Rates & Barrels - A Memorable Night at Rickwood Field, the 2024 Run Environment & Bequeathed Baserunners

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

Eno, DVR and Trevor discuss a few takeaways from Thursday night's game between the Cardinals and Giants at Rickwood Field, the 2024 MLB run environment and try to determine why scoring has fallen back to 2022 levels despite rule changes implemented last season to increase offense. Plus, they look at deep split stats for starters and relievers to take a closer look at inherited and bequeathed runners, and which pitchers battle back most often from difficult counts. Rundown 1:34 Takeaways From Thursday's Game at Rickwood Field 8:16 The 2024 MLB Run Environment 13:29 Is Talent Being Maximized More Effectively Now Than Ever Before? 21:24 Eno Is Ready to Adjust the Mound 26:58 But, What is a Reasonable Adjustment 30:52 Looking at 3-0 Counts & Pitcher Mindset 44:27 Why You Should Care About Inherited & Bequeathed Runners 55:14 Relievers Adapting to Current Stolen-Base Environment 59:00 Bob Feller's Fastball Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Trevor on Twitter: @IamTrevorMay Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Friday, June 21st. Derek Van Riper, you know, Sarah's Trevor May all here with you. It's a live one. Thanks for the live hive for joining us on our YouTube channel. We're live most Fridays at one o'clock Eastern. I've been awake too long today, fellas.

I have been awake for about seven hours already, which is about three hours too many before a noon local recording. So I've had time to let a lot of things marinate. I've had time to drink way too much coffee, which could be good for the show. Could be a disaster. We're going to find out over the course of the next hour on today's episode. We'll discuss Thursday night's game at Rickwood Field between the Giants and

Cardinals will dig into the twenty twenty four Major League Baseball run environment. People have been asking us about this in the discord for a little while. What's going on is with the ball. It's something else. We're going to dig into that a little bit more. We're going to go all the way back to in the discord for a little while. What's going on? Is it the ball? Is it something else? We're going to dig into that a little bit more. We're going to go all the way back to 1888 for a split second too. So we can look forward to that trip in the time machine. I promise we're going to be there for three seconds.

Then we're going to come right back. We're going to dig into some situational stats for pitchers that Trevor was digging up and things that I hadn't really thought about a lot before, but Trevor thinks about them all the time. I think we should bring those to light because they're going to be really fun to discuss and we'll take some questions along the way as well. So if you've got questions, fire away on stream. We'll get to those here in just a little while. Gentlemen, we had a great game on Thursday night at Rickwood field. I think it delivered in terms of broad expectations

that I had just in terms of learning about history, seeing a beautiful park that I'd never actually seen before, had an entertaining game as well, six, five games, so had a little bit of everything across the board. I wanna start with you, Trevor, what were some of your takeaways from Thursday night? So interestingly enough, I was only able to catch a couple pitches of the actual game

because of a bunch of random things that kept happening all afternoon, but I was able to catch a lot of the desk and I had a really good time a lot of those conversations. I've actually had the pleasure of speaking to Reggie Jackson a bunch of times. He's one of those guys who is maybe one of the best, better storytellers, I think, of X-Players. His story about the stuff he had to deal with. That was super powerful. Was super powerful, really, really awesome. The fact that they had,

they had like Jeter and A-Rod and Barry Bonds all just sitting together was kind of jarring because I grew up watching those guys, like they were the prime. Then I got caught up a little bit in the discourse around Barry Bonsey and he took Satchel Pagedeep, which was a lot of fun as well. So I'll be honest, that's the rabbit hole I fell into, and then I was in that one for a while. But the Reggie Jackson story was one of my favorite parts about the entire presentation. I'm glad I was able to see that in its entirety. It's incredibly powerful because I think it's easy for us in the present day to romanticize

parts of the past that we are excited about, but to kind of extricate them from the truth, the complete context in which those things happen. So extremely powerful. You could hear it in Reggie's voice. You could see it in his face as he recounted that. That clip, if you didn't even see the game, that clip was making the rounds on social all night as well. Definitely go back and watch it if you haven't seen it already. How about you? You know some takeaways that you had from Thursday?

Yeah, just the emotions, Barry crying about Willie, all the tributes to Willie Mays. You could hear the anger in Reggie Jackson's voice when he told those stories. I just thought, I thought this was really powerful. Some weird slip ups, like, it couldn't help but mention Smoltz mentioning they Americanized the dimensions at the park. What? Did I hear that right? But overall, I thought it was great. Another weird thing for me was,

did you see the light stanchions? They had these like- The original ones? Is that the original ones? So there were two sets of lights. I was like, those things are gonna come down. The original lights, they took the bulbs out, they said, cause they were worried about like a foul ball breaking them.

They had to install different lighting for this game. So I'm talking about the installed lighting, cause they had this stuff- The original lights, yeah. That was like reaching over, that just looked really like rickety. for this game. So I'm talking about the installed lighting because they had this stuff. The original lights, yeah. That was like reaching over that just looked really like rickety. And I was like, you know, some parts of this, like it's an old stadium. Like you also look at the seating behind home plate.

Like a lot of it's not flush with home plate. Weirdly. They did a lot of like, if you're sitting just like 10 feet to the left of home base, like the home plate, you're facing the lines. So there's a lot of people like sort of looking in certain directions. And there were so many people involved in this and it was such a small park that I was like, you know, I bet you maybe half the people here that are sitting in the stands are actually linked to like events at this and like former players and like it was it looked like it could hold like 5,000 people it was really small I just loved the history lesson you know talking to Gleason who is has been a pastor and was a marine you know and then he's out

there in the in the leagues like I Like I thought that was awesome. Like, you know, just to learn so much, I didn't know a lot of those players names. Bill Greeson is the oldest living player to have played in the Negro leagues, played for the Cardinals. Grew up across the street from Martin Luther King Jr. And has been a pastor in Birmingham for 50 years. Like his life story, it's an incredible life. He threw out the first pitch. I mean, just the endless amount of information that you could dig into coming off of a game like

this is really exciting, right? There's still going to be great stories coming out of this event. And I think that's more than worth our time. I'm excited for all of that. Clinton Yates had a really good series of pieces called Letters from Birmingham that I thought was pretty cool. Yeah, and I know that Clinton worked with Roy Wood Jr. on an episode of the ESPN Daily podcast earlier this week Previewing this game. They also had another podcast that Roy Wood Jr. was a part of the Road to Rickwood I got to go back and listen to that I didn't know that was out there that was produced a couple episodes a little while back. So tons of great stuff out there. Just a great night for baseball. I think there was one question sort of at the end of the game. People were floating out there was, can we make this an annual

tradition? I mean, all for it here. Like no, no reservations from me whatsoever. I'd be a hundred percent supportive of this being an annual trip on MLB schedule. Yeah. I wonder what the facilities are like for the players. I mean, since it's such an old park, you know, they look good from from where we were. Agne and the live high, vouching for listen to listen to Road to Rickwood. I'm guessing it's amazing. Clinton Yates does fantastic work and the episode of The Daily that I heard was outstanding with those two guys.

So yeah, really great all event event all around on Thursday night and just a great night for baseball. A lot of people were also hearing Bob Kendrick for the first time. He's the president of the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City. I saw the link from pitching ninja today. They are taking donations and nlbm.com slash donations. It's on the screen. If you're watching on YouTube, be sure to drop in there. a donation if you can, support the great work that Bob and the team do in Kansas City. That's on my list. I've never even been to Kansas City. I'm more excited to go to the museum than I am to go to the ballpark itself. Normally, I'm a, I got to go to the city, got to go to the ballpark, but that's a must

stop for me. Hopefully, if not this summer, by next summer, it'll be something I'll get a chance to do. Let's move on to the 2024 MLB run environment, a source of frustration for managers and baseball writers and all sorts of folks out there looking at this. Hey, what's going on? What's going on? Is the ball wise run production down? And when you pull back and you just look at what's happening on the field right now, 2024 looks a lot like 2022, which isn't the worst thing in the world, but it's weird because we just had rules

implemented last season that were designed to boost offense, right? Specifically, limitations on shifting on the infield were supposed to bring batting averages up, increase hits, do all those things that make people like Trevor very frustrated. And, you know, it hasn't quite played out that way. Like we're at four point three five runs per team game. It's the sixth lowest since 2000, but not like off the charts bad. We're just over a home run per team game. Similar to two years ago, we haven't been under a home run per team game since 2014.

So we haven't completely leveled offense. But the slash line is the thing that gets everybody. The league is hitting 241, 311, 391, entering play on Friday. There are three seasons on baseball reference, three ever, where the league average was under 240, 1968, 1888, and 1908. And you know what 1968 was, right?

That was the mound got raised that year right that was the year of the pitcher so they raised the mountain 69 so they raised them on the sick that was one of the major rule changes of our time happened after that season I clicked on 1888 just because I was like come on what was going on 1888 cap Anson was a 36 year old who hit 344 that season the league's average was still that bad so I don't know what cap Anson was a 36 year old who hit three 44 that season. The league's average was still that bad. So I don't know what cap Anson was doing or eating in 1888, but clearly a superhuman relative to his peers at the time based on, on that production. But what is happening right now?

What is happening this year that is causing the run environment to shift right back to our pre 2023 rules? How do we explain this? I have some, uh, some theories. Yeah. You know, if you'd like to go first though, I can, I'll pop in. I'll just throw out what's basically the, the premise of our article, which is, is just that there are long-term trends in data analytics pitching. There are long-term trends where basically it's better for run prevention. Like there's a lot of the things that we've, that we've discovered are better for run prevention. Like a lot of the things that we've discovered

are better for run prevention. And so if you look at something like shifts, outfield shifts have been more effective at reducing batting average to that location than infield shifts ever were. So we didn't do anything about outfield shifts and we're just getting better and better at outfield shifts. And you see those cards that they have in the outfield and those are very sort of detailed

take three steps in this direction take four steps in this direction you know it's like that positioning is stealing a lot of production to the outfield. Now you have we showed that stuff plus is now perpetrating through the league and so what you see is the leagues we we forced league average in Stuff Plus to be a hundred every year. But if you didn't do that, what you'd see is that Stuff was up every year. And so, you know, pitchers are designing their pitches. They're not throwing bad pitches anymore.

They're making their bad pitches better. The last wrinkle that we have is that pitches with multiple fastballs now is up to up 40% over the last two years. And two years ago, a hitting coach told me, pitchers with multiple fastballs is a cheat code. I tried to sit on that. If you've been listening to this pod, you've heard me talk about it a fair amount. And finally, Donnie Ecker said I could, I could, I could out him as the person who did

it. So he told me that two years ago and in the last two years, pitchers with three fastballs up 40 percent. So, you know, you just what that does is a pitcher never has to throw the wrong fastball to the wrong hand. He always has a cutter or a sinker or a four seam. He knows what for what pitch to throw to what hand. And so basically, as these things have gone,

what you've seen, I think what you see is like, when they changed the stolen base rules, we didn't go back to the 70s. We went back to like the late, the early 90s in terms of stolen bases. And so when you see the shift rules, we didn't go back many years. We just sort of stemmed the tide a little bit

against this long-term trend which has been towards run suppression in terms of analytics. That may be changing with some of the bat tracking stuff. There may be some new stuff, but hitters to me generally say, you know, I don't know how much analytics can help me to a certain extent because I have to react and the pitcher is in control. There's certain things like in biomechanics, we've learned that the hip shoulder separation is really big for pitchers for VELO, right? And so you could take that to a hitter and say,

you need more hip shoulder separation, except the pitcher decides when to release the ball. The hitter can't have such a huge swing to create more bat speed with a huge hip to shoulder separation. What is that? That's a long swing. That has to start going a lot earlier. So that's just one little example.

But just generally what we found was that the ball is only slightly different than it's been in the past. It's basically the same ball that you've had in the last three years in terms of drag and that the trend has just been towards run suppression. And we tried to do one year of changes and we stemmed the tide a little bit, but we're just back on that train. Here's the overall idea, you gotta remember,

that baseball players, by their nature, or baseball is, they call it a game of adjustments, you are creating different environments for people whose job it is to adjust to those environments quickly. And so you're gonna see, guys are gonna adjust. We talk a lot about like, there's the player poll came out recently and everyone says, are guys from the 80s pitching?

Could they pitch now? The way I explained this was we are now better at, we have more guys in the league fulfilling their potential. So everyone is, in terms of the ceiling of talent It's probably not changed in a big way like the talent was probably very similar very best at the top Yeah But the guys who aren't probably as talented are better that those versions the middle guys are better than the middle guys were then You could just tell that story with V lo right right? The max Velo is staying the same,

but sitting Velo is going up. So you're getting more out of everybody, but the very top is staying the same. Here's a theory I have, one. So also we need to remember is a year over year, I believe since 2020, strikeout rates are slightly going down. So the ball is being put in the play more.

They're not hits yet. So there is an adjustment a little bit that needs to happen. It takes some time for some of this stuff to shake out. And of course, and it's also early in the season. We're just now getting into warm weather. And historically batting averages go up in June anyway. So that's also a factor. Well, we were comparing May to May on a lot of this stuff.

May to May, okay. So it is slightly down and I did check that that was. But it's also just, if you're thinking holistically, guys, people at home, just remember that that's usually a factor as well. I went to a Mariners game the other day with where they played the White Sox. These are two not very good hitting teams.

I think I believe it was Cannon versus Miller. Basically these guys were throwing strike one like crazy. And I had this realization, I was watching like four or five hitters in a row call their timeout 0-2 so they were 0-2 and it's happening so fast that I was like oh they're 0-2 constantly so I think that getting ahead now the data I went and looked and it hasn't shaken out a lot it's a slightly it's a slightly worse 0-2 counts but of course there's so many different variables in there but I think that pitchers are figuring it out enough to where it's starting to level out

and they're getting an advantage from it when they're throwing the ball over the play. Using the clock to kind of go downhill on the pitcher, on the hitter. They're snowballing on hitters more than they're snowballing on pitchers. Last year though, the walk rate was a percent up, right? So it was snowballing on pitchers.

Now we're seeing that less and less. People are getting used to it. And now it's snowballing on hitters because again, they have to react. So if a pitcher feels good, you're shoving it down your throat and you would have been. Boom, boom, boom.

Boom, boom, boom, you're out. And not only that, your defensive swing is happening earlier faster because you don't even have enough time to, if you go up and just swing really hard, swing really hard, swing really hard, and then you swing really hard, take 30 seconds, swing really hard, take,

your bat speed's gonna be faster the second time. And so there's a little bit of that. So there's a lot of like softly hit ground balls that maybe a guy was trying to juice O2 and every once while you get a double and now it's just a roll over to second or short. There's something in there also about the incentives the ball creates.

So the ball in 2019 was the rabbit ball. And what do you do when you have a rabbit ball? You take your A swing every single time, you strike out, it's cool, the next guy's gonna try and hit a homer, right? But the more that they deaden the ball, and this is where you're talking about, it might take a little bit of time to filter through, right? But if the ball's deadened,

the incentives change a little bit. It's a little bit more like, ah, I may use my A swing a bunch of times and not hit the homer because the ball is not flying as well. And that might lead to lower strikeout rates and may lead us to somewhere that we like in terms of fandom, but it may take a couple years of not looking that great in the meantime. I think the adjustment is going to take time. I think it is a positive change in terms of, I think the things that they're looking for in terms of how offense is created is actually happening. I think those shifts are happening. It's just gonna continue to

need a little tweaking. What did the Mariners say before this offseason? We need to cut strikeouts. We need to cut strikeouts. It didn't work. We just got to put the ball in play. It didn't work. It's getting better but it's still not great. And then one last thing on the stolen bases and this is the one thing with the stolen base rule that the people who talk about it and made the decision were in that room when the commissioner's office is working on it. I feel like they have a distinct misunderstanding

of how teams make decisions whether or not to steal. And at the end of the day, you are chancing giving an out for one base. And that value proposition, no matter how easy you make it to steal, that will always still be the trade off unless it's automatic. You have to have like a 95% chance to make that valuable.

It going from 77% to 81%, it wasn't enough big enough jump. So don't be surprised. They're like, oh, pick offs are just banned now. That's like the way, that's what you would have to do in order to get into a level where teams would be like this Is just we got to take these free bases my nephew's little league team This is a hilarious to me, but they just they run every pitch They just steal and then they have a lot of rules about it Like you're not allowed to run before the pitch goes down

You know like and when the guy gets back on the on the mound so like he throws a pitch he gets the ball back From the catcher and he's sprinting to the mound to get there before the kick goes down. And when the guy gets back on the mound. So he throws a pitch, he gets the ball back from the catcher and he's sprinting to the mound to get there before the kid can take off. Because he knows he can't throw it to second. And when I played and I was 10, that was like, no, no stealing, that's bad sportsmanship. And now they're just like, get on third, get on third. And you need it to be like that in order for it to be,

for a big league team to say, we want everyone to steal all the time. You still only have your couple guys that you want to go all the time. We had 85% success rates on third base last year, and yet teams weren't really spiking. Still not doing it. Cause it's just, if you go through a little bit of a,

if you go for a week where you're getting caught every time, you could lose two or three games cause of that. The Nationals have been the most aggressive on stolen bases this year, and they have been running into outs like pretty crazy style. The last couple of games, I heard their announcers was watching the game yesterday and their announcers were like, and they run into another out. That's been happening. And they were like talking about and they and I think they lost their game

by like a couple like the one I was watching on office yesterday, the day before they didn't they've won the loss by like a run or two. And I saw them run into like three outs and you're just like, dude, that would have been a base runner, you just erased that guy. And that's what it comes down to. So teams make decisions somehow. Sometimes I think the rules committee doesn't know that.

And that's why it hasn't manifested into more runs specifically. But I think that, I think it eventually will. more runs specifically, but I think that eventually will. It's more, but it's not as much. But again, we talk about all this stuff. I don't know if there is a perfect sweet spot. I don't know when we're going to be like, okay, we're good.

I don't know if that even exists either. Well, with the sitting Velo going from 91 to 94, since we've been tracking it, I'm becoming a little bit more open to changing the mound dimensions. I don't know if it's making it shorter, like not as tall like they did last time, or pushing it back. It just does seem like we're running up

against the strikeout rate, the VELO, we're running up against some tension between the dimensions of our field and the dimensions of our players. There were a couple things that I was starting to think about in the last day or so, especially looking at the old dimensions from Rick Wood and watching the catch at the polo grounds and thinking maybe we just need to make the parks bigger because then there'd be more balls in play that the outfield defense can't catch.

At a certain point, there's just too much space. Or you have to have a lot more athletic guys in the corners. Not to say that all corner outfielders are lacking athleticism, but you would need basically three center fielders if you made the outfield big enough. So that changes the dynamics of the game a little bit, but then maybe that drags offense down because those guys don't hit as much as your corner guys, right? So there's always this extra effect, the secondary effect that comes from making a change like that. If outfield defense has improved the positioning of outfielders and the league already made its rules for where infielders can stand with the changes last year, what are we doing in

the outfield if we don't make parks bigger? Because we make parks bigger, we're putting people further away, fans away, further away. That's not what anybody wants. So that's probably not going to happen. In these meetings that he's talking about, about you're gonna throw all sorts of ideas around So I'm sure that at least at some point the idea has been thrown around That you're gonna throw draw some circles on the field We know that they that they were talking about the pie slice

Where you basically take the base pass from first and third and you extend them past second base and you create like a little sort Of a pie slice behind second base and that they were they were thinking about and they tried this in the minor leagues. We documented that they were thinking about making that no no fly zone for infielders so that it's not even like right now with the shift rules they can kind of inch up right next to second base and not be that far from where they were in the past you know but with the pie slice rule they wouldn't be able to do that and they wouldn wouldn't be able to like, you know, basically stand behind second base by the time the ball's in play. So, you know, circles in the outfield, man, I, like, I just, I understand how

you get to that and why you would discuss it, but I don't want to be, I want to be like forward thinking and be like, yes, let's be like other sports and make drastic changes and let's have a four point line. You know, like I know basketball is going to consider that. I bet you, you know, but like circles in the outfield will just look so tacky. It's going to look so bad. I just, I don't know. Like just think of like how you, when you look out at the outfield, you look out at

the field, it looks so beautiful. The green grass, you know, there's limited lines. The lines are in and out, you know, and then inside it's clean and beautiful. And then just have these little circles in the outfield where the- Think about the ads though. We could place ads, we could put Quick Crete out there.

Crete could be out there. Stand out there with the Crete logo. Might as well have auto parts. Can you imagine, you know, like, Steve Vought is like, a, a challenge, uh, that outfielder is not on the quick creep logo out there. What is, and what if, what would you get? Like a strike, a ball, a free runner?

Yeah. What would the, what would the, yeah, that's funny. Runner on second. He gets a double. He's ejected. We do need more extreme in game rules. We need ways to have players eliminated from the game. The red card effect, everything I want in baseball comes from soccer.

Like I want people sent off, like play the game with eight defenders. Yeah, that's what we need a yellow card first. Like something that's a yellow card, like you skip in a bat, you get, you get skipped in the lineup. That'd be cool. Skipped. Oh my God. Yeah. And anything you can do do to to juice it up.

I'm on board. Hilarious to behind the scenes. Our producer, Brian, said it'll be like MTV Rock and Jock softball. Yeah, I was thinking about that. We're a NBA jam turbo tournament edition where you had the spots on the floor, the hot spots. You get more points for shooting from the hot spots and they'd pop up. That'd be cool. So, yeah, you've got all these different ways you can try and tweak it.

And I'm sure this is something the league spends a lot of time worrying about because it is a product that is supposed to entertain. And if people are not entertained, they're going to keep changing it and changing it and changing it again. It's just after all the adjustments that just happened, it has to be a little frustrating even though it's, imagine this, without the changes we had last year, the offensive environment right now could be even more stringent. It could be worse than what we see right now.

It could be historically bad instead of like at a lower end of a normal range. If we hadn't made the adjustments from last year, and then people would be losing their minds. I don't have a problem with it. I think you could make small adjustments along the way. I think you watch it and you just keep tweaking along the way. You don't have to be radical about the on field adjustments. I think you can make those is changing radical.

That's a big adjustment. Well, I don't have to do it anymore. So I'm all for it. Let's go for it. So what would your adjustment be though? As imagine if you, if you still had to make the changes, what do you think a reasonable mound adjustment would actually be that wouldn't cause unnecessary

added risk to pitcher health? Cause that's an ongoing concern too. Honestly, if you just added a couple of feet, if you moved it back a couple of feet, the interesting thing though, the interesting thing, yeah, that'd help you hit fastballs, but suddenly it makes breaking balls break more. So like- though, the interesting thing, yeah, that'll help you hit fastballs, but suddenly it makes breaking balls break more.

So like. Yeah, no more space to break for sure. And changeups just get better. And we already have a trend in baseball, fewer fastballs. Yeah. It could turn into the thing where you throw fastballs like you used to throw sliders, you throw fastballs 20% of the time,

and you throw all these bendy pitches, you know, and like a nightmare scenario would be move the mound back and do ABS because then you'd have this machine that's like, you know, you're basically trying to, have you seen like the warehouse games or Whiffleball? You know, when you watch Whiffleball, like- Whiffle or Blitzball, yeah.

Yeah, Blitzball. What it would be like would be like that where you'd be trying to move the pitch so much and just catch Make the machine turn green, you know, like just catch the tiniest part of that zone you'd have people you have catchers catching balls on the ground or Like two feet out of the strike zone, but they nipped it, you know on the way, you know So it'd be a lot of frisbees. I mean that could be kind of a nightmare scenario, too

Yeah, I don't know if there is an easy way. Shrinking the zone is probably your best solution to help hitters shrinking the zone, which is just sounds so awful. Well, it's kind of what they're doing. Triple A it's smaller. The ABS is smaller. They didn't have, no one said anything officially about that. It's way smaller. Yeah. Yeah. It's like the top of the zone is two inches lower, two inches. Like I got to the point where I thrown it and they're like, Hey, do you want a challenge?

I'm like, I don't know where the strike zone is. I don't know how big it is. So I don't know, you tell me. I've been here for one day. It looks like a big league strike, but it's not a minor league strike. Yeah, I mean, you look at Jared Jones, how much he struggled against AVS

and he comes up and he's shoving. Yeah, it's not crazy. It's just a hard adjustment. Like people can adjust. It's just gonna take some time, and that sucks. But yeah, I think striking the strike zone is probably your only surefire way to really benefit hitters,

because they can stand there, when in doubt, stand there. Yeah, but that also does not make the product better. Doesn't make it more exciting, though. Yeah, so they would have to make an adjustment, too. Definitely don't want to increase walks. I do not think that anybody likes to watch a walk. I don't know if there is a way, maybe it's a combination.

Yeah, walks need to be more exciting somehow. Banana ball, they had a run at it. Yeah, you can run as long as they, what is it? Everyone has to touch the ball. And even watching them do that is actually fun to watch because if it's well orchestrated, everyone moves and does what they're supposed to do, they can get the ball around pretty quickly. My buddy, Louis Paulus, who used to work for the Phillies, had an idea that hit by pitches

should be more penalized. So more bases hit by pitches could be a double. The general long-term thinking is that you would be prioritizing command over stuff a little bit maybe. You'd be incentivizing command over stuff by penalizing hit by pitches more. One of his ideas was immediate ejection. Guys would definitely be leaning into pitches or not getting out of the way of pitches more often. That too. With the armor. If an ejection was needed.

You won't throw it in ever again. Right. And then with the elbow armor, you wouldn't just be like, I'm standing on top of this damn plate like Anthony Rizzo, and I'm going to have my armor on, and I'm going to get you ejected out of this game. Like when Conforto got hit with that strike and won the game in 2021? Yeah. Exactly, was there? Yeah, see it happens. Let's move on to some situational stats for pitchers.

Trevor went down a few rabbit holes recently. And one thing that I had not thought a lot about is what types of pitchers battle back most often going down 3-0 in a count. And what does that say about mindset? Right? Trevor, what got you to start digging into this again? Because it's one of those things where, you know, I just think about it, oh, you're down 3-0, you're probably screwed.

I don't think about how often some pitchers get back out of that situation and how often others completely cave. It's interesting because it's like, there's so many mindset dynamics from a hitter and a pitcher. And when you're thinking about playing the game that way, like, what is this guy intending to do or what is he thinking right. And when you're thinking about playing the game that way, what is this guy intending to do or what is he thinking right now?

If you're good at figuring that out and knowing where you're at, that's a pretty holistic understanding of what's happening right now and then how to be successful in it. You can, it's like social engineering to its finest. So I was like, what? I've always thought when I was three,

I'm like, you're not going to first for free. Like you're at least gonna have to see some strikes and figure that out first. You're gonna have to do something. I'm not letting you go for free because 4.0 is just for free. Like you didn't have to do anything. I had four and a half walks per nine in the minors

and I adopted a mindset and started to get better. And then I walked seven in my debut in the big leagues. I was like, you know what? I'm gonna take this mindset because that's one thing I have full control over. And then it just kind of stayed with me as a reliever. And historically I had really good stats against guys three, two because of that, like they had to go from kind of

checked out to back in the at bat. And that's not easy to do and they're reacting to us. You're forcing them to change their mindset in a way. Cause they're exactly making them adjust twice. This guy can't do a strike. I'm gonna stay, I'm not gonna swing really. And then it's like, oh crap. They're like, this guy can't do a strike. I'm not going to swing really. And then he's like, oh crap. They're locked in to maybe checked out to back locked in.

So you have an advantage there if you're always locked in. So I was like, okay. Then I watched Edwin Diaz and Edwin Diaz was a guy, I was like, can you go three on? He's just like, I don't, it's not worth wasting the pitches here. That's a different mindset. Still valid in some ways,

but I would never be okay with throwing, I'll throw more pitches and knock up up runners and vice versa, but he struck out two of every three guys he faced. So like, that's a little bit of a different situation. So it was like, oh, hmm, who does this the best and who doesn't? And what I looked at was three O counts that the next pitch, okay, so I took, I got,

shout out to the guys at True Media who put this together for me, because I don't know how they made these stats, but they filtered them perfectly for me, it shows your total 3-0 counts over a certain amount of time for the guys And then what percentage of those went 4-0? They walk a four pitch walk and then what percentage of those did they get back to 3-2 before whatever happened? They might still walk them, but it didn't just happen, right? So they buckled down or just called it buckled down And I just did one for a minimum of 100 innings, so there's some relievers over the last five years.

Since 2019, I feel like that's a good line. And the guy with the highest four-pitch walk, he didn't go 3.0 a lot, but when he did, Sean Doolittle went 3.0 14 times and a four-pitch walk 10 times. And he threw 90% fastballs. So if you think about him, he didn't go three out a lot, but when he did, he was all, like, he was just erratic

because he was only throwing his fastball. So, like, that probably was mechanical. Which probably also like a give-in thing where he's like, I'm not gonna go middle, middle with my fastball. And I only have one pitch, he knows what's coming no matter what. It needs to be high in his zone.

He can't afford to just lay fastballs over and after talking to him a couple times, that tracks. He just definitely, he thought that he was smart with that because he said, I have one good pitch, but I know that I have to be smart about it. Mark Molenson, 67% of his, he had a little bit more. 33 for pitch, or three O's and 22 of them for pitch walks. Closer, now there's an interesting thing.

Closers do this more than like firemen, eighth inning guys probably because you come in to an empty base pass situation you're always in I can create one base runner or two or maybe but like I can definitely walk one guy if I'm gonna you know get out of this it'd be okay Pete Fairbanks is on here he's tied in second 67 67 percent of time 26 to 39 and the interesting thing is the the inverse of this they go 3-2 he only goes 3-2 13 percent of the time. I wonder if there's some sometimes maybe also an interaction between the pitcher and the umpire where he wants to throw it in a certain place and he's just not getting the calls because Melanson is not that similar to the rest of the guys

except that he like threw a cutter a lot. And if he just wasn't getting one corner or one area of the strike zone and he was like, I'm just gonna keep throwing it there because that's where I throw my pitch. And if I'm not getting calls on strikes, then this is gonna be a bad day. Now I kind of wanna go look at like Houston street.

Same thing, he's like, I'm just gonna keep doing the thing. I'm not trying, like I'm just gonna keep trying to throw it there. If it's not called strike today, then it's been as walks one interesting one though If you go look at guys who are good at it guy right now who is good at it Griffin Jacks He's 30 21 percent of the time, but he gets back to 302 42 percent 3 2 42 percent of time But he's a fireman guy who might throw one plus innings and it'll come in the seventh or eighth inning There will be people on sometimes. Yeah, exactly. So he can So he can't afford to just go walk a guy in four pitches.

He has to find a way out, even if it costs him 30 pitches. He can't make it first and second with one out, or bases loaded. He needs to keep pushing it, yeah. He also has good breaking balls he can throw in the zone. Exactly. I think you've got some other names like that. And guys like Griffin's job.

Guys who do Griffin's job on other teams tend to have really good breaking balls and tend to do those same things well. And then you have to have that mindset combined with the stuff. And that's why he's had so much success in the last few years is because I think he knows what I'm talking about, whether or not he's consciously thought it or not.

He has had that mindset, closers don't, and it was just really interesting to notice because you can see closers get kind of comfortable in that way, and then when they're put in situations where they have to go do the other thing, i.e. Ryan Presley, maybe. Playoffs or, yeah, or just a, you know, they got another. Or they're moved

in the eighth inning role and suddenly it's way different. This is one of the ways that manifests it. It's different, which was really eye-opening. I didn't anticipate it being this clear on how high, like, Emmanuel Classe, 59%. Which is funny because he doesn't walk people. He doesn't have bad command. But when he does, he walks them four bitches. And he's just like, fine, whatever, next.

And I'm going to throw in the next guy, 98 mile an hour cutter. He's going to pound it in the ground. I got a double play done. It's really interesting, too, though, the difference even between Classe and Edwin Diaz, both very good closers for recent years. Like Diaz misses so many more bats like he can reliably strike the next guy out at a much higher level with Classe. It's like, hey, man, like you're you're tough to hit, but

it's not a zero. It's not 40 or 50 percent K rates. It's like, hey man, like you're tough to hit, but it's not a zero. It's not 40 or 50% K rates. It's not absurd. It's mid to high 20s most years from class. Last year was on 21.2%. So it's like not quite fully being on board with how dominant you are. But if you don't end up in those situations that often, I get it. Also, manual class, it doesn't give up homers.

Yeah. It's a 60% ground ball, right? You know, yeah, it doesn't give up homers. Yeah, it's a 60% ground ball rate, you know. Yeah, he doesn't give up homers, so I think that's the other part of it. It's like, that's all right, run around first, no big deal, I'll get a ground ball. That's probably the other huge part of it for him versus Diaz that makes his mindset and approach a little different. A couple other quick ones just to know that are over 50% in the last five years.

We got Jose Leclerc, David Bednar, Kenley Jensen. Like, all of them. Jake McGee, Gregory Soto, they're all over 50, they've all closed. That's funny. It is crazy, it's crazy, it's a lot of them. Here's an idea, you know pitchers have A swings and B swings and C swings, so pitchers have like their moneymaker, they have their pitches ranked in their head, right. And and and even sort of pitch and location like like, you know, do little slow fastball is not rated

highly even in his own head. Right. So he's like, number one, high fastball. Number two, you know, slider on the corner or whatever. You know, like you have these things rated. Those are your A swings, your B swings, your C swings. The closer is just like, I'm going to take my A swing over and over again. And I feel like maybe the middle reliever mentality is more like, hey, sometimes I need to throw my third pitch because I need to get it in the zone. Or you know what I mean? Like it's a little bit more of a wide variety of pitches, maybe not the same strikeout rate, Maybe not the same level of dominance, but more of a like battling mentality

And maybe I throw my third best pitch here because I need a strike. I need to steal a strike I need to get back in this as opposed to the closer being like you're never gonna see my third best pitch I'm never gonna use it closer. Also know this this is a thought that closers have and I can attest to this last year I Cannot give up a homer. Guys in seventh inning are like, I don't want to, but if I do, at least we'll hit again. And maybe make up for that idea. So like,

a lot could be pretty bad for me in this situation where I already have a base runner, you know. Yeah, and they have one run leads a lot. So Doolittle's out there like, I can't give up a solo shot, even if it's three one. So I'm gonna try to get him to swing it a pitch on the edge. I have to. And so sometimes it just turns into a walk. Trevor, did you spot anything in the starters

in these situations that stood out like guys that are aces that have excellent stuff being more willing to go to the next hitter or anything along those lines? One thing was interesting and I'm gonna pull this up really quickly once again because I'm going by innings pitched here. So I'll go to 250 so that'll pretty much take it down to 300. 300 innings over the last five years I think it's a pretty good, there might be a couple relievers in here but the number one guy was Charlie Morton which was really interesting because you know we think of Charlie Morton having good command and I think this is probably most of the last couple years but again we've switched to breaking balls all the time and he throws, he'll throw his curve ball 3-0. He'll do it because he's another guy who, you know, his movement's crazy and he knows what his best pitches

are and he's definitely, he's gotten away from the sinker like he used to throw and he was with the Pirates and he throws four seams. So again, it's like avoiding that home run, like avoiding, just like the hitters are going for damage, now pitchers are thinking I need to avoid damage even if it means a walk, that's still better than a triple or Homer. And those are the decisions being made. Really interesting here is like, I got Josiah Gray is up here, 46%, Zach Lattell's 46%,

but they also have kind of high, like, Lattell's 37%, three, two, so that just might be a, he does both, it's one or the other, which is interesting, I don't really know what's going on there, that could be a, he does both. It's one or the other, which is interesting. I don't really know what's going on there. That could be, he could beat us. I see a little bit of that smaller arsenal. Like right now, he doesn't have a great fastball

to use against, he's like kind of become more of a sinker guy. And so he doesn't have a really great fastball to use in lefties. His walk rate is twice as high against lefties. So with a starter, you might have some of this like, well, this is Juan Soto, and I don't really have a great fastball to throw Juan Soto.

I don't have, I'm a righty trying to pitch to Juan Soto. Maybe I'll just give him the walk because I don't want to give up the homer and I don't want to give in and throw him my second best fastball or whatever. It is part of the proliferation of multiple fastballs can help you out of this. Because how do you climb back in account,

give them a fastball that you can command, but not the fastball they expect? Yeah, it's a wrinkle. Like if you throw a seam-shifted two seam and a four seam, you can throw the seam-shifted two seam, three or two oh, as opposed to the four seam. And that also probably might be hit on the ground. So the highest, honestly, in the last three years,

for starters, 47%, Charlie Morton. So these numbers are much lower than relievers in general. That's the highest. And there's a bunch of 20s and 30s and 40s percentage here with these same guys at the top, 3-0 to 3-2, which tells me, for starters, it's very, very, it's way, way more situational. So like you said, they're picking their spots. We've got two outs, Soto's up,

I'm just gonna put him on first and go against Stamina or whatever. And they pitch around guys a lot more than relievers do. We just go like this. Well yeah, there is like the managing your own workload, your stamina and avoiding damage simultaneously. I think that's a bigger part of the equation.

And I think it is something match up specific could even be handedness when you're giving up the platoon advantage. If you don't have that pitch you need, then maybe you're more willing to give in in that circumstance. And then if you're Zach Littell facing a righty, maybe you're less likely to give in and continue working the count as much as you can, because you think you can battle back in that situation. Can I throw my slider for a strike in a 2 or 3-0 count? Yes.

Where does that slider for a strike go? Does that slider for a strike work against lefties from a righty? Maybe not. Maybe I don't want to throw that slider for a strike. That might be right in their happy zone. Here's one for you. This is a related concept in a lot of ways, at least in ways of thinking about what's happening with guys on base.

Why should we care about inherited runners, Trevor? I love this one. I always tell this joke to especially new guys in the bullpen. I'd go look up like they were a new guy from another team who's been in the big leagues for a while. Or we talk about guys pitching and I'd be like, I was always interested in how well they handle inherited runners, meaning how many guys are on base when you come in the game and then bequeathed runners, how many do you leave on base when you leave the game

and someone else comes in after you, how much of those score? And basically I always have a standard that if you give up more inherited runners than other guys are giving up your bequeathed runners, then you're a bad teammate. And that was just a joke. I just look it up, they're like, yeah, you're a bad teammate. And I just say it to the guys and we joke about it, whatever.

But there is something to it. When you go in and the guys on base aren't yours, so if they score, it's not gonna be your ERA. There's guys that just don't really care that much about it. And that sounds like mean, but it's true. They're not, they have enough worry on their mind, they're worried about getting their job done in their own thing. And if you're on a bad team, that happens. And so it comes down to like, how well do

you go in and strand the runners that you inherited and you want someone who comes in behind you to do your bequeath. So to like do a good job of getting, taking care of your bequeath runners. So if you're like the eighth inning guy, and you go out and you give up a runner, but they bring in the closer, you're like, good, the closer's coming in, so the chance of that guy on second stays there are high. But if you're the starter, we talked about this when we were going to the show, you give up seven in five innings, and then you're going out in the six, and you give up two runners, they bring in the guy. The guy they're bringing in, you're down seven, too. The guy you're bringing

in is probably not great at leaving guys out there. He's probably a starter that's just like, I don't know what I'm doing. But if you're a slightly better starter that pitches to an even game, then you get the A-Bowl pen. You get the A-Bowl pen, and that's a big thing. That's something to pay attention to. That's why, remember Paul Skeens' debut and he gave up one run, but two of his bequeath scored. And everyone was like, well, he gave up three runs in four in the third inning. So I'm like, he didn't give up those two. The guy came in who threw 16 straight balls did. So it's like, and how do you keep that?

So as relievers, this hurts relievers a lot. And this is always something that's so interesting to me. If you have like one day where you come out of a game with two outs, the bases were loaded and you were down by a run, however, it's just not a great day. The guy comes in behind you, gives all three of your runs up.

That can fundamentally change how your statistics, or at least your ERA and how many runs you've given up on the year, a lot. It could add, if you have 45, 50 innings, that could add almost a full run. So it's like, you always have to asterisk these things when you're relieving, be like, well actually, if my buddy would have just thrown a fastball there,

I would have had a 2-9, but now I have a 3-6. So, and no one cares about that. And that's one of the crappy parts about being a reliever, but when I look at relievers, if they're really good at leaving inherited runners out there, that's one indicator I look at for a guy who can throw and leverage that I don't think anyone looks at.

It's something that I would notice if I were in, if I were thinking about picking up a guy in a trade who maybe hasn't been used that well, Danny Colum was a guy who, I think he's inherited 13 guys this year and let zero of them score. I want that guy going out there with guys on base because he's good at it and he does it on purpose. It is a funny thing because in the one way this gets paid attention to I think in fantasy and in analytics is left on base percentage for

mostly for starting pitchers. I haven't seen a lot of people think about it. Mostly in fans, they only care about the closer. Right, the middle relievers and leverage guys. Mostly everywhere, they only care about the closer. Everyone only cares about the closer. Well, but there's a way around this that I've wondered about for a long time, and it's the way games are scored.

But should inherited runners fully count against the pitcher who they reached base against, or should they be divided based on which base they reached? Right So if you leave the game and the runner was on second base and then I come in and I let the run score Maybe we should each take half of that run if that runner was on first you take a quarter I take three quarters of a run like it should maybe be Accounted properly to each pitcher involved that would change a lot

Maybe in arbitration in some cases, a handful of cases, but it would change a lot in perception. We know ERA isn't a big deal in advanced stats communities, but it's plastered all over the stadium. So the people shredding relievers on Twitter are probably still caring about ERA. So maybe it would just be a little better if we made ERA a little more accurate because people are still mindful of it in in the mainstream for sure. I also was thinking about this idea that Trevor's talking about that like if you're not that great of a pitcher and then you are handing the ball to the Bebel pen

then maybe your strand percentage won't regress to the same places as others. So another way of saying this is the left on base percentage, LOB on fan graphs across the league is like 71 or 72 every year. And so you can go and you can see that Ryan Feltner has allowed 57% has allowed 57%, 57% of the people that he's had on base, he's so 43% have scored and normally it's 29. So you're like, oh wow, he's been really unlucky. Well, you know, there's a Colorado action there. There's another guy on here, Patrick Corbin,

that left on base would say he's been unlucky. Well, he has a 6.6 expected ERA. So he's not keeping his, he's one in6 expected ERA. So he's not keeping his he's one in seven on the record. So he's not keeping his team in games and he's not getting the good reliever when he leaves the game. He's not getting, you know, I forget who it is. Like he's not getting Hunter Harvey. No, he's not getting to that that branch of the bullpen. He's definitely getting the B relievers. And by the way, I was going to write about this for the recap this week. The Nationals really do have something cooking with pitching. They have exceeded projection

with several pitchers this year by K minus BVB, by ERA. There's something going on there. So, Doolittle and the organization, they've got something working. It's Mackenzie Gore. We knew Mackenzie Gore could be really good, but I don't think we had expectations he would exceed by this much this year. It's Finnegan, it's Harvey in the bullpen, it's Jake Irvin, it was Trevor Williams before he got hurt. I mean, they've had a whole bunch of guys come up with little fanfare. Now DJ Herz is up, kind of curious where that goes. So not a place I've traditionally looked at and said, hmm, their pitchers might be better than expected. They also are one of those teams that if you look at Babip on the rolling one-year leaderboard

They are near the bottom. They're bad. Their defense has not done Out above average they're the 25th best defensive team Right. So for them to be exceeding projections on the pitching side is even more difficult because their defense is bad Just to finish my thought on left on base real quick Pablo Lopez Second worst left on base percentage. He's a good pitcher I know his era is high but something like his ex era is 3.5 and I would Generally think that Minnesota has a good bullpen. Yeah, they would be bullpen. Even their B guys are pretty good. Yeah Yeah, so I I think that you know, there's something to this like, you know

thinking a little bit harder about strand rate and not necessarily just, you know, saying, oh, Corbin's going to be better because of this. But if you're looking at Cease or Pablo Lopez, even Kevin Gossman, part of what's happened is just some of the relievers probably have let in some of their runs and made it look worse than it should be. Yeah, it's not helping. I have one prime example that this is the first time I ever thought about this. This happened 2015. I'm about to drop a name. This is a deep cut. Blaine Boyer.

Speaking of twins bullpens, so in 2015 he was three and six with a 2.5 ERA and 68 appearances. By all accounts accounts good year Did you dig a little bit he struck out 33 and 65 innings? That's not ideal There's not many and he allowed 18 runs of his own runs. How many inherited runners did he allow to score also? 18 18 of 38 he allowed to score and five of his 22 bequeath scored. So I'm like. Whoa, so the 18, he's with the bad teammate you're talking about a little bit.

I mean, it's being facetious. Which is hilarious. Because Blaine Boyer's the nicest, like most honest and genuine person. He is the best teammate I've ever had. But he put 18 runs on other people's. As soon as he takes that mound, bad teammate. And he just couldn't miss any bats, obviously.

But he would always get out of it when his runs were on second. But if there's someone else's, they score every single time. So we kind of had a running joke going about it. And he was always really good with it. But because he inherited 38 guys in one year, that's a lot. So he was the guy. He was that guy you're talking about.

He would come in in the sixth. Probably when they were losing losing or caught Yeah, like it's close, but they weren't we weren't winning and this is hard to fix on the fly But what were teams expecting from Blaine Boyer exactly? Like he had a great ground ball rate for most of the first half probably thought they were getting grounders They thought that was coming back and it didn't Andrew cashner He's just Andrew cashner's twin brother. They looked exactly the same.

Oh, did they? Big beards and heavy sinker, bowling ball sinkers. And he threw 96, 97 in his prime. Like he threw really hard. So you think he could parlay that, but it just never manifested in the strikeouts. He struck out 292 guys in 470 innings. I wonder what he would look like

in the age of pitch design. Yeah, I'm wondering if that's what it was. Like if there was just something, he was just a little ahead of his time in terms of when his ability would have been maximized because there was enough there for teams to keep bringing him back, wanting him to have a job. I mean, he threw an 87 mile an hour slider.

Like that was a pretty good pitch. By all accounts, eye test, he looked like he had good stuff. It just didn't turn into misses, per se. There you go. Well, that's, I didn't think Blaine Boyer was gonna pop up on the show today. So, cap ants into Blaine Boyer. A complete history of baseball just in one hour.

How'd we do it? Couple of the things here, you know, one other question I had that kind of ties a couple topics together is how much are relievers going to have to adapt to the current stolen base environment? You know, because I think when I watch games, it seems like teams start to run even more when relievers get into the game. And certain relievers. And certain relievers have a clear, like there's's, there's, the word has gotten out, like you can run on these guys.

So if there's like a max effort slow to the plate, but that's how you get your stuff to be nasty sort of approach, how long will it take for relievers to also add some element of being quicker to the plate, to their, to their overall profile and to eliminate that, that weakness. It may already be happening. I had stats performed, check this out. One thing that was interesting is that starters

give up more stolen bases in a given season. That's mostly because they pitch more innings, but we've actually come to almost an equilibrium between starter and reliever innings. I think it actually has something to do with leverage index. So I think that most often you want to steal when it's not necessarily the game on the line. You steal when you're trying to put up crooked numbers. You steal when you're trying to like add like scoring at the beginning. You don't always want to steal if you need one run and you've got your bopper at the plate and it's the eighth inning, you know what I mean?

Like that's not so there's I think there's more situational moments early in the game where you can steal versus late. I think that's part of it. But what we've also found is that starters are better at suppressing stolen bases. So, you know, they've always had a better stolen bass success rate than relievers in the sample that I was looking at. And it's usually, you know, like 20 to 30 points as much as 50 points. But in 2023 with the new rules, bass runners were 84% against relievers. They were successful 84% of the time and 77% against starters.

It was one of the biggest, it was the biggest difference in my, in my thing. This year, 81% against relievers, 77% against starters. So already either teams are saying, I'm not sure I want to give this reliever who can't control the running game that many opportunities, you know, in this new environment, or relievers have already started to make the adjustment of being like, I have to bear down and think about this and spend some time in the off season figuring out my move to second, my move to first. Interesting that we're already seeing a little bit of a shift there, but we'll see.

We'll see what the rest of the season brings in that regard. I mean, our man, Otto Vino, who came on on here a friend of the podcast is you know, it's kind of off to the track races I'm looking at it right now. I was gonna use him as my benchmark. He's only six six out of seven this year Usual it's been 22 19 and 22 last three years how many stolen basic? Oh, I mean I try to think about throwing out a runner when he's throwing that sweeper though. Like what, how are you, how are you gonna get a throw off?

That he'll be the person to tell you. He's like, you just don't it's your, you got it. You just gotta guess that I'm not gonna throw the sinker up on accident or something. Yeah, that's pretty interesting. Got a question here from the live high. This is a pitch design question. Don't know if we have an answer to it, but I think it's worth throwing out there. This one's pretty interesting. Got a question here from the Live High. This is a pitch design question. Don't know if we have an answer to it,

but I think it's worth throwing out there. This one's from Lars. Was reading about Bob Feller versus Satchel Page before Rick Wood. What was the fuzz on Bob Feller's fastball? Insane arm side run? I mean, they said it was Velo. And, you know, one of the,

I think the best calculation I've seen was that when he threw, when Bob Feller threw the ball and they timed it and they had the motorcycle going and everything, the best math I've seen I think on that suggested that that pitch went 98. So I think Feller was a really hard thrower. Velo and one thing Bob Feller did, and this was kind of the mechanical way they taught mechanics too, pretty much everyone was a Tom Seaver type drop and drive guy, so extension.

Everyone had like, they thought extension meant hard throwing. You had to have extension to do it. So guys were just like jumping down the mound, scraping their back leg on the ground. So like they were releasing the ball really low and he felt like they were closer to you. So that gives you like perceived,

guys say it looks harder than it is. He definitely had that too and he threw hard so he had both those things that's why he was anecdotally that's why I think he was so dominant because he had both. Page is really hard because a I don't think that we'd ever did these like sort of let's try to see how hard he throws I don't I don't I've seen fastball I've seen facing Nolan like I haven't seen like a thing on satchel Paige but I do know that my kid plays Satchel Paige in MLB the show and they gave him 100 mile an hour sitting fastballs so that was the kind of like Willie Mays told a story that he got a single the first time he page uh fast face Paige

off of his slider and he heard Paige muttering something about being a boy uh because I think Mays must have been like literally like 16 or something and then the next time he comes up Satchel Paige says boy I'm gonna throw you three fastballs and you're gonna sit back down and Willie Mays is like he's gonna tell me what's happening and then he threw three fast balls and Willie Mays sat back down and he just struck out. I love those stories. You know and you know so I think that Paige was a really hard thrower. What we saw in MLB was the end of his career. He was the oldest debut at 41, I think. He played again.

He actually went away for a little bit because he lost his VELO completely, his arm was dead. And then he came back and pitched a little bit, 59. So he's the oldest pitcher to pitch in baseball too, when some of the VELO came back. But we don't know how hard he threw, but I would assume that part of the central page was how hard he threw.

I also wonder too how many of those guys had ride and it was just something people didn't think about. It was just a, hey, this is a good fast ball, right? But it wasn't described the way we describe it now. Ride is funny too versus sink. If you throw a good sinker, like I think you can see it easier as a pitcher. And I think that the coach can see it easier

because it like really is like, you know? So I think for a long time when we weren't using machines, it was like, throw that thing. That looks nasty, you know, that, you know, the Greg Maddux sinker. I think the moves is nasty, the thing that doesn't. Yeah, exactly. Straight fastball is now called ride.

Yeah, exactly. So I would guess a lot of those guys back in the day through sinkers. Yeah, I think keeping the ball on the ground was very, very popular for a long time in baseball. That was a big part of it. You want it on the ground, nothing bad can happen. The main hitters trying to hit the ball on the ground too.

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