Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1204: Shifting Weather Patterns

Episode Date: April 16, 2018

Ben Lindbergh, Jeff Sullivan, and Baseball Prospectus writer Russell Carleton discuss Russell’s new book, The Shift, banter about bad weather, Bartolo Colon, baseball’s unexpectedly competitive division races, Mike Trout topping one WAR leaderboard, Ronald Acuña’s (possibly) impending call-up, MLB’s low attendance so far, and a new Carter Capps imitator, then answer listener emails about Kris […]

🎵 For stormy weather For stormy weather Hello and welcome to episode 1204 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined as always by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello, Jeff. Hello. And today we are joined by one of the most frequent guests, if not the most frequent guest in this podcast history, although it has been a while since his last appearance, Russell Carlton of Baseball Prospectus. Hello, Russell. Hello. There it is.

Still got the old traditional Russell Carlton greeting. Well, you know, I am a creature of habit. Yeah. So it has been a while. We were just talking about that. We attempted to have you on one time not so long ago, but schedules and conflicts got in the way. But you have been on many a time. We have continued to cite you all the time. I feel like I'm citing some Russell Carlton research every other episode. So it feels like you've been here, but we had to have you actually here in person and are happy to have you here in person because

you wrote a book. I did? Congratulations. Thanks. It's called The Shift, The Next Evolution in Baseball Thinking. I am holding it in my hands, as I have been quite a bit lately. So we're going to talk about that briefly and then a bit of regular banter and then maybe even some emails.

We're doing everything in this episode. So you wrote a book. And for people who read you as religiously as I do, there are some greatest hits in there that they'll recognize from your previous work. But there's a lot of new stuff too and some old stuff in greater depth and complexity. Anyway, I've really been enjoying it as I enjoy all of your work. And I'm curious because you have been doing this, and by this I mean, you know, doing statistical work about baseball, not that it's all statistical, for quite a while now. You are the longest tenured writer at BP at this point, I would think not only now, but maybe are not quite as obvious inefficiencies as they

were once upon a time. So what are the most obvious examples to you of that? I guess of things that you maybe wrote about in the 2000s, say, and said, why aren't teams doing this? Or which teams should pay attention to this? And now we don't have to write those things anymore because they do and they are. Yeah. I mean, the 2000s, yeah, I guess it was back then. Way back when. Yeah. I mean, I've been writing either at BP or there was another site since about 2007. And so it's been a long time that I've been doing this. I remember back then, like you could totally get an article out of here's a pitcher's FIP and here's his ERA. And they're very divergent and they don't match. And either he's going to collapse or he's not as bad as he looks and he's due for some better days ahead.

And I remember you could write those articles and that was cutting edge stuff at the time. I remember you could write those articles, and that was cutting-edge stuff at the time. Now it's kind of like if you try and – yeah, okay, yeah, great, nice article, but everybody knows that. I remember that was high-class stuff. I remember when the first catcher framing stuff came out. I mean I wasn't writing that, but now it's kind of like, oh, catcher framing. Everyone just kind of wants to puke every time they hear somebody talk about that on a broadcast. But on the flip side of it, I think that back when I was first starting out, I remember at one point, I don't know if I wrote this or not, but I've said something like, leave makeup in the makeup aisle. And this idea of a player's makeup and how we handled the game and things like that, I figured out that's just a whole bunch of people talking about stuff that really doesn't matter. And I dismissed it.

And now, 10 years later, I'm looking back and I'm going, yeah, that's kind of dumb of me. Teams are actually thinking about this now and how can we – some of what we thought of as makeup and some of it's garbage, but some of it that we thought of as makeup turns out to have at least a decent case for being studied league nutrition and how teams should actually feed their minor leaguers. And maybe not every team does, but certainly more and more over the years, it seems like every few months I'm reading a new article about how Team X decided to get personal chefs for its minor league clubhouses or something. Or when we had Jonathan Perrin on the podcast not long ago, he was talking about how well the Brewers are feeding their minor leaguers these days. Again, this is something that should have happened long before it did, most likely. But now I no longer link to that article quite as often, I'm sorry, because teams have taken your advice for the most part. So what's the, well, the next evolution in baseball thinking, as the subtitle says? oh, everything that can be found has been found. And that's no.

If you find yourself saying that, then you're totally missing the boat. I mean, if you think about, and part of when I wrote the book is, and I pitched it to the publisher, I said, you know, I don't even know this is so much a baseball book as it's a book about people who all happen to be wearing baseball hats. And so any piece of the human experience that can be linked back to baseball, I think that we, we're now getting to a point where we may not have, you know, specific data that we can look at, but you can study it and you can pull it apart and you can say, you can ask, you know, questions, how does

this affect a baseball player? And you see this with research that's going on about nutrition, about sleep, about, you know, how do we, you know, even do we hire somebody to be, you know, a player experience coordinator for the minor leagues who kind of goes around and just kind of checks in with guys and sees how they're doing. Some of those soft, squishy skills that, you know, we would have, you know, that's not a double, that's not a strikeout that we would have, you know, dismissed 10 years ago. Those become things that you can look at and you can look into. And I think that, you know, that's where I'm going next. But, you know, StatCast is a thing, I don't know if you guys have heard of it, and the amount of data that's being poured in there.

And, you know, I'd love to see, hopefully publicly, but I'd love to see what people who are, you know, really tuned into both baseball and the human experience, what they find in that gigantic trove of data to see what else can we learn about the baseball experience. Yeah. And I would say I enjoyed the parts of the book that are kind of about you since I know you and there's a lot in there. kind of about you since I know you and there's a lot in there but kind of your earlier fandom or you know the game that you left early you committed the cardinal sin of attending baseball games and in a way it worked out but in another way it didn't and there's stuff about how you met your wife or how you you know worked for a team yourself so I enjoy the personal aspects but there is plenty of gory math in the book as well for people who are interested in that. Do you have a favorite bit of

research you did for this book or, I don't know, something that you would use as a teaser, as an excerpt on a podcast essentially? Yeah. Well, great. It's like making me pick between my kids. Yeah, well, great. It's like making me pick between my kids. Anyway, so the one that I actually think that I am personally the most proud of, both on a mathematical level, and I don't really get into the deep math of this in the book, but also on just a conceptual level, is the stuff around managers and how they battle the grind. Because that was the first time that I really found something where I'm like, you know, we evaluate managers in terms of their tactical stuff, pinch hitting and, you know, hit and run and all that sort of stuff, how they make the lineup. And I had gone through and I had made a catalog of all those decisions and then looked to see, okay, how much does that really matter? And it turns

out the answer is not as much as we think. And then I did some stuff around, I used plate discipline because plate discipline kind of erodes over the course of a season. And I looked and I said, well, what if there are managers that have a consistent ability over time to kind of arrest that erosion so that, you know, their players are kind of as fresh as they were on opening day, even though it's the middle of August. And it turns out that there are managers who seem to have that and that it is statistically, we can show that it's a fairly consistent ability across time to the point where I feel comfortable saying, yeah, some managers have this and some don't. And, you know, when I, when I look at that now, I'm, I'm, I'm really proud of that because

it's, and it shows that, you know, the effect size is pretty big and that you can pick up, an extra win from your manager over how he helps to handle the grind over the course of a season. And, you know, I think that that's, that's an area where, you know, again, 10 years ago, we wouldn't have looked at, and maybe we even said, oh, that's just, you know, that's all just everybody's, everybody's got a story about how the manager helped them out. And, and, you know, it's just, we want to look just on what they're doing on the field. And I think there's something to be said for that behind the scenes stuff. We've all been doing this for a very long time, upwards of a decade, if not more. And so, as you mentioned, our writing has evolved, our thinking has evolved, the shape and form and length of articles has evolved.

You can't just write the FIPERA article anymore. But as you mentioned, it was— Got to have a GIF in there, too. It's a GIF. We've been over that. FIPERAGIF, yes, okay. Gotta have a gif in there too. It's a gif. We've been open. F-I-P-E-R-A-G-I-F. Yes. Okay. It was so easy 10, even 15 years ago to just talk about makeup and young players and dismiss it, as you mentioned. And now, of course, we look at that and I think collectively we recognize, well, actually, this could go a long way toward determining how a player develops or how successfully is it getting close to his ceiling so now i don't know if this is a a good question but it's definitely a question it's we

can edit this out if it's bad but you mentioned that you have uh you were thinking on makeup is not only evolved but it's it's more or less flipped so if you had to sort of project now five ten years down the road do you have a hunch of sort of your most recent strong opinion that you think is going to have maybe the rug pulled out from underneath it? Oh, wow. I, boy, I don't, I don't know what I can, I can think of because I'm, I'm right about everything, obviously. So no, I mean, I, it's, it's interesting because I, I would never have seen 10 years ago that that opinion would have been pulled out from under me. And I mean, so it's very difficult for me to say, okay, what am I getting completely wrong now that I, you know, and maybe, I don't know, maybe it ends

up being something like, you know, I talk about the infield shift in the book quite a bit. And, you know, maybe there's something I'm just not getting there. Because even though I wrote the book, and of course, I expected it to completely, totally change baseball, teams are still shifting. And I'm sure they have other things that they know that I don't. And maybe I look back on this in 10 years and I go, oh, maybe I completely and totally muddled that one. But maybe in 10 years, nobody's shifting anymore.

Yeah, I'm sort of having this hunch that, you know, it's really easy to look up players whose, like, velocity has improved, and we all celebrate the guys who can throw 95 to 100. I wouldn't be surprised if a few years down the road we start to understand that's actually not really all that helpful, and that's more detrimental in the long run. But, you know, this is a question for you, not for me. That's my own, but I was curious. How many people have mistakenly thought that this entire book is about the infield shift?

Oh my goodness, do I have to? On just about every promo piece I've done, I promise it's not 300 pages about, and then you move the shortstop a couple of steps to the right. And I mean, no, it's not, it's not all about the shift. That was just, I mean, my, my original, my working title was The Thinking Game, which I kind of liked. And they, the publisher said, well, what do you think about the shift? And I said, that's kind of cool too. And we eventually went with that one, but I think it's cool because, you know, the shift is, it's neat in that it is a movement away from what used to be into what is now. So, you know, it's kind of a nice little marketing tie-in. But yeah, it's, I promise it's not 300 pages of shortstop positioning.

Well, I just opened to a random page and there is a table of Babbitt versus the shift and Babbitt no shift on this page. So I don't know if this story checks out. No, I've read many of the parts of it that are not also about the shift. Don't worry, people, although I like reading about the shift too. So go get the book. I think a lot of people who listen to this podcast are probably aware of it and hopefully have already picked it up. And I've seen people posting pictures of it in the Facebook group where Russell is also a member and regular participant. So you can get the book and ask him questions yourself right in our Facebook group. I'm around.

Yeah. And we will move on to some other topics. But everything that you say is in a way an advertisement for the book. Oh, good. Because your insight, your speaking, it indirectly should convince people to pick up your writing. And I endorse it. So I'm glad that this came together and that you could join the fraternity of people who have written books about baseball analysis.

There are a lot of us these days. Yeah, well, I'm kind of late to the game, I guess. But buy the book anyway. Yeah. And you put your own spin on the genre, I think. Just your background as a therapist and the kind of non-statistical inquiry that you bring to the topic is something that not a lot of people have. So that sets you apart, as does the research, but you're kind of a double threat. You're the Shohei Otani of

analytical baseball. I'm tingling, Ben. Yeah, but you had a terrible March. Well, speaking of Shohei Otani, we didn't get to see any of him this weekend, sadly. How's the weather where you guys are? Usually that's not a fun topic, but these days it seems like it's terrible everywhere, except I'm sure Portland is beautiful. Well, Thursday is going to be a mountain climbing window, so I'll be out of here. Russell, how are things in the Atlanta area? Kind of, you know, cold, I guess. It's rainy. Well, if my phone buzzes during this podcast, it's the latest flash flood warning being beamed to my phone. So that's how things are where I am. So we had, what, six games or something postponed on Sunday, and a couple of

those had already been postponed from previous days. And so there were a lot of people angry about not every ballpark having a retractable roof. So we didn't get Otani. I was upset. I was disappointed. My wife has been planning angels brunches to coincide with Shohei Otani Sunday starts. And now we're going to have to figure out something else because he's going to be starting on Tuesdays, I guess, for the foreseeable future, which maybe is better for his fans in Japan who would have had to get up at an ungodly hour to watch him midday Sunday in the States, but unfortunate for us, except that we now get to see him against the Red Sox and the Astros, so we will see true tests of Shohei Otani, the pitcher. But instead of Shohei Otani on Sunday,

we got a Bartolo Colon perfect game attempt. How about that? Against the Astros, no less, what we were all expecting yes of course yeah you know i and i i happened to see i was in a i was talking to somebody and somebody mentioned that and i'm like yeah yeah you're funny and bartolo cullen's got a perfect game going and and then i got the push alert on my phone and i'm like really i think it was through six innings and i was about to go to the grocery store. So I pulled up the radio feed, the Texas radio feed. And I listened to the seventh inning and then in the eighth inning when he lost it on the walk. But yeah, it was, of course, I remember I'm from Cleveland. I remember when Bartolo Colon made his major league debut and I was in high school. major league debut and I was in high school literally I was in high school I he and he he was you know he was kind of the new young pitcher yeah Bartolico and now through 18 and two-thirds innings has a 1-4-5 ERA a 2-2-5 FIP he has struck out almost a batter per inning walked less than a

batter per inning over 55 percent ground ball rate i don't know how long this kind of thing can continue he has a 217 babbitt but it has been a whole lot of fun to watch and and you know when people say he's doing this and he's only throwing one pitch i mean sort of but not really right like i mean or i was hearing someone talk about how like you see better stuff from pitchers in a high school game or something and clearly that's not the case you might see guys throwing harder in a high school game but you don't see guys who throw as hard and have the command and have the movement and of course even if he's throwing a fastball it's a fastball that goes in different directions and breaks in different ways

and goes exactly where he wants it and so when it's working it really works back in the earliest days of pitch effects when it was easy to just get an article out of one pitch effects fact i remember i was writing about the mariners and i would like try to separate you would have to like do manual classifications because of course the pitch classifications back then were not very good and someone like Miguel Batista or even Jared Washburn was almost impossible to get the pitches actually separated now that didn't make Miguel Batista or Jared Washburn good and I regret all the effort that I put into that way after the fact but I think one of the things we're not very good at right now is it's it's so easy to talk about this is this guy's repertoire.

These are the pitches he throws. Oh, this pitch has gotten faster. This pitch has added more depth. But we spend so little time talking about pitchers who can actually add and subtract on the pitches that they throw. This is, of course, what makes Rich Hill's curveball so good or Lance McCullers' curveball so good. And this is how Bartolo Colon and, I guess, to a lesser extent, Lance Lynn survive because

they basically have a fastball that they throw but they are able to add and subtract and make it move a little differently I don't have a measurement of how much better they are at that than anybody else but I think that Colon leading the Texas Rangers in wins above replacement right now on the pitching staff is sort of proof that clearly he's able to make this work. Bardolo Colon has been almost a win more valuable than Cole Hamels this season. Right. Speaking of leading the league in wins above replacement or leading something in wins above replacement, Mike Trout right now is at the very tip top of the baseball reference war leaderboard.

He is not at the top at Fangrass, although he's close, but number one in all of baseball, Mike Trout, according to Baseball Reference War. Usually we say that Mike Trout being at the top of the war leaderboard is when we know that stats are meaningful and significant and stabilized, and it's maybe a little too early to say that still. It's April 16th, but there is Mike Trout regardless. He hits home runs in the snow now. And he has a.244 Babbitt. I'm not familiar with this gentleman.

Who is this guy? We've got a few episodes about him over the years. Yeah. I figured I should also bring up a couple teams. We haven't really talked about the standings so much this year because it is still very early to do that, but things have changed since the beginning of the season in quite a few divisions, right? We had the teams that people were calling the Super 7, or at least we had the six division favorites that everyone pretty much picked to win their respective divisions. The Astros, the Cubs, the Dodgers, the Indians, the Nationals, the Yankees, some of those were closer than others. But I was just running the numbers here and I was looking at the three different methods of playoff odd calculations.

So baseball perspectives, 538, fan graphs. So at the beginning of the season, those six teams on average had a 71% chance to win their respective divisions. And right now, as we speak, that is down to 55%. And there are three of those teams that are, according to the consensus of those three systems, no longer even favored to win their divisions this year. The field is more favored than they are. So the Astros, all these teams' playoff odds have fallen since the start of the season, but in some cases, not all that significantly. Like the Astros are down from, oh, they were about, what, 82 at the average of these three systems to win the division at the beginning of the season. Now they're down to 73. Or the Indians are barely down. They're down from like 85 to 82.

On the other hand, you have the Yankees, the Nationals, and the Dodgers, even the Dodgers, who now, according to these systems, are not the favorites. Now, according to some systems, they still are. Like, Fangrass actually diverges pretty dramatically from the other two methods where it comes to the Dodgers. But according to these three systems, these teams are no longer more likely to win their divisions than all of the other teams in their divisions put together. So to what extent are you guys buying that? We're talking

about the Dodgers, the Nationals, and the Yankees here. Which one is in the most hot water here? I mean, what I like here is that I was very strongly convinced that the Yankees, Indians, Astros, Dodgers, Cubs, and Nationals were all the clear favorites, the Yankees being the only team with kind of a race. And not a single one of the teams is in first place not yet no one zero out of six so i i mean i would think i'll i'm gonna let russell take this one over in a few minutes so i'm a few seconds even but i think that the one that is catching my attention i think we we sort of probably all shared a hunch that the mets would be good they'd be a strong team if they could keep their pitchers healthy and that is sort of a day-to-day thing. But I mean, it's

surprising that they're 12-2, but it's not a surprise that they're good. It is funny how we haven't heard anything bad about Gabe Kapler in a week since the Phillies have won every game. And I think the Diamondbacks are the clearest threat here. The Dodgers have obviously been without maybe their best position player, and their pitching staff is thinner than it's been in a while. They do still have Clayton Kershaw, who's amazing, but the Diamondbacks are quite good, and I think there's a strong argument that they were underrated coming into the year.

Now their own rotation depth is going to be challenged, because I'm going to guess Tywin Walker's no structural damage is probably major structural damage, so we'll see about that one. But that's it. I mean, we're looking at a five-and-a-half game gap already in the National League West. The Dodgers are worse than the Padres, Giants and Rockies, too. So that one I'm at a loss to explain what's going on. I mean, okay, let's put in the standard disclaimer. We're talking about, what, 15, 16 games for everybody. Right. And I'm guessing that if you just pulled a random sample from last year over 15 or 16 games,

and I mean, the Indians had that stretch where they won 22 in a row. So pull it from there, and the Indians are 16-0, And we're sitting, we're saying, you know, is this the best team ever? Yeah. And so, I mean, there's that aspect of it. But yeah, for the life of me, I cannot figure out what on earth is going on with the Dodgers. I mean, Kershaw's fine. But, you know, Alex Wood and Rich Hill and Kenley Jansen were kind of, rest of the, the, the pitching staff there, it's just not quite working out. And for the life of them, Corey Seager can't hit. And I'm just kind of, of stunned at that. And I mean, now I will say that in my head,

I'm still sitting here and I still, I, if I had to put money and I'm not a betting man, but if I had to put money, I would still have the Dodgers up in the National League West, even though they're in the cellar right now. But I am just completely flummoxed by how big a collapse, as much as you could call a collapse in 15 games, is that they've gone through. So that's, you know, it's I think everything that we say in April should end with, but it's April. Yes. So it's a collapse, but it's April. Yes. It's largely Wilmer Falt's fault.

Oh, okay. Good. We have a goat. Yes. Yeah. He was sort of a sleeper pick, but he has not woken up to this point. So I don't know. Yeah, I think that it's a good thing, I guess, for baseball that some of these favorites are struggling and some of the underdogs are

playing well. I think Jeff and I talked before the season about the idea that things were really stratified and imbalanced and there were good teams and terrible teams and nothing in between. And I think we were all skeptical of the idea that that would continue, that that was anything more than a blip or sort of a cyclical state. But it did sort of seem to be the case for this year, just looking at, say, the preseason playoff odds. They were a little anomalous in that sense, in that it did really seem like the favorites were overwhelmingly the favorites and the other teams were more underdogs than they usually are and so

here we are just uh not even a few weeks into the season and things are almost reset in a way it doesn't mean that any of these teams is in permanent trouble or is doomed or anything. But if the season started today, then people would not be saying the things I think that they were saying just a few weeks ago about how this is going to be a boring season and, you know, it's all locked up already. And we were skeptical of that idea anyway, because people said the same things about last season too. And to be fair, last season, the favorites won their divisions, essentially, but it was still an exciting season with surprise teams and flop teams and interesting races. And so I expected that to be the case this year, even though, yeah,

I thought all of these teams would probably win their divisions, with the possible exception of the Yankees. Anyway, here we are. It's been fun to watch so far. There's a lot of uncertainty, and the Mets are 12-2 as we speak and they're starting a series against the Nationals. And as Jeff says, it's kind of, you know, they were always the team with the biggest error bars around their projection and everyone said they're going to be great or terrible or they have the potential to be either because of their pitching staff. And for the first time, all of their pitchers are healthy, which means that they can put some of the excess pitchers

in the bullpen. Guys like Lugo and Gesellman and those guys have now been really good in the bullpen and Conforto is back and completely healthy. So all the health questions that they had and have had for years now have at least been temporarily answered with green lights. So I don't know whether that will continue, but it's not hard to pinpoint the secret of their success so far. Yep. All right. So should we take some emails? Anyone else have banter that they want to inject here?

Let's see. So it was just a few weeks ago, we were all concerned about Shohei Otani and thinking that Ronald Acuna was getting screwed. And now Shohei Otani is one that Ronald Acuna was getting screwed and now Shohei Otani is one of the best players in baseball and here's an MLB.com headline Acuna unlikely to be called until play improves Ronald Acuna has gotten off to a slow start in AAA how much of this do you think so we have passed the date at which Acuna could be called up and not have the Braves lose that year of service time so as we saw with the Cubs and Chris Bryant

some teams are not afraid to just bring the player up make it all obvious telegraph what they're doing but you know what's going to happen the grievance is still pending as far as I know but with Acuna the Braves are waiting I know Preston Tucker has hit some home runs and whatever but how much of the Braves having Acuna still in the minors do you think is posturing and trying to sell this versus they actually think that he needs a little more development? Oh, speaking as our official Atlanta resident, I think that this is actually a developmental thing. I mean, he has been scuffling at AAA. And I mean, it has been tough.

And I mean, in reality, I mean, the Braves aren't going to go anywhere this year. I mean, I know they're doing well, but they, you know, they're, they're not projected to win their division this year. And so, you know, you don't, you don't need to rush him. And I mean, part of it might've been that they were thinking, you know, if he gets off to a blistering start, we're going to leave him down until whatever, April 12th or 13th or whatever the day, the magic day was. But, you know, since he is scuffling, well, you know, why, why force it? You know, this is, this is a consolidation year in Atlanta and you might as well make sure that he's good

and ready so that, you know, he doesn't come up and have just a kind of a disaster first, first couple of weeks. And then, you know, you're trying to reconstruct him psychologically. I mean, last year they, they had the Dansby Swanson experience where, you know, Swanson was kind of the consensus early season rookie of the year favorite. And he had, you know, what turned out to be a terrible season and ended up being sent back to AAA. And, you know, I think that some of that is probably going to weigh heavily on them. So that, you know, maybe they're saying, let's just be careful. You know, what is the rush, really? And you're actually going to make it to SunTrust Park before Acuna does because you're heading there right after this podcast, I believe.

I am, yes. Yeah. And, yeah, this is the time of year when you hear lots of teams saying, well, we may not call this guy up just because they don't want to look like they are waiting until that precise day. So the Yankees have been sort of saying similar things about Gleyber Torres, who's hitting very well in AAA, and Aaron Boone has been asked about whether he's coming up and has sort of demurred. But it'll be interesting. I think Acuna was maybe the greatest

threat to Trout and Otani in terms of number of listener emails we would get about a player this year. And thus far, that has subsided for a few weeks. By the way, one other thing about all the cancellations and the weather, Jeff Passan noted in an article on Monday that attendance is way down. He noted that it's, let's see, the average crowd of 27,532 over the 221 MLB games played this season is about 2,700 fans per game lower than last year through the same point. Over the course of a full season, that would amount to a drop of more than 6.5 million fans. Of course, this is largely weather-related. I don't know how much it's weather related, but Jeff also notes that this is the most postponements in April since 2007, and we're only about halfway through April. So I would guess that that has a whole lot to do with it and that this will bounce back. But I don't know, cause for

concern, either of you, do you think? Yeah, baseball's dying. Yeah. This is this is a consequence i mean i know that we just had a bunch of games postponed in the middle of april which was always going to be baseball season but they started the season earlier than i don't know if it was ever but they started the season earlier this year to get a greater number of off days built into the schedule and the funny thing about that is is now i guess a lot of teams have used those off days because now those later off days have been filled with replayed games. So that's going to be an annoyance. But, you know, the obvious solution here is to shorten the season, which no one's ever going to do.

That's right. All right. Anything else? Yes. A couple of things quickly. First of all, there was a report, I believe it was Susan Slessor, who said that the A's are trying to sign Matt Chapman to an extension. And Matt Chapman is represented by Scott Boris.

And so, no, nothing is happening there. But that's something to watch. He is leading the majors in fan graphs at this moment, I believe. 0.3 wins above replacement. We have an MLB.com headline here. At 27, Nolan Arenado already in rarefied air. The definition of rarefied air is of air especially that at high altitudes of lower pressure than usual thin he is in rarefied air half the time

but more importantly over the weekend matt king on twitter sent ben and i a video of michael cedaroth i believe i'm pronouncing this correctly he is a pitcher in the giants system this is in the california league and michael cedaroth has a jump delivery I don't I don't know if it's more Jordan Walden or Carter Capps I think it's more Carter Capps but this is an interesting follow-up because it was a year or two ago that I was tipped off to a guy Nolan Riggs also in the low levels of the Giants organization who was attempting a jump delivery that he didn't hang on to, I believe, but it was something that he experimented with. And I heard that it was the team's idea that he do that. So we have now, it looks like two pitchers attempting a jump delivery in the lower levels of the giant

system within a couple of years. So something to keep an eye on as Carter Capps has faded from complete relevance. Yeah, this could be the next evolution in baseball thinking. Wow, that's a great line. Can I use that? Sure. Okay. All right. Should we take some emails?

Let's take some emails. Let's do it. Why not? All right. Patrick says, as of April 15th, Chris Bryant is currently leading the Cubs in OBP, OPS, walks, and batting average. Meanwhile, the Cubs' leadoff spot is a black hole. Why shouldn't Chris Bryant lead off?

The usefulness of Bryant as their best hitter is partially neutralized if he's coming up to bat with one out every time. Putting Bryant in the leadoff spot versus second in the order would also get him a handful more plate appearances a year. Plus, it's not like there aren't a number of power hitters behind Bryant that could be slotted in as the second batter. I would imagine a 1-4 order of Bryant, Rizzo once he returns from the DL, Contreras, and Zobrist would probably be the most effective. This gets your best four hitters in the lineup virtually every day, barring injuries and rest, and getting them the most plate appearances rather than platooning Happ or Almora in the leadoff spot.

Russell, you've written a fair amount about lineups and batting orders over the years. And in the book, I know that it's kind of become standard sabermetric thinking that you put your best hitter in the second spot. And we have seen teams do that more and more. We've also seen teams put better or more powerful hitters in the leadoff spot increasingly as well. So again, I guess not that this matters all that much, whether Bryant is hitting first or second in the grand scheme of things, but is there a case for your best hitter not hitting second,

depending on how your lineup is constructed? Oh, sure there is. And well, of course, you have to recognize that the Cubs have a manager who's known as an old traditionalist who never varies from his ways. And that you have to think about that for a minute. And so maybe that's what's keeping it. I don't know, it's Joe Maddon. But there's definitely a case for that. I mean, realistically, you want as little as lineup construction actually matters in the grand scheme of things and i think that we should put that caveat in front of it the little bits of value that you can squeeze out of the lineup basically come from getting your uh your best hitters as many plate appearances as you possibly can and how they kind of fit around one another and are constructed and,

you know, and trying to say, oh, if I hit this guy after this guy, you know, there's a little interaction term there. I mean, that does happen, but it is basically swamped by the fact that you can get me, you know, maybe get a Chris Bryant, an extra plate appearance within a game. And that that's, there's a big case to be made for that you know i think that maybe they're the the counter case is you know maybe he's grown accustomed to that number two spot in some way and he just doesn't want to and maybe you know angry chris bryant isn't quite as productive a hitter and then that kind of saps whatever value you might get from putting him in the one spot but i would be thrilled as i mean the cubs did it last year with uh with anthony rizzo they stuck him in the leadoff spot and it kind of worked

yeah and the cubs rest of the lineup will probably also come around okay yeah i would think all right question from aaron who this is relevant to what we've been discussing on last monday's cubs reds radio broadcast they repeatedly mentioned that the fly balls were, quote, dying in the air because of the cold and that, ooh, that ball would have been a home run in June. Is that real? The conventional wisdom sounds logical, but I'd love to hear any statistical evidence that shows this bears out the way we expect it to. Just something I've been thinking about as home runs launch from guys in Balaclavas. So I sent him a link to the seminal research on this topic at Baseball Perspectives by Alan Nathan, which looked at the relationship between temperature and home runs. And Alan found basically that for every 10 degree decrease in the temperature, there is a two and a half foot decrease in fly ball distance.

So there is a real relationship here. It's not so dramatic that it turns every long fly ball into a home run when the weather warms up a little bit, but there is a real effect here. And presumably that has had some effect on the league wide numbers this year. Now, home runs are down significantly, and I don't know exactly why that is. It's tough to say because it's still mid-April, because the weather has been so strange and unseasonably nasty and cold. And Rob Arthur wrote something last week that suggested that maybe there is more air resistance on the ball, whereas in the last couple of years, it seems like there's less and less. So could be ball-related, could be guys swinging for the fences

and raising their launch angles so much that they've overdone it, and now they're popping up instead of driving the ball, or it could just be the cold and the weather. Do you guys have a leading hypothesis? I'm going with weather. So on fly balls and line drives so far the league average exit velocity is 92.9 miles per hour last year it was 92.1 uh this year on fly

balls and line drives the average launch angle has been 26.1 degrees last year it was 26 degrees so if anything if you can trust all these numbers the fly balls and line drives are being hit a little harder. They're just going out of the park less often. And I am going to blame weather for that. Yeah, I mean, I think that we have this idea of, you know, oh, the ball is lively or whatever explanation you want to have for that. But, you know, we kind of remember the last baseball that was being played. And our memories from last year are all kind of colored by the fact that, oh you know it was July and August for a lot of the time and you know now we've just got this sample of April and and we're kind of a little eyes on the ball jumping a little more and we

kind of forget that every year well you know it warms up a little bit we know the physics of it that the ball carries a little bit more and I think that there's this it's probably overstated in people's minds oh that that would have been a home run in June when it was just kind of a pedestrian fly ball to left. But, you know, you're talking about, you know, at 10 degrees, if 10 degrees of temperature is two and a half feet of distance, well, you know, we're playing games in temperatures

that are, you know, 20, 30 degrees colder than you would get on your typical July night. And so you're talking five, six, seven feet on a fly ball. And you know, that's going to turn a warning track ball into a home run. Sure, no problem. And so I think that, you know, this seems like it's just one of those things that happens every April and kind of like how when the first snow of the season comes and everybody forgets how to drive in the snow, we kind of forget that this kind of happens every year everyone should be familiar with weighted on base and expected weighted on base which is a baseball savant so last season again looking at fly balls and line

drives the league average actual weighted on base was six points lower than the expected so anyway pretty good agreement between expected results and actual results this year the expected weighted on base average is 76 points higher than the actual weighted on base average which means the uh the numbers have expected far more balls to go for doubles triples and home runs than have actually happened now that could be i guess a change in the ball which is not something that we observed in spring training but i think this is this is the cold weather right yeah that's the surprising thing just and that makes you think that maybe it is the weather it was not snowing for the most part in florida or arizona so the ball was flying there home runs were up and we expected that to continue so we'll see i mean at this point the weather has been cold enough for long enough it's it's not like

it will be warmer to make up for that later. So maybe home runs will be down or not up over the course of the full season just because of the weather thus far. But if we had to project what would happen from here until the end of the season, maybe it would look more like last year than it's looked so far this year. All right, Russell, you want to sub in with a stat blast of sorts? I guess. Do I get the theme song to go with it? Yes, you do. Yes! Okay, so since I wrote this book called The Shift, The Next Evolution in Baseball Thinking, available wherever you get my book, I actually had one that kind of ended up on the cutting room floor, but it was with the Cologne game. It got me thinking about a story that I told in the book and then had to cut for space.

And it was kind of the original Bartolo Cologne, except that this guy was not quite as memeable, and we didn't have GIFs back then. But I don't know how many people out there are familiar with Odell Jones. And Odell Jones was a guy who was, you actually go to his, his page. He's got one of the weirdest looking baseball reference pages that's out there. Cause like he debuted in 1975 and he was 22,

but then he missed the 1976 season. And then he pitched 77, 78, 79 and missed 1980. And then he pitched 77, 78, 79 and missed 1980. And then he pitched in 81 and missed 1982. And then he pitched in 83 and 84 and he missed 1985. And then he missed 1987. So there's just these weird gaps. And for a guy who had a 13-year career, at least in terms of when it started to when it ended he's there's a whole bunch of of stuff that's missing in the middle and then randomly he shows back up in 1992 three years after he retired in the uh in the angels triple a club and he's pitching nine random innings at the age of 39 and just and

you know i i think it seems like he'd been out of baseball from there. So I found this guy to be kind of cool. But, I mean, the reason that he was in my mind is that in 1988, and this was a game that happened in May, and I was eight. I was living in Cleveland. And my dad had gotten tickets to a game that was happening. And you have to remember, at the time, the Indians had just been awful for decades. And they had had a little resurgence. And at the time, I looked this up, they were actually a game and a half out of first place. And this is late May. And they were a game and a half behind the Yankees. And so, you know, you got 38,000 people that showed up for this game

that night. They were playing the Brewers. And I remember the big news was that Teddy Higuera, who was supposed to start, couldn't start. And I forget exactly why. And so for some reason, the Brewers were like, well, okay, we need a spot starter. And so they called Odell Jones, who hadn't started the game since 1981. So it had been seven years. And I remember I went to the game and we all thought oh well i've never heard of this guy so this this will be easy and you get there and and so odell jones is out there and he gets through the first inning and he sets him down one two three and he goes to the second inning and he sets him down one two three and he goes to the third inning and he goes through the indians lineup and you know i'm eight years old at the time. And I remember thinking to myself, boy, this is interesting. And I was

cognizant enough of a fan that I could say, oh, I wonder if something interesting is going on. And, you know, he got through most of, I think he pitched seven or eight perfect innings until eventually he won Mel Hall, I think. And there's this random guy out there. There's this random guy who's pitching a perfect game into the eighth inning. And so I remember watching that game. And a few years later, I had the, well, many years later, I was taking my, I took my daughter to a game in 2014. And it was against the Braves-Phillies game. And the Braves pitched, or I'm sorry, the Phillies pitched a combined no-hitter that day. It was Cole Hamels and a couple of relievers that day, and I remember

having that same feeling of, how do you cheer in that situation where you're, you know, it's the road team that's doing the thing, in this case the no-hitter or the perfect game, and yet, you know, you are, you know, you want the home team to win, but how do you, how do you handle that? And I remember my daughter was five at the time and I remember leaning over to her and I said, I wish you were older so that you can understand what you're seeing here. And so I, and I, and I thought back to that Odell Jones game of, you know, I, I, I was just barely old enough to understand what I was seeing at the time and to fully appreciate it. But, you know, Odell Jones, I mean, it's it is just the craziest page on that I could think of, because, I mean, he it's it's just this guy's career doesn't make any sense.

And I mean, after that game, they gave him one more start, which didn't go very well. And then he kind of went back to being a bop-up bullpen arm. And then he was out of the majors and he never appeared again. And he had this one day where all of a sudden he was just completely unhittable. Yeah, it happens. And there's probably some five-year-old who was watching Bartolo on Sunday and not fully understanding the significance of that game. But by the time that five year old is in high school, I'm sure Bartolo will still be pitching. I'm sure they will fully understand what they saw. So yeah, that is a strange baseball reference page. So if y'all want to see something just really weird, go to Odell Jones.

All right. Here's a question that Russell can check my math on. This is from Zach, who says, I saw this headline at ESPN, which struck me as rather dumb. So the headline is from an April 5th story that says, for the first time of many, Yankees, Judge Stanton, Sanchez, power trio, all Homer. And Zach continues, I was curious if I'm actually the dumb one. How wrong is this headline? How likely are they all to homer in the same game many times? Quote, many times. So how likely are Judge Stanton and Sanchez all to homer in the same game?

So I'm not a probability whiz, but if we say that these three guys average, I don't know, 40 homers a piece, let's say, if that's kind of the baseline projection right around now, you could maybe make the case that it's even more, but that seems right around the range. Then you'd expect each of them to hit a homer roughly every four games, which means that the odds of any one of them hitting a homer in any given game is one out of four, and that times itself three times, that to the third power, the odds of all three of them homering in a given game should be one out of 64, I would think, which would mean that you'd expect it to happen about two and a half times

per season, I guess. And, of course, the events aren't completely independent, right, because you might be more likely to all-home run certain days because of the ballpark and the opponents and because it's June and the weather is warm. But if we just kind of gloss over that for now, two and a half times per season, and I guess that's not many, but when you consider that none of these guys is old and they're all under team control for several more seasons and you wouldn't expect them to decline precipitously in the near future, I think you could plausibly somewhat accurately say many that you expect this to happen many times.

Yeah. I just ran some quick math along the same lines that I got. I'd expected about three times over a course of 162-game season. And, you know, figuring, you know, 45 home run power for each of them, and maybe that's a little optimistic, but you figure, okay, well, you kind of figure four plate appearances a game, and over 162 games, it kind of comes out to three. So I would expect that to happen a couple times a year. It wouldn't be something that you see every day. It might be worth a headline, but not worth a wow. Yeah, I think so. I'll buy it just given that they're all teammates for the long haul, presumably. All right. This question sounds like a hypothetical from a Russell Carlton

article, I think. So I've been saving it. This is from Sean in California. We were just talking about Odell Jones. This is Immaculate Jones. Subject, Immaculate Jones loves the third inning. So Immaculate Jones is searching for his new team. He's never allowed a run, given up a hit, or done anything other than strike out every batter he faces on three pitches. Given this, who wouldn't want Immaculate Jones on their team? Well, here's the catch. Immaculate Jones is only willing to pitch the third inning, and he insists on doing this every other game the team plays, leading to 81 very predictable innings and appearances. Given the limitations of a 25-man roster, accommodating Immaculate Jones would be be rather challenging would a team construct a roster

with three starters and nine to ten relievers and attempt a bullpen game every other day or is the value of 81 perfect innings during a very inconvenient spot in the game not valuable enough to make room aren't the rays basically trying that this year yeah i don't think they have immaculate jones well they are trying but Well, they don't, but, you know, it's – see, here's the thing. I mean, part of bullpen construction and bullpen usage is that you want your good relievers to not pitch when it's not important, which is different than saying you want them to pitch when it is important. out the closer until the ninth inning a lot of times because you know in the in the top of the eight or the bottom of the eighth you might put up you know four or five runs and then it becomes out of reach and you don't have to use the closer then you get by with some lesser reliever and you kind of save the closer and the bullets in his arm so i i think that because it's the third inning it

would be kind of weird i mean i could see a team saying okay maybe you know one of these new two or three inning type relievers that um that the race seemed to have stockpiled and then built their pitching strategy around you know maybe we could have him do inning one and two and then immaculate jones set up for three and then you know maybe i don't know if you do a bullpen game the rest of the game or you try and slot in your you know, maybe, I don't know if you do a bullpen game the rest of the game, or you try and slot in your, you know, real starting pitcher from innings four through eight or four through nine or whatever it is. But you could, you could, you could possibly do that. Boy, would it be worth it?

Boy, I'd have to, I'd have to really sit down and math this one out. I mean, this is, there are so many, and part of it is that with the Rays experiment, we don't really know how that's going to go. I mean, we don't, we're in such a weird new area of pitching usage that, you know, we don't know if that kind of a pitching schedule is something that can keep pitchers healthy in the current day. We just don't have a whole lot of data points to go at it. You know, do you have the right guys who would thrive in that sort of role? So I mean I can be totally weaselly here and say, well, it depends. But my thought process here is that would be really, really cool if it happened.

And my initial instinct, and this is based on nothing more than my instinct is, it probably doesn't end up being worth it in the contortions that you have to do around a 25-man roster to make it work. But that's me not sitting here having really had a whole lot of time to think about, well, if we did this and we did this. Yeah, right. The real-life identity of Immaculate Jones would be Rocky's starting pitcher, John Gray. John Gray has a career OPS allowed of 737 and a career ERA of 4.52. However, in the third inning, he has allowed an OPS of 471 with an ERA of 1.65.

He has the lowest career T-OPS plus in the third inning for a minimum of 50 innings. If you set the minimum to 25 innings, then you figure out who Kurt Kepshire was. He had an E-array of 1.74 and a T-O-P-S-plus of 23 in the third inning. I should have played the stat plus theme song. Ladies and gentlemen, he just took a data set sorted by something like E-R-I-minus or O-P-S-plus. I thought if we gave Russell the stat plus today, we wouldn't have a TOPS plus mentioned on the podcast, but no, we always do. All right, Jeff, you already answered this one via email,

but you can start it off and then we'll see what Russell thinks. I guess this is a question from Peter, although I think it's a question we've received from multiple listeners. A few episodes ago, you talked about John Lester's bounce pass to pick off a runner, and it got me thinking. Let's say a pitcher was so bad at pickoffs that every base runner could advance to the furthest unoccupied base, not including home. So if a runner walks with the bases empty, he is automatically at third. If the next batter also walks, he moves to second, etc. How good would a pitcher have to be at preventing base runners in order to remain a viable major leaguer? And how much worse would an elite starter like Kershaw or Scherzer, etc.,

be all of a sudden if this ailment befell them? So the worst defensive run saves keeps track of some sort of stolen base runs, as we'll call it. And we only have a little, like a decade and a half of this information, but the worst season on record, actually two of the worst seasons are back-to-back with the same guy, Chris Young, the Padres starting starting pitcher many teams starting pitcher but the padre starting pitcher in 2007 was seven runs worse than average in terms of stolen base prevention and here's why

it's because that season runners attempted 44 stolen bases and runners stole 44 bases against chris young they stole every base that they tried so uh that season chris young couldn't stop the runner if he wanted to and his era was 3.12 it was the best season of his entire career i believe so he was an all-star that year with the padres he looked like an ace this is also his last fully healthy season before all the shoulder problems but anyway i think that even though that's a real life example of something that's not even close to this hypothetical. I mean, you're looking at less than a win of estimated value. Now, the stolen base value doesn't take into consideration. Maybe guys take bigger leads, and they can get better starts, and maybe it's easier for guys to round the bases on other hits. But still, Chris Young, 3.12 ERA. This is back in the early Petco days, so everything was a ball in play. There were no home runs. No one allowed a home run or hit a home run. Phil Nevin got very upset. But if the worst we've ever seen was

a little under a win of lost value, then I would think that even at this hypothetical, you're talking like two or three wins max, at which point, yeah, it's going to be hard to be good, but really, really good pitchers can still be useful, even if they let guys just keep going. Yeah, I mean, I think the answer to this question is, you know, how good of a pitcher do you have to be to make this work? And I think, isn't the answer John Lester? I mean, it's, and there's a certain, I think the Lester experience has shown us that you think that, you know, Lester, who, you know, clearly has trouble throwing to first, okay, fine. And that you probably could. And yet still, I mean, what percentage of, of runners try against him? And I mean, some of that is,

some of that then comes back to, you know, realistically, there's still the catcher to think about and, you know, yeah, you can get a little better lead, but, you know, you can't just, you know, stroll out there while he just blithely ignores you um you still have to think okay well am i gonna you know can i read his timing and can i get a good jump and who's behind the plate and even then i mean even if you have a slightly better than average uh stolen base rate against a guy i mean it's it's lost value but it's not you know it's not going to knock a guy out of the majors or in Lester's case, obviously, it's not going to knock him out of, you know, the list of guys where you're like, oh, okay, I'd love to have him on my team. Even if, you know, he's not the best pitcher in baseball, I'd love to have him starting an important game for me. So, you know, I think that I get, you

know, this is the fun of the hypothetical is, you know, if that guy could just walk basically from first to third after walking from home plate to third, I mean, yeah, that's, that is going to, uh, to really mess with, uh, with a pitcher's, uh, uh, stats. And yeah, maybe at that point you'd have to be, I don't know, Randy Johnson in his prime or something like that. But, um, but I think that, But I think that that really overstates what the John Lester question is. And I think that it's giving a little bit too much credence to the idea that Lester's throwing issues are just such a hamper on his game. All right. Yeah, I'm with you both on this. All right. Let's say one from Chris H., who says, was reading a discussion about how in the NPB, teams carry 28-man rosters and then select three players as healthy scratches before each game. That's in Japan's highest baseball league. This is also similar to how hockey rosters are managed. Do you think there'd be a benefit to this approach for MLB rosters? And would it allow more creative lineups? Or would it just mean that bullpens get

larger and the commissioner has a meltdown over even more pitching changes during a game? And I do think that you would need some sort of restriction on what type of player these extra players could actually be, right? So, I mean... And so Shohei is a... Yeah, right. So I don't know how you classify him, but I think you would have to say, yeah, you can't just add three more relievers because no one wants that. So, I mean, you would, obviously you'd have, you know, your last starting pitcher or two probably ineligible for the game, and then you'd activate some other guys and we'd have, I guess, actual pinch hitters again in baseball. And, you know, there'd be a little more tactical variety as far as pinch hitting and defensive replacements and that sort of thing. So do you think this will

happen? Would it be good? I once proposed something in an article and it was that, you know, effectively most teams have a 21 or 22 man roster that they take to the ballpark because, I mean, you technically have 25 guys on the roster, but last night's starting pitcher isn't going to pitch. And probably the guy from the night before isn't going to pitch. And probably the guy from the night before isn't going to pitch. And, you know, you are more likely to see him in like a 14th inning pinch hitting role because we're out of players on the bench and somebody's got to go up and hit for the pitcher and it might as well be him. And so I think that the idea that I had was a 28-man active roster,

but only 22 are allowed to use in the game. And I had it in mind that, you know, using more of a tandem starters approach would be more viable by then. Because if you try and use a tandem starters approach on a 25-man roster, that essentially you kind of have six spots that are just dead spots, and you can't really run a major league team that way. just have the last three nights starting pitchers would be sent to the healthy scratch list and yeah i'm guessing that those three guys that would now be allowed on the roster would all be relievers i as much as i'd love to believe that teams would get more creative than that i i don't have that much confidence in them i think that we would just see a parade of relievers yeah this feels like something that would be tried in september 1st And we've already seen talk about this, where you want teams to at least have 25-man active rosters, but you still have expanded rosters, so you have more players available to you, but maybe they shouldn't be available every single day. So I would imagine that something like this could or should or would happen, but we'll see it tried in September 1st, because right now the rules don't really make sense. And then we'll go from there. To give you some idea, I mean, like, if you think about, occasionally you'll see a team that has, you know, a guy go on the DL or a starter go on the DL. And what they'll do is they'll play hide a player for a little while. And they'll say, okay, we'll put him on the DL, but we won't need

his rotation spot for a couple of days. So we're going to call somebody else up for those three days that we don't need him and then we'll send him back down when the regular start with the you know the guy who we're going to have him start in that place comes up and you'll see teams play around with that and the guy that they always bring up is a reliever they always do it's always a guy for the bullpen and so i mean i think that that's that's pretty much the the best evidence that we have on how people would actually attack that. So, yeah, I mean, if you like the parade of relievers, boy, that's a great strategy for you. But, you know, if that's not something that you like, well, I would not recommend that as a way to get baseball to be more creative. I think you'd just get more of the same. Yeah. All right. Quick one maybe from Seamus who says, a first baseman in the low minors, let's call him Jeff Lindbergh Miller, knows the aim of every pitch thrown to him. Of course, if the pitcher misses his spot, this foresight will be moot and Jeff is highly likely to miss if he swings. Can this knowledge

take Jeff to the majors? How long until people figure this out? So I answered via email, and I think this would be a very valuable power. I think if he knows location, then he probably either knows pitch type or can infer pitch type with a pretty high degree of accuracy. I mean, if he knows where the pitch is going to be and he knows what the count is, you can almost solve for X and get the pitch type most of the time. So given that he is essentially being tipped off for x and get the pitch type most of the time so given that he is essentially being tipped off to where and what every pitch is i think that would be a huge advantage and i think assuming some baseline level of talent and athleticism like it wouldn't get me

to the majors but if this guy could get to say double a under his own power then i think this would vault him from there to the majors. And I don't think it would be really detectable either. People would just think he was really good at anticipating or reacting to pitches, right? It's kind of the perfect crime. Am I wrong? Yeah, it's a little bit. That's what Mookie Betts is. I guess so. Well, I mean, but to think about, I mean, even if you know, okay, I know he's going to waste this I guess so. he's going outer half between those two and yeah i mean maybe he misses his spot and fine i mean is i i guess the idea is that you know if he's going to swing to that point and like you know he doesn't

do the obvious and kind of go okay i know what he's thinking i'm going now i'm going to i'm not going to do the obvious and kind of go well he might miss so i'm going to adjust accordingly um but if i mean if the if the conceit is that he not only knew, but he would be forced by something in his brain to swing to that point, that would be a lot less valuable. But man, the ability to say, I know where this guy's going to throw and I know what he's going to do. I think of just the extra balls that you pick up

by kind of knowing in advance that he's's going to do. I think of just the extra balls that you pick up by kind of knowing in advance that he's just going to waste this one and that that's his strategy. And I think that that right there propels him to not only the majors, but I think he's then one of the best hitters in the league. Yeah, no, I mean, any single target that is mid-thigh or above, you know, is some sort of fastball, maybe a cutter. And then there's no pitchers trying to throw his off-speed stuff higher than his fastball. So, yeah, if you had to swing at the zone that you think the pitch is going to, you'd be terrible. You'd never hit the ball because that's like the World Series Baseball 94 for Sega, where it's just like this is where the circle goes, and then you hope that the circle is on target.

But if you have a hitter who knows the location and has even a modicum of baseball intelligence where he can figure out what the pitch is likely to be well you've already made this point so now i'm just repeating both of you yeah all right so let's end then we haven't really talked about otani at all today we've shown great restraint so i am going to end on an otani note here. We got a few questions about how you use him. What's the best way to deploy Otani or how would teams deploy Otani? So Joe wants to know, essentially, all right, I'll just read this. I know it's too early to think about, but if Otani makes the all-star team,

is it as a pitcher, a DH, or both? Regardless of how he makes the team, will he be used as a DH, a pitcher or both? Will he be invited to the home run derby, etc.? So that's Joe's question, how do you use him in the all-star game? Then we get the question also from a different Joe, or in this case Joseph, who says, is Shohei Otani allowed to pinch hit in games he starts? Is the team allowed to insert the pitcher into the batting order, giving up the DH in future innings if they're already in the game? Does it matter if he'd be batting for the DH versus a fielding player? Lastly, we got a question from Steve who wants

to know about where Otani slots in in a World Series rotation. So assuming Otani stays as a top of the rotation arm and is easily the Angels' best option at DH in a perfect world, what would be the best way to deploy him in the playoffs, and more specifically during the World Series? Should he be lined up to pitch at home? The team would lose his bat. If he starts in an NL park, he could DH all home games and his bat would be in the lineup during an NL game. That seems like the best case scenario, but if there isn't an NL game until game three and he's your best arm, you may not want to hold him back. So taking these one at a time, the first Joe, the All-Star game, I think it's – I guess it's more likely that he gets added as – I don't know.

Well, I don't actually know which is more likely. I think regardless of how he gets there, he will be used as both, I think. Where's the All-Star game this year? Is it in an NL park? Well, they're using the DH in the All-Star game, no matter where the park is. Yeah, okay. I see.

I mean, the question I want to see is, how would the Angels use him in a wild card game? Yes, we've gotten that one too. There's that. Yeah, same. But as far as, I think he's more likely to make it as a pitcher, and I think he would definitely be invited to the Home Run Derby just for the curiosity factor. Yeah. Just, you know, and he's, it'd be fun to, you know, the Home Run Derby is a marketing effect or a marketing event anyway, so why not?

But he would be most likely, I think, to make it as a pitcher. I think to make it as a pitcher. And, and I, I'm guessing that there would be plenty of, there would, there would be plenty of cry for them to, you know, bend the rules just a little bit. Cause you know, it doesn't count anymore. And that, you know, eventually we're gonna have another tie and that, that, that they might say, well, you know, can we just kind of have this one time thing where we let them bat, you know, pitch the second inning and then hit in the seventh inning or something like that. And there's going to be, you know what, there's going to be like when that happens, there's going to be a million columns written about it over, you know, a potential slightly breaking the rules in an exhibition game all-star. How we should handle this because A, it's the all-star break and there's nothing else to write about and b well we like writing argumentative columns yeah and jeff you answered the joseph question right about otani yeah coming the dh essentially you can't really use him to pinch hit you can't just pick and choose your spots but what based on my reading of the rules if you were in the american league and you opt into using the dh which of course every team would but then later in the game if you have you have the DH, so let's say Albert Pujols is the Angels DH, and Otani is on the mound. If Pujols then switches to first base, then he becomes the defensive first

baseman, he stays in his lineup spot, but then the DH is forfeited, so then Otani would slide in, or whoever the pitcher is, but in this case otani would then enter the lineup wherever the first baseman was so in a way you could sort of pinch at him because you could put anyone on the bench at dh you could swap in for pujols and then move that person around wherever you need in the lineup so that then you can have otani move in to the lineup so it is kind of possible in a weird way. Yeah, and you could, I mean, you'd lose the DH for the rest of the game, but hey, there's something to be said. I mean, you would

have to be a little bit craftier than the usual, you know, in the heat of the moment, you kind of go, hey Shohei, get your bat, and you could do it, which is, you know, might be kind of fun to see them try it at some point. I mean mean the wild card

game scenario isn't even unlikely it's the angels are one of the likelier teams to be in the wild card game so we don't know what park it will be in whether there will be a dh or not but i mean obviously you start him unless you know maybe garrett richards it's been really amazing or something i guess you could do a tandem sort of thing with Richards and Otani. You could, like, start Richards and then DH Otani and then bring in—move Otani to pitcher or something after Richards is out of the game. Then you have enough bench bats to cover the pinch hitting appearances you'd need. Right, yeah. So maybe something like that works.

I don't know. But either of you have any thoughts on the World Series rotation, where and how you use him? Well, I mean, they've shown, we know that from the, from NPB, he can play in the outfield. Yeah. I kind of wonder how much the Angels have thought about that as far as, you know, do you want your, your ace starting pitcher making throws from right field on, even on a non-throw day? Yeah. Well, it seems that they don't. your ace starting pitcher making throws from right field on even on a non-throw day yeah well it

seems that they don't and i mean he has played exclusively at dh and probably for that reason so i mean i think that you kind of have to pick i mean if if the idea is get the most out of shohei well i mean it's obvious what you do but i mean even the question of okay well you know we've got do you line them up for, you know, game three, and so that you can kind of take advantage of whatever, if you can line them up at all, but do you line them up there and see, okay, well, maybe we can get a few extra at-bats out of him. You know, in a World Series, well, if he's going in game three, he's probably going in game seven, so, you know, you're probably going to get two starts out of him, and during the World Series,

so maybe that's probably yeah that's probably the worst thing in the world to if he if he is legitimately your staff ace to even you know line it up like that boy i i don't know prove me wrong maybe you don't have him if he pitches one and then game five you have him in relief for game seven so maybe there's that that to think about all right well we can end. I think this has been a long one. So again, I will remind everyone, if you haven't already, go get Russell's book. It's called The Shift, The Next Evolution in Baseball Thinking. Madison Popgarner is in the cover. I don't know if he is the next evolution in baseball thinking. He is not even a baseball pitcher right now. He is the next evolution in the stock photo file that they happen to have.

Yes. Yes, that's right. So go get it. You can all get it wherever books are sold and all of the usual places. You can, of course, find Russell writing regularly at Baseball Perspectives and tweeting as well at Pizza Cutter 4. Russell, always a pleasure. We will have you back on before your next book comes out

Oh good Thanks so much Ben Well the flooding has subsided in my area Although there are still three Baseball games postponed on Monday Including one in a dome go figure The sky is falling in Toronto There's a lot we didn't get to talk about today

Including the incredible Cubs comeback on Saturday Craig Edwards has a good article on that at Fangraphs if you want to dig into how unlikely it was. But there's just too much baseball to podcast about everything once the season is in full swing. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support

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or via the Patreon messaging system. Stay warm, stay dry, watch baseball if they're actually able to play some, and we will be back to talk to you very soon. Bear with the wind Bear with the wind