Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 900: The Salvy Won’t Save You Edition

Episode Date: June 8, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about the brawl between the Orioles and Royals, then answer listener emails about Clayton Kershaw, Jon Lester, beating the shift, and how bad they would be at calling balls and strikes.

I've been caught stealing once when I was five I ain't just stealing, I'm just sippin' the stack Well, it's just a simple fact When I want something and I don't want to pay for it Hello and welcome to episode 900 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com and our supporters on Patreon. I am Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives.

Hello. Hey, Ben. Got an email show today. Got some really good emails, some emails I'm excited about answering. Anything you want to talk about before we do? I don't know. So you saw the fight, you know. Yes. And... Danny Machado, you're Donovan Tora. to talk about before we do i don't know so you saw the south you saw the fight you know yes and

machado you're donovan tour but by far the most interesting part of the the fight was sal perez letting it happen uh-huh like he just sort of just jogs very casually he does not try to he doesn't try to get in front of machado he doesn't try to to hold him or or anything he just sort of jogs after him and this was very suspicious and a violation of the unwritten rules. But there's nobody to hit, there's nobody to throw a pitch at Sal Perez because he's violating the unwritten rule against his own team. So do you think now the Orioles are obligated to do something nice for Sal Perez? Is the reverse that they have to throw him a cookie? something nice for Sal Perez?

Is the reverse that they have to throw him a cookie? Do you think anyone is upset about this in the Royal Clubhouse? It depends. I mean, yeah, I think so. I bet so, yeah. Well, for one thing – There might be some anti-Ventura sentiment. Well, I'm sure that there's anti-Ventura sentiment, but you can't – I think that probably you can't pick and choose when you're going to be on your, in my opinion, you can pick and choose when you're going to be on your team's

team. Like I remember being in soft, a slow pitch softball game one time when one of my teammates almost got into a fight with big dude, a couple of big dudes on the other team. And, and it was his fault that he was in the fight. And I remember wondering as this thing was about to develop whether I got to do that, whether I got to judge whether he was at fault. And I think that ultimately you don't. It's almost like chain of command, right? In extraordinary circumstances, maybe you break the chain of command. Maybe you even break the law. However, you have to be willing to pay the consequences for that.

That's sort of the principle of civil disobedience is that it's not just breaking the law because you don't like the law. It's breaking the law and serving the punishment for it. serving the punishment for it. And so I think that probably Sal Perez may have been issuing a protest vote, but I don't think that that can go without consequences in a unit that is going to hold, even though I might perhaps admire it. But the other thing is that without knowing that much about the details of the dynamic, the internal dynamic of the Royals Clubhouse, there have been times where you get the feeling that Sal Perez wasn't liked by everybody.

Like, wasn't he like throwing water at a guy during an interview or maybe he was holding a water bottle for Lorenzo Cain pretending it was a microphone? Remember that? Well, he picks on people in a fun way. Right. Well, no. A regular thing. Right. In a fun way right well no a regular thing for you right in a fun way but

the reason i bring up the thing that i barely remember the royan's okay thing is that i remember you could just see just just pure hatred in canes or whoever it was his eyes and you really got the feeling that while sal prez might be a leader and he might have a reputation for a leader you do get the feeling that maybe not all 24 other people in that clubhouse agree with that. And maybe none of them do. I don't know. We don't know. So I'm not ruling out the possibility, though, that Sal Perez is actually not liked. I'm not saying, look, I don't know enough to say that he isn't. I mean, you know, you hear good things generally. But sometimes you do find out that the guy that has the reputation for being a great clubhouse guy is actually not at all. He's really good at working the refs, but that in fact, you know, he's sort of despised.

And I have one name in particular in mind, but I'm not going to say it, but this is a person who was, you know, generally thought of as a great clubhouse guy. And in fact, his team hated him. The whole organization hated him. And I can't say that Sal Perez is that by any means, but I'm not ruling it out either. Yeah. Well, he had that whole series of Instagram videos where he picked on Lorenzo Cain, and Cain reacted sort of like Adrian Beltre does when you touch his head and you're never totally sure if he hates you or not or if he's playing the part so there were some incidents like that and and yeah when you have a kind of prankster figure often there are people who don't

really care for it even if they're kind of laughing along so that's possible but uh but yeah you'd think the the anti-Ventura sentiment would be far stronger after he seemingly gets himself into these situations. Often enough, you would think that maybe he should get himself out of it too. The other thing is that if you are a human in position to stop violence from happening, then you should probably do it. So Sal Perez can't even claim any sort of moral high ground here. Like even if this weren't a teammate thing, even if I weren't making the case that you should stand up for your teammate, you know, he's a big guy who had the chance to stop another big guy from hitting a somewhat smaller guy. Unless he's trying to stop future meetings. Right, preemptive.

Right, yeah. It could be that he thought that the moral arc of baseball fights is long. He thought that the moral arc of baseball fights is long. And in the end, Sal Perez will make sure it bends toward not throwing baseballs at Manny Machado. I don't know. Right. Yeah. All right.

So let's start with a question that is a response to something we bantered about yesterday. It's from Joseph. He says, on my way to work this morning, I was listening to the episode in which you discussed Clayton Kershaw's dominance while pitching in the zone, and I immediately rushed to the office, ignored my growing list of emails, and read Sam's article. After the 4,201 GIFs finished loading, I came away with one takeaway. Is it possible that Kershaw's reputation for dominance and good stuff precedes his actual dominance and good stuff on occasion. I'm not questioning his greatness, as he is no doubt one of the best pitchers of our generation, but in a sport that requires so much confidence to succeed at the highest level and requires just as strong a mental approach as a physical approach at the plate, could some batter step into the box already 10 or 15% less likely to succeed

because they know how great he is? Thus the pitches in the zone shocked them just as much as us, as they expected a nasty slider on the black or one of his less often thrown curveballs in the dirt. I would compare that theory to the Tiger Woods red shirt theory. In his prime, the red shirt on Sunday was said to intimidate his opponents, as it signified his dominance and expectations to win. As a result, other opponents would sometimes perform less successfully than they would against other golfers And in other situations This is obviously impossible to quantify

And no athlete would ever admit to being Intimidated but is it an interesting Theory yeah I don't know that the red Shirt is the same thing But I think that the It is an untested hypothesis That I could get behind for For two reasons.

One is a little bit harder to demonstrate but could be real, which is just that basically if you go into every swing against Kershaw with a two-strike swing, if you're not really able to dig in and sit on that pipe shot, then yeah, you're not going to be as prepared to do damage to it. And that makes perfect sense. You could also argue that maybe, well, maybe argue that the opposite would happen, that knowing that you're defeated against Kershaw before you even step in, you might decide to sit on a mistake and just say, hey, look, the odds are against me. So there's no point playing the normal, you know, safe grinded out game. I'm just gonna,

you know, just gonna try to shoot the moon. And, and sometimes it would work. And so you might expect the opposite. And maybe Clayton's pitches down the middle would be even more hittable for that reason. But clearly, that's not the case. And so it's a fine explanation for why. But the other thing is just we have seen that in a measurable way, I haven't measured it with Kershaw, but in a measurable way, players have talked about how, do you remember, David Wright talked about it with, David Wright about five years ago or so, there was an article or an interview he did where he talked about how he goes up

looking to hit the first strike he sees against some pitcher, which is not his normal approach. With your normal pitcher, you might, you know, you know, you've got three to work with and, you know, he might walk you. And so you wait for your pitch. But against this other pitcher who was so tough and especially once you fell behind and you weren't necessarily going to get any good pitch. And even if you got, you know, even if you took three swings, it might take you three to actually, you know, catch up to one. He would swing much earlier in the count. He was basically looking for anything that he could touch at all. So you could definitely, you would expect probably for batters going up against Kershaw to have a different plan than against,

you know, Kyle Loesch, and there would be ramifications of that. They could be good ramifications for pitches down the middle, or they could be bad, but it makes sense that if you're going up there kind of more aggressive, less selective, if you are more selective and you're really sitting on that first pitch down the middle and you don't get it, you're going to take it,

and if you do get it, you're ready for it, then you should be able to do more damage than if you're being extremely unselective and saying, I'm just hacking because the only chance I have is three swings at this guy. Then the benefits of having a pitch down the middle would be a lot lower because you're not ready for it. You're not sitting on it. Yeah, it's a tough theory to test.

I like it, but I'm not sure how to prove or disprove it. You could kind of, which is kind of what you're not ready for you're not sitting on it yeah it's a tough theory to test i like it but i'm not sure how to prove or disprove it you could kind of which is kind of what you're doing you could look at identical pitches thrown by clayton kershaw and thrown by someone else and maybe you'd see that the identical pitches thrown by kershaw do better than the identical pitches against anyone else and you could compare with location and speed and spin and all the factors that we have to compare pitches now but even if you did that you still wouldn't be able to divorce it from the fact that Clayton Kershaw probably threw a better pitch before that or maybe his command was better or whatever it would still be really difficult to untangle that and just see whether reputation correlates to something. So I

don't know, but it's a good theory. I like the theory. I don't think it was David Wright. No, I think it was Chipper Jones, but it might've been David Wright. Don't remember. Okay. All right. Well, we got another Kershaw related question from Andrew who said there's constant discussion about whether Bryce Harper or Mike Trout is the best player in the game today. Why is Clayton Kershaw never included in this conversation? He is considered to be the best pitcher in the game today, and most people consider him one of the greatest of all time. Yet I never hear him being in the conversation. Does the fact that he is a pitcher only playing every five days detract from his consideration for this title?

I think, first of all, I don't know that he's never mentioned. He must be mentioned sometimes in that conversation. But I would think that partially, yes, it's just that pitchers kind of get their own conversation. It's like this Cy Young Award is kind of, because the Cy Young Award exists, you probably hear less about pitchers for MVP debates just because there is their separate award for them. Whether or not that's actually how the rules work, that's how people tend to think of it. So I think people kind of think of pitchers as their own thing. And so maybe you say he's the best pitcher and then you break it out and say,

who's the best player? And it's a different kind of conversation. But also, I think, yes, I think the fact that he does pitch once every five days makes him less valuable. I don't know. I guess if you go just purely based on stats, that is the case, right? His best seasons by wins above replacement player are in the 8-win range, or exactly 8 wins. And Trout's best are exactly 10 wins, and Harper's best is 11 wins. have and sort of makes sense that in a day and age where pitchers don't throw 300 innings or even 250 innings that they would have a harder time being as valuable as guys who are playing every day yeah i it's not a conversation that interests me uh-huh i i i find i mean i just think that they're very different roles and for that reason, it's by sort of a nice coincidence, the value of a hitter and the value of a pitcher are close enough that it makes it look like you can compare them. But they're doing completely different things.

And they should be measured on different scales, in my opinion. It would be like trying to compare Mike Trout to Steph Curry or even to, you know, who's a football player? Calvin Johnson. Calvin Johnson. Is that a guy? Yeah. Yeah. Or Calvin Johnson. You know, I don't, I don't, I just don't really think that you ever get there. You don't really ever answer the question. And so, you know, I generally just prefer to avoid that. Calvin Johnson's retired, apparently. Yeah, Detroit Lions players have a good time at his wedding. He just got married. Congratulations. Congratulations, Calvin.

So, yeah, I don't know. I think that's why I don't mention it. I mean, to me, it's fine to. I don't have a problem with other people doing it. But I would rather talk about how good Clayton Kershaw is as a pitcher than how good he is compared to a hitter. To me, it's just messy. It's messy. By the way, messy. I could have used messy as the other athlete. I thought about that.

Yeah. use Messi as the other athlete. I thought about that. Yeah. So I, and I, you know, that's the problem with the MVP voting is that I think that this, this, that it's sort of, to me, it's not a great thing to have the pitchers be eligible for the MVP voting because of that. And yet, because they are, you can't ignore them. And so then you have this weird situation where you have some people not picking pitchers or some people holding it against pitchers. I don't think the every five days thing matters. I think it's more that a large part of what pitchers do is collaborative with their team.

And so it's hard to separate what, you know, if Kershaw gets a ground ball to the shortstop and the shortstop fields it and throws it to the first baseman, it's hard to know how much credit to give Kershaw gets a ground ball to the shortstop and the shortstop fields it and throws it to the first baseman, uh, it's hard to know how much credit to give Kershaw for that ground ball. Um, and, uh, whereas it's not hard to know how much credit to give Mike Trout when he hits a line drive over the shortstop. And, um, so the way that I, the way that BP traditionally did it, uh, at least, and I think it shows up in all wars, is just that it's sort of harder for a pitcher to rack up value on a batter-by-batter basis for that reason. Now, I don't, I mean, every fifth day thing doesn't matter to me much because they have an outsized role in that day. I mean, Mike Trout doesn't contribute to the Angels every day. He might play every day, but he doesn't contribute to the angels every day he might play every day but he doesn't contribute to the angels every day

he doesn't contribute to them winning every day um and less of a role obviously than when you were throwing a complete game every five days or four days but like for instance uh well i mean if barry bonds were had been the giants dh well let's put way, Ben. Clayton Kershaw pitches every fifth day, right? As we've established. You know Escobar plays every day. Is you know Escobar more valuable than Clayton Kershaw? No. No, of course not.

So it's not that you can't be more valuable playing every fifth day. It's not prohibitive of anything at all. It changes the way that you count. It changes the way that their performances cluster. But Clayton Kershaw, not only is Clayton Kershaw clearly better, clearly more valuable than almost all players who play every fifth day or who play every day. So that is a pointless distinction. But Clayton Kershaw also faces more batters than most batters will hit. And then you have the

defense. And so then you have that. But then you have Kershaw bats and you have that. And it all just gets messy because they're totally different roles. So I just don't really like the conversation. That's all. All right. Then we will stop having it. All right. Tom says, as a Cardinals fan who lives in St. Louis, I watch nearly every game on the local TV broadcast.

Seemingly every time Matt Adams gets a hit, the local play-by-play guy will say, Adams beats the shift. He does this no matter where Adams hits it, as long as it goes for a hit. If I remember correctly, he has also said the phrase after several Adams home runs, but I believe this was meant ironically. Well, that's one way to beat the shift. I know the goal of the shift is to get Adams out, and any time he gets a hit, he has defied that goal, but I feel as if there needs to be a stricter definition of beating the shift. In my mind, one beats the shift when he blasts it through the shifted fielders. A basketball announcer would not say LeBron beats the double

team when he passes to an open teammate. However, after making this comment to my mother, who was also annoyed with the proliferation of the phrase on the local broadcast, she insists that one beats the shift when one defies expectations and goes the other way and gets a hit on a ball that would normally be fielded for an out by unshifting defense. Whose use of the phrase should become the nomenclature in our shift-happy world? Mine, my mom's, or our play-by-play guys? Man, that's a good question.

It is. I don't know. I do not know. So I agree that it can good question. It is. I don't know. I do not know. So I agree that it can only be one. Yes. We have to decide. Just like walk-off, I think I remember this, but walk-off used to refer to the losing team. So like when Dennis Eckersley came up with the term, it was about the losing team.

And it morphed to become about the hitting team. We don't use it to refer to the hitting team we don't use it to refer to both teams you don't say that they they had a walk-off well i guess do we say walk-off loss well anyway forget the walk forget i ever mentioned walk-off yeah it's not a good comparison ignore the walk-off uh distraction all right it needs to be one of the other it can only be one and i'm not sure which one i probably have used it both i traditionally i think i have thought of it as uh going the other way so countering the shift and and then i going uh into the shift you'd say he hit through the shift yeah uh teeth of the shift through the teeth of the shift yeah yeah but i think i actually think that, golly, it's the one shows if you go through it, then you are beating it on its own terms.

If you go against it, you're outsmarting it. You're going up there with a plan to beat it. And so one is sort of intentional and one is kind of unintentional. And yet it does feel like beating the shift on its own terms really is more beating it. It's like going around instead of through. And to me, beat is a smackdown. It's a much more active verb or it's a much more aggressive verb. And so I, even though I don't generally use it this way, I think that henceforth,

at least until 12 seconds from now, when you start talking and convince me, I think henceforth, I am going to say beat the shift for going through it, going through the teeth of it. Huh. And then so we can rule out the play by play guy way, which is just getting a hit in any method when the shift is on is beating the shift. Yeah, yeah. Although, I mean, it's perfectly fine if you want to say, well, that's one way to beat the shift because that's fine. I don't know what verb I'm going to propose for going against it, but I think avoiding the shift maybe. Yeah, all right. I guess that's one way to do it. Yeah. I mean, traditionally I have

used it more often to say a guy bunted against the shift or he went the other way. He beat the shift. He, he completely, uh, he beat its reason for existing or he, he made it extraneous because he stopped hitting the way that he was supposed to hit. And that is certainly a way of beating the shift. So they're both valid uses. We do kind of have to pick one. Or else we'll all be confused all the time. And we'll have to specify exactly what happened. Because no one will be able to tell.

So I think I like the beating equals avoiding. I think that is, i don't know that's the way that i care about beating it yeah i know and that's it's the great it's the more admirable act too it's it feels like the one that you really want to encourage right it almost feels to me like hitting it through the i'm trying to think of a better alternative for... If we're saying you've got to hit even though you hit right into the shift. Like, what would be a good term for that? Overpowering the shift? Overwhelming the shift?

Yeah. To me, I don't... I'm talking this analogy out as I go, so it might not work. But I almost think of it like if you make a trade, if you're a team and you make a trade and the guy you trade for is terrible, but you win the World Series, you, you, you know, you won the trade, right? But you didn't win the trade because you did anything great in that trade. You won the trade because the, you know, the mistake that you made didn't cost you and everything ended up working out and you got what you wanted. Your ultimate goal was always to win the World Series and however you get there, you get there.

And so, you know, technically you could say, hey, we won the trade. We won every trade in our franchise history leading up to now. But really to win the trade, you got to – the player you get should be good. You should get more out of that trade than you gave up. should be good you should get more out of that trade than you gave up and um so hitting into the shift and just just having it go through feels like that like the result technically uh is a win you you won therefore you beat but but did you did you you could say singled through the shift right i mean that's a simple single through through the shift through the shift right i mean that's a simple single through through the shift through the shift yeah yeah why do we have to say you beat any why why do we have to give it a an a strong verb yeah you're right yeah singled through the shift right grounded through the shift lined one over the shift right past the shift how about past the shift yeah that works too

okay so beat the shift is when you go i don't feel totally confident but beat the shift. Yeah, that works too. Okay, so beat the shift is when you go, I don't feel totally confident, but beat the shift is when you counter it, when you counter program it, when you're better than it. And otherwise you just go through the shift or you go past the shift or you go under and around over. You just go, you just hit, you just got to hit. Yeah. Just got to hit. I'm siding with Tom's mom here. Tom is not wrong. And if Tom can persuade more people he's right than Tom's mom can, then maybe Tom's way of

saying it can become the standard. But I'm rooting for Tom's mom's usage to become the accepted way. If you get a hit against a normal defense, we don't give it a special verb. We don't say he beat the defense. You just got to hit. And so if you hit it toward defenders, but it gets past them, you just got to hit. It's really the notable act is only the guy who does something unusual to counter a strategy. And so, yeah, beat the shift is to go the other way or to

bunt all right all right settled all right playing decks short last week we looked at the winning percentage of teams that were engaged in a winning streak to see whether they felt the pressure whether they felt the heat or whether they got as heat, or whether they got, as we would have expected, more and more likely to win the deeper they got into a winning streak just on account of them having proven themselves to be a superior team. And so somebody asked me to do the reverse and see if there's any, if it's exactly the same or if it's at all different for losing teams, teams on losing streaks. And with losing streaks, the pressure is totally different. Instead of feeling pressure to keep it going, maybe the feeling that maybe you're

flying too close to the sun, it is instead that you are losing confidence in yourself, that you are feeling like you are falling deeper and deeper into despair, and there has to be some sort of shift in inertia to change your fate. So I did the exact same thing as I did last time. I went and looked at all of the streaks in history, changing the time frame to make it manageable. So for 23 game losing streaks or more i went back to 1947 whereas for two game losing streaks i just looked at the last year and a half um and in fact it it is sort of different although you know not so different that i'm saying that it's different but um you know

it's different um so as you recall the team wins today, if you know nothing else about them except that they won today, they are, I think, 51.1% likely to lose tomorrow. I'm going to phrase all of these in winning percentages just to keep it consistent for the team that is playing the losing streak. So obviously, if a team on a losing streak wins 40% of their games, that is exactly the same as saying that the team that is playing the team on a losing streak wins 60% of their games. So I'm just going to keep it all from the winner's perspective, okay?

Okay. All right. So a team playing a team on a two-game losing streak wins 51% of the time, which means that unlike last week when teams that had won two in a row were much more likely to win three in a row historically, this is much closer to what we would have expected based on our 51% model. Okay. All right. And then the line up is actually exactly what we were looking, more or less exactly what we were looking for last week and didn't find. Last week, we found that teams that are on winning streaks are much more likely to win,

but it doesn't seem to get progressively more so the higher you get. In this case, it is. So teams playing teams on losing streaks, two game losing streak, 51%. Three game losing streak, 52%. Four game losing streak, 51. Five game losing streak, 55. And I'm just going to read the numbers now. 55, 54, 60, 55, 59, 57, 56. Now we're up to 11-game losing streak. 12-game losing streak, 58, 13, 60, 14, 63, 15, 65, 16, 91. That's an outlier. Big sample, i'm sure yeah out of 11 there have been 11 16 game losing streaks and only one ended on 16 huh uh and then 70 71 60 67 and um if you look at them as a whole teams that have lost at least two games in a row win only 45% of their next games. So that's all losing streaks, two or more. Win only 45% of their games. If you get to seven or more, teams on seven game losing streaks or more lose 42% of their games. And teams that have lost 12 or more win only 37% of their games.

So once you get to a higher losing streak, you really are spectacularly more likely to lose the next game. And we didn't see this for wins. We saw a much smaller effect in favor of the winning team, and we didn't see it growing. So do you think that there's a difference, or do you think we're just talking about small samples? Like for instance, my 12 game or more losing streak group is 206 total games. What year is this going back to? For the high level, since 1947. And so everything over like eight games is since 1947. And so if, when we're looking at seven game losing streaks, where you have a fit, you know, 42 42% chance of winning your next game, which is much lower than we saw for winning

streaks of the same level. We're talking about 2300 games. So that's not that's not a small sample at all. No, yeah, I would think there's something to it. Maybe it's just that if you're on a losing streak, you're more likely to be impaired in some way, to have your best player hurt or something, or you're not trying, you're not putting together a competitive team. I think it's easier to be impaired in some way than it is to be performing at greater than your usual efficiency. Yeah, well, like if Mike Trout got injured today the Angels would get 10 games worse overnight yeah but there's no equivalent

of adding Mike Trout for the next you know for the next 15 days yes like that there's no equivalent in the sport of getting 20 games better or 10 games better over the next two weeks you just can't you can't add a guy for two weeks. You just can't add a guy for two weeks, but you can very easily lose a guy for two weeks or a month or whatever. Maybe if you're on a losing streak, you are actually more likely to be worse at that moment than you

usually are compared to when you're on a winning streak. I think that makes a lot of sense. Alright, so that's the Play Index. I think it was Tom who asked, maybe, so thanks for asking, Tom. And you can subscribe to the Play Index yourself using the coupon code BP. Get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. says more john lester banter please no one is stealing off of him what gives gentlemen what gives i think he has developed an especially menacing glare when he checks first base so this is a confounding one john lester has allowed five stolen bases he's allowed nine stolen base attempts which is nothing right so last year he allowed 55 stolen base attempts and 44 were successful.

And this year he has allowed nine and only five are successful. He is the greatest athlete in the world. Yeah. So I think there are a few reasons for this. So first I wondered whether maybe he was doing something different. And as far as I can tell, he is not. I was talking to Rob McEwen of BP just now. It's hard to find pitcher pickoff attempts, but Rob looked it up and John Lester has not

suddenly started throwing to first. He has not thrown any pickoff attempts. So he has not altered that behavior. And as far as I can tell, he is not getting rid of the ball more quickly either. We don't have stat cast pitcher release times for 2015. We have them for this season. But I asked Inside Edge, who tracks pitcher times to the plate and Wester's time to the plate, this year is essentially the same as it was last season. So he has not hurried up his delivery in response to guys stealing on him. So I am speculating that it's a combination of a few things.

One is that he simply hasn't allowed as many base runners this year. He's allowed a 255 on base percentage. And last year he was at 288. So guys are not getting on base against lester so fewer steal opportunities and league-wide the the stolen base rate is still it's dropping slowly but it's dropping it's a little lower than it was last year i don't know if it's lower for teams that lester has faced i think that the brewers and theates are one and two in the NL in stolen bases, and the Reds are fifth. So I guess he has faced some stolen base teams. But I think the main thing

is that David Ross is now compensating for Lester's lack of pickoff attempts by making his own pickoff attempts. So David Ross has thrown, I think, four pickoff attempts. So according to Rob, Ross has thrown four pickoff attempts while Lester is pitching, and at least one of those was successful. And I think this is something he's doing more now. I just searched Twitter for Lester and pickoff to see whether anyone was talking about this. And Brett Taylor from Bleacher Nation just last week tweeted John Lester showing his pickoff move, a.k.a. David Ross throwing behind the runner. So I think this is something that Ross is doing. And Ross is not like a savant at restricting the running game.

He's throwing runs the last couple of years, according to BP, have not been above average. He hasn't had a great stolen base percentage or anything, but it does seem like he is compensating by being the person who makes pickoff attempts because Lester is not that person. So combination of those things, even so, you'd have to think that

there's got to be some more opportunities to steal against lester but i'm i don't know you could check the lead length against lester stat cast has that i have not done that but maybe guys are getting smaller leads against him this year because of ross yeah i mean there's only there's two things that would keep players from stealing against Lester. Or there's I guess, sorry, there's two two ways that a player should be able to steal more against Lester. One is take a much, much larger lead like that old Photoshop of Billy Hamilton. Yeah. Or being more confident that you could leave on first move.

And the latter one would have nothing to do with David Ross. If you're going on first move, you're going on first move And a back pick would not get you because you'd be on second And as to a larger lead, you only need a larger lead on the one where you're going Although maybe you don't always go because maybe you don't get a good jump But still, it seems hard to think that you'd be that prone to getting picked off Just because you took an extra two-foot lead against Leicester Especially if you know you're not going, you can still get back

You don't have to take as big a secondary lead if you know you've already got two extra feet And it seems like... And if he's not picking guys off, then he's, I mean, he's keeping guys who are not going closer. Maybe. Like the threat of back pick would keep a guy who is not stealing closer. But we're talking about guys who are not stealing. Like why aren't they stealing? Yeah, right.

It continues to be a mystery. He's Kilgrave. So he's just telling people not to take leads against him? I think he is. Yeah. I always wondered why people don't just wear headphones when they're going against Kilgrave, which is a very common thing to wonder. I think that came up later in Jessica Jones. But yeah, I am equally mystified by the Lester thing, as I am by the not wearing headphones against Kilgrave. I don't know why Russ is probably contributing to this. Fewer base runners got to be contributing to this. I mean, clearly, yeah.

Clearly, Lester does some things to limit the running game on his own. Otherwise, it would be crazy, right? So he is quick to the plate, and he does stare you down very well, and he alters his timing well. And those things help. But the thing is that he not only doesn't give—well, there are two things. One is that— Those things shouldn't help – well, there are two things. One is that – Those things shouldn't help though, right? Because if you're staring down, it doesn't matter if he's not going to throw.

It shouldn't matter. Although adjusting your timing does though. But the two reasons that it – the two notable things are that this was all basically their – last year he was doing a lot of staring and he had a quick delivery to the plate and guys ran crazy off him. So this is another one of those things where any explanation that you have you have to

run it through the, well why didn't it work last year? But the other thing is that it's not just that guys aren't stealing against him, it's that when they do they're getting caught. So you can't even argue that they should be stealing against him more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm going to look into this a little more, I think. But it is because last year should have been, should have egged everyone on. Last year was a validation of the you can run on Lester theory. Everyone noticed that he never throws over. That circulated around the league, and guys ran on him more than they had against any other left-handed starting pitcher, and it worked out just fine. And so that should have encouraged people to do it even more, if anything, this year. And the opposite has happened. And they're having less success against him And less willingness to run against him Now than

Before anyone knew that Lester didn't Throw over In 2014 There were 21 attempts Against Lester and 16 were successful And that was Before everyone knew about the fun fact And it became national news

And everyone was watching for it Now everyone knows and no one is trying to steal and no one is successful so unbelievable i'll just say it again greatest athlete in the world uh all right uh we'll wrap up with a couple uh participatory journalism questions so olaf jorgensen A Patreon supporter Asks us He says after hearing you two discuss the fact That Sam is maybe a half step slower Than the two elder Molina brothers

And Sam's statement that a random guy like Trevor Ploof Would be one of the fastest runners Most non-professional athletes had ever met I've started to notice how close A lot of plays at second base are Even on balls hit to the fence That makes me wonder Assuming the outfielder does not misplay the ball I've started to notice how close a lot of plays at second base are, even on balls hit to the fence. That makes me wonder.

Assuming the outfielder does not misplay the ball and it doesn't take a crazy bounce, where would I, or the two of you, need to hit a ball in a major league stadium to end up with a double? Let's say the outfielders in this hypothetical have league average range, arms, release times, etc. Are there any stadiums in which you think you wouldn't be able to hit a double anywhere in the park? I am a fit, reasonably athletic 34-year-old man, and I am not certain that I could hit a ball to any part of the park in Baltimore or Cincinnati and end up safely at second base. What do you think? Well, I disagree with this. I think that most doubles, a large percentage of doubles, at least certainly some doubles, are just not close at all. And if you hit one down the line and the outfielders are playing straight up, you're going to be fine. I think you'll go in probably standing up. The problem, though, is that no outfielder would be playing you straight up.

They would be playing you maybe 40 feet more shallow than they would play a pitcher. And they would probably be playing like the right fielder would be on the line and expecting you to be late on it. And so it's going to be really hard to get a double on anything that doesn't go over their heads if they're playing that shallow. And so you just have to go over their head. If you go over their head, then you'll get a double. And you never ever will

Right But yes you could hit Baseballs to many parts of the park If you could hit them there And get a double Look there's Slow guys get triples What percentage of the Molina's doubles were stand up

I would bet almost all Because the Molina's I don't up? I would bet almost all because the Molina's, I don't think do a lot of aggressive base running. So probably when they got one, it was probably pretty easy send. And you know, they got triples. They both,

they all got triples. So if, if the Molina's got triples and you could hit a ball where they hit those triples, then you certainly would be able to get a double, but you know, it's hard to hit it where they hit it. Yeah.

All right. And last question is from Daniel, who says, calling balls and strikes is pretty hard. Not hitting hard, but I think much harder than people give it credit. And generally speaking, umpires are pretty good at it. If you two had to call balls and strikes tonight at a major league game, how good do you think you would be? You have all day to prepare, but no more. So umpires are something like 90%.

The good umpires are between high 80s and 90% correct, according to PitchFX strike zones. And I think that's maybe not taking into account for the fact that they uh they switch things up as the count progresses and and they do things that a computer wouldn't do but still let's let's just say that a good umpire's nine out of ten so how many would i get in my first hundred yeah correct yeah um i mean i would i think I would do significantly better if I were doing this just in a laboratory somewhere with no one watching. And you had a batter and a pitcher and a catcher, but no stakes and no national audience watching. The nerves would definitely get to me to some extent in my first attempt here.

If you had to do this and you could stand anywhere you wanted for the best results, where would you stand? Like would you stand where the normal umpire does right behind the catcher? Would you stand behind the mound? Would you sit in the front row of the seats or even up higher so that you have a view, a little bit of a broader view? Yeah, I'd probably stand behind the mound. Maybe I'd even sit out in center field. I'd probably, maybe I'd sit out in center field so that it could be close to the TV angle I'm used to. Yeah.

And, you know, have a telescope or something. I think if you were out in center field, you'd do pretty well. Or if you were standing at second base, you'd do pretty well. When we were scouting Stompers games, we would sit right behind home plate, 15 feet behind the umpire, and we would have to chart where the pitch was. And sometimes we would do these in pairs.

There'd be two or more of us out there. And sometimes I'd look over and there'd be a pitch that was swung on and missed that was inside. And the guy, the scout would mark it outside or vice versa. i might mark it outside and somebody else was like that was inside um and so we didn't do a great now partly that's because that was tough because you're multitasking and you're multitasking and record the the result and yeah and usually i think

the swing uh you're there's a tendency for us to watch the swing And so it was always much harder on pitches where there was a swing But even then I would say that we weren't I was never that confident in saying even where the pitch was When I was just basically doing umpire work I was basically trying to decide where the pitch was I don't know Most pitches are still fairly easy to call. I mean, every now and then you see an umpire blow one that is just, you know, right down the middle or very, very obvious.

And Jeff Sullivan will write a post about what an outlier call it was. So that happens every now and then. But most calls are, you know, every umpire gets them right, or it's just, it's the borderline calls that I think distinguish the best umpires from the worst umpires, but all umpires are pretty good, whereas we would not be, we would not have any practice in doing this. So I don't know whether we would blow really obvious ones, like would we blow ones right down the middle or way outside or something? I don't think we would do that regularly. So most calls are fairly obvious, I think. So I mean,

we would blow a lot of borderline calls, I think, many more than a practiced umpire would. But we'd still get, I don't know what percentage of calls are just obvious, obvious, uncontested calls. Well, how many would it take before your eyes were even open if you were standing where the umpire is? Like, serious question. Yeah, right. Well, I don't know. I've never really been in that situation, so it's hard to say. I mean, yeah, I'd flinch for sure on,

you know, foul tips and stuff. I'd be, that would be part of it. I don't have any way of saying, I think I'll say 70, 76% accuracy. Yeah, that's, I was, yeah, I was going to say 75. So, all right. So something like that, but we don't know in that situation, it might be overwhelming in some way that we hadn't anticipated. And of course, if you're actually in a major league game and you have the cameras on you and everyone's watching and the stadium is hard on umps to begin with, so if they know that you are some dummy who's never done this before, they're going to be riding you even harder and the players are not going to respect you at all.

So they're going to be challenging everything. And so you're going to have to deal with angry big leaguers. And so all that's going to be in your head. So it might be even worse the first time. Now, as a kind of middle approach to answering this question, you and I are supremely unqualified. Major League umpires are the most qualified. We did have a lot of experience with Pacific Association umpires, and you and I had different

conclusions about how good they were. You, I think, generally thought they were terrible at their job, and I generally was amazed at how close, like, i think that they intentionally had somewhat bigger strike zones uh than a major league umpire did that was my sense but um i actually thought they were fairly consistent and uh i would say that the gap between them and the major league umpires was not maybe not as big as the gap between our players and major league players for instance i didn't have that strong an opinion there were definitely certain i felt like the the bad calls were worse or there were they were much worse the field umpires were horrible oh well yeah so bad

like just unbelievably bad and that's i think that's because the you know the 360 degree nature of being a field umpire makes it a lot easier for you to just like get disoriented and just have this real blind spot glitch you can't just tunnel into this one task that you're doing and they would do things that were so bad so unexplainable And then they would also overturn calls for no reason. Like, I don't know if you were at either of these, but there was like a three-game stretch where, in Vallejo, where I think we saw three calls at first get overturned. Just routine calls, like a runner, base runner at first. And, you know, they were in i think it probably in all three cases they were terrible calls that were wrong but it's just like the

manager goes out and goes like you got that wrong and they overturned it like which is the weirdest thing and not even always not even always like coordinating with their partner like they would just be like oh well well, you seem mad. Yeah. Yeah. So they were – I mean that was – like they were out of their league on those. But for strike zones – sorry, I interrupted you what you were saying about strike zones. Well, yeah, I didn't have a blanket opinion that they were terrible. There were certain guys who were bad and temperamentally they were bad.

They would allow themselves to get upset. There were ump shows all the time and just all the overturning and everything. And the players seemed to think that everyone was terrible. Now, maybe that's just because we were in the dugout hearing the complaints. Maybe you would hear that in the dugout at any level. I don't know.

But they seemed pretty convinced that they were bad. And when they made mistakes, like when there was a bad umpire, it was more obvious that they were bad. And there were guys who would like step back as the pitch came in and like just do things that didn't look very umpire like. And so that increased, I think, the condemnation. But yeah, they were still much better than I would be. So all right. I think we're finished. I like those questions. There are some good ones we didn't get to.

I will star them for next time. Keep them coming. All right. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild Today's five Patreon supporters are Garrett Allen, Michael Short, Alex Kapuscinskas Dominique Banfield And Cameron McSorley

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