Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1254: Revenge of the Super-Nerds

Episode Date: August 9, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Jacoby Ellsbury‘s latest injury, Jayson Werth‘s anti-analytics rant, Luke Heimlich, and Shohei Ohtani, then answer listener emails about how defensive positioning is affecting positions themselves, throwing strikes to Jorge Alfaro, bringing “the wall” to baseball, why so many pitchers are throwing 100 mph, how the Orioles fit their […]

Hey, one other highlight, Gino, that happened in Rochester tonight. Willens-Ostadillo successfully pulled off the second hidden ball trick for the Rochester Red Wings this year. Jermaine Curtis had one earlier this year, was playing third, and he pulled off a hidden ball trick because, of course, he did, because the legend continues to be burnished of Willens-Ostadillo. I had some friends in town, and I don't know them well. An old teacher's daughter and her family, as Cave lashes a ball to center field.

Geyer goes back on and makes a nice running catch. One out. And she had two sons. They live out in California, and they're aged, I think, 12 and 10. And they were in to watch a couple of Twins games. They're kind of doing a ballpark tour. And I was like, who's your favorite player? And they're like, we listen to Ben Lindbergh's podcast, player? And, you know, Mauer was a dozer at the time, and they're like, Ostadio, man.

Like, we listen to Ben Lindbergh's podcast, and he doesn't strike out, and he doesn't walk. And so I told him, I said, you know, I know Ben Lindbergh. No way. So I texted Ben Lindbergh. I said, they're more impressed that I know you than that I know Paul Molitor. He is kind of the driver of the Austin Eel bandwagon nationally.

It's a straight call to the counter zone. Super cool, Miss Pants, we broke out. Now we're running crazy down the middle of the boulevard. Space out! There's a night of light. There's a night of light. And you'll never, ever, never take us alive. You'll never take us alive You'll never take us alive

You'll never take us alive Hello and welcome to episode 1254 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, still in Helena, Montana for the moment, joined, as always, by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hello. How are you?

I'm well. How are you? I'm doing all right. I'm coming close to you very soon. I have a flight to Seattle in just a few hours, but not coming to Portland, so we will not see each other, but we may record a podcast when we're on the same coast. That's exciting, I guess. I don't know. I don't know if there's some sort of fanfic audience out there that wants us to spend more time literally together, but we're not. We're making zero effort to hang out while you're on the West Coast, because it turns out the West Coast is big. And I think it's easy when you're on different,

like I was just in Connecticut and I have friends in Massachusetts. I have family in North Carolina. I know some people in DC and it's really easy for me to think, oh, I'm going east. I can see them all. It's a big coast alert. There's a lot of distance between them. So if you're like 2,500 miles away from someone and then you erase 2,000 of those miles, you're still 500 miles. Anyway, the point is we're not going to see each other. So I'll yeah all right so we're going to do emails today a few bits of banter perhaps there was news about jacoby ellsbury this week remember jacoby ellsbury is there any player who was i would say a star level player who has just fallen into complete obscurity the way that jacoby ellsbury has i mean we talked about him i I don't know, at some point, right,

about just how average he had been. He's been like the most average player for the past few years when he's actually been playing. He's just kind of okay. And this year he was just the forgotten man for the Yankees because they went out and they got Stanton and they had Judge and there was just no room in the outfield really for Ellsbury. And then

kind of conveniently, I guess he got hurt. They were trying to trade him and that didn't work out and maybe they were happy to have him around for depth, but he turned out not to be depth because he was hurt and he hasn't played this season. And now he has had, I guess you could call it season ending surgery, although his season never started. So he now had, what, some hip operation that will take six months or something to recuperate from. I don't know what his career will look like from here on out, if anything. And obviously he's a guy who had injuries even when he was at his peak and a good player when he was on the field. But man, he has just fallen off the radar. Right. He was an eight or nine win player that one year in 2011.

You remember, everyone remembers he had 32 home runs, and the season after that he had four home runs. I don't know. It's kind of a Brady-Anderson home run trajectory. But, yeah, you think every so often you have these guys who get to like 7, 8, 9, 10 win seasons, and you think it requires a certain skill level to even scrape that. You can't just fluke your way into that kind of success.

But Jacoby Ellsbury, I mean, how much contract is even left on the books? He's not a free agent until 2021. There is so much contract left. And I feel bad because as we talked about, when he's been healthy, he's still been like an average-ish player. He's still useful, but more than $21 million due next season, more than $21 million due the season after that. I guess we have a new Matt Kemp or something.

And you know what? Matt Kemp bounced back this season, so I don't know. Maybe there's going to be an opportunity here, but I think it seems fairly clear that Ellsbury if the Yankees are worried about the competitive balance tax I don't know if they're going to be worried about that moving forward but Ellsbury would be a one pretty easy way for them to just ship off a bad contract and package a prospect with it and send them to I don't know the Orioles they'll be bad for a while yeah so I wanted to mention Jason Wirth because there was a Jason Wirth article in the Washington Post he talked to Chelsea Janes he's done playing now even more off the radar than Jacoby Ellsbury, but he came in hot with a real fire and brimstone old school anti-analytics rant, which almost made me nostalgic. players. And I think largely that's a good thing that the attitude of players has changed. And

that's something that we're writing about in our book, Travis and I, that players now often embrace stats and analysis and make great use of it in certain cases. Whereas before there was this kind of reflexive, you know, resistance to it. So Worth is more of an old school guy, I guess, and he still very much has that ingrained resistance. So he came in, he said, they've got all these super nerds in the front office that know nothing about baseball, but they like to project numbers and project players. I think it's killing the game. It's to the point where just put computers out there, just put laptops and what have you, just put them out there and let them play, which is an amusing mental image. We don't even need to go out there anymore.

It's a joke. When they come down, these kids from MIT, Stanford, Harvard, wherever they're from, they never played baseball in their life. When they come down to talk about stuff like shifts, should I just bunt it over there? They're like, no, don't do that. We don't want you to do that. We want you to hit a homer. It's just not baseball to me. We're creating something that's not fun to watch.

It's boring. You're turning players into robots. You've taken the human element out of the game. No, I guess. I don't know. We obviously haven't taken the human element out of the game in that there are still humans made up of elements playing the game. I know that the robot technology has improved a lot, and you'll see videos of robots that are running running and playing soccer but i don't think they're really equipped to to play baseball yet they're not even apparently equipped to call balls and strikes yet so you know one thing at a time jason worth but

i mean like i understand well i guess i sort of understand the frustration even the war makes jason worth look like he had a pretty good career i guess even conventional stats make it look like he had a pretty good career but if it weren't for war i don't know if he would have had the opportunity to shine in the first place anyway i understand a little bit from his perspective he's just got all these numbers being thrown at him and and it's just something that's really unfamiliar to him it's not the era that he grew up in but it's important to understand that the uh the mathematics and the analytics they're mostly tied to player development and player acquisition. In the game itself, it's obviously changed in that there are like shifts now and there's more precise defensive positioning

and there are like pitching strategies that teams talk about. I was just reading about how the A's have a specific pitching strategy they're going to lay out for Mike Fiers, I guess. I don't know what that means, but they think they see something. like fires, I guess. I don't know what that means, but they think they see something. But I think it's kind of exciting in that the baseball teams are still composed of just as many players

and they're more athletic than they've ever been. And people in the game are just trying to make these players as good as possible or they're trying to identify players who maybe haven't gotten a fair shake. So if you look at the game itself, I know there are more strikeouts and I know there are fewer bunts and I know that there are shifts, but it's inconclusive whether

shifts actually have a meaningful effect on the game. Sacrifice bunts were stupid and they're not exciting. And people strike out because the batters are trying to hit the ball harder and the pitchers are throwing harder. And as you and and i have discussed i don't think strikeouts and home runs are the problem with baseball strikeouts and home runs are exciting routine fly balls or pop-ups or grand balls those suck at least as much as watching a batter strike out i know that they can happen faster but i don't know this just jason worth seems like he has a feature as a baseball grimp broadcaster or color man although he's still probably better than fp santangelo yeah well we've talked a lot about whether analytics have had an effect on the game and whether that's a good effect or a bad effect

and i think there's a bit of both and we don't need to fully revisit that right now but i did want to recognize jason worth for bringing back the sort of rant that we used to hear a decade ago and has become mercifully less common now. But now it's kind of charming. When every player was doing it, then it was like you felt like it was us versus them to a slight extent, and so you would kind of bridle at it or take some offense when a player would call us all super nerds. Now it's just sort of a point of pride almost. It's quaint to hear this sort of thing today.

So that's nice. I mean, the only thing that is the constant in all these things is like the numbers people know nothing about baseball. That's always the thing that gets me because a lot of the people who do analytics stuff for front offices did play baseball at some level, at least in college. And, of course, they love baseball. That's why they do what they do. They know an awful lot about baseball. There are also a lot of things that they don't know that Jason Wirth does know, but I think they each have something to teach each other. But I kind of hope that we have a laptop game just as an exhibition. Just put some laptops out there or maybe just use the laptops as the bases.

See how that goes. I think toward the end of his career, Jason Wirth defensively was equivalent to a laptop in the corner outfield. So that's, I wonder, because this isn't even unique to baseball. You think of like critics or analysts in other industries, like movie or film critics aren't producers or actors. Food critics aren't chefs. There are people who participate in something for a career, and then there are people who study that participation for their own career. Now, of course, I am a little defensive because you and I are here as baseball analysts, and we haven't played baseball at any kind of meaningful level in our own history. But of course, there are things about baseball that when it comes to the actual gameplay itself and strategies and just like making adjustments on the fly i'm not good at that stuff i don't

know anything about clubhouse culture or how to behave myself in a dugout there are so many things about the experience of being a baseball player i i truly don't understand but jason worth might be put off or goose gossage if it's spring training might be put off by how these super nerds don't understand baseball because they've never played it at a high level. But they're not suggesting anything about how to comport yourself on a day-to-day basis as a baseball player. They're just saying, if you throw more high fastballs, you're going to get more swings and misses because historically, your high fastballs have gotten more swings and misses than your low fastballs. That's not complicated. That's just data. so i guess it's one thing to

to be upset with the influence of analytics but it's quite another to actually examine them on their own merits and at a fundamental level i know that things like war are are weird and unfamiliar because they're based on this like obscure opaque math that I couldn't even explain in under three minutes. But so much of analytics today are like, okay, we'll meet the pitch on its plane or throw this pitch more or throw this pitch in a different location. And that's all based on, for the most part, empirical evidence. So there's really nothing. It's all founded and grounded in baseball.

You run track record in baseball performance. So I don't think there's anything. I think that if Worth were to look at this i don't look i don't want to talk about this anymore is there anything else that you wanted to bring up uh well we do have so recently we talked about roberta asuna and and that whole bad look for baseball specifically for the astros asuna still waiting for his day in court but But we do have, somewhat loosely related to that, we have a Luke Heimlich update. I think you and I and several other people were kind of expecting that Luke Heimlich

would end up with some sort of major league organization opportunity. There was talk about the Royals being interested in signing him. Luke Heimlich was not drafted. He has not been signed after the draft. And as another indication of how he's not getting some sort of major league opportunity, he was signed by the Lamego Monkeys,

a Taiwanese professional baseball team. The Monkeys signed Heimlich because, you know, they saw an opportunity, good pitcher, etc. And then the league stepped in and is saying, the uh the league stepped in and uh is saying no you can't you can't sign luke heimlich so i'll just i'll just read a quick paragraph here from cpblstats.com the article is titled monkeys sign child molester luke heimlich contract voided by cpbl so first paragraph the lamiga monkeys caused a huge stir in taiwan yesterday after the team announced the signing of a convicted child molester in Luke Heimlich. After the immediate public backlash against the baseball team, the CPBL stepped in and terminated Heimlich's contract. So, it's just a real own goal for the Lameega Monkees here, I guess. They should really take the L because not only did they get the bad, horrible PR for trying to sign Luke Heimlich, but then they also just have the contract voided anyway.

So they made themselves look like assholes for nothing. Anyway, I don't think either one of us needs to talk about Luke Heimlich's background or anything about this case, but this is not the first time that the CPBL has acted on a zero-tolerance policy for misconduct. And this blog entry goes on to show that in 2017, a contract was voided for a player named Kyle Simon because of drug abuse. In 2018, after conducting an internal investigation, a player had his contract voided for domestic violence. And I believe it was in 2017, a previous Rookie of the Year award winner had his contract voided because of an investigation following attempted rape so cpbl seems to uh this is this is a league where it used to uh used to be moderately well

known for its uh its game fixing you know just a different sort of set of ethics that's uh what was it chinwe sao i pronounced that name wrong oh Oh, the former Dodgers pitcher. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So a few years ago, former Dodgers pitcher Chin-wee-sow was caught up in some sort of game-fixing scandal. Do you remember Chin-wee-sow? Yes. Uh-huh. I remember his Wikipedia page because it's among the best in baseball. Yeah. So the league has taken a turn. It's tried to focus on, I don't know, family-friendly atmosphere, etc. But really, this doesn't need to be a conversation about how to market a baseball league.

It's just that a baseball league that is not even like the KBO or the NPB, but the CPBL, that's where Luke Heimlich had to look for an opportunity, and that's where Luke Heimlich is not getting an opportunity. So I would say that I, myself, and I don't know about you, but I was pleasantly surprised. I was very surprised that Heimlich didn't get signed by any major league organization for all the same nonsense reasons that the Astros presented when they signed Roberto Ursuna.

I was astonished that he didn't get a chance. And clearly, the factors limiting his opportunities domestically are also chasing him non-domestically, internationally. And so I don't know if Luke Heimlich is going to have any kind of baseball career at all. Yeah, if the Astros were in this zero-tolerance league, then presumably that would only apply if you actually committed the offense while you were in this league. If you committed the offense before you joined the league, then there would be tolerance of that. league. If you committed the offense before you joined the league, then there would be tolerance of that. But yeah, I think this sort of no tolerance policy, I mean, I wouldn't want Major League Baseball to have a no tolerance policy for any person who had a conviction in

his past. I think that would be bad just to completely preclude the possibility of someone coming back and changing their story in some way. But on the other hand, there are certain offenses and certain reactions and responses to those offenses in Heimlich's case where you just kind of hope that, not that you want anyone to be blanket banned, that just seems like probably a bad precedent in many cases at least, but you just kind of hope that individually the teams will decide, not me, and that has been what has that individually the teams will decide, not me.

And that has been what has happened in Heinlich's case so far. All right. Do you know, by the way, who has been the, well, I was going to say the best hitter in baseball over the past week, but that would be David Peralta of the Diamondbacks. That's not particularly interesting. Then there's Brian Dozier of the Dodgers, Malik Smith of the Rays, who we're not going to talk about him at length, but he actually has been very good and kind of exciting. But Shohei Otani, number four on the best hitters in baseball over the past week list.

Shohei Otani's WRC Plus. We haven't talked about him a whole lot since he stopped being a two-way player temporarily, but WRC Plus up to 143 now, and he has 12 homers, and that's in 223 plate appearances. So he's basically gotten, you know, a third of a season's worth of plate appearances, and he's been a really, really, really good hitter. And he's doing a bullpen session this coming weekend in his continued maybe comeback from hurting his elbow. But even if he doesn't, he continues to show that he is a viable major league hitter.

And yet one of the first things you said is that we have not talked about him for a while. And I remember we had the conversation very early in the season. It might've even been before the season started of how long it would take before we just kind of, I wouldn't say forgot about Shohei Otani, of how long it would take before we just kind of, I wouldn't say forgot about Shohei Otani, but stopped covering him at a feverish pace. And the answer is this amount of time. Maybe minus a little amount of time because Otani, of course, came off the BL to bat on a mostly regular basis as the DH for the Angels and I have not seen a whole lot written about him.

I've seen video clips. He's still getting TV coverage and whatnot. Still a big story. But the team has faded. He is at present not a two-way player. So right now, he's basically just like a good hitting DH, which is fun. But I guess some of the magic feels like it's gone. And some of that is just becoming more accustomed. But really, the whole two-way player thing is what made him so exciting it was just seeing how he could balance the two but what we're seeing right now is convincing evidence that he really is a good hitter like right now already and this is something we suspected early on this

is something that we suspected even before the season began but like we're seeing it now the numbers are right there he's he's of course he's swinging and missing a little bit but the power is real he's hitting a lot of fly balls right now and he's hitting the ball over the fence that's exciting and still i mean i haven't helped i haven't read about otani in months i don't think you have either that i can recall and not that we're the only analysts out there but it's it's just i don't know i'm floored by the fact that we've kind of moved on so quickly but i'm also not because this is just how it always is. I mean, it took us a few months to get used to Aaron Judge last year, and Aaron Judge was absolutely amazing. What a story that was.

Yeah, I mean, conditions have changed. I think if Otani were still pitching all the time, I would still be talking about him more and paying closer attention and maybe writing about him. But he is lacking currently the thing that made him most fascinating. So still fascinating, but it just can't compare to what he was doing early in the season and hopefully what he will be doing again sometime soon or in the future. Yep. All right. So should we answer emails? I apologize in advance if there's the sound of a drill that chimes in on this podcast from time to time. Someone is drilling outside my hotel room. As

Jeff says, it sounds like I'm at the dentist, so hopefully that won't be too obnoxious, but we'll see. Let us answer emails and we'll have a stat blast or two in a few minutes as well. Or two? Yeah, I might have a stat blast myself, as I often

do these days. What, do you not trust stat blast myself, as I often do these days. So... Would you not trust me? No, you're the go-to stat blast guy. But I don't know. There are just so many good stat blast questions. By the way, I'm going to keep interrupting you here. I'm just going to continue doing this. I did get a question in the chat, my chat last week, of what is the first line of the

stat blast song. So I'll just allow you to explain. I should just read out the StatBlast lyrics Because I think one of the most popular thread topics in the Facebook group Is what are the words to the StatBlast song Which they sound very clear to me But maybe that's because it's my wife singing And I'm very familiar with her voice, I don't know

But the words to the StatBlast song are They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OPS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's today's StatBlast. That's how the StatBlast song goes. You'll hear it very soon. All right. Question from T.

He goes only by T or she. This is a Rays and Brewers question. Today I was listening to the most recent StatCast podcast episode, and there was a discussion floated on third base being a rover position, referencing the use of shifting in order to negate the need for a real shortstop. I found this defensive use interesting, the point of the discussion being that Milwaukee seems to have bucked the trend in gathering essentially three third baseman types, Shaw, Moustakis, and Scope, to make up for the need of a true shortstop. I instantly thought of the Rays' creative use of Sergio Romo at third base in the Waxahachie swap. The pitcher always

went to the outfield, and now the Rays think they should stay in the infield. My point is, it seems that both uses reflect a devaluing of infield defensive value, possibly due to shifts. Are there other reasons that infield defense might be devalued? Do you think it has been devalued in the player market? How should we think about these defensive experimentations? In other words, should the Brewers trade for Jose Iglesias? I will say that despite all the Brewers activity since, I don't know, over the past few weeks, it's been mostly Orlando Garcia playing shortstop Hernan Perez Jonathan Scope has started at shortstop one time but it's been

they've they've still maintained having uh mostly a regular shortstop uh Scope has played mostly second base Moustakis has played mostly third base and Travis Shaw has just kind of showed up in certain areas so the Brewers at least to this point have not fully embraced not having a conventional shortstop but anyway clearly they made the moves they made they want Shaw Moustakas and Scope to play pretty often and uh and so they're going to have players playing out of position at shortstop but I think this is mostly for the reasons that we have discussed and as mentioned in the question that defensive shifting has reduced the amount of ground that each individual infielder has to cover because if you are sacrificing the whole opposite field, well, no one's really going to cover that area. So you just don't have to worry about it. So I don't know if you figure, let's see, this is a,

this is not at all accurate with the math, but just to make it easy to explain, there are 90 feet from first base to second, and there are 90 feet from second to third. So even though this is not true, I'll repeat myself. It's not true. let's just say there are 180 feet of infield to cover. It's not true, but let's just say it. So it used to be you would have four defenders who would have to cover 180 feet or something like that. That would be their responsibility, and so that would mean that each one is responsible for covering,

what is that, 45 feet. But now let's say that you are sacrificing 40 feet to the opposite field. That's kind of where people give up if you're not fielding for the bunt. So now, all of a sudden, you have 140 feet for four infield defenders to cover. And then that divided by four is a different number. 35. It's 35 feet for each individual defender. So when you have people who are shifted or overshifted, it's just it's true

that you do have to cover less ground. And so there is just less responsibility for that conventional shortstop. Now, not every team overshifts, not every player gets a shift in the infield, but most of them do because most players hit their ground balls very predictably, very few players hit ground balls to the opposite field. So I don't know if there's another explanation. I don't know if we need another explanation i don't know if you have anything but i would i say it's the shift well yeah i think so too and as t mentioned there are more strikeouts which means there are fewer balls in play but even though as a percentage increase that is significant in terms of the actual number of balls in play per game or balls in play per position per game, the difference isn't really that dramatic.

So maybe it's something, maybe it's part of it, but I agree that it is the positioning more so than the strikeouts that are encouraging teams perhaps to experiment a bit with playing fielders who are not really fitting the typical profile for the position. All right. Jacob says, As of this email, the Phillies' Jorge Alfaro has the third highest O-swing rate in the league that is outside the zone swing rate and the second lowest outside the zone contact rate. Yet he still sees a pretty average 44% of pitches inside the zone. How successful do you think pitchers would be against him

if they threw 20% of pitches for strikes? How about literally never throwing him a strike? Would that drastic drop teach him something resembling plate discipline, or would he still be up there hacking? Well, okay. If pitchers never threw a strike, it might take Alfaro like a few games to figure it out. But then at some point, he would just be like, oh, I noticed that my zone or someone realistically, someone with affiliates with affiliates would tell him like oh by the way you haven't seen a pitch in the zone for like a week and a half so maybe just kind of lay off for a while so it's a i think it's interesting if you look at even the most undisciplined hitters in through the recent history of baseball

the pitchers will throw them in the zone the lowest ones are usually around like 40 i think josh hamilton off the top of my head got to like the high 30s or something in terms of zone rate. Because as a pitcher, you need to at least keep a better honest. And pitchers also just aren't accustomed to staying out of the zone very much. And remember, Alfaro, he's got one of the highest chase rates in baseball, but it's not like it's 80% or 90%. He's not chasing that much.

It's like 45% to 50% is where he hovers, kind of Javi Baez territory or Adam Jones when he just kind of gives up territory. So pitchers, on the one hand, are unaccustomed to just staying completely out of the zone, but also you need to throw some strikes because it's the strikes that kind of make the non-strikes look so compelling. If you put a strike in Alfaro's memory, then he'll think,

oh, this next pitch is also a strike. Nope, nope, no, it wasn't. Well, this next one is definitely, nope, uh-oh, definitely wasn't either. So you got to keep him honest. And I think that if you're an opposing pitcher and you're facing Jorge Alfaro, I don't think that anyone is too worried at this point that they're not pitching him optimally because I think that he's getting pitched appropriately enough. you know there there are pitches in the zone that you want

a guy to swing at or if you get a guy who's kind of in patient mode because he thinks he's being pitched out of the zone too often then that you can you can sneak a strike in so in the same way that it's fastballs that keep hitters off of change-ups then it's strikes that keep hitters off of walls yeah and it's actually a 48%. I think the email said 44%, but Alfaro has seen 48.3% of his pitches inside the strike zone this year. And that is almost exactly league average, which is 48.2. So yeah, you could probably stand to throw some more pitches outside the zone to him. I would think that zone rate is going to come down and something that's, that's kind of floored me when I started to think about it, I think it was Miguel Oliva that first

put me in this frame of mind. But you look at a guy like Miguel Oliva or Salvador Perez or Jorge Alfaro now, and I don't quite understand how catchers can be good at the catching part of their job, but not understand how pitchers are pitching them. Like it seems like it should be kind of the same part of your brain that thinks, how would I pitch to me? Oh, I'd throw a lot of balls because I swing at everything. So I know,

I know that hitting isn't easy. I know it's incredibly difficult. I know that if Ben or I were to stand in against a major league pitcher, or even just like Santos Aldebar, that we would embarrass ourselves because we suck and pitchers are good. Balls move fast. They're hard to identify. I get it.

I absolutely get it. I know that catcher's development goes at a slower pace because they have so many other things to worry about and their bodies hurt and all that, et cetera. I just don't get it. I don't get how it doesn't seem to connect that, oh, these guys aren't going to throw me very many fastballs. I should probably stop swinging at everything as if it's a fastball in the strike zone because usually it's not. Right.

All right. Question from Shane. Hitting 100 miles per hour used to be a rare occurrence, and now there are 20-plus different pitchers who have hit the 100-mile-per-hour-plus mark this season. Is this due just to better training? Could some of this be explained by the technology being used? What if there have always been this many pitchers pitching this fast, but the radar guns used in the past just couldn't track the ball at that level? Have there been any studies to measure the difference in the technology

used? So there is something with the radar gun and how, you know, it used to have slightly lesser range. And so it would have trouble picking up the pitch out of the pitcher's hand. And so it would get the pitch at some point on the way to the plate. And so the readings would be lower, but that's going back decades since that was the case. And we know that even in recent years, average velocity has increased by at least a few miles per hour just in the several years or so that we can look at that data and have a lot of confidence in it. So I think it is clearly training. It is clearly team selecting for that. And a lot of it is just reliever usage and the way that pitchers are brought in and encouraged to throw 100 if they can throw 100 and not worry

about endurance or durability. So that's a big part of it too. Yeah. And I think with TrackMan right now, also remember that as of a couple of years ago, we started getting velocity readings that are supposed to be like right out of the hand as opposed to even when we had pitch effects, that was like at 50 feet. So pitches were a little bit slower. I think the average was by like one mile per hour or something.

We were getting readings that were lower than they are now in part because if we were just reading the ball later on. But mostly it's the reasons that you said. Yeah. All right. Let us take a question from Alex, who says, In talking shop about defensive alignment in the Baseball Info Solutions office the other day, a hypothetical came up that none of us knew how the league or players would handle. What would happen if a team went full soccer free kick

and put five or six guys right in front of the batter's box so they could just stand in the way of any batted ball? Obviously, this threatens the fatherhood capabilities of the infielders involved, but think about how few balls would get past you. If you had a pitcher with great tunneling and command, you could just leave a small area to throw the pitch through and still have the ability to mix pitches up. I'm not sure if this is legal as is, but even if it were, how many back-of-the-bench guys would you be willing to sacrifice for a near-zero batting average on non-fly balls? So I assume this would be legal. You can't move the catcher

out of the catcher's box box or there's a catcher's balk and there's an automatic ball assessed, but I think you can move anywhere else, anywhere you want to until Rob Manfred makes a rule that says you can't. So I think you could do it. This is something that Sam and I talked about in a very early episode of this podcast because there is a cricket equivalent of this, which is called the silly position, which is very silly. And it's called the silly position because it is very silly to stand right in front of someone who is hitting a ball very hard at you. So that is great. And if you haven't seen it, Google cricket silly position or silly leg, and you can just see all of these fielders just crowded around the batsman

it's very amusing so if you did that if you did the wall in baseball how well do you think it would work i i have i'm not able to scroll through the official rules quickly enough to be able to answer this i had in my head that there was some sort of rule that like a defender couldn't be in front of the pitcher until released or something. Is that just a softball thing? No, there is a rule that says you can't intentionally distract the hitter, I think, because there's the Eddie Stanky rule where he was doing jumping jacks in the infield. And so there is that rule that you're not supposed to be in the batter's line of sight, I think, and you're not supposed to be intentionally distracting the batter. I can find the exact language on that maybe, because maybe you could say that that

would apply to this situation. Right. So I would think that that's how it would be interpreted, at least at first, to the umpire. Some umpire would say that, well, this guy is standing way too close. He's distracting. How close in was Ben Zobrist or Anthony Rizzo coming for the Cubs when they would do their their alignments because that was coming in real close but still not not uh not like terrifyingly close I would think that if you're a team also I don't want to take this just all the way to the the grim part of it but if we're going to be honest like pitchers get hit in the head sometimes they do not have time to react but if you figure a pitcher is the most as vulnerable as you're willing to make a defender and the pitcher is just there out of necessity, then if you put someone in front of the pitcher, then that player could die. Yes.

Yeah, you'd have to have quite easily. You'd have to have body armor. You'd have to have body armor. I don't know what is legal as far as uniforms and padding, but it's rules or is or was rule 6.04 C. No fielder shall take a position in the batter's line of vision and with deliberate unsportsmanlike intent, act in a manner to distract the batter. The penalty is that the offender shall be removed from the game

and shall leave the playing field. Now this says you can't take a position in the batter's The penalty is that the offender shall be removed from the game and shall leave the playing field. Now this says you can't take a position in the batter's line of vision and with deliberate unsportsmanlike intent act in a manner to distract the batter. So it's not an either or. You have to do both of those things it sounds like. You have to be in the batter's line of vision and you have to do unsportsmanlike conduct to deliberately distract the batter so i think you could argue that if you set up in the batter's line of vision but you weren't intentionally distracting him you were just standing there in a very sportsmanlike manner this is sportsmanlike i would say if you're just positioning yourself there so i think you could parse this to say that

it's allowed although maybe mlb would say that it's not because this would probably be very bad for baseball in a number of ways yeah it would be bad for baseball it'd be bad for the people playing baseball so uh i i have not been able to confirm that there is a rule that says you can't do this but i think that there is a rule of i don't know human instinct that says you can't do this because people would like okay you put a guy really close or you put if you put six guys really close you just ask not only would these people be unable to react to a batted ball to say nothing of the pitched balls coming from behind them that they're not even looking at but the ball would also be still faster off the bat than it would be when

it gets to the pitcher because a batted ball loses velocity starting immediately yeah so if a if a batted ball hits a pitcher's head at 100 miles per hour it might hit one of these people at 105 or 110 or just something devastating people would die there would be death on the field yeah no let's say let's say that you could armor them in such a way that they wouldn't die and let's say that you could make it legal would it work do you think it would work very well i mean i guess it would emphasize fly balls obviously i don't know how steep a trajectory you would have to hit the ball at to get it over these walls heads you know if this is just a pure meat shield it's just all your fielders just in front of the hitter,

and you'd need to leave enough space that the pitch could come in, obviously, and that these guys wouldn't be drilled in the back by their own pitcher. But if you could do it, do you think it would be effective? You'd get caroms, too. That's the other thing. The ball would be hit so hard off these players' bodies that they wouldn't actually be able to react. They wouldn't be able to field it. So it would be mostly just caroming off them in unpredictable ways. And maybe you'd get some base hits out of that too. And whoever the ball hit first would be out of the play for at least the next minimum

30 seconds, maximum rest of life. So that's also, I'm not comfortable with how easily you said meat shield is that like a a gaming term because that's not a human term yeah yes okay so okay where where are these players positioned exactly like directly in front of the batter's box yeah except uh you'd have to leave a lane for the pitch to come in but otherwise yes oh my god okay so you it would be clear up the middle although that's also where the pitcher is uh oh my god okay so you need to have someone playing first base but are you bringing like everyone in i don't know how many bodies you need to just stand there leaving a lane like a pitcher would hit one of them in the back of the that's the brain stem

also just like one bad fastball and you them in the back of the that's the brain stem also just like one bad fastball and you brain one whatever we're pretending that these people that's the thing you can't have the pitcher in the wall you can't have the catcher in the wall you can't have the first baseman in the wall so you're limited to what is that five remaining fielders who can actually be in the wall or it's uh six i guess the outfielders and then the third baseman the shortstop the second baseman so you've got six guys and you've got to leave a lane open in the wall or it's six i guess the outfielders and then the third baseman the shortstop the second baseman so you've got six guys and you've got to leave a lane open in the middle so can you get them close enough to the plate to cut off a significant portion of the field at line drive or

ground ball level and you probably still want at least two guys out in the field to just kind of cover either half in case a ball gets by because otherwise it's just everything is now i'm at a home run so you want i would say leave two guys in the outfield so that leaves you with four bodies i guess to just station in front of the box so and you're leaving a lane i don't know i'm kind of estimating here with my arms how wide a lane you'd need but oh my god okay so you can't as the meat shields you can't respond you can't go to cover the gap as soon as the ball passes because there's just like no time between when the ball goes by you and when the batter swings and hits it so you have this this lane in front and the batter okay so maybe you want three to

the pull side or something one to the opposite, maybe two to the opposite field, but that's where the fly balls go. Yeah, because you're cutting off grounders mostly, and most guys pull their grounders, so you'd want to stack your wall on the pull side. Okay, what if you had two guys on one side, and they were holding up a third guy? Is there anything in the rules that says you can't build a human pyramid? That I don't know. Kai? Is there anything in the rules that says you can't build a human pyramid? That I don't know. I don't know. You can't throw a glove and hit a ball, but can you put a person on your shoulders? That seems like probably something you can't do, but I don't know the specific language.

I guess I've never examined the rules before for the human pyramid strategy. Now, granted, unless you're using the meat shield alignment, there's not really a good reason to stack your defenders i mean maybe you can like rob home runs or something but you're really sacrificing mobility of the the base of the pyramid in this case or like if you're giving piggyback rides but now we're just into a whole nother like what if mike trout had to give someone a piggyback ride while he was playing baseball that's a freebie for next year so if anyone wants to ask that for us but okay so let's see what i wouldn't be surprised so let's see what if mike tried to carry tooth okay so what if mike tratt had to carry jabari blush on his shoulders you can't get away with like some alexi amarista nonsense okay so we've got we've got what where are we two defenders on either side or three on one and one on the other what are we looking at yeah it probably goes three in one okay so we've seen how the caroms come off of pitchers on liners back up the middle the ball

often will go all the way like toward a dugout or something or sometimes to another defender so you would get caroms for a lot because if the ball hits one of the meat sacks in the arm, it's going to bounce away. If it gets them in the head, certainly it's going to bounce away. If it gets them in the shin or the knee, it's going to bounce away unpredictably. So those are like automatic hits right there. Really, you're looking for the batter to hit the ball right to the soft spot, which is like, you know, the neck or the stomach where there wouldn't be much of a carom or if the ball just hits so flush that like caves in one of their skulls but i guess we're going to pretend that they're immortal so he just plays with a head dent for the rest of his life so

there'd be a lot of carom so i don't know how well this would work in reality because the ball would still get away so maybe what if you have, what if you have two meat shields, one on either side of the batter, and then you have two covering foul territory to retrieve the caroms? I wonder if that might actually work. This is a spring training or Arizona Fall League technique. Yeah. All right.

Well, we have tentative plans to have a cricket expert on this winter to talk about cricket. So when we do, we will ask about the silly position and see how it works in action. All right. Scott says, on your trade deadline episode, you mentioned that the Orioles had replenished their minor league system through a series of veteran for prospect moves that the team made in the two weeks leading up to July 31st. The O's got five prospects for Manny Machado, three for Zach Britton, four from the Braves for Kevin Gossman, and two from the Brewers for Jonathan Scope. What's more, a few days before the Britton trade,

the Orioles signed Sean Gilmartin and Jared Gates to minor league free agent contracts. Those 16 players had to go somewhere. Setting aside the 40-man roster rules, are there strict limits on minor league roster sizes? In other words, when the Orioles acquired 16 minor leaguers in July, did they have to cut 16 players from their existing minor league team, that means you can phantom DL marginal players that you'd like to keep around in case of injuries, but that aren't good enough to be offended by being stowed away for a few weeks. It's an art form to come up with the fake injury the player has when they're put on the DL with no actual condition, as it isn't really policed on the minor league side for these practical reasons.

The O's may have been able to take on 16 players spread across a bunch of levels and stretch the limits of these parameters if they weren't already doing it, but they probably let about half a dozen marginal older players go who were already on the release shortlist. So that's probably it. They probably did let some players go. They probably stashed some players go. They probably stashed some players away. They spread them around and just tried to find a place for them somewhere. And can we all, I would like to take a moment to apologize. Within that trade deadline episode, I believe I referred like three times to Aaron Loop going to the Cubs.

He went to the Phillies. He went to a different team. So even the trade I was trying to make fun of, I got completely wrong. So my bad. Aaron Loop was traded to the Phillies. He might even still be was trying to make fun of, I got completely wrong. So my bad. Aaron Loop was traded to the Phillies. He might even still be on their roster. I don't actually know. Apologies to Aaron Loop.

All right. Stat blast. Stat blast. So you'll be as blessed And then they'll tease out some inches To take and discuss So don't blame them Analyze it for us In amazing ways Here's to days still past Last week, last Thursday, Rukunet Odor

Walked five times in a game. He also hit a home run, but I don't care about the home run in this case. He came up, batted six times, drew five unintentional walks, and he hit a home run. Forget about the home run. Five walks. Ruganet Odor. I don't need to tell you. That's weird.

Ruganet Odor, a career walk rate of 4.43%. He had walked to that point five times over the entire previous month. So I went to Baseball Reference, and I went to the Play Index, and I searched all the games in which a player has drawn at least five unintentional walks. Now, in fairness, I said at least five unintentional walks. One time, a player walked six times in a game. That was Jimmy Foxx. On June 16, 1938, Jimmy Foxx came up. He batted six times. He walked six times in a game that was jimmy fox on june 16th 1938 jimmy fox came up

he batted six times he walked six times none of them were intentional i guess even though intentional walks weren't really recorded as an official statistic so i don't know maybe he was pitched around but in any case i don't care i was curious what player who has walked at least five times in a game all unintentional has the lowest career unintentional walk rate room at a door i figured pretty good candidate to have the lowest walk rate among all these guys now the highest is a player i've just learned about and you immediately had a nickname so ted williams had a career unintentional walk rate of 19.94 he drew five walks once max bishop is a player who drew five walks in a game twice he He had a career walk rate.

Now, I'll remind you, Ted Williams, 19.94%. Max Bishop, 19.96% career walk rate. Max Bishop leads this list. This is a list that has following him Ted Williams, Eddie Yost, Ricky Henderson, Joe Morgan, Lou Gehrig, Mel Odd, Jimmy Fox, Joey Votto. Max Bishop, first place. This is not a Max Bishop stat blast, but really it kind of is because I'm still talking about him. What was his nickname? Camera Eye, one of my favorite nicknames in baseball history.

Max Camera Eye Bishop because his eye was so good. What do you think Max Bishop's nickname would be today? Because we don't think of the camera as the most accurate device. Back then it was, oh, a camera. You could actually replicate real life and go back and look at it. I don't know that he would be called camera eye today. He'd be called like GPS eye or something.

I don't know. What would he be called? What's accurate? I mean, GPS eye, you might just call him GPS. I mean, the old standby is you just go with eagle eye, even though that feels like that's about 250 years old. I mean, I'm sure people would just call them like MaxBot

or Max Bishop the robot because we get lazy, but I don't know. What do I know about technology? I'm a Luddite myself. So, I don't know. Is anything more accurate than satellite GPS? Well, maybe like the way that you measure gravitational waves.

And they have those facilities where you can detect gravitational waves from halfway across the galaxy or the universe. LIGO, Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory. LIGO, Max LIGO Eye, Bishop. That would not catch on. That would absolutely not. But I could see if you want to, like, if you get really loose with it, you start thinking like, okay, GPS, okay, satellites. And then you could just go with like Max Google Earth Bishop, which is like a stretch, but

whatever. Anyway, to get back to the point. Continue. Rugnet Odor, in no way comparable to Max Bishop, but for the fact that he walked five times in the game. So Rugnet Odor, career unintentional walk rate of 4.43%, very low. It's like half the league average out of everyone. And now there have only been 64 cases in recorded major league history, none in the playoffs.

64 cases in major league history where a player drew five unintentional walks in a game. Rugnett Odor, second lowest career unintentional walk rate, 4.43%. The actual lowest for a player who walked five times. This is a player who on April 8, 2003, walked five times in five plate appearances, no home run. Ivan Pudge Rodriguez, career unintentional walk rate of 4.37%, lower than Ruganet Odor by six hundredths of a percentage point. Ivan Rodriguez was playing against the Mets in that game, and he came up in the second,

the first inning, he walked against Al Leiter. He came up in the third inning, he walked against Al Leiter. He came up in the fifth inning, he walked against Al Leiter. He came up in the seventh inning, he walked against Al Leiter. And then in the ninth inning, he walked against Armando Benitez. But Ivan Rodriguez, five walks in one game, five walks and five played appearances. Ivan Rodriguez in 1991 finished fourth in the American League Rookie of the Year voting. He played in more than half the season.

He batted 288 times. Do you know how many times Ivan Rodriguez drew an unintentional walk in his rookie season when he was 19 years old one five five times five unintentional walks in 288 plate appearances as a 19 year old rookie and then as a 31 year old veteran five unintentional walks in five plate appearances now ivan rodriguez of course i shouldn't say of course you wouldn't know this in 2003 rodriguez did have the highest walk rate of his career. He just was somewhat unusually patient. But this isn't something he really grew into. So I'll repeat five walks in one game in 2003. In let's see, what's a good number here. So in in the year 2000, he drew only 14 unintentional walks all season. In 2005, he drew nine unintentional walks all season in 2007 he drew eight in uh in

his final season he drew just eight as well yvonne adria has just never really walked but that day that day alone al leiter decided i'm not gonna mess with this guy i'm gonna mess with will i close the window whoever's batting after him let's just call him i don't know juan pierre or something and that team won the World Series. Good for the Marlins. And I have a stat blast as well. This one was inspired by a listener email. The listener's name is Jeff.

He says, listening to a podcast that you, Ben, have been a guest on in the past, Slates Hang Up and Listen, the hosts keep track of NFL scores that have never happened before in the game. And they call it score-a-gami. Is there an MLB endgame score that has never happened before that is within reason? Say 15 runs or lower by the winning team. If not, what would be the most reasonable baseball score-a-gami remaining? So yeah, this is something you can hear about all the time on Hang Up and Listen. John Boyce has made videos about skorigami. You don't really hear about it in baseball. There's a good reason for that. There's so many baseball games that just about everything has happened. So I went to my go-to stat blast source, Dan Hirsch of the Baseball

Gauge, and he checked this out for me. He says there have been over 217,000 games played since 1871, so all reasonable scoring conditions have already occurred. In fact, every combination where the winning team scored between 1 and 20 runs has happened. So if your baseball scoregummi card went up to 20 runs, the last box to be checked was on April 17, 1976, Phillies 18, Cubs 16. That was also Mike Schmidt's four-homer game. Now, Dan has included a picture of a 25-run matrix, which I won't describe, but I will link to it if you want to see it, because it kind of gives you an idea of which box is most likely to be checked next. So it looks like the most likely scores that haven't happened yet are probably 25 to nothing

come on orioles and mets you can get there 25 to nothing 23 to 11 has not happened 22 to 12 has not happened that sounds like a reasonable baseball score 25 to 9 has not happened so you have to go up there into the the mid-20s to get to anything that has not happened. But I will include this graphic if you want to check it out. And Dan also adds that the last time a unique scoring outcome occurred was on May 19th, 1999. So it has been almost 20 years since the last unique baseball score that was Reds 24, Rockies 12. score that was reds 24 rockies 12 so every single outcome since 1999 has been a duplicate has been a repeat which uh sort of surprises me i think but there have just been so many baseball games and that's why well sam would write pretty often about new pitching lines and that was yeah those

happen all the time that's different yeah there's a there's a lot of numbers in that one and it's i think it's always surprising when you when you see one because you think there's no way that hasn't happened before because there have been so many starts. But yeah, that's always a little more fun. And I guess in this era of increasing strikeouts and everything, then just more levels are getting unlocked. All right. And then this was a suggested stat class that doesn't actually need to be one necessarily but this is from jackie who says i'm jackie a baseball fan from taiwan long time listener first time emailer yesterday a friend of mine told me that there were as many as 10 games decided by one run on august 5th one single day 10 games decide by one run he asked me whether that is a record for most one run games

happening on the same day i tried to play index and google but both to no avail. I'm fascinated by this fact and really think it's both interesting and quirky that so many one-run games occurred on the same day. I'm wondering the same as my friend. Is 10 one-run games a record for most one-run games on a single day? So I didn't even have to ask Dan Hirsch to look this up for me because Dan Hirsch had already looked this up and tweeted it himself. So that was actually a tie for the fifth most one-run games in a single day. The top four all tied for first, 11. 11 is the maximum number of one-run games in a single day. That happened in 1914, 1918, then not until 2001, and then in 2010. So there are like 15 games with 10, so it's not that uncommon, but it's unusual. So 11 is the max, now we know.

And by the way, follow Dan on Twitter. He is a great follow because he is constantly tweeting facts that could be stat plus if he hadn't already tweeted them. He is at Dan Hirschsch and his most recent tweet the orioles are 45 and a half games back in the al east the most games back through 113 games in the divisional era is the 1979 blue jays at 41 and a half so these orioles are four games further back than any team has been in its division at this point in the season god they suck all right question from josh how has colin mccue been so successful this year he's gone from a

mid-rotation starter to a relief weapon for the astros that might actually be the answer to the question right i was gonna say you're a rotation starter I was just looking at Colin McHugh yesterday. I was just thinking like, ah, maybe there's something here to write about. And that's it. You nailed it, friend. Yeah. I mean, it's not always that simple. Not every pitcher goes from mid-rotation starter to bullpen and then is amazing. How great has Colin McHccue been what are his stats looking like well it depends he's got an era of one uh he's got a fip of 2.46 and he's got an xfip of 3.03 so it kind of depends what number you're looking at but his his strikeout rate is 35 which is very good his strikeout minus walk rate is 29 it's very good last year it was 16 year before that 16 year before that 14 year

before that 19 so col McHugh his walks are basically the same as they've ever been and his uh his ground ball his fly ball is basically the same they've always been but his strikeout rate is up like 10 percentage points so he's uh yeah that's what he's been is he throwing a lot harder is he uh throwing certain pitches a lot more that can benefit certain guys more than others if they you know some guys it seems to be just like a bullpen mentality thing they come into the bullpen and they can just really air it out other guys are already kind of throwing their max as starters and then there are starters who are good because they have several pitches that they can mix and vary and then maybe it doesn't help

them as much to go to the bullpen if they don't have like a dominant wipe out out pitch but other guys do and that makes them even better disproportionately. Yep. Nope. Same pitch mix, but he's throwing about a mile and a half faster. So that's calling the cue. That's the entire answer. Pretty much. All right. Question from Matt. Bartol Colon is 45 years old and has 46 career baseball reference war. I think he now has also 246 old school wins,

which is the most by a Latin American born pitcher. If he had the ability to consistently pitch two war seasons as long as he liked, how long would he have to pitch for until he was Hall of Fame worthy? Would an extra 10 years and 20 war get him there with a total of 66 war and retiring at the age of 55? and retiring at the age of 55. So we've gotten and answered a question before about just, you know, a perpetually average player who's just always a two-win player. How long would he have to be a two-win player to make the Hall of Fame? And I think our answer is never.

If you're just a two-win player forever, it just, I mean, you'd be looked at as some kind of phenomenon. I mean, you'd be, you know, 80 years old and still a two-war player. You'd have some artifact in the Hall of Fame, but I don't think you would have a plaque, really. But Colon, of course, has been much better than that at his peak and was a Cy Young Award winner, even if he probably shouldn't have been. And he has a lot of just kind of color to his story and his trajectory in the majors. And Sam actually wrote an article for ESPN very recently about Bartolo Colon's Hall of Fame case as it is. And Sam argued that it is a reasonable case as it is. And Sam said he probably won't vote for Colon, but that you could make a case just based on the way that pitchers are used these days and the innings totals they get. And yes, he's far short of the average Hall of Fame pitcher, but the average Hall of Fame pitcher was pitching in far different conditions for pitchers than pitchers today. So we kind of have to adjust our expectations for careers. So you could make a case for Bartol Cologne as a Hall of Famer. And I think if he were to hang on for five more years as an average pitcher, I think that might do it. Yeah, obviously there are differences between these two players, but just for the sake of comparison, I can tell you that Bartolo Colon,

according to Fangraphs, he's been worth 51.6 wins above replacement over his career. Let's just round that to 52. 52 war for Bartolo Colon. Felix Hernandez, 52 war via Fangraff, so for his career. Now, Felix Hernandez has started 398 games. Bartolo Colon has started 549. So Colon, of course, just has durability and, I don't know, career length on Felix, mostly because Colon is 45 and Felix is a 45-year-old looking 32.

So I don't know how much more Felix Hernandez has left, but if you figure well felix hernandez regardless of how he finishes his career he's maybe should be a hall of famer because of how good he was bartolo cologne was never felix good like in bartolo cologne's best season at least according to fangraphs he was worth 4.7 wins by replacement that was good we had 34 starts he's through 242 winnings so for cologne's first decade he was treated like kind of an old-timey starter he started all the time and he eclipsed 200 innings on the regular and he was like a i would call him a solid number two and that peak for him lasted

like six or seven eight seasons i don't know yeah eight seasons quite a few and then uh and then he entered the uh i don't know let's we can refer to it as the wet fart era of Cologne's career before he came back. And the German medical treatment era of his career when he just fixed himself somehow under somewhat shadowy circumstances. Right. And then, I mean, as long as we're just going to talk about Bartolo Colon, am I incorrect in remembering that he has a second family? He did. I guess he still does. I guess once you do, you continue to. Yeah.

In 2015, Colon was sued in Manhattan by a Washington Heights woman seeking child support for her son and daughter, whom she alleges were fathered by Colon. The children were conceived and born during Colon's marriage. I don't know why I brought that up. That's really not pertinent to Bartolo Colon's career. But whatever. The man's got color. So. Yes. I don't know why I brought that up. That's really not pertinent to Bartolo Colon's career. But whatever, the man's got color. So it kind of depends what you're looking for in a Hall of Fame pitcher. Sam is right, of course, to focus on the fact that pitchers are being used differently

and that we have to lower our standards because otherwise modern-day pitchers just aren't going to make it unless they're Chris Sale or maybe Justin Verlander. But if you're saying maybe about guys like Sale or Verlander or Felix, then I think that you're being unrealistic. But nevertheless, while I agree that we should lower our standards for Hall of Fame pitchers, I think I like Peake's and Colon's. It's kind of a borderline case for me. But if he gave him another 10 years of being an average pitcher,

then I think at that point he'd become sufficiently extraordinary to merit it. I wouldn't I wouldn't protest if Cologne made the hall of fame at that point yeah as Sam pointed out there are inferior pitchers to Cologne who are already in the hall of fame maybe they had better peaks than Cologne did I don't know but uh you know it's not just his appearance and the way that his batting helmet falls off and the way that he carries his bat to first base and the way that he hit a home run that one time, those are all parts of his legend. But it's also just the very distinctive way that he pitches and his pinpoint command and his constantly throwing fastballs.

There's just a lot to Colon's story that stands out. And if you're one of those people who thinks that fame should actually be a part of making the Hall of Fame, then he has that. I guess I misspoke. It was not a German doctor. It was a Florida doctor who flew to the Dominican Republic to treat him. I guess it was Kobe Bryant who went to Germany and maybe other people.

But this doctor had used HGH with other patients but said he didn't in Colon's case. I don't know. It was murky but uh i don't know whether writers would hold that against him or whether he's just kind of entered the jolly old uncle type portion of his career where you don't hold anything against him i don't know anyway i think if he held on until he was say 50 as a productive pitcher he might have a really legitimate chance to get in by the way, looking at defensive runs saved for all pitchers, Julio Tehran, first place this year, six runs saved above average. Clayton Richard, five.

Perdolla Colon, tied for third place, four defensive runs saved. Yeah. All right. Ryan Patreon, I've got two more here. He says, how much would Mike Trout's performance be affected, or I guess we could say any player's performance be affected if he lost the ability to judge the strike zone? He would still be able to track the ball just the same and the actual strike zone would be the same, but he wouldn't have any way to know which pitches would be called balls or strikes if he let them go by. Would he swing a lot more out of an abundance of caution? Would he eventually become very good at hitting pitches out of the zone? Would he be able to compensate for this? Or would his performance inevitably suffer? So Mike Trout

turns into worse than Jorge Alfaro as far as his strike zone recognition. He has no idea. He can still hit the ball. He can still see the ball. He just doesn't know whether it will be a ball or a strike. Okay. Well, let's see. It's a confusing one, but I would figure that over time Mike Trout would realize what is his hittable area. So that's what he would be focusing on. Okay, well, let's see. It's a confusing one, but I would figure that over time, Mike Trout would realize what is his hittable area, so that's what he would be focusing on. But he can hit well as opposed to what's going to be a striker ball. Which corresponds to a striker ball. Yeah, I was going to say, convenient thing about this, that is the strike zone, basically.

So Mike Trout can hit balls pretty much anywhere in the zone anyway, so I think he would be worse, but I think he would look very similar. is pretty much anywhere in the zone anyway. So I think he would be worse, but I think he would look very similar. Yeah, I guess that is true. Like there would be borderline pitches that maybe he'd be worse on. But yeah, like unless he has no ability

to distinguish which pitches he can hit, I mean, that would be debilitating. Then he'd be terrible, I think, because he'd just have to swing at everything, right? And you wouldn't have to throw him anything near the plate. But if he can still sense what is within his reach, then I think he could make the logical leap from that to, if it's within my reach, that means it'll probably be a strike. So, yeah, I don't think it matters all that much.

All right. And last question from Scott, who says, I'm emailing from London, England. I've been a regular listener to your podcast for the few years since I've gotten more and more into baseball as a second major sport. Find me a Brit who doesn't list football as his main recreational pastime, and I'll call him a liar. player-to-player interaction we see on base during the course of the game, especially in comparison to soccer. The friendliness, smiles, jokes, and overall camaraderie on base seems like the complete opposite of what you need during a competitive sports match. If you're on third and having a friendly joke before a flare into the outfield knocks in a run, or in a worst-case scenario it rolls over the third baseman's hand on an error, I would be steaming. As a parallel, if a Chelsea player starts having a friendly laugh and joke walking to the dugout at halftime as they're down 1-0 versus the Spurs,

you would be tearing that player to shreds. Not only would the fans boo them off the pitch and insist they weren't passionate enough to wear the shirt, the pundits would lay into them during the halftime punditry. I realize these are two totally different sports, and the general vibe at an English soccer match is totally different from an American baseball game. However, in terms of player to player interaction, is there anything that is a complete no-go? Are there concerns about the player's loyalties and commitment on the field in the same way as soccer? What are

the absolute baseball taboos in terms of player actions on the field? Well, I know Rob Nair has complained several times in the past about this on-field fraternization between opponents. I think that just visually, it can be maybe a little jarring if we're going into it thinking like, this is a rivalry game. But on the other hand, I don't know anyone who doesn't love when Felix Hernandez and Adrian Beltre joke with one another when they're facing one another. So yeah, corrected.

Some of that is, I mean, that's a little playfully antagonistic, of course, that they're trying to get the other one out. But maybe look at that case specifically. Felix and Beltre joke from, like, from the dugout with one another. And they're opponents. They've been opponents. They've been rivals for years. They joke with one another.

But then when they actually face one another, they take it very seriously because they're trying to, like, get their, it's just one-upsmanship all around. So, this is also this is a game where there's very little in the way of like direct interaction on the field like even when you have pitcher versus batter you're standing 60 feet away and you're not like competing for the same space if you will not very physical yeah right so you can have i think i guess the concern might be that maybe a player who's like joking around might be a little less focused i

don't know if that's true baseball is slow who could be focused the whole might be that maybe a player who's joking around might be a little less focused. I don't know if that's true. Baseball is slow. Who could be focused the whole time for three and a half hours? I can't watch a Ken Burns documentary. So you have these cases where maybe you could argue there are these lapses in focus. But I think on the other hand, you could say that if you're just constantly nervous and tense, you might be less focused and aware than you are if you're just like having a good time and you're feeling free and loose and then you can go chase down that foul ball that might be

just out of your reach so i think this is it's not much ado about nothing it's very little ado uh made to do about about nothing i know that it is weird but when you have a game that's more testosterone-y then it makes more sense to see players get mad. And of course, you will see that erupt on the field sometimes, mostly between pitcher and batter, because that's when there is some sort of like physical intimidation factor. The pitcher could knock the batter out at any time. But otherwise, it just doesn't really matter. Yeah, I mean, there used to be, I think, a much stronger aversion to being friendly on the field. I mean, there used to be, I think, a much stronger aversion to being friendly on the field.

And teams were maybe it was because they played each other so much more often. I don't know that real rivalries would develop when there were fewer teams in the league. Or maybe it's just the fact that players were poorer. They weren't all very wealthy people and they were really fighting for these jobs. And they had offseason jobs and they were supporting their they were supporting their families on every pitch and every play. So I think tensions tended to run higher back then, whereas now that's broken down considerably. And for the most part, I'm fine with that. And it's not actually battle. It's not a war the way that you use those kind of martial analogies for football and maybe soccer too.

And I think one of the nice byproducts of that is you typically don't get extreme violence in the stands at baseball games the way that you occasionally do at soccer games. And so I think it's just kind of, yeah, a lot less testosterone all around. And you wouldn't want anyone to look like they just weren't trying or weren't attempting to get the other guy out because he's their buddy or something you you don't want guys like tipping pitches intentionally just to give their friend a better swing or something like if if you just you know if two guys were joking and one guy just didn't get to a ball because he was just hobnobbing with a player on first base or something. That would be, I think, a problem and people would condemn that and the player would probably get fined or benched or something.

So there's still some strictures against this sort of thing. But for the most part, you know, as long as you're doing your job well, and as you say, maybe you could even do it better in some cases. I'm fine with everyone getting along and not hating each other or pretending to hate each other. Yeah. And I think if you're a first baseman defensively, you should be trying as much as possible to fraternize with any baseman because you might. Exactly. All right. So we will end there. You can, and for our sake, I hope will support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Bowing 5 listeners have already done so.

Rick Gold, Jay Augsburger, Brian Langford, Ed Paniazek, and James Stunden. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and many another podcast platform. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcastandfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. I will be on the road for one more episode before I head home, so we will be back with that one soon. I'd rather be