Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1421: A Game of Inches

Episode Date: August 24, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about beer and the mercy rule, a 12-minute game finish at Fenway, whether baseball players have high job satisfaction, compelling playoff races and especially lucky and unlucky contending teams, robot ump implications (including measuring player heights, determining the shape of the zone, and preserving receivers’ sense of self-worth), and […]

It's taken up all of my time just to keep it in line, it ain't right Cause I was fine on my own, tall and steady like a dial tone Couldn't believe me, I was happy, unhappy But now I'm all of this, I wish my heart were really made of stone And I can forget you you Like I really want to Hello and welcome to episode 1421 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you?

I am doing quite well. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you. Excellent. Good. On our most recent episode, Sam and I were talking about mercy rules. Yeah. And we agreed that they seemed like a viable idea. I don't know if I'm pro-mercy rule. I'm not sure we need a mercy rule. But we thought that no one would really miss those blowout innings,

and you would have very few comebacks prevented by a reasonable mercy rule. But as a few listeners have emailed in to say since that episode, there is a problem with the mercy rule, which is alcohol and selling alcohol. And I'm trying to figure out how to get around that. That is a very pesky problem because usually you have a cutoff for beer sales in the seventh inning. So if you had a mercy rule that said that the game ends after seven innings, if you're say 10 runs behind or something like that, then what do you do about the beer? Because you don't want a bunch of drunk people to be driving home that would that would be very bad yeah not at all outweigh the benefits of saving some time in a baseball game so how can you find a way around that that's a

very tough problem to solve i think it would be very funny if the thing that finally got us to commit to the infrastructure to have good public transit was this problem and clearly it won't but but yeah when i was asked about the mercy rule thing in my chat this week and one of the chatters brought up the the point that you and sam discussed of you know people pay money and they pay a lot of money for baseball games now and they might feel kind of of fussed and irritated if the game was cut short. And I found your guys' discussion of that compelling. But I think this presents a far more significant problem because on the one hand, teams, I imagine, would be somewhat irritated at the idea of a mercy rule. somewhat irritated at the idea of a mercy rule even though i imagine concessions drop off probably pretty precipitously as the game goes on you still are if you have a mercy rule even

setting aside the beer question like relinquishing voluntarily giving up two two innings potentially two full innings of and maybe longer of other concession sales so that seems like a thing that they would get fussy about. And you're not going to get them to stop selling beer earlier. And I think that you would have some people who just didn't go to baseball games if teams did that. Yeah. Could you do like maybe after the 5th, if it looks like it's going to be a blowout or something, then you just cut off the sales then? Like if you're close to the mercy rule, do you cut off the sales early, anticipating

that maybe that would happen? It wouldn't be perfect. And then you'd get some times where it wouldn't turn out to be a mercy rule, and then you'd have cut off beer sales. And I don't know. Then people would be in a really foul mood. Yeah. It's a tough one to get around.

Someone else pointed out that if you had a mercy rule, it might make some of these games more interesting. Like you'd be rooting against the mercy rule being triggered or something. So it would make like the bottom of the seventh or something more exciting because you'd be rooting for your team not necessarily to come back and win the game, but to come back enough to continue the game and catch up so that you're not 10 runs behind. So that might be kind of fun for a while. But yeah, the beer thing, it's a problem. Maybe we should bring back prohibition. That's the only thing I can think of. It made me think, your discussion with Sam made me think about how funny it is the way we think about time sometimes as a sunk cost. Like if you sit at a game and it goes to extras, well, I don't know if I'm a representative.

I might not be a representative baseball viewer. I mean, I know I'm not a representative baseball viewer in a lot of ways. So I might be off the mark here. But I've had the experience of going to extra innings games. I didn't know they were going to be that when I arrived, of course. And you get to a point where you're like, well, I just have to see this thing through. It doesn't matter how long it goes.

I just have to see it through because I've already committed three and a half hours of my life, and that'll have been for nothing. Even if the team I prefer, assuming you prefer a team, loses, we look at that and think that it will have undone all of that time we spent, even though we got a lot of enjoyment

potentially out of that time. And if it's a game that goes to extras, maybe a lot of enjoyment because it was tense and there was score changes and things were tied potentially. But when we are faced with just like a normal boring game, we're like, eh, maybe we'll get to the dinner reservation early.

So we just interact with this stuff in such a funny way because I think Sam is, and you maybe brought this up too like you guys are right like people after a while they're like yeah like this one's in the bag the mariners aren't coming back which is almost always the right answer these days like i can just you know i'll beat traffic i'll go have a beer that costs less money right that's the other thing is like people just often keep drinking after the game anyway but traffic another problem if everyone leaves at once. Right. So that isn't directly, none of that is directly related to the beer point, but it is sort of this funny, it is a funny thing.

What we think we've paid for matters, but only in particular circumstances. And then we sometimes get very loosey goosey with our time because we've already wasted so much of it. It's just a funny side of like the logic is so strange. But that is something that I think maybe I talked about with Jeff because there is a point in extra inning games where you start rooting for it not to end. Right. So you root for it to end up to a certain point. But then when it goes beyond that point, then you just want it to continue and be something historic or like it turns into a story at a certain point. It's like, oh, I went through this experience. I was there for the 19 inning game or whatever. And I stayed the whole time. And it's like a point of pride. And you can kind of dine out on that story for a while. Yep, I was there till the last pitch. And so that is very strange. Yeah, none of that solves the beer problem, though.

The beer problem. That's tough. And I think it's the sort of thing where, I mean, you just hope that people are making good choices, but we know that they often don't. Yeah. And so I don't think we can count on that. So it does present a sort of interesting public policy question.

I mean, I think that people generally could probably just stand to drink less at ballgames anyhow, because it's so expensive and, you know, it there are all these kids around you know and then these kids are like look at these drunk adults what an embarrassment maybe you can just secretly switch to non-alcoholic beer in the can you imagine the scandal when that was discovered though can you imagine twitter the day that people realize that you know there are stories about this all the time about like how people are convinced that the beer at sporting

events gets diluted and you're paying so much for it and the cups are small and people engage in optical illusions and other carnival trickery to to take your money and sell you less good beer. And in some ballparks, you know, those prices are outrageous considering the quality of the beer that you're getting. But, yeah, I don't know. I wonder if it would be noticeable. I don't know that I've ever had non-alcoholic beer, but I've seen that Freaks and Geeks episode where they all get drunk on non-alcoholic beer

because it's like placebo effect and theyeks episode where they all get drunk on non-alcoholic beer because it's like placebo effect and they just assume that they're getting drunk and they act drunk and feel drunk so if you did that at a ball game midway through especially after the people who will be buying those beers have probably already bought real beers in the early innings and so maybe they're already a little tipsy and yeah maybe you could get get away with it. I hope I have not told this story on the podcast before. And if I have, well, I can go back through our nifty new database and probably find it. But I have noticed and things may have changed at Yankee Stadium since I was a resident of New York. One of the things that I used to goof about at Yankee Stadium when I lived there with my friends from Seattle who were going to see a less good baseball team play the Yankees, namely the Seattle Mariners, is that, well, at least we had good beer at then Safeco.

Because you could get craft beer at Safeco. They have real good beer. And at Yankee Stadium, it's all Bud Light and Coors. And we will set aside how once you're in your 30s and it's a hot day, actually Bud Light's just fine, and we should all not be so snooty about it, but that's a different conversation. And then I noticed when I moved back to Seattle that when fans of the Yankees would come to, again, then Safeco, for the Yankees series,

some of whom no doubt were not from New York, but some of whom you could tell from their accents were native New Yorkers, they would just get hammered, just hammered, in a way that I hadn't seen even from denizens of the bleachers at Yankee Stadium. And I swear it's because they were used to drinking Bud Light. And then they got to Safeco, and there were these big big IPAs and they didn't know what they were in for. And then they probably didn't remember any of the series at all. So that, again, doesn't solve the problem of the mercy rule.

But I think it is important for people to have a little time to cool off. Although I don't, you know, I don't think that it necessarily, I don't know how much it does to return people to a state in which they're driving would not be impaired. You should probably, yeah, it's two innings. That might not be very long at all. So I think the real solution is that people should, when the opportunity presents itself, take the bus or light rail to ballparks, and then you don't have to worry about it in any state and you don't have to worry about traffic and everyone's safer on the road and things are good. Yeah. Well, speaking of short games and ballparks

that you don't have to drive to, should we talk about the 12-minute Red Sox Royals game? We should, but we shouldn't talk about it for very long because I'm writing about it. Oh, okay. Well, I'll look forward to that. It is my favorite baseball game that's ever been played. It's my favorite inning of baseball in the history of baseball.

Yeah. Ever at all. It's pretty cool. Yeah, for those who missed it, there was a suspended game from earlier this month that was resumed on Thursday between the Red Sox and the Royals. They were tied at four in the 10th inning and it ended very, very quickly. It ended in that inning in 12 minutes and that was that. And the Red Sox, I think what kids got in free to the game and adults had to pay five bucks and

the proceeds went to the Jimmy Fund. And so it was kind of this nice, weird game of baseball where no one was really making any money off of it, I guess, except for concessions. They sold a bunch of hot dogs. But other than that, it was just this very fun sort of lighthearted thing. Maybe not for the Royals who had to give up an off day and go to Boston to play this 12-minute game. And the Red Sox wanted to get it over with quickly too, I think, because it would have been an off day for them too. But yeah, this was- And didn't they have to fly to San Diego like immediately upon the conclusion of the game?

Yeah, so they wanted it over with as quickly as possible in 12 minutes. Yeah, I mean, if you, it's kind of, I wouldn't have known what to guess the attendance would be at a game like that. Because, of course, it can end very quickly. And going to a game, it's a whole production. And most people cannot just walk there. And you've got to either drive or take the T or take a bus or whatever. And Fenway is right in the middle of the city. So it's not quite like I don't know going to

Chavez Ravine or something but still not knowing how much entertainment you're getting I mean when you go to any baseball game you don't know how much entertainment you're getting but generally you're getting a set amount and maybe more than that whereas in this case you could have been getting 12

minutes and still 20,000 people showed up albeit for free or very low prices. But still, you got to leave the house and go outside and go to the ballpark and get to your seat. And it's sort of a hassle to do that, but they did. And yeah, it's a singular experience. I wonder how much thought the average attendee to that game put into timing their concession run. Right? Because, you know, if you're going to a game, I'm just like really reticent to talk about this at all because I'm grumble, grumble, grumble. If you're going to a game, you have a routine, you know, you have a rhythm and you have wiggle room. And you don't have to, and you know when in the game rhythm and you have wiggle room and you don't have to and you know when in the game you don't have wiggle room right you know not if it's a if it's a tied game in the ninth you know not to go to the bathroom you're just gonna be uncomfortable for an inning

so that you can see the action because it's important so you know you don't have wiggle room in that instance and you make decisions. We don't think about needing wiggle room at the beginning of a game. Some people are very diligent about being in their seat for first pitch. I prefer to be in my seat for first pitch. Again, I don't know how typical a baseball viewer I am in that regard. I imagine there are a fair number of people who want to do that, but it's not a big deal if you miss it, right? If it takes the hot dog guy an extra five minutes because, hey, the hot dogs are still cooking, whatever. You know, you miss a little bit of action. It's on the TV screen.

You're like, eh, whatever. I'm going to see several hours of baseball. But you had no wiggle room. So I really wonder how much time, like, did people, how early did they get there so that they could be in their seats were they cognizant of i guess like what did they expect the at the length of that game to be right because i suspect that it would have dictated your concession patterns or perhaps people were more diligent about like getting cash so that they could buy food from the folks who just walk around in the stands so they don't have to worry about it.

My favorite inning of baseball ever, ever in the whole world. I assume they didn't sell beer at this game. I don't know the answer to that because when I was reviewing the tape, as you know I did, I think they did sell, they sold stuff in cans. So maybe that wasn't beer or maybe i will expose uh someone who managed to dodge the the security at fenway in a way that is remarkable but i i don't know if they sold beer or not but i wonder if they did because there were people drinking stuff out of cans like you do with a beer. Well, that was weird and wonderful.

I guess I won't ask you to talk about it anymore because I don't want to steal your thunder. Look forward to the article. I'm so excited. It was one of those things where I got really busy yesterday doing other stuff and I had started writing it and then I kept working on it and then I was like, oh, I'm really tired and I went to bed. And then I had that moment of panic this morning where I was like, I have to check every website to see if this has already been written about in the way that I'm going to write about it. And no one did. I'm so excited.

No one else really writes about things quite the way they do usually. Yeah, except one time Sam found that beer guy. Yes, that's right. Sam is probably your leading competition for this article. Oh, terrible race that I'll never win. Well, this made you very happy, and it reminds me of a question that you got in your chat, not about the mercy rules, but about happiness, because I've been thinking about this. And someone asked you in

your chat whether you think baseball players on average have more fun at their jobs than non baseball players, again, on average. And so I've been thinking about this in the days since then, and just generally about whether players are happier than the typical person and whether we can decide. And you speculated that they are probably happier at their jobs or they enjoy their jobs more than most people do, which I think is reasonable. What's your reasoning? I think, well, one, it's just like, it's a really, it's a really cool job. You know, it is, if you are playing in the major leagues, even if you are on a minimum contract, it is a personally enriching job. It's a thing that they have, you know, a thing that they have wanted to do, presumably for a very long time in their lives.

And how I want to remind myself what I even said, what I even said in response to this. Hold on. I'm gonna, I'm gonna. I said the following. I'm just going to quote said in response to this. Hold on. I'm going to, I'm going to, I said the following. I'm just going to quote myself and then I might, and then I might disagree with myself because I don't want to do that too. I said, I think probably yes. I think all jobs have things that are not fun. I love my job very, very much.

And I have weeks where a beer on Friday evening is quite welcome. This is true. But the highs of getting to do a thing you've worked toward forever have to be pretty great. Now, I'm sure there's variation year to year. I don't imagine anyone on the Orioles is having as much fun as anyone on the Astros, but it's a pretty great job, even if it's a deeply weird job and a hard one. And this is the thing. It is a very strange job. And so I think the ways in which baseball players probably dislike their jobs are unlike any other, you know, it's like that Tolstoy quote. It's like they're unlike any other set of people disliking their jobs because their jobs being bad just requires things that the rest of us do not ever have to contemplate. But I think that it's a probably pretty great gig.

You get to be, you know, you get to be a steward of your city. You get to make good money playing a game, a hard game and one that is work. And I don't say that to denigrate the work that they're doing, because I think it's important for us to think about it that way. But it is a game. You might get to be on the cover of a magazine you know your mom at thanksgiving even though your mom says she is as proud of your brother who is a doctor and your sister who is a college professor she's really the most proud of you and uh that's pretty cool because you know fighting among siblings is an intense thing and uh and then when you're done, you are a relatively young person who has a lot of money and the rest of your life to do other stuff. So I think that, uh, I think that it's pretty great, even though I'm sure that there are moments that are super frustrating and probably long stretches that are super frustrating for some, you know, I think that Craig Goldstein wrote a really nice thing about albert poohles for baseball perspectives today and and thinking about uh him sort of stealing time back

when he stole uh base which you know like uh the rangers should have lost that game because albert poohles stole a base and extra so shame on them but they didn't because baseball's unfair a lot of the time but i bet if he were asked and gave a a really candid answer to people who he trusts to not tweet about it, he would probably talk about how the last couple of years have been something of a bummer for him. Or like, you know, Lindsay talked about how CeCe Sabathia's knee pain is an eight on a good day. That's, you know, that's terrible. But he's still playing baseball. So they have to like it a fair amount because i've worked

in a job that paid me more money than i was producing in terms of value for society when i worked in finance and i'm sure that this is not true for everyone but there does come a point where the compensation does not make it worth it and you are miserable and you have to leave or you will go baddie and so i think that even though they are well compensated and that probably makes the bad days less good, they really do have to like it because it is a grind and it's hard and it's weird. That's a long-winded, much longer answer than I gave in my chat, but that's my answer.

By the way, Albert Pujols has 10 stolen bases since his last caught stealing in 2015, which is pretty great. That's amazing. He doesn't steal a lot, but he picks his spots pretty efficiently. It's kind of cool. So I don't know what to say about this. I think that a lot of people hate their jobs, and I think probably very few successful baseball players hate their jobs. So that's a difference. few successful baseball players hate their jobs. So that's a difference. I don't know whether a baseball player likes his job more than you like your current job or I like my current job because

we both like our jobs. So I don't know whether there's a difference in degree there. But I would imagine that the average happiness and job satisfaction would be higher just because you probably don't hate it because it's pretty cool that you get to play baseball. And this is a lifelong dream for most of those players. Like you don't get to the big leagues unless you like playing baseball and you're dedicated to it. There are degrees, of course.

There are people who just live and breathe baseball and there are people who just do it more as a job. But I think they all like it enough to have devoted a lot of their lives to playing it because that's how you get to that point so i think that's true as for whether they are happier people in general i don't know there was that study that gets cited all the time 10 years or so ago by daniel kahneman and another economist who said that there are two kinds of happiness and that one kind of happiness is just like your day-to-day mood and sort of how resistant your mood is to whatever minor adversity you're facing from day-to-day and that money matters up to a point but not beyond that point for that kind of happiness. So they pegged it at $75,000 as annual income at that point is kind of the threshold where beyond that, it doesn't really

make you better able to weather those day-to-day stresses. And you sort of feel the same kind of baseline happiness in that sense. But there is another deeper kind of happiness they postulated that is more like a life satisfaction. You feel like your life is going well and you're doing what you want to do and what you should be doing. And they found that that is correlated to your income and how much money you make even above that $75,000 figure. So if that's true, then baseball players make a lot more than that. They make a lot more than the average person, even the worst paid major league players, that is.

And so you would think that between that and between the adulation you get and all the perks of being a big leaguer and the fame and notoriety and people fawning over you and all of that there's probably some deeper satisfaction to that and you know you're one of the very best in the world at doing a thing that you do and that that thing is valued and it brings entertainment and joy to people and so i would imagine there is some deep sense of satisfaction that goes along with that, even though there's a lot of frustration inherent in baseball. And it's a game where you fail a lot and your team loses a lot. And that is unavoidable.

But still, just to get to that point, you've got to be feeling pretty good about yourself. Yeah. I mean, it's just so hard. Like making the majors is just so hard. Like making the majors is just so hard. And I can't imagine that. It's like you said, I think there's certainly a range of players. There are guys where you'll hear from the beats that cover them that this guy just really is a baseball nerd. He's invested in the game in a way that isn't about his performance. Not everyone is like Zach Granke going to ASU games in February,

which is like, whack, you're really longing for that baseball, aren't you, friend? So not everyone's doing that. I remember when Robinson Cano was on the Mariners, Shannon Dreher, who covers them for 710 ESPN, would talk about how he was just, he would just always have it on, you know, he was engaged in the game beyond, you know, the team he was playing that night or his own performance on the field in a way that suggested that this was just like, you know, part of his identity in a way that extended beyond it being

his job. And not everyone's like that. And there are definitely guys who, you know, of his identity in a way that extended beyond it being his job and not everyone's like that and there are definitely guys who you know in the off season they go and take their time away and uh that that's fine too right you don't have to be obsessed in the same way that everyone is but um or that some people are i should say but i think that there has to be a baseline of appreciation because it's just too hard a thing and you just fail you just fail too much of the time to be able to endure that if you didn't like it because it's so hard to be like so much of being a baseball player is being bad at your job right so much of it is that and it sucks to be bad at your job. You know, I miss stuff in edits sometimes, and I feel grumpy about it all day. And I do that way less than baseball players do, which is mostly a testament to how much

harder their job is than my job, not a testament to how good I am at my job relative to how good they are at theirs. And so I think that if you didn't love it, you couldn't endure that kind of failure. It would just make you sad and self-loathing in a way that would not be surmountable, but for a deeper appreciation for what you're doing. So, yeah. I don't know if they're happier as human beings, but I think their workplace satisfaction is probably significantly higher, which feeds the other thing, although they're not perfectly correlated.

Yeah, of course, there's stuff going on off the field that can outweigh and overshadow all of the other stuff. But we're just kind of talking about the median player, the average player. So I know you've been waiting three days to talk about the strike zone and some robot up stuff. I don't know if there's anything else you want to get to before that no i i don't think especially i i i just i do appreciate that the centrals collectively are trying to give us some some drama here in the final six weeks so did you have an opinion on my question to Sam about the most compelling playoff race remaining? I think it's, I mean, these things are, as Sam noted, these things are very closely tied up in one another.

That AL wildcard, I think, is real fun. So I'm pretty excited about that, which also means being excited about the al central in one form or another but yeah other than that i mean the the nl central is compelling but those teams are less good right so that does make a difference to me it makes a difference it shouldn't but it does but it does so yeah i feel a great sense of anxiety for everyone i know who's a Mets fan because I can see them getting drawn in to this Mets team and it feels like going into the basement in a horror movie. And what's funny is they know that and they're doing it anyway. But yeah, so that, you know, I mean, they're fine,

but it makes me nervous. I'm nervous for them. Yeah. I'm afraid. It's funny if you look at the Fangraphs' playoff odds, the Mets are half a game ahead of the Phillies right now and tied in the loss column, and yet their odds of winning a wild card are 50.2% the Mets, that is, according to Fang to fan graphs whereas the Phillies are at 11.3 percent that is a massive difference for two teams that are essentially tied in the standings yeah

it's not the strength of schedule really there's a very slight advantage there for the Mets but it's not much compared to the Phillies it just seems to be that the fan graphs projections and depth charts think that the Mets are a much better team than the Phillies. And their expected rest of season winning percentage is 547, whereas the Phillies is 462. That is a very big difference. And I know that we've got, what, five, six weeks left in the season. And so there's just randomness and that will probably dictate what happens. But you'd still want to bet on the better team.

And according to the stats, at least, the Mets are a better team as currently constituted. So I don't know if we look at like the Pythags and the base runs, I'm guessing that they will show that the Mets have done better so far. So the Mets have a plus 26 run differential. The Phillies are at negative 14.

And the interesting thing, the Mets have played exactly to their base runs record. And the Phillies are nine games up on their base runs record, which is the most of any team but the Yankees, which suggests to me if it's not that huge a run differential difference, maybe they've just been very clutch. They've timed their hits and hit prevention particularly well. So I'm guessing that's what it is and that the Phillillies record is rosier than their underlying performance has been and yet i am more nervous yeah i mean fans i need to i need to contemplate my mets perceptions it's an off-season project is to diagnose my mets perceptions and find out which of them are fair

and which of them are unfair because I'm sure some of them are unfair but they're not all unfair you should be nervous yeah I'm invested in the Mets winning because uh I don't know it's like my hottest or trolliest take is that Mets fans tend to exaggerate how bad their performance as a franchise has been, which is probably an easy sell to a Mariners fan, I would think. I know there's lots of dysfunction involved with the Mets organization, but in terms of the results on the field, sure, could have been better in many ways. But we are talking about a team that was in the playoffs three years ago, in the World Series four years ago. The World Series. Are a pretty good team right now. So could be a lot worse.

Mets fans really could be a lot worse. It could be a lot worse. And I am perpetuating their grievance by saying I am nervous for them. It's just that, you know, sometimes when people decide to be a touch clownish in public, it's fun to pile on. Sorry. It is. That's my trolly take. Yeah.

There is an analyst named Ed Feng who used to contribute to Grantland. And he has a website called The Power Rank. And he has a page on there where he calculates the cluster luck for every team. So that's just kind of how luckily or efficiently they have clustered their hits or prevented other teams' hits to gain better results than you would expect based on just how many runs they've scored or allowed. And that lines up very well with what we were just saying about the base runs standings so the yankees according to cluster luck have gained 51 runs this year just from that clustering effect and they are first just ahead of the phillies at 49.5 and they're kind of in a class of their own they are both way above everyone else so that i, I think, maybe speaks to the Yankees' success this year.

We were talking to Lindsay about how, obviously, they've done a great job and maybe just kind of lucked out in certain ways when it comes to just getting career years out of unknown players while they have lost all of their first stringers to injury. while they have lost all of their first stringers to injury. So it's hard to parse. And they've also been very fortunate, it seems, in terms of clustering their hits and their hit prevention. So they've got a lot of unluck this season, but they've also got a lot of luck, and it kind of has balanced out in a way that has produced a very successful season. But yeah, things would be even worse for the phillies if not for this timing effect where do the reds stand on that yeah that's that's a good question let's see the reds are well they're a little lucky but not as lucky as you'd expect they're like 13 runs yeah i would

expect them to be very unlucky oh well yes well, yes, right, because, yes, they have scored a good amount of runs. Yes. But they have not had good results. But in terms of how they've sequenced, yeah. And in terms of how they've sequenced things, right? Right. And so their base runs record is five wins better than their actual record. Right, yeah.

Poor Reds. Yeah, that's all the stuff I have, I think. All right. Except for this strike zone thing, which I don't know how long a thing this strike zone thing is. So if you have other stuff that you want to talk about, we can talk about that stuff first. Well, let's see where it takes us. So you want to set it up? So there's a piece that came out earlier this week in USA Today from Gabe.

I don't know how to say Gabe's last name. Neither do I. Lax. Lax. Sorry, Gabe. Lax. You can tell us if we're wrong. We apologize.

In USA Today about the ongoing experiments in the Atlantic League with the robo-ump, and I had missed this piece when it was initially released, and then Tom Tango tweeted it and noted a thing that i had just i had just not thought of yeah i had not thought of it in the conversation around track man and sort of adjusting to the robo zone and and how that is gone they're talking to a player in the atlantic league and i i'll just read a little bit from this and then and then we can talk about it and track man certainly has its quirks.

For one, do not lie to Trackman. Blackstone found this out the hard way. Since he has not played affiliated ball, the 25-year-old shortstop had no previous data such as height or batting stance in the Trackman system. Like many athletes of a certain height, Blackstone, of a certain height is just really delightful phrasing here. It is writing that I applaud. It's just a very evocative short little

it's good blackstone gifted himself an extra inch in submitting his player information because who wouldn't prefer a six foot shortstop over a five foot eleven shortstop trouble was the generous height was entered in the system to establish his strike zone and so in his first few games with the auto strike zone several very high strikes were called against him i always say i'm six foot says blackstone but that's over man yeah i had not considered this but i hadn't either yeah so if you set the strike zone based on listed heights then that is going to affect players negatively if they're exaggerating their heights as most players do or at least the ones who do not have accurate heights you could guess that they are listed as larger than they actually are and that would mean that they would then have a bigger automatic

strike zone which would mean that more strikes would get called on them. And so you have incentive for players to give accurate heights, which would really break from baseball's entire history if we suddenly have accurate height data. But yeah, if we're heading for robot strike zones at other levels, and probably it's something that if this is deemed to be a success in the Atlantic League, it'd probably go to the minors for a while and see how things go there. But yeah, and if you're a minor leaguer and you have accurate heights, then presumably you would still have an accurate height when you get to the majors, unless you just add an inch at that point. So we may have a future where players actually have to tell the truth about their heights or be measured precisely so that they can get fitted for a strike zone, essentially. Well, and this was and you know, when when I saw this tweet, I sent it to you and Sam and Sam raised a good point because it isn't just that the height needs to be the general height needs to be accurate, right?

that the height needs to be, the general height needs to be accurate, right? Presumably, they, you know, and they note that in this piece that there's sort of an understanding of a player's batting stance in TrackMan, presumably, so that they can account for this issue. But like if we go by the rulebook definition of the strike zone, which I pulled up to make sure I remembered it properly. I'm going to read from this again, right? This is a thing people are familiar with with but just so that everyone is reminded the strike zone is that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the

top of the uniform pants and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap and so it's not just that you need to know the height. You need to know, you know, your torso height, your body, like the bulk of your body. You need a, we need a specific measurement because Sam asked like, you know, if we needed to be even more precise here and you would if you wanted an automatic zone. So I just hadn't, I hadn't thought of it, which is probably, you know, shame on me. And well, and you hadn't thought of it either. So probably shame on me. And you hadn't thought of it either. So we really both dropped the ball on this one. But it does require a precision of measurement that I imagine is going to collide with a deeply entrenched vanity that players have.

an understandable vanity because as this USA Today post notes and as we all know you know we we look at frames and bodies and like we project guys and where they're gonna end up playing defensively based on that and the power they're gonna have and that's like important stuff you understand why they add an inch Jose Altuve's listed height is 5'6 and and I am 5'5", and I have been on field level, you know, when he's been on field level, and he is my height. He might be 5'6 in cleats, but he's 5'5", and that's fine, and you know, it's worked out, it's worked out okay for him, so I'm not here to criticize Jose Altuve, but like, everyone's gonna have to have a moment, and then they're gonna have to, you know, what we should do, what we should do before the robo zone is to make sure to get a very good complete download of player information because i

want to know who lied yes exactly i want to know how much the whole league-wide average changes when suddenly we have accurate heights and everyone is an inch smaller. I mean, if every player exaggerates his height, then it won't even matter because it'll just be like the average goes down. But I'm guessing that it is skewed toward the shorter players exaggerating their heights more because they have more incentive to, I think, more bias against them. Like the 6'3 guy doesn't necessarily have to say he's 6'4 it's not gonna i mean if you're a pitcher maybe maybe that would be even more appealing i don't know but you know you're gonna get the altuves of the world juicing their stats a little bit more than

than the taller players and i think you're gonna get i think that we would find a lot of of 5'11s juicing their stats because you know if you're a i'm not a man so i don't know how it feels to to fib about this stuff but i think a lot of men would prefer to say as this guy in the usa today story said like i'm six foot right like that's like a right you're you're starting to approach the height at which we just like randomly trust you more because you're taller and our brains are you know still lizard like in a lot of ways right so you're approaching that height as soon as you clear the six foot threshold so i think that i think that shorter players definitely fit but i think we'd find a lot of 511s a lot of new 511s. Like Kyle Seeger, I don't know, man. I don't think you're really six foot.

Right. Yeah, you definitely see like a clustering at certain heights, I think, probably. So I was talking to Harry Povitis about this because he's thought a lot about it and written a lot about it of baseball perspectives and the pitch classifications that are used at Brooks Baseball and also fan graphs. And so he was saying that, yeah, you could measure precisely, you could like strap sensors onto guys or do some kind of mapping system and get exact definitions. But he said he thinks, A, players wouldn't want to do that, whether it's vanity or just invasiveness or being paranoid or whatever about having your data out there. So he thinks that it probably could just be getting an accurate height and that would be good enough.

Because, yeah, you'd have some guys who the distance between their knee and their shoulder is a little smaller or bigger than you'd expect given their height. But most people are shaped approximately the same way, at least professional athletes. Yeah, I imagine the distribution is pretty narrow, actually. And it's not like your stance matters, like how you initially set up, right? Because it's when you're prepared to hit or when ready to hit or whatever it says. So people are kind of already crouched over there and maybe there's less variation in that state. And so he said, you know, he thinks it's probably good enough if we get accurate heights and just say, that's how we determine the zone, just your height and that's that, then that would probably work well enough. And maybe it would disadvantage certain guys, but you wouldn't have like what Aaron Judge has to deal with now where he constantly gets non-strikes called on him. It wouldn't be that egregious.

And it probably would be better than what we have now because what we have now is not super precise. now because what we have now is not super precise it's just umpire eyeballing this guy as he gets into his crouch when the umpire is already paying attention to other things and so you know you're not going to get a perfect readout right now so this is probably going to be more accurate than that and we could just use that as the standard rather than absolute perfection do you think that there are guys who wear high socks to try to make it easier to determine where their kneecap is? Yeah, I have wondered about that. There have actually been studies, I think, about whether players with high socks get different strike zones called on them. And I don't think there was any

grand conclusion from that. I doubt that it it actually matters but i could see it being a thing a baseball player would think would matter yeah right and i don't say that like oh oh those dummies can't believe they believe that like it it makes an intuitive sense that if you have a a cleaner visual break between or one at all really between the bottom of your kneecap and the rest of your leg, that it might help to sort of gauge properly where you are as you're preparing to swing, right? So I wonder if they think that it matters. It's just, I love the idea of people lying about their height. I love the idea of baseball players lying about their height because, you know, baseball players are not like us. So much of the time they do this impossible thing we just spent

all the time talking about how hard their jobs are but this is them going to the dmv and fibbing about their weight on their driver's license like that's what this is yeah and my online dating profiles yes oh that is oh yes yes yeah Another place where men lie about their height, I will just say. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I've seen data on that too. Thank you. So I think, yeah, this is kind of fascinating, and we've talked about it.

I talked to Harry too about what we were talking about, how the strike zone is kind of an oval right now in practice, and the track man zone is not. And so you get these pitches that are technically in the rulebook strike zone is kind of an oval right now in practice, and the trackman zone is not. And so you get these pitches that are technically in the rulebook strike zone, but no one really thinks they should be strikes. And so what do you do? Do you count them as strikes, or do you just program the robots to say, no, that's not a strike? And then how do you adjust that programming? Like, are we all okay with just saying the strike zone is an oval it

it sounds strange to say that it is even though in practice that's how pitches are already called and then there's the thing we've talked about about how the shape and the size of the zone shifts depending on the count so the zone is much bigger on 3-0 and much smaller on 0-2 and I kind of like that because it has the effect of giving the player who is currently behind in the count a little bit of a helping hand and maybe makes plate appearances more competitive in that sense. But Harry was saying, you know, you could program it to do that and players are used to it being that way. But he said that he thinks it's sort of a self-defeating thing like we

if we don't want the human element if we don't want it the way that humans do it then let's not replicate that with programming he says you know he would just choose the size carefully just like maybe is it the average zone on all of the pitches as currently called? Is it everything is like the current zone on 0-0 on the first pitch? And maybe you just shrink it so that it does not classify pitches that really shouldn't be strikes that aren't hittable pitches as strikes. And then it's just kind of fair enough, I guess, because he was saying part of that zone changing is like humans maybe building

in a little bit of leeway because they can't perfectly detect what's a strike or not. And so they don't want to like ring someone up on a pitch that isn't a strike and, you know, or walk them based on an incorrect call. And so they almost like build in a little buffer there. And with a machine, maybe you just wouldn't need that. So it is really interesting. And I don't know that it will have that huge an effect on the game, just in terms of if you look at the results in the Atlantic League after the break, and Rob Arthur wrote about this at BP last week,

since they instituted the TrackMan zone zone the walk rate has very slightly changed the strikeout rate has almost not changed at all like there hasn't been any giant recalibration there the big difference has actually been the stolen bases because the the new pickoff rule that they implemented stolen bases are up by like 75 which is a lot And it's not the bigger bases because the bigger bases have been there since the start of this season. I want it to be the bigger bases, though. I know. Maybe that helps a little bit, but it's not the bulk of it.

Yes, I would imagine the pick-offs are a much bigger part. Yeah. So anyway, it's kind of interesting. Maybe just the lack of disruption in the Atlantic League so far suggests that we could just kind of get away with what we've been doing but you have to make these decisions we you can't just say we'll have track man call the zone and that'll be that you have to like decide what you want the zone to be and maybe it's a little bit different than it has been and maybe you have to change the

definition and you have to build in all these assumptions and yes you have to measure the hitters so there's a lot to think about it's great that i i uh i think the nice thing about there not being a ton of disruption and thus not a lot of change is that i think it allows you know the the biggest concern around roZones is the technology not being where we need it to be with either the precision we want or as rapid a delivery mechanism as we want. And so, you know, if things are just kind of humming along apart from the pickoffs, which, you know, whatever, then it suggests that we could take some time to get all that stuff right and think about it carefully so that if and when such a change needs to come to the majors, we feel really confident. We feel confident that we are getting it right, that we've thought about all of the things, that we are not going to introduce the thing that happened with replay where we are suddenly looking for outs underneath guys fingernails from

Oversighting and so it's a good thing because we can be very intentional about it And it will be one of the biggest changes that we've made to baseball Sort of systemically since you know, we must round with the mound So I think be you know being being sure and confident and careful is fine and that this suggests we can take the time to do that is delightful, which means we'll have to wait to find out how tall people actually are. Setti, who's a 28-year-old catcher for the Blue Crabs, and he said that for catchers, quote, the changes it makes to the position are drastic. I've always thought every single pitch that's received, the catcher has to earn the strike call. Trackman rewards the lazy catcher, the bad receiver,

and devalues the good receivers, and that's a big part of the game. And that's something you and I have thought about a lot and lamented, I think, as fans of framing. I don't know how many framing fans there are out there, really, but this does bother me. It really does. And I don't know whether it bothers me enough to outweigh the benefits, but personally speaking, I think it does, and this upsets me. It's a skill that has been prized and taught and valued for all of baseball history, essentially. You can go back more than a century and find references to shaping the pitch and all of that, and now we know maybe it's even more valuable than we used to think it was, but this has always been an area where players have been able to affect the game. And I know a lot of people look on it as cheating or manipulation or just exploiting a weakness in the umpires, and it is kind of all those things. I don't think it's technically cheating,

but it is exploiting human inability to be perfect on pitch calls. And yet, I like it. I like the variation in skill. I like players being able to apply their talents in a way that affects the game. And I'll be sad when that's not the case anymore. I agree. And I would invite people who think that this is unimportant to their enjoyment of the game.

People understand the value of pitch framing as it's currently constituted. But it has an aesthetic value, at least to me. Again, I think we're just highlighting places where we might be abnormal relative to the average fan. But I would invite people to watch college baseball and watch the catching in college baseball. Because, well, first of all, you'll find that set aside, like actually presenting or framing a pitch in a way

that is going to lead to a strike. There are just like actual receiving of the ball issues in college that are significantly worse than they are in the majors, which is unsurprising but is very jarring if what you were used to watching is major league or even minor league baseball so there's that but i would invite people to go watch some of the framing that goes on in college and you will you will not be able to unsee it once you see it and then i think you will appreciate pitch framing as a thing more and it'll be a

reason to not want the robo uh umps because i think that this gentleman is right mr falsetti is correct that it'll deprioritize it as a skill and so we'll get a lot of loud hands a lot of yep and it's gonna be loud i don't have soft hands anymore and then and then we'll look back and we'll wonder how we got here and we'll know. You and I will know. We'll say, hey, we raised the alarm. Mike Falsetti raised the alarm. No one listened to us.

Yeah, we'll be the crotchety old people writing about how back in our day catchers knew how to receive pitches and how that art has been lost and players these days, they don't even have to think about that. They don't know how to receive a pitch. We got a question actually from listener Dan who brought out something I hadn't thought about.

And I think that because of this track man strike zone thing, we've been thinking, well, the job is easier for catchers. Sam pointed out on an earlier episode that the past ball rule that you can just run to first base if the ball gets away whenever you want to, that is something that increases the stress on a catcher because they do have to block every pitch. They have to make sure they get in front of it. Whereas in previous years, under other rules, if there was no one on base, it didn't really matter if the ball got by you. And Dan brings up something else. He says, I was reading the Jason Stark article about the changes in the Atlantic League. Everyone has written an article about the changes in the Atlantic League.

And it got me thinking again about the pass ball rule and why it was implemented. why it was implemented, might the motivation to create the rule be to prevent catchers from routinely deceiving hitters by setting up far away from the hopeful pitch location when no runners are aboard and there are less than two strikes? It seems like it would become common practice if an automated strike zone were implemented. Am I overestimating the impact of where the catcher sets up? Do pitchers need a target? Some catchers don't seem to really give one. Do hitters pay attention? It seems like they must, or catchers wouldn't shift their positioning at

the last minute. I've always loved the gamesmanship between the catcher and hitter. Maybe this is a way to preserve or enhance it. So he's pointing out that if it doesn't matter how you receive a pitch, then the catcher can set up wherever he wants i mean within the catcher's box but he can set up on the opposite side of the plate if he wants to if he thinks that maybe the hitter is peeking at where he is or can hear where he is and i know that does happen because i remember talking to i think it was eric kratz maybe because I noticed that he sometimes does like a foot stomp before he sets up. So he'll like stomp. I think he just retired, but he used to like stomp in the location where he was not going to be as if to mislead the hitter into thinking that, oh, he's setting up inside and then he would just quietly shift outside, something like that. So in theory, a catcher could do that and you could try to mislead the hitter about the location of the pitch. On the other hand, maybe,. But can you just ask a pitcher to throw to a location where you are not setting up? So anyway, Dan is just thinking that maybe this pass ball rule would actually help incentivize catchers to set up where they expect the pitch to be to increase their odds of blocking or catching the pitch. I wonder if being able to set up in a in

another place could be the new the new framing and as an aside people are gonna lose their minds if that's true i don't think it would work i mean it won't work the same yeah way it won't work the same way and it hit i think for some of the reasons he highlighted, right, it's risky to be in the wrong, to have your body in the wrong spot in case things go right and you have to block pitch. But people would lose their minds. Yeah. I wonder how, oh, man, you just have so many people who did it badly, revealed themselves to be very bad actors.

I don't mean bad actors like bad guys. Like they'd be bad thespians. Right, yes. An expert. Yeah. Oh, I don't know. Yeah, I doubt that that was the intent behind the pass ball rule because I think that you definitely see guys who do that

and sometimes you see guys who do that and they set up far away and that's where the pitch is going and the batter swings anyway and i was like you can't you couldn't have heard him you didn't hear him your peripheral vision did not indicate that the catcher was all the way over there but i i doubt that it makes enough of a difference and that kind of trickery is commonplace enough that it would have motivated the rule. But it does seem like a place that you could kind of goof with guys a little bit. Right. Yeah. There was one very sad passage in this USA Today article where Falsetti was talking about how catchers and umpires now, they just kind of commiserate about their fates and the way in

which they are being rendered obsolete by this technology and that now the connection between the catcher umpire like that relationship is now often limited to just like asking whether the pitch would have been a strike if the ump had any say in the matter, which is so sad. It's just like the catcher's just now reduced to saying, would that have been a strike if you could have called it? And the umpire's like, yeah, it would have, but we're powerless and our jobs are being automated. I hate this so much. I hate it.

I just hate it. It feels dehumanizing. I mean, it's literally dehumanizing, but it feels dehumanizing. It just feels like we're, you know, we had a whole population of human beings who developed a skill, and it's a hard skill, and they had to be sweaty and not get paid a lot while they were being sweaty while they developed it and then we were just like meh i don't care about this and i understand that that happens a lot of times but i don't know there have been books written about the typewriter and we were sad about it so we get to be sad about this too yeah typewriter used to be the job of a human yeah and now it is a machine so yeah or people who produce literal typewriters right those people don't have jobs either

yes i mean some of them probably do but not as many yeah yeah the machines they're coming for all of us and now they can run i mean not, but like that Boston Dynamics robot knows how to run and not trip now. Yeah. Can't they make it look less creepy? I guess they can't. It's just a robot. Now the Matrix is being rebooted. It's all happening.

It's all happening. We need original IP and fewer machines. So there was one thing I wanted to briefly mention that maybe we can end on The Angels shut down Griffin Canning, their rookie starter this week He had just crossed the 90 inning mark And that means that the Angels are not going to have a pitcher this year Who threw 100 innings And that is a first

And I would not call this a fun fact because inevitably it reminds us of Tyler Skaggs, who would have gotten to the 100-inning mark. But even if he had, that would be one pitcher at 100 innings, and there's only been one team that even had one pitcher to get to that mark, and that was the 2012 Rockies who you know Coors Field and I think that was the team that maybe had like 75 pitch limits on their starters they were trying that out that year so that was kind of an outlier there's never been any other team that had even one single starting pitcher cross the 100 inning mark as opposed to more of them and now the angels

are going to be the first team not to have a single pitcher get there and even with the the tragedy and skags you know they probably would have been at at one and i wonder whether this is a sign of things to come whether i think in in some ways like the Angels this year, they've had more in the Angels case, it is mostly inadvertent and it's injuries and it's, you know, pitchers not working out the way that they hoped and the staff just being shorthanded and very thin. So I don't know that they drew it up this way exactly, but you could imagine that someday people will look back and say, oh, the 2019 Angels, that was the first staff not to have a hundred inning pitcher. will look back and say, oh, the 2019 Angels, that was the first staff not to have a 100-inning

pitcher. And now every staff is just like a bunch of guys who are throwing 80 innings or something, and no one actually is a starter anymore. And it's just relievers and starters all in a jumble, and they all pitch three innings every couple days or something like that so i wonder whether this will be a something that turns into a model for pitching staffs even if in the angels case it was not i imagine that we will see i don't know that it will be quite as extreme as this of course i say that and then it you know i didn't think the robot would be able to run either so what do i know but um i i mean a lot of as you've noted like a lot of the Angels particular situation seems to be the result of of injury and, you know, literal tragedy. And so some of that will, I think, not be and of course, the Angels are not a contending team, right? This is not seemingly like a purposeful strategy that was designed with October baseball in mind. And so I think that there are definitely limitations to,

well, while the number of reliever innings is going up, you don't want a staff that is this thin, at least not on purpose. So yes, but also not to this degree. I think that there will be more teams like this. but also not to this degree. I think that there will be more teams like this. I don't know that this team will be the model for how one constructs a staff, especially if we continue to get rule changes

that are designed to sort of hem in pitching changes. It's useful to have a guy who can, you know, like it's nice to have a guy who can go seven when you need it, even if you're acknowledging that there are going to be days where you intentionally design your staff's work to accommodate not being able to do that. Yeah. You're obviously seeing fewer 200 inning guys that's happening, but I don't think you'd even want an arrangement where your best pitcher is not throwing at least 100 innings. Right.

Because that seems like – Right. Yeah. And even if there aren't that many guys who actually should be throwing 200 when you take into account times to the order and injury risk and bullpens and all of that, you'd still – you'd be doing yourself a disservice if you did not have the best pitcher on your staff throwing at least 100 innings because that would be very silly you would be shooting yourself in the foot so yeah i don't think this will become the norm no but maybe it's it's sort of reflective of certain trends that are going on but much more extreme than i think it should be yes i i think that's right i mean you know the nationals wish that Scherzer had thrown more than the 138 innings he's thrown so far,

even if they know that it's unlikely that he will always be able to go 200 in a year. So you want your best players on the field. I think the degree to which, you know, there will be some squishiness and some of those guys might be relievers who can go a couple of innings who are really just starters who don't go long. That'll be a trend that we continue to monitor and see sort of shift around. But when you have the choice between a reliever out of the pen or Lance Lynn, you need Lance, right? You just want Lance Lynn pitching as much as you can. 2019 is weird.

2019 is wild. Yeah. This does have implications, though, I think, for Shohei Otani and his usage because, and I wrote about this earlier this week, but you might say that on a typical team, Shohei Otani's war would be this as an outfielder or this as a pitcher, this as a two-way guy. But the Angels are not a typical team because they have Mike Trout in the

outfield, they have Justin Upton in the outfield for the next three years, and they have Joe Adele, who is in AAA and is one of the very best prospects in baseball and will likely be ready next year. So that's your outfield of the future right there. And so replacing any of those guys with Shohei Otani, you're not going from replacement level outfielder to Otani. You're going from very good to greatest outfielder to Shohei Otani. So I don't think there would be as big an impact for him on the position player side. And they need pitching. I mean, they need pitching i mean they need pitching as much as anyone needs pitching like i think their starting pitcher war this year and we've

gone over the reasons but i think only the orioles have a lower figure this year and i just i don't know how that changes in in the near term future like, Otani is their only internal certain source right now of high-level innings in 2020. So I just don't see how you could not want him to pitch on this particular team. I was looking at the board to see their prospects in their farm system, and I know that their farm system is not the abyss that it once was.

No. But it's not like they have a ton of pitching help that's almost ready. I looked at their top 30 prospects, according to Eric and Kylie, and only one of them is a pitcher who is listed with a 2020 ETA. And that guy, I think, had like a 6 ERA and AA right now or something. that guy I think had like a 6 ERA and double A right now or something so it's not like there are a lot of blue chip starting pitcher prospects who are almost on the

verge of being ready to help so that has implications for Otani and it also has implications for is Trout ever going to get to be on a good team because I don't know man like this team just does not have pitching and they have position player talent and they're going to get more when Adele comes up.

But how do they get from that to actually having a competitive pitching staff? I don't know that they can do it internally. So do they just have to— Garrett Cole, come on down. I guess so, right? They have to import a pitching staff. That seems like they're not a terrible team right now. And there's no reason to think they'll be a terrible team next year but it's also hard to see them making a large leap without importing pitching help and for trout's

sake i hope they get some yeah i think the good news when it comes to that sort of thing i mean the the bad news is that with all of the extensions and what have you that, you know, the help is thinner on the ground than it once was in the free agent market. But, you know, the good news for the angels is that when you look at their payroll commitments for the next couple of years,

you know, they definitely have a couple, but it's not what it once was. You know, they have some things that are that some guys who are coming off the books and they they aren't running. Even now, they aren't running a payroll that's close to some of the levels that we've seen from them in the past. So, you know, like if you look at their cots, they have one hundred and sixteen million in committed payroll for next year. And then it goes down to 90 and in 2021 so it's just three players it's just yeah it holds upton and trout yeah so yeah so they are you know they have flexibility that they could work with next year anyhow and so i would imagine that they sort of are keenly aware

of the need to try to win uh with trout and otani on the roster and um i would imagine that they'll end up being pretty active in the pitching market because i think you're right there's they're going to need to supplement what what limited help they have internally with guys outside because they just don't have any you know there's not a there's not a star pitching prospect in the high minors who's going to come up and save the day for them. So I think they're going to have to pay for it, which, you know, there are worse things than that.

Garrett Cole's pretty good. Yeah. So that's fun. But, yeah, they don't have a – there's no Mackenzie Gore or Forrest Whitley sort of sitting around uh wait waiting for them so they're gonna have to do some stuff uh beyond that there is a show here tony though there is a show here tony i i uh was listening to to you and sam talk about otani uh on your i think that was your most recent episode or maybe the episode before. And I felt sad for you because you wanted so badly to be able to say it would be him.

And Sam was like, no. Yeah. He's not entertaining that. No, he was. It wasn't mean. You know, I think that Sam is probably right. But I could hear the desire in your voice for it to be true. Yeah.

The frustrating thing is that Otani only threw 50 innings last year, and then he threw like 25 innings the previous year in Japan because he had, I think, an ankle injury. And so it's been three years now and will be four by next year since the last time he actually pitched a lot. So between that and coming back from the elbow injury, they're going to probably be pretty careful with him. So we won't get to see the fully operational

take the reins off Otani until 2021, probably. Probably. You can always go back and watch some of those early starts from last year, though. Oh, yes. Those were so special. They were so special he had that that ace start he had that start he had against the aces still one of my favorite games from last year baseball's been downhill from there since since that one week where he was great at pitching and then he also hit like three dingers or

something and you're like well and the the best thing about that broadcast was that you know sometimes um you know every broadcast tries to get like a good they try to get good looks at at pitcher grips because you know it's like cool to be able to see uh but something about the way uh something about that broadcast he just you just could see you could just see his grip on the ball so clearly so much of the time so it was just it's just fun i miss it i miss it too now i'm sad retroactively that he can't be the the best the new best player in baseball bummed about it again all right well i guess we should end the episode on that downer note see these are these are the places where we're not always happy in our jobs. That's right, yeah.

Alright, talk to you next week. Bye. Alright, that will do it for today and for this week. Thanks to all for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild and signing up to pledge some small monthly amount. Help keep

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to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. And you can contact me and Meg and Sam via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. You can buy my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players. We could really use your positive reviews on Amazon and Goodreads if you're so inclined. We hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Felix Hernandez is starting on Saturday, so I have my fingers crossed for Felix and for Meg. Even more for Meg. But regardless of how he does, we hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. Tell me who's been fooling you Tell me who's been fooling you I'm out.