Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 449: More Answers to Your Burning Baseball Questions

Episode Date: May 14, 2014

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about Tommy John surgery, velocity limits, rooting for minor-league teams, and more.

Try and breathe some life into a letter Rooms that hope will never be again My clutch is at its peak, you know what I mean How do you say you're okay to let someone else see you? How do you say you're okay to let someone else see you? Good morning, and welcome to episode 449 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index.

I am Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller. Hello. Hi. You added a little sultriness. Yes, I did. I wondered if I overdid it as I was doing it. No, it sounded good. Okay, maybe I'll keep it. So we have a listener email show scheduled.

Is there anything that you would like to attend to before that? I guess just real quick we should note the notice that we got about Matt Albers. Yeah, today's the day that we do our play index segment, but we got a listener email from someone who did his own play indexing. Hopefully he used the coupon code BP, although he didn't say. He didn't, but presumably he did. And this is Pete from Michigan who notes that while Matt Albers is, not only does Matt Albers have the most

games finished without a save and the longest streak to begin a career of games finished without a save, but he is actually very, very close to having the longest streak of games finished without a save at any point in a career. He's at 83. The record is 87 by Terry Mulholland, and Russ Springer is 85, and nobody else is longer. So he and, of course, as well, Webb, are very close to a record. And, you know, I get the feeling that probably there are a lot of people who wonder why we're so into this. I was just going to say that I wonder how many listeners we have lost by starting every show with updates on Ryan Webb and Matt Albers' games finished without a save streak.

Some people must be under the impression that this is a podcast about Matt Albers and Ryan Webb. Well, I don't think I would care all that much. I mean, we talk about a lot of things that we never care to revisit. In fact, we forget days later. I think that what really made this a permanent issue for me— Saves are such a silly stat, too. They are. It's true. I think what made this a permanent issue for me is there such a silly stat too all right it's true i think what made this a permanent issue for me was a couple days after it came up seeing matt albers pitch in the eighth inning of a game and do a save celebration after

after striking out the side and just realizing that this is something that he wants. You know? He would, like, he wants to save a game. He wants to celebrate a save. And it's just so, I don't know, it's sort of arbitrary that this poor guy has never gotten to save a game. He's always the game finisher but never the closer.

And so I don't know. I find there to be something about the labels that we put on these roles that makes it a slightly tragic storyline. Yeah, and sadly it got more tragic earlier today. Evan Drelick, the Astros beat writer for the Houston Chronicle, reported on Twitter that Albers, who has been out for a bit with a shoulder problem, had a setback. He has had a quarter zone shot.

He is not throwing for the next 10 days. And Jeff Lunau says that he's looking for outside bullpen help. That's actually quite good for his chances, though. I mean, as we've talked about, all he's doing is, well, all we're doing is holding our breath and hoping to make it out of Houston, you know, because he's going to get a save if he's with Houston too long. So every day that he's not pitching for Houston is good for his pursuit of this record.

And if they get outside bullpen help, that's very good for his pursuit of this record. Clearly his shoulder doesn't have the closer mentality. He doesn't have closer shoulder. All right. I was going to start this show by saying that we had gone a day without news of someone else getting a tommy john surgery getting some ligament damage but we didn't the last the last thing that i saw before we started

recording was that the astros reliever jose cisnero needs tommy john surgery so he's going to be the next guy we should have a we should have a list like like the opening of The Simpsons where they have the factory with the plant with the days since last accident sign. Someone should have a sign with days since last ligament injury. See how high we can go. All right. So listener emails. We got good ones this week. We got good ones this week.

Let's start with, well, on the subject of Tommy John surgery, we have a couple on that subject. This one comes from Aaron. He says, here's something this recent slew of Tommy John surgeries has left me wondering. If Tommy John surgery had never been invented, how would pitcher usage, development, and management be different? I have to think that the costs and benefits of a torn UCL are priced into the system right now, and that if the costs of a torn UCL were significantly greater with no repair possible, teams would do something they're not currently doing in order to avoid that outcome. Agree, disagree, thoughts. So I'm sort of thinking no. Disagree.

Yeah, disagree. It seems to me like teams are already doing all that they can to avoid this. Even though the success rate is pretty good, as we discussed yesterday, there's still an enormous incentive to avoid it if you can and not lose a year of a player's production and in some cases a year of service time. And I mean, we've seen teams certainly be careful with pitcher usage and limit their pitch counts and limit them in the minors

and limit how their innings counts from year to year. So it seems like teams are already doing just about everything that they can do. I don't know that they would do anything else if every Tommy John surgery were a career ender guaranteed. I don't know. Maybe they'd continue the trends that we've already seen to an even greater extreme. I was wondering this today. I didn't have time to research it, but I was planning to. But what happened in the old days when you sprained your UCL? Did you just keep pitching for 10 years poorly and just get worse and worse? I think so.

I'd like to go back and look at that and dig through some newspaper archives and see how it was reported. I mean, I don't know when people started talking about UCLs, but elbow pain. Someone asked me today, like, what happened in the past? Is it that these injuries are happening more often, which seems to be the case, but also when it did happen in the past, what happened to those pitchers? And I think in a lot of cases, the guys pitch through pain. And I mean, we've seen even some cases where a guy will have ligament damage that leads to Tommy John surgery, but he will make some starts with that ligament. It's not impossible to pitch through that pain. so I think guys did that and presumably were a lot less effective and and there are stories of guys who started out as flamethrowers and then had some injury and then came back and just kind of limped along for the rest of their career and were fringy junk baller types so plenty of stories like that so I assume that that's what happened yeah I uh I do too. Okay, this question comes from BP's Nick Wheatley-Shower, who you all remember from the team preview episodes this year, and this is related to

something we briefly touched on with Doug Thorburn yesterday. Nick asks, with so many hard-throwing pitchers needing arm surgery, Major League Baseball may want to make rule changes to protect pitchers. An effective way to do this would be to place limits on how fast pitchers can throw. What if baseball put a 92-mile-per-hour maximum on any pitches thrown? They could make things interesting by only enforcing the maximum if the pitch was taken by the batter. So if a pitcher threw a 93-mile-per-hour fastball and the batter didn't swing, the pitch would automatically be a ball, but if the batter swung, then the resulting ball in play or whiff would stand. Would pitchers who could normally throw harder develop better command?

Would batters be able to discern 91 from 93? How close to the maximum would pitchers be able to throw without risking an automatic ball? Would breaking balls become more common? Could that lead to more arm injuries and make this whole rule change backfire? And how dramatic would it be to watch a batter take a 3-2 pitch with the bases loaded and see the scoreboard read 91.9 miles per hour? Boy, that's all that I would have to say about this. That covers it. Those are good questions that I would have liked to have raised. Those are good questions that I would have liked to have raised.

That's, I don't, yeah, I, well, do you think that batters can, batters can't discern between 92 and 93, right? No way. I doubt it, you know. Especially while it's. Right, in the time that they have to make the decision. I mean, like, probably if they saw a pitcher who was throwing 94, like, they would know, you know, after the pitch, but like not while it's coming. I don't think they could, they could see it while it was coming. Yeah. Um, and I wonder

what the maximum, how hard would people throw if 92 was an automatic ball? What sort of buffer would you leave? What would the, what would the average fastball velocity be? Let's say every, every pitcher in baseball would be capable of throwing 92. Let's just say that that's the case. And there's this rule that if there's a 92 mile per hour pitch, then there's an automatic ball. What do you think the average fastball velocity would be? oh um uh well huh i think that it would be pretty close to 92 i think that you would see a lot of pitches go over 92 uh and it's a big penalty though i mean that's serious it is but it depends i mean if you're throwing well look if you throw it outside the strike zone... If the batter sees a fastball...

Yeah, sure, batters take fastballs. Especially in certain counts, they'll take a fastball. But if you throw a 1-2 fastball in the strike zone, he's swinging at it, right? If it's in the strike zone, he's got to swing at it. And if he swings at it, then all bets are off. And if it's not in the strike zone, it's a ball anyway. So, I mean, in certain counts, maybe first pitch fastballs,

you wouldn't be able to really air it out. And maybe when you're behind in the count, you wouldn't be able to air it out. But you'd be able to throw a lot of fastballs 93 without risking too much. be able to throw a lot of fastballs 93 without risking too much. So I would actually think that it would be, I could see the average fastball, I could actually see the average fastball being greater than 92 in this league. Yeah, I hadn't really considered that. That's possible. All right. This one comes from Bryce. While watching Boston foul off numerous pitches against my Rays, I finally figured I would send in a question I've been pondering for a while now.

An at-bat ending in and out of how many pitches by your leadoff hitter would surpass the value of a first-pitch solo homer? I think ending the at-bat with a hit of any sort would deflate the number pretty significantly, so I am most curious about your take on what I am calling the productive-unproductive at-bat, where an out is made. My thoughts vary. Maybe we can agree that 1,000 pitches should get through the entire staff and should easily surpass the value of one run.

So working back from there, sometimes I feel it would have to be 200-plus, as the opposing manager may just bring in another starter and you may need to get through both of them or several other times like recently with how tax the raise pen has been, I feel it could be as few as 25. So, so the question is, would you, would you, uh, how many, how many pitches by your leadoff hitter? You're guaranteed an out, but he can see any number of pitches how many pitches would he have to see in this at bat that ends in it and then i would to surpass the value of a first pitch home run i want to go back real quick to the to the previous question before we answer this one when he talked about the weather breaking balls would just become more prevalent. I think that that's absolutely the case that they would be.

And when he asked whether that would just lead to more injuries, I don't know that that would lead to more injuries. But here's what I do know. I would say a fairly high degree of confidence, not certainty, but a fairly high degree of confidence, it would lead to something that would lead to more injuries. I think that there Here comes another psycho. I think that there's... We've talked about this before,

but basically these guys are going to push themselves to the very brink of their health. And if you outlaw things that cause them injury, or if something becomes taboo and gets somewhat... Well, basically if you force them to wear helmets, they're just going to engage in risky behavior and that's an actual – I can't remember if I've used this specific example but if – actually if you ride your bike with a bike helmet on, cars don't give you as wide

of a space and so it actually is arguably more dangerous in one way of looking at it. Because cars think, oh, he's wearing a helmet. I don't have to be as careful. He knows what he's doing. I don't have to be as careful. And basically, that's the world. Whatever you do to add safety to something, it often leads to riskier behavior because you feel safe. And there's a law around this that I've talked about before, and I always forget what it's called. So anyway, I would say that if it's not breaking something, you might see that in this world,

you might see guys throw 35 more pitches every game because the signs that they're losing stamina wouldn't be as obvious right if you're one of the signs that you're losing stamina right now is that your fastball loses velocity as the start goes on and if you're a guy who can throw 97 but is only allowed to throw 92 well you could probably do that 200 200 pitches in a game and so maybe guys start throwing a lot more pitches um or maybe they start throwing riskier pitches or um you know maybe they maybe there's not as much need to develop efficient mechanics uh as you're coming up some way or another uh i figure that players are gonna are gonna get injured as much

as they can possibly get away with. That effect that you were looking for was the Peltzman effect, right? There you go, yeah. It's the idea that people compensate for decreased risk by becoming less cautious, taking more risks themselves. Okay, so back to Bryce's question. How many pitches would your leadoff hitter have to see in an at-bat, ending in an out, to outweigh the value of a first-pitch solo homer?

So basically, if it's a first-pitch solo homer in the first inning, I think that that changes your winning expectancy from 50% to, I think, 62%. Not all homers are that important, and some homers are much more important. But if that were, let's say, the average homer, then you would need to get rid of enough of that pitcher's pitches to gain a 12% win expectancy. That's really hard to do. I mean, whose bullpen is

that shallow at this point? I mean, you could make the case that that starting pitcher is so much better than the worst reliever in the staff that taking maybe two innings out of him would be worthwhile, but most teams don't use all of their relievers in a game. And even in a series, even if it was the first game of a series that you were going to play, the benefits of tiring out their bullpen are probably overstated and not that valuable. So I'm thinking it would have to be. Now, on the other hand, there is the fact that you would also tire that starting pitcher out for that inning. And he might be, A, less effective in that inning.

If he's throwing 65 pitches in an inning, you would imagine that he's going to be a lot worse in the 65th pitch when he's facing your number three or four hitter in the inning. And also, because of the strain of longer innings, like let's say the guy's going to throw 110 pitches in the start, and you make him throw 30. Well, now he's got 80 pitches left, right? But if he throws a 45 or 50-pitch first inning, the stress of that inning actually probably lowers how many pitches his manager will let him go if his manager's sensible. And so maybe you actually uh

maybe now he's only able to throw 95 pitches in the start so there's like that sort of secondary benefit of tiring him out just by having the in-inning strength um i would say that something like 35 seems like the right number to me uh-huh well um well related subject, there was a post recently at Beyond the Box Score by Neil Weinberg where he asked a similar question. He asked, would you rather be down by one run with your starting pitcher having thrown no more than 10 pitches, or would you rather that the pitcher throw a scoreless inning so you're tied, but he's thrown at least 40 pitches in that first inning? So it's a sort of a similar question. And Tom Tango created a thread about this question at his blog, tangotiger.com. And in the comments, it was discussed and Peter Jensen supplied some data.

He said that 32 pitchers have, uh, in some span of time, recent span of time, have thrown 35 or more pitches in the first inning without giving up any runs. And you would think that those pitchers would be worse in the rest of that game just because they're so tired and they've had to work so hard in that first inning. But that turns out not really to be true. They might not last as long, but they are effective while they last. really to be true. They might not last as long, but they are effective while they last. He said they average four more innings and 1.44 runs allowed. 26 of those 32 made it through at least five full innings. Four pitchers finished the seventh inning. Eight of them allowed no runs

and 12 allowed only a single run. And as Tom Tango pointed out out 1.44 runs per four innings is an ra a run average allowed of 3.24 which is better than than normal better than average so it doesn't seem i don't know whether that's a selective sample in some way whether whether worse pitchers would have been removed from those games sooner if if they ran into a tough first inning like that. Maybe it's a better than average group, but it does seem like you really have to do a lot to outweigh the value of a lead. Yeah. I'm reading these. Yeah, I could use an executive summary on those numbers. They're good.

You're saying those pitchers did well. Yes, after struggling in that first inning, after laboring, they pitch better than the typical pitcher in any outing. They did better than the typical pitcher? Mm-hmm. Oh, wow. Yeah. Do they?

Four additional innings? Well, they might not last as long, but while they're in the game, they are more effective. They have a 3.24 run average. Yeah, but there's no reason to think that... But here's the thing, though. There's no reason to think that throwing 35 pitches in the first inning would correlate to more success. Now, maybe, maybe, if there's a factor, it might be that these are pitchers who, you know, have swing and miss stuff and therefore are kind of engaged in long at-bats where they're, you know, like maybe they're figuring out in the first inning.

Like you can imagine a guy like Danny Salazar having one of these innings because nobody can, you know, have a one-pitch at-bat against him. So maybe there's a type of pitcher that has a 35-pitch scoreless first inning. But basically, there's no reason to think that those 35 pitches in the first inning would make them better pitchers going forward. And since we're dealing with a fairly small sample, you would think that you would just throw that out. I mean, that to me is irrelevant data. There's no reason to think that they allow fewer innings because they throw 35 or more pitches. There is no mechanism by which one leads to the other. Therefore, I'm throwing it out. That is not, no, I mean, that's not evidence. It's just a fluky result. Why, Ben? I think it's, I wouldn't bet on them to be better,

but the fact that they weren't worse to me makes it a little more likely that that would be the case. Yeah, but we're not talking about them being worse. We're talking about how long they're going to be able to go before they have to get relieved. And they average four additional innings. The average pitcher does not average five innings, and they certainly don't average five innings when they're pitching so well i mean what does the average pitcher average right now like five and two thirds or something i mean okay it's not much more so you're talking about a couple more outs from your relievers who are good anyway so yeah so if you if you add basically if you add 17 or 18 pitches to their first inning

you're not two-thirds roughly off of their start uh two-thirds inning off of their start now that i would i would argue that given what we know about their runs allowed you're actually knocking more off because most pitchers who allow 1.44 runs in a game uh go much more than five innings and so something is something is is artificially forcing these pitchers out of the game before their effectiveness has disappeared. And that something is obviously their pitch count. So I think that you could argue that, in fact, 35 pitch first innings, 35 or more first pitch first innings, knock roughly two innings off of the starter's outing. And so then the question, which is basically what we were expecting all along, right? You add 15 or 20 pitches or maybe a little bit more because this is at least 35 pitches.

Then you're going to have an extra two innings out of the bullpen. So how much are two innings from the bullpen worth from the bottom of the bullpen, more or less, or from the fourth or fifth or sixth or whatever the extra reliever you would have to bring in is? How much is that worth, and is it worth a run? And I would say that it's not worth a run because relievers are really good. Bullpens are really deep.

And even though relievers aren't actually as good as starters, they're more effective because of the roles they're using. So my guess is that it would not add, that it would force the pitcher out of the game faster, but not nearly enough to make up for the loss run. Yeah, I would agree. And maybe there could be some circumstance where that's not the case, where your whole bullpen is blown from having to pitch a complete game the day before or something. But otherwise, I would always take the lead. I think I would. Yeah.

Okay, so Matt Trueblood sends us a question. He sends us a link and an attached question. The link is to a story at MILB.com. It's about minor league baseball and CBS inking a game of the week TV deal. There's going to be a weekly minor league baseball game of the week during the season from starting already. I guess there have already been two of these

through August on CBS Sports, and it's going to be games ranging from single A to triple A. So Matt asks, is this a neat bone for prospect porn addicts to gnaw on, or is it a first step toward minor league baseball becoming an analog of NCAA football and basketball or one of the lower European soccer leagues? So is this a precursor to minor league baseball being of interest for something other than the fact that the prospects might one day play in the majors? I don't know what lower European soccer leagues are like. I don't know what would be an alias to that. So it's hard for

me to say whether it would be like that. i didn't think that the draft would ever become what it is now like i didn't think that just by televising the draft it would be um you know the thing that it is now uh and maybe that's just is it is it popular i don't even know like it was watch i mean it's you know it's not in the same neighborhood as the other sport drafts for various good reasons. But don't you feel like it takes up a lot more pixels on every team's blog, smart blogs and not as smart blogs, the day that it's happening? I mean it feels like all the news gets pushed aside in a way that it didn't really used to. Maybe I'm not sure though, that has anything to do with televising it. It might just be because of Twitter. And because of prospect coverage as a whole has

really exploded. Yeah. But I mean, prospects in a minor league teams are like three years closer than draft picks are. Um, and, uh picks are. And much more established. It's a lot easier to identify which ones are going to have a career than on draft day. And yet, a significant percentage of the fan base still gets caught up on draft day in a way that certainly didn't 10 years ago. Right?

I don't remember the first draft I cared about. Actually, I think I do. Hang on a second. I'm going to check what year this was. It was 2007. 2007 is the first draft I paid attention to. So, yeah, 10 years ago, it wasn't anything like this. So yeah, but now the question is whether this is just going to be something like a niche product for fans who just are already hardcore baseball fans and just want one more game to watch.

Or whether it would be something more. I wouldn't think so. it would be something more. I wouldn't think so. To me, there's something about minor league baseball that these teams are sort of trying to be two things to two different people on the one hand. They are an extension of the big league club that a lot of fans have loyalty to, but this is very clearly a secondary part of the organization. It's not the big league club.

So if you're a Cubs fan, you have some interest in the minor league system because they're a representation of the Cubs. And then there's also the local audience, which sees this team as independent and doesn't particularly care that much about the Cubs and likes the guys who are cycling through. and likes the guys who are cycling through. And I feel like if minor league ball, if these clubs were independent and they were still selling their players to big league clubs the way that they did in the 1920s, I feel like there would be potential for that.

You could really get attached to a minor league team on its own merits. But right now there's too much of a subservient little sister kind of idea to really get emotionally into them. They only exist to most of us to serve the purposes of another body. And so for that reason, I have a hard time thinking that massive numbers of fans are ever going to get too attached to the results. Yeah, I agree. I mean, NCAA has the built-in school loyalties

because you went to a school and you root for that school, and minor league baseball doesn't really have the equivalent of that. Yeah, and NCAA players are playing for their team. You don't have to think, like, okay, is this guy playing for his team? Do I think of this guy as a Cedar Rapids Colonel, or do I think of him as a Minnesota Twin? And there's not that kind of mixed identity there. So it's simpler.

It's easier to feel loyalty, I think. Okay, play index time. Yeah, sure. So I apologize to whoever pointed this out to me, but somebody pointed out this week to me that Derek Norris hit two 3-0 home runs in one game, which is an interesting thing. Well, I don't know how often that happens,

but given that it's extremely rare for any player to hit two 3-0 home runs in a season, I would say not very often. So I got to thinking about 3-0 counts over the years and whether teams are swinging at more 3-0 pitches or fewer 3-0 pitches. Joey Votto hit a 3-0 homer the other day. Joey Votto also, and it might be a game day issue, it might have just been improperly labeled, but today Joey Votto bunted with a runner on first and two outs. Did you see that? No.

Again, this was just a description, and then I checked on Twitter, and there were people going, Joey Votto bunted! But they might have just been looking at game day, too. But that feels like a little—that's extreme Votto. Like, even by Votto standards, that's pretty extreme. The most Votto thing is where he just steps out of the box completely on, like, a 2-1 pitch. It's just, like, a pitch right down the middle.

He just doesn't even look like he might possibly swing at it. That's my favorite bottom thing. So what I did is I went to Play Index split finder. I went to the team split finder, which allows you to set as your team major leagues, all major leagues. So instead of team major leagues, all major leagues. So instead of one team, all the major leagues. And I looked at how many at-bats they had that ended on 3-0. So this is not plate appearances.

So walks are excluded. This is at-bats. So the guy hit the ball, put it in play. Now, this won't obviously capture all 3-0 swings. If you swing and miss, it doesn't end the at-bat. If you foul it off, it doesn't end the at-bat. But I have to assume that it's A, a good proxy, and B, that it captures most swings. Because if you're swinging at 3-0 and you foul it off, you're an idiot. So I did that, and then I also clicked the option that shows total plate appearances, and then I copied that into a Google Doc spreadsheet so that I could just divide it really easily.

And what I did is I actually divided the bats that end on 3-0 by total plate appearances that get to 3-0 minus intentional walks. So intentional walks are not going to be part of this plate appearances because that's not really an honest pitch. So, for instance, if there were, say, 10 at-bats that ended on 3-0 and there were 110 at-bats that got to 3-0, and 10 of those were intentional walks, then 10 out of 100 would be 10%. Then I looked at those by year. I charted them by year to see if there was a trend.

Before I reveal the results, I'm just curious. What do you think? This goes back to 1988. I have every year from 88 to 2014. What would you expect that chart to look like? It's a line graph. I would say a downward slope. And why? What would be your rationale for that? Because I vaguely remember an article that Russell Carlton wrote about this, and I think that's what it showed, but I'm not

positive. When was that? Just curious. Like last year, there was a Verducci article where he argued that hitters were being too selective, taking too many pitches. I think he used this as an example, and Russell wrote a response response to it I could be misremembering but I don't know maybe just the appreciation of walks increasing or something yeah no the appreciation of walks

increasing would certainly be a reason on the other hand and I love to pull this quote out of the 2005 annual I'm not going to quote it because I don't have it in front of me, but in the comment about Nick Swisher, it's all about how the A's, the money ball philosophy of taking pitches actually is not about drawing walks.

It's about count leverage and that Billy Bean was banging it. Later on, I read that Billy Bean was banging his head because prospects didn't get that and they were just trying to draw walks. And he's screaming at them, no, it about count leverage and you know there's no better count leverage than 3-0 uh when the pitcher just feeds one into you um especially because he thinks you're going to take it and so it's a it's way better than even 3-1 in a sense because the pitcher you can you can sucker punch him basically uh anyway so yeah that makes sense uh the actual chart is it's a little nuanced and so there's a few different twists um in the in the late 80s early 90s before the

offensive boom uh the swing rate or the i guess we'll call it the swing rate but i explained it's not exactly that swing rate was you know between about four and five 5%. And so looking at it now, we know that's historically fairly high. But around 92, just as offense started to pick up a lot, it started to go up higher and higher. And in 1996 and 97, it was very high. It was over 6%. And looking at the chart now, it's much higher because from that point on starting in 97 i believe maybe 96 yeah 96 it just starts going straight down and this is interesting

because you could imagine that this would correlate somehow to the offensive environment yeah but it doesn't 96 was right in the middle of the offensive environment and it was going up up up but then it just drops drops drops and like by 2000 it's already down to four percent again uh and by 2004 still offensive boom it's it's just three a little bit a little bit more than three percent but i guess like three and a quarter percent and that keeps going down down down and then 2009 around the time that offense sort of starts to to to stop you know that this the so-called steroids era is kind of clearly cleanly over it starts going up again and last year was back at 4%, which is the one to basically a four-year incline since 2009. And so I don't really know how to explain any of that. But what's interesting is how kind of clean the lines are. It really does feel like this was a real shift

because it's not like you're just seeing spike, valley, spike, valley, spike, valley. You're really seeing sustained periods of incline and decline. I don't know. If you have a theory you can tell me. If you don't have a theory i can move on i have some some more fun facts about intentional walks or not sorry not intentional walks uh 3-0 pitches yeah i don't my only thought is that the call the strike zone has gotten bigger in the last few years and so if you take the pitch there's a higher percentage that it will be a strike? Yeah, but the pitch that you swing at, when we talk about the 3-0 strike zone and how wide it is, those aren't the pitches that people are swinging at.

People should be swinging at the fat pitches. I mean, they're still only swinging at 1 in 25, for goodness sake. And even if you exclude all walks, by the way, it's still only like 10 or 12% of, you know, of strikes that they're swinging at. If you're listening and you have a theory, let us know. Yeah. All right. So I have some more stuff on here. Okay.

Because I have a really good spreadsheet that I can sort stuff on. Stolen bases on 3-0 are way up. That is one clear trend. In the late 80s and early 90s, there would be as few as two stolen bases on 3-0 per season. In 89, there were two. And really, for like five years, it was like two, three, six, you know, that range. And those were the years when everyone was running all the time. Last year, 25.

And in 2012, a high for the period, 30. So from two to 30, huge, huge. And so that's a clear trend. You definitely see the era changing. No real patterns for hit by pitches, although I will note that there are years where there are 11 3-0 hit by pitches and there are years where there are zero, which just is probably a good thing to remember

when we talk about so-called trends, how much random fluctuation can cause big differences in totals. There's no pattern. I don't think there's anything to draw from the fluctuation, but sometimes 0, sometimes 11. Six players in that time have, six active players, I should say, have been hit by two pitches on 3-0 counts. One of them is Alex Rodriguez, who is, of course, despised.

One of them is A.J. Pruszynski, who is despised. Is that a coincidence? I don't know. I would guess that it's probably not. I would guess that if I was a pitcher and I were facing, especially Alex Rodriguez, and there were 3-0 and I were pitching around him, yeah, I'd probably use that. I'd take a shot. That's when I would take a shot at him. I mean, to me, a 3-0 hit by pitch is always suspicious.

So Jason Wirth, Chase Utley, Joe Maurer, and Karl Crawford are the others. No trend of hateableness there. But so, all right. Babbitt, this one oh wow okay so babbitt also this is basically the same as the hit by pitch just showing how much things can fluctuate uh for no real reason we're only talking about 500 bats or so that end in uh 30 counts so of course knowing that there's going to be babbitt fluctuations man, do they fluctuate. In 1999, BABIP on 3.0 was $2.29. And then the very next year, in 2000, it was $3.60.

And so if you really were like, you know, if you were a stat head in 2000, you would like, you probably would write a story about that. Yeah. Create some nerd. It's sort of surprising that it could be as low as $2.29. It, isn't it? This year is actually the lowest ever. Currently $203. Batters are BABIPing $203 on $30 this year. So on pace, of course, to be the lowest ever by some margin, but it'll come back. Overall BABIP, what would you guess? I'll tell you that the BABF, uh, what would you guess? And I'll tell you, uh, I'll tell you that the BABF in this era, uh, this 26 year era is 296 overall.

What would you guess the BABF on three O's? 348. 302. Wow. I know. Right? Isn't that crazy? It is crazy.

It's insane. That makes me question everything I know about baseball. It's amazing. That's like the whole reason I kept going on this. That's insane. Let's see. Albert Pujols is the active leader in double plays on 3-0 with four. But do you want to have any guess on who the king of 3-0 swinging is?

I sorted all the players by how often they swing on 3-0 by the same standard. And so I have the active leader in 3-0. Any guess? Man, I have no idea because I'm thinking of guys who swing a lot but those guys wouldn't be in 3-0 counts very often well it's not total swings it's percentage swings I'm just thinking how often does

Pablo Sandoval or Alfonso Suriano even get to 3-0 more than once it's not one of them Alfonso Suriano would even get to 3-0, but I don't know. One of those guys. More than once. Yeah, sure. One of them? No, it's not one of them. It's actually the clear king is Victor Martinez,

who has swung it 58% or has put in play 58%. Let me see. No. How do I put this? Sorry, I used a different method of doing this. So this one is all I did is I took their bats that end on 3-0 and divided it by their walks that end on 3-0 and subtracted their intentional walks that end on 3-0 from the walks because there's no count.

And Victor Martinez has 58% as many balls in play as ball fours on 3-0. And that's so far ahead of anybody else. Number two is Ryan Howard, all the way down at 41%. And then after that, you go down to David Ortiz at 33%, Albert Pujols at 33%. Most of you are talking about guys who have the green light, obviously. Billy Butler at 32%. And so you wanted to know, Sandoval is at only 9%. So he's actually one of the most, I don the most, and maybe, I don't know,

maybe it's just that he doesn't get the green light because his manager knows he'll swing at anything. He can't be trusted to treat that with the, you know, respect it deserves. Alfonso Soriano is 13%. There is a challenger to Victor Martinez. There are two, in fact.

Dom Brown is at 62%. So he's higher than Victor Martinez, but in such a small number that I don't really count it. Will and Rosario is at 69%. Nine balls in play, 15 walks, two of them intentional. So basically nine balls in play, 13 ball fours. And then with only 15 plate appearances ending in three oh so again way too soon to say but manny machado manny machado getting the green light as a rookie pretty impressive seven balls in play eight walks so almost you know almost half as likely the clear leader but in a sample issue there.

And Jamie Wright. This has to be a mistake. Jamie Wright has one ball in play. Victor Martinez has a.341 babbip on 3-0. So at least when he swings, he hits the ball hard. And a.1555 OPS. He's got a.702 slugging percentage on 3-0. 555 OPS.

He's got a 702 slugging percentage on 3-0. Manny Machado, meanwhile, has a 143 slugging percentage on 3-0. He's got one single in all those at-bats. Alright, so if you want to repeat this analysis for every other ball strike

count, which you're probably burning to do after listening to this, please subscribe to The Play Index using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. All right. You answered this question via email, so maybe we can just do it quickly. It comes from Paul, who says, I got into an office tussle with a colleague who argues that slugging percentage is more valuable than on-base percentage. I hope this was an actual physical altercation. In researching my stance that on-base percentage is approximately twice as important as slugging, I uncovered something odd. In 2010, the Tampa Bay Rays scored 802 runs, which ranked third in Major League Baseball. They did this

despite ranking 27th in batting average, 10th on base percentage, and 14th in slugging percentage. How can this be? What was that particular team able to do that overcame their shortcomings and still score so many runs? My gut tells me that this most likely is a statistical anomaly of sorts. So you already answered this question, but maybe you can just answer for this team specifically. And also, I suppose you can just answer for this team specifically. And also, I suppose it's an answer for any team that manages to outdo its underlying statistics. And it's even more impressive in this case, I suppose, because the Rays play in a pitcher's park. So the fact that they were able to exceed their triple slash stats is even more impressive.

So how did they do it? They hit much better with runners on base. They had the 10th best OBP overall, but the best when runners were on base. They had the 14th best slugging percentage, but the 6th best when runners were on base. They hit into far fewer double plays than any other team in baseball that year.

And they were the American League's best base-running team by base-running runs that year. All right, so that's how you do it. And that's usually what it is, right? It's usually that. It's usually the runners on base thing. That's pretty much the first thing to look for on a team level. For an individual level, the first thing you look at is BABIP,

and then you go from there. From a team level, the first thing you look for is how they do with runners on base and compare that to how they are overall yeah all right um this question comes from james in fayetteville arizona he says if flags fly forever is true then winning the world series is the best thing your team can do in a single season to boost profits but if you were the owner of a team looking for a good boost, what accomplishment besides a World Series win would best affect your income as an owner for the foreseeable future? Do you want the perfect game montage to begin every home game on the Jumbotron for years to come? Do you want to hang a banner near

the hot dog stand for your MVP slugger? And he lists a list of possible accomplishments. Basically, do you want an individual season-level achievement? Do you want a player who wins a Cy Young or an MVP? Or do you want a special accomplishment, a perfect game or a no-hitter in a single game? Or do you want to win? I mean, he like winning the wild card and winning the division and it seems like those are the obvious choices yeah let's take away

right take away wins nothing can't have anything to do with winning yeah so it it just has to be an individual achievement i suppose or you know perfect game a no-hitter is kind of a team achievement in a way but do you do you want a a achievement in a way. But do you want a guy to take home some hardware? Do you want some special performance in a game that gets shown in highlight packages forever? What boosts your bottom line the most? I'm going to say 57-game hitting streak. Yes, that's probably it.

I would say a long enough hitting streak, or maybe 60 scoreless innings. But an achievement that is a record that takes a long time to play out. And I'm not sure that either one of those actually does take a long enough time to play out, because by the time you care about the hitting streak it's usually two games from being over um i mean people started counting people start paying attention i feel like in the in the 20s like i mean everyone was talking about nolan arenado's 28 game hitting streak and he was halfway to dimashio right i said care about though you you acknowledge it but you don't really care it's not driving you don't go to the game uh-huh i would say that maybe what when does it become a live look at 35 34 yeah certainly certainly by 40 uh-huh so i mean that's you're talking about

i'd say half of those are home games so So maybe you, maybe you get eight to 10 games where, see, I don't know whether people buy a ticket to go see whether a guy gets his, his 41st game in a row with a hit. Certainly, I don't know, the last, the last handful, I would think you'd get some walk-ups, you'd get some people going to see that. would think you'd get some walk-ups you'd get some people going to see that i'm always surprised by how much uh by how easily when a team uh signs a player who's kind of you know a veteran and who's starting to get into the milestone portion of his career i was surprised by by how the new team just treats that record like like you know like they're part of it you know like they they hype it up and i guess that it's just a matter of honoring their their player but i think this is one reason i'd be a

terrible owner is that i'd be like that's not ours let's we're not getting we're not taking credit for that ignore that like james shields today got a you know like a big overation for his 1500th strikeout if i were an, the first thing I'd say is, almost none of those were for us, and what is 1,500 strikeouts anyway? And that's why I'd be awful. Right. Yeah, living in New York, it's amazing how much mileage the Yankees have gotten out of a single perfect

game, out of Cohen's perfect game, Wells' perfect game. I mean, I have seen the last out of those games, I feel like, hundreds of times just before Yankee games or, you know, Yankeeography or Yankees replay on Yes Network. I mean, that stuff, it's one single game, so you get no opportunity to drive ticket sales there. But people seem to have an endless appetite, or at least they keep pushing those things. I've seen them so many times,

but I guess I don't know whether there's really any extra revenue there. Maybe there's some extra sort of brand- value there to reinforcing some some great accomplishment but you can't really sell anything unless you sell some some commemorative plaque or something commemorative statue on the 20th anniversary of that game first yeah uh first uh openly gay player is what is what i'd want i'd want one of my 25 to come out that's what i'd want that's that's the money that's the money how would you how would you monetize that um that's a we're too late in the episode to get into that but i mean you know come on it's either i was thinking it's either that or having a Jim Edmonds catch. And the Jim Edmonds catch doesn't quite have the staying power.

No. All right. So that's it for this week. There are some more excellent questions I have on my list there. I will star them and maybe we'll get to them next week. So thanks for sending questions. Please rate and review us on iTunes. Go to our iTunes page. Search for Effectively Wild. There's a link on the BP podcast post. Rate and review us on iTunes. Go to our iTunes page, search for Effectively Wild.

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