Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 294: Answering Your Baseball Questions to the Best of Our Abilities

Episode Date: September 25, 2013

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about MVP debates, the future of soft-tossing pitcher, Hall of Fame voting, and more.

I want to ask you a bunch of questions, and I want to have them answered immediately. Good morning, and welcome to episode 294 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Ben Lindberg, hopefully sounding more cheerful today, joined by Sam Miller, as always. Hello. As always. Yes. Always.

Almost always. Pretty much nonstop-stop all day every day yeah we just we start recording at some point but we we keep a constant conversation going um okay so it's the listener email show so we have selected some questions and you're gonna read them yeah and i want to start just with a uh a reference to last week when we talked about players getting ejected mid play. And you mentioned, uh, one example that was brought up involving Justin Upton. We got another example that was brought up from Ed and it was, um, Steven Strasburg who, um, uh, was tossed quote, was tossed after he threw two wild pitches in a row behind Andrelton Simmons. It looks as if home plate umpire Marvin Hudson ejects him after the second wild pitch

while Strasburg is moving to cover the plate with the Braves runner on third coming home. Schaefer hasn't reached home yet before Strasburg is thrown out. MLB rule 4.07 says, When a manager, player, coach, or trainer is ejected from a game he shall leave the field immediately and take no further part in that game so had the Nats catcher been able to get the ball to Strasburg in time would Strasburg have been permitted to tag Schaefer or would the Braves be entitled to an unchallenged run because Strasburg was immediately out of the game and I don't have an answer for that but but what I do have is an unrelated example

of something different that Richard brought up, in which Benji Molina once homered but was pinch run for after reaching first base. And the story behind this was that he hit a home run, the umpires ruled it a single, emmanuel burris immediately ran out to pinch run for melina because melina slow and then the giants appealed the call and it was ruled a home run so then burris was on first and uh let me see if i can find the quote but burris circled the bases enthusiastically it was hilarious he said it was such weird play. You don't know how to react. I stood there at first base for a second when they said it was a home run. I asked first base coach Roberto Kelly, and I even asked the umpire,

does Benji come back and run for himself? Roberto kind of gave me a push, and the umpire told me to run. So I said, okay, I'll take it. And I just think that the answer to the Strasburg thing probably doesn't exist. Like, I get the feeling that in a lot of cases, these umpires... Just wing it. They really do just make it up. And, like, sometimes when we bring up a particularly strange play, or a particularly strange rule, I should say, in the rulebook...

Which seems to happen in every listener email show. You have to imagine that the reason that it's in there is because one time it happened they didn't know what to do so the umpires winged it and then they uh then they just put a rule in and it never happens again someone sent us an email about the the rule about distracting a batter right do you want to recap that uh there was a player um was it was it uh pesky was it uh no it was someone someone on the right side right um it was was it doer or could have been uh fielders distracting batters eddie stanky oh right yeah okay yeah uh eddie stanky is the culprit and even has the quote Stanky Maneuver

named after him and the amazing thing about the Stanky Maneuver which actually I believe is even the web link that he sent us even has pictures of him standing behind the pitcher kind of grumpily unless it's the umpire

yeah it's gotta be the umpire yeah I couldn't tell it looked like he was in some sort of pitcher's helper position, it looked like to me. But maybe, I don't know. Yeah, but the thing is that he started doing this, I think, in August. And they let him go the rest of the season before the rule was made. Yeah, it wasn't clear to me whether he kept doing it or not. the rule was made yeah it wasn't clear to me whether he kept doing it or not there was a that was that story was from august and then we we found out or the emailer told us that the the

rule was passed the following year so i don't yeah i don't know if he continued doing it consistently throughout that season or whether they they warned him to stop or something but theoretically you you could have kept doing it for for the last month or so of that season and theoretically you could go and see if there was an effect if you were looking for an unfiltered topic for tomorrow uh all right so let's get to the questions eric hartman uh asks how big a lead would i have to spot a low a team before you think they'd be likely to beat a major league team, presumably in one game? And I guess presumably at the start of the game, I mean, this would be how many runs you'd have to spot them at the start.

I was kind of thinking, like, would a one-run lead in the ninth, who would you bet on if they had a one-run lead going to the ninth? Who would you bet on if they had a one-run lead going to the ninth? Probably if the low-A team had a one-run. Probably, obviously, probably still the major leaguers, I think. Two-run lead in the eighth? Yep. Three-run lead in the seventh? Why don't we just increase the number and keep the inning as the ninth?

Wouldn't that be a more logical way to do this? I would, yeah, I would need, I don't know. I guess it would depend slightly on the pitcher, but cause you could get like, you could get some really advanced low a pitcher,

I guess who, you know, yeah, you could, but I mean, assume it's a normal low A team. Yeah, just a normal guy. It's not a stacked team, yeah. Yeah.

I guess a three-run lead, I would favor the low A team. In the seventh. In the ninth. But what about in the seventh? In the seventh? Well, why don't we just, why don't we do the start of the game? I think, well, because you and I have, it seems like, drastically different opinions about this.

And if we start at the start of the game and I give my opinion, then that will be apparent. Okay. Seventh inning. I don't know. six, seven runs. Wait a minute. If it were the seventh inning, you would bet on the major league team with, even if they were down by five? Uh, maybe.

Wow. See, I would bet. The gap is really pretty sizable. And I know that. Is it See, I would bet. The gap is really pretty sizable, and I know that. Is it, though? I think so. I would bet on the, see, now, I would bet on the minor league team, on the low A team, I would bet on them even if they were down. I think I would bet on them if they were up four to start the game.

Hmm. Because if you think about it, and you're the gap is is is big but i mean replacement level is like somewhere between double and triple a right yeah and so replacement level i mean a team that you know the team that wins 80 games an average team is like 30 30 wins better than i mean i don't know if trip i don't know if that's... Replacement level is like the best guy in AAA. No, that's not true. Yeah? No, no, no.

It's not the best guy in AAA. It's the freely available. It's the guy you can get at any point. Yeah. But, well, okay. Well, anyway, the point is that if a major league team is 30 wins better than replacement, roughly average, then that's, you know, two runs a game better than whatever the replacement level is. And, I don't know, I mean, it seems fair to maybe double that to go from, you know,

to go from replacement level down to low a maybe more but i don't know i feel somewhat confident that in a major league i mean in a in a professional baseball game that the difference over nine innings isn't that huge i mean i don't know if you i mean if you say that the low a team pitcher pitcher is like a batting practice pitcher. Well, he's not, though. Probably he's better than that. But even if he were a batting practice pitcher, you would still make outs from time to time.

Even if it were just a guy pumping it in there at 70-something or whatever, you would hit the ball hard at people now and then. And so it's not like it would just be turning over the lineup over and over and over again because no one would ever get out. But even if you hit the ball hard, there would be outs. I don't know. I feel like the World Baseball Classic has somewhat, to some degree, answered this. I mean, you see teams that have no business going up against major leaguers,

and they basically hold their own. And, I mean, that's not just an average major league team either. The Dominican team and the American team are all-star teams, basically. And they don't just dominate. This isn't basketball. I mean, well, I don't know. I feel like I wouldn't feel super confident betting on the minor league team up by four runs,

but I would feel more confident than betting on the major league team down by four runs. Okay. I don't know. What do you think the average level of a WBC team is like one of the smaller ones? Below low A, but I would say it's below professional. I mean, one of the really small ones. Like what would the Netherlands be? Yeah, I don't know.

I would guess the Netherlands might be the netherlands might be high i think it would be higher yeah i wouldn't put him at double a i'd have to look at the rosters you would yeah neither of us watch the wbc all that closely you only know like four guys on the roster though so that's all you need to look at you just you you don't know you don't know them there's a reason you don't know them yeah okay didn't all right don't know him. There's a reason you don't know him. Yeah. Okay. All right. There have been exhibition games.

Didn't the Yankees play like Virginia Tech? A 17-year-old girl struck out Babe Ruth, dude. I don't know about that. No. I've heard some things about that. All right. Well, I think you're wrong. Okay. All right. Well, I think you're wrong. Okay.

All right. Josh asks, I'm guessing that teams like the Indians would be much more inclined to rethink their names and logos if free agents started saying those things are offensive and I don't want to play for you. Or if a smart front office type goes to work for the Cardinals over Cleveland and reveals his decision was partially based on being uncomfortable with the logo and or name. Do you ever see something like that happening? Are there ballplayers out there who avoid Cleveland and the Braves because they consider the name logo Tomahawk Chop to be offensive? What are the chances someone out there has Cleveland on his no trade list simply because he doesn't want to wear that logo on his body? Later skaters um thank you for the question josh uh it seems to me unlikely that there's a player out there who secretly has that as a well do you think of a player i haven't even heard have you ever heard a player speak out about either of those issues of those teams i've never heard of that i mean i don't yeah i don't think i have so the the question is if there was a player who who felt strongly about this or even felt mildly about it mildly enough that it you know changed

his decision at all would you you'd expect him to say something right because it doesn't have any power if you don't say anything it's a silent boycott is is not valuable at all you need to write a letter to the company and explain to them that you're not buying their product so presumably if we've never heard of this that presumably there is no player for whom this has ever been a factor uh i don't know i i could see a player caring a little bit but not enough to you know i mean anyone who says that would have to care a lot about it because the attention that he would get and the questions he would have to answer and the media would descend on him

and he'd have to care enough about it, feel strongly enough about it to put up with all the extra attention and all the extra interviews and then it would be weird when he played the Indians and the Braves maybe so I could see a player being against it,

but not against it so much that he would say anything. And probably not against it so much that it would dictate his choice of team either. I'm a little surprised that we don't hear about players making stands against maybe particular owners. I mean a lot of these owners have politically staked positions. They're rich guys who put their money into various causes. I'm surprised that you've never heard a player kind of take on his owner's politics. It's partly that baseball is fairly apolitical.

Yeah. I would say more than other sports. And it's also fairly conservative, much more than other sports, except golf. Although you do hear golfers talk politics a lot more than you hear baseball players talk politics. I've never heard a golfer talk about anything. I see. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think there are a lot of political activists in clubhouses.

I don't know. They don't have time. They're professional baseball players. Do you think anybody, any player has opted not to sign with Arizona or has added Arizona to a no-trade clause because of their immigration laws? Because you did hear some players speak out against that, and that's a thing where you could maybe argue that it's not even a purely political thing. If you're a Latin American ballplayer, yeah, I mean, I guess you could see it as a political thing, but not a pure left-right political thing.

So do you suppose there are any players who've done that? That's more plausible to me. I wouldn't be shocked to hear that. Do you think that in 50 years there would be any players that, I mean, if the Indians keep their name and logo for the next 50 years, I mean, if the Indians keep their name and logo for the next 50 years, would you expect to ever hear a single player take a stand like Josh is suggesting? Yeah, I think it's probably unlikely that they'll keep it that long. Right. You would, well, given sort of the political makeup of players, you would think that in baseball, the players are unlikely to be the... The vanguard, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like in football, you could maybe see it a little more. In basketball, I think you could see it a little more, maybe. But baseball is different. Yeah, I don't know.

If it got to the point where if you played for the Indians and the Braves, you would be shunned or something for not standing up about it, then I could see people having it affect their decision. But by the time it gets to that point, I would think the team would have just changed it anyway. So I don't really expect the movement to find a voice inside a clubhouse michael asks assuming average pitcher velocity continues to rise will this eliminate pitchers who do not throw hard for the game or will it lead to a new renaissance of soft tossing pitchers because hitters aren't used to facing them it's an interesting question um

my initial thought was was that there might be something to that that the rarer something gets the more the more value there is to to doing that thing um but i'm not sure it applies here because a pitcher who throws hard can also throw slowly, right? Or at least you could find guys who can do both. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think there would be a renaissance of soft tossing i i just think that uh there might be some slight benefit uh that soft tossers would get in a hard throwing league compared to what soft tossers would get in a non hard throwing league do you think that our british listeners i don't actually know what tosser means but in we do occasionally find out that we're accidentally swearing in other

countries yes it's are we right now swearing in great britain uh yeah or something close to that i think i don't remember uh what was the other one recently where someone in australia told us that we were we were saying something that was not what we uh so anyway what i'm saying is that uh rootability rootability i don't know what that means means sexually attractive in Australia no kidding alright so while there might be

some counter programming benefit to a person who doesn't throw hard if everybody else is throwing differently than them I think that generally speaking there is a pretty strong almost one you know almost almost one-to-one correlation between throwing harder and being better um so i i just think that slow pitchers would just get left in the dust so like they

would get like five percent advantage uh and but lose like 95% in the other direction. It would just be bad. And even if this were the case, even if this were significant, you would merely find some sort of balance where if it went all the way to an extreme, then there might be a couple of guys who benefited on the slow end. But then if there was a renaissance in which you saw 30 guys on the slow end or 60 guys on the slow end, it would completely negate the outlier effect or the counter-programming benefit and it would disappear again. So even if this were the case, you wouldn't see a renaissance. You just might see three or four quirks.

Soft tossers might turn into knuckleballers, for instance, where you see two or three at once, but never anymore. But I wouldn't expect it would be nearly the effect that knuckleballers have. Yeah. Agreed. All right. Aaron asks a question about Hall of Fame voting. Do you think that, and he compares it to NFLfl where apparently all the eligible voters meet the day before the super bowl in a room together all eligible players have a voting member make a case for each player and then they discuss it as a group and take a final vote do you think getting all the bbwaa together and putting them in a room to discuss the merits of each player would make a

difference in how the outcome would be particularly in this age where battle lines are so clearly drawn between letting in PED players or keeping them out. Face-to-face discussion and strong cases for or against may make inclusion different than how the outcomes currently are going. Maybe a mob mentality would push one side to the other. Curious on your thoughts. So I guess the question is, basically, do you think that the format of debate where all the debate currently takes place in snarky columns and not so snarky columns, but basically all the debate is happening in column form where people are in a strange way, they are not speaking to the other voters

except accidentally. They are essentially speaking primarily the other voters except accidentally. They are essentially speaking primarily to a huge mass of people who don't get to vote in order to maybe have some sway over the few who do. It's an inefficient way of changing minds. There's some cross-pollination. I mean, writers talk to each other. I was just at Yankee Stadium, and someone was talking about how he had

been discussing MVP races with, with a bunch of other writers and, and was it Annie McCullough? Yes. And, and, uh, and that they hadn't, didn't necessarily have the same philosophy on those things. So, so yeah, it was, uh, I mean, there's, there's some discussion that goes on there I guess people maybe would tend to congregate like I don't think people are choosing who to hang out with based on their Hall of Fame philosophies

but maybe if there's some sort of age breakdown to it that you tend to have the younger guys hanging out together because they came up as writers together and the old school guys hanging out together because they've been on the beat forever or whatever. I don't know. I mean, I think probably people don't care quite as much about this as you would infer that they care from what they write.

You mean voters don't care. Yeah. Yeah. You know, because it can get kind of heated at times online or on Twitter. And I feel like if you put people in a room, there wouldn't be like a fist fight or anything. It would probably be a pretty civil discussion. And I don't know whether you'd be any more likely to change minds about it. Maybe if you had a really persuasive speaker or something, but I don't know. I don't think so. Yeah, I would be extremely surprised to find out that anybody's

mind was changed by a presentation or a panel discussion, uh, in a room. I don't think anybody ever changes anybody's mind with, with, with, uh, argument and debate. I really genuinely just, I don't think that's how the human brain works. I think, I think we change our opinions by subtle peer peer pressure that we don't even appreciate is, is happening. And we, we just sort of essentially, you know, follow the, we follow what we think is the norm behavior among the people that we align ourselves with. And so in a way, the column approach works because it really does. I mean, everybody has these sort of signifiers on which side they're on in larger arguments, and then they say what they think about the smaller arguments.

And I think that subtly shifts people's minds. You mentioned Andy and the MVP vote, and he mentioned in a tweet today that he thought that the Cabrera-Trout debate last year killedvp voting debates forever or he said something along the lines of it yeah took all the fun out of them forever or something like that and i think that's kind of true too i was asked the other day um on like a radio thing about trout or cabrera and like i just all i had just hung up oh yeah all i had in me was a heavy sigh like i it really feels like things changed last year because you realize, like, you know, it's not really, like, people are intractable.

Yeah, well, could I say something? Because we literally just received an email, breaking news, as we recorded this, from Michael in Philly, who said, simple question, would players on non-contending teams receive more consideration for the MVP award if the word valuable was not present? If it were called most outstanding player award or best player award.

And Jonah Carey on his podcast last week, I guess, had Susan Slusser on. And they talked about, you know, she is the Baseball Writers Association of America president. That is one of her roles. And so Jonah asked about this and whether she thought the definition should be clarified and left less ambiguous. And she said that she likes the ambiguity because it inspires great debates every year. And I might feel the same way if I were in her position. I mean, it might be a good thing for the Baseball Writers Association that there is this debate every year. But the debates aren't great, I don't think. Maybe occasionally you have an interesting argument for a player or against a player, but for the most part, it's rehashing the same stances time after time and adapting it slightly.

And I believe the playoffs should matter, and I don't believe the playoffs should matter. And there's no bridging that gap, really. and there's no bridging that gap, really. So I would be in favor of changing the word valuable, I think. It's just more trouble than it's worth, really. Yeah, my issue with the word valuable is I don't like laws that are selectively enforced, because to me it feels like if you have laws that are selectively enforced, it's basically a way that you can, you know, you can use something to your benefit if you want to and you can ignore it if you don't.

And it creates this kind of confusion for everybody in the society, right? And I feel like with the valuable thing, it's a word that is, you know, can mean everything if you want it to and it can mean nothing if you want it to. And people, you know, there's it can mean nothing if you want it to. There's no real consistency in how people use it. That's my big problem with the word valuable. It's very easy for me to look at the word valuable and just go, oh, well, that's a nonsense word. It's just a proxy for the word best. I don't mind it being there. I mind it being deployed some years by some people and then not deployed by the same people the next year.

It's too squishy. I guess I don't like the squishiness of it particularly. I don't mind seeing the same arguments every year. I just mind that they're not going to change anybody's mind. I feel like the thing that last year just showed was how pointless it is to actually debate. Nobody changes their minds at all. It's possible that readers are being persuaded. We're talking about it as if writers are just writing to other writers who have votes. There are people reading these things. And I mean, you know, if you if you reach an

impressionable person at the right point, and he, he or she happens to see a certain column that has a certain viewpoint, maybe that could change your mind here and there, I would think. Probably. But, yeah, I don't know. I'm pretty tired of it. I haven't heard anything new in a while. If there was something new, great. But there's nothing new. It's the same arguments rehashed, and many of them are good arguments,

and I've heard them all. Yeah. I mean, what could possibly even be new even even the players aren't new now no exactly players now uh so now we're down to arguing about like some slight circumstances that have changed in their situation since since last year it's it's like a whole new level of pointlessness. And there is not some greater cause that this is building to. For a while in my life, it felt like this all really mattered and that when the right pitcher would win the Cy Young

and the right MVP would win the MVP, the world would change or something. But this is actually not about anything bigger at all. It's just about an award that is often given to the wrong person and the world forgets. Why do we even have to pick one player? They're all really good. All these guys are really good.

Why does it have to be just one? I don't know. I don't know either. Okay. Well, that's probably the last time we will talk about the MVP race on this podcast this year. I will bet you $1 million it is not. It has to be. I told Andy that we wouldn't.

Yeah. that we wouldn't yeah well the worst thing really the very very worst thing about it is that i will still get sucked into at least one day where i i forget that i don't care about this and i start tweeting out things i mean it's so hard to go the entire awards season yeah without without thinking like ah i've got the tweet that'll end all tweets yep like you just you're oh you get and then you this is the jack morris killer right here you immediately hate it like as soon as it's on there you hate yourself yeah and and and and so then you're like okay fine i i regret that i won't do it again and you get 35 replies and like 16 of them are so dumb that you have to reply to them. And then you're,

then you're engaged in a little bit of a, Oh, I tweeted a joke the other night about Joey Votto when he was intentionally walked and something about how he had a passive approach or whatever. And I felt so, so ashamed when I refreshed my timeline and there were like 10 identical jokes about Joey Votto from everyone else on my

feed and it just I don't think I've tweeted since so I have more breaking news a person from my fantasy league just picked up

Jose Fernandez Jose Fernandez. Jose Fernandez is available? For the playoffs. Well, he's out for the season. It's not a keeper league. Oh, and so it's just a gesture of some sort? No, no, no. Just an ignorant owner.

The best kind of fantasy owner. She needed a better pitcher. She went and she sorted based on who had the best kind of fantasy owner she needed a better pitcher she went and she sorted based on who had the best year amazing how fortuitous that he was just sitting there on the waiver wire one of the best pitchers in baseball all right uh last question very last question guy asks uh about foul balls off a batter's body during an at-bat. If pain causes an adrenaline rush in the brain and adrenaline increases focus, vision, strength, and speed, do you think it's possible that a hitter has a better chance

of hitting the ball hard immediately after fouling a pitch off his foot, leg, or other body part, assuming no deeper injury that could inhibit the swing? I'm guessing that the pain would supersedeede the adrenaline i don't know it's it's a question that i'd i'd like to ask someone who might have an informed opinion about it but i would think that the pain itself would be so distracting uh or actually impairing the player that that that would outstrip any benefit that you'd get from increased focus or or something yeah i'm not sure that adrenaline is good for a batter i mean it seems like it would be based on guy's description of what adrenaline does but

i feel like i kind of want to just take the word of players who talk about how important it is to be to be calm and to be within yourself and not be too amped um so i would guess i would guess that between between that idea and basically the the sort of idea that they are afraid of being hurt again that they would want to avoid pain and therefore uh it would affect their kind of desire to swing at the next pitch would make it unlikely that Guy's reasonable hypothesis would pan out. Yeah. Although I guess you'd have a problem if you ever tried to analyze that because there's always the cliche when a batter fouls a ball off himself that the pitcher is going to come right back in there, right? That's always what the announcer says, going to come right back in there. So you'd have sort of a sampling problem

if you ever actually watched video and attempted to study that, because maybe there would be a higher proportion of pitches in, I don't know, low and inside after that. Yeah, there would be. Maybe you could compare them to other low and inside pitches though. Yeah, you could do that. Yeah, there would be. Maybe you could compare them to other low and inside pitches, though. Yeah, you could do that. Alright, well, that's the show. We'll be back tomorrow.