Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 308: Playoff Banter Plus Listener Emails

Episode Date: October 16, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss the latest action in a pitching-dominated postseason, then answer emails about power outages, platoon splits, and more.

The lights go down, I want you baby The lights go down, I need you baby The lights go down, and there's no one around Morning and welcome to episode 308 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from BaseballPerspectives.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. We are going to do as we did last week and split our email show into two nights and fill the first half of each night with a playoff banter. Ben, how are you? Okay. So you didn't read my recap yet, I assume?

I did. Okay. So yesterday we had talked about whether there was any real sort of method to try to determine whether it is the pitchers or the hitters to blame for this string of incredible pitching performances that we're seeing from the Tigers. And I kind of attempted to do that. And so I wanted to just mention that because we had talked about it and see if you thought there was really any validity at all to it.

Well, do you want to describe what your methodology was? And people should just go read it if they subscribe to Baseball Perspectives, which they should do. But if not? Yeah, sure. So it's limited what I was able to look at, particularly in a fairly short period of time. But I figured if – I wanted to figure out a way to differentiate between the pitches that the pitcher tried to make and then the pitches that were kind of mistakes. And if he made the pitch that he intended to make that was like his pitch, I give him full credit

and decide that you can't penalize the offense for not hitting the pitcher's pitch. But if you can identify the mistakes and the offense isn't hitting those mistakes, that that's on them. And also that you could sort of see whether the pitcher is actually making fewer mistakes than he usually would. So basically identified where the starters' secondary pitches are intended to be based on patterns. And I think that it's, maybe it's a leap, but I don't think it's that much of a leap.

I think that it's, maybe it's a leap, but I don't think it's that much of a leap. Based on kind of general pitching strategy and, you know, what I've been told, I think that you can basically assume that, like, almost all of a pitcher's sliders are supposed to end up in a fairly small zone, and anything that's not in that zone is probably a mistake, and to some degree the same with change-ups and to some degree with curveballs so i looked at um where for instance max scherzer's slider is supposed to be with the presumption that it's always supposed to be in roughly the same place and then uh saw how often he missed that area and i did that for all the secondary pitches that each pitcher made um ignored fastballs so there's there's a big part of a pitcher's performance that I didn't do this for. You could conceivably do it by looking at the catcher's setup for every pitch,

but that was too much. And as it turns out, the Tigers' three starters over the last three days have missed their targets with secondary pitches exactly as often as expected and uh those mistakes calling them mistakes uh the red sox have basically had 75 or or 80 mistakes on secondary pitches that they could have done something with and they've done nothing there uh in those 80 pitches that missed the you know the target um they have not had a single hit on those. So they basically, I thought it was the conclusion as much as there was one, and there probably wasn't one, but the conclusion as much as there was one

is that the Tigers pitchers have been basically as good as they always are, at least with their secondary pitches, and the Red Sox have had lots of chances to hit baseballs and have not hit any baseballs. Yeah, I found it pretty convincing. I mean, you mentioned the things that it wouldn't capture, and those things could be important, but I don't know how else to do it quickly. At least I considered doing something like it in Zach Greinke's last start because his command seemed so good.

And as I was watching just kind of casually, it seemed like he really wasn't missing the target by much at all. And so I thought maybe I'll go back and I'll watch every pitch and I'll see how many he missed the target on and I'll set some amount that he missed the target by and I'll classify each pitch as a miss or a hit. Ultimately, I'd... You're making some interesting noises over there. Am I?

Yeah. What are the noises? What does it sound like? Just some static sounds. Oh, sorry. Stop now. It's a mouse. Okay.

So ultimately, I didn't do that, not because it would have been that much work really, but because I don't think the results would have been conclusive. I wouldn't have known what his baseline for hitting the target was, so I would have had nothing to compare it to. I could have guessed whether it was better than average or not, but I wouldn't have really known. So there isn't really a great way to do that,

I guess, unless you have that command FX technology that tracks the catcher's glove. But otherwise, I mean, with the data that we have available on short notice with a quick turnaround, I thought it was pretty good. I'd kind of like to see it for every other playoff team now because really none of them is hitting. kind of like to see it for every other playoff team now because really none of them is hitting yeah no it's true and the yeah you're right i mean the big thing is that even if you know i mean you don't know that pitcher's command profile you also don't really know the average pitcher's command profile i mean if you actually wanted to do this by hand it would be it would be impossible yeah and you'd have no the other thing is that that you can't necessarily take as a given

that the catcher's target is the catcher's target. It's certainly suggestive. It's the best information that we have. But there's all sorts of reasons that catchers don't necessarily set up A, exactly where they want it, and B, with any idea that the pitcher's going to hit that exact spot i mean basically the catcher in a lot of cases is just giving a general zone the cap that the pitch is supposed to go to um and uh you know like for instance if a pitcher has a lot of movement on his you know a ton of movement on his two seamer is the catcher setting up where he

wants the pitcher to start the ball or where he wants the pitcher to, you know, to where he wants the pitch to end up. Um, you know, a catcher might find that for some pitchers, it's better to set up, uh, you know, kind of closer to the middle of the plate and let the natural movement carried away. So, uh, I'm not even sure that you could do it with the targets. Yeah. Okay, so you watched the Tigers-Red Sox game. You asked me the other day which pitcher I thought was more effective in the Sanchez game, right? Yeah. Which pitcher did you think was more effective in the Red Sox-Tigers game?

I did not ask you that. I asked you who was more effective between Sanchez and Scherzer. Oh, yes, that's right. Okay, so who was, well, which starter was more effective tonight? Because they were both pretty good. I thought that Verlander looked slightly better. He usually does look better, at least. He's Verlander.

He's handsome. Yes. Yeah. And John Lackey's not. He's lost some weight, but there's only so much you can do with what he's working with. Yeah, I mean, they both looked great. I watched Lackey for a few years closely, and I don't think I've necessarily ever seen him look that good. That was really something.

Yeah. Um, well, I, I watched the Dodgers Cardinals game and it was like a, it felt like a high offense game. It was 4-2 and there were actual home runs. People hit the ball over the fence. It felt like 99 cores or something. But in the end, it was 4-2, which is generally considered a pitcher's duel or close to it. But it's kind of a lot of runs for this postseason. And you updated the median pitching line for October in your recap of that game, and it got even better since the Mike Miner line you quoted yesterday. It did.

I feel like I must have made it. I also looked at what the average game score is now, 59. The median game score is now 59, and I looked at what a 59 game score has done in the regular season, and it's like 630 winning percentage for the team, which is basically like every starting pitcher is now like 100 and, you know, turning their team into a 101-win team, basically, and they're doing it against postseason offenses.

So I feel like I should probably, before I go to bed, I should double-check my playex search because that seems high. Does it not seem high to you? It's high, but not shockingly so. I mean, we're seeing 1-0 games every night. But I'm just talking the median. The median is really, I mean, the teams, they're like 250 and 100 with a game score of 59. That's a huge winning percentage.

Yeah. Maybe. I don't know. And yet the starters who pitch best often aren't winning these games. Did you think you'd see Carlos Marmol in a two-run game this postseason? I wrote down in my notes, Carlos Marmol pitching in the playoffs? Verbatim, that's what I wrote. Because it was so surprising to see him in a close game, fairly high leverage.

I mean, not that high leverage, because at that point, the odds are very much against the losing team coming back. But still, seeing Marmmel. But he was okay. Yeah, it's a little bit of an optical illusion where a two-run lead is not nearly as close as it seems when you're trailing by two. Yeah, yeah. Russell Carlton wrote an article about that, about whether it makes sense to use your closer when you're like one run down or something because you could come back.

And he found that even one run down, the odds are very much against a comeback. Yeah, yeah. So. Yeah, Oral Hershiser was like crushing Manning for that decision basically on the radio and saying, you you gotta you just gotta play for today tomorrow you know if you're going down 3-1 you gotta you gotta treat today like a must win and you worry about tomorrow tomorrow

and you just you have to do everything you can to win today but I mean obviously there's a point where that's not true if he was down 10-1 I don't think Oral would be saying bring in Brian Wilson so yeah 4-2 is not as close as as probably it felt. But also it did seem sort of odd.

Yeah. I just didn't expect Marmo to pitch at all. Nope, me neither. So is there a takeaway from this incredible pitching that we've seen so far? Does it mean anything? Shadows? so far? Does it mean anything? Shadows? That certainly seemed to be the case in the one start that I wrote about, the afternoon start at Bush, where the Shadows were in between the mound and home plate, or they were covering the whole infield, and that seems like a factor. It is interesting,

because, yeah, I mean, it's not like these are all pitching and defense teams either. I mean, the Tigers and the Red Sox, I think, led the AL in OPS Plus. And the Cardinals and the Dodgers, I think, might have led the NL in OPS Plus. Yeah, they're definitely the two best offenses. So these are basically the four best offenses in baseball. This is not, like, if it were the Pirates and the Orioles or something in the playoffs, you could expect something like normal offense or less. But yeah, I mean, these are elite offensive teams.

Maybe there's just no such thing as an elite offensive team right now. I don't know. It kind of bothers me because I feel like it supports the pitching and defense win in the playoffs narrative, which I don't really subscribe to. I mean, those things do win in the playoffs, but offense wins in the playoffs too. Offense is good. Scoring runs is good. But all these low-scoring games, I feel like, is just kind of reinforcing the idea that

offense is irrelevant and all that matters is having aces and good defenses, even though the aces have not won some of these games despite pitching well. It feels like a large number of games have turned on home runs. These close games have turned on home runs. And so that's kind of nice as a narrative buster. And so that's kind of nice as a narrative buster. Not that anybody who peddles the no homers narrative will remember this in a year. But there have been a lot of, you know, like today's game, solo shot in an otherwise offenseless game was all the difference. Yesterday's game, it was essentially the Red Sox sitting around doing nothing until they got a big home run.

That's happened quite a bit. Yeah, and Matt Holliday's homer tonight, although that was the first homer in this series, and in the first three games of the series, you could say that it was mental mistakes or defensive mistakes that allowed teams to score past balls, and people not getting in proper fielding position or not getting good jumps on fly fly balls seemed to be a pivotal place but yeah the first game turned on a on a carlos

beltron double that was you know missed being a home run by like a foot so yeah there's not a huge distinction there although you could argue that uh you know a team the dodgers could have won if they'd had a real center fielder uh and I guess there have been, in the series that I'm recapping at least, there have been a lot of mental mistakes or lapses in judgment by veterans, which is interesting because you kind of hear broadcasters tie themselves into knots explaining how that happens. Because if Puig makes a mistake or something, or someone young who's in his first playoffs,

it's so, it's his first playoffs, he's young, the nerves got to him, whatever. But we've seen pretty terrible base running plays by Daniel Descalso and Nick Puto, like the ultimate scrapper, veteran, know-how guy. So I don't know what that means, but I guess it kind of... Yeah, nothing. But Russell also wrote an article about the value

of previous postseason experience and found that there wasn't any, really. So I guess that sort of supports that yeah all right uh email uh sure okay um good okay do you have it i have a couple here okay well i want to there's one that i want to get to because um a couple weeks ago i actually emailed it to us to try to get you to answer it. Oh, no. Yeah, you refused. And then randomly this week, two people asked almost the exact same question.

So Michael says, what if baseball were played until a team scored a set amount of runs, five runs, ten runs, whatever, instead of the current construct of trying to score more runs than your opponent while exhausting a finite number of outs, he asks how that would change the game. And then Dan Brooks independently writes, in 1857, under the Knickerbocker rules, which governed until 1872, the current nine-inning format was adopted, replacing the previous rule that the first team to score 21 runs won. So, of course, 21 runs to win is absurdly high for the modern game. What if the total was something like four? Games would continue until one team scored four. If the visiting team reached four or greater,

the home team would have the opportunity to exceed or match the total. If the latter occurred, the rules would change to the current extra innings format. There'd be no extra innings because the concept of a nine-inning game would be erased if it took 15 innings to get to four. So be it. Four seems right because it would mean that all Grand Slams were effectively game-winning hits and seemed close enough to the current nine-inning total length of games to not vary too wildly. What would happen to baseball?

And my question was actually slightly different. My question was if the rule was that you played until a certain number of runs and the home team got to decide before the game what that number was going to be, what you thought the most common number would be. So I guess I'm more interested in my question. I'm more interested in the other people's question. Yeah, okay.

Well, what do you think about the idea? Well, would you, I guess, would you start with your closer? Would you even have starting closers anymore? I mean, you wouldn't want anyone to go through the lineup more than, it depends how many runs you're playing to, but if you, if you're playing to, well, I don't know. The idea of leverage, the idea of leverage would be completely turned upside down. Yeah. Right.

So if the question is when would let the high leverage kind of kick in, would it be from the first out? Because four runs is really that, that can happen in a flash. Yeah. Right. Yeah. first out because four runs is really that that can happen in a flash yeah um good right yeah but on the other hand maybe you wait until they have you know two i guess i don't know i mean you you wouldn't be able to use your closer every day or your best pitcher every day so is there is there any time that's more valuable than than any other time would you wait until until they allow until they have three before they have three before the high leverage kicks in, or does it start from the first pitch?

It seems like it might start from the first pitch. Yeah, I think it would start pretty early. And I don't know, if you're playing to four runs, was Dan saying that the length of the game would be roughly equivalent to nine innings? I feel like it would be, well, it might be. Well, on average. Yeah, I guess it might be if you were using your best pitchers at the start of the game and trying to prevent people from scoring, then it would take a while to get to four,

whereas, well, yeah, I don't know. Maybe you would just have to kind of revolutionize rotations and just not have starters so much and just have people pitching as often as they possibly could. I guess there'd be a lot of value in having rubber-armed pitchers who could just go day after day and be effective. Yeah, I don't think you'd have anything like the current situation where you'd expect a pitcher to pitch as long as he could because that model is based on the idea that you have to make it through a long season and because of that you're willing to absorb a certain number of games

where four, five, six runs are scored. You throw a starter out there for seven innings and you sort of accept that you're going to get four or five, you know, probably in that game unless he's super, super on. But you do it because there's too many innings to go, you know, all out every game. If you were playing to a score like four, then four would be automatic death. You just couldn't afford to let a guy pitch seven innings and give up three runs. It just would be, the margin would be too small. So I think it would be all, you know, at most you probably would see guys on average pitching three or four innings, maybe occasionally

more if he was super on, but probably not. So would you carry more pitchers or fewer pitchers? I think more. I think you'd carry aers or fewer pitchers? I think more. I think you'd carry a lot more. I mean, I think you'd carry a ton more mainly because the average game would no longer be, I mean, the average, the median game might be nine innings but roughly half the games, if it's scaled to the standard game,

then half the games would go longer than nine. Half the games would basically go extra innings. Every game could go 30 innings or something. We see games go extra innings with fewer than four runs scored all the time. Just think about every 1-0 game. Tonight, how long would that game have gone if you had to score four? So basically every day would be a potential 15 to 25 inning game. So yeah, tons of pitchers.

Even with a 25 man roster, I could see carrying two bench position players, like basically a catcher who can do a bunch of other things and an emergency catcher who can do a bunch of other things. And that's it. who can do a bunch of other things. And that's it. This baseball sounds bad. I love it. I don't want this baseball. So that's for you.

I mean, the downside is just that you would, you know, you'd have a lot of games end in 20 minutes. That would just really suck. Like, there's no real logistics for how to have i guess i i mean boxing has that but boxing has you know entire cards right so there's like six fights in a night or whatever um the main event is you know it's a bummer when it goes only one round but at least you've had a whole night of activity before that as i understand it at least but baseball there's no really logistical way for bringing in 30,000 people

and then telling them to go home in 15 minutes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So what would the home team generally pick if they had the choice? What would be the most common number? Probably a really low number, right? Because players wouldn't want to play 30 innings. Well, but on the other hand, the longer the game goes, the more likely the true talent is going to emerge.

And if the home team has the edge, the longer the game, the more their edge grows. If they have the edge in every inning, then a 30-inning game is much more likely to benefit them than a three-inning game. Yeah, but the home team is only going to have the edge in every inning, then a 30-inning game is much more likely to benefit them than a three-inning game. Yeah, but the home team is only going to have the edge half the time. No, the home team has the edge in every inning. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, it seems like more of a collective bargaining issue because I don't think players would want to play long games or have the potential to play long games but if it were decided by a general manager who put a team together then yeah i guess i guess that seems like about the right balance what did you say seven i said seven yeah sure something in that range seven's a you know it's a it's a lucky number it's a uh it's a it's a it's a number with baseball history i mean seven or nine or three would make the most sense right yeah i guess sure all right okay which one did you want you got that question answered uh, I wanted to mention quickly this question from Tim. Do you think that Carlos Beltran would have taken less offense if Puig had run hard out of the box and ended up with an inside the park home run?

You could, I mean, Puig made it to third standing up, so you could make the case that if he had been busting it out of the box, he might have made it around the bases. So in this case, maybe his watching his triple helped the Cardinals. I think that Beltran would have taken less offensive if he had caught the ball. I think that it was mostly just a little bit of a petty, envious response to it. It was just a way of complaining about something that didn't go Beltran's way. So I think if he had caught the ball, then nobody would have said anything. Well, maybe because it's Puig that they would have, but I think Beltran probably was annoyed that,

A, that was a big play, and B, it's not that Beltran misplayed it exactly, but a little bit where the ball took a funny hop on him and he had to run after it like a darn fool. So I just think he was venting more than anything. I feel like no hitter goes from looking lost to looking locked in more quickly than Puig. And I don't know whether it's,

whether it's deceptive and I'm just reading into it or not, because when he started the series, whatever it was, oh, for 10 was six strikeouts. Everyone said, Oh, Puig looks lost.

And, and he did, I mean, he was chasing pitches that he sort of had chased earlier in the season. And I did that article when he started laying off those pitches and started taking some walks. And it seemed like a really clear change in approach. And then the first couple of games here, he was lunging and chasing at those pitches again. And it sort of seemed like he would just swing at anything and you could get him out really easily and then all of a sudden

he stopped doing that and it was like you could almost just see the moment when he decided to stop or figure it out how to stop and he took this took this close pitch I think it was like a 2-2 curve or something from Wainwright. And he just let it go. And he was like talking to himself and smiling at the bench saying like, yeah, I'm not, I'm not swinging at those anymore. And then suddenly he,

he just looked locked in and got a couple of hits tonight. And maybe I'm completely, completely imagining it, but just kind of reading body language and reading approach. It's really easy to look at him and feel like you can kind of tell whether he's whether he has a good approach or doesn't well you gotta you ought to test yourself you ought to from this point on yeah you ought to uh before he comes up you should study his body language and predict whether he's going to get a hit or not

and uh then see if you're better at predicting than in a random chance. Unfortunately, we might have a one-game sample to test myself, but maybe I'll – You could do it next year. You could do it all year. Yeah, maybe I will. I think I would guess that this is more of a diagnosis issue than an actual epidemic. of a diagnosis issue than an actual epidemic. I would guess that this is probably mostly due to the fact that any time Puig is doing well or not doing well, you hear about it. I feel like I hear about every slump he has and people talking about how the league has made an adjustment or whatever. I hear about every hot streak he has and people talking about how the league has made an adjustment or whatever. And I hear about every hot streak he has and people talking about what a phenom he is.

So you're very aware of the shifts in a way that you're not aware of the shifts that Juan Francisco goes through or something like that. And also, since you have looked at him in detail, you are also able to diagnose him to some degree. So you're probably self-diagnosing or not self-diagnosing, but diagnosing on your own more than you would for a normal hitter that you haven't looked at. Yeah, probably. I don't know whether I'm diagnosing more accurately or not, but yeah. Um, were there any questions that you wanted to get to? Cause I, I had one more. Go ahead. Well, this was the question that you responded and said that you wanted to answer. Oh, shoot. This one's a little bit of a long one.

Let's do this one tomorrow. Okay. I have one that I think is a good one for tonight because it's time. Sure. So this is from Wes who says, watching the Red Sox Tigers in a power delay, I couldn't help but wonder what's the rule on a power outage in the middle level play. Imagine we're in the 25th inning at midnight. Tigers down by three with the bases loaded. Two outs. Miguel pops up. The lights go out. Nobody can find the ball and it turns into an infield grand slam. Does it stand? Do they replay the pitch? Dead ball single. So I spent

about 25 minutes searching for every keyword I could think of that might lead to an answer in the rules book, and I couldn't. I mean, there are lots of sections about lights and power outages, and none address interruption of play mid-play. In fact, nothing that I could find at all addresses interruption of play mid-play, player injury where we've we've talked about in the past the player has the right to any base that he has the right to if he's injured but um it doesn't seem to be addressed which leads me to think that um uh well it probably leads me to think that it would be considered uh like ballpark failure the same way that like if the ball hits the bullpens you know the bullpen bench or something like that it it's a dead ball and the umpire has some discretion

uh i would feel like almost anything that's super weird uh the umpire would have a tremendous amount of discretion although you know in a situation where uh an entire series is hinging on it there would be a lot of pressure on them to not just simply declare some rule arbitrarily. But I'm curious what you think would be the most appropriate. What would you want to see happen? Or if you were the umpire, what would you do if there was no guidance from the rule of thumb? Do over?

Do over entire pitch? The question is, when does the play like how far along does the play have to be before you no longer do it over i mean what if you hit a line drive down the right field line for you know a double or a certain double maybe a triple and it's in the corner you wouldn't do over at that point once the play is sort of determined. So how far along would the play have to be before you would say it stands and simply use umpire's discretion to figure out what the result would have been? Well, I don't know. It would vary based on the play, but I guess just kind of the point where the outcome is no longer in doubt, really, right?

And that could be different points depending on the play, but yeah, I mean, if the ball is down and it's clearly going to be a hit already, I guess there, there could be a question about whether the guy's going to get to second or third or something, but there's no question about whether it's going to be a hit. So I would, I would let that stand. But if it's the pitches on the way to home plate,

I would do that over. Or, I don't know, a guy hits a fly ball and it's not clear whether it's going to fall or not, I would probably do that over. I think I'd let it go. I think I'd just let it play play if he can circle in the dark i think he i think he has the right if there's nothing in the rule book that's that that allows for this um you know i mean if all of a sudden uh if he hits the ball and all of a sudden uh you know a tornado appeared uh they wouldn't call it in the middle of the play. They'd say fight through it until the play's over.

Pitch black, stadium, I think they got to go. I mean, the problem is that the umpire wouldn't be able to see anybody doing anything. So, like, you wouldn't know when the ball, like, the second baseman might have the ball and tag the runner, but the umpire wouldn't see it. And so then, I mean, if the umpire wouldn't see it yeah and so then i mean if the umpire is not able to actually do his job then i guess he has to call dead ball time out and probably make the the ruling of whether the the play had been determined or not like you're saying i'd like to say just play on but now that i think about it uh the likelihood of shenanigans it goes there's a point

where it goes from madcap to um to lawlessness and i'm excited about the madcap i'm not excited about uh like like potential riots on the field like it'd be like that episode of saved by the bell when the lights, they do the murder mystery and then the lights go out and they turn the lights on and somebody's been killed. Like I just, I don't want that happening. Yeah, no, that would, that would be bad. Um, I feel, do you want to attempt to answer the question about platoon splits? Cause it's a really good question. Do you, do you know the answer sort of answer is out there it's the answer is out there we just haven't it's a i i didn't put the well to find it but i i sent it to some smart people and even they weren't sure um yeah so i don't go ahead and

answer it we'll we'll try it just because it's it's timely and playoff related. So this comes from AJ in Boston. In light of last night's game, and this was a day ago, so he's talking about the Ortiz home run game. In light of last night's game, I have a question regarding platoon splits. The Tigers brought in Joaquin Benoit, right-handed pitcher, instead of Phil Koch, left-handed pitcher, to face David Ortiz, left-handed hitter. Many have said that they agreed with the decision, noting that Benoit has been better against left-handed batters than, left-handed hitter. Many have said that they agreed with the decision, noting that Benoit has been better against left-handed batters than against right-handed

hitters, which is what we said. That was our snap judgment on the podcast. In an article on Grantland, however, Jonah Carey questioned the decision, noting that Ortiz has been better against right-handed pitchers than against left-handed pitchers. My question, therefore, is which of these matters more? In essence, does the platoon advantage or disadvantage come more from the pitcher's skill set or the hitter's skill set? So this is kind of a complicated question. So I tried to, I went to the book because the book is... Yeah, I'm like 100% sure that that has been answered at some point by one of them. So I skimmed the book's chapter on platoon splits.

What it does say is that the variation in platoon splits is much higher for pitchers than for hitters. And it also said that, I guess because of that, pitchers' platoon splits can be reliably measured much more easily than those of right- or left-handed hitters. A right-handed pitcher's platoon split is reasonably accurate once he has around 700 plate appearances against left-handed hitters. For a lefty, the number is about 450.

That doesn't answer the question at all, though. about 450 so that doesn't answer the question yeah it doesn't really answer the question so that you know you know what a what a pitcher's true platoon splits are much more quickly than you know for a hitter um but in this case you have david ortiz who's been playing forever and and has many thousands of play appearances. And so you know what his platoon splits are. You know what Benoit's are. I don't think it directly addresses which party is more responsible for the split. I would say that if you're trying to figure out what the expectation for the plate appearance is, it doesn't really matter,

right? I mean, if you're just trying to figure out what the better matchup is, then you calculate what each guy's expected performance is against a pitcher or hitter of whatever handedness. And you can calculate and regress and you regress a certain amount based on whether it's a pitcher or a hitter or a left-handed pitcher or right-handed pitcher. And you figure out what the expectation for each player is. And I haven't done that math, but you, you could do that math to figure out whether Benoit was the better matchup for Ortiz than, than Koch. Um, but that's, I mean, to, to answer whether, whether Leland's move was the right move or whether Koch would have been a better move. That's, that's all you need to know, right? Just what their observed performance is and over what

sample size and then regress it and, and calculate what the expectation for each plate appearance is, right? I don't know whether that answers the question either, but that's what you would do. So, all right. So David Ortiz has a 900 OPS against right-handers, and Joaquin Benoit has a 600 OPS against left-handers. and Joaquin Benoit has a 600 OPS against left-handers, you're treating Benoit basically just as, well, I don't know. You're treating Benoit as a right-hander.

You're saying that David Ortiz's true talent against Benoit and Benoit's true talent against Ortiz are the same, even though each has kind of individual splits? I mean, is Benoit a right-hander? Yeah. I mean, if Benoit's stuff works like a left-hander's stuff, then should you be comparing? Yeah, I mean, I think – Should you even be – yeah.

Right, because with pitchers, it's not... You know, it's hard to say why certain hitters have certain platoon splits. They just... They don't see the ball as well or whatever or something about their stance or their swing or their setup, and it's kind of hard to pinpoint. But with pitchers, you can...

I mean, you can identify, you can project what a pitcher's platoon splits will be without ever even seeing him, without having any record of performance. If you just know, like, what his arm angle is, you know, is he a side armor? Is he over the top? What pitches does he throw? You know, does he throw pitches that tend to have big platoon splits or don't? have big platoon splits or or don't um yeah like you know the pitchers who don't have big platoon splits will tend to rely more on on fastballs or something and the big platoon splits will be like

slider guys and so you can kind of project based on that and so maybe maybe the profile of the pitcher is what matters or what matters more than the actual handedness or at least that that plays a big part the repertoire it plays some part but the angle also plays a big part the angle at which he throws i mean i yeah i don't know i don't know the answer to this i i i feel like maybe maybe i mean i've definitely seen the answer to this somewhere in the distant past. But it's conceivable that I saw it so far in the past that it doesn't actually represent. I mean, you know, a lot of things got said, you know, eight years ago that we don't really follow anymore. So it might have just been something that I saw tossed off as a solution to this problem that would now look wrong.

I'm sure the answer's out there. I mean, somebody can answer it. You said you asked smart people, or did you? I did, yeah. Usually when we don't know the answer to something, we just wait for Russell to listen to the podcast and tell us what the answer is. But I already asked him, and he doesn't know. So that's scary.

And I asked Colin also. I bet Tango knows. I bet Tango's done a post on this. gary uh-huh and i i asked colin also so if you're at tango knows tango might know i bet tango has done a post on this i feel like tango's done a post on this well maybe i'll maybe i'll email him but if anyone listening has a has a better answer than what we've given let us know um and so we'll probably doing we'll probably be doing a part email show again tomorrow. So you can get your questions in again for that at podcast at baseball prospectus.com. We'll be back with more emails and more playoff talk tomorrow.