Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 391: The Best Listener Email Show Since Last Week’s

Episode Date: February 21, 2014

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about MLB’s blackout policy, the Phillies and the NCAA, missing triples, the save rule, and more.

There's a blackout for me, a one for you too, and there's a white heat keeping everybody down. When it's not around, you'll be breaking up the pieces of the blackout. There's nothing you can do about it. There's nothing you can do about it. Good morning and welcome to episode 391 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I'm Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller. It's Friday, so we are taking a break from the team previews until next week and doing our traditional email show.

And you all responded with excellent emails, as usual. Where would you like to begin? So Benjamin says, as someone who might charitably be described as a political operative, I spent a lot of time thinking about the composition of committees and elected bodies and how that composition affects decision making. The discussion of the Rockies co-GM situation got me thinking about how decision making could be done differently in front offices, so I thought I'd propose a couple scenarios. I was wondering how decision making in the following scenarios would be similar or different to today's model, and whether decisions would ultimately be better or worse.

Scenario is, decisions are made by a group of seven co-GMs hired by the team to make decisions. It is assumed the skill level of each co-GM individually roughly mirrors the distribution of talent in front offices generally. So essentially, instead of having a GM who makes decisions, you would have a body of GMs who would vote, like a congress of GMs. And all votes would be weighted equally. I am assuming decisions to trade, sign, etc. are made like they are in a parliamentary setting. They need to be proposed by a member of the body and voted on. So, what do you think? Would you rather have seven GMs who are sort of, well, keeping each other in check are sort of, well, I mean, keeping each other in check and utilizing the wisdom of all seven of them, but each sort of diluting the others,

or would you rather just have the one strong man at the top? Well, a lot of teams sort of do have the co-GM thing almost in that there are a lot of front offices that have former GMs in senior advisor roles or special assistant roles where they have the experience of having been GMs and they come in and give guidance. But they don't vote. They don't actually have a vote, no. I mean they probably do vote. There probably are lots of situations where they vote, but it is advisory role only. They don't have any formal authority.

Yeah, I would not want an actual voting body, I don't think. You and I have talked at some point about the fact that it's been a long time since a general manager was fired. point about the fact that it's been a long time since a general manager was fired. I wrote something about this recently that will be at Grantland at some point in the next couple of weeks. And I talked to some GMs about it and they said basically that it is kind of a committee, almost, at least more so than it used to be, that GMs work a lot more closely with owners than they used to. They work a lot more closely with their fellow front office people than they used to be that GMs work a lot more closely with owners than they used to. They work a lot more closely with their fellow front office people than they used to because there are many more of them. So I feel like the GM on his own is already getting the input of lots of smart people,

in some cases, some former GMs, and is already incorporating all of that into his decisions and probably is not going against the majority all that often. Yeah, that's quite true. So I don't think it would really change anything. You would just probably have more contention, more animosity if you had actual GMs with equal responsibility voting against each other? Yeah. So I'm reading the, um, the power broker, the biography of Robert Moses. And, um, at the beginning, before Robert Moses goes all evil, um, he's like a reformer and he's all like, you know, pro-democracy. And, and one of the things that he, uh, one of his beliefs is that you need to have a strong executive so that somebody can be held accountable.

And that sort of paradoxically, the stronger the executive branch, the more democratic it is, because then the voters are sort of capable of holding somebody accountable and, you know, throwing the bum out when things don't go right, or rewarding when things do go right. And so I think that in that sense, we have a hard enough time figuring out how to evaluate GMs and figuring out what GMs are responsible for and what we can blame them for or what we can credit them for. I imagine it would be a lot easier if we were the owner of the team and we had access to all this information, but it's a challenge as is. And I feel like if you had seven of these co-GMs, it would essentially absolve all of them of any blame. It would be impossible to ever identify who was good and who was bad. And there would be really no accountability whatsoever.

So I don't know that it would necessarily lead to worse decisions, but it would lead to a lot less information about who's good at the job. And so in the long run, it could arguably lead to a lot worse decisions. It would turn into a reality show where you would have people like scheming to get the majority to their decision where you don't want someone to be kicked off the island or kicked out of the house or whatever you want. where you don't want someone to be kicked off the island or kicked out of the house or whatever you want. You want to curry favor with the other people and get a majority, and there'd be backstabbing, and it would be messy. Yep. So voting no on Proposition 7 co-GMs.

All right. We're against it. On to the next. Okay. You want to read the triples one? Yeah, sure. Let me find it. So as I mentioned early this week when we first introduced our sponsor, part of what we're going to be doing is a, I guess you could call it a sponsor segment during each email show fridays where we use the play index to do something to look up some cool information or some interesting stat uh and many of you who used to listen to joe and ranny uh heard them do the same thing and hopefully enjoyed it as i did uh so in this case we are actually just answering answering a listener email by using the play index.

Someone sent us a question. This was actually months ago, and it's just sort of been sitting there, and we've meant to answer it. But now we are going to do that with the power of the play index. So Christopher in Tennessee says, while browsing Baseball Reference, I noticed that the number of triples last year in the American League, 348, was the lowest it's been since 1972 without even adjusting for the number of games played, which has only gone up. 10 to 15 years ago, the AL would routinely hit 420 to 440 triples a year, but since 2008, it's averaged about 10% less than that. But since 2008, it's averaged about 10% less than that. I suppose in the 70s and 80s, there was artificial turf and speedy runners to account for the high numbers of triples. But what accounts for this huge drop since 2003?

Power hitting doesn't seem to correlate, and I don't think there have been lots of new parks built since 2003, just two that I can think of. Could the drop in triples be related to either better fielding or a change in base running philosophy? If the latter, is it possible that a triple is less highly valued by teams than it used to be and coaches have been instructed to keep runners at second? Or do we have just a bunch of really slow runners right now? The NL had a similarly significant drop last year, but it's more difficult to spot a clear trend there. Yeah, so I didn't want to just limit it to the, to the recent past. So, um, I went back to the seventies and started looking at the differences, uh, to even, cause I don't even think it's actually that necessarily that easy to explain from the seventies to now. Um, and you know, Chris mentions of, you know, that artificial turf and speedy runners might

account for the high number back then. And, and, you. And he asks at the end, do we just have a bunch of really slow runners right now? And basically there's kind of three ways that you could imagine this. One is that there are fewer fast runners and therefore fewer guys getting triples. Another is that there are more slow runners and therefore more triple-averse hitters. And the third is that there's some variable in the environment either strategically or um you know ballpark wise or you know defense wise or something that is affecting all runners right and so um so first i wanted to see whether there were fewer fast runners because the very fastest, the elite triples guys, you would think they wouldn't change much, right?

There would still be super fast guys out there. The very fastest guys, the very best hitters, the very best triples hitters, they're secure in their spot in the game. It's not like baseball in the post-Moneyball era doesn't have room for Lance Johnson, right? The guys who are good and who hit triples are going to survive. So first I looked at how many players in each decade had at least 14 triples in a single season. And so for that, if you go to the batting season finder, you can find out how many players in each season match a certain criteria.

And so I did that for each decade. And so they're actually, if you set 14 as the level for elite triples hitting, it does go down. There are fewer elite hitters. So, there were 20 elite triples hitters. So, there were 20 in the 70s. There were only 8 in the 90s. It bounced back.

There were 13 in the 2000s. And as Christopher noted, there are more games being played now. So, that dilutes it even further. Uh, I looked for how many, uh, player seasons of 120 plus games there were in each decade. Um, and, uh, there of course are, were more in 2000s because of expansion. Um, and so if you start looking at how many seasons, how many player seasons it takes to get a 14 triple season, uh, it's get a 14 triple season, it's about half

as rare now, or twice as rare? Twice as rare? Half as frequent now as it was in the 70s. And so that seems pretty telling, the fact that even the very fastest runners who you wouldn't think would be disappearing are nonetheless hitting fewer triples. And to sort of validate this claim that these guys wouldn't be disappearing, I filtered for players with at least two war, which is to say they're at least average. And that's actually kind of high. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of guys, there's room in the league for a lot of guys who are below two war, but, uh, you know, even if you set it at two war, um, about 85% of the elite triples seasons were by players who had two war or more. So you can say very, I would say with, with virtually a hundred percent certainty that those guys would be around

in any generation. So it's not like the league is kicking those guys out and in fact of the 11 below average seasons of these triples um most of them actually came in the 2000s so there's actually more room in the league for bad playing good triples hitters than there used to be so anyway that invalidates the the one possibility so then you you um so then you start thinking well okay so maybe it's the ballparks which would that would obviously that would make sense right there's been a lot of different ballparks so um boston though has the same park since the 70s uh cubs have the same park since the 70s the dodgers have the same park since the 70s so those three things didn't change so uh looking at the team splits um uh you can find out you know how uh you know you can find out how many triples are hit uh in each ballpark in each season and so i looked at each of those

ballparks to see which seasons had the most triples and in fact yes they're overwhelmingly concentrated in the 70s and 80s um of the you know of the 30 most common the top 10 triple seasons for each park so a total of 30 seasons about half of them took place in the 70s and so those ballparks didn't change so you wouldn't, there's clearly something going on that is bigger than ballpark because even when the ballpark doesn't change, triples nonetheless have gone way down. So those are two pretty big factors that, you know, you could sort of rule out. So what is left, Ben? What do you think is left? I have some more. I have more stuff too, but I want to hear your voice. Well, first of all, I think you went back to the 70s.

If you had gone back even further, you would have seen that the decline has been going on much longer than that. There was an article by Dan Fox about it at BP in 2007, and he went back to, you know, 1900. And it's been a pretty steady decline, really throughout the century, it was, was sort of level for maybe the first 20 years or so of the century. Since then, it's just been very steadily declining with the odd little blip here and there. And right, I don't think there is any way that you could convince me that there are not as many fast runners or that there are slower runners today than there used to be, as we discussed recently. The fact that neither of us is convinced that players from previous eras could even

make the league today, or just even looking at, you know, track and field records that have constantly fallen and fallen. There's, I don't think you could persuade me that people just aren't as fast. So I guess it probably would have to come down to defense. Yeah. And Dan Fox's conclusion in that article, he actually looked to see whether it was that like bulkier players might be causing it.

And he, he decided that that was not the case. So he said in reviewing the other theories, we are then left with better outfield positioning, better throwing arms, better cutoffs, in short, increasing excellence on the defensive side of the game. And he also did mention the standardization of ballparks as a possible reason. So that makes sense to me. I guess you probably could figure out whether teams have decided that it's not as good a play. Like if you're already at second, maybe teams are being more conservative about going to third because you probably score from second on a single anyway. second on a single anyway um you could look to see i suppose how often guys were thrown out at third trying to stretch a double or or something like that maybe the the break-even rate there has

changed or teams are more aware of it but um probably yeah there is a very strong correlation uh year to year between triples and stolen base attempts. And so if you wanted to convince yourself that this is a matter of will, a matter of strategy and desire, that might be suggested. But I would think that that's probably a coincidence, that there's some sort of variable that tracks with both of those. And just out of curiosity between height and weight how strong would you think the correlations are between those and player triples individuals height, individuals weight

and their triples rate probably like a negative.3. It is actually, for weight, it is exactly negative.3. Huh. So, well done. For height, it's about half that. And it's about the correlation between stolen base attempts and triples for individual players is about 0.5, which is not as high as I expected. So, yeah.

I mean, the thing about it is that I think that when you say there's not fewer fast guys, well mean obviously even if there are more fast guys even if the average player is faster as we generally believe the defense is going to be faster too so the question is are there fewer kind of fast guys relative to the rest of the league or more slow guys and i mean it just like if you catch the ball then it it wipes out the triple, right? I don't know. I don't quite know how to put this. But the defender is in a fixed zone, and he... I'm not going to be able to say this. I just don't know how to... I don't know where to go with this.

But I would think... I guess what I'm saying, without being able to explain it, is if you added 10% speed to the runner runner and 10 speed to the fielder i would expect that to lead to a huge drop in triples um we have talked about the fact that the rising strikeout rate maybe makes it more tolerable to play a poor defender because there are just fewer balls in play. So if you stick an Adam Dunn out in left field or something, he's not going to get as many opportunities as he would have been or a player like him would have at one time.

So maybe that would then work against that trend, right? Because you'd be more willing to put someone like that out there, but maybe just the overall athleticism has increased to the point that washes that out. Well, it's interesting you mention that because that seems, I didn't even think about that, but that seems like sort of an obvious factor too that I should have thought of that instead of looking at triples per game we really should have looked at triples per ball in play

because there's a lot fewer balls in play now. There are probably 20% fewer balls in play now than there were in the 70s. Right. And when Dan Fox did it he did triples per at bat I, I think,

or triple per plate appearances. But, yeah. Ideally, you would. It should be per balls in play. That seems kind of obvious now in retrospect. Yeah. But I'm sure it would show something similar. Yeah, but a lot less.

Yes, probably. Jeff Sullivan wrote about it recently, and he pointed out that the decline in triples rate last season was really extreme. It was like 18% decline just from 2012 to 2013, which is kind of crazy. And he mentioned that there had been really no year with that large a decline since 1901 to 1902. I can't think of any reason why suddenly it would change to that degree unless it was just the player pool. Well, the exact same thing

happened with stolen base attempts though right right which the same thing it was like a one year drop that was totally unexplainable yeah so that's kind of weird it is weird this is what keeps this is what keeps us coming back to this really strange sport that would otherwise be boring if we didn't have mysteries like triples and stolen bases. Yeah. So I suppose that concludes the baseball reference play index portion of this podcast. You know, there were 0.16 triples per game last year, and there were 0.2 per game in 1972 which isn't actually that big a difference you know like i don't it doesn't look like there was a particularly steady i mean there's the decline happened from like 1939 1940 then there was a steady decline until about 1970.

It's actually been kind of flat since then. There's been a couple years where it's spiked up to 23, 24. For the most part, since 72, there have been a lot of years between 0.8 and 0.22, which is a fairly small range. it's moved around a lot. So actually, to some degree, maybe the premise was overstated. Yeah, could be. Maybe. I don't know.

When there are more home runs, there are fewer triples, and I don't know why that would be. When there are more doubles, there are fewer triples, and I can sort of understand why that would be. And I don't know why that would be. When there are more doubles, there are fewer triples. And I can sort of understand why that would be. But there is a way that triples disappeared in the 90s when offense was up that makes you think that there might be something. Can we just agree that this is probably mostly about Robinson Cano not hustling?

Yeah. Yeah, he just gets to second and says, eh, not going to go for it. Yeah, exactly. I think that makes sense, eh, not going to go for it. Yeah, exactly. I think that makes sense. All right, so that's good. So should we just have a subcategory of emails that's just Play Index requests? Yeah, sure. That's probably a good way to prompt these.

Yeah, we would prefer that you subscribe to the Play Index and do the research yourself. But if you have ideas and suggestions, then we will certainly use them. All right. So Andy says, I recently explained to a friend of mine that in baseball, once a player comes out of the game, he can't return. explain to a friend of mine that in baseball, once a player comes out of the game, he can't return. He was baffled by this, which made me realize that unless you played in high school or something, you have to learn this rule from your dad. Think about it. It's not like this is ever mentioned in broadcasts, and it would be weird if they did, but it's very key to strategy. Are there any other baseball rules like this? That's a really good question because it's true. In Little League, you get to come in and out at will.

And in some other sports, many other sports, the majority of other sports, I would say, you get to come in and out. And it isn't something that would ever be said in a broadcast. So unless you're watching a fair number of games, you might not pick this up. And yet, it seems so obvious to you. I mean, it's so obvious that that's why you would never mention it. Can you imagine if Vince Scully, when there was a double switch, said, and for those of you at home, you can't come back into the game now. That would be really weird, right? So are there other rules that you can think of that we take for granted

that are incredibly important to the strategy of the game and that you would never mention in a broadcast? It's hard to think about baseball from the perspective of not knowing anything about baseball. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. It's a good observation. Yeah.

I don't know. Does it have, I mean, eh. No, I got nothing. I don't have anything either. I mean, like, the, I got nothing. I don't have anything either. I mean, like the force out is actually mentioned. Like they do talk about force outs a surprising amount of time. Yes. They talk about what base the force is at.

Yeah, they talk about, you know, setting up a force and they talk about needing to tag the runner because there isn't a force. So actually, that does come up. You don't have to watch that closely, I wouldn't feel like, to be exposed to that rule. You wouldn't need your dad to tell you that one. The foul ball not being strike three becomes pretty obvious by the third time it happens. becomes pretty obvious by the third time it happens. I guess tagging up.

No one would ever really explain the mechanics of tagging up, although you'd figure out that's what happened. You get those split-screen shots where they show the guy catching the ball timed up with the guy with his foot on the bag so that you can see whether he left before it was in the glove or not. So once in a while you get one of those and it would be pretty obvious what was going on there. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll have to keep thinking about this one.

But not in real time. Right. All right. Not in real time. Right. All right. So Eric Hartman says, With the whole mess of the Phillies ratting on a draft pick of theirs to the NCAA,

there's been a sentiment from many writers that the Phillies might run into some issues in future drafts due to their picks not trusting them. While I share their disdain for what the organization did, I can't imagine a scenario in which this actually hurts them, the Phillies. I'm often skeptical when there are claims that big league teams will have trouble attracting talent. I feel like Eric is subtweeting us in this question because we say this. Like was said in recent years with the Marlins, you can say our name, Eric. We said it. We stand by it.

I'm even more skeptical that this will have the slightest difference for their draft uh what leverage do these players have we should explain what he's talking about uh there is a the story is that a fifth round draftee of the phillies last summer ben wetzler uh he did not end up signing with the phillies uh he and another guy who signed in the sixth round returned to school for their senior years. And the Phillies, according to a report by Aaron Fitt, tipped off the NCAA that both of the players were using agents, which is against NCAA rules. Of course, NCAA players are allowed to have advisors who are the same people who are agents for professionals, but they are called advisors for amateurs, and it's sort of a murky, murky difference. So apparently, or at least the implication of this report is that the Phillies just vindictively wanted to get this guy in trouble for whatever reason, because he didn't sign with them, which, if true, is not very nice.

It seems like there should be some more to that story that maybe we haven't heard yet. And, of course, we don't know whether their accusation was even true. The case is still being reviewed. whether their accusation was even true the case is still being reviewed um but uh what what would you get what would you guess is the something more to this story do you have a really i i mean i don't know i can't i can't even think of a motivation that the phillies would have to do this other than vengeance right i mean there mean, is there, I mean, we don't, you know, maybe the negotiations were somehow so acrimonious. Maybe this guy, you know, made fun of Ruben Amaro's mother. We don't know what happened. We don't know whether this guy

should be an object of sympathy or whether there was some fault on his part, but it's, it's hard to imagine that, that there's really any incentive for the Phillies or any team to, to do this other than to get even. Yeah. My guess would, my guess would be totally, totally uninformed.

My guess would be that, that when we talk about the Phillies doing this, that maybe what we're actually talking about is one guy the phillies did this could be yeah that one guy is kind of right now really in a lot of trouble because it's right not it's not cool to do that um and so i don't know it seems i don't know it seems maybe more likely that this is not a team policy so much as just one guy who couldn't hold his tongue um but we'll find out right won't we so anyway the the point though that eric was asking about i think is um i think that um ranny and and and uh dane perry who he cites uh are probably correct and i think everybody who's saying this

is probably correct that the phillies might run into some issues in future drafts. Because basically there are sort of three things a scout does. One is figures out how good the guy is at playing baseball. And one is tries to convince him to sign with the team after he's drafted. And the third is to have an idea of whether the player is going to sign. So that means knowing what his, you know, basically knowing what his salary demand or his, you know, his signing demand is going to be. And usually that means, I don't know if usually is the right word, but my sense is that very, very often, perhaps usually, it's the case that actually there is some agreement made before the draft has even happened, that there are conversations going on between the player and the team,

letting the team know what this guy's going to ask for, maybe being extremely explicit about it and having an arrangement all but in writing. And so you need to be able to get that information to be on an even playing field with everybody else. That's a really important piece of information for a team to have, to know if they're going to be able to sign the guy and to know what it's going to take out of their bonus pool. And if the Phillies run into a situation where there are a lot of teams and players and agents who aren't willing to talk to them before the draft, they're not going to have access to a really crucial piece of information that other teams are going to have access to. I think Eric's right that once you draft the guy, he's not going to, I mean, he's

got no way to take it out on you. I mean, the system is set up to give teams all the leverage. But it feels like there could be a situation where the Phillies are going to have more unsigned picks than other teams if this happened or you know have a harder time estimating how much of their bonus pool uh they're going to need uh for certain players um because of this and um yeah so that i i guess that's does that seem reasonable to you that seems like what everybody's worried about right it's also possible it's conceivably possible that like in fact all teams want to do this and when they go to the GM's meetings they all talk about how they should really put their foot down and the Phillies just got ahead of the game and they're like yeah guys

let's do it and and everybody else like no we were just complaining we weren't ready to like do anything I mean it would be I feel like um that that having no agents for any of these players probably actually wouldn't help teams that much i think that players get paid a bit more because of agents but but and and that's good for the players but also players sign more because of the agents the agents are sort of sort of a matchmaker to some degree. They want to get you signed and they want to get you signed for a figure that you guys both agree on. And if there were no agents, if they were just dealing directly with the players, then it would kind of be hard to make some of these deals happen, I would think. And so you probably

would have more bad negotiations, more negotiations that go in wildly different directions and end up with you resigning. So I think that probably for the most part, agents are kind of good for the game. But if you knew as soon as a player brought his agent into the conversation that he couldn't go back to college, like if you set up a system where the player could either talk to you without an agent and then go back to college or talk to you with an agent but now he can't go back to college, that you have all the power once he brings the agent in because he can't go back to college,

then the club would have a huge upper hand, right? It would be like everybody would turn into a fourth-year senior with no other options. So yeah, probably agents. If everybody's using agents, I think it's good for the game. But if you could, I don't know, in a system where some players don't use agents and some do, you probably would drive a lot of prices down maybe. I don't know.

Seems reasonable. It's crazy. This is a crazy thing. It is. I don't think it's completely unprecedented. I know there was something with the Blue Jays and James Paxton, and Jim Callis said there was something with the White Sox and A.J. Hinch many years ago. But it's not something that we hear about often.

No. All right. Josh, hey, guys. What if starting this year saves were awarded to the reliever that came in and succeeded at the highest leverage situation? With the definition change, how many managers would immediately start using their closer in the 6th, 7th, or 8th in high leverage situations?

managers would immediately start using their closer in the sixth, seventh, or eighth in high leverage situations? And midway, or at least by the end of the season, sorry, would, okay, sorry, let me rephrase. How many managers would immediately change their strategy? How many would change their strategy midway through the first season? So not immediately, but not long after, immediately, but not long after, or never change. So basically the question is, now that the save, I mean we all think that the save dictates strategy, there seems to be a lot of evidence that the save dictates strategy. The save should never dictate strategy probably, stats shouldn't drive strategy, winning should drive strategy. However, now that the idea of the ninth inning guy is firmly in place, do you think changing the stat would change the usage?

I think it would, but I think the majority of managers would not change, at least initially, probably even in the first season. probably even in the first season. I think for one thing, managers really like being able to say, this is my seventh inning guy, this is my eighth inning guy, this is my ninth inning guy. And they always say that relievers also like that and value that certainty. But I think the managers like it just as much as the pitchers do in that they can't be second-guessed as much. I remember Jim Leland talking about this in the playoffs a couple years ago,

how it's such a luxury to just have a closer that you always bring in in this spot because no one will second-guess that you brought that guy in, even if he blows the game. So there's that. Managers have gotten accustomed to that. There's also the fact that they've kind of painted themselves into a corner in that they've been justifying the ninth inning thing for so long now that they can't really abandon that position right away, right? Because there's the whole ninth inning mentality and the

idea that the ninth inning is different from every other inning. And you hear, you know, most managers will say something like that at some point. So if they were to just abandon it immediately, that'd be a notable flip-flop. So I don't know. You might see some of the more progressive managers do it. Or maybe you would see them change the narrative somehow and say, oh, only the guy with the closer mentality can come in at the highest leverage spot. But I think it would take a while for that change to happen. I think it would eventually. Let me ask you this.

How long would it take for the average closer to ask or if not ask because he just wants to do his job, to desire the new saves role as opposed to Nathan. I think probably five minutes. Really? Well, I mean, if you're a closer going into a contract year, you're not going to be happy about not getting any saves all of a sudden unless, well, I don't know. I mean, are teams paying for saves currently, do you think? To what extent are they paying for saves as opposed to just—

I think they're paying a lot less for saves than players think they're paying for saves. Yes. So, yeah, you're right. So either way, it's the same. A player would probably push to get the saves, but I don't know. It, it seems like it would immediately make the saves, make the save stat look silly. in one season were getting no saves the following season that would that would just kind of point out how absurd the stat is uh and maybe it would just be a non-issue the premise of the question is also kind of funny and probably true but like the idea that if they changed what a save was that that all of a sudden we would be incapable as a species of counting how many times a person pitched the ninth inning in a close game.

Like, we couldn't just come up with another word for that. Yeah. We'd just look at games finished instead or something. So, yeah, let's imagine that they changed what a save was, but they also kept track of saves, and they called them something else, like games finished, like close games finished. Exactly, you call it close games finished. In 10 years, A, which one is kind of more prominent in the player's player bio,

in his team handbook, and which one do players pursue more? Does the word save still hold its cachet? Yeah, I don't know if it does. Because I feel like a lot of the saves cachet is the ninth inning attachment. The idea that you are the guy on the mound when the game is won. That kind of lends it some prestige value that it wouldn't have anymore so uh so yeah i think you would people i think you'd see people shift to the the close games finished do you think mariano rivera could have killed the save if in his last if in his last five years he had insisted he had no interest in saves anymore,

please bring me in the sixth inning when it's necessary, and had just completely punted on the idea. And maybe even in coordination with this, a stat was developed to reflect what he was doing, as various Saber sites have toyed with a stat that, you know, like a shutdown stat, right? Right. Could Mariano Rivera have undone what Jerome Holtzman wrought? I think he could have. And I think he really let the world down by not speaking out. It would have been his Nixon goes to China thing. You know, if Mariano Rivera doesn't care about saves, I mean, he's the only person who can safely goes to china thing you know if mariano rivera doesn't care about saves i mean he's the only person who can safely mock the save you know right he's i mean he does a lot of

philanthropy but he could have stepped forward for an issue that people really care about and gotten rid of the saves so um bad job by rivera all right uh, uh, what is a walk worth in singles? Um, how much is a walk worth compared to a single about 0.8? A walk is about 0.8 of a single. So that answers that quick one. Yeah. Um, all right. I guess the last one should be, uh, I don't know. How about, there's a few in here that I like. All right, Scott asks, MLB TV prevents you from watching your local market team online. Fans therefore must, sorry, fans must therefore watch most local games on cable.

Thus, cable companies are falling all over them. It's also acquired teams' TV rights. We know this. Aren't the blackout rules then specifically designed to protect cable companies who pay insane rights fees to teams? If so, we'll never see the blackouts lifted, right? Yes, I actually don't consider blackouts to be this blemish on Bud Selig's record at all, because yeah, it seems like they go hand in hand. Um, there's more money to be made for the sport if you can charge cable companies all this money. And obviously you have to give something up and what you give up is your ability to watch things for cheap on the internet. So somebody has to pay for those things. I would,

I would maybe the blemishes – The Saturday blackouts are absurd. Yeah, and maybe some of the blackout areas are strange so that you are not actually in the team's local market when you're blacked out of that team. Yeah. But the concept itself, yeah. Yeah, you're right. So there are some details that are problematic. you're right. So there are some details that are problematic. Um, and I, I mean, I think the, I think that the idea that you can't watch, um, a baseball game on a Saturday afternoon, unless you want to watch this like sort of third tier regional game, that's not even in your region

is kind of awful. Um, so that's poorly executed, but yeah, I mean, I, I think that, um, that it's conceivable that we'll see a day not too long from now when you can pay to have your blackouts lifted, but the money would be pretty substantial. I would imagine that the money might be something close to the cost that you already pay for MLB TV, and that it would go to the cable companies, because the cable companies make a huge profit on this, and they deserve to. Well, I don't know. I guess they deserve to. It seems to me they deserve to. They negotiated for these rights under the assumption that they would be able

to limit you. So it would be weird to take that away from them now. I don't know. I don't like blackouts but I mean there are so many things in this world that you don't get unfettered access to. I understand that there are restrictions on what I'm allowed to have. Yeah. Plus as you always point out, if you're willing to wait long enough, you can watch anything. Yeah. I guess the frustrating thing is that most things are buyable. Most things can be bought if you're willing to pay more for them. And I think there are a lot of fans that are willing to pay more to have blackout-free

access, but there isn't an option for that. You can't. No matter how much you're willing to spend to see certain teams play certain games, you can't do it. And it would be, I think that the ultimate solution is that you have a means to pay for those games. Could go to them.

Not if you're in a handful of cities where you really can't go to them. I mean, you can't just decide you're going to go to a Giants game, for instance, on Tuesday at 6.45. All right. Yeah. Good questions. Very good questions. Okay.

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