Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1404: Do the Hustle

Episode Date: July 15, 2019

Ben Lindbergh, Sam Miller, and professional player (and former Sonoma Stompers coach, catcher, and first baseman) Tommy Lyons discuss the different types of hustle in baseball, deciding what level of hustle is acceptable in a variety of situations and examining how the fan perspective on hustle differs from the player perspective on hustle, plus a […]

Good morning and welcome to episode 1404 of Effectively Wild, the baseball podcast from Fangraphs, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN, along with Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. Hello. And we have another guest today. He's going to be serving as something of a adjudicator, a judge, a expert witness, not witness. He's an expert. His name is Tommy Lyons. He is a former member of the Sonoma Stompers. He is maybe the last professional baseball player to hit 400 in a season, which he did in Australia a couple of years ago, two years ago, I believe. Tommy, how are you? I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me, guys.

Yeah. What is it like to hit 400, Tommy? What's it like? What does it feel like? It just must feel like being on the moon. Yeah, no, it was very cool. A little out of this world, but that's a lot of Australians like that. Very happy to be here. No, don't leave the 400. We're still kind of acknowledging and kind of making fun of your 400 batting average. So you hit 400. Did people just think you were? I mean, 400 is like that is a number. That is a thing that we have never seen in our lifetimes.

You know, no professional player I've ever seen is at 400. And so were people around you just like did they think that you were like a warlock did they think that there was just something incredible about you or does does it just kind of look the same every day first sam i hate to i hate to do that guy but i could actually even higher on the stoppers 2015 i think i was too so i think that was a 667 so was, it was a bit of a come down. It was very, very cool. I know we've talked about it briefly before, but there is a little bit of pressure on you as an import player. Basically, everyone assumed that you can hit 400.

So there is a lot of pressure that this is the standard. It is not necessarily as exciting. I got a lot of trash talk because I didn't hit a lot of home runs while i was down there so it was like yeah you hit 400 but you probably could have done a little better so a bit of a mixed bag there i would say yeah you were just hitting for average you should have taken the power swing well you know basement you know i'm clogging up the base paths. I get it. Yeah. Can you just summarize your career? Because you've played on, what, three continents and you've played in multiple indie leagues. So Sam and I are somewhat familiar with all the places you've been,

but for the benefit of people who are not in some of the places you've played are not on Baseball Reference, so they can't easily be looked up. Yeah. No no it's uh also a bit of a mixed bag i think that would be a good summary of the career i'm actually kind of mad that baseball reference it has college stats now but only one so my d2 stats don't count but they lump them in with indie league so it would make me look a lot better than i actually you know there's so many more opportunities now to play baseball, especially as an American. I mean, within the next 10 years, they're looking for a lot of guys to grow the game.

I don't know if those opportunities are going to be there after that, but I got a lot of cool spots that I got to check out. I played for the Euro Cup in baseball, which I didn't even know was a thing. Switzerland, you know, I got to go to australia a couple times obviously the stompers were just an incredible experience got to be a footnote in your guys's book which was nice still a little bit mad that sam you know didn't put it in writing that i was smarter than parker over there but that's okay but yeah no uh just kind of uh went anywhere they would pay me to play so that was was, you know, almost like I would compare it to like the classic, you know, 1940s barnstorming.

You know, it's just on a wider global scale that you just kind of get to go wherever they want baseball. And you're 29, right? And you just got your master's and you are recovering from shoulder surgery. And are you done playing? Are you still figuring that out? We'll figure it out. If there's a team that wants to take a risk on a 29-year-old slow first baseman with a bad shoulder, then I mean, totally. But let's talk.

Who twice hit 400. Exactly. That's exactly right. Yeah. No, I think I technically led the stompers in batting average unless someone went like one for one that year was that i feel like i don't know what wasn't wasn't that okay so that am i remembering right that that was the game the sunday game after we'd been eliminated right and okay all right good just making sure zoe is basically who who pit did

zach pace pitch in that game were there real pitchers where tommy were you facing real pitchers hey oh no they were real pitchers let me set the record straight there's been a lot of talk about that no uh they were real pitchers but i think everyone didn't want to be there i i think it was actually a conversation with you sam and theo i don't know ben i don't know if you were there we were at a um a little restaurant off the plaza called town square and uh when i first agreed to help with the bench coach thing if we got eliminated or we clinched the second half i would get to play in those games and so i think that's how we agreed on it and i got like two little bloops down third baseline. That meant it being stompers this week. We mentioned on the podcast a couple days ago that Chris Mazza,

who was a 2018 Pacific Association pitcher with San Rafael, has within the span of a single calendar year made the major leagues. He is now pitching for the New York Mets. He has a 2.25 ERA in four innings as we record this. And I just wonder, as a fellow alumni of the Pacific Association, does this raise emotions in you? Oh, totally. Totally.

I remember hearing about the, I played in the Pecos too, hearing about the first Pecos guy to make the major leagues. It's kind of a weird fraternity where you go through the same struggles. Obviously, I'm not putting myself on the same level as someone that majors, but it's cool to know that someone went through the hardships of the very lower minor leagues and came up on the other side. I think that's awesome. All right. Well, we're going to get to the topic now. Ben, I'm going to explain it so everybody can just shut up for a little bit while I monologue. I think that generally speaking, this podcast has been, the position toward hustle has been fairly nonjudgmental. I think that we try not to make a

big deal about criticizing players for the way that they go about their jobs and maintain their machines. We recognize that it's a long journey through the season, that not every play is equally important, and that keeping oneself healthy is equally important and that keeping oneself healthy, keeping oneself fresh, keeping oneself optimized is a personal endeavor that they know what they're doing better than we do. Now, with that said, the other day, some weeks ago, there was a player who is, I'm not going to even name him. It's not worth saying who he is, but he's a player who is criticized from time to time for not hustling. And there was a runner on first base and he popped up to the infield, in the infield, and he stayed at the plate. And then at the very, kind of at the very

last second, he's like, oh wait, I just realized if they let this ball drop, it's a double play. And he started to run, but it was very late. And that was a situation where it was really kind of annoying. Like, that's not exactly hustle so much as just like, really not, I don't know, being in in the game. And if I had cared deeply about the outcome of the game, which I didn't really, but if I had, it would have really annoyed me if he had been doubled up at first base. And so I started thinking that there's a lot of kind of different degrees of hustle that there's a lot of kind of different degrees of hustle. There's a lot of different things that we call hustle, some things that we don't call hustle. And all of them in one way or another provoke some emotion in us as spectators.

A lot of the time, maybe we won't care. Sometimes maybe we will care. And so what we're going to do now is Ben and I are going to name instances of hustle and or situations where one might hustle or be said to have hustled or be said to have shirked, to have not hustled. And we're going to name the situations and discuss whether we care about hustle in that situation, what we as personal viewers expect from our ball about hustle in that situation what we as personal viewers expect from our ball players in that situation if it matters to us if we have any kind of emotional response to seeing a player sort of take it easy in that situation and then tommy who is the second smartest sonoma stomper that we had behind andrew parker who unfortunately is on east

coast hours and couldn't be here tonight tommy adjudicate. He will tell us as a ballplayer whether he has an opinion about that form of hustle and what the dugout, basically what the view in the dugout would be for that situation. So that's what we're going to do. Is everybody on board? I'm in. Yeah. I am. All right. So I noticed that you had thrown this out to the Facebook group asking for suggestions of types of hustle. I noticed that all of the replies were smart aleck. And so I don't know if you got anything at all from there.

So if you want, I'll start and then you can keep trying to think of something. All right. So here's one that I notice a lot. This is a dropped third strike that does not get away from the catcher. So this is not a ball that goes back to the backstop or anything like that. It's just, it's in the dirt. There is now an action required by the catcher to retire the batter. And the batter has a choice whether to at least make some move toward first

that will require a throw or else not. Just give up, concede. Because, of course, a major league catcher is going to be able to make that throw 99 times out of 100, probably even more than that. And so a lot of times what you will see is the batter will not make a move, even if it's in the dirt. He will just let himself be tagged or he will for will forfeit he will walk to the dugout which under the rules now the modern rules is an automatic out my position is that it is not

an undue strain on the batter's body to jog to first and make the catcher throw. Now, I'm not saying that he needs to Pete Rose it out there, but to at least make the catcher throw and introduce the opportunity for a mistake seems to be an extremely non-risky effort with some potential benefit. So that's my position on third strikes in the dirt that do not get away from the catcher. So are we just sort of stipulating that this is an average situation? This is not like bottom of the ninth game seven of the World Series, in which case you should hustle all the time. I mean, this is just kind of your run of the mill. Yeah.

Run of the mill game. Leverage index of one or whatever. Leverage index of one. of one or whatever leverage index of one your your seven games yeah let's say you're three and a half games out of the second wild card spot and it's june 14th and let's also say that you don't have any any lingering hamstring injuries okay and it's the fifth inning all right i would say that you should run i wouldn't say that you need to sprint 100% necessarily. I guess this is tied into my feelings about just generally running out ground balls, let's say. But I don't think you should stand there. I don't think you should turn around and head back to the dugout. I think you

should make at least a token effort. You're heading in the right direction. If somehow the ball gets away or whatever, or he throws it away you'd be safe all right so we can't we kind of agree on that so tommy what is the view from the dugout is this a uh is this something that you need to run out i would love to take a controversial uh take on it but i think you guys are both right yeah you know it's not a mortal sin if they don't do it i don't think anybody would be too mad in the dugout if they didn't run it out. But at the same time, you know, the effort is there. If you just go halfway down the line, if he's going to make a bad throw, he's going to make a bad throw. I don't think it matters how hard you run down the line to get that. But I think that there should be at least

some effort made. You're not giving up. I think that's kind of my view on it. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, that's how I feel. I feel yeah that i that thank you yeah that's how i feel i feel like like you say if he's gonna make a bad throw it's gonna be a bad throw if it's not like you're trying to turn a you're out by one foot into your out by a half a foot kind of situation like this is if he throws it down the line then you're gonna get you know a base out of it you don't have to be running hard to maximize that situation, basically, is what I'm saying. So the effort required to get almost maximum benefit feels to me very low. Now, here's the situation, though, with a strikeout, too, which I wonder about. A strikeout is a very frustrating thing for a batter. Like,

you went up there, you had your shot, You only get one an hour and you struck out. You got to be pretty bummed out. And so I recognize that this is probably pretty frustrating. And this is not when you want to be your best self exactly for almost certainly no return. Does the fact that you have failed in that situation make it to the dugout more important that you kind of do the minimum hustle? Because dude, that dude dude he struck out like he can't you can't be big league and when you just struck out or is it more sympathetic that like ah well he's he's having a bad minute let's like if he didn't run he's got

other things on his mind 100 there's an emotional component to it i think everyone would understand like okay you're not in your best you, state of mind because something awful just happened. There's something very morally defeating about striking out. And it's everyone goes through it. But at the same time, you know, I think there's an empathy from the teammates like, okay, well, he's not acting his best because he just went through this. For sure. I think that that is definitely a component involved. All right. Ben, do you have a type of hustle? Yeah. How about sliding into first base? That's hustle. I guess it's intended to be hustle. It's perceived to be hustle. And there's the whole question about whether it's even beneficial. Of course, that's almost a separate conversation or maybe it's part of the same conversation but when someone slides into first base i think they think at least that they are going all out and they are gonna reach for every millimeter i personally

don't think that you are at all obligated to slide into first base. I don't think it's even helpful, really. I've seen conflicting conclusions about whether it helps you or not, and I know there have been ESPN sports science things, and there are various ways to look at it, and I don't know that that question is completely resolved,

but I don't think there's a big difference either way, and you are obviously subjecting yourself to some injury risk there. But there are certain guys, you know, Nick Punto and Brett Gardner, these guys are known for sliding into first base. And I wonder what players think of that, because it tends to provoke pretty strong reactions one way or another in fans. All right. But first, you want to know, Ben, what I think, correct? Not as much as I want to know about Tommy, but sure. I'm going to talk for a minute. So I think what we have here is a little bit of a, I think this happens a lot. Things get called hustle that are not hustle. They're simply running hard because you see something that you want right in front of you. So like, for instance,

if you're trying to steal second, you run really hard. We don't like go, wow, look at that hustle. He sprinted like, because you think that sprinting is the way that you're going to achieve your goal. And a lot of hustle doubles, I think are mislabeled. They're not hustle doubles. They, maybe they're awareness doubles. Maybe they're heads up doubles because you spotted an opening. But it's not really hustle. My feeling on hustle, the way that you define hustle, is running hard, putting out extra effort when most of the time there is no benefit, but occasionally there will be. So backing up a throw, for instance, is hustle because most of the time the throw is going

to be accurate. You're not needed. You're an insurance policy. But every so often it will be very crucial. And it's the person who's willing to run a hundred times in order to be there for the one or two times that has hustled. So I would say that a lot of things like sliding to first, So I would say that a lot of things like sliding to first, they are to me false hustle. They're not necessarily, well, in this case, they're not necessarily even helpful. They're like, this is false hustle probably most famously is the idea of running to first when you walk, in which case it's not harmful. It's just pointless. It's just like, okay, all right, that's the thing you wanted to do,

but it doesn't actually accomplish anything. Sliding at first is more like, I don't know, it feels to me like it is grinder behavior. Is there a distinction between hustling and grinding? I don't know. I feel like it's a brand more than it's an actual strategy. It feels like you want to be the sliding into first base guy. So I give no credit whatsoever to sliding into first base. That's what I'm saying. None whatsoever. I will say that if you're the type of runner who sees that the throw is errant, the first baseman has come off the bag to field it and is going to have to do a swipe tag and you are capable of adjusting your body in a way to maneuver out of his tag and slide in that very specific situation i will give you credit for being a particularly heads up and dexterous base runner but i'm not attaching the word hustle to any of that so you get no hustle from me brett gardner well first off great use of the word

dexterous i totally agree with that i agree with sam on most of those points for me hustle is above what you would expect in terms of effort from a player and i think that involves a lot of context like you know you're going to expect albert poolhouse to be very very slow right d gordon you're going to expect to be veryols to be very, very slow, right? Dee Gordon, you're going to expect to be very, very fast. So if Albert Pujols goes first to third versus Dee Gordon goes first to third on a single, like it's a way different thing. But I think it's if you put in more effort than what your teammates or the crowd or whoever expects of you, and it has a tangible, positive outcome, that's good hustle. If you put in that same effort, and it doesn't have a tangible, positive outcome, that's bad. You could,

you know, I'm sure we'll get into it. You can run after striking out or going to first base on a strikeout and the ball in the dirt and you're out by 90 feet, it just looks bad. That's just kind of my definition of good hustle is like is it going to result possibly in something better for the team if it's not then just don't do it you know that's just kind of my view well so what if the player who's sliding into first base believes that it does have a benefit because some of them probably do right so they may be wrong but what if they think that's the case and that's why they're doing it? I didn't actually even really address the example there, but I was always raised on the belief that it does slow you down.

I don't have any good science to back that up. I agree with Sam once again. If a first baseman is coming off to tag you, totally appropriate to slide just to avoid it. I think if it's a close play it does seem kind of fake that you're like oh you know i tried my best you're already trying your best by running as hard as you can so i i think i'm in agreement with sam on most of these points so ben do you think that a first base slider believes that the people who do not slide are doing it because they don't want to i'm not i'm not being snarky.

Do you think that their position is that non-sliders are sort of shirking or don't want to get dirty or are kind of like not willing to do what it takes to get that base? Yes. I wouldn't say that they think they're lollygagging or something, but they're not going above and beyond in the way that the first base sliders are so if they believe that in good faith then i will give them credit now this raises the possibility that hustle is a kind of individual experience and it all depends on what you think the rest of culture believes. And so if they think that they are hustling,

then I will say that, okay, they're hustling. I don't credit them for that though. I don't, I don't know that I feel like, so this goes, okay, this basically goes to the question of, let's say that you have, you have your baseball population and 67% of people are going to be within one standard deviation of the hustle mean and 95% are going to be within two standard deviations of the hustle mean. And then 97%, 99%, 99.7% are going to be within three standard deviations of the hustle mean. 99.7% are going to be within three standard deviations of the hustle mean. And I think that if you talk about the outliers who are pro-hustle, I don't really have strong emotions about them, the pro-hustle guys, but I admire it. And so I would say I just, you know, I basically admire it. I have stronger emotions about the three

standard deviations on the negative hustle side and I try not to be judgmental about it but I do have a negative I have a stronger negative emotion when I see three standard deviation outliers on the negative side than on the positive side so what you've described is somebody who is really straining to be on the positive side, and I'll give them some credit, but I don't really care that much about them. Yeah, I think that's right, and they may be wrong. So you can credit them for the effort, but I'm not going to debit anyone who doesn't do it because they may very well have studied the matter and come to the conclusion that it doesn't make sense to do.

I went a long way in that answer to prove that I understand standard deviations. That's hustle, really. If you think about it, that's hustle. That was a flashback to statistics and quantitative methods in college. Thank you for that. All right, I'm going to go with a really mundane one here. Ground ball to, boy, going to go with a really mundane one here. Ground ball to boy, let's say shortstop ground ball to shortstop. Now I don't personally, and I'm going to say it's,

it's so routine that, that the average runner will be out by 12 feet on a cleanly fielded place. So like, as soon as you hit it, you know, that you're not going to be, you're not going to beat this. My position, as far as like emotions arising, my position is run hard out of the box until the ball is fielded cleanly. And then once it is fielded cleanly, then like 80% effort, like, so you don't stop, you don't peel off or anything, but 80% effort is fine from there because then it becomes, well, like Tommy said earlier, either the throw's there or it's not there. So I do not like to see slow out of the box because there's a, seems to me a reasonable

chance that a ball will take a bad hop or be misplayed. But, and, and also because it's a second, it's one second, you know, like the, the play is going to be fielded within one second. And then, you know, all right, now you can coast into 80%. And then once you're, once you've seen it fielded, then you can protect your hamstrings and just take a nice, a nice Sunday afternoon gate toward the bag until you see that it has been made. I prefer to see, you know, probably I prefer to see a harder runner, but I'm not. I have no negative response when I see, you know, a valuable player who's got that basic breakdown of his run to first.

All right, so Ben, what do you think? I agree, and we've talked about this before in the context of Robinson Cano, let's say. And Cano maybe just didn't run hard at all out of the box. But I agree with you. It doesn't take much to sprint for a second, let's say. But I find it very persuasive if a player is not hustling all the way down the line on a virtually certain out just because I think there is a benefit to not doing that. And I'd be curious to hear what Tommy thinks players think of that argument that it actually helps you in the long run not to bust it all the way down the line

every time because maybe that energy you save helps you later in the game or the season, and maybe you decrease your injury risk. And, you know, if you cost yourself a couple singles a season or something, it all works out in the end because you're not going on the injury list with a hamstring strain or something. So I think that if you're virtually certain that you can't make it, and again, we're talking about the average situation here, then it is smart. It is discretion is the better part of valor sort of situation and that you should not run as hard as you possibly can. I love it. This is a great hustle conundrum right there that really does depend on context. I think everybody in the clubhouse knows who's hurting,

who really could take a little bit off. Me personally, you guys know, I didn't get that many at-bats, so I was always trying to run hard because you might steal one. Like Sam said, it is similar to the ball in the dirt. If it gets thrown away, they're going to just throw it away. I think the one major difference there is, I think if a catcher throws the ball away at first base, you're staying at first.

Very few times are you going to be able to get an extra base. The one thing with this situation is, if you do run hard out of the box, shortstop just boots it, throws it, whatever, you do have that small chance to go to second base. So it's kind of a slippery slope there. I think it, like I said earlier, I think it really depends on context.

I think who the player is that's doing it. If you know that they're hurting, then yeah, it's a long season. Don't hurt yourself. But I think that there is an argument to be made that you should go as hard as you can, depending on the situation yeah there's also there the defense for hustle here also includes the fact that there are a lot

of errant throws that do not get past the first baseman that only slow the play down maybe maybe a second if a for instance i can envision a first baseman scooping a ball, but not scooping it cleanly, but having the ball there and picking it up or catching it on a little bit of a bobble. I can imagine a first baseman who has to leap for a throw and lands. And those are situations where a split second will really matter. And I think part of my math here, as far as both the extra base that, that hypothetical extra base, if the throw gets past the

first baseman and also the aaron throw uh that it does not get past first baseman is that i believe that 80 running and 100 running is really close like i don't feel like you're necessarily losing that much so i'm not necessarily saying like well you're jogging to first you're necessarily losing that much. So I'm not necessarily saying like, well, you're jogging to first, you're still running, but you're not really pushing with your legs. You're taking sort of these like, you know, comfortable long strides, which I would feel like would still look pretty much like a sprint. I'm kind of thinking it over with my own body right now. And my guess, a sprint. I'm kind of thinking it over with my own body right now. And my guess, I don't know, I'm guessing it's three or four feet of difference. And I don't know, I might be way off on my math there. I don't know, maybe in fact, running 80%, what we're calling 80%, which is not literally 80%

is actually much slower, but I feel like it's pretty close. Like it's, it's almost, it's, it's almost an, a non non difference for almost all plays. What do you think? Well, I was going to ask you because you said that if a guy's nursing an injury and everyone on the team knows it, then it's more acceptable and then everyone's okay with it, but they would not be okay with it.

And you would not be okay with it. If it were purely a preventative thing. If it were a guy who was healthy and said, well, I want to stay healthy. And maybe one way that you get to the point where you're nursing an injury is that you're sprinting all the way down the line and you tweak something because of that. So what if someone said that to you? said that to you, hey, I've made this calculation and I want to preserve my health so that I can be available to help the team and at full strength. And therefore, even though I am perfectly healthy right now, I am not going to go all out. Well, first off, I don't necessarily disagree with that argument, but I would ask hypothetically,

you know, where do you draw the line? Do you not want to swing as hard as you can in case you're going to get hurt? You know, I mean, injuries are kind of a part of sport, right? So there's always that in the back of your mind that, you know, this could be you could. I mean, anyone can tear a hamstring running 90 feet. It's just part of life. So I think that that plays into it a lot. I think so that, you know, it's not necessarily effort. I'm having a hard time trying to compartmentalize the different aspects of us.

I don't think it's that simple of a question. But yeah, no, I think that it really depends on the person. And like I said, the injuries and everything, it's just tough. I wish I had a simple answer for you, but I don't. Tommy, if there was a crocodile chasing you and it was going to like with a crocodile chasing you, you could run to first base in 4.3 seconds. Like that is your max, like life on the line, 4.3 seconds. How often do you run that fast? and how often would you say that you're imperceptibly but you know that it's not really max max max max max max max max max effort how often me personally or a baseball player in general you you how often is a crocodile chasing you in your mind at least six times a day

it's awful uh no but um yeah no i see what you're saying i think you guys touched on it earlier you're talking about you know depends on the game if it's a game in may versus a game in august although they do you know in the long run kind of matter equally you have that sense that you need to give it a little bit more i would say that it's it's above 50 on the times that you're giving it it a little bit more. I would say that it's above 50% on the times that you're giving it the 100% max effort, but it's lower than I would like to admit. Yeah. And there's no way you can answer this question with any sort of precision, but what are the chances of being injured on 90% effort compared to 100% effort? Are you 90% as likely to be injured?

Or do you think you're almost 100% as likely to be injured? Or are you more like 2% likely to be injured? I would say it's one-to-one, just because you're always going to have those freak things. I've obviously, we've talked about it, I've dealt with a lot of injuries, and I don't think there was, the shoulder was, there were specific plays,

but I've made that play 100 times times it's just it's gonna happen so I don't think that they're I think it's dangerous to say like you shouldn't make certain plays because you might get hurt more just because you can get hurt doing anything like I said I see so by one to one you mean you're you're basically as likely if you're running you are basically as likely to have something go wrong with your body regardless of the effort that you're putting in and same with throwing and same with anything else that might be a little bit of me like adding my own life philosophy to it but yeah i mean if it's gonna happen it's gonna happen yeah i don't think we're smart enough with our bodies that we know when it's going to happen, but you know, whatever happens, happens.

All right. Closer is the closer is the closer line right there. Yes. Yeah. All right. All right. So I'm going to lump a couple similar ones together, I think, and talk about diving for balls in the outfield or crashing into the wall for balls in the outfield, which are slightly different, but same idea. How much are you going to put yourself in harm's way to make that catch?

And let's say it is a realistic catch. Let's say it's certainly not a given that you're going to catch it if you dive or if you run into the wall or very close to the wall, but you have a legitimate shot to do it. And if you don't make this extra effort, or maybe you don't consider it an extra effort, maybe it's ordinary effort, then you definitely won't catch it. So you have certain outfielders who have a reputation maybe for being a bit wall shy. Like they used to say that about Bobby Abreu, for instance, is he's kind of wall shy. He would stop well short as if he were a little afraid to run into the outfield fence

or someone who maybe is a little, you know, likelier than most to play the ball on a hop and not dive and take it conservatively. And I guess there's a different cost-benefit analysis with these two plays because if you are not diving forward, you are only costing your team a single that you're allowing. It's probably not going to be an extra base hit. And there's always a chance that if you dive,

you will turn something that would have been a single into an extra base hit. On the other hand, you're probably not going to hurt yourself as seriously on that play. You know, maybe you'll jam a finger or something like that. But on the ball at the wall, you are, of course, going to give up an extra base hit, which is very costly if you don't do that. But the costs to yourself are also higher because you could crash into a wall. You could seriously hurt yourself. So I don't know exactly how to say what my position on this is.

I guess it's a you-know-it-when-you-see-it sort of thing for me. There are certainly times when I will see an outfielder not lay out to make a catch, and I will think he probably could have caught that if he had made the dive, and he probably would have been fine, and that I think is maybe not enough hustle. On the other hand, I totally understand why an outfielder would not crash into walls because that can be a career ending type of victory risk. And in the long run, it's probably better not to do that. So I typically would not fault someone for that kind of, you know, Aaron Rowand type of play where it comes back to bite you. All right. So first I will just say that, you know, when you see it,

I feel like we don't know it when we see it. And so I'm very hesitant to, if I'm watching a major league game, watching an actual game, I'm or watching any game, really, I'm very hesitant to assume. I know how catchable the ball was. Angles are misleading. Depth perception can be misleading. And you just don't know whether the fielder really thought he was in control of that play. And so if a fielder does not, I don't know if I've ever in my entire life thought, I can't believe he didn't, he didn't slide for that or he didn't dive for that or he didn't do whatever for that out of any sort of

lack of effort because i just assume that like they really want to catch the ball like they're really incentivized to catch baseballs and i assume if they did it they would now to the question of whether we should expect them to to put themselves in harm's way in order to catch a ball i have not thought this through enough and so i will tell you that my first reaction, which I might, I might repent tomorrow, but my first reaction is that you owe it to your team to catch a ball, that that is the culture, that's the expectation. And, you know, there's not like, look, if there was a, if there was a dragon or a pit or something like really, truly dangerous, then I'd think maybe differently about it. I expect a fielder to do whatever he believes he can do to catch a ball that he believes he can catch. I think I'm with you on that one.

It's tough to be totally objective on this just because every outfield fly ball is so different. It would be great if you could have 500 balls hit to one spot with the same outfielder going after every time. And then saying, well, you know, on 400 of these, he went, you know, a certain amount of effort. And then on the other 100, he went on a different amount of effort. But I think even teammates that know their outfielders so well, it's pretty justifiable if you can just say, hey, you know, I didn't think I was going to get that one. You don't think you're going to get it you know it makes no sense to me to go like ben said you know if you don't think you're going to get it why go aaron rowan style and hit the fence it's this one's kind of a dicey situation for me but i think it's i wouldn't call it bad hustle for going after balls that you don't think you can get, but it's a little fake if everyone knows that you can't get it.

Yeah, sometimes you do see the guys who will dive or do a somersault, and it's almost after the ball is by them or something, and it just seems like they're trying to make it look like they went all out when they really didn't. Yeah, that happens. I saw a play a couple weeks ago. This is totally unrelated. I just wanted to say it because I couldn't figure out how to do anything with this. But Steve Duggar went back to the wall and tried to catch a ball. And he leaped in sort of a backhand. And he caught it in his glove,

but as he hit the wall, it came out of his glove, and then he tried as he bounced off the wall to re-catch the ball, and he did a forward flip in trying to catch it. It was the most incredible defensive play I have seen this year, and maybe in many years, and he did not catch it so it will be on zero highlight reels that's not here nor there anyway all right i'm gonna do this is kind of a uh this is a very specific type of hustle but it is one that does kind of drive me crazy this is when you have a runner on third tagging or any situation where the runner is scoring

and there's no play at home, he's fine. He's in the clear, but there are trail runners and one of them might be trying to reach a further base and one of them might get tagged out before you have scored at home. And so this one is obviously, of all of these, this is one of the highest stakes ones. Because if you don't cross home plate before your teammate is tagged out, like that's a run. Like a run is a big deal. A run is a million dollars on the free agent market. Like that's a big deal. And I feel like you kind of feel silly running super hard home when you know there's not a play. It looks kind of dorky if there's no throw and you're like running like there's a crocodile behind you. So I get why it is a natural instinct to just kind of like, you know, run like you need

to run, like you run in your 80 or 90% rate to get home. That's probably what I do in softball or also in equivalent situations in life. But this is a situation where the, the action is happening behind you. And while it doesn't feel like there needs to be a hustle, this is like a real, like potentially hustle important situation. And so that one drives me kind of crazy. And so I'm going to say that when I see a runner, even if it doesn't backfire, sometimes it backfires. We've all seen it. We've all seen it where a guy gets, uh, does not cross home plate before the out is made

behind him. But we've also all seen the situation where the out was not made behind home plate and the broadcasters note that it could have been made behind him before he crossed home plate. I think I jumbled some words there. Forget it. Anyway, even in the latter situation, I do kind of go, oh, come on, dude, run hard. Like there's a thing going on. It's a baseball game.

So that's my position. Yeah, I'm with you on that one. I think I kind of understand it because maybe the urgency is not as clear as it usually is. You have to think about things that are not directly affecting you, which you're kind of programmed to do because, you know, it's a forced play or whatever, and you yourself will be out if you don't run. out if you don't run. But yeah, that's a run at stake. That's about as big an impact as hustle can make. So I would agree that that is a no-no. You know, I agree with that too. I think you don't really know what else is going on if you're just running 90 feet. You have somewhat of an idea. You know that there's runners on base or that there's runners behind you, but you don't really know if there's going to be a play made over there so you might as well just you know give it your all and it's not like you're going to get hurt by like you said running 80 to

90 percent but at the same time i don't know you might as well that's i guess that's my take on that so our colleague russell carlton one time wrote a piece about some strategy that we had proposed on this show. And he pointed out that there is a little bit of a feeling in America that you shouldn't try too hard, that you should only try as hard as is necessary, and that you kind of mock a guy who's trying too hard when there's no real payoff. And so do you, if you're, if you have a base and it's kind of like uncontested, if like, for instance, you're, you have an easy double in the gap and you're like, would, wouldn't you feel silly running as though that was going to be a hustle double? Like if you have a double in the gap, you don't sprint at a hundred percent the whole way You coast, you do what looks kind of feels and looks good, do what you need to do to get there quickly. And so how silly does it feel to run super hard at a base when there's no play on you? Are you asking me or Ben? I guess I'm asking you, Tommy. Ben's

never been on base. I think I'm probably a bad person to ask this question because there's a general insecurity about being a slow person that, you know, there's been a lot of times that I thought it was a double. And it was like, oh, my God, this is a lot closer than I thought it was going to be. I've had home runs before that I've like rounded first base. Like, well, I better get on my horse. Oh, no, that's that's going. That's fine. But the effort there, I guess if you're a fast guy, yeah, it would look kind of silly if you really ran it out. But yeah, for me,

and that's probably not a typical athlete thing because a lot of athletes are more athletic than I was. But there's always that in the back of my mind, like, dude, you better get there because it's going to look really silly if you don't, you you know if you're out by a step and you could have run harder that's just kind of my take on it yeah i think that it's it might look silly if you're running super hard and there's no play on you but they're also not going to show it on tv if there's no play on you and it's going to look really silly if you're out by a step when you had a wide open base. And they're going to show that like nine times. It's also really tough to explain to the dugout.

Like if you go to the dugout after you ran really, really hard and you got in there, you know, you might get one guy just kind of being a wiseacre and just like, hey, you know, why were you running so hard there? If you get thrown out on something that everyone assumed you'd be safe on, you're going to have to answer some questions from teammates. They're going to be very confused on that. Do you ever get made fun of in the dugout if you use the word wiseacre? You know, the first time I've used it, why? But yes, I would imagine that I would.

My new favorite right now is, I was just rereading some great Green Lantern comic books and a pooser, a real pooser move. That's a good word. I was trying to think of a way to work that in here, like false hustle. That's a real pooser move. All right, I'll do one. How about the one because on one hand you're a professional player you've taken many swings maybe you've hit a lot of home runs at various levels and so I think your sense of what is gone and what is not off the bat is probably pretty accurate and I understand why just anything becomes routine and you take things for granted even if you're a big leaguer and you're playing on

this big stage at some point it's just a routine thing that you do and you've done many times and you assume that it will happen that way again on the other hand there's really no cost whatsoever to running some regular amount instead of just admiring the ball as it flies. And we've seen this enough times to know that even major leaguers are not perfect when it comes to gauging what's gone and what's not. So it's human nature. I get it. It's not like the most unforgivable thing I've ever seen, but it's bad, I would say. You should do it. All right. Let me think about this one because it is true that unlike the other situations where the alternative to hustle was health and maintenance, general well-being, this, the alternative is just straight up self-glorification. You are not running it out because you want to make the most of your home run and strike a pose.

And I so in that sense, it would be unforgivable. Can I make a counter argument? I boy, to be honest, I'm surprised it happens. I feel like the not because I think that players would be like better than that but that players would have a better sense of where the ball was going to land i'm surprised that a batter would ever be you know fooled by by that i i mean i guess there are situations where maybe the wind is blowing in but it seems to me that like when you if you've hit a million baseballs a literal million baseballs in your life,

and you feel confident enough to not run out a ball because you're sure it's out, that you would actually be sure it's out. So I'm somewhat surprised that, even though it's a rare event, at how frequently it happens that a batter thinks a ball is gone and is not. Like I was watching Jock Peterson in the Home Run Derby. I was watching all of them in the Home Run Derby.

It's not like I just turned it off when Jock Peterson wasn't on the screen, but they all, you could sort of see like they knew when it was a home run and they knew when it wasn't a home run. Like in some cases, some of the players were, had like kind of more of a home run posture after they hit a home run. And I would be really surprised,

like, like impressed when like you they'd swing, they'd hit it and they do the kind of like oh is a home run kind of like look and then it'd be out by like an inch you feel like wow they really know what they're doing and so to see a person not run out a ball that then falls short it just strikes me as strange like i i'm just surprised like i i'm surprised that the calibration was off now is there i don't know that's a tough it's hard to justify i it's the exact opposite of the strikeout situation where now you've done that you think you've done the greatest thing

and you get a little leeway to be yourself and to do whatever you want. Like who's going to judge you now? You've done the best thing a baseball player can do. And so I sort of, that makes sense as a motivation for wanting to watch it or to take your time. But if you're wrong, that's a hard one. That is a hard one. Ooh, that's a hard one. That is a hard one. The good thing, the saving grace is that in most cases, a home run that is actually not a home run is either an out or a double.

Like it's very rare that you see a player who only gets a single, like it happens. And that usually does not go over well, but usually they end up with a double. Could they have stretched it to a triple? Maybe, but the triple? Eh, maybe, but the triple is the, the rare event. Uh, and I feel like usually you get bailed out, you get bailed out by the circumstances. Like you kind of look silly because you posed for a home run and it turned out to be an out, but no loss, or you kind of look silly because you posed for a home run. It turned out to a double, but no loss. As long as it's not a single, uh, you kind of look silly because you posed for a home run and it turned out to a double. But no loss. As long as it's not a single, you kind of got bailed out. And so I would say that I laugh.

I would say that's an LOL for me, but not a send this guy to AAA moment for me. Sam, you kind of stole my thunder there at the end. The one counter argument I have for you about in terms of knowing whether it's gone or not was just, you know, home or away. You play in so many different parts. And I know I've hit balls that I'm like, knowing whether it's gone or not was just you know home or away you play in so many different parks and i know i've hit balls that i'm like oh that's gone and it's if you're at a different i mean you guys know like albert's park like versus arnold is a very different kind of park and that's on a very small scale but there's going to be times that you're playing at you know coors field or you're playing at Oracle Park in San Francisco.

And you could hit the same ball. And if you're used to it, you're like, oh, that's definitely gone. So you're going to enjoy it a little bit longer. Agreeing with you, that being said, I think, like you said, there are almost always doubles. It's tough to stretch an almost home run into a triple. And if you are stretching into a triple, you are probably fast already think to touch back again it's a pooser move if you get a single on that but most of the time you're going to be second base and uh still in scoring position and at the same point too i guess kind of tangential here but you know you still did something positive it's not

like yeah like if you got thrown out going to third on a home run, you know, or what you thought was a home run, that's a Poser move for sure. But if you're just standing on second, I don't think anyone's going to be really too upset about that. Could have been better. But I think most people would understand that. All right. What do you think, Ben? Should we call it or should we do another round? Well, I've got more.

You do. All right. all right what do you think ben should we call it or should we do another round well i've got more you do all right i will uh let's see let me think what do i have i will uh i will say that on a let me think i have a list here but i'm not eager to talk about any of them I feel like, let's see, on a double play ball, to me, this one, okay, so a double play ball is basically the same thing as the ground ball situation that I set up earlier. But to me, I don't know if this is at all fair, but I feel like a double play ball, you owe it to your team you owe it to everybody to run hard because you have just really blown up an inning and so there's just like to me that is not a time to take it easy so if you've grounded into a potential double play i want to see a very i want to see a bang bang play at first the other thing is that that's a really complicated sequence of events. I mean, obviously, Major League defenders are incredible athletes, and they're going to turn it most of the time.

But it is a complicated sequence of events. It's got to be fielded. It's got to be flipped accurately. It's got to be fielded. It's got to be turned accurately. It's got to be caught. And I don't think that in that case, I'm willing to allow that the play is basically completed

the way that I am on a routine six, three. I feel like all, well, certainly the first four of those stages are, uh, situations where it is very easy to imagine an error will be made. A miscue will be made. And so I don't think that you get to, you get to stop at any point along the way. Now, I, again, I don't know if that's fair. If you hit into a double play in a situation that as a fan I care about, that I feel invested in, I'm just mad at you.

And so I'm already mad at you and I might just be bringing any reason to be a little bit madder at you. And that's not fair to you. But that's where I stand. I feel like double play, run hard all the way through, even if you don't want to. I thought this was going to be about breaking up the double play at second, which is something that I thought you were going. Yeah, I'm kind of curious about that one, too.

I think with running all the way, yeah, I guess it's similar. I guess most of what I've said about running out of a regular ground ball applies. I think it seems to me that there's even more pressure on you to hustle on a double play just because you're costing your team two outs. So you better atone for that by running really hard all the way. But in terms of whether it matters or whether there's a real reason to run harder than usual, I guess not really, because it's still just you getting out or not. But I am also curious about what Tommy thinks about the breaking up the double play and what you're obligated to do in that situation because you do see guys get a lot of say, when you do that. But I don't know how

hard you're obligated to go in to satisfy the minimum expectations. Yeah. So I guess the way that I look at double plays compared to the classic like 6-3 is that, you know, with every total chance that you have, you have conceivably the same chance of having an error. So the more total chances that are involved in the play, the better chance you have you have conceivably the same chance of having an error so the more total chances that are involved in the play the better chance you have on that error happening so i guess it would be with a double play there's what four chances something like that um it would look a lot worse if you're not hustling because they can recover from that if you're if you're going as hard as you can you have a better chance i would think about being safe in regards with breaking it up i i guess it's kind of the same argument

that you know if you can do what you can to interrupt those chances in theory i would think that it would have a bigger impact on the play on the whole that's without you know involving like the emotion and like oh this guy doesn't want to slide, that kind of stuff. But that's kind of my thought is the more people that touch the ball, the better chance you have at just being safe. So that's more important to go harder there.

If I could compare it to a simpler example, it's why do you run so hard to first base on a pop-up? There's only one person touching the ball. What are the odds that he misses it? If you have three to four people touching the ball, there's a much better chance that you're going to be safe. Yeah, that's a good point. All right. I think we should do backing up throws. There are a lot of different ones here, I think. I saw that on Facebook. Yeah.

Yeah. So one important one, I think, is catchers backing up throws to first and third. Maybe the routine thing that they're expected to do, run down the line when there's a play at first, which is something that they don't always do, and they get credit. The rare time that they are actually running down and backing up first, and the throw is wide, and they keep it from going into the dugout or something. But obviously catching is a difficult job and there's a lot of wear and tear on you and you're wearing the gear and, you know, you have to, I mean, you're squatting and then suddenly you're expected to get up and sprint down the line. That's a lot to ask. ask. So that is one that I'm kind of interested in. Like, okay, if a catcher does it, if he really does hustle down there and prevents an extra base being taken every now and then, I guess that's

commendable. But if he doesn't, I don't know, catchers just have so much strain on their bodies as it is that maybe it's for the best not to do that because it's so rare that it actually matters yeah i it is interesting that the most demanding position for backing up is catcher which is also the most demanding position and also the slowest player on the field and yet we put so much pressure on them to i don't remember the last time i heard of a... Well, why would I remember? It's a very specific thing to remember, but I don't really remember the last time I heard a fielder criticized for not backing up, but I don't remember the last time I heard a catcher criticize.

I don't remember anything. You guys, I don't remember anything ever anymore, ever. My memory is just gone. Catchers. Andrew Parker always backed up first base, so I'll tell you that. Smart player, Andrew Parker. I feel like, for the most part,

backing up a base is almost all glory for fielders. I think that you get a lot more credit for doing it than you get non-credit for not doing it unless you're the pitcher, which is a very weird dynamic pitchers are constantly getting criticized for not backing up the right base and it's partly because like they don't really have to sprint like for them it's just like knowing where you're supposed to be like otherwise you're just like a like a guy in the middle of the field so it's about knowing

where you're supposed to be and so it becomes like kind of a proxy for like is your head in the game but also if you're backing up a base, like we very well know what happened. You just gave up a hit. Like there are base runners that you allowed. There was a hit that you allowed. So it's this weird way that we kind of take everything out on the pitcher for not knowing whether to go to third or to home.

I would say that in general, I admire a catcher who runs down to first base every time I do admire it. I, I don't know if I would ever think negatively about a catcher who didn't get there in time. I don't, it just seems so hard. It just seems like such a difficult thing to do that. I don't know that I would ever think that it's, it would be, I don't know that I would consider it routine ever, but a batter, a catcher that does it i admire it and um a couple days ago a couple maybe a week ago i read about how carlton fisk ran down to first base beat thurman munson to first base on a three six two double play which is just about the most beautiful thing

that i could ever imagine that's awesome i would love to see video of that first off. It's one of the more interesting ones. And this actually, you know, I saw some of the comments earlier to just this kind of factored into my definition of hustle. What's expected of you versus going above and beyond? You know, growing up, we were always taught, you know, if you're not involved in the play, find a job. And I think that touches a little bit on the pitchers backing up stuff. You know, they give up a hit and then they're just kind of hanging out. So you might as well back up somewhere. And I think that's kind of why you have the negative connotation that if you don't back up, it's a lack of hustle.

I don't think, you know, you know and you know i wouldn't congratulate parker on anything but we didn't really congratulate him when he would back up first base just because we've all kind of expected it it's it's kind of included in the job description so i think i disagree a little bit there that this wasn't necessarily hustle this is what people expect you to do it's it's more if you take a closer look at the game, you realize how often that happens, I think. That would be kind of my view on that. You have a ton of people backing up in almost every play.

It's just until something goes wrong, you don't notice. Yeah, right. Outfielders backing up other outfielders. Yeah, or outfielders running in running into backup infielders even. Exactly. Yeah. It's expected, but yeah,

it would be viewed badly. I think if you just didn't do it, I think. All right. Tell me, I want to ask you one last question, which is not, not as specific instance.

And it's not, I, we, we kind of know how the culture of baseball is enforced between teams, which is primarily primarily through hit by pitches and and jawing around the plate, jawing and bullpens rushing in to stand around like that's how a team that disapproves of the way you're playing will let you know. Yeah. But there's also, of course, this culture of baseball that is team enforced upon itself. And one of the things that surprised me or that I learned while I was doing, uh, the stomper summer. Uh, and I don't, uh, the question is going to be if this is stomper

specific or if this has been true of every team you've ever been on, but the way that a team enforces a style of play is largely by criticizing you behind your back while you're on the field. Like when, if you don't hustle in left field, then everybody on the bench is just like talking about what a, what a jerk you are for like, like 40 seconds. And that's it. Like, that's it. Like it's most like a team is a lot of like talking about who failed behind their back. And so is that normal or did we have a dysfunctional team? Oh man, that is a, that's a good one. A little column A, a little column B, you know, I come from a very Irish Catholic family. So there's always a lot of that passive

aggressive, you know, we're going to talk about this issue and we're not actually going to bring it up. I think that teams in general get very clicky. So, you know, guys within that click can bring it up and confront you and it's a non issue. But, you know, the rest of the team still seems to seize the same issue. And I think we even saw that that year with off the field stuff that everyone knew what was going on but no one really wanted to talk about different issues unless they were close to it so oh man yeah yes and no yeah i think that that is that's definitely part of the club house i won't say it's a healthy part of it but i can't argue that that doesn't probably happen

all the time because that has happened on a lot of clubs that I've been on. And in general, would you say that players care more about hustle than fans or fans care more than players? I think players do. I think that maybe players have a more specific definition of hustle than fans do. So there might be things that fans get pissed about that players won't. But the things that players do get pissed about, they're going to get they're going to feel a lot more strongly about them than fans would, I would say. All right. Well, we've been going for a while, so I guess we're ending. going for a while so I guess we're ending but I will just mention a few that we didn't really talk about because in some cases I think they're probably similar enough maybe to what we did talk about that we don't need to cover them separately but I'm kind of interested in you know pitchers

not covering first because as Sam was saying often with pitchers I think they're expected to hustle or it's it's considered non-hustle if they don't cover a base or back up a base because they don't really have to sprint. They have all the time in the world to just mosey on over there. But the one exception is not covering first on a play there, which I kind of get because you're focused on the batter, and some guys don't land in a great position to sprint over to first, and suddenly you're expected to be a runner and a fielder when that's not normally what you're doing. But on the other hand, it's supposed to be drilled into you to just instinctively do that and move that way on any ball hit over there. So I get why that's something you get condemned for.

I guess one is like allowing a hustle double or just not chasing down a ball in the outfield with your full effort. Like there's that pretty famous Tampa Bay Rays play from 2010 where BJ Upton just really kind of jogged after a ball that was hit to center. And after that, he and Evan Longoria got into it in the dugout because Longoria was upset about that. It looked bad. Just, you know, you have a guy rounding the bases and Upton is just very casually retrieving the ball. And that's obviously costing you at least a base. So some of these are just obvious, I guess. Yeah, that's bad. I think everyone would agree that that's bad. And something like getting thrown out at first by a right

fielder, that's the ultimate embarrassing play, I think, just because that's total non-hustle. You don't even have to hustle to not have that happen. So you're going below and beyond if you get thrown out by a right fielder, no matter how slow you are, unless you're unable to run for some reason. And what else did I have? I guess maybe like a base runner running very hard on what looks like a routine out, but isn't. Like a pop-up,up for instance and you're just motoring around the bases even though it's almost certain to get caught and you know the one time that it does drop you you end up scoring or something because you were running that i think is hustle i guess that's good hustle but sort of similar to uh what we were talking about and then one of my favorites i think

is i don't know if this is hustle or heads-up-ness, because those are probably different things, but a base runner taking an extra base after stealing or after getting to a base because no one is covering the next base, sometimes because there's a shift on or something and there's just no one at third, let's say, and the base runner at second realizes that before the third baseman or shortstop or whoever and is able to take that extra base. I love that play. I don't know if it right there. I think that's good situational awareness.

I think it would be bad hustle if you saw that opportunity and didn't take it, I guess. Yeah, true. Yeah, sometimes there's uncertainty. I just don't feel like most baseball players are unwilling to run hard when there is a direct benefit to it. And so I don't think there are a lot of guys who see that opportunity and would not take it just because they're like, I'm tired. Yeah, I guess I guess my my two takeaways I would want people to know from this is that baseball players almost to a tee, we all think that we're a lot better than we are. We think we're faster than we are. And I think we're all a lot dumber than we think we are so the hustle

aspect of it is there's going to be a lot of times they're like no i can make that that's not a big deal i don't have to hustle with that and then the other side is we don't know what we're doing oh that's interesting that is interesting the i this has reframed everything that that they that that running hard feels wasteful because they there's a miscalibration wow i'm so fast as is why do i need to run faster last thing can you just explain the the concept of eyewash as it is applied by players it's not purely a baseball term but it is a very common baseball term and we talked about the one thing like sprinting to first base after a walk or a hit by pitch or something there are a few others in

that category i think the the most common suggestion i think in the facebook group when i asked about this actually was running on and off the field you know like running all uh you know between innings going all out to to go on and off the field yeah you're kind of talking about like an eye test on like what looks like hustle yeah or or like a couple others like sprinting toward a foul ball that's clearly going to be way out of play or in the stands or like climbing the outfield fence as if you're going to rob it when it's actually like way there's no play like is this something that gets you disliked by your teammates or if you're someone who hustles all the time but also hustles at these unnecessary times is that

okay like how does this affect your your standing on the team if you do this sort of thing i would say this depends on the club i'm i'm really glad that you ended on this because i do have an anecdote from the second four-year college i went to i hope he's not listening but he's not into modern baseball thought but our uh our college coach would have us practice sprinting on and off the field in between innings and he would also have us practice sprinting back to the dugout after a strikeout we would have what a monster and it was just i mean it was just silly it was it was way too much i don't think that that would affect your standing within the club i mean it's a cultural norm i guess you know if if you know that the head honcho if it's the gm or the coach or the manager, if they say that, you know, this is what

you got to do, and you do it, no one's going to bat an eye. If everyone else knows that how just ridiculous that sounds, and you do it, then people are definitely going to view you as fake hustle. And this is, you're doing too much, you know, back it off a little bit, I guess. Me personally, huge pet peeve. I can't stand it. Like I said, my definition of hustle, I guess, would be effort above what is expected with a tangible, positive outcome. So if you're running onto the field or running off the field, or you're running back from a strikeout, or you're pretending that you have a chance to rob a home run, what is the outcome?

It's still the same. So why would you do that? What if you're just trying to pump yourself up or you have to go all out all the time because, I don't know, you can't throttle down and throttle up. You're someone who always has to be at 100% effort. And sometimes that is helpful. And other times it's not helpful, but that's just who you are. And you're not doing it to look good in the coach's eyes. You're just wired that way. I would hope that the rest of the clubhouse would know you well enough that you just kind

of not necessarily roll your eyes at it, but just like, you know, that's who he is and we accept him for it. I don't know if that's necessarily always the case but that would be how i would view it i don't necessarily agree with it but yeah you know if that's who he is cool man like it's not hurting anybody so johnny juco yeah that's it dude that's exactly what i was thinking of a couple different times in this conversation okay oh i think it's still playing by the way so there's there's something to be said for that i guess yeah it seems like coaches like the coach you're talking about will want to instill eyewash in their players even though like most coaches were players themselves and and so they know how that's perceived or i don't know if

they just forget or they think that like by making you practice sprinting on and off the field that will carry over to everything else you do i don't know if they just forget at some point what it's like to be a player and but it seems like false hustle is also often something that players do to please the coach because the coach wants to see that and maybe doesn't recognize that it's false for some reason. Yeah, no, I think, I mean, you guys know the old school mentality in baseball, I think is stronger than any other sports. I could be wrong, but it just has this very strong tradition of things that don't necessarily make sense. And I think some of the newer stuff is a lot more objective and has data to

back it up, but there's this very, very strong urge to just like, we got to do it the way we did it the good old days. And I think false hustle is a lot of that, you know, because like you said, you know,

when you, when you don't have the data and the objective viewpoints that i think a lot of baseball has now you had to rely on eyewash just like yeah no look at that guy he runs all the time he does this he does that it made a lot of sense back then now it's you know i i think we can look a lot closer between the lines or at least i hope all right so i think we have discussed all the scenarios that we wanted to discuss we are glad to get the players perspective and particularly your perspective so tommy i guess is there anywhere people should find you the effectively

wild facebook group i guess is one place to find yeah i Yeah, I'm still in that. So I like to leave the odd comment and troll some people. But yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's great to hear from you guys. I guess hopefully this isn't your worst episode. I guess that's what I'm rooting for. But this was awesome, man. I loved it. All right.

Thanks, Tommy. All right. Talk to you soon. So Sam and Tommy and I recorded this episode in the middle of last week because Sam is away this week. There are a few things that have happened since that I wanted to mention here as I speak these words on Saturday. The first so-called steal of first base, or as Sam said, the first player advancing to first on a wild pitch, happened in the Atlantic League on Saturday in a game featuring the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs.

I will link to the video on Twitter so you can check out what it looks like. Sam and I were talking about how before every pitch now, batters would have to weigh whether they would go or not on a pitch in the dirt. And it was clear that in this situation, the batter had not done that. He was not prepared for the ball to get away. But it did seem to get through the catcher's legs. It went all the way to the backstop. And this was on a first pitch, an 0-0 count.

And nothing happens for a couple seconds. The catcher doesn't react. He doesn't go chase after the ball. The batter just stands there, and then all of a sudden, it dawns on the batter, oh yeah, the rules are different now. I can just run to first base. So he takes off, and then the catcher takes off after the ball, and the batter runner made it easily. This is what I was saying when Sam and I talked about this rule in our last episode. Some of these are sort of fundamental changes. If you've played the game one way your whole life and then the rules change right out from under you, it's going to take some time to adjust. So we will probably be seeing a lot of this standing still and then the sudden realization that you can run.

But kind of cool. I like it seeing it for the first time. We also saw another first in the Atlantic League. Former Major Leaguer Frank Viola, who's now the pitching coach for the High Point Rockers, was ejected for arguing with Trackman, essentially. Not quite. Technically, he was arguing that the umpires should have overruled Trackman, which Atlantic League umpires do have the ability to do. It's possible that there could be calibration errors with the system at this point, but I'll link to the video of that too. It's a historic first, if nothing else. If Sam and I had seen it before we spoke, we surely would have bantered about the wonderful events that took place at

Angel Stadium on Friday, where the Angels, in their first home game since the passing of Tyler Skaggs, won 13-0 over the Mariners and threw a combined no-hitter. It was such a special night to watch, to see Tyler Skaggs' mother, Debbie Skaggs, throw out a perfect first pitch, to see Trout absolutely launch one right into the rocksgs, throw out a perfect first pitch to see Trout absolutely launch one right into the rocks in the first inning on the first pitch, something he typically doesn't do. I think only 16 of his 270 career homers have been first pitch jobs. He's just never been someone who swings at all that many first pitches. This year, the most aggressive first pitch swinger in the majors, minimum 100 first pitches, is Williams Estadio, our boy. He

swung at 53.1% of them. Trout way down at 15.9%, almost the bottom of the list. And yet here he swung and he drove one 450 plus feet. In a way, I think these last couple of weeks have been the finest moments of Trout's career. He's not someone who's had a lot of signature moments on a national level because he spent a little time in the playoffs. We know him from the sum of his contributions more so than any individual moments, and now that all eyes have been on the Angels, Trout has not only gone on one of his hottest hot streaks, homering eight times in seven games heading into Sunday, but he's also been such a leader and spoken so touchingly about Skaggs. He's someone who's known more for his deeds than his words, but it's been both lately. So Trout got this game started, and Taylor Cole and Felix Pena took it from there.

The celebration in the moments after they completed the no-hitter was beautiful. The laying of the 45 jerseys on the mound in remembrance of Skaggs. The entire team, of course, was wearing 45. As I think I saw someone say somewhere, this was maybe the first cool combined no-hitter ever. Usually don't get too excited about the combined no-hitter, but how could you not get excited about this one? And in the wake of that win, you heard all about connections between various numbers in the game or the date and numbers with some significance in Skaggs' life, and that sort of numerology apophenia aspect to it was a little less meaningful to me than the event itself and the emotions that were on display there.

Not that there's anything wrong with pointing out those connections, but I don't think those events required those connections for it to be something special. And whether it's just a happy coincidence or a product of players somehow digging a little deeper and doing something special on a night when they're commemorating someone, mourning someone. It really is unforgettable when these things happen, whether it's this combined no-hitter, or Dee Gordon's Homer after the death of Jose Fernandez, or Bobby Mercer's big game after Thurman Munson's funeral. These really are the moments that transcend sports, however trite that may sound to say. You know, there were parts of Bud Selig's memoir that you roll your eyes when you read, but the chapter on the aftermath of September 11th wasn't one of them, especially having lived through that myself as a New Yorker and seeing the significance of baseball in the aftermath of that tragedy. It really can be something that makes it a little bit easier to go

on. Not that that one night will end the pain of the Angels or Debbie Skaggs or anyone who was close to Tyler, but at least there will be one really great memory made during those difficult days. And you know, speaking of cosmic coincidences or apophenia, that tendency to draw connections or whatever you want to make of these things, just as I was getting ready to record this, I saw the news that Bob Gibson had announced that he's been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and he's undergoing treatment. I'm not someone who remembers the uniform numbers of players. I know a few, of course, but some people just seem to have perfect recall of the number every player or every prominent player wore, and it's just not something I've ever associated

with my memories of those players. You know, I remember many facts about Bob Gibson's career and about Bob Gibson the person. I could tell you what he looked like. I could see him pitching in my mind's eye, even though I obviously never saw it except via video. But I couldn't have told you what uniform number he was wearing in that mental image. And yet something made me go to his baseball reference page after talking about Tyler Skaggs just to confirm what number Bob Gibson wore. And of course, it was 45. So now there's a new 45 that we are thinking of and rooting for. and I thought it

would be appropriate to end with the last paragraph from the great Roger Angel's profile of Bob Gibson, published in 1980 in The New Yorker, one of the best profiles Angel ever wrote. It was all about Gibson in the years after his retirement, and Angel was trying to get to know this guy who was known for being unknowable. It was sort of inspired by something that Gibson said one day during his career after he pitched, and a reporter asked him if he'd been surprised by what he had just done on the field, and Gibson said, I'm never surprised by anything I do, which sort of shocked the assembled reporters. So Angel ends this piece, which I will link to by writing, Athletes illuminate our imagination and raise our hopes for ourselves to such an extent that we often want the best of them to become models for us in every area of life, an unfair and childish Writing, him in the new and even more difficult contest he is engaged in. Those who know him best will look to him for something brilliant and special now, just as they have always done. Even those of us

who have not been spoiled by any athletic triumphs of our own, and the fulfillment of the wild expectations of our early youth, are aware of a humdrum twilight quality to all our doings of middle life, however successful they may prove to be. There is a loss of light and ease and early joy, and we look to other exemplars, mentors, and philosophers, grown men, to sustain us in that loss. A few athletes, a rare handful, have gone on since their day out on the field was done to join that number, and it is possible the expectation will not quite go away that Bob Gibson may be among them someday. Nothing he ever does will surprise me. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some small monthly amount to help keep

this podcast going and get yourself some perks. This episode, for instance, was made available a day early to Patreon supporters of a certain level. The following five listeners have already pledged to support the podcast. Philip O'Hara, Skylar Thompson, Maria Edwina, Adam Bechea, and Quincy Wheeler. Thanks to all of you. You can also buy my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players. It's the story of the player development revolution going on in baseball today. And if you like it, I hope you'll leave a positive review on Amazon and Goodreads.

You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to effectively wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. You can contact us via email at podcast at fan graphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. If you are a supporter already, thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And I will be back to talk to you with Meg a little later this week. As he slowly fell apart

And I'm staring down the barrel of a 45 I'm swimming through the ashes of another life There's no real reason to accept the way things have changed staring down the barrel of a.45