Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 668: The No-Strikeout Streak, The Double DH, and the Overgrown Infield

Episode Date: May 1, 2015

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about DH alternatives, baseball without the grounds crew, the most exciting starters, and more.

Well, it's evil, wicked, mean, and nasty Don't step on the grass, Sam And it will ruin our fair country Don't be such an ass, Sam It will hurt your Sue and Johnny You're so full of bull, Sam Oh, we'll pay the disagree with me Please give up, you already lost the fight.

Good morning and welcome to episode 668 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus presented by The Play Index, baseballreference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello. Hello, how are you? All right. We are one month away

from Sonoma Stompers opening day. How does that make you feel? It's okay. It makes me feel okay. Okay. That's good. You've promised a good play index segment tonight. I don't know what it is, but apparently it's a good one. Should I just do it now? It's my favorite one since, this wasn't really a play index segment, but it's my favorite one since Babe Ruth's Frank Grimes. Yeah, that was a good one. That wasn't even one, but it's along those lines. It's much quicker than that. But

can I do it? Can I just go? No, you teased it. Let's wait. Space some questions in and we'll have that. Something to look forward to. We're doing listener emails today on a friday which is something that we used to do once upon a time right and we're doing it again today i guess we'll start this was dh week in our inboxes from all of you listeners i guess it was dh week on

the internet in general we got lots of dh. I'll start with one from Greg in West LA, and a bunch of people sent similar sort of questions. He says, I was thinking about the eventual demise of having pitchers bat and was wondering what it would look like in the other direction. What if any and all position players could be DH'd? If one assumes five starters and eight required position players, that leaves a dozen roster spots open for relief pitchers or DHs. How many of each do you carry? Do you still need regular bench players to spell injured or tired players? Or for lefty-righty matchups, are deep bench guys a thing of the past? It would vary from team to team, but reasonably,

of the past it would vary from team to team but reasonably what's the hugest or lowest number of dhs that would start so you can dh for your shortstop you can dh for your catcher you can dh for as many many bad hitters as you have but you still have the same number of roster spots i think probably long time listeners careful listeners might uh tell us that i i would guess that we've answered this because everything that I'm prepared to say, I feel like I've said. So I'm going to say it anyway. Okay, yeah, do that. Because the show's a hit, so if it worked once. This will be like a clip show. Okay.

So this was, of course, this was the fear. This is what anti-DHists warned of in the early 70s, that eventually it was going to just be like football with offense and defense. And that argument was made, I think, fairly commonly by purists at the time. And of course, it never happened. The rules never changed. But I also think that part of the reason that the rules never change is I don't think that there is really hardly any advantage to it. I guess to some degree if you could load up on short stops playing first base, that would help. But like we've talked about, I know we've talked about this.

One time I asked Kevin Goldstein, of the 10 best short stops in existence throughout the world playing at any level or not play if you had ten best defense of sorts of in the world how many of them are in the majors right now and he said ten told me the answer is ten

uh... that there's actually like uh... really strong correlation between how you are at some baseball skills and how you are the others. And I think that we kind of found this when we did the tryout, right? We had guys run and we had guys field and throw and hit. And really, like as kind of amazing as it was to discover this, like you really didn't need to see all of those to know who was going to be good at all of them. Like you could pretty much tell just by looking at them at how they were their

pants as, as embarrassing it is to be that guy. Like you could just sort of look in the way that they moved. Yeah. Tell it was an athlete. And the guys who were good at throwing were almost always good at hitting and fielding. And they had the motion,

they had the mechanics down. They just had, they knew how to do baseball things. And I'm guessing that partly that's because good players get better coaching along the way. And I think that part of it also is that if you took those guys that we identified as the best, you know, the best at any individual skill at the tryout, they would also be the best basketball players and the best football players and probably the best golfers. They're just, that's like what we think of as discrete skills in these sports really only kind of emerges at the very highest level.

In fact, they're all just the best athletes, and they sort themselves once they get into the best athlete pool. But for the most part, good hitters are also good fielders, and good fielders are also good hitters in baseball relative to the rest of the world. So, like, I think that you could probably, you could, if you wanted, yeah, you could have center fielders in every position. It wouldn't be that interesting because the defensive specialists wouldn't be beloved. They wouldn't become celebrities, I don't think.

They would kind of be generic. And the hitters, I don't think that you have enough hitters to fill out an offensive side of the game. I think that you would want an awful lot of your fielders to be hitting as well. My guess is that of the 240 players that you have playing defense, My guess is that of the 240 players that you have playing defense, I kind of think that probably 130 to 160 of them would also be among the 240 best hitters in the world. Yeah, I don't disagree.

I mean, there'd be a few teams that had AAA slugger types or quadruple-A slugger types just kind of hanging around in AAA and maybe they would be better than your your backup catcher who's starting on a certain day or your good defensive shortstop who can't hit and so you'd have you'd have the occasional person yeah but but yeah you're right I don't know what the maximum number would be. Maybe you'd have a team with, I don't know, four guys or something. Yeah. Very few hitters who aren't playing now would be hitters in this format. A bunch of fielders would be, but they would just be kind of marginally better

than the guys that are currently there. Like they almost wouldn't even be noticeably better, I think. Yeah. It was funny at that tryout how quickly we transitioned into scout mode so we started in left and they were doing fielding drills and by center where we were like sort of mumbling nonsense to each other kind of have to lean uh left we we you know the thing the moment i realized that we had become that was when we were watching the center fielders and we uh they were i don't know

maybe they each one took maybe six balls and we were like they had taken like four or five they were still taking it and it was like we're done here and we left like we went over like like we've seen all there is to be seen. Seasoned scouts of one tryout. The only two people on the field who were giving them any attention just leave, just turn their back and walk away. It was cold. It was heartless cold. And I noticed it while I was doing it and couldn't stop myself. Yeah, well, because we knew nothing about these players.

So usually we default to looking at numbers. And in this case, we had no numbers. Like, we were Googling guys to look up their college stats or see if they had played an affiliated ball or something. They had some stats on baseball reference. But for the most part, we knew nothing about these guys' past performance. And once you lose all of the stats that we usually look at then suddenly all the scouting stuff is your best option so like the guy who looks like he's got the good body or he looks like he has good mechanics or whatever maybe in the actual game he would be awful

but that's all you know i can't tell you how many times i wanted to know what that guy's ERA was against lefties. That's right. Yeah, I guess the difference is between, to the extent that there is a difference between statistical people and scouting people, is how much weight you put on one when you have both available to you, whereas in this case, we just had one at the time. Anyway, these are the kind of musings you can read about in our book in some number of months from now. All right. Greg in West LA, by the way, also emailed us to add us to his professional network on LinkedIn.

So thanks for that, Greg. All right. So that's the DH question. There were a few different DH questions, but they were all sort of variations on the same theme. Question from Francis in the Bronx. The discussion of eponymous pitcher days seems to have exploded this season. I don't know if I've just been spending more time on the internet,

but I see it all over the place. Happy Strasburg Day. It's King Felix Day. Can't wait till we finally reach the next Fernandez Day. The popularity of naming days after starting pitchers got me thinking about which pitcher's typical day was the most incredible in history. In what pitcher season did the average start produce the most excitement and buzz? And Francis wrote a blog post about this at his site, howblank.blogspot.com. But he came up with the guys you'd expect, I guess, Randy Johnson, Doc Gooden, Pedro. And he wants to know which pitcher day we would be most excited to go back in time to experience.

I'm sorry, I didn't click through. What were his his his top five were he used to what what did he use to decide what was the metric or what was the technology stats and quality of team and quality of uh like attendance and personality and just okay yeah well all right so it seems to me that not having fernando valens waylon here is a big oversight he mentions him okay his blog post but is not on his top five uh-huh and to me of uh recent years that the starts that i would say that I was most interested in, along the same lines as Fernando, although that was before me, but Dontrell days early on were absolutely crucial. I was watching every one of those. And Strasburg early as well. I don't know.

I mean, it's true that these guys that he lists were all dominant, and maybe they were so dominant that, in fact, they overwhelmed the newness effect. But my days would almost all be young pitchers who just feel like they're more interesting. However, they are good ones. Randy Johnson is a good one, and Pedro is a good one. But I'm going to go for mine. I'm going to pick.

Pedro's a good one. But I'm going to go for mine. I'm going to pick, it would either be Nolan Ryan in 1973 or Nolan Ryan in 1991. Because Nolan Ryan in 1991, when he was 44, he was having his best year in some years. I mean, he was 44. And that was the year that he threw the no-hitter. And then they started having like guaranteed no-hitter night or like a guaranteed no-hitter night where if he didn't throw a no-hitter, then you like got a refund or something. Do you remember that? No, you wouldn't.

No. So I don't know. I mean, there are better pitchers. There are more dominant pitchers. Randy Johnson in 2002 is probably the one of these five that most rings a bell with me. But you don't need to be, as we've established, you don't need to be that good to have your start be an event. And so as long as you clear the minimum threshold bar, I want some intrigue as well as goodness. And so that's why I think that all these years later i remember nolan ryan starts being events all these years later i remember don trowell and then randy johnson's were i don't know why i remember randy johnson one thing about randy johnson's i don't think it was 2002 i think

it was maybe 2004 was the year that he like lost like 16 straight one nothing games you know he straight 1-0 games. He had not that many by the way. He had a 176 ERA plus but lost 14 games. 16 and 14. Yeah, it was 2004. And there was a run there where he, anyway, he wasn't getting run support so his starts became very fast.

I don't know. You're mm-hmming like you either not buying this, not listening or waiting to drop a bomb on me. I'm just reminiscing about Small World Fantasy Baseball. Did you ever play Small World? No, I've never heard of it. There must be like four people listening who are nodding their heads now. There was this game, Small World. I guess guess i played i was still in grammar school it must have been like 99 2000 or so and it was this stock market style fantasy game where you started

out with a cap you had a 50 million dollar cap and it was like players were stock so as managers bought and sold them their price would increase or decrease. And so if you bought low on guys and sold high, you would just have a higher salary cap and you could buy more players. And it was great. I love that game. I played it for, I don't know, three years or so with all my friends. And I can remember like logging into internet cafes in the middle of nowhere in in Russia so I could set my small world lineup.

And for a couple of years there, it was called the Randro strategy that everyone followed because Pedro and Randy were amazing at that time. If they were not starting on the same day, if their starts didn't overlap, you could do this thing where you could pick them up at their lowest price because their stock price would ebb and flow between starts as managers added them. Because any manager could own any player. It was like the stock market. You could buy any stock. So you would have multiple teams in the same league with the same players. And it was all about when you had them and what your salary cap was. So Pedro and Randy's prices would fluctuate like crazy in between their starts because people would pick them up on the day they were starting and get their start and then

sell them again. And so if you bought like Pedro or Randy halfway between their starts when it was their price was at its lowest and then you just bought them and held them until they started and sold them on the day they started which would still count for your team then you could just pick up like millions and millions of dollars and it was kind of like an exploit I think maybe after that they they found some way to fix it but it was great for a couple Randro's strategy could get you a super high salary cap, and I did that religiously. So that was an event at the time just for me since I was playing Small World.

I always knew when those guys' starts were coming up. I don't know if there's an equivalent to that now. I tried Googling, and I found a bunch of blog posts with people lamenting that there's no Small World anymore. I think it was bought by the Sporting News at some point, and then I don't know what happened to it. Ben, you work at Grantland, and you haven't done an oral history on this? That's true.

I should probably do that now. I haven't done any oral histories. Do you remember, since this was the same time, you might, do you remember Hollywood Stock Exchange? No. Same thing with celebrities yeah basically you you'd buy stock in celebrities and and it was uh yeah it was like a kind of like kind of like before fantasy sports became fantasy everything uh and i remember in 1999 being really into this because like i had a subscription to Entertainment Weekly. I tracked the box

office openings. I was really into that stuff. My strategy was not to spread my money out. I went heavy on three stocks, bought all the stocks I could afford for George Clooney, who at the time, this would have been a pretty good investment. I mean, he was definitely kind of broken out. He'd done out of sight in Three Kings, I think. But this was still two years before Ocean's Eleven. So, I mean, you know, you hit a whole other level.

George Clooney, Kevin Smith, who never had another hit, and is just repulsed. You thought Kevin Smith was was gonna be a mainstream success yeah well i i at the time as a as a 19 year old i like was i loved the the three movies and i really loved chasing amy i've very purposefully not gone back and re-watched chasing which i'm led to believe is hot garbage uh and i also uh you know he was was coming out with the one with George Carlin and Alanis Morissette. I mean, this was a time where he was getting like these big casts and things. And so, yeah, it seemed like nothing could stop him except his own aesthetic, as it turned out. And then my big investment, though, those were relatively small.

My big bet was on Wes Bentley. And then my big investment, though, those were relatively small. My big bet was on Wes Bentley. That didn't pan out. The guy who filmed the plastic bag in American Beauty. Yeah, Wes Bentley. So let's see. Wes Bentley these days is making movies he was in an interstellar he was an interstellar i'm trying to find if there's a single other movie i've seen he's been in i mean he's in four movies a year oh yeah of course he's sending a crane

in hunger games that's a big one yeah and let's see. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, there are dozens of movies. Although, actually, he took about seven years off. And so, yeah, he did American Beauty, and then he had a few movies that flopped. The Claim. I saw The Claim in 2000. And then took like seven years off for the most part. And has been working steadily four or five movies a year.

Ever since two of which you've heard of. So he's a post-type sleeper. I guess so. I wonder if I had an account. I mean if I remembered my... If you log in now it's probably worth millions. It could be. It's still up!

If only I could remember my Hotmail address. log in definitely hotmail i logged in with my hotmail all right well anyway harvey day was fun sabathia day with the brewers tomorrow's harvey day yeah sure how about sabathia with the brewers when he was like starting on three days rest over and over and pitching seven complete games in 17 starts for them. Yeah, definitely, but that one benefits just from you've got a fixed ending. He's not going to do that all year. You know that he's holding his breath and basically sprinting for three or four weeks. Which makes it fun.

No, it makes it super fun, but if Kyle Loesch were doing that, it'd be fun. I mean, it was just not as fun. No, it makes it super fun, but if Kyle Loesch were doing that, it'd be fun. I mean, it was just not as fun. It was partly the things that had nothing to do with him, although he was very good. Alright, you want to do your much-bellyhood play index? Well, yeah. Now I've got

expectations so high. A huge flop, like Wes Bentley. Alright, so, Ben. Yeah. What's up with Tanner Roark?. All right. So, Ben. Yeah. What's up with Tanner Roark? That's right. He got bypassed to start, right?

Oh, that's not what I was going to say. What's up? No. Well, that happened. Are you aware of what's up with Tanner Roark? I guess not. I thought that was what? He has appeared in seven games.

He has thrown 12 and a third innings. He has faced 51 batters. He has thrown 12 and a third innings. He has faced 51 batters. He has zero strikeouts. And so this got me. I assumed that this would be notable, but I didn't know how notable. So I went looking. I went to Play Index. I went to Streak Finder, Pitching Streak Finder.

I looked up games appearances to start the season with zero strikeouts. And I did this for starters and relievers. So first I'm going to say that for starters, it's kind of inconclusive. If I had two more seconds, then I could do it. Not two more, but like eight minutes I could do it. But basically there are, Not two more, but like eight minutes I could do it. But basically there are, since 2000, there have been three starters who cracked 10 innings at the end of a start. So basically 12 pitchers have failed to strike out anybody in their first two outings, okay? In their first two starts. And most of those guys got hit around, and so they were only at like six innings after two outings or five innings.

I assume that they got weeded out well before they got to 12. There are three pitchers who had more than eight innings in those starts. Joel Pinero in 10 innings, Scott Erickson in 10 and a third, Kirk Reeder in 11. It's very possible that one of them made it past 12 innings in their third start before striking out somebody in like the fourth inning of that game or something. I could that up i haven't looked it up i had a thing to do it but anyway long story short nobody as a starter has ended a game with a streak to start a season longer than tanner or arcs for relievers also true uh but not even close like not not remotely close. I think that the highest I could find of any reliever going strikeout-less was Jason Simon-Taki. Do you remember him?

Mm-hmm. Who was a Cardinals pitcher briefly in the mid-2000s. He went eight and a third, which doesn't even get him. It's barely in the conversation of Tanner Roark. And a couple of guys got eight. Almost nobody, though, got higher than, you know, five or six, ending an outing. And that makes sense, right, because it's relievers strike out guys. It's hard to go that long without striking a guy out. I did a quick little math just to see how rare this would be.

So last year, the lowest strikeout rate as a reliever of any pitcher was Anthony Bass, and Anthony Bass struck out like 2.2 batters per nine. And so if you had Anthony Bass-level strikeout rate, I did a per-batter rate, the chances that you would go 51 batters without striking somebody out to start a season are about 1 in 25, which is not that extraordinary. Except that to have Anthony Bass's strikeout rate, you already have to have defied the odds. I mean, Anthony Bass wouldn't normally have Anthony Bass's strikeout rate.

Anthony Bass's strikeout rate, his true talent strikeout rate, is considerably higher than that. And so it's not fair to expect anybody to start at that strikeout rate and then do the odds. So then I looked at the lowest strikeout rate of any active reliever with at least 150 innings, and that would be Joe Bimal. If you had Joe Bimal's strikeout rate, the lowest in baseball. So that's a pretty extreme. If you had that, the chances of doing this, of doing what Tanner Roark has done, are still 1 in 2,500, which is extremely rare. And if you had any kind of strikeout rate, like a normal pitcher, like, for instance, Tanner Roark,

who struck out 6.5 per 9 as a starter last year, you would think as a reliever probably you would project that to be around maybe 8, and you wouldn't be shocked if he just busted out and struck out 11.5. If he were the median pitcher, which last year was Mike Morin with the Angels, if you had his strikeout rate, the odds of doing this to start a season would be 1 in 150,000. So that's pretty unusual. So this is very odd that Tanner Roark is doing this. But that is not what ultimately this led me to.

I wanted to see who had the all-time record because I only went back to 2,000 for this query. So I went for the all-time record because I only went back to 2000 for this query so I went for the all-time record and as near as I can tell and it's possible I botched something but as near as I can tell the second longest that anybody has ever gone is like 27 innings which was Marv Goudat. And the third longest was 23 innings, which was Ben Cantwell, which I've used that name as a joke before. I think that might

have been when I was in Cespedes Family Barbecue. That might have been my old-timey name. Ben Cantwell. That's your name, Ben. Part of it. Not the good the good part no you do things very well but ben right i got that part but the record so 27 is second place the record is ted wingfield who in 1927 went 66 and two-thirds innings wow 40 more innings than the next longest streak to start a season.

40 more innings. And so Ted Wingfield, you wonder, oh my gosh, how did this guy do this? So I went and I looked at his season and he struck out one batter that year. He threw 75 innings over 20 games, including eight starts. And he struck out 1 batter. He hit 3, struck out 1.

He had 1 win, and 1 strikeout. He completed 2 games, but 1 strikeout. He completed 1 strikeout. He had 9, he got the 27th out twice, but the 3rd strike won. You got the picture. I twice but the third strike ones you got the picture so uh i'm

not the first person who's ever noticed this uh matthew caruth has mentioned it a couple times although i haven't seen anybody really dive into it or write about it and so i went to the saber bio for him and even the saber bios are amazing they're incredible and they catch everything and they're wonderful not a single mention of this. And this is, by the way, the record. I mean, it's not like there's anybody else who struck out one batter in 108 innings or three batters in 240 innings. This is by far the record for the lowest strikeout rate in a season.

So it doesn't mention this, but it does mention, and this is where I'm really excited by this play index. It does mention this. His name is, I told you his name is Ted Wingfield. What's his name, Ben? Ted Wingfield. Ted Wingfield. Except is it really Fred Wingfield?

Like his name is Fred on baseball reference. He was born Fred. In news accounts at the time, he was often referred to as Fred. But we know him as Ted. His obituary lists him as Ted and the Saber bio explains so how did he get the name Ted the story goes that he was on a baseball team at some point early in his career with two other Freds the manager found that it was so difficult and as legend would have it one day on the dugout, the three Freds were sitting beside each other on the bench when the manager looks at them and says, Fred, no one realized, no one knew

who he was addressing. That's it, the manager yelled. From now on, you're Ned, you're Ted, and you're still Fred. So Ted was the guy in the middle. I wonder if Ned went by Ned for the rest of his life. I agree with this, and I have considered when I have the time, which might be while you're talking, eight minutes, seeing if I can find a Ned.

Well, I wish, I don't know whether I like it more or less because it said as legend would have it. I might like it more if it were well documented or might like it less. But I'm glad to know about it anyway. It's going to be tough, man. Records are, I mean, records for these minor

league teams are already tough. And so there was a year that he was on a team with another Fred. Only one? But only one and no Ned. There were guys on a team with another Fred. Only one? But only one and no Ned. There were guys on that team, though, named Skipper Friday. Furpo Marbury?

Oh, yeah. He's famous. Furpo? Really? Yeah. He's a senator. He was like one of the first proto-closers. Who are you talking about? Oh really?

You knew this huh? Furpo huh? Squire Potter Showboat Fisher A lot of these are clearly Named names Pinky Hargrave And we'll stop there Well I think that lived up to its billing

Any portion of that play index Could have been an okay play index segment, but you kept going. You kept adding, building. I found another team, Chattanooga, where he is on a team with another Fred, but only one Fred and no Ned. And I'm guessing, my guess would be, that might be the best bet, but who knows what team he was on, you know? I mean, at that point in time, he could have been, I mean, this could have been one of those circus teams,

or he could have been on one of those teams that dressed up as ladies and pretended to be ladies. We just don't know. We'll never know. Well, I'm glad we know something about Ted slash Fred Wingfield. Thanks for bringing that to our attention. You're welcome. Play Index, use the coupon code PP when you subscribe, as you should, and get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription.

Okay, question from Wes. If grounds crews were outlawed today and no maintenance whatsoever was allowed, how quickly would the game become unrecognizable? It probably wouldn't be noticeable for a few months since they're starting from perfection, but in two years, every ground ball would take a bad hop and the outfield would be like running in a jungle. What would be the biggest gameplay and strategic changes? What would league ERA be? This could be a fix for down offense. Hang on, no maintenance whatsoever was allowed no none well i presumably the the players could keep scuffing the dirt in front of them as they do to well when they

mess something up and pretend that there was a bad hop but there's no no one paid to do this there's no but the grass ben could be yeah four months until the grass was 10 inches that's a problem so the game would become unrecognizable pretty quickly you'd still have i mean the infield would still be the infield so you'd there's no grass on on most of it so you'd i heard the important parts or first of all there might be there might be there. There might be soon. I don't know. Do you think anything can grow on an infield? If you just went out to the infield and planted corn and you took care of it, you watered it, would it grow? Or do you think that that is like a completely non-carbon-based, I don't know if soil is ever carbon-based, but non-carbon-based soil?

Just that it's basically like they took a bunch of, you know, artificial dirt and chopped it up and put it out there. I think nature would find a way. All right. So like three weeks? Yeah. Okay. Grass. I mean, you can't do anything about the grass. It's done. You're done-zo, man. I guess so. And that's the only thing, by the way, that would matter. I wouldn done-zo, man. I guess so. And that's the only thing, by the way, that would matter.

I wouldn't care about anything else. I think everything else would be just fine. But the grass. Yeah, I guess there's no getting around that, really. What if you can, and if you stipulate that you can cut the grass, then that's kind of it, right? Unless there's, I mean, over eons of geological time, there would be pits

on the field and you would be happy. But over a year or a decade, I don't know, I guess you'd get divots. Maybe we underestimate how much work the ground screw does to keep the field in a playable condition. I mean, we've seen fields in the park that are not well tended to. They're rocky. I guess there wouldn't be rocks. Rocks couldn't suddenly appear. There are no rocks to begin with. But you'd get bad hops.

I don't know. Babbip would go up eventually. It's not a very exciting answer. Bears might live there. Maybe. Without a grounds crew, there might be bears. I feel like with all the post-apocalyptic fiction I have consumed in one medium or another, I should be well prepared to answer this question. But usually those things are taking place in cities.

I think that the infield, let's just put it, look, Wes is going to then email and say, no, I meant to say that you could cut the grass. And we're going to say, Wes, you've got to put these in the infield. But let's just go ahead and skip the, all right, so you can cut the grass. I think that the infield – He does say the outfield would be like running in a jungle eventually. So that's – I mean, maybe he's – Maybe he means that literal trees would be plants.

Maybe you can't cut around a sycamore tree. Maybe that – I don't know. It's the grass. There would be puddles and then it would get rocky. There'd be, you have like sort of like, somebody would drive, oh you know the other thing is that people would drive their trucks on it. That's what I do know is any untended field eventually somebody drives their truck on it. Like that is a thing to do in high school. Find a field, drive your truck on it. So you'd definitely have truck grooves in the infield. Okay.

Oh, the guys from across town would probably do a prank. Still fences, though. Still security, I'm guessing. It's not total anarchy. Yeah. No, I know what it'd be to get a truck on there. Someone would. Drive the ambulance on there.

I don't know, Ben. Yeah. I feel like the grass is pretty much a sticking point here. It seems to be. Okay, take one more from Mike D. in St. Louis. We all watched the Maguire-Sosa home run race for the record in 1998. Would we be super interested in watching Billy Hamilton and Dee Gordon making a run at the single-season stolen base record?

Would ESPN cut in every Time they were on base and have to stay With them for the entire time they were on first And second That's the end Alright Now the answer portion I well geez it'd be

So different right because we don't need People to tell us anymore When a thing is happening like we don't we Wouldn't need people to tell us anymore when a thing is happening. We wouldn't need anybody to cut into it. We cut on our own. We market to each other and we have agency in what we put on our screens. So I think that it would not be no. I think the answer is no. The answer is no. We would be into it. You and me would be into it. Lots would be written about it. But no, this would not capture America's imagination. I would expect that... Well, for one thing, ESPN, I don't think... Can ESPN cut? I don't know if ESPN any longer has cutting rights. I think ESPN would not cut into anything, whether it has the

rights or not. I think MLB Network would cut quite a bit because they're big cutters. And I think that on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is your mom knows that this is happening, even before the record. Like, obviously, once it's on Time magazine, that's a 10, right? And 1 is we found it in a play index and turned it into a meme and so on the scale of one to ten i would put this at like uh five and a half to six and a half

somewhere in that range i mean think about how excited we were about hamilton last year how many articles there were just about every time hamilton did something got caught stealing, played Yadier Molina, whatever it was, if Hamilton were really doing what we were all excited about him doing, that'd be a pretty big deal. No, I think it would pass the, it would certainly pass the cousin threshold. I don't think it would not pass the mom threshold. And I think unless one of them broke the record, if it were just a chase, I don't think it would pass the uncle threshold. Okay. Ben. Yeah.

Six months of grass growing uncut. What is BABIP? I mean, what's BABIP on line drives? Sorry. Sorry. No, let me take that back. That's horribly phrased. What I meant to ask is, of all batted balls, how many of them are caught line drives?

So line drives make up like 20% of batted balls, and BABF is like 650 on those. So we're at like 13% of batted balls, roughly, are caught line drives. And some of those would not get caught because people have to run to catch them, but other pop-ups would. I'm going to just estimate that somewhere around 13% is still a very big... I'll just... I'll bump it up to maybe 18%. I will say Babbitt would be

820. I don't think it would be that high. Well, you'd still... I mean, most fly balls would be caught. I don't know that that's true. If you're running... If the grass were above the outfielder's heads, then maybe not. If it were at their knees? I think... I mean, think of how bouncy your head would be trying to gallop in a foot of grass. You wouldn't be able to keep your head straight and steady. You wouldn't be able to run and catch anything. So I'll go with you. I'll go higher.

But I'm not going to go, unless you have more than that, unless you're bringing bigger weapons than that, I'm not going any lower than 715, Babbit. Well, the thing is that you could play your infielders way in, right? Because every... Because they'll get hit by a line drive.

Yeah, that's the concern. But I think, I mean, you wouldn't do silly position. You wouldn't do the wall in front of home plate. But everyone would be playing, you know, infield in, probably maybe farther in than the typical infield in depth right now because every ball would die, like, by the time it got to the pitcher's mound just about. So you'd have, have like every infielder

playing pitcher's helper pretty much and you'd have to find the ball that wouldn't be easy but you could you could see its trajectory and you'd see the grass parting and you could go chase it down and you'd have all your infielders except the first baseman Kind of crashing the plate All the time and they'd have to be Wary in case there was a line drive But I think given that Given the fact that all of those ground balls Would die like before they got To the pitcher's mound and you'd have your third

Baseman and your shortstop and your second Baseman all crowded around that Area plus you'd have There is no point There is no amount Of playing in that area. Nope. There is no point. There is no amount of playing in that they could safely play that would turn a single ground ball into an out. Every single ground ball would be lost. It would take, you'd have to find them.

You'd have to reach down and get it. And I mean, I don't think anything is getting to the fielders. I think that the opposite happens. Everybody plays outfield and you've got seven outfielders, uh, or maybe you've got a couple of guys who are sort of, uh, maybe two guys are around the infield because you just get such a bonus for being able to actually run on the dirt that you can cover a lot more ground, but like five or six outfielders, one guy on the dirt and then another guy on the dirt maybe then we would finally see bunting against the shift i think you're bunting obviously you have to be outlawed although although actually it might you'd have to be able to bunt pop you

know line drives or pop it because if you bunt it on the ground it would only go two feet in the catcher would just walk over and get it yeah right but i. But I do think bunting. And given that there's, in fact, now that I think about it, given that we are talking about a 720 Babbitt, I'm not sure that bunting would be worth it. Yeah, maybe not. Like if you hit one, it'd be mostly doubles if you hit it in the infield in this alignment. Because it's not going to be easy to find the ball. I'm telling you, I've spent a lot of time in weeds looking for baseballs in my life. And I think that hitting a ball to third base that gets caught somewhere halfway between

home and third and nobody's quite nearby and then they have to go dig around and someone's got to cover the base. And I think you might be looking at a triple. In time, the base paths would be overgrown too. I mean, it's not like the the base paths are a region where grass doesn't grow that's because of the grounds crew so very quickly you would have grass on the infield so that would slow down the batter and they wouldn't be able to find the base also so it would be a terrible spectator sport that's why i asked i don't know that this is

soil that plants are going to grow comfortably in. I think grass would grow. I mean, probably, but it would be, you know, I could see it being hard for grass to take on life there. I mean, it would grow inward. You know, it'd grow like it'd grow out, I guess, or into the... But I'm not convinced. I think you're probably right. And I think certainly once a truck drives on it and then you've got churned dirt with grooves and little bits of crags here and there for a seed to get some shade and some sun and for moisture to collect. Definitely post-truck infield starts growing all sorts of things. I don't think it'd be grass, honestly. I think it'd be you'd have thistle. I think it'd be a thistle infield.

We must have some groundskeepers listening. I don't think it'd be grass, honestly. I think it'd be, you'd have thistle. I think it'd be a thistle field, thistle infield. We must have some groundskeepers listening. Someone should email us and let us know what would happen, what happens when they don't do their job for a few days. Yeah, or if you're not a groundskeeper, you can email us and tell us too. Sure. We'll take those as well Okay

Speaking of Playindex players Who we made into memes by the way We didn't do our Ryan Webb update And there was Ryan Webb news He's on the Indians now So that's the Ryan Webb update Back in the running for a save theoretically So that's it for today

You pitched in like the 3rd or the 4th today though Oh that's not a good sign It's not good for saves. It's also not good for building your games finished, although it's better for building your games finished. Yeah. Okay, so that's it. Thanks for listening to us this week.

We will be back next week. You can send us emails, again, at podcasts at baseballprospectus.com. Join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively Wild and rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes. We'll be back on Monday.