Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1029: Clayton Kershaw’s Knuckleball

Episode Date: March 9, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan answer listener emails about one-pitch innings, trampoline stats, winning in spring training, David Price and pitcher pace, a baseball scene in Chicago Justice, automatic homer hitting, putting hitters away with two strikes, underrated first basemen, banning player mannerisms, signing with an anonymous team, intentionally walking Mike Trout, and a Clayton […]

Renegades with fancy gauges Stay the plague for it's contagious Pull the plug and take the stages Throw away your television Hello and welcome to episode 1029 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Van Graffs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Van Graffs. Hello. Hi. Doing an email episode, so we're going to get to questions in a minute. I have a few

follow-ups from listeners about things that we've talked about recently. We've emailed about a couple of these things, but Jay wrote in to say, I know it's not quite the same thing as what you guys were talking about last email show with the intentional walks and the new minimum number of pitches that would be required to get through an inning, but it did make me wonder what the fewest pitches anyone has ever thrown while still getting a full inning of work was, and it turns out that there's been only one time that a pitcher threw only one pitch to get a full inning of work. It was Jeff Nelson in 1995. And this was July 13th, 1995. Game between the Mariners and the Blue Jays.

Magical season. Perhaps you remember it. That's your favorite baseball season of all time, right? This was not the highlight of that season. That was the turning point. It's a highlight. That was the turning point for that team. Yeah.

So I will link to this play because it's actually on YouTube. Thanks, MLB Advanced Media. But we were looking at the box score. So Jeff Nelson comes in and he throws one pitch and he gets a triple play on a bunt, which is crazy. And as you mentioned, this might be the worst bunt of all time. Well, I was curious about that. And then I just Googled bunt triple play. And I didn't realize that, I guess I must have forgotten that just a few years ago on, what, April 15th, maybe April 14th, 2012 i'm looking at an article by aj cassaville written uh special to mlb.com but the uh the dodgers turned a triple

play on a padres bunt which is a very padres thing to have happen i think so there is at least those two instances of this and i believe there are more so there have been bunt triple plays just I guess no other circumstance of a bunt triple play against a new pitcher completing an entire inning it would be I wonder if there have been other one pitch innings that then the pitcher just remains in because hey he threw one pitch and so then those would be more difficult to find through research but the bunt triple play I remain remain convinced that the bunt against Jeff Nelson was tied for the worst bunt of all time. However, there are other bunts that are tied with it. Who is this?

So who actually laid down this bunt? Jesus Guzman. Jesus Guzman was the Padres player who bunted. And, well, I'm not going to play the clip right now because nobody else is watching it with me. But I don't know, some freaky stuff happened. And then three players were out. And that's how a bunt triple play goes. I think if you look at the video of any bunt triple play, it requires that baseball hit breaks down in the sequence because there's no other way to actually record a triple play on a bunt. So there's a bunt,

something happens happens and then nobody understands what's going on because baseball players are conditioned to only understand a very well-defined set of rules and gameplay and then as soon as something is in violation of what they are used to everybody kind of stands there and they shrug and then the umpire decides that somebody is out or somebody's out of the baseline or the the game is over, or it's raining, but things just go haywire. Yeah, this bunt in 1995 was laid down by Sandy Martinez, who was a rookie that year, and went on to play six, seven more seasons in the big leagues but only get 400 plate appearances in all of those seasons so this was not the beginning of a storied career it was a it was a long career but not a storied one

well there's a story yeah there's there's this story so we'll link to this video it's fun to watch jeff nelson stock off the mound as if he had just done something routine, getting a triple play bunt. So follow up also from a listener named Solomon, who sent us some stats on trampoline injuries. I should probably read this. He says, just in case nobody else has sent these along. No, no one else sent very detailed statistics about trampoline injuries. But thank you, Solomon. No one else sent very detailed statistics about trampoline injuries, but thank you, Solomon.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission tracks trampoline-related injuries. In 2000, it released a report estimating nearly 100,000 trampoline-related injuries in 1999 and a total of 11 fatal injuries in the previous decade. decade. A 2014 safety alert suggests that the total number of injuries estimated for 2014 was only slightly higher at 104,691, but a total of 22 fatal injuries from 2000 to 2009. Finally, CPSC makes available the data of the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, in which the injury admissions from a sample of hospitals are coded based on the products involved and their severity, then used to generate the nationwide injury estimates. Using this query tool for trampoline-related injuries in 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, returns 3,281 cases in the sample, from which the estimate was 107,123 in total nationwide. The product code for trampolines is 1233.

Since they are outside the scope of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, this query tool does not have any comparable data regarding barn roofs or shark photo ops, but it does include baseball, activity, apparel, or equipment excluding softball, baseball, activity, apparel, or equipment, excluding softball, which returns 3,127 cases and an estimated national total of 120,234. Although tempting, I did not download the file with the demographics and narratives of all the injuries within the actual sample. So according to Solomon's stats, baseball is actually more dangerous than trampolines but but i don't know if trampolines had lethal accidents i don't we know there's like the one base well there have been a couple

baseball deaths but i would yeah i would assume that there have been fewer than what is that 33 over the past two decades basically yeah i don't know i mean whether this would count like amateur youth players who have heart attacks while playing because of heart defects or something like that. You usually hear about that with football, but I imagine it has happened with baseball. But that's not directly a baseball related activity in the way that jumping off a trampoline to your death is. So I don't know which one is actually more dangerous. So I don't know which one is actually more dangerous. I would guess that trampoline has a higher risk of fatality and baseball has a higher risk of, I don't know, getting beaned and getting a black and blue.

Actually, that's not true. You definitely get all sorts of bruises with trampolines. Anyway, I guess we know you can't forget that Chris Johnson and Brian McCann both died of a heart attack because of a bat flip. So that's kind of a danger that we've seen in recent baseball. But keep in mind, these trampoline statistics, these are injuries, I assume, sufficient to take somebody to the hospital. These are not just like you sprained your ankle on a trampoline, which, by the way, happens every single freaking time that you jump on a trampoline. You don't go to the hospital for that. These are like compound fractures. This is bone coming out of your skin. is your you broke your back you tore your ACL where where is the disconnect here because so triple-eating clearly risky activity right we can agree on this most risky

activities are performed because the the thrill and the excitement is at least on balance with the risk people go squirrel-suiting for God's sake and then that seems to be like the thrill of a lifetime unless you just sail right into the face of a rock wall. So there is a thrill there. But one trampolining is not look, it's not that it's not that fun. I've been on a trampoline before a couple times. It's you jump. It's exhausting. You don't do much. I guess some people do flips, but that just seems like a great way to make sure that you can never do a flip again for the rest of your life. So where is the disconnect?

Because trampolines are popular, and I think people know that they're dangerous, but it's kind of like wink, wink, ha-ha, I'm jumping on a trampoline kind of dangerous. Instead of like, no, you're essentially drunk driving right now, and you're doing it, and you're paying for it, and you're doing this on purpose, and you're bringing your entire family. You're bringing one of these into your house. I don't know. It looks innocent enough, I guess. You're just jumping on a bouncy surface. It seems like there shouldn't be anything that could hurt you, especially if you are in one of those places where you can't jump off the trampoline, like the trampoline surface

is the whole room or it's large enough that you wouldn't just fall on the ground. Maybe it just seems deceptively safe. I don't know that I would have automatically assumed that it was that more dangerous than any other kind of physical recreational activity before you brought it to my attention. You know what? You know, those trampoline gyms, you don't have a whole room that's a trampoline. You have a whole room of trampolines that are stitched together. You know what's on the borders? Metal bits. And they put that like foam cushioning on top of it. But no, that foam cushioning, if only it just makes the metal feel harder when you land on it.

So like you can effectively look at one of those rooms, remove the foam in between the different trampoline surfaces because you can't have a room size trampoline. That would be insane. You wouldn't do anything. It would be all concave and sinking in the middle so if you just remove the foam and then you look in the room you realize oh here are these bouncy surfaces and there's basically barbed wire in between them i'm never going to want to do this i'm not going to jump this is not fun landing when you're used your body kind of gets used to the jumping the the elastic surface and so when you land even on the, like if you have a trampoline at home,

which you never should, it's like leaving a loaded gun in the backyard. If you land on the ground and you're used to a bouncy surface, you're not going to land on it properly anyway. And the ground is hard. I don't know if you've ever been on the ground, but it's not very forgiving,

especially when you're all like bow-legged or flailing like you do on a trampoline because you think you're invincible. You're not invincible. You're far from invincible. At least 33 people documented it, figured out they're extremely vincible over the past two decades.

Yeah. Don't become a trampoline statistic, people. Although if you do, Solomon will send it to us. So thank you, Solomon. All right. And another follow-up from Brian. This is kind of a question, more of All right. And another follow-up from Brian. This is kind of a question, more of a comment.

I was listening to the discussion on Effectively Wild about the owner whose only goal was to win in spring training. And it occurred to me that this team could exploit a market inefficiency by trading for players after the previous season and then flipping them before opening day. This team would get a valuable asset for its most important time of the year. Thank you. previous season. I also thought this team could sign one-dimensional veterans to minor league contracts to amass a silly amount of depth. You could literally have a full team of defensive replacements enter the game in the seventh inning and then either release them prior to opening day or keep them on the 40-man roster for the season. And Brian wanted to know if we had any other ideas along those lines, although I will say that the first idea might not work so well. In theory, those players do have the same value if you were trying to trade them in spring training as they would have the year before. Maybe you could even say that there would be fewer openings, I guess, although if this one team has stockpiled all these guys for spring training, then other teams

wouldn't have been able to acquire them, so maybe they would still have needs for them. But you'd have to try to offload all of these players at one time at the end of spring training when a lot of teams have already made their plans for the season and they know that you're trying to do this. There'd be a desperation aspect to it because you'd be unable to pay all these players for the season so your trade partners would know that they kind of had you where they wanted you so not sure you could actually pull this off so well you might get stuck with some guys although i guess you could always trade them at the deadline i guess the only thing missing i think we've we've agreed it would be possible to build the greatest cactus slash slash Grapefruit League team ever assembled.

And there is enough information out there and a clear lack of incentive on the other team's part that you could probably dominate. I think the best spring training record I came across in my almost entirely pointless research on the subject the other day was the Nationals one year. I think they went like 19 and 4 or something. I'm sure they had some ties, but those don't count. So you could build a very incredible spring training team. The problem is that you yourself would have a complete and utter lack of incentives. As we were discussing with Pedro a little bit just the other day, the Angels were undefeated in 18 consecutive spring training games, which now I know it didn't occur to me immediately. There was also a whole regular season in between some of those games where the Angels lost a whole bunch. But yeah, I think regular season baseball is sufficiently different from

spring training baseball that you can separate the two. The Angels went 16-0-2 over 18 consecutive spring training games. And then Pedro brought up the question, how many spring training games in a row does a team have to win or at least go undefeated in before people like you start selling out the stadium and people get really excited to see your team in spring training? And the answer is no, there is no answer. It never happened. It could never possibly happen. So this would have to be some sort of, I don't know, VEC-like enterprise to not only build a team so good, but to then hype it up as if it makes a difference. I did realize in other cursory research that when you look at the spring

training standings on MLB.com, of course, you get the Cactus League standings and the Grapefruit League standings. But you also get American League and National League standings on the same page. So there's two sort of competing or at least somewhat parallel standings. And I guess do you have to win all of the – I guess best record is best record, right? But if you win the Cactus League but a team in your league does better in Florida, then what? I've never thought about this before. I'll probably never think about this again. But as long as we're here, this is just another reason why spring training is too long and stupid and weird. All right.

New business. Let's take a question from Alex. Imagine if a regular person was suddenly able to hit a home run off any pitch thrown to them by anyone or anything in the world. When I say regular person, I mean someone off the street, 25 to 35 years of age, maybe played Little League or a high school sport. So this is an almost supernatural power, and Alex is basically asking how efficient the scouting system is. This person is out there. He has the ability to hit a home run on every at-bat in the major leagues. How long does it take to pluck him from obscurity?

Okay, so this is the Kenny Griffey Jr. cheat code, essentially, for, what was that? Griffey Baseball 97? Whatever it was for N64. Okay, so we have to make a few assumptions here, I guess, because I will go and throw a baseball every so often with a friend, but I never hit. And I think when the average person does go hit, assuming they're not a baseball player and they're about our age, they'll like go to the batting cage, right? And there are no home runs. So you have to imagine that this person is already in a circumstance where he's being lobbed to or pitched to like in a stadium environment, which, okay, that's a

little difficult. Maybe he goes to the cages or or she maybe this individual goes to the cages it would take more home runs for a woman by the way so you you go to the cages and you realize hey i'm making really good contact all the time okay so i don't know i don't know what it would then take to get you to a ballpark but whatever you go to an area ballpark it maybe it's like a little league field or a bay bruce league field or whatever the differences are and you're getting you're getting pitched to and you hit a bunch of home runs i don't know maybe after five you're excited after 10 you're like i can't seem to not do this after 20 you're like i think someone else is in control of my arms and my body because i mean at some point you know you'd you'd probably take a swing that's like not a home run swing or something just

to test it and then the ball would still go out i I don't know. This gets into some sort of flubber situation, I guess. But I don't know, 25 pitches in, if you hit 25 consecutive home runs on 25 swings when you're with your friend, I don't know when you stop. You kind of want to keep going for the day, right? Just to see how long you can do it. Yeah. So I don't know. Your friend gets tired probably around 100, 150 practice pitches. And you're like, all right, let's do it again. Let's do it again in a week. Come back out, 50, 100 more. Your friend gets tired and you're like, all right, I have now hit 250 consecutive home runs.

I don't know who you reach out to. But at that point, maybe you start to research like area league, like adult league or rec league or something. I don't have a window into this, but you're like, hey, coach, I am an automatic home run hitter. You might be interested in this. I can't play defense for beans, but I can give you guaranteed runs every time I swing the bat. So assuming that you have a job or a personal life that allows you to take the time to go be the best baseball player ever, then you go join a league, you get, I don't know, your first game you hit, how many times you bat in an adult league game? Is it usual? Let's say four, whatever. Maybe you join your company softball team. I don't know

what you're doing. I don't know how to draw this connection. I'm thinking out loud and feel free to chime in if you have any additional thoughts that you can insert into mine. But you join some sort of team, whether it's a softball team or an adult league team, and you go a few games and you hit constant home runs. And maybe at that point, if you're in an adult league team, maybe there's someone who's loosely connected to baseball, maybe some hanger on, maybe somebody who knows something. Yeah, that's the thing. Even if you're like hanging around the batting cages, like probably maybe there's someone who gives lessons there and is a former player or knows former players, maybe former players hang around there or they know them. So I would think that maybe you'd talk to someone like that

and you'd say, hey, I seem to be able to hit a home run on every pitch. And then you would test yourself against faster and faster pitches on the pitching machine. And then maybe people would gather. There'd be a crowd watching you take BP and hit these bombs on every pitch. And word would travel. I don't even know if you'd have to join a league. I don't think you'd have to go that far.

Yeah, actually, I guess maybe not. Because you could, someone at some point, like if you're just out on a field and you're hitting home runs all the time, some passersby will probably take a video at some point. As soon as a crowd develops, someone is holding up their cell phone. And then the local news will promote that being like,

area man hits constant barrage of home runs. And then that's the entire news segment because it's like 75 minutes of nothing but home runs and then someone someone will notice i don't know deadspin would get a tip about this and they'd post a video and then jeff passan would go in and write a profile of this person or something and and then people in baseball would hear about it and of course there'd be a lot of skepticism, but probably some team just looking to capitalize on the PR aspects of it might invite the guy in for a tryout or send a scout to see him or something like that. It would be a big story.

This guy who supposedly can hit home runs whenever he wants or person who can do it. So then I think you actually test the person against live pitching. And if this ability held up, then you'd have to start to take it seriously, right? You'd have some minor leaguers come in and throw the person and it would keep happening. And then, yeah, I think you would probably just sign the person at that point, right? You'd make them do it over and over again. And the cross-checkers would come in. And the scouting director would come in.

And then the GM would come in. And they'd all see this freakish ability. But, yeah, so how long does this process take from start to finish? I don't even know that it would be that long. It might take the person some time to realize that they had this ability. be that long. It might take the person some time to realize that they had this ability, but I think word would spread pretty quickly given the way things work today and how quickly things become phenomena. So I could see this all playing out in, I don't know, a month. I think it might take more than a month. I think the hardest part would be doing this enough at

the beginning. You need to do it enough and in a sufficiently public situation, I guess, where someone would take a video because as I think about it, that's the most likely way to get your name out there is somebody is just paying attention. Maybe your friend starts taking a video because, you know, you are the two who know about it, but then you need someone to look at the video or I guess a critical mass of people to look at the video. I don't really know how things go viral, but I know that like in the Effectively Wild group, we've seen like people's home videos of their children swinging. I don't know how those things go viral, but they can be impressive. So if you had to guess, I don't know how these things work. I know teams are constantly giving tryouts that never get any attention because why would they? But which major league team do you think would be first or last

to want to give a tryout to this man or woman? I feel like the Brewers would be into this. It just seems like the Brewers are kind of open to anything right now. Like they're signing indie leaguers all over the place. They signed a Sonoma Stomper. They're taking other people's low ceiling prospects and older prospects and they're just, they're just, they'll take whatever talent they can get. So I think the Brewers would be all over this talent acquisition strategy. Yeah. And I think the Padres would be in there

too, just because that's AJ Preller is hyperactive in those regards, but it was. So if you have a hunch, which team do you think would be least willing? I mean, granted, this guy would probably or woman would probably go to one tryout and then that team would sign him and then that's it. So there'd only be. But, you know, you could have a bunch of scouts in attendance. Which scout might not be in attendance? I don't know. Would we be thinking about some traditional team, some team that wouldn't want to do something undignified?

I'm trying to think of what team stands out team that wouldn't want to do something undignified. I'm trying to think of what team stands out in that respect. Like, I don't know, would the Yankees want some schlub on their team who probably has facial hair? I feel like they have so many people who are involved in talent acquisition that they would send someone even if they weren't that invested just because they have people to spare. Right. So just the cheapest team, basically. I don't know. I have no idea. The A's?

Yeah. Maybe the A's, which is funny because they're the team that should. Well, anyway. They're like, hey, we have another John Jaha. All right. Dan in Kitchener says, I don't wish Tommy John surgery on anyone, but the news of David Price's situation. This was before we found out that David Price is probably okay. His ranking last year being last in pitcher pace.

The new pace of play rules in Travis Sawchuk's article on Mark Burley working quickly got me thinking, were to miss all of 2017, would the time saved by replacing him with a pitcher with average pitching pace, or even Mark Burley, save more time than the new intentional walk rule? It's an interesting question. I guess we could do a little quick math. Okay, let's do some quick math. Yeah. So initially, I thought, this is interesting. This might actually be the case, and maybe this would drive home how insignificant the new intentional walk rule is. If you could just take one pitcher and replace him with someone else and that would do just as much. But on further reflection, maybe you can do the math and tell us exactly how long David Price took and what the average was and how much slower he was.

But there were 900 something intentional walks last year. And I assume David Price threw, I don't know, how many pitches did David Price throw? Like 3,500. Yeah. Okay. So intentional walks, there were, I think 930 ish. And we don't know exactly how much time is saved. We can't look that up very easily right now. But if you had to guess, are we talking about 20 seconds per intentional walk? Well, so let's see. In the past, I think the estimate is a four-pitch intentional walk would take at minimum 60 seconds

because you still have the whole charade of the pitcher coming set and doing all that, and you don't throw the ball immediately. So let's say it saves at least 45 seconds. It's still going to take some time because you need the jester and the batter will take his gloves off and trot down to first, whatever, but all that stuff was already happening. So actually, it could save, let's just say 60 seconds, 60 seconds per intentional walk. All right. Well, so if that is the case, then I think that has price beat, right? Because

we're talking about almost a minute for 930 minutes. And with price, we're talking about 3,500 pitches, but probably only saving, what, a few seconds per pitch. So what's the price-pace? Do you have that? Yeah. So on average, David Price last year was 2.9 seconds slower than the league average, which would work out to, over the entire season, 10,425 seconds, which, long story short, works out to about three hours if you replaced all of David Price's pitches with a league average pace. So three hours versus in the case of if you take... 15 hours or something.

16 hours if we're talking about a minute per intentional walk and they're 930. Yeah, 15 and a half hours, basically. The difference, of course, being that all of those intentional walks being saved would be scattered throughout, and then every would-be David Price start would all of a sudden feel a lot faster. Except that the pitcher would be worse and there would be more base runners.

The other side of pitcher pace is Price is keeping people off the bases, which makes his games faster. Yeah, so, all right. Just in terms of time between pitches, then losing Price, replacing him with a league average pitcher would be something like a fifth as much time saved as the intentional walk rule. Maybe more than that if you replaced him with Mark Burley, but it doesn't quite equate.

How slow would Pedro Baez or Joel Peralta have to be before he's essentially a felon? Twice as slow as he is currently. Twice as slow. And then he's in violation of federal crime. Yeah. All right. Question from Jeremy. While I was visiting my grandma in Florida, we watched an episode of Chicago Justice,

a new crime procedural on NBC. I like that he uses his grandma as an excuse for why he was watching Chicago Justice. I just quickly watched a little bit of one episode that Jeremy is asking us about, and it seems basically like The Good Wife, but worse. It's a lawyer show, but kind of cookie cutter and networky. So Jeremy is writing to us about the show because there is a baseball scene in the third episode of this first season. And I am going to play that clip right now. You killed it today. That was the best redirect I have ever seen. In your three years of practice? Seriously. It was Atticus Finch. Tom Cruise kicking the crap out of Nicholson.

What if Kalila had adult-onset diabetes? What if she said the deputy had two fingers raised? Never ask a question you don't already know the answer to. I was naked out there. I know I screwed up, Peter. I should have asked if she wore a... Forget it. Forget it. You know I screwed up, Peter. I should have asked if she wore a... Forget it. Forget it. You know I played baseball, right? I pitched.

It was Cubs, Sox, 2007, bottom of the ninth. We're up one. I throw the sinker, and it's an easy ground at the third. A sure double play until my third baseman boots it, and just like that, we lose. Now, the entire north side of Chicago, they blame the third baseman, but the only person I blamed was myself.

See, if I'd have thrown the splitter, the batter would have popped it up to right, and we would have won. Okay, so Jeremy writes, This exchange was so bizarre for so many reasons, and I couldn't get it out of my head. I looked up the Cubs' 2007 season to see if I could pinpoint whether this actual scenario occurred in a game. The DA did not specify whether the opponent was the Red Sox or White Sox,

but the Cubs did not play the Red Sox in 2007. That season, the Cubs went 5-1 against the White Sox, and the only loss was a 10-6 defeat on May 20, 2007, a game that featured no errors. Thus, it does not seem as though the district attorney in Chicago Justice, who is the one speaking in that scene, is impersonating any particular Cubs pitcher from the 2007 team. So this DA is a former baseball player. He is sharing this anecdote. Not totally sure how the anecdote relates to the situation. I skimmed just enough of this episode to see what the context for this was. And basically, he just had come out of a court case and he wasn't prepared because of this other associate, but he managed to pull out a victory and he took a risk and he didn't know what the witness's answer was going to be, but it ended up working out. So I guess he's saying that that's analogous to this situation because what he did was bad and he doesn't blame his fellow lawyer slash third baseman in this scenario. He blames himself for putting his fellow lawyer slash third baseman

in that situation to fail, I guess, is the takeaway from this parable. So there are a few weird things about this story, I think. First of all, his confidence that he could induce a pop-up with a splitter is weird, right? So he's saying that he got this ground ball double play ball with a sinker and he blames himself because he knows that if he had thrown a splitter, he could have gotten a pop up instead or the right fielder could have made the out, which is weird because the splitter is not a pop up pitch. That's not what you would throw if you wanted to get someone to fly out. Like, I guess it has a higher fly ball rate than a sinker would, but probably not by much. A splitter. It's a swing and a spit.

And if your best splitter is like, he's going to hit a fly ball, your splitter sucks and you should never throw in that situation. Yeah, unless the advanced scouting report on this hitter is that he always pops up splitters which seems that's the different super skill that would never get you to the major league yeah so that's strange also strange is the idea that the pitcher would blame himself for getting a double play ball that's like the best thing that a pitcher could possibly do and i don't think a pitcher would hold himself responsible like unless he knows that this is ped Pedro Alvarez playing third or something like this is aielder messed up and I'm not going to blame myself.

And no one else would hold the pitcher responsible for getting a crown ball, double play ball. This is exactly the situation where you blame somebody else. Like that's, if you, you should, you should not make a habit of, of doling out blame. But like in this situation, one person deserves blame. It's the guy who messed up. And to whatever extent the DA is trying to be like noble or something by saying, no, it was me. I never should have put my third baseman in that situation.

Well, guess what? A fly ball puts the right fielder in that situation. So what if the right fielder drops the ball? You're still asking somebody else to make a play. And these are plays that the fielder should be sufficiently competent to make. This is the major leagues, which gets into, I think, what I just realized is my biggest problem with the situation. What former major league baseball player is a district attorney within 10 years at most of retiring from the major leagues? Like maybe I could buy a 10 year retired major league player selling refrigerators to a district attorney, but actually becoming one.

Maybe if you're like a really good player from a small school that doesn't usually have major league players, you get like an honorary degree. But that doesn't mean you pass the bar because they gave you like a congratulations. You went to Columbia Law or at least you're affiliated with the school, therefore you can now go to the courtroom. I don't know what the case was, but this is a case from network television, so it was probably very dramatic, high stakes. I am not a legal professional, unlike I think the majority of people who write about baseball online, so I don't know exactly what's entailed, line so i don't know exactly what's entailed but like craig breslow right has the uh i think he was a double major in school right it's uh science like microbiology molecular biology yeah yeah yeah something like that and he's like he's headline news but if you are so good at school

that you are basically on track to become a legal professional. You don't have the time to dedicate to being a baseball player. So assuming baseball has taken priority when you are in college, you haven't studied any law at all. So maybe this player, maybe this DA suffered a major elbow or shoulder injury shortly after his getting a double play ball that Mike old, I guess screwed up. And, and so then he's then he's forced into retirement.

So let's say this, he said the game was in 2007? Yeah. Okay, so major injury. Worst case scenario, you know, everybody still tries to rehab a little bit from an injury unless he was like paralyzed, which I'm going to guess, which having watched the episode, he was not. So let's say he's got a bum shoulder.

He tries to rehab and he figures out a year and a half later okay i'm never coming back from this so that takes him to the end of 2009 so we're starting 2010 he's like all right i need another career so then you go back to school and then you become a law student and then you go to law school and then you do whatever it is that's required to become a district attorney, which I feel like is at least a 10-year process, probably. Maybe more. I honestly don't know. I'm talking out of my ass here. Maybe you know more than I do. You've watched at least more legal television. Yeah. Well, I have discovered some of the backstory of this DA. Peter Stone is his name. Apparently, the character is the son of Benjamin Stone, an assistant district attorney on the first four seasons of Law & Order. So this is part of the same legal extended universe. extended universe. So here's an explanation on The Hollywood Reporter from one of the showrunners,

I think. Because we had to make the connection to the father, then I thought, okay, what do kids with famous fathers do? They reject them. So he did the thing. As far from being a lawyer and an intellectual as he could, he became an athlete. However, an injury brings him back to the courtroom. You always go home and do what you're genetically disposed to or psychologically disposed to do, but he brings that same athletic competitiveness to the courtroom. So does the show take place in the year 2029? Because then I can buy the timeline here. line here. I am not sure from the five minutes of it I watched. But another thing that confuses me about this anecdote is that he says that if he'd gotten this pop-up to right, then the Cubs would have won the game. But there had to be fewer than two outs, right? Because he's getting a double play ball. So there has to be one out or no outs and so if he gets this fly to right he's still gonna need another out or two so the game is not over well then he just throws another

splitter yeah i guess right it's just automatic anyway yeah that's that that's so conspicuously stupid too you can't say double play ball and then i could i was going to get one out unless you are so confident your right fielder is going to throw somebody out with an assist i guess because yeah the only way that happens is if you allow a deep fly ball on your splitter which means even more don't throw the splitter because you're basically giving up at least a two run home run yeah i don't know this is i guess not the worst example of a baseball reference in a show not totally making sense but not great not the best speaking of baseball reference yeah here you have yeah it's actually not from baseball reference though but still but still that works. I was just tooling around with some numbers this morning on Baseball Savant, so I'm not using

either one of our sponsors for this research, I guess, just leaning on regular old baseball itself. One of the things I like to look at every so often when I am very desperate for anything to look at is it's easy to talk about how often pitchers throw strikes or how often they get strikeouts. Strikeout rate is one of the most commonly cited statistics. I like to break it down sometimes just out of curiosity to look at how often pitchers get to two strike counts and then versus how often they get strikeouts in those two strike counts. So it's sort of a way to split up how pitchers are working, whether they're really good at getting ahead but then they don't have a put away pitch right or whether they have a put away pitch but they're

just kind of wild then they have trouble getting to two strike counts so i i was only looking at information for 2016 because i was kind of in a rush here but if you had to guess so i using some low but sufficient minimums do you have a a guess of which pitcher last season threw the most pitches with two strikes? So basically two strike rate. Because this is a rate statistic. All right. In that case, I will say Dillon Batonsis. Yeah.

No, you're wrong. No matter what you were going to say, you were going to be wrong because I didn't think you were going to say the name. Trevor May. say you were going to be wrong because I didn't think you were going to say the name Trevor May Trevor May actually of the twins threw 37.2 percent of his pitches with two strikes which I don't know I don't know what I was expecting I wasn't expecting anything for Trevor May honestly I wasn't expecting this to be one of those spreadsheet projects where I was like I'm looking for something on Trevor May but he stood out Kenley Jansen was second Sean Kelly Koji Uehara and Neralis Chapman followed.

I don't think that's surprising. Do you have a guess of who threw the fewest two-strike pitches? The rate, I guess, of two-strike pitches? I shouldn't even bother. Well, I mean, if you had guessed Justin Nicolino, you would have been wrong, but at least you would have been close. It was actually Jaime Garcia. He threw 22.6% of his pitches with two strikes. Moving on, do you have a guess of which? Nope. This one, this one, I think. Hold on. This one, I think you might be able to guess.

Which pitcher got the lowest rate of strikeouts when throwing two strike pitches? You can get this. I believe in you. You've probably written about this guy and how weird and stupid he is. Think weak contact. Weak Hendricks? No, that doesn't make sense. This would be someone bad, right?

Bad-ish. Yeah. Jared Weaver? contact week of hendrix no that doesn't make sense this would be someone bad right bad ish yeah jared weaver uh he's there he's near the bottom but no the answer is uh blaine boyer oh right you might recall that blaine boyer last year threw 66 innings and he got 26 strikeouts which i think max scherzer basically got in one game yeah so blaine boyer got strikeouts on 8.2 percent of his two strike pitches that's very low followed by mike pelfrey zach efflin derrick holland and unfortunately jordan zimmerman so there's a problem there do you have a guess you probably have a guess who had the highest rate of strikeouts on two strike pitches is it the guy i guessed before he's second he's in second place. Dylan Patances is in second. Andrew Miller is in first.

Andrew Miller, 34.6% of his two strike pitches got strikeouts, which is absurd. It was Miller at 34.6%. Dylan Patances at 33.3%. And then Hugh Darvish all the way down at 29.5%. So a big separation between second place and third place. So once you have these numbers, then you can sort of, it can be fun to tool around and see who's really good at one thing, but not the other one, right? Because that way you can look for players who are weird, which is, I think, our entire,

I don't know how to speak French, but reason for being. It's the entire reason that we do what we do. So just looking at this, the player with the, I don't know how to explain Z scores on a podcast. It's really not that interesting, but you can essentially score how players rank in each of those statistics. And then I, I decided to look for the difference to see too. So there are two ways of looking at this for this part. We'll look at guys who were the best at getting two, two strikes, but then the worst at subsequently turning those two strike counts into strikeouts the player who is at the top of that list is the angels and previously the phillies

and previously the a's and yankees and red sox and probably more andrew bailey shows up here he was quite good at getting to two strikes he was more than two standard deviations better than average but he was more than one standard deviation worse than average at turning those two straight counts into strikeouts. I don't know what that means for Andrew Bailey. It sure seems like it means he should strike out more batters. He should probably work on that, but getting a put away pitch or at least using his put away pitch better.

So he tops that list, a player I might actually choose to write about after this podcast is over. And therefore before this podcast is published might be Matt Boyd. Matt Boyd is someone who the Tigers picked up in a trade, one of those young pitchers they picked up in 2015. Matt Boyd is in fourth. He was very good at getting to two strike counts and then not so good at putting people away. So top of this list is Andrew Boyley, then Blaine Boyer, Nick Whitcren, who's a Marlin. Please take my word for it. Matt Boyd and then Trevor May. At the other end of the list, we have the players who are the best last year at actually

getting strikeouts out of two strike counts, but relatively speaking, the worst at getting to two strike counts in the first place. I already said his name. It's Jaime Garcia. Jaime Garcia last year was quite good, relatively speaking, at getting strikeouts out of two strike counts. Garcia last year was quite good relatively speaking at getting strikeouts out of two strike counts he was nearly two standard deviations better than average in that regard for reference his strikeout rate just given this metric was better than Corey Kluber who's better than Zach Britton it was about as good as Aaron Nola but he was the worst pitcher in baseball in getting to two strike counts so he is easily the runaway leader in this regard a second place lance mccullers he's inefficient then dylan batances

who's just good all the time but a little bit wild followed by kelvin herrera you darvish and then andrew miller who is bound to show up here because he's so good at getting strikeouts that getting to two strikes could never measure up i also have a hunch that the players who are the best at getting strikeouts don't spend too long in two strike counts because they just move right from two strikes to three. They don't get fouled off and whatnot. But there's something in here that's probably interesting about Matt Boyd and something that's probably interesting about Jaime Garcia. And I don't know what that means, but maybe this is even too post for me because it's March 8th and I'm woefully desperate for anything to write about All right well glad you have the rest of your day figured out

We can take a question from Michael Actually we got questions about whether first basemen are underrated from both Michael and Colin Colin's theory was that maybe first basemen are underrated because their defensive stats don't account for everything they do, such as scoops, although I think defensive run save does include scoops, right? But coming off the bag maybe to prevent an errant throw or fielding bunts or being good at applying pickoff tags, that sort of thing. So maybe there's a little something to that that's not being captured, but I don't know if that would change things dramatically.

But Michael's question is, I have recently been wondering whether first basemen and DHs are underrated by war. Here is my thought. Say you have a guy like Joey Votto. He produced 53.1 weighted runs above average last year, second in baseball. He was a little below average on defense, which we know fluctuates year to year. He was above average in 2015 and just about average as a base runner, and yet he's at five wins after getting dinged by his positional adjustment.

That's still very good, but considering he was as valuable at producing runs, that's the weighted runs above average part, while batting As Mike Trout may be inaccurate We know 8 of the 20 best hitters Last year, by weighted runs above Average, were first basemen or DHs And yet that isn't represented in the War leaderboards, and by extension the Leaderboards of our minds and hearts

I guess my argument here comes down to the Known versus the unknown. We know The precise value of batting, the value Of every discrete batting event can really Leg really legitimately be calculated to the tiniest decimal. We know Votto and Nelson Cruz and Freddie Freeman produced all those runs for their team. But fielding is a relatively theoretical exercise, and positional adjustment is even more so. Yet war as a metric weighs these variables exactly equally. When we are evaluating guys like Vato ortiz cruz etc should we bump them up a little bit in our collective understanding of how valuable they are based on the premise

of certainty versus uncertainty or am i overestimating how imprecise the non-batting inputs of war are no i think we we do have a pretty good grasp of offensive production and we probably have a pretty good grasp of offensive production, and we probably have a pretty good grasp of base running production. So I think that part is totally fair. But the reality is that if Votto last year defended statistically as he had before, he would have had a war on fangraphs far higher than five. But the reality is that based on UZR, he had his worst ever season at seven runs below

average. And based on defensive runs saved, he was even worse at negative 14. Joey Votto had a, at least statistically, legitimately bad defensive season last year. I think, you know, Saris actually just posted an article about this. He was talking to Joey Votto in spring training. So, you know, just talk to Votto. I haven't read it yet. It's too early in the morning for me to read or communicate except for this so you know talk to vato about this i would assume

vato agrees that he was not a very good defensive player last season i'm sure he's worked on what he can do better in the past he's been a good defender he was above average basically every season before last year he played last year as a 32 and nearly 33 year old so you know players get worse but last year vato was a worse hitter than mike trout vato was great but he was a worse hitter than mike trout by wrc plus he played a non-premium position defensively he played that position poorly relative to his competition and also a small fact well he was a far worse base runner than mike trout we know that for damn sure and as a small but well he was a far worse base runner than mike trot we know that for damn sure and as a small but factor that should be mentioned he also played in the worst

league so that is a small adjustment and i don't have a problem with this assertion i know that this this is basically the same conversation as we've had for a while about war which is what do we do with the defensive statistic where we don't know how accurate it is and I think it's totally fair to sort of mentally apply your own error bars especially if you believe Votto was better than he was last year I think this is how some people choose to look at Eric Hosmer because his defensive numbers have never quite stacked up to his reputation same with Justin smoke all these supposedly good defensive first baseman

but aside from assigning those error bars i don't think there's anything else that we can really do and the reality is that trout was good at a premium position thought it was not at a not premium position yeah that question comes up every year because there's always someone leading or close to leading on the war leaderboard most of the way through the season who has a lot of his value derived from his defensive rating. And people will point at it and say war is crazy because it says this guy is the most valuable player in baseball. And then Dave Cameron will write a post about whether that's actually what war is saying and whether we should interpret it that way. And Mitchell Lichman will say that the defensive values in war should be regressed

because we know that they take a longer time to become meaningful than the offensive part. So there's something to that. I think if more of a hitter's value comes from his offense, I think you can be more confident in that value in a smaller sample than you could be if he's one of those guys who's an okay hitter but has like a plus 25 drs or uzr or something that could be a little flukier but i think when you're talking about the broader positional adjustments like we know that first base is just not as important a defensive position, right? Like more people are capable of playing it and playing it at a high level than our short stops or center fielders or whatever. So I think we know that's the case that if you are a first baseman, whether

you're a good first baseman or a bad first baseman, you have to have some value subtracted from you relative to someone who's doing the same thing, but doing it relative to his peers at a position that fewer people can play. So I guess if the question is about a specific first baseman who maybe has a bad UZR or DRS something in a single season, maybe you can discount that a little bit, but you're still not ever going to arrive at a system where the best first baseman or a first baseman who's average relative to his peers at his position is as valuable as a shortstop who's good relative to his peers at his position. It's just a harder job, and you should assign some value to the person who's doing the harder job. So I don't know if we can say that there's a blanket tendency to underrate first baseman,

but I think the specific question of whether one player might be underrated or overrated in a certain season is probably fair. Like if it is a guy like Votto or a guy who's a great hitter every year, but has one defensive down year, maybe you'd say, well, he's probably better than the war suggests because of what we know about his history and what we know about his performance this year. So I think that sort of thing is fair. But if you're talking about first basemen as a group being underrated, I'm not sure there's evidence for that. Yeah, I think that a lot of people are open to the idea that maybe the positional adjustments in war aren't perfect, and that much is true, but they're at least close to where they should be.

Whenever people have volunteered revised, well-researched new positional adjustments, they always look pretty similar to the ones we have now. It's just a matter of a few runs here and there. Also, at least with Votto, it's worth talking about the difference between what War says and how some people interpret it, where if War says that last year Votto was a five-win player because his defensive numbers dragged him down, well, I don't think anybody thinks that Votto was as bad defensively on talent as he was statistically last year. But, you know, in 2014, he also had a down year offensively, and we all assumed he was and would be better than that, which he was the next year. But it's worth noting that two years ago, Joey Votto was a seven

and a half win player. But I would like to point out that last year, Joey Votto batted 677 times. And I'm just going to apply Kevin Kiermaier's career war to that number of plate appearances. So Kevin Kiermaier has played parts of three, I guess, very technically four seasons, although he didn't bat in the first one. Basically a three year player. He's batted 1,313 times. If you took Kevin Kiermaier's career performance and put it over Joey Votto's 677 plate appearances last year, you would get 6.75 war. Joey Votto was good last year for five war. Kevin Kiermaier has been basically an average hitter for his career.

He is about as extreme as a player gets in this regard. Really athletic athletic phenomenal defensive center fielder probably the best in the game maybe the best we've seen in a long time since franken gutierrez before his body started to work against him if you are willing to believe that kevin kiermeier is that valuable you are on board with war if you are not then you are probably most people but i think there's a tendency to look at what Kiermaier's numbers say and just to conclude outright that's insane but it seems that anyone with an open mind should be able to wonder at least well is this possible and if so how and the reality is that if you are saving I don't know a double every couple games which is what it seems like Kiermaier would do well I mean what's

the difference between a really good hitter and a mediocre hitter it's like a single or a double a week right yeah right all right let's see we just do a lightning round let's answer a couple just quickly chris says what would happen if players were banned from doing all of their little favorite ocd ticks slash timing mechanisms if you couldn't jump over the baselines coming off the field you couldn't do over the baselines coming off the field, you couldn't do the Nomar Kabuki dance after every pitch, you couldn't tap the plate in a certain way when you step in the box, could not eat fried chicken before every game, could not pray

to Jobu in the clubhouse, etc. I wonder if their heads would explode. I think baseball is the most rife with these, but I guess all sports have them. And let's just keep it to on-field stuff. I don't know how you could police players' pregame rituals, but if we just talk about the distinctive mannerisms that players do after every pitch or whatever, do you think that anyone would actually get worse?

Okay, so you'd essentially be talking about prison baseball, but everything would be the same. Everyone would be fine. The game would move a lot quicker if you just stopped people from rubbing up the baseball between pitches or a batter stepping out and redoing all of their clothes and accessories between pitches i can totally get that everybody needs a moment to think and kind of catch their breath but all this superstitious nonsense is words i can't say on this podcast and if we if baseball did something to prevent that which you know it kind of did two years ago the game would be great and people would adjust super fast because few of these players are actually have a condition that requires them to you know put their batting gloves back on they

didn't go anywhere they didn't go anywhere they're still there same tightness as they've been the entire time you didn't even do anything you didn't move your hands you don't need to adjust your batting gloves yeah if you could somehow apply this to all players, I think they'd all adjust maybe some more quickly than others. But everyone's being held to the same standard here. So everyone's being penalized equally. I guess some people have more mannerisms than others that would be harder to give up. But I think with a little time and the right incentives, I think basically all players would either adjust or all suffer roughly the same penalty. And so you wouldn't notice any difference overall. All right. Question

from Sean, would you sign an anonymous team contract? Let's pretend you are a free agent and your agent calls to tell you there's a team offering double what any other team is willing to pay, but they won't reveal their identity Until after you sign, would you take it? I imagine the answer would change Depending on the amount A player projected to make one or two million Might not think the extra million is enough to sign Somewhere you may not want to go

But someone who's slated to sign a $200 million contract May not be able to pass up the extra $200 million Right, so what's Essentially what's the negative value of a team being super weird? I think most free agents would sign it Because at the end of the day, most free agent contracts and decisions come down to the most money being offered. And I think that history has shown that in most cases, it doesn't matter where that money is coming from. Because for example, people signed with the Marlins in 2012. And then they were immediately not on the Marlins anymore, and their careers survived. So yeah, in the majority of cases, people would take that contract because they essentially already do. Yeah. You'd have to wonder why this team is stipulating that it be anonymous. You'd maybe have some misgivings about that. But I think most players probably go with the high bidder, especially if it's double what another team is willing to pay and really how bad

could it be? As long as it's a major league baseball team we know them they're all fairly normal and within a narrow range of operating styles so right although they wouldn't be if this condition yeah well that's true and i don't know whether it would matter depending on how much you're making you answered an email and you said it might work the other way where if money is really important to you because you don't have that much of it, maybe you'd privilege that even more in making your decision. So I don't know. It might end up being the same. All right.

And a Patreon question from Aiden Jackson Evans. Last week's discussion on spring training intentional walks got me thinking, what if every team decided to intentionally walk Mike Trout for all of his spring training plate appearances? Let's say they all came to this decision independently. How much does this affect Trout's performance in the regular season? How do the Angels react? How quickly does this descend into a beanball war? And does MLB intervene? I've speculated about this before when I used to write at Lookout Landing where I got so tired of Trout that I thought the Mariners should just walk him every single time in spring training.

And to think of it going league wide, it would be I'd try would ultimately be fine he would just face live pitching and take his bp and I don't think anything too bad would happen except that we might finally be able to get some personality out of Mike Trout because he would be furious because it's just I don't it's like unethical in the weirdest way where Trout isn't really being harmed but it would just be so frustrating it would be pointlessly frustrating because you have teams taking the bat out of your hands for literally no reason at all but i don't know if trout would speak out but mike socia would throw a fit he'd yes he'd make constant socia face and i don't know if what

this would do to like the guy after Trout in the lineup, whoever that's going to be probably Pujols, who's I don't think playing yet. But there would be a lot of I don't know, you would what's the word tilt? You'd get people on tilt, I think. And so it would it would be it'd be fine. I don't I personally, theoretically, I don't think there's an downside. If you're another team, I think it would be a lot of fun just to see what happens just to see what happens. If you I mean mean maybe you just like start in a game like

march 17th you figure whatever yeah let's just walk track what's the point let's just you know like screw the fans who kind of what the cubs did to bryce harper in the regular season last year right in that series some people point to that as being like the series that screwed bryce harper up now granted i think the phillies kind of did it before the Cubs did, and then the Cubs got more attention just because they're the Cubs and they're geniuses. Well, no, the Phillies were first. Don't give the Cubs too much more praise than they deserve.

They won the World Series. That's good enough. I think that would be interesting. But the difference, no, no, there is no, no, do it. Just do it. Just walk Trout all the time. Just do it. Yeah, there'd definitely be a war of words.

There might actually be a brawl. When the Stompers tried to do this, there was a hitter in our league named Matt Chavez, who was basically Barry Bonds. And eventually we decided to just start walking him because we couldn't get him out. And the manager of his team, the Pacifics, basically tried to psych us out or convince us not to do it by arguing that we were hurting him, like he wasn't going to get seen by scouts or he wasn't going to be able to put up stats because we were walking him all the time, which I think was nonsense. It just made him look even better

that he was being intentionally walked all the time and he was then subsequently signed by the Padres. So I don't think it ended up hurting him at all. But that was the case that that manager made, I think, mostly as a kind of gamesmanship thing to force us to pitch to his best hitter. So I think there's definitely like a kind of macho thing and a competitiveness thing. And I think the Angels would be mad and Mike Socia would be mad. And there would definitely be a lot of jawing back and forth and possibly some brawls. I don't know exactly how a brawl would develop in an intentional walk situation like the catcher, especially now when you don't even have to throw the balls like Socia would signal and then everyone would come running in from the bullpen.

I don't know how that would even look, but i think there would be definite issues because it would be at least perceived that you are depriving this player of like a fair opportunity to prepare for the season that everyone else has so i think it would be pretty divisive all right okay okay mike trout mike trout is 25 years old yeah he does not yet have a thousand career hits he does not yet have 200 career home runs. He is a 25-year-old baseball player. Granted, he's amazing, but he's a 25-year-old baseball player. Let's say, hypothetically, he has intentionally walked all the time for the rest of his career.

Does it make the Hall of Fame? Yes. Yeah. I mean, I guess he has to. But even if teams did agree to intentionally walk him all the time, at what point are you like, maybe he's rusty? Let's try to pitch to him. How long would it take? I don't know. This is a difficult hypothetical. Yeah, no, you're right. I think the first person to do it would probably get some kind of advantage. All right. And last question from another Patreon supporter, Andrew Patrick. Let's say you're Dave Roberts while

walking the spring training field. You notice Clayton Kershaw goofing off while playing catch. And what do you know? He has an 80grade knuckleball. For purposes of this exercise, just imagine it's peak R.A. Dickey good. How do you decide to deploy this weapon? How often do you have him throw it? Or do you just tell him to do what he's always done that's made him the best pitcher in the game? If he does throw it, how much better does this make him on a war level? And this kind of came up with that recent Travis Satchik article about whether Clayton Kershaw is too predictable in certain counts and whether he could be even better if he mixed things up. So this is another even more extreme way in which Clayton Kershaw could, in theory, be better, although he's already so good that there's always some risk of tampering with that sort of success.

Yeah, peak R.A. Dickey had an had an era that was 27 better than average peak clayton kershaw which by the way is a new peak every single season last year he was 57 better than average throwing zero knuckleballs at all although he did have a uh an ethos or a slow curveball in there somewhere i think he threw early in the season to some braves player who was yeah that was too bad and the rich hill drop drop-down arming. Which was bad. I was going through the numbers. That really did not work for Kershaw. Really?

Yeah. Maybe I should revisit this one because I think this is going off the subject a little bit, but I guess real quick, Kershaw developed that little drop-down technique inspired by Hill. He threw only fastballs from that angle. He achieved better velocity, but he didn't really get swings and misses. And it was fairly predictable. He got hit a little bit in the playoffs. I think Anthony Rizzo hit a couple of really loud fouls against that pitch. And the inclination, and I was guilty of this, is that you see Kershaw doing that and you're like,

oh my God, Clayton Kershaw's even better. Well, no, sometimes he makes bad decisions. And this one could work. But the thing about Rich Hill's lower arm angle Is he throws both his pitches from down there And Clayton Kershaw only threw fastballs And it didn't really work I don't know, maybe that's another post too Clayton Kershaw, not perfect at everything Give him a knuckleball

And let's see, Ari Dickey, peak knuckleball It averaged about 77 miles per hour That's so fast Okay, so Ari Dickey, peak knuckleball 77 miles per hour. That's so fast. Okay, so Ari Dickey, peak knuckleball, 77 miles per hour. That means Kershaw has a knuckleball that's faster than his curveball, which is weird. So he'd have fastball. He's throwing about 50% of the time.

Slider at 88 miles per hour. He throws a third of the time. Curveball, he throws a sixth of the time. That's at 73. Give him a knuckleball. There's not room for Kershaw to get better by much but i don't know you give him he's never really been able to have a change up he works on it every single spring and it doesn't work and then he doesn't throw it and then he throws it once or twice and then it's bad and then he never

throws it again give him a knuckleball he'll throw it 5 or 10% of the time. And I think Kershaw could probably sustain an ERA in the mid ones. Pitcher could make him Worse like unless he Has a worse mix Of his pitches or it hurts his Ability to throw the other Ones because he doesn't work on them Enough or something like that but Otherwise I wouldn't

Think that just having another Really great weapon could be bad So that is The end of this email episode You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com Slash effectively wild five listeners So that is the end of this email episode. slash groups slash Effectively Wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Tim Morton, Joe Camerata, James Walker, Steve May, and Thomas Schiavone. Thanks to all of you.

If you missed Monday's episode of Hang Up and Listen, Slate Sports Podcast, you might want to check out Josh Levine's Afterball. Toward the end of the episode, there is a little tribute to greatest ever Effectively Wild guest, Ned Garver. It includes a clip from our interview with Ned. You should be subscribing to hang up and listen anyway, as it's always really good. Keep your questions coming. They've been really excellent and numerous lately. You can email us at podcast at fangraphs.com, or you can send your questions through the Patreon messaging system. We'll be back later this week with the preview podcast for the Blue Jays and A's. Let's start an anonymous club.

I'll make us name badges with question marks.