Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1368: Barehand Gab

Episode Date: April 27, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Rich Hill‘s dominant rehab start, the most famous catches in history and Sam’s article about recreating Kevin Mitchell’s barehand catch, their own best baseball plays, and when it becomes objectionable to sit a player who’s pursuing a single-season record, then answer listener emails about the entertainment value of […]

It could happen to you, something for your sake. If I should stumble, catch my fall. Yeah, if I should stumble, catch my fall. Catch my fool, catch my fool wanted to talk to you about our pal Rich Hill, who is making his season debut for the Dodgers this Sunday. He hurt his knee. He sprained a ligament during spring training, so he hasn't pitched yet, but he has been making some rehab starts. Did you see how he did in his second rehab start? I think this is something we've talked about before this genre of baseball thing, the good major league player who pitches a rehab game against very low

level competition and just destroys them, which is always fun and a reminder of how good baseball players are. So Rich Hill, earlier this week, he made a second rehab start. He had already made one and pitched four scoreless innings for high A, and he thought he was ready, but the Dodgers disagreed. So they had him go and pitch again in extended spring training, which for those who don't know, extended spring training, it's kind of a mix of players. But at this point, it's typically like low A players. It's like short season minor leaguers who are just kind of waiting for short season minor leagues to start. And sometimes you get rehabbing big leaguers and other guys in there,

but that's basically what it is. So Rich Hill facing these guys. He is 39 years old, as we know, but he absolutely dominated them. He went six innings. He struck out 16. He said he threw 60-something pitches, and the other two non-strikeouts came on ground balls. He allowed one hit, which he described as a jam-shot single, and he was quoted as saying,

a lot of strikes. Yeah, a lot of strikes. I was really disappointed. I can't believe they won't let a pitcher go for 21Ks these days. Not even in a rehab game. they won't let a pitcher go for 21ks these days he really had a shot at doing something he could have had 25ks which would i'm i'm joking and then i uh i am obviously joking but then midway through i forgot that i was joking and i actually started to think that there might be something about 25ks when we know that in lower levels there are examples of uh you know like what didn't clayton kershaw have a start in high school where he struck out every batter he threw an all strikeout perfect game yeah it's just it's so great they're so good at baseball and you would think like at a certain point I mean you

wonder when the lines will cross that's another conversation we've had like when does the young guy catch up to the old guy and so so these are presumably like, I don't know, high teenagers, low early 20-somethings who were just out of school in some cases, and they're facing 39-year-old Rich Hill barring some major injury will be like well into his 40s if not longer before players at this level can actually hit him which is pretty impressive yeah so I want to talk about the article that you wrote that is up on ESPN you have anything else before that I just I just I'm thinking about what you just said in it. Yeah. That was too profound to just rush past with it. Yeah.

You're right. Like when will Rich Hill be too old for 17-year-olds? I mean, you'd have to be like 50. I mean, he doesn't throw hard, obviously, and he's been banged up. He's got blisters all the time. He has this knee thing. So his problem is durability and actually being able to pitch. But if he is healthy or healthy enough to pitch in an extended spring game, then presumably he could keep this up for at least another decade or something before it's an even match, if not longer.

Well, Bill, you remember when Bill Lee pitched in the Pacific Association. Right. You weren't there, but you remember that story. And I think he did it a couple times, but one of the times he did it, the last time that's publicly listed on his baseball reference page, he threw a complete game. He allowed four runs on eight hits and he was 65 and uh and you know we we i don't know what the pacific association was uh in 2012 uh if it was better or worse than when we were there but we estimated like a somewhere between a low a and and single a level talent across the

league and uh theo who arranged that as I recall, said it was legit. Lee was a legit pitcher. It's not like this was some pure stunt. He was really glad because he had Bill Lee in a pennant race, and the other team was really mad that they used Bill Lee in a pennant race, and he was 65, and it worked. Yeah. I guess it probably depends on the type of pitcher.

If you're a major leaguer who's solely dependent on blowing guys away and you just have a really good fastball, A, maybe these young guys have seen pretty good fastballs before and also you're going to lose your fastball. Whereas if you're Rich Hill and you have this special high spin curve, you've just never seen that pitch if you're in extended spring. And you've probably never seen some of the pitches that Bill Lee had at that level. So if you've just got like a really nasty breaking ball that these players have just never encountered before, and it's maybe less dependent on speed, you could probably just keep going as long as you're like

physically able to get the ball to the plate. Yeah. So you wrote, speaking of Pacific Association, you returned to Sonoma, California, and you hung out with the O Fight Master this past week. And Tommy. Tommy was there too. Yes, Tommy Lyons. Tommy Lyons, MVP of the 2017 Australian Baseball Minor League season. MVP. Did I say MVP twice? Yes. Well, he won it once, but MVP of that league as well as 400 hitter,

maybe the last 400 hitter in professional baseball. So you were there to recreate the Kevin Mitchell barehanded over- shoulder catch from 1989. And this was a really fun article because you not only actually attempted to recreate it, but you talked about why it was impressive. And there is a video that I think a lot of our listeners would like to see of you attempting to, and then kind of succeeding in creating this catch. What do you mean? Why, what are you marginalizing the catch for? Well, the only one it shows you completing is not really a perfect replica of the Kevin Mitchell catch.

You may have made other ones, but yeah. It shows you screwing up in a pretty entertaining way. I would definitely subscribe to a series of Sam Miller recreating famous baseball plays and falling on his face in the process. That'd be fun. Do I have to fall? Does it count as falling on your face if it's predetermined that I'm going to fall on my face? Well, yeah, as long as it's genuine, but it might be genuine every time. I described the falling on my face to my editor as sincere and severe. Yeah.

So I think maybe the best part of the article is the quotes that you got from the ESPN cricket coverage. Yeah. One great quote. I know what you're going to say. That's a it's a it's an all timer of a phrase that we're going to use, I think about a million times on this. Yeah, it's really great because you, you wanted to talk to someone who covers cricket because in cricket they make barehanded catches all the time. And so he wasn't even particularly impressed by the Kevin Mitchell play.

And he said that in cricket, I think we'd call it RC rather than classy. There was more elegance in this catch, but I didn't think it was that amazing. You even went and got Cricket Analytics Company data on how often cricketers catch barehanded attempts, which is 77%. Yeah, Jared, the cricket expert, got those for me to confirm his own estimates. So the Kevin Mitchell catch, I saw that you asked on twitter for like The most iconic catch other than the willie mays catch and there were quite a few replies who Suggested the kevin mitchell catch and that was not one of the ones that initially came to my Mind i i think probably because it was a bit before my time i was two when that happened and i was not watching it live as you

were and as a giants fan or someone who grew up a giants fan i'm sure you saw this saw it live zillion times yeah yeah and i have not i mean i i am aware of it but i i haven't been exposed to it as many times as you have but i think judging by the twitter replies a lot of people would consider this maybe the i don't know most indelible catch memorable catch impressive catch perhaps yeah it's hard to it's hard to you don't know every person on twitter's age and so it's uh possible that it is undoubtedly the most famous second most famous right say obviously the most famous catch in baseball history is uh undeniable everybody knows that one so second most famous so it could be without a doubt the second most famous catch

for like a six-year range of of human births it's just hard to know like jeff passon said that one and jeff passon's you know to me i'm i'm content to let jeff passan be the final word on baseball issues such as this one. I think he's like exactly your age or something like that, but that might have something to do with it. Yeah, and Riley Breckenridge gave me this one as well, and a lot of people gave me this one. I think that this was probably, I didn't count, but I think this was probably one of the two most common answers that I got, this one and Bo Jackson running up the wall. And I was surprised because I think that the Mitchell one I got more than the Jim Edmonds one, and I thought Jim Edmonds was definitely the second most.

The whole point of asking this question was actually just to test. I wanted to say that it was one of the most famous catches in baseball history, maybe as high as second or third. And then I thought, well, is that true? I don't know that it's an easy way to measure fame is to ask people what's famous. And so I thought that the Edmonds catch would be the clear number two. And it wasn't. But there were a lot of great catches listed here for sure. And famous catches and famous catches I wasn't thinking of. And some that I thought were underrepresented. But again, it's hard to know if that's just my generation but it really felt like the you guys you and um meg talked i think the other day about the uh decline of blooper reels uh in major league

baseball and the the sort of the baseball clips package of both bloopers and also extraordinary plays was a lot represented a lot more of our baseball consumption in the old days than it does now um and so like the kevin mitchell one i you're right i saw it a gazillion times partly because it would it would it would be on these clips packages that you'd see at stadiums also because it would be it was part of theants television broadcast intro montage. So you'd see it before every game. But two of the huge, huge, huge plays of that era were the minor leaguer catching the ball and then running right through the wall.

And the, I believe, Japanese ball player who climbed the fence, who planted his foot, grabbed the rail, and then extended like, you know, a full probably 11 feet into the air to catch a ball and both of those i expected would be a little bit would be named more than sandy amoros uh was but sandy amoros won yeah that's a famous one but it comes from the year after willie mazes catch so a lot of people probably just aren't as aware of it i know that uh i guess bill james chimed in on your twitter replies to suggest sam rice yes the world series in the 20s i mean in yeah in

yeah so he said sam rice in 24 or 25 which he didn't remember which one i feel like i feel like that somewhat disqualifies it i also got uh i forget who it was but someone in 1947 i don't know i feel like like that that while while that certainly puts that catch in the conversation, it also sort of rules it out because you don't remember who did it. Is that the Al Gianfrido catch? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm saying the person who suggested it said someone in 1947. That's what I mean. Right.

Yeah. Well, we don't have to rehash all of them if you're if you're thinking of one in your head i'm sure someone said it in the replies to sam here so go check out that twitter thread i mean in recent years you'd probably include like jim edmunds and gary matthews i i think gary matthews catches is probably my favorite gary matthews jr that is yeah but uh more than endy i specifically created this so that endy and gary matthews would not benefit from recency bias and so i said not not including the last 15 years but you'd say uh edmunds over over endy huh i'm an endy guy well

we're talking about most famous not just which one we personally like the most. I mean, I think if I had to just, if I could only watch one catch on loop for the rest of my life, it'd probably be the Gary Matthews Jr. catch, but, but Andy was great. And because it happened at a very prominent moment, maybe it is more famous, but anyway, there are a lot of good choices, but you chose Kevin Mitchell and you wanted to recreate this one because I think you were curious about what it would feel like for one thing to catch a ball barehanded and how much it would hurt and it turns out that it hurts a little but a manageable amount so you didn't do serious damage to any part of your hand it sounds like yeah i um partly one of the reasons i wanted to write about the mitchell catch is that. Yeah, I, partly one of the reasons I wanted to write about

the Mitchell catch is that I had not that long ago read the Willie Mays biography by James Hirsch, and they talk, Hirsch talks about how about one of Mays' barehand catches that's not on film, but that some Willie Mays like kind of

completists would say is actually his greatest catch, and people at the time, many thought it was his greatest catch, and I've always been kind of completists would say is actually his greatest catch and people at the time many thought it was his greatest catch and and i've always um been kind of i don't know i've i've not really reckoned with the question of what what is a barehanded catch where does it fit in the highlight scale uh it's it's unnatural for sure it's unexpected for sure i don't know how hard it is how difficult it is i don't really know how to separate the arsiness of it sometimes um from the necessity of it from the from the sheer reaction to desperate straights kind of component of it um and so i uh having not been able to see the

willie mays plays i was i was somewhat i was somewhat both skeptical of the claims about his barehanded catches and also really curious to see them. And I thought, wow, the fact that I'm this curious to see them says something about it. And so the Mitchell catch is the iconic barehanded catch. There have been a few other barehanded plays, but they tend to be either close to the batter or sort of like looping balls like the David Wright barehanded catch or pitchers david wright barehanded catch or pitchers sometimes will make a barehanded catch or catchers will sometimes make barehanded catches on like on very low pop-ups and so those are sort of different and so the fact that the mitchell catch which turns 30 years old today uh was its own kind of anomaly even within that

genre of highlights made it something I wanted to explore. Yeah. Well, this was personal to me because the best play of my brief baseball career or my brief baseball competitive career was also a barehanded play. It was not a catch, but I was playing second base in eighth grade on my grammar school team, St. David's, against this other school team in the city, Collegiate, and I got a bad hop. It was just one of those unconscious things. If I had had to plan it and think about it, it probably wouldn't have happened, but got a bad hop and just in the moment just reached out and sort of grabbed it and started a double play, which at that level is you cannot assume the double play in eighth grade ball. So I did that and it was such an impressive play

that the other team, the collegiate team actually like applauded and I bowed at second base. And that was the best moment of my competitive baseball career and I've had other bad hops that did not go so well one bad hop broke my nose although that was a bad hop off a tree root they did not tear the uniform off my back although I'm sure that they would have I just kind of quit playing baseball because I didn't want to go to practice but that was the the best moment of my competitive athletic career. That's a good one. This is where now do I have to say mine?

Sure. I'll tell you the best moment of my competitive baseball career. But first, I want to say that, Ben, you also factored into some of the development of this article without knowing it. So Alan Nathan did me the solid of uh of figuring out how hard the ball that ozzy smith hit to kevin mitchell was likely going i found a a ball that was comparable in distance traveled and and height or hang time and so to get

the exit the likely exit velocity and launch angle alan nathan had this great trajectory calculator that could tell me how fast the ball was going at each hundredth of a second of its flight and at its apex and so on. And so the answer is a fairly, you know, kind of an unimpressive velocity. The ball was probably hit about 95 to 100 miles an hour, but by the time Mitchell caught it, it was going much slower. And in fact, roughly speaking, it was going about as fast as you know about a 60 mile an hour pitch would be going when it crossed home plate and you pitched to me the day that we clinched the first half championship in the pacific association and i think i remember

this right i'm not totally sure but you went we we timed ourselves we clocked ourselves when we were setting up the pitch FX system. And we, you know, we were in the like low sixties or so. Right. Yeah. And low to mid sixties. And so you pitched to me. And if I remember correctly, you were wild and you kept throwing pitches that were right at me and one of, and I had to swat them away with my bare hand. And I had to swat them away with my bare hand. And I believe one of them I caught. You threw it at my face and I caught it. And I thought, wow, well, you know, if the ball that Mitchell caught was only going that hard, like that was not a life-changing event for me to catch that. sort of struck me as interesting that one of the great highlights in baseball, unlike all the other great highlights in baseball, is something that you could actually do,

that you could kind of recreate. Potentially, I wasn't sure. So I wanted to test that. Greatest moment of my baseball career was when I was catching in Bronco. So that's 11-12. I was a 12-year-old and I was very little. I was probably the second smallest kid in the league, depending on whether Sean Mullen was in town or not. Sean Mullen lived in my town and then moved away and then came back. And he was, I think, smaller than me. Charlie Rodriguez.

You must have been happy when he came back. I was. I was good friends with Sean too. and Charlie Rodriguez was probably smaller than me but he was a he was a legit athlete so I was right there among the smallest kids in the league but I was a that year I was a catcher which I was really proud of to be that little in that and to be a catcher and uh so this guy uh who was the the biggest or the second biggest kid in the league barreled into me at home plate. But I mean, he was out by 40 feet and he wanted to knock me out and he just came right into me. He was intimidating and he just plowed right into me, full head of steam. And I remember flying

about 15 feet straight back like a cartoon. Maybe I might've left an indentation in the backstop from where my body hit. But I held onto the ball and everybody, my whole team charged in around me to pat me on the back. And my old coach who owned a Las Palmas Mexican restaurant in town, which is a good Mexican restaurant, ran out, sprinted out and picked me up and gave me a bear hug and carried me to the dugout. Oh, that's nice. It was nice. I've got an email for later in this episode about catchers flying backwards, so maybe we'll get to that one.

You do. Yes. The thing you pointed out in this article is that the catch itself, I mean, if you have an unlimited number of opportunities to try it, is not really that impressive because you can kind of recreate it but it's impressive because it's unexpected and because it's just spur of the moment and you adjust to the circumstances and and that maybe he if he had taken a better route or something he wouldn't have had to do this but he did it and that was

kind of the case with with myhanded play too, which I think was a one hopper. And that makes it more impressive. How does that apply to, and as a number of people are probably thinking, there was very recently a barehanded play by Freddie Galvis who caught a pop-up barehanded and that was great. How does this apply to more routine barehanded plays, which I guess are never really routine in baseball. But if you're a third baseman, let's say you make barehanded plays pretty often. That's different because velocity is not really a factor. You're not worried about hurting your hand. You're worried about just picking it up cleanly and making the throw. And it's also just part of the job. But it's still one of the more impressive parts of that job. So I guess even there where it's not as uncommon an occurrence, just doing something barehanded in baseball where you have a glove to do things, that's pretty much always impressive. Mark Simon, I think when he was at ESPN, when he was on the stats and info team at ESPN,

had Baseball Info Solutions one year track all the plays where a fielder picked a ball up with his bare hand, either, or maybe caught a ball with his bare hand. I want to say, though, that it was like fielded a ball with his bare hand. So I think, you know, even charging charging i think even charging in on bunts and things like that would have counted but um yeah they the i remember thinking that it was very interesting that that they were going to track those and then i remember at some point thinking that it was what was very interesting is just how low the numbers were like you i the leaderboard was not that interesting because it was like three, like a guy had three. And so those plays are very rare.

And so anything that requires that kind of spur of the moment innovation is worth, I think, yeah, worth thinking about the role of improvisation in good defense. That's kind of a staple of like Andrelton Simmons plays that we have broken down on this podcast. Meg and I just talked about his tag that he made on like a kind of quasi hidden ball trick the other day and that was the sort of thing where he had to think of doing it that was not like physically impressive but often when we talk about simmons it is partly like i'm trying to remember what the one specific play that is kind of coming to my mind but not quite that he made where it wasn't just the physical aspect of it that was impressive, but like that he even thought to do the thing that he did, like throwing to whatever base he threw to or running to it. quickly and make an amazing throw but other times it's like he's just it's almost like a gretzky

like like he's seeing the ice in a way that no one else is seeing it sort of thing yeah yeah all right so i will link to that article everyone go read it and more importantly watch it you gotta click just to watch sam fall on his face uh yeah i don't i think that the uh i think it cuts off before the audio but the the face first, I fell into a patch of mud. The reason I fell is that the area was soaked and waterlogged and completely muddy. And so not only did I fall, but I fell into basically a pigsty. And I immediately hopped up to explain, mud! But I think that got cut off.

So just know that it was also muddy. Okay. All right. So we're going to do some emails here. I have one from Colin who says, Cleveland goes into today, not literally today, but whatever day it was when Colin emailed us. Third in pitching strikeout rate, 27.8%. And second to last in hitting strikeout rate, 27.8%, and second to last in hitting strikeout rate, 27.4%. After flying cross country and facing Kikuchi and the Blue Jays facing Martin Perez and the Twins Penn and with Trevor Bauer pitching, they could be first in both

percentage stats tomorrow. Not sure where the question is in here other than if we assume balls and play make the game interesting, is this Cleveland team the most unwatchable in mlb with respect to the fact that they neither put the ball in play nor allow it to be put in play i recognize that it's generally good to see your own team's pitchers strike guys out would perhaps a team with high hitting strikeout rate and low pitching strikeout rate be more difficult to watch so So I just, I looked up the numbers as they stand today. So if you're wondering about the team with the highest combined strikeout rate, it's actually the Rays who have a 53% combined strikeout rate. Cleveland is actually in extremely close second at 52.9. So there are six teams as we, that are over 50%. So you do get a bigger range

here than you would get in just hitting or just pitching strikeout rate. Like in pitching strikeout rate, you might get a staff that's maybe 10 percentage points higher on the high end than the lowest strikeout team. But when you're talking about combined strikeout rates, you have the Rays at 53%, and then you have the Angels, who just don't strike out anymore on offense and also don't have a very high strikeout pitching staff. They are at 37.8%. So there's like almost a 17 percentage point spread

between the Rays and the Angels. So do you think that the premise holds? Does this actually correlate to unwatchability? Well, I'm kind of on record as not being opposed to strikeouts, particularly when it's good pitchers striking out batters. I do think that if your attention is more on the batter, then strikeouts are no fun. Attention is more on the batter than strikeouts are no fun. I don't think they're considerably less fun than weak ground outs or lazy fly balls to the outfield.

So I think that separating the entertainment value of strikeouts with the entertainment value of actual offense is important. If you give me two teams that both had a combined, say, you know, six runs per game of offense allowed and offense scored, I don't think I would care if it was strikeouts based or not strikeouts based. I also think that walks and home runs are also part of this. Maybe not home runs. People like home runs, but walks are part of it and cleveland does not walk particularly often if i'm correct hang on i was just looking at this and i forgot to i navigated away and it doesn't matter just trust me and they don't walk many batters they walk very few i think they're last no they're not last but they're near the bottom in the American League in issuing walks. I would much rather see a team that doesn't issue walks than a team that does issue walks. That would be my deal breaker.

But, you know, it is true that strikeouts have some effects on the game outside of that particular plate appearance. Strikeout pitchers tend to have higher pitch per plate appearance rates, and they tend to also often have more walks because the counts tend to go a little bit deeper and they're not being ended on contact. Cleveland has, let's see here, by their pitchers have the league average pitches per plate appearance. So they're not long plate appearances. And so all in all, I would say that simply knowing their strikeout rate does not move me in any way. And particularly because I think that their pitching staff is

really interesting and pitchers that strike batters out tend to be the ones that you want to see the start of. You know, there was a, I remember at one point when they were thinking about expanding the netting behind, in front of the fans to save fans from like errant fly balls and bats. And people were like, well, now nobody's going to want to sit in those seats. And Harry Pavlidis pointed out like the most expensive seats in the park are all behind netting right now. And like you would kind of be foolish to think, ah, people really like nets. But you would also take that appropriately to mean that people don't mind nets enough not to spend tons of money on the best seats.

It is not a deal breaker. And I feel like the fact that when you look at pitcher matchups on MLB.com and decide which games you're going to watch that day, all the pitchers that you want to see strike out the most batters is not necessarily proof that strikeouts are inherently more interesting, but it definitely proves that good pitching is and that strikeouts are not an obstacle to enjoying good pitchers. Yeah. Well, I was just going to make a similar point, which is that people often speculate about how many strikeouts are too many strikeouts. And a lot of people think we've already reached or passed that point and others think we haven't, but that there

probably is a point where there would be too many and so if you just talk about the Rays this year I think the Rays are perceived to be a fun and enjoyable baseball team right I took the Rays with my fourth pick in our team fun draft and I've seen a lot written about just how the Rays are good and fun and a cool baseball team and yet in Rays games this year, there have been more strikeouts than in any other team's games, but they're pretty fun. I mean, I wouldn't want to use Rays attendance figures to prove my point, but that's for other reasons, not because of the strikeouts. So if you can have fun watching Tampa Bay Rays games right

now, just because the team is fun, then that suggests that you could tolerate a game where the strikeout rate is considerably higher than it is across the league today. Even if you look at the fifth highest combined strikeout rate right now, the Padres at 50.8% generally acknowledge that the Padres are a fun team, not because of the strikeouts, but for other factors. So yeah, I mean, that's like a, it's kind of a preview of where baseball could be if this trend continues for another five, 10 years, then maybe every game is like that. Now, maybe that's too much, but still kind of makes you think, it does yeah all right so let's take a couple questions these are two very similar questions so i'll read this one this is from matt who is a beleaguered orioles fan he says would it be of any advantage to a rebuilding team to look at future

rule changes and start drafting acquiring acquiring, or developing players who are particularly suited to potential future rules. I can imagine that for some particularly bad teams, say the Orioles, the Marlins, the Royals, etc., there may be a strategic advantage of proceeding ahead of the actual rule changes in order to capture any first mover advantage. But at the same time, a team that moves too soon could be saddled with players who aren't well qualified for whatever actual rules go into effect. For example, when I first heard that MLB was testing an enlarged base, I thought, great news for the Royals, their speedy team might actually have an advantage in the modern MLB. But then I realized that most of their current lineup may be long gone by the time a hypothetical change in bag size goes into

effect. So, in short, what is the best time to start preparing for a future rule change and which perspective changes would you optimize around? We got almost the same question from Chris in Silver Spring, Maryland, who is also an Orioles fan. So I guess this is what Orioles fans are thinking about right now. This team is terrible. Can we like do something so that it will be good when they change the rules remind me what a few years ago like five years ago when the strike zone was kind of moving around a little bit and there was the low the expanded low strike zone for a couple years and wasn't the case that the red socks really took advantage of that

had this pitching staff that was just perfectly suited for the big low strike zone, dominated, won the World Series, and then they changed the strike zone, more or less. lower so they went and got a bunch of guys like porcello and masterson and miley and kelly and they had buckholts and then they were going to get catchers who were good at framing low pitches like vasquez and ryan hannigan and then they would kind of do the pirates thing just like low in the zone get good framing shift a lot get grounders but then the ball changed i don't think it was the strike zone changing so much as it was the ball. And then hitters started golfing those low pitches and they turned into home runs and the 2015 Red Sox pitching was a disaster. So I think that's what happened. And then they embraced high fastballs and Brian Bannister came in and suddenly they

were elevating everything. But that's the idea. You have a strategy and then circumstances change. That's one thing. Or sometimes we'll get questions or you'll hear, well, if robot umps are coming, then maybe you don't have to worry about catcher defense anymore. And, you'll probably have sort of a fairly long sense of when the rules changes are coming. Rules changes tend to be pretty minimal. Baseball is a conservative sport, Major League Baseball. The commissioner's office is a conservative body.

And there's probably not a lot to be gained by this sort of thing, especially when you're talking about players, like when you mentioned the Royals, it's not just that their players won't necessarily be there, but their players are kind of like they're marginal. A lot of them are marginal one year guys anyway, who are going to be like, you're not putting a six year deal on on Billy Hamilton at this point so that you can really lock in those extra one point five inches that he has between the bases. But we're at a point where I think three things to maybe maybe two. I don't know how I'm lumping these, but have sort of changed the way that you might think about that question. is that they announced pretty significant rules changes coming into play next year with lefties specialists with one batter. Sorry, but what is it? How many outs remind me?

You have to face at least three batters. Yes, ending and ending. So which we don't exactly know how much that's going to play. which we don't exactly know how much that's going to play. Like we've talked about, it could be something that only affects a few, a very few number of appearances, or it could be that it essentially banishes 25 established major leaguers from the majors because they no longer have that thin margin of advantage. And the fact that they would make a move that affects like, that so much affects like,

you know, 5% of the player pool of the union members with very little lead in time, does kind of make you feel like this is a less conservative commissioner's office than we've ever had, or at least that we've had in some time. And so you don't totally rule out that he will make a significant change with fairly short notice. But the other thing is that we have a greater appreciation for how much the strike zone matters in subtle ways. And we also know that the strike zone is shifting in substantial ways from year to year and sometimes even within seasons. And that if you can adapt to the strike zone before anybody else, there there really is a big advantage potentially there. We also I think especially we know that the value of changing a ball to a strike or a strike to a ball is much bigger than we thought for much of baseball history.

And so there does seem to be some potential there. And the other thing is that we have a baseball that radically changes from year to year or has for the last few years. And that dictates all sorts of changes in strategy and potentially in who is and who isn't good. And so I'm more open to the premise that you could be gaming out some of these changes in advance if you were a team. The tricky thing is that the ball itself is unpredictable. That's been the other lesson of the last four or five years. You don't know what the ball that you play with in the second half is going to be like, even if you know what the ball in the first half is like, necessarily.

Strike zone is to some degree similar as the Red Sox example shows. And so this is to now go back to the original proposition that you should probably mostly focus on getting good players and helping them be their best selves. Yep, I agree. I think between the uncertainty about when things will happen, we just don't know that they will happen usually. And even if we do know, you maybe just get one season's lead

time. And then there's also the fact that most rule changes are not that significant. And there's an element of unpredictability to all of this because of the ball changing and other circumstances changing. I just don't think it makes that much sense. Like there could be a scenario where you have a truly't tell you when that will happen, and I certainly wouldn't start doing anything right now to plan on that happening. It's going to be tested in the Atlantic League this year, so it's conceivable that that could happen in the majors as soon as, I don't know, two or three years, but it's entirely plausible that it might not happen for 10 years or 20 years. So who knows? It's just not something I would plan on right now. All right. Hypothetically, Ben, so we know that the baseball this year appears to be livelier than the baseball last year. And we could not have known that coming into the season. But let's say that somehow one team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, knew. They knew what the baseball was going to be, what it was going to play like, and how the game was going to be different in 2019 compared to 2018. Of their active current 25-man roster, how many different players do you think they would have instead of the 25 they have now? If we're just talking about going from like last year, which was what the second highest home run rate ever to this year, which is on pace to be the highest home run rate ever.

Yeah, probably no difference. I think I think that's probably true. Yeah. let's say when homers were way down to this year then i think if you had an understanding of how these things affect players and performance which probably teams do today more so than they did at that time but i think you probably if you had enough lead time that you could actually make transactions to prepare for that i think you you would probably have, let's say, three different players, maybe three different hitters. And you might instruct your hitters differently as well, because there are certain things that you could teach hitters to do.

You might optimize their swings for one type of ball that you wouldn't do for another type of ball. So I think that might be, you'd probably change like how you instruct your young players, although by the time they're big leaguers, who knows if things will be the same. So yeah, I'd say a few and maybe you embrace a different hitting philosophy. And if they really outlawed the shift today, how many roster spots do you think would be affected huh would anybody lose their job would would anybody change would would there be anybody whose position changed would there be anybody who was suddenly seen as either a better or a worse option on a given team i think there have been certain players who have been driven out of the game or have had their playing time

reduced as a result of the shift oh you're thinking of hitters aren't you i'm thinking of hitters yeah i was thinking of defenders but yeah of course so there's also the question of hitters and there's there's also the question in the middle maybe of pitchers yeah for fielders for fielders i i think probably we've seen some teams like maybe the Brewers be willing to put someone like a middle infield spot or something or or you might like right now there's concern about Vlad Jr. And can he play third? Because if there's a shift, then he'd have to turn a double play. And will he be comfortable? Will he be capable of doing that?

And so maybe he moves to first base sooner than he would have otherwise or something like that but yeah i i'd say i mean some players would be affected like lightly affected by that would you guess that andrelton simmons war would go up or down if there were no shifts is that like assuming that war is accounting for the shift in a correct way? Yes. Whatever defensive metric is accurately appraising. All right. So I would guess, I would think that for a player like him, I guess it goes down, but slightly.

I think probably someone like him who has such extreme range, maybe if the shift allows you to compensate for other players' subpar range, then it narrows the gap between him and that player. But on the other hand, he gets to shift too, and so he just gets to apply that great range even more efficiently. So maybe the gap between him and everyone else or him and the worst guy shrinks, but I would guess that it shrinks less than we would think. Right. So instead of being 100% better than, say, the replacement level, maybe now he's 120% without the shift. Right. But the range of plays that he's involved in shrinks from X to, say, 90% of X. And so his ability to enforce his superiority on more plays has gone down so yeah i don't know you could go it's a math problem now yeah stop last that last they'll take a data set sorted by something like e r a-B-S-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 day-stab-lust Alright, so I got a question that I was just going to ignore because it didn't seem like it would matter particularly. But I found myself having an opinion about it. I was surprised and thinking, oh, yeah, I do have. I also have felt a thing along those lines. So this question was from Kevinvin who says via via patreon hello the other night

cleveland had jake bowers as its dh batting eighth in the lineup whenever i see a dh in the bottom third of the lineup i think the team must be deficient in some way i was wondering is there any pattern to a team's win lossloss record and the place in the order of the DH? Do teams with the DH batting in the bottom third tend to have a worse record than a team with a DH batting third or fourth? And so Ben, what's your reaction when you see a DH batting? Do you have any reaction as Kevin does, or do you have no reaction? And in retrospect, do you have a position on this question? My perception is that this would have become more common recently, that in the past, teams had more dedicated DHs who were probably better at hitting, whereas today you get fewer dedicated

DHs and more guys who are just kind of rotating in and out of that position and maybe coming back from an injury or something and so i think i feel like i've seen studies or articles on this that the playing time at dh is distributed differently so i think today i would not make much of this but at an earlier point i think i might have and i would have thought that it would hurt you because if you have a DH slot on your team, if you're an American League team, that's a place where it seems like you should be able to go get a good hitter. And so if you fail to do that, then you're passing up an opportunity that other teams are probably taking advantage of. It seems like it should be easier

to get a hitter who can hit closer to the top of the lineup at DH because you don't have to have that guy play defense. And so I would think that you're passing up an advantage and therefore you'd be worse, but not notably so. Well, let me first just swat down your premise. There is not an increase in DH's batting at the bottom of the lineup. If you look at DH's batting eighth or DH's batting ninth, the most common, the years where that was most common were, you know, before. Before now.

Sometimes, you know, there's a bunch of years on here, but 10 years, 20 years ago, five years ago, not in the last few years. But otherwise, yeah, you can make a case that a DH batting eighth says, wow, that team has got a lot of hitters, right? Because everybody should be able to have a competent DH. And so if you assume that at the very least, well, if you assume that almost every team is going to have a hitter, not necessarily David Ortiz, obviously, but a hitter, a guy who's good enough to hit in the major leagues and good enough by a large enough margin that he can do it even though he can't play the field. And they're so good that they have him eighth, then they must have a really

deep lineup otherwise. Or you could say, wow, that team can't even get offense out of dh they're giving away offense they have this position where they ought to be able to get some offense and they're just giving it away they're taking an l on that and it also i think maybe significantly too you could start to kind of write a character study of this team based on this, which is that maybe they're a bad front office if they've been unable to fill the easiest position in the field with a good hitter. I sort of was thinking about it like everybody knows the green M&Ms have to be removed clause in contract writers for bands. And everybody would make fun of those and go, ah, can you believe this prima donna wouldn't have green M&Ms?

But then the artists then explained, oh, well, it's not actually about the M&Ms. It's about making sure that the arena staff are competent and up to the job and that they read the contract because if they can't take care of the M&Ms, then they're not going to be able to make sure that the electrical stuff is waterproof or that the stage is safe. And so it's the easy, that's the easy task. You check that to see if they're up to the harder tasks. And if a team can't do the easy task of having at least a league

average hitter at DH, then, you know, what are the odds that they're going to have a solid, you know, middle infield or whatever? So that's another way you could speculate that it might work out. So I also feel the way that Kevin did without realizing it. I had never quite acknowledged this viewpoint that I had. But as soon as Kevin said it, I thought, yes, I also think that when a team has a DH batting eighth, it's kind of like, ha ha, they have a DH batting eighth. They're bad. Right.

And so then we're going to blast some stats to see if this is true. So what I did first is I looked at all team games since 2010 in which a DH was batting ninth, in which a DH was batting eighth, and in which a DH was batting seventh. And I looked at the record of those teams. We have a total of 2,600 games over that nearly decade. And those 2,600 teams with those 2,600 DHs in the bottom third are essentially exactly 500. They went 1,293 and 1,302, which is the equivalent of an 80.7 win team over the course of a season. So it says absolutely nothing about your team

in this way of looking at it. But this isn't really the way to look at it because these could be one, probably a lot of these would be just one-off days where maybe your main DH is getting the day off, and so you've got whatever backup is going to play that day, and maybe you're pulling your second baseman to give him a little break as well from the field, and so nobody should expect him to be hitting. And in fact, if that's the case, then your primary DH isn't there that day,

so you're worse than the team you planned on, and your second baseman maybe isn't fielding that day, so your defense might be worse than the roster that you built. And so that's really kind of a misleading way of looking at it. What we really want to see are teams that did this enough that it reflects their planning. Either they intended it this way or they were forced into this situation

for a persistent period of time. So I looked at the five teams throughout the past, throughout the DH era, that had the most games in a season with the DH batting ninth, the most games in a season with the DH batting eighth, and the most games in a season with the DH batting seventh. So five at each level, 15 total teams. And so those 15 teams include a wide variety of team quality. The 2002 Yankees, for instance, are the second most common dh batting ninth team in history they had 31 games where the dh

batted ninth if i'm not mistaken i think that most of those went to nick johnson and they were 103 win team yeah that's a really good team if you look at the teams that had the dh batting eighth most frequently number three and number five are also yankees teams they are the 77 78 yankees who had back-to-back hundred win seasons the most common dh batting seventh team is the 82 brewers who i believe was that the year that dan okren wrote nine innings oh yeah could be yeah the Brewers won 95 games. They were really good. And if you, there's one team that is on both of these lists, which is the 2013 Orioles,

who won 85 games. And, you know, they were, they had their number one on DH batting ninth and number two on DH batting eighth. So cumulatively, that's the most in the top two, those two spots. And they were a good team. And you know, 85 wins is a pretty good team. But also, I mean, we can all remember Baltimore's pitching staff that year. So without looking it up, I bet their offense was pretty good. Cumulatively, we have these 15 teams, they averaged about 87 and a half wins. 11 of the 15 were winning teams, and more of them won 96 games or more than won 81 games or fewer.

And furthermore, if you took this one step further, in these games, these games specifically, so like we know that, for instance, the 103 win Yankees had a DH batting ninth 31 times, but that's only 31 games. They also maybe they were much better in the other games. But in fact, no, if you look at just the games for these 15 teams, when they had a DH batting seventh, eighth or ninth, they went 415 and 337, which is the equivalent of an 89.4 win

team. So they were even better when their DH was batting in the bottom of the order. And a good example probably of how this plays out is, or maybe a good, not how it plays out, but one example of how a great team has a, that gets on this list is that the most common team to have a DH batting ninth this year is the Astros, who have Tony Kemp batting ninth every so often. And that's where he should bat. He should be the ninth hitter. And he should probably not really be the DH, but the Astros have an incredible team and a very good offense. uh and a very good offense um and they uh they they use their dh as a lot of teams use their dh these days partly to get guys rest and partly as a little bit of a rotating thing and so on and so

forth and uh so the you would not say that the astros are a are a bad offense obviously despite this the fact that sometimes this happens yeah maybe, maybe. I wonder. I guess you could even say that they have a DH who's kind of an afterthought because they have such great hitters everywhere else that they just figured they could go get a DH and didn't put their attention on that spot. I know why I thought what I thought about the DH when you asked me about it, that teams were kind of using it as a place to just park guys and not really starting people there. I think I was remembering 2017, which was the worst DH year, at least in recent memory. Fangraphs has league-wide splits by position

going back to 2002, and 2017 was by far the worst year for DHs.hs had a 95 wrc plus that year it's the only year that dhs have hit worse than the league average in that span partly because david ortiz retired after the previous season and just subtracting him from the stats actually kind of did that but there were some tread pieces written about this at the time so like beyond the box score had one december 2017 who killed the dh and it's funny because that post actually links to an earlier post by dave cameron at fangrass from 2010 is the dh dying and dave was responding to kind of a low ebb for dh offense from 2008 to 2010 and he advanced the theory that i was just describing there about how teams are just kind of using it as a place to give guys a rest. And then DH offense recovered. And right now, obviously,

we're just a month into the season, but DHs this year have a 117 WRC+, which would be by far the highest on record. So yeah, DH offense is doing just fine and last year 2018 they had a 110 which was the second highest in this span always be wary of uh you'll see like some years like one position will just have a great year or one or you were you working on one i wrote one i wrote one i wrote one in december and now i'm scared. Which one did you do? Third baseman were better than first baseman for the first time in, I don't know, like ever. Yeah, I missed that one, but I'm sure your rationale was good. But if we look back on it in five years, I'm going to bet it doesn't age that great just you see this all the time because it's like it's kind of deceptive because you think wow the whole leagues that position hit terribly or hit great this year

and then you remember it's really just like 30 guys or dh obviously you're talking about like 15 teams for the most part and so that's more subject to fluctuations but that just happens it doesn't take that much to like change the league wide average for position. And so you can always talk yourself into like, well, yeah, there's a reason why, like Jeff and I have talked about how maybe you'd expect middle infield offense to be up because guys can shift now and maybe range isn't quite as important. So you can get like bigger second baseman and you can have second baseman hit lots of homers, which they did a year or two ago. But sometimes it just happens to be that cohort of second basemen who just happened to be playing second base at that time.

And then they go away and other guys come in and they're not as good. And then it's suddenly different. So you can go back and find many examples of that type of piece that probably just proved to be a blip. But sometimes it's real. of that type of piece that probably just proved to be a blip, but sometimes it's real. Yeah. When we talked about things that were anomalous in 2019 and whether they were real or not, one of the things I thought about mentioning was that at that point that you and I had that discussion, shortstops had been the best hitters in baseball that season. They had the highest split OPS plus. And i didn't bring it up because i thought

well it's not real it's just not it's all the way not real and they have pulled now they're now they're like uh fifth they're already filled it was it was eight what nine ten eleven days ago that we recorded that they're already down to one two three four five fifth so you know you're right yeah hey you didn't you're right. Yeah. Hey, you didn't ask if I had banter. I just want to – don't move on from – we can talk about this as long as you want, but then don't move on before you ask if I have banter. This is kind of a peak period for shortstop offense, at least.

Like, I don't know, maybe if you went back to the Jeter, Tejada, Garcia-Para, A-Rod era, it'd be different. But the last four years are the highest league-wide WRC plus for shortstop offense in the period since 2002. And this year is at 105 right now, which would be easily the highest. So there's some truth to that one. Some truth, but the shortstops are not the new left fielders. Okay. What did you want to say christian yelich the other day well i think it was yesterday he had the day off and uh he pinch hit but he didn't start and christian yelich is on pace to hit 81 homers and to drive in 193 rbis

which are both records that he will not break um but if this were mid-september and he was on pace to maybe break the all-time home run record and maybe break the all-time rbi record and he sat for a day i think a lot of people would be really disappointed and uh maybe we would be mad that we were having a history taken from us but probably more likely that would never happen i think if it were mid-September and he were in pursuit of the all-time home run record, he wouldn't take a day off. His manager wouldn't give it to him. So I'm just curious. Obviously, the odds of Christian Jelic breaking the all-time home run record are extremely,

extremely low. But when does it kick in that a manager should not give him days off? And I have three questions on this topic. That's the first of them. Well, I mean, I think, A, we're in an era where managers are less likely than ever to care about that kind of thing. Now, maybe the all-time single season home run record is, it still probably has more cachet than like a no-hitter or even a perfect game perhaps and so I think there would be more pressure on that kind of chase but still I think we're at a time when teams just kind of put what's best for the team ahead of record chases so whatever the date is is probably later

than it used to be but I think there's still a date. And I'm going to say like August 1st. Wow. Okay. Yeah. All right. So if he were on a pace to hit 74 at the all-star break and he got, you know, July 8th off, then that would not be, to you, that wouldn't be weird. I don't think so.

Okay. Yeah. But close. All right. So August 1st for home runs. Got it. All right. So August 1st for home runs. Got it. All right. Byron Buxton is on pace currently as a hitter always is at this point in the year to break

the all-time doubles record. And he has also had a day off or two. When does the doubles record kick in? If he got the fourth to last day of the season off and he was right on the line to hit 67 doubles, would that be a big deal? I mean, the doubles record doesn't excite me very much. It doesn't have nearly the luster of the home run record. So I'm going to say like, yeah, like last week of the season, last second half of September. last second half of September, although maybe if you're a playoff team and you have your spot sealed up and you just want to give guys a rest before the playoffs start, then maybe you get an

exemption from this. But yeah, I'll say like September 15th is when people might object to that. All right. And then last one, the all-time record for single season war at baseball reference is 14.1. Mike Trout is again, as he was last year, and as I think maybe at this point in the year before, on pace to be better than that. He's on pace for 14.3, despite missing three games already, which is crazy. Yeah. Think about that for a second. He has missed more than 10% of his team's games. We are more than what we're like almost a fifth of the way through the season. And he's still on pace despite that to have the all time highest war. It's just fun facts all around. But this is a slightly different question. So war is obviously a measure of value of total value. It is not a measure of how many home runs you hit, but of how valuable you are. And if a team decides to give Mike Trout a day off for rest,

they're doing that because they think that is how to maximize value on their team. They think that him having that rest will keep him fresher over the long haul, will lessen his risk of injury, will perhaps be good for getting another guy into the lineup so that that guy doesn't get rusty. Obviously, the decision that a manager makes to sit Mike Trout is a rational one based on maximizing the value of the team's entire roster and the team's entire performance.

the value of the team's entire roster and the team's entire performance. So while giving Christian Jelic a day off can only, literally only keep him from adding to his home runs, a day off for Mike Trout could be, or theoretically in the manager's opinion, is actually increasing his value in an abstract way. So should, if Mike Trout is in pursuit of the all-time war record, would it actually be hypocritical for me to complain about him getting a day off? Well, I mean, first of all, I guess you could make the case

that Christian Jelic would be more likely to hit two homers the next day. No, I don't think you would though you would obviously obviously the the i think it's it's it it would just absolutely shock me if you could prove that giving christian yelich uh a day off increases his chances of breaking an all-time home run record that that yes there's a little bit of a benefit in keeping him fresh but i would i just do do not think that it could possibly outweigh. I don't think so either. Right. There have been studies on the effect of a day off after a bunch of non-days off, and there does seem to be some benefit there, but not so much that you would expect like an extra homer. So, right. I think, I don't know, I'd be very curious to see how much

people care about the single season war record because of course the single season war record changes which is kind of an awkward fact i wrote and will change again right i wrote about that earlier this year war is is always changing which makes it hard to use as like a milestone chase kind of metric because of that and also because like you can't see it change necessarily like you can't you know you you know when someone hits the record-breaking homer but you don't necessarily know when someone does the record-breaking war thing it's like oh that was that was a pretty good catch maybe that added a tenth of a war well and the way the reference does it too, the defensive war is all whole numbers.

And so you move up from six defensive runs saved to seven one day, but even though you only shaved. Yeah. Right. Fangraphs, I think, just updates the defensive war like every week or two or something. So when war changes from day to day, it's not actually reflecting that necessarily. So yeah, that's the thing. And obviously it doesn't have the history that these other metrics do. So I don't know that anyone would care. I mean,

we would care. I think we would be following it very closely, but I don't know if the larger media or fandom would care, but let's say they did. I think if it kind of all depends on like the idea that you are helping him in the long run, I think is kind of all depends on the idea that you are helping him in the long run, I think is kind of dependent on your being a contending team or a playoff team, right? Because if you're resting him so that he'll be better later, it kind of only counts toward the playoffs, right? Yeah, but then that starts to get dicey. Then can you say that a war record doesn't count if you don't make

the playoffs at all like then do you start saying none of the value is real until you're in a playoff chase yeah i don't want to go there no so and of course we don't have war for the playoffs which you could make a case that we should have that too so yeah I think that if he sat late in a record chase of a single season war, I would still think that it hurts his chances of getting that single season record. Maybe it helps him in the playoffs. Maybe it even helps him later in his career somehow. But I have to think that taking a day off, if you're chasing a single season record, it almost always hurts, even if you're talking about war. All i'm skimming my third base first base article right now to see if i concluded i think that i i was very as you would expect i think for me i was very uh clear that that this

could be a blip and uh i did i gave a certain i gave a no I gave a lot of I did give a lot of space to the it's just a blip argument but I did my last paragraph begins it suggests we could be seeing a realignment around first base now suggests and could be and so those are both hedge words but I did say it suggests we could be seeing a realignment. We might be seeing first base being pulled into the versatility era, which was what my theory was that basically what was being identified as a trend around DHs is increasingly also being used at first base where you see a lot more guys from other positions using first base as the flexibility. That's actually uh that's

another dave cameron piece from january 2017 he wrote punting first base is the new black and uh i don't know what happened in 2017 and 2018 and what's happening this year but i assume that has held up more or less but uh yeah i miss those dave cameron pieces. He was the master of those. So I would end the episode,, I believe, Henry Rowan Gartner's first game. Anyway, on multiple pitches, closing out the game with a strikeout, Rowan Gartner's fastball is so ferocious that it knocks over the catcher. I don't recall if the movie ever mentions just how fast he can throw. It has been a long, long time since I've seen this gem, but I'm wondering just how hard a pitcher would need to throw a ball to legitimately knock over his catcher knowing a fastball is coming in real life. So I sent this question, and we can maybe quibble with the aspects of the answer,

but I sent this question to David Kagan, who is a physics professor at CSU Chico, and he writes about the physics of baseball often at the Heart Ball Times, so I wanted his take on this question. So I'll read his response, and you can see if you disagree with anything. He says, how fast would a ball have to travel to knock over a professional catcher? The ball would have to come in with a certain amount of oomph. The technical term for this oomph is momentum. To put a number on it, you would multiply the speed of the ball times the weight of the ball,

more carefully the mass of the ball, but let's not worry about that for now. So for a 100-mile-per-hour fastball, you multiply by the one-third of a pound weight of the ball and get a momentum of about 33 oomphs. I don't think that's the technical unit, but we'll go with that. When the ball is caught, the momentum of the catcher changes by 33 oomphs. A momentum of this magnitude can't knock over a catcher, or at least I've never seen it happen. The reason is a catcher weighs about 200 pounds with gear.

That's 600 times as much as the ball. So when the oomph of the ball is distributed over that weight, the resulting speed change is 600 times less than the ball, or one-sixth of a mile per hour. This change in speed of the catcher is so small that he easily has time to adjust his body to absorb it. So now we have a new question. How big a speed change can a catcher handle without falling over? This is a tough one as there's no data to rely on. Nevertheless, here's a way to look at it. People walk easily at five miles per hour. Part of the reason they can do

this is that they're capable of a delicate balancing act. When you walk, you put one foot in front, leaving the rest of your body out of balance and falling forward toward the ground. You would do a faceplant, except for the fact that you're able to quickly get your back foot out in front to stop the fall. The process repeats, and you're walking. Part of the reason there's a limit to human speed

is connected with the maximum speed you can get your back foot to become your front foot. If we assume that the maximum walking speed is 5 miles per hour for an upright person, then the maximum walking speed of a catcher in a crouch is certainly less than that. Let's use one mile per hour. We can use the previous idea to find out the speed of the ball needed to change the catcher's speed by one mile per hour. Now we have a 200 pound catcher whose speed changes by one mile per hour. The ball weighs 600 times less than the catcher, so the ball would have

to be coming in 600 times faster or at 600 miles per hour. Not an exact answer, but at least we know that a 12-year-old kid can't knock over a professional catcher, even a movie, with an unrealistic premise. So just watch it and have fun. Yep, and that's what I got too. Yeah, exactly. All right, perfect. I guess the other thing you could say is that maybe like if you're using a walking person as the example, that's an upright person, whereas a catcher is crouching, so momentum. But yeah, 600 miles per hour at that point, obviously you have bigger problems because that would hurt even if you tried to catch it with a glove. Yep. All right. All right. That will do it. Wanted to stick one more answer in here at the end. This was a question from Michael who asked about one pitch outings and Sam actually answered it via email. So I will answer it via voice.

Michael says, Roberto Osuna finished the Astros game earlier this season by throwing one pitch. On the next day's telecast, Mike Stanton speculated that he probably threw a half dozen such games in his career. That seemed absurdly high to me as I assumed this feat would be quite rare, given that bringing in a new pitcher with only one out needed is not common. Off the top of my head, I would think it only happens if a non-save situation gets dicey or if you're maneuvering for a specific matchup against a tough left-handed hitter. I suppose if we expand the search to one-pitch outings that didn't end the game, a loogie might have plenty of opportunities to log a one-pitch outing.

How many such games did Stanton throw? What is the MLB record for such games? So I will answer the question of the MLB record for such games? So I will answer the question of the MLB record for most games. This is, of course, going back to 1988 because we don't have pitch counts reliably before that. The guy with the most one-pitch outings at any time is Javier Lopez, the former Loogie. He had 34 such games, and then the next guys are Randy Choate and Jesse Orozco at the top of the list. Lots of loogies here, as one would expect. So these outings will not be seen very much anymore.

We were talking about rules changes and the change about pitcher usage. This will be one casualty. Not a complete extinction, but close. So the question about how many of these we've seen to end a game, 10 is the record of those. how many of these we've seen to end a game. 10 is the record of those. Tony Fossus had 10. And tied for second place with Mark Zepchinski, Dan Plesak, and Trevor Hoffman is Mike Stinton with six.

So he estimated half a dozen, and he was exactly right. The rare case where a player was perfectly accurate when recounting something from his own career. Thanks to the Baseball Reference Play Index and Sam for answering that one. One other note, just wanted to plug a piece written by my pal and friend of the show, Steve Goldman. He wrote this for Deadspin. It's called Baseball's Unwritten Rules Are the Vestiges of a Drunk and Violent Sport. Meg and I talked to Danny Nalber a week ago about unwritten rules as

they exist today, but Steve traces their origins all the way back to the 19th century, and he points out that in that era, baseball was extremely violent and alcohol-soaked, and that some of these rules may have evolved just to prevent actual fights. So there's a reason that they exist, but that doesn't mean they still need to exist, because fortunately things have gotten less violent over the years. It's a fun and informative piece, though, so I will put it in the show notes, and I implore you to check it out. piece though so I will put it in the show notes and I implore you to check it out you can support the podcast on patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild the following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some a small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going Brian Beyer, Brandon Kuhn, Michael Berger, Matthew Penny, and Cody Braun thanks to all of you you can join our facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild.

And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions coming for me and Sam and Meg via podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance in my living room these last couple episodes. You can preorder my book, The MVP Machine, which comes out later this spring. If you have pre-ordered or you are about to pre-order, send proof of your pre-order to themvpmachine at gmail.com, and you will qualify for some pre-order bonuses,

like an extra chapter and a conversation between me and Travis about writing and reporting the book, and some additional cool documents. And you will get those on the day the book comes out, but only if you order it in advance. So again, email some proof of your pre-order to themvpmachine at gmail.com. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. Show your hand now, show him your hand now I'm jumping off the fence I'm jumping off the fence I'm jumping off the fence

Into your car