Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 654: How to Talk About Offense in 2015

Episode Date: April 10, 2015

Ben and Sam talk about how we should talk about baseball’s latest decline in scoring.

I keep my eye on the sparrow, keep my focus pretty narrow. I listen to the music and read books about its makers. I read books about baseball, the swingers and the takers. But what I love even more is pouring over five scores. Good morning and welcome to episode 654 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectus. Hi. Howdy. How are you? Okay. Anything to banter about?

Nah. Gosh, I was hoping you would say yes. Anything to banter about? No. Gosh, I was hoping you would say yes. Did you see the TV intro that had all the misspelled names? I did, yes. The Deadspin Cubs local broadcast. Do you...

That feels like a meme. It feels like a bid for a meme. It feels like a trick. Doesn't that feel like a trick? It's too obvious. It feels like a bid for a meme. It feels like a trick. Doesn't that feel like a trick? It's too obvious. It did seem really obvious. If it was one misspelling or

and the ways that the names were misspelled. Like, if you're gonna misspell Cincinnati, that's easy. I've misspelled Cincinnati. One N-T's. But three N's. No one does three N's. There's no word in the, there's no word that's ever had three N's, is there?

I don't think so. So. And San Francisco Giants is, like, pretty extreme, and it was, like, Milwaukee or something. Right. It was Milwaukee, like, walk, like the verb to walk. Yeah, yeah. So the whole thing just kind of felt like the Twinkies touchdown thing, which you saw that.

Did you see that? No. I don't know if it was Twinkies. It was some hostess cupcakes or something like that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, yeah, so they had a picture of them. And then it was like they released this ad on opening day, and it was a picture of the cupcakes.

And the cupcakes were – they looked like baseballs. They had seams on them, like kind of with the icing. And they were clearly baseballs, right? And then at the bottom it said touchdown. And everybody for like – people were mocking that as though like that were anything less than intentional it's just so obviously intentional and um and then people were like mad at people for mocking it because they fell into the trap but i feel fine giving them

it that was a good ad like that was a nice ironic ad like to me making fun of people who can be tricked is like totally legitimate i don't normally side with the brand. But in this case, I thought it was good. It was clever. It was obvious. And the proper response to that ad is one and one half seconds of look at those idiots and then like 20 minutes of thinking, oh, jeez, I'm the idiot. They fooled me for one and a half seconds. But I don't see what ABC7 in Chicago would get out of misspelling Milwaukee.

Like, I can't figure out where the meme kicks in. I can't figure out how this turns to step three profit. I have no idea where this pays off. I don't know. It's not like I'm going to subscribe to ABC7 so that I can see if they mess up anything else. What are they going to do next? What cities will they misspell tomorrow? Right.

And there's not even a subscription service for them. They're an over-the-air broadcast network. It's weird. So I can't figure out how they're making money off me. But it just didn't quite sit right to me. Yeah, I don't know. And they got a bunch of them right too. Could always just be sabotaged by one production person.

Yeah, it could be. Yeah, that probably is the most likely, right? It's that or it's like they just really did it fast without even thinking, knowing that they'd go back and fix it. These were just placeholders and then they forgot. Because there is a sort of a rule in journalism that whatever joke placeholder you put in text will certainly run. And so this could be an example of that, that they were just sort of jokingly banging out

these things to be placeholders and they forgot to go back and finish it but i just don't think that there is actually a person in chicago uh who thinks there are three ends in cincinnati don't either well there are there are three ends in cincinnati but four ends right three consecutive ends yeah so okay well i'm glad you i'm glad you said something about that because i i'm i'm always Four ends. Right. Three consecutive ends. Yeah. So, okay. Well, I'm glad you said something about that because I'm always wary of leading the podcast with Ryan Webb updates because I feel like there must be, in any given episode, there must be a few people who are hearing us for the first time and it's probably not the best way to retain new listeners to just immediately launch into the latest ryan webb news often without any explanation of why we're discussing ryan webb but we have to talk about ryan webb briefly today to acknowledge the fact that he was traded ryan webb cult hero of effectively wild for being the all-time leader in games finished without a save is now a Los Angeles Dodger. And we didn't mention him the other day when we talked about what team would be best

for Webb to go to in order for him to get a save. We didn't mention the Dodgers as a candidate, but maybe we should have, at least in the short term. With Kenley Jansen out, Chris Hatcher got his first major league save the other day Joe Peralta got a save saves are up for grabs right now so Ryan Webb this could be an opening yeah Miguel Castro is the Blue Jays closer now he turned 20 in December he was named closer after his second career game so he got a save in his third career game youngest guy to get a save since rick ankyl in 1999 some guys just waltz in and get a save right away yeah and uh albers also pitched a a a as i i think he pitched a high leverage eighth inning good for him am i right i might

be wrong no he pitched a low leverage eighth inning i think he pitched a low leverage eighth inning i think we're okay with albert okay yeah he did he pitched a low leverage Anthony. I think he pitched a low leverage Anthony. I think we're okay with that. Okay. Yeah, he did. He pitched a low. I misunderstood. I thought that his team was winning, but they were losing. So for a brief moment, I thought he had moved into the right-handed setup man job. But nope, mop up.

All right. Everything in its place. Okay. So I wanted to talk a little bit about, well, I'll tell you what I was thinking as I was preparing for this podcast other than it's four days into the season and I'm already out of podcast topics. But I was thinking about offense and you tweeted about all the shutouts that are going on. You compared it to the mid-90s, how many shutouts there were at that point. Certainly seems like there are a lot of shutouts, and that is something that everyone kind of independently notices when they look at the scores of the games we've seen so far.

I did my desperate thing pre-podcast where I gchat people and say, what should I talk about on the podcast? And a few of them said offense. Kylie, did you ask Kylie? I did not ask Kylie. Kylie might have had a better suggestion. But everyone said offense, offense, them said offense. Kylie, did you ask Kylie? I did not ask Kylie. Kylie might have had a better suggestion. But everyone said offense, offense, offense, offense. And so I was kind of wondering if we could talk about how we are going to talk about offense this season. Are we going to spend the whole season talking about offense?

Talking about the same thing that we talked about all of last season? Because I looked at the numbers, so I compared. It's so early that one high-scoring day can really change the league averages. But compared to the same point of last season, offense is down. Again, there are pretty large fluctuations from day to day at this early point in the season but last season through uh 48 games and we are through what 46 games now so almost the same point last season the league era was 3.61 now it is 3.18 oh my goodness that is that's big but that is that is big but it's uh it's also i mean strikeout rate is not up um at least strikeouts per nine was 8.2 at that point

it's 8.03 right now home runs per nine is basically the same Walks per nine Is down Now actually for pitchers So it was 3.3 last year Now it's 2.8 That seems to be the biggest difference BABIP Was 288

Last year at this point And now It is 269 well that's something yeah i mean it's the least something i mean it's it's it's striking but it's also the like kind of the one that you'd be uh least convinced is significant i guess probably but 46 games. 46 games is like what is that? 1,700 played appearances-ish?

I can probably tell you that in a second too. There's still regression in 1,700. Quite a bit though. There's still a lot. Still a bunch. Yeah, it's not... Well, I was going to say It's not insignificant But for all I know, it could be statistically insignificant

But the difference Is significant If the sample is So we'll see I mean, we will Watch that And the low strike percentage I looked at that too

Just called strike percentage Like I looked at that too. Just called strike percentage, like called strikes over taken pitches on pitches in the lower third of the zone. This is using ESPN's True Media tool. So in like 2009, that was like 22% or 21%, that sort of range. Last year, it was 25.1%, which was the highest in that six or so season sample that they have of PitchFX stuff. 2015, so far, 25.9%, which is also the highest they have on record, higher than last year, and higher than through this point last season. Not that that necessarily makes a difference for low strike percentage, but if anything, and that's not the most precise way to look at called strike rates and everything, but

it would suggest at least that the low strike trend has either accelerated or not abated. And I guess that is maybe the more significant thing. I don't know how much this shows that offense is actually down or will be lower this year relative to what it was, but there hasn't been a correction of any kind. I don't know why there would have been a correction because there weren't any notable rule changes or anything that would have produced one.

But, you know, who knows? Like if MLB had slipped a new ball into the mix or something that could have changed things and we wouldn't necessarily have known about it beforehand. But it doesn't seem like anything has ended this discussion. We are having the discussion again. So, and another possibly relevant thing, which I didn't even think to look at i hadn't ever thought to look at it but rob arthur in his article for 538 last week uh pointed out that spring training offense was down uh runs per game in spring training were a tenth of a run beneath uh the

mark in last year's spring training they were lower than they'd been in at least a decade i'm guessing that he said at least a decade just because we don't have good data before then so probably the lowest on record and uh that is significant he showed that there's a pretty strong correlation between spring training runs per game and regular season runs per game. So that would at least support this early season scoring drought that we seem to be seeing. So I guess my question is, I was thinking like, well, are we really going to get into this on day four of the season?

Are we going to burn the offense topic this early in the year and then never be able to talk about it for the rest of the year but of course it will be a thing that we talk about for the rest of the year and so i'm just kind of wondering how often we should talk about it like should we be constantly remarking on hey offense is down like we have for the last year and the year before that and the year before that with kind of increasing urgency or uh do we just sort of not have anything new to say about it we've we've said the things like the strike zone is getting bigger and guys are throwing harder and there are more strikeouts and there are shifts and we've gone over this over and over again. And it seems like those trends will continue if there is no attempt to correct them.

And there's probably not going to be an attempt to correct them mid-season. We're not going to see the strike zone suddenly change in the middle of the year. So we are probably locked into whatever this is for the rest of the year. If there's going to be a change, if there's going to be a DH in the National League or a change to the strike zone or a new ball or whatever it is, we won't see that till 2016. So how should we talk about offense this season? We've got a long season ahead of us in which we could compare to previous season scoring as often as we want and

we can remark on this change as often as we want so how often should we talk about it do we have anything new to add or is it it's just the same old same old thing right like something probably has to be done uh well if you think i mean first of, I will just get out of the way that I'm perfectly fine with there not being any offense. I have no issue with it whatsoever. I enjoy it. I think it's probably more to my tastes, and so therefore I'm a poor person to ask. However, I will just get that out of the way,

and then pretend that's not me, and then pretend I'm like one of all of you people, and like in the faculty. I'm going to be like in the faculty uh all right so uh so i think first of all the year of the pitcher was what was the first year 2010 i think i think it was 2010 too and and pretty much every year since then with maybe the exception of 2012 has probably had plenty of year of the pitcher talk about it uh because 2010 was so uh unlikely actually 2012 wasn't 2012 the year with all the perfect games yeah there's yeah there was one of those so even that even that one where the offense went up a tick probably was also called the year of the pitcher. They all get called the year of the pitcher.

And so at first it's worth talking about because it's like, oh, this is new and jarring. And then it becomes not really worth talking about because we all kind of know that these things go in cycles. And there's going to be little pockets of history where fewer runs are scored and pockets of history where more runs are scored. But there is a certain point at which it becomes worth talking about again because you start to wonder, are we ever going to come out of this cycle? This is no longer just a brief period. It starts to look like the way that baseball is played in the modern age. So I think that while speaking about the decline in offense, probably, I don't know, there was a point where it was getting tired.

I think that it has become lively again because it feels like something that people are dissatisfied with and that it's not going to fix itself on its own. I mean, it really is hard to imagine what would fix it on its own. And of course, this is kind of how history works, right? Pitchers, given no rule changes or anything, pitchers gain the advantage over time. And then something changes to give the hitters back the advantage. And then eventually the pitchers reclaim their dominance. And so then something else changes. And so it is between the kind of persistence of this, as well as the trajectory of it where every year except

2012 has dropped since 2009. In fact, since 2000, actually, since 2006, every year since 2006 has been a decline except for 2012 which was a tiny little blip upward. The trajectory is also very compelling and you could imagine that if you think it's a problem now, you see worse days ahead and very little room for optimism. And if you don't think it's a problem, you might still see worse days ahead. You might still see the potential for it to get problematic. As we talked about very early on in this podcast, even I do see a problem where if games feel like they're all settled by the third inning

because some team took a 2-0 lead, that's not good. That's not fun. So, yeah, I think it's worth talking about. I think it's worth talking about more this year than it was last year. And it also kind of feels like, I don't know, it sort of feels like this might feel like a historical year or I guess a generation shifting year in 20 or 30 years. This might feel like 93 felt, for instance uh just because you have a you have a new commissioner um you have stat cast um coming in and mostly those things um well that wasn't supposed to be funny i mean no it's it's you have seven terabytes of data per game uh which is a little bit of a

tipping point uh as far as data and. And then you have a new commissioner, which is obviously significant. And so it's, I don't know, it just does feel like this might be a good time for, I don't know, big changes or something. So I'm going to just go ahead and say, yeah, we can talk about it. Okay, good. Well, yeah, there was a good article in the Hardball Times annual this year by Steve Trader where he looked at the trajectory of strikeout rate over time and he showed, as you were saying, that it does seem to continue climbing unless you do something to stop it or just stall it temporarily, at least kind of, you know, roll it back a bit or try to have a plateau for a few years.

And so I think I think we're getting there. I guess let's say that that scoring is down again this year that this early season trend is a real trend and maybe it's not as massive a gap as those numbers that i cited at the beginning would indicate but but let's say offense is down this year by as much as it was down last year this feels like the last season when we will be talking about whether mlb should do something without them actually doing something i would think and i know manfred has said and he said it's slow and when brian kenny asked him about this that he doesn't want to act hastily and sometimes things are cyclical and he doesn't want to jump in and make

some massive rule change when this conditions would correct themselves on their own and and that that makes sense but i this feels like the year when if we go a whole next six months talking about low scoring and high strikeouts that we will not make it to 2016 without something, whether it's a strike zone or probably would be the strike zone. I don't know. I don't know what else it would be. That seems like both the easiest change and the one that would probably make the most impact. So a well-placed pit would be easier. and the one that would probably make the most impact. Pit. Pit.

A well-placed pit would be easier and have more impact. Only if you put it in front of the pitcher's mound, I guess. Anywhere else it would hurt offense. You'd put it in front of the pitcher's mound. I am interrupting you here. Okay. Today I was watching Shane Green pitch, and I have a rooting interest in Shane Green this year.

Because of your shameful failure to identify him? Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah. Who did I call him? You called him Ian Clarkin. I did, yeah. Anyway. Reference to the Back of the Bullpen podcast.

Anyway Reference to the Back of the Bullpen podcast So Shane So Shane Green Is He was pitching today He pitched very well But you know Shane Green last year Shane Green who's like

He was a non-prospect He's got like Pretty good He's got okay stuff He kind of looks like Brandon McCarthy pitching with a little less velocity and one less pitch. He was a 15th rounder. He never really saw him on a prospect list. He was a 25-year-old rookie.

And yet, if you look at his numbers last year, which, by the way, weren't that exceptional. Like, he had a 103 ERA plus, but if you look at his numbers, the rest of his numbers, the unadjusted numbers, he's basically Roger Clemens like a fifth and sixth Cy Young seasons. He struck out 9.3 per nine. He walked 3.3 per nine. He allowed less than a home run per inning. And I mean, like those are numbers that a decade or 15 years ago would have been unthinkable. And there's just, it's not that Shane Green is, is the problem. It's that there are so many pitchers, like, like you, you can just look up so many pitchers who have good numbers now. Um, and, um, I don't know i i i forget well something about shane green

bad things happen when people bring up shane green on podcasts with you um but okay well well it's jarring even even now it's still sort of jarring when you look at shane green's numbers and see how good they are compared to someone a couple decades ago but what if you took away all the numbers and we never saw the numbers yeah um would would we even mind that much i mean we'd still we'd still notice like if you if you took someone from the height of the offensive era and you just plop them down in the middle of today and didn't show them what the league average rates were, I think it would still be detectable. Right, well, it would be detectable.

I think you would know, like you would sense that this is a different game. Yeah, you would sense it's a different game, but there's no reason to think that it matters that it would be different. Like, it's fairly arbitrary that we were all raised with the expectation that the average major league game was going to be five to three and that more or less than that was off. And it's also fairly arbitrary that we think that this is low scoring. Like we think five, three, or I guess we think four, three is super low scoring, but

that's seven scoring events. And, and you know, football doesn't have more than that. Generally in a game, seven scoring events is a lot of scoring events for and you know football doesn't have more than that generally in a game seven scoring events is a lot of scoring events for a football game it's just that they decided that a scoring event counts as seven or six i guess seven we'll call it seven and like there's no reason to think that like simply declaring that points count more or you know that runs count for more would change anything but we are fairly foolish with this stuff. I mean, it is, like, I don't think that there's any, like, real reason to think that you have to have a certain equilibrium.

We just, I don't know, we just, I guess, are used to it. And so we find a change or reason to complain. I mean, usually there's this sort of perceived wisdom that if you launch, if you redesign your website, people will hate it the first day. Like every single time, there has never been a website redesign that people didn't hate the first time. But then within two weeks, it's totally normal.

And I feel that way about baseball, but I feel like we've gotten through the two weeks. The two weeks is like the last five years, and people still hate it. And so then you start thinking, okay, I guess we need to redesign it. And so, fine. I mean, that seems fine to me. But, no, I mean, it's basically baseball still, pretty much baseball. I don't feel that different watching.

There have always been 1-0 games, and there will be 13 to 12 games this year. It is baseball's offense kind of on a macro level is just like the old thing about the difference between a 275 and a 300 hitter, right? It's, you would never notice it watching it by yourself. You need the stats to tell you that you're seeing something weird. And if we looked away from the stats, yeah, we probably would all be fine. But we're never going to look away from the stats. That's all we do is look at the stats. That's all anybody does is look at the stats.

And it's probably unavoidable that we're going to complain about them. Yeah, I don't know. When I was following Harvey Strasburg earlier, it kind of, I don't know when I was following Harvey Strasburg earlier, it kind of, I don't know. I just felt like good pitching performance fatigue, sort of like as, as exciting as it was to see those guys face each other and see Harvey be really, really good again. I just kind of like looked at his line and yeah, six innings, no runs, four hits, one walk, nine strikeouts like that would have been worth getting excited about at one point and now it's just kind of you know another really

good outing um yeah didn't feel as special even though like relative to the league harvey is still going to be really good it's not not like everyone is doing what Harvey will do every single day. But overall, it just, I don't know, there's sort of a good pitching performance fatigue for me right now. I don't know what the optimal scoring rate is where you'd make the most number of people happy. But I assume that we have, I mean, we must have passed through it, right? In the last decade or so, we must have passed through the perfect scoring year because we were going from one extreme and now we are close to the other extreme. So at some point in the last decade or so, baseball was perfect. We didn't even appreciate it at the time.

We didn't even appreciate it at the time. Yeah, five times Roger Clemens struck out batters more frequently than Shane Green did in his pretty okay rookie year. It was an okay year. Five times. Yeah. Well, all right. So I guess we will continue to follow this story then you have given us permission to continue talking about strikeouts and scoring through the long

long summer of no scoring I need to figure out two or three more reasons why this is going to be a generation change year because I don't feel like I I don't know I didn't bring enough that's why I chuckled because there were only two two reasons even though they were big reasons Yeah I know

I need more Ask me again in a couple of weeks Alright So that's it for today I suppose That is it for this week Also you can join our Facebook group At facebook.com

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