Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1361: A Generous Tip

Episode Date: April 10, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Willians Astudillo’s first strikeout of the season (and whether strike three should have been a foul ball), then answer listener emails about Alex Verdugo and whether it’s better to play full-time in Triple-A or part-time in the majors, what baseball would be like if players had a finite […]

And you must believe me, no matter what the people might say, you must believe me, darling, it just didn't happen that way, no, no, it just didn't happen that way. Hello and welcome to episode 1361 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello, Sam. Hello, Ben. Doing an email show. One thing I wanted to talk about before we get to that, I was watching video of Williams-Estadio's first strikeout of the season, which came on Tuesday. Not against Jacob deGrom, but against Luis Avedon. And Astadio thought he tipped it, clearly. He turned around after he swung and missed. It was not a good swing. He should not have been swinging. It was 0-2. I'm

surprised that he did swing at it, but he was surprised to be called out he kind of turned around and just acted as if he had made some slight contact it was in the dirt and not caught cleanly and the umpire signaled that he was out and that was the end of it he didn't fight about it he just turned around and trudged back to the dugout but if you were an umpire and williams estadio told you he tipped it what would your confidence level be that he did not tip it given that it's got to be a tough call to make in the first place and williams estadio seems like more of an authority on contact and all things contacted whether he made contact that seems like i don't think i don't think that the extent of his genius is like dramatically better than other people's like perceptions of touch. I think it is.

I think he's that much of an outlier. I think it should be like the Ted Williams, like the, if Mr. Williams didn't swing at it, it wasn't a strike. But his, no, no, Ben. It should be like if Mr. Williams says he tipped it, he tipped it. No, no, because his skill is not determining whether he hit the ball. His skill is hitting the ball, right? So you could say that given no other information,

if all you know is that he swung, is it likely that he made contact? Then you would say yes. But it's less likely that he would miss on a swing than for anyone else. And so if he says he didn't miss, you already, your confidence level that he actually missed has to be lower than it would be for anyone else, right? Because the odds are lower to begin with. So if he tells you, I actually made contact with that one, then that should change your prior, or I guess it's not a prior because it's after the fact, but that should change your confidence level, I think. Maybe it should change it with anyone. I don't know. Obviously, some guys

would just be lying. But since you have to be not very confident to begin with because it's him, that for me, I would guess that i probably blew the call that is you've now made a much stronger argument than your first one okay uh and i have to think about it it hmm it's interesting because this is in the again like in the in the large pool of pitches that he swings at it is true that it is much likely that much less likely that he will have swung and missed at it but is it true in it does that also uh hold true in the much smaller sample of pitches where he appears to have missed it i don't i don't really know i don't know when astadio ism stops having power um and so uh so that's a good logic question that I can't necessarily think through on the fly.

The thing about the Ted Williams example, which this is off topic here because I've already established that they're not analogies for each other in any way, but I've always felt like the guys who have really good eyes, who say that a pitch was outside the strike zone because they didn't swing at it. It's the opposite. The fact that they're extremely discerning and patient and they don't swing at a lot of pitches. It's Pablo Sandoval is the one who, if he says it wasn't in the strike zone, you should believe him, right? Because if it was anywhere near the strike zone, he would have swung at it. Like he's looking to swing. it was anywhere near the strike zone he would have swung at it like he's looking to swing ted williams didn't swing at many many pitches inside the strike zone he didn't believe in swinging at

a lot of pitches that were in the strike zone if they were not in his hitting zone and i've always i've always felt that we we get that one entirely wrong to me it's javi baez is the one who should be able to tell an umpire buddy i'm I'm Javi Baez, not Brandon Belt, who does nothing but take strikes. Right, yeah. Well, for what it's worth, I watched the slow motion replay and I still can't tell if he tipped it, but I do believe him.

I trust him. I would say that in almost any case, if a batter told me that he tipped a pitch, I would believe. Because batters swing and miss all the time they i mean not obviously not this one but most batters swing and miss a lot and they don't generally so it's almost like um all right so let's say that you're uh you know uh that you want to frame a person? And so you plant their gloves at the scene of a murder.

But when you're doing this, you don't know what their alibi was, right? And so you end up risking that you look like a real fool because maybe they were on TV at that moment, right? And therefore, people are going to say, well, wait a minute, the guy who found the glove has some explaining to do, right? And therefore, people are going to say, well, wait a minute, the guy who found the glove has some explaining to do, right? And I feel like with most swings and misses, you don't see,

generally a batter isn't going to make up, like he isn't going to pick that moment to say I tipped it because he doesn't really know how like what it looks like. Maybe he missed it by like, you know four inches you risk you risk really being really really really wrong right so i think that most

bad i don't know if that analogy is very good but i think most batters when they say they've tipped a pitch genuinely believe it and that it's not something they make up yeah and i think that probably when they believe it they're i would say that they're almost always right. I have seen batters who obviously didn't tip a pitch, who claimed that they did and who got away with it. I think I saw Starling Marte do it earlier this year. Really? Because I was going to say that one reason I might believe it

is that you don't typically get to influence that call if you're the hitter. Like sometimes guys will maybe pretend that they got hit by a pitch and then they'll get first base because they pretended but on a swing and miss usually the call is made before you even have time to turn around and say i tipped it right i mean the call is there and you don't usually see that reversed like oh i called you out but you say you tipped it all right then you get to keep hitting that doesn't happen very often so that makes it more credible to me well the one that i saw was a pitch that was in the dirt that that the catcher trapped and so it made the difference i guess it would have made the difference in the astadio case too

otherwise i doubt he would have argued but this was a pitch that you, you know, if you tip it and it hits the dirt, then it doesn't matter if the catcher comes up with it cleanly because it's already hit the dirt. And so the thing about those is that I also believe that it's more likely that a batter would actually think that he tipped that pitch because he's hearing the sound of it hitting the dirt too at the same time. It might actually be confusing sensorily for the batter as well but it's definitely an opening if if the pitch is in the dirt then the sounds are all muddled the you know it's kind of out of the umpire's view

because it's low it's it's down low near the dirt probably and not like you know up where it's it's clearly visible to him and so maybe the batter batter in the case that I'm remembering, which may or may not have been Starling Marte, was a really savvy understanding of, like, well, this is an opening. I have an opening here. And it worked. What did the Asadio one look like? Was this a pitch that just got through the catcher,

or was it a pitch in the dirt? It was in the dirt. It did not get behind the catcher. Oh, so maybe he was dirt it was in the dirt it did not get behind the catcher oh so maybe he was uh yeah so it could go either way that's a good hmm hmm uh and you say that you can't tell whether even with the slow-mo you can't tell whether he tipped it no not really i i just sent it to you if you if you want to see it It's like a GIF type thing. It's tough to tell. It's often tough to tell because it's almost at the ground anyway, so you don't really get a chance to see if its trajectory changed.

Am I going to see some good replays if I keep watching this? Yes. Oh, wow. He didn't put much – he didn't really argue this. No, he didn't put a big fight up, but, you know, it looks to me he didn't just turn around. He wanted to see if the umpire would signal something, and then he had a little dejected shoulder slump. No, I don't think he tipped that. You don't think so?

Well. I don't think so. I believe Williams. Oh, man, that is close. Yeah. Oh, man, that is close. Yeah. Oh, oh. I don't know. Yeah.

The man doesn't miss pitches. I don't think he missed it. All right. So I'll put the give up, the clip up. I'll link from the show page if you all want to come to your conclusion. Maybe I'll even poll you since we're doing polls now. I'll poll you on whether you believe Williams or not. How many times has he

swung and missed at a pitch this year? I don't know. Alright, I'll look it up while you go. Alright, so we're going to just do some emails now. I've got a bunch queued up. I'm going to start with one that I think is a great question. I'm not sure that we can answer it, but I'd really like to know the answer. This is from Keith. He says,

but he can play in the field as a defensive replacement as long as he does not come to bat more than once, or another full season with the Oklahoma City Dodgers playing every single inning of every game. My guess is that being with the big league club is better, giving him exposure to better pitchers and coaching, while also learning about the culture of playing in the majors. Let's assume that either way he is a full-time major league starter in 2020. Which approach makes him better that year? So it's the standard question of is it better to have a guy up on the big league bench and get sporadic playing time, or is it better to have him in the minors playing every day? And that's a question that teams wrestle with every year, so I'd like to know.

Yeah, it's a good question. Three out of 45 by the way 45 pitches three swinging strikes including that one counting this one okay it's a good question that wouldn't necessarily apply equally to all names that you even all 23 year old names even all top 100 prospect names that you could put up here verdugo is has 800 triple a at bats already yeah um so he is he's done that like there's not a lot more like you don't feel like you need to kind of slowly move him up the cognition ladder until he's at the majors or anything like that he's he's spent more time there than uh your typical prospect already and he's not uh he's not 19 either either. So he's older than a number of major leaguers.

And so you wouldn't worry about the character development quite as much probably as you would if he were 17 or something like that. There's also the matter of the different types of instruction you're likely to get. He would be surrounded by 25 major leaguers. the different types of instruction you're likely to get. He would be surrounded by 25 major leaguers and major leaguers, baseball players in general, love to talk shop, love to talk craft. And there's probably something to be said for sitting on a bench with Corey Seeger one inning and Justin Turner one inning and Russell Martin one inning and, and Clayton Kershaw one inning.

And just sort of like hearing those assessments of your game and other people's games around you that I, I would imagine you wouldn't get that at AAA. However, on the other hand, the AAA coaching staff, the coaching staff that's around you is specifically there to develop you as a player and to help players get better in a way that the major league hitting staff has kind of got different jobs um and you don't have the i don't think you don't have the

roving instructors coming around like you do in the minors giving you extra attention so there's that there's a lot of details here i've observed some of them but there are even more but i have an answer oh okay it's not it's not i have an answer i'm just curious but I have an answer. Oh, okay. It's not I have an answer. I'm just curious if you have an answer too. Well, as you were saying, I think the question assumes that you're getting better coaching in the majors because it's the majors. Oh. And I'm not sure that that's probably the opposite, if anything, for a young playwright.

I think, as I write in the book with Travis, there is more instruction going on at the major league level these days than there used to be, in part because there are more good young players around like Alex Verdugo who need that instruction. tend to climb the ladder the way that you do in any other job. In baseball, you can make a case that you would want your best coaches to be at the lowest levels or lower levels, at least, just because they could make more of an impact there. But I think major league coaches make more money. It's a more prestigious job. It's a cushier job. So if you're a good coach and you get promoted, you end up there. So major league coaches are good, I think, but they're also dealing with different pressures and constraints and egos. And there's less of like polishing a guy off than maybe kind of getting him back to what he's doing when he's good and, you know, getting him out of slumps and that sort of stuff. So for a young player, I'm not sure that you would

actually get better instruction at the major league level. And there isn't really much of a data difference at this point, at least when it comes to hitting. You've got TrackMan in the minors. You've got all your swing tools and everything. So I wouldn't count on that being an advantage for him. So yeah, I think that there's some unquantifiable,

I don't know if it's even like, I mean, Verdugo has been in the majors. He's played 63 games in the majors over three seasons. Is he even still rookie eligible? Yeah, I guess he is. Yeah, well, it depends on how many days he spent on the roster. Yeah, he made prospect lists. Yeah, he doesn't have the at-bats minimum yet.

minimum yet and uh i think that in his case he there's something to be said just for like being there once i think and playing there under the bright lights and getting to see major league conditions and you know playing in front of huge audiences and all that but once you've been there a few times the benefit there probably wears off i would say that in his case, also, you have to worry about just frustration and kind of a psychological stagnation, because if you feel like you're stuck in AAA and you can't do anything about it, then I don't know that you're going to be getting the benefit from seeing pitches there anyway. Yeah, well, since we're into the psychology, I mean, this is all very speculative and soft factors here so uh people will disagree with our conclusions about these specific issues but i was thinking that it could also go

the other way though in the majors where if i mean a big part of i would think that one of the things that you'd hope would be accomplished by having him in the majors for that time is that he would see himself as a major leaguer that that he would, you know, like have the confidence of a major leaguer, that he would feel like, you know, he's been there, that he's played under the third deck and he's coexisted with Clayton Kershaw and he feels like, you know, a big shot. But it somewhat depends on what that one plate appearance a day is. If it's a mop-up plate appearance where he is told for a year that you can't start, you're not good enough to start in the majors, you could see that wearing him down and him feeling like he is a lesser major leaguer.

However, if that plate appearance is leveraged and he feels like he is a key part of the team and that he's being used in a way that is very valuable, then that seems like it would be really good for him. I do think that having one... This question presupposes one guaranteed at-bat per game, which isn't... It's hard to do, right? We have now left the realm of realistic, and now we are doing a reality show.

And so I don't know exactly that you can even have this discussion because you've no longer got a realistic scenario. But if it is actually, you know, roughly one at bat per game, if he's appearing in 100, say 135 games a year, like the way that Cody Ballinger last year played every game, he led the majors in games played because he was good and valuable. And so if they did the same thing with Verdugo, where he basically played 135 or 140 games without ever starting, I feel like that's, that would be pretty good. Like that's almost, to me, almost as good as playing all the time. Like you've got to be mentally in the game. You're not lounging in

the clubhouse. You're not sort of checked out. You're not going into every day expecting that, like, ah, you're probably not going to bat. And so I think that that is, that would be, like, I would say like 96% of the value of a full season in the majors, even if it's not, even if it's not every at bat, it's every day. He's not going to stagnate. He's not going to get stale on the bench. He's not going to go nine days without playing and wonder every day whether he's going to be him in AAA because I think there is a real value to seeing hundreds, thousands of pitches, I think, at least up to a certain point, or maybe there isn't even a point where it stops helping. I don't know. I think that having seen many, many pitches is a big part of why baseball players are as good as they are. And so I think that that continues to help you.

As Russell Carlton has written, your prefrontal cortex is developing until you're 25 or so in many cases, and that can be responsible for pattern recognition and things that you would think would be helpful for recognizing pitches and knowing what's coming next. And so I think all of that can be very valuable. And actually, one thing that I heard from Mike Fast, formerly of the Astros and currently of the Braves when I was working on the book, is that the Astros were able to

kind of rush pitchers. They could promote pitchers pretty quickly through the minors, but it just didn't work as well with hitters, and that it seemed like hitters needed a certain amount of time at each level just to adjust to it or to fully flourish there. And obviously there are exceptions to that, and you get your Juan Soto, who's amazing in the majors at 19, but he's kind of the outlier, I think, in general. You really benefit from playing time and from seeing pitches. So particularly for hitters, if it's a young guy and he's not Juan Soto, I think I would opt toward, you know, maybe you bring the guy up just to say, hey, this is what it's like. This is what you're playing for. You're going to be back here someday. We believe in you.

But then if it's just going to be playing once a week or twice a week or something, then you do leave him down until you have a spot open. Yeah, I basically agree with that. If this were somebody who was 19 or younger, I would go the minor league route. I think I would probably be comfortable with the major league route a little younger than it sounds like you are. comfortable with the major league route a little younger than it sounds like you are and i also think that i'm not the part of the yeah well anyway yeah all right this is a question from patreon supporter adam he says when i was first watching baseball as a child i briefly thought

that when the commentator said a batter was retired in the context of making an out that the player was now forced to retire from baseball, I guess because he made an out too many times. If baseball actually worked this way, where players would be forced to retire after making some number of outs, what is the smallest that this number could be without messing up the game? How quickly would the league collapse due to lack of hitting talent if the number were something like 1,000?

When I was a kid, I remember turning on the car and intending to listen to the Giants game, which was in progress. And right as I turned it on, the broadcaster said the score, which at the time it was like the second inning and the Giants had scored and the other team had not. So it was one nothing, but they said the score at the Giants won. And I went, yes. and not so it was one nothing but they said the score at the giants won and i went yes that's what i remember i remember i remember which direction that car was facing and i that's a very strong memory for me i don't know why seven maybe yeah this is a good question i responded to this question because i was interested in it. So let's try to remember what I said. So, all right, as I pointed out, you wouldn't have Miguel Cabrera's triple crown season if you had fewer than 5,000 outs before you were retired.

I do, I sort of do like the idea of, well i did i really liked the idea um in a in a in a non-real world kind of way i really like the idea of having of putting a scarcity of forcing a scarcity into the game that i mean we like we like a lot of the conversations that we have in this in this uh space are all about imposing new restrictions on the sport and what would happen. And of course, the main restriction on the sport right now is that you will get old and you only have so many games before you do get old and you're obsolete. But here we have been introduced to a new scarcity, which would be outs made in your career. And so I like the idea that we would be counting down. You know that Justin Timberlake movie where you had a certain... I liked that movie. I actually liked it.

Okay. I saw it on an airplane. That might be why I liked it. But this was a movie where you had a certain amount of time and then you would die and you could buy time. Like a Logan's Run type thing? Never saw Logan's Run. I only see bad movies. Well, it's not great. What's Logan's Run? Tell me about Logan's Run. It's this society where when you turn 30, you die. It's just like to conserve resources or whatever old sci-fi movie. Sounds similar premise.

Yeah, sort of. Anyway, Justin Timberlake, back to baseball. So the idea that you would, the way that you would watch this game where you know that an out is extra precious, that it's incredibly precious to the hitter as well, does kind of add a certain amount of emotion to it that I think would be fun.

And you'd be tracking players. You'd really start to have to decide, like, when does the count get scary? In Singapore, they have these units that you can't buy public housing. They have all this public housing, these condos that everybody lives in. And you basically buy them, but you can't own them. What you do is you buy them with a hundred year lease. And then after a hundred years, the government gets them back, which is not likely to affect you when you buy them in year one. But now we're getting to like 40, 50 years. And I'm interested. I know people who live in these units and I'm interested to know when the market value is really going to start to react to this. Because so far, mostly they haven't.

But at some point, you're like, year 60? Do I care now? Year 70? Do I care now? And I think it would be interesting to watch Miguel Cabrera bat when he has 4,890 outs left to go. And then when he has six left to go or 200 do you get used less do you i think you would see a lot more platooning for one thing i think that batters would be very possessive of their outs they wouldn't want to give them out so instead of wanting to bat five times in a game

they would want to maybe bat three times against the pitchers they think they could hit in a game so that's maybe wouldn't be fun anyway i felt like it would work better in a season rather than being retired for forever. I thought it would be more interesting if a team could apportion its outs among players. But once a player had had made a certain number of outs, they were burned. You just couldn't keep going back to that well. But really, I haven't thought that one all the way through either. Yeah, I think on a career level, I would hate it. I think it might ruin baseball for me. I mean, first of all, outs are already something that players are pretty diligently trying to avoid. It's not like they're just walking up there and taking a whole lot of at-bats off at this point

because, A, outs are precious to teams. And in theory, players want their teams to win. And so they're trying to avoid that. And there's a lot of incentive for them to do something good with their plate appearance and not make an out because their stats are at stake and their salary is at stake and their reputation is at stake. So they're already trying really hard. I mean, maybe if there were a countdown clock on their career that were plate appearance-based, they would try even harder than that. I'm not sure that we would even be able to tell the difference. I think they're probably pretty close to their maximum effort. get that but then you'd have like a you'd inevitably have a just it would be part of the the chyron on the screen when they come up like here's their batting average they're on base percentage they're slugging percentage and here's how many play appearances they have left and if that were counting down to when they just have to go away that would depress me i think i i think

i would hate that i would just dread every out so much where it would make me think of, I don't know, my mortality or something in a way that we watch baseball to avoid thinking about. It's like when I play video games, for instance, I don't like when a level has a clock. Sometimes there's a reason why it needs to have a clock and that's okay and it makes it more fun. and it makes it more fun. But I think of, there's this game for Dreamcast called Jet Set Radio, which is this kind of cel-shaded game where you rollerblade around and grind on stuff in the city,

and you're doing graffiti tags everywhere. And the original game was fun, but it had a clock that was constantly counting down on every level, and I found it very anxiety-inducing. Whereas the sequel, Jet Set Radio Future, was sort of the same except it had no clock. And suddenly there was no time pressure. And it was all about just this leisurely making your way through the level and exploring and enjoying the music and the scenery.

And I love that game. That's one of my favorite games. So I think I'm just not a countdown clock person. I don't like trivia when there's a clock counting down. All I can think about is the clock. Maybe this is why I like baseball, that there's no clock. I wouldn't mind a pitch clock, but a clock counting down toward the end of the game is not something that is part of my typical sports viewing experience, as it is for most people. And I like that.

There's the whole romantic, like, oh, baseball has no expiration date and it could go on forever. And philosophically, I kind of like that, even if it gets annoying when games go really long sometimes. But just in general, I like not seeing a time ticking away. I just like being able to take your time and enjoy things as they come. Well, I think we need to separate this idea and probably all ideas into two different goals that it has. One of the goals for a restriction like this would be to change the incentives of the players, to give them something else to think about, to change the way that they would play, to make their process of decision-making more complex, right? We like ideas that add strategy, that add sort of a degree of nuance

so that plate appearances and games and so on have more variety and more to think about within them. And in the way that you described it, you're right. What this does is incentivize batters to not do the thing that they are already incentivized not to do. It would not really change anything once you step into the batter's box. It would change parts of the game. The strategy that would change would be resource management, both for the player in his personal career and also for the team that doesn't want to lose the player or hasten the player's retirement. And so you would see, I think you would see, like, it'd be a lot harder decision. Who do you send up to face, you know, Max Scherzer? up by a certain number of runs?

Are you going to pull guys? Right, because he doesn't want to play. And I don't think that that's, I think that there's some potential there to think through it and maybe it comes out interesting. But for the most part, it doesn't change the fundamental practice of batter against pitcher. And therefore, it is redundant. And therefore, it is not really useful and we should reject it.

And therefore, it is redundant. And therefore, it is not really useful and we should reject it. But the other aspect is, does it give you more reason to care? And you, it would make you care more, but you are opting not to care in that way, which I think is reasonable. It is a different, it would cause you anxiety and you would not like that. I'd care so much that it would be unpleasant. It would be unpleasant. But I think I'm open to the idea that it would go the other way,

that it would actually be really – first of all, I think that if you had a guy who was down to his last out and like the whole nation would be cheering for him to get a hit in a way that, you know, like we all were cheering for Ichiro to get a hit, to beat that ball out on his last, what we knew to be his last played appearance. But imagine if it didn't have to be his last played appearance, if he could keep playing, if he could continue to earn a sort of an, theoretically, you could earn your immortality in the game. And like that clock, I don't know. Again, I don't know when that clock would start to really register for us. But I would really be rooting hard for Mike Trout to not just do Mike Trout things, but to avoid outs. If Mike Trout grounded to third and the guy threw it away right now, I'd be really excited.

I'd be like, that's awesome. Like he's getting closer to, you know, setting records with every out that he manages to avoid. And then when you finally do get your final out, there would be a real clear moment for everybody to stop and applaud you. And some players do get that good retirement. You know, Ichiro got that good retirement. He was able to craft the retirement he wanted. Most players, almost all players do not. You know, Jim Edmonds just didn't get to play anymore. Like he was even really good in his final year and he just didn't get to play anymore because no one signed him and i never got to stand and applaud for jim edmonds and i i feel like there would be a ritual to the retirement

of a player the forced retirement of a player if it took place in this way it it also does really feel like putting your elders on an ice flow yeah and so i'm against it. But if you were to write a novel about this world, I think it could be a compelling novel. It would be one thing if there were an upside to kind of an enforced retirement age in baseball because whatever, you got sick of players or they weren't good anymore, but they just got to stay around because of seniority or something, which happens in other industries. But in baseball, which is at least more meritocratic, that doesn't happen so much. When you start making a lot of outs, you don't get to play baseball anymore, at least in the majors. And so I think that's part of it. It's not like there's any benefit to getting rid of guys sooner because you get to stay only as long as, obviously, or you would really impact the quality of play in baseball because you just wouldn't attract as many players. No one's going to devote their whole lives to playing a game that they have to retire from after a thousand plate appearances or whatever. Well, a thousand's absurd.

A thousand's way too low. A thousand's two seasons, you know, three seasons, even if you're good. If you get to 5,000, then you're really only affecting a very low percentage of players anyway. So maybe it doesn't make that huge a difference. It would still make a pretty big difference in terms of career earnings for some guys, or at least it would have when old players used to get big contracts. But that's something you'd have to worry about too. I wouldn't want it to dissuade anyone from pursuing baseball

and lose any promising athletes over this. I think how sad it'd be if you made your final three outs on a triple play. You thought you were taking your final lap. Yeah. And all of a sudden it's just done. Yeah, this is depressing me. I don't want this. All right. Stat blast? Yeah, sure. Yeah, this is depressing me. I don't want this. Alright. Snap blast?

Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. You can just talk. I will stick the song in. Alright. 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 Dastablast Yeah, so this one is, I'll warn you, not entirely satisfying. It's just one of those ones that you can't answer it all the way with the stats, as it turns out. But I was listening to the radio broadcast of a game the other day,

and I heard an announcer. The bases were loaded. There was one out and a full count, which, as we all know, means nothing. That's not a situation. That's just a normal baseball situation. If there were two outs, then, of course, the runners would be off on the pitch because it's a full count and there are two outs. But there was only one out.

And the announcer said, Whenever I see bases loaded one out, I think of the late, great Don Zimmer. He put the men in motion in a situation like this one, and it paid off more than it didn't. I saw him do it with the Cubs. He told me he started doing that way back in his days with the Padres. And so this is, to be clear, Don Zimmer, according to this story, would have the runners go.

They would attempt to steal with the bases loaded and one out in a full count, which is like I just i almost pulled over thought could that be and instead i drove i kept thinking could that be and i drove home and i did a stat blast i mean can you imagine ben the base is loaded and you're like we we're going to go. Can you imagine? No. No. No. You couldn't imagine. And so sometimes you hear things that happened, supposedly happened long ago. And the teller is telling you in good faith, but the story has been mangled along the way, exaggerated along the way.

Who knows if it happened? And so I tried to find out whether this was true, whether either Don Zimmer or anybody ever did this. And it's a tricky thing to query on Playindex because well, for one thing, before 1988, we don't have counts. We don't have pitch data.

And so lots of guys were caught stealing with the bases loaded and one out. I can tell you that. Lots and lots of guys were. But most of them, as you might realize now or in a couple minutes, if I let you think about it, were busted suicide squeezes. You put the squeeze on. Guy doesn't get the bunt down. Catcher tags you out. That's a caught stealing.

And maybe there would be pickoffs in there too. But probably we're mostly talking about suicide squeezes. And so most of Don Zimmer's managerial career takes place in the pre-pitch count era. And so we're somewhat limited to a little bit of a proxy, which is that we have to find instances where the bases are loaded, there's one or no outs, the runner is caught stealing, and the batter strikes out, which would mean that the batter had two strikes on him. And if the batter had two strikes on him, you almost certainly wouldn't be calling a suicide squeeze.

And so maybe you would. Again, the idea that 40 years ago ago managers were calling suicide squeezes with two strikes is actually a lot more plausible to me than that they were having runners steal with the bases loaded. But one way or the other. And so I'm going to assume, though, that if a batter struck out and on the same pitch a runner was caught stealing home, that most likely that was this play that we're talking about. And those are also hard to query, by the way, because you, well, for reasons having to do

with Playindex, which is an incredible tool and everybody should get. So anyway, to answer the question about Don Zimmer specifically, Don Zimmer had four managerial stints with four different teams. And going back to his time as a padre, two years as a padre, which according to this story, he did this as a padre. There were no runners caught stealing with the bases loaded during his two years as a padre. And then he went to the Red Sox and there was one runner caught stealing. Sorry, with the padres, nobody was even caught. There was none. There was no confusion at all. Nobody was ever caught stealing with the bases loaded. And then with

the Red Sox, there was one runner caught stealing with the bases loaded and one out, but it was not on a strikeout. And so that appears to be a busted squeeze. And then he went to the Rangers in 81 and 82, and there was one, but not on a strikeout. And so again, apparently this was a squeeze. And then he went to the Cubs, which is where this broadcaster remembers this happening in his own telling. And there were a couple, two in his four years were caught stealing.

One was not on a strikeout. And so we can throw that one out. But the other one was. The other one, there actually was an instance where in the 12th inning with the bases loaded one out tie game 1-1 3-2 count randy myers was pitching to manny trio and don zimmer sent the runners and it did not work out there was a strikeout which is not uncommon against randy myers uh and vance law was thrown out at Law was thrown out at home, not thrown out at home.

He was tagged out at home. Vance Law had one stolen base that year, so he was not exactly a threat to steal home on a straight steal. And that ended the inning. So I also found one other reference to this legend of Don Zimmer, which is that when Don Zimmer passed away, Tim Kirchhen wrote that in 1982, twice that year, I saw him hit and run with the bases loaded and neither worked, something I'd never seen before or since. So I don't know what neither worked meant because

it didn't, what is it? I don't know exactly what it worked would be. I mean, it's not going to lead to a stolen base, obviously. Ideally, worked would mean either you stayed out of a double play, or it so discombobulated the other team that they threw a bad pitch and the guy walked, or a guy covering, leaving his position to cover the bag for some dumb reason would have been out of position and a ball would have snuck through. And, you know, we just don't have enough three, two bases loaded, one out situations to tease that out of the statistical record. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn't. But Kirchner says neither worked. So I don't know. But it happened then. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It happened. This happened. This crazy thing happened.

And in fact, so Zimmer though, to finally put a bow on this, again, we don't know. This is all, anything before 1988, it's very hard to know what happened. I don't really, I can't think of a way to prove what happened except to ask the people that were involved. But in 1980, which is the year before Don Zimmer went to the Rangers, the Rangers actually had three runners thrown out at home with the bases loaded and fewer than two outs, which is a modern record of sorts.

And one of them was clearly a broken suicide squeeze, but the other two were on strikeouts. And so that was before Zimmer was there. That was Pat Corrales was managing. And we don't know the counts. We don't know why these guys were going. We don't know if this was about trying to do the Zimmer, but those were both players who with one or no outs were attempting to steal home with the bases loaded and two strikes on the batter and they were thrown out. And so there's some indication that this was actually a thing

that was happening in baseball in 1980, not just from Don Zimmer, but from other managers. And I would be open to other hypotheses of why those runners would be going, what else might have happened. And I would also be interested in your reaction to the fact that this was a thing that during my lifetime, runners were stealing with the bases loaded. Yeah, well, I am surprised and impressed that there was some factual basis to this because so often when there's a story like this, as you said, it turns out to have been misremembered or just completely invented

out of whole cloth. It's like the, Rob Neier calls these tracers, right? I don't know if Rob Neier invented that, but when you actually go back and you look at things that old ballplayers said about certain situations, it's wrong a very high percentage of the time. That's actually the same thing that David Smith of RetroSheet told us when we had him on the show, that in his history of checking claims in stories like these, they are very often wrong. I guess and it is Sort of surprising that this would be something That happened with any regularity but Maybe not so surprising when you Consider just how Bad in-game tactics were Until pretty recently and How often teams were

Just making mistakes very Almost self-evident mistakes or what seem like Self-evident mistakes now Whether it's with pitch outs Which almost never happened anymore. When was the last time you saw a pitch out? Pitch outs are really decreasing. Intentional walks, sacrifice bunts, all that stuff is just a lot less common than it was

even a decade or two ago. So it does not shock me that teams would have done something like this a few decades ago. So we don't know how many times Don Zimmer did this. The strikeout rate was a lot lower back then, obviously. But even if you figure 15% or so, I don't know what the strikeout rate on 3-2 would have been in 1980. So it's hard to know. But I don't know.

You figure maybe there's a one in four chance that when you have a 3-2 count that you're going to have a strikeout. The fact that only one batter got caught stealing suggests that he didn't do it that many times. I mean, he didn't do it probably a hundred times. Maybe you want to give batters credit for putting the ball in play or Zimmer credit for knowing when to do it and having an extremely low strikeout rate on these situations, but even still, probably more than 10 would be stretching belief if only one ever got caught on this right so what let's say that he did this nine other times and one of them led to vance law getting thrown out at home in the 12th inning of uh of a tie

game do you think there's anything in the other nine that could collectively lead you to conclude that yes more often than not it did work out for him no i don't think so yeah me neither in his defense manny trio was a very low strikeout hitter up to that point well fairly low strikeout hitter up to that point. Fairly low strikeout hitter up to that point in his career, but he was 37 and he struck out a bunch that year. But the rush you got from the first time it worked was so good that you just keep chasing that. But we don't know how many times it happened. Yeah. I wish we could ask him.

All right. Question from Mike in Springfield, Virginia. Wanted to ask you a question about Ichiro Suzuki. If Ichiro came into the league today and was taught to hit the way that most teachers seem to hit, to lift the ball with a higher launch angle, would he have been as successful? Itro hit the ball on the ground a lot with a chopping motion, perhaps reminiscent of Ty Cobb. I wonder if modern techniques would have taken that away from him and hurt his career. There was a question on Deadspin the other day on Drew McGarry's fun bag, which was if guns and roses came out today would they be big stars if they were like you know if they had note for note they played the songs that made the

massive stars but they were like now like 64 year old 64 years old just shredding um would they be hits and and drew i think rightly concluded that no they wouldn't even they wouldn't even get signed yeah so the there's a question here of of would Ichiro have been trained out of being Ichiro but there's also the the question of would would Ichiro have is do you think there's any chance that Ichiro would have languished that he would I mean like you know not to keep going back to Williams-Estadillo, but like the man has like a 1200 OPS right now and he's been hitting the whole time. Yeah. But he just didn't do it right because he was, you know, if he he was apparently born 60 years too late to be a superstar in a lot of in the way we play. But but it was there and it maybe is there. Do you think there's any chance that Ichiro, like, for instance, wouldn't have been desirable to major league teams when he record in Japan. I mean, if he had just been a regular minor leaguer who hit that way, Japanese or otherwise,

I don't know that anyone would have expected much from him, and probably someone would have tried to change the way that he hit. I wonder whether we've gotten more open to pattern-defying players or less open to them over time. Like today, are we more receptive to the guy who doesn't look like most baseball players do? Or was there just more variation in the past and so it was more typical to have non-standard, unorthodox guys,

whereas now there's maybe more agreement on what orthodoxy is and what the ideal mechanics are. And so maybe we're less tolerant of approaches that deviate from that. I don't know. I mean, you still get your Altuves who was discounted, you get Pedroia, you get, I mean, even Mookie Betts was not a very top prospect early in his career. So I think there's still a lot of skepticism of guys like that. And I'm sure there would have been and would be a lot of skepticism of Ichiro. Now, if he were hitting high 300s at every level, I don't know that you'd change that. Like. I'm sure there would be some guys who, if Itro was hitting 390 in rookie ball or something, some hitting coach would look at him

and say, you can do this in rookie ball, but he's going to get overpowered when he gets to AA or AAA or the majors. This isn't going to work anymore. And to be fair fair that would probably be a true assertion for most players Ichiro was one of a kind I think in his ability to place the ball and hit it where he wanted to hit it at least in his era so it wouldn't be a bad move if you had a hundred guys who hit in the way that Ichiro did Ichiro himself might be the only one who actually pans out, so maybe it would make sense to change most of them. But Ichiro himself, if you changed him, I think he would have been worse. I think it's safe to assume. It's a little different for him because with him specifically, there was always the talk of, well, he could hit for power if he wanted to, and he puts on these shows in batting practice. And so there was always the suspicion that he could hit in a more conventional way and

still be good. And maybe he could have, we'll never exactly know the answer to that question, although I tried to write about it once. But I think for most players, when they get to the big leagues, I think Jeff and I answered a question similar to this one about frank thomas who had like a walt riniac style batting philosophy that was at least in theory kind of more contact oriented and and less launch angle-y and so we got a question about would frank thomas have been better if he had hit with modern hitting mechanics and my conclusion was probably not because he was one of the very best hitters of all time in his prime. And it's like, if you're that good, then you almost have to assume that if you do something different, it's not going to make you

better and might make you worse. On the other hand, I just wrote a book about a lot of guys who got to the major league level and were at least successful enough to do that and then dramatically changed things and got even better. So there is some possibility that if you have those skills, like a lot of the guys who've embraced the launch angle stuff and it's worked for them have been guys who had a lot of ability and could make contact and could hit the ball where they want it to. had a lot of ability and could make contact and could hit the ball where they want it to. That's a point that Joey Votto has made about like JD Martinez and Justin Turner, that these guys got to the highest level with their suboptimal mechanics. And so it's not like you could teach anyone to hit the way that they do and they would suddenly be those guys. I wonder if a team saw Ichiro's stats, like a team today, let's say that Ichiro were, you know, in Japan doing what he was doing, hitting 380 with the great speed and a reputation for an outstanding arm

and all that. And they thought, oh, let's, let's go sign him. Do you think they would rather they get there and see a guy who is hitting just like a normal, like just looks normal, just a normal swing, you know, normal hitting mechanics, everything's normal. And he's hitting 350 in Japan. Or do you think they would rather see a guy who's doing it like Ichiro, where it's unlike anything that you've ever seen? And maybe they then think, ah, now we can even make him better. Yeah, I wonder because that's kind of been the knock on hitters in Japan that like power doesn't translate as well or at least it hasn't. And so that was one thing about Itro.

Like his skills obviously translated very well. He was just about as good in the majors or close to it as he was in Japan, even despite the higher level of competition here, whereas some other guys who were maybe more power-oriented, they took a bigger hit when they made that jump. So maybe that kind of insulated him against that change. But also what you're saying that maybe, right, they would like it because they would think we could take these raw materials and craft them into something even better. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's a good question. I think that one thing that technology allows teams and coaches to do is to look past the surface stylistic stuff. And if you have data on a guy's bat speed or how he hits the ball, that's ultimately what matters.

And so if you know that a guy is making consistent good contact, then everything he does up to that point really doesn't matter that much. Or maybe it matters if you think it will impair his ability in the future. contact then everything he does up to that point really doesn't matter that much or you know maybe it matters if you think it will impair his ability in the future but really what you care about is what happens when the ball hits the bat or how often it hits the bat and so i think that has made it more possible for guys to look different but still 60 and still get bumped up the ladder because you can't really argue with the results and we're better at quantifying and measuring the results than we used to be. But I would guess that Ichiro, when you're talking about a Hall of Fame player, I would think that he's already got to be close to maxing out his abilities and that any dramatic

change you make to that player is more likely to hurt than to help. Oh yeah. Okay. So each row was the, was the number nine prospect in baseball before he came over, right? Baseball America had him number nine the spring before his rookie year. And I don't know, it wasn't that long ago. Yeah. My guess is that each row would have been, I don't know. It wasn't that long ago. Yeah. My guess is that Ichiro would have been, if he came over now, he would have been allowed to be exactly as he is. And he would be viewed exactly as he was.

And probably not much would have changed. Yeah. Well, he just had such a track record. He was 27 by the time he came over. over but what if he hasn't been hitting high 300s in japan for years and is in the middle of his career and is at the beginning when you can probably change what a guy does more easily yeah if he'd been right yeah that is true but he had a track record what i wondered is japan didn't have a track record of like at that point there were there weren't dozens of major leaguers who had who had made the transition from Japan to the United States.

And so there wasn't like that kind of – there weren't the rules of thumb, I guess, that we have now for how well the talent translates. Uh-huh. Right. Okay. Last question. We've gotten a couple like this, but I will read this one. This is from Mike who says, baseball god has given you an expansion team and 35 wins above replacement to distribute across your team of players that appear suddenly on your roster. How do you distribute your war to win the World Series? Does everyone become a slightly positive player or do you build a scrubs and stars team with one player that is better than two Mike Trouts? with one player that is better than two Mike Trouts. Is there historical precedent for building teams in a specific way, or is this just personal preference on team building?

35 is such an annoying number. Yeah, it's not quite enough. Yeah, you really can't. You have to decide whether it's worth building a team that's going to be dominant when dominant or i guess tailored to the postseason or whether it's going to be a team that is tailored to the regular season to get you there if it were 43 wins above replacement then i think you build then i then i think you build a team with i mean probably the the one loophole here you have is that your relievers are going to be undervalued

by their war uh-huh and uh so you if you if you knew you were getting to the world series especially or to the playoffs especially i think that you would probably put a disproportionate number of your wins in in relief i mean those those wins would cost a lot more on the free agent market for instance um and you're getting them here for retail or for whatever. I guess retail normally has a different meaning than I'm trying to use it here. You're getting them here for that flat rate. But 85 wins, which is about what a 35-war team could be expected to do.

Now you've got to overperform a little in the regular season just to get there. And then I think that you probably want depth you're you're probably gonna try to build as deep a team as you can and uh hope that your depth gets you through the long season more than another team's does and uh so i'm thinking like probably I'm getting three two-win relievers and then getting all one or two-win players around the roster and trying to have the best 25th guy on my team, knowing that at certain points in the season, he's going to have to be my 16th best guy or 18th best guy. And that's my strategy. What about you? Yeah. best guy and that's my strategy. What about you? Yeah. Well, the similar question was from a Patreon supporter, Jeff Snyder, and I answered his question and I guess I feel sort of the same

way about this one, but both of the questions presupposed that you have this omniscient deity that's giving you a certain number of war and you know how many war you're getting in advance, which if you know that, it just, it doesn't matter, right? I mean, at least in that season, if you know I'm getting 35 war or 40 war or whatever, then, and that's your team and you're stuck with it, then who cares if it's coming from a bunch of okay players or, you know, one amazing player and a bunch of scrubs. You know where you're getting anyway, right? But usually in real life, you don't know that. And even in this scenario,

maybe you know that that's what you're getting the potential for, but things could still go wrong. You could still have someone get hurt maybe. I mean, the risk with having it all concentrated in a couple of incredible players is that one of those guys can get hurt and then suddenly your team stinks. If you want to, assuming you have payroll room, then it's a lot easier to go from a terrible player to an average player than it is to go from an average player to a great player. So there are arguments for both sides, which I guess is what makes it an interesting question. I think I would probably rather minimize the risk a little and spread the talent around. I wouldn't want to depend on one or two incredible players who could kill my season. And maybe that is one reason why

teams historically have not paid at a nonlinear rate for war that you would think that they would, just because if one player is worth 10 wins, in theory, that's more valuable than two 5-win players because it only uses up one roster spot. On the other hand, it exposes you to the risk of losing all 10 wins if something happens to that one guy. And that risk would be something that would weigh heavily on me. So I think I would spread it around a little bit and I'd want to have a few roster spots that were just black holes basically so that I could upgrade and and maybe it's worth thinking about in terms of what happens in future seasons after this first season when you know how many war you're

going to get maybe you don't know after that and so in theory maybe it's better to have a broader distribution just so that if that one guy leaves or something, you can still field a competitive and so there's going to be yeah like you might over perform or underperform but like you can't really manage that over and under performance it's kind of out of your control however i did take it to mean that i could not go out and add other players beyond that that like that okay that i was set and so if i had a player who was um you know well below replacement i could bench him but i couldn't replace him yeah if that makes sense yeah um and so uh so i hope we'll have to get clarification from the asker but yeah the tricky thing i mean i think almost everybody at some point thinks it's that it's really weird that we treat wins more or less linearly that because it makes a lot more sense that a six win player would be more than twice as valuable as two, three win players because of the limitations

on roster space. And yet that doesn't seem to be how the market works. And there are different explanations for why the market doesn't work that way, including sort of psychological and, and, and economic reasons. But I, I feel like one of them is just that the, that the great, the subtext of all this is that,

that yes, there is the risk of getting zero out of everybody that there, that is out of your control. And that, that risk kind of applies to all players equally. So while Mike Trout is a thousand times better than everybody else, he's not a thousand times less likely to trip on a sprinkler, you know? Yeah.

And that's just kind of like that's the nature of the bad outcomes is they apply equally to all the good guys equally, you know, as much as to all the bad guys. And I know that that's baked into the projections. Like, that's why Mike Trout is projected to be an eight win player instead of a nine win player or whatever the case may be, because there's that regression for the worst case outcomes as well. because there's that regression for the worst case outcomes as well. But the impact that it would have on your team feels like it's hard to just kind of treat that as one of the average outcomes that you're counting on. By the way, for anyone who's wondering, because we get this question sometimes, team war is very closely correlated with team wins.

And the way it works, at least statistically, is that a replacement level team is expected to get 48 wins. So a team with 35 war, in theory, should be something like an 83 win team. And it does basically work out that way, historically speaking. So I was going to end there. I just got an answer to a question while we were recording this from someone I asked about it. So I'm going to very quickly read this because I think it will be quick. This was from another Patreon supporter, Sean McKelvey. He says, why don't pitchers get the same sort of uneven arms that tennis players do? If you're unfamiliar with this phenomenon, I would recommend a Google image search. Basically, tennis players, at least some of them, get much larger muscles in their arms with their dominant hand that they use to swing the racket. So Sean says, is it the nature of

pitching being a whole body activity? It still feels like they would use their pitching arm significantly more than their non-pitching arm, right? So I asked Kyle Bode of Driveline Baseball about this. He probably knows the most about pitching and pitcher training of anyone I know, or at least can direct message quickly. And he says they do. They do get uneven arms. It's just not as pronounced because pitching involves fewer repetitions at higher speeds plus lighter weights, which means less chance of hypertrophy or hypertrophy, however you pronounce that, and less muscle building. So if you could measure with great precision the right and left arms of pitchers or non-Pat Vendetti pitchers,

then you probably would see that their throwing arms are slightly larger and stronger. But visually, I think pitching leads to less muscle building. And maybe pitchers' arms are just less exposed also than tennis players' arms are because tennis players are playing in tank tops and short sleeves a lot and pitchers are not playing in those as often. So maybe we could actually tell if they were. Yeah, there are weird photos on uh google image of tennis players but also when i was looking at them it felt like they were all flexed photos they were all photos of like the arm mid-swing and you felt like you were

kind of being misled by right yeah that's true too because there were some that looked totally normal also and uh maybe it depends on your training regimen too. I mean, you do see like competitive arm wrestlers do have one larger arm, at least some of them than the others do. But if you're an athlete and you're doing whole body workouts all the time and you're probably training both arms

and training your shoulders, I mean, you probably don't want a lopsided arm and maybe having a lopsided body would just make you more unbalanced or less coordinated or increase your injury risk. I don't know. I feel like now we're stretching. Let's go back to Kyle and get some real answers again. Yeah. I think Kyle's answer is the right answer. But usually like if you're in the gym, you're doing the rep with both sides. I mean, you could just focus exclusively on one. I guess it would save you time if there were no downside and all you cared about was your ability to increase that one muscle size or strength.

But, yeah, I don't think that happens so often. All right. If anyone knows of any pitchers with lopsided arms, feel free to send us images. But don't send us gross images of pitchers pitching because sometimes those will turn your stomach of a pitcher in mid-delivery where you can just see his UCL snapping, basically. All right. So that will do it for today. And I will talk to you next week. All right.

Bye. Okay. Thanks to everyone for listening. I will talk to you next week. All right, bye. Okay, thanks to everyone for listening. As a reminder, I will put a link to a poll up so you can watch Williams-Estadillo's strikeout slash foul and vote on what actually happened there.

And if you're interested in the responses to our previous poll, in episode 1360, we did a draft of fun teams in baseball, and the results were pretty overwhelming. The listeners agreed that Meg drafted the most fun selection of teams. With the 255 responses, Meg got 44.5% of the votes. I came in second with 30.7%, and Sam came in third with 24.8%. And I don't disagree. I think Meg actually did get the most fun teams, so thanks to everyone for participating. some of you contacted us about a story this week about a connecticut high school baseball field that was doused in gasoline and set on fire in order to dry it faster this is something that we may well have bantered

about except that hang up and listen got there before we did hang up and listen is one of our favorite podcasts sam and i appear on it pretty often. It's Slate's sports podcast, and you should always listen to it. But if you listen to this week's episode in particular, there's a fun afterball that Josh Levine did toward the end of the episode about the history of fields being doused in gasoline and set on fire to dry them more quickly. Spoiler, it's usually not a good idea, although it apparently has worked on occasion. So go check that out. I'll link to that too. You can support our podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up to pledge some small monthly amount and help keep the podcast going. Jared T, Andrew Phillips, Ben Morrison, Joseph Owen, and David Kim. Thanks

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if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. You can pre-order my book, as mentioned earlier on this episode. It's called The MVP Machine, and it comes out on June 4th, which is getting closer. I can't emphasize enough how much pre-orders help. They increase our odds of getting on bestseller lists, which helps bring attention to the book, and it also shows our publisher and booksellers that there's a lot of interest in the book. It can affect how many orders are placed for the book and how many copies are printed. So please, if you do intend to buy the book at some point, get it now. We'll be back with one more episode this week. It will be me and Meg, and we

will talk to you then. I still believe in my friends I still believe in my friends.