Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1901: Living in Interesting Times

Episode Date: September 10, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about how the White Sox have played in Tony La Russa’s absence, then discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the rules changes coming to MLB in 2023: a pitch clock, restrictions on pickoff attempts and the shift, and bigger bases (with asides on a new WAR, Zack Greinke’s front-office […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1901 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Nate Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing well. You know, Tony La Russa, White Sox manager, he's been absent from the team for about 10 days. He's on a little medical leave. He's been getting checked out. He is reportedly okay and looking at a return early next week. But I wonder whether White Sox fans are thinking, Tony, take your time. Run a few more tests.

You know, just be careful. Because I believe the White Sox are 7-3 since they left and since they have been managed by interim manager Miguel Cairo. And they've made up some ground in that time. And they're only a game and a half off the AL Central lead now, tied with the Twins. And I don't know that there's causation here, but I think the correlation is amusing at the very least. Not saying that Tony Russo is the sole or even primary cause of the White Sox having one of the more disappointing seasons this year. At the very least, funny, I think, that he has been gone and the White Sox have turned it on and played really well over that time. So I'm sure everyone wishes Tony Russo well, health-wise. But I do wonder whether some White Sox fans are thinking, you know what? Don't hurry back.

Take your time. Why not just be safe and maybe a little leisure would do you good and you'll just be healthy and refreshed whenever you do return. Run a few more tests, you know, just like rule out everything, whatever it is that caused you to take this time. Like, don't hurry back. We're doing OK. We wish you well. But, you know. I want to make clear that we're not laughing.

Like, please, like, be impeded from returning by more dire health consequences. But I'm envisioning Tony La Russa, like, you know, going to bath to, like, take the waters, you know. Right. It's a long season. Yeah. Just, you know, kick back, relax. Yeah. Recuperate in a seaside town with good air circulation.

You know, you get that salty breeze off the sea. You can, you know, again, met at her first baseball game, as we discussed yesterday. Just whatever you need to do. Have some me time, you know. And Miguel's got it. And we'll win one for the Gipper, you know. We'll win it for Tony. We're winning while he's away. Maybe it's like, look, baseball, it's a superstitious sport, you know.

When things are going well, you don't want to change anything. So we're not saying it's because you've been gone that we're winning, but we're bound by baseball superstition to just keep doing what we've been doing. So, you know, maybe just stay away until we hit a rough patch and then you can ride in like the cavalry. Anyway, I'm glad that he is seemingly OK. On the mend, yeah. Yes, I am sincerely wishing him well from a health perspective. But we have questioned his managerial acumen at times, as I imagine a few White Sox fans may have from time to time. So whether it's suggestive or not that they have played pretty well in his absence, it's amusing. So just wanted to mention that.

We'll see how they do this weekend with Adam, and we'll see how they do when he returns. But I guess we got to talk about the big news today, which is kind of news that we've been building toward for so long that it barely even feels like news. It feels like a fait accompli, really. But we've got some rule changes, not surprising ones, but they are now official. They were just voted on on Friday and passed, not unanimously, over the objections of some parties. But the three biggies

or three of the biggies that we have talked about ad nauseum over the past several years that have been tested extensively in the minors, they're coming to the majors next season. So we're getting the pitch clock, the pitch timer. We're getting shift restrictions. Yeah. And we're getting bigger bases. Yeah. So two out of three ain't bad, I guess. I guess that everyone probably has formed an opinion on the wisdom of these rules by this point because, again, like the shift restriction one, that is probably the most controversial or at least the most controversial maybe among our audience and among the two of us. But that, the groundwork has been laid for years now.

I remember on his very first day in office, Rob Manfred brought up the possibility of banning the shift. It was January 26, 2015. And I remember this because I wrote an article about it for Gretlund, a website that no longer exists and hasn't existed for several years at this point. That's how long ago it was. ago it was he came into office he took over as commissioner on january 26th and on the same day there was an interview that aired with carl ravitch of espn where manfred talked about how they had to get more offense into the game because that was 2014 and offense was at a low ebb this was before the juiced ball and he said in that interview, for example, things like eliminating shifts, I would be open to those sorts of ideas. And Ravitch followed up and Manfred confirmed that, yeah, he was talking about defensive shifts. So really, that was seven and a half years ago. And finally, we're here after much debate and backlash. So Rob got what he was open to all along yeah i just i'm just gonna be really fascinated to see like how much do not us notice and it's hard for me to have a good gauge of that right because the way that i engage with non-media members around baseball is, well, there's like the Twitter of it. And I have my timeline pretty well dialed in at this point. So it's heavily curated, right? And even then I'm like, I don't know if I want to be on here anymore. So there's that piece of it. And that means that I

am seeing mostly other media members and then like people who I know who like baseball, but who by and large view it through sort of an analytical lens. And then there people who I know who like baseball, but who by and large view it through sort of an analytical lens. And then there's like the people who comment on articles at fan graphs, who again are seeking out content at fan graphs. So they have a particular view of these things on average, right? There's variation, right? Cause it's a, it's a diverse community of folks, but there's sort of a, you know, we could, we could point to sort of a majority view there. And again, mostly analytically inclined. And then there's like, you know, my friends and family who like baseball. And I would say that even amongst that group, on average, they are pretty savvy when it comes to analytics, which I don't, to be clear, don't view this as like a,

an old school versus new school thing entirely. But it's just that like having, you know, if you're a person who's like read a lot of Russell Carlton, you're going to have a particular view of the shift, right? You're going to have some questions about like, is this actually going to accomplish what baseball wants? But I do wonder if people are going to really engage with this in a way that makes it meaningfully better for them. I mean, I hope the answer is that they do notice because if they don't, then like why are we even bothering with this stuff, right? Because the whole idea is to improve the viewer experience of baseball. But I do wonder.

I think that'll be really interesting. I don't know that there's going to be a great way for us to get like reliable data around that, but I'll be curious. I mean, I remember last year, this is 2022. So last year in fall league, they were using the bigger bags, right? They were using the bigger bases. And I don't know that you noticed Ben. Like, I don't think you do. You notice when they give big bag versus smaller bag when you put them next to one another like one of those objects is bigger than but like on the field i don't know that you really notice no that's a small one yeah you know aesthetically speaking yeah you notice more like if your advantage is from the press box and you have the advantage of being able to visualize the entire infield from a bird's eye.

Right. But even then, you have to be looking for it. So I'll be curious about that. I'll be curious if people really notice the shift. People are going to be like, wow, these innings are moving lickety split. Yeah, you'll notice the pitch clock. Yeah, people, and I think in a largely positive way, you will notice the pitch clock. I'm sure that people will feel like a boo void.

They're going to have a boo void, Ben, because I think, if we were to rank, I haven't done a study, you know, but if we were to think about the moments in a game where fans most reliably will boo some action on the field, I think pickoffs are like really from the opposing team are probably at the top of that list, you know, and then like various forms of umpire booing probably fall in line not far behind that and maybe an aggregate that that would take the the cake over the pickoff stuff but people are going to be like i feel like i should be expressing myself negatively in this moment i feel like i should be frustrated and i don't know why so maybe then they will feel frustrated because they won't be able to identify the gap in their frustration and then they'll just have

to stew in that. Maybe they'll get the hiccups. I had the hiccups for like six hours yesterday, Ben. Oh, no. Yeah. After we podcasted. Actually, a little bit before and then it stopped and we podcasted. And then after, and I thought to myself, how would we have dealt with this if I had just gotten hiccups in the middle of podcasting anyway this isn't about hiccups but i still feel the effect of the hiccups today like i have i have ache in my in my chest i know everyone has their little personal proprietary hiccups cure i don't know if any of them work i'm here to tell you mine does because i cured myself permanently of hiccups yeah i've not had hiccups hold on how do you know that though because like you're still alive and you got a lot of life left you might get pronounced that i will never hiccup again yeah but i haven't

hiccuped for like decades at this point i just yeah never so i should have told you that i had hiccups yesterday and you probably could have helped me out. Yeah. It's just, it's amazing. It's my, my epiglottis has been just perfect. Has not missed a beat in years or my diaphragm or whatever it is that causes the epiglottis to go haywire and my cure, which I can't guarantee will work for everyone either temporarily or permanently. I guess I don't know that it cured me either. Maybe my body became impervious to hiccups for some other reason. I got bitten by a radioactive hiccup. But what I did when I used to have to do this, back when I hiccuped like a mere mortal whose throat was malfunctioning, I would take a glass of water.

And I guess that's a common component of pickup cures. Yeah. And I would like lie so that my stomach was on some sort of surface like a chair or like an ottoman or something. Okay. So that like the front half of my body and my legs were like in the open air kind of. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I got you. And then I would drink from the glass of water while suspended in that way so that I sort of had to like raise my head in an awkward position. Okay. To drink while I was on my stomach flat essentially. And that seemed to do the trick. And at some point it did the trick so well that I haven't had hiccups. I can't even remember. It's been so long.

It's like when I was a kid. So try it. Okay. It might work. Who knows? I am open to the idea, like 25% of me thinks that you're punking me. No. Because you're like, Meg, we've now spent like three minutes on a hiccup diversion that

we did not. We're in a cul-de-sac of hiccups that we did not intend to go down. This is a hiccup in the podcast, in fact. But the vast majority of me thinks that your recommendation is sincere and that the next time I get hiccups, I'm going to give that, I'm going to give that a go. No, I should market this as like Dr. Lindbergh's miracle hiccup cure, except it's not snake oil. At least it wasn't for me. So you could become a wellness influencer i could go in a very interesting direction solely based on hiccups

well i mean a hiccup influencer if we were to if we were to rank again i have not done a study of the cop but if we were to rank the common ailments that afflict people, I was like, do I just, is this my life now? Am I just a hiccup or forever? Do I mean, cause you hear stories, Ben about people. Yes,

you do. Yeah. Don't Google that. Yeah. Don't Google that. Don't do it. Just trust me that there are people who like, do they end up getting surgery to fix their,

what is, what was the word that you use? Epi, epiglottis yeah anyway um i think that all the rule changes are fine i i agree with you and have expressed sort of hesitation in the past about the shift stuff mostly because you know it doesn't seem to be, the efficacy of the shift seems to be, I don't know that unsettled is the right word, but nuanced, right? That it is to say the shift does or doesn't do something wholesale isn't quite right, right? There are instances where the shift seems to be effective. There

are instances where it seems to actually not be that effective at all. It does complicate pitcher behavior in a way that is really interesting. And so I think that we have been reticent to enact shift limitations or bans, not because there might not be a version of that that does work the way that the league seems to want it to, but that the way it is being expressed in the past has not been sort of sufficiently complicated for us. And that makes us nervous because we're like, well, you know, this stuff is complicated. And if you don't embrace that complication and try to really grapple with it,

you're going to get unintended consequences like the oversliding stuff, right? Like we just, we didn't anticipate that teams were going to see an out squeezed in between the gap between the bag and the runner, right? We didn't anticipate that teams were going to see an out squeezed in between the gap between the bag and the runner. We didn't see that. We didn't anticipate that. And now we have some really irritating replay review side effects as a result of our inability to anticipate that. So I think we've been nervous about it more philosophically, at least I have been, than anything else.

But I think this stuff is fine. I think the pitch clock is rad. JJ Cooper had had a tweet to this effect. And if anyone is going to be in the weeds on like the effect of the pitch clock at the minor league level, it's going to be JJ. I know he has done a number of studies around this and obviously goes to a bunch of minor league games that, you know, when they first implemented the pitch clock in the minors pitchers being savvy realized that they could reset that pitch clock by stepping off and throwing. Right. And so JJ's perception of this, and here I am reading his tweet, why the pickoff limit rule, if you don't have a pickoff limit, the pitch clock with runners on is meaningless. When pitch clocks were first instituted in triple and double A, didn't take long for pitchers to realize a pickoff step off reset the clock. So it seems like this

is baseball doing exactly the opposite of what I worried it was doing before being like, oh, we have to view these things in tandem because the one affects the other and we don't want to leave room for manipulation. So that seems good. I think the base thing is fine. It's fine. I don't know if it's going to do what people want it to, but sure. You know, like, sure.

Go ahead. That's fine. You know, Terrence Gore is like, this is a great day. Yeah, I'm taking it for granted that people basically understand what is happening here just because we've been talking about these things for years at this point. Yeah, I guess I should have laid that out. I got distracted by hiccups. No, me too. I'm thinking now about my potential as a hiccup influencer.

See, if I were making money off it, I would be skeptical. I'd be suspicious because how could I prove that I never hiccup? What am I going to be strapped to a hiccup monitor 24-7? It would be easy to pretend to be a non-hiccupper. Now you can trust me because I have nothing riding on this. I'm not getting anything out of being a non-hiccupper. Anyway, maybe it's just a placebo effect. Is it like a permanent placebo effect? Can that be permanent? Like I just convinced myself that my hiccup cure was so good that the effects never wore off. I'm like Wile E. Coyote when he's like suspended in midair. But not looking down. No, I think you're going to be fine. I'm not a regular hiccup. That's part of why it was so distressing because I haven't flexed this muscle in this way to be sort of hardened to it. Anyway. various implementations and just various varieties of these changes in the minors. So just to keep track of what we're actually talking about here.

And I described it as three rules changes, as did MLB. But the pickoff rule is kind of like part of the pitch timer rule, as you were saying. And it is a pretty significant change in its own right. So MLB has just voted in these changes. It's the competition committee, which is a joint committee. It's mostly composed of MLB people, people on the ownership side and the league side. But there are player representatives. There's an umpire on the committee. And for at least a couple of these measures, the pitch clock and the shift ban, the MLBPA representatives, the players, voted against those things.

And they put out a statement from the MLBPA account that said, players live the game day in and day out. On-field rules and regulations impact their preparation performance and ultimately the integrity of the game itself. Player leaders from across the league were engaged in on-field rules negotiations through the competition committee, and they provided specific and actionable feedback on the changes proposed by the commissioner's office. Major League Baseball was unwilling to meaningfully address the areas of concern that players raised, and as a result, players on the competition committee voted unanimously against the implementation of the rules covering defensive shifts and the use of a pitch timer. pitch timer. Not shocking because players generally haven't wanted to make these major changes to the way the game works in the past. And I guess now they can say, well, we wash our hands of this if we don't like this new version of baseball. It's not our fault. We voted against it, but they had to know it would go through. And Rob Antford, he's had the power to implement these things unilaterally after a year or so for a while now. And he hasn't wanted to do that.

He's wanted it to appear to be a bipartisan mutual decision. Not entirely here. But anyway, it was pushed through following several meetings. And here's how MLB lays this out. So the pitch timer, they say, will improve pace of play and reduce dead time. The regulations include the following provisions. A pitcher must begin his motion before the expiration of the timer. Pitchers will have up to 15 seconds between pitches when the bases are empty and up to

20 seconds between pitches with at least one runner on base. Testing in the minor leagues involved 14 seconds with the bases empty and 18 seconds or 19 seconds in AAA with at least one runner on base. So this is not quite as stringent as the most recent pitch clock that has been tested in the minors this season, but it's not far off. It is somewhere in between the initial pitch clock settings and the current pitch clock settings in the minors. settings and the current pitch clock settings in the minor. So I was sort of happy about this because I figured they wouldn't be able to go whole hog from the start, that they would need to ease players into it. But I was worried that they would do a much less strict and more lenient version of this that wouldn't actually produce a big change. Because as we learned learned or as I think I learned when I gave my little pitch clock history

lesson on episode 1848 and the long history of attempts to implement pitch clocks in the past, like when you don't really go after it and get aggressive, then the effects are not as big as you might think. So I think this is a pretty good place to set that timer from the start. So I think this is a pretty good place to set that timer from the start. Now, a pitcher may disengage the rubber. Timer resets twice per plate appearance without penalty. Subsequent disengagements result in a balk unless an out is recorded on a runner. The disengagement count resets if the runner advances.

Testing in the minors had no reset until the following plate appearance. So you can only throw over a couple times per plate appearance. A hitter must be in the batter's box and alert to the pitcher with at least eight seconds remaining. Testing in the minor leagues included nine seconds remaining. A hitter receives one timeout per plate appearance. Umpires will have authority to provide additional time if warranted by special circumstances. So they provide some stats about how well this has worked in the minors. They talk also about the stolen base attempts that have increased. So the restrictions on throwing over, not only does it work in concert with the pitch clock,

but also encourages runners to go. Once the pitcher has taken the couple step-offs, then you're free to take a very large lead and go at your will. So there's a game theory aspect there and pitchers have to be careful with those pickoff attempts. And so you will probably see more stolen base attempts and successes. So that's something that I think generally I like. And it also notes in its most recent week of play, minor league baseball has averaged just 0.45 pitch timer violations per game. So they say just 0.45. I don't know whether you would say just 0.45 or whether 0.45 seems like a lot.

That is, you know, every other game there is a pitch timer violation, which is, I'm sure, a lot less than it was before. But also, that will be something new to adjust to. All right. The bigger bases, we can get that out of the way. So the goal here is to improve player safety primarily just so that players are not running over each other and stepping on each other's feet. stepping on each other's feet. And it also has the perhaps secondary effect of shortening the baselines and further incentivizing runners to go or giving them a greater chance of success when they do go. Although, again, we're talking just inches here. The idea is basically like, well, everyone's attached to the 90 feet between bases. Well, we'll just make the bases bigger instead of shortening the baselines and they'll never know.

We'll just sneak this in there. But it's such a small difference that I don't think you would notice that. But the size of first, second and third base will increase from the standard 15 square inches to 18 square inches. Bigger bases are expected to have a positive impact on player health and keeping major leaguers on the field. It says base-related injuries decreased by 13.5% in the minor leagues this season, including declines at every level of the minors. I don't know how they figured that out. It seems tough to track base-related injuries over multiple seasons. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I buy that there would be some decrease.

It seems smart. Anyway, I'm fine with it. And it decreases the distance between first and second and between second and third by four and a half inches. Okay. Now, the defensive shift restrictions, it sold to us via this press release as a set of restrictions will return the game to a more traditional aesthetic, which is interesting, right?

Because you might say, oh, this is a newfangled change. This is changing the way the game is played by mandating where players can and can't stand. They are pitching it as, no, it's not a new thing. We're going back to traditional baseball, which is, you know, defensible in a sense. So a set of restrictions will return the game to a more traditional aesthetic by governing defensive shifts with the goals of encouraging more balls in play, giving players more opportunities to showcase their athleticism and offsetting the growing trend of alignments that feature for outfielders. outfielders so lateral positioning two infielders must be positioned on each side of second base when the pitch is released depth all four infielders must have both feet within the outer boundary of the infield when the pitcher is on the rubber and this doesn't say so but i believe i saw elsewhere that they're also going to standardize what the outer boundary of the infield is so that you can't just like make the outer boundary

deeper in your ballpark or something just like have more dirt or something and exploit a loophole that way i think they're planning to to lay down the law there too and then no switching sides infielders may not switch sides unless there is a substitution so this is the part that I have grave misgivings about. I just I can't help being concerned about this one on multiple reasons. And I should say, I don't know what the effects of this will be. I don't feel like I know for sure. And you find people on both sides who think that they have the answer here for what exactly will happen because of this. And I'm not sure.

I'm just like I have some suspicions, but I don't feel like I can perfectly anticipate what the direct or indirect unintended effects of this change will be. be because shift ban advocates will say, well, the shift works too well and it takes away base hits and therefore you get fewer hits and you get fewer base runners and you get less offense and that's bad. Now shift ban opponents will say that, no, actually this is bad for multiple reasons first it's not directly addressing perhaps the root cause of the action issues which is fewer balls in play it's not directly addressing that at least the pitchers are still throwing as hard as they ever do from the same distance and it's hard to make contact these days because pitchers are wizards and this doesn't change that it may be indirectly incentivizes hitters to put the ball in play more because they might get better results so it's kind of putting the thumb on the scale a little bit there but it might be more direct to say either

move the mound or have stricter pitcher limits on the active roster, whatever you think would maybe just make or bailing out a subset of hitters who tend to get shifted the most. So your dead pole hitters, primary lefties, your power guys who have just decided we're going to sit dead red here. We're going to just try to elevate and celebrate. We're just going to pull. And if we hit it on the ground then so be it we'll hit it into the teeth of the shift and hopefully we'll hit it in the air and over the fence and that

this will just give them complete license to say okay now there's no penalty to this just grip it and rip it pull approach and you'll get even more pull heavy and people will double down on that approach and that therefore we'll get even more strikeouts and power and fewer base hits and that kind of thing. So I see the wisdom of that as well. You could also say that that power and strikeout first approach is already dominant. So how much difference could it make? You can go back and forth like will the pitch clock make pitchers throw softer or will they throw just as hard and have less recovery time and hurt themselves more? Or okay, if you nerf the defense a bit, then maybe hitters have more incentive to put the ball in play, but don't pitchers have even more incentive to keep the ball out of play and go for strikeouts? Not that they're pitching to contact much these days anyway. I guess I would say in the league's defense here, if you want to make the case that something had to be done here, that this had just gone too far, it had gone beyond interesting experimental novelty to actually affecting enjoyment of the game, you could point out that the league-wide batting average on balls in play this season is 291.

That is the lowest it's been since 1992, so 30 years. And coincidentally, I guess, offense is, as we know, down partly because of the less juiced ball, but also offense has been down within this season, as we've noted. So oddly, offense was higher in May and June than it has been in July and August. August is like the lowest offense month since April, which is weird. It's not unheard of. It's not that unusual for August and July to be lower scoring than May and June. Ryan Nelson, frequent StatBlast consultant, was looking into this for me the other day. And it's unusual in that the typical pattern is that offense will peak in July and August

and it'll be lower before that and lower after that. But that's not ironclad. It varies from season to season. However, it does seem that the decrease in offense, Ryan figured, from May and June combined the season to July and August is also the biggest since 1992, 30 years. So that's notable. And it could be because sticky stuff is back, as we discussed the other day. But look, offense is low and teams are shifting much more often in the infield and also in the outfield with four-player outfields, etc. And they seem to have gotten better at it.

And initially it seemed like, well, they were bad at shifting on right-handed batters and yet they persisted in doing it. And this season it seems like, well, maybe they've actually kind of gotten the hang of that after a while. And maybe pitchers aren't suffering the ill effects from pitching in front of the shift that they used to to the same extent. So maybe the shift is just too prevalent now and it's working too well and something needed to be done to hamstring teams' abilities to take hits away. So I do see both sides. Like there are some people who think like MLB has no idea what it's doing here. I mean, I think there are some pretty smart analytical minds in the commissioner's office who came to the conclusion that this would have the effect that they want.

So I don't think that they're just like the old school fan who's like, I miss when a ball up the middle was a hit. You know, like they put more thought into it than that. more thought into it than that. So I think that as you were saying, like how noticeable will this be for fans in the ballpark? Pretty noticeable at home, maybe not so noticeable because generally you're not seeing the defensive alignment from pitch to pitch, but you are seeing that balls that used to be a hit are often not hits now or vice versa. So that kind of thing, you will probably notice that we're going back to that traditional alignment and what you think is a hit off the bat, that may be a hit again. And some people will probably enjoy that and not miss that cognitive dissonance where it's like, oh, the ball that I thought coming off the bat was a guaranteed hit because I grew up with

it being that now it's not. And I just have to constantly readjust. You know, maybe we would have gotten used to that eventually. But that was still a bugaboo for some people. So I'm saying that it's possible that this will make the game better in some ways. I'm not ruling out that possibility. I'm not firmly in the camp of like this is actually doing exactly the opposite of what it's intended to do. I do think, though, that there is some possibility that it might have some unintended consequences that make some problems worse or at least don't directly address the root cause of the problem, which is that pitchers are just really unhittable. Like, even if you know that maybe you have a slightly better chance

of getting a hit if you put the ball in play, it's still just really hard to make contact. So they're hoping that like in concert, banning the shift and then deadening the ball, suddenly it just won't be as rewarding to swing for the fences anymore. And we'll get more slap hitters and guys who are using the whole field and everything, even though like using the whole field is maybe not as important as it was when there was a huge hole on the other side because the team was shifting. So I'm saying like there's room for debate and disagreement about what the actual effects of this will be, but it does bug me just on a fundamental level that we are restricting where fielders can stand.

Like, you know, I'm for certain ways of limiting teams' tactics and things that were experimental and innovative and kind of cool at first. Well, maybe they break baseball and you have to do something. You have to change the rules to prevent them. But I just wasn't there yet with the shift. And so I am uneasy. I have a lot of misgivings about this i don't know if it's quite zombie runner level of disgust and but it's it's somewhere not too far

from that on the spectrum i definitely have a deep unease you're keeping you're keeping an eye on it you're like oh yeah more than that yeah it's I kind of like identify now, I think, with fans who are maybe older than us who don't like the way that the game has changed in some ways. And they're like, this isn't the baseball I know and this isn't the baseball I grew up loving and I don't like this anymore. I'm not saying I don't like it anymore. I'm going to stop watching baseball or anything. We're in too deep at this point. But like I am getting just an inkling of what that feels like for them because I'm old enough now to have seen some changes. And there are some I don't like. Although I think I have better reasons than just I grew up with baseball looking different. Yeah. You know, like just purely attachment to tradition. That was maybe dismissive of me. I apologize.

It's probably more than meh. There is some of that though. Sometimes there's meh. There definitely is. Yeah. And I'd like to think that I have more considered objections than just meh. I think you do. But maybe there is also some meh.

I don't know. I mean like the shift, that's not something that was a fixture of the game when I started watching it. I mean, it's been an occasional part of the game going back a very long time, but it didn't take off until, well, I guess right before we started this podcast or right around the time this podcast started sometime around there. So it's not like I've never seen baseball without the shift or something and I just won't recognize it anymore. But I don't know. It bugs me. You're keeping an eye, Ben. It's like when a young cousin of yours goes to college and they read Ayn Rand for the first time and you're like, this could be fine, but I'm going to keep an eye on it. I'm looking. I'm going to watch your post for a while, make sure this didn't go in a weird direction.

Yeah. It's just like that. That's a very relatable metaphor. That's the analogy I would have chosen. I don't know. We got to keep our eyes on this one for a minute. Yeah. I mean, I am glad that they're willing to tinker and they're willing to do things.

I am glad that they're willing to tinker and they're willing to do things. And even like when Rob Manfred came in, I was like, OK, he's like open to new ideas and he's open to changing things. And then immediately it was like, oh, but the shift is like the first thing you mentioned. That's not anywhere on my list. So it was like, oh, this backfired immediately. But I do think it's time for some changes, maybe not all of these specific changes. But like the pitch clock, love it. You know, absolutely bring on the pitch clock. Pitch clock is great.

And other changes that have been discussed and tickered with, great. So for far too long, I think baseball has just been set in its ways, major league baseball. And we just have not seen rule changes that have kept pace with the strategic changes. The game has changed. It's not like if you don't change the rules, the game won't change. It will change regardless. You have to change the rules to ensure that it doesn't change too much or in ways that you don't want. So we definitely have to do some things. It's just this one specific thing is not the thing that I would want them to do, at least not right now. And for what it's worth, it hasn't actually worked in minor league games.

Unlike the pitch clock, which actually has shortened minor league games, the shift restrictions haven't really reliably consistently increased BABIP at those levels. It's hard to say what that means because they don't shift quite as frequently down there as they do in the big leagues. But I don't know that you can say that it's empirically proven to work. We have likened it in the past and now this might be emotionally resonant for you in a way that it wasn't before and isn't for me. It's like you kind of want it to be a, you want the commissioner's office to act kind of like a parent and not like a overly strict one, but not an overly permissive one either. It's like you want the game to be able to thrive and

flourish and grow. And it's going to do that in ways that are sometimes unexpected and prove to be really cool. And then sometimes it's going to, again, it's like Reed Ayn Rand is a college freshman. And then you're like, I got to say some words about community to this one. You know, and so you need to have the ability to course correct before things go in a direction that isn't good and also might start to gain institutional momentum that's hard to counteract because teams are like, this is great. There's an out in there. There's an out in that little space between the bag and the runner. Got to go get that out, right?

And baseball has not seen fit to intervene on that problem, which seems very obvious to both of us. But you want it to be willing to make rules and changes that will help to have it thrive, right? And also give it breathing room to sort of engage in self-discovery. This is what I imagine parenting to be, and I'm probably horrifying actual parents by describing it that way,

where they're like, no, my kids, not like that. But that's what I imagine it to be, and that's kind of the approach that I want the league to take to the game, where it's like you're trying to foster productive growth, and you're also there to get a little strict if the need arises. So, yeah.

Yeah, and we'll see if there are any ways And you're also there to like get a little strict if the need arises. So, yeah. Yeah. And we'll see if there are any ways to exploit this or loopholes, you know, people have mentioned. I can't wait. Because you know there are going to be some. Yeah, maybe. I mean, they've tested this stuff. They've thought of things. Sure.

And like they're going to put like lines on the field and stuff, right? I know, yeah. There's going gonna be lines out there yeah there are very particular rules like i think folks maybe got excited for a minute about the potential of teams like exploiting the shift rule by like making their infields crazy and you know doing a bunch of different weird shapes because you know infields are a little bit variable in terms of the exact shape of them. But I know that friend of the pod, Evan Drellick, tweeted yesterday that they have some discretion,

but there are rules in the rules that are specifically meant to address that. They want to have particular specifications within a range. So yeah, they're trying to think of stuff. And I imagine that they've thought of most of the stuff, but I am not convinced. I'm not convinced that there isn't. Can I think of a less confusing way to phrase this? I'm pretty sure that like most teams,

even though it's not a formal title, because then the commissioner would be like, you're up to bad business. Probably have a person on staff whose job is to be like, how can I help you push this? Like I'm the designated rule gap finder. And, you know, they probably are the only people who read the rulebook more than I do. Yeah, right. And, you know, people have talked about, well, our defensive players, are they going to start

like running to the shift position? Sure. Like when the shift is released, could they get like a running start or something? It still will affect your range regardless. So yeah, there might be little things you can do on the margins, but obviously a lot less freedom than they have currently, which is do whatever. Anyone can stand anywhere. Well, as long as it's in fair territory and it's not the catcher and the pitcher. So yeah, I am sort of sad that we will not see some wacky alignments that we have seen in the past few years. It's been fun at times to see some of the more out there alignments that you get from time to time.

So it's just it's more standardized. Like I do like variation between teams just in terms of like the tactics that they employ. And this makes it more uniform in a way that I'm not totally into. So again, I don't like it. I hope that I will come around and be convinced and that it will either be so unnoticeable that I find that I don't care or noticeable in a good way, right? Where I'm like, oh, actually, this is good. And they were right all along. I shouldn't have had to be dragged, kicked and screaming here.

But we'll see. I have my doubts. So I do think that ideally it probably would have been better if the commissioner and the players had linked arms and just gone hand in hand, skipping down the road to these rule changes. I'm not surprised that that's not what happened. And I'm somewhat sympathetic to the commissioner's office in imposing these things because I think they just had to. I don't know that you were ever going to get to a point where pitchers just happily welcomed the pitch clock. And I think it's needed. So I get it.

the pitch clock, and I think it's needed, so I get it. I was just reading Evan's piece at The Athletic where he reported some of the details about things that players weren't pleased about. So he said, a pitch clock wouldn't have much of an impact if a pitcher could continuously reset it by stepping off the mound. At the same time, pitchers want the ability to throw over multiple times to try to keep potential base stealers from swiping bags. Position players are said to have provided feedback during the process indicating that they would take large leads to force pickoff attempts, and then, knowing at that point that a pitcher has only one pickoff attempt left, they'll then use the clock and a pitcher's history to steal. A pitcher might develop a history of consistently throwing before the clock hits, say, three seconds remaining.

The pitcher might develop a history of consistently throwing before the clock hits, say, three seconds remaining. The feared end result is that there are more stolen bases that are not contested without a chance for a catcher to throw out the runner. There's also because teams can challenge whether a player was in an illegal position before a pitch. Players worry that a tiny infraction, an inch over, will lead to the erasure of some major moments, even if it didn't impact the outcome of the play or pitch. And finally, players are concerned about the timer's effect on major situations, be it the postseason or late and close games in the regular season, moments when pitchers might otherwise take extra time to collect themselves and reset. While MLB is pleased with the results of clock testing in the minors, players point out that

the minor leagues can't replicate October baseball at, say, Yankee Stadium. Will major moments be decided more by the clock than a player's potential best effort? One idea players liked was to relax enforcement during late and close situations. I don't know. I think- Isn't late and close when all of the pickoff attempts happen? Yeah. And when everything slows down. Yeah. For good reason, I i guess from players perspective but yeah i mean if you're trying to speed things up then you can't really carve out an exception

for the times when they slow down the most i don't know and also like if you allow that at some times then will that impair pitchers ability to get in the habit of doing this all the time right like if there's no exception then it's like okay i gotta get in this habit of doing this all the time, right? Like if there's no exception, then it's like, okay, I got to get in this rhythm. But if it's like, okay, now I can relax a little bit, it seems like that might make you more likely to go over and get a violation at other times. So, you know, they might have some points there, I think, but I don't know that they ever would have been satisfied with this or would have said, yeah, let's do it. Let's make us work faster and have to worry about this countdown. So I think you might've just had to impose this at a certain point. So I'm hopeful that the pitch clock will be

just such a success and everyone will love it so much that it will somewhat overshadow any other effects that we don't like as much. Like if I am just wholeheartedly on board with the pitch clock and I don't like the shift, maybe I would wish that we could have one without the other. But if I'm wholeheartedly on board with the pitch clock and I don't like the shift band when it's implemented, maybe I will wish that we could have had the former without the latter. But maybe on balance, it'll be okay and I'll feel fine about it. I guess we'll just have a lot of time to see how it goes and react to it when it's actually happening. But exciting, scary times, I guess, for those of us who are not used to Major League Baseball actually doing things. Yeah. A lot of change to be had. If we get a bunch of emails about objectivism,

you can ignore them. I'll take that one. Okay. One other small change is that there's a new war in town, right? So Ken Rosenthal reported some, but not all of the details of the war that MLB is using and the MLBPA is using to hand out the bonuses for pre-arbitration players, which are partly based on awards results, but are also partly based on how the players perform according to this new war, which in Ken's article, which is based on a memo that was sent around. It's referred to as joint war, which I guess we could end up calling J-war if we want to.

But it's joint, I guess, because it was a collaborative effort between the league and the Players Association. It basically sounds like the wars we have already from what we can tell. It sounds like it has the same components and inputs the only major difference maybe it's using stat cast for defense which fan graphs were largely is at this point as well but yeah also it's kind of blending fan graphs and baseball reference pitching war basically so baseball references like runs you allowed war andraphs war is fip war defense independent pitching war and this basically is just like a 50 50 blend basically half of one half of the other which you can

actually find at fangraphs as well if you want to you can look at it that way but it's not the official fangraphs war the fangraphs war of record so that's what it will be for jay war so i don't know if we'll ever get the ins and outs and the details and everything and if we did it would probably be pretty boring because it it appears to mirror the other wars that we use already but if anyone was wondering because you know they had at times talked about using one of the war systems that was out there already which the people who published those war stats were kind of uncomfortable with. So it appears that they have made something similar that I guess they're all on board with and we'll just get some values and some rankings. Maybe we won't get

the guts. I don't know. But I assume that if the players want to know what goes into it, then they can. And we've talked in past about like whether you could game that in any way to like have a higher war but generally I think we decided that for the most part having a higher war means you're just like more valuable to your team it's not such a bad thing at least for the most part yeah

I have to say Ben so I was I was busy yesterday I didn't see this I didn't see it I didn't know that it happened doesn't involve us. I didn't know that it happened. It doesn't involve us at all. I feel really good about it. I didn't have to know about this. I didn't get any tweets about it.

I didn't hear anything from anybody about how do I feel. I don't feel nothing. I don't feel any way at all. It feels great. That feels great. That is a feeling. But otherwise, I am a J- his position. We did get someone point out something to us because we wondered whether there's anyone else who has done this. And I was thinking at the time, Zach Granke, and I didn't say Zach Granke, but Zach Granke has done some things along similar lines.

I think when he was with the Brewers, when he was with the Dodgers, maybe with the Diamondbacks, too. Like basically wherever he goes, I think people value his scouting acumen and his knowledge of the game. And so he has provided input to some front offices as well. And another really great and prominent player who has not been with his one team his whole career or anything. So he's bounced around a bit.

So he maybe fits the Correa twins mold more or less, sort of. So I guess he is a second example of a player who has been consulted in that way. listener, Brittany, which I don't believe we answered, but she said, apologies if this has already been covered. There's a lot of effectively wild out there, sure enough. If the rule limiting pickoff attempts comes to MLB, as it has, do you think we, the fans collectively, will stop booing pickoff moves? And if so, what other perfectly legal and fairly common defensive maneuvers should we start booing instead? So that's what you were just wondering. I don't know. She said, I struggle to think of any others that often feel like a cowardly and pointless delay, but it's possible I'm just blinded by social conditioning. I do think that the collective booing is fun and one of the most harmless expressions of discontent fans can engage in, and that we may need this outlet. So perhaps we should pick a replacement in advance and start practicing just in case.

So I guess the pitch clock prevents us from booing players who are just dawdling and lollygagging, right? We can't collectively boo Pedro Baez anymore the way that maybe people have in the past. And I guess it's just harder to have delays when they're cutting down on the time between innings and and like there's even a rule it's like 10 seconds of walk-up music right and and no noise between pitches so i wish no music between pitches as well so they're just they're trying to cut out the dead air here and there wherever they can so i guess there just won't be as many obvious instances of just everyone's time being wasted where we can all boo about that. But if anyone has any ideas or suggestions

for low stakes booing that we can all engage in instead of booing pitchers who throw over too often, please let us know. Yeah, definitely. All right, well, it is time for the Past Blast. This is episode 1901. And so the Past Bl blast comes from 1901. And as always, from Richard Hershberger, Sabre researcher, historian, and author of Strike Four, The Evolution of Baseball. I have said that 40 plus times at

this point, but this is the first time that I have said it, that I am actually welcoming Richard Hershberger to the podcast to deliver the StatBlast in person. Welcome, Richard. Hi, Ben. Hi, Meg. Good to have you here and great to have had you involved with this segment from the very start. And the reason that you're here today to deliver the StatBlast is that this is your last StatBlast, sadly. You helped us touch off the segment. You have handled it since we started with episode 1858 and year 1858. But you are handing off the baton now. You are a 19th century baseball specialist, or at least you are very modest about your baseball expertise beyond that point.

So you've gotten us to 1901, to the start of the American League, to the quote unquote modern era. And now you will be handing the reins to a former Effectively Wild guest and probably future one, Jacob Pomeranke, who has been on the podcast multiple times. He is the director of editorial content at Sabre, and he is the person who tweets from the Sabre Twitter account, as well as his own at Buckweaver. So we'll talk about Jacob and we'll have pass blasts from Jacob as we continue. But we wanted to mark the occasion of the changing of the guard here by having you on yourself because it's been a great pleasure to have your past blasts to this point. So I can tell you for the first time, thank you in person on our behalf and behalf of everyone who has enjoyed your research. Well, thank you. It has been fun, but I also know my own limitations

and I am given to understand that they played baseball in the 20th century, but I don't really know that for sure. I've heard that there was this guy named George Ruth who was pretty good. I may look him up. He may come up on a future Pass Blast. Or you never know. Maybe not. Sometimes they're obscure Pass Blast subjects. But I've said that so many times.

Sabre researcher, historian, author of Strike 4, The Evolution of Baseball, or some combination of those words. But that's just the snapshot. That's the tiny capsule summary. So tell us a little bit more about the man, the myth, the legend, the past blaster, Richard Hershberger. How did you come to develop your interest in this period of baseball and your deep knowledge about it? Well, I come from a family full of academics, and I am not an academic. I made that decision many years ago not to go that road, but I have the itch. And about 20 years ago, when newspaper archives first started coming online, I was just idly looking through and I punched in baseball in 1880 and was quite enchanted

to find box scores that were completely understandable. And from there, I ended up joining Sabre and writing articles. And this is how I scratched that academic itch. And what about this particular era of baseball has proven to be so compelling to you? Because you joke about, you know, Babe Ruth, but you have been this font of knowledge for us. What about this stretch is really what has grabbed you? It is when they were figuring it out. Normally, when we think of baseball history and we think of, you know, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, and so forth,

we have this image of timeless baseball. Think James Earl Jones talking about baseball being a constant in America. And I think we know that that's not really true. It's certainly not true in any literal sense because, of course, baseball had a beginning. And it's not even true that baseball in Babe Ruth's day was just the same as baseball today the rules were very similar but that's a separate discussion from how the game was played so what interests me in that but scratch my academic itch was how did we get to this baseball as a constant? You know, where did it

come from and what was the process of getting from there to here? I mean, that to me is what history is, is figuring that out. So that's what led to the book that Ben has very graciously plugged many times, Strike Forward, The Evolution of Baseball, is specifically about how the game was played in general and the rules in particular. If I can do an extra plug, I just recently turned in the manuscript to University of Missouri Press for my next book, which has the working title, The Rise of Baseball, 1744 to 1871. Yeah, when you told me that, and congratulations, first of all, when you told me that, I lamented that we had not started the Pass Blast far earlier because you went back much farther. But we started around when actually you thought it would make sense to start because I was in communication with you just based on your notes and just how prevalent baseball was. But if it's not a spoiler for the forthcoming book, how do you go back that far?

What was baseball in the mid-1700s? Well, 1744 is the earliest known use of the actual word baseball. And there was this new genre of literature, the children's book of games. So this was from a book of games, and there's a page where it has baseball, and there's a woodcut of some children playing a ball game, which is clearly not modern baseball, but okay. And there's a little four-line poem, which if I had come prepared, I would have had it in front of me. But it talks about, you know, the boy hits the ball, then goes running and comes home, which sounds like baseball to me. And then because this is 1744, there's a second poem, Giving the Moral, which I won't bore you with. But of course, they had to have a moral. That's how you

justify doing these books. So that's the earliest known. Clearly, it wasn't new then. There was this kind of soup of English ball games, you know, folk games that were played, and this one came out of it. But that is the earliest where we can identify that they had a game called baseball. And I think people would probably be curious about how you have found all of the tidbits that you have sent to us for this series. Because what I've so enjoyed about your past blast contributions is that they're not just the most obvious thing. You have gone off the beaten path and you've given us some really interesting stuff that's about the innovations and the new rules and rule changes, experiments that were ahead of their time, but also just some things that no one would ever know about that you would just not find in a history book, except yours, perhaps. But how did you come across all of the articles, all of the little things that you sent

us over the past few months? The long way. So one of the advantages of not actually being an academic, so I'm not teaching courses and I don't have deadlines, except ones that are self-imposed, is that I could take this very slowly. And I set out initially to read all the newspaper coverage of baseball that was available from before the Civil War. And there's really not that much. It was played, it was starting to rise into cultural prominence, but it wasn't like it is today. So really, nowadays, newspaper research is a lot easier than it used to be. You know, a lot of it's online. And even if it's not online, nowadays you can go to a library and put it into a microfilm reader. Or if you're dealing with bound volumes, you can put it under

a scanner. And, you know, microfilm readers nowadays are hooked into computers and you put in your flash drive and you get your scans and you can read them at your leisure. So really, it's a lot easier than it used to be. And so when I set out to read all the pre-Civil War material and take notes, which again, nowadays you do that electronically, which is much easier to recover afterwards. And really, anybody, you know, with some spare time could do this. It's very doable. You know, you set aside a month where this is going to be your hobby activity for the month and, you know, you could do it. And I initially expected that that would be that, but then I wasn't smart enough to stop.

So now I'm into the 1890s. At that point, there's far too much material to read everything. I make no attempt at reading everything, but I read a lot. I take a lot of notes. So really, in these past class, what you're seeing is tidbits, items that interested me enough to take a note. I'm curious, and we'd have to workshop the name for a segment like this, maybe blast to the future or something. But is there a stretch of time in sort of more modern baseball

that you might want to turn your attention to at some point? Not to add work, especially to someone who is getting ready to publish a book, but if you were to look ahead to the more recent past, yeah, we have to workshop it. Is there a stretch in there that's particularly interesting to you? Well, I mean, I am a baseball fan and have been my entire life. So it certainly interests me just as a baseball fan who tries to be informed. My interest in the rules has gone a lot livelier in the last couple of years. In the last chapter of Strike 4, I do discuss what I saw as future rule changes. And this was written probably in 2018. future rule changes. And this was written probably in 2018. And my predictions turned out to be wildly modest compared to what has happened. You know, the zombie runner, I never imagined that. You know, robo umpires, yes. Pitch clock, yes. But there's been an awful lot of discussion since

then. So I could, if anybody ever asked me to do a revised and expanded edition, that is where the revisions and expansions would come from. But beyond that, kind of my approach to history and research has given me a real leg up on the 19th century material just because nobody else has been insane enough to do it this way. And I would lose my marginal advantage if I tried to do that with 21st century baseball. There's a lot of people who would be way ahead of me at that point. Two mainstream bunch of normies interested in only the last century. So I was curious because you said

that the 19th century was sort of when they were figuring it out, but obviously they're still very much figuring it out or trying to figure it out. Would you say that what we're seeing now and could continue to see in the next few years is the most sweeping, significant change to the game since the period that you have covered in these past blasts? I mean, with the pitch clock and the shift ban and robo-umps and who knows what else and other things that have already happened, is this just the most dramatic sea change that we have seen since the earlier formative periods of the game? Yeah, I think it is, at least potentially. We'll see how much of this actually gets carried through and what sticks and what doesn't stick. But if you look in the 20th century, there are some rule changes in the 20th century, but they're pretty limited.

Depending on where exactly you want to start, you have the foul strike in 1901 in the National League and 1903 in the American League, which people hated at the time, by the way. It took them about 10 years before people stopped complaining about that. Then going from there, you have, other than a few very minor tweaks to the rules, you have to get back into you know the year of the pitcher and they they lower the mound and add the dh you know so really i guess the question to answer your question is is do you consider what the current discussions to be more important a bigger deal than lowering the mound and adding the dh and i think it probably is yeah one thing that this series has helped me with,

I think, is just getting used to the idea of change. Not that I was resistant to change before, but it is helpful to remember that every change has caused some backlash and hue and cry, right? Even great changes, changes that we totally take for granted today. People were upset about them at the time and raised protests. And so that doesn't mean that every change that's going through today is good, but it does suggest that at least we could get used to it eventually. So it's almost like if you redesign a website and suddenly people have to click here instead of clicking there and they don't know where anything is and they think it's the worst thing ever. That always goes great, Ben. Right. It never results in comments. It's fine.

Yeah. As you know well from personal experience. But then you get used to it and often there was some rationale for the change and ultimately maybe you decide that it was better. So, Richard, what do you think is the shelf life of people being upsetire to wear off? You know, if someone is upset about the pitch clock, let's say, or me with my discontent about the zombie runner, which we hope will not be permanent but may very well be, or the shift ban, for instance. Will we ever just get over these things or will we take our grievances to the grave? The resistance to change of any sort, you know, not as opposed to a specific change. In the 19th century, the rules would change practically year to year. And sometimes they were pretty big changes. So, you know, you'll have a process of about 10 years, 15 years where the number of balls for a walk was gradually lowered. So,

you know, people were completely comfortable with the idea that, you know, this year's rules are going to be different from last year's rules. They might complain about a specific change, you know, or they might criticize a specific change, but they weren't complaining that there was a change. And that actually was new with the foul strike rule. You know, we're calling a strike on a foul ball. And that was a real change, if you will, in the attitude because the complaints really were just, this is a radical change and baseball should not be changed. And as I say, that lasted about 10 years. Then, I don't know, did people complain about lowering the mound? I really don't

know. We haven't gotten to that episode number yet. We're not sure. That'll be about, what, 70 more episodes in. Yeah. I think, Ben, that you're absolutely right with the DH, that people are complaining about it today because there's been the option of watching baseball that did not use a DH. It's been clear to me for quite some time that it was going to be coming probably maybe 10 years ago. ago, I came to the realization that the National League and one of the two Japanese leagues were the only two leagues in the world that did not use the DH. It's like, okay, this is a done deal. It's just a matter of the timing. I will be astonished if 10 years from now, people are still talking about it. I don't think five years from now, people will be talking about the DH. How does this carry over the zombie runner? I don't know. It's a good question. And I'm interested to see what the answer is. I think part of the problem with the zombie runner is going to be that it doesn't really kick in in

most games. So that leaves people more room to- Right. It's sort of like, yeah, it's the DH kind of example, right? I mean, even in a game where you get the zombie runner, you still got no zombie runner for the first nine innings and suddenly it changes. So you can constantly just see what baseball is like without it and be upset about what it's like with it. Recently, the people who were fans of American League teams, they'd go into this discussion going, have the pitcher hit? What are you, nuts? Right. And they had a point. And I grew up a National League guy. So I was resistant to the DH for many, many years. But I think also writing my book also really brought home to me how much baseball has changed over the years,

and it never really stopped. The difference nowadays is that the driving force in change is not in the rules. It's in strategy, gameplay. We see this with the shift, which, yeah, the shift's been around. You had the Boudreaux shift back in the day, but the shift as something that you would see on a regular basis is, what, five years old, something like that? Yeah, a little longer than that, but it's gotten more and more frequent over that period, yeah. I distinctly remember seeing a game on TV when they're going, oh, look at where these guys are placed, and this is really weird. on TV when they're going, oh, look at where these guys are placed. And this is really weird.

And it wasn't that long ago. The big change that we're seeing in recent years beyond that is pitcher usage. 20 years ago, your ideal game plan was you have your starter who you really hope will go seven innings. Then you have your setup guy. Then you have your closer and you march to victory. And does anybody try to do that game plan anymore? I don't think so. I think that now you hope that your starter gives you a five and then you have this series of bullpen guys where even the fans don't know this guy's name. And then, yeah, you have your closer still.

don't know this guy's name. And then, yeah, you have your closer still, but there's none of this overarching strategy of pitcher usage is not at all like it was just a few years ago. And this means that these guys can come in and they can throw their 100 mile an hour fastballs from the first pitch to the last pitch because they're only going to go one inning. And, you know, that changes the hitting environment. And, you know, the game today is different from what was 20 years ago. And this has nothing to do with the rules. Yeah, I was wondering if you could talk me off the ledge at all about the shift ban, because this bothers me on a pretty deep level. And I guess part of it is just the idea of restricting where players can stand or mandating where they must. So I wonder whether with your vast historical perspective, you can either provide precedents that make this less of a fundamental change to the game, or whether you

think that we will not lament the loss of this extreme defensive positioning once it's gone? Yeah, I am less on the ledge about banning the shift than you are. My initial gut reaction was to be against the banning, but I've come around. The history is, if you go back to the oldest rules that we have from 1845, they don't even say where the pitcher is. Telling you where the pitcher is doesn't come in until 1857, and even then there was a line and you had to be behind that line. You could do a run up to the line like cricket bowlers do. And it wasn't until 1864 that you had a back line. So 1864 is when you really get to the point where you have this limited area and the pitcher has to be in it. And the catcher, the rules made no distinction about a catcher until much later. And they eventually designate this slice.

Imagine the two foul lines, they extend them backwards, you know, into foul territory behind the batter. And you can see this on old photographs because they actually put out the chalk lines. on old photographs because they actually put out the chalk lines. And that area behind the plate within those two lines was the catcher's and umpire's area. Nobody else was allowed back there. And that kind of implies that the catcher has to be there, but it was a pretty wide space. And it's not until I think 1910 that they actually put in a back line where the catcher has to be, you know, forward of that back line. So it's pretty late that you actually designate an area where the catcher has to be. And the original rules did not specify that the other fielders had to be in fair territory. You know, you would sometimes have talk about having two catchers, you know, a front catcher

and a back catcher. I don't think that that was ever actually done in professional games, but it was talked about sometimes. So now everybody except the catcher has to be in fair territory. So it is not completely unprecedented to gradually restrict the players. completely unprecedented to gradually restrict the players. My other point about the shift, something that you see in many rule changes is that they're actually very conservative, or we could even say reactionary, where something has changed in gameplay and people don't like this change, you know, for good reason or bad reason. So they institute a rule to try to restore

the game to its previous version. And banning the shift would be explicitly that, because as we just talked about it, you know, 10 years ago, shifts were very rare. So if we ban the shift, the fielders are now, you know, looking positioned much more like they have been through the vast majority of baseball history. So, you know, I kind of see the objection in principle, but it really is a very conservative change. Are there other rule changes that you would be interested in seeing baseball implement at the major league level? Is this a if i were god and or the commissioner discussion or is this a realistic discussion i mean it can be both if you want but you know is there we all have our you know we all have our little picadillos right things sort of irk us so

are there changes that you would like to see implemented do you think would improve the spectator experience of baseball well i'm with you two on the zombie runner. I do not like the zombie runner. And I actually, I did not imagine the zombie runner in my book, but I did talk about how do we deal with marathon games, which, you know, I don't like to stay up as late as I did when I was younger. So, and I like to be able to see the end of the game. And my suggestion was embrace the tie. Tie games were part of baseball through most of its history. And certainly before they had stadium lighting, games were called on account of darkness all the time. And if the score was tied at the, you know, when the game was called and if they'd gotten their five innings in, then it was a tie.

Everybody go home. And nowadays, this is against the trend in sports, but to hate the tie. So you have elaborate tiebreakers in football and so forth. I would be perfectly happy. So here it is, the 11th inning. The score is tied. Let's all go to bed. Yeah, you know, here it is, the 11th inning, the score is tied. Let's all go to bed. Yeah, I'm with you, at least as an alternative to what we have now. So I guess we

should get to the pass blast that we teased. And unlike every previous one, I will not be reading this one or at least most of them, and I did not receive it far in advance. So it was a bit of a surprise for me this time, too. So would you like to take it from here? it far in advance. So it was a bit of a surprise for me this time too. So would you like to take it from here? Oh, thank you. So the setup here is, this is from the Baltimore Sun of January 1st, 1901. So it's New Year's Day.

And the first sentence is, the close of the century witnesses a crisis in America's great professional game. And I want to preview that because I just want to note that the Baltimore Suns on record that the new century started in 1901, not 1900. So here is a foreshadow. This is a spoiler for what's going to happen in the new century. The close of the century witnesses a crisis in America's great professional game. The National League is under a new financial weight that was assumed by the reduction of its clubs from 12 to 8. Its methods in 1900 caused it to play a losing season. Its players have reorganized in their own protective trade union, and a powerful rival has sprung up into the arena.

This is the American League, which in 1900 was confined to the West, and which in 1901 will have both an Eastern and a Western circuit, regardless of the wishes of the National League. The National League itself is torn with jealousies, and members of it who have not believed themselves well treated are suspected of a willingness to desert the old ship. The American League seems to have the confidence of the people for in 1900 it made money. It will start the new century in health and the national game is due for a great revival. So the background is that the American League had come out of the old Western League, which was a high minor league. And in 1900, the National League had contracted from 12 teams to eight teams. And this opened up space for the American League to move into legitimate major league markets.

And in 1901, it declared itself to be a major league, which is another way of saying it declared war on the National League. And that war would last until 1903. As being a professed not 20th century baseball history guy, I ask, is the American League going to survive? And I'm taking the under. I think that they're only going to last a year or two. And there's a little comment that Jacob sent along to do a little handoff here. So he wrote that by the end of the 19th century, the National League was in total chaos. So Ben Johnson and the AL owners picked the right time to pick a fight.

total chaos. So Ben Johnson and the AL owners picked the right time to pick a fight. While the NL had a strict salary cap of $2,400 per player, the AL signed more than 100 NL players to lucrative contracts. The NL had held off other challengers before, but this time their rivals had too much momentum and too much money. The AL was here to stay. So he's a little bit more bullish. You spoiled it for me. More bullish about the AL than you are. Yeah. Well, I guess everything old is new again, because we're at a time of tumult in the game again. I guess unless the antitrust exemption gets struck down, we probably won't have another rival league springing up anytime soon, but it is a time of sweeping change. And also Queen Victoria died in January 1901, right? So I guess we have another even longer reigning monarch passing. So all of this has happened before and will happen again, and we will continue to passast about it without Richard, sadly, though I hope he will remain a presence on the podcast in some form, whether it's just consulting you on rules questions or 19th century questions

from time to time, or maybe in the future when the Pass Blast has concluded, when we have caught up to the present, although some people have suggested that we do hypothetical Pass Blasts that extend out into the future. Isn't that just the whole podcast? Yeah, that's basically what we do most of the time, I guess. But maybe after it's concluded, you have done a whole series of research and written about the origins of words and baseball terminology. And you've sent me some samples of those, which are very interesting. So maybe we could dabble in that at some point. And for anyone who has Richard Hershberger withdrawal, first of

all, check out the book, Strike Forward the Evolution of Baseball, that we've been plugging all this time, just as a thank you to Richard for all the research he has contributed to the podcast. And he will have another book coming out, although the pace of academic publishing is not swift. So it may be a couple of years, but you can get your Pass Blast fix from Richard every day at his Facebook page and also in the Effectively Wild Facebook group, where he is a member and he posts 150 years ago in baseball flashbacks every day that people enjoy in there. So I don't know if there's anything else that you want to plug or direct people to while you're here, Richard. Well, I could point out that the way that you and I went into communication is you made a

factually incorrect statement. I believe in one of your ringer articles, and I very, very graciously corrected you without even being asked this is how i usually introduce myself to people and uh i i promise you that if i catch you in a mistake you will hear about it yes please do was that the the automatic pitching machine origin no that that was the uh the the john? No, that was the John T. Brush noticing that batters did better the third time through the lineup. Ah, right.

Uh-huh. Yes. And then you ended up spending half an hour on your podcast, you know, talking about that. And I was really impressed that anybody was going to devote half an hour to something that happened in 1887 or 1889. I made the mistake.

And that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Yes, I hope so. Well, thank you so much. You've gotten this series off to a great start, and it's been great to get you involved in the Pass Blast and also to have you here in person. So thanks so much. Well, thank you. It has been a lot of fun.

It's just I can tell that it was time to hand it off. So you are in capable hands. Yes. And Jacob will take us from here. I guess it might have made sense to have Jacob on this episode as well, but we're sticking to the tradition, I guess, of having the outgoing Pass Blaster come on the podcast to take a little victory lap and hand off officially in retrospect. It may have made sense to have you on at the start of the Pass Blast series so people could put a voice to the name all along, but better late

than never. So thanks again. All right, that will just about do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening. We've already gotten a bunch of emails about possible shift loopholes and possible byproducts of banning the shift. We alluded to the possibility of, say, a shortstop just running toward the right side as the pitch is thrown with a pull-heavy slugger at the plate, just getting a running start so that you're in a legal place when the pitch is thrown, but you're already in motion football style. Here's a suggestion from listener Sam. Now that the shift is officially banned, will we see situations where the defense leaves first base open? If the pitcher knows they have to cover the bag no matter what, they can likely get there pretty quickly in many cases. What do you think? Could this be a fun positive to arise from a post shift world? Maybe. Seems like a lot to ask a pitcher to be ready to get over to first base on every pitch.

A lot could go wrong there, but it's creative. I'll give him that if there's no runner on first. Or here's a question from Jake, Patreon supporter. In light of the new shift restriction rules, I was thinking about how the optimization of the game has led to a less exciting product. I'm also a big hockey fan, and a similar sentiment exists. The game is too clean, too well coached to be as exciting as it used to be a couple of decades ago. This is always debatable, of course, but one of the solutions I've heard in some circles is that there should be fewer coaches on the benches, perhaps limited to only the head coach. This theoretically would minimize coaching in the game, lessen the number of lengthy challenges,

and lead to more mistakes, which leads to more scoring. What do you think of this possibility in baseball? Maybe only a manager, a bench coach, and a pitching coach? Maybe just the manager? Would shifts lessen naturally due to the lack of time for the manager to make these moves? Would pitching changes be often more suboptimal without a pitching coach? And my response was, I don't want to see fewer coaches, but I want to see less coaching, especially in-game. I would ban coach visits and mound visits. And I said to Jake, I'm also fine with banning info that players carry with them in games on the field, like positioning cards. But then it dawned on me, maybe they

won't need to carry positioning cards anymore if positioning is severely restricted. It's a brave new world. One piece of pretty big news broke after we recorded. Our pal Evan Drellick tweeted, Rob Manfred said, MLB notified the MLBPA today that MLB is prepared to voluntarily recognize the minor league players union, pending a card check agreement to make sure that the union actually has the support of the requisite number of minor leaguers. But that's interesting news. We talked the other day about the potential for MLB to voluntarily recognize that union. Since it seems like it's inevitable, we kind of doubted it would happen just because the league and ownership tends to drag its feet and put up petty fights when it comes to labor issues.

But there's no great downside to voluntarily recognizing if you know that the union's going to happen. And there's some upside, including just not taking the PR hit and also maybe getting to control when negotiations happen as opposed to having that imposed upon you. So just recognizing the union is one step. Of course, that doesn't make a CBA magically appear. There has to be a big round of bargaining. But still, semi-surprising, semi-encouraging, just like that whole unionization news cycle. So we are indeed living in interesting times. that whole unionization news cycle. So we are indeed living in interesting times,

lots of significant tumultuous events, not just in baseball, but also in Major League Baseball specifically. And I'll leave you with this from listener Charles, who wrote in in response to our discussion on the last episode about thumbing one's nose at someone. This is from Casey Stengel's Hall of Fame biography. The Kansas City native found a home at the polo grounds when he became Hall of Fame manager John McGraw's protege and unofficial assistant coach. From 1922 to 23, Stengel hit.355 as a platoon outfielder with the Giants and homered in Game 1 of the 1923 World Series. Stengel hit another home run in Game 3 and thumbed his nose at the New York Yankees bench while rounding third base. Baseball commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis was in attendance that day and promptly fined Stengel for his antics.

Charles writes, Nose thumbing is an old-timey thing. I feel like you have to have some familiarity with cartoon art from the 30s through the 50s to have really seen it. Anyway, as with pretty much all things baseball, whatever is happening now almost certainly happened a century ago. And maybe will happen a century hence. As we were saying earlier, history repeats itself. So before I repeat myself too often,

I'll get off the stage. In the meantime, 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 monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, get themselves access to some perks, and help us stay ad-free. Rosh Schneider, Andrew Blackburn, Daniel Colbert, or is that Colbert? Keith Teeple, and Sarah. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to our exclusive Patreon-only Discord group, as well as Patreon-only bonus episodes, which we release on a monthly basis.

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Changes in your life.