Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 712: Combating Baseball’s Beanball Wars

Episode Date: August 4, 2015

Ben, Sam, and Zachary Levine banter about hidden streaks, then discuss baseball’s latest self-policing problems and the best ways to discourage beanballs.

The games they got are all getting slowed down. They have to get you slipping and it's all over the pound. And one guy's gonna send me as a story. They're gonna bash it up, bash it up, bash it up, bash it up. Hey! The man you're talking back to me, take him out. Gotta keep them separated. Hey!

The man you're disrespecting me, take him out. Gotta keep them separated. Hey! Don't pay no mind. We're running a race. See, you won't be doing any time. Hey, hey, come out and play. Good morning and welcome to episode 712 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by The Play Index at baseballreference.com.

I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg of Grantland and also guest Zachary Levine of Baseball Perspectives and the, I don't know, are you the Steve Martin or the Tom Hanks of this show? Do we know? I'll be Steve Martin. I'll take that one. All right. I'll do Steve Martin.

I'll take that one. All right. We are going to talk about throwing baseballs at baseball players in a minute. But I wanted to ask you guys something, both of you. So I was looking at Clayton Kershaw and what he has done since that episode where we laid down odds that he would end up with a better ERA than Tim Lincecum. we laid down odds that he would end up with a better ERA than Tim Lincecum. And since that day, since that day, he has a 1.10 ERA in 90 innings. Wow.

Yeah, 1.10. So, of course, the record is 1.12. And it's, you know, it's like it seems practically impossible that anybody would ever break that record. It seems practically impossible that anybody would ever break that record. But this is a guy who's just gotten in an arbitrary end point. He has gone halfway to a fully qualified season with an ERA below this. And what I wanted to ask you guys is, in tennis, you can win the Grand Slam, which is winning all four majors in a year. But you can also kind of win the Grand Slam just by winning all four consecutively,

even if they aren't in the same year. It's not quite so prestigious, but it sort of counts, right? Yeah, there are two different terms for that, right? They usually just put your name in front of the one like there's the grand slam and the serena slam or the tiger slam or that yeah it's like the gold like the golden slam that's no that's the grand slam and the gold medal that was a stuff you were a uh the calendar year there's there's something there's this came up on Hang Up and Listen recently when they were talking about Serena Williams. Yeah.

I remember the Golden Slam from the year that I had a subscription to Sports Illustrated for kids, and Steffi Grof was on the cover. No, seriously, when you said Golden Slam, I remember it because I read that issue of Sports Illustrated for kids in 1988. That's a thing I remembered. I kept that one now formative experience 27 years i kept it waiting waiting this is like my uh uh slumdog millionaire moment uh all right so anyway uh but it like it basically counts right like that's seen as a big thing right I mean you guys

have had the hidden perfect game conversation we have had the hidden perfect game conversation which is a total non-entity but I'm more wonder except in conversations like this but I'm wondering why whether you think that it is a bug or a feature that we don't care

about players accomplishments over the course of a year unless that year starts roughly April 1st and ends roughly October 1st. Do you think we should? Like if a guy hits 400 over the course of 162 games or a guy wins 30 games over the course of 162 games or whatever, should we make a bigger deal out of it? Because we don't.

We don't make any deal out of it. It is worth a Jason Stark tweet if you break a record in a non-seasonal calendar year. And it doesn't feel like that's necessarily right. You're right. It strikes me as a function of just a limited capacity to see these things that there's just so many single season events single game events you know the Sammy Sosa's home runs in a month we have so many of these things that uh it's just we are just sort of at our mental capacity for seeing these things.

And, yeah, I would love to know how many guys have beaten the 112 over, I guess, seeing as we're modern right now, call it a 32 or 33 start span rather than whatever they were doing back in the 60s. Well, it's going to be zero. It's going to be zero. Nobody has. I'm sure of that uh yeah so i guess i would want to know what's the closest anyone has come since was there a

pedro segment of 99 and 00 was there a maddox segment of 94 95 that would have come close but yeah it's just we are at sort of at the edge of of uh everything we can care about here. That's my opinion. It's just that it's a mental capacity thing. Yeah. It's also a calculation thing. It's harder to calculate. Like just the actual process of seeing what someone did over a calendar year is difficult. If you want to go to Baseball Reference and look at the game logs,

If you want to go to baseball reference and look at the game logs, you can't do that really across years in a very convenient method. And so's hard to pretend that someone was in the same mental state over a year long period that included a several month long off season. Like if there was a hitting streak that was 60 games or something across the course of two seasons and, and there hasn't been, but if there had been, that would probably be regarded as less special because the whole mystique of the hitting streak is that you are hot you're on a hot streak you are better during this period than you are normally and all the

pressure is building up and you're dealing with that on a day-to-day basis so i think that's part of it is that it's just more satisfying if it's a self-contained, if it's all consecutive and there's no long layoff. But I agree that it's really just as impressive if Tony Gwynn hits 400 over the course of 162 games, which he did. It doesn't particularly matter if he does it all in one year or not. Yeah, you're right. it does feel more satisfying if you can uh impose on this achievement the feeling that the player has reached some sort of um like nirvana right where like you believe that they've cracked baseball uh for this contained period of

time and if you just think of it as dice rolls that cluster together which is what a broken up year kind of forces you to to reckon with then yeah it's it's just as rare and yet somehow not quite so fun i guess i found a uh i found an oral hershiser stretch of 154 innings with a 1.05 ERA. But just eyeballing it, it does not look like he made it to 162 on either side of that stretch. And that's not even 32 starts. That's just getting to the bare minimum of 162 innings. So that would have been, obviously,

probably the first one everybody might think of. And he didn't get to it. I wonder what Gibby's best 162-inning stretch was. Hang on, I'm going to look. I'm going to look, and I'm going to go right here, and I'm going to go down to there. 164 innings, 0.71. I think I can actually do better than that.

Hang on. 165 innings, 0.6. Wow. Four unearned runs though In that time That ruins it 165 innings with a.6 ERA He was basically The greatest reliever season of all time

As a starter In that time In that time by the way he made 18 starts And not one of them Less than 9 innings One was 11 One was 10 And he lost a game 18 starts and not one of them less than nine innings. One was 11, one was 10, and he lost a game and had no decision. In fact, in that time, he had a five-run game and a six-run game.

So you can imagine how amazing all the other ones were. That's when men were men and pitchers were pitchers. They finished what they started And none of them ever got an injury No, exactly I wonder if I No, I don't think I can do any better than that Man, oh man, point six Alright, let's talk about bean balls, you guys Okay

Over the weekend there were two Two stories of teams being mad at each other And taking it out via the baseball The Pirates and the Reds had a little brawl being mad at each other and taking it out via the baseball. The Pirates and the Reds had a little brawl involving Andrew McCutcheon hit by a pitch and Mark Melanson hit by a pitch and some other hit by pitches and Marlon Bird going out and being tough. And probably a little more attention for the Royals Blue Jays in which Josh Donaldson was hit by a pitch after perhaps pimping a home run.

Benches were warned. And then the Royals seemed to go up and in twice more without consequence. And then later in the game, the Blue Jays threw at a, and all hell erupted. And that one got more attention because there was lots of talking and tweeting after the game and good quotes, surprisingly good quotes. Not surprising when you consider who covers the Royals, but otherwise, surprisingly good quotes.

And so Zachary proposed this topic for Ben and I, and so that's why we brought Zachary on. Hi, Zachary. Hello. Again. I like to bring a little violence to the show. Yeah. So Zachary's question was, what would it take to get teams to stop throwing at each other,

and then in parentheses, that the union would go for? And I have, I think uh you know i've i've been on record as saying that um eventually someone is going to die and then we'll fix this and it's a shame that someone's going to die before we fix it i don't particularly like the throwing it guys i think that even if you're aiming at the at their back uh that players don't have that good of command, and it's only a little mistake to hit their head, especially when you're not used to throwing to that location at that particular angle. And so while I don't particularly judge the players who are involved in any of these because it is the culture, it is the tradition, it is sanctioned in a way,

and under the rules that we play by I understand why they do it and I don't think they're bad people I do think that the league should have done something or should do something I don't particularly find it to be a great feature of the game What about you two?

I'm the same way It's a little bit surprising that this is still such a big thing. One of the things I was thinking about in proposing the topic is what bad parts of the baseball culture have we gotten rid of? What are the things that 30, 40 years ago we would have said, I hope that in a couple generations this is gone,

or looking back as you know enlightened or want to be enlightened people that we are now we would look back and I mean the the one you think of pretty quickly is chewing tobacco and I mean that's it was such a part of baseball's culture and it still is at a lot of levels I mean mean, there, there've been rules at certain levels and there's been certainly a, a health conscious kick, but I don't, I don't think we've, you know, it's still a part of baseball culture. It's still, as far as I know, sort of way overrepresented among, among baseball players, at least among people of baseball, major leaguers level of wealth. So, among people of baseball, major leaguers level of wealth. So, you know, I don't have really good examples of something that we've sort of eradicated

from the culture and a model to follow. I don't know. Do you guys have anything that that was a big deal and a big thing, but we've gotten rid of? Segregation. Segregation. OK, that's good. And so that one took, you know, some forces around it and also some pretty brave people. But I mean, that's sort of

an addition rather than an elimination thing. That's a good question. mean i don't know if this qualifies but uh catching used to be like lethal dave fleming on the giants broadcast a couple weeks ago was telling the story about how the uh how catchers pads came into the game uh and i i didn't know this particular story although everybody should read the book catcher by by the way, which is a great, great baseball book and is about how catchers back in the 19th century were kind of like cowboys in a way. They were sort of part of popular culture as these tough guys who were really brutal and deranged. But anyway, so Fleming is telling the story about the guy who invented the, I think it was the knee pads. And he had suffered a pretty bad injury. And so when he came back, he had pads.

I think they were just knee pads. Just knee pads. And the crowd booed him so lustily that they had to forfeit the game. And it was his home crowd. So I guess the idea that, I don't know if that's this but that's sort of more like chewing tobacco the uh there's a sort of less self-destructive and spitballs right spitballs were very much a part of the tradition of the game and kind of this fraternity of people who loaded up the baseball and it was sort of you know there was a bit of an arc to it maybe. And it was just grandfathered in.

It was officially grandfathered in, but only after, as you say, someone died. And it was decided that there shouldn't be spitballs anymore. And so that's sort of similar in that there's, you know, it's kind of like there's a mystique to it. And there's almost a fondness for it. And it seems sort of archaic, but it had been around forever. But once it became clear that it was dangerous, it was eventually banned and it took quite a while. And there was, you know, a couple decades where people were still throwing them even after it had been banned or close to it. But

now no one throws spitballs, or at least legally. So that's an example of, like, you could imagine if there were no more baseball fights, I don't think we would really miss them. I sort of, I get the argument that it adds some intrigue in that we're talking about those incidents that happened this past weekend. And we wouldn't be talking about those baseball games if not for those incidents, most likely. And it's not only the incident, but it's the whole reaction and people tweeting things and then deleting tweets and then tweeting apologies.

I'm referring to Jordano Ventura and Jose Bautista here. And there's, you know, there's a whole discussion about it. Even if part of the discussion is, should we stop doing this? It's at least getting people talking about baseball. And that's maybe in a sense, a good thing. But if there were never another bench clearing brawl, I don't think I would be lamenting the loss. I don't think I'd be sitting around thinking baseball is boring now because no one ever hits another person with a baseball intentionally yeah that that's sort of like how people before replay came in talked about how we would miss managers arguing uh yeah right and that didn't really seem that realistic and

you don't really miss it occasionally a manager will argue, but we've done okay without seeing Billy Martin types coming out and kicking dirt on the plate. I guess the argument that probably a person who defends this in baseball would use is not so much that there's entertainment value in the brawl or there's entertainment value in any of this, but that, I mean, this is always the argument for, I think, for hockey fights, which is that by having this kind of way of enforcing rules and codes and etiquette, you keep larger problems from happening. Now, I remember C.J. Wilson was talking about how, I think it was C.J. Wilson was talking about how

if you think a guy is using steroids, there's not really much you can do other than throw at him. And that was sort of a glimpse into this idea that whatever you do wrong, whatever breach of etiquette you have, if you steal a bag up by eight, well, we're going to throw at you. And if you up by eight well we're gonna throw at you and if you do steroids we're gonna throw at you and if you you know spit your gum at the wrong time

which is actually a thing right i think that i i was using that jokingly but i think actually kimbrough that happened like twice this year i think there were gum spitting incidents yeah with like kimbrough and pagan i think was Anyway, they're going to throw at you. And so when you use the, well, hey, this keeps people from misbehaving in others. Yeah, misbehaving in completely benign ways that lead to nothing otherwise by throwing baseballs at their general head area. So probably that would be the argument. But it's not like there is a dangerous way of playing baseball. Other than this, this is the only dangerous way of doing it. It is like we have decided to solve all the peaceful ways with the dangerous way.

Yeah. And there's definitely an impulse to it that goes across sports. People are talking about this all the time with hockey and banning fagging in hockey, and hockey has more actual fistfights than baseball typically does. But it's that, and it's all the concern about head injuries in sports. There's just less and less acceptance of the fact that athletes take physical risks and that getting seriously injured is a byproduct of those. There's a lot less tolerance and certainly a lot less enthusiasm for that across sports and

perhaps across society. So the problem with getting rid of it in baseball, it's kind of like Mike Peska's argument about gun control is that it's really hard to remove the impulse to kill lots of people from everyone in your society, but it's maybe a little bit easier to remove the ability to kill lots of people in your society. And in baseball, it's sort of the same way. You can't necessarily remove the impulse to throw a baseball at people. These are young men in highly pressured situations. Some of them are going to lose their tempers and are going to have the impulse to throw at people. The problem is that there's no real analogy to gun control in that there's no ball control.

Pitchers have to throw baseballs. You can't take the baseballs away. So you can't remove the weapons that they are using. So you have to somehow either remove the desire to use baseballs as weapons or make the penalties so severe that it overcomes the impulse. Yeah. So Ben, you mentioned both gun control and your example of a spitball. You're talking sort of legislation here. And I was curious what you guys thought would happen if, you know, Rob Manfred woke up tomorrow and said, I don't think we want to have this anymore.

don't think we want to have this anymore. And the next guy who was throwing at somebody got 25 games. First, what do you think would happen with that penalty? Would it be knocked down upon appeal? And then also if it held up or if he got 15 or 20 or something like that, and there was a series of those, do you think we would start to see these incidents decreasing? So the only reason that it wouldn't be knocked down on appeal would be if just commissioners get to do whatever they want now, which seems to have some precedent in other sports. But, I mean, there's clearly no precedent for this. Right. There'd be none.

It would just be he woke up, you know, Tuesday morning and said, I've kind of had enough of this. Yeah. No precedent. So the only way he wins an arbitration hearing, I think, over this or an appeal in this is if whoever is doing the judging just goes, well, he's the commissioner. He can do whatever he wants. And so otherwise, I do think it would get knocked down. And so otherwise I do think it would get knocked down.

And I don't know how you – I don't know if you just move a game at a time. Because I don't know what the penalties are like now as opposed to 20 years ago. It sort of feels to me like they're a little stiffer than they used to be. Well, 20 years ago they were also all accompanied by brawls, and now none of them are. years ago they were also all accompanied by brawls and now none of them are so it's a little hard to sometimes separate what you get for the the the the pitch and what you get for the fight and now it's you know there's nothing there's been very little done in any of what passes for fights now that's that's suspension worthy so kind of a little bit different thing. And they've tried some intermediate measures like warning the benches is a fairly recent addition, right?

That's within our experience of the game that was added to the umpire's tool belt. You mean like sometime within the last 27 years? Yeah, like issuing an official warning. That's a new-ish thing, I think. Is it? I mean, new-ish, boy, that can mean almost anything. Yeah, especially in baseball.

I'll see if I can... Was anyone warned after Bob Gibson threw out people? Probably not, right? Yeah, I don't think so. By the way, I don't know if Bob Gibson's reputation is just legend or if it's true, but when you're talking about things that have been eradicated from baseball, I mean, pretty much every single person in baseball, with like two or three exceptions who everybody hates,

all agree that you don't throw at a guy's head and the legend of bob gibson and don drysdale is they threw at your head so you could argue that like we're two-thirds of the way there now the problem is that not throwing at a guy's head intentionally is not going to ever keep anybody from getting hit in the head. But at least culturally, there's a big difference between where we are now and where the legend of where they were 50 years ago was. And then your colleague Jonah Carey had a tweet the other day that I'd responded to and thought was really interesting, that they might as well just get rid of the warning system just because Mark Melanson, when he hit a guy late in the game after it had been, quote unquote, settled and he put the tying run at the plate.

And it's not a situation where you'd ever throw at a guy. And the umpires sort of probably felt they had to throw him out of the game because they'd issued a warning. And what I responded to that was that I would like to see the warning system go away sort of for the opposite reason, that it's used as a means of keeping players who are obviously throwing at somebody in the game, that the umpires feel because they have this warning system now that the first time someone throws at someone intentionally, you warn both benches and you know it's sort of like in in track and field where they had this rule where that everyone hated that the first false start is charged to the field and then the second

one then it's just who it's on whoever you know does it again that gets the punishment and i'm sort of all for this idea i think that there's way more examples of guys who should be thrown out who are not just because they decide hey we'll just warn them then uh then the other way around yeah the you're right the warning gives everybody permission to be the first one like you get a freebie. And the most obvious, I don't know, maybe not the most obvious, probably the most obvious hit by pitch in this whole series in Toronto and Kansas City was the first one, and that carried no penalty. Although, I don't know, I guess the league can always go back after the fact

and penalize them. I don't know if they did. So I think if there were a way to get a harsher suspension through the system it just would gradually fall out of baseball culture. It would become it would be seen as something that was anti team as opposed to pro team, because right now it's seen as sort of a stand up for your teammates and stand up for your team and have each other's backs kind of thing. and stand up for your team and have each other's backs kind of thing. But if it became so serious, if it led to long enough suspensions that it was seriously hurting the team when someone did this, then it would be seen as more of a selfish thing. Like you just wanted to get your revenge and you weren't thinking of the team and what would be best for the team.

And it might take some time for that to change, but I think it would change if there were a way to actually suspend people for a while. And maybe the way to do that would just be by having higher game numbers initially, and the arbitrator would cut it in half or whatever, like it usually is, but it would be starting from a higher point. But I don't want longer suspensions. I want them to not throw at guys sure but when they do i don't want them gone for 30 games i mean i don't want to have

pennant races decided by this i don't want you know like okay this is gonna sound awful but i don't want my fantasy league decided by this i don't want mvp awards decided by this i don't want my fantasy league decided by this. I don't want MVP awards decided by this. I don't want this to be a thing that hugely disrupts the season. And if he started handing down 30 game suspensions, I would probably think, well, that's crazy. Like, stop doing that. Well, there would be a warning, right? He would issue a warning that that was going to happen that that was the new law of the land so you'd be forewarned that if you threw it someone intentionally you'd be in for a long suspension and then ideally if it actually worked as a deterrent then you wouldn't have to keep issuing the suspensions that you just have to do it a few times and the message would sink in

but is it a thing that a person should lose a you know a fifth of the season for is it really that serious of a crime i mean i again i i don't i would rather the league be rid of it but i also don't think that each individual action is worth that big of a suspension it would be though if we were if we were starting fresh right if we were creating baseball from scratch today, it would seem like a pretty serious thing, I would think. It doesn't seem like a serious thing because there's this whole weight of centuries of baseball and people doing this. And maybe the fact that it's been done for so long and, you know, for the most part, no one has died is a sign that maybe it's not all that serious maybe you can just keep doing it but it looks a lot like a thing where the penalty is one base yeah as much as we say he obviously did it and he obviously did it it's you know when we say obviously it's 99.8 percent or whatever i did a sort of really rough sketch of the math of that a couple years ago on on probabilities based on the probabilities of unintentional hit by pitches and it i mean it was

very crude math but it was showed sort of overwhelmingly that that the chances of these things happening by coincidence are so low but uh one other thing I wanted to ask you guys was, do you think players like this culture or are slaves to this culture? Like it. Do you think they, for the most part, like it? Yeah, I think they like it unless they just got hit by a fastball in the face.

We have good reason to believe that one of the players that we know and love in real life threw a baseball at another player in real life uh not that long ago and do you think i mean how would you feel if our league's commissioner put down a 30-game suspension on that i mean like this was a thing that the people who were involved uh good people, took care of business everybody moved on and I don't know, that was that, right? Like, it doesn't seem like a big deal

when it's happening Right, and most of the time it isn't most of the time you get punked in the back or whatever and you have a bruise and you go to first base and everyone forgets about it and it's considered even and it's fine. And maybe it offends our delicate sensibilities that someone would do something violent towards someone else.

But for the most part, the players accept it and it doesn't bother them. And it doesn't usually lead to lots of other consequences. So it's the risk that something serious could happen. So it's the risk that something serious could happen. And the fact that it really hasn't happened over decades and centuries is maybe a sign that we just shouldn to eradicate but in practice maybe it's just not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things of all the ways that we can die this is you know way way way way way down the list of likely ways so maybe we expend too much brain power on how to fix this problem because we're people who think about baseball all the time. And so it seems like a problem to us when it's not really in the grand scheme of things. But on the other hand, if you were starting the sport from scratch, you'd probably not want this to be a part of it.

It would probably seem somewhat shocking if there had been no tradition of this happening before, and you were just creating a game and someone hit someone else in the body with a fastball. It would be like the 2001 scene of apes hitting each other with bones. It would be disturbing. But it's not because it's what's always happened. Yeah, I think that the reason, the only reason that I would think that it is a bigger deal than the 100 years of non-deaths would imply is that people throw 10 miles an hour harder on average now than they used to. Although people actually wear helmets now. That's a thing people didn't used to do.

Yeah. No, that's true. And the helmets are stronger. Yeah. I mean, I almost feel like if we were starting over, I'd rather have the fights like hockey. I'd rather just let two guys go. And I know you can't do that in baseball

because one team has nine guys out there and the other one has one, and you can't just let guys go like that in that sport. Also, there are bats. Yeah, there are also bats. Well, there are sticks. Hockey players have sticks and skates. Yeah, Eazy-E never wrote a song about hockey sticks, though.

He did, just in case. He did write a song about bats. I figured. Yeah, okay. But I am, I guess I'm sort of more on team get rid of this stuff, and I would tend to penalize more.

All right. But I would tend to penalize more. All right. But I would also reject guys quicker. The warning system is a bit of a hang up for me. So let me offer the obligatory Bill James solution to this, which I've always liked and I know RJ likes and I've written about it before. So, Bill James in 1985 offered the Frank Robinson solution. What am I going to read now? Before he was a manager and

known for having the league's most antagonistic pitching staff, Frank Robinson had a solution he liked to recommend. Forget all about the intent of the pitcher. If a pitcher comes inside two or three times, tell him to take the rest of the day off. The umpire doesn't need to make any judgment about what the pitcher has in mind. He just needs to say, quote, it looks like you're a little wild today, son.

We'd better get another pitcher in here before somebody gets hurt. And so James notes in that same piece that the rules prohibit pitchers from throwing the ball in the batter's space, and intention is not relevant. If you hit a guy, they don't care whether you meant to or not. It's a base, and the reason that they have that rule is to keep people from throwing too much inside. And they figure that if they have this rule, it will discourage pitchers from not only the intentional hit by pitches, but doing the things that lead to accidental hit by pitches. And so this seems like, A, a very reasonable thing to think about, but B, also something that would probably take away the inside half of the plate, which in some eras would be perhaps a significant thing

if you were in 1999 in Coors Field and you couldn't throw inside more than a few times a game. That might be a factor. But, I mean, rather than suspending guys for 30 games, which I don't like, if you had a situation where you were much more likely to be pulled from a game in the third inning, and the stakes are very real and very immediate, but not necessarily lasting a month, feels to me like that would have perhaps positive

effect. And if you look at these things, the Josh Donaldson situation is a little bit of an anomaly, I think. In my experience, these things usually start with analdson situation is a little bit of a of an anomaly i think in my experience these things usually start with an accident they usually start with a hit by pitch that was an accident and then there's retaliation and it builds up from there and if you do something to kind of prevent the accidents in the first place or to at least at the very least have a league sanctioned punishment for accidents that players feel fits what they see as the crime uh you keep the players from having to police it themselves someone this happened to someone within the last few years didn't someone on the yankees get thrown

out after he just had no control and was just deemed a danger to the game i don't know and literally you got three a game or two an inning before you'd get taken out. I'm going to look this up. Oh, Zachary is doing the classic effectively wild lookup move. Make us all wait while you Google.

It was a Joe West job. It was Cesar Cabral who hit three guys, got thrown out of the game, and then got DFA'd in a Yankees blowout loss to Tampa Bay. So that's a pretty severe penalty. What if you just get DFA'd if you hit someone? All right. So I've talked in the past about baseball references, Easter eggs, and name pronunciations.

I don't think this is one, but Cesar Cabral, pronunciation guide, last syllable, B-R-A-W-L. Pretty good. So he got ejected even though there was no belief of intent at all. Yeah, I think it was just the umpire feared for the hitter's safety. Wow, yeah. That's interesting. I've never heard of that happening in the majors. I like that.

Good for them. All right. So did we solve the problem? I don't know. Read a 30-year-old Bill James excerpt all of the day? That's usually a pretty good answer, actually. Looked up Cesar Cabral. Bill James excerpt all of the day? That's usually a pretty good answer, actually. Looking up whatever Bill James wrote in 1985 is usually as good a solution to a problem as anyone else has.

Yeah. But I don't know. The only other way to do it would be to somehow make players not want to do this by just peer pressure or making it seem uncool or something or making it seem bush league or you know i i don't know how you would do that replace the baseball with a tennis ball yeah sure then you could get a grand slam oh bringing it all back to the beginning of this episode all right all right well thank you for joining us Zachary Yeah thank you for having me this is always fun

It is for us too and you can Send us emails at podcast at baseball Perspectives dot com You can join the Facebook group at facebook dot com Slash groups slash effectively wild Rate review the show on iTunes Subscribe to the show on iTunes and Support the sponsor of the show, Playindex

at baseballreference.com. Use the coupon code BP when you subscribe to get the discounted price of $30 on one year's subscription. And we will be back soon. I wear the literally the same clothes every day. Every single day.

The first month of the season including spring training i wore like kind of rust brown corduroys and a stomper shirt and then the zipper broke so then i wore gray like uh kind of like khakis and that same shirt and then like i got like a pen stain and after a month and so then I switched and now I'm wearing light brown corduroy. So I've worn three pairs of pants and one shirt. How cool am I? Not only am I so cool. That's more – like most baseball players over the course of the year wear three shirts and two pairs of pants.

Not only am I so cool that I only wear those clothes every day. I'm so cool I brag about it.