Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1703: Yesterday’s Papers

Episode Date: June 5, 2021

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and Sports Illustrated’s Emma Baccellieri banter about Ryan Yarbrough throwing a rare Rays complete game, then share their thoughts on the recent debate about media access in sports sparked by tennis star Naomi Osaka, touching on how access to athletes compares across sports, the dubious value of press conferences, athletes’ obligations […]

Cause who wants yesterday's papers? Who wants yesterday's good? Who wants yesterday's papers? Nobody in the world I've lived in a life of constant change Every day means a ton of the same Yesterday's fate has a sudden bad news. Same thing applies to me and you.

Hello and welcome to episode 1703 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm all right. How are you? Doing well. We are also joined by a special guest to talk about any number of articles that she has written recently emma bachelorette of

sports illustrated emma how are you i am pretty good how are you i think we're doing okay thank you for joining us of course yeah meg mentioned you've written a lot of things recently and this is not even the thing that we plan to talk to you about. But one thing you wrote is about how the Rays are embracing modern baseball. So I have to ask, Ryan Yarbrough just pitched a complete game. Is this some kind of prank or hoax? How did this happen? The throwback Rays? I would argue this is actually spotlighting the complete game as a new inefficiency, just innovating a little More to make your opener and your closer The same pitcher Yeah right

Save a roster spot I guess yeah There's a five year streak 731 game streak of No complete games by raised pitchers The last one was I think Matt Andrees In 2016 and Here's Ryan Yarbrough Nine innings pitch this wasn't even like a manfred ball seven

inning complete game or something this was nine innings pitched two and run six hits no walks six strikeouts fair number of pitches too it was 113 so it wasn't like he was really super efficient so i don't know if this was just like some display of dominance over the Yankees like we can beat you even without taking our guy out before the third time through the order or whatever or I don't know how this happens but I guess he really earned the bulk guy moniker this time or they wanted to be like really mean to Blake Snell just like stick it to him a little while later it's like when tech bros accidentally invent like city busing. They come up with an entirely new form of pitching.

And it's like, I think that if you pick people up on a regular route and get a couple of them at once, it's just a bus, man. Yeah. I still think Yarbs is a really strange nickname. I kind of like it. It's weird that they didn't go with Yarby or something, which is just always what they do. Yarby. Yarbs. I kind of like Yarbs. But apparently they didn't go with yarby or something which is just always what they do yarbs i kind of like yarbs but apparently according to the mlb.com story he

threw an eight and two-thirds inning game against seattle of course in august of 2019 and he told kevin cash that if he got that far again he wanted cash to let him finish and i guess he did but still he had to get that far again so it was weird but kind of a nice departure from the typical ray's game plan i guess it worked for them your burrow sounds like a kind of cheese german-ish yeah like uh something that has like bite on the back end and maybe is holy like Swiss cheese. So, Emma, we wanted to bring you on to talk about a couple deep dives that you have done recently in the newspapers.com archive to find out what people were saying about previous offensive outages, both in 1968 and in 1917, where there was a cluster of nohitters. And I always enjoyed doing these sort of deep dives myself, and I always enjoy when you do them. So I wanted to talk to you, and we wanted to talk to you

about what you've learned from doing them and also what you turned up in these searches specifically about what people were saying in those previous times when the conversation was sort of the same. But while we had you, I wanted to just bring up a conversation that has been happening over the past week that we haven't really touched on here, and it has been probably done to death at this point. And it's sort of a media, naval, gazey kind of self-indulgent discussion sometimes.

So I don't even know how much people, the public is interested in this conversation, but it came about last week because Naomi Osaka, who was just entering the French open, said that she didn't want to do press conferences. And she, you know, initially she had a couple statements about this and really the whole conversation sort of got sidetracked, I think, from what it probably should have been, which is more about Naomi Osaka and her mental health. And that was kind of the root cause of her bringing this up. It seems like she said she's dealt with depression and she's uncomfortable doing these press conferences and has some form of social anxiety, it seems,

when it comes to these things. And so she wanted to avoid that sort of setting. And I guess it spiraled into a larger discussion because her initial statement made more of a blanket statement, I guess, about press conferences are a waste of time. And she sort of lumped in other tennis players and said, we don't like doing them and there's no purpose to that. So that started this whole media discussion and a backlash from some quarters about athletes not wanting to talk to people and a lack of access and then a backlash to the backlash about how athletes shouldn't have to talk to anyone and the press is unreasonable and press conferences are terrible and then backlashes to those backlashes and on and on it went and the upshot of it all unfortunately was that Osaka pulled out of the French Open and I think the organizers of the tournament initially

kind of came out firing with some statements that probably weren't great either and it seemed like the whole thing was maybe a little bit of talking past each other and miscommunication as I understand it. And maybe there could have been some kind of accommodation here because obviously no one wants one of the best players in the world not to be playing at one of the biggest tournaments

of the year. But this has sort of expanded into other sports and baseball, of course. And there's really nothing I think that media people like to discuss more and chew over than access to athletes. And I saw that you tweeted about this a couple of times, and I was kind of curious about your thoughts on it, just because you do not cover baseball exclusively. And you write about other sports, and you've covered tournaments and press conferences,

and you've seen how other sports handle these things. And so I wonder what takeaways, if any, you have from either your own experiences in baseball or other sports or just the larger conversation about this. do feel for Osaka and I wish this could have gone a different way where she didn't feel like she was in a position where she had to you know pull out of the tournament and take a step back because that really sucks but I think the the bigger takeaway for me here looking at the way that access works in different sports and the way these conversations have played out over the last week is um I mean a just how different it is across different sports, that a lot of this conversation, it seems like to me has kind of had like this monolithic take on sports and sports media, when like, there's a lot of variation here. And with baseball, particularly from the little I've covered of sports outside MLB, I've done, you know, some basketball, some college basketball,

and then WNBA and NBA and a little bit of soccer. And my takeaway from doing those is just to be really grateful for the amount of access we usually have in baseball under not pandemic circumstances. Yeah, just because I think I mean, part of that is the structure of the sport when it's daily, you just have so many more opportunities to talk to people. And I think, you know, I'm certainly not a beat reporter. So it's not like I'm ever seeing the same people day in and day out for months or years at a time. But you know, sometimes for for weeks at a time, some especially, you know, as you get closer to the playoffs, where, you know, you're seeing the same teams over and over and and doing coverage like that, just the familiarity you get from that. And from having access, again, not in pandemic times,

to formats that are not a press conference when you have clubhouse access when you can maybe talk to guys on the field during BP just the opportunity to have conversations that are not as structured that don't put guys on the spot necessarily you know obviously there are some players who are fine with press conference formats and don't really mind it there are others who certainly don't like them as much, which I can't blame them for. But just having had the opportunity to cover sports where you don't have that opportunity for establishing as many personal conversations like that, side conversations, just opportunities to talk to a guy without the recorder going just to see how he feels about something to maybe then initiate a larger

conversation later. It makes me really grateful for the kind of stories you can do when you do have the opportunities that baseball gives you to talk to guys not in a press conference and then when you compare it to a sport like soccer is not great for access at all and it's very hard when you only have little snippets from the mixed zone or from press conferences. Basketball is kind of in between the two where you do have open locker rooms, but it's less time. It's obviously not the daily nature that you have in baseball. And so, yeah, I think there are lots of ways to cover sports that aren't press conferences. I don't think press conferences are the best format for it. But even though we've, at this point, because of the pandemic, been having pressers exclusively for a while, I think you can still find interesting things in press conferences. And I don't know, that's not really a point. But I guess just looking at there are many different ways that this is done across sports. It takes different forms, and there are different benefits to it. And it's not just all one sports or sports media.

not just all one sports or sports media. Well, and I would imagine that with someone like Osaka, it's like you take the existing landscape, which as you correctly note is varied sport to sport. And then even within tennis, it's not like she's the... I'm going to betray my ignorance of tennis here. So I apologize to all of our tennis fans. It's not like she's the hundredth rated player on the tour. She's literally one of the biggest stars in the world, not just in tennis, but across that and across the sporting world more generally. I would imagine that it has to be incredibly overwhelming to field whatever requests for interviews you get when you're that high profile of an athlete, regardless of the existing infrastructure around access. it's like you have this system that is designed to sort of limit your

access to these snippets. And then even within that, you are the most, one of the most in demand players on the tour. So I have to think that it's just like an avalanche of requests all the time. Yeah. And I think also with tennis, the the way that it works the idea that it's i mean incredibly mentally and physically grueling to be out there as long as you are and then if you lose which i mean part of this is osaka traditionally has not been great on clay which the french open is and so already had some you know anxiety coming into it potentially handling a loss there you don't have that much time at all before you you've gone out there from playing for you know three hours to then having to sit in that

presser as a after a loss like that can't be easy at all and I think that's very different from I mean obviously in team sports you can have someone who is carrying the weight of that I mean a closer after he blows a save, whatever. But it's not quite the same as like, you have personally been giving 100% of your effort for that long. And now you have like 10 minutes before you have to get in front of people. But I think there's a lot of things that make that structure very hard in an individual sport. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there are misconceptions maybe. Yeah. Reporters would prefer not to do press conference if they could get some kind of more intimate access. It's just that that's often I mean, just the public, people on Twitter. They don't really care that much, which is understandable about whether reporters are getting that access.

They just want to watch the players play. On the other hand, I think there are real benefits, even to the public and to the athletes themselves in some cases, to having reporters as those intermediaries. Like this conversation, I think, just keeps coming up because of how access has changed and the way that athletes now have a direct conduit to the public and they have social media and they can put out statements with PR apparatuses and the teams and the players, especially the huge stars, don't necessarily need newspapers, you know, or even digital outlets the way that in the past they once might have to get their message out. So I think that leads to a lot of anxiety about reporters who are feeling like, oh, are they going to cut out the middle people here and they will just shut us out. And in some cases, I think athletes and celebrities are really good at just getting whatever their message is across or sharing their personality themselves. And in other cases, not really. And in some cases, it helps to have people to tell

the story or frame things or even just people who wouldn't really search out the limelight. And we just wouldn't know things about them if someone weren't asking them these questions. Just thinking about baseball, a lot of the really popular personalities in baseball, some of them are popular because they just go straight to the masses, but a lot of them aren't. A lot of it just comes out of interviews and long Q&As and everything.

Think of all the interviews we've read over the years with Joey Votto, for instance, and the access that people have had to him and how that's helped flesh him out as a personality in the public eye. I do think a lot would be lost. There's a misconception, I think, because when sometimes reporters ask really bad questions like in a press conference setting, and maybe it's someone who's not normally credentialed or is new or just has some specific angle or ax to grind or something. And so that will go viral maybe and give all of the press a bad name. And so people make fun of the talk about questions that don't

really have any substance to them and beat writers who just kind of have to get a boilerplate quote in their copy and aren't really thinking in depth about the question, which is tough to do if you're covering a team and a player on a day-to-day basis. But there are a lot of really good questions too, and a lot of interesting insights that come out in those settings, and especially in clubhouse settings that we wouldn't have if we were just shut out. So I think part of it's just professional anxiety and just like if your job depends on access to some extent, or if that is a difference maker for you, then obviously you don't want to lose that and you're going to get kind of protective.

And maybe you're even going to get sort of snippy at other media members who are suggesting that access should be cut off. And it's like, you're a traitor if you're trying to restrict our access. But I think there's also a lot of value in things that would be lost that, like, I don't know if we have experienced the best of directly just because we're not beat writers who are covering a single team on a day-to-day basis and building those relationships. Like when I go to a clubhouse, I'm kind of parachuting in to talk to someone who maybe I haven't met before and don't really know, but need to ask a specific question. But if you are in there every day, then things come out that wouldn't otherwise. And sometimes it's just happy, fun things. and sometimes it's people who kind of get called on the carpet if there's someone there to ask them that question and otherwise there wouldn't be yeah i mean i think just the relationship building you can get which sometimes is important to tell stories that are you know really crucial that just the trust that you can get that requires i think being able to form those relationships outside of like press

conference settings. And so I think that access is so important for that. And I mean, who knows what that's going to look like after the pandemic. I think tying into what you said about the like professional anxiety component of this conversation, I think a big part of it is that right now it's the future looks very uncertain because we're still mostly under the pandemic protocols. And, you know, once you've lost that access, it's hard to imagine, you know, is it coming back exactly as it was? Will there be changes? I think that's probably another layer of that anxiety that's fueling the high emotions of this conversation. But yeah, I mean, it's complicated. I certainly understand why people dislike various aspects of this.

Like there are obviously some terrible questions that are asked. I mean, both just like silly questions and outright insulting questions. Yeah. And I mean, there are lots of bad press conferences out there, but there's also there's also plenty of good ones that provide important information that people then like use to understand their teams as fans and to learn more about what they're watching and how it happens. And so, yeah, I mean, I just, I think the access is important and I hope that we're able to hang on to as much of it as we can. Yeah. I think that there's, you know, this is a good opportunity for,

even though I don't want to equate the access situations across all sports and say that the structure is the same or the nature of the relationships that reporters can build with, with athletes are the same. I do think it's a good opportunity for some, you know, self-reflection on the part of media members to think about how, you know,

they're utilizing those relationships. I think one of the great things about the relationships that be writers can build with players is they also kind of, you know, they develop a sense of like when to leave a guy alone, right? So that's part of the push and pull of the relationship is that you have a sense of what's going on with someone. And so hopefully in these moments when they are experiencing stressors that are either the results of their on-field performance or from stuff away from the game that you, you know, you're able to navigate that the way you would any interpersonal relationship and sort of know when to ask and when to push and when not to. And, you know, there's obviously like a huge racial component to the particular coverage

and experience of the media that Osaka has. And so like that, I think, is something that we can continue to have a period of reflection and hopefully improvement around. And I don't know, like I think that there's probably a way forward here that allows continued access to athletes that is important both for our understanding of the sports and for folks to do their jobs while also having compassion for the individual situations. I think it's hard when we do feel access is under pressure because any concession to like give someone the space they need because their mental health is not, you know, consistent day to day, right? We all experience fluctuations and that sort emotional. But you're right, Ben. I think hopefully the conversation we can recenter around is like, how do we best sort of serve and respect mental health issues in what is fundamentally a workplace, even

if it's a very public one that comes with this expectation of sort of press interface, which is not an easy question to answer. And so I'm really glad that we're litigating it on Twitter because surely it will be found there. Right. Yeah, exactly. There were a lot of truly terrible takes in the first round of the discourse. And I think maybe part of that was once Osaka came out with her second statement and it was very clear that this was a mental health issue, a serious thing that she struggled with more so than not wanting to answer another question about not winning on clay or whatever. I think there was more sympathy and

I think probably a lot more sympathy and understanding than there would have been in the past, which is good. And so I think in the first statement, which definitely alluded to that, but wasn't quite as explicit or made it seem like more of a broader issue. And as I've seen other people point out, if you are dealing with depression or other mental health challenges, you may not be in the best headspace to express what you're thinking or feeling or what you need from others or to ask for help. So if that first message didn't quite come out perfectly, it's certainly understandable. But i think people responded to that maybe just the usual you know athletes are selfish or entitled or whatever terrible takes but also i think maybe people were worried that there would be kind of a slippery slope like

if you let one athlete say well i'm not comfortable doing this or whatever then do all the other athletes who you, probably a lot of them on the whole would rather not do it if they didn't have to, just because it can be a hassle or a pain or takes up their time or whatever, then will they all, you know, try to get out of it and say, this makes me uncomfortable. And maybe that is kind of concern trolling to say that that would happen. But again, I think people who actually depend on this access are always so vigilant about any erosion in it. And I can understand why an athlete would feel that way. I can't put myself in the place of someone who gets asked as many questions as Osaka. It's

unimaginable. It must be such a deluge. But the only things that I can say that would be even remotely comparable, and to be clear, it's not even close, but when one of my books has come out and you do a media blitz around that for maybe a few weeks, if you're fortunate, after the book comes out, at first, you can't wait because it's like you've been sitting on this thing for months or years or whatever, and you want to share it with the world and it's flattering to be asked questions about it. And there's nothing better than getting an opportunity to talk about it. But then like after a few weeks, especially if you're doing a lot of interviews with people who don't know you or, you know, haven't really prepared or haven't read the thing that you wrote or whatever, and just kind of ask the same basic questions over and over, then it just starts to become rote after a while and you still

appreciate the interest and the promotion and all of that, but it's a little less mentally engaging because you're not really thinking about what you're saying anymore even. And so when I'm on the other end of that, which is typically the case and I'm trying to do interviews, I try to differentiate myself and not ask exactly the same question that this person has been asked a million times before. And I'll look up previous interviews and try to avoid things. But there are only so many questions. Generally, if you're talking to someone about something, it's probably for a specific reason. And no matter how much you try, you probably are going to tread on some ground that they've heard before.

And that's why baseball players default to the cliches and, you know, trying to help the team and take it day by day or whatever, because you have to have something to say. So yeah, I've periodically wondered if I have just, you know, like not a great day of writing it like to imagine if there were a numbers to quantify exactly how bad my day was and put it in context. And I had to answer questions about it. Like, I would also be saying tomorrow's another day, like every single time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's true. I guess we're protected, hopefully from traffic quotas and the like, or at least I've been lucky in that respect. But yeah. And I think also people maybe misunderstand like how a press conference can be for some people a more anxiety inducing setting than like, you know, center court in the finals of a Grand Slam, which is like hard to

put yourself in that place, I guess, because one sounds more terrifying to me than the other. And I think when you think of athletes as like public figures and everything they do is on display and everyone is watching them all the time. And so you figure, well, what's the hardship of asking a question? But it can be, it can be more of a hardship for many people. So being famous and successful and wealthy doesn't make you immune to these difficulties. And that's something that a lot of athletes are increasingly opening up about, including many baseball players. I think that's something that you have to understand too, like remembering Zach Granke and when he dealt with social anxiety in baseball and maybe still

does, he would talk about how the mound was his happy place sort of. And when he was pitching, he was okay. And then it was the other times and all of the interactions that were required of him that were the most challenging and why he had to step away from baseball. And that's probably why he still doesn't do a ton of interviews. And like,

when he always says something, Joe Pesnanski just wrote about this this week, but when Grinke always says like, well, heanski just wrote about this this week, but when Granke always says like, well, he wouldn't want to win a Cy Young because it would be a hassle or he wouldn't want to throw a no hitter because it would be a hassle or something. And everyone says, oh, that's Granke being Granke and he's quirky and he doesn't care about the things that most people care about. And that is endearing in a way.

And yet also maybe it's because like the hassle you know it is a real thing it's a real impediment like doing a lot of interviews about those things wouldn't actually be worth it to him so there's probably a deeper underlying issue there yeah it's tough i i do not envy them for for that aspect of their jobs and i i think that's hopefully this whole thing can be a reflection for more sensitivity and care with the way that reporters treat that access. Because I think it is important to have a press corps that has the opportunity to tell stories that involve that access, but also it's a huge responsibility to be caring and sensitive and appropriate with it. And we should say, I know that friend of the show, C. Trent Rosecrans, president of the BBWA and others there are working really hard on restoring that access.

And they sent out an update this week, which it sounds like there's some progress there, at least with media members in baseball getting back on the field before the game and not having to social distance if they're vaccinated. And that hopefully that will be a prelude to clubhouses opening up again at some point. And that's all collectively bargained and it's not entirely in media members control, but I know that people are working really hard on advocating for those things. And it sounds like Monday is

when media members will be allowed onto the field. Trent said that he and others have heard from some players that they would actually welcome people back into the clubhouse. Like, I think that's a big concern is that like, yeah, baseball does sort of have this special year and a half or two years or whatever, just because of the circumstances, then will there actually be inertia that just prevents it from snapping back into place? And that's happened in other sports and can sometimes be an excuse to restrict access that people might've wanted to do anyway. And I mean, just putting myself in baseball players place, I don't know if I were a baseball player, would I mind that the place where I like sit at my locker before the game and get changed and walk to and from the shower and everything is not like populated with strangers with recorders all the time? Probably not personally, even though I think I would probably enjoy answering some questions at least.

But I know Trent said that he's heard that some baseball players are in favor of opening the doors again and letting people back in. And I guess they might say something different to a reporter who's asking them about that than to their teammates or their friends. But still, it's nice to hear that at least some players see some value in it. And some of them benefit both in terms of exposure or if they're interested in future media careers of their own. That is something that I think you make those connections with media members and that's how you end up on a panel or you're a talking head on MLB Network someday or whatever. So there can be some benefits. It's not

just entirely a one-way parasitic sort of relationship. So I guess we have done our media criticism conversation. Everyone was waiting for Effectively Wild to weigh in on this topic because really it had been so undercovered this week. You know, reporters like to talk about reporting, I suppose. So hopefully people will forgive us for that. Sparing everyone the split infinitive conversation. So it could be a lot worse. And whether you can say very unique or not.

It's like it's anyway. One more thing I meant to mention about the access issues. Joe Girardi kind of ruffled some feathers recently where he admitted to hiding Bryce Harper's injury and pretending that he might be available when he wasn't. And then he also declined to explain his rationale for a strategic decision. And he said, you know, he's just he's not going to explain those things anymore. It's like an organizational stance that the Phillies are just going to say it was a manager's decision and he's not going to share anything on who's available or who's not or why he did certain things necessarily Because he feels like it's a competitive advantage to the Phillies for their opponents not to know what they're doing or why they're doing those things And this is not totally new for Girardi

I remember him doing some things like this in New York where he would maybe sort of obscure injuries or he would explain why he made a mid-plate appearance pitching change by saying strategy, which I enjoyed, of course. But he, I think, said he was going to be open and honest about everything when the Phillies hired him. So this was seen as a reversal of sorts. And it's maybe related to what we were saying because if you're just doing everything remotely and via zoom like it's probably easier to hide someone who's you know nursing an injury and if you're not seeing them getting treatment on that in the clubhouse or they don't have to lie to your face when you're in the same room with them then

that kind of thing is maybe easier to get away with. But I wonder where you stand on sort of teams lying or omitting information to try to preserve some purported competitive advantage. Yeah, I mean, I am skeptical of the idea that it gives you a great advantage that there's that much to be gained in that. But mostly from the stance of when it comes to like not explaining various managerial or strategic decisions it feels like it's a negative on all sides i mean obviously i have a bias here as a reporter but i tend to think like if you have a chance to explain yourself not every explanation is good of course like sometimes you hear an explanation for a very strategic move and it's just it is silly frankly but a lot of times like at least

having the chance to explain it makes it better for you as a manager as a team that you can see there what here is what the thinking was behind that even if that thinking perhaps was flawed or you know didn't have a great outcome um it just seems better on all sides to generally have transparency on those things that obviously it makes for better coverage, I think, when reporters can accurately say, like, this is why this happened, rather than having to guess or try to source it around the edges. If it is a managerial choice, then maybe that makes it clear that a player doesn't need to come under fire for some of these things. Just accurately putting the responsibility where it should be. I don't know. It just seems like it is better for all parties on a lot of those things to actually be able to explain your thinking and show why something ended up working out the way it did. show why something ended up working out the way it did and uh i'm skeptical for the idea that the fillers are getting that much out of not explaining but to use their own i guess yeah it's not like

in the nfl if you're like is this quarterback going to be starting and you might like game plan your entire like defense or whatever just differently based on that and in baseball it's like you know is the fifth reliever going to work tonight or not? Or even if it's Bryce Harper, I don't know. It seems like most people pitch to their strengths more so than the opponent's weaknesses. And it probably just doesn't determine the outcome of the game as much. So it seems kind of like petty almost to to do it i guess you know

he's not necessarily under any obligation to be forthright about all of these things but it just seems like why draw a line there i guess especially just because like if you're the manager and you're one of the spokespeople for the organization and like that's part of your job and so you kind of want people to cover you in a certain way and obviously reporters are going to get snippy if they feel like they are being lied to and they can't trust anything you're saying you know who the the injury lineup stuff does really tick off though gamblers yeah that too so i i imagine that if there is intervention here, it will be for those reasons. Because it makes hard for your little bets, your little bitty bets.

Exactly. Yep, that is true. Yeah. And Girardi has like, you know, he's kind of had an up and down relationship with the press over the years, I think. And that was sort of what I was saying about how maybe if you're a player who has aspirations of being oh, this is, you know, these are the top 10 like future managers in baseball. And of course, they're all like white catchers. they study the game in a certain way and break things down and that they're like articulate in the way that a manager you know is expected to be then that can kind of help with that reputation as like oh future coach future manager and then maybe that helps you get that job someday down the road so that's a factor too so we wanted to talk to you emma about what people were saying

in the past about offensive droughts. And really, I guess the solution to this whole access problem is just to listen to what people who are probably dead now said like 100 years ago in newspapers.com. So really, you don't need to talk to living people when you have this whole archive, although I guess that archive depended on that access existing at some point. So we should be happy that that happened. So just as a lead in to this discussion, I just wanted to bring up Rob Arthur's article infield shift, but outfield positioning, which is sort of undercovered and maybe makes more of an impact and not even just necessarily like a four-man outfield or some sort of extreme thing where you have all the outfielders in one side of the field or something, but just basic positioning, how deep you stand, are you moving left and right, depending on which hitter is up, that sort of thing, which is really subtle, but seemingly according to what we can tell, which is tough because StatCast, at least currently, doesn't give the public the starting position of every fielder on every play, but you can see averages and changes over time and you can sort of suss these things out indirectly. And so Rob's conclusion in his most recent article, the headline're talking by 10, 11, 12 feet on average. And that really seems to correlate with declines in batting average on balls in play at those positions. like some teams are moving their fielders back a lot of teams and are surrendering some texas

leaguers and bloopers that are falling in in front of outfielders but that the trade-off seems to be worth it because there are more deeper balls hit than there are shallow ones and also because those deeper ones would turn into doubles and triples whereas the shallow ones turn into doubles and triples, whereas the shallow ones turn into singles. And so it seems like this is really making a big difference here. So reading from Rob here, the findings here support the idea that teams are consciously backing up their fielders to improve overall defensive efficiency and suppress the most dangerous kind of offense, extra base hits. And he brings up the Theo Epstein USA Today piece that we talked about earlier this week. He says they also showcase the exact kind of vicious cycle Epstein alluded to in his quote, by taking away doubles, triples, and sacrifices, teams incentivize hitters not

to put the ball in play. Why bother getting on base when the main way to score is via home run? The model predicts that there would be a thousand more hits this year if we had the same defense in 2021 that we had in 2016. hits this year if we had the same defense in 2021 that we had in 2016. With a thousand more hits on the field, we'd be on track for the highest BABIP 314 in many years, which accords with the spike in hard contact and exit velocity. Batters are putting the ball in play forcefully when they don't strike out. It's just that defenses are better than ever able to convert those hard hit balls into outs. Pro-rated over the full year, there would be about another 3,000 total hits.

We tend to think of shifts as the dominant new defensive tactic of the last decade. I've argued before that this viewpoint is mistaken. Infield shifts are extremely visible, but the case for their efficacy is mixed. They probably reduce BABIP sometimes, but may exact an offsetting penalty that makes the overall effect on offense minimal.

This analysis suggests shifts are more like the tip of a defensive efficiency iceberg that's walloping offense across the league. So this is pretty fascinating, I think, if Rob is onto something, because Babbitt being down is a big factor in offense and batting average being down. People talk about strikeouts, and that's important,

and people talk about how the ball is behaving about strikeouts and that's important. And people talk about how the ball is behaving this year and that matters too. But I think that matters a little less than many people have made it out to. We're still at a almost all-time high home run rate and home run rate on contact. So it's the BABIP decline that is really notable. Like 292 last year, which I think was the lowest since 1992, which was before expansion and before another ball change probably. And that was a weird pandemic year, so you could kind of write it off, but now 288 and we haven't seen 280 something in a really long time. And I don't know if that'll come up a bit as the summer goes on, but not enough to be where

it was in recent seasons. So that's pretty significant. I don't know what you made of this piece. Yeah, I thought it was really interesting. And it mostly just struck me how little I had thought about this before, which I think when he gets at it with the idea that the shift with the infield is visible, like you see that so clearly. And even when it comes to infield positioning that's not the shift but just like shading your fielders pretty significantly like i'm pretty likely to notice that but i'm usually not like even if i'm at a game where i have the ability to look wherever i want to and i'm not at the mercy of the television cameras um which certainly aren't

going to show you the outfielders backing up a tiny bit even if i'm deciding what to look at i'm usually not looking out there at least not closely enough to notice when someone is taking a few steps back and positioning themselves like this. So yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I think it is a pretty compelling argument with the data he's put together here. And it was mostly just striking to me that this seems like it has been in front of our face for a while it would explain a lot of the the babbitt stuff we've seen um which as you said is just so unusual and i i think am i right in saying that you wrote about babbitt last year in the pandemic yeah yeah because it started super low and then it rebounded a bit but it still ended up pretty low and it's weird because uh exit velocities keep increasing especially this year with the ball maybe being a little lighter or smaller.

It's leaving the bat faster. And so it's odd. And that's kind of been a mystery for a long time about why BABIP has been pretty stable for decades, even as other changes have happened. And so that made it seem like everything was kind of constant, but maybe it was some changes that were offsetting other changes. And so it was hard to see on the surface. So yeah, like you said, even if you're in the park, you know, you would notice if you saw like a side-by-side shot of an outfielder playing 10 feet deeper, but would you notice if you only see what he's doing on that day? You know, not necessarily.

Like outfields are pretty big, so it might be hard to tell depending on where you are. And yeah, as you said, you're pretty much never going to be able to tell that on TV. And it's not easily tractor quantified. I guess distance from home plate is, but it's not as glaringly obvious as people playing like on a totally different side of the field from where they have traditionally stood. So it sort of escaped our notice a little bit. And yet. Like I remember in 2016 when the Cubs had that incredible defensive season, part of that was that they had moved Dexter Fowler back significantly in the outfield. And that was like an analytics driven decision. And Joe Maddon said to get guys a little deeper is probably the right thing to do. Keep the extra base hit out of it and permit the single. Now when the ball bloops in front of you in the latter part of the game and the run scores everybody goes nuts percentage wise it's probably better to play these guys a little deeper and i think that fowler's defensive metrics improved and there was a a case where i think he helped save a jake arietta no hitter because he was playing deep and that might have helped him get to a ball so speaking about the the no hitters you know one play can make the difference so that was one case i recall

and then the following year with the orioles and adam jones he backed way up all of a sudden and he said at the time the number guys are smarter than the players it's weird playing a little deeper but that's the way our front office wants me to play. I'm not insubordinate. I will do what they ask and sacrifice in other areas. That's what they see in the data. That almost sounds sarcastic. I don't know if he's like, I don't know if he was entirely earnest about that, but that was what they were telling him to do. And I guess it seemed to make a difference. And that's also pretty intriguing to me the idea That like for all of baseball History maybe outfielders Were playing too shallow which is

Pretty interesting like with the Shift yeah like you would think it Would have been more intuitive like stand where the Ball is going to go but at least You had sort of at least after A certain amount of time you kind of had the Understanding okay I'm on this side of second Base and that side of second base.

And so you were like really breaking a boundary if you crossed over. Whereas backing up doesn't seem like that big a deal. I mean, you probably remember like in Little League when a big hitter was up, everyone said, okay, back up. Right. So it's not really like that revolutionary seemingly. revolutionary seemingly so the idea that like the best players in the world were standing like too shallow on the whole and that they were costing their teams runs and hits over the course of you know hundreds of years that's pretty amazing and i guess it's kind of like maybe the the risk aversion i don't know of like not wanting to be too deep and and to have balls falling in front

of you all the time and maybe you're worried that that will be more deep and to have balls falling in front of you all the time, and maybe you're worried that that will be more common and it'll make you look bad. Like if the ball falls in front of you, people think that's on you, whereas if it goes over your head, well, that was hit hard, and people are more likely to think it wasn't playable

and less likely to blame you. It's just kind of amazing to me that something like that, which you would think might have been something that you could kind of intuit, apparently wasn't. And now everyone has been taught the better way to do it, apparently. This makes me think that we need, you know, we have this proliferation of available broadcasts and you get a lot, there are a lot more camera angles than we see on the broadcast, right, that are available to us. And I think we need trend cam that is just from the press box view and gives you the whole field, sort of like the All-22 in football. So that if you decide that what you want to do is spend an entire game just watching outfield positioning, that you have the ability to do that. So that we can peek at this stuff.

Because I think you're right, it's really hard on a traditional traditional broadcast they understandably are concerned with infield action because that's where the pitcher and the hitter are and the only time you ever really see the outfielders moving around is when like uh the the bench coach is doing big hands to to tell the guy to move and then he's looking at his card and he's like i gotta move because a big hands on the card and then you you see him move but often that's like laterally rather than sort of front to back. So yeah, we need trend. We need lab league and we need trend cam. These are my solutions to baseball.

This is how I solve it. Do you like it when the chyron shows the positioning of the infielder? Sometimes it shows it like either it flashes it or maybe it even shows it permanently do you do you like having that there sure yeah i guess like it doesn't bother me i'm not i don't find it disruptive to my viewing experience and i it can be kind of informative to see where guys are playing um because sometimes if it's a team you watch less often you maybe don't have an intuitive feel for who everyone is from the zoomed out view right so it's useful to to have it confirmed that

oh yeah that's where the shortstop really is playing you know the third baseman really is that deep so yeah i i like it i think it's fine do people not like that i think i like it yeah yeah yeah it'd be hard to do again with the outfield right i guess it's fine do people not like that i think i like it yeah yeah yeah it'd be hard to do again with the outfield right i guess it's just harder to really notice the difference and it's also harder to prevent this like if you decide that this is actually a big problem how do you stop that because like banning the shift which again i i'm not really in favor of or certainly wouldn't be a top priority for me it's at least fairly easy to do it like you can say that people can't stand on the outfield grass they can't start the play there or you have to have a certain number of infielders on one side

a second or whatever like there are rules that you can put in place pretty clearly there but what do you do if the issue is depth if it's just outfielders or third baseman or whoever just backing up 10 feet how do you stop that do you make them wear smaller gloves do you make the field bigger which we've talked about do you start drawing lines on the field where you can only stand in front of this line or something like i guess that's doable but it would be weird and you would have to have like visible painted lines on on the field which would be unusual give them little circles to stand in and you're not allowed to leave your circle until the ball is hit yeah i guess so which like philosophically i i kind of like the idea that

people can stand wherever they want but i don't know like if this is an issue. Again, I think putting the ball in play more should be the top, top priority. But if they find a way to do that and then there still aren't a lot of hits because defenses are so efficient at positioning and talented too, then yeah, I don't know. Maybe you do just start having to have lines on the field. A lot of other sports have a lot of lines on the field and they do okay, I guess. So that's fine, but it would be a big change certainly. So yeah, just because this is subtle, it's harder to notice. And so I guess it's also harder to prevent, but pretty important apparently. So I will link to that piece for everyone to check out and maybe we'll talk to Rob about it at some point. But I assume that that at least was not something they were saying in 1968, or if they were, they were not

citing StatCast data. So tell us, I guess, just before we get into these specific pieces, like what inspires you to do these deep dives on what people were saying long ago? How did this become part of your quiver as a writer and reporter? Part of it is just that I really love my newspapers.com subscription and want to get my money out of it. I mean, most of it is just one of my favorite things about baseball and having this as kind of my main beat is just how much history there is. And the fact that almost anything you're looking at you there's probably been some variation of it before even if it's not exactly the same and it's just especially when it seems like the conversation is predominantly centering on like we've never

seen this before this is totally new this is a novel problem for baseball to solve which i think because of social media and the way that discussion happens now, I think usually tends to go in that direction, which is a little more hyperbolic than it probably needs to be. This usually has been done before. And especially with something like this and the way that we're talking about the offensive environment right now, it's like, well, there was a very famous case, like in the lifetime of people who are still alive now like not something from you know this isn't the dead ball era like we're not that far removed from a time when baseball looked at the offensive environment we gave it a name we called it the year of the pitcher and decided that we had to

change the structure of the game to you know kind of make the offense a little more level and restore that balance between pitchers and hitters like this isn't totally unprecedented there I figure maybe there were some lessons to learn from the way that we talked about it in 1968 like as a public and baseball itself MLB the commissioner's office teams etc what there was to take away from how those conversations unfolded and also I was curious about how we ended up deciding that lowering the mound and adjusting the strike zone were the things to do like I really had no idea when I went into it like was that always the the you know leading suggestion did they zero in on that in

like over the summer and then decide to go through with it or were they throwing out a bunch of ideas like we kind of are now like you're seeing all the various things being tested in the Atlantic League other discussions about what else can be done um I was just kind of curious to see how did we decide that those two were the things that were going to be done and was not particularly surprised to see that there were actually suggestions of a lot of different things. And it just so happened that those were the two that stuck, but they weren't the only two. I enjoy this tactic too. I use it often if I can, you know, if I'm writing about moving the mound back, then if I can quote someone from 1891 or whatever, who was saying we need to move the mound back because pitchers are too good, then I don't know what it is, but somehow like trotting out these things that people said a really long time ago, it's like, okay, we had this conversation before they change something and it addressed the problem. It's like really helpful to have that historical example, especially if like something was done and the problem was corrected, at least

temporarily. It's like, hey, we can save ourselves a lot of trouble here. Potentially we can just learn from history. That's the nice thing about history, hopefully, is that we don't repeat the mistakes and we do repeat the successes. So we talk ourselves in circles about all of this stuff. And it makes me almost self-conscious knowing that like almost everything we ever say about this has been said and written before, which I guess I feel good about the fact that maybe in a hundred years people will be quoting us unless like they're making us sound really dumb and everything we said was like totally off base then that would be bad I guess but it's nice that you know people are paying attention even after

you're gone but also it does make me think that none of us ever has an original thought and I have brought this up on the podcast before I think but maybe the most influential course I ever took in college was this class called Baseball in American Society taught by Professor Chandra Manning. And it was an American Studies class where we just looked at the links between baseball and how it reflects American history and all of that. And we were assigned all of these primary sources. And when we got the syllabus on the first day, it was like, oh, boy, I think a lot of people took this class because it had baseball in the title. And no, there's actually a lot of reading here. This is not just an easy course that you take if you have to take something. maybe and see that people were saying exactly the same things and complaining about the same things and having the same baseball is dying discussion that we were always having as you have written about also emma so that i think was helpful for me just to keep in mind as we have these

discussions again it's like first of all we should probably figure out what they were saying before but also not everything is a new and unprecedented crisis like most things have happened before and all of this has happened before and will happen again which i guess is a lesson i could have learned from battlestar galactica anyway but like still it it can really be enlightening i think to do these things and also you get the old-timey baseball writer language which is just you know the best part of it. It's so good. We need to bring back bingle as a term for our base hit. Bingle.

I'm curious if you have a sense, Emma, of – one thing that I've kind of wondered about in looking at the prior offensive panics is sort of how much folks had their dander up and whether we at times might be sort of bailed out in our panic by being able to look at just more stats in order to put stuff into context, right? And I know that batting average wasn't the only thing that they were looking at in the year of the pitcher, and obviously the scoring, the literal scoring environment was different then versus now because of home run stuff. literal scoring environment was different than versus now because of home run stuff. But I wonder if they would have had, you know, a greater suite of stats to look at if they might have been like, well, yeah, things are bad. But this like tiny thing might indicate to us that things are not as bad, or it puts it in a slightly different context. What what is your sense of just how, how panicked people really were at the time?

Yeah, that's something I did wonder about because, I mean, just from looking at newspapers, you can see the columnists were very concerned about this. But did columnists represent the average fan? Like, it's hard to say. And I also would have been curious. I have no idea if television ratings and radio were shifting. Like, were they concerned that people weren't watching games? That's something that I didn't watching games i that's something that i

didn't really get a great sense of from this and i would be curious to see more about that because i know right now it feels like a lot of the conversation is tied into like the ball isn't being couldn't play enough and that's why baseball is dying like or this is why baseball needs to take action to get young fans whatever and most of the conversations that seem like they were being discussed in in columns and what you heard players talking about basically all of the sports media coverage was like this is bad for baseball because it is like baseball as an institution is suffering when we don't have the game looking like it normally looks like but it wasn't put in the context of that like macro concern of do people care about this who aren't us, basically?

So I am interested in that, and I'm not totally sure. But I think the stats point is a great one, because you're right, it was primarily just batting average and runs per game are really the only numbers that were cited in terms of the structural things. Obviously, you had ERA across the league was very low, and you had Bob Gibson and other players posting crazy numbers and those individual numbers were picked out. But in general, it was pretty much just batting average and scoring runs per game, which I do wonder if there would have been a little more nuance to the conversation if you had something to look at that wasn't just batting average, kind of as a blunt tool for looking at the whole of the offensive environment. Right. And it's not as if, you know, if you look at some of the peripheral stuff now,

it's not like you're like, oh, actually, offense is fine, right? That's not the takeaway that you have. But I do think that from a diagnostic perspective, it is useful to see like where exactly things are slumping, like, you know, BABIP is down, people are still hitting the ball hard, all of that is information that allows us to sort of say what the exact nature of the problem is and then identify which of the solutions that we've just been debating for the last hundred years are most applicable in this moment. And so I don't envy them. They're like sort of limited view. They managed to find the right solution and course correct. But it is interesting to just think about what the like diagnostic environment was then versus now, which isn't to say that we will fix things because, you know, we're all terrified of change. But it is interesting to kind of think about what tools they even had at their disposal to properly say, here's what the problem is, you know? Well, one of the things that was really fascinating to me was that after the season,

in 68, they had the general managers meeting in november and the way that they ended up deciding that they were going to lower the mound and shrink the strike zone this didn't come from the top down this wasn't like now we see it's usually the commissioner's office proposing these big changes what they had was they asked the general managers to make suggestions like to draft an official thing and then they would pick from those which seemed like it was the best and the five suggestions that the GM sent were lowering the mound and shrinking the strike zone which of course happened but the other ones the other three are stuff that we're still talking about today one was instituting a pitch clock which was really fascinating for me

to see because no one was complaining about games being too long. They just thought that if pitchers have more time, they'll pitch better. And so even though there was not really a concern over pace of play at the time at all, it was just, okay, maybe if we institute a clock, they'll start hurrying up a little more and it'll throw them off. The second of the three that was discarded was cracking down on illegal substances, which obviously is very much a thing right now. Basically, what it was to allow an umpire to declare illegal any pitch suspected because of the flight of ball of having an illegal substance on it. I think at the time,

the environment was more if you think a guy is using something like you should talk to him, but you can't declare it illegal and take the ball. Obviously, that's changed now. But that was one of the rules they suggested in 68. And then the last one was to designate a minor league to be a spot to try out other new rules in the future, which was a Bill Vax suggestion, because he thought that it would be a great way to create publicity around the minors, which was not wrong, I don't think. But yeah, it was just crazy to me that I'm not sure exactly what diagnostic tools they were using there, especially the idea of the pit clock when it seems like they weren't even commenting on time of game. But that even

though they had pretty limited information, they came to exactly the same solutions we're talking about now. Yeah, and that's another example where now you have the data on spin rates, and you can see what a difference that might make. And that seems to be providing more incentive for players and teams to start using this stuff or start using more effective stuff. And so that has kind of created the current frenzy for doing something about this. But as you said, even though we have the data now and we can kind of quantify that, it's not like it was unknown to them at the time, even though they didn't have that information. It was unknown to them at the time, even though they didn't have that information. And in retrospect, it does seem sort of obvious and simple what the problem was at that point.

Like they dramatically expanded the strike zone and offense cratered. And, you know, then they returned the strike zone to where it had been before and offense picked up again. And like those weren't the only issues going on, I know. And then offense fell again before they instituted the DH. So I guess part of the problem is that there are always like 10 things happening at the same time and they might all be contributing a little bit, which is what we find today when we talk about these things. It's like, yeah, it's the foreign substances.

It's the defensive positioning. It's the fact that pitchers are throwing harder and harder.'s the ball it's like a million different things and so you have to figure out which is the main thing or like which is the first thing you should fix or what is the one thing you could do that would produce the biggest change and that i guess is where we all have disputes so i don't know if the takes on how to fix these things have gotten better or worse because we have more information. Like maybe, as Meg was sort of saying, because we have so much information, maybe that could kind of diffuse some of the concern, but maybe it could also amplify some of the concern in some cases. So, yeah, I guess a lot of things are different, but a lot of things are also pretty similar. So I did want to ask like much more about this, which is the Jim Fregosi suggestion to pitch out of holes in the ground, which we've talked about pits on the field. I

don't think we've talked about pitching out of the pits. Was that a serious suggestion? I could not tell. I drove myself crazy looking for more about pitching out of holes in the ground. It was one of those things, I think, mean, obviously, the 60s news environment, there wasn't always total fidelity in the quotes being shared. I really wanted to see like the original genesis of this quote, and I couldn't find it. It was pretty widely shared, that like, here are all our ideas. And also, did you hear Jim Fregosi with his idea about having pitchers pitch out of holes in the ground? So it showed up in like several papers. It was in Sports Illustrated in a we did a cover story that June on the hitting famine. It was mentioned in that story. But I couldn't find the original one. And sadly, Jim Fregosi died in 2014, I believe. So I

couldn't call him and ask, was this a joke or was this serious? It's probably a joke, but I really liked that it was something that someone said. And I wish the joke would have come with a visual aid because I would have loved to see the idea of what this could have looked like. He needs to have a presentation like on an easel to be like, here's the hole. Here's how deep it goes, right? From the top, but also from the side, because you can't really sense the depth of it if you're just looking at it straight on, right? Like, who knows? Yeah. Did you sense any difference in the tone of the discussion when it came to like traditionalists and people being upset about changing these sacred numbers or dimensions or

whatever, because that was 53 years ago. So some of these things were less cemented, maybe. It's been a lot longer since the last mountain distance change, for instance, but there had already been a lot of baseball by that point. And I guess they were closer in time to some of the more fundamental changes. But did you sense that there was like just as much reluctance to change things? Or were people in general, more interested or more willing to shake things up? There was a variety, I think, I mean, there were certainly some columnists, this actually is probably very similar to what you'd see today, columnists that seem to be older, that seem they were a little crotchety or curmudgeonly about all of the ideas, which you can also find today, of course. But I was surprised that, I mean, it seemed like there was a fair amount of interest in trying to do something to change it.

Certainly disagreement over what specifically needed to change. But it seemed like there was pretty widespread acknowledgement of the fact that it's probably worth looking at, you know, taking a look at what we can do here. And there was also a really interesting, the Associated Press had an article that was, I mean, circulated very widely because it's the AP, that summer where they put it in conversation with like, this is a decade of social change and baseball needs to change too. And you'd hear that and think they meant like, you know, I don't know, conditions, racial equality, but no, like this is how baseball should change.

And it actually like the kicker was something about how hitters should join social justice protests because they're being discriminated against. Yeah. Which is quite a way to take that. But that was not the only piece that put it in conversation with like, we're in a time of change. This is a different type of change of one of our great American institutions that needs to take place too, which I'm not the angle I would have taken, but it got pretty wide play. So yeah, there was certainly some people who were more hesitant about the idea of any kind of change and the same sort of traditionalist you would see today, but also a pretty widespread embrace of the idea of changing something.

I'm curious. This is a question that is perhaps not really addressed in the historical record, so I will preface it by saying that. But Ben and I have been very concerned about what to call the zombie runner. And there were obviously a number of different possibilities for what we were going to term this year, right? You talk about the various iterations of it. And then we settled on the year of the pitcher, which is quite a bold claim, as you know, when you think about it. What is your sense of how that was the term that we really landed on? Was it just the fact that it started being used by players themselves and so it was popularized beyond that because ben and i would like to put our thumb on

the scale and we are keen for tips on the on the way to arrive at your preferred silver kit because i uh i worry that we're gonna just be stuck with ghost runner even though it's not really what we're describing it did seem like it was the players using it that had it really take off. Although I think also the media environment was different enough then that there were a variety of terms that were being used. It looked like through May through June in June sports illustrated, tried calling it the year of the zero hero, because there were so many shutouts, which I think would have been catchier. I would have liked that one. The Hitting Famine, I thought was also a good one, although a little dramatic. And but then yeah, it was there was an Associated Press headline that called it the year of the pitcher in June that, you know, circulated in papers across

the country. And so then I imagine once you've seen that once as a newspaper editor, and you're driving, like all sports coverage at the time time you probably use it more and more and then the first time I could see a pitcher using the term was at the all-star game in July and then it seemed like after that it just was everywhere so in that context it seems like you don't have a lot a long window to work with it just was like a couple months and then they really they had the term and that was it I hope your window isn't closed um granted last year there was a lot going on. So maybe you still have an opportunity to get in there and change it. But me like there were three pretty significant changes. At least there was, yeah, the mound was lowered, but then the strike zone was returned to its pre offensive drought dimensions. And then there was a big round of expansion and a bunch of new teams. in a bunch of new teams. So if anything, if I had to rank those in terms of probable impact on offense, I probably would put lowering the mound at the bottom. And yet it seems like people just associate that so closely with, oh, they lowered the mound and that was the way that they

countered Bob Gibson and his unhittability. And that has a bearing on the current discussion because I still see people all the time suggesting, well, you should lower the mound again. That's what they did last time without knowing or acknowledging that there were other changes at the same time that may have had an even bigger effect. Yeah, I do kind of wish it wouldn't have made any sense,

but if they could have like separated out those variables and tested them each for a year to see which had the bigger effect and then figured it out. Because as it is, you're right, I would think that lowering the mound was not the most effective of those. And yet it does get brought up as the thing. But there's really not a way to separate them and find out for sure. But it was interesting because at one point earlier in the season, the more predominant suggestion was moving the mound back. Obviously what we're talking about now.

And they ended up going with lowering the mound instead, partially because it was less work and less drastic. The idea of doing something with the mound really took hold kind of early. But the idea of moving the mound back, and actually literally some of the same things people are saying now of like, are we going to replicate this at every field down to the lowest level like this yeah physically fundamentally changes the field in a way that just lowering the mountain doesn't how do we want to do this exactly how far should it be you know there was one proposal that gained quite a bit of traction was put forward by a braves executive i believe and it was to move it back by two feet. Right now, we're talking about one foot. And there was a lot of discussion of like, well, it's too drastic.

What does it mean? And so they ended up going with lowering the mound. It seemed like kind of as a not quite a compromise, but the idea that we should do something with the mound, but moving it back seems like just too much. But yeah, it is interesting that that ended up becoming the thing because I'm not sure that it really was in the end. Yeah. How much if any player input was there into this process? I know you said that it's not top down. You know, this was a GM thing, but did they have any, did they care at all what the players thought of the proposed changes and which might be the most effective? I did not get the sense that they cared, but the players were talking about it. Sure. Obviously, pitchers weren't super pleased. Although I did see a fair amount of examples of pitchers who acknowledged like, well, last

year was pretty crazy. Like, maybe this isn't the worst thing. Another thing that was an interesting like kind of side plot to this that I didn't end up discussing in the article, but that was kind of driving to the extent that there were concerns about what about the health of baseball as a whole is that this was right when the NFL was starting to really take off. And baseball kind of for the first time felt like it was maybe potentially a little bit threatened as like the national sport. And so you didn't see so many of these concerns that I could find during the season. But once you got into the offseason,

when you were talking about here are the changes are they going to work what does this mean there was a little more of that strand of is this preserving baseball how many people are going to want to still watch did we do this in the right way will this like maintain baseball's spot as you know the American sport and so there were a few quotes from players that were a little more amenable to it in that context of like, well, you know, this is probably important for, you know, making sure fans are still super interested and we can try it out and we'll see what happens, whatever. Maybe this isn't going to last for more than a year. And the previous strike zone change had only lasted, I guess it was seven years. So this idea that this is something you can change and it's not

permanent was definitely very much in people's minds. But yeah, it didn't seem like the player input was very much considered. Maybe GMs had sampled their players before they went to those meetings, but there wasn't much evidence of kind of what GMs went into those meetings with. I'd be interested to know more. And so, yeah, I mean, kind of similar to ways right now where you have players giving their opinions, but I'm not sure how much that's shaping any of the actual work sure i hadn't even thought of that it's like the players association existed at the time and marvin miller had been hired a couple years before but it was not nearly as powerful as it would soon become yeah so owners could kind of just do what they wanted in a lot of cases with these things. And also you didn't really have MLB as it exists today as sort of a central authority.

So I also wanted to ask, you noted this in the piece, but 1968 and 2021 get lumped together a lot because of the batting average similarity, 237 then, 236 so far this season. But the problems were different under the hood beyond the batting average. The problem now really is strikeouts or lack of balls in play. And the problem then was lack of scoring. So which of those is a bigger problem, do you think? I feel like the rise of future outcomes, the lack of the ball in play feels like a more existential thing to me. Maybe I'm wrong about that. But I feel like that shapes the action of a game more than just a lack of scoring. I don't know, I'd be interested to look more at that,

because maybe I think that because this is the one I'm living through, and hearing all the takes about every day. But yeah, when you're talking about something that is like, so not just looking at the final outcome, but what every inning looks like, like the shape of every plate appearance, that feels more to me a bigger thing than just a lack of scoring, but maybe not. Yeah. I don't know. It's tough to tell. Neither is ideal. Obviously I think maybe, I don't know. I tend to think like a lot of fans would probably be more bored if you just had a bunch of 1-0 games, even if people were putting the ball in play more often. But it feels like a more persistent problem, like the rise of the 3-2 outcomes and strikeouts in particular has been happening for so long and has been happening so acutely of late that it's kind of harder to control. Like, I guess you can always just juice the ball some more and you can prop up scoring

if you want to do that, but it's a little harder to prop up contact. So I don't know which is worse. I might even be inclined to say low scoring is worse, but maybe also higher strikeout rates and just inexorably rising strikeout rates is just a tougher problem to correct. I wonder if we feel like the three true outcomes form of baseball is sort of more vulnerable to shifts, not literal shifts, although also literal shifts, but sort of variation in the ball and the defensive environment, maybe it just feels like that kind of production

is more vulnerable because you are eliminating other forms of scoring. And so if home runs bottom out, then an offensive environment that's buoyed by them is going to suddenly revert to like one run games, right? Whereas maybe we have a sense that there is a variety of means of scoring when the ball is put in play more often and there's more contact that gives us some sense that like it's more easily correctable. I don't know. It feels like part of what we're reacting to is a sense not only of the game as it's played now,

but like what it portends for the game five years from now, which of course we were worried about in 68 also. But I think it's being framed in those terms, right? That we're sort of, we have a slow moving freight train that is coming to crash us. I think that's how we understand it. Or like we're about to drive off a cliff. I don't know, some sort of transit related metaphor. Yeah. Well, I will link to that piece. It's a lot of fun to go check out the quotes. And I will also recommend Rob Maines at Baseball Prospectus did a series throughout last season, I think, where he kind of, or not last season, it was 2018, the 50th anniversary of 1968, where he kind of went week by week or month by month and looked back at what people had been

saying at the time and what was happening in the country as a whole. So that might be relevant here, too. And just before we let you go, I guess your other piece about no-hitters and the cluster of them in 1917, a lot of the things people were saying then were also similar to what people were saying now. were also similar to what people were saying now, although I guess it was a little different because it wasn't so much fretting about what the no-hitters meant, right, or the no-hitters as sort of a symptom of larger underlying problems. I mean, no one was scoring runs in 1917, but they were used to that, I guess, because it was the dead ball era and there had been a lot of low scoring seasons so it it seems like people were not quite as worried about it as like an existential threat but more as like a this is weird or this is devaluing the no-hitter kind of thing yeah that was also

interesting to me just because like you said it wasn't tied into any greater concern about like what's happening to our offensive environment because it was pretty much how it had been you know for years at that point but just like the open disdain for them at the end of that cluster of six was funny to me because like why I feel like most of the conversation now it's like oh like are they less special yes but it's also because of a bigger conversation about well is the ball being put in play enough? Like, what is the state for baseball? It's the concern now, I think, is very much tied into that bigger thing. And the idea of just having this disdain, it was very funny to me that you had several columns that were like, another no hitter. So thank you very much for coming on, Emma, and for doing all the research and keeping newspapers.com in business. And I look forward to your next deep dive. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me. And we'll link to all of those recent pieces. And of course, you can find Emma on Twitter at Emma Batchelory and at Sports Illustrated. I'm a bachelor and at Sports Illustrated.

All right, that will do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening and condolences to Will Craig, who was designated for assignment by the Pirates. It's been a rough week for Mr. Craig. I'm sure the play was not the sole or even primary reason why he was DFA'd. This is not the first time that he has been DFA'd by the Pirates and also he has a 59 WRC plus, but really here's hoping he returns to the pirates or catches on elsewhere and can live down the legacy of what was a befuddling and amusing, but ultimately inconsequential play. You can support effectively wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild.

The following five listeners have already signed up and put some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Christopher Lou, Steven Scroggins, Bailey from Foolish Baseball, you should all like and subscribe and support him on Patreon, Tony Adams, and James. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins as always for his editing assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you early next week. History never repeats. Deep in the night, it's all so clear.

I lie awake with great ideas. Working about in no man's land. I think at last I understand. History never repeats. I tell myself before I go to sleep. There's a light shining in the dark Leading me on towards a change of heart