Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1762: They Write Mike Trout Hypotheticals in Outer Space, Too

Episode Date: October 23, 2021

Meg Rowley and guest co-host Ben Clemens discuss the Astros’ pitching woes, the role of starters in the postseason, Dave Roberts’ decision to have Brusdar Graterol hit in Game 5 of the NLCS, Yordan Alvarez, how a 3-2 series deficit feels for fans of the team with the upper hand, and Ben’s look at Ian […]

Reading in a letter, baby, do not leave out the words Stories and cigarettes ruin lives of lesser girls And I wanna know, cause I want you to know, and it's a strange condition, a day in prison, it's got me out of my head and I don't know what I came for. Hello and welcome to episode 1762 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs, and I am joined today by the other Ben, the temporary prime Ben, Ben Clemens. Ben, how are you? I'm doing pretty well. It's very rainy in San Francisco, which is kind of strange, but aside from that, everything's going well. I mean, I guess it is October. We are into the fall, but you do get that lovely fall bit of nice weather in San Francisco. It's a weird city weather-wise.

I don't know what you guys are doing down there. Yeah, it's kind of strange, but I like it. Yeah. Well, we are going to talk about some playoff-related stuff to start the episode. We are feeling other Ben's presence in this episode because we're going to talk about his piece with Rob Arthur on some of the minor league rule experiments that MLB did, and then we're going to answer some listener emails. But I thought we would start today by talking about the Houston Astros and the state of their pitching because you recently wrote about

that very topic for Fangraphs.com and is a relevant playoff consideration as they get ready to take on Boston this evening and potentially advance to the World Series. But they will do so, it sounds like, without the services of Lance McCullers Jr., which puts an already shaky rotation on tilt even further. So, Ben, what do you expect these Houston Astros are going to do in an attempt to counter the absence of McCullers?

So the most likely thing they'll do is just keep doing what they've been doing. McCullers hasn't pitched in the ALCS. It's just that is in itself a kind of shaky plan. Yeah. So Fran Rivaldez is great. He pitched really well in game five. Luis Garcia is, I mean, I want to say great, but he hasn't pitched very well. I think he's finished three and two thirds innings or something in his two playoff starts and is hurt

and is having trouble pushing off the mound. Jose Arquide is a pretty decent pitcher who the Astros seem to not trust very much. Yeah. And then after that, it gets kind of weird and old. You know, you got Jake Odorizzi and zach grinky although they really don't want to use grinky and potentially brandon belak yeah garcia can't go i don't know it's it's not really what you think of as a playoff rotation yeah which is interesting because when when i think about houston's season the place where they you know if you were going to pick at an area of their roster where you were a little bit nervous going into the postseason, it was in the bullpen, right? Because

their bullpen hadn't been bad. I mean, they added Graveman at the deadline to much Mariners fan consternation, but it had been sort of middle of the road, right? They had sort of lacked. I think that's generous. It was below average. It was below average. By the end of the season, it was sort of lacked um that's yeah that's generous it was below average it was below average by the end of the season it was sort of like kind of okay and that was the place where you were where you're like do they have sort of the the lockdown bullpen pieces that uh teams tend to lean on once they get into october and now those guys are sort of keeping them in it from a pitching perspective and the rotation is the place that is leaky which is not what i had expected but i also didn't think that lance mccullers jr was

going to be injured and unable to pitch so that there's that i suppose yeah it is um i was looking through their bullpen stats and everyone is pitching really well yeah against tough opposition too right you know the white socks and the Red Sox are not easy opponents. Right. And, you know, we've seen some of the weakness that the Red Sox have been able to exploit, right? But it has been, it has come mostly at the expense of their starters. All those grand slams seem suboptimal.

Yeah. It's also one of these things where relievers are pretty good. Even a below average bullpen probably has four or five guys who throw really hard and miss bats or have a nice slider or something. Right. A lot of the innings that have been lost by starters have been picked up by Christian Javier, and that's great. He's probably a better pitcher than those starters. They should probably be happy that the starters haven't been able to fill up the innings that he's pitched instead. Yeah, it's a weird bit of business when you're like,

well, maybe Zach Reinke not pitching is actually fine. I don't know. They're in an advantageous position, right? Because now the Red Sox are sort of playing for their lives in a way that Houston doesn't have to quite tonight. But you would imagine they want to wrap things up. How do you anticipate that game this evening going? This will probably post in time for people to hear your opinion of it

and mock you if it goes the other way. Well, I mean, whether or not they've heard it before the game starts, they'll be able to do that. I worry about Yvaldi. Yeah. For the same reason that all these guys who have made strange and unnecessary relief appearances on their normal throw days have not done well in

their subsequent starts right that just seems like a like an obvious hole i pointed this out on fangraphs audio earlier this week but if you had to pick somebody who was the the throw day guy the the poster child for this phenomenon you'd probably pick patrick corbin sure 2019 playoffs because he pitched in eight games. He made three starts. And he was, as I remembered, great. He was not great. You misremembered his postseason greatness? Well, he was great in the World Series.

Right. Or at least he was great in Game 7 of the World Series. Right. He was great in the moment that mattered the absolute most for Washington Washington he made two starts on short-ish rest yeah two days rest after a throw day and then three days rest after unclear like a relief appearance in game one of the world series yeah and he was not very good he gave up four earned runs in both of those he went five and then six innings he like it's not very easy to come back after not actually getting your full rest and make a full start. And he was, you know, very good overall in those playoffs.

He had one or two bad games, but mostly was solid. But he wasn't good as a starter. They mostly didn't use him as a starter again. Or if you think of Uvalde, who's an example that a lot of people have used because he did the same thing in 2019 or 2018 rather. Well, he started as a starter and then once they started using him as a reliever, they stopped starting him and he didn't make any more starts. Yeah. I don't think that people, people say, oh, you can just, you know, use your starters on throw days with no cost, but no one has ever proven that. Right. I think that I can appreciate how it intuitively makes sense to

people that it is not going to diminish their ability to have an effective start in their next start because it's like, well, yeah, they're throwing that day regardless. But I don't think that a pitcher's bullpen day replicates in any meaningful way the experience of pitching actual playoff innings against playoff hitters. To assume that those things are equivalent to one another seems understandable, but probably short-sighted. Yeah, exactly. I understand why people have that thought, but it's not that easy. One thing that I think a lot of people miss is it really affects your length. Even if you think that they're going to be just as efficient and effective in the pitches they do throw, no one has gone long after having one of these throw day sessions.

And so you really are mortgaging the future. Often for like an only so-so pitcher, Yuvaldi threw, I think, 24 pitches in his abbreviated but disastrous relief stint. So between Garcia having a hurt knee and Uvalde being gassed, I think this is going to be another parade of bullpen game. And weirdly, I think that favors the Astros. I mean, I just think the Astros are a better team. Yeah. But I also don't trust the Red Sox bullpen even a little bit. Less than the Astros.

Yeah. I hope that Uvalde pitches well just because I would like us to sort of put to bed some of the more facile starting pitching narratives that have emerged. But if he doesn't pitch well, it perhaps allows us to sharpen the argument with what we're actually annoyed by in the way that starters are being deployed. Because I don't think that the opener is really the problem I think it's what we've been talking about here it's starters being used in relief in a way that is perhaps understandable given the game state but doesn't ultimately set their teams up for success and then ends up compromising later starts so that we have this compounding reliever problem that isn't really

about the relievers at all it's about the know, effectiveness and sort of usage of the starters in their non-starter appearances, although some of them have been bad in their starter appearances, too. It's like if Julio Urias can't be used effectively in the way that Dave Roberts is trying to use him, it seems like a reconsideration of the strategy is sort of in order, because if you're going to think about a guy who has that flexibility and perhaps is going to be comfortable doing some of this stuff you'd think it would be the guy who has come out of the bullpen at at various points throughout his career and done so to great effect and the fact that he can't makes you think like maybe just let your relievers yeah maybe just let your relievers be relievers i think that it really displays a lack of understanding of like total value by a lot of these teams and managers where yes i'm pretty sure that using max scherzer as the closer in game five of the nlds

increased the dodgers chance of winning that game very slightly yeah most relievers the average reliever pitching the average inning doesn't allow any runs right scherzer probably better than that and so yeah you can you can pick up this small gain in that game or in the game that Arias came in to try to hold a two-run lead. You can try to pick up the small gain. But it's a small gain and it has big costs in the future that are certain. And you could use a reliever for not much loss. And I just don't think teams are doing that. Like, they're really saying we're going to live for today.

And do you actually think that's a smart way to manage the playoffs i don't i think that you have to consider the dodgers don't just need to win one game they need to win one game and then you know x more and then x more depending on which game we're talking about right and i think focusing too much on win today figure out tomorrow tomorrow is not really doing these teams any favors. And there's a reason that you see so much scrambling and, oh, I don't know. We'll,

we'll try this guy, but he pitched 20 pitches for no reason two days ago. So maybe he won't be good. It just seems like it's a, like a solution looking for a problem. They didn't need to do this. Right. And they did.

And now it hurts. Right. I, and I think that like, we would acknowledge that there are moments where it's like do or die if you don't make some drastic decisions, then you're just going to go home. Yeah.

Also the closer to the end of the World Series you get, the more it makes sense. Right. But I think that it is always hard to balance sort of the needs of present you with future you. And I can appreciate tipping the scales in, why managers would tip the scales in favor of present them but it's like you want future them to be in the room you know it's like

a they need to at least be on their shoulder being like but remember tomorrow you're gonna have dead arm sure is that what you want because it it did seem like a an understandable if unnecessary bit of managerial fretting on his part it's like you probably have you have a guy in your bullpen who can get three outs you have a guy i mean surely you have several guys i know they're all tired but so is mech scherzer well here's the thing we know that dave roberts can think about future dave there's no question about that he let bruce dark gratteron pinch hit for himself, essentially. Yes.

Rather than use an actual pinch hitter. I guess he was saving them for the future. So clearly he can think about future Dave. He's just doing it in spots that don't make any sense to instead of ones where it does. That was an admirable transition, Ben. I'm really impressed because we did want to talk about this bit of managerial strangeness. I'm really impressed because we did want to talk about this bit of managerial strangeness. When you have a big win and you score 11 runs and Chris Taylor hits three bombs and AJ Pollock contributes too, it's easy to forget these moments of managerial strangeness. But we do need to talk about the decision to have Brewster Graterol hit for himself and then not pitch in the subsequent inning.

That is deeply strange. I know, Meg, that you're a fan of big, beefy hitters. Oh, yeah. Love the beef boys. It's hard to argue with that. I mean, Brewster's a big guy. Yeah. And with the Yankees not in the playoffs, we can use all that we can get.

Or not in this round of the playoffs. But yeah, that was really bad. And even if you want to preserve your pinch hitters, use a pitcher who can bat, maybe. Right, or if you want to preserve your pinch hitters and you're going to leave the pitcher in there, well then just let him throw the following ending. Oh, right. It just seemed very strange to go immediately to try an N-1.

Who did they still have who had they used by that point pinch hitting they just had two lefties in barns they have lux and baity in barns okay but i don't know then just let him pitch the the next well i assumed the move was that he was going to pitch the next inning so i didn't even think anything of him not being pinch hit for it made perfect sense it made sense but then it stopped making sense grotter little new thrones 14 pitches right this is the thing it wasn't like he had been taxed over much yeah it wasn't a particularly close game at that point it was 6-2 right and yeah i i don't know why trying to come in there if trying did need to come in there and there were no decisions after like between this pinch hitting and trying to come in he was the last batter of the inning

right it's not like then they scored more runs and he thought oh i'll just get carter all some rest right the situation was exactly the same nothing changed and somehow between those two he decided it's no good clear reis is a pretty good batter pretty good batter. And maybe Roberts was saving him for the save. You know, he does like using him in relief, but why not just let someone else pinch hit there? Right. It was very strange. Very, very strange.

Yeah. I struggle with how to properly diagnose the phenomena of Roberts managing in the postseason because, well, I think that like my base state assumption is that these decisions, and I think you, based on the managerial report cards you've given out, might agree that like these are often marginal choices, right? Like the difference between one decision and the next is, or one choice and the next is not particularly meaningful. And so I don't want to make moves that don't end up mattering that much

into molehills because, or mountains rather, they are molehills often because, you know, I just don't think that the difference is all that meaningful. So there's like that base state assumption that I make. And then the next base assumption that I make is that the Dodgers as an organization are sort of good tacticians generally, right? Like I think that they're clear-eyed in their analysis of particular matchups and game states. So I don't go in assuming that like they are fundamentally misunderstanding a particular moment and making decisions based on like bad underlying assumptions. And when I watch Roberts pitch or manage, he hasn't pitched in the regular season.

That would be very strange. That would be the ultimate odd manager move. When I watch him manage in the regular season, he doesn't strike me as making particularly zany choices. And so with all of that sort of said, I do, though, watch him in the playoffs, and he's good for at least one weird one, a series. Now, maybe I am just, you know, engaging in some survivor bias here, because his teams tend to last longer in the playoffs and be

in big moments. And so I noticed those decisions more than I do other managers who also make zany choices, but you know, then their teams lose and they go home. So like, I'm willing to admit that I am perhaps overestimating the degree to which this either happens relative to other managers or matters. But it does seem like he is good for a couple weird ones, right? Like he does some weird stuff and it seems to manifest at the most critical moment in his team's season. I think that some of that is made to look bigger than it is because some past iterations of the Dodgers really did have no bullpen.

Right, right. They've had some teams where you look at the front office and you're like, well, look, you guys are really smart and look how good the Dodgers are and you just wrote Joe Kelly six times as your whole bullpen. I don't think that's how you're supposed to do it. They seem to have, I guess actually the Kelly signing after the

2018 World Series kind of marked a turning point where they spent more resources fixing the bullpen. But they've had some dodgy bullpens before that really did make it seem like Clayton Kershaw and relief in the World Series might be the best option. Right. And, you know, Roberts' decisions on those, I blame him less because he was picking between a lot of bad options. Right. I think that if there's something you can fault, it's that it doesn't seem like he's changed his decision making as the team has changed its composition.

Right. And yeah, like you said, it's not a huge difference i think i gave gave capler like a c minus or d plus for his lineup usage in the nlds and it's because he got like two at bats wrong where he could have had better hitters and i thought it was pretty predictable what he did yeah so i don't know you know two at bats where you don't have an advantage instead of do or like your hitter slightly worse that's not a big deal it's just like it's the only thing that's totally in your control right hitters can be hot kike hernandez or cold kike hernandez that's not clear which one you're going to be but managers you know that that's entirely up to you right and

roberts seems to have had the worst of those that i've noticed recently it could just be because yeah he gets a lot of chances to goof it up. Yeah. But it is noticeable. And I don't think we're second guessing or armchair quarterbacking or whatever you want to call it. It was weird right in the moment to have a reliever bat for himself and then immediately pull him from the game. That's weird.

Yeah. Well, and I guess the other thing that kind of confounds me about it is that, like, we noticed this because we watch these games. And so I imagine that the Dodgers have noticed this. And so this is the other place where I struggle because you would imagine and perhaps they have like and perhaps they've given this feedback, but all the other things that Roberts does so well sort of offset it in a way that it isn't, you know, a deal breaker for them. But it seems strange that it is a problem that has been allowed to sort of persist, even though the exact manifestation of the weird decision sometimes varies, right? Like sometimes it's often how he's using his pitchers. I guess that that is fair. using his pitchers, I guess that that is fair. But it's just weird that this has been allowed to sort of stick around as a thing that we're kind of on the watch for

and expect him to do at least once or twice a playoff series because you would think that the front office would be like, so hey, Dave. Yeah, I do wonder if they just agree with the idea of using starters and relief. I mean, they don't agree that you should randomly not pinch hit for a reliever. Right. At least somebody. There's no chance, especially after Bellinger stole that base.

Right. That they would have agreed with that. Right. But yeah, I imagine that you're right. The Dodgers have a huge front office that spends a lot of time looking at all players in baseball and all decisions in baseball, including their own. They probably aren't hearing this podcast and saying, well, Dave Roberts makes questionable decisions.

What? You need to look into that. Yeah. We should get somebody on that. Right, and they've had years and years of having Roberts as a manager, having high stakes post-season games. I assume that they're at least somewhat complicit. Right, and so it sort of nettles me

in the back of my brain because it makes me think like, are we missing something here? But I also don't want to just assume that teams are always making optimal choices but i do think of the dodgers as smart so it's it's confounding it's one of those things like you know i don't know chris ionetta's framing numbers that i'm just going to be bothered by for the rest of my life i don't know i think you can say teams are smart and yet they make substandard decisions.

Right. Lots of smart people make bad decisions. And lots of smart people make bad decisions with all the information. Right. I think this is just some of that. Yeah, I think that that is a satisfying explanation. It won't stop it from keeping me awake at 3 a.m. I would argue it's an unsatisfying explanation.

But it's an explanation. It's an explanation. It won't, you know, stop me from randomly thinking about it at like 3 a.m. a couple of times but it will help me get back to sleep after I do. So there's that, I guess. So we will have a game six in that series aided by Chris Taylor just not wanting to go home

and wanting to continue to play three home runs in that game and then there's Pollock and then there's the rest so I did not prepare you for this question I wonder how it feels and then how you intellectualize the way that this current NLCS is mirroring last year's NLCS because I imagine if you are a Braves fan and if you're an Atlanta sports fan in general, you are just sick to death about hearing about 3-1 leads getting blown and your team failing to sort of get across the goal line in a meaningful way regardless of the sport. That's good.

You know, if I'm going to be tormented about a goal line fade for the rest of my football fandom, then somebody else has to be on the chopping block from time to time. But so there's like the way that we feel when we are confronted with that reality, right? In much the same way that, you know, sometimes like very good closers tend to walk guys and they're good, but we feel terrible about them being in there. This is another thing about Atlanta that our Brave fan listeners are probably like, hey, make shut up about that already. So there's a way we feel about it.

And then there's a way that we sort of intellectualize it, right? We can look at sort of how teams have done in situations like this and know how hard it is to come back from a 3-1 deficit and what have you. But when you see, OK, they have to play a couple more games here. How do you feel about it? I mean, they're at 3-2, they're not at 3-1, but how do you feel about it versus how do you intellectualize the reality that the Dodgers face in this series going forward? I think I can do that. I don't think it's that hard to sync the two up. We have in our play playoff odds let's look at the zips postseason game by game odds we have the braves as basically two to one favorites and 68.9 so a little over two out of

three that seems reasonable to me and that's probably about how it feels for the braves if any number of little breaks had gone different ways last year, they would have beaten the Dodgers. It's not like they got up 3-1 and then the Dodgers won 20-0, 20-0, 20-0. Cody Bellinger hurts his arm celebrating a different home run than the one that he did hit. That series could have gone very differently. If I am a Braves fan, I'm sure I'd

feel miserable. Largely because I'd be really upset with my own fan base for their questionable in stadium decisions. Yeah, man, you got it. I'd also be just I feel miserable because this has happened before. Right. But I think you can feel miserable and still be like, yeah, we'll probably win.

Yeah. I think the Giants probably felt similarly being up 2-1 on the Dodgers. Sure. And, you know, they didn't pull it out, but they had the better of it. They had the better of it going into it and just didn't quite come out ahead. It's nice to have a game cushion. It's nicer to have a two game cushion. Right. So I don't know if I'm an Atlanta fan, I'd be worried. And I would probably not let my past experiences with these same teams color my perception of it too much. A lot of players are different. Right. But yeah, like

it's one thing when you're up right but yeah like it's one thing when you're up 3-2 it's another thing when you're up 3-2 and you're facing walker bueller and max and you have ian anderson and i guess charlie morton on regular rest yeah it's not bad pitching by any means and having a game in hand matters but the braves won't be favored in either game and they shouldn't be well and you know it's perhaps narratively satisfying for those who wish to look at the remaining two games and feel doom and gloom that they have Anderson on the mound who has this reputation, as you wrote about this week, for just being god-awful in the first inning. So if you are looking for guys who succumb to narrative, you perhaps feel particularly nervous there. But you

would tell Atlanta fans to not fret about Ian Anderson, wouldn't you? I would. I mean, well, I would tell them to fret about Ian Anderson because he's a hot and cold young pitcher facing a pretty deep lineup. That's not a recipe for success. No. Ian Anderson's been bad sometimes and good sometimes. But I would say don't worry too much about the first inning. He's made two starts

in this postseason. One of his first innings was good. One was bad. The good one was against a bad lineup. The bad one was against a good lineup.

I'd say worry about the lineup. Dodgers have a lot of good hitters and I'm sure it's miserable to face them. But nothing seems noticeable at his first inning woes. There are guys who are not good in first innings

because they're not warm, basically. Right. They don't throw hard enough or their pitches don't have the right movement. Nothing about Anderson's performance and nothing about the aggregate performance of people who have bad first innings suggests that that should continue. So I wouldn't be too worried about that. Yeah, I'd more worry about him just not having it. He's made two starts and had one good one and one bad one so well we will have to wait and see what the results of that game is just like we will wait to see if we have a further game in the alcs what do you expect our world series matchup to be ben trying to think whether i should

pick the most like the mode outcome or the one that i think is most interesting i think i will stick with my pre postseason prediction of Dodgers against Astros. Okay. I think the Braves are more likely to win, but I don't know. Watching that series just feels like the Braves makeshift band of outfielders is just like eventually going to hit a wall and go 0 for 20 for a while. Right. And I don't know.

I just can't shake the feeling that it's going to happen in this series. a while right and i don't know i just can't shake the feeling that it's going to happen in this series it's not a banner postseason for really fun bandwagon teams yeah to say the least yeah we're a little light on candidates although i i continue to endorse the approach that we discussed on the last episode of the pod which is like pick your everyone should just pick their guys yeah i agree with that i like a ton of players on these teams yeah i'm definitely gonna be rooting for jordan alvarez who remains just bafflingly underrated yeah bafflingly underrated by the overall populace of baseball fans he's one of the best i don't know 20 players in baseball for sure and maybe i think he's one of the top five or ten hitters in the game and

now people are seeing a little bit more but yeah but he's great and really good and really hard to pitch to. It's not a lefty-righty thing. It's not a thing that you can get out of with platoon matchups. He's really fun to watch. From Rivalde is really fun to watch. There are probably five or six players on each of the four teams remaining that I'm very happy to watch. Yeah. And so, yeah, I'm with you. I predict a World Series of Dodgers-Astros because I already have, but I would be happy

with any of the possible matchups. And that'll be because there are some really fun players on each of these teams. Yeah. Well, we will await the results of those contests, but we want to talk about some experimental rules that, you know, leave it to Ben, other Ben, to like be on leave and still produce a reported and very detailed feature with Rob Arthur. An exhaustive feature. Yes. But, you know, I'm pleased because it gives us, you know, it gives us a podcast topic.

So really, Ben wrote a feature and he contributed to Effectively Wild, both things that he should not have to be doing right now. So we tip our hats to him and also to Rob for Rob's contributions to this piece. Going into the season, we knew that there were going to be a number of rule changes that were experimented with at various levels of affiliated ball and also in the Atlantic League. So to remind folks of what we're dealing with here, in the Atlantic League. The mound was moved back by a foot at midseason. In AA, they banned the infield shift. In AAA, they got really wacky enlarging the bases and then changing some of the rules around pickoffs. And they also made some of those pickoff changes,

I believe, or step off changes rather in low A. And then inewe West, they had a 15 second pitch clock. We also had some automatic ball system testing going on. So those were sort of the big rule changes. And Ben and Rob went through each of these and sort of evaluated them for their impact and also efficacy, some of the issues that we have seen pointed at. We don't need to recount this entire article, which is exhaustive and well worth a read. We'll link to it in the show notes. But I guess maybe the way that we can start with this is, Ben, which of these rule changes sort of struck you the most, either in terms of their impact, positive or negative, or the work that still sort of remains to be done to get them up to snuff to introduce at the major league level.

The one that seems the most immediately applicable at the major league level, and I think I'll start there and go down that way, is pitch clock. Yeah. Why isn't there a pitch clock in the majors? Yeah. It's really, at this point, it seems pretty clear that it would work, that it would reduce the time of games, that it would, if nothing else, clear that it would work, that it would reduce the time of games, that it would, if nothing else,

probably result in higher contact rates as it did in the minor league levels where it was tested. It's been tested a lot of places, as Ben and Rob pointed out in the article, including in spring training, I guess in 2019. I don't remember that personally. Which is a good sign that you don't remember it. Yeah, exactly. In any case, I don't think there's much argument that introducing a pitch clock would reduce the time of games. Most players in the majors have played under a pitch clock. So what's stopping us? I'm not quite clear. Is it a union objection?

Well, yeah, I don't quite know what our issue is here. I mean, I do think that this piece acknowledged an important aspect of this, which is it's not enough to simply introduce the pitch clock like you really have to do work to then enforce the pitch clock because what has what has happened for a number of these leagues that have tried this is that the first go is great and it reduces time of game but that time of game tends to to creep back as mostly as players like find ways to circumvent this rule. Oh, yeah, like the no step out rule and then everyone just steps out. Yeah. So it is the sort of thing that it is not enough to simply require and then set it and forget it.

You have to be diligent to maintain those gains over the course of the season. And part of this, I think, is that the 15-second pitch clock is a reduction from prior versions of the pitch clock. And then it seems like it was a really big enforcement priority for umpires, as they note here that they sort of closed all the loopholes that existed in prior versions. Oh, yeah, totally. Like the stepping off to reset the pitch clock.

Yeah. That's not going to work if you can do that. Right. And so, you know, in double and triple A, they've been able to do that. But in low A West, they could only do that twice before a Bach was called. So I want us to redo the Bach rule and come up with a new word because I never feel like I'm saying Bach correctly. Do you have this problem? I always feel like I'm mispronouncing Bach like I'm sounding like it doesn't sound like a word.

It does sound. I have that problem with the word tall. Tall? Really? It just sounds wrong in my head. Interesting. I know it's not. I'm confident that I'm pronouncing it correctly. Yeah.

It doesn't sound like a word. You said tall and I'm like, that is identifiable to me as the word tall. Yeah. It just doesn't sound like a word to me. And I don't know why, but it never will. Yeah. tall yeah it just doesn't sound like a word to me and i don't know why but it never will yeah so i think pitch clocks seem like an obvious win to sort of keep the game moving and and have it have a nice tempo and pace and as you noted and as ben and rob note in their piece like the number of

players in the big leagues who have not experienced a version of the pitch clock at some point in their career is like increasingly small almost vanishingly small shockingly small yeah i was really amazed by that and some of that is because of the 2019 spring training one right when they removed that it went up but it was still quite small and that's just because it's in the minors now right and pitchers pitch in the minors like garrett crochet is one of the few pitchers right not to use one and that's because he never pitched in the minorsers not to use one. And that's because he never pitched in the minors like Otani too. Yeah, it's like he never pitched in the minors and then, you know, made the big league roster. So it's just like, here we are with a very young guy

who's never really encountered this, but he probably wouldn't care. Right? Yeah, I would imagine that he probably wouldn't be averse to it. I think the other thing that so there were there were a couple of other things that I found striking about this piece. The first was sort of the minimal impact that moving the mound seemed to have. Yeah, that was really surprising. I think that's very far away from being used in the majors. But yeah, didn't you wouldn't you expect it to do more? Yeah, I was I was quite surprised that that was not more sort of immediately impactful. Now, I know that some of the concern there was that there were sort of other confounding variables that might have obscured some of the effect because they also sort of changed the shape of the strike zone midstream. And so some of that might have been a result of doing multiple things at once. But I was surprised that even given that, that the effect of it was not more pronounced. Yeah, I agree.

Probably more study required. Right. The fact that there was not a big spike in injuries means that more study is possible. I know that that was really deeply concerning to a lot of Atlantic League pitchers. Right. That you're pitching here because you want to get a major league call up,

basically. You want to get another shot. And will major league teams want to call me up if I'm pitching some weird distance and blowing my arm out by trying to throw differently? Right. Seems like neither of those has really happened, which is a good sign. Yeah, it's very promising. We at Effectively Wild are advocates of lab league,

where you're assuming those risks sort of explicitly, but it is very good to see that it didn't result in a spike in injury. I think the biggest takeaway here is the work that remains to be done when it comes to the automatic strike zone. Yeah, I agreed. And I don't just say that because I have not been a robo zone proponent in the past and appreciate Ben providing us with good grist for that particular mill that doesn't make me just sound like a Luddite because I was worried that that's sort of where I was venturing. But it is interesting that, first of all, that they had to sort of adapt to this zone's

size and shape over the course of the season and that they still had errors now fewer errors seemingly than you would with a human zone although i think errors that fans would find particularly galling given where they felt that there were a number of pitches just right right in the right in the heart of the zone that ended up being middle yeah that ended up being erroneously called balls. And I think that this raises for me kind of one of the questions that I've had the whole time, which is what is our means of sort of rectifying errors like this? Do we empower umpires to say, well, that was right down the pipe and we're relying on an automated system,

so we should correct that in real time and and make that call accurate what happens when the tech goes down entirely which i'm sure will happen like we will definitely have a day where the array isn't working and we can't rely on the robo zone so i don't think that this like i read it and i was like okay so we're still a ways away from being able to implement this in a way that isn't going to make everyone furious said and that is that's even before we consider some of the the things that Ben and Rob point out here about sort of how we are used to the zone adapting with the count right that we umpires tend to keep either pitchers or hitters in an at-bat by sort of adapting their zone when the count gets to 0-2 or 3-0 and that that will disappear in a way that might make for a more

accurate zone but be less entertaining to viewers so i just i know that bad calls are irritating to folks and i don't mean to downplay their importance, but I still feel like we're quite a ways off from this being the way that we interact with strike zone. I agree. I think one thing that is maybe slightly less worrisome to me than the average person is the O2 versus 3-0 thing. If you look at the statistics from the article, yeah, this will really screw with what happens when batters get ahead or behind in the count.

But a lot of that is player behavior too. And we don't actually know how that would change. You know, once the zones are automatic and people have had a few years to work with that, maybe hitters don't take those borderline pitches on 0-2 as much. Or maybe pitchers know that you can't just like get it near on 3-0. Some of that is just that all these players have spent their entire lives learning that this right zone does change based on the count. And that it doesn't it'll take some time to adjust to that so i wouldn't necessarily treat those numbers as gospel yeah that's fair i think i am also against

a robot zone for a lot of the same reasons that it's difficult and the errors are more galling and that i kind of enjoy the probabilistic nature of the strike zone yeah i do too and too. And actually the earlier Effectively Wild suggestion of a challenge system, I'd be very into. Yeah. It just seems like such a nice solution to this problem. It will never happen. They could do it like tennis where they display it up on the board and everyone claps. Yeah.

That's always kind of fun. It's not going to happen, but I would be in favor of that. I think that this is pretty clear that it's not ready for primetime yet right it's better it's better than it was three years ago but i think it's still not quite there yet well and i i appreciate that the the powers that be seem to be open to feedback from players on how this is actually playing right like in the early versions of this like when i saw it in the fall league in 2019, it was the three-dimensional zone. And that proved to be like a real problem and quite tricky. And they adapted to that, right? And they went to the 2D zone, which I think has played better

and sort of been more intuitive both to the folks watching and to the players. So there's that. And they are monkeying with sort of the boundaries of it. As I have said on this podcast and to you in the past, I appreciate very much that we will finally know how tall everyone actually is as a result of this because you use the percentiles, the percents of their height to determine the bounds of it. And so there will be no more false six footers in baseball. So do you think that they

will do that when they win in the majors? Yeah, because that's not how the actual rulebook works. Right? It's not. It's definitely not. It's also not how the the calculated strike zone that StatCast gives you right now works. Right? I am. I mean, I imagine that they are going to do it that way just based on what the test parameters have been and that we will see i mean they're gonna have to they're probably gonna end up redoing that section of the rule book to account for this anyway yeah and so i have to switch to a 2d zone for one thing right right and so i suspect that they will part of what they are trying to calibrate here is what the correct proportion is, and then they will kind of go from there. But I know I'm going to lose on this question. Like, it's just, it's obvious that the, this is one place where momentum, I think, is real. Like, the momentum is behind this as the future of how we call the zone, but I don't like it. And I won't take satisfaction from people being frustrated by its implementation, but I might take like a little bit of satisfaction from that.

Because people are so, you know, I think that when the robo zone gets something wrong, which it will do on occasion, we're going to be so much angrier about that because we assume that tech should work perfectly every time. And it won't. And like, that's, you know, that isn't that different from the reality that we sit with now where we have human umpire error. But our understanding of how acceptable that is, I think, is going to be quite different from our current understanding of like, here, human beings doing a really hard job we don't have sympathy for computers do you know the uh the driverless car version of this problem is it the

existence of driverless cars well basically like if driverless cars kill people right in traffic accidents well then that will be awful yes you have this robot that's killing people that's bad right killer robots are the stuff of dystopian books they're not supposed to in real life, but people who actually drive cars kill more people than driverless cars. And so when you see driverless car accident rates, they sound alarming, but it's just because driving is dangerous and they're actually safer. So I do think that when the automated strike zone comes, even if it is better, and even if they get to a good implementation of it that it will be met with a lot of shock and confusion yeah i think that i think that that is right so i and we will just keep booing the human people on the field which is like the part of it that i will continue to harp on because it's going to be strike me as so mean i did like the people after um game five of

the nlds who were like see we should have robo zones because of the bad normal floors, check, swing, claw. I'm like, no, no, that's still going to be a problem that you have to account for. That is not within the purview of the robot. They're not going to be actual robots on the field. There won't be. There will still be folks

out there. Although I will admit that the first time I conceptualized the robo zone, I was imagining the robot from the jetsons yeah that's just uh the home plate umpire right it's like but that's not that's not what's gonna befall us i guess we should hit the other changes in this just really quickly sure the shift changes did nothing yeah unsurprisingly i think all the research on the shift shows that it doesn't actually do that much, particularly infield shifts. Outfield shifts seem like they maybe take away some hits. Right.

Outfield shifts don't seem to do that much to the overall results, particularly against righties. So removing them doesn't seem to do much. Right. I'm not surprised by that. Stolen base rules, I'm not sure they'll ever make the majors, but they should because they're cool. Yeah. And they sure seemed to matter. Yeah.

If they bring those to the majors, the one that mattered the most was forcing people to step off. Yeah. Actually, it looks like the one that mattered the most was two pickoff attempts per plate appearance. But both of those mattered a ton, a significant amount. And if they brought either of those to the majors, there'd be a lot more steals, which sounds great. I don't think they'll bring either of them there because they feel bush league i wish ben was here to talk about this actually but uh they they feel bush league yeah i imagine they will not be transitioned at least anytime soon to the actual major leagues but i think that

they should be plus like have you have you seen the big bases compared to the little bases? Those look bush league. They look great. They look so cool. It's hilarious. I think it makes them all look like little leaguers. I have no problem with that. And it also doesn't affect anything, it seems like. No, that doesn't seem to have been the-

It might be a safety issue. Maybe they should just bring them for safety. Less collisions over the bag. But yeah, that one didn't seem to do much. I thought it might because every inch counts, but I guess every inch doesn't actually count. Right. Like if you shorten the base pass by an inch, it'd just be like, oh, it's still baseball. Very few plays are actually decided by an inch.

Right, right. Yeah, I think that their ranking of these is pretty accurate. The step off rule didn't appear to be all that useful. The automatic ball system needs some work here, as does the mound move and the shift band kind of not really doing as much as we might have expected. Although I agree with you with the shift stuff. I was like, this isn't going to make any big difference. And then we should have a pitch clock,

and we should have bigger bases, and we should have fewer pickoff attempts. And then we will have solved baseball. No one will complain about it ever again. Well, those rule changes at times have felt like the suggestions of an effectively wild email, and so I'm going to use that to transition to some emails today. We're going to do some emails.

That's smooth. Yeah, there we go. Professional podcaster over here. This is from listener Will. I just thought of a weird strategy. Let's say you have a batter. He's usually pretty good, but when he gets to a certain count, let's say 0-2 to make it easy, he almost never reaches base.

Let's say there are two outs, you have a runner on first, and the next three batters are very good, and our guy has fallen to 0-2. Does it make sense to have the runner attempt a steal with the aim of getting caught to restart the batter next inning with a fresh count and the opportunity to get something going? Are there any strategies you know of that are kind of counterintuitive in the same way this may be silly but i'm curious about y'all's opinion you know the dodgers could have done this last night yeah yeah gotta get bruce star up there again man i mean well cody bellinger stole right and if he were thrown out then there would be a real batter in bruce star's place next

yes that's true and there are three very good hitters do up after him. That is true. In fact, use this exact strategy. Which implies that it would probably work. Yes, I think stealing on O2 when there's a good hitter at the plate and two outs is a good idea. Yeah, I doubt that you I doubt that teams are thinking about it in precisely these terms, right? I think that they are probably thinking about it more in terms of the downside of being caught is such that if you actually steal the bag, that upside outweighs the downside, right? That you don't mind.

It just changes the break-even. Right, the break-even shifts. And if you get thrown out, well, you're gonna get them next inning. And obviously like the game state probably matters some here too. But I do think that there are times when the calculus on whether or not it's worth it to attempt the steal shifts.

And this is part of that shift. But I don't, I don't think they're thinking about it in terms of like, I'm going to endeavor to get thrown out. I'm going to attempt to get thrown out. But I do think that they might say, go for it, Cody. Yeah, we use a, you know, be successful three out of four times stealing kind of rule of thumb. But it changes a ton based on the situation. When you're down one in the ninth inning and you have a runner on first and two outs,

the steal becomes more valuable or one out or whatever. The Dave Roberts example. It is different depending on what state the game's in and who's the plate. And stealing when you're down in counts is on average okay if there are two outs it's on average less detrimental because you're not very likely to score from that situation right and if you get your runner in a scoring position you're more likely to and right if the batter has his counter race down it's not so bad yeah i think that maybe you shouldn't like you said go and try to get caught. Don't just start walking over to second slowly before the pitcher throws his pitch.

Start ambling over there. Hey, hey. I mean, that actually worked very well, again, for the Dodgers in the series. Right. When they drew a hit by pitch. Yeah. Off of Max Fried. But yeah, you don't have to try to get caught.

But directionally, this makes sense. Right. You should be more aggressive stealing when you're giving up less if you get caught. Yeah, I think that you've stumbled into some good strategy here. Well, yeah, the max free to hit by pitch is another portrait Turner. But like, that's another moment I just forgotten because of the final score. I agree. We shouldn't have blowouts because it obscures the big moment, like the funny, weird little

moments because you're just, you know, so fixated on Chris Taylor hitting home runs. No more blowouts. Tight games only. Let's all be stressed. I like, I wanted the Dodgers to score a lot more last night once they got out of hand. Yeah. I think really big blowouts are fun. It would have also been okay if the Braves came back and scored, you know, 30 runs in the top of the ninth or something.

That would have been cool. Yeah. Just batted around four times. I would have also been okay if the Braves came back and scored 30 runs in the top of the ninth or something. That would have been cool. Yeah. Just batted around four times. I would have been into that. I will say that once you get into those moments, I want exciting baseball. I want more fun baseball. It is very hard not to root for quick conclusions when that happens, when the downside for you is your poor writer having to scrap a big part

of a gamer and then you staying up later to edit it. I will admit, I've reached the point of the postseason, Ben, I don't know if this is where you are, where if I stop working for an hour, it's very hard for me to restart because I leave room for the exhaustion to flow in. I guess I'm like a shark. I'm the literal Meg. It's like if I stop moving, it's really bad. I shared this with our coworker, John Taylor,

and he said that he feels like wilted lettuce. He's wilted greens, so we are all under refrigerated arugula at this point. Yeah, I don't really feel that way well good but i probably would if that had happened to more of my games this year yeah i've had some uh some pretty straightforward ones to write so that's helped yeah i also just really like playoff baseball which yeah it's so much fun makes it less tiresome yeah the only one that i've been frustrated by was last friday's astros red socks game where it just went on for i don't know 10

hours yeah for an age an era i really wanted to eat dinner and just keep going but that's okay i just ate dinner while watching tv right it all worked out okay yeah all right this is from listener alex gabe morales made a very bad call last night to end this was obviously sent a little while ago to end the giants dodgers game this was just making that call every night to end this was obviously sent a little while ago to end the giants dodgers game this was just making that call every night yeah every night he's like i gotta stick it to these giants this was obviously game five of the nlds i don't think many people would disagree including morales who probably feels terrible but after the game a lot of people were screaming ump show and i think it's high time we make a clear distinction between a very bad call and ump show. In my opinion, Don, I never say this right. Denkinger? Denkinger? Jim Joyce blowing the Galarraga perfect

game, although they got a book out of that, so it ended up being fine. Last night, these are all very bad calls. Meanwhile, Adrian Beltre ejected from moving the on-deck circle, Tim ejecting the ground screw in Baltimore. These are examples of ump shows. Am I wrong? What's the best way to differentiate between the two? I think if it's strictly a judgment call in the field, it's almost always a very bad call, especially if you can surmise that the offending umpire likely feels more bad about it than anyone else. Whereas if there's even a hint of pettiness involved, it's an ump show. But I'd love to hear your thoughts. So Ben, how do we distinguish between very bad calls and ump shows? I should say first, I agree with the premise of this, but I don't actually think it's up

for debate. They're very clearly different things. The ump show is an ump making the game about himself. Right. And a bad call, those umps usually don't want to make the game about themselves. They probably wish they had disappeared. Right. An ump show is where you make very demonstrative ball and strike calls, where you show up the manager or you eject somebody or anything like that.

An ump show is where you consistently do something to make the game more about yourself. Right. You've seen how Hernandez called a game. Right. The idea tracks. I mean, Joe West is an ump show, but an enjoyable one sometimes. Right. Their ump shows are where the umpires think they're the entertainment to me.

And the examples that Alex gave are great. It could alter a objective removing the index circle. Hilarious. Clearly an ump show moment. I don't actually remember which umpire ejected him. Yeah, I don't quite recall either. Ejecting the grounds crew. Yeah.

You can't eject the grounds crew because you're like, oh, I blew that call. I shouldn't have ejected the grounds crew. It was really close. Right. You do it because you want to make it about yourself i don't think um show is a valid complaint for a missed call i think it is a valid complaint for a way of umpiring that makes the umpire a main character and if you unwillingly become a main character because you blow a huge call that's a different thing so right i think that the distinction listed here by alex is about right judgment call almost always a very bad call i don't think there needs to be pettiness for it to be an up show interesting it doesn't need to be that you're showing up for players you can just be making about yourself without being petty yeah and it's still an up show who's the guy who has the very aggressive looks like he's stabbing the batter

out called strike three call tumpane maybe i don't remember exactly who it is i think there are a couple that that gesticulate pretty dramatically i was gonna ask you as a follow-up to this to this email like how do you feel about the demonstrative ball strike calls i love it yeah that's a way for an umpire to be part of the entertainment that is not getting in the way of the actual entertainment. And so that is platonic ideal for me. Yeah. I think that, I think that that, that tracks for me too, because it's, I also think that it like, you know, if I were an umpire and you're behind a mask the whole time, it's a really weird thing because you're right. I think that ideally whatever your brand of officiating is in a sporting contest like you want that person to not be someone you remember at all right you

want their presence to be to be something that doesn't stick for even one second after the game has concluded because it indicates that the you know the game was called fairly and that it was about as you said like the play on the field and not the umpires. Right. But I also imagine that like if your profession is to be an umpire, that kind of on occasion sticks in your craw because you're you probably feel put upon, you feel underappreciated. No one likes you really like. Right. You're either unnoticed or hated. Right. And so if you are trying to find space in the game for them to sort of vent some of that consternation in a way that is unlikely to impact the play on the field and to your point gives us a little flair and entertainment then i think that you should all be like my italian grandmother and

gesticulate wildly back there and have like a real signature move because you're you're doing a fun thing as long as the call itself wouldn't have been different which means you need you probably need something for balls and strikes so that you are not tempted to call one over the other because you really want to get a you need something dramatic for both things i think that that's i think that that's great i asked my my mother, like, what would your strike three move be? And I expected her to not have one because she is like a fair weather baseball fan. She likes watching baseball with me, but otherwise does not seek it out really. And she had that.

She was ready. She had one. And I was like, this is, you know, this is evidence that we are both literally and culturally Italian. This is maybe not a popular opinion, but I also like the umpires who sometimes wait awkwardly long before calling a strike because i appreciate a little like huh yeah a little wake-up call where i you see a pitch down the middle and i'm like that was a ball yeah and then a second later they're like this is strike one yeah i didn't expect it because they they tricked me they yeah they drew me into paying

attention to the umpire right by making a correct call without taking anything away from the players so i think yeah i like when umpires are neat that way not so much when they make the game about themselves and to baseball's credit and to the umpiring union's credit there are a lot fewer ump shows these days yeah i think that that has been has been tamped down in a useful way so okay this is part of an email from listener sean who in true effectively wild fashion proposed several mike trout hypotheticals we will entertain one let's say aliens from outer space that feels like an unnecessary clarification but we'll set that aside touchdown on planet earth today and the first thing they do is check Mike Trout's baseball reference page. Because what else would you do if you were an alien touching down on Earth for the first time?

Let's say they are completely unaware Earth is going into year three of a pandemic. So we inform them MLB had one truncated season due to the pandemic, but we don't tell them which season it was. Using Mike Trout's season by season statistics as a guide, how many guesses would the aliens need to guess the year the shortened season took place in my prediction is no less than three uh no that's wrong i'm sorry listener sean maybe some of your other hypotheticals i'd agree with why would they pick the season where he played 134 games and had 600 plate appearances over the two where he had

less than 250 plate appearances each he might pick wrong between 2020 and 2021. Sure. So his plate appearances go 600, 241, 146. Yes. And you're picking exactly one of those to be shortened by a pandemic and you pick the 600? No chance. Well, how does your answer change? Let's say that they touched down in May of 2022. How does your answer change so that we have not had a full season of baseball yet oh sure well then still wouldn't change because they would know that it's may yeah that's unless they don't know what a calendar is i don't know they're aliens maybe they have not figured out what a calendar is but i do take the spirit of the question which is that it's hard to tell whether 2020 or 2021 was the shortened season. Yeah. And yeah, that's very true. Let's leave 2019 out of this. It's just like,

it was pretty much a full season by him. We'll leave that one aside. And then you'd say, well, was 2020 or 2021 the shortened season? Here's an interesting question. Yes. If one season is shortened by pandemic, would you predict future seasons to be shortened by pandemic? Without knowing anything about it, Right. We don't know any other details. I think I would. I yeah, I mean, it is hard for me to answer that question and remove the experience of having lived through 2020, which I just thought I thought every season would be shortened by after that. I was like, we might just be done with baseball. But that was me being fatalistic. But yeah, I think that if you are an alien, even if you do not have a firm understanding of human cultures and how they respond to disease and science, but you have a conception of disease yourself from your own alien experience, you might expect that a global

pandemic takes time to resolve. Although I the the question asks us to assume that they're unaware of a pandemic so that is that is complicated that complicates your question i guess but like let's assume they know that there is a pandemic you would assume that the next year might be goofed by it right yeah so i think that would lead you to guess 2020 more because if it was 2021 well then what happened in 2020 that gave him so few plate appearances you'd be wrong because what happened like the 2021 season was not shortened by 2020 but i think if you had no knowledge you might say well probably the year after a pandemic will be shorter too whereas there's obviously no information before the pandemic

right so i would pick 2020 it is an interesting question of like what if you just had his plate appearances or what if you just had his rate stats would you be able to pick which one was more likely to be a pandemic i think no but maybe i don't know maybe these aliens are very good at teasing things out of baseball statistics i love the the notion of an alien race that is unaware of a pandemic but is aware of mike trout and is also aware of baseball reference that's true and then it's like if you're an alien i love our email so much but if you're an alien and you're like i'm gonna travel to earth and i want to know about i have the capacity to travel across the galaxy uh to another planet and say hey but i don't have the ability to somehow find

his baseball reference page from space what kind of alien technology are we working with i don't know i love our hypotheticals they're quite fun yeah i also you know i i dispute slightly that they didn't check his fan graphs page first yeah yeah i used his fan graphs page look at plate appearances there yeah come on i hope that i hope that the aliens from outer space buy a membership that'd be cool i think actually that i will have a further yeah here's a reason that if they checked his baseball reference page they would know that 2020 was the shortened season because he finished fifth in the mvp voting in 2020 oh that's right the presence of black ink yeah he did not win an mvp award but he did finish fifth in mvp voting in only 241 plate appearances yes i think that is unlikely to happen in a full season i think that that is an excellent that's an excellent way to do it i love this idea that like they know

they know what baseball reference is but they're like we gotta go to earth we can't we can't access it from where we are we have to travel across the universe in order to get to baseball reference because we gotta check in on that mike trout i mean like if anyone is going to inspire interstellar travel who is a baseball player i don't think that he's the entire list but he's certainly near the top of it right like he's on there for sure he probably ranks pretty highly so i'm very impressed that these aliens have the internet and yet have not learned about covid oh yeah i mean an internet without covid god bless you yeah it doesn't actually seem very easy that would be fantastic okay we will we will

close lastly from listener Sean, whose name I have previously mispronounced, as you just heard, it's pronounced like Sean, but with an M. So Sean, I apologize for the mispronunciation and we'd like to contemplate an email that you sent. So this was in reference to a conversation that I had with John on a prior episode.

I agree with the podcast that making the number of bases being awarded probabilistic or runner based would be too complex. This was in reference to Hunter Renfro and the ricochet ball off of him that resulted in Yandy Diaz not being able to score but being instead awarded a ground rule double. But it does feel like the ground rule double rule, that's hard to say, is broken if the intent is to award the offensive team proportionally for what they produced. Almost every time there's a runner on first and a ground rule double happens, we've grown that the fielding team caught a break. To me, if the fielding team

is catching a break, the rule isn't fairly rewarding the offense. I'd hypothesize that the two rules for everyone rule is a relic of ancient base running athleticism where the average base runner was likely to only move up two bases with modern base running changing the rule to be a ground rule triple makes more sense to me or alternatively having ground rule doubles clear the bases by default what do you think the ground rule double should be ground rule double rule that's you know we should call it something different first of all because that's impossible to say i guess you could say what do you think the ground rules should be? Yeah.

But that's not quite. It's not specific enough. Yeah. I don't really have any problem with it being a double. Sorry. I know that's not very controversial. I feel like I've seen plenty of ground rule doubles where the runner wouldn't have scored. Depends on the runner.

And as you guys correctly pointed out, that is very hard to handle. Yeah, you need something hard and fast because otherwise you're going to get manager fights every time. Yeah, it is true that stadiums are bigger now. So the ball is landing when it goes for a ground rule double further from the plate. Yes. Which makes it easier for the runner to score. If they switch it to ground rule triples, I think I'd feel a little cheated because triples are so cool. Interesting.

And if you look to people's triple stats and they were ground rule triples, I i'd feel a little cheated because triples are so cool interesting and if you look at people's triple stats and they were ground rule triples i would be less interested interesting okay so i responded to this email and said that i quite liked the idea of a ground rule triple because there aren't enough triples i enjoy watching triples and i don't feel that there are enough of them but this is an interesting uh viewpoint to have on that because you you would be of the mind that it makes them less special and thus we would enjoy them less yeah if we just said kind of by fiat that everyone hit 10 extra triples this year yeah but none of them had the crazy rounding the bases at full speed and ball rattling around in the outfield and they were just on the stat pages. Yeah. I don't think I would really get the warm fuzzy that I do from actual triples.

Okay. I love actual triples. They're so enjoyable. They are one of the most pure aesthetic moments in baseball. They are just unambiguously excellent when they happen. Yeah, triples and hustle doubles are my favorite hits. And I don't think ground rule triples would feel any different than ground roll doubles to me. That is a fair point. Plus, you know, this sort of puts them into intentional walk territory where you have to mentally pull them out of a hitter's accomplishment to have like a real sense of walk rate. Not that we really have to do that with pitchers because there aren't that many intentional walks anymore. But sometimes a has like a couple intentional walks and then you're like oh his rate's a little bit different

than i thought it was and that's irritating one thing i can tell you is i hate writing out people who bat eight sure because i always pull the intentional walks out right like you should do that to do analysis but every time you write about it someone's like well did you consider that they're batting eight so they get intentionally walked yeah like yeah i did you're like yes i did that i am good at my job it was in the article but um that's a guaranteed thing that happens anytime you're anyone who hits eighth and i wonder if it would start being the case with triples right i think maybe you could have them clear the bases like sean said i think that's actually not a bad idea many hits advanced runners

more than the batter himself or herself advances and And I think switching to that rule, it's a two base advancement for the runner and a three base advancement for every batter would basically cover all the things that you're worried about. It would also not cheapen triples. And honestly, a lot of those hits wouldn't actually be triples,

even if they would clear the bases. Yeah, that's fair. Well, I hope that that is an acceptable alternative. I like that as a rule. Well, Ben ben i really appreciate you coming on yet again filling the ben void being ben prime at least for now is there anything that you would like to plug in particular before we remind people how many underscores are in your twitter account i would like to plug the use of underscores in general they're great um spaces

are very difficult and hard to parse. But if you use an underscore, it's clear that there should be a space there, but you're still putting a character there. So no one has to wonder how many characters need to go there. And never use two underscores in a row. Also very, very useful guide. That's hard to tell. But if you're using one, it's great.

I don't know why everyone gives me so much crap for it. I think underscores are lovely. Also, I write on Fangraphs. You can check me out there all the time. Yeah, and often on Fangraphs Audio, where you are always the prime, Ben. And with those underscores, you can follow Ben on Twitter at underscore Ben underscore Clemens. Ben, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me.

That'll do it for today. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going, keep us ad free, and get access to a few special perks. Xander Stroud, Brittany Bollet, Matthew Hine, Tosca Salts, and Erin Wilson. Thanks so much. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild, and you

can rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for us coming via email at podcast at fangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. I'll be back next week with new guest co-hosts and new episodes. Until then, have a nice weekend just ways to fly easy to take you could take me in four hours make me a deal Dear, day of peace Take it all, just stay a week I'll take you in pieces We can take it all apart

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