Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1587: The Live-Ball Era

Episode Date: September 5, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley follow up on an earlier Clayton Kershaw commercial conversation and banter about Tom Seaver and the benefits of being a late bloomer, then answer listener emails about catchers sharing secrets about their old teams, the value of game-calling, Manny Ramirez signing with the Sydney Blue Sox and the experience of […]

She was searching for the writer of a song that made her shiver. She listened over and over on her walkman cassette. And she said, come with me, late bloomer, for a little while, I want to see that fire burning in you, little child. Hello and welcome to episode 1587 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Pretty good. How are you? I'm tired, tired but i am well it's kind of a constant when we do our friday pods with both of us i guess yeah definitely with you yeah it's like hey it's been a whole week

yeah and now i'm ready to be done with the week but always happy to talk to you ben likewise likewise yes so i have a follow-up to something we talked about last week when we dissected Clayton Kershaw's second Hankook Tire commercial, the one where he's on the mound and he's mulling over which pitches to throw. which he almost never does in real life and we were wondering well why would they write this into the commercial or why would Kershaw okay it wouldn't he say to someone hey I wouldn't actually be thinking of throwing a change up to lefties here and maybe they would change the script or something and we just figured well I guess he doesn't care that much he's just kind of cashing the check and he'll just say whatever the script tells him to say. But we got a theory here from listener Joe that I had not considered. And he says, I recall a tale that Greg Maddox would allow a batter to really rip one off him during spring training

in order to set him up for the regular season. What if that Clayton Kershaw-Honcook-Tyrek changeup is like way, way deeper than the Greg Maddox story? What if Kershaw thinks that Juan Soto will remember the commercial and think, oh, he's considering throwing me a changeup here. And then he gets locked up on a fastball or completely fooled by the slider. And I had not thought about this, but maybe Kershaw outthought us and outthought everyone. And he just put this out there to try to confuse batters and maybe it's working because he

has a 1.5 era right now and he's coming off yet another strong start could be because of the tire commercial so then the question becomes does he have any actual conviction about the quality of of honkuk tires or did he simply see an opportunity to fool us all? And this was just the vehicle. And maybe he prefers a different tire brand entirely, but they didn't ask him to come on. And he's like, well, this is my opportunity to plant a tiny seed of doubt. Yes.

I maintain that that is a ridiculous theory but it is a delightful ridiculous theory yeah and i like very much the idea that pitchers are so keen to press their advantage that they will uh take any opportunity and i'm sure that uh if this theory were to be true that clayton kershaw would be delighted that he was given one that was so enriching. Although I don't know, you know, I don't know Juan Soto. You'll be shocked to learn that we are not pals. And so I don't know what his viewing habits are like, but I would imagine that this particular approach would really only only work for someone who is watching as much mlb tv yeah as we are and getting this commercial over and over and over commercial on at other

times or is that only what it's on because that's the only time i've seen it but i don't see that many commercials except when i'm watching baseball so I will admit that I have seen it. Like, you know, there's been, we've talked about this recently, just there are a lot of sports. There's just a lot of sports on right now. And so last night I checked in on some of the NHL action because, you know, Seattle is going to get an NHL franchise. Yes, I've heard.

And I realized that I thought I knew a lot more about hockey than I actually know. That has become clear to me in checking in on the NHL playoffs. But that commercial played during the NHL playoffs. And I will note that it was the second one. It was not the first one where he drives the car. So perhaps there are other opportunities. But I think you really need the repetitive mlb tv experience to drive at home right drive at home oh no ben i didn't even mean to do it yes you called the

commercial a vehicle earlier did i yeah oh god i'm a monster so so anyhow i don't think this is actually what's going on but i like the idea that it that it is and perhaps perhaps ben the actual target audience um for such a fake out is not a current major leaguer but a minor leaguer who might be home and watching mlb tv and uh and is gonna come up and think i might have to deal with that change up so so. So he is undermining the next generation of baseball players, and I applaud his efforts. Yeah, because Soto's probably not watching that much MLB TV because he is on MLB TV.

But yeah, okay, well, it's probably the velocity boost that Kershaw has gotten more so than the entire commercial that has contributed to his performance so far. But I like the theory. So thank you for sharing it with us, Joe. Yeah. Gosh, what a, you know, we don't have a lot of nice stuff right now. Our amount of nice stuff is fairly limited.

But Clayton Kershaw's 2020 counts as nice stuff. Yeah, it really is yeah he's he's got a as you noted in a 1.5 era he's got a fib in the low threes he's got he's striking out almost a whole batter more per nine got that velo tick yep strikeout rates up four points I like it It's been fun to watch Been fun to watch And there are 20 games on today, Friday Granted, a lot of seven-inning doubleheaders in that mix But 20 games, that is one short of the record

That we have previously determined for the most major league games on one day So that's fun And I believe I saw the most games on a single day since 1974 Yeah, I think the record was September 7th, 1970. That was when there were 21 with nine doubleheaders, but maybe there was another 20 game day a few years later. So that's quite a long time between having a lot of games. So here's my question about this, Ben. I heard last night as i was delighting in the white socks broadcast and allow me to just say as a quick aside you know we i think you and i have sought out benetti's

calls for a long time because he's just such a great fun broadcaster i am so pleased that the white socks being good means that more people have occasion and reason to check in on their broadcasts and thus are experiencing that booth uh it's just great fun even when he is not explaining pokemon but especially when he is explaining pokemon yeah the stone benetti combo is great and we always talk about benetti of course friend of the show friend of the show, listener of the show. But Stone is great, too, with Benetti. They are great together. And I think Stone working with Hawk Harrelson for so many years, it's a different vibe, I think, in that broadcast booth. And I know some people like the way it was, too, I'm sure.

But it's a little bit different. And I think it has allowed Stone to showcase a different side of himself as well so I think he has only been enhanced by working with Jason yes he they are just a really terrific pairing and I heard about this game thing on that broadcast because I knew that there were a bunch of games today but I had not realized just how significant the number was and now I've pivoted over to the Cup Four account and I'm watching the Royals mascot just destroy Pikachu and it makes me laugh every time.

I'm curious though, given how many games they have to get in today, why the first one doesn't start till 2.10 Eastern? I thought we would have some breakfast baseball given how many games we are due for today. And it's going to be a quite long day for everyone. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, so that part's a little surprising. But so many games.

So we have so many emails. We got a lot of great emails lately, and we want to clear out some of the backlog today. So I have saved some that Sam and I didn't get to on our last episode and we'll get to them today. One thing I wanted to say before we start on that, Sam and I talked a little bit about Tom Seaver on our last episode and how chance kind of governed where he ended up pitching, why he ended up with the Mets, and then when he went to the Reds

and when he went to the White Sox and then back to the Mets and then when he went to the Reds and when he went to the White Sox and then you know back to the Mets and all over the place we talked about that but we didn't so much talk about his development before he got to the big leagues and this is something that I was not aware of until I was reading the latest edition of Craig Wright's newsletter pages from baseball's past baseballspast.com check it out out. Highly recommend it. But I would have assumed that Tom Seaver was always really good just because he was so great early on in his career. He was really great in AAA from the start of his pro career in 1966. He was the rookie of the year in 1967 and was already really great. But you could have assumed based on that strange start to his career that there was this lottery, this derby for Seaver and only three teams were interested

That tells you that he was not the biggest prospect ever and the reason for that is that physically he was sort of a late bloomer So reading here from Craig's newsletter For a player who was a nearly unanimous choice to the Hall of Fame on his first ballot. Tom Seaver had a decidedly odd beginning to his career. Both of his parents were athletic, had played basketball in their high school days, and were excellent golfers. His father had also played basketball and football at Stanford University. Their son enjoyed playing high school baseball and basketball, but no one would have guessed they were looking at a future professional athlete.

He was better at basketball, where he had a fine shooting touch, but he did not have a basketball player's physique and was only 5'11". On the diamond, he had a so-so fastball and relied more on breaking pitches and control to get batters out. He did not even make the varsity squad until his senior year. There were no scholarship offers when Seaver left high school, and he instead worked a warehouse job and enlisted at the Marine Corps Reserve. and he instead worked a warehouse job and enlisted at the Marine Corps Reserve. A year later, he began attending the local community college and decided to pursue a career in dentistry. Interesting. Dr. Siever.

It turned out that Tom was a late bloomer physically. He grew two inches after high school, and between his time lifting crates of raisins at the warehouse and his training with the Marines, he added 30 pounds to his frame. When he began pitching for the Fresno City College team, he was surprised to discover he was now the hardest thrower on the team. Adding a great fastball to what he had already learned about setting up batters as more of a finesse pitcher had turned Seaver into a formidable pitcher. And that's interesting because people always talk about how cerebral he was and how well he thought about pitching and remembered every pitch he threw.

And when he got older and he lost his best fastball, he was still really great. He was really good into his 40s and he kind of transitioned into almost a junk baller phase and was still really effective. And Craig is suggesting that maybe that's because he sort of started out that way unlike the typical prototypical ace he didn't come up as the biggest guy with the best fastball so he sort of learned to pitch like a mortal and then became immortal and so he had the physique and the stuff and the frame and all of that to go with the mentality of someone without all those gifts. And that's kind of the perfect combination. So I guess if you want to develop the ideal athlete, maybe they actually won't be early bloomers and huge at a young age. Although you'd think that in many cases, they might be discouraged from continuing to pursue a career in athletics or they might just get overlooked by coaches. They might not get a chance, you know, because they can't compete with bigger people at that age that maybe they would just gravitate toward other careers like Seaver almost did, you know, wanted to become a dentist. So there could be other would-be Seavers out there who did become

dentists, and that's fine. We need dentists too, but there might be some of those. So it's kind of like he threaded the needle where he got this boost of knowing what it was like to pitch without a great fastball before he had one, but also didn't get pushed away from sports permanently. Yeah, it seems like it would be a very difficult balance to strike and would require... How do I even want to describe the sort of mentality I expect it would require? On the one hand, you would need to be sort of dogged and determined, which I suppose is common to athletes who become professionals, regardless of when exactly their sort of native talent presents itself. But I think you'd also maybe need to not take it less seriously, but sort of you'd need to be able to be a good sport

about where you kind of where your your talent suggests you will go and then be surprised by, hey, I found a bunch more velocity than I was expecting because I grew or what have you and had projection on the frame. Because I think that it's very easy to get discouraged when we fail. This is why I haven't actually finished any cross stitch that I've ever started because they don't look good.

So you need to be sort of game to put it in its proper perspective and not be overly discouraged by early failure, but still determined enough to sort of keep at it in a way that I think is probably uncommon for a lot of folks. So yeah, it's an interesting sort of blend of things. Although here I am talking about how being able to put things in their proper perspective is important. And I know that he was, you know, he, he talked a lot about how the Marine Corps sort of instilled a discipline that was really important to his success as an athlete. So I don't know if my own example with Seaver is especially applicable, but it is a, it's an odd combination of things or perhaps a rare combination of things that I think you're right.

I think a lot of those folks just become dentists, which I don't know. That's a lot of school. It's a lot of school. It's a fallback. It's its own kind of determination, I suppose. Yeah. Anyway, I kind of identified with that because like my dad, I was sort of a late bloomer myself. Anyway, I kind of identified with that because like my dad, I was sort of a late bloomer myself.

Like neither of us grew until we were 16, 17. So up till that point, I was always one of the smallest kids in my class. And my dad was like, this was me too. Don't worry. It'll happen someday. And when you're like 14 and it hasn't happened, it's kind of hard to believe that. And it can be kind of tough because, you know, kids are mean. Not that they were particularly mean to me, but that can be the case. And, you know, when you're small at that age, you don't kind of command the respect that

someone does who's just kind of like more developed physically. And so I always felt like it was kind of an advantage for me in the long run, because like before I did eventually grow in high school, you know, you had to like find other ways to sort of relate to people or interact with people. I felt like it made me kind of better at just, I don't know, getting along with people or having a sense of humor or something. Because it was like I wasn't going to intimidate anyone. You know, I wasn't going to like be the biggest guy that people were going to automatically look to or something. And so if I wanted to have that kind of relationship with people, then I think it helped to just kind of like, you know, you have to find other ways to hold people's attention, I guess. And also just like the fact that I was not the biggest guy just kind of made it easier for me to pursue intellectual pursuits, I think, which maybe I would have done anyway.

But, you know, I was on some sports teams and I wasn't bad, but I wasn't such a standout that I harbored any huge aspirations there. I would rather read and play video games and stuff and watch baseball. And it turns out that all those things that I did are now what I do just kind of as a job, which worked out in the long run. So there were times if I could go back and tell 12-year-old Ben, it's okay, You're tiny now, but you won't always be tiny. And also maybe you will benefit from this tiny face in the long run. So I didn't turn out to have a great fastball ever though, but maybe it helped as someone who has to entertain people professionally now. I think that was probably helpful at the time. This is like my theory that

the fact that this is a very strange sentence that I'm about to say aloud and I want to recognize upfront that it is kind of awkward. I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that upfront. Ben, no, I'm not going to phrase that as a question because then it puts you in an awkward spot. So I think that I would not be alone in noticing that teens seem to be much more fashionable and sort of put together in their appearance than they were when we were teens. Like teens are, they've learned all these tricks and secrets and they are not awkward. I mean, many of them are still awkward because they're teens, but the average rate of awkwardness seems to be much lower. And I worry that it will mean that we end up with kind of bad stand-up comedy in the future.

Because I think it's important to one's ability to relate in that way, to sort of go through an awkward phase. You got to be awkward and have some pimples and not know what to do with your eyebrows and the hair is you know you need that in order to be funny yeah i think so too yeah and so yeah instagram is maybe uh spoiling the next generation of stand-ups because because they're too attractive yeah and that's an awkward thing to say because they're teens. But you know what I'm trying to say. They're pulled together in a way that I find very intimidating.

Yes. And so I think they will be less funny. Yes. And we're going to get, oh, no, and now the teens are going to come for me and they're going to make fun of me on TikTok. And I'm never going to see it because I don't know how to make it work, Ben. Aren't cargo pants back, though? Well, this is the- I've an article suggesting that cargo pants are back not that i would know but uh but i was aware of

them on occasion when they were first in oh man i think that a lot of stuff from the 90s has come back and i think um and i think that that might be the latest thing although and i don't know what the exact demographic breakdown of our podcast is. So this concern will probably not resonate with our male listeners. But to everyone else, we're not doing low cut jeans again. Okay. We're protesting. We're saying no.

Okay. We've gone a very weird route with this pod, but that's okay. I think Tom Seaver would also hate low cut jeans they're bad they're not flattering on anyone ben and you should all be awkward so that you can be funny later what's going on i don't know hey william testadio is back did you know that i did not know that yeah he's uh he's the 29th man on the Twins roster for Friday's doubleheader. He is back from the alternate sites. So that's great. The season has finally really started when Williams is a part of it.

Okay. Let's get to some emails. Here's a question from Ian who asks, what are the off-the-field benefits to acquiring another team's catcher, assuming said catcher is a willing participant? This occurred to me when the Padres traded for two catchers from their own Super West division, catchers whose old teams make up 30% of the Padres' remaining games. Since you can't nab a team's analyst or coach midstream, is snagging a team's catcher the

next best thing to their network password? Presumably you would be getting A, a glimpse of a team's book on mutual opponents, B, information that team has on how to pitch your own hitters, and C, an understanding of the team they came from, at least the pitching side. Is this valuable? I feel like I've heard this, but is it quantifiable? I've also heard that rubbing cut potato on your face makes your mustache grow in faster, but you can't confirm that on baseball reference either. And I guess relevant, there was a game earlier this week where the Padres beat the

Angels, and Jason Castro, the catcher who went from the Angels to the Padres, hit a tie-breaking two-run double in the eighth inning, which sort of opened up the game against the Angels, and the Padres end up taking that one. So that's maybe an example of this at work. And I think one aspect of it, we've been asked many times about do catchers hit better against pitchers they've caught before, because they know their stuff, they know when they might throw certain pitches. And I did look into this for an article at The Ringer a couple years ago, and I found that there is some small effect there, that it does seem that when you adjust for everything you have to adjust for, catchers do do a bit better than you'd expect against former battery mates. But that's not a huge effect, and it's just an individual thing. So Ian's really asking about the intelligence value that they bring over to their new clubhouse.

I imagine that there is some, right? Because there are going to be, how do I want to put this? I mean, I think that front offices are pretty savvy at being able to look at results on the field and use that data to inform their understanding of an opponent right and so it is not as if the only mechanism they have to assess and sort of endeavor to predict you know a particular pitcher's approach to their hitters or what have you is to talk to a human being right because they you know they have they have all of their stat cast data, they have all the results, they can watch the guy and have their advanced scouts say, here's, you know, here's stuff, here's stuff, you know, that's what they say, they say stuff,

because that's how precise they are. But I would imagine that there are insights into the club, either the process by which they approach their pregame prep or how a particular pitcher, you know, sort of thinks about the game, how likely they are to get flustered in particular moments, that sort of stuff that would be useful. You know, they, they probably, I don't want to say this about a particular trade because I don't think that I don't have any special insight that would suggest this. But like, you know, I would imagine that, and we heard this to be true when the news was breaking of the Astro sign stealing, like intelligence of that variety would be extremely useful if something like that existed, which again, I'm not suggesting is the case in the case of the Padres acquiring guys. But, you know, so if they were aware of that sort of thing, if they said, hey, like my experience is

that this starter you have is tipping pitches and now I'm here to help him stop doing that, I think that would be valuable. So I think there is intelligence that is actionable, but I don't want to overstate how much there is because I suspect that if you have good analysts and you have good advanced scouts, you're going to spot a lot of the stuff that a catcher might tell you. Does that sound like a reasonable answer, Ben? Yeah.

I was going to say something similar that I think this probably matters less than it used to because now you just have so many alternative sources of information. You know every pitch that has been thrown, whereas in the past you might not have had any of that information. And so you just might not even know what a guy throws or when he throws it. And all of that can just be automated and boiled down into a scouting report now. And you've got video and you've got everything. So I think it probably matters less than it did, but it might still matter. And yeah, if there's tipping pitches going on, that might still matter.

And it's got to be a weird mental adjustment. Like neither Jason Castro nor Austin Nola had been with their old teams for a very long time. But imagine if you're a longtime catcher who's been working with the same pitching staff for years, and maybe you go back to the beginning of your career with overnight. It's now your job to beat that pitcher. And maybe people are asking you, okay, what do I need to know about this guy? How do I beat him? And your job just goes from trying to hide all of that to revealing it just right away. And I wonder whether there's any hesitation

or even like almost an unwritten rule of, I'm not gonna give away all the secrets because these are my friends and teammates. And now I have new teammates, but they're not really my friends yet. And suddenly I'm expected to give up all of this information that puts you in a strange spot. Yeah, it would put you in a very strange spot. And I would imagine that the intelligence that you have that is the most actionable has sort of the shortest shelf life. Yeah. Right?

Like if it's tipping pitches, that probably gets sorted. Or maybe. Or like signs, you know. Right. They're going to change their signs. Yeah. Maybe you have insight into that. Or maybe I guess another place that it might come up is if there's a guy who has an injury of some sort that hasn't necessitated an IL stint.

And so you might have a good sense of the overall health of an opponent, but that probably, the shelf life on that probably decays pretty rapidly. Am I using that correctly? Anyway, I think that the stuff that would have the biggest impact would probably be fairly short-lived, but you do have some insight there that I think you benefit from actually knowing the person and having a sense of them in a way that isn't necessarily going to show up in the data. And how big a difference that ends up making, probably small. Those sorts of insights probably have a marginal impact on your efficacy or the team's efficacy on the field but it's not nothing i would expect yeah i think so too and the other thing though is that there is probably a penalty something that goes in the opposite direction which is that the new catcher now has to learn a whole new pitching staff and

pitching staffs are really big now. If you hadn't noticed, there are a lot of pitchers on teams and a lot of pitchers per game. And I know that Craig Wright, the aforementioned author of pages from baseball's past, when he used to work for teams, he did some studies that showed that it, it seems like there is a cost that when a catcher changes teams mid season, that his impact on pitchers, you know, goes in the other direction for a while.

Like it does seem to take a while to learn that stuff and improve as a receiver and as a game caller and all of that. And so if you're the Padres who just, you know, on paper, maybe you upgraded with Nolan Castro, but you also lost Hedges, who is a great defensive catcher, and just people who knew those arms and had worked with them for a while. And they're trading for those guys at midseason when it's not like you have spring training to get to know everyone. It's just, you know, right into the fire. into the fire so i would think that there is potentially some cost there just to not knowing what pitches to call or or when a pitcher likes to throw a certain thing or you know is this a day when he has his good stuff do you even know if you haven't caught his stuff before so there's a lot that i think takes some time to learn so i would guess that that maybe eats away at whatever intelligence edge you get yeah i gosh i wish we asked this question on our shift or i asked this question before our shift debate

episode i would love to know like the rate if the rate of cross-ups changes in a demonstrable way after a catcher's traded that would be super interesting because yeah you don't you don't you don't necessarily have experience catching that particular pitcher's repertoire and you might imagine that for non-fastball pitches you could get you could get in a bad way fairly quickly yeah it would be very interesting to see so sports info solutions get on that cross up tracking we're curious acquiring minds want data related question from andrew who says while teams and institutions like fan graphs track pitchers pitch selection and sequencing i was wondering if any effort is made to track catchers' desired sequencing and pitch location. Unless pitchers shake off enough signs to nullify their influence, it seems to me that catchers would fall into habits of calling for pitches in the same location,

preferring a high fastball instead of a low breaking ball on a one-two count, for example, that are common from pitcher to pitcher on a staff. In addition, one could note how a pitcher's pitch selection changes from each member of a catching platoon. That is, if there is a difference worth noting. And this is something that I think remains sort of a mystery or, you know, remains an area where we have a lot to learn pitch sequencing. And sometimes it's tough to know whether the catcher is calling the shots or the pitcher is or the bench is. So that complicates things. And are they just following the scouting report or are they working in their own preferences and intuition? So it's sort of tough to isolate the catcher's effect. I did do an article years ago at Grantland where I tried

to look at Yadier Molina's tendencies and compared them to his backup catchers. Not that his backup catchers ever really played at the time, but to the extent that they did, I tried to look for some preferences, and I'll link to that. But it's hard. You can sometimes find differences, but you don't necessarily know if the differences are beneficial or detrimental, and you don't know if they're entirely attributable to the catcher, but there's probably something there. And if you were to ask me, what's the area where there's still some significant source of value that we're not quite quantifying, I would guess that it's probably that, that that's a leading candidate just because you're involved on every pitch and just in the way that framing matters a lot because it's every pitch. Well, you have to call every pitch too. And so there's a lot of opportunity to add or subtract value there if it's possible to do that. And the fact that Jeff Mathis is still a major leaguer suggests that a lot of teams believe that there is value to that. quite quickly i'm curious oh gosh how how we would properly attribute that set of decision

making to a catcher versus you know them looking at their little card because so many of them look at their little wristbands or their little cards does it seem like everyone has a card now pretty much yeah they've all got cards pitchers have cards outfielders catchers they all have cards yeah and i imagine this is fallout from the astros right that you are just the teams even Pretty much. Yeah. They've all got cards. Pitchers have cards, outfielders, catchers, they all have cards. given the shift to sort of pre-printed cards and whatnot, how much is still being left to the discretion of the catcher versus an analyst somewhere. I mean, they're still sitting there sort of working through stuff with the pitcher, but gosh, it has been a noticeable source of increased time of game to me.

That's not the purpose of this question, but that's just a thought that I had. It's like sometimes you're like, hey, guys, can you get it together? Yeah. But yes, I would imagine that game calling is a place where a good and expert game caller and there are guys who have a pretty sterling reputation there. And sometimes that reputation diverges from their reputation as pitch framers, which I find interesting.

But yeah, I would imagine that there's sort of a well of unexamined or known value that's being added there and it would be hard to tease out but it would be really really cool if we could yeah right yeah and there might be cases where catchers try to be random and try not to repeat patterns right and they end up doing it even more. That happens sometimes when people try to make a list of random numbers or something, then they end up doing it in a sort of predictable way, like the Benford's Law thing. But also there's an element of intuition to it where sometimes it's not necessarily about, well, what's the best pitch to call in this count with this pitcher, but sometimes it's about how the batter reacts to an earlier pitch. Like, did he look like he was seeing something well? Did he look comfortable?

And I guess you could be deceived by that sometimes too, but there is an element of that where players will say that they do that and that that matters So yes, I would like to know the answer to this, but I do not But I think that's an area where maybe teams have done more work And maybe there will be more public work in the future Yeah We did have Harry Pavlidis on episode 686 years ago to talk about some work he did on game calling But it was pretty rudimentary

it was looking at the total impact a catcher has and then subtracting framing and everything else that we can quantify and saying that what's left over is game calling so it didn't really specify how a catcher was helping by calling pitches that's kind of the next step okay nick says recently 48 year old manny ramirez signed with the Sydney Blue Sox of the Australian Baseball League. Does this news make you happy or sad? How do you feel in general when an old player signs a deal with a very low-level league? I generally, hmm, how do I generally feel? feel i think how i feel tends to be dictated by what we know of the player's own experience of continuing to play baseball because i think that there is even at an advanced age you know depending

on just how low level the league is there might still be an appreciable skill gap that exists between a player even in their late 40s over you know indie league players who are quite a bit younger and even though some of the physical skill has deteriorated they still are able to kind of hold their own i tend to feel very badly for people when they are publicly embarrassed yeah But what embarrasses us varies person to person. And so it could be that, you know, you just really love baseball and you want to keep playing it and you feel good in your body and the setting is sort of immaterial to you and you do not experience being on that field as embarrassing because you are on a field at all at you know 48 or whatever and so you're you're just content to be doing the thing you like

and you're not bothered by the level of competition i think that i tend to like it when people are not fussy about themselves and so there's something that I find very endearing about players who are just like, I just want to play baseball. And it doesn't have to be so, it is serious. It is still professional. It's not like he's, you know, in a softball league somewhere, but I don't say that like softball isn't good. I just mean like he's not in like an amateur, you know, neighborhood thing. But so I think that if your experience of it is, I just want to keep playing because I'm not done yet, and they'll have me, and I'll have them, and we'll have a good time,

and it doesn't need to mean any more than that. It doesn't have to be a commentary about the endurance of the human spirit or how we all age and how you can't count on anything, including your own body. It can just be a guy playing a game. That's nice. I think there are times where guys get out there and it becomes clear that the physical skill

has deteriorated to the point that sort of the practice can't overcome it and then it feels yucky. And I don't like to see people embarrassed. So then it feels bad but if the players sort of approach and attitude toward it is i get to go play baseball then i think that's great yeah i think so too if it's a sort of a sideshow thing or a money-making thing like uh you know jose canseco showing up for one game or whatever then but if it's just someone who really likes playing baseball,

as you said, that it almost improves my opinion of that person. Like it's just, it's clear that they just really love the game and they want to be out there. And if they're having fun, then I think that should be something we're all happy about, right? It's, it's like when people say when a player is coming to the end of his major league career and people are saying, you know, oh, he should hang it up or it's time to go or something. And I always feel like, you know, hang on as long as you can, as long as it's bringing you some satisfaction and as long as you like being there, that's great. And that whole thing about like they're going to tarnish their legacy or something like that, I don't think there's that much to that because the old performance is what it was and the stats are frozen.

So, you know, they did what they did. And now if they're in diminished form and they're still playing, it doesn't change what they accomplished previously. I guess, you know, if you see a 48-year-old Manny Ramirez in the ABL, you probably won't be as impressed by him as you would have if you see this person who doesn't look the same and doesn't play the same. But if they want to be there and if it's bringing them some joy, then that's great. I think it all depends on their goal and their mindset. Like if they're in denial about their slipping skills and they still think I'm going to make it back or, you know, they're bitter that they're not still in the big leagues or something, then that might be bad. But if they just say, hey, I'd rather do this than whatever else I would be doing, then that's fine with me. Great.

Go get it. Yeah. I also think the point you made about us understanding sort of where they are in their career is a really valuable one. Because we shouldn't expect that a 48-year-old Manny Ramirez or, oh gosh, I don't want to always use him as an example. Especially since I just said that I don't want to feel embarrassed for other people unless they do. But like a 40-year-old Albert Pujols is just going to look different. He's going to play differently. But I also think that we can acknowledge that if any of us tried to play

professional baseball, even as young people, we would look really silly and be bad at it. You know, Monday, the Padres played the Rockies, and Fernando Tatis Jrr made this incredible snag in the infield on a very hard hit liner off the bat of sam hilliard and he caught the ball after leaping for it and it knocked him down like the force of it knocked him down but he was fine and able to do it and i just i saw that and i was like i would to dust. I would just be a pile of dust if I tried to play professional baseball. It's so hard.

These guys are so incredible. I think that it's not fun to watch the diminished version because we do have this mental image of prime Pujols or prime Ramirez and what that meant on the field. It's hard for us to forget that part because it was such the image is so indelible and they were so good but i also think that like doing it at all at that age which is not old for a human person but is quite senior for a baseball player is its own kind of accomplishment i think it's hard to hold on to that feeling over the course of an entire season which is part of why our experience of pool holes is what it is, because you do look at him and you're like, oh, buddy. But, you know, he gets to decide when he's done.

So at least as long as he has a contract. So perhaps we ought to shift the way that we think about it. Yeah. And Sam and I saw this a lot in the Pacific Association. There are a lot of people bouncing around there after they were in the majors. So, you know, like Brandon Phillips was playing in the Pacific Association last year, in fact. And when we were there in 2015, Aaron Miles was there playing sometimes years after he had last played in the majors. And in fact, the late Tony Phillips, the year before he died in his 50s,

he was playing in the Pacific Association. So sometimes this just happens and people miss the game. And if they still have some skills for a certain level and they're still having fun and everyone else is still having fun and they're not depriving someone else of a shot, I guess you could say that maybe Manny Ramirez is taking up a roster spot that someone who's potentially on the way up might be using. But I think there are a lot of spots to go around in that league and not many of those players end up going to much higher levels.

So I think that's less of a concern. And then you get a chance to see this guy and he's in the news. And yeah, maybe he's not polishing his legacy, burnishing his legacy at that point. But just the fact that he's on the field and we're talking about him just gives you an opportunity to remember how good he was. And you can say, hey, that 48-year-old guy there, okay, he may not look all that impressive, but you take your kids to the park just to see him so that you could say you did. And then you tell them about what he was like 10, 15 years ago and show them those stats and those videos. So I think it's a net positive probably in most cases. Yeah. I think that the sort of David Ortiz retirement tour where you're going out

at sort of still the top of your game, you're still hitting well, you're able to decide, this is when I am done. Those are very rare. It's just very unusual for guys to be able to, even really great players, to be able to time it right and so i think we have to think carefully about how to how to enjoy and embrace and appreciate the the more common decline and it is often very different than the pre-planned retirement tour even sometimes the pre-planned retirement tour comes in a season that's pretty gnarly so you know we all have to make peace with our exits yep all right question from aaron this is actually uh two questions on the same subject so aaron says i am sitting in a physical meeting with others but the meeting is actually online some people in the room have headphones, some do not.

So there is a ton of echo. This got me thinking about baseball stadiums. What if there were an all-virtual baseball league and there were never going to be fans in the stands? How would a stadium designed specifically to enhance the experience at home be different from current stadium design? One thought I had was that you would design it to sound great for microphones around the stadium so fans would really hear the crack of the bat and the snap of a glove when a ball is caught. And then Brian, Patreon supporter, along the same line says, after watching a few games without fans, I began to wonder how differently stadiums would

be designed if fans weren't part of the experience, as sad as that would be, and baseball games were only consumed from home. How small could a stadium footprint get, and would that allow them to fit in more places? Would walls or netting extend as high as stadiums do now just to keep the ball inside it? Would fields be surrounded by sculptures or art installations? Maybe bullpens would be right behind the dugouts because they wouldn't interfere with prime seating. Would more camera angles be possible if blocking views weren't an issue? How cheaply could one be built without concourses, food service, hundreds of restrooms, suites, and giant parking lots? I'm curious what other possibilities come to your minds. Oh boy. Well, I think that you, there are a couple of sort of practical uses of ballpark space that we would need to maintain

so you would probably still want to have seating behind home plate to facilitate scouting so that part would need to persist i think that you could open up a lot of different camera angles without worrying about blocking anyone. I think that would probably be the most noticeable difference in terms of your TV experience. I don't know, Ben, if you've been watching any of the NBA playoffs, but without fans on the one side, they just have a lot more room to maneuver seemingly with their cameras. So that part is cool i think that the the visual representation of what's beyond the outfield fence would become more important because on the one hand i think that these emails are right that you could you could operate in a tighter physical footprint than

ballparks do now because you don't need the concourses and you don't need a giant parking lot, although you still need a parking lot and baseball players drive big trucks. So there would still need to be some space for that. But your overall physical footprint, I think could be smaller, but you still want to produce a pleasing ballpark aesthetic for the viewer at home. ballpark aesthetic for the viewer at home. And that would no longer include, you know, shots of fans and, you know, bleachers and what have you. But I think having something that is that sort of breaks up the the monotony of the outfield would be important. Although I wonder how distracting that would be. I guess if it's way out in the outfield, it wouldn't matter. But I think you would have some creative opportunities

to enhance the background aesthetic experience because I don't think that people would want it to go from what we're used to, which is lively crowds and a bunch of color to something that is completely stark and not at all vertical, right? Because ballparks have this great sense of verticality, because of the stands. And I think that we are used to watching baseball that way and seeing play sort of take place against that backdrop and if it just went to a completely flat you know your your neighborhood field where you can kind of you just feel kind of in a way in a strange way claustrophobic because it is so flat i think that that would be a little less pleasing on tv and it would have to

be kind of enclosed anyway just for privacy's sake or you'd just have a bunch of people standing around walking by. So, yeah, I think you're right, though. You wouldn't need as much space. You wouldn't need the parking lot and all that as big a parking lot. So in theory, you could put it somewhere. Also, you wouldn't need it to be like close to a city center necessarily, right? I mean, you wouldn't have to have it be close to public transportation. You couldn't have it be in the middle of nowhere, I guess, because you'd still need the players to

get there. But, you know, they all have buses and planes and everything. So you could have it be somewhere out in a picturesque setting, right? It could be in nature or something. You could have it be somewhere out in a picturesque setting, right? It could be in nature or something. You could have a beautiful mountain in the backdrop. I mean, there are some amateur level stadiums around the world that are very beautiful and have that kind of backdrop because they don't have to be in the heart of a city. So you're right. You could get some really great scenery there. of a city. So you're right. You could get some really great scenery there. And I think you're already starting to see more experimentation with audio and video this season. I guess you've

probably noticed on the Root Sports Mariners broadcast, they have this fly cam now. It's like a camera that's installed sort of on a line, like from the press box to the left field foul pole and it's remotely controlled and it's attached to cables and it just kind of glides around and gives you an aerial view sort of like we've seen in in other sports and they also have this diamond cam that's in the grass in front of the batter's box and they have mics on the outfield walls now so that you can get better sound when a ball or a person bounces off a wall. And I think MLB Network just debuted these like speed cams, these cameras on the dugout along the first baseline so that as the runner is running down to first, this camera

goes like on tracks on wheels along with them along the top of the dugout which would otherwise block people who were sitting there probably and right i think there have been some equivalents to those things those things have been tested before in baseball broadcasts whether mlb or otherwise but i think we're seeing more of that and uh more willingness to kind of make it this kinetic experience because people are not at the park. So yeah, you could get that. You could get drones, which we have discussed before perhaps. So I think I don't know what else comes to mind immediately.

I think the listeners both had some good suggestions. But, you know, like the field field itself the diamond is the same dimensions and outfields are going to be roughly the same size so there's only so much that you could tinker with really i guess but just having some privacy having some sense that it's an enclosed space but also opening up a little more because you don't have to have an upper deck you know you don't have to have that much seating up there so you could get a bit more sky involved yeah you could get you could get a bunch of sky involved i i will say that the fly cam is pretty is pretty nifty um particularly when you have runners rounding third because they'll kind of sweep in as they're coming home.

So it's just a cool vantage on that action in that part of the field. Yeah, I think you could get pretty creative, but I think that people might underestimate the degree to which the movement and color and sort of breaking up of their visual experience on TV aids with their enjoyment of it. I think even though they are sometimes

not properly proportioned to one another, when you watch a game at T-Mobile and you see all the cardboard cutouts because the Mariners have just like a crazy number, they're not the only team to have such a full park, but they really have cardboard cutouts just all over the place. You can kind of trick yourself for a second that the park is full and that the sound is warranted and that it's not just, you know, something manufactured that's making that noise.

So I think that if we were to deviate from that, it would really take some getting used to to have it be completely empty and not have any semblance of human presence there. And so it would become important to have something to sort of break up the visual and make it a little more aesthetically pleasing on TV. I like the idea of having art as a part of that to kind of make each park distinctive and have it have a feel. And, you know, it could represent the place that that team is from in a way that could be really cool.

And every now and then we get a question about like, well, if you want to cut down on home runs, could you just not have outfield fences or just have them really, really far away? And one of the problems with that is that you've got to have fans out there. You have to have bleachers. So if you just had no outfield fences or they were extremely distant, you wouldn't be able to put fans out there. They'd have a terrible view. So you could do that in this scenario. And there have been some precedents for that in baseball's past, but I don't know if you would want that. I don't know if you would want a ball to just be able to bounce for 800 feet or something and have people chase

it down and have a ton of inside the park, or I guess it wouldn't even really be inside the park because there's no wall. I don't know what you would even call it in that case, but you could get really wild with dimensions if you wanted to just because you're not constrained by having to actually give fans a good view in the park but i don't know that those things would be actually good for baseball or would produce a more entertaining game but but you could if you wanted or you could put i don't know uh like targets. You could put like the Marlins home run sculpture. There could be equivalents of that everywhere in the outfield. So like, I don't know, when you hit a home run and it hits a sculpture or a light out there or a target or a bullseye or whatever, and it causes some kind of pyrotechnic show or something, you could get kind of creative with that i guess just because you don't have to worry about obstructing anyone's view i think that it should just be reproductions of the marlins home run sculpture in every ballpark in america yeah this should be our new

civil religion yeah mike says the ability of pitchers to hide the ball from hitters until the last possible moment is often discussed as a reason that certain pitches may play up compared to their underlying metrics. I am wondering two things. Would there be a style of hand tattoo that would make it harder for hitters to pick up the baseball from a pitcher's hand? Like if a pitcher dyed his fingers white and got red stitches tattooed on his fingers, do you think this would improve said pitcher's deception? And would this be legal and uh i note that you tweeted a picture of mike clevenger as a padre yesterday and he has finger tattoos or like arm tattoos that extend to his hands and fingers but they're not uh baseball colored so he's not intentionally doing that.

But yeah, I would think that if your hand looked like a baseball, that might potentially be distracting. I imagine that it would absolutely become a problem and it would necessitate a rule. Yes. Because it would depend, I suppose, on what it counts as. There are plenty of rules in the rulebook about the color that pitcher's gloves can be, for instance. Because deception is good and you want to allow for that. But also there is a safety concern.

You need the hitter to be able to pick up the ball eventually or they get beaned. So there are specific rules in the rule book around what color stuff can be. And there's a rule in the rule book on undue commercialization. So it says, in fact, why do I have this handy, Ben? Not surprised. Playing equipment,

including but not limited to the bases, pitchers, plate, baseball, bats, uniforms, catcher's mitts, first baseman's gloves, infielder and outfielder's gloves i love that they just felt the need to specify every potential glove they they couldn't say all of the gloves protective helmets as detailed in the provisions of this rule shall not contain any undue commercialization of the product designations by the manufacturer on

any such equipment must be in good taste as to the side and content of the manufacturer's logo or the brand name of the item. The provisions of this rule shall apply to professional leagues only. So an interesting thing about this is that the language of this rule I think has changed because people might remember that, I think it's Javier Baez has the MLB logo tattooed on his neck. And I think that there was a time where that was potentially in violation of this rule

because you couldn't have any logos displayed at all that weren't approved. But anyhow, I don't think that this would count as commercialization if you were just trying to mimic a baseball. But I think that they would be like, so hey, bad news about that tattoo you just spent a bunch of money on. Got to get rid of that because it's not safe. Yeah, because every now and then you will see a manager come out and tell the empire to look at something that's going on with a pitcher that

could be distracting, right? Like their sleeve is flapping a lot or I don't know, they're wearing some bracelet or something that could potentially be distracting. And sometimes they'll make them change that or, you know, put on sleeves or or take off a shirt or whatever or glove colors as you mentioned i don't know what you do if someone shows up with a baseball tattooed hand like you do you just make them remove it because that hurts but i guess you would have to right like you just have to say they're not eligible to pitch unless they get this tattoo removed or recovered in some way it wouldn't be as easy a fix but yeah i guess you'd have to do that yeah i wonder if the solution would be i wonder i mean they would never do this because they'd be worried about how it interacts with the ball and substances and whatnot but i wonder if they would ever grant an exception to have

to wear like a batting glove on your pitching hand they wouldn't wouldn't do that they absolutely wouldn't throw a ball like that yeah i don't even know if you could do that yeah they wouldn't let you do it yeah i don't recommend this yeah i think it's a pretty bad idea also i think if you're gonna do it you should not be a professional baseball player. Because if you have a baseball hand tattoo, everyone's going to be like, hey, do you play ball? And you should just say no and then not explain anymore. You should be like, no, I don't know why you'd ask me that. Tomo says, suppose all of a sudden someone came to the present from a year ago by time machine.

If they were only allowed to see current game schedules and results, tuning out all the media like TV or internet news, and then notice the weirdness of the season, shortened season, a couple of teams suddenly stopping playing games, etc. Do you think they could speculate that a pandemic is happening? Could they guess that this is caused by a pandemic? I don't know that pandemic would be the first thing you would pick. I think it would be among the first five things you might guess. I think that you would certainly assume that some disaster had befallen the country. I'm thinking about which teams were immediately affected from a cancellation perspective.

So you had the Marlins and then you had other teams in the East, but not necessarily teams in Florida. So I think that that would probably be your first clue that there was some illness-related incident because if everything, you know, if the teams that had had cancellations and postponements due to COVID had been, say, the Marlins and the Rays,

you might assume some sort of natural disaster had befallen the state of Florida. Yes. But I think that the geographic distribution of those teams, right, that it was the Marlins and then the Phillies had a bunch of waiting around to do, and then eventually the Cardinals had a bunch of waiting around to do, and you didn't have, you know, both New York teams or both Bay Area teams or what have you sort of have issues right away, that would be what might send you off the path of, oh, there was a hurricane or there was an earthquake or, I mean, I think we would get there in pretty short and disturbing order, actually.

Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing your mind would probably go to is a work stoppage, right? A strike or something. But it's not a year when the CPA is expiring, so it would be a strange time for that to have happened. So that would probably still initially seem more likely than this current crisis that we've had but then when the games start and you see that some teams are playing but other teams are not for weeks at a time like then you know it's not just a work stoppage at that point and then could it be natural disasters that have only occurred in certain places you know like if it were the the marlins not playing for weeks or the cardinals not playing for weeks i guess it

it could be some sort of flood or hurricane or something in those cities but but you're right it was sort of broad and and extended to other teams too and yet not every team. So I think at first you'd guess work stoppage. Then once you saw that the season had started and most teams were playing but not all, then maybe at first you'd think, okay, it's just weird weather or an earthquake or something or who knows what. But I think you would eventually get there yeah i think eventually you would reason your way out to it whether it's a pandemic or some other sort of national disaster i don't know but yeah i think you'd get there just it wouldn't be your first guess necessarily yeah i don't think it would be your first guess, but I think that you could reason your way to it, like I said,

probably within your first five. Okay. And I will end with a stat blast here, but I've got one more regular question on my list and it comes from Zeke and the subject line was just, let's get weird. So we have already discussed the possibility of a pitcher with a hand tattooed to look like a baseball but this is weirder than that this is about the baseballs themselves zeke says what if it is discovered that the baseballs used by mlb are not manufactured but in fact sentient beings that have been harvested or farmed for use in the game and the changes in the ball composition in recent years are in fact evolutionary changes to their species.

The balls cannot communicate with us in any way, so we don't know their thoughts on being used for the sport, but MLB admits to having covered up the origins of the balls for years. It is universally agreed that moving to a manufactured ball will produce dramatically different effects and that the only way the sport remains similar to what we know today is to continue to use the living balls. How would you react to such a revelation? Where does this fall on the spectrum of sport scandals? Would the sport die off? Does PETA prevent games from being played? So in this scenario, we are subjecting something with sentience to Aaron Judge's bat? Yes. Like a lot of the time?

Yes. I think that it would be the biggest scandal in sports history. I think it would be too, that it was covered up for all these years. But again, we can't communicate with the balls, with the ball species. So we don't know how they feel about this. How do we know they're sentient then? Well, that's a good question. I don't know exactly how we know. But if you were able to detect that they were organic, I mean, I guess they are made of organic material. But if you're able to detect that they were alive, one question is like, is the hand stitching that we know goes on, is that all a ruse? Is that fake? Is MLB just plucking these balls off a bush or something? Or are they actually manufacturing them and they're becoming sentient at some point in the manufacturing process? I don't know the answer to that. So maybe that changes things

because if you're creating the balls, if you're giving life to them for the purpose of use in games, maybe that's different from if you're just finding them fully formed somewhere else. MLB has had a secret supply of naturally occurring baseballs that are just on a tree or growing somewhere but again they're sentient and they i would say the following this doesn't make sense i mean clearly it doesn't make sense but are they then able to determine how far they go, because it seems strange to me. Let's apply some logic to this completely wild question. That's what's needed here. It seems odd to me that a sentient thing

hit why Aaron Judge's bat would elect to reward Aaron Judge for that cruelty. That seems very strange. Yeah. How do we know they're sentient? Ben, I know that I'm supposed to just take that as a given and I'm supposed to move on, but I can't.

Only the major league ball is sentient, but all the ones used in college baseball or in little league are tiny children battering sentient living things for their own amusement? Is the kid in the John Smoltz commercial who goes, Play ball. Is he a terrible monster? I mean, we know he is because he is irritating as all get out.

But have we learned a new dimension of his monstrousness? But what if the balls enjoy being batted? What if that is their purpose in life? I mean, there are a lot of species on Earth that exist and thrive in conditions that we would consider inhospitable to life and that we would not find to be fulfilling existences, and yet they are perfectly fine with it. They have evolved to be suited to those conditions so maybe baseballs want to be batted maybe that's their goal in life so they're like the the sport equivalent of all the slimy fish that live by vents at the bottom of the sea

extremophiles yeah that's that's their thing again That you'd be depriving them of their source of fulfillment if you no longer allowed them to be hit. But sometimes to their death. That's true. Sometimes the cover just comes right off the ball. Yeah, absolutely. It's a cycle of life. Do they have control over their sentient?

Do they have control over their ownient? But like, do they have control over their own physical dimensions? So my question is this, if you had a sentient baseball, is that baseball electing to have seams of a particular height, or say, is there as much variation among the baseball community as there is among the human community? And some of them just happen to be home run balls and others don't. And does a home run ball that is then fouled off feel like it has missed its purpose and is not able to fulfill its own purpose in its weird spherical life? And also, how do they reproduce, Ben, if they're sentient? And also, why are they suddenly, if their purpose in life is to be hit by a bat, are the bats also sentient?

Are they incommunicado? Are they in cahoots with each other? And also- Symbiotic life forms. Did they evolve together? Right. And also, why are they suddenly disinterested in being baseballs that are

used in baseball games? Is this another example of Major League Baseball's disregard for labor? Are they trying to unionize? Are they trying to unionize? Are they on strike? Ben. Yeah.

I don't think they can control how hard they're hit in this scenario. I think Zeke is suggesting that they have just evolved different properties, and that is why the ball is behaving differently these days. And so maybe that is why this has finally come to light, that MLB has been covering up this truth about the balls for years, but now that they have suddenly begun to behave in atypical ways, and we are all suspicious about why that is, they finally come forward and say they've been alive the whole time and they're changing. So is their atypical behavior a protest for their working conditions? It could just be naturally occurring. Maybe it's just a genetic mutation.

Or maybe they are protesting, but even though they are sentient, we can't communicate with them. And this is the only way they have to indicate to us that they are displeased with their lot in life. That could be too. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Humans have gotten taller over time. Maybe they've just evolved bigger seams, higher seams, lower seams, whatever it is. This is, gosh. The baseballs are also drinking milk

that has antibiotics in it is what we're learning. That could be, yeah. Maybe their conditions have improved in some similar way. So I don't know. This is tough. I was actually, I've been watching a lot of Star Trek The Next Generation lately with my wife. And I just watched an episode last night, the season three premiere, which is called Evolution.

And it has a storyline very similar to this one, actually, where Wesley Crusher is doing a science experiment with some nanites. And a couple of them escape and they go together and they evolve intelligence. And there are all these nanites that are in the Enterprise and are causing all kinds of problems with the ship's computer. And at first they're just going to exterminate them because they think they're just a bug. They're just a machine that's gone haywire. But then it turns out that they can communicate and they have a collective intelligence. And it all works out because they're able to just go into Data's circuitry and he translates. And so they speak through him and they come to a kind of agreement. But if we can't

communicate with the baseballs here, I don't know what we're going to do. That episode, actually, it guest stars Ken Jenkins, famous for playing Dr. Kelso from Scrubs. And he has a long monologue about baseball in that episode where he talks about how the game died out because people got too impatient and it doesn't exist anymore. But he loves the stats and he plays out entire seasons in his mind just by looking at the stat lines. He would definitely be a Fangraphs reader, effectively wild listener. Do you know baseball? Yes, my father taught it to me when I was young.

Once, centuries ago, it was the beloved national pastime of the Americas, Wesley. Abandoned by a society that prized fast food and faster games. Lost to impatience. But I have seen the great players make the great plays. Do you recreate them on a holodeck? No. No.

In here, with the knowledge of statistics, runs, hits, and errors, times at bat, box scores, men like us do not need holodecks, Wesley. I have played seasons in my mind. So that's just kind of a weird coincidence, but this is a very TNG scenario here. And I think if Captain Picard were in charge and he discovered that the balls were alive, he would have to, I guess, make sure that he was not doing any harm to that life form. And the prime directive would come into play here. And I think you would have to cease play for a while until you could hopefully determine in some way whether you were harming the baseballs or whether they were willing participants in the sport otherwise just imagine the moral hazard of watching a game knowing that these living beings

were being battered for our entertainment yeah i would i would think of several players who seem to be very nice guys very differently yes like i think that if this is true and the players knew about it now that's an important proviso because maybe they don't know right and then you can continue to think that like nelson cruz is a super cool guy because he seems to be a lovely human being who helps his community and does good stuff but if he knows he's a monster would you rather evolve into a nana of ascension baseball or or um wasn't there a voyager episode where janeway and paris evolved into like salamanders giant salamanders or something yeah right we are so cool ben yes we're the cool you know what we could be stand-up comedians i mean we couldn't because we're not funny in that way we are funny i if If I can venture to say that, I think we are amusing,

but I don't think we're like stand-up comedy amusing, but we're awkward in a sufficient way. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. This is getting weird. This is running off the rails in a very Friday afternoon way.

I'll quickly tie this up with a stat blast. This stat blast song cover comes from sean rudman thank you sean For us in amazing ways. To tears, to days. Soundcast. This question comes from RB. He says, As of Tuesday night, the Blue Jays have played 34 games, 16 of which have been decided by one run. I have a bet on their total win, so every game has been heart-stopping. What is the highest percentage of one-run games a team has had in a season?

I have to imagine that nearly 50% blows away the record. Last year in 162 games, the Giants had 54, which was by far the most in the majors, and still only 33%. Just wondering if anyone has had that percentage ever, and I know you all know how to look it up, and that is true. You can use baseball reference stat head to look this up actually you can go to the team pitching game finder and you can look for games with a run differential between one and negative one so you do get some ties in there for some old-timey teams here is 75 75 games that were decided by a one run margin the 1971 astros went 32 and 43 in those games and that was obviously out of 162 so that's uh that's a lot that's that's uh yeah that's more than 46% of games that year were one run. And there are some in that range I will link to the full list if you're interested.

And there are a lot of dead ball teams here and low scoring season teams. But I think that would be quite heart stopping. And the 1971 Astros were not a particularly good team. They were 79 and 83. But I guess if you wanted to make a mediocre season like that entertaining or suspenseful, I guess that's one way to do it, right? Just have a whole lot of one-run games. I would be a nervous wreck.

Yeah. Can you imagine, either as a fan or a player, the anxiety, and then you get into it late and you look up and you go, oh, God, we're doing this again. Right. There'd be a large element of randomness to your season there too because one-run outcomes are pretty random. So, yeah, that would be as someone

who had money riding on it as rp does with the blue jays that would probably be a little too intense for me or if i were a fan of that team if i were a neutral observer then i guess i would enjoy that but yeah that's uh boy that's adrenaline. Yeah, I don't think I would care for that at all. I think it's good to have games that feel close and feel like they have stakes. But you need a break every now and again, because we're anxious creatures and too much of it makes us miserable. And then closing statblasty question from Russell Eason, who says, at the time of writing, three players for Cleveland have batted in the same spot of the lineup for all of the 2020 season, Ramirez, Lindor, and Santana in the two to four spots. I thought this was quite remarkable, and a cursory glance at the other 29 teams found just a further three individuals, Goldschmidt, Merrifield, and Miguel Cabrera. This leads me to the question of how many players have done this over a complete season and has any team had more than one person do it? So I got an answer on this from listener Adam Ott and his RetroSheet database, and he sent me a spreadsheet which I will put online, but

it's not that rare really in just not a full, full season if you're limiting it to players who played in all 162 games for their team and batted in the same spot every time. That has happened, but it is rare. Joey Votto is the last to do it in 2017. He batted third for the Reds 162 times. Freddie Freeman did for the Braves in 2014, Prince Fielder for the Tigers in 2012, and Prince Fielder actually for the Brewers in 2011, batted cleanup in both of those years. And Itro in his 2010 season for the Mariners, he batted leadoff 162 times. And Prince Fielder, Justin Morneau, Ryan Zimmerman, A-Rod, and Carlos Delgado are the only other ones who've done it in this century. But it is fairly common. Adam also sent guys with a minimum of 100 games played,

and there are, let's see, just in this decade since 2010, there have been 93 guys who've played at least 100 games for a team and have batted in the same spot in the lineup in each of those games. So it's not that unusual, really. But the last time that two teammates started every game and batted in the same spot was Cal Ripken and Eddie Murray batted three and four for the Orioles in 1984 every single day. Before that, it hadn't happened since 1949. Before that, it hadn't happened since 1949. And Ramirez, Lindor, and Santana could be the first trio of teammates to do it for an entire season if they continue to.

Although, obviously, 60 games would make that much easier than 162. Yeah, I would imagine that the batting order placement is far less surprising or strange than or unusual, I would imagine, than playing every day yes yes so i think that tends to be the gating factor both historically and even and perhaps especially now because uh you're keen to give even very good players days off to maintain their health and adam was looking at it just in starts so he found that these were the guys who had done it when they had actually been in the starting lineup. So, for instance, Mike Trout last year, he batted in the number two spot for the Angels in all of his 133 starts. But he also had a couple of other appearances, pinch hit appearances or defensive substitutions or whatever.

So Adam didn't count those because he might enter the lineup in a different spot than you would have been otherwise. But yeah, there's a lot of lineup variability these days. I think we have talked about that before on the show that maybe lineups, they're more unique lineups than there used to be, but still not that uncommon if you're someone who is like a leadoff guy or a number two hitter or a cleanup guy. Yeah, it's not uncommon for that to be your role every single day. Okay, so we will end on that note. You didn't tell me if you'd rather be a baseball or a salamander. Oh, I think I'd rather be a salamander, right? I don't know that they were actually salamanders, but they kind of looked like them.

Yeah, they were some sort of wizard. They were very large. Yeah, baseballs can't really move unless they are propelled which is a limitation so i think i'd rather be a salamander and just uh be able to move around at will i'm gonna have nightmares about sunshine baseballs me too every now and then you see like a graphic of like a baseball being hit and it's screaming or something. Right. It has a mouth. And yeah, now I'm imagining that it's just like silently screaming as it's being hit.

And I'm going to try to banish that image from my mind. Well, this brings to mind, and then I swear we will go. But have you noticed, I think I've tweeted about this before, but I saw it again, perhaps on a Cubs broadcast the other night and continue to just be haunted by it. There is a hot dog brand that advertises itself behind home plate at games for Midwestern teams. I think that I've seen it in Cleveland and also Chicago and perhaps in Milwaukee. Cleveland and also Chicago and perhaps in Milwaukee. And it is a hot dog with a bite out of it and a thought bubble that says, hey, biter, biter.

And I hate it, Ben. Yeah. Because it suggests that this hot dog has hopes and dreams and is being slowly murdered via cuisine. That is disturbing. It's very upsetting. I guess we all know where hot dogs come from they were sure they were originally part of a being and uh yes i guess a lot of people who consume hot dogs are are kind of okay with that but at least they're not being consumed as they are forming thoughts which uh is more disturbing, perhaps.

Yeah, I am just very, it's very upsetting. And I don't know if it's supposed to be guilting the consumer of the hot dog. But anyway, just, you know, think carefully before you endow sentience to a non-sentient thing because it makes a lot very strange and uncomfortable yeah don't anthropomorphize food because you have to eat it yeah no thank you no thank you all right all right have a good weekend ben you too all right i just read an article by rob arthur at baseball prospectus about how the drag on the baseball has been especially inconsistent this season.

Although it's not flying quite as far as it was last season, it is fluctuating a lot more from game to game and week to week than it has up until this point. Now I'm wondering if that is a cry for help. This adds a new dimension to Sam's stat blast on our last episode

about which players use up the most baseballs. Maybe they're the ones with the most baseball blood on their hands. Now I'm wondering if we've misunderstood what the dead ball era meant all this time. Maybe the live ball era is when the ball attained sentience. Happy to see that Williams Astadio made his presence felt in his comeback game. He was the extra runner in the eighth inning of what was supposed to be a seven inning game, and he scored the winning run for the Twins, making a difference already. Also, I'm sure that our Star Trek banter there probably summoned the memory for some of you of Kick Me Out to the Hall of Suite, the Deep Space Nine episode.

Deep Space Nine, definitely a baseball show. Michael Bauman and I did an episode of the Ringer MLB show on that episode of Deep Space Nine with Ira Stephen Baer, so I will link to that in case you haven't heard it and want to check it out. Ben Sisko, big baseball fan. Lastly, wanted to mention that Russell Carlton did some additional research. He published a follow-up at BP on the shift. So as Meg mentioned earlier, Russell and Alex Victorman from Sports Info Solutions were on the podcast last week to debate or discuss whether the shift actually works. Russell has argued that it doesn't work or that it's overused at least, and that's because he has found in the past that it's associated with

more walks. So pitchers pitching in front of the shift walk more batters, and that seems to cancel out the benefit of the shift. And there is truth to that, but Russell did a deeper dive and found that there's more at work here, and it turns out that handedness is particularly important. So I'm just reading from his piece here, which I will link to. The shift does seem to work for reducing Babbitt for everyone the way that it's supposed to, a little better for lefties than righties, but profit is profit. The walk penalty is still a real thing. We see that walk rates do go up in front of the shift on both sides of the plate. What differs is that the shift also seems to increase the number of strikeouts among left-handed batters as well, while having the completely opposite effect for

righties. Righties also see an increase in their extra base hits and their home run output, while for lefties it's mostly flat. Handedness is clearly the key variable. With lefties, the shift does steal back more outs than it gives away in walks, though surprisingly in the form of strikeouts. It seems that pitchers go for a style of pitching which favors a lack of contact, which does produce more walks but also more Ks. Considering everything, the shift is a net positive against lefty swingers, not so much for righties, where the ball tends to go into play more with destructive results. Major League teams have been increasing the rate at which they have been shifting everyone,

left and right, while they've been increasing their proportion of shifts on left-handed batters on which they accrue value, they've also been increasing their percentage of shifts against right-handed batters, which are toxic and cancel out much of the benefit that they would have gotten by just sticking to shifting the lefties. He adds, this means that much of my own writing on the topic has been conflating two different effects. The walk penalty is a real thing, and I stand by it. I assumed that this was what was driving the finding that the shift was a net positive. It certainly doesn't help, but what seems to have been driving the bus is that somehow shifting against right-handed batters supercharges them and reduces their interest in strikeouts. Even though the majority of shifts are done against lefties, the negative effect of shifting against righties is much greater than the effect of the benefit of shifting against lefties. So the net effect of

these missing righty strikeouts and the fact that some portion of them became extra base hits and home runs was turning the shift into an overall negative. Teams were doing something right and something wrong at the same time. So on the whole, shifts against lefty batters, good. Shifts against righty batters, bad. And so bad, Russell says, that it actually outweighs the value that teams get from shifting lefty batters. Maybe there are certain righties it still makes sense to shift against, but it would appear that that is happening too often. But again, this is a developing story. We are learning more about this by the week. And you can continue to learn more about it by listening to Effectively Wild,

which can continue to happen if you support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. 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. Sean Taggart, Alex Tam, Colin O'Reilly,

Paul Hamann, and Ben Gosby. 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 Meg and Sam coming via email at podcastandfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance.

And we hope you have a wonderful long weekend. We will be back to talk to you again early next week. Bye.