Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1258: Slow-Pitch Baseball

Episode Date: August 18, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Ben’s introduction to climbing, a Mets-Phillies blowout, Scott Kingery‘s slow pitches, Jacob deGrom‘s run support, Jose Ureña‘s suspension and how to punish hit by pitches, the Rangers’ odd triple play and the 2002 debut of Ron Wright, Matt Kemp‘s slump, and an umpire’s rapid reaction, then answer listener […]

So that's what happened. That's what I did. And let's just play baseball, not fight, I guess. I don't know. I don't do, I think, think Think about what you're trying to do to me Oh, think, think Let your mind go, let yourself be free People walking around every day

Playing games and taking scores Trying to make other people lose their minds Well, be careful you don't lose your mind Hello and welcome to episode 1258 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hello. Hi, how are you? I'm doing well. I did it. I went climbing. My first ever climbing experience. Yes, it went well.

Wait, again? Well, Jessie had gone by herself. Jessie had gone before. I remember. I remember the details. Okay. She came back grievously wounded with blisters everywhere. Nonetheless, she went back for a second time, and I accompanied her, and it was fun. There's a place in the city that is directly under the Brooklyn Bridge, and it's an outdoor climbing facility. There's a wall, a bunch of walls with color-coded hand grips that indicate the difficulty of the route. And I enjoyed it. And my hands are not too terribly wounded.

I have calluses from lifting, and they're not necessarily in the same place on your finger. And so by the time we wrapped up, I could feel some sensitivity developing. And I was like, okay, we better get out of here before I hurt myself. But it was good. I liked it. Yeah, right. You get the calluses from lifting below the fingers but from climbing all over the fingers. Yes, everywhere.

To the point where, yeah, if you keep it up, your hands are going to be like twice as thick in like a disgusting way. But it's okay because sometimes they peel. So was it free climbing? Was it bouldering? Or did you have ropes? I did not have ropes, but it was not super high. And the floor was kind of padded. They said it was like not the best padding. It was just kind of, I guess, usually they have like mats that are very bouncy. Not at this place so much.

It was just kind of like almost like packing chips, sort of like packing peanuts. Not really that, but sort of like just kind of a springy surface. So if you were to fall, it probably wouldn't hurt too badly. But yeah, there were no ropes and it was just these standing walls. I don't know how 10, 15 feet or whatever. And you just had to go up and put both your hands on the top of the wall and then find your way down again yeah it's like you were climbing above a ball pit and yeah the uh sometimes it's it is when you when you go bouldering outside what people will generally bring is something

called a crash pad which is like essentially a slightly bigger yoga mat that you put on the sometimes lopsided ground under like sometimes the the angular sticky outy rock so it really doesn't look quite as safe basically don't if you're outside don't don't fall but sometimes people do do the uh the deep water climbing which is uh when you're just climbing rock that like comes out of the water that one's kind of fun and i i remain stubbornly insistent that i think that some pitchers could benefit from not like climbing super hard during the off season but just like climbing up to a certain level because not only is it good for your that some pitchers could benefit from not climbing super hard during the offseason, but just climbing up to a certain level.

Because not only is it good for your flexibility, but I feel like it's probably good for your forearms and definitely your shoulders. Can you imagine the blisters if Rich Hill climbed? It's like he's just handling hot plates for most of his life. So yeah, there's certain players who you think, whoa, we're going to pack from the the really grippy when you get like a new handhold at the climbing gym before like human oils wear them down they're like really tactile and it's like climbing on sandpaper it's miserable but at least you know that you won't fall or if you do fall you'll

leave half of your skin on the hold which is essentially like staying on the wall if you fall but a lot of your dna is still on the wall like you didn't really fail i think anyway are you going to do it again yeah i think so it's funny by the end of it your fingers are so tired and your hands are so sore that the things that you did really easily at the beginning seem impossible like by the end i was just you know trying to finish with a couple easy ones and they were just grueling because my fingers were so exhausted. Yeah. It's a weird way to wear yourself out because it's like a really unfamiliar sort of fatigue.

Yeah. All right. Well, that happened. I'll keep you posted on my progress. So I wanted to talk about the Mets-Phillies game on Thursday. The Mets won 24-4. They won this game by 20 runs. It was, I think, the first game of a doubleheader.

It was. Yeah, not fun for the Phillies to lose 24-4 and then have to play again immediately after that. Or, I don't know, maybe mentally it's better to just get right back out there after you get trounced like that. It was the biggest margin of victory in Mets history. Jacob deGrom had to be wondering where was this when I pitch. Why doesn't this happen to me? And by the way, Jacob deGrom has seven wins and 7.3 wins of a replacement. So he is still doing it, still outwarring his win total.

Yeah, but he's won his last two, so it's frustrating. Yes, I know. That's true. And the Mets are hitting now, so I don't know if he can keep up this not winning pace. But Phillies did win the second game, so they bounced right back. But the interesting thing in this game, first of all, 24 to 4, the Phillies were attempting to set some score-agami here, as we were talking about on a recent email episode. We were looking for scores that have not been achieved in a Major League Baseball game, and 24-4, it has happened, but it is pretty rare. It has happened, well, let's see, I guess six times in Major League Baseball history. I think I saw Tyler Kepner looked it up, and it hadn't happened since 1940 or something. So a bit a while, but not score a gami.

You'd have to have 25 to nothing. That would be a unique score. 25 to 9, that would work. 23 to 11, that would do it. Anyway, they didn't come close on that. But the fascinating thing was that the Phillies used two position player pitchers. Okay, that happens all the time now. Roman Quinn and then Scott Kingery.

Scott Kingery, I don't know whether you saw, Quinn got creamed. Quinn gave up, I think, seven runs. And then Kingery came in for the last four outs. And he pitched pretty well. He only gave up two runs and I think he threw 16 pitches and 13 of them were strikes that is a good ratio except that he was throwing so slow that stat cast could not track any of his pitches I looked at the game feed for this game on baseball savant and not a single pitch by Scott Kingery was tracked by the system.

If you look at the highlights, if you look at the GIFs, it's like the slowest pitch you've ever seen in a game. I think we answered on a recent email episode, what's the slowest pitch ever to be thrown for a strike? And we were saying it's a hard question to answer, A, because there are all sorts of data errors. So there are pitches that say they were 40-something, but they weren't actually 40-something. And then if you throw a really, really slow pitch, it just won't even be recorded. So I think Scott Kingery last night, he threw a pitch, and I'll link to the GIF for anyone who hasn't seen it, but Ben Harris, who writes for The Athletic, and I think is a listener who heard our conversation about this, says, Scott Kingery testing the limits of how soft you can throw a pitch and

still put it in the strike zone. And Jeremy Frank, who is at MLBRandomStats on Twitter, he said, this pitch was in the air for over a second. The average velocity was around 38 miles per hour based on some quick timing and math. So we talked recently about what the slowest possible pitch you could throw for a strike, just physically, how slow could you throw a pitch that actually would make it into the strike zone? And our listener and physics expert, Andrew Dminiani, determined that it was about 27.5 miles per hour. That is the lower bound on how slow you can throw a strike.

So Kingery, if he was at 38, he was less than 10 miles per hour over the limit here. And I sent this to Andrew and he said, wow, if 38 miles per hour is correct, based on where it's caught, it seems like he could have gone slower. The hypothetical 27.5 mile per hour slow pitch reaches almost 20 feet off the ground at its apex. This one looks like it doesn't get much over 12 to 13. So if he had lobbed it, if he had increased his launch angle and just softly dropped it in there, he could have sacrificed even more speed. But Scott Kingery coming close to the slowest possible strike. All right, there's a few things to point out here.

So first of all, you were talking about Jacob deGrom. So the Mets, as you said, scored 24 runs in the first half of a doubleheader. Jacob deGrom, between April 21st and June 13th, Jacob deGrom started 10 times for the Mets. They scored for him 19 runs. 19 runs over those starts. If you exit on April 16th, they scored six runs, and it came that they still lost. That would have put them over 25.

But in any case, Jacob deGrom probably furious at this point. As far as not tracking pitches, it's not even just like around the 20s and 30s that Sackhouse doesn't pick it up. It's been really difficult if one wanted to analyze Kazuhisa Makita this year for the padres because a lot of his pitches don't show up because he throws sometimes like 55 miles per hour those just don't show up on game day he hit a ball 99 miles per hour on thursday which i think was 13 miles per hour faster or 16 miles per hour faster than any pitch he has thrown in the season i was gonna say he doesn't recognize that kind of velocity but that's what every left-handed

batter does to him so anyway uh and i uh i didn't look up any quote i remember seeing this as if zapping because quinn was just throwing like like normal but then kingry comes in and i've never seen that i can't recall a single position by doing that now he kind of like looked like a knuckleballer if he just kind of freeze framed him because you know knuckleball has never looked like they're throwing really hard but the fact that he was throwing so slow was an explanation provided for why he decided to do that i mean if you you can go up there and you can just toss you know like what what comes easily to kingry like 60 miles per hour probably like no effort 60 miles per hour just to like put a ball in the zone and it'll be fine then you can like

mix it up throw a curveball whatever have some fun with it but did he ever provide an explanation for why he decided to do this because i know that it doesn't really it doesn't make a difference like the idea of a position player pitching some people would say it makes a mockery of the game anyway no one's really looking for king reed to be great but i just don't know what goes through your head where you decided i'm going to stand out for this i'm going to literally lob such that jerry blevins can hit an rbi single against me and have a good time was it just there's something here to study i guess but i don't know what it is because we don't actually have the data that we need yeah i don't know maybe he was just

trying to preserve himself and not hurt himself i don't know he he homered in the second game so maybe he was just trying to save his strength but uh it was something to see and yeah he came close to what we were talking about so that was kind of fun it would be like the ultimate BABIP test Kingery is such a small sample of data but if you're like okay if this guy lobbed for 200 innings and he allowed a BABIP of like 320 then and then we could really know okay this is really BABIP is mostly noise now Now, I don't know, do you think, I know that there have been enough of the studies, enough of the Alan Nathan tweets and articles about how the pitcher doesn't really supply much of the power,

but what do you think would be a pitcher's, or let's just say Kingery's, home run rate if he played a full season pitching like that? Like, is it too slow? I think it might. I mean, I don't know. Because, I mean, can big league batters, like, homer off a tee? I think they can, right, in theory.

So it's possible. And I don't know. Jerry Blevins got his first career hit off of Kingley in that game. So if Jerry Blevins can hit him, I mean, he only singled. But I would guess that for a big league batter who can supply so much of that strength himself that he would give up more home runs throwing 38 even even with the the lack of velocity so there should be i haven't checked there should be exit velocity still for this right no no there's nothing oh no so we have no idea but he did allow a few doubles so you know maybe

the exit velocity was there but still it would uh it would be a curiosity so phillies if you're out there if you're listening consider scott kingery as the fifth starter so that we can we can study we're all just here to learn things right before we die right sure the other weird thing that happened on thursday was the the Rangers turning a triple play. And it was one of the weirdest triple plays. Every triple play is sort of strange and surprising. But this one was the first one since 1912 that was turned without the batter being retired. And I have watched this triple play a bunch of times. And frankly, it's hard to understand exactly what happened.

And I don't think all the players on the field even totally understood what was happening as it happened and I'll link to the play you can go see it it's it's just a strange sequence of events the bases were loaded and David Fletcher was batting and he hit this short hopper to Jerickson Profar, and I think that was maybe the source of some of the confusion that people thought that he had caught it, so the angels on the base pass were sort of confused, and so Profar stepped on the bag, he tagged Taylor Ward, who we talked about the other day, and then threw to Rugnet Odor, who was covering second base, and that completed the triple play.

And then Odor was chasing Cole Calhoun all the way back to the base because I think the third out wasn't signaled until Calhoun left the base pass. So there was a lot of confusion. And Levi Weaver did a fun oral history of this play immediately after the fact for The Athletic, and he talked to everyone involved about how weird it was. My favorite part of that article, though, there was a fun fact in there. So Levi noted that this was the first triple play turned in Globe Life Park since 2002, and the only other triple play ever turned in Globe Life Park. And on that day in 2002 2002 it was april 14th the guy who hit into that triple play was a bh named ron wright and i had never heard of ron wright he was on the mariners maybe you remember ron i remember exactly ron wright he had a hell of a debut yes he did so levi writes if you don't recognize the name don't worry that was literally the only big

league game he ever played he struck out in his first at bat hit into a triple play in his second at bat and hit into a double play in his last at bat he had three plate appearances and accounted for six outs that is I mean Moonlight Graham is like shaking his head and saying, that sucks, man, because that is a rough single game to have as the entirety of your Major League Baseball resume. Ron Wright, putting a baseball reference, still alive, might be available. Only 42 years old. He's only a year older than Fernando Rondi. Survived that day. That would have killed him. April 2002, so that year in AAA, Ron Wright slugged for 60 at an 8.10 OPS.

He was one of those guys. He was 26 years old, so not super old, not super young. He was one of those guys who was a pretty good hitter throughout the minors. He had a career minor league OPS of 8.16, include the major leagues. He was 8.15 because of course he had his one game I don't remember the circumstances of why he was called up in April at that point that's a

pretty unusual for somebody who's not even on the 40-man roster but yeah that was a that was in the just before I started blogging about the Mariners days but when I was extremely active on like Mariners message board days and run, there's, there's something that happens as you age having our kind of job. And this is not, this is not unique to us. This is true for everyone who's ever written about anything, but the things that you take for granted as knowledge when you start no longer are taken for granted as knowledge when you get older, like people who are newer baseball fans, they would have absolutely no reason to know about Ron Wright wright but i never talk about ron wright because i always

think oh everyone knows about ron wright but now i understand exactly how like old baseball announcers get to the point where they're just recalling stories of like teammates they had in 1967 as if we're all supposed to understand what the significance is and we just think, shut up, old man. But not enough work is done to bring back the things that you knew about from like 15, 16 years ago that people just aren't, a lot of people just aren't old enough to know now. So that's one of those things that is a useful constant reminder. But yeah, Ron Wright, maybe we should just make a point of mentioning Ron Wright like once a year because his debut really is one of the worst and most remarkable that you could, not just his debut, his major league career, let's say is one of the most remarkable that's

ever existed. It's just like this. I can't imagine how he felt after that game. And I would love to talk to him to try to find out. Although Ron Wright, if he's ever been interviewed, it's for one reason, one reason only, it's this one reason, one reason only. It's this, and he might be furious.

The Mariners did win the game. They did win 9-7, but Ron Wright, he started, and he was removed in the seventh inning because the Mariners probably thought, we don't want to do this again. We don't want to take a chance. And so when Ronight was due to bat there was uh there was runners on the corners and the mariners thought you know what mark mclemore might not hit into so many outs we don't want ron wright to get up to nine four plate appearances yeah all right so we want to get to emails and a stat blast and you have a chat coming up but one thing that we should briefly banter about probably

is the suspension for marlin starter jose arreña so ronald acuna came back on thursday seems to be suffering no ill effects from being hit by a pitch against arreña on wednesday but i think it was surprising to no one and disappointing to many that Ureña was suspended for only six games after seemingly very clearly intentionally hitting Acuña on the first pitch of the game on Wednesday. hit lots of homers and lots of leadoff homers and Reina figured, I guess I can't get him out and I will show the rookie that he can't be good at baseball without consequences. So I'm just going to drill him here with a really, really hard pitch.

And I think that we all wanted baseball to send a message that this is not okay. We've had this conversation before. This is a form of assault when you intentionally hit a batter with a baseball that is thrown really hard. And baseballs on the whole are thrown harder today than they ever have been before. So this really is no joke, no laughing matter when someone gets hit by a hard object that is thrown that hard. So he was suspended for six games, which is kind of what always happens. It's one turn through the rotation, theoretically,

or if you rearrange the rotation in some way or you just kind of skip a starter or something, it really hardly even affects the team or the starter, and there's a lot of frustration about that fact. So what would sending a message look like? Because I've seen suggestions that, well, if you suspend a hitter for five games or something for some infraction, then you should suspend a starting pitcher, you know, five times as many games because you want them to miss five games too. And that I think is not

completely fair. It depends on if the severity of the action that led to the suspension is the same. If it is, for one thing, when you're suspended, you're not getting paid. So that's part of it. Now, for most of these guys, maybe it doesn't make a difference in their quality of life if they miss six games in a season or something. They're making a lot of money for the most part, but you're not getting paid. So that is part of the punishment. The other thing is that proportionately, you're missing a sizable chunk of your season. If you do miss one start, as opposed to just having it pushed back a day or something, then for a starter, you're missing, you know, what, one thirtieth of your season or something. It's effectively the same as a hitter sitting out several games, a hit in theory can have more impact on the game he starts than a hitter typically does in a game when he's just one of nine hitters and many people playing positions.

So in that sense, one game for a starter is not equivalent to one game for a batter. So I get it. But on the other hand, I think the severity of the action when a starter does something like Urania does is just different for the most part you know unless a hitter charges the mound and decks someone or hits someone with a bat juan marichal style usually it's something stupid and it's you know making a little contact with an umpire during an argument something like that that really doesn't endanger anyone in the way that a starter throwing at someone intentionally does. So maybe you do say, yeah, we're throwing the book at you this time and you're going to be out for, I don't know,

30 games or something. We're just setting a precedent here. This is what happens. If you do this, don't do it again. Right. So this is something that the NHL struggles with is how their suspensions sometimes differ in length based on whether or not the player who was generally assaulted is injured or not. And so you wonder if Urania would have been suspended for longer if Acuna had a broken elbow or out for the season, which easily could have happened if he had been hit one inch higher on the arm. So, yeah, I was going to mention the salary thing, and that's presumably the big reason why pitchers don't get longer suspensions, because that would be unfair if they lost five times as much money as position players did for whatever infraction. Now, suspensions are not collectively bargained.

It is just but what you do run into is let's say that Commissioner Manfred saw this and he decided, all right, that one's enough. I don't know what justification he could provide if he decided, okay, Urania, you're out for a month. You get a 30-game suspension, 30-day suspension, whatever it is, and this is setting a new precedent. I don't know what that process would be like because he could issue that suspension and Urania could appeal it. I don't know much about the appeals process.

I know that based on history, it seems like everyone appeals and knocks your suspension down by one game. I guess that's worth it. I don't know much about the appeals process i know that based on history it seems like everyone appeals and knocks your suspension down by one game i guess that's worth it i don't know player i don't know if the players union would file a grievance i don't know what the protections would be this case was so i feel like it was so egregious it seemed like it was definitely blatant but the players union would still want to come to uranus defense because of the new precedent that it would set. So this seems like it might be something that you would have to talk about during the offseason and try to find some common ground because this should absolutely not be part of the game. It makes absolutely zero sense. The fact that Keith Hernandez talked about it as if it did make sense is just an absurdity. It's just antiquated thinking.

But I know people talk about how pitchers throw harder than ever now so it's even more dangerous and that old school mindset doesn't really apply anymore because everyone throws 100 miles per hour it doesn't really matter if pitchers actually hit batters all the time on purpose in the old days that was bad too it was just we didn't recognize it then or we weren't alive in many cases because remember a lot of our audience doesn't even know who Ron Wright is so in this case, I understand why Urania didn't get a longer suspension. In my opinion, he deserves a much longer suspension. I feel like in your opinion, he deserves a much longer suspension. I don't think that that's the

kind of thing the commissioner can just implement on the fly, but I would hope, I don't know if this is true, but I would hope that over the off season, this is something that the league and the players can talk about. It shouldn't take very long. You just you just say look in a case like that it's obvious i want to set a a far stronger precedent because someone is going to get very badly injured in fact they already have yeah i think you're right it would probably be difficult to do in practice just out of nowhere just because there is such a long precedent for this sort of action, and because in those previous cases, there hasn't been a mega suspension. And so, yeah, whatever process the review goes through would probably say, why does this guy get 30 games when no one else has gotten more than six games for this?

So I think you're right. You could make a case that the union shouldn't protest this, should want longer suspensions because it's a player safety issue, right? It's sort of a workplace safety issue. I mean, it's player on player violence, but I think it would be better for everyone if this sort of thing were just not in the game. It would be better for all players, really. It would be better for teams. So you could say that, yeah, players associations should support the idea of stricter penalties just because it would protect their players. But on the other hand, there is the payment issue, and you don't want to cede authority to the commissioner's office to take away money

from your members. So that is kind of a tricky situation. But I agree with you. I hope that this is resolved to everyone's satisfaction sometime soon. So Larry Stone of the Seattle Times on July 14th, 2017, Larry Stone of the Seattle Times published a column titled Double Play, Triple Play and a Strikeout. The ex-Mariner who made six outs in his only three MLB at-bats. picture of ron wright with his wife ron wright is currently a pharmacist in idaho i was concerned when i googled this that ron wright was just living a life of regret and depression one of the lead quotes here is quote i'm grateful for the time i had up there and to get into that game no regrets whatsoever ron wright seems to be uh, uh, I'll just keep reading quotes here.

My reaction now is the same as it always has been. I'm grateful for the time I had up there and to get into that game. No regrets whatsoever. He, uh, he of course went strikeout, triple play, double play. If I got into one game, Wright said cheerfully, I might as well do something memorable. I wish it had been three home runs, but it wasn't. It was kind of a weird sequence of events that led to the actual outcome with different base running and different bounces you never know this story is even more interesting than i thought you think of all the circumstances that lead to this ron wright was considered like a good prospect with the pirates but he had uh he had back surgery in 1999 the surgeon removed a disc and nicked his sciatic nerve while he was uh doing that so it left ron right with

perpetual numbness in his right leg that effectively sapped his power that's a problem so he was okay he uh he got a september call up from the pirates before that in 1997 but he didn't play because he had a wrist injury so that's just one of those things he was he moved around teams usually the pirates and the reds then the devil rays and the Devil Rays and the Mariners. Signed him to a minor league contract in 2002. My leg, quote, my leg was always fresher early in the year, and I got off to a torrid start with Tacoma. Mariners had a deep lineup, but I was wondering why Wright was up in April. Because Edgar Martinez suffered a hamstring injury in April of 2002.

So Tacoma was in Iowa when the manager told Ron Wright that he had been promoted. He was going to the major leagues. Now he sat the first two games that he was up there, and he wasn't even supposed to start the game that he did start, except in batting practice on that fateful Sunday, a line drive by Mike Cameron bounced off the pitching screen and struck Jeff Cirillo on his head, opening a wound that required three stitches. Gerald Perry, the Mariners' hitting coach,

informed Wright that he would be starting at DH and batting seventh. In his first at-bat, facing veteran lefty Kenny Rogers, with two aboard in the second, Wright experienced the only regret he would have. He decided to take one pitch and let a fat fastball from Rogers go by. Looking back, Wright thinks if he hadn't sat for a few days, he would have come up hacking, but he felt he needed one pitch to reconnoiter good use larry stone rogers proceeded to paint the corner for the whiff i still remember looking at that first pitch and

thinking i should have torn that ball up everything that happened next he says is like a blur i could just read the entire article but run right living at least as of last year living happily in idaho as a neighborhood pharmacist and pleased to have had the Major League experience that he had, which makes me feel a lot better about the world. Yeah, that's good. Glad he's got a good attitude about it. So let's answer some emails. Doug Graham, Patreon supporter, says, A headfirst slide sent Mike Trout to the disabled list last year, and a footfirst slide has him back on the DL this year. So I posed the following.

How good would Mike Trout be if he weren't allowed to slide? So that's kind of a good question, because when he got hurt last year, we all said, well, players shouldn't be allowed to slide headfirst. It's dangerous, and teams maybe are encouraging players to slide feetfirst more often now. So now he slides feet first, and he jams his wrist anyway as he's sliding into the bag, and now he's on the DL again and getting cortisone shots. So would Mike Trout be better? Would he have been more productive, I suppose we could say, this season and last, if he couldn't slide at all. So these injuries wouldn't have happened, but he also would have been impaired in his other games by not being able to slide. Right, okay, so you take away stolen bases pretty much entirely. So he's never running for a steal. He's never getting a triple.

He makes a few more outs at home, I don't know how many. So he stays at second on would be triples he either stays at first or just guns it on potential doubles and is thrown out more so his base running value would go down considerably i don't know the breakdown because we don't have like slide data on how often this happens so So essentially, we have Mike Trout, who's healthier, he plays almost every single day, but he is incrementally less valuable every time that he takes the field. So I mean, you would figure at some point, like the team would realize, okay, he never slides, so we're just not going to send him. So he runs really conservatively. So let's call him like the worst base runner. Let's just call him the worst base runner and that we usually see that that's like

victor martinez or miguel cabrera territory that's like negative eight negative ten runs so yeah let's take that instead of where it's mic track usually like plus five or something like that so let's say these worst by like a win win and a half now of course he also has some some offensive value that's reduced because he doesn't right triples but that's not by that much because a triple isn't that much more valuable than a double especially because the base runners still score so let's call i'll call them two wins worse but also healthier so it actually comes out almost like a wash yeah i would think probably i mean you know hopefully he won't hurt himself and be on the DL every single season with a slide-related injury. So over the course of his career, I don't know, but over these two seasons, I think probably a healthy trout who never slid would have been more valuable because he missed 46 days with that injury last year.

He had surgery on his thumb, of course. He has missed 11 days and counting this year. And, you know, maybe there are after effects of being rusty or your hand not being 100% when you get back. So that's a lot of value. I mean, 46 days of Mike Trout, that's more than two war right there, right? So – or just about two war. Right there right so or just about To war so yeah I think probably

I would have rather had Mike Trout Not slide this year and last Year than have what actually Happened for anyone out there who's curious This year according to fangraphs the league's worst Base runner has been on hair of a Salarte of the Blue Jays and the second Worst base runner has been Justin smoke

Of the Blue Jays Well too bad we didn't notice that when rachel was here we could have talked about some blue jays all right andrew patrick also a patreon supporter says let's say you're a little league coach you discover after some charting of games that little league hitters are extremely predictable and that if you want to you can shift your defense to get put outs 95% of the time. You can move your best fielders around to do this with simple hand gestures and an iPad. My question is, is it morally reprehensible to win Little League games through coaching alone?

Well, okay. We've gotten this question, I think, from a few actual Little League coaches who have wondered, like, can I shift? Is it okay? Can I use numbers in this league or is that just cruel so what do you think uh okay okay look so okay so it starts someone who does this needs to hire like a spokesperson like you need to have a pr team because if you're the other team or like a parent of a player on the other team you say you're doing this because you care about the numbers like this is absurd these kids are like eight they're just trying to play with their friends who cares about winning and losing now if you're the coach the defense and you shouldn't put it like this but the justification would be well i just want to

prepare these players for what it would be like at a higher level world out there it's a cruel world and yeah you know we're not here so that we all have an equal good time. Or, you know, maybe that is actually like the motto of Little League Baseball. I don't know. But as a coach, you're concerned about your team more than you're concerned about any other.

And you figure that if we shift, if we do all these things and we're more likely to win, that makes my players happier. So I build a winning environment and I'm preparing these players. I'm building them from the ground up. Like, none of my players are going to be Bud Norris complaining about the defensive shift behind him. And with the Houston Astros, they'll be open-minded because they've been doing this since they were six.

So, yeah, sure. Maybe Tony on the other team, big boy Tony, he always pulls the ball like a soft line or a grounder between first and second because he sucks and he doesn't know how to spray the ball to left field. Learn how to hit, Tony. But if he doesn't do that, I guess, look, if I were at a Little League game and I saw a team shifting, first of all, do we trust a Little League infield to complete a play anyway? But if I saw them shifting, it wouldn't leave a good taste in my mouth. I'd be like, this is maybe over the line. But I think there is a perfectly reasonable justification that someone would need to dress up through like 10 different revisions before you can actually deliver that message.

But I think that it would be okay. Yeah, I've never coached a Little League. But in general, I subscribe to Will Leach's philosophy about this. He does coach Little League, and it's all about fun for him. He doesn't care about winning. He doesn's philosophy about this. He does coach Little League and it's all about fun for him. He doesn't care about winning. He doesn't care about competing. He hates it when other coaches in the league take things too seriously and make it about them and not about the kids. So I think the question is, does this increase or decrease fun? And I don't totally know the answer to that because I could see how it might be fun for the

kids on the defending team to be better and also to just make a game out of this and actually you know it can be fun for players it was fun for the Sonoma Stompers I think to shift and they'd never done it before and they kind of got into it as a fun experiment and an adventure. So maybe it would be that for some of the Little League kids. But it would be pretty depressing and demoralizing for the hitters who were getting out all the time. So I think on the whole it probably decreases fun. Now, I don't know. What does Little League go up to? 12 or so. So maybe once you get on the upper range of that and the kids are actually kind of competent

and coordinated and are more interested in taking it seriously and winning and losing, maybe at that point you could introduce this to an extent. But anything that's just about winning or about vindicating your coaching, that I think is probably not what you want to do. So I'd be very careful about this. Is there any strategy in Little League? Honest question, because I don't know the answer. I didn't play in Little League. I only played in high school. Is there ever any strategy that you implement? Or is it just all the same, all the same pitching, all the same defense, all the same everything for every player? I don't know. I mean, at the earliest level,

it's like coach pitch and, you know, t-ball. And I don't think there's strategy really at that point because no one is good enough to execute a strategy. But maybe once you get beyond that. But, you know, I don't know that there are really any super sabermetric coaches in Little League. And if they are, they're probably taking it too far. If you ever get to the point in Little – okay, so maybe we can put it like this. they're probably taking it too far. If you ever get to the point in little, okay, so maybe we can put it like this.

Shifting and defensive strategy starts to become acceptable at whatever level it is where you start to like pitch the best players on the other team different. As soon as you start using any strategy against a specific player on the other team, then you should feel free to implement strategy across the board.

Incidentally, do you think ever in coach pitch little league, a coach has hit a batter on purpose oh i hope not but tony keeps blowing us up i just had to send a message yeah did you speaking of uh speaking of home runs did you see nicholas castellanos's home run on thursday the bat flip caught by the empirepire. Yeah, never seen that in mind. It was already a strange bat flip because Castellanos swung, he hit the ball well, and then he turned around and flipped his bat, I think, and then the umpire just saw it.

And I don't know what was going through his head. Maybe this is going to bounce and hit one of us in the leg or something. But the umpire, for anyone who didn't see it, you can pull it up. But yeah, the umpire, for anyone who didn't see it, you can pull it up. But yeah, the umpire, Castellanos just flipped his bat straight up and the umpire came out and caught it. And I don't know what happened after that. He probably just laid

the bat down in the on-deck circle, but maybe, unless this was pre-arranged, which I think the other team wouldn't like if Castellanos and the umpire were colluding for anything, but I've definitely never seen it. So it wound up being like a two-man show, which I appreciated. Yeah.

Manny Gonzalez was the umpire. We should give him credit for executing that play. Yeah, that was pretty impressive. It made a great gif anyway. So there's that. Stat blast? Yeah, sure. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways.

Here's to DASTA+. to taste the blast. So this was hastily put together because I wrote on Thursday about the Chase Field humidor. And so the humidor was implemented in Chase Field before the season. The idea was twofold. One, so that the baseballs

would feel more grippy, which I don't know if that's happened. Strikeouts and walks haven't really changed at Chase Field this year. If anything, they've gotten worse for pitchers. But the other idea was when you store a baseball in a more humid environment, they become heavier, and their coefficient of restitution is reduced. So the ball comes off the bat with less speed. Arizona, Phoenix area, has a very low relative humidity.

I think it averages about 20% during the baseball season. The baseballs were stored at 50% humidity or something like that in 70 degrees. So using StatGast information from Baseball Savant, I was able to see my favorite comparison here was looking at home Diamondbacks versus road Diamondbacks game exit velocity. I think that sends the message. And so we have four years of this information. And so the numbers I'm going to say are the difference between average home and average road exit velocities for all batted balls by all teams involved in Diamondbacks games.

In the year 2015, the difference was plus 0.8 miles per hour. That was the highest difference in baseball. In 2016, it was plus 1.2 miles per hour. It's the highest difference in baseball in 2016 it was plus 1.2 miles per hour the highest difference in baseball in 2017 it was plus 1.6 miles per hour the highest difference in baseball double the next biggest difference and this season negative 0.1 miles per hour so based on that limited evidence but still fairly convincing evidence the humidor has well done exactly what it was expected to do, and it has rendered Chase Field kind of batted ball neutral.

So that's kind of cheating for a stat blast because I already wrote about that. There's a whole article. You can read it if you want to. You don't need to because I just told you the conclusion. But what I also did as part of this is I looked at every single team and every single ballpark. Now I'm going to say some numbers to you, and I'm going to wonder if you have any sort of explanation at all. So I told you that in Arizona, historically, the ball

has come off the bat faster than it did on the road, and that is no longer true in 2018. In 2015, in Citi Field, batted balls were 1.2 miles per hour slower than on the road. In 2016 2016 negative 1.4 in 2017 negative 1 and in 2018 negative 1.3 city field in 2015 was the second biggest negative difference and the last three years this year included it's been it's been the ballpark with the biggest negative difference batted balls have come off the bat slower so you live in new york i don't think this is a humidity thing because the Yankee Stadium isn't down there with Citi Field. But if you saw this information, would you suspect that there's something real or that this is just some weird, pervasive, persistent calibration error that's happening in Citi Field? Or it's just the Mets vortex of despair somehow slowing down batted balls. It's just the power of Jacob deGrom's terrible timing. Maybe what else would affect? I mean, are we talking about quality of contact so that if there were like a batting eye issue or something and hitters weren't seeing the ball as well, that that would affect things?

that would affect things? Sure. I mean, look, it all works together, right? If you see the ball worse, then you don't hit it as square, I guess. And I can confirm not only is exit velocity down, but I looked at expected Woba on contact and indeed in city field, that is also lower than it is in Mets road games. Okay. And that is not park adjusted. So that's not affected by that. So I don't know. All i can think of is that maybe are hitters changing their approach in some way because it's a big ballpark and it's not a great home run field so maybe they're going for contact more than they would when they're on the road is that possible i mean it's not like the most extreme is it the most extreme pitchers park now now that uh pnc right is it pnc or at&t okay well it's a pitchers park it's one of them so i don't know whether that would be it but

i don't know why it would be that extreme a difference unless they're changing their approach or they're just not seeing the ball well in Citi Field for whatever reason, because that's a thing in like Comerica, right? Like the theory goes that the batter's eye is just great there and you can see the ball really well. And so the same hitters will tend to make better contact in Comerica, even though it's a big ballpark too. And you might not hit as many home runs but you might make better contact and there's a is there another one like that where the batting eye has been a subject of some discussion i seem to remember something being published earlier this season about some park or another by i don't know mike petriello or or someone i'm not sure what i'm remembering, but that is a factor. But I've never really heard

about Citi Field being discussed in that way. Yeah, looking at, so I already mentioned expected WOBA on contact, but just looking at overall expected WOBA, which I like because it reduces the noise of regular WOBA. So since 2015, everything all together, Mets home games have had an expected WOBA of 303. Mets road games have had an expected WOBA of 320. That is a pretty substantial difference. And looking at the fan graphs, park factors, Citi Field does indeed show up as the most pitcher-friendly ballpark by like a tiny margin, but it is down there with San Diego

and Los Angeles and San Francisco. And incidentally, apparently Houston is a pitcher-friendly ballpark now? Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's hard to remember. Everyone still thinks of that as a hitter's park, but it hasn't been for a while. Yeah, what in the hell changed? Well, that's a whole different conversation. So anyway, this is about Citi Field and the take-home messages.

I don't know. Yeah, actually, that reminds me that the article I was just thinking of that Mike Petriello wrote was about the Astros Park, was about Minute Maid, because Minute Maid has, of course, that really short porch in left. And so it is the place where you can hit some of the softest home runs in baseball. And yet it is also a good pitcher's park on the whole. And Mike wrote about that too. And I don't know that he had a definitive answer, but could be Batter's Eye related. Could be that people are trying to pull the ball so much because of that short porch that it affects their performance in some way. And anyway, I'll link to that article too. You can read as he walks through it. But yeah, there are things like that that are park factors that are ways that the park affects play that are not necessarily directly related to the dimensions of the field so that's interesting yeah i guess when you see one of those stupid like

alex bregman home runs to left field in houston a home run like that creates an impression of a ballpark it's just the way that the human brain works. But it works the same way in Yankee Stadium. You see that short porch on right field and you think, well, anyone can hit a home run. What a hitter-friendly ballpark. But of course, Yankee Stadium is basically neutral historically in its current incarnation. And Houston is pitcher-friendly. Kansas City is a hitter-friendly ballpark,

even though it's almost impossible to hit a home run in Kansas City. Fenway Park has a low home run factor, even though that doesn't seem like it would be true. But it does, but that's a hitter-friendly ballpark. So it turns out home runs and park factors have only a loose relationship because home runs usually don't happen. Right. Okay, Bobby says,

I was reading the postgame comments from Kevin Gossman's latest gem against the Brewers. He credited a large part of the performance to pitching from the stretch the whole game, I believe, for the first time. Obviously, the results speak for themselves. Small sample size caveat, of course. Is there a way to check windup versus stretch splits somewhere?

Was this one of the tweaks the Braves envisioned unlocking Gossman's potential? Is this something more pitchers should try? And I took this question because you wrote about it being something that more pitchers are trying. Yeah, I did. And I am sure that I arrived at conclusion. I wrote about this, I think it was last winter, spring or something. Yeah. After I wrote it, so the theory of the article was that the windup is going away because it's just, if you were to design pitching now, given how difficult it is to maintain consistent mechanics in one throwing motion, I don't know why you would ever ask someone to have two throwing motions.

It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me why that would be the way that it is. And in theory, pitchers think that the windup allows them to increase their velocity, maybe have better balance. But in practice, when you look at the results, it doesn't really make a difference. Pitchers are as effective, if you control for everything, pitchers are as effective throwing from the stretch as they are from the wind-up so it's just a psychological thing or it's just a habit thing but we've seen a number of pitchers move away from the wind-up carlos carrasco was the first example i could think of but they're everywhere and carrasco has been dominant since he came back from the bullpen when he's been healthy

and it's just something that most relievers throw exclusively from the stretch because they expect to have base runners and starting pitchers are more from the wind up but i think that over time it should and will go away of course there are going to be hold outs because this all pitchers learn their motions from a low level and low level coaches are generally steeped in old habits so it's going to be something that takes a long time but like if you were developing pitchers i don't know why you would ever have pitchers have two motions it doesn't make any sense to me and if the most important pitches are thrown with runners on base anyway you might as well focus on throwing from the stretch so you don't have like the the john gray or like brandon maurer problems of runners are on base and i don't know what to do

now i will point out then in two of kevin gosman's three starts of the braves he's had as many walks as strikeouts so he did have one gem against the brewers hasn't been amazing but anyway that's not the question yeah all right question from ryan if the yankees miss out on both wild cards will they fire brian cashman and screw up their front office, signed Ryan, a Red Sox fan. Yeah, no. At this point, I mean, there are a couple GMs out there who I don't know what they would have to do to lose their jobs. I'm not sure if they could lose their jobs. Like Brian Cashman is just entrenched. He is just an institution. He's been the GM for 20 years now. He's been

in the organization for more than 30 years. He has survived Steinbrenners. He has survived even George Steinbrenner, and he seems to have kind of consolidated his power. So between that and, I mean, you know, Billy Bean with the A's. Could Billy Bean, he's not the GM technically, but could he get fired? Could Brian Sabian get fired? I mean, these guys have been in their roles for decades. And I think it might take not even a scandal because Cashman's had a scandal too, right? He's been in the tabloids for various stories and hasn't seemed to affect his job security.

I think it might just take an ownership change for these guys to get displaced at this point. I agree with that. I don't know. Brian Catherine will not be the Yankees GM or operate in that role for the rest of his life. Probably. But he could also do it for literally the rest of his life. Yeah, if he wanted to. It seems like he could. And I think that the Yankees realize that even if they were to somehow miss the playoffs this year, have it be a disappointing season in the end, clearly they have built a foundation here that really hasn't been seen in this organization since the one that set up the dynasty a couple decades ago.

So I think that he has done good work, and regardless of the outcome of the season, that work is recognized. Speaking of which, I recommend and will link to the article that Mark Couric wrote for The Athletic this week about how the Yankees have changed their clubhouse culture. They've made it much more rookie-friendly. They've done away with the hazing and the hierarchy. Some of the veterans like CeCe Sabathia have made a point of putting the young players on an equal footing with them. Some credit goes to Cashman, too, and Aaron Boone and other older players. Really good story and something that in this youth-oriented era of baseball, other teams should emulate and that Mike Matheny would hate. All right.

Question from Patreon supporter Sean Cusack. It's no secret rental players have been bringing back less value in recent years due to how most teams view them. What if teams traded a rental player, but what was sent back in return was decided based on how the team performed the rest of the season? There would be a base package that the selling team gets no matter what, but the package gets a little better as the team progresses in the season. You could have base package plus one if the buying team makes the playoffs, base package plus two if they win the pennant, and base package plus three if they win the World Series. Would teams go for this approach and would the league allow it? Or, you know, not even maybe winning one playoff round here or there because there's just so much randomness associated with that.

But say it's just make the playoffs or don't make the playoffs. Like if you're acquiring a player because you want to make the playoffs and then you don't, they're just two different packages there depending on what happens. This is something that happens in other sports, and I can only speak to hockey, but I think it's in the NFL and the NBA as well, but there are conditional draft picks. Have you heard of these? I know the term. I don't know what it means exactly. Yeah, they can be involved in trades, i'm just reading a reddit forum so i don't know if this

is going to be a good idea here but well i'm not going to read this comment because it's bad but what happens is that you can have you'll make a trade with the team and you'll get a draft a conditional draft pick in return and the the round of the draft pick you receive will be determined by like how many games the player that you traded plays or it can be can be based on team success so like if a team finishes i don't know if you can do it based on winning percentage but maybe like if the team makes the playoffs then you get a first round pick but if the team misses the playoffs then you get a second round pick so that does exist i don't know if it can exist or does exist with players, like players who have identities as opposed to draft picks that turn into humans.

They're like little unfertilized eggs, I guess, in a way. But it does exist. So the mechanism is there from other sports. But maybe this is something that will come to baseball when baseball decides to also embrace being able to trade more draft picks than you can currently because that's just a dumb rule or dumb absence of a rule i don't know which one it is yeah by the way there's an article up at fangrass now by dent simborski about matt kemp and uh i'm just looking at his numbers since the all-star break matt kemp has been the 12th worst hitter since the all-star break he has a 50 wrc plus that is a 173 batting average 264 on base 280 slugging so matt kemp i'm not crowing about matt kemp not being good i don't care if matt kept is good i think it was a fun story that matt kemp was good even though everyone thought he

would be bad but lately he has been kind of the player that people expected him to be yeah there's some article that was written about kemp from an old teammate or coach's perspective that said like enjoy it while it's good because as soon as he like hurts something or goes in a funk then that's just it that doesn't speak very well to i guess matt kemp's psychological willpower but in any case he uh he was fun and the dodgers enjoyed him he is uh he's bad now he's losing playing time and i'll point out that also in the second half max muncie has a w or surplus of 100 and a strikeout rate of 38 so that could be ending as well all right last one this is from

luis he says i recently re-watched an episode of the office where they have a garage sale in the warehouse dwight being dwight he challenges himself to trade a thumbtack for increasingly more valuable objects until he emerges with the most expensive item at the garage sale. He actually manages to trade all the way up to a fancy telescope, but then he falls for Jim's prank and trades it for some of his miracle legumes. What would be the equivalent in baseball? Let's say a particularly gifted GM when it comes to trades. Let's call him Perry DeHoto, challenge himself to get an all-star player from nothing. Let's say the goal is just to get that all-star on the roster no matter for how long. What's the least valuable asset Perry could start with? Or what's the most

he could get from, say, a quadruple-A player? Would there be a strategy choosing between position players, starters, or relievers? How long would this process take? Oh, man. So, okay, so maybe you start, maybe you, I can't tell which side of the Adam Lind trade you start with. You either start by trading low minors players for Adam Lind, or you start by trading Adam Lind for low minors players. But I guess you get, like, you end up with some sort of live, let's say you trade for the low minors players for Adam Lind or you start by trading Adam Lind for low minors players but I guess you get like you end up with some sort of live let's say you trade for the low minors players and then you you have some live armed 17 or 18 year old maybe he has good numbers

but he's like super distant from the major leagues but he's interesting and then you find some scouting heavy organization that really likes his arm so then you make a trade with that team you trade the low level pitcher for some minor leaguer who has like better stat cast numbers or maybe better play discipline something like that something that just seems steadier more projectable and then you just move on up from there now i don't know if you would focus on pitchers because they're more volatile or if you focus on hitters because if you find someone with a good eye maybe you can teach them power but this entire process jiradipota tries to do it every single day but this entire process would realistically take probably like three years but this has been one of those things that i've had in the back of my mind just thinking like

some gm is probably out there trying this like right now like there because there are teams that have values slapped on every single player that is professional baseball. I know this because they're outside consulting companies that do the exact same thing. And teams, I'm sure, have either signed contracts with that company or they have their own numbers. Every single player in baseball has a value. And of course, there's error bars around those values. But some teams, probably the Astros, for example, have a value on every single player. And so the Astros can look at this and say, I'm going to trade this $2 million player for $3 million player and just keep going from there. And the only thing that would really stop you is that sometimes teams just don't want to be

trading all the time. Yeah. I guess if you wanted just an all-star and you don't care what kind of all-star or if he's actually that great, you could go for one of those fluky reliever seasons that ends up being an all-star season. So you could just collect a bunch of AAA arms or, you know, AAA starters who haven't been that effective, but maybe they'll be the one guy who when you move him to the bullpen, he's suddenly amazing. So that is one way you could do it if you just want to check the all-star box, but that's maybe not quite what we're talking about here. And just in closing, I can confirm something, an example, at least of a conditional draft pick in a trade. An example, this is from

Cora. I think that's how that's pronounced. Let's assume that it's true. Thank you, Leo Ebars from March 11th, 2016. An example would be the Donovan McNabb trade from the Eagles to the Redskins in 2010. The Eagles received the Redskins number two pick pick in the 2010 draft and a conditional pick in the 2011 draft. The Eagles will receive either the Redskins' number three or number four 2011 draft pick based on the following conditions. One, whether McNabb makes the Pro Bowl in 2010. Two, whether the Redskins make the playoffs in 2010. Or three, whether the Redskins win nine games in 2010. If one or more of the three conditions above comes true, the Eagles will

receive the Redskins' third pick. If none of the conditions come true, they get the Redskins' fourth pick. So that's that. It does exist. Baseball should have it too. Yeah. And baseball has incentive clauses, of course, in player contracts. You know, if you win this award or if you pitch this number of innings or get this number of plate appearances, you make more money. That's not the same thing, but it is a conditional outcome. So something like this could probably work. All right. Happy chatting. So that brings us to the end of this episode and this week's worth of episodes. Thanks for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild, signing up and pledging some small monthly amount.

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if you are a Patreon supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We hope that you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you early next week Bye.