Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 463: Listeners Ask the Difficult Questions

Episode Date: June 4, 2014

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about pitch selection, recruiting skills, bionic arms, and learning to scout.

Good morning and welcome to episode 463 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by the Baseball Reference Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg, joined as always by the man who just said hi, Ben, Sam Miller. Hello. Hello, Ben. So, listener email show. Anything you would like to get off your chest before we begin?

Real quick, the Orioles had a six-run lead going to the ninth. Ryan Webb was available to pitch. Our friends at Cespedes Family Barbecue were in the press box eagerly awaiting. We were wondering whether there would be an announcement, whether they would dig the rubber out of the mound and give it to them, whether there would be a scoreboard or what. And it turned out to not be Webb. And the boys at Cessna Best Family Barbecue report,

we're in the press box freaking out, and nobody else in here knows what's going on. Please, you can't walk into a press box in America that is not full of effectively wild listeners. They know. They're just being more discreet about it because they know no cheering for Ryan Webb to finish a game in the press box.

You know what I think it was? I think that his manager, I think Buck Showalter, didn't want him to break the record on the road. He wants him to break the record at home. That could be it. So he held him out of this game. He'll wait until Baltimore. Although, as we established, it's not the record, right,

for games finished without a save. There was a listener email or a listener who did a play index. There has been a longer streak. There has been a longer streak, but not a longer streak but not to not to start a career and not not to end a career which is currently like if the world ends tomorrow then they will they will go uh into the great beyond without having ever saved one and so nobody's ever it's a come on ben it's a record right but do we already establish recently that records to begin careers are worthless to you.

This record is worthless to me. This is the point, Ben. This is the longest stretch without a save by games finished. It's not a record that we need to have a lot of integrity about. It's taking on a deeper meaning to me. All right. So we got a response to a listener email show from i don't know a couple weeks ago zachary levine of baseball prospectus who's been

on the show many times wanted to respond to our question about what rule uh what rule baseball could adopt to make it more like the xfl um or what rule the XFL of baseball, the equivalent, would adopt that maybe Major League Baseball could adapt. And Zachary's suggestion was that you eliminate tagging up. So he says, if the ball is hit in the air, the runner can advance at his own risk, with the bases being his safe havens. It's just a continuation of the time before and during the pitch.

One of the problems with the three true outcome era, to people who see it as a problem, is a lack of action with the ball in play. And this should lead to more of that and some really exciting plays and interesting decisions on the bases. Also, a walk would be a worse result for the pitching staff since every walk is just a couple of fly balls away from a run. So pitchers might have to be giving hittable pitches earlier in the count i have no idea if players would be able to pop up on command if there's a fast runner on but my gut says no and so he says that that's what the xfl of baseball would do you like that idea uh i do you think that on a uh on a high fly ball let let's say a seven-second fly ball, which is a very high one, about as high as a pop-up goes usually,

you'd be able to score, right? If you had seven seconds and you didn't have to tag, and presumably you had a big secondary lead, and then they've got to throw to get you out, by my math, if you had any sort of speed, you'd be certainly rounding third with a head of steam by the time the ball was in the glove. Seems a bit dangerous to me. Too unbalanced? the George Will romantic notion that baseball is sort of created by intelligent design

in a way that is miraculous and marvelous, and the 90 feet, if you add one foot, then all those bang-bang plays wouldn't be bang-bang plays, you know that idea? Well, I do, however, think that one of the great things about baseball is that if you get on first base, you have to go three more bags, and at most you have three more outs. And so you have to somehow get one base over without an out being recorded. You have to steal a base. You have to go on a wild pitch. You have to somehow figure out a way to advance

one base where no out is committed. And I like that. I think that's why it's so easy to hate the sacrifice bump, because you know you're just losing ground. You're trading one out for one base, but you need to at some point get ahead of the out base one for one trade ratio. And a sacrifice bunt basically does not do that and gets you one out closer to the end of the inning. So this seems to be slightly too unbalanced because it would make it too easy to overturn the one-to-one ratio. I mean, you could do it on any pop-up. You could go to third on any fly ball.

It feels a little too easy to me. Okay, so too extreme, even for baseball XFL. I think so. The other thing is that a walk would be so destructive, and Zachary suggests, well, maybe pitchers won't allow walks, but maybe also batters will just be even more dedicated to getting walks. All right. Let's start with a question from Vinit. He says, one of the bigger pitching bromides is to keep them guessing. Presumably pitchers have tendencies and hitters are aware

of them. If a catcher had access to a random number generator to call every pitch in game, what advantage, if any, would the pitcher gain? I understand that not every pitcher can throw any of his pitches at will, but this would at least work for the first pitch. You could even make the random number generator weighted such that you get a precise mix of pitches, say 65% fastballs, 20% change-ups, etc. what's the question ben the question is would it be better for pitchers if a catcher used a random number generator to call pitches rather than his own intuition or hunches or however they do it or scouting reports well when when i wrote that baseball sandbox article a couple weeks ago and talked about what I would do if I had an entire year to do nothing but collect data, that was one of the things I would want to collect data for, which suggests that I don't know the answer yet.

If I knew the answer, I wouldn't need to collect data. It seems compelling. I mean, the thing about it is, so, okay, I'm going to tell a story that is a bit tangential, but I don't know, maybe eight or so years ago when we were all watching the World Series of Poker every year. This would probably have been 2005. One of the sort of feature segments that they had was that they featured the Rock, Scissors, Paper that happens uh in the middle of the week uh do you have any idea what i'm talking about did you ever watch the world series no all right that's why it took so long for phil ivy to follow me so uh so anyway they have this big rock scissors paper championship in the casino that week and and one of them I think it might have been Andy Duke. Her strategy was just to use a random number generator to basically use, I think she

used a dollar bill, you know, serial number and would just use that to dictate what she was going to do. And, you know, she basically had a 50-50 chance of winning at any given point. And so, if you think you're better than the other person, if you think you can outsmart them, then sure, you should. But we know that the human brain tends to overestimate its own place in the hierarchy of skills, that we all think we're above average drivers, even though by definition we can't be. So we're probably, a lot of us probably think we are smarter than our opponents and we're not actually. And so anything we do is counterproductive. And in that case, you'd be much better off doing something random. So basically half of the teams should probably use a random

pitch selector. As to whether the other half should. pitch selector. As to whether the other half should... Should Yadier Molina, who is reputed to have almost supernatural powers of sensing what the perfect pitch is to throw in any situation? Yeah, it's hard to say. I guess he shouldn't, probably. I mean, if he's, I don't know, I mean, by making a choice, you are making yourself more predictable. Just by playing into the logic of pitch selection, just by going down the decision tree, by entering into that framework, you are making yourself more predictable. But as long as you're aware that you're making yourself more predictable and counteracting that predictability, then it shouldn't be predictable. So presumably if you're smart enough, if you're one of the top half teams, presumably I guess you shouldn't. But I don't know that anybody But I don't know that anybody...

I don't know. I guess I sense that... I don't know. I guess I sense that even the top half aren't really going the levels necessary to be unpredictable. I think that pitch selection is somewhat predictable. I don't know.

I'm not expressing this well because I don't really have a good answer for it. But I think it'd be interesting to see. I know that, I think it was Tom Tango had a, I think it was Tom Tango had a lengthy defense of the idea like in his comments once on a blog post. Mitchell Lichman writes about it all the time. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

I mean, it seems it makes sense. Why not? Yeah, sure. Sure. OK, next question from our friend Eric Hartman. Gentlemen, Shy Davidi penned a nice article about Juan Francisco's rise with the Jays and mentioned that Edwin Encarnacion was a driving force

in getting him in Toronto. How often do we hear players say that about another player? Is this actually very common and it just isn't publicized much? Would we consider this a point for Edwin's intangibles? And he includes a couple quotes for the articles from Encarnacion saying, I made him sign here because I knew he'd get an opportunity to play. He had a couple more teams he could sign with, but we are very close, so he listens a lot to me. And Francisco says, as soon as I was put on waivers, I got in contact with Edwin, talked to him about my situation. Edwin called Alex Anthopoulos.

They were in communication, and I figured out a way to bring me into the organization. So Edwin is the main reason I came here. And I'd say that's fairly unusual, at least to hear it put in such stark terms. You often hear about players making recruiting calls that that happens every winter with prominent free agents who might know a guy or even if they don't know a guy, maybe they're just a respected player. And they will reach out to the player and try to persuade them that it's a good place to play and you're the missing piece and we just need you to the player and try to persuade them that it's a good place to play and you're the missing piece and we just need you to come put us over the top and that sort of thing.

I don't know how often that is the deciding factor. I would guess fairly rarely. So if there were a player with amazing recruiting powers, then that would be an advantage, right? That would be worth some amount of money to pay for that player because he can get you other players. It would be. I think that what has been described with Encarnacion, I think it's extremely common and we're only hearing about it because, you know, Francisco's doing well. It's after the fact you're hearing about it because, you know, it's a nice little thing to boast about, right? It's, you know, you're writing a, you're writing a bright about the guy who's doing well.

And this is a good narrative detail. I think, though, that probably in, I think it's pretty common that anytime somebody signs somewhere, they've talked to somebody else on that team. And if you wanted to, that guy who he talked to could say that he helped recruit him and told him it was a great place to play. I mean, that's what happens. You call a guy on the other team who you know, and he says it's a great place to play. Occasionally, and I know of a couple or at least one instance, he says it's a terrible place to play. Actually, I know, well, we talked to Charlie Wilmoth about his book, and in the early 2000s, I guess, maybe Jason Kendall or somebody like that told a teammate

it was a terrible place to play, but I know of another one, too. And those are rare, though. I mean, I think most people, most players want to, you know, see players sign with their club and they say nice things and then, you know, the guy signs or he doesn't sign. I mean, I don't know, maybe Francisco, maybe it was more direct than usual.

Did you see the Joe Lemire piece about Zach Granke in Sports on Earth? No. This was an interesting one because J.P. Howell said that he signed with the Dodgers because Zach Granke had signed there and he knew that Zach Granke had

kind of done all the I'll just read it. Granke has such a reputation for thoughtful preparedness among his peers that choosing the Dodgers in free agency prompted another pitcher to prioritize the club. Quote, I know Granke did his homework and he probably knew something, Howell said.

He wasn't the ultimate reason, but the fact that he picked here says a lot. I know he's studying all these teams and trying to figure out which is the best fit. He saw something in these guys. And when my wife and I were looking for a house, I remember we talked about how we should just find a Chipotle because we knew that like Chipotle had probably, I mean, Chipotle goes and looks for good locations. They've done all the work, you know, but you can basically cheat on their neighborhood research. You know that it's a safe place. You know, it's a place with some future. It's maybe it's growing nicely. You know that it's a safe place. It's a place with some future. Maybe it's

growing nicely. And so that's sort of the same premise as the cranky thing. But again, I mean, if you listen to the word, this is a good story. If I'd heard it, I would have definitely quoted it. It's good. It's awesome. It fits into a nice feature about cranky. But he also says he wasn't the ultimate reason. And the ultimate reason, virtually always like 92% money and like 2% maybe where your family is. And so, you know, it'd be hard to give the, even in this case, it'd be hard to give Encarnacion more than like 6% credit and 6% of what? Of Francisco's value, marginal value.

Surplus, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So 6% of the marginal value is pretty slim. Right, okay. And there's noise. I mean, maybe Encarnacion literally has one friend. Right, everyone else he calls actively avoids the team that he's on. Yeah. This one guy. Right. Okay. This question comes from Andy. The other day, I read a story

about the FDA giving approval to the first arm prosthetic capable of complex motor control by translating signals from a patient's muscles to the prosthetic. The piece highlighted its durability and lists some tasks it's capable of doing, such as using locks and keys, preparing food, eating, using zippers, and brushing and combing hair. Meanwhile, our great national nightmare of young pitcher Tommy John surgeries marches on. This got me thinking about the place prosthetics could play in baseball, giving baseball its own incredible bionic pitcher. Now, I'm not suggesting players chop off their arms instead of getting surgery

so that they can get a biotic limb, but rather consider this. Mitch Harris, a current Cardinals minor leaguer, served in the Navy after being drafted. Suppose that during that time, either due to an accident or enemy fire, he had lost an arm and the Navy outfitted him with an advanced prosthetic capable of such complex motor control that he could still pitch. How do you think Major League Baseball would respond? Well, I genuinely don't have any idea. I don't know.

I'm hesitant to speculate. It feels like a bionic arm would not be allowed. I would say so. Of course, there'd be a lot of sympathy for that pitcher, especially if he had lost his arm in military service. And if he had been a professional pitcher before that point, and this technology were sufficient that sufficiently advanced that, that it wouldn't endanger hitters in any way, then I guess you would, I mean, you'd end up with the Oscar Pistorius controversy again. Not the latest Oscar Pistorius controversy, the more serious one, but the

earlier one about whether he would be allowed to run. And he wasn't at first, and then he was. And so I don't know. It feels like if it were a significant— I mean, what if it just returned him to his original level, right? He didn't throw any harder than he had before. He had the same control, same true talent. He would obviously not be susceptible to injury anymore, but he wouldn't be supercharged. It would just be like going in for i don't know like a guy

whose eyesight deteriorates and he has lasik to bring it back to what it originally was he's not enhanced exactly he's just just returned to his ideal state and the the only difference is that now he is impervious to arm injuries i I feel like maybe that would work. I know, but then he wouldn't get tired. That's true. I mean, that's like 80% of the game is pitchers getting tired. Yeah, that seems like a difficult one to get around. If he could pitch indefinitely at that same talent level then that would sort of destabilize everything yeah i don't know how i don't i mean i don't know what

the the language would be to prohibit it um and so and i also don't know who has uh i don't know if major league baseball has more power to just declare what they want or the you know i don't know if Major League Baseball has more power to just declare what they want or the, I don't know, whoever, Olympic Federation or the World Track and Field Body or whatever does. My guess is that baseball does. Baseball seems to be able to just do whatever they want. I don't know. Yeah, it's hard to say, Ben.

It is. That's why people email us. We're the ones who have to answer the hard questions, but not this one. All right. Do you want to do playing deck segment? Sure. So this one's a quick one. It's a quick one, and I don't know.

Maybe it's not a satisfying one. You'll tell me. It's probably not a very satisfying one. So on Hang Up and Listen this week, they were talking about the Padres. Did you listen to it? I have not yet. I have downloaded it, but have not listened. Apparently the Padres are to hang up and listen what the Reds are to us.

They realized through some investigation that the Padres are the professional team that they speak of the least basically and so josh levine tried to rectify this by talking about the padres for a little while and one of the things he mentioned is that the padres are have never had a have never hit for the cycle and uh are you are you aware of the current controversy over the cycle uh no tommy medica uh hit for a non-cycle because of a scoring decision i don't know they called it a double in an air and instead of a triple or something like that and so now after the fact they're petitioning the league to change it so that they can have their first cycle in franchise history uh which uh is i don't, it's just so sad. So Josh, though, when mentioning that they've never hit for the cycle, Mike Peska jumped in.

No individual has hit for the cycle. Because as a team, they have definitely hit for the cycle in a game. They have definitely had a game where the entire lineup combined for a single or double, a single, double, triple, and home run. There have probably been quite a few games where they they had i wonder if that's true this year actually because well they haven't oh that's the subject of our play next time all right gonna get my question answered i wondered uh whether any team has has ever gone a year without hitting for a cycle or whether it's so common uh that every single team hits for the cycle at least once every single year. And maybe they do it every game.

Maybe they do it. I mean, they obviously don't because they don't hit a triple every game, but maybe this is like scores of times for every team. And so I went to the play index, and I looked up, I went to the team game finder. I set my limits at one plus single, one plus double, one plus triple, one plus home run. I searched for how many times each team has done this in each year, and I went through all of baseball history.

And what I found is that, in fact, every single team since 1920, which is, I don't recognize baseball before 1920, every single team since 1920 has hit for the cycle at least once. And in fact, they usually do it a lot. Most teams do it, you know, a half dozen to two dozen times, somewhere in that range. The closest any team has ever come to not ever hitting for the cycle in a season was the 1974 Mets. The Mets were a bad team offensively, kind of, but they weren't absurdly bad. They were a bad team at hitting triples. They were last in the league in triples, but they were not absurdly bad. They were a bad team at hitting triples. They were last in the league in triples.

But they were not absurdly bad at hitting triples. They were not among the all-time no-triples leaders. And while scanning these teams, there was one team that was the clear favorite for not having hit for a cycle. They did hit for a cycle, because every team has hit for a cycle. But if any team was going to not hit for the cycle, it would have been the 1972 Rangers. And I just want to tell you a little bit about the 1972 Rangers very briefly. The 1972 Rangers

had the third fewest home runs in a full season by any team since 1960. So that's in a full season by any team since 1960. Okay. So that's 50, you know, basically 50 years. So we're talking about, you know, 1,200, 1,300 teams, seasons. And they're the third fewest home runs of those 1,200 or 1,300. They're the 32nd fewest triples. And they are the 10th fewest doubles. They are amazingly in the basically one or two

percentile for every different category of extra base hit not just one and not all of them as a group but each individual one they have the lowest hit total in that in that entire, you know, 60, 55-year stretch, they have the lowest team hits total in a full season by 45 hits. I mean, I'm including 1968 when, like, the league as a whole hit, like, 220. They were so bad as a team. As a team, they hit 217, 290, 290. One player on the team scored 50 runs uh no player drove in 60 and uh they did manage to lead the league and caught stealing despite having no base runners ever and they did manage to finish second in the league and sacrifice bunts despite having no base

runners ever and the twist of this is do you know who their manager is no their manager is the greatest hitter who ever lived ted oh right of course the worst offensive team in history was managed by the greatest hitter who ever lived and you know ted williams has been uh the example that everybody gives for why great players can't be great managers, because they don't have the patience for the mediocre. They are so used to things being easy or things being done at such an elite level that they just don't appreciate how for some average players it can be a struggle, and there are ups and downs, and the game

is not always that easy. And I think that Ted Williams got a very bum rap because this was not a mediocre team. This was not an average team. This was not him losing patience with a bunch of hundred OPS pluses. This was the worst offensive team ever put together. And he sat through that entire year without quitting in a huff, without murdering anybody. I think that Ted Williams deserves a lot of credit. And in fact, Ted Williams' first year with the Washington Senators, who became the Texas Rangers, this was their first year in Texas, his first year with the Senate, with all teams in Washington were the Senators, right?

There have been multiple Washington Senators, so this was also the Washington. Anyway, his first year with Washington, they were good and according to writing news accounts that I have found, Ted Williams was lauded for his managerial work with the 86-win Washington

squad of 1969. So, I think Ted Williams has a bum rap, and I think that he has every right to have been frustrated, but his team did hit for the cycle. The reason that I like to bring these types of things up is that I like to give people something to root for. I was hoping that I could give you a team to root for this year

that has yet to hit for a cycle so that we could all watch and see whether they make history. Unfortunately, every team has already done it. It's only June 2nd, and every team has done it, which gives you an idea of how hard it is to not do it. The Tigers have hit only one. I guess they have a chance to tie the record, but they're not going to. And nobody will until next year.

So it'll be something for us to look for next year. Keep an eye out. It does seem like the modern teams do have a legitimate shot at this in a way because triples have been at an all-time low for quite some time. The all-time low for a team is the Orioles in 1998 who hit only 11. And last year, one team hit 15, one team hit 14. the year before a team hit 13, and that's really what you need. You need to be a bad offense, but you also really, it helps to be a no-triples offense, and if you could get that triples down to like six or seven, you'd have a shot.

So I think that some teams got a shot. The 2011 White Sox are the modern champions. They only had three, and teams that hit for the cycle, doesn't sound like much, but 73% win, sorry, but 73% win. Sorry, 730 winning percentage. All right. Well, if you need another reason to watch the Padres, you can watch because Jason Lane is back in the big leagues as a pitcher for right now. And I can't say he exactly forced his way up because he struck out 28 hitters in 64 innings at El Paso,

but it's back in the big leagues. All right, so use the coupon code BP when you subscribe to the Play Index so that you can get the discounted price of $30. And as always, we highly recommend it. By the way, Ben, while we're on the topic of Hang Up and Listen, the GIST, Mike Peskin's new podcast, is phenomenal. It is my new favorite podcast. It's not a sports podcast. It's an everything podcast. It's incredible. It's hysterical. It's newsy. At the end of every show, he says,

tell somebody who will like it so that they can subscribe on iTunes. So I'm now telling everybody, you will like it. It's great. And it's a total wonder. I agree. I'm a couple episodes behind because like this show, it is a daily show. And it's about 25 minutes usually and covers a bunch of different topics in a few different segments. And I agree.

I have learned things and enjoyed myself. a few different segments and I agree. I have learned things and enjoyed myself. Jason Lane, by the way, in El Paso this year at AAA, hitting 407, 484, 667. How many at bats? 31.

Interesting. Alright, this question comes from Matt. He says, we often believe there's a divide between scouts and stat heads. Scouts often believe stat heads are missing something because they aren't scouts, but this is seemingly unfair. Any person can read the book, as in the Tom Tango Mitchell Lichman book, comb through stats, crunch some numbers, and learn database management in the comfort of their

basement. However, scouting is incredibly difficult to get into. You can't learn to scout by reading a book or watching a game, especially if you aren't in a certain geographical location. You have to have the finances to travel to watch hundreds of games and players, develop relationships with a scout that can teach you to scout, and once you've done that, you might be lucky enough to attend scout school. How can we make proper scouting more accessible to the average fan? school. How can we make proper scouting more accessible to the average fan? So I don't, I don't know that, that it's a goal that we necessarily need to have. I mean, it's okay that you have to acquire some skills to be a scout, but if we, if we were to encourage people to get into scouting, I would say that there's, there's, there's more out there that can help you do that than there once was,

even if it's just reading. There's so much more prospect coverage now. There's so much more video online of prospects and just of any player. You can watch every major league baseball game. And yes, it's sort of difficult to learn about scouting just by watching without having some sort of tutor or instructor. But I think there's a lot of writing out there that people will point out what they're looking at, and they'll show you gifs, and they'll show diagrams, and they'll, in painstaking detail, explain how they are evaluating prospects. So it seems to me that there is a lot to learn just from what's publicly available. I mean but just from listening to the Up and In podcast or Fringe Average podcast

or reading the Baseball Perspectives scouting staff and all the other stuff that's out there. So I would say that it's the degree of difficulty to become someone who's interested in scouting is comparable to the degree of difficulty of becoming an actual qualified analyst, data analyst, sabermetrician, the type who can work for a team, that's not easy to pick up, right?

I mean, you need database skills. You need a grounding in math. You need an original mind. You need an awareness of all the research that's been done you need you know like you and i are not at that point even we often rely on on the resources we have at baseball prospectus or or the play index or any of those any of those sources of data so to become you know someone who a team would hire to do data analysis is, I don't know that it's necessarily easier or faster than to just be a guy who goes to games and talks to scouts. And that's difficult. I guess

it's more difficult if you are in an area that just doesn't have baseball games, then you can't go to them. Well, you have high school and college baseball games true yeah that would be pretty much anywhere so i don't i don't know that there's that much of a difference i don't know that it's that much harder to get into scouting if that's where your interests lie i think it's probably easier to get into scouting i i think it's very difficult and uh most people you know i i think it's fair to say probably most people can't. Most people, the time is prohibitive. The skills are not universal. And in order to actually get somewhere with it, you have to be actually good at it,

and not everybody is good at everything that they do. However, I think that you're right. The technical demands, at least to me, the technical demands of the average stat guy who is hired now are absolutely impossible. Yeah. It would be... Have you read a job listing

from one of the teams that we post at Baseball Perspectives or that gets posted anywhere else and the list of qualifications and programming languages that you're supposed to have learned is just endless. It just goes on and on. You have to have, you know, you have to have a degree in computer science or like a master's in math to, I mean, you can get hired with fewer qualifications. But that's what they're looking for.

Yeah, it's only slightly, slightly more attainable than like if the requirement was that you're seven feet tall. You know, it's just you're either that guy or you're not. You're either born and or raised up to this point in your life with those sorts of skills and that sort of intelligence, or you're not. And scouting is, my impression is that scouting is more of something that you master through, like sort of in the classic 10,000 hours way of doing things. And most people don't have the stick-to-itiveness to put 10,000 hours into it. But I get the feeling that if you do, you've got a decent shot at things. you do, you've got a decent shot at things.

But I have to say, I don't know if this, I don't know, it's been a while since you went to scout school. When I try to watch like a scout even for like one pitch, if I try, there's too many things happening and it happens too fast. And like I don't, like you're looking at the guy's hands and you've forgotten to look at his feet yeah and then you don't know what pitch it was because you were looking at the guy the batter instead and um it's very very fast you know you don't appreciate how fast this game is until you try to you know actually watch like one little sliver of the game

uh without losing track of all the hundred other slivers it's a very difficult thing it's gosh it's hard i don't know i don't know what do they tell you when you're in scout school about what to do about that yeah that was a problem especially early on um they i mean they did tell you at the beginning, they just said, really, just look at one thing and don't even look at other things. So if you're like, we had worksheets where we would have to say, okay, this pitcher has this type of windup and, uh, this is the, these are the pitches he throws and you'd have to go through and kind of check off each thing just to get the basic information on who he is and what he does.

And they would tell you like, use a pitch for each of these things. So on this pitch, look at where he lands. Does he, you know, drive right to the plate or is he throwing across his body or something? And that's the only thing that you look for on that pitch. And then the next pitch, you look at his arm angle and, you know, is he over the top? Is he three quarters?

Is he sidearm? Whatever. Just focus on that. And then towards the end, they, you know, the idea was that we had been looking at these things and focusing on these specific aspects for long enough that we might be able to sort of take in more at one time. But I can't say that that was easy at that point. But if you're a longtime scout

and you've been doing it for years, then you just sort of pick these things up, I think. But otherwise, it's very, very difficult. Okay, so that is it for today. We will do some draft stuff. I think it's definitely not our wheelhouse, which is why we have not been talking about the draft much to this point. But the draft starts on Thursday.

First round is on Thursday. So we will probably talk to someone who knows things about the draft or talk a bit about the results on Friday. So that will be coming. And please start sending us emails for next week's listener email show at podcast at baseballprospectus.com. And we'll be back tomorrow.