Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 603: Dirk Hayhurst on Pace and the Batter-Pitcher Balance of Power

Episode Date: January 23, 2015

Ben and Sam talk to former major leaguer Dirk Hayhurst about the player’s perspective on MLB’s efforts to speed up games.

Keep your head, keep your head Rather than surround you Chop off their own Keep your head, keep your head While all your statistics Distract you from being alone Yeah, we're gonna go faster, faster, faster again Good morning and welcome to episode 603 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com.

I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectus, and a guest who you are probably aware of. He has been on this show a couple times before, although that is not his main claim to fame. He is a former Major League pitcher, a broadcaster, an accomplished author who's written four books about his time in baseball, most recently Bigger Than the Game. He is Dirk Hayhurst. Hey, Dirk. Hey, guys. How are you? All right. So you are back in school these days. How is that going? And what is the long-term goal of going back to school? Oh, man. Well, I'm back getting my master's of business administration.

my master's of business administration. And it's weird. It's weird, like, being in school and not being part of an athletic program while you're in school. It's just strange. So I can't, like, beat up nerds and make them do my homework like I used to. It sucks.

So, yeah, so I actually have to do projects myself, which is hard because they make me, like, they make me spell my name all the time. It's difficult for me. Yeah, that's got to be tough after you've written four books. Yeah, well, I mean, I beat somebody up to write those. So I drew pictures of what I wanted them to do, and then they just wrote words. No, actually, it's really fun. I enjoy the learning process a lot. I'm kind of a continuous learner. At least that's what the business buzzword is for it now that I have that MBA skill. So it's great. I think you get a lot of nuts and bolts of the business world with this degree, and I learn a lot about the interchanges in baseball because I filter everything I learn kind of through that first learning experience with baseball.

So I can make more sense of organizational decisions and some of the bigger stuff in play. I won't profess to know everything. I'm only like through half of it, so I still have like how to conquer the world left. That's like a final project. But, you know, it's good. That lets me see the world a different way and those who makes me feel better about uh... by future prospects of having a nice steady job

provide for a family because the winds of the baseball world a little bit more volatile you're kind of like uh... you're kind of like stringer bell who knows well a uh... wire reference i found a person who does not respond to wire references. Oh, man. Gosh, yeah. It's a shame. You see, I spend all my time being productive and not watching television.

It's weird. A lot of people don't understand it. It's just kind of the crazy way I am. The wire is the only education you need. the crazy way I am, you know? The wire is the only education you need. So we wanted to have you on today to talk about some pace of play stuff. This has obviously been a hot button issue in baseball.

We've talked about ways that pace should be sped up and whether it's important that pace should be sped up. And it seems like things are starting to get real, that there are negotiations taking place now between the owners and the union about measures that will be put in place. There were some measures tested in the Arizona Fall League last year. And you wrote a bit about this. One of your last pieces for Bleacher Report before going back to school was about pace of play changes. So just generally speaking, would you consider this a high-priority issue that is at the top of the to-do list for baseball right now?

Is it at the top of the to-do list? Would I rather have a faster baseball game or a game that finally put the smackdown on drug users and cheaters or even provided some kind of like uh unionization structure for minor leaguers that paid them a decent wage i mean all of those things to me seem more important but that said the game is it's it's almost unsufferably long now and depending on who plays i mean there's no weighted statistic for matchups from like normal teams versus the games between the Yankees and the Red Sox, which are egregiously long. But the game is long. And I say this as somebody who loves baseball and thanks baseball for my

livelihood, but it gets boring. It really does. And there's just some needless fat that could be cut from it to speed it up. So, you know, but to answer your question, is this something that baseball needs to throw a ton of time and resources at to tackle? No, not really, not especially. I don't think there was a massive outcry from the masses saying, God, baseball is so long, fix it. I think there's other areas they could definitely focus on, but they won't. And there are a lot of more complex moving parts when you talk about minor league exploitation

and lawsuits and moving team franchises and cracking down on drug use. Those are big big complex problems. Putting a clock in play is not so much. Even doing instant replay isn't as hard comparatively because there's not as many stakeholders there. So this is something that I think baseball gets to blow its horn and say, hey, we're trying to make the game different. Look at us. We're revolutionizing the system. And I don't think it's really that big of a deal if they're successful or not.

I hope they take their time with this decision, step out a few times, maybe adjust their batting gloves before they do anything rash. Obviously, I think when we talk about this, we talk about it mainly as an entertainment issue for the fan. Just curious, though, do the games feel long and slow and boring from the bench? Do you guys gripe about how long they are? Is there a point in May where

you're just thinking, I picked the wrong sport? Oh, gosh. I think I picked the wrong sport all got there but i mean i think i think i picked the wrong sport starts for baseball players when you realize that you have to report the start playing for it again and like the end of january when you finish the feed around october i mean do we really need this much spring training and uh... especially for bullpen guys which is the most of my life in that capacity you just sit around and you wait. I mean, that's one of the reasons I could write books about baseball while I was playing is because there was so much dead time.

In fact, my final year in AAA with the Durham Bulls, and I was hurt during this period of time, but even when I was a starter, you know, I'd have four days off, one day on, and those four off days, I honestly would go out for the first inning and clap and cheer really hard close to the manager so he felt my presence. And then I would sneak away around the second inning and play civilization in a toilet stall in the clubhouse bathroom until about the seventh inning. And then I'd go back out. Or if I got beat, you know, if I lost, my civilization was destroyed, I would go out sooner. But that's mostly how I spent my time. There was just, there's just so much inactivity for guys. And at that point, you know, there's so many games during the season. So when you're logging 120 in the minors, 140 in the big leagues

worth of games, you just, I mean, you find things distract yourself. Mostly you get in trouble, but yeah, the games are long and everybody is happy when a game is played in two hours. Everybody. I mean, it's just, there's a spring in your step. You got out of there at a decent time. You can go home and get a decent night's sleep or drink more and party harder if that's your thing. But yeah, speeding up the time that you have to spend in the office, there's nothing like it. And we can control that if we would just play an efficient manner and not waste time, but inevitably we do. So yeah, it's noticed and it's enjoyed when it's sped up. And yet there has been some resistance to these proposals among

the players. The pitch clock is the main thing that we seem to know is going to happen. The AA and AAA level, there are going to be three timers in each park, two of them behind top plate, but between the dugouts and one in the outfield beyond the fence somewhere. And there has been some backlash to this. John Lester criticized the decision. And I guess there have been a couple of ways that people have criticized it, even people who support the idea of speeding up pace. And one of them is the aesthetic argument, which is sort of the one that John Lester made. The baseball is the game without a clock argument that this is going to disrupt the beauty of baseball with the crack of the bat and the green of the grass and all of

that. And yet there is not really a new rule being added to the books. It's just an enforcement of an old rule. So it's kind of taking that no clock in baseball thing a little bit literally or semantically. There's always been an implied clock in baseball in this sense. So what do you make of the aesthetic argument? Is this going to ruin the spectator experience somehow? Oh, no. No, this is—that's the easiest argument for me to shoot down, the easiest one, because

it's—the premise on which a player says that is ridiculous to the point of absurdity to me. Like, if we instituted a clock, then suddenly less sonnets will be written about the glory and beauty of baseball. Less poets will be inspired to pick up the craft of baseball. Less artwork will be commissioned in the honor. Shut the hell up, Lester. Just save that, because it's not going to ruin anything in baseball. You know, what ruins baseball is you taking your sweet-ass time out there on the mound and your defense going to sleep behind you, and you have to do more work yourself because you've

got tired legs out there. Look, just pitch quickly and efficiently. Everyone has smacked you on the butt and said, good job. You sped the process up. We appreciate that. You're a good teammate. I mean, that's like universally. We want to talk about the nuances of baseball. I have never played on a team that are like, man, could you just take more time? Because we love standing around out there doing nothing. It's the best. No one.

No one ever does that, right? So, yeah, there's no clock in baseball except for the clock that doesn't get enforced in baseball. And where else do we see rules that are in baseball that don't get enforced? Hello? Like, do we have to slather more pine tar on our face or neck and just get away with it because we have big league time? These kind of stupid things that players think is just part of the magic of the game, they're just rules that don't get enforced.

It's a good old boy system. And so this only makes cursory sense because John Lester said it. Oh, you know, he's a great pitcher and his game's going to be ruined if we were to speed up the clock. No, it won't be. Because this whole pitcher timing cat and mouse thing, it's not predicated upon how many laps you take around that lump of dirt in the center of the field before you finally tow the rubber and pitch, it's predicated on your ability to change speeds, to wind up differently, to read the guy at the plate in front of you. He's not starting the timing mechanism count from the moment you step onto the field and

start pacing around. He's starting it from the minute you start your delivery. He's tracking the ball out of your hand. So as long as you are pitching in a timely, efficient manner, all the variables stay the same. This concept that like, if I could just wait him out, you know, if I could just stay out there, hunkered down behind the mound with like a Red Bull for 10 or 15 minutes, he would finally get tired out or psychologically distraught enough that I could just throw a ball past him. He wouldn't be prepared. That's not how the game is played.

The timing mechanism is in the delivery. It's not in the pace ability. And I really hate when guys say that there's this sweet, wonderful poetry to the game that's just going to get destroyed. And for the record, God, doesn't that happen all the time when any kind of rule change? You know, well, if we institute happen all the time when any kind of rule change, you know? Well, if we institute instant replay or to destroy the game, the game will be ruined. That's not what the game is supposed to be, you know? If we had, like, a strike zone that actually worked, it would

destroy the game. I mean, cry me a river, okay? Now, these are things that other sports have. Those sports have been just fine. Baseball is so big, it's critical mass now, and you would have to go out of your way to destroy it. People would still love it because it's America's pastime. So a little tweak like this is not going to hurt anybody except fat cats with fat cat salaries who think any disruption to the force is going to somehow destroy their ability to be effective. And quite honestly, if lefler think that he won't be effective because that uh... a pitching clock has been introduced then he's reevaluate would make them good

because it isn't the clock it you've got damn good stuff that's what makes them good and it doesn't matter if there's a clock on ever not it's going to be damn good stuff well when you said fat cat i thought on this dollar i did come out against this for a minute. So it does seem odd when ballplayers cite the poetry argument because that's our argument.

That is not mine and not Ben's, but that is the fans' jurisdiction, right? So the fans can say, we don't like it, it's less entertaining. Entertainment is our area, and it's not really the players. But the players do have a perspective on some other issues that, um, you know, I tend to defer to them while acknowledging that maybe they're a little bit more conservative as a population than I might be toward the sport. But it seems like there are three areas where a ball player could conceivably convince me that this would be a bad idea for them.

And so I thought we'd just, if we could, take them one by one. One of them is imbalance. And you sort of just alluded to this. But the idea that the offense-defense balance might somehow be tipped in one direction because of this. And if there was a pitch clock, I mean, certainly I think we've seen certain teams, certain pitchers use the very slow mound work as a strategy. I think that maybe I'm kind of thinking about the Red Sox, obviously, in recent years. Is there a way that some ballplayers see pace of game as a strategy, and is it legitimate in any way?

Well, see, the thing about pace of game is that it's in relation to the main pace in which you operate under, right? So if you're a guy who pitches really quickly, and then you decide you want to start pitching slowly or you want to start bleeding out those seconds, there is something to be said, I guess, for that. You know, if you want to take more time in between each pitch or something to that effect when tempo is – when things are really intense on the field and you feel like you're maybe going too fast. But you still don't take a minute between each pitch. You know, the amount of

seconds that are being allotted by this is plenty of time to still play that game of, I'm pitching quickly, and I want to take the full allotment of time before I have to start my windup. You know, you're going to see guys get on the rubber and then disengage the rubber to reset the clock. You'll see stuff like this. I really don't. Okay, as a pitcher, I can tell you honestly that if it's going to benefit anyone, it's going to benefit the pitcher. It will. Because the pitcher who moves fast and throws strikes usually gets better results than the guy who doesn't. Because you don't have a pitch to then work off of. Like the last thing that a hitter sees, it changes his relationship to the zone. Because the zone is not a static vacuum thing. When you stand at the plate as a hitter, it's not like this is the zone

and all in time and space revol revolve around this fixed you know uh location in the universe and it will always be what it is the zone is changed by your interpretation of what the pitcher is doing what the what the umpire is doing the last pitch that you saw and the more time you take the easier it is for me to then let that zone reset to what I'm comfortable with. But if you're pitching quickly, I have to adjust to what you are doing. And so some pitchers just pitch too slow. They just flat out do it. In fact, most pitchers take too much time.

And everybody, from the defensive factor of not being static out there at your position to working off of the batter's eye that you're adjusting pitch to pitch to just generally getting yourself off the field so you can rest more in between innings, all of that stuff goes up when you pitch quicker. The one thing that you can even say might be a factor is that I have such a slow pace to begin with that I need way more time to play that i'm going even slower game to slow down the thought that that kind of shenanigans stuff but that just means you were quicker

and then you can still use the time frame that you're in five so i'll buy that argument or the people that you that they just have a thought creatively enough about the new parameters because they should be thinking about it it's going to get instituted and you should be thinking about how you could exploit it into of thinking about how it's going to exploit you. So this is maybe slightly tangential, but I've always wondered, why do some pitchers take so long? Why does Clay Buchholz take 40 seconds between pitches? Is this something that some coaches believe in for some reason, and what is the reason? Or is it something

that certain pitchers believe in for some reason, and is the reason or is it something that certain pitchers believe in for some reason and what is the reason or is it simply that he's just like that is ever since he was a baby he moved very slowly and everybody looked at him and wondered why he was going so slow well i can't speak to his upbringing uh but i can't say what i know and that's that well once you once you let go of the ball, everything else is out of your control, right? So the buildup to that loss of control is key in understanding the psychology of a pitcher, because you want to feel like you're in the best psychological point, place possible before you let go of the pitch. And what do I mean by that? It's like if I feel like, whether it's proven or not, but if I feel like I have the best results before I pitch,

if I adjust my hat four or five times and wipe the back of my neck and stretch and touch my toes, you know, I'm thinking like something totally Japanese now, you know, where I have this crazy little fidgeting routine in between, or I'm like a certain hitter who has to adjust his hat to the point where, like, I'm grinding it into my head or adjusting my batting gloves 100 times before I get into the box. The same things take place on the mound.

They do. They just manifest differently. And I need to take X amount of steps or X amount of breaths, or I need to be in a certain place psychologically. So I need these physiological routines to help me get there, to feel like I'm balanced. You know, guys, that is how guys generate these little routines that they have. And some guys, because they have more of them, because it takes them longer to get to that point where they're comfortable with delivery or letting go, it takes them longer on the mount. And really, that's the best answer I can give you,

because some guys are going to say, well, you know, I should take my time. I want to focus. I want to concentrate. Look, you know, you've been doing this for most of your adult life. You've been doing this for most of your adult life. How much time do you actually need to throw a pitch at this point? Because if it takes you more than whatever amount of time it takes to get the ball back, step back on the mound, toe the rubber, and take a breath, then you're one of the most inefficient pitchers I've ever seen. Because for someone who's been doing this for at you know at least i think i'm going to do it for thirty almost forty years of the plane

and if if you can't do it in a timely manner what are you doing with yourself you know that should be the focus of this kind of physical activity should be do to do it in a time inefficient manner and guys make it inefficient on purpose and the only reason that that inefficient because they're trying to mitigate that psychological factor so this is i somewhat related but a little bit different uh... uh... is it conceivable that it will benefit

some players more than others or that it would hurt some players one of those because there is a sort of an and and unfairness to changing the rules midway through uh... the game if it's gonna affect some players when others if it won't then that's an issue but if it's conceivable that you know carlos pena would take this as a as an attack on his way of life or something uh... you could see why some players and maybe uh... in the instant there is all players would be opposed to it

yeah you know it would really socket the rules that all players were expected to adhere to but the system has allowed them to get away with not adhering to them and its own inability to enforce the rules suddenly gotten forced. Wouldn't that just be terrible if we just cleaned up the system and expected guys to do what they were supposed to do the whole time?

Yeah, I could see how that would really screw everything. I'm being horrifically sarcastic here. But to prove a point, like, you know, baseball players, they get the luxury of saying, I'm really good. I'm awesome. I've always been doing it this way. It's unfair that I should suddenly have to play the game the way it was intended to be played.

How dare you, sir? Wrong. You know, conceivably, there will be guys who have a harder time getting themselves back to the rules than guys who have always played within the confines of the rules. Yes, for those guys it will be difficult. Will it hurt them? I'm sure that they will fall on a sword someplace and scream into a media mouthpiece and say, the game has conspired against me.

My God, my God, what have I done? It's killing me. Why have you forsaken me, baseball gods? That stuff is just, that's shenanigans. That needs to be tuned out immediately. If the rules were enforced the whole time, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. But now that baseball has decided to wage a little battle on this particular timing rule, which could benefit a lot more than it would hurt the outliers will certainly speak out and say unfair but then unfair to what you know to what degree how can you quantify the damages that the clock the clock is doing to these outliers you can't so you're just going to have to listen them wine and I will be there

trust me I will be there to say poor baby that will be my role so i have the one last one on the list and i'm going to anticipate that your question that your answer is is going to be it won't be a factor at all i will i will say it but um uh i will then and sort of add the follow-up before i go in the last one is is health and safety i assume you'll say that's not an issue i think I would agree that it's probably not an issue. But it just gets me back to the kind of original question that I might have, which is why this is the pace of play is largely driven by players. They make the choice to play at this pace. It's not entertaining. It's not an issue of strategy particularly or fairness or health

and safety i assume you'll say i don't need it presume but i presume so why why do they play at this pace why has it gone in this direction for decades and decades what is it that is so appealing to players about taking forever to do every act because uh... i don't know if you'll notice this, but you should, I mean, I'm going off intuition here, but the data, which I considered most data in baseball to be truth. I really do.

I mean, you need somebody to interpret it there based on experience or observation, but most data to me represents truth. So I don't have the truth here, so I'm just going to make an inference based on, which I hate to do, based on my experience. I value my truth, but I'm going to try this anyways. So in my experience, most younger players run out to the mound, take the ball, and they go to work because they don't have the luxury of being able to take their sweet time out there. And being able to take time, I mean really just slow play it, is something that a lot of established veterans can do and will do while a lot of younger guys can't.

So it's a power thing in baseball. And whether baseball players will fess up to that or not, it's a power thing and that power is kind of tied into your comfort level uh so when you feel comfortable with the big leagues and you feel powerful with the big leagues the one resource that everyone has that you can exploit is their time and so you drag it out you take time out of the box somebody's quick pitching you know he's not i'm taking some time out here so he knows who i am. He's going to play at my pace. And that's where that cat and mouse thing comes in. But for the most part, I mean, it only becomes a factor when you're trying

to make it one. Like you're trying to show a guy that he's going to play on your terms, you know. And that's like, that's great. that's fine, but this ain't poker. And really that kind of stuff is, it's hard to quantify the actual outcome there. And I don't think anybody's going to be in a health risk because of it speeding up and you losing that little dynamic. And just making guys jog out to the mound and hustle a little bit harder. I mean, these are world-class athletes. They can handle it. They're not going to be winded or at risk of injury.

You know, we're asking for, basically, you're asking for 15 minutes spread out over three hours, and that's going to amount to what? You know, a little extra effort in those sprints or one less warm-up pitch here and there. I mean, it's really not going to be that big of a deal. So guys, I think, are just blowing it out of proportion, and they will latch on to any argument they think the media will help them make sense of if they yell loud enough. Let me ask you about mound visits. This was one of the things tried in the Arizona Fall League, a limit of three mound visits per team per game by anyone, including catchers.

This is not something that's probably on the table right now in the major leagues but if it were if this were instituted if if mound visits were outlawed entirely would we even notice would it really make a difference we've got scouting reports you can study before the game if you want to go over how to pitch a player you've got lots of time between innings to talk to anyone you want to talk to. If you couldn't make mound visits anymore, would players just stand there looking around for help, wondering what to do next? What percentage of mound visits were actually useful to you? Well, I mean, it depends on your relationship with who's visiting the mound, I guess. I've had some, some guys come

out there. I would rather, you know, throw the ball at them to make them go back into the dugout or just stay the hell away from me. Mound visits, you know, they're, they're contextual and sometimes they serve a purpose, but I've, I've had more mound visits than maybe other people that you might talk to just because I was really bad and I had to be visited frequently to make sure that I was that bad. It turns out that I was. So, you know, I think that if you want to throw mound visits out and limit them, I don't think you're going to really hurt anybody.

You might screw up that part of the game where you feel like, if I just went out to the mound a couple more times, I might be able to slow their momentum, quote unquote. I love this word, momentum, the momentum phrase, you know, which no one can really quantify. No one really knows how to put a stat to that, but we all think that it exists. And we think that it exists to the point where we will slow everything down to try and kill it. And personally, I think that's just as much a part of the game is when guys have their surge of momentum, you know, you need to figure out how to get results even against this psychological surge.

And it shouldn't slow the game down to a crawl with you coming out to do mound visits over and over and over again or to give the guy in the bullpen time to warm up. You just need to be more efficient in predicting when you need someone in the bullpen time to warm up. You just need to be more efficient in predicting when you need someone in the bullpen to start warming up. And for God's sakes, baseball is so rich with data on how and when to do that, it shouldn't be that hard. So, you know, this is going to force some old school guys who are used to doing things their way out of their comfort zone.

And because it's baseball and it's entrenched in the way it does things, and there's so much money on the table at any given time, you know, something as simple as really all this is, is just, okay, guys, let's be more efficient with our time and speed things up. And any other business, if you found out a way to do this, my God, it would be awesome, right? But in baseball, it's like the end of the world. So yeah, I think that mound visits are something that you will hear managers whine about or maybe catchers whine about, but I don't think I can really recall a time where I can directly correlate an outcome

because my manager came out and said, this just came in from our data analysis department. You know, in the next 10 minutes, fastballs are unhittable. It's a crazy stat. We've analyzed all of it. Throw all fastballs. And it was, okay, done. It was always like, okay, what do you want to do with this guy? Well, I want to get him out.

Okay, yeah, but, you know, what do you want to do? You want to go first pitch curveball? I don't know what you want to do. Oh, I was thinking first pitch breaking ball, man. You know, I think he's hungry. He's trying to do something with fastball. Okay, fastball it is then. All right, man, let's do this. Let's do it. All right, you good? Yeah, I'm good. All ball, man. You know, I think he's hungry. He's trying to do so much fastball. Okay, fastball it is then. All right, man, let's do this.

Let's do it. All right, you good? Yeah, I'm good. All right, boys. All right, boys, it's the umpire now. I don't have a voice for him, but just go with it. The umpire, you know, let's break it up. Let's hurry up.

So, yeah, you know, that's about the best case scenario for most mound visits. Can I hear your Christopher Walken now? Guys, the mound visits are hot stuff. Not bad, not bad. And lastly, between innings breaks. This is one of the latest things to come out that Major League Baseball is proposing these measures to reduce the time between innings. Pitchers would be required to finish their warm-up pitches and be ready to pitch 30 seconds before the end of the commercial breaks. Hitters would have to be in the batter's box,

ready to hit 20 seconds before the end of each break. So this implies that the players bear some responsibility for the length of between innings breaks. Baseball officials are supposedly saying that this could shorten games by 10 to 15 minutes. And this kind of flies in the face of the perception that advertising has contributed to the increase in the length of games and that there's no way around that without sacrificing funds. So do you buy this? Did you often find yourself just sort of standing around waiting for another player to be ready to play or yourself delaying things after the commercials were over? Or is this hot air?

No, I would say that, quite honestly, I think of all of the things that Major League Baseball wants to get past, this will be the most difficult because it does involve a set amount of advertising opportunities. And if you standardize the amount of delays in the game, then you're going to cut down on the potential advertising or at least the profitability of that certain advertising. So if you can only do – and you might be able to compensate that by making the advertising space that you do have available more expensive, and then it evens out. I'm not sure. But I had never once in my career or in the career of anyone that I've ever talked to been told that I need to change the way in which I use time to warm up to help accommodate advertising or to help accommodate the television portion of it.

And see, this is unique. And maybe people will be like, oh, well, you know, of course, of course. Why should that stuff play a role at all in anything? But this just goes to show you that there is a multi, multi-billion dollar industry that revolves around what these guys in uniform do. And these guys in uniform have never talked to any of the heads of any of these departments, not ever. You know, maybe once when they had to do like, you know, commercial promos that they cut in and out of games, you know, while they're doing that particular broadcast. But your guy that does, your starting pitcher doesn't talk to

the head of the marketing department or all the people that go on in there. It hasn't, nobody's ever brought to his attention the amount of seconds that he takes on average to warm up and what that does to the advertising budget on a set night or how that affects commercial distribution or how that cuts down on what can be done as an ad or how many pitches are going to be left. Because that's all a big factor. And a lot of that gets, in a derivative-type manner, gets turned into what pays them. So it's much more connected than a baseball player has an awareness of.

But at the same time, I think that baseball players are programmed to weed any kind of possible distraction that does not connect with what they're doing on the field out and pay zero attention to it and always sound as stupid on the matter as possible. So in this one scenario, I think it might be in their best interest because it might end up being in the advertiser's best interest to have these kind of delays, to get these high, and I don't know the value of these ads, but, you know, there are a lot of moving parts here, and it's a revenue area. So, you know, you might see a standardization here, and it might be under the guise of quickening the game,

but it's going to run into how the game makes its money and how it commercializes itself, and there will be some pushback from that. I'm pretty confident. All right. Well, as always, we appreciate getting the sarcastic inside perspective from you. And hopefully we'll just find a way to straighten this stuff out before everyone gets so bored that they just have to go back to business school just to pass the time between pitches. And if you want to follow Dirk on

Twitter, you can find him at The Garfus. You can look up his books and his writing at dirkhayhurst.com or offer to do his homework if you're interested in that. And thanks. Good luck with everything and have a good weekend. Boys, it's always a pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity. All right. So that is it for this week. Please support our sponsor, the Baseball Reference Play Index. Use the coupon code BP when you subscribe to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. We will take your emails at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. We welcome you at our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and appreciate your ratings and reviews And subscriptions on iTunes

Have a wonderful weekend we Will be back on Monday There's like 10 seconds of nefarious Giggling and then nothing That's a large Part of the show