Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 894: Lasers in the Outfield

Episode Date: May 31, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about a play at the plate and a bad fun fact, then discuss the defensive-positioning differences between the Dodgers and Mets.

Good morning and welcome to episode 894 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, brought to you by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com and our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight. Hey, Ben. Hello. How are you? Doing well, thanks. Good. Let's see, did you see the Tyler Holt attempted steal of home? Yeah, someone posted that in the Facebook group.

And so he was going to be safe. And so the pitcher, Cody Anderson, simply threw the ball at the batter, who happened to be the opposing pitcher, hit him and negated the run. Yeah. And so this is my favorite play ever. Although it's somewhat, I don't know off the top of my head whether there were two outs or not.

I'm assuming there were. There were. And so, yeah, it's brilliant. Probably brilliant, probably pre-planned, right? Because I think that that's too much to think about in the moment if you're the pitcher. Because you have to figure, you have to know the outs. you have to know that the pitcher is the one batting and you have to sort of be able to do that math to figure out if a extra base runner is worth saving that run and that's very easy math to do if you have you know say two and a half seconds but he had like

one and three quarter seconds and so i'm guessing that he knew because holt bluffed early in the at bat that that's what he would do although then it makes you yeah yeah so then you wonder though if he was actually thought that holt was going to steal which is such an unlikely play it's like yeah overwhelmingly likely that holt is never going to try to steal straight steal home against you uh and so then if you're if you actually think that he's going to maybe just pitch from the stretch, it is the opposing pitcher batting. And so maybe now, maybe it's breaking down. Maybe I don't like it. But I do like it.

I think that it was a brilliant play, smart play. But now I'm unwilling to necessarily give him full credit because now I wonder whether he was being impulsive or it was actually an accident. I like anything novel and this was novel and Alfredo, now we have to pronounce his last name again as we struggled to do recently. We decided we would go with Simone although he doesn't seem to know or care whether it's Simone or Simon. I think in fact I think he actually has asked to be called Simon. Okay. So Simon, then. My guess, though, is I'd bet a million. He's probably just trying to make it easy on people.

Exactly. I would bet a million dollars that nobody who has known him since childhood calls him Simon. Right. I just, I don't, that's a dumb bet. Who would bet me? Anyway. Well, he was quite upset to be hit, and he did his utmost to get out of the way

And he just could not So it was clever Especially if he came up with that on the fly But even if it's a pre-planned play That the Brewers have just a standing play If someone's going to steal home And the pitcher's up Just put him on

Well the next level genius of it, if you really want to say that Cody Anderson in this split second was able to make six chess moves in his head, is that then the next time he came up, Simone hit him with a pitch as the leadoff batter in a close game. And so he's the pitcher. Anderson is the pitcher and now gets put on base for free, which is really brilliant because then any potential harm of putting Simone Simon on base, which is minimal, is is like wildly undone by the benefit of Anderson getting on base in a much more offense friendly situation. Yeah. And he did fall down sort of as he delivered the pitch. And evidently, according to one of the posters in the Facebook group, he claimed in his post game interview that he was just

rushing the throw home and slipped, which is plausible. Yeah, very plausible. He was, he was distracted by the runner trying to steal home and therefore was rushing the delivery and Yeah, very plausible. But that seems quite plausible Probably more plausible than This being a pre-planned play Oh you think so? I don't know I would say it's more plausible that he slipped Because he was trying To alter his delivery Mid-throw And that's not an easy thing to do

And so he sacrificed his mechanics For it and kind of fell over Because he was reorienting his body So steeply. But, I mean, it is a perfect pitch for this. I mean, he hits him in the belt buckle. Like, it's just you couldn't aim a better pitch at Alfredo Simone's gut. Yeah.

So, anyway. Well, I'll post it in the usual places. You can be the judge. Yeah, it's great. Anyway, all right, Rich Hill had a good start. Uh-huh. And it doesn't move the needle. It's going to, now that we've really established a baseline for Rich Hill,

it's probably not going to be a lot more movement. No, he needs to have a bad start now to change things. Yeah, or he needs to really have a month. Uh-huh. Yeah, if he has like an incredible month, like a Kershaw, Arrieta-esque month, then we can reevaluate. But six and a third and nine strikeouts and three walks and two runs or whatever, that's what a three and 65 pitcher does. Yeah, right. All right, anything you want to talk about?

One bad fun fact that was submitted. We've been receiving a lot of these these and it's become clear to me that the real culprit in these bad fun facts, I used to think that beat writers and bloggers and TV broadcast researchers were equally culpable when it came to these bad fun facts. But it's become clear, I think, that team media relations employees are the font of bad fun facts and they they flow outward from them to other people who use them in their content and so 10 episodes ago we shared the tweet from the yankees pr department in 2015 nathan avaldi became the fourth pitcher to win every start versus the al central in a season seven plus starts and there was a similarly qualified tweet, this time from

the Tigers PR department that Connor Devins shared in the Facebook group. And it says, Michael Fulmer is the third Tigers starting pitcher since 1913 to throw at least seven and two thirds shutout innings and allow three or fewer hits in one of his first six career starts. So you have, I think, something like seven qualifiers in this tweet. I think he is the third to do it since a certain year to throw at least seven and two-thirds shutout innings, three or fewer hits in one of his first six career starts. So that's a lot of layers to this tweet. So congratulations, Michael Fulmer. And he was added in that tweet by the Tigers PR people.

So they thought he would want to know, or I guess they want people to follow him. But one way or another, he knows. And I wonder what emotion that elicited in Michael Fulmer. Yeah. I wonder if they did the thing where they pretended to throw the ball into the stands and he panicked because he wasn't going to get the game ball from this achievement. But then it turned out that, of course, they had protected this wonderful souvenir and

put it in his locker later. Right. Good. Good one. I am enjoying the horrifying fun facts that we've been getting sent. This is richer terrain than I had realized was out there. I agree. Do you have anything to say about Dodgers' rangefinder gait? Yeah, I do.

Okay, let's talk about that. Well, that's the topic. Oh, all right, great. All right, so the Dodgers used a rangefinder to help them sort of prepare their positioning before the game. So they went out with something like a GPS sort of like, you know, golf. Like anybody who's golfed has seen these range finders that back in my day didn't work. But they might work now. It's been a long time since I was golfing seriously.

They might work now. It's been a long time since I was golfing seriously. But they apparently have used this to help them prepare their positioning before games. They've done it in various ballparks. They ran into a wall with the Mets, as I understand it, who complained to Major League Baseball, which is now investigating it. And I'll first just say up front that I think that 85% of the coverage of this is the fact that the word laser is in it. If they were using something that was less cool technology, if they were using something that was not also a gun in Contra, I don't know that we would be that excited about it.

But we do like our lasers. And so it's gotten a lot of attention and everybody has had to weigh in on it. And so, first off, do you need to explain it better than I have? I don't know. Well, the sequence of events isn't totally clear to me. I'm reading the initial Ken Rosenthal report and the Dodgers tried to clear this plan with the Mets ground crew that they wanted to use the range finder to determine where the outfielders would go and then use some sort of marker to indicate where the outfielders should stand. And wait, is this like a physical marker? Like they were going to put like a little peg in? Is this like a physical marker, like they were going to put a little K in? Yes, something, a T or who knows what, some strip of tape, or apparently they use paint at their home park, so something, some actual physical indicator.

And the Mets ground crew agreed that the Dodgers could leave two marks in center field and one in left, and then— Hang on, wait, wait, hang on. Does the mark have anything to do with GPS? Or is it like, is it a, is it a, does it have radio capabilities? I don't think so. I don't think it violates the ban against electronic devices. It's just a small geographic milestone for outfielders to refer to. Yes.

And so the Mets ground crew agreed to this, but then told their superiors that the Dodgers informed them that if the markers were removed, Dodgers players would dig holes in the outfield with their cleats. And then the Mets instructed the grounds crew to erase or obliterate anything they saw on the playing surface. So I don't know. It's not clear to me why the Dodgers would make that threat. I know what a threat that is. If the Mets ground crew agreed to this, I don't know why you would antagonize them by saying that you were going to scuff up their field if they changed anything.

Even if they didn't agree to it, it doesn't seem like something that you can threaten. Yeah, right. I mean, if they don't agree to it, then I think that your option then becomes to do something a little bit more clandestine. I mean, if we're just talking about a little T or a little marker, then just drop another one. Yeah.

And so maybe there's more to this exchange than that report suggested. I don't know if there's been more detail in some of the follow-up reports. But the Dodgers evidently have granted permission for other teams to do this in Dodger Stadium. And other teams have granted permission for the teams to do this in Dodger Stadium, and other teams have granted permission for the Dodgers to do this. And there are actual rules preventing this, according to Rosenthal rules 3.09 and 3.10, prevent clubs from leaving equipment on the playing field, including golf tees and other such markers. And evidently paint would qualify as such a marker. So you're not allowed to do this, but it is evidently a gentleman's agreement of sorts.

What about it? Lots of teams are doing outfield positioning. We did a podcast about that with Chris Mosch last year about how that's become more common. And so this is something that teams allow each other to do because they all want to do it. Is a surreptitious pit considered equipment? Probably. Okay. Yeah.

Well okay. So now thank you for that extra context. Because now we've got a few different things to consider. If it's against the rules. Then it's against the rules. And it doesn't matter whether it's a capricious rule or not. If it's against the rules. You have a choice.

That is to phone your representatives in Congress and try to go through the legislative process in order to change the rules. You don't get to cheat unless you have, you know, some official waiver. Otherwise, you are breaking a rule, right? Even if the rule doesn't seem to matter much. So maybe in a very simple way of thinking about this, it sounds like it is in violation of a rule. And if the Mets didn't want to waive the rule for them, well, what's the controversy, right? Yeah. Okay.

Now, to the question of whether it should be a rule, to the question of whether we should be at all weirded out by the encroachment of lasers into our national pastime, do you have an opinion? I don't have a problem with the rule. I think part of the challenge of positioning your fielders is positioning your fielders, is making sure that they know where to stand. And so lots of teams now have cards in the back of their outfielders pockets that people on Twitter mistake for phones and tweet videos of, and people have to correct them. But Howie Kendrick, for instance, was seen with a card, pulling out a card to tell him where to stand. And last year, Kevin Kiermaier was seen with one of these things in center for the raise. So this is just a reminder. And those cards, I think, just say, you know, play to pull, play,

play whatever, just kind of a general positioning instruction they don't tell you exactly you know pace off this many strides from home plate and stand exactly in this precise point and so that's part of the challenge and that's something that teams have been dealing with forever and having coaches come out on the top step and wave their fielders one way or another. And so that's part of the difficulty. I think you should, in addition to determining where you should stand, what the optimal point is based on where the hitter tends to hit the ball or where people tend to hit the ball against that pitcher, then part of the challenge should also be actually implementing that recommendation but why like what is what is

the uh like what is the scurrilous force that is being introduced by measurement here like why what what possible opposition could you have to being to a club that is trying to precisely measure where their outfielders are going to stand using a uh non-intive, non-invasive tool to measure what they stand. I mean, why, like, why not outlaw the cards? Why not outlaw bench coaches? Why, why allow them to do their job well at all if you're going to outlaw this very minor assistant? Well, it wouldn't be unfair if it were permitted for every team. So, you know, it wouldn't be. I just don't think there's any problem with it the way it is. I don't think it needs to be easy.

I don't think MLB needs to go to any lengths to make this easier for teams. It's just part of your strategy and part of how well you can implement that strategy. So, you know, I don't know that it changes the game really in any way if you were to allow teams to precisely position their fielders, but it's just another way for talent to show through or for skill to make a difference between teams, which is a good thing, I think. So the entire purpose of having a rule against it is to create an arbitrary obstacle to them doing what they're trying to do? I mean, there are probably other points to that rule. This rule was probably to avoid just having dangerous obstacles on the field, that kind of thing. I'm sure it wasn't put in the rule books with defensive positioning markers in mind. So it's just something that

happens to cover this new innovation. And so it doesn't matter that much, really. It wouldn't affect my enjoyment of the game if you could put a little golf tee in the ground or something to tell a fielder where to stand. But I also don't feel any desire to just make that easier for teams. It's fine the way it is, I think. I mean, my position is more or less Sandy Alderson's or at least Sandy Alderson's stated public position, which is I'm quoting defensive positioning is a big part of the game these days. But nobody said that baseball needs to make it easier to make sure that kind of positioning is as precise as possible. to make it easier to make sure that kind of positioning is as precise as possible. So from my standpoint, everybody has the same opportunity to position their players,

but, you know, marking the field seemed to go beyond the rulebook. I basically agree. You know, the field looks a certain way, and it's the same for everyone, and you have to play within those constraints. I am still not getting your point. I still don't understand what—and maybe maybe i do understand it but you haven't said it your position is that an arbitrary obstacle to a team doing this makes it more interesting or that you want it to be more challenging you just you want the game to be harder is that it yeah i think so so so yeah so if i look'm going to go into hypotheticals and all that. But like if, for instance, there was a rule that – I don't know.

I don't know. That you're – you know, instead of pine tar, you had to slather your baseball bat in vegetable oil. That would also make baseball harder. Would that make baseball more interesting to you? No. I think you're saying it would, Ben. I'm pretty sure you said that you want to know. Yeah, I'm just, I feel like this is not what is going to make or break my relationship to the game, but it just feels like usually there should be a reason for a rule.

You shouldn't make the rule book any more complicated than it needs to be. And you shouldn't generally, it seems to me, have laws unless there's a purpose for the law. And sometimes, as we've talked about here, there's this push-pull where we want two things from our sport. One is that we want to see the best baseball players play the best baseball they can. And, you know, that's why we turn it on, where it is in pursuit of the highest achievement in sport. For instance, we don't have our 100 meter dash runners have to wear snowshoes just to see what would happen. We want to see them run fast. The point is to see them run fast. And so we say, run as fast as you can. Don't put this in your body, but otherwise run as goddarn fast as you can. And so it's sort of the same with baseball. We want to be inspired

by the level of play. The converse of that is that we also put all sorts of restrictions in place because the restrictions make it more interesting and the restrictions give the game a set of rules that adds sort of layers of strategy to it, that adds levels of difficulty to it, that keep it from being too easily broken in one direction or another. And so there's all sorts of rules in baseball, like, you know, the Bach, for instance, maybe is one or like you can't have a 33 inch glove is one or like you can't use aluminum. There's all sorts of rules in baseball that are put in place for not necessary for no like no, there's no social good to outlawing larger gloves we've decided it makes the game more interesting and so uh for instance at the moment you are not allowed to have a connected laptop in the uh in

the dugout um and there's no social good to that prohibition either it just is deemed to make baseball more interesting to have restrictions on what the manager is able to have access to. And maybe someday, maybe even some minute, not long from now, we'll debate that policy. But there are rules in place like that. And so if your point is that, in fact, you think that baseball becomes too fine and too precise, if teams are allowed to use this technology, then I want to hear you say it. But I can't... It seems like you gain nothing from outlawing it. You gain very little.

You gain nothing from allowing it either, except you're allowing the players to play the best that they can. And it seems like a sort of very small place to... Yeah, but you're not... And it seems like a sort of very small place to be. Yeah, but you're allowing the front office analysts to play as well as they can, sort of. This is taking something away from the players. It's taking away a challenge from the players. They don't have to position themselves.

They don't have to know where to stand. They just have to go to the marker that someone else set and stand there. So to me, it takes away very slightly. I mean, A, you could make a case that just having your fielders perfectly positioned is bad for baseball as a spectator sport because it means fewer hits and maybe it means fewer diving catches and less offense and all of that that baseball is already kind of trying to counteract but to me it it sort of is it is moving the measurement of whether you succeed away from the players and away from the field in a small way in that it is all dictated before the game and it takes agency or it takes challenge away from the players who just have to stand on this predetermined point.

Yeah, but they are already doing this. They're already having these meetings before the game. The bench coach or whoever is defensive positioning, in charge of defensive positioning, is already telling them where to stand. It is not a skill that we expect players to be utilizing on their own in this day and age anyway. And so we're really just, it's not like you're outlawing communication from the dugout to the players or anything like that. You're not necessarily getting that thing that you're pining for. I think that instead of cards with defensive positioning in their pocket, the team should arrange for the players to have cards in their pockets from each of their moms saying, have a nice day, I love you.

All right. A strange thing for us to disagree on. Yeah, I guess it is. This is one of our maybe top two or three wedge issues, I think, on this podcast. I wasn't expecting that. Yeah, I don't, I don't feel very strongly about it. And I wouldn't suggest necessarily putting the rule in place if it weren't already in place. So maybe that means that I should be okay with it being removed, but I don't feel any injustice. And I kind of like that there can be some gamesmanship here, that if one team doesn't want to allow another team to do it, then it doesn't have to. And it can prevent that team from doing it and prevent it from getting that advantage, at least in its home park, and then maybe have to suffer the consequences when it visits that team's home park and they retaliate by not allowing them to do it. I mean, the Dodgers, let's say they're

one of the most aggressive at this kind of positioning. Let's say they're one of the best at it. Then if you think that, and if you think that their giant R&D department and all the resources they put into this make them the best at it, then you should deny them the ability to do this if you think that it's an advantage. So I kind of like that you can do that. There is a grounds for denying it. to unplug StatCast and that StatCast would no longer be allowed and nothing resembling StatCast would be allowed, would that also, to you, increase the amount of... It sounds like you want to see more players and less front office on the field, right?

Yeah. And so if Mr. Manfred said that we've gone too far, it's changed the balance of influence on the game, and we don't actually think that all this extra information is doing anything to preserve the spirit of nine guys on a field, and we're going to unplug it, what would be your reaction emotionally? I would be upset because I like having access to that information. I think that there is enough value for spectators and people who follow the game and people who try to market the game that it's worth it unless you show me some strong evidence that it's making the game less entertaining. It seems really hard for me to agree with any position. I don't

know if this is the Dodgers position. They seem to be sort of rolling with it. But it seems hard for me to be sympathetic to the position that this is really necessary. Like, I know that maybe it's better. They like it. Whatever. But is it that hard to position your fielders to just look? To go, if you're a step off that's okay uh you

basically know where to go it doesn't feel that necessary like i'm the one who's arguing that there's no reason to have a law against it or a rule against it but also it doesn't really feel that necessary and uh if anything it seems like it maybe it increases the home field advantage and i do like home field advantage i think that yeah anything you can do to strengthen a home field advantage in in in most sports is a good thing i think there are some sports where maybe the home field advantage has gone too far but for baseball i would like a larger home field advantage i don't think 53.7 is enough right do you uh if you had to guess would you guess that this came up because of bad feelings between the Mets and the Dodgers? And let me just to add to that, does it change your reaction to it at all?

If it is really explicitly not just even gamesmanship, but, you know, grudge, spite, like it's the spite, right? It's the returning it for spite, right? If that were the case, would that change things to you? That it's it's the spite right It's the returning it for spite right If that were the case would that change things To you that it's less about strategy It's less about you know fairness And it's more just about you know not liking That because did this come What did this come before I guess this came before

Syndergaard yeah this was before Friday's game so this would have been Potentially Them get the front office's version Of a beanball right is uh hurting the other team's analytics department because ruben tahata broke his leg yeah all right well i think i i like i i have no problem with this being a consensual thing that teams can agree to even if it violates a rule technically like if like if it's like, like, you know,

doctoring your hand with some foreign substance, and everyone does it, and you can get away with it as long as you are not doing it very obviously, in which case someone will call you on it. So if it's not like you are putting a big bullseye on the field and saying, stand here, and everyone can see, then someone can call you on it. But as long as it's low profile and you let your opponent do it, then I'm okay with everyone doing it. So if you are only doing it out of some personal animus and not a competitive spirit, then maybe I would disapprove a little more. spirit, then maybe I would disapprove a little more. But it's like we talk about in our book, how there's always been this fine line between cheating and exploiting an edge of some sort in baseball history. And a lot of the most brilliant baseball minds did things that weren't ethically quite correct, or we wouldn't approve of them in retrospect. And so this is another advantage

that teams can potentially get that might be against the letter of the law, but is in line with the spirit of it, which is beating your opponent and being a better baseball team. So yeah, if it were just bitterness between people who didn't like each other or had a nasty slide or something, I would approve of that less Than if it were a calculated decision That were made to deprive the Dodgers Of something that they are better at Than the Mets are, let's say

Or than most teams are There is no rule against the center fielder Before every batter Walking in to second base And then pacing out to wherever His card tells him to pace to. So he could reset himself every play by taking 34 paces out and then three paces to his left. So that is not against the rules. Of course, we don't see that, but the T that gives him

a shortcut to the exact same outcome is against the rules. I know that I keep going back to this very small Picayune thing that you are saying, but what is the point? I'm trying to figure out what the philosophical point that we're trying to get at is, because you don't really have an issue with the outcome, And there is no consequence to the process. I like the idea that during the game, the players are on their own in a sense. Or the coaches are on their own. And they are left to fend for themselves. And you can do all this preparation before the game.

And then you can implement it as best you can during the game, but you can't have your positions marked off to the precise point. You have to implement it the best you can. And if you were off by a little bit, then you cost yourself and you suffer the consequences. Would you like baseball slightly more if pitching coaches and managers were not allowed to make visits to the mound and except to remove a pitcher? Yeah, I think I would. I think I would, too. Yeah.

I think not only just the fact that it's boring to watch and it takes up time, but also, yes, you should be able to plan out what you're going to do in the upcoming inning in the 10 or 15 or 20 minutes that you're in the dugout. in the 10 or 15 or 20 minutes that you're in the dugout. Things don't change so much once you leave the dugout that you need to reevaluate and have another conference. So yes, I would approve of that for many reasons. All right, I think I agree with you on that. And I think that I probably, I think you've convinced me that your vision of baseball where the players are essentially left, are alone.

They don't have these the assistance from the front office or even the dugout is nice it's just that as it is uh there's nothing in place to keep them from getting that assistance you know they're responding to directions you know the manager can call pitches from the dugout if he wants to the bench coach can direct defenders as he wants to and so it feel it, so you're not, since you don't have that world, that vision of baseball, it feels weird to just sort of pick off this one little detail. But I think it's fine that if there was some way to make it more consistent, I think that you might be right. That might be a more fun way to think about or watch baseball. So as to the

iPad question, as is now, as I understand it, you are allowed to have an iPad that has no connectivity. And so you can have one iPad's worth of data. Is that right? Yes. Which could be, you know, everything. It could be. Yeah. Just about. I mean, it's a lot more probably data than, than Billy Bean had in 2003. So given that you do, what do you think of that? And what would you think about having even connectivity? Because again, it goes back to the question of do you want them to be able to do their job as well as possible? Is there any reason to set up a restriction on them playing baseball to win as good as they possibly can when nobody is harmed? Or are you just simply making it too easy? Have you invented a bat that only hits home runs? No, I don't think you've done that. And I think we've probably talked about this in the past, and I've been in favor of the idea of having, say, statistically oriented coaches in the dugout like we were with the Stompers this

past season. It seems like things are definitely heading in that direction, whether you have a uniformed person in there or not, or whether eventually you have someone on a headset who's talking to the manager as has been done in basketball and in football, you have some kind of connection to someone who can give you the statistical perspective, your stat coordinator who can work with your offensive coordinator and your defensive coordinator, that kind of thing. So I think things are probably heading in that direction. And I don't really know what the difference is between having a iPad preloaded with all

this information that you might need and an iPad that is actually networked other than the ability to communicate and text or instant message or something with someone in the front office, which, I mean, again, I kind of like the idea that you do your pregame preparation and you arm your players and your staff with all the information that they need and you practice and you go through game plans and you lay out what you would do, but in the heat of the moment, you are on your own. I think I like that from a competitive perspective. So I have no problem with information being in the dugout.

It doesn't matter whether it's in a notebook or in a binder or on an iPad. It's essentially the same idea. So I have no problem with that. But I still kind of like the idea that you have to go into this game with your preparation. And then you have to do the best you can with how you've prepared and practiced for it. And you can't just phone a friend during the game for assistance. When I was a high school student, we had a biology teacher who would allow you to bring one 3x5 card into the test with notes. And so the point of it was to allow you to have some, you know, a little bit of help, whatever you thought was most necessary to help you solve some of these problems. but of course it's not just about preparing the right info well it's not just

about having the three by five card it's about knowing what to prepare for which maybe the science teacher thought that was the point but it was also about who could write the smallest and who could sort of best tetris his words onto this three by five card and that is neither that is not the point of what the teacher was trying to go for. Like, he wasn't trying to test us on our ability to write small. He was trying to test us on our ability to solve biology question. But it introduced this other sort of part of the game, which was who could do the best job writing small,

who could figure out the best pen, who could figure out the best style of writing, who had the best eyes. And I, even though that had nothing to do with biology and it had nothing to do with the course or the content that we were being tested on, it's still like, first of all, I liked it. I liked that there was that strategic element to it. And it made me probably enjoy that test more than most other tests. But it also probably taught us more about solving problems in life than we ever did, than I ever learned in bio.

Like I actually don't remember anything about bio right now. And I've done okay with that. I don't know if I remember anything from the 3x5 card, but it was a challenge to be solved. And so I'm sort of conflicted on whether I think that all of these things simply add an extra element of strategy and gameplay and problem solving and rules negotiation and all these things that make sports more interesting to talk about or if they take away from the sort of base point of the game, which is the one thing that has been has proven rugged and durable for 150 years. So I'm not sure. But yeah, I don't know. We're going to obviously have to figure this out as we go, because not only is there more technology coming, but you can't even envision the technology that's coming.

That's sort of the nature of technology. And so having these discussions now and having them serve as precedent for whatever happens in 10 years from now, you know, anybody who knows about, like, for instance, internet libel law knows that it's really hard to write rules for technology that doesn't exist and then have them hold up 20 years later. Yeah, I reserve the right to flip-flop on everything I've said because in general, I approve of intelligence making a difference. I approve of teams finding these edges and being able to exploit them. And so I'm in favor of, say, a team building up its front office and trying to discover things about baseball that

another team doesn't know and then applying those things in game. So it seems sort of arbitrary to pick a point at which you can use those things and which you can't or exactly how you can use those things. And maybe you should just open it up and say, do whatever you want and everyone can do whatever they want and we'll see who wins. So I'm sympathetic to that perspective too. All right. Yeah. All right. So that is it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Today's five Patreon supporters are John Presser, Shane Gavegan, Bill Batterman, Tyler Bradley, and Jason Lee. Thank you. You can also buy our book, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work, our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team.

We are very grateful to those of you who have finished it and complimented us and left Amazon and Goodreads reviews. We hope that those of you who haven't finished yet will do so once you have reached the end. We also hope that you will go to the book's website at theonlyruleisithastowork.com. Check out the photos and videos and stats, as well as the excerpts and reviews and interviews. If you want to find out more about the book before you buy it, you can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription to the Play Index by going to baseballreference.com and using the coupon code BP. We'll be doing a listener email show next, so please send us questions at podcastatbaseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon. We will be back tomorrow. down to the laser show come on baby now

don't you know we're going down to the laser show