Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1571: Does the Automatic-Runner Rule Rule?

Episode Date: July 31, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about family members not attending big league debuts and how teams and broadcasts could make better use of empty ballparks, audible profanity on the field, the rapid change in public opinion of the extra-innings automatic-runner rule, why the rule works as well as it does, the magnitude and causes […]

It's funny how things go around, but go around they do. This place is empty, empty, so empty without you. Hello and welcome to episode 1571 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello, Sam. Hello. We are planning to do an email episode today. So since we last spoke on Monday, we've had, what, a few more Marlins test positive,

including Miguel Rojas. We've had a Phillies coach and clubhouse attendant test positive, and Thursday's workout at Citizens Bank Park got canceled. MLB has required teams to travel with a COVID compliance officer. Nick Markakis opted back into the season after having opted out. Joe Kelly threw at and taunted the Astros and got suspended for eight games of a 60-game season. And MLB and the Players Association agreed to give Rob Manfred the power to suspend players for sign stealing. And also Blue Jays top prospect Nate Pearson made his major league debut and

touched triple digits. Do you have thoughts on any of those things? You know what? I have thoughts on Brady Singer, who we talked about Brady Singer's parents being in Cleveland to see him debut, but not being able to go to the ballpark and how I thought. Anyway, you remember that it was just two days ago. A couple things about that. One is that my friend Dan pointed out that Sam Hilliard of the Colorado Rockies parents were actually in attendance at some games in Texas. His dad was diagnosed with ALS and the Rangers came up with a plan or maybe the Rockies came up with a plan. Probably they came up with a plan together to allow his a few members of his family to watch a few games.

The end of the the exhibition games. Are they exhibition games, practice games? And then the first couple games of the season from a socially distanced spot up by the concourse. I thought that was very nice. And, and that since that has now been done, since there's precedent for that, I'm going to expand my recommendation that not just every starting pitcher

can pick a fan or two to sit behind home plate and be our cheering avatars, but that those fans should also be allowed, perhaps required to bring an unleashed dog with them. I think it would be wonderful to have dogs running around the empty stadium. To chase after the balls? That could be part of the plan. I don't think you want a lot of dogs because I don't think you want a lot of dog fights.

But I think, assuming this season continues to go forward, I think a burgeoning theme in how I'm watching these games is thinking about how little this sport is playing to the TV audience. There really haven't been that many adaptations. There isn't much adaptation for the fact that the audience is entirely at home watching on TV. And just like if you are a stage actor, you act differently than if you are a film actor where your audience is the camera instead of the back row of the stadium. Baseball needs to recognize that now that it has a TV audience and all this empty space, it should be doing a lot more to make the game like kind of a more interactive, you

know, thing with the fans at home. And I mean, that's been talked about like miking up players or miking up the dugout, I think is a very good start. I think that the to some, I think as the season goes on, we might see players that develop more gifable personas, knowing that their audience is entirely on TV. But I would also like to see them make use of the empty stands in a better way as the season goes on. And to me, that includes having unleashed dogs in the stands. So I'm just throwing that out there. I also, one other thing about Brady Singer,

you heard how I just said his name, right? Brady Singer. The Brady Bunch, of course, was a show about some kids who then became singers, popular singers. They had a band. They had some hits. They were the Brady Bunch.

I think they were officially called maybe the Brady Bunch children or something. But they were singers who were also Brady's. So whenever I see the name Brady Singer, I think Brady Singer. But you just heard how I said Brady Singer. It's different. When you say Brady Singer, the name, you stress the last name. Yeah. And when you say Brady Singer, like if you're describing the singers in the Brady family,

you would say the Brady Singers. The Brady Singers. There's like more of an emphasis on Brady, right? Where the Brady is the stressed syllable instead of singer. And I had not noticed until Brady Singer that we stress the last name when we say most names almost all names at least yeah well at least we do you and i do and that seems weird to me because the reason that we stress brady when we're describing the kids singing is that brady is the modifier they are the singers who are brady. And our first names, if anything, are modifying our last names, right?

Where the idea of having two names is that, like, you are from House Lindbergh and you are the Ben of the Lindbergh. You're the Ben Lindbergh. Which Lindbergh? Ben Lindbergh. And so it feels like we should be stressing the first name which is more of a modifier Sam Miller which Miller Sam Miller but we don't do that and and I'm not recommending that we switch I'm just saying that it is only because of the major league debut of Brady Singer that I've noticed this by the way from season 2 episode 16 the drummer boy this is a bit of

dialogue carol the brady matriarch clapping says hooray for the brady singers so that seems like that's right now currently behind the paywall at cbs all. But I feel like there might be the potential for repurposing that clip somehow in Brady Singer's career. Yeah. Well, I wonder if the name stress thing is because you don't get to see the whole name written out when it's said out loud. And so when the first name is said, then there's a curiosity, right? It's a question. Which Ben? Yeah, which Ben?

I mean, is it Brady Singer? Is it Brady Rogers? Is it Brady Anderson? Is it one of the other baseball Bradys? So that kind of answers that question. Well, which Brady? Brady Singer. That's a great point.

Yeah. Yeah, you're right. All right. Well, I was going to say I don't think this is an intentional adjustment to this broadcast environment, Yeah, you're right. that he was looking forward to this season, but it really has shown up even more than maybe I expected it to, and we've gotten a lot of great moments. I mean, A, you get to hear Dusty Baker cursing at Joe Kelly and telling him to get back on the mound, which was delightful, you know, the headhunting part.

Wait, wait, get back on the mound. Which one of those words do you consider a curse, Ben? None of those are dirty words in my house. I omitted that part. Which part? Our family-friendly audience. But you had that. The headhunting, the beanball wars part of that was, I think, not so great.

And it's nice that there's a suspension, although I'm surprised that it was proportionally as big a part of the season as it was. I guess that's because everyone knew that people would be gunning for the Astros and it was so obvious and teams had been warned before the season, you know, eight years ago, not to throw intentionally at the Astros and Joe Kelly did. But I enjoyed the Dusty Baker part. And we heard at least about the taunt that Joe Kelly did after striking out Carlos Correa. And then you get to hear this just routinely as you're watching games, like, you know, Josh Reddick pops up and he screams out something and then it's just so audible on the broadcast. He screamed when he popped up.

on the broadcast. Get back on the mound! He screamed when he popped up. It's so audible that the broadcaster has to acknowledge it. It's like awkward if they don't say something. And I think Mark Craig just wrote something about this for The Athletic because I think after Josh Reddick screamed, not get back on the mound, I think it was Joe Davis maybe who just said, sorry, out loud. And it's like, you know, what are they going to do? I mean, should they put all the games on a delay or something for like FCC purposes? I don't know how that works, but you can't really quiet it, I guess, if you want to have any kind of baseball sound. If you want the crack of the bat and the pop of the glove, then you also have to have Josh Reddick screaming after he pops up. Unless, I guess, you are very quick on the silencer button.

But you almost have to acknowledge it at that point because it's just like this silent moment on the broadcast, and then all of a sudden someone screams out a curse word, and you could just ignore it and pretend it didn't happen. But generally, broadcasters seem to be acknowledging it and sort of half-jokingly apologizing for it, and everyone's in on the joke. And it's great fun. So I'll be curious to see if players moderate that at all as the season goes on and they get gift and they're hyper-aware that this is being picked up by the mics. Or maybe they like that. Maybe they want to

be the guy who's known for screaming when they pop up but i've enjoyed that aspect of the broadcast at least yeah i i would be surprised if the players moderate it wouldn't be surprised if the league issued a memorandum yeah directing them to and maybe threat i don't know maybe threatening fines if they didn't which uh would be a whole different discussion but most you know most profanity josh reddick josh reddick's been you know screaming that after pop-ups for his whole career and most of them don't get on tv but yeah uh they're you know very audible around the stadium around the you know particularly the lower level of the

stadium so if josh reddick doesn't feel any embarrassment about his language when people are in his immediate vicinity, then I don't think that the fact that this goes out on TV is going to affect him. I just don't think that he thinks that this is any sort of damage to the world. The league being corporate will have a different view, I assume. Yes, I think so. So I was just going to say that I had noticed kind of a change of public opinion on the extra innings rule. And we talked about it very briefly on our last episode. And you said you were still coming up with your opinion. You were still evaluating it. And I was going to say

that I had noticed a few articles coming out in praise of the extra innings rule, whereas before that it was all people slamming it. And I've generally been against it. But whereas it was kind of cool, or at least the consensus to say that this was terrible and it's Bush League and it's ruining baseball before the season started. Now I've started to see some articles come out to take the opposite stance and I have not read it yet, but I just noticed that you have now written one of those articles. So the headline says that it's glorious. I don't know if that reflects exactly what you wrote, but it seems that you have formed your opinion. Yeah, I had absolutely no doubt that it was a bad idea. This has been humbling because I thought that it was a bad solution to a non-problem. And whether it's a non-problem or not, I think is still very much a matter of your temperament or your lifestyle or your relationship to baseball. And even 50 years from now, it might still seem like, well, that was

a problem that didn't need to be fixed. But clearly, there are other people who have very practical reasons for thinking that it is a problem, right? The players hate 20 inning games, the owners hate 20 inning games, the majority of fans hate 20 inning games. And it's a very small subset of us that loved them. And I don't know if I'm, I think it's possible that I might be even moving out of that subset. I'm not sure yet. However, as far as it being a terrible solution to it, I had proposed, if you were going to do this, what I considered better solutions that would have caused more variety and more dynamism in strategy in late innings and more varied outcomes in late innings than simply

putting a runner on second with one out. And I have been, I think, I mean, it's obvious it's only been seven games, but I think I've been proven totally wrong about that. The seven games have produced seven very different pathways of subsequent events. None of the games has really resembled the other. The strategy has not been either routine or uniform or even, it seems like every game's strategy really has to be specific to the circumstances of that game and the people involved. And I have looked forward to those innings starting and I've really enjoyed,

I've found those innings to be tense, urgent, entertaining, surprising, unpredictable, and you can't look away from them. And I had a, I mean, I, I had a day a couple days ago, it was the Brewers Pirates game, when I knew I was writing this. And this was the fifth extra inning game of the season and they made it through 10 without scoring this was the first game that had gone to the 11th and um this was it was like you know 9 30 or 9 or so my local time my time and my wife came over to see if i was gonna uh watch a tv with her that night and ordinarily i would have either had to turn the game off, which I

would frequently have done with extra inning games, because who knows how long they're going to go. Or I would have had to say no, because this game might go, you know, well past her bedtime. But in this case, I could just say, well, this is going to probably be over in 20 minutes. And so yes, I'm going to watch TV. And I both saw the ending, it was an exciting ending. And then I lived my life beyond that. And that was satisfying. Now that latter part, the forcing the resolution, I still am not totally sure on and I don't think that I think, again, I think that just depends on where you are in your life or in your week, whether you want a game to go infinitely, I still will have

always have a place in my heart that longs for the infinite game. But just as far as the variety of the games themselves, they've been really exciting and really interesting. And if there's any surprise that I've had, it's that extra inning game seven, which happened last night, the Astros and the Dodgers, which ended up going to the 13th, which is going to be very rare. Like that might be, might be the only 13 inning game this year, right? I mean, they're, I guess it probably won't be, I think they're, they're expected to be, you know, something like, I don't know, maybe an extra 13 inning game every four years or so for every team. So there would be a few this year, but 13 innings is long. And I thought that the excitement would,

would go up exponentially with each extra inning, knowing that the resolution is still coming soon. So you don't get lulled into that, that coma that you get in innings 14 and 15 and 16 sometimes, but also like having felt like each team has, has been dodging bullets up to that point. And it was exciting. It was exciting in the 13th, but I was a little surprised that it wasn't really any more exciting

in the 13th than it had been in the 11th. And in fact, around the 13th, I started thinking, okay, let's end this. Yeah. So is that tactical intrigue something that you see remaining fascinating? Or is it just that, well, this is the first week, this is the first time we've ever seen this. So of course, anything is going to be interesting for a while. But do you think there are enough permutations and enough actually optimal strategies?

I mean, if it's just, well, do you bunt or do you not bunt? And you have a run expectancy table that tells you whether to bunt or not bunt is that endlessly interesting i mean maybe it's more interesting than just the same version of baseball indefinitely but do you think that those decisions will continue to intrigue you or is it just sort of the first blush i think that they will because well for one thing the decision of whether to bunt or not bunt is in a lot of cases really right on the fence to the degree that it could change with with a changing count it might be it might make sense on on 01 and it might not make sense on 10 or the players involved or the pitchers well certainly with that but i mean i mean like even within the at bat it might still be changing with with uh as the count develops and the main thing is that if you're

not bunting routinely a bunt is you know a bunt funnels things into a very sort of predictable outcome right like there's only if you if you try to lay down a bunt there's there's you know maybe the pitcher tries to get the lead runner at third and throws it away and so there there are some sort of chaotic things that can happen but for the most part you're either gonna get the guy over to third or you're not gonna get the guy over to third and so you would feel like you're gonna see a lot of the same sequences and have the same sort of situations over and over and over. But if you're swinging away, then the starting point for the next batter is it could be anything, you know, you could have anything from a home run to a, you know, three, five fielders choice. And because of that, it's just not going

to get stale, there's going to be a constant, you're going to have to update your your strategic aims, every every batter. so the main thing i think is that people aren't bunting very often and that has caused a lot of variety in the types of innings we've seen we've seen i think bases loaded situations in well there's been seven games and i i think there's been bases loaded situations in maybe like seven or eight innings already. And so just like you, you find ways for the inning to fill up that are not predictable or that are not routine. So that's more what I'm talking about than the strategic variety specifically that you're

right, the strategic variety is basically like, do you hit or do you bunt? But then the key thing is, does the outcome variety then reward you? I think that there are other strategy things involved in terms of just like the 10th inning is really a time where you might be emptying your bench because you know the end is coming. And so you probably like about half the games have had a pinch runner and about, I don't know, close to that many have had pinch hitters. And so you're just kind of coming alert for that inning, knowing that like, okay, here's where teams are doing their end game plan. Yeah. I mean, when I've seen these extra inning games, I haven't turned off the TV and discussed or anything because it's making a mockery of baseball. It's pretty entertaining.

the TV in disgust or anything because it's making a mockery of baseball. It's pretty entertaining. I just sort of, I'm philosophically opposed to it, sort of. Just the idea that the game is going to be different once you get to a certain inning just offends me on some level. And just the idea that you can get on base without doing anything to get on base, Something in me rebels at that, but maybe I'm just being too dogmatic and not imaginative enough. I mean, before this, I, again, like you, didn't really think that the occasional very long extra inning game was a big negative and maybe even was a positive for me personally, but I almost felt like I'd rather see ties. I'd rather just have it end, which I know a lot of people are even more opposed to the idea of ties, and we've talked about that on the show before. But to me, I almost would rather prefer that it just end rather than they just

change it before it's over, but I'll probably get used to it and I'll probably be fine with it. And I wonder whether they will consider making it a playoff thing or a permanent thing. That was the big question was, would this be a 2020 thing or would it carry over? And based on the initial response and based on the positive articles, I would say that the odds in my mind that this will remain a part of baseball, a part of Major League Baseball have increased. And I wonder if it'll be weird when we get to the playoffs this year, because this is not supposed to be in effect for the playoffs, or at least it isn't as of now. But if we get through a two-month season and everyone's fine with it or even likes it, I wonder whether they'll say, well, we'll just keep doing it, or at least we will in the future. Because at that point, if you do end up with a 15 inning game or something in October, it might seem even stranger than it would have otherwise. Yeah, there have always been slight

nods to the fact that October is different, right? Not always, but like the rain out rules, for instance, in October, they don't, they don't shorten games for rain, you have to finish it. And so I think that treating October a little differently and recognizing that people's attention spans and their interests are a little higher in October is probably possible. But I definitely I would be shocked if if this is not carried over next year. At this point. One other thing about it that I have noticed I like is that if you are watching an extra innings game under the old rules, and you know, it doesn't matter which team you're you're rooting for. But like if your team gets through the through half of an

inning without allowing a run, it's good. It feels like oh, that advanced your win expectancy. And in fact, I think if you get the top half of the inning complete without allowing a run, I think it increases your win expectancy by like 14%. And then if they get through the bottom half, it, you know, it evens it up again. So that's another 14%. And so it's like 14% an inning. And that feels, I mean, you know, you're, you're interested, you're watching, but I don't know. It doesn't feel like a huge victory unless you're scoring a run. It doesn't feel like the state of the game has changed that much.

Whereas under these rules, if you get through a half inning without allowing a run, it feels like something really big has changed. And then, you know, consequently, if you get through the bottom half of the inning without allowing a run, it similarly feels like something really big has changed. Like I'm looking at this now that so the win expectancy shift under the old rules for a scoreless inning in extra innings was 15%. According to baseball reference, I have not checked to see whether these are I don't know how they came to this, but I assume these are correct.

Okay. So 15% win expectancy shift for a scoreless inning under the old rules, 32% win expectancy shift under the new rules. 32% is huge, right? Like a 32% win expectancy shift would be like the, like a, that's like a hitting a three run homer when you're down by one in the eighth inning is probably the equivalent. So every half inning is creating at least that much of a win expectancy shift. And so, you know, like those are little nuggets of 10-minute emergencies, which you didn't really have in the old way where they were like little nuggets of 10 minute, you know, problems to solve.

Right. And it is kind of confusing that this works as well as it does. And I know some people have been confused by this because I was initially confused by it. statistician and was thinking that this is a fallacy when they first saw this playing out because each team gets the runner on second to start the inning and so it would seem as if well how are you actually going to shorten games because you know you had a situation where both teams were starting with the bases empty now you have a situation where both teams are starting with the runner on second they're both getting the same advantage and so you might think well why would this end games any sooner because it hasn't actually given either team a run expectancy boost right relative to the other team and so you might think well the odds have increased of scoring for one team but the odds have also increased of

scoring for the other team so it'll just keep going and it'll be a higher scoring version of what we had before. But clearly that's not the case. And we know from the minor league data that games have ended much, much quicker in extra innings. And the theoretical probabilities say that that should be the case too. And I don't know if you've come up with a very easy way to explain this. It's like almost like the Monty Hall problem or something. But it's like, you know, even though the run expectancies haven't changed relative to each other, because you're increasing the scoring, you're also increasing the variance. And you're increasing the odds of the teams scoring different totals of runs in each inning, which would end the game, whereas before there was a very good chance that both teams would score zero and the game would go on. Is that the best way to explain it, or do you have a more transparent way?

No, this would be something where I would normally, I would take a walk, and then I would come back with an explanation with words. And so I was not prepared for this. Okay. Well, I think that's roughly the explanation and I'll think about it more. And if we come up with a better reason or explanation, we'll get back to you. But it's odd, right? I mean, on the surface, like you haven't even thought about why it works, right? And it just, it works, even though you're giving each team

the same sort of advantage. So it's kind of confusing on the surface, but when you dig into the numbers and think about why it works, it makes sense that it works. Okay, so yesterday or a couple of days ago, the Rangers were trailing four to two in the bottom of the eighth.

So they were down by two, bottom of the eighth, Joey Gallo, three run homer. Now to give him a five to four lead. Now you can imagine if you were in Texas, home team, bottom of the eighth, trailing by two, Joey Gallo comes up, hits a three run homer, gives you the lead going to the ninth, imagine what that would feel like. Imagine the eruption in your soul for that. So that's a 34% win expectancy shift. And so assuming that these baseball reference numbers are actually as applied to the current situation and not using old assumptions, these might be wrong. But assuming that, then 32% for this, 34% for that.

That's kind of what it feels like when you get through the the top of the 10th yeah so just to briefly follow up on one other thing I mentioned on the last episode I speculated that it seemed like there had been a lot of pitcher injuries and pitcher arm injuries this year so far but I wasn't sure if I was just imagining that or it was confirmation bias because I thought that maybe there would be more injuries with the strange structure of the season. And, you know, maybe it's just a bunch of particularly prominent pitchers who have gone on the IL since the season started. Myles Michaelis, et cetera, Steven Strasberg, not on the IL, but has missed a couple of starts. And it just seems like several guys, it doesn't seem like it, it has been the case that several guys have suffered forearm strains. A few guys have had elbow injuries or Tommy John surgery already. There have been other shoulder injuries and back injuries.

So I did look into the numbers for this, and I'm writing about it. So I did look into the numbers for this and I'm writing about it, but it has been quite anomalous compared to the equivalent portions of earlier seasons. If we look at just the first week after opening day, so really eight days inclusive of opening day, I was able to go back to 2009 and the start of all of those seasons with the help of Lucas Apostolaris from Baseball Prospectus. And there's been no change in position player injuries. In fact, there have been fewer this year when you take out the COVID-related IL stints. But pitcher injuries are way up, and particularly pitcher arm injuries. There have been 21 pitchers who have gone on the IL with arm injuries, and that is by far the most in any of these early seasons. In fact, it's more than twice as many as any season except 2018, which had 11. So it certainly seems as if this is unusual. And I think that makes sense. And I've talked to some biomechanics people and

strength and conditioning people in front office people over the past few days, and they seem to think it makes sense too. Just that on the one hand, some pitchers would potentially benefit from having had those few months off because that's a big part of the injury spike that we see among pitchers at the start of every season. It's just that either guys ramped up too quickly during spring training or they had some injury that was lingering over the winter from the previous season and they just hoped that it would go away or they weren't even aware of it and then getting shut down for an additional few months and having that extra healing time could be beneficial. But having to ramp up and then shut down and then ramp up again in an even shorter and more abbreviated summer muscles so that they will take more of the load and that it won't get transferred to those parts of your body that don't really get built up very much, the ligaments and tendons, which just kind of are what they are. And so if that hasn't happened, then you would expect there to be some more breakdowns.

So based on the people I've talked to, they seem to think that if this is a real thing, if it's related to the brief ramp-up, it shouldn't really linger throughout the season. Like it should just be something that either shows up in the first couple of weeks of the season or doesn't. So, you know, if guys are getting hurt in late August or September or October, that probably isn't really related to it. that probably isn't really related to it, but they seem to think there is something to the fact that a greater than normal number of guys have gone down with these arm injuries. So on top of everything else that MLB is dealing with, there is also a mini pitcher arm injury epidemic. I wonder what you would think of perhaps a hypothesis that unlike a normal, you know, a normal spring, a lot of pitchers are ramping up from zero because they actually take a couple months off from throwing that,

you know, that you sort of have to do that. You have to, you can't throw year round. So you take two, two or three months off and then, you know, you start getting back in shape for spring and then you, you know, then you ramp up. And I imagine that in this case that this was not that this was not your, your scheduled two or three months off. And I imagine that a lot of pitchers were, were still throwing that unlike a normal December or January, they were still throwing. They were still probably throwing hard. They were still probably trying to stay.

At least a lot of them were probably trying to stay in shape which is part of why you know there could be a shorter summer camp because people weren't starting from from zero yeah and i just wonder whether whether pitchers throwing hard without pitching coach around could have i don't. I do this thing sometimes when I walk where I close my eyes and then see how many steps I can take without opening my eyes. Yeah. And, you know, I'm walking on a sidewalk in a in a residential neighborhood. And I mean, I would know if I was going to walk into the street or if I guess I would know if I had walked into the street. So I can kind of tell I'm still on the sidewalk. or if I, I guess I would know if I had walked into the street. So I can kind of tell I'm still on the sidewalk, but I don't know if there's like, I'm about to, if I veered off to the side of the sidewalk and I'm about to run into a pole or a fire hydrant. And so the challenges is really much less about not running into things. What am I, how'd this come up?

how'd this come up the challenge is not as much running into things as it is feeling the confidence to keep taking another step you know like i'm not walking that fast and again i know i'm not on the street and i know i have not veered into the grass i'm still on the sidewalk and i probably took a glance to make sure that there was nothing in my way for a long period of time ahead of me. And yet after pretty reliably after like 16 or 17 steps, I sort of lose my bearings and I get really feeling lost. Like I feel very, very like I no longer feel like I know where I am in space and it gets nerve wracking. And those are the steps that really test you. You know, even if you're in, I swear this is true, even if you're in a completely empty parking lot with nothing, or you're in an empty field with nothing around set step 16 or 17, you start to lose your sense of self and you sort of start to freak out and you sort of start to veer into circles.

Like you are no longer can keep going straight reliably and you want to open your eyes like something is screaming to like open your eyes because you don't know where you are anyway i wonder if throwing even for a major league pitcher if you can sort of throw for the equivalent of 16 steps without a pitching coach and everything's fine but after a few weeks these little these little like you've taken a slightly wrong direction somewhere along the way and if you're if it's not corrected then you just start veering wildly in that direction and it becomes disorienting and dangerous. Yeah. I mean, I think part of spring training or summer camp is getting your mechanics in tune in addition to building up your strength. And so you would think it would be easier to go off course and cement some sort of bad habit that maybe makes you more likely to get injured if you're using a part of your body in a way that you don't usually use it. And who knows, certain guys probably stayed in great shape and were throwing

all the time, and other guys who are maybe not quite as self-motivated, if they don't have someone looking over their shoulder or maybe they just didn't have access to the same facilities or something, they probably were a little more lax and didn't really stay in that kind of condition. So I'm sure it varies by the pitcher and by the team. And also I should note that Steven Strasburg said, to be frank, this season is kind of a mess to begin with. So I've got to think big picture here. It's my career. I know that in the long run, it's important to try to make as many starts as you can. And by putting yourself in a compromising position now, I don't really know if it's the best way moving forward. So it's possible that the strange nature of this season has led some other pitchers to either consciously or

subconsciously conclude that they're just not going to push it. They're not going to try to pitch through something or they're not going to try to hide it because it's just not worth jeopardizing themselves in this weird season. So maybe they've been more open about things that under normal circumstances they wouldn't have been. The question of motivation is underlying a lot of what's different about this year. And, you know, not just the motivation of like, do you want to be there? Do you feel comfortable being there? But even just on a sort of a much smaller and baseball focused level, you're, you're again, like your stats aren't really going to mean anything this year, you're not gonna,

you're not going to set a career high and wins, you're not going to accomplish that cool stat that you set out to accomplish every year. And the pennant race is completely different than it ever has. And so you could find a lot of reasons to wonder whether today is really the day to push anything. Yeah. I'm looking at a thing in a science mag about an experiment where volunteers were blindfolded and told to walk in a straight line across a large field most participants meandered this way and that occasionally walking in circles as small as 20 meters in diameter so apparently if you put blindfold blindfolds on people and tell them to walk straight they eventually always come around and do circles according to this thing that i'm skimming

people end up doing uh circles and and they aren't totally sure why. One side of you is dominant and stronger or something? No, that had been one of the hypotheses from these researchers, but they found that that doesn't seem to be the explanation. These differences didn't correlate with their turning tendencies. Leg strength didn't correspond with their turning tendencies. Leg strength didn't correspond to their turning tendencies. And when the researchers exaggerated differences in leg length by adding thicker soles to one of the shoes, they found no systematic effect on the tendency to veer left or right. So if they made one of your shoes longer, you didn't necessarily turn one way or the other. You were just as likely

to turn in either direction and do your circle that way. Huh. Huh. Interesting. All right. Well, let's try to get a couple of emails in. Or not. Maybe we'll just do a stat blast. Or should we just talk about walking blindfolded? All right. Well, do your stat blast. This is a stat blast song cover. We've still got a few left here. I'm burning through the backlog. So this is actually a second submission by listener Theodore Bierhoff. And then they'll tease out some interest and tip it disgustingly And analyze it for us in amazing ways Here's to days that last Thank you. All right. One of the things that you and I have both talked about

is not just Mike Trout's bold ink, but his variety of bold ink. And I think this is something we first, we did a draft, in fact, on this. We started talking about it maybe five years ago, of bowling uh and i think this is something we first we did a draft in fact on this we we started talking about it maybe five years ago noting that uh he had uh every year he seemed to lead the league in some new category and that was part of what made him seem so special is that he was continually adding new new new ways to be the best in baseball at something and so one year we

drafted which new category we thought he he might lead the league in that year um and of course he has a ton of bolding he's led the league in a ton of stuff runs rbis steals walks on base percentage four times slugging percentage ops ops plus six times total bases intentional walks and we have treated each of these new stats that he has led the league in as almost like an advance, like that's the year that Mike Trout added intentional walks, when he became feared, as though it was like a sort of a shift in his nature, his character.

And so I wondered, I probably shouldn't have wondered this. It would have been better to just keep this going. But I wondered whether he has in fact led the league in a lot of things relative to other superstars. So clearly he has led the league in a lot of things and a lot of times he has led the league in things. But if you just look at how many categories he filled, does he fill a greater than normal number of categories? So there are, I'm counting 20 categories on a baseball reference stat page. I'm putting plate appearances or at bats.

So not treating those as two separate categories. If you lead the league in either one, that's one category. And then there's games, runs, hits, doubles, triples, homers, RBIs, stolen bases, walks, batting average, OBP, slugging, OPS, OPS plus, total bases, hit by pitches, sacrifice bunts, sacrifice flies, and intentional walks. 20 categories. He has led the league in 10 of those. So I took the, I don't know, I looked at all the best players in history, So I took the, I don't know, I looked at all the best players in history, basically, to see what the norm is. And so here's the answer. Babe Ruth, also 10. So like Mike Trout, just as accomplished in his variety as Babe Ruth, except for, except Babe Ruth played when there were no intentional walks or sacrifice flies. Of course he would have led the league in intentional walks, maybe not sacrifice flies, but definitely would have been intentional walks. So really he would have been 11, but he only gets credit for 10. Willie Mays had 12. Mickey Mantle had 12. Albert Pools has 12. And I think we can probably just say hat 12. And you know, I think we can probably just say hat, 12. And, you know, I think we should just stop.

Miguel Cabrera, 12. I think Albert Bowles and Miguel Cabrera are both incredible, all-time great talents, two of the greatest right-handed hitters of all time. Albert's one of the probably 20 greatest players of all time, maybe. And he is also, though, not notable for his variety, right? Like we don't, we would not have created this narrative about how every year Albert Pujols found a new way to be great. Well, maybe we would have, he became a very good base runner. Not that he got any bolding from it. He became a very good defender, great defender, not that he got any bolding from

it. Basically though, this is just capturing that he was a great hitter in some years he led the league in on base and some years he led the league in slugging but it's not like he developed as a slugger he he just was great the whole time and Miguel Cabrera even even less so Miguel Cabrera is kind of just a your classic great dominant hitter didn't develop a bunch of new skills just led the league in a bunch of stuff and some years his great batting average was enough to lead the league and some years his home runs his great home runs were enough to lead the league but it's not like he developed home runs in fact he led the league with 44 one year and then he didn't lead the league with

44 the next year it's not like he lost the ability to lead the league in home runs. So the fact that Miguel Cabrera has 12 and Trout has 10, I'm not sure. Barry Bonds, 12. He was very, very much like Mike Trout in some ways. Alex Rodriguez, 12. Oddly enough, Alex Rodriguez never even came close to leading the league in intentional walks, which is kind of interesting. He also never led the league on base percentage, but led the league in many other things. He had 10 by the age of 27, which is what Mike Trout is through the age of right now. So through age 27,

Mike Trout and Alex Rodriguez, same number of categories. After that, Alex Rodriguez would go on to to lead the league and i believe ops and ops plus which he had not by that point and then we get to chuck klein he had 13 but here's the crazy thing so chuck klein 13 all in a five-year span and so not only is chuck klein not famously broad talented like mike Trout necessarily? But it wasn't even a matter of developing anything. He wasn't developing new skills. He wasn't even developing.

He just had a five-year run where he led the league in everything. Hannes Wagner had 13, but he played before there were intentional walks or sacrifice flies either. He also managed to lead the league in all these things without leading the league in walks or homers, which is interesting to me. Hank Aaron led the league in 13 categories. He actually had 12 by the time he was 27, so he was ahead of Mike Trout

in this particular way of looking at things ty cobb had 14 again with disclaimers for there being stats that he couldn't have led the league because they didn't exist yet rogers hornsby the same he had 14 ted williams had 14 carly stremsski had 14. A guy named Ross Barnes, who is like one of the old-timey players, he had 14, and he had 14 in an era where they were only counting 16 stats. So he had 14 out of the 16, because at that point, they didn't have hit-by-pitches, sacrifice hits, sacrifice flies, or intentional walks. He led the league in everything except home runs and RBIs,

which are also two of the big ones but i guess they weren't big ones for him ross barnes played in like the fakest of fake baseball if you're gonna use such a pejorative term for baseball uh he uh he had six career home runs and really only played for like six seasons it was a weird weird era. But anyway, 14 of 16. Lou Gehrig had 15 of these categories. And I think in the modern era, when everything counts, Stan Musial is the champ. He led in 16 of 20. He led with eight hit by pitches, which feels like cheating. That's not enough to lead the league, but he did. He had 13 of these categories ticked off by the time he was 27. And then he later added hit by pitches, RBIs and intentional walks, Musial 16 out of 20 and amazingly never home runs.

So anyway, Mike Trout, nothing unimpressive about what he's done. 10 is a lot, and it matches up with the very greatest of all time through this point in his career. But I do think that we have created meaning in something that probably didn't need to have meaning. And this does lead to one question, which is, do you consider this year, this 60-game season, a good year or a bad year for his chances of expanding on his count on his count of

10 well in general it's a bad year for the odds of the best player leading in anything right so you've got more chance of underdogs doing things but if we're talking about categories that he has not collected yet and that maybe he is not actually the most likely to lead in, then he will have an upper hand in those. So I guess those do kind of balance out. birthday just almost a year ago now looking at these categories and I think I used slightly different criteria than you did I think I narrowed it down to 17 categories maybe but I also had Musial at the top of my list and at the time it really looked like Trout was going to check the home runs box off because he was leading in that he ended up getting overtaken just in the last few days of the season by Jorge Soler because Trout was off by then so that was disappointing but I came to a similar conclusion I think and I forget now I haven't gone back and read that so I don't really remember what the the likeliest

ones that he has a chance to get are right like uh home runs obviously because he just narrowly missed it but also he's uh he's come close and hit by pitches and and he's never quite done it so i guess that's one too but otherwise it would have to be something really weird and and i guess his chances would be better although as i think i pointed out in that article a it's more impressive to do it by a certain age, as you said. And most guys have crossed off most of the categories they're going to collect by that age, I think. But you do get people adding on here or there. But it's harder to do now, I think, just because there are so many teams and the quality of the league is so good.

teams and the quality of the league is so good. And so I guess, as you said, there were certain stats that you couldn't actually lead in in earlier eras because they weren't even being tracked at the time. But aside from that, you had fewer teams, less competition, and the really great players were able to just beat up on the players who were barely major league quality, but were there because the league just was segregated and not nearly as professional as it is today. And so you could really lead a lot of things that today would be difficult to do, stiff competition. Yeah, I have traditionally been a disbeliever or a skeptic

in the notion that your black ink is a product of, you know, of your era, that it's that it's harder to lead the league now when there are more players than it was then when there were fewer. But I've become de-skeptical of that notion. I think you're, I think there is something there. I don't think it's as strong of a force, maybe as we sometimes talk about it with other ways that your statistics are affected by the quality of competition, but I do think it is a factor. Can I read one email that is related to something you brought up in banter so that I won't be a liar about this being an email episode?

This is from Tim in Oakville, Ontario, and he said, in recent episodes there have been further discussions of the cardboard cutout fans and soon perhaps a discussion of the Fox Sports virtual stadium fans, all of this to enhance the TV experience. My question is, if television networks were to deploy a fleet of drones with cameras all over the stadium, what would be the effects on the viewing experience? been deployed for broadcast because one, cost, two, obstruction to in-person fans, and three, in some ballparks, being too close to aviation corridors. With drones following the cost path of Moore's Law, with no MLB in-person fans, and with barely any airplanes anymore, I believe that this is a ripe time to deploy a fleet of cameras that can capture that amazing outfield catch, that can better crystallize umpire review calls,

and that can observe the spin of a slider. Perhaps there is concern that a line drive would hit a drone, but that is no different than a seagull or the skywalk at Tropicana. Perhaps Trevor Bauer was ahead of his time. Thoughts? What could possibly be the downside to this? I guess, obviously, I have a real bias to saying yes to almost anything yeah historically and so i'm trying not to just go yes please do that is there any reason that we would not want to have uh i guess you don't want the fielders to be like you you would

have a drone get in the way of a fielder perhaps or have a player lose the ball in the drone right yes uh you don't want them to be chasing a fly ball look down to see where they are look back up and pick up the drone so i guess you have to probably think about the defenders more than anything else here. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's good. I would, yeah. Why not? Yeah.

I don't know. I like it. Other than the distraction, as you mentioned, and I don't know, the noise, maybe you can get quieter drones. And there are certain things like, I mean, he's talking about seeing the spin on a slider. I don't think you need a drone for that, right? You have those super slow-mo cameras already. And to get a drone close enough to the ball that that would be a better view from the drone would probably interfere with things.

I mean, it would have to be just like hovering right above the pitcher and the batter, right, which would be weird. So there are certain things that we can already see really well. I mean, there are such great cameras, such high fidelity cameras, and so many cameras now. And you would think that just like you'd be able to put camera people elsewhere in the stadium if you wanted to now, not even with drones, but just humans who are there. You could move cameras around if you wanted to. There should be more flexibility there. But there aren't that many times when something happens in a baseball game and I can't see it, you know? And I feel like, oh boy, I wish there had been a camera there. I wish they had a better angle on that. It happens every now and then, but not

nearly as often as it used to. But I still would like to see this kind of aerial view. Like when they do the football view where they have the camera that's like on a wire over the field and they just move the camera across like as the play is happening and you can kind of get this very dynamic developing view of everything and they can move it around and concentrate on certain things. So it would definitely be like a more cinematic view, I guess. You could capture that motion in probably a more visually arresting way than you could with a stationary camera. But there aren't that many

times when I feel like I'm being deprived of something that's happening on a baseball field now. Yeah, the example of picking up spin is a perfect example of what we already get to see the shots of spin on pitches is you know like of all the ways that like the future the very i don't know there are relatively few ways that the future has lived up to its promise but i will say getting to see the spin on a Garrett Cole slider in slow motion is up there. Yeah. All right. Well, while we've been talking, it was announced that or reported at least that the Phillies are going to take some time off now. So the Blue Jays-Phillies series that was scheduled for this weekend will not be played.

So you now have two NL East teams that are not playing for this whole week basically just a week into the season and their opponents either not playing or rearranging their schedules MLB and the players association have also apparently reached an agreement for there to be seven inning double headers starting on August 1st which I suppose they will need if they want to play something like a complete schedule because these teams that have missed all this time will come back and have more games remaining than days in the season remaining, I think. So got to get those double headers in extra quickly. So we're still trying this, but it's getting harder by the day, seemingly. After Sam and I spoke, it was announced that Mike Trout was placed on

paternity leave. I think his wife Jessica was due on August 3rd originally. The paternity leave term is three days, so their baby boy must be coming soon. We send our best wishes to Mike and Jessica and to their son, whose name we don't know yet, but has been picked out. So whether or not Trout leads the league in anything for the first time this season, he will be a father for the first time. And that's probably pretty important to him too. Okay, that will do it for today. Thanks for listening. We will try to get to more emails next time. So please do keep sending them to me and Sam and Meg via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Speaking of which, hey, consider being a supporter. If you haven't

already, just go to patreon.com slash effectivelywild, sign up, pledge some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners, Chris Bonner, Sean P. Montana, Jeff Fang, Matt Muzia,

and Reed DeWolf, thanks to all of you. You can also rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. Baseball banter never stops in there. Thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And I will be back with Meg for one more episode before the end of this week. Talk to you then. But after the night, you said just quickly got past me

I'm expecting, you're expecting I'm expecting, expecting