Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2157: Sophomore Lumps

Episode Date: April 27, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about whether they believe the projections that peg the White Sox as merely a run-of-the-mill terrible team, this season’s sophomore slumps (so far), and more on ballplayer dirt consumption and replay review protocol, then (30:09) answer listener emails about promotion and relegation in professional baseball, the definition of “getaway […]

Well, it's moments like these that make you ask, how can you not be pedantic about baseball? If baseball were different, how different would it be? On the case with light rippin', all analytically Cross-check and compile, find a new understanding Not effectively, why the can you not be pedantic? Yes, when it comes to baseball, how can you not be pedantic? Yes, when it comes to baseball, how can you not be pedantic? Hello and welcome to episode 2157 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I'm joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer.

Ben, how are you? Well, I hate to say this because i hate to inflict this topic of discussion on anyone but i think we have to talk about the white socks dude yeah i think we do i think we gotta go there i think we've got to go there sometimes this early in the season you can't help but feeling like i'm overreacting to stuff you I'm, I'm making too much of it. They'll, they'll turn it around. Ben, I, uh, I don't think they are gonna, you know, when you're like getting excited because actually a team's base run records indicates that they should have won, they should have won five games. Yeah, they should be 5-20. Like, you're in territory that should embarrass some folks.

And I feel bad when we have these conversations because I appreciate that, like, they're very real human beings whose livelihoods depend on this going better than it is. Some of whom I think are probably smart baseball minds and are doing their best. But, oh boy, Ben. I, oh, okay. The question is, how much better will it get? We know it's going to get a little better because as we speak here on Friday afternoon.

It has to. They're 3-22. That's your standard 19-win full-season pace. So they're going to do better than that. But how much better? Because it looks so bleak right now. I saw a headline on MLB Trade Rumors this week that said a potential positive development

on the White Sox roster. And I thought, wow, what could it be? What could possibly be going well? well enough to deserve its own post? And it turned out that it was about catcher Corey Lee, who has hit pretty well in 46 plate appearances. So that's good, I guess. You got to take your wins where you can get them. Also, Tommy Pham is here. The cavalry has arrived. They've designated cleanup hitter Kevin Pillar for assignment and brought in Tommy Pham. So can't hurt.

Right. But yeah, this is mostly not just abysmal luck. As you said, maybe they should have had a couple more wins than they do. But that still would have been a horrendous record. Yeah. So it comes down to just how low can they go. Right. Now, this reminds me of some conversations we had about the Oakland A's last season.

Yeah. 2010, which was May 24th of last. And we talked about whether we believed that. They actually projected to win something like 53 or 54 games. And we talked about whether we believed that. And I think we took the under. And I guess we were right to take the under because they ended up winning only 50 games and losing 112. So they fell a little bit short of the projected regression, the good kind of regression. Right. But they definitely kind of regression. Right. But they definitely did play better. And usually when a team is playing terribly, again, you can only go up.

You can only get better. You can only get rid of the dead weight in theory and call up some players who almost are bound to perform better than the players that you've had. And they did that. And they brought up some good players and Zach Gelof shows up and is one of the best players in baseball from day one, right? So some things go a little bit better. I don't know that things will go that much better for the White Sox. Like they have to go better in terms of wins and losses, but in terms of true talent, are

they actually going to be better? So Dan basically repeated that exercise this week for the White Sox instead of the A's. And as expected, projected them to be somewhat better the rest of the way. Yeah. Still truly terrible, to be clear. Yeah. But better. Better.

Zips had them. And this was, I think, posted before their loss on Thursday afternoon. Still truly terrible, to be clear, but better. Better. So Zips had them, and this was, I think, posted before their loss on Thursday afternoon. Okay. Yeah, they were only 3-21 at the time that this went live. Things were looking up. Yeah. Yeah. So, Dan, before that loss, Zips had them winning 54 games, right? And I just applied the method that Tango applied to the A's last year to the current White Sox.

So Tango has this rule of thumb for regression where you add 35 wins and 35 losses to a team's current record. And the winning percentage you get is their rest of season winning percentage projection. So for the Sox, they're 3-22. So you add 35 to each tally. That gives you 38-57, which is a 400 winning percentage. And they have 137 games left as we speak.

So that would be 54.8 more wins added to the three they already have. Don't forget about those three. We don't want to shortchange them. Don't want to take away the very few that they have. So that would get them to 57.8 wins. So if we round up, let's say 58 and 104. So again, the projections, the bounce back rules of thumb say that they should win somewhere in the mid 50s. But I just don't know that I can go that high. Part of this, too, is that not that the rest of the AL Central is as good as like the AL East, for instance. But like they don't I feel like they don't even have a extremely weak central to fall back on as a place to get like easy wins like that as we've talked about the rest of the central is

like at the least feisty you know like kind of scrappy even if they aren't destined for playoff glory like they're you know they're scrappy they're scrapping the white socks are not doing that yeah the combined fangraphs playoff odds which take into account the strength of schedule They're scrappy. They're scrapping. The White the estimates are roughly in that range, 54, 57, 58. Man, I mean, prior to the season, I didn't expect them to be this bad. I thought they would be bad for sure. I thought they would be bad, but I thought that they would be better than, well, I thought they'd be better than the Rockies. I thought they'd give the A's a run for their money.

But like, you know, they did have some guys. You know, this is the other thing about it. It's like the only interesting players they have. A lot of them are hurt. Garrett Crochet has really fallen off. You know, here I was, I was like, Garrett Crochet, he's a starter. And like, he might be a starter, but... Yeah, he's not Ronaldo Lopez.

No, he's not. What a weird year we, like, he might be a starter, but... Yeah, he's no Ronaldo Lopez. No, he's not. What a weird year we're having. You know, like, there's a lot of strangeness in the early going. They have a negative 85 run differential. How is that possible 25 games in? The Rockies were the worst projected preseason team. Right. And we did their season preview pod last. And I'm pretty sure I

remarked maybe on our White Sox preview that I could certainly envision them being the worst team in baseball. But obviously, you never expect even the worst team in baseball to start or play this poorly over any stretch of 25 games. So yeah, it's just about how much can they bounce back? Can they bounce back to the point where they could get to even the mid-50s? And I just don't know because it doesn't seem like the reinforcements are coming. They do have an improved farm system after the trades that they've made, and it's middle of the pack, if not better now. Sure. they could subtract from this roster. I know it sounds like, what is there to move, right? But maybe, like, if things get so dire, maybe Robert comes back and they say,

well, actually, let's just totally throw in the towel and move him or someone else who is still standing and is a productive player on this roster. There are a few, at least. So they're more likely to subtract than they are to add. And that is a depressing prospect too. So I don't know that I even feel as good about the guys that they have maybe waiting in the wings as I did about the A's at this point or later last season. Because the White Sox, big problem has been depth all along, even when they were supposed to be good. Their Achilles heel was that they just didn't really have a second string and a third string,

and then guys would get hurt, and then it would all be over. And that's still sort of an issue, except they don't even really have the first string now. So, I just don't know where the help's going to come from. So, yeah, they'll get a little luckier. They'll play a little better. It's not going to get easier immediately. They're playing the Rays this weekend, then the Twins. Man, it's just everyone else has been beating up on them. And I just don't know when the fortunes are really dramatically going to swing. They just lost a seven-game road trip.

They lost all the games. They scored 18 runs in those seven games. Their offense is like dead ball is back again. It's unbelievable. And they're now one game better than the 1988 Orioles who infamously started so terribly. And their 25 game starters, I guess one game better matches the 2003 Tigers, who were notoriously terrible, the 2022 Reds. Now, the Reds, they got better, right? They were historically awful. And we talked about that a lot. And then they were actually a pretty decent team the rest of the way. And they ended up losing only 100 games. So it is possible. I just don't know if it's

possible for this particular team. Well, and like, when you look to their farm system, like, what incentive do they have to start the clock on any of those guys, you know? And I don't mean that in, like, excusing service time manipulation or anything like that. A lot of their guys are just like,

they're not quite big league ready. I don't think that you're seeing anything nefarious, but there's not even a reason for them to be like, can we catch lightning in a bottle with, you know, Colson Montgomery? Like why, why?

I mean, he's a triple A, but like, why, why start the time? Like when is, when is the next good White Sox team, Ben?

It's, it's a ways away. Cause like pretty much this entire roster needs to be like taken down to the studs and rebuilt. Oh boy. It's a ways away because pretty much this entire roster needs to be taken down to the studs and rebuilt. Oh, boy. It's a pretty grim kind of thing. A negative 85 run differential. It's April 26th, Ben. I know.

That's so early for that. Yeah. The lineups are just the worst you'll ever see. It's not even like they have a lot of good players who are dramatically underperforming. projections because in the aggregate, they're right. And even if you look at extreme cases, these projections, these rules of thumbs have held true on the whole. But I just can't see it. So rough, dude. Yeah.

I don't know if I'm going sub 50 because that is like truly awful. But there's potential for that. And I mean, just feels so rough for the fans there. I don't know. I guess if I were them, I'd get really invested in your minor leaguers. Yeah. Right? I guess. I'd get like, hey, what's going on in Kannapolis? Still feels bad though, Ben.

Still feels pretty though, Ben. Still feels pretty bad. Yeah, and it's bad just against the backdrop of the team's trajectory. It's not worse than the A's who are actively driving away their fans and trying to leave town, but it's the next worst thing

really because they had high expectations and they had a full rebuild and they were good for a little while. And then that window just slammed shut way before anyone expected. And it just didn't pay off that much either while it was open briefly. And yeah, they're not going to leave Chicago, although there were rumors about that for a while with ballpark extortion tactics, basically. But that's not going to happen. But gosh, you almost wish they would at this point. Just get them out of my sight. It's really rough. Neil Payne wrote something

recently at his Substack, which I will link to, where he looked at just expectations for teams based on various factors like your winning total in the most recent season, your win total in the prior season, your team age, and just kind of came up with a simple model based on those factors to project how many wins a team would have over the next X seasons. And the White Sox are just the second most disappointing team ever by that metric after the mid-1910s Connie Mack fire sale A's, a previous fire sale A's, right? So that was explicable. At least there were circumstances that explained how everything went so wrong so fast. And here, it's just almost a mystery. It's just nothing panned out. There was

no depth. Guys got hurt. They didn't develop. Everything that possibly could have gone wrong went wrong. You're not able to course correct on stuff that goes wrong on the big league roster when you have such a limited appetite for spending from the ownership group you know one one way to counterbalance this stuff is to say well this guy got hurt this guy didn't end up developing the way we want but we really like that free agent we want to make a case for him to come here we're gonna spend what we need to to attract marquee guys and you know their big free agent spending of the last little bit has been andrew benintendi and you know i think we talked about it at the time benintendi's a fine enough player that deal felt rich to me and i don't want to discourage teams from spending but

when you're you're willing to commit so little to the big league roster, you have to pick the right guys, you know? And it just wasn't clear that like Andrew Benintendi isn't a win because of guy. He's not the dude who pushes you over the line, right? So they just have so few avenues to really get themselves out of the muck. And now when you're, you're looking at a team like this like even if you have a complete change of heart you know reinsdorf is like oh actually like i am closer to the end of my life than the beginning of it and maybe i'd like my last couple of seasons to be ones with a winning club on the field it's such a dire situation that like, who are you attracting to this team? You know, who are you persuading to say like, you'd have to spend so much above market. So I don't

know. I think it's going to be kind of grim for a while. I think you're right that like this probably keeps them where they are. You know, what city is going to, I mean, we could say the same thing about the A's, I guess, but, you know, I don't think that there's going to be much in the way of appetite for relocation. And I would suspect given what's going on with Oakland that the owners, while they are happy to kind of help each other out and sort of defer, like probably even they know we can't have two of these going at once especially for clubs of this caliber so i think the good news question mark is that you're probably gonna be able to hold on to that team but it's gonna i think it's gonna be a good while before we see sort of winning

white socks baseball again and it's too bad because like you said, like the window that they had where they got to enjoy, you know, the fruits of their rebuild, it was such a narrow window. Condolences to White Sox fans. Someday things will be better. They can't be worse. You know, part of what makes, I think, this feel kind of nasty for folks too, I imagine, is that for very good reason, but for the two sort of seasons of this rebuild where you actually had them in the playoffs, one of those years was the pandemic year. So no one got to go and they lost in the wildcard anyway. And then the next year, things were still not quite right in terms of people being able to go to the park and have that feel normal and you know i know it doesn't feel universally normal now but you know then they lost in the division series it's like

okay that's what we got we got that out of this? Yeah. That feels lousy. And so I do feel bad. The whole history of the franchise not making the playoffs in back-to-back years even until then. And their long title drought and just, oh, man. And that farm system was so hyped and so exciting. What an incredible collection of talent they had. And some of those guys were good, are good, were good briefly. But yeah, it's really a shame, you know.

Well, speaking of some disappointing starts to the season, though not quite that disappointing, there have been a bunch of sophomore slumps this year, which is something that our pal Patrick Dubuque recently wrote about for Baseball Perspectives. So, first of all, I should note, just to follow up on our recent discussion of Jackson Holiday, that he has been optioned now. He has been optioned, yeah. I'm sure he'll be back and he'll be better. But they figured they had seen enough for now that they needed to have him work on some things or restore his confidence. But there are some guys who sort of set the league on fire last

year who've had a rough go of it so far this year. Namely, Corbin Carroll, I guess, would be your leader, your laggard in the clubhouse. Things have not gone great for him. At least he's been playing. There are a lot of notable guys from last year who have not, who have been sidelined by various injuries like Kodai Senga, Josh Young, Matt McClain, Tristan Casas now. But, yeah, there are also guys like Nolan Jones or Tanner Bybee or James Outman. It's not everyone, like Gunnar Henderson is even better than before. Yeah, he sure is. Yeah. But lots of guys, the sophomore slump has struck. Jordan Walker, by the way, just a really rough start to the season. He has also been sent back down to the minors. Yeah. So that's rough. And there are other guys who are off to good starts and good prospects and everything. But Patrick was wondering, well, is this weird? Is this an oddity now? Is the sophomore slump still a thing? Was it

ever a thing? Because it seems like young players are so historically productive now and they arrive ready and better coached and better developed than ever before. And maybe whatever weaknesses you have would be exploited more quickly. Like if the idea before was, well, you can kind of take advantage of the league not knowing you and then you go around again and suddenly they start to pick you apart. Well, if there were something to that, now we have great data and scouting reports based on pre-major league performance, and then you have great stat cast data in small samples. You don't need a whole season to get a guy's number if he has one. And Patrick determined the way that he

structured his study, just sort of looking at players, hitters, and pitchers who reached a certain war threshold in year one. And then what did they do year two? What was the decline like? And he found out that it hasn't changed at all seemingly. But also that it has never really been much of a thing. It's sort of a myth in the sense it's really just a regression thing, right? Like if you look at rookies who get to some war threshold, three or four or five or whatever, things went well for them and they were healthy and they had luck go their way. And so you select any group of players with any level of experience who made it to some more thresholds, and they will probably not reach that threshold the next year because they won't be

as lucky or healthy or fortunate. So that has always been the case. And that's where you get the bad rap of the sophomore slump. Because if you're like a rookie sensation, then probably you're going to take a step back. It's like the regression, it's plexiglass principle, it's those baseball truisms. But it hasn't seemingly moved much one way or another. So it's been a rough year so far, though, for some notable sophomores. And I guess I just remembered that I say sophomore in a way that you don't and no one else does seemingly. I want you to know that I noted that again, and I wasn't going to say even one thing about it. I was going to be like, you say, you know, I say crayon. So, you know, we all have our little things that we...

Crayon, you know, like you color with, like you got a box of crayons. Yeah. That's a Northwest thing. I don't know. We just say crayon up there. We also say Oregon correctly. So, you know,

we all have our thanks. That I have learned just against my will. I've just gone with the natives, but hopefully the White Sox will be better. Hopefully Jordan Walker will be better. Hopefully Jackson Holiday will be better. Hopefully everyone's fortunx will be better. Hopefully Jordan Walker will be better. Hopefully Jackson Holiday will be better. Hopefully everyone's fortunes will be better. That is probably impossible for some people to be up.

Other people have to be down. That's the way the sport works. But we can hope. We can root. I do root. They can take turns being good. How about that? They can set up a schedule.

Well, I guess they have. They had their good rookie years, and now they're having their down second year. So maybe this is the arrangement they worked out. Down 25 games. Who knows if it's going to be a whole year? But we are getting to that point where everybody starts to remember. It's like, oh, the stats stabilize now, so we know what they're going to be forever. We got some follow-ups to our discussions last time. It seems like people think that, if anything, we underestimated the quantities of dirt that Major League Baseball players consume. Yeah.

I was almost worried I was going too high, but some people in our Discord group, Patreon supporters, made good points. First of all, pitchers are always licking their fingers. Yeah. And there's just going to be grains on there. There's going to be particles because the ball will pick them up. Even though now, obviously, they're changing the ball frequently. And if it gets dirty, then you toss it out and you get a pearl. You get a nice new one.

Pearl. But still, there's going to be some residue on there, right? So there's that. But also, someone pointed out, this was Citar in our Discord group, they left off just how much dirt is all over, like the cleats, the clothes, the glove. They toss it into the locker and it probably puffs dirt in their faces. They're constantly touching it. And do you think they wash their hands before every handful of sunflower seeds? They probably hit the first daily average with the first mouthful. Yeah, the water bottle gets covered in dirt, then they drink from it. So that person was saying even 20 times more dirt than the typical person might be underselling it. If anyone missed the previous episode, we started by discussing how much dirt do Major League Baseball players ingest unintentionally over the course of a season. And then we compared them to astronauts like you do and, you know, went from there. Also, some people pointed out something that I meant to say. Sometimes, you know,

I mean to say something and then we start saying other things and then I forget to say that thing. But I did want to mention when we were talking about replay review and the current structure, which prioritizes the call on the field over the replay umps call. And we were saying, well, is there anything that the umpire on the field gets to see or know that the replay ump doesn't. I meant to mention that sometimes sound plays a role, right? Like if it's a bang bang play, you might have sound play some important part. And I guess there's nothing preventing the replay umps from being able to check the sound. I don't know whether they do. I don't know whether the wiring, whether the setup for sound is as good as it is in person. I guess probably not because there might not be a perfectly positioned mic there. But then again, your memory of what you perceived in the sound, that might not be perfect anyway. But yeah, that might be an element that the replay umps have less access to. Then again, I guess sometimes an ump on the field is relying on sound because they can't

do a slow motion replay, you know? Right. It's like a bang, bang play at first. It's impossible to judge, basically. And so you're like, well, did I hear the foot go on the bag before the ball slapped into the glove? Well, you might not need to rely on that if you're the replay amp and you can slow it down

and watch it frame by frame in 4K. So maybe it doesn't matter that much, but it's something. Much to consider. It definitely helps to orient you chronologically on the fields, the effect of sound. I think that you're right to point out, and we can say

this about pretty much anything that our our memories of our lives are less reliable than we want to think that they are or often assume them to be but the auditory experience of being on the field is papering over gaps in what you're able to perceive and from what angle and at what speed. And that while it's not a useless input by any means, it is one that I think very quickly can kind of get pushed to the back burner when you have a bunch of camera angles available to you and are able to sync things up. And we need all the umps to be like the guy in the Cloud City, you know, And we need all the umps to be like the guy in the Cloud City, you know, where he's got the thing on the outside of his head. You know, or like, you know, it can be like Geordi with his visor where he can like zoom.

But absent that, we can just use replay review and I think get a lot of the way there. And then there's no surgery involved. How nice for everyone. Yeah, there might be some plays where bodies obscure something, even with all the camera angles available. It's possible. And I think that, so we were talking about instances where, you know, you might defer to the ruling on the field. You know, that sounds like a situation where like, if you really don't have an available angle to decide what's what, right? You can't see something because of what the, like, maybe then you're like, okay, what was the call on the field? We can just leave it like it was, we don't have enough to overturn, but you're still, you should still endeavor to

get the call right. And then only default to what was called when you have no other recourse, you know? Like, that seems like the way to go. All right. Let's answer some emails. Let's do it. Okay. Well, here's one that really might be the most common question in the history of Effectively Wild. And I don't know that we've ever explicitly answered it. I kind of think we've touched on it, but it's like every time it comes in a new version of it, I'm like, oh, we must have talked about that at some point. Because we've been asked about this for more than a decade now. But I'm not sure we ever did. So maybe we can just once and for all just officially get it out of the way here. Yeah.

And then we can refer future question askers to this. So promotion and relegation. Oh, we've definitely answered this question, haven't we? You'd think we have, but I... I feel certain that we've talked about promotion and relegation on the pod before. I think we've alluded to it. We've talked about it, but I just don't know that we've ever fully given it its due and answered it because we keep getting it.

And every time I'm like, okay, I'll just refer them to the previous time we talked about it and then I can't find it. So I don't know. Maybe it's there, but I don't know that we've done it really, really well. So the most recent version of many comes to us from Marcus, who says, I was riveted by your discussion in episode 2147 of whether the AAA Norfolk Tides, now once more featuring Jackson Holiday, were a better team than the Colorado Rockies. Yeah, how about that? while the two or three best teams of the lower league get to play one level higher the next season. I was also thinking of this this week because Max Scherzer made a comment about how the bottom 10% of umpires should be relegated to the minors. So he's in favor of that based on, say, strike zone accuracy. So that's one way that I guess you could implement relegation promotion.

And we have it, obviously, for players, as Jackson Holiday has found out. But continuing with the question, applied to baseball, it would mean that the three worst teams would go down to AAA in 2023. That would have been the Royals, Rockies, and A's, while the Norfolk Tides and two other AAA teams would become major league and so forth with AA and single A. Of course, minor league affiliations with MLB teams would have to cease, and each club would be on its own. The upside of such a rule is that it keeps the entire league exciting over the course of the season. No team can let up halfway once they realize they are not going to make the playoffs. And the late-season race for the last place, safe from demotion, is typically as thrilling as the run for the championship.

Lower leagues do not serve as mere talent pools, but have exciting seasons in their own right. No team, not even the Oakland A's, could afford to lean back and rest on past glory. Also, there is no strict segregation between pro and amateur levels. So as a lowest level league amateur team, you can dream of making it all the way to the top tier over the years. If you wonder if it ever happens, it does. The baseball club of my youth, the Baldum Boers, made it from lowest fifth league to first league. Took us 12 years. Congrats. On the downside, with promotion, demotion in place, clubs are more focused on short-term success and patience is not rewarded. Teams are in a constant struggle for survival, and they never get the chance to slowly groom

talent in a multi-year rebuilding effort. I wonder how such a rule, knowing it would never be seriously considered for MLB, would change the game of baseball. And I'd be profoundly interested in how you think this would play out. So that's Marcus in Germany. I guess one reason why I've neglected this question in the past is that it is so far-fetched, which certainly hasn't stopped us from answering much further-fetched questions than this. But it's a total non-starter, right? It's just it would not happen. I mean, it could happen. I mean, it could happen. MLB is maybe the major North American sports league that is best set up for something like this because we have the minor leagues and multiple levels of it. I mean,

it's already built in like that as opposed to, say, the NFL or something where you don't really have a minor league like that. So in that sense, okay, it's ready-made for promotion, relegation. Obviously, the owners and the leagues would never accept it or have any incentive to pursue this. They want the certainty of we're a major league team, and we will continue to be a major league team even if we stink up the joint, right? Even if we're White Sox-level bad, even if we're A's-level bad, there's nothing you can do. You can't kick us out the joint, right? Right. Even if we're White Sox level bad, even if we're A's level bad, there's nothing you could do. You can't kick us out of here, right? Right.

So that's what they want. And probably some European league owners would want that if they could, like that Super League failed attempt, right? That's right. They want some certainty. It's a nice gig if you can get it. So that's the reason or the main reason why it would absolutely never happen because an owner's not voluntarily going to say, sure, you can just take away my major league status if we stink, if I don't invest in this team. So that would never happen. And, you know, it grew up historically in Europe for other reasons.

And it just it grew up one way there and it grew up another way here. Right. And never the twain shall meet most likely. Even Major League Soccer doesn't have promotion relegation in the U.S. Right. In North America. So it's just a non-North American way to structure your sport. But if you could compel the owners to do this, then would it work?

Would it have advantages? There are all of the logistical issues associated with this, right? And there are all of the ways in which, given how we do player dev in affiliated ball in the U.S., it would be tricky. And there's like the, you know, where do they live and how do you do those stadiums? And there's all of that. This might be a cynical take, Ben. I'm going to maybe offer a kind of cynical take here. The biggest barrier to this being sort of an effective mechanism to incentivize teams playing better is that it assumes like a greater capacity and sensitivity to shame than I think is maybe in play for some of these owners, and here I want to be very deliberate and careful to separate out ownership from front office personnel, because I think that even folks who are sort of bought into

a pretty efficiency-focused means of building baseball teams, you know, leadership in front offices that is perhaps more comfortable with like a prolonged and really meaningful teardown approach to getting your way and back into good competitive position. Even folks who kind of operate that way, where I might have, you know, quibbles to all the way up to disagreements in terms of how good an approach that is from a fan enjoyment perspective, etc. They want to win baseball games eventually, even if I wish that they cared more about winning them right now, right? They want to ring. They're spending a lot of time doing this. It's all consuming for many of them. So I want to be careful to separate out the folks working in front offices from ownership here. And I am squarely talking about ownership. I just don't

think that John Fisher reacts to shame as a motivator, certainly the way that I do. As someone who's like, does everyone like me? Can I go convince them individually? Could I go door to door and be like, no, but really, please? I don't think it works that way for them because the requirement that they put a winning team on the field is so decoupled from the franchise value. Now, in a relegation system, I guess it would be fair to say that like, you know, if you're the White Sox and you get relegated, you're probably less valuable as a franchise in that scenario. Yeah. If they aren't responsive to shame, then that's all the more reason maybe for a relegation system because they might be responsive to a depreciation in their franchise value, if nothing else. I guess. I guess. And maybe I'm just being too limited in the way that I'm thinking about this.

Maybe they would go, oh gosh, now we just are like the Poughkeepsie White Sox, the Lubbock White Sox. We can't sell a franchise. But maybe the reason I'm struggling is because my imagination cannot conceive of a scenario where they're like, no, your billion-dollar asset just lives in Lubbock now or wherever. I don't know why I'm picking on Lubbock. I've never been to Lubbock. Lubbock might be nice, but it's probably not the place that you put a billion-dollar franchise. You put the Texas Tech Red Raiders, Red Riders, Red. I'm the wrong person to ask. You got to watch college baseball, Ben. Let's talk about that.

Red Raiders. Red Raiders. See, I remember stuff. So maybe this is the right way to do it because it isn't reliant on shame. It actually makes it hurt. But why would they ever say yes to that? They like being, I mean, from shame because they just get to go to restaurants and nobody says anything. It's so weird. Yeah. But if you force them to do it, it would have some advantages. You'd be lighting a fire under all these owners and they would have to spend or face the consequences, right? So that's an argument in favor of doing this. And it could be maybe a multi-year system so that if you had one—

Oh, it would have to be. Yeah, one terrible year. It would have to be a multi-year system. How does it work with soccer? How many seasons? I don't know exactly how it works, and maybe it varies based on the league. But I think there are single season. I mean, I think it's like, you know, every year teams get promoted or demoted. I don't know if

that takes into account multiple seasons. I'll look it up. You can save your emails. We'll find out. But yeah, I think you'd probably to avoid relegation in some fluky nightmare scenario where everything goes wrong and it's not even so much your fault. It's just you lost a lot of one-run games and everyone got hurt. You're the Padres. You're the 2023 Padres. Yeah. I mean, they wouldn't get relegated. They weren't terrible.

But that's a more extreme version of that. Version of that. Yeah. Your pick a Rangers team from the last 20 years that has had just all of its pitching get hurt at once you know like you're you're that you're you're that club okay so let me offer a a different take now because i feel like my shame take was maybe it lacked imagination in a way that um kind of undermined it as a point what i I would prefer is we keep the teams where they are and we just force these owners to sell.

If we're reimagining the system, we can make it whatever we want. Leave them the Chicago White Sox. Don't take that away from the fans. They are invested in their team, even though their team is terrible. But I think that stop counting on incentives, shame or financial, and just say, sorry, Jerry, you don't get to have a major league team anymore.

Like we need Congress to step in and force a bite dance to divest from TikTok. To be clear, of all the pressing problems that the world faces, as much as I love baseball, not top of my list for things that the United States Congress should get involved in right now. We have to take the antitrust exemption away. Yeah, that'd be a step, I guess. And just say, like, look, look, Jerry. Look, Bob. Look, John. look, look, Jerry, look, Bob, look, John, if you're going to remain a billionaire, you don't get to be this kind of embarrassing billionaire. You have to be a different kind. And it is

frustrating that in this scheme, they're like, great, now I get a billion more dollars. Like, what? I don't know, Ben, there might be some flaws in this system. Yeah, I think the Premier League, for instance, I think it is just a single season thing if you're the best in that season or the worst in that season. Up you go, down you go. So harsh. But I guess there's the problem with facilities. You know, you'd have some time to anticipate, oh, we're getting promoted and so we have to spruce up our field. This has to be a big league ballpark now.

The A's are kind of voluntarily relegating themselves to AAA in terms of the ballpark and also the quality of the roster at times, too. But that would be a bit of an issue. And also just attendance. I mean, population centers. You know, historically, minor league teams have been in small towns that can't really support a major league team financially to pay for players, right? Like, that's going to be an issue. If you're in some tiny town that has a low-level minor league team and you manage to work your way up rung by rung, it's a great story, but ultimately, how are you going to draw? How many publicly funded ballparks are we going to have now? Because suddenly,

every little town's going to have its handout because, hey, we got promoted and isn't this a great story? And then even if you could build the park, how could you pack the park to support a major league level payroll? So if you think the payroll disparities are vast now, imagine what they might be in this system, right? So, I mean, I guess that's an issue in other promotion relegation leagues and they've managed to weather that. But the disparities in population and economic resources in the U.S. between your big population centers and your smallest minor league ones, that's going to be tough to compete. And granted, most of them just wouldn't get promoted. But, but it's going to lead to a decrease in revenue.

Probably not that that has to be our top of mind concern. And then like TV ratings too. And yeah, there's, I mean, add this to the list of reasons why the owners and the league itself would not want to do it voluntarily. Well, and I think that we don't want to lose sight of the fact that like the idea here is that you want to see the best possible baseball you can at the big league level. And if we were doing the system, we would need to rejigger the way that we're doing player dev anyway. But, you know, I think one of the things that I was struck by when Dan did that piece and, you know, maybe a different team constituted a little differently

where you have a more sort of even dispersal of talent than Norfolk does, where so much of their really good prospect talent is concentrated on the position player side. But even that team, that team that was like blowing guys out and had all of these top prospects and guys who projected the best of all the minor leaguers, like they weren't the Dodgers. They were barely the White Sox. Now, this was the White Sox before we had this version of the White Sox, to be clear. But you know what I mean? Like they weren't like a world beater. And so if what we're trying to accomplish is let's get the best possible teams at the big league level that we can, I think a lot of that comes down to changing the folks who own these clubs, right? Rejiggering their priorities.

And one way to do that is the potential financial hit, I guess, of relegation. But, you know, why rely on incentives? You just need regulation, not relegation, regulation, you know? as it's currently set up. It's so funny because you're right that you look at all of the different major North American sports and it strikes you as the one that's like, oh, well, you already have different levels and you have all these facilities, right? Whereas like in the NFL, you couldn't do this because what are you going to do?

Like promote Alabama? I mean, like that would be hilarious, but like you're not going to be like, sorry, Carolina Panthers, like you're down and Georgia's up. Like you can't really do that. I mean, you're not going to be like, sorry, Carolina Panthers, like you're down and Georgia's up. Like, you can't really do that. I mean, you could, I guess, but you couldn't really. Like, there's a bigger institutional barrier there.

And like you're saying, if you want the best baseball talent to be exposed to the biggest audience, then you are getting that now. getting that now, even though there are some terrible teams that aren't really trying, they're still better than the best minor league teams, except maybe at the extreme margins every once in a while. This is the point I'm making, yeah. Yeah. And how are you going to catch up to that talent level? Because if you're one of the strivers, the lower levels who's trying to work your way up, you're not going to convince a big leaguer to sign with you. You're probably not going to have the economic resources to do that. And even if you did, could you convince someone to sign with you in AAA or AA or whatever

on the off chance that maybe you'll get promoted and they'll get back to the big leagues? No, they're not going to want to do that, right? So it's going to be hard to make up that difference. So you'd be promoting the best teams on one level and demoting the worst teams on another level, but those worst teams would probably still be better than the best teams that you're promoting. So, yeah. You think you want to see the Norfolk Tides take on, you know, whoever. But you probably don't really. Like, not actually. And you don't want to rush the—because it takes a long time to develop in baseball.

This is the other thing. Yeah. And I say that not knowing how long it takes to develop as a soccer player. I truly don't. Yeah. Well, I mean, they get those kids even— I know that the shoes are messed up, Ben. I know that now. I know about the shoes. Teams sign soccer prodigies even younger than baseball teams sign international players, right? So they have them in their academies and

everything. But yeah, it does take a long time. And so you'd be sort of rushing players up to that highest level and then they just wouldn't be good. Yeah. I like aspects of it if it were feasible or workable, but there's also a lot I don't really like about it. And I'm trying to get out of my mindset of this is just not the way it works right now. It's literally foreign to me. And so we have to expand our consciousnesses to imagine this even happening. But having tried to do that, I still don't think that the benefits outweigh the costs. I think that we should just force congressional action and make Reinstor sell, you know, make him sell, make Nutting sell. Let's redefine Nutting, Ben. Let's do it. You and me. We tried for a while there. I think we succeeded

maybe too much. Too well. We had to step back from the precipice there of redefining nutting as not trying. Ethan, Patreon supporter, says, one more pedantic question for the pile. How can you not be pedantic about baseball?

I'm watching the Dodgers about to play the Nationals in the last game of their three-game series in Washington. The pregame show has called this a getaway game for the Dodgers. I'm curious what you think the parameters are for calling something a getaway game. To me, the most obvious and undisputable version of a getaway game is a game that is, A, the last game of a series. This one is absolutely required for it to qualify. B, the game is a day game or otherwise scheduled earlier than normal to give the road team more time to pack and fly out. And C, the next day is an off day, meaning the team has at least 48 hours between games. In the game I'm watching, A and B are satisfied. It's a day game. But the Dodgers are

still playing tomorrow, so they still have games on back-to-back days. Does this still qualify as a getaway game? I'm torn. On the one hand, they're playing back-to-back days, so it doesn't feel like they are getting away from anything. But the fact that this game is taking place earlier than normal, albeit starting at 4 p.m. Eastern, isn't actually that early. What do you think is the minimum requirement to be considered a getaway game? Is there a variable I'm missing? I'm with him on A and B, that it needs to be the last game of a series. Yes.

And it needs to be early to allow the opportunity for the team to get away. Yeah, but I think I'm not with him on C, that the next day needs to be an off day. I agree. Yeah. In fact, I would go the other way and say, yeah, you almost need the next day not to be an off day because otherwise there's no need to get away. I mean, you could take your time, you know, you have a travel day, right? So yeah, I think it's almost imperative that there be a game the next day.

That's why you got to get out of there. That's why it has to be early so that you can get there and be there in time to game the next day. That's why you got to get out of there. That's why it has to be early so that you can get there and be there in time to play the next day. Yeah, I think that that's right. Because otherwise, it's like a leisurely stroll day. You know, it's a take your time day. It's a don't worry about

how many of your relievers you use because you have an off day the next day day. That's a really different kind of day. That's like a, I won't go so far as to say it's like a self-care day, but you feel chill. You feel a little more chill than you otherwise would. So I agree. Question from Sean, Patreon supporter, who says, As a Phillies fan, it's really interesting to see an apparent focus by the team on pitcher fielding.

Having two gold glove finalists, including the winner last season, while many observed that Ranger Suarez would have won had he met the innings limit, has led me to believe that the team is either focusing on pitchers who field well, the team is good at training pitchers to improve their fielding,

some happenstance, or a combination of those three. My question is, so how much does pitcher fielding matter? It seems like it may be the least consequential fielding position and the hardest one to improve as it seems to focus almost entirely on the position you end in at the end of your delivery and your reflexes. So yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to that. It does seem like the pitchers who excel at fielding in many cases end their delivery in good fielding positions. Just, you know, sort of not off balance, facing the plate. And it would be hard to change that.

You know, teams are reluctant to mess with mechanics if things are working well. And yeah, it's true that a lot of it is just sort of quick twitch reflexes, self-defense almost, right? On some of those plays on comebackers at least. But there's also a lot of fielding practice, pitcher fielding practice, PFP as it's called. PFP. Fundamentals and getting over to first base and kind of having that drilled into you. And I was actually sort of surprised to see how much it mattered. So it's hard to tell, but we do have defensive run saved figures for pitchers. Yeah.

And if you look at, say, last year, Fangraph's leaderboards, look at the team fielding page and then the positional split as pitcher, the range in DRS from best to worst, it's actually wider than I thought. So the Angels were on top at plus 15. So that's something the Angels were good at. They were 15 runs above average. Of course, they did have Shohei Otani fielding for them sometimes. And then at the bottom, it was the Padres and, what do you know, the White Sox at negative 14. So that's a 29-run spread. That's like a three-win spread. I don't know if that sounds like a lot to you or not, but it sort of sounded like maybe more than I figured. It's more than some positions. Like first base, the spread at first base was from plus 8 to negative 10.

So only 18 runs. The spread at, gosh, I don't know. Let's look at, say, left field, for instance. What's the spread? It's plus 16 to negative 14, so basically the same as pitchers. And why don't we go to shortstops and see, okay, shortstops have a wider range, plus 20 to negative 21. And I'm sure catchers have a fairly wide range, even in these days of the bar for framing being pretty high, plus 14 to negative 19, so a little wider.

So the premium defensive positions might have a wider range, but most positions, not necessarily. I guess I wouldn't be surprised if team defensive performance at pitcher is less consistent from year to year than team defensive performance at pitcher is less consistent from year to year than team defensive performance at other positions, but there is a gain to be made there. Now, the caveat is looking at these numbers that a lot of the differentiation in pitcher DRS is coming from controlling the running game specifically. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, because you're not going to get as many fielding opportunities

when it comes to throwing and actually fielding ground balls and line drives, right? So a lot of it does come from just, yeah, restricting the running game, making sure guys don't get good jumps. That's still important, and it's more important in this era, maybe, of the current stolen base rules.

I guess pitchers have less recourse now than they used to, arguably, but maybe that makes it even more important that they do what they can. Purely on plays made, though, the range for pitchers ran from negative 12 to plus 11. So I do think there are gains to be made here. And controlling the running game, that seems like something that you could instill in your pitchers. And some teams undoubtedly do a better job of that than others. I wonder if my sense of how important it is is inflated by how visible bad screw-ups from pitchers who are trying to field tend to be, right? Where, you know, you have guys who, they fall down, or they throw the ball away,

or they throw the ball away and they fall down, and then they just look like, you know, turtles on their backs, like, ah! Whereas, like, when a guy can get off the mound and he can feel the ball and he has a good zippy throw like it feels like athletic and like he's in control um and so i i feel like my sense of how big a difference it really ends up making is a little bit distorted by the fact that when it doesn't go well it ends with me going oh oh, I just saw you do that. You fell down.

I did a stat blast, I think, on episode 2030 about pitchers throwing and examining that belief that they are worse at throwing. They're more prone to mistakes, which always seems kind of counterintuitive because they're the best at throwing. They're pitchers. That's their whole job. And yet it's a different kind of throw, obviously. It's a different kind of throw, yeah. That they practice less and they're under pressure and they're trying to throw from a different angle

and to a different place. And so I think my conclusion in that stat plus was that it holds up that pitcher error, throwing error rates are higher than players at other positions. But maybe that's all the more reason to do drills. I guess it comes down to maybe like opportunity cost. You know, pitchers have a lot of other stuff to work on. And so where are you going to prioritize fielding higher than

you used to prioritize hitting, certainly, but also below just rest and working on your stuff in the bullpen and everything. So it's the other thing, I guess, that might be tough is that on a team level, obviously pitchers are fielding as many innings as players at any other position, but on an individual level, they're not. So to any individual pitcher, it doesn't really matter that much, especially pitchers throwing fewer innings than ever. If you're a reliever and you're throwing 60 innings or something, how much effort are you going to devote to fielding? Because you're probably not going to even have an opportunity to be that much above or below average in that sort of sample. And even if you're a starter these days, you can only distinguish yourself so much.

So you'd have to instill a real team mentality and say, yeah, but as a whole, it actually does matter if our pitchers are good, even if for you, it's not specifically a make or break issue. So I don't know, maybe the Phillies or other teams have done a decent job of that. Maybe it's a hangover from them being like, look, they actually aren't all DHs. Some of them can field their position. I don't think that's how people from Philly sound, but maybe one of them. Maybe there's one of them, and they work for the Phillies, and they sound like that.

Loose show. It's a Friday. Michael says, while enjoying brunch with my beautiful wife, I was perusing the always well-edited Fangraphs.com. Wow, Michael's just dropping compliments. Wow, so nice. What a guy Michael is. And I read one of Michael Bauman's stories about the Otani imbroglio.

Among the many nightmare outcomes of this situation, Bauman describes an unknown ne'er-do-well saying to Shohei, swing over this one-two change-up or your buddy gets it. Or your dog gets it. That would be hard to contemplate. Depends how you feel about the dog. Yes. It's a little hard to imagine a situation where Otani would know for sure that the malevolent forces need him to make an out in a particular spot.

But let's posit that the situation exists. He has been told that he is not to hit a second homer in a game, say, where the prop bet on him is set at 1.5 homers and he already has one in the game. My question is, could he do it? I think that it would be relatively easy to intentionally swing low when your eyes and brain have told you it will be a high one and just claim you were fooled. But let's also argue that these shadowy figures have made it clear to the hitter that they have to make it look good because they don't want attention coming to their non-banging scheme. When David Ortiz was asked once why he didn't simply go the other way when faced with severe shifts, if I'm recalling correctly, he said that it would mess him up too much, that it would be better for him to keep doing what he always does,

and if the ball happens to go the other way to beat the shift, so be it. I also vaguely remember reading that Ted Williams said something similar when asked the same question. So the question is, hitting a baseball in 2024 is incredibly hard, even for someone as gifted as Zotani. Could someone intentionally make it out and leave the illusion that they were trying as hard as they could not to? Isn't there some danger that muscle memory would take over, or perhaps that in trying to miss it, you instead accidentally hit it on the screws. So I think there's definitely some danger of that. We can think of times when a hitter has mishit the ball and just because they are so strong, they've kind of poked it out, right? That leads me to think that the safest approach to this sort of subterfuge, if what you really need to ensure is that you do not hit a home run,

is to take rather than to swing. Now, you might inspire some suspicion, I guess, if you're like, You might inspire some suspicion, I guess, if you're like, maybe the guy on the mound isn't very good and the pitch you're taking is, and I'm going to do a mild, not swear, but bit of crudeness in the spirit of effectively wild. You know, if it's like a fastball right down the dick and you take it, people might be like, that's weird. Why didn't you take that? Well, that pitcher is not very good. Like, surely he knew. But that does happen often. But it does happen, right?

And you would have plausible deniability. And you would probably have, in this scenario, he has already hit a home run, right? He has hit a home run earlier. So I think particularly if you have already had success in the game and so you don't look like you're trying to get up to shenanigans that it would be more convincing and that the the better approach would be uh to just take rather than swing and assume that you can get it right you probably can and like otani has a good eye among his many skills right but it it probably would be safer for the purposes of your little weird dog that you just take. Now, I guess the danger is that the pitcher who has previously thrown 92 right down the dick is bad not only in terms of throwing pitches that are real meatballs,

but also throwing pitches outside the zone. And then you take real meatballs, but also throwing pitches like outside the zone. And then you take a walk, but like, who cares? You know, like if someone's doing prop bets on you walking, like, God, the degree of derangement involved in that exercise is just profound. So, but I think that this scenario, obviously this is an extreme scenario, but this was part of why Otani being involved potentially in a gambling thing was so unnerving because he is good enough that you did have to be like, what if he's like shaven points? Is that I don't even know if that's the right terminology to use with a sport like baseball as opposed to like basketball. But it's like he's so good that, you know, him failing a little bit, people are going to be like, but he's so good all the time. Like he's clearly trying so hard. Yeah.

I'm thinking of Eight Men Out when Studs Terkel playing Hugh Fullerton is like, you know, let's make a notation if we see something that seems suspicious and we'll compare notes after the game. So would it seem suspicious? The thing is, even great players look bad pretty often, whether it is taking a pitch right down the dick or whether it's just being totally fooled, right? That does happen even to the greats, even to Shohei Otani. You see him take bad swings. Right. So you wouldn't think that much of it if it just happened one particular time. And I could imagine that, yeah, it be bad intentionally, that goes against their years and years of muscle memory. And they might actually be bad at being bad because they have practiced trying to be good. So I could see them totally getting in their head and being like, okay, I have to miss this one and then sort of overselling it potentially. But I'm going to do, I'm going to do, I'm going to do. Yeah.

But I think it would be more doable than, say, yeah, trying to hit against the shift, which was the example. I mean, that was just hard to do. Even if you set your mind to it, it was tough to do. Because this isn't the dead ball era when you could do what they called place hitting, you know, hit it where they ain't, right? era when you could do what they called place hitting, you know, hit it where they ain't, right? And just the ball wasn't going that fast and you were taking a choppy short swing and choking up and, you know, it was totally different conditions. So you could actually aim the ball fairly reliably, whereas now you can't really do that even if you attempt to. So that I think is a little different. I think it would be easier to say miss intentionally, just say, okay, I'm going to be a little late or I'm going to be a little

high or low on this one or something, but it might still look weird and awkward. I just, I don't know that we would notice if it were an isolated event. Probably not. Probably not. Yeah. You could be like, I had an inner ear thing. You know, I was stressed about my, you could just say you were stressed about your dog. You don't have to say because he's being held hostage. You know, you can just say like, yeah, the dog's not feeling good. And so I didn't sleep well. And so, you know, sometimes the animals, they're not feeling well, and then you don't sleep well because you're having to take care of your little critter, your weird, too perfect dog. You can probably also just take something off your swing. Like if it's just, okay, I can't hit a homer here. That's pretty easy, I think. Because yeah, players say they don't go up looking to hit homers. And I think mostly they don't. I think in some situations they do, whether they acknowledge it or not. And maybe that turns out to be counterproductive, but you do have to swing a certain speed to muster that exit speed, right? And so I think if you just say, I'm going to offer it this one, but I'm not going to give it the full heave-ho, the full effort, right? Or you could even say like, this will be my two-strike swing, basically.

Not that people have two-strike swings anymore, really, but this will be my I'm-just-trying-to-make-contact-here swing. So that I think you could absolutely sell without arousing any suspicions. Yeah. I'm laughing because now I'm just imagining someone going up to the plane going, hey, I'm trying to make contact here. Yeah. Someone going up to the plane going, hey, I'm trying to make contact here. Yeah. I wonder if we should take a moment, each of us, to express how relieved we are that Shohei Otani was not like a degenerate gambler.

I think about it once a day, Ben. I think about how relieved I am. And I, you know, with all of our prior caveats about like how concerning the situation is and how bad we feel for all the people involved, even Ipe. There's all of that, but boy, wow, feels like we got away with one there. This is a less dark timeline than that one would have been, for sure. That would have been a really bad timeline. That would have been a really, really bad timeline. There's a lot about this timeline that isn't great, to be clear. One thing that's not great is while we've been recording, it was announced that Wade Miley will be having Tommy John surgery.

And if Wade Miley is having Tommy John surgery, then truly no one is safe. No UCL is safe if the guy who's sitting 90-ish, if he can sproing, then anyone can sproing. And I know it's more about how close you are to the top of your personal range maybe than just your raw velocity. But still, Wade Miley, you know, like Wade Miley would be the example. If you were going to say they should try to prioritize durability and you could just have a bunch of Wade Miley's and Kyle Hendricks's. Well, that's not going so well on either account this year. So that's sort of depressing. When I saw the headline that Jesus Lizardo was on the IL with elbow tightness, elbow discomfort, I felt some discomfort of my own,

not in my elbow, but psychologically, emotionally, haven't the Marlins been through enough and their poor pitching staff? And he's been struggling and maybe it's elbow related. You almost hope it's a phantom injury in this case, as opposed to a real one. He says that it's not that serious, that it's just precautionary,

that he might only miss a start or two. Hope so, hope that's true. But with him, at least it's not that serious, that it's just precautionary, that he might only miss a start or two. Hope so. Hope that's true. But with him, at least, it's, you know, okay, another hard thrower. But Wade Miley, of all people, man, there's just, yeah, nothing is, no UCL is sacred or safe anymore. And he always looks so concerned in his roster photos. It's like he knew. Yeah.

You know. He knew it was coming. All right. Jeremy says, thought of a question for you while watching a Mariners game recently. It was Bryce Miller's latest start, a young pitcher known primarily for his four-seamers exceptional spin rate and ride, which makes the fastball keep its horizontal plane so as to appear to move up from a hitter's perspective rather than dropping down. And on a pickoff attempt to first base, his throw appeared to clearly have the unique ride and flat shape of his signature fastball. So this made me wonder, do you think pickoff throws could put a pitcher at a disadvantage by giving away his pitch selection in a given situation due to the grip? If the pitcher is in a pivotal counter situation

and they plan to throw a two-seamer to deceive the batter and then throw the ball to the first baseman and it tails arm side just like a two-seamer to deceive the batter, and then throw the ball to the first baseman, and it tails arm side just like a two-seamer. Would the batter then be able to know what was coming? Should the pitcher then change his selection for the next pitch? Are pickoff throws so different from pitches that it wouldn't matter at all? Could the pitcher change his grip mid-throw to avoid this? Let me know your thoughts, or if this has ever come up before. I don't know that it has. But, yeah, you wouldn't want to telegraph your next pitch on your pickoff attempt. You definitely want to avoid that. Someone like Miller, if you just have natural ride on your four-seamer, then you might just have natural ride when you're just warming up, when you're tossing, when you're throwing. Yeah, that's just going to be your natural movement and that's just going to happen.

But that's preferable to, I mean, I guess you could try to throw the hitter off the scent and throw some like slider over there. But you don't want to do that because you want to be accurate with your throw and you want to give a good feed to the first baseman. So usually you're probably going to be just gripping it like a four-seater, right? That's probably going to be your best bet because you don't want any unnatural movement there. So you might have some unavoidable natural signature movement, but I think you absolutely should. And I'm sure pitchers generally do camouflage what they're going to throw.

Like if they're holding the ball in a certain way, preparing to throw a certain pitch type, and then they decide, actually, I'm going to throw over there. I would think that they do change their grip prior to making that throw, right? Yeah. Unless they want it to be some decoy or something. But yeah, I think they do camouflage it and they should. If for no other reason than you want to just throw a straight ball over there. And then if they don't, they throw the ball away or fall down. And then we go, you really should do more PFPs.

You know, if they did that, they wouldn't fall down. That's part of the pitcher fielding. Yeah. Okay. And Reggie, Patreon supporter says says, so what, if anything, gets undone in baseball that we've seen change in the last many years? Does the Manfred man that I refer to as the zombie runner die? Do weeknight games go back to 7.05 starts, where many teams right now start at 6.40 or in some cases even 6.10 in April and September?

right now start at 640 or in some cases even 610 in April and September. What, if anything, besides the zombie runner, would you undo and take back to baseball of 2005, 1995, 1985? Are there any rules changes that you stipulated that the zombie runner, we talked about that recently. I'd love to roll that back. I don't think it's happening, but I wish it would. And there's a good basis for arguing that it should, given that we have shortened the games a different way, right? But putting that aside, are there any changes that you still lament? I don't have a developed opinion about the interference stuff yet. So I want to put a TBD on that. I think it's mostly been fine, but I haven't made a study of it yet. So I want to put a TBD on that. I think it's mostly been fine, but I haven't made a study of it yet. So I'm not quite sure what I think of that. I mean,

like the zombie runners, obviously the most important one. It's just a blight. I'm looking at Baseball Almanac that has a handy dandy little list of rules changes. I don't know if it's everything exhaustively, but it's a lot of little things. So, first of all, they don't have anything between 1988 and 2008. And there weren't a lot of rules changes for a while, I think, relative to other sports. That's my perception, at least. I do think there are changes, sometimes dramatic ones, where you instruct umpires to enforce or stop enforcing something. Sure. Yeah, like the BOK.

Yeah, the year of the BOK or the obstruction now at the bases, right? They didn't actually change a rule at second or third, let's say. But here are the rules changes like since the 80s. 2008, MLB ads limited instant replay to be in effect for all games starting on a certain date. So that was home run calls fair or foul. I think that's good. I wouldn't want to undo that. 2014, you had the runner attempting to score may not deviate from his direct pathway to the plate in order to initiate contact with the catcher or their player covering home plate.

Catchers cannot block the plate without possession of the ball. I don't want to undo that. I think maybe it could be clarified sometimes. There's still some confusion about it, but yeah, I don't want to bring back catchers getting knocked around a whole lot on those plays or other players for that matter. 2016 slides on potential double plays will require that base runners must make a bona fide attempt to reach and remain on base. Now, 2017 pitchers no longer required to throw four intentional balls to walk a batter. There are some people who will sometimes say that's silly. That's like clock management theater. That's a time pace of game theater. It's not really a meaningful savings. And they will always cite, you know, Miguel Cabrera reaching out on an intentional pitch, intentional ball just as a thing, but I don't miss the just charade of going through, yeah, let's throw, let's lob four pitches up there. I'm not eager

to see that return particularly. So pitcher must face a minimum of three batters, three batter minimum. I'm fine with the three batter minimum. I don't think it made an enormous difference, but I don't mind it. And then the zombie runner, the universal DH, I don't want to do away with that. The playoff format expanding, I guess if we're counting that, I might roll that back. Not going to happen, but I might say, yeah, let's go back to 10 teams or even fewer, at least 10. I think maybe expanded playoffs is also on the list if we're

but I want to keep the wildcard series. I want to keep the wildcard round of series. I don't want to shrink the bases. Honey, I shrunk the bases back to where they were. Don't care. Don't care. Defensive shifts, some shifts that the band there. Honestly, I might undo that. I feel less strongly about it than I felt before

that change was put into place, but I'm still not really pro that. So maybe I would undo that. It still sort of bothers me philosophically and I don't think it's made that much of a difference, really. So yeah, maybe I would undo that. Yeah, maybe. I don't feel very strongly about it, but you have my sword if you want it. Because I was just thinking about – I wrote an article for Baseball Perspectives once about – remember the fake to third throw to first rule where they outlawed that at a certain point where you could do the fake to third? And it worked very rarely, but there were certain guys who were kind of known for that move. And I found it funny because it was rarely very convincing and it was often half-hearted. And I just thought it was sort of just comical in a way. So I guess I kind of missed that, like not actively lamenting, gee, baseball was better back when we had the fake to third, throw to first rule. But it was kind of quirky and quaint, and maybe I'd like that.

Also, I guess the Waxahachie swap, that was a product of the three batter minimum, really, that that got basically banned. And I do lament that, even though it was really rare. But being able to shift a pitcher out into the outfield from time to time when things got weird, which sometimes would happen in those extra long, extra inning games. I don't know. Maybe I like that enough to undo the three batter minimum, but I also don't love relievers coming in and facing one guy and leaving again. Apologies to the loogies out there. So, I'm not sure I would undo that one. So, I'm not sure I would undo that one. Yeah, I think that it, in general, moves things along in a way that I appreciate and prefer, even if I do miss Lukey sometimes. I be rolled back in some way. There are a lot of people out there who think we're over replaying and it should just be, you know, if we have replay, it should be

limited to like, you have to watch it in real time or something, or you have to make a snap judgment about whether to challenge, right? So I guess I could imagine that maybe replay people find it a little onerous and you could kind of make it less common or quicker or something a little less pervasive or long lasting than it for the ABS, which maybe is somewhat inconsistent in certain ways. But we've talked about it. There are differences. I also think this isn't like really undoing a rule, but maybe is a modification to a rule. And I feel like I've been less annoyed by this lately. So maybe guys are sliding better than they were are guys better at sliding ben than they used to be here's what i often i'm annoyed by i don't love it when a guy comes off

the back for just a teeny tiny like just a little infinitesimal it's just so small and tiny why did you yell at him it's just so tiny yes and then and then there's replay so i am in favor of like the the the like a zone this was a dave cameron idea yeah the airspace thing the airspace you should have airspace you know we should have like the the zone above the bag it's just like understood safe and get rid of those like overslide you know sometimes guys do do legitimately overslide and it's like really obvious, but sometimes you're, you're just like trying to lift up the, and find a little out in there. Teeniest house, tiny. What?

I'm in a weird mood today. Yeah. I'm with you on that one. I guess it's, I don't know if that counts as, uh, removing a rule, but I guess it would be a way to kind of limit replay. So maybe that counts. Maybe that counts. I don't know if that counts as removing a rule, but I guess it would be a way to kind of limit replay. So maybe that counts. Maybe that counts. I don't know.

Well, yeah. I mean, most of the rules changes have been good, I think. And some of the ones that are bad, they amend quickly to make them better. Yes. But I'm going to go with Zombie Runner. But I'm going to go with Zombie Runner, and I guess if I have to pick another one, I'll go with the shift ban, and then less urgently, and maybe I'm kind of on the fence, like three batter minimum just for the purpose of bringing back Waxahachie Swap and the fake to third throw to first because it was entertaining to me. I think that if we're counting postseason expansion, maybe I would include that. Oh, yeah. Although I would, as I said, prefer that the wildcard round remain a series rather than a single game.

Zombie Runner, obviously. Modification to replay. that as long as you, and by you, I mean like the league, the baseball watching public, the folks who think about this are open to trying stuff and then undoing it. It's hard to,

it's hard to go really wrong. You know, we, we had some of this, like remember like the neighborhood stuff. We were just like, this is dumb. We're doing this in a goofy way.

And then they stopped. And it was like by the end of April, you know. Or like the transfer on the catches, right? Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of. Yeah. And it was in like what, like 2014, 2013? They were like, oh, like this is annoying and is resulting in silliness. So let's beat them with this. And they did that very fast.

I always think of the neighborhood play, like bring back the neighborhood play. But I don't really miss the neighborhood play. I don't either. Yeah. Yeah. I think you should actually have to step on the bag to get the force. That seems right. Yeah. Okay. Thanks for the questions all. Keep them coming. Thank you. Well, after we recorded, the White Sox were victorious. Not only did they beat the Rays, they beat the Rays nine to four, a-hit outburst. So the bounce back begins. Also very much in need of a bounce back, Anthony Rendon. Unfortunately, that possible bounce back will be deferred even further.

After we recorded, there was an announcement about the latest chapter in the annals of Anthony Rendon trying to stay on the field. He has a high-grade partial tear of his left hamstring. He's going to be out for months. Who knows how many months it's Anthony Rendon. So the fact that he's injured is not new. However, he seems to have slightly modulated his tone when talking about the injury. I've been somewhat fascinated by Anthony Rendon. We've gone over his quotes stretching back years that have created the perception that he's not fully invested in baseball. This time, though, I think he's saying the things that would be more likely to get fans on his side. First of all, he suffered the hamstring tear while trying to beat out an

infield hit. He was hustling. Also, he sounds not just really beat up, but really beat up about it. This is the fourth consecutive season that Rendon will have suffered a serious injury, and he sounds pissed about it. He said, it's four years now. I was angry for a few days, frustrated, anything that you can possibly imagine. The game keeps getting taken away from me. I want to win. I want to be out there. It's frustrating. I don't know what else to say. You try to control as much as possible. I try to do everything in my power to stay out there, and it seems like nothing's working. So he's sort of mirroring fans' frustration in a very visceral way. He also talked about how he wants to help his teammates while he's out. i think that's what i've been figuring out over the last few years since

i've been in this position more often than i would like how am i going to be able to impact the guys off the field right how can i talk to them when i'm down in the dugout or how do i talk to them after the game after they've had a good day or they had a bad day how can i share my wisdom and what i've been through to kind of give as much wisdom as I can while I'm here. I'm sure these are thoughts and feelings he's actually having, but I think it's wise of him to express them. Seems likely to elicit sympathy from the fans. So if he's not getting any better at avoiding injury, maybe he's getting better at avoiding backlash to his injuries. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening, and a special thanks to those of you who support the podcast on Patreon,

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