Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1074: Time is a Flat Cycle

Episode Date: June 22, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan have an only slightly outdated discussion of Freddie Freeman’s potential position change and a Coors Field scoreboard message, then answer listener emails about a ground-rule-double derby, an amateur GM taking over a team, where pitcher mechanics come from, what writers root for, how to tell when a new metric makes […]

There isn't much that I have learned through all my foolish years Except that life keeps running in cycles First there's laughter, in those tears of fan graphs hello hi doing an email show anything you care to banter about before that let's see two things i guess we can start with uh there's some speculation out now so freddie freeman is going to return to the braves before too long he's coming back from a what is it a fracture to wrist that he sustained in the middle of may and that was the injury that was supposed to devastate the braves but uh since then they they've been able to, I don't know, keep playing as well as the Braves can play, I guess, because they traded for Matt Adams. Matt Adams

has hit pretty well since he came over to the Braves. And there is now... Really well. Very well, yes. Not quite Freddie Freeman before the injury well, but maybe Freddie Freeman, what he would have done well. So that is kind of like Eric Young Jr. hitting almost like Trout while Trout is out. That's exactly the comparison I was just going to bring up. Okay. And so now the Braves are trying to figure out, well, what do we do when Freeman's back? Because you might've seen Matt Adams try to play the outfield when he was with the Cardinals

earlier this year. We know that Tommy Pham did and he was not very good. So the Braves are thinking, well, we're probably not going to play Adams in the outfield, but we don't want to have him on the bench. So there is at least the whisper of a possibility that Freddie Freeman could return to play third base for the Atlanta Braves. Freeman, I think I read last played third base in the minors or maybe he was even high school or something in 2007. He was 17 or something.

Yeah, been a long time. Also, it's not often that you move one of the only players worth a damn on your team and certainly the he's the highest paid brave right right i don't know if we're counting matt kemp because the braves aren't paying him all of that money so he's at least the most important brave clearly the face of the team talking about moving him to third base now this is a season in which you know the braves kind of don't matter. So it doesn't really matter what you do with the defense. I doubt Freddie Freeman would represent more of an injury risk playing third base than first. I think it would be silly.

It would be a silly thing to do. Because if you think about what the Braves are talking about here, I understand the team has been light on hitting. Matt Adams has been really good. But this is Matt Adams. It's the same matt adams that the cardinals were willing to give up in the middle of may because they didn't have a place for him on the roster and there's something i also wanted to point out baseball prospectus keeps

track of what is at least purportedly quality of opposition and so this year let's see this year there have been 327 players who have batted at least 100 times. Baseball prospectus very helpfully splits this out by teams played for. In June, usually not a consideration, but Adams has played for multiple teams. Matt Adams, since joining the Braves, has faced the third easiest pitchers of anybody in baseball. Manny Pina is actually first. That doesn't matter to me. Sandy Leone, second.

That also doesn't matter to me. Leone second that also doesn't matter to me but Matt Adams is there he's in third place the third highest third easiest schedule of pitchers to face it's not a surprise because Tyler Flowers is fifth Adonis Garcia is sixth Dansby Swanson 15th turns out the National League East it's terrible so it's not surprising that Matt Adams has faced a bunch of really bad pitchers. And one would suspect that has helped inflate his numbers. He remains very presumably still Matt Adams. Not the kind of guy that you want to move Freddie Freeman for. But I am going to guess at this point that that is not what's actually going to happen.

Freeman is not back yet. He still needs to recover. I think he's not even swinging. Certainly not facing pitching. And probably by the time he comes back, Matt Adams will not be swinging like Freddie Freeman used to swing. Yeah, I don't know how this idea came about. If this were something where Freeman volunteered to do it or suggested it, maybe that would

be a little bit different. But yeah, Freeman is your future and your star. And so it would be weird to ask him or tell him to move to make room for Matt Adams. And I don't know what the advantage would be, even if Freeman isn't good at it. I mean, he's young enough and he's good enough at first base that I assume he could not embarrass himself completely if it were a short-term thing. I mean, what we saw, Miguel Cabrera moved back to third after having been a first baseman. And of course he had more experience at third, but he was also, I think, older or at least larger and less mobile. And he was bad, but it didn't ruin the Tiger season or anything. So in general, I think that the positional constructs, like just because someone is one kind of position doesn't mean that he couldn't be stationed at a different position for a little while, assuming there's not some kind of handedness reason why he couldn't play

that position. Like you could put a lousy corner outfielder in center if you wanted to for a few days and probably the expected number of plays that wouldn't be made because of that move would be smaller than you'd think I would I would guess just because a lot of plays are routine sometimes the ball just isn't hit to the guy it makes less of a difference than you might imagine it adds up over the course of a season but I guess you could get away with it but But yeah, if you're increasing someone's injury risk or putting your marquee player in the position of having to move for someone who was just added to the team, that seems like a bad idea. Related to that,

we get asked every so often about the idea of playing some really terrible defender at a really premium position and how costly it would be. Like imagine, I don't know, Freddie Freeman as a shortstop, just as a little glimpse of how sometimes that doesn't matter. I can tell you, I saw a tweet of Gene Segura. He's on a rehab assignment in AAA Tacoma. He's played something like 14 innings, I think, the last two games for Tacoma at shortstop and has not been involved in a play,

not even a put out, no assists, no grounders, no liners, no anything. So sometimes shortstops just kind of get to stand there and watch Which is a lot of fun Yeah, I think Russell Carlton might have done an article once On what happens when players switch positions defensively I have the vague idea that maybe it does hurt their defense a little bit And that it's not something you can just automatically do And just start learning a new

position or go back to playing a position you haven't played in a really long time and have it be a seamless transition. And maybe if you're struggling defensively, it starts to affect you offensively. So there's all sorts of reasons why it wouldn't make sense, especially because it's the Braves and they don't really need to win anything all that urgently. So I'm sure that this is probably the last we'll hear about Freddie Freeman, third baseman. Probably. Okay. So last thing, and this is actually something that was emailed in. I'm sure you saw it as well. Actually, so is that. Andy asked us the question about Freddie Freeman not being a third baseman. So retroactively, that was a listener email answer.

Freddie Freeman not being a third baseman. So retroactively, that was a listener email answer. Perfect. We kicked this off early. So I think it was Sunday afternoon, the Colorado Rockies defeated the San Francisco Giants 7-5. This is coming from an email from one of the several Erics that listened to this podcast. So this was a game that the Rockies won. After the win, they had 20 more wins than the Giants. So it's sort of the outcome one wouldn't have expected. game that the Rockies won after the win they had 20 more wins than the Giants so it's sort of the outcome one wouldn't have expected anyway the Rockies blew a lead in the top of the ninth and the Giants blew a lead in the bottom of the ninth Rockies 175 and the heroics were provided in the bottom of the ninth Mark Melanson was pitching to Nolan Arenado and on the first pitch Arenado hit a game-winning walk-off three-run home run Nolan Arenado I believe the factoid is that he became the first player ever to not only hit for the cycle, but to complete the cycle

with a walk off. Was it just home run? Or was it lead changing home run? Or I don't remember exactly what the point was. But you know, it was some sort of like borderline fun fact kind of cycle. But the historical part is that Nolan Arenado did hit for the cycle by hitting that home run. However, Nolan Arenado also won the baseball game by hitting the home run. So listener Eric pointed out he only got a glimpse of it. But as they were showing a replay of Arenado's home run, he got a glimpse of the scoreboard after the ball. This is in Coors Field, of course, after the ball flew over the fence and the scoreboard did not say home run or Rockies win. Most importantly,

it did not say Rockies win or walk off victory or hooray Rockies. It said cycle. The scoreboard celebrated the cycle that Nolan Arenado had hit in lieu of celebrating the fact that Nolan Arenado's cycle completing home run won the baseball game in very dramatic fashion. I don't have a further point. I just felt like this is something that people should be aware of. I don't think either one of us very highly values the cycle. Of course, a cycle is more uncommon than a win. It's probably it's definitely

even more uncommon than a walk off win. And I would go so far as to suggest it's more uncommon than a walk off win on a a home run but still cycle very much a stupid individual accomplishment and a walk-off home run is a fantastic team accomplishment it doesn't matter what the scoreboard says but i feel like the decision should be easy under any circumstances in which the home team wins the game the scoreboard should say home team wins unless maybe maybe well no obviously a perfect game or no, no, obviously a perfect game or no hitter. Then you say perfect game or no hitter. I think that one you can't argue, but a cycle is not even close to being an accomplishment on that level. see what else was on the scoreboard and maybe it did say other things about the Rockies winning and we just happened to see that moment that Eric saw a snapshot in time where it said cycle for all we know it was revolving between different messages I don't know but I completely agree the

cycle I guess that's the thing that will be remembered maybe you could say about that moment right because the Rockies might win, I don't know, 90 games or something if they continue playing well. So you might not remember seasons from now, another walk-off victory, even if it was on a home run by Arnauto, but you might remember it because it was also a cycle. So maybe that is what really cements it in your mind. But I agree in the short term, the most significant thing is that the Rockies won and won in a walk-off. And that is the thing that should be celebrated at that moment.

Agreed. All right. Other emails. Let's take one from Harold. Would you watch a ground rule double derby? I think I would. I feel like it would be way harder. Maybe it would be the most boring thing ever. Any other derby style events that I would. I feel like it would be way harder. Maybe it would be the most

boring thing ever. Any other derby style events that you think might be interesting? Bunt base hit derby, maybe? Okay, so I was thinking about this and the idea of a ground rule double derby on its face is silly. But what appealed to me was the idea of if you in the home run derby, your goal is okay, I'm just trying to hit the baseball hard, and it only has to exceed a certain threshold, and then I get a home run. The credit is the same. What I like about the idea of a ground rule double derby, even though it would be unwatchable, is the idea of the hitters having to be very precise with their contact, and sort of having to aim, at least in a trajectory sense.

So, even though I wouldn't watch a grand world double derby it did give the idea that i would love to see a batting accuracy derby where like yeah i don't know how many swings you would get but you have some i don't know bat control artists let's say i don't know miguel cabrera or joey vato or anyone he goes up there it takes some number of swings and then before each pitch with enough time for him to notice some portion of the field or the bleachers behind the wall lights up and then the hitter has to try to hit the ball into that area i don't know how it's recorded it should be easy enough to just tell if he succeeds with the eyes but i think it would be a lot of fun you have parts of the field that are lit up

you have parts of the bleachers that are lit up so it's kind of a home run derby but it's also a left field home run derby or a right center home run derby, but it's also a left field home run derby or a right center home run derby or a spray a ground ball the other way, batted ball derby. And I think it would be a lot of fun. It would be sort of the baseball equivalent of the shooting accuracy skills competition

that the NHL has. It would incidentally also be fun to have that competition for pitchers, although the pitchers might take something off so that they're not throwing at 100%. And then I don't really know what we're testing anymore for hitters wouldn't really be the same i think we could learn a lot whether it's by learning that these players have phenomenal back control or by learning that they don't because it's really hard to hit like a line drive the other way if you don't have that kind of swing so i'd like to see it i don't think it

would mess hitters up if anything coaches might like it more than the home run derby, which purportedly messes up swings, even though I think that's been debunked. So that. But yeah, I would like that too, because I've written about that before, how when people talk about hitters who face the shift a lot, they say, well, just go the other way. Just hit the ball away from the shift. And that is a difficult thing to do if you aren't used to doing it and you don't naturally do it. And so we've seen some guys have some success doing it. We've seen others struggle doing it. Mostly we've seen people not attempt to do it. And so, yeah, if you were facing game speed pitches, I think that would

be important because if it's BP, I think any hitter could place the ball more or less where they want to, or at least hit it to a section of the field where they want to. I think what makes it so difficult is that the ball is coming in fast and it has crazy movement and spin. And so you're just really trying to put the bat on the ball in some forceful way and you don't have time to aim it exactly where you want it to go. taking BP or facing a pitching machine or something. If it were facing real pitching, and I guess it would have to not be real major league pitchers, but I don't know, maybe a quad AAA guys or AAA guys or recently retired guys or something like that, that could approximate major league pitching. I would definitely watch that. Let's just call them, I don't know, Bronson Arroyo or something hypothetical. So I'm not sure. I wouldn't want to see it off the tee. I'm not sure if I would mind if it was done against a BP pitcher. You know, it's still 60 to 75 miles per hour. It's close enough. I think that if you had people

throwing like 90 or 95, obviously they're not mixing and breaking balls, but if you had them throwing big league fastballs that might make it a little too challenging. The thing with the NHL shooting accuracy competition is of course, no one ever gets stationary. The thing with the NHL shooting accuracy competition is, of course, no one ever gets stationary uncontested shots in the NHL except in shootouts, which are very different. But that competition does not replicate any sort of game situation, but it's still kind of fun to see who's really good and who's not so good. So even though it would be fun to see it against kind of real pitching, I think I would be satisfied with just the regular home run derby pitching. I think I would be satisfied with just the regular

home run derby pitching. All right. Question from Spencer. Let's say it's opening day of this year and you magically become GM of a team that is both good and has a good farm system. For this hypothetical, let's use the Astros. All of your subordinates in the front office treat you with the same amount of respect that they would give Jeff Lunau, i.e. every move you make won't be intensely scrutinized because you're new and have no experience. How long do you think it would take for your inexperience to show itself on the field? I would think at least a couple of years due to the amount of talent that is under control for a while. How long do you think you would last? Okay. Well, we've probably both been asked a bunch of times before,

do you think you could be a major league GM? I suspect speaking for both of us, the answer has always been no, except maybe 15 years ago when I certainly thought I was smarter than I was. Then I lost $300 betting on baseball in about 20 minutes and I never did it again. So neither one of us is qualified to be a major league general manager. We have a lot of drawbacks, but what do you think would be your biggest drawback if you were a baseball executive? think would be your biggest drawback if you were a baseball executive? I would say there are so many to choose from. I mean, I would think that if initially my lack of connections would be a problem because if I were starting a front office from scratch, I'd have to convince people to work with me and for me. And I think that's such a big part of what makes a GM successful is the people that the GM hires to do a lot of the hard work.

And so they all have connections from working in baseball for many years and they command respect. And so if I were suddenly to be put in charge of a team, I don't know that anyone would want to work for me and I wouldn't know which people to hire. And so my own inexperience would be compounded by the inexperience of my staff, which would be made up entirely of fan graphs and baseball perspectives writers, probably. So I think that would be my greatest weakness because if I were just plopped down into a current GM's role and everyone was already hired and everything was running smoothly, I think I could fake it for a while or at least have a much better chance of faking it because everyone else would be competent and experienced and they would keep doing their jobs. And they'd come to me and ask me to sign off on their decisions or make a decision between multiple options or whatever. And that I think I could handle a little bit better. I also think that negotiating is something that I would be bad at, or at least would be bad at initially. So talking to agents or trying to get contract terms down, that kind of thing. Obviously, I have no

experience doing that sort of thing. So I'd be totally out of my depth there. And when it came to making moves with other organizations, again, I'd be at a big disadvantage because I wouldn't have relationships with these people other than some that I've talked to for articles and stuff, but that's about it. And so I wouldn't be able to just call them up and have that rapport that GMs who've worked in the league for a while develop. Right. I think that if I suddenly took over the Astros and then someone was like, oh, why don't we try to trade for, I don't know, Sonny Gray, call the A's. I'd be like, I don't know how to do that. What's the number?

What number do I call? I think I agree with you on what you said that would be a drawback for both of us. I don't have any connections. I don't know how to build the staff. I also that there would be a lot of just little like little rules that you have to follow or procedures you have to follow. Like, I don't know how to file a waiver claim or all of that stupid paperwork that you have to do. I don't know how to call somebody up or send somebody down. Yeah. And of course, the GM doesn't actually do those things. Probably they have someone they delegate, but I wouldn't know who to delegate it to. And I wouldn't have anyone who did know how to do those things. So yeah.

Yeah. In terms of roster management, I think if either one of us was put in charge of the Astros, that would be a really difficult team to screw up, certainly in the short term. Now, if pitchers keep getting hurt, then that's going to get more complicated because you'd have to make a move and you'd start to feel a little bit of panic because you'd think, oh, no, I actually have to do something. But otherwise, you could act very conservatively. The team is pretty good, best team in the American League, World Series possibility. So it would be really difficult to mess up the astros in the short term but i think there would be enough brewing

internal discord because even if you become gm and everyone respects you just the same at the start it wouldn't take very long for people to realize that you don't really know what you're doing about a lot of things you don't know who to talk to you don't know how to behave all that ordinary little stuff that we don't really ever see so you'd have some leaks eventually start coming out people talking about all this this front office is messed up it doesn't really know what it's doing it's acting unprofessionally it's this guy doesn't even wear long pants in the office stuff like that and uh that wouldn't really have an immediate effect on the roster. The players couldn't care less. There's a great divide between the front office and the actual product on the field, but it would scare off potential future employees to say nothing of trying to negotiate

with teams and agents down the line. So it would be a slow deterioration, but eventually you'd be forced into having to make a bunch of moves. And then that's probably a million times more difficult than it seems when you play fantasy baseball. So I'd give it by the end of year two, I think cracks would start to show and the team would be in considerably worse shape than it would be when you took over. Yeah, it would be weird because you wouldn't have Jeff Lunau's memories, presumably. be weird because you wouldn't have Jeff Lunau's memories, presumably. So you wouldn't have his personality. So everyone would realize you were alien Lunau masquerading as Lunau immediately, and no one would want to work with you and everyone would be creeped out and wonder why you had amnesia or whatever. So immediately there would be lots of front office discord.

But yeah, the Astros are so good that I think they would still win the division and do whatever they were going to do and probably keep being good for years to come. I don't know that you can really screw up what a GM has spent years building very quickly. Was part of the hypothetical that you not only take over the team, but that you also look like Jeff Lunau? Was that part of the question? I guess not. But part of the question was that they treat me with the same respect as Jeff Lunau. And I don't know why they would do that if I'm not actually Jeff Lunau. So yeah. All right. Question from Johnny. Quite simply, how does a young beginning pitcher first develop

his mechanics that usually stick with him through his career? How much is taught and how much is intuitive? There seems to be a natural character that starts from a very young age that gets refined as a pitcher grows and develops, but often he still retains the same quirks. And you were a pitcher, so you can probably answer this question better than I can. A little bit, but I was also a pitcher who only started playing organized baseball in high school, so I kind of missed out on the whole youthful experience. I only learned with family and friends, and then I decided I should take this into a game situation, which was a grave mistake. So I think if I had to guess based on my own very limited experience, which is insubstantial, I would think that a pitcher's delivery, the component that is most

natural inherent to the pitcher himself is the arm slot. Your sort of general throwing action, I think, just sort of comes naturally because if you give a young person a rock and say, throw this rock, that young person will throw the rock in whatever way feels most natural to that person. And then if you tell that kid to throw 100 rocks, then it won't take very long before the child, boy or girl settles on a consistent sort of arm slot that just feels like it's how the body wants to throw. Some people are going to want to throw more sidearm. Some people are going to want to throw more over the top. I think that's mostly instinctive. It's obviously

not always that case. James Paxton lowered his arm, and after becoming a professional, that was more comfortable. Brad Peacock, someone I just wrote about. I just want to bring that up. I've been mocking Brad Peacock's strikeout boost this year just because it's so inexplicable to me that Brad Peacock would be a strikeout person. I know. And yet he is. And, yeah, as you wrote, it's just like he, I guess he had an injury and maybe because of that, or maybe not because of that. I don't know. He dropped down and now throws from a lower

angle and that's changed his whole movement profile and now he's good. And so, yeah, you, you wonder whether if he had always just thrown from that angle, whether he would have been good before. Yeah. And, and that's something that i think he had mentioned that he threw a little bit uh lower when he was in high school i don't know maybe i'm making that up it's certainly something clayton kershaw used to do so that's interesting he raised his arm over time but in any case i also have been mocking brad peacock because i couldn't just from looking at like the player page you don't see anything that's really changed except then you go underneath and oh, he throws completely differently. Three fun facts, I guess, about Brad Peacock.

One, he was a 41st round draft pick, which is uncommon for those people to be successful. Peacock also kind of a somewhat forgotten component of the, I don't know what to call this, I guess the Jed Lowry trade. Is that the centerpiece of this? Also part of the Gio Gonzalez trade in 2011. Is that the centerpiece of this? Also part of the Gio Gonzalez trade in 2011. And a third fun fact, Brad Peacock, his full name, at least according to baseball reference, is Bradley J. Peacock. I don't know what the J stands for, but I think that Bradley J. Peacock sounds better than Brad Peacock. You should go by Bradley J. Peacock, probably not BJ Peacock. That would be a bad idea. Anyway, so there are pitchers who change their arm slots as they become professionals. So those are things that can be tweaked. Every single thing about a pitcher can be tweaked, even their brains. But I think that certainly when you are a young developing pitcher, you'll have your natural arm angle and the rest is going to be coached. You're going to learn, well, how much do I drop down on my back

leg when I'm pushing off the rubber? How much am I actually supposed to push off the rubber? What do I do with my front foot when I'm coming around? I'm going to guess that a pitcher's mechanics will develop naturally. I don't know when coaches actually start trying to mess with mechanics because when you're in little league league no one really cares how you play but you still have to do something as a coach which is usually like that's where you throw the ball throw the ball to that base instead of the other one but at some point coaches do start manipulating you physically i wish i had put that in a different way but you know like when you have your your leg kick as a pitcher and where you drop your foot probably comes naturally at first.

And then over time, you try to tweak that. And whatever you do with your glove arm as it's outstretched, that's going to come naturally, but then that's going to be tweaked. So it's all going to be tweaked, but you presumably start with a natural sort of reach back motion and then front leg motion and arm slot. And then from there, it gets tweaked, probably starting somewhere around nine or 10 or 11, depending on how competitive you are. Or maybe some people model their motion after a favorite pitcher of theirs. Although I guess it would be unusual

probably to have a favorite pitcher that you'd want to mimic before you ever attempt to throw a ball. So maybe that's not so common, but just whoever teaches you to throw, whether it's a coach or a parent, probably you model yourself after that person or they impart whatever their beliefs about the proper way to throw is to you. But yeah, I assume it's just some combination of nature and nurture like everything else.

Now imagine that you were a young person and your favorite pitcher used to be Brad Peacock And then he chained his delivery You've been living a lie your whole life Alright Question from Greg This is from last week Keon Broxton just hit a home run A long home run

Naturally the first thing I thought was Well Jeff's going to love that And that got me thinking I know that neither of you are fans exactly And And I know that in the past, you've talked about rooting for a game outcome or for a stat to play out fittingly. But I also know that you talk about the banality of baseball in general. So how do you do what Jeff must do when Keon Braxton hits a long home run? How do you maintain enjoyment of the game? As a fan, it's easy to put a finger on the derivation of our enjoyment, our own team successes. But as a writer, can you put a finger

on the heart of your own enjoyment? Well, I enjoy when James Paxton is good. It's been a rough couple of weeks. Broxton also needs to stop striking out. I don't even look for him to have hits anymore. I just look for him to have games where he strikes it less than two times. It's really disappointing. So, I mean, on the one hand, I am still kind of a Mariners fan. I enjoy when they win more than when they lose. So that hasn't completely gone away. But as a writer, and I'll give you the floor in a minute because your perspective might be a little bit different or it's probably exactly the same. I root for baseball to be surprising. I want it to be predictable enough that I don't lose a job because baseball

is just completely random and people pick up on the fact that we don't know what we're doing. But I like for there to be stories. I like for there to be continuing stories. I love, for example, what Cody Bellinger is doing. It's just fantastic that he's having one of the greatest rookie starts of all time. That's a lot of fun. And then it's fun to want to examine that in different ways. It's sort of a challenge to figure out a new way to write a Cody Bellinger is good article because there have been so many hundreds of them over the past few weeks with a case like, I don't know, someone like Broxton or Paxton or some sort of some guy that we have individually championed. Of course, it's fun to see those players succeed, but you have to know that you can't really predict where these players are going to go. Broxton seemed really promising last year based on the half season of data, and he seems somewhat

less promising this season based on also another half season of data, but a lot of his indicators have gotten worse. So he's just kind of changed as a baseball player. I don't know what to do with that, but it's interesting to see that he's gone a little off the tracks. But I don't lose my mind when Keanu Broxton hits a home run. I root for him a little more than I root for, I don't know, Eric Sogard, I guess, because I don't have any attachment to Eric Sogard. But if I write about him and if I write about how he's doing better, then maybe I will have an attachment to Eric Sogard. These things are fluid. I don't really have actual personal favorites. I just kind of like when things are interesting. And the good news about separating yourself from just rooting for one team is that there are 30 teams out there and 750 players who are trying to keep things really interesting. And

generally, they are successful. Yeah, I think that with me, it has just a lot to do with the intellectual exercise of baseball more so than the wins and losses and the arc of the season and the pennant race and all of that. And I think it also has to do with how baseball is constantly changing. Like there's a lot of hand-wringing about strikeouts and home runs and how baseball's offensive environment is different and all of that. And sure, some of those changes probably aren't great and might need to be corrected at some point. But what if baseball never changed? Like what if it was just sort of the same baseball every year and the players were different and the teams were different

and it all played out differently, but the game itself was the same and the same number of runs were scored and there were the same number of strikeouts and home runs every year? That'd be pretty boring, at least to me, or at least that would remove a big part of the reason why I love baseball, which is this constant push and pull and the balance of power between batters and pitchers and one side gets an edge and the other adjusts or doesn't adjust and then

the other side finds something else. So that I think tug of war is maybe the most fascinating part of it. And just the exercise of planning a roster and building a roster. Like I wrote an article about the Brewers yesterday and the Brewers, you've written a lot about them too. And the way that they're doing this rebuild is interesting. And so I don't know if I'm rooting for them exactly, but I'm maybe more interested in the Brewers than I would be in the typical team just because they seem to be going about this differently and they've found talent in a lot of unusual places and kind of gone after depth guys that maybe were overlooked or blocked or had lost some of their luster. And they are

trying to pull off this rebuild without ever being completely terrible for a few years like the Astros and the Cubs were. So I am interested in how that plays out. And so I'm paying more attention maybe to the Brewers than to some other team. It won't make me sad if the Brewers suddenly start playing badly, but it is one of the things that is heightening my attention to baseball. So that sort of thing, or yeah, if I am writing an article and I want something to work out a certain way so that my article will be better, then that's a very self-interested short-term kind of thing that I root for. Or if I stake my reputation to some slight extent on a player's success, then it benefits me if that player is better after I write that article, which I don't think makes me not impartial or anything or ruins my ability to think objectively. But I still might hope for a certain outcome over another outcome.

outcome. And of course, it's possible to appreciate the human interest stories in baseball and just root for guys who had a hard time getting to the big leagues or are great people off the field or good personalities or something like that, or root against guys you don't like for opposite reasons. I'm probably not quite as motivated by that. I guess at a certain point when you've been following sports for a long time, it almost feels to me like the great uplifting stories blend together a little bit. I guess this is sort of a jaded, cynical way of looking at things, but it's like, oh, okay, this is another one of those stories about overcoming hardship and struggles and everything doesn't make it any less admirable, but it's just like, you know, I've read stories in this genre before. I'm less excited by this type of story.

Probably just makes me a bad person and makes that person a good person, but those are good reasons to root for players too. Just another one-handed pitcher. Soulless robot like me. So, yeah, all these reasons. If there's just some freak or phenomenon like Aaron Judge or whatever, I want Aaron Judge to keep hitting homers. I don't want pitchers to expose the hole in Aaron Judge's swing or whatever, although in a way that would be really interesting too if Aaron Judge were the best player in baseball for half a season and then suddenly got exposed because pitchers found his weakness.

That would be interesting, too. That's an example of the push and pull and the balance of power that I'm talking about. So either way, when someone stands out for doing something unusual, when you're looking at the same players and stories and stats year after year. Anything that is out of the norm stands out and naturally your attention is drawn to it. So I think we've covered most of the reasons why baseball appeals to us. Yeah, baseball analysis from the outside, I think seems pretty easy, pretty straightforward. You would remark to someone in responding to an email that it's actually quite a bit more difficult than that. And I agree with you. Any sort of easy analysis article always ends up taking about seven hours because there are just so many variables to try to correct for. But

when I was a pitcher in high school and I got a comebacker off the brain, so I suffered a pretty severe traumatic brain injury. After I recovered from that, I had the idea in my head, well, I was really impressed by the people around me and And I want to become a neurologist, or at the very least, I want to become a neuroscientist. So I went to school, and I thought I was going to try to become one of those things. And I thought, no, that seems really hard. And I decided to shift to a different subject matter. And then I decided to shift into writing about baseball. Sorry, mom. But what I like about writing about baseball now and what I've liked about it for the past 10 or 15 years is that when you are doing baseball analysis, it's like you get to run sort of scientific experiments that you come up with as often as you want to. You can get

results of those experiments quickly. And it appeals strongly to the scientific side and inclinations of my brain. But the other part of it is that there are no stakes, really, certainly for me. Like, sure, it's my own professional reputation on the line. And this is a career that I've worked to build. But there are not lives that hang in the balance like if you worked on people's brains. So I like that I can run experiments like I would if I were a scientist, but I can get results very quickly. I can self-publish and at the end of the day, it's not actually important because I don't think I want to have an important job that

seems like a lot of stress. All right. You want to do a stat segment? Sure. I don't know how to introduce it. I'll just go right into it. Okay. So this year, Yulieski Gurriel, who I guess we're calling Yuli Gurriel. That must be a change that happened this year. Sort of like Norichika to Nori. So Yuli Gurriel this year has walked six times. He has been hit by five pitches. The former of those numbers is surprising to me.

The latter, well, I hadn't even considered it before. So he's one player to keep in mind. I've had my eye on Josh Harrison also this season. You might remember that earlier this year, Josh Harrison was hit in four consecutive plate appearances, which is hilarious. He has never really shown much of a tendency to get hit by pitches before. His previous career high was seven hit by pitches in a season. This year, he's already been hit by 14. So clearly, harrison has changed his stance to become a little more hit by pitch prone he leads major league baseball harrison has 14 hit by pitches he's walked only

17 times so that drew my attention this is something i probably look at every year or two but it drew my attention to the idea of someone actually getting hit as often as they walk so i went to the trusty play index. You can also do this at Fangraphs, but I play indexed it because again, I don't have that much in the way of brand loyalty. And I decided to look up historically since 1901, players who have finished seasons with hit by pitch totals, at least as high as their walk totals. So I ran a search for qualified players. So the specifications for that have changed over time but i believe baseball reference uses an average of 3.1

plate appearances per game per team game so i went through baseball history and running that query i came up with 13 names 13 player seasons where the player has finished a season with no more walks than hit by pitches. Going back, we've got Dan McGann. That is a fantastic name to say. Dan McGann in 1901. Dan McGann. I'm actually just going to sit here and say Dan McGann for the next 35 minutes. Dan McGann. Dan McGann. Dan McGann in 1901, hit by 23 pitches, walked 16 times. So I told you there are 13 player seasons. Four of them are from 1901. I don't know what was going on.

Not a whole lot of walks. Baseball was different. Jack Warner, Billy Maloney, Art Nichols. Those are the four players in 1901 who had this happen for them. Jack Warner shows up again in 1903. Then we have Whitey Alperman. That's an extremely 1906 baseball name. He was hit by 14 pitches, walked six times. Boss Schmidt. Boss Schmidt. What was his real first name? Let's check that out. His real first name was Charles. Okay, well,

he was also the boss. Boss Schmidt was a catcher. I guess he was the boss on the field he played for who cares he was hit by seven pitches he walked five times 1907 whitey alperman shows up again in 1909 six hit by pitches two walks not a whole lot of walks 1915 and 1916 art fletcher did this twice in a row 1916 also jack berry shows up just as many hit by pitches as walks 1918 Oli O'Meara 10 hit by pitches 7 walks I have read to you now 12 player seasons most recent 1918 fast forward 2017 we have one player currently on pace for more hit by pitches than walks and I don't know I'm gonna guess you don't have a name in mind do you have a name in mind could? You've probably never even said this name out loud before. I'm not sure. Okay, then probably not. It's not Brandon Guy or I see.

It's not Brandon. No, it's Jose Peraza. So you have, I'm sure, actually said Jose Peraza before, probably even to me. But in any case, Jose Peraza this year has batted 267 times. He has been hit by six pitches. He has drawn five walks. His walk rate is under 2%, which is laughably low. I wouldn't say that Jose Peraza is actually likely to pull this off, but he would be the first player to do it in just about an entire century of baseball, which is a very long time. Jose Peraza, just glancing through the minor leagues. He did not, well, he never has really walked, but he did not get hit by a whole lot of pitches when he was in his very first year.

When he was 17, he was playing in the Dominican, the Braves affiliate. He was hit by 10 pitches. He walked 15 times, but anyway, something to pay attention to. Jose Peraza, not very good, but good enough to keep playing, certainly on the Reds. And he's got a chance at a little bit of, I guess, well, it's certainly remarkable history, even if it's not, you know, good history. I decided to do another search where so that looked at just qualified players. But of course, Peraza can't quite compare to the other 12 player seasons on that list yet, because he's only played a little under half of a season so i lowered the plate appearance minimum to 250 plate appearances so peraza still fits that and when i ran that search i came up

with 23 names or at least 23 player seasons again it all starts with good old 1901 dan mcgann which is i need next week i'm going to find some other fun fact on Dan McGann because we got to have a Dan McGann episode. So a lot of the same names, but then we've got the same 12 player seasons from 1918 to 1901. But there has been a good amount of more recent precedent. So since 1996, we've got 11 player seasons that qualify, given, again, a minimum of 250 plate appearances. player seasons that qualify given again a minimum of 250 plate appearances you've got brian johnson with four hit by pitches four walks got sean dunstan five and two fernando vina 11 11 inard diaz 10 and 9 reed johnson makes two appearances in 2003 and 2011 uh ryan domit shows up here aaron rowand mike zanino in 2014 17 hit by pitches and 17 walks and of course brandon

guyer is there from last season brandon guyer batted just 345 times but he was hit 31 times he walked only 19 times so brandon guyer is kind of the recent champion of this and i haven't actually taken a look at what brandon guyer has been up to this season i don't know if you have but i can tell you he's batted 60 times. He appears to be on the disabled list right now with the left wrist sprain. So Brandon Geyer has played in just 21 games with the Indians. He has been hit by four pitches, and he has walked zero times. So Brandon Geyer, still doing it.

He has 70 career hit-by-pitches, 61 career walks. This Jose Peraza fun fact Has become a Brandon Geyer Dedicated segment That's good Alright question from JJ I've been wondering lately how we know when a metric Is accurate or trustworthy

Expected WOBA comes to mind in particular But it also applies to deserved run average And some of the other new metrics we have I don't necessarily have any reason to doubt them But I also don't have any way of knowing How telling they really are And I answered this via email, I said that usually when a new stat is introduced, there's some justification provided for why that stat is being introduced and why it is better than stats that have gone before or different in some useful way. So if you're talking about deserved run average, for instance, every time BP has either rolled it out or done an update, they have done their own testing of it and compared it to other

metrics that have the same sort of goal. And you can test its consistency. That's often how you judge these things. Is it reliable? Is it repeatable? Is a player who's good or bad at it one year, good or bad at it the next year? Two, is it predictive? Does it tell you more about the player's future performance than whatever the alternative is? And so usually you can find that stuff either provided by the person who presented the stat or published somewhere else by someone smart who decided to test it. programming skills or Excel skills or querying skills, then you might have a hard time testing it yourself. And you might just have to take the more, I don't know, technologically or mathematically equipped people's word for it to a certain extent. But I'd say that's usually it. Sometimes it's just so extremely intuitive that this should be a useful thing that maybe you don't even need a fancy statistical justification for it, but it's always nice to have that evidence and usually you

can find it. Yep. Okay. Question from John. What is the range of outcomes Jake Arrieta has on his upcoming free agent contract depending on his rest of Steven performance. He seems like an obvious guy that teams should be extremely wary of, even if he somehow turns it around. But I suppose it is usually unwise to bet against Scott Boris getting his man a deal. I think there was a recent John Heyman article about this, which I read an article about, and I think he said, and of course, Heyman seems to be very well connected with Boris and at least has been accused of spinning his clients in a positive light. But I think he said that Arrieta would have no problem getting a five-year deal and that

if it would be so easy for him to get a five-year deal, maybe he could even get a six-year deal. I don't know if there were dollar amounts mentioned, but of course, we've talked about Arrieta this season, and he's a confusing and polarizing player. Yeah. I mean, if you want to talk about the whole range of outcomes, if Jake Arrieta got, I don't know, hit by a car tomorrow and badly injured. That would hurt his free agent contract, yeah. Well, that would hurt a lot more than his free agent contract. But then if Arrieta pulled off one of those second halves like he had in, what was it, 2015 when he was basically completely unhittable, if he had that second half, then he would, then everything, his past calendar year struggles would be completely forgotten and he would get

six or seven years at gigantic money. So there is an enormous range of potential outcomes here. And yeah, you're right. Or at least whoever whoever was right you don't really want to doubt what scott boris can do but there is a lot about jake arietta that is kind of statistically off-putting uh he's got a hell of a workload i think the cubs have started to acknowledge just the fact that they've had to throw a lot arietta has thrown something like 500 innings between 2015 and 2016 combined his velocity this year is down and it has not recovered he's not able to lean on the cutter or slider whatever you want to call it that propelled him to so much success a few years ago jk arietta is not where you would want him to be as a steady starting pitcher now we know that johnny cueto signed for a six-year contract with a two-year opt-out with

the giants after having that not very good second half with the Royals in 2015. So there is still precedent for kind of struggling pitchers with good track records getting big money. But Arrieta right now is not a guy that I think I would want my team to sign because he still has the name value of a really dominant ace he still has pitches that move like the pitches he had when he was a dominant ace but the indicators here are just not promising he's not getting the ground balls that you want he is avoiding hard contact kind of but he's still not throwing very consistent strikes he's in the national league which you know there's that factor so i i wouldn't want to sign him but but I do feel like because he is a starting pitcher

and he has piled up the innings totals, he'll get a pretty big contract. He's probably going to get an opt-out clause in there just because they seem to be in every big contract these days. But I would suspect right now that whoever signs Arrieta is probably not going to be thrilled with that acquisition a few months afterward. All right, question from tony after hearing you talk about the bryce harper brawl a while ago i wondered if you had any insight into why batters don't take first base after a hit by

pitch and then charge the pitcher when the pitcher is less ready for the confrontation. So I think the obvious reason is because it's Bush League and because it would be an ambush. And I think the whole point of charging the pitcher is to show how macho you are and that you're standing up for yourself. And if you wait until his back is turned, essentially, that would be seen as dishonorable. And it would reflect poorly on you. Charging the pitcher maybe reflects poorly on you too, but in a different way. And it might reflect positively on you in certain quarters of the baseball universe. So I would think that's the main reason. And I don't know how often the intent is to injure when you're charging the mound. If it were, then yes, this would be a better strategy.

Wait until the pitcher's guard is down instead of charging him when he's facing you and the catcher is right there. But I think that even in the heat of the moment when these guys were just hit by a baseball and are seeing red, I don't think they really want to hurt the guy even though that occasionally happens. I think it's more about standing up for yourself and showing that you can't be intimidated and you can intimidate and so it's better to just face the guy head-on than to try to use guerrilla tactics yeah right so yesterday we talked to joe lemire and he we talked about the baseball term horse shit uh his first sentence in his paragraph about the word horse shit in his scouting glossary

was horse shit in bold poor play in baseball is never bullshit or dog shit but always horse shit with the scouts preferring the equine concoction to its bovine and canine variations well there is one shit that joe also left out it's a very common baseball term chicken shit is used to describe otherwise bush league plays it's sort of the r-rated version of bush league i guess if you bunt to try to break up a no-hitter that is chicken shit and if you got hit took first base in a premeditated attempt to charge an unsuspecting pitcher from a 90 degree difference that would be a chicken shit maneuver you would be suspended longer by the league because they would see through your chicken shit actions and the other team would beat the crap out of you because that

would not just be some manly testosterone fueled confrontation in the heat of the moment that would be you making an attempt to get the pitcher to put his guard down and then go tackle him the other team would not respect you at all your own team would not respect you at all. Your own team would not respect you at all. Managers, of course, they're kind of their whole reason for being is to stand up for their players. The players feel like the managers have their backs. We just saw this with Joe Maddon defending Anthony Rizzo's slide, which was a pretty clear violation of the rules as they're written.

Joe Maddon knows that. Joe Maddon's not an idiot. He knows Rizzo wasn't supposed to slide like that. But Joe Maddon has nothing to gain by saying yep shouldn't have done that and he has his own team's respect to gain by defending Anthony Rizzo on his slide so this would put your own manager in a very difficult situation where he's trying to defend a guy who clearly broke the unwritten rules by you know going down to first base and you know the pitcher is going to know first base is not that close to the mound it's no closer than home plate i believe so the pitcher is still going to

know that you're coming because you can't just like get to the mound from being stopped in under a second the fans would make a noise the other team wouldn't make a noise the pitcher would just the pitch is probably also looking at you so you should have to go down to first base and then just kind of hang out there and wait for the pitcher to like, try to get a sign for the next at bat. And then you charge, I don't know the timing of it, but the long story short is what you should do is just go down to first base and slug the first baseman in the neck. All right, Alex, the Washington Post had a great story about a dad writing to each of the 30 major league teams and asking them why his newborn son should be a fan of them.

If that dad wrote to you and asked you who his son should support, what would you say? What factors are most important for picking a team for life? Might you suggest rooting for a non-MLB team, the Nipponham fighters with Shohei Otani for now, or maybe a minor league team? And my initial impulse here is that picking a team this way is probably not the best way to pick a team. I think so often it just arises naturally based on geography or family history. And I think that bond is the deepest possible bond and a tough one to overcome. So I could see doing it this way if you didn't have a childhood team. Like on a recent episode of the podcast, Joe Posnanski and Michael Schur drafted teams that they thought that the guest, Linda Holmes, the NPR TV critic, should be a fan of. So they were evaluating them based on geography and history and where they are on the competitive curve.

And are they the lovable underdogs or are they the team that always wins? And so there are all those factors. like the easiest and best team to root for is the team that's closest that you can go see play all the time and have that tribal local identity aspect to it and if there's some reason why you can't root for that team then I guess you can consider other factors and then we could get into whether you just want to root for the team that always wins and is always competitive or some team like the Indians or whatever that has a really long drought and so you want to be there when they finally win you know you could go through that whole exercise but I don't know that I would determine it this way for a newborn which seems weird because usually we're in favor of rational objective approaches to things and there's nothing

more arbitrary than just being a fan of whatever your parents were a fan of or whatever team you happen to be born near but i think that is still probably the best way as random as it is yeah right you don't there's really no point in deciding to root for team based on short-term considerations like where they are on the winning curve or what players they have if you're talking about a newborn and you want him to root for the angels because they have mike trout well when the newborn grows older mike trout will be dead so that's not really going to uh matter very much i could have said retired but you know we'll eventually die let's just embrace not only our own mortality but also mike trout's so will the newborn the newborn too why even bother to become a fan of a team?

It's going to die eventually. Yeah. You know what? The teams are going to die also. Baseball's not always going to exist. Certainly not like this. Will there always be Yankees? Probably not. Heat death. This all comes down to heat death. In any case, the short-term consideration is not really that important. You think about a few years ago, would have been a lot of fun to root for the Royals. 15, 20 years ago would have been the last thing you'd want to do with your life. You'd rather be in jail than root for the Royals. You would feel like you're in jail of your own decision-making 162 times a year if you rooted for the Royals. So I think that at the end of the day, the most obvious point here to make is that being a sports fan is less about the

team success and the player success and it's all about having your community and you want to be within a community of like-minded people because that is the entire point it is a bonding experience whether the team is good or bad or in between it doesn't matter you make friendships through sports you find other relationships through sports you can bond with your family over sports you just want to choose a team that gives a community to you or has one that's already around you whether that's who the family likes that's important the city around you that's important but even if you decide to root for a team that's somewhere far away you are not going to enjoy that experience very much unless you can find a

community for yourself now thankfully with the internet that is easier than it's ever been i root for a hockey team that is almost couldn't be further away in North America. But thankfully, my brother also roots for the same hockey team. So we can just talk about that. Because if I had to watch them go to the Eastern Conference finals and I would enjoy it, but then I had no one to talk to about it, then it's just not close to being the same. So you want to root for a sports team that you can talk about with other people. And that is basically the entire point.

All right. Les says, I was watching a game this weekend when a batter Fouled a pitch straight back to the screen I could have predicted what the announcers were going to say Next, he was right on that one And indeed they did say something very much Like that, indicating that when a batter Fouls a pitch straight back, he is timing the pitcher

Very well, and perhaps beyond that Is very close to doing some damage on one Of the next pitches. My questions are One, is this true? Two, if yes, how do we know? And three, if no, why do announcers say it? And finally, four, what is the best kind of foul ball to hit, where best means predictive of success in the at-bat? Thank you. And there are a lot of unknowns here. I don't think we really have the answer to this question. I suppose that saying that a hitter was right on the pitch when he fouls a ball straight back does make sense in some level, right? You're not late on it or early on it. You are just too high or too low. And so you fouled it straight back, back i guess is how you get a foul straight back so it makes sense i suppose on that level now whether it's true i don't think we have any objective way to say that and i don't think we can necessarily determine one i tried to do an

article last year with stat cast data where i wanted to look at the distribution of foul balls to write something about screens and netting being extended a certain length. And I wanted to say that if you extended the netting to X length, it would block X percent of foul balls that are not being blocked currently. And I just couldn't do it. The data was not there because stat cast and track man are set up to track pitches that are hit fair and are hit forward. And so if you're hitting balls behind you or to the side at some trajectory, it is just not tracked in many cases. So I don't know that the data would be complete enough to actually do a study on this. Maybe, maybe it's gotten better.

I'm not sure. But at the time, at least, I don't think it was. Maybe, maybe it's gotten better. I'm not sure. But at the time, at least, I don't think it was. And I don't know whether any of the other companies that do this stuff manually track the direction of the foul ball with that much precision. So not sure you could come up with that answer. And it is very possible that it is a myth.

I think that you believe it's a myth, right? Because we answered this email via email and you aren't buying it. What's funny to me about saying that a hitter is right on a pitch, he fouls straight back is that he fouled the ball straight back. He's obviously not right on the pitch. He's right on the timing, but that's only one of the components of being a hitter. Now, there has been research, again, probably by Russell Carlton, probably also by other people, that has shown that the longer in a bat goes, the more it favors the hitter. other people that has shown that the longer in a bat goes the more it favors the hitter right so like those those long at bats kind of shift the balance of power pitchers throw all of their pitches and batters get most comfortable look at the pitcher so there's that element that's kind of in here but if i had to guess then most pitches are nearly independent of the other pitches in a

bat of course the sequences matter and all that stuff but if you were right on a pitch i don't think that actually makes it that much easier to predict what the next pitch is going to be and where it's going to be now if it's a sign that you have picked something up from the pitcher or maybe he's tipping his pitches that could be one thing that could be one element that would color the hypothetical research that's basically impossible to currently do but i think that if the hitter is right on one pitch and he misses it, many hitters would tell you, well, that was my chance. You know, there's a there's this conventional wisdom that hitters will get one pitch to

hit in and at bat. And, you know, if you're facing like, I don't know, Bronson Arroyo, that's not true unless you consider that everybody gets a hit on the first pitch. And that's what they mean. So it's like an old baseball trope that hitters buy into. and if you miss your one pitch well that was your chance and better luck next time neither one of these captures the whole truth of the showdown but i would guess that if the hitter is right on a pitch then the pitcher would think to himself well that was a missed opportunity for him and i'm just going to come back and throw the next pitch and it's going to be very different

it's kind of like uh if you say that that the offense has a pitcher on the ropes and then maybe the pitcher gets out of it, comes back out. If a pitcher allows four runs in an inning and you think, okay, the offense has him now. Well, research has shown that the next inning, the pitcher is likely to be just his regular self. There doesn't seem to be very much carryover effect of struggles between innings. And so I'm skeptical there would be too much of an effect between pitches. And I don't think that hitters picking up pitcher sequences and timing is really that much of a trait that carries over pitch to pitch. Yeah, I guess I agree. I would think that maybe the best kind of foul ball from a predictive perspective, if there is such a thing,

would just be a foul ball that you hit really hard and really far like the Edwin Encarnacion almost home run that we talked about on the last email show if you show that you can hit a ball super far against a pitcher maybe that tells you that you're seeing that pitcher well or something I don't know this is so pervasive and you really do hear it so much often from former players who are broadcasters that I wouldn't be shocked if there's something to it. This seems to me like it could be one of those things where we dismiss it and then we find out later that the players were right all along, or at least there was something to

what they were saying. So I wouldn't be surprised if we did a perfect study of this and were able to construct that somehow, whether there was some slight advantage. Like, you know, at least it tells you that you can catch up to the pitcher's fastest fastball or whatever, if that's what it is. And maybe if you're not late on it, I don't know, maybe that tells you something about this matchup or how well you're seeing that pitcher. So, you know, I've just, I've heard it so many times. It seems to be such an ingrained belief among baseball players who you would think would know from personal experience that it means something good when that happens that I wouldn't completely discount it. I wouldn't

be surprised if there was an effect, but I'm sure it wouldn't be a huge effect because as you're mentioning, if the pitcher thinks that this is telling him something about how the hitter is timing him, then that would just encourage him to change what he's doing. Although maybe the hitter then anticipates that he's going to change what he's doing and then that becomes predictable. So I don't know. I wish we had a perfect answer to this question. And maybe someday we will. And that's one of those things that will eventually make baseball, well, I guess, continue to allow baseball to feel fresh. When we can, at some point, analyze foul balls, which I don't know why StatCast would ever give us that information. There's so little to gain. But one day, in theory, we can analyze this.

And that's cool. We can try to answer. There's like a never-ending list of baseball questions for us to try to answer. We keep thinking we're going to run out of questions. Every August, it feels like we are out of questions, but there continue to be questions and this is one of them. Yeah. All right. You answered this one, so maybe we can do it quick. This is from Sam. It seems to be commonly accepted that baseball is just going to continue to get bigger, stronger, and faster. Is Aaron Judge single-handedly fast-forwarding this timeline. If you hadn't noticed, Aaron Judge has been very good this year. Aaron Judge is also a very large man. Do you and Jeff think that the

success of this behemoth may cause coaches or scouts to start evaluating players with less bias instead of dividing the player pool into 6'4 and over pitchers and 6'3 and under position players? How many of these lousy hitting pitchers could have been Aaron Judge if their high school coach would have let them ride out being the tall, skinny first baseman? I don't have a perfect answer to this aside from no one player is really going to change things that much. The proportion of tall players who have been pitchers hasn't really meaningfully changed over the past, what did I look at at five or six decades it's always been somewhere between like 70 and 80 percent of the tall players in the major leagues have been pitchers i don't think that aaron judge alone

is going to cause coaches to look at tall people and think hey maybe you could be the greatest slugger in the world instead of a pitcher. I think the most the more important point here to recognize that Aaron Judge is just a weirdo. We say the word freak a lot. I think freak comes with some negative connotations. I don't want to say that Aaron Judge is a freak. If he played another sport, he would be ordinary. He plays baseball, though he is. He is the best version of a baseball freak. He can do things that other players just can't really do. He hits the ball as hard as Giancarlo San, but he hits it more, seems to have a better approach. He's just, you know, really, really good all around. I don't think that Aaron Judge is the result of some coach

saying that, hey, you know, I would like you to be a hitter instead of a pitcher. Chances are Aaron Judge was playing baseball and he just took to hitting a lot more than he took to pitching, just required less work for him to be a really good hitter. And I think that that's probably the determining factor i mean you never really know how a player is going to physically develop when they're young some guys will fill out and become judge strong other guys will become chris sale wiry and you can't really necessarily predict how that's going to go so well but yeah i don't think i don't think one player is going to change the landscape very much and i just up talked when i meant to-talk to signify the end of my answer. Yeah, I think there's probably still more advantage conferred upon a very tall pitcher

than a very tall hitter. Very tall pitchers get more extension, so fastballs look faster. And maybe they get more downhill plane and have the pitch coming down at a more extreme angle, which could potentially be harder to square up. And so I don't know if a pitcher gets the same advantage. Of course, strength and leverage is an advantage for a hitter, but it also comes with the drawback of having to cover a greater area of the strike zone. So I think probably you would still see very tall players gravitating toward the pitcher's mound, but maybe it only takes one player not to change things dramatically, but to make things easier for the next exception who comes along. And you can now point to Aaron Judge and not have to say, well, he could maybe be Richie Sexton. You can say, well, he can maybe be Aaron Judge, which seems to raise the ceiling for a very tall player. So in that sense, he could be a trailblazer. Tall players need raised ceilings. All right. Last thing, Corey, in the clip you played recently of Buck Martinez talking about

consecutive pickoffs, he says that when he came to the plate, they quote, still had a rally going. Given that there was never more than one runner on base, does this seem like a rally to you? And he wants to know if this is an application of the jam crowdsourcing. And he says one could say that a team has a rally going when it manages to put the opposing pitcher in a jam. Do you think that is true? Is a jam always a rally? and is a rally always a jam ah okay so i haven't thought this all the way through but my sense is that a rally almost requires you to be trailing right i know it's not yeah always true rally is also a tennis term right yeah right

that's just for hitting the ball back and forth a lot. Yeah. So that's just like a consecutive plays made so that there's no break in the action. But in baseball, I feel like a rally doesn't always, but it feels like it connotes a you are putting the other team in the jam, but you are also behind because you are trying to rally to tie the game or win it with a walk-off cycle completing home run so yeah i think that all rallies are jams but not all jams are rallies uh-huh okay yeah that makes sense to me i think from a run expectancy standpoint it's probably similar i would think it would kind of just be the other side of the coin so yeah i'll go along with you on that. Great. All right. So we will end it there. End of episode Ben here. Since Jeff and I spoke, the Freddie Freeman third baseman scenario has started to sound a little more realistic. Freeman was seen taking grounders at third and it came out that it actually was his idea as I speculated. So still slightly skeptical,

but could come to fruition. In other news, Ryan Rayburn went two for three and hit his first home run of the season. His first of many, if the off-year, on-year pattern holds. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Adam Johnston, William Andreas Viglakis, AJ Lee, Nicholas Perry, and Patrick Morris. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild,

and you can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. If you're looking for something else to listen to, Michael Bowman and I will have a new episode of the Ringer MLB show up later today. We talked to ESPN's Marley Rivera about ESPN's baseball experience and the lives of Latin American players. It's a good conversation. Keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast.fangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system.

We will be back with another episode soon. Night.