Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1603: Match Points

Episode Date: October 16, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about a baseball ad on the radio, revisit the topic of how often teams win when they outhomer their opponents, discuss the brand of baseball on display this postseason, share a Stat Blast about the percentage of runs scored on homers and investigate whether all-or-nothing baseball is as problematic […]

🎵 All again Sam Miller of ESPN. Of course, if you're having to come up with advertising copy for a commercial on radio baseball, of course, you can always fall back on that tried and true technique of having some, just sprinkling some baseball phrases in, you know, how that goes. Just put a little baseball in there, turn your product into a metaphor for a baseball game, that sort of a thing. Put a little baseball in there, turn your product into a metaphor for a baseball game, that sort of a thing. And you might have wondered whether there are any products that this does not work for, that the sort of, I don't know, lightheartedness of a baseball pun might not actually apply. And the answer is no.

There is an Atlanta health care system that begins its radio ads this postseason with, Atlanta health care system that begins its radio ads this postseason with COVID-19 may have thrown the world a curveball, but they still knock safe expert health care out of the park. So then they go on to list some other baseball puns like infections don't belong on your team, for instance. And that worked for you? I don't know what it did to me. I think that it has, I will now, I think for the rest of time, every time I hear a radio ad that employs this technique, I will, I think I will now think about this. Yeah, I haven't heard that one. That's radio only. I guess I'm I will now think about this yeah I haven't heard that one that's radio only I guess I'm missing out yeah so I want to partially retract my puzzlement from last time about the

fun facts or the same fact repeated over and over again about how teams have done when they have out homered their opponents definitely have not stopped hearing this, still hearing it about as often as I'm hearing about the shadows on the field. But I wrote about it partly just because I wanted to make sense of it myself because I kept trying to figure out, is this worth saying? Is this just so obvious that we shouldn't even be pointing out that teams as we record right now are 26-2 so far this postseason when they have out-Homer their opponents. And I've come to the conclusion that it's legitimate to point out. It's getting tiresome, I suppose, to hear it over and over again because you hear it almost every game or it's on Twitter, and the number just keeps climbing. The only exceptions to this rule so far are NLDS Game 2, the Bellinger game where he brought back the

Tatis homer, and ALCS game three. But I think it's worth pointing out because conditions are actually much more conducive for this to happen, which I wasn't totally sure of before I looked into it. It seemed like, well, maybe this has always been true that when you hit more homers, you're likely to win the game. And it's true to an extent that even if you go back a century or something, if you did out-homer your opponent, you were still quite likely to win. But it's become more common for a couple of reasons. First, if you do out-homer your opponent, you are more likely to win now than you were in earlier eras of baseball history. So it's like teams in the regular season at least have something like a 760 winning percentage these days if they out-homer their opponent. And if you go back to the 1920s or 30s,

it was like a little below 700, which is not a huge difference. But I think it's worth pointing out because A, you do have a far higher percentage of runs scored on home runs these days. So it makes sense that you would win more often when you hit more homers because there are just fewer other ways to score. It's harder for other teams to make up a home run deficit by scoring in other ways. And then the other thing, which I don't think this fun fact even gets at really, that the 26-2 doesn't tell you that there are 12 games in which neither team has out-homer the other team, right? So you have to factor that into the equation too, that this is telling you what happens when one team out-homers the other, but there are quite a few games where neither team out-homers the other. They end up with the same home run total.

However, those games are far less common than they used to be. So if you go back a ways, it was pretty common for teams to have the same home run total at the end of games because maybe they would both go homerless or each team would have one. And now you get things like you got in NLCS game three, where the Dodgers out-homer Atlanta 5-1. And that's not nearly as shocking today because there's just so many homers hit that it's more common to end up with uneven home run totals. So if you look at the total percentage of games that are won by a team that out-homered the other team, it's way, way more common than it was at any other point in baseball history.

And it's more common for those things to happen in the playoffs than it is during the regular season because of the run environment and there are fewer runs scored, but a higher percentage of them are homers. So in conclusion, I will allow it. I don't know if we have to keep pointing it out after every single game, i think there's a an important point lurking inside this fact that is oft repeated this postseason would you rather would i guess the the much it seems like the i mean the more significant or the more telling fact of all of all those things that you just said there's really one thing that's kind of useful to know which is that 76 of the time a team that out homers their opponent will win that game. And yet I haven't heard that yet. Like

that's the first time I've heard that. Now, does that matter to me? Probably not. Like if it were 74% or if it were 78%, it wouldn't change my understanding of home runs being good. And of, you know, the simple math that a team that has more home runs than their opponent in, you know, in a starts with a lead, starts with a head start. And also furthermore, that out homering your opponent does not mean you hit one more homer than them.

It means you hit one or more home runs than them. And so you could hit six more home runs than them. So of course you're going to win if you hit six more home runs than your opponent. So ultimately, I still don't know whether I can use that information. I don't know that like I hear that and I have an action plan, but it does seem like a simpler, more kind of like universally useful thing to know. Is that a fact that you would like to hear repeated a bunch?

a bunch? Like should, should broadcasters and writers be dropping that in a couple times a year so that it's just one of those numbers that fans have off the tip of their fingertips or whatever expression that is? Because if you don't, yeah. So it seems like you would want to, people to know that if you have faith in this fun fact, then what you really want is to amplify 76%. And if you find that it's not that important for people to know 76%, then I think the whole thing still does kind of fall apart. I mean, it's just a fun fact, right? Isn't it just a fun fact? It's just like if we were playing flip the coin and teams that flipped with their left hand went 18 and two over a 20 game stretch, we'd still be like, check it out. Crazy, crazy thing. Yeah. I think what makes it more

meaningful to me is that it does tell you something about baseball in 2020 and especially post-season baseball in 2020, which I wasn't sure of because you don't hear that context. You don't hear on the broadcast that, well, it's 26 and two and you would expect it to be X and X, or this is the baseline. This is what it normally is. So I think you'd need that frame of reference. It's like when you cite spin rates or something and the audience doesn't know what a good spin rate is, you have to give them a helping hand. You have to say, here's the average, or here's where that ranks or something, so they can make sense of it. And 26 and 2 sounds extreme, so maybe you just hear that and say, oh, well, that must be special. But I wasn't sure how special it was or if it was special, whether it really reflected some change about baseball or whether it just happened to be the case because it does fluctuate, obviously, from postseason to postseason because the samples are just not that big. But having looked into it, I've satisfied myself

that this does reveal something about baseball in 2020. What does it reveal again? I have not quite followed your change of heart. It reveals that you are much more likely to end up with a game where one team out-homers the other team. But that's not... How does that... How does it 26-2 revealed by... The games where this doesn't happen are not in this fact. They're not in the fun facts. Yes.

No, that's true. So the fun fact does not tell you that. I have informed myself of that by looking into it. And it's pretty striking. Here's what I wrote in my article. In the 1920 regular season, only a little more than 30% of games ended with one team out homering the other, and a little more than 20% of games ended with a team that hit more homers triumphant. In the 2020 regular season, more than three quarters of games ended with one team out homering the other, and almost 60% of games ended with a team that hit more homers

triumphant. So it used to be that at the end of the game, only about a third of the time could you look at the box scores and see different home run totals for each team. Now it's more than three quarters of the time. But it's also true that if you do out homer the other team, if you end up with uneven homer totals, the team that has the higher total is more likely to win now than it used to be. Both of those things are true. And I think that's a way into talking about the fact that a way higher percentage of runs are scored on homers than on any previous era. I want to talk about that in a second. But can I just hypothesize something?

This would be very easily disproven if it were not true. hypothesize something like this would be very easily disproven if it were not true. But if I had to hypothesize something, it would be that increasing home runs broadly increases the margin by which the out homering team on average out homers their opponent. And that if you actually were to just look at games where a team out homers their opponent by one homer, and then games where a team out homers their opponent by two homers and then by three homers and you split those into each individual winning percentage my guess is that it hasn't changed that that in fact out homering your opponent by one homer these days is still roughly the same as it was in 19 you know 74 or whatever it might be a little bit, but for the most part, not. So really what we're saying is that there's a lot more home runs hit today.

Yes. And that teams are, in some cases, bludgeoning their opponents with six homer games. Yeah, I think that's part of it. I think even if you kept it consistent, there'd probably be some change just because a higher percentage of runs are scored on homers. Although, because there are fewer base runners and more homers, a much higher percentage

of those homers are solo shots these days. So, so many solo homers. So even if you hit more home runs than the other team, more of them were more likely to be worth one run, and thus you would not have as big a lead from that. But you're right. Probably part of it is just that when a team out-Homers its opponent these days, it's more likely to have done so by multiple Homers than it was in the past. And I don't know that that changes it that much for me because it still tells you that your success is going to come down to Homers or when you look at it in retrospect, the difference between the two teams will be that one hit more homers than the other. I guess that is where I kind of find common ground maybe with the broadcasters who are perpetually complaining about home runs and encouraging small ball and lamenting the loss of small ball. I think when they're doing that, we all reflexively say, no, this is silly.

Of course, home runs are better than bunting or home runs are better than any other outcome of a plate appearance if you're trying to score runs. And I think those broadcasters know that on some level. I mean, even if they're talking about home runs killing rallies or how it would be better to bunt or something, maybe some of them honestly believe that. But I think a lot of that stems from just a desire for more variety, for teams to do or there's less variety in the way that teams win they're just more games when you look back at the outcome you say oh well it's because this team had three homers and that team had two or one or whatever and as we've said there have just been a lot of games this postseason where you're just sort of sitting there waiting to see who ends up with more solo homers.

And it's just a series of bullpen monsters and no one can make contact. And it's just empty bases or stranded runners and runners in scoring position that don't come across the plate. And then someone hits a solo homer and that decides the game. So I think I am with those broadcasters on there being a bit too much of that and i'm still entertained because it's the postseason and the stakes are high and there's history and suspense and all of that but if this were may then i would not be as entertained and i would think it was a more boring static brand of baseball and historically speaking, postseason baseball is sort of a preview of the future of regular season baseball, at least when it comes to time of game or strikeout rate or pitching changes,

those things become more common in October, and they're almost like a preview of what regular baseball, regular season baseball, will look like in a few years if everything is allowed to proceed unchecked. And so I share those broadcasters' discomfort, maybe not to the same degree, but I think to an extent, I would say that I am also a little bit dissatisfied by the brand of baseball that has produced the 26-2. And just to be super clear, if I found this fact, if I thought, wow, it seems like the team that out-homers the other team wins a lot, and then I looked it up, I would definitely share that information. It is, there's no harm whatsoever in sharing it. It's good news.

It's a good thing to share. I think we should go into the stat blast, actually. Okay, stat blast. They'll take a dataset sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to DASTPLAST! to taste the past. All right. I'm going to make you first. Give me some numbers.

I'm going to guess some numbers, intuitive numbers, okay? Okay. I want you to tell me how many runs on average you think, you feel, a team scores per game in the year 2020 that are not driven in by a home run? How many runs per game? Okay, so...

I'm going to ask you three things, in fact. So that's one of them. How many runs per game a team scores on average in 2020 that were not driven in by a home run? What you think the peak of that number is over the last 20 years? And what think the say, I don't know, maybe the median would be for that for the last 20 years. All right. So having just done this article, I'm hopefully a little bit more prepared perhaps to answer this question, I guess. And I mean, I know what the average runs per game was this year. And I know what the percentage of runs scored on homers was, which probably puts me a leg up on most of the listeners, I guess. So I would guess that this year the average run scored per game not on homers was somewhere around 2.5, 2.6. Okay, keep going.

Okay. And you want to know the peak over the last 20 years or so? Yeah, what you think the peak was, how you think that's changed. Okay, well, there have been some higher scoring seasons in that time, and there have also been a lot of seasons where a higher percentage of runs were scored on homers. So I would guess, though, that it's pretty small. I'd guess that it's pretty small i'd guess that it's something like uh i don't know three let's say and uh then the average i guess the average would be somewhere in the middle so maybe like uh 2.75 i'll say okay yeah so pretty close on all

those things so when i'm bringing this up because a couple of the last time we recorded i said that the it's not so much the home runs like we were talking about how the 2-1 yankees rays game your mother-in-law was it was commenting about how it seemed like nothing ever happened except for home runs and we said that you were saying that it felt like there was no way to ever score besides home runs and then i said yeah it's not the home runs that caused the feeling of, you know, kind of boringness or static. It's the fact that nothing else ever happens that you can't score otherwise. And so in my head, I had it that there was like, I expected that there would be a big drop in runs scoring, not on homers, like a big drop.

I thought it would be a big drop. So I looked to see what percentage, not what percentage, because that's driven in part by how many runs score on home runs, but what the total number of runs per game scored on non-home runs was last year and then how that's changed. And you're just about exactly right. So last year it was 2.61 runs per game over the past 20 years the peak is 3.04 runs per game and the median is like 2.84 runs per game and so for it might be the first time you ever quizzed me and i got it right nailed it that's how i feel all i had to do was uh extensive research and an article in preparation for that question and so so i am taking back what i said that is to me that is a very small difference

yeah a quarter of a run per game scoring on non-home runs fewer than than normal i know that over the course of a year that affects run scoring environment and it affects stats and things but i just don't really believe that i was watching that baseball game and had such a fine grasp on this fractional difference in likelihood of scoring a run on a two out double that i could tell correctly that the game was static and boring i think that i'm i think i imagined it i think we're imagining a lot of this i think these conversations that we're having are actually causing us to foreground this kind of actually maybe relatively sort of small change not small significant but also maybe not that significant and that if we didn't hear about it constantly then we wouldn't

be thinking about it all the time yeah to me 2.61 runs per game scored on non-homers is not something that I can tell by the naked eye is less than 2.84 was. And I think that I might have talked myself in to finding baseball more boring than it is. I think also, given that home runs are more common, I mean, a home run, they're not all solo homers. If you have a home run that scores scores say there's runners on second and third and someone hits a three run homer it's not like well those are three boring runs that's you know two of those runs would have scored on a double and so a home run in some sense is actually making it less likely it's taking some of those non-home run runs away but not actually taking all the non-home excitement away. You still had

runners on second and third, and it was exciting. And the pitcher was in the stretch and the crowd was, no, it wasn't loud. It wasn't loud, but it would have been loud in a normal situation. And so the, the, in fact, it's not like the home run takes away all the excitement of, of that rally at all. It just punctuates it in a particular way. So in fact, the difference to the naked eye that hasn't been primed by doomsaying podcasters all the time wouldn't even probably notice it as much as that. And so I kind of now feel like issuing a correction and taking back what I said. I wrote an article that was sort of along those lines a few years ago where I sort of defended this version of baseball from the naysayers.

And I said, you know, how I learned to stop worrying and love the strikeout or at least not really mind the strikeout. And part of that was about the fact that strikeouts can be entertaining. But a lot of it was about the fact that if you can be entertaining, but a lot of it was about the fact that if you look at it as a percentage of all plate appearances, they're not that much more common than they were several years ago or whenever we make these mental comparisons. Even if you look at 2020, the league average strikeout rate was 23.4%, and it's, you know, the 15th consecutive season there was a record. If we go back to, say, 2000, if you look at the increase on a percentage basis of how much more common strikeouts are compared to how common they were then,

it looks like a big difference. It's like the strikeout rate has increased 50% relative to what it was. But if you look at it as a percentage of all plate appearances, it's still not that huge. And at least when I wrote that article, I was kind of questioning whether I could actually notice this, you know, because if you look at it as like, okay, well, what proportion of your average typical sample of 100 plate appearances are now strikeouts instead of something else? It's just like a handful. It's like, okay, out of every 100 plate appearances, there are now seven of them more that are strikeouts than there were 20 years ago. And when I wrote that article, it was even fewer.

And I was sort of wondering, am I actually noticing this? article, it was even fewer. And I was sort of wondering, am I actually noticing this? Like, if you just showed me a random assortment of plate appearances from 2020 compared to 2000, and I didn't have any other marker of what year this was and what era it was, how long would it actually take me to identify that this is now the high strikeout, low contact brand of baseball as opposed to what it was before. And, you know, it's more extreme if you compare it to the 80s or some even earlier era, but it's still not as big as it seems, I guess, when you think of it that way as a percentage of all plate appearances, or if you even think of like the fact that non-strikeout outcomes

are still way more common than strikeout outcomes are and so i wonder whether we have all bought into this that we've all decided that this is a problem and so we're hyper aware of it or not because there are definitely times in the playoffs when in fairness like all of these things are more extreme so there are more strikeouts in the playoffs and a higher percentage of runs are scored on homers in the playoffs, etc. So it stands out when there's a game like ALDS game five and it just seems impossible. But I know on an intellectual, logical level that it's not impossible, that the Rays or

the Yankees could have scored in a way that wasn't a solo shot. That just seemed like the case to me. So I think you're right that we have sort of talked ourselves into that. Like there's definitely truth to it. And it is more glaring, I think, at this time of year. But also we're probably primed to pay close attention to it and make a big deal out of it. I actually started this spreadsheet with a different dumb hypothesis in mind which i was going i had a

hypothesis that that you could actually track how interesting baseball season's offensive environments were i didn't know how i was going to define that exactly except i guess i was sort of in some sense just assuming that later is worse and that a while ago was better because that's how we've been talking for the last few months anyway that you could uh track this by the percentage of runs that score without an rbi not because runs scoring without an rbi are more interesting like a lot of times they're not that interesting but that they would that they they would, that they all correlate with action. They all correlate with, I mean, obviously you need to have base runners. You get an RBI on a home run, but they correlate with sort of the ball moving around for the most part.

It's moving. The ball is moving. And it helps to sort of think about like, well, what am I talking about? How do runs score without an RBI? What am I talking about? How do runs score without an RBI? Well, let's see. Run scores without an RBI if it's a double play.

Like a double play that brings a run in, that scores without an RBI. If it's a batter reaching on an air with two outs, what would have been the third out? That could be an RBI. A runner scoring on a throwing air is an RBI. A balk, a stolen base of home, a passed ball or a throwing air is an rbi a bach a stolen base of home a passed ball or a wild pitch a fielder throwing the ball to the wrong base or a bases loaded catcher's interference i believe those are those are all the examples i could think of of runs scoring without an rbi and again those i did not list like my eight favorite baseball plays just then. Those are all like kind of just dumb mistakes a lot of times. But I thought that maybe

that would be a, that would kind of correlate to runners and action. And so I looked and in fact, runs scoring without RBIs as a percentage of all runs haven't really changed over the last 20 years. And so I thought, oh, well, I guess that disfrues my thesis. But then when I realized, oh, wait, maybe my thesis is that baseball is actually pretty much the same experience, except for we've talked about it in a more pessimistic tone. But in fact, if you're watching it, like your mother-in-law might be the outlier in a sense. She might have, or maybe not your mother-in-law is the outlier, but that game was the outlier. Maybe that game was an outlier where three runs scored on solo homers with strikeout pitchers otherwise dominating. Maybe most people who don't listen to podcasts don't actually notice this. Yeah, that could be. Okay.

And you know how you always make fun of my umpire perfect game concept? Oh i knew this was gonna come up in it and i i'm ready for it tell me about how an umpire performed his job yeah well you've uh you've mocked my concept of the umpire perfect game uh legitimately i think because the only choosing to be perfect for one side was really the part that I mocked. I'm ready to mock the whole concept, but it was a very narrow mockery before. Right. When I wrote this article to look for an Empire Perfect game, I really had to lower my standards because there wasn't one when you were looking for 100% correct calls on both sides. So I settled for looking, okay, well, has anyone even called all of the pitches correctly for one team, half of the game? And even that was pretty rare. But you're right that maybe that's not even something really worth striving for or celebrating. But we got an email the other day from Patreon supporter Joe who pointed us to this account, this Twitter account called Umpire Scorecards, at Ump Scorecards. And Joe

said that this was the best scorecard he had ever seen. So I think this is just an automated sort of PitchFX-based account. I haven't really looked into the details. But according to this readout, Umpire Pat Hoberg in game one of the NLCS had a very good total accuracy, so a 98% overall accuracy. And according to this account, 91% is the average percentage of correct calls for an umpire. And he was perfect on calls inside the zone and 97% on outside the zone. And so Joe said this was the best he'd ever seen, the closest to an umpire-perfect game. And then when I was looking at that, I came across this post on website closecallsports.com, which really goes very in-depth into umpire accuracy. And they

had a post on Monday about John Tampain, who was the umpire for Game 2 of the ALCS. least according to whatever their method of doing this is. And I guess they have a more sophisticated method where they go back and review it after the fact. And when they did that and they did this post-game process, they found one incorrect call according to that. So maybe it wasn't completely perfect. And this is probably not the same method that I used for my article. It's probably not the same rigorous method that MLB uses to grade umpires. But I did want to mention that a couple of umpires came close and that we certainly pay a lot of attention to umpires when they have poor games behind the plate in the playoffs. And these guys had very good games so i figured that was worth a shout out

yeah you i think you have a an appropriate tone for this so i'm not i have nothing more to mock i think that's that's right they it is uh it was a job well done i saw that grant brisby was wondering aloud whether this next generation of umpires is going to just be dramatically better than the previous generations. And in fact, there might not be a need for robot umps because maybe, maybe this generation of umps won't see their job as being, uh, I don't know, putting quite so much of their own personal taste on the strike zone.

And maybe it will just end up having like routinely getting umpires with 97% accuracy in their games. I don't, I do, I don't know. I don't, I have a hard time thinking about these umpires as being like, I don't know, as, as competing out there. Like, I don't like that. I do. I have a hard time thinking that they're the ones who were achieving something

like they are, they're, they're the ones who are achieving something like they are they're they're necessary but i don't like i don't want to get umpire cards i don't particularly want to think about umpires setting records i am just not there yet mentally i i just prefer to think of the umpires as being part of the scenery and not fun fact creators of their own. I don't have any particular investment yet in their success, in their excellence, in them achieving things in their field like that. The ballplayers are the ones that I'm watching for that. And maybe I just haven't. Maybe I'm just not caught up to you yet.

Maybe in a year as this concept of tracking umpires success rates in a game catches on, maybe I will. And maybe there will be a great new genre of umpire fun facts and we will, they'll blend seamlessly in as it is now. I don't have that much emotion about it. It, uh,

when I, when I thought about you being excited for John Tumpain, it reminded me of when i worked in a movie theater for two years a little two-screen movie theater where the movies would start and then nothing would happen for the next two hours because both movies had begun so we would just sit there uh with nothing to do for two hours and the window the ticket window overlooked the main street of the town that i lived in. And so cars would drive by this street. And I noticed this was 1997. I noticed that, boy, it sure seems like there's a

lot of Volkswagen Cabriolets these days. And I speculated that as many as 4% of cars might be Volkswagens on a good day. And so I started counting cars and then counting Volkswagens. And I did this for like four months trying to achieve the elusive 4% Volkswagen day. And I could never get there. Like there'd be times where I would start really hot and I'd have like seven of the first hundred. And then regression would kick in. And I get, you know, by the time I got to like 1,500 cars, I was just lost.

And I thought I was really into that. Like I couldn't convince you to care about my Volkswagens, but it actually gave me something to be interested in during this two-hour stretch of not much happening. And if that's what makes baseball interesting to you, I won't mock it because my brain works the same way. It's fantastic. Yeah.

Well, what Grant was saying has already happened to an extent. If you compare now to the beginning of the pitch tracking era, umpires are much more accurate, at least if you're just comparing them To the PitchFX zone And they're much more uniform There's less variation from umpire to umpire Which is good, I think And less frustrating, but I also Acknowledge that people who

Support Robot Strike Zones Will just say, well, that's great It's great that the imperfect Humans have come a little bit closer To the perfection of the machines. But if we're judging their success by how close they come to what the computer says, then why don't we just use the computer? Because the computer would be perfect all the time or most of the time if the technology is to the point where they could use it in real time, et cetera. Like if we're using the computer as the standard that human umpires are judged on and we're saying, oh, good job, human, you got most of the way there, then I could certainly see

why people would say, well, that's great. It's nice that they're less wrong, but they're still wrong a lot. And so if we're just judging them against the computer, then why don't we just use the computer and it will always be right. But, you know, there are various technological hurdles there or issues with what sort of pitches would actually be called strikes in that scenario. And we've discussed all of that before. But I do acknowledge that there is maybe some inconsistency there

in sort of celebrating the humans based on how close they come to the computer, but then not really being all that eager to have computers call pitches. Did you see Josh Donaldson in the middle of John Tupain having the greatest game in umpiring history was on Twitter just completely ripping him

as the worst umpire and had no idea what the strike zone is. Yep. And it does actually, I mean, I have not looked closely at his pitch chart or anything like that. But like you just said, I think that the pitches that umpires quote unquote miss in a lot of cases, not a lot, but in some of the cases, I do think they are pitches that nobody involved in the play actually thinks is a strike. I do think they are pitches that nobody involved in the play actually thinks is a strike, that they're a sliver of pitches of a certain pitch type in certain pitch locations that nobody really feels like are strikes, even if they clip the rulebook strike zone. And when we talked to a couple of players from the Atlantic League who had gone through this experiment,

they would identify which of those types of pitches there are. And so John Tompain, it is possible that to the people involved might've missed some, like they might've felt like he missed some. And one of the big challenges to deciding when to make the jump or whether to make the jump to robot umps is what you do with the strike zone

where people don't actually want the rule book strike zone. I don't know. I don't exactly know how to put it. But I guess basically, I think there's maybe there's a feeling among people who are in the batter's box or who are pitching or who are catching that you can't write a perfect strike zone, that you can't put in words exactly the strike zone that should apply at all times, words exactly the strike zone that should apply at all times that there are just these little details on the corners and the edges that can't be expressed in words and that they actually don't want the computer being forced to make cold-hearted yes no calls on that and they

actually prefer the umpire doing it and so anyway i it would be interesting to i mean i i assume that the consistency that john tumpane had in that game would have been appreciated and recognized by everybody, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were a couple of calls that to the players, maybe they actually thought he did get wrong if he was in line with the computer system. Yeah. Okay. So we're recording this on Thursday afternoon, just before a couple of baseball games, so we're not really diving into the minutiae of those series today. And the plan was to do emails, but we have talked for almost all of this episode. I just have one or two here, maybe, that I've been saving for a while and would be interested in your thoughts on. So this one is from Rory, and you actually answered it to say that you would want to hear my thoughts on it.

So maybe we will both want to hear each other's thoughts. But Rory says, probably been asked a lot, but with teams shifting even more this year, do you think we will see a rise in ground ball pitchers? It seems to me that they have faded out a bit over the last few years with teams promoting the high four-seamer and low breaking ball approach. I was inspired to ask this after looking at Randy Dobnak's lackl have pointed out, have this very ground ball oriented bullpen. And we've been talking about the decline of the sinker for several years now in baseball. The sinker is sort of out of vogue and teams have gone more toward four seamers, those elevated high

spin fastballs and sliders and other off-speed pitches. And yet if you look at the Dodgers, they led the major leagues this year in the percentage of sinkers thrown. And because of what we think of the Dodgers as being, you know, sort of the bellwether or the team that's at the forefront or is very analytically sophisticated, you could look at that and say, well, the Dodgers have decided that baseball has gone too far in this other direction, and they have decided to zig where everyone's zacking. And now that everyone's gone away from the sinker and is going toward these high fastballs, well, now maybe hitters have adjusted to that. And maybe now the new inefficiency swung back the other way, and now it's actually good to load up on synchro ballers and get ground ball guys. And it makes sense in a way because if you think that shifting is good and that it prevents players from getting on base, then you would think that it's more beneficial to get a batted ball than it used to be compared to getting a batted ball in an earlier

era because you're more likely to have a fielder standing in the way of it and the Dodgers have also been ultra aggressive when it comes to shifting now there's some uncertainty there with shifting as we've discussed on the podcast too that it seems like teams are probably shifting too much with right-handed hitters at the plate. And if that's true, the Dodgers are as guilty of it as anyone because they shift a lot on right-handed hitters. But you would think that it might make some sense or that if everyone's gone in this other direction, maybe there would be a niche for ground ballers. Maybe the ground ball is back. And I'd like that to be the case because that would address what we've been talking about, you know, strikeouts and balls in play. And if analytically advanced teams decided that, yeah, actually it's good to get ground't know. When I watch the Dodgers, for instance, and you see Bruce Dargradarol out there, and he's

throwing 100, and yet he's getting one of the lowest whiff rates on fastballs of any pitcher, or maybe the lowest, or he's giving up hard contact and a lot of contact. I can't really talk myself into that being better than just missing bats. Like ultimately what it comes down to is that it is better to not have the hitter make contact from the pitcher's perspective, from the defense's perspective, than to have the hitter make contact. I mean, you're just going to be more successful over time. There's no better outcome than a strikeout or a whiff on a per pitch basis. So I still don't really think it's true. You know, like maybe ground ballers or contact oriented pitchers have become a little bit undervalued in certain cases, but I'd still say that all else being equal, it's probably better to get whiffs and get strikeouts. And it certainly doesn't seem as if there's any shortage of pitchers who can do that. You know, there's no scarcity of that skill that would necessarily force teams to say, maybe there's a different way to do this. The Dodgers bullpen, you just think it's a coincidence that there's like some kind of collection of pitchers who have that sort of tendency.

I guess so. I'd like to think it's a plan and that the Dodgers have identified something here, but maybe not. They weren't even supposed to end up with Gratterall, right? Right, yeah. And it would be kind of weird that they would only notice this need in the bullpen, that for some reason they don't want ground ball starters, but they do want ground ball relievers.

That would be a weird distinction to draw. And they do have non-ground ball relievers as well. So I agree that it's probably just a coincidence. Yeah. Okay. I always, I don't know if this is a thing. I always, I don't know if this is a thing, I haven't done any work at this, looking at this or anything like that, but sinker ballers tend to throw a fairly small percentage I kind of, I think that collectively batters, uh, eyes are too good, uh, maybe for that to work as reliably as it used to. I don't think that you have as many batters who are just as willing and as, uh, as willing to swing to expand the

strike zone to go after those pitches and also as easy easily fooled by those pitches and so it i think also maybe there's just a problem of sinker ballers being having a harder time living outside the strike zone uh than they might have say 15 years ago yeah there's probably something to the swing plane idea like if everyone's swing is is geared toward the high fastball then yeah i mean if you're like in the minority if you're the pitcher who doesn't do that then you're going to be outside of what the hitters are trying to do with their ideal swing like that's why the high fastball that's part of the reason why it's been so effective over the last several years is that pitchers were not doing that and hitters were

used to trying to hit balls lower in the zone and pitchers were told to throw low and get the pitch at the knees and keep it down and so pitchers who went away from that had more success so anytime like everyone's doing one thing I think there is an opportunity to do a different thing and have some success just because of the element of surprise. But I still think that ultimately there's no real way to get around the fact that no contact is better for the defense than any kind of contact. All right. John, Patreon supporter, says, says in the ninth inning of game two in the Dodgers Padres series, the Dodgers had 10 pitches with two outs and two strikes before Hosmer grounded out on the 11th such pitch.

Games can end on pitches that aren't two outs and two strikes. And there were a total of 35 such potential game ending pitches in that inning, starting after the first base runner with one out when a double play was possible for these intense playoff finishes, it feels similar to the drama you'll find at the end of a five-set tennis match when the broadcast will count on the screen, match point number one, match point number two, etc.

If we wanted to do this in baseball, would we define the match point as any potential game-ending pitch, even the far-fetched ones that would require a triple play, for example, or only the two-outetched ones that would require a triple play for example or only the two out two strike pitches i definitely think that it has to be two outs i don't think you can even count on a double play to part of what makes a double play so fun is that it's double the expectations it's not the default and most events are not going to end the game even with a runner on first and one out.

So I don't think that you can assume. It's like the scoring thing. You can't assume the double play. So I think we have to throw out all the, well, it could end on the next pitch, but it probably won't, situations. So then the question is two outs versus two outs with two strikes.

And I think I say two outs and two strikes it has to be it i think that there's something i i know that it's a little bit of a fallacy to say they're down to their last strike because they can earn three more strikes but i do sort of like the tension inherent in that statement and if you work your way out of it, then I think that's an achievement. I like the idea that you can reset it, but you do have to. You can't go from two strikes to one strike. You have to dig out of that hole by resetting things. So I think that two outs, two strikes is the appropriate place to draw the line here.

Yeah, I know this is sort of one of Jerry Seinfeld's baseball hobby horses. I think he's mentioned it when he's been in the broadcast booth and he tweeted this at Gary Cohen or at the Mets broadcasters in September. He said, Gary, you are the best, but it is not technically correct with two outs and two strikes in the ninth to say the Nats are down to their final strike because a base hit gives them at least two more strikes it would be accurate to say the Mets need only one strike which uh is technically correct I guess the the best kind of correct as they say but I mean that's true of anything though like if you if you get another one it's not your last one. Well, like if you're down, would Jerry say that you can't be down to your final out because if you homer and tie the game, you get three more the next inning?

I mean, like obviously the point of saying you're down to your last one is that you have to do something to escape that situation. It's not a fait accompli because if it were then you'd be down to no strikes you'd be you'd be out of strikes you'd be out of possibilities your future would be shut off and so there's always an implicit like there are still two two paths that this could go one is the lousy one and it's one strike away and the other is the lousy one, and it's one strike away. And the other is the good one, where you fight and you get more. And so I don't know if, I mean, I don't, I'm not going to get in a fight with Jerry Seinfeld over this. It's fine, but.

He's probably not listening. I'm fine with it, though. It seems fine to me. It's the flip side to one strike away right you're one strike right and i think that down to your final strike it is implicit that you're that there is an unsaid at this moment at this moment you are down to your final strike yeah this doesn't bother me at all i mean i understand cherry's point i suppose but everyone knows what it means we're all on the same page

so it's not like it's creating any confusion here about the situation so i think as long as we're all speaking this language which we are and by convention this is what they always say we understand what they mean it's true in a sense so it doesn't bother me at all. I'm totally fine with this. And so what is John's specific question then is to, he's saying if we were to track this, if we were to track how many times a team fended off defeat at the last gasp, basically, that it faced impending defeat and fended it off, would it be how many, he's basically saying, should we count batters or should we count pitches and should we count outs or should we count strikes?

And I, okay, now I kind of feel like, okay, by that standard, you could go either way, choose either one. And in 15 years, uh, it would be the norm and it would be an institution and we would go with it. You just need to start counting. Basically anything you start counting that picks up a momentum where people then have to count it forever um and so just i think we could just pick one and and start counting and that would be it i would probably go with two out two strike yeah well but then like if a batter gets down oh two and then takes three balls and then grounds out.

Are we giving that batter credit for postponing defeat? Not really. He needs to get a hit or he needs to somehow advance the line. And so now I'm back to batters. There should be batters. But then you can't really get that many batters because you're either coming back or you're not. And after a certain amount of time, you've taken the lead and the math stops adding up.

So back to strikes, two outs, two strikes. I think I like the way it works now. I like the two outs, two strikes too. It's just, there's a real difference between having a two strike count or at least being down in a two strike count and just having a clean count with two outs. That's a big difference.

And when it comes to how you feel, if you're clinging to a lead or you're the team that's trying to come back, maybe the runner's on third or something, there's a runner in scoring position, all you need is a hit or a ball in play or whatever, you feel a lot less confident about your chances if you're the team that's trailing. Once you get to two strikes, then it just feels like, oh boy, we really are against the wall in a way that you don't feel, I think, if it's 0-0 or 2-0 or whatever, and there are two strikes. So just like if you look at the odds and the outcomes of plate appearances,

there's a huge difference there between being down or down to your last strike or just being down to your last out and having a different count. So I think to me, I would want to count really being up against the ropes, which is one strike away from defeat. So John's basically calling these match points. Let me ask you this. Say a team was pitching and had the bases loaded in a tie game and three balls on the batter at the plate. Would we count each pitch that the pitcher threw

as a match point as well? If it's tied? Yeah, it's tied. I guess you should probably. I think I would. I mean, I certainly feel more tension in that case than for the two-strike batter. Yeah, I think you should. Yeah, all right.

Match points. I like it. Me too. All right. Well, we will end there. All right, that will do it for today. And as I record this outro, I know the outcomes of Thursday's games. So the teams that hit more homers went 1-1, which makes them 27-3 in this postseason.

The Braves, or really Marcelo Zuna single-handedly, out-homered the Dodgers and won their game. But the Rays out-homered the Astros, and the Astros won nonetheless. The Rays hit three homers, the Astros hit two. But they were all solo shots, every one of them. And those homers accounted for five of the seven runs scored in that solo shots, every one of them, and those homers accounted for five of the seven runs scored in that game. So we now have two teams on the brink. The Astros are down 3-2 in their series. The Dodgers are down 3-1 in their series. Not a great day for that sinkerballing Dodgers bullpen and Brewstar Grotto roll, which we did not know when

we recorded this episode. If either of those series goes to Saturday, I hope we will be able to deliver one of our Patreon live streams for those of you at the $10 level and up. But these things are sort of tough to schedule in the postseason when we don't know when those games are or whether those games will happen. Stay tuned to your inboxes if this applies to you. And if it doesn't, it still could. You can support the podcast 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 Thank you. 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.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Meg and I will be back with one more episode before the end of the week to discuss these championship series and perhaps other subjects so we'll talk to you then Why can't you be sensitive and good? Why don't you want to be understood? I've got to match your grace and my glance. I've got to match your grace and my glance.