Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1354: Cabin Ball

Episode Date: March 28, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Sam’s unusual plan to immerse himself in the beginning of the baseball season, watching games as a writer vs. watching games as a fan, two responses to previous listener-email answers, whether “ball” is synonymous with baseball, why baseball has hit a dry spell for single-season record chases, the […]

Now my fingers are numb and my eyes are twitching He's whistling the end in the kitchen As the telephone jingles and the snow turns to dripping Right in here where everything is slipping Oh, cabin fever Oh, cabin fever Oh, cabin fever Oh, cabin fever I'm gonna run for it

Gonna make a run for it Hello and welcome to episode 1354 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello. Hello. How are you? I'm doing okay. It's opening day. Happy opening day to you and everyone listening. You want me to fake the excitement? It's the day before for me, and I can pretend. I can say, oh yeah, how about that Scherzer-DeGrom duel? Things are off on the right foot.

Yeah, you don't have to fake real time excitement. I am excited. We're a few hours away, so you shouldn't have to fake too much excitement. I'm really excited. I'm going all in on baseball this year. Oh yeah? Yeah. You're going to watch? You think you're going to follow it pretty closely? I do. I'm actually going to a cabin to watch baseball for the next four days. Oh, wow. In a cabin. Just complete immersion? Cabin baseball.

Yeah, it's basically the shining of baseball. That's what I'm going for. Which actually, there was a baseball bat in that. Yeah, that's true. Baseball movie. Yeah, definitely. Are you going with your family or is this just, you're just stealing yourself away? No, I'm going with a friend who is also a baseball fan. I see. And so you're just stealing yourself away no i'm going with a

friend who is also a baseball fan i see and so you're just gonna like just gonna watch watch ball wow yeah sounds pretty fun hey i have a banter i just remembered a banter from like a year and a half ago that i didn't get to use because i wasn't hosting a podcast keep going i'll come back to it well have you planned out how you're doing this like i mean i haven't looked at the schedule to see like how many hours a day can you conceivably watch baseball. I don't know how spread out it is. And doesn't it go like after opening day when everyone plays, there's kind of a lull. There's always kind of a lull where some teams take days off.

So are you going to have a dry spell there? Yeah, it's not a great schedule for cabin ball. Tomorrow is all day, day baseball, except for one, one evening game, one five o'clock game. And so you don't have the traditional for the West coasters,

10 AM to 10 PM. Yeah. Day schedule. So that's a little bit of a letdown. I mean, it'll still go from, from 10 AM to 8 PM or since the Red Sox are playing eight 40 PM, but the one that the game at night will be all alone

and there will actually quite possibly be a little bit of a gap in between. And then the next day, I don't believe there's any day ball at all. I think it's all night games and it's like a half schedule. So what are you going to do in the cabin? I don't know. Well, I don't know. I mean, yeah, I don't know. Well, I don't know. I mean, we, yeah, it's up. You don't care.

But it's true that Friday is going to be a little bit of a letdown. So there's a half schedule. And then Saturday works out nicely and Sunday works out nicely. Have you done this before? Cabin ball? No, no, I haven't. I haven't. I have done one-off days frequently with this friend, but never a cabin.

Huh. So what prompted this? Did you feel like you were losing touch with your roots or something, and you have to go back to just watching baseball like a regular Joe or something? No. Well, no. You know my two-player fantasy league, right? Yeah. Which we've talked about here. He's the other guy. And so we needed to do the draft and we normally would do the draft earlier in the month, which takes about eight hours, but we didn't have an opportunity to do it this year. It was bad schedules. And so this was looming as a good weekend and we decided to make a cabin out of it. That sounds fun. Are you

planning to create content based on this or are you going to diary journal Captain Paul? What it was like when I watched baseball? No. I'm not going to do that. I will certainly end up with a tickler

full of articles, 98% of which I will never get to, but I'm not going to diary it. I do have a, I think I am going to try a diary project later this year though. I don't know, diary projects never work. And when I wrote this diary project idea down in a list of things that I thought I'd like to get to and sent to my editor, there was not like balloons falling from the ceiling as they celebrated my great idea. I'm not sure they liked it, to be honest. So maybe I won't do the diary, but I have an idea and I might do it.

Well, that's why I asked. I was wondering if you thought you would be able to let go and just enjoy as a spectator without constantly being thinking, I'm an ESPN writer and I have to write articles for ESPN, so what can I write an article about that I'm watching right now? I mean, those things kind of come to you anyway, but there's a way in which I feel pressure when I do kind of sit down and watch a game to, like, get something out of it. I need to glean something that will help me in the future as opposed to just kind of letting it wash over me, which is how I would like to do it. Yeah, I feel no pressure, particularly early in the season when I'm still interested in watching three-hour games. By June, I'm not going to have that much interest in sitting down and watching a game from start to finish unless it's for something I'm looking at

because I've had the joy of rooting stripped away from me. And so then I'll watch in a lot more like short short short bursts here and there uh you know like flipping around uh this will probably be a lot of full games in a row i'll be interested and um no i don't think i'm gonna feel any pressure at all i i will probably get i mean i'm i'm serious i will probably have 40 article ideas that come out of this so i don't i don't need to put any pressure on. It's an interesting game. Yeah.

I did a, you know, I did the piece two years ago, I think, where it was, it tested the theory that every time you turn on a game, you have the chance to see something you've never seen before. But you delegated for that one. I did. You had other people. I got help, but I did, I watched like, I think there were 12 games that day and i think i

watched eight and uh that that was a lot of pressure i mean really like by the fourth inning you start to panic and you're like going over your notes and you're being like a two one slider have i can't say for sure i've never seen a two one slider but then they all they all came together except for one which was the kicker, I guess, to the piece. Well, cool. That sounds fun. I look forward to hearing about how it went. So what's your year and a half old banter?

There was an episode of Hang Up and Listened where they talked about football coaches. And a football coach was described as a ball coach, I think. Do you remember this? Yeah. Was it an after ball? It might have been. I think it was. Yeah. That sounds vaguely familiar. And yeah. So ball coach. Yeah. He's a ball coach. Somebody had gotten hired. And when somebody else had given an endorsement to that person, he said, he's a ball coach. Yeah. It's like when baseball people say he's a baseball player. No, no, no. It's not like that. Was it not like that? No.

I thought it was like that. No, it wasn't that he was a football coach. It's that he was a ball coach. And I thought that ball was baseball. That if you shorten something to ball, you're talking about baseball. If you go to the ball game, it's the baseball game. If you go to the ballpark, it's the baseball park. If you go to the ball field, it's the baseball game if you go to the ballpark it's the baseball park if you go to the ball field it's the baseball field if you're a ball player you're a baseball player

and hang up and listen i think that maybe josh did do an after ball or something like that on the con on the uh the word ball coach which got me thinking that baseball has has sadly seeded that part of the language. And one of my goals this year, if I can do it without being too ostentatious, is to reclaim ball for baseball. You can always just say ball for baseball and people will get it. And so I'm going to start trying to work ball into more things. Right. Maybe that's just a provincial view that we have, that it's a baseball thing. Maybe it's not a baseball thing. Maybe it wasn't. I don't know. In other sports, I mean, like in basketball,

you can just say that someone can ball. That's true, yeah. That's a basketball thing. He's a baller. That's true. Right. That's a good one. From the Stompers, you'll remember that we had ball out, though, was to be a baseball player uh and to do so in an outward way i guess i don't know what ball out meant exactly uh but they have the you know

the the take me out to the ball game is maybe the most what is take me out to the ball game the second most famous song in the american songbook after, like, happy birthday. Well, yeah, after, like, patriotic songs, national anthem type songs. Yeah, maybe. And so that's got ballgame right in it. And I think that everybody knows that song. Yeah. And they know what sport they're talking about. Yeah, okay.

Well, I wish you luck. Thanks. Reclaiming it. So a couple updates I wanted to relay here based on episodes that we have done in the recent past so there was the episode that Meg and you and I did together which we had hoped to do

actually today for opening day but then the scheduling didn't work out so we're going to try to do it early next week instead but when we did do that we answered a question. Play ball! It's a play ball! a play ball. Yeah, play ball. You don't get that anywhere else.

No. Yeah. So we answered this question from the brother of a guy named Dario, who is a baseball fan in Australia, in Brisbane, who has not paid any attention to baseball this whole offseason. paid any attention to baseball this whole offseason. He just went into a baseball blackout and he wanted to know our advice for how to get back into baseball and figure out what he missed. And we advised him just to go into it cold and just to see how he learned things, just kind of organically pick things up. And so I think Meg may have suggested via email that he broadcast this process and he is doing that. So if anyone is interested, if you're not going to be in a cabin watching all the baseball games and you want to watch Dario watch baseball and pay attention to baseball for the first time

in many months, you can go in the Facebook group. I'll link to it. There's going to be a YouTube live stream. It's going to be 3 a.m. where Dario is, so he's going to be wearing pajamas, but he will be watching baseball. He's going to be watching the Mets opener. It will just be his first exposure to baseball for a really long time, so that might be fun just to watch his reactions

to seeing who's on the Mets now because a lot of new Mets. Does that count as the accounts and descriptions of this game is is he potentially well as long as he doesn't uh do play by play or put the game on the broadcast i think it's okay if it's just uh him reacting to things i think that's and it's great right the mets open the season the mets are the first yeah team to play a game yeah and So you can get this stunt out of the way really quickly.

Yeah, so I will put the link on the show page and everyone can go watch Dario if you want to. So the other thing that I wanted to mention, you did a stat blast last week. It was about the best game for a two-year-old and you determined

what the best game was and the father of the two-year-old, and you determined what the best game was. And the father of the two-year-old wrote in to report how that exposure to that game went. So it was, what was it, August, first game of a doubleheader, was it, that the Mets blew out the Phillies? I'm completely forgetting everything, but I think, yeah, that's basically right. And there was a lot of Action and not A lot of wasted pitches we Got a video of Hannah watching The inning and I'll just

Report what Her father Ben said to us Many thanks we can confirm that The top of the fifth of Mets Phillies on August 16th 2018 is Undoubtedly a two year old Friendly inning highlights included Hannah insisting every runner take off his Batting gloves whenever they reached first base on August 16th, 2018, is undoubtedly a two-year-old friendly inning. Highlights included Hannah insisting every runner take off his batting gloves whenever they reached first base,

Hannah moving from distress to imitation when she realized that the runners weren't falling down but sliding, Hannah realizing that the Mets had batted around by exclaiming, Jose Bautista hitting again, and Hannah spontaneously initiating three high fives, two hugs and two kisses, something she does not offer liberally. When the final act was made,

she turned to Kristen and me and asked again, thanks for making our family's weekend very happy. So good pick. Thank you. It's good stuff. Yeah. It was a good video. I got to see the video.

Yeah. Super charming. Yeah. I won't post the video. No. He charming. Yeah. I won't post the video in case Ben doesn't want to. He didn't say not to, but yeah, probably should do that. You know, there were two Hoseas in the lineup. I'm just saying. Okay.

Well, either way, she noticed multiple Hoseas. All right. So we are going to maybe do some emails, but before we do some emails, we've been meaning to talk about an article you wrote last week. You had a very productive week last week, and you wrote about which of baseball's most unbreakable records might actually get broken in 2019. This is probably a premise that we've talked about on the podcast, just the idea that we're in a real dry spell for records. But if people haven't read this, and they should, and I'll link to it, but if they haven't, can you lay out the case for why this is a time when no one is breaking records? It's two things. One is that specifically it's not an extreme era of any real sort. It's not an extreme pitching era.

It's not an extreme offensive era. Stylistically, it's extreme, but like the runs per game, it's not extreme. Yeah. Strikeouts are extreme. Home runs are pretty extreme. Home runs and strikeouts are extreme, but strikeouts, you've got a problem in that none of the rates strikeout rate stats are known in the popular imagination. And you've got a severe lack of workload build up to get a strikeout record. And so you don't have pitchers throwing 600 innings. You don't have batters playing in a league where, you know, five and a half runs are being scored a game and you don't have super tall mounds. And then the other fact is that, well, I guess there's three. The other fact is the old thing about why nobody hits 400 anymore. You want to explain that one? Oh, well, I mean, players are, well, there are a few reasons for that too, I guess. I mean,

one is the strikeouts and that's probably part of it, But also, just everyone's better at baseball, basically. And it's the old Stephen Jay Gould argument about how when you had a bunch of scrubs playing baseball and people who weren't actually that good and now everyone's good so there are just fewer extremes of every kind it's harder for the best players to stand out as much as they used to so that's part of it and just also the strikeouts and and the fact that the league batting average is 248 last year right so that's a big part of it too yeah and you also have the fact that the league batting average is 248 last year, right? So that's a big part of it too. Yeah. And you also have the fact that there hasn't been expansion in a really long time. It's been 20 years, 21 years, I guess, since there were teams added to the league.

And so you haven't had that dilution of the player pool. And so it really is a fairly tight grouping between the best players and really the floor of players, I think right now. And then I guess the third factor is just that they've been playing baseball a really long time, which means that a lot of records have already been set a bunch. It's not like you're breaking the eight year old record for home runs in 1876 or whatever, because they've been playing so long that lots of people have had chances to hit a lot of home runs, right? And so anyway, the point is that there are hardly ever any records broken anymore, any good ones.

And there haven't really been any good chases in a while even, particularly this decade. There were some, there were really some records broken and obviously in the nineties and the early two thousands, which wasn't that long ago and gives hope if you want to see records broken but in the last decade there hasn't really been anything that's even come close to a record that i can think of unless you count a couple of fringy ones and so so the premise for this article was to take 20 records the 20 most significant records that are entirely contained within a single season. So we're not talking career records here. We're talking either season totals or streaks or single game records. So anything that you could see starting right now in 2019 and ranking those by how likely they are to get broken and considering what gets in the way, what specifically gets in the way, but also just how unlikely it is.

Because really, until you get down to number two, maybe, you can't really imagine any of these being broken. And until you get down to number probably seven, you can't even, like, okay okay so when i said imagine a minute ago i should have started with a weaker word because i would say that you genuinely can't imagine number eight or or or below being broken like you can't even imagine it you i did it i had to but you can't even really imagine these things happening and so then seven and down are like sort of like okay uh yeah maybe i could sort of see that getting broken there's nothing that's

like permanently in the way of it getting broken but like we're talking massive like for instance number five is 67 doubles and that's number five that's the fifth most likely record to be broken. And if you combine the best first half doubles total for the last decade and the best best half that any other player has had out of thousands of players and uh and it just barely gets it done and not only that but i didn't check this but there's a pretty good chance that the first half doubles max in the last 10 years was a longer half than the typical first half and that the second half which came in a different year was also in all so probably if you really looked at it that was probably like 164 games or something like that anyway uh and that's number five that must have been the only thing you didn't check because you you must have you had so many stats in this article i don't think i've ever read or written an article with just so many stats in it

and i don't mean that in a negative way i don't take it in a negative yeah i mean as i was reading it i was like oh my gosh like that sentence must have taken him so long to write and then the next sentence would be something that was like oh my gosh how long did it that take him to write he must have been play indexing and exporting i don't know how much did you have help with like elias or espn researchers or something no my gosh this one must have taken you forever it's a lot of words but it's like also just full of fun facts and stuff and it's just like oh man monumental effort yeah yeah thank you i guess probably not everyone would appreciate that if you haven't written many stat-filled articles yourself and just know how much time can go into one extremely insignificant sentence. I would like, yeah, I mean, I would like to say that these are, I think 20 records are discussed.

And I would like to say that there are 19 mini articles that can all stand on their own as individual articles. The only one that isn't is the hits. I just basically was like, whatever. Yeah. Well, like doubles, for instance, since you were just talking about doubles, I hadn't really thought of doubles as like the one thing about baseball that's sort of the same. Like everything else is like no one hits singles anymore and everyone hits homers and no one really hits triples as much as they used

to but doubles are kind of just like unaffected by anything doubles are just hanging out they're just doubles rate is kind of the same as it often was i don't know what it is about doubles that makes them so resistant to change but i guess they're kind of like the middle of the pack type hit maybe they're fewer like a few fewer of them just because there are fewer hits in general. But otherwise, not really. Maybe a double isn't that affected by ballpark, right? For the most part. Because if you have a smaller ballpark, most doubles are doubles off the bat.

And with a little bit, there's like an exception for, you know, some balls hit in Boston, for instance, or some balls hit in parks like Coors that become triples. But most doubles are just, they're just doubles. They're stand-up doubles. Maybe they're hustle doubles, but they're doubles off the bat. And it doesn't really matter where the fence is. And if you moved the fence, I don't know. This isn't a very good theory. Well, I think there's something to it.

I mean, it's probably less sensitive to ballpark changes than triples and homers. I don't know about singles, but yeah. There was a great hardball times piece a couple of years ago by John LaRue that I'll link to that just shows the homogenization of ballparks over the years. The one that I struggled the most with was RBIs, which the record i mean the

record is 191 right and nobody gets 191 i think i mean like i don't know which which of these fun facts should i read uh 191 rbis is is outrageous nobody comes even close to that and like when when you look at the old numbers there's all sorts of guys with 170 RBIs and Lou Gehrig had 180 some RBIs and it just seems like it was a crazy era for RBIs. And now no active player has ever driven in 140 and nobody has come within 25 RBIs of the record since 1938, which is 80 years ago. And so this one felt like it was way out of reach. And I explained that I had originally put it at number 18 on this list. And then I could not think of a reason why it couldn't be broken. And it just kept moving up one spot at a time until it was number 10.

And even that feels like not that, and it maybe should be higher because, so, all right. So Hack Wilson, I'm just going to, for everybody who read this, you're going to get to hear me read an article. Hack Wilson, 191 RBIs. There are three pieces to an RBI total, right? There is how many base runners you get. There is what percentage of your base runners you drive in, and there are how many home runs you hit. And in none of those three components, besides a little bit the home runs, in none of those three components did Hack Wilson do anything that hasn't also been done by current or recent players. So he had 524 base runners that year, which is not extraordinary.

And Albert Pujols had that much three years ago. Various players have had that that many this decade it's not uncommon to have 524 base runners on he drove in 22.7 percent which players this decade a bunch of them have have been there or pretty close to there including as i noted alan craig of all people and so if alan craig can do it it's not like you're talking about you need an all-time slugger to do that. And then he hit 56 home runs, which is a lot. And that's the closest thing.

But that's not out of range either. And so there's nothing about what Hack Wilson actually did. Like, I know that it was an offensive era. I know that there were stacked lineups. I know that baseball was more offensive. I know that guys were hitting 400. Like, baseball was very offensive at that point in history. But when you actually look at what he did on the three components of the RBI, none of those was outlandish.

All of those could be matched right now. And I don't really understand why nobody drives in 140 runs ever anymore. The season's longer, too. Yeah, well, there were some that I hadn't thought of here, and I didn't really disagree with your ranking about much. I would say you put 62 saves, the single season saves record, at number four, which is reasonable. record at number four, which is reasonable. But I don't know, I just wrote about how teams are now distributing their saves much more democratically than they used to. And it's rarer for guys to have high save totals. And it's much more common to have like five or 10 saves because teams are just sort of spreading it out and not really anointing a closer who gets all

the save opportunities anymore. They're just kind of playing matchups and going with who's rested or whatever so i think that probably makes that even less likely is that true of of like the top 10 closers in the league too are our season leaders dropping doesn't feel to me that maybe season leaders aren't dropping but i don't know i think there are fewer people who are getting to like a threshold where maybe you could start to talk about a record i don't know but uh yeah well and you don't you don't have to that's crucial because you don't actually as i wrote you don't have to be that good to get the saves record you just need to get the save opportunities record that every person who has held the saves record for the last 40 years has concurrently held the save opportunities record it's almost it is almost entirely well

it is it's entirely the people who have had the most save opportunities in a season have also had the most saves in a season consistently since uh the early 1980s at least so if uh what i'm basically saying is that the pool of players who could be bobby thigpen who could set an all-time saves record is probably 20 of the 30 closers on opening day but if uh if only six are getting the automatic save opportunities because of this trend that you are noting then it it definitely lessens the number of players in that pool there have been been, well, I guess in the last few years, it dropped. There were a lot of 50 save seasons at the beginning of this decade, but it has dropped. And your number one is 20 strikeouts in a nine inning game, which we've talked about

many times on the show. And I know that you want to see that broken or at least want to see people try to break it and have a realistic shot to break it. And I was just talking about this on the Ringer podcast the other day because we did a prop bets over-under type thing. And Michael Bauman set the over-under for will a pitcher have more than this number of strikeouts in a game at 16.5. And I took the under, which felt weird, but no one got there last year. No one got there the year before, or no one got over, that is. And no one has gotten over since Max Scherzer struck out 20 in May 2016.

And that's always the kind of fascinating thing because you have strikeouts going up and up and innings and pitch counts going down and down. And it seems like the innings and pitch counts are down and down. And it seems like the innings and pitch counts are kind of winning out over the strikeouts, but it is very conceivable that it could happen. But it's just whenever someone is making a run at it, usually he has thrown too many pitches for his team to let him actually go for it, which is kind of a bummer. Yeah. I also wonder if, well well like what we've seen in the last few years is that not only are pitchers not getting extra pitches to complete their no hitters as often but it seems to me this is like kind it's anecdotal and i might be imagining it but

it seems to me that teams are actually aggressively pulling their pitchers kind of early so that they don't get put in the position where they have to make the hard the hard pull you know like if you pull them after six then you can go all right well you know you don't have three mornings in you but if you pull them after eight like he can smell it right yeah and um like paxton when he struck out 16 in 105 pitches clearly could have gone at least an eighth. Like he could have struck out 18, but then they might have to let him go in the ninth or they might feel more pressure to let him go in the ninth. more than 16 last year, that does not mean that it is impossible to, or even that difficult to imagine a pitcher striking out 20. Like he just has to kind of get the opportunity, right? Paxton was so close. He just didn't get the opportunity. Yeah. And you have the stolen base stuff in here

and Ricky Henderson. And that is, I mean, that's a sign of just how hard it is to imagine any of these things getting broken is that Ricky Henderson's 130 stolen bases in 1982 is only number 13 on the list. So there are a bunch below that that are even less conceivable. But bigger base. Well, yeah, bigger base. Yeah, that could change things. But I was thinking about this because I just done my annual article where I look at spring training stats to see if anything notable has changed. Because league-wide spring training numbers are pretty strongly correlated with regular season numbers. So if strikeouts or homers or whatever goes way up in spring training, there's a good chance that that will happen in the regular season too.

And basically this year, everything is the same as last spring training. So it doesn't look like we're heading for any major changes, which is kind of encouraging in that strikeouts were up this spring for like the 11th consecutive year, but just barely, barely, barely. So while I was working on that, I had just checked to see what the Royals did in spring training this year, because that was the thing that I was looking forward to about the Royals, that they were going to try to bring back the 1980s and steal a bunch of bases and they got all the fast guys and they ended up with 27 steals in spring training which ranked eighth among all teams so the interesting thing is that they led all teams in spring training in batting average and OPS and also on base percentage so I don't know if it's and slugging percentage.

They just led all the teams in everything, which is also weird. So I don't know if they weren't running because they were just hitting so well that they didn't have to run. It would be really weird if like the reason that they don't end up running a lot is because like Billy Hamilton is a really good hitter now and Terrence Gore is a hitter. I don't know. Billy Hamilton is a really good hitter now And Terrence Gore is a hitter I don't know it's weird So I'm hoping that they were just Saving their speed for

Games that count or something but Otherwise I'll be disappointed Gore reached base 14 times as a hitter In spring training he had a 341 on base Percentage he drew 8 walks He had 6 hits and he stole 2 bases and was caught twice Wow so yeah almost more of a

offensive force in other ways i assume he is uh on the opening day roster right i have yeah he they just announced it like an hour ago excellent excellent all right can i ask you something you keep mentioning the royals yeah as being interesting because they're going to run a lot yeah and i don't see what is so interesting about it um and i'm so can you lay out your vision of how this looks because i agree that if they're really crazy out there if if they're like if they steal 300 bases i'm watching but if they're just a team that leads the league in steals while winning 56 games with a bunch of bad on base percentage hitters. I don't think I'm, I just don't think I'm going to flip over there. I don't, I don't, I don't have,

I might, so I don't have the imagination that you might have. So can you describe what you're seeing when you imagine the interesting Royals? Well, in theory, I like the blueprint that they had where, I don't know if this is their actual thinking, but they're going to be bad. So they figured we'll just do something different and we'll get a bunch of speedy guys because speed is exciting. Stolen bases are exciting. We all agree on that, right? Everyone likes stolen bases, even if you think that maybe it didn't make sense to steal as much as players used to steal because outs cost you a lot. But I think everyone would like there to be more steals i haven't seen anyone complain about bigger bases because it might actually lead to more steals and

more running so i think we all like that now maybe it's not a big enough draw to get you to change the channel to watch the team if you had like someone who went every time, that would be something you'd tune in to watch. Yeah. So they'd have to get to the point where you feel like you're going to see someone go every inning or something. Then I might watch. But you're right. I mean, just leading the league would not be that interesting. It's not like I usually tune in to watch the stolen base league leader on a team level.

So they would have to like blow everyone else away. That was what I was hoping, that they would just be so separated from everyone else that they would just be playing this time capsule throwback brand of baseball and it would look completely different from everyone else. I mean, those good Royals teams of 2014 and 2015 are probably the most fun teams i've ever seen i think yeah they were playing games that counted though they were playing i mean a stolen base a stolen base is is a is really exciting in a game that you're really invested in yeah i mean it's not a rare occurrence. And so if it's not a game that you're already

invested in, I don't know that it would, it would move the needle. However, I, I, I agree if it were automatic or if, you know, if they had three guys who were chasing 85 steals or something like that, I mean, that would be genuinely something fun. And I, I'm a, I, I, I'm a sucker for the double steal. So if they started, if every time they had two guys on, they were double stealing, I don't know. Would I flip over? No. Yeah. Well, that was my hope that it would just be really in your face like that just because it seemed like that was what they were doing this winter, where they were just going and getting all the fast guys.

And if you're going to go get all the fast guys, then wouldn't you just tell them to be fast and steal a lot? And so I assumed that they would not put a team together like that and then not kind of give it the green light at all times. But this spring training is demoralizing me. I'm not sure whether that's going to happen. I wouldn't steal a single base in spring training. That seems like a terrible idea. Yeah. Well, it's funny. Every team talks about how it's going to steal more bases in spring training. But I guess once the games begin, they talk in spring training about how they're going to do it once spring training is over. Yeah.

So, yeah, maybe they'll turn on the ignition when the games actually start. Would you be mad if they really made spring training look fake like if they were like no player should ever be hurt in spring training for you know for a reason other than like throwing a baseball might hurt you right but like nobody should ever i'm just imagining what the fix would be for steven souza but uh like if you had let's say they had teams could opt into no slide rules for spring training games where you just you don't slide. You can run through every base and just kind of like, you know, turn around and then go back to the base or something like that. If they were playing at like very, very light speed in the field or on the base paths, would that ruin it completely? Is there a compromise there?

Well, it's not like I'm watching much spring training completely is it is there a compromise there well it's not like i'm watching much spring training baseball as it is so i don't know that you can't you can ruin it for me so but people do i mean people do and when you go i mean going is fun going into spring training and it's fun yeah so do you think it would ruin it if you were at the park relaxing in the sun not caring about a thing in the world and having to watch a slightly different version of baseball yeah i think if you could tell that that guys weren't giving effort i think that would probably affect things yeah but it might be smart i don't know i mean you see like a single francisco lindorf injury or something and uh probably cleveland wishes they had been not trying all spring just to have him for the months that he'll be gone.

Jeez, is it months? Well, I don't know if they've said how long it is, but it said acute. Acute sounded bad. So what was the last record chase that you remember being excited about? Is there one that stands out in your mind? Boy, I mean, I've been excited. I was excited last year when Mike Trout was chasing the war record through May.

I don't know if that counts, but I mean, it was only through May. Do I need to think of one that lasted through the All-Star break or something? I don't know that I have thought of one really. By the way, I guess Lindor is not expected to be out for months. So hopefully that will not be the case. He was just coming back from the calf thing.

And then he had the ankle thing. Right as he was coming back from the calf thing. So hopefully nothing else happens. But yeah. I mean the only one that stands out in my mind. I think that I actually wrote an article about. And actually was kind of invested in. And excited about.

Was Ichiro's pursuit of the single season pinch hits record. Which was. I actually wrote an article about and actually was kind of invested in and excited about was Ichiro's pursuit of the single season pinch hits record, which was two years ago, 2017. Ichiro actually finished one short of the single season record, John Vander Waals, 28 in one year. Ichiro with the Marlins at age 43 or whatever, had 27 pinch hits in that season. And I was kind of excited about that because I thought it would be so cool if the same person held the single season hits record and the single season pinch hits record. I thought that would be really phenomenal and that it would sort of tell the story of Itro's career and how he was this phenom and he had all these hits and then he just held on and

held on and held on and was actually pretty good that year for a team that was not pretty good but that I think was special to me also because it was so kind of out of nowhere like no one has dedicated pinch hitters anymore and so it was very much against its era too And he was chasing John VanderWaal Who of course was known for that And was playing in 1995 Coors Field Which if you adjust that Obviously the 2017 Ichiro playing in Miami Would be more hits than VanderWaal

So I really was kind of into that record But it's not like a well-known record You wouldn't have been able to name necessarily Who was kind of into that record, but it's not like a well-known record. You wouldn't have been able to name necessarily who was the single season hits record. You might have guessed John VanderWaal, but you wouldn't have known how many. So that's the last one I can think of and kind of the only one I can think of in recent years. Yeah, I've come up entirely blank. Coors Field, man.

John VanderWaal hit 400, 500, 711 in Coors Field that year. Well, I mean, I guess if neither of us can really remember one and we're still watching baseball and you're going to a cabin to watch nothing but baseball, then maybe we don't need record chases. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would like to write about some of these record ch chases though. I mean, I think some of them would be a ton of fun. Somebody asked me which one I would most want to see broken this year. And I think that a 57 game hitting streak at this point is probably the most fun that baseball can, can produce in a season. I think that would just be out of control. I would love that. But my personal favorite would be, and if this maybe is cheating, because this is the one that is probably shouldn't even be on this list. It's so absurd. But the 13 shutouts, if a pitcher could somehow get 13 shutouts, that would be something I'd watch. I mean, once you got to like six at midway through the season, I mean, you're already watching that guy. You're all every everybody's already watching every one of his starts. already watching that guy you're all every everybody's already watching every one of his starts and the drama of will he throw a shutout is perfect because a it starts on the first pitch

you can immediately start i mean is he allowing a run is one thing and how's his pitch count and does the game situation make sense for him to hit for himself in the seventh inning and and so on and so it starts with the first pitch and it lasts for three hours and it is a truly immersive game experience and um i think it'd be incredible it's just it's not even it's absurd yeah it's a terrible it's a terrible idea yeah i think the most surprising fact in this entire article was the identity of the person who has the longest on-base streak since Ted Williams' record, 84 games in 1949. I don't think anyone would guess this. Orlando Cabrera. Orlando Cabrera.

63 games on base in a row, Orlando Cabrera. I don't get it. How could Orlando Cabrera. That is, I don't get it. How could Orlando Cabrera have a longer on-base streak than like peak Barry Bonds? What? I don't get it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, as you said, if Orlando Cabrera could do it, then surely someone better than Orlando Cabrera could do better than he did. Yeah.

I wonder, did you look to see like how he did it? Like, was he walking a lot? Did he have just like a 600 BABIP or something during that time? How did he do that? I didn't look. And to be honest, Ben, hearing you say this out loud makes me think, oh, wait, I got that wrong. It wasn't Orlando Cabrera. Well, we won't look into it any further then.

I don't know. I'm going to see. I mean, of course, I checked all these things. Oh, please. Let's see. Probably. Yeah, here it is. Okay.

Orlando Cabrera. Wow. Oh, my gosh. The headline when the streak ran out was, a good run for Cabrera. Okay. Yeah, here it is. All right, good. I mean, of course I checked.

I don't want anybody listening to think that I didn't check, but it sounded worse aloud. Yeah. All right. Well, I think I will do a stat blast. I don't know if this is an email show or not, but whatever. We'll do a stat blast I don't know if this is an email show or not But whatever, we'll do a 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 day's to blast So this is inspired by a listener question. It comes from Alex, and Alex wants to know, In 2019, the Cardinals will try to finish ahead of the Pirates in the NL Central for the 20th straight year. That's currently the longest in-division streak and the longest such streak by my research in the wildcard era.

So this is kind of a record going for a record here. My question, what is the record? I know the Yankees finished ahead of the Blue Jays for 21 straight years from 1994 to 2014, again by my research, but I figured the Yankees way back in the day would have maybe had an even longer streak over a franchise like the Athletics or something when divisions were non-existent, but I wasn't sure. Also, as a Cardinals fan, should I even care about this? Because I must admit I do find myself invested in it, and I want them to beat the Yankees over the Blue Jays streak and whatever other streak might be out there.

So I got some help with this one from Dan Hirsch of Baseball Reference who often helps me with these questions and he gave me a giant file which I'll put in a Google Sheet and put online for everyone if they want to peruse it. But Alex's research is correct. He has those numbers and figures right. And he even speculated correctly about what the longest streak would be. The longest streak, and so this is going divisions, obviously, looking at division opponents from 1969 on, and then just looking at league opponents from 1871 to 1968 before there were divisions. So the longest such streak is 34 seasons,

and that was the Yankees over the Kansas City and Philadelphia A's. So 1932 to 1965, the Yankees always finished ahead of the A's. And unsurprisingly, probably like all of the top streaks are the Yankees over someone. Yankees over the A's, Yankees over the White Sox, Yankees over the Red Sox got up to 27 seasons from 1919 to 1945. There's a lot of Yankees on this list. Pretty predictable. And you do have to, really, the ones that Alex named, the ongoing Cardinals and Pirates streak is easily the longest.

Actually, let's see what the longest other one right now is. The longest active streak other than the Cardinals over Pirates streak is the Dodgers over the Padres, which is only eight. Oh my gosh, you're kidding. And actually also Dodgers over the Rockies, also eight, and Nationals over the Marlins, also eight. So yeah, the Cardinals-Pirates streak, more than double the second longest active streak right now. longest active streak right now. And really, the striking thing when you look at the top of the list is not only is it just Yankees, but it is like all old teams, which I think speaks well of baseball's competitive

balance and parity. The only other notable long ones, like 20 or longer here, are all streaks that started like in the 60s like 69 or so and it's someone over the Indians like the Indians were really bad so like 69 to 91 the Red Sox topped the Indians in the AL East every one of those years that is 23 consecutive years. And then like 63 to 85, the Orioles over the Indians, also 23 years. Or 69 to 89, the Yankees over the Indians, 21 years. Lots of Indians. And that's kind of it. It's like everything else basically started in like the 19-teens or 20s or 30s.

And I think that is indicative of just how many garbage teams there were and teams that would be terrible for like decades at a time and we're not even trying to compete and now you don't really get that so much except for the Pirates for part of this Cardinals Pirates streak so I think that is encouraging and really like the only other long, if you look at like 2000 on, for instance, the the Angels beat the Mariners from 2004 to 2015, which was 12 years. But you just you don't get this anymore. So what the Cardinals are doing over the Pirates right now is pretty unusual and anachronistic. And if I were a Cardinals fan fan i would definitely be rooting for it i mean i'd be rooting for the cardinals to do well anyway and to be better than the other teams in the division but it's also kind of a cool streak it shocked me when you said the longest active

streak was only eight and then i just sort of thought about each division and of course you have the astros who were behind every team and then ahead of every team and so that wipes out one division and the cubs were behind every team and then ahead of every team. And so that wipes out one division. And the Cubs were behind every team and then ahead of every team. And that wipes out another one. And so really in the rebuilding era, it's very hard to keep a streak going for more than seven years, even if you're... That's true. Yeah.

Yeah. When I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how the National League is just so much more exciting than the American League now, all of the facts and figures I had in my article were like three years ago. It was completely the other way around. Like you can just, you know, Google in five seconds and you can find articles from like 2016 talking about how like half the National League is tanking and the National League is unwatchable. talking about how like half the National League is tanking and the National League is unwatchable. And now it's completely reversed because the teams that were tanking or rebuilding or whatever you want to call it then are good now for the most part. And now a bunch of AL teams are in that down part of the cycle. And probably a few years from now, it'll be turned on its head again. So that's kind of how baseball is working right now. Well, while you were doing that, I was looking up Orlando Cabrera.

I've got a few little details for you. Okay. You're going to be delighted by them. So first I'll just get two of the good quotes out of the way. Well, maybe I only had one good quote. It's not even a direct quote. But this is from the story about the streak breaking. He said he was satisfied with

the streak but relieved it had ended which is not how you're supposed to be with the streak you couldn't end it so he he had the same reaction that we did which is uh it's just crazy me doing that kind of stuff i'm a free swinging hitter reaching every reaching base every day it was hard to believe i was doing it now in, in those 63 games, well, first- What year was this, by the way? 2006, when he was on the Angels. So the day that the streak began, he had an on-base percentage of 301. So that's one detail that you should know.

Another detail that you should know is that during the streak, he had an on base percentage of 372 what oh man oh wow i like those uh long hitting streaks where it's like so and so just finished like a 22 gamer and he hit like 250 or something like during the streak and it's like oh he just went one for four every day so it's uh it's kind of what cabrera was doing for a ridiculously long time 372 he had a 316 babbitt he had a walk rate 316 that's all that's all yeah yeah he hit 303 during the streak, slugged.418.

He had a.316 BABIP. He had a walk rate below 10%. He was hit by two pitches, and one of those two hit-by-pitches kept the streak alive. It was the only way he reached base that day. I wonder how many of the 63 were single-time getting on. It must have been a lot. It must have been a lot. A lot, yeah. So there were there

are five streaks longer than his in history three of them ted williams one of them joe dimaggio and i don't know who the fifth one was someone good so so here i'll just go quickly down that one time two times one time one time three times one time one time one time one time one time two one one one four three he's hot yeah two one so i'll stop there okay how many what was the longest streak of ones that you see do you see one well it's hard to yeah i've got to look at three columns at once yeah all right well all right that is uh extremely improbable oh in this game he had one where he reached once and it was a 13 inning game uh-huh that is a wild occurrence 372 yeah when ted williams did it i think it was july 1st to September 27th, 1949, 84 games, he had a 518 on base percentage. That makes more sense. Orlando Cabrera, not so much. where the record seems absolutely out of range. There's no, we never see anybody get close.

You can't possibly fathom somebody hitting 36 triples or whatever. But then you look at the guy who did it and he never came. He like, like the, the, the guy who has the all-time doubles record with 67, never hit 30 in a season. The guy who had the all-time, yeah, the guy who had the all-time trip triples record 36 never led the league in triples never had more than 14 and then you got Orlando Cabrera just popping up in an article about records yeah so you can't usually see it building really hard you know maybe usually it happens in a an era that is favorable for that thing but you can't necessarily pick out the player and say oh he's getting close year after year and sometimes it's just this weird out of nowhere performance yeah all right i have uh an

email or two here that we can answer to to wrap this thing up so this one just came in as we were recording actually from listener eric who says on the whole would you say the rise of analytics has been a net positive for Major League Baseball players? As a group, were they better off when front offices were, for lack of a better word, dumber? So this is tricky because are we talking about the 750 baseball players who are on rosters today or the 750 baseball players who would be on rosters in an alternate universe? It's obviously been bad for some players. Yeah.

Probably most of those players it's been bad for don't realize it's been bad for them because, you know, it just felt like a career. It felt like their career was to top out at AA or whatever. They didn't realize that it was because of, you know, analytics. It's just how the game is. So, you know, there's going to be some winners and some losers so that's hard to answer that question in a in like a deep way but it's probably easier to answer in the way that you're going to answer because you wrote a book about it well yeah that's

true i mean definitely it has made it possible for certain players to improve themselves in ways that would not have been possible before. On the other hand, it's a zero-sum game. So when those players are getting better than someone else is getting worse, that kind of comes back to maybe it's not really better or worse in the aggregate. I'm trying to think of other outside factors, other ways in which the fact that these stats are out there has made life better for baseball players. Well, yeah, there's one way that it's made it worse, right? Which is that GMs in the analytical era care much more about not spending money on players. And it is probably the case that in a world where nobody had ever invented any of this stuff, probably payrolls

would be somewhat higher. Yeah, probably. That's true. I mean, on the other hand, like payrolls are higher than they were before analytics, which is not because of that. They've far outstripped or outpaced, I should say, inflation, you know mean, that's what sports salaries do, but they have. So we don't know that alternate universe either. And I've made the case here before that it's possible that executives are more willing to spend money the more confident they are in their projections for a player, that the existence of uncertainty makes you less likely to want to gamble millions of dollars on a player. And so one might, might posit that having more accurate projections, more accurate data about players has made, could have made, had the opposite effect,

could have caused more front offices to be more comfortable giving lots of money to players, caused more front offices to be more comfortable giving lots of money to players, even though, of course, the prevailing trend is to not give money to aging players who were the main beneficiaries of the old financial model. So, but your, it seems to me that your book, so I think we talked about this at one point, or maybe I talked to somebody else about it, but the point of Moneyball was that data was making it possible for front offices to basically get good performances from players who they didn't have to pay as much. And your book is much more about how players have taken control of that data and used it to make themselves better. It is not about team building primarily.

It is about players finding the best version of themselves. And so in that sense, in the larger self, you could say that perhaps you could say that the first 20 years of the analytics era were, by and large, not very good for players because nobody saw them as existing for players or on behalf of players, but that we have reached a place in the last couple of years where it is much more the case that that these these things are existing as tools for players first and foremost and so that would suggest that maybe the next 20 years would be good for players and maybe we had to go through the first 20 years to get here yeah that could be true but still there are going to be players who aren't interested in this stuff and that will be worse for them because you're going to have to be

interested in this stuff to keep up with everyone else who is so in a way it's almost like you have more homework to do if you're a player because in the past it was more like you could just kind of get by on natural talent or natural talent plus work ethic whereas now you need natural talent plus work ethic plus like an analytical approach so that you are practicing in the most optimal way. It's almost like the demands on players have increased if they want to keep pace with other players. So they're kind of making it harder for each other in a sense. In a sense, it has certainly benefited certain players who just would have been gone and now are not because they had some tool that identified something they did well or that changed something that they did well. But I just I don't know if that means that it's better for players on the whole than it would be without. You could say one thing about and I don't know, probably this would have happened. And I don't know, probably this would have happened. I think probably this would have happened without analytics,

but it is undeniable that it happened after analytics first started talking about it, which is that pitch counts were reduced a great deal, which perhaps has the benefit of keeping pitchers healthy. Presumably it does. That's why they do it, but it's also hard to prove. But more importantly, Ben, there are hundreds of more pitchers appearing in the majors each year. That's true. Because of that.

And so the pool of players that, I don't know if you want to call it analytics, but that lower pitch counts have brought in. And I guess that the shift toward more innings going to relievers, which is somewhat analytics driven. Times through the order stuff. Yeah. There are just more major leaguers than there used to be. Although there are fewer guys. I guess a lot of them are just kind of shuffling back and forth and aren't really there all year. But still, they're there sometimes and they probably wouldn't have been there in the past.

So that's something. And all the other stuff that we talk about as downsides, like aesthetically speaking with more strikeouts and that kind of thing. That might be a negative for fans, but I don't think players particularly care. All right. There's one more that you said you wanted to answer about the best stats to gauge a player's power. This is a question from Nate, one of our Patreon supporters. And he says, curious what you guys think is the best or most telling power metric in other words if you could only use one metric to highlight a player's power in a given season which one would you use yeah and i don't know if i i mostly just wanted to pass along an observation

that i had recently that was along these lines which is that it actually is kind of hard harder than i expected to sum up a player's power output in just one number. This came up when I was writing about Bryce Harper recently. And Harper's reputation coming up was that he was an elite power guy, like like he was an 80 power guy from like his early teens. And you know, he had that he's he's very strong, but he also had that incredible swing. And he had a lot of power. We've seen him lead the league in home runs, and we've seen him go on torrid home run streaks, and so on. But over the past three seasons, I wanted to demonstrate the power that he's had.

And nothing really felt right. And everything that I could summon seemed like it was only telling a little bit of the story. And so I ended up with eight bullet points for, for, to try to make the case that his power in the last three years, I partly, it was that I was trying to make the case that his power has been only pretty good, but not great that he's, he has not been an 80 power hitter for the last few years and i didn't want to criticize a guy who had just signed a 13-year deal without data that i could believe in and and so i just kept on adding bullets and so i ended up with home run per fly ball rate which feels pretty that's pretty good and then i had average exit velocity which seems also very

good but you know average exit velocity doesn't really matter that much if you're for instance hitting a lot of ground balls or if you're mainly going the other way perhaps and your your high exit velocities only get to the warning track the other way. Who knows? And so then I also had the peak exit velocity, which I know is a Jeff Sullivan favorite, demonstrating just how strong a person is at his max. But that doesn't really necessarily seem like you can pin Bryce Harper

or you can criticize Bryce Harper based entirely on that. And then there's isolated power, which feels good, but also includes doubles and triples. I think you replied that isolated power is the best and probably maybe arguably it is, but it includes doubles and triples. And then you've got the farthest ball he's hit as opposed to the hardest ball he's hit, which I think i only included because i was feeling the momentum of bullet pointing and then his fly ball rate which is not power at all but is extremely important to the manifestation of one's power and his non-out rate on all batted

balls which now we're getting really esoteric but it made sense to me at the time and his hard hit percentage which again is not at all about power. It is about hitting the ball hard, which you can do even if you're weak, but is arguably more important to producing power than raw strength. So what I'm saying is that I also find there to not quite be a one number proof that a guy both has power and is able to tap into it consistently without breaking those two things apart. Mm-hmm. Well, in an era before we had batted ball stats like hard hit rate or exit velocity or max exit velocity, you would have just used isolated power or dingers.

Yeah. And that would have been fine. Probably you would have felt like that was, I mean, isolated power to me, you do want to include doubles and triples, right? It's not quite the same sort of power, but I mean, you care about your power output. You care about extra bases, total bases, right? Extra bases specifically if you care about your power output. You care about extra bases, total bases, right? Extra bases specifically if you're talking about power. Do you consider that power? Do you consider a triple down the line a power outcome? No.

I mean, triples are so rare anyway that— Well, do you consider a double down the line? Do you consider a double down the line a power outcome? I think I do. I mean, first of all, a lot of doubles are not down the line, do you consider a double down the line a power outcome? I think I do. I mean, first of all, a lot of doubles are not down the line. And so you do have your doubles in the gap and doubles off the wall. And those are certainly power. But I think even if you're, I mean, a double down the line is usually hit hard.

If it's not hit hard, the guy gets to it, right? So, I mean, I think there's still an element Of power there Every double off the wall is a home run That came up short though Yeah but it's still power Right I mean there are singles hitters who

Rarely hit balls off the wall You still want to include that I think So like Chuck Knobloch power hitter i mean he had some dingers from time to time i wouldn't call him a the year the year that he was on pace to break the all-time doubles record when the strike interrupted the season he had five dingers yeah i mean and so i i had more tone in my voice than i meant he had five dingers power hitter well what was his isolated power that

year probably not very good not that great 149 yeah yeah so no so you're okay you feel like you feel like the test was passed yeah yeah all right yeah i think i'd rarely find a hitter who had like a like what 200 is kind of like 200 feels like a power hitter. If you've got a 200 isolated power slugging minus batting average, I think I would rarely find someone who had a 200 plus ISO. And I thought, yeah, that guy, he's a singles hitter. So, I mean, you would never find that. So you'd have to have like just a extreme doubles machine who really just hit a bunch of balls down the line and never hit one over the fence, but that's pretty rare. I think usually when you get up to that threshold, you're talking about a power hitter, someone I'm comfortable saying is a power hitter. Yeah, I'm looking at the list of 200 ISOs last year.

Well, this era might be a little unusual for that. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I'm going to be able to trick you. Like, for instance, Freddie Freeman, power hitter, right? Jerickson Profar, not really a power hitter. No. Jerickson Profar had a 204 ISO, and Freddie Freeman had a 196. Ozzy Albies, 191.

Matt Kemp, 190. I think Matt Kemp's a power hitter. He's not good, exactly. I mean, although he was actually pretty good last year, but he was a power hitter. Anthony Rizzo, 187, power hitter. Yeah, didn't have a good year, though. I mean, he did for part of the year, and part of the year he really didn't. Yeah, you might be entirely right about this.

Yeah, maybe it's just ISO. I don't know. It doesn't feel like maybe it's just ISO. I don't know. It doesn't feel like just looking at these. I don't know. This is the worst argument in the world. It doesn't feel like a power header, man. It doesn't feel like it. Well, that's kind of what we're talking about here.

So, I mean, I'm okay with that because I'm sure Anthony Rizzo, he's got a career 200 plus. You know who had the 18th highest isolated power last year? Paul Goldschmidt, power hitter. Yeah. You know who had the 19th? No. Giancarlo Stanton, power hitter. Yeah.

17, Gregory Polanco. You know, it's Gregory Polanco. He's Gregory Polanco. gregory palanca you know it's gregory palanca yeah he's gregory palanca he hit 23 home runs and i don't honestly know how that adds up to a higher isolated power but partly it helps that he had six triples partly it helps that he had 23 home runs and he only played 130 games which is a fair number of home runs but he was a power hitter that year yeah he's uh i just don't know though that i would i don't know that i'd make the case i mean if you can add seven more bullet points you should but uh if you've got to go with one one number if you've got to go with one number i i think if you've got to go with one number i would go with home run per fly ball rate and i would put a caveat

that that's affected by ballpark but i would go with home run for per fly ball okay i wonder if that's a staple or i guess i mean for pitchers it's pretty random but for hitters it's not so that probably works all right bryce harper by the way yeah what was i doing bryce harper was 15th in isolated power last year i of Goldschmidt and Stanton Could have saved yourself Seven bullet points right there Yeah It's weird

Nothing Against Gregory Polanco Trying to get the impact of the name Alright we're done Alright so yeah enjoy Cabin Ball and I'll talk to you next week and hear about cabin ball all right ben okay bye see ya okay that will do it for today and for this off season thanks for tuning in to the podcast year round we appreciate it your support and appreciation

helps us get through the off season hopefully we help you get through the off season it's a symbiotic relationship i know there are some of you out there who prefer off season effectively wild because we get weird just out of desperation to find things to talk about but we stay pretty weird during the season too so if you found us this offseason we hope that you will listen to us all summer long you can support the podcast on patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild the following five listeners have recently pledged their support. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms.

Keep your questions and comments for me and Sam and Meg coming via email at or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. You can preorder my book, The MVP Machine, as discussed on this episode. It comes out June 4th, and I will be back with one more episode with Meg this week. So we will talk to you then. Enjoy the actual baseball game.