Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 524: Deep Thoughts About Beating the Shift

Episode Date: August 28, 2014

Ben and Sam banter about the latest in Andrelton Simmons defense, then discuss why hitters don’t often go the other way against the defensive shift.

Good morning and welcome to episode 524 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus, presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland.com, joined by Sam Miller of BaseballPerspectus.com. Hello. Hello. How are you? Okay.

So some congratulations are in order to our friend Jason Parks. Yes. Very, very in order. Yeah. Yes, very in order Yeah, leaving BP to take a job scouting with the Chicago Cubs And it sounds like a cool scouting job Not that they're not all cool, but this one is kind of a hybrid He gets to do pro scouting and amateur scouting and international scouting

So that's kind of cool Yeah, I think the only thing more flattering in this world than getting hired by somebody is uh getting hired for a job that they created for you right yes that's true and and he's he's got good timing uh he's he's climbing aboard a what seems to be a ship that's on the way up, and he can take credit for that when it happens. Yeah. On the other hand, he's climbing aboard a ship that has been sinking for a century. Yeah.

I don't know how well this ship metaphor is working. Let's move on. No. So there was an Andrelton simmons play and normally we would have probably watched it together but we've probably seen it separately now what did you think of this play very good play hot take yeah i agree do you have it in front of you? I'd like to rewatch it. I do. I'm just rewatching it over and over. So the main, I mean, the impressive part or the more impressive part is the throw, right? Because getting to it was good, but I feel like a lot of short steps could have gotten to it and kept it there.

I want to slightly dispute that, though. I think that the first moment of that play that makes it brilliant is that he got to it while staying on his feet. You can see he had to extend while running. He had to extend, which is a very hard move to make. I don't think any other shortstop even tries to get that on his feet. I think they all try to do the pop-up uh-huh i don't yeah i don't even know if if many shortstops make the throw they they get there maybe they keep it there but i don't know if they then actually try to to make the play because the

the throw i mean the the transfer is pretty quick obviously he. The momentum is going in completely the wrong direction, and he gets a lot on it. It's not like a rainbow. It's pretty much, I mean, it's like a throw from a third baseman. It's on a line, pretty much. It bounces. Maybe he wanted it to bounce, but it's's a good bounce not a short hop bounce the throw is uh the throw is really something that the jump in the jump throw is it almost you know like jeter

is sort of famous for the jump throw but jeter's jump throws you get the feeling that he wants them to be so photogenic that like the point of them is to really do a ballet move. This was a purposeful jump throw. This was quick. It was not showy. He could have definitely made this play more

Jeter-esque, but he doesn't. He uses the jump to actually get momentum on his throw. And then he's done. That's it. Oh, look at that. Nice play.

This is a very nice play. So the Braves announcer said maybe his best of the year. Yeah, I was trying to remember what the ones that we've co-watched on this podcast have been. There was the one where he was going in the one direction and then he stopped and came back in the other direction. I think this is better than that. I don't remember what the other candidates are, really. One and a half.

He's going full speed to field this ball, and then he has to reach out and extend, which is a move that almost every human being alive would fall over if they tried this. And then he goes from the moment of stopping it to in the air in one and a half steps. There's not any extra step there. It's incredible. Well, you should all watch this if you haven't. Hopefully you've been watching as we've narrated.

I will link to the play. Yeah, the thing is that you know that he has great arm strength, and it's almost easy to discount that as just, you know, he was born with great arm strength. He was a former pitcher. But the balance of the move and the efficiency of movement in it is really the part that feels practiced. You know, like the arm strength he was born with, the rest of it is practice. Okay. Shall we move on?

You can, but I will be watching this for the next 35 minutes. Okay. As I have been. I just keep on going frame by frame. The great thing about frame by frame is that every individual frame you think, that's not baseball. What is he doing? Why is he facing that direction?

How come his body is doing that that none of it is baseball until you press play and launch it full speed all right anything else just this yeah i guess i should i have to offer condolences again on sergio santos yeah because he was designated again i'll just keep congratulating you every time he's called up and consoling you every time he's demoted. Okay, so what I wanted to talk about mainly was the thing that I wrote for Grantland today, which is about whether we should expect hitters

to be able to beat the shift, whether it's fair to expect that. And I know it's a frustrating thing to watch them not try to or appear not to try to. Our friend, my Grantland colleague, Michael Bauman, just tweeted that it's the single thing he finds most frustrating about baseball, the shift and hitters' inability to beat it. And uh we know about bunts and i'm all in favor of of bunts against the shift and i think that should happen more but the the actual changing your spray chart in effect changing whatever the the battle ball direction is that makes teams shift against

you is a trickier thing and we've seen some people kind of do it or try to do it. Adam Dunn sort of did it. Matt Adams kind of did it. But most guys have not been able to do it or have not attempted to do it. And it's not clear to me whether we should be upset when they do it or when they don't. i i linked to and showed a play from earlier this year when lucas duda was playing the cardinals and the cardinals totally packed the right side of the field against him he's he's a pretty extreme pull hitter and they put five guys on the right side of the field they moved the shortstop over to the right of second they moved the third baseman over there john j Jay was straightaway in center and Matt Holiday in left was the only player on the field to the left side of second base. And of course, Gary Cohen, who was calling the game, said, how do you not just try to roll one to the shortstop hole? And I'm sure many other people were thinking that as they watched that. And of course, Duda just pulled a grounder right into the shift and he was out.

thinking that as they watched that. And of course, Duda just pulled a grounder right into the shift and he was out. And so I'm kind of curious the way that we are curious about whether pitchers can hit their spots. I'm also curious about whether hitters can hit their spots, whether they can direct the ball. And so I looked at all these different situations and was kind of updating, redoing a John Walsh article from the hardball times several years ago that i've mentioned on this podcast before where he looked at various situations where you would expect batted ball type or batted ball direction to change or where the hitter at least has incentive to change those things and i look to see whether it does change because maybe that, maybe that's a clue about whether guys can change to adapt to the shift. If they, if they can't do it in other situations,

then maybe it's just not something that they're capable of. So, so I looked at the hit and run, and this is clearly a case where at least the, the general understanding is that the guy who's up is not only supposed to make contact, but he's supposed to hit behind the runner. Ideally, the second baseman is running over to cover. There's a big hole and you can just slap a grounder through there and then you have a first and third situation set up. So I compared, and when I say I, I really mean Rob McEwen of BP, who I would be lost without, who helped me with a lot of this data stuff. And we compared situations where a runner was on first with the hit and run situations, as defined by Mike Fast a few years ago.

And runner on first with no hit and run cases where a guy probably was not going and looked to see the percentage of balls that were hit to the right side of the field. And there was almost no difference. There was a, like all the differences I found for these things were in the direction that you would expect, but they were infinitesimal. They were just tiny, tiny differences. Like the percentage of balls hit to the right side with a runner on first who is not going when the hit and run is not on is 36.5.

And when there is a hit and run on, it's 38.7. So it's just a tiny little thing. And you'd think that that's a case where the hitter would really be trying to do that and and would be a case where often it would be a hitter who the manager thinks is particularly well suited to to do that right like Like you'd often hit and run with your number two guy who's supposed to be your bat control guy traditionally. And I even looked with just number two hitters to see if there was any difference there. And there was a slight difference, very, very slight. They were able to direct their balls to the right side of the field slightly more often than the typical hitter in that situation.

But again, not a big difference. And then I looked, not the hit and run, but just a runner on second, no outs situation where you're supposed to do the same thing. You're supposed to get the guy over. And if you give yourself up and you get the guy to third, then you get lots of fist bumps and butt pats when you get back to the bench. And the broadcaster says that you're selfless and you're playing small ball and everyone approves.

And this is sort of a similar thing. With a runner on second, one or two outs, the percentage of balls hit to the right size, like 38%. With runner on second, no outs, it's 42%. So something, there's some difference there. And it's a real difference because this is thousands of balls in play, but it's not a lot. And interestingly, maybe, at least to me, that ability seems to be decreasing. Like there's never been less of a tendency for there to be a difference in your batted ball direction in that situation than there is now, going back to the beginning of RetroSheet's data, which is 60 years ago.

Which could mean a couple of things. It could mean that maybe hitters care more about their stats now because there's so much money at stake. But I took it to mean, and I don't know if you'll agree, that it's just harder to do now. Does that seem reasonable? Like if guys can't even make contact now and they're making contact less often than they ever have, either because teams are recruiting the kind of guys who don't make contact or because it's just a choice and an approach thing to try to go for power. If you can't count on them to hit, to make contact at all,

then it seems like even more of a stretch for them to be able to direct their contact. At least that's the conclusion I took from that. When you say that it's at an all-time low in the retro sheet era, you're just talking about the ground ball to the right side? Yes. The difference between the rates of ground ball to the right side in that situation, runner and second no outs compared to, say, runner and second one or two outs when you wouldn't be trying to do that,

the difference in the batted ball rates is smaller now than it has been at any previous point. I don't know that I would necessarily say that it's because it's... I wouldn't necessarily say that batters are failing to do it against their will. It seems to me reasonable to think that they're not trying to do it as much, that in general, while it is still seen within the game as being a productive out, a good outcome to do that, there's less of a feeling that it's necessarily the best outcome because this is 12 years after we quit taking productive outs at face value and started to think about the value of not making outs a lot more. And also because it's an era

where home runs are a lot more common. And so my first instinct would be to assume that that means that players aren't trying as hard to do it. They are striking out more, but we don't also know how much of that is the pitchers and how much of that is the hitters, allowing themselves to be struck out more, essentially a change in offensive strategy as much as a change in pitching strategy. change in offensive strategy as much as a change in pitching strategy. And while pitchers are better now than they ever have been, I think generally we assume that batters are also better now than they ever have been. I don't know if they've improved at exactly the same rate. I think that historically, my hypothesis has always been that barring rules changes or expansion, the pitchers will beat the hitters as time goes on, and therefore rules changes and expansion tend to even things out and help the hitters.

But it's been a long time since either a significant rules change or an expansion, and so it makes sense to me that pitchers might have gained the upper hand on hitters over the last five, ten years. However, just the point that you're making that pitchers are better is somewhat undone by the fact that hitters have also gotten better, right? Yeah, maybe. So just a couple more quick situations. I'll summarize the sack fly situation. You would expect hitters to want to hit more fly balls when there's a runner on third who could score on one of those fly balls, as opposed to times when there isn't. You might expect that, Ben. You might expect that, but you might not expect that, because you might expect that pitchers would be pitching away from that as well. Right, so that's the point. I mean, that's part of the point.

Well, it's the point. You're talking about the shift. This is all a way of illuminating the shift. And maybe I'm skipping ahead a little bit in your article, but what you have found is that there is not a difference in the way people pitch when the shift is on, correct? Not completely. Well, so you're right. I mean, there are things. So I also looked at fouls per swing rate with two strikes because there's this idea that certain guys can foul off

pitches that they don't like until they get one that they do like. This is something that people used to say about Itro or Luke Appling. I even found a Jason Kendall quote in his book where he said that he could just kind of do this at will. How much of Jason Kendall's book did you read? Two pages. I stumbled on it one time when I was looking for something. I forget what I was looking for. Maybe hit by pitches or something like that. And I stumbled on his book and I could not put it down, but not for great reasons. Right.

I ended up reading like 30 pages of that stupid book. I stumbled on the Jeremy Affeld book not long ago for something else, and I read the whole thing. I just did not switch away from that tab until I had finished the entire 190-page book. Man, if you're a baseball player, you can just get a book deal, I guess. You don't even have to have been a notable baseball player or necessarily even have an interesting perspective. You just have to have been a baseball player. Affeld's book was published on a Christian academic press from the Midwest. And I thought, oh, this is interesting.

They're doing this Christian publishing house that apparently does athlete biographies. I ought to get in touch with them because i've always one of my secret wishes in life it's a it's a secret now it's not anymore is i really want to ghost write a book like i just want to go through the process it sounds weird and i i would love to do it one time like the worst possible thing in the world to me you have to write a book and then you don't even get credit for it i know know. I talked to somebody the other day. I was at a BB – well, I was at a party and there was a journalist there who has written two. And yeah, it's like you interview them, you get way less time with them than you would think you would. Like it's – you would

think it's their book. Their name is on it. Their picture is on it. You'd think you'd get all access for six weeks or something like that. Or you might think that they would actually write the first draft and then you would just craft it. But it's not that at all. You basically sit there and interview them as though you were writing a magazine article about them. And you struggle to get access to them all the same.

You get a couple hour chunks here and there a few times, and then you turn it into a draft, and then you write it. You can basically make things up because it's not journalism. It's like fake journalism, sort of. And then they read it, and they tell you all the things they don't like about it, and then you just have to rewrite it. I mean, you're right. It's the worst.

It sounds like the worst thing in the world. I would love to go through it just once. I'm interested in going through it once. Anyway, so I thought, oh, maybe I should get in touch. And so then I looked at the rest of their roster of authors. And Jeremy Eiffel is the only athlete. Everybody else is like, you know, theologian at some university in scotland they've got like hundreds of these super high-end like uh theological books and then jeremy i felt

so as i was saying the valve for swing rate doesn't really change the swing rate does so so you can change how often you swing like that's that's a hitter decision that's not dependent on the pitcher really if you want to swing a lot you can Like that's a hitter decision that's not dependent on the pitcher really. If you want to swing a lot, you can do that. And so hitters swing a lot more on two strikes than they do before two strikes, but they don't have any special ability to foul the balls off, nor does Jason Kendall. There's no higher rate of fouls per swing on two strikes.

And then the sack fly situation, there are fewer strikeouts in sack fly situations. Hitters, I guess, are more interested in putting the ball in play, getting that RBI one way or another. But the batted ball rates are exactly the same, just about. There's no real tendency to hit more fly balls in that situation. And as you say, that is not necessarily because hitters aren't – well, I mean, it's a two-person thing. It's a battle. Pitchers know that hitters are maybe trying to hit fly balls. They don't want them to hit fly balls.

And so maybe they do something to prevent them from hitting fly balls, throw lower in the zone or throw different pitch types, whatever it is. And so it's always this two-person thing. Can you say the two-strike thing again, the two-strike sack fly or two-strike whatever you said? With two strikes, hitters swing a lot more than they do prior to two strikes. In all two strikes or just in two strike with a runner on third and less than? All two strikes, just in two strike with a runner on third and less than? All two strikes.

Just post two strikes. No, that doesn't sound, okay. Yeah. Great finding. That was not really the takeaway. Do they swing less on 3-0, would you say? I mean, I don't know. We might have to do a lot of research on this.

I would think so. Did you would you say? I mean, I don't know. We might have to do a lot of research on this. I would think so. Did you do that research? I did not. You're the one who specializes in 3.0 swings. So all of this... The data is too noisy at this point. There are indications that batters might swing less on 3.0, but I'm just waiting for a little bit larger sample.

So all of this led to the shift and informed my understanding of the shift. And so there's sort of a puzzle, which maybe you can help me unravel. I don't know that I answered why this happens, but I got a bunch of data from Inside Edge who shared hitter performance with and without the shift, what the same hitters do when

the shift is on relative to when the shift is not on and it turns out that hitters pull the ball more often when the shift is on which you would think is uh is counterproductive or would be would be the opposite of what you'd want to what they'd want to do. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Before you go on, before you go on. Okay, so hitters pull the ball more when the shift is on. So you've done more, you've looked at further sets, but let me just hypothesize based on knowing only that. So I would suggest that pitchers are pitching to the shift.

And what would that mean to you? To me, that would mean more pitches inside. And it would mean more pitches low. And it would mean more pitches that are probably a combination of pitches that I want to say pitches that are slower, but also sort of pitches that are breaking, that are moving inward. So more cutters and maybe, maybe, maybe fewer change ups, even though they're slower. I, not necessarily fewer changes, but I wouldn't put my money on change ups,

but I would expect more cutters. Okay, so that's one. And the other thing I would say is that they're more likely to shift in what would be a situation where the hitters... Right. Well, that's one possibility I mentioned. I looked a little bit at the base out states and it doesn't seem, there wasn't anything that obvious to me, like you shift in a certain combination of runners and outs that would be more likely to lead to a pull ball. But there is the possibility that, and I think it's a reality, that teams shift in at times or with batter pitcher matchups that they

believe are conducive to the shift right like there are teams personalize the shift based on the pitcher they don't necessarily just look at this is what this is this hitter's average batted ball direction or uh he pulls the ball x percentage of the time they also look at what he does against you know the pitcher's handedness or the pitcher's repertoire or the pitcher's speed that kind of thing and i don't know exactly how that works but but uh but they do seem to make decisions based on that And so you'd think that maybe since hitters don't get shifted all the time, maybe they get shifted somewhat selectively in that they get shifted more often when a pitcher is on the mound who would be more likely to have them pull a ball for some reason.

So that's possible. I don't know how to adjust for that really, but that's possible. It is possible. That's possible. I don't know how to adjust for that, really. But it is possible. I mean, it would make sense that the defense would shift when they think it's more likely that the hitter will pull the ball. Although you see a lot where they say, I forget where I've seen this most recently,

I think maybe I saw Dan Fox say this recently, maybe I didn't, that the goal of the shift is not to get them to hit a ground ball to your shortstop in shallow right field. The goal of the shift is to get them to adjust their approach and do something that is unnatural slash not to their strength. Which would suggest that, which would mean going the other way, right? Or hitting that weak roller to the shortstop hole or whatever? I think that what that means, I think that what that might suggest is that it means sort of trying to go the other way

or trying to do something other than go with the pitch, and yet they don't, if they're conceding that hitters are going to try to beat the shift and yet we don't see them beating the shift a lot, then that suggests to me that they have determined that you can't do it. That what they want is for the hitter to go up there thinking, going to beat the shift, but he actually can't do it, and so therefore he hits something that is both a weak ground ball to the second base and just sort of a less intuitive bat from the batter,

but still likely a ball pulled. Yeah, I found there's a whole chapter on place hitting in F.C. Lane's book, Batting, from 1925, where he interviews all these Hall of Famers about whether they can direct the ball. And there are some people who swear by this, and then there are others who say that it's bunk and it's a myth. And I think it was Rogers Hornsby was one of the people who was against it, and he basically said the same thing, that he's not confident that he can hit the ball the other way, that if he did, he probably wouldn't hit it hard, that he thinks not confident that he can hit the ball the other way,

that if he did, he probably wouldn't hit it hard, that he thinks it's better to hit the ball hard and not worry about the direction and that sort of thing. On the other hand, according to InsideEdge's data, when the shift is on and a hitter hits the ground ball, hits a ground ball the other way, they have a 540 average on that, which relative to, I think, 290 when you put a ground ball in play normally. Yeah, but Ben, that's sort of like saying that

when a batter hits the ball down the line line he's got you know a 750 batting average it's like you don't know how hard it is to do that and maybe they're hitting maybe they're hitting 540 when they hit the ball the other way against the shift but maybe they're hitting 312 when they try to hit the ball the other way against the shift yeah we just don't know right okay they don't it's not like the bunts where they where they have to show bunt and we can therefore deduce all the attempts instead of just the ones that get laid down successfully we just don't know how many times they're trying to go against the shift right okay so the pull tendency is not the change is not huge. With the shift on, hitters pull grounders 81% of the time, or I guess they hit to the opposite field 19% of the time

instead of 23% of the time when the shift is not on, which is not a huge difference, but it is many thousands of balls in play. And Russell did a little research for me on how quickly balls in play or batted ball direction stabilizes, and it's very quickly. It's like 30 balls in play for you to be able to tell that a guy is a pole hitter. Wow. Yeah. That's incredible.

Yeah. Not that surprising to me, really. I mean, I figured it would be pretty quick. But yeah, it's very quick. I wouldn't, just because most guys who are... I mean, most guys, it's a somewhat even distribution. It's like, I don't know, it's like 3 to 2 to 1 ratio or something like that. It's not even that. It's much less than that for most guys.

And so you would just think that a couple of balls that go with the pitch would skew it so i don't know i'm just surprised i'm not arguing that it's wrong and how do you argue that you're you should be more surprised about a truth i don't know i would argue that i wasn't that surprised and how do you do that what What is the argumentative tact? I don't know. All right. So the surprising thing, though, is that your first theory, which was also my theory, that pitchers throw inside more often,

is not the case. They actually throw away slightly more often. And I don't know why that is, whether they're thinking that they can get guys to just roll over and hit grounders or something if they're throwing it out there. And this is not a skewed sample. It's not just looking at where they throw with the shift on relative to not with the shift on because that would skew things, obviously,

because you've got big sluggers and pull hitters up with the shift on relative to not with the shift on because that would skew things obviously because you've got big big sluggers and pull hitters up with the shift this is looking at the same hitters and where they saw pitches with the shift and without the shift so i don't know how to explain that i don't know why they would see more outside pitches with the shift on it seems counterintuitive the differences in pitch selection are not huge they They are what you would sort of expect or what I expected, which is just sort of more slow pitches. It's not a big difference, though. It's like per 100 pitches, there are about two fewer fastballs and like three and a half more change-ups and splitters.

So maybe that's part of it, but I don't know how much of it that explains really. And I didn't look at pitch height. That is something that you could look at. But I don't know. It's confusing to me that it would show more pulls with the shift on and fewer inside pitches. And so I can only speculate that it is maybe partially the pitch type difference, partially what we talked about earlier, the fact that it might be skewed somewhat by teams shifting when they think they're going to get a pulled ball.

somewhat by teams shifting when they think they're going to get a pulled ball. And maybe, of course, some of it could be psychological. And guys seeing the shift as a challenge or something, that they want to hit the ball even harder in the same direction. They want to beat the shift as some sort of macho challenge thing, like it's an insult that the other team is suggesting that they're so easily defensible. Or maybe it's just a distraction, seeing guys in a place that you don't normally see them. Although for a lot of guys, at this point, the shift is the standard that they usually see. So I don't have a perfect answer. I would guess that it's a combination of those things. But my takeaway is, I guess, based on looking at all of those ripe opportunities for

situational hitting and seeing how hard that seems to be for most players. And given that pitchers are part of the equation and hitters can't just unilaterally make changes, they have to deal with pitchers anticipating and trying to counteract those changes. That may be that we should pity pole hitters instead of blaming them for not changing their tendencies with the shift on. Except for bunting, they should all bunt. How did you handle the two-strike shifts? The guys, the shifts that start only when there are two strikes on the batter? I think that the numbers I got were only on at-bat ending pitches. And a part of it also is...

Wait, wait, hang on. Wait, the numbers you got were only on at-bat ending pitches? The balls in play, I mean, the balls in play are obviously at-bat ending pitches. I'm thinking as far as the pitch selection and pitch location. Right, right. Yeah, so that's not controlled for either. And that's something I mentioned that when you have two strikes, you are – well, actually, when you have two strikes, you're a little less likely to pull.

So maybe because you're back on your heels or you're defensive or you're waiting to see where the pitch will be or something. Yeah, but I'm wondering if when you have two strikes, whether there's a pitch that a pitcher is more likely to see. Is the pitcher more likely to go away is the pitcher more likely to throw certain pitches yeah i don't know i mean there is a way that this all makes sense kind of um i i don't think it makes sense in in in reality but if you just think about what we're talking about we're talking about a hitter who comes up and is going to do damage by pulling

the ball and is a scary hitter and is going to do damage by pulling the ball and is a scary hitter, and he wants to pull the ball, and the opposing team doesn't want him to pull the ball. Now, imagine there are no shifts in the world. That batter's going to come up. Well, don't imagine there's no shifts in the world. Imagine there are shifts. That batter's going to come up.

The defense is going to anticipate that he's trying to pull the ball because that's what he does. They're going to shift to try to get him to pull the ball. And independently of that, they also don't want him to pull the ball because that's what he does. They're going to shift to try to get him to pull the ball. And independently of that, they also don't want him to pull the ball because it's still scary when he pulls the ball. That's where he hits home runs. And so they would also want to pitch him away. The same pitcher would, the same defense might do two different things

that seem contradictory, but both are aimed at the hitter's same strength, right? Yes. So the more a pitcher thinks that a batter is likely to try to pull the ball, or the more that a pull would be damaging, if there are certain situations where a ball being pulled would be especially damaging, then in those situations, they would have more incentive to shift and they would also have more incentive to pitch away. Those two things sort of work in concert. And so the more likely you are to shift, maybe the more likely you would be to pitch him away. And so that could be why you see pitchers going away more, even though they're shifting on the guy right that that could that

could be the sort of the two-step approach to facing a batter the question though is why you would see it doesn't seem like for david ortiz who is like the the ultimate guy that you shift against right or ryan howard i guess is the ultimate guy you shift against it's pretty much the same every at bat like there's not a huge range in situations that Howard comes up. He comes up and if you can shift him, you do. And if you can't shift him because there's a runner on second or whatever, you don't. But otherwise, you pretty much shift him every single time. So it doesn't seem like there would be a huge range of situations that would lead to different actions. You would think that the game plan for a team would be the same with Ryan Howard, no matter what.

It's always the same with Ryan Howard, right? Before the game, you go, how are we going to deal with Ryan Howard? You don't go through 35 different game states and figure out a different strategy for each of those 35. It's exactly the same, pretty much, for all of it. Everybody moves over here, and all the pitches go over here. And so the fact that there seems to be a difference with pitchers going outside more is hard to explain.

Like in a general incentives sense, it makes sense. But in the more blunt way that these strategies are implemented, it's hard to find the space where that trend would emerge. This Simmons play I think is the best. I think this is the best one that he's ever made. Really? Best one ever? I think it might be. It's not the flashiest. It's not the flashiest and it was the worst one to listen to me watch. I will acknowledge that. Listening to me watch it was not interesting. There isn't a moment, there's not one moment, there's not one shock.

It's just incredible. Let me ask you this. His throw, do you think that his throw is harder than your throw would be if you had a running start from the same position to throw to first whose throw is better yours in a situation where you're given a ball facing the bag and told throw it as hard as you can or his jumping away and spinning and throwing in one very very very quick move. I think probably his. I think, yeah. I do, too. His arm speed is really fast. It's incredible.

It's like the arm just, like it's there and then it's done. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Probably watched this play 45 times while you were talking. Wow. And yet you were still able to contribute to the conversation. Thank you.

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