Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 731: The Up to One Swing for the Fences Edition

Episode Date: September 24, 2015

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about bullpen catchers, past playoff odds, a Nationals Park promotion, and more.

I am not throwing away my shot. I am not throwing away my shot. Ayo, I'm just like my country, I'm young, scrappy, and hungry, and I'm not throwing away my shot. I am not throwing away my shot. I am not throwing away my shot. Ayo, I'm just like my country, I'm young, scrappy, and hungry, and I'm not throwing away my shot. Everybody sing! Good morning and welcome to episode 731 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus, presented by the Play Index, BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, and he is Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectus. Hello. Hey.

Going straight into emails, right? Yes, sir. Going straight into emails, right? Yes, sir. Okay, we're doing an email show. Got some good emails accumulated. I will start with one that you called an A-plus idea in your response. It's from Luis, and he says that he's had this pet idea for some time,

although now that he thinks of it, we may have mentioned it in passing in one of your episodes. I don't think we did. Any of a team's bullpen catchers is eligible to enter the game if all your other catchers are out of the game and or injured. Said bullpen catcher would not be permitted to hit and his turn would result in an automatic out. So it's not quite like just having a 26 roster spot. The spirit of the rule change would be to remove the fear of your last catcher being injured. Obviously,

though, teams could try to use this as efficiently as possible and get some competitive advantage of it. So imagine Commissioner Manfred announces today that this rule will go into effect starting with all games. Tomorrow, on the conservative side, I think starting catchers would be pulled out of blowouts more often, and there'd be more catcher substitutions in extra inning games what else can you imagine coming out of this you'd have to imagine that the uh that there'd be a lot more offensive oriented backup catchers yep because you'd now be free to actually use them as actual human parts of your roster instead of just the spare tire in your trunk. Like imagine if, like imagine, no, don't imagine. I was just going to imagine if you had to rotate your tires with your spare tire being part of your other tires,

it wouldn't be that weird little tiny tube, you know? And as it is, there's no real reason to have a catcher who can hit, or there is, but there's no real reason to pay for that, I guess, because you can never actually use him to pinch hit or to participate in the game other than the one or two days a week that he plays i mean i think that it's much better it seems like this keeps the the way that it is right now where your managers are always way too paranoid about losing their second catcher and not having a catcher keeps them from playing their best players as much as they can. You don't get to, you know, you don't get to pinch hit as much as you want to. You don't get to pinch it for your catcher as much as you want to. You don't get to

have a defensive upgrade middle, midway through the game as you might want to. You don't get to have a fresh set of legs in there when you want to. And it feels like restrictions, generally speaking, that keep the better baseball players from playing baseball, usually I'm against those. And like we've talked about before, in some ways, limitations are the whole point of the game. And seeing how a team gets around the limitations is much of the fun. And that's why, for instance, it's probably a good idea that ballplayers can't come in and out of the game like basketball players can. However, I think in this case, it is probably clearly an accident that we've gotten to this place and not intended. And if you did have a situation where managers could still only have their 25-man roster, still only use their two catchers but at least not have the kind of fear of the black swan event driving their uh their catching catcher usage strategies i think it would be good i love

this idea and it seems like there's no downside whatsoever unless you think that teams would start doing shady things with that 26 spot and using uh like actual major leaguers as bullpen catchers so they can have an actual major leaguer, but they're not going to hit anyway. Right. That's what Luis suggests, that maybe you would see suddenly really well-paid bullpen catchers like Jose Molina or someone who is a defensive specialist,

a true defensive specialist, like such a specialist that you can't even use them to hit, but you just hide them in the bullpen and you'd pay them major league minimum or something. And occasionally they'd get into a game. Yeah. That would be a bad thing. You think? No, I mean, it would be a bad thing if that happened, but I don't think that's going to happen. I think this is a well-designed rule change that is completely unobjectionable and even the bullpen catcher would love it right how cool would it be if you were the bullpen catcher and every once in a while you got to

be in a major league game yeah that'd be great that would be great they're already by the way we were talking about this when we were with the stompers because we our manager knows the Giants bullpen catcher. And we were talking about how much they make, bullpen catchers make. And bullpen catcher is already undeniably the coolest job in the world. You're hanging around. You're in the bullpen, which is already the most fun part of the team. You're never expected to actually do anything great. Yeah, you're immune from criticism.

You are. No one in the media is going to blame it on the bullpen catcher. And you get to catch major league pitchers. And so it seems to me that there are hundreds, literal hundreds, probably literal thousands of people who are qualified for this job. Probably literally tens of thousands of people are qualified for this job. Like you're not coaching, you're not doing anything particularly demanding. You just have to be a cool guy who will show up, not bum anybody out and can catch pitches, right? Pitches that are very difficult to catch, you and I couldn't do it. But you know, anybody who's ever

caught high A or probably even shown up in a minor league camp or went to Gulf Coast League or whatever could probably do it. And in fact, in spring training, they do do it. So if you can pick out mechanical issues and help with that aspect of things, that'd be an advantage. I mean, kind of, but not really. I mean, that's not your job. And there is a bullpen coach and there is a pitching coach and there are other guys, there are other pitchers there. I mean, that's not your job. And there is a bullpen coach and there is a pitching coach and there are other guys. There are other pitchers there. I mean, there's no shortage of smart people in the area around you. You don't need to be the smart guy.

No one's asking you to be the smart guy. In fact, cool it with that smart guy act, bro. That's probably what you hear. So great. It's a great job. And so and there's no shortage of people who could do it probably with a big smile. Bless the guys who get it. And so, and there's no shortage of people who could do it probably with a big smile. Bless the guys who get it, but you would think that they would get paid almost nothing because there'd be almost no market leverage that they would have. And yet, this was just estimates based on intelligent people who were in this conversation.

The estimates that we heard for what a bullpen catcher may, which might not be true, but let's just assume that they are. 60,000 base per year for a seven or eight month job, plus a few tens of thousands in tips. Wait, did we think there were tips? I don't remember tips being mentioned. Yeah, maybe I might be confusing that with the clubby discussion. So maybe there's not tips. However, you do get the full major league per diem, which is like 150 a day or something like that now, or $99 a day, something. So that's every

day you're on the road, you're getting that. That's another 10,000 or so. Again, you're only working seven or eight months a year. And if you win the World Series, you get a full share. And so the Giants bullpen catcher was pulling home like 400 grand a year to be a bullpen catcher. Now, I know that most – that's a – you got to be lucky. You got to win the lottery. And winning the lottery and having your team win the World Series is like going, oh, man, you make $38 million just for being a landscaper and winning the lottery? Like, no, you have to separate those, right?

So most of the time you don't get $400,000. But most of the time you get, it sounds like, $80,000 to $100,000 for being a dude around a ball club. Like, that's insanely cool. And I am in awe of the people who've managed to pull off that. Yeah, I mean, many people would do that job for free, although you wouldn't want most of the people would do that job for free although you wouldn't want most of the people who most of the people who would do it for free you you probably

wouldn't want doing it but still there's more supply than demand yeah so if you if you've ever been a bullpen catcher or you know a big league bullpen catcher email us tell us about how good a living you made yeah all right another what if hypothetical from matt what if pickoff throws from the pitcher counted as balls it feels kind of intuitive right the pitcher stands on the mound and throws a baseball somewhere other than the strike zone why not count it as a ball i I'm curious about the obvious questions. How often would pitchers even bother making pickoff attempts? What would stolen base numbers look like? How would this impact walk rate, et cetera? And also what the other intended or unintended consequences of this change might be.

Can we, I mean, I'm not just, not to criticize your, I guess it's an interesting question, but it's not really an interesting question because we don't – like why? Like why was this rule put in place? Why this? It feels somewhat arbitrary. Why not? What if pickoff throws from the pitcher cost you $40,000? Why not?

I mean, why not pickoff throws? Why not anything does anything? Like just this is a Mad Libs question, right? Sort of. Why would they count as balls? What if fly balls won you an apple? Like, I don't know, probably nothing. anything like just this is a mad libs question right so why would they count as balls what if fly balls won you an apple like i don't know probably nothing yeah there's no real reason unless you thought that there were too many pick-up throws okay so maybe that or you wanted to

encourage base dealing or this was a way to increase scoring or something all right so if the intellectual premise of this is that there are too many pickoff throws, then I can entertain it. Okay. All right, so are there too many pickoff throws, in your opinion, as it is? Do you think that a rule that limits pickoff throws would make the base running game more interesting or less interesting? Pickoff throws in themselves are not very interesting. A pickoff is interesting.

A pickoff is fun, and there's always the potential for a pick-off, but the vast majority of pick-off attempts do not result in pick-offs, and many of the pick-off attempts are just lobs, which are not interesting. So I wouldn't say that there are so many that it bothers me, but I also wouldn't miss pick-off attempts if you could somehow eliminate them and replace them with something else interesting. I do love the split screen. I like split screen, yeah. I feel like if there was some limitation, some restriction on pickoff throws, it would make the pitcher's decision to throw over more interesting.

As it is, it seems like there's only two reasons. I guess there's three reasons a pitcher doesn't throw a pickoff throw. One is it's completely unnecessary. There's no upside whatsoever, and you might throw it away. All right, so that's one. Two is the visiting or the home crowd might boo you, which is very weird and frustrating that that's a factor if it is a factor. And I think it probably is a factor.

And the third is that by pitching instead of throwing over, you are trying to get the jump on them. You want them to think you might throw over, and that's when you pitch. And there's some strategy there. But otherwise, pickoff throws are very cheap. And I do kind of wish that pitchers didn't have an unlimited supply of them.

In a lot of ways, and this contradicts the bullpen catcher answer I just gave, but in a lot of ways, the restrictions placed on teams are what make everything interesting. So I wouldn't mind if a catcher couldn't go out to the mound, not because it feeds up the game to do that,

but because, like, then you'd have to save them, and we'd have something else to count, something else to pay attention to. I wouldn't mind if you only got, you know, eight grounders a game, and after that, they were all out. Like, because that'd be kind of dumb. But then after the seventh one, you'd be like, ah, is he going to hit it on the ground? I love the old softball, the slow pitch softball rule that you get X home runs and then beyond that they're all outs. I don't know.

There's not much to gain by changing any of these rules, so maybe don't. But I wouldn't mind if a pitcher had, say, I mean, to me, if you think about it, a three pickoffs per batter would be tremendously interesting. Yeah, I wonder what percentage of batters go over that now. It would be a tiny, tiny number. Yeah, but, I mean, over the course of, not really. I mean, if Billy Hamilton is on first base and you go 2-2 before striking out the hitter, you've almost certainly thrown over three times.

And it'd be really interesting to think about, okay, well, what's the first one mean? How does it change the base runner's lead after you've thrown one? How does it, I mean, does he then start getting big leads just to draw your throw? What happens with two? It would add a tremendously entertaining matchup between the runner and the pitcher, I would think. I don't know what happens when you've thrown your third. Does the guy just get to literally take a 40 foot lead i'm not

sure yeah just as far as he can go without you beating him to the bag if you ran over there i feel like these probably aren't gonna happen no i don't think they are okay so if you only get three per batter and you throw two over and you've got one more, and then the guy's going to take a big lead. I think that you'd see a lot more pick-offs, which are interesting, because runners would be more aggressive. And you'd probably see a lot fewer throws, which would be good, because throws themselves are kind of boring. And you'd see more stolen bases, which are fun.

Everybody likes stolen bases. Yeah. All right. Question from Adam in Atlanta. On the September 16th episode, you entertain the notion that Sam might be a better defender than even a very good major league defender who is stricken with the inability to throw it all, except as if the ball were a box of shoes.

This got me to thinking about defensive metrics in general. Suppose defensive metrics perfectly captured every defensive contribution players could make, including avoiding high slides, properly locating to cut off an outfielder's throw, etc. Among position players, what fraction of the average player's overall defensive value would be attributable to A, his range, B, his catching ability, C, his throwing ability, and D, other. Other being basically his actions, his... Yeah, okay. His transfers or his...

His awareness, his feel, his mechanics, how well he's coached. How would this distribution differ for the league's best overall defensive player? So what fraction of the overall defensive value would be attributable to range, catching ability, throwing ability, and other? Pick a position or pick a player, and then I'll give you an answer. Yeah, so I assume we're not talking about catchers, so let's just say an outfielder. Okay, name one. Name an outfielder. Carlos Gomez.

All right, I don't think there's much variety. I'm just, I need a player so i can say something all right so carlos gomez i would say for an outfielder for a center fielder it'd be like 75 to 80 percent range if we're counting range as jumps i mean anything that helps him cover ground, get to a ball. So like almost 80% range. It's range, throwing ability, other, and? Catching ability, which if you separate it from range is not very important. Okay. All right. So now, okay.

So I'll say 75% range, 8% catching ability, 14% throwing, and 3% other. But that's for an outfielder. An outfielder, it's basically just there's two jobs, right? Run to the ball and throw the ball back. Yeah. Assuming you're not dropping the ball once you get there. Yeah. And so it would be different for an infielder.

So for a shortstop, I would then say 30% range, 30% catching ability, 30% arm, and 10% other. Okay, sounds about right. What would the biggest, I guess, catcher would be the biggest other? Did you say how big an other would be for catcher? No, for catcher, an other would other would be well are we calling the way you catch a pitch catching ability is that i think so really okay you put framing and catching ability i think i don't know okay so otherwise you're just being a backstop basically i'm not prepared i'm not prepared to i we as a as a people are not prepared to talk about the other for catchers. It's still in the agnostic zone. So I'm not going to even say.

Okay. I would guess, well, we know that range is almost nothing for a catcher. So I don't know. I would guess 50% catching, 30% other, and 20% throw. And for first base, I'd say 20% range, 65% catching, 5% arm, 10% other. Okay. Well, I just wanted to point out an internet resource that I think not a lot of people know about. We got a question from Brian.

This was a while ago, and at the time I didn't have an answer for him, and now I do. He said, I was wondering if anyone had ever calculated what the White Sox playoff probability was when they completed the white flag trade with the Giants in 1997. It was on July 31st. I remember that they were 3.5 games out at the time of the trade and were vilified for the trade. Owner Jerry Reinsdorf said something to the effect that if you think we can catch Cleveland, you're crazy. Is it possible to go back to seasons when playoff probabilities weren't being run on a daily basis or at all

like they are today? If so, I was wondering what the numbers showed. Were the Sox playoff bound or were the Sox right to make this trade? Can you go back to previous seasons to see what team's playoff probabilities were? And at the time that Brian emailed us, I'm not sure that there really was a way to do that, but there is now. So there is a site called the Baseball Gauge, just thebaseballgage.com, which is a really interesting site. It's like you might not have heard of it because it's not BP or baseball reference or fan graphs, but it has a lot of interesting stuff, some good resources on there. It's run by a guy named Dan Hirsch, who I'm working with about a different article now. And he has run playoff probabilities for just every year going back to the beginning of baseball.

I think he has them going back to 1871. And obviously there are some limitations to this. It's not quite the same as the playoff odds that you see at baseball prospectus today, which are based on depth charts. So it takes into account who is on the team at any particular moment and who's on every other team, which is pretty important information. And Dan's don't do that because that would be really difficult to do. And you couldn't have playing time estimates for every day in baseball history. Obviously, that would be prohibitive. So his playoff odds,

and he's got wildcard for years with wildcard, and he's so his playoff odds and he's got wild card for years with wild card and he's got overall playoff and he has pennant probability and it's just based on the team's record and the record of their opponents in the division and the league and the remaining schedule basically and he simulated the remaining schedules 100,000 times, which for all of baseball history, he says is 1.7 trillion game simulations. And so you can go to thebaseballgauge.com and look up playoff odds for any day of Major League history for any team, which is pretty cool. And maybe it's not quite as sophisticated as the ones that we have now but i would guess that assuming it's calculated the way it's says it's calculated it would be a pretty good proxy so to answer brian's question on july 31st when the white socks made that white flag trade dan has them with a 22.4

chance to make the playoffs most of which was winning the division i think there was like a four percent wild card chance something like that so if reinstorf said something about catching cleveland being crazy it's not crazy but it was unlikely that they would have made the playoffs going back to the catcher thing i think the thing that differentiates restrictions that are interesting and make the game rich and restrictions that should probably just be done with are whether they actually do introduce strategic element or whether they just basically become an impediment where everyone responds to them the same way. So it's like when people sometimes will talk about how the National League is more strategically interesting, and they love watching the cat and mouse game with managers because the pitchers have to hit,

and then other people go, well, no, when the pitcher hits, you have them bunt, or you pinch hit for them. It's actually not that difficult. Everybody knows what to do, and it's taking that away that actually makes things more interesting. Anyway, in the catcher case, there's not any sort of strategy to how managers use their backup catchers. They just don't. They just go, well, can't use him. Don't want to be left without an emergency catcher or without a catcher in case something happens.

And so it's like not something you ever think about. It's not in the forefront of your mind. It's not even in the background of your mind. It's just like, well, can't use your catcher. That sucks. So that's, I think, the distinction. All right. White Sox, 22%.

Yep. So that would be, let's see. I wish I had thought of this beforehand. But give me, what was the date? The 31st? Trade deadline day. And it was, sorry, 22%? Yep.

To make the playoffs? So that'd be like roughly where the Blue Jays were at the trade deadline this year. Uh-huh. The Blue Jays on July 29th were, I guess, a little higher than that, about 35%, but that was almost all wildcard. Their adjusted playoff odds, which are the odds that they get into an actual series, which would be the equivalent of what the White Sox were going for because there was no wildcard play- in, were 24%.

So essentially the White Sox, when they had their white flag sale, were where the Blue Jays were when they traded for Tulewitzki and David Price. Interesting. Although I wonder if the White Sox would have been, I mean, at the time the Blue Jays seemed like they were better than their record indicated, which is something that the playoff odds should take into account. We could go back and see whether the White Sox were playing over their heads at that point or not, but maybe it's sort of different. But it's amazing that the Blue Jays have come that far. I remember when I wrote about the Tulewitzki trade, it was far from a

foregone conclusion that the Blue Jays were going to make the playoffs. And then they had, you know, 10 straight wins or something after the deadline and beat up on the Yankees. And suddenly they were right there. And in retrospect, it seemed obvious because they had a good run differential and they had all this talent, but they came a long way in a very short time yeah and you could um make the case that by picking the blue jays i sort of landed on a very conveniently interesting answer another conveniently interesting answer on the flip side would be the tigers who when they traded yoanis cespedes were at 20 to make to make the playoffs although although their adjusted playoff odds were lower,

were like closer to 10%. Okay. The Mets, when they traded for Cespedes, were at 30% to make the playoffs overall and 27% to get a series. So they were pretty close to where the White Sox were, and there was not, I don't know, do you have any sense that the Mets were seen as being a much better team than their record at and there was not, I don't know, do you have any sense that the Mets were seen as being a much better team than their record at that point?

No, I don't think so. No, not really. The Mets were kind of projected to be a 500 team coming in, and they were projected to be an 84-win team from that point on. So I don't think anybody really thought that they were a sleeping giant or anything. No. All right, so playing decks slightly different this time i wanted to go back over our the things that we noted were different about the

first two weeks in this baseball season our annual our annual how baseball is different now episode where we decide whether the early season trends in league-wide style are real or fiction or likely to regress. And this is, you can, at Baseball Reference, if you go to Seasons, and then there is a MLB season averages for batting and pitching that goes back forever. And you can see how many, say, runs per game or caught stealing per game or sacrifice bunts per game there have been across the league in every year going back forever. And so that's what we use at the time, and that's what I'm using right now. And so there were four things that we talked about that apply here. And so I'm going to see if they were indeed actual trends or not. So sacrifice bunts at the time were at a record low.

This was about two weeks into the season. So, you know, some hundreds of games, but also just two weeks into the season. They were at a record low, the lowest in recorded history by a lot. And the previous records had been set in 2014, and before that 2013, and before that 2012, so this was clearly a trend, and yet there were two things notable about this. One is that there was a huge, huge drop from 2014. It was not the typical small drop each year that we had been seeing, but a big drop. Secondly, it was surprising because we thought that there were reasons that would counteract

the trend away from the bunt, one being that bunts have more value and utility in a low scoring run environment, and two, with the shifts there was more incentive to bunt for hits and bunts for hits are sometimes become bunts for sacrifices if they're not perfectly executed. That's one nice thing about a bunt for a hit, is that you might still advance the runner. So anyway, you would actually, based on those facts, you would actually guess that bunts would be up, they were down, and then we decided that it was probably a real trend, but not too real.

All right, so at the time, there were 0.23 sacrifice bunts per game. Do you want to now guess whether it turned out to be real or fluke? I would guess that it has gone up, but it is still low. Yes, it has gone up. It is still low. It is now at 0.25 sacrifice bunts per game, which

is a new record and is still a big drop from the previous year, down about a little more than 10% from 2014, which was the previous low. So sacrifice bunts are still, and I think it's fair to say, truly at record lows. We now live in a game where the sacrifice bunt

is definitely out of fashion. RIP sacrifice bunt. All right. Hit by pitches. Hit by pitches, we're at an all-time high, or tied for an all-time high at.39 per game. We expected, I think, the opposite because walks are way down and control is, you know, generally speaking,

pitchers have much more control than they used to. And because with offense down, there'd be less reason to pitch in on batters. And the cost of a hit by pitch would be relative to other offensive outcomes greater than it used to be. And so we thought it would go, we thought that it would have gone down. Instead, it had gone up to a record high. You said, I think it's going to go back down. Do you want to guess whether you were right? I'll say that I was. All right, it did.

In fact, it is no longer at record levels. It's now actually down below last year, slightly, but basically it's been consistent for the last seven years. Virtually no change, and this year is right in the middle of it. So, not a hit-by- hit by pitch era as we thought for 12 days it might be okay all right babbitt was down 11 points this year babbitt is actually very reliable from season to season it drops over generations but very rarely from season to season the 11 point drop was the largest drop in history by a lot uh and some of that was explained by April BABIP being generally about

four points lower than usual, but this was an 11-point drop, and we wondered whether the shifts had finally caught up or whether, I don't know, maybe something about the low strike zone or something had finally caught up. You said part April fluke, sorry, part April, part fluke, you thought two points was real. And so you predicted that the 298 BABIP of last year would turn into a 296 BABIP this year. Do you want to stand by that 296 figure? I don't know what it is now, but I don't think it's down. So I'm going to say it went up again. Okay. So would you guess that 296 roughly in line with previous years, but slightly down is still your guess? I would say slightly higher than previous years. All right. In fact, it is higher even than last year. It is at 299 up one point.

The very strong April trend that we saw, completely overwhelmed. And so, despite the continued, we could have a whole episode about this. We have done it before. Despite the continued infusion of shifts, defensive shifts into the game, Babbitt continues to not be affected. And in fact, this year, slightly up. Interesting. All right, slightly up. Interesting. All right, last one.

Wild pitches was the most ever. It has been a steady climb. We considered this one a gimme. The answer seemed pretty obvious. Pitchers have harder, better stuff than ever before. And this is, like I said, it's been a regular elevated trajectory for quite some time and we predicted that it would continue to be and I will now see whether in fact it continued to be wild pitches per game are still tied for the all-time record but basically equivalent with last year

and the year before. So not any notable change from previous years and no correction of the trend upward though. Okay. So there you go. All that stuff is available on Baseball Reference, I think, even if you're not a Playindex subscriber. However, if you are a Playindex subscriber, you can look at all those things and then go and do a whole bunch of Playindex searches that they inspire you to do. Didn't we talk about scoring? Did we just talk about straight up scoring? No, because I guess we didn't because I guess there wasn't a notable trend at that point. Or maybe because we'd already talked about it the previous day. I'm not sure.

Well, we can talk about it in a future show, but there has been an uptick. Do you want to know? We can talk about it in a future show, but there has been an uptick. There has been an uptick in the last couple months, and it is about the same level that it was in 2011 and 2012, and so up from last year and the year before. Still a mystery about why that is, but maybe at the end of the month, if it continues, we can recap that and come up with some reasons why it may have happened all right okay so use the coupon code bp get the discounted price of 30 on a one-year subscription

to the play index let's take one more question from j keith i just heard an analyst describe a pitch that was hit for a home run as a sinker ball that didn't sink. I've heard this many times before, but never a curve ball that didn't curve, a slider that didn't slide, or while we're at it, a fastball that didn't fast. Is there anything to this beyond it being easy to know that certain pitcher is known for throwing sinker balls so you can tell when a pitch stays up? Do pitchers ever throw a curve ball that doesn't curve but is still a curve ball? And would a knuckle ball that didn't knuckle just be a fastball slider that didn't slide you might not say the exact word but a backup slider is very much a thing uh-huh or just a just a hanging curve is the same idea right a hanging curve is mostly the same idea although sometimes

refers to location like i feel like could you throw a good curveball, but if you miss up? Like, if a curveball had its normal movement, I feel like a curveball actually, when we say a hanging curveball, we usually do mean just that it was thrown in the strike zone, up in the zone, not that anybody actually went through

and measured the movement. Yeah. Whereas a backup slider is actually a slider that does not slide, right? It can actually be effective for that reason because it's so unpredictably non-slidy. I don't, I mean, you know, it just feels like language. Yeah, I think there are analogs for every pitch type to explain. I'm not sure that most sinkers that don't sink are actually sinkers that don't sink either. Now that I kind of think about it, I think those are usually

just, again, pitches that were left up, not that they didn't sink. They might have had the same movement. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes you get more arm side movement instead of downward movement. Maybe you don't even get any movement. Maybe it just is flat because you grip it wrong or throw it wrong. But a lot of times a sinker that doesn't sink is really just a way of saying a sinker that he threw too high for a sinker. Yeah, I think it's probably hard to tell in the one second that you have to watch and describe a pitch. Probably hard to tell if a sinker had good sink or bad sink.

Yeah, with that attitude it is You could tell if you had time To maybe watch a replay or something But if you just saw the pitch being hit I'm guessing that your initial Response is based more on location Than the number of inches That it broke

Alright this was sent in by Ben He sent us a link to an article, which he says, explains that the Nationals will be offering free season tickets to fans who can hit a homer out of Nats Park. Presumably, there must exist many ex-players in attendance most of the time. However, the Padres ran a similar promo and nobody hit one out. How many homers do you think the fans can hit? A retired Bonds, perhaps, if I sold him my season tickets. And the ground rules for this program is one person per ticket plan is eligible to compete in the Swing for Your Seats promotion on or about October 5th.

The Nationals will notify the primary account holder for every eligible plan with information about how to register for the event. Fans will stand at home plate and receive up to one swing at up to two pitches from an automatic pitching machine. The Nationals will provide wood bats and batting helmets, and they'll have the final say if there's any dispute about whether a batted ball clears the fence in fair territory. Anyone who hits a home run will receive the full payment amount of his or her 2016 ticket plan Not to exceed $10,000 A $10,000 credit will be applied toward the cost Of the seats for winners with ticket plans That exceed that amount

And there was a similar Padres promotion In 2014 And I think we talked about that at the time And none of the thousand fans Who tried it was able to Hit a home run Yeah, so I probably mentioned at the time that I did an Angels promotion where you could bring in cans of food and then take swings on the field

back in 2003. And I one-hopped the wall, something that I'm very proud of, although slightly foul. It was just down the line and it was just a few feet foul. But I did one-hop the wall, but that was with a metal bat. And it was probably on like my 16th swing. I imagine, I recall that I didn't do anything the first couple. And so I don't know, I'm, I sort of feel like this is, if you gave them five, a lot of people would do it, but that the one swing aspect of it makes it very, I feel i just think that the difference between your first and your second swing is huge like it's like the difference between the first and the second pick in the draft it's much bigger than the difference between any subsequent swings the wood bat thing is obviously a big thing the pitching machine the fact that you're hitting from a pitching machine

helps because you know the location is going to be very predictable and straight but the sort of faster that it goes the less likely you are on the first swing to catch up with it and the slower it goes the less likely you are to hit it for a great distance you hit a pitch off of me i want to say 300 feet uh with a wood bat right it was a gapper it was a gapper maybe 280 and you haven't played for very long and you never really played that much uh you're more of a i think you're more of a calf guy than a upper body guy i feel like if i were to pick a muscle that you're above the median and i'd probably pick your calves i think that's the opposite of the case oh really your calves are no good no me and gabe kapler did a competition about calves once because neither of us has any what was the competition he

challenged me to a cav off yeah like a one month calf regimen and uh we followed we followed a program i don't think there was one it was just like a self-reported thing. What was the metric? I think we measured inches, circumference, and then we followed a program that he recommended, a very Gabe Kapler program, and then we were supposed to say whether it did anything at the end, and I don't think it did. Speechless, man.

Okay. You were in a calf competition. With Gabe Kapler. I sure was competition with famous athlete Gabe Kaffler. You and Gabe in a calf off. Yeah. And you're just telling us this. It was a public thing. It was on his website. You're kidding me. Yeah.

When was this? You haven't been reading. It's probably last summer. Oh, my goodness. All right. Well, now I've embarrassed myself by praising your calves. The whole world is laughing at me. Yeah. Everyone who knows me is just shaking their heads.

Yeah. So anyway. I feel like I was walking around with, you know, a boogie in my nose, and nobody told me. The whole world saw it, and nobody told me. Here I am it and nobody told me here i am praising your calves i didn't wear shorts much this summer so you can't be blamed but the point is i hit a ball 80 to 300 feet with a wood bat off of 65 not my first swing of the day swing at all but and even when you see players take bp obviously not all of them are trying to jack the ball out right away.

Obviously, many of them go through a program where they want to hit the ball a certain place before they start trying to hit home runs. But even when they start trying to hit home runs, it's not an automatic thing. Sometimes they'll get in a little groove or it'll take a few swings for them to get the range. And so these are season ticket holders. the range and so these are season ticket holders and season ticket holders probably tend to be older people who can afford season tickets and therefore further removed from their playing days and and yeah it's it's one swing one swing is really hard it's not even one swing it's up to one swing yeah it's an extremely safe promotion i think is what i'm saying yeah and it's even more safe because if if one person does it it costs you ten thousand dollars it's not

going to bankrupt you and ten thousand in goods too right yeah it's toward the ticket plan so you still get the person coming and buying hot dogs. And it maybe attracts people who would decide whether to buy season tickets based on whether they get to go on the field at Nationals Park and try to hit a home run. So yeah, I think it sounds like someone should do it. And even if there happens to be a former professional player who has national season tickets, it would be difficult for that person to do. So the typical person person it's a extreme long shot given a thousand swings where stamina is not an issue you can take as many breaks as

you want but given a thousand swings would you get one i think so i don't think i would i'm not sure about you but with a wood bat i don't think i would i think with a metal bat no doubt about it but with a wood bat no we were using wood beds right when we were saying yeah i know still i think if i had a thousand and i'd get tired and i could just aim for the line anyway we'll never know all right did you post did you post pictures of your calves i hope not i'll i'll you can i can look at this after okay all right okay so's it. We'll be back with another show tomorrow. We've kind of cleaned out the mailbag a little bit. So please do start sending them for next week at podcast at baseball perspectives.com. Join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively.

Oh my gosh. You referred to your calves as an affliction. They are. That's how I think of of them you refer to your calves as your fate yeah it's a big problem not even gabe capler could correct it even his own and if gabe capler can't make his calves better than no one can so you can can rate, review, subscribe to the show on iTunes. Told you about the Facebook group. We will be back tomorrow.