Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1114: Net Gains

Episode Date: September 22, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Glory Hole Recreation Area, solve the mystery of Bill Doaks, discuss archaic baseball language and how today’s baseball writing will age, and touch on an odd double play and another byproduct of 2017’s record home-run rate, then weigh in on the expansion of netting in ballparks and […]

When I see the glory, I ain't gotta worry. When I see the glory, I ain't gotta worry. Hello and welcome to episode 1114 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphsball Podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I am Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, regretting the way that I enunciated the introduction to this, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of TheRinger.com, which I guess is what we were going to call it. Hello, Ben. This is Thursday night. How are you this Thursday night? We never do this. No, we're recording just a little bit after midnight Eastern time. This really brings me back. This is how we used to do it in the old days when this was still a daily podcast or week daily podcast.

And we'd record it every night around this time. And I really got into that routine. But it's been years. This is nice. Well, tough nuggies. We are. This is not a routine, but we're going to do it like this. And I guess for you, it's actually still Friday morning anyway.

So technically, our routine is to record on Friday morning. And you are still doing it on Friday morning just about 11 hours earlier than usual and yes we have some baseball stuff to talk about which is good because we need to do that this is a baseball podcast but there's one thing that we were talking about a little bit for this that I feel like we have to talk so my girlfriend is traveling in California for the week down there for reasons that oh I don't need to get into it but she's traveling now The second half of her trip is for pleasure and not work. And today she spent entirely too long in a car because there was a freak snowstorm in the Sierra Nevada that sent her having to go through a very, very massive detour to get to the other side of the mountains.

And as part of her detour travels, I received a texted image on my phone and the image is of a sign it is a sign outside of a campground and the sign reads glory hole recreation area glory hole recreation area it is a real thing i have no further explanation ben can confirm yeah it appears to be by a lake i would i would argue that every glory hole is a recreation area i would argue that they're generally not so prominently advertised. I've never, I suppose, frequented one myself. But I wanted to make some sort of joke on the internet as soon as I got this picture. But it seems so, so obvious.

And it's in California. It's around. It's in the Sacramento, a little east of Sacramento, north of Yosemite area. So it's in a well-trafficked area. So I figured maybe this is one of those. You know that old street sign picture that says weed and college, right? And there's arrows, right? So that's like one of the original viral internet photographs. So I wanted to make some sort of joke, but I figured, well, Glory Hole Recreation Area has got to be played out and maybe I've just missed it, but maybe it's not. I don't know. I don't

know how fresh this is but glory hole recreation area it has several dozen internet reviews and as i was reading them it seemed like people reviewed it for its campground facilities and i couldn't find jokes i expected i expected jokes but people seem to be pretty uh pretty straight man about the glory hole recreation area which uh you can reserve yes this may be a virgin find i don't know this is i i can't believe that this is a real place there is a baseball connection very tenuous and that this is evidently located in angels camp california which sounds like the spring training home of the los angeles angels but it is not but it does say angels camp i don't

know what to make of this you were speculating before we started recording that maybe glory hole recreation area originates from before the more modern connotation of that word which just from some quick dictionary research comes from the 1940s at some point so it's possible that glory hole recreation area predates that meaning of the word in which case it could be used to refer to many of the other meanings of glory hole, which evidently there are quite a few. And maybe is it a body of water? Is it just a glorious hole in the earth where there's water? I don't know. It's adjacent to...

She didn't stop to investigate, which was wise. It appears... I'll just click on this Google thumbnail. Glory hole recreation area is just off this road. investigate which was wise it appears i'll just click on this google thumbnail gloryhole recreation area is just off this road and it is uh it is on a large body of uh of water what body of water why i can tell you in a minute that body of water is the new malonis lake i don't know what that is i don't know why it's new but it says that it is and it has a glory hole an older one yeah well if anyone's in the area and you

know the history as always please let us know i wish that there was some way to objectively monitor the patterns of the podcast emails we get because they really do bounce around that's it's it's 80 baseball but then there's uh there's been a lot of information about uh organists both professional and uh and amateur yeah and we're going to we we're going we're going to get i'm going to say a half dozen emails about the glory hill recreation area i'm going to say two people who suggest things about it never having been and four people who have actually stayed there that's gonna be my guess we're gonna see none of you please if you're gonna email in don't lie i lie. I want to see how accurate. All right.

Good estimate. Is there anything you'd like to discuss before we discuss something? No, we can discuss something. Okay, great. Well, we just got another email in the previous episode. Oh, this is great. We just got one. As we speak, just got another email. So in the previous episode, I did a stat segment on the worst starts ever where the

starter allowed zero runs and i wound up identifying and perplexed by a start by one bill doke bill doke started a game for the st louis cardinals against the boston braves in july of 1922 bill doke's final line read three innings, nine hits, two walks, zero runs. It was a mystery. I didn't quite understand. Also, incidentally, in this game, all runs scored in the eighth inning. Kind of interesting, but in a way that we're not going to dwell upon. Anyway, I put a call out to readers, I guess listeners, not readers, but everyone who listens

can read, presumably, to maybe help with some sort of research because I couldn't quite figure out how Bill Doak, who I will remind everyone was relieved by Clyde Barfoot in a game started by Mule Watson on the other team. I can't get over the 1920s. But anyway, I couldn't figure out how Bill Doak had faced 15 batters and lasted three innings and had nine hits, two walks, zero runs. Well, we have received a quartet now of emails from listener Jeff J. Snyder. A quartet of emails.

Each one more informative than the last. Absolutely. We have responded to none, but we are delighted to have received them. I guess I don't need to go through them all. I will start with the second email. So this is going to alternate between Jeff J. Snyder's text and text from a very old newspaper looking scan. So this is from Jeff.

Not this Jeff, Jeff. I found one other thing. According to a box score in the Arizona Daily Star, Doak left the game with two on and zero outs in the fourth inning. That is a critical point. Yeah, we couldn't see that

in the baseball reference box score. That seems like a detail that they just didn't include for 100 years ago. Anyway, and there's also a double play listed where Mueller, the left fielder, threw to Hornsby, the second baseman,

then to Clemens, the catcher. I wonder if that was some sort of funky double play that started on a hit. Maybe a guy trying to stretch a single into a double gets thrown out at second and then Hornsby throws to home to get a guy who started on first base and is trying to score on the throw to second or something. Considering the circumstances, it seems like it was something weird like that. Anyway, so the penultimate email that we've so far received from jeff j snyder says sorry last one that's how it begins that was a lie jeff it was a lie that you you immediately uh within 10 minutes matter minutes yes minutes uh jeff snyder a liar but a wonderful liar who has come in very handy sorry Sorry, last one. This one has all the answers.

See the attached description from the St. Louis Star and Times. So there is an included image that is of a small newspaper column, and I will read it until I stop reading it. Bold face sub-headline, wild base running. No hyphen, I will say. Base running, two separate words. That's how the Arizona... Actuation was different those days, yeah. So, wild base running no hyphen i will say base running two separate words that's uh that's how the arizona was different those days yeah so wild base running the braves put on one of the wooziest

base space running exhibitions ever staged on a big league diamond when they failed to put over a tally on nine hits off bill doke's delivery during the first four frames i'm glad the newspaper picked up on how strange this game was to boston they didn't even have access to baseball reference or the play index two boston singles were wasted in the first as a result of nixon's attempt to reach third on cruises wrap to center in the second hulky singled and died stealing oh no more from that game then buried the lead there dead player he's to. He's unlikely to score. Then with two out and two runners on the sacks, Kopf was trapped off third while watching Gibson steal second. The third round proved more of a farce than either of the preceding cantos

as the Braves wrapped out four binges? Bingles? Like binges. Language evolves very quickly. I just want to i want to write i want to say this that long ago this is the same sport that we're talking about what year are we talking about here 1922 we could yeah we could barely understand what's happening here i'm gonna say this again the third round proved more of a farce than either of the preceding cantos as the Braves wrapped out four binges in this frame without shoving over a run. Bold-faced sub-headline, freak double play, period.

Watson, Powell, and Nixon led off with singles. I wonder, was that supposed to be singles, but they said binges? Is that some weird double typo? Well, I don't know. Watson, Powell, and Nixon. Binges. It's there. You can click on? Well, I don't know. Watson, Powell, and Nixon. Bingies. It's there. You can click on the caption.

I swear to God. Watson, Powell, and Nixon led off with singles, but the cards turned a freak double play when Mueller's throw to Hornsby nailed Powell off second as he rounded the bag on Nixon's blow, and Watson was cut down at the plat by Hornsby's relay to Clemens.

Cruz clouded the fourth straight hit off Odak. That is a typo. Doak retired in the fourth for yielding a single to Holke. Holke, incidentally, was a player who previously died stealing, so he was reincarnated. Yielded a single to Holke and a pass that's walked to Ford. Barfoot took over the assignment. After a sacrifice by Kopf, Holke was caught at the plate on Gibson's tap to Hornsby and ford died stealing jesus that's two players the garbage in this game john john watson exercised his old-time mastery over the cards however and up to the close of the seventh they were unable to gather a run off his delivery only four hits being recorded off his delivery during this time umpires moran and

quickly attendance exactly 6 000 and so jeff snyder begins that email saying sorry last one which he follows with the full play-by-play if you are interested so whatever we are here let's just read down the play-by-play who am i reading boston okay i will skip the cardinal stuff so first inning powell singles to left nixon forced powell on a snappy play that's in the play-by-play they're editorializing when you when you have like the hit hardness and it's like hard medium soft back then it was snappy or non-snappy yeah this is like early baseball info solutions yeah okay. Inside edge. Okay, so Powell singled the left. Nixon forced Powell on a snappy play.

Fournier to Lavin. Cruz singled the center, but Nixon was cut down trying for third. Smith to stock. Buckle popped to stock. No runs. Second inning. Holkey singled to left. Ford flied to Smith.

Holkey died stealing. There it is again. Clemens to Lavin. Kopf walked. Gibson singled past third. Kopf stopping at second. Kopf took third on a delayed steal. Gibson stole second.

And when Kopf tried to sneak home after the pilfer, good word, he was trapped off third and run down. Doak to stock to Clemens. No runs. Third inning. We're almost done here. Watson singled to right. Powell beat out a slow roller to short.

Slow roller. Look at these details. Nixon singled to left. And Powell was cut down when he overran second. Mueller to Hornsby. And when Watson tried to score, he was doubled at the plate. Hornsby to Clemens. Cruz singled to left, sending Nixon to third. Buck, Buck, Bucket, Bucker, somebody forced Cruz.

Hornsby to Lavin. No runs. Fourth inning. Holkey singled to center for the ninth hit off Doak forward walked that concluded Doak's sojourn on the mound and Barfoot replaced him etc so how many outs I didn't read this closely enough how many outs did Doak actually record on his own we're gonna go over this again oh god okay okay I'm gonna I mean you can you can open this but whatever let's okay first inning so there was a single Nixon forced Powell on a snappy play God, okay. Okay, I'm going to... I mean, you can open this, but whatever.

Okay, first inning. So there was a single. Nixon forced Powell on a snappy play. I'm going to guess that's some sort of grounder. And then Nixon was cut down trying for third. So that's a base running mistake. And then Buckle popped out. Okay, so in the first inning,

Doak got two outs on his own out of three. Second inning, Hulky singled to left, Ford flied to Smith. That's one. Hulky died stealing. So that to smith that's one hulky died stealing so that's no that's not doke so hulky's dead cop while gibson single pass there and cough stopping and saying cough took third i delayed steal gibson stole second and when cough seemed to see how his trap okay so somebody just picked off okay so so far through two innings doke has actually recorded three outs of his own. We go to the third inning. Watson singled to right.

Powell beat out a slow roller to short. Nixon singled to left. And Powell was cut down on the overrun second. Nope. Okay, so not Doak. Mueller to Hornsby. And when Watson tried to score, he was doubled at the plate. Okay, not Doak.

Hornsby to Clemens. Crew singled to left, sending Nixon to third. Buckle forced Cruz. Okay, so Doak recorded four outs on his own out of nine outs that were recorded when doke was on the mound two players died in this game right and doke allowed tonight wow okay so this game is extraordinary and the play-by-play thanks to jeff snyder for his very helpful emails i could not track down this information i will overlook the fact that he lied so that he could supply more information incredible this is indeed a game worth the fact that he lied so that he could supply more information.

Incredible. This is indeed a game worth the amount of time, I guess, that we have now spent on it over the course of two different podcasts. Are you sure it was Bingey? Is it possible that it was Bingle? Bingle? Oh, it's hard to tell with that old typeface. Yeah, I'm guessing Bingle is more likely. I've looked up in the dictionary, baseball dictionary. I don't see any bingey, but I do see bingle, which is a base hit of any kind. Bingle is synonymous with a base hit. The big fellow grabbed three bingles. Sounds like we're still talking about the glory hole recreation area at this point. So yeah, bingle is some sort of hit.

Okay. So I'm guessing that's what it is. A bingler is a batter who gets a hit, logically enough. And there's bingling, which is the act of getting hits. This is all consistent. And to bing is to hit a ball hard. It's an onomatopoeic term based on the sound of the bat solidly meeting the pitched ball. First use,

1909, bing one, cap. The last use, 1911. Yeah. Do you think our writing will age better or worse than that? Do you think that people reading it in whatever, 2110 or whatever, the equivalent number of years between our two times do you think that ours will be more or less discernible on the one hand i don't think i use as much slang like that even i mean we we certainly still have it but i i tend not to use it i think but maybe that's just what i think and it would sound equally alien to future ears. The other thing is that we have all these stats and numbers now that, I don't know, maybe we've now gotten to the point where we will be speaking the same statistical language that future baseball fans and writers will be speaking, because they will have stat casts too, and it will be just consistent across decades and centuries. But it could also just come off as extremely primitive based on the brainwave readers and neuro devices and wearable everything and holograms that they're using then.

Space Week podcast. Space slash future week. Yeah, I don't. That's a good question. when I think about current baseball writing, where of course, I'm just biased by the baseball writing that I read, it seems like the writing itself is less floral and thoughtful about the baseball, but it features a lot more existential dread, sort of that weird philosophical edge to a lot of online baseball writing that I don't know when that started, but it's hard to get away from. But in terms of like actual, are you referring to people reading like the internet baseball writing specifically or just baseball writing of this era in the future yeah just just us just our typical day-to-day post

uh i think that people know you know i don't have a thought i don't have a good thought i think that it's it's always important whenever you are making fun of something that seems ridiculous from the past it's always important to remember that you yourself will also look ridiculous so if i had to guess i think that we will come off as seeming equally ridiculous however to the people in the future if they were to read this playbook late from 1922 it would seem twice as archaic because there will have been just more time passing so to them they would it might as well be hieroglyphics so i think that we will look very silly all the things that we we will look very silly all the things that we prize will look very silly because of course we don't have access to the heart rate

monitors that they're going to be sharing with the public in 21 17 as people know exactly who is and is not a clutch hitter and who you want at the plate in whatever the hell baseball looks like at that point i'm they're going to have to have a lot of domes to protect players from the 150 degree winters during which the season will be rescheduled. Yes. Yeah, I think we should bring back bingle. Bingle. I agree with you. I will. Now, here's the question. Do you think that Stephen Goldman is listening to this? Like, yes, of course, it's bingle. Everybody knows it's bingle. Yes, I'm sure he does spend a lot of time perusing old newspaper accounts, so I'm sure that the term is familiar to him. But yeah, I say let's bring it back.

Single is passe. No one hits singles anymore anyway, so we can just bring out Bingle in the rare occasion when that happens. Speaking of which, I just did want to mention one quick Home Run update. Today's sign of the Home run apocalypse I don't really think It's an apocalypse but some people do The Royals team record was Finally finally broken By Mike Moustakis who hit his

37th home run of the season Took him a while to get there had some injuries Had some slumps but he did get there He finally broke the Steve bye bye Balboni Record of 36 Which was set in, what, 1985? Yeah, so it's been a really long time. Despite the fact that the fences have been moved in at Kauffman, despite the changing offensive environments, despite the PD era, despite everything that has transpired in the past 32 years, it took that long for a royal to hit more home runs than that i

think there have been 355 hitters i read in a rustin dodd story in the kc star since that time who have hit at least 36 home runs none of them was a royal until today so that finally happened there's a interesting post actually by andrew perpetua at Rotographs about just kind of trying to adjust for the possible effects of the ball and kind of project how many home runs would have been hit if not for that using the StatCast information that he had. And he broke down the hitters who would be most susceptible to losing home runs in that kind of environment, just basically reverting back to the old baseball. And unsurprisingly, I think it's a lot of the people you would expect. Didi Gregorius is at the top of the list with Luz, 11 of his 24 home runs, according to Andrew's analysis. Brett Gardner up there too. Lots of the kind of 20 to 30 home run group that no one expected to be in that group. So kind of a fun article. And Andrew runs the XStats site also. So check that out too. Absolutely. In terms

of anything else, I don't know how interesting it is. But just when we were about to begin recording, I saw that the Brewers who were playing a dramatic game, they should have won, but then lost to the Cubs. They should not have done that. But in that game in the top of the 10th and inning that was going off the rails for the brewers they turned a very unusual 4-2 double play so i have uh no real further information on that but there were runners on the corners for the cubs ground ball was hit to the second baseman who charged in applied a tag to the runner going from first to second and then through home where the runner was declared safe and then upon challenge review

declared out so 4-2 double play they have happened before just a quick google yield something from darwin barney that was a different sort of play the caption reads darwin barney makes an over the shoulder catch in right field and fires home where manny machado is out ellipsis i'm not clicking through i don't need to know any more information. So 4-2 double play, not unprecedented, but probably rare. Yeah. All right. Yep. Do you have any other banter? No, I guess not. Apologies to anyone whose Alexa we activated yesterday. At least one person tweeted at us to say his Alexa was going off during that podcast, but that was fun. I was happy to hear your Alexa from afar from afar well thankfully she's kind of kept her mouth shut today she is usually not very helpful so uh so for the

remaining i don't know half hour we have this podcast i'm just going to read old play-by-plays from 1920s decade and we're just going to see what other words we can find no so this this week one of the big baseball stories that i think got a little beyond just baseball and became something of a greater conversation. It's the conversation we've had before, or at least the public has had before, about the extent of netting in baseball stadiums. It's one of those conversations where, from my perspective, it seems weird that we're even needing to have this conversation, right? I think many stadiums, all stadiums, I don't know exactly what the rules are, but most stadiums, if not all of them, have some amount of netting.

But as of the other day, when a young girl was hit by a foul ball in Yankee Stadium, I think the count was 19 teams didn't have netting that extended to the dugouts. Does that sound true? I didn't see an exact number, but it sounds about right. I think it was 19. I think that's what I saw in the Jeff Passon column.

So 19 teams did not have netting that extends all the way past the dugouts. Now, I don't need to let everyone know that this is not something that comes up that often, because if it came up that often, there would be a lot more fans injured. And so this would be a story a lot more often. And often there would be a lot more fans injured and so we would this would be a story a lot more often and then there would be more extended netting it hasn't happened very often which i think has allowed teams to sort of neglect the problem but in the immediate aftermath of the young girl getting hit by the foul ball there was a general outcry from the editorializers on the internet and probably in press as well if there still is that and i think

it was within a day the cincinnati reds announced they were going to extend their netting before next season the seattle mariners announced today on twitter they're going to extend their netting i didn't look at all the other team twitter accounts but i would imagine that there are going to be others as well you were laughing did you see? The Mariners were rewarded for installing this netting by being absolutely roasted by you on Twitter. This is a cruel tweet. Wow.

I'm just going to read it. The Mariners tweeted, in an effort to better protect our fans, we will be extending the netting at Safeco Field. There's a nice peaceful picture of idyllic Safeco Field. First response from at baseball Jeff Sullivan. Good call.

I also appreciate how proactive you've been in protecting area baseball fans in October. We're allowed to be mean to organizations, right? Organizations are businesses as long as you're not being mean to people. But the Mariner's Twitter account is so friendly. I know. They'll i have no response to this i feel what response could they

have what response could they have never tweet again i think probably they have dealt great emotional distress to those of us who still hang on many days of the summer anyway i felt a little bad but i don't feel that bad because at the end of the day they're doing most of the damage got a bunch of faves yes that uh i i sent that and i was like that was funny then i went out to get dinner and then i came back like oh man i uh i don't i haven't whatever twitter's weird so yeah so the mariners have extended their netting they will probably also now introduce a stadium burn unit for themselves because they got wicked burned anyway lots of netting there are so if we're going to use the number 19 and i know for a fact that

the reds and the mariners are going to extend their netting they've already made those announcements let's uh let's assume that other teams are going to do it as well but the point is that not even half the teams yet have either have installed or have said that they're going to install netting that extends all the way to the dugouts. So that seems odd. I don't know what the argument is against it. I know that, of course, installing netting is not free. It costs, I don't know, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even millions if you have a very complicated, unwieldy stadium.

I doubt that it would be millions. You don't need like retractable netting. But I guess I don't understand the argument for why it wouldn't. So maybe you can have retractable netting but i guess i don't understand the argument for why it wouldn't so maybe you can have retractable netting right because if you want to have like player fan interactions before the game whatever you can you can like lower or raise the netting when there's not active batting practice or something whatever who cares or there could be non-baseball events i suppose that you would want to lower it for like Like? Concerts. Oh, yeah, sure. So yeah, you can have the netting go up or come down. I mean, how hard could that possibly just like unclip a rope or something or roll it up?

Netting has been around for a while. They'll figure it out. So I don't quite understand the angle that teams have for not having it. But I've focused a lot on the netting here. But what I actually wanted to talk with you a little about is the brand of baseball and baseball related entertainment that they have in Asia, this being predominantly Japan and Korea and elements that you and I would like to see Major League Baseball or at least North American baseball, but mostly Major League Baseball incorporate from what already works over there because there have been

some videos i know fernando perez linked to a video the other day that was from i think it was an hbo production i don't remember exactly but it featured an interview with someone who works the tokyo giants i believe it was long story short i believe every japanese baseball stadium has extended netting and it's great nobody seems to care so that seems like an easy place to start it works people love the baseball entertainment product in Japan there have as far as I know there have been no major complaints nobody's like boycotting the stadium because they feel like they're removed from the field it seems like one of those gimmies where I mean the worst case scenario is people complain for like a couple of weeks, but the likely scenario is they don't even complain like at all. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those things that sounds like it would be annoying. I mean,

if you had never had the experience of sitting behind netting and then someone told you you're going to pay to sit in these expensive seats and there's going to be a big net hanging between you and the field, That sounds unpleasant, right? That sounds like it would be a worse viewing experience, but it's not like a net that it's, you know, it's not the kind of net that really gets in the way. It's a very fine mesh kind of. And once you've stared at it for a while, you almost stop noticing it's there. So I think it's one of those things that sounds much more onerous than it is. And once it's installed and everyone is safe and no one's getting hit by foul balls, I think everyone kind of comes around on it. And it just makes all the

sense in the world. Obviously, it is a fairly rare event that people get seriously injured by foul balls, but it's far from unheard of. And if the cost is very low, might as well, especially because balls are getting hit really hard these days. Pitchers are throwing harder than ever. Hitters are swinging super hard. The ball is bouncier. It's even more dangerous than it used to be. And it was always extremely dangerous if you were sitting right there, even if you are paying attention. There's just not a lot of reaction time based on the spin of certain batted balls. And it's pretty impossible to pay attention

to every moment of a three plus hour baseball game. Just most people don't do it. So if you're going to have kids there or not even kids, it's just prudent. And it's one of those things where the cost is so low that you might as well. Yeah. I don't want to exaggerate the problem. But if you want to think about reasons why this could be getting worse, I don't know how much like the strikeout trend would increase or

decrease foul balls. But how often have we seen or read a Sam Miller article where he points out how many fans are not looking at the field of play. And we are we're in an era now where people are just expected to be staring at their phones like all of the time no matter where they are so if you have a populace that's going to baseball games and is actively spending less and less of their time actually looking at the field you're just asking for for more danger now i don't in this case this was a young child who i don't know what the young child was doing but you can't expect someone who, I don't know, did they announce the age? I guess it doesn't really matter.

You can't really expect someone six or eight years old to be able to know how to handle a foul ball flying off the bat like that anyway. Okay, so let's just say we're both on the same page, we always are, about taking the netting that's big in Japan, why not use it here? Okay, that's point number one. Point number two, and this is another thing that we have talked with Fernando Perez about,

but Japanese style batting practice. And this one, at some point, I think I'm supposed to write about this within the next few months. One of the rare topics that I actually have planned for the distant future. Hardball times. That's the one. Yeah. Nice. So back off, everyone out there.

But I guess to sort of introduce that point now so you don't have to read the article later you and i have talked a while ago i think about how batting practice seems dumb because you're practicing something that in almost no way resembles what you need do during a game because you're just out there taking hacks at grooved pitches down the heart of the plate what's the point japanese style batting practice at least as far as i understand it is like live batting practice against pitchers who are trying to not get hit and why why would that not be the system that teams use here and i can think of one reason and it's it's granted it's a pretty good reason uh pitching is hard and you don't want to use up your own pitchers.

But for one thing, you don't really need guys who are out there throwing 100%. You need guys who are out there throwing like 90 to 95%. And also, you don't need to use your own players. Every team is in a major city, some sort of major city. And in every major city, you have colleges, high schools, you have programs. Maybe you have minor leaguers. I don't know. You can find people who can actually throw, who can throw something that's kind of like actual baseball and why would

you not want your hitters to practice facing actual pitching because as as things stand now the function of batting practice is i don't know i just really don't know what the function of it is aside from just you know if the tsa is security theater then i guess this is like exhibition theater practice theater where i can't imagine that it's actually helping anybody at all, because you can work on your stance, you can work on trying to pull the ball. But congratulations, if you pull a ball that's going 65 miles per hour over the plate, what good does that do you in a live game situation? It just seems silly. You would never design it this way from scratch. Yeah, right. And I don't know if there's any kind of psychological benefit. It's almost like, I don't know, maybe it's like swinging a weighted bat with a donut before you go up to the same field where you're about to play.

I don't know. Maybe there's something to that, but I would guess that the environment is just so different. There are barely any fans there. It's just some old guy throwing BP. It's probably not close enough that that would even transfer over. So I think I'm with you. Maybe there's a reason why it evolved. Maybe if there had never been any point to it at all maybe it never would

have evolved maybe it was filling a need at some point but at this point probably not i think players are so diligent about preparing at this point and conditioning themselves and staying in shape i think they would probably be taking pitches in the cage or something even if they didn't have batting practice and you do see teams seems like, more willing now than in the past to just skip BP. If they've had an extra inning game or they just feel like they need a day off for whatever reason, teams will just skip BP. So I could see it dying out or maybe evolving in the way that you're discussing. Point number three, and this is the obvious one. This is the one that people bring up whenever they say any sort of Japanese or Korean baseball highlight. But the atmosphere, you could say that it's a little bit different overseas in that there are the coordinated chants, but basically you just have the more lively atmosphere. And this is something that you also, of course, see with Central and South American baseball that sucks compared to or at least like North North American baseball that above the Mexican border baseball that seems to be rather dull in the way that it is consumed. And whatever, I'm sure that every single one of us, or at least many people who are listening to this podcast would love to be able to make more noise at a baseball stadium. But you know, you never want to be the one or or like the one group of people who's at the game trying to get something

going. But you just need that tipping point. And I think that people do want to be the one or or like the the one group of people who's at the game trying to get something going but you just need that tipping point and i think that people do want to participate and you see that because you see this stupid freaking wave that goes around this baseball stadium people lose their minds over it people love to participate that but then it it lasts a few minutes if it works and people do that because they're just they're thirsty for it especially i mean if you get to participate when you are at a sporting event it's something that can appeal to young people it's something that can appeal to middle-aged people maybe it's not something that appeals to older people i don't know i haven't gotten there yet but still you can at least have sections and we've seen this we have seen this because the mariners years ago introduced the king's court for felix hernandez home starts and

people ate it up. And not only did people eat it up. So I don't know what the original plan was for the Kings court. I don't know how if they were going to do it for every start or if it was just a trial, but the demand immediately skyrocketed. And they've had games that were called the Supreme court where everyone in attendance got a t-shirt and a placard and they got to do the Kings court thing. They did that after Felix's perfect game a few years ago when he was a good pitcher and people loved it. And there was mimicry. There was almost instant mimicry that Tampa Bay Rays tried. It didn't work so well for reasons I don't know I don't need to get into, but they tried to do it with David Price. They tried to have a section, I forgot what it was called, but they had a similar

fan cheering section for a player that they subsequently traded almost immediately. The Rangers had a section that was dedicated to Hugh Darvish for his home starts. Of course, the Yankees have the judges chambers, which have perked up for Aaron Judge, which is a little more difficult because he's not someone who's starting every five days. He's there all the time. So, you know, you have to be pretty dedicated,

but people love these sections and you see how quickly something like the King's Court can spread because baseball teams see a good idea and then everybody's motivated by money and wanting to have the best business and entertainment product possible so they'll they'll pick up on it so if you could just i don't know what you have to do to get something like this to be more widespread i don't know what you what needs to ignite but the spirit is there

i know at least i shouldn't say I know, I believe I have faith that people want to participate more in the product on the field. They just don't know how. And I don't know why teams wouldn't be more proactive in trying to help their fans do it, because people want to do it. People love making noise. You listen to I'm biased because I'm mostly exposed to Seattle sporting events, I guess, because they're closest to me aside from Portland, which sucks. But in Seattle, baseball stadium frequently dead. But if you go to a soccer game or a football game, it's loud as hell. People love to make noise. And in football games, they love to make noise when you have a good team. So I don't know why baseball wouldn't do what it can to try to generate that sort of enthusiasm and and i don't know vocality

in the stands because people love it it helps the time fly especially if you're getting more drunk you're only going to be more willing to participate if you're in that like 20 to 50 window of being someone at a baseball i guess maybe not 20 21 that's the law so i don't know if people complain about how baseball is boring i get it but part of that has to do with the atmosphere and the atmosphere is frequently dead. And I just can't believe I can't believe that there's nothing that teams can't do to actually get fans to make noise because I do think fans want to make noise and they think we talked about this. I was wondering, again, for people who didn't hear, he was the guy who could seemingly hit foul balls at will and just keep fouling balls off and fouling balls off. And it seemed like it would be annoying, but it turns out that it's not in Japan because the between pitches atmosphere is so intoxicating and engaging and people would count his foul balls and there would be cheers

and just such energy and electricity that you didn't mind the increased time between pitches or time when nothing was really happening. And that is the opposite of what we have in Major League Baseball. And yeah, I don't really know how we get from here to there because it's just not to the extent that it is there, at least part of our sporting culture, to coordinate in that way. But obviously we're capable of it. Soccer fans do it in other countries. I suppose Americans sure what the steps to take to get there are. Because when it's just the basic stuff, like a message flashes on the scoreboard that says get loud or something like that, that's just, I don't enjoy that, really. That's just kind of, it's almost like being in the studio audience at a sitcom or something and they flash the applause sign and you're supposed to cheer and clap. It just feels like you're doing something on cue. It doesn't feel like you're really taking an active role in anything. And I know people complain about just ballparks being too loud in general, just with the piped in music

and the sounds and everything, but that's not organic coming from the crowd. It's just being blasted at you through the PA. So I don't know exactly what the origins of the coordination in Japanese fans and crowds are, but maybe that would be instructive to find out about that, figure out how it arose there. Maybe it could arise the same way here, but I'd certainly like to see it. Right. It seems like it's not one of those things that has to necessarily be organic either. I don't necessarily want to draw a parallel between this and like trying to date, but you think about the classic struggle

of trying to find the right pickup line, right? You go to a bar and you don't know exactly what the perfect line is you want to say, but at the end of the day, all that you're really there to do is to start a conversation and it doesn't really matter what the first line is. Not to go all heteronormative,

but whatever, this can happen with anyone. But it's the same kind of situation where I don't think that people really care necessarily how this starts. The Kings court was just straight up marketing. It's an idea to try to get people in the ballpark and get them to participate and spend more at the stadium, whatever. That's all it is. Of course, all these teams want to do something that tries to generate money for themselves. But if you can get something out of it as a fan, who cares? If a team, I don't know exactly how you have get something out of it as a fan who cares if a team i don't know exactly how you have to do it because it would require a change in mindset because if you want a baseball season

is long that is the fundamental difference between baseball and the other sports is the season is at least twice as long as the schedule for the other sports and it's 10 times as long as the football season in terms of the games this place so if you have 81 home dates in a season, then it would require that people go and expect that they are going to have to be responsible for some of the entertainment. But I think that people could get into that. And I don't want to exaggerate the significance of this. But if you figure what's one of the major struggles that baseball has right now, it feels like it's it's having trouble attracting the young fan. Well, if you can't draw a fan to the experience of watching baseball, maybe you would have a little more success drawing a fan to the experience of participating in a group activity where people are enthusiastic watching baseball. We know, as you mentioned, people are very loud in a lot of collegiate atmospheres in baseball. Also, not just football and basketball.

People love to participate. And that's in large part comes down to the student sections that go. Well, why would why would baseball stadiums not want to attract? I mean, isn't that like the 18 to 34 male demographic? Isn't that like the demographic that you want to target for how they just throw their money away? Like that is the young fan. Those fans will have disposable income and they love to make noise.

If we know anything about 18 to 34 year disposable income and they love to make noise. If we know anything about 18 to 34 year old people, they love to make noise just like all the time, almost as much as three year olds. So I don't know why you wouldn't want to try to attract them. You could bring more people to the gate. And if you are able to sell your stadium as an experience, I mean, we were talking about stadium reviews the other week. This is a little bit different. But you remember Fenway and Wrigley got like bad reviews, except they got good reviews. Everybody hated them, except that they're Fenway and Wrigley. And that's because they are baseball cathedrals, they're museums, they are experiences just going to those places. And you couldn't if you're SunTrust Park or Marlins Park, you can't you're not going to be a Wrigley Field or a Fenway

Park. But if you're able to market yourself as as an experience, a place where people go to have something greater than just nine innings of a mediocre baseball game, then you can elevate what you are as a destination. And I don't know what's taking teams so long to tap into that. I mean, maybe I do, but it seems like someone would have or should have figured it out by now because they did in other countries and like every other country except for this one. Yeah. Well, speaking of how much baseball there is, that's another thing I suppose we could potentially borrow from Japanese baseball. There are fewer games. There are only 144 games in the NPB schedule. There are also 12 teams. Obviously, we're not going back to that. No one wants to go back to that. It's a smaller country, but there's a lot less baseball there than there

is here. I don't know whether the difference between 144 and 162 is perceptible enough that it would make a difference in fan enthusiasm, but I don't know. I wouldn't mind going back to that, something like that. I know there are all sorts of economic reasons why it's difficult. And there's also some value, I think, to just having baseball in your life every day. It's a little different when you're covering the game than it is when you're just a fan. When I was a fan who was watching my team's game every single day, I certainly wouldn't have wanted there to be less baseball. I wanted there to be more baseball.

I wanted there to be baseball during the months when there wasn't baseball. So I can understand why there would be resistance to that in some quarters. But of course, it is something that is being discussed because the season is just incredibly long. And it's just comparatively difficult to get psyched up for any one game because it's so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Let's just do it. 12 teams. Let's just get rid of 18 of them. Just, you know, have some sort of lottery where, okay, you 12, you survived and the other 18, I don't know, go form a competitive league. That could be good for business. I don't know.

Right. Okay. I like that one. And I think that it feels somewhat inevitable that in time, baseball will reduce its schedule. I think that there's a lot of emphasis being put on player rest and health and while of course the big drawback here is convincing the owners to give up some of their revenue it seems like there's a pretty significant push to try to get back to something like 154 game schedule which is not 144 i don't know why 154 seems to be the magic number that people always seem to gravitate towards when they talk about a reduced schedule maybe just because it used to be that long, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So that seems like it's it. I don't know exactly what the players would need to give up in order to convince the owners to do it because I'm sure the players would love to play a little less baseball. In fact, let me just say, I know the players would love to play less baseball. They would love to play less baseball in spring and they would love to play less baseball in the summer.

Especially if their salaries do not decrease accordingly. Yeah, yeah, right. And I mean, maybe if you're the union and you point to the widening gap between team revenue and the players' share, then you can just say, okay, well, we're not going to demand a fixed ratio, but we would like you to have fewer games on the schedule and we will not give up any money and then maybe that can be their sort of concession but i don't know i don't know how to negotiate uh now granted i don't know if tony clark knows how to negotiate but it's his job not mine yeah so i like that uh moving on to another one i don't have the data for this this is maybe a little more anecdotal but one of the things that you will commonly hear about either players, pitchers who come over from Japan or Korea, or American players who went to Asia and then came back is

that they have unfamiliar approaches, which are not fastball heavy approaches, they kind of do more of the pitching backwards, so to speak. And now this is something that where I think majorly baseball is already trending in this direction. But it seems like one of those things where I don't know if it's just like the, the aura of masculinity or if it's just the traditional, I've got to establish the fastball mindset that's been around for a hundred odd years, but it seems like the key to better pitching, the smarter pitching is sort of the pitching backwards system that you, you hear talked about about i don't know if this is actually how baseball is pitched in japan and korea and because i haven't actually done the research i don't know how i would do the research but if the whole idea of pitching is to not fall into a pattern and not

allow the hitter to know what you're going to throw that's what pitching backwards is sort of code language for it's that the pitcher is throwing what the hitter doesn't expect and that's the whole point so it should never be a criticism fastball avoidance is not a sign of weakness if anything it's a sign of intellect or it's a sign of having a terrible fastball i mean it can be both but you don't need to have a dominant fastball you can throw the fastball 30 to 40 percent of the time and you can be a successful pitcher masahiro tanaka has been avoiding the fastball he's been i mean he's been alternately pretty good and great and and homer prone but this is an area where I think major league baseball has already picked up on the idea and I don't think it's

going to slow down it's going to take a long time for the trend to sort of sink in it's going to have to penetrate the the lower levels as well and it can't really be a top down kind of thing and I know that players are going to develop knowing their fastballs first because of course that's what you throw when you were youngest. But when you make it to the major leagues, there's absolutely no reason to have to be a 60% or 80% fastball guy unless you just have terrible other pitches. Yeah. And I mean, it's sort of a cyclical thing, or it could be where people are expecting you to throw fastballs in certain counts, because that's how it's always been done. And if you can take advantage of that expectation by throwing something different, then you can benefit until too many other people

start doing the same thing. And then that becomes the norm. And then who knows, maybe things swing all the way back to where throwing a fastball in those counts will then be the new inefficiency. So yeah, I agree. I witnessed that firsthand when I was with the Stompers, that guys would come back to the dugout and complain about someone who threw a breaking ball in a fastball count, and it just seems like a ridiculous complaint. Why would you not throw the pitch that is most likely to get the hitter out? Usually those complaints came after the hitter was retired because of that pitch, which retroactively makes it seem like the pitch was effective at least and maybe the right decision so yeah i'm with you on that a couple other things we could mention one travis sachik i suppose just did a post on roughly this topic right and fan graphs on thursday he wrote about a potential solution to the problem that the wild card round the one game play-in is very vulnerable to upset.

Now, maybe you think that's not such a bad thing. It certainly increases the excitement and those games do well in the ratings. But if you think it is too unfair and too un-baseball to bear, he suggested that we could borrow the Korean baseballball Organization, KBO, format. And I'll quote from his post here. He says, seed twice the top seed must win just once to advance this is a rather elegant and simple solution to the problem while a best of three series reduces the chance of an upset by just a few percentage points from 46 to 44 kbo format reduces the percentage chance of an upset from 46 to 21.1 so if you like that he mentions that while you might have to take two days to do that

you could also just play a double header if you really wanted to keep it to one day of baseball, which would still be exciting and would add an additional layer of strategy. So I don't know that the wildcard round is broken. It's certainly fun, but that is one potential way you could tinker with it to kind of please both sides, the people who like the best team to win and the people who like to see some excitement. Yeah, I don't know exactly how I feel about that one. I'm unconvinced. It's something I would support. I'm open to it. I like the idea. Certainly, it makes sense in a season like this where the Yankees are so much better than the Twins that it's like the Yankees should have some sort of advantage. Many years, however, you might have wildcard teams

who are separated by one win or no wins at all. And I don't know, if you have a wildcard tie, what do you do? You can have a, I don't know, a season schedule tiebreaker. But then is that if one team beat the other team six times out of 10, is that really reason enough to have one team put in the hole in this situation? So I don't know exactly if, I don't know.

I'm on the fence. I'm willing to be convinced, but i don't know exactly if i don't know i'm on the fence i'm willing to be convinced but i don't know you are already facing a pretty harsh penalty being a non-division winner because you have to play that extra game i don't know if it's worth further penalizing the second wildcard team but i'm up a dude do you have a do you have a strong feeling either way particularly i don't really mind the way things are right now. Although maybe I would if I were the fan of a far superior team that got knocked off in a single game, which is very subject to randomness. So, yeah, I don't know.

It sounds potentially more fair, but I just can't muster the energy to get worked up about it either way. Well, yeah. See, if we went to 12 teams instead of 30, then we would have fewer of these problems. Yes, that's right. Just narrow the player playoff pool. You said that you had a few things. Was that? I have one more at least.

So one of the notable differences, I suppose, between NPB and MLB is that Japanese baseball has more flexible rosters. NPB and MLB is that Japanese baseball has more flexible rosters. So they have 28-man rosters, technically, where before each game, the manager chooses three players to be designated as inactive. So it's really still a 25-man roster in the game, but you could, say, deactivate the starting pitcher from the previous game or two, that kind of thing. You could decide what you want, how you want to construct your roster for that day. And maybe that's smart.

I don't know. We're seeing teams try to do that kind of in the majors. They can't quite do that, but they're kind of using the back end of their bullpen as just this place where they can shuffle relievers in and out as they use them or as they're ineffective. So maybe there's some appeal to just giving them this option to say, hey, just fix your roster however you want. Now, maybe the way things are going, they would just end up with like a 12-man bullpen every day. I don't know. That's the way that teams love to construct their rosters. But maybe if we were to see this sort of thing, you would see bigger benches, at least in the short term. And maybe you'd see starting pitchers unavailable, but a pinch hitter would be back

on the bench. Maybe you'd see some more platoons, that kind of thing. And that's always fun, I think. So you'd see fewer high leverage at bats where you have some really weak hitter who is taking the plate appearance against some unhittable reliever just because there's no one better to pinch hit for him so there's some appeal to that idea yeah I like that I was afraid that you were going to point to the other dramatic difference between major league baseball and in this at least Japanese baseball which would be all of the sacrificing which is maybe one of the things that Japanese baseball could stand to take from the American game as opposed to the other direction whatever they have their own system it works for them I don't think that there's that much of an appetite to bring that over or bring that back

over depending on your perspective but people talk about that which is missing in the high home run and strikeout era but i don't know i don't know if sacrifice bents ever really got me going so that is one element that is present in japanese baseball that i think i am perfectly content with major league baseball not adopting as for the other ones we've discussed i think uh i think maybe maybe aside from the wild card format where we're both on the fence i think think the other ones are, they're all clear winners. And I think that we should probably be named the, uh, the co-commissioners. Yeah. There are other differences, obviously that we haven't mentioned. I guess they have ties after 12 innings. I don't really care about adopting that one. I think we've talked about that

in the past. They've got six man rotations, whatever. We're kind of trending that way anyway in some ways, but it's not something that I think would make baseball better or more exciting or anything like that. So we're probably missing some things just because of lack of familiarity with the game over there. So I know we have listeners who are much more plugged into Korean baseball, Japanese baseball than we are. So if we're missing any fun differences, innovations, please let us know.

And also be sure to let us know anything about the Glory Hole Recreation Area. In case you had forgotten, we do eagerly await the emails that you have to send about whatever it is that you have to tell us about the Glory Hole Recreation Area. I'm just going to say it one more time. Please do. Glory Hole Recreation Area. All right. We can end on that note. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild.

Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Connor Benin, Ryan Barrychuck, John Neeson, Tim Livingston, and Ross Bacorex. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Every time one of you leaves a review, I get a nice little email notification. It's usually a positive review. Makes my day a little brighter. Thanks to all of you who have already left those reviews. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance.

If you're looking for something else to listen to, there is a new episode of the Ringer MLB show up. Michael Bauman and I talked about things we're watching the rest of the regular season. We're both kind of switched to playoff mode mentally, but we came up with a bunch of good reasons to watch the rest of September baseball and I suppose October 1st baseball.

We also talked to the aforementioned Travis Sochik about the implications of baseball's high home run era, how it affects teams planning and scouting and strategizing. Keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. Thank you for listening. Have a wonderful weekend.

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