Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1047: The Email Answers You Ordered

Episode Date: April 20, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Jason Benetti, Andrew Triggs, Addison Reed and Odubel Herrera, C.B. Bucknor’s bad day, and Starling Marte’s suspension, then answer listener emails about the nature of fandom, dominance against a division rival, a billion-dollar payroll, Eric Thames’s hot start, transplanting an NPB team, catching up to favorite players from […]

This is Eric's trip. We've all come to watch him slip. He's slipping all the way to Texas. Can you dig it? Hello and welcome to episode 1047 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hi. So follow up to yesterday, I saw that you and Jason Benetti had a little Twitter interaction. Brief. I don't know any, there's no thing there that isn't public, I guess, but he tweeted that he wants to book a trip to Mount St. Helens and asked if I wanted to go along. And the answer is, of course, yes. The answer is yes under almost all circumstances.

But now I have no idea if this is true or just a ruse. So, hey, Jason, if you're out there, what's going on? I know you've got a series. He's got a series in Seattle coming up soon. Then he made a trampoline reference, too. So either he was tipped off to our banter yesterday about his appearance on the Axe Files and his reference to both volcanoes and trampolines, or he is a regular listener and that's why he said those things in the first place. So either way, he has acknowledged what we said.

So I feel that our voices have been heard. So our pal Andrew Triggs has not allowed a run yet. Correct. Well, he's not allowed an earned run. Earned run, yes. He has allowed three runs, actually. He has one of the stranger stat lines. I don't know whether to be encouraged

by his stat line or discouraged because right now he has a 13% strikeout rate, which is not good at all. He has a zero ERA, a 2.56 FIP, which is good, and a 4.09 XFIP, which is not particularly good. So I don't know whether he's off to a great start or a very mediocre start. Yeah, and the way that I look at these things is that he's made three starts. He's had what I would consider a bad one, a fine one, and a good one.

Bad one, he opened up, three walks, one strikeout, five point two innings. The next one, he had six innings, one walk, three strikeouts. And then just yesterday, he had six innings, zero walks, five strikeouts. So I think he's getting a little, little better. I don't think that anyone believes Triggs is going to go out and dominate every single start. But if you just look at sort of the numbers underneath, which is crazy to do when you're talking about a guy who's made three starts so far this season, his strikes are just the same as they were last year. His contact rate is still better than average.

So he probably has not lost his ability to miss bats. His velocity is a little bit down, but it's April. He's getting stretched out for basically the First ever time out of spring training Andrew Triggs I like him Yeah and another follow Up to something we just talked about Did you see I don't know why

You would have seen but last night there was A quick pitch to Oduble Herrera from Addison Reed I don't know whether it really qualifies As a quick pitch because it probably wouldn't have been quick with any other hitter. But as we were saying, Odoble Herrera has been the slowest hitter in Major League Baseball this year, taking almost 32 seconds between pitches in order to screw with pitchers, as he himself has admitted. And in this case, Addison

Reed just didn't wait for him to be ready and just threw a pitch. And because it's Addison Reed and he almost exclusively throws strikes, it was a strike and Herrera struck out on three called strikes. So that's the way to deal with Odubel Herrera. I suppose if you are a pitcher, just don't wait for him to be ready because he's trying to mess with you. Just throw a pitch right down the middle to really really hate addison reed because teams get defensive about stuff like this but i don't know how a team like the phillies could necessarily retaliate i guess they could try to quick pitch some mets but it's not like you can go bean addison reed or like if you're a hitter and you're trying to hit every comebacker right at addison reed well that's sort of what every hitter is already trying to do with the ball so yeah good idea addison reed

throws nothing but strikes might as well throw quick strikes to oduble herrera you have anything else before we get to emails uh i guess i should just say the words cb buckner just kind of put that out there yeah i returned to some messages uh you might have returned to some messages after seeing the decemberists last night cb buckner had himself a day i don't really know i mean without videos on a podcast i don't know what we can do and you know it's just a bad umpiring game but for one thing okay so just there are two things that stand out to me i didn't examine the whole game but there was one and like the fourth inning jason worth had a strikeout on six pitches i don't know if you

looked this up i looked it up i would have been writing about it if somebody else didn't already claim it for Fangraphs. Thanks a lot, teammates. Jason Wirth went up there. He saw six pitches from whoever he was facing. He didn't swing at a single one of them. All of them were out of the strike zone and he struck out on six pitches. And the last two called strikes were particularly terrible. The first one was sort of like off the plate, but excusable.

Sort of a Kyle Hendricks strike, if you will. And then the last two were just like laughably outside. Not like Ketcher had to reach way over outside. They weren't like going to the backstop. But very bad strikes. And Worth struck out. Worth was upset at the end of the game, even though the Nationals won, which is how you know that an umpire messed up.

You might remember Bryce Harper having a little event last year with whoever the umpire was. For all I know, it was also CB Buckner. I don't know. But at the end of the game, what was it? Sean Kelly was pitching to some clown on... Chase Darnot. Chase Darnot, yeah, whatever. So Kelly is working in a bad against Chase Darnot.

I think the bases were loaded. It was a 3-1 game. It was close, and Darnot was fighting off pitch after pitch, and then Kelly struck him out with one of those Sean Kelly sliders that's really good Darnot swung and missed and if you look at the instant replays he missed the ball but by what I would estimate to be at least like three or four inches you know like a pretty big miss by Chase Darnot the ball was not caught cleanly behind the plate because by the way it was a slider basically in the dirt so it was a terrible pitch to swing at but that's what Sean Kelly does don't know missed and that was the end of the game until it wasn't because C.P. Buckner for what I fathom as literally no

reason decided that the ball was foul tipped which means that then Sean Kelly had to come back and throw another pitch after the team was celebrating and the groundskeepers were already working on the running track which by the way. They do that freaking immediately. There is no delay among the groundskeepers. But they had everybody out celebrating. And the Braves had given up. And then CB Buckner was like.

Play on. And so Sean Kelly comes out. Throws an identical slider. Gets an identical swing and miss. The ball is caught cleanly. CB Buckner is satisfied. I don't know. I don't have anything.

I'm sure when you have a pitch like that, it's not like Buckner has a great angle. Because from his line of sight, he can't tell how badly the pitch was missed. And, you know, it wasn't caught cleanly, hit the dirt. I'm sure it's an easy mistake to make. But, boy, it looks bad. And, boy, umpires don't make that mistake very often. Yeah, you said three or four inches. And Chase Darnot's manager, Brian Snitker,

said eight inches. So he just outright admitted that it was a huge miss. And yeah, as I was watching this, I sort of felt some sympathy because the foul tip call must be so difficult to make. Just, I mean, sometimes it might make a sound or the trajectory would really be deflected a lot by that contact. But at other times, it probably isn't. It's just a glancing little tip that doesn't make any sound, and you can't even tell if it changed the trajectory. So that must be a very difficult call at times. But in this particular instance, it was, I mean, I can't imagine it was that hard a call because we just never see calls made like this. And if it were difficult, we'd probably see it more often. So I wish there were some way to query this and find out how bad it was, historically speaking.

But obviously, we don't know how far the bat missed the ball by, unfortunately. So we can't do an equivalent of your worst called ball called strike series, but just visually, it's pretty embarrassing and bad. Okay, so I don't know. Do you have anything about Starling Marte? I wrote about it. Yeah, that was received well. The headline was maybe not the best crafted for what I was saying in the article. But I guess the upside of this suspension is that maybe everyone realizes how good Starling Marte is. But the downside is that now everyone hates Starling Marte forever because he took steroids.

Although I don't know if that still applies. I don't know if we have the same anim it against players to the extent that we might have at one time when we were all still very worked up and bitter about PEDs. But obviously, I made the case that he is the best player at the time he was suspended for a violation of the substance abuse policy. And there are a couple of close rivals like Ryan Braun in 2013 Or Manny in 2009 I think Starling Marte might be the best At least in terms of What he would have been expected to produce In the time that he will not be playing now

Because of the suspension And obviously it's devastating to the Pirates And those are all Obvious things that we have now Acknowledged and we can move on. And as we know, in a world without stats, Charlie Marte is baseball's best player. So this could be this could be rough. I think that one point that does often get lost in these things is you think, OK, Marte or whoever has been busted.

Now he's going to miss a half season and we don't know what he's going to be when he comes back because how much of Marte's game was a factor of taking PEDs. Well, there is a certain amount of, I don't know if it's concern, but acknowledgement, at least within the industry, that, you know, PED effects can last an awful long time if they help you build up your body. And so while I don't pretend to have any sort of particular insight for Starling Marte, you can look at some of the other players who have been suspended for PEDs. And when they come back, there is basically no change in their performance. Maybe they look even better because it turns out that when you change your body, those changes can be mostly maintained, or at least they don't deteriorate for a long time. I don't know when Nelson Cruz started using or when he stopped. If he stopped, I guess would be another question to raise. I'm not here to just throw shade, I guess.

I hate, I don't want to say that out loud. I don't want to just like cast aspersions on players. Maybe that sounds more podcasty and poetic. But when you put something in your body to make your body stronger, and then you're suspended and you're not supposed to be taking that anymore. Well, you've already made your body to make your body stronger and then you're suspended and you're not supposed to be taking that anymore well you've already made your body stronger and it is not clear how long it takes for those gains to go away if they go away at all so even though Marte is gone for 80 games I would expect him to come back looking a lot like Starling Marte it's not well

of course he's going to look like Starling Marte but he's going to look a lot like Starling Marte he's going to have the same skills and if anything he could be fresher because i you get to participate in like extended spring training or something before your suspension is up right i think that's yeah i think so because you know you have to make it easy for these players to transition back into the majors after they're suspended for taking performance enhancing drugs all right questions from you the listeners this one is from jason he says you're talking about the wave made me realize that being a fan of the

sport is not unusual despite not feeling passion for a team. I get grief at games for wearing a baseball cap for a team not playing because I am there for the game, not a team. I own a cap for 75% of the teams. Should I feel bad for wearing a cap not matching

a team on the field and I will say two things I think firstly it probably is unusual right in that it's not the most common thing I would think baseball is a pretty regionalized sport and most people who are at a ballpark probably have a rooting interest for one of the teams that's playing. That is not the case if you're listening to podcasts hosted by baseball writers. But if you're just talking about the typical fan, I think that probably makes Jason unusual, but certainly not in a negative way. I think it's admirable, if that he is Able to maintain this passion For baseball without having a Day to day rooting interest or

At least without having that Same sort of pull that everyone has To want to see their team Win I think it was a Sam Line in our book about how there's No wrong way to love Baseball and I think that Applies to Jason's situation Right the line I'll usually applies to jason's situation right uh the line

i'll usually well i guess it's similar to sam's line there's no wrong way to like baseball and there there are wrong ways you can imagine if the way that you like baseball is that you try to murder people who root for the teams that you don't like that would be that would be a wrong way that crosses the line robert de niro in the fan and you're a stalker killer then yes that would be probably a bad way right yeah don't murder because of sports that is the wrong way to like sports but short of that short of criminal activity or basically disruptive activity this is it's here to entertain you and you are free to be entertained however you like and no one well okay people people most people will judge you for it but they don't have the right and you

don't have to give a crap about what they do you can't go to a hockey game without seeing a charlestown chiefs jersey somewhere and i know that's different because the chiefs aren't real that's a slap shot the movie reference but you know when i go to a hockey game it seems like you you see of course a lot of the local teams hockey jerseys. But it seems like it's mostly an excuse for people to think now I have a reason to wear a hockey jersey. And so they will go and they will just wear a jersey. And that's great. And it doesn't matter if they're affiliated or not.

It's just how often do you get to wear a hockey jersey? So with the baseball cap, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Don't worry about it. You're there. You're not offending anybody. If you go to a, I don't know, Blue Jays Orioles game and you're wearing a Reds hat, I would imagine many people wouldn't even recognize the Reds as being a major league baseball team. So it doesn't really matter. Just wear whatever you want as a hat and don't worry about what other people think about it. Life lesson, don't worry about what other people think about you that said neither of us wears hats right right yeah it was weird when i would like transition to backpacking and all that outdoor stuff where i need like sun protection and i used to wear baseball caps all the time

until somebody stole my favorite one when i was in like second or third grade and then that was the end of it and then i started thinking i to preserve this hair on my head while I can. But then having to wear like a hat before being on trails for a long time was weird. I felt all these self-conscious like wearing a hat makes me feel like a very different looking person. Yeah. Yeah. It improves some people's looks. Like I think Chris Bryant looks much better with a cap on because he has something

weird with his hairline i don't know what it is but yeah i agree and i just don't like having something on my head my natural state is nothing on my head that is the most critical thing someone said about chris bryant's appearance i think yeah it's actually a frequent topic of discussion among the ringer staff because I think there's some sentiment that Bryant's looks are overrated, maybe because of his eyes, which are very attractive eyes. But there's something strange with his upper head area. Is it just too big of a forehead? I think it's, yeah, I think it is. I'm not even, it's not necessarily a receding hairline. It's just, it's naturally receded sort of because his forehead is big.

All right. Question from Kyle, a Patreon supporter. Yesterday, I found myself thinking about Chris Truby for some reason. He spent most of his short MLB career with the Astros during their NL era and hit 265-345-612 against the Brewers, but just 229-262-374 against everyone else. By OPS, he was roughly the equivalent of Mike Trout against the Brewers and Mike Zunino against the rest of MLB. So my question is this, how good would an MLB player have to be against a single division rival to make it worth it to keep him on the roster for an entire season despite the fact that he's going to be below replacement level for 140 other games okay if the player is going to be below replacement level for the other games that then don't don't

have that player yeah there's there's no reason unless you know for a fact this player can only hit one team and then you just call them up for that series that's great but i think to simplify this we should say okay you have a replacement level player who is way better against one specific division rival a team plays a division rival 19 times a year yep right okay so let's say the player plays every single day who knows why he uh this player he or she, but probably he, will play 162 games, and in 143 of those, the player will be worth zero war. So I think to make it worth it, you want something like an average player, probably, and an average player would be worth around two wins above replacement, probably a little bit better than that, but let's just put it at two. So you need two war out of a full season player but really you need that two war in 19

games and so let's okay so looking at the current fangraphs leaderboards eric thames is the leader in uh in war so he's got 1.4 war in 13 games so far which multiplied out to 19. Oh, perfect. To war. Eric Thames over 19 games at his current pace would be worth to war. If he got there after 19 games and then was replacement level the rest of the season, I think that would be some approximation of what you'd be looking for. And so all this player would

need to do is slug literally 1,000 over 19 games against a division rival. Eric Thames is currently batting 426 491 1.000 good for a 612 woba a 291 wrc plus a 1.491 ops eric thames as brett anderson noted on twitter yesterday is the best hitter in the world he's not actually the best hitter in the world but maybe he is the best hitter in the world i don't know the hell am i supposed to know if you look at eric thames this is now about Eric Thames. I'm

sorry, podcast. Yeah. Well, we're about to answer a couple Eric Thames questions. So just so you know. So I think that you'd basically need a player to be current Eric Thames level against a division rival to be worth it. All right. So the two Eric Thames questions One is from Andrew And it just says dear Ben and Jeff What and or how is Eric Thames The other question is from Tanner in Buffalo Who says Eric Thames has been worth a Major league leading 1.4 war

According to FamGraphs He also leads the majors in just about Every other offensive category This surely isn't sustainable although one can hope Given that he signed a three-year, $16 million contract in the offseason, and the free agent cost of a win is $9 million, roughly, I think. How long do you think it'll take until he is, quote-unquote, worth the contract that he signed? So I guess we can first answer the question of how good we think Eric Thames is, and then that will sort of answer Tanner's question. And I know you have written about Eric Thames recently, as has the rest of the staff at Fangraphs.

So do you want to take that one? I believe Fangraphs Audio yesterday was also about Eric Thames. So Eric Thames, the hitter. One of the things I'm reminded of going back a few years, this is story time, I guess, Justin Smoak was on the Mariners. Justin Smoak has been on a few teams. He's been bad with most of them. Justin Smoak has always had power. I think if you look at his exit velocities, they show that he's a powerful hitter. But one of the things that clicked for me was Smoak didn't walk as much as he used to and his play discipline numbers weren't

as good as they looked like they should have been when he was in the upper minors as a top prospect and one of the mariners hitting coaches they've had several over the past few years was talking about how the problem wasn't so much smoke's eye as it was the way that his mechanics forced him to commit to pitches earlier than you would like to see and so the idea was not that Smoke had a bad eye, but just that he had too long of a swing for whatever reason, and he had to shorten up in order to see the ball a little longer, which would then help him make better decisions. Now, I think if you look at Justin Smoke's career, he hasn't made the changes necessary to become an actual good player. But since then, I haven't been able to stop thinking about this. With Eric Thames, we know

that he is not hurting for strength he is maybe the strongest player in i don't know the world i can't get over the fact that he was nicknamed god in south korea i mean i know that we all joke about like mike trow being a baseball god but no his nickname was just straight up god just like no no question this is just god playing baseball and still i'll be making outs more than half the time god is sometimes not good but so thames has the strength that much is clear uh his contact ability has gotten it's a very small sample so far we don't know what it means he's played the reds a bunch and that's always good for a hitter but his contact is better his discipline is better and i think that if you look at thames's swing what i'm struck by when i look at some of these highlight

clips that he's had so far this year is just how quickly he goes from, I don't know, like zero to 60, so to speak. You look at one of the swing changers, like Josh Donaldson or JD Martinez or even like Miguel Cabrera, and I'm not trying to suggest that Eric Thames is better than Miguel Cabrera, but you have these hitters who have the textbook load, like they have this high leg kick, and then they kind of move their hands back and up a little little bit and they coil like they're like they're a snake that's about to strike and it works for them great but Thames probably because he's just so strong he just goes from standing still he doesn't have a big leg kick he just sort of has a toe tap moves his leg a little bit forward and he barely moves his hands back he holds them just behind

his back shoulder about like shoulder or chin level and then he just attacks the ball his swing has gotten shorter he doesn't have one of those exaggerated uppercuts like you see i guess a jd martinez have so he is just so fast to the ball his his rate of swinging at pitches out of the zone is a lot better I heard from a baseball person just the other day that based on their own internal swing decision metrics, where someone like Joey Votto is always making the best swing decisions in baseball. So based on these internal swing metrics, Votto is always the best, but Eric Thames is way close to the top in terms of his selectivity. Now, if you go back to where he was in 2011 and 2012, he would chase a lot and he would frequently chase pitches down. If you look

at where he's swung so far this season, he has not chased many pitches at all down below the zone. So if Eric Thames keeps up something like the play discipline he's had for the first half month, my God, he has so much strength he barely needs to hit the ball to make it go a long way it's sort of like a aaron judge check well aaron judge is doing great himself so it's not like he needs tips but it's just when i guess he like when you look at someone who's little like brian dozer he kind of needs to put everything he has into the swing to hit the ball out and hey it works for dozer that's great but when you are eric thames you can simplify and still hit the ball

super hard he's once again he's slugging 1.000 he does not swing at balls he makes contact with strikes everything is there eric thames clearly is not the best player in the history of baseball even though he is god but from what i've seen so, I am buying him as a very good first baseman. I don't know. I don't know. Do you have sort of someone you like to compare him to what level he is? Well, I mean, he's definitely moved up probably as much as any player since the season started, maybe more than any player, because I figured he wouldn't have to be that great to be worth this contract, which is basically what Tanner is asking us. But I wasn't confident that he would be a good first baseman. You have to be a really great hitter to be a good first baseman. And when I had him on the

Ringer MLB show over the winter, not long after he signed that deal, I mean, that deal was a surprise, right? I was surprised when I saw that deal. The fact that it was three years, and maybe that makes it seem more surprising than it actually is because $16 million isn't all that much. But the fact that it was three years coming from Korea seems surprising. And when I asked him, even he said he was surprised. Like he didn't know that he would get any offers. He sort of expected to have to get a one-year deal and come over and prove himself. And then maybe he'd get a longer deal. So I don't think that he or his agent saw a multi-year contract coming. seemed aggressive. And I know there were some people who thought this was placing too much

faith in the statistical translations going from the KBO to the major leagues, which is based on a pretty small sample. And obviously, we've seen some players come over from Korea recently and been good, but it's still a gamble given what kind of hitter Thames was when he was in the majors before. And I also asked him, how do you know you're a different hitter now or do you think you're a different hitter now? Because it must be hard to tell if you are just facing this inferior pitching. And he was pretty open about the fact that he wasn't seeing a lot of great fastballs over there or anything. So he wasn't really being tested the same way that he is here. And he said he was confident that it wasn't just that he was beating up on comparatively bad pitching, but that he had become a much better

hitter, that he'd rebuilt his swing, he had a new approach, he'd gotten stronger, etc., and was just a different guy. And the Brewers evidently thought that was the case, etc. and was just a different guy and the Brewers evidently thought that was the case too. I remember reading a report, I don't know if it was accurate that they didn't even scout him in person, that they just saw video, I guess, and looked at the stats and that was enough for them to

make this kind of commitment. So I was expecting this to be basically like maybe a mid-tier first baseman like like i don't know maybe he would be kind of like uh trying to think of a comp like maybe like a greg bird and maybe greg bird is better than that too but just sort of like an above average hitter but not a star given the high first base baseline. And now he does look like a star because, as you say, he certainly has the power. We knew that.

But he has the plate discipline, which is the sort of thing that you can trust in the sort of samples that we have so far. And he's been really great. So now I don't know what kind of comp to make, but it seems like he's a good player. It seems like you can kind of come to that conclusion without being too fooled by small samples. I don't know. Obviously, there will be adjustments. I don't know. Has he been pitched in the zone a lot? Have guys been challenging him or have they been treating him with respect thus far whatever you want to define as respect half the pitches he's seen have been in the strike zone which is about where he was before he has seen a way lower fastball rate last time he was in the majors he saw 57 fastball so far he's seen about 50 fastballs and that's i think what you'd expect however most of that actually turns out to be an increase in cutters so i don't know what's going on everybody is just seeing 50 cutters

these days so i don't know obviously there's plenty of time for pitchers to adjust to eric thames and try to figure out what's going on i'll say uh i've seen a few references to eric thames having rebuilt his swing and obviously people who have spoken to thames or thames himself would know more about that when i look at video i don't I don't see a huge difference his stance is a little bit different but I'm not convinced that stance actually matters that much for what a hitter does his swing is maybe a little flatter I do think his hands are a little lower but the outline of Eric Thames now the the batting profile of him in 2012 versus Eric Thames in 2017 looks similar he has the same very I think

very distinctive sort of follow-through something Ken Rosenthal wrote in a column the other day has stuck with me where he said Thames used to have a problem with a lot of off-speed stuff and then he went to Korea and you know basically only sees off-speed stuff in South Korea so what better way to improve just by having three years of repetitions. But in terms of how he has improved preseason projection this year for Eric Thames on Fangraphs was for an 838 OPS and a 353 Woba. Currently, the updated projection after 13 games is a 869 OPS and a 365 Woba. So he's gone from projecting to hit as well as Charlie Blackman to projecting to hit as well as Manny Machado. So that's good. Obviously, you can only move your projection so much in 13 games,

but considering he's moved his Woba 12 points. Yeah. Well, so as far as Tanner's question, I mean, if he finishes the month hitting at all like he's hit thus far, just going by the dollars per war conversion, he will have been worth the money already, basically. So like unless he plays at a sub replacement level going forward, which seems highly unlikely, this seems like it's going to be a very large amount of surplus value, right? I mean, if it's a $16 million commitment and he ends up being even, say, a four-win player or something like that, I mean, he should be worth that entire three-year commitment by the all-star break. I mean, I don't know if it changes things that it's over three years. Like, if anything, it's over three years like if anything it it's less money because of inflation perhaps so in terms of 2017 dollars so just based on what we've seen so far it seems very hard to concoct a scenario where the brewers

don't come out well ahead here yeah and you wonder i do i don't know what something like this is going to mean for like i don't know you might go navarro or some of those other former major league baseball player flops you've gone to south korea and then hit really well and thames is the first one the first one to come back i think at least in any meaningful way i guess it'll be interesting come mid-season presuming the brewers don't keep winning more than half of their games they're probably going to drop sort of out of the race at some point, although maybe Herakles will continue to prop them up. I don't know. But it will be interesting to see if the Brewers think about moving him because clearly if you have an MVP level hitting first baseman who is signed for

basically nothing, that is an asset that is extremely uncommon to come across. However, I don't know how that would be received because what a gift this is for a rebuilding team in order to get fans to the ballpark and sort of advance your rebuild. And I don't know how far away the Brewers actually are. I mean, Keon Broxson hasn't hit well yet, which I'm trying not to address,

but there is enough positive there that's going on. Maybe the Brewers are not that far away. Maybe they were an Eric Thames away from being like maybe a 500-ish team for as soon as next season, if not even this season. They're 8-7. I don't know. But it will be a very interesting thing to see how Thames is doing and how the Brewers are doing come the middle of July

because this could be a pretty big deal. All right. Question from Eric, another Patreon supporter. Let's say we promote last year's NPB championship team to the majors as a 31st team. You are made co-GMs and you're told that you can remain in the majors as long as you don't finish with the worst record in baseball. That team will be demoted. The promotion happens right after the MLB World Series, and

assume you get to bring every member of the MPB championship team with you for the full season, which in this case means that we get Shohei Otani and Takuya Nakashima, so that's fun. The team will be based in the U.S., so they won't have to deal with an insane travel schedule. Let's say they become the Portland-Neponham fighters and they join the AL West with a reasonably balanced West Coast heavy schedule. You can leverage free agency, trades, the Rule 5 draft, everything available to MLB teams from November onward. than 31st in 2017. And if we're assuming that NPB talent level is some kind of quadruple A, like between triple A and the majors, and maybe the best team in the NPB or the team that wins the championship is a little better than the typical talent level, then you're not so far away that you couldn't dream about this. In fact, is it possible that a team that's not trying to win in the majors will be worse without doing anything

than the best team in NPB? Or is that a stretch, do you think? I guess I'm biased by the reality in which Shohei Otani is currently injured for a long time, which I know is not at the spirit of the question, but that kind of takes a bite out of it. Let's see. Can you make that team better than the Padres? I think the answer is... Well, I

really want to say the answer is yes. I mean, the Padres availed themselves of three Rule 5 draft picks last year, which someone named Ben Lindbergh has recently written about i'm troubled by the idea that the ham fighters fighters let's just say fighters their best hitter last year aside from otani was one brandon laird who has not hit in the major league so i think that the lineup would be terrible i think that uh i mean i mean even otani i think

would be a decent hitter in the major leagues. I am not convinced that he would be great. The pitching staff is, it's like, Otani, he's really good. But then you have, like, Anthony Bass, Chris Martin, Luis Mendoza, a bunch of just major league nobodies. So I think this team would not be very good. I don't know if it would be, a replacement level 48 win team as is because Otani could kind of make a big difference himself. If he's like a seven win player, then all of a sudden it's hard for the team to be completely terrible. But I don't know if you get

free agency. I don't know what the budget restraints are, but I would imagine that we have a lot of money to spend because this Japanese team cannot be that expensive. lot of money to spend because this japanese team cannot be that expensive if it helps this team went 87 53 and 3 last year so good team whatever that tells us man okay i think they would be quite bad but you could still you could fill it out with short signings you like instead of the phillies signing michael saunders you could go sign michael saunders you could just throw money at these veterans and i think that that would be if you knew that you would be relegated or demoted, whatever the word was, if you were the worst team, then I think you just throw money at sort of veteran bounce back guys, one, two year contracts, and you sort of have to tread water doing that until you build

up a farm system. Because I think the team would not hit the pitching staff would be incredibly thin, you would really be pushing Otani. I don't know if this was an American or National League team, but that affects what you do with Otani, because maybe you want to DH him. I don't know how useful or practical that would be between his starts, but this would lean very heavily on Otani being a quality player, which I do truly want to believe,

even in a circumstance in which he's not currently injured because the stuff is there and the power is there but boy that's important because kensuke tanaka led the team last year and played appearances he had two home runs yeah so if we're putting a percentage on your chances of not being the worst team in baseball in that first year. I don't know what to put. Maybe like, I mean, it depends obviously how much money you have to spend if you can go out and sign every free agent, then that kind of spoils the question because I think you could definitely get good enough. But assuming you can't, assuming you're not going gonna outbid every other big league team i'd say i don't know maybe just with the randomness of baseball and the randomness of making shrewd moves in the winter

that sometimes turn out better than expected i'd say you maybe have a like a 25 chance of not being the worst team in baseball, something like that. I wonder if you could actually even convince a free agent to sign with your team given the language barrier that they'd be dealing with in this major league roster that's just full of like 95% Japanese players. So I don't know what you'd do there, but I guess maybe you'd have to focus on building up the run prevention side as much as possible. So go sign, like instead of the Astros signing Charlie Morton,

you go sign Charlie Morton on the basis of his, like, four starts that were encouraging last year. And you just try to load up the pitching staff and the defense as much as you can and hope that you can score 600 runs. Yeah. All right. And a very similar question from Brian, who says, say I am a Saudi Arabian prince interested in buying out the Miami Marlins in 2017 before the 2018 free agent class.

I am able to afford a $1 billion payroll and I'm going to be acquiring Kershaw, Harper and Machado in winter of 2018. The thing is that I only have average knowledge of the game and I want to be the general manager and the manager of the club i don't have the best leadership qualities and can be hard to work with how long before the team wins a championship or implodes from my lack of intangibles so owner who's willing to invest much more money than any owner has in present day payroll but he also wants to do it all himself and be the gm the manager. Man, it's like imagining Jeffrey Loria except a slightly different version where he just goes a little bit better because I think that he really wanted to involve himself and he did really deeply involve himself in Marlon's decision making except that he did not invest much of his own money and also he was a complete goon. So in this circumstance, you have a guy guy i mean a billion dollars for god's

sake you can yeah you're going to win you're going to win you're just going to afford everything going into that free agent class you could conceivably sign everybody i mean and we can we can look at that because even the marlins were able to sign like what jose reyes and mark burley and those other people whose names i forgot that one off season and there was no reason to believe that the Marlins were going to like turn over a new leaf and become a respectable franchise but still people signed there because they saw the money and and that was it the team bombed so that's also informative and we've seen some big money like Red Sox teams bomb but when you have a billion dollars and the next

team is willing to spend a quarter of that yeah now granted if you can't if you're willing to spend a billion dollars i don't know how the luxury tax there plays out maybe you're actually having an effective payable of like five or six hundred million but still i mean that's that's an absurdity so uh just given the randomness of baseball you would run into problems or your team might underachieve or you know someone gets hurt there's nothing you can do about injuries but if you sign like kershaw harper machado the best players you still have stanton yelich or zuno i don't know what you're doing with the outfield here so you just kind of move people around i don't know but stand at first base i think you

would win a championship within three or four seasons and you would have a lot written about the weird clubhouse dynamics, but you could probably just throw money at those people to shut up. Yeah. I mean, this is a team that has already moved its general manager down to be the manager and has fired managers early in seasons very frequently. So this would be worse than that. I mean, short of players just outright walking out or refusing to play because this guy is, I don't know, like if he's abusing players in some way, like if he, I don't mean like physically like hurting them, but in the way that he's using them in games like say he never gives anyone a day off say he is just totally trashing the pitching staff he has all the starters throw complete games or he has relievers pitch every day or something like that where he's like actively endangering careers then maybe you could have the players lodge a

grievance of some sort and maybe this guy gets removed from the team i don't know like i think there are probably some workplace safety concerns where maybe this owner slash gm slash manager is just so terrible for the team that the players refuse to play for him maybe they just i don't know sit out the season or something risk action. I don't know what it would come to. But short of that, if it's just making some bad moves and generally being an unpleasant person, this team is going to be talented enough to overcome that. So I think it is doable. I mean, if he's a Saudi Arabian prince and he's like, you know, like has extremely regressive policies about like women or he's like all male employees or something like that, then I don't know that he lasts a season because players might just go on strike or something. But yeah, short of that, I think the way that baseball works, this team would win. team would win. You wonder where the line might be where baseball and baseball players would get sort of protective where they think, you know, you could justify going to play for the Yankees

a couple decades ago or like the Dodgers now because you read about the Dodgers and you read about how they have a system and they're doing things smart and they're not just about the money that they have. But at some point, a team is just laughably spending so much money that it sort of goes against the spirit of parity. And I know that there would be fun angles of having this sort of like big money all-star team against every single other team would be an underdog and that would be fun for conversation everybody would hate this team it would be kind of like the miami heat i guess yeah but you know crazier than that a team full of i don't know the basketball players the heat had i can only name one of them so never mind but i wonder where the line is where baseball players

who would be available would say, I can't do this. I can't bring myself to play for this team. This is bad for the game. They shouldn't be allowed to do this. And maybe that is something that the owner would run into where players would just react in such a negative way that he wouldn't be able to fill out his roster, except with a bunch of idiots and losers who are just doing money grabs and who are in no way motivated. i think there would be some sort of natural protective instinct i just don't know where that line is it actually probably is around a billion dollars uh as a payroll so something to be aware of i think that deep down players do want things to be pretty fair i think they don't want to see a team blow everyone else out of the water like this.

I think if it was like a one-year experiment where baseball is really suffering and they want to mix things up and have sort of like an XFL vibe, maybe you could do this as a one-time project, but there would clearly be a lot of room for failure or incompleteness, I guess. All right, did you have a stat segment?

Mookie Betts. Mookie Betts has not struck out in a very long time. So for anyone, yeah, and you might be reading about it again shortly on Fangraphs. Ah, okay. Well, let me say this much. So, so far, Mookie Betts has not struck out this season. And that is already interesting,

but it is further interesting because last season, he last struck out on september 12th there were many more games after that an important point just to play sort of wet blanket mookie bets did strike out one time in the playoffs it was his first playoff at bat it came against trevor bauer he struck out and so whoever is writing about this streak that he has and that probably includes me and also probably retrospect, since the post will probably go up before this podcast, something you have to point out. Mookie Betts has struck out. He struck out last October.

And that's just something that we conventionally overlook because for some reason we think of the playoffs as being different. In this case, it's very convenient to do so. So I'm going to do it, and I'm going to put in the note and then ignore the note that I wrote. So Mookie Betts has this season and last season he's gone 120 something plate appearances. I should probably know this. 128.

128. 128 plate appearances without striking out except for the one time he did strike out, but we're not talking about that. So just so you know, that is insane. There's an article written by Anthony Kastrovitz on MLB.com that talks about, there's a little visual here. This

article is a few days old, but the longest active streaks at that point without a strikeout. Mookie Betts, 122 plate appearances in second place. Jose Peraza, 43. That's not very many. He's at 47 now. Yeah. Great. So Perazaaza look out mookie bets process nipping at your heels he's only behind by 81 plate appearances the longest strikeout list streak i guess contact streak this century according to kestervins or whoever did his research juan pierre went 147 consecutive plate appearances without a strikeout in 2004 and of course i think people have a general understanding that strikeouts have gone up and up and up so it's really this is one of those things where it's really difficult to compare across even just the last decade or so

because strikeouts are so out of control that mookie bets should not be compared directly to those previous streaks but here he is anyway i have done a little bit of further research just for just for fun since last september 13th so since his last game without a strikeout he has posted i should have gone to a better page he's posted a 143 wrc plus that's pretty good yeah it's actually very good uh it's it's no thames eric thames has actually been twice that good which is absurd so mookie bets over his last 29 games, I think that is a 143 WRC+. I looked at Mookie Betts' 29 games leading up to the start of the strikeout list streak. So 29 ordinary Mookie Betts games up to and including last September 12th.

His WRC plus over that streak was 143. So Mookie Betts has actually gotten no better or no worse just in terms of his results since he stopped striking out I did a little bit more with the play index streak finder you can't really easily get like a streak of the most played appearances without a certain event taking place but you can get the most games in a row or the most darts in a row. So I just ran a few queries. I looked among all active players, the longest career streak of games without a single strikeout. This is just looking at games with at least one plate appearance.

So Mookie Betts is in first place. He has a streak of 29 consecutive games without a strikeout, not paying attention to the playoffs which again just shut up just shut up rookie bets first place 29 games second place albert pooholes in 2007 had a streak of 23 games without a strikeout and he batted less often moving on since the year 2000 i looked for the streaks of the most consecutive starts without a strikeout. Juan Pierre, 2004, 31 games, 31 starts without a strikeout over that span. He batted 405.

That's crazy. In 2001, Juan Pierre had a streak of 30 consecutive starts. He batted 378. That's crazy. And then Mookie Betts currently working on 29. Who are the Red Sox facing today? The answer is that the Red Sox are facing, who did they face yesterday? That'd be the easy answer. The Toronto Blue Jays. So he's going to be facing a very bad team apparently. And Francisco Liriano, a high strikeout pitcher. So I don't know if Mookie

Betts is going to strike out today. Odds are he probably won't. And as the last fun fact, I looked up, so the previous one with Juan Pierre topping Mookie Betts was looking at consecutive, longest streaks of consecutive starts since the year 2000 another option that baseball reference made available was looking at the most consecutive games not starts so i'm just going to read this up from fifth place fifth place is actually a tie so the most consecutive games minimum one plate appearance so this is not the same as like a playing time streak this is just games whatever it's a streak it's i just want to read it so a tie for fourth place i guess mookie bets is there 29 consecutive games again without a strikeout he's tied with levon hernandez who had 29 consecutive

games of course he batted less often he was a pitcher but he uh he had 43 at bats more played appearances than that he did not strike out then there there's 2001 Juan Pierre, those 30 games. There's 2004 Juan Pierre, 31 games. And in first place from 2001, 34 consecutive games without a strikeout. Do you have any guesses? Nope. Lenny Harris. Lenny Harris in 2001 went 34 consecutive games without a strikeout.

Now that involved, it looks like fewer than 50 plate appearances, but Lenny Harris shows up in first place on this list. He shows up in 10th place on this list. Lenny Harris also shows up in 21st place on this list. Lots of streaks of making contact. Maybe this is why Lenny Harris was considered such an effective pinch hitter because he could come to bat cold and put the ball in play. I do not want to suggest that he put the ball effectively in play, but he certainly did things with the ball that made the ball go forward. And so Lenny Harris technically topping

Mookie Betts on this list, even though Betts has batted like 70 more times during his streak. So point being, Mookie Betts has not struck out for a very long time. It's incredible. He did strike out though during the streak where he has not struck out. So I don't really know what we're supposed to do with that. Yeah, I looked at it in sort of a similar way. And I think you're right. He has definitely been very productive during this streak. If I had to choose, like if we said that this streak Mookie Betts is actual true talent Mookie Betts and before the streak Mookie Betts is a different true talent Mookie Betts I would definitely take the pre-strikeout streak Mookie Betts over the current model but it is very striking just how different he's been during this

streak and maybe that's obvious in that he hasn't struck out but just the decrease in his power the increase in his ground ball rate decrease in exit velocity like he's just been a completely different hitter during this stretch and he's picked up lately like he's he hit a home run on tuesday and he's had a bunch of extra base hits in the last five games or so so i would expect that he'll probably just go back to being regular mookie bets from this day forward he's had a bunch of extra base hits in the last five games or so. So I would expect that he'll probably just go back to being regular Mookie Betts from this day forward. He's had the flu. He had a knee thing. He's had pitchers change their approach against him. But it really is a very shocking streak just because of how high the strikeout rate is now.

But also just some of his stats, at least. He has been very valuable during this streak, but in a completely different way than he was before it. So yeah, Mookie Betts' strikeout streak, pretty fun. Yeah, what's interesting is, I'm sorry, his swinging strike rate has not moved that much. I'm going to assume he's just been good about fighting pitches off with two strikes or putting balls in play.

But yeah, this recent version feels vaguely like Jeff Kappen jury, if that makes sense. And I don't really love that as an approach i think it is though a testament to mookie betts's uh bat to ball skills i would assume that i haven't looked at the numbers yet i haven't gone in depth i still will which again has already happened for you listeners i guess this is weird every single time but i'm going to guess there's been some sort of adjusted approach lately and bets is just responding to that but then pretty soon i'm sure pitchers will figure out bets can hit anything so they'll change their approach and then he'll get back to his old power

hitting and occasionally swinging in missing ways yeah his uh zone rate has gone way down since late last season belatedly because i know that you wrote something about that last year when it started to happen and dave wrote something about it before it started to happen. It seemed like pitchers were underrating Betts because I guess he's not that big, even though he was hitting for a lot of power. So they have finally started avoiding the middle of the strike zone against him. And maybe that is part of this and that he's still figuring out how to handle that. But in the meantime, he's doing just fine. I have a very quick stat segment of my own.

We got a question from Scott who says, not sure this will hold up, but there's a neat line from Hanley. And at the time, Hanley Ramirez was 0 for 4 with three runs batted in. So Scott wondered what the most RBI in a game by a player who failed to get a hit was, and that's an easy play index. So actually three RBI in a hit list game, not all that uncommon, but four has only been done twice. So that is the record. And it's been done by two catchers almost 80 years apart. So Bob Farrell did it in August of 1923. And basically the ingredients that you need here, aside from just luck and timing,

you need a high-scoring game so that you get lots of plate appearances and so that you have a lot of guys on base when you come to the plate. So Bob Farrell was in a 15-8 game, and he got six plate appearances, and we don't have play-by-play for that game in 1923, so I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but we do have play-by-play for Ben Petrick's game in September 2000. And as you might expect, a Rocky in the height of the Coors Field offensive era would show up on this very exclusive list. So Ben Petrick was a Rockies catcher. This was a 15 to 11 game, and he had two RBI groundouts, a sack fly, and a bases loaded walk.

So that is how you can do that. And ultimately, Hanley Ramirez's line did not end like that he was i don't know exactly which game it was i think he was credited with a hit or he lost an rbi or something just as a quick related search because i was curious i just ran so this is now another a third stat segment i guess but i looked up using the baseball reference play index former sponsor the highest ever single game win probability added for a game in which a hitter did not have a hit so i have let's just again from fifth place on we have in fifth place for butter alomar at 0.714 fourth place we have a i just wanted to read this list

because of this name whitey weedleman whitey weedleman in 1946 batted two times he had a wpa of 0.746 i don't know why he struck out he also reached on an error that's probably the answer Chad Cruder third place Jim King second place first place Jeff Jenkins who in September 23rd of 1998 batted five times he went 0 for 3 with a walk a hit by pitch and a reach on error the details if I can see second inning he made an out in the fourth inning he made an out. In the fourth inning, he made an out. The seventh inning, he was walked. The eighth inning, he was hit by a pitch. And then in the bottom of the ninth, with two outs, and the bases loaded against Rod Beck.

Why don't I just open the line score so I can do this justice? Bottom of the ninth, the score is, let's see, seven to five Cubs. Jeff Jenkins playing for the Brewers. Rod Beck leading off Fernando Vini runs out. Mark Loretta singles jeff cerillo doubles and jeremy bernitz is intentionally walked then marquis grissom hits a foul pop fly there are two outs bases are loaded rodbeck is pitching to jeff jenkins and jeff jenkins reaches on e7 fly ball loretta scores no rbi unearned run cerillo scores no rbi unearned run bernitz scores no rbi unearned run. Cirillo scores, no RBI, unearned run. Bernitz scores, no RBI, unearned run. Jenkins to second base.

E7, that's left field. Playing left field at that point was one Brant Brown, who somehow committed seven errors as an outfielder that year. Brant Brown entered as a defensive replacement for Glenn Allen Hill. Wow. All right. Question from a listener named Ben. Think of your favorite position player you watched when you were growing up.

Now, how many years would it take for you to outwar him? Would you ever? Assume you're both starting 162 games and treated as a normal replacement level player. I assume he's 15 to 20 years older than you. normal replacement level player. I assume he's 15 to 20 years older than you. And the obvious idea here is that eventually his skills will deteriorate just due to the aging process. So in my case, my first favorite position players were John Ulrud and Bernie Williams, who are both 18 years older than I am and will continue to be as long as we are all alive. So I'm not sure that I ever catch up. I don't know that that is a big enough gap for me to catch up. Now, obviously, if one of them is, I don't know, like 90 and on his deathbed and I am 72 and fairly healthy, then sure. But if

we're all reasonably healthy, like, I don't know, I guess there is a point, but I don't even know if it would be like when they're 60 or when they're 70, like maybe there's an age drop off at which just the decrepitude is so significant that you wouldn't be able to stay in the lineup. You'd hurt yourself and I'm 40 and they're 58

and that's enough of a difference there You wouldn't be able to stay in the lineup. You'd hurt yourself. And I'm 40 and they're 58. And that's enough of a difference there that my physical recovery would be better enough to compensate for the fact that my baseball skills are still way worse. But man, I think it would be quite a while. It certainly wouldn't be now. Those guys are in their late 40s. And I'm quite confident that they could both easily outwore me. Oh, yeah. No question.

Yeah. My favorite was Edgar Martinez. Trouble here being he remains a major league hitting coach. Yeah. So not only is he a former the best DH of all time, but he's also still involved in the industry hitting the baseball on a daily basis. He is 23 years basically older than i am so not too different from old rudy williams i nearly said john old rude yeah because he hit a cycle in san diego which is hilarious but yeah edgar martinez i think i could out war him when

he's dead except that i i also couldn't because my war would be negative so actually dead edgar martinez would uh i guess that would be dead be dead Edgar Martinez would still have a better war technically than me. Yes. And even if you put, I don't want to dwell on the idea of a dead Edgar Martinez, I hope he lives forever but even if you put like a dead Edgar Martinez in the batter's box, if he just lied down, no one would ever throw him a strike. So like he'd reach

base, he would never, his base running score would be terrible. But yeah, I don't, just thinking specifically about hitting because you know Edgargar was a dh for a while it might not be too hard for me to learn better defensive skills i mean he has a background of being a defender yeah he was a third baseman but he's his knees are worse than mine he is a 54 year old man he hasn't played defense in like 20 odd years i'm sure he can't really run the bases either so my speed i don't think i can outrun david ortiz i do think i could outrun edgar martinez today uh-huh uh he has better instincts but i don't know i could learn a

little bit i could play uh downfield i guess but like he is so much better at hitting i know and if we're talking about dh first baseman, like when you see like super old baseball men, like maybe coaches and granted, those are people who are around the game, but they're like hands and their reactions just don't deteriorate as much as you would think. Like I'm going to guess that Ulrud at pretty much any age i mean he was a really good fielding first baseman i don't think there is an age like as long as he could stand and move i don't think i would ever be better at like scooping short hops or catching throws to me that sort of thing i don't know that i ever catch up and mean, the offensive gap is so crazy and enormous that, again, like as long as he can swing a bat, I'm not sure that I catch up.

So maybe it's different with Bernie if we're saying that he still has to play center. But of course, he doesn't necessarily have to play center. He could DH or something. Also, you could always just have the guy dh or play the least demanding defensive position to compensate for declining skills so i don't know like i guess maybe if i'm 60 and i've kept myself in shape maybe that's enough of a gap at that age i don't like is there do you think there there must be like a steepest part of the aging curve for humans, right? Like with baseball players who, you know, treating their actual reasonable career lengths, I think Nate Silver found that it was in your early 30s is like when you drop off most steeply.

So with actual human beings, I don't know if there is that kind of steep drop off. There probably is at some point. I don't know when that would be. But if you pick that part of the life cycle, then I guess maybe. But I'm going to say it's going to be quite a while until these guys are really breaking down. Yeah. So Barry Bonds, he's 52 years old. He was a hitting coach recently. There is the, I think sort of misstated, but still the story that I think it was last year in spring training, he won a home run derby contest in Marlins camp. I don't know if that's what actually happened, but Barry Bonds can still hit the ball out with ease. He's a 52 year old man. So my question to

you unrelated to Barry Bonds, Pete Rose currently he's 76 years old do you think within one year you could develop into a better baseball player than Pete Rose is man I mean he definitely doesn't look like he's kept himself in shape like sitting and signing autographs not the greatest cardio but gosh I mean his bat to ball skills I I'm sure, are still superior to mine. So I'll say yes. I'll say if we're talking all around value, yes, I could be better than a 70 something Pete Rose. So if we're talking about a 46 or whatever year age gap, yes.

But in this case, we're talking about an age gap that is less than half that. Man, I want to see like the annual best college team you can put together, like college all-stars against old-timer all-stars. I just want to see how that game goes. If you could get them playing at 100% intensity. Yeah, I mean, there's that Luke Appling home run in an old-timers game in 1982 when he was 75 years old. And granted, I think the fences were pulled in for this game. It wasn't a real home run, but it's still possibly better than I could do. And yeah, that is on YouTube if you want to check that out. So, I mean, he was a well preserved player and person, but it's possible certainly to retain the strength and

coordination at that age to hit a baseball hard if you were really great at hitting a baseball in your younger days. And Luke Epling only hit 45 home runs in 20 years. Yeah, right. So, okay. Yeah, I'm going to say I either never catch up to these guys or just very late in life when I have gone to seed myself. I don't know if you want to pick a particular age, but yeah, I'm going to say 60. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what's most dispiriting is that any of these people could almost immediately become better baseball writers than us. Probably. All right. Quick little lightning round. Two questions you have already thought about and answered via email. So this should not be too tough.

This question is from John. He says, suppose that during the course of an inning after a very unusual play followed by a controversial challenge and then umpire review, a play that seemed to end with two outs only ends in one. But after the next out, everybody walks off the field, none the wiser. No one recognizes anything for at least a few innings, but the video team that was batting at the time points it out before the game's end. What happens next? Could this ever actually happen? If individual players can forget the number of outs.

I believe the game would just proceed and everyone would say well that was clumsy i think that if you have both teams who are under the impression that the inning was over then the team that was wronged forfeits the right to complain of course it would be unintentional but the closest comparison i can come up with is that i have seen a handful of accidental three pitch walks which is a testament to the fact that nobody pays attention during baseball games if i if i google a three-pitch walk i see article from may 31st 2015 nats moving past vato's three-pitch walk okay in 2011 i believe uh the mariners accidentally maybe it was doug fister i don't know Some mariner walked Cameron Mabin on three balls.

So that happens, and I'm sure there are people who recognize. Obviously, nobody recognizes in the immediate. The managers, or at least the wronged manager, hasn't noticed. But someone over the course of the game will notice, especially now in the age of social media. People would tweet, like, hey, no, this is wrong. In the past, because teams have moved on with three ball walks, I think that's a much more subtle version of this example. But I believe things would just continue. And that would be it. And it would be kind of a funny story. I know that in hockey, you can have a goal scored, but sometimes when a puck goes into the net, it hits a thing and it comes out immediately so that

you can't really tell the puck went into the net the light doesn't go on and play continues and then you can have up to like several minutes elapse in the game and then at the next tv timeout or the next stoppage in play someone will the referees will go look at the video and they'll be like oh a goal was scored like seven minutes ago so then i what happens and this is very uncommon but then what happens is that then you do go back you award the goal and you replay the minutes i don't know what happens if there's like another goal scored after the fact uh i would love to know if this were effectively uh hockey term then if this were a different podcast effectively no i don't i don't have anything then then that's something that i would research i i'm not going to do the work right now but i would love to know the answer

to that but that's that's not baseball pertinent i guess we could ask we could try to ask like some i don't know do you have an umpire link yeah a former umpire i could potentially ask yeah well i'll yeah maybe i'll do that but yeah with you. This would probably just, the game would go on and everyone would talk about it for a while after, but that would be that. All right. And the last one, Evan says, imagine there's a slow pull heavy right-handed batter at the plate and a fast running right-handed pitcher. Could it ever work to shift the entire infield and have the pitcher cover first base on all ground balls? If the pitcher always immediately runs to first he will definitely beat the runner he's got 63 feet to run instead of 92 but could he beat him with enough time to turn around and catch no okay yeah it's uh it's too

frantic probably not worth it yeah it's a great way to end up with like a snapped or rolled ankle yeah and the pitcher would probably be distracted as he was trying to pitch, which would probably counteract any benefit you'd get from the batted balls. And he'd be so tired. Yes, that too. All right, so we will leave it there. Man, we are getting so many questions these days, which a lot more people are listening to the podcast, which is good. days which a lot more people are listening to the podcast which is good but we are getting more questions which i guess is also good but we feel guiltier about the fact that we are not able to answer as high a percentage of them but if we haven't answered your question that is why although

we're still doing our best to answer the interesting ones this is how my friday chats feel because there are like hundreds of questions that submitted and like a third of them end up being, are my questions going through? I can't tell if my questions are going through. It's like, yeah, I'm sorry. Your questions do go pledged their support just recently include David Peterson, Adam Bennett, Stephen Tidings, Brian Voll, and Dan P. Thanks to all of you. By the way, I'm sure you all know this by now, but we recorded before Buki Betts' strikeout list streak came to an end in his second plate appearance on Wednesday. He struck out swinging against Francisco Liriano, so his streak ended at 129, which is pretty impressive. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild, and you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. If you're looking for something else to listen to, Michael Bauman and I will have a new episode

of the Ringer MLB show up today. We talked to Ozzie Smith about the shift and defensive positioning and defensive stats and the current crop of young shortstops. It was pretty fun. We also talked to effectively wild favorite Michael Lorenzen of the Reds, who is doing some unorthodox bullpen stuff and also pinch hitting when he's not pitching. You can stream that at tunein.com slash ringer. We'll be back on iTunes very soon. Keep your questions and comments coming to me and Jeff at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We will be back soon. Streamer, ooh, Stalin's in the slipstream. Streamer, ooh, Stalin's in the slipstream.