Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1113: Welcome to the Machine

Episode Date: September 21, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about another odd end to an American Association game, a recent javelin-baseball crossover, Nick Sinay, the first Tibetan-born player signed by an MLB team, and MLB’s new record single-season home-run total, then answer listener emails about Mike Trout’s defense, multiple aspects of BABIP, the most Alexa’d MLB players, the […]

dark night feeling die you'll be a hero but live long enough to see yourself become a villain you went from the favorite to the most hated but would you rather be underpaid or overrated more victories is for minor league coaches and yeah ready told you we made you you cockroaches hello and welcome to episode 1113 of effectively wild a baseball podcast from fan graphs presented by our patreon supporters i I am Ben Lindberg of TheRinger.com, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hello, Ringer.com, changing it up. Yeah, I figured just in case anyone's been wondering all this time, where do I find this,

TheRinger? That is where you find it. You just stick that.com on the end and that'll take you right to it. So now you know, No excuse for not reading us. We are doing an email show today, but a bit of banter before we get there. First, I think we have to mention the American Association, which has been a recurring theme on the podcast this year. This is the league that houses the Winnipeg Gold Eyes, who we had an interview with Mike McIntyre a while ago about a crazy extra inning game that they were involved in. And it turns out that they were involved in another. This is also the league, of course, that includes the Salinas Stockade, who did not make the playoffs in the American Association this year or even come close to it. I guess I should mention what their final record was for the season since we talked

about their losing so much this year. So Celina ended up at 18 and 82. That is a 180 winning percentage. They finished 43 and a half games back of the Wichita Wignuts, who are currently actually involved in a five-game championship series with the Wichita Gold Eyes. And what happened was in game four, there was a crazy ending slash non-ending. So the game ended up going 17 innings, which is weird enough, but it was even weirder that it almost ended in the regular length of time. It was, I think, the ninth inning. There's a hitter named Casey Turgeon. He grounded out to short, and this would have been the final play of the series. He is a gold eye, and the Wingnuts were winning, and they were up in the series,

so the Wingnuts would have won the series if this had been the last out of the game, and it looked like it would be, and he, right, he grounded the short, the wingnuts celebrated, they started leaping around on the infield, they thought the game was over, and they're all in the field, and then suddenly the, it turns out that the umpire had called a balk, and the runner had to go back, the batter had to go back to home plate, and there was some controversy over this, I think mostly because the umpire didn't signal with his hands that there had been a balk. So some people didn't know.

And if you watch the replay, it doesn't look like he had signaled for a balk, but apparently he said it out loud. He shouted it. And so the hitter said he heard it. And if you look at the catcher, he does not go out to celebrate with the rest of his team. He kind of puts his hands on his head and just stands there. So they had to essentially say do over on what looked like the season ending pitch. And Turgeon ends up tying the game with his second chance.

It's a two out, two strike, I think full count double a few pitches later sends the game to extra innings and the gold eyes end up winning in 17 innings sending the series to a decisive fifth game which was supposed to be played on tuesday but was rained out so will now be played wednesday perhaps by the time you hear this so crazy ending slash non-ending continuing the trend of indie ball being weird and wonderful you have covered most of my notes so uh winnipeg earlier as we talked about on this podcast won one of the craziest baseball games i'd ever heard of and now if you fold in context they have won another of the craziest baseball games i've ever heard of yeah i don't know when they're going to

end up playing game five but that just increases the drama i guess increases the stakes there's a quote i got from turgeon after the game turgeon being the guy who was at the play who grabbed it out and then hit the game tying double which incidentally was very nearly caught in center field it was a full extension play but quote being a hitter when you hear bach it's a free swing i heard bach i swung at it they made the play he called me out they start running to the mound but i start walking back to home plate, Turgeon said, of knowing he'd get another chance, which it's interesting because for one thing, that confirms that there was the umpire signal vocally, even if not physically, but also the Bach call would have been made as the pitcher was in his delivery. There would have been very little time between the Bach call and the ball arriving

at home plate. So if turgeon is telling the truth he made a split second decision to swing it i think it was a two strike pitch that in any case did put it in play if his explanation is to be believed one of the other controversial points here was i don't really know what the bach was in the first place i think that i think it was supposed to be yeah yeah that's the one now there's there's like the uh that pickoff bach and that one's weird i've never i've read like that old rj anderson article at baseball prospectus a million times about pickoff box or whatever the exact theme was but i still can't wrap my head around it and i know there's like not really a rule about planting your foot 45 degrees first base whatever look

if you're out there nobody understands what a bach is the first base this wasn't the bach the first place there was a runner on second and there was a bach. And what I think, what I assume the bach was only because this is the easiest bach to tell. I assume the bach was because the pitcher, Ryan Kussmaul, did not stop in his motion. The only problem with that explanation is that he did. He did stop in his motion. He did kind of the, for anyone who hasn't seen the video, he did kind of the Chris Tillman thing of, I guess a lot of pitchers do it, but I associate it with Chris Tillman, where he's kind of like moving the ball in his glove as he's lowering it to his belt.

So he has the ball in his glove around his chest, and he's just like lowering the glove slowly toward his belt right before he begins his delivery. And then there is a pause. There is, in my estimation, just a long enough pause. And then he begins his motion. So it's not a clear balk at all. But still, call was made. And what's weird about the call being made, baseball reference does have evidence. There were 54 balks called in the American Association this year. Wichita, incidentally, was called for only one.

That's Kusmal's team. And Ryan Kusmal himself has not been called for a buck since 2009, which was his very first year on record in some independent league. So there is evidence of a specious, I think I'm using that right, specious buck call on a pitcher who never bucks that robbed a team of the championship game. And there was no immediate signal so everything about this it's just it's devastating i don't know if custom all is going to be able to pitch in game five i want him to i would like him to close it out just because this seems like it's a little bit unfair and if somebody sees video and and they feel like there is a block and they they know why please let

me know because again i would love to know what box are. This didn't seem like one. Maybe I'm wrong. I would probably be put at ease if it was a clear block. I don't think it was. And so it's unfair if Wichita ends up losing this series because that would be a real bummer. But on the other hand, I mean, Winnipeg has become sort of the American Association team of the podcast, I guess. So also should root for entropy, right? Yeah, that's right.

All right. Well, I will pay attention to what happens in that game five, and I hope it's not just a normal game. I hope it ends in some other weird way because that would be only appropriate. So another tweet that we received, we got a few tweets about that game, got another one about a Javelin-related matter. I don't know if you saw this. I just sent it to you again in case you missed it. This is a tweet from the CPBL Stats account. That's the Chinese Professional Baseball League, the highest league in Taiwan.

And this is about what the tweet describes as Asian javelin record holder Cheng Chao Sun, who holds the record with 91.36 meters. I don't know if he's the record holder in Asia or whether he's the record holder who is from Asia. I don't know. But anyway, he threw out the first pitch at a CPBL game and now, according to this tweet, holds the CPBL record for the longest and fastest ceremonial first pitches at a game and so the first the the longest he throws from like center field like close to the wall or the warning track i guess on the warning track he throws on the fly to a person

who is basically playing pitchers helper He's like standing right by the pitcher's mound, catches it on the fly. So that is the longest. And then the fastest first pitch is 134 kilometers per hour, about 83 miles per hour. And he throws it very hard and offline, sort of. And it probably would have hit a photographer who does not flinch at all if it had not been deflected by the catcher. And it just barely was. So it caroms off to the side. And someone in the replies to this tweet says authoritatively that when this guy was younger, he played outfield. And because of his strong arm, he was pushed by his coach to be a javelin thrower. So maybe he started out in baseball and then

became a javelin person. So it's not quite the typical progression we were talking about with javelin thrower becoming pitcher, but another example of a javelin thrower having pretty good arm strength and ability to throw a baseball if you are out there and you are very skilled at throwing a javelin you might consider a line of work that makes a little more money than javelin throwing although maybe this is going to be like playing the organ and it turns out that there's more money in throwing javelins than i thought that there was but we don't need to we don't need to go into that a good form i like the. It was good form of an outfield throw. Not quite Brett Phillips arm strength, but you know, better than most of the players on the A's. Yep. All right. Shall we

move on to emails or you have anything else? Not quite yet. Two things. It was going to be one more thing, but now I have two things. One, so you did an interview with minor league wonderkind Nick Sine, uh, with a ringer on monday nick sinea now known i guess known in his circles but now more nationally known for getting hit by everything i wrote an article to sort of synergize with the podcast interview i guess on monday wrote the article on fangraphs article about a guy in a ball with a lansing lug nuts named nick sinea he's an outfielder who led the minor leagues in rate of times getting hit by pitch. He did not lead an actual hit by pitches. He was second behind Brett Cumberland,

but by rate, he got hit by pitches in 13% of his played appearances, which was unbelievable. The minor league average was 1.4%. So the difference between Sine and the guy in second place was basically three times league average, whatever. This is just mathematical gymnastics. He got hit by pitches a lot. Last year, he was a minor league leader in hit by pitch rate in 2015 he led his college conference and hit by pitches in 2014 he led his college conference and hit by pitches when he played summer ball in 2013 and 2014 he led both those leagues and hit by pitches anyway you interviewed you and michael bam and i should say interviewed nick sine who has uh leaned into this i would say which is now i just realized that's also a pun.

So anyway, yes, I interacted a little with Lansing Lugnuts broadcaster Jesse Goldberg Strassler after the article went up on Monday because he he was there to witness Sine's historic season, a very historic season in which he slugged like 256. Anyway, Jesse Goldberg Strassler relayed one further anecdote that isn't directly about a hit by pitch but it was too good not to share with the audience this is all from an email that i did not get permission to share but i'm doing it anyway so quote goldberg strassler one last quick sine story for you he was hitting an amazing two for 48 in road games before collecting an rbi single on june 15th with the bat still resting on his shoulder inside fastball he never moved naturally

and the ball bounced off the bat knob into no man's land down the third baseline. It brought in the tie-breaking run and sent the Lugnuts on their way to victory. Nick Sine, singled by getting hit by a pitch, and it drove in a tie-breaking run. I don't think I've ever seen that. Maybe it's happened. I would like to think that it's never happened before. Nick Sine, incredible story. Love him to death. Hope he makes it to the major leagues and I hope he gets hit by more

pitches than Brandon Geyer. Me too. Yeah. I wish I could have asked him about that play, but he was pretty funny and a good sport about talking about how often he's been hit by pitches. So I'd encourage everyone to go listen to that. And I mentioned this on the Ringer episode, but I got some stats from Hans Van Sleuten about how historic this hit-by-pitch rate is, and I asked him to look all years, history that have been hit more often than Sine. One is Omar Guerra, who did it in the 2008 Venezuelan Summer League. He was hit 13.4% of the time in 262 plate appearances. And the other one was Charlie Fox, who did it in the 1951 interstate league that is a class b league and he was hit in 14.1 percent of his plate appearances and he had 290 plate

appearances 41 hit by pitches not sure that either of those is definitely 100 accurate i don't know what the record keeping was like in the 1951 Interstate League or the 2008 Venezuelan Summer League, but maybe those are both legitimate. I don't know. But if they are, even so, that is pretty impressive what Nick Sene is doing. And he's probably doing it at a higher level of baseball than those guys were. So I am blown away by Nick Sine and I can't wait to follow his career. I hope it lasts a long time and I hope that he does not get hit by a pitch in any serious location. He says he gets hit mostly in his triceps. So that's good, I guess.

I should also say that Jesse Goldberg Strassler relayed that they have their own pitch tracking system. I don't know exactly what it is, but he said that they had a record of three times Sine was hit this year by pitches that were in the strike zone. Uh-huh. Okay. As far as Omar Guerra is concerned, just because I got curious,

looking up the 2008 VSL Rays, the team he played for, he got hit 35 times, second place on the team, 10. Jonathan Quinonez. But Omar Guerra, after getting hit 35 times that season, never played again.

I don't know why. I don't think I want to know why. Last thing i'll throw out there before we move on to the emails is just because we have a new first sort of the red sox signed a teenager the other day and in case you haven't seen this uh the red sox signed the first technically tibetan baseball player not the first chinese baseball player and the tibetan player let's see what his english going name according to one article is jampa rinzin but according to another article it's jampa rigzin so i don't know which one is correct i don't know where to go from there but he is a catcher he's 16 years old he's a product

of china's mlb development center so he has some of the training that you'll see and you know the difference between a tibetan prospect and a chinese prospect i guess is not very large but this is a year where we've seen the first lithuanian player in the major leagues and the first african player in the major leagues so it's interesting to just have another first another market that is beginning to get tapped i guess jampa rigson or rinsen born in 2001 he was born to a working class family, which probably describes most families east of Lhasa, which if I'm not mistaken, that puts him in the general Mount Everest area. Although I suppose much of Tibet is in the general Mount Everest area. So he was born east of the provincial capital of the Tibetan autonomous region, which we

don't need to get into the politics there. Reading a website that's called the Tibetan Journal, it says says news reviews and opinions but it's in english so i don't know why that is and there's a picture of jampa rigson at the top with what seems to be some sort of scout and family members and an agent or a translator i'm not entirely sure but it's going through some more background details and for example in in 2011 after his team excelled in various tournaments and lifted the junior Baseball League Diamond Cup champion, I should warn people that the English here is not perfect. Jampa won the individual award of best pitcher in the tournament. He was a pitcher then.

He's a catcher now. In September 2015, he was successfully admitted to the MLB Nanjing Baseball Development Center. By December last year, Jampa starred in China's first baseball youth top idol drama, Our Youth, and the show started to broadcast on Hunan TV from July 9th this year. I don't know what that means, but at the bottom of the article, there are some bullet points. These are just little filler details. So, for example, he was born on January 1st, 2001, and he's from Tibet.

He has a long Chinese name. He's listed at 180 centimeters and 78 kilograms, which my stupid American brain is not very good at translating on the fly. He plays shortstop and catcher. He has more offensive and defensive skill than Shu Gui Yuan. So take that, Shu Gui Yuan, I guess. He's from the Nanjing MLB Academy and is currently preparing for the annual 11th Asian Youth Baseball Championship.

Second to last bullet point, will join the Gulf Coast League Red Sox in August. Final bullet point, very attractive young man. And I'm not stroking egos. Exclamation point. Okay. All right. That's all I got. Yeah. Tibetan baseball player. Super cool. All right. And I guess we can also mention that the all-time single season record for home runs hit in baseball was broken. You've probably heard about that already, but since we've talked about home runs and baseballs so much this season, we might as well acknowledge that that happened. The 5,694th home run of the season was hit on Tuesday night by, of course, Alex Gordon, who has not contributed very much to that total overall, but he's the one who hit that decisive blow. So from now on, every home run hit in Major

League Baseball will be a record-setting home run. As everyone is aware, I think home run rate is the highest it's ever been, and so are total home runs. So this was inevitable, but it has finally happened with a couple weeks left to go in the season. If you go to the MLB.com scoreboard page, you see the games and the line scores and stuff. And on the right, you see video clips that have little captions over them that describe what the videos are. And yesterday, the video clip shows the thumbnail is Alex Gordon high-fiving Whit Merrifield crossing home plate. And the headline reads, Gordon hits 5,694th home run in majors, which is a misleading headline, which makes Alex Gordon out to be sort of the equivalent of God. So I would that that just it's a screenshot that I look at.

And I think this is going to be a John Boyes article one day. Yeah. All right. Let's get to questions. Got a couple BABIP related questions. I'll take a trout related question first. So Pat says, my brother and I were recently looking at Mike Trout's year-by-year value stats, expecting to see high totals across the board. And we did see insanely high totals in base running and offense, but his defensive numbers were unremarkable. Here's where Trout stands among the top 30 players by war since 2012. According to Fangrass, he's number one overall in offense, number one overall in base running, but only 24th overall in defense.

And Pat says he gets a bit of a boost for his position and does easily beat out fellow center fielders Adam Jones and Andrew McCutcheon, but is well behind Lorenzo Cain and Carlos Gomez. Now, I suppose the remarkable thing is that Trout is an otherworldly hitter and base runner and still manages to be an above average defender at a premium position, but I always thought the narrative was that he was elite in every category. Unless I've misread the narrative, this leads me to a few possible conclusions. One, Trout's defense is overrated. Two, Trout's offense is somehow very underrated.

His dominant war totals are due mostly to astronomical offensive stats. And three, Trout has room for improvement. He was a top-five center fielder in 2012, and his speed is still there. So which conclusion makes the most sense? And I think, I don't know if it's fair to say that Trout's defense is overrated. I would say that when he first came up, he was probably a better fielder than he is now and certainly had better defensive stats. I think that was the thing that was so fun about his 2012 season, is that at least for a while there, pretty late in the year, he was number one in fielding and base running and offense.

I think Cabrera passed him at some point in offense, but he was the best at everything that year, his first full year in the majors. And that was maybe the most fun Mike Trout season. I don't know, because it came out of nowhere and he was so great at every aspect of the game. And I think he had a bunch of home run robberies either in that first year or the first couple years of his career, which helps a lot in defensive stats and is obviously partly a product of skill, but also partly a product of opportunity. You have to have enough home run robbery opportunities, and that means you just have to have balls that are just barely over the fence, and you only get so many of those opportunities a year. And so Chutt's defensive stats now are not great, and Mike

Petriello recently wrote about this because MLB just rolled out their outs above average stat for outfielders and Trout doesn't do that well. But as Mike pointed out, a lot of that is just that he hasn't had difficult opportunities this year. He's had like the easiest plays on average of any outfielder or easiest opportunities, which could be because of great positioning, could be because Angels pitchers just haven't allowed a lot of fly balls.

They've given up a lot of home runs, that sort of thing. Or could just be because it's just happened to be the case that he hasn't had a whole lot of opportunities to make plays like out of his zone that would be spectacular catches. But he also hasn't done that well on the opportunities he has had. He's had fewer than the expected number of difficult plays made. So as Mike pointed out, his speed has not seemed to decline, at least from last season or the season before. We don't have his speed stats from 2012. I wouldn't be surprised if he was faster then than he is now.

But I would say that his defense is fine, right? Like he's not an elite defender he's not like the type of andrelton simmons jackie bradley kevin kiermeier kind of class that we talk about as being just you know the cream of the crop defensively but he's good at a premium position and given everything else he does he's amazing overall agreed when trout was first coming up he had that the spate of robberies that he had in 2012 that's i think the kind of it was 2012 right when he was robbing all those it feels like let's so let's say that it was it makes the most sense sure given that that was trout's coming out party so to speak after his sort of mediocre 2011 debut

and those home run robberies and like the the clips of him going out making that catch in baltimore and running back to his position just like grinning like an idiot staring at the scoreboard like that leaves a very lasting impression and in the same way that people think that seeing outfielders make diving catches makes them look better than they are i think that it was among trout's first impressions i guess and so when you when you see someone who was clearly an outstanding defensive player back then, you just kind of keep believing that until you have compelling evidence to believe otherwise. And Trout has never been visibly bad at all. His biggest problem for a while was his arm, but he's worked to make that better. It's

still not necessarily a good throwing arm, but it's less bad than it used to be. It's roughly average for a center fielder. Looking at the stat cast outs above average leaderboard this year, Trout is at negative three catches relative to average. Last year, he was at negative two catches relative to average. So clearly nothing bad. But by sprint speed, as much as people talk about how quickly Trout can burn it down the line, his sprint speed this year is good. But he is tied with third baseman matt chapman and dodgers first baseman slash everything else cody bellinger and i don't think that you think of cody bellinger as having mike trout speed but here we are and that's not because trout is slow it's because bellinger is fast and trout speed isn't elite maybe his acceleration is elite i

don't know we don't have that anymore but he's not a bad defensive player but probably a crucial point to understand about anyone who plays center field is that no one aside from that one year shin suju did it no one who plays center field really looks bad because it's selective for really really good defensive outfielders and it's a lot easier to tell the difference between a bad defender and a good defender than it is between a good defender and a great defender everybody out there is a good defender especially now i mean billy hamilton isn't even the best defensive center fielder in baseball anymore because there are just too many good ones and so when you have so many defense first elite defensive center fielders then it's going to be almost impossible for someone like mike trout to stand out because he's just got neck muscle you

know he just can't he can't move the way that billy hamilton can move because you could put three billy hamiltons in Mike Trout's neck. Yeah. So maybe it's fair to say that Trout's defense is overrated and his offense is underrated. I don't know. I guess that might be accurate to the extent that we can judge accuracy with something as nebulous as ratings of a player. But I mean, Trout is the best hitter in baseball this season, at least among hitters with as many plate appearances as he's made. So I think it might be fair to say just because Trout,

I think, initially developed the reputation as the guy who was really great at everything. And the arguments we were making for him, like with the 2012 MVP case, wasn't so much that he was the best hitter in baseball. It was that he was the best hitter in baseball it was that he was a great hitter and also great at everything else and when he put it all together he's the best player by far and now it would be accurate to say that he is just the best hitter period at least when he's been on the field this season and I don't know that that is generally understood that he is the best hitter in baseball period with all the attention that harper gets or judge gets or all these other players get for their offense alone

trout is just the best at this point i mean he's having his best offensive season so that would be why and yet as the angels try to make the playoffs over the past two weeks trout just 6 for 42 just when you think the angels need trout the most yeah he hasn't he hasn't quite been there although i was i was thinking in my head it feels like it's been a while since uh since trout went deep two games ago two games ago he hit a home run he's fine yeah all right the aforementioned babbit questions rob from san diego says i'm hoping you can shed some light and explain something to me when a player has a crazily high BABIP, it's generally seen as a bad thing. But when a player has a low BABIP, like Reese Hoskins at 257, it's seen as a good thing.

I get that a higher BABIP might show things like luck, but how about when it's lower? So I guess the difference here is when you're talking about a small sample or a big sample, right? So when you're talking about a big sample, it's not a good thing to have a low BABIP because BABIP is something, you know, it might be the average is around 290 or 300 for every hitter, but some guys have higher BABIPs because they're faster, they hit the ball hard or something like that. And some guys have lower BABIPs and it's not a good thing to have a low BABIP. Albert Pujols has a low babbip at this point in his career because he's extremely slow and as we noted recently teams are playing him

way way back i actually we talked about whether you could look to see whether teams are playing deeper against pujols and you can actually look that up on baseball savant they have the average starting position of fielders when a batter is up yeah so i looked this up just yesterday i looked for the average depth of third baseman when right-handed hitters are up and pujols ranks fourth in that category it was like 118 feet or something he's fourth behind stanton cruz and judge so it goes stanton cruz judge pujols and one of those does not belong in that group obviously offensively those are three really good hitters who hit the ball very hard and albert pujols who is not that kind of hitter at this

point in his career he is an extremely slow hitter so it's a weird mix of guys like Stanton and Judge and then guys like Pujols and Jose Bautista who are, you know, slow at this point and easy to take advantage of in that way. So yes, fielders do play abnormally deep against Pujols. And I think the Mariners actually play that kind of Astros deep alignment against Pujols also at this point. So anyway, if you have a low BABIP over a long period, that's not great. That means you're not beating out infield hits and maybe you're not hitting the ball that hard. But if you have a low BABIP over a small sample and you're trying to figure out, well, is this a fluke or is it real? Well, it's, I guess, encouraging that someone like Reece Hoskins, for instance, has a low BABIP over this crazy run that he's been on because it suggests that, well, it's not that he's just been doing something very unsustainable on balls in play. He has actually been earning, quote unquote, this hot streak that he's had so if you see someone who's been hot but he has had like a 450 babbit over that span or something then you figure well he's happening to hit the ball in an optimal place or he's getting lucky with where he's hitting the ball yeah it's a little like i guess if you're

a pitcher and with pitchers home run rate is maybe the most volatile of statistics uh it just bounces around and you can try to explain why a guy is giving up a lot of home runs or why he might not be giving up a lot of home runs. But usually it's just noise. So in a small sample, if you have a pitcher who has not allowed home runs or has allowed a bunch of home runs, it's probably nothing we've seen just this year. Mike Fiers went from having a huge home run problem to allowing no home runs at all. And Masahiro Tanaka has kind of done the same thing. And home runs are so important that those home runs go a long way toward sort of defining how a pitcher is going to be perceived. And even if the talent level doesn't really move around very much, still, that statistic moves around very much. So for pitchers, if you have your home run rate is not really to be trusted over a small sample.

But if you have a large sample, if a guy gives up a lot of home runs, no, that's bad. That's a bad pitcher. That's like the worst thing that you can do. And if you have a large sample, if a guy gives up a lot of home runs, no, that's bad. That's a bad picture. That's like the worst thing that you can do. And if you have a large sample and you don't give up home runs, then you think, well, this guy's doing something. That's great. We should definitely try to get another Clayton Kershaw. So with BABIP, we get emails about specific statistics fairly often, I would say.

People asking, would you rather have, if you knew nothing else, would you rather have this statistic or this other statistic? And and the answer is, we can we can answer is as you just did about what you want from BABIP. Totally true. But really, if you just want to know more, just look at other numbers, you don't need to know that many numbers to be able to evaluate a player, but it's almost it's it's always more than one. So BABIP is something to be folded in with other statistics. And it is never it has never been unless I've been. So BABIP is something to be folded in with other statistics. And it has never been, unless I've been searching for BABIP specifically, it's never been the first thing that I've looked at for any player. Yeah.

All right. And we had another BABIP related question. This is from Linder. He says, with all the talk about BABIP and its misleadingness, I was curious as to what your opinions are on the following. Would it be more effective to evaluate hitters based purely on their walk rate and strikeout Well, I responded to that by email, but I don't remember how I responded. as a Twins fan, Robbie Grossman came to mind as someone who would likely be highly overvalued. Well, I responded to that by email, but I don't remember how I responded. So let's see if my answer matches up with what I said then. I think that I would take walk rate and strike it right.

I think that is what you said. Yes. Great. I think strike it right. It implies the bat to ball skill and you can try to infer some things from that and walk rate it not only will tell you something about the player's discipline but it can also most of the time not all the time but most of the time it can tell you something about the player's power as well which batting average can't players who hit for power tend to be walked more than players who don't because you know you don't want to give up powerful hits so again you you would love to have more and someone like robbie grossman is a weird case where he doesn't strike out and he he walks a bunch even though he doesn't seem to have a bat so he just kind of stands there and kind of a nixon-esque attempt to reach base via not hits but yeah for for most

players you want those high walks low strikeouts jose ramirez is a example of a higher walk low strikeout guy who just figured everything else out and for that same high walk low strikeout reason i'm starting to wonder if maybe cattell marte is going to be like the breakout player of 2018 because he does those things right and he runs pretty well and you figure the other stuff can develop but batting average is good you know joey vato high batting average that's great it tells you plenty of information but i would i mean if nothing else i'd rather have two numbers in one right yeah sure i just want to mention this tweet I just saw from Craig Calcaterra. It's about Alexa's most searched MLB players. So Amazon Alexa, the device that you have in your home and you ask it stuff.

I don't know. I don't totally understand the appeal of that type of device, although I'm generally a gadget guy. But anyway, the Alexa people at Amazon sent Craig a list of the most Alexa'd MLB subject. And so we have a list of 10 players here. I'm going to read nine through two first, because nine through two are very obvious, very predictable. So starting with nine and counting down, we've got Clayton Kershaw, Anthony Rizzo, Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz, Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, Aaron Judge, and Albert Pujols. Okay, those are all famous, well-known players.

Number one on the list, Tyler Moore. What? Which I think has to be because of the late Mary Tyler Moore, right? I would think she died in January. I'm guessing that a lot of people have been Alexa-ing Mary Tyler Moore, and Alexa is giving them results about the baseball player Tyler Moore, which is probably not all that interesting or not what they were looking for. So I don't know why they're bragging about this, really. This seems like something you would want to sweep under the rug. Anyway, Tyler Moore shows up as the most Alexa-ed Emily player.

Number 10 is chris young and granted there are two chris youngs but i would think that even if you added together real searches for both chris youngs they still wouldn't add up to someone who is actually famous and and good so i don't know what to make of that chris young i don don't know. He's on the Red Sox. He was on the Yankees. He was involved in the whole sign stealing thing. But maybe this is another case of confusing a player with some other phrase that has Young in it. Or I don't know. Is there some other Chris Young? Yes, there is. Christopher Allen Young, born June 12th, 1985, is an American country music singer and songwriter. In 2006, he was declared the winner of the television program Nashville Star, a singing

competition which aired on the USA Network. So there is another Chris Young. But how is Alexa or whoever is compiling this? I just turned on my Alexa. Whoops. How is Alexa determining what searches are for baseball? Because if someone's saying like, Alexa, tell me something about Chris Young baseball. See what she says?

You know what fine go to hell alexa doesn't want to respond oh now she lights up whatever it's a useless device usually i sit at work and then i say alexa play some playlist and then i listen to a song and then the playlist is not organized well and i think alexa just stop and then that's the end of it so very frustrating device that i keep on my desk to be activated randomly during baseball broadcasts but so there is the chris young who seems to be far more well known than the other baseball chris young's i'm going to guess so i don't know yeah how it was determined that those were baseball searches i'm going to guess not a whole lot of thought was put into it was albert pooh holes second place he was the ninth second so really first place if we're going to assume

tyler moore is mary tell them more that's right pooh holes being a search more is that because 29th. So really, first place, if we're going to assume Tyler Moore is Mary Tyler Moore. Albert Pujols being a search Moore, is that because he's Albert Pujols, modern day legend, or Albert Pujols' worst player in professional baseball? I would have to imagine at this point it's probably the latter. Alexa, sell Albert Pujols. Trade Albert Pujols with Mike Trout Because their value cancels each other out As we've determined Hold on, hold on Alexa's talking to me about something

Alexa, sell Albert Pujols The top search result for sell Albert Pujols Is Epic Case's iPhone 6 case For Apple iPhone Ultra slim transparent dominate the baseball field series It's $19.99 total. Would you like to buy it? No. No. Not at all.

Definitely not. An iPhone 6 case? What? Check back in. No. Don't check back in. Stop. Alexa, stop. Alexa, stop. Glad you're getting good use out of this device. Oh, God. What a horrible device. Bad gift. Bad gift, everyone.

All right, play index. I have a quick play index of my own, but you go first. We got an email some time ago. I couldn't quite pull up who it was. So sorry, listener slash emailer. I don't recall your name. Couldn't find it, but he had a very simple question. He was curious about the worst starts,

the worst pitching appearances ever made, but the pitcher allowed no runs. And I couldn't really search that for relievers i didn't care it's more interesting with starters and so this wound up being a pretty simple play index query that i pulled up i went to baseball reference and i searched for starting pitchers who allowed zero runs in their starts and then i just searched in ascending order of game score game score of course not being perfect but whatever it'll work and when you do this you will find a lot of games uh unsurprisingly where the starter seems to have begun and then probably got hurt so for example i don't know what happened to

wade miley on may 5th of this season but he shows up he started he went two-thirds of an inning he allowed three hits there were no runs i don't remember if wade miley got hurt or if buck showalter just kind of snapped to it and he was like whoa wade miley's pitching let's knock that off and then he went got him but wade miley does show up there but i don't think that's really in the spirit of the question i don't think anybody cares that wade miley allowed no runs in two-thirds of an inning of a bad start. So for, let's see, a pretty contemporary example with a game score of 48. Actually, we have Travis Wood from just three weeks ago. Travis Wood started a game against the Giants. This is a game the Padres won 5-0. And Travis Wood was not eligible for the win. And here's why. 4.1 innings, six hits, four walks, no runs. So Travis Wood, terrible start in a game where Brad Hand got the save.

So that shows up there. It's not the worst. And as I'm just kind of scrolling up, we've got Fergie Jenkins in 1967 going 2-3 innings with 4 hits and 3 walks. That's bad. Scrolling up from there, we've got Bob Hendley. Bob Hendley, not Bob Henley. So this is a different kind of game 1966 april 23rd through two and two-thirds innings five hits four walks no runs also through

a wild pitch for good measure that's bob henley with a bad but scoreless start on april 23rd 1966 interestingly just worse than that four days later later, Hank Fisher, 1966, April 27th, two and one third innings, six hits, no runs, no walks, no strikeouts. There's two game scores that are worse than that. Hank Fisher showed up with a game score of 45. One of them is a pitcher who allowed three hits and recorded zero outs in 1914. I don't care. As far as I'm concerned, those weren't even human beings. But in 1922, this is one that confuses me. I have been able as far as I'm concerned. Those weren't even human beings. But in 1922,

this is one that confuses me. I have been able to find no answers to this. I emailed this back to the listener. July 21st, 1922. It's a game between the Boston Braves and the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals won the game six to one. They were out hit 14 to eight. Bill Doak is our starting pitcher in question. Bill Doak started for the Cardinals. He was not eligible for the win. Bill Doak, incidentally known for a few things. He innovated the design of the baseball glove, according to Wikipedia. In 1920, he suggested to Rodda Rawlings that a web should be laced between the first finger and the thumb, saying it would create a natural pocket.

The Bill Doak glove soon replaced all other baseball gloves and is the standard to this day. So good job bill doke also according to the national pastime.com in 1922 cardinals right-hander bill doke loses his no-hitter when he forgets to cover first base turning kurt walker's seventh inning grounder to first baseman jack fournier into an infield hit the redbird star spitballer that's the other thing he's known for settles for a one hitter his second of the season and a one nothing victory of the phillies at sportsman spark so bill doke a few claims of fame but in this start bill doke worked a clean three innings zero runs this is according to baseball reference three innings

zero runs nine hits into two walks i don't know how this happened because this predates the play by play logs on baseball reference and i've been able to find no further evidence of anything, but Bill Doak, if these numbers can be trusted. So Bill Doak, three innings, that means nine outs that he recorded, unless he pitched into the fourth. And we just don't know that. He was relieved by one Clyde Barfoot. I've never heard of a Barfoot, but in any case,

Clyde Barfoot got the win with five innings of one run baseball the losing pitcher in this game was named Mule Watson sure let's just uh let's just go over some names in this one Mule Watson we have a Clyde Barfoot Spex Toporcer I guess uh melt stock lead off lead off of the St. Louis Cardinals, fun one, Max Flack. That's pretty good. The 3-4 hitters were Rogers Hornsby and Heine Mueller, so it's also good. There was a Hod Ford playing shortstop for the Boston Braves. Yeah, I don't think it's going to get better than Hod Ford, Max Flack, and Clyde Barfoot. In any case, Bill Duck, three innings, nine hits, two walks.

Game score of 39, which which is terrible but it shows up with 15 batters faced so nine hits two walks nine outs 15 batters faced i don't entirely know i haven't tried to work it through in my head how many double plays would have been necessary but even if you had what you can only have one double play in anything i guess so if you have what god how many maybe caught stealing did players get caught stealing in the game and yeah uh no the answer the answer is no that didn't happen larry kopf stole a base frank gibson stole two bases so i couldn't i tried to pull up like the the newspaper article of the day but it's all concerned about like war

time just weird old human history so i couldn't figure out what happened in this game so i don't know if these numbers are are reliable but i mean nine hits and a two in theory unless something else is happening you can only allow three base runners in an inning unless something without allowing a run unless something weird happens so maybe there are a bunch of outs on the bases or at home or what but for now at least as far as i can tell if the numbers are true bill doke worst ever scoreless start july 21st 1922 three innings nine hits two walks 15 batters faced if you can solve the mystery, please, please help to solve the mystery because I am at a loss. Unlike Bill Doak.

All right. Well, my stat segment is actually about scoreless seasons of a sort. So this is a question from listener Dylan, who says, I just watched relief pitcher Carlos Ramirez pitch for the Blue Jays and was amazed when I looked him up and saw that he has not given up a run yet in 45 and two-thirds innings of professional baseball this year at AA, AAA, and the majors. What is the professional baseball record for scoreless innings in a season? Now, Carlos Ramirez is now up to 47 and two-thirds innings. He has allowed runs. He allowed two unearned runs at AA, but he has a zero ERA this season in 47 and two-thirds innings. That is pretty impressive. So this is not play

indexable. So I went deeper. I emailed Hans Van Sleuten, the estimable, invaluable Hans Van Sleuten who runs stats for Baseball Reference. And I asked him to query up a list for me of pro players with the highest innings totals who had zero ERAs in a season. And Carlos Romero is really close to the top. So at the very top of the list, there is Teddy Corbett, who had a zero ERA in 88 innings in 1892 for the Western League in 1892. Now, I don't know if we can trust Western League scorekeeping from 1892, and I don't know whether we should count 1892 regardless. But Teddy Corbett, your official record holder. But Teddy Corbett, your official record holder. But in the modern era, the record holder is Ramon Acosta, who in 2008 had a zero ERA in 54 and two thirds innings.

Now, Ramon Acosta did that in the Dominican Summer League. So this is obviously a much lower level of baseball than Carlos Ramirez is doing it. And that's it. It's Teddy Corbett, Ramon Acosta, and then Carlos Ramirez at 47 and two thirds. So unless you count the 1892 Western League guy or the 2008 Dominican Summer League guy, Carlos Ramirez, definitely your record holder for high level baseball, AA, AAA, and the majors. He is now up to 47 and two-thirds. I guess he does not have time to surpass Ramon Acosta's 54 and two-thirds, but what he has done, I would say, is considerably more impressive than what Ramon Acosta did, given the quality of competition

and also given that Ramon Acosta allowed six unearned runs that year and the very following season allowed a 5.04 ERA and a 7.92 RA and was out of baseball after that. That was in the Appalachian League rookie ball. So basically what Carlos Ramirez has done here is extremely impressive. Now, if he had spent the whole season in the majors, he probably wouldn't have done this. If he had thrown more innings, if he had been a starter, he wouldn't have done this. So it's not like the most impressive pitching feat of all time, but it is pretty impressive and virtually unprecedented. And he's actually a converted outfielder who started pitching in 2014, I believe, in the Blue Jays system. He's 26. He is now up to 10 scoreless innings in the majors so good job Carlos Ramirez he's got pretty good peripherals too yeah the only thing I had on

him was that he was a converted pitcher he was an outfielder for about five years in the Blue Jays system started pitching in 2014 and he had the numbers of a convert pitcher he had high walks no strikeouts and he's gotten better every season and at this point he's throwing a fastball at 93 with a slider so he looks like a pretty standard yeah generic six foot five right-handed reliever and at 26 years old he's he's on a bad team which is giving him a chance to have a career so there's a pretty long history of these sort of converted players but i think they're always interesting i don't know if ramir has had a pitching background at some lower level but considering that there have been people in the minors or the major leagues who have been pitching for 15, 20 years who aren't quite very good, Ramirez is just like, yeah, I want to try this

because I'm not very good at my full-time job. Three years later, here he is, major leagues, scoreless. Yeah, pretty cool. Pretty cool season. So that's something to watch over the next couple weeks, see if he can extend that streak. All right. Question from Maggie. I have a question regarding what happens if a player is ejected mid-play on defense, but the ball ends up at his position. I'm currently watching Cubs cards and John Lackey just got ejected.

No surprise there. Mid-play as he was backing up home plate. For reference, it was a 1-1 game in the fifth. Runners on first and second. Two outs. Lackey pitching to Carlos Martinez, 2-2 count. Lackey throws what is likely a ball, but is questionable. We actually talked about this briefly on our Andrew Varga interview on Monday. Martinez starts to walk to the dugout as he believes it's a strike, though the umpire calls it a ball. Lackey got a bit hot right away, but nothing major there. Next pitch happens and

Martinez hits a line drive single that scores a run. Lackey jogs toward the plate to back up a throw home and is consequently mouthing off to the umpire during the process. The umpire throws him out seemingly before the play is really over. I'm wondering what would happen if, say, there was an overthrow and Lackey caught it, but he's already been thrown out of the game. I did a little research to see if I could find a precedent for this, but seemed to only find happenstances with managers being ejected mid-play and i know you were able to google up a rule that applies here yeah so you might remember that sam went through the rules and found the rule that he

most wants to see take place where a player can be ejected change into street clothes and then sit in the bleachers that is permissible by baseball law so we're still waiting for that as far as i know but very near to that rule in the rule book is the following rule rule 8.01 parentheses d close parentheses i use an exclamation point it doesn't come with an exclamation point i will quote the rule each umpire has authority to disqualify any player coach manager or substitute for objecting to decisions or for unsportsmanlike conduct or language and to eject such disqualified person from the playing field if an umpire disqualifies a player while a play is in progress the disqualification shall not take effect until

no further action is possible in that play so by rule john lackey was ejected but was still part of the game until the play was complete i did not expect to find a rule about this i was somewhat pleasantly surprised to be able to conclusively answer the question did not expect to find a rule about this. I was somewhat pleasantly surprised to be able to conclusively answer the question. And also, this is only a rule because it must have happened before that somebody was ejected mid-play, and then they were like, well, wait, now, hmm,

what do we do? So there is some precedent. I just don't know where or when. Yeah, all right. And related question from Matt, who was perusing the rulebook because of the very same lackey play. And he did find rule 8.01D. But in the process, he says he also noticed rule 6.04B, which says in part, well, I'll just read it in whole.

So it says players in uniform shall not address or mingle with spectators nor sit in the stands before, during or after a game. or mingle with spectators, nor sit in the stands before, during, or after a game. No manager, coach, or player shall address any spectator before or during a game. Players of opposing teams shall not fraternize at any time while in uniform. So this is in the section of the rulebook about unsportsmanlike conduct, Matt says, and incidentally appears immediately before a rule preventing a fielder from getting in a batter's line of sight and distracting him the eddie stanky rule i guess and so this is evidently included twice in the rule book there's also a separate no fraternization rule 4.06 so matt says my question is have you ever heard of this no fraternizing rule being invoked should it prohibit the kinds of interaction even by the romine brothers that upset some related to the Tigers-Yankees brawl, talking during batting practice?

Or maybe just that if you go out to a bar together afterward, you cannot wear your uniform? Players cannot wear their uniform to Halloween parties unless there were no players on other teams present. prohibits players from addressing spectators while in uniform ever, thus perhaps disallowing any video board announcements or ads featuring a player in uniform and talking to fans while giving them autographs. So yeah, this rule seems like probably a relic of an earlier era of baseball, I guess, where teams did not fraternize. I don't know why it was specifically banned, but the not addressing or mingling with spectators, that seems like it's probably a response to, I don't know, some player swearing at fans or something like that and needing a rule to eject anyone who does that. get Joey Votto talking to fans all the time. And I mean, that is something that we want to encourage, if anything, I think. Players interacting with fans in a benign way and signing autographs and talking to them when they dive into the stands to catch a foul ball or

whatever. So clearly not enforced. And I don't know what the origins of the various parts of this rule are, but I guess it's good to have at least the unsportsmanlike parts of this just so you have a rule to throw at someone when they do something bad. But the no fraternization rule, I don't know the original origin of that, and I'm not aware of any time that it has been invoked. Right. I know it was sort of an old Rob Nyer pet complaint that players are not supposed to fraternize with one another on the playing field. And I always kind of figured it was tongue in cheek and I didn't know where it was coming from. And I'd heard the specific word fraternization pops up every so often and just often enough that you figure it had to come from somewhere. somewhere and presumably it comes from a time when someone found out about this rule and decided hey players shouldn't be allowed to be friendly with one another on the field which whatever i guess it's a spectator event you can maybe you want a little more conflict what i find interesting about this rule uh 4.06 or 3.09 i don't know exactly how the decimals work the specific no fraternization rule not only is there the the part where players can't mingle with spectators because i feel like

i'm seeing now a rash of videos of players throwing the ball back and forth with the kids in the bleachers now i don't know if that's a new thing but it seems like every team is trying to hype up some player on their team who does it because like wow look at what a humble normal humanity is but you know first of all it's probably not very satisfying for a player to throw with a kid in the bleachers like that kid it's not you can can't, you can't throw it a hundred percent. And that kid can't throw it a hundred percent. Like, look, I've thrown, I've thrown with kids before. It's terrible.

But anyway, part of the same rule. First sentence, players in uniform shall not address or mingle with spectators, nor sit in the stands before, during, or after a game. So that goes with the specific rule about how players can be ejected, but then they have to change into street clothes if they want to sit in the bleachers. Players can be in the bleachers, but they have to be undercover. Okay. Huh. All right. Weird rule. A lot of weird relics left over in the baseball rule book. It's a long book. All right. Steven says, with the MLB schedule starting a few days earlier in 2018,

and therefore adding off days to stretch the schedule, how do you guys think it will affect rotations? Could this help allow teams to utilize a six-man rotation? Will it lead to healthier So I would say, yeah, probably no tangible or at least provable effect. But if anything, I would think the last thing he mentions is the most likely that you would just be able to skip your worst starter a couple of times maybe and do the opposite of a six-man rotation, like almost more of a four-man rotation at times. I mean, we're looking at what, four extra off days. So it's nothing. Yeah. Nothing you're likely to notice. I'm sure teams will have designs because you can always map out a schedule. And if you want, you can try to maximize the starts that you get from your number one by just taking advantage of off days that have already existed. But this is taking place at the same time when teams are trying to be more conservative with their pitchers than ever before. So there is an increased opportunity to I don't know what word to use leverage your rotation and make it a little more top heavy but at the same time i think teams are trying to take it a little more easy on their numbers one number ones i don't know i don't care so it's something where maybe down the stretch if you have a team that's just trying to squeeze its

way in you have a team that just kind of goes all cc sabathia on the brewers and tries to use their number one as often as possible. But that's it's such a small it's such a small change that I can't imagine that anyone's going to actually notice anything. It's not going to be as observable in effect as like what's happened with the 10 day disabled list or all of a sudden disabled list visits are up. It's not going to be like that. Yeah. All right. Travis says right now the Red Sox are set to face the Astros in the ALDS. We've all seen playoff teams with division leads spend the last week setting up the rotation and Travis says, which the last four games of the season, for instance, would either team try to change the matchup? The Red Sox could lose to try to push the Astros past the Indians or the Astros could try to send the Red Sox to the wildcard game in favor of the Yankees. Would either team try to

take or preserve home field advantage for the ALDS? The Red Sox are only four and a half games behind the Astros and could have a chance to seal home field. How much rest would the two teams give their players? Any other weird strategies. You could try send every runner for the extra base to get a sense of the defender's arm strengths or tell my fielders to hold something back to surprise the other team, etc., etc. Well, my assumption is that it would be boring. I think baseball is pretty conservative and unwilling to really kind of play around with a situation like that. If you have a series that means almost nothing uh just immediately before a series that means almost everything then the

likelihood is that the priority would be put on player rest and player health and not doing anything too crazy because you just want to keep those players for the games that actually will matter i don't think that the astros would try for example to knock the red socks out of first place in their division because it's not like the Astros get anything from that, then they just have to face the Yankees, which would be really hard also. So I don't think they would care. If you had a situation where the two teams were tighter, then I think you could see them play for home field advantage on both sides. But in this case, where the Red Sox as of right now are five and a half games behind the Astros, like unless that really narrows then I

don't think it's going to matter so even if the Red Sox were like three games behind the Astros I don't think that they would bust their asses trying to go for the sweep because I don't think that they would uh care that much home field advantage just not that important and it would be too hard to play for because you would need to sweep the series so I think that you would have both teams take it pretty easy on their best players and then who knows what you might see from the backups or the the depth pieces you could see maybe some sort of gamesmanship i guess it would be a lot of fun if you sort of uh try to rope a dope them or maybe that's the wrong term but if the red sox used chris

sale but then he just like made himself look broken or something that would be interesting just to kind of throw the astros off the scent in this hypothetical but you know you do that and at the same time you run the risk of maybe ch Hale gets all messed up because he tried to look messed up. And at some point, you are what you are. So you don't want to act in a way that in any way changes your routine or performance. So I think there's the opportunity for things to go really weird and really fun. But really, if you're looking for someone to do really something really fun and silly down the stretch, you should probably look at like i don't know the padres because who cares yeah travis suggests starting a beanball war one team could use their triple a players on the expanded roster to try to

goad the other players into getting suspended somehow that's a good idea i don't know i mean yeah you could just bring up some idiot to like throw at carlos correa i guess if you really want to get into the weeds here. Right, yeah. Yeah, I could see maybe one of the teams holding back or skipping a starter, for instance. I don't know if you're going to see Chris Sale a couple times in the ALDS. Maybe you don't want the Astros to see him another time

right before the playoffs. Maybe you go out of your way to avoid that a little bit and give the guy some rest at the same time. So something like that, perhaps, but I can't imagine anything else all that fun happening, unfortunately. That's baseball. Just not fun. Yeah, we are almost done here. Let's see if we can get through this one. I was listening to the podcast earlier this week where you spoke about the catcher attempting to frame a pitch that bounced, and it got me thinking, what would baseball be like if the pitcher could bounce the ball and still have it be called a strike? The strike zone wouldn't change, but a pitch that bounced and then crossed the plate in the zone would be called a strike. I realize the obvious answer to this

question is cricket, but as an English fan of both sports, I wondered if this would actually give a pitcher any advantage and if anyone would even bother to try. So I guess the advantage, I mean, the pitch is going to get to the plate slower if it bounces first, but it's going to have unpredictable spin and direction. And maybe that's a reason not to do it because you're not sure where the ball is going to end up. But on the other hand, maybe it's a reason to do it because it would be unpredictable for the batter to and there'd be no time for the batter to adjust to a ball that bounces right in front of the plate. So I could imagine some pitcher perfecting this strategy and having it be very effective for him. Yeah, this was a difficult one to think about in my head.

Obviously, it works in cricket. This is something that people do and refer to as pitchers on that side of the world but that's fine different sport i think that this is something most pitchers wouldn't try certainly in like a full count you're not going to do this because you figure that it's just going to be too hard to control the way that the ball bounces and even if you get really good at it you're just you're not going to be able to tell what part of the baseball is hitting the ground at what precise moment so you are going to have a lot of crazy bounces hitters would never swing you just can't you wouldn't you're trained the entire time you don't swing at the and you just have to assume that

pitch is going to be a ball but even though i think that baseball for the most part would stay the same i've come around to the idea that this would be an advantage for pitchers because they would just present a new weapon a weapon that hitters don't really have much of a defense for aside from not swinging i imagine the maybe the biggest change is you would see a dramatic increase in oh and two count called strikeouts because that's when i think pitchers would be most likely to try to do this where they figure well i have four pitches to burn i'm going to try to bounce one spike it in the dirt in front of the plate and then if it bounces up and gets right in the middle of the zone well here is not going to recognize that as a pitch in the middle of the zone umpire is going to have to call it a strike i don't know how umpires would deal with these

called strikes because they would probably be very hard to know exactly where they crossed into the zone you're not used to calling pitches that are moving up into the zone but if umpires were able to be trained for it and they knew what was going on then i could see someone like rich hill or someone else who's good just being like well oh to count i'm just going to for it and they knew what was going on, then I could see someone like Rich Hill or someone else who's good just being like, well, 0-2 count, I'm just going to spike it. And if it bounces up into the zone, hitter's not going to do anything and then free strike. Yeah.

All right. Well, I've got some other good ones starred, but we will table them for next time. You can keep them coming, of course. And we will wrap it up there. Late-breaking American Association news. The Winnipeg Gold Eyes won They beat the Wichita Wignuts

18-2 So the outcome of this decisive fifth game was never in doubt So the Gold Eyes are the team that almost lost game four And were bailed out by that Bok So that Bok may very well have swung the outcome Of the American Association Championship Series Congrats to Winnipeg And Wichita, we're sorry.

Also, remember all those stats I cited about Blue Jays reliever Carlos Ramirez, the man with 47 and two-thirds innings and a zero ERA? Yeah, the inning after that didn't go so well. Between the time that we talked and the time I'm posting this, Ramirez pitched one inning. He allowed four earned runs. So he now has a 3.27 ERA in 11 major league innings. Sorry, Carlos.

Couldn't quite make it to the finish line. That's why it's so hard to do. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Jeff Johnson, Jody Madrone, Dustin Palmatier, Joel Gillespie, and Matthew Yeo. Thanks to all of you. Patreon messaging system. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. We will be back later this week.