Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 993: A Few Favorite Stories from 2016

Episode Date: December 20, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about good deeds by two podcast listeners, then discuss several topics inspired by a selection of baseball writers’ self-selected favorite stories from 2016, including pitcher abuse, fans running on the field, and the home run spike.

You're my favorite thing. You're my favorite thing. You're mine. You're mine. You're mine. You're mine. Good morning and welcome to episode 993 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by the Play Index, Baseball Reference, and our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN, along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. Hello. I forgot to bring this up, but a listener named Corey did us a solid. You remember a few weeks ago when Jason Castro left the astros uh and we bemoaned the fact

that there didn't appear to be any more players whose names included the team that they played for yeah alfredo simone being a free agent no longer a red and jason castro being a twin no longer an astro and so cory uh has uh created a spreadsheet with basically all the players ever who, or at least of recent years, who have had a team name in them. And then seeing if any of them played. uh four as 16 players who have at some point been affiliated with a club that their name was in but not necessarily the major league club this includes a lot of minor leaguers but uh like ray sadler was a ray uh at one point and a lot of rays actually there's four rays there's three angels there's uh two reds sorry three reds two astros a met and he so then he has a whole bunch of uh what's the met the met was eric stamets okay uh there's also some really

like uh some some ones that would have been great if they had come together like for instance uh for the yankees there was ryan keifer ryan keifer uh but but never happened uh but he has uh cory has three players who are currently in an organization he's counting simone so take out simone two players who are currently in a organization that their name is in they are both both long, long away from the majors, so we're not counting them yet, but Angel Rosa, or Angel Rosa, is an Angel, and Grayson Garvin is a Ray, both in the low minors. And that's really all we've got.

In fact, there's no other player on his, there's not really a player on his list that you're even paying attention to who might end up on a team uh i guess like jared kozart could be a red that wouldn't be that weird if that happened someday are there any others freddie freeman could be a red of course all the freddies any freddie that you can think of could be a red but it's sort of a dry dry terrain right now as far as this goes Alright

Alright, indeed Anything you want to talk about? Just wanted to give a quick acknowledgement to another listener And a member of the Facebook group, Chris Feld Who did a very nice thing for another listener And the other listener's name is Nick Bentley And he was hoping to buy our book as a Christmas present For his father-in-law, but it was sold out everywhere at the time, and he couldn't find anywhere and he shipped it to Nick in Virginia, and he did not even ask for a charge as long as he passed on the favor by making some sort of donation to charity. So he helped out another listener, and he did it without any expectation of thanks or compensation in return, and he also bought our book, which is always nice.

That is nice. Well done, Chris. That's exciting. Mm-hmm. All right. Anything else? No. All right.

Every year, Patrick Dubuque, a friend of the podcast, baseball prospectus writer, hardball times writer, former lookout landing writer, puts together a Google Doc in which baseball writers are invited to post a link to their favorite article that they wrote this year. This is a conceit I like a great deal. For one thing, I think it's really interesting to see what people say is their favorite because it might be different than the one that hits the hardest or gets the most likes or whatever the case may be. I also like that it gives people a way to sort of brag about their work without actually bragging about their work because they're not saying that it's the best article that existed this year. They're

saying it's the best article they wrote this year. So, there is no bragging whatsoever. They're merely acknowledging that they wrote more than one or maybe they only wrote one. And one has to be the best of those. So you're not like going, the fact that I have a thing I like the most means I'm great. You're just saying, I have a thing I like the most. I like that. It's a way of advocating for yourself without seeming self-promotional, which is also fine. Self-promotional is also fine, but it's nice to have something. Anyway, I love this list and I try each year to read all of the things that people submit. And I read a bunch of them this weekend and I wanted to, since they cover so much ground, I just thought I would use a couple of them to launch a few conversations about baseball. Mm-hmm. So I will, I don't know,

there's like maybe five that I'll probably identify. There are about 80 some on here and I will send these to you as I go. You haven't read any of these and you're not going to. In particular, you're not going to read this one. And the reason that you're particularly not going to read this one is that it is 37,000 words. Which is, in case you are not a writer, that is an insane amount of words.

For any article, like it's a quarter of our book about. Yeah. It was 120 something. Yeah. Yeah. So more than a quarter of our book. It's by bobby demuro who wrote it for today's knuckleball and it's about the expiration of the baker's field blaze

the minor league team in the california league that will be no more and jen mac ramos also wrote about the demise of their ballpark samlin ballpark which is a crazy park with a, I guess, a sort of odd history and odd dimensions. And the team itself has some sort of odd history and odd dimensions. And to give you a sense of what Sam Lynn ballpark is, I'm going to read a paragraph. The one thing most people know about the ballpark, often the only thing, is that it faces west directly into the sun. Night games are delayed until nearly 8 p.m. in the middle of the summer, so the sun can go down behind the park's massive centerfield sunscreen. The place lacks amenities sought by big league clubs.

There are no indoor batting cages or large clubhouses or on-site weight rooms. Centerfield is just 354 feet from home plate the shortest distance in pro ball the stadium seats only 1800 people making it one of the most intimate venues in the minors it's located in oil dale a few miles north of baker's fields downtown and while parking is free and abundant the neighborhood is rough as the city expands west toward interstate 5 few people have oil dale on their radar anymore and uh this is a great piece that goes into the history of bakersfield the people around the team the characters that they have been and that they're currently are and what it means for all of them

that it's all all on one page too yeah it is all right for it's not even like a series or anything nope one article. Wow. Yeah, they're probably the only minor leagues that stocks the fridge with growlers of beer so that everybody around the press box can drink during the game. Fred Willard is apparently a Bakersfield Blaze super fan. There's a lot in this piece. Oh, the other thing about the ballpark that is worth pointing out is not just that it faces the sun but that they built the sun

they have a sunscreen right and they have a sunscreen that they built so that they could block the sun but the problem is that they built it in the winter nobody thought oh well the sun. But the problem is that they built it in the winter. Nobody thought, oh, well, the sun sets in different parts of the sky, depending on the season. And so they built it in the winter, and it didn't actually block the sun. As they say, it had to be like 10 degrees to the west. They also built it 14 feet off the ground because the fence is 14 feet high, but it's 24 feet back from the wall. So there's a gap between the bottom of the sunscreen and the top of the wall. So it blocked the sun at first. But in about the second inning, the sun peeks out from underneath the sunscreen and blinds the catcher. In the middle of a game in 2011,

they had to stop the game because the catcher couldn't see anything. Mid-game sun delay. So the reason that, I mean, besides this being a great piece of fun piece to read, it struck me that California is strangely empty of minor league baseball. And this sort of relates also to our experience with the Stompers. There used to be the Golden Baseball League, which is a pretty thriving minor league, independent minor league that had some of the highest caliber of play. A lot of our better players had played there in its glory days. Mark Pryor played there before he got signed by, was it the Padres that rescued him? And Ricky Henderson played there.

A few players have been. Phil Nevin managed there and Valon Lentini played there and so on. managed there and Valon Lentini played there and so on and it went out of business and now the league no longer covers California it covers this really small area around

wine country and part of the dream I think that the owners in that league have is that they'll reestablish a independent league that goes up and down the coast because it really does feel like there should be a market for a lot more baseball than there is. Now that Bakersfield and I believe High Desert have left the California League, they both ended baseball after this season, and the Carolina League is going to get expanded by two teams. There are now only

eight high A teams in California. I believe there are two PCL teams in California. So that's 10 minor league teams. And when you compare that to many other pockets of the country that are obviously significantly smaller than California, California is like 11% of the population of the country, I think. it's amazing that there are not more teams. Like the Inland Empire, for instance, which has a team, the Inland Empire. No, I don't think, I think IE changed, did IE change his name to Rancho? Is Rancho IE now? Anyway, the Inland Empire has a couple of few teams. Inland Empire 66ers?

Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. Seems like it's still a thing. Yeah, they are. And then Rancho Cucamonga is Inland Empire. And there are some teams in the Inland Empire. But Inland Empire is also four and a half million people, which means that it would be the median US state if it were its own state. Long Beach, where I live, is more than a half million people, which is, I think, larger than some major league cities. And yet, there are only

these 10 or so minor league teams. There are only these four very, very small independent league teams. And I'm trying to figure out if that means something for baseball. And the reason that I've been trying to think about why there are so few teams, and I think it's because wherever you are in California, you're not that far away from a major league team. And that increasingly, my supposition goes, teams relate only to a major league team if they have a choice. So for instance, there is no minor league team west of any major league team. Pretty much everything west of any of the major league teams is just major league territory. If you live on a coast, you have a major league team within, you know, an hour or two hours of you, and that's

who you support. And it feels maybe like California's lack of minor leagues is partly because California can support major league teams. That still, I think, leaves them underrepresented, but the mere presence of a major league team within any sort of wide swath of territory sucks up all the oxygen for baseball and makes it too hard for a small team to thrive, to succeed. And if you think about major league baseball, the population of the country keeps growing and has been growing, obviously. And as the population of the country grows, major metropolitan areas develop and new baseball teams fill them in. So there are now 30 teams. There used to be only 16. Maybe there will be 32. Maybe there will be 36. Maybe the population of the country will soon be 450 million and they'll be able to support 40 teams. And yet the geography of the geographical bounds of the country don't grow. And in fact, the media markets in some ways get more compressed. And so it feels like even though

the population grows, the demand for smaller baseball teams actually shrinks because there are more people, but more major league teams. So that is just a long way of saying that I wonder if in California we see a model for how in a quarter century, minor league baseball will be even less of a going concern nationwide than it is now and exists even less for the local communities and as independent businesses and even more as merely adjuncts for the major league system. Yeah, I was going to say that maybe you'd see some sort of effect with higher level minor league teams just because teams like having their closest affiliates talent-wise geographically close to them.

It's not a must necessarily, but it's a plus. And so you'd think that maybe like AAA teams, for instance, would be not clustered all in one part of the country just because there's some advantage to being close to major league teams and being able to give them a reason to want to partner with them. But obviously, that's not really a concern with A ball or high A. And that's what we're talking about here, really. So that's probably not all that relevant. But that's one reason why maybe you wouldn't see, you know, like 10 different AAA teams clustered in one little spot just because it's advantageous to be distributed in the way that the big league teams are distributed sort of a little bit. A few years ago, Carson Sistoli wrote a piece about the best places to live for minor league baseball coverage, minor league baseball exposure. And there are a lot of parts in the country where

you can be within an hour of three or four or even five levels of baseball like if you're in the suburbs of cleveland i believe three different levels will cycle through ballparks within 30 45 minutes of you plus the indians plus you have i think the eerie crushers i think maybe are on the Frontier League is Around Cleveland, there is a Frontier League Team in the suburbs of Cleveland And yet, if you're in California, you really have

Your Major League team, you might Have a high A team And that's really it It's interesting Alright, so that's a good Piece that I recommend people read. Give themselves some time. If they have a day or two to scroll.

Yeah. All right. Next one I'm going to send you is by Neil Weinberg, who wrote a piece for Fangraphs called How Managers Were Fooled by the Home Run Spike. This is an interesting article because I find it interesting to just think about his conclusion. And we don't need to go into that much detail about his conclusion. There are a lot of tables. But as we know, starting pitchers throw fewer innings than they did the year previously and the year previously and the year previously. And some aspect of that is that teams have ever stricter guidelines for how many pitches is healthy for a pitcher.

But what Neil finds is that that doesn't seem to be enough to explain this, that even that there is, in addition to the trend toward fewer pitches, there was a trend in the last year toward pulling pitchers more quickly because they had given up more runs. And this makes sense. If you're a pitcher who's giving up runs, that you are more likely to get pulled by your manager because you just don't have it that day. And Neil finds persuasive, I think, evidence that managers' decisions to pull these pitchers was not simply about restricting their pitch count, but was about getting them out of games where they had given up runs. But as Neil considers, the reason they were giving up more runs is because offense was up and offense was up because there was a big unexplained home run spike. And so in

a sense, they were pulling pitchers earlier from games, but the pitchers were not actually pitching any worse than they would have been that adjusted for the league's overall offensive environment. These pitchers were relatively cruising or whatever, as much as they ever had been. And that the failure, either the failure of managers to recognize this trend early enough, or their failure to believe it, their failure to see a pitcher who gives up three runs in one environment as not doing any worse see a pitcher who gives up three runs in one environment is not doing any worse than a pitcher who gives up two runs in another environment, led them to make suboptimal decisions. So I thought that was an interesting conclusion. And I also am trying to figure out whether that is the appropriate way to think about these

manager decisions, or if there is a reason to pull pitchers having given up home runs anyway. And I don't think there is. I don't think I can find a way of justifying what managers did. Yeah, I thought this was interesting. I read it at the time. And the only possible quibble you could have is that there could still be other reasons why pitchers are getting pulled earlier, right? Like in the postseason, pitchers were getting pulled earlier than ever before. And I think offense was down relative to where it had been before, although people were still hitting home runs, but scoring was down. And I think that at least in October, it was probably something to do with teams just wanting

to give relievers more innings and wanting to take starters out before the third time through or whatever, or being more conscious of the penalty or fatigue or whatever it is. So that's possible also, right? I mean, it definitely could be what Neil is proposing here. It could also be something else or a combination of things. Right. It could be that just coincidentally, the trend toward polling pitchers earlier for strategic reasons, regardless, more or less, regardless of how they're pitching, simply awareness of third time through the order effect and other factors, that that coincided in a way that made it look like one was causing the other. But maybe managers are simply embracing this strategy independently of the run scoring environment. And maybe even if they really

were making these decisions for wrong reasons, maybe they were doing themselves favors anyway, given that in the World Series and the postseason, they made this choice also on the assumption that it was better for their team's chances. Yeah. It's certainly possible though, that, uh, I mean, the thing was that, well, scoring was up, but not up as dramatically as you would think based on the home run rate, just because as the home run rate increased, you know, other things didn't really, people were still striking out a ton on On-base percentage wasn't way up. So I think the scoring was more muted than you would expect just looking at the home run rate. But it's definitely possible that just psychologically a manager sees his starter give up a couple bombs and thinks he doesn't have it this day and goes to someone else.

And that's probably a bad decision if everyone's giving up bombs. So, yeah. On the other hand, I might be able to make the case. Okay. I sometimes, I think we sometimes have talked about this with the Rockies. The Rockies, of course, play in an extremely high run scoring environment. And if you're a pitcher with a, you know, maybe, maybe you're a pitcher with a 5.5 ERA, but it's 2000 and that makes you a league average pitcher. But the Rockies have had so much trouble having pitchers survive in their history, both pitchers that they've tried to develop, pitchers that they've brought in, that it seems like pitcher careers just die in Colorado and that it can't simply be that they allow more runs because, again, the run scoring environment

is shifting. More runs don't actually necessarily equal worse. And so maybe there is some both psychological and physical effect of allowing more runs that is harmful for pitchers regardless of the run scoring environment. And that would be something that if the run scoring environment does change from year to year and from generation to generation, and if that is the case, it would be something that would probably be useful to take into consideration and analysis. If there's going to be a half run more scored next year than this year, or than last year, does that change the way that you want to manage? Do you start to have concerns about pitchers psychologically being able to handle these extra runs coming in? Is there maybe greater error bars

for a pitcher's performance if runs come easier? Is there something physical about having to work more from the stretch or being concerned that any individual pitch, if there's a lot of home runs, for instance, do pitchers feel the burden of always kind of having a runner in scoring position because any pitch could be hit out at any given time by any batter? Does that make pitchers too fine? Does that change their pitch selection? Does it exhaust them more? Does it distract them? And so all of these things could be factors.

these things could be factors. And so simply saying, well, you know, baseball's run scoring environment changes affect everybody equally, and therefore that pitcher is just as good, might not actually be true for every individual pitcher. That is true. All right. So I like that piece though. So read that piece. All right. Next one is by Petereter woodburn who wrote at lookout landing about the experience of being a security guard who tackles a fan on the field uh and so he talks to a fellow named nick nest engine who is a security guard who uh has tackled three fans on the field all three i believe if i read this correctly there have been three fans on the field in his time at Safeco and he has tackled all three of them. And the reason that he has tackled all three of them, I believe, is that he is a former college quarterback. And so he starts going after the guy and he takes great pride in being able to run him down and bring him down as he is quoted about one.

This guy was mostly sober, explained Nick. Quote, I honestly expected him to make a move. But the thing about field runners is that they always disappoint you with their athletic abilities. He just kept trying to run straight ahead. So I tackled him, which kind of reminds me of i guess i is it too soon to spoil game of thrones yeah i'll just leave it all right the thing with the arrow all right uh right okay i uh i've never considered the fan on the field very much until i read this and now i have i've thought about it first thing i want to say about the fan on the field phenomenon is that nobody

should do it. Like from a self-interest standpoint, if you think that it is going to pay off for you, that it's probably not going to. And for that reason, you should be warned, don't do it. It could cost you greatly. It could cost you a lot of money. It could cost you your next job if you have an arrest on your record. And so for purely rational reasons, smart people don't do it. Okay. There's a great website called Running the Field in which a guy who ran onto the field and got tackled and got arrested and then was very fortunate to have the charges dropped thanks to some police officers with a sense of humor, nonetheless writes about the experience.

And it doesn't seem like something you should do for your own personal benefit. All right. Now, that said, there's a piece in The New Yorker this week about leaks, about government leaks, national security leaks. And the argument is put forward that the government has a very strange relationship with leaks, even unauthorized leaks, because they leak a ton of stuff intentionally. That leaking things to the press is a way of, in one sense, reassuring the population that there is an accountable press looking over the government and that if there were secrets, they would leak out. And partly leaking things is a good way to get play for the thing. If you just put out a press release, nobody covers it. But if you leak it, then they cover it. And so the government has,

as every reporter knows, leaked stuff constantly with sort of their boss's blessing. There's also a lot of leaks that go on that aren't with the boss's blessing. But the government has an, has an interest in those existing too, because if all the leaks that came out were known to be with the government's blessing, then they would cease to be leaks and the power of their leaks would, would get watered down and nobody would pay.

People would just treat every leak as a press release as well. So you have to have some leaks that clearly piss off the president or that clearly make somebody look bad. Even if in the individual case, it is terribly damaging for people or even for the country, it props up the system selective leaking that is good for the country and that is good for the populace and that helps us have faith in our government, right? So I was thinking about the fan on the field. Clearly, teams don't like fan on the field. For one thing, it can be scary.

For another, it makes them look silly. For a third, you allow a sort of a loss of authority that might then manifest itself in other more damaging ways. So a team has to be against fan on the field. They have to have signs, they have to have very hefty fines for it. They have to remind you all the time, they have to not show you on TV, they have to do all these things that show how against fan on the field they are. And yet, I believe that the fan on the field is also good for the team and good for the sport and good for the experience in general. For one thing, it's fun. It is often a fun thing in the middle of a very boring game and the crowd gets to cheer

and the crowd gets to come together. And in a sense, a lot of times fan on the field, if it happens in a loss, it is a way of sort of the entire fan base collectively exerting their frustration at the team by this sort of civil disobedience. But beyond that, I think that there is a way that the fan on the field both bridges the gap between the field and the fan by going, oh, look, it's just right there. Like, oh, I could just hop the fence. Like, they're not on TV. I'm in the same physical space as the center fielder. Sure, there's a wall between me and him. But I mean, that guy just hopped down off the wall. I could too. We are breathing the same air. When he sneezes,

some of the molecules will get distributed into the environment and I will breathe one of them. And so in that sense, it brings you closer to the field. And in another sense, in an almost complimentary sense, it also reinforces the fact that the field down there is this hallowed place. And when a non-athlete goes down onto it and looks so out of place and silly, that it reinforces the notion that the player in the uniform is different, is special, has a place there, and has earned his place there, has worked his way up there, that this is a cathedral after all. And so in both of those ways, I think that it reinforces a very positive and healthy relationship between fan and game, especially fan at the park and the game and the park. And so it is good for the team when there is a fan on the field.

However, going back to the leaking analogy, they have to be against it officially. They have to. It only works if they make it difficult and if they maintain a position of being against. Because you don't want it to be seen as a thing that the team condones in any way or even gets amusement from. It only works as an act of rebellion. And you want it to be rare, right? Right. You need it to be rare. I see what you're saying. But yes, you need it to be rare. You need it you're saying, but yes, you need it to be rare

because if it's happening every game, then it's a nuisance, then it's an annoyance. But if it's happening once in a while, how often do you think it happens? I don't know. That was my next question is how much is appropriate? And do you think that – I have two other questions that were not qualified answer, but one is do you get the feeling that fan on the field in baseball is on the up or down swing?

And two, what is the sweet spot? What is the perfect feeling that fan on the field in baseball is on the up or down swing? And two, what is the sweet spot? What is the perfect amount of fan on the field in your team's home schedule? So those three questions. The first one, how often do you think it happens? I would guess two to four times. So I guess I'll just say three. Three times per team per season. Hmm.

two to four times. So I guess I'll just say three, three times per team per season. Hmm. I think I'd go higher, but I'll, well, hmm. Yeah. I'll say like home games or- Well, they're all home games. Yeah. They're all someone's home games, but okay. So typical team, eh, I'll say five times. Okay. I don't know if I just put it out of my memory, but I don't remember seeing one in a very long time. And I've probably been to 100 games in the last six years. Yeah. I don't remember the last one I saw either. How common was it for them to be shown on TV in the past?

Well, when I was growing up, never. When I was growing up, it was never, ever, ever, ever. Okay. And so that hasn't changed, I guess. It's really, it's hard to gauge just based on your own game going experience, because if we're right that it only happens a few times per season, then you could very easily miss it for, you know, go to hundreds of games and not see one. So I don't get the sense that it's more common.

If it were more common, I feel like we don't get the sense that it's more common. If it were more common, I feel like we'd be reading articles about why it's more common and what we're doing to make it less common. If so, if anything, I would think probably less common. Maybe there's, I don't know, because there were, like, it used to be more of a fun thing, right? Because like there used to be the kissing bandit, you know, and it was like, it was kind of a lighthearted thing when a fan runs on the field. And now since there has been some violence, there have been scary incidents. And maybe just because just in general, everyone is, you know, worried about terrorism and sabotage and all kinds of terrible acts, just because

we're all watching the news all the time just because we're all watching the news all the time and we're all reading the news all the time. And even if those acts aren't more common, they're more covered. So I would guess that it's rarer than it used to be. I also believe it's rarer than it used to be. And I also wonder whether it's just because there's much less character to them than there used to be. It used to be sort of a performance art that would have a bunch of drunks mixed in. But and the other thing is that in my my whole little monologue a minute ago, the legitimate danger factor does make me wonder whether the risk of that one terrible, awful fan makes all of that not not true i've just asked i've just asked the

uh the internet how many in an average team's home team's season uh and i have so far gotten three one or two two two and a half uh so let's say two two ish then that seems about right i could i could probably enjoy more than two a year before it got old. Like, especially if I could probably, I could probably see the benefits of the fan on the field, uh, persisting through six or seven in a season. Uh, but, but as it is now, it's, it's nice and rare. I'm fine with it. Yeah.

All right. Let's do one more. There's a lot of good pieces on this list. it yeah all right let's do one more there's a lot of good pieces on this list i i uh again encourage everybody to make use of this list all right last one is a from friend of the pod kazuto yamazaki who writes for beyond the box score the 2016 summer koshien Pitch Count Report. Apologies if I'm mispronouncing the name of the very famous high school tournament in Japan that is one of the biggest sports spectacles in that country every year, their version of March Madness, I guess. And known primarily here for two things.

One is introducing us periodically to the next great young Japanese player. But more than that, it's known for the outrageous pitch count headlines that make it over here. And so Kazuto goes through various measures of the most extreme acts of pitcher usage by these high school pitchers, including individual games where pitchers threw 187 pitches, 183, 177 in a 12-inning outing, and so on. But the ones that really, really get crazy are the high pitch counts with little rest. These games are very tightly packed together as baseball tends to be, and the pitchers just keep going out there. And so I think the one that probably is most interesting is a pitcher named Kento Onishi, who quote, single-handedly propelled his Hokai

team all the way from the first round of the regional tournament to the Koshien final, the equivalent of collecting all seven Dragon Balls. During that time, spanned from June 29th to August 22nd, Onishi amassed 80 innings out of his team's 93 total innings. 80 of 93. Yeah. 39 of which came in the Koshien in five starts, two of them on zero days rest, and another on one day. The righty threw a grand total of 527 pitches,

completed four games. His pitch count total was the second highest mark among any pitcher in the tournament. On the morning of the final, Onishi reportedly felt soreness in his elbow. Still, he started the game with the help of pain pills, only to get knocked out in the fourth inning, leaving with the bases loaded and no outs. And so game one, 123 pitches. Game two on full rest, 92 pitches. Game three, the next day, 116 pitches. Game four, one day rest, 126 pitches. Game five, the next day, 70 pitches. So basically,

if my math is correct here, in a five-day stretch, he threw about 500 pitches in four different outings. And I'm curious whether you're a baseball writer. I'm a baseball writer. We have a podcast. Do you think that the American baseball industry, the American baseball media, the American baseball player have any part in this? Is it our place to scold them, to shake our heads, and to impose what seems like a very uncontroversial but nevertheless culturally defined norm about pitcher usage and the value of pitching careers and so on on a culture that has decided over the course of a long time that this is the tradition that they are going to celebrate? Yeah, I think so. If we had good evidence that this was harmful and the kids who may not know that it's harmful or may not have the ability to protect themselves

and succumb to all of these pressures that are imposed on them by older people, I think there's maybe a responsibility to point out the problem. On the other hand, I'm not sure that their problems with this are any worse than our problems with this, are they? I don't know whether we haven't exactly figured out how to do this with domestic kids. I mean, with everything you read in Jeff Passan's book, which had a chapter about this and about kids in Japan pitching too much, but then had a chapter about kids in the US pitching too much and showcases and throwing too many pitches to show off for scouts and throwing too hard and throwing too many pitch types and travel ball and year-round baseball. So I'm not sure that this is so much a Japanese problem as a universal problem in the places that play baseball. This is maybe a high-profile example of it just because it's this famous tournament and everyone's watching it and famous people play in it or people who become famous play in it.

And it's just very obvious. It seems that they are pitching too much and stressing themselves too much. But I think probably the lower profile events going on in the US all year, maybe do the same amount of damage. Do the same amount of damage. I mean, I don't think that there are, I don't think that currently in American baseball, there are pitch count patterns like this. I think this is much more extreme than anything you see with anything approaching regularity in America. I mean, I guess there's a way that an individual who's on multiple teams might be at risk of being used in a similar way because, again, it's different teams, different coaches. And I know that it's still a problem at all levels

of amateur baseball that continue to be worked on. But there's also a fairly robust culture in America of policing coaching that abuses arms like this. And I just don't think that they're, I mean, I don't, I, again, it again, it's an extremely imperfect system all the way up and down, as Jeff writes, and as everybody knows, and there are terrible anecdotes, and there's probably also terrible data. But I don't think there's anything like this. I don't think there's anybody who is a elite pitching prospect who's allowed to throw four full starts in five games, five days. Yeah, no, probably not. However, that said, I'm not disputing either of the things you said, which is that there might be a role in American baseball here, but also that American

baseball has to get its own house in order before it can really speak with a great deal of authority. Do you think that, let's say America, American baseball just totally cracked the problem and every kid was treated responsibly and all the coaches were taking care of their arms and all that. All right. Do you think there is a way that American baseball could influence Japanese baseball without being completely culturally insensitive and or disruptive? Well, I guess one way would be by not signing their pitchers or not paying their pitchers very much because you're so worried about their history. I mean, I don't know that that would help that much because obviously the only pitchers who get posted and American teams can sign are usually the ones who make it and the ones who didn't make it just never get to that point. But if that came up during negotiations with teams where, you know, like the, I don't know, whoever the next Otani or, or the next guy who only pitches becomes available and he has great stats and everyone says he's going to make a ton of money. And then no one bids on him because they saw that he threw whatever

four starts in five days in this tournament when he was a high schooler and he's going to break, then I guess that would send a message. I don't know though. I mean, that would send a message to NPB teams, but I don't know if that message would trickle down all that well to the coaches who are managing in this tournament because that is years away from that point. So I don't know that there's that great a way if it's that culturally ingrained. I mean, there's always that problem and people complain about it with college coaches in the US that they just don't, you know, their incentive is to win at that moment and to ride their best

pitcher really hard because they want to win a championship and help their job security or just they want to win or whatever. And what happens to that guy later on is important in that maybe future pitchers won't want to sign with that program if they end up breaking all of their players. But it's a little less direct. So that's tough. I mean, there's no way to kind of remove that incentive, I guess, of if you do this, you'll be more likely to win unless you can talk to the organizers of the tournament or something and maybe get them to set some limits, which I guess you could do if you brought some data and some influential baseball people and made a presentation.

So there's probably some way you could do it. Okay. All right. I guess for now, we'll just gawk and do podcast episodes about it. All right. All right. That's all. Okay.

I will link to the list in the usual places if you want to go read the rest of the articles. Or contribute your own. Yeah. Or that. All right. the list in the usual places if you want to go read the rest of the articles or contribute your own yeah or that all right so you can support the podcast on patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild five listeners who have already done so will hayward ben rao alex naser dale schneider and andrew taylor thanks to all of you you can buy our book the only rule is it has to work our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team. It's back in stock on Amazon if you're interested in picking it up as a last-minute Christmas gift. And you can check out more info on the book at theonlyrulesithastowork.com.

You can join our Facebook group, which is about to pass 4,800 members, at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. I have a new episode of the Ringer MLB show up. Michael Bauman and I did some Star Wars baseball banter.

Then we talked to Jonah Carey about Tim Raines in the Hall of Fame. And we talked to the CEO of a company called Whoop, which makes a wearable fitness sensor that a bunch of minor leaguers just wore. So they did a big study and released the results, and we discussed them with him. If you want to contact me and Sam, we'll have an email show coming up soon. So you can email us at podcast at baseball perspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon. We will talk to you soon. I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm