Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1373: Podcasts Per Hour

Episode Date: May 9, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Shohei Ohtani’s return, Mike Fiers’ no-hitter, and the hard-luck Reds, do a Stat Blast and banter about True Wins vs. no-hitters and other standout starts, and answer listener emails about baseball and the gambler’s fallacy, umpires estimating the outcome of every batted ball (and whether pitchers, hitters, or […]

And say it's true, you were the only one who could love me the way you do. And I was the only one who could help you to break through. From all the ugly people who tell you what you can and can't do Say it's true Good morning and welcome to episode 1373 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs.com brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello Ben.

Hello. How's it going? It's going well. Shohei Otani's back. How did he play? Not particularly well, but I did watch the entire Angels game. What a fun team. Some might say the most fun team. I watched him. He walked and had an RBI ground out. That's about all. He did hit a ball very hard that was caught at third base.

And I got to see Trapp do some fun stuff. And I got to see Angleton Simmons make a patented Angleton Simmons over the shoulder falling down pop-up catch. And yeah, had a good time. Watched the whole game. Awesome. Hey, I mean, just hearing you describe it, it was fun. Hey, I mean, just hearing you describe it, it was fun. Yeah. If we ever do a draft of teams that it's fun to hear recapped, maybe the Angels will be higher than I had them. Yeah, I was reminded that Jose Molina is the Angels' catching instructor,

and it seems to me that the Angels have on their major league staff or roster probably like the three players I've enjoyed the most over the past decade. Trout, Simmons. Wait, three? Only three? Not four? Well, I don't know if I'd put, well, Trout, Otani, and Molina because I love Jose Molina. And then Edelton Simmons. We've taken Simmons.

Yeah, we've kind of gotten to maybe to to blase about Simmons. But there was that. I feel like there was a period where Simmons might have been both of our favorite player to watch. Yeah, he actually threw a ball away. He made a very out of character throwing her in that game, too. But he made up for it with that catch. So yeah, fun team. Lots of fun players on that team. Yeah. I might spend, after we record this, I might just go back and reread some of my old Angleton Simmons writing. Okay. Yeah, sure. I loved writing about him. All right. What was the plan? What are we planning on here? Well, we're doing emails, but I figured you are going to deliver on your tease of the true win versus no hitter stat blast. So we could do it now or we could do it later,

but it is timely because we just had a no hitter right after you and I were talking about how some no hitters are not particularly impressive, or maybe they don't tell you that much about the pitchers true talent. Mike fires of all people pitched his second career, no hitter. He became the 35th pitcher ever to throw multiple no-hitters it was not one of the least impressive no-hitters i mean he he struck out six he walked two took him 131 pitches and as we were saying no-hitters often depend on great defensive plays and that was the case here i think he only had 11 swings and misses in this game. And so he gave up a lot of contact.

And there were some really excellent plays behind him to preserve this. Ramon Laureano brought back a homer. There were a couple other plays that were sort of no-hitter preserving. I'm recapping. Every sentence you say makes this seem less impressive. Keep talking. By the end of this, I'll be convinced he lost. Did I mention that it was Mike Fiers? So, yeah. So if Mike Fiers can do the thing twice in the only two complete games of his career, by the way, then it can't be that impressive. I mean, he's not someone who is known for hit suppression. That's not really a skill that Mike Fiers possesses except for two days when he did it as well as it can be done. So yeah, that kind of reinforced my theory

that the true wind is more impressive. Mike Fires is a career 081 slugger. He has no extra base hits. So he will probably not have multiple true winds in his career. No, probably not. Well, since we're on the subject, I know that we usually

save the stat blast for the middle of the episode, but should we just do it now? That would be fine. Keep people guessing? Yeah, sure. All right, stat blast. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA minus or OBS 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 still past.

Okay, let me start with some banter, some background banter, I guess. Russ Goldstein, the creator of The True Wind, along with his friends, known as the East Meadow Crew. Gotta make sure the East Meadow Crew gets full recognition. I wish my friends had a name. Do you have a crew? I grew up, a couple of my closest

friends, whom I'll be seeing this weekend for a wedding, they grew up on Long Island and their friend groups all have names it's like I've never had a name for my friend group I wish I did no my friends I've generally kept my friends apart from each other I I don't I really I generally like one-on-one interactions a lot and when you start putting groups together then I I get surly I feel like the the group dynamic, sort of the exponential growth of interrelational drama becomes a little too stressful for my little human brain to deal with, and I start to shut down. And so I really, if I think about it, I have like a lot of friends who just don't know each other at all.

Yeah. As I like it so there are no group names but in second grade i was uh we we christened ourselves the daredevil club and uh we were uh we were you had to do a dare if someone dared you to do something you had to do it and uh we we did one dare it was to jump off a boulder yeah that's that's like a terrible premise for a friend group yeah well it's a good way to keep membership down yeah that's true did the boulder jump thin the ranks at all well it thinned the premise more than the ranks nobody did die okay well anyway russ has uh pointed out that you can now actually buy i don't know if you

saw this but uh but you can actually now buy a noah cinder guard bobblehead doll a actually a noah cinder guard new york mets true win bobblehead for 45 dollars uh and it is noah standing on a newspaper it looks like a new york post but kind of it's not a anyway uh and it says true win cinder guard something game something the mound and at the plate and uh he's holding a glove and also a bat is is leaned up against his his thigh this is this claims to be uh licensed officially licensed but i think somebody i don't, I don't know how commerce works. You can buy this at a site that is not MLB.com, but it says it's licensed. It also says it's not a toy.

This is a serious bobblehead. Only serious bobbleheaders can play with this. Don't play with it, in fact. That's interesting. So it says true win. So it must be a listener or a reader of yours, right? Because it's not like anyone else was saying true win for what that was. Right, yeah. It's $45 and it ships no later than August 19th.

So I don't know how things work. I guess it takes a while to produce a bobblehead. So there's that. And speaking of Russuss uh few people have asked me for and i also had this question um and so i just took it to russ which is does it have to be a home run for it to be a true win could could you get a true win if you produce the entirety of the the run uh yourself without any help from your teammate but you do it without a home run so for instance a triple and a steal of home would be pretty cool yeah uh if you uh or or you know a double and a wild pitch and a pass

ball maybe or if you really wanted to expand it maybe a single and a stolen base and going to third on a ground out and scoring on a sack fly would that count i don't know what would count. And so I asked Russell and his ruling is that simplicity is key here. And I think that's right. I think that at this point, there's already confusion about what a true win is. And since Russ invented it, he gets to say, I think with every day that it exists out there, Russell will sort of lose power over it, lose control of it. And maybe at some point even no longer have the authority to say in the way that I don't care what the gift creator says the word is pronounced like. You lost it. It was too long ago.

Sorry, buddy. But for now, this is a week old thing. But for now, this is a week old thing. Russ is the king of it. And he says home runs only, which is helpful because you can't query very easily the other ones. Right, that too. Now that said, if a pitcher triples, steals home in the third inning and is throwing a shutout, I am going to alert you, Ben, and everybody else. And I'm going to cheer for it.

And I'm going to put Russell to the fire on this. Because in the abstract I'm all on board with the simplicity if it gives me something to root for in the seventh inning of a game uh then I might change my mind but for now uh home runs don't count now here I don't even know if I should bring this up because I'm afraid Russ might lose some people but should I even say this all right this is controversial russ feels like an inside the park home run shouldn't count huh so interesting i mean that not that that ever happens but but uh when was the last time a pitcher had a an inside the park home run i don't know but yeah his feeling is that inside the park home runs are often the result of a misplay by the outfielder but does that mean that only inside the park home runs are often the result of a misplay by the outfielder. But does that mean that only inside the park home runs

that are the result of a misplay by the outfielder don't count? What if it's not a result of a misplay? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't love that. I mean, you could say the same thing about the past ball or the wild pitch, that that was a mistake. I mean, it was a mistake by the other team to throw a ball that the pitcher could hit for a home run, right?

And it's a mistake by the other team to swing at some pitches that they shouldn't have swung at, enabling the pitcher to record the complete game. So I don't know. That doesn't bother me. I would object to that if it ever actually came into play, which it probably won't. if the goal is simplicity and clarity of message for the broader audience that is learning of this stat for the first time then saying uh you have to do a second query to see if any of these home runs were inside the park feels like it goes counter to that yeah all right so the question there were a couple of questions this is going to be like maybe an all stat blast episode because there were a couple of questions that i thought i promised that I might look up and the first one was are no hitters or true wins more well I don't know what exactly the question

was but are true true wins or no hitters more impressive pitching wise or I mean I think we would deduce that probably no hitters are going to be better than average shutout pitching wise but like what is a no hitter so the point is ben that i looked up all no-hitters since 1950 and then i looked up well let me just tell you oh well we'll start with that okay so while you can describe a mike fires no-hitter that starts to kind of look like just a pretty good start by mike fires uh by the end of your description and while you can even describe a no-hitter say an edwin jackson nohitter, that by the end doesn't even seem like it's necessarily a good outing at all, most no-hitters are very good. And we should be clear about that.

There have been, since 1950, 174 no-hitters. And the ERA, pitcher's ERA in those no-hitters is 0.02. So we're talking about good pitching. There's no arguing that even if you include unearned runs, the runs allowed per nine is 0.08. So good pitchers and the average game score of no hitters is 91, which is a very good game score. I took out perfect games. I further took out perfect games. That includes perfect games, but I feel like if it's a perfect game, we don't call it a no-hitter. If you call it a no-hitter,

it is already known that it was not a perfect game because we would otherwise be calling it a perfect game. So let's update that with non-perfect no-hitters. 157 with a game score of 91, okay? All right, so that's our baseline. So how much, do you think that no hitters are better than one hitters on average?

One hit shutouts? Yes. Okay. So in one sense, you're correct. One hitters since 1950, there are 600 and sorry, one hit shutouts since 1950. There are 517 of those.

The average game score is 89, which is basically a game score of 91 with a hit right i forget what is a hit is two points in game score two points for each hit allowed so in that sense it is exactly the same with one hit so you have a 91 add a hit now it's an 89 but one hit shutouts and no hitters are actually kind of different in in the sort of shape of them so in no hitters there are oh by the way i just went ahead and also i did a third round of no hitters where i i removed the games where runs were scored because those are weird games and so so now i'm dealing with non-perfect no-hit shutouts since 1950 and one-hit shutouts since 1950. So in the no-hitters, there is a 2.43 FIP. In one-hitters, there's a 2.34 FIP.

So the FIP is actually better in the one-hitters than in the no-hitters. No-hitters tend to have more walks. In fact, quite a bit more walks, almost three walks per no-hitter, whereas one-hitters tend to have more walks. In fact, quite a bit more walks. Almost three walks per no-hitter, whereas one-hitters have two walks per game, per nine innings. No-hitters have about 64% strikes. One-hitters have about 66% strikes. So no-hitters tend to be wilder than other games, which kind of makes sense, partly because you might be a lot more careful

if you have a no-hitter on the line. You might be, at a certain point in a no-hitter, your goal is probably to protect the no-hitter, especially if the game is not all that close. Whereas in a one-hitter, your goal doesn't really change. You're just still pitching as well as you can. For another thing, a pitcher who's walked seven in a one-hitter might very reasonably be pulled after whatever number of innings. A pitcher who's walked seven in a no-hitter traditionally has not been pulled unless the pitch count got outrageous. That was part of my basis for saying that the true win is probably better than the no-hitter, is that you only get left in to finish the true win if you're really genuinely pitching well and not just fluking your way, for the most part.

Exactly, yes. We have a selection bias here. really genuinely pitching well and not just fluking your way for the most part exactly yes we have uh we have a selection bias here managers are not treating all of these starts the same and only some pitchers are allowed to keep going to complete them uh all right so uh so we have kind of a complicated answer which is that no hitters have a better game score slightly but one hitters have a better fit and are arguably actually better than the no hitters. So then two hitters, I looked at two hit shutouts, which are much less common. There are about a thousand of those since 1950. And those are more like the one hitters, 66% strikes, 2.47 FIP, which is just a little bit worse than the no hitters and an average game score of 87. So it's ticking down. That's another two points average game score of 87. So it's ticking down.

That's another two points for that one hit, though. So it's basically the same with that one extra hit. And then I looked at no-walk shutouts since 1950. And in order to get a comparably-sized pool, or I guess a comparably rare event, I said no-walk shutouts with eight strikeouts which we see we don't have a name for them but you see them and you go oh wow did you see his start he uh he struck out eight and walked nobody and threw a shutout and that's a thing without a name

and those are better than everything uh kind of again kind of those are obviously unsurprisingly have a lot higher percentage of strikes they have a f FIP of 1.02, which is much better. Now that's not surprising. Two of the three components of FIP are walks and home runs, and we've already forced those to be zero. And the third one is strikeouts, and we've already forced those to be eight. So this is like a perfectly crafted FIP machine, these starts. But obviously the FIP is much better.

The game score is 89. So. The game score is 89. So the average game score is 89. So we're back up to about where a one hitter is with an average in those games of four hits allowed. So what's better? Which do you think is better? A no walk shutout as I described or a no hitter? I guess the nowalk shutout. And so if I were to, say, move this up to 10 strikeouts, then those now become rarer than no-hitters. Would you watch a chase? If that had a name, if someone was chasing a no-walk 10-strikeout shutout,

would you watch it? I don't think so, at least. Now I wouldn't. I mean, if there were some historical aura around that somehow, that's part of why you watch a no-hitter, is that it has this history and tradition, but it's also because there's a concrete thing to root for or root against no-hits,

whereas, I mean, I guess you can root for the 10th strikeout or something in those games, and you can root against a walk but it's just not as satisfying yeah there's uh obviously there's there's something to the fact that we watch no hitters and we're talking about mike fires but the starters that do the other thing we we just don't even notice or acknowledge it uh despite it being arguably rare probably certainly more impressive uh and yet not a thing. When a thing is a thing, it becomes something you pay attention to.

And if it's not a thing, then it just passes. The average shutout, random shutout, no restrictions at all, just that it's a shutout since 1950, is a 2.55 FIP. So remember, the FIP in the no-hitters is 2.43. The in the no hit shutouts is 2.43. The FIP in the non no hitters is 2.55. So there's really not that much difference there. They're pretty close to the same. And the average game score of those is 82. But shutouts have gotten much more rare because pitchers aren't allowed to complete them very often. And so if you just look at an average shutout in the 2010s in this decade, the average game score is 86 and the average FIP is 1.96.

And so I have not put, I put no restrictions on how many walks you can allow in those games or how many strikeouts you must have in those games. And yet the FIP in those games is much better than the average no hitter. And I don't know. I think that we might be getting to a point. I mean, there were only 19 shutouts last year, so that's more than there are no-hitters. But we're kind of almost getting to the point

where shutouts are as impressive on their own as no-hitters just because it's so hard to complete a game these days that in order to do it, a whole bunch of things had to be awesome. Arguably more things had to be awesome than in the no-hitter. Mike Fiers completed his no-hitter at 131 pitches. The overwhelming majority of pitchers would not be allowed to throw 131 pitches in just a regular shutout. Maybe one pitcher, maybe Bauer would.

I mean, Bauer's gotten kind of in the high 120s a few times. His manager seems to let him do that. Maybe. Otherwise, though, it's just not really, it hasn't been allowed for the last five years. And so that is to say, what I'm getting at, Ben, is you can make a case that a shutout in the 2010s is by some measures as good or better than a no hitter in the 2010s. some measures as good or better than a no hitter in the 2010s. And if that's what a true win is, by definition, then you maybe could argue the game score is going to be a little lower, but the pitching might actually on average be better. Yeah. And he hit a homer. And he hit a

homer. So let's go to the homer part of this. So the average pitchers win probability added in a shutout is about 0.45. And the way that win probability works, it doesn't matter whether you load the bases and get out of the jam or whether you strike out all three batters in the inning without letting any runners on because the same result has happened and it has all been credited to you. Three outs have been recorded with no runs scoring. And so it doesn't matter whether it's a no hitter or a 15 hitter. Win probability added is roughly the same. There's a little bit of a quirk in this that some types of shutouts, the worse you pitch, strangely, in the, I don't even want to get into that. That's not

worth getting into. So about 0..45 the average win probability added of the home run hitting pitchers in their true wins so this is the home runs that they hit but also their other at bats which are presumably on average very negative is about 0.1 so you've got uh your your true win hitter added about a quarter of the value of his pitching with his bat in those games and that's a pretty significant i mean that, that's a 25% boost. And so if we're saying that true wins pitching are pretty close to no hitters in impressiveness and maybe equal, then you're just adding a whole quarter of the value of that performance

on top of it with the home run. That seems like a pretty big tiebreaker. I mean, that's not nothing that's not small and so then lastly we get to the question of flukiness whether a pitcher hitting a home run uh says anything whatsoever about his i don't know whatever his essence his hitting ability or whether it is just like totally random and it is no different for instance than giving him credit for i don't know like turning a triple play in that game or something that we don't think of as being sort of meaningful uh and andy who's another member of the east meadow crew uh some of the east

meadow crew have been dming me all week which i'm'm grateful for. The tone of my voice sounds amused right now, but I'm also grateful for it. Andy notes that the six true winners this decade were all pretty good hitters and that three of them had, four of them in fact, had multiple career home runs. So they're not even like all that flukish but i wondered about pitchers who hit exactly one home run if that means that they're better hitters or not so i took all pitchers who have hit a single home run in their career since 2000 so all pitchers who have batted at least 50 times and have exactly one home run, okay? And I removed that home run from their performance. And then I took all pitchers who have batted at least 50 times

and hit no home runs, and I removed their best offensive act, their single best hit. Because it wouldn't be fair to say, ah, you're worse when I take away all your best outcomes. So I have to take away the best outcome of the other group too, right? That makes sense. All right. So I took out, you know,

if you hit a triple, but no home run, I took out your triple. So pitchers who hit a home run, singular, who hit a home run in their careers have hit 136 and slugged 159. Otherwise with a 221 BABIP, you have already forgotten those numbers. I will repeat them in a minute.

Pitchers who never hit a home run, once their best hit is removed, otherwise hit 114, slugged 127 with a BABIP of 194. So the home run hitters actually had about 22 extra points of batting average in their career, 22 extra points of slugging percentage in their career, and 28, 27 extra points of BABIP in their career. They also struck out slightly less. So while I was dismissive of single home run hitters, because I saw Bartolo Colon do it, in fact, it is telling, it does tell you that you are probably a better hitter than the median pitcher. And this is true even if you never hit another one. So all the evidence is what I'm saying.

All the evidence is pointing to true win is a vastly superior performance to a no hitter. And we should celebrate it disproportionately. Okay, I agree. I look forward to the next opportunity to do that in two years or whenever next happens or comes close to happening. a no-win true hitter, a no-hit true win. They are Rick Wise, Earl Wilson, Wes Farrell, and Jim Tobin, few of whom probably you have a personal connection to, but those are the four who've done it. And Kazuto Yamazaki, the friend of the podcast, emailed to let us know about two much better,

I would say much better examples of no-hit true wins that took place not here, but in Japan. So in August of 1973, Hanshin Tiger's ace lefty, Yutaka Inatsu, after tossing 11 no-hit, 11 no-hit innings, already, already a god, walked the game off with his own solo home run. That's a good one. No doubt about it. Additionally, in 1967, Yomiuri's Suneo Horiyuchi launched not one, not two, but three dingers during his no-hitter against Hiroshima, which only one major leaguer pitcher in history has homered three times in a game.

And he did not throw a shutout. He did not even get the true win because he allowed more than three runs. So those are two very good, very strong examples. Yeah. I was curious after Kazuto emailed us that how pitchers hit in Japan, whether there's any difference there because the league is maybe not quite as high level as the majors. And so I figured possibly there's less of a separation between pitchers and all other players as there used to be in MLB And it's kind of hard to look up those numbers even on Delta Graphs, the Japanese baseball stats site They don't have really easily accessible numbers for all of pitcher offensive performance

But Xuto said that in 2017, Central League pitchers, that's the DH League, hit 100 Whereas the league as a whole hit 251. Last year, pitchers hit 105 versus 259 for the league, and that's like 1,700 plate appearances or so in both years. So that's only

batting average. I don't know about the rest of it, but that's actually a bigger gap between the league batting average and the pitcher batting average and the pitcher batting average than we have in the majors which is kind of interesting so yeah pitchers here hit about 115 ish or so they hit 115 last year this year they're hitting 116 so and the league average is in the 240s these days. So that's kind of curious and makes those true wins even more impressive. Ben, I feel a great pressure to just summarize real quick.

Can I just summarize real quick? Sure, yeah, please do. All right, I'm going to summarize all those numbers. Okay. Bullet point one, in the year 2019, throwing a shutout is arguably just as impressive or roughly as impressive from a pitching standpoint as throwing a no-hitter. as impressive or roughly as impressive from a pitching standpoint as throwing a no-hitter. Bullet point number two, hitting a home run in a shutout adds a tremendous amount of value to the performance. It is no small thing from a win probability added perspective. Bullet point number three, pitchers who homer tend to actually be demonstrating a true talent for homering.

Okay. Well, we've, I think think conclusively answered all the questions about true wins and uh next time one happens whenever that may be you will be prepared to regale all of your friends with facts about the true win so thanks for covering this topic so so comprehensively okay that's sounded like an insult and sarcasm, but I actually am interested in the true win. All right. So we have some questions to get to here. Question from Alex. He says, I was curious if the gambler's fallacy still holds in baseball.

That is, if a player is playing really well or really poorly over a significant enough number of plate appearances, player is playing really well or really poorly over a significant enough number of plate appearances we shouldn't expect his performance to overcompensate in the other direction in order to regress back to his preseason projections however front offices are constantly looking at opposing players to find their weaknesses and will mercilessly exploit that weakness as soon as they can if a player is playing really well are they more likely to run into a cold streak soon after for this reason thus going against the gambler's fallacy or i guess supporting the gambler's fallacy in that case but for a different reason supporting and going against the fallacy aspect of it right yes true conversely if

a player is playing really poorly his team is analyzing the data and working with the coaching staff on how to overcome that weakness Let's assume for this question That this player is on a sabermetrically inclined team Like the Astros Is it reasonable to expect that a struggling player Will bounce back with a hot streak After a poor start So there's

Nothing wrong with any of that logic And I would add to it This is much more speculative And could be wrong But I would add to it this is much more speculative and could be wrong but I would add to it that if you believe in the gambler's fallacy and you are in fact the agent of your performance and your belief in yourself is itself in some ways self-fulfilling then if you are super hot and there's a part of you that's like oh no I no, I'm not going to be this hot forever. And then you go over three and you go, oh, no, I'm cold. Then theoretically, you could be psychologically pulling yourself back to not just your established level of performance,

but maybe something slightly worse than your established level of performance. But I mean, you know, I'm just suggesting that that is a theoretical possibility, given my experience as a human being with a brain, but not that it's probably true. So, you know, like whenever Russell would do things that look at like, is it better to have a lefty starter, you know, after two righty starters or something like that, where it's like, does it make sense to have this little thing that seems like it would make sense he would usually find that yeah it makes sense and if you play out 45 seasons you'd get one extra run but really you should just probably play the best players that you have and i could like i sort of again like the the logic here doesn't seem necessarily wrong, but it feels quite small. Like the right odds, the the explanation of why players do well or do poorly are probably myriad and generally speaking much bigger than this phenomenon, which might affect some players some of the time in some small way. I also think that the I don't really believe that teams are going to react to a hot hitter

all that much by changing their plan. Like, I don't think that if a guy comes into a series, you know, 11 for his last 20 with four home runs that teams are like, well, now we should stop throwing him fastballs down the middle or whatever. But maybe, I don't know. Maybe there's a little bit of extra caution there.

I don't think that there's that much though, in like, say advanced scouting reports that makes a huge difference in the way that teams tackle or the teams approach batters, especially batters that they've seen and known for a while. I think that for the most part, it's like you have like two plans for how to work pitch, how to work batters and do one of those two. So probably I would be less likely to believe that a hot team, a hot hitter is likely to

go cold just because now teams are adjusting to his hotness yeah i could imagine maybe in the past that being more the case like you'd maybe put more effort into advanced scouting a guy if he was hot maybe there was more belief generally that hotness is a real or powerful force and so if a guy comes into a series hot, then that means you really have to worry about that guy. So today I would think that belief is reduced. And also teams are already just putting so much effort into advanced scouting everyone all the time

and doing so with so many tools and so much technology that wasn't available in the past that I don't think anyone would be like, all right, well, I would have half-assed this scouting report, but this guy's been hitting well lately, so maybe I'll actually pay attention here. I don't know. Probably not a huge amount to that. But the second idea, the idea that someone's struggling, I mean, I think that probably you could maybe answer all of these questions empirically if you constructed the right study you can look and see whether guys who have been hot or cold

are more likely to to bounce back in the other direction than you would expect and you could see also maybe whether i don't know for instance slumps are getting less prolonged or less severe because one of the things that I heard from a lot of players when working on the book is that there are all these tools now that give them a baseline to go back to. look at some mechanical data or they can look at their pitch characteristics on high-speed cameras or see exactly what they're doing differently from what they were doing when they were performing well. So in theory, if that's the case, then guys should kind of be writing themselves faster than they used to when they didn't have that frame of reference that was easily accessible. So you could check to see now or in the future whether slumps are getting less long on the other hand you also have teams that are maybe better at exploiting players weaknesses so all these things are kind of opposing forces and like you i would

guess that if there is something to this it's so small as to be almost meaningless. Yeah. Like if you had, so say you start with a pool of say 500 players and 500, you know, a hundred of them are right where their, their, their normal standard of performance is. And a hundred of them are, you know,

20% better and a hundred percent or 20% worse. And a hundred percent are a hundred of them are, you know, 20% better and 100% or 20% worse, and 100% are 100 of them are 50% better and 100 of them are 50% worse, then the idea that the bottom quintile would be the ones most likely to would be more like that they might be more likely to do something radically different, and therefore become significantly better than they were rather than the second quintile. That kind of holds up to me. Yeah.

But I also feel like of 100, maybe two of those 100, well, I mean, maybe five of those hundred well i mean maybe five of those hundred would be would be the ones that actually would try something radical and maybe two of those radical things would pay off and you know some maybe one of the other quintile are also going to do something radical and it pay off and so like maybe one out of a hundred guys would kind of become something new that is what i said earlier but it's yeah it'd be hard to attribute but i could kind of like i could kind of see it yeah right kind of okay by the way i feel bad for not even mentioning the the name of the team that mike fires no hit or maybe it's maybe it's nicer not to say the name of the team, but it was the Reds who we are notorious for not talking about. I actually did a whole segment on the Reds making up for all my years of not talking about them on the Ringer MLB show yesterday and was talking about how they'd actually been playing really well, even though they haven't won a whole lot.

And then they got no hit immediately after that conversation. But the Reds are, the interesting thing about them this year is that their pitching has been excellent and their position players and their offense has been lousy, which held up again against Fiers. And it's kind of amazing. in Fangraph's pitching war, which if you know the recent history of the Reds pitching staffs, that's pretty extraordinary because they went from 2016 having a replacement level pitching staff, basically being the worst in the majors, to then second worst in 2017 to fifth worst in 2018. And now they are leading the majors. And it's also interesting because in 2016, at the time, they had a below replacement level pitching staff. And Jeff wrote about that a couple times. And I had to break the news to him yesterday that their 2016 pitching war is no longer below replacement level, is now above replacement level, I think because they had bad framing that year. And framing is now part of the fan crafts war calculation so jeff was pretty upset to find out that that fun fact no longer holds because it was one of his favorite fun facts that he had uncovered so i think at the time that was like the worst pitching staff ever and now it no longer is but still really terrible anyway they have uh i just want

to console reds fans they have actually outscored their opponents by quite a bit. They've underplayed their base runs record by quite a bit. And they've allowed the fewest runs per game of any National League team. Only the Rays have allowed fewer runs per game than the Reds, which is partly a product of like Luis Castillo and Sonny Gray and Roark and some of the pitchers they acquired. Not Alex Wood, who hasn't pitched yet but also the fact that Tucker Barnhart has now apparently learned to frame pitches too and so for the first time since 2012 they are not in the red in framing runs also so sorry Reds you you are interesting and playing pretty well in a lot of ways but you're also in last place and getting no hit by mike fires hmm yeah

and they also had the uh they also got the the pablo fun fact against them so that's two episodes in a row we have talked about unusually good pitching performances from unexpected people against them yeah and then plagues of bees as well so yeah all right question from kyle in seoul south korea there was just an odd play in the fourth inning of a recent Twins and Orioles game where the infield fly rule was called and CJ Krohn missed the catch, but it was already called foul in the air and therefore dead if it landed, even though it landed on the line and should have been fair and an out by infield fly rule. At least this is what I think happened. Twins broadcasters Justin Morneau and Dick Bremmer seemed confused too. This got me thinking, what if there were no fielders on the field besides the pitcher and the

umpires had to decide off the bat, the results of every ball ground out, fly out infield, fly single, double, triple, et cetera. For balls hit in the air,

they would have to make the call as quickly as possible. Why? Much before the ball lands how accurately do you think the umpire called results would be compared to real life results i guess mentally projecting infield shifts would make this more difficult these days for them to predict as well i don't know why maybe there's a there's a strike of infielders but uh the pitchers and the umpires and the batters are still playing i don't i don't know it's a it's a weird hypothetical doesn't need a reason this is how you play

baseball in batting cages when you're 12 like somebody calls whether it was a hit right away and uh i don't know how to quite overlay that experience on top of Major League Baseball in Kyle's scenario. What I remember is that line drives up the middle were always good. Yeah, well, I think if you used like stat cast, then you could do this very accurately. I mean, it would make games very boring, I think, because every play would have the average expected outcome. But of course, you can look at the no hitter and you can see that I think Joey Votto had a ball that had like a 650 expected batting average, and that may not have even been the highest one in that game. So you can obviously call things based on the exit speed and the launch angle and the expected batting average stuff that doesn't even necessarily take into account the location, the horizontal angle of the ball in most cases. But you could factor that in too if you wanted to, and you could then generate an expected batting average or expected outcome of every batted ball off the bat

and you could just simulate the entire game that way and it would be fairer in a way but also boring yeah so there are four basically there are four parts of baseball there's the pitcher there's the hitter there's the fielder and there's the base runner and we now have expected stats some sort of expected stats for each of those thanks to uh thanks to the go zone uh yeah and so so theoretically theoretically in theory you could play four different sports of baseball where all three of the other four skills were were basically just treated as as expecteds and we only watched the one like the the one skill acted out and so like you could or maybe it'd be the other way you could have three and then you could remove one or the other but which of those four, I guess, is the most fun to watch actually overperforming the expected?

Because that's what the game is. In a lot of ways, the game is to create the most expected value out of a scenario and or to overperform the expected value of a scenario. So for instance, a pitcher is trying to throw a pitch that has, we don't have expected value of a pitch exactly, but throw a pitch that is expected to not be hit well. And we could, theoretically, we could remove the hitter and just say, ah, that's in a location that is very rarely hit well, the pitcher wins. Or we could say that the movement or the velocity or the location is some combination of excellence and

we don't even need the hitter so we could watch a whole sport of pitching right yep against a computer and the computer against you know whatever against a vr against a robot against anything you want whatever is algorithmically programmed to respond to the pitcher but the pitcher is alive the pitcher is it has agency Or you could have a scenario where the number of pitches is thrown randomly, programmed, and the fielders are programmed, but the batter is real, and the batter is hitting a baseball that is delivered to him. You get it? Yeah.

All right. Which game are you watching? Which game do you think you would watch? The game where there are only human pitchers, there are only human hitters, there are only human fielders, or there are only human base runners? I think only human hitters, right? You think? I think only human fielders. I think hitters might be my third. Nah, pitchers would be boring. Yeah, pitchers would be boring. nah pitchers would be boring i like pitchers would be boring pitchers would be boring unfortunately i want it to be pitchers because i feel like the skill that pitchers have is actually the most

interesting and the one that you that in some ways you can use the most imagination and you're it's the only one where you're in control and so you actually have your plan instead of simply reacting to a thing but unfortunately watching the same thing over and over basically it'd be watching archery uh with with movement with break and i don't watch archery so unfortunately although it'd be like watching bowling too and bowling is not a nothing sport like it's not clear that any of these sports would be more popular than bowling so bowling might actually like if you could say oh yeah that'd be as big as bowling, that might be the winner. Yeah. I mean, I don't watch bowling, but a lot of people do. Would it be as satisfying as bowling even? Because

if you put some pins behind there that you were knocking over, maybe, but there's no like feedback like that if you're pitching. In bowling, you have the target and you can see it in a very satisfying way whether you hit the target in pitching it's not really like that well i'm saying there would be something visual there there'd be a there'd be a there'd be a screen and uh you'd be like you'd be pitching to like a batter and bases loaded too and he'd still hit the ball and it'd be fake but but it would there'd be a visual there. I think it could also be somewhat like watching putts in a golf tournament, which are probably more interesting than a lot. I like watching putts.

Yeah, putts are fine. So now I think that pitchers maybe would be okay. So then hitters, everybody likes hitting, of course. But I feel like hitting would be kind of boring to watch in this scenario. But maybe not. I don't know. It's batting practice. Is batting practice a sport?

Well, people show up early to watch batting practice. Yeah. I mean, they certainly show up to watch home run derbies. Yeah. Once a year. Yeah. But they do show up to watch batting practice. And that's not even a challenge.

That's just like, that's easy hitting. So if you made it hard then that'd be good but then if you could if you had only fielding and you could guarantee a steady stream of plays that fielders had to run after and chase and so instead of like in this scenario there'd be no strikeouts there's no point in having the computer pitcher strike out the computer hitter while the human right fielder like you know picks uh dandelions so there'd be a play every every pitch well in that case yeah if you're not if you don't have to simulate it realistically and so you're just because defensive highlights are my favorite highlight in baseball and maybe in all sports even so obviously a lot of defensive plays are routine and not interesting most are but you would get the occasional great catch which would be better than anything you're getting really

watching the hitters or the pitchers so yeah all right if i don't have to sit through the the non-contact events, then sure. And base running doesn't deserve to be discussed. So Kyle is suggesting a scenario where you have human pitcher, human batter, but non-human fielder. There's no fielder. And since I am now, I think, on record saying that the fielder is the last one I would remove, Kyle has not asked us if we like this idea by the way kyle asked us how accurately do we think umpire called results would be compared to real life results yes but i'm telling him uh first and foremost that get out of here

so what do you pick do you like that do you who are you so okay so i'm not removing fielders because i want i would take all fielder game first. I would take all pitcher game second, and I would take all hitter game third. But now there's the question of if you had two human and one robot. Right, because if you're only removing one, then fielders are maybe the most dispensable because they're involved the least.

Oh, but dude, I don't... Unless we're catching... Well, you need the catch so dude i don't unless we're are we catching well you need the catcher i don't know if you remove the catch you have a simulated catcher i guess yeah you know but you can't have the pitcher and the fielders you have to because they're on the same team no because you can still be playing against the computer and every team could be playing against the computer and your goal is to it is now a completely defensive sport so you could do it so uh i forget where we were going i would not remove the fielders even in this scenario i think i would rather have a game that was all hitters and fielders huh okay and so i if i could if i had to remove one of the three i would remove pitchers if i

had to remove both of them i I would remove hitters first. Okay. Would you even know that the pitchers weren't real pitchers? I mean, they're still throwing real pitches, so what's the difference even? Like, the pitches are still coming in, right? You still need the pitches. How does it even work if you take the pitchers out? You could create a much better pitching machine.

Right. Okay. Well, a much better pitching machine would be just as entertaining as a as a hitter right i mean i i guess a machine that perfectly replicates any of the the people just robot players and you can't even tell that they're not human players then then it becomes just as entertaining i guess no no you could you would know that it was not a real pitcher you would know that somebody battle-botted some some machine that could throw pitches at roughly the skill level that a major league pitcher pitches uh-huh well the thing that makes this not entertaining if we're just saying like uh it's just it's just a simulated fielder who just is in like the average fielder position has the average range and I guess makes mistakes as

often as the average fielder. I mean, that's why it would be boring just to have like expected outcomes of things that hitters do, because what makes it interesting is when a fielder makes a play that he's not expected to make, or when I guess he flubs one that everyone does expect him to make, or he's standing somewhere that that everyone does expect him to make or he's standing somewhere that you wouldn't expect him to be standing and all that would be difficult to to simulate which would make it boring just to have like the routine average outcomes of every play but it's getting complicated here so i think we can stick with saying that yeah it is getting complicated the basic question that i'm trying to get at is whose pursuit of some level of performance

above expectations is the most fun to watch. Right. And I feel like watching a fielder make a play that he's not able to make, as well as watching a fielder not make a play that he's not able to make, is more interesting than watching a pitcher throw a good pitch or throw a bad pitch, and more interesting than watching a hitter do a good hit and do a bad hit but how accurately do i think umpire called results would be compared to real life results pretty accurately yeah i think so too similar to the question we were asked about like humans replicating stat cast sort of you could do it

this would not be as accurate as uh If you're allowed to use video and Take some time and everything if this is just a snap Judgment I mean we see Hitters misjudge balls we see Fielders misjudge balls so Obviously umpires would also misjudge Balls but on the whole They've seen a lot of baseball you can often

Tell if you're just watching at home you can Usually tell what's going to happen When the ball comes off the bat. Not always, but yeah, I think they'd be pretty good at it. It's interesting, Ben, because baseball is at heart a game of tag, right? It's a complicated game of tag. And at its origins, it was much more of a game of fielding. It was much more a game of who could catch the ball

than it was certainly of who could pitch pitching was was not really a factor at all the pitcher was just there to be the you know to start the action yeah and i i would say that the origin of the sport would put the most value on the runner the second most value on the fielder the third most value entertainment value or or like interest value on the hitter and the fourth most value on the pitcher and it has arguably flipped entirely where it is now a game almost entirely about the batter pitcher matchup not just because we've got the three true outcomes world but because that's really who the stars are and that's what the that's what we focus on and we think of fielding as as sort of a third tier skill and base running as a fourth tier skill.

And so one way of thinking about it is to say, oh, wow, we've really gotten away from the origins. This game has really, you know, we've lost what made it great. But another way of thinking about it is over the course of 150 years of tinkering with and figuring out what we like about this experimental game that they were playing we have come to the conclusion that the hitter pitcher matchup is the interesting part and that the fielder is the somewhat less interesting part and that the tag aspect of it is the least interesting part um and so probably that is true and so probably you should probably uh if you're replacing humans with robots or visual screens then then you should probably ignore what I said and go runner gets replaced first, field or second. Yeah.

On the long scale, I think it's more likely that the game has evolved than devolved. Right. So I think that's right. Because you do occasionally see that argument that like, okay, there are moreouts than than hits and that's not good and this is the opposite of like what the framers intended but a lot of things that the framers intended have changed and the rules were constantly changing in the early days of baseball as people figured out what worked and what didn't and so we're left with what worked maybe some things are not working as well as they did recently. That is an easy and

compelling case that you can make. But I think on the whole, I wouldn't want to go back to just pitchers lobbing the ball, serving the ball up there, and then putting the ball in play. That is such a different way of thinking about the game than most of us do as we get older. If you think about the game, whatever it is now as having basically won a competition for survival and that what we are left with is always what worked then you would never say back in my day it would always be that this that we have now has won has won the uh you know the adaptation wars and therefore must almost by definition be better. I don't know if that's true either,

but it's just like the exact philosophical opposite of how everybody from Roger Angel to the least of us tends to nostalgize the game. Yeah, that's right. Of course, players getting better doesn't always equate to the game getting better But over the long haul I think both have been True. Alright Question from Anthony in Albuquerque

I was wondering if you guys had any Insight as to why pitch speeds Are measured and discussed in terms of miles Per hour rather than feet per second I realize that it's probably a result Of using radar guns that spit out numbers In miles per hour but pitches are In the air for about half a second and travel about 60 feet. They don't typically travel a mile or hang in the air for an hour.

And this is kind of interesting because this is a question that MLB Advanced Media has been wrestling with in the past few years when figuring out how to present sprint speed. in the past few years when figuring out how to present sprint speed. Because initially, I think for the first couple years of StatCast, sprint speed, or however they were representing player speed at the time, was in miles per hour. And then they have switched to feet per second. And I know that Tom Tango and Mike Petriello feel pretty strongly that feet per second is a superior measure to use for that. And I think a lot of the same arguments apply

in theory to pitch speeds too. So I know that when they rolled this out and Tango has tweeted about this too, but Mike wrote and introduced and said, why are we using feet per second instead of miles per hour? And his explanation was that a, a lot of things in baseball are already in feet. His explanation was that, A, a lot of things in baseball are already in feet. When you talk about how far a home run went, you don't talk about it in terms of miles. When you talk about it in terms of, I don't know, the distance between bases, whatever, it's usually feet. Even when you talk about the distance between the pitcher's mound and home plate, it's 60 feet, 6 inches. It's not what that is in miles. And so that's part of it. And then evidently also, I think they found it was more satisfying to use feet per second is kind of measuring your fastest one second window

which is like seven steps or something and so that's a little more of a sustained period so but you could you could if you want it just as easily say that it's your miles per hour over your fastest seven step window or whatever yeah i guess so that's even more complicated well you don't have to say it i didn't even know that they had the window. Yeah, right. So that's true, I guess. But evidently, like Billy Hamilton didn't look as impressive, according to miles per hour, because what's really impressive about Billy Hamilton is not just that he gets to a high peak speed, but that he stays there for a while and sustains it more than most players do so i think that's why they use feet per second for that and and also because i think it comes in handy for other plays like when you're breaking down a play and uh you're saying like okay this guy was this many feet away from the base when he threw the ball and his sprint speed is this many feet per second so

he was this many seconds away from the base and so this was like the expected outcome of that play here's how many feet he had to cover here's how many feet the fielder had to cover you're kind of keeping the same unit so you could do all of this in pitches you could say feet per second and the advantage of doing that, I guess, would be that maybe it would convey more so than miles per hour does. Like just the reaction times that are involved here that we're talking about, like 60 feet, six inches. And yet, I don't know, like 90 miles per hour is like 132 feet per second, I think. And so that makes it seem really fast. Then you can tell like, oh, wow, the ball's getting to the plate in like less than half

a second. Maybe that is even more telling than just saying it went 90, which we know was fast, but maybe it doesn't convey just how fast it's getting to you and how quickly you have to make that decision. So that would be the advantage of switching, I suppose, and disadvantages we're used to miles per hour and it works okay as it is. pitch velocity because of radar guns that were originally developed to clock cars on the freeway right yeah and i think that's a frame of reference for all of us yeah in regular life we all know what 100 miles per hour is we all know what 80 miles an hour we've all traveled all of these distances all of these speeds right in a way that makes it fairly intuitive to understand i think

that yeah you're right that feet per second given the fact that we know 60 feet six inches would probably be pretty easy for us to have adopted originally i think yeah given that that the distance from the mound to the plate is not like moving all the time or anything like that that like we all know 60 feet, it would have, it would be pretty easy to have picked that up. Yeah. But we didn't. And now it's much simpler to, to, it doesn't matter what you use, really. Not really.

It just matters if you have a baseline that you can easily react to as a human brain. And once we all get a baseline of 90 good, 80 bad or whatever, um, then it, uh, it's, it's very easy. You could, we could have done it in, I mean, I assume they do it in, uh, in, in like in, in other countries, they use kilometers per hour. And I assume that it's just as useful for them, uh, as miles per hour is for us because after you've been following it a little bit and you know what a good number is and you know what a bad number is it doesn't really matter what what any i mean all of these things are essentially social constructs right the weird one ben the weirdest thing of all of these though is spin rate because spin rate is rotations per

minute yes which a we nobody has any idea like we don't use rotations per minute. Yes. Which a, we, nobody has any idea. Like we don't use rotations per minute in any other aspect of our lives. It's not like when you're driving down the freeway, you're like, wow, my tires are going 84,000 rotations per minute. Like you, there's nothing there at all. It comes from nowhere. B it creates a completely weird scale of numbers where 2400 is say average but how many times does a pitch rotate on the way to the plate five yeah not many at all does it even do five i don't even know how many it does i don't know what normal is and it so that's like not in any way at all intuitive so you both have the uh the the problem that is being described here where you're using a unit of measurement that doesn't apply to the situation at hand but

also you don't even have a baseline of familiarity to it and yet kind of works works enough yeah so what if a 2400 spin rate that's revolutions per minute so then per second that would be 40 and then if a pitch is in the air for let's say half a second or so then it's like 20 so i i guess it it is rotating like 20 times on its way to the plate something like that so i kind of do wish that that were how we thought a spin rate like the typical rotations when it's actually in the air on its way to the plate i think that would be more intuitive to me than 2400 or 3200 and having to figure out what that means it doesn't really mean anything to me except in relation to whatever the average is and what other pitchers throw so i think the benefit might be that people don't like decimals

and you'd have to to accurately convey a pitch in is it rotations or revolutions revolutions okay so to accurately convey revolutions on the flight to the plate well there's two two things for it but but one is that you you'd end up with decimals you'd to distinguish between a good fastball and a bad fastball or a high spin and a low spin fastball you might have to go like 20 20.9 versus 20.1 and generally speaking i think people don't like decimal points 2460 rpm fastball with a 2250 rpm fastball is not actually simplifying anything you're still you have you're just there's no decimal point but you're still using four digits you like you shouldn't it shouldn't be easier to do that but i think it is i think that for most of us or for many people it's less intimidating to see a whole number

instead of a decimal. The other thing, though, is that release points aren't the same place. And so you'd have to do revolutions per 60 feet or per 55 feet or per some standard feet instead of how many times it actually spun on the way to the plate. And if you're presenting it in a kind of way of saying this is how many times it actually spun on the way to the plate and if you're presenting it in a kind of way of saying this is how many times it actually spun on the way to the plate but then you have to explain that it's not because of extension and stuff then it might maybe be a bother yeah i think i'd still prefer revolutions per second to minute that'd be better revolutions so you'd rather it be like 40 you'd rather that yeah so and so's

got 40 and so and so's got 38 that 40 is a better number to deal with than 2400 i think most people would be more yeah it'd be yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the other thing with uh miles per hour you do have 100 which just so happens to to work out yeah. I mean, I guess 100 is, that's like 147 feet per second. So I guess you could say like 150 feet per second could be the 100 miles per hour of that scale, but it's not quite as satisfying. 100 is pretty satisfying. And it just so happens that that's like a number that people can actually reach and that's very close to the top of the scale so that's nice too and as long as we're not using feet per second for other stuff in our daily lives and we all grow up knowing how fast cars go and experiencing that ourselves it's just

it's even to switch to feet per second for sprint speed i have to like think about it for a second And think about what that means And it's just a little Jarring so alright I have one more can we do One more this is from Colby I recently saw yet another online Argument between AL and NL fans Regarding the DH one common argument

That I see is that NL managers have A more difficult and therefore more interesting Job as they deal with pinch hitters and Pitching. This time, the argument turned to suggesting that AL managers can basically sleep through the games as they don't have to deal with the same things the NL managers do. My question is whether or not you think managing an NL team is drastically more difficult or intensive than managing an AL team. Also, is there evidence that shows that AL managers struggle with these decisions when playing in an NL stadium?

You wanted to ask this question so that I could answer it? Well, so that we both could. But I think, I don't know if there's evidence. I don't know of any evidence. I think that occasionally there's an example of like an AL manager who like screws up a double switch or something in an NL park. I'm pretty sure I've, I've seen that happen. So I, I can't summon a specific example right now, but I think it has

happened where maybe a manager was a little bit out of his depth there, but on the whole, I think the idea that NL baseball is significantly more complicated or full of strategy or difficult for managers is kind of overblown. I don't think it's that huge a difference. It's probably not that huge a difference. The roster is a lot, is practically speaking, smaller in the NL because you've got to pinch hit more. And so that means that you are going to run through your bench sooner and you're probably going to run through your pitchers a little bit sooner, even though you do get a little extra length from your pitchers because they don't have to face DHs. But there's a roster scarcity that's a lot bigger problem and a lot bigger, I guess, from the manager's perspective, challenge than in the AL. And I don't think that's nothing.

That's something. You have to make a decision about when you're going to pull the pitcher. And it's a decision that the AL manager doesn't have to make. It's not like a decision that any AL manager is incapable of making. It's not like you can have a manager who's good in the NL but not good in the AL or vice versa. I guess there's a skill, certainly, to deciding when to pull pitcher. And so you can maybe have more value as a manager or subtract more value as a manager in the NL, but it's not such a difference that like you'd need

a totally different skillset or someone couldn't comfortably move between leagues. So the one other thing that I've come to appreciate in the last couple of years, I think is the decision that NL managers, this is not a big deal, but the decision NL managers have to face about whether to intentionally walk the number eight hitter with two outs and the pitcher on deck, uh, or the number seven hitter with two outs in the pitcher on deck. And, uh, it used to be that you just would that, I mean, the other day I, when I was writing about Peewee Reese, I noticed that Pee Wee Reese led the league in intentional walks one year. And I was like, wow, he must have been quite the slugger that year.

And he was just batting eighth. So it was kind of automatic that you wouldn't let the number eight hit or beat you with a guy in scoring position in two outs. And that turns out to be maybe not the right decision. It might be better to start the next inning with the pitcher so that you get that first out, like kind of banked. And I feel like it's, I think that the numbers would show that it's probably better to pitch to the number eight hitter in most cases.

But it feels like one of the closest kind of 50-50 propositions that managers face. closest kind of 50-50 propositions that managers face. And I do kind of enjoy the uncertainty and seeing what they're going to do and which way they go with and then whether it burns them. It's always very fun when it burns them. So that's kind of a nice, I don't think a few years ago, I would have gotten much joy out of that because it was just been like, yeah, you walk them. I would have gotten much joy out of that because it would have just been like, yeah, you walk them. Yeah. Okay. So we can call it there.

All right. All right. A couple more things. First, when Sam said gif earlier, it reminded me that that's sort of an underrated aspect of Jeff's departure. Effectively, Wild is now an all hard G gif podcast, at least among the hosts. I know it's a silly thing to care about, but as Meg just said to me, Jeff's soft G pronunciation of gif was truly his worst take. Also, as a few of you pointed out, I miscalculated when we bantered about the Royals on the previous episode. I was thinking that the Royals had played 25 games instead of 35 games, and so I said

they were on pace for many more steals than they actually were. They do lead the majors by 10 stolen bases as I speak, which is impressive, but even so, they're stealing bases at a rate of one per game. So if they keep that up and end up with 162, that would be more than any team has had in either of the past two seasons, but not enough to get that excited about, which maybe explains why I'm finding them a little less fun than I hoped I would. They're fast, but they're not off the charts fast. So the lesson I've learned from that is don't do arithmetic while recording a podcast. Also, some of you have asked where to start with Roger Angel.

Sam and I and our guest Joe Bonomo did recommend and name check some specific pieces, but we didn't say where you should start. And I think one reason why we didn't say where you should start is that it almost doesn't matter where you start. If you're interested in his baseball writing, you can pick up just about any of his baseball books. The Summer Games, Season Ticket, Late Innings, Game Time, they're all good and worth reading, and you can tell from any of them whether you like Angel a lot and want to read more of him. It's funny, actually, having finished Joe's book about Roger Angel, I'm now

reading Robert Caro's book, which is called Working. Caro, of course, the famous biographer, he is a comparatively young and spry man of 83, and Joe Bonomo led off his Roger Angel book with a quote from Angel, which says, writing is the hardest thing in the world to do. It's just as hard as baseball. And Robert Caro kind of says the opposite. He says that writing is easy for him, at least the writing part of it. The research takes him a very long time, but he writes so quickly that he's actually taken to writing longhand and then with a typewriter just to slow himself down. I am definitely more along the angel lines of slow suffering than the Caro quick copy. And it's funny that Caro is such a quick writer, as he himself points out, because his books take quite a long time to come out. But that's just because of all the research

he does. Anyway, these two books make pretty good companion pieces, if you're interested. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Following five listeners have already done so. Timothy M. Stackhouse, Kyle Talley, Eric Edston, Aaron Roth, and Larry Freed. 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. Two little plugs for the Facebook group where wonderful things happen on a regular basis. The other day, one of our listeners, Nicholas, posted this. Quote, earlier today, I was at Millennium Park in Chicago

and saw a guy with what appeared to be his family and he was wearing an Astadio jersey. I yelled Astadio toward him and we exchanged smiles for the common bond created by this great, great baseball man. The rest of my group thought I was insane. It's entirely possible that they were right. First comment on the post is from another listener, Caleb. That was me. Figured you were a fellow listener of the pod. Long live Williams. And then Justin said, goddamn, I love

this group. That's the kind of thing that happens in there. Another thing that happens, our listener Michael Gates, as a wedding gift to Jeff, commissioned a video of Letty Harris congratulating Jeff on his wedding from not cameo, but kind of a cameo equivalent site. I will link to this video. As some of you may recall, Lenny Harris was a recurring figure in some of Jeff's early episodes of the show. And here's what he said to Jeff. Hey, Jeff and Brett, I want to wish you a happy, happy marriage on August 27th. Hope you guys enjoy it. I hope you guys enjoy the mountains and the blue skies and many more. Lenny Harris, enjoy. So thanks for the thought for Jeff, Michael. I enjoyed that when he got the wedding date wrong,

but otherwise it was very nice. Please replenish our mailbag. Keep your questions and comments from me and Sam and Meg coming via email at podcast at fangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. I am holding my book, The MVP Machine, in my hands as I speak. I just picked up my copies yesterday, so I can verify that if you pre-order it, you will receive a physical item. I think it's a pretty good looking and good feeling book. I am it's a pretty good-looking and good-feeling book. I am obviously hopelessly biased. It's got a very fetching spine.

Nice color scheme. It's pretty hefty. Good tactile quality. So you can have one in your hands in less than four weeks. And if you do pre-order, which is very helpful to me and Travis, send your pre-order confirmation to thembpmachine at gmail.com. And when the book comes out, we will send you some pre-order bonuses, extra chapter and a conversation between us about the book

and some additional documents if you're on the fence about buying it early that's a good reason to get off the fence on the pre-order side so I hope you will we will be back with another episode a little later this week talk to you then Try to let you go Try to Try to let you go

Try to Check 2