Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1666: The Number of the Banana

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the new baseball format embraced by the Savannah Bananas, the experimental rules MLB is imposing at various levels of the minor leagues in 2021, and whether they would want to live in a ballpark (like a man who claims to have lived for three years in Veterans Stadium), […]

Oh yes! We have no bananas We have no bananas today We've got string beans and onions and big juicy lemons And all kinds of fruit and say We've got an old-fashioned tomato A Long Island potato, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today. Hello and welcome to episode 1666 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters.

I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello, pot of the beast. Yeah, exactly. We are taking a break from our endless season preview series today to do some emails and just reviewing our recent emails to pick some for the show. I was struck

yet again by how many of them are about changing baseball and how different baseball would be if it were different. It's really a high percentage of the questions we get, which I guess is not surprising because we do kind of cater to that interest and we don't get a lot of questions about, well, what if baseball were exactly the same and nothing changed? How would it be? We already know. So no one has to ask us about that. And people love talking about baseball being different. And this has been a big week in the area of baseball potentially being different and new experiments and new rules being announced. So I guess we can talk briefly about that before we

get to some emails. And I don't know if you saw earlier this week, even before MLB announced some new rules that will be in effect this season in the minors. Did you see the Baseball America story about Banana Ball, the Savannah Bananas, and their attempt to invent a new brand of baseball? I did not see that. You've been busy, I know, this week, so you missed Banana Ball. So our pal JJ Cooper at Baseball America wrote about the Savannah Bananas, who are a team in the Coastal Plain League, which is a summer collegiate league. They are trying a new brand of baseball here

that changes a number of things we like about the grand old game here. So each game has a strict two-hour time limit. Innings end immediately if the home team takes a lead. Each inning is a point. Win an inning, win a point. First team to five points wins the game. A fan catching a foul ball counts as an out. Walks have a batter speeding around the bases while the team in the field tries to throw the ball around the diamond. It's baseball-like, but it's not quite baseball. And also, batters can't step out of the box. Coaches can't visit the mound.

at the two-hour mark is settled by a batter-pitcher face-off, which I kind of like. Each one of these showdowns results in either a point or an out, and the first team to five points wins. And in this showdown tiebreaker, there's a batter against a pitcher and a catcher, and maybe there'll be one fielder, and the batter isn't trying to get a base hit because he has to go all the way around the bases before he's tagged out. So you have a batter slapping a ball down the line and then racing to run around the bases and get home before the pitcher can run the ball down and throw it to the catcher. So it sounds very weird. And evidently the Savannah Bananas tend to sell out their games when they are able to play in front of fans and they do a lot of fun stuff between innings as well. But this was weird and extreme,

but it was kind of a good prelude to the MLB announcements on Thursday for slightly less extreme adjustments to the sport, but in a similar spirit. I want to have something profound to say about the Savannah Banana experience I want to have something profound to say about the Savannah banana experience because I feel like, you know, when you're monkeying with the sports rules, profundity is required. But all I can think about is how perfectly Savannah banana kind of fits into the monomona. Yeah. Yes.

There will be bananas in pajamas on the baseball field. Maybe we should talk to someone from the Savannah Bananas at some point. I'll link to the story and a video that the bananas produced to explain banana ball. But we should get into the changes that are more in the realm of reality in affiliated ball for now, which were announced on Thursday. MLB put out a press release about some sweeping experiments that will be done this season at all levels in the minors, but sort of staggered. So some changes will happen at some levels and others will happen at other levels and no level will be the same. So this press release quotes various people who are working in on-field operations for MLB now. Michael Hill, formerly of the Marlins. Raul Banez, formerly a player for

multiple teams. Formerly the guy who spiked the ball into left field let's be honest that's what everyone remembers Rallabadi is for he had other moments too yeah reflected better on him I don't want to reduce all of Rallabadi's career to that one gif but that gif is so good you know how you know how the criticism of the show and our iTunes reviews tends to fall into two categories one that we're being too serious and one that my laugh is weird. I'm very tired because this has been a very busy week of Fangraph's business. And so I'm worried this will be a laugh episode. I want to apologize in advance. That's okay. I enjoy the laughs. Laughter is good. I mean, if we're laughing, we can't be too serious, right? So some people will be mad,

but the other people will not be mad. Do you know the Yes, We Have No Bananas song, Ben? I don't think so. There's a song. I am familiar with it because it is in the original Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. Oh, yes, yes. And she sings it when they go sailing. And so I wonder if the fans of the Savannah Bananas on days when they're off, do they sing the Yes, We Have No Bananas song? We have no bananas today. I'm going to deliver some actual baseball thoughts at some point in this episode, I swear. Well, there's our intro song for the episode today.

Thank you for that. You're welcome. So Theo Epstein also quoted in this press release as he is now a consultant on on-field manners for MLB. So the point of these changes, the press release says, consistent with the preferences of our fans, the rule changes being tested are designed to increase action on the base pass, create more balls in play, improve the pace and length of games, and reduce player injuries. So in theory, that all sounds pretty good to me. I think we're all pretty much on board with the desired results there.

So the question is, will the proposed changes produce those desired results, and are they the best way to do it? So I will summarize what they have in store here. For AAA, you've got larger bases. So to reduce player injuries and collisions, the size of first, second, and third base will be increased from 15 inches square to 18 inches square. inches square and this is not only to give more people space to run through the bag without running into each other and stepping on each other but also it will slightly shorten the distance between the bases by what four something inches i think and so they hope that this will incentivize people to try to steal and be more successful when they do and i should just mention that most or all of these changes are things that either have been discussed repeatedly

for the past few years or have actually been tried, whether in the minors or in the Atlantic League. So nothing here is unheard of. It's not like completely out of nowhere. All this stuff has been in the ether for a while. AA, the change for AA is defensive positioning A, the change for Double A is defensive positioning. They are coming for the shift in Double A. So the defensive team must have a minimum of four players on the infield,

each of whom must have both feet completely in front of the outer boundary of the infield dirt. So that's how they're going to go about it at the beginning of the season. And then depending on the preliminary results of this change, MLB may require two infielders to be positioned entirely on each side of second base in the second half of the AA season. So they're going to take some tentative steps to ban the shift here, and then maybe some more extreme steps, which would really kind of outlaw it. So that's double A. High A is the step-off rule. So pitchers have to step off the rubber prior to throwing to any base, and they get a balk if they don't comply with that. And this

is very similar to what was done in the Atlantic League in the second half of 2019, which really upped stolen bases considerably, I think by 70%, something like that. Steals were way up. Success rate was up significantly too. So that'll be at high A. In low A, there is a pickoff limitation. So pitchers are limited to a total of two step-offs or pickoffs per plate appearance while there's at least one runner on base. And a pitcher may attempt a third step-off or pickoff in the same plate appearance, but if it doesn't work, if the runner gets back to the base, then the result is a balk. So that's, I guess, everywhere at low A. And then depending on how that goes, they're going to consider reducing the limitation to a single step-off or pick-off per plate appearance with at least one runner on base. robot umps so the automatic ball strike system that has been tested in the atlantic league in the arizona fall league that will be in some low a southeast games as well to help the umpires it

says to assist the home plate umpires with calling balls and strikes ensure a consistent strike zone is called and determine the optimal strike zone for the system which was an issue in the atlantic league right because they were using the usual rulebook strike zone. And there are some balls that are technically rulebook strikes that are really never called strikes. And that was disorienting for everyone. So they may sort of test new shapes for the strike zone as well to figure out how to bring that into line with what people expect a strike to be.

And then finally, low A West, in addition to the limitations on step-offs and pick-offs, following the successful pace of game rules testing in the Florida State League in 2019, on-field timers will be in effect. So one in the outfield, two behind home plate between the dugouts, and these will enforce time limits between the delivery of pitches inning breaks and pitching changes so not new for there to be a pitch clock but i think it's going to be even stricter going from 20 seconds to 15 seconds and then there will also be time limits on how long batters can take to get up to the plate and inning breaks and pitching changes and the like.

So that's all of it. What do you think? Well, my first thought is I just feel bad for these poor prospects who I'm sure were like, we're going to have a normal year of player development. Right. And this is always part of the trick, right? Which is that you have to do some degree of experimentation with rule changes like this to see if there are,

you know, if it's working the way you expect it to and if it accomplishes the goal that you expect and if it creates weird corner cases that you haven't accounted for in the rules that you either need to proactively and sort of readily address or that might cause you to reconsider the rule and what it's actually solving for. And so I understand all of that. And we've talked before about how, you know, some we're open to some degree of experimentation in baseball. I think especially if we're able to like look at something and try it and be like, that didn't work and then move on. Like we don't have to the mere suggestion that we try something new does not mean that we have to then stick with that new thing in perpetuity. But it is tricky because there are real players

whose real careers are affected to some degree or other by rule changes like this. And I imagine that it's not like there's a guy out there who is probably going to make the majors who isn't now because the base is bigger. But it does strike me, say are there are plenty of position player prospects who when we think about them in the course of prospect evaluation we're more comfortable with them staying on the infield for instance if they can be a position aided player and now this is

potentially signaling that that's not going to work and you don't get to try them in the places you would have before so i i don't want to be a fuddy-duddy who's resistant to change. And I know that there has always been change in the history of the game. And at the same time, you know, change for its own sake isn't necessarily good. So I guess this is a really long way of me saying I kind of wonder if they put the bigger base thing in there to try to throw people like us off the scent of the other changes. They're like, you know what? You know what Ben and Meg are going to talk about? They're going to talk about that bag being bigger because that's like deeply Meg shit.

That's some catnip for them. think about the shift and how it's continues to be very silly in my opinion to regulate defensive positioning because we should just let teams discover a more optimal strategy on their own because they're likely to do that at some point because that's how this always works and like the decline in offense is not really the fault of the shift and so it seems like you're solving a problem that isn't well you're not really solving the problem you're setting out to solve. I don't know. I think that we could have just let all of these dudes have a normal year in the minors, if nothing else, and then changed a bunch of stuff next season when they had gotten their feet under them and had played something resembling a normal season, even though some of them are going to be at the alt site and some of them won't be, and they're going to be playing until October, and the bags are going to be bigger,

and cats and dogs are living together. I'm going to have that banana song in my head for the rest of time. That's the thing that sort of surprised me about this, not necessarily in a bad way, but just the scale of this, the fact that it's happening at every level so suddenly, and maybe that has something to do with the fact that MLB is now calling the shots in the minors, right? Which, you know, it was to some extent before anyway, and maybe it would have been able to implement this even before the consolidation and the downsizing. But now there's really nothing standing in MLB's way, you know,

just decreeing that things will be as they are in various levels. So I think the idea of doing a different change at every level I kind of like because one of the criticisms of the Atlantic League plan was, well, you're just throwing a whole bunch of stuff at the wall at once now. And so it would be kind of tough to isolate the impact of certain changes because you're changing seven things at once. So I kind of like that they're doing really like one or two things per level now. And so it'll be a more controlled experiment to say, okay, what happens if you just change this one thing? And yet it can all be done in one year as opposed to changing one thing per season, let's say, and then it takes several seasons to try everything out. So I like that. Although imagine how disorienting it will be for a prospect who has some helium and like someone who starts out in A ball and ends up like in AAA or something. And it's like, oh, I just got a promotion.

Okay. So wait, let me see. The bases are bigger now. Okay, wait. So I can't step off. I can step off. How many pickoffs am I allowed? As you're climbing the minor league ladder and trying to adjust to stiffer competition

at each level, you also have to learn new rules or unlearn rules. So that's tough. That's challenging. But I suppose some sacrifices must be made if we're going to figure out if these things work. I think that the defensive positioning one is the change that sort of stands out to me as potentially pretty galling for these guys. And it's not just something that affects position players either. I mean, I talked about the effects that this potentially has on guys who are sort of seen as prospects who can stay on the infield dirt because they can be shift aided where they might have to, especially up the middle, might have to move

to a corner in another circumstance. So it has an effect on them. But part of getting guys comfortable with the shift isn't just about the defenders. It's about the pitcher and getting him used to you know having guys shifted behind him and like not getting fussy when a ball leaks through because all these other balls in play result in outs and so it just seems like a lot at once and i take your point that it is for the sake of understanding the effect of any given rule this is probably a much better way of deploying those changes than just being like i don know, you sort of play

baseball now in the Atlantic League. Good luck. You know, that seemed like it was trying to do too many things at once. It's like you don't have to wear a hat and a scarf and this other thing at the same time. I don't know. Too busy an outfit. Who even does outfits anymore? I so badly need to sleep. But anyway, I think that there's something to the idea of being able to isolate the effect of each of these much more precisely but yeah for a guy who is like really rocketing up through the system it's gonna be a very strange year in what will still likely already be a strange year despite it looking a little more normal because of having to get used to playing so many more games and being back in a real competitive game environment and you're going to spend at least a couple minutes every

game laughing at the bigger bases so like that's going to be distracting so i i feel like this is just it's just a lot to do in a in a time in the world where we are already overwhelmed by our reentry. And I think we should stop overwhelming people as they're trying to get back out there. It's like they got to figure out how to like smile or wave, but not both. Although you could say from MLB's perspective, their interest is in testing these things, getting people used to it. And what better time to do that

than when the entire world has been overturned, right? I mean, look at all the changes that were made last year to cope with the pandemic season. And now people are used to extra runners starting at second in extra innings and seven inning double headers or whatever. And so now the seal has been broken. And so you can do a bunch more stuff maybe because people are like, all right, well, we rolled with it last year. So now at least it'll be a more normal world, hopefully in a more normal season. And so we can test this other stuff and maybe people will be a little less

precious about doing that just because a, they'll be so happy to have baseball pack in any form that it's like, all right, well, the bases are big. That's fine. But also just because maybe people have just gotten more used to the idea of change. And I'm okay with most of these changes, frankly. I mean, you and I have reservations about robot umps that I think are probably not shared by the majority of fans at this point. And I'm open to the idea that Robot Oomps are better for baseball, even if for you and for me personally, it would negatively impact some of the things that we love to watch and appreciate about catcher defense, let's say. of the things that we love to watch and appreciate about catcher defense, let's say. I do understand that that may be a losing argument and that there may be benefits to baseball that override that concern on our parts. But some of the other things, like bigger bases, I'm all for the bigger bases. I mean, they're not comically large bases, so they're just a little bit bigger. And I think it makes sense to have more room to run through without stepping on someone. And if it helps people steal some bases, that seems good too. I think in general, it's a good thing that A, MLB seems to have the right

goals. Whether they're actually doing the best possible things to bring those goals about, they're actually doing the best possible things to bring those goals about we could debate but the end result that they seem to be desiring is fine with me i think it sounds good to me and it's something that fans would like so that's good and the fact that they're willing to experiment at all is good and so we can quibble with the specifics, certainly. But bigger bases, I'm on board. Timers, absolutely on board. The pickoff and step-off stuff, I don't know, might be a little too extreme. I don't know if we need 70% more steals out of nowhere. If you take away all weapons that pitchers have to restrict the running game, maybe it's too much. Maybe there's a happy medium or something, but certainly I would like to see

more running and more action on the base pass and so yeah the the defensive positioning one is the one that gets our goat i think and and we've certainly talked about that before but that's just a case where it seems like the thing that they're doing is not really aligned all that well with the thing that they want to happen which is why it bugs me i mean philosophically it bugs me a little bit that they're not just letting it play out and saying well it's a cat and mouse game and you can do one thing and then the other side adjusts like it's possible that the other side can't adjust like the shift has been around for a while now and i think it's very hard for hitters to do something different as they've shown they're either unwilling or unable or both to really counter the way that they hit the ball and so there may not be a counter move coming but i i

still think that it's just not really going to produce that dramatic a difference because you look at the league-wide BABIP and there was a slight dip last season, but really it has tended to be the same on the whole. And as we've discussed, it seems like team shifting on right-handed hitters has actually helped the hitters on the whole. So yes, it does suppress BABIP against left-handed hitters and maybe teams will start shifting more optimally. And so it makes sense to cut them off at the pass here. babb up against left-handed hitters and maybe teams will start shifting more optimally. And so it makes sense to cut them off at the pass here. But I don't know that we've gotten to that point and I don't see the shift as the major issue when it comes to all of this aesthetic stuff that we talk about. So that to me seems like a drastic change, one that I'm philosophically somewhat opposed to, and that even worse, doesn't directly address the problem as much as MLB seems to think it will. So I'm against that

one, even though the shift itself is not really new and novel anymore. I mean, certain alignments are. There are some weird, wacky ones that are still sort of fun because we haven't seen them before. But the shift, the standard over shift is like the dominant defensive positioning now so it's not really new and interesting and if it were shown that there were no way to counter it and it were really adversely harming the game then at that point i might be open to legislating something but we're not at that point with the shift i don't think so don't love that one but hey it's only at one level and we'll see maybe there won't be much of an effect and they'll forget about this although i kind of doubt it i wanted to tell you like that that the base

size would be noticeable to you and so then i googled what are things that are 18 inches long and it's about 1 30th as tall as a brachiosaurus just to like really put it in that helps yeah and it's um 30 times as long as an aspirin okay and uh 1 30th as long as a semi-trailer huh all right yeah now i now i really now you really are you're like yeah i i haven't thought about it in terms of aspirin but now i can really put it in perspective in in the field i mean like i think that if you're gonna make the base as big you should also put a trench out there somewhere but it's like what you be put a pit in the field for sam don't be a coward. I think that you're likely right. I mean, apart from the automatic zone and the shifting stuff,

a lot of this is probably not going to be as immediately impactful as I am maybe assuming it will be or I'm concerned that it will be. There's a long list of things where we thought it was going to be very noticeable and then we forgot immediately when it changed. When was the last time you longed for actually having to throw four pitches for an intentional walk? You haven't. You have not longed for that probably ever in your life and certainly not since the rule

changed. So I don't want to overstate the case, but I also think that we are vulnerable right now and they should let us ease back into like you know i i go i go for walks in my neighborhood and i'm sometimes i'm wearing a mask if there are people nearby and i still smile under the mask like in the acknowledging kind of way and i've started doing this little wave like with one hand and i know that when this is over and i don't have to wear a mask i'm gonna do both and i'm gonna look wild-eyed i'm gonna look unhinged ben and so we just we can't even do the little social graces to smooth the way the way we used to like we're all gonna struggle for

a little while so maybe they could leave the bases the same size while we're in the you know in the course of re-entry. See, for me, and I don't know what this says about me, but I've actually kind of been relieved to be free of the burden of having to make facial expressions. Maybe this is because I live in Manhattan and you're constantly passing a million people and no one really acknowledges anyone anyway. And so the mask, it's like we're all wearing a Manhattan mask at all times, right? Even if we don't have a literal mask, we're just expressionless everywhere we go. And you dread someone actually making eye contact with you or saying something so that you have to respond. It's like, all right, buddy, I get it.

You're Mr. Friendly neighbor here. We're all just trying to go about our lives in this busy metropolis. So for me, it's almost been a relief to just have the mask to hide behind almost. But maybe as a less social person or in a less social situation, that is what I'm thinking. But it's true that when we are back in society and all unmasked again if that day comes sometime soon then we will have to use some facial muscles that maybe we have not been accustomed to using as much I just think that my smile is gonna I'm gonna be like Pennywise and people in the neighborhood are gonna be, we would like you to move. You're scaring the cats.

They'll all be doing the same thing. Yeah, I guess that's true. Anyway. All right. So I'll link to these various changes if you want to. I'll explore the details at your leisure. If you asked me to fix baseball and gave me two changes, I would move the mound back and deaden the ball a bit. I think that would take care of a lot of what ails the game, but those are slightly heavier lifts when it comes to persuading the Players Association to okay this at the Major League level, especially moving the mound back.

Deadening the ball, you might not need permission. And of course, if you move the mound, then you might have to move mounds everywhere in the world, which would be a problem. I'm still hopeful that we will see the mound move back just a bit in the Atlantic League, perhaps as soon as this season, and that if that went well, maybe it could make the leap to affiliated ball, but I'm writing about that now, so I will save my thoughts on that for next week. And the last thing I wanted to mention is there is an interesting story I saw in the Philly Inquirer about this new memoir that came out written by a man named Tom Garvey, who claims to have lived in Veterans Stadium for a few years. From 1979 to 1981, he lived in an empty concession stand. So someone in his family was involved in running the concessions and the parking at the vet at the time. And so he was working there,

and he just gradually hung around at all times, at all hours, until eventually he just started living there. And he found this abandoned concession stand in sort of a low-traffic area, and he built a wall of cardboard boxes just inside the door so if you open the door and go in it looked like just an abandoned concession stand with a bunch of cardboard boxes but at the end if you walk down there's a little passageway that led to an open area where he had an apartment with uh like a hot plate and a bed and some furniture and it was like this cozy little place where he lived inside Veterans Stadium for a few years. He could just be there in the middle of the night. He used to go

rollerblading around the concourse in Veterans Stadium. And one day he like walked out when there was a rain delayed game and there was almost no one there. And he just walked out in like his bathrobe and flip flops with his cup of coffee just to basically watch the game in the front porch of his concession stand. And I was wondering if this sounded appealing to you. Would you have wanted to do this? I mean, free rent and sounds like kind of cozy, but would you want to live in a ballpark? No, I would not want to do that. I already have work boundaries

that concern my mom so i think that having being right there would just you know that doesn't that doesn't bode well for my ability to do anything else no that's true it would always smell like popcorn probably yes you know like there would be times when games would go into extra innings and you're like i'm very tired but it's loud still kind of uh it's loud in that way that like sometimes things are loud at night where it's very peaceful and then there's a big ruckus and you wake up and you can't go back to sleep. And so it sounds kind of terrible. Do we think this really happened? Well, it can't really be verified

because they knocked down Veterans Stadium many years ago and he says that he had a no photos policy because he didn't want this to get out. However, there are a few people in the story who corroborate it and vouch for him and say that they saw the apartment and were in the apartment, including Eagles Hall of Famer Bill Bradley. So it seems to have existed. Maybe he's exaggerating. But for him, it sounds like it was sort of therapeutic because he was a Vietnam veteran and he came home and hadn't really

reckoned with what he had seen and experienced there. And it sounds as if it was almost like a Walden Pond type of experience for him being in the vet, at least in the times when it was not packed with Phillies fans or Eagles fans. It seems like it was sort of a serene place for him to have the place to himself and yeah i mean there are definitely downsides to this but i can see the appeal at least for a while just because a ballpark can be a cool place to be after hours like not many people get to see a ballpark except when a game is being played or in the immediate aftermath. So you never are in that context unless it is full of other people who are very raucous. And so if you ever get the chance to be in a ballpark when it's empty, it's pretty cool.

of like being an intern for teams back in my intern days is that you'd get to see a ballpark at night, you know, when it's not fully lit up or when it's not full of people or even some late nights in the press box when everyone had cleared out. And it's a nice place to be, at least to experience now and then, because many people just never get to see that side of a ballpark. So I think there is something to like the forbidden aspect to it, like you're not supposed to be there. This is not a home. And yet you have made it one. So, you know, sort of like a Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler situation where, you know, you're living in a museum of sorts. Sure. Where, you know, you're living in a museum of sorts. So I can see the appeal there. But, you know, maybe living in a tiny concession stand actually has some drawbacks too, as you noted. being told that it did but i i don't think it would be the very best yeah yeah just yeah i mean if you're a young person like i'm not saying it would be better than like living in a beautiful home or something but i guess if you're a young person who uh you know has trouble making rent or or can only afford a concession stand sized domicile than having it be in a ballpark. You know, not that Veterans Stadium was really a looker.

I never went myself, but having seen it from afar, about as ugly as a ballpark can be. So that takes away from it a little bit. But, you know, still sort of a secret little place. There's an allure, right, to being someone who lives in a ballpark, right? The floor would be sticky all the time. Probably, yes. It would just be a sticky floor. Hopefully he did a deep cleaning before he moved in.

Anyway, I'll link to the article. The article. Yes. Oh, yeah. If you had like the sticky, yeah, or like stepping on gum and caked disgustingness, that would be a bad thing if it were in your bedroom, basically. But I'm guessing he cleaned the place out a bit. Anyway, I'll link to the article. You can check out the memoir. It's a fun story. So we will get to a few emails here. Here is one from Nat who says, the normal cliche is that spring stats are meaningless, but we haven't seen some of these guys in two years, long enough for major physical development in younger players, injury recovery for injured players, and decline for older players, but also extra rest for the opted out. Do you think this year's spring stats will be more meaningless

or less meaningless than usual? I am asserting the same amount of meaning. I think it's the same amount of meaning. I think that, you know, it's always useful to, there are parts of spring training that are useful, right? Like velocity is a useful indicator in spring training. How hard a guy is hitting the ball is like a useful indicator. And I think that the email identifies another one that's important, which is like the, you

know, whatever the visual presentation of one's physicality is, is important. I think especially once we get minor league spring training underway and some of the younger prospects make their way into camp and we can finally and some of the younger prospects make their way into camp and we can finally see some of these guys who weren't non-roster invitees and who either, you know, if we were lucky, we heard reports from the alt sites about them, but many of them were just at home. And so I think that there's usefulness there. But I also think that in some respects, it's's gonna be tricky because as we've talked about you

know you have pitchers trying to come back and sort of figure out a way to ramp up in a way that makes sense after a very strange 2020 and so that i i'm trying not to like read too much into any one pitcher except to be depressed about felix because you know it's like who knows what the this might just take some of them a little bit longer I would think it's possible that seems possible so no yes it's the same it's the sort of thing where there are certain things that are hard to fake and so when you see them it's like well that's a meaningful data point because the ability to hit the ball hard for instance is is a thing that you can't really like fake and so being able to do it is is meaningful or like de graham was throwing 101 tonight like okay i think spoiler alert i

think jacob de graham probably gonna be pretty good this year and so there are there are things like that where it's like okay this this is um a positive sign but i'm trying hard not to think too much of guys who are kind of taking a little while because last year was just so strange. Yeah, that's the thing. I think the stats, if we're limiting it to stats, I would say that probably not more meaningful than usual just because you had a lot of people who were off all of last year, didn't play actual games, professional games. And so they're rusty and there have been long layoffs. And also spring training is extra weird this year with various rules and innings getting ended prematurely and all of that. So the stats themselves, which, you know, sometimes at the extremes you can glean some

meaning from. There have been studies that have shown if someone has a really incredibly hot spring training, that does have some predictive value when it comes to their beating their projections and opposite end of the scale is probably true too. But yeah, the stats themselves, maybe not so much just because of all the confounding factors. But if we're saying just like information more broadly, then I'd say there are certain things that might be more valuable than usual to see. And you just named most of them, but you know, the fact that we haven't seen some of these players for a longer time than usual. And so they've had more time to get into better shape or get into worse shape or grow or lose velocity or gain velocity or whatever. And so spring

training might not be the best indication of what their true talent is, but just to see, you know, are they healthy? Are they throwing harder? Do they look different physically? Like, you know, there's just been a longer time. I mean, usually it's the off season only. It's like you see someone in October and then you see them again in February and this year with some players at least who were you know at the alternate site or not even at the alternate site and you just didn't see them all summer then they haven't really been in the public eye for a year and a half or something so in those cases it's probably more useful to see so yeah you know I don't know if you should put more stock in the stats necessarily, but certain information, certain data points, I think probably more important this year than usual.

I think that, yeah, I think that's a good way of thinking about it. Okay. Matthew, Patreon supporter, says, I'd like to draw your attention to the Wikipedia article baseball. The first thing you see is a photo of Jason Hayward hitting a ball on July 17th, 2016. If you had no idea what baseball was and you could show it

in one image, how close is this to the first image you would choose? It shows the act of swinging, the ball, as well as the catcher and home plate umpire. It also features baseball's unique home plate shape and you can even see the dugout. The fact of the baseball in the air implies that its movement

originated somewhere so a pitcher is implied though their exact role and placement would be unclear to first-time baseball image viewers. Additionally Robinson Chirinos is catching and being a Venezuelan player identifies baseball as an international sport. The home plate umpire in the photo is Corey Blazer, who was 34 at the time, showing how umpires have gotten younger on average. Also, the photo is from Wrigley Field, one of the most iconic in the game. There are some atypical elements, but they're not immediately evident in the photo. The play pictured resulted in Hayward hitting into a double play. Would a home

run swing have been more emblematic of the modern game? Also, the game only lasted two hours and 17 minutes, owing partly to John Lackey and Cole Hamels both pitching eight innings. Neither of those could be described as a norm. Is there anything missing from the photo that you would want if you could describe the game in one image. It's interesting. I wonder if we can look on the talk page on Wikipedia, whether there was some discussion of what image to use to represent baseball. What do you choose? I mean, you have to choose something that's in the public domain and available to Wikipedia, but there's still a lot of options there. How is it that you happen to choose an image from 2016

of Jason Hayward lining into a double play? I don't know. Yeah, you know, I don't. So I'm struck by the decision to, which I originally sort of like recoiled from because I was like, that's not the most typical baseball you see. But then I thought to myself, well, hang on a second. Originally, I was like, why would they pick an interleague game?

But then I was like, if you want to represent baseball, well, that's the exact kind of game you should pick because you have both of them represented. See, if it had been me, I would have opted for two teams with more distinct color palettes because I think that this is a little too close. I do think it is funny that Hayward is the guy here because one way you could go with a decision like this

is to pick the hitter that is sort of the most emblematic of modern baseball, right? Like you could pick the most famous guy, like you could have Mookie Betts or you could have Fernando Tatis Jr. You could have Mike Trout. And they're like the guys, right, that everyone knows. But you didn't.

And that's okay because like that's not really the most relevant thing to someone who's just like, so what is baseball? I don't know. Like I think it is interesting that for an article about baseball that they decided to pick an MLB game at all. True. Yeah. Right? That they did not pick something. I mean, like they could have picked a WBC game

and had a real international, more obvious international representation. Could have been Little League, yeah. Right, because you have to know about Robinson Torino's to know that this picture does subtly suggest a global game. And so I think that if that were a thing that were important to your understanding of what baseball like small b baseball is that you would perhaps want to be more explicit about that yeah you do have three different skin tones at least in this picture

something yeah i think that if i were picking a shot like a camera angle i would be more likely to pick well can i reach it from where I'm sitting? I don't think I can. I don't think this USB cord is long enough. You know, like the, oh, I could just Google it because I do have my computer right in front of my face. This doesn't bode particularly well for like how I'm going to be able to put words together when it comes time for positional power rankings, which is like very soon. So Ben, do you remember this book that came out last year that people thought was so smart called Future Value by Eric Langenhagen and Kyla McDaniel? So if you recall the cover of that book, it is at least the hard

cover, it is a shot from like an aerial shot from slightly above behind home plate, like kind of where the broadcast booth would probably sit or where the press box is and it shows clayton kershaw pitching to mookie bets and i don't know who's catching for the dodgers but the dodgers catching and so i would probably pick a shot like this because it actually gets the pitcher into the shot and so the the origin of that throne ball is is no longer a mystery you're like baseball what is that oh there there are two guys um in the beginning of this baseball action and you can see the ball kind of traversing the distance from from the mound to home plate and you can see

mookie bets and so you still have an issue of aesthetic diversity of the uniforms because there should be more purple uniforms and there just aren't. And that's a real shame. But here we are. You couldn't put a Rockies guy on the baseball page. That's not a relevant franchise. So I guess this is not a terrible representation that they have selected on Wikipedia. But I would argue for something that includes the pitcher in the frame so that you get a real sense of like where the action originates and what the the sort of different sides of the contest are um especially to to

differentiate um baseball from other bat to ball or uh what is it in cricket it's not a bat is it a bat yeah it's a bat other bat to ball sports where the setup is a little different in baseball. Although if you're like a softball aficionado, maybe you'd look at this and be like, well, it's pretty similar and you're not wrong. But anyway, so I would probably include something that had the pitcher in the frame. And I think that I would try to center it around international competition because I think it's important to demonstrate that it really is an international game, not just in who plays it professionally in the US, but just who plays it at all.

So yeah, like you, I would want a different perspective that encompasses more of the field. And I'd probably go even bigger than just the batter, pitcher, catcher, umpire, quartet. I think I'd want to get the whole field in there if possible i mean oh sure if you did just like a top down not like a google earth sort of you know top down bird's eye view of a stadium because i would want to like be able to see the players and some of the action but just pulling back a bit so that you know if you were watching from like the upper deck behind home plate or something, just so you could see the shape of the field where all the fielders stand and just really get a sense of the whole scope of it.

I mean, the batter-pitcher confrontation is the center of it, especially these days. But the Hayward pick, just there's no pitcher. I mean, you know, as Matt said, the pitcher is implied. The ball is coming from somewhere. But if you knew nothing, it could be just a pitching machine or something. So you got to have the pitcher in there. And then you got to have the bases, right? I mean, home plate is in this photo, but there are no bases, other bases in there.

So what's the baseball? i guess home plate is technically a base is that a debate that we've had does anyone disagree about that i don't know it's a base but i think i would want to have the whole field and just the the whole shape of the thing that would be good i think and you know i don't know how much the game matters but uh maybe like if there were a way to show something that would convey the long history of the sport as well as the present like you know i guess i'm cheating if i have a collage of multiple photos but you know it would be interesting to see some like black and white like civil war era photo of baseball and then also modern baseball just to impart to people that, oh, this has been around for a while.

They've been playing this thing for some time because that's an important aspect of the sport too. So yeah, I don't know. This isn't the one I would choose probably. It's not perfect, but it's okay. Probably most people who are going to the baseball Wikipedia page have some idea what baseball is and what it looks like. But you could do a little bit better if you wanted to sum it up in a single image. Yeah, I think that this gets at a lot of it, but it could do more. It could speak to both the way the game is played and who plays it with a bit more precision than this currently does are there people who don't think that home played as a base probably they call it like a nickname for

i know but like a nickname for a home run is a four bagger which suggests that they're all bags they're all the same sort of thing even if one is is hard and one is pillow like and one of them is apparently made of the same material as baseball some of them yeah well i didn't want to start another batting around to paint where one doesn't exist so forget i ever said anything about it home plate to base we all agree okay michael says i was hoping to get your perspective on one of the first great juicy baseball quotes of spring training cubs president of baseball operations jed Hoyer recently said regarding the Cubs rotation, we may be at the very bottom of the league in velocity, but I think in terms of pitchability,

we might be right at the top. And Michael says, I've heard announcers throw this term around a bunch, but I don't think I could actually tell you what pitchability is. What are your thoughts on the definition of pitchability? Does it correspond to any existing metric or combination of metrics that we use? And is there any way that the Cubs rotation could be atop its rankings? And most importantly, should it be spelled pitchability with no hyphen or pitch-ability? I hope that we can both agree that there's no hyphen. There's no hyphen. Pitchability. Yeah, no, no hyphen ability. I hope that we can both agree that there's no hyphen. There's no hyphen.

Pitch ability. Yeah, no, no hyphen pitch. In fact, like if you had a hyphen in there, it'd be almost like the opposite of what pitch ability is. Like you're not talking about the pitch itself and the characteristics of the pitch, which for me, that's what pitch ability is. It's like everything other than the raw stuff. Yeah. Which can encompass all manner of things. It could be command. It could be your composure on the mound.

It could be your strategic thinking, your sequencing. You know, are you a smart pitcher? Pitcher, not a thrower, as the saying goes? It's like everything other than how much does your pitch move and how fast and how much does it spin. Yeah, it's sort of like kind of akin to baseball IQ or your ability to knowing what pitch to throw to a particular batter, like how you sequence them and how they play off one another and sort of having a good grasp and understanding of that and approaching it in sort of a thoughtful way. Yeah, definitely no hyphen. And I'm not just being a person who thinks we over-hyphenate,

although I do think we over-hyphenate as a culture and it's unnecessary. So yeah, I think it's like a, I don't want to make it too nebulous or amorphous because I think that if you were to ask a scout, there's like an understanding of all the things that are sort of encompassed within it. But yes, I think that like the base definition

that you came up with, that it's like, it's all the stuff away from stuff. Yeah, right. That makes a pitcher an effective pitcher and sort of makes them a pitcher as opposed to just a thrower. Yeah, and I hope for the Cubs' sake that their rotation is at the top in pitchability, and it may very well be. I mean, obviously, Kyle Hendricks is like a pitchability poster boy, I guess, right? And Davies to some extent, since they're basically the same pitcher, except one is a little bit

better than the other. But, you know, like pitchability and velocity are probably inversely correlated in MLB in the sense that if you don't throw hard, then there must be something that is allowing you to be a big leaguer. So it's probably pitch so you know certainly hendrix uh has great command and and you can quantify that like mike asked if if there are metrics that capture pitch ability and certainly not perfectly but there are things that maybe allow you to get at it to some extent like you can certainly look at hendrix's location as uh who was it ben clemens wrote about that recently for fan graphs and someone else i think also wrote about alex chamberlain yeah so you know you can see that hendrix tends to throw his pitches in the shadow zone as it's

called you know basically like right on the the edges of the plate and sort of lives there. And so you could call that pitchability. But there are also other things just like your mound presence. And do you let the pressure get to you? And do you let things spiral out of control when you're in a jam? And sequencing, which is theoretically something that could be quantified, but hasn't really in a rigorous way yet and command as well there are some command metrics that are imperfect you could maybe put things like tunneling and spin mirroring and seam shifted wake and all of that that's you know

maybe kind of a gray area i guess that's sort of stuff in a sense like if it has to do with actual pitch movement but that seems to be part of hendrix's success too but but yeah like tunneling if it's like you know deception maybe i don't know if deception is part of pitch ability i might separate those things but yeah if it's uh pitches complementing each other in a clever way then perhaps that could be part of pitchability too. Yeah. I think that that's a, yeah, I think that we have arrived at a good, a good understanding. I hope that was helpful. Yeah. I hope so too. All right. Mike in Chicago says 20 years ago, young phenom shortstop,

Alex Rodriguez signed a 10 year, $252 million deal and immediately became a pariah. This week, this was not this week, but an earlier week, young phenom shortstop fernando tatis jr signed a 14 year 340 million dollar deal that is beloved and celebrated what would you say is the biggest reason that public perception of mega deals has shifted in the player's favor if if we agree with the premise which uh we we don't necessarily have to do i think that it's shifted i don't think that it is a universally held belief i think that the ratio is definitely has changed dramatically i think there's a greater consciousness of who the owners are not only in terms of what their wealth looks like compared to the wealth of players, but what they're sort of prioritizing in the way that they run their organizations,

and that that is not always putting a winning product on the field. And I think that that has caused a lot of fans to sort of re-evaluate how straightforward it is to root for Laundrie, which is what I think if we want to give fans credit, which I think we should, I don't think that the historical divide has been between owners understood as such and players. I think it has been between owners with the proxy of the team standing in front of them versus players. And so I think that as ownership has shifted some of its priorities and now winning is important to some, but not universally important, at least not to

the degree that would require them to spend money. And certainly there are teams that are exceptions to that rule, but there are also teams that have undergone long periods of sort of inactivity and free agency that fans have allowed themselves to sort of complicate their understanding of what it means to root unreservedly for the team, because sometimes rooting unreservedly for the team signs you up for watching a lot of bad baseball. And so I just think that that has allowed some stuff to sort of shake loose for fans as they think about what it means to be a Mariners fan versus a fan of like Felix Hernandez or Kyle Seeger or Ichiro or whomever, right? So I think that that has helped to sort of shift things around for folks. And I think that we have a general,

there's been sort of a general consciousness raising of the gap that exists between the very wealthy and everyone else in society more broadly and so i think that that maps onto some of the conversation between players and ownership even if the sort of severity of that gap feels at times to be much smaller than it is between say a teacher and a team owner so i think that that's part of it too where we're just having a conversation around that and the values we associated with it more broadly in in culture than we were maybe you know at a time when the wealth gap was less extreme and we didn't have to have that conversation so i think that that is kind of how i account for it to the extent that it has shifted but there are definitely fans who like just do not give a shit about any of that so we should acknowledge

that too and you know I think that there's some value to be had in having baseball as a place to start to think about those questions as like citizens where it's a little bit lower stakes for us personally and that's been true for some and hasn't resonated for others. And I'm feeling generous. So I'm deciding not to judge that today. Yeah. I mean, I think there's definitely a growing awareness of economics in baseball among media members. And you're less likely to see the cranky columnist who's like, oh, these players are overpaid. And that's why tickets cost too much or whatever. I mean, you still see that every now and then. But I think you see a lot less of that. I'm sure that among the rank and file fan, that attitude is still prevailing.

I mean, even if you just look at the Twitter replies to an announcement of some new contract, you will see a lot of overpaid players make too much. They're playing a game, blah, blah, blah, and no real acknowledgement of the revenue that they generate or just how much money there is in baseball and how much money the owners are making and that they would just be making even more if it weren't going to the players. So there's definitely that and probably among people who are not on Twitter, I'm sure that sentiment is quite common too. And you even see some things. I mean, remember MLB's tweets a few weeks ago about the Tatis extension, right? I sure do. MLB tweeted, you know, name something more expensive than the left side of the Padres infield, right, with Machado and Tatis. And then they deleted that

tweet eventually. Eventually. Once they got a lot of condemnation, although they still left up a tweet about Tatis' extension and the largest extensions in history. And I think the caption was whole lot of money or something. I think that's still up. So they do still emphasize that,

which, you know, you always have to wonder what their motivations are for doing that, heading into CPA negotiations. But I think in some cases, always have to wonder what their motivations are for doing that, heading into CPA negotiations. But I think in some cases, like I think if we're talking Tatis and A-Rod specifically, I think one huge difference is that A-Rod was leaving his team and signing with another team. Yeah, that's a very good point. Tatis is staying with his quasi homegrown team. He's staying with the Padres. He's basically signing up for most of the rest of his career with this team, whereas A-Rod was the mercenary who's just playing for the almighty dollar and going wherever the highest bidder was, which was not really a fair attitude to have necessarily but i think that is a big part of the difference there is uh just the fact that one guy is staying put and the other is leaving and so looks less like a

mercenary so you know if you were to have someone i mean if if tatis today were to sign this deal with another team i mean if he had been a free agent and he had signed the same contract with some other team then you probably would have seen the same thing. Like when Bryce Harper signed with the Phillies and there were all these stories about how Nationals fans were like, you know, altering their uniforms to take his name off of it and replace it with some insult or something profane because they were mad about Harper taking a deal from a division rival. So I think a lot of it is that. And then probably also some of it is the fact that teams just don't give out many of these deals to free agents anymore. At least they don't give it to them beyond a certain age.

I mean, A-Rod was a young free agent, uncommonly young, because he came up and was so good so young, but teams are not really handing out the 10 plus year deal to the 30 something player at this point. So, you know, they sort of learned their lesson. They know what the aging curve is now, and they've seen enough of those deals not really work out on the back end that they're not handing them out. And so part of it is just that there are probably fewer mega deals for players who are kind of on the back end of their careers being awarded these days. Well, and I think that the context of sport

just generally has changed around this stuff too, right? Like, you know, if you look at the Wikipedia for the list of largest sports contracts, like there are a lot of recent names on that list. And I think that they sort of all paved the way for us being, you know, it's still a big number. I don't mean to say that like $340 million is nothing like that's a lot,

you know, that's a lot more money than I have. Like his, his per game, his average per game salary is more money than I have. His average per game salary is more money than I have, but I think that the context of it is also just different. We're used to big numbers like this associated with star players in a way that was still very new when it was A-Rod.

I think you're right. The fact that he was leaving made it seem i mean like i remember because i was young and i thought about this stuff in a in a less critical way at the time i was like how dare he like that greedy guy you're a mariner's fan so yeah we were and and they was like that was just not it was such a simplistic way of thinking about it but there have been other big big deals both for guys sticking around and also for guys going to other teams in baseball and in other sports and i think that that kind of numbs you a little bit to the magnitude of it because the gap between fernando tatis jr and like mike trout i realize this is complicated by how much of the contract

is like new money versus not, but let's just set that aside for a second. Like you or Mookie Betts' deal with the Dodgers, you're in the range of the money that Tatis was getting. You're not like, oh my God, a contract that starts with a three. Like what on earth?

And so I think that you're just, we're used to living in that space in a way that when A-Rod signed his deal, it was like, I can't imagine a human person ever signing a contract of this size, like for any sport ever. Like, what are we doing? And now it's like, oh, OK, like, you know, this happens sometimes doesn't happen often, as you note. And I think you're right that like our perception of it when it's a free agent versus not is a little different, but not always. And so it's just it's we're operating in a different landscape. You know, A-Rod walked so that Fernando Torres Jr. could run or something. You make a good point just about the relative size of the A-Rod deal. I'm reading an ESPN piece about that. size of the A-Rod deal. I'm reading an ESPN piece about that. Prior to A-Rod, the biggest sports contract was the six-year $126 million deal that Kevin Garnett signed with the Timberwolves in

1997. So A-Rod doubled the previous largest sports contract and more than doubled the previous largest baseball contract because I think Mike Hampton, who had just signed with the Rockies, got what was then the biggest baseball deal, $121 million over eight years, which exceeded the $116.5 million over nine years that Ken Griffey Jr. had signed with the Reds. And then right after A-Rod signed, Manny Ramirez got an eight-year $160 million deal, so it blew everything out of the water, really, whereas the Tatis deal was the longest ever, but not the biggest ever. Also, the A-Rod deal was negotiated by Scott Boris. So don't overlook the Boris factor.

Boris makes people mad. All right. Maybe we can end with this one, which is about tanking, or I guess this is sort of a, there's two questions here that go hand in hand. So this one is from Tim, Patreon supporter, who says, does tanking or super team better define this era of baseball? So one or the other. It's clear enough that beginning with the 2016 Cubs, baseball is witnessing a run of historically great teams. The run may not be ending anytime soon, either, as the Dodgers are as good as ever and the Padres and Mets are ascendant. However, it feels misleading to define this era solely by the success of these great teams and ignore the tanking process by which some of them were built. Tanking undoubtedly contributed to the absurd winning percentages baseball witnessed during

this era too. In the end, using either term, tanking or super team doesn't quite capture baseball circa 2016 to 2021, so perhaps we need a better descriptor. My vote is for the unbalanced era. Unbalanced not only captures the wins and losses but the nature of the style of the play itself. Even more fittingly between the extremes lies the harmony of Mike Trout and the remarkably unremarkable Angels. What do you think?

So yeah, if we had to call this the tanking era or the super team era, which one would be more fitting? I like the unbalanced era because i think that i think it captures you know it not only captures both ends of the extreme but the relationship between them right that some of some of uh the super team thing is fed off of other teams electing to not compete for a while and and how hard they tank and the duration of that tank and how successful the tanking is obviously varies but it i think it does contribute to some of the the super team stuff um which i suppose is like better than it

not because otherwise everyone would just sort of play for 85 which a lot of teams do so i think unbalanced reflects it very well because it is sort of, we have fatter tails than you would necessarily expect in an environment where more teams were spending closer to their capability or what we estimate their capability to be. Yeah. Certain seasons within this range have definitely had historic levels of, you know, however you measure it, competitive balance, just competitive imbalance, whether it's like standard deviation of team winning percentages or whatever metric you want to use. There have been some years where the gap between the good teams and the bad teams has been far larger than usual. So that's not the

only way that we could sum up this era, but it is certainly one of the distinctive characteristics. And I guess I'd rather, you know, label it the super team era than the tanking era. Probably most people would tend to think of it as the tanking era before the super team era. But, you know, I wouldn't necessarily want to paint the entire era with such a broad brush to call it one or the other. So Unbalanced, I kind of like. It's neutral. I mean, maybe it's semi-derogatory or negative, but it doesn't pass judgment in the way that, I mean, Super Team, it sounds exciting.

It sounds fun. Super Teams, whereas tanking sounds terrible and maybe one is too negative and one is too positive. And unbalanced is right in the middle. It's a nice, happy medium. Yeah, and some teams are bad on accident. Yes. So you've got to account for those too. It's like they look around and they're like,

oh, we weren't even trying to do this. Right, yeah. And that gets at this last question from Ed, who is also a Patreon supporter I've been looking for positive things about baseball today And it occurred to me that the current Rankers and tankers situation Might actually be ideal

It almost ensures that each team's fanbase Will get at least a few glory years Within each 20 or so year span That means the kids in each city Will experience winning at least once Which I think is critical for creating lifelong baseball fans. To me, there is nothing sadder than a 1993 to 2012 Pirates or 1990 to 2012 Royals situation where an entire generation in a city can grow up and never see a good baseball team. years of 110 lost teams isn't sadder than that. I think the best baseball events of the century have been the many generations long title droughts being ended. Red Sox, White Sox, Cubs, Astros, Nationals, etc. Ranking and tanking might be the best way for bringing us more of those.

What do you think? So I don't know that I'd call this ideal necessarily, but I do agree with some of what Ed is saying here, which is why when people bemoan the ills of baseball, I agree with some of them, but tanking is one where I tend to think the problem is a little less extreme than some do or that this is an existential problem for the sport because definitely some of the anti-competitive behavior that we've talked about is not great. And so when you do get teams not spending and content to be mediocre, that's not good for the sport, certainly.

But the tanking thing, I feel like it's a little overblown, and maybe it's just my personal opinion, but I do agree with Ed that there is some virtue to being very bad and then very good again, as opposed to just being meh for years and decades at a time. You know, if I had to choose one or the other, I would probably rather have the tear down and the build up into something good again than the some early eras of baseball, there were teams that weren't trying, you know, the economics of the sport being what they were at the time. And then there were teams that, as you just said, you know, are not trying to be bad, but just were because of incompetence and because not every team can be great at every time. I mean, there are always going to be teams that are on the upswing and

other teams that are on the downswing. So I tend to think that maybe more is made of this than should be, but I think there are some concerning aspects to it. And maybe it's not even the tanking that bothers me as much as it is the just sort of generally being satisfied with not being good enough, right? Which seems to be something that affects more teams than, you know, if we were just talking about strict like Astro style tear down tanks, there aren't that many teams that are doing that at any one given time. And if they do it in waves sort of so that, you know, only a couple are terrible at one time and then the others are getting good again, then that's not so bad. But it can be an issue when a lot of teams are trying that at once because then you have a bunch of

really bad teams that the good teams are beating up on and then also it's harder for those tanking teams to actually get good again on the other side of it and i think that once they're on the other side of it i think the place where i get nervous is if if they're actually going to invest back into their club and we we sometimes do see that um you know it's not like the astros were stingy with contracts once they were on the back end of their rebuild but we don't always and so i think that i agree with you that like there's there is a fair amount of anxiety around it and some of it is is ill-founded but it does require like a surveillance that i don't love like i i think the the part of the modern game that i find the most exhausting is that i feel like we just have to be constantly vigilant because they're

always trying to be a bummer and so we're like like, ah, I got to pay attention all the time. And we have so many other things that candidly, like on the, on the, on a societal scale are like objectively more important than, than this. And so it's like, I can only, I can only surveil so many things at once. So that part of it, I find a little bit exhausting. Um, but yeah, I think that if you are realist, if you're a team and you're being realistic about sort of what your odds of contending are, and then you implement a plan with the're going to do once the back end arrives and you know the risk is that the teardown doesn't work and then you've had a couple of years of being bad and you don't end up being good but as we've said you can just be bad at baseball and not mean to be so i don't know if the intentionality behind that badness is something that i i hold against teams more than i sort of credit them for having a good plan. But it is a thing that I think it's good to be to like, we should keep an eye on it. We should worry about it and the size of bases, I guess.

sports where draft picks matter even more, where that can transform a franchise in a single year if you get the top pick, let's say. Whereas in baseball, that's not something you can count on. And so a lot of the benefits to tanking or whatever we're calling it come from trading away your established stars and veterans to go cheap for a while and get a bunch of prospects back and sort of align your competitive window at a different time than the team you're trading with. So there's in some way less incentive to do it in baseball, but a lot of incentive to just kind of coast because teams are raking in a lot of money as it is, whether they're competitive or not. All right. So that's the end. I suppose I have like a stat blast. Can I give you the stat blast here? I suppose I have like a Statblast, can I give you the Statblast here?

I don't have much to say about it But I have an answer to a question We have no bananas Today Alright, here's the Statblast song They'll take a data set 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 day step blast. And here's the stat blast question. It comes from listener Hayden, who says, Yesterday when listening to my beloved Rangers radio broadcast, longtime announcer Matt Hicks pointed out something that I'd noticed for a while. The Giants, who have always been pitching first, have had a bad offense for quite some time. But he also noted that last season, they ended up fifth in runs per game in the NL, despite scoring fewer than three runs in 25%

of their games. This statistical anomaly came from a game in which they scored 23 runs in one game against the Rockies in late August, which in a 60-game season was enough to buoy their entire season average. So this is something we talked about on our last episode with Grant Brisby. The Giants actually hit last year, but they did a lot of that hitting against the Rockies in one game. Hayden continues, that one game accounted for 7.7% of their 299 runs scored in 2020, it got me wondering, if you exclude 2020, what the highest percentage of a team's season-long runs total came in one game. Being a Rangers fan myself, I thought it might be the 2007 Rangers with their famed 30-run game against the Orioles. Those 30 runs equated to roughly 3.67% of their 816 total runs.

I'm sure there are other more extreme examples of this, but I'd love to know what y'all find. So I emailed frequent StatBlast consultant Adam Ott. This was a simple one for him to look up. So he sent me a spreadsheet as always, and as always, I will link to it on the show page. So he looked looked this two ways one is just using the actual number of games played which varies a lot by season and by team depending on if it's an old timey team or if it was a strike season or whatever so obviously if

you have a shorter season fewer games and you happen to score a ton of runs in one game, then it's easier for you to get an inflated percentage of all of your runs scored in that single game. Sure. 162 game season and just uses their like average runs per game and extrapolates that over the full season and then takes the percentage according to what that projected runs total would be for the full season so for instance he says the Giants were tied for second in 2020 so they weren't actually at the top they were tied for second with the brewers at 7.69 percent of their runs coming in a single game but that's only 2.85 percent of their adjusted total if you extended that to 162 game season atlanta scored 8.33 percent of their runs in a single game last year that's 3.09 percent adjusted which would make them 64th all-time adjusted. And he says the 2007 Rangers, the team that Hayden asked about, they are 10th all-time

proportion of adjusted runs coming in a single game. So if we were to look at it the first way, doing no adjustments, then your winner is the 1918 Cardinals. The 1918 Cardinals, they played 131 games in their season and they scored 22 runs in one game on July 27th. That was 22 of their total of 454. So that was a 4.85% of their total for that year coming in that single game but again that's unadjusted and there are a bunch of dead ball teams toward the top which sort of makes sense probably

that if you weren't scoring a lot of runs in a season at that time if you happen to clump a bunch of them together in one game then it might be easier so you've got a 1901 and a 1909 and a 1918 and a 1906 toward the top here. And the first modern team is the 1978 Blue Jays, who scored 24 runs in a game on June 26th of 78. And that was

a little more than 4% of their 590 on the season. They played 161 games games but if we go with the adjusted metric here your winner the 1909 senators who scored 16 runs in a game on september 18th and that was out of their total of 380 they played 156 games that season so their adjusted number is 4.05%. And then you've got the 1978 Blue Jays second at 4.04. Really, it's a bunch of dead ball teams at the top. And then the 1985 Phillies who scored 26 runs in a game. 1955 White Sox scored 29 runs in a game. And then as Adam mentioned, 2007 Rangers with their 30 out of 816. That was August 22nd, 2007. And you've got the 2004 Royals in 12th. They had a 26 run game and the 2018 Mets with a 24 run game. They are in 13th place. So I'll put all of this online.

If there's a particular outburst you're remembering and you want to see where your team ranks you can look that up oh imagine if you like didn't tune into that game you missed a large percentage of your team's run scoring that season yeah so plus you would have like you would have such an you would have a pretty accurate understanding of your team i mean like if you watched a bunch of them and you would just sit there and feel like you had lost your mind because people would be like, remember that one time?

And you're like, no, but that was just the once. And right. So it's about 4%. That's basically the ceiling. If we look at the adjusted metric or even the unadjusted, it's between four and 5%. That's about where you can max out

when you're clustering all your runs in one game so thanks for the question hayden and thanks for the research adam so that will do it for today thanks for all the good emails there were a bunch that we couldn't get to but we'll get to them in another future email show one day when we are done with the season preview series we'll be doing email shows more regularly. Okay, that will do it for today. Thanks, as always, for listening. You can 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.

Lord Kinboat, X-Files reference, nice. Steve Descala, Casey Shankland, Derek Ma, and Mike Lemaire. 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 coming for me and Meg. Replenish our mailbag by emailing us at podcast at fangraphs.com or by messaging us via the Patreon messaging system if

you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance, and we will be back with one more episode before the end of this week. It'll be another season preview pod, and we'll be talking about the White Sox and the Diamondbacks. Talk to you then. like what on earth yeah like you're some old-timey news person like yeah um um I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. We're going to get such weird reviews after this one. Anyway, this is not me tooting that particular horn. That's not. Anyway. I get like one of these every couple of months.

And as long as it's not every week, I think it's fine. It's like the one-year anniversary of quarantine. We're all supposed to be eligible for vaccines by the end of May. There's a lot going on right now. Yeah, they're changing all the rules at every level of baseball. The base is different, and now apparently home plate is maybe not one. Who knows?