Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1190: The No-Look Podcast

Episode Date: March 15, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Willians Astudillo’s day in the spotlight, Carter Capps’s new look, and Minor League Baseball’s new pace/length-of-play rules, follow up on previous discussions of spring-training celebrations and ground-bound players, and answer listener emails about a front-office saboteur, Steve Carlton’s incredible career balk total, the predictiveness of second-half performance, Ronald […]

I've always been true and I still love you, so don't look away, there's a lot you can do to get me away, you've got to stay, don't look away, don't look away. Hello and welcome to episode 1190 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Van Graffs presented, as always, by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Bringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Van Graffs. How are you? Hi, Ben. I mean, I'm good. How are you? Okay. We are doing an email show today, and we have lots of good emails to get to so we should try to rush through the banter i've got a few things to get to maybe we can start with something you just wrote about because i've got updates on a couple of effectively wild celebrities and one of them i almost brought

up yesterday but we had a lot of other stuff to banter about so i I didn't. But our man, Williams Astadillo, has gone viral, not for any of the reasons that we have appreciated his play before, but one of my picks, my first pick, was it, in the minor league free agent draft this year, or one of my early picks, at least, and he is now famous for a no-look pickoff, and you wrote about it. Who couldn't? I woke up and I was just browsing through the MLB.com videos that they have on their homepage just to see what was maybe happening in spring training, and I saw no-look pickoff, and I thought,

no, that's interesting, and then I saw it on YouTube, and there weren't very many views, and so I wrote about it thinking, oh, I'm going to expose this thing. I didn't even have any idea that MLB.com had also tweeted out and put it on Facebook, and it was everywhere, but I don't care because nobody else, I was reading a bunch of articles about it

and I don't think that anybody even acknowledged who Williams Estudio is as a player. It's just like, oh, look at this thing he did. But he's amazing even outside of this. And then he did a no-look pickoff. He didn't look and he picked a guy off. He did that and he didn't look where the ball was going. And he's done it before.

Yeah, that's the thing you uncovered is that this is like the third time that he has done this successfully. It's just the first time that it's happened to be caught on camera in Major League Spring Training camp. So it spread. And you also pointed out that the Rays have instituted this as something of an organizational policy or strategy that its catchers have pursued with some success, presumably. So it's not unheard of, but I think it was the first time that a lot of people had seen something like this. And we knew Estadio, of course, for being an extreme outlier in his refusal to strike out. He doesn't see a lot of pitches because he makes contact with the first or second pitches he sees generally. And he is very much a standout player in that respect. And

he's also sort of physically distinctive in that he's kind of your prototypically squat catcher. He's also seemingly a pretty good framer. So I'm hoping he actually does make it to the majors and as you pointed out in your piece some people might wonder well why not save this for a more meaningful game than a spring training game but for william zestadillo this is a meaningful game he's trying to impress people he's trying to make a major league roster which he probably won't do fresh out of camp but maybe this increases his odds of making it up at some point this season yeah i think the guy in front of him on the depth chart is mitch garver and yeah i don't i don't know much about mitch garver maybe he's good but it's probably not a coincidence i don't know much about him so i think astrodio chose a decent place to to land and you know i know he's he's listed at 5 9 225 and that's not tall and that's not light. But Brian Pena, a major league veteran of 12 seasons, is measured at 5'9", 240, and he's a catcher.

Tomas Talis is 5'8", 220, which is basically the same thing. So I don't think that physically Estudio has anything that's necessarily wrong relative to other catchers. He has been a decent framer. I don't know what the problems are. I don't know what his, like, exit velocities are because, you know, when you never strike out. Well, I can say he's started to hit more fly balls. Just going to put that out there. He had a pretty good winter in Venezuela.

My favorite thing I learned about that is that Willian Zestadillo in the Venezuela Winter League, he batted like 233 times or something like that. And he had four strikeouts and there was a teammate of his who i won't name because i can't pronounce it and that teammate had six strikeouts and he batted eight times so astadio fewer strikeouts than a guy who like showed up and played and everyone realized oh he was lost he didn't he wasn't supposed to play for us but he still struck out more often than Astudio did. And I'm amazed that I've been hearing,

it feels like I've been hearing about Astudio for long enough. I can't believe he's still only 26 years old and it seems like he should get a shot in this era with the ball taken off. Give a chance to the guy who hits the ball. Sure, yeah. I will say, I don't know if no look pickoff is really entirely accurate. I mean say, I don't know if no look pick-off is really

entirely accurate. I mean, he probably looked, right? We can't really tell. He didn't crane his head to look, but his eyes may have moved, probably moved. I don't know. It's hard to tell. You can't really see what his eyes are doing. I assume that he

looked, but it was really impressive that he did it. And he just sort of lulled everyone into thinking that he wasn't going to throw. And as you showed, even the first base coach wasn't really looking. The runner wasn't expecting it. The first baseman wasn't expecting it. No one was expecting it. And he just sort of casually tossed it over there as if he was tossing the ball back to the pitcher. he probably looked i don't know i would wager that he looked in some way yeah i was every so often when i see something happening in baseball i try to just work it out with my own body which is not a professional baseball player's body but it's the best that i have access to and i i was trying to work out how

this could work and he could look and you know i'm sure he looked you know it's not like first base is not 90 degrees to his side it's not like he could see first base i'm sure with his peripheral vision and you know in the poor quality video maybe he maybe he shifted his eyes over but it's really convincing anyway yeah so even if he did shoot a glance it was it was effectively a no look throw yeah it's an play. I'll link to it if you haven't seen it. Another update on an oft-mentioned player on this podcast, Carter Capps, who is not really doing anything in particular to distinguish himself this spring training, except that, well, there are two things, really. The first is that he is wearing a necklace made out of his own rib bone, which is notable.

He had thoracic outlet surgery. He had a rib or part of a rib removed. He now has a part of that rib on a necklace on his neck, which is odd. So that's notable. The other thing is that he seemingly has yet again changed his delivery. I just g-chatted you a link to a GIF of his 2018 delivery versus his 2017 delivery. Of course, Cardicaps, the reliever famous for the hop, which now has since been outlawed, essentially, at least in the way that he used to do it, where he would push off the mound and then just take a full skip forward. That's not as pronounced yet He still sort of does it but Not quite to the same extent but now

As pointed out in this gif which Again I will link to and this Was posted by Rob Friedman At Pitching Ninja on Twitter And he shows that in 2017 Caps Put his hand The hand with the ball behind his back so that it was like kind of touching his butt basically.

And now he has it on the other side where he is essentially rubbing the ball in his crotch before he releases it. So I don't know if this is going to be effective. It looks weird. It looks like he doesn't even fully have control of it. like almost he's bracing the baseball against his crotch. I don't know. It's the latest strange Carter Capps thing, and maybe we've seen the last of Carter Capps as an actual effective relief pitcher. It's hard to say, but he continues to innovate, I guess would be a way to put it charitably. What is he doing? I don't know. I've been looking at this since you sent it, and I just can't figure out what is even the reason to do this. I don't know. It's very weird.

This is so dumb and weird. I mean, how do you have a guy who has the weirdest delivery in baseball, and then he adds the weirdest delivery in baseball, and then he adds the weirdest delivery in baseball. It doesn't make... Maybe I should say I shouldn't accuse Carter Capps of doing something without thinking it through. There's got to be some reason that he's touching his nuts. But this is bizarre.

I can't see how this works. No, I don't know. Maybe it's just like he has to top himself every year with a new weird thing. It's like, what's going to be the weird Carter Capps move this year? I'm going to put the baseball in my crotch for a while for no apparent reason. Anyway, it looks awkward. It looks like it's just slowing his arm down and making it, I mean, I guess it's like some sort of timing mechanism.

It makes it look like it would make timing more difficult. But if it works for him, which is not at all clear then then good for him i think that now i have a reason to send a message to one dave cameron to see what he might be able to say publicly about this because at least now we have a an in we have a witness on the ground yes all right and then the only what is he doing i don't care if you're gonna keep talking i keep looking at this it's been three minutes i really don't know i feel like i'm sorry i'll let you proceed that's okay the only other update i have is the runner on second rule which we learned on wednesday will actually be put in place at all minor league levels starting

in the 10th inning so all extra innings in all levels of affiliated ball, aside from Major League Baseball in 2018, will have the runner starting on second to begin the inning rule. And as many of you recall, we bantered about this rule in the intro to episode 1171, which was just last month. So you can go back and hear the math we ran through then, which came to us courtesy of listener and Patreon supporter Mark Arduini. But I think that math still applies. He found that on average, this would trim about 19 minutes off of an extra inning game. And I think the difference here is that now this is starting in the 10th inning instead of the 12th inning, as we thought then. So it will just apply to more games and a greater percentage of games. So that will mean more time saved, I suppose. Time saving measures I generally approve of The importance of Trying to save time I think it's a good thing

To make baseball games faster If we can because they have indisputably Gotten a lot longer and I don't think that enhances Anyone's enjoyment of the game and I would imagine that it could Act as a disincentive for people who are Potentially getting into baseball

I don't see an upside to having games be three plus hours instead of 20 minutes shorter or whatever. So I am fine with those efforts, especially when they target the things that, as Grant noted, seem to be primarily responsible for the increase in game times, which is time between pitches. I'm not on board with the extra innings thing. I think it's silly. I don't think it really helps. I don't think extra inning games lasting longer really was turning anyone off from baseball. It's a minority of games that go to extra innings. It's obviously a very small minority that go deep into extra innings. Once you go deep into extra innings, you get some really memorable and weird and fun games. So this is doing away with the possibility of those. And I just don't like the idea of having a runner on second to start the inning because then inevitably you're going to get a bunt to move him over. You're going to get intentional walks to set up the double play. It's extremely boring. Those are two of the most boring things in baseball. Set up the double play.

It's extremely boring. Those are two of the most boring things in baseball. And I just don't think this really makes baseball better. And as long as it's confined to the minors, who cares? But it's a triple A now. Obviously, this is being done with an eye towards potentially transplanting it to the majors at some point. And I just don't think this is where I would concentrate my efforts when it comes to time of game. And to be fair, they are also kind of making the pitch clock stricter. So it's going to be 15 seconds with bases empty, 20 seconds with a runner on in AA and AAA this season.

It had been that way at lower levels before. And the risk there is possibly that there will be more injuries. And the risk there is possibly that there will be more injuries. And John Rogel tweeted that when that was instituted in the Florida State League, pitcher DL stints did increase possibly in a related development. So that's one thing. Maybe pitchers will just learn to not throw quite as hard if they don't have much time to recover. Anyway, I'm fine with pitch clock. I don't like the extra innings, runner on second thing. I don't know. Seeing it get all the way to AAA is concerning because I don't like it either. I just, I don't need to explain it. I don't know many people who do like it in the majors, but if it is confined to the minors, and if it's confined there for the reasons they've talked about, or it's just about preserving pitcher health, and of course in the minors, you don't really care that much about winning anyway, then I don't have a problem

it's just a matter of whether or not you take the league at its word that it's just doing this with player safety and development in mind because when you see something expand to triple a then it's only natural to think well this this could be this could be coming but i think that it would be a pretty significant leap to introduce it to the majors i think that there would be a huge pushback even more than there would be with the pitch clock because it's not just i mean technically as people have pointed out there is a clock in the rules and it's just not implemented but a runner on second that's not the rules and that's a stupid rule to begin with as far as the the pitch clock goes i shouldn't say stupid i just don't agree with it i'm sorry rob manfred but it's among your

most stupid of justifiable initiatives. As far as the pitch clock goes and 15 seconds, it sounds really fast. I just, for the matter of being thorough, I do want to explain to anyone whose eyebrows are raised at the idea of 15 seconds being very fast. For one thing, pitchers work like six or seven seconds faster on average with their bases empty than they do with runners on. So already pitchers work faster. And also also it's not 15 seconds between pitches it's 15 seconds starting with when the pitcher has the ball back from the catcher and he's around the mound and then he just it's 15 seconds until he starts his

wind up or starts his motion to come set which if you think about it you could just come set and hold it for like a long time if you wanted to. So it's really, I don't think that this is going to be a huge change. I think it would be pretty easy to manipulate if you're a pitcher, if you need a breather, you just come set and that's it. Yep. All right. Well, we've got a lot of good emails this week, so let's get to those. Let's start with a couple of follow-ups to our previous email episode. So last time we talked about Philip Evans, the Mets player who hit a walk-off Grand Slam in a spring training game, and you chronicled what a walk-off Grand Slam celebration looks like in spring training, considerably more muted than in a major league game. about the spring training walk-off Grand Slam discussed in episode 1187 that I feel should not be overlooked. Not only did nobody in the dugout help Philip Evans celebrate, but he was greeted at home by two teammates and a bat boy, which suggests that even one of the runners who was

already on base didn't bother to stick around and wait for him, but just touched home and ran away as soon as possible. Didn't even cross my mind Or maybe one of the runners was the bat boy Maybe there was a substitution It's spring training Yeah spring training is weird And then the other follow up from Nicholas He says when you discuss the hypothetical contract

Of a player who can't fly to baseball games I immediately started thinking about Dutch superstar soccer player Dennis Bergkamp When Bergkamp signed a deal With Arsenal in 1996, there was a stipulation in the contract that he would never have to fly to games. He had become so afraid of flying that he got panic attacks just getting near a plane. This was also the reason he stopped playing for the Dutch national team. So how much money did he lose in contract negotiations?

He wrote this in his autobiography, quote, I know what flying is. I've flown countless times in large planes, small ones, tiny ones. At Ajax, I once flew in a minuscule plane over Mount Etna near Naples where we got into a terrible air pocket. In terms of flying, I've seen it and done it all, and I'm simply not flying again ever. In talks with Arsenal, if I said a million, they automatically deducted 100 grand because, quote, you don't fly. And I accepted that. So Nicholas continues he lost 10% because of his fear of flying. As far as I know, he never missed any league games in England, but he did miss because it's probably a lot easier to get away with this in England than it is in the United States because this is a big country. So the

number of games that you would miss, and we went through an estimate of that last time, but it would be a lot easier to get to all of the games in England without flying than it would be in the majors. Yep. All right. so moving on to new emails new business Jesus says this reddit post got me thinking about how this would apply to baseball and he links us to the aforementioned reddit post and it says you've just been hired as the ad athletic director of your rival program how do you keep your job for as long as possible while doing as much damage to that program as possible? So Jesus continues, let's say you were Dave Dombrowski and he were secretly a Yankees homer. What could he do to sabotage the Sox yet still keep his job for as

long as possible? Would it make more sense to only ruin the games they play against the Yankees to try to maintain competitiveness or the illusion of competitiveness? What type of success would So double agent. Baseball operations double agent, essentially. Okay, so you got to keep your job, but you got to tank your team. You want to keep your job, job i guess to do the most damage possible over the longest term although i guess i guess there's like a flame out scenario where you do a lot of damage in a very short span of time and maybe that's the most damage you can do i don't know yeah what's the what's the most sinister what's the quietest way because you know you can make a bunch of shel Miller trades and you could argue that Dave

Dombrowski has tried his hardest to drain every farm system that he's ever occupied. But his teams have been good so that's kind of the trouble here. So I think you do have to focus on the Red Sox-Yankees games specifically, not exclusively, but specifically you need to, especially because you figured

for the next several years, this one included, the Red Sox and the Yankees are going to be vying for that division title. So if the Yankees can just beat the Red Sox by a few games every year, then that kind of accomplishes an enormous goal. So let's see, how do you make your team worse in those games? You can't injure your players. I think this probably comes down to the thing that we talked about briefly the other day, which was make everyone sick. If you're contagious, go to work, hang out in the clubhouse.

Not don't poison them with like nerve agents, but just allow allow sicknesses to get around. I don't know if you if you overuse pitchers, but you can always maybe I don't know. You could you could demote someone from the bullpen if they were maybe worked hard or not even worked hard just before a Yankees series. And then you bring up someone who's actually not very good, or maybe you don't do that. If the bullpen is exhausted, then you don't option anyone down. But it would be really difficult aside from make bad trades with the Yankees, which would probably catch attention really quickly. Yeah, that would be suspicious.

Yeah, if you're just the GM or the front office person, there's only so much you can do to affect the outcome in specific games. I mean, unless you are actively hurting your players in some way, you can't really control the in-game moves, and you can't really demote good players from the team without arousing suspicion. So if it is a Yankees-Red Sox situation specifically, you could argue that just hurting the Red Sox in the long term might be more beneficial to the Yankees just because the

Red Sox are usually the Yankees' number one competitor in that division. I mean, take the Red Sox out of competition this year in the AL East and the Yankees number one competitor in that division. I mean, take the Red Sox out of competition this year in the AL East and the Yankees could basically walk to the division title, it looks like. So if you wanted to just sabotage an organization in the long run, I think you could just make a series of trades that were bad, but not so bad that you would immediately be fired. Like there would be some defensible interpretation for them and you could appoint incompetent people to various important front office positions and that would go a long way in the future. Even if you were gone, the whole front office would be bad at its job.

So the benefits would continue to accrue even after you were replaced. So I think you could do that. You could just, you know, reduce your budget, say, to scouting and player development. Just make sure that the pipeline of future players is kind of closed off and trade your prospects for middling veterans. And so there are a lot of ways I think you could really hamstring yourself. You could try to run an organization on principle. Instead of trying to have the best or most efficient team possible, you could say, well, you know what? We are a very prominent organization, one of the most prominent and well-known baseball teams, major league operations in North America. We want to make sure that we are representative in every way. We're not going to acquire players who have any sort of troubled background. We only want great character guys, and we want great diversity of views in the front office, which now granted, that is a good thing, but you could also use it to justify bad behavior and bringing people into the fold who maybe

aren't that smart but who or at least who don't know baseball very well but who are not represented within the game and so you could just sort of try to sell yourself as as the good club the principled club the club that you can really believe in and maybe you bring in a lot of hometown players because you want people to support them and you you re-sign players to stick around because they're fan favorites and you don't want people to see them leave and so you just build this team and it's not what's the word good it's not a good team but you you market it as this is the team that you should find the most likable we're going to go for the most progressive and likable baseball team around and that will keep you a job for five years, and then you're bad.

Yeah, I mean, it's not so different from what Peter Angelos has done in just ignoring all international markets, right, and not even putting a bid in for Shohei Otani as sort of a principled stand of some sort. And he's gotten away with that, and it's certainly hurt the Orioles in the long term. So you could do that sort of thing, just ignore important markets. You could pay a bunch of money to your minor leaguers. Instead of renewing your young players

for close to the major league minimum, you could just give them a lot of money and just erode away the value of having a cost-controlled young player in the first place and just be like, you know what, Mookie Betts, you should probably get more money than you get, so we're going to give it to you. Yeah, sure. Let me just do that. Yeah, everyone would like you, and you'd probably be pretty bad at baseball for a while. Yeah, that's a good idea.

All right, let's do, well, let's take a couple of Ronald Acuna questions. Who doesn't like a Ronald Acuna question? So this one is from- Hall the fame class of 2034. Yeah. No, wait, that's too early. Yeah, probably, because he'll be playing for 20 years as a superstar, of course. So Scott says, the Ronald Acuna mystique stems in part from his improvement at every level in 2017, and actually before that. But in 2017, 814 OPS at high A, 895 OPS at double A, 940 OPS at triple A, all as a 19-year-old, and then also was the Arizona Fall League performance, right? He doesn't include that in this article, but he was the MVP of the AFL, which is important, so his OPS

there was 1,053, so he kept it up there. Scott says, what if Acuna can continuously improve at every level he plays? Should Acuna post a 950 OPS during the regular season? That would be a Hall of Fame level debut for someone who can't legally drink. What's the next level up after the big leagues? MLB playoffs? Okay. So say Acuna is so good in 2018 that he leads the Braves to the playoffs and he produces a 975 OPS in the postseason how could we continue to test Acuna's Kaizen after that the all-star game is too small a sample size is there a space jam style intergalactic tournament he can play in and I will note that even if we include the AFL and his 1,000-plus OPS there,

if we count Major League Spring Training as another level, he's still doing it. 2018 Major League Spring Training, as we speak, he has an OPS of 1130, so he has continued to increase it. So he'd now have to have a regular season OPS of like 1150 to keep up this trend. I don't have a good suggestion here because there is no higher league other than Major League Baseball. I think we answered an email

question on some episode long ago about like a higher league composed of just the best players from Major League Baseball concentrated into an even more elite level but that doesn't exist obviously so i don't know yeah after postseason and like each progressive postseason round i guess could be its own level beyond that i don't know yeah no the only thing you can really do is just try to make his major league competition better and better so i guess you yeah trade change divisions to like i don't know the al east is pretty much always the best because it's got two juggernauts in it and you know if you want to get really picky about it you could look at his opposition quality and if that keeps getting tougher and tougher uh just by like i don't know ops or whatever number you want to use then in theory he could technically be getting better

against better competition but no you're right it's it's the majors that's it yeah All right and then second Acuna question from Craig and Charlotte who says to Ensure Ronald Acuna is in the Braves Opening day lineup why doesn't the team Just sign him to a lifetime contract If this were a possibility what would it Take for both sides to actually think about it

15 years and 20 million 15 Years and 25 million 20 years and 30 million if Acuna really is The next elite level player he'll likely sign a massive free agent contract down the road that could exceed $300 to $400 million. If he's merely a good player, a Justin Upton or J.D. Martinez level player, he's not sniffing that much money. Could the Braves actually be talked into committing that much money to one player who hasn't even had one major league at bat? Would a player even want to lock into a contract knowing how much money he'd make for his entire career? Who balks at the idea? So I answered this via email. The Braves would very, very happily give Ronald Kudia any one of those numbers that Greg just quoted and possibly double and triple that. I think that is nowhere close to what it would take to do this.

So what I said in my email is that in theory, something like this could happen, but not for that kind of money. I guess the closest comp really is Evan Longoria, who signed in, what, 2008 or 2007, whenever his rookie year was. A year into his rookie year, he signed what had the potential to be a nine-year $44 million extension. That was a decade ago, and that was a notorious contract that, for years after, was either celebrated or maligned as an extremely team-friendly deal. And I think players have become more aware of the fact that teams have

generally gotten more than their money's worth on those early career extensions for young players. And I think they might hold out for more than that. And because Acuna has just owned every level he's played at, as we just talked about, and because he's been extremely young at every level while he's done that, he is owning Major League Spring Training right now. He's the number one prospect in baseball. Stats and scouts all agree that he's as close to a can't-miss prospect as there is in baseball. I just think it would take a ton to sign him. And Longoria had gotten a $3 million signing bonus in the draft,

which maybe made him more willing to settle, whereas Acuna, I think, signed for only $100,000. So this would still be life-changing money for him, but there's just no way that he would sign away his entire career for less than Longoria got for a shorter span of time, especially now where I think players are really hyper aware of how much they essentially get screwed over by the current economic system in baseball. Yeah, okay, so let's see. Looking at Ronald Acuna, he was given a 65 future value rating in the Fangraph's top 100 prospect list about a month ago.

And last summer, that converted into an estimated surplus value. I know this is making me sense of the listener of about 70 million dollars I think that's under shooting I would suspect that Acuna is probably more like a 70 arguably even a 75 I don't know he does have some swing and miss in his game but if you put him in a 70 then the estimated surplus value for his cost controlled years is 107 million dollars so if you are a cuneus camp you don't accept less than that at all and again that covers only six or seven technically years of your

career where his expectation is that he's going to play for much more than that so i don't know how you do lifetime and come up with terms because you don know how long his career was going to go but if at this point you expect him to be at least an average player and he's probably going to play like 10 years you should be looking at i don't know where where's the minimum if you're going to go 15 years like 250 million or is that still too low because Because he could destroy that value. He could. And that's another thing I said in my email is that even the examples of a merely good outcome, as Craig put it, I mean, since then, he will have made $132 million by the time he's finished with his age 34 season. And both of those guys could potentially get another contract on top of their current one. I mean, even if those are like the disappointing outcome for a prospect like Acuna, you're still talking huge, you know, high nine figures. I mean, way over 100 million. So I think, yeah, I mean, it sounds amazing that someone who has not had a single at-bat in the majors could command like $200 million. majors could command like $200 million, but I think there's just a great recognition now that the gap between being great in AAA and the AFL and spring training and the majors just is not

that significant, particularly for a position player. That's the other thing. It's not like Acuna is a pitcher who potentially could rupture a shoulder any second and have his career be over. potentially could you know rupture a shoulder any second and have his career be over that's extremely unlikely for a player like him so i mean yeah you have to start at 200 250 it would be unprecedented so maybe ownership would balk at something like this but i think just based on expected value you'd have to start talking about something in that range. Yeah, what do the owners care? They'll be dead by the time this contract is up anyway, because they play forever. We don't have a lot of comparisons. You brought up Longoria, but like Yohan Mankata, when he was signed, he was given a $31.5 million signing bonus,

which because of the rules was effectively doubled in expenditure. So he was signed for about $63 million back in 2015 2015 and he wasn't even all that close to the majors at that point so maybe even a better comp at this point would be Shohei Otani who of course signed for nothing but if Otani were a free agent the talk was that he would command a price of like 200 to 250 million dollars this offseason if he were a free agent and that again would cover however many years the service time years and it wouldn't cover his entire career now i don't know akunia versus otani i don't know who you might like more otani technically can pitch and hit but

you know he's mostly a pitcher and that comes with injury risk whereas akunia is a hitter and he's great so if you figure i don't know 200 that's probably too steep for just a service time years. But I mean, then you get into the free agency years and those should be so expensive, especially because they're like seven years down the road and there's going to be inflation, probably in the free agent market. I guess we don't know. Yeah, maybe.

God, now we're pushing 400 million. A lot of money. It would be a lot of money. Yes, we can agree on that. All right. Maybe a quicker one here from Connor who says, I was browsing Fangraph's pitching stats leaderboard just now and saw something that I found very interesting.

For some reason, the all-time box leader, Steve Carlton, has twice as many box as any other pitcher in Major League history. He has 90 box. Second place is Bob Welch with 45. Why did this happen? Has there been a drastic rule shift? And this really is a fun fact. It's not unknown.

You may be aware of this trivia, but if you weren't, it is pretty shocking that any pitcher could double any other pitcher. And I did a little research and thinking and answered Connor. So I think it's a combination of a few things. First of all, Steve Carlton just pitched forever. So that's a big part of it. Obviously, if you have a long career, then you have more opportunity to accumulate box. And he pitched for 24 seasons in the majors and more than 5,000 innings. So that will partially do it. Second, he was a lefty and he had one of those borderline balk pickoff moves. So, you know, in the way that when Andy Pettit would make his pickoff move and you'd always hear, oh, that's technically a balk.

And he kind of gets an exception. And Carlton, I think think usually got an exception too but not always so sometimes he would get called on it and then the third thing I think is that he pitched in a high balk era and we don't usually think of like era effects on balks but they exist and they're significant and I found this fun post by a guy named David Venturi, and I will link to this blog post, but it's a deep dive on Bach stats, and he showed how Bach rates have changed over time. Because of all of the stolen bases. If there were runners stealing triple digit stolen base totals. Obviously there were more threats to run. There were more pick off attempts presumably. And more box called.

And so the 80s as a whole were a pretty box rich era. And 88 of course is known as the year of the box. That was the year that the box rules were changed. So that the complete stop that the bach rules were changed so that the complete stop in the rule was changed was replaced with a single complete and discernible stop with both feet on the ground it was supposed to make bachs more uniform and easier to call but instead it annoyed everyone and bachs spiked to a rate that we've never seen before or since. There was like one Buc every 40 innings pitched or so in that year, the year of the Bucs. So that was Carlton's last year in the majors.

So that doesn't have such a significant effect. But he was pitching throughout that decade when Bucs were fairly common. So I think it's just a combination of those three things, really. And one other fun fact from this post by David Venturi, which, again, I will link to, the guy who is the anti-Steve Carlton, the bizarro Steve Carlton, the guy who threw the most innings without ever balking, is Kirk Reeder, who threw 1,918 innings and never balked in the majors. Did he? I mean, I don't think anyone ever would have been thinking he was a threat to throw over because he threw so slow, but let's see, he was a lefty, so runners maybe wouldn't have, how was Reeder's running game control?

I've been working on my own fun facts here. Don't recall. I can tell you Reeder stole a base in his career. That's uncommon. But in terms of everything else i'm just uh buying time here while i uh scroll on down the answer is that kirk oh my god kirk reader how did we not know this kirk reader for his career lefty 34 stolen bases allowed yeah 65 caught steals whoa that's like a one out of three success rate kirk Reeder was amazing, and he never balked.

Yeah, that's pretty impressive. Yeah, good for Kirk Reeder. Here I was just looking up other stupid nonsense, like, for example, the career leader in hit-by-pitches for a pitcher. Shout out to Gus Weying, who at 277, he's the all-time leader in hit-by-pitches, and he has a 58 hit-by-pitch lead over second place. So that's pretty good. But there is probably nothing better.

First of all, year of the Bach is maybe the worst possible headline to describe a baseball season, if you're looking for interest. But maybe the best comparison. So Pete Rose would be a good comparison in terms of he blew away everyone else historically in catcher's interference calls because he played forever but for one jacoby ellsbury who has surged i've written about this a million times but jacoby ellsbury is the all-time leader in catcher's interference calls at 31 that he's drawn i think he even also drew in the playoffs that doesn't count here we do have is that a walk-off catcher's interference hold on i gotta click on this a walk-off catcher's interference? Hold on. I got to click on this tab.

Walk-off catcher's interference, according to the play index, took place 1971, August 1st. It was Willie Crawford, who was the batter, against Joe Gibbon. Bases were loaded, bottom of the 11th. I got to scroll into this box score. Reds-Dodgers. Reds rallied in the top of the 9th to tie the game 4-4. We go to the 11th. I don't know what the stakes were in this game. Reds-Dodgers. Reds rallied in the top of the ninth to tie the game 4-4. We go to the 11th. I don't know what the stakes were in this game.

Reds-Dodgers, 70s. It's probably important. Joe Ferguson led off with a single. Wes Parker then bunted unsurprisingly, and then he reached base on the bunt. There was an error. Maury Wills was at the bat. Wild pitch, and then Maury Wills struck out looking. Manny Mota was intentionally walked. Bill

Buckner. Oh my goodness, I didn't even realize the Dodgers tied the game in this inning. It was four to three coming into this. Tony Perez hit a home run anyway. Bill Buckner was hit by a pitch to tie the game with the bases loaded, so this game is already nuts. Then Dick Allen grounded out, there's an out at home. Willie Craw, come on.

Willie Crawford, this is the list. Okay, bases loaded one out. Dick Allen ground out, force out at home. So bases loaded. This is the list. Okay. Bases loaded one out. Dick Allen ground out. Force out at home. So bases loaded, right? Two outs. Okay. Then it says Willie Crawford, Bach, but Moda stays at third base.

Buckner stays at second. Allen stays at first. There's a Bach listed, but nothing happened. I don't know what that means. But then it says Willie Crawford reached on interference on catcher. Moda scores. Unearned run. Buckner to third. Allen to second. Crawford to first. I'm going to guess that game on interference on catcher moda scores unearned run buckner to third allen to second crawford to first i'm going to guess that game ended with a catcher's interference that was mislabeled as a buck but maybe it was a buck i don't know so that game

either ended with a walk-off catcher's interference the only one in baseball history or a walk-off buck well and it was tied because of a bases loaded hit by pitch if they'd started that inning with a runner on second none of that would have happened, probably. That's what we're losing here, people. All right. Well, we're already sort of in stat blast territory here, so we might as well just make it official. Let's cue up the stat blast. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+.

And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to Deist-a-plast. Oh yeah, I forgot that I even put something together here. It's Pi Day. Yeah, we each have a step last year, right? Yeah, so why don't you say yours? Okay, so yeah, you and I are speaking on Pi Day, March 14th. No one is listening to this on Pi Day, but you're listening soon after Pi Day, presumably. So we have a couple

themed stat blasts here. So Maxime asks, what is the most Pi game ever in terms of runs scored per inning? Has a team ever scored three runs in the first inning, one in the second, four in the third, one in the fourth, five in the fifth? I doubt that a team has ever scored nine runs in the sixth after scoring three, one, four, one, five runs in the innings before, but we never know. Well, actually, we do know, or I know, and you're all about to know. So I consulted one of my go-to stats people on this question, Dan Hirsch of the wonderful website, The Baseball Gauge. Everyone should be using that site regularly. And Dan very quickly determined the answer here for me. So there's no

game where both teams have scored 3-1-4 in the first three innings. So that is not combined, but each team individually scoring 3-1-4. So that hasn't happened. No team has scored 3-1-4-1-5 in the first five innings. That has never happened either. Three teams have scored 3-1-4-1-5 in the first five innings. That has never happened either. Three teams have scored 3-1-4-1 in the first four innings. So that has happened three times. First time, July 4th, 1872, the Middletown Mansfields versus the Boston Redstockings. Then it also happened September 14th, 1989, Rangers-Royals, and most recently, May 19th, 2000, Pirates versus Cardinals. 28 teams have scored 3-1-4 in the first three in both teams totaling one run in the second inning not both of them each separately scoring that run total but scoring run totals that add up to those totals we have three runs in the first inning that has happened combined 15,197 times going

three runs in the first inning one run in second inning, that has happened 3,046 times. Going 3-1-4 in the first three innings, that has happened 118 times. And going 3-1-4-1 in the first four innings, that has happened 26 times, most recently on August 13, 2012, Brewers and Rockies. There has never been a game when both teams have had combined run totals that were 3-1-4-1-5 in the first five innings, although three times teams have combined for four runs in the fifth inning. So they came one run short of getting to five and pulling the sequence off for five innings but that's the answer it's only ever happened four innings we've only ever taken pie out to three decimal places in baseball games which uh sort of surprised me because there have been an awful lot of baseball games but it just hasn't gone any farther than that so that is the answer mansfields versus the red stock you only have to go back 150 years so that the red stockings have the more intimidating mascot nickname yeah so you looked for pie games and i i went looking for pie seasons or careers and so i was looking for uh for hitters and pitchers and i just kept it simple

by looking at batting average and era we are nothing if not traditional here on effectively wild yes so i got i found some better position with the hitters. So just to get this out of the way, I looked at pitchers. And for everyone, I looked at individual seasons and whole careers. I looked at zero playing time minimum. I just wanted anything. So there have been three identical closest to pie seasons in baseball history. In terms of ERA, we're looking at Mel Parnell, which is fun to say, 1948. Paul Feutek, 1957, also fun to say. And Jerry Kuzman,nell which is fun to say 1948 paul foytek 1957 also fun to say and

jerry kuzman 1970 also fun to say that's something that they all have in common so those pictures allowed 74 earned runs in 212 innings which works out to an era of 3.141509434 so that takes it to what is it spy is three point one four one five nine so this takes us to five digits which is pretty good yeah they are the the closest pi pitchers in terms of era but it gets uh it gets even more fun when you look at the hitters and uh using batting average i mean this of course requires requires a little bit of manipulation of pi to move the decimal over. So if you want to complain, no hitter has ever batted 3.14. Ronald Acuna will. We have another three-way tie.

For closest to pi batting averages, we have Jim Tomey in 1995. We have Turner Barber in 1921. And the unforgettableim tommy in 1995 we have turner barber in 1921 and the unforgettable scoops carry in 1902 so nicknamed i assume it was a nickname because he was a first baseman i don't know if that's true but there's no other explanation that makes any sense and i doubt that his given name was scoops anyway in those seasons those uh those batters batted 452 times and they had 142 hits which works out to a batting average of 0.31415929 which takes us to what is that the eighth decimal before there's any difference between those in pi they're off by the difference here between pi and their batting averages works out to 2.66764 to the uh negative eighth power i haven't actually said powers in a while, so I

think I got that correct, but they're very close. Those are easily the most Pi seasons. I could have looked at on base percentage or, God forbid, selecting percentage, any number of stats. I could have calculated historical WOBA if I wanted to. I didn't. So Tomy, Barber, and Kerry, they get the most Pi-like batting averages for your consumption when you listen to this on the day after Pi Day. All right. Well, those were both very thorough, possibly too thorough answers. So, there you go. There is.

Oh. There's more. I just noticed, eyeing this, Ed Konechi. Have you ever heard the name Ed Konechi before? Yeah. I don't know if it's pronounced that way, but maybe. I don't either. But he's not going to correct me, I can tell you that, because we're looking at seasons in 1912 and 1915.

Ed Konecki, or whatever it is, and you'll probably correct me soon, he batted.31412 in 1912, and in 1915 he batted.3314236 anyway the the reason i did this is because i i just found the difference the smallest differences between pie and the batting averages and ed kanechi has two of the 23 let's just call it 25 two of the closest 25 seasons to pie in batting average does that mean that ed kanechi had something mystical going on that drew him toward a pie? Probably not, but I will have to ask him when I'm dead. Okay. All right.

Let's take a question. Another opt-out question. This is from Jamal, who says, your recent discussion on how good Jason Hayward would have to be to opt out of his contract got me thinking how good would David Price have to be in 2018 to opt out of his deal. So David Price is making $30 million this year. He can opt out following this season, and he has another four seasons on his deal for a total of $127 million.

So it'll be $31, $32, $32, $32. So that's a hefty salary, but not so many years. And really, I mean, there aren't that many players who are making more than this still per year, period. David Price's deal wasn't signed all that long ago, really. So, I mean, if David Price bounced back and had like a peak David Price season with no injury concerns, even if he did that, he would be entering his age 33 season. And given the injury issues in the past year, I think a lot of people would be wary about him. So I can't imagine him getting a massive contract i could see something like the justin upton situation maybe where in exchange for not opting out he gets like another year tacked on

something like that but it would be difficult i think to beat four and 127 for a going on 33 year old price yeah so masa here tanaka declined to opt out of his contract this past winter and i know that he had a home run prone first half last season but he could have opted out of three years and 67 million dollars and he didn't he decided to stay with the yankees and that's only one case but i am whenever i think of david price now i think about whatever is happening in his elbow and i don't think that it's good uh masahiro tanaka of course went through something similar where he didn't have tommy john but he's just pitching through damage every pitcher is pitching through damage but i don't really trust david price as much as i used to he used to think of him as the model of durability and now i i am wavering a little bit so it would take like

a a kershavian season i think in order for him to opt out of the money that he has left because even when he signed that contract it was enormous? It wasn't the biggest contract given to a pitcher. It might even still be because Zach Rankin was less and Kershaw's going to blow it away. But yeah, it would have to be the best season for a pitcher in baseball, I think, for him to opt out. Yeah. All right. Question from Ranger who wants to know about half splits and future performance. This is Carlos Gonzalez. Oh, yeah. His name is Ranger. His name is Ranger.

This addresses the question that we had a few weeks ago. Yes. Yes. Someone, I think, wrote in to say that he had named his kid Ranger, but this is presumably a different Ranger. So Ranger may be one of the more popular names that is also the name of a Major League Baseball team. So Ranger responding to our Carlos Gonzalez discussion. Of course, Gonzalez had an extreme first half, second half split was much better later in the season. So Ranger says, when a player has dramatically different halves of a season, it's always tempting to believe that there is some reason that can explain away the bad half, health mechanics, etc. some reason that can explain away the bad half, health mechanics, etc. Is there any evidence to suggest that players with very different halves in one year will in the next year outperform players who had similar overall production but a more even distribution between halves? And this is

something that I know Nate Silver researched long ago, and I found a reference to it that Rani Jazeerli wrote on his Royals blog in 2008. I couldn't quickly find the original study, but Rani writes, Silver found that a player's second half performance is slightly more indicative of his performance the following year than how he played in the first half. It's not a huge factor, something along the lines of 54 to 46 percent, but it's there and it's there for players of all ages. So that's the only really study I recall of this. And I would guess that this is ripe for another study because this just seems like one of those areas where maybe in the past, this would have been downplayed or dismissed. But today with the knowledge that we have of what statistics are the most

meaningful in small samples and the new technology we have and the way that players are seemingly reinventing themselves more and more often, I would guess there's something to this and that maybe it's easier to detect and maybe even more true today than it was in the past. So in the way that we used to dismiss spring training statistics and say they didn't matter because if you just look at like ERA or OPS or something, it doesn't really matter. It's not sensitive enough to pick up on something. But a couple years ago, Dan Rosenheck wrote a study at The Economist that showed that spring training stats can be somewhat predictive if you look at the right stats. And that's like, you know,

strikeout rate and swing rate and things that are more directly under the player's control. So I would guess that if you did a really good study on whether second half performance matters, you know, over and above full season performance, I would guess that it does, but not an enormous amount. Yeah, whenever you look at any decent projection system, it always more heavily weights the most recent data.

And the way that you look at that usually is the most recent full season. Yep. And then the second most recent full season, then the third, et cetera. And there's no reason why that principle shouldn't carry forward such that the most recent half is weighted a little more heavily than the first half.

But I am almost certain that the difference is pretty small. But yeah, I'd always rather have a better second half than a better first. All right. I have a couple of questions here have a better second half than a better first. Yeah. All right. I have a couple of questions here that are related to retired White Sox players, but maybe that's not the most amazing pitch for these questions,

but I think they're both pretty interesting. So I'll start with this one from Dylan. So this one is about headlines. Dylan says, I was reading Roger Cormier's, Cormier's, I assume, Cormier's, your new Fangraphs colleague, his article about the history of the bullpen car. The first guy to write in one was apparently Mickey Hefner. Obviously, I had to go to Hefner's Fangraphs page and dissect his career stats with the off-kilter enthusiasm of a guy who is definitely not procrastinating an important essay on ancient Chinese monarchical structure. Hefner managed 13 war over a 1500-ish innings pitch

career, despite only striking out 3 per 9 and walking over 3.5 per 9. Perhaps it's just my modern sensibilities, but that is just gross. To determine if it was just my modern sensibilities, I reached for Play Index, found out that there have only been 83 pitchers to throw 1,000 innings and walk more than they struck out. 82 of 83 pitch no later than 1961, save Greg Minton, who pitched from 1975 to 1990. Indeed, my sensibilities were modern, other than Minton, who, uh, well, why? Then there's Ted Lyons. Then there's Ted Lyons. Lyons threw 4,000 innings over 21 years with a.96 strikeout-to-walk ratio and about 67 war as the only Hall of Fame pitcher ever to walk more than he struck out.

He even went and fought in the Pacific Theater of World War II at age 42 despite being draft-exempt and pitched another season for the White Sox three years later once the war was over. A few questions. How? How? Will we ever see this breed of extreme contact pitcher again? What circumstances would allow for a pitcher in today's MLB to walk more than he strikes out and still perform above league average? With the current state of hitters

approaches, is it even possible to induce tons of contact and like no strikeouts ever? So no, I don't think, but I wanted to try to explain Ted Lyons' Career and his successful career So first of all you have to be aware That the league wide strikeout to walk Ratio in that era And he pitched from 1923 Through 1946 with that

Break for the war years So during that time .96 as a strikeout to walk ratio wasn't good, but it wasn't really bad either. It was roughly average. Sometimes the average was a bit below one. Sometimes it was a bit above one, but it was always right around there. Guys just didn't strike out back then like they do today. So I think Lyons was good, A, because he was sort of a soft contact, low BABIP guy. He had a.277 career BABIP, and BABIPs back then were roughly what they are now in the.290s,.300 range. So he was good at weak contact, and that's maybe because he developed a knuckleball several years into his career after he hurt his arm, and knuckleballs tend to induce weak contact. So that helped. tend to induce weak contact, so that helped.

Second, he just didn't decline ever, maybe because of the knuckleball. He just kept going and going and going, and however you divide his career, you'd probably find that the latter half of it was better. So he was just at his most successful, really, toward the tail end of his career. So that's part of it. And third, he wasn't that great by Hall of Fame standards.

He was kind of a compiler. He had a well below average peak Jaws score for a Hall of Fame pitcher, but he just lasted long enough and accrued enough innings to get him over the career Jaws baseline. circle hall of fame career and yeah i don't think we're gonna see another ted lions or even someone who could have like a successful season with ted lions like stats i can't even recall like there was that weird aaron cook year a while back where for a while he was making that work but then he did not make that work he just can't really make that work today. Yeah, I mean, you need to be an extreme ground ball pitcher. There's really no other way around it here. And let's see, Aaron Cook in his last season, he had a ERA of, well, 5.65. So not good.

No. He did have more walks and strikeouts. Now, whenever I think about this, I'm always reminded of Nate Cornejo of 2003 Tigers fame. Cornejo was not wild. He was just bad. But he had a career ERA of 5.41, ERA plus of 80. It's not very good, but, you know, he did start 56 games of the majors. And he had 115 walks in his career and 103 strikeouts.

He missed bats never. And he hung around. And he wasn't as dreadful as it seems like he could have been. But I'm also reminded of our old but new friend, Kirk Reeder. Kirk Reeder did not walk a lot of players over his career, but over his final seven seasons of his career, by which I mean his final six seasons of his career, he had an ERA plus of 96, which is fine.

That's like a number four starter, number five starter. And he had 342 walks and 352 strikeouts. He did not have a strikeout to walk ratio under one, but he was basically there and he had 342 walks and 352 strikeouts he did not have a strikeout to walk ratio under one but he was basically there and he was okay and one of the reasons is because he didn't allow anyone to steal a base it turns out and he even better than that he just got them out if they were on base so if you have a really great pickoff move, then I guess that helps. It's good if you never balk. I think that because of Kirk Reeder's comically enormous ears, he could hear base coaches talking to runners about what their plans were,

and so that gave him a strategic advantage. I would never recommend the Kirk Reeder path, but he is maybe the most recent example of a pitcher with that kind of strikeout to walk ratio who was fined for more than a few months. All right. And then the other White Sox related question, this is from a listener named Ben. He says it was inspired by a question in a recent Jay Jaffe Fangraphs chat, which was about Frank Thomas and Walt Riniak, the tutor of Frank Thomas, one of the hitting specialists of that era, sort of in the Charlie Lau mold. So he Googles an article about Hriniak and Thomas. And so he writes,

they summarize Hriniak was strict in his philosophy, head on ball, swing to hit up the middle, and that Ted Williams at the time preached an uppercut, get the ball in the air style. There's this great section of the Sun Sentinel article here. Quote, Marzano's point on the younger players has caused a stir in Chicago as well as Boston. Last year, the White Sox flew first-round draft pick Frank Thomas into Chicago from Sarasota for a promotion with fellow Auburn alumnus Bo Jackson, who is in town with the Royals. After Thomas returned to the Class A team, Al Goldis, the team's director of scouting and player development, was aghast at his swing and asked the young first baseman about it. That's how Coach Riniak told me to do it, Thomas said. So Ben continues, I'm a lifelong Sox fan who grew up with Frank Thomas.

Riniak was his mentor. Thomas used him as his exclusive hitting instructor even when he was no longer the team batting coach. It was often written about how Thomas, despite his mass, was not trying to be a home run hitter, but to spray it over the field. This changed around 2003 as he got older and Thomas was more obsessed with his own numbers, wanted to get to 500 homers and beyond. Admittedly, this is off memory, struggling to find much Google support. Hall of Famer, Frank Thomas in his prime hit 40 home runs a lot. Is it far-fetched to think that if Ted Williams had taught Thomas instead of Riniac, Thomas would have been better? Looking at the massive man he was, slow and lumbering, would you pick a weirder candidate to say, try and just hit a line drive up the middle for a single? And that's a good point. I would say he's not the most natural or obvious candidate for that sort of swing. But Frank Thomas was so good that I don't know if I can imagine him being better in any way. So the way I answered Ben, I just did some Fangraphs leaderboard looking. And so, I mean, in his 20s, Thomas was almost unparalleled.

So only five hitters in the modern era of Major League Baseball have been as productive per plate appearance in their 20s as Thomas was in his 20s with a minimum of 2,000 plate appearances. And the only guys ahead of him are all from much earlier eras. earlier eras so if you just go in their 20s sort by wrc plus minimum 2000 player appearances it goes babe ruth 208 ted williams 193 ty cobb 182 rogers hornsby 180 nap lajue 179 frank thomas 177 so he is right there number six with only like formative inner circle type Hall of Famers ahead of him. So it's just hard to imagine. Like I can imagine Thomas with a different approach hitting more homers maybe, but because he was so good at everything, great power, great patience, great contact skills, he never struck out. He hit for high averages. He still did hit for a lot of power. So it's not like he was sacrificing that much power presumably. He hit for high averages. He still did hit for a lot of power. So it's not like he was sacrificing that much power, presumably. He was just so amazing that I can imagine him being

amazing in a different way, but I can't imagine him being that much better just because so few players ever were. Yep. Nope. Can't make Frank Thomas much better given what he was. One of the best hitters of all time. I'll point out that according to at least the baseball reference splits, he was terrible hitting to the opposite field, just absolutely nothing doing over there. He pulled everything, and he was great at it. He had a, well, I don't want to bring up TOPS+, but here we are, TOPS+, of 203 to the pull field. But more importantly than that, Frank Thomas, for his career, according to baseball reference,

had a very fly ball oriented approach. I don't know how reliable ground ball fly ball splits are back then. Something looks a little funny, but according to Baseball Reference, the MLB average ground ball to fly ball ratio over the course of Thomas's career was 0.79. And Thomas's ratio is 0.48, which is much lower. And that did not only change late in his career. 0.48, which is much lower. And that did not only change late in his career. So I suspect that Frank Thomas was always an airball hitter, always a power hitter. And even if the home runs were, I don't know, kind of accidental, he sure hit a lot of them. Yeah. I mean, he hit over 300 for his career despite being a low average hitter in his latter years. So, I mean, he topped out at 353 for a single season batting average

and 42 homers as single season highs. So like if he had totally sold out for power, maybe he could have hit 50, 60. And if he had gone entirely contact oriented, who knows? I mean, maybe he could have hit 400 or something if he just sort of choked up and went for contact because he really did not strike out for a power hitter of his caliber. But I would guess that he found either the optimal balance or something very close to it because he was just an absolute force of nature in those days. Yep. All right. All right. I am going to close with two questions for our official scorer correspondent, Darren, longtime listener who is actually a major league official scorer, so comes in very handy to have his help when we get official scoring questions. So Nathan says, I got to thinking about stolen

bases, and as I understand it, the official scorer can decide that a successful steal attempt was due to defensive indifference, and it doesn't go in the books as a steal. What are the limits to this? I assume there must be some that I'm not able to find, but my thought was whether or not the A's could just decide to never contest Billy Hamilton's stolen base attempts. Maybe he's able to actually start getting on base and is 20 shy of the record, so the A's, having a vested interest in preserving Ricky Henderson's record, could decide not to throw, leaving the scorer to claim defensive indifference. Could that happen? Shouldn't a steal attempt be either a successful steal or caught stealing? Am I crazy? I asked Darren about this question. So this one has a fairly simple answer. So

Darren says this can't happen. It is actually specifically covered in the ML simple answer. So Darren says this can't happen. It is actually specifically covered in the MLB rules. So in the rulebook, this is a comment to rule 9.07G. And the last line of this rule comment says, quote, defensive team is impermissibly trying to deny a runner credit for a stolen base if, for example, the defensive team fails to defend the advance of a runner approaching a league or career record or a league statistical title. So this very scenario is actually covered in the rulebook. So you would need not only a team doing this, but also some kind of crooked official scorer being in cahoots with the team to get away with this.

And official scorers work for the league now. So that sort of thing doesn't really happen. So that is the answer to that question. Now this one is a little more complicated. This comes from Adam, who is a Patreon supporter. And he says, for a starting pitcher to be awarded a win, he needs to complete five innings. But do those innings need to be pitched consecutively? If his team took a first inning lead that it never gave up, could a pitcher throw four innings, Waxahachie swap to the outfield for a bit, come back in and

pitch another inning later for five innings total and be awarded a win? Or would his short starting segment mean the most effective reliever gets the win? But what if the starter's relief segment was very effective? Is he somehow prevented from being the winning pitcher due to the short start? So Darren took a while to get back to me about this one, had to do some serious research. So he says, I had to engage some of my other scorer peers to get their takes, as this isn't explicitly covered in the MLB rules. However, as the game evolves and we see this type of managerial maneuver, this might be something that is addressed in further rules classifications. So Adam, you might be onto something here. So Barron says, my colleagues and I seem to have settled on giving

the win to the starter. First, rule 917b, read perhaps more precisely than it was intended to be, says, quote, in which such pitcher is removed from the game. In this case, he wasn't, and doesn't say anything about uninterrupted innings. But the clincher for me comes from constructing an absurd edge case and thinking it through. Here, suppose your starter got put into right field for a batter. Who hits the reliever's only pitch for a homer? And then the starter retakes the mound for the rest of the game. If the rule is interpreted as disqualifying the starter, well, then you get into a strange situation.

Darren also says, also in looking at 917B2, if they don't make an exception for a five-inning game, the scorer might have to award The win to a relief pitcher who pitched Negligibly as in the twist I added so I guess this could happen But maybe this is something

That gets brought up at the next annual Official scorers meeting maybe Adams ahead of His time here it is really handy To have an official scorer listener Because otherwise I would not know how to answer these questions. I mean, clearly he must be enthusiastic about looking these

things up, but that last one must have taken a lot of time. It's just not covered. But now he'll be ready if it does happen. So that's good at least. I hope that he hasn't been flooded with requests since it became known that there is an official score listener yeah all right so we can wrap up there got a couple

more interesting ones but we'll save them for next time by the way jeff and i didn't cover the actual mechanics of the starting extra innings with the runner on second base rule if anyone is wondering about that the runner placed at second base will be the player in the batting order position previous to the leadoff batter of the inning. So the last batter from the previous inning, usually the guy who made the last out in the previous inning, although not always. And it's sort of considered an error that that runner got on base, but that error is not assigned to anyone. So if that runner scores, it's considered an unearned run, which is somewhat wonky and inelegant. But then this entire rule is you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. We are on the verge of hitting a milestone 1000 Patreon

supporters, which is I suppose somewhat demoralizing if you look at it as a percentage of our listeners. That would be a very small percentage, but very encouraging if you look at it as a percentage of our listeners. It would be a very small percentage, but very encouraging if you look at it from the perspective of, hey, a thousand people like this podcast enough to support it financially. So thanks to all of you. And five listeners who have just recently signed up and pledged some small monthly amount include Adam Dyke, Chang Ku, Amy Lee, Joseph Owen, and Matt Mason. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. More than 7,500 members in the group now. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcastfandgraphs.com

or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a Patreon supporter. Thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We have one more episode lined up for this week. It's another Team Preview podcast. And next time we will be talking Toronto Blue Jays and Pittsburgh Pirates. So we will be back very soon. Talk to you then. Darling, don't look now, someone's on your brain Take the gold from the mine

Take the salt from the air Take the promise that you don't have to keep Don't look now, it ain't you or me