FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: April 18, 2026
What-ifs are a central part of being a baseball fan. We love to consider how differently things might’ve turned out if a star player hadn’t gotten hurt, or if a team had signed one free agent instead of another. Some what-ifs are the stuff of legend, like the fabled night in the late 1940s when, during a drunken dinner with Tom Yawkey at Toots Shor’s Midtown Manhattan joint, Yankees owner Dan Topping nearly traded Joe DiMaggio to the Red Sox for Ted Williams. Others aren’t revealed until decades later, like when Barry Bonds said on the Opening Night Netflix broadcast last month that he would’ve played for the Yankees instead of the Giants if George Steinbrenner hadn’t given him a take-it-or-leave-it offer.
We all have our own personal picks, too. Here are a few of mine: What if the New York City newspapers hadn’t gone on strike in 1978? What if Eric Gregg hadn’t been the home plate umpire for Livan Hernandez’s start in Game 5 of the 1997 NLCS? What if Dottie Hinson hadn’t dropped the ball, or Jimmy Dugan had just laid off the booze? Some of the most significant what-ifs could’ve had a massive impact on the world beyond baseball. What if the Black Sox hadn’t thrown the 1919 World Series? What if Curt Flood hadn’t challenged the reserve clause? What if George W. Bush had been named commissioner of baseball?
We won’t be examining any of the above what-ifs in this week’s mailbag, but three of the four questions we’re answering below are rooted in an alternate reality, one in which Mookie Betts was always a shortstop, Ford Frick didn’t run Bill Veeck out of baseball, and a starting pitcher was exactly league average at everything except throwing strikes. The lone non-hypothetical question, which is where we’ll begin, looks at whether teams have more success when they hit a grand slam than when they score at least four runs without one. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
Matt is the associate editor of FanGraphs. Previously, he was the baseball editor at Sports Illustrated. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Men’s Health, Baseball Prospectus, and Lindy’s Sports Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @ByMattMartell and Blue Sky @mattmartell.bsky.social.
Now I’m curious about this hypothetical: Gac Zallen is exactly the same except he also has a reality distortion field that prevents a book from getting out on them. Every batter maintains their exact Z-swing and Z-contact rates against him. Would he be good then?
I feel like that’d help a lot with the K rate; a lot more called strikes if people think they might be throwing a ball.
Still, I don’t think that solves the HR issue. Less swings overall helps lower the number somewhat, but when all misses are misses in the zone, I imagine that’d get ugly.
Uh-oh, Baumann briefly mentioned politics. Queue the ‘keep politics out of Fan Graphs’ comments
Helps that it’s a members only column. Also helps that it was an extremely softened comment.
Do not mess with the Mookie Betts timeline. He may be one of only things in baseball *and the world* that has been consistently good and a source of joy from 2014 through today.
I was thinking about ice cream the other day. It is one of life’s small luxuries, and how it has been bringing joy to children (and adults) with amazing consistency since it went into the mainstream. Almost nobody has a bad thing to say about ice cream, at least not while they are eating it. Mookie Betts’s career is like that. Don’t mess with the timeline.
I’m honestly getting concerned about him. Last year he delt with a lot and his production was way down. It was easy to give him a mulligan for the year. This year he’s off to even worse start. I say this as major Bert’s fan. He’s always been a joy to watch I’m a bit biased though as a Red Sox fan and it hurt each time fangraphs article appeared that amounted to the fact Mookie iwas still amazing.
FWIW, as I’ve gotten older, my lactose intolerance has gotten progressively worse. I just grew up avoiding milk and cheese. By my 30s, I was only eating cheeseless pizza. In my 50s now, I basically have had to become a “vegan, but who eats meat.”
That is, I can’t have any ice cream. Not ever.
Things can always get worse.
But there is so much truly great vegan ice cream these days! Full-fat, full flavor, honest to goodness ice cream! Get that vegan Mookie goodness!
I feel your pain. The lactose intolerance hit me like a freight train at 27. No issues before that, and completely dairy-free since. Not great for a NYC1-adjacent fella whose favorite foods were pizza and everything bagels with cream cheese . . .
You may be selling Veeck short on free agency. He was the only owner to testify in favor of Flood when the Supreme Court considered Flood v. Kuhn.
Also, the last 10 years have taught me that there is nothing that could prevent certain Eagles fans from saying they’d rather have Kevin Kolb under center than Donovan McNabb, and that doesn’t just apply to the Eagles, Philadelphia, the NFL, Kolb, or McNabb.
Regarding moving the Browns to Milwaukee – Veeck’s Plan A was to run the Cardinals out of St Louis. He almost pulled it off – Veeck (as he always did when he purchased a team) juiced local enthusiasm for the Browns, while the Cardinals were floundering. The Cardinals were being actively courted by Houston and Milwaukee before Augie Busch stepped in in 1953 to “save the Cardinals” (and sell more beer).
That is a wild alternate history – not just the “Houston Cardinals” but a modern St Louis Browns franchise that maybe feels more like the Pirates or Reds or Guardians than it does like the Cardinals franchise of today. This alternate history wasn’t one that was affected by Veeck getting cold-shouldered out of the Owners’ Club, but it is a strange universe that almost happened.
I agree with the short-changing of Veeck on free agency though. He was a crafty businessman for sure, but everything I have read by him and of him he comes across as someone who was more fundamentally decent than nearly all his peers. (Excepting wealthy Owner or Commissioner’s Office types who spoke out of both sides of their mouths to stab you in the back – he had plenty of vitriol for that crowd.) In a universe where Veeck has a loud, persistent and persuasive voice I think free agency would have quickened.
My only quibble with the Veeck question is that it seems unfair to Milwaukee fans.
The Braves themselves wanted to leave for Atlanta by the early 60s not because Milwaukee was inhospitable–check out it’s 50s attendance–but because the team hamstrung its own growth in several ways.
For one, Lou Perini would not sign any kind of local TV deal for nearly a decade after relocating. Worse, the team in the early 60s instituted a policy that barred fans–many of whom worked in breweries–from bringing their own beer to games.
Once Lou Perini sold the team to Bill Bartholomay and Co., the move was inevitable, because the new owners had no connection to Milwaukee.
As someone who attended Milwaukee Braves games-this seems more accurate to me. The Braves, as I recall, dominated attendance in the 1950’s. It wasn’t the fans that caused their leaving, it was the carpetbaggers.
Isn’t Philly the land of eternal QB controversy even when their starter is good?
Eagles fan here – we are the most eternally miffed fanbase ever for a team that won a Super Bowl in absolutely convincing fashion over a generationally talented QB and then won 11 games and the division the following year, the first team to repeat as NFC East champions in over 20 years.
Even so? We’re miserable. Don’t believe me? Just ask us, we’ll tell you about it for the next 90 minutes to six hours depending on how much free time you have.
Maybe I misread the response, but does ZIPS say that Mookie would have been an average SS? Seeing as he was above average last year in his 30s, wouldn’t the projection likely be that he was quite good earlier in his career? While we don’t have to assume he would be as good of a SS as he was in RF, I feel like your answer is mostly based on a positional adjustment rather than the interpolation of his minor league stats and last year’s performance.
I would guess that his comfortably below average defensive numbers from 2024 affected the projection too.
Suppose Gac never throws a pitch that misses its target by more than one ball diameter, but the miss can be in any direction. That would mean that the catcher could never set up a target closer to a corner than 1 1/2″ (approximately) from the edge of the zone; that way even his misses would be ruled to be strikes by the silicon BS system.
I think that yes, he would get annihilated. His pure stuff just isn’t good enough to always be in the zone.
Let’s try someone different. Lets make a Robubba Chandler, who throws 100 MPH gas, a wipeout slider, and a decent change and curve ball with the same impeccable command. I think the curve would still be out of bounds, because the SBS system calls pitches at the back outside corners of home plate. So he would essentially be forced to hang every curve ball. And he would never be able to back-foot LH batters with a slider when he has two strikes.
I don’t even think that would work.
Even if a pitcher had a Mariano Rivera quality cutter, he could never back-door a hitter with it because they would always know that it was going to catch a piece of the outside corner. And he could never run it in on the hands of an opposite hand hitter, because that would be out of the zone.
Strike 3, you’re out.
The Kevin Kolb line got a big old chuckle from this Eagles fan!
I think Gac Zallen would give up 2-4x more home runs than you suggest. If there were an imaginary world where nobody else knew he didn’t throw balls for each player appearance or even each inning, he’d do better. But if hitters know, he’s toast.
That was my thought. I think he would be unplayable, like ERA over 9 or something.
He would allow SO much hard contact. Yes, there would be no walks, but, batters would tee off on him.