Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 518: Your Emails Mean Business

Episode Date: August 20, 2014

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about outfielders, strikeouts, command vs. control, and more.

Yes, no, don't know, I don't care, I'm only a questioner Yes, no, don't know, I don't care, I'm only a questioner Only a questioner Good morning and welcome to episode 518 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland.com, joined as always, almost always, by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello, how are you?

Good. How are you? Okay. Good. Listener email show. Yes, sir. Can I you? Okay. Good. Listener email show. Yes, sir. Can I begin? Please.

Okay. All right. So this question comes from Maximilian, who is referring to a topic that I discussed with Russell and Michael Bauman last Friday, I guess it was, when you were at the Area Code Games. He says, The only thing I would miss if mound visits were eliminated, so this is something we discussed as a potential time saver. Yeah.

The only thing I would miss... I wondered about that. I thought that came... This just started in the middle of a conversation. I wondered about that. So good. Yes. Yes. You're right.

Okay, so this will save you the time that you would have had to spend catching up with that episode, which I know you were planning to do. The only thing I would miss if mound visits were eliminated or drastically reduced is the late game drama when the manager goes out for the first visit and it's not clear if he's going to pull the pitcher or not, and he leaves him in. You don't see it much anymore, but the aspect of i asked him how he was feeling he looked me in the eye and said he could get the next guy and i told him it was his game to win is priceless uh and then he he sends us a link to a game this june when he says bob melvin left jim johnson in in extras in this game and

after a troubled season it was a powerful moment, signifying confidence in his guy, though Johnson didn't end up getting the next guy. I do wish that there were some way to know, to have the mound visits when this interaction happened flagged, so that we could see whether the pitcher is any more likely to get the guy, any more or less likely to get the guy after he has vowed to his manager that he's going to get the guy. And after the manager has looked into his eyes and seen some hidden strength there. Because we can't really, we could look up lots of instances when this has happened, but of course we're more likely to hear about it when the pitcher does get the guy. So it would be a skewed sample.

So would you miss this if mountain visits were outlawed or drastically reduced? I don't know if I'd miss it because I don't know if I would notice that it had disappeared, but I do enjoy that. That is actually something that I find enjoyable too. I like the not knowing. I like that moment of surprise because you assume when the manager comes out that it's over and then when it's something new. I mean it's like how many new things are there in baseball? How many surprises are there really? And so it's a good little surprise. I like it.

Yeah, I like it too. And I like the little Larry David Curb Your Enthusiasm stare down that happens when they look into each other's eyes. So wait, so there's no way they could replace this, right? I mean, I guess we could see them talking in the dugout between innings where the pitcher is trying to talk himself in, but you know, you don't you could have that now too, so it would you could just stare there's nothing you could do to really replace it, right?

you could stare from afar, stare from the dugout to the mound and lock eyes in fact, in a way, you might argue that that if this well, let me think no probably not you couldn't argue it no i would miss it me too okay um wonder what i was thinking about arguing you'll never know what

i was going to consider arguing huh it wasn't very good that hasn't stopped you from publishing articles in the past. A bizarre thing to say. Inside joke. Okay. Mike D. in St. Louis says, if a team had a 13 strikeout per nine pitching staff, would a top defensive team be necessary when half the outs are coming from the pitchers? Would a top defender's stats be increased by having fewer chances thereby having fewer opportunities to make errors so this is something

that we kind of talked about with the tigers last year or year before that uh how they had this super high strikeout pitching staff and that maybe they could kind of afford to have Miguel Cabrera at third base and Prince Fielder at first base and a weak defensive team overall because they had fewer balls put in play than other teams. So yes, it's easier to get away with it if the higher your pitching staff strikeout rate is, the less damaging potentially a weak defensive team would be, I think. And I don't think a top defender's stats would necessarily be improved by having fewer chances, but the likelihood of their having a high defensive rating, I guess in a sense it would be improved because the likelihood of having a high defensive rating, I guess in a sense it would be improved

because the likelihood of having a high rating would be increased, right? Just because of small sample size and variability. The likelihood of having a high defensive rating by a rate stat would be improved, but so would the likelihood of having an extremely low defensive rating by a rate stat. And we don't really, none of us pay attention to any of the rate stats. For the most part, we pay attention to the counting stats of defense, right? So, in fact, it would probably hurt them, right? It would appear that they were not very good defenders.

You would just have fewer opportunities to build up your counting stats, right? Yeah, I guess so. drive-in runs. And so if you were looking at RBI, what is baseball prospectus' RBI opportunities? Opportunities, yeah. So that, for instance, in an equivalent situation where there was never anybody on in front of you, that wouldn't really be affected all that much, except it would create more variance. However, it would certainly hurt your raw RBI totals, and I would think the same would be true here. The thing about this question is that, and I don't remember if we mentioned this with the Tigers or not. I would hope that we did, but I don't remember saying it. The thing that this would benefit is the team that has strikeout pitchers and good hitting position players.

And those are the two things that are generally considered to be very lucrative on the market. They're already things that are expensive. They're not undervalued commodities. If anything, maybe they're slightly overvalued commodities. So, theoretically, everybody wants strikeout pitchers and everybody wants power hitters, and this would be the most expensive way to build a team, theoretically. Now, of course, sometimes guys fall into your lap, and if you happen to already have the good pitching staff with the strikeouts like the Tigers did,

then maybe you could argue that it's an appropriate time to punt defense, and if you already have the terrible defense and it's too hard to turn that around, maybe you could argue that it would make more sense to sign strikeout pitchers because a large party roster going into every offseason and every trade deadline is already set. So you kind of have to play with the cards that you already have. But you would think that the sort of twins model would lend itself to this idea more because the low strikeout pitchers are cheap, theoretically. are cheap, theoretically.

And I don't know if this is still true, but I think it's still maybe slightly more true than offense is that defensive stats are maybe paid for less. I mean, certainly in arbitration, I think. I think that's still the case, yeah. Yeah. So you would expect maybe some... I would expect we would get more suggestions to build that kind of a team than this kind of team. But we don't.

Nobody's ever suggested building the Twins to us. No. In fact, people have asked us why the Twins have built the Twins. Yeah, and the Twins didn't do the defensive half of that situation. That's kind of the problem. Okay, this question comes from Kevin Whitaker, whom I met at Saber Seminar this past weekend.

A few of the MLB affiliated speakers at Saber Seminar mentioned the pace of play as an issue, but they didn't say much about likely solutions. You've talked about how you, or at least Sam, don't like the idea of a pitch clock, and how other options like limiting mound visits or pitching changes might not have such much effect I would like to

hear your reactions to a new proposal what if the pitcher was allowed to pitch at any time he wants regardless of whether or not the batter is ready in other words the batter can't waste time standing outside the box or adjusting his equipment the onus is on him to be ready whenever the pitcher throws. This rule would not apply after foul balls, when the umpire has to put the ball back in play, or for the first pitch of an at-bat, and the bulk rule would still apply, preventing extreme quick pitching. This rule would prevent many batter-caused delays in the game and might incentivize pitchers to work more quickly, ultimately speeding up play. Plus, it would do so without disrupting the aesthetic of the game with a pitch clock. Do you think this rule would help So I think it would. of the 12-second rule, I was frustrated to find that it was harder than I expected to find violations of that rule, that pitchers can't take longer than that with the bases empty,

because the way that the rule is worded requires that 12 seconds to start when the batter is in the box, and there's some language to the effect of when he is prepared to receive the pitch, something to that effect, and that can take a very long time. Once the batter goes through that whole process and steps out of the box and steps back in the box and faces the pitcher and goes into his stance, at that point, if you start the clock then, even if the pitcher is a slow pitcher, it's pretty rare for him to take longer than the allotted time after that point if you start the clock then even if the pitcher is a slow pitcher it's pretty rare for him to take longer than the allotted time after that point because so much time has already passed and so uh if you did this it would it would make it easier to enforce i think it would

speed things up i guess the the downside or the risk is that it could potentially be dangerous if the batter is not paying attention when he should be and the pitcher pitches and throws too close to the batter who is not prepared to get out of the way. That's potentially dangerous. I think it would work except for the occasional traumatic injury. Yeah, it would be dangerous. It also, if I had to guess, it seems to me that pitchers are the ones who want the delay more than the hitters.

We know that there are some hitters who take a long time between every pitch, and every hitter probably takes more time between every pitch than is necessary. pitch and every hitter probably takes more time between every pitch than is necessary but I feel like they're doing that because they know that you know it's just a lot of sitting around until the pitcher gets going I I feel like the pitchers are the ones who consider this to their advantage to to take a long time and so my guess is that if this rule were in place it would speed up some games because some pitchers would embrace this. But it would not speed up a lot of games, and it might not speed up most games because I think that the pitchers still largely control the pace.

And like when you mentioned the 12 seconds thing, by the time the batter gets set, if the pitcher takes 12 seconds, it feels so long that the batter almost certainly has called timeout. Again, by that point, like standing there waiting for 12 seconds is a very long time. So I kind of feel like what the batters do right now with all of their stall tactics are just a way of killing time until they can wait for the pitcher because they don't want to be up there like idiots frozen while the pitcher goes through his whole thing. Yeah, because there's sort of a power relationship there also.

The pitcher has the ball, so the play is dependent on him. So the batter is being kept waiting by the pitcher, and often then the batter will try to gain the upper hand in a sense by stepping out and taking the initiative to delay the at bat, but ultimately it's the pitcher who is determining when play resumes. Okay, so here's why I like the idea though. And the reason I had forgotten that I was opposed to a clock uh and i'm glad kevin reminded me the reason that i'm opposed to it is that i think it's basically it's the player's game

as much as possible we should defer to them the style they want to play the rules that they want to follow etc and i feel like that's why none of these pitch clocks or the 12 seconds ever get called as is and why no efforts to speed up pitchers and batters ever really take hold. This is the pitchers don't want to do it and the batters don't want to do it and it's their game. So I say all for it. However, in this case, what you're doing is empowering them to act quicker if they have the choice. You're not mandating that they act quicker, which they don't want to do. You're simply empowering them to have their own pace. And there are almost certainly pitchers who would prefer a faster pace. And so I say that it's a great solution to at least some of the games to give them more freedom

rather than what most of these solutions do, which is to take away the freedom. I wonder if there's a way that you could also do this for the batter. And I don't know that there is. I mean, if a batter stayed in the batter's box and never left and was always poised to hit, then the 12-second clock would start faster. But if I were that batter, I wouldn't have any faith that it was actually going to get called. And then I would just feel like an awkward doofus the whole time. But it would be nice if, yes, if everybody on the field had the choice to speed things up on their own, and this would be a good start. So yeah, I'm pro Kevin's idea.

Okay, let's do one more before play index. This is from Lewis, who says, just wondering what the difference is between command and control when discussing pitchers. Seems like there's a lot of overlap, or perhaps it is mixing the use of the terms. What do you guys think? I'm curious what your opinion is. I have an opinion that is growing stronger as I get older. I've never been comfortable with the fact that these are two different things. I understand the distinction that control is the ability to throw strikes or to throw pitches in the strike zone, and command is the ability to place the pitch within the strike zone or to hit a certain spot. And those are two different things, but they are, I think,

two different points along the same spectrum, right? They're not, I can't really come to the conclusion that they are completely different abilities. It seems to me that one is a superior or more refined version of the other. And so the idea that we refer to them as two completely different things instead of just using one term and saying that someone is better or worse at it, I'm not completely thrilled about it. And it seems to lead to a lot of confusion. We get a lot of questions about it. And no one seems to be entirely happy with this distinction. Yeah, I feel like I have seen no evidence that there is any pitcher who is capable of hitting his spots consistently without walking batters or vice versa.

To me, they are the same skill. The skill is throwing a baseball near where you're trying to throw a baseball. And if there was an exception, it might be a guy whose pitches, like let's say you're a sinker baller and you have good command, but your target is always going to be arguably out of the strike zone, right? Or a guy who gets a lot of chases, relies on chases more so than called strikes. So in that sense, he might have command because he can throw the pitch he wants, but he doesn't have control in the sense that his style of pitching is never going to avoid walks all that effectively. And so I guess you could say that that's a true result of his style, although it's not really so much about his tools and his ability as how he pitches.

But nonetheless, the results would be the same, right? You would expect that guy to not get hit hard while also giving up more free passes than you would like out of a pitcher. It's sort of a little bit of a conflict in his style, and it's going to be a fact of life for him. sort of a little bit of a conflict in his style, and it's going to be a fact of life for him. Otherwise, I think that maybe it's more of a reflection of a pitcher's choice. Like, there are pitchers who can probably avoid walks simply because they really want to avoid walks, and they do that at the expense of command. I guess you would say the expense of command in

that they are content to challenge hitters and just throw it right down the middle to avoid the free pass. Again, it's not really something that's a skill so much as it feels like it's a choice. It's a mindset. What you're describing is a pitcher who has made a decision about the way he wants to pitch, but you're not really talking about a pitcher who has a particular, who has two distinct skills, which is what command and control purport to describe. The opposite of that would be Levon Hernandez, who is the one guy that I think of when I think of command but not control. Levon Hernandez did not have a particularly good walk rate,

did not have a particularly good walk rate. And even late in his career, it was pretty good, like his last seven or eight years. It was better, but he would walk guys. I mean, he wasn't a league leader in the walks department by any means. And yet, if you look at his zone profile, he has maybe the best ability to avoid the center of the zone of any pitcher during his generation. I might be using hyperbole there because I haven't looked it up. Other than Mariano Rivera, maybe?

But he would have... I mean, his zone profile was like parentheses. It was incredible. The way that he would just completely avoid the middle and hit the, and, and just, you know, stack pitches on the inside and outside corners. Uh, it seemed like a pretty spectacular gift. And I mean, this is a guy who like finished in the top 10 in walks seven times, uh, the top 10 being in the bad direction. He had a lot of them. So I think that that's not an accident. I don't think that's because Levon Hernandez, well, I will say, okay, so I think generally that's not because Levon Hernandez was unable to avoid walks. I think that Levon Hernandez had a philosophy that said you pitch one way to the number three hitter and you pitch a different way to the number eight hitter and you pitch a different way when there's guys on base and you pitch a different way in a three-run game and he had those uh he was able to contain those different philosophies within a

start better than almost anybody and so i think that he was perfectly content to lose certain batters at certain times um and then he was also perfectly able at certain times to pitch in a more aggressive and maybe arguably more effective way at certain times. So that's who I think of maybe when I think of command but not control. But again, I think that if Levo had really wanted to walk one and a half batters per nine, he could have. That wasn't his style. per nine he could have he that's just that wasn't his style the one other the one other exception i might make is a guy who um who can lose his release point for stretches of time maybe so like 90 of the time he has extremely good command and so then you would say well he's a good command guy if you have command 90 of the time you have good command but then he might lose it when he loses it he might lose very bad um i'm thinking of like the typical lefty like jonathan sanchez

has neither good control nor command but it feels like he has especially bad control because sometimes he would like the margin is much smaller and most of the time he was able to you know be a pretty good pitcher and sort of hit his spots but when when he would lose it, he would lose it by so much that he would walk a lot of guys. So I don't know if that makes sense. But I could sort of imagine that a guy who's more likely to lose his release point at certain points in the game would have a lot of walks, but could otherwise be a pitcher who you would say has a pretty good command profile. walks, but could otherwise be a pitcher who you would say has a pretty good command profile. Yeah, I wonder how this distinction evolved, whether it was introduced in response to an outlier like one of those guys, like just one guy who you needed a different term to

talk about, and now we're stuck with these two terms that for most guys are interchangeable or just variations of each other. For most guys, I think we could get along just fine saying this guy has great control and this guy has good control and this guy has okay control and we wouldn't need anything else unless we just needed a synonym

so we weren't saying control 10 times in every paragraph. But for most guys, I think we could probably do without it. All right, so I've got my Dixon baseball dictionary. The term became popular in the 1990s, but it was commonly used in the 19th century as well. For example, command is another feature in the 1990s, but it was commonly used in the 19th century as well. For example, command is another feature in the pitcher's work, and this is a technical word for placing the ball at will, which is in the sporting life in 1883.

And quote, unless he has perfect command, he will never be a winning pitcher. Baseball, how to become a player by John Montgomery Ward in 1888. Cy Young in 1911 quoted, command of the ball is the first essential to success in pitching. So those seem sort of generally to be synonymous with control, although the first one really doesn't. Command is another feature of the pitcher's work, and this is a technical word for placing the ball at will. I don't know that it could be. It's hard to tell. uh yeah the quotes that they use seem to be uh general control until about yeah the 19 like really early 2000s quotes that are cited and

then all of a sudden command becomes the command we know interesting uh if we can blame it on maddox and glavin or something kurt schilling 2002ball America. Control is the ability to throw strikes. Command is the ability to throw quality strikes. So that's pretty much it. So authoritative. It just is. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Huh. Yeah, I guess maybe if a pitcher had... I mean, a quality strike is not just location. Quality strike is also... I don't think people use it this way, but a quality strike can also be... A lot of things can go into a quality strike, right? Velocity might be part of a quality strike.

The ability to use different pitches might lead to quality strikes. But people don't really use it that way. So I think it's much more about location. It's about hitting your target, right? And it's hard to imagine how you could never miss your target by more than three inches and yet miss it a whole lot by two feet. Those two things just don't really go together.

Yeah. Well, let us know if you're listening and you have strong opinions on command versus control. I'd be interested to know. Or if you know more about the evolution of the distinction between the two. All right. Play index? Sure.

So this, I don't think I've ever highlighted this feature of play index before. But one of the things you can do is the event finder. And this is basically you can find, if you want to, you could find, for instance, every time Barry Bonds had a sacrifice fly, and you could see all sorts of things about that group of events. So you could see which parks he did it in broken down. You could see which counts he did it on broken down. You could see a list of all 400 or whatever of them listed chronologically in this list,

which is very easy to use and you could easily export to Excel. You can see every count, every play description by game day, every pitcher, the score at the time, runners on, all these things. It's a pretty incredible thing if you want to, like, learn something about all of Clayton Kershaw's hit by pitches or something, and you only have 12 seconds to do it, or if you have two hours to do it. So you can also do this for entire teams. You can also do it for the entire league. And so I looked at, I simply looked for every catcher's interference since 1950 for all teams in both leagues. And I have them all on a page in front of me. Every single fact that you could want to know about catcher's interferences is right here in front of me on this one page.

It's an amazing thing. So I have learned a few things about catcher's interferences. I have learned a few things about catcher's interferences. The most important thing, and this will give us something to watch, is, Ben, I don't know if you knew this, but we are living in what might be the golden age of catcher's interferences. Might be. It's not clear yet. Yeah, so in the 1950s, there would be single digits per year,

like 4, 7, 6, 6, 5, 2, 4, 5, 8, 8. That's the 1950s, there would be single digits per year, like 4, 7, 6, 6, 5, 2, 4, 5, 8, 8. That's the 1950s. And then the 1960s, it got up to double digits for the most part. In fact, the first time in 1960, there were 10. But still, it was like low teens, 11, 11, 15, 16, 17. And then in the 70s, that was the first golden age of catcher's interferences. And one of the reasons it was is because there were a couple of guys who seemed to really embrace this as a strategy. Pete Rose, who I would mention later in this conversation, but I'll just mention it now, is the all-time leader in catcher's interferences, or at least the post-1950 leader, with 29, which is almost double anybody else. There was another guy whose name was Bob Stinson,

who had six in a year, which I discovered by reading a Sports Illustrated feature on Bill James, and that came up, of all things, in 1982. And so Bill James mentioned it in 1982, that the season happened in, I think, 75. So in the 70s, there was this kind of increase in catcher's interferences. So it was like in the 20s, pretty reliably. 20, 15, 21, 15, 24, 25, 23, 29, 27, 21. And then the 80s, it dropped a little bit, although in 87, the

record was set, the modern record was set with 31. And then, strangely, as a lot of things happened in 1988, it feels like the 88, everything changed in 88, no matter what stat you're looking at. Something changed, either in 88 or 93, something changed. And so in 88, all of a sudden, catch interference has dropped quite a bit. And to a peak of nine in 2002, which was the first single-digit year since 1961. And then they've been steadily growing back. So right now, in the last five years... Wait, can I, before you give this answer,

I have a way to tie this Play Index segment to a listener email that we received in April. This is a deep, deep pull. I favored it or starred it back then and meant to answer it, and we never did. This question comes from Jason. Hopefully, Jason is still with us, even though we didn't answer his question back in April. He said, I feel like we are seeing more instances of catcher interference being called in the last couple of years than we used to. Is the emphasis on pitch framing a reason for this?

Are catchers so concerned with catching the pitch and making it look good that they are reaching forward more? If that is not the case, is there another explanation or am I just imagining this is going on?" You are not imagining it. You can answer the question that Jason has had for the last four months. Excellent. So, there have been 123 in the last five years. The record for a five-year

period is 128. Now, I'm well aware that there are more baseball games being played right now and so that might be part of the reason. However, there is a chance that they will pass that record. That record. This thing that everybody is watching closely. And just 10 years ago, the same five-year period a decade ago, there were only 75. So they've just almost doubled what we were seeing five years ago, which is fairly interesting. Now, is it about framing? I don't know. The boom sort of seems to have started around 2007, which might not be before catchers were paying more attention to framing, but it was before all of us were generally paying more attention to framing. 28 in 2010 is, I think,

the second highest total in the modern era, and that was before the statistical emphasis, at least the analyst's emphasis on framing. So it's hard to say. We also have talked about how it seems to us, it seems certain to me, that more guys are getting hit by backswings. And we talked about whether that was a batter thing or a catcher thing. But this would certainly go with that if it were a catcher thing. So we need five more to break the five-year record. So a few other things of note. The number one catcher interference pitcher is Phil Necro. That makes sense, right? That makes a ton of sense, doesn't it? Phil Necro. That makes sense, right? That makes a ton of sense, doesn't it?

Yeah, I guess. You'd think that the catchers would be not moving much or they'd be frozen in place or something. Yeah, I would think that the catchers would be reaching forward to try to get it before it breaks. That's what I would think for Necro. Number two one is Nolan Ryan, which also makes sense, because batters would be back in the box, because he threw so hard. So it's kind of interesting that the number one and number two both make total sense, and for completely opposite reasons.

So if you think Ryan makes sense for that reason, then that would support the idea that batters as a group, as a population, have moved back in the box as pitchers, as a population, have added velocity over the last several years. Very good, yes. So that could be an explanation. That would be a great explanation. Well done. There has only been one catcher's interference on a 3-0 count since 1950. That was by Ryan Klesko, who was a pretty good catcher's interferer.

He got six in his career, which is solid. Not many people get six. There have been, let's see, 39% of catcher's interference have come with a runner on first and nobody else on base, while only 18% of plate appearances are in the same situation. So about double the expected rate, which also makes sense. You would think a lot of these catcher's interferences would come from catchers reaching forward in order to either throw the guy out or pick the guy off. And so therefore, you'd have a situation where a lot more base runners would be going

and the catchers would interfere a lot more often. That makes sense, doesn't it? Sure. The three spots in the lineup most likely to have catcher's interference are second, which makes sense because of the base stealing thing, ninth, which I think actually makes sense because you have both pitchers who don't know how to swing and might swing funny, or pitchers who are trying to get on base by doing this,

or simply just that you have pitchers, pitchers probably stand way back in the box because they're scared. So those two make sense. Seventh though is the other spot. And then it's a big drop off after those three. And I'm trying to figure out why seventh would matter. I can't really. Yeah, I don't know. It's a pretty nondescript lineup slot. Pinch hitters are about twice as likely to have a catcher's interference as they are

to, given their population, their percentage of the population, they're about twice as likely as you would expect. I don't know why that is. Yes. Maybe they come up with runners on base more often. Could be. Could be. That could be. That makes sense. Let's see. It's more likely to happen to the visiting team, which is surprising because almost every other positive outcome is more likely to happen to the home team. And yet, visiting teams are more likely to benefit from a catcher's interference. And lastly, there is nobody anywhere close to Pete Rose's record. Ellsbury has 11. He has no chance to get there. Karl Crawford has, I think, 14. He has no chance

to get there. If you want a hope that somebody might do it, Paul Goldschmidt has five and is relatively young, but probably Jason Hayward is your guy. He is at four already and he is about 13 years old. Hayward's got a shot. I think Hayward is on pace to challenge it, if nothing else, but he's got a long way to go. Four is not very far. Fascinating. Any questions while I have this page open that you wanted to know? Is there information on which catchers it was called on?

There is not. I'm sorry. Okay. Well, that was my question. It might be on baseball reference somewhere, but it's not on this page. Oh, no, it's not on this page. Oh, no, it's not. Okay.

All right. Well, I think we learned some things there. Got to the bottom of some stuff, potentially. And we answered Jason, or I guess it's actually Jay's question, after four months in limbo. So we did some good work here today. You can do your own good work by going to baseballreference.com and using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 for a one-year subscription on the Play Index. Okay, before we end, let's take this one from Tom in Canada. Hi, Ben and Sam. You're the GM of an AL team.

You're looking at two Japanese pitchers who you're considering signing. These pitchers project to be league average starters except for one exceptional skill. Player A has an amazing curveball like nothing anyone else can throw that you project will allow him to strike out roughly 40% of the batters he faces in Major League Baseball, roughly 30% better than current leader Clayton Kershaw's 31% strikeout rate. Player B has spectacular sinking action on all his pitches, which you project will allow him to generate an 80% ground ball rate on balls in play, again roughly 30% better than current leader Dallas Keuchel's 62%. Both project to have league average walk and home run per fly ball rates, You want the extreme strikeout rate guy or the extreme ground ball rate guy? It's got to be the strikeout rate guy, right?

I mean, imagine, just think about it this way. Imagine instead of those numbers, he strikes out 100% of batters or he allows grounders to 100% of batted balls. I mean, then it's pretty easy, right? Yes, I would think so, yeah. And similarly, if he struck out zero batters and got zero ground balls,

I would think that would be pretty easy as well. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so even if you have the best defensive infield in baseball, I guess that probably still doesn't change the answer. No, I really want to see somebody try the all-ground ball, five-infield alignment. You know that's a thing that I want.

However, I don't even know that that would work. Even if you could pull that off, I don't know if it would work. The only thing that entices me about the 80% ground ball guy is maybe I could pull in an outfielder and have a five man infield. Uh, but I have no idea whether that would work. That might backfire terribly. And then I would just really regret my choice. Uh, all right. Well then one more quick one, since that was quick. Uh, this is Andrew with yesterday's talk about Alex Gordon being so slick in the field. I always wonder about above averageaverage corner outfielders

and why they don't play center field. Gordon has an excuse. The Royals have an above-average center fielder. Do you think Alex Gordon could play center field respectably? What about Josh Reddick, Jason Hayward, or other such plus corner guys? If not, why? What is it that makes them above-average corner guys but struggle in center field?

That's a good question. because nobody because it's it's true there are like there are guys who switch back and forth you know there are guys who play center field credibly and then also play in a corner and they're above average corner outfielders they do well but they're not as good as like reddick appears to be or or hayward appears to be. And yet nobody is clamoring for Redick to play center at all. And I, I guess part of it is that Redick and Hayward both have really incredible arms, which we think of as right field things. And yet,

and yet I'm not even, I think that I asked this on Twitter not that long ago. And I got a 50, 50 rate of rate of answers. But so let me ask you this, Ben, if you had two players who were exactly the same defensively, they're both, that long ago and I got a 50-50 rate of answers. So let me ask you this, Ben. If you had two players who were exactly the same defensively, they're both good defenders, there's similar fastness,

similar everything, except one has a much better arm. Which one do you put in center and which one do you put in right? Well, obviously the traditional archetype of the strong-armed outfielder is right. So are you suggesting that that's potentially, that that shouldn't be the case? Because, I mean, from right field, you have to make some longer throws, but then again, it's possible that from center you have to make more throws. Is that true? You make more plays, so if you make more throws as well, then maybe that would balance out

the fact that you don't need to make the throw all the way to third from a corner. Is that the question, essentially? That's essentially the question, yeah. You're right. The tradition is that you put the strong arm in right field, although that's usually the choice is right field or left field. That's usually what your choice is. And of course, that means you're going to put the better arm in right. And you can't play right field if you don't have the arm for right. And so it gets a reputation for needing a good arm, but not necessarily that it's more valuable than in center.

I mean, there are a lot of long throws from center field, right? Not only are there a lot of long throws from center field, but you're a lot more likely to field the ball without your momentum going toward the target. And so you might argue that a strong throwing arm might be even more valuable in that position. I think that you put him in center. I don't know the answer to this. I'd like to know the answer, but my guess is that you put him in center. So anyway, so what I'm saying is that Redick's value being in his arm doesn't necessarily make him less of an asset in centerfield. It might make him even more of an asset in centerfield. Maybe, but at least the traditional baseball belief would be that it – well, if we're talking about left field as we are with Gordon, that's not a position where you traditionally put the strong armed people and he is a,

he's a strong arm person anyway. So, I mean, I guess the, I guess the most common reasons for a good left fielder not to play center most common would probably be that he just happens to be on a team with a really good center fielder. And, uh, maybe that center fielder is better than he is or maybe he was entrenched before the left fielder showed up. And then by the time the situation changes, by the time that center fielder moves on or the left fielder switches teams or something, he is either old enough that he's no longer really an asset in center or he's just become known as a left fielder or right fielder

and these things become crystallized to some extent and the other possibility is is the arm thing as we were just talking about maybe if you have a guy who covers a lot of ground but he has a weak arm maybe there's a perception that he's not a good fit for center because of that, whether it's true or not. And then the other reason is just I think some guys just don't like to play center or just don't want to play center, don't feel comfortable playing center for some reason. Carl Crawford was like that. Everyone thought he had the skills to be a center fielder. He certainly seemed to.

He had the defensive ratings and left that would suggest that he could have handled center just fine. And he played some center early in his career, but he didn't like it. He didn't want to stay there. I don't know whether he just wasn't comfortable with the angle of the ball or he didn't want to be the guy who gave orders in the outfield or what it was, but he just didn't want to play center guy who gave orders in the outfield or what it was, but he just didn't want to play center. There was actually some talk of him potentially playing center earlier this year with the Dodgers when they didn't really have anyone to play center, and that never happened.

But that's an example of a guy who seemed to have the talent to do it and just for whatever reason didn't feel like it. So I guess that happens from time to time too. So Jason Hayward is like a plus 20-ish defender this year in right field. Would you guess that he would be a plus 10 center fielder? Would you think that he is one of the better center fielders? Or do you think that he's below average? Because the positional adjustments would suggest, the traditional positional adjustments would

suggest that he would be an above average center fielder. Same with Redick, same with Gordon. Do you think that that's true for all three of them? Yeah, probably. I mean, maybe if a guy has all of the skills that would suggest that he should be a centerfielder, but he never actually plays center, then maybe there is something about him that would not make him have the typical positional adjustment. For whatever reason, he's not comfortable or the team knows he's not comfortable, and that's why he hasn't played there. So if he were forced to for some reason, he wouldn't take to it well but but i would guess if you have that much of a cushion above average and right then you would still be above average and center okay

okay all right so that's the show please send us some emails for next week at podcast at baseball prospectus.com join the facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and rate and review and subscribe to the show on itunes we will be back with another one tomorrow