Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1556: Zero to Sixty

Episode Date: June 27, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley answer listener emails about statistical leaders and record-setters in a small-sample season, what would make winning a championship in a 60-game season more impressive, the odds of good teams missing the playoffs, bad teams making the playoffs, and teams having unrepresentative 60-game stretches, the possibility of losing a perfect game, […]

🎵 Cause Billy really wants one, he ain't willing to pay 🎵 🎵 Oh, oh, oh, the price that it takes, man, the price that it takes for him to stay 🎵 🎵 Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Hello and welcome to episode 1556 of Effectively Wild, a Fanagraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fanagraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing all right. How are you? Doing okay. Okay. Well, we are here to do some emails, so we're just going to go straight into it. And I think we will have an extra episode this week, so you can look forward to that

on your feeds sometime soon. But for now, listener emails and stat blasts galore. So we've gotten a couple genres of question here, and this is one that multiple people have sent. So Sean, Patreon supporter, says, what if someone bats 400 this season? Would that count? Has anyone carried that through 60 games in recent years? It seems like this is the only season where it would be possible in my lifetime.

And similar question from Louis, another Patreon supporter, who says, if we get a shortened season, how do you think we will look at performances that could end up being significant or even record setting? Most years hitting 400 would be a huge storyline and seen as a historic accomplishment because hitting 400 over 162 games is so difficult. It has not been done in nearly 80 years. Hitting 400 over 50 or 60 games would not be easy, but I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility. If a player hits 400 this season, how would it be viewed? I can't imagine anybody thinking it was as impressive as it would be if it was in a regular 162-game season,

but it would be the first time this has happened since 1941, and arguments can be made that hitting 400 after the longer offseason could be more impressive. The same would go for a player breaking Dutch Leonard's post-1900 ERA record, Pedro's whip record, or Barry Bonds' on on base percentage slugging and OPS records. How would these accomplishments be seen and would MLB require an asterisk in the record books? I think that properly contextualized, there are aspects of baseball history that we do not require to transpire over a complete season, however long that was at the time, to be impressive. We like streaks. We're about streaks in history. We think those are cool, whether they're hitting streaks or games played. And so I think that there could be things that we find to be impressive, but I would imagine that any of the big records, we probably are going to think carefully about displacing, I guess, right? I think so. Yeah. And I don't know that we need an actual asterisk. I think that we can just hold that in our heads. We all know, you know, maybe in some far distant future where there have been thousands of baseball seasons and no one remembers

individual seasons, which would be nice if we end up surviving that long as a species and playing baseball. But if you got to that point where no one just knew instinctively that, oh, 2020, that was that year with 60 games, then I guess maybe. But even then, presumably you would see the number of games or the number of hit bats or plate appearances or something. I think the stats speak for themselves. I think the numbers speak for themselves. So, yeah, it's still quite unlikely that it will happen. quite unlikely that it will happen. David Schoenfield at ESPN wrote this week that since 2000, only one player has hit 400 over the first 60 games of a season. That was Chipper Jones, who hit 408 in 2008. And over the past 10 years, the highest average was Cody Bellinger's 376 mark

last year. That's just the first 60 games as opposed to any 60 games. But still, I think the odds are pretty remote. I think it's something like if you're a true talent 330 hitter, even then the odds are like 1 in 40 that you would do it. And I don't know that there are any 330 true talent hitters. Of course, there are many hitters and there are many opportunities to fluke into this. But it's still probably not going to happen. And I still think it would be fun if it happens. I don't know. I guess you could say, well, if we don't really think it's that meaningful or impressive, then why would we even care? But it would just be kind of a fun,

quirky thing to follow, I think. I'm rooting for weird, strange statistical quirks, and I won't treat them the same way as I would over a full season, of course, but it would still be fun to see that stat line preserved forever, right? And to go to baseball reference and see 400. I mean, I guess you could maybe find instances of that in some tiny number of plate appearances already, but to do it over 60 games would still be impressive. And I think it would be a fun thing to track as the short season wound down. So I hope someone makes a run at it. Yeah. And I think that we've talked about this a lot on this show over the years, but I'll frame it a little differently now. I really like

it when baseball reminds us how hard it is. I appreciate very much when we are given opportunity to marvel at the skill that players exhibit by doing their jobs really well, because it's such a challenging thing. And I think that we just tend to discount in a way that really does a disservice to the skill on the field, just how hard baseball is. Yeah. That's one of the only things that I'll miss about pitcher hitting actually is that they're just so bad at it. They're so bad at it. And yet they're like athletic people who were probably great hitters when they were in high school or whatever. And so just seeing that contrast reminds you how great the other hitters are. Yeah. And I think that perhaps because they, you know, baseball players can come in all shapes and sizes

and their athleticism isn't always as, you know, chiseled and apparent as say like a, you know, some positions, some skill positions in football, you know, there are definitely some, some linemen who don't fit that description, but, you know, I think because they can look a lot of different ways, we tend to forget just how much skill and athletic precision is required to do baseball well. And I like when we remember that. Yeah, I agree. So I look forward to us, you know, if we have fun little weird statistical oddities to chase great if we end up not having any because it turns out that as you said 60 games isn't nothing and it's hard to to replicate that kind of performance over a 60 game stretch well that's

that's useful too so yeah when sean says would it count yeah it would count it would be the batting average that person would have gotten hits and 40% of his at-bats. And when he went to his baseball reference page, it would say 400. And so it would count, but it wouldn't count in the sense that we wouldn't give as much weight to it. And I don't think I want to use the term illegitimate or talk about records being less legitimate because they're legitimate. It's not like they cheated. They didn't bring about these conditions themselves. I would call it less decisive, less definitive, less impressive, something like that, but less unlikely, whatever. But, you know, it's legitimate. You did it with the rules that were in place at the time and everyone was facing those same conditions. But I guess you would have some decisions to make. Like, you know, Baseball Reference does that thing for all-time records on its stat pages where it, like, bolds them and italicizes them if they're, like, the all-time record.

So I guess Sean Forman would have to decide, well, are we going to italicize this as an all-time record? And I would opt for probably not doing that. And I assume that there are lists of, gosh, I don't know, like 400 is not a record thing. It's not like, I mean, the 400 hitters club is kind of an informal thing. So you wouldn't have to decide, does this person qualify for that or not? But if it is an actual record that would be listed in baseball encyclopedias, if they still print those or on baseball reference or MLB.com or whatever, you would have to make some editorial decision then about, do we put this there? Do we not put it there? Do we put it there with a note or something? Because, you know, you can't count on everyone

knowing these things. And if you just put a list of the lowest ERAs ever in a qualifying season, and you still have the same qualifiers where it's like an inning pitch per team game or 3.1 plate appearances per team game, and you just list the number for qualifiers, then you might have to make some decisions about will we exclude this? Will we put an asterisk or something? But I think mostly we can just kind of all know it when we see it. Yeah. I think that we are less good about remembering the specifics of even catastrophic events than we think we are. And so I'm sure that there will, as time goes on and sort of our exact memory of 2020 fades, that there will be times where

a guy gets sort of irresponsible, sounds so much weightier than it is. I think we all have a good perspective on responsibility now. But there will be times when a guy from 2020 is sort of erroneously included in a table when he shouldn't be. But I also think that when we look at when we look back on it and we see outliers in the statistical record, it might prompt, you know, future generations of baseball researchers to say, gosh, what was what exactly was going on in 2020? then they'll go oh yeah it's that it's that year my parents won't shut up about yeah and they'll have occasion to go back in and um sort of grapple with our strange taxing um time and that that's not a that's not necessarily a bad thing to have as a as a reason it's like when a reason. It's like when trees have aberrant rings because of environmental conditions.

It tells us something about the time that is perhaps not pleasant, but is useful. So that part's not bad. Good analogy. I should alert Scott Boris about that one. Yeah, Scott. Yeah, I was thinking about that too, because I was writing about the 2020 and what a 60-game season would look like and all the randomness involved. And as I was doing some searches and making some tables for that article, I was filtering out like 1994 and 1981 when I was looking for certain things, which you get used to doing when you do baseball analysis. You just filter out the weird smaller sample seasons when

you're doing some types of studies. And for as long as I am writing about baseball, I will be filtering out 2020 from queries, assuming there even is a 2020 season. But it is going to be one of those where it's like every time I see it, it'll be like, oh yeah, that was weird. It's like in the episode of the X-Files where they cut open a tree and then the bugs come out that eat them in the dark. Yeah, exactly. Just like that. Suck in all the life out of us.

Related question from Matthew, another Patreon supporter. I've been thinking a lot about how we'll view the World Series champion if we make it through the season. I know what things could happen to ensure more people view the year as a fluke. Lots of player absences due to COVID, the Mariners winning the World Series, so cheap shot. But I'm more curious about what could happen to convince the most people to view this as a real season. Maybe if all of the presumptive

favorites make the playoffs, if the Nationals repeat, if the team that wins the series wins next year too, could this season play out in a manner that convinces it resulted in a proper champion? Oh gosh. I mean, I think the most important thing is probably the who of it. And I don't just mean the winner, the eventual winner, but also the fields that that eventual winner has to navigate through in order to get there. So I think that the most important thing that could happen to sort of legitimize that World Series winner has already happened in that we do not have expanded playoffs this year. Yes. I think that if we had had expanded playoffs, even if a team like the Yankees or the Dodgers had emerged, ends up emerging victorious from that, I think we would just view that playoff field as inherently less sort of taxing a gauntlet for the winner to go through because the odds that you end up with a weird team, you know, the odds that the Mariners end up in that playoff field just go up. And that's true with this current construction of the playoffs also. But when you have more teams in play, you just have more of those weird fluky teams getting

through. So I think that the winner is going to be important. And I think who that winner has to defeat in order to emerge victorious is probably those are going to be the two most important things. You know, if the Dodgers end up playing the Mariners, and I would just want to remind people, you can make your jokes. And I think your jokes are fine. And many of them are very funny. And I don't think that they're all geared to hurt me. I think some of them are meant to be like, oh, you're Mariners. You can never hurt me as badly as the Mariners. I'm immune now. It's fine. Like it's fine. I wish them well, but they can't, they can't cause emotional damage anymore. So I think, you know, if the

Dodgers beat the Mariners in the world series, we're going to be like, well, I mean, you mean to say that you won the world series, you know, defeating Kendall Graveman. I can't believe that to be true. But if the, if the field ends up being somewhat legitimate and we have the good fortune of the players who opt to play remaining healthy and a number of very high profile players who might have very legitimate reasons not to play, decide to play, I think that things look really different. But a 60 game season, you you're always gonna look at that season as as strange even when you remember that baseball that the world series does sort of a bad job in general even in a normal year of deciding of crowning the best team as the winning team even when you

remember that stuff we're gonna be like no yeah weird strange year but i will say the following on on effectively wild just for the public record. If the Mariners do win the World Series this year, which as an aside, I find to be very unlikely, even with all the statistical oddity that we are likely to see this year. I'll buy a hat and I will wear it. And I will not, I, you can't make fun of me. I will not, I won't have it. I'll get to experience joy. Don't, don't try to take that from me. Then i will not i won't have it i'll get to experience joy don't don't try to take that from me then we will not be friends that is something that i wonder about like would you

want a drought to be ended in this year if you're the dodgers do you want 2020 to be the year when you finally win one for the first time in decades knowing some people, your detractors will say, oh, well, it took this weird 60 game season for you to win, or it's not as real or impressive as it would be in a full season. On the one hand, it's better to win than not to win. And it doesn't preclude future championships. It doesn't make you less likely to win next year or something. So it's not like you used up your one shot or something like you only get one World Series and you got it in this strange season that maybe people will discount. On the other hand, maybe there's something to the idea of like you want the time that you end the drought and do it

for the first time in years to be as special as possible and so like maybe it's even worth not winning for a year or two more knowing that the payoff will be even better and i guess you could say the same thing about the mariners playoff trout right now when they finally end it do you want it to be in a 60 game season where people can say oh they fluked into it this is the only way the Mariners could possibly have made the playoffs. No, you'll just take it, whatever. You don't care about the circumstances at this point. No, no, I don't think you want it to happen this year.

I mean, if it happens this year and it happens the year after, then fine, no problem. But if a team like the Mariners breaks their drought this year of just making the playoffs and then they go back to mediocrity afterward. You don't want it to be this year. And it's not because of questions of legitimacy or how it will feel or Astros fans being snarky. It's not any of that. It's because if it happens this year, the real result is more discourse.

And Ben, I think we're all tired sometimes of discourse. This will be one of those things we debate it'll be this and when guys have batted around we don't need it we don't need it sandwiches yeah yeah i don't care no neither do i so don't care yeah i mean i i think if the dodgers were to win this world series I think there would be less talk about it being fluky just because they were the favorites. And you're right that the playoffs are already random and we already put up with that and we already treat it as somewhat meaningful. I mean, maybe we look at it and say, oh, it's a coin flip basically, but there's still a

lot of suspense and people still care and they still get very happy and they still get very sad. So clearly we treat it as something meaningful and maybe part of that is the bragging rights of getting to that point. That's the difference with this year is that usually you can be pretty confident that the playoff teams are all good. There are occasional exceptions where a kind of mediocre team sneaks in there, but you have to be pretty decent to get to that point. And so the playoffs, one of the reasons they are so random is that all of those teams are pretty good and they're pretty evenly matched. And so it's hard to figure out who the best is over the course of a five game series or a seven game series. This year, it's possible that some not-so-great teams could kind of fluke into it. And so if you're the Dodgers even, let's say, and you play some terrible team that

somehow snuck in because it was a 60-game season, would that take a little luster off the World Series? Even though you're the big, bad Dodgers and you were expected to be there if you had an easier route to winning, that might still be something that people hold against you. So I think it does depend on the playoff field. And Sam actually answered this question via Patreon message, and he said the playoffs will be the same, except that a few lesser teams, probably not more than a couple, might be in there. So as long as the World Series champs path basically goes through good teams, I don't think there will really be any talk at all about it being a lesser championship. I think we'll be shocked how little we diminish the champ if the season is played and concludes.

We'll definitely diminish division winners, stat leaders, etc., but not the champ. And I don't know. I think we still will diminish the champ a little bit. I think we'll still, regardless of the circumstances, think of it different because it's just so—it's such an outlier in length. Like even the 1981 Dodgers, who won the World Series, they played 110 games in the regular season. That's a lot more than 60. won the World Series, they played 110 games in the regular season. That's a lot more than 60. So even comparing this season to other previous shortened seasons, it's still a lot shorter. So I don't know that we will ever think of like, oh yeah, that's the team that won the 2020 World

Series without also thinking, oh, but that was that 60 game season. I don't know that those thoughts will ever actually be decoupled in my mind, even if it's kind of a more impressive route to winning. Yeah. The more I think about it, I think the thing that actually will determine how we think about anything related to this season probably doesn't have anything to do with how competitive it feels and how close to our expectations of a team's true talent the results end up mirroring versus you know noise and flukiness i think it'll really just depend on how safe it ends up feeling for guys to be playing at all i think that that's probably the thing that likely will determine how we remember it and so for that reason i hope very much that we look back and are like wow that was

that was good fun because if the alternative is true it means some things have gone very badly awry yes that is very true all right well this is also a somewhat related question from chris who says was listening to mike farron say today you might hear Mike Farron on this podcast sometime soon, that every team has a good 60-game series during a usual season, and 33 wins would probably get a team into the playoffs this year. So is it true that even the worst teams, like the 88 Orioles and the 2003 Tigers, have 60-game stretches around 500?

If that is true-ish, then what would we say the odds are that an otherwise bad team could make the postseason this year? Also, what are the odds that True Talent World Series teams would have a nightmarish first 60 games like the 2019 Nats and finish on the sidelines? So I basically wrote about this. So there's an article up at The Ringer that I will link to that has more information and numbers and got some help from Lucas Pasteleris of Baseball Prospectus on the stats. But yeah, what Mike said is almost true, essentially. era, so 1969 to 2019, excluding 81 and 94, 71% of all teams managed at least one 60-game stretch where they went 33 and 27 or better, and 88% of them played at least 500 ball over some 60-game stretch of the season. Not necessarily the first 60-game stretch, but some 60-game stretch.

So most do that. Most can be competent for that portion of a season. Not all, though. If you are a truly terrible team, it is possible that you can't even do it over that amount of time. So Chris asked about the 88 Orioles and the 2003 Tigers and the 88 Orioles best 60 game stretch was 27 and 33 and the 2003 Tigers best 60 game stretch was 20 and 40. They were truly terrible at all times, no matter how you slice their season. But most teams can manage to do that and be pretty decent for that amount of time,

which means that you could kind of fluke into the playoffs. And David Schoenfield again looked up the average winning percentage of the worst playoff team over the past five years, and I think it was 549, which would basically be that 33-27 record that Mike was talking about here. So most teams are capable of doing that at some point. Now, if you look at what percentage of teams that would be in playoff position after 60 games at the start of a season end up making the playoffs, most of them do,

but a good percentage of them don't. So last year, for instance, after the first six games of the season, the Rangers were in playoff position, the Cubs were in playoff position, the Phillies were in play data, 36.5% of teams that are in playoff position through 60 games don't end up making the playoffs. And if that happens this year, they will because the season will be over and there's no extra time for them to revert to the mean and for the coach to turn into a pumpkin or whatever they will just be in the playoffs and that'll be that and we'll never know that they weren't a playoff team we might suspect based on their projections or their underlying performance but we'll never be able to prove one way or another that they wouldn't have made it and it's hard to say what impact that has on our perception of the season I looked again among eventual playoff teams so teams that did make the playoffs over those 51 seasons 29% of

them had a record worse than 33 and 27 in their first 60 games so again it's like you would have to expect that roughly three of the 10 teams in the playoff field this year would not make the playoffs if this were a full-length regular season so do with that what you will yeah jay jaffe did a piece at fan graphs today friday when we're recording this on friday sort of replaying his study of different, he had done an earlier one of 50 game slices of last year, and he did another 60 game slices this year, or what a 60 game season in 2019 would have looked like in terms of stuff moving around. And a lot of it is, you know, division winners and wildcard teams sort of swapping spots.

The actual pool doesn't change entirely, but it does change some depending on the slice. And the real place where this might end up getting very fluky is in the number of potential tie-breaking games that might need to be played because you just have, not only do you have far fewer games, and so teams are going to be more tightly clustered in terms of their distribution of wins. But some of the league's tie-breaking procedures sort of assume scenarios that we won't have this year. Like we'll just have a lot fewer games to go by. And as a result of that, you know, you won't be able to look to a team, say, league record as a way of determining things because outside of their division, they're not going to play. They're not going to play. They won't have common opponents. You know, they will have a lot of wildcard races. I would imagine that future teams would just never play each other.

Yeah. Be very strange. So, yeah, there's all kinds of potential for flukiness, not just in teams that are less good sort of sneaking their way in. potential for flukiness not just in teams that are less good sort of sneaking their way in but you know we might have a repeat of what was it 2017 where we ended up with two games 163 games 163 game 163s i go with the latter i guess yeah it's But yeah, so team entropy might make itself known, which feels like a very 2020 sort of situation. Yeah. The worst best 60 game stretch by a team since 1969 is not quite the 2003 Tigers at 20 and 40. It's the 2018 Orioles at 19 and 41. That was the best it ever

got for them over any 60 game stretch, which is quite sad. That's still very bad baseball. Let's see. What other fun facts do I have here? The worst 60-game stretch by a team that ended up making the playoffs was 22-38. So you can be quite bad at some point in the season and still make the playoffs. That was the 1973 Mets and the 2016 Giants. They both went 22-38 at some point

The best 60-game stretch by a team That ended up missing the playoffs Was 45-15 By the 1978 Red Sox Who famously got overtaken And the 2005 A's And the worst record For an eventual playoff team

So a team that did make the playoffs in its first 60 games, was 25-35. That was the 1981 Royals. If you toss out the 1981 team, the 2005 Astros also did that. And the best record for an eventual non-playoff team in its first 60 games, so a hot starter that missed the playoffs was, again, the 78 Red Sox, who started 41-19 and didn't make it. Bucky bleepin' Dent. So I've got tables in my article, tables all over, if you want to look at the playoff teams with the worst records after 60 games

or prospective playoff teams after 60 games that ended up with the worst full season records i will link to all of that and it really is striking just how much of a difference there tends to be between a team's best and worst stretch in a single season like good teams just play poorly for big chunks of the season and bad teams play well or at least have good results and i have a table in here of the biggest differences between a team's best or worst stretch and its full season winning percentage and there are some really big ones and the most extreme teams in terms of the difference in winning percentage between their best 60 game stretch and their worst 60-game stretch. There are two. There's the 97 Phillies, who had a 400-point swing,

so they basically played like a 103-win team over one 60-game stretch and like a 38-win team over another 60-game stretch. And the 2013 Dodgers, who were very weird. weird they played like a 62 win team over a 60 game stretch and then they played like a 127 win team over a 60 game stretch which some of you may remember that was like Yasiel Puig came up and was great and suddenly they could not lose at all so 2013 Dodgers 2017 Dodgers also had a very extreme hot streak where they had that 850 winning percentage over the course of 60 games. So yeah, there's a ton of fluctuation and randomness, and we will very likely see some team or teams kind of fluke into

a playoff spot if we even get to that point this year. And we'll never be able to say that they didn't deserve it or that they wouldn't have made it, which is kind of what we're talking about, why we might think of this season a little bit differently. But that's all right. We've all made major adjustments in so many ways this year that certainly we can do that with our fandom too. Yeah, for sure. All right. So let's do a stat blast. Yeah, for sure.

All right, so let's do a stat blast. And this week's stat blast song cover comes courtesy of listener Alex Eichler. And this is one of our most clever covers yet. I think you will recognize the tune here. This is sort of a weird Al type take on the statast song. Buy something like ERA- or OPS+. And then they'll tease out something interesting like a tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us. So you're a stat blast blast like a really math blast just can't get enough blast

get some help from Dan Hirsch I'm that stat type always lots of data type talking Mike Trout type might seduce Ben Lindberg type it's the stat blast duh it's the stat Duh.

It's the Stat Blast. Okay, so this week's Stat Blast question comes to us courtesy of Brett, who says, The potential new extra innings rules could set up an opportunity for a real-life vroom-vroom guy. The situation was laid out by Jeremy Frank at MLBRandomStats on Twitter here, and then he links to where it was laid out, and Jeremy Frank tweeted, Bottom of the ninth, two outs, tie game, nobody on base, Billy Hamilton at the plate. The manager gives him the strikeout sign so he will get to be the runner on second base in the 10th inning. Because of course the way that this auto runner works is that the guy

who gets placed at second base will be the player in the batting order right before the leadoff batter of the next inning. So usually it would be the batter who made the last out in the previous inning or a pinch runner for that guy. And so he is suggesting that maybe it would make sense for Billy Hamilton to make an automatic out so that he would be the automatic runner in the 10th inning or other extra inning. And Brett continues, does the math support this decision? My first thought was no, but having him on second with zero outs in the 10th might be more valuable than him on first with two outs in the ninth. So I briefly thought about tackling this question myself, and then I thought, that sounds pretty hard. I will not really try to do that

right now, maybe sometime. But Meg, doing her job as managing editor of fancrafts.com, which she is very good at, suggested that it sounded like a very Ben Clemency question, which I agree with, a very Ben Clemency question, which I agree with. And I very much enjoy Ben's work, as we both do. And so we farmed it out to him. And we outsourced the question to Ben, who has done all the math and written a Fangraphs post and now is joining us for a guest StatBlast segment. We're bringing in a ringer here. Hello, Ben. Hey, Ben. Weird Ben singularity. Multiple Bens. Usually I'll say like Ben is other Ben and now both Bens are here. So this is going to be confusing.

But after reading your post, I am relieved that I did not try to do it myself because I would not have done it as well. And it turns out that there's a lot of math and a lot of tables and it's kind of a complicated question but it's a good question and it's a good answer so how did you go about trying to answer this question yeah so the first thing i wanted to answer was how valuable is billy hamilton as the runner on second base and it turns out it's really valuable yeah if you have billy hamilton as the home team you win 55 of extra game games and that's assuming that you're 50% to win a random game. So that's huge. And so with that in mind, then you just have to figure out with your backstop being 55%, how willing should he be to take risks?

Because he can always just, you know, make it out. It's pretty easy to make an out if you want to like Vroom Vroom guy, basically. If you just take off from second to third they can't not throw you out so the question then just became at what point is he up enough that he should stop stealing and let the team try to win in the ninth right so you don't need to have him do the automatic strikeout you might as well have him try to get on base and then worst case he runs himself out of the inning but best case he somehow just keeps stealing or he keeps running and he scores anyway and you don't even have to worry about it but automatic strikeout just seems like sort of a waste although because it's billy hamilton that might end up being the result anyway it's similar he hits a home run on

i think a half percent of his plate appearances yeah Yeah, right. So how do you figure out how valuable Billy Hamilton is as a base runner? You just look at the historical stats, I guess, instead of looking at the typical rates at which a runner scores from second or from whatever base with some number of outs. And I suppose there is a small sample issue there, but also we know that Billy Hamilton is quite fast. And so you would expect him to score more often. Although I guess it depends on, you know, do you have Joey Votto batting behind you, for instance, but I don't know that the Reds lineup behind him has been better on the whole than the typical leadoff guys. So that's basically what you try to do.

You try to see how much better is Billy Hamilton than the average person. Yeah. And he actually doesn't have the smallest sample of being on second base with no outs. He's you try to do you try to see how much better is billy hamilton than the average person yeah and he actually doesn't have the smallest sample of being on second base with no outs he's done it 130 times and he's run home from second on singles enough times that they aren't tremendously small samples uh they're definitely small enough that i wouldn't publish this study and say i'm 100 confident this is the right answer but he's he played since 2013. He's on second base a lot because if he hits a single, he steals second base a lot. Yeah. Not as often on second base as his teams would have liked him to be, but. Ah, yes, but now there's a rule that will get him there.

Exactly. Right. Yeah. We've got the question before about like, should Billy Hamilton or should runners be allowed to steal first base? Like just should you be able to try to steal first base at any time? You could just go. And I don't know that that's actually a good idea, but it's one of those hypotheticals we get and people wonder about it with Billy Hamilton because he doesn't really get to first base on his own power all that often. So he would be the person to take advantage of that. It's like he's one of those players that it just makes sense to ask these weird questions about him. And that's been going back to the beginning of his career. We've had odd hypothetical questions about Billy Hamilton. I think back in 2014,

Eric Hartman emailed us a question that Sam ended up writing an article for BP about, which was down one run in the ninth, would you rather have David Ortiz on second base or Billy Hamilton on first? So basically, if you're the infielder, should you take the out at first, get Billy Hamilton, and just have Ortiz at second, which would be better? And at the time, Sam concluded that he would take the out at first and get Hamilton and keep Ortiz at second, but there wasn't that much data to go on at that point, probably ripe for revisiting that. But that's a different question. So what did you discover? So he should just bat more or less normally. I mean, I would say swing for the fences, but

I don't really know what that means for really Hamilton. But once he's on first base, he should always try to steal. So there's this rule of thumb that if you're successful 75% of the time and steal is neutral. That's the one that I always use in my head. His break even to steal second is being successful 20% of the time in this situation, which is outlandish. That's the same break even as if you're on third base with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in a tie game, stealing home like you don't have to be successful very often stealing home kind of the eric cosmer mad dash but billy hamilton is that's how successful he needs to be stealing second and he's 80 success by stealing second most of the time so he should just run every single time okay yeah like if he's

on first base it doesn't matter how many times they throw over it doesn't matter how bad his jump is he should just go and even if that's only i don't know 70 60 successful it's giving his team a huge edge just just by how fast he is in extra innings just by having him there at second base to where i mean if the ball goes to the outfield he's scoring and if a ball is popped out to the outfield he's probably going to third so what is the value then of Hamilton like over a full season of this or I don't know should we go over the the numbers again of like your odds of of winning yeah relative to some other runner. Yeah, absolutely. So that's kind of the rub as it were. He's worth about 0.3 runs or 0.3 wins rather

over a full 60 game season, which sounds like very few. Yes. And I mean, it is very few because there aren't that many extra in games. That's the big problem here is that he's a very valuable weapon in this situation where the game goes into extra innings, and either he was the last batter, or you can sub him in as a pinch runner. And when that happens, he's worth 5% or 6% of a win, which is really big in a single

game. You would give up a lot to get 5% or 6% of a win in a single game. But if he was in a different spot in the lineup and playing that day it doesn't happen if you had other base runners on in the ninth when you were uh doing this it doesn't happen if you just happen to win in the ninth inning it doesn't really matter and if the other team happened to score a bunch of runs in the top of the 10th it doesn't matter and so it's a very interesting situation where with the possible exception of terence gore billy hamilton is the perfect player for this it's a rule that lets you skip batting and go stand on second. And that's exactly what he's wanted to do for his entire career.

And yet it just doesn't add that much value over the season because it comes up so rarely. Yeah. Well, an extra 0.3 war for Billy Hamilton basically doubles his 2019 war. So proportionally speaking, it makes him more valuable, but yeah, not a big deal. I guess it just doesn't happen enough. I wonder how much more likely Billy Hamilton is to sort of like have a big league role as a result of this, even understanding the limited application of his particular skill set in this particular set of considerations. You know, he's still ostensibly fighting for a roster spot on the Giants. And I wonder how, not how much this improves the Giants

sort of win probability over the course of a season, but how much this improves Billy Hamilton's roster probability over the course of a season, but how much this improves Billy Hamilton's roster probability over the course of 2020. I think that's a lot. I think this makes him almost definitely rosterable. Because, yeah, 0.3 wins is not a ton of wins, but your 26th man isn't that valuable in general. They probably project the below replacement level,

if you're the Giants especially. So I think that that gives him a huge layup. It doesn't make him like Trout, but relative to the guys he's fighting with for that spot, I think it's a lot. Right. Yeah. And this came up on the Giants Insider podcast earlier this week.

I saw a story that I'll link to, and Gabe Kapler was talking about it, and he said he's a perfect piece for that moment. One of the things GM Scott Harris brought up is how nice it would be to have Billy Hamilton run out there at second base and try to steal third base with a stolen base rate in the past of like 85%. He's been really successful at it, and Scott brought that point up to me. It makes that roster spot more important. It makes having a dynamic player like Billy more important to have on a roster, and it's just kind of exciting to be able to have that as an option in those situations. And then he was also asked about what else you could do in that situation and talk to people who had been in the minors with that rule in effect,

and Kapler said when we dug into it, what they thought was happening wasn't necessarily happening. A lot of conversations have been around whether to bunt somebody over from second to third, whether to attempt to steal or whether to play it straight up. The reason I'm being a little cautious here is I don't want to give away any strategy. And in that situation, have you looked into that or thought about that at all? Whether it would make sense to try to move that runner over or just hope for the best if it's not Billy Hamilton? Yeah. So if it's Billy Hamilton, I don't really think he can steal third. He's just starting with zero outs is too much of an edge that he's just very likely to score anyway. But for a regular runner, I looked into this a little bit and in the top of the 10th, it's not really worth doing

anything differently because the other team can just counter you. So doing any strategies that are giving up run scoring edge to try to make it back in win probability, they could just do the same strategy. So you should just try to score as many runs as possible, essentially, is what it looks like to me from running through the numbers. If you are the home team, it makes it a little easier because the other team doesn't get to counter as it were so in the case where they don't score any runs then it changes your strategy a little bit depending on what part of the lineup you're in got it if you're at the very bottom of your lineup and the other team didn't score any runs and you have a runner on second it's probably sometimes worth bunking

up over the third that's not the case if you if the top of your lineup is hitting but it definitely is the case if you know an eight hitter or a billy hamilton type hitter is hitting although you have not managed things right if billy hamilton starts the 10th inning at the plate instead of on center perfect yeah okay so in conclusion it was a good question good scenario and unlike a lot of these scenarios yeah it actually does make sense and i I will link to Ben's post. You should go check out all the numbers if you're interested. But essentially, yes, Billy Hamilton, if he finds himself in this situation, coming up with two outs in the ninth, no one on, and he happens to get on base, he should just keep going. Because even if he makes an out,

it's advantageous to have him start that 10th inning on second base just because he is so fast. And you wrote in this article, weird baseball rules create weird baseball situations. And this is one of them. Are there any other weird baseball rules that are in theory going to be in effect this season that are creating weird situations that you're interested in or just strategic or tactical decisions that teams may have to make? Well, this doesn't quite qualify as a weird rule so much as a weird scheduling quirk, but the schedule is so compressed that I'm very curious to see how teams manage relief appearances. Yeah.

You know, the classic way that teams have done it is really not cared too much about the back of the bullpen and they don't worry about burning guys out too much. The Yankees, you know, the classic way that teams have done it is really not cared too much about the back of the bullpen. And they don't worry about burning guys out too much. The Yankees, you know, notably never pitch anybody two days in a row, basically. But most teams just don't care about it too much. And it works out with enough off days. I think that the back of teams' bullpens is going to matter a lot more this year just because the top guys are going to be tired more often. There are fewer off days in there to sprinkle them out. So I think you'll see very different

bullpen management than normal. I don't know exactly who that benefits the most. It could benefit the teams that have a really deep shuttle squad and a really deep back of the bullpen. And it could just benefit guys who have relievers who can pitch more days in a row. back of the bullpen and it could just benefit guys who have relievers who can pitch more days in a row you know like if there's a reliever who just can throw two days in a row and has the arm strength and stamina to do that i don't know how we know that because there just hasn't been this compressed of a schedule in baseball before but i think that that'll be really interesting i don't think the dh really changes tactics very much in the n. Or rather, it doesn't create any new interesting tactics. It gets rid of double switches.

Well, while we have you, I'll ask you this other question that's related to that. And it's from one of our Patreon supporters, Mike, who says, I came across this article about the Reds. And it's an article by John Fay in the Cincinnati Inquirer. And the headline is, a shorter season is not good news for the Cincinnati Reds. And the questioner, Mike, continues, he makes the point that the Reds' strength is their starting pitching, and a shorter season benefits teams with better bullpens rather than rotations. Are there some statistics that would back this up? I initially thought that a solid rotation might be better because it will take longer for the hitters to get back in the groove than pitchers. And this is kind of a confounding one because I think,

on the one hand, as far as the last part, I think hitters tend to be ahead of pitchers early in the season. There have been past studies that have shown that if you adjust for temperature, and I assume that that will continue to be the case. But with the Reds specifically, you could say that any team that was not a playoff favorite prior to this benefits, right? Like when Dan Szymborski did his article the other day about teams that have higher playoff odds now or higher World Series odds, the Reds have better odds now than they did pre-pandemic just because it's a shorter season and because of the way that they're projected they were not the favorites in the NL Central and so shorter season helps them but that doesn't really answer the pitching depth question and I'm not exactly sure how to approach that because I don't know whether starters will end up throwing a lower percentage of innings or a higher percentage of team innings it's kind of hard to say because of the workload concerns and the reds may not have as great a bullpen as they do a starting rotation but they have a pretty deep staff overall there

was a table in an ian osiris article the other day using steamer projections from fan graphs and it ranked baseball's pitching staffs by depth and it looked at the number of above replacement pitchers and average starting pitchers and the Reds did quite well in those metrics they were like right after the Rays and Yankees and Dodgers and Padres were up there too so I don't know do you have any thoughts on whether this helps or hurts a team like the Reds? I think it's pretty close to neutral. I think at the beginning of the season, bullpen probably helps more

because it's very unlikely your pitchers will be fully stretched out. It's just such an abbreviated, I guess, summer training. Yeah. They have a new name for it. Yeah. Spring training 2.0 just doesn't quite work yeah jeff suggested summer camp on twitter so maybe we should go with that yeah

yeah so i could see the bullpen helping more at the start of the season but i don't see a reason why a lower percentage of innings would be thrown by your starters aside from again the first two weeks call it i've been thinking about why that could be, and nothing springs to mind. It's not like starters really need the extra days off sprinkled in. Teams carry five-man rotations. I guess that you can't get as many times where you take a double dip with your ace

because there are fewer days off where you can get moved up in the rotation and you skip your fifth starter. But that doesn't say anything about starting against relieving. That says something about depth. And like you said, the Reds actually have really good starting depth. So I don't think I buy that the short season will help reliever-centric teams so much as it'll help teams that are deep. Okay. Take heart, Reds fans. Okay, well, thank you for running the numbers. I will link to the post and your other work. And Ben is on Twitter. Also, the rare double underscore Twitter hints at underscore Ben underscore Clemens was was just the one underscore version taken at the time. Sadly, yes. Okay, well, it's not an uncommon name, I suppose, unfortunately.

Yeah. I'm glad to know that having all the bends on Effectively Wild has not so far caused the heat death of the universe. Yeah. We might just need more bends. Oh, no. 2020 is so complicated. There are enough bends.

You could have gone with at Ben Clemens And some long string of numbers That made you look like a Russian pot or something I think this is better Yeah, I guess so Alright, well thank you Ben Very much, enjoy your work And appreciate your coming on

Yeah, thanks for having me Okay, so speaking of the weird extra innings Runner on second rule We got a couple questions about that. One from a listener named Shant and one from a listener named Jacob. And Jacob puts it, with the runner starting on second base in extras, can we have a scenario where a pitcher records a perfect game and still loses? Because, of course, you could have the runner who is just an automatic runner who scores a team's winning run and that run is not assessed to that pitcher's earned run average

it doesn't count as a runner he allowed because he didn't of course but he would still be the losing pitcher and this scenario has arisen a couple times. Two-time Effectively Wild guest Rick Teasley actually pitched a perfect game but lost, or he threw a perfect nine innings but his team lost, and that was in the Independent League. And then there was also a scenario with the minor league team Tampa Tarpons of the Florida State League. with the minor league team Tampa Tarpons of the Florida State League. They had a similar scenario to this too because this extra runner rule has been in place for a while. So the Tarpons took a perfect game into extra innings in 2018, but those extra innings began with a runner on second and then some other stuff happened. But it could happen nine perfect innings and then the 10th starts with them in on second. And then who knows, there's a wild pitch and a sack fly and a team allows no hits or walks or errors or hit by pitches, but still loses the game. However, it turns out that

you could still have a perfect game. This would technically still count as a perfect game. So I am reading from a Jason Stark article at The Athletic this week. He says, after that Tarpons game, the Elias Sports Bureau put itself on record as saying that any game in which a runner scored cannot be considered perfect. But Corey Schwartz, who oversees statistics for both Major League and Minor League Baseball, took to Twitter to announce a slightly different interpretation back then. And Corey tweeted, No need to wait. I can tell you right now, auto runners don't count against a perfect game or no hitter.

And Jason continues, So when this rule came to the big leagues, I thought we'd better get an updated ruling on this. And just so you know, Elias is now on board with the idea that it is possible to lose an extra inning perfect game. But they told us they're also on board with the idea that it is possible to lose an extra inning perfect game. But they told us they're also on board with the reality that there is basically a one in a zillion chance it could actually happen this year. In other words, they're saying there's a chance.

So it could happen. Yeah. I mean, you'd have to have a pitcher pitch into extra innings like that would be weird enough to have him go 10 and lose. And especially in this season when pitchers maybe won't be built up and so it's very unlikely to happen and I talked to Rick about the scenario when he was on the podcast for the second time to talk about the Atlantic League rules that were in place last year but yeah it it could technically happen. So I kind of like the idea of a perfect game that is still a loss. I mean, it's really just semantics. It's someone at MLP decides whether we're going to call it a perfect game or not.

And they have decided evidently that we would. I just want to know what the at bat notification will look like. Oh, yeah. Like, how do you start trying to, you know, we would get it much earlier, right? The first one saying, oh, we're on a perfect game watch, come earlier. I don't know why it would have that kind of dopey voice. So I guess that's the voice that I assume notifications talk in. Sorry, that bad.

I think that's probably true of like, you know, when I get a UPS package delivered too. So, you know, the first one would be like standard stuff and then when it's lost how do you succinctly describe the action i died i guess that you'd probably just under describe you'll never believe how this picture lost his perfect game right yeah what accent is that that i'm even doing i don't know you're doing a lot of voice work today. Yeah. Just trying to keep it interesting. Yeah. I think it makes sense, though. It seems just to me to give a perfect game.

Like if you're going to impose this rule that a pitcher through no fault of his own can allow a base runner. Now, granted, like an error might not be the pitcher's fault. And we still count that as a non-perfect game. Right. But in this case case no one screwed up it's not even a teammate who did anything it's just mlb said hey we're starting extra innings with a runner on second now so there's that runner you can't really blame anyone for that really so still seems perfect i think it's perfect i guess it comes down to the nature of perfection

we can't all be perfect really we can't ever really be perfect so i think it's fine that this is an approximation of perfection i think that we should credit the era to the pandemic i think that i think the pandemic should get a stat page and it should just be all errors and negative war yeah yeah every every one of them every time a base runner is put on second in extra innings as a result of this, because we know whose fault it is. It's the pandemic's fault. Yes, absolutely. So I want there to be one more place where we are recording negative COVID stats for the record.

I think we should be able to measure the effect in baseball in a very concrete sort of way. So that would be my piece of snarky advice to the committee if I were asked. I will respect the committee's decision since I wasn't, but that would be my preference. Well, we're only talking about this weird extra innings rule because we hate ties as a culture. We just can't seem to stomach ties. One of the big baseball scandals of Bud Selig's tenure is that there was a tie. Can you believe it? There is a tie in a meaningless exhibition game. What an incompetent commissioner. He actually just sat there and let these two teams tie. Can't believe it. So we got a question here from Guillaume. He is the questioner who asked the StatBlast question the other day about World Series winning players who did not actually appear in the World Series but did appear on World Series winning teams.

And he says, here comes Guillaume or Guillaume again, the French dude with the unpronounceable name. By the way, you did very well last time. That's nice to hear. I was listening to episode 1555 and was surprised to listen to you arguing about draws. This is very funny because we were arguing about them as well in the podcast that I run on baseball and MLB in France. This also came from our unhappiness of seeing extra innings start with a runner on second base. extra innings start with a runner on second base for us french people it seemed that if mlb wanted to have better control of the time frame of the game they should stop with extra innings in regular season but keep them in postseason and by the way this extra innings runner rule is not in place for

the postseason so we will not see a world series game ending with with this just don't worry about that so continuing if mlb wanted to have better control the time frame of the game they should with extra innings in regular season, but keep them in the postseason and accept that a baseball game could end as a draw between the two teams. The season is normally 162 games long, and I don't think the draws would be an issue in having a clear division winner. Anyway, my question about this is as follows. Could you tell me why, historically historically does a baseball game need to end with a clear winner and not in a draw and do you think that baseball could become the first sport of the big four to have its regular season games end in a draw so there is some precedent for this in the distant past there were baseball games that were ties or draws and there have been ties or draws in other major american sports too

i wasn't sure of the exact history of this and i googled and i found a paper that conveniently was just published in march called a history of america's aversion to tie games in popular team sports perfect it's great when you can find a paper. The title just perfectly matches your Google search terms almost. And this was published in the International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure, which sounds like a journal I'd be interested in reading. And it was published by Zach Bloomberg or Blumberg, Andrej Markovic, and Annabelle Scholl. It's a long paper. It's a 23-page paper, and I will link to it if you're interested in all of the information that go through the history of ties in various sports. But I'll just skip ahead to the conclusions and future research section that comes at the end here. And it sounds like it perplexed them to an extent, why we Americans just can't tolerate ties. Sounds like it perplexed them to an extent, why we Americans just can't tolerate ties.

So they write, To this point, this project has provided modest insights into American sports and American sporting culture, but has not identified a definitive time period or reason behind America's aversion to tie games. Throughout the study, the one consistently documented phenomenon is that Americans across nearly every sport and time period dislike Thai games. However, there is no consensus about when or why this developed. While not providing a clear causation, we believe that America's singular bourgeois culture, which was mentioned at the paper's outset, plays a role. uncertainty and indecision. These states of mind enjoy greater tolerance in a highly structured and vertical system that typified aristocratic Europe, as opposed to the greater horizontality offered by American bourgeois development. In the mindset of the latter, winning is a constant necessity of life, and a major motor for distinction. Some American sports, namely baseball and basketball, have been devoid of ties largely since their creation, hinting that Americans could potentially have disliked ties since the beginning of organized sports in the United States.

Meanwhile, hockey and football, and hockey of course is Canadian, have worked to eliminate ties over time, hinting that these sports leagues are perhaps following a later shift among Americans to a more intense distaste for tie games. Furthermore, America's unique sporting environment provides additional material from which to garner conclusions. American sports culture emphasizes rule changes, legal tinkering, and general evolution, something which is distinctly American. From this angle, it is possible that Americans' opinions of Thai games are not a standalone phenomenon, but rather part of an American sports culture that differs from its global counterparts. While there's plenty of evidence about the

general differences between American and global sports culture, such as America's use of playoffs and willingness to make drastic rule changes, there are no explicit data linking views about Thai games to this specific phenomenon. However, this is certainly an area with potential for further exploration. And they say that going forward, it would make sense to conduct research to ascertain in greater detail the essence of what constitutes American culture. Sounds like a simple question. And whether the dislike of ties is congruent with this larger phenomenon, and second, to search for any psychological phenomena that might be unique to Americans in this regard,

finding information about the second topic could explain the first, and together they could ultimately produce an improved answer to our original puzzle concerning American aversion toward ties. Goodness. Yeah. Can I offer a kind of half-cocked explanation? Yes, please. a half-cocked explanation yes please i think it's that american spectators like to be able to brag about enduring things and baseball lets you do that while sitting down so we'd prefer extra innings so that we can brag but not have to stand up yeah that, that's true. There is a bragging right that goes along with like,

oh, I was there at that night. I was there. I didn't leave. I didn't turn off the TV. I stayed up to the bitter end, even though I got no sleep and was a zombie the next day and probably should have just gone to bed. But I didn't because I'm a hardcore fan.

Because I'm a real fan. Yeah, right. I'm a real fan and i'm a real fan yeah i'm a real fan and i got to do all that while sitting down so that's my sort of um half-baked explanation i don't know how true it is but i'm comfortable with it at least so far yeah i think i would maybe prefer ties than the extra hitting runner rule if that were to be implemented permanently i get why it's in place this season but the idea of a victor is satisfying to me like it does seem like kind of the climax or it almost makes the whole thing worthwhile right to to know who won but i guess you could say it's about the journey not the destination and it's about the journey, not the destination. And it's about the fun of watching the game. And we don't need to know the winner. It's not like in a baseball game, the winner of that game decides who the best team was at that time.

So in the long run, it still tells you what the good teams are. Like if you have a very long season, it's fine. If you have some ties, it doesn't obscure anything. So I don't know why I'm uncomfortable with it. I shouldn't be. But I guess just uncertainty in general is something that's unsettling. We want to know things, but sometimes it's fine not to know and to admit that you don't know. Yeah. The only sport that I really watch with any regularity that allows for eventual ties is football. And I'll say that you don't feel good after a tie. It feels like a failure that everyone has to wear. If overtime

in football ends in a tie, my general takeaway is one of incompetence. And for whatever reason, despite the fact that if you have watched a 19 inning game, you have also watched a great deal of incompetence. You get to end on a note of, well, sometimes you end on a note of incompetence leading to victory. So that's its own bit of nonsense. But somebody at least emerges victorious. Whereas when you watch the Seahawks and the Cardinals end in a tie because of missed field

goals, you're like, why did I do any of this? Like, why did I sit here for four hours or however long it was? So I think part of it too, is that there is a, that feeling is an icky one. And you're right. Like, um, it, it's sometimes as right. It sometimes is good to sit unsettled, but I think you also mostly just feel like you've wasted time, and we hate that very much. We'd rather endure something terrible, granted, while sitting down for a long, long stretch, than be like, oh, I wasted my time.

Right. So I think that's part of it also. But I am very open to an explanation that interprets American exceptionalism in a negative light. I'm very sympathetic to interpretations of American life that center around that right now. Feels true. Feels true in my heart. Okay. This question comes from Jacob, Patreon supporter. He says, I was curious as to what you think is going to happen to top minor league players such as Carter Keeboom or Nate Pearson, who might be on the cusp of the majors but haven't signed a contract in the way Luis Robert has. Do teams have any incentive at all to let those guys accrue service time this year?

It feels unfortunate but also likely that we'll have to wait another year and 20 days of next season to see some of these really exciting prospects make it to the show do you think the same thing or do you think we could see some of these guys poke their heads into mlb so i sent this question to eric longenhagen of fan graphs to see what he thought and he said i know that teams are currently talking through concepts like this i think if you're toronto and you wait a week and you're 0-6, you might go screw it and keep him down. Talking about Pearson, their top pitching prospect. Baltimore and Detroit sound like they're going to be immediate sellers. I think whether prospects debut or not will be driven by their team's competitive incentives. This is something where Jeff Passan noted the other day that if the Blue Jays hold Nate Pearson down for seven days, then they'll get an extra year of control, which isn't that much different really from a regular season, except that seven days is proportionately much more of this season.

And so as Eric is saying, it would be a shame if a slow start prompted some team to not promote a prospect, let's say. But if you go 0-6, that's a tenth of the season already. So that actually does really dramatically affect your playoff odds. And yet there's so much potential to just sort of sneak into the playoffs this year that I would really hope that teams are going for it to the extent that they can do something to go for it, as we talked about before. The rosters are already pretty much in place there's only so much you can do but because of the randomness and because you can just get in there without necessarily having a team that's built to win over 162 games i would hope that not many teams or not any teams decide to sell or keep

prospects down even though they probably will i think think that sadly, a lot of them will. I do think that it will be interesting to see. And I don't know how much direct insight we're going to have on this question. But, you know, I think we're all agreed that service time as a concept and its sort of peculiarities and contours is going to be a pretty big part of the next CBA negotiation. And so I wonder if there will be teams out there that are sort of on that cusp who want to make a run this year, even though it is a weird season. They want to get their guys who are sort of high majors prospects time in the big leagues so that they are making sure to take great care with their development and

giving them every opportunity to continue to grow as players. And they look at it and say, well, maybe all this is going to be different after 2021 anyway, so why not? That might be a very optimistic reading of the potential situation. I think that history has shown that given the ability to manipulate service of otherwise ready prospects, that teams will do that. And considering that Chris Bryant lost his grievance and was likely to be sort of the most clear-cut case of service time manipulation and thus the most likely to win that, maybe that emboldened some teams to say, ha-ha, ha-ha. Yeah, right. Remember when Chris Bryant lost his grievance? Yeah, seems like a long time ago. most likely to win that maybe that emboldens some teams to say haha yeah right remember when chris bryant lost his grievance yeah seems like a long time ago feels like a long time ago so i i don't know the answer to that we have seen teams uh in the last couple of years that have that have

decided to buck this trend right and to just put their players on the field when they feel that they're ready you know chris paddock and f and Fernando Tatis were on the opening day roster for the Padres, so it's not as if it's impossible or even unheard of, even without contract extensions like we've seen the White Sox lean into, but I do worry that teams will be shifty, although we've also heard front office executives say that they expect to be judged by the results on the field regardless of how wonky this season gets so it's not as if every front

office type that's making those choices is going to feel themselves sort of totally unencumbered by the expectations of ownership but i don't know yeah i don't know. Yeah. I don't know. There are these taxi squads. So I would hope that if you put like a prospect on a taxi squad and he's working out with the team or traveling with the team but not on the active roster or not making major league money or not getting service time, that would seem pretty lousy to do that. I don't know. The thing is that like this year, there's no minor league season, most likely, or certainly not a normal one. And so if you want your guys to get any sort of seasoning, it kind of has to be in the big leagues unless there's like an expanded something Arizona Fall League. But, you know, it's hard to imagine even that now because of what's happening in Arizona. So I don't know. that could happen. But usually it's like, well, do we want to rush this guy? Do we want to promote this guy? Even when that's like

a legitimate concern and not just a justification for surface time manipulation, it's like, well, we think he needs a little more time. Now there's nowhere else to get time, really. So if you want any in-game experience, it might have to be in the big leagues and that's kind of a strange single season dynamic too so i don't know i i would hope that like if detroit or someone just happens to fluke into like a 15 and 15 start or something and then you get to the trade deadline on august 31st which is so weird because it's one month into the season. And yet, you know, that's half the season. Like one month is normally nothing really, but now it's half the season. So it's conceivable that you could actually look into a playoff spot if even if you're not a great team.

And I guess you could say, well, it's this weird season. No one's going to take it that seriously anyway. So why should we try as hard as possible? And why should we call up a prospect if it's a short season and we're not even going to get as much playing time out of him but on the other hand it's way more feasible that you actually could make it and that holding on to players instead of trading them or promoting players instead of keeping them down could really turn out to be a playoff berth you know like even if it's like right in the middle of your rebuilding period or something that would be nice like even if you don't think, well, we're going to be back next year, it would be a nice little respite of giving your fans a competitive season in the middle of a bunch of losing seasons. So I would hope that we will see teams try as much as possible, given how

easy it is comparatively to make the playoffs this year. Yeah, I think that's right. This is not a player who I expect to see in the majors this year, which is fine. But did you see the report because of all the factors that you just named that the Rays are very likely to have Wander Franco on their taxi squad? No, I did not. They're likely to have Wander Franco on their taxi squad, which makes good sense. And he's 19 and has not played advanced minor league ball yet. So I don't have any expectation that we will see him. That would be very strange. But part of me wondered if they did it to keep him away from trampolines.

Did Jeff listen to Effectively Wild and say, haha, wait, I have a solution. Yeah, if that's what it takes. I've got one last question here. This is from Derek, another Patreon supporter, who says, My much more observant eight-year-old son asked me why the KBO catchers always try to catch the balls in the dirt instead of getting down to block. That was a couple weeks ago, and I've been watching more closely since then. Sure enough, there appears to be much less blocking from the knees. then. Sure enough, there appears to be much less blocking from the knees. Now I'm wondering if catcher blocking is a relic left over from the past where catchers didn't have functional mitts and the best strategy was to use the body to keep it in front. Could it be that it's still done this way because it's always been done that way and a skilled catcher may be better off scooping like a

first baseman in some circumstances or even all the time? From the games I've watched and paid attention to, three to four-ish, I'd say it was at least half trying to dig the ball even with runners on base. I separately asked my eight-year-old son without giving him my estimate, and he said they only block about a quarter of the time. He's been watching more games and more closely,

but he's eight, so there's that. We are likely overestimating because we are looking for it, but it's enough to be noticeable for sure. Either way, I think the question is still valid. As a coach, I know that I drill into my players the need to block all balls in the dirt, which is based on not only what I was taught, but also the leading catcher resources. I would not be surprised at all if it continues that way because of the aversion to risk. There are few things in baseball that are shamed more vehemently than a passed ball with a runner on base if the catcher tries to pick it instead of

blocking. So Derek and his observant eight-year-old son are suggesting that maybe this is the better way. Maybe this is the more highly evolved way of stopping balls as a catcher. I wasn't sure about this. I didn't know why this happens or if this happens and what it would mean. So I sent the question to a couple of people who scout for KBO teams because I figured they would be much better equipped to answer these questions. So these are both people who have worked in that world for quite a while now, and they both confirmed this observation. So well done, Derek's eight-year-old son. You noticed something that was happening. And one of them says, I've noticed that before. Koreans and Asian players in general are really good at working in small spaces using angles, precise movements, etc. Less focused on acts of brute strength and force.

It could be they think the risk-reward is just in their favor. The catchers also drop their glove to the ground, as the pitcher is in the delivery. Don't see that too often here. The other scout had sort of a more pessimistic or negative interpretation here and said, I believe it's just the lack of proper coaching and conditioning. They don't really get into a nice and loose athletic position when they catch.

Players and coaches here still have the misconception that becoming bigger and heavier equals power, making it tough for their bodies to alter positions. Since pitch velocities have gone up compared to what they were years ago, of course it's nowhere near the major league average, veteran catchers may feel it's more efficient to just move your hands instead of your whole body and prefer to cheat. Young catchers will pick that up. Also, secondaries generally have lesser movement and velocity compared to those thrown by major league pitchers. The KBO has struggled at developing good young catchers. They've kind of been in their own island in terms of catching. There has never been a South Korean catcher who has had an established career in the States, then afterwards spread the word back to South Korea on

how it's done. I don't even recall any former catchers going over to the States, learning a few things, and then opening an academy over here either. The Lotte Giants catchers seem like they've made improvements this season with Hank Conger looking after them, so it's good to see that. And he also included a note that wild pitches plus pass balls per game in 2015 were 1.08 in KBO versus 0.89 in MLB. So quite a few more wild pitches or pass balls over there, despite the fact that pitches are moving more slowly and maybe not moving as much. And so in theory, you would think they might be easier to block. So it could be a technique or conditioning issue, which I

guess that's one of the things that we've heard about the KBO is that in many respects, the level of play is comparable to the majors or to high level minor leagues, but that defense is maybe one of the areas where it falls a little short at times. So I guess this could be a manifestation of that. Yeah. And it's, you know, if you watch, if you watch college baseball, even high level college baseball in the U S and you watch catchers a lot, like, you know, maybe I do, there seems to be, you take for granted how good the, not just the frame, the literal receiving is in the majors. Yeah. And when you watch high-level college ball, you're like, oh, some, you know, like catching the ball is hard. Yeah. And I bring that up not because I think that it's a perfect

talent level comp, but because I would imagine that some of the average velocities that the catchers there might see would perhaps be similar. So I do think that there is, even at lower velocities, probably work that needs to be done to perfect technique so that you're just receiving the ball competently. So it would not surprise me if, yeah, you just need, it is a point, it would be a point of emphasis in terms of improving development because it is one that is true of sort of amateurish pros here in the States too. Right. Yeah. All right. Well, that's all I got here. I will leave you with the latest Scott Boris analogy news or metaphor news, which is that he recycled himself. Boris analogy news or metaphor news, which is that he recycled himself. He reused one of his analogies. So it's not a new breakdown that we need here, but he liked one of his word plays enough to use it again two years later. So some of you may recall when Scott Boris talked about

the Padres as a volcano of hot talent lava. And Jeff and I analyzed that at the time. Of course, Jeff loves volcanoes and lava. So this was of interest to him. And he said at the time to turn that lava into Major League Rock. That's a hard thing to do. What Eric Hosmer brings, he went through all that in Kansas City. They turned into championship rocks. When you can have a young veteran champion,

I think your chances of guiding lava into rocks is pretty good. I think that's the destiny and the plan. And thus far, the Padres have still been lava, I guess. They have not been championship rocks. They have not been the volcano, if it's even a good thing to be a volcano and erupt. But he's still sticking with it. And he said just the other day on a radio show there's more of that lava coming and they added quite a bit more in this draft i think the volcano's ready to erupt so clearly he likes the volcano and lava eruption analogy when it comes to the padres and he's sticking with it. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

I also noticed this is not a Boris one, but my pal Zach Cram from The Ringer just flagged this for me in a Jeff Passon column. It says, 10 days ago as Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association continued haggling over finances and return to play discussions, one official said the whole thing felt like Game of Thrones.

All this fighting over money and power when the real hazard for the 2020 MLB season, the existential threat, loomed elsewhere. The COVID White Walkers are real, he said. So it's Boris-esque, but I assume it's not Boris because he would have put his name to it probably. Well, maybe not because he would not want to distract from the money and economic issues. But yeah, I don't know. Boris, it seems like usually science is work when he does one of those or at least he gives himself away.

Like, I don't know that you can have an anonymous analogy if you're Boris, because if you come out and say that free agency is the vase of championships or whatever, and you just ask to be anonymous, I don't think it's really going to hide your cover because we know how you speak, Scott. Yeah. Gosh, I hope that the end result of this season is more satisfying than the last season of Game of Thrones. Me too.

Me too. Years of my life. Yep, yep. Well, that's sort of the same thing. I think about that too with Game of Thrones. Like, yeah, it ended in a very frustrating way, but I enjoyed the ride. So it's sort of analogous to what we're saying about like an extra inning game ending in a tie or something. Like maybe the tie would be dissatisfying, but what if the game was good up until that point does it ruin the whole thing retroactively i will say that my stance toward the runner on second and extra innings rule has softened since it incentivized the giants to give billy hamilton a job yeah it's softened somewhat you know so there's there's that we got that going for it i guess right and john taylor just did a post for fangrass about how rare this would be, or we won't actually see this that often. And he mentioned that in all of MLB history,

there have only been 84 games that went to or passed the 19th inning. So it's like, you know, won a season if that, so it doesn't even really seem worth legislating that out. But he also noted that even if you lower the threshold to 15 innings, there are only 16 of those games last year. So 0.6% of the season once every 160 games. So basically like once a season per team, something like that. So the extra runner rule does work. It definitely does. And in the minors, he said they saw a gigantic decrease in games that went three or more innings past the ninth. Granted, there weren't all that many to begin with. He did say that it might save some time. The games that were done in 10 innings

last year lasted on average three hours and 34 minutes or 29 minutes longer than 2019's nine inning average. A half hour chopped is nothing to sneeze at especially when the goal is not to be on the field a minute longer than is necessary so that's true and it's uh also true i guess in the giants case i think they play more extra inning games because it's kind of a low scoring team and low scoring park and there end up being more ties after nine innings so So maybe Billy will be in action more often. Could be true. All right. So we will end there and we will be back with an extra episode before this week is out. All right. That will do it for today. Thank you for listening. And

speaking of the KBO, I will be on ESPN's KBO broadcast early Saturday morning with Jessica Mendoza and Jason Benetti around 5.30 a.m. Eastern. I'm sure you'll all set your alarms, but I'll be on their book club segment talking about the MVP machine. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Garrett Spin, Mike Waller, Teddy themselves access to some perks. Garrett Spin, Mike Waller, Teddy Ballgame, Philip D. Cowan, and Roland Smith. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions for

me and Meg and Sam coming 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. And as mentioned, we will be back with one more episode this week, so we will talk to you soon. I'll never be a winner An alien cloud of dust Never been a burning heat Red sea devouring me Human of a milestone sound Oh