Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 866: Noah Syndergaard, Right Now

Episode Date: April 20, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Noah Syndergaard, then answer listener emails about 1-2-3 innings, what David Ortiz could do to replicate Kobe, conservative replay reviewing, and more.

Let the record show, you gave it all your mind. And let the record show, I gave it all of mine. It didn't turn out quite, quite like we'd hoped. So lay your best lines and let the record roll. Hello and welcome to episode 866 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com, and second, but certainly not least, our supporters on Patreon. I am Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello. Hey, Ben.

We are doing a listener email show. Anything you want to banter about before we begin? Yeah, I want to talk about something I heard an announcer say yesterday. Other people might have heard it as well, if they were watching the exact same game at the exact same time that I was. It was an announcer talking about Noah Syndergaard, and what he said about Noah Syndergaard is, do I have the quote? Oh yeah, all right. Well, anyway, I'm going to There's three keywords that matter It's the announcer said that Syndergaard has

To be the best pitcher in baseball Right now. He said it Very emphatically. He Said he repeated it over and over again And then when his partner Not argumentatively But said, yeah, no It's an interesting discussion

Some of the other names that come to mind are clayton kershaw and the other guy said no and the key thing i think is the reason i bring it up is is because of i won't talk about right now uh the um you hear this sometimes where a person will uh will use some incredible hyperbole to describe a player and then at the end tack on right now and so then it's sort of a way of cheating so like you're not necessarily saying that noah synergard is actually the best pitcher in baseball but right now he is like for the these five minutes he is or for these two months he is and it it creates this sort of heisenbergian uncertainty where it cannot be proven or disproven uh and no one even knows what you mean and like for how long what is your time

period is this time period is this looking backward is it looking forward are you saying that his last start on Tuesday last Tuesday nobody pitched better on Tuesday than he did or are you saying something bigger and broader than that and really anytime you're making a claim where no one knows what your claim is you have no responsibility to it But also you're accomplishing nothing And so I think That the goal Of this is simply

To use some Stew of words to make the Case that Noah Syndergaard is very good And he could have said Anything he could have You know He's using hyperbole. He's using sort of almost, it's like dogs, you know?

Like, if you talk to a dog and you're like, sit, right? The dog doesn't necessarily know the sound sit, but it knows the tone that you're using. So if you go to that dog and you go, you say, soup, the dog is going to sit, right? Because he knows like when dude comes over and goes like that in that tone, I sit, right? And you could be like couch or anything, just any word in that tone. And so it doesn't really matter that he chose the adjective best. It doesn't really matter that he chose the adjective best. It doesn't really matter that he defined his population of players that he's comparing Syndergaard to to all of baseball. It doesn't even matter that he said right now. He's really just trying to say, boy, guys, you notice Noah Syndergaard lately?

He's pretty fun. He's pretty fun. It's also possible, though, that he truly thinks that this is true, that, in fact, Noah Syndergaard is the best pitcher in baseball right now, and that means something to him. It means nothing to me. And so if that is what this announcer means, I reject him as an announcer. The third possibility is that he genuinely believes that Noah Syndergaard has actually become

the best pitcher in baseball, that he has passed Clayton Kershaw. And this is an absurd thing to be confident about, right? Even if you think that this might have happened, even if you think a corner has been turned, even if you think that this might have happened, even if you think a corner has been turned, even if you are of the belief that some combination of stats and scouting can make one change their minds about a pitcher of Syndergaard's capabilities relative to a pitcher of Kershaw's, even in over just the span of three starts, you would still have to, a reasonable person would have more doubt than has to be, has to be, has to be. But, okay, so I want to just quickly engage you on this question. How realistic is it for a person to think that Noah Syndergaard is the best pitcher

in baseball? Secondarily, how, because Kershaw is so, so good that it kind of skews this whole conversation. How realistic is it for a person to say that Noah Syndergaard is, in fact, the second best pitcher in baseball? I'm sympathetic, sort of, because if you watched Noah Syndergaard's three starts thus far this season, it's hard to see those starts and imagine that a human being could be better at pitching than that right exactly if his point is if if his point is point number three that he actually believes then i'm only criticizing him for his confidence uh in his own opinions it is a kind of an interesting question how good is sindergaard how good can we say he is after three starts yeah right i mean when you have a guy who throws 98 and now suddenly he throws a slider

that is really good and goes harder than anyone else's slider and he has these other good pitches and he's been overpowering in the past and now suddenly he has leveled up, he has upgraded. It's persuasive. No human being could convince me that he's better than Kershaw after three starts. Even if we're saying just, you know, right were to just project who the best starting pitcher would be based on pure stuff yeah just looking at you know pitch fx stats for what a guy throws or something or stat cast stats for what a guy's throws then i would think that you would probably have cinder guard at the top of that list yeah as as a set of blueprints, he is the one that you have the boys in the shop build. Like, he's the best set of blueprints in baseball at this point. But, and the performance is exceptional to date in this season, and it was extremely good last season, too.

to date in this season, and it was extremely good last season too. This is always a difficult question to get your head around because in the short term, you might be too affected by this feeling of hotness or pitcher being locked in or whatever. And in the long term, then you start to have all sorts of complicating factors like aging and health and injury risk and all that. So sometimes I'll ask you if you needed one pitcher to make a start on, let's say August 4th of this year, how many names before you get to Syndergaard? I mean, he's, he's, he throws. So his stuff seems so otherworldly right now that he would be like at the top of my Tommy John list probably just because it seems like a human arm should not be able to do that.

Yeah, I'm removing that. But assuming he's healthy. Fine, fine. May 14th. Yeah, okay. Sometime not today, not this week, but not far in the future. I mean, he'd be top five. He'd be top five.

I think. Is there any chance that he's number two? I'm trying to think of who I would want over him. I mean, Arrieta, not even. Not Granke. Probably not Granke. Kershaw, Arrieta. Yeah, Kershaw is number one.

And then you'd have Arrieta, Sale, Fernandez, Stras and then you'd have sale arietta sale fernandez scherzer scherzer all around roughly same range and i mean you know you'd have like look it's not it six months ago de grom and harvey were starting games one and two of the postseason and syndergaard was you know in the back half of that rotation so you could make a case for each of them. Yep. And did I say Fernandez? Yes. So, you know, you said top five. Perhaps.

I did say top five. So I guess I would stick to that. But not, you would not say, you're saying fifth. Yeah, probably. Okay. I think I would, I think I'm the same. I think I'm about fifth. I don't think I'm going over Sale or Arrieta right now.

So the highest I would go today is four. You have Rich Hill in there somewhere too. So you got to make room for him. But I would be, I would be content to have him. I'd put him fifth. I'd have Fernandez. I'd have Jose Fernandez over him, too. Okay.

By the way, the picture that was tweeted by the Mets SNY field reporter of the imprint of the cross necklace on Kevin Ploiecki's chest the other day, that was great. But that was like a classic fun fact lie, I think. We always talk about how fun facts lie in some way. They distort reality in some way. This, to me, was an interesting picture. It's visually arresting. It's not something I've seen before. But it also doesn't, to me, say anything about Cinderguard.

Right. A 96-mile-an-hour fastball. Wait, go ahead. Well, the thing is, yes, right. So, you know, all the stories were, oh, he was averaging 98 or 99 or 100 or whatever. I mean, you know, it could be 93 and it would still leave an imprint. Anyone could leave that imprint. The more relevant thing is it was a curveball.

Oh, my gosh. It was an 83- thing is it was a curveball oh my gosh it was an 83 mile per hour curveball and one one post i i saw about it said like for emphasis oh and it was a curveball as if like that makes superpowers even greater like he can throw a curveball and do this but no really it just means right i don't know maybe i guess if you if you throw a 70 mile per hour curveball maybe you don't leave such a good imprint i don't know yeah but you could throw any number of pitches harder than 83 it would be like if you replaced that for emphasis oh and it was 83. Right. Very cool picture. Definitely worthy of being tweeted, but very misleading. I'm looking forward to the tweet that shows a picture of a baseball thrown by Noah Syndergaard embedded in the pocket Bible that the catcher keeps in his breast pocket and that saved his life. Yeah. Right. That's what I would be convincing. right all right that's all i got okay then let's start with a quick one just a throat clearer

from patreon supporter bob stocking who says in the top of the sixth in yesterday i believe afternoon's brewers twins game jonathan velar sing, then was forced out in a 3-6-3 double play, one of my favorites. After the batter struck out, the Twins announcer said, the Brewers go down 1-2-3, and as we head to the bottom of the sixth, etc. I've heard other announcers make the same pronouncement. While it's true that only three men batted, the first one was not retired as a batter, only as a runner. In my mind, that's not a 1-2-3 inning.

How does it look to you? I mean, obviously correct. He is obviously correct. I would guess that the announcer himself would admit that he just misspoke. Nobody would call that a 1-2-3. A 1-2-3 implies the sequential outs of one two and three however i always did as a as going back to my childhood uh think that it was perfectly fine to say three up three down uh-huh for such a situation and three up three downs okay i i could see

arguing with me on that uh although i couldn't see caring enough to argue with me about that. Yeah. Yeah, we have separate ways to describe these things. We have one, two, three. We have set down in order or retired in order. Those are clearly one, two, three. Everyone gets out in succession. And then we have face the minimum.

That is a separate description that we have that applies to that situation. I don't think I've ever really heard somebody say face the minimum for a single inning. A single inning. Do you object to the use of strike out the side when, you know, four hits and three runs have come in in between? It's underwhelming in that case, but i don't think it's inaccurate well it's the problem is that it's underwhelming in that case and therefore it pollutes all the cases where it doesn't need to be underwhelming you know and instead we force broadcasters to say strike out the side in order. And that's extra words. I, I, I, to me, I guess it, I mean, I guess that's what the side is, but to me, the side

should be the inning. Like if you strike out the side to me, what is the side to, what do you think the side refers to? I would think the side. It's just, I think it's your three outs. I know, I guess it is, but it feels like it should be the slate of batters that batted on that side of the score the scoreboard that inning right i don't know if it is it must not be but i think there's a line separating the top half of the inning from the bottom half of the inning and your side is

your side you're at the top or the bottom and so to strike out the side would be to strike out all the offense that happened on that side of the line. It's not, probably, because otherwise that phrase wouldn't be used the way it is. But that seems like the most reasonable origin of the phrase. And I don't know. I've always wished that we could reclaim strike out the side for only in order. I do see sometimes

some gentle mockery of the notion of saying that somebody struck out the side while also giving up seven and a half runs. There's also the matter this is off topic, but it's also the matter. This is irrelevant. This is off topic, but it's also the matter of the the hold slash loss where you can you can get a hold and a loss in the same amount.

Totally different topic. But someday we should talk about that. OK, I think you can. We'll save that for sweeps week. All right. Question from Joe G. in Pittsburgh. It's really a statement that I will make into a question. He says, I have spent the past two hours on my company's clock trying to figure out what type of final game David Ortiz would need to have in order to compare to Kobe's final game.

I am no math or statistical whiz, and comparing baseball to basketball statistics ended up being harder than I thought. For the sake of comparison, I valued field goal attempts to equal at bats, field goal makes to equal hits, walks to equal made free throws, and extra base hits to equal three-pointers made. Using Kobe's per-game averages for the 2015-16 season as the baseline, I found the percentage increase for Kobe's stat line in his last game. So his 50 field goal attempts was a 196% increase over his usual. His field goals made was a 267% increase. His three-pointers made was a 200% increase. His free throws made was a 186% increase.

So using David Ortiz's 2015 Per game averages as a baseline Joe calculated a potential Batting line based on Kobe's percentage Increases and he found That rounding to the nearest total number And factoring in that exactly half Of his extra base hits in 2015

Were doubles and half were home runs Ortiz would need to go 4 for 11 With two walks One one home run, and one double. A great game, sure, but hardly as exciting as Kobe yakking 50 jumpers at will. In fact, Big Papi's stat line seems like a typical game in Toronto with Clay Buchholz facing R.A. Dickey. So I wanted to ask whether my response to Joe was that this sort of brought home to me how different these two sports are in their capacity to allow one athlete to monopolize the minutes to take over the game. And I'm curious about whether you are happy that baseball is as it is. And not necessarily in the Kobe case, because maybe you don't want Kobe to do well, or maybe it's not entertaining to watch a bad basketball player take over a game. But a good basketball player can also do that to an extent that a baseball player cannot.

And so I wonder whether the downside of missing out on one player just sort of taking over a game and having a truly transcendent performance is offset by the fact that you don few decades, we don't have to deal with Kobe Bryant or someone like him retiring. Well, I guess Kobe kind of did it all season. Yeah, I think generally the NBA will survive Kobe Bryant's last season. I it's a deeper philosophical question than that, I guess, or it's just sort of fundamental i don't even know if it's worth litigating it but they're just different sports yeah it's like i don't know that i don't know how to answer it but do you wish that baseball were more like whether it's like really asking me whether i prefer that the sky is blue or that the grass is green and am i glad that the sky isn't green or that the grass isn't blue like yeah they're different things they're they are nice they're both nice i will the only

i was trying to think of a comparable situation to kobe and the only thing i can think of was my first uh indie ball game um that i went to in 2014 was actually not to a Stompers game, but to their rivals, the San Rafael Pacifics. And they had Eric Burns, retired Eric Burns, playing for charity. He was playing a game and he was playing for charity. And so every hit that he got would be like, you know, 250 bucks for charity or something like that. It could have been a million because he couldn't hit at all. But every ball he caught was 500 and i just

remember eric burns playing left field and running like 300 feet to catch the fly ball and calling off like the second base yeah yeah that was fun it is uh i think it's undeniably an obstacle to the popularity of baseball that Bryce Harper's role in the game is mathematically limited to the extent that it is almost impossible for him to stand out, to be involved in many more situations than Wilson Ramos is going to be. And the crucial situation. Right. And that's not necessarily, I'm not saying that's an obstacle to the sport appealing to me or to being something we fall in love with or

maintaining its competitive integrity or anything like that. But if you wanted to reach out to the population as a whole, you'd have a sport like basketball where 75% of the camera shots can be on Bryce Harper as they are on Tom Brady or 60% are on him as they are on Steph Curry. And so if you care about baseball appealing to a larger population, then maybe you'd consider it a

bad thing. But what are you going to do? Can't do anything. I'm not doing anything. It's just how it is. Yep. Would you? I mean, you're asking me if it's, you're basically asking me if it is worth the tradeoff of baseball

not being basketball to have it be baseball. Yeah. Yeah, I think it is worth the trade baseball. Yeah. Yeah, I think it is worth the tradeoff. Yeah. What was it on Hang Up and Listen they were talking? Was it on Hang Up and Listen? I don't know.

They were talking about what the baseball equivalent would be, like Derek Jeter playing every position in his farewell game. And, yeah, I guess the upside of this is that if you have a Kobe, he can't sabotage the game. But no one ever does that other than Kobe, really. Well, a couple of equivalents. That's a Jeter playing every position. Although that sort of, in a way, is almost the opposite. Because it is not Jeter doing what Jeter does.

It's Jeter. It would be like if Kobe played center in his final game. That would be the equivalent of Jeter playing every position. I think that a better comparison would be if, you know, in his final game, bad old Steve Carlton had thrown a complete game no matter what. And he, you know, he'd given up 14 home runs and threw 350 pitches but just kept on pitching because they came to see him or you know even a good pitcher like mariano rivera if mariano rivera had started and thrown 190 pitches uh that might actually be better because i think we would all thrill to that like that would be amazing if that's what

mariano rivera had done in his final game. Just been like, you can have, you know, I'm donating my UCL to science anyway, so you can have it. And that's probably pretty close to accurate. Although it's not quite because, again, what Kobe did was he was Kobe to the max. Like Kobe always took way more shots. And here he just took even more shots, even though he's even worse. And it's not like Mariano Rivera was known for starting, but it's close.

That's close. You might also have an example might be like if Vlad Guerrero in his final game or his final weeks just decided not taking a pitch No matter what, like not any pitches I'm the guy who swings at everything And I'm swinging at everything And yeah, that's probably the best If Ricky Henderson

Had decided that he was going to go On the first pitch every time he reached Base in his final month maybe But I think the Mariano Rivera One is probably the example I like the best. That would have been fun because I was always curious to see what would happen if Rivera had tried to start post-cutter. What a mess that we didn't do that. I know.

This was right there for us. And they were playing the Astros. The 111 loss Astros. Yeah. Although I guess that was, was that Andy Pettit's farewell game too? Yankees have had so many farewell games over the last few years. It might've been, but Moe didn't pitch the last. I don't think, did Moe pitch?

I don't think Moe pitched the last weekend against the Astros. No, I don't think he did. So he could have pitched in any of those games. It would have been the same. All right. Am I allowed to take questions about John Lester? Or are you writing something about John Lester? Give me a week.

Okay. I think I'm writing something in the next day or two. Play index? Sure. Well, yeah, sure. This is a very, very, very, very, very, very, very simple one. This might be the simplest one I've ever done. simple one this might be the simplest one i've ever done um and so we'll figure out if i can talk about it long enough to justify uh my role in the email shows okay um the the other day

starlin castro got i i think he got what he got his thousandth hit and i uh he's younger than derrick jeter was when derrick jeter got his,000th hit. Okay. So this is a fun fact. This is a genre fun fact, and it's interesting. And it does point out just how young Starling Castro is, how long he's been around, and how decent of a chance he has to do some things in his career. It's also the case that Starling Castro is probably not going to pass Derek Jeter's career hits total. And that's because Derek Jeter's career hits total was built not just on what he did in his early 20s,

but in his longevity and in how long he was very good. And this is something that I think about a lot lot and I don't really have a grasp on why it appeals to me, but I what I'm talking about is how it seems like a lot of careers end up being defined by how long

a player is good, how good he is in his 30s, even though even in those cases, in most instances, he was better in his 20s like most of most of a player's value happens before he's 30 but most of what makes a player a legend is actually what happens after he turns 30 um which i'm not conveying well but i'll get to the point i was looking at i decided to use Play Index to look at where all-time record holders were in the all-time leaderboards through age 29. So, you know, Pete Rose is the all-time hit king.

But through age 29, relative to all other 29-year-olds, where was he, right? Yeah. Was he at, right? Yeah. Was he at the top? Okay, because most of, like, Pete Rose was better in his 20s than he was in his 30s. And Hank Aaron was better in his 20s than he was in his 30s. All these guys are better in their 20s than they were in their 30s. But were they the hit king in their 20s? And so I just very quickly looked at the record holders in some of the most well-known records.

So Pete Rose, through age 29, was 37th in hits. And just to clarify, I'm not saying that he was 37th on the all-time leaderboard in hits. I'm saying that of all players through age 29, 36 had more than Pete Rose in hits. Right. That's good. All right. So Pete Rose, the hit king, was 37th in hits. He was behind Edgar Renteria, who was 12th.

Edgar Renteria, 12th all-time in hits. Pete Rose, 37th all-time in hits through age 29. Pete Rose is the hit king. Edgar Renteria did not get to 3,000. And so that's what I'm saying. That is the prototypical example that I can give you of this. Okay. I'm going to give you a few more though. Uh, Hank Aaron, RBI King was eighth in RBIs through age 29. Nolan Ryan, Nolan Ryan, sixth in strikeouts through age 29, sixth Nolan Ryan

behind Felix. Felix was ahead of him. Felix will probably come up 2,000 or 3,000 strikeouts short of Nolan Ryan in his career. Even though he pitches in a higher strikeout era, Nolan Ryan trailed him through age 29. Greg Maddox, who is the, I would say, the post-1950, if we want to call that the modern era for starting pitching. He is the leader in wins in that era. He was 11th through age 29 behind CeCe Sabathia, who will, of course, come up way short, and Ken Holtzman and Catfish Hunter. Let's see.

and Catfish Hunter. Let's see, Barry Bonds, the home run king, was 30th in home runs through age 29, behind, you know, Daryl Strawberry and Jose Canseco. Even Hank Aaron was 8 eighth behind Andrew Jones. And last one, Mariano Rivera was 36th in saves behind Chris Perez, behind Matt Capps, and more than 160 behind K-Rod. And more than like 140 or so. I think he's 130-ish behind where Craig Kimbrell is right now.

And Craig Kimbrell is actually in his age 28 season. So Kimbrell has a chance to be the all-time leader through age 29. He has a decent chance at passing Frankie Rodriguez to be the all-time leader in saves through age 29, just miles and miles and miles and miles ahead of Mariano Rivera's pace through that point in his career. And that is the sort of thing that I look at and immediately I think, oh my gosh, he might break the record.

And of course, as we've talked about, nobody breaks records anymore, but he might break the record. And he probably won't. It's weird to think that, in fact, he just probably won't. It doesn't matter how far you are ahead. Like these records are won in your 30s. That always kind of blows me away. I don't know why.

I don't know why, Ben. I'm still thinking about why this matters to me. Now, because it seems like getting an early start, I mean, should help you as much as being productive late. Maybe it's just that almost every great player comes up within a range of a few years. I mean, you get your very occasional 18-year-old or something, but most superstars, most Hall of Fame type guys, they're coming up around 21 or 22 or somewhere around there. And a year or two there doesn't make that huge a difference, especially when you're not in your prime yet. But then there is a big difference between guys who retire at 32 and 35 and guys who hang on to be productive into their 40s. So I guess you can separate yourself more at the back end of a career than you can at the front. Yeah. It's almost like primary voting where

everybody's good. Everybody's basically playing and everybody's basically good at that level. Everybody, you know, the stars, they're all good in, you know, when they're 25. And so whatever advantage you might have or not have, it's proportional allocation of delegates. You're, that guy might be way better than you, but he's only picking up like 8 homers a year on you But Late 30s is winner take all And if you can be Barry Bonds and hit 40 home runs at age 38

You're likely getting A 40 home run Jump on the other guys who aren't hitting any You know why right I do know why he did steroids Yeah But yes you're right okay well that play index coupon code bp discounted price of 30 on a one-year subscription was actually the

perfect segue to the next question which is from christopher who says today a co-worker alerted me to this wikipedia article list of Major League Baseball records considered Unbreakable and It is exactly that and there are I don't know 20-25 of them I probably shouldn't rattle all Of them off but you can very easily Look up this page if you'd like to

And you will know most Of these records but we can just Pick out a few and I think One that you just alluded to probably would be the most breakable, even as improbable as it is, as much as you just said that Craig Kimbrell will not break that record. That is probably one of the least improbable records, 652 saves. Yeah, someone will break that. The person who breaks that is alive today. Right, unless, as we talked about yesterday, saves are on the way out.

Yeah, which might happen. And that's the unbreakable records discussion. Anytime it gets to, well, they used to play baseball this way, and now we play baseball this way, therefore that record will never be broken, makes the unbreakable record the unfun unbreakable record like it's like going well no one will ever break the record for most home runs hit in the polo grounds it's just never going to happen they don't make them like they used to yeah um and i feel like a lot of unbreakable records you know like hearing that uh like for instance will white

and his 75 complete games in a season in 1879 um there's a yeah it's not within the realm of possibility it's not no one's in the realm of this sport it's no no one's trying i think that the if you have a record that no one's trying to break, we can quit talking about it being unbreakable. Yeah. And I think that's probably true of, you know, of anything that is held by an old timey. Now, then you've got the ones that are very old timey, but technically people are still trying. Like what's the record for batting average? Like 456 or something?

Well, 366 career. Yeah, but in a season. That's not even on here. I guess it's breakable. But something like that, it is in the gray area where the unbreakableness of it, the extreme unbreakableness of it, like it is clear that no one's getting anywhere close to that. And the clearer it gets in a way, the less impressive the record is. It's this paradox where like you can't take it too seriously.

Yeah. But it is technically still a record that a person could try to break. But yeah, that's not on here. So most consecutive games played seems like a weird one. That's a weird record because I don't think anyone wants to see it broken. Right, yeah. And I don't think anybody would. I think if every player started their major league career

with the goal of breaking that record, it would get broken without that much trouble. I know that it's not worth it. It's not worth it. Right. But if you start with 750 players every year, or if you start with, you know, scores of people making their major league debut every year, and if a guy, if, you know, if a mysterious A mysterious man approached them in the hallway and revealed themselves to be God and said, I was going to ask you to sacrifice your son on an altar. Instead, I just want you to break the Cal Ripken record.

And they went out there with that as their singular goal. I think it would get broken without too much difficulty. Like it's not that hard. But nobody wants to. Nobody really wants to break it, and nobody really wants to see it get broken. So it's just not, it's going to live forever. Right. Yeah, I think it's pretty hard.

I feel like I should be the Ron Washington of this segment. Yeah. It's incredibly hard, but it's... Most career stolen bases is both a change in the way the game is played, but I think also genuinely it is not going to get broken. Well, it might get broken because like the piece I wrote about whether 90 feet is still long enough in relation to Billy Hamilton. And the answer has been, I think, pretty clearly proven that 90 feet is still long enough, but it's not a guarantee that it always will be. And humans change change 90 feet is

not changing and there is the possibility that there will come a point in time where humans have you know evolved or the sport or whatever have gotten to the point where it should probably be 91 feet but we're not that, and it becomes too hard to stop somebody. Uh-huh. Yeah. Probably on my thing. There's, like, you know, consecutive no-hitters, which is two. Yeah, which is untrue.

That's bar trivia more than anything. Not that it happened, but as the right. Like, that is the – that's your trick answer. Yeah. I mean, no-hitters are – It's not really a record. It's not really a record either. Like, nobody – it is. It's only happened once. But that is a – that's a play index. Yeah, I mean no hitters are... It's not really a record. It is. It's only

happened once, but that's a play index. Yeah, it's a feat. More than anything. They got famous. Yeah, I mean, if you consider it a record then I would say it's breakable just because there's so much less contact now, even though pitchers are not throwing complete games anymore.

That's within the realm of possibility. Maybe triples in a season, 36. Yeah, get the right park and get the right guy. The fact that nobody in the last 50 years has come within 13 of it. So that just tells you that it's probably unlikely But if you got the right ballpark If they started making ballparks with triples in mind

Longest hitting streak is, of course, extremely unlikely But breakable But breakable Conditions of the game have not changed to the extent that it is impossible I mean, it's certainly harder now Batting averages are lower Guys are not putting as much emphasis on contact maybe defense is better lots of reasons why it's probably harder than it was

and it was really hard then but it's not out of the realm of possibility it is right it is basically not less likely today than it was when it happened and so so if it happened once, it could happen again. Like you say, it is less likely because of those factors, but not significantly. Right. So I would say, I would think that if I had to pick which of these are going to get broken in our lifetime, what about most all-star games played? That's a tricky one because that's a cheat.

They got a cheat. Hank Aaron, 25, but that's because there were two all-star games for four years yeah and so that's a big cheat on the other hand players age better or at least they were aging better for a while and we have seen seen some outliers who have aged extremely well uh is it conceivable that we'll see a 26 year career of a player who debuts with something like Bryce Harper's immediate all-star ability. And, you know, he plays from- All-star games made, maybe.

But all-star games played, I doubt it because- Oh, yeah, good point. But all-star games made- Game doesn't have the same status and people take the game off for little to no reason. A lot more people make all-star games though, too. True, yeah. The active player is 14 i think that that is just bare it is conceivable it's not impossible it's also not likely uh if

i had to pick uh which ones will uh consecutive 200 hit seasons i mean each road just did that yeah no reason that couldn't happen yeah it's it's. Yeah. It's crazy to call it unbreakable. Yeah. Right. It's hard to break. I would guess that, well, I think that the, if I had to guess the ones that are going to get broken in our career on this list, I would say that saves is the first one that I would pick. Hit King is the second one.

I could see someone getting 42-57 maybe. You don't think so? I'd say that's less likely than the consecutive 10 seasons of 200 hits. Randy Johnson came within 900 strikeouts of Nolan Ryan. 900 strikeouts of nolan ryan he started extremely late and essentially had no strikeouts to speak of uh until you know four or five years after some pitchers they you know are good maybe that's not a coincidence maybe that's why he lasted uh but strikeouts in general go up i would have said 57 14 won't get broken but thinking about how close Johnson got, I kind of feel like maybe? Maybe. It's not as far from possible as Cy Young's career wins or whatever, but I think rising strikeouts haven't kept pace with pitcher usage.

I mean, guys don't get as many strikeouts now per season because they don't throw as many innings and face as many batters. So it would require a large reversal in a longstanding trend, I think. Yeah, I guess. Well, but so are we saying that Randy Johnson was of a previous era that nobody else is going to throw innings like that and that he benefits from being of the previous era instead of saying that he is of this era and therefore provides a model for how it could happen yeah i would say he qualifies as a different era i mean he started in 88 his i mean he threw uh 271 regular season innings was his high. Which is only like 20 more than Justin Verlander's high. Right.

It's possible. Okay. So going back to my rankings. Saves number one. Hits streak number two. Hit king number three. Career strikeouts number four. Those are my four most breakable, unbreakable records.

Golly. Randy Johnsonson 45 45 he was still good yeah and he was yeah still striking out eight per nine that wasn't league average yeah he struck out 13.4 per nine as a starter man you look at i think i'm i think i'm taking out strikeouts because you look at The we talk about This strikeout rate going up all the time But nobody really Comes close to what Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez were doing anymore

As starters like there's A big drop off from what you expected Like everybody strikes out ten per nine now But and People weren't doing that in 1997 But Randy Johnson was routinely striking out Elite bullpen strikeout numbers And that doesn't really happen anymore

Darvish kind of got close And I guess Kershaw, maybe Syndergaard will do it How old is Noah Syndergaard, 24? He is the best right now He is the best chance at this record right now. Noah Syndergaard throws so hard he leaves marks on his catcher. Why did I look that up? Syndergaard's 23 this year.

All right. I will say that all but three of these records are, as baseball is played today, unbreakable. All right. The only ones I'm conceding Are breakable Even if they won't get broken The way that the game is played today Are the career hits, hitting streak And career saves

Oh, and the 10 straight 200 hit That's barely a record And by the way, two grand slams in an inning Also Don't be smart Alright Because the thing You can tell it's not a record because before you said it nobody considered it a record yeah like nobody was like who's gonna who's gonna break the record for most grand slams in an inning like it's like back before fernando

tatis it wasn't like oh like every time someone got a grand slam in an inning like it's like Back before Fernando Tatis it wasn't like Oh like every time someone got a grand Slam in an inning it wasn't like record watch You know Yeah I don't think something that Is only two can be a satisfying record Okay last one From another Patreon supporter Amos Blackman who says

I feel like this might cover territory already Discussed particularly by Sam but Today's article in the New York Times about the Yankees replay reviewer Brett Weber is actually pretty damning about him. No, the article notes that the Yankees have the highest success rate in baseball on replay reviews, 77 percent, which immediately sent up a red flag in keeping with Sam's principle that if you never miss a flight, you're wasting time showing up too early. Yeah, I mean, the New York Times article that he refers to is a very interesting article, generally speaking, first of all. And I learned a lot about this guy's job. I learned a lot about a lot of things. It was really fun.

It was great. My favorite passage of it was, Corota, Miller, and Brett Gardner are the voices most frequently in his ear. They all pile around him in this little windowless room and look at, and they try to tell him to, and A-Rod as well. They run back there and they look over his shoulder and then they try to influence him. And they sort of implied that the players want to call a lot more, call for a lot more reviews, but they see challengeable plays everywhere. So we learned a lot about what this job is, which is one small part of his day.

He does many, many, many other things. And so first, just to get it out of the way, no, he should not be fired. He presumably does a lot for the organization. he should not be fired. He, he presumably does a lot for the organization. And, and also we don't know how much the decision,

the philosophy that the Yankees pursue in terms of how often they're going to call replays is Weber freelancing or as opposed to the manager, right? The manager has given him, you know, has told him, Hey, I don't want to, you know,

I, I really value the, I really value saving our review, or maybe the front office has. So I'm absolutely not going to say that Weber should be fired. That said, yeah. This is not – no, probably not. He's clearly – he's got a plan and he's doing it well uh it is not the plan i would i would choose this is this whole article uh as the emailer says this whole article frames uh as a good something that is a bad like it uses words like the yankees have been

judicious right that is a bad thing to be i i believe i believe. I don't think that there's any – we all watch enough baseball, I think, to know by now, to have kind of got this internal clock in our heads where we know that there are not a great deal of overturnable calls that are not getting overturned because the team used their review early. that are not getting overturned because the team used their review early. And if that were happening, then we would be able to do some math, but that essentially never happens. The replay review is, in this case, is being used like a backup catcher where the manager presumably doesn't want to use it because it's worried about not having it, but the case where that doesn't happen is exceedingly rare. There just are not frequent games where you're seeing them turn because the manager didn't

use his review. So I just don't see a justification for this. It's not just that they have the highest success rate and the lowest you know challenge rate but as this article points out they're high above everybody else they're yeah they're like 10 higher 10 percentage points higher than the second team um and it's also not you know it's i i don't want to be swayed too much by this but the fact that the rays and the cubs are way at the other extreme feels like you know validation of this position that you should just call him all the time yeah so i don't know there's a lot of quotes about how good he is right so that's the only possibility right he's preternaturally talented at this job and

therefore he always challenges when you should challenge and he never challenges when you shouldn't. And he never makes a mistake, which I don't, I don't even think you could, I don't think that explanation even works, because that would presuppose that there have been fewer opportunities for them to do this, like, they've never missed one, it doesn't compute. Look, the bottom line is that you have to assume that there's no particular bias that would lead to teams getting, to teams having more calls incorrectly go against them. So if you assume that over the course of these two and a half years, every team has roughly the same number of opportunities to

overturn a call, then it's pretty easy to just look and say, well, okay, so who did have the most overturned? Like that's the whole percentage means nothing. The percentage is judging this on some denominator that we consider irrelevant. The denominator means- And that's what Amos was saying, right? That this is the case where accounting stat is a better measure. Accounting stat is 100% a better measure, unless you can demonstrate to me why losing your review, your right to review, is consistently burning teams. And the fact that it's not, it's not. I mean, there's a quote from Weber. There are some philosophies that say challenge everything. If you lose, you lose it. I go back to it's either right or wrong. I think our process works,

but we continue to tweak it. So it is not as though the Weber and the Yankees have not thought about this. They have a, they have decided that they're going to take this far left position or far right position or whatever on the, on the issue. And so if you assume that Weber is part of an organization that has decided this, he's doing his job very well. And you can't blame him for that. He might be preternaturally good at this. And if you put him on the Cubs or the Rays, maybe he would be the best at that philosophy. But I think that the Yankees philosophy doesn't make any logical sense. Uh-huh. Okay. So not fired, but I think that the Yankees philosophy doesn't make any logical sense. Okay. So not fired, but perhaps talked to.

Joe Girardi. Here's a quote from Girardi. It's not like you get as many as you want. So if you call for a replay, you'd better be right. That's just completely wrong. It is true that it's not like you get as many as you want. You do though, as a practical matter, get as many as you need. You do as a practical matter, get as many as you Need you do as a practical matter have More than you need there is a surplus Of review Opportunities or Whatever review Tickets that managers get and

You will occasionally get burned it is true but It is not happening and so Girardi is focused on This he is focused On the finiteness of it instead of the relative infiniteness of these reviews. It is like you sometimes read about these billionaires, particularly from, well, I don't know, maybe they happen today too, but you'll read about these extremely rich people who

are also incredibly miserly and not frugal, not like Warren Buffett driving a Hyundai. But like they, you know, reuse deli wrap because they're just so they're just so obsessed with not spending any money at all. Because presumably they have some pathology that makes them think that they're going to run out of money, even though they're like millionaires. There was an episode of The Dollop about one of those. There was, yeah. The Witch of Wall Street. The Witch of Wall Street. Yes, that is an example of it.

Exactly. And so this is, I think, a situation where instead of realizing that you are a billionaire, you are focusing on the limits. He is rich with review opportunities he is a rich rich man when it comes to review opportunities so uh just you know spend them yeah all right so uh depends on how this system came about if he uh if he is on strike here if everyone is telling him call more more challenges, and he refuses to, then maybe you find something else for him to do. Seems like an extremely good employee, though. Like, there's a lot to this article that is just about him. And it really seems like he is an extremely multi-talented person, very smart.

Yeah, he was there when I was an intern there. Seems like a nice guy. Never challenged me on anything. I would hire this guy to be a GM. But at this moment, I do think that this is his weak spot. Okay, so that is it for today. You can send us emails for next week at podcast at baseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon. Speaking of which, you can support the podcast on Patreon five listeners who

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