Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 718: Early Awards and Excessive Celebrations

Episode Date: August 24, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about Joc Pederson and answer emails about Madison Bumgarner, on-field celebrations, the Triple Crown, holding runners, and more.

Good morning and welcome to episode 718 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Howdy. How are you? The same. Okay. So we're going to do an email show today. do an email show today. We've had a bit of an irregular schedule lately. There's one week left in Stompers season, and it's unclear how that will affect the podcast because we'll be busy book writing after that. But at least we'll be home, not at baseball games every day,

which will maybe make our recording more predictable. So thanks for bearing with us this long. Anything you'd like to discuss? No, thank you. Okay. So we're going to get to emails in a second. I will just bring up the Jock Peterson story. Did you see the Jock Peterson story? He was benched despite having a 413 on base percentage in August. He's not hitting.

He has had 41 at-bats. He's struck out in 17 of them. And he's had hits in two of them. But he's walked 20 times. So he has a 122-413-293 line in August, which translates to an above average offensive number. Just using WRC plus from Van Grasse where 100 is league average. Jack Peterson has a 117 WRC plus in August because of all those walks and all that on base percentage. And yet he has not been hitting the ball.

been hitting the ball. He clearly has not lost his plate discipline entirely, but he's not looking as good as he did for most of the season. So he has been benched and replaced by Quique Hernandez. He has hit very well all season. 327, 389, 551. Obviously not the prospect or player that Jack Peterson is But he's been pretty consistently good all year And he's been playing second base Filling in for Howie Kendrick And with Kendrick coming back and Chase Utley coming to LA Mattingly prefers to have his bat rather than Jack Peterson's So we've seen a player who was probably the rookie of the year favorite one of the best players in baseball in the first half get benched despite a month where he has a 413 on base

percentage i don't know that i would make this move yeah i mean you i don't know that you would make this move even if he had a 213 on base percentage that's one thing right right you you personally uh are a regression to the mean kind of guy and uh so you would look at jock peterson's overall skill set and performance as a baseball player in his life and you might give him the benefit of the doubt even if he didn't have the 413 on base percentage uh now august is a you know social construct and right and so so who's to say that exactly 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 exactly 19 games and uh 15 starts is the appropriate timeline to judge somebody if you are going to judge him on recency. And if you go, say, a week, another social construct, he's now hitting 071, 316, 286. And if you were to, say, go two months, another social construct, it would be 154,

So two months, another social construct. It would be 154, 302, 269. Well, that's a long time. That is a long time. Yeah. So that makes it more understandable. Oh, so yeah. I mean, you could make the case that you would want to go longer, or you could make the case that you want to go shorter.

If you want to go really longer, then you'd go to June. Three months, a quarter, a even more defined social construct and now he's up to 183 336 367 which plays certainly with his defense and uh if you wanted to go say a year uh he's now quite good so so yeah well i yeah. How much do you think... Let's see. If this were 1999 and we were talking about some decision that the Dodgers made or the Royals made or whatever team made, then we'd be like, oh, look at them. The tyranny of the batting average again. Do you think this is a tyranny of the batting average thing?

I mean, it's the Dodgers. I would guess it's not, right? Yeah, well, I don't know It sounds like a Mattingly decision I don't know whether there's such a thing as a unilateral Mattingly decision Or whether every Mattingly decision is based on input or orders from the front office But yeah, maybe that's fair Maybe it's not just a batting average thing. If you're hitting 122 or whatever over a span of a few weeks and you're also walking a ton and you've been a great

player for months before that, then it doesn't seem like such a big deal. But if you go back two months and you're hitting 150, that's significant. Even if you are playing good defense and center and you're walking a fair amount, it's potentially a sign that you need a break, maybe. Maybe you just need some time off to collect yourself or work on your swing or whatever it is, because Jack Peterson's probably not a 150 hitter so as for whether it gives the Dodgers a better chance to win which is what Mattingly said that was his justification for the move well maybe maybe it does if he's been hitting 150 with a 300 on base percentage over the past two months and also Hernandez has been really good. He has.

Right. And Mattingly at least says that the defense is comparable. And they're not replacing him with Scott Pitsadnik. They didn't find gritty veteran dude who would make you think, oh, they're just falling in love with the veteran over rookie structure or anything like that. I mean, they got another rookie and put him in there, and he's also good. He's also a very good player.

Yeah, okay. So the 413 OBP in August is sort of a fun fact, and it sort of lies about how good or bad he has been. Yeah, I think explicitly yes. Yes, okay. In our last or recent show when we had Eric Malinowski on, we talked about Madison Baumgartner and his hitting ability. And since that show, he has homered again,

and he has also been used as a pinch hitter twice, which I think was the first time that had ever happened. So the Giants have now come around to the idea that he's a hitter, even when he's not a pitcher, he's a hitter. They had a very short bench for a few days. Yeah, he did single the first time and come around to score, right? But yeah, they used him that way, which is unusual. And Michael asks us a question.

Is Madison Baumgartner a good enough hitter for an AL team to target as a starting pitcher slash DH? Are we already in emails? Yeah, I just seamlessly transitioned into email. Oh, well, can I see? Wait, I had more on the Rookie of the Year thing. Oh, okay. Real quick. Pretend it's an email.

Sure. So, as I recall, Keith law's position is that uh rookie of the year shouldn't just be the guy who had the best rookie season it should be the guy who was the best rookie and that's a and so like prospect status matters future greatness matters i guess how good you are as a ball player even if you weren't as good. The distinction is very difficult sometimes to parse, and so I might be misrepresenting, but you sort of are familiar with that, right? Yeah, it's sort of similar to the All-Star Game argument that it shouldn't be the player who has the best first half necessarily. It should be the best player. Yeah, that Chris Coughlin shouldn't have won the Rookie of the

Year over Andrew McCutcheon, even though he had a slightly better year, because everybody knew Andrew McCutcheon was the better player and was going to have the better year. I am curious, because we have a very, it seems to me, a very, very, very good case for this. Matt Duffy is having a slightly better year than Chris Bryant. Chris Bryant is going to have a much better career than Matt Duffy. Is this, in your mind, would you have any qualms about voting for Matt Duffy?

Is it a tiebreaker? Does it have any merit at all? I'm closer to the it's a one season award side of the spectrum. So I don't have a problem voting for someone who I think was sort of a fluke if he had clearly the best year. If it's close, though, I might give an edge to the guy that I think is actually the better player. Certainly as a tiebreaker. What's the what's the separation between them right now? So I'm looking at reference, and it's 4.3 wins for Duffy and 3.5 for Bryant,

which is definitely margin of error. Is it all defense? No, 131 OPS for Bryant and 124 OPS plus for Duffy. And then also there's a base running run in there. And then, yeah, there's also defense. Both defensive performance as well as positional value. Well, that's pretty close. You could say that it's insignificant. It's not statistically significant, that difference between two players in war of less than a win and that Bryant will be the better player and we all thought he was going to be the better player. argument for making it not about the one season award does it serve baseball in some way if it

goes to a better player in the long run like we get to talk about how he was the rookie of the year for the next 20 years as we talk about his other career accolades or it helps his hall of fame case or whatever i mean does it have any impact at all beyond this year? Because if it doesn't, then if I'm confident that the inferior player had the superior year, then I'd be okay with giving it to him. Well, even if it did, then does the same rule apply for Cy Young and MVP? Does it? I mean, it's the same general idea would theoretically apply. I mean, you could argue that it doesn't do baseball history as good to have Terry Pendleton winning MVP awards instead of Barry Bonds. You could argue that if you wanted.

Or you could say that maybe it's better for a marketing or promotional aspect for for mlb if you want to get people excited about young players and young stars then you want to get them excited about a player who's worth getting excited about in the long run you don't want to a coglin or whoever a hamlin type rookie of the year award winner who's just going to be not a bust, but not a superstar beyond that year. It builds up the Chris Bryant legend, which would be a good thing for baseball in the long run. Yeah, the standards, I think, are generally lower. Well, they are literally lower for a Rookie of the Year, by definition, than for an MVP. And so it's probably easier for a Coghlan to fluke into it. The other thing is that rookie of the year voting is itself, uh, kind of

the rules don't necessarily make a lot of sense. I've written about this before that you have, uh, there's sort of a bias toward non-prospects getting in position to be rookie of the year because they're usually older when they come up and so they're closer to their peak. They quite possibly didn't have service time manipulation, so they might get to play full seasons. And as I've recorded, Felix Hernandez, for instance, has been younger every year of his career except until finally, I think, last year. He's been younger than at least one. Actually, even last year, he was younger than Matt Shoemaker and Colin McHugh, I think.

And so I think every year of his – can that possibly be true? I think it is. Younger than McHugh. I wouldn't have guessed that. Anyway, I think that he's been younger than like a top three finisher in rookie of the year voting every year of his career and so if you're trying to recognize great young players then you wouldn't have the 135 plate appearances restriction you just say who's the best young player. And so it's already kind of a weird and to some degree pointlessly defined award that doesn't have as much value.

So maybe it's not. Maybe you might as well just give it to the guy who you are most excited about. By the way, Duffy. Not to mention the arbitrary rookie guideline. What defines whether a guy is a rookie or not? Just a number of at-bats or innings or service time or days on the roster or whatever. By the way, Duffy trails Bryant by a similar margin that he leads on fan graphs and at baseball prospectus. Uh-huh. Okay.

Well, so that is probably enough for me to say that I'd go with Bryant. I mean, depending on what happens over the remaining substantial portion of the season. I always think that talking about award votes is very silly at any point, really, other than the end of the year. I mean, you know, if it's a sensational race, maybe it's something you want to enjoy down the stretch. It's a sensational race. Maybe it's something you want to enjoy down the stretch, but saying who we would vote for or whatever is kind of crazy when there's still a large chunk of the season remaining that will determine who wins that award.

Okay, emails. All right, so my attempt to segue seamlessly into emails failed miserably, but I will repeat the question. Michael wants to know whether madison bumgarner is a good enough hitter for an american league team to target as a starting pitcher slash dh so a guy who would actually hit regularly when he's not on the mound we talked about this and didn't we like didn't we spend like a pretty long period of time answering this? I actually thought we were answering his question because the question had already come in when we talked about it.

No, I don't think it had. I'm pretty sure it had. It was after that because it was after another homer and the pinch hits and everything. We talked about how good we thought he was or whether he'd be worse if he played regularly or not. So you could extrapolate that discussion to this question, but we didn't specifically discuss this question. All right. No. I say no.

Yeah. Okay. I say no also. If only because it would probably affect his pitching, I would think, but probably wouldn't be a great DH either. Yeah. Okay. So Jake from Cespedes Family Barbecue emailed us about, he emailed us a link to a story about the White Sox and the Cubs from last week. And it's a story from CSN Chicago. It's about Pedro Stroop did an emotional demonstration, which is the sort of emotional demonstration that prompted Bob Costas to say something that was kind of questionable about Pedro Stroop earlier

this year, which he apologized for. But Pedro Stroop struck out a guy. He did a very ostentatious demonstration. And so naturally, people asked the White Sox, the other team, about what they thought about this. And Adam Eaton, White Sox center fielder who was struck out by Pedro Stroop in that game, said, it's part of the game. It really is. I think fan bases like it. I do. I think it brings a little bit of flair to baseball that hasn't always been there. I think the old time guys would say, save it, get off the mound.

But other people, including me, think it could be good for your team and can really push your team to the end. It was a big moment in the game and ended up being a key part hats off to him he made his pitches and strobe said it was nothing personal and alexei ramirez didn't have a problem with the fist pumps and everything he says it was in the heat of the game he got out of the moment without damage and it was the way he could celebrate that and strobe says you know he's a guy who gets excited and that's all it is and so jake asked us whether this story about the Sox being totally okay with Stroop's enthusiastic celebration is significant. This seems like a clear cut example of a team who are showing maturity or

forward thinking by not turning this into a beanball war. I first want to note that Michael emailed us on August 16th. We talked about Madison Bumgarner with Eric Malinowski on August 17th. All right. I was not aware of this question, I don't think, when we were talking about it. All right. Now, I have noticed, I think that there has been closer creep, closer celebration creep in the game.

And I'm not saying that in a in a bad way but there are i was watching for instance uh the marlins had a guy conley pitching yesterday and he got out of a out of a jam in the fourth yesterday and you know he was not pitching that well he'd thrown 85 pitches through four a of base runners, but he'd gotten out of some jams. He was trailing, and he did a big old fist bump and a yell at the fourth. And I'm somewhat, as a person who's grown up in other eras than this one and has watched baseball change through the years, I think I'm somewhat calibrated to think, oh, whoa, that was excessive. He's, they're not going to like that because, you know, he's scoreboard and all that, and it's the fourth. And then I think that nobody commented on it, nobody remarked on it, and I doubt anybody but me noticed it. And so that actually had me thinking that there is a dilution of the unwritten rule against celebrating on the mound.

And partly that might be because this is just a hypothesis, but perhaps closers now move in and out of the role more often. And so the who is a closer maybe has changed and it could just be that now that the eighth inning role is a defined thing only slightly less prestigious than the closer role and the loogie role is a defined thing and that all these roles that people have they guys do come in to accomplish a predefined task, just like finishing a save is a predefined task. And when they finish it, they get really excited. And so I don't know if this is a Cubs-White Sox specific thing. And I don't know that it necessarily – I mean I don't feel like there's been some great migration away from unwritten

rules enforcement in the last few years. If anything, it feels like we've seen a little bit of an amplification of unwritten rules in the last few years. So my guess is that this is either a very specific taboo that is fading or also possible it could just be baseball players rejecting the premise because they don't like reporters it could be that if the reporter hadn't said anything the next day maybe they would have thrown at somebody because they didn't like strope maybe somebody else would have noticed it and complained about it when they were drinking that night i and they were just like no dude i don't want to get in your drama mr reporter dude i know you're trying to stir things up and i'm not going to get stirred but the trend is definitely towards more demonstrative right

even not even just the the celebrating after striking someone out but just celebrating period when you did your article on home world series celebrations and how those have evolved over time and how it used to be just everyone would calmly run off the field and celebrate in the clubhouse and now it's a pile up on the field and and you know a extended celebration and that's fine but that's that's the way things are going so if we were to watch a randomly selected game from 20 years from now or 40 years from now, if we could see that right now, all indications are that there'd be more of these demonstrations, right? Yeah, and you see it team-wide. I mean, 10 years ago, you never had a guy reach on a single and then do some elaborate animal sign to the dugout. So they do that. They do the bubbles. Those are team-building things. and then do some elaborate animal sign to the dugout.

So they do that, they do the bubbles. Those are team-building things, and so they're in a little bit different category. And my conclusion when I talked about the evolution of World Series Dogpiles was that it was kind of a medium-is-the-message sort of situation where as the game became more of a TV event, there was a expectation that or sort of a feeling that you owed the fans a celebration that they wanted to see you celebrate. And so rather than just run into the dugout and celebrate on your own, there was you had to provide this show

and it is after all baseball is a performance it's performative exercise in many ways and it's possible that the uh that the kind of uh meme style celebrations that we see with the antlers and the bubbles and the uh each pitcher having a save celebration in the arrow and all that, that could be specifically a reaction to the GIF era and to the highlight, the MLB.com highlight era. So let me ask you this. Okay. If Chapman debuted his somersault role now, now partly Chapman is much more established,

so Chapman could probably do whatever he wants. But if a Chapman-type pitcher debuted a somersault role now, as opposed to four years ago, would it get the immediate backlash and have to be stopped? I think probably yes, because there was, who was it? Henry Mejia, right? Yeah, but Mejia got away with that for a really long time. And Mejia, like, couldn't stick to one. Once you establish something, then it's grandfathered in. Nobody complains about the arrow, really. But Mejia was, it was like Mejia was workshopping things. Now, I re-watched The Summer the summer assault the other day like four days ago

and it's really stupid and it does not look it does not look uh it does not look triumphant he didn't commit to it he he started he did it half-heartedly and he doesn't have the body for summer assaulting it was long yeah and gawky yeah so it i don't know maybe maybe everything worked together against that one but should have tried a pommel horse i mean if he did like imagine a guy who like did like a tuck and roll and came up and did like a roundhouse kick yeah would it work i would love it i. I don't know. You would have to be... You remember Guile in Street Fighter 2? Yeah.

I want to see someone do that kick, that sonic kick. If you were good enough, if Carter Capps did it, I don't know, maybe Carter Capps probably couldn't get away with it because people are already upset about his hop. His hop is almost a move in itself. He respect the game yeah right but if someone as good as carter katz debuted that move i don't know well if a if it will if a veteran suddenly broke out that move that would be different from a rookie doing it from the start right if some respect if craig kimbrough suddenly debuted that move. Probably Kimbrell could get away with it. But again, it's like, it's like, it's like the Bach

rules where if you have some sort of, you can have kind of a Bach move as long as you do it every time. Like for your, like if you have a little bit of a pause and then you start again, but then you pause again, like a double set,'s a balk unless you do it every time and there is something about chapman waking up and deciding that he hasn't he hasn't uh laughed in the face of baseball enough and now he needs to start doing it that might actually not work whereas if it's just a thing that you do because that's what you do uh it might play better for a rookie i don't know again it's like all about getting past the first two days and once you get past the first two days you're good to go yeah uh but it does seem like everybody likes kim roll i mean he played with brian mccann so

who's you know who knows better what's cool and what's not than he could probably get away with the somersault he's also got a somersault and body uh-huh yeah okay jesse says the mariners suck it's the 11th inning of the third game against the red sox this weekend when he emailed us and they've given up 45 runs to them total so far my question regards nelson cruz our lone bright spot now that felix seems to have given up for the year as of right now, he is third in the AL in batting That's still true, he's third in the AL in batting Behind the leader by just four points And first in homers by two I think he's now first in homers by three

Unfortunately, he is stuck in seventh in RBIs A whopping 15 behind Chris Davis And now I think the lead is even larger He is still seventh seventh but he is 22 behind Josh Donaldson who's been on fire lately is there a stat that calculates expected RBIs based on other stats assuming one has even average hitters surrounding them in the lineup if so where does Nelson come out also if someone won the triple crown but was on a bad team would they be considered an MVP frontrunner?

And Baseball Perspectives does have an RBI opportunities report. It doesn't calculate expected RBIs, although I guess you could figure that out with the information that's on there probably. But it does give you the number of runners that have been on base when you have come up to the plate, and it gives you the percentage of those runners that you have driven in. It's called OBI percentage, others batted in percentage, and Nelson Cruz doesn't do spectacularly well in that metric. So I sorted by OBI percentage among guys with 400 plate appearances. Josh Donaldson is actually first in that stat. So it's not purely that he has gotten a ton of runners on ahead of him, although it's partly that, but he's also driven in a higher percentage of them than anyone else.

And that this stat doesn't distinguish between the base those runners are on. So maybe he's had more runners on third or something. There are separate stats on this report for runners on first, runners on second, runners on third, etc. But Nelson Cruz's OBI percentage is 79th out of 132. So he's not doing particularly well at driving guys in as a percentage when they are on base. So it's not purely the Mariners not having lots of runners, although it is partly the Mariners not having lots of runners. And then as for the second question about whether he'd be an MVP front runner if he were leading in RBIs, I would say no, I think. It depends. If he were leading in RBI because he had 10 more homers or something, then maybe.

But if he had the same triple slash stats and just 23 more runs batted in, I don't think he would be ahead of Trout and Donaldson at this point. Five years ago, same question, but five years ago, or a hypothetical universe where Miguel Cabrera didn't win the tournament. Yeah, before Cabrera, I think maybe, just because of the novelty and how long it had been and how special that seemed. But even when Cabrera won, everyone was saying Trout should have won the MVP because he was the better player. No, no, everybody wasn't saying that.

The people who don't vote were saying that. And Cabrera was the frontrunner, and he won. He won the better player. No, no. Everybody wasn't saying that. The people who don't vote were saying that. Yes, right. And Cabrera was the frontrunner, and he won. He won the race. He did. He was better than Nelson Cruz. Yes, that was very close. But a ton of the arguments for Miguel Cabrera were,

dude, he won the Triple Crown. How do you even top the Triple Crown? Yes. By having six more wins above replacement and doing defense and doing running and doing baseball but there was like a very clear like bro you win the triple crown you win the mvp kind of mentality also a he made the playoffs he did right making playoffs or other things he was better he would he was you know not unreasonably far behind Trout in everything else and uh so I'm I'm I'm also I'm not saying definitely Nelson Cruz would but I think that Nelson Cruz

this season if it won the triple crown five years ago would have beat all comers yeah there's certainly a point at which that was true and maybe that point was five years ago before Cabrera post Cabrera and post all the Trout Cabrera discussions and post the acceptance of war and everything I think it would be too big a gap now for him to win for a bad team now if he were on a playoff team and having this season then i think he could possibly overcome that gap between him and trout and donaldson even though trout and donaldson are on good teams too and have i don't know two and a half win war leads at this point i think triple crown could possibly overcome that but for a bad team i think we're probably past that now if he

were on a good team right now without the triple crown does he win the mvp award i don't think his numbers really you don't think so you think that you think that enough guys would look at donaldson's defensive metrics and defense aided war and pick him even though the one guy has like the classic mvp line like that classic mvp line is now officially outdated well josh donaldson has that line too at this point i mean well he's got this has been a better hitter but but like barely and probably only after you adjust for park effects right i mean it don, Donaldson is hitting 302, 370, 585. And I guess Cruz is better in all of those stats. Yeah, he is.

He's got 50 points of OPS and 20 points of OPS plus. And he's got the home runs, if not the RBIs. And he's got the batting average. If he wins the batting title and home runs... I don't know there is a lot of i think there's a lot of awareness of donaldson's defensive contributions on the other hand he's never won a gold glove or anything so maybe not i i don't know i think donaldson or trout would still take it if they were all on playoff teams clearly donaldson has the narrative poll

but maybe he only has the narrative poll because he's on the winning team it's hard to know and there's probably some people who would not vote for a cruise because of the ped suspension and would assume that this is somehow ped related also all right okay playing decks uh yeah sure uh quick one quick one and uh i want to talk about the cardinals runners in scoring position thing that we talked about we did an episode about and you wrote an article about their pitchers being so much better with runners in scoring position or with runners on than without and so i um I think we know that one-year flukes happen in these types of splits, even though we're talking about hundreds and hundreds of at-bats, thousands of at-bats, they still happen.

And I don't know if you got into it in your article, but I wanted to know whether these splits happen over these kind of unusual splits happen over larger periods of time uh-huh so i looked at uh first off uh the worst team ever and i was looking at well okay so first i was looking at worst we already know the cardinals are the best team ever for the risk non-risk. The worst team ever, if you're curious, was 1998. The Arizona Diamondbacks were 100 points worse of OPS, worse with runners in scoring position, and were a bad team, and were an even worse team because of that.

So since 2012, which is four years, and that's roughly 11,000 plate appearances in this split. 11,000 plate appearances is like, that's Pete Rose's career. That's a huge sample. I'm going to say a thing that is not supported by fact and then I'll acknowledge that, but it seems to me impossible that something could just be noise for 11,000 plate appearances. Now, in fact, we have 30 trials because there's 30 teams, and we have even more than that because there's lots of four-year samples in baseball history, and there's going to be outliers if you run trials. And so maybe, in fact, it's not weird at all. But it does seem like 11,000 plate appearances spread out among a disparate group

of individuals who, well, you know, just that, disparate group of individuals, would be not very noisy. Like, that should smooth things out. I don't know if that's true. But since 2012, the Cardinals have the third lowest split. As we talked about, teams are generally worse with runners in scoring position. Pitchers are generally worse with runners in scoring position than without for a couple of reasons. The Cardinals have the third smallest split. So their OPS with runners in scoring position

allowed is only four points higher than without runners in scoring position. To put that in perspective, the Padres gap is 39 points. The Indians is 38. The Dodgers and the Rays is 32. So that actually is a huge difference. That's a huge difference. The Yankees are actually in that time period. They're the smallest split. They actually have a reverse split. They've been three points better with runners in scoring position. And although I mean, since 2012 is including this year, it is yeah it is that's a big part of it no i know but it also includes the other years right that's what i mean we we know that this year is as part of it but they've kept this whatever so-called thing going for four

years at least whether it's but a lot of that just is this year. Yeah, but that counts. That's part of the sample. Sure. Look, if you take out. That's totally swinging it. I think the Cardinals had totally typical in the last couple years. Yeah, but if you take out all the parts that make a guy unusual, then he's usual. You can't take out the interesting parts because then everybody's going to be at zero.

You've got to include the interesting parts. Anyway, my point is not the Cardinals. They're the hook. It's more the Yankees, who we weren't talking about, and the Braves, who we weren't talking about, who have a one-point difference, and the Padres, who have a 39-point difference.

There's a 42-point swing between the top and the bottom and i know again the outliers are going to be outliers that's why they're outliers but 42 points seems like a lot to explain by fluke alone and so anyway then i thought well all right maybe 11 000 late appearances isn't enough and so then i went back to 1988 which is is like... That's all of recorded history. Exactly. It's like 60,000 plate appearances or something in this split. And the gap between the best and the worst is still 17 points. Seattle, 30 points worse with runners in scoring position.

The Angels, 13 points worse with runners in scoring position. And that, it's almost impossible to find a cohesive narrative for why a team would be better at this for 30 years. There's not a single person in the organization for that time, let alone consistent personnel on the field or consistent necessarily coaching philosophy or anything. It's the longtime clubhouse attendant who's been there since 1958. I mean, it's, you could, like, the only thing that's consistent in that time is the air density and the batter's eye maybe. Actually, the hitter's eye isn't because they redesigned that part.

Not even the stadium. The rocks there. It's consistent. For Seattle, right? Yeah, Seattle had an indoor stadium, so. Yeah, exactly. sign that part but even not even the stadium the rocks it's consistent for seattle i mean yeah seattle had an indoor stadium so yeah exactly uh so uh so i'm i feel comfortable saying that 30 and 13 30 for seattle 13 for anheim is completely fluke even though it's like infinite plate appearances uh and if you can have a 17 point fluke over 27 years i feel like maybe 42 over four years isn't actually that unusual either and so i'm going to go ahead and say that if i were betting on the yankees and the padres next year uh i would maybe give the yankees one point of

expectations better than the padres otherwise i'm wiping the slate clean yeah yeah this is one of those like statistical significance questions where if you if you did like your t-test or whatever on this it would probably show that it's significant because it's a huge sample and it's just an enormous number of plate appearances and to have that kind of difference over that sort of sample seems like it couldn't be by chance and maybe statistically it would say that it was not by chance or that it was unlikely that it was by chance but you you know something that the t-test doesn't and you know that it there's really no no possible explanation for how a team could be doing something over the

course of three decades and you know like 10 roster turnovers and six front office turnovers and multiple ballparks and everything that could explain it that could be consistent over that entire time so the context of what we know might make it seem like you know it's not significant that you can get a certain number of statistically significant results just by doing enough tests and looking enough places but it doesn't always mean something. So, all right. So Playindex, you can use the Playindex to establish other flukes with the coupon code BP. Use it when you subscribe. Get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription.

Okay, last question. We will ask Henry's question. Maybe holding the runner on first base is a habit that baseball teams should selectively break. Watching Jon Lester's latest pickoff attempt, I wondered why the first baseman bothered to hold the runner on at all. Lester is not going to throw over to first, and if he does, it seems like it's a boon for the offense. So why not play the first baseman behind the runner and take away the hole? The first baseman could still sneak back in and take throws from David Ross, who will tell you himself that he's very good at throwing behind runners. What is the defensive range cost of

holding a runner, and are there other situations where the runner is traditionally or habitually held on base when it might help the defense do not hold the runner? For example, one out, down by two runs in the fifth, A-Rod is simply not going to steal in front of McCann and Beltran. Why bother holding A-Rod on at all? Wouldn't the defense gain more from covering the hole than from keeping A-Rod two feet closer to first base, etc.? Even if a team gave up a few random stolen bases, might they gain more by cutting off a few hits? Managers shift the defense on probability, so why not hold the runner or not hold the runner on probability

as well? I wonder how... It does seem like if your goal is pick-offs, that the daylight play actually at first base might work better. Yeah. I wonder if we'll ever see that. They go away from having the first baseman play

on the bag and just go to the daylight play interesting yeah uh well i mean a lot of this is a lot of this is that you don't want to give the guy a big secondary lead right um like a that's an underrated aspect i think of managers uh thought processes when it comes to stopping the running game is that you don't want to have guys able to get good secondary leads, break up double plays go first to third, all those sorts of things so that's

probably one of it, one of the things and I mean with Lester do you remember that photoshop that someone put in the Facebook page earlier this year uh which one the runner was taking his leave and then like the caption or whatever it was like now this is getting ridiculous and the runner was like 75 feet off the back

lester was just staring at him but he was like two thirds of the way. I mean, like we've talked about every time we've talked about Lester, there is, there is something about a man staring at you with the baseball that even if you know, he's not going to throw and is incapable of throwing that you still see that as a threat. You,

that you still see that as a threat. You can't quite break all of your training and all of your experience dealing with men with baseballs and convince yourself that he's not going to throw. And I don't know if anybody has... I would absolutely love to see a stat cast analysis of the average lead that runners take on Leicester this year. That'd be great. of the average lead that runners take on Leicester this year. That'd be great.

And my guess is that based on just watching those and based on the success rates the guys have had and the takeoff rates, I mean, I know they go more often, but they're getting like a foot, right? They're only getting like an extra foot, it seems to me, is how I feel. And so if you took the first baseman back i guess i mean unless you're unless that the daylight play was really well refined you basically might give them four feet or six feet or something and four feet or six feet is really enough to completely shift the math on base stealing. Like nobody basically ever gets thrown out by six feet.

So if you were able to get an extra six feet, then you could really steal like crazy. Yeah. Well, so what Henry is saying makes some sense to me because it does seem like there are times where you absolutely know the guy is not going to steal and he'll probably be too tentative to take an enormous lead even if he's not being held on and it's got to be a significant difference if you had the the first baseman

cutting off the hole um i mean guys hit better when there is a hole right when left-handed hitters are up and like left-handed hitters always appear to be more clutch because they get that hole when there are runners on base and so they do better in the situations where there would be a hole on the right side of the infield and so it definitely makes hitters better and there's been a lot of analysis of that. So if you could cut off a big portion of that hole and not hurt yourself as much with the lead, which it seems like there are definitely cases. If you pick your spots, there could be cases. For a while, there'd just be so much novelty to it.

And the runner wouldn't know what was going on. And he'd worry that there was some kind of trick play going on or something. So you could definitely get away with it for a while, I think, if you use it selectively. But I think it's a good idea. All right, so that's it for the email show. You can continue sending emails. We built up a bit of a backlog, so I still have someone I'd like to –

I'd have some that I'd like to get to over our next email show or two. But you can keep sending them to podcast at baseball prospectus.com. You can join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild is now at 2,996 members. So by the time I talk to you next, it'll probably be 3000. You could be the 3000th and you can rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes. We will be back with another show tomorrow.