Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1041: The Fernando Rodney Dinner Date

Episode Date: April 6, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Jake Arrieta’s velocity loss, the league’s artificial velocity gain, and whether the Astros won the winter, then answer listener emails about topspin and the turf, the Mariners’ and Blue Jays’ 40th anniversaries/seasons, disagreeing with projections, intentional-walk predictions, Madison Bumgarner’s batting, the negative value of player mistakes, single-game double-play […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1041 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. My name is Ben Lindberg, and I'm a writer for The Ringer, joined as always by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hello. So we were just talking about whether we had any banter. We don't have a whole lot, but I just went to Fangraphs and saw the two posts that you have published since I last emailed with you a few hours ago. And the last one is called, What on Earth Happened with Jake Arrieta? Which is a question I'm interested in. So what on earth happened with Jake Arrieta? If you can summarize

without making people not want to read your post completely. Well, that's impossible because it's basically one statistical point with 800 or 1000 words written around it, which is what most of my posts are. I hope that didn't shatter any glass for people. But the point is basically in the early going, we always get asked what is most important in the early going. What's actually most important is that, hey, baseball is back and that's great. And everything we do is just gravy on top of that. But if you're looking for any actual significance, then you're looking for things that stabilize very quickly. If you're looking for meaningful numbers, nothing stabilizes faster, aside from, I guess, one person's very existence, than how fast a pitcher throws.

I think you would agree. Fastball velocity tends to stabilize after a sample size of, oh, I don't know, one. So we've seen a lot of pitchers generate a sample size of one oh, I don't know, one. So we've seen a lot of pictures generate a sample size of one or more so far. Things are a little complicated right now for those of us who play with the numbers because it turns out velocity readings are being recorded differently this year. This was speed readings too. That's good callback. Yeah, we can keep that up all season. That'll be fun. This is going to be the new Lenny Harris.

If you would look at Fangraph's pages, which of course is what I would do pretty often, up through last year, then velocity readings were recorded. This is a very long explanation about Jake Arrieta. Velocity recordings were read basically around 50 feet from home plate, roughly 10 feet from the rubber that was standard and what's happened is that without i think anyone publicly being told about it i don't know maybe some people were told weren't paying attention readings now are different for 2017 readings are being taken from basically the release point because the pitch fx system that used to track all of the stuff has been replaced it was made redundant when stat cast was installed in every park there are different systems stat

cast is based in part on a trackman recording system so pitch fx no longer in use which means the reading at 50 feet away no longer in use trackman is now reporting the highest observed velocity that a pitch has which is under all circumstances right out of the hand because otherwise that would defy all the elementary physics that i know so to get to the point of this the error that we've seen is that a lot of pitchers are showing up throwing harder than they used to which is what you'd expect because pitches slow down as soon as they're released yep so I looked at all 46 starting pitchers who have started this year in the very early going. They also all pitched last year. And on average, those 46

starting pitchers have average fastball velocities that are up by four tenths of one mile per hour. April velocities are also generally lower than full season velocities. So you can see evidence of a little boost there. The median is plus seven tenths of one mile per hour. So if you see a pitcher who has a higher fastball velocity already, you can be excited, whatever. But if it's only by like one tick, it probably doesn't really mean anything. So where Jake Area comes into this is that he started on Tuesday and his average fastball as recorded by the systems was down 2.6 miles per hour which is rather substantial yeah that's a full mile per hour

difference from the next biggest decline which I think it was Jake Odorizzi I don't know which is of course not good either nobody who's losing velocity is good but 2.6 is kind of huge even pitchers who have declining velocity tend to lose like a half mile maybe a mile an hour season to season and it's about normal and this is really like more than three once you account for the league-wide difference this year yeah if you just like compare it to the average rise of four tenths of one mile per hour that's a full drop of three miles per hour which is huge now where this gets weird is that the tracking system in the Tuesday game sort of stopped working for a couple innings which is suspicious and it makes you wonder if there was something wrong however in the very same game Adam Wainwright who started against Jake Arrieta had his average fastball velocity increased by a mile and a half from last year.

So it's not like the readings were just low across the board. I don't know why the system would be biased against the Cubs. I think if the internet has taught me anything is that people tend to be biased against the Cardinals. So you'd think it would work in the other way. Best fastballs in baseball. So long story short, it's been one game. We don't really know what to make of it.

Velocity readings in general are different. So it's going to take some getting used to. But after one game, this is a, I don't know, would you characterize this as a, what are the colors? Orange or red flag? Cubs are doomed. Clearly, this is it. Yeah, this is sort of scary just because there were reasons to be worried about him coming into the year.

Different reasons, mostly. You wrote a lot last year about his slider, right, and his lack of command of it and his non-throwing of it relative to before. So that was a bad thing and that seemed to be contributing to his inconsistency. And that seemed to be contributing to his inconsistency. And so if he has actually lost that much speed on top of everything else, that's not a good sign because that was the one semi knock against the Cubs coming into the year was that the rotation depth was not so great. And that if someone was subtracted from that rotation, the downgrade to the next best guy would be significant so that's somewhat scary not like super scary because i think they had a sizable cushion in that division most likely and probably would even without him but not great especially if you're looking forward to the playoffs yep i would say anything almost anything after one start is more of like a, an orange flag, a caution than a, than a potential disaster. However, something clearly

to watch about Jake Arrieta, especially when it's his contract year and he's been talking about like a, I don't know, 150, $200 million deal for a guy who's in his thirties. And so, yeah, if I guess most of the people who would be listening to this would be not Cubs fans, presumably, unless there are an awful, awful lot of Cubs fans. It does seem like there are a lot of Cubs fans. There are so many Cubs fans, more now than ever. But if you were looking for, I guess, one positive parody-related takeaway from this, it's that, hey, the one thing that could make the Cubs vulnerable could,

could, like 5% chance, be taking place. So it's something. it's all about hope Right this early in the year Okay quick follow up from Brian who wanted to Respond to our conversation last time About whether there was a team That won the winter and he Submitted the Astros he said if he

Had to name an offseason winner it would be the Astros They didn't make any block muster moves Such as trading for Quintana But they did get markedly better in areas in which they were lacking. And that's true. We were talking more about making blockbuster moves or a big shift from not spending to spending a ton. We cited the Padres from a few years ago or the Diamondbacks when they signed Granke and that sort of thing. So that wasn't the Astros. They were a good team already, but they probably come close to

qualifying in that they did sort of shift their approach. They took the young core that they had, and then they spent quite a bit more and supplemented with guys like McCann and Beltran and Redick. So that's a good submission. If you had to pick one, it would probably be that one. Yeah. A super boring pick. But basically, if every winter has a winner, just like every regular season, then yeah, I suppose the Astros would be said winner. But if anything, I mean, they kind of came up short of what people were thinking. Like if they had traded for Jose Quintana, maybe then they would get the same win the

winter press. But they didn't do that. Haven't done that. We'll see. Yeah, they'll probably win the summer, so that's okay. All right. Question from Nate. He says, on the April 4th Yankees broadcast, Paul O'Neill commented that the ball, when it hits the artificial turf, actually speeds up.

He was saying this in reference to a ball that hit the dirt and slowed down on Ronald Torres, causing him to fail to throw out a runner from short to first. This seems implausible based on the laws of physics and the existence of friction, but O'Neill seconds later doubled down, claiming Dave Concepcion used to intentionally skip the ball off the turf to speed up throws to first. Since Concepcion played in the 70s and 80s, I thought this might be one of those weird baseball beliefs that isn't borne out by science, but does either of you know if there is any evidence of Concepcion or anyone intentionally skipping a throw off the turf to gain speed? So I sent this to Effectively Wild physics consultant, Alan Nathan, who has

helped out with a bunch of physics questions in the past. And his answer is interesting. He says, if the ball is hit with a lot of topspin, then it can actually speed up when it hits the ground. The topspin has to be such that the side of the ball making contact with the ground actually slides backward, in which case the friction acts in the forward direction, speeding up the ball. the physics and it requires topspin, infielders do not throw to first base with topspin. So I am skeptical that speeding up really happens on a throw, and it probably doesn't even happen on a batted ball, although the topspin does make the ball slow down less. So from my reading of this response, it sounds like this is technically possible, at least on a batted ball, but still unlikely in that case and extremely unlikely slash borderline impossible for a throw to first. And I didn't do any research. I don't have any incontrovertible evidence about fielders throwing skipping throws off the field, although I would have said that that is something that happens or has happened. I mean, I don't know. I've certainly seen infielders bounce throws. I don't know whether the intention was to speed it up or whether it was just they couldn't make the full throw and

they didn't want to short hop the guy or whatever. They were rushing or something. So I don't know for sure about Concepcion or anyone else definitely doing this, although I would have guessed that it has happened. I wonder if when we're dealing with artificial turf, you can be dealing with funny sort of unnatural hops that the ball takes. And I wonder if we're dealing here with an issue of sort of perceived velocity versus actual speed of the ball, where maybe if a throw to a person is generally sinking, whereas when the ball hops off the turf, it's coming back up and it's rising. And I wonder if the ball looks faster when it comes back up because it's kind of coming for

your face as opposed to when it's sinking down to the ground. So that's some of my speculation. I also figure that if you are a defender and a batted ball hits the turf in front of you and it takes a funny sort of unexpected bounce to the side, I think because that bounce would be unexpected, it kind of, your brain thinks that it moved really, really quick away because it didn't go where you were thinking. So I wonder if, again, it would be an illusion of, oh, that ball hopped way too high or it didn't hop very much at all off the turf and it looked a lot quicker than the ordinary help I was expecting. Right that makes sense to me.

I don't know if Paul O'Neill said anything about kicking the ball off the turf. Because he has done that too. But this sounds to me like mostly perception. Like a rise on a fastball sort of thing. More so than actually happening. All right question from Eric Hartman. The Blue Jays and the Mariners both joined the AL in 1977. Last year, the Jays celebrated their 40th season,

and this year, the Mariners are celebrating their 40th anniversary. Both are technically correct, but which of them is just? So this is the 41st season for Both of these teams so last year was the 40th season but the Mariners Are celebrating their 40th anniversary So which would you have Done if you were in charge Of Mariners Blue Jays

Marketing would you have picked one or The other or would you have done Both so you could celebrate both years This feels like one of those things where I'm going to express What is a very mild opinion But people probably have outlandishly strong opinions about what the proper answer is here i want to say that i would rather celebrate going into my 40th season so then i could if if i mean it's already arbitrary to be celebrating 40 anyway right who cares about 40 39 but as long as we are a round number based civilization, I would far rather support,

this is a terrible way of putting it, the year number 40 as opposed to the anniversary of the completion of year number one, I guess. I don't know. It feels weird. Yeah. Year 40. It just makes more sense to me. I agree with you.

Although I wonder if it's possible that there was coordination between the teams because, of course, they would know that both of those teams were 77 expansion teams. Maybe there was some kind of clandestine deal. There was behind-the-scenes negotiations about who would get 40th year, who would get 40th anniversary, and maybe they worked it out so that they weren't Both promoting their 40th At the same time You know you can't have fraternization between rivals So maybe they had to have intermediaries Get together in the Seychelles Could be I don't know if anyone Knows about any backroom dealings

About who got to say 40th Anniversary and who got to say 40th Season the tip line is always Open all right And we might as well do another question from eric hartman since he sent a couple good ones and his other one is while discussing predictions on episode 1040 ben mentioned that if he disagreed with the projection significantly he would pick against them however he mentioned that he seldom does so his predictions are boring jeff

more or less agreed so i'm curious if either of you can imagine a scenario which would result in you disagreeing with projections yes team full of kian broxons yeah okay so let me just pull up the kian broxon page i always have a number of this is i'm just making my home page there's a number of players every year where i have a higher or lower opinion than the projections do. And when you're talking about teams, then things get diluted rather significantly. So, I mean, I could say, so Keon Broxton, if I look at this depth charts projection. So, Broxton is projected on his Fangraphs page to be worth 1.3 war the rest of the season.

I personally would project him to be somewhere between 3 and 4 war over the rest of the season. I personally would project him to be somewhere between three and four war over the rest of the year. So I see Brock. I think Broxton might be my biggest outlier. If he's not, then I would be shocked because I am all about the Broxton train. Maybe James Paxton too, but his projections are better. So because I'm higher on Keon Broxton by let's call it roughly two wins, I guess you could say I'm therefore probably higher on the Brewers by about two wins. But I mean, that's all entirely because of one player and players like this are so rare that there's generally not much of an additive effect. Like if there were two or three Keon Broxtons on the Brewers, I'd be like, whoa, this team is a lot better than the projections believe. However, there is one and only keon broxton and the

brewers delightfully get to have him and he will win the national league mvp and he will share an award sage with james paxton even though i don't know if that's how these things actually go yeah i mean there are definitely instances where i've disagreed with a team projection even just this year depending on your projection system i think pakoda was super low on the cardinals like when we were doing the team previews they were like 76 wins or something and the fangraphs projections had them around 84 i believe so that's a big difference and i was closer to the 84 by far and couldn't really see where the 76 was coming from there is manual input of the depth charts that's a big part of the projections is just one person or many persons combing over

the depth charts and saying this is who's going to play and this is how much they're going to play that's not an automated thing because automated systems don't do that very well so if you thought that someone was wrong about the team's construction or who was going to make the roster or who was going to get injured or not get injured or something like that then you could disagree although it would be hard to disagree that much across the board unless you had a really incompetent depth charts person so i don't know or like the notable examples like when pakoda hated the royals or something i didn't hate the royals that much i i think a lot of the people at baseball perspectives at the time didn't hate the royals that much and were semi-perplexed by the system's

output so definitely there are outliers like that where it just doesn't really accord with the consensus even of stat heads so there have been cases yeah oh i i also thought of mitch hanager i like mitch hanager almost as much as i like kian broxton so if you flank broxton with hanager on one side and i don't know i don't know who else is underrated so you know another dude who cares on the other side then then you're going to have a pretty good system there I think I am now inclined to put a little more weight on bullpens than I think the projections so I sort of move teams around like I think the Padres this year are an awful team but I really like their bullpen if and when Caps comes back healthy because I'm a big believer in him and Brad Hand and

Ryan Buchter etc so I think the Padres could do some stuff. But on the other hand, they'll trade all those players. So maybe it doesn't really matter. Yeah, you did that post a year or two ago about whether teams that have a bullpen ace outperform their, what, not their projections, but their base runs record or something like that. Yeah, probably both. Let's be honest. At different times of the year, yeah. So, and I think if I recall you, it was like a win or something, or maybe a win per relief ace or something like that. Like it wasn't dramatic,

but it seemed to be real. And you look at the Orioles, for instance, over the last several years when Sam did his retrospective this winter about how the Orioles had outperformed the projections, it was almost entirely bullpen. So, yeah, I would say I've become more likely to give the bullpen at least a little bit of extra credit in extreme cases like that So yeah, alright Question from Lane who says Have you made a prediction about how large An increase in intentional walking There will be in 2017 I've always held my breath When watching intentional walks because

It seems like a lot of pitchers get a little yippy In this situation My guess is that a lot of managers perceived Intentional walks as more dangerous than they were As well and worried about Messing up the pitcher's mechanics or using up their bullets. So with these perceived barriers removed, I predict a 30% increase in intentional walks this year. What do you say? I predict a 0% increase. Yes, I predict a decrease possibly. Yeah, probably a decrease. Just going over the recent history last year there were

932 intentional walks the year before that 951 the year before that 985 the year before that 1018 the year before that 1055 i don't need to keep reading these long numbers out to you but intentional walks have been on the decline for a variety of reasons one of which is probably just that there are fewer base runners overall so fewer fewer reasons to intentionally walk. But I don't think that managers are suddenly going to embrace the intentional walk more just because now you don't have to do anything because I don't think any manager would have been significantly influenced by the idea of a pitcher being made worse by throwing four intentional balls. I think that if you had that amount of concern about a pitcher you brought into the game, you probably brought the wrong pitcher into the game and into

the major leagues in the first place. So maybe, maybe there's like one or two guys out there who managers just really didn't trust to pitch after an intentional walk. But I would, I would be surprised and I would, I would expect that we will not see an increase at all. Let's see. Let's do some really early math. So there are 4,860 games in the average season. There have been, through this podcast, 46 games. So if I were to multiply numbers by numbers, blah, blah, blah, we're on pace for actually an intentional walk increase of about 130. However, it's been two days.

It really doesn't matter. This is a trend i probably will not monitor until the all-star break at which point i will be scrambling for ideas yeah they've been becoming rarer and rarer they're never rarer than they were last year i think that has a lot to do with teams realizing that they should be rare and i don't expect that to change much, if at all. So agreed. Okay. And question from Zach. Do you think that Madison Bumgarner would have value to a major league team as a designated hitter or first baseman if his elbow or shoulder gives out in the next three to five years, presumably in a way that didn't impact his offense?

in a way that didn't impact his offense. Given that these are small sample sizes, but also assuming that Baumgartner would improve if he had the opportunity to take more at bats, do you think he has enough raw talent to succeed as an everyday batter? And just for context, I think after his two home runs on opening day, he now has exactly a 100 OPS plus since the start of 2014. So three plus seasons, still a smallish sample because he's a pitcher, but he has been an average major league hitter over that time. Yeah, which is remarkable.

So I've run in the same numbers, and he's batted 258 times. So I don't know, a little less than half of a full season since 2014 when he became super good, assuming I've selected the proper start date, which I have not. So actually what I'm going to do is press select again and say that he's batted 259 times since the start of 2014. Doesn't make a difference. I'm seeing a 105 WRC plus, which is slightly above average, as will be unsurprising. I think it's pretty much all because of his power. He's struck out a whole bunch. He's walked very little. He's been, I don't know, Randall Gritchick. Does that work? Has he been sort of Randall Gritchick at the plate?

Yeah, sure. And I remember, apparently I have perfect recall of your posts. I remember another post that you did about Madison Bumgarner and how he was getting pitched and whether he was getting pitched more like an actual hitter. And you found at the time that he was, I think, but probably maybe not quite like a real hitter just by pitcher standards. So that might change things a little bit. I don't know at this point, I haven't looked lately. I don't know if you've looked lately, but if he still is getting any pitcher benefit because opposing pitchers aren't completely buying it, then presumably they would be even tougher on him if he came back as a full-time hitter. Yeah. Bumgarner got a lot of pitches in the zone in 2014. However, his fastball rate dropped pretty

significantly and that's held fairly steady for the last few years. He has not been getting pounded with fastballs over the plate like everybody else i think pitchers have a pretty good understanding i think if if a pitcher hits one home run i think that makes a lot of the difference for an opposing pitcher because if a pitcher shows you can hit one home run then all of a sudden you think okay i have to take this guy a little more seriously most pitchers cannot do that i would say not in real game action. I know that Bartolo Colon did it, so therefore anyone can do anything. That's very inspiring, very 2017 millennial sort of zeitgeist, I guess. But Bumgarner has actual power, not just hitting mistakes power. So I think pitchers do pitch to him a little carefully.

I examined not too long ago a post where I was just looking at how Noah Syndergaard pitches against pitchers because I was curious because it seems like that would suck to be a pitcher facing Noah Syndergaard. And Syndergaard would throw a lot of fastballs. However, he hasn't done that when he's faced Bumgarner. Syndergaard has shown him respect, which of course Bumgarner has deserved. Now the problem, which is

not surprising, is he hasn't demonstrated that he's very good as a hitter. He's just powerful, but he swings and misses kind of like Chris Carter or Russell Branion. And you saw how much trouble Carter had getting a job. But figure if Bumgarner could do this on a full-time basis, he could probably lift his contact rate some number of percentage points. The power is still there. Maybe he'd walk a little more, but he'd at least strike out less. So I think he could for sure be at least a league average regular because he's already been a league average hitter

as a pitcher which is incredible right yeah but as a dh first baseman could he hit that well well i don't know what his defense is like remember the rays are starting logan morrison at first base right he would not be a like first division first baseman or DH, I don't think. But he could find a home. He could play. Okay. You want to do your stat segment? Let's do it.

And it's all about Clayton Richard. Remember Clayton Richard? Yeah. He's back in pitcher form. So on Monday, the Dodgers walloped the Padres, as I think everybody expected them to do. And so everybody then got to talk about how the Dodgers are a real baseball team and the Padres are embarrassing and it's going to be a terrible season for the Padres. And at least there's only 161 more games to go, et cetera, et cetera.

Fast forward, the Padres shut out the Dodgers and came to the season, which is awesome. And Clayton Richard was the, I guess, author of most of that shutout. He spun eight shutout innings against the Dodgers, walking two, striking at five. He yielded to Brad Hand, who slammed the door because Brad Hand is very good in a different way from Clayton Richard. So Richard is interesting to me. I, for some reason, wrote a whole post about him on Fangraphs because whatever. It's April 5th and i'm already desperate for ideas but richard is interesting because ever since he came back from thoracic outlet surgery he uh he's lowered his arm slot and he's become

an extreme ground ball pitcher not quite like zach britain but he's like the next best thing in terms of getting ground balls so if i go over the box score from richard's near complete game shutout on Tuesday, I see that in the first inning, Corey Seager grounded into a double play, third base to shortstop to first. In the second inning, Yosemite Grandol grounded into a double play, second base to first base. In the fourth inning, Yossi El Puig grounded into a double play,

third to second to first. And in the sixth inning, Justin Turner grounded into a double play, shortstop to second to first that is for clayton richard four double plays in one game which struck me as being quite a lot does it strike you as being quite a lot hot tip yeah it should it's a lot so i got curious to see well how often are there games like this how often are the games with more and so i went to our trusty currently non-sponsoring baseball reference to use it anyway because it's more useful for this so the last pitcher to get

exactly four double plays in a game don't have to go that far back james baxson american league cy young winner coming up he had four double plays in a game last j 7th. However, it gets better than that because last August 28th, fellow Padre Luis Perdomo generated five double plays in a game, got five from the Marlins in a complete game. I don't know what they call this, a one runner. That's stupid. That's just a complete game. Luis Perdomo threw, he got five double plays. Before that, Martin Perez got five double plays in a game in 2014, Joe Saunders, 2011. Billy Buckner in 2009, etc. So five.

Hey, it's been done. Six. Six is the top. We've had, on record, five starts. First one coming from 1935, in which a pitcher has gotten six double plays in a game. So two of these games are pretty old. We've got George Turbevilleville in 1935 a game between philadelphia and cleveland he went 14.2 innings so of course he did something crazy to go with

his six double plays he also walked 13 batters which is absurd i don't know what was going on with george turbeville but i guess he was sort of taking care of his own messes gene bearden 1948 cleveland against washington he threw nine innings. He got six double plays. Dick Drago. Drago? Drago? Drago. Drago.

Dick Drago, 1972. Six double plays in a game. And now we get to the more fun, recent stuff. Mark Burley in just 7.2 innings in 2009. He got six double plays. He also picked a guy off. A very Mark Burley game, but also an exceptional game in history. Also picked a guy off.

A very Mark Burley game, but also an exceptional game in history. And in 2011, Matt Harrison generated six double plays in an eight-inning start against the Yankees. The shame for Mark Burley, who did this in 2009, is that he generated six double plays in 7.2 innings and the White Sox still lost the game. So taking this back to Clayton Richard a little bit because I was curious, Richard, of course, in one game, eight innings against a good team in the Dodgers, eight innings, he generated four double plays. So I was curious about active or recent pitchers who have never generated more than four double plays in their careers. I'll ask because it's habit if you have any guesses who among recent pitchers has the most career innings with no more than four double plays generated? Of course you don't. The answer is Jim Henderson. Jim Henderson has thrown 137 innings through 2016. I guess, I think he still counts as active. He pitched last year. pitched last year 137 career innings he has generated a total of three double plays jose capayan who's no longer active or at least he's probably active but at home and not on a baseball

field he has three double plays to his name cory erasmus three and 123 innings hunter strickland has 120.2 innings in the majors and four double plays you might remember edward ramirez he was like an interesting yankees reliever i think he had big strikeout numbers in the minors but he like had goggles and he didn't have power stuff he had a change up right right i remember being very excited about him but he could only throw that change up and a not very impressive fastball so it didn't work out so well it did not work at all however well i guess there is no however because it gets worse in 109.1 major league innings edward ramirez had one double play that he generated which is very bad i guess in this specific category anthony renato also won etc i'm scrolling down this

looking for anyone who has none and that takes me to nario rodriguez whose career ended in 2002 he had none brian sikorsky, none. There was that year that I'm not going to bother looking up to confirm because I don't care. But I think Brandon Morrow, not too long ago, he was a starter. And I think he had zero double plays in an entire year. Do you remember that? That sounds familiar. Yeah.

So I'm not going to confirm it. You're not either. But let's just say it's true. Brandon Morrow had an entire season, I think, without generating a double play. Clayton Richard got four on Tuesday. Don't sleep on Clayton Richard because you should sleep on your bed instead. Oh, wait. I just Googled Brandon Morrow.

I think he got a ground ball double play on September 25th of that season. Oh, no. Ah, I ruined it. Yeah. Spoiled everything. Desmond Jennings, 2011. But he still finished, Finished I think way out in First place for the most innings pitched in the season

Since 1919 which Is as far back as baseball reference had Double play data recording One or no ground ball Double plays so Alright question from Brian you may have seen the Cardinals and Cubs game on opening night

And if you hung on till the end, you saw Matt Carpenter pull a play in the ninth with one out that got me thinking. To recap what happened, with one out and a runner at first and the Cardinals up by three, a ground ball was hit to Carpenter. Rather than take the sure out at first because the runner at second was meaningless, Carpenter

tried to throw to second, promptly bobbled the ball, and couldn't flip it to first in time, so all the runners were safe. This set up Contreras to hit the three-run home run to tie the game, promptly bobbled the ball, and couldn't flip it to first in time so all the runners were safe. This set up Contreras to hit the three-run home run to tie the game and me to swallow yelling some swears at the TV for not wanting to wake up my sleeping toddler. This got me thinking about dumb players and how much their dumbness impacts their war. It's probably harsh to say dumb,

so maybe they lack baseball smarts or aren't savvy or they're boneheaded. I don't know if that's nicer than dumb, but sure. be fast still could hit and still could throw but you'd be bad on the bases and not make many difficult fielding plays or maybe botch throwing to a base to get meaningless lead runner in an opening day game how good would you be what would it do to your war so i guess i guess you could uh if you if you really wanted to you could probably come up with something like this or you could if you had stat cast data at your command right you could come up with bad outs on the bases just based on where the fielder was at the time and where the runner was at the time and if you knew all those variables you could come up with that or guys throwing to the wrong base or i don't know what else would be dumb really but you could I mean see you have to kind of

classify what's just purely a talent related mistake and what is a purely intelligence related mistake and it's kind of hard to separate the two like is swinging at a bad 3-0 pitch is that

dumb or is that you just not being good at baseball? I don't know. Maybe it's a combination of both. Yeah, I don't think you could count swings. I think that's too almost instinctive. I think you need to have plays where there's at least time for a thought process to count. I mean, I didn't submit the question.

So when I think of dumb, I think of players who flip the ball into the sands when there's two outs. That one's pretty dumb. You see it a few times a year. It's always embarrassing. But what dumb play, what legitimately dumb sort of play do you think happens the most often? Big leaguers are pretty smart about baseball generally. So I don't know. Would you count pitch selection?

That's something that you have time to think about, right? Like if you just throw a dumb pitch, which I don't know, it's hard to just say what a dumb pitch was necessarily because there's all kind of game theory aspects and a pitch that might look dumb in isolation might not be actually, but something like that. And I don't mean just throwing a pitch over the plate. I mean, I don't know, throwing your worst pitch at an important moment or playing right into the batter's hand at some point. So I don't know how often that happens. But if we're counting that, that would probably be the most common mistake just because there are so many opportunities to make it. Yeah. And that would be impossible for us to calculate because we don't have a counterfactual to see how a pitcher would have done if he threw better.

I guess I could even take it to a greater level and say that the most common dumb thing we see players do is pitch, just like in general, because it seems really dangerous. Or catch. Yeah, catching seems horrible too. A lot of it just seems horrible. You know, if you're a pitcher, you should just get your good signing bonus and then retire and just be like well i'm healthy and young and i have some millions of dollars and i never have to pitch again yeah it'd be great because i like being able to reach for things and open jars i can't imagine what it'd be like to not be able to do that or like swim i don't swim but i like having the option to swim if i want to you know so pitching kind of dumb but in that case then i

think there are a lot of players who are generating positive war because they're doing something dumb. I think to the spirit of the question, this is one of those things where it would be fun in like in my version of heaven, I can ask any question and get an immediate answer to it. Yeah. I think that I would eventually grow tired of that. And I'd want to kill myself in heaven. But it would take me a long time because there's a lot of questions I'd want the answer to. And this is one of those things where you would need someone who's observing every game keeping very detailed manual notes about dumb plays and then at the end of the year you can go comb through them be like this is a bad out on the bases or this is a guy missing the cutoff man or a guy not paying attention to the field and here is an approximate run value of that mistake and then you could add them up and then that would be interesting i would be delighted to have that information to see who's really good who's really bad but from my perspective and from presumably yours since your perspective is similar to mine there's just we we don't i don't know who's like a dumb player in baseball so i can't even fathom how much value is lost right it's hard to even ballpark but i mean if you're a superstar who is making these bad decisions, I would say you're still going to be a superstar unless you're doing it like every single time you're on base. I mean, if you're just getting picked off constantly because you're taking dumbly large leads, then that would make you a lot less valuable. But within the realm of feasibility, I think it's probably just a bit up or down on the

margins more than anything all right question from connor my girlfriend and i were watching fernando rodney implode over dinner tonight always a nice relationship this is a bummer of a start to an email and she posed a great question to me she just got into baseball over the past year since we've been dating so she didn't think much about it She asked how good would a pitcher be If he only threw strikes two obvious Things one this pitcher is not Fernando Rodney two

It's not as simple as you might immediately Think I was inclined to say oh well Of course the best pitcher ever but If you're the hitter and you get to two strikes You know a strike is coming just not which Pitch my question how good Would this pitcher actually be But if you're the hitter and you get to two strikes, you know a strike is coming, just not which pitch. My question, how good would this pitcher actually be? That's actually your girlfriend's question, Connor.

You're stealing it from her. Classic man move. Would he put up the astronomical strikeout numbers you would expect, or would he get hit around since hitters know it's a strike? Well, that's a good one. When I think of pitchers who have pounded the strike zone, of course, you get your like Kenley Jansons, but then you get your Carlos Silvas, who just are like strike machines. But even that version of a strike machine is not a 100% strike machine. It still depends almost entirely, I guess, on the quality of your stuff. Because if Kenley Jansons was throwing his cutter and he constantly threw strikes, well, there's a

lot of area within the zone for a pitch to be a strike. And so a high strike is very different from a low strike. And so there's still that element of unpredictability. But if you're just like, I don't know, Josh Towers comes to mind for some reason. And if you're Josh Towers and you're hanging around in the strike zone, then you're really depending on your timing confusing the hitter because they know it's going to be over the plate. I think that this pitcher would be one of those guys who has very good peripherals, but a higher than average batting average in balls in play. He would probably have a home run problem. I don't know if we should just assume the guy has league average stuff. I guess maybe

that's the safest. I'm reminded of that game where Bartolo Colon threw 37 consecutive strikes against the Angels, which was outlandish. But of course, that game actually featured him throwing some of those strikes out of the zone. So I don't know if those count. Probably not. I assume the question is about always in the strike zone. Yeah, I think so.

Well, I'm going to load up a leaderboard. So I'm going to toss this one over to you real quick. You always have a leaderboard for the craziest hypothetical. You gotta look up numbers. You always have a leaderboard for the craziest hypothetical. You gotta look up numbers. Just when I think there's no possible real life results that you could consult in order to answer a question, you have already opened the page. Well, so we have PitchFX, or I guess now TrackMan PitchFX information going back to 2008. So just setting a very low minimum of 50 innings the highest zone rate for any pitcher

over that span of time is chad bradford i wasn't expecting that well anyway chad bradford but he's only at 59 percent strikes cliff lee is way up there maybe he's a better example he threw a ton of strikes or pitches just off the plate cliff lee was not a guy who once he got good made a habit of bouncing pitches or throwing way high so lee maybe is the best example of a guy who just would go out there and throw strikes as often as he could. Bartolo Colon is, of course, another recent example, and he throws far fewer pitches than Lee in that he throws one. I don't know. I think that because you would you'd never be behind in the count. So hitters would always be on the defensive and you still have a variety of pitches. I think the pitcher would still be

extremely good, but not I mean, there would be a good number of runs i think that his actual era would be within a somewhat familiar realm yeah well you'd be way worse on two strikes than the typical pitcher is today right but you'd be better most likely on well i guess you'd be better although even now there's always some chance that the pitcher is going to throw something out of the strike zone on zero strikes or one strike so there's more uncertainty there's the area that the hitter has to be prepared to cover is so much larger i I don't know exactly how to quantify that, but the fact that it's in the hitter's head, I mean, even if this pitcher has five different pitch types or something, he's throwing them within a fairly narrow zone. So I don't know

exactly how to quantify how much that hurts him, but I would think quite a lot if the hitter, I mean, you always hear a hitter say oh i just i focused on this one area or something like i was i was looking for something inside or whatever and i was ready for it and that's not quite the case here but looking for a strike at least does really narrow things down just for fun i, I pulled up Baseball Savant, and I wanted to look at pitcher's zone rates with two strikes last year. So what the hell, I'll ask you again. Which pitcher do you think, given the low minimum,

had the highest zone rate, according to the Baseball Savant's constricted zone, in two strike counts? He's a reliever, and he's known for a rising fastball. Grant Dayton. Josh Fields. Josh Fields at 45 percent and the lowest the very lowest zone rate with two strikes belongs to a pitcher i've never heard of ryan o'rourke kudos to him for being on a list i guess i don't really care he sounds like he's

probably a twin let me try to confirm that that seems like a very twinish name am i correct 2016 name. Am I correct? 2016 Ryan O'Rourke. Twins! Nailed it. This podcast is over. You must have had some subconscious Ryan O'Rourke knowledge in there. I think maybe it's just sort of knowing that if there's a pitcher whose name I don't know, there's only so many teams he could pitch for because I know pitchers on teams who are interesting. And last year's twins were extraordinarily uninteresting, especially the pitching staff. So that's probably how my brain worked rhino rook almost a strike an inning good for him maybe that's because of his two strike approach all right so we don't have a definitive answer to this one i guess it's hard this is a hard question i'm gonna say can we even say

definitively whether he's better or worse than a current league average pitcher remind me what were the actual terms of the question he just always throws a pitch in the strike zone oh so the question was would he be good or how good or what was it yeah how good would he be uh and we have no idea how good his stuff is no but so i guess we just assume he's average all right so assume he's got average fastball curveball change up or slider change up whatever yeah uh always throw strikes i'll say between four and five war oh okay so he's much better than an average pitcher twice as good or something like that i think so but i'm assuming because he's always throwing strikes that he is above he was pretty good command within the zone. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that probably makes sense, but not necessarily. All right. I'll take the under on that.

I think I won't say worse than the typical pitcher, but I don't think he's a star. All right. Last question from David, who says, with all the recent hypotheticals about mystical powers and whatnot, it's not even just recent, it's like the last five years, one of them that I feel hasn't been tackled is the following. What if you have acquired the ability to see an end-of-career stat line for whatever player you think about?

All you can see is the single summation total stat line. You have no breakdown of years or teams played for, none of that. You see the very bottom line of a career totals page. This could be the end of career stat line for a potential draft pick or end of career stat line for a player already in the big leagues. How long after acquiring this power would it take for you to find a job in a major league front office, and how long would it take before you are at the top of the chain

in any major league team? Seems like getting an internship or something fairly low level would not be that difficult to attain but it would take many years for your picks or hunches or predictions however they are viewed to come to fruition and for you to move up the chain and that is true i i don't even know i mean getting an internship you you wouldn't be able to get anything from this really until how long would it take? If you're starting with draft picks or you're starting with a young player or something, you're not going to have any idea whether you're right for a decade at least. I don't know how you parlay this into a job because obviously if you come in claiming that you know this, you will be ruled out of every interview immediately for being a crazy person. And it would take a very long time for the facts to prove you right. So remind me, in this condition, you know doesn't totally matter. Maybe we're saying that you only apply for the job. You start trying to get a job once you know that you have this skill. So

I don't know whether you know it supernaturally or you know it because your predictions have been borne out in the past or whatever, but let's say you know you have it. Okay. So I would say that presuming you find out or you know that you have this skill and presuming it's something that you want to pursue, the first thing that you probably do is you start writing. Maybe you begin with a Twitter feed or something. Maybe Facebook. There's even more people on Facebook, but they're dumber. Maybe you go to Twitter and you start making your baseball observations. Then you set up probably an independent blog, if we still call them that,, I guess it's the more general term. And you write about baseball players. And

it shouldn't take very long, even though a career performance line statistically does not imply if you have a very good career performance line that in no way implies that every single season is good, of course, so you would still be making what other people would think are predictions for players that would sometimes not come true. However, your hit rate would be very good, especially if you were writing about prospects and you could generate probably the quickest way to get a job, I guess, would be to come up with your own prospect lists. And they would look very different because you kind of have the answers, like the long-term answers. So if you had your own prospect lists and I don't know how

you'd still need to write captions on players. And if there's like pitchers who are really talented and they have short careers or no careers, I don't know how you like predict injury. I mean, if you predict enough injuries, then people are going to be like, what's this guy doing to these pitchers? But I don't know how you'd handle it it but if you come up with prospect lists and it would not take very long for your lists to start looking really good you would not miss on some of the prominent players you would hit on some of the less prominent players that would get attention pretty fast if your site hasn't already gotten popular you could at least point to it and go right for like fangraphs or baseball prospectus or baseball america or some other outlet and so as soon as you do that then all of a sudden you are in front of the industry.

And as soon as you are a pretty good prospect person in front of the industry, you would get a job within roughly two days and then you would go join a team. Although actually, I would say that you probably don't want to write for a site unless you actually are good at evaluating players visually. Also, like if all you know is their final career stat line, then I think the less you say, the better, right? Because if you write about it or talk about it, you're just going to expose your own ignorance. I mean, I guess you could sort of retrofit your scouting report based on what you know the player is going to do. So you can even apply tool grades based on what those grades would

equate to in career stats or something like that. So I guess you could fake it fairly well, but it depends. Like if you have at least like above average baseball knowledge to begin with so that you can talk about the game in a convincing way, then I guess in that case, you could fudge it. If you aren't even a baseball person to begin with, and you somehow discover that you have this power, then you would just want to say nothing and just be the mysterious cipher who can pick every player and not divulge your secrets to anyone. That would probably be the best method for you. yeah maybe maybe you talk about players but in extremely vague ways where you don't offer any explanation of why you think what you think

like if there's a prospect who everyone agrees is going to hit for a bunch of power and then you know that that player is not going to hit for a bunch of power then you're just like i don't know what should we name him ryan o'rourke you're like ryan o'rourke he's not going to hit for a lot of power scouting report not on my list whatever and then and then that's it and people have no information on why you believe that and so you're not revealing anything you're just like no he's not gonna hit for a lot of power and then his career plays out mostly or fully and people are like oh he never hit for power this guy's kind of knew what was going on with ryan o'rourke i don't know what would happen when you join a team how you explain it but i guess after a long enough period of time people just trust your hunches because they learn that they aren't really hunches. They'd be like,

well, he's not explaining anything, but I guess he's right. So let's just take him at his freaking word. And eventually you, well, I guess not even that eventually, within a few years, you just need enough players to pan out that I don't know how you could stop being promoted. You'd basically become baseball front office god, and you'd make a lot of money. Because what's Andrew Friedman's deal? $50 million for five years? Does that sound right?

Or is that Theo? That's Theo, I think, yeah. But something around there. You'd make a lot of money. You'd make as much money as a lot of the players that you were predicting. I guess it's not even predicting, just seeing. Okay. So I guess you really only need a couple years probably to get a shot.

That would be enough to show that most of your prospect picks at least have not headed backwards, which would be unusual even in that small a timeframe. So, okay. That's one way to do it. And then that's just an entry level getting a position as for how long it would take you to go all the way up the chain. And probably depends a lot on your other skills and your interpersonal skills and whether people like you or hate you or whatever, because they might not promote you if they hate you. But I think, hmm, what can we say? But I think, hmm, what can we say?

I mean, I don't know what the fastest anyone's gone from entry level to GM is, but for some guys it's been somewhere between five and ten years, certainly. So you could do this in, gosh, if you're right about everyone. I mean, the thing is that even if you are right about everyone, that doesn't necessarily mean that you should be a GM or that you would be the best choice for GM. Overseeing the rest of the department And hiring people and being the public Face of the organization and talking to Other teams about transactions You might be terrible at all of those things I don't know So it entirely depends

If you have at least replacement level GM skills and you also have This talent then I'd say You could probably be a GM in Five years at the Longest but otherwise you might never get there depending on your skill set. Yeah, I guess GMs have so many things that they have to worry about aside from just roster

management that, yeah, maybe you'd function as a really good assistant GM or special advisor to the general manager or, I don't know, director of baseball. No, that's worse. So, you know, you'd be way up there and you'd make your money. But yeah, maybe you don't want to handle all the other responsibilities. Maybe you just want to sit in your office and talk about numbers

and you don't want to have to deal with the related bits. So it's entirely up to your own ambition and also if people find you annoying. Yep. All right. We have come to the end of this podcast. Except before that, I have a question for you. Okay.

Because I was curious about something based on that last question. You have such a clear understanding of, I guess, all the posts that I've written that I just assume you have a very clear understanding of everything that has ever been done. And so I wanted to ask you a question real quick about the Effectively Wild podcast question shows, because I know that there is even some disagreement over whether to do email shows in the first place. Yeah. When did it become the norm for people to submit wild ass hypotheticals? Because I know it's like a huge part of it. It's kind of every part of it. But how did that develop? What were the email shows before?

I don't know if there wasn't before. I think that might have been immediate. Not that all the questions we got were immediately of that sort. but I think those were the kind of questions Sam and I were most interested in answering. Like if someone sent us fantasy questions or just, you know, who's going to win the AL Central or whatever, like we probably wouldn't be as interested in answering that as we would some weird one that caught our attention. So I would guess that we started selecting for that kind of question almost immediately. And either that attracted people who were interested in hearing answers to that kind of question, or it sent the signal that that was the kind of question we liked talking about. So I think it was probably almost from the get-go. Cool. I'm satisfied. Cool. I hope the same goes for everyone else. By the way, one of our listeners, David, submitted the question we answered a few weeks ago about the DA with the baseball background on Chicago Justice, who used a semi-nonsensical baseball analogy to talk about a court case, and we broke down why it didn't make much sense.

court case and we broke down why it didn't make much sense. David submitted the same question to the Script Notes podcast, which is a podcast with two screenwriters, John August and Craig Mazin, and they broke it down in detail. They talked about it for a while, so it's too long to play a clip, but I enjoyed listening to their perspective as people who have written this sort of scene and been involved in TV production. So I'd encourage everyone to go check that out. It's episode 294 of Script Notes, and that response starts at the 30-minute mark. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have started supporting us recently include Dan Miller, Joe Mike Sell, Billy Cole, Jeff Fang, and David McDonald. Thanks to all of you for your support. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild.

Now over 5,600 members talking baseball 24-7. You can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Michael and I will have a new episode of the Ringer MLB show up today. Yes, it's still on tune-in for this month, but if you're interested in listening, we talked about a bunch of things that have happened

in this first week and whether we think they signify anything. And then we talked to Rob Mains from Baseball Perspectives about the statistical pitfalls of April and how easy it is to be misled. You can stream it on your browser at tunein.com slash the ringer. Or if you want to get the tune in app, you can stream it or download it there. Keep your questions coming for me and Jeff at podcast at fan graphs.com or by contacting us through the Patreon messaging system. We will talk to you tomorrow.