Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1405: The Rookie Mistake

Episode Date: July 17, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Meg’s visit to Cleveland, the Giants’ perplexing situation heading into the trade deadline, Edwin Jackson’s next destination, and the approaching addition of ads to MLB jerseys. Then they answer listener emails about whether Mike Trout’s popularity among stat-savvy fans stems from his lack of playoff appearances, the “strikeout […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1405 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought It's all I'm saying missed you pal yeah time to talk how was your all-star experience well my actual all-star experience took place on my couch at home so not so dissimilar from past all-star experiences but the futures game was great fun i survived both getting to and returning from cleveland yep which is not an easy place to get to from Seattle from Seattle anyway although several of our more westerly uh compatriots had uh similarly tricky travel uh but it was it was nice I had never been to Cleveland's good little Midwest city did you leave before the derby too yeah yeah yeah I left before the derby but my flight had live ESPN So I actually got to watch most of the Derby despite not being there. But watching the Derby, you know, this was like the second year in a row where I was like, the Derby is pretty great.

Maybe I want to like be at the Derby right now. Yeah, right. So that was a fun surprise feeling. But yeah, Cleveland's cool. I think we should be nicer to Midwestern cities. I think we're kind of snobby about them on the coast. Like what? People

talk about them like they're not sophisticated as if there's not Panera in Seattle or something. I don't get it. Every city is the same now. They're all the same. We have the same restaurants everywhere. I've had that argument with Sam on this podcast, I think, years ago, where he was arguing that you couldn't get good food of a certain type in certain cities. And I was saying, it's 2019 or 2016 or whatever it was at the time.

You can get good food everywhere for the most part. But I don't know. We subsequently heard from lots of people. People had opinions about that as they will about cuisine. And I do understand that there are cities where maybe you can't get every type of ethnic cuisine and maybe certain cities have big immigrant communities from certain places in the world. And so it's easier to get good food of that kind. But I don't know, in general, I think that regionalism is a little bit overblown and you can eat well everywhere. Yes, I think you can eat well. I don't think you can eat

everything well everywhere. But I think and I'm sure that there is a size of city, you know, under which it is hard to get something maybe fancy, but we should all just enjoy a good diner and be fine with it, I think. That's my philosophy. Yeah. Yeah. You can get good diner everywhere because diners are mostly the same and it's wonderful wherever you go.

Yeah. I agree. So I guess we should talk about baseball. We're mostly going to do emails here. I don't want to steal your thunder there. I just talked to Bauman on the Ringer MLB show about the Giants, and you were just chatting in your chat about the Giants. I think they're kind of the team everyone's like, what's going on with that team right now?

Because they're suddenly winning a lot and have been really good for six weeks or so. And that throws a wrench into the whole trade deadline picture because they were like the one team that you could count on to trade and also have appealing players to trade and now they're probably still a team that should trade but they're like only three games out of a playoff spot as we speak and sort of hard for a decision maker to say well i'm gonna take the long view and i know this team probably isn't great, so I'm going to equip it for the future by trading off pieces now, even though I am technically within striking distance and depending on how their next couple of

weeks go, that's the sort of thing. I guess fans are smart and they kind of know the lay of the land and they're not totally delusional. I guess they're kind of delusional sometimes, but I think they know the situation of the land and they're not totally delusional. I guess they're kind of delusional sometimes, but I think they know the situation the Giants are in and that the Giants could afford to restock their system and get young guys and trade some of these impending free agents. But on the other hand, if they keep winning for another week or two and they are that close to a playoff spot, some percentage of your fan base will probably be annoyed that you didn't go for it. Yeah, I think that that is true. I'm going to say a couple of

things about a couple of different states of fandom, and I'm going to offend a lot of people who I just maybe made like me by talking about how we should be nice to people who don't live in the places we live. I think that they are not actually a very good team, is my opinion of the San Francisco Giants. They have been winning a lot, as you said, but I do not think that they're actually a good team. And Eric and Kylie kind of have been doing some updates to our prospect rankings and also our farm system rankings, just generally ahead of the deadline. And the Giants did improve in the last little bit, both through the draft and just in the estimation of some of the guys that they have.

But they went from having the 27th farm system in baseball to the 22nd farm system in baseball, at least by Eric and Kylie's estimation. And they're pretty good at this. So I think that they will likely take the long view. If you're a Giants fan, I, I will not say, what could you possibly complain about? Because my life is pretty great and I complain about all sorts of stuff. So I should definitely not cast stones because I live in a glass house. Your baseball life has not been as great.

That's true. And their baseball life has been terrific. So wouldn't you rather, wouldn't you rather sit there and say, you know, we had some, we have a couple of prospects who are exciting, who we would like some more, uh, because our system is not very good. And we have all of the guys who folks want to trade for. Uh, so, uh, so let's go get them. I imagine that the conversation within the Giants front office, and I say this without any inside information would probably go something like this, which is that if you were to put the shoe on the other foot and say, hey, we're very close to a playoff spot and we'd like to go on a little run here, we have a bunch of holes. What

can we trade from our farm system to go get some replacement pieces that would be better? Then the answer becomes very quickly, not a lot. And so I think that that probably will end up sort of determining their strategy in a way that'll be pretty sensical. But Giants fans, it'll be okay because you've won a bunch of World Series very recently. You live in a beautiful place and I'm sure that your team will be much better in terms of its setup for the future after the deadline than it is right now. So that seems pretty great. Yeah. it's sort of seductive, their success recently, because it's not just that they've been winning, but they've also been playing well.

Yeah, they have been. They've been outscoring everyone for six weeks or so. And so that's a little more real. But you look at the players who are driving this and how bad they were for the first two months. And granted, they've made some personnel changes, but just look at the roster and it doesn't look great and i just the worst thing that you could do probably is to like win a few

games for the next couple weeks and be close enough that they're worried about backlash and they don't end up trading the bullpen parts that they have they've got a really good bullpen this year and a lot of those players are on expiring or soon-to-expire contracts, and you could get quite a haul for them, plus Bumgarner, plus others, and that could really kickstart your rebuild, which is probably overdue at this point. And you don't change your whole regime and hire Farhan Zaidi to do nothing and to keep all the guys that the previous regime put in place.

You kind of have him because you figure he's going to get you to your next really good team. And thus far, he hasn't been very active in that area. And he's probably been banking on this month being the time that is going to be really pivotal for this franchise. So I will be very curious to see, because if they, I don't know, if they go 10 and three or something in the next couple of weeks and suddenly they're like in a wildcard spot, then it becomes very difficult just from a PR perspective to actually run up the white flag. Even if in the long run, you look at the numbers and you look at the true talent and you think this is going to be beneficial. There are a certain number of fans who are just going to look at the standings and say,

why are we not adding? Why are we subtracting? So that's something you sort of have to steel yourself against as a front office person. Yeah. And I, you know, I get that. I'm looking at our very nice fancy new roster resource dev charts at Fangraphs. I'm looking at the Giants roster resource dev chart now at Fangraphs.com. And there's a lot of older guys on this team.

This is laid out in such a nice way. So you're like, am I getting excited about a team where one of the better hitters they have is 2019 Pablo Sandoval, who, granted, hitting better than I expected Pablo Sandoval to hit in 2018, but still Pablo Sandoval, who granted hitting better than I expected Pablo Sandoval to hit in 2018, but still Pablo Sandoval. And then you scroll down the page and you think about the rankings of their prospects and their highest ranked prospect is Joey Bart at 21. Joey Bart's an exciting prospect. Joey Bart's exciting, but that's the best he got on an overall basis. And then you have to go down to like 76 to get something close in the top 100.

So I think that it's the sort of thing where it has been overdue and they've sort of bought some playoff appearances on borrowed time in a way. Maybe should have started thinking about rebuilding earlier. And so, you know, I think that it'll be painful for a minute. And when it is that those fans should just go back and watch uh you know world series tape very recent world series tape the hair hasn't changed very much right most of the hair is the same yeah brandon crawford's hair

is still greasy i'm not saying that you have to make this like very cold clinical decision and say like we're in contention for a playoff spot right now. But if we give up on this playoff spot, then we could get ourselves like two expected playoff berths in five years or something. Like if you've got a shot right now, then you should probably take that shot and maybe don't do something That's going to really impair you In the future but Don't give up if there's a Realistic shot but the Giants Just don't seem that good That there is a realistic shot I think their playoff

Odds are like 2% right now At Fangraphs and that's all wildcard Odds and they're like 5 wildcard teams ahead of them And even though they're not great it's still a lot of teams to leapfrog so yeah i think you have to be somewhat philosophical about it and there are times when a team will seem to start the rebuild too soon but usually it's too late i guess like the too soon that i can think of, like when the Braves after 2014, when they decided to pull the plug and start over, they were still a pretty good team.

They finished poorly, but they were really good in 2013. They still had a lot of talent and it seemed like they just decided, well, we're going to lose Hayward. And so we'll get rid of Hayward and we'll trade all these other guys. And granted, the Braves are good again. So it kind of worked, but I don't know, was there more in that roster that they could have squeezed out of it before they decided to start over? But usually it's the opposite. Usually it's, let's give it one more run with these guys.

And then suddenly they're not worth that much. And when you do get around to trading them, you don't get very much back or they leave via free agency. And that's sort of the boat that the giants are in right now, or it would be if they don't do anything. So one would have to think that they probably still will. Well, and I don't think that the only two modes that a team can operate in are, you know, full teardown sort of rebuild and then being the Dodgers, right? It's not like the only option. Those are the only options available to you. And I do think that there are teams that successfully sort of understand what their window is and maybe push in a little bit early because they're

overachieving or, or what have you. But I think that the giants don't fall into that camp. And if you're, if you're the giants and what you want to do is say, look, we're not interested in a hard rebuild. We want to continue to contend for a long time. That's a strategy decision that you make in the off season when you could have, you know, been someone who was been a team that was like going to sign free agents before February, for instance, right? Like you had, they had that option available to them and they decided not to really do that. So I think that you can operate in a mode that is not just World Series or bust, but you probably don't make that decision on July 16th with a roster that looks like this. Yeah, right. Well, contenders can pick up Edwin Jackson if they want Edwin Jackson, because he was designated for assignment

By the Blue Jays And I wonder whether this is finally Going to be the end of the line for Jackson Because he did not pitch well With the Blue Jays He did not make a strong argument In favor of continued employment At the major league level

He pitched in 8 games, 5 starts 28 in the third innings 11.12 ERA, just barely a sub-9 FIP. Things did not go well for Jackson. So on one hand, I'm kind of happy that there's a chance that he could catch on with another team and add a 15th notch to his belt. a 15th notch to his belt. I guess, I mean, even if he were to be picked up by another team, it's basically like even odds at this point that it would even be a new team because he's played for almost half of them. But I just don't know. I mean, I'm sure he could get a minor league deal somewhere if he wanted to, but might be tough at 35 and coming off of that performance to

add another team to his record. Well, and the bad news for him is that several of the teams that would make sense from adding an additional team to the list, the bad ones are teams he has already played for in some capacity, right? So going to Miami doesn't do anything for him. Being an Oriole, we shouldn't subject Edwin Jackson to that again. That just feels mean. Detroit is off the table. Obviously, he just got let go by Toronto. The White Sox are off the table.

And then you have good teams, right? So the Rays are not going to be interested in him. And he's already played for them. Let's see. He could go to the Reds, but I don't think the Reds are going to concede quite like that because they should be much better than their record suggests. So they might end up being like legitimate buyers. Yeah, they should have had good pitching.

Yeah, right. Yeah. They have no need there. Don't go to Colorado, Edwin. That seems like a very bad idea. You've already been a Mariner, right? No. Oh, he should be a Mariner.

We've solved that problem yeah he'd fit really well he's yeah it's almost incomprehensible that he hasn't been a mariner did he do minor league time with them or does he just feel like he was a mariner he feels like he should have been a mariner at some point oh lordy um yeah no i guess no, I guess he never did. So that's the answer. We got to check that box off. Yeah. That's what it is.

We got to call up Jerry. I got an idea for you, sir. Do you have any thoughts on uniform advertising patches on jerseys, which seems to be coming in the next few years? I mean, I don't love it. I don't know that fighting it is going to do much good. For the international series that they've done this year, they've had decals on the batting helmets,

and I find it terrible and quite distracting. I just, there are very rarely, there are so few shots when you're watching a game on television there are so few moments where the camera is not already on an ad and so i just don't think it's necessary but i'm basically asking people to make less money so that seems like you know my aesthetic preference is probably not going to rule the day here, but I wish it would. And I guess I'm resigned to it just because as you said, you're seeing ads everywhere all the

time. So what's one more way to see an ad is also another way to think about it. I guess it could be like the breaking point, like this is the one thing that doesn't have ads. And so it's even worse that this will have ads or you could just think well there are ads everywhere already so why even draw a distinction why make a fuss about one more place to have our purchasing power solicited but see i do think that it's i mean i don't think that i'm actually like arguing against you here because i don't think you disagree i think it is importantly different in this respect which is that the uniform is supposed to signal, it's representative of something of what you're supposed to be proud, right? It is already an ad.

It is an ad for the team. But it's the sort of ad that we have come to grow comfortable with because it's more akin to a flag than a billboard, right? Like, you know, when the Mariners play out of town, their jersey says Seattle on it, right? They're representing a thing. That feels very different than, like, representing Coca-Cola. I don't have any, you know, particular allegiance to Coca-Cola,

but I do feel a sense of place and pride in seattle and that's not gonna be true for everything but i i do think that it's sort of importantly different but i don't think that that will end up being persuasive either so i'm bummed about it i don't know i think there are probably like soccer kits have ads on them but they look bad. They look bad. I'm so used to seeing them, you know, like the Vodafone ads or whatever that I almost don't even notice. It's almost like it's part of the uniform to me because I don't watch that much. But it's also that I guess, A, I'm not really that much of a uniform purist or stickler. I think I care a little less about uniform appearance than

a lot of baseball fans do. And also, it's just that I accept the inevitability of this happening. I mean, it's already happened in basketball. It's just going to happen. I guess the Players Association, in theory, could reject this. And I think the important thing, obviously, is that if this does happen, that everyone gets to share in that profits. If the players are going to be walking billboards, then they should make sure that they're getting a cut of that revenue. And I'm sure that they will. So unless they really put their feet down and say, we don't want to do this, I would assume that it's almost certainly going to happen in the next few years. And so

I don't want to do this. I would assume that it's almost certainly going to happen in the next few years. And so I'm not going to invest much emotional energy in opposing it because I know that I'll just be frustrated in the end anyway. So that's parts here. I grew up with, you know, everything that possibly happens in the game is sponsored by someone like this number out in the game is sponsored by this advertiser that has some very tenuous connection to that number. Or, you know, it's just like on the Chiron or it's on the outfield walls or it's on the scoreboard or whatever it's everywhere. So I don't care that much, but I think that is a meaningful distinction that you make, that these are already ads and ads that have some civic pride attached to them because

it's representing a city to a certain extent. Well, and I think that it'll be interesting. It's interesting that you referenced the Yankees in particular because, you know, having lived in that media market, I know what you mean. It's not as if they are immune from this, but how do the Yankees talk about having a Chrysler ad on pinstripes? How are they going to talk about it? square that financial decision with the, I think it is appropriate to call it fussiness with which, or reverence, that's probably a nicer way of talking about it than fussy. The reverence that they have for the pinstripes, right? I think that if they're going to put a Chrysler out on a Yankee uniform, then guys get to

have beards. I think that's a fair trade. Yeah. Yeah. Because what are we doing? it's not something that fans should like celebrate like we're not going to get anything out of this i mean the owners will get something the players should get something we're not going to get like our ticket prices lowered or something because there are ads on the jerseys it just means that we're going to see more ads so i wouldn't expect anyone to be happy about this it's just i guess resigned because this is the world we live in and

we're already used to ads everywhere and there won't be an ad block for baseball broadcasts i guess where you can just in real time filter out all the ads that you see on jerseys so you'll actually have to see these things and then in time you won't even notice them which i guess is insidious in a in a way because you're just not even noticing that you are being pitched on some product and i i think a lot of us think that if we're not actively paying attention to an ad we're not being influenced by it but i'm sure that's not true i'm sure the whole principle of advertising is that subconsciously we are being influenced. Otherwise, advertising wouldn't work very well. So yeah, I think it's not something that fans will be happy about and

they shouldn't be happy about it, but it's also something that I doubt we can avoid at this point. And in the grand scheme of things, it's still baseball, so it won't ruin anything for me. It's like this podcast doesn't have ads. And I think it's a nice thing that we don't have ads and that our listeners support us on Patreon so that we don't have to. But virtually every other podcast I listen to does have ads. And I still like a lot of those podcasts. If this podcast had ads, I hope people would still enjoy it. Don't worry, we aren't planning to add ads, but you know what I'm saying. Yeah. And i guess it's sort of remarkable that it hasn't happened already but yeah that's true too i just i don't know like i like those like it's gonna look so

weird on the throwbacks too which are the best uniforms yeah maybe we can can we exempt throwbacks because they didn't have ads when they were actually worn? Right. Right. Yeah. I don't, you know, if you put a Roman ad on a throwback Diamondbacks jersey, I'm going to riot. Right. All right. Well, that'll be coming. I'm sure we'll have many more opportunities to talk about that. So we should answer some emails. I will start with one from Tim who says, how much of Mike Trout's popularity among hardcore baseball fans is that he is not always on the biggest stage. Don't the people who are constantly on the biggest stage eventually find themselves fairly or not hated by the opposition.

If Meg as a Mariners fan constantly had to see Mike Trout making the playoffs over her team, wouldn't that diminish her enjoyment of his accomplishments? No. The answer is no. I mean, I guess it might diminish the enjoyment that 2013 Meg had of Mike Trout, but first of all 2019 meg is like the mariners who are the mariners so that's part of it but i mean perhaps i i think that it is difficult for any person to sort of maintain sustained favor in in public although people who are sort of

flavor in in public although people who are sort of even keeled and boring as personalities and i think i continue to think that mike trout is secretly very interesting like i think that he is probably a really good pal right he's like a good friend he seems to just like have specific interests that he is very passionate about so i think that baseball nerds can relate to that right it's like yes you know he probably goes to parties and talks about the weather and his friends are like oh my god can we be done with the weather yeah the way that we talk about mike trout's war at parties right the way we talk about mike trout is the way my chat talks about the weather and so i don't know i think that the reason that we like him so much is because he's just so amazing. But if he revealed himself to be, say, a controversial personality, whether he was on a bigger platform or not, I think that that would certainly complicate the... I have the worst Mike Trout with Trevor Bauer's personality. That would be the worst thing to happen in baseball.

That would be the worst thing for baseball ever. That would be devastating. I think baseball would just be over. Yeah. I guess there are ways in which Mike Trout could be more entertaining, but he's so wholesome. Yeah. You really can respect him. And the whole thing about whether athletes should be role models, maybe that is unfair to a certain extent.

But he really is one, I think, at least based on what we know about him thus far. There's just no knock against Mike Trout as a player or a person. I think that's really nice. And the fact that he does not send offensive tweets, that he just sends like emoji of airplanes or whatever and weird spaces before his exclamation marks. That's great. And it's endearing. And it's a little bit vanilla at times. But he has made vanilla into almost like a brand at this point. And I think that's nice. Yeah, I think that there are a lot of ways

to have an endearing personality and there are certainly personalities in baseball that are more uh sort of effervescent that are i think similarly endearing but i think this is a type of endearing personality the sort of like earnest guy who like the fact that he's not a monster i don't mean that in a in any particular way apart from just being like arrogant is spectacular like the fact that he is not just the worst i mean i've heard he is not a good interview because he's not particularly loquacious but like in terms of he doesn't come off as just like a pompous jackass if anyone is entitled to be kind of a jerk about his own performance, it would be Mike Trout. But he's just like steady Eddie.

So I don't think, I don't know. I don't want to test this theory too, too much, but I don't know that he's ruinable. Right. Yeah. And I guess maybe there's a way in which he could get overexposed if we were seeing him every single offseason, but I don't really think so. Like if he were Derek Jeter or something, I guess Derek Jeter is an example of a great player who probably was more hated or people were just sort of sick of Derek Jeter because he was always in the playoffs and there was this mythos about Derek Jeter. But I think that was partly because Derek Jeter became overrated. I

mean, he was legitimately a Hall of Fame player, but because he was pumped up so much because he was discussed as this legendary figure, I think that made people more likely to point out his flaws and say, well, yeah, he's good, but he's actually a really bad fielder and he's costing his team. And so I think that can't really happen to Mike Trout, at least now, because he's amazing and he's the best. And you can't really overrate him because he's the best there's ever been to this point in his career. So I don't think so. I think if we saw him on the national stage, we would be happy that he were getting that exposure. the national stage, we would be happy that he were getting that exposure. Now, maybe we feel a little more eager to promote him ourselves because we feel like he is not getting that exposure. So if he were just the household name, if he were on the tip of everyone's tongue,

if we were seeing him every October shining in these big moments and we didn't have to convince anyone that Mike Trout is as great as he is, then yeah, maybe we wouldn't talk about him quite so much because it would just be common knowledge. We would be preaching to the choir. Whereas I think there's maybe less so now than there used to be, but a little less awareness of Mike Trout's incredible play than there should be just because he doesn't get the hype that the best player ever should get I think so that's part of it I think we're trying to balance the scales a little bit by talking about him as much as we do and we just really enjoy marveling at the stats and we've talked on the show before about how he and Winsor Berber placement have almost this symbiotic

relationship where they kind of got big at the same time and trout enables us to appreciate what war can do for us and war enables us to appreciate what mike trout can do for his teams and so that has been a very happy marriage between those two and has enabled us to illustrate his greatness in a way that would be difficult otherwise because his traditional stats are incredible too, but they don't make the case quite as convincingly as war does, for instance. Yeah, they're not as,

it doesn't grab you in quite the same way. Although I think you're right that, you know, even traditionalists looking at mike trout's batting line would say like oh this is great like he's hitting above 300 he's like slugging 666 right like this is a phenomenal player i don't think that there's anything there that would be difficult but i think that because he is so good at everything that having a comprehensive stat that articulates value in that way is particularly compelling when you're trying to talk about why he is so good. So, oh my God. He's leading baseball in WRC Plus again.

Yep. And I think part of it maybe also is that when he was introduced to us, it was kind of an us versus them thing that he became the avatar of the sabermetric camp at a time when there still was sort of a wall between those worlds. I don't think there is so much in 2019, but in 2012, there still was. And there was that natural foil for Trout in Miguel Cabrera, who was also great, but was not as well-rounded a player as Trout. And so advanced stats illuminated how great Mike Trout was in a way that the traditional stats didn't. And Cabrera was winning the Triple Crown, and he was winning those MVP awards. And at that time, we were still kind of on the outside saying, no, he's actually better. He's the most valuable. And so I think maybe we came to identify with him in a way that we wouldn't have because we were making an argument about how great he was. So that's probably part of it. And it's probably

past time to think about things that way. although he has missed out on subsequent awards that he probably deserved to win because, you know, didn't make the playoffs, etc. I guess that could conceivably happen again this year, although, I don't know, he's so far out in front of any American League player at this point that even if the Angels miss the playoffs again, it's hard to imagine anyone else winning that award. But I think that's part of it, is that he was part of that us versus them mentality before that broke down completely. Well, and that you could have a guy who, you know, sort of famously just by where he was from and literally what the weather was doing that year was sort of you know clearly was under drafted relative to what we would come to expect of him but also maybe even relative to what would have happened if it had just been a different weather year in the northeast but has not coupled that with like he you know he is not tom brady still talking about what went on in his draft year,

right? Like Mike Trout doesn't talk about that stuff. He's just like, well, I'm the best player in baseball. It doesn't matter. So it is a very, it is a story that I think dovetails nicely with,

like you said, the way that sort of sabermetrically inclined writers and fans thought about baseball, but it hasn't seemed to come with a chip on his shoulder about, you know, where he was taking granted, like the relative positions for those guys are different. So before anyone gets mad, I know where Tom Brady was drafted, but you know, it just, he's just like, I'm just going to play baseball and be amazing at it. It's great. Here I am. Let's talk about the weather. Yeah. Yeah. Did you see the promo that MLB released earlier this

month? It's like mike trout i'm exactly who i've always been at least that's the title on youtube i don't think i've seen that one it's like a one minute long thing where he's just kind of addressing his reputation and saying like i'm the same guy i've always been and i still call my parents before every game and i still make time for the things that I think are important and it shows him like signing autographs and he's basically like saying I'm humble and down to earth and I appreciate that MLB is trying to promote Mike Trout because he's a good face for the game and people complain all the time about MLB not doing a good job of that although I think that's

largely unfair but there's a point in this ad where he says like some say i'm the best ever to play the game and it's just it's weird to hear him say that about himself like even though he's not saying i am he's saying some say which is certainly the case i just said it like two minutes ago right but it's weird to hear him even acknowledge that because i'm i'm used to him not promoting himself at all or not like claiming that he is the best or anything i've never heard him say anything to the effect like i have no idea if he has any awareness of the fact that he has like the most war ever through age 27 or whatever like I've never heard him acknowledge that or make mention of it.

So it's clearly this is just like a script that someone said, hey, read this. And he read it. But it's almost strange to hear him even say that some are saying that because I'm so accustomed to him not saying that sort of thing about himself. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that I like that. They should just have everyone else in baseball talking about mike trout yeah to have a promo of him like basically saying i'm

mr like put my head down and work and i'm not trying to draw attention to myself like i think that is a good image to have yeah if it sounds boring but like when you then do a promo that's like saying that you're that guy it almost almost defeats the purpose of being that guy. If you're the guy who's going to brag about being the guy who's not drawing attention to himself, then you are drawing attention to yourself. Even though, obviously, MLB asked him to do this, but still, it's kind of weird. Thorny. Yeah. All right. Question from Oliver. this but still it's kind of weird thorny yeah all right question from oliver i'm currently sitting

at an akron rubber ducks game in the rain and something made my mind trail off for each game the home team akron labels one of the away players as the strikeout player of the game they announced this over the loudspeakers before each of the hitters at bats do you think this would be more of a hindrance and distraction or more of a motivation for the hitter and or pitcher in this particular at bat the hitter proceeded to hit the second pitch on a line through to the left field for a single and this is something that sam and i saw and heard a lot during our summer in the pacific association because just about every team did it there where you would have like a designated strikeout guy in the opposing team's lineup and if that guy struck out in that game then there

would be like a discount on hot dogs or something in that game and it would be announced as the guy walked up to the plate and then everyone would be watching to see if the guy actually struck out so that they could get their discount. I personally, I would be worried about, I think it probably, first of all, I think it probably does not matter at all, even a little bit, would be my suspicion. But I guess it might be motivating for the pitcher. I don't think it would make much difference to the hitter. I think that this is a really good time, though, for me to tell a totally unrelated story about watching the Atlantic League All-Star Game. Oh, yeah.

Sorry, I watched the Atlantic League All-Star Game because I cannot help myself. And I swear it's vaguely related they had they had a a troop of guest mascots uh which is a a real troop uh and i was made aware of this by a friend so now i have to find the name of it because it is funny in a way that uh i should i should actually uh say something about the zooper stars and they they take animals and they take athletes and they mash them up and at this one was nolan rhino and the announcers said and they did not show it because you know you've you are familiar with indie ball not a lot of camera angles available when those games are broadcast at all.

So they could not show the dugout. But they said that Nolan Rhino was pretending to urinate on the crowd from the top of one of the dugouts. And they seemed very amused by this. And so I can only imagine what Nolan rhino was doing that successfully mimed this activity and so anyway that's not related at all to what you are saying except to say that they have some real weird and sometimes mean uh promos and sundry in indie ball and uh i was amused by that yeah no that's true and i don't i mean I've never seen like a hitter give any indication that he recognized that he was the strikeout player of the game. I can't imagine they know.

Yeah. I mean, in some of those parks, you can't help but hear it unless you're like so in the zone that you don't know anything that's going on around you. But I would guess that at that level, you're used to it. You just don't care. It's basically like heckling. It's being heckled by the opposing team's PA person, not a fan. But that's the same sort of thing. So, I mean, if it were me and I were the strikeout player of the game, it'd probably affect me, I would think.

I don't know. There are ways in which I am not that sensitive to the opinions of the public and there are ways in which I am. Like if I'm going to the store and I'm wearing pajamas or something, I'll just wear pajamas to the store. And my wife will be like, don't you want to maybe put on some real clothes? And I'll be like, no, I'm okay. And that may be because she doesn't want to be seen with me more so than concerned for me personally. But that kind of thing I'll do. But on the other hand, like I was just in an elevator just before we started recording and there were a couple other people in the elevator and I was going to the eighth floor and the rows were kind of confusing and I was like looking for eight and I couldn't find it. And I was feeling the eyes of the other people in the elevator, looking at me, wondering when I was going to press the button. And finally I just like stabbed at a button. Cause I was like, oh man, I got to press something.

All these people are waiting for me to press a button. It turned out to be eight. So it was okay. I went to the floor. I wanted to, but the point is like that got to me the most low stakes, low pressure kind of situation that I could think of. And I was thinking of that. So if I were a baseball player, yeah, I'd probably be aware of that. And maybe it would be in the back of my head. But I'm not a baseball player. And that is one of the reasons why I'm not because that sort of thing probably would weigh on me. So I'd have to imagine that if this were, I mean, maybe at that level, you have some guys who don't have the mental makeup to ignore that sort of thing. Whereas by the time you get to the big leagues, you probably do. But I can't imagine that if we could do a study of sorts, if we had this in a database, who was the strikeout hitter in every game, and we looked to see if there was any effects for more strikeouts in games where the guy was the strikeout hitter, every game and we looked to see if there was any effect for more strikeouts in games where the guy was the strikeout hitter i highly doubt we would find anything i think that i would perhaps

be predisposed to to over swinging because i would be like hey screw you i'm gonna hit a home run and then i'd be like when i struck out on three pitches so i think that that is uh i think that that's definitely a possibility i'm not saying that i would not be weak- pitches so i think that that is uh i think that that's definitely a possibility i'm not saying that i would not be weak-willed i'm saying that baseball players are weak-willed i would almost certainly crumble under the pressure but then again if i were facing major league velocity or even indie ball velocity i'd crumple under the pressure then too i don't know that a promotion would have much to do with it no yeah i would be the strikeout player of the game but just because i would already be striking out every time so

the undeclared strikeout player of the game yeah related question from charles he says i was just thinking about the way we look at clutch and momentum that anyone who can make it to the majors is probably relatively even keeled at the plate or on the mound. But what about at lower levels? If one of the main arguments against paying attention to it is that big leaguers are closer to robots than we are, does it make sense to consider clutchness at lower levels? How much should college recruiters take this into account? Or in drafting a rec softball team, should clutch concerns still just be a tiebreaker

or should it weigh much more into the decision making oh geez i think that i don't think that this is like a great man do i believe this to be true do i believe that what i'm about to say is true i i don't think that it's much different i think that there is uh that human beings have different sort of either innate or learned abilities to handle disappointment in a way that is not personally destructive, which is different than clutchness, but I think related to that. version of this and this is definitely a thing that gets thought about both you know when guys are still being scouted as amateurs and then as they're progressing like sort of your ability to deal with the wear and tear and and mental difficulty of the game but i don't think clutch i don't think that that's a i don't think that that's a real thing that would matter much differently at a lower level. I don't think it would.

I don't think it would. I'm just going to keep saying that over and over again. You talk for a little while and I'm going to try to think about what I actually mean when I say that. I mean, there's got to be more variation in players' mental skills at that level, I would think. Because we know there's more variation in physical skills, and we know that if you watch an A-ball game, there might be a game where there's a Hall of Famer, a future Hall of Famer in there,

and there's a guy who'll never get out of A-ball. So there's more difference there than there would be in a big league game, because if you're in a big league game, then everyone's gotten to the big league. So you've had to survive certain trials to reach that point so i would think that would also apply i mean i guess it's possible that like mental skills might be maybe you'd be filtered out sooner i don't know whether like if the pressure gets to you in a way that is really debilitating, maybe that shows up in

little league. Maybe it shows up in high school or college. I don't know. Maybe you don't even get to the point where you're a pro ball player and that gets to you. But I would think, I mean, there must be some players at that level who are more susceptible to performing differently in pressure situations in a way that is harmful to them than once you get to the majors. I think that that is likely true, but I guess I just would not necessarily view that as innate or stagnant. So I don't know that I would over, I think it would be a data point that would be interesting, but I don't know that it would be one where i would necessarily say this is this necessarily means anything predictive about how this person is going to be able to grow and adapt

because you have to you have to undergo the difficulty before you know how you're going to respond to it the place where it starts to matter is like how do you respond to it, the place where it starts to matter is like, how do you respond to it the eighth time, right? Like once you've built up some sort of understanding of not only like how you experience that in game, but then the emotional and sort of mental taxing that comes with it. I just don't think that that would be something that's stagnant. I mean, you, you adapt to that stuff and learn how to cope in a way that is productive. That's just a big part of growing up as a person. So I think that's what I mean when I say I don't think it would matter. Not that it doesn't matter in the moment or that it can't end up being a problem because there is some filtering process that goes on, you know,

and that happens on a lot of different variables, some of which are performance-based and some of which are personality-based. But it's not as if you're going to have a perfect understanding of what a guy is going to be like as a grown person, not just as a grown baseball player when they're in college or in A-ball or whatever. There's going to be some change. And I think part of it's like acclimating to the stage. And then people do that and they do great, right? Like there were definitely, there were definitely dudes in the futures games who were, you could tell they were nervous and they were overthrowing and they didn't have their best stuff because you could just tell that they were nervous.

Well, maybe the next showcase they go to, they won't be like that because they'll have gotten that stuff out of the way, right? They know how to sort of focus in and adjust and view it as another game. So it's not that it doesn't matter or that it can't end up mattering a lot. It's just that I don't know that we necessarily know what snapshot is the one that matters until we do.

Yeah, that's a good point. You always hear people say like the minors is where guys figure out how to deal with failure. That's often where they encounter their first struggles because most pro ball players were really good in amateur ball. And so, yeah, it would sort of defeat the purpose of player development if the first time someone kind of cracked under pressure or got so demoralized that it affected his performance that you just said, okay, you're gone because the whole idea is to try to learn from that. Now maybe it gets to the point where you prove unable to learn from that

and eventually you do wash out, so that probably does happen. But I think a lot of guys would experience that at first, but figure out some way to get stronger because of it. Like I'm reading David Cohen's book that came out a few months ago, The Education of a Pitcher. And he talks in there about his first postseason start in the 1988 NLCS. And he was, I think, 25 or so then. And that was his first full season, his first postseason appearance. And he had written an ill-advised column, like a ghostwritten column in the New York media, where he just sort of trash talked the Dodgers a few days before that start. And that column got pinned to the walls of the dodgers clubhouse and they

were all yelling at him and as soon as he was on the mound he deeply regretted having written that and given that ammunition to the dodgers and he was quite bad in that game he he went two innings he gave up five runs and he was done and he says that it got to him like he started dwelling on what he had written and regretting it and he was just very much out of the right mindset. But he says, on the one hand, that was very costly because the Mets ended up losing that series and they might have won if he had been better. It went seven games. So that could have been the decisive thing on the other hand he says it made him a better and stronger pitcher and he pitched in two more games in that series he threw 10 more innings he gave up one run he was just fine and he

learned from that he didn't write any more ghostwritten columns where he trash talked the other team now that's David Cohn who is a great pitcher and prides himself on being a pretty mentally tough guy. And so maybe not everyone can make the adjustment from that mistake and from that failure that he did and go on to have a Hall of Fame caliber career. But that's the kind of thing we're talking about, I think, where you wouldn't want to make a snap judgment and say so-and-so is soft or whatever and he can't be better than this because people can be better

than that. And the other thing is that when we talk about clutchness in the majors, we're not saying it doesn't exist to some small extent. We're just saying it's not huge probably and it's not predictive because even if it it were real the differences are not so great that it wouldn't take like thousands of plate appearances to at least statistically say whether this is real or not and by that point it doesn't really help you because that's like the whole career basically so right i think that would probably also be true in the minors where you probably have even smaller samples and more factors that are changing and guys getting promoted and all sorts of things that would make it impossible to say that so-and-so

was unclutched based on stats in a timeline that would help you tell whether he was going to be a good future major league or a good prospect unless one day we have like you know heartbeat monitors in games or something and you could tell that someone is like his pulse is elevated because the pressure is getting to him or something like that some invasive thing that minor leaguers will probably have to deal with someday because they're not in the union that might give you some more insight into why someone is or isn't performing but But just based on the outcomes, I think it would be very tough to tell. Yeah. And you, I mean, like part of building, part of building real self-esteem is failing and realizing you can survive that failure

and do it better next time or do it differently or fail again, as the case may be. So I think that we are sometimes down on failure as a means of instruction. And I don't mean that in like a way that should be draconian or punitive or mean-spirited, but it's an important thing, right? Like you said, like they're definitely due to face failure for the first time when they get to professional baseball there are guys who you know underperform in triple a and end up being amazing because they were bored right they need the challenge right like this happened with lindor right like they're they're prospects now where it's like well

you should probably just promote them because what are they doing? They're not being challenged there. So I don't know. I think we're a little down on failure. Yeah. All right. T says, I recently finished listening to a two-part episode of Gimlet's Reply All that examined the development of data into the New York Police Department's effort to fight crime, which began with mapping pickpockets routes and ended with stop and frisk. You've at times pondered the dystopic. In the future, do you think players will try to cheat the data the way they cheat PED testing? And I wasn't totally clear what he was asking, so I asked him to clarify. And he says, in general, I'm thinking of an incentive structure in which it is to the

mutual benefit of player and coach to doctor the data. For example, if the effectiveness of a minor league coach is determined by a quota whereby a coach's performance is judged by how many players increase velocity or spin rate by x percent, that coach would have incentive to cook the data, perhaps only to blame that player's inevitable regression on injury or faulty mechanics. If Yonder Alonso might serve as an example, small samples increasingly get paid in a market where development isn't linear. In other words, in a newly disrupted market, what is signal and what is noise? So he is essentially suggesting that we pay a lot of attention to data and player development now. suggesting that we pay a lot of attention to data in player development now. I just wrote about it.

And if it is to the players and to the coaches advantage to make it look like that data is more impressive, like if someone's spin rate jumped suddenly or something, or his movement was different or something, he wants to know if we'll ever get to the point where somehow they will doctor that data to make it look like the players have improved performance, improved skill, even if it's not, I guess, you know, the actual outcomes, because it would be difficult to doctor whether someone went two for four or over four. How would they do it, though? That is the question. How would they do it, though? Yeah yeah i don't think that i don't i certainly do not think that you would have coaches and sort of team personnel in cahoots with players i don't think that would happen because their incentives are you you know, their goals are aligned to a large degree, but not perfectly. So I don't, I think, and I think it would be hard. I want this as like a movie though.

Yeah. Just be a cool movie. I know. There would just be such a, I feel like there would be a very limited range of things that you could doctor though, right? Like you couldn't, I mean, you could monkey around with, it seems like there would be a limited range of things that you could doctor where someone watching it couldn't say, wait, what? Yes. That seems wrong, right?

Right. seems wrong right right like um you know you could i guess you could like adjust exit velocity up but you can kind of tell watching like you can tell if a ball is hard hit or not by watching it exactly how hard hit sure maybe not but like you can get a general sense of how hard a ball has been hit and you then have the outcome of that you know batted ball right right so that's all seems out of out of it you could monkey with like sprint speed but all you need is a is a scout there with a stopwatch to time you so that seems like it's out yeah you can you could like adjust within a very small range like launch angle i guess but again you can look at it and see yeah to some extent i guess you could adjust anything subtly i mean right you can't say that an 85 mile per hour batted ball

is actually 110 mile per hour batted ball right because you can see that difference but if you were to tamper with someone's data and say actually he has an average of 96 instead of 94.5 or something right and if you were a front office person just looking at the numbers because you haven't watched every game that this guy's played and you're deciding whether we want to promote this guy or call him up to the next level or something maybe that makes the difference in a way that would be difficult to detect i mean eventually you'll get exposed because you just won't be very good but you know who knows by then maybe you've made the majors maybe you have signed to an extension or something based on this data or i don't know, something like spin rate, which is difficult to see.

You know, I mean, if your pitches aren't moving more than the spin rate only matters so much. But if you have a high spin rate, someone might look at you as someone with more potential who if we adjusted the spin axis of your pitches or something you could get more movement down the road like i could see something like that or or if you just like your your hardest batted ball if you changed one batted ball from like 105 to 115 or something and and that would say hey this guy is capable of hitting a ball that hard. That's a good sign. And if you didn't actually watch the video and confirm. I just think it would require a lot of people being less good at their jobs than I know people who have those jobs being. Yeah, that's true. You know, I think because like I, I know, like I know front office people who their impulse, their instinct when they get sort of unusual like stat cast information is to go watch it and then to assume that there was a calibration

issue. Yeah, that too. Like their instinct is skepticism. skepticism. And so I guess if you were, I guess if you were a player who had, I guess that if you were a player who was maybe on the decline, you would be the best position to take advantage of this because you've already established a baseline of performance and maybe you're slipping a little bit and you can delay people realizing the slippage and they might just attribute what's going on to some you know bad batted ball luck or whatever right or like an outing where you got batted around a little bit uh as a pitcher but the the velocity is still good the spin's still good

i think it would be really hard for young guys to get away with this and i don't think anyone could get away with it for very long no that's the thing i mean he mentioned i want to try though i mean i don't because they get in such trouble right you'd never you'd never be on a team ever again yeah even if you could figure out how to do it you would just be done yeah so don't don't anyone do it if you were a coach you'd definitely be done if you're a player and you could still play, you'd probably get another chance. But I think because he mentioned the comparison to like trying to cheat PD testing, I'm thinking of like, you know, instead of having someone pee in a cup for you to get a clean test, you have some better hitter like take a swing with your swing sensor or something and suddenly your swing speed is faster than it was although it'd be weird if like everything about your swing suddenly changed and you had a different like attack angle and you know swing plane and everything but if you had someone who was like had a similar swing to you but swung harder and you just handed off your center to him

and were like hey i need a favor like i i need to get my average swing speed up a little bit and someone were inclined to help you out with that or you you somehow trick them you switch the swing centers so that you think the best hitter on the team is using your blast center or whatever i mean this is all pretty far-fetched like that is that's more conceivable than tampering with TrackMan or StatCast data. That would be difficult to do because it's all automated and centralized and all of that gets recorded by a stringer who's in the park. So you just have to have that person on your side. You would just need so many people to be in on it

and very bad at their jobs yeah and it all gets uploaded right away to the front office so like i don't know at what point and then what happens when you go on the road right that's a problem too because then presumably this is all harder to affect and uh and then your your baseball ops group is gonna be like wow these are the weirdest home away splits we've ever seen. And they're going to start digging. And then you're going to have to go into your manager and be like, I made a terrible mistake. Yeah.

Yeah. It's an interesting scenario. I mean, in theory, it's more plausible than it used to be because we have all these process measures now, which in theory you could tamper with in a less obvious way than the outcome measures. You're probably not going to just change what's in the box score. That'd be difficult to do. But changing something behind the performance that might be more feasible, but even so pretty difficult to do.

And you'd have to sustain it for a while in order to benefit from it really and i don't know that you could because you and at some point like you have to demonstrate this skill in games too like if if you're not having any success and and your spin rate is really high i i just it only goes so far like maybe it gives you a longer leash maybe it keeps you from getting cut like i could see that like if you're if you have a feeling that you're about to lose your roster spot and you could tamper with one of your pitches so that suddenly it looks like hey he's got a high spin curveball or something and then maybe you get another chance because someone says well if we could just get him to throw that curveball or something and then maybe you get another chance because someone says well

if we could just get him to throw that curve more or something then maybe there's something there but again okay then what happens when they tell you to throw the curve more and your curve is still bad and you're still getting knocked around right so it only works for so long it only works for so long it requires and we would all write about it right so that's the thing it's like once you start putting any of this into games we would all be sitting there being like wow that's really weird like we're watching that guy and he should be a lot better and we don't have that data in the minors to be fair that's true in the minors you could you could you could get away with it for longer maybe maybe but once you get called up you're you're really toast yeah right because you know somebody

i mean there are a lot there are plenty of articles that we run at fancraft store it's like it's so isn't it so funny that like these are the results and these are the underlying stats. But after a while, people will be like, so, hey, we've been keeping an eye on this and we're here to tell you that something's up. Something has gone terribly wrong. Right. It's like Seth Lugo, for instance. He was like the stat cast hero for his high spin curveball. And it was kind of perplexing because he wasn't getting really

great results. And now he is though, like now he's effective and good and has thrown his curveball at least a little bit more than he used to in his sort of changes pitch selection. Anyway, the point is like ultimately he backed up what people were saying and now he's striking out like 12 guys per nine and he used to strike out like six guys per nine so i think that gave him it made him much more of an object of interest i think than he would have been otherwise because we knew that thing about him and that thing augured well for his future which as it turns out has proven to be pretty prescient but if you just have that high spin curveball and you never get good then i don't know i i guess you can you can hang on for a little longer but first of all you have to be pretty good to get to the big leagues and and to stay there and even at lower levels it's only going to get

you so many chances but it wouldn't be like the most shocking thing like in a world where we saw hacking one team hacking another like it's not the most inconceivable thing that this could happen and cameras on phones that are banned in the united states now and i mean i'm not saying that no one would try yeah i'm just saying i don't think that you could have you couldn't have sustained i don't think that you could have sustained success in your subterfuge for very long before it got. And once you reach the major league level, you're definitely toast. And I think that there are plenty of pieces of technology that we have to measure players that are more sophisticated than a radar gun or stopwatch. But even at the minor league level where these guys are being watched and scrutinized so

extensively, both from team personnel, other teams personnel, and then, you know, prospect people, I think that it would be tricky there even with, you know, analysts who are just doing public side writing, not having access to track mandate at that level or whatever. I just don't think you could do it for very long. It would make a good true crime podcast. Yes, yes, it would. All right, question from Jimmy.

I got a kick out of this quote from Dallas Keuchel in The Gamer written in The Athletic by David O'Brien after the July 2nd loss of the Braves to the Phillies. Keuchel allowed the deciding two runs on a J. Bruce double in a 2-0 loss. Here was his quote. Quote, I mean, outside of a so-so slider to Bruce, which wasn't that bad of a pitch. It was just the wrong pitch, wrong location at the wrong time. He was swinging.

I knew he was. I was trying to bait him off the plate, and he just got enough to get a double down the line. And Jimmy continues, I just thought the assessment was funny that the pitch was so-so when it was by his reckoning the wrong pitch, wrong location, wrong time. Not to take away from Bruce who got a nice hit down the line, but doesn't that mean it was the worst possible pitch? Wrong pitch to throw, not sequenced well, and mislocated. Yeah, I think that that's a good assessment yeah there there is i i see what jim is saying here i think i have a different interpretation i i think keitel is saying that he's saying the plan was good because he knew bruce was swinging and he was trying to get him to swing at a ball,

which is a good plan. That can't be a bad plan to get someone to swing it. Yeah. So part one is good. Yeah. So I don't think he's saying that the idea was bad. And then I watched the pitch. The pitch was in the strike zone. So he didn't do a good job of executing because it wasn't. He was trying to get him to swing it at a pitch outside the zone and it ended up being inside the zone and Bruce got enough of it to get a double. But as I said via email in response to this, I think he's saying that in most situations, this pitch would have worked out okay. It's like when we say that someone was in the wrong place

at the wrong time. We're not saying that they are to blame necessarily for being in that place at that time. We're just saying that they were the victim of circumstances. Right. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and it came back to bite them. But nothing they did was necessarily blameworthy. Whereas I think in this situation, I think keichel's sort of saying the same thing like the pitch itself wasn't horrible like it wasn't a hanger it was kind of low in a way and kind of close to the corner which in most cases would be fine and wouldn't normally

be pulled for a double and so i think he's saying that in this case it was the wrong pitch at the wrong time because it just so happened that jay bruce hit a double and right you know whether it's a credit to bruce for putting a good swing on it or just it happened to be the one time when a pretty decent pitch was hit you know maybe it was luck maybe it was skill whatever it But Keichel wasn't totally blowing it by throwing a total meatball. He was kind of a victim of a good hitter or a cruel universe and things transpired in a way that wouldn't typically have transpired. Yeah, I think that we tend to not be quite as generous with our understanding of who is responsible for what in any given played appearance as we maybe could be. Sometimes guys just get a lucky little swing on something. I watched, I don't remember what game this was. I still have very severe time dilation from

Cleveland. It's been weeks later, but now we're into trade value. So I'm not going to know what day it is until September. But anyway, Ronald Acuna just had just like a little excuse me swing. And he singled. And he looks surprised to be on first base. And you're like, what are you going to do? Like sometimes it just happens. It's like it's no one's, you're not bad at your job.

Sometimes other, everyone's good at their job. Sometimes everyone is good at their job and they're just a little bit better or they're a little luckier. Right. Yeah. So it was so-so. He probably could have gotten it farther outside, but it wasn't terrible. And so he was, yeah, wrong pitch in the wrong place at the wrong time. But at another time, it might have been okay.

I think that was the idea. And Jay Bruce singled? He doubled. Oh, well, see, see i mean now it's less fun but i i still his line is is more sensical now and it bums me out all right last one from maximilian he says can you see a world in which luis renjifo doesn't make this tag. And he links us to the play, which I will link you all to. This is, what, Steven Piscati sliding into second base. This was a game, I think, on June 30th.

And he slid into second. He sprained his knee sliding into the bag. And Ranjifo, as soon as he realizes that Piscati is off the bag because he sort of like over slid the bag and then he was just lying there cradling his head in his hands obviously in pain

and unable to move back to the bag and as soon as Renhifo realized this he very quickly scrambled over and applied the tag to Piscati and got the out. And so Maximilian says, I was surprised I didn't hear any grumbling that this tag was unsporting or see any hesitation on Remi Hefo's part that he was tagging out an injured player who had beaten him to the base. I've seen soccer matches where a team will kick the ball out of bounds to stop play when one of their players is hurt. And then after the ball is put back in play, the opposing team will return it to the team with the injured player. I think I have

also seen it where the opposing team will even kick it out themselves. So he's asking if it's possible to envision a world where Runifo, just like out of sympathy for Piscati's pain here, does not apply this tag. I don't think't think so first of all before we get to that can we take a moment to note how andrelton simmons is still like just a a mad genius because he is why this tag happened and i don't say that as a a knock on him and i i don't think that ranky behaved in a way that is bad here butfo clearly thought that he had already applied the tag and that Piscotti was just out. You can tell when you watch the clip that he's showing the ball

to the second base umpire like, hey, I got him. And Simmons, because he is a wizard, is like, hey, just make sure though. Hey, why don't you just go make sure? And points to him and says, hey, go apply the tag before he can put his foot back on the base so that's one thing we should all just appreciate andrelton simmons more than we do i don't think that this is especially on sporting you know after the play is concluded they they both go over there and sort of check on pascottity to see if he's okay. And, you know, it wasn't like he like socked him in the jar or anything or like stepped

on it. I mean, like I can imagine things that are sort of outside the normal course of play that would result in the baseball internet sitting up and saying like, hey, that's not the way that we want to be on the field. But this is, first of all, the way to conclude play on the field, right, to get a break in action. Piscotti was clearly going to have to be helped off the field or was in some serious amount of pain anyhow and was not moving.

I don't know. I don't think that this is bad. I don't think this is bad. I think Rangifo's a little forceful with his tag, but I don't think he meant to be in a way that's a little um forceful with his tag but i don't think he meant to be in a way that was like harmful or anything careful with that knee right yeah he does he does get a little close to me like hey buddy but um you know i i think it's okay do we have an expectation that that you're going to basically concede a base runner simply because

a guy's injured i don't think so. I don't think we do. Sam answered this via email, and since he's away this week, I will read his response. He said, I've been thinking about this and haven't come to a firm conclusion, but I think there's something about the flow of each sport that makes the concept of stopping for your opponent a little different. With soccer, there's no stoppage between plays. You just run nonstop, very fluid. So to take care of a player, somebody, a teammate or an opponent actually has

to end the play. So that's what they do, kick it out of bounds. But in baseball, the play ends when everybody is on a base or else out. So while it's sort of cruel to take advantage of the player's injury that way, it is from a pace setting standpoint, the equivalent of kicking a ball out of bounds. You end the play. Then we can turn our attention to the patient. This is, of course, a speculative explanation. I don't know what the cultures of football and basketball are around hurt players. But for this theory to hold, football would be more like baseball and basketball would be more like but not entirely like sort of in the middle soccer.

not entirely like sort of in the middle soccer. And Maximilian responded to that and said, I think it probably holds in cycling, or at least in the Tour de France 15 years ago when we all watched cycling. Readers do not seek to gain time when their riders are involved in a crash. Fluid contest that does not stop until the end of the stage. Competitors wait for one another,

or at least do not take advantage of their opponent's injury or misfortune. In an even more extreme example from another sport, racing, when a race car was involved in a gnarly crash in the final race in the movie Cars, a junior race car abandoned his hopes of winning a title to help his veteran opponent cross the finish line. So I guess that's a good distinction that makes some sense to me. Yeah, I think it's just a very different, I think that if there were a way to sort of press one's advantage in the moment, we might think about it a little differently. Although I don't know that the moral calculus necessarily changes because there are a lot of ways to demonstrate care for another person that don't require you you in this case, like allowing a

base runner, even if, you know, it's clear that it would have been a pinch runner at some point here, but he's not pressing an advantage. This is normal course of play. And I think Sam's answer where it's like, this is how you, how you stop the action on the field so that you can, you can actually have medical personnel come out and do what they need to, I think is a good one. That's an important distinction to draw here. But I think it's okay. I mostly just send men off, Handleton Simmons. And Piscotty's okay, thankfully.

Like he's back. I think he's back today, in fact. Yeah. Or maybe recently. Like at first, Ranjifo just, he seems to apply the tag and then he immediately runs off the field. But I think he just didn't realize that Piscati was hurt because then he does see that he's lying there writhing and he stops running off the field without a second glance and he knew that Piscati was hurt and didn't demonstrate any concern, then yeah. That would be bad. Yeah, like there are times when a pitcher will hit a batter and it's not intentional and he'll show a lot of remorse and concern, especially if the batter really seems to be seriously hurt. remorse and concern especially if the batter really seems to be seriously hurt there are other times when the pitcher will not really react at all to hitting a batter and i guess it's maybe

partly like a macho thing or like i'm not gonna show that i can crack here like i own the mound and it's my batter's box and i'll throw the pitch wherever I want to. And that's something that to me, I guess, sort of like reflects poorly on that player. I mean, I don't know what's going on inside and whether there's a lot of internal turmoil, but if he doesn't seem to show any concern and he's just like trying to be the intimidator or the headhunter or whatever, then I would think that that looks not great for him. But I like to see players, you know, yeah, sure, get the out, apply the tag, but then show some level of sympathy for another human being. Yeah, I think you can accomplish both things and doing the one doesn't

make you sort of insensitive. In the other case, you know, I think it's probably like everything. There's a bit of, it's going to depend case by case. But, you know, I don't know when Kyle Seeger hit a line drive that hit Matt Shoemaker on the head, like he still took first base and then looked like he wanted to throw up while he was standing there. But, you know, I think people understand that you're going to do the baseball thing because there's a pause that's gonna naturally come right after that and so it's fine to kind of conclude the play and then take the time to do what you need to and sort of show your sympathy that's the best part of all-star week i've decided is just looks like all

these guys are like we have the weirdest job on the planet. Maybe not the weirdest, but one of the weirdest. It definitely ranks. And we should all just be pals because who else is going to understand what we're doing? Yeah. By the way, last thing, I just happened to see this while we were talking, but the Trenton Thunder bat dog rookie. Oh, yeah. He made a visit to Yankee Stadium and he was not allowed to be the bat dog in the game because evidently MLB rules prohibit bat dogs.

So Rookie just had to watch the game from the sidelines and take a picture with his pal Aaron Judge, who I guess got to be friends with him in Trenton. This seems like something we need to change. Why can't we have big league bat dogs? That would make everyone's life better. Did someone see Air Bud and like get nervous I mean I know there's occasionally A time when a bat dog gets a little

Overzealous and maybe it's like A rookie bat dog this one is named Rookie but it's not a rookie but sometimes You see them like go chasing after a ball or something But that's just precious and wonderful And we love when that happens so Maybe Rob Manfred wouldn't like it Because of pace of play but

I would want bat dogs in all Possible places In every place I'd be curious I wonder whether There are park effects for bat dogs I mean I wonder like if you put Rookie in Any ballpark does his training Transfer over so that

If he's trained to be a bat dog in Trenton If you put him in Yankee Stadium with the bright lights and the big crowds and a bit of a different layout, could he just seamlessly adopt his bat dog duties? Or would he wilt under the pressure the way that we were just talking about minor leaguers? We need a clutch score for rookie. Yeah, but please bring on big league bat dogs. I mean, I don't want to put any bat people out of jobs. Sure, no. But bat dogs are just better, I think. Yeah.

Well, yeah. And what other bat animals could we have? I don't know. You could have, I guess you couldn't have like a bat cat. No, bat cat cats are not be very cooperative cats aren't super trainable and they probably would struggle to get the bat to the guy yeah you need a certain size and strength we could have raccoons pliability and yeah we could have we could have bat uh miniature ponies. Okay. I could see that happening.

People do yoga with goats. And as an aside, I still have yet to get an explanation of why. I don't understand and I don't tell us. We don't want to know. Yeah, I've never really looked into that. We're not asking the question. We just don't understand it and we're contented to be ignorant. So that's not what we're asking.

Yeah. And how I'm going to think about this. To be ignorant, so that's not what we're asking. Yeah. Now I'm going to think about this. I only have one more thing I have to edit today, so I can think about bat animals. That's fine.

Dogs are just, I think, probably uniquely suited to be a bat carrier, as they are in many other ways to be a pet and an assistant to humans. But, yeah, please, we should break the bat-dog barrier. I don't see why we can't have this. Oh, man. If Bill Beck were around, I'm surprised he never did this. Maybe he did. I don't know. Maybe there's a rule against it because he tried it.

Maybe. It just seems like such a missed opportunity. I agree. And every team could have a different kind of dog. Yeah. So there could be all kinds of different dogs. That would be so great. You don't want them all to be the same because give us all the good dogs.

Oh, man. It seems like they're always golden retrievers, I guess. They have to do a lot of retrieving. They do. And I think retrievers are pretty easily trainable. But you could have all kinds. We should have a French bulldog, bad dog. Okay.

Let's just end on this note where we're all contemplating bad dogs. What a nice thing to get. Thank you, Ben. What a nice thing. All right. We'll leave it there. Okay. Just Ben here now.

I thought we would end there, but I realized that we hadn't done a stat blast. And just after Meg and I finished recording, we got a stat blastable question from Jimmy. I really like this question, so I want to stick it in here. So, Jesse, take it away. All right. Jimmy says, All right, Jimmy says, A couple weeks back, Steven Strasburg pitched an immaculate inning. I really enjoy when that happens because it's just about as neat and tidy as you can be to do your job as a pitcher. Nine pitches, nine strikes, three down. Well, my friend just reminded me that Strasburg also has a three-pitch inning in his career.

September 29, 2017. Maybe it should be called an economical inning. A parsimonious inning? 29th, 2017. Maybe it should be called an economical inning. A parsimonious inning? An efficient inning doesn't work because that's common parlance all the time when the pitcher gets three outs on relatively few pitches. I like economical inning. That works. Sometimes you hear that about non three-pitch innings too. So Jimmy wants to know how many pitchers have pitched both an immaculate and an economical inning in their career. And he linked me to a page on the site Baseball Almanac that has a list of all the three-pitch in site, Baseball Almanac, that has a list of

all the three pitch innings. Baseball Almanac also has a list of all the immaculate innings. And these are, of course, the economical innings and immaculate innings that have been recorded. We only have pitch counts going back to 1988, but the site also includes many earlier examples that were just mentioned in news reports, game stories, various other sources, and have been collected by this site and its readers. So I took the list of guys with immaculate innings and the list of guys with economical innings. I put them both in spreadsheets. I cleaned them up a little. I removed the duplicates for the guys who have done one or the other multiple times, and that left me with 90 individual pitchers who have pitched immaculate innings. that's the nine pitch version, and 162 individual

pitchers who have pitched economical innings, the three pitch version, which maybe makes sense. It's gotten a little easier to get the immaculate inning over time just because there are many more whiffs these days than there used to be. There used to be a lot more contact and balls in play, and the immaculate inning is probably a bit more dependent on skill. With the economical inning, you're kind of dependent on the batter helping you out and swinging at a pitch and putting it in play, which is somewhat out of the pitcher's control. So when we do some cross-referencing here with the indispensable index match function in Excel, we get 10 pitchers, 10 guys in known baseball history have thrown both an economical and an efficient inning. Jimmy already mentioned

Strasburg, so there are nine others, most of them from recent years, as you would expect, because we have the pitch counts. The exception is Joe Eschger, who pitched in the 1910s and 20s, but evidently news accounts noted that he did both of these things. So we've got Joe Eschger, Pete Harnish, Andy Ashby, Jimmy Key, Rick Helling, Mike Messina, BJ Ryan, Randy Johnson, and Latroy Hawkins. That's an interesting mix of guys. You've got a couple Hall of Famers in Johnson and Messina. You've got some more mediocre pitchers, but all pitchers who were fairly long-lasting and good at some point in their careers.

So they pitched a lot of innings for the most part, gave them more shots at recording the Immaculate Inning and Economical Inning, and obviously a bunch of guys who missed bats in that group but it's a fun list because really these two achievements are kind of in conflict the pitcher who gets the immaculate inning that's someone who is missing bats who is getting lots of whiffs and is probably throwing more pitches because it takes more pitches on average to get a strikeout than it does to get an out on a ball in play, although obviously not if you're getting all your strikeouts on three pitches. But the Immaculate Inning favors the Randy Johnsons and the Steven Strasbergs and the BJ Ryans, guys who got strikeouts, whereas the Economical Inning favors guys who pitch to contact. And yet, 10 pitchers in the annals of the game,

obviously recorded history. There are probably others, but we'll never know about them. But of all the thousands of pitchers who have pitched, these are the 10 that we know of. Very exclusive group. And it's getting easier to record the Immaculate Inning, but harder, I would guess, to record the Economical Inning. So I really like this club, the Perfect Inning Club. Thanks for the question, Jimmy. So I wish I could end this episode as planned on the lighthearted notes of bat dogs and stat blasts, but the online baseball community got some sad news on Tuesday, and I want to tell you about the man that I and many others are mourning. This is sort of a strange and solitary job, a good job, but an unusual one,

and people like me and Sam and Meg, who are lucky enough to do this thing full-time, we work from home, and whatever co-workers we have are typically people we interact with via Slack or Gchat or Twitter, maybe the occasional phone call. Of course, sometimes we meet up at conferences or the odd event, but it can be kind of a lonely life for part of the day. You know, my wife's at work. I'm here with my dog typing away. That's one of the reasons I value this podcast community so much. The emails from listeners and the Facebook group and the constants in my life from a professional perspective are people I just gchat with throughout the day. And there are people I've been talking to in this community, people I worked with

at BP and elsewhere on a daily or near daily basis now for about a decade, and a few of them I haven't met. Most of them I've at least talked to, but you develop strong bonds with these people whom you've never actually seen in person because you talk to them constantly and they're part of this world and your problems are often the same problems they're facing and vice versa. And one of those constants in my life for the last decade or so, and someone who has been as helpful to me in my professional life as almost anyone, is Rob McEwen, who was the director of operations for Baseball Prospectus. And that title, director of operations, sounds like it can mean almost anything. And in Rob's case, it did. It meant almost anything and everything. He was involved in every aspect of Baseball Prospectus. And whether you know it or not, he probably had an impact on your life if you've been consuming any internet baseball content of a sabermetric slant over the

last 10 years. Rob had a bit of a baseball background. He worked for Stats Inc. for a few years in the 90s, but then he went to other internet and tech companies until he wound up at a site called Baseball Daily Digest, which was run by Joe Hemrahi, and Joe later became the CEO and president of Baseball Perspectives, And Rob kind of came over with him. So he sort of entered BP's orbit in late 2008, which was also when I entered BP's orbit. He started writing there occasionally in the spring of 2009. And by 2010, he was not only writing some fantasy stuff for the site, but he was doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work too. And by 2011, he had taken over most of the website's operations

and a couple years later Colin Wires left to join the Astros and Rob took over Pocota and most of the stat generation for the site and he was just the go-to guy all the time that I was at BP and ever since he was the one who knew where everything was because BP's back end was sort of a tangle of Byzantine databases and artifacts of the tenures of Keith Wollner and Clay Davenport and Colin, and Rob was the code and figure out what was wrong. He was involved in building so many of the tools that are available at Baseball Prospectus, various leaderboards and utilities and the team tracker and the score sheet draft aid. The list goes on and on. And Rob was not only the one who would put out fires, but he was endlessly helpful to anyone and everyone, and probably particularly me. Rob was a SQL wizard. He could query a database

like no one I've ever known, and I'm somewhat notorious at Baseball Perspectives for sending a lot of stat requests. As I've mentioned many times, I'm an English major. I didn't enter this line of work with any great background in math or computer science or programming, and so I've had to rely on the kindness of others over the years to help answer the questions that I post. And Rob has been the one answering those questions more than anyone else. Part of my value as a writer, as a researcher, has been figuring out the right questions to ask. And that's nice, but it doesn't go a long way without being able to dig up the answers. And sometimes that's beyond my abilities, but it was almost never beyond Rob's.

Right up until last month, in fact, I wrote about Mike Trout and the Angels and how the Angels have hovered around 500 over the past few years, and I wanted to know which teams in history have stayed the closest to 500 the longest. I think I mentioned that on this podcast, too. That was a stat request I sent Rob, and I knew he'd have no trouble with it, and he didn't. And at times I felt bad about bugging Rob with these things, especially after I left Baseball Perspectives and he had no real obligation to help me with anything. And I tried to spare him when I could, but there were times I knew that if I wanted to answer a question, there was no way I could do it without Rob. And he was tireless and endlessly patient and would always respond to requests. And sometimes he would say, I'm swamped and I'm fielding a dozen requests and this is going wrong and that respond to requests. And sometimes he would say, I'm swamped

and I'm fielding a dozen requests and this is going wrong and that's going wrong and I just can't possibly get to this anytime soon. But nine times out of ten after he said that and I said, okay, don't worry about it, he would get around to it after all. And he would send me the answer and he would say, actually, this didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would because he was that good. And I was so happy the odd time when I could help him with something. Maybe he'd asked for my opinion or I'd report a bug that I'd found on the site or something I had asked him to help search for me helped him uncover some other issue that he was able to fix. I felt like I was working off my debt a little bit, but I knew I would never work it all off

because I was so deeply in his debt and so dependent on him. And in fact, when I left Baseball Perspectives for Grantland, one of the things that I fretted about was losing access to Rob because he was such an integral part of my process. And actually, one of the reasons why it was important to me to keep doing this podcast, which of course was started at Baseball Perspectives, was so that I could maintain some connection to the site and have some reason to keep sending stat requests to Rob. Because when I got to Grantland and I started sending stat requests to ESPN Stats and Info, I was somewhat shocked to learn that there were many requests that would have been a cakewalk for Rob that when I sent to ESPN, the biggest sports media company there is, no one there would know how to answer, or no one would have the data that was needed to answer them. And so I would end up asking Rob anyway, even though I'd left. And I told him at the time, if you wanted to go to ESPN, you could be running that place because

you can answer questions that this entire department is having trouble answering. And it wasn't just that Rob could answer any question, although he could. I almost never stumped him. If I did, it was just because the data didn't exist, not because he couldn't query it. But it was more than that. It's very valuable to find someone who can answer questions, but he would also make the questions better. He would see how your question could be improved, how maybe you were overlooking something that would affect the answer, and he would talk it through with you and say, well, have you considered this? And what about that? And these results might not look the way that you want them to because of X and Y.

And then you would craft the query together. And I developed a reputation often for sending these stat requests. And then after I got the results saying one more thing, and often one more thing would turn out to be two or three more things. And I was worried about whether I was a pain, whether Rob wished I would go away and leave him alone.

But he told me that he enjoyed working with me, but he told me that he enjoyed working with me, and others have told me that he enjoyed working with me because he liked the questions I asked, and I would be very curious about them, and he would get curious about them, and often they were sort of meaty topics, and he was excited to contribute to that research. And I really think that if you did an audit on all of my baseball writing from the past decade, you would probably find at the bottom of 20% of those articles thanks to Rob McEwen of Baseball Perspectives for research assistance. There were many articles I've written that wouldn't have been as good without Rob's input. There were others that I might not have even attempted to write without knowing that Rob could supply whatever I wanted. And it's not just me. I think I've probably been the one who's

pestered him with the most stat requests, but he was a resource for the entire staff at Baseball Prospectus, for people who left BP and went on to other sites and would still send stat requests. And he was always happy to help if he had the time. And he always seemed to make the time, even if he didn't have it. And he was always generous when it came to trying to impart the skills that he had to others. Many of the stat people that he worked with, and in some cases tutored at Baseball Perspectives, have gone on to work for teams. People like Bradley Ancrum and Andrew Kuh

who are with the Rangers now, and of course Colin with the Astros, and Dan Turkenkoff with the Brewers, and he had an impact on all of them. And if you've used Baseball Perspectives, if you've read anything at the site over the past decade, it's almost certain that Rob had a hand in some of those things. Even when we started Effectively Wild, Rob was the one who submitted the podcast to iTunes

and tinkered with the RSS feed and handled all of those things. I don't know if he knew anything about it, but we asked him to help, and of course he did. And you may not know the name Rob McEwen if you haven't been reading to the bottom of all of my articles and seeing me thank him, because as far as I could tell, he had no interest in getting credit. He certainly didn't seek the attention. I have no idea whether he ever looked at my articles to make sure that I had acknowledged him. He certainly never said so if he did. He was in it entirely to get to the answer and to help someone with whatever they were doing, and he was so, so good at it. Sometimes I would see the queries he wrote, and they seemed to go on for dozens, entirely to get to the answer and to help someone with whatever they were doing. And he was so,

so good at it. Sometimes I would see the queries he wrote and they seemed to go on for dozens, hundreds of lines. And I would just marvel at how he had written it and how quickly he had done it and how clever he was at answering questions that seemed so difficult to tease out the truth of. And the reason I mentioned at the beginning of this little tribute that a lot of people who we haven't met in person come to play a big role in our lives is that Rob was that person for many of us in this little world. I never met Rob. I talked to him on a few conference calls. But other than that, it was text only. And it was so much text. I just searched my email for his email address and I found more than 5,000 threads that I was on with Rob, whether emails or gchats.

And to my knowledge, no one at Baseball Prospectus ever met him in person. Even people who lived in some proximity to him in the Chicago area never met him. He was a private person. He certainly could have gone on to work for a bigger company or for a team, but I think he valued being able to keep to himself the way that he could at BP. And so he was something of a mystery man in that respect. And yet you felt like he was a constant presence, like you were interacting with him all the time because you were in one way or another. And people sometimes say that I don't sleep and I thought Rob didn't sleep. Really, I think he did sleep, but he slept at odd times, as I tend to do. And so there was many a night or many an early morning when I would look at my gchat list of contacts at 3am or some other

ungodly hour, and the only green dot signifying that someone else was available and active was Rob McEwen. And there were many nights when we chatted about something or other, maybe some stat request I had sent him, but often just baseball or something else, and we kind of kept each other company. It's one of those things where even though I never met the man, it's incomprehensible to me that I won't be able to talk to him again because he's been there for as long as I've been doing this, and even to the end, he wasn't very forthcoming about his personal life,

and I don't think anyone knew the severity of the health issue he was facing, and so it's come as a shock to many of us that he is gone, but he's been an unsung hero for so long, and he's had a huge impact on a lot of us in this line of work. If you've enjoyed anything that I've written over the years, there's a very good chance that Rob McEwen made it better. If you've read almost any BP research over the past decade, that is certainly true, so my best to any family or friends in his life who probably knew Rob in a different way than we did. But even though the way we knew him was somewhat unusual, he meant so much to us, and he will be greatly, greatly missed. So sadly for the last time, thanks to Rob McEwen for research assistance. You can buy my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists

Are Using Data to Build Better Players. Most listeners I've heard from seem to like it. It is right up your alley if you like this podcast. And if you like the book, please leave a review

and tell the world on Amazon and Goodreads or anywhere else you feel like expressing a public opinion. You can also support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already pledged their support

and earned themselves access to some perks by giving some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going. Patrick Emery, Zachary Ellenthal, Ken Hui, Brian Beck, and Paul Formichelli. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg and Sam coming via email at podcastoffangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And Meg and I will be back with one more episode this week. So we will talk to you soon. Oh, please just answer. Please just answer.

Please just answer me.