Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1748: On the Clock

Episode Date: September 18, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the potential benefits of a 15-second pitch clock and the massive winning-percentage mismatch between the NL’s impending wild card winners, then answer listener emails about intentionally swinging at a wild pitch to reach base, the obsolescence of ERA, whether Statcast should be used instead of video to make […]

🎵 Stop chasing till the clock runs out. What are you going on about? Hello and welcome to episode 1748 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Did you read or absorb the contents of the Jason Stark article for The Athletic this week about the pitch clock in low A? No, but let me guess. He likes the pitch clock.

He does. And seemingly everyone else who has experience does. The pitch clock has been a part of some levels of minor league baseball for several years now, especially at the upper levels. But that's been the 22nd pitch clock. This is the 15 second pitch clock in Loe West this year, which was implemented midseason in June. And Jason's got all the stats. And before the pitch clock was implemented, the average time of game there was three hours and two minutes. Since the pitch clock, it's been two hours and 41 minutes,

which is a pretty sizable difference. That is a 21-minute decrease in average game length. And not only that, but it's been accompanied by an uptick in offense. And Jason doesn't break it down by weather or temperature or anything or what the usual increase in offense is mid-season. So I imagine some of it is just the weather being warmer post-June than before June. But still, it's a pretty sizable increase. And yet, the average time has decreased, you would think with more scoring that would lengthen the games, but they have actually gotten significantly shorter, which means that if you were to adjust for the offensive

uptick, then the pace would be even quicker. It's been six runs per game scored post-clock compared to 5.5 before. Batting average is up from 244 to 269, slugging up from 379 to 429. Walks are down a little bit. Strikeouts are down a little bit. It seems like it's sort of fixed everything, to hear Jason tell it.

And according to the people at MLB, like Raul Banez, players who had some hand in putting this in place, they love it. And apparently the players who have experienced it, at least he quotes a couple interviews, some here, they seem to sort of like it too. The only people who really express any reservations about it in this article are major league veteran players. So it is pretty intriguing, really. I mean, I think we were

fans of the idea of the pitch clock to begin with, but this is an even more aggressive one, 15 seconds, and I'm for it. Based on this, it seems like there aren't a lot of drawbacks. you know, and Eno has written about this, I believe that you just, if you have to go faster, you don't have time to recover in quite the same way. So the ability that a guy has to go max is just diminished if he has to move along. So in addition to the time save, like it's not surprising to me that we would start to see offensive benefit because we know that when guys throw harder, they tend to do better, although not always, obviously. And so if we could make things kind of move along, not by artificially constricting like where guys can stand on the field or what kind of guys can do what sorts of things or what have you, and can just make the action progress more smoothly while also having the

balance or a shift back in the favor or at least more equally toward hitters. That seems cool. Yeah. Like you, I assume that part of the offensive increase must be that there's less recovery time between pitches and pitchers must not be throwing as hard. But apparently that is not the case. He has some data in here that the average fastball velocity without the clock was 92.3. And with the clock, it's 92.4. So it is something of a mystery why offense has increased to this point. Again, maybe some of it is just weather and temperature. But if it's more than that,

I don't know if it is just like the decision fatigue that we talked about in our interview about umpires and how their performance may degrade. Perhaps there's something similar with catchers or pitchers, or I don't know what else it could be, whether it's a defense, the defense isn't ready. I mean, there are a lot of potential explanations for why offense is up but even if offense weren't up i mean forget about the offense you just saved 21 minutes and there is evidently no significant downside here like there there doesn't seem to be there's nothing in the article about an uptick in injuries or anything like that, I guess you can't rule that out. That was going to be my next question. Yeah. So there's that possibility. But otherwise, there's really nothing against it other than

just that sort of romantic notion about baseball being the game without a clock, right? Which certainly had some appeal for me at some point. I liked that as a differentiating factor, but I care about that a lot less now. I mean, you do have rules on the books already about how many seconds you're supposed to have between pitches. So there is no clock, but there is supposed to be a clock. Essentially, it's just that no one has actually been keeping track or enforcing that. So why not enforce it or even make it more aggressive? Because, again, it's just dead time

between pitches right jason has a video here of like a side by side you know between pitches from low a and from the majors and the low a guy just gets going again you know he's like he never leaves the rubber really and the batter doesn't circle around the batter's box or anything he's just like ready to hit again and then the pitch is delivered and then there's like 10 more seconds in the major league side of the video where you know everyone's just adjusting their gloves or standing there or whatever they're doing and it's a baseball game it's not the worst way to waste time but it is a waste of time so i'm all for this well and I think that if it comes with sort of accompanying enforcement on the hitter side of things where they're not allowed to sit up there and like mess with their gloves all the time and

step out of the box and everything, this isn't the kind of time that you like mess, right? I think that, and granted, some of what I'm about to say is dependent on us returning to a zombie-less extra innings existence, certainly. But when I think about the things that make baseball feel like it's sort of not an exercise that is encumbered by the clock, it isn't the pitch clock that does that for me. It's the fact that it has the ability to stretch as long as good pitching will kind of allow it to. And that's the part of it that feels different and distinct from other sports experiences

rather than sort of helping the game move along in these sort of smaller interstitial moments. So I think it'd be fine. And if people are nervous about it, I mean, I don't know that pitch clock enforcement is like universally good between levels. I know J.J. Cooper was tweeting about this a bit earlier today, that his experience is that in double and triple A,

people are maybe getting a little loosey-goosey with that pitch clock. But if you want to have a sense of it, you should go to a minor league game if there's a team near you and you feel comfortable, because you'll be surprised how quickly you don't notice it at all. Right. Yeah. And that seems to be mostly what the players say too yeah and i think it matters how long the game is as well as how fast paced it is like everyone always says like oh it's not the length it's the pace just like people say it's not the heat it's the humidity and like it's both you know

sometimes sometimes it's 115 degrees. People are like, it's a dry heat. And you're like, yeah, but like, it's still really hot. Come on now. Yeah. Let's be people who melt. Let's admit that we're people who can melt. Yeah.

Why don't we? The humidity makes the heat much worse, but also the pace makes the length of game worse. But right. It still matters. I think the length of game matters. And we're up to three hours and nine minutes per nine innings this season, and that's the longest ever. So there have been some attempts in recent years to cut down a bit on the time between pitches, and the benefits of that were temporary. And really, I mean, that's a long time, not even like comparing

to ancient history or anything like 10 years ago, the 2011 season, the average time per nine innings was two hours and 51 minutes. That's a lot of time that we've added and we haven't actually added more baseball. I mean, maybe scoring has changed or something, but there aren't more innings. There are fewer innings sometimes these days, but rather than just lopping off innings, let's just lop off some seconds that really no one is enjoying all that much. Those are the seconds when you can look down at your phone and maybe that makes it more tolerable that there's that delay, but why have to have that delay? There's a nice rhythm to just, hey, get the ball back and you're ready to go.

And that more so than the length of commercials or anything else really seems to be what is driving that increase. And I get it. I understand why major league players are like, no, we want to take our time. We don't want to be rushed. There have been studies that have shown it can benefit individual hitters or pitchers to take more time between pitches. But I think maybe what players aren't considering is that everyone will have to go faster.

So it might impair your performance slightly, but it'll at some point played in a league with a pitch clock. real veterans and these are people who are respected and have leadership roles and everything. But pretty soon we're going to get to the point where even a lot of veteran players have experienced the pitchcock and presumably know that it's not anything to fear. So I hope that that will make it easier to implement because you can't just do it unilaterally. And obviously it's a lot easier to do this in low a west than it is in mlb but i'm still hopeful that it can be done yeah i was just gonna say like at a certain point we're gonna we're just gonna have uh generationally moved past right the point where people are not used to this or don't have experience with it you know it's like just like they'll all be good at tiktok none of them

will remember our shows we get used to things and we grow up assuming that the technology that surrounds us is sort of the same and has been constant. And so when we think about people having to adapt to it, we're kind of shocked and dismayed that they have had an experience that predates that. It's like when I tell people, you know, it's like when I tell the stable of young bucks who write at Fangraphs who are all so young and talented

that like I remember life before the internet and Devin's like, what? You know, like he doesn't talk like that. But, you know, you can't necessarily

derive tone from text. So there you go. But yeah, it's going to be a thing that I think is just a lot easier to adapt to and get by. And as we, you know, see people's careers come to their natural close and they get replaced by people who are like, yeah, pitch with a pitch clock.

That's fine. Like, I'll do that. That's no big deal. Yep. And I think it's probably less tolerable to have a three hour plus game in low A where there are no stakes, I mean, no competitive stakes. Some of the baseball banners were real bad. baseball, the stakes are higher and there's more money riding on every pitch and there are playoff implications and everything. Even so, we could stand to have the games be a bit shorter and we're not losing anything that I would miss personally. So I think it's just as important

to do it at that level, even if it's tougher to do just because there's so much riding on every pitch. And yeah, J yeah jj cooper just wrote about how even at levels where they have added the pitch clock sometimes those initial reductions in game length don't last and in some of those leagues the games are even longer now than they were pre-pitch clock so there is just this upward pressure throughout baseball history that has caused games to get longer and i'm not sure that the pitch clock is a permanent or complete solution, but it seems like low-hanging fruit. So I'm hopeful. Hopefully this 15-second clock can sort of supplant the 20-second clock, and that can spread throughout affiliated ball and other levels of the minors, and it'll get normalized. It's funny. We have

misgivings about some of these experiments, but this one, at least, I'm totally on board with. And in the minors, I mean, I don't even mind the zombie runner in the minors, except for the fact that it sort of normalized the zombie runner and led to it being embraced at the big league level. But at that level, it's like, hey, this is just development and there are fewer resources and people aren't getting paid and there are fewer fans and there are just many good reasons to end games sooner that I don't think apply at the big league level. So I'm not saying do the zombie runner or do seven inning games. I'm just saying let's cut out some dead air between pitches. Yeah. And, you know, we want to feel confident

that we're not sort of stumbling into increased injury risk right we we're sensitive to that in particular is something that we want to be mindful of but i think we can you know we can give a little on some of this stuff without compromising the identity of the sport in a way that i really do think makes it more palatable to people who aren't diehards right like we should think about Like we should think about the folks who don't listen to Effectively Wild because we want them to have a nice time at the ballpark too. And I think that we can balance-

They're all dead to me. Oh, but then we'll never have new listeners, Ben. It's very short-sighted of you. Yeah, I'll include future potential listeners of Effectively Wild are not dead to me. But I think that we can balance those interests. And sometimes that's hard to do and there are comprom dead to me. But I think that we can balance those interests. And sometimes that's hard to do and there are compromises to be made,

but I really don't think that this is one of those times. I think we can score this a win in pretty short order and we won't miss that dead time. And then we'll look back and be like, holy hell, how long were we at ballparks for? Yeah, right. And even if you're a traditionalist and you don't like the idea of changing things, it should maybe placate you a bit that this is actually reverting to a more traditional form of the game.

It's taking what you might consider a drastic step to get there, but it is making games look and feel more like they used to. So there's something for everyone here. Yeah. We can look back to move forward. I don't know. That sounds like a terrible campaign slogan. That's another thing that people assume is just the same forever

is like the kind of politics you inherit. So things change, everyone, as much as they stay the same. Build back faster. Oh no, we're going to get emails about that for sure. So we want to do some emails that we have gotten. And we also want to do a stop blast and meet a major leaguer. The only other bit of banter I had was about the coming mismatch in the wildcard game, regardless of who wins that first NL wildcard, whether it's the Giants or the Dodgers.

of who wins that first NL wildcard, whether it's the Giants or the Dodgers, you're going to get a differential of close to 20 games between the first NL wildcard winner and the second NL wildcard winner. And I wonder whether that's a problem, whether that's a bug or a feature, whether anything should be done about that, because obviously it's an outlier. It's an extreme season. We don't usually have such a huge gap between one wildcard winner and another. So I'm not suggesting we need to dramatically rewrite all the rules because of this one weird year where both of the best teams in the

league and maybe in baseball are in the same division and they can't both win that division. But you can preemptively feel the pain of the Dodgers or Giants fans if one of those teams is eliminated in that game against the Padres or the Reds or the Cardinals or whoever it would be. You might not be thrilled about that. That might not be the climax you were hoping for after what has been an incredibly fun division race. So are you okay with that? Is there anything that could be done to make that more of a level playing field? Or do you just have to sort of accept, hey, it's a one game play in, play off, whatever we're calling it. It's not going to reflect true talent.

And this is just going to be a weird year. Yeah, I don't know. I go back and forth on this because on the one hand, I do want, I think that the general purpose of the wild card in addition to providing us with like an exciting and somewhat aberrant baseball experience right we don't really come down to one game all that often like that's not how we how we tend to dictate things we like the long haul we're in it for the long haul but i like

the general structure of that being one that really strongly incentivizes teams to win their division. Now, I don't think that we can fault the Dodgers for happening to be in the same division as the Giants, right? Which is perhaps an argument for us just reseeding the playoff field entirely and making sure that the really best teams are the ones that sort of persist through and that the weaker links are the ones that sort of persist through and that the weaker links are the ones that end up in that wildcard. But given the structure we have, I don't know. I think it's probably fine.

I mean, I have also decided what I'm rooting for in the NL wildcard. Do you want to hear? Yeah. I want the Phillies in that game so bad, Ben. Oh, yeah? Yeah. They can't play a normal baseball game. They are the Seahawks of baseball.

They can't play a normal game to save their lives. Every game they play is so stinking weird. They end up with scores that don't make any sense. They are giving you a heart attack the whole time. If we have to watch that team play playoff baseball, it is going to be miserable for every single inning, and it will be the best thing we watch all year. I want it so bad. Now, I do not want them to win that game because I again, I'm not going to fault these poor Dodgers and or Giants for happening to be in the same division as, you know, another behemoth

team. They they both have tried. They're trying to put a winning product on the field, the Dodgers especially so. You're not trying to give them a hard time, but I do want them. Did you see any of this Phillies-Cubs game? I know you wanted to talk about the wild card, and I am doing that in an indirect way,

but I got to talk about this. Did you see any of that Phillies- Cubs game last night? I was not watching live. I have caught up after the fact. I have not seen performance art this affecting in years, Ben. I'm going to read a tweet by stats by stats, which I always have to read in that

tone because, I don't know, guys. You could have named your company something different. The Phillies are the first NL team in the modern era to trail by seven plus runs in a game, but end up winning by nine plus runs. It was truly the dumbest game of baseball I've ever watched, and I've never had a better time. You know, because the Cubs lost 17 to eight,

and they led 7-0 at one point in that game. Like, and early. They led 7-0 early one point in that game like and early they led 7-0 early they had that feeling that teams have i'm sure where they're like we've got this one in the bag but they didn't because they forgot where they were and that's the kind of energy we need in the postseason the chaos the insanity yeah it's not gonna be fun but we need it yeah good for the phillies being on the winning end of a bullpen blow up for once, often on the other end of that. But that was a weird one and a fun one.

And yeah, all these wildcard teams are sort of sloppy. But sloppy can be fun sometimes too. I think the thing with the wildcard game and with the giant difference between teams, which right now is a difference of 17 games, but would not surprise me if it's up to 20 by the time they actually play that game. I mentioned this on the Ringer MLB show, but obviously Dodgers fans would be upset if they were the wildcard team and they lost in that game. But I don't know how many neutral observers would be upset just because the Dodgers are always in the playoffs and they just won the

World Series last year. And even the Giants, I mean, this is a different Giants team and a really fun and surprising Giants team. So I think it would be a shame if they got knocked out immediately, but you wouldn't cry for the franchise or its fans as a whole because they just won a few World Series, as I recall, within pretty recent memory. So it'd be one thing if we were talking about the Padres or if the Mariners or something had finally made it back to the playoffs and then that's how they got knocked out and they had had great seasons if they had the records that the Dodgers and Giants did. So that would be a bit different for me if there had been a really long drought and you had teams that had never won and then

they got knocked out like that against a far inferior regular season team. So that's the consolation, I suppose. Not that it would be of much consolation to the Dodgers or Giants fans, but that's something. And I don't know what else you would do other than just chalk it up to an outlier year. Of course, there's some advantages for the better team already. They get home field advantage. Maybe they get to set up their rotation the way they want, whereas the team that's fighting it out until the last day of the season might not have their ace ready to go if they need him just to get to the wildcard game. And what with unbalanced schedules, sometimes it's not even

the fault of the inferior record team that they have the inferior record. Maybe they just had tougher opponents. We have talked in the past about potential solutions for this sort of mismatch. I think back in 2017, I want to say it was episode 1117, Jeff and I discussed an idea about maybe the team with the worst regular season record would start down by that number of runs in the wildcard game. You'd come up with some sort of run differential in the wildcard game would mirror the number of games back you were during the regular season. That would not work this year, I don't think, because are you tuning in to watch the Dodgers or the Giants

starting up 17 to nothing against the Regs of the Padres or Cardinals or whoever? Probably not. Probably not. Probably not compelling viewing. It would not be like that in most years, but even so, that'd be a big difference. I guess you could do a fraction of the games back or something would be the number of runs, but that's kind of complicated. The other potential solution is the one that the Kbo already uses right which is instead of having a single elimination

game they have a two-game series but the worst team has to win both to advance so it's it's basically like you have a best of three wild card series except the better team in the regular season starts up one nothing in that. That's more or less how it works, I suppose. So kind of like that idea, not averse to that idea. It makes it even less likely to have upsets than just having a three-game wildcard series would be. So that has some virtues to it, but I don't know that we need to dramatically rearrange everything and maybe you just have to sort of accept this is weird and it's just a coin flip. And this is what we've all decided because it makes for fun TV.

And you know what? Prioritizing fun TV is not like the worst thing that we could do. There's a lot of really bad TV. There's a lot of dreary TV. And we could just have fun TV. So, you know, there you go. Yeah. I do want the regular season to count for something.

I do too. Generally, but maybe not always. All right. Let's answer a few questions from our listeners. Here's one from Peter. We may have answered something like this before. I know we've gotten many emails about it, but this is about a half-baked idea, intentionally swinging at wild pitches to get on base. So Peter says, this may have been tried and failed enough to eradicate it completely, but I think batters should, when they have two strikes and fewer than three balls, be on the lookout for pitches that are manifestly wild pitch candidates. Once a batter identifies such a pitch, he should swing, not with the intent of making

contact, but having an idea that the catcher likely won't catch the ball with the intent to advance to first base through the uncaught third strike rule. If I understand correctly, the plate appearances still score to strikeout, but batters should care about helping the team by getting on base more than their batting averages. I know hitting is already complicated enough, but some crafty players, Joey Votto or Javier Baez, could handle this. Are there examples I'm missing of batters trying to do this? Isn't this a great idea? He wants Javier Baez to strike out even more.

Peter, he strikes out enough as it is. But this is basically the idea that you're down in the count and you're just hoping and waiting for a wild pitch to come along and you will swing at it not expecting to make contact but just because you know it'll be a wild pitch and it'll get by the catcher and then you can run down to first which you can't do if you just take that pitch for a ball so we're encouraging more shenanigans where because the catcher can't do something while people get to each base is what you're telling me.

I realize this is fundamentally different than the drop short third strike rule. So don't write your emails. I understand. I don't know. Like this is terrible. It's definitely a bit of a mockery of the game, I suppose. But I mean, I see the attraction of the idea. I think it's actually harder to do in practice

than it sounds like. I mean, I think that's the biggest obstacle is that you would have to, in a very short span of time, recognize that this is likely going to be a wild pitch and decide to swing at it anyway with the intention to run down to first base. And that's tough. There's not a lot of time there to decide whether

to swing or not. And then you're saying you have to decide whether it's going to be in the dirt, whether the catcher can catch it, whether it's going to get by him. That's tough. That's tough. And yeah, maybe in certain situations, if it is 0-2 and you're probably not going to get on base anyway, and you know this is a pitcher who tends to waste a lot of pitches and throw stuff in the dirt, or maybe the catcher isn't a good blocker or something, like you could look for circumstances where it's more likely to happen. But even so, it is asking for a lot. He is asking for a lot. And I think you'd probably have to be a pretty decent hitter to pull this off, like just to have the pitch recognition and decision skills to do it. And if you are the kind of hitter who can do that, maybe you And that someone like Joey Votto is probably the, you know, like it takes that sort of preternatural understanding of the zone and pitch recognition and approach to really be able to execute on something like this in any sort of volume that would make it, you know, valuable to you. And of course, this doesn't happen that often.

Yeah. So there's that part of it too. But, you know, to take the Javi Baez of it all, like, if he could do this, this doesn't happen that often. So there's that part of it too. But to take the Javi Baez of it all, if he could do this, he wouldn't be Javi Baez. He would just be a very different kind of hitter than he is. Is that ungenerous of me? It might be a little ungenerous. But I think that if you were able to do that

with any kind of consistency, then you're probably just better off trying to get on base the normal way generally. Yeah, I think so too. And I'm trying to think of any examples of this happening. Like, yeah, if you're Billy Hamilton or someone, maybe just statistically speaking, you could make a case again if you have the time to make that decision. I know that there have been cases like, you know, I'm sure this has happened. I can't think of a specific example that is this exactly. There is the famous intentional strikeout that Alfredo Griffin had in a September game in 1992 where the Blue Jays were up nine to nothing in Yankee Stadium.

And he was just trying to get the game over with faster because it was the fifth inning, and it was rainy, and the rain was starting to come down, and he was just swinging at everything. And so Greg Catteray was the pitcher, and he threw just a totally wild pitch, and it makes for a great gif because the pitch is over the catcher's glove and head

and to the backstop and Alfredo Griffin just swings at it anyway and turns around and goes back to the dugout doesn't even try to go to first base because he is trying to make it out so that the game can be over with I think maybe Jack Morris's 20th win of the season was on the line as well and that was part of the motivation. And it didn't work out ultimately because after that, the umpire called a halt to the game and there was a long rain delay. And then I think they came back and they ended up playing the entire game anyway. So it just made for a fun sort of highlight or low light or blooper. And it became an unwritten rules controversy after the game too.

I was just going back and reading some accounts of it from the day after. And Cito Gaston, who was the Bougie's manager, said, I didn't tell Alfredo to do that. I only told him not to take borderline pitches. So he really took that advice and ran with it. Then apparently it says Griffin was upset when it was suggested later that he was making a farce of the game. Some accounts say he got in a shouting match with reporters about this. This account says, I just wanted to get the game over. Griffin said angrily, they wanted to get me out, didn't they? What do they care if I swing at a bad pitch enforcer, said, I've seen that before, but I wouldn't do it. I don't believe in it, etc., etc. Anyway, that was funnycoats versus the Rumble Ponies. You've probably seen this highlight, but I will link to it on the show page where the pitcher delivered the pitch, but he just sort of spiked it and it dribbled, it rolled a little bit toward the first baseline, basically. And before it even got there, Fuentes swung sarcastically, sort of. He swung as a joke because this was so clearly not a pitch that one would swing at. Right.

And the umpire called it a strike. And he struck out because it was two strikes and two outs. And that was the end of the inning. And he was like, wait, what? I was kidding. But technically, he did swing. It probably wasn't the right call because he didn't legitimately intend to strike at the pitch, which is sort of the vague standard for what a strike is. And it's funny because the catcher runs over to tag him to once the strike call is made, just with that in mind that, hey, he might try to run to first base. wonder like at what point does it cease to be a swing because like if you could wait for the ball to get by the catcher and then swing like at that point then you would know that you would have time

to run to first but i don't think that that would count right i'm pretty sure the empire would say no that was too late to count as a swing and so it would not be ruled a strikeout but i'm just wondering if you could test the limits there of swing lateness as a way to give yourself a little extra time and intel before you made this decision because there is that famous highlight from 2014 when pablo sandoval was on the giants and the hit and run was on or at least the runner on first went to steal second and sandoval was trying to protect him. But he takes a really late hack. So literally, I think he starts that swing after the pitch is in the catcher's glove.

And yet that was still ruled a strike and a swing. I don't think you can say he was really trying to hit that pitch. But in that case, the umpire counted it as a strike nonetheless. So who knows? Maybe it would work with a wild pitch. So basically, what started as a silly question about wild pitches has turned into an existential question about what actually constitutes a swing in baseball. So we're pretty on brand. Yep, pretty much. Anyway, I think it's rare that this would be feasible and advisable, but never say never. All right. Here's a question from Javad,

Patreon supporter, who says, quick question about earned run average. Is there still utility in using ERA to evaluate pitcher effectiveness? Pitchers rarely pitch nine innings anymore, and doubleheaders are now seven inning games. Since the equation to calculate ERA is based on nine innings, does ERA truly mean anything anymore? I researched this briefly and found a 2018 article from Baseball America, which shows that each year fewer starting pitchers qualify for the ERA title because they do not reach the minimum number of innings. Has ERA become obsolete or should we multiply earned runs by five, the approximate average innings pitch per start, instead of nine to come up with a new ERA. And I think Javad is kind of conflating multiple issues there. One is ERA and how long pitchers actually go into games. The other is qualifying for the ERA title. And we've talked about that,

and Sam Miller has written about that, changing what it means to qualify for the ERA title just because pitchers don't get to 162 innings as often anymore. That's a separate issue. And yes, I think you could stand to change that. But the question about changing ERA to put it on a different baseline because pitchers are not expected to pitch complete games anymore. Any thoughts on that? I mean, we've survived with relievers having ERAs scaled to nine for their entire existence. So I don't think that that's so much a problem. I mean, I think that we acknowledge there to be a lot of limitations to ERA and how many innings it's scaled to is like the least among them. Yes.

That's not really a problem. I think that we want, and many ERA sort of estimators try to dole out with sort of greater accuracy the stuff that the pitcher actually controls so that you're not faulting them for like a bad defense, right? Or giving them credit for a really good one. regularly to try to better sort of represent pitcher performance and and give appropriate credit or blame for stuff that they do in games and control but i don't i don't see this as a problem am i missing an obvious reason why this is a problem now i don't think so okay it's a fine question like i think that thinking about how how our stats talk to actual use in games is always useful, right? It's always useful to think about that. I think that this one we can probably still feel pretty okay about, even as we try to come up with other measures of pitcher performance that, like I said, we think do a better job

of really getting down to what the pitcher did well or poorly, himself independent of factors outside of his control. But I think ERA is fine from an innings perspective. We pick at it for other reasons though. Right. Yeah. If you want to say ERA is obsolete, I'm with you in some ways. There are certainly better tools, better stats that we can use as an evaluative tool. But yeah, I don't think that having ERA be on a nine inning scale is predicated upon any individual pitcher being on a nine inning scale. I mean, maybe that was the way it was originally, but I think having it be nine innings still makes sense as long as most of the games are nine innings.

There's still nine innings, yeah. Yeah. And we all know what a good ERA is just because we have the weight of history behind it. So we would have to relearn it if we were to rescale it to five innings or seven innings or something, which would not be worth the trouble because there are better stats out there in tradition and all of that. So, yeah, I think it's fine. It's fine, at least in that sense. I think it's okay. Yeah. And I think just because a thing is, we don't mean to say that just because a thing is challenging that it isn't worth doing, but I think that we're always trying to balance

making things more precise with making them more confusing because I think that those things can sometimes work at cross purposes. And so you need to have a really good reason to upend something as fundamental to our understanding of the game and, and sort of like you said, you know, where you can say, you know, that guy has a, a, a two, a two one five ERA. And you go, ah, that guy must be a pretty good pitcher. I mean, I'm going to look at his other stats because we're us, but like, that sounds good. Or if you're like, that guy has a nine ERA, even if I didn't have the tone, you'd be like, that's not good at all. That's pretty bad. Either he's bad or something real weird is happening with his team. And then you'd go find out. So I think because there is such clear understanding and we don't have to do any mental

adjustment to sort of intuitively know, yes, that's good. Yes, that's bad. I think you'd need a really compelling reason. And I don't know that we have one here. Yeah, it's a rate stat. So it's okay to keep it as is, I think. Yeah. Okay. Here is a question from Andrew. He says, I'm watching Dodgers Padres and Adam Frazier dropping Justin Turner's pop-up right around the right field line. I see the umpires go to review it and then the only angles they have are extremely unhelpful. I'm always frustrated how MLB relies only on video for the replay system instead of looking to how other sports use technology to make reviews faster and easier. looking to how other sports use technology to make reviews faster and easier. This seems like a perfect situation to use the new Hawkeye ball tracking system to be able to definitively see where the ball ended up.

Tennis seems to use something like this to see where balls land and get replay answers very quickly with no fuss. Cricket builds in Hawkeye into its replay system too. Why are we stuck with waiting around for someone to try to figure out the parallax in a couple lousy video angles instead of just getting the actual answer that StatCast probably already has? We should. Yeah, why don't we? We should.

I mean, especially now that we use it for other stuff and already have the arrays and all. I say that like I'm talking about the internet as a series of tubes. So that sounded great. But we definitely should. I mean, it does seem sort of strange that we have the capability to judge these things both, I assume, more quickly. Although I don't honestly know how much of a time differential that would really represent. But presumably more quickly. It's pretty speedy in tennis.

Yeah. And with greater accuracy. So it just seems pretty obvious that we should try to do that. I mean, I will say if you're looking for a reason to feel better about the approach that we take to replay review in baseball, like football started again and gosh, this sport that generates all this money and people's lives are on the line, they're mashing their heads together and they're like, here's the chains, still doing the chain thing. That's our measure here. We're still using chains. So it could be worse, but it could be

better too. Yeah. I can't think of a reason not to do this. I don't know how often the fair foul calls are incorrect as it is. I think it's fairly rare that they get that wrong now, but at the very least, it takes longer than it seems like it should have to. And yeah, I don't know of any reason why that wouldn't be measured with enough accuracy. And there's always video as a backup if something were to glitch out, but it seems like it Right. with the replay umps, but they also sometimes at least have additional ones too. So they may very well have cameras that are pointed straight down the line that give you a really good look at that, at least in some parks at some times. I think maybe they've had fewer angles available to them at times during the pandemic because sometimes the visiting broadcast crew is calling the game

remotely and they might not have their own feed. And so there may be fewer cameras and fewer angles. But on the whole, I would not assume that we are seeing exactly the same thing that they are seeing in the replay room. But even so, yeah, why make them see anything? Just trust the robots. We are always in favor of robot umps. That's what we always say on this podcast, right? Famous pro robot stance on this pod.

Yes. In this case, definitely no reservations about this personally. In theory, at least. I've done a little light Googling while we have been talking here. And according to a March 2020 article in Sport Techie about StatCast, the Hawkeye upgrade reduced the margin of error on batted balls to one foot. Maybe it's improved since then, but if the margin of error on batted balls is that big, then that probably wouldn't work so well for Fairfowl. I think the margin of error in tennis is only a few millimeters, but maybe that's because you have a smaller playing

surface and a different playing surface, and maybe you have more cameras trained on the baseline or those locations or on the ball or the cameras are closer to the ball. Maybe that reduces the margin of error. So perhaps if you were to use StatCast for fair foul, you could get more cameras in the ballpark and train them on the foul lines or on the ball. I don't know exactly how that works, but just wanted to mention that because if that one foot margin of error is accurate, then that would be a good reason to keep using video. I think the old StatCast system had some trouble with some balls hit down the foul lines, but the Hawkeye-based system is much better at getting all batted balls. And I think it tracks pitches to within half an inch. So if pitch location can be tracked that accurately, I would imagine that batted ball location could be too,

if that were made a priority, right? Because there are five cameras, I think, that track the area from the mound to the plate and then seven for everything else, essentially, which is a much bigger area. So maybe you get greater resolution with more cameras. All right, here is a question from Chris, Patreon supporter, who says,

is DJ LeMayhew good? I mean, sure. He is an MLB player in 10 years by reference about 26 in 10 years. Please explain why the Yankees expected him to be really good when he has far more below average years than above average. So this kind of caught my attention because I at one point thought

DJ LeMayhew wasn't very good and I made a decision based on that that I kind of regretted later, which is that for a few years, I've done the top 10 positional rankings on MLB Network heading into the season. And so you pick your top 10 players for that season based on whatever value metric you think is appropriate. And whatever year it was that he signed with the Yankees, I guess that was going into 2019, I left him off my top 10 second baseman list. And I had cause to regret that later because he ended up being a five-win player by fan graphs. And he had a great year and he got MVP votes and was an all-star and was a star suddenly.

And that kind of caught me by surprise. I don't know if it caught everyone by surprise because I do remember talking to someone in a front office before that season started who told me that their team had a pretty similar projection for DJ LeMayhew as Bryce Harper, who had just signed that giant deal with the Phillies. And I thought, really, that's amazing. LeMayhew got a two-year $24 million deal or something like that. And Harper got his massive one and Harper was a superstar and LeMayhew was not. But this team's true talent projection was not different really, or not very different between them. And that was borne out at least for that year because LeMahieu outperformed Harper for that season.

Obviously not this season. He's kind of back to mortal LeMahieu. But for a couple of years there, he finished fourth in MVP voting and then third in MVP voting. And I didn't see that coming because I was thinking like DJ LeMayhew he's a fine player like he's an average player that was my thought about DJ LeMayhew going into that year and average players have value but prior to joining the Yankees he had a 90 career WRC plus and I think his per 600 plate appearances were according to fan graphs was like 1.8

now that's including his you know early years where he scuffled a bit so he had been a bit better than that over the past three or four but i thought you know he's like a below average hitter with a good glove so he's you know an average ish player and i didn't expect him to reach a new level at age 30. And he did. Prior to joining the Yankees, his best offensive season was that outlier 2016 year when he won the batting title, which was obviously somewhat Coors-assisted and Babbitt-assisted and all of that. But that was largely batting average. And then suddenly, he turned into a power hitter in Yankee Stadium. And so now he's back to being more or less the LeMahieu he was before, which is a pretty decent player, an average player with some positional versatility and

decent glove and just an average bat. And that's fine, but maybe not what the Yankees were expecting coming off of his past two seasons. So is he good? Yeah, I mean, he's good. Is he great? No, Is he good? Yeah, I mean, he's good. Is he great? No, but he was pretty great for a couple of years. positional versatility and i think that those are things that have a lot of value to clubs and i think people generally thought that he was like a pretty good player and he's not making like a crazy amount of money right like he's making what 15 million a year or something like that like that was the the contract that he signed right i mean he's making what did he get to join the yan that was the the contract that he signed right i mean he's making what did he get to join the yankees the first time around he got a two-year deal for 24 million right total and then two years on two years older he got a six-year deal at 15 million

per yes six year 90 million so he's signed through 2026. the Yankees or the market in general thought he had leveled up or evaluated him differently prior to 2021 than it did prior to 2019. Whereas it seems like in 2021, he has gone back to being sort of the player that he was prior to 2019, which was certainly serviceable and useful, but probably not the guy you signed to a six-year deal for $15 million per. Not that that's so exorbitant, but I'm guessing that they probably hoped for or expected more than that because if that's what he's doing in the first year of that deal, then what is he doing in year six, right? Right. It's going to look really bad in the back half, yeah. Yeah. I don't know that there's a better explanation than they probably saw something that

they thought he would continue to do well they liked other aspects of the profile besides just the bat and he's regressed somewhat toward what he had been previously but i don't know like i don't have a hard time believing that team would look at a guy who like doesn't strike out that much and walks a reason at a reasonable clip and is like yeah that's useful i don't know it's it is sort of surprising that it was quite as much money as it was given how sort of competitive balance tax conscious they've been in the last little bit right that they would deploy those resources that way is perhaps surprising but i don't know that i have have a profound answer other than he was a pretty good player with a good glove, and then he was really good, and then he was like, okay.

Yeah, and it could be because his becoming a monster and then not being as much of a monster correlated with changes in the baseball. So one thing that I probably underrated about him when the Yankees signed him is just that he seemed to be a good fit for that park and that he would hit a bunch of homers that he would just sort of lift the other way that would float into that short right field porch. I think that is part of it. It probably didn't hurt that he joined the Yankees in the peak home run year ever. The ball was already pretty juiced in 2017 and 2018, but it got even juicier in 2019. And I would think that that is why he went from having a high of 15 homers in Coors Field to hitting 26 in 2019 and then hitting 10 more last year in 50 games. And this year, he has only hit 10 in 139 games.

And he's still playing in Yankee Stadium. And there was a Fangraphs post about this a couple weeks ago, I believe, how it seems like you could make a case that LeMahieu is probably one of the biggest victims on the offensive side of the ball being slightly less juiced than it was in that he seems like he's a guy who had a lot of just enough homers that maybe you really needed that extra five to 10 feet or whatever it is. And so more of those balls may be dying on the warning track now than were over the last couple seasons. Well, and I think that even in his 2019 season, his hard hit percentage was high, but his barrel percentage was only middle of the road, right? So I don't know that we should have necessarily been quite so surprised to your point that

there was a little bit of a sapping there. His average exit view was in the 92nd percentile, but when you look at the barrels, you're like, it's fine, but not out of control. That has been consistent over the course of his life. I mean, over the course of his career, rather. I don't know what his barrel percentage was like as a young person, probably even lower because he was younger.

But he peaked in terms of barrels that year and even then was kind of middle of the road as that goes. So I don't know, he's just DJ LeMayhew. Yes, he's had a nice career. He's had a nice career, right? And you need guys with nice careers. And that 2019 season that he had, if you're going to have a really great season,

have it in the year where everyone else on your team is just really, really hurt. I can imagine that Yankee fans are sort of frustrated with LeMahieu this year, but let us remember that he really had a well-timed good year given everything else that was going on with the team in that 2019 season. So he got that going for you. It's not nothing. I think before the Yankees signed him, Jeff actually wrote a post about how he was a potential swing changer guy or how he might have some latent power potential that he had not fully extracted yet just because he was

such a ground ball guy and yet hit the ball hard. And he continued to be a ground ball guy. So I guess it wasn't that he dramatically changed his batted ball profile so much. It was just that the ball changed and also where he was hitting balls changed. So yeah, sometimes players have a certain skill set that really works in a certain offensive environment and context and you put them in a certain park or you change the ball in a certain way and it really unlocks something. And maybe it slightly changes most players' performance, but a few players have the skill set that can benefit kind of exponentially from that. skill set that can benefit kind of exponentially from that. And maybe LeMahieu was that guy. And maybe the Yankees are feeling a little remorse that the ball changed a bit, given how they have hit as a team this year and how LeMahieu has hit.

But, you know, he's still obviously an asset to that team, just not as much as he was over the last couple of years. You know what we haven't talked about in a while? What's that? The baseball. Yeah, no, we really haven't. Yeah. what we haven't talked about in a while? What's that? The baseball. Yeah, no, we really haven't. Yeah, remember when all we talked about was the baseball and Otani? We still talked about Otani then, but we were like,

who are you, baseball? Let's get to know one another. Let's have a six-hour brunch and find out about each other. I don't know what that guy's doing these days. Hope he's well. Yeah, it's been a bit deader but hardly dead and i guess we're feeling a little bit better about where offense is in general these days and where the home run rate is as a result of that change and the sticky stuff crack down and everything so it's been a little less of a hot button issue. And it's nice not to talk

about how offense is anemic or how entirely home run dependent it is on every episode. Although obviously those things are still true to a certain extent, but the problem is maybe a little less acute and maybe it has been jumping around a little bit less, at least in season because of the ball. So that's nice. Although you never know. Sometimes the calendar flips over to October and suddenly the ball is lively or dead again. So you can never rule that out. All right. Shall we meet major leaguers?

Sure. Meet a major leaguer. I am very eager to meet this nascent major leaguer. It's the thrilling debut of somebody new. Let's meet this mysterious major leaguer. Do you want me to go first? Yeah, go first. And I'm going to start mentioning the number major leaguer they are in terms of all-time debut, which is something that we probably should have been doing all along, although it changed mid-season according to Baseball Reference. Sure did. They began to count all of the Negro Leagues major leaguers. But now that those are in the counts, I believe that your pick for Major Leaguer today is debut number 22,539. was called up by the Boston Red Sox on September 10th, I believe, to make his debut. He did not pitch until a couple of days later against the Mariners on September 13th, but he caught my eye because he was an undrafted guy. We like undrafted guys. He went undrafted out of Aquinas College

because he blew out his elbow as a senior and he was pitching for the Gillette Slammers of the Frontier League. And then the Yankees signed him at age 25 in 2017, and he didn't reach AAA until 2019 and made his way to the Red Sox in the minor league phase of the Rule 5 this past offseason. And the knock against him, he's struck out a lot of guys over the course of his career. He has pretty good strikeout numbers, but the command has been wanting. He has walked a lot of guys in his brief career. In 2018, across two levels, he had a 6.8 walks per nine. That's too high.

That's too high of a number. Across three teams in 2019, he had a 5.0 walks per nine. So that part was sort of standing in his way. Things have gone slightly better in that regard for him this year, although I think that command remains something of a bugaboo,

as it were. He walked, let's see. He only walked, Ben, 10.3% of guys this year, so that still wasn't great in AAA. But as much as we hate COVID as a reason for opportunity, the Red Sox clearly have had a pretty terrible COVID outbreak and have had to rely on some AAA arms. So they called up Caleb Ort to pitch, as I said, against the Mariners.

And he pitched in the bottom of the eighth, and it went like this. Abraham Toro single to right. Luis Torrens flat out to right. Then Tom Murphy walked because it wouldn't be Caleb Bort if we didn't have a walk. Then Caleb Bort's night was done. He was pulled in favor of somebody else. Who was he pulled in favor of?

I'm doing great with this segment. I think it's my best one yet. Josh Taylor, he was pulled in favor of Josh Taylor. He was optioned back to AAA Worcester on the 14th. So his time in the majors was brief. He has a 0.00 ERA and a 12.17 FIP. All right. Caleb Ortt. He's 29. 29, seven months, and 12 days. So when you're an undrafted guy and you make your major league debut at 29, like I know that that outing probably didn't go the way he wanted. And the Red Sox ended up losing that game, although that was not Caleb Ortt's fault.

But if you're if you're a 29 year old, almost 30 year old who went undrafted and got to his team in the Rule 5, in the minor league phase of the Rule 5, I think that it's very cool that you made the majors at all. So we tip our caps to Caleb Hort. And we like saying your name. So there you go. Yeah, I definitely like saying his name. He is the third major leaguer from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids. And the previous two major leaguers from there were Paul Ossenmacher

and Dave Gumpert. So quite the names on the Aquinas College alums in the majors. Paul Ossenmacher, Dave Gumpert, and Caleb Oort. Oort. Quite a trio. Yeah. I tend to, as an astronomy nerd, I think of the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort and the Oort Cloud, which is the collection of icy objects in the distant

reaches of the solar system. Although that is two O's, double O-R-T. And now when I think of Oort, I will think of Caleb Oort as well with just the one O. I mean, I think that one of the things that people say about you, Ben, is that your references are just too basic. They're too popular. You know, read a book. Yeah. The nice thing about having these esoteric references is that like you turn off a good portion of your audience, but the tiny sliver of your audience really gets the reference. They love you. All right.

My major leaguer to meet today is major leaguer number 22,418. So he preceded Caleb Ort in the big leagues. And that is Sammy Long, left-handed pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, 6'1", 185. He is 26 years old, and he attended California State University in Sacramento. He is an 18th round pick in the 2016 draft. He was drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays, and he has followed a somewhat winding path to the majors too, which seems to be something that a lot of our meet-a-major-leaguer picks have in common because that makes their stories more interesting. And Sammy Long was actually nominated by a listener, Harry, who suggested him sometime last month. And there are a lot of reasons to recommend Sammy Long

as a candidate for this segment. And he actually debuted a while ago. He showed up for the Giants and pitched first on June 9th of this season. And he pitched a four-inning relief outing, gave up just the one run, one walk, seven strikeouts, an auspicious debut, and he is still on the roster, although he has pitched sporadically of late. He's only pitched twice in September, and he does have a 5-5-3 ERA on the season, albeit with a 4-2-2 FIP. So he's outpitched his peripherals a bit, has not been a core member of that staff,

but he's one of the younger San Francisco Giants at a fresh-faced 26. And he had the usual nice heartwarming quotes about his debut. He said, it was everything that I have dreamed of right there. And Buster Posey was getting the day off, but helped out and caught his warmup pitches that day. And Long said, that's when it kind of sunk in. It's like, I'm on these guys' team and they believe in me to help them win.

I don't know if they actually did believe in him yet at that point or not, but they were going along with it because there he was. And later he said it was a really special moment for his career. It's awesome to be able to fist bump all those guys I looked up to growing up. It just felt like a dream. And I guess that is the virtue of the Giants being super old is that their few younger players grew up watching the rest of the players on that team. So they're happy to be there because Sammy Long is from Fair Oaks, California.

So he grew up watching Buster Posey. I mean, not really. He's not that much younger than Buster Posey, but some of the guys on that team. He's one of Buster Posey's twins. So yeah, he got released by the Rays. Then he got signed by the White Sox. And then, you know, there was no season last year. And then the Giants picked him up. And apparently he had given up on baseball for a while. And then he decided to continue to pursue it. So I'm going to crib a little bit from a Susan Slusser article from this spring in the San Francisco Chronicle. And he said he was released by the Rays. That left the question, what was next?

At the time, I just didn't feel like baseball was it. Moving on from baseball was a little tricky. Once it went away, it was like, wow, I have a lot of time now. His uncle is a firefighter. Once it went away, it was like, wow, I have a lot of time now. His uncle is a firefighter, and so he took classes to be an EMT, and he was thinking that he would become a firefighter as well. But he just couldn't quit baseball, couldn't shake it. He went to work out at this place called the Optimum Athletes Facility. He had had a back injury, but he did physical therapy, and he kind of transformed his body and his diet and he got

his velocity up and that opened everyone's eyes. He was suddenly hitting 92, 93, and that caught team's attention. And he went up about 20, 30, 25 pounds in weight and got a lot stronger and made a mechanical adjustment to throw over the top instead of sidearm. And now, you know, he can hit the mid-90s at least. And apparently 10 teams pursued him this offseason. So there was a demand for Sammy Wong's services, but the Giants were pretty adamant. And so he signed with them and he was in camp and he has this kind of classic lefty Zito style 12 to 6 curveball and he's got a change up and a slider. And so that's all nice. But I think the most interesting thing

about Sammy Long is how Susan led this article. So I will just read her lead here. In some respects, Sam Long is your typical quirky left-handed reliever. Case in point, his as-yet-unwritten screenplay in which he rides around Sacramento on his electric bike, saving the city as an eco-friendly superhero. He'd like James Cameron of Titanic fame to direct.

Quote, it's written by me, directed by Cameron. I'm going to try to get him, Long said. It's basically a tour of Sacramento, an action film, and I'm starring in it. It starts with me jumping off one of the tallest buildings in Sacramento, base jumping in, and then hopping on my electric bike. From there, there's going to be some cool stuff on the river cat's field, interacting with mascot Dinger, they have a Dinger too, and other hijinks. I haven't put pen to paper, said Long, who conceived the idea during the minor league shutdown. This is all in the brain. My brothers and I grew up remaking movies like Rambo, Forrest Gump, with a little camcorder so happy to see that his baseball career has panned out although it is delaying his potential screenwriting career and this eco-friendly superhero franchise that he is planning to start someday i mean i'm sorry but the obvious choice here is greta gerwig she can make it part of her sacramento oeuvre yes it would be a different direction than cameron but he's gonna be making avatar movies for

like the next 200 years that no one will see or that we'll all see but not remember one minute after we stepped out of the theater so call greta and then you'll really then he'll really be like a a lefty like relief weirdo because it's like you know who doesn't want to hang out with greta gerwig yes exactly and there was some question harry who nominated him for the segment was wondering how did susan hear about that like yeah talking about it did she hear about it second hand so i messaged her to ask and apparently one of his trainers told her about it mentioned it to her first and then she went to Sammy Long and asked about it. So Sammy wasn't walking around broadcasting this. I guess you've got an

idea that's good. You don't want to just give it away. That's how that came to be. The superhero IP market is crowded and people are cutthroats. They're ruthless out there. You got to protect your ideas and make sure that they're just yours. there. You got to protect your ideas and make sure that they're just yours. Yep. So that is Sammy Long. And he had never pitched professionally above APOL prior to this season. And here he is, part of, as we speak, still a first place team. So congrats to Sammy Long. Nice to meet you and Caleb Ort. Ort. All right. Let's do a step blast. Okay, so your pick of Caleb Ort segues perfectly into this first stat blast here.

And this is prompted by a question that I've been meaning to answer for a while. This is from Jeff, a Patreon supporter, who says a question about the idea that most relievers are failed starters. Toward the end of the third inning of Washington at Toronto on April 28th, Blue Jays announcer Buck Martinez noted that reliever Ty Tice has always been a reliever

throughout his professional career. By the way, look at Ty Tice, another major leaguer we should meet because he debuted this year too. Another nice name. A look at Tice's baseball reference page confirms that while he started games in college, he has not in three years in the minors, and he is not yet in the majors either. So I'm wondering how common or uncommon this is. In terms of players' professional careers, do we know what percentage of MLB relievers were never tried as starters in the minors? Presumably it isn't uncommon in the minors, particularly at lowest levels, to see relievers who have only been relievers professionally, but we tend not to think that those are the pitchers that will make the majors. So Caleb Ort is someone who has never started a game professionally or at least not in affiliated ball. I haven't studied his history in detail, but he has not started a game in the majors or the minors just like Ty Tice and just like Zach Popp, who is actually the first major leaguer that we met as part of this segment, the Marlins reliever. So these guys are out there who have never started a game, but there is a conception

that it's typical for relievers to be failed starters. And some of you may have seen Andrew Chafin, the Cubs and now A's reliever, who has worn a failed starter t-shirt this year and has popularized that. So that is the idea. And to be fair, like even if you never started a game in the minors, you probably started a game at some point. So Ty Tice started some games in college.

You know, other guys, they started in high school. They certainly started in Little League. So if you want to take it really, really literally and technically, yeah, probably just about everyone is a failed starter. It would be weird if you had big league talent, but never started a game even like in little league or something. But if we're talking about just minors or majors, and right now we are, I was able to get

some stats on this courtesy of listener Lucas Apostolaris of Baseball Perspectus. And Baseball Perspectus only has reliable minor league data back to like the late 80s-ish, something like that. If one had the complete baseball reference minor league data, you could probably go back even further. But we can answer this question without necessarily going back further. And as always, I will put the data online and I will put a graph online, but I asked Lucas to look at this in two ways. One was to look up the percentage of big relievers in any given season who had never previously started a game in either the majors or affiliated ball starts. And then figuring that you might have a guy who picked up a random start here or there, but was never actually looked at as a starter, especially nowadays when you have piggyback games and you have openers and all of that. I also asked them to check to see what percentage of major league relievers in each season had never

had a season in either the majors or the minors where they were primarily a starter. So the majority of their appearances came as a starter. And the answer is, at least so far this season, the percentage of major league relievers who have never made a start in the minors or the majors this year, 7.9%. Wow. Yeah. And the percentage of relievers in the majors this season who have never had a season where they were primarily a starter 21.7 percent so judging by those numbers

there is still a lot of truth to the saying that relievers are failed starters because more than nine in 10 major relievers have made a start in the minors of the majors at some point. And almost four in five of them have had a season at some point where they were a starter. So that's kind of interesting, right? I guess that might confirm one's assumptions, but I thought maybe things had changed even more. The interesting thing is to look at the trend over time, because I assumed that these percentages would have climbed because in this day and age, I think a lot of pitchers are drafted just as relievers and that's what they are. And no one ever expects them to be starters. And there are just so many bullpen openings these days and so many relievers and so many pitchers

who just have the single inning reliever skill set who you'd never really think of as a starter so i thought it would actually have changed more it has changed somewhat so if you go back 20 years or so, or, you know, I went back to 1995, which is when we have reliably, we can say that all of the minor league data is included for those guys too. So like in 1995, the percentage of relievers who had never made a start 5.4, you know, 96, it's 5.2 and then 97, it's 4.2. So it was around that like 4% to 6% range, whereas until recently, it actually has gone down slightly in the past few years, which is interesting because like in 2012, it was 11.5%. In 2013, it was 10.5%.

In 2014, it was 11.2%. In 2015, it was 12.1%. Now it's more like 8% or so. So I'm not sure exactly why it has decreased relative to a few years ago. Could be partly because of the rise of openers crossing off some pitchers who otherwise would never have had a start, but it has definitely increased relative to 20 or 25 years ago. And I'd imagine that if we went back even further, there would be an even bigger increase. And that is also true looking at it from the primary reliever or starter standpoint. If you go back to mid-90s or early 2000s, it was like 13%, 14%, 15%, 16-ish percent had never had

a season when they were primarily a starter. And now it's like 22%. And a few years ago, it was 22, 23, 24%. So yeah, as you would expect, there are more dedicated relievers who have always been relievers, but that is still not the norm. It is still the norm to have them be failed starters at some point, because I guess why not try them in that role at least and see if they can hack it. Right. I think that I don't know if this constitutes a change in team philosophy or not. So I don't want to assert that it does. But it seems like, you know, you do have guys every year where you're like, this is the this is the fast moving reliever. Right. They get drafted and we kind of look at them and we're like,

that's a guy who might end up pitching. He's not just going to make his pro debut. He might make his major league debut this year or the year after. It's a guy who just has the goods to pitch in a big league bullpen right now. You obviously don't have that trajectory for starters, but it does seem like you're going to try a lot of guys just to see if they can hack it because if they surprise you, then you have a competent starter that you weren't anticipating being such,

and that's quite a windfall. So I can't decide if I'm surprised that the number is even as high as it is. Does the number surprise you? I can't decide if I'm... I don't know if I'm surprised. Yeah. I don't know either. I guess I was initially surprised

that it wasn't even higher just given how much pitcher usage has changed. Just like there's so many relievers, it's like were there enough starts to go around for all of these relievers to have gotten a start at some point? Sure. But part of it is the denominator we're using so lucas is using all relievers just anyone who pitched in a

game in relief in a given mlb season and some of those will be swing men or regular starters who just happen to make one relief appearance so you might not think of those as relievers and that slightly depresses the percentages here, so I asked him to look at it a second way, which is to make the denominator just full-time relievers, pitchers whose only appearances in that MLB season came in relief. But that doesn't change things dramatically. For instance, this year there have been 623 pitchers entering Friday who had pitched a game in relief. 506 of those were exclusively relievers, and there have been 49, including Ty Tice and Caleb Ort and Zach Popp, who had never made a

pro start. So if we use that different denominator, that only raises the percentage from 7.9 to 9.7. That is the percentage of relievers who had never made a start. And if we look at it the other way, 135 relievers this year have never had a season in which they were primarily a starter. So that bumps that percentage from 21.7 to 26.7. So generally, looking at the rate of full-time relievers as opposed to just anyone who made a relief appearance, that only adds like 2 to 4 percentage points to the rate of relievers who had never made a start or maybe five to seven percentage points to the rate of relievers who'd pitched three games and they were all starts. And he was a starter prior to that point in his minor league career. And sometimes guys are starters right up until then. Sometimes they convert sooner. I guess the hitters tell you when you can't be a starter anymore generally.

But I wonder whether this will change in the future because, well, you have fewer minor league teams and the relievers have to come from somewhere if they keep just using more and more relievers every year. And there are fewer minor league teams and games. I wonder whether that will mean there are fewer starts to go around. But it's hard to project because there could be limits on pitcher usage in the future as we discuss. Yeah, we don't know what the roster dynamic is going to do to something like this where it's like, well, now you have to sort yourself out early. Well, those are the stats. So you can go check them out and look at the trend lines by clicking on our show page. And I will leave you with this one, which is prompted by another listener question. And this is a timely one from Greg, Patreon supporter the season today, September 16th, against the Reds.

But for the third consecutive series, they fell short in the final game. They remain the only team in baseball without a sweep this season. Not only that, they fell to 0-14 in games where they had a chance to complete a sweep. Is this, as I suspect, a record? How many is the most failed sweep opportunities a team has had in a year where they failed to complete a sweep. Is this, as I suspect, a record? How many is the most failed sweep opportunities a team has had in a year where they failed to complete a sweep? Alternatively, how many is the most failed sweep opportunities a team has had before successfully completing their first sweep of the year? So yeah, this was a one nothing game. I believe that the Pirates dropped to the Reds

after winning the first two games in that series they just can't seal the deal I guess if you're a Pirates fan you're probably happy that they're even getting to the point that they have the chance to complete a sweep but they have come very close many times this season and they have not cemented it yet. So I sent this question to frequent StatBlast consultant, Ryan Nelson, and he looked into it and Greg was right. There is something here. This is not just hometown cooking,

hometown bias or home cooking or being a myopic or insular. He recognized that this really is something. So Ryan says we have two in a row where someone found a record. In fact, this obliterated the previous record. Yeah. He is referring to the Ryan LaVarnway question where someone asked if LaVarnway was the first player to take 10 seasons to reach his 162nd career big league game. And he was.

And this also makes me think of the question about what was it the the mariners or the padres not completing sweeps on at home or on the road or whatever it was yeah we did a whole stat blast about that i love that that's this is one of my favorite things about doing the podcast is that like these are things that i would just not be aware of i don't know that the pirates had had 14 chances to sweep this year and had not completed any of them. And I feel like that's why people get mad at national broadcasters. That's part of the reason is that they just can't know these little quirky things that you know about a team if you're following it all season and watching all the games.

And so we are alerted to these things by our eagle-eyed listeners. So Ryan writes, In this exercise, I defined what Greg was talking about as a missed sweep. That is a series where the team won all but the last game. So, Ryan writes, If we look at baseball since 1900, it's not that different. I'll just go out to one decimal point here. 51.4 series in a season, 4.8 sweeps and 5 missed sweeps. If we look in the last 20 years, both sweeps and missed sweeps have gone down a bit, 4.3 and 3.7. For more context, only 2.9% of teams in baseball history, that's 85 teams, have gone completely sweepless in a season. So the 2021 Pirates are already in fairly rare company there. Only 2.2% of teams since 2000, that's 14 teams, have gone sweepless. The record for most missed sweeps in a season without a single sweep since 1900 is only 10, which has happened twice, once the 1951 St. Louis Browns, and most recently by, unfortunately, the 2011 Pirates. In fact, even if we include wonky 1800s baseball, the only team to have more missed sweeps was the 1873 Elizabeth Resolutes. Of course, everyone remembers the 1873 Resolutes who had 18, but purely on a technicality.

They played 23 games and their 23 games were split over 20 series, 18 of which they went 0-1, which since they lost all but one game counted as miss sweeps. Oh, man. The same thing happened with the 1872 Washington Nationals, 11 miss sweeps, and the 1875 Philadelphia Centennials, 10 miss sweeps. Then it's those Browns and Pirates teams. If the 2021 Pirates pull this off, it will be truly historic. Some other fun series facts.

Most sweeps in a season since 1900 belongs to the 1949 Red Sox. They had 18 sweeps in 57 series. The most sweeps since 2000, the 2017 Dodgers, 12 sweeps in 52 series. And most sweeps with zero missed sweeps since 1900. Again, the 2017 Dodgers who had 12 sweeps and zero missed sweeps since 1900. Again, the 2017 Dodgers, who had 12 sweeps and zero missed sweeps. And I asked a couple of follow-ups here for Ryan, what's the record for most missed sweeps in a season period? So including teams that did eventually earn a sweep at some point, because I was guessing that the Pirates already held the record for most missed sweeps before the first successful sweep

in a season. And Ryan confirmed that the record for most outright missed sweeps since 1900 is 19 by the 1930 Philadelphia Athletics. And he confirmed that since 1900, the record for most missed sweeps to start a season was 11 by the 1939 Pirates. Again, it's the Pirates. Kind of a consistent theme here. But yeah, the Pirates just looking at their schedule for the rest of this season and seeing what their chances of a sweep are doesn't look great for them. They are playing the Marlins right now. That's their best chance.

So if they could sweep the Marlins, then they could get off the schneid here. After that, they play the Reds for three games. Then they play the Phillies for four games. It would be even tougher to sweep a four-game series. And then they have the Cubs again for three, and then they finish the season against the Reds. So their best chances really come against the Marlins this weekend and against the Cubs in the last season of September. But they've already made history. They could make even more history if they stay sweepless for the rest of the season.

I'm so impressed by how many times you managed to say sweeps. And then without, you didn't goof it up even one time, Ben. Yeah, pretty good. That's why you're a pro how sweep it is that's a call back to some old effectively wild episodes and yeah this is not something i ever would have noticed i guess it's frustrating to be poised on the precipice of a sweep so many times and not to seal the deal so that sucks sucks. I've had the LaVarne Weiss joke and song that I told you off air stuck in my head for like several days now. Our listeners did not hear it.

You want to share it with them? Yeah, he should record a cover of the Eagles and sing it. You can go LaVarne way. Yeah, I have not had that stuck in my head, fortunately. For days and days and days oh no yeah all right well good step blasts good questions good research thanks to everyone involved as always and i'll just uh shout out a little extra fun fact here that I was hip to by tweeter and listener Aiden Jackson Evans who tweeted prior to Friday's game

that Joey Gallo needs one homer and 21 more strikeouts in the next 15 games to achieve the full Nelson and what he is calling the full Nelson is more home runs and strikeouts in a single season than Nellie Fox had in his entire 19 season career than Nellie Fox had in his entire 19-season career.

So Nellie Fox, former White Sox second baseman, Hall of Famer, sort of the Nick Madrigal of his day. He had 35 home runs and 216 strikeouts in his entire career because he never really struck out and he didn't have a ton of power. Joey Gallo entered Friday's game with 35 home runs and 196 strikeouts. So almost the full Nelson. And he has since homered in Friday's game. So he has surpassed Nellie Fox's career home run total this season. And he is well on his way to surpassing his career strikeout total. And I just ran a quick stat head query to see who else has had the full Nelson in the past.

So this is players who have had 35 or more homers and 216 or more strikeouts in a single season. It's Mark Reynolds in 2009, Adam Dunn in 2012, and Chris Davis in 2016. And I would guess that Gallo will be the fourth sometime soon. The only player who has had the strikeouts, but not the homers, the half Nelson, is Johan Mankata in 2018. Yeah.

That's a sign of how things have changed and also just how much of a contact outlier Nellie Fox was even in his day. But yeah, that's Joey Gallo for you. He's constantly breaking the scale. All right. So that will do it for this week. Thanks as always for listening. Well, eat your heart out, Howard Emke. Your 99-year-old record for the most hit by pitches in a single season has been broken. On Friday night after we finished recording, Padres reliever Austin Adams issued his 24th hit by pitch of the season. He has pitched only 49 and two-thirds innings. The

recipient of number 24 was Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina. Looked like the pitch hit him on the back of the arm. Adams really seems mad at himself every time it happens. He shouts. He looks down at his hand as if to say, how could you be betraying me like this? At this point, he can't be that surprised. Max Bay on Twitter did some analysis of his pitch's locations, and he found that earlier in the season maybe Adams was getting a bit unlucky with how often his pitches were hitting people but that lately his expected hit by pitch rate has spiked to the point that on average he would be expected to hit about six batters per hundred pitches just based on where his pitches

have been and this one was pretty unavoidable it was an 87 mile per hour slider and Molina was fine Padres manager Jace Tingler said I get the narrative he gets the narrative they're all sliders this guy's not headhunting this guy's not throwing 95 mile per hour fastballs and hitting guys yeah that's true but even so it just doesn't seem like he knows where his pitches are going it's got to be tough to bring a guy in when there's like a near certainty at this point that he's going to hit someone. Of course, it's also tough to bring a guy in when there's a good chance that he's going to give up runs. And he's been doing that a lot lately. And he did that in this game.

The play log was double to left, strikeout swinging, walk, wild pitch, hit by pitch. Then Adams was replaced by Ross Detweiler, who allowed a grand slam to Dylan Carlson, and that made what was a 4-2 Cardinals lead, an 8-2 Cardinals lead, and that's where it ended up. So shockingly, this Vince Velasquez-Austin Adams-Ross Detweiler pitching plan did not pay off. Adams, over his last seven appearances, has hit seven batters, and perhaps more importantly to the Padres, he has allowed 10 earned runs. So you may not be seeing him in a lot of high leverage situations, but he has already made history to cap off one of the weirdest seasons of all time. And if you're wondering, Austin Adams has made two

starts in his pro career, but both came as an opener for the Mariners in 2019. He actually didn't make starts in college either, so if he's a failed starter, he failed as a starter long ago. He may become a failed reliever if he keeps this up. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks, while also helping keep the podcast Thanks to all of you. Spotify, and other podcast platforms. You can find Effectively Wild on Twitter, at EWPod. 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 for his editing assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. Only 23 and you see it through me I'm a failure Success into my hands I do the worst I can A pleasure I'm confused as I could be There's a million more like me Oh, oh, oh The feeling on my feet

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