boy, does he have his work cut out for him.

But, who knows? I might have to wait until Tuesday to see my payday, or it could take weeks, or months. No matter how lopsided a trade seems at the time, especially in keeper leagues, it could take years for the winners and losers to shake out. Scherzer could turn into a pumpkin and Tucker could become the AL MVP. Marte could go 30-30 and that draft pick could become the next Mike Trout.

Geez, I hope not.

So I could say this lesson is to try to make better trades, but let’s be realistic. You never know what’s going to happen. I’m still waiting to find out the winner of the Michael Pineda for Jesus Montero deal. (Former Montero owner here.)

Lesson #10: Love is a many splintered thing.

I have been known to have the occasional man-crush on a player. I admit it. The phenomenon reaches beyond simple hometown allegiance. It’s no surprise that I was a Tom Seaver fan growing up, or that I’ve followed David Wright’s career intently. But those were not man-crushes. I was just being a fan.

A man-crush is when you keep drafting Dave Stieb because he once won you a title, even though he’s barely draftable now. A man-crush is when you are all over Matt Capps’ support metrics and keep hanging on to him even though Joe Nathan has already been named the closer. A man-crush is when you spend a whole season wishing for Ryan McMahon to find his playing time.

Yeah, I did that.

How can you not be drawn to a guy who went .355/.403/.583 in over 519 plate appearances in his last minor league season? How can you not salivate over those stats in Coors Field? Even when the Rockies signed Carlos Gonzalez in March, I kept saying to myself, McMahon is just too good not to find his playing time.

There needs to be a certain space, some dispassion, between you and your players. Sure, you can grab a few favorites and have fun for awhile, but if you are serious about contending, there needs to come a time when you cut the non-performers.

McMahon was on my team all year. Even when he was demoted, I held on, watching the solid numbers he was still posting in Albuquerque. He’d be back, I told myself. And when he did come back but was getting less and less playing time each week, I still hung on every at bat. (Seriously, his weekly ABs after his recall were 17, 15, 10, 14, 10, 7, 5, 5, 3, 0.)

What’s