Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 357: New Listener Emails for a New Year

Episode Date: January 3, 2014

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about switching agents, the spitball, rule changes, advanced stats in other sports, and more.

Phil Ivey quietly making some noise again. Ivey is the greatest poker player on the planet. Come on. At 33 years old, he's won 22 tournaments worldwide and reportedly won $7 million last year in online poker alone. Even opponents say there is nobody better. You're the king, baby! Phil Ivey number one!

Good morning and welcome to episode 357 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. How are you, Ben? Very well, thank you. Excellent. So it's email Friday, and you've looked at the questions. I've also looked at the questions, I've also looked at the questions but I have not starred the questions.

Have you done anything like that? Sort of. I have a few. Why don't you read one while I pour some coffee? Alright. Alright. John wants to know Ben and Sam

with Josh Donaldson reportedly changing or with Josh Donaldson's reported agent change today, does he have to pay anything to his old agent? My understanding is that an agent gets a percentage of any salary or endorsement he secures for his client. So I imagine Donaldson would have still owed a percentage of any previously negotiated deals to the old agent, but was curious if there are additional transaction costs, severance, retainer for the new agent, Do you know the answer? I do, sort of. Can I guess the answer?

Okay. No. Yes, that's the answer. Yes, that's the answer. As far as I can tell, I emailed Joshua Kuznick, who is a certified player agent and has been writing some articles about being an agent for Baseball Prospectus. player who changes agents owes his original agent any endorsement money and any fees not paid yet on a multi-year deal uh so if if a player gets a five-year deal and fires his agent in year three the player still owes his original agent for the totality of that contract uh so it's whatever work that agent did he gets paid for and then i suppose whatever work the new agent does he he gets paid for um which is maybe why we see so many agent swaps that there really isn't much of a disincentive for the player to switch do you feel like we see a lot of agent swaps? Uh, I don't know. I mean,

I don't know if there are more in baseball than there are in other sports or the entertainment industry or any other industry, but I mean, you see it fairly often. If you look at MLB trade rumors regularly, you'll often see a post about someone switching agents. I don't know. I don't know if it's unusual. There was someone, I think it was Oscar Tavares, maybe changed agents like three times this year, possibly. I will look that up while you... Do you have a question?

Yeah, sure. I bet there's a lot of agents switching uh early in guys careers um like before like i mean it makes sense that oscar taveras would kind of be moving up um you know to better agents as he can attract better agents you know um because because to some degree i mean to some degree like you mean, to some degree, like, you know, the Dominican kid who signs for $14,000 can't get Scott Boris.

He's, in fact, in a lot of ways, he's the buyer, you know, at that early stage, or I guess he's the seller, whichever one you think is the better one to be. He's not it. And then as he moves up, you know, he's the seller whichever one you think is the better one to be he's not it and uh then as he moves up you know he's the guy with the commodity so um yeah anyway all right Eric wait Oscar Tavares as of late September had changed agents four times since January yeah and

uh not not to it not to a different agent each time, he was with this one guy three times in this year alone. So he's had five different... He went from this guy to another, back to this guy, then to a different, and then back to this guy. And then back to the original guy, yeah. Uh-huh. Interesting. That doesn't... Yeah yeah so that's weird yes i wonder because he i mean there's the the two guys in the middle couldn't have possibly gotten a dime out of him right especially because at this stage in his career right there's not much he's not even due for him. Right. His salary is basically part of the collective bargaining agreement or whatever.

So that seems weird that – yeah, that seems weird. That makes me not like him as much. Yeah. Actually, when I read that, I sent it to some scout who had said something to me about him before, and I kind of wondered whether... Do you question his makeup? I would. I would knock him a half point on a 2080 scale. If I had him like a 68 as a prospect,

I'd knock him at least a 67.5. Yeah, sure. And probably like 65.5. I would probably go 2.5 yeah yeah sure and probably probably like 65 and a half probably i would probably go two and a half points uh eric says if you had the power to change a single thing about the game for one year with the single goal of learning more about the game what would it be assume the players association and teams can't object and you don't care what impact it has on the aesthetics or fan experience or even on the sport going forward this is simply your chance to run a controlled experiment and gather a season's worth of data with no repercussions i like this question a lot this is i know it's one of my favorite questions

and ever yeah and i feel like we should do an article or a lineup card or something on it and i was thinking hey hey hold on hold on phil ivy just started following me phil ivy the blue check mark phil ivy real phil ivy and only 435 follows so this is not a jose batista situation professional poker player phil ivy big news wow yeah we might, we might have to have a new guest in episode 400. Yeah, sorry. Congratulations on that. All right. So, yeah, I thought about this for a little while, and I feel like I don't even have an answer that's worthy of the question.

I was just – I sent it to a few people who I thought would be as intrigued by it as I was. And I think Dan Brooks had a good suggestion that I will adopt, which is that before a random subset of pitches, the batter would be given the sign, unbeknownst to the pitcher. So the pitcher wouldn't know that the hitter had the sign and couldn't change the sign unknown or unbeknownst to the pitcher so the pitcher wouldn't know that the the hitter had the sign and couldn't change the sign um but we would know somehow those pitches would be marked or tracked so we would know which ones that the hitter had the sign for and we would be able to to track the performance of hitters who knew what pitch was coming

versus those who didn't um That's a good suggestion. I'd enjoy that one. That's great. That's much more creative than mine. Yeah, there are a lot. That's a very good answer. I mean, I should have gone to Dan. That was right.

Yeah, there are a lot of these that I feel like you need not only the power to change something about baseball, but then you need like a thousand seasons also to see what will happen. Phil Ivey follows Sabre. Huh. All right. He also follows, so far as I can tell, only two people that I follow. Mark Saxon, the ESPN LA writer who used to cover the Angels with me, and Carson Sestouli.

Huh. How about that? Oh, mike petriello sorry are you a big big phil ivy fan i i well i haven't watched televised poker in some time because i don't get that channel but there was a time where i was a huge, huge fan. I mean, not just of televised poker for like three years when I was 20. But also, particularly, that was Phil Ivey's heyday. It was just before it got so big that you couldn't keep any of the players straight. And yeah, he was the guy you wanted to see in the tournament so you should kind of tweet at him and say thanks for the follow with an exclamation point um yeah anyway reigns for hall of fame if he follows reigns for hall of fame um tyler skaggs yeah so that was a good suggestion by dan uh i guess i'd like to see i don't yeah i don't know

there are a lot that i'd like to see that would just take more than one season probably what was what was your idea oh uh so mine's simple um and it's just um in the american league uh every pitcher uh can take steroids uh but but no hitters can and in the National League every hitter can take steroids but no pitchers can and it's we're going to be super serious about the ones who can't take them not being able to take them

so if you get caught taking them and you're not allowed your team forfeits every game for the entire season so we're super super serious and you have to report that you're doing allowed, your team forfeits every game for the entire season. So we're super, super serious. And you have to report that you're doing it. And if you take steroids without having reported, without having sort of claimed the exemption, you're also forfeiting the entire season.

So we would have a huge group of known users going up against known not users, as well as during interleague, known users going up against known not users, as well as during interleague, known users going up against known users. And we would see both the effect of PEDs on performance for the first time, and we would see also the, in interleague, we would see who has the edge in a user versus user matchup yeah that's a good one i also would be interested to see whether they would whether they would take advantage of this because i've long had this pet theory that in fact the way to get rid of peds in sports is to make them legal but have the players like kind of enforce their own code. Presumably players as a group don't want steroids to be used. I've always found that the unwritten rules are more easily

enforced than the written rules because baseball has a tradition of flouting written rules. of flouting written rules. It's almost considered a source of pride to do whatever you can to get around the rules. And so once you have this culture that does not actually take rules as morality but does have unwritten rules kind of as a proxy for morality, I've always had this idea

that Torrey Hunter could enforce steroids ban much better than Bud selig ever could and so it would be interested interesting for me to see actually just in that year what the culture was and whether everybody who could use used or whether most people didn't and if most people didn't what you know how effectively would they keep others from doing it and so that my one fear would actually be that nobody would do it anyway and And so I thought about my rule being that you have to do it. Yeah. That's what I was just thinking.

It might be, it might be good just to force certain players to do it just to, uh, just to see what the effect is. Yeah. And it could also be the case. No, yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Maybe. Sure. But that seems for an unrealistic question, forcing people to do steroids might not be even the answer that I want to go to. We could survey them to ask who would be willing to do it, and then we'll let them do it, and they will do it openly.

All right. What's next? Okay. Dave asks, do you ever follow trends in new statistics in other sports in case they lead to different ideas about how to look at statistics in baseball? For example, hockey is just in the past few years starting to develop numbers like Corsi and tracking of zone exits. And it seems much of the thinking came from examining the statistical work in baseball. I wonder if it goes the other way, and if it does for you guys, which stats in which sports have caught your eye?

I don't. But, I mean, you know, ideally I think I would like to, but I think that I really appreciate the sorts of things that matter in other sports. You have to really understand the sports of things that matter in other sports. You have to really understand the sports and follow it closely. I mean, I think that there are a lot of, for instance, let's say you were a hockey fan and you followed baseball about as closely as Ben and I follow hockey. Your exposure to baseball statistical innovations would be fairly shallow and it would be quite misleading. And you would still think that dips was absolute, for instance. And so I just don't think that I would be able to appreciate –

if I tried to keep up with current trends, I don't think I would appreciate them with anything sort of reflecting usefulness or accuracy. sort of reflecting usefulness or accuracy. Yeah, I'm definitely intrigued by it, much more so than I am. I mean, I don't read about other sports in other ways, but if I come across something about some new statistical innovation in another sport, I read it. I don't know whether I've really ever taken anything from that and applied it will hold my interest. Yeah, I will read it and generally it will hold my interest.

I don't want to like claim credit for like being a multidisciplinary expert or anything like that. Um, I, I feel like most in some way, anytime you and I learn something about another sport, um, we do tend to incorporate it into, into an answer at some point. You know, we did talk about the coach who never punts. And yesterday I talked about Chip talk about the coach who never punts, and yesterday I talked about Chip Kelly and the hurry-up offense. I do tend to think,

okay, what would this look like in baseball? But I'm sure that it would be insulting to the people who think about football the way that I like to think about baseball to even presume that i know one percent of of what they know and can make anything of it yeah uh drew can i read the one from drew i don't know what the one from drew is go ahead what is the youngest player that you uh think will play in the major leagues in the future and what is the youngest that you would want to see

uh i don't know 17 what position pitcher uh yeah i uh i i think that um it's tricky i don't think that it's tricky. I don't think that you would ever see a 17-year-old at this point because of the way that the league, you know, well, basically because six years of service time, right? I mean, the service time clock is very valuable and you don't want to waste your six years before he's anywhere close to his prime performance. So I think I can actually absolutely imagine a scenario where the six-year service time is gone and it either becomes age-based, like everybody hits free agency at 27, or it just goes goes away completely or somehow goes away completely, but basically where there's not an incentive for teams to keep their best players in the minors. And in that scenario, I could imagine an 18-year-old pitcher for sure. 17, I guess if he was a phenom, I did a, I don't know if you

remember this, but I once did a, um, a thing on what, what the latest date was that Bryce Harper was not better than Xavier Nady, I think. Yeah. Right. Uh, because I don't, Xavier Nady, I guess probably Xavier Nady had been playing instead of Bryce Harper or something. Or maybe Bryce Harper replaced Xavier Nady. And it was like, okay, at 15 he definitely wasn't. Even though Xavier Nady was still terrible. I could not believe that a 15-year-old could play at a major league level or even a AAA level. But then 16, it started to get tricky. level or even a AAA level. But then 16, it started to get tricky. I could imagine a 16-year-old

Bryce Harper being better than replacement level. Not good enough that you would use him and have him be a free agent at 23. But good enough that he's better than the 25th 23, I mean. But, you know, good enough that he's better than the 25th guy on your bench, and maybe you're a team whose philosophy is that being around big leaguers is better for your development than being around the

Midwest League or whatever. So, to answer the question, I don't think in the next 10 years we will see anybody younger than A-Rod was when he came up. Pitcher or hitter. Julio Urias will be 17 until next August 12th. I don't know what his translated numbers would be, but I would guess that he wouldn't have been the worst. I mean, I'm certain of it.

He wouldn't have been the worst pitcher in baseball last year. No, probably not. If he'd been in the bullpen. Yeah, somebody pitched an inning last year who was worse than him. Sure. At 16. I mean, the answer to the second question is like there's no way. The younger, the second question is like there's no way. The younger, the better.

If it were up to me, the entire league would be 14-year-olds and 58-year-olds and nothing in between. And the bats would have spikes on them. And the 14-year-olds would all be drunk. And the 14-year-olds would all be drunk. And the 15-year-olds, the 56-year-olds, I mean, would all be in cars. So why wasn't that your answer to the first question? You can change one rule in baseball, right? I thought about it.

I thought actually I thought I was trying to think about what rule I would change to get a better grasp on aging. And I actually did think about having the 25 every – I thought one of my possibilities was a 25-man roster has to have one of every age. So it can be any age, but you cannot duplicate any year. So presumably you would have like 19 to 20 to 43 represented or something like that. But then the tricky thing is if your 20-year-old gets injured, he can only be replaced by another 20-year-old. Because I would actually like to see how 18-year-olds do. And I would like to see how 47-year-olds do.

And maybe some team would do 22 to 47-year-olds or something. Sure. I would even expand to 30 man rosters in that scenario i would expand to 40 man rosters in that scenario uh next question comes from someone known only as mystic puppet who says the spitball was a large part of baseball's early culture with some players making hall of Fame careers out of it. Mostly it has died off with the occasional abuser. What if the pitch made a comeback of sorts, and it was revealed that pitchers were using a new spitball that somehow umpires could not detect?

How many pitchers do you believe would start using this new pitch? Would it be morally different than it was back in the old days? Also, bonus question, would any pitchers in particular surprise you the most? So I chose this question because I found a couple other things related to it that I wanted to bring up. But I guess, I mean, part of the reason that the spitball was outlawed was that it made the ball so difficult to see. This was an era when the ball was not changed nearly as frequently as it is now. And so the ball would be brown after you'd use it for a while and it would be dangerous and someone could get hit in the head and killed, which happened. So it's possible that now when I think the average game ball

is used for something like four pitches, I think, there wouldn't even be time for it really to stain the ball. So I guess in that sense, the danger, whatever the danger was, would be reduced. But I don't know how you would – well, if you change the rules to allow it, then it would, it would no longer be cheating and no one would have any problem with it possibly. Um, I mean, I don't think that you would see it happen because we're not really at a point where people are looking for ways to, to swing the balance of power toward pitchers.

But, okay, so imagine that it wasn't against the – I mean it was still against the rules. But there are rules that are enforced and there are rules that are not enforced. The sunscreen, for instance, it seems to probably be against the rules and yet it's been allowed because the culture has supported it and because maybe arguably it makes batters safer because pitchers can get a better grip on the ball. And, you know, the taking too long between pitches has never been enforced. So imagine that it was just very poorly enforced, but, you know, still considered cheating. I mean, I don't know.

but still considered cheating. I mean, I don't know. It feels to me like one of the things that is still... I don't remember what I was going to say. People talk about how... I just did this. I just did this like 10 minutes ago, talking about how cheating is sort of an accepted part of baseball culture. And it's considered, if you're not cheating, you're not trying, kind of an idea.

And that steroids was like the first big kind of rift in this culture because nobody is really supporting steroids. There's not an idea that it is in any way honorable or sporting or anything like that. But I feel like coinciding with this, and maybe coincidentally or maybe not, but coinciding with this, other forms of cheating have become sort of more embarrassing. Maybe it's just because nobody does it and maybe it's because it's only one player a year gets caught doing it. But you just look like such a loser when you get caught now. And also the other thing is that every once in a while some blogger will identify something that either is cheating or appears like cheating. And there's this great umbrage taken from the player.

It's not considered like an innocent thing the way that I feel like we believe it used to be. And I don't know if it ever really was. It might just be that cheaters age well and that after a period of time, we forgive them and we honor them. But I don't know, maybe at the time, Gaylord Perry was just considered a schmuck and nobody wanted to hang out with him. Well, I wanted to bring this up because I came across this article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from March 6, 1955. And the headline is, Frick favors return of the old spitter. So this is about Ford Frick, the baseball commissioner, who said, if I had my way, I'd legalize the old spitter. And the interesting thing is that it ties into what we talked about yesterday about speeding up the game. about speeding up the game.

It says, Commissioner visited the Philadelphia Phillies training camp Monday and took the occasion to discuss the new stopwatch rule requiring pitchers to deliver the ball within 20 seconds after they step on the rubber and the financial prospects of the major leagues this season. The 20-second rule is designed to speed up the action and shorten playing time, a matter of considerable discussion in recent years

with many games dragging past the two-hour mark. And he talks about how people can get around the rules if they want to. If he had his way, he'd legalize the spitter. It was a great pitch and one of the easiest to throw. There was nothing dangerous about it. Mostly the ball dipped and did tricks from a natural delivery. It was nothing like the screwball they have to throw today with a twisted elbow and a tricky snapping of the wrist. No wonder today's pitchers can't go on as long.

So this article is like almost 70 years old. And it's talking about how games are going on too long and pitchers aren't going deep enough into games and we should legalize the spitter. Yeah, good find. Solid ball. Also, the Wikipedia page for spitball has a comparisons to other sports section and since we have not brought up cricket on this show for a while,

and we always try to if there's an opportunity, the techniques used to prepare a spitball are analogous to the techniques still used to condition the ball in cricket. As was the case in pre-1920s baseball, a single cricket ball is used for a long period of time, almost 500 deliveries in international cricket, and the fielding team progressively attempts to make one side of the ball more shiny than the other to create such phenomena

as swing bowling. Some techniques, such as physically polishing the ball against the player's clothing or applying sweat and saliva, and then there's a parenthetical, even when tainted with mints that a player is sucking on, are entirely legal and are used widely. Other techniques are illegal, known as ball tampering, and include such practices as altering the ball's state by the use of artificial substances, such as sunblock or dirt, or degradation by fingernails or other hard substances intentionally returning the ball along the ground to abrade it or raising the seam. substances intentionally returning the ball along the ground to abrade it or raising the seam. So in cricket, you can pretty much throw a spitball even when you're sucking on a mint.

And cricket is the sport of gentlemen. Yeah. It's like the gentleman's version of baseball. So it uh you know how you define your own mores right we're gonna get 10 emails about that i was gonna say 10 too 10 was actually my estimate um all right should we uh uh do you have a last one or should i do a last one uh there there's like a follow-up to yesterday go for it a couple little follow-ups to yesterday um oh i have one by the way this is uh this is uh off topic okay but when we talked about uh like like a week or two ago about what uh what we would measure if we could measure that that isn't currently measured yeah

you remember that yeah and you said like uh what did you say? Like how many times they shake off the catcher or something like that? Broken bats or broken bats are, you know, things like that. Well, mine is now how many times a player slides or dives. I would love to have every player's to the ground total for the year. And classified as head first or foot first? Could be, but I don't really care. Dirty is dirty to me. Okay.

Mike in Philly said that after listening to yesterday's podcast, I was a little confused in regard to your thought process on rising strikeout rates and their continuing upward trend. Later in the show, Ben mentioned the possible elimination of pitchers hitting. Wouldn't the permanent DH in both leagues, especially with season long interleague cause the strikeout rates to fall slash normalize as he would no longer lose a DH when AL teams played in NL parks and NL versus NL would no longer have to bat seven year olds. Or am I wrong in thinking a DH over a full season of at bats would strike out

less than a five man rotation. So that is true, right? I think NL pitchers last season, who were much better than AL pitchers last season, struck out 36.4% of the time, which is almost exactly Chris Carter, who was the major league leader in strikeout rate. So NL pitchers as a group struck out as often as the guy who struck out the most. So if you got rid of all of them, there would be a dip of some degree. So how many of the top strikeout rates in baseball, let's say of the top five strikeout rates in baseball for pitching uh were

in the american league last year do you think uh well you'd have to have a pretty small minimum number of plate appearances right no no team team wide oh team team wide which teams pitching staffs had the highest strikeout rates per nine? Of the top five teams, how many do you think were AL and how many do you think were NL? I don't know. I guess I feel like the Tigers were first probably. They were. So that's one um uh i don't know i guess i would guess that all the others were national league all the others

were american league all the others from there going hmm so what does that tell us? Well, it either tells us that American League pitchers are that much better or that there's not that big a difference. I mean, pitchers don't bat that much. They bat twice a game. Wait, hold on. We're talking about pitching staff striking out hitters, right? Yeah, we are. So AL pitchers struck out 7.7 per nine last year,

and NL pitchers struck out 7.7 per nine last year, and NL pitchers struck out 7.5 per nine. So, I mean, while interleague is a small part of that, AL batters presumably struck out more than NL batters as a collective. I mean, pitchers don't bat all that much. Dodgers and the Reds fourth and fifth, according to what I'm looking at. I didn't know that. I'm looking at percentage, not per nine. I'm looking at I didn't have that I'm looking at percentage not per nine

I'm looking at per nine sorry yours is a better stat if you want me to retract yeah alright so anyway do you have league wide percentages because that would be no i don't

okay i don't have league-wide percentage all right uh well i can i can do it yeah or i could do it while you're talking uh i'd rather you talk which one of us has to talk uh well you were the one saying something the point is the point is that uh that this is that this rise in strikeout rates is not a pitcher batting phenomenon by any means everybody strikes out more than they used to uh al batters strike out more than they used to and they strike out more than no batters and so the point is just that. That's my point. Yeah.

But do you think it's big enough that it would counteract the natural rise for at least one season or two? Maybe for one season or two. I mean, maybe. Maybe. How many times did pitchers strike out? I can tell you that. So go ahead and tell me that. NL pitchers struck out 1,868 times.

Okay, so 1,868 times. So by the way, NL's strikeout rate was 19.9%, and AL's strikeout rate is 19.8%. So there is one in a thousand batters strikes out in the NL who does not strike out in the AL. All right, so how many times did you say? 1868. 1868, and how many plate appearances? 5136. Okay, so that is a 36% strikeout rate. So if we give them the league average of 19.8%,

then 1,016 batters would have struck out so that's what is that 850 so 850 strikeouts over the course of 2430 times 2 so 4860

so basically .17 strikeouts per nine. So yeah, that would reverse for like four years, probably. Maybe. Yeah. Well, yeah, there was a year recently where it rose by like half a K per nine. But yeah, most years, I guess that would, that would reverse it or slow it for a little while. What is, do you have the, uh, do you have the season case per nine averages? Uh, I was just looking yesterday. I think it was, let's see, uh, I have it 7.5, 7.6, 7.6, 7.1, 7.1, 7.0.

So basically over the last seven years, it's gone up one strikeout. So yeah, like it would basically be like a year and a half that it would slow the flow, I guess. Okay. You got to hear some live math performed on the podcast. And lively math. Yeah. All right. That's enough, except for this one.

This is a short one. It's just Gordon asked, the topic of automated umpiring reminded me of a question I've had since reading Ben's Grantland article on that topic yesterday. And in the article, you mentioned the idea of an umpire aid, such as a pocket buzzer or LED indicator, that would inform an umpire of the pitch effects ruling. An adjunct possibility was a heads-up display that would give the ump a centered view. I'm wondering about the effect Google Glass or a similar apparatus could have an umpire assistance.

I'm by no means an expert on emerging technologies or umpiring for that matter. However, if the technology can already give an observer in the stands feedback on pitch type speed and the outcome, it seems PitchFX could be incorporated directly into an umpire's view of the game. Does this seem like a feasible possibility? Yes. I think so. I mean, the Google Glass demo that shows like someone in the stands watching a baseball game and he sees the pitch effects info is just the pitch effects info that you see on MLB game day. have the sort of heads up display that we have on our TVs superimposed on an umpire's view or at least in the corner of an umpire's view something like that. But what excuse does he have for not calling a strike that's in that box though at that point? I mean at a certain point what is the difference

between having a computer do it and having an umpire who is forced to follow a computer? Yeah not much. There's not. I mean, that's why... The calibration is really off for some reason. Then he would maybe be able to tell, although when I was writing that article and talking to people about it,

Dan Brooks made the point that if you did have an umpire who had this sort of aid and he just sort of went with whatever the aid told him was the correct call then he probably wouldn't even be prepared really when there was the the rare case where a pitch was just missed by the system or the calibration was off he would be so used to depending on it that even if he was told to sort of come to his own conclusion just in case, human nature being what it is, he probably wouldn't be prepared to make that call or make it as accurately as he would when he is the sole arbiter. So yeah, I think if you're going to do something like that,

you probably just pretty much take it out of their hands, except for a few rare emergency cases. But it would be a way to... Right. And it's my belief that baseball has never actually wanted a rulebook strike zone to be called to the rulebook, that it likes the variance, that it does not actually want a box that's called consistently, variance that it does not actually want uh a box that's called consistently and that um you know this is for that reason this would basically be against baseball's wishes people i i don't think

that baseball has ever wanted that to be the case basically it's always given umpires the ability to make the strike zone their own sort of personal, personal morality playing field. So, and yeah, I'm not sure I feel differently as a, as a writer, at least as a fan, I might feel differently, but as a writer who gets a lot of material out of bad calls and, and how bad was that call and what percentage of pitches in that location are

called strikes and balls and catch your framing and all those little nuances that would just disappear. I would be sorry to see that go i want no strike zone right well your second night in a row i've already there i might this might be the year that i turn this into a political movement well i followed phil ivy at the beginning of this podcast and i was trying to stretch it out hoping that he might follow me back by the end. But no, no, he didn't. Sorry. He has, it looks like he's followed like, he's followed like, like, like 100 people since he followed me.

Huh? Oh my gosh, he's followed like, well, he's followed probably 200. He's followed multiple hundreds of people since he followed, well oh my gosh he's followed like well he's followed probably 200 he's followed multiple hundreds of people since he thought well he's followed 110 people all right well maybe he followed keith law maybe he got hacked by a baseball loving i don't know well he had he had baseball follows all along but you know i think reigns hall of fame isn't that old of a of a twitter account and so it does make me wonder whether all of these are today that like maybe he he you know like he's gone on a that i was not the first of his uh of his flood of follows and in fact he might have followed oh he followed he followed Deadspan, Grantland,

Josh Herzenberg. Josh Herzenberg, member of Baseball Perspectives prospecting. So you're saying there's a chance for me. There's hope. I'm saying that it looks – Followed by this poker player I barely have heard of. It looks like a – he did follow me before Sestouli. So that's kind of nice.

Nice to know. All right. Yeah, I'm not sure what's going on. I'll be monitoring it closely and we'll have updates. Yes. Okay, so that's it for the week. Send us questions for next week at podcast at baseballperspective.com. He is wearing headphones.

He's wearing headphones in his avatar. And he famously often wears headphones. It is conceivable that he is playing a tournament right now listening to us talk about him and trying not to smile because this is all sort of surreal and weird to him, but he doesn't want to smile because he's got his poker face in him. He doesn't want to give anything away. So right now he's staring at a guy

and trying really hard not to smile right now. Like right now, Phil. Right now you're trying not to smile, right? Is that right, Phil? All right, this is getting weird. Okay, so podcast at baseballperspectives.com. We'll be back with a full schedule next week, although sadly not on a multiple of five.

We hope that you will rate and review us on iTunes and subscribe to the show on iTunes so that iTunes will know that you're a listener and follow or join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. Have a wonderful weekend.