Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1075: Baseball Will Be Fine

Episode Date: June 24, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about a non-revelatory tweet, cycles, Bryce Harper vs. Aaron Judge (and also vs. expectations), Jarrod Dyson’s homers and bunts, and Ben Davis’ 2001 bunt against Curt Schilling, then respond to Tom Verducci’s articles about baseball trends and explain why they aren’t worried about rising strikeout or home-run rates. Audio intro: […]

As the mood starts changing, and the fights start raging, I just sit here waiting, cause I've heard that beat before. I've heard that beat before. Yeah, I've heard that beat before. Yeah, I've heard that beat before. Hello and welcome to episode 1075 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I am Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. How are you? I'm all right. How are you?

I'm doing just okay. Do you got anything to talk about? I do know why, but okay. Do I have anything to talk about? Yeah. A couple brief things. There was an email we got from a listener named Michael who drew our attention to a tweet that was tweeted during the NBA draft. This is a non-baseball tweet, but it's in a genre of tweets that has come up on this podcast before. So I did want to mention it. First, I guess we should establish how you pronounce this word. So if I spell this word, say how you would say it. So R-E-V-E-L-A-T-O-R-Y. Revelatory? Okay. All right. So Sam was a revelatory and I was a revelatory, which I think is probably wrong, but I think they're both okay. So we have talked about the non-revelatory or revelatory rumor many times on this podcast. It's something we'll be seeing much more often, probably in the next month examples of the form, although it was basketball. This was tweeted by Tom Moore, who is a Philadelphia 76ers beat writer. And the tweet says, quote, hearing Sixers have been talking to a lot of teams about all kinds of possibilities.

it's peak it's peak trade i guess this is draft but for baseball it'll be peak trade deadline activity tweet yeah that's just like classic john morosi kind of tweet like the kind of tweet where you assume he's probably already tweeted it and you know what as much as that that is both a tweet that you and i could just tweet whenever and it would always be true but it's also a tweet that you could journalistically source and then like tweet based on real inside information that you have so i guess it required i don't know if this tweet was made in jest or not i always assume right not yeah because you know reporters and their work and you know what he probably worked hard to find some sources to tell him like oh yeah we're talking to this team and this yeah this other team but yeah no you and i could plausibly tweet the same thing now because we just heard that this was the

case from the tweet so we have also been hearing that the sixers have been talking to a lot of people even reading as such yeah so yeah i guess what so what do we learn from this tweet if we want to be nice what do we know now about this is the six, what do we know now about, this is the Sixers, what do we know about the Sixers that we didn't know before? We know that they are... Well, yeah. We know their phones work. Yes. I mean, I don't know anything about basketball, so I don't know how common it is to have tons of trade activity at the NBA draft time.

I gather that it's pretty common. It's certainly been a Knicks storyline in the last couple days. So I assume this is not uncommon and that all the teams are talking to a lot of teams about possibilities, but maybe this is meant to indicate that there is an unusual amount of activity, that they are talking to more than the usual amount of teams about more than the usual amount of possibilities. So, and I guess it maybe conditions you to expect a move sometime soon, or at least it raises the probability that there will be a move, perhaps. That's about the best I could say. And yeah, my evaluation of the tweet depends almost entirely on the degree of self-awareness with which it was tweeted. And I didn't see any subsequent evidence that it was a joke and a satirical knowing tweet about this kind of tweet or anything. So I assume it's on the level, but you never know for sure. So let's see. I've never looked up basketball transactions before, but did the Sixers ultimately do anything?

Let's see. Let's Google this. According to ESPN, I see no transactions for Philadelphia 76ers. That doesn't make sense, though, because they had just had a draft. So let's go to what is real GM. All right, I'm exploring basketball internet now. I see, okay, here, June 22nd, they drafted five players. Matt.

Well, I'm not going to try to pronounce his name. Matthias. No, I'm not going to. Okay. But we do have a bullet point that says June 22nd, the 2017 NBA draft took place in New Jersey. Bullet point was acquired by the Orlando Magic from the Philadelphia Sixers in exchange for the draft rights to another name that I'm not going to try to say.

But there's no name preceding was. Was is just there after a bullet point in lowercase letters. So something was acquired by the Orlando Magic from the Philadelphia Sixers in exchange for the draft rights to Anze Passenakis Passen Passe. You know, we could go back and forth. It's a revelatory pronunciation of this name. But there's a name. There's something that is missing in this bullet point.

And I don't know. It's acquired by the Orlando Magic. So maybe they made the player disappear. But the Sixers got draft rights. So they did, I guess. It looks like they did something. But it looks to have been minor. So they talked to everyone about everything and concluded, nah, we're not going to do that.

We're not going to do any of those. If we apply this to a baseball team, let's say that this is about the Tigers, I guess. I don't know. The Tigers have been- Tigers have probably talked to a lot of teams about trading some untradeable players, and it hasn't happened. So from a baseball standpoint, what I would take it to mean is, okay, Tigers are open-minded. They could even go so far as to be convinced to move Miguel Cabrera or Justin Verlander. They are not wedded to any particular thing. Now, I think we

beat around the bush or we say explicitly every trade deadline, but that usually applies to everyone. And whenever you hear a report that a team is open to listening to offers, what that actually means is nothing. So again, we come back to no substance. It's probably well-sourced zero substance, but that only makes it worse. Well, it just whet my appetite for the deluge of baseball tweets

like that one that we're going to be getting. So if you see any listeners out there see any particularly egregious examples of this genre, do send them our way. Although remember that the bar is pretty high for what constitutes one of these because just the baseline is pretty bad usually. So all right. The other thing I wanted to mention, we got an email from a listener named Ben who followed up on our Nolan Arenado discussion about cycles. And he said, tonight I was walking the dog while listening to you two and I heard you discussing Nolan Arenado's cycle slash walk-off home run on Father's Day at Coors Field. I was at this game. I also noticed the scoreboard splashing the cycle. And I thought to myself while jumping and screaming with my kids, that's dumb. Who cares? Of course, you provided the usual and justified scorn of the cycle as a statistic, but I think you missed the best stat of that game. This cycle tied Coors Field for the most cycles among active ballparks with Fenway Park at 17.

That is insane. Fenway opened in 1912. Coors Field opened in 1995. I'm not sure how many games have been played at Fenway, but I can tell you it's a lot more than Coors. Third place is Wrigley, which opened in 1914 with 10. And that's a fun fact. Obviously, it's a big field. There's a lot of room for triples. And so that's why you get lots of cycles at Coors Field. And also mentioned And this was interesting too He said, this is not a question

But he said, I imagined if Major League Clubs Started designing their ballparks With the goal of breaking the record for cycles At a ballpark, there would be some interesting Features, I bet New ways to draw the fans to the park And this is interesting, there's a high school in Denver Kyle Freeland's high school actually

Where there is a hill that slopes down into the right field corner. If the right fielder or anybody, actually, just a person is fine, is standing at the foul pole and you're standing at the plate, all you can see is the head. Nobody. Somebody hits a ball there, instant triple. Parks could start adding some really exciting features to get some triples. Move a fence in somewhere to get some extra home runs. A world where cycles are the draw is a world I want to live in. Wow. Yeah. They could install one of those Sam Miller pits just anywhere. Could always have a pit. A hill.

Wow. Okay. I haven't known that to be. I mean, I know obviously there's Thalsel and everything that used to exist, the hill up, but a hill down. That is interesting. Is that intentional? Did that, did like, was there there was there a sinkhole and they're just like oh let's play it like you want to know more about this yeah what kind of jumps do you get if you're the right fielder all right next friday we're going to interview the groundskeeper

it's got a difficulty high school making a note. And got to look more up about that. Let me put that sentence differently. Got to look up more. No, that's the same sequence of words. Well, you know what? We got to research more. We got to figure out what's going on at that field. Maybe we can get someone on the phone to talk about what in the hell.

Yeah. No, are we allowed to talk to people in high school or is that like weird and kind of illegal? We did, right? We talked to Connor who technically was still in high school at that point, right? Yeah. I think you're allowed to talk to high school students. I don't think that's breaking any laws. Yeah, the age of podcast consent

is lower than... So, okay. That's really interesting. A hill, a slope in the outfield. And if it's possible at high school, it could always go up a level. We just need to see it at college. Yeah. There's a world of options here that haven't even been considered it's like oh raise the man lower the man move the mound back pits pits and holes yep yeah that's good yep mogul baseball okay so let's see just a

couple statistical things one thing that someone mentioned in the chat that i just did that you know bryce harper always starts out hot and then seems to slump something something about something something is he doing something wrong who cares since the start of May Bryce Harper has a 113 WRC plus so this covers month and a half nearly two months I guess baseball 113 WRC plus not bad of course but also not that good he is tied with Steven Piscotty he is basically tied with Seth Smith Starlin Castro Devin Masarocco, and Eddie Rosario, etc. All these players who are whatever. He's just a few points below Miguel Cabrera. So, you know, good hitters are in this area. But it is worth considering that I think we talked in April about how maybe April was evidence that Bryce Harper was back and maybe

the best player in baseball and nothing has been proven since his April ended. But again, we are confronted by the possibility that maybe bryce harper is just very streaky and i guess would you take aaron judge over bryce harper starting right now ignore contract terms just like career from now on here on out career from now on no i would not i think i would not for the rest of the season. Maybe. sitting on a career WRC plus of 140. This year, he is still at 155. Judge is at 196. Judge is starting to strike out a little more in June, but he's also having the best offensive

month of the season in June. So I don't know what to do with that. Judge also is in the better league, whereas Harper is playing in one of the worst divisions in baseball history. So there's also that that is coloring the numbers. I think I might actually take Judge here. I there's also that that is coloring the numbers. I think I might actually take Judge here. I would need to do maybe a little more research. I don't know what that research would uncover that I don't already know. Judge is super, super good, but it's possible that he could be a little bit exploited. But I mean, Harper is just not that

convincing. Yeah. Well, let me ask you this. What do you think Bryce Harper has to achieve in his career to be remembered as something other than disappointing or like he didn't fulfill the full potential or the hopes that we had for him? justify the Sports Illustrated cover and the hype and the amazing MVP season at age 22. Like, is there a number where we'll say, yep, okay. Because obviously there was hope and there was potential for him to be one of the best players ever. And it looked like when he had that MVP season, maybe that hype was going to be justified and pay off. And since then, he has been good, but not great or not great last year, pretty great this year, but not MVP level great. So what do you think he has to do? Does he have to be a Hall of Famer essentially to justify the hype? I guess he does, right? He has to be a Hall of Famer. Are you asking according to us or according to the

average baseball fan? Yeah, I guess just the average fan. If you, you know, 10 years after he retired, you bring up Bryce Harper and does this hypothetical average fan say, oh, that kid could have been great or whatever? Or does he say, yeah, he was great. Where's the line for Bryce Harper? Because I think it's higher for him than just about anyone in history maybe yeah no question how high the expectations were in a sense he's kind of screwed just because of the existence of Mike Trout they're always going to be linked and Trout has already been worth twice as much

war Harper is essentially the same age as Manny Machado and while Harper has been the better hitter they have both been basically tied in career war so Harper has been no more valuable than Machado Harper does need to separate himself from Machado, I think. Not that that's how it's going to be remembered specifically, but Harper does need to get better than this. Now, granted, Harper has already averaged, I mean, basically like four or five wins a season over his career. He's still not 25 years old. That is extremely good and it bodes very well for the rest of his career i think if he becomes a hall of famer or a hall of fame caliber player then that will be enough i think there's there's hall of fame and then there's not and it doesn't matter how good you are if you're in the

hall of fame that you are beyond the threshold of okay you're a hall of famer we don't need you to be any better like uh one of the things that harper that will be held against harper is he probably won't ever have a season like his 2015 when he was 22 years old one of the better seasons of all time and that may be unfairly for Harper established this sort of unreachable probably unreachable ceiling for him and whenever you see a young player do something outstanding you always expect oh well he's still young he can get better well that's not very nice and that wasn't nice to Adrian Beltre when he did the exact same thing but Beltrere has had an excellent second half career renaissance. And if Harper could do anything even close to that, then I think he'd be fine. He hasn't plumbed the depths that

Beltre did post Dodgers career for his little stretch of not hitting very well in Seattle. But yeah, I think Harper will be held to a very high standard because of who he is, because of what he's been, all the hype, everything, especially because people are looking for reasons to not like him very much. Yeah, I would set 70 war. Not that that's how people are going to think about it, but whatever you need to do to get to 60 or 70 war. Maybe Beltran is still underrated by most people, and I'm sure that'll be a divisive Hall of Fame case, and it'll probably be split maybe along lines of more sabermetric or not, although maybe not because he has the postseason greatness, and maybe that will help him bridge the divide if there is one at that point. But yeah, if he has a Carlos Beltran career, I wonder whether that would do it. I guess that would do it.

I don't think you could really consider Harper a disappointment if he had a Carlos Beltran career and he's more than a quarter of the way there. He's like, I don't know, he's not quite a third of the way there, but he is 24 and Beltran is 40. So that is certainly well within reach. Beltran is 40. So that is certainly well within reach. So let's see. On April 24th, I ran a little post on Fangraphs. I was polling people about hitters off to very good starts. And I polled them about Bryce Harper. At that point, Harper had a 246 WRC+. That was very good. That was best in baseball. His rest of season projection at that point was 153. I polled the audience. I don't know where the post is where I actually gathered the results. But the three most popular answers were that I asked people what his rest of season WRC Plus would be.

The most popular option was in the 170s, followed by 160s, followed by 180s. So in other words, Harper was probably forecast at that point to finish with a wrc plus somewhere around 170 since that post went up his wrc plus has been 124 with a normal babbip and you know the usual good harper numbers but not great harper numbers so you know whatever we'll see i wonder if the emergence of aaron judge does anything for him because he's and also cody bellinger i don't know if it relaxes the standards for harper or only intensifies them because he's because he's and also Cody Bellinger I don't know if it relaxes the standards for Harper or only intensifies them because he's because he's getting passed by by other breakout young players so I don't know how that works but we do generally move on from the great young players pretty quickly unless they remain really really really really good like Mike yeah good like I don't know how many people are talking about Manny Machado right now who's still very good but

there's just all these other fantastic young players to discuss. Yeah. All right. Did you have any other banter? Just one. Something that it doesn't mean anything, but Gerard Dyson has four home runs. I don't know if you knew that. Before this year, he had seven total.

He had never hit more than two in a season. He has four. He has four home runs. Not just that, but his ground ball rate has dropped by 10 percentage points. He's hitting more balls in the air than balls on the ground. This season, he's pulling the ball more. If you just looked at the profile, you'd say Gerard Dyson has joined the fly ball revolution and he's hit four home runs. The problem is that he's Gerard Dyson. The reason this came up is over the past month and a half, I noticed Dyson has been almost as effective a hitter as Bryce Harper which is hysterical but the more I don't know damning point is uh so Gerard

Dyson has four home runs this year and Alex Gordon has three there's no great reason to pick out Alex Gordon there's a lot of players who have three home runs like I don't know Franchi Cordero good for him three home runs but who would have ever imagined just a few years ago, just one year ago, that halfway through the 2017 season, Gerard Dyson would be out homering Alex Gordon. That is, I don't know if people understand how bad Gordon has been. I don't know what Dyson thinks he's doing. I want to say it's stupid. It's not going to work, but whatever. Everything is a home run now, for everything that alex gordon hits yeah why have you looked at why that is is it a batted ball thing or a exit below thing or gordon yeah or is it uh he's hitting 188 there's there's that

everything is bad just everything alex gordon is doing is bad i haven't looked at him closely because you know there's just so many players to examine he's been hitting more ground balls than ever although that's been a little better lately so i don't know maybe gordon will improve soon but he has been absolutely terrible he's been a bad hitter now for a year and a half so yeah not looking good and remember when gordon signed his extension we were all like oh doesn't get safe for the now it's gordon weird um yeah speaking of dys, he was obviously in the news this week for not a homer, but a bunt, a more typical Gerard Dyson activity. And I don't know whether there was that much backlash. I got the sense from people in our Facebook group talking about backlash somewhere else that there had been backlash, but I didn't actually encounter any myself, which I think means that I'm living my life right. But this is like a perfect go-to example the next time this situation comes up, right? Like when someone is mad about someone breaking an unwritten rule

in a way that could help his team win, this is the perfect example of why you should and why it makes sense to because obviously Verlander was throwing a no-hitter. It was the sixth inning. The Tigers had a 4-0 lead and then Verlander gets the first out of the six, then Dyson bunts and gets a single. And I wasn't watching the game. I saw that Emma Bacciolieri's recap at Deadspin of this event said that Verlander was visibly shaken. I didn't witness the shakenness myself, but if we take Emma's word for it, and it looked like he was out of sorts because of this bunt. And then he walked Mike Zanino. He gave up a single to Gene Segura. He gave up a single to Ben Gamble.

Then there was a strikeout. Then Nelson Cruz doubled in a couple of runs. And by the end of that inning, there was a strikeout. Then Nelson Cruz doubled in a couple of runs. And by the end of that inning, it was four to three. And then Mitch Hanegar homered leading off the next inning, and then it was tied. And then Tigers ended up losing the game. So that just seems like the perfect example of why it would be absolutely nuts to expect a hitter to observe these unwritten rules when, I mean, the Tigers aren't really in the race or anything. They're not so far out of it that they can't dream still at this point, presumably.

But it's just crazy to expect someone not to bunt if you're Gerard Dyson and you're good at bunting and you're trying to win the game. It would be crazy to not do that because someone is throwing a no-hitter. And this just seems like the perfect reference case in all future cases when this kind of thing comes up. And you can say, well, if he had done it, if he had broken the unwritten rule, then maybe it turns out the way that this Mariners-Tigers game did. So case in point, I suppose. Yeah. So it was Kurt Schilling, right? He was throwing the perfect game when Ben Davis bunted. And I think it was the eighth day this is okay 2001 ben davis did this and then i think it was probably who arizona's manager back then would have been bob brendley

because that was the world series year so i think it was it must have been bob brendley who said that ben davis's move was chicken shit which is something we discussed earlier this week yeah on the podcast so i was watching the game actually, when Dyson laid down the bunt and then everything that happened after that. Verlander said after the game he didn't care. He wasn't upset by the bunt, which is a good way to diffuse the situation. So whether or not he was shaken at the time, I don't know. But he said he didn't care, so situation over.

It doesn't seem like it's an actual controversy. And I think that we've probably moved past the point in baseball where this is no longer controversial, because if you actually think about this in any rational way, it doesn't make sense. Many players are not very good at bunting, but bunting is a legitimate way of getting a hit. If bunting was actually like a cheap way to get a hit, people would do it an awful lot more because hitters want hits. It's extremely difficult. And the idea of not being allowed to bunt when the other pitcher is working on a historic game is to remove a result and therefore reduce your own chances of success as a hitter, which means you're just trying to do the pitcher a favor, which makes absolutely no sense in

the world, especially when you draw Dyson. Bunting is a part of his game. He has six. He's tied for second this year in baseball and bunt hits with six tied with other very fast players you know Dyson could bunt the fact that the Tigers weren't actually upset by this means there's no reason to actually rant about it I guess this is more directed at Bob Brunley 16 years ago and that was Ben Davis if Ben Davis is dropping down a bunt you should be able to get him out he's a catcher he's also a bad hitting catcher he doesn't run very well

I haven't watched the video of the bunt in a while i could do that it's right there in front of me i'm not going to do it he did bunt for hit but you know thombex should have thrown him out i like that he ruined kurt schilling's perfect game because you know you know yes i know that's all i got i have uh no problem with bunting to break up a no hitter perfect game joe posnanski wrote about this i'm sure a million people wrote about this and they'll continue to write about it i don't know when one of the problems is when does a no-hitter or perfect game bid begin so even if you accepted this as something you shouldn't do like right that's the thing one out in the sixth inning like the odds against the no-hitter are you know astronomical still at that point so yeah well now i've clicked on the video to watch ben

davis bunt and you know what It was a pop-up bunt. It was actually a horrible bunt. Ben Davis, I don't know. Here, I'll send you this link so you can watch it as well. We can just both watch this together. Yeah, that's a terrible bunt, but it worked. We're ready to go now. Pitch on the way to Ben Davis.

A chopper to second. Got to hurry up with it. No play. A base hit. Infield hit on the bunt for Ben Davis. How do you like that? I'll tell you what, from a macho standpoint, a lot of guys won't like that. Nope.

Yeah, that is an abominable bunt. How many bunts did Ben Davis have? Because I could see if you're, like, it's more acceptable or less likely to anger the other team if you're a guy who always bunts did Ben Davis have? Because I could see if you're like, it's more acceptable or less likely to anger the other team if you're a guy who always bunts, right? If you're Gerard Dyson, whereas if you are Ben Davis, then it is like you're trying to break up the no-hitter intentionally as opposed to just going about your business and doing the thing that you normally do. So how weird was it? Do you have any stats on hand about other Ben Davis bunts?

Or is that, I guess that's pre-infield hit data at Fangraphs? Well, okay, here's the weird thing about it. So I pulled up Ben Davis's splits at Baseball Reference, and I went down to hit trajectory. And according to Ben Davis's official Baseball Reference stats, he has zero career bunt hits. He has eight bunt plate appearances seven of those for a sacrifice which makes sense and then one out in 2003 there is no record therefore

of ben davis having a bunt single in 2001 i'm going to go into his game log official score insulting the bunt because of how bad it was maybe it doesn't even qualify as a bunt what day was this this was may 26th may 26th okay so ben davis on may 26th credited with a single i'm just going to click through here eighth inning so the diamondbacks won this game three to one good for them the bodies were early in the season. Both teams were above 500. So Ben Davis is given credit for a ground ball to weak second base. Alright. Whatever. I mean, I guess, yeah. I mean, it kind of is.

I'd call it a bunt, but it's such a bad bunt that it is on the border. Yeah. Did he chop at it at all? I need to watch this again. I would say there was some slight forward motion of the bat it's oh no that's just horrible bunting technique that's not at all what he intended to do if you watch his bat he tried to drop that down look at it i don't know if you still have

the video open i do if you pause it right at contact you see davis i think he's pretty clearly trying to drop the ball down the third base side maybe that's not true his momentum is moving toward first maybe he's trying to drag bunt but why would you try to drag bunt you're Ben Davis yeah no I'm with you I guess it's uh does the intention make it a bunt or does the result make it a bunt if you intend to bunt but you pop it up is it a bunt person who should be most offended by this is the Padres manager who watched his player unsuccessfully drop a bunt down he popped it up and then I assume that's J Bell playing second. I don't know who actually was playing second. Was this the junior spy of the years? Whatever. Who cares? The point

is Ben Davis was fine and Bob Brenley is chicken shit. All right. Okay. Well, once again, just like every Friday, we talked for about half an hour before we get to our actual topic. But this was the week that tom verducci wrote a feature story for sports illustrated i don't really know how to say the thesis aside from baseball is not what it should be it's not what it used to be which we know and therefore baseball is worse because of it it's too slow there's not enough action it's nothing new it's not a new argument or observation it's just the latest article written on this matter by a very talented writer. Tom Verducci is great, and he raises legitimate points,

and that baseball is currently too much about no action and strikeouts and home runs. I felt like this was something that we should talk about because we've talked about it a few times before at modest length, but we haven't dedicated an episode or or in this case, seven minutes to the subject. And then just by coincidence, when I sent you the link so you could read for a refresher, it turned out you were already writing an article about this article and the theme. So why don't I just send it over to you? And why don't you talk about your article's response to Verduccia? Yeah. Well, yeah. So I've talked talked about it a couple times briefly on the podcast but

i feel like my my thoughts about this have been crystallizing whereas before i would i don't know not be worried about this sort of thing because it doesn't really matter to me all that much exactly how baseball's offensive environment looks but you do a little bit of fretting about the future of baseball based on the lack of balls in play, or there are too many homers, or not enough homers, or too many strikeouts, or whatever. And lately, I've just been thinking that this is a product of writers being obsessed with these things that I'm not sure that the typical fan would have the same interest in or concern about. And this article really cemented my mind about this because I love Raducci. I think he's great. And everything he points out here is accurate and true. These are all trends. And in the case of more strikeouts and more home runs, these are things that we've been seeing

basically since the beginning of baseball. And sometimes they increase very quickly and sometimes they plateau for a while or even decline for a while and then they tick back up again inevitably. And so all sorts of people have written worried posts and articles about this. Rob Neier and Joe Sheehan and basically everyone in the sabermetric community, I would say, has expressed some degree of concern about this. And the more I think about it, the less worried about it I am. And in my article, I had three main reasons for that. And the first reason, I think, is just that the changes are not as big as we make them out to be. They're big if you look at it kind of as, I don't know, maybe on a percentage basis or something. Or if you look at it as a full season total, like if someone tells you that there are going to be almost 500 more home runs hit this season than in any previous season, that sounds like a lot because 500 homers, like just imagine watching

500 homers. That would take a long time to watch. It seems like a huge number of home runs and it is, and it's fascinating to me why all those home runs are being hit. But in terms of just the impact on the game, when you divide it, it's, you know, 493 homers or whatever we're on pace to break the previous record by. Divide that by 30 teams and suddenly we're talking 493 homers or whatever were on pace to break the previous record by divide that by 30 teams. And suddenly we're talking about 16 homers per team and we have 162 games in a season. And so you're talking about basically one home run every 10 games for any one team. And that just doesn't sound like a lot. And of course, that's compared to the previous record season, 2000. So if you compare it to 2014 or something, it will be more dramatic than that.

But it's basically what we watched in 2000 with one extra homer per team every 10 games. And 2000 was fine. I don't look back in 2000 and say, man, that was way too many homers. It really ruined the season for me. We think of it as a high home run era and maybe it's PDs and a bunch of other factors, but it didn't really spoil baseball for us at the time. And I don't think it spoils that season or that era for me in retrospect either. Baseball was about as fun then as it's been any other time I've been watching it.

And that continues to be the case. And so I just don't see it as a game-breaking bug, really. I don't know whether it's a feature or not. I think you could consider it a feature. And Jeff Passon did an article this week at Yahoo. He talked to Rob Manfred, who said that MLB has done surveys, and the surveys say that people like homers and strikeouts and they're perfectly happy with the way the game is now and i haven't seen the results of those surveys but that doesn't sound implausible to me because i kind of feel the same way i've come around on really enjoying watching these strikeout monsters and kenley jansen and craig kimbrell and chris sale and just watching these guys totally dominate and i like like watching someone like Yasmany Grandal get extra strikes and help strikeouts in that way.

And I like watching Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger hit tons of homers and strike out a lot. And those two guys, their three true outcomes rate combined is 52%, which is, you know, more than half of their plate appearances, more than 20 percentage points, more than the league-wide average this year that everyone is fretting about. And what has been more fun this season than Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger? So I just don't know that I see the home runs as a problem. And really, I looked at 1996 compared to now, and it seems like the changes have been dramatic. But as far as three true outcomes rate, which is just walks and strikeouts and home runs, we've essentially

changed one plate appearance every 20 plate appearances. So if you took 20 plate appearances in 1996, one of those now would be a home run or strikeout or walk that wasn't at that time. And that just doesn't sound that significant to me when you put it that way. I'm not sure that if you showed me game logs, for instance, from 1996 and 2017, and didn't tell me which year it was, just based on the number of strikeouts, like it would take me a long time, I think, to notice any difference unless I knew these numbers going in. If I just watched the game and couldn't tell any other way, if I couldn't tell based on uniforms and hairstyles and video quality and all of that, I don't know that I would know immediately that this was 96 or 2017. So that's the first reason to me is that we focus so much on these numbers and we're looking at leaderboards all day and we're tracking these changes in the game. And it is interesting, at least to us, about why these things are happening. But I just don't know that the magnitude of the difference is enough that someone who is sitting at home watching primarily their

team and rooting for their team's players and is not really even aware of what's going on in the league or just doesn't care or mind all that much. I just don't see this as that big a problem. Do you have any different thoughts on that? I was going to bring up the exact same point about three true outcomes rates. I was going to use 1998 as the comparison year, just because that's an even two decades ago. And that's the season that's frequently credited with saving baseball or restoring baseball standing among the American public, etc. Home run chase and everything. People loved home runs in 1998. And just like in 1996, like you said, we're looking at a rise in the three true outcome percentage of five percentage points, which, yeah, I was also going to say one per 20 plate appearances.

Same page, mind meld, all that stuff. going to say one per 20 plate appearances same page mind meld all that stuff it is interesting that three true outcomes rate held steady at about 28 right until the beginning of the pitch era if there is an undeniable link at least if not a causation that correlation that over the past decade is when this is really taken off fastballs have gotten harder walks have stayed the same but strikeouts have gone up of course and home runs have bounced around and now they're all bouncing over fences i guess not bouncing those would be a lot of doubles that would be a doubles spike i don't know how we would explain that in baseball i guess lots of people stretching singles anyway yeah it uh it feels a lot more dramatic until you break it down and

think of that figure if you're changing one in 20 plate appearances the average game features what 70 plate appearances something like that 70 75 probably yeah i 70 played appearances? Something like that. 70, 75, probably. Yeah, I had an article. It's like 1.4 batted balls per team per game now, or fewer than in 1996, which is just, it's not a whole lot. There is probably a drop in players like, I don't know, Ray Ordonez, or just like no hit players. There are probably fewer of those now than ever before. Now there are good reasons for that. Those players are usually bad. There are fewer soft throwing pitchers, I guess. There's not really a Jamie Moyer. The game

is probably a little worse without Mark Burley because he was great, but there's no reason those pitchers can't still exist. Dallas Keuchel is there is one of the better pitchers in baseball and he is lucky to have a fastball go 90 or 91 there is still room for finesse and the slow growth of these trends it's so easy to notice as a writer because you're still looking at an increase of like 16 or something in three true outcome rate over 10 years ago instead of if you look at it as percent instead of percentage points. And of course, we've seen the comparisons of home run rate from now versus 2014. But then 2014 was like the low point right in forever for home runs. That was a completely different kind of season. And it's never fair to compare an all time high to

an all time low that is not it's just not a good usage of the numbers so i think to take you into what might be your second point i think it's it's completely valid to observe the changes that are happening we can say that at these rates within 10 or 20 or 30 years baseball could feel like it's really different there could be more changes of one in every 20 plate appearances maybe one in every 10 things could happen but rob Rob Manfred, of course, is aware and he wants to stop these things from getting out of control. But even if you were to accept that things are somewhat untenable now, or at least getting there, which I do not think is proven to be true, might actually be the opposite of true.

But even if there were developing problems, the neat thing about baseball, as you have observed, is that baseball is responsive to changes. Things tend to be cyclical and you need people to point out that maybe things have gotten out of control when things are getting out of control, but that's just part of the process of baseball self-correcting. Yeah. And this is a repeated refrain. I cited an example from 1997. So 20 years ago, same magazine, Sports Illustrated, and there was an article that was worried about strikeouts and said, strikeouts are piling up at an alarming rate and Ks were increasing at a frightening pace, et cetera, et cetera. And just looking at how the last 20 years played out, I think for baseball, at least, I mean, there were many memorable

moments. It was fun. If you had to think of what best represented baseball over that 20 years, you wouldn't really think of strikeout rate. It wouldn't really mar those two decades for you. So even in retrospect, I don't think it would have made sense to be frightened or alarmed at the strikeout rate in 1997. And I don't know if it does to be that way either today. And so I just think that I'm sure you could go back even farther than that and find examples of people worried about the strikeout rate even earlier when it was even lower. But it just seems to me that also when we talk about contact as a good, it ignores a lot of the very boring contact plays. It's not as if every defensive play is fun and exciting. A lot of them are, but a lot of them are just bouncers to second base or a tapper back to the pitcher. And there's a routine throw and there's a guy jogging down the first baseline and there's no suspense or excitement there. And I would argue that it's certainly more fun to see someone hit a home run and probably more fun to see someone throw a really amazing, fast, visually impressive pitch and see a hitter take a huge swing and miss. I mean, that to me, there is some entertainment value there also, even if technically nothing happens as a result of the plate appearance other than the strikeout.

So I just don't know that saying that less contact is a bad thing necessarily makes sense in every case. And so I just am not buying, I guess, that baseball is actually less entertaining or worse, at least for these reasons. I think there's something to the pace of play argument. worse, at least for these reasons. I think there's something to the pace of play argument, and I don't know that we're gaining anything by the same amount of action, but taking longer, I wouldn't mind seeing baseball do something to correct that. But yeah, I just think that we're in this place where these outcomes that we're so worried about, the strikeouts and the walks and the home runs, are still just a third of what happens at the end of plate appearances, and everything else is still twice as likely to happen as those three things combined. dimensional game because these plays that have become more common are still very much in the minority and are still improbable when any plate appearance starts and so i just don't see it as

that acute a problem and yes of course this is the job of rob manfred and maybe it's the job of baseball analysts and writers about baseball to notice these things and to say if left uncorrected and if we extrapolate and if nothing changes, then this will happen and that will happen. But the whole history of baseball is that the game is always evolving and things are always changing in unanticipated ways. We certainly didn't know we were going to be talking about a record high home run rate just three years ago. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if the home run rate just fell for reasons that we can't anticipate now all of a sudden. So I just, I don't see it as that immediate a problem. And part of

the reason is my third leg of this argument was that we can fix this if we all collectively decide that this is a problem and that baseball is actually worse. I think the fact that MLB really hasn't attempted to fix the strikeout problem, if it's a problem at all, just goes to show that it really hasn't reached the level of becoming a crisis yet. But there are things that the league could do. Like part of the strikeout rise is that the zone has been called differently and enforced differently and even was explicitly expanded in 1996. So you shrink the strike zone, the strikeouts are going to go away to a certain extent. And in theory, you could shrink the strike zone as much as you want until you're happy with the strikeout rate. So I just don't see it as an intractable, unsolvable problem.

And then you get into the mound height and moving the mound back and making outfields bigger and pushing the fences in some way or adding a DH to the National League. Anyway, there are all these solutions that I think we have every reason to expect would mitigate these trends. So even though over the longer term, strikeouts and home runs have been rising, trends. So even though over the longer term strikeouts and home runs have been rising, it doesn't feel to me like we have no solution to this and that it will rise unchecked forever. If we get to the point where we decide to do something about it, we know exactly what could be done and I think it would be pretty effective. So it just is not worrying me all that much. Looking at some of the numbers on fan graphs i assume these are all accurate

so far this season 10.4 percent of all pitches thrown have resulted in a swing and miss that is high that's the highest that we have on record that is not a coincidence of course strikeouts are the highest they've ever been but for the year 2002 9.6 percent of all pitches thrown resulted in a swing and miss that's weird that's uh not very much lower now there was a little bit of a drop and in 2006 the rate was down at 8.6 percent so you know there's an increase but it's not like batters have completely lost the ability to make contact they still make contact almost exactly the same amount if you were just watching two games back to back and one was from 15 years ago like you said you probably wouldn't really notice that

there was a lot more swing and missing you would probably years ago like you said you probably wouldn't really notice that there was a lot more swing and missing you would probably notice the increased velocity but you could solve that by just not reporting pitch velocities on the screen and presto it doesn't matter anymore if you look at stolen bases last season there were 2,537 stolen bases which is pretty much exactly how many there were in 2003 2004 2005 so we know that steals are kind of down relative to historical norms, but they're still there. There are still teams stealing bases. You just heard about the Diamondbacks being a great base running team. Yeah.

One of the things Verducci cites as an argument against this era is less strategy. And he talks about fewer sacrifice bunts and fewer intentional walks. And I think that has a lot to do with the rise of the analytical movement more so than the offensive environment. But it's probably some combination of both, but who misses those? I definitely don't miss those, and I don't even mean like from a sabermetric, they're suboptimal tactics perspective. I just mean from a spectator perspective. Who cares if there are fewer sacrifice bunts? I'd rather see almost any outcome of a plate appearance than a sacrifice bunt. So that seems like a good thing to me. And yeah, he cited the fact that I think no player had had

75 steals in 10 years or something like that. And the steal rate per game is down a little bit relative to sometimes in baseball history, but relative to the wider scope of baseball history, it's actually not. In my article, I compared 1920 to 2016, so the whole live ball era essentially, and the average over that span is exactly the average this season. So this is a completely typical stolen base rate if you take a slightly longer view looking at similar to seals i guess in terms of sudden action bunt hits last year there were fewer bunt hits than there were 15 years before comparing 2002 and 2016 bunt hits league wide were down about 200 but that's still a difference of fewer than seven

bunt hits per team per season so it's just not very much you might see a little less gerard dyson like bunting for a hit but we're also seeing bunts against the shift so there's still bunting strategy if anything i think teams want their players to get better at bunting not for sacrifices because those are bad but for hits and it's fun to bunt for hits and players are getting more athletic than they've ever been for a variety of reasons which means players are probably faster than they've ever been which means stolen bases are more possible bunt hits are more possible if and when the power ever goes away because i don't know the ball gets unjuiced it gets dehydrated if you will then that's going to reduce the run scoring environment,

which will only incentivize the strategy again. It doesn't take a whole lot to cause that to happen. You just have the baseball change imperceptibly again in the other direction, I guess, perceptibly to Justin Verlander, but imperceptibly to other people. Yeah. And for all the fretting about the shift and defensive positioning and all that, BABIP is not at all down relative to where it was when the shift was just catching on. It's higher than it's been for most of baseball history. The number of hits per game this year is essentially the same as it was in 1985, 1975, 1961, 1919 even. So I just don't see this as an existential threat. I think it's interesting to keep track of and point out these changes. It's one of my favorite things about baseball that the rules don responses and find out that the most pleasing brand of baseball is X runs per game and this many strikeouts, and you could somehow make those the conditions in baseball, I would think that we'd get tired of that probably after a few years, right? Like even if we loved it at the beginning, I think we'd want some changes. And so I think that's one of the great things about baseball

is that it's the same sport. It's basically the same rules, but there are these very discrete, identifiable eras where we can say this was a time when everyone hit for high averages and ran a lot. And this is a time when no one stole bases. And this is a time when everyone stole bases. And this is a time when everyone hit homers. And you can just classify these eras based on what the baseball looked like, but it was at its core, essentially baseball all the way through. And the things that appeal to you in one era would appeal to you in just about every other era. So that is my plea, I guess, is that we should all keep talking about this stuff. I certainly plan to keep looking at it and paying attention to it and pointing it out and discussing

the whys. But I guess it's the step from baseball is different to baseball is doomed or baseball is in trouble. That is a step that I just can't see myself taking anymore because the sport has proved very resilient. And until we get to a point where I'm really not enjoying it because of what it looks like from game to game, I am going to cease to assume that that point will ever arrive. And I'm running some numbers. So one of the things that goes along with worrying about the increase in home run rates is that pitchers are throwing harder than ever. And that is true. But looking at some numbers from baseball savant, let's look at 2015 league wide through June 23rd league wide, the average fastball was 92.5 miles per hour last season through the same date, the league wide average fastball is 92.7 miles per hour, that's a little bit higher,

that's about what you'd expect this season, the average fastball through this date is 92.7 miles per hour. No increase. So what that means, I don't know. Teams are still training their pitches to try to throw harder. Everybody wants pitchers to throw harder. Throwing harder is good. But for one thing, there is a natural limit. Pitchers will probably never be able.

The maximum conceivable limit is right around where Eraldis Chapman throws. And most humans are not that good. Worrying about like synthetic perfect elbow ligaments is a problem for future Ben and Jeff and future Rob Manfred but also most people are not freaks most people are not a Rallis Chapman there is an upper limit beyond which humans cannot throw and more important than that as pitchers throw max effort and learn to increase their max effort that's going to lead to more injuries because there is obviously a link between the force you put on your arm and how often your arm breaks down teams will be responsive to that and i suspect that the velocity trend it's still going to exist

to some extent more velocity is always going to be preferable to less velocity but as teams learn more and more about the presumed link between velocity and getting hurt then they're going to realize well maybe maybe we should back off this a little bit at pitcher's throw below max effort or don't prioritize velocity over command. There's going to be a response because if pitchers keep getting hurt, well, there's reasons for that. And teams are going to want to protect their assets. Nobody wants to have millions of dollars sitting on the disabled list. You don't want to end up in a situation like the Mets where everybody good you have is either Jacob deGrom or hurt. So that's going to be a problem teams will have to reckon with.

And so I don't think that the velocity thing is going to get out of control either, because as velocity goes up, injuries go up, and baseball will again self-correct. We know that if you have good command, you can be a successful pitcher in the major leagues throwing 88 to 90. Dallas Keuchel is the proof of that. Mark Burley was the proof of that with seven miles per hour less heat. So that's not going to go away. Hitters don't know what to do against pitchers with good command. Hitters hit mistakes. And so if you don't make so many mistakes, you don't need to throw that hard. We have Kyle Hendricks. At least we had last year's Kyle Hendricks. This new one with hand tendonitis is a little bit worse, but I think fretting about the velocity

trend, it's a little too soon. Fretting about the baseball trend is, I don't know what to do about that because the baseball changed all of a sudden and it could happen again. In conclusion, I guess, because we've been talking for an hour, everything is fine and there's nothing to worry about. Yeah. I kind of feel that way when it comes to baseball and when it comes to everything else, maybe not quite as much, but yes, I think that I am feeling very much at peace about the changes to baseball, and I'm curious about what they will be, but I am not worried about what they will be. So I hope that I can spread some calm to the rest of the baseball community. Well, you spread it to me.

All right. So we will leave it there. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild five listeners who've already done so include Clay, Ben Harris, Christian Tratt Andrew Mearns and John Sagal 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 keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance we will talk to you all very soon Keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. We will talk to you all very soon. I don't want to worry, baby, no, no. I don't want to worry, baby, no, no.

If you're going to make me worry, say goodbye. So I have a funny little story to tell you, free podcast. Okay. Yesterday, it's around 9 o'clock in the morning. By this point, my girlfriend has gone to work. She biked to work, and I was upstairs. And then I was like, all right, I have to go use the bathroom. So I went to use the bathroom.

I was in there for a few minutes, and while I was in there, I heard the sound of a door slam. I thought, oh, that's weird. Maybe it's the neighbors. Maybe it's not the neighbors. I wonder what that was. So I left, and I went downstairs downstairs and the front door was closed. Our back door was ajar. And we were out

$100 of cash on a liquor cabinet just sort of in the dining room. Somebody came in and burglarized us of $100 of cash while I was home upstairs. What's even weirder, my wallet was sitting right next to the cash untouched not taken there were uh thousands of dollars of camera

equipment sitting right next to the front door that could have been grabbed very easily untouched not taken all of our like mountaineering climbing equipment is still upstairs because we haven't put it away because we're messy people untouchedouched, not taken, nothing taken except for $100 and what was basically an empty purse. That is very strange. I was going to say very efficient thief, but I guess very inefficient thief maybe because whoever the thief was made it in and out very quickly and found money in a liquor cabinet, which is impressive. On top of the liquor cabinet, in fairness. Okay. right but not but not while it was right there so yep

they didn't want cards didn't want identification didn't want anything to sell i think it's like hey door's unlocked i'm gonna go in and be out of here in 10 seconds that was strange yeah i am i used to think that i was uh that i had some attention problems like i i never listened to music or anything when i'm writing because i just can't focus because I get easily distracted. But apparently, I'm not easily distracted enough. So I guess you got to lock your doors now. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm hoping, I don't know how likely it is, but I'm hoping that the heroin addict who took my money will also soon become an Effectively Wild Patreon supporter and I can gradually earn my money back.