Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 627: Saving the Strike Zone, the NL Ascendant, and Other Emails

Episode Date: March 4, 2015

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about an all-catcher lineup, league strength, robot umps, and more.

But I don't know if I could still believe you now So I just don't know No, I just don't know I don't know if I am I don't know if I'm not I don't know if I can I don't know if I've got the time. Good morning and welcome to episode 627 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com.

I'm Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectus. Hello. Hello. of baseball prospectus hello hello so we got further information about the yankees pitching machine that we were talking about yesterday before our indians preview podcast we discussed what how embarrassing how significant it was that chris young had struck out against a pitching machine we were speculating about what this pitching machine was throwing. And there was a profile of the Yankees pitching machine in the Times today, an article by Billy Witt. And this article says that the pitching machine, which is called the Hack Attack and retails for over $3,000,

it was set to throw nothing but fastballs. That's dismaying if you're Chris Young. Yeah, it is. And also programmed to throw almost all strikes. They did say that they would throw a few in the dirt every once in a while so the catchers would have work blocking pitches. But they were focused more on the other aspects of the game, the defenders, the fielders, and the base running. They wanted everybody to get used to game speed stuff.

And so they were trying to really let the hitters hit. And so there was mostly strikes and all fastballs. I really... I can't... I'm not sure if there's a pitch FX machine in that park, and I'm not sure. I think a PitchFX machine in that park, and I'm not sure. I think we've talked about this once. I don't know if the PitchFX machines are just always on,

and whatever happens to get thrown is recorded somewhere and just gets discarded because nobody needs it. But I would like to imagine that there's a PitchFX on this pitching machine and Dan Rosenson could write it up. I'm pretty sure there is a threshold for velocity with PitchFX

because I think I've asked before about whether ceremonial first pitches get captured at PitchFX and I think they mostly don't because there is some, some minimum, I don't know what it is like 40 or 50 or something miles per hour, but that's, that's plenty, plenty low enough for the hack attack to clear that bar. So, so yeah, you could, you could probably see that.

I guess pitchers are ahead of the hitters, right? And maybe pitching machines are ahead of the hitters too. Yes. Okay. Anything else? This is a listener email show, by the way, for anyone who's listening and wondering why we're not talking about a team yet. We're doing emails. Anything you want to say before emails?

No. Okay. All right. So we've got a few new ones We've got a few from the archives That I've been saving for a while And waiting for a chance to bring out So we'll get to some of those

Let's start with This one, you like this one So we'll start with this one from Dan In New Jersey Who says if you had to field a starting lineup Using only current major league catchers who would you choose to play each position so uh one thing i discovered while thinking about this over the last 14 seconds uh via play index uh so actually before i get to that

so it seems to me that russell mart Martin is an obvious infielder, right? Sure. You've got three infield positions you need to fill, three outfield positions you need to fill. You need a pitcher and you need a first baseman, but that can be anybody. And then ideally you have left over a catcher who is a really good catcher, a great defensive catcher. And I don't think that will be a problem. I think there are at least seven of those guys or eight of those guys out there.

So really, you don't even have to think about that. If you have any of those eight, I think you'll be safe. So you need three infielders, and Russell Martin is clearly going to be one of your infielders. Yeah, so you put him at shortstop, right? Because he wants to play shortstop. He wanted to play shortstop in the WBC, right? And he didn't get to, but he will on this team. You think so. See, I think that you could put him play shortstop. He wanted to play shortstop in the WBC, right? And he didn't get to, but he will on this team.

You think so. See, I think that you could put him at shortstop. Buster Posey was a great shortstop in college, and I still believe he probably has the skills. Of course, Martin has played third base in the majors and played second base very, very, very briefly in the minors. Actually played two innings in second, even in the majors. So probably just based on that, you would probably assume that Martin is the better choice.

But Martin is also years older now. He's got many more games caught than Buster Posey has. And so I don't know. I probably would put Posey at second or third. Martin, yeah, probably at shortstop. And then I run out. I think Robinson Chirinos might be your second baseman just because for a brief second you think you're reading the name Robinson Cano. Yeah, well, you'd want Drew Butera, right? He'd be pitching for you.

Oh, yes. Yeah, Drew Butera would definitely be pitching, yeah. Well, probably, although we're ruling out, we're saying that because we've seen him pitch and he's good, but there is a catcher-pitcher overlap. You know, a lot of former catchers become pitchers when they flame out, or I guess a lot of pitchers who are converted from positions were catchers. We have never seen, for instance, Yadier Molina pitch, but we wouldn't. That wouldn't be the guy that you would bring on in a blowout.

You bring Drew Butera because he's not worth anything to you. I think you could probably presume that a lot of these guys would be pretty good pitchers, that they'd be better pitchers than a lot of position players. Posey also was a pitcher in college, a very good pitcher. I'm skimming to see if anybody went the other way. I don't think anybody went the other way. But I don't have a better answer than butera so sure i'm trying i was just thinking about the molinas today and i thought that no maybe yadier did yadier pitch in in puerto

rico i can't remember anyway i don't know i did a little play index just to export catchers heights and weights just to do like a height over weight thing to try to get a uh a measure of who's the most catcher shaped not that it's the greatest metric i mean jose molina shows up as the guy with the lowest number when you when you divide uh when you divide height height by uh by. So that's good. But you've also got just people who are large there. Would you just put Evan Gattis in an outfield corner because Evan Gattis plays outfield corner?

I don't think Evan Gattis counts. Wait, is he still at 50%? Yeah, he counts. Yeah, he was at 70% last year. I set the minimum there. You would definitely put Evan Gattis in an outfield corner. I think Jordan Pacheco, by the way, is your third infielder. Yeah, that's smart.

So you've got three infielders, although now you're stuck with Jordan Pacheco in your lineup, and maybe it's worth taking the hit to get Devin Messarocco because you've got to get Messarocco and McCann in there, right? Because they're your best hitters. And Lucroi. I guess Lucroi. So, yeah, you've got to get Lucroi, Messarocco, and McCann in.

And so that's, at best, it's a catcher, a first baseman, and a corner outfielder. So, anyway, this is where my play index came in. Because then I started thinking about the outfielders. And I thought, okay, well, I'll just see who's the fastest. And no catcher stole five bases last year, which seems crazy to me. When I was growing up, there was always a couple of catchers who would steal some bases, right? They'd at least steal like 10, and sometimes you'd get one that would steal like 16 or whatever.

And that just doesn't happen. None stole five and more than half last year. In fact, 53 out of 76, so well over two-thirds, stole zero bases last year

of the ones who got played X number of games or whatever, 50 games or whatever I said. So we are at a We might possibly potentially be At a low point for Catchers ceiling Basics I wonder why that is

Is this the official play index segment or is this just A supplementary play index Bonus play index Bonus play index I don't know Because stolen base attempt rate Is not Historically low or anything

It's back up a little bit We've talked about this You know Raul Abanez was a catcher In the minors Okay yeah we're gonna Get emails from people who know The personal histories of various Catchers better than we do, and we'll know that so-and-so played such-and-such in college or whatever, and that alone would probably qualify some people to be on this team. But yeah.

Jan Gomes played a little third in the minors. third in the minors right yeah at a at a certain point maybe there's i don't know how deep you can go before you're just running out guys who haven't really played anything else since little league and at that point you just want the best hitters in the lineup yeah yeah probably you'd want some range though i mean it normally you might say ah these guys. But some of these catchers are incredibly slow. I mean, some of these catchers would be historically bad in a position, right? Mm-hmm. Certainly Benji and Jose would have been historically bad center fielders, for instance. Right, yeah.

It's not like you can go, oh, well, the bat makes up for it. You know, you get 20 extra runs from the bat. Because they might actually be minus 90 or minus 100 in center field. They might actually be minus 100 center fielders. I don't know if there's any way around that. Do you think there's any way around that? Well, yeah. If you've got a guy

who basically runs like an athlete, maybe you don't waste Russell Martin at third base or shortstop. Maybe you put him in center field because Russell Martin, he runs. shortstop. Maybe you put him in center field because Russell Martin, you know, he runs. He stole nine bags in 2013. Well, shortstop wouldn't be a waste. But, yeah, maybe you don't put him at third.

I don't know. Who are the athletic-looking guys? I guess like Caleb Joseph shows up at the top of my little height. Body mass index. Yeah, my fake body mass index sort of thing. It's mostly the shorter guys, so he's not all that short, though. Yeah, so that's a possibility. He's maybe not super slow.

I don't know. All right, I'm going to set the threshold at eight stolen bases from a catcher and see since 1975. That was the first year ever that nobody stole eight. Nobody stole eight. Nobody even stole five, Ben. I said it at eight, and that was the first year nobody stole eight. So that means, obviously, it's the first year nobody stole five.

In 1999, there were five. Jason Kendall? Yes, he was. And then in 1990, there were five. You Kendall? Yes, he was. And then 1990, there were five. You want to name one of those five? Nope. Craig Biggio was who you were looking for. Oh, right.

Let's see. 2006. You want to name one in 2006? Nah. It's a great game, but... All right. So, yeah. Okay. so yeah okay bad athletes all right okay okay next question all right let's say eric in san francisco imagine for a moment that baseball sees a drastic reduction in popularity over the next few years and the commissioner blindly decides to fix the problem by emulating the nfl schedule of one game per week and 16

games per season how do you think the in-game strategy would change would you change the composition of your roster make riskier managerial decisions seek out lower variance hitters and avoid streaky players or the opposite do you think a full week's preparation for each matchup would favor pitchers hitters or neither well did we never answer this this one i don't think we did but you would you'd have your you'd have uh you'd change your roster composition certainly and i don't know people have talked about ways that teams could change you'd change your roster composition, certainly. And I don't know, people have talked about ways that teams could change their roster composition for a one-game wildcard playoff,

and this would be like that, but even more extreme. I don't know, what would you do? Would you do the all-bullpen game? At this point point there's no there's no advantage to having anyone conditioned to pitch many innings because you get six days off in between every game so you can just yeah throw your best starter out there for one time through the lineup or yeah and so the fact that there'd only be there would only exist like 100 pitchers in the world and so a that A, all the games would be 1-0.

And so then with that, you'd have to change your roster construction for that somehow, right? You'd have to have, I would guess that you would almost, like if you put somebody on base, you might pinch run every single time. You might carry four pitchers, eight starting position players, and then your 13 players on your bench would involve four pinch hit, pinch runners. Just super fast, Billy Hamilton type pitch runners because every game would be

1-0. I mean, it would be insane. All the starters in the league would be relievers. Justin Verlander in his prime would be a reliever. Clayton Kershaw would be a reliever. They'd all be relievers. What do you think the average strikeout rate in the league would be relievers. Justin Verlander in his prime would be a reliever. Clayton Kershaw would be a reliever. They'd all be relievers. What do you think the average strikeout rate in this league would be? There'd be so few base runners.

As a percentage, what was it last year? Like 20, a little over 20, 21%, something like that. Yeah, I guess it'd be like mid-30s. I would guess that you'd strike out between 16 and 19 a game. Maybe. 14 would be the floor. This is Rob Nyer's nightmare. Although he does like, he likes, I think, pinch hitters

and fewer guys in the bullpen. So maybe he'd like that. Yeah, I mean, I want the baseball season to be shorter. I think that that's the, I mean, I want the baseball season to be shorter. I think that eventually in 50 years the season will be shorter and it will save the game. But I'm not sure whether I think that the season should be shorter but just compressed more. So you'd have the same thing.

You'd just lop off April and September. Or if you would have it be spread out like this and so people maybe wouldn't get hurt as much as a side effect of having fewer games. And you would just take Mondays and Thursdays and Fridays. I don't know what you'd do. But anyway, this doesn't sound like fun baseball to me though. This particular schedule doesn't sound that good to me.

No. And the question about whether it would favor Whether the preparation Would favor either side Obviously this would favor pitchers But the preparation Itself would probably also Favor pitchers

I wonder if that would even make a difference I wonder if there's a level of Advanced scouting and planning That teams are not doing right now just in the interest of saving time or whether they're already doing everything that you could possibly do to prepare for an opponent. Well, the thing has been that you could play in the same league as Clayton Kershaw in this scenario and face him seven times in your career. Because you're only playing 16 games, and he's only pitching in those 16 games, of which most of them aren't against you.

He's only pitching 32 to 48 innings a year. And so you're at best going to face him once a season. And so you just would never see the pitcher. So it would be, the preparation would be more valuable to the hitter. However, the need for preparation would, I mean, not being able to see a pitcher more than once every five years would be devastating for hitters. All right.

A couple questions about leagues. This is from Dave. This is an old one. Do you think Andrew Friedman moving to the NL following Theo Epstein will mark the time the NL return to dominance over the AL? League dominance seems cyclical, and I think it's about to switch to the NL following Theo Epstein will mark the time the NL returned to dominance over the AL. League dominance seems cyclical, and I think it's about to switch to the NL. And then another question from Kirk, who asks, from looking at the offseason, which league do you think got better, AL or NL? And there was one offseason where the free agent signings really seemed skewed. It was maybe a couple of years ago. And I remember writing an article about it at BP just to see if I could tell how much better one league got relative to the other. And it wasn't a lot. It was like, I don't know, I came up with some number that maybe it was like a two game difference or something but but the al has has won interleague

every year since i don't even remember what you like 2004 ish something like that it's been it's been 12 years maybe i think since the nl won in interleague um which is one way that you can look at at league strength you can also compare league switchers, guys who go from one to the other. But one of the theories for why the AL was dominant or has had this period of superiority was that

the AL had these big spending teams and the NL didn't. And so the AL had the Yankees and the Yankees were outspending everyone and therefore other teams had to spend more to try to compete with the Yankees and the Yankees were outspending everyone and therefore other teams had to spend more to try to compete with the Yankees and so the talent both front office and field talent flowed from one league to the other and if that is true if there is anything to that and there are other factors that could be responsible but if it's that then I guess you

could say that that incentive or that force is no longer really active anymore, right? Because the NL now has the team that spends the most and also happens to have a smart front office. And a couple of the best known front office people or regimes have just switched from AL to NL. And I don't think there's been any notable imbalance in spending this winter, or at least just eyeballing lists of top free agents and where they went. It doesn't seem like there's a very clear pattern of one league outspending the other. But if that was part of the reason that the AL had this period of superiority, then I guess you could say that maybe it will switch.

Yeah, and Preller went from the AL to the NL too. So that's another guy you might note. But yeah, Jeff Long wrote a thing this year that suggests that NL pitchers will be better than AL pitchers this year based on projected warp. And that's a hard thing to say. There are a lot of different ways you can measure that. And there are so many different parts and usage and all sorts of things that it's really hard to say that that actually is definitely going to happen. But I think something like five of the top six or six of the top seven or something like that of RJ's top free agent pitchers all went from AL to NL, something like that.

And a bunch of the top hitters all went from the NL to the AL, so that wouldn't necessarily change the overall imbalance, but you might see the distinction between the leagues get a little bit bigger. Let's see. So the top three all did. Shields and Lester and Scherzer all did. And then Irvin Santana went the other way. Brandon McCarthy went from AL to NL, but only half of AL to NL.

And at the same time, Jake Peavy went NL to NL, but had been traded. And then you have Jason Hamill is there. So, yeah, it depends how you even count those, but it's like four of the top five or five of the top six or four of the top four or whatever anyway okay uh all right question from reza who says let's say at some point in the near future or alternate universe ball clubs adopt the gospel of not bringing your best reliever supposedly your closer in today's world in just for the ninth inning in this brave new world managers will bring their best reliever at the most critical point in the game. This means that this pitcher will be going

against the opposite team's best hitters at high pressure situations. What would be acceptable standard stats for such pitchers? Presumably they will no longer be called in to pitch against the bottom third of the lineup as much as before. Therefore, they will not have the luxury of padding their stats. So how do we judge these pitchers based on their stats? I know there are leverage index and win probability added stats, but is there any indicator that accounts for the quality of the opposition in high leverage situations? If this was going to happen, would trying to statistically place a value on these pitchers replace catcher framing as the new hot indicator to quantify. I guess maybe the more interesting aspect of that to me is if you take away saves as an incentive or a way that guys are valued, then what would you replace it with?

Would there be some substitute for saves or how would you how would you judge them would you just judge them purely on strikeout rate and era or fip or whatever or is there some some other stat that you could judge a reliever on would it just switch from saves to something else what's tango has a replacement for saves what's yeah just shutdowns and meltdowns yeah those are those are things that exist um that is i mean that's one of the obstacles to to getting rid of saves or to getting getting the closer market or the reliever market or the free agent market off the save standard is that that's what people are paid for so if you take away saves or if you try to use a late inning reliever in such a way that he won't get as many saves then he's not going to be happy about

that because the market is paying for saves at least theoretically i don don't know how true that is anymore. But I don't know. You probably would want to adjust the opposition stats if the guy is always, if he's like a true fireman and he's coming in in high leverage situations every time, you could adjust by leverage. I mean, there's some debate about whether to do that or not, whether you give the pitcher credit for being used in those situations, because even if he is, even if that role is more valuable to the team, is it really the pitcher accruing that value? Or is it just that someone was going to accrue that value and therefore this

pitcher is the one who was chosen to do it. So I don't know, but if, yeah, if, if, I mean, maybe we should be adjusting closer stats right now for their tendency to face the bottom of the lineup more often. Opposition stats are something that generally don't get mentioned unless it's one of the extremes, which is usually fine because over a full season sample, there's usually not an enormous disparity in the quality of opposition.

But at the top and bottom of the scale, there is kind of, and maybe that is one reason why closer stats look so good. Obviously, they are very good and they are chosen because they're very good, but maybe they also face weaker opposition. So I don't know. You probably want some sort of leverage based thing yeah play index sure um i wanted to find out uh which team in i don't know recent history or whatever has used the fewest lefty relievers in a game uh in a season uh and that was easy enough. I just went to the play index. I went to game finders. I clicked on left-handed. I clicked on as reliever. I clicked on find teams with players matching criteria. And then I just searched since first I started

at 2000. And then I went further back because some of the things I found made me want to go further back. And so Ben, I'm going to ask you a question that you get to guess. Oh no. No, it's easy. This one, there's no reason for you to know it and you don't have to think. So how often would you guess that a team goes an entire year without using a left-handed reliever? And it could be anywhere from five times a year in the majors to it has never happened. I don't want you to think that it's a narrow range of possible guesses.

Anything could be possible here. Hmm. Okay. I'll say once every five seasons okay well it happens much less frequently than that since 2000 it's only happened once and that was with the 2004 brewers who were incidentally managed by Ned Yost, who last year during the postseason, we learned, is not a guy who really cares all that much about platoon matchups. He generally sticks with the players that he has in his lineup all game long. And he didn't really care that his top three relievers were all right-handed.

He didn't do a lot of fussing around with that. He basically put them in and let them fire away. And so maybe it's not a coincidence that Ned Yost managed a team that in 2004 used no left-handed relievers. They did have Jorge De La Rosa around, and he started five games as a left-hander, and you could imagine that he could have been used in relief, but he wasn't. They also had Brooks Kieschnick around, who is not left-handed. However, he does bat left-handed and also played outfield for the Brewers that year. And so that's how frequently it's happened since 2000. Now, you would think,

though, that it probably happens a lot less now because left-handed relievers are so much more a part of the game than they used to be and so i went back to 1940 uh actually i went back to 19 yeah to 1940 i did go back to 1940 and amazingly the brewers uh to find a team before the brewers you have to go to 1947 there was a almost a 60-year gap between the two teams that had did this. And the difference between the Brewers of 2004 and the Philadelphia Athletics of 1947 is that the Philadelphia Athletics only had 137 relief appearances total, and the Brewers had 423. And so it's, in a way, all the more surprising that teams back then weren't doing this, because they hardly ever even used relievers.

And certainly there was no such thing as a loogie at the time, I don't believe. So kind of interesting. Anyway, that's all the answer to one question. But where this really took me is to the 2004 Angels. And the 2004 Angels did not manage to join this list as you have figured out. They had exactly one left-handed reliever make an appearance. And this was a story kind of at the time that the Angels didn't have a left-handed reliever make an appearance. And this was a story kind of at the time that the Angels didn't have a left-handed reliever.

The local news were writing articles about it. And Mike Socha has said in the past that he would rather go to the better pitcher rather than the lefty, but even he acknowledged that, yeah, he would rather have a lefty, and not just because you want to have a lefty who comes out and gets the left-handed batter out,

but as he described it to a reporter at the time, there are, I'm going to quote him, there are some things that having a lefty in the pen definitely helps you with in a lot of areas. Some are very subtle and some are very obvious. Whether we have one or not doesn't change the way we have to get after it and the way we have to play. Good quote, by the way. That last one. I should have just skipped it. So I guess if your question is can we win without a lefty in the bullpen, sure.

But he mentioned several subtle ways, including preventing the stacking of left-handed hitters in an opposing starting lineup, the option to turn around switch hitters on a whim, and keeping left-handed pinch hitters out of the game. switch hitters on a whim, and keeping left-handed pinch hitters out of the game. And so it is interesting that not having even the threat of one, or I guess it should say having the threat of one in subtle ways, forces your opponent to behave suboptimally. They will perhaps, if their three best hitters are all left-handed,

they might bat them third, fifth, and seventh instead of third, fourth, and fifth. And therefore, that one guy is going to bat 50 fewer times in the season or whatever than he would otherwise. And maybe the left-handed pinch hitter doesn't bat because of the threat of the reliever, even if you're not intending to use a reliever. Anyway, so the guy who did get the one appearance was a guy named Dusty Bergman. Dusty Bergman received the Fred Haney Award the previous spring for being the top rookie performer at spring training. He had a spring ERA of 2.08. He had a 2.65 ERA at AAA when he was recalled in June to take the place of injured Troy Percival. And that season in Salt Lake, he was very good. He had an ERA of 2.85. He only walked 13 batters in 73 innings, which is a phenomenal walk rate.

Overall, a very competent left-handed reliever who had been pretty good in AA before. He was a swing man in AA. He was a starter at one point in AA. They converted him, and he was generally pretty successful as a reliever, particularly that year. And yet, they brought him up. It was noted in the newspaper that he was finally going to give the Angels their first lefty in the bullpen he had one outing as a major leaguer in that outing he got completely crushed he gave up three runs in two innings of a blowout in which I don't know if he even faced any lefties

they just brought him in in the eighth inning they were already down by like nine of a blowout in which I don't know if he even faced any lefties. They just brought him in in the eighth inning. They were already down by like nine. And he gave up a sack fly, a wild pitch, a walk, a single, a double, a single, a fly out, a line out, a single, a pop out, strike out, and a ground out. One of the outs was a fly ball to deep center. Another one was a fly ball to deep right. Another one was a line out to short.

The single was a line drive. The double was a line drive. There was not a lot going right for him. But he, you know, whatever. He got out of it. They lost 12 to 2. And then they didn't use him again. Troy Percival came back two weeks later, and he was sent back down to the minors, having only pitched the one game. He never got called up again. And then the next year, they traded him. The Angels traded him for Jason Christensen. Do you remember Jason Christensen? Lefty reliever.

They traded him to the Giants for Jason Christensen, who pitched three and two-thirds innings for the Angels. It is hard to imagine he could possibly have been any better than Dusty Bergman was before the trade. He had a 5.36 ERA for the Giants in a full season before the trade. He had struck out 17 and walked 15 in 42 innings. He was a disaster at that point in his career. He was 35 years old. The year before his ERA was 4-5. The year before, 5-1. The year before, 5-4.

He hadn't been good for a very long time. The Angels traded for him. They let him throw three and two-thirds innings. He never pitched again, and neither for the Giants or for any other major league team did Dusty Bergman, who was last seen playing

in a German professional league. So it's essentially impossible at this point. It's only happened a couple of times and with bullpens as big as they are now, it seems like there's no way that it could happen. You'd have to have. Well, why? Why would it happen? Why would it not happen now?

But it happened essentially almost twice in one year just a decade ago? It could happen. Why not? It could happen with Ned Yost right now. Could. Did Yost, let's see, I'm trying to remember, Yost carried Finnegan. Did he have another lefty? He didn't carry Francis Lee Bueno, as I was expecting. I can't remember if he carried another lefty In the pen Well he had Duffy Oh yeah he had Duffy

Yeah things have changed even in the last Decade or so I mean starters are still pitching roughly The same percentage of innings And relievers are still pitching roughly the same percentage Of innings but the relievers Have specialized even more And they're throwing even

Shorter outings per reliever so I Find it hard to I mean I guess Well who does Yost have Now he's got Tim Collins Oh Collins was there Too yeah and Franklin Morales yeah so

I well It's only happened twice since World War II, so it seems unlikely that it could happen with the era of eight-man bullpens. It is extremely unlikely. I think it was extremely unlikely in 2004, too, and it happened, so I wouldn't rule it out. But, yeah, it's extremely, extremely unlikely. happened so I wouldn't rule it out but yeah it's extremely extremely unlikely so actually maybe now is the time for Dusty Bergman to to return now that the league is ready for a pitcher like him

yeah could be all right so that's the play index use the coupon code BP get your discounted rate of $30 on a one-year subscription okay from David. I enjoyed Ben's Grantland piece on pitch framing, and it led me to ask a pretty simple question. What happens if the strike zone becomes electronically enforced in the near future? The technology exists to make this a reality, and it would seem to make the game both faster and fairer since the perceived bias in favor of better players

or players with more seniority would disappear, at least in terms of how balls and strikes are called. Of particular note, the current agreement between MLB and the umpires union ends following the 2019 season. Perhaps an electronic strike zone could be implemented as soon as 2020. Even more interesting, one would think that a player like Austin Hedges, whose value is primarily in his ability to frame pitches, should be promoted or dealt at full market value, presuming at least a few teams still exist who don't believe an electronic strike zone is on the horizon, as soon as possible to ensure that the team that possesses a pitch framing reliant player gets as much value out of that player while they still can. think teams tend to front run rule changes all the time or at least that's part of the narrative for why so many teams are willing to forfeit their ability to sign international players for more than 300k for the next several seasons it seems to me that the possibility is distant enough and remote enough that it probably doesn't change even aust Hedges' value appreciably right now.

Would you disagree? I would have a hard time seeing this in the next 15 years. Yeah, I agree that it could be done technologically. But not right now. I think it could be. No, I don't know. Maybe something's changed in the last year. But a year ago, PitchFX was not nearly reliable enough. I wrote about it, I don't know, a year and a half ago or something.

And, I mean, there are occasional missed pitches, and that's a problem. If you miss a pitch, what would you do if the system goes down if something happens so that it's not tracked which happens but it's on a very tiny percentage of pitches so you you could tell the umpire to just be ready for the rare event that that happens although that would be be hard to expect him to actually pay attention on every pitch in that case. But I think you could do it from, I don't know, from what I learned when I wrote about it. I think it could be done if your standard is having it be more accurate than umpires are. I think it could be done.

Are you saying that it's just a matter of the delay in processing that it wouldn't be fast enough? No, I thought that I, I'm asking Dan right now, but I thought that I remembered from around a year or so ago. I think I maybe linked to this in the thing that I wrote, or maybe you did. But as I recall, it's not quite precise enough. It's very good, but it's not quite precise enough. Okay, so let's see. I have this parenthetical, though it's clear that PitchFX isn't up to the task yet,

which is a link to something you wrote in April 2013. Yeah, so yeah, I wrote that it's not automatic, So yeah, I wrote that it's not automatic, that it wouldn't be just the easiest, most automatic change. But I think if your standard is perfection, it's not there yet. If your standard is as good or better than a human umpire, I think it's there yet. I mean, umpires are currently graded based on pitch effects and maybe an adjusted, tweaked version of pitch effects that couldn't be done easily in real time. But I think it's probably close enough. I guess the real problem would be setting the height of the zone. That's something that's maybe not always quite precise.

But then again, umpires aren't always quite precise with that probably either. So I think it could be done, but I don't think it will be done anytime soon. So I would not value a good framing catcher any differently at this point. If he were in my system or on my roster, I would not be worried about it. But I also hope it doesn't happen. Actually, this this came up at Sloan. And we talked about it a bit. But I, I think I'm officially a non robot umpire strike zone person. Yeah, I am a non strike zone person. Oh, yeah, you don't want any strike zone at all.

My preference is no strike zone. If there's a strike zone, I am on the fence. Some days I'm 60-40 one way. Some days I'm 60-40 the other. I used to be 98% pro-robot. Yes. And now I'm not. By the way, the contract thing is interesting because I'm talking to Jason Wojtkowski right now.

You don't actually have to keep the umpires through their contract. If you pay them to do their job, you can tell them to stop doing their job. The contract is for you to pay them, not for them to do the thing that they have to provide you. Lots of rule changes are collectively bargained though. I'm not sure that you could just take pitch calling away from umpires unilaterally.

You don't think you could, huh? Jason says, I can't think of a reason why you'd have to allow the umpire to work. He says, your obligation was to pay the money. We could complicate the situation by the laborer counting on the work to build his reputation, writer, architect, something like that, but I don't think that would fly. And then he said what I said, I can't think of a reason why you'd have to allow the umpire to work. Now, the issue though is that you do still need umpires. Yes.

And so if you took away their most prestigious role, they might just quit doing the third. I mean, they're not in this to umpire at third base. Nobody gets into the business. They could stand at third and call two tag plays a game, which are overturned by replay anyway. Yeah, I used to be totally pro-robot-ump because I felt like accuracy and fairness was the only consideration or the paramount consideration. But now I've kind of come around to the idea that the goal shouldn't necessarily be calling the strike zone as close to the rulebook definition as possible but that you you want to take into consideration the level of interest and entertainment that you're getting and i'm not sure that the robot up zone system is comparable because i i kind of think of it as akin to park effects or ballpark construction like you could You could construct every stadium to be the same

with the same dimensions, and that would, in a sense, be fairer. A deep fly ball in one park would be a home run in every park or not be a home run in every park for the most part other than some elevation differences. But that would be less interesting, right? It would be a level of analysis and complexity that we wouldn't have anymore. And also it would take away some strategy from teams if they want to build their roster in such a way that they take advantage of their park's characteristics.

They couldn't do that anymore. So it sort of strikes me as the same thing with the strike zone it could go too far it could be pre-humidor Coors Field or the Baker Bowl or something where it just feels cheap and arbitrary and you can have that with the strike zone too maybe it's Eric Gregg's strike zone with LeVon Hernandez in 1997 maybe that that's too far. That hurts the game, maybe. But the way that it is now, where umpires are graded against pitch effects and there's a lot more uniformity and accuracy in the zones, it's close enough now that I think the variations

actually enrich the game. And you can benefit from it. you can treat it as just an existing condition and you can strategize so if you want to get more strikes you can get a good freeming catcher or develop one or you can study umpire zones and see who has the slightly larger zones and who has the slightly smaller zones and adjust your approach accordingly and things like the zone expanding or contracting based on the count also sort of serves a purpose in that it makes the plate appearance more even if the if the zone gets smaller on certain counts you know if it gets smaller on o2 and bigger on 3o then that helps the underdog in the plate appearance.

It makes him more likely to come back, and it makes the plate appearance more interesting, more suspenseful. Yeah, you have actually talked me into robot umps. What did I say? Well, your part factors analogy is, I find it to be disagreeable because it is as though you have – it's like saying that it would be cool if some parks did not adhere to rules about what parks have to adhere to. Like if in some parks, third base was just 82 feet away, right? Well, yeah. It'd be local color. There's a rule that says 90 feet, and there's a rule for the strike zone.

So as long as you have the rules for the strike zone, like if you want to make the rules more permissive, then that's fine with me. And that is literally fine with me. That is my suggestion is to make them as permissive as the umpire wants them to be. However, as long as you have a set of rules, and you're not arguing that you should throw out the rulebook, as long as you have a set of rules, it seems crazy to me that they're arbitrarily chosen, that the enforcement of them is arbitrarily decided, and that the players who are kind of given instructions about how to play the game according to the rules

can't count on the rules enforcers to enforce them with any particular consistency. I mean, it's one thing if some arbitrariness or randomness seeps into the game. That is the game. However, these are explicitly the rules enforcers, and we are saying that we are happy with them specifically not enforcing the rules?

That feels kind of weird to me. So I agree that I, like you, enjoy the game within the game that we observe with catchers and to some degree with hitters. And so I also would feel like I would lose something. However, I don't know that that holds up as an argument that should apply to all baseball fans or to the sport as a whole. I want them to apply the rules consistently to the best of their human imperfect abilities.

But I think the game would actually be worse if they were perfect so why not the rob nyer argument uh about well if you want some umpire air why not take away their contact lenses why not make them do it with one eye closed why i mean how do you know you have just the right amount of human air maybe maybe more human air would be better uh-huh yeah well as i said it it can go too far so if if the park effects get out of control then you do something you you install a humidor so that it's not so crazy because it it was out of control where it just felt like you know the offense was so extreme in certain places that it was changing the game or putting certain teams at a disadvantage or it just felt cheap when someone hit well and you could have that situation with

the strike zone and maybe we did have that situation with the strike zone before a few years ago before there was this objective standard that umpires were sort of held to more closely. But I think it's now at the point where the accuracy is quite good and the uniformity is quite good. And I guess every now and then you still get a zone that feels wrong, that feels cheap, or like someone is being uh disadvantaged by it but as long as it's not to the point where you just literally can't predict what's going to happen because there's so much

variance from game to game or umpire to umpire i think it's actually a feature not a bug but it is it is kind of a hard line to set because i I mean, how do you say exactly where the optimal level of error is? So I accept that that is a difficult line to draw. Can you do me a favor? Sure. Can you please post my strike zone article on the Facebook page? One of these days somebody is going to read it. It's one of my favorite things I ever read.

Nobody reads it. Nobody likes it. Nobody brings it up. Just to read it. It's one of my favorite things I ever read. Nobody reads it. Nobody likes it. Nobody brings it up. Just keep posting it. Can you post it on the Facebook page for this and every podcast ever? No, but I will start with this episode. I will post it and we'll see.

Alright, so that's that. We will be back with the Marlins team preview podcast tomorrow. You can join the Facebook group and see Sam's article on why there should be no strike zone at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. Send us emails for next week at podcast at baseball perspectives dot com. Rate, review and subscribe to the show on iTunes. And as we always say, subscribe to the play index using the coupon code BP for the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. Good morning and welcome to episode...

That's it? That's all you're bringing today? What? That was bad? It was flimsy. Go again. Alright.