Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 432: The Weekend of Unwritten Rules

Episode Date: April 21, 2014

Ben and Dan discuss the weekend’s news and transactions, including a trio of unwritten rules violations.

Yeah, I need to see the written invitation, please. Yeah, I need to see the written invitation. Good morning and welcome to episode 432 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg. Sam Miller is still on vacation back this week, but not yet. So I am joined, as I was last week, by Dan Brooks of BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball Prospectus.

Hello, Dan. Oh, God, I just called you Sam. What is wrong with me? Hey, Ben, what's going on? Good to start. Good job. By the way, if anyone missed Friday's episode because it wasn't up in time for your commute

like the podcast normally is, you should check that out. It was a fun one and an educational one, I think, for me at least. I talked about the rising strikeout rate in baseball with a bunch of people, more guests than we've ever had on this show at one time. Terry Pavlidis and Rob Neier and Brian Bannister and Alan Nathan, and we discussed and debated why strikeouts are up so much and what should be done about it. So that was fun. Check it out if you haven't. So today we are just going to talk about a bunch of stuff that happened this weekend. We

don't really have one topic. We have a few, although I suppose there is a theme to a few of the things that we are going to talk about. This was the weekend of unwritten rules. So we will talk about all the unwritten rules controversies, because we have a lot to add from our perspective as former high level professional baseball players. And there was also some news that we can discuss. I guess we can just get the quick actual news items out of the way. So the Tigers released Alex Gonzalez, which was not really a shock to anyone, I don't think. The shock was probably that Alex Gonzalez was being counted on to play shortstop, to start at shortstop for a contending team in 2014 at age 37. And this is, I guess, the second straight season

that Alex Gonzalez has been asked to do something that he really can't do. Last year, he was asked to be the Brewers' starting first baseman on opening day. That didn't last very long, and this didn't last very long either. The curious thing about it, I suppose, is that the Doug Pfister

trade got so much flack and Dave Dombrowski got so much flack and the defense was often that Dave Dombrowski has this great track record for trades, which is absolutely the case. But this trade was sort of an offshoot of the Doug Pfister trade because one of the players who was traded in the Pfister trade who Detroit got back for Pfister, Steve Lombardozzi, was traded to the Orioles for Alex Gonzalez, which seemed like sort of an overpay at the time. Not that Lombardozzi is anything special, but, you know, a decent utility guy and seemed like someone they wanted over the winter. And, you know, when they lost Iglesias, they sort of made the desperation move for Gonzalez. But it was kind of curious to think that, you know, Gonzalez clearly not much of a hitter

anymore. And to expect him to play shortstop at a high level seemed like a lot to ask, but you figure, go back to the Dombrowski trade track record again and how he's always seeming to make these moves that work out. And so now they have already thrown in the flag on this one and released Gonzalez and called up Danny Wirth. And they basically more or less admitted that it was kind of a scouting mistake, you know, without using those words. But they basically said that they hoped that Gonzalez could play shortstop at a high level. And he just wasn't. He wasn't giving them the range that they thought they would get from him. So I don't know whether they saw him for a few games in spring training and thought he looked good, and he turned out to not be so good.

But now they're in the situation where they're going with Andrew Romine and Danny Wirth, and I'm still sort of wondering, why not Stephen Drew? Do you have any theories about why not Stephen Drew? No. It's curious. I mean, you know, I mean, you know, why not Stephen Drew has made little sense

from the beginning. And so why not Stephen Drew now? I guess maybe it's because there's like some shame involved in signing Stephen Drew now if you didn't sign him to begin with, and you're giving up a draft pick to get even less. You could just wait, and I don't really understand it.

I mean, the qualifying offer system doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever, but it really doesn't make any sense to me in light of why not sign the guy. I think really the whole Alex Gonzalez thing is weird, not because they were asking him to be a major league shortstop, but just because of the whole story around it. You know, like, I mean, if Alex Gonzalez has been sitting on the couch at home or, like, mowing his lawn or, like, teaching, you know, like, you know, some eighth uh teaching you know like you know some eighth

grade classroom or something like that and you know they they just needed a guy because iglesias went down and they didn't feel you know happy with any of their other options and so they called them up and they were like the guy so badly that they apparently asked omar viskell if he wanted to be that guy and he didn't like you know what i mean like if they just needed a guy you know and he was just a guy then they could go get a guy and he didn't like you know what i mean like if they just needed a guy you know and he was just a guy then they could go get a guy and you know like he had done this before you know it wasn't like crazy it wouldn't be like um you know like calling up barry bontz and being like hey you want to be our shortstop right you know i mean like this this was a guy who could be a shortstop

i mean he just actually couldn't be a shortstop. And so the weird thing is that they, like, spent assets to acquire him after acquiring those assets in a seemingly undervalued, but you were hoping maybe, like, it was a really good deal for them because of the whole trade thing. You know, I don't know. I mean, the whole situation is just weird. But why not Stephen Drew? I don't know. I mean, the whole situation is just weird. But why not Steve and Drew? I have no idea.

I mean, did he, like, personally insult some member of the family? Did he, you know, did he do something wrong? Right. I mean, the only thing I can think is that they are just getting kind of worried about things coming to a spectacularly terrible end all of a sudden once this current core gets old uh and maybe things go downhill fast and they're just really sensitive about giving up a draft pick but i i don't you know it seems like a team that is really built to win now and drew would give them a better shot at that either that or it's you know they just think they can get through the regular season without him which could could be the case

they are well the weird thing about it all is is that you know you just signed miguel cabrera to a 10-year deal um and right that's what it was so the 10 years was eight years 10 years there's some you know it's a really long deal. Right. And, you know, so, and, and, you know, everybody is pretty much in agreement, but the first years of those contracts might be worth it. But the last years are going to be terrible. And, you know, it, it's one of those things where it's like, if you are so future conscious in some areas,

like you don't want to give up a draft pick to go sign a clearly better player than you can get internally. Then why are you so not future conscious in other areas of the organization? That's sort of confusing. Well, we'll see what happens with Drew. I'm curious to see whether, you know, he works out some sort of agreement.

He and Boris work out something with some team over the next couple months. Who knows, maybe they already have some sort of provisional agreement somewhere. And the day after the draft, we see him signed somewhere. Is that sort of what you're expecting? I mean, it seems almost inconceivable that he could sit out the entire season. Yeah, you know, I mean, it's really dumb that there are rules that prevent people from playing at no... You know, this is a really dumb rule.

It should be changed quicker than the transfer rule. Like, if I had a list of rules that I would want changed, it would be, like, the qualifying offer rule, and then I would go for the transfer rule, but the transfer rule is going to get changed first. Yes, so good segue. So we can talk about that. That was another news thing that came up this weekend.

Ken Rosenthal reported that it seems likely that the home plate collisions rule and the transfer rule will both be changed. And not just that they would be changed, because I don't think that that was news to anyone, really. But it does seem like they will be changed soon. It wasn't at all certain that anything about the system would be changed before the end of the year. You kind of got the sense that while this was a trial run and while major league baseball was always upfront about it, you know, being subject to change, it wasn't certain that, that they would tamper with things, meddle with things in season. Cause then, you know, it just, it looks sort of bad. Why couldn't you work this out before the year? And then you've got to explain everything

again to coaches and players who were explained something different this spring. But it does seem from what Rosenthal said that there could be a change about both of these rules sooner rather than later. Probably during the season is the sense I got. And it sounds like players are as mystified and upset about the transfer rule as we are. You and I and Zachary talked about it on the podcast last week, and you called it before the spring, right? I mean, you in March were talking about how this would be a big problem. It's too bad that you were not on the committee that came up with the rules. But it sounds like they'll just be sort of going back to what what a catch is what we thought a catch was what a catch used to be a catch will be a catch again

and we saw another example of the the transfer rule this weekend with kyle seager at third base sort of bobbling a ball on a transfer after having made a force play and the call, you know, the runner was ruled out and then it was overturned. So it sounds like pretty soon this will be gone. We'll be back to a catch being a catch, and this will just be sort of a historical footnote that we all kind of laugh about in five years.

Do you have any? Yeah, go ahead. There was another one tonight, actually, during the Red Sox game on Sunday Night Baseball. I think it was Flaherty was covering second. You know, I think it was a shift play, so I'm not exactly sure who was at second base. But he took the ball, I think, on the comebacker to the mound, which was the throw from the pitcher, I think.

And I remember the catch very clearly because it was clearly a catch. He extends out. He captures the ball. His foot is on the back. And you can see his glove squeeze like you can see the whole thing. And he brings down his glove to take the ball out of the glove because that's what you need to do in baseball is you need to actually take the ball out of the glove, because that's what you need to do in baseball, is you need to actually take the ball out of your glove before you throw the ball.

And he drops it. And everybody knew at that point that the runner at second base was going to be safe. And they cut to Buck Showalter in the dugout. And he's just like, you could tell like what he was thinking is you're all idiots like you know like he didn't challenge the play because there's nothing to challenge you know what i mean like it's not really a challengeable play because there's you know there's no interpretation of he dropped the ball because you know gravity shows he dropped the ball you know like everybody can see the balls on the ground but like everybody could also see it was a catch and there's really nothing worse than when everybody can see it's a catch and they can't do

anything about it so so it'll be changed i mean yes it should be changed yes and it's it's nice to know that this madness will will not last much longer because it's been kind of bad PR for what I would say overall is a good system and a good development. It's kind of a black eye for replay in general that there has been this occasional strange play that really doesn't align with anyone's understanding of reality. align with anyone's understanding of reality. So hopefully this will be changed soon and we can go back to just enjoying the fact that fewer calls are incorrect now. Yeah, the weird thing about this is that this really doesn't have too much to do with replay

in a lot of ways. You know what I mean? Like, had they just not emphasized this transfer thing, would anybody have ever gotten a transfer catch wrong on replay? You know what I mean? Like, there would have been gray area ones where it would have been so clear, Would anybody have ever gotten a transfer catch wrong on replay? You know what I mean? There would have been gray area ones where it would have been so clear, but most of these ones are just black and white.

He caught the ball and then he dropped it. And we've made him a crap test out of it. So we can just go back to being better people and have a good baseball again. Yes. I look forward to that. All right. A couple other quick news items. I just wanted to talk about this Sean Doolittle extension briefly.

Not even so much to talk about Doolittle himself, but just to talk about the deal. The A's extended Doolittle to a five-year contract extension. So it covers the current season, runs through 2018. And this is kind of unusual for a reliever to get that long a deal. A guy who hasn't been a closer, a guy with his service time. a guy who hasn't been a closer, a guy with his service time. MLB Trade Rumors did a post and there were only three reliever extensions for four-year durations and none that had gone to five. You could count this as a four because one of the years is already in progress, but

there are very few, if any, comparables to this kind of thing. And so I'm curious about the best interpretation of what this deal means, because I saw a few. There's the idea that relievers are somehow the new money ball, which has been bandied about a bit since Billy Bean traded for Jim Johnson and spent all that money on a closer, which is weird. And we'd never seen Billy Bean traded for Jim Johnson and spent all that money on a closer, which is weird. And we'd never seen Billy Bean do anything like that. And then he traded for Luke Gregerson, who's making decent money. And so this comes on the heels of that. And so, you know, the idea is Billy Bean sees some sort of inefficiency with bullpens and relievers. And so now this is part of that. The other interpretation is, I suppose, that this

is just an example of what Sam wrote about last year when he sort of speculated about which way extensions would be going and what teams could do to kind of push the envelope now that everyone is signing extensions and it's not automatic that you just get a great deal on everyone. He was talking about what teams could do to get a great deal. And so one of his ideas was they could sign guys really young, sign them before they ever reach the majors, sort of like the contract that the Astros offered Springer. And his other idea was just sort of sign marginal players to extension. Like in the past, extensions have kind of been the domain of star players, or at least above average players, extensions have kind of been the domain of star players,

or at least above average players, really valuable guys you want to lock up. And maybe now we're starting to see a lower or a lesser caliber of player get extended. So maybe that's part of it. Maybe now we're talking about reliever extensions. And then the final interpretation is that maybe the A's figure, that Shondoolittle is their closer of the future, maybe their closer of the very near future. And if he's racking up say's over the next few years, he will be rewarded for that in arbitration. And therefore, it makes sense to lock him up to a deal now before he has that closer aura about him. Sign him when he's still a setup man and then make him a closer and he'll still be paid

like a setup man. So which of those interpretations is most persuasive to you? Well, first, I just want to go back to ask you a question. So when you say the new money ball, you mean the new thing that Billy Bean is doing? Because Billy Bean is like the default, you know, he's the guy in Moneyball. Or do you, well, I mean like, you know, Brad Pitt and Alphys Fanny.

Do you mean the thing Billy Bean is doing or do you mean the thing that makes good baseball sabermetric sense? The thing that Billy Bean is doing because he thinks it makes the most sabermetric sense. Okay. I mean, just the idea that Billy Bean is going after relievers all of a sudden or paying relievers more than the standard sabermetric line about it doesn't make sense to pay relievers because they only pitch 60 innings and they aren't dependable and there there's always another one you could pick up that that whole thing that maybe maybe that was wrong the whole time maybe maybe the fact that all teams

were paying relievers a lot more money than you know our our win value models would suggest that they should have was was them actually being on to something and and so now billy bean is on board with that but here's the thing if if billy bean or you know like if it's like uh i mean i feel like billy bean is like both a real person and a fictional character. There's an actual guy that exists, and then there's a guy that we talk about as if he embodies all the sabermetric general manager ideals. And so if the fictional Billy Bean, who embodies all sabermetric ideals,

thought that it made sense to try and acquire relievers cheaply, then why would he pay them? Right, yes. Right? I mean, that's the part I don't understand. Like, if you can already go out and get relievers cheaply, you know, like, is Doolittle not going to be available? Like, you know, unless you are projecting Doolittle to be worth much more than the contract,

which was some option somewhere in that litany of options that you gave me, you know, nothing really helps make sense, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, the A's have certainly been able to find cheap arms in the bullpen over the last couple of years, you know. Do you think they're going to stop being able to find cheap arms in the bullpen over the last couple of years. Do you think they're going to stop being able to find cheap arms? Well, yeah, I wonder. I wonder because Sam, again, did an article last year where he was actually responding to that idea

because I think I, on the podcast, had mentioned something about how the A's had just managed to find all these cheap, effective arms and Dan Otero and all of these people who kind of came out of nowhere to be really good setup guys. And so he was looking to see, I don't know how repeatable that skill was. And he looked through all the A's successful bullpen guys and his conclusion that was that it's not easy, that it's actually really hard to find these guys, that lots of teams sign guys Or maybe it's just sort of a fluke, sort of a run of just hitting on all of these guys or a higher number than most teams did. So I don't know. And he made the point that it wasn't, I mean, they put some time and effort into finding these guys and working them through the minors. And it wasn't just like reaching out and just snapping your fingers and coming up with a great setup, man.

So maybe, yeah, maybe they have self-evaluated and said that we've gotten lucky here. We've had a really nice run of success finding these cheap available arms but we don't know that we can continue to do it so maybe we should lock these guys up while we can yeah i mean that's yeah that is certainly a possibility that maybe they've just gotten lucky and so what they're doing now is they are um you know hedging against the fact that their luck won't continue, that they've been good at scouting guys who have turned out in the recent past. The problem is if you think that, then what you're saying to yourself is we don't know quite enough to go get guys,

but we know that the guys we have are going to project to be really good. And that's a little bit weird, right? I mean, it's like saying, you know, we know that there's something about Sean Doolittle that's going to continue to be good in the future. And so we should pay him, even though there's probably plenty of other guys who are going to be underpaid next year, who presumably you could apply the same sort of model to and decide we could pay them just a little bit more

than they would otherwise be making, sign them comparatively cheaper than Doolittle, and make off like bandits. And so I guess it depends what you think about your player evaluation model. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, right. All right, and final bit of news we can just talk about briefly. The Ivan Nova injury seems like could be the latest guy

to be headed to the operating table with Tommy John. He's got a torn UCL and not sure of the severity, and nothing has been announced for sure. He is on the disabled list and it doesn't sound great. And I just wanted to bring this up because you asked me a question on, I don't know, Thursday, Friday, about the Yankees. evaluation of them had changed or my projection for the team had changed just based on the early success of a couple of starters who we weren't sure what to expect out of before the season started. Masahiro Tanaka, who's been great through a few starts, and Michael Pineda, who's also been great. And so I said that my evaluation or my expectation for Tanaka hadn't changed all that much I expected

good things out of him and he's been great but you know I wouldn't revise my my projection my outlook for him all that much based on a few starts but that Pineda I didn't know whether he'd pitch at all or if he did pitch, whether he would come back with close to the stuff he had before, whereas he seems to have come back with all of the stuff he had before. And so that seemed like maybe you'd bump up their projection a couple wins relative to what you would have predicted for them prior to the season, just based on Pineda, even though he remains an elevated injury risk, certainly given his past. So now, Nova.

So somebody asked last week, you know, with that whole like Pintar-Pineda incident, if there was anything different that Pineda was doing that he hadn't done the last couple of years. And my answer was immediately, yeah, throw the ball. You know, like the ball was moving from the pitcher's mound to the glove, you know, in a way that it hadn't done in the last couple of years. Yes.

So, yeah. So, yeah. So that's been a plus. So now in the wake of the Pineda injury, or sorry, the Nova injury, I guess have they kind of then given back the couple of wins that maybe we would have given them over their March 31st projection? Just based on the fact that they're now going from Nova to, you know, Fidel Nuno started in his place today. They're obviously not a team with a wealth of sixth and seventh and eighth starters.

So that's kind of a big blow. I mean, I don't know about you, but I was expecting good things out of Nova. He was sort of on my, I don't know, I don't really have a breakout player list, but if I had made one, he probably would have been on one just based on the improvements he made during the season in 2013 and how effective he was down the stretch. I was expecting good things. And now it looks like they will not be getting those good things. So that probably wipes out the good that they get from Pineda actually pitching. Yeah, although, you know, Pineda could be a, you know, I mean, if Pineda comes back and he's really good, which is, you know, every indication maybe he's going to be, at

least, you know, if he keeps throwing things, you know, that could be a top-of-the-rotation kind of arm, whereas I don't think Nova was ever going to be a top-of-the-rotation kind of arm. So I think there's way more upside for Pineda if he's healthy than there ever would be for Nova. Of course, there wasn't huge injury risk for Nova until he, until his elbow blew out. There's huge injury risk for Pineda, I think, you know, I mean, you know, I think you have to, you know, every day that Pineda gets on a mound

and gets off it without, um, experiencing some sort of like, um, like, uh, spontaneous arm amputation, you know, uh, you, you have to think it's good. Yeah. I'm trying to decide whether the Yankees have been more or less healthy than I would have expected for them so far. They've had the Teixeira injury, and he's back now. And they've had the Robertson groin strain, and he's just about to be back now. And, of course, they've had Brendan Ryan hurt and Francisco Cervelli hurt, and now they've got Nova hurt. Is Brian Roberts hurt?

Is Brian Roberts hurt? I sort of assume that Brian Roberts is hurt, but he's been playing. No, no, no. Didn't he hurt? I thought he didn't play at all. I thought he played like two games. Let me see while we talk. Am I crazy?

I thought he threw out his groin or something or some part of him. Robert Sin did. No, no, no, Robert. Okay, he's played. Yeah, Robert, he's got lower back soreness, but just the last few days, day to day. And I'm sure that won't escalate into anything worse than that. No. day-to-day. And I'm sure that won't escalate into anything worse than that. And Jeter's

had a day-to-day thing here and there. But I guess you kind of have to, after last season and given the collective age of this team, maybe this is a more healthy April than you could have expected. One pitcher potentially

lost for the season, and a few guys on the 15-day with DL, and a few guys day-to-day. I guess it could be worse. That's kind of the risk. What about A-Rod? Yeah.

I'm a Red Sox fan, so I just felt necessary to bring up A-Rod. I mean, there is no reason he belongs in this conversation. But all right, there you go. Okay, we can move on. All right. Okay, so we've already talked for a while, so that's enough news and current events.

Well, let's talk about other current events that are not strictly performance-related. This really was the weekend of unwritten rules. really was the weekend of of unwritten rules um and we jason or uh russell and i spoke to dark k hearst last week about unwritten rules and how they can be confusing for for off the field observers and seemingly also for for on the field participants and so there were there were a few this weekend so we can just go through them quickly here and give whatever our thoughts are. So I guess the first one involved the A's and the Astros. The A's knocked Jared Kosart out of the game very, very early. They scored seven runs in the first inning of what turned into an 11-3 win over the Astros.

And that first inning only ended because Jed Lowry, who was batting for the second time in the inning, went for a bunt single and was thrown out at first. And so the bunt single actually worked in the Astros' favor in that Lowry was out, but it was not well received by the Astros. And the next time Lowry was up, Paul Clemens, who was pitching for the Astros, threw between Lowry's legs. He was aiming to hit him, presumably, somewhere in the lower body. And then the second pitch was inside also.

And then Lowry flew out and he had some words with Jose Altuve. And, you know, the standard, whether the mercy rule in effect, in a sense, was in effect after scoring seven runs in the first inning. And I was watching MLB Tonight on MLB Network that night, and they had Harold Reynolds in the studio and Mitch Williams in the studio, and they were split on this one. And Harold Reynolds was very much opposed to this action by Lowry. Just, you know, bunting with a seven-run lead was just, was unforgivable. Mitch Williams said it was totally okay because it was the first inning.

And his understanding of rules like this is that it has to be, you know, after the sixth inning or double digit deficit, which is kind of the problem with all these things is that, you know, they were contemporaries in baseball. They played the same game and they completely disagreed on this play. And so certainly we not having played will disagree with people who have played and disagreed with each other. I don't know. Do you come down either way on this one? I mean, it sort of boggles my mind, really, that given how big a business baseball is and how important, how valuable every win is to every team, not to mention, you know, every single is to the players who figure to make a ton of money. It really kind of boggles my mind that we are still talking about any sort of mercy rule in

baseball. And, you know, I guess I am okay with it, given that it was the first inning, and it was also the Astros, and you figure they're probably not going to come back from a seven-run deficit. But so early in the game, as Mitch Williams said, if you don't like it, don't give up seven runs in the first inning. No, I mean, look, I actually, I think Lowry's comments really summed this up best. When Lowry was asked about it, I think he said, you know, look, they were shifting me, right, in the first inning, down seven runs. And if the game was so out of hand that they, you know, they expect that I shouldn't be trying to punt for a single,

then why are they deploying weird defenses against me? You know what I mean? Like, like if, you know, if you think that, you know, if the, uh, if you're complaining that, for example, like, you know, this happens in football every once in a while, it's like, you know, a team is down, you know, 35, uh, or something like that. And, um, and you know, the other team will still be throwing deep against them. And it's like, well, still be throwing deep against them and it's like well why are you doing that it's like well why are you blitzing you know what i mean like what what what do you possibly hope to accomplish you know it's like what why do you feel like you get to play the

game to best uh you know contribute to your chance of playing but I don't get to do the same thing. And that's dumb. You know, so, well, I tend to think that most unwritten rule things are dumb. But, you know, I mean, really, you know, if you're going to shift people and expect that people can bump against the shift, it wasn't even successful, right? and expect that people can bump against the shift. It wasn't even successful, right? I mean, like, you know, it's not like they did something that was like,

I don't know, you know, like if they were up, you know, 14 to 2 in the ninth inning and they put in Billy Hamilton to run it, I know they don't have that guy, but if they put him in to run at first base and he stole second, you know, that would be like, all right, now you're just being dicks. But this is a case where, you know, the Astros are choosing to shift, which we all recognize is a unique defense designed to prevent Jed Lowry from hitting the ball or getting hit when he hits the ball to where he normally hits it.

So clearly it's in his best interest to not do that. I mean, you know, I can't even really wrap my mind around why anyone would be upset at him for doing that. Yeah, that is a good point. I guess you could say that the Astros are shifting so much now that for them to not shift in a shift situation would potentially screw them up somehow. They're in this mindset all season where they're shifting in certain situations, and then to abandon it one time would be a lot of effort for them to have to readjust their approach to the game or something. But yeah, I mean, that seems like a pretty airtight argument to me. I would find it more insulting if I was the Astros, if the A's just decided to give up,

right? Like Jed Lowry could have easily have just sat down in the batter's box, you know, and been like, all right, well, strike me out. How's that working? And they could have struck him out, and he could have walked back and sat down in the dugout. But obviously that wouldn't have been satisfying to anyone, so he's trying to play

to win. People play the game to win. Yeah. Second unwritten rule violation came on Saturday when Bryce Harper was pulled from the Nationals game by manager Matt Williams for not hustling. He was pulled after six innings because he didn't run out of ground ball and he really, really didn't run it out. I mean, it wasn't one of those cases where you jog all the way to the base. He didn't even reach the base. He sort of got three quarters of the way there and peeled out back to the dugout. And so he was removed from the game. And to intensify the attention paid to this,

as if there wasn't going to be enough already, Harper's spot came up in the bottom of the ninth inning with Trevor Rosenthal on the mound. and the Nationals used Kevin Franson with the tying runs on second and third base. And Franson drove in one of those runs with a ground out, but of course the question was, what would have happened had Harper been in the game? And the Nationals, I think, lost that game by a run. I think lost that game by a run. So the question was, you know, did Williams handle this well? And I guess it's kind of the standard thing when a new manager comes in and, you know, he wants to establish his authority on the team and establish the fact that no player on the team is above the law and can get away with things that other players on the teams couldn't. And presumably he was brought in kind of, you know, playing on his reputation as a guy who played the game the right way

or, you know, coming in to take over a team that underperformed last year. And so maybe he sold ownership on, you know, being harder on the players, getting more out of the talent. And so this was clearly a case where, you know, it's not like Harper really cost the team anything in 99 out of 100 situations. But you never know. It was kind of an egregious example of not running it out. My question really is, you know, is this the best way to handle it? Do you want to do it in such a high-profile way with a player who is so important to the franchise? And of course, you know, you look back through baseball history and all kinds of Hall of Fame

players have been benched at some point in their career. This is probably not going to be a lasting issue in any way. It's unlikely that Harper is just going to be seething and the resentment will build year after year and he'll demand a trade or he won't resign with the Nationals because of this incident or because of other incidents that snowball from this incident. Most likely it's just over and it's a blip and we won't ever talk about it again. But, you know, you would think that at least the way that I would handle it and Matt Williams is, you know, paid to handle things better than I would and to know what makes Bryce Harper tick better than I would. But, you know, why not pull him aside and say, don't do that again? Rather than put the spotlight on him,

sort of embarrass him. If you think he's a player that could learn a lesson just from being told as opposed to being made an example of, then why not try it that way? And of course, I'm assuming that this is not a pattern that Williams hasn't, you know, talked to Harper about it before. And so Harper was then disobeying an order, in which case that would change things. But otherwise, you'd think, you know, why not go about it in a way that puts a little less attention on Harper and also doesn't cost the Nationals in the short term a potential victory? in the short term a potential victory. Yeah, so actually, I mean, really, I mean, it's all sort of like self-flagellation, like who cares, right?

I mean, you know, it's not like they hit a guy with a pitch or something because he decided not to hustle. You know, they removed their own player from the game that presumably gave them a smaller chance to win. So if they want to do that, whatever. that presumably gave them a smaller chance to win. So if they want to do that, whatever. The best thing about this story is not the fact that it happened, but the fact it happened to Bryce Harper,

who actually was on the cover of Inside Pitch, which is the Nationals program. And I just sent it to you. I don't know if you've seen this before. Yeah, so he's on the cover, and it's a picture of him running with this wild eye, looking at space, and it says, nothing but hustle. And it's just amazing that he would be benched

in that very game for lack of hustle. You know, this is also a guy who plays with such reckless abandon that he runs into walls at full speed. Right. I mean, this is a guy who plays with such reckless abandon that he runs into walls at full speed right um i mean there's a guy who uh probably six months ago or a year ago or however long it was ago you were talking about like does he need to slow down so that he doesn't hurt himself or something like that and you know so it's kind of like if you benched Puig for, you know, taking a wide turn at first rather than hustling to second on a double.

And it's like all the media attention is about how he's not. He's a good base runner, actually, but all the media attention is how he's an idiot on the bases and costs his team runs. And all the media attention on Harper is like, you know, dude, slow down. Don't hurt yourself. You have a long career, you know, don't run into walls. You know, there's going to be times where you aggravate a leg injury or whatever. You don't need to bust it down the first baseline, you know, on routine grounders or whatever, you know, you can run, but you don't need to kill yourself because you're a special kind of player.

And it's just amazing that they would bench him for not running hard enough. That seems incredibly short-sighted, but who knows? I mean, you know, they know him better than I do. Right. Yeah, that was more or less my feeling. And then the last unwritten rule flare-up of the weekend Came courtesy of Carlos Gomez Who has given us such controversies to discuss before And this one started in a game where he

He's playing against the Pirates He flipped his bat on what turned out to be a triple. It looked like it was a home run off the bat. He appeared to think it was, and he ended up at third after the ball bounced back and got by Andrew McCutcheon. So it didn't cost the Brewers anything. He ended up on third. But once he got to third, Garrett Cole, who was pitching for the Pirates, started saying something to him. And then Gomez started responding. And then he sort of threw some punches, which were not really just punches, but punches while he was still holding his batting helmet, which is, you know, kind of dirty in a way.

And so his... He wasn't using a bat, you know... He wasn't using a bat. He wasn't using a bat. No, we can give him that. So after the game, Gomez defended himself, and he said

that he was not flipping his bat because he thought it was a home run. He said he was flipping his bat because he thought it was an out. He said, I thought it was a home run. He said he was flipping his bat because he thought it was an out. He said, I thought it was a fly ball out, line drive center field, and I'm kind of like, oh, I had good contact, but I don't think it's going out. It's not like I'm pimping a home run, which is a little dubious, I think, probably, but he did make a good point that he you know, he had done this stuff before.

Like he homered against the Pirates on Friday night and he flipped his bat. He flipped his bat on a sacrifice fly against the Pirates recently. So I don't know whether the resentment was building up or whether the pitcher who was pitching when those balls were hit just didn't mind what Garrett Cole minded. So he says, i do the stuff i've been doing for eight years why do people get mad and pissed off for something i do every time and when they when they do it nobody gets mad nobody gets pissed off i don't understand and he gave a couple examples during the same series of pirates who were pimping hits, according to him. And the Brewers didn't say anything. He said, we respect that.

You win. Okay, enjoy it. We hit a double. We hit a triple. They get mad. I don't think it's fair. So maybe kind of an unusual situation in which a young player who made the league last year is yelling at a veteran about unwritten rules,

which is maybe the opposite of the way it usually works. But I think Tom Tango raised an interesting question after this game when he, he asked whether, whether the NFL rules about showboating that prevent showboating are smart and whether baseball should do that. Because as it is right now, players more or less police other players. And I know that when Sam and I talk about these things, we usually say that it's the player's game and however they want to play it is fine with us. But Tom made the point that, you know, maybe why not empower the umpire and the league to do it? And of course, in a way, you know, Gomez will be suspended.

Other people who participated here will be suspended and fined, but not for the unwritten rule violation, but for the brawl that ensued after that. So, you know, the rules that the NFL has about celebrating after a touchdown or after a sack or whatever it is, and demonstrating, you know, right in front of the player who you just beat, which is pretty much equivalent to pimping a home run and flipping your bat right in front of the pitcher who allowed it. why not then give the league or the umpire the power to impose the fine or to take the player out of the game and just take it out of the player's hands entirely, which possibly could do away with these sorts of brawls

that we see from time to time. So the NFL actually has really specific rules about what's allowed and what's not allowed. So for example, you can do sack dances, you can do touchdown dances, you can, you know, do first down dances. You see that every once in a while. Um, you know, if you make an intersection, you can do a dance after that, whatever. Um, you can't make, um, like aggressive gestures. So you can't like slit your throat. You can't, um, you know, like grab your crotch. You can't, you know, you can't use the ball as a prop.

You can't do like a coordinated thing with a whole bunch of people, you know, like, so there with a whole bunch of people. There's a whole bunch of things. The idea that watching your home run would be outlawed in the NFL is silly. People do way worse than that.

After you sack the quarterback in the NFL, you get up and then you dance over his corpse. You know what I mean? Like, you know, like, like, come on, like, like if a baseball player did that, you know, like, you know, he would get beat by everyone on the other team for the rest of the year. You know,

and that's actually the funniest part about this whole thing to me, at least. So Kok on baseball sunday night baseball was they were replaying this and he was saying you know garrett cole just needs to learn that when somebody does this to you the next time he gets back in the box you just drill him and it's like garrett cole throws 100 miles an hour like i don't see how it's any better for garrett cole to get back in the you know to to for Garrett Cole to get back in the box and then drill him off the ribs or whatever with a 100-mile-an-hour fastball than it is for him to yell at him while he goes around the bases.

That seems a whole lot less provocative to me, but I'm not a baseball player, so I don't know. It seems like a whole lot less possibly likely to cause injury, you know, all sorts of things like that. But, you know, who knows? I mean, I think that policing these things is pretty well done by the players. You know, there were actual punches thrown in this fight, which is really rare. Yes. You know, most brawls are, like, the lamest things. Most baseball brawls are, like, you know, I love, actually, my favorite part of the baseball brawl is when the bullpen's clear.

Yes. You know, because, like, by the time everything has happened, you know, it's like the bullpens sort of look at each other and they're like, you know, many times they actually come from exactly the same place. So clearly if they wanted to fight people on the other team, they could just turn three feet and fight the guys who are also coming out of the bullpen. But they don't do that. They like all run, jog towards the infield. And they sort of mill around and talk to each other.

Yeah, I wish we got bullpen on bullpen brawling, just in a different setting, just multiple locales. Well, you know, like, I think that would, you know, I think that would really up the ante here. No, but seriously, I mean, you know, baseball balls tend to be pretty dumb. You know, rarely do actual punches get thrown. Rarely do actual people get anything that could possibly hurt them. They're a lot more tame than hockey balls,

but they're sort of there to do the same thing, right? Like they're a pressure release valve. Guys yell at each other. They come out on the field, then they get thrown out of the game, and then the game continues. If you listen to guys talking about hockey fights, they're more or less totally staged. Like, they're not staged.

Like, the guys are throwing punches at each other. It's not like WWE. But they actually, they're like, hey, you want to fight? And the other guy's like, yeah, let's fight. And then they drop the sticks. You know, it's not like one guy, like, jumps the other guy. And, like, he starts throwing punches out of nowhere. You know, like, they talk to each other.

And they're like, hey, we need to fight now. You know? And, you know, these are guys who more or less, they fight all the time. And they're like, okay, let's start fighting. And, you know, baseball brawls are sort of the same thing. You know, it's like there's a little bit of, like, you know, baseball brawls are sort of the same thing. You know, it's like, there's a little bit of like, you know, some tensions blowing up, and then somebody throws a pitch that's usually nowhere near somebody else, and they get upset about it. And then they

charge the mound, and they yell at each other, and then everybody gets thrown out of the game, and then it moves on. You know, and I mean, I don't know. So anyway, I think the idea of like, getting umpires involved here any more than they are already would be awful. I mean, I don't know. So, anyway, I think the idea of getting umpires involved here, any more than they are already, would be awful. I mean, can you imagine, like, you know, a guy hits, like, a big double on a key spot in the ninth inning or whatever to put the go-ahead run on third base, and, you know, he gets up there and he, like, does a fist pump.

And, you know, when they get to second base, they gesture at their teammates and they're like, oh yeah. The umpire being like, red card, you're out of here. Right. And then we have to have replay review to determine whether he fist pumped. Only now. I mean, you know, I mean, like, look, you know, the game polices itself pretty well. I mean, you know, if this was really a problem, then players would say this was really a problem. And nobody is really getting hurt in baseball brawls.

I mean, like it happens, but it's super rare. You know, like it happened. It happened last year, right, Zach? Ricky got hurt, didn't he? You know, like it happened last year, right, Zach? Ricky got hurt, didn't he? Yeah, I mean, that was more a one-on-one confrontation than a brawl. I guess it turned into a brawl. And there's the Jason LaRue, Johnny Cueto one.

But, yes, it's not common. Yeah, it's just one of those things. I don't know. I tend to think like... I think the more embarrassing thing about all these unrecognizable things is that Jed Lowry didn't get hit with a pitch. I think if you're going to go out there... Didn't Ryan Dempster do this last year with A-Rod, right? Where he was like, I'm going to hit you, and he threw a ball behind him that didn't hit him,

and then he threw another ball behind him that didn't hit him. And A-Rod looked at him like, dude, he'm going to hit you, and he threw a ball behind him and it didn't hit him, and then he threw another ball behind him and it didn't hit him. And here I'm like, dude, is he going to hit me or not? And then he got drilled, right? That's a good example of something that Sam likes to talk about, and we've talked about it on the podcast before, that pitcher's control is probably not quite as good as we tend to think it is. And we looked up a stat about, you know,

when the pitcher is facing an opposing pitcher at the plate and he goes to 3-0, and of course the sample is sort of skewed because the pitchers who are going to 3-0 on opposing pitchers are probably guys who don't have good control to begin with, but it's like only 67% strikes in that situation on 3-0 to a pitcher, which is the most, you know, gimme strike situation in the world. No pitcher is going to swing at a 3-0 pitch probably. So you can just lay it right over the middle. And even in

that situation, they can only do it two-thirds of the time so it's not not shocking to me that that they miss players bodies when they are aiming for those also at times what about bartolo cologne yeah i mean you gotta pitch around that guy right yeah i where where carlos gomez is concerned at least I feel like maybe he should just sort of get a special dispensation from the unwritten rules, because it's clear that this is how he plays the game and he's not apologetic about it. And yelling at him is not going to stop him from from doing this. And and, you know, Carlos Gomez is from his perspective, he doesn't feel that he's doing anything wrong. from his perspective, he doesn't feel that he's doing anything wrong. So if he wants to continue doing this, that's fine, but he should probably just not respond to people yelling at him. And then these things won't escalate, and he can keep flipping the bat if he wants to.

If this was really a problem, people would say, if you flip the bat against our team, you're going to get drilled in the ribs. And no matter how much Carlos Gomez likes flipping the bat, it's going to get old for him to get hit with the ball, you know? And, you know, this will solve itself. You know, we just don't need more. We don't need rules about when, you know, if he hits the ball a long distance, he can admire himself hitting the ball.

You know, like we just don't need rules about that. We need fewer rules, not more rules. I agree. And the idea that it would have been more acceptable if the ball had actually gone out, whereas because it didn't go out, it was somehow more of an affront seemed curious to me. I mean, the fact that he misjudged the fly ball slightly, I don't know why that has any bearing on whether the flipping itself was out of bounds or not. But that's just one of many corollaries to the unwritten rules that are sort of hard to parse. Well, the only thing about it is that if it had gone out, he would have just been off the

bases, so Garrett Cole wouldn't have been able to turn around and yell at him. Yeah, well... You know what I mean? I don't think it necessarily would have been any better. It's just he wouldn't have been there. Brian McCann might have appeared and prevented him from scoring. Oh, God. What stupidity.

All right. Well, that's enough for today one one final note because it actually is sort of unwritten rule related a long time ago sam and i talked about whether it would be against the unwritten rules for an outfielder to fake a catch on a home run if the play were not reviewable for some reason or if the replay weren't conclusive and an outfielder pretended to you know catch a ball that ended the game and pretended to go up over the fence and bring it back and didn't actually have it in his glove but sort of brandished his glove at the umpire as if he did and got the out we wondered whether that would be against the unwritten rules

to deceive the umpire and deceive the other team and win because of it. And maybe we got a little confirmation of it. We got a listener email from Thomas who writes, during the Yankees-Rays game on Sunday, Brett Gardner hit a ball to the wall that looked like a possible home run. Live, it appeared that Will Myers made the catch, but on replay, it was shown that the ball actually hit the wall and then fell into Will Myers' glove. As soon as Myers realized he had the ball in his glove, he started trotting in with the ball held up as if he had made the catch. It's not quite on the level of a true fake play where the player doesn't even have the ball, but afterwards, the broadcast showed Myers and the other outfielders laughing and joking about how he

almost pulled it off, so he clearly knew he was trying to sell a non-catch and not legitimately thinking that he counted as a catch. And so Thomas wanted to let us know because we had talked about that. And so now we have some clarity on that. No one yelled at Will Myers. No one drilled Will Myers in the ribs next time he was up. So if you want to fake a catch, that much is okay. Well, now we know why the Royals traded him. Right. He just doesn't play the game the right way. Yeah, exactly. All right.

That is all the unwritten rules violations that occurred this weekend, I think. So thank you for joining me, Dan, and discussing those. No problem. And come to Saber Seminar. Okay. And people, yes, well, everyone should go to Saber Seminar. Are tickets still available? Indeed.

All right. They're going quickly, though. Where should people buy them? SaberSeminar.com, and all tickets are donations to the Jimmy Fund, and you'll have a great time. Well, I can't promise that, but you will have a great time. And you can follow dan on twitter at brooks baseball you should be using brooksbaseball.net because it is a great resource

for people who want to know what's happening in baseball and uh please support our sponsor baseball reference go to baseballreference.com subscribe to the play index using the coupon code bp to get the discounted price of $30. And that's all for today. Please send us emails at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. We will get to those later this week.