Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 928: The Evolution of Umpire-Manager Arguments

Episode Date: July 19, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Joe DiMaggio’s breath and Yan Gomes’s sacrifice, then discuss the latest wrinkle in umpire-manager fights....

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Starting point is 00:00:00 But handsome girls are your daylights and it's like they look brand new Let's begin, let the fantasy fool the experts too What the hell, since we've traveled so far from our future fear Let's begin, let the fantasy fool the experts Let's begin with a fantasy for the experts. Let's begin with a fantasy for the experts. Good morning and welcome to episode 928 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. Brought to you by the Play Index of Baseball Reference and our supporters on Patreon.
Starting point is 00:00:45 I'm Sam Miller along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight. Hey, Ben. Hello. Last night, I dreamed that I woke up, checked my fantasy team. This is a story that involves me telling you about my dream and my fantasy baseball team. So, strap on in. Two of the best kinds of stories combined. And I
Starting point is 00:01:02 so I checked to see how my players had done the previous day and david ortiz who was on my team uh in this dream had seven homers the previous day and i just wanted to know am i pretty cool is that a double header no just one day seven homes do you have is do you have the fantasy baseball dream regularly i'm Probably less now because you don't really play. Right. I have had it, but yeah, not for some time. Yeah, but I would say that fantasy baseball,
Starting point is 00:01:32 in the way that playing Tetris makes you see Tetris in your mind's eye, I have found that playing fantasy baseball makes you dream about fantasy baseball more than almost anything else. I mean, that's still not, that's still not every day, but how many things do you really return to in your dreams? My most common one back, um, back a few years ago, uh, before I would have my big, uh, my big draft in the two person league that I'm in is I would have these recurring, sometimes it would be like, you know, 10 times before the draft, I would have these dreams where I, would be like 10 times before the draft,
Starting point is 00:02:05 I would have these dreams where it would be like the 17th round, and I'd be trying to figure out who was available, and I'd be like, oh, oh wow, would you look at that? Mike Trout is still there. I think I'll draft him. And we had just somehow forgotten to draft all the good players, and I just got to just vacuum them up, just put together the greatest team ever in like the 19th, 20th, 21st, and 22nd round.
Starting point is 00:02:29 And I would have that dream a lot. So I don't know if it's a universal experience. Yeah, I think my dream is probably more like forgetting to set my lineup or showing up to the draft with no prep or something, or everyone's off the board. I think I would have the opposite sort of fantasy dream. Yeah. Well, let us know if the fantasy baseball dream is universal. All right. I have one more quick thing to banter about. You might have more, but I have been lucky enough to be reading a book that's coming out in some time. I have an advanced copy of a book by Lincoln Mitchell
Starting point is 00:03:01 called Will Big League Baseball Survive? And there is just one line in it that I cannot help but spoil because it's so great. It's not his line, so I think it's okay for me to spoil it. But he quotes a 1939 profile in Life Magazine of Joe DiMaggio in which there's a paragraph about how I guess how well assimilated he is how he's not too Italian you know he's Italian but he's not too Italian and there's a line he he never reeks of garlic not even lunch I die I read this over and over die he never reeked some garlic oh so good i yeah i actually read it and then i was walking around with this in my head yesterday and i was trying to remember if it said never or rarely and i thought that's a that's a pretty big distinction
Starting point is 00:04:00 i should check we all reek of garlic occasionally it's hard never to reek of garlic it's true that's what made him the yankee clipper i guess he never knew if someone was seeing him for the first time so he never wanted to have garlic breath on that day the great thing about reading old baseball writing is that you go for one line and then you realize that every line is gold so i'm gonna now read two more paragraphs from this life profile that are not quoted in Lincoln Mitchell's book. All right. This is how people wrote about baseball players in 1939. Among the innumerable erroneous ideas about baseball entertained by the public, which pays for the game, are the notions that, one, baseball players
Starting point is 00:04:45 keep rigorous training for six months of the year. Two, all ball players are phenomenally stupid. And three, and three, baseball players are prodigies of physical energy. That's the first paragraph. As a matter of fact, baseball players do little or no training. Unlike fighters, whose problem is to be in the peak of condition for a special occasion their problem is to keep up interest in the game over a long period many trainers insist that players dissipate a little whenever they feel so inclined both because it prevents them being bored and because if they exercise self-control they may develop inhibitions which slow down their physical reactions. The legend that ball
Starting point is 00:05:26 players are stupid is a canard promulgated by reporters who, being professionally articulate themselves, fail to understand athletes who quite properly regard words as a waste of time. The theory that professional athletes are physically active is equally
Starting point is 00:05:42 preposterous. The truth is that the salient quality of most good athletes is a kind of muscular lethargy, which enables them, when called upon for reflex action, to furnish it with an explosive violence garnered from doing nothing at most other times. So the second point about why it is so easily misunderstood that ballplayers are phenomenally stupid. It is sharp and very relevant even today. The rigorous training for six months of the year is great because it's not even like for 12 months of the year. The public thinks these guys keep in shape for half the year. Oh, no, they don't.
Starting point is 00:06:19 Not even that. And then the third point, I've read it. I've read both the point and the supporting documentation of this myth three times now, and I have no idea what it means. What are prodigies of physical energy? What is that? What is he talking about? And then when he gets to it again, and the salient quality is a kind of muscular lethargy
Starting point is 00:06:41 which enables them when called upon for reflex action to furnish like this reads like a sort of a description of a patient in a medical journal and yet it also i sort of read it wondering whether they were euphemistically talking about them uh sleeping around like i couldn't figure out what he was even talking about here. I don't have any idea what a prodigy of physical energy is. Anyway, there you go. Maybe like Brett Laurie seems like a prodigy of physical energy. What is – like because he's just about to snap that he's like a coil? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:18 Could be. Right. And then haven't even gotten into the ads. Slightly condescending passage, but are we really any different when we talk about how baseball players aren't funny? Uh, no, because baseball players aren't funny. But the public thinks that baseball players are funny six months of the year. We're condescending to the public. That's true.
Starting point is 00:07:40 All right, any banter? Well, I just wanted to say a word about poor Jan Gomes. Did you read about the misfortune that befell him? Well, kind of vaguely. Like, I picked up that they did the sacrifice, and then the next day he injured his back, and he'll be out for something like six weeks. Yeah, so we talked about Jan Gomes last week because he was on the list of players who had underperformed their Pocota projections.
Starting point is 00:08:06 Maybe he was first on that list. And so we were talking about whether we expected him to get any better. And then he tried to put his finger on the scale. He tried to make himself better by sacrificing a chicken to Jobu. And then I think the very next day he Hurt his shoulder I think when he Was trying to beat out a ground ball And he was trying to avoid a tag And then
Starting point is 00:08:31 He has an AC joint separation So he's going to be out for four to Eight weeks just an Unfortunate sequence of events for Jan Goms who was already Batting 165 so he Had it hard enough. And I wonder whether it has anything to do with the fact that he sacrificed a target rotisserie chicken,
Starting point is 00:08:52 which is not really in the spirit of sacrificing to Joe Boo. No, it's taunting. In fact, I believe, I think that there actually is, unfortunately, off the top of my head, I't have uh deuteronomy in front of me but i think that there is actually clear instructions about well not only i mean there are clear instructions about what you have to sacrifice which of which of your flock or which of your herd you have to sacrifice but i think the oh you know what it is is there's there are rules about not eating the food that you sacrificed and And so I don't know if they ate,
Starting point is 00:09:27 did they eat the Target chicken afterward? How did they sacrifice it? It was already sacrificed by Target or by whoever delivered it to Target. So I guess they were just cutting it up. I understand because I was just Googling live chicken sacrifice. And there was a example From 2011 when a couple Of high school baseball players Sacrificed live chickens I don't know exactly how they did that But they were accused of killing
Starting point is 00:09:53 Baby chicks in what was Believed to be a ritual to improve their On-field performance and they were both Charged with cruelty to livestock Animals which seems fair And so I Wouldn't advocate that either. No, no. Something about the Target rotisserie chicken.
Starting point is 00:10:10 And I love a rotisserie chicken, one of my favorite foods. I've never gotten one from Target. I have. Good. Well, okay. No, you're right. Look, the solution, clearly you cannot sacrifice live chickens for your baseball joke, okay? But the solution for that is not, to me, to sacrifice a target chicken,
Starting point is 00:10:31 but rather to not go through with your dumb joke. That said, is there a way, like how would you, if you really got it in your skull that you needed to go through with the sacrifice for Jan Goms, needed to go through with the sacrifice for Jan Goms. Is there a way that you could do it that would be at all more authentic than a like an herb rub chicken? I feel like the herb rub really kills the sacrifice. Yeah. The other thing though, can I just say though, if, if, if the whole point is that you're sacrificing quote unquote sacrificing. So let's say that the sacrifice was they're not going to eat it. They bought a target chicken and they're not going to eat it. Like they're going to sacrifice it by whatever, burning it.
Starting point is 00:11:13 Okay, not a live chicken. You have not killed a chicken for your sacrifice. Good job. Except you totally have. That chicken died to be eaten for energy. And if you're not eating it, what is the difference, really, between wielding the cleaver yourself and buying a chicken? Either way, a chicken died for waste. So I'm not sure that it is any better.
Starting point is 00:11:37 Right. All right. That's right. And wasn't the lesson of Major League that the sacrifice doesn't work and that the only way that you succeed is by believing in yourself and not by joe boo that's that's when he finally hits the curve so i think we've drawn the wrong lesson from the movie yeah i guess so i've only seen major league three back to the minors yeah the most critically acclaimed of the major leagues i honestly don't even know if that's the subtitle of it and it is also the only one i have seen can you believe that i actually only have seen the third one that's insane really what i know it is it is i know it was playing in the it was
Starting point is 00:12:18 playing in the movie theater when i worked at the movie theater so that's why i have seen it i didn't go out of my way to watch these out of order. It was just... I worked in a two-screen theater, and so there was a ton of downtime, and so you saw everything. So that's why I saw it. Were they showing The Godfather 3 at the time also?
Starting point is 00:12:37 Nah, that was years earlier. I've seen... I've probably seen all of Major League one out of order like i've probably seen enough enough 20 minutes here or whatever and i get all the references in the same way that jason vojokoski after three years of editing the annual has basically seen the simpsons all the way through even though he's never actually seen an episode just because there's a simpsons joke in every comment. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:13:07 And I don't think I ever saw the second one at all. Okay. There you go. It's a gap in your education. Yeah. All right. Anything else? Nope.
Starting point is 00:13:12 Okay. So MLB, the Associated Press reported a couple of days ago that Major League Baseball has told managers to knock off the arguing balls and strikes. And I wanted to talk about this as it relates to the umpire-manager relationship, as it relates to review, as it relates to future RoboMaps, etc. And just so that we have all the context, this is not a very long article by the AP. I'm going to read the whole thing so that everything that we talk about is known. Major League Baseball is telling managers to cool it on arguing balls and strikes
Starting point is 00:13:48 and warning them not to rely on replay help to bolster their beefs. MLB executive Joe Torre sent a memo Friday to managers, GMs, and assistant GMs that said this highly inappropriate conduct is detrimental to the game and must stop immediately. The memo was obtained Saturday by the Associated Press. Torrey said in his note that, quote, the prevalence of manager ejections simply cannot continue. Torrey said skippers are increasingly relying on technology
Starting point is 00:14:15 from the clubhouse or video room to argue from the dugout. Every pitch and play is monitored by teams in case they want a challenge for a replay review. Detroit manager Brad Ausmus was ejected for arguing balls and strikes and covered home plate with sweatshirt with a sweatshirt earlier this season. And Boston manager John Farrell was tossed during an animated dispute alongside Red Sox slugger David Ortiz. Earlier this month, Cubs manager Joe Maddon was ejected while arguing from the dugout. All right, that's
Starting point is 00:14:45 the article. Now, I want to put all of the big issues aside for a second and just ask you whether it is in Major League Baseball's interests to tell managers to quit making scenes arguing or to quit getting ejected arguing. Just that, just the manager going out to yell at the umpire, generally speaking, good or bad for the game, something to encourage, discourage, or let play out the way it does? Yeah, I think within moderation, some managerial arguing is something we want to see. Claire McNear wrote something yesterday, I think, about how baseball fans like seeing arguments with umpires. And so this is something that MLB should not discourage, at least if not quite encourage.
Starting point is 00:15:29 And I think that is basically right. I think if it were happening every game, then it would lose its novelty. But we do occasionally like to see a fight because everyone always has some latent hostility against umpires simmering in their hearts. And so we want to see managers express that. We want to see these normally composed people turn sclerotic with rage, and we want to see them kick the dirt, and we want to see them
Starting point is 00:15:58 throw their hat. So I think some amount of that is okay. Of course, it's inconsistent with MLB's desire to shorten games, and I think we all generally prefer shorter games. So I understand what they're saying, and of course it kind of undermines the authority of the umpire and the umpiring system in some way. I haven't really seen complaints about this this year because people complain about ump shows, but no one really complains about manager shows. That's not a hashtag, right? Everyone likes it when managers get involved. Yeah. And so Rob Arthur has framed the length of games as it's two different conversations people are having. There's the time of game and then there's the pace of game. And those are actually separate things. And so do you consider, and a manager coming out to argue with the umpire for a minute and a half obviously does add a minute and a half to the length of the game.
Starting point is 00:16:53 And if you're trying to get out in time to get your kid home on a school night, then that's a minute and a half. That's objective. But does a manager umpiring help or hurt pace of game in your opinion? I don't think it hurts because that isn't really dead time. It's not like a pitching change when nothing's happening. There are people arguing and yelling at each other. It's arguably more entertainment value per second than you get with actual baseball going on.
Starting point is 00:17:22 So I don't think it hurts the pace. It hurts the length, but probably not the pace. I agree with that, especially if they're fairly rare. Yeah, right. I mean, I think when we had the challenge system, well, we still have the challenge system, but when it was taking forever and managers would stroll out and then they'd wait and they'd wait
Starting point is 00:17:42 and they'd use the maximum amount of time possible while waiting to hear from their replay people and that still happens to some extent that hurts pace i think but the actual arguing does not yeah and particularly the type of arguing that happens for balls and strikes it forever and ever you know if there was a close play at first and the manager didn't like the way the call went and he'd go out and argue, in 90% of cases, he wasn't going to get ejected. And in 100% of cases, the call wasn't going to get overturned. And so while maybe there would be, okay, something's happening that's a little different, I guess I'll perk up. Unless the manager got really heated and or ejected that was kind of dead time when you're talking about balls and strikes though the arguing happens from the dugout and occasionally it'll happen between
Starting point is 00:18:31 innings or with a you know a pitching coach or a manager might say something on his way back from a mound visit but it's not the sort of thing where you're running out and arguing about a play that happened where everybody knows that play is not getting overturned and by the time the manager does get out to the umpire uh if it gets to that situation it's usually because he has been ejected or somebody has been ejected and the manager is getting his money's worth and it seems like that is a thing that fans like regardless of whether it's their home manager or their road the road manager fans seem to like it when managers get ejected, specifically ejected, not arguing, but actually ejected. So that doesn't seem like something that hurts the experience. Now, Torrey also basically represents the umpires in it.
Starting point is 00:19:15 The umpires are also employees of the league, and they have a right to be aggrieved if managers are arguing a lot and pestering them and yelling foul names at them from their dugout but particularly now because there is there has been set up and this is what the article alludes to but there has been set up this brand new and really almost fatal imbalance of information where the manager has access to the replays of the pitches and also i assume through you know the tunnels underneath the stadium the pitch effects of the pitches he can see every pitch whether it missed by a half an inch six inches or caught the the zone and the
Starting point is 00:19:59 umpire does not get that until later in the game, which then raises a very crucial philosophical question of, well, first of all, of all it raises, I mean, I would say that it raises the umpire's very, very fair grievance that it's not really fair that a manager can, can yell at you. It's, you know, the manager can go, ah, that was inside you bum. But it's even worse when the manager can say that was 2.36 inches inside i checked and that's not really fair for the umpires unless you think that the point is to get the calls right and so then you have to like the here's the interesting question to me is it good for managers to be able to tell an umpire, no, seriously, you're missing that call. I have seen it.
Starting point is 00:20:48 I know. We have the facts. And we're voting yes. Well played, Miller. I think that, I mean, for one thing, we know that umpires get reports after the game about how well they did. So they do get some kind of. Corrective measure.
Starting point is 00:21:07 They can check and see what they did wrong. Of course. Maybe you don't really have the incentive to look. Or it's not like umpires are getting fired all the time. Because they're making missed calls. So if you have a manager. Yelling at you during the game. In front of everyone.
Starting point is 00:21:21 Then that probably drives the message home. More so than a printout that you get in the locker room after the game or whenever that happens. So maybe it helps umpires improve. It's just kind of, right, it's an imbalance of information. And it's the reason why a lot of people want robot umpires, because we are all in the same situation as the managers now We're watching from home
Starting point is 00:21:47 There's a K-zone on the screen We're watching on game day We can look at Twitter bots that tell you Whether it was in the strike zone or not So we are all watching this And we know way more than the umpires do And so now the managers are In the same boat
Starting point is 00:22:02 And for a lot of people that just makes it look ridiculous that we are still having humans call these pitches yeah if you if let me let me ask you a hypothetical let's say that well let's say that umpires got their report after every pitch so the umpire is the just pure hypothetical okay so umpire gets, sees the pitch, calls the pitch, and then 10 seconds later, so not overturning any pitches, the system isn't calling the pitches, but 10 seconds later, they get a little buzz in there, like the spelling bee. They get a buzz if they got it wrong. Average umpire, let's say average umpire, just throwing out a number,
Starting point is 00:22:44 misses eight calls a game how many calls a game would they miss if they had this sort of self-correcting pitch fx system in their ear which is essentially what managers are sort of doing when they're yelling that was a strike that was a pitch fx said it was a strike. Does that make them better? Do you think they're capable of adjusting that precisely? Or do they miss the calls because they missed the calls and that it's not a matter of will or effort? They missed it, and they're going to miss it even if they're told you're missing. Yeah, I think it would probably help. It certainly keeps you on your toes.
Starting point is 00:23:22 I think it would probably help. It certainly keeps you on your toes. It makes you want to get the right call more so than you might if no one was yelling at you. But, of course, people have always yelled at umpires one way or another, but their opinion wasn't any more valid than the umpires was. And in most cases, it was less valid because they had a worse view of the pitch. And now that's not the case. So I don't know how much an umpire's zone can change on the fly, really. I think guys tend to call pitches certain ways in certain places and seems to be fairly consistent over time,
Starting point is 00:23:56 and I'm not sure that having an umpire tell you that a pitch was outside or inside or whatever would just make you instantly stop calling that pitch, but I would say it makes you better. I think it's more likely that it makes you better than that it makes you worse. Because what's the argument that it makes you worse? Just that you're so self-conscious, you're in your head, you're not just kind of calling as you see it, you're calling it as you're worried that a manager will see it, something like that.
Starting point is 00:24:25 So I could see that, I suppose. But if you do have some trend and often you will see an umpire calling the same wrong pitch or making the same sort of mistake over and over, like he's just giving a pitch to the pitcher in a certain place, then you'd think that might correct it because umpires know that they are being evaluated based on this stuff. So it's not just wanting to avoid being yelled at, but also wanting to be disciplined or not promoted or given a raise or whatever happens if you, if pitch FX says you're bad at calling pitches. So I think it could only help. Yeah. The, I guess the argument that it would be bad is that there's actually, it's not clear, not all pitches that are obvious whether they're strikes are not simply looking at the pitch effects overlay.
Starting point is 00:25:13 Maybe if you had, you know, Harry's pitch info adjustments and you knew, like maybe if the manager was able to say, that's a strike 64% of the time, then that would be helpful. that's a strike 64% of the time, then that would be helpful. But we've all seen the tweets of pitches on the zone profile, and those are really terribly limited for deciding whether a pitch actually is a strike. I mean, look, I think that you know how I feel about the strike zone, but I really feel like the big problem here, the MLB does actually have a big problem here, and it's not just with the managers or the GMs or the fans. It's with all of us. We should not, it is untenable to have these pitch trackers on every broadcast when they don't actually reflect
Starting point is 00:26:01 the strike zone and when umpires themselves don't reflect so i'm going to shift real quick because i want to i think to make this point i can do it better jesse specter has a piece in the sporting news uh this week in which he talked to a bunch of ball players and asked them about robo arms and you know you get the normal responses that you would that you would think about but one of the things that's really interesting is, so I'm going to read, for instance, Brad Brock. I'll read his response. I think pitchers would be able to manipulate the electronic strike zone. You look at Zach Britton, our closer.
Starting point is 00:26:34 If they had an electric strike zone, electric strike zone would be cool, by the way. He meant electronic, but electric strike zone would be cool. You touch it. Zach Britton, our closer. If they had an electric strike zone would be cool you know you touch it zach britain our closer if they had an electric strike zone hitters would never be able to touch him he has pitches that he throws that nick the strike zone and wind up in the dirt i think they might be able to do something with that but it's so difficult and then jesse says but if it nicks the zone shouldn't it be a strike brad yeah that's the argument but when you have balls hitting the dirt after they nick the zone like curve curveballs especially, being on the plate, hitters would really have a difficult
Starting point is 00:27:09 time hitting that. I think pitchers would really like it, but I know hitters wouldn't. I don't quite follow this argument. But it does speak to, I think, the fact that there are actually two things people argue about when they talk about the flawed strike zone. One is that it's really hard to call balls and strikes, and umpires get it wrong. Sometimes they're fallible, they're human, it's a tough job. Sometimes they miss a pitch. They miss a lot of pitches, right? That's one problem with human umpires. The other thing that people see, and I don't know if they have a problem with it, but Brad Brock doesn't have a problem with it and most of these players don't have a problem with it.
Starting point is 00:27:46 It's not the missing. It's that the strike zone is not literal. The strike zone is a social construct. The strike zone is trying to accomplish the de facto strike zone is culturally defined. It changes based on the situation. It is in some ways an attempt at moral arbitration. And it is a very complicated thing that for some reason, for one reason or another,
Starting point is 00:28:15 the game over the course of 150 years has developed to support. And that is, I think, really debatable. All of us want the umpires to not be bad at calling balls and strikes i think there's disagreement among old school and new school about whether we want the strike zone to actually be rule book and i don't think i think that when players talk about the human element or whatever bizarro phrase they use. I think that's what they're talking about. And I don't like the phrase human element, but at this point moment in my life, I do like the concept. I do like that the strike zone is not the rule book strike zone because it seems to add layers of strategy of intrigue and of narrative. And I it okay i'm fine with it and i i probably i wouldn't miss it
Starting point is 00:29:06 necessarily but i'm only one person i don't like to impose my will on an entire sport and i like it because the sport likes it i like because the players like it the catchers like it the umpires like it everybody likes it this has been this has survived the test of time and therefore i am i am i'm happy that it exists and you cannot you simply cannot have a situation where you have a pitch tracker on the screen that is demonstrating a literal strike zone that doesn't exist and that makes the umpires calls look wrong when they are not for any practical purpose wrong it is untenable ben you i just don't know how mlb squares this you can't have it it isn't working so what do you do you get rid of the zone you well no strike zone
Starting point is 00:29:56 yes no strike zone is the obvious answer but and oh god i still wish people agreed with me on that but i think that you you just i think you have to stop broadcasting it and i think that you have to have a rule that managers can't have any access even secondhand access to pitch fx readings in game and that i think that if you are found to be accessing pitch fx mid-game, it should be disciplined. To me, that should be technology that should be considered illegal within a game. So managers can't have access to the PitchFX. Teams can't have access to the PitchFX in-game. And fans, for simple viewing experience, this is not a strategic, this is not nearly the,
Starting point is 00:30:41 this is a different kind of thing. not a strategic this is not nearly the this is a different kind of thing but i think for for for our own viewing happiness we need to have the uh the the pitch tracker taken away from us because the when you said what is the harm could it make umpires worse if a manager gets to cherry pick which times he's using the de facto strike zone and which times he's using the literal strike zone, then he could argue, you know, 30 calls a game, probably. I would guess that that's really the subtext of Joe Torre's memo. Like, it is kind of intellectually dishonest to get to choose whichever standard of the strike zone you want to use to yell at the umpire. Although maybe I like people yelling at the umpire and I don't think the umpires should be complaining. Yeah. Well, Tori did say that this is a violation of the existing replay regulations, which state
Starting point is 00:31:37 that quote on field personnel in the dugout may not discuss any issue with individuals in their video review room using the dugout phone other than whether to challenge a play subject to video replay review so technically you're not allowed to call the replay person or speak to the replay person unless a replayable potentially replayable play just occurred i don't really know how you police that because there are constantly plays happening and technically any of them could be reviewable, not a ball or strike call. So maybe if you see someone calling the replay person when there wasn't actually a safe out call or a fair foul call or anything like that, then maybe that makes sense. Maybe you'd tell them to stop. That's
Starting point is 00:32:23 against the rules, but it's hard to really police what people are saying to the people in the replay room because you could call up and say should i review that play and hey also what about that pitch that i was mad about last inning yeah and not only that but it's not like there's a dmz between the dugout and the replay like when we read that article about the review it was like players were going and watching the replays behind his shoulder i mean it's like what is it 26 feet away or something like you could just yell loud if you really wanted to probably um so yeah like just because you're not picking up the phone doesn't mean that you don't have access to that you go to the clubhouse you could do all sorts of things if you want to break the rules which people do right yeah so i
Starting point is 00:33:03 don't know how you stop that from happening other than if they bring up the information in an argument with an umpire, then maybe you get a suspension or something for that. Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess. Yeah. Do you think managers use this? So umpires know that managers can see. And so if a manager comes out to you and says, that was low, or that
Starting point is 00:33:26 was inside, and the umpire goes, not how I saw it. And you can go, no, seriously, bro, like, I'm looking you in the eye. I'm not saying where I got this information. But I'm telling you, that was inside. The umpire knows, okay, so this guy has seen better information than I have. He's probably right. Do you think managers use this to then lie and say like even if it's not they like it becomes like sort of a game of chicken where they then they could the manager can imply that he's seen the pitch fx and that that pitch was a ball even though maybe or that it was like even though it wasn't actually but he knows the umpire can't check and has to maybe assume that the manager knows. Yeah, that seems pretty likely.
Starting point is 00:34:11 Okay. All right. Good. spies where you know the one where once everybody is lying about everything then intelligence becomes worthless anyway because you don't know what is fiction for in order to throw you off and so then maybe it becomes a world where everything is is seen as deceit and therefore nobody actually has the upper hand right okay sounds like a bleak future maybe Yeah all right so that is It for today you can support the podcast On patreon by going to patreon.com
Starting point is 00:34:50 Slash effectively wild five listeners Who have already pledged their support Timothy Evans Carol O Will Hickman Nick Bruce and Andrew Mujica 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 Can get more info on the website
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Starting point is 00:35:21 on a one-year subscription to the Play Index by going to baseballreference.com and using the coupon code BP. And you can rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes. You can contact us, send us emails for tomorrow's email show at podcastatbaseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon. We will be back then. No need to argue, no need to argue anymore. There's no need to argue anymore.

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