Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1584: The Immaculate Golden Sombrero

Episode Date: August 28, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about how Albert Pujols has remained an RBI man without being a good hitter and the historic slimness of Cleveland rookie pitcher Triston McKenzie, then answer a listener email about whether all innings would be better with the extra-innings automatic-runner rule, followed by Stat Blasts about what would happen […]

Blind the future of the past Always lost in bloody thoughts And when they're gone It's the end of you Living on a thin line Ooh, tell me now What are we supposed to do? Living on a thin line Ooh, tell me now Hello and welcome to episode 1584 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented

by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ken Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by ESPN's Sam Miller. Hello, Sam. Hey, Ben. Got some emails lined up and some stat blasts lined up for today, but a couple quick things I wanted to bring up. First, I wanted to talk about Albert Pujols for a second because he had a historic run batted in on Monday. He passed A-Rod on the all-time RBI list,

and now he trails only Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth. And I'm sort of fascinated by Pujols' continued RBI accumulation, even after the point when he really stopped kind of contributing to the Angels' victories. So since the start of 2017, he has not been a good hitter or a good player, at least by most estimations. So over that time, he's hit 242, 291, 405. Not great for a first baseman DH. That's an 85 WRC+. It's negative 2.8 fangraphs war.

And yet over that period, he has still driven in 105 runs per 162 games. So he's basically been a 100 RPI guy while being a sub replacement level player. And I guess that's why we don't talk about RPI all that much, because they're not all that meaningful when it comes to player performance. But it's still sort of interesting to see why guys are getting them sometimes. But it's still sort of interesting to see why guys are getting them sometimes. And with Pujols, I guess it's a combination of factors that allow him to keep driving in runs despite not really creating that many runs. 20 homer guy at this point with the ball the way it is but still he's retained some home run ability he doesn't strike out a lot he's striking out a little bit more this year but still well below the league average and really he has retained the ability to put the ball in play which is kind of a double-edged sword or really maybe it's just one edge because a lot of those balls in play are out so he just makes a lot of outs but because he puts the ball in play and doesn't walk much anymore, that helps him drive in runs, I think.

Of course, he's had Trout hitting ahead of him, which helps a lot, and other good hitters too. But also he's been kind of clutch, which I think we've touched on before. But he's, I think, 26th or so in Fangraph's clutch metric since 2017. He has a 111 WRC plus with runners in scoring position versus his 85 overall over that period and 74 with the bases empty. So he really has turned it up a notch with runners on. Don't know if he can keep doing that, but I would imagine that that probably has played a part in him continuing to get as much playing time as he has right because if he had the same overall stats that he has right now but he hadn't timed his hits as well it probably would have been even harder to keep him in the lineup all this time I would think well I mean I don't know that I would confidently say that any

of the people making the decision about how often he plays necessarily believe that he's a clutch run producer so much as him being a clutch run producer has prevented them from taking the you know somewhat frictiony step of benching him it's like the he he it's like it's like i don't know sometimes you like i don't know you just how do i put this like with sometimes you you have a you know a child sometimes you've you've procreated and the child has grown up and has some you know has a lot of sovereignty as well. And the child is disrespecting you clearly in manner and in their own head. And you would like to address that disrespect, but you need them to do something first. You need them to give you an excuse for the protocols of discipline to come into play.

And so long as they don't do that, you're unable to take action. They have managed to prevent you from having the excuse that you need to initiate discipline. And so that's what I'm saying is happening with Albert Pujols. I got a little nervous when you said sometimes you've procreated. I couldn't recall a specific instance of that happening in my case, but I guess you never know. It could happen at some point. I remember a specific comment in 2017, which was like the first year I think that Pujols was just a net negative, really. first year, I think that Pujols was just a net negative, really. He hadn't been great for a year or two before that, but that's when he really fell below average just even as a hitter. And I think

I found the quote about halfway through that season, I think Pujols had the worst war in baseball. And so people were writing about the fact that Pujols was like literally the worst player in baseball to that point in the season. And the Angels disputed that, as you would imagine they would. But Bill Shakin wrote about it for the LA Times. And he said, we don't attach that statement to Albert Pujols, that he's the worst player. I guess that is definitely not something we believe. And Mike Socha, who was the manager at the time said Pujols is what fourth or fifth in our

league in RBIs those guys don't fall off the trees this guy has done a good job for us and I don't know how much he believed that and how much he was just saying it because that's your job as a manager to stick up for your players but probably there's like a part of him that believed it and maybe Socia was just a more old school manager who'd be more willing to believe that but you know when billy epler said our analysis our viewpoint is that in albert's case we're seeing a guy that still has a lot of presence in the middle of the order he impacts the baseball and he has big at bats you know those are sort of generic things to say about a player but maybe more believable when the guy is actually getting

some clutch hits and driving in runs. And fans are probably less sick of seeing the guy when they're seeing him drive in runs. It's easier to remember those good moments than the outs he's making at less leveraged times. So I think it has an effect on the perception of the player, even if Billy Epler was not going to say, yeah, I'm changing my projection for Albert Pujols because I think he is permanently clutch or is better than the numbers say. Did you see Tristan McKenzie start on Saturday for Cleveland? He's a rookie pitcher. He came up and had a really great debut. He struck out 10 in six innings, walked one guy, gave up two hits, and he was starting

in place of Mike Clevenger, but he was so great that even though Clevenger is back, Cleveland said, okay, keep pitching, and McKenzie is scheduled to start again on Friday against St. Louis. And I wasn't that familiar with Tristan McKenzie, but I was watching his start and he has sort of a striking appearance because he has really good stuff and he is really tall, but he is also extremely slender. He is just very lanky, just a very lanky guy. He's 6'5". He is listed at 165. And it's sort of surprising to see the speed come out of that frame because it just doesn't look like the most powerful frame. And suddenly he's whipping the ball in at like 97. That's what he got up to. He was averaging close to 95. McKenzie this week at Baseball Perspectives and found that he has more rise on his fastball than anyone this year except James Karinchak and Tyler Thornburg. So that tends to mean more whiffs as it did in his debut. He's a first round pick in 2015. He's a top 50 prospect. He didn't just come out

of nowhere, but he's had a lot of injuries and setbacks. And if you read scouts' comments about them, a lot of them will say you know they don't know if he'll be durable or can he hold up to a workload because of his frame and all of that in fact he hadn't thrown a professional pitch prior to his first official start of this season since august 2018 because of his injuries but i think it's fun to watch him because he's slinging the ball really hard and it doesn't look like he should be able to produce that kind of power. And he almost slings himself around. After he releases the ball, he just kind of is knocked to the side a little bit by the force of his delivery.

And so I was curious to see if that observation that he is an extremely lanky guy really holds up historically and so i wait you have you're wondering whether the 6'5 165 player is perhaps an anomaly he's 6'5 yeah and he weighs 165 pounds yeah that seems uh he's probably he's probably listed at the lowest weight among all pitchers right now. I didn't check that. And he's 6'5". Yeah, probably just need the eye test on that one, I guess. But I still wanted to see. Yeah, I don't know if you saw that.

He tweeted a picture of himself, I think the night before his start, and he was wearing normal clothes, not the baseball uniform. And it really comes out then, like he was wearing, you know, normal, normal clothes, not not the baseball uniform. And it really comes out then like he was wearing like, you know, like jeans and sneakers. And it's interesting because he looks skinnier for a for a citizen than he does for a baseball player when, you know, of course, baseball players are all, you know, they generally are muscular, and they work out and all that. But I guess they also have a sort of a more toned physique. And so, yeah, the skinning is actually, to me, oddly enough, played up more, you know, on a sidewalk. Yeah. So I asked Kenny Jacklin at Baseball Reference for a list of the highest and lowest body mass indexes,

like the top 100 and bottom 100 among all major league players ever, just to see where he stacked up. And yes, unsurprisingly, he is quite close to the bottom of the list when it comes to BMI, which is not a perfect measure of fitness or strength or anything. It's really more of a measure of thickness. Are you thick or are you thin? And he is quite thin. The bottom of the list, it's mostly guys from a very long time ago, 19th century players, early 20th century players, when players were not the physical specimens for the most part that they are now. So the lowest body mass index on record is Candy Cummings, generally credited as the inventor of the curveball. So he was 5'9 and listed at 120 pounds, which would be very unusual now, but was not so unusual in 1872.

Anyway, there is only one player who has a lower BMI than Tristan McKenzie's 19.6, who debuted after World War II, and that is Rusty Meacham. Rusty Meacham, the pitcher who had about a 10-year career with the Royals and other teams, he had a slightly lower BMI, 19.4. He was 6'3", 155, so same sort of neighborhood. And it's kind of tough to compare with the listed weights because baseball reference often will use like the latest listed weight for a player unless it's a long ago player. And so if a guy got bigger and heavier as his career went on, then maybe he might be listed with a higher BMI, even though when he came up, he had a lower one. So by the end of his career, Tristan McKenzie may very well have packed on some pounds and then it won't look so extreme. According to Eric Langenhagen, he has added only about five pounds in the five years since he was drafted. So I don't know, maybe he just has the kind of metabolism where it's tough for him to keep on weight. And I don't know if

it's a problem or not. It's the sort of thing that scouts will say, I don't know if he can hold up. And he has broken down a bit, but that could be unrelated. It's just that when scouts see something that looks like an outlier, looks that far out of the norm, they get a little nervous because you don't have the mental database of players who were successful and looked like that. And you do hear some pitchers say that

having a little extra mass and weight helps them not wear down over the course of a season, or maybe helps with the velocity and the momentum and imparting extra speed to a pitch. With him, I guess it's just a great gift for arm speed and long levers, as they say. So we'll see. I hope that he has a long and successful career regardless of what he weighs, but I just wanted to check what my eyes said against the database and the database agrees. He is listed as the third lightest pitcher who has appeared in the majors this year. The lightest is Phillips Valdez on the Red Sox, who is 6'2", so 3 inches shorter and listed at 160. And Sionel Perez who is listed at 162 pounds and he is 6 inches shorter than McKenzie.

Okay. Well, Cleveland just keeps churning out really promising pitchers. They just come in all different shapes and sizes. You have anything before we get to emails? Nope. All right then. Let's start with one that we meant to get to last week and just never did. It's from Justin who says, if putting a runner on second is a good rule for extra innings, then is it a good rule for all of the innings? This is obviously mostly facetious, but I've been wondering if the extra innings are, at least in part, more interesting because teams are more aggressive. If you know the bad guys are

starting with a runner on second, it becomes more imperative to get your own guy home. Extend that to every inning, and you have built-in tension all the time. Scoring would go up without increasing game time. Every routine play suddenly becomes interesting. We would lose a lot of things. Shutouts for sure. And a pitcher could throw a no hitter and take the loss. People who like baseball would hate it, but it would be fun. So I want to give you four recent examples of extra innings situations that I have responded to. Okay.

I've got four of these. These are just games that I happen to see the extra innings of. So Orioles Phillies about two weeks ago, the Orioles won on an inside the park home run. And that's exciting, right? Like that you could, if I went, this new extra innings rule is incredible. I saw an extra innings game one on an inside the park home run. A person might say, oh, well, yeah, but that would be exciting. Even if there was nobody on base and extra innings game one on an inside the park home run, a person might say, oh, well, yeah, but that would be exciting even if there was nobody on base. An extra innings home run under the old rules would have been exciting. You don't get credit for that. But this was an extra innings home run in which it was a line drive to center field. And I believe Roman Quinn

charged it and very aggressively tried to catch it. And it got past him, rolled all the way to the wall and became an extra innings home run. So it wouldn't have been an extra innings home run under the old rules. The whole reason that Roman Quinn went super aggressively after it is because the go ahead winning run was already on second base with nobody out. He was trying to stop that run from scoring. he he overplayed the ball the ball got past him and now instead of being uh like you know hypothetically and under the same same rule under the old rules if the exact same thing had happened we have a leadoff single which is kind of exciting a leadoff single in the 10th inning instead we got a leadoff extra innings

inside the park home run so that's one another one i forget which game this was the runner starts on second base there's a single into the outfield throw comes in to try to you know throw the the runner out at home it's unsuccessful the run scores and the batter takes second on the play it might have gone down as a double but my recollection is that he was basically got to second because the throw went home and so now you have another runner on second and the first pitch to the next batter is a pass ball in which the catcher simply just got crossed up. It was like a fastball on his left knee and he was expecting a slider and it just shot off and it was a pass ball and the runner went to third. And the reason that that cross up happened is because there was a runner on second base and they had to go through the more elaborate

signs. They got confused. If the runner had been on first base, if this had been a normal situation and the same thing had happened, then it's a leadoff single, kind of exciting, but there's just a runner on first. The catcher probably doesn't get crossed up with his pitcher and there's no pass ball at all. And so now we have a runner on third with nobody out. Whereas in the old days, it would have just been a single and then he would have stayed on first and it'd be like an 0-1 count or a 1-0 count to the next batter. So more exciting because the runner was on base. Another one, Orioles Red Sox a couple of days ago. Sacrifice.

I haven't read ahead on this one, so I'm hoping that this will end up having drama. I wrote Sox a couple days ago. Sacrifice, I haven't read ahead on this one, so I'm hoping that this will end up having drama. I wrote this down a few days ago. Sacrifice bunt attempt. They tried to throw the runner out at third. They failed. The runner was safe. So now you had first and third with nobody out.

A wild pitch ties the game, puts a runner on second, and then a grounder to routine second base. But the second baseman had been holding the runner on. And so he could only stop the ball with a dive. This was just a routine play, but because he was holding the runner on, he had to dive to like basically knock it down. And so you have this whole sequence, all these base runners circling around that, you know, probably never would have happened if you had not started with the runner on second, because there wouldn't have been the sacrifice bunt attempt.

There wouldn't have then been the failed attempt to cut the runner down. And then you wouldn't have had the, the fielder holding the, the, the guy on second base, which caused another single to happen on a routine grounder because he was shaded over trying to hold the runner. All right. Fourth one, Brewers twins about a week ago, ground ball to first base three, five attempt. The first baseman tries to cut the runner down, throws the ball in the dirt. Third baseman makes a great scoop, tags the runner

out. And instead of being a routine three unassisted, it is a very exciting 3-5 put out in which an incredible play is made by the third baseman. I have seen that exact play happen twice now. Both times, the aggressive throw to third to cut the runner down, and the throw wild, the third baseman makes a great play, tags the runner out, and basically resets the inning in a totally different way. And that 3-5 put out in extra innings has kind of become my new favorite play in baseball. And again, it's a grounder to first. It's boring, except because you have the runner on second, it causes this extra aggression. So what I'm saying is that I think that part of what has made this exciting is that when you put runners on,

I hadn't really realized this. And maybe it's only because it's extra innings. And maybe it's only because the, uh, that run represents the winning run, but everybody kind of starts acting a little wild. You know, the, the defense starts acting a little wild. The base runners are, you know, obviously there are base runners and so they're doing things and there's just a lot more activity and things that are routine when there's nobody on base actually are like two, three, four step processes when there's already a runner on base. And so that actually causes a great deal more intrigue. By the way, that Brewers twins game that I mentioned, the one, might be my favorite extra inning game so far this year.

And the highlight of it was actually the next half inning when Jed Jerko was the put-on runner. He was on second base. And the first batter singles, so now you have runners at the corners. And then there's a pop-up into shallow center. The second baseman catches it, so he can't go. So now there's first at the corners and then there's a pop-up into shallow center. The second baseman catches it so he can't go. So now there's first and third with one out. A line drive into right field. The right fielder runs in.

Max Kepler runs in, makes a diving catch to catch this ball for the second out. And Jerko failed to tag up. He had gone too far down the line. And so then he tries to run back to third and tag up. He had gone too far down the line. And so then he tries to run back to third and tag up. But by now Kepler has stood up and he just has to stay at third. So it's a diving catch into right field and he couldn't tag up for who knows what reason. Anyway, that game was amazing and it went 12 innings. All right. So I've given you four examples where the runner on base made things more interesting simply just by like he not, not even that the runner on base made things more interesting simply just by like he not not

even that the runner on second was necessarily the interesting part but made the uninteresting thing that was happening elsewhere on the field become much more interesting because people had to behave differently i have had when i wrote a piece well i will say one more thing and then i'll let you talk for a little while i wrote a when i wrote my piece saying that i was surprised by how much i enjoyed this new setup i got a bunch of tweets that brought this up this like oh well if it's so good then they do it in the first inning and then the people would like sort of like tweet that and i could just imagine them like being very satisfied that they had just shut me down and and uh I mean I'm not I'm not saying that it necessarily would be better with a run-on first but to me that is not a dunking at all yeah probably it would be I mean it probably yeah

probably it would be more interesting now the reason thatwell, I'll let you talk. Well, yeah. So the question is, does the novelty of it wear off? And is it so exciting because it's in contrast to the normal, which is not starting innings with runners on base? And I think that's the position of, say, Joe Sheehan, who wrote about this in his newsletter a couple weeks ago. And he acknowledged that it's fun, but he doesn't want more of it. So what he wrote is, yes, it's entertaining. A runner in scoring position with nobody out is inherently more interesting than a no on, no out situation. Then again, that would also apply in the first inning. Allowing any team down five or more runs to start their turn at bat with a runner on second would be entertaining. Playing with just six defenders behind the pitcher would be entertaining. Entertainment value cannot be the only measure of an idea, even in a spectator sport. The integrity of the competition has to matter, and placing a runner on second to start innings and extras is deleterious to the integrity of the competition. We know this in part because MLB has said so itself.

MLB will not use the rule in the postseason because the league recognizes that it's a gimmick unfit for deciding a championship. And then he ends this newsletter by saying that baseball already had a good method of reaching a conclusion of determining a winner and a loser. This rule just gets the game over with. And we can talk and we have talked about maybe the benefit of getting the game over with instead of just extending indefinitely but that's the idea that maybe it's too random it's just too wild and it's fun in small bursts it's it's good in moderation but you wouldn't want it all the time, A, either because it would reduce the competition itself to just kind of flukiness or because it would cease to be so exciting when it's all we know, when it's just the default. candy for years, but I think that's because I always thought cotton candy looked so appetizing, and the first few bites that you take of it are just so fluffy and wonderful and sweet,

and then very quickly it becomes disgusting, at least to me, and it gets all hard and caked, and it's just so sweet that it starts to turn your stomach almost. And I never ended up finishing the thing. So I liked the first few bites, but I didn't actually want a whole stick's worth of cotton candy. And so that would be one thing that you could say about the extra innings rule, that it's fun in extra innings, but you would not want it in every inning. On the other hand, you could also say, well, it's more exciting. it in every inning. On the other hand, you could also say, well, it's more exciting. So why wouldn't you just want the default, the baseline to be more exciting? Because after all, baseball is competing with all of these other forms of entertainment that are potentially exciting. So the more entertaining you can make it, the better. Yeah. For me, it's more microwave popcorn than cotton candy. So I think I have four responses to this so-called definitive disproval of the extra innings rule.

That if it's so good, why wouldn't they do it in the first inning? So four things. One, there is a sort of a fallacy going on here, right? things. One, there is a sort of a fallacy going on here, right? Where, for instance, football in the NFL, the most obvious thing that you would think to do on a touchback would be to put the ball at the one or like the one inch, right? You're in the end zone. Now, obviously, you can't start the play in the end zone in your opposing team's end zone, or I guess your own end zone. But why would you move the ball up to the 20 or the 25 that that doesn't necessarily make any sense except for you know it does we we don't want

to have every every series start on the one inch that would be a boring sport and it would be really hard to ever score and you it basically would become a safety sport and so they move it up all right so they move it up to the 20 or the 25. I don't remember which one it is now. And so then the equivalent argument here would be, oh, well, if it's so good on the 20, why don't they just start you at the 50 or your opposing teams 30 or at your opposing teams one Like, that's not how this works. We're trying to find the right thing somewhere in the balance, and the one-inch line was too restrictive, and the other team's one-inch line is not restrictive enough. We're trying to have a sport with tension and entertainment both.

And so, you know, you try the 20. I don't even know if they started at the 20. Maybe they started at the 5 originally and thought this isn't enough. Or maybe they started at the 20 and went, this works fine. And maybe in 100 years, they'll realize that they should be starting at the 30. It's a balance. And you're tweaking as you go. In the NBA, you have a 10-foot rim.

If I said it should be 11 feet and someone said that's too high and I said, well, then why don't you just make it six feet? Well, that doesn't make sense either. 10 is fine. Okay. You just find the thing that increases action and also makes the sport kind of hard. And basketball has decided that they're going to have a 10-foot basket, and that causes several hundred scoring attempts a game, or I guess maybe about 100 scoring acts per game. And the NFL has decided they're going to put the ball at the 20, and that's going to have, I don't know, a half dozen or 10 scoring events a game. And baseball has decided that they're going to have no runners on base, and that's going to cause like four ish, five scoring events a game. And soccer has decided that they're going to make the net the size of the net. And that's going to cause like two scoring events per game.

And each sport is kind of different and finds its balance. But it's not like there is only objectively one possible pace that you could have. And you might decide that more scoring events is better and that more action between scoring events is better. So anyway, that is all to say that having a runner on second in the 10th inning does not mean that you have to immediately have a runner on second in the first inning. So that's the fallacy, right? Why not make the rim six feet high fallacy? Okay. The second one is somewhat related, which is that, yes, it actually would probably maybe make baseball more interesting.

Whether it would make baseball better is a little uncertain. And because the uncertainty of the unknown always introduces a bit of friction, a bit of like you're a little wary of it. It might make things better, but it could ruin a perfectly good thing. And so for that reason, we tend to be, you know, as a people, we tend to be a little conservative. We like the familiar. We sometimes put a little bit more pressure on a person to justify a change than we feel to justify leaving things the same. And you can see that all throughout society for good and for ill. But in this case, the reason that there's not a runner on second in the first inning or in any other inning traditionally is not necessarily that it

was worse, but because we were, you know, we're cautious about introducing change. Now, change happens anyway. And I go back to this all the time. Baseball, when they invented the rules, the rules being there's going to be a first base, second base, third base, there's going to be three outs in an inning, the bases are going to be 90 feet apart, all these things. They were designed for an extremely different sport than is played today. The 90 feet that it took to run to first base was codified when it was extremely hard to field a ground ball and throw the runner out. And so if you look at how many batters reached base

in the original formulation of baseball, it was a much higher number. Like if you look at Babbitt plus errors in a game, there were way more base runners and they apparently liked that. That was how they designed the game. And then things got more professionalized. People got better. There were gloves and now Babbitt and, you know, Babbitt plus errors is a lot lower and it's a different kind of a game. And in response to that, we've essentially done nothing. Now we didn't do nothing because each step along the way, we were trying to, you know, I don't know, it wasn't even by design. It's just that we're resistant to change.

And so the game has been changing, you know, all around us. But extreme steps like whether we're going to have a totally new way of putting base runners on, we're wary of on. We're wary of those. We're cautious of those. And so the notion that by doing that, though, you are maintaining like one consistent product is wrong. The game that's played today is very different than the game that was played a century ago or 150 years ago.

Change is happening. It's fine. We're fine with change. We just like to go sort of slow. And so putting a runner on second base in the 10th inning, one inning, is perfectly in keeping with that. It's going slow. It's not saying we should do it every inning. It's just a little tweak. And in fact, it's a little tweak in an already anomalous year. We're kind of seeing how it goes. It's a very cautious approach to it. And the result is that I like it. And that's all. Like they tried a cautious thing in a one-year experiment and I liked it.

And I don't really feel like I should be dunked on for liking it. I don't feel like I need to get like a bunch of people on Twitter, you know, trying to out logic me. I just like it. It's just fun. Third thing, third thing, the reason that you would have it in the 10th inning, even though maybe we, maybe we do all agree that it shouldn't be in the first inning. The reason that it makes sense in the 10th inning is that it solves a problem that people have identified. It might not be a problem that you personally think is a problem, but it is solving a problem

that people identified and wanted to solve. So it is a very specific solution to that problem. Rob Manford didn't say, what if we put a runner on second in the fourth? Like he didn't just pick an inning out of the hat. He said, what can we do about these 18 inning games that everybody seems to hate? pick an inning out of the hat. He said, what can we do about these 18 inning games that everybody seems to hate? Or that I guess a large, a large part of our stakeholder population seems to hate. Well, what if we put a runner on second in the 10th inning? It wouldn't solve that problem by putting it in the first inning. So it can work in the 10th inning, even if I grant you that it

wouldn't work in the first inning, because they're separate things things one is one is for a reason the other is for a hypothetical in an email episode the fourth thing is what i alluded to earlier which is that part of what makes it fun in the 10th inning is that everybody acts all crazy you know roman quinn starts diving for the ball and it gets past him and it's an inside the park home run and that excitement and that that unpredictability might well not happen in the first inning when these runs don't have the same game-ending stakes attached to them. Yeah, one of my reservations is just that I like a run to feel like an accomplishment. I like it to feel like you got on base, which is hard to do,

and then you advanced all the way around the bases, which is also difficult to do. And a lot of things had to come together for that to happen. So when you do finally push that run across the bases, which is also difficult to do. And a lot of things had to come together for that to happen. So when you do finally push that run across the plate, it really feels like an achievement. And you look back at all the things that had to happen for that to happen, unless it was a home run, of course. But it's not quite the same when you start halfway there. And really, it's more than halfway there, because a big part of the battle is just getting on base in the first place yeah and so i i understand the the tactical wrinkles and it's all very exciting and it's strange and in contrast to the norm it's pretty interesting

but i don't know that i would want it to be the norm. Even if you said, well, hey, scoring runs is fun. That's the goal after all. So why not remove some of the impediments to accomplishing that goal? It'll just be rapid fire runs back and forth, runs, runs, runs. But there is something to be said for the suspense and the buildup to those runs and to really being made to feel like you earned it. to those runs and to really being made to feel like you earned it yeah i wouldn't i am not i would not promote changing all innings to be like the 10th inning i think that uh it's great for what it is and i am generally pretty cautious about implementing uh changes to things that

seem like they're basically working and i still feel like the the basic gameplay of major league baseball is still pretty entertaining and exciting to me. And the changes that I would make to make it more interesting and exciting would be less disruptive or, I don't know, discontent, incongruous. There's got to be an opposite of continuity that is also an adjective, but it would be less of that. So, you know, one of the things

that I think I keep on wanting to talk about this rule, I, and I might sound kind of obsessed with talking about this rule. And I think that part of it is actually just because I was so against it. And I feel like my mind, I worry that I'm not very open-minded. I worry about everybody not being very open-minded, but I worry that I don't change my mind very often. And I think, well, how can I really trust that I am processing new information rationally and open-mindedly if I almost never change my mind on anything or change my worldview on things?

And it's really exciting for me that this is a thing that i like can see my mind was changed on and that i'm not simply like finding evidence that suits my pre-existing opinion so it's it's like a i don't know people please be patient with me this is like a really kind of fun and novel situation for me where I get to see my brain change in real time. Yeah, I think you're right, though, that the model that we have that we've always had, at least when it comes to you have to actually get the runner on pace before the runner advances the scores, that has worked well for 150 years or more at this point. And how many things can you actually say that about? Or how many things can you actually say that about? Or how

many entertainment forms can you say that about? And so, yeah, I'd be pretty careful about tampering with that kind of bedrock thing, especially because if you do want more base runners, which I agree, probably a good thing to have more base runners than we do now, more defensive plays, all of that, there are things you can do to get the game back in that direction just give it a little nudge instead of a total overhaul and it wouldn't be nearly so disruptive so all right well i think we handled that discussion do you want to do a stat blast yeah sure okay this stat blast song cover they keep keep coming in. And this one came in from Tyler Stafford. And as I said to Tyler, I can't believe it took this long ERA- and plus version of OPS Ben Lindbergh coming and the Jeffs stopped coming

Meg said let's go and she hit the ground running Didn't make sense not to bring Sam back The games are on but the bats go crack So much to do, so much to see see so let's dive into some low retro sheets if they don't know lucas might know or dan or someone with a show hey now it's a stat blast send an email listen to them search for answers for all of your questions did they choose the baseball only rob Rob Arthur really knows. Whew.

All right. Okay. Thanks for stepping up, Tyler. All right. Not your favorite Smash Mouth song, though, right? No. What is the official Smash Mouth song in this podcast? Wasn't it that one about, I feel like we talked about the one where, what's that, the one

from Astro Lounge? Hang on. I really like the third track on Astro Lounge. I just want to see. Maybe that's a deep cut. Stoned. Stoned. Oh, yeah.

Oh, Stoned is a great one too. Yeah, that's the one I remembered being maybe the... Yeah, that's a great one. But that's the one i remembered being maybe yeah that's a great one but that whole album is just great start to finish problematic fave this comes from an email that ryan sent a couple months ago a few months ago just after the season had been delayed and he said i was thinking about how antsy people are going to be getting sitting at home with not much to do naturally including mlb's general managers people can get up to some weird business when bored for very long so how long is it going to take before

the general managers start making trades just for something to do worded another way how different would baseball be if all general managers acted like jerry depoto constantly making roster moves and there was a pause on roster moves during the shutdown, right? So you couldn't make trades or wave players or anything like that. So the hypothetical where this was going to happen because we were, you know, GMs had gotten bored of making bread is not applicable. But I had been wondering how different would baseball be if all general managers acted like jerry depoto you haven't answered this yet have you no all right so i looked at just trades and you'll see why i looked at just trades to see how many more trades there would be if everybody behaved like jerry depoto this peak depoto i know depoto just made a trade this week and sent taiwan

walker to toronto but this is still a different DePoto from the peak DePoto when he was still sort of tearing down that team. And this is only if the GM was there for all three years. If the active GM had not been there for at least three years, then I prorated how long they had been there over three years. And if they had a new GM or a relatively new GM that either was hired, basically that was hired late in 2019, I didn't count them at all. So Jerry DiPoto in that time made 68 trades. And yeah, like you just noted, peak Jerry DePoto is not necessarily his resting heart rate. He had a flurry of trades over a period of time. And then he does make, I think, more trades than most GMs other times, but he couldn't keep that pace up. And in fact, over those three-

Had a lot three players to trade yeah well maybe and so he in fact did not make more trades than any other gm over the last three years eric neander of the rays made more trades so depoto made 68 neander made 73 farhan zaidi if you prorate actually would be the champ because he made 25 in his first full season as the giants president of baseball operations but i'm gonna consider that a little bit of a of an anomaly new new franchise and all that new organization and all that so the raise at 73 is the peak so 73 trades over the course of three years is like 24 per year. And the average GM in that time made 13 per year.

So 24 to 13, it's a big difference, particularly if it, you know, over the course of three years, it's, you know, it's 34 more trades than the average. And relative to like the least active trade, like Jeff British on the Rockies, he only made 14 trades in that time. So the Rays made 59 more trades, almost 20 more per year than the Rockies did. So if in that time span, then we have 1,095 trades. And I just realized that each of these trades involves two teams. So we really have half that many, but we're gonna pretend that I didn't make that oversight

and hope that it doesn't affect any of the conclusions. So 1,095 trades over the course of three years. And remember where the raise are, you know, not quite double, but you know, close to double. And so you would think, all right, well, if we made 1,095 in three years on average, the raise are about double, then how many trades are we going to get? 2,190 is two times. Okay. Or per year, like 800 instead of 400 or something like that. But of course, that's not

true. Of course, that's not true. Of course, that's not how trades work. A trade is not a single GM acting on his own deciding to do something. A trade requires two willing GMs deciding to do something together. And so the more active one GM is, the more active another GM will be because he is more likely to find a willing partner right yeah that makes sense doesn't it it does and so if you had a situation where instead of one jerry depoto you add say two jerry depotos then every gm would probably make slightly more trades because they're more likely to bump into a jerry depoto and the day that they decide that they want to make a trade and they pick up the phone to call a gm more likely that

the other gm is going to say yes and so if you had a situation where there were three jerry depotos or four jerry depotos then you would have this network effect right like fax machines you would just have you know find everywhere you look is a willing recipient to your offers. So what I did is I took each GM's rate of making trades. I broke it down. I took, I did a lot more steps than necessary. In fact, and I might've done it all wrong. And I'm going to double check this at some point. And I might come back in a later episode with a totally new stat blast. But I basically took the number of trades they make per week per team.

So if you say you're Eric Neander, you make almost half a trade per week. And there are 29 other teams. almost half a trade with any other GM, with a specific other GM per week. Okay. So let's just imagine that once a week, every GM calls every other GM once. And they say, you want to make a trade? And it's binary. It's either yes or no. It's like

swipe right. And if they both swipe right, then they make a trade. And if one swipes left, then no trade. All right. And they go through this process once a week with each other. Everyone calls every other one once a week. And then you have a likelihood of two willing partners matching up okay right so using log five the old bill james method of figuring out the likelihood of one team beating another team given their winning percentages i applied eric neander's trade rate to every other GM's established trade rate to see how often each of these GM's would make a trade if all other 29 teams were the raise. And so for instance, Jeff British, instead of making 14 trades over three years, he would have made 26 trades over three years, which makes sense because now every GM is essentially twice as likely to make a trade

with him specifically as they currently are. But then if you cause all 30 teams, basically, if you give Eric Neander's rate to all 30 teams, how often would Eric Neander make a trade? And the answer to that is about four times as often as he does right now. So the effect of making every team Jerry DiPoto or Farhan Zaidi or Eric Neander would be to essentially increase the number of trades fourfold. There would have been, instead of 1,000 trades over the last three years, there would have been about 4,000 trades over the last three years. And by my math, that means that we would get 26 trades a week in Major League Baseball. Instead of the current quarter of that?

Yeah, like six or seven yeah huh boy that'd be a lot of movement to keep track of it would be i'm glad that's not what happens i think yeah although i think again that each of those trades involves two teams so have that so i guess we would have 13 trades per week instead of the current like four three or four boy you put a lot of work into that one i did yeah i put a lot of work into just re-familiarizing myself with the spreadsheet when it came time to do this stat class i was seeing the the charlie day bulletin board gif in my head as you were going over that my contributions are like emailing someone hey could you look this up for me?

Yours is like 20 tabs in a giant spreadsheet. But you had the courage to tackle that question. Also, yeah, really important. We've established that baseball would probably not be better if everyone traded like eric neander so the question is whether eric neander and cherry depoto and farhan zaidi are trading because they have an like an ideal roster that they're moving toward or if they're trading because they i mean to oversimplify they just like trading and so they then would in this scenario, you quickly hit a peak, not a peak, but like kind of a plateau where every GM had all the players they already wanted from everybody else. Like could these high, high frequency traders continue to have appetite for trade?

And you see with Jerry DePoto, I feel like Jerry DePoto has both traded for and traded away a lot of the same players now. Like a lot of like his second generation of trades were players that he had already traded for. So he didn't really slow down that much. It's not like he got a player like he, for instance, they just traded Dan Vogelbach. It's not like he got Dan Vogelbach and said, like, finally, this is who I'm going to retire with. He kept on looking for ways to change his roster around. So I don't think that you would have a slowdown after a certain

amount of time, but it's certainly possible that you would. Okay. I guess technically that was, was that just a cash deal? I don't know. Vogelbach was purchased or that's what it went down as in the transaction log. Anyway, I have a much quicker and simpler StatCast response here. This is from StatBlast. StatBlast. Yes, StatBlast. This is from Richard and also two other listeners. Three listeners emailed us, Richard, Kyle, and Patreon supporter Dan.

All wanted to know if this was unusual. This was what Richard said on Saturday, August 23rd, six of the 14 games finished with a score of five to four or four to five. This seems unusual. What is the highest number of games that have finished with matching scores on the same day? Is six even that unlikely? Got an answer here from listener and research assistant Adam Ott. Got an answer here from listener and research assistant Adam Ott And yeah, it turns out it is pretty unlikely This is the fourth time that this has happened In, I guess, the last century or so of baseball Of course, there are more games played on the typical day now

Than earlier in baseball history But it has never happened more than six times There have never been more than six identical scores on the same day. So that's the max. And it was with 5-4 games this year. In 2018, May 19, 2018, it was also 5-4 games. There were six of them on a day with 17 games. There were 14 total games when it happened this past weekend.

On October 2, 2012, there were six 4-3 games on a day with 15 games played. And on September 24th, 1972, there were six 2-1 games on a day with 14 games played. And for anyone who's wondering, 5-4 is not the most common outcome, but it is quite common. So the most common is three to two, then four to three, then two to one, and five to four is the fourth most common final score. And in fact, there was a five to three score on the same day that there were six five to fours. So we were one run away from that losing team scoring one run and getting us to seven identical scores, which would have broken the record, but we didn't quite get there. And because listener Mike asked us this week, and I figure this question might come up again, I figure we should mention that

on episode 1356, we did answer the question of what the most games played in any single day was. That might come up again because we're going to get a bunch of double headers here. So most games played on any single day was September 7th, 1970, when there were 21 major league games played, nine double headers. Okay, so that is the answer to that question. Now, Anthony, Patreon supporter, says, I have an almost incredible fun fact that I think is still a solid fun fact and might be stat-blast worthy. I agree. On Sunday against the Cubs, Luis Robert struck out three times on nine pitches in his first three plate appearances, followed by a four-pitch strikeout in plate appearance number four.

Has anyone ever gotten an immaculate golden sombrero in one game? So four strikeouts on 12 pitches. golden sombrero in one game. So four strikeouts on 12 pitches. Robert was just one pitch away from that before I think Jeremy Jeffress maybe threw him a ball on 0-2 before he finally struck out. So what Robert did, striking out three times on nine pitches in a single game, is uncommon, but not that uncommon. It has happened 299 times going back to 1988, the first season with pitch-by-pitch data. So that's about nine times per season, and it happens more often these days than it did at the beginning of that time. But the real question is, Immaculate Golden Sombrero, how close was Robert to joining that exclusive club, and how exclusive is that club?

to joining that exclusive club, and how exclusive is that club? It is very exclusive. As you might imagine, it has happened three times. Three times someone has had a game in that period where they have struck out four times on 12 pitches. For the first time, it happened on April 10th, 1988. Mike Pagliarulo struck out three times against Teddy Higuera and then one time against Dan Plesak. struck out three times against Teddy Higuera and then one time against Dan Plesak. Then it happened twice in 2015. Those are the only other two times it has happened. So Justin Upton struck out four times, all swinging, three times against Jose Fernandez, one time against Mike Dunn on August 2nd, 2015, and Brett Lurie, all swinging again. Colby Lewis twice, Keone Kela once, and Neftali Fleas once on April 7th, 2015. 11 of the 12 pitches he saw were breaking balls, actually. Grit Brisby blogged about it. And that's it. It's only happened three times on record. And that's not really surprising

because, you know, you have to strike out four times in a game and then you have to do it on three pitches every time. And you would think that if you were close, you would start taking some pitches. Maybe. I don't know how much this would be on your mind that, hey, I don't want to have the immaculate Colton Sobrero. It's not like that's a well-known thing that everyone knows and you might not even notice that it had happened. But you know, you would think like there are times when people take a pitch, like they don't want someone to have a minimum inning as you like to call it. So if a pitcher gets two outs on two pitches, they might just take a pitch just to prevent

him from getting the minimum inning. That doesn't seem to happen, or at least if it happens, it doesn't work because you could just throw a called strike. So it's kind of in the pitcher's control to some extent too. Yeah, to a lot of us. I mean, you're probably better off swinging at every pitch. If you're trying to avoid this, then you would probably decide to swing on every pitch. Maybe if you wanted to get a foul or put the ball in play.

If you took every pitch, probably the odds are that he's going to throw a ball before you take three called strikes, right? Yeah, I don't know. It depends how early in the process you begin strategizing against the immaculate golden sombrero because the odds are certainly, I would say, pretty extremely low that the pitcher's going to throw

12 straight pitches in the strike zone. But three straight in the strike zone, that happens constantly. That happens all the time. Whereas if you swing at all of them, like if you just compare the average hitter's contact rate, it's higher than the average pitcher's ball rate, right? Like, yeah, roughly half, let's say roughly half of pitches are not in the strike zone, but like 70 to 80% of swings produce contact.

So only like 20 to 30% of swings produce no contact. And so you would probably want to, now of course that's on pitches with the batter chooses to swing at. And if the batter swings at everything, then he's going to swing at some really dumb pitches. But yeah, I think that you would want to, I think that your goal in avoiding a golden sombrero

is to either put a ball in play or to foul off a pitch with two strikes. And so I think that your best strategy for both of those would be to swing early and often. Okay. All right. And I answered this question already. I'll just relate it to the audience. This is Sean, Patreon supporter, who asked, between the seven-inning doubleheaders that we've been talking about and the base runner starting on second base and extra innings, is the length of the average game appreciably lower than in previous years? If it is, does this have an impact on the amount of wins that are estimated for individual player contributions in war models? And the answer is that the length of an average game is down from 8.94 innings last season to 8.69 innings

this season. So, you know, 0.2 innings is the difference, and that difference might increase a little bit as we get more and more seven-inning doubleheaders here down the stretch, but you would not really notice the impact on war, at least, you know, on top of the enormous impact of having a 60-game season instead of a 162-game season. I don't think you're going to notice the extra 0.2 or 0.3 or whatever fewer innings per game. So I think that is maybe more relevant when it comes to qualifying, right? Like 3.1 plate appearances per game is qualifying and still is, I guess, for the batting title. But you might have a harder time getting that number of plate appearances because games are a little bit shorter now.

You know, part of that too would, I don't know how much it would affect it, but part of the reason that it's as high as it is, is I assume that without a home field advantage, the home team is batting in a lot more bottom of the ninths. Oh yeah, that could be true. So you have more games that go nine

instead of 8.5 this year yeah so if that were to disappear that would be another thing where it would uh probably it would drop a little bit more but yeah it's it's not it's not surprising it's not some huge loss or a huge drop i'm looking now and I'm trying to find what the lowest ever was. So in the pre-1900s, this was presumably because of darkness and also because nobody was really watching the games. And so who cared about resuming them if it rained, for instance, they were 8.6 to 8.7, pretty reliably. to 8.7 pretty reliably however since 1900 the so we're at 8.73 innings per game right now yes since i'm just gonna skip i'm gonna say since lights became in use we have 8.86 probably maybe 8.84 was the shortest so in the late 30s and and in the mid 40, you'd have it be in the high eights, which I guess probably is just that they resumed fewer games. Yeah, could be.

When did they stop playing bottom of the ninths? Oh, that was like very, very, very early. Extremely early, like the 1870s or something like that. Okay. Maybe earlier. But after the foundation of the National League or was it even before that, do you think? Were there major league games played during the period when they just played every bottom of the ninth, even if they didn't have to? I don't know.

I don't know. Well, if you find out, let me know. I mean, I could go find out. You want me to go find out? Yeah. All right. Hang on a second. Okay. find out you want to you want me to go find out yeah all right hang on a second okay all right i have not read this whole thing so it might not actually answer it but i'm going to read

where this comes from this is uh from peter morris's great book a game of inches and this is actually for the entry for walk-off hits once it was established that a game was to last nine innings the requirement was taken literally if the club batting last was ahead after eight and a half innings it wouldn't have occurred to early players not to complete the game after all

a baseball match was a ceremony rather than a competition and for the losers to walk off the field would be the ultimate act of poor sportsmanship this custom of completing the game persisted throughout the increasingly competitive 1870s, while many other gentlemanly traditions died out. Before the 1874 season, a proposal was made to end play after eight and a half innings if the outcome was decided, but the idea was, quote, discussed somewhat unfavorably end quote and voted down people probably said if you want to end after eight and a half why don't we just

yeah exactly yeah exactly nor was it simply a case of going through the motions in the bottom of the ninth this is my favorite part in fact this is i i think about this a lot nor was it simply a case of going through the motions in the bottom of the ninth in many cases a side that had already won piled up many additional runs against demoralized opponents in the deciding match of a tournament in blissfield michigan held august 22nd and 23rd 1879 the nine spots of sturgis led the adrian club 5-4 in the bottom of the ninth, but a two-run single won the game in the tournament for Adrian. The nine spots glumly walked off the field, and the umpire ruled the game a 9-0 forfeit,

which not everybody knows this, but a forfeit has always been recorded as 9-0, one run for every inning, regardless of what the actual score is. The newspapers criticized the club for the breach of etiquette more important there's action in walking off the field helped to pave the way for the walk-off hit this and similar incidents made it obvious that a custom once designed to promote good sportsmanship was instead creating ill will the rule was finally changed that offseason so that quote if the side at bat in the ninth innings secures the winning run, the game is to be called without putting out three men as heretofore. Stevens Point Journal, December 13th, 1879. The first sudden death victory in Major League history took place on opening day of the National League's 1880 season.

And with the visiting team still generally batting last, the road team was victorious. In Cincinnati, Chicago rallied with two runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to defeat their hosts four to three. The Chicago Tribune triumphantly reported that, quote, it was nobody's victory till that last moment. The dramatic circumstances surrounding

the National League's first walk-off home run are described, oh man run are described oh man are described in the entry rotations i took this like dramatic like what's the last sentence we're gonna sum it up i took a dramatic tone and then it was just go elsewhere for more and i didn't realize it until halfway through the sentence so that's the answer 1879 was the last year that that was okay so they played four seasons of national league baseball playing the bottom of the ninths yeah bless them all right all right that will do it thanks as always for listening by the way as you may have seen shades of a previous email episode discussion this week mike trout said he has a fear of flying he said if there is a hurricane in houston he

might not fly home with the team i do not not like turbulence, he said. You can ask any of my teammates. I already told Upton if that happens, we're driving six hours west and then flying. So Mike Trout likes weather and he likes airplane emojis. He does not like when real airplanes go through real weather. Anyway, on episode 1187, Jeff and I answered the question, how much value would Mike Trout lose if he was not allowed to fly on a plane? Which fortunately is not actually the case here, but you can check out that episode for our answer. Also wanted to mention friend of the show and sometimes stat blast assistant Dan Hirsch,

who works for Baseball Reference, has transferred his great game changer tool from the Baseball Gauge, his site, to Baseball Reference. So if you use MLB TV on a computer and you want to set it up so that it will automatically switch from game to game based on your preset criteria, go check that out. I will link to that and everything else we discussed this episode on our show page as always. 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 jonathan knapp dylan simon sean nodes alexander bertland and carter fornash 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 spotify and other podcast platforms keep your questions and comments for me and sam and Meg coming via email at podcast at fancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. That's it for this week, so we hope you have a wonderful weekend,

and we will be back to talk to you early next week, when most likely we will recap the trade deadline and see if Sam's stat blast came true. I'm going somewhere