Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1410: Ballpark Figures

Episode Date: July 30, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the Gerrit Cole strikeout fun fact, listed heights and weights and Ketel Marte, running the bases clockwise, and a Ramon Laureano postgame comment, then answer listener emails about come-from-behind (and comeback) victories, whether the 2015 season was good or bad for Bryce Harper (and how players’ success is […]

And this is the sound of being left behind And this is the ritual dissection of the soul And I hope that you will enjoy it Good morning and welcome to episode 1410 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs.com, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN, along with Ben Lindberg, the ringer. Hey, Ben. Hello. So we're going to do an email show today, even though it's not midweek, and then we're going to do a midweek show on everything that happened at the trade deadline. And so we will, for instance, talk about probably strowman going to the mets at that point unless you have anything to say

about that that is like so urgent that like that that the value of it comes from being in this liminal space where we don't know what the mets are doing yet so if you want to you can but otherwise we can just, you know, put that off for a couple of days. Yeah, we can wait because that seems like a move that we would probably say something different about once we find out about subsequent moves, if there are any. Right. You cannot analyze the Stroman trade without knowing the next, well, you could, but probably without knowing the next couple of days. You can only entertain the people by making a fool of yourself with preemptive declarations.

Yes. And so we're going to choose not to do the foolhardy thing. You mentioned the Garrett Cole strikeout fun fact that was going around. This was that he was the second fastest player to get to 200 strikeouts in a season by innings which is literally exactly the same as strikeout per nine except that you've changed per nine to like a different well i guess you flipped the denominator and the numerator basically but it's basically the exact same thing why does this fun fun fact, which I have heard multiple times, have legs? I don't know.

He has the highest strikeout per nine rate. He is in contention for, he is right on the border of perhaps having the highest strikeout per nine rate ever. The only person who, well, the person who currently holds the record is Randy Johnson, the same year that he had the previous fastest to 200 record. Of course, same record. So we are saying like what? And I repeat the question. Why does this fun fact have legs?

I guess people like counting stats and maybe it's more satisfying to think of getting to that 200th strikeout than it is to think of him striking out 13 per nine or whatever he's at i don't know it's not a counting stat though right lots of people have 200 strikeouts it is a it is a ratio stat it's yeah it's well it's a counting stat coupled with a rate stat sort of it's it's a counting stat it's a rate stat where you have hid the rate behind like a dresser and only the count is visible. Yes, that's right. it's a record for strikeouts per nine, and people are not into that. We could rephrase it somehow as the only player to strike out 300. I don't even know how you would do it because it's not a round number. That's the other thing. It's a round number.

It's a weird time to get this because he was also the fastest to 191 before that, and he'll be the fastest to 208. It's a weird time to start coming up with records in the middle of july but the round number i found it a weird fun fact it is it's a weird one all right let's see we have an update on cattell marty's weight this is from healy who happened to be staying in the same hotel as Cattell Marte and approached him and asked him on our behalf if he is actually 165 pounds as listed. Healy says that just visually you can see that he is much more than that.

But he decided to ask him. Whoever was with Cattell Marte jumped in and yelled, that's half of him. That's half of him. So we got one person saying 330 pounds, but Cattell says from his own lips, 200 to 210. Yeah, which is, I mean, when you think about it, that is to be 165. And how tall is he? He's not super tall, right?

So if we are to take his height listing as accurate, well, he's 6'1". All right, so 6'1", 165. If you saw that person in real life, you probably wouldn't think that person is a string bean. It's not a ton of weight for that height, but it's not way, way, way below average probably. But for a baseball player, baseball players are all huge, even the ones you don't think are huge are pretty huge for the most part

so for him to be as as big as he is and as powerful as he is now yeah it's somewhat suspicious that that weight still hasn't been updated in your previous research on this topic do you remember why these listings are so misleading why they're so wrong? I forget. There was a Jeff era episode where we talked about how one team, I think it was the Reds. Yeah, the Reds actually had what seemed to be accurate weight listings. It wasn't to the nearest five or 10. They had like, you know, 182 pound guys. And I emailed their media relations person to ask about that. And I don't remember exactly what he said, but he wasn't really entertaining that question.

He wasn't all that interested in answering it. So I assume it's just like whose interest is it in to update it? Maybe it's just like, I don't know, you do it once and then you probably just don't even want to bother the players anymore. And they don't care what they're listed at. You'd think they might care if they put in a lot of time in the gym to go from 165 to 210 or something. You'd think they would care about wanting to be recognized for that, especially if they're now a power hitter

and you would want to be appreciated as a power hitter who's a big strapping guy instead of the 165 pound weakling you used to be so i don't know why they don't care but i guess they don't really want to weigh themselves no one else wants to update it and also it's probably partly just that it's hard to display like if you look on a website on baseball reference or something it's only has space for that one number otherwise what are you going to do are you going to have like something you click to see their listings over time? That'd be fantastic. It would be very helpful from an analytical standpoint, but I guess just from a user interface

perspective, it's just not something we've ever had the way that we have. Like, it'd be great if, you know, we have stat lines for every season and the stat lines will say, well, he was 27 years old that season. so why can't they also say he was 165 pounds that season and then this season he was 29 and he's 210 or you know that'd be nice yeah but it's never worked that way huh yeah that would be really fantastic as it is i don't know i i don't know that it should be anywhere i don't know that the teams should distribute these at all. Well, it's in some players' best interest not to have it out there, I guess. If there's some player who has struggled with their weight and has tried to keep it down,

perhaps unsuccessfully, then they might not want the accurate number. And if you're on the low end of the scale, I guess it's just like with heights where no one wants to be the shortest player. And so everyone adds an inch or two. So I don't know. Maybe people just don't want it out there. I guess the other thing is even if they weighed them, I mean, I presume that they do step on a scale at the beginning of spring training or at some point in spring training. But even that, that's good for one day.

That's good for one hour. training but even that it's that's good for one day that's good for one hour yeah and if you were to gain or lose six pounds over the course of the season then you'd be you'd have just as misleading a uh weight total on your weight uh whatever weight total weight on your bio and so i guess it's it's impossible it's an impossible thing to solve, which is probably fine. It just feels somewhat odd that I look at it every time. Like, I feel like I do know these players in part because I have, like, for instance, it is not exactly, but my dad and Will Clark, when I was growing up, were the same. They were the same. My dad was 6'1 and 180, and Will Clark at the time was 6'1 and 180. He's now listed at 6'2 and 190. He's been working on his height. But I thought like, to me, that was a ratio that because of

that, because I was seven years old, and Will Clark was my favorite player. And my dad was my favorite dad. I thought that that was like the ratio of like, what a what a healthy male adult is. And like for a long time, not a long not like into college or anything but for much of my childhood i would just i that would be like sort of my starting ratio and then i'd be like if this guy's 6'2 and and 205 i'd be like oh he's he's he's big he's bulky he's a slugger or if he was like 5'11 and 150 which happened at the time i'd go ah he's skinny or whatever and so the ratio i do still notice the ratio for these players like i probably i don't know i say that even though you guys not you guys jeff stumped me so bad on the uh on the like lance lynn once

185 or 285 game so maybe i don't notice it as much but i feel like with position players i i do internalize the information a little bit the ratio and i have sort of a sense but maybe i actually don't maybe it doesn't matter all right speaking of jeff speaking of a jeff era episode 1319 first of all jeff i don't know if you remember this, but Jeff's imitation of a dolphin trying to speak English is my favorite moment of the show so far, going backwards. Fantastic. Specifically that part. What would a dolphin sound like if a English-speaking human were doing an impression of a dolphin

doing an impression of a human? What would it sound like? And it was great. But you answered a question, which a human what would it sound like and it was great um but you answered a question which was what would baseball be like if the runner could choose whether to make first base down the third baseline or down the first baseline you remember this one and it was an interesting discussion about like whether batters would have a better babbitt on grounders and how often whether they would get confused and whether it would be confusing for the defense and all those things

but a topic that wasn't really discussed much which i would like to talk about is the effect on left-handers in baseball i've always found it very odd that baseball is asymmetrical that even though the field is symmetrical given the way that the bases are not run like it's not you don't run out the second and run back like in kickball you have to go clockwise and so the field sort of tilts as a ball is put in play and because of that of course left-handed players are in that in one respect at a severe disadvantage if you are a left-handed thrower if you are raised to be a left-handed thrower, you can never be a third baseman, a shortstop, or a second baseman,

no matter how good you are at fielding ground balls. It's never going to happen. And that is, in one sense, a real huge disadvantage for a ballplayer coming up. Because you have to think like a lot of guys. For instance, Eric Ibar, if he'd been left-handed, does he have a career? I don't know.

Does he? I'm not sure. And there's tons of those guys. Like lots of infielders are valuable because they can play the infield. And if they threw left-handed, they would be deemed to not be able to play the infield. And yet on the other hand, baseball is like wildly advantageous for left left handers as well because they get the platoon advantage so often. Also, they are closer to first base when they bat. But I think mostly it's because they have the platoon advantage so often. And so if you look at the great hitters throughout history, for instance, they're disproportionately left handed compared to the population at large. If you look at pitchers as well, because the platoon advantage that left handed pitchers get seems to be larger or valued in some way. The percentage of pitchers in the majors is wildly disproportionate to the percentage of left handed people in the

population. And so in a way, what's interesting about that is that they didn't really know, as I understand it, early baseball did not know that there was a platoon advantage there was never intended to be a platoon advantage that wasn't really discovered until like the 19 teens and maybe it was known before that but certainly not in like the 1850s they did not know that lefties were gonna have an advantage against lefties and right and vice versa and so by accident they created this sport which is almost the only game i can think of where you go counterclockwise instead of clockwise. Like when you're playing cards, you always go clockwise. When you play Monopoly, you go clockwise.

Clockwise is the way that action moves in gameplay, generally speaking. It's the default. But they decided to make baseball counterintuitively counterclockwise. In doing so, they did something to balance this tremendous imbalance that they didn't even know would have existed in favor of left-handers. But as it is, they then created this, instead of basically balancing that imbalance in some way, they just created a new imbalance that goes the other way. So lefties have a huge advantage in one respect and a huge disadvantage in another respect. Unrelated respect.

Okay. So we're there. We're all together there. All right. So if you were to do this, then you would take away the righties advantage in positional flexibility, I think, because you would now have to have your first and second baseman be able to play, you know, more or less like they would have to be left-handed. The second baseman would probably have to be left-handed instead of right-handed maybe so that he could make that

harder throw to third base a lot. And there would be an expectation that those players would be good fielders. And so what I think would happen is that instead of having left-handed players get funneled into pitching from an early age because they can't play shortstop, like if Ibar was left-handed, by the way, he probably would have been a pitcher. That's a thing that I forgot to... Eric Ibar probably would have become a pitcher. He would have been... He'd be a reliever.

He would have had like a lesser career, but that's what he would have done because he would have had the arm for it and he would have been left-handed and theyver he would have had like a lesser career but that's what he would have done because he would have had the arm for it and he would have been left-handed and they would have said well you can't play shortstop so you're going to be a pitcher now or a center fielder so what was i saying lots of left-handed pitchers would now be playing second base and first base because those would now be defensively demanding positions, right? Because of that, there would be fewer left-handed pitchers, fewer qualified left-handed pitchers. So left-handed batters would get the platoon advantage even more.

Instead of facing like 30% or 40% lefties, they maybe would only face like 20% lefties, and they'd be a slightly lower quality. Meanwhile, righties, right-handed batterss would face right-handed pitching even more. And so the platoon advantage would get even wilder. And I think that what you would have is a game that left-handed, like a very small percentage of the population, the left-handed population would just completely dominate. Like the war of a left-handed player would just be presumed to be like four higher than a right-handed player of the same general baseball quality.

Okay. So that would really destabilize things more than we had considered. Yeah. So don't do it, I don't think. Okay. I think that's it. Okay. I figured I would mention there was sort of an Effectively Wild-esque post-game quote.

I don't know if this is something, well, I'll read it. This was Ramon Laureano, who hit a home run off of Rangers pitcher Adrian Sampson. And he was asked if he enjoyed the home run. And he said, to be honest, I don't enjoy anything. It just kind of happens and that's it. Which I don't know if that's something to laugh at or like whether we should check in on Ramon Laureano and make sure that he's okay or what, but this just seems like the kind of post-game quote that we should recognize on the show because it's not normally what you hear,

where usually you hear the, oh, sure, yeah, it's a good feeling to be able to help the team or something, and then Ramon Laureano says, I don't enjoy anything. It just kind of happens and that's it, which is maybe a healthy perspective to have on things or maybe it sounds like it could be a symptom of depression or something. But let's hope that's not the case in Ramon Laureano's case, but not the usual postgame quote.

Okay. It's too bad that there's not more room for follow-up on on things like this right yeah i don't know if he's just talking about in a baseball sense only is it does he just mean like baseball accomplishments whatever they all blend together and you play a new game the next day and you don't get too high or too low about anything or does he literally mean like he does not feel joy about anything in life? I hope that's not the case. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I necessarily hear it as he doesn't feel.

Look, I don't know. Is this the right way to say this? I have recently noticed that I no longer feel emotions. I mostly feel anticipation and anxiety. Those are like my positive emotion is I'm looking forward to something and my negative emotion is I'm anxious. And I don't feel a lot of other emotions the way that I used to. Like if I'm eating a really good meal, like I enjoy the really good meal. I definitely enjoy it. I enjoy like physical satisfaction of all sorts. Like I enjoy caffeine and I enjoy taking a nap and I enjoy like cool breeze on a hot

day. But like I don't feel an emotion about that thing. And I just think that's like part of being an adult and having a lot going on in your life. Yeah, right. So when he says he does it, he said he didn't enjoy it right okay so then maybe that's a little different but i just assume that like he's saying like i don't know i don't know like i don't really know how to process that lately i've been having trouble responding to questions like how did a thing go and and i i don't know i don't i don't know i

don't really process these things anymore it just it did did go. And now it's in the past. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think the postgame sideline interview would be a good format for you. I don't think you'd excel in that area. I would really like to see Ramon Laureano's response so that I understood it better. loriano's response is that i understood it better yeah i i saw it on twitter and i did not hear it i don't know what the intonation was and i don't know if this was captured on video but maybe that changes how you receive it there's a youtube video that says ramon loriano doesn't enjoy anything okay so that's probably it here i'm going to send it to you we can see it all right see if it's worth it for everyone maybe enjoy this one a little bit more than the other ones i'm gonna be honest i gotta get this clear like i don't enjoy anything like you just kind of that's it like it happens that's it and

i just keep moving forward i'm trying to win a game every day and that's it all right i have watched it you have watched it yeah so to, it sort of sounds like he means baseball wise. Like he almost did say like, you know, it happens and then you move on because you've got another game the next day. It sounds like he's saying to me like he just doesn't get too high about anything that happens on the field because it's one of hundreds or thousands of games he's going to play. And one highlight is a lot like the last and the next yeah it's hard to know because there is that moment where you can see he's got a little glint in his eye like he knows he's going to land something right here he goes right i gotta be honest and he kind of cracks his lip a little he says i don't really enjoy anything and it uh so

that gives it the tone of like here i'm'm going to, I'm going to do this sort of, I'm going to give you a little bit of a dark answer that you're not expecting. Um, the words, I agree. The words themselves sound like he's just saying like, I'm, I'm focused on getting through the season. I don't take the time right now to like dwell on anything. Just like if something bad had happened, I'm not going to let it get me down. I'm going to be the same.

I'm going to have the same, you know, smile on my face and the same mood in the clubhouse, regardless of whether I go, you know, four for four or over four, that kind of that kind of thing. But I don't know. I mean, he's he's got he's got good delivery here. I do think that there's a part of this that goes a little deeper than that and that I admire and that it does not come across as in any way tortured. Like you do not get the feeling that like someone needs to give him a hug other than just like i mean a lot we could all yeah use a hug it's pretty deadpan though aside from that

little that twinkle at the beginning it's not like he's smiling as he's saying the whole thing no but deadpan is just right deadpan implies that it implies that he is not smiling however the intention is to be funny. You're not deadpan when you're just not funny. The guy at the DMV is not deadpan. He's at the DMV. So I like this quote. Yeah, it's kind of a John Jaso-esque philosophical quote. So I like it.

I don't know why. See, he tricked me into revealing too much about my emotions, though. It's good to know. All right. Tim says, what do you consider a come-from-behind victory? If the home team trails 1-0 going into the bottom of the first and wins, is that one? If the home team loses a lead in the top of the ninth and then comes back in the bottom of the ninth is that one my very unscientific method is you can only call it a come from behind win if you are trailing by more than five at any point or the number of runs trailing equals the number of outs left oh wow thoughts that's pretty scientific actually it's scientific but it's a high bar. Yeah. So did he, you have the email in front of you.

Is there a distinction, do you think, between a comeback victory and a come from behind victory? He does not make one here. Do you have a distinction? I guess a comeback sounds to me more exciting. exciting the the bar for excitement or improbability seems higher than a come from behind which technically yeah any deficit could be come from behind i think right i mean technically so so would come back yeah but not as much i agree it feels like come from behind feels a little bit more sterile like you could just be describing like the leaderboard for come from behind victories in a way that come back like you've chosen a slightly more dramatic word. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, if I were going to, I mean, if I were describing a game as a comeback or come from behind even, I guess I would have some sort of bar in order to justify saying that. If I were trying to convey that a certain team had had a lot of come from behind victories over the course of a season or over the course of some number of games, then I would count it even if it were a cheapie come from behind, even if it were like going down one nothing in the first or something, which you could argue that's not even behind because you haven't had a chance to bat yet. So maybe you're not even technically behind, but you are, I guess. Your win expectancy has decreased if you're down 1-0 after the top of the first.

So I think I would say that this team has set a record for come-from-behind victories or something. I would count that in that if I were trying to make a fun fact about it. But if I were writing a game recap or something, I would not describe that as a come from behind win. If it were just a one nothing, it would have to be some higher bar that the team cleared. Yeah, I, in the last few years, come from behind victories has been cited more often for team stats. You'll hear how many come from behind victories a team has and where that ranks oftentimes. And I have also cited those stats when it suits the purpose of an article. But I agree that when you're wrapping, you know, a three run deficit in the ninth into

the same bundle as a one run deficit in the bottom of the first, it does not feel like you're capturing a dynamic that is all that useful to know about a team. a dynamic that is all that useful to know about a team so if i were to create a bar for what the comeback has to be in order to be flagged as a comeback i would say any any comeback in the final three innings to me counts because now you've got teams are teams are throwing their their their closer sequence at you they're close they're they're in the end game state right they've pulled their starter they've got their three guys for you maybe four if they've got a loogie mixed in there and they are going to do what they planned to do just to finish this off and so if you thwart that to me even if it's only a one run plus the drama in that like you feel a real sense of urgency even in the seventh inning

i would say certainly in the ninth inning but i would say even in the seventh inning you feel a real sense of urgency nothing like you're running out of time and if you can take the lead if you can erase that deficit and even take the lead well now they're running out of time it's like a big turnaround so seventh on and then i think something like number of innings remaining divided by two round up. So sixth inning, two run deficit, fifth or fourth inning, three run deficit, second or third inning, four run deficit, first inning, five run deficit. Although it feels like a four run deficit, even in the first.

If you can come back from four runs down in the first i mean you really feel like a loser when you're down four in the first and it does show some resilience if you come from behind and you don't let yourself get taken out of the game so maybe i would make an exception for the first inning just say four runs yeah all right those sound good I don't have a specific bar in mind, but you could use win expectancy. Right. So what off the top of your head, what win expectancy would you be thinking? 30%? See, I think I would go, I think I would go 20. 30 is like, I think if you go down to nothing in the first that you're down to 30. I think if you go down to nothing in the first that you're down to 30.

So I think 20 and yeah, I mean what you come from behind one out of five times and that makes it a comeback. That seems, that seems like a, just a fair, easily intuitive definition. If, if you,

if it's a deficit that you come from behind fewer than one in five times and you do it, then, then you something. Okay. All right. Question from Ken Hui, Patreon supporter. one in five times and you do it, then you need something. Okay. All right. Question from Ken Hui, Patreon supporter.

I was just at a Dodgers-Phillies game and realized folks will never be fully satisfied with Bryce Harper because what they thought they would be getting is this year's Cody Bellinger for the next 10 years. That got me thinking, could the worst thing that happens in Harper's career turn out to be his performance in 2015? Monetarily, it was great for him because that season helped to make him a $300 million man and reinforced falsely in many minds that he is Mike Trout's equal, but it also means Phillies fans will likely believe over time that he underperformed if he doesn't come close again to his 2015 season. In other words, is it better for a player who everyone

touted as an inner circle hall of famer if he never met those expectations in any season and everyone realized they were wrong and he just became a great player who never quite reached the pinnacle? Or is it still better for a player to reach the mountaintop in one season and never climb it again, leaving everyone to wonder why he couldn't repeat his greatness? Well, they're different people with different goals, different priorities, I'm sure. But who would you rather beat, Bryce Harper or Steven Strasburg? Well, Meg and I were just talking the other day about how we underrate Strasburg. Exactly.

He's been so good and yet he doesn't get the hype for it. Right, because he never had a 10-war season. He never had the season that Bryce Harper did. And so it has always felt a little underwhelming, fairly or unfairly, just like it feels a little disappointing that Bryce Harper will never have another 10 war season, fairly or unfairly. But I think you'd rather be Harper, right? I mean, people have a, people, people miss the greatness of both of them in different ways, obviously.

And people miss the greatness of both of them in different ways, obviously. But Harper, I mean, Harper is more, I would say his talent is more fully actualized in a way that Strasburg's is not because you saw him put it together. You don't ever have to say like, oh, if only he could have put it all together for a full year or if only he could have been healthy for a full year or if only he could have reached his peak. He did it. We saw it. We loved it. We'll never never forget it i think he's i mean i don't know he's probably he's also i would say more likely to make the hall of fame for it than strasburg is he's it's hard to compare these obviously it's hard to compare because pitchers are different than hitters and strasburg was drafted out of college and all that but harper's

probably gonna make a lot more in his career than strasburg is i'm guessing but again that's apples and oranges so and i don't know you you you finish your career and there's a lot of ways to judge it depending on how good you were and how good you expect it to be but seeing bold inc seeing an mvp you know like for that year you were the best in the world and i think that like no matter what happens what you do is temporary if you are the greatest player if you're mike trout and you're the greatest player in history well only for while you're playing eventually it's going to end and you're someone else will become you know the best player in baseball it won't be you anymore and people will will have an absence of you in their life. And obviously you'd like to extend that window as long as possible, but to do it even for a year is it

accomplishes something. And it's in a broad universal scheme. It's no less ephemeral than everything else that we see on the field. So who cares if it was only for one year, he did it. He was Mike Trout for a year. He was, He was probably better than Mike Trout for a year. By some wars, he was better than Mike Trout for a year. And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, his WRC plus that year is still better than anything Mike Trout has ever done. Yeah, that was the best post-Bonds offensive season, right?

And still is, I think, maybe. Yeah. So yeah, if Harper were someone else, if it were a player, I'm trying to think of a good example, but one of those players from throughout history who had just an unrepresentative rookie year, let's say, and came up and was a phenom right away and then never recaptured that. And maybe he wasn't a highly touted prospect and he wasn't someone who people expected that kind of performance from. But because he came up and made that first impression, that was the whole story of his career. And the rest of his career was why can't he be that guy he was that first year in his career?

Why did he never get back to that point? I could see that being a burden where even if it leads to you being remembered in a way that you wouldn't be otherwise, you're just remembered for having been good that one time and then never being able to be that good again. So that might be onerous to have that around your neck, I guess. But if you're Bryce Harper, who was on Sports Illustrated cover when he was 16 and was forecasted for greatness and to be a legendary player. For him, I think it is better to have fully fulfilled that promise at least once, even if he only did it for that one year and then we were somewhat disappointed that he never did it again. I think it justified the hype that we all had for Bryce Harper just because he did it that one time.

And maybe even that one season wasn't as impressive as we thought it was at the time. Like Jeff and Rob Arthur wrote articles about how he kind of got lucky that year and his performance was way better than you would have expected based on like his fly balls way outperformed what they should have based on how hard he hit them and the angle he hit them because that was the first year of StatCast so we had that data but I think even so just to have been the best player in baseball or at least his league for that one year in Harper's case that probably takes a load off more than it puts a load on whereas other players it might be the other way around that's a great way of phrasing it does it put a load on or does it take a load off and yeah if harper never had that season if he was if he just peaked at like four four-ish something win player this whole

time he wouldn't have gotten the big contract of of course, which would have been bad for him, I guess But also just in the way we perceive him, I think we would all be sitting around going, well, this is Bryce Harper He's just kind of a mediocre guy and that's all he ever was and all he ever will be and that's very disappointing Whereas now, I think it'll still be something of a disappointment if he never has a season like that again. But at least he did one time and it wasn't a barrage and it wasn't all hype with no basis. Yeah. So I was watching a Christian Jelic interview the other day and he was saying about his goals coming into this year. He said, I just wanted to prove it wasn't a one-time thing, prove it wasn't a fluke. And so that would see like no one i don't feel like there was a load on christian yellage no and i don't feel like even after the mvp year there

there probably was either but if you take his quote as being you know sincere and accurate then he felt it like he all of a sudden had to prove that that something that he had done wasn't a fluke. Whereas before that, he hadn't had to prove that. He was a perfectly good, nobody was, absolutely nobody was disappointed in Christian Jelic, right? He was a... Well, people kept saying he could be even better. He was already like, what, a five-win guy or something. Yeah, he was a...

But people kept looking at the ground balls and saying, you know... Well, by people, you mean like eight writers on the internet. Yeah. Like this was a popular like eight writers on the internet. Yeah. Like this was a popular thing to write about. Yes. Christian Jelic was outperforming the expectation of, you know, anybody, probably including himself when he started his professional career. He was a successful baseball player who didn't need to do anything except keep being himself.

And then he goes and he has the greatest season of all time. Not the greatest season of all time. not the greatest season of all time the greatest season his greatest season and again if you take this quote face value that put a load on him i'm sure that he i'm sure that he was fine with that with that load and that in fact he i'm using this more to give a suggestion of a point but if you so like with harper the load i think we would agree was already on yes right so he had to take the load off and i would say that with strasburg the the feeling of disappointment that you and meg talked about is a representation of the load was already on when he got drafted it was already there was already the load and maybe he maybe that doesn't need us uh you know a full nine war cy young season to be resolved i mean i'm looking

at his career right now and maybe it could have happened after 2017 when he was he was the the the best fifth in the national league he finished third third in Cy Young voting. And as you recall, like in the second half, it looked like, well, that's it. He found it. He is the best pitcher in baseball right now. And he might be going forward. So we did see it for a half a season from Strasburg. Or maybe it's this year when he's going to, I don't know, he's leading the league in war, not war, in wins.

And he's a Cy Young contender. And maybe this will happen. But so are there, I'm trying to think to think though if there are any players for whom it really puts more of a load on and you suggested the rookie who like maybe the Shane Spencer who's who doesn't really have necessarily that talent but on the other hand, do you think Shane Spencer regrets those few months? Do you think Kevin Moss regrets those few months? Is Gary Sanchez maybe an example where he is really good and he is going to have a long career, but that incredibleness of his first few months maybe set the bar too high?

So like, if you're not good if you're not actually that good then the flukish run is great because it's all gravy and you otherwise you wouldn't got it and if you are really great then the load's already on you but if you're like just a good major leaguer who who starts with something like gary sanchez started with uh maybe that puts too much of a load on you yeah that's true because people will probably see him as a disappointment even though he is really excellent so yeah okay so so like you got that you got maybe gordon beckham's rookie year although again do you think gordon beckham would rather have a career defined by all basically, you know, mediocrity and or failure?

Or would he rather have a career that's defined by a lot of mediocrity, some failure, but also a really great rookie season that gave us unrealistic expectations of what he was going to do right away? And maybe the same for Brett Laurie. Do you think that he would rather have that career with the really incredible start, even though then it got him traded for Josh Donaldson and traded a lot and people like a lot of scrutiny on his, you know, on the way that he he did everything after that? Is Brett Laurie an example? I'd get tired of hearing about it. If I were in those players position, it's the same as an artist who had a successful album or directed a successful movie or something, and then everything you do after that gets compared to that one thing, and people will say it's not as good as that one thing. And you're probably still glad that you did that one thing that people liked, but at a certain

point, maybe it affects the perception of everything else you do. So that would probably bother me. I don't know. I guess I'd rather have a success than no successes, but I'd probably also eventually come to resent that one successful thing if I weren't able to replicate it and if that's all anyone ever talked about. I don't know if you would. I don't know if you would ever resent your successes. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, if the success that you had, like let's say that you're a, you know,

like a math rock band, and then you decide one day to do like a novelty bubblegum pop song and it becomes a number one smash. And then your shows are now radically different because everybody expects you to play the hit four times and they don't care about your math rock. In that case, your success is you might resent it because it is not actually a thing you value. You, you tossed it off as a joke, as a novelty, maybe even as an act of protest or satire. And suddenly it comes to define you. But like

Brett Laurie or Gordon Beckham or anybody else, Bryce Harper, the things that they were successful at was the thing that they were trying to do all along. And they did it. Like they proved that they could do it. They certainly did it more with that success than they would have done if they hadn't had that success. I mean, one is better than zero. And so there's not, I don't really feel like there's any way that you can say that any success makes it harder or less satisfying. It makes your career less satisfying. Now, maybe this question, the email question goes a little deeper than that and suggests that like Bryce Harper and others like that the quality of life that you get from your fans liking you is also something that is valuable

and so if the thinking is that fans won't like you because you have that success and never live up to it now that okay i could see that is a trickier thing i don't think that well that is probably true of bryce harper or could be true could be true of Bryce Harper over the course of his contract. But I think more because of the contract than the one year of success. Yeah. I mean, right now he has 117 WRC plus and he's been worth two wins or something. So if he were just a three win player for the Phillies in his prime, that would be disappointing, and they would be upset about that, and I don't think he would be warmly embraced

there. But not so much, I guess, because people would be looking back at 2015. But I guess he wouldn't have been signed to the contract that he was signed to if he had never shown that 2015 ability. So the Phillies themselves must have had that in their heads when they signed him. Hey, he's capable of this. Maybe he can be capable of it for us. Like if he had just been signed as someone who had previously peaked, well, what, 2017, he had a 155 WRC plus and he missed some time with injuries, but he was still like a five win player. If that was his previous peak, then maybe it wouldn't affect things that much.

I don't know. Maybe he wouldn't have gotten that big deal, but Phillies fans would still be thinking, why isn't he the five win guy? Why is he the three win guy? Why is he have a 117 WRC plus instead of a 155 WRC plus? So maybe it's not because he had that otherworldly peak. It's just because he's seen as a star and he's not really playing like a star. And that's that. If this is all he does for them, and I assume he'll probably be better at some point during the life of this contract, but if this is all he does for them, then I think he will be viewed as

a bust or overpaid or they won't like him. They won't feel like they got their money's worth or that the team did. And that would make his very, very long stay there less pleasant, I would think, than if they had signed him to be a two to three win player. And that's what he was. Of course, he wouldn't have gotten the contract he did if that had been the case. I just learned of a new muscle. What's that? Max Scherzer is on the injured list with a mild rhomboid strain. Oh, yeah. I've heard of that one. I've never heard of a rhomboid as a muscle. Yeah. I don't know if that describes the shape of it. It does. It does. It is a rhomboid shape. It's like a back muscle, right?

Yeah, it's like in the back shoulder. Shoulder-ish. Yeah. Okay. All right. All right. Stat blast? Sure.

They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. A quick one. So when runners are on first base or on first and second or on first, second and third, and there are two outs and the count is full, they get to run on the pitch. Then they're obviously not trying to steal. They're getting a running start because they can. If the batter strikes out, then it doesn't matter. If the batter walks and it doesn't matter. And if

the batter puts the ball in play, then they've got a couple of extra steps on the defense. And so I wondered how much this matters. And so I looked at all of the instances in which a runner was on first or a runner was on runners were on first and second or runners were on first, second and third with two outs in, I believe, 2015 to 2017. And then I looked at all the same states, but with a sorry, 2016 to 2018, all the same states, but with a three, two count and two outs. to 2018, all the same states, but with a three, two count and two outs. And I looked at how many runs scored in those plate appearances. Well, okay. So this is a little tricky because a three,

two count changes the batter's offensive expectation. So maybe he's more likely to get a hit or maybe he's more likely to get a double, or maybe he's more likely to get an out. And so I looked only at how many runs scored per hit or batter reaching on the air minus home runs. And then the runs total, I did all the runs scored minus all the runs that scored on home runs, which is pretty easy math to do because you know how many runners there are in each state and you know how many runs score on a home run in that state. how many runners there are in each state and you know how many runs score on a home run in that state so what i found is that when a runner is on first and there are two outs and it is a non-3-2 count and the batter gets a hit or reaches on an air on average he scores 15 of the time mostly on doubles and triples probably almost entirely on doubles and triples so 15 of the time

got it when he is in the same state runner on first two outs three two count and the batter gets a hit or reaches on an air that's not a home run he scores 24 of the time pretty big difference yeah it's nine percentage points more it's almost it's almost twice as often so that's interesting so then with runners in first and second when there's a hit or a reach on an air on average 0.98 runs score 0.98 runs about one run in the same state but with a 3-2 count it's 1.19 runs and so now we've got uh more runs there too and then with the bases loaded and any count other than 3-2 and two outs 1.98 runs score per hit or reach on air with a 3-2 count 2.21 hits a 2.21 runs score so uh basically what looks like it happens is that you're about 10 percentage points more likely to score from first base. And you're about 10 percentage points more likely to score

from second base. And you're not any more likely to score from third base, which makes a lot of sense. And so, so those two things combined. So if there's runners on first and second, or with the bases loaded, then you have, you get both of those benefits and you score about 0.2 runs more per hit or reach on an air. So it's a pretty big deal. Okay. And I don't know. I don't know when they discovered this. I don't know when some smart base coach or runner realized, oh, hey, there's no loss

for me here. But my guess is that it was not immediate. My guess is that baseball was played for maybe even a couple of decades before someone realized that it was all upside to running and no possible downside. And probably when they started doing it, some people probably complained. Some people probably liked it and had talked about it on a podcast. Some people probably complained that it wasn't sporting or it couldn't possibly matter or it looked funny or it was,

um, I don't know. The game was, was, there was too much running already. Uh, but they just persisted. And,

uh, and now we have a totally taken for granted strategy that hardly ever gets thought about or spoken about, but does change outcomes. Yeah. Significantly. Not that significantly. In fact, I, I, ever gets thought about or spoken about but does change outcomes yeah significantly not that significantly in fact i i it's very big if you just do the math on how often this happens how often three two two out runner on first situations happen how often from there there is a hit that is not a reach on an air and then further note that there's other batters coming up after you and so

they might have driven in those runs as well and then you look at you consider the fact that most games are not decided by one run and most playoff spots are not decided by one game it's very unlikely in fact that this would uh would be the thing that would get you into the playoffs but it is a real tangible effect and i would bet that throughout history there have been oh i don't know if i had to guess i'd guess that there have been 95 games decided by this. Okay. Well, I can't really check that, but I'll take your word for it. All right.

So I sort of have a stat plus two. This is inspired by a question from Carl, who says, Josh Reddick recently noted on social media that after playing at Bush Field recently, he has now played in every ballpark in the majors. I'm sure this is pretty common, but it got me wondering what player in MLB history played in the most ballparks in their career. I imagine it would have to be someone who had a long career that spanned an era that saw a lot of new ballparks. I thought maybe Cal Ripken, Ricky Henderson, or Barry Bonds might be the most likely answers. All right. Are you going to give me a chance to guess? Sure.

All right. Well, I do not like the Cal Ripken offer. I mean, that one league, most of his career predated interleague play. And in fact, most of his career was with 26 teams as it was. Although I think he did. Did he get, did he reach, he might have reached 30 team. Yeah, he played in 98, right? Or he played into the 2000s actually. So yeah. Yeah.

Okay. And Bonds and Henderson have, Henderson played in both leagues, but only fairly briefly in the National League. And I don't know. I feel like if a large part, you don't, you're not guaranteed that, like for instance, the Giants just hosted the Yankees for the first time since I think like 2001

or something like that. So you're not guaranteed to, even if you play a long career in the interleague era, you're not guaranteed to get like every, you know, it's not every three years, it's not every six years on the dot. And so if most of your career or a large part of your career predates interleague, like every you know it's not every three years not every six years on the on the dot and so uh if most of your career or a large part of your career predates interleague then i feel like

that's a real disadvantage so i am going to say that i like as an answer adrian beltre but i'm not i'm not done okay man each row if you count it as ballparks in Japan. Oh, yeah. Runaway. So, yeah, I'll go with Adrian Beltre. Okay. So Dan Hirsch of Baseball Reference sent me a list of every player to have played in 40 ballparks. And it turns out that there are 279 players who have appeared in 40 big league parks. So I will tell you that it is not Adrian Beltre, but that's not a bad answer.

He played in 44 parks. And as for Carl's guesses, Barry Bonds played in 40 parks. Ricky Henderson played in 46 parks. And Cal Ripken did not make the list. So yeah, he was not that great a guest because of his one team career. But I don't know if I should,

should I just give you the all-time record holder? I would not have guessed. Give me his career spanning years. 88 to 2009. Greg Maddox. No, let's see where. 88 to 2009. No, Roberto Alomar.

No. Maddox is actually not on the list, and I would guess. I mean, maybe that's Alomar played in 42 parks. Maddox... Omar Vizquel. Let's see. No, but Vizquel must be on here, right? Yeah, Vizquel 47 parks, so that is very close. So I think pitchers are, just looking at the top of this list it's not that pitcher heavy for the most part because you know you figure pitchers you're only pitching

every five games if you're a starter and so maybe you just missed a series entirely where you could have added a new ballpark to your list so you you're only playing 30, 35 games a year. So Vizquel is at 47, and then you do get—I guess you get relievers, like long-lived relievers who played in a lot of parks. So right tied with Vizquel—well, Kenny Loftin's tied with Vizquel, and then also Rudy Sienes, the legendary Rudy Sienes. So then I will give you the top five. We've got Chris Gomez with 48 ballparks, Sammy Sosa with 48 ballparks, Steve Finley, 49 ballparks, Jamie Moyer. That's probably, if you were going to guess a pitcher, that'd probably be many people's first guess because he lasted forever. So Jamie Moyer, 50 ballparks. Gary Sheffield, 51 ballparks.

I almost, oh, I hate myself, Ben. I almost replied to this email with, I bet it's Gary Sheffield. Really? I am not kidding. Oh, I cannot believe I blew this. Yeah, because 22-year career and almost evenly split between leagues.

13 years in the NL, nine in the AL. And I think this was the sweet spot for doing this. I mean, A, you have to have played in an era with a lot of teams, but also you want to have spanned the ballpark boom that followed Camden Yards and the whole 90s and early 2000s. So that was, I think, the time to really rack up a lot of ballparks, so 51 ballparks for Gary Sheffield. That's great. Incredible.

Not only did I not say Gary Sheffield, but then even more regrettable is I claimed to have known a thing that I was given the option of proving and failed to do. Nothing is weaker than that. Nothing that I could do on this show is weaker than that. I am sorry. So Ichiro played in 42 MLB parks. So even though he didn't join

until he was, what, 27, he still racked up a lot of parks. The only other active players, Ichiro not really active, the only other active players on this list are Miguel Cabrera at 41 and Albert Pujols at 40. And otherwise, obviously, it know harder if you're an active player you're younger for the most part and so most guys haven't had the chance to cross off this many spots on their baseball ballpark bingo card but also i think we're probably past the point of peak ballpark turnover so yeah that's probably part of it, too. So, I think you really, the first player, the earliest debut on this list of guys who got at least 40 ballparks is Mike Morgan, who debuted lasted forever, 79. And then it's not until like 82 that the next guy debuted. So I think that was the sweet spot to debut in the 80s and last forever and you span all the new ballparks. So this may be a record that won't be broken. I kind of hope it won't be broken,

right? Because I like having some consistency in ballparks from year to year. So it's probably for the best that we got rid of all those cookie cutter parks and replace them with retro parks and that whole movement happened. And maybe there will be a corresponding movement like 30 years after that first wave, then maybe all those parks will get replaced again I don't know So it could happen that you have another opportunity To do this but I think for now Gary Sheffield's record is probably safe Hmm yeah Alright good question Alright thanks to Dan for that Alright last question And this is sort of

The same question from two people So Daniel says I'm watching the Mets game tonight, as I do pretty much every night. And for the third time this season, the home plate umpire had to exit due to being hit by a foul ball. The part that seemed interesting to me is that there isn't a replacement umpire to take the place of the injured umpire, leaving the remainder of the game in the hands of a three-man crew. My question is, do you think having a replacement umpire available would be feasible or not, considering how many games there are in a given night? And then Nathan in St. Paul is another Mets watcher who said the same thing about a different game in the Mets-D-backs game on Friday, May 31st. Carlos Gomez hit a double down the left field line to drive in what was

the winning run. Jim Wolfe was forced to leave the game earlier, which meant that Rob Drake had to hustle out from behind the plate to call the ball hit by Gomez fair or foul. While called fair, the Mets TV replays were inconclusive, and it didn't look like Drake had time to get a great angle to make the call. So should umpire crews consist of five umpires who rotate so that one ump is off each night? When an umpire didn't show up in my little league, my dad would do it. So I'm sure he'd be available yeah i the thing that's uh appealing about this i don't know how i imagine that it's kind of a physically grueling job anyway so the idea of just having a rotating not for the injury not for any

of the you know people having to leave because they got hurt reasons but just it seems like a five-man cruise a good idea yeah because i mean it's a lot that's seven days a week right for a lot of times yeah or travel day when you're not working a game so yeah yeah so um boy boy that seems like a tough job yeah yeah it's kind of strange that like we've decided that there is an optimal number of umpires and this is what it is and that you're just going to play shorthanded like that. That doesn't happen in baseball. If a player gets hurt, you don't just play without a left fielder or something. I mean, you have someone on the bench to be in that spot. And so it's kind of weird that if major league games are as important as they are and lots of money is at stake and people's happiness is at stake and we've decided that you're going to have this many umpires and yet if one of them gets hurt, we'll just keep playing and it'll be suboptimal and we'll be less likely to get the right call, but everyone's comfortable enough with that to keep going.

Like baseball is a big business. It's a massive industry with billions of dollars being made. You'd think there would be some redundancy built in for umpires. Yeah, I like it when an umpire has to leave for whatever reason. Like I don't like the cause of them leaving, generally speaking. But I actually sort of like it when there's three umps. I i don't it's like a moment where it's like things are different now and i've never i don't know i i don't really remember any times where i thought that some umpiring travesty happened because of it so i don't feel that there's much much need to have

a backup for those very rare instances and when i say i like it when it happens i i don't really like it like i don't tune into games seeing if this is the time that they're gonna go down to three or maybe even could we have two umpires that would be fun but uh what i mostly mean is like i don't consider it to be a particularly uh problematic situation uh they rotate you know there's not that many plays at third base and um and i've never i've never even been convinced that the third base umpire is is the best person to to call a lot of the fair foul calls that he has to do and also uh never mind check swings don't get me going on check swings so i don't feel like it's that important for that reason however i do like

the idea of having five man crews i look we very very very few people in the world are asked or i think even legally required to work seven days a week for six months in a row and baseball players it has been determined do it because they are such that they have to this is the only way that this schedule works. And there's such a limited number of baseball players that we decide that it's okay that they do it. But I don't feel like umpires need to do it. You could have five per crew and give them each a day off every five days, four days, five days, every five days. And that seems like a pretty fair outcome. Do you think that, and this is not my primary concern, but do you think that the replacement level of umps is such that if we expanded the umpiring pool by 25%, that it would make

a significant difference in the quality of umpiring? I think you'd be able to detect the difference, but I don't know if it would make a significant difference in how umpiring was perceived. People already think that umpires make lots of mistakes. So if you could compare a AAA umpire to a major league umpire over a full season, I think people would probably appreciate the major league umpire and the caliber of umpiring at that level a little bit more. Like if you could, or even if you could put like your weekend softball umpire up head to head with the big league guy, I think we would see like, oh yeah, this is a big leaguer. This is what that means for umpires.

That's how they're so much better. Although I think that what Jeff has shown that I think that the call-up or rookie umpires tend to be just as good if not better at calling strikes, maybe because they are more sensitive to the current emphasis on calling or the rulebook zone as it's supposed to be called. And so they're actually closer to that than the older veteran umpires who kind of have their own idiosyncratic ways of calling balls and strikes. umpires who kind of have their own idiosyncratic ways of calling balls and strikes. So maybe in that sense, it wouldn't actually lead to a diminishment in the quality. But I think you could tell like statistically if I were looking at the percentage of correct calls or overturned calls or something, but would it be disruptive on a day-to-day basis? Like we'd all be promoting umpires even more than we do? Eh, probably not. If you were to somehow start baseball from scratch right now, what do you think the umpiring setup would be?

And I have an answer, so if you want, I can go first while you think about it. Yeah, you can go. I'm thinking of like in the playoffs, you do have the larger crews and you do have them rotating so that one guy will go to the Chelsea, you know, the replay room and be the replay ump for a game, which is not exactly having the day off, but is physically less grueling at least. I'm imagining though, like you start from scratch. So there is no, there's no like expectation of how it's always been done or anything like that. You've invented this sport. It's wildly successful. You have to figure out what to do about refereeing because all sports

have to have refereeing unless it's ultimate Frisbee and the, or golf, golf has a guy. So I think you would have two umps. You'd have a, uh, basically a plate ump and you'd have a base ump. And then you'd have almost every play would be called by somebody on. Well, they would call the easy plays. And then there'd be someone in Chelsea or someone maybe just in the upper deck, actually, with access to all these camera replays. And he would be telling them all the calls they need to know. And there would be like maybe 15 calls a day that were determined by the umpire in the upper deck with cameras. And the two on the field would be kind of running around, a little bit more NBA style because they'd have to run to wherever the play in the field was,

or soccer style. And they would be, in a lot of ways, more just the conduit of the voice in the earphone. Yeah, that's probably true. I was going to say the umpire's union would like it if there were a backup ump and if umps got to rotate and obviously it would be an additional job for umpires on because the umpiring system was developed at a time when there was no replay and there was no easy way to gauge the accuracy of these calls. And now that there is, we stick with the human umps because we've always had them, but they are probably replaceable, at least to some degree. Some of their jobs are replaceable and could be done even better by technology. So yeah, probably if you were starting from scratch, there'd be fewer of them on the field.

All right. That will do it for today. Thanks for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Following five listeners have already signed up to pledge some small monthly amount and help keep the podcast going and also get themselves some perks jeremy jokal smith thomas neil blank eric ensminger and andy wong thanks to all of you you can join our facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild sure to be busy over the next couple days as people break down trades and trade rumors you can rate review

and subscribe to effectively wild on on iTunes and other podcast platforms. You can contact me and Sam and Meg via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. You can buy my book. It's called The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players. If you like it, please leave a positive review on Amazon and Goodreads. It helps us out. Enjoy the deadline responsibly. We will be back to dissect all of the trades that are made and not made sometime in the middle of this week. Bear with us. We'll have writing to do, but we will talk to you soon. Just an empty world is all I have before me. before me I'd give anything

if you were with me now And I'd trade all of my tomorrows for just one yesterday I don't want to live

without you anyhow.