Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 920: Home Runs Have More Than Bounced Back

Episode Date: July 7, 2016

Ben and Sam discuss the causes and ramifications of this season’s dramatic (but easily overlooked) rise in home run rate.

It's the same old story It's the same old game How about, how about Try to be the same Hello and welcome to episode 920 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by our Patreon supporters and the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hey.

Anything you care to discuss today? Nope. Well, I think we'll probably just do a quick one, as we're recording a little later than usual. And this is something that we have touched on before, but it seems to be a story that's gaining more and more attention. So I figured this would be a good time to check in on it. Namely, home runs. Everyone's writing about home runs these days. Everyone has noticed that baseball players are hitting lots of home runs these days. And it really is possibly even an unprecedented number of home runs. It's not just an increase relative to last season or to recent seasons when offense was down and home runs were down relative to the PED era, the home run hitting. And by my calculations, last month, June, was the all-time home runniest month, I think, ever in Major League history, going by home runs on contact,

which, you know, defining contact as just at-bats that don't end in a strikeout. So the percentage of at-bats, of non-strikeout at-bats That end in a home run Last month was higher than in any month I believe ever Higher than any month in 1999 Higher than any month in 2000 Which are the peak home run seasons And higher even than any month At the end of last season

When everyone suddenly started speculating About why home runs were up And the home run rate thus far in July is even higher than June's home run rate. Now suddenly Giancarlo Stanton is contributing to the home run rate again. So I wanted to ask a couple questions about this. Obviously, this is something we talked about briefly, I think, when Rob Arthur and I wrote about what seemed to be a trend earlier this year before opening day. We talked about how the home run rate spiked in the second half of last season and seemed to continue in spring training this year. But now it's basically a full year, a full calendar year of home run hitting at a rate that we either haven't seen at all or haven't seen for 15 years

since everyone was talking about how players were juiced and the ball was juiced and baseball was incredibly home run prone. So I guess the first question is, would you notice, do you think, if you weren't reading any coverage and you weren't reading, suddenly there are a ton of stories about how, you know, the Orioles hit the most home runs any team has ever hit in the month of June. And Chris Young is allowing home runs at the highest rate of any pitcher ever. And Mark Trumbo has 26 home runs somehow. And, you know, so you start seeing all these stories about home run records and guys with home run totals that we haven't seen in years. And suddenly you put all of that together and you realize, well, yeah, the entire league is hitting lots of home runs. But do you think you would really know if you

weren't studying stats every day, if you weren't reading articles every day, if you had just, you know, watched baseball casually this season, just dropped in on a game here or there, even really watched a game every day, but not really dug into the numbers. Do you think the difference is enough that you would know that something strange and something that we hadn't seen for quite some time was going on? I think certainly not. Okay. Partly because overall offense isn't way up to, you know, 2,000 levels. Like back in 2000, you could tell that weird things were happening because there were just so many runs being scored.

And, you know, home runs were a part of that. But more than anything else, it was just that there was just such an imbalance between offense and pitching. And there isn't that imbalance. It's actually about as balanced as it's ever been in the aggregate, depending on how you want to say what balance is. And so I would not notice on those grounds. Baseball doesn't feel like it's any less competitive on an inning by inning basis than it ever has been. And the other thing is that there really aren't, I mean, nobody's

challenging 73. Nobody's even challenging 60. You mentioned Mark Trumbo having 26 home runs, which is not that notable. Like it's, we're past the halfway point. There have been, you know, lots of, lots of people have had 25 home run halves in history. And the fact that that leads the majors, I mean, it's sort of interesting that there are a lot of guys with 20, 20 plus at the halfway point. And so we might have a lot of 40s after having a few years where even 40s were rare. Like I think someone led the league with 38 a couple of years ago, and that's not going to happen this year. But you don't, like, I can't think of the, like, I think of the Canary

in the coal mine for the, for the, well, I guess it wasn't the Canary in the coal mine because it came in the middle of it. But you'd have like Rando's second baseman would hit 40 home runs. So people would sort of grapple with the fact that guys who were not even that good – like if Zach Cozart had 20-23 this year, who were not even that good. Like if Zach Cozart had 20-23 this year, like if he was doing, if there was something like that where it was like, this guy is actually on pace to have 40-something,

then we might. But there really isn't that. You've got a couple of outliers. Adam Duvall is sort of weird. But otherwise, there's some powerful hitters who have a lot of home runs, but nobody's on pace to go 60,

let alone 70. It doesn't feel like we've got, I mean, you've still got plenty of Eduardo Nunez's around who are, you know, good baseball players without being on a 30 home run pace. It's not like there's only one way to be good. And so, in fact, it's sort of striking how little I would notice it given that in the aggregate, the league is hitting so many more home runs. Yeah. And I guess that's a good thing, or, you know, that was one of the hallmarks of the late nineties, early two thousands era. It wasn't just that there were lots of runs or lots of home runs. There were of course, but there were also just these incredible, unbelievable individual performances. And there was just a, just,

it seemed like a very high variation among players and high standard deviations, if you look at it statistically. And there were just guys having all-time great seasons, you know, not only just hitters, but Pedro and Randy Johnson and Maddox and Clemens. And then of course, on the other side, you were getting McGuire and Sosa

and just all of these just individual performances that we hadn't seen. And you're don't know how much of the previous offensive era was PED driven, but that's at least one of the potential explanations for why there was so much variation among players. So this is a little different and maybe this is better, or I don't know, it's definitely less noticeable. And what you said is right. We're kind of just at the average amount of run scoring now after years of hand wringing and just wondering if pitchers had won. and something had to be done and the strike zone and the ball and all of these possible solutions. And now we are back so far at 4.51 runs per game. And if you look at the average runs per game figures from, say, 1920 to 2015, you get 4.48. So we are almost right at the average amount of scoring in baseball over the last many decades. And I mean, I guess that's good, right? I guess the the crisis is kind of over.

And the fact that it's so hard to notice unless you're really looking for it maybe means that we were worrying about it too much. I'm not sure if it just, you know, the fact that we were worrying about it Too much I'm not sure if it just You know the fact that we've now gone back To basically an average amount Of run scoring and it's not Too high or too low it's just right Right it's like the perfect temperature Or it should be and yet I don't know that baseball is

Better I don't know that the average fan Notices that baseball is any Different than it was So maybe it just doesn't matter all that much what the run environment is. Maybe it's just baseball regardless. I want to go back to the middle infielder hitting, you know, 35 home runs thing that was felt so prevalent in the in the 90s and isn't there now. And to put this in perspective, I just did a play index since 1993, sorting home runs by catcher, second base, or short stops. And to find anybody on this list

from recent times, you have to go down to, for instance, number 18 is the first person in this decade. That's Dan Ugla in 2011, so a full half decade ago. To find somebody more recent than that, you have to go to Robinson Cano at number 33, and that was only in 2012. To find somebody more recent than that, you have to go, I'm still scrolling here. You have to go down to number 73, Brian Dozier with 28 home runs in 2015. There really was this whole era of Chris Hoyles's and Terry Steinbach's and Mike Lieberthal's and Rich Aurelias and so on, Brett Boone, Bill Hall, these guys who were like middle infielders that were doing ridiculous things with power numbers.

And that hasn't been the case even as we've seen power over the last few years. Basically power – like while runs were down, power stayed up for the most part. But it stayed up in a way that didn't really jar you alert because it was the corner outfielders in the first baseman in the DH who were mainly hitting a consistent level of home runs. But maybe it's just that teams' appreciation for deep, renewed, resurged appreciation for defense from high-profile positions perhaps kept them from investing in Jose Valentin types. Or maybe, in fact, this premise that I have is about to be outdated

because while some people who are paying closer attention to their fantasy teams than I am probably already know this, there is the potential for this year to really crash this leaderboard that I was just looking at. Trevor Story, of course, has 19 already in half a season. And I'm going to skip the guys like Cano and Machado, who are actually really good. But Story with 19, Danny Espinosa with 18, Marcus Semien has 18,

Ruggio Dorr has 16, Neil Walker has 15, Cozart, mentioned, has 14. And so no catchers, oddly enough. You have to go all the way down to Brian McKinnon who only has 13. But maybe this year is the year that, in fact, the middle infielders, the giant swing for the fences middle infielder has returned. And maybe it's just that I won't or we won't notice it until it gets to, you know, to big baseball card numbers like 30 and 35 and 40 at the end of the year. Yeah. And, and of course, this hasn't solved or reversed the strikeout trend. Strikeouts are up a lot, as we talked about very early in the season, that trend is still

holding. And so if you're not the sort of fan who likes three true outcomes and wants to see balls in play, then more homers, more strikeouts is not ideal. But it does sort of seem to remove some of the urgency from all of the calls to do something. And we were hearing that as recently as this spring That MLB was thinking about raising the strike zone And that might happen for next season And maybe it still should But now you almost have to worry about Whether there will be too much offense

If you shrink the strike zone Because, I mean, it might help with the strikeout problem But now suddenly we're at this kind of ideal Or normal range of run scoring And now if you tamper with the strikeout problem, but now suddenly we're at this kind of ideal or normal range of run scoring. And now if you tamper with the strike zone, then maybe we race scoring to a level where people start to complain about too much scoring. So I don't know. It seems to remove some of the urgency, at least from it, in that the strikeout trend is not any different from what it was. that the strikeout trend is not any different from what it was, but before the strikeout trend was paired with the scoring trend

and people were wondering whether the strikeouts were a symptom of just batters being behind pitchers and never being able to catch up without some assistance, whereas now it seems like they have found a way to compensate or something has changed in order for them to score it at levels that they used to back when they put the ball in play more often. You know, I, Ben, I'm going to start talking about a weird thing I was just thinking about while you were talking. I, uh, I'm not, I'm not in favor of robo umps behind the plate. However,

it would be kind of cool if you did have robo-umps behind the plate that if you wanted to as the league, you could almost assure a perfectly steady offensive environment by having the strike zone get tweaked minimally, really almost imperceptibly in response to how much scoring there is so just you could just shave off like you know hundreds of inches around the edges you could have it be like totally dynamic where it could change even from like week to week if you really wanted to and and almost nobody would be able to tell and i don't think all but one or two hitters in the history of baseball would even necessarily be able to um to complain because i don't think they can usually tell the difference between 10.81 inches and 10.83 inches and yet

those two hundredths of an inch probably affect uh you know enough calls that uh that they affect uh you know a few tenths of a run per game anyway sorry yeah well i think they would be able to complain i think they would complain oh they would complain think they would be able to complain. I think they would complain. Oh, they would complain. Then you'd be able to complain about every single call because every single call could be an example of Major League Baseball's invisible hand tampering with the strike zone without their knowledge. Yeah, it's probably a terrible idea. There's probably one non-terrible way of implementing this that I would not trust humans to figure out. And so they would probably implement it in a terrible way. Forget I ever said it. So we have acknowledged that this has happened. Do you have any theories about why it has happened?

Because that's still a mystery. And the fact that that is still a mystery is really the most interesting thing about this to me. I mean, it's nice that scoring is back up, I think, although as we've covered, it's not even necessarily the sort of thing that you would notice if you weren't looking for it. But really, I mean, for people who do what we do and are interested in the game in the way that we're interested in the game. Just the sudden increase in home runs without an obvious explanation, without even a non-obvious explanation, is one of the more fascinating stories of the season. So we've now been watching this for a year, and when Rob and I wrote about it in March or whenever it was, we said, you know, we'll just

have to wait for a bigger sample to see if it's real. And today at Baseball Perspectives, Rob Maines wrote about the home run raid and how just looking at past seasons, there's no reason to expect it to fluctuate much in the second half of the season. Sometimes the home run rate goes up a little bit in the second half. Sometimes it goes down a little bit in the second half, but usually it's pretty stable. And so you'd think that this is what we're going to see for the rest of the season, except that last year when all of this started, it just changed almost overnight and we still don't really know why.

And I wonder whether you have formed any hypotheses. I still think that the, that the best hypothesis is that the composition of the ball has changed by accident or intent. Isn't that by far the most compelling explanation that you guys settled on? It is. And we tested one batch of baseballs and we couldn't find any difference between the Rob Manfred model balls and the Bud Selig model balls. And that was not conclusive. I mean, you know, it's one batch of balls and it could be a non-representative batch. Even if there was a change, you would expect some balls not to be

different just by chance. And so there was no way that we could kind of economically test enough baseballs to establish it with any certainty. But, you know, I did speak to people at the commissioner's office and they test the ball regularly and they insisted to me that they had not found any difference. And I assume they had done more testing than we had. And I mean, I can't figure out why you would do that secretly. I mean, if it is an intentional change, then I don't know why you would. I mean, I guess I kind of know why you would obscure that. We talked about that earlier this year, too. But when you have people looking at it so closely now, you know, 30 years ago, you might have just gotten away with it and people weren't looking at home runs on contact percentage and exit velocity and sending baseballs to labs. So you could just kind of come up with a story and stick to it or not say anything and probably it would be fine.

Now you kind of have all of these sabermetric eagle-eyed watchdogs. I guess I'm mixing animal metaphors there. But you have People studying these stats And scrutinizing everything and so It seems more risky to Try to get away with it on purpose And then if it's an accident If it's just a change in

Production that wasn't something anyone Did intentionally then you'd think It would still be detected by the testing So I still don't Get it but it does seem like the most likely explanation just because it is such a drastic change and it happened so quickly. Yeah, I think that the most likely explanation,

or at least the most compelling explanation, the most likely explanation remains the field. Something that we haven't said or that we've discarded. But it seems the most compelling hypothesis is that the composition of the ball has changed. It doesn't seem that compelling to me that it was done intentionally or with the intention of having this result because it's not as though baseball was in some sort of state of crisis where they had to do something desperate or anything like that.

There wasn't a great motive for changing, I don't think. I mean, there were less obtrusive ways of accomplishing more offense if you wanted to, and, you know, the game was clicking along pretty well. I wonder if I had to say something on, like, sort of strategic or, like, on a gameplay grounds. I wonder if the fact that, okay, so pitchers are harder and harder to hit every year. They throw harder. They're just, they throw harder and they're used in a way that allows them to throw even harder still.

And so if you're a batter and you swing at a ball, your rate of return is going to go down each year just because they're throwing more difficult pitches for you to hit. And if the odds are that you're not going to do something good with a pitch, that you're likely to swing and miss at that pitch, likely to swing and miss at that pitch, then it kind of creates more incentive for you to guess, to take the boom or bust type of approach to a pitch. So I think that there, correct me if I'm wrong, but there is more early count swinging as hitters, I think, have realized that falling behind in counts against modern pitchers is more damaging than ever before. So there is more early count swinging. There is perhaps more guessing at pitches or sitting on certain pitches. Basically, with the recognition that most at-bats end badly, so you might as well

shoot for the moon, because you're probably going to lose anyway. So it might be that there's a kind of not so subtle shift in hitting philosophy that is fairly common throughout the game. And while it seems weird to think that the sport's 750 players could change all at once like that. It's not, it's not that outlandish, uh, because they are all kind of using the same data. I think that a lot of this stuff gets talked about publicly and, um, uh, and there aren't really any secrets and you can see what everybody else is doing. Um, and so it, and they all kind of have a lot of the same philosophical basis from front office to front office as it is. So you could sort of imagine that, you know, like any particular trend that one team or any particular shift that one

team does is likely to get picked up and copied by many more almost simultaneously these days. Yeah, I think that's true. I do think there was sufficient motive for Major League Baseball to change the ball. I have no idea whether they did, but I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if there had been a desire to do that just because scoring was down to the lowest point in the DH era. And people were talking about this a lot. And Rob Manfred was getting asked about it a lot and having to say that he'd consider this and consider that. And I actually think it is one of the less obtrusive ways of increasing scoring. I mean, as we were just discussing, it's not even necessarily something

you would notice, right? Because guys just hit home runs, the ball goes a little bit farther, there are more home runs, but the game isn't really played any differently the way it would be if you move the mound or move the strike zone or did something else, the ball goes a little bit farther, and it's hit a little bit harder, you don't really notice. You just see some scores that have higher numbers. Although when I was on MLB Network last week with Joel Sherman, he was saying that anecdotally, it seems to him that he is more often noticing outfielders tracking fly balls and being surprised by their landing spots, you know, going back to the wall on a deep fly ball and appearing to have a beat on it and then looking up as it soars 20 rows deep into the stands as if they too are surprised by how far the ball is flying. Anyway, I think there was a lot of reason for Major League Baseball to do it.

Not that the sport was like in desperate straits or anything. I mean, it was very profitable and well attended and in good shape financially. So it wasn't like their backs were against the wall but if you are gonna tamper with with the way the game is played there were reasons to do that but hang on i want to pause because because i i think we're maybe you and i disagree is uh what we think the um the consequences would be if they were caught secretly tampering with the ball juicing the ball as it is. How serious would it be for Major League Baseball? I mean, we saw in Japan that it was a bona fide scandal that cost people jobs.

Do you think it would be such here in the States, or are we just so used to scandal in such an honorless society and so dulled by Goodell. Goodell? Is that his name? Yes. That we would just say, well, the system's rigged. Everybody does it. Or do you think that Major League Baseball would actually suffer, as an industry and as a group of executives working in an office, would suffer any serious consequences? Because if you think that the consequences would be slight, then yes, there's, there's enough incentive for them to do

something that has little downside for them. If you think that it's the sort of thing that, um, you know, costs Manfred his career or casts a Paul on the sport for four years or something like that and becomes, you know, quiz show in the sixties, then, uh, I would say there's not nearly enough incentive for that. Yeah, I think, I think it would probably be a big deal. I don't know whether it would significantly hurt the sport, but I think there would be a wave of negative PR. I don't know. Everything just seems to become a bigger deal in baseball because of the history and the

tradition and maybe the age of the fans and the attention that's paid to the statistics. So if, if it was found that MLB was putting its finger on the scale and just, you know, tampering with run scoring in that way, I think people would probably wouldn't like it. You know, would anyone stop watching baseball because of it? I don't, I don't know, probably not, but it would be a negative story. I think it would be bad PR and I don't know. Probably not. But it would be a negative story, I think. It would be bad PR. And I don't know if anyone will lose their jobs over it, maybe. I mean, we talked about earlier this year whether we would mind or anyone would mind if they just came out and admitted and said, yeah, we're doing that. And we talked about whether there would be any downside to that. And neither of us really said we would mind if they did that i mind a little bit more if they did it secretly i suppose so uh yeah there's some some risk there and i think in in japan i mean they had maintained that there was no difference and the commissioner ended up resigning and and i think claimed to the end that he didn't know that anything had happened that other people

had made this decision without his knowledge. And so something similar could have happened in Major League Baseball. So there's some risk to it. But I think the alternate hypothesis that you proposed is also plausible. Obviously, there are more strikeouts, which would be consistent with guys just, you know, going, selling out for power or going all or nothing and just swinging for home runs. And there's no strikeout stigma anymore. And so I could see that happening. The only part of it that confuses me, as you noted, is just that

it happened so suddenly. And that's the part I can't quite figure out. It's almost as if everyone just got a memo at the all-Star break last year and said, hey, you know, start swinging harder or something. And then just everyone did it in unison. And I agree that maybe that kind of approach would spread pretty quickly, but it still seems extremely sudden. You know, that was when people responded to my article with Rob and said, oh, you know, it's PEDs because people always do that. We kind of had the same response, which is,

you know, what everyone in baseball suddenly started taking a new undetectable PED that only helps hitters and doesn't help pitchers. It just didn't really make sense with the timeline of the stats. And so that is my only reservation about the change in hitter approach idea. And it also kind of, I mean, it suggests that hitters were doing something very suboptimal for years, right? Like they should have just been doing this years ago because now they're scoring half a run more per game than they were you know two seasons ago which means that they were just leaving hundreds of runs on the table all the time and that they were capable of hitting lots of home runs all the time but they just

didn't want to they just hadn't decided to and so now they can just decide to hit home runs and suddenly they hit home runs that I mean, maybe. Yeah, it's not that they're deciding to, I mean, well, they're deciding to hit home runs, but at the cost of, you know, many other parts of the game. And so it's not necessarily that it's, again, this is a situation where home runs are way up, but it's not like offense is way up. So it's not like they were doing something that was so irrational that they were costing their team tons of wins. Maybe the math works out to be 40% more home runs, but only a half a percent more offense.

And so you'd be like, well, geez, that's crazy. They would give up all those home runs, but they're not. The point of the game is not to hit home runs. The point of the game is to score runs. Yeah, I mean, it is a lot more runs though I mean it's not It's not as big a percentage increase As the home run increase But still it's almost half a run per game

Relative to 2014 It's the most runs scored In a season since 2009 Which was before the strike zone expansion So it's still a lot. It's still a significant number of runs that, you know, we're basically saying that hitters were deciding not to score before. Yeah. Um, I have a, so, okay. I have not put any thought or any research into this question, but, um, you know, how strikeouts are this weird paradox where they help pitchers, like a pitcher is incentivized to get them even though they don't seem to hurt hitters, which doesn't seem to make sense because it's a zero-s walks are the reverse, that they're terrible for pitchers

and yet not necessarily worth pursuing as much for hitters? And so we have more pitchers who are basically extremely conscious of trying to avoid walks and therefore pumping strikes into the strike zone, while hitters who are seeing less benefit of deep counts and perhaps are seeing that home runs are easier to hit than before are incentivized to swing at those pitches and no longer pursue the walk as an end for that at bat. Like, does that philosophically, could could that make sense is that conceivable huh well we do know that you know a walk is a valuable thing to do on offense yeah and a strikeout but a strikeout is an unvaluable thing to do for offense and yet we still we still say that there's good reason for hitters to accept strikeouts that strikeout

that allowing those strikeouts to seep into your game helps you in other ways and makes you a better hitter uh in the in the in the hole and so yeah we know that walks are good for hitters but maybe pursuing walks makes you a worse hitter that's possible yeah i mean although uh walks are up this season too they are yeah they are but not they're still well below, you know, historical norms. They're up over the last couple of years. They're up compared to the last couple of years. You're right.

Yeah. So, I mean, it's one of the more fascinating things of the season for me. And yet for maybe the majority of baseball fans, it's not even a noticeable thing. So I don't know. I guess that's kind of one of the big two takeaways for me. I mean, one, the fact that something so dramatic can happen in the way the game is played and we can't know why, which is really kind of amazing that, you know, in this ecosystem where we have a stat that covers every little single outcome, that something so dramatic could change in a very quick timeframe. And no one knows why exactly.

And we all have theories, but we can't prove them or disprove them. That's one of the fascinating things about it to me. And then the other fascinating thing about it is that it is such a drastic change, and yet it is also so easy to miss if you're just not paying really close attention. It's just like, you know, we obsess over run environment and strikeout rate and home run rate and all of these indicators. And really, fundamentally, the sport is pretty much the same as it was before. And, you know, you could drop a baseball fan from 20 years ago into today's game. And, you know, they'll wonder why all this shifting is going on and everything. But otherwise, it's, you know, very recognizable as the same sport. You lived through 2000, sort of.

Yeah. How old were you? You were, yeah, you were like 13. That was like your prime years, right? Yeah, and that was why the PED era or the home run era or whatever didn't seem that anomalous to me at the time because that was kind of the baseball I grew up with. I want to ask the question that you asked me about home runs, except imagine that it wasn't home runs. Imagine that you were suddenly dropped into the year 2000, baseball that was exactly like the year 2000. Again, you're not reading analyses. You're not looking at the numbers. You're not scouring the sport for trends.

You are just Ben Lindbergh watching baseball games. the sport for trends, you are just Ben Lindbergh watching baseball games. How many games before you realized that the offensive environment was different than in 2015? And we're talking a full run per game more. Yeah, right. Maybe a month. Okay. A month of one team's games or a month of the scoreboard of watching the scoreboard? Yeah, probably need the scoreboard. I think if you had the scoreboard, you'd notice within a week. It was noticeable even, I think, early this season that the scores were different, that the numbers were higher. And so, yeah, maybe if you were looking at every box score every night, you would probably sense something different. Yeah. Okay. every night, you would probably sense something different.

Yeah. Okay. But I don't know whether it would affect your enjoyment in one way or another. I think I like higher scoring or I like at least this scoring better than I like, say, the scoring of two years ago. But it doesn't dramatically affect how close attention I pay to the sport or how often I watch it or talk about it or write about it or anything. So I don't know. I guess we probably obsess over these details that are relatively insignificant to many baseball watchers.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, I would say that we would stay tuned for the explanation. But at this point, I'm not confident that we are going to get a good one. So we'll see. Or we won't. All right. That is it for today. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up for a small monthly pledge. Five listeners who have already pledged their support.

Jake Silverman, Patrick Garza, Nicholas Pelicero, Joshua Blanchfield, and Tim Wolfe. Thank you. You can buy our book, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work, Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team. Check out theonlyruleisithastowork.com for more information. And if you like the book, please

leave us a review on Amazon Goodreads. 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. Use the coupon code BP when you sign up for the play index at baseballreference.com to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. And you can send us comments, criticisms, complaints at podcast at baseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon.

We will be back with one more episode this week. Tomorrow.