Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1394: Hard Cora

Episode Date: June 27, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about whether the Red Sox pulling a pitcher in the middle of a plate appearance was an instance of “Strategy,” share a Stat Blast about whether the platoon advantage is more pronounced early or late in plate appearances, and discuss a pitch-framing flare-up between Tyler Flowers and Willson Contreras, […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1394 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Bringer. I'm joined by Samuel of ESPN. Hello, Sam. Hey, Ben. We had a possible sighting of strategy, de-strategy, whatever we're calling it. The strategy we've been discussing for the past few weeks and suggesting that maybe a team should start removing pitchers in the middle of plate appearances to get the element of surprise. And it appeared as if it might have happened in the Red Sox game on Monday. Some people alerted us, which I appreciate. Red Sox game on Monday. Some people alerted us, which I appreciate. So I'll lay out the situation here and we can talk about the degree to which this was or wasn't the strategy. So this was in

the eighth inning of the White Sox-Red Sox game. It was the top of the eighth and there were two outs. John Jay was up, so lefty hitter. Colton Brewer was pitching, so righty pitcher, and they left in the righty to face the lefty hitter. And then on a full count, Alex Cora made the change. He went to the lefty in the middle of the plate appearance, and he brought in Josh Taylor. And I don't know whether we can say that it worked because Josh Taylor threw a ball and John Jay walked, although Taylor then struck out Yohan Mankata and the Red Sox got out of the inning and ultimately they won the game. So this was sort of the strategy in that it was a middle of the plate appearance pull and it wasn't like the pitcher was struggling or he fell behind in the count. So at the time I thought maybe this is it. So I texted Brian Bannister, assistant pitching coach for the red socks after the game and i asked him what the rationale here was and here is his response it forces the lefty versus lefty matchup when they have a righty pinch hitter ready the other manager

is unlikely to pinch hit for one pitch but more likely if he gets to see multiple pitches so this was not exactly the strategy but it could be a gateway to the strategy. You know, Ben, I just, before I get to that, I just want to point out that there's a man named Brock Davis who played briefly in Major League Baseball. Not that briefly. He didn't play much, but he did manage to cover almost 10 years of chronological time. He debuted in 1963 at the age of 19, and he retired at the age of 28 in 1972. Brock Davis, 242 career games. The first 35 of them were for Houston in 1963 and 1964, and the last 85 of them were for Milwaukee in 1972,

which means that he was both Colton Brewer. Okay. All right. I'm glad you got that in there. I mean, I'm happy it happened. So what did you ask me? For anybody who, some people have forgotten that we already said the name Colton Brewer in this podcast earlier. Yes, right. That's a callback to like 40 seconds ago. The pitcher who was pulled, yeah.

Yeah. All right. What was your question? Was this strategy or was it sort of strategy? I think it was, so here's why it wasn't strategy, I think. It was, so here's why it wasn't strategy, I think. He, Colton Brewer got ahead 0-2, and then he threw ball one, two, and three. And I believe that if you're going to employ strategy, I mean, well, look, first off, let's just restate.

There are three different kind of reasons that you might, as a matter of strategy, pull pitchers mid plate appearance semi-routinely. One is that the pitcher that you're watching pitch has clearly not got it. You often will decide to replace him because he gives up a hit or a walk, but you might also decide to pull him because he gave up a hit or a walk and then also threw two more balls and you thought, well, this isn't going to end well. He, this is, he is no longer my best option and I'm not going to wait for him to issue another walk. I'm just going to pull him. I believe that that should happen more, but that is not strategy. That is not the strategy. A second one is that you might

have decided that certain pitchers are better in certain counts, that there are Dillon Batonsis out there who are really good with two strikes, but that you maybe are a little bit less confident with them at the beginning of plate appearances because they're a little wilder. And like, for instance, if you were to look at Josh Hader's numbers and Delon Batonsi's numbers, in fact, they are insane with two strikes. They are among the greatest pitchers in history with two strikes. They are among the greatest pitchers in history with two strikes, but when they allow contact early in counts, it actually is, they're not distinguished. I have a

spreadsheet somewhere here, in fact, where I looked at this and saw that Josh Hader and Dillon Batances were like the two most extreme players in baseball for ratio of two strike offense to non-two strike offense. And so you could make the case that, and because Batantes in particular is not exactly a strike thrower, you could make the case that he is as good a pitcher in baseball as there is with two strikes. And he is worse than many other alternatives until that point. And so you might have essentially a platoon between two pitchers who excel in different counts. That is what apparently they do at Duke or some college, North Carolina, some college. What college was it? Wake Forest? Tell me the college.

It was Duke in that anecdote, I think. So that's another strategy that Joe Girardi seems to have used once and that some college coach, perhaps coaches, use. That's a different thing. The third thing is that what we think is potentially a good strategy is to time as many pitching replacements as you can mid at bat so that you can take advantage of this difficulty in adjusting. And in particular, I believe that it really would work well if you could also take the next step and have your new pitcher not warm up on the mound so that the batter cannot even get used to his arm slot or the general speed of his pitches

i believe if you have not seen the pitcher throw a single pitch like if you have not stood in the on-deck circle and watched him throw a single pitch your chances of hitting it are are zero that there is zero change i believe even if you even Even if you run back to your iPad in the dugout and you watch some video? I think even then. I think that it is cognitively impossible. I mean, I'm hypothesizing thus. I have no evidence of this, but I'm hypothesizing that your brain is incapable

of doing that math, that complex math of depth perception and adjustment if you have not seen him throw the ball. Now, I think that seeing warmup pitches probably gets you pretty close to being able to do it, maybe all the way, and so it might... Anyway, so the third thing is what we're hoping will take off throughout Major League Baseball and that 80 years from now will be named something with our name in it somehow.

So this is not that, probably. This is more... Well, this actually, you know, there's a combination of all three involved here but it is probably not it's not a it's not what we're talking about exactly right it is not a commitment to this idea they pulled brewer i i would think that what you would want to do for our strategy is that you'd want to do it when you get to two strikes so that you can really take advantage of only needing that one pitch. And they waited until three more balls had been thrown after Brewer got ahead 0-2. And it was only one case. So we'd have to see him do it again and again before it

would be strategy, which is employing this as a as a regular thing so it's kind of it's slightly it's sort of slightly its own thing i i don't know you you so you explain you relayed what brian bannister said did you also say what alex cora said publicly no i don't know if he fully explained it i saw an alex spear tweet where he said that cora had been wanting to do this for a couple months, that he'd been thinking about it, but I didn't see his explanation. Yeah, his was different. His was actually a little different than Bannister's. So his explanation was that with John Jay up and a runner on first, they were content to give away the platoon advantage. But when McCann stole second, or maybe went to second on a wild pitch yeah he stole second

then john jay the singles hitter became it became more important to strike john jay out more important to get john jay out they were less worried about john jay driving in a runner with an extra base hit than they were having him just sort of do what he does don't go and do anything get it put the bat on the ball. And so the urgency. Now, the play, I haven't watched this inning, the play log that I saw had McCann stealing on the one-two pitch, which would mean that Brewer was left in for one more pitch, but the game story that I'm reading, which is not bylined. And so who knows if I trust this guy, but this writer, but this says that McCann stole second on the 2-2 pitch,

and so then out came Cora immediately. So even there, it's not entirely clear what the motivation was here. I have my stat. You want to play the stat blast music? Wow, this early? All right. Well, this was what was going to be the stat blast. Ah, okay. All right, stat blast. This was what was going to be the stat blast.

Ah, okay. All right. Stat blast. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's today's stat blast. So I'm going to warn you up front. I have done the stat blast. I have not yet really thought that much about it. And I'm not entirely sure what it all means.

So I got to thinking about the first explanation for what they were doing, which was that they wanted the platoon advantage. They figured if they pinch, if they replaced Colton Brewer at the start of the at bat, well, okay. So if they leave Brewer in, they don't have a platoon advantage advantage. If they replace them at the start of the at bat, then Jay would be pinch hit for they assumed. and so they would not have the platoon advantage and so they were going to try to get the platoon advantage by kind of by shrinking the size of the abat and hoping that the other team would not value the partial abat enough to pinch hit in that situation. And so I was thinking like, all right, so is a platoon advantage bigger later in an at-bat? And one theory might be that later in the at-bat,

you're more likely to have an outcome. You're more likely to have the at-bat actually decided. And so in that sense, it could be that a platoon advantage on 3-2 would be greater than any other time. But the other could be that a platoon advantage on 3-2 would be greater than any any other time but the other thing is that a platoon advantage manifests itself not just in hard hit contact or what happens in the ultimate outcome but also in your ability to throw strikes to get ahead in the count to put the other guy behind in the count and so by the earlier in the at-bat you

can get the platoon advantage theoretically, the better because it would compound. So I looked at the platoon advantage for every count and just to see if it changes as it gets deeper into the count. And I looked only at lefty pitchers. So lefty lefty or lefty pitcher against lefty batter or righty pitcher against lefty batter. And I have some results. I'm not entirely sure what they mean. Ultimately, I think the question that this is answering is more from the White Sox perspective

of should they have, if they were willing to pinch hit for John Jay at the start of an at bat, should they have been just as willing to pinch hit for John Jay on 3-2? Because from the Red Sox perspective, it doesn't really matter. They made a calculation that in order to get the platoon advantage at all, they had to do it this way. And so for them, it's a different calculus. But for the White Sox, they still had the choice. They had the choice of whether it was worth burning a batter for one pitch.

And if the platoon advantage shrinks later in the plate appearance, then you might say that it wouldn't be worth burning the batter. And if it grows, then you would say that it's even more worth burning the batter. And so this is kind of a mess here. But here's a few things I will tell you. The pitcher's advantage is highest on 0-2 counts. It is second highest on 1-2 counts. It is third highest on 2-2 counts. It is fourth highest on 3-2 counts. So clearly on two strike counts, that is when the platoon advantage most manifests itself. Okay. So that is the biggest advantage for results for actual

WOBA. That, of course, does not take into account strike percentages. Pitchers who have the platoon advantage also throw more strikes in every count than pitchers without the platoon advantage. But the two counts where that is least true are 3-2 and 0-2, where it's almost exactly the same. So we have with 0-2 that maybe makes, I don't know. I don't know if any of this makes sense. I'm just saying things. But it's strangely enough, here's what I'm saying. Strangely enough, the lefty strike throwing edge the platoon advantage strike throwing edge is smallest on the four two strike counts and so you're less likely to throw a strike i mean you're still more likely to throw a strike but your edge in throwing a strike is smallest on two strike counts but your edge in getting the out is much higher on two strike counts i don't know what to

make that but i after going around this a few different ways, here's, I think, the key thing, okay? Okay. In all plate appearances, the righty pitcher facing the lefty batter. So Colton Brewer is the righty, Josh Taylor is the lefty. So let's say they were average. Everything was average about this situation. Brewer against the lefty John Jay would be expected to allow to allow about 10 more offense than taylor at the start of the at bat 10 after one pitch so in all the counts minus the first pitch regardless of what happens on the first pitch then it would still be 10 for all the other counts for minus two pitches, then it's 12%. Uh, for minus three pitches,

it's 12% for minus four pitches. So basically all the counts that are three, one, two, two, and three, two. Uh, so deep into counts it's back to 10% and for full counts, it's down to 7%. So basically, the deeper you get into counts, the platoon advantage doesn't noticeably shift. There's a little bit of a dip at 3-2, but I'm probably willing to say that that's mostly just noise, that it's pretty steady. Now, you're, well, anyway, that's all. Okay, so you're suggesting... You're, well, anyway, that's all. Okay, so you're suggesting. What I'm suggesting is that if you would pinch hit for John Jay at the start of the at-bat, you should pinch hit for John Jay at the end of the at-bat, I think. Right. Okay.

So if they did this for the banister reason, if the Red Sox made this change when they did because they thought it would make the White Sox less likely to pinch hit. I'm saying the White Sox choked. They should have pinch hit anyway. That is all I can say about this situation. Because again, the Red Sox, they don't get to control the platoon advantage necessarily. So they had this kind of clever gambit to try to get it. And it worked. That's actually very successful if you think about it. It worked. They kept John Jay in the game. If we assume that John Jay would have actually been pinch hit for at the beginning of the at bat, which we don't know for sure, Maybe he wouldn't have. But if we assume that that is the case,

then we would say that the White Sox failed to respond to this pitching change and that they should have done it. I think. Okay. Yeah. All right. I think that makes sense. I think so too. There are a lot of things here where I got kind of hung up on like the logic of what I was saying and so on. And so I'm sorry about that, but that's the stat blast. All right. Well, I agree that what the Red Sox did in this instance was not really the strategy that we have discussed, but I applaud anything that resembles the strategy because perhaps it will break down the resistance to making a pitching change in the middle of a plate appearance because you don't necessarily know what the rationale was. We don't even know in this case. Bannister

said one thing and Cora said one other thing. All we know is that a pitcher was pulled in the middle of a plate appearance when he wasn't behind in the count or notably struggling. And so if that becomes normalized for whatever reason, it may lower the resistance to doing the strategy that we are talking about. That's absolutely right. It is good for the strategy. These sorts of replacements should be commonplace. And also, for whatever reason they happen,

they do give us some indication of whether pitchers who come in in the middle of a plate appearance can throw strikes right off the bat, whether there's any kind of like – I mean, we need more than one, obviously we need, ideally there'd be, there'd be hundreds of these thousands even, but, but that's kind of helpful to making the case. And by the way, Colton Brewer, according to this same article that I quoted from earlier, Colton Brewer was not happy to be taken out of the game. And Alex Cora said it was a tough one trying to tell him, just hang in there with your crazy manager.

All right. Well, that's a reason why our strategy might not happen. By the way, one other thing that I think Cora implied in his explanation is that once McCann stole second, he was less worried about a ball four. He was less worried about a walk four. He was less worried about a walk because he told Taylor, I said, just relax, brother. This is just a kill pitch. If you strike him out, you strike him out. If you walk him, you walk him, which sounds like something that you say because the guy's already on second, you have a base open. Got it. I can't imagine someone trying to follow along to my stat blast. I think we summed it up okay at the end yeah should pinch hit you should have

pinched it for john j pinch hit pinch hit for john yeah okay let's talk about one more thing before we get to a few emails this is also something that happened on monday i don't know if you saw it was a little spat between catchers between cubs catcher wil Wilson Contreras and Braves catcher Tyler Flowers. And this happened in the second inning of a Braves-Cubs game. And it was just one little plate appearance. I'll send you a video that I will also link just so you can see exactly what happened here. But it was on the third pitch of this at-bat, Julio Tehran was pitching. And Tehran and Flowers got a call on Contreras that Contreras was not pleased with.

And it was a little low. I think it wasn't as bad as it looked on my initial viewing. The little dot of the ball on the screen strike zone was just slightly below the strike zone. And when I looked up the pitch info called strike probability, it was like 45%. So this was almost a toss up. It was a little less likely to be called a strike than a ball, but Contreras was not happy. It was a sinker. It kind of looked a little lower at first than it actually was, I think. So Contreras turns around and he's jawing at the umpire and he's, you know, pretty demonstrative and upset about this call and it's not clear

what exactly tyler flowers did to inflame the situation but he did something this video zooms in on his face and you can see that he appears to just be grinning broadly while contraris is uh shaking his head and clearly upset so not clear whether flowers said something or just sort of mockingly smiled about Contreras being so discomfited by this this call but Contreras was upset not only at the umpire seemingly but also at Flowers and on the very next pitch Contreras hit a home run and as he left the box he turned around and he seemed to yell something back at Flowers, presumably, and made some gesticulations there. And he kept jawing as he rounded the bases and came to home plate. And there was a little confrontation when he got there. And both of these guys talked about it after the game. And neither one said exactly what transpired. But, you know, Flowers was kind of not happy that Contreras was not happy. And Contreras was not happy about the call and not happy about Flowers too. And I just thought this was kind of a fun illustration of what these two catchers bring to their teams. Because Tyler Flowers is a framing savant.

He is always one of the best framers in baseball. And Wilson Contreras is always one of the worst framers in baseball, but often one of the best hitting catchers. And this year has been an excellent hitting catcher. So this was kind of an illustration of the things that each of them does well. I mean, Flowers is a decent hitter too. He's having a pretty good offensive year, but he's someone whose glove is his big asset.

And if we look at baseball prospectus framing leaderboard, minimum 2,000 framing opportunities this year. Tyler Flowers is second in enhancing the called strike rate after Austin Hedges and Wilson Contreras is fourth worst. And it's funny because Flowers has been great at this. He's really devoted himself to it. I've talked to him and podcasted with him and written about him improving his framing. And I know that the Cubs have tried to improve Contreras' framing with little to no success thus far. because he gets this kind of call, and he gets on the nerves of hitters who get these calls going against them,

and Contreras, who probably was maybe not getting these calls as a catcher and doesn't typically get these calls. And then meanwhile, Contreras, who takes away value behind the plate, but adds it at the plate because he hits home runs, and that makes him a very valuable player too. runs and that makes him a very valuable player too so i thought this was just a fun little inconsequential vignette that illustrated what these guys are good at and how it can kind of piss other players off when they put this into effect i think a lot of people have the experience at some point in their childhood where they have a best friend and somebody else has the same best friend and the one in the middle has a certain sort of, I don't know, a little bit of a higher status because he's both of your best friend. And this I sort of feel like the umpire in this situation gets to be like the best friend and he's playing them off each other and they're both a little bit jealous. Yeah, right. Yeah, I guess that's true. I mean, I don't know that this episode reflected

well on either Flowers or Contreras because it's sort of a silly uproar, but I thought this was telling. This is what these guys do. One frames very well, the other frames very poorly and hits dingers, and they're both good at their jobs. Delillon Batances in the last five years has allowed an OPS on two strikes of 286 and an OPS on everything that's not two strikes of 1070. Wow. Which actually sounds crazier than it is. That 1070 is actually not that far off. I don't even know.

That's probably, I'm just glancing at the column here, and it's probably a little worse than the median, but not even that much, not even that crazy. But the ratio or the, I guess, the relation between those is crazy. So that one is four times as big as the other. And I'm just glancing at other guys who are like the opposite. I mean, nobody's the opposite. Everybody's better with two strikes.

But like, let me get you a good one. Matt Albers. Matt Albers. Good friend, Matt Albers. Or let's say Jake McGee. Jake McGee, two strikes, 626. Everything else, 899. And so, Dylan Batances is miles better than him on two strikes and quite a bit worse

on all the other counts. And, uh, you know, maybe you, that's over five years, but all the same, you probably would maybe want to regress all of those numbers somewhat. But if Jake McGee and Dillon Batances were on the same team, I don't know. One's lefty, one's righty. You might already have reasons to have them in the game when they're in the game and so on, but it makes a little Hector Rond 5 41 with two strikes 8 13 without so that's much closer yeah there's a few guys there's a there's a handful of guys on here who you could make the case that if they were

teammates you pair them up make some sense will harris is one of those guys and will harris is really good so let me see if you had will harris is, I'm trying to find out if there's a good ass. There's a lot of Yankee, you know, there's a lot of Yankees right now. Actually, this is interesting. So Batances is number one for the greatest two strike to the other one relationship out of 300 pitchers. So out of 300, Batances number one, Chad Green, number 10, Adam Ottavino, number 11, Aroldis Chapman, number 12. So you have all these Yankees who are on the, well, I mean, they're strikeout pitchers. Why am I surprised? Well, yeah. I mean, that's maybe why they were the first to try this strategy, at least with Dillon. So Brad Peacock is very high on the list and Will Harris is quite

low on the list. And they are both Astros pitchers who could be relievers in the postseason. They could try. They could do it. All right. All right. Let's answer a few questions here. This is one from Patreon supporter Dave in Trinity, Florida. He says, if baseball were different, how different could it be and still be baseball? Baseball has gone through some pretty significant rule changes in the early years, but there haven't been many major changes since the introduction of the DH. What are the untouchable things about baseball that cannot be changed, or it is no longer baseball? I think as long as you have a pitcher and a hitter,

you can tinker with almost anything else, baseball and the moon, and still call it a version of baseball. Huh. I replied to this. Did I reply all, or did I just reply to him? I think you replied and I think I might've seen it, but I forget what you said. Well, unfortunately what I said is embargoed because it was about an article that I submitted,

but that has not run. And then I probably shouldn't mention quite yet. But my answer beyond that is that it is, you could change almost anything so long as you have a competitive pitcher against a competitive hitter. So the pitcher and the hitter have to be in opposition to each other. You cannot have a situation, I don't think, where you take away the role of the pitch as part of the defense. Like in that sense, I guess you, one could argue and say, but Sam in early baseball, in the very earliest baseball, you didn't have that. It was basically a game where you got your pitch. You were allowed to

ask for your pitch and the game was much more about fielding and base running. And the pitcher was a non-entity. And I believe that the game rejected that and became one where the matchup is almost, uh, the, the crucial matchup is between the pitcher and the batter. And you could theoretically replace, I'm not saying that this would be a better game, but if you replaced the fielders with some sort of like zone rating thing, or like all hits were ex-WOBA hits instead of actual hits, and if there was no base running at all, but merely like station to station mandated based on the ex-woba or something like that, the game would suck.

But to me, that would still be baseball. You could not, however, say we're playing home run derby with fielders and base runners and have it be baseball. To me, that stops being baseball when your dad or your team's batting practice coach is your pitcher and is sort of complicit in your offense, colluding with your offense. So I think if we go into semantics, if you change the ball, it's no longer baseball. If it's a softball, it's softball, right? But I think that is still understood to be fundamentally the same game. It's a different name. It's a different ball. So I do think you need a literal baseball to have it be baseball. And of course, the baseball keeps

changing, but it mostly looks like a baseball. But I think softball, we could say it's a variant of the same game and it's close enough that I don't consider it truly a different sport. Although in that case, you have, you know, different distances, you have pitchers pitching underhand. I mean, there are other things that are different, but if you just took major league baseball and all you did was change the baseball to a softball or some other ball, then you probably wouldn't call it baseball anymore. But you probably wouldn't, you probably anymore. You probably wouldn't. It'd be tough, but if you just kept calling it baseball for a year, then it would still be baseball.

You would have to convince everybody who is used to referring to the baseball as the very literal thing, the shape and size that it is. But once you got past that, you could very easily get away with calling it baseball, even if the ball. Let me ask you this. If you play video game baseball, there is no ball at all. And yet you still recognize that it's baseball. Like that's just a pixel. That's no the size of it, the shape of it, the feel of it, the texture of it is all imaginary. And yet you still recognize it as a representation of baseball so if they add if they made that ball slightly bigger in the video game you wouldn't even notice and it'd still be baseball i don't i don't i i don't dispute but i also don't concede

that your uh point is valid okay we got a video game it's i mean it's an attempt to accurately represent the baseball. If you had a holographic baseball in real life or VR or something, if you had VR baseball and all the players were just simulating everything, is that baseball? If they're seeing through their goggles and we're watching at home, but they're not actually throwing and swinging. Yeah, it's still baseball, I think. But let me read this passage from Bud Selig's forthcoming memoir, For the Good of the Game, which I just read and I think is relevant to your initial answer. So he's talking now about being a kid and growing up in Milwaukee in the 40s and playing baseball with his friends. He says, we'd play games behind the school, in the park, wherever. We'd play with any kids who showed up, and if there weren't a lot of kids, that was okay too. Herb and I, Herb's his best friend at the time, or some of our other friends, Shelly Gash, Buzzy Grossman, would play strikeout. Say him again. Shelly Gash, Buzzy Grossman. Oh, I'm going to ask you later in

the episode to say that one more time. Okay. Can't think of a more 40s kid sandlot baseball name than Buzzy Grossman. He says, so he and Herb and Shelly and Buzzy would play strikeout. I don't know if it was played everywhere, but it was played in the Midwest. Kirby Puckett told me about playing it in the Robert Taylor Holmes housing project. Say that name again. What was that name? Buzzy Grossman. Kirby Puckett?

Kirby Puckett. The man's name was Kirby Puckett? Bud Selig is making names up. Kirby Puckett? Come on, Bud. So this supposed Kirby Puckett was playing strikeout in the Robert Taylor Holmes housing project when he was raised in Chicago. Selig says, we would use chalk to draw a strike zone on the wall at school, and one of us would pitch and the other would hit. It was simple as could be, but that's always been part of the beauty of baseball, that you can play it with two kids. I guess, I don't know, one kid? I don't know how you can play strikeout with one kid.

But two kids, and he says that's part of the beauty of baseball. He also calls it a variation on baseball, so I don't know if it's still baseball. To me, I mean, I— You can play it with one kid, so you and the one kid. Yes, one other kid, yeah. So I played this game. I mean, everyone's played this game.

I didn't call it strikeout, but it was just, you know, throwing and hitting. But I wouldn't call this baseball. I would say, and maybe I'm being too literal here, but to call it baseball, I think you need bases. It's in the name. That's fair. That's a good point. I think you need to run around something and, you know, be safer out. I mean, you can tinker with the positions and, the positions and the dimensions and all of that, but I think you need something to happen after you hit it. I think you need to decide, is it a hit or an out

based on what happens after the ball is put in play? And I think bases is an essential component. No, I mean, I basically agree with that, but I don't know that you i i and look clearly what i'm describing here where you have no fielders or base running like that is stretched it all the way to the breaking point and and maybe beyond it maybe i'm wrong and maybe that's beyond it but even i mean i'm in saying that that would still be terrible baseball i'm allowing that it would just be at the very outer edge of what you could conceivably call baseball. But so I do think that there is something about the base, about having progress that you have to make, that it's not all home run or out, that you can single, you can double, you can triple. But i don't know that you have to actually run like i could see

if you had if you set up a game with your friend where you're basically playing strikeout but you know a hit to the to the garden is a triple uh anything over there is a double anything beyond here is a single and anything short of that is an out and you're doing ghost runners and you're you're like the hit is only it's representative progress there's no actual base runner sprinting for those but he is still deemed to be neither scored nor out he is safe he is at a safe midway point i think that covers the base in baseball okay all right fair. However, you're right. The word base has got me thinking. Yeah. Seems like an essential component to me. All right.

Question from Henry. With the usual caveat that I still do math on my fingers, I was helping a freshman study for his geometry exam the other day, and while we were reviewing Euclidean vectors, I found myself wondering if there will be many more hit batters with the pitching rubber moved back to 62 feet 6 inches.

In the Atlantic League, presumably, or in the majors in the future, perhaps. Henry says, With two more feet for the ball to travel, those errant pitches that deviate from their intended target will have farther to travel and will therefore deviate more widely. deviate more widely. The pitches headed inside will be farther inside, and those balls that ride in on batters will have more distance to move and might ride right into their hands or heads. Yes, there will be a little bit more

time for batters to get out of the way, but that does not seem to offset the extra distance an errant pitch could move. Do you think this is a safety issue? Another argument for moving the mound six inches at a time instead of a whopping two feet? Oh, man. He says that does not seem to offset the difference with so much confidence that argument for moving the mound six inches at a time instead of a whopping two feet? Man, he says that does not seem to offset the difference with so much confidence that you would think he has any way of putting those two things in perspective. How do we know that that's

not enough time to offset the difference? I don't know. I will say that my thinking on this issue has changed just in terms of what the effect of moving the mound back would be, because I used to think this was just silver bullet, panacea, move the mound back, hitters will have more time to track the ball and hit the ball, and that will lead to fewer strikeouts, etc. And there's still a chance that that could be true, but I am much less sure than I would. I used to think it was so obvious because pitchers are throwing the ball harder. They're bigger than they used to be. So they are literally releasing the ball closer to the plate.

So, of course, just for fairness's sake, you would move them farther back. That's only fair. I think it is sort of fair. by J.J. Cooper of Baseball America and Rob Arthur at Baseball Prospectus that kind of opened the question of what the effects on offense, at least, of moving the mound back would actually be. Because in the J.J. Cooper piece, he talks to Kyle Bode from Driveline about this, and Bode says, the mound being moved back will be way worse for hitters. Difference is not large from a velocity slash reaction time standpoint. So that's what Henry is arguing Here but the movement difference is Huge and Cooper says

The further the ball has to travel the bigger break A breaking ball has both in actual movement and just As importantly in perceived movement to The hitter so Bodie says Play catch with a big leaguer throwing Sliders at 50 feet and then play Catch at 70 feet catch At 70 feet is infinitely more terrifying

now i i have not played catch with a big leaguer at 50 feet and 70 feet so i i can't say that myself but he has so you'd think he would know and yeah rob arthur brought some math to this and alan nathan's trajectory calculator and and all of that and he sort of pointed out the same issue, that there's more movement on breaking balls, that that might really hurt hitters. And in theory, then, if there's more movement on breaking balls, now Henry is mostly talking about fastballs here. And when we talk about hit by pitches and danger, we're mostly talking about fastballs. So still, there's the movement difference there. And I think this is something that's worth thinking about. I don't know. I'm not up to speed on my Euclidean vectors right now either,

but it seems reasonable to me. And we're already at a point where people are throwing really hard. Now, once the pitch got to the plate, it would be going a little bit slower in a 62 and a half foot world than it is in a 60 and a half foot world. But that would not be a big difference in terms of speed. And so I think there is some legitimate risk here. We're already at a point where there are more hit by pitches than ever, which, you know, there are many possible reasons for that. But it seems like one of them is just speed and more breaking balls. And so I

think it's possible that this could be a risk in addition to highlighting why this might not work as well as I once thought it would. Yeah. I can't remember if I ever thought it would work. I don't know. I don't know if the reason that I'm worried about it, I don't know. I have a hard time being consistent on some of these issues, but it seems to me that if it's what this email presupposes and what Kyle describes, but also, um, also common sense, what you would probably think is that it would be really a lot harder to hit the strike zone with a pitch. And so if, if the goal of baseball is to change certain things about it, to incentivize balls put in play and to make it somewhat harder to strike batters out and you have a huge incentive to take pitches

because pitchers have a harder time throwing three strikes before they throw four balls and if the pitches that i mean which heavens if the pitches themselves are harder to hit square because the movement then you have even less incentive to swing and more incentive to try to get a walk. So there's all sorts of ways that this could be like really dramatically different. I don't know. If I had to guess, I would guess that if you had a 62 foot mound, you might add like a walk and a half per nine. I have no idea how much you would add, but you'd add something just, I mean, it's hard enough to hit the strike zone as it is. And in this world, obviously you would wilder. I mean, you'd have a harder time hitting the same target from a farther distance.

And so some of those misses and those wider misses would be inside. So you'd be more likely to hit guys, I would think. And the difference is, you know, milliseconds when you're talking about the travel time. So it seems like Henry would probably be right about that inaccuracy trumping the added time that a hitter would have to get out of the way. So it seems like a realistic concern to me. When do they start? Don't they start pretty soon? Second half, right? Yeah, it should be very soon, I think, unless those plans have changed. If they televise those games, would you be watching them? Yes. Would you be watching them, plural?

Maybe not. I would watch to see what it looked like, but I don't know if I would keep tuning in. I could see. It got a pretty good sense probably the first time. You think so? I could see wanting to watch. I mean, it's our job. I don't know if pure baseball curiosity would have me watching more than a game or two. But for what we do, I feel like I could definitely justify sitting down and watching seven to ten days straight of that. Right. down and watching seven to ten yeah days straight of that right yeah and maybe one game wouldn't be enough to tell you anything because you don't know whether the pitcher's control is just off that day

or whether he's actually struggling with the new distance and and also yeah right like you'd also would probably want to watch seven to ten games after a couple of months when they've although maybe at that point maybe maybe after a couple months it's the statistical Record would tell you a lot more of What you needed to know than Watching it yourself yeah Alright question from Healy I was wondering if now would be the best time

To give long term extensions to young Pitchers with high contact rates especially Those with high fly ball and home run Rates with the current climate of baseball It's easy to understand why teams would stay away from these types. Teams could theoretically acquire them for very little and or sign them for very little. Might it be wise for a rebuilding team to bet on the baseball being altered

to reduce home run rates over the next few years by signing young pitchers who they have analyzed to be possibly more successful in a less power-oriented environment? Well, the pitchers who are going to be more successful in a less power oriented environment, I would guess that that profile of that pitcher is one year deal. Like those are the kind of pitchers that like if they're allowing a lot of contact, if they're prone to home runs, if they're Joe Blanton, then you're probably not going to want to invest Three or four years on the off chance That baseball abruptly shifts back

To the wobbly ball era Right Yeah I mean I think it's likely That the home run rate will be lower in the future Just because it's at an all time high And you'd have to assume that if it moves In either direction it will be down Although it just keeps going up

Even though the ball seems to have changed again, it's only exacerbated that trend. But I just don't know that that would be enough to sort of buy a low on these guys because A, even when the ball changes, they're not going to be as good as the guys who miss bats. I mean, you still want guys who don't allow a lot of contact in any run environment. So it's not like it's going to change your evaluation, all else being equal, of contact guy versus non-contact guy. Non-contact guy wins in any era. So that's part of it. And also, what are you going to do with these guys in the meantime?

There's no telling really when the ball will change, when things will go back to the way they were, if ever. So are you just going to stockpile these guys in the minors? You know, are you going to draft them thinking, well, by the time they get there, three, four years, we'll be ready for them. You're not going to carry them on your major league roster until then. So I just don't know. This is similar to a question I think that we answered not too long ago about rules changes

and whether teams should plan for that. You know, for instance, if we think there's going to be an automated strike zone, then should you go out and get a bunch of good hitting catchers who can't frame, anticipating that framing won't matter anymore? And I just don't know. Teams operate on a fairly short time horizon. I mean, you might look a few years in the future, but beyond that, there's just no predicting anything. You can't even count on being there, the owner or executive at that point. So I just don't know that there's that much you

can do to plan for those conditions. So what is at this point? Okay. So right now, 2019, 1.36 home runs a game might even go up because that includes April and home runs go up after April, but let's say 1.36 home runs a game. That's a all-time high. Let's double check. Yeah. That's like wildly all-time high. All right. So 1.36 right now, 1.15 last year, 1.26 the year before, which was the all-time high, 1.16 the year before that, 1.01 the year before that, 0.86 the year before that. So Ben, what is the best bet for how many home runs a game there will be three years from now? Just like, I mean, if you had to, if you had, if you were, you know, hired by Wall Street or, you know, the CIA or whatever to like analyze the facts and predict the environment

in this region three years from now, is it more likely that whatever we see today will hold on? Is it more likely that we will regress to some previous norm as though this is some sort of statistical fluke or accident? Is it more likely to assume that we will see some sort of backlash to this or attempt to turn this trend around to kind of find something more steady in the baseball manufacturing? Or is it more likely to see this very obvious trend line up and assume that it's many complex factors all working together in a way that is likely to continue because all else being equal, a line that's going up will continue going up?

I think the likeliest thing is that it will come down, but not to, say, the all-time average something above average just because i think probably fans like home runs i don't know if they like this many home runs but i think they like they don't like low home run rates and are you answering though for 50 years from now if you had if i asked you to predict a random year 50 years from now, that would be the case? Or are you answering three years from now? I'm talking about a few years from now. Okay. I think, I mean, it's an all-time high. And so I think the likely thing is that it will come down. Now you could say strikeouts are at an all-time high and they've been at an all-time high for 13, 14 years in a row now. And I think they will continue to, except that at some point, I think

MLB will put their thumb on the scale and intervene, and then things will go down a bit, at least for a while. Obviously, the long-term, centuries-long trend in baseball is more strikeouts, more home runs. So I don't think we're going back to 2014, let's say. But I think if there is a change to the ball, I think it would be one in a downward direction just because this is so extreme and there's so much scrutiny about it. Although, as I may be talking to Dr. Meredith Wills about sometime soon, she just did a new study about the baseball's construction at The Athletic, and it seems possible that the ball has changed again this year, and it may be actually as a result of MLB trying to tighten the standards or exert more control

over the manufacturing process. If anything, it seems to have sent the home run rate even higher, which I don't know if they intended or not, but I think they wouldn't do anything to intentionally make it very low at this point just because offense would crater, at least in the short term. There are so many strikeouts. Unless you're going to make other changes, taking away the juiced or aerodynamic or non-wobbly ball would just send offense plummeting in a way that I don't think anyone would want. I think just the ball. We should just call it the ball. We call this the ball.

The previous ball is the wobbly ball era, and before that was the dead ball era. So we've got three eras of baseball now. We've got dead ball, wobbly ball, and starting 2016 is the new modern era. 1988 is now the distant past. It's at 1.36 now. I don't know. I'll say it. If I had to bet on what it would be three years from now, I'll say it'll be 1.2 or something, like between 2017 and 2018 level. Still high, but not this high. So 2015, 1.01 home runs.

And I'm just glancing. It varies a lot, but let's say that that's normal. Over the course of 75 years, 1.01, let's just pretend that's the median. Okay. Yeah. So now there's, and then it jumped in the second half of 2015 and then it jumped more in 20, well, it stayed there in 2016, jumped more in 17, weird little back some last year, but still very high and then massive this year. All right.

So we went from 1.01 to 1.36. That's 0.35 home runs per game per side. And I'm curious of those extra home runs. What do you think are, so let's, I'm going to pick a number out of it. Let's say there are a thousand extra home runs, which is not right, but say there's a thousand extra home runs of those thousand. What percentage do you think are purely the ball, purely the ball, nothing other than the ball explains then the ball is traveling farther. Okay. What percentage of that, what percentage are purely players changing the way that they play to hit more home runs because they

realize home runs are good because they've unlocked certain types of swings because there are certain coaches that are supporting this notion because it's a rational response to high strikeout pitchers all the things that would have happened regardless of what changed to the ball and then what percentage do you think are player adjustments that are themselves purely a response to the ball so that if the ball went back to the old ball, the players would themselves go back in certain ways to how they tried to hit in 2014 and 2015. I think it's 90% ball, 5% players just optimizing their performance in any era, and 5% response to the ball. So if they replaced the ball today, you would expect there to be about 1.02 home runs per game. Yeah, I suppose so. I don't think there would be many more homers than there were.

I do think that particularly young hitters now are coming up in an era where they are using mechanics that are more beneficial in this era than they would have been just a few years ago. So I do think it's a risk that you're teaching hitters to do these things and maybe conditions will change in a way that makes them less beneficial. But on the other hand, I think in some ways they're more beneficial regardless of the ball, because unless you're in a true dead ball era, I think you still want to get the ball in the air. So yes, I think offense in an era where the ball went back to what it was would be very similar to what it was at that time. All right. And forgive me if I'm asking you to repeat yourself on what you just said a minute ago, but you said that if you had to predict, you'd predict 1.2 homers per game three years or a few years from now, which is basically halfway between the ball and the no ball. And so is that because you think that

the ball will only be scaled back halfway or is that you hedging for your own natural uncertainty? Both, but probably the former mostly, I think. So you think we'll get a new ball that is more like the 2016 ball? Like they'll sort out whatever it is about this year, but stop sorting before they sort out what happened in 2015 All-Star break? Yes. Okay. Is it going to wobble?

That's what I want to know. Because I would like to have normal seams, but no wobble. Now that I know the ball wobbled, I can't possibly think that wobbling baseballs is better. I feel like you need to fix the wobble now that we know the wobble's there. Yeah, I like no wobble. It's still not clear how much the difference is actually wobble related. It's kind of hard to gauge the wobble. But yes, no wobble just seems like sounder construction to me. I mean, they were basically playing baseball with water balloons for 150 years. It's embarrassing now that we think about it. All right. Last question. This is from Corey.

He says, a recent episode had a discussion about teams being paranoid about trading with the Astros because if the Astros want a player, it probably means they think they can unlock something in him, so his original team should try to do that instead. What if the Astros started asking every team about players who were obviously terrible? Would teams driven by paranoia become convinced that Wilmer Defoe has 40 home run power or Sam Caviglio could be a shutdown closer? Would it be more effective if they asked about prospects they knew the teams wouldn't trade Wilmer Defoe has 40 home run power or Sam Caviglio could be a shutdown closer. Would it be more effective if they asked about prospects they knew the teams wouldn't trade and then threw in some scrub just to mess with the other team's evaluations? Has any team ever tried something like this and would teams ever find out what was happening? Well, look, in some sense, we kind of already know like some attributes that the Astros

seem to target and that they seem to be able to work with. And since we're all, you know, we can all look at things and baseball teams are all learning from each other and stealing from each other. Probably every team is able to, to some degree, look through their own players and go through that process already. So if the Astros are calling you up and they mentioned a player and you've already not fixed him, the odds are you're probably not going to fix him. You might not want to trade with the Astros because you might look bad if they're going to turn him into Charlie Morton or Ryan Presley or Garrett Cole and make you look really silly. You might want to just opt not to take that call. But more likely, if they call and they ask you for

Wilmer Defoe, you should say, oh, good. Somebody wants our Wilmer Defoe. They are offering what is current market value. But to them, to the Astros, he's clearly worth much more because they're going to turn him into three times that ballplayer. And so then you go through a normal negotiation where you're trying to find the number between what the Astros know that you are willing to let go of Wilmer Defoe for, and you know that the Astros are willing to go to in order to get and unlock Wilmer Defoe, and you get slightly more return. Yeah. And also, what does it cost you? I mean, if you think that Wilmer Defoe might actually be capable of great things, and that's because the Astros expressed interest in him, then what are you going to do? You're going to maybe assign an

analyst to say, hey, take a look at this Wilmer Defoe. What are we missing with this guy? Or maybe a coach will take a deeper look at him. But so what, I guess? Is there an opportunity cost there where you're spending all this time investigating Wilmer Defoe's non-existent potential and you're not applying that time to someone else you actually could improve? Maybe. But teams have such big front offices and minor league staffs these days that I don't know that you're actually costing them anything of value there. So you might kind of confuse them, I guess. Maybe you make them a little less confident in their own models and evaluations. If you think, hey, there's something about Wilmer Defoe that we're missing,

the astros see it, and you bang your head against the wall because you can't find it because it doesn't exist, then do you have less confidence in your own evaluations? Does that make you make some other unforced error because you don't trust your own stats? I don't know. It's kind of a hypothetical where I don't exactly know what the cost of that would be. So I don't know. It's kind of a hypothetical where I don't exactly know what the cost of that would be. So I don't think this would be a great strategy. I mean, the question of whether a team that gets a reputation for being able to fix players or enhance players, whether they then have a harder time trading for players, that is an interesting one to me. I don't know how that manifests itself obviously the

esters have had success with rehabilitating guys over a period of years so it wasn't like the first one or two made it impossible for them to keep doing it but at this time they have that reputation it's common knowledge so if they come calling in the next month for some pitcher at the deadline then you know everyone kind of knows. I mean, if they read the MVP machine, they might have a sense of what the Astros value and what they're able to fix. And so, as you said, if you have that player, then you can look and make those changes yourself, or at least know that you should make them, but can't for whatever reason. He won't listen to you. You don't have the people in place to communicate that to him. And so you might trade him anyway, just because you can get more for him from the

Astros. But again, you're not going to just give him away because you know what he's worth to that team. So I bet a lot of them are saving it for the offseason, Ben. So they probably haven't quite read it yet. It's a busy time of year for baseball front offices. So anyway, yeah, I didn't answer this question because I wanted to first answer the question of whether teams should not be trading with the Astros in the first place, that subterfuge would be needed. And I believe that the answer to that is no. Uh-huh.

Okay. All right. So I think we can end there. Okay. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks for listening. Congrats to Shohei Otani

and to all of us who appreciate Shohei Otani. He threw his first bullpen session after surgery, threw 70 pitches on flat ground in the outfield, then he moved to the pen, threw about 45 pitches in the bullpen session, only fastballs, and only at 50% effort, which as we know from the study cited last week means that statistically speaking, he probably threw with about 87% of the usual elbow torque and 78% of his max velocity. But hey, he is on the comeback trail and the two-way player comeback trail, so it's nice to see him throwing.

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And I guess it's not a failure we could help. We'll both go on to get lonely with someone else.