Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1077: Strangely Slanting Fields

Episode Date: June 29, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about (and/or follow up on) Miguel Montero’s Cubs demise, philosophical Pirates quotes, Carter Capps, unusual ballpark constructions, jams and rallies, and target-based hitting competitions, then answer listener emails about extra-inning wins by wide margins, Jake Arrieta’s career vs. Brad Radke’s career, David Ortiz’s value, rampant base-stealing in single games, […]

Hello and It's the story of my life Hi. Just before we started talking, there were some developments in the Miguel Montero situation, namely that Miguel Montero no longer has a job, at least with the Cubs. And I was planning on possibly bringing this up anyway, because his comments were kind of interesting. So he was the catcher for a Jake Arrieta start, and there were seven stolen bases allowed. And so after the game, he said it really sucked because the stolen bases go to me. And when you really look at it, the pitcher doesn't give me any time. So it's just like, yeah, OK, Miggy can't throw nobody out. Yeah, but my pitchers don't hold anybody on. It's tough because it doesn't matter how much work I put on footwork and throwing and everything because I don't get a chance to throw. That's the reason they were running left and right today, because they know he was so to the plate. Simple as that. So he completely just threw Arrieta under the bus. And Anthony Rizzo had a comment on ESPN Radio the morning after saying that, you know, something

about how you're not supposed to criticize other players and our other catcher throws everybody out, which is true. Wilson Contreras has thrown out, I forget, 30-something, 34% of attempted Steelers this season. And Montero has gone one for 33, I think, throwing guys out, which is not so good. Probably a large element of truth to what he's saying. I know Travis Sochik just wrote a post that I haven't had time to read yet, but usually the case that the pitcher has a lot to do with stolen bases being allowed. And I don't know exactly what the data is with the pop times and the times to the plate and all of that. Maybe Travis has it in his post, but probably a lot of truth to what Montero is saying, but obviously not the sort of thing you're supposed to say. And this made me think of our conversation about the Giants clubhouse the other day and how positive clubhouses can become negative clubhouses very quickly. And maybe the same is true of leaders and not leaders in clubhouses because Miguel Montero is supposed to be like the veteran mentor clubhouse leader type, right? supposed to be like the veteran mentor clubhouse leader type, right? Like I just googled very quickly and I saw an article from February. The Chicago Sun-Times said that the leader in the

Cubs clubhouse is and was Miguel Montero. This was about how the Cubs were going to fill their David Ross leadership void. And Rick Morrissey, who wrote that column, was at least making the case that Montero was always like the heart and soul of the team that he still was. Or just on May 26th, Saharav Sharma wrote for The Athletic Chicago, Miguel Montero is both a clubhouse leader and a media favorite for the Cubs. And I think it was six days ago, Brett Taylor wrote for Bleacher Nation, Miguel Montero got bit by the positivity bug and he's passing it around, which is right before his incredible negativity. And this was, you know, he was tweeting a bunch of stuff about how the Cubs are coming and they're

going to be great and everything. And of course, he's the one who has that popular hashtag from 2015, we are good. So I don't know what to to make of this the cubs are kind of struggling montero is personally kind of struggling and maybe that leads to a situation where things like this are said but again it is striking to me that often it is the team and the player who is not supposed to do these things that does it yeah very. Very quickly summarize what Travis Sotchick wrote. I can tell you, Miguel Montero does rank 52nd out of 52 catchers in average pop time this season. He has declined. For anyone who doesn't know, pop time is basically, what is it? The time between when the catcher receives the ball and when the ball arrives at second base. Yes. Basically. So yeah, there is a very narrow difference between the best and the worst. I think the

best average pop time was 1.88 seconds. I could be wrong, but it's close. Miguel Montero is at 2.12 seconds on average. So it's a very, very tight difference. But stolen bases are all about the fractions of one second. If you look at just Jake Arrieta this season, it is interesting to note that while Arrieta has a very slow time to the plate, which could have something to do with the fact that he's been a bad pitcher this season, he could be focused on his mechanics and worried less about

base runners however arieta has thrown 35.2 innings with miguel montero behind the plate this season and base runners are 12 for 12 arieta has also thrown 53 innings with wilson contraris this season and base runners are three for five so So clearly there is something else going on. Now, as to the magnitude or the significance of the stolen bases allowed, well, that's going to be sort of the theme of the stats segment. Allowing stolen bases is not always a crippler, although it can be very conspicuous when it happens. The bigger problem with the Cubs is that Jake Ariat has not really thrown enough strikes. Miguel Montero has actually hit a little better this season than Wilson Contreras has, but Montero has now been designated for assignment,

replaced by a catcher who has also played first base in the minors. So presumably, I don't know much about the prospect, but not an aces defensive catcher because he's also a first baseman, but whatever. Clearly, this was made for reasons beyond just montero's performance although his performance has been a mixed bag and uh yeah starting to see some i guess you could say cracks uh beginning to develop with the cubs who still cannot get very far above 500 and joe madden is supposed to be the guy who develops the greatest strongest most cohesive clubhouses around and you can't say that that's not true or that that doesn't exist, because this could be one of the things that that leads to that getting rid of Montero immediately helps prevent any sort of real fracture from forming, perhaps.

But the reality is that there is frustration. And when a team is frustrated, that will manifest with certain players. And that's how a clubhouse gets worse. Yeah, I don't know how Montero would rank in the annals of released players as far as current performance goes, but I would think he is significantly above average for a player who's being designated for assignment. Like according to Baseball Perspectives' stats, which include framing and everything, he has been worth one win above replacement in only 44 games and 112 plate appearances, which is very good. He has a 112 WRC+, so he is 12% better than the average hitter, and obviously that's very good for a catcher. He's hitting 286, 366, 439 with above average framing and bad throwing. But those basically cancel out according to the stats.

And so, yeah, this is, I guess it's a fairly drastic release based on something a player said. I would think that most DFA players are performing considerably worse than Montero has to this point in the season. Victor Caratini is the point in the season. Yep. Victor Caratini is the name of the prospect. I forgot to mention that. Victor Caratini is the guy coming up. He is one of, he's the guy replacing Miguel Montero and Caratini. In the minors has started most of the time at catcher, but he's also played first base

and third base and he is thrown at 31% of base runners, which is not very good, but it's better than Montero's three percent by an order of ten so yeah there's that all right did you have any banter before we get to emails because i've got a bunch of follow-ups to things that we have already talked about i do and i have two things i was also going to bring up montero just because that's what was happening but i have two other things and i suspect that one of them is something you were also going to bring up because i saw that you favorited a related tweet so So I'll begin with the less interesting one. But this is a pertinent to something I didn't really realize what was going on. I haven't looked at

minor league numbers yet this year. But Jeff Passan just wrote an article that concluded with a little section on a player that I will bring up in a few seconds. So last December, last December 27th, I guess maybe it was December 26th. Anyway, around last Christmas, the Los Angeles Dodgers signed three minor league free agents. Now teams sign any number of minor league free agents. And generally you never hear about them again until they are once more minor

league free agents. The Dodgers on that day, they signed Andrew Thurman. Andrew Thurman is a pitcher. And this season with a Dodgers affiliate, he has thrown two innings. To his credit, his ERA is zero. They also signed Jay Muhammad, and Jay Muhammad this year for a Dodgers affiliate has thrown five innings.

Now, his ERA is 1.8. Good for him. He's thrown five innings. In rookie ball, not really doing very much. And then there's this other guy they signed that same day, Wilmer Funt. Now, do you remember Wilmer Funt? I remember the name, but that's about it. Yep. He was a Rangers pitching prospect back in the day. Even now, he's only 27 years old. But Font is interesting for a few reasons. One, Wilmer Font, he's 27, former Rangers prospect,

former actual big leaguer for a couple very, very brief cups of coffee, but his rookie status remains intact. Now, Wilmer Font came up as a starting pitcher prospect, and he continued to start. I'm going to guess he was injured in 2011. There was a blank space. I didn't research that, but he was a starter in 2012. He was a starter in, well, yeah, through 2012, beginning in 2007, and then it looks like he was converted to relief in 2013. Nothing really happened for him. Got strikeouts, but he walked too many people, etc. Carry that forward. He was a reliever in 2014. In 2015, he was converted back into being a starter.

And here is where a name emerges. The Ottawa Champions. Wilmer Font pitched for the Ottawa Champions in 2015. He was fine. And then he also played some winter ball in Venezuela Venezuela I guess that would have been after the year played for Caracas and in 2016 he went back to the Ottawa champions and he was starting again he had an ERA just over three I don't know what that means in that league that could be very bad very good or somewhere in between but I don't really know why this happened I haven't done the research but he kind of stopped walking guys and he started getting at least he maintained his

strikeout so font looked pretty good for the ottawa champions he was signed by the blue jays i guess midway probably through the can-am league season something like that he went to triple-a buffalo and he was quickly demoted down to double- Hampshire, where he was still quite good. He, in the offseason, went back to Caracas, and he pitched in Venezuela, and he wound up still a minor league free agent, and he was signed by the Dodgers. To fast forward this, Wilmer Font has started 15 games with AAA Oklahoma City. In those 15 games, he's thrown 80.1 innings. He has 22 walks and 112 strikeouts he is the current leader in strikeout minus walk rate for any qualified pitcher in the triple a level he has struck out

a third of his opponents he's walked just 6.7 percent of his opponents his lead in strikeout minus walk rate is one of six percentage points over brentwell, legitimate prospect for the Tampa Bay Rays. So Wilmer Font has emerged as a minor league free agent who pitched for the Ottawa Champions, also pitched in Venezuela. He is now throwing 68% of his pitches for strikes in AAA. He's also missing bats. He has a seems like a high rising fastball surprise. He's on the Dodgers. He is probably in line to be called up before very long. And this is just, this is a nobody. This is on no one's radar.

And the Dodgers just lost Julio Urias for two seasons. And for all I know, it might not even be an exaggeration to say that Wilmer Font could replicate his performance pretty much right away. Well, I look forward to your post. Yeah, now I have to wait to write about it. Cause Piazza just wrote about it, but I give it another few weeks and then I could bring it up again. Or maybe as soon as he's promoted,

that would be a good time. Okay. So the other bit of banter that I suspect was on both of our radars, this has to do with the Pittsburgh pirates and some quotes we talked about on episode 1,000 and 48. So that's what? 29 episodes ago ago there was a john jay so quote this is very early in the season and the pirates seemed to have this thing where they would either sweep or get swept whatever why not ask someone about it and john jay so said quote it's bizarre

such as this game and such as life we talked about that a little bit because I don't know why that was a quote. I don't know why that showed up in an official MLB.com game recap. We talked about what the template was accidentally revealed where there was room for interesting or notable player quotes. And we debated whether or not that counted. Okay. So John J. So his quote ended with such as this game and such as life.

So we got some more information tweeted at us by way of Adam Berry, a true Pirates beat reporter for MLB.com. So the Pirates lost a difficult game recently. And pitcher Trevor Williams had a postgame quote. Williams said, quote, Baseball is a game of inches and it bounced their way tonight. Nothing weird here. Baseball is weird and such as life. Trevor Williams, the second Pirates player to weird and such is life. Trevor Williams,

the second Pirates player to bring up such is life in a matter of a month or two, which can't be a coincidence, I don't think, because I don't remember a baseball player ever saying such is life under any other context. And now we have two teammates who have said the same thing. So I'm going to open the floor to that conversation in just a second but pan and barry put together sort of a power rankings of pirates beat writer quotes and there are two other ones you can rank these however you want but we've got trevor williams and john j so both saying such as life we also have trevor williams from earlier in the year saying quote a baseball is fun when you don't get your ass kicked and we also have also have Jordy Mercer on the debut of Gift and Go Pay. Jordy Mercer said, quote, this is just special because he's from Africa.

Come on. He lives with giraffes and lions. Let's go. There's a good relationship between Mercer and Go Pay. They've known each other for a decade. Nothing weird there. Nothing racial or racist. Just giraffes and lions.

In any case, back to Such Is Life. Your interpretation, please, on the Pirates having two players issue a back to Such Is Life. Your interpretation, please, on the Pirates having two players issue a quote saying Such Is Life. Yeah, seems unlikely to be a coincidence. Like the first part of that quote about baseball being a game of inches is as wrote a quote as you can imagine, but Such Is Life is not. And I would imagine I know nothing about the relationship between John Jaso and Trevor Williams, but I will note that John Jaso is from Chula Vista. Trevor Williams is from San Diego. These are very near to each other.

They're both Southern Californians. Maybe they are both just laid-back surfer-type bros, and their attitude toward life is that such is it. And their attitude toward life is that such is it. And so I wonder whether they are friends and whether this is a saying that's catching on in the clubhouse or whether it's just limited to Southern Californian members of the Pirates. But either way, I like it. I like the deep, profound-sounding philosophical quote after a game. It's better than just saying the ball bounces a certain way or sometimes you just have to tip your cap to your opponent or whatever it is i like such as life and i hope that it continues to be heard i don't remember exactly didn't the cubs have some sort of team rallying

cry last year i don't remember exactly what it is maybe you do but i remember joe madden had the whole race slogan uh it wasn't that one it was something well i well, I mean, maybe that was, but that one sucks. Maybe I think there was something more team specific, but I just, I can't remember off the top of my head. But I do remember in 2008, the Tampa Bay Rays had this whole team rallying cry, nine equals eight. Now I kind of have forgotten what that meant. I know what the nine means, but I forgot what the eight had to do with anything.

But anyway, Joe Madden, it was some sort of inspirational team slogan, and the Rays went to the World Series, et etc joe madden likes to create these team slogans they're good for clubhouse chemistry except for this season i guess where miguel montero equals one out of 33 maybe that's not a very good team slogan but i wonder if the pirates have a team slogan that's sort of defeatist yes such as life you know, pirates used to be, they peaked and they were good. And now they're kind of slumping and they're under 500. And such as life, they didn't do anything wrong. It's just, you know, them's the breaks.

Such As Life was the pirates fan base's attitude for two decades there. So it only makes sense that the team would embrace it now. Nine equals eight. I just Googled, quote, the idea is nine players playing nine innings together to become one of the eight teams in the playoffs. Hunt. Oh, well, that's kind of boring. But whatever.

Yeah. Gets the job done. All right. Other follow-ups from listeners. Tony in Albuquerque, a Patreon supporter, wanted to contribute some information to our Carter Capps discussion from the previous episode. He says, I just listened to this Tuesday's episode, which included a discussion of Carter Capps' ejection over the weekend. I thought you might like to hear from an eyewitness. I actually saw Carter

and the Chihuahuas at an Isotopes game earlier in the month, and his appearance came and went without serious incident. Thus, when he came into the game Sunday night, I didn't have any suspicions that anything was going to go awry. He was coming on, I believe, to start the eighth inning of a game with the score Albuquerque 9, El Paso 5. The first warning came on the very first pitch. I hadn't noticed any significant differences between this pitch and the warm-up pitches he had thrown, but it wasn't too difficult to figure out what was going on. The second warning came two pitches later, and again, I couldn't spot anything significantly different in his delivery. Then again, I am neither a scout nor a AAA umpire, so what do I know? Anyway, it was at this time that Rod Barajas came out and got tossed. He was, as you might imagine, fairly animated with the

first base umpire, who had been calling the illegal pitches. Caps didn't seem that upset at this point. The game continued, and he worked the count to 2-2 before uncorking a wild pitch that bounced in the dirt, and then bounced up, hitting the home plate ump In what appeared to be a sensitive area So the home plate ump was hit in the beans As Grant Brisney would say Following the old baseball tradition of Wonder around until play is ready to resume The catcher walked in front of the plate

To deliver a new ball to Caps who joined them there They chatted for a moment Then suddenly the home plate ump snapped to attention And marched up to join them A brief bit of jawing ensued And then Caps was tossed Whereupon he had to be physically restrained From the home plate ump snapped to attention and marched up to join them. A brief bit of jawing ensued, and then Caps was tossed, whereupon he had to be physically restrained from going after the umpire. Needless to say, this was all highly entertaining to the home-town crowd. I was talking later with a friend and found out that El Paso had had something of a beef with the home plate ump of Saturday night's game, so Barajas' outburst at least may not have

been as much about Caps' pitches as an eruption over the series as a whole. And I got some corroborating evidence on that from Dustin Palmatier, who said that the only other illegal Caps pitch that he knows of that he was called for this season was on Friday night with the same umpiring crew, and that the one on Friday came a couple of pitches after the opposing manager, Glenn Allen Hill. So we've got Glenn Allen Hill versus Rod Barajas, the managerial matchup of this series, came out to talk with the umps, presumably about Caps' delivery, and he pitched a full inning, and that was the only one they called. So it seems like it is a rogue umpiring crew that has taken a disliking to Carter Caps

and called him on it twice in one series. But he has gotten away with it otherwise. That's interesting that he was called on his first pitch of the game. And then after his third pitch of the game. Implying that he did do something different. Or at least that they didn't call him for anything illegal on the second pitch. And then he went right back. It suggests probably accurately that Capps is forever straddling the line of illegality because his delivery is stupid and completely illegal but the idea of him trying to do something so sensitive

on every single pitch I don't know in the spring I was really optimistic about Caps and the idea that he would be able to work his way back and now I'm biased because his results have been bad and he's doing things like getting injected and mouthing off at a rogue on firing crew. But yeah, I don't know. It might just be too complicated for him to keep this up. Now, I say that even though Caps was amazing for a half season the last time he was in the major leagues, but there's so much attention on him now. This seems like it's going to be very difficult for him to actually get that and not get too

out of sync or too frustrated. Yeah, seems like it would be a tough thing to detect from first base whether his back foot is in touch with the rubber or is leaving the rubber by some slight fraction of an inch or whatever it is. It seems like it would be tough to tell from that far away. But anyway, another follow-up. We got a couple follow-ups about weird stadium designs after we talked About the one on a recent Episode in Colorado where

The field slopes downhill And you can only see the right fielder's Head from the plate and Nick says I knew that the Talk about there being a hill that slopes downward In the outfield seemed familiar to me And I finally found where I heard it before Willie Keeler of Hit It Them Where They

Ain't Fame played outfield for Baltimore in the 1890s, and the outfield there had a downslope to it. The passage here, he links to a book, makes a reference to how he would hide balls on the downslope so that if the ball got hit down the hill, he could simply grab a ball hidden in the grass and throw it in quickly. I couldn't find where I read this story But I remember reading in a book once that this Ruse was discovered when he and another outfielder Both chased a ball down the slope And to the shock of everyone two balls Ended up being thrown toward the infield So that's a strategy to keep in mind

Another listener Tim Says that your conversation on Friday About the unique field in Colorado hit a chord Close to my heart my high school alma mater The height school has a field that Seemed perfectly normal to me as someone who Practiced played, and coached there, but drew the ire of every opposing team. As you can see from the images attached, there are images attached, it looks like a somewhat normal baseball field with dirt and grass, albeit patchy,

until you notice a few of the details that come with trying to fit a baseball field into a rectangular field in a highly populated suburb of DC. One, there is a 20 foot tall hill in right field, which is only 180 feet away from home plate. The hill runs from the right field foul line to deep center. And yes, we assure every umpire that asks the hill is in play. Balls over the fence are ground rule doubles, depending on if they are to the right or left of a specific gate. Two, conveniently, the backstop is only a few feet away from home plate, meaning the catchers who can block are optional and pass balls don't show up in the box score. Three, the left field line is only about 200 feet away, but the angle of the fence means it quickly goes to over 400 feet. The most amusing would be to see how the poor freshmen the opposition put in right field decided to play the hill. Would they stand at the

base of the hill or stumble and fall as their stride was broken by an abrupt climb it definitely gave us an advantage as pop-ups would easily turn into doubles and 9-3 was a common scoring play we practiced often i mean you'd effectively have to treat the entire hill and fence as one giant fence just of a weird configuration because it's a steep based on the picture it looks like it is a pretty steep slope up to the base of the wall in right field and like a 20 foot steep hill it's no joke i'm looking at the back window and there's probably a 20 foot difference between the the ground and the sloped roof of the next building that i'm seeing and 20 feet sounds like nothing it's only like running up the equivalent of three people's heights i guess if they're above average tall people yeah like you would be stunned if you were in a dead spring sounds like nothing it's only like running up the equivalent of three people's heights i guess if

they're above average tall people yeah like you would be stunned if you were in a dead sprint after a fly ball first of all you would fall down immediately but you would be stunned by how quickly it gets difficult to sustain momentum running up a slope like that i don't care how smooth it is you just get winded fast and so you kind of have to play the whole thing like a wall but i don't know how you prepare for a ball to bounce off of that slope. That gets into physics that goes beyond like ninth and tenth grade level pre-calculus physics. You don't know what the ball is going to do. Throw in the idea of the grass probably being kind of patchy because high school fields are terrible, especially the ones that are designed to be terrible.

It is going to be a nightmare. And I would love to watch other teams, especially for their first visit of the year, try to play that field. The only downside being that in high school baseball, you I don't know how good the level of skill is for this particular high school and its conference. But you probably don't get a whole lot of deep flies to right field anyway. But I guess actually they don't have to be very deep flies. They just have to be pop ups that kind of carry, don't they? Yeah. All right. Couple of emails about jams and rallies we got one from andrew patreon supporter who says

i don't think the venn diagram of jams and rallies completely overlaps the easiest example is the team that is down by three but hits back to back to back solo home runs to take the lead he is arguing that that would be a rally because it was a string of hits, but it would never be a jam because no one would ever be on base, which I suppose is a fair point unless we are saying that a rally has to involve multiple base runners also, which you could make the case that it does. I don't know. Jeff says, I disagree that a rally must come when a team is behind. If nothing else, we have to include a tie game, don't know. Jeff says, I disagree that a rally must come when a team is behind. If nothing else, we have to include a tie game, don't we?

If a team goes into the bottom of the ninth in a tie game and strings together three or four hits to win the game, that's going to be called a game-winning rally, isn't it? Yes, fair point, Jeff. But even beyond that, I think the definition of a rally is really tied more to the tennis definition than anything else. It's a sustained series of hits. If a team has 14 hits in an inning, that's a rally no matter what the score was when the inning began. I think part of the reason referring to home runs as rally killers became a thing is because a home run

kind of lets the pitcher reset. Okay, no runners on. Let's just pretend this is a new inning and put the unpleasant thus behind us. Obviously, it gets taken too far when people think a home run is actually a bad thing because it killed a rally, because by definition, a rally killing homer scored you at least two home runs, unless you're one of those pitchers who says that a rally killer can be a solo home run, which is weird, but I've heard of at least two pitchers say that. But in the sense that a rally is a constant series of base runners moving around the bases, yes, a homer can kill a rally, although the things you would have had to do to continue the previous rally will now just serve to start another one. I disagree with the notion that a rally can

happen in a tie game or when you're leading. I understand that you could use it and people would know what you mean, but I seem to hear rally just about every single time in the context of a team rallied from behind to win the game. And to me, that implies any sort of comeback, and it could involve just a string of solo or two-run home runs. But to me, the way that I've heard it and the way that I use it, a rally does imply coming from some sort of margin. And while I guess you could say that a team staged a rally in the bottom of the ninth to break a tie and to win the game, I don't think that's how the word has been used, but I don't know.

I could be wrong. I don't feel like looking it up. All right. Controversy continues. So another one. This is the last follow-up item, I believe, from one of our UK listeners, Tom, who says,

Listening to episode 1074, the talk of an alternative home run derby came up specifically with targets in the outfield. By a strange coincidence, on the 4th of July in London, MLB is hosting such an event. Looking at the promo pictures, it seems like they plan to have targets around the field and maybe even floating targets. And Tom wrote about this at his blog, Batflips and Nerds, and he linked me to that. And I am looking at the MLB page about this. This is a Hyde Park event on July 4th. There's a home run derby. It's sort of strange. It pits

a team managed by Carlos Pena against a team managed by Cliff Floyd. And the weird thing is that the Carlos Pena team is the Red Sox. Carlos Pena played for the Red Sox for 18 games. So I don't know why Carlos Pena's team is the Red Sox. And then you have the Cliff Floyd team, which is called the Dodgers. Cliff Floyd never played for the Dodgers. He actually played for the Red Sox more than Carlos Pena played're getting Red Sox and Dodgers, except that Sean Green, I believe, is on the Dodgers team, which I don't know why Sean Green isn't leading the Dodgers team. He's much more of a Dodger than Cliff Floyd. But it's these two guys, and it's also a bunch of English cricketers, which now has me intrigued. I actually want to see how they do in a home run derby. But there is an image. It looks like a mock-up image and in this image there are like triangles on the field and coming from each triangle are four lines that connect to

a home plate shaped thing that seems to be floating in the sky like maybe it's a balloon shaped like home plate or something and one of them says 100 feet and two of them say 150 feet as if these things are suspended targets in the air that you're supposed to hit with your home runs. So I don't know what this event is, but I am... It's not baseball. No, it's going to give British fans a very odd idea of what baseball is. But I am looking forward to hearing more about this. So, Tom, any other UK listeners who attend this event, please let us know what it was like.

The event is free and not ticketed, so you can just show up in Hyde Park on July 4th as part of the British Summertime Open House Series. So check it out, I guess. Let us know how weird it was. I understand that baseball wants to promote its game into international markets, but I don't know what they are promoting in this case. It's not the sport that they play. It's just sort of people swinging and hitting balls,

which I guess is by the loosest definition baseball-ish. And maybe the idea is to be the least confusing when you have a market that is more familiar with a different batted ball sport. But I mean, this is not close to either one of them. No, this seems like a promotion for our podcast more than anything else. But I'm curious. I want to know more. All right. So we've been talking for half an hour. We have now gotten through the preliminary part of this podcast, although those were all listener emails for the most part. And this is a listener email show. No one said they had to be questions. So let us answer some actual questions. We got a lot of terminology questions,

but I'll save those for after your stat segment. So Tom says, as a Red Sox fan, it's my duty to think up ways to further inflate David Ortiz's legacy. We always say that the DH gets penalized by war for not playing the field, but I present this argument. Ortiz, a comically bad fielder, was providing value by not being a liability in the field. Is this a valid argument or is it a faulty premise? When I was in ninth grade, my rhetoric teacher was reading some paragraph aloud. We didn't have

a printed copy, so he was just reading something aloud to us. I don't remember what the lecture was about, but he kept referring to the penal system and I thought it was the funniest thing in the world until I went home and I realized what he was actually talking about. I had a very different impression. Okay, so I don't know how to explain the positional adjustments very well, certainly not in a cohesive off the top of my head on the fly kind of way. So the argument presented here is that Ortiz was helpful because he didn't play the field because that way he made the Red Sox better because they didn't have to have a terrible first baseman. Right. He would have hurt them more if he had played the field because he would have been bad at it. I guess the one thing I don't understand is how would that not

apply to every designated hitter, at least of the certain era? I know that there are teams that cycle through regular players through DH just to give them sort of a half day's rest. But Ortiz certainly is a legacy from sort of the previous era where DHs were DHs because they couldn't do anything else. And you had a whole bunch of big fat players who could hit kind of like David Ortiz. So I don't know why this would be more of a boost to him than anybody else. And it's sort of factored into it. But if I could explain the positional adjustments better, well, I guess I wouldn't have, I wouldn't be in a different, that's still the same job, but I would be a little better at my job, but I'm not. Yeah. Well, I think you could just say that it's true that Ortiz may have hurt the Red Sox less by being a DH than if he had been a fielder, but I don't know if that inflates his legacy or his own value because when people

say that, they are comparing the DH to a good fielder, right? They're saying that he's not contributing the value that most players contribute by playing the field and improving the team in that way. So whether Ortiz was a bad fielder or not a fielder at all, he still was not helping the team defensively, which is the argument against him or one argument, I guess, against his Hall of Fame case is that he just didn't contribute on that side of the ball. And that is still true. So I don't think you should say that the Red Sox would have been better off with Ortiz playing a lousy first base or something. But I think if your case against Ortiz is that he was

a DH and that's it, that's not an adequate case. People make that case against Edgar Martinez. And if Edgar had just continued to be a bad third baseman, no one would make that case against him, which might be true, but they should make that case against him. If he was a bad third baseman, then that should hurt his hall of fame case so it's all runs added or runs subtracted and ortiz was just not saving the red sox any runs defensively so when that's the case you have to hit a ton and hit a ton for a really long time to make up for it or or to contribute as much as someone who is hitting a ton but is also playing the field

pretty well. And you could argue about whether Ortiz did that or not, but I don't think this specific argument really helps his reputation at all. Yeah, I think if you want to inflate Ortiz's legacy, he already has good numbers, maybe a little, his regular season numbers might be a little bit short of the usual Hall of Fame standards but then ortiz also has some dominant post-season performances that you can't exclude so that certainly helps his case it makes up some of the difference between him and edgar martinez who absolutely deserves to be in the hall of fame and so much more of ortiz's case also comes down to sort of his his recognizability emphasizing the word fame in hall of fame he was a clear icon of the game for i don't know 10 or 15 years or whatever

it was he was a vital member of the community and so there's not a whole lot you could do to inflate ortiz's case unless unless you made up some sort of personal anecdote that told the story of how david ortiz came to your assistance or rescue under some situation that it could be whatever you want it doesn't have to be true but no one can disprove it if you just say that david ortiz came and helped ward off a burglar or a home invasion or david ortiz helped you fix a tire which i i know actually happened to somebody that i kind of know in boston not really a friend not even somebody i like just somebody i was having a conversation with who hung around with my brother. Didn't like that person, Michael. But he was broken down and maybe he made this up too.

But this is probably 2006 and he had a flat and David Ortiz pulled over and helped him fix his tire. And if it wasn't David Ortiz, it was someone who looked remarkably similar. So you could just make up a story like that except maybe raise the stakes a little bit and spread that on social media. Nobody can say it didn't happen, say that it happened nine or ten years ago. And voila, David Ortiz has a little bit of a surge in viral popularity. And a few years down the road, it can help his case for the Hall of Fame a little bit. Yeah. Alex Rodriguez saved a life once. Do you remember that story? I do. Yeah. Someone, a kid was about to walk into traffic and A-Rod leaped out and pulled him back into the

sidewalk and saved his life and was credited with saving his life. And it was a Yankees fan and everything. And I tried to do a story on that 10 years after it happened, because this was like at the height of A-Rod's unpopularity when he was suspended or about to be suspended, or I don't know what. He was in the midst of all of that PD stuff and I wanted to do a story on this like I don't know just reminding people that this pariah had saved someone's life once and that there was something on the positive side of the scale and then also seeing whether the person's attitude about A-Rod had changed because if you have your life saved by someone, you'd think that

that would influence your perception of them even later. And I did manage to contact the kid who was by then, I think 18 or something and his parents, and they didn't want to be quoted for the story, unfortunately. But it sounded like even they didn't like A-Rod all that much at that point. His popularity was so low that even people whose lives he saved were were not big fans i i forget exactly what they said but it was like they were grateful to him but they still were not big fans of how he had conducted himself or it was less than a a full-throated endorsement of a rod as a person which uh kind of told you how how far his popularity had sunk at that point.

Alternate headline, Alex Rodriguez shoves child on sidewalk. Yeah. Okay, another Jeff, or actually it's the same Jeff as before, but different Jeff from you, says, if you could be a player, whose major league career would you rather have? Your options are Jake Arrieta or Brad Radke. Radke had nearly three times the career value by war, but Arrieta has a World Series ring and was the best pitcher in baseball for a brief time. Radke never reached the heights and he played for a worse team, but it looks like Arrieta's time as a good pitcher

might end up being briefer than Radke's. So this is kind of a peak versus career value argument, So this is kind of a peak versus career value argument, but from the player's perspective, not the team's. So it's choosing a career, not necessarily choosing a person, right? I can just have the same numbers? Yes. Yeah. I mean, in that case, then I'll take Arrieta. He reached the highest high, won a World Series.

He's experienced things that Radke never got to experience, and he's going to be set for life. He's going to sign some sort of large contract this offseason, almost no matter what he does down the stretch. And then he's going to be fine. He seems fit. He can grow a healthy beard. I guess we're not actually becoming the person. Yeah, sure. So, yeah, I'll take Arrieta, even though I see the argument and I can be swayed to the counter argument. But how high Arrieta got, I think that would probably linger for me for a

while if if i had a perfectly fine career and i became the comparison point for every single pitcher that the twins ever developed again for the rest of their franchise existence but still never really did much the playoffs got the world series yeah i'd like to have been the best pitcher in baseball for even a fleeting amount of time and win it all. That'd be nice. Yeah, I think I agree too. And I have no team spirit, so I don't even know if I'd care that much about winning a World Series. I'm just out for myself. But I think that probably I would rather be Arrieta, yeah, just because of the heights he reached and how unhittable he was for a time. And also he has already made more than half of the money that Brad Radke made over the course of his career, not after you adjust for inflation, but I would assume

that after whatever contract he gets this winter, Arrieta's career earnings will be greater than Radke's, even inflation adjusted. And I don't even know that he will have less longevity. Like he might not have the same career value because Arrieta didn't really get good until he was like 28 or something. But I think that he's already had eight years in the big leagues. Radke retired after his age 33 season. So he only had 12 years in the big leagues probably could have pitched longer perhaps but didn't so arietta might very well end up having the longer career also if not necessarily the better career so i think it's it's close enough in that respect like if you if you told me like like if i had to choose between arietta and like I don't know, Tommy John or someone like that who pitched forever, you know, pitched for, what, 26 years in the big leagues and was a borderline

Hall of Fame candidate and was never as good as Arrieta was for that brief period still, but pitched forever. And I don't know, I guess he won a world series too right or he was uh in two world serieses did he he lost you know I think he lost all the world serieses he was in Tommy John but he got to pitch in a few of them anyway if it were that kind of longevity versus peak I might go with the the longer career but I don't think the Radke case is convincing enough and let me say if Brad Radke were around now and we were all talking about him on Twitter, he would be spoonerized every single day because he has maybe the best baseball spoonerism ever. I don't know.

Rad Bradke is fantastic. But when I do a Twitter search, I can't find anything. When I do a Google search, there's hardly anything. Not a whole lot of references to Rad Bradke, which is a shame. So there's that. He also pitched in the wrong era for his spoonerizing his own name Alright, stat segment Yeah, okay

So it arrived quicker than I was expecting But that's fine, I'm fully prepared So Miguel Montero and Jake Arrieta And the Chicago Cubs allowed the Washington Nationals To steal seven bases against them On Tuesday night, that was bad It got Montero designated for assignment Although maybe it wasn't so much the performance as the verbal performance that followed the game and god knows what else he might have said in the clubhouse maybe he tried to

give jake arietta a hot foot just a pleasant little hot foot where you try to burn somebody's foot in any case seven soul misses is a lot it doesn't happen very often so first thing i did was i ran a quick baseball reference game search to find the games with the most stolen bases allowed and there's choosy ones in here seven stolen bases in a game has happened a bunch of times and it in fact happened earlier this month the brewers allowed the dodgers to go seven for seven in a game that the brewers lost ten to eight i don't remember anybody on the brewers getting designated for assignment after that but i also don't remember Manny Pina or Jet Bandy saying like, I don't know, Junior Guerra

sure takes his time, or whatever. So seven is a lot, but it's not the most. There have been, it looks like, about two dozen games that have had eight stolen bases. There have been five games where a team has allowed nine stolen bases. There have been two games where teams have allowed 10 stolen bases.

And on August 1st, 1976, in what seems to be designated as the first game of a very unfortunate doubleheader, the Minnesota Twins were playing the Oakland Athletics and allowed 12 stolen bases. Now, this game went 12 innings. Maybe the most incredible part, the Twins won. They won 8-7, even though the a's stole 12 bases against i haven't clicked on this box score i'm going to do that so in this game the a's were 53 and 50 afterward and the twins were 52 and 50 all right even match first game of double header oh that sucks so twins beat the a's eight to seven oh this is actually a fun one so the twins tied the game

in the bottom of the ninth a's took the lead on the top of the 10th twins tied it bottom of the 10th top of the 12th a's took a two run lead twins walked off in the bottom of the ninth. A's took the lead on the top of the 10th. Twins tied it. Bottom of the 10th. Top of the 12th. A's took a two-run lead. Twins walked off in the bottom of the 12th with three runs. The Twins in this game also committed five errors. Sloppy game, Minnesota. So, oh my god. Okay, stolen bases. I don't want to really read all of these, but Burt Campanaris stole three off Pete Redfern, Glenn Borgman, Tom Johnson, Glenn Borgman, Pete Redfern, Glenn Borgman. It looks like it was a bad game for Glenn Borgman. Glenn Borgman was the starting catcher for the Twins. He wound up replaced by Butwinagar, Winagar. I don't want to get these pronunciations wrong, but I don't care. Lots of stolen bases. The Twins stole just two bases against Oakland,

but lots of steals in that one. So I don't need to go through that details anymore, except that maybe let's see top of the 12th inning, Matt Alexander stole a base, whatever, who cares. So I want to also focus on a game in 2000. So there were two games that had 10 stolen bases allowed. And these might technically be the winners here because that game in 1976, where the twins allowed 12 stolen bases as mentioned that game went to extra innings so the cubs lost the nationals in nine innings and they allowed seven bases seven stolen bases in nine innings so two teams have allowed 10 stolen bases in a game both those games the uh the team went 10 for 10 and both those games went nine innings. Now in 1996, the Dodgers lost to the Rockies 16-15. I'm going to guess which of the stadiums that game was played in.

The Dodgers pitchers threw 8.2 innings, allowed 20 hits, 16 runs, only 8 earned, but the Rockies stole 10 bases. And the other game where a team stole 10 bases, the Florida Marlins on may 18th 2000 went 10 for 10 against the san diego padres and the padres won the game anyway six to two so the marlins had six hits and four walks and nothing else and so basically they had 10 base runners so the equivalent of every base runner they had a solo base and they only scored two runs and the Padres won anyway, which is outstanding. And that helped to remind me about how awful the Padres were at controlling the running game for a stretch there. This was just before I think we all really started to write about baseball analysis a lot.

But this is something that I quite enjoy because I used to live in San Diego and I i paid closer attention to the padres than anyone ever would or should now but the padres especially in like the middle of the last decade just absolutely god-awful at preventing stolen bases now if you look at a search it's sort of all time on baseball reference but realistically their stolen base data is complete going back to it looks like about i don, I don't know, 1974, I think. That sounds about right. So it's not all-time. It's not close to all-time, but it's all-time that anyone should really care about. The team that has allowed the most stolen bases all-time is the 2001 Boston Red Sox.

They allowed 223 stolen bases, which gives them a lead of seven stolen bases over the 1986 Phillies. Now the 2001 Red Sox won more games than they lost. But more interesting than just raw stolen bases high up on this list are the 2007 San Diego Padres. The 2007 San Diego Padres allowed 189 stolen bases. Now that only ties them for 18th place on this list. So nothing too remarkable, even though there's been a lot of baseball history. But the other thing about those 2007 San Diego Padres is they allowed 189 stolen bases, but they since 1974 if you calculate stolen base success percentage the 2007 san diego padres come out to 90.4 which is the worst rate allowed in the entire sample not coincidentally pretty close to the top of the list the 2006 san diego padres also not a coincidence pretty close to the top of the list the 2008 san diego padres so here's some stuff about those padres i isolated between 2006 and 2008 because that's when the padres were at their

worst okay this is awesome so i looked at all 30 baseball teams and i sorted them over the three years combined i sorted them by stolen bases allowed fifth place most stolen bases allowed chicago cubs 321 fourth place new york yankees 341 third place toronto blue jays 350 second place chicago white socks 353 remember that number 353 first place second padres 507 507 stolen bases allowed for the padres they ranked easily first place in stolen bases allowed however they also ranked third worst in caught steals in all of baseball. So they allowed a stolen base percentage of 85.8%. Very easily the worst stolen base rate for any team over that three-year span.

Now, this is connected. On Fangraphs, you can look at stolen base runs against sort of. It converts all these numbers into a value. And at the worst, the 2007 Padres, they're measured at 12 runs below average, which is basically as bad as it gets. Maybe that sounds less terrible than you'd think. But 12 runs is a lot to lose just on stolen bases alone. In 2006, one of their catchers was Mike Piazza. They also had Josh Bard.

Josh Bard stuck around. He was terrible. In 2007, Josh Bard allowed 121 stolen bases by himself. He caught just 10 runners. In 2008, Josh Bard was still around, but they also had Michael Barrett, Nick Hundley, Luke Carlin. Guess what? None of them were the solution, but the absolute best part maybe about these San Diego Padres, two things. Chris Young in 2006 allowed 41 stolen bases out of 45 opportunities but it gets worse because the next year Chris Young allowed 44 stolen bases out of 44 opportunities Chris Young like John Lester without the yips it doesn't matter he couldn't do anything and he didn't care he didn't care. He didn't care. Now, the next year,

he did allow 15 out of 17 stolen bases. But then Chris Young started getting the injury thing that he dealt with for what seemed like forever. But Chris Young just didn't care. Stolen bases all the time. His time on the plate was just terrible. I mean, he's got like 13 feet of levers that he has to like unfurl before every pitch. So he never had a chance of getting anybody out in the first place. And the 2008 Padres, in fairness, were absolutely terrible. They almost lost 100 games. But the 2006 San Diego Padres won their division and made the playoffs.

And the 2007 San Diego Padres came one Trevor Hoffman meltdown in game 163 in Coors Field away from also making the playoffs. So the worst stolen base control teams pretty much in recent baseball history. Two of those three teams, both Padres, just about made the playoffs. They played beyond 162 games in the regular season. So just goes to show there's a lot that goes on with any team. Stolen bases are far from the biggest concern and if you allow a whole bunch of stolen bases it's not good it's not a good look of course john lester has

worked on this because you don't want to allow free bases but if you can still hit field and pitch you can win baseball games because stolen bases just are not that important and chris young and the padres are my favorite example of why and oh my god 10 year anniversary or maybe 11 year anniversary i don't know how this works but chris young 44 out of 44 fantastic what was the year of that 12 stolen base game 1976 that's right right yeah so pete redfern was the pitcher there who gave up a bunch of those so that year he gave up 19 steals in 24 attempts. So that is a 21% success rate, way below the league average. But every year after that, he prevented steals at an above average rate. So he had a higher than average caught stealing rate while he was pitching compared to the league average of 37%. So after that year, perhaps prompted by that one embarrassing game, he became very good at shutting down the running game. So it was not actually easy to steal where the red fern throws.

That's good. Now, I wish I didn't have a follow-up, but the A's stole 12 bases, and I'm going through. Let's see. Help me count here. So, 1 off Borgman. Glenn Borgman was the twin scorer. 1 off Borgman. 2 off Borgman. 3 off Borgman. 4 off Borgman. 5 off Borgman. 6 off Borgman. 7 off Borgman. 8 off

Borgman. 9 off Borgman. 10 off Borgman. 11 off Borgman. My god! Borgman was replaced halfway through the game but he allowed 11 stolen bases in the game 11 out of 11 glenn borgman for his career above average caught steal rate uh actually this happened in 1976 but two years later he threw out 19 of 39 base runners the year before 1976 he threw out 57 base runners. The year before that, 46. For his career, he threw out 39% of base runners.

The league average was 37%. Glenn Borgman, not a bad defensive catcher in terms of throwing. What in the hell happened on August 1st, 1976? I don't know. Maybe we should call him. I have no answer. Is he still with us? Hold on.

Let's make sure he's not dead. This is always awful. Glenn Borgman, no evidence of his being dead. He is 67 years old. Is he? Let's see. All right. That could be Glenn Borgman.

Glenn D. Borgman? Glenn Dennis Borgman. Oh, there we go. Oh, nailed it. All right. So let's just see here. We don't know if Dennis Borgman. Oh, there we go. Oh, I nailed it. All right. So let's just see here. We don't know if this is a record or anything, right? No other team has allowed more than 10 stolen bases, so it's got to be a record.

Yeah, okay. At least a recent record. So other than that game in 1976, he was very successful, right? Yeah, so 11 out of 11 in that game. Other games, he would have had 16 steals allowed and 11 caught steals, which would have been pretty good. Well above average. Right. Okay. Let's call Glenn Borgman

to find out what's going on. August 1st, 1976. First game of a doubleheader. Awful. And he allowed 11 steals. It looks to be 11 steals. And did he play in the second game of the doubleheader? Oh, that's a good question. Let me check that real quick. Glenn Borgman,

no. Butch Weinegar got the start of the whole game. Okay. All right. So here we go. Let's see here. So we got Glenn Borgman's voicemail. We just called him, left him a message. If I get a call back from Glenn Borgman, I will let you know. But moving on for now, question from Andy, who's a Patreon supporter. He wants to know how lopsided can an extra inning game get? He says the Cardinals just won 8-1 in the 11th inning. As hard as it is to break a tie in that fashion, it got me thinking this seems like it could be one of Jeff's lists where the top may be way ahead of second place, which is a thing that we just had happen again on the stolen bases list. And so I was able to play index this and Hans Van Sluyten at Baseball Reference even added a run differential option to the play index so that we could look this up.

Great service. Not even a sponsor of ours anymore, but still willing to help out. So it turns out that a seven run differential is actually not all that unusual. It has happened 36 times, a seven run margin in extra in game. It has happened twice this season, actually. In May, the Pirates beat the Braves 12-5, such is life. And also, there have been 23 bigger margins than seven runs in baseball history. And the greatest margin is 12 runs, 1983, July 3rd. The Rangers beat the A's 16-4 in extra innings.

This was, what inning was it-4 in extra innings. This was, what inning was it? It was 15 innings. So the Rangers put up 12 runs in the 15th inning to go ahead 16-4. And that is the widest margin. And there is not a big gap between that and the next one. There's an 11-run margin. There are a couple 10 run margins so it's very rare for double digit extra inning margins but it has happened that is the answer

i want to i'd like to go over this so it's uh july 3rd 1983 rangers beat the a's 16 to 4 and the a's made the mistake of tying the game in the bottom of the ninth little did they know they would play another six innings and allow 12 more runs in the uh top of the 15th inning dave beard was pitching the rangers and here is the uh the entire line score walk single grand intentional walk double wild pitch walk single walk reached on error about the second baseman single single double fly ball double single fly ball all those words combined to be 12 runs Dave Beard was replaced to when the score was seven to four he was replaced by somebody named Ben Callahan I don't know who that is Dave Beard incidentally one of the only players of this era to according to his baseball reference picture

not have a beard anyway Ben Callahan came in he had made his major league debut on June 22nd of the season 1983 he was fine then he got a start on June 27th he was fine on July 3rd he made his fourth major league appearance that's the game we were talking about he threw two-thirds of an inning he allowed seven runs six hits he never pitched in the major leagues again after that game and incidentally two days prior on July 1st he got a start also against the texas rangers in what i assume is the same series he worked 1.1 innings and he allowed seven runs ben callahan during this series alone in july of 19 what was it 1983 he threw a combined two innings in two games and he allowed 14 runs and he never pitched in the major leagues again ben callahan

career era 12.54 oh no that's very bad all right one more before we wrap up with a couple semantic questions eric hartman says if theo epstein decided that his job with the cubs was too strenuous for him and took a gm job that promised him he would work only 40 hours a week and he would be disconnected at all other times, would he be the worst general manager in baseball? So how much of Theo's excellence is just his willingness to work a lot? And he has been reported to work like 18 hour days and be obsessive and just constantly be working. So if he just worked a standard American work week, how bad would he be? This might be apocryphal, but what I seem to remember from sort of the turn of the millennium

Mariners when they got good somewhere around 2000, their general manager was Pat Gillick. And I used to read a lot and post a lot on the ESPN message boards about the Seattle Mariners. I remember there was a lot of complaining because the Mariners would never really do much at the trade deadline, the way that people complain when their teams don't acquire all-stars at the deadline. But one of the main complaints is that Pat Gillick was way too inactive. Now, those Mariners teams were good. They didn't need a lot of help. But of course, there were things that they could stand to do. And I remember there was one deadline that I believe the story was that as the tread deadline

approached pat gillick was moving and he was in canada or something he was just at his new place he was at home and he was inactive he was not doing anything that seemed to be team related this is back before there were cell phones in everyone's pocket and everyone was easily accessible now pat gillick presumably not cut off completely from all lines of communication but the idea was essentially that pat gillick was so averse to doing anything at the trade deadline that he decided to move and he was just not doing anything and the Mariners were fine although they didn't win the World Series so that is the only point of comparison that I have if Epstein were working 40 hours which by the way not the typical American work schedule anymore. Shame on the middle class.

He would, of course, if you could plan for this, if Epstein's just like, look, I'm not going to do the whole 40 hours of shit work and then 40 hours of doing what I want to do, like we were talking about the other day. I'm just going to do the 40 hours

and then go home. He would presumably delegate a bunch and he has a seemingly and effective and thorough and broad support staff with him with the Cubs. So I don't think that he would become the worst general manager in the game. He would do the least of any general manager in the game. But so much of being a GM is having a network of people around you.

So those people would work a lot harder and maybe they would get too stressed out. But he could probably just hire some support staff to help compensate for his absence. And if he could do this, that would be great for him because, oh man, what a way better life he could live. Assuming he wants to be at home. Yeah. Which based on all the evidence, he does not. Yeah, I would agree. He would not be the worst. Maybe he'd be bad if he were just starting with the team. But at this point, if he scaled back on his work hours i would think that the cubs have a enough of a support system in place that they would mostly just keep humming along as is so yeah in fact yeah the whole pitching staff like most of the starters have declined relative to the last few seasons and it's been pinned on fatigue from working so much

essentially extra time right in 2015 2016 deep play runs, that kind of adds miles to your arm and the pitchers have gotten worse. Well, Epstein has been working extra time as well, at least more high leverage time, if you will. Very stressful viewing experiences as a Cubs executive and maybe they could all stand to take a step back. Fewer innings on the pitchers, but also fewer hours on the executives.

Something to think about, Theo. All right, wrapping up now with a couple lexicon questions. I don't know how we suddenly became the authorities Something to think about, Theo. As I am sure you are aware, Gallows Homer was of the inside the park variety. Can this still be considered a bomb? Are there other home run nicknames that can only apply to the inside the park variety that could have been pulled out on this occasion? I think we both agree that an inside the park home run is not a bomb. I don't know that there is any. I think you could call it a round tripper. That's something that I think would apply to this. call it a round tripper that's something that i think would apply to this but the other is like going yard or jack or i just i don't think they apply to inside the park no i think there there

is one nickname for an inside the park home run and it's inside the park home run right that's the only one that currently exists they're just too infrequent to have anything else i think if you were writing a headline you can say yeah round tripper is a good one you could say shot like he uh he went three for four at the with a shot because you can have a shot double or even a shot single shot just implies some sort of line driver hard hit absolutely not a bomb yeah i agree i think even shot might be stretching it i don't know we'll probably get emails now about what a shot is but i don't know if i would call a double a shot. I think, I don't know, it at least implies home run. If I heard shot, I would guess, or at least in a big league context, I think I would.

I don't know if I were just playing with friends or something. Someone said that was a shot. I think that wouldn't necessarily need to be a home run. If inside the park home runs were any more common, we would need to have them separated out. They're not, so it doesn't matter, but they are not home runs. Yes, right. Question from Tyler. I have another entry to add to the Baseball Semantics Pantheon. I was watching a game the other day, and after the batter took four straight balls, the announcer praised him for working a walk. That didn't sit right with me. I feel like working a walk is fouling off a few pitches in a 3-2 count before taking a close pitch outside. What say you? I guess it does depend on sort of the context of the walk or how the walk looks.

As I think about it, if it's four close pitches, I think you could say that he worked the walk. But working implies some degree of difficulty, and the average four-pitch walk is not that difficult. So I think if you wanted to have a rule, I think you would have maybe a walk after a first pitch strike or a walk that comes in a two-strike count. But otherwise, it is sort of situational and any close pitch that's hard to take can lead to some work being done. Yeah, I don't think it necessarily has to be 3-2 and you foul off a few pitches, but I agree. You have to be behind in the count or on a two-strike count or something. It has to be more than the minimum number of pitches that you can take to get a walk. All right, question from Adam.

In keeping with two recent Effectively Wild trends, I have a question that involves both the Reds and unnecessarily detailed discussions of baseball terminology. On the Nationals broadcast, Bob Carpenter commented that the Reds have twice given up a four-run lead. The Nats trailed 4-0 after the top of the first, then 5-1 in the third. Doesn't giving up a lead imply that you are either now tied or behind? So for his comment to be true, the Nets would have needed to trail 4-0, tie it up at 4-4, then come back to tie it after an 8-4 deficit. On the other side of this, does saying a team has come back from a deficit require that they have tied the game or taken the lead. If they trim a 5-0 to 5-3, can you say that they have come back or does it need an additional qualifier, i.e. almost come back, staging a comeback, etc.? Yeah, okay, so I sort of understand where the second point is coming from, but no, for a comeback you need to at least erase the deficit.

You can begin coming back, but mostly that is just trimming. but mostly that is just trimming as for the first part i've never understood this it's a widespread announcer quirk where if a team is up five nothing and then seven to two and then they lose or they give up the lead then someone will say they've twice given up a five run lead no no they haven't that's stupid that doesn't make any sense and it's not even shorthand to help tell a story because nobody cares it doesn't change your impression of the game certainly anyone paying attention would know well they had a lead and they blew it and you didn't twice blow a five run lead because that implies that you were up five nothing and you blew it then you're up ten to five and you blew it that would be horrible that would be the story you twice blew a five run lead but that would

be like what would have actually happened in this circumstances is that you would say the team twice had a five run lead but they lost the lead that they had and whatever. So the people take a shortcut and it doesn't matter at the end of the day. None of this matters at the end of the day. We become soil later after we are dead. But it is a shortcut for no purpose that I can think of. And it doesn't help with storytelling in any measure that I care about. Yeah. And then last one from Kellen.

During the Cardinals Reds telecast, the commentator mentions the Cardinals had a chance to break the game wide open. It was the sixth inning bases loaded with the Cardinals already carrying a seven to one lead. At what point in a game would a team be considered to have broken the game wide open? And by how many runs? Also, can you briefly describe the parameters of insurance runs? Well, I did email a response to this one, but what the hell? I'll let you answer this one at least first. Yeah. I think your response was that what a 7-1 lead in the sixth inning is already wide open or it seems pretty close to wide open to me. You could just do this with win probability and I don't know, like at whatever point it gets to like a 5% win probability,

a 3% win probability. I don't know exactly where you would set the line, but wherever it becomes just extremely unlikely that you're going to come back. And I would say most of the time that's probably like six-ish runs. It varies a little bit by inning. Obviously, you probably wouldn't say broke it wide open if you were up 6-0 in the first, I guess. But after a few more innings, you probably would say that. So it's all win expectancy based. And I don't know exactly where you would set the threshold. But I think in most cases, it would be right around 6 or maybe 6 plus base runners on something like that.

And as for the concept of insurance runs, my understanding is an insurance run is just any run that increases the deficit from one. Yeah, I think that's right. I don't know. Maybe if you, I'm trying to think if it's more likely to be described as an insurance run when it's closer or when it's farther apart, I guess when it's closer, right? Because if it's too far apart, like if you went from seven run lead to eight run lead or something, I don't even know if you'd call that an insurance run because you don't really need the insurance. You're already insured. So it would probably have to be a pretty close game to be called an insurance run. But yeah, anything from going from one run to two runs to, I don't know, like maybe three to four or something like that would be an insurance run. After that, it probably doesn't apply that well anymore, although technically it's still true.

Yeah. At some point you go from insurance runs to runs to now you're just running up the score runs and then the other team gets upset. Yeah. Okay. And we're probably, this is like the longest episode ever, but this one, this is timely. Russell said, this thought just occurred to me while listening to Jacoby Ellsbury reach on yet another catcher's interference. It was, what, his record? He tied the record? Tied the record. Yeah, nice.

So you've tracked this very closely. If you limit the scope of this question to things that actually help your team, is drawing a catcher's interference the weirdest thing you can be good at in baseball? Ooh, weirdest. Well, that's a very good question. That's when reaching on uncaught third strikes would be one, even though I don't know if anyone tracks that. Yeah, if that's a skill.

I mean, I guess if you're fast, you're more likely to do it. But I don't even know if that's weird because that's just being fast, right? Like fast and taking bad swings. Yeah, I guess it's like a very... I've never seen a leaderboard, but it feels like I wouldn't be surprised if Starling Marte were the league leader in this because he has a history of horrible swings

and being fast. So there's that. I don't know. But among things that we track, I am having trouble off the top of my head thinking of something that is definitely a weirder skill. And Josh Reddick, incidentally, also recently had another catcher's interference call. So that takes him up to five on the season that's in the lead but he's

still not going to break jacoby ellsbury's record mark of 12 last season 12 it was 12 insane that's 12 yeah all-time record tied i guess i'll have to write about it when he actually breaks the record which could be happening probably as we speak yep Yep. Yeah, I can't think of anything off the top of my head either. So if you're listening and thinking of something, let us know and we will end there. I have gone to great lengths to contact Glenn Borgman, but no joy yet. I do hope to hear from him. So if and when we do, we will definitely follow up and I hope to bring you a Glenn Borgman conversation sometime soon. Always sad when the cold call attempt is thwarted. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild.

Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Brian Stoner, Olaf Hong, John Gilbert, Aaron Lemon Strauss, and Justin Held. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. 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 bauman and i have a new episode of the ringer mlb show up we have reached the approximate midpoint of the regular season schedule so michael and i drafted our favorite things from the first half you can find that on the ringer mlb show feed you can keep your questions and comments coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system.

And we will talk to you all very soon. Transcription by CastingWords