Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1364: Rounding Second and Heading for Home

Episode Date: April 18, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Johnny Cooney as the Vroom Vroom Guy, minor-league closer Dusten Knight’s backflip save-celebration ritual, the extreme struggles of the Red Sox, and a new way to represent Willians Astudillo’s success at making contact, then answer listener emails about umpires calling balls and strikes from second base and the […]

They're just literally sorry, got more energy than most Now times the only time they crawl streets like ghosts Save the light to your face, never try to walk away Get into trouble, think I like to say Oh jumpers, oh jumpers Oh jumpers, oh jumpers Jumpers, oh jumpers Oh jumpers, oh jump boys, oh jump boys, oh jump boys Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello Ben.

Hello. How's it going? Doing well. I want to say that when you told me that I was having a good 36 or older season at the end of last episode, I brushed past it in the moment, but it stuck with me and it meant a lot to me. So thank you. Oh, well, that's nice. You sounded appreciative at the time. Yeah, that was more sort of like default manners in public. Yeah. I have two very quick things to

mention. One is that in the two days of baseball play since we last recorded, triples have gone down. Oh, okay. So that's exciting. They're now down to 0.13 per game, which is, let's see here, almost 20% lower than the all-time record. Ooh. Yeah. The second thing I wanted to note is neither here nor there, but I happened to run across it yesterday and learn of it for the first time. This is from Peter Morris's great book, A Game of Inches, a history of, I don't know, how things in baseball became things in baseball. And there is a section here on what is called keep on running. And I had never heard this story, but this was in June of 1926. And I'm just going

to read it. And then there's nothing to discuss on june 17th 1926 the cubs loaded the bases against the dodgers in the sixth with one out joe kelly hit a sharp ground ball to dodge a first baseman babe herman who threw to shortstop rabbit marinville to force johnny cooney at second maranville marinview marinville what do you how are we pronouncing marinville maranville that's a tough one I've heard it both ways not that I hear it pronounced that often let's say let's say Maranville yeah sure all right Maranville who again is the shortstop who fielded the throw at second base Maranville returned the ball to first to try to complete the inning ending double play

but his throw went astray and then the fun began. Brooklyn pitcher Jess Barnes retrieved the ball, saw a base runner headed for the plate, and threw it to catcher Mickey O'Neal. The Chicago runner stopped short before reaching the plate and turned toward the dugout. O'Neal followed the runner into the dugout and tagged him for the third out. The problem was that the runner was none other than Cooney,

who you remember being thrown out at second who had just kept running after being put out at second meanwhile kelly the batter who was running to first had moved up to third while the catcher had pursued cooney after some thought home plate umpire bill clem ruled that the inning had to continue there ought to be a law against such a thing but there isn't was the decision of the celebrated arbitrator chicago counted two more runs that inning but brooklyn eventually won the game columnist thomas holmes wrote cooney's little joke was unique if it ever has been pulled in a ball game before it must have been pulled in china nobody ever saw or ever heard of anything quite like it. So he was thrown out at second and he just never broke stride.

Yeah, he just kept going. He stayed active as though he were still a live runner, which he's not. He has now become detritus to be removed from the field. But his presence was a distraction. They got confused and thought he was the guy. That is funny. Distraction. They got confused and thought he was the guy. That is funny. That reminds me of during the Jeff Sullivan era of the show, a listener wrote in to propose a character named Vroom Vroom Guy. He's a guy who just never stops running. I have seen many references to this and have no idea what it is.

Yeah, so it was suggested by listener Corey. He's just a guy who always runs when he gets on base. He just never stops running until he's thrown out, but maybe he doesn't stop running even when he's thrown out. He's Johnny Cooney. All right. Vroom, vroom. That's my banter.

You got any banter? Yeah, I have a couple things. So you have probably come across the AA Twins reliever this week, Dustin Knight, who has become internet famous for doing backflips after he saves. He's a closer, and he records a save, and he does a backflip. And as far as I can tell, this is not new. I know he was doing it at least last summer because I came across a GIF from last August where he did a backflip after a save. So I don't know why this has suddenly caught on or when exactly this started or how it started, but I wonder whether you think it could possibly last in the current environment of baseball if he were to make the majors because, of course, this makes everyone think of the Aroldis Chapman

somersault in 2012 when he was a first year Closer he had been going Through a rough patch and he just Seemingly you know without premeditation Just somersaulted After a save a couple times toward the plate And Dusty Baker who is His manager at the time he just

He nixed that entirely Immediately after that Game he said it's been addressed and it won't happen again yeah but we are in a different era of baseball now maybe where celebrations are looked upon a little more kindly and i i guess it's just gymnastics really that you're not allowed to do as a closer because you can do the the arrow shot if you're fernando rodney you can do the arrow shot if you're Fernando Rodney. You can look pumped up and you can do fist pumps and you can do all sorts of gestures and screams. But maybe you can't do gymnastics. So I wonder.

He's 28 years old. I don't know whether he'll make the majors. But if he were to make the majors, do you think he would do this? And if he did, do you think he would do it a second time? I do think he would do it. I think that he would do it multiple times.? I do think he would do it. I think that he would do it multiple times. I've thought about it. I was thinking about it already. And I think there are two key things here. And one of them is that a backflip is just

more dignified than a somersault. A somersault is a, it's just it's just i don't know it feels more taunting it feels less adult it feels more out of place in an athletic that's what it is it doesn't feel athletic a somersault is not athlete yeah it didn't look graceful whereas the dustin knight thing it's impressive right backflips are allowed on baseball fields. We have established that. Ozzie Smith. Yeah. Exactly.

Not only did Ozzie Smith do it, not only is Ozzie Smith one of the most beloved players in baseball history, maybe the most beloved? I don't know. I mean, he's right there with Mariano Rivera, right? If in our lifetime, it's like, who's more beloved than those two? Tony Gwynn is maybe more beloved. Ichiro. I don't know.

Ichiro might be more beloved. Ichiro, I don't know. Ichiro might be more beloved. Astadio. So not only has it been done by somebody who is above reproach, but it is partly the reason that he is so beloved. It is considered not only acceptable, but a beloved act. And so I think that's one thing. Where's a somersault i mean so the other thing though is i think that if chapman could have avoided somehow doing this in a televised game for his first two or three saves it would have then been allowed i think that you get grandfathered

in your save cell because there is like there is nothing carter caps rule or something yeah maybe it is the carter caps rule i mean the there is nothing aboutter caps rule or something yeah yeah maybe it is the carter caps rule i mean the there is nothing about firing an arrow for instance that is not also kind of taunting and or out of place on a baseball field i don't know none of this feels taunting to me for to start with but um clearly there's something about these some acts that bother people and other acts that don't bother people. And those two acts seem like they overlap entirely in many key details. And yet one is allowed and one is not. And I think that the grandfathered in aspect of it is a big part of it.

And I can't say that the AA relievers backflip would be grandfathered into the majors if he's only done it in the minors. But I think he has a lot better chance. I think if Chapman had been doing this, for instance, in Cuba, when he came over, it would have been allowed. So that's the other thing. And by the way, I would just like to throw a plug out for Jeff Sullivan's piece on July 1st, 2011, classifying MLB's closer celebrations, which is one of my favorite pieces he wrote even though it's more gifts than it is words and uh so for instance here's his description of uh jose valverde doing a save celebration with the score five two tigers in the top of the ninth closer jose valverde struck out fernando martinez to wrap things up and valverde flipped out like he always does dipping and doing a little spin and clawing at the air as if to suggest that he's an actual

tiger instead of a member of the team and uh you know grandfathered in uh-huh yeah so i don't know if the aussie analog applies here i mean it's the same sort of movement but different circumstances sort of movement it's a backflip they're the same same. Well, so Smith's backflip, I mean, A, I think he debuted it just from my quick Googling. I think he started backflipping in 1982. So he was an all-star and a gold glover and an established good player by that point. And he was also doing it in an exuberant way. He wasn't backflipping to celebrate a great assist or put out at shortstop or something. He wasn't, it couldn't be looked upon as gloating because it was just something he would do when he would run out to his position. And I think he did it the first time because the team had been running a couple miles and he backflipped to show that he wasn't tired after their jogging, something like that. So a little different purpose. No one was going to be affronted by Ozzie Smith's backflip,

whereas if you're a hitter who just struck out because Dustin Knight got you out and recorded a save, you're probably not going to like that he backflipped. That's probably going to ruffle some more feathers. And he is, of course, a 28-year-old who is not particularly good. Do you think so, though? I mean, just pause for a minute and think about it. Do you feel like if you saw a closer do that, that it would feel different than a normal save celebration? Because to me, it feels, you know, more it's relative.

You're in your space, just like Val Verde. You're not like you're not leaving the mound to celebrate. You got your move. Yeah. I can't tell if I like this. I appreciate it. It's an impressive thing that he does to just go from standing and doing a standing backflip. But it looks so premeditated.

It is, obviously. It doesn't look like he just got caught up in the euphoria of the moment and he just had to backflip. Like, he doesn't even react initially after recording the save. It looks like he's not going to do anything. Then he takes a couple steps. He stands to the side and he does this backflip in a very rehearsed way. So it's just this ritual, which I guess could still reflect some genuine emotion. But it doesn't really look like

it does i'd i'd like it if it just looked like he couldn't contain himself and he just had to express himself via backflip but yeah you i you have identified the also the big issue that i would have with it and the reason i think it might not work is that it he waits too long uh-huh yeah he needs to do it right away, which you probably can't. Off the mound. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

It doesn't look like this is the nerves coming out of him or the emotion flowing through him. It looks like he's going to be the backflip guy. And I don't know why. Again, it's hard for me to say why it's not more like the arrow guy than the somersault guy, other than that somersaults are what children do and backflips are what athletes do. But yeah, a lot of things you don't know how they're going to feel until you do them, until you see it done. And the emotions that arise from the act are sort of a surprise to you and i i could see it going either way and i would say i'm not super confident here but i i mean i'm thinking like 70 70 30 he gets he he gets away with it and it becomes a i mean this won't happen because he

probably won't be a major league closer but if he did he gets away with it and it becomes a beloved part of his his shtick in as much as closer celebrations are ever beloved by anybody well i hope we find out that he's a 28th round pick who is a 28 going on 29 year old reliever in double a so not optimistic that we get to find out the answer to this question but for his sake if chapman had had had ignored dusty baker and had just decided to keep doing it. Do you think that by now, I mean, would we still talk about it? Or by like Somersault 6, would it be totally normal? Well, I'm guessing he would have just been like fined or demoted from the closer role, right?

I doubt Dusty would have let him get away with that direct challenge to his authority yeah it sounded like dusty was pretty upset about let's say dusty let's say dusty had let him or had told him like it's a bad look it's it's not you you know you got to have some feel out there but you know it's up to you and chapman said it's how i'm going to express myself i mean you know the bottom line would we have gotten used to it or would a somersault have never been normalized? I don't know whether he would have kept doing it because do you really want to be the somersault every time guy hit? It looked like something he just did on the spur of the moment. He did two of them too.

I know. Yeah. He almost somersaulted into the dugout. Johnny Cooney style. Right. So I kind of doubt that he would have even wanted to do this every time. But if he had done it and gotten away with it without being chastised, then I wonder whether it would have opened up the possibilities for other pitchers to explore the space and

get adventurous in that way. So I think we probably would have seen some other attempt in the intervening period. Can most athletes do a backflip with training? Is it hard? Well, with training, I would think so. Wait, with training, they could do it? Yeah. So you don't think there's anything particularly special about Aussie or AA reliever guy?

Probably not. I mean, I don't think anyone could just do it cold. But if you practiced it, yeah, probably. Is it more or less likely that this save celebration would be embraced if it were something that very few athletes could even do? Like if a backflip was really something that even with training, only a small handful of ballplayers could pull off, would it make it more or less normal or not normal, but more acceptable? I think. Yeah. I think more because you just have to tip your cap to that guy for doing that thing

that he could do. Yeah. Okay. All right. So one other thing I wanted to bring up, we haven't really talked about early season results or the standings or how teams are doing because there's very little point to doing that for the first few weeks of the season but i think maybe there's one team that has reached the point where we could i just want to interrupt real quick before we move on the

announcer in this reds game is really excited by the somersault he like he's like it's like he's calling a buzzer beater he he really goes after it yeah i would be surprised if that happened i guess i'd be pretty excited so i think there's one team that has reached the point where we can start to talk about whether they have really hurt themselves and that would be the boston red so, who have played pretty terrible baseball thus far. It's not just that they have a lousy record, although that is true. I think they have their worst start to the season since 1996. They're 6-12. They're in last place in the AL East.

But it's also how they've gotten there. They have the second worst run differential in baseball, just better than the Marlins. the second worst run differential in baseball, just better than the Marlins. They have the third worst base runs record in the game after the Orioles and the Marlins. So they have just been legitimately bad. They've been beaten up pretty badly and they have hurt themselves quite a bit in a competitive division. When I look at the playoff odds, I like to look at the odds of making the division series, which takes into account not only your odds of making the playoffs in any way, but your odds of winning the division. And so right now, relative to opening day compared to Fangraphs, the Red Sox are down

31%, which is much more than any other team. I think the Cubs are down 18.2% and no one else is down really in double digits even. So 31%, that is significant. That's a lot. And of course, the Rays have been the big beneficiaries there. They are up 35.7%. So basically the Red Sox have lost all of those odds and the Rays have gained those odds and the Rays have played really well. So Red Sox have lost all of those odds and the Rays have gained those odds and the Rays have played really well so Red Sox we're not going to have an easy route to the top of this division to begin with because the Yankees are good and the Rays are good and I didn't pick them to win the division as it was but this start is now getting to the point where it could really

sabotage their season even if they do rebound from here. Yep. That's all you're going to give me. Are you, so, yeah, that's true. I mean, that's very clearly true. They have a, you know, a team that everybody took, you know, serious enough in the Rays who are now seven and a half games ahead of them.

And you have to, that means you have to beat a pretty good team by eight games going forward instead of by seven or six or five or one. And that's a big difference. Are you though saying that you think that the Red Sox are worse than the Rays? Because obviously we know that,

we know their playoff odds have dropped. And so you are answering a question. Have their playoff odds dropped? Yes. But the tougher question is, have you reassessed the Red Sox as a collection of talent? have dropped and so you are answering a question uh have their playoff odds dropped yes but the tougher question is have you reassessed the red socks as a collection of talent and are you well maybe a little bit i mean there's some weird stuff that's going on with the red socks like mookie bets not hitting and i don't expect that to continue I think he is still probably the second best player in baseball,

and he's got a 700-something OPS, so that's going to improve. I guess you could be worried about Chris Sale. It sounds like Chris Sale is worried about Chris Sale, given his post-game comments after his latest outing where he talked about being an embarrassment and just how upset he is with his own performance. In some ways, his last appearance was encouraging in that he actually threw hard. He was throwing like 96, 97, which is good. And it seemed like maybe his breaking ball

was moving more, his slider was better, but it wasn't going where he wanted it to go and and he had an unsuccessful outing so given how he started the season i think that is a cause for concern because we're only used to worrying about chris sale when it's late in the season and maybe he runs out of gas usually he starts like gangbusters so that is kind of concerning and i mean the bullpen was a concern coming into the year that hasn't actually been their biggest problem so far so i suppose i'm a little lower than i was on them coming into the year well so there's six things that six individual players that have have done this uh to them basically they are eduardo nunez who has an ops plus of five they are jackie jackie padrea who has a ops plus of negative 29 yeah though he's not a you know he he hasn't been a a regular uh and he didn't obviously contribute last year but yes uh i'm

not i'm skipping padrea for now okay uh so nunez and then you have Jackie Bradley Jr., who has an OPS plus of 10. Yeah. Twice as good as Nunez. Imagine saying at the beginning of the year that Bradley would be literally twice as good as Nunez. That sounds pretty good. And then Betts, as you talked about, who has been a fine major leaguer, but probably his underperformance is even greater relative to expectations than Nunez and Bradley. And then, so those three hitters, and then you've got Sale, Evaldi, and Porcello, and they all have ERAs over eight, and Evaldi's FIP is nine, and Porcello's ERA is eight. And so they've all been just absolutely dreadful. Now, Eduardo Rodriguez has a bad ERA, but hasn't necessarily pitched all that bad.

So you have three starters and three hitters. So the three starters, you've got the complicating factor of A, as Alex Spear, I think, described, they had a different routine for their pitchers in spring this year, right? Because they were worried about the extra innings they had last year. And so they had them build up a little slower. Yeah. about the extra innings they had last year. And so they had them build up a little slower.

Yeah. So you have both the concern that you might always feel about pitchers who've gone deep into October the previous year, but as well as the fact that they had a somewhat unfamiliar spring this year. And so it's hard to know whether this is permanent. And then you've got the three hitters and hitters we tend to treat differently

than pitchers in short samples. So of those six, do you think that those six starts are all real? Well, I mean, I don't think Eduardo Nunez is very good to begin with. I didn't think he was very good. Right. So the question is, will either he or Pedroia be, you know, close to an average second baseman? Will they fill that position with something close to average this year?

Yeah, probably not at this point, I guess mean i'd say probably yes obviously they'll be better but uh maybe not yeah i don't know it's just hard to know what pedroia has left maybe he has a lot left but he's been out for so long and the injuries and everything so yeah and nunez is just you know he's not a terrible player but he's probably a below average starter. So I think that's what you're going to get from him. And I like Jackie Bradley. I thought Jackie Bradley would be better than, well, better than this, but just better, period. So I do expect him to be good, I guess, or playable. Obviously, he's a great defender, but I expect him to hit better than this. And I think Mookie will be fine. So less worried about the offense. There are other guys who haven't hit in that lineup, like Devers. I feel like I'm kind of lower on Devers than some people.

I don't know. I don't have huge hopes for Devers, but he's still very young. And Christian Vasquez can't really hit, but he's not there for hitting. And then as for the pitchers, sort of worried about Sale, probably less worried after his last outing, even though it was bad, but still sort of worried about him. And as for Purcello, I think you probably have to be a little worried when someone has walked 12 guys and walked more than he struck out through a few starts. I mean, not like apocalypse level worried, but there's always some possibility that there's some physical cause for that kind of thing. So,

you know, some alarm bells going off there, I guess. Yeah. You've got six key parts on that team that have been dreadful, including probably the two best players. And, uh, ultimately the question is if you think those six parts are going to start playing like normal tomorrow. And, uh, I think there's reason to be worried. And if they're not, then they're not a very good team. Yeah. And, and uh even if they do play like themselves from now on they might have a tough time making the playoffs or at least uh the division is going to be very tough so anyway that's it's kind of like the first time that uh something has seemed real on a team level like even the yankees are off to a disappointing start they're seven and nine and half their team is on the injured list, but their odds of making the division series are only down like 5% actually. I guess that's partly a product of the fact that they've just played better,

even though their record isn't great. Underlying numbers are a little bit better, but some cause for concern with them just because of the incredible injury stack that they've had. But yeah, Red Sox are kind of alone when it comes to reasons for concern. It's interesting that you said that that was the first thing that was real and you focused on the Red Sox, but not the Rays. Do you think that the Rays are- Well, yeah. I meant more in the negative direction. I think, yeah, I think the Rays, if you're going to say one is real, that you almost have to say the other is kind of real or at least in terms of the odds of of getting there i think they're just a genuinely good team too i don't think they're the best team in baseball but i

think they're good yeah i i've uh i'm i'm i'm fairly convinced about the race i think i undershot the race this year i thought they were a fine team, a good enough team, an 88-win team. And they seem like they're really good. Yeah. And I believe it. I, in fact, will take this moment right here to retract something that I wrote before the season when I said that the best thing that could happen to the Rays is the AL East being won by a team with 95 or fewer wins because if the Yankees and Red Sox go off on a run of 100 win seasons, it's going to be basically impossible because, the words I wrote,

the Rays are not in a position to win 96 games anytime soon. And I don't, maybe they won't, that's a lot of wins, but I look at that team and that definitely looks like a team that could win 96 games anytime soon. That's like, you know, reassessing like a couple of young players on their team, reassessing Tyler Glass now and reassessing Austin Meadows with what we've seen in a couple of weeks. You don't have to buy into it all the way to see that those are both like probably really good major leaguers.

Yeah. All right. Well, good job, Jeff. I'm sure it's all Jeff. Yeah. All right. Well, good job, Jeff. I'm sure it's all Jeff. And last thing I wanted to mention is Fangraphs rolled out a kind of fun new statistical tool this week. It's called like the plus stats, which just shows you hitters or pitchers performance relative to the league in any category over a single season or over a span of seasons or over their entire career. And it's just, you know, their performance relative to the league average. And that's all, there's no other adjustments, no park factors, anything like that. So naturally the first thing

that I did when this was rolled out was I looked at William Testadio to see where he ranked in terms of K percentage plus his strikeout rate relative to the league. And if you search right now, I looked for the whole live ball era that is 1920 to present. I just looked at the career level, minimum 130 plate appearances, which is the highest I could set it to include Williams Estadio. And right now he has the highest K percentage plus, or actually it's the been 14% of the league average which is impressive but it's impressive to see him at the top of this leaderboard next to or above names that you kind of associate with legendary strikeout avoidance he is the top 10 so there are 10 guys who are below a 30k percentage plus so lower than 30 percent of the league average and

they are williams estadio at 14 nelly fox at 20 he's probably one of the first ones who would come to mind as is number three joe sewell he's at 22 and then it's stuffy mckinnis johnny sane who is a pitcher and was very good at not striking out, Tommy Holmes, Bill Burgo, Tony Gwynn at number eight, Felix Milan, and Lloyd Wehner. So you have some Hall of Famers on that list. You have a bunch of players from a long time ago. No one except Gwynn more recent than the 60s, I guess. And then you have Wayne Tessidio at the top.

So it checks out. He is historic, and that is one of the reasons why we love him. And, of course, this could change as he actually gets more than 131 plate appearances. But just to do it this long has been a lot of fun. Aroldis Chapman is fifth on K per 9 plus for his career, which is pretty impressive when you think about when he's playing. I mean, I always kind of just mentally assume that the high K pitchers of this era are fun, fun facts, but if you really think about it, they get badly hit by just it being the era.

But Chapman, fifth all time. Yeah. Rob Dibble, third. Uh-huh. Give me the top five. Number one is Cy Seymour. That's no fun. Okay.

Number two is Dazzy Vance. That's kind of fun. Yeah. And number four is Rube Waddell. Oh, yeah. Okay. Brian Harvey, number nine. It's an underrated name.

Yeah. Well, this is fun because if you look at Rube Waddell's strikeout rates with modern eyes, you would not be impressed. But you have to take into account the fact that no one struck out those days, and that makes it impressive. So that's what these stats are for. Fun tool to play around with. Great tool. So we are halfway through this episode already. This is supposed to be an email show, so let's answer some emails and you have a stat blast.

But let's take this one from Doug Graham, Patreon supporter. Robot umps are back in the news thanks to the report from Boston University master lecturer Mark T. Williams and his team of graduate students that showed MLB home plate umpires missed 34,294 pitch calls in 2018, which is around 14 per game. I think that's about 9% of pitches, something like that, are technically miscalled according to the rulebook strike zone. Instead of robot umps, I think it might be better to just have the second base ump call balls and strikes instead. It seems like they would get a better view. How much would making that change reduce the number of missed pitch calls per game, do you think?

Well, it would either reduce or it would increase. Yes, it would do one of those things. Don't, let's not put the cart before the horse. I mean, I don't know why the guy stands behind home plate, but you figure it's because it's better, right? Well, it's... It's certainly more dangerous. Is it? Now that I think about it, it is Well, it's... It's certainly more dangerous. Is it? Now that I think about it, it is, right?

It's got to be more dangerous. It's got to be more... It's got to be less comfortable at the very least. Yeah. I mean, I guess you need someone there to make calls on plays at the plate. Every other call, though, you would think, I mean, like a check swing call, the home plate umpire doesn't have the best view. A, like a check swing call, the home plate umpire doesn't have the best view. A foul tip call, I'm not sure that maybe the home plate umpire has the best view or he can hear it at least maybe better than other people. But there are a lot of calls back there.

Despite the proximity, you'd think being closer would be better. But obviously your view is obstructed there. be better but obviously your view is obstructed there so i would think like a second base ump or someone who's standing around second base that is obviously closer to the center field view that we're all used to and it seems like in theory that might be a clearer view right because you don't have to look over the catcher and you can actually see everything yeah well you couldn't be directly behind the pitcher though so no you yeah that's true you'd have to you'd be offset a little bit and that would be bad there'd be like a parallax effect or something and you'd probably misjudge certain pitches because of that but even the umpire the home plate umpire is a little bit offset because you have to stand to one side or the other of the catcher so so there

14 just curious there are 14 um 14 missed calls a game he said yeah okay how many do you think there would be if everything were exactly the same as it is now except the catcher and the batter were not allowed to communicate with the umpire at all like not even small talk not even like or like anything nothing you can't even you can't, you can't be demonstrative in any way. You just, the umpire's all alone out there. Because I can imagine that maybe the process of kind of finding that strike zone each day is a little bit of a collaborative effort between the umpire and the feedback he gets from the two people who presumably do have the best views

like i think the catcher has the best the best view right the catcher knows probably better than anybody in the park whether it was a strike yeah i would think so in terms of the perspective at least i mean the catcher has a lot to worry about he's got a mask on he's got gear he's got to worry about not getting hurt he's got to worry about the batter swinging and what the base runner is doing. So he's more distracted, but obviously he has the most direct view unless it's the pitcher. Maybe, maybe the pitcher does. The pitcher, I would, I was, it's, it's gotta be either the pitcher or the catcher, I think, because the, the relationship to the pitch is just so much different.

I mean, the, the, the throw is an extension of the pitcher's actions. And I think that he is just more intimately in tune with what the ball does for the 60 feet that it travels. Like he's got this, it's coming straight out of his body. And I think he sees it really well. I think a catcher though is even a better judge, my guess. For one thing, he knows exactly where he's set up on the plate and the line of demarcation between the plate and the non-plate is right in his view. It's right in his vision. And not only is it very visible to

him, but he has to be aware of it. His job is to be aware of that line because he's got to stay right on it. He's got to walk that line. And, you know, he is receiving the ball. It is also an intimate relationship with the flight of the ball that the catcher has that nobody else has. We're all spectators, but they are painting this pitch in a way. And I think that they probably have just a better kind of feel for what the pitch does and exactly where it is this is obviously speculative and hokum but i think that i would i would if you could if you had an honest catcher uh i would take the catcher's call over

anybody's um and probably the pitcher's second and probably at least on pitches they don't swing at, probably the batter's third. And then I'd go to the umpire. And so if you assume that the catcher and the batter have good views, and I think it's possible that maybe the pitcher, I might be overselling the pitcher because the pitcher's head is flopping around and they've got the follow-through

and they might not actually be seeing the pitch very well as it crosses. So I would probably put the pitcher's head is flopping around and they've got the follow through and they might not actually be seeing the pitch very well as it crosses. So I would probably put the pitcher third. So anyway, the point is, though, that if you have the catcher and the hitter are the two experts, the worldwide experts on whether a pitch was a strike or not, even if you accept they're biased observers of it, they are presumably giving some feedback that the umpire can use to kind of hone in on where his misses are that day. And so I would guess that that's a couple of saved calls right there every day. I don't know if I would.

They're giving feedback, but it's highly biased feedback, of course. Very. And one side is biased in one way and the other side is biased in the other way. And if you're the umpire who's worrying about appeasing both sides to some extent, and there has to be some pressure there. Even if you're a veteran umpire, you're used to people yelling at you, but you'd probably rather not have people yell at you. And so there's some pressure there to make people happy. And I think there's been some evidence. I remember Noah Woodward, who works for the Braves now,

he did a couple of pieces for BP about makeup calls and how you might be more likely to get a call if the umpire just missed one and you put it back in the same spot. So I think there's stuff like that. Whereas there is a pressure underlying all of it now that MLB uses this zone system to evaluate umpires. Ultimately, the umpires know that their job performance comes down to how closely they line up with those numbers. And that is probably their overriding concern. And that's how you would judge their accuracy is how closely they line up with what the system says is a strike after the game. So that's probably what's most on their mind. And I would bet, if anything, they might do better if that was the only thing in their mind and they weren't worried about someone yelling at them.

That was the only thing in their mind, and they weren't worried about someone yelling at them. Yeah, you might be right. That is the other possibility. And I know that I certainly would be a very poor umpire because I would be afraid of getting yelled at. And I don't know how much other umpires are. I do think that they are probably, after having done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of games, probably after having done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of games, I think they're probably pretty good at sussing out the bias and knowing, you know, how,

how much a catcher or a batter's feedback should influence their priors as it is. But, but you might be right that they might be social animals back there. So I think the, the missed call rate is at 9.2%. Jared Diamond just wrote about this for the Wall Street Journal, and it's been improving every single year. So it was like 16.4% in 2008, and it's just come down a little more ever since as the empires have gotten judged based on this data, and they've gotten used to that. And I don't know if that means they're better, but it means they vary less

and they're in closer accordance with the rule book zone, at least. So there's improvement there. But anyway, the question is not so much about umpire's performance currently, but how good it would be at second base. Well, it is though partly about that because now that we're talking about the influence

of the social structure around them and other things, I mean, it is notable that by simply putting, by simply having the league say to the umpires, quit messing around, get it right, they do. Like it is kind of wild to think that they just they could have been better in the past but they didn't want to be that they wanted to call it the way that they do unless you think that the feedback that they're getting is itself being incorporated into their calls and so that yeah they are they're getting better just because they're getting that feedback but yeah

that's what i was gonna say i think it's just that there was no objective standard before i guess there was quest tech but i mean now you can compare your performance to some objective correct call and figure out where you're weak and where you're going wrong whereas before you couldn't really do that yeah but you do think that the 3-0 auto strike for instance is a knowing act from umpires right yeah and that having a smaller strike zone on o2 is a knowing act from umpires right yeah and that having a smaller strike zone on o2 is a knowing act by the umpires kind of and so they are the these would all be filed under missed calls right the 30 auto strike is probably like 20 of those missed calls yeah to pick a random number uh and act like it means something So they, by getting the mandate that you should call it better, that is at least some of what's going on.

So to the actual question, though, I refuse to answer it because I think the home plate umpire, I'm sticking with the home plate umpire. I think it's better. I called some pitches from behind the mound when I was a kid umpire, but I don't remember how I did. There'd be an adjustment period if you had to switch from one to the other. But, I mean, if you could stand behind the mound, you would be unencumbered.

You wouldn't have to wear all the armor. You wouldn't have to wear a mask. Maybe that would help. I don't know. You wouldn't be worried about getting hit by a foul tip. You'd only have to worry about line drives. And it seems like the perspective, like there are just certain pitches that I think umpires probably can't see or can't see well with certain catchers or, I mean, maybe they should be able to see everything that is a strike if they are in proper position. But there must be times, you know, shorter umpire, tall catcher, where you're just kind of guessing on a pitch at the bottom boundary of the strike zone because it must be hard to see exactly where it is. And I just, I don't know, you were off to an angle a little bit. I don't know, you were off to an angle a little bit, and it just seems like if you have a straightaway view, and as you said, it wouldn't be completely straightaway,

but I think it would be, if you're behind the plate, can you even tell, like maybe you can tell where the pitch is with great accuracy, but can you also at the same time see where the hitter's knees are and where the upper boundaries of his strike zone? Can you take that all into account and synthesize it in the way that you could if you have a slightly wider view and you can see not only the plate, but how the hitter relates to

the plate? I'm going to say that A, yes, you can. But B, you're also not being as badly misled by what happens with the catcher's glove after the fact i have i mean i think i have a pretty good idea of what a strike looks like on tv especially from a good camera angle but on low pitches and on breaking pitches low the glove movement happens so fast that i get that's where i get them wrong. I get a lot of, of those wrong. And I think that part of it is having the view of the catcher's glove moving. And I know that the home plate umpire is also misled by the catcher's glove movement, but I think it's even worse if you're seeing it straight ahead. And I, I feel like there's a, that when you're back there in that crouch that you're seeing the ball in a nice tight tunnel and that you do kind of have a little bit more of a more control over whether the ball

is in the the sort of zone that you have set in advance uh-huh well maybe there's there's also i guess the fact that the strike zone is not two-dimensional, right? Yeah, that's a hard one. Yeah. Maybe you could tell better from behind the plate if it just snuck through a part of the plate, whereas it's probably hard to get that perspective from far away. Maybe that would be part of it. Is the fact that they do it this way completely unconvincing to you no i have that is a pretty good argument although maybe you just have to have an umpire back there anyway

i don't think you do though i mean well what what call well i mean for what you're 60 feet away if there's no play that's going to happen at the plate. I mean, unless this is a relic of stealing home of days where people stole home a lot, not that you get any kind of view on that if you're the home plate ump behind the catcher, but unless it's a relic of the stealing home days, there really isn't a play that's going to happen at home that you're not going to have time to kind of move 30 feet and get in position for, I wouldn't think. to kind of move 30 feet and get in position for, I wouldn't think. I don't think the foul tip is probably a big enough advantage if it's an advantage at all.

So I don't know, maybe. But I mean, you need to have an umpire who is assigned to home plate calls, who is closer to home plate than the base umpires currently are. But I don't think that you need to have him squatting over it. Yeah. All right. I think I'm convinced. I mean, if you're a home plate umpire and you're in the slot, then probably your view is not actually blocked. And if you're at second base, I mean, you're like 100 feet away or something,

A, the second base ump has to move around all the time. If you could somehow just station him there and just have a guy calling pitches, that would be a little bit different as it is. He's moving around much more than the home plate umpire is, and that would make it much more difficult. But I think just the depth perception aspect of it and being able to gauge whether it caught some part of the plate it's probably better from from behind the plate so i think that probably makes sense all right stat blast stat blast they'll take a data set sorted by something like e r a minus or o bBS plus And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit

Discuss it at length and analyze it for us In amazing ways Here's to daystep lost I talked a couple days ago We talked a couple days ago, we talked a couple days ago about how old pitchers have disappeared this year, how there are very few old pitchers this year, and we're, it looks like, perhaps on track to have the lowest number of innings thrown by 36 and older pitchers since 1972, which, by the way, 1972, there were what, half the innings basically, or not quite

half, more than that, but like two thirds of the innings played that there are now. And so as a percentage, it might, I don't know, maybe it's an all time low. So I went to look for the pitchers that disappeared thinking, oh, there must be a bunch of old pitchers who pitched last year and aren't this year, or who were 35 last year and would be 36, which is the cohort is 36 and up. So would be 36 this year, but they're gone. And there actually aren't that many. Jason Hamill was a 35-year-old last year. He threw 120 innings and he seems to be maybe not invited back. And then James Shields was 36 last year and he's still a free agent and maybe won't pitch again. And Brad Ziegler was an older 36 last year and he's still a a free agent um and maybe won't pitch

again and brad ziegler was an older pitcher last year and i think he retired and rich hill was an older pitcher last year and he's he's injured he'll he'll pitch this year but he hasn't yet and so you know there's a few guys that have have gone away or who haven't appeared but it's not like there's 15 free agent pitchers who like the league collectively decided we're not doing old pitchers anymore. And so a helicopter just went over my house. And so I went looking, but so anyway, so this of course made me realize that one reason that some years have fewer old pitchers is that there were fewer younger pitchers of a certain age cohort that a couple years earlier moving up, right? That's pretty obvious. If, for instance, the

government declared today that no child born in the next three years would ever be allowed to pitch, well, in 18 years, we'd have a bunch of stories about how Major League Baseball doesn't have any pitchers in the draft. And then three years after that, we'd have a story about how there are no young pitching prospects. And then 10 years after that, we'd have a story about how there are no 30-year-old pitchers. And then eight years after that, we'd have a story about how there's no older pitchers. But that's really all the same story just told over time as the demographic hump or trough moves through the line. And it wouldn't really be about baseball GMs making a decision or the game changing. It would just be about kids being born and not becoming pitchers that year.

And of course, that doesn't happen. But for reasons, for various reasons, some drafts turn out to be much more productive for pitching than for hitting and vice versa. So that's all pretty intuitive. then for hitting and vice versa. So that's all pretty, pretty intuitive. And so I wondered about how much attrition we should expect at each age level, not for individual pitchers, but for the cohort as a whole. So using the play index at baseball reference, I put every pitcher season season for age 32 through 41 since 1996, which is the, you know, there've been full seasons ever since then. So I started after the last strike short in season and put them into a spreadsheet and

looked at how many innings there were for 32 year old pitchers one year, and then how many there were for 33 year olds the next and onward for each age level going up to 40 to 41, and looked at how many innings for each age are typically lost for the next year. And so for 32-year-olds, for instance, about 85% of 32-year-old innings come back the next year as 33-year-old innings, and about 85% of 33-year-old innings come back at 34-year-old innings. And then it starts to speed up a little bit, but from that point on, it's kind of steady. It's 75-ish percent for 34-year-olds and 35-year-olds, and then it's about 70% for 36, 37, 38,

39 and 40 year olds. So obviously there's fewer 40 year old innings, but of the 40 year old innings, there are about 70% of those return the next year. So if what we are talking about is a trend in the way that baseball teams build their rosters and how they value old pitchers, or if what we're seeing similarly is a trend in how old pitchers are able to keep up with their younger counterparts,

then what we should expect to see is that those rates of innings disappearing would be much higher or innings returning would be much lower in the last year, for instance, or the last couple years. be much lower in the last year, for instance, or the last couple of years. And so to kind of just answer that main question, that's not really happening right now. If you just apply these rates to last year's innings, there should be about 1400 innings this year from 36 and older pitchers. And there's on pace to be about 1,000, but when Rich Hill comes back, it'll go up a little. And I mean, anyway, the difference between 1,400 and 1,000 wouldn't be that much anyway.

It would not be a notable change or particularly worth doing real or not topic on this podcast. And so then if you go to, like, say, last year, when there was a very low number of innings thrown by 36 and older, well, that was actually also right where it should have been there. There should have been about 1200. There were about 1100. So very quite normal. And if you look at 2017, there should have been about 1,500 and there were about 1,600. So right on track. And if you look at 2015, there should have been 2,700 and there were 2,700.

And in 2014, there should have been 2,450 and there were 2,600. So those are all extremely tight within the expectations. But I skipped a year. Did you the expectations. But I skipped a year. Did you hear? No. I skipped a year. Okay. I skipped 2016. Oh, important year. 2016 went haywire, man. And real quick, the numbers that I have are a little bit inexact for three reasons. One is I'm only looking at 36 to 41-year- olds, but 42 and up also count in the 36 and older thing. And so as it turns out, you're going to have slightly more, in some years, you're going to have slightly more observed than you would have expected because I'm not counting

Bartolo Colon at 45 in the expectations, but he does count in the actual. So that's one caveat. But anyway, in 2016, there should have been a little more than 2,000 plus Bartolo. So like I think Bartolo threw like 170 innings or something. So there should have been about 2,200. And there were only 1,500, including Bartolo. So that was a big underperformance. And in fact, if you look at the biggest ever drop from age 36 to 37, that it happened that year. If you look for the biggest drops ever from 37 to 38, the second biggest drop happened that year. From 38 to 39, the fifth biggest drop ever happened that year

out of a pool of, how many did I say, 24 years or something, 20 some years. And if you look at 39 to 40, the second biggest drop ever happened that year. So at each level, there was bigger than expected drop. So something did happen that year. I don't know what it was. I don't know if it was deliberate or if it just happened that a bunch of old pitchers got really old overnight. But that created this demographic trough from which we haven't really recovered. So if you apply these same attrition rates that I laid out at the beginning, not just to last year's older pitchers, but if you look at what we should have expected from 2015 pitchers who were aged 32 to 37 or whatever it was, and you apply the attrition rates

to that baseline each year since then, then you should now be expecting more than 2,000 innings this year. In fact, the answer is in here somewhere, but I don't know where. More than 2,000 innings this year. In fact, the answer is in here somewhere, but I don't know where. More than 2,000, though. There should have been like a little bit more than 2,000. And there are, in fact, wait, is this the end? Maybe here? I think this is it.

2,060 innings, but we're on pace to have only about 1,000 or maybe a little bit more or maybe a little bit less. And so there was a big change. It's just that the big change happened four years ago one time. Okay. Okay. That's a lot to keep track of. But what I'm saying, what you should take away from this is that the fact that there are no old pitchers this year is a story we should have written four years ago. Okay. So it happened. That was a year. I don't know if that was the year,

but it seems like maybe that was a very pivotal year in a lot of ways. It was right around then when a lot of things changed, right? When all of these trends really hit some inflection point where they just accelerated strikeouts, pitcher usage, starters not going as deep into games, more pitchers being used. Like all of that has really ramped up in the past three or four seasons. Maybe that was the year. Yeah.

Well, that was the year that the ball jumped in halfway through. I don't know if all these trends were showing up. No, that was 2016. Summer of 2016. Are you sure? I thought that was 2015. I'm not sure, but I think. I think that was 2015 i'm not sure but i think i think that was 2015 when that happened halfway through and then 2016 was the first full year of look it up

look it up okay so uh yeah you're not looking it up no because because 2014 was the like deadball year that was when scoring was way down okay i think it was the very dead ball year. That was when scoring was way down. Okay. I think it was the very following season. All right. So then, okay. So 2015, presumably I'm going to trust you here. You're probably almost certainly right. You were writing about it at the time.

You were literally the foremost expert in the world on the juiced ball mid-season in whatever year it was. So we should trust you. So yeah. So then 2016 was the first juiced ball year. Yeah. And so that makes sense. That would make sense that it was the first juice ball year. Yeah. And so that makes sense. That would make sense that it would change a lot of things. Yeah. Okay. So let's get a couple more answers in here. This one is a question from Robbie in Potomac, Maryland. A podcast point of

conversation that always interests me is how someone who was plucked from another era or someone who has never seen baseball at all would relate to baseball today. This has come into my life a bit recently as my girlfriend and I have been dating since January, so this week has been our first baseball experience together. The first game we watched was the O's and A's on Monday night of opening week. Yes, people actually watched that.

She saw ERA flashed across the screen and pronounced it like a word, not an acronym. I decided to explain to her the streak that Chris Davis with a C was having and the difference between him and Chris Davis like a word, not an acronym. I decided to explain to her the streak that Chris Davis with a C was having and the difference between him and Chris Davis with a K. I considered telling her about 247, but realized she doesn't know what batting average is. In the first inning, an A's batter fouled a pitch off and she asked why he didn't run. I guess us fans really take for granted that people know anything at all about baseball. It also got me thinking, what is the

baseball thing that is most commonly known? It could be a rule, a strategy, or a cultural phenomenon. Yeah. Great question. Great question. What part of baseball is part of the common lexicon? It was 2015. You're right. Okay. Of course you're right. So this is a great question, and I wasn't listening to you read it because I was looking at the, but did you, didn't he give us an answer? And then we agreed that that's obviously the answer. And so it wouldn't be fun to talk about. Yes. He suggested three strikes, you're out. discuss this. And one thing that is helpful is that I am married to a person who wasn't raised in a baseball playing country and had virtually no baseball exposure. And so I was able to run a few things by her. She had maybe a very, very, very slight amount of baseball exposure. Her parents probably had not maybe necessarily heard of baseball

before I started writing about it. Although her sister did play softball. So that's a little bit of a factor, but I don't think they followed her softball career that closely. So I was able to kind of ask her a little bit about this. So one thing that you should know about her is that the song Take Me Out to the Ball Game, she'd never heard heard it and so i had to i i got to teach her that song uh as an adult and it didn't come easy to her uh at first because it's a sort of a weird song um so i don't know if we're expanding this beyond uh baseball playing countries or not uh but if we are, then take me out to the ballgame is not the answer. Okay. All right.

So I have a list here of 10 things that I think could possibly be the answer. So I think that the Yankees as a team could be an answer. Okay. I don't know what percentage of people in, let's just say the United States, have heard of the Yankees, but it's got to be 97%, right? Well, I know that wherever you go,

you see Yankees caps. I don't know whether all the people who wear them really know what Yankees are or what baseball is or whether it's just a style thing. I would not recognize a Tampa Bay Lightning cap if I saw it a thousand times. And by the way, can we pause this discussion and talk about something totally different for a minute?

Sure, okay. Yesterday, Craig Goldstein and I were having a conversation about a video, a music video that I was watching. It was for a song by The Roots. And in it, Black Thought, The Roots MC, is wearing a Yankees cap and it is extremely poorly blurred out but it is blurred out and you can tell what it is like the edges of it are frequently not blurred out when he moves his head when the camera when the shot cuts off the top

half of the hat you can see unblurred the bottom half of the yankees logo it is just a yankees logo right this is not one of their best pixelations and we were trying to figure out why it was blurred out if it could possibly be that the yankees enforced their trademark logo uh their trademark rights on appearing in in music videos and can you even i guess you can but in the same video somebody's wearing a phillies hat and it's not blurred out, which was the really confusing thing. That is weird. Yeah. I don't know why you would want to. It seems like great marketing to have it. Anyway, I know that you often see like White Sox caps and in music videos and that seems to be a popular one.

So I don't know, but there must have been a reason to do it. Craig's theory was that it was not actually a Yankees logo, but that it was a somehow deformed Yankees logo. That it was something that was made to look like a Yankees logo, but was actually like, I don't know. Yeah, blended with something else or some bootleg thing. And my theory is that this was a knowing thing that the Roots did as like an act of like municipal loyalty that somehow like Black Thought was like was going rogue by wearing a Yankees cap. But of course, they're a Philly band and the band said, no way, we rep only one team in this band. And the third is simply that yes that yes the yankees enforced the trademark and that other teams do not huh andy rooney if i can take this in another direction from the roots to andy rooney natural transition andy rooney 25 years ago he used his little

three minute column at the end of 60 minutes to talk about how weird it was that we pay for team team gear instead of them paying us to wear it and he he took the uh the very andy rooney take that he would only wear a team's jersey if they paid him and like that he was open for business he would wear your hat but he wasn't he going to do it for free. He's no shill. Well, yeah, if you were going to wear it on 60 Minutes, I would expect some endorsement fee. That's funny because I'm reading Lords of the Realm right now, and that was actually the case that baseball teams used to pay equipment manufacturers for their uniforms and caps and everything. And then at some point, I think it was only like in the 80s, they were like, hey, we don't need to pay for this.

They should pay us to get their products on TV and be the official equipment sponsors of Major League Baseball. And then suddenly it was Rawlings, I guess, paying a million dollars a year for that instead of teams just buying their stuff like anyone else does. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so the Yankees was my number 10. I i'm rejecting it i think the other nine are actually all better okay so then uh one is the concept of a strike i don't know if the word strike as a as a a word for you know like a

an offense as a strike against you for instance as punishment. I don't know if that word, that usage exists outside or would have existed outside of the outside of baseball being a culturally familiar sport. I don't think that I don't know that they would say, you know, that's a strike against you in another in another non baseball country. So just the concept of a strike might be an answer. It might be more familiar than that there have to be three of them for some action to happen. I think home run is very familiar, the concept of a home run. Home run is also part of softball, but also part of kickball. And just it's a home run.

Like you can say it's a home run in any context. You don't worry about having to explain, well, okay, so then the play is dead, but you're allowed to go around the bases unimpeded. Does it matter whether the person using the term realizes it's a baseball term? Like if, if strike does come from baseball as opposed to something else that it's very possible that baseball adopted strike from something else. Sure. In fact, probably, I guess. But if you say that's a strike against you, you're not thinking I'm using a baseball term. No, you're not. You're right. I think that it has to be familiar and also has to be known to be connected to baseball.

And so, yeah, so I'm saying strike is not a contender. Home run is a contender. All right. I'm going to cross this one out because it's not very good. Okay. Then you've got Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, both, I think, extremely historically significant. Babe Ruth was arguably the biggest star in the world for 10 years, the biggest celebrity in the world for 10 years.

And everybody knows Babe Ruth was a ballplayer, right? Yep, I think so. Pretty good. And then Jackie Robinson. I mean, there's a chapter in every kid's history book, there's a Jackie Robinson. You were taught Jackie Robinson. He is one of the most consequential Americans that there have ever been. And so that's a big one. Although I don't think that if I recall my conversation correctly, I don't believe that Jackie Robinson or Babe Ruth is widely known in the country of my wife's birth. And then you've got the ball, the ball itself. Could you identify if you showed someone in a lineup of five sports balls and said, which one's baseball? Would everybody know it?

Would anybody get it wrong? And I think the answer is everybody would know it and her parents would know it. And that seems consequential to me. I just said consequential again. And they would also know a bat. And I think that a baseball bat is even more known than a baseball. I think that while the image of a baseball is completely ubiquitous, as well known as the Golden Arches, I think a baseball bat beats it. It's a weapon.

It stands on its own. It is, yeah. And you can have a baseball bat. You can have a baseball bat. It's reasonably likely that you might have had a baseball bat in your life without ever playing a baseball game simply because it's a good thing to have in your home. And why not? And you know what it is. You're not like, so what is this piece of wood shaped in a weird way?

Well, I'm not going to look it up. So I think that bat is the leader of all that I've named thus far but i can be convinced otherwise and then you've got the field layout there are baseball fields everywhere that you have a baseball field in your town and you kind of know if you were looking down at a baseball field if they showed you a baseball field a football field a soccer pitch and a basketball court and said which one one do they play baseball on? I think that's almost pretty much universal. And I don't know, I don't know if it would be universally known in Russia or China, but because you probably presumably don't have one on in every town there, but that seems like the one. And then you have three strikes, three strikes. They don't call it three

strikes. Like they, they have laws in other countries where if you commit an act three times you are penalized for it or whatever but they do not call it three strikes uh and you're out or anything like that they don't say well that's your third strike they say it's your third offense and this again goes back to do you have to know that it's a baseball thing but i think that baseball i think that with three strikes specifically people do know that it is a baseball thing that they know that that is the origin of why a third strike matters yeah well i think you've covered most of them and i have a couple more i'd throw in and i don't know that either of them can challenge three strikes you're out or home runs i think home runs is probably the answer, actually. But I drew on a great piece

that Brian Curtis wrote for Grantland about baseball metaphors in political speech and politicians using baseball metaphors, which I think is a good source because politicians, they're trying to address the whole country. They're trying to speak to everyone. And so if they're using baseball metaphors, then that's a pretty good guide for what they think is the lingua franca. So one I would throw in is just the concept of bases and of understanding the order of the bases and rounding bases. So for instance, born on third base or rounding third base and heading for home or rounding second base and heading for home or rounding second base and heading for home if you're Johnny Cooney. Or, I mean, obviously, you know, getting to first

base and second base and third base, those have their own meanings. So I think this is probably just an American thing. I doubt if you came from a country that didn't understand baseball that you would know those terms. But in this country, at least, I think knowing very little else about baseball, you understand that and what it means kind of that you're progressing toward home plate and that if you're at third, you're close to home. And if you're at first, you're not. I think that's well understood. Then the other one I would mention is innings. I think people know ninth inning, for instance, or first inning that you very commonly see used. So Brian quoted a Reagan

quote from 1986 where Reagan said, it's the bottom of the ninth and tax reform is rounding third and heading home. So he combined both of those things. We're about to score the winning run, not just of the game, but of the whole season. So I think if people say it's the ninth inning or get the sense that it's closing in toward the end, he quotes FDR in 1945 saying, you know how I really feel? I feel like a baseball team going into the ninth inning with only eight men left to play. And then he died eight days later. So that was very accurate. And at the other end of the spectrum, the idea that the first inning is the start of something. Brian has a quote here, a weird quote.

Brian calls it an awful baseball metaphor, and of course it comes from Mitt Romney, who would say something strange. He said, we've had, if you will, the first inning of a game that has, let's say, 50 innings in it. He said that at the 2008 Iowa caucuses. You wrote about a game that would have 50 innings in it once? It wasn't real. And some of these quotes are, I mean, he makes the point that politicians love quoting baseball because lots of politicians are old white guys, and that's kind of baseball's core market.

And some of these quotes are from eras when baseball was more part of the common experience and part of the language. So that may have changed a little bit. But those are the two other contenders I'd mentioned. Or what about umpires? Just umpires? I don't know if you can say that's a baseball thing, like that term specifically. Obviously, other sports have officials and referees, but you'll hear umpire used pretty commonly. So if that's a baseball origination, then that's another one. But I think it's home runs. Everyone knows a home run

is a good thing. You hit it out of the park. Okay. I think it's the bat, but I think that home run's a good one. All right. I had other questions. I'll table them for next time and we will end there. So I'll talk to you next week. All right. See you. Okay. That will do it for today. By the way,

if you're interested in more real or not real, I wrote an article for the ringer that looked at a wide variety of early season stats and trends, tried to suss out what's different and why it's different and whether it will continue and whether it means baseball has doomed. So I will link to that along with everything else I linked to in the show page. A couple other things happened after Sam and I recorded. One is that there was a brawl

that was incited by a bat flip. That makes me even more pessimistic about the odds of Dustin Knight being able to get away with his backflip in the big leagues. Don't think MLB is ready for that sort of celebration yet. The other thing that happened is that the Red Sox lost again, this time to the Yankees 5-3. And this was a bullpen blow-up. I think it was their first blown save of the season, actually. Not only did they lose, but Dustin Pedroia had a recurrence of his knee issues. He had to leave the game. So more bad news for them. The Rays also won. I can't give you the updated playoff odds number because it hasn't updated yet, but I can tell you that I think the Red Sox odds of making the playoffs, let alone the division

series, will actually dip under 50%. So the situation is sort of dire, at least compared to where it was a few weeks ago. You can support the 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 to help keep the podcast going. Tinoff, Stefan Eisenberger, To pledge some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going, Tinoff, Stefan Eisenberger, Scott Meredith, Max Twine, and Daniel Heller. Thanks to all of you. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Sam and Meg coming via email at podcastfangraphs.com

or via the Patreon messaging system. We do try to answer emails as we can, even if we don't answer them on the show. We get too many to answer them all, but we do read them. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. You can pre-order my book.

That would be much appreciated. It's called The MVP Machine, and it comes out later this spring. It's about the ongoing revolution in player development in baseball. So we will be back with one more show this week. It will be me and Meg, and we will talk to you soon. Outro Music