Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2166: Delayed Gratifi-K-tion

Episode Date: May 18, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Rays running out of mound visits and various visit-related hypotheticals, then (21:00) answer listener emails about “due up” vs. “on deck,” strikes vs. pitches in the strike zone, whether focusing on wins instead of runs makes WAR less intuitive, Quinn Priester and FIP-based pitcher WAR, Ronald Acuña […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2166 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm all right. You know, I think one mound visit is too many. You're aware of that, right? I think they should all be banned. You should just have to do your conferring between innings, not during. This is not Little League.

This is the big leagues. This is Bush League to have to call a coach out there or to go out there and remind a pitcher of something. You just had a chance to talk to him. Anyway, I know that that may be a minority position, no mound visits allowed, but you're definitely no longer allowed five mound visits. Even Major League Baseball agrees that's too many. It depends. Yeah. Okay. So there is sort of a wrinkle to that. And we talked about this recently because we were reviewing recent rules changes that we might want to be rolled back. And one we considered was the reduction in the number of mound visits you're allowed.

We did not want to roll that back, but we were kind of making fun of the reduction because, yes, they reduced the limit from five to four this year after previously lowering it from six to five, right? Yeah. And then – and, of course, it used to be unlimited. Right. However, we were kind of poking fun at the severity of the rule because if you run out, you get a bonus one. Right. You get an extra in the ninth. Yep.

And so it almost seems like there are no consequences because if you actually do run out, don't worry about it. You get another one, right? However, there is a scenario where you really can run out and the Tampa Bay Rays discovered and experienced that scenario on Thursday night. So the thing is that you can use four through the first eight innings. Eight. And then you can get an extra one for the ninth tacked on. Yeah. However, if you run out mid-ninth inning, you can't then get an extra one.

Correct. As Rays skipper Kevin Cash discovered. And this was a high leverage spot. It was. This was a pretty meaningful moment. Division rival, ninth inning, the Rays leading the Red Sox seven to five. And Jason Adam is in to close it out for the Rays. There are two men on and two outs.

And then the pitching coach comes out for a visit. However, the catcher had already visited in that inning. Right. And this was a transgression. Yeah. This was too many mound visits. Too many. However, there was some substantial confusion about that.

Yes. Just as we were kind of making light of how severe this is, maybe the umps sort of felt the same way because I guess they don't usually have to discipline people for this because teams are not typically running right up against the rule. Or if they use up the four in the eight innings, then they get the extra one. So this doesn't happen every day. And the umps took their sweet time figuring out what to do here, which Alex Cora, Red Sox manager, was upset about. He was the one who came out and pointed out that this was a violation, which is funny because he's like all over the rule book and like looking for little infractions.

Meanwhile, he's one of the ringleaders of the banging scheme. Anyway, you know, he's always looking for an advantage. And sometimes that's an illegal advantage for his team. And sometimes it's policing other teams' illegal advantages. So he was upset that it took so long to straighten out because Rosmo Ramirez, who was the only remaining available reliever in the Rays' pen, he then got a lot of time to warm up. And Cora thought that, oh, if he had sort of sprung this on Ramirez, he would have been all out of sorts. And if they had rushed him in with just the warm-up pitches that he was allotted,

then maybe he wouldn't have been as effective as it was. He got the game-ending ground out, and it was a bunch of fuss and much ado about not much. Right. Because the consequence for exceeding your allotted number of mound visits is that the pitcher has to come out. And like, that's a big, you know, that's a big consequence. Like, we talk a lot about, you know, we get wonderful emails, the very best ones about all of the different rule changes that we could implement to make baseball different than it is. And one of the things that we often think about in considering those rules, it's not their practicality. We're unconcerned with that as a phenomena.

But we want to make sure that the balance is maintained between pitching and hitting. You want consequences for rule violations to feel proportional and you don't want to throw the game out of whack. Right. And so, you know, they they really don't want you to take extra mound visits because they are giving you a big consequence. If you do, you have to pull the guy. And then the next guy, like, as you said, doesn't get like infinite time to warm up. It's not like when a pitcher comes out because of an injury and you give the the guy who comes in to you know replace him time because it's not his fault that the guy got hurt before it would be it would be a lousy reward for helping out the the injured player to risk injury yourself by not being able to warm up sufficiently right so yeah we have these this give and take within the rule structure and then then, yeah, it is remarkable to me. I feel like I have written various articles over the years about what happens in the space between when a rules check, because it's not a challenge, right? What they do is they call the replay center and they confirm their understanding of the rules so that they're not making a guy come out when he shouldn't or whatever.

But it always seems to take a very long time like a preposterously long time and it feels like there should be like a robert's rules of baseball order just sitting in the ballpark you know maybe it's a lot to ask of like an official scorer but it's like they really takes this long they're not doing replays reviews constantly like surely there's a parliamentarian designated for this purpose but it does always seem to take a long time and then you get in this weird spot where you're like it would it would take less time to just grant them their lousy extra mound visit so that we could keep this thing moving you know it's a very odd balance that they're trying to enact and you know maybe this was a protest on the part of the umpires being like, you said you reduced the number, but you only kind of did that. And we think that's stupid.

So here we are. We're going to spend 10 minutes checking the rule. Yeah. So as soon as pitching coach Kyle Snyder crossed the third baseline, Cora was out there reminding the umpires of that rule. And Cora was out there reminding the umpires of that rule. And Phil Cousy was the crew chief. And he said, he told the pool reporter, the umpires initially thought, okay, he never got to the mound. So here we are in the ninth inning with two outs and he never did speak to his pitcher.

So we felt we would let it go. But Alex with the Red Sox naturally came out and said, no, you saw it. No, no, you know the rule. So we said, we know the rule. Let's just get a rules check from New York. New York confirmed what we knew. And it was very clear that Cash had to come out and change his pitcher. When I told him that, he had absolutely no question about it. He went right to the mound to change pitchers.

So Cora was upset. Cash was not upset. He recognized his culpability. And there was no Ron Washingtonian buck passing here. Kevin Cash did not blame his pitching coach. He said, 100% on me. I let the man visit slip in my mind. It's on me. I screwed up. And I'm glad that it didn't cost us a ballgame. First of all, I always appreciate when managers do that, you know, when they take accountability in those moments. And I'm so happy to be able to point to a new instance of it because the last time I was aware of such a thing to the point that I felt like writing about it, it may have involved a former disgraced, now disgraced Angels and and guardians and mets coach and manager so nice to have a non-calloway related example of this but i would have to check the particular rule hopefully

it wouldn't take me 10 minutes but generally the distinction that gets drawn in the rule book if i recall correctly is enter the field of play it doesn't you don't have to have actually traversed all the way to the mound in order to have it count as a mound visit. Once you enter the field of play, just like there's a lot of stuff that is dependent on players exiting the field of play or the ball exiting the field of play. So I think you don't have to have gone all the way out there. It would be funny if it's like the transgression is crossing the foul line or not. But it's like, hey, you got to walk all the way out there to really prove the point. Like, you know, go dance for us, Kevin.

Go dance. Yeah. I was thinking of ways that this could be stretched somehow, too. Sure. I think I may have seen someone wondering, well, is this a loophole for the three batter minimum? Because what if you wanted a pitcher removed before he had faced three batters or ended the inning? What if you just made a bunch of mound visits or you exceeded, you know, you maxed out your mound visits and then you tried to make another one? Would they just immediately remove that

pitcher as the penalty? And no, they anticipated that loophole. So the rule itself says a manager or coach who crosses the foul line on his way to the mound after his team has exhausted its mound visits must make a pitching change unless the pitcher has not pitched to a minimum of three consecutive batters

in accordance with Rule 5.1 OG, in which case the pitcher shall continue to pitch only to complete pitching to his first three consecutive batters or the end of the inning, whichever comes first. Gotcha. So they do not remove that pitcher immediately. He has to stay in there until he faces his third batter.

And then I guess he gets pulled. And then I was thinking, well, does that mean that you could theoretically make infinite mound visits in that situation if you wanted to if the pitcher had not yet faced his third batter? And so he couldn't be ejected. He couldn't be pulled from the game. Does that mean you could keep popping out there and meeting with him after every pitch if you wanted to without having that pitcher removed because, again, the rules supersedes like the three batter minimum supersedes the mound visit maximum. And so not that you would. Right. But could you just to test the limits just to see if it could be done. I think that you could not because I think at that point, the umpires would lean on their

discretion and authority under the notion of umpire's discretion to say, hey, we know what you're doing. You can't be doing that nonsense. You're trying to monkey with the rule. So you go tell them what you need to and then you sit your butt on the plank and go from there. I think that they would be wise to that. Can I say one of my favorite things about baseball? I love that they're like, this is a, you know, this is a civilized sport.

It is a nice day at the park. It is, you know, clapping and cheering and enjoying a time. And it is full to the brim with people who want to do shenanigans. And we know that. So we have to anticipate every possible bit of shenanigan. Is there a singular shenanigan? Can you do a shenanigan? Shenaniganery. Yeah. Shenaniganery. That's definitely not a word, but it should be. Should be.

It should be. I think it is one now. I think we've created a word just here. Say it again. Shenaniganery. That's hard to say, but I love it. I think that's fantastic. That's bounevard. So all of that to say, baseball rocks and dudes rock and mound visits are fine, actually. visits are fine, actually. What other sport would you have a kind of controversy about just how many times someone who is not a player is able to just walk out onto the field and pause the game

and start meeting with people? Many sports, you're not allowed to do that. I mean, yes, you can. You see head coaches, they will, you know, they'll be stalking down the sideline and sometimes they will step onto the floor. Or isn't there a thing with football head coaches where there's someone who's supposed to like hold them back so that they don't. So that there's like a designated coach holder so they don't go onto the field. It looks a lot like parents who put leashes on their children at amusement parks. Like, don't get too far away from me! As someone who

watches the Seahawks every weekend, I gotta tell you, it's gonna be weird because you used to have to hold Pete Carroll back. You had to be like, Pete, come over here. And I don't know if the new coaching regime is gonna have a similar field proclivity. But yeah, they have like a guy who's like, nah, you gotta – because if you get in the way of the side judge, it can be a penalty and stuff.

Yeah. I did put my hypothetical to the Discord group. Could we just get infinite mound visits if someone wanted to be a pest? Someone wanted to be a pest. And people pointed out that, yes, not only is there the umpire discretion, they could just eject you or they could, I think, eventually just cause you to forfeit the game if you persisted in the shenaniganery. So you can't push them too far. But also, I think if the manager makes multiple mound visits during the same plate appearance, then I think he's got to get ejected. Then there's a penalty for him too. Yes.

And therefore, they would not be able to keep going out there to make a multitude of mound visits. However, you could. You'd have a new manager, right? One manager gets ejected. Then someone else just takes on the mantle of the manager. And then that guy could come out. It would be his first. So you could have a succession, a series,

and you can designate anyone as the manager. I mean, you could go through your entire coaching staff if you wanted. We could have a player manager scenario. We haven't had one in decades. This could be the time to do it. We could just designate a player to be the manager for the purpose of coming out

to make yet another mound visit, just a check-in to see how things are going. So you could – and look, given how the umpires responded to this scenario, who knows how long it would take them to call the team on it or they'd have to check with New York and we'd get a long delay and we'd have to figure it out. All of this could be settled if we just outlawed mound visits altogether. Zero as a maximum would be very easy for everyone to remember and enforce. Also, what kind of weird-ass pitcher are we dealing with that the entire coaching staff has to break every rule and get ejected to coach this? He's going to have so little self-esteem by the end of it.

Am I really that bad? this like is he he's gonna have so little self-esteem by the end of it so am i am i really that bad am i really that bad that i can't so i i think that there's a a lot about this scenario that is perhaps not totally plausible ben if i had to offer a note well i think there are just too many meetings in the world in general and so maybe that's my frustration at the meeting creep that is spilling over into the sport that I love. And so many meetings, you know, could have been an email, could have been a pitch comm communication, could have been a mid inning, between inning conference, just so many alternatives to the meeting. Hey, speaking of which, can I, can I offer a low stakes rant on

this, the main feed? Sure. What's up with having pitch comm issues before the first pitch of the game? You notice this phenomenon sometimes? It's like they do the whole rigmarole to warm up. They throw their warm-up pitches. The ump's back there. He's getting his eyes calibrated. They do this whole thing. They throw the ball around the infield. The guy's in the on-deck circle. The cameras are there. They bring the little kids out. They scream, play ball, which is in the rule book that

you have to say, play ball out loud, which is so, what a beautiful sport, so they're tiny children they are in either overly enthusiastic or terrified they never seem to occupy middle ground between those two emotional extremes and they yell and you're supposed to play and then the pitcher will take his cap off and he pulls out the thing and he's like shaking it by his ear and he's gesturing he's like it's not working and i'm like you didn't sort this out before. What in the world? I think that when that happens, they should have to play without Pitchcom the whole game. If it shorts during the game, sure, go fix it.

But if you didn't notice that your Pitchcom didn't work during your warm-up tosses, I'm sorry, you forfeit your right to Pitchcom the rest of the time. Go back to signs. Maybe they'll get stolen. You know, Get your stuff ready before. What is that? What is it, Ben? A little tough love from us today.

Get your crap together. Get it together. Or maybe in that instance, you should have to use a mound visit. Have a consequence. My God. god everybody do your homework if no one else play ball could you play under protest could you lodge a complaint could you

say oh i answer to that i didn't know in the rule book though i mean yeah i'm gonna go back to the rule book and i'm gonna have to make sure my memory of this is right it doesn't specify that it has to be a tiny child to be clear but they but they do that, you know, because it's like a cute. If you lose and no one said play ball, you could claim that you didn't realize this was for real. You thought it was just practice. Oh, I didn't realize we had started. So this is playing the game is the subsection of the rulebook. 501, starting the game, parentheses, play ball. And there's like an exclamation point of the rulebook. 5-0-1, starting the game, parentheses, play ball!

And there's like an exclamation point in the rulebook. So if you don't exclaim it, if you just sort of say it in a monotone, if you mutter play ball, that's not permissible. You have to really yell it. The exclamation point is not consistent through the rest of the rule. At the time set for beginning the game, the players of the home team shall take their defensive positions. The first rest of the rule at the time set for beginning the game the players

of the home team shall take their defensive positions the first batter of the visiting team shall take his position in the batter's box the umpire in chief oh shall call play and the game shall start after the umpire calls play the ball is alive and in play and remains alive and in play alive is such a choice relative to just live. Alive suggests like it has a family, you know, and it has feelings. And then it gets either murdered or thrown away so casually, you know, so casually. Anyhow, what are we talking about during this? We're 20 minutes in. Friday shows, man. They can be a little loose. We should enter some emails.

Although, apparently, if the manager or the coach leaves the dugout when the team is out of mound visits, the ump is supposed to warn them. Yes. Supposed to say, hey, don't go any farther. And if they then continue, then the manager is ejected. So you don't even get to make the mound visit. You're supposed to be stopped before you can get there, which is what happened here. Although I guess it was Alex Cora doing the stopping, not the umpires necessarily, because Cora came out to complain. Right.

And I love, look, there are rules in the rule book where the umpire is supposed to be keeping track of what's going on and rules where the opposing team is required to not protest in the way that like play a game under protest but like they have to be paying attention i think you know batting out of order is one of those where it's like if you miss it then there's just a new batting order established but if you're paying attention you can be like excuse. That's the voice that they use. They all sound that way. It's amazing. The umpire should eject themselves if they fail to keep track of how many mound visits have been used. There should just be like a seat that they would use in Top Gun

to get out of the cockpit and the umpire should just be forcibly boosted out of the place if they lose track of the mound visits. Apparently also, if you make a mound visit that forces a pitcher change and you don't have a pitcher warming up, then that's grounds for ejection for the manager too. It's amazing just how many mound visit rules there are. It's really wonderful. Also terrible.

What a sport. Okay. We should answer some emails. So we got a couple pedantry check-ins. How can you not be pedantic about baseball? I never know whether to front load or back load those, but whatever. We're kind of on a pedantic topic here. So let's just segue right into that.

And you were talking about the beginning of the game and things going wrong. And here's a complaint about the beginning of the game or I guess the beginning of an inning. This is from Philip who says, I have a bone to pick with 670 The Score's Cubs broadcasts. It is not that they have approximately 7 million sponsorships they read during gameplay. I understand that's part of the business. It is not even necessarily the sponsors they choose.

Having opposing pitcher walks sponsored by North Shore adult diapers for even the heaviest control problems might actually be my favorite sponsorship ever. I think we've discussed that in the past. My problem is this. Every game, the start of the Cubs' half of the third inning sounds like this. The guy due to lead off the inning is on deck. Who's on deck is sponsored by on-deck business loans. Am I crazy to think, Philip asks, that that guy is explicitly not on deck? I would always describe that player as due up and the guy hitting behind him as on deck.

This genuinely confused me the first few times they read it because I thought I misremembered their last inning. Would you ever describe a player as on deck if there was no one set to hit before him? I probably would not. Part of this is the way that these things are presented graphically. So typically, at least, so I'll speak to the broadcast that I have the most sort of intuitive knowledge of, which is the Mariners route broadcast. I think they normally will show a little graphic that says do up to indicate the, you know, once an inning has concluded, they will do do up to describe the batters that are to come in the following half inning. And so, yes, I think I would refer to the first guy as being do up. And then the guy behind him is on deck yes behind the guy who's due up

that's weird i feel like this is it indicates a level of sponsorship greed that i'm frankly offended by because do it a different time is the company really called on deck? Like, or did they? I guess. But can't they just say that it's the batter who is actually not due up first in the inning, but due up second in the inning? I guess you could say that the leadoff batter in that inning is probably standing in the on deck circle. In the on deck circle. Yes. Watching the pitcher warm up. So he's physically on deck in that sense, I suppose. But what about ecumenically?

Spiritually, philosophically, where's he at, man? Yeah. It might be technically kind of correct, which is the best kind of correct. But no, I think it misleads. It confuses. It obfuscates. It obscures. Yes, I would not say it.

Maybe it's actually, I don't want to impugn this regional business. Here I am being a jerk. But it's like maybe it actually indicates not greed but cheapness. Because if you were the ad read every time someone was on deck, that might cost a lot of money. Maybe they're like, we have maxed our not cheapness, but it's like they're, you know, they're a regional business. It's not like it's Apple bees. They don't have a limitless ad budget. They can't every time somebody says they're on deck, they're like, I can't write another check. We're, I don't know anything about this business or the

people who own it. So maybe they are, you know, really a subsidiary of a national concern, some sort of decking syndicate. But we'll assume not because they tend to not be on the radio side. No, apparently it's business loans, on-deck business loans. So it's not a deck company. It's not a decking company? It's a loan company called on-deck. That's not even – okay, I'm back to thinking they're greedy. You've got to leave that name for somebody installing decks and patios.

What are you doing? You're taking that name out of circulation and you're just like doing loans? On Deck Capital. Yeah. All right. The other question, this is from Samuel who said, Joe Davis on the Dodgers broadcast just said 44 of 51 pitches have been in the zone for Yamamoto. Of course, what he meant was 44 of 51 pitches have been strikes of those strikes may have been out of the zone but called strikes.

And perhaps even some of the balls in the zone, though that becomes kind of a philosophical question. If it's not in the rulebook strike zone but it's called a strike by the umpire. It's a strike. It was a strike, but is it in the zone because the umpire declared that it was in the zone? Even though it would not technically pass through the dimensions of the zone as far aspire declared that it was in the zone even though it would not technically pass through the dimensions of the zone as far as we can track those things well does that get superseded by the umpire's judgment no i would say the question continues it being a strike it or not is a matter of the umpire's judgment but it being physically within the zone is a matter of like physics.

That's like a verifiable, strictly defined thing. Okay. We've straightened that out. Samuel says, I wouldn't pile on Joe Davis for an off-the-cuff remark to mix up the vocabulary, but I do hear this from announcers often enough that I know I've had this thought before. First of all, am I crazy or have others heard this? And second, is this pedantic enough for you? Multiple question marks. Yes, it is. It was almost too pedantic for me, but it just barely slipped under the maximum allowable pedantry here on the podcast. I do hear things similar to that sometimes where people kind of conflate pitches in the zone with strikes. And it can be kind of confusing because if you say someone was throwing strikes,

that kind of connotes that they were over the plate. They were throwing pitches in the strike zone. Like if you say someone is a strike thrower, you probably wouldn't say that about someone who gets a lot of chases. Was effectively wild. Right. Yeah. If you threw a lot of strikes, but they were the sort of strikes that were outside the strike zone, but you got people to swing at them anyway, then those are strikes. You are a strike thrower. But I would probably infer that this is a guy who's around the zone, right? He's like over the plate. And so that can be kind of confusing sometimes. So I would not say that the pitches have been in the zone. I would not use that interchangeably

with strikes because, yeah, some of those pitches could have been called outside the zone. They could have been chases. Of course, I guess until the advent of pitch tracking technology, we didn't have an objective method of differentiating in the record between pitches that were called strikes but weren't in the zone and pitches that were called strikes and were in the zone. We only had the subjective method of yelling at the ump because it didn't look like a strike to us, which remains popular to this day. But yes, you could say that he was throwing strikes. That wouldn't be wrong. It just might give me a different impression of how he was obtaining

those strike calls. I agree. I agree with everything that you just said. Yeah. Excellent. All right. Well, then we can table that and move on. All right. Peter says, I've been added to a group WhatsApp chat with friends of friends who I'd say are baseball normies, the kind of guys who play daily fantasy and think Aaron Judge is a bum for his poor postseason performance. Okay. Anyway, I feel like I'm in a time warp because there are still loud discussions about how war is a garbage stat. It feels like I'm in 2012 arguing about Trout versus Cabrera or something. For example, one recent conversation involved incredulity that Juan Soto had been worth only two war so far this season. Despite the fact that two war is very good, especially this early in the season. Compared to judges, one war at the time, who as mentioned above, is a bum apparently.

Though he's been hitting very well lately. So maybe he is no longer a bum in their eyes. Turned it on. Yeah. Jay Jaffe admonished him, and he was like, I ought to perform better for Jay. However, one reason I think this continues to be an obstacle for war adoption is the focus on wins. No individual player can be worth that many wins because of the nature of baseball, and wins are another level of abstraction or projection away from runs. The rough rule of thumb is 10 runs being worth one win. That doesn't always make sense intuitively either.

It sure feels like 10 runs should get you much more than one win. Finally, wins just feel small, which ends up with hair splitting over tenths of a win rather than whole numbers of runs. So my question is, do you think the focus on wins in war as opposed to runs makes it harder for people to adapt? Should our focus be on run production instead of win production when describing player value? Um, no. I don't want to dismiss it out of hand like that i'm just trying to

like think about i so don't find the win piece of it flummoxing and so yeah um i'm trying to put myself in uh the the like mindset of it being flummoxing in a way that is fair because like i i get why people get jammed up on war although i tend to assume and maybe this is a faulty assumption on my part that the place where they get kind of there's consternation is more around things like say positional adjustments and defensive metrics and you know i guess the phenomena of of a low average but high obp and slug guy being really valuable tends to kind of jam people up to maybe a little bit so so maybe that is about runs in a more abstract way but not necessarily i I mean, I imagine that part of it is that like we have a notion of a thing called a

run and that is like a smaller increment or unit of value than like a win. Like I think of runs as tiny and I mean, not tiny, they, they add up, but they add up to the win, right? Like they're like,

if you're, yeah, you know how baseball, uh, um, and so I don you know how baseball works, Ben? And so I don't know that I have an issue with that part. I think you need like a bigger unit of thing to wrap all of it into. You know, you got to be able to get your hands and arms around the whole deal. I don't know if I'm articulating this notion well.

I'm just like kind of flummoxed by runs being like a more intuitive. I mean, I get like why if you're watching baseball, you're like runs good. But it's like, why are they good? Because you went, oh, you know. that a top player can accrue can strike people as underwhelming. And you might think that's it. Even the very best players might be worth something like 10 war in a fantastic season. That's 10 wins and that's 162 game season. And if you have a great team, you might win 100 games. And that's all this MVP, that's all he's worth, 10 wins. It doesn't sound like a lot. That's all this MVP, that's all he's worth, 10 wins, it doesn't sound like a lot. And that's why I think in the past, pre-war, before we had a framework for this sort of thing, they would just pick a number out of thin air because how could you tell exactly? You could kind of just claim they were worth whatever you said they were worth and it sounded

sort of plausible. Right. So I do think that, yeah, if you look at how great Juan Soto has been and you say, oh, he's only actually been worth two wins or something. It might not sound that impressive. And if you put it in runs, it would be a bigger number. Sure. But I'm not sure that would actually help with adoption. Yeah, I don't know that it would.

Yeah, clearly war has caught on. So it seems to be fairly intuitive. Yeah, people are kind of concerned about, oh, there are multiple versions of war. And how do they calculate it? And is it precise? And what is a replacement level player? Right. There are lots of concerns and reservations, but usually not about the win value or structuring

it around wins. Because you could go look up runs above replacement or above average if you want. It's there. It's on the fan graphs. It's on baseball reference. It hasn't caught on to the same extent. And I don't think that is purely because of the editorial judgment of fan graphs or baseball perspectives or baseball reference or wherever pushing wins over runs.

I think it is more intuitive to people because if you said so-and-so is worth how many runs, I feel like the natural question would be like, okay, well, what does that amount to in wins, though? What does that add up to? And then you're right back to war again. I think putting it in terms of wins does make it more digestible for people. more easily apply the stat to both hitters and pitchers because like if you have you know juan soto you well first of all i think you would have confusion trying to do it in terms of run because i think for traditionalists who are not sort of used to that framework or don't think about baseball within that framework they would immediately go well but how many runs does he score you know what i mean like yeah you Like you would get bogged down in like run, scored, RBI, confusion, and that's like a bad bog to be in. And then, you know, you move to the pitching side and it's like,

well, you want to prevent runs as a pitcher, so then you're worse run. Like that would feel, I think, confusing to folks also. I guess I should have said that actually you're right. The thing that really stymies people when they are starting to get their arms around war as a concept is the replacement level piece of it. Like that's what really gets people worked up, you know. Or the fact that it can change retroactively as we update the war model. No, I understand why. Yeah, they're like, just stop updating oaa why would you keep updating it and then guys move around you know

like uh we we did a war update um swapped out at the beginning of the season swapped out some components so that we could you know move away from ucr and um it it changed moogie betts's 2023 war and we had spent how many podcasts saying that they have the exact same war and now the gaps acuna and bets right yeah and now it has a bigger lead yeah the gap is wider it's probably a conspiracy you know seems to be the prevalent opinion these days about stuff. The email, I want to make clear to the very nice listener who emailed a perfectly legitimate question. I'm not calling you conspiratorial. It makes sense that you would ask because it did change. But then that's why.

Well, Peter, try it out. Look up the runs value instead and try sending that to your chat and see if that's any more palatable. See if that goes over any better. Try sending that to your chat and see if that's any more palatable. See if that goes over any better. I am going to betray sort of like a directional bias here, I think. The part of that email that was the most surprising to me is like you're in on WhatsApp, but like war too far. Like that's too, you know, it's a bridge too far.

There's the expression. Yeah. Making up new ones. Yeah. By the way, I agree that the 10 runs roughly equals one win sounds wrong. Yeah. It doesn't sound very – because I think it's because people look at 10 runs in an individual game and say, well, that's a lot of runs. Yeah. That could make the difference between a loss and a win many more than one loss and one win.

So the best explanation I've ever heard of why that's the case that's not super, super mathy was from Phil Birnbaum, the sabermatrician. I'll link to his post about this. It was more than a decade ago, but he put it a couple ways. One way, slightly more mathy, he said, imagine a reasonably large number of baseball games, a team season or decade or whatever, pick 10 games at random, and then pick one of the teams randomly in each of those 10 games,

add one run to those 10 teams' score, you've now added 10 runs. How does that change things? Well, for many of those games, it won't change things at all. If the game didn't go to extra innings and was won by two runs or more, then adding one extra run can't change the outcome. In the 1990s, 68.4% of games were decided by more than one run. That means that 6.84% of those extra 10 runs are quote-unquote wasted and don't do anything. Now consider the nine-inning games decided by exactly one run. That was 22.5% of all games. Half the time, the extra run will

go to the winning team, so that run doesn't do anything either. That leaves 11.3% of games where the run goes to the team who lost by one run. That 11.3% of the time, the game will now go to extra innings. The team that gets the run will win half of those. That means that 5.3% of the time, the game will now go to extra innings. The team that gets the run will win half of those. That means that 5.6% of those extra 10 runs turn a loss into a win. That's 0.56 wins. So that leaves only games that went into extra innings in the 90s. That was 9% of all games. So if we add a run to one of those teams, that team now wins the game outright. It would have won half of them anyway. So half of those runs don't amount to anything.

But the other half, the run turns a loss into a win. That's 4.5% of all games or 0.5 wins. Add 0.56 wins to 0.45 wins and you get 1.01 wins. That's how every 10 runs lead to one win. So that was semi-mathy, but an even less mathy way. If you assign 10 extra runs randomly, he wrote, five will be assigned to the team that won the game anyway. So those are wasted.

Another three will be assigned to teams that lost by two or more runs. So those are wasted too. That leaves two runs. One of those runs will turn a nine-inning tie, half a win, into a full win. So that's half a win. The other one will turn a one-run deficit into an extra inning game, which turns a loss into a full win. So that's half a win. The other one will turn a one run deficit into an extra inning game, which turns a loss into a half win. So that's the other half win. So that's how you get there. It's just in any individual game, even one run can make all

the difference, let alone 10. But in most games, it won't actually make that much of a difference. So that's why you have to keep accruing those runs for it to have an impact on the whole. So that sort of made it make more sense to me. I think that it is good for us to acknowledge, though, that this isn't intuitive to everybody. Sure, yeah. everybody. And I think that the fact that it is still not intuitive to everybody, and we've been doing this for how long, is like a thing for us as a community to reflect on in terms of how we talk about advanced stats and metrics. And I know that people get frustrated and sometimes a little haughty about them, but I think for a lot of folks that like clicks right away and the fact that it is all

encompassing and it allows you to compare players across eras and it has a lot and the managing editor of fan graphs thinks that war has a lot to recommend it right like of course i do but you know this is it requires a little finessing and explaining and i think that um we can do that at least with the folks who are really trying to understand it and, you know, like have some patience with it because there were times in all of our lives where we didn't know what wins above replacement was. Imagine back to then. You were like so confused and now you're less confused. And I think a lot of people are comfortable taking the word of the experts for things, which isn't to say that you should default to someone else in all cases, you know, do your own research. You want people to do their own research. You've stepped on my joke, you jerk.

Sorry. In some situations, it makes sense to do your own research, but in others, whether it's some serious science or sabermetrics, sometimes you just say, oh, well, those people have studied it for decades. They seem to know what they're, they've shown their work. I might not understand the work, but other experts understand the work. Even me, there are many times where I'm like, all right, that seems like it makes sense. Yeah, it seems right. I don't totally follow it, but yeah, okay. I'll trust you on that one. And I think part of the benefit of approaching these things with some amount of humility is that we do make changes and we do have revisions. And sometimes that means that a guy's career war or in-season war moves maybe significantly.

war or in-season war moves, you know, maybe significantly. And I think that people are able to digest that with less immediate skepticism and less like this invalidates the whole stat, right? Like this is the favorite refrain that I see from folks on Twitter who like don't like war and don't think about baseball through war and find the war framework to be oppressive and pushed upon them. You know, any change that is made to the stat because we do update defensive metrics or we start to look to different ones than we used before and it means things shift around a little bit you know the fact that there's any change at all invalidates the whole thing because you know maybe scoring decisions get changed or whatever but like they look at something like batting average and they're like well it's just his batting average right his batting average from

10 years ago is just what his batting average is today like there's no change and i know that there are some changes but you know what i mean and so if if we go in and don't get over our skis with saying how definitive things are then i think that that those changes go down easier right and they don't become sort of referendums on the entire pursuit it's just like oh yeah sometimes it changes like now we have stat cast positioning and so the defensive metrics are better but it means that stuff's going to get changed at least during the stack cast era so you know it's like this is why if you try to be humble and nice, then people tend to like you more and say, okay. I would prefer that were not changed because we measured everything perfectly the first time. That'd be nice.

Oh, yeah. I would love that. That would be better. Yes. Of that. That would be better. Yes, but it also would not be better to stick with a less accurate value because it's a hassle to change it. I do appreciate that war is willing to update its priors and say, oh, I know better now. Or the people who craft war. It is a problem for adoption and also for celebrating milestones and that sort of thing.

It's hard to, you know, you can't say, oh, he passed this threshold. Well, according to which war and when exactly. And also he might dip below that threshold again in the future. So it's harder. It's a little less satisfying than traditional stats in some ways. And I'm happy we still have the traditional stats for that reason, among others. ways, and I'm happy we still have the traditional stats for that reason, among others. Okay, well, while we're on the subject of war skepticism, here's one from Patrick who says, the Pirates rotation has generated a lot of buzz these days, not something I'm

used to. And recently, this was around a short-lived six-man rotation. Quinn Priester was sent down to the minors, and when I checked his page, I was pleasantly surprised to see a 4.33 ERA over his 27 innings. Not bad. Not great, but not bad. However, Fangraphs said this performance was worth negative.4 war. My question is, why does Fangraphs use FIP in its war calculation instead of ERA? I understand the theory, but the practicality is that the stat is simply misleading. Did 27 innings pitched of 4.33 ERA ball

really contribute negative value? Did it hurt the team more than it helped? It feels like the stat is more misleading than it needs to be. Okay, I prefer Fangraph's war. I prefer FIP-based war. Yes. And not just because I'm a company man. I'm not

on the fancrafts payroll, although this podcast is hosted at fancrafts, but I think I always preferred and sometimes you'll split the difference and say half of this and half of that, but if I'm given one, I far prefer fancrafts war. And that's because, in my

mind, at least, what we want to do with war, and with Quinn Priester specifically, we want to credit or debit Priester or any pitcher for their individual contributions, not for the factors beyond their control. And FIP is generally better than ERA at isolating the pitcher's performance as opposed to luck and defense, et cetera. That is, I think, why FIP is better at predicting future ERA than ERA is because it really drills down to the essence of what that pitcher actually did, which is what we are interested in, even with retrospective value. I know a lot of people will say, oh, I use baseball reference war for the past and then FIP for the future and for predictive power. But the reason it's predictive is because it is actually isolating what the pitcher did. And isn't that what we want

to know also retrospectively? We don't want to just say that guy was valuable because if you were run scored while he was on the mound because his defense did a great job or he just got really lucky. It's not the case necessarily that if you have a good ERA, it's all you're doing, right? You may have gotten fortunate in some respects. So Priester was not very good when it comes to the three true outcomes, strikeouts, walks, homers, that are a little less luck and defense dependent. Obviously, there's a role for luck and defense in those things too, but a little less so than balls and play, let's say. So minimum 25 innings pitched this season, that's 152 pitchers and Quinn Priester's strikeout minus walk rate is eighth worst. And he also has given up a bunch of homers too.

His home run rate is third highest in that group too. And even though the Pirates don't have a great defense overall, seemingly, StatCast says that the Pirates defense has been above average while Priester has been on the mound. So even if the team as a whole has not benefited from great defense, maybe he has specifically. And the thing is, this isn't even just a FIP versus ERA or RA thing because even if you go by baseball reference war, which is based on runs allowed, Priester's still below replacement level. Baseball Reference has him at negative 0.3 war. And Fangraphs has also an RA9-based war, if you prefer to look at things that way. And Priester is, I think, replacement level or below by that metric, too.

is, I think, replacement level or below by that metric too. So here's partly why a 4.33 ERA this season, not so hot. It sounds like it should be at least decent, but as we have discussed, offense is down. It seems like maybe the ball is a bit deader, whatever is happening here. a bit deader, whatever is happening here. The NL league average ERA right now is 4.02. Right. And in the AL, it's 3.84. So we got to calibrate and recalibrate what is good again. So 4.33 in mostly pitchers' parks, both on the road and at PNC, it's not very good. Yeah. both on the road and at PNC, it's not very good. Plus, he allowed four unearned runs, which often aren't entirely unearned. The pitcher maybe bears some responsibility there. So his RA, his runs average is not that great when you fold in those four unearned runs too.

So I'm not trying to dump on Priesters. Sure. I mean, congrats to him for being a big leaguer and he's a prospect and maybe he'll be better in the future. But the Pirates did demote him. I know they had more pitchers than they had rotation spots, but they decided he was the one who was going to go down. So it doesn't seem like they disagree with the idea that he's been roughly replacement level because they replaced him. So it all kind of checks out to me. I'm not trying to dogmatically defend the stats, but it does sort of make sense

in my mind, again, even if it's not totally intuitive. There are good conversations to have on, you know, how much really is in the pitcher's control. Are there pitchers who we think have um a real repeatable skill when it comes to home run suppression or what have you that is a hotly contested conversation people are are never so excited as they are when they're discussing like era estimators so you know i think that it's fine to have those conversations. And two, you know, when you're presented with sort of an outlier guy, say, well, here's what his war is. But like, you know, I think that we can all agree that, to be something going on. But in general, I think it is a good way to sort of a good intellectual framework in which to view sort of what is the guy able to control most reliably and what is more reliably outside of his control. Let's not, you know, credit him for a good even or like knock him for being in front of a bad one.

You know, it flows both ways where there are pictures where we can say like my god they are just in front of a excuse us where dog defense and we we shouldn't knock them for that even though they are doing the things that are within their control really well so you know i think that it's fine to prefer other versions of war. I think it's fine to look at some other metrics and say this might be a more reliable indication of this individual pitcher's true talent because he has traits that make him an outlier relative to the rest of the pitching population. But I think that it's a better way to understand a guy in any given season. And to 2023 MVP season, Ronald Acuna had a massive, basically unprecedented drop in strikeout rate from 23 to 30% each year to 11.4%.

This was discussed on the pod, but it still may have been an underappreciated aspect of his MVP season. Yeah, it probably was. We were all focusing on the 40-70 and the steals and the power speed, but it was incredible. It was one of the wonders of last season that he managed to slash his strikeout rate to the degree that he did while not compromising the rest of his performance and power output, et cetera.

However, Ethan says, this year it's right back to his career norm at 24.9%, the strikeout rate, that is. There was a Jay Jaffe article last week discussing Acuna's struggles with contact compared to 2023 and suggesting some lingering knee health issues could be contributing. But if you look at his career, it really seems to me like the 2023 season needs more explaining than the current struggles. Strikeout rates are one of the quickest stabilizing offensive numbers. Hitters almost never see the kind of drop Acuna had, especially if they're already well established in the majors. On top of that, he cut his strikeout rate in half without sacrificing power for contact. Besides Jaffe's article, the only commentary I've seen is some nebulous cheating accusations from online posters with little to no explanation of how he could have been cheating.

with little to no explanation of how he could have been cheating. Of course, anytime you get any anomalous performance, you're going to get people coming out of the woodwork and saying that someone is cheating. Every now and then they are, but usually not, probably. Every now and then they are. I am at the point, and this is clearly a statement on me being of the age I am, and so I have moved on to the Astros since PEDs, but it's like, I am over the banging scheme as an individual act of cheating, but I remain annoyed with Houston

that we have to have this conversation every time somebody does something awesome because our experience of like awesome has been tainted by banging that tainted by banging. And before banging, it was PEDs and it always, oh, someone's having a great year. Steroids, right? Gotta be steroids. You still get that sometimes. Okay. Ethan says, I'm really curious about what's going on and what could really have been the key to success last season. Can we have a reasonable measured discussion about this? Of course, on Effectively Wild, we specialize in reasonable measured discussions and also pedantic ones and very silly and preposterous ones sometimes. So one thing that I wanted to add to this discussion, now strikeout, strikeout rates, again, these are like traditional stats.

We record something that happens in the box score and it won't change unless there was some sort of mistake that's immutable. Either you struck out or you didn't. However, even strikeouts can be kind of squishy. There's luck associated with strikeouts and the lack thereof sometimes. And I asked Dan Cymborski of FanCrafts about this because Dan has expected or estimated rate stats, zips, as part of his zips projection system. He has Z stats. You might think of them as X stats often they're called, but basically like what was the deserved or expected rate? What quote unquote should he have hit? And he has those even for say say, strikeouts and walks, etc. And based on what

Dan told me, and you could probably even just guess this based on just how extraordinary it was that his strikeout rate dropped the way that it did, he probably overperformed, outperformed his true talent strikeout rate last year, and he might be underperforming his true talent strikeout rate last year, and he might be underperforming his true talent strikeout rate this year. So according to Dan's Zips-based expected strikeout rate, and this is based on things like plate discipline stats and stat cast stats, but it will be like, how much contact do you make? Contact and various other stats will correlate well with strikeout rates. And sometimes if someone is making a lot of contact but still striking out, that seems strange. Maybe things are going against them in an unlucky way, right? So Dan says that according

to his model, Acuna should have had 100 strikeouts last year, not 84. and he should have 40 strikeouts this year, not 45. In which case, if we substituted what he quote unquote should have had, and I know this is setting off all sorts of alarms and hypothetical numbers nerds, this is why they play the games. I know I'm not disputing that what really counts and matters is whether he actually struck out or not. But we're talking about why it's fluctuating, and so this is relevant. So if you substitute those expected stats for his actual ones, then his updated K rates would have been 15.5% last year, not 11.4%, and 22.1% this year, not 24.9%. That's still a sizable difference going from 15.5% to 22.1% this year, not 24.9. That's still a sizable difference going from 15.5 to 22.1, but sample, we're only a quarter away through this season and the knee concerns and maybe something is bothering him, right? So if you factor that in, maybe it's not that wide a swing. Dan says that Zips thinks that Acuna's 2024 line, which is disappointing overall, it's not just that his strikeout rate has regressed,

has gone back up again, but overall, he just hasn't been very good. He's been like a league average hitter. That's not what we expect from Ronald Acuna. He's hit 245, 354, 342. A pretty powerless hit. It took him a long time to hit his first homer,

and he only has three in 181 point appearances. It just doesn't seem like Acuna. It seems maybe more like the Acuna when he was kind of recuperating from his knee injury or not even that good. So Dan thinks, though, that he's underperforming, that his 2024 line should be 305, 398, 467. should be 305, 398, 467. That's 150 points below where he was last year and even further below where Zips says he should have been last year

because as great as he was, unanimous MVP, he actually underperformed seemingly. So Zips says he should have hit 348, 434, 605 instead of his measly 337, 416, 596. So his deserved line is about 150 points below where he was last year, but also 170 points above where he is this year, which is one of the biggest differentials of anyone this season. So he probably should be somewhere in the middle and it shouldn't be as drastic a swing and I think that's a good thing to inject into the discussion just so we take into account

that he probably wasn't actually that great at avoiding strikeouts last year and maybe he's not as bad as he's been this year at striking out it's still a big difference and I don't know how to explain it other than slow start, knee issues not as bad as he's been this year at striking out. It's still a big difference. Sure. I don't know how to explain it other than slow start, knee issues, small sample, things just not going great.

Some very sophisticated, but sometimes guys aren't good. But it wouldn't be that noteworthy if he had his deserved stats this year and he had his deserved strikeout rate this he had his deserved strikeout rate this year and his deserved strikeout rate last year. So that just might be coloring our perceptions a bit about just how weird this is and whether it could be explained through normal means and not, oh, he was cheating and suddenly he stopped cheating.

And, you know, I think that these things, if I could help Ronald E. Cooney Jr. turn his season around, I probably would just tell the Braves that instead of telling the podcast. But, you know, I do think that small things going wrong in concert with one another can have a really, they can compound in terms of the impact that they have on a swing's viability a guy's offensive performance and i think the frustrating thing is particularly if he is playing through you know maybe not a new injury but just like not feeling great feeling um sort

of after effects of the lower body stuff like we might not. If he doesn't have to go on the IL, we probably won't be told the full extent of his injuries, assuming he has some, because sometimes these guys just don't want to, they don't want to tell you, you know, they don't want people to know like, yeah, he is compromised, particularly in season when, you know, an opposing team might try to figure out a way to use that to compromise his performance further, you know?

Okay, question from Kevin on episode 2157, you were discussing pitcher fielding and defensive runs saved when you made the point that lots of pitching defensive value comes from controlling the running game. Understandably, this is a term that mainly refers to pitchers and catchers, but how much value could be attributed to the other fielders involved? Is Christian Walker so good at holding opposing runners that they take shorter leads? And that's why Gabriel Moreno is tied for the lead in stolen base runs saved above average.

Was Pique Javi Baez so good at tagging that runners were more reluctant to steal? How many daylight play back picks at second would a shortstop need to pull off before it was worthy of mention in an advanced scouting report? How good would an infielder need to be at these things before it became noticeable? And how many runs could the most valuable infielder save?

I mean, I think that good defense from other players has sort of a complementary effect to other guys on the field. And I won't be so naive as to say that we're probably perfectly separating all that stuff out in our existing metrics like you are going to credit you know in this instance like christian walker is going to get credit for being a good defensive first baseman and i think he grades out well by most of the metrics and here i'll just like remind everyone that like when you're looking at positions down the defensive spectrum it's often useful to look at the underlying metrics themselves rather than just the defensive war number because that has the positional adjustment in it so you might say meg

he's terrible but it's because he plays first base it's fine everybody's fine um i mean some of them are bad but like he's not so you know i think that that there might be a little bit of defensive value creep that we're not perfectly accounting for. I don't know. Gabby's arm is just his arm. I think that there are definitely probably first basemen who do a good job of keeping guys close versus not. And the tag thing does matter, certainly. But also, when you watch a guy whip one down one down there just did it he like whips it yeah down there so i want to say there was some measure of this or that this was taken into

account with drs and good fielding plays and bad fielding plays and that there was some attempt to quantify those little things those aspects defense, like how quick you are on the transfer and how good you are at applying tags. Why don't we hear so much about Javi Baez's tags anymore? Has he gotten worse at tagging, or is it just that he hasn't been on good teams and he hasn't been good overall? So he's just, we don't think about Baez that much anymore

except when he's been bad and is striking out and not hitting, which is most of the time. You want a grand unified theory of Javi Baez that much anymore, except when he's been bad and is striking out and not hitting, which is most of the time. You want a grand unified theory of Javi Baez. Yeah, like it's a halo effect thing where when he was kind of good overall and valuable, then we talked a lot about how great his tags were. He was a scintillating, exciting, dynamic player. And now that he's not overall, I guess he could still apply some great tags every now and then, but maybe we just wouldn't really notice or celebrate that the way we used to. I don't know the, I want to make very clear that I don't have a considered opinion on his actual tagging skill today, May 17th, and whether it has degraded relative to peak Javi from a couple of years ago.

I think that players like him kind of go through different phases in there and stretches in their narrative arcs. They're just like, hey, he's really awesome. He does this cool thing. Yeah, he strikes out a lot, but like he really wallops the ball. And so like Javi's great. Yay, Javi. And then there's the phase that some players will go through where it's clear that the the production at the plate is declining and perhaps precipitously but the glove is still so superlative that you're like but he's still that guy and then they get into this phase where they've been underwater from a war perspective for long enough that and they are maybe on a team that

isn't generating a lot of attention that it's not that you really have anything to say about his defensive acumen it's that you're probably happier this feels so mean when you're not thinking about him at all right because it's like it's just not going well but But you look at the numbers, and I think I'm correct in thinking that, like, he has actually not been a sub-replacement level player in large part because his defense does still grade out well. I don't know how much of that we want to specifically attribute to, like, tags, but I think he still grades out as a reasonably good well maybe this year it's doing less well but like it's may 17th so but like last year he was still like a plus defender um when you look at the advanced stats so that really you know it kept him it kept him above water from a war perspective, not by much, but he was still an above replacement level player, again, only by a little bit. But if he had had a 61 WRC plus and had been a bad shortstop, let me tell you, it would have been a lot worse.

There was an article by Daniel Epstein last year at Baseball Perspectives about measuring tags and how it's one of the few remaining defensive data voids publicly. And Mark Simon of SIS did confirm that they do track tags and good tags and bad tags, but it's not something you can sort on a public leaderboard currently. a public leaderboard currently. I would guess that the value in most cases is fairly negligible, especially in terms of controlling the running game and discouraging runners from going or throwing them out compared to pitchers, especially and catchers. But it'd be on the margins meaningful. And you could have someone who is such a superlative tagger or holder or whatever it was that there probably was some value there that we're not capturing. And I'm sure that teams could or are quantifying this. Like when I was an intern for the Yankees back in 2009, 2010, we were manually tagging plays from video. This was pre-StatCast, but there was an interface where one of the intern grunt work tasks was just to watch all of the stolen base attempts. And really,

like every run and every throw, we timed all of the, so many intern hours saved by StatCast because we just had a stopwatch. There was a stopwatch like built into the interface in the software and you would track every runtime and you would chart every – and it was precise. It wasn't just kind of eyeballing it. I mean it was sort of, but it would be like you would click on the spot on the screen and that pixel would generate the location. So it was sort of fancy, but you would do that for throws down to second. sort of fancy, but you would do that for throws down to second. And so you would chart where the throw was received, where it was caught, and also where the tag was applied. So like you could isolate just the tagging portion of the play and account for where the catcher delivered it and

when. And so you could quantify just the tagging value. and I'm sure that teams have, but it's probably not that big a difference in most cases. Yeah, I think that's right. Okay. This is a good question for you as a big advocate for the ball strike challenge system. So Brad says, it's a challenge for the challenge system. I recently attended a St. Paul Saints game where I saw the ball strike challenge system in practice for the first time. Overall, I appreciated it. It was quick, efficient, and used effectively about 10 times in the game across both teams. However, there was one component that I did not anticipate being an issue that I found to be different once I actually saw

it in person. There were several higher leverage moments in the game where the pitcher got a big called third strike with runners in scoring position. Under normal circumstances, the crowd would have been sitting in nervous anticipation pre-pitch then exploded with excitement when the batter was called out. However, with the challenge system, we still experienced the first half of that equation, but the explosion of joy never really happened. As quickly as the umpire called strike three, the batter tapped their helmet to challenge the call. It essentially cut out the opportunity to cheer at that moment. Even when the call stood, the cheers were certainly more muted when not preceded by the nervous anticipation of the pitch being thrown.

With replay, the call is made on the field and the crowd cheers or groans. You know the call may be challenged, but the time needed for the manager to decide to challenge and review still allows for the initial excitement of the call on the field. Overall, I still stand with the idea that we ultimately want to get important ball strike calls correct and the challenge system provides the best way to do that. That being said, I did not anticipate missing this immediate cheering element in big moments. Have you experienced similar things? Is it something that I and the crowds get more used to when you experience it more often?

That's so interesting. I will admit that I have not necessarily seen that exact scenario play out. I get how it could maybe dim the thing a little bit. I do think people will get used to it and we love to yell so i think we'll we'll find our way um but that is a that is a small ding if you don't have the emphatic call from the umpire because the umpire is just being told in their ear, like strike three, will you have the same like enthusiastic release under a full ABS? The thing is that you probably should challenge any close call.

Yes. Depending on how many challenges you're allotted. And so it might become a really routine thing where any strike three call, there are only so many called strikeouts in a typical game and only so many that matter in higher leverage moments. And you might as well, right? Like there's just no downside as long as you have challenges remaining if it's an important moment. It will be de rigueur. It will be we almost will think it's strange if there's not a challenge. So it will kind of be built in that we will anticipate the challenge. So I guess it will seem less jarring that there is a challenge.

feel more reservation. I'd feel more restraint, you know, in cheering and having that release and exaltation if I knew that there was almost certainly going to be an appeal. I think I have to think about it more. I think it'll be fine. I think it'll be fine. Yeah. I still prefer it. I still think to the full ABS, but it is a slight, it's a knock, but it is a slight, it's a knock, I guess. It's a drawback. But yeah, anyone who's seen much more of the challenge system in action and want to weigh in on how that has played out, please write in and let us know.

I'm sure it's something you get used to, but maybe you also just get used to not celebrating as much immediately because you have the built in expectation that you're going to have to wait a while to get that call confirmed. And I think that the way that we might come to engage with it is like, you know, the the pitcher and this doesn't happen after the end of every inning. But, you know, sometimes like you get a big dramatic conclusion to the inning right a guy

works out of trouble or he gets the big strikeout and he does the thing and then he crosses the foul line and then he has to hold hands with the umpire for a couple of minutes minutes is too strong but you know he's got to go through the glove and and hand inspection for sticky stuff and i think that in the beginning i found that to sort of disrupt the narrative flow of him exiting the field triumphant you know and i largely don't notice that anymore so i wonder if that's the comp now i know that um that's a an individual interaction between the pitcher and the umpire whereas like the challenge is going to require them to do the challenge and then they put it up on the board and they show you the zone but one thing i will say and it i

haven't observed this exact circumstance but people really love to cheer or boo when the challenge goes their way or goes against their guy yeah people really enjoy that and so i do think that there will be some amount of like catharsis and release, which the email acknowledges. But it's not like it's a completely unemotional moment. People are like, ah. Yeah, it might not be the same. But isn't the pre-pitch tension replaced by the post-pitch tension of waiting to see the call? It's not a long wait, right?

And that's one of the benefits. That's one of the benefits. That's one of the benefits. It's very quick. So I guess there's not a lot of time for you to sit there and fret about whether the strike that was called will actually be a strike. But there's at least a brief moment, I guess, of waiting and worrying. So maybe there'd be still some slight release of tension there. Okay. Question from Jonathan, Patreon supporter.

Ken Rosenthal wrote an article on why top-hitting prospects are having a harder time transitioning to the majors than in the past. He talks about how the stuff of MLB pitchers is a lot better than minor league pitchers. Three years ago, Ben wrote about advanced pitching machines being able to replicate the pitches of MLB pitchers. I think Bryce Harper used something similar when he decided not to go on a minor league rehab assignment. I think we talked about that. I've seen other articles since Ben's about these pitching machines, though it seems like these machines aren't used at the minor league level. So why is that the case?

Having hitters be able to practice against MLB-level pitching from a machine seems beneficial in making the jump. Are they still just too new and not enough of them? If that's the case, when they become more ubiquitous, would you expect this to make a difference in hitters transitioning from the minors to the majors? The effect, the observable league-wide effect, if any, of these new fancy schmancy pitching machines that I wrote about that since have become more common. Things like the Traject Arc and others that seek to replicate perfectly or close to perfectly a pitcher's stuff down to the seam shifted wake and the precise movement. And so you can just dial in, not I wanna face a slider, I wanna face a curve ball, I wanna face a cutter,

but I wanna face that specific pitcher's stuff. And it will replicate the exact movement and release point and everything down to the smallest degree. And you could even pair that potentially with a video screen so that the ball would be coming out of the hand. It would appear to be emerging from the hand of the pitcher and

you could really try to replicate a lot of aspects of that specific individual batter-pitcher matchup, if not necessarily the game environment. So those machines, maybe they are still somewhat rare and limited in supply and expensive. And probably some teams have been early adopters and others have not. So I don't know how prevalent they are in the majors, let alone AAA and on down. You would think, though, that if they do become standard, if every team everywhere has them, that that might have some effect if you're able to face major league pitching before you're in the majors. People have also asked us, well, will this have an effect on the times through the order penalty? against the picture you're facing that day and it is somewhat lifelike, then doesn't that mean that you might not be as much at a disadvantage the first time you face them that day because you were just hitting off some simulacrum of them in the cage beforehand? And that does sort of make sense. It sort of stands to reason. So I am watching out to see if we can notice something like that, but I haven't

yet. Yeah. I think it's too early to say with any kind of certainty, even among the orgs where we know this is like a prevalent developmental tool, but I think it would be really interesting to study in a couple of years and see like, does it sort of ease that transition, you know? Yeah. I have wondered whether people are saying that, that the minors to majors gap or triple A to majors is bigger than ever. And we certainly have seen some notable first year players struggle. But I don't know. I'm sort of skeptical.

I wouldn't be shocked if it were true, but I want to see some data, not just a few anecdotal examples because people have said this before. I wrote an article about this for Grantland in early 2015 because that was a common refrain at the time. Oh, the gap between the majors and the minors has gotten bigger. And I did a bunch of analysis and I could not find any evidence that that was really true. Obviously, there's always been a gap that majors are hard, but I couldn't find evidence that it was widening. I think what was happening at the time was that offense in the majors was at a low ebb and in the minors, it wasn't so much. And so when guys would get promoted, their stats would sink more than you expected

because just the offensive environment in the majors was kind of depressed at the time. So that would make it look like the transition was tougher, but it was really just the scoring environment. These days, it could be true. Maybe it's sort of an advanced scouting difference, even though you do have fancy advanced scouting in the minors now, or it could be you're going from ABS or challenge system to non-ABS or challenge. That could be jarring, different strike zone dimensions. I've also seen some people suggest maybe, you know, you have restrictions on how many minor leaguers you can roster these days. And so maybe the veteran types who are still hanging around there and are kind of like replacement level quality, like your AAA veterans who are on the downside,

but are maybe better than the average AAA player and worse than the average major league player, maybe fewer of those guys are still around because you don't want to carry them if they're not prospects. Like there's fewer org guys who can give minor leaguers a taste of what the majors are like, even if they themselves will not make it back to the majors to stay. So all those factors, I guess, could be playing a part potentially in making that transition tougher. I just, I guess I don't know for sure. And I'm sort of skeptical until it's proved. Yeah, I think I'm with you on all of that. I could see it mattering.

And of course, who knows? Maybe it matters more for individual guys rather than it being indicative of some broader trend or issue. But yeah, I don't know. It could be true. Okay, last one. This question comes from Alec, Patreon supporter, who says, in high school, my team ran a play with runners on first and third

where the first base runner would get a massive lead to get picked off, flop on the ground, and roll into right field. The idea is that while the first baseman is chasing the runner on first down, the runner on third would have enough time to score. On the defensive side of things, my team ran the grand illusion pickoff, where the pitcher would fake a pickoff to one of the bases and all the fielders would act like the ball got away. Then the runner would be tagged out when advancing, and he links to a College World Series example,

which I will link to on the show page. Why do you think we don't see as much creativity in base running and pickoffs at the major league level? Is it the fact that they would look silly if they don't work out or the fact that those would be considered Bush league or do you think it's something else entirely? Why not more creativity? Why not more trick plays?

In the majors? Why not more trick plays in the majors? Cowardice. place in the majors why not more took place in the majors i cowardice um but i could express it more neutrally and say uh the stakes being as high as they are means that you're less likely to deploy strategies that might be suboptimal because the consequences run scores and you lose so i think that i think it's as simple as that. And I think that might be, maybe I would like to see teams that are down already be more willing to sort of freelance a bit. Cause it's like, well, you're like, try something weird. You're already losing, you know, what are you gonna do? Lose more? I mean, and the answer they would say is probably,

well, yeah, like we'd like to win. So we'd like to not lose more because we we want to win yeah i think i think it's that i think it's that they have probably an appropriate sense of the stakes and that puts them in a weird spot so yeah i think maybe also it is yeah it's it's the Bush League thing. It's not wanting to look like you need to resort to these underhanded tactics. We win fair and square or I guess cheat, but not in this Bush League away. So I think there is kind of a peer pressure. We don't want to have to do something weird and strange. And yeah, if it fails, not only are the stakes higher, competitively speaking, but personally, reputationally, the stakes are higher. If you try something strange and it backfires, then people are going to write about it and people

are going to talk about it. Whereas if you do it in Little League, no one will really notice. I mean, your friends might give you grief for years to come, and that might be worse in some respects, but you get a lot of public scrutiny if something went wrong, though you could also be celebrated as ingenious or something. But I think mostly it is just kind of condemning any attempt to, like, couldn't you say that A-Rod shouting ha on a pop-up or trying to slap the ball out of a fielder's glove? Like, that's sort of in the spirit of this sort of thing. And maybe it's because it's A-Rod that those actions are looked down upon. Whereas if it were someone else who had a reputation for playing the game the right way generally and was not sort of a cheater in other respects,

then you might say, oh, that's just them being a gamer. They're just trying to pull out all the stops, do everything they can to win. But maybe it is just kind of like a macho, you can't win that way. Because this reminds me of Sam's skunk in the outfield play and that kind of trick play is sort of similar to what's being described here.

And yeah, you don't see a lot of that. Maybe it's all been done before and it's all been tried. It could also be that, hey, these are big leaguers. They're not so susceptible to these tactics, right? Like maybe they wouldn't fall for it the way that an inexperienced amateur might. You might also say, though, that they're less prepared. They're not expecting that stuff because it just doesn't happen at the big league level. So they might be even more susceptible to it. But, you know, they have great instincts and they've seen everything at some level. And maybe they would be able to adapt and adjust because they're just better at baseball.

They're better at every aspect of baseball. But I encourage it. I would welcome it. I want more silliness and whimsical trick plays and hidden ball tricks and so forth. The KK play, outfielders deking, faking a catch and then making the catch at a different point. I would love that stuff.

I don't care if someone says it's cheap. I like the Eddie Stanky, look for ways to exploit some little tactic that no one's thought of or they thought it was beneath them to try, you know. Just save it for that big moment and win, even if you win ugly. If you're willing to be the main character for a day, all sorts of stuff opens up for you, you know. all sorts of stuff opens up for you. Yeah. Well, if you're a Pirates fan, however valuable you think Quinn Priester was,

you're probably pretty pleased that your current rotation includes Paul Skeens. As expected, he was a bit better in his second career major league start. Not effectively wild, just effective. Held the Cubs hit list for six innings, 11 strikeouts, nasty stuff, struck out the first seven batters he faced, and they let him throw a hundred pitches. The Skeens era has officially arrived. Also, last time we talked about whether the career prospects of David Fletcher would be better as a knuckleballer than an infielder. Well, on Friday, Fletcher's career prospects took a hit either way. We knew he played some part in the fateful introduction of Ipi Mizuhara to the bookie he ended up betting with, but ESPN has now reported

that contrary to Fletcher's previous claims, he also placed bets with that bookie on several sports, which reportedly didn't include baseball. But because that was an illegal bookmaking operation, it sounds like Fletcher will now be investigated by MLB, another friend of Otani, more material for that Ipe TV show. ESPN also reported that another friend of Fletcher, the former minor leaguer Colby Schultz, did place bets on baseball, including Angels games that Fletcher played in. One follow-up for you. On a subject we answered an email about on episode 2160, the idea of furnishing players with destructible equipment

so that they wouldn't be tempted to kick or punch something and hurt themselves, listener Paul from British Columbia says, I very much enjoyed the conversation about the need to identify an article of clothing or equipment that could be used by players to vent their anger or frustration without risking injury to themselves or others. I'm old enough to remember the Führer when Damaso Garcia, then of the Blue Jays, burned his uniform after a game. At the time, I remember speculation that this was a brujeria practice, a kind of a cult tradition, but could never find reporting on this. Possibly it was Garcia's judgment that it was safer to light his uniform on fire and risk third-degree burns than to kick

a water cooler or punch a wall. Could this be a solution to both the pant issue and the need for an objet d'event? Well, I found some coverage of this, and apparently DeMaso Garcia did say, I was just frustrated with myself, frustrated with the way I've been playing. Some guys break bats, break up clubhouses. I just decided to go a little crazy and burn my uniform. And at that time, it wasn't even a protest about transparent pants. So yes, I guess he did see it as an alternative to smashing stuff. Less risk of broken bones, perhaps.

Of course, this solution introduces some potential fire safety issues. It requires some prep, too. You can't quite do it in the heat of the moment. Take some time to heat up your uniform. So it might not satiate every player's pressing, visceral need for violence. There's got to be a better way. Garcia, by the way, went 0 for 4 in that game, committed an error, which led to several runs being scored and a loss for the Jays. Some men just want to watch their uniforms burn. Garcia's teammate Tony Fernandez said, he did it out of frustration. Sometimes you're so frustrated, you don't know how to express that frustration. And

the best way for him to express that was by burning. Basically, he was saying to himself, I'm going bad with this uniform. I need a new uniform. I need to create something to break out of this problem. He never thought that could create such a controversy. Maybe it worked. He had a seven-game hit streak after that. He hit well the rest of that season, 86. He and his uniform were reborn like a phoenix from the flames. Lastly, let me pose a question to you on behalf of listener Daniel, who sent us this question.

It's a good one that I thought I would crowdsource. So he says, I was listening to the Cleveland radio broadcast of Tanner Piby's start against the Tigers on Wednesday when they announced that the batter requested a timeout and the ump granted it just as Bybee was starting his pitching motion. You can imagine what they said next because every announcer says it every time a timeout is called just as a pitcher is winding up. To paraphrase, you see a lot of injuries when that happens. Daniel says, I never really questioned the wisdom. I can imagine a pitcher being surprised trying to stop their motion, trying to aim differently or take something off mid windup.

It all seems like a possible injury factor, but I don't think I've ever seen or even heard of an injury in that particular situation. Maybe one time, like 30 years ago, someone slipped off the mound trying to stop his motion. I know everyone says there's no way you can look this up, but I'm pretty sure there's no way you can look this up. Is there even any anecdotal evidence of an uptick in pitching injuries or of any pitching injuries at all when a timeout is called? Is this secretly behind the pitcher injury crisis? And yeah, I've heard that broadcaster comment all my life. Have I ever seen someone suffer an injury because they were disrupted by a timeout? Not that I can recall. I'm sure it's happened. I'm sure someone listening to this remembers an instance. So if you do, please let us know and we will let Daniel know. Another thing you can do for us is support this podcast 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, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Alex Tolford, Caitlin Swiecka, Justin Coates, Morgan Gray, and Rick Glidden. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, discounts on merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships, and so much more. Prioritized email answers even. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the special Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, and intro and outro themes to podcast at fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms.

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We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week. Well, the curveballs bend and the home runs fly. More to the game than meets the eye. To get the stats compiled and the stories filed. Fans on the internet might get riled, but we can break it down on Effectively Wild.