Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1574: No Fans, Good Field?

Episode Date: August 7, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about their minor league free agent draft results so far and whether this season has helped or hurt minor league free agents gain playing time, the continued watchability of revamped extra innings and the possibility of bringing back traditional extra innings for one week a year, and whether this […]

Away from all this jazz, we could do anything we want Distractions, like butterflies are buzzing round my head When I'm alone, I think of you And the things we'd do if we could only be through with these distractions. Hello and welcome to episode 1574 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. Ben, are you nervous about your minor league free agent team yet? I honestly haven't looked at it lately. Should I be?

Well, you don't need to because none of your players are active in the major leagues. And, you know, it is a short season. You don't have much time to make up ground. I mean, we're what? We're like a fifth of the way through the season and you don't have much time to make up ground. I mean, we're what? We're like a fifth of the way through the season and you don't have an appearance yet. So I guess you're not nervous, but are you nervous now? Yeah, a little bit. How are you and Meg doing? Meg's got Greg Holland, who has got a save for the Kansas City Royals. I've got six of my 10 active right now. Wow. Yeah. now. Wow. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, now I'm feeling pretty nervous. Yeah, you should be. Would you think this would be a bad year or a good year for hit rate? I think it would be a good year for hit rate. Well, yeah. Shorter season. Shorter season, but there's a lot of remember some guys going on this year

yeah injured pitchers sick people people getting called up from the alternate site yeah and expanded rosters so yeah yeah and you know players who have who have opted out and so it's a weird player pool this year like it's just it's a weird player pool this year and i have i have found the exercise that we've been going through over the last week where the marlins just signed players yeah to fill their diseased team yeah multiple people named josh smith very odd to me the the that is this has been the most kind of disturbing transactions period ever where it's like we have to backfill because 60% of the players have the virus that we're all deathly afraid of right now.

And so to just see players getting traded into that, I mean, I know that it's the, I know that like the Marlins clubhouse now is no less safe than any of the other 29 clubhouses. So any team signing any player is bringing in a new player and that player is joining a new group and all of that is sort of uncomfortable. But there's something about just it being the Marlins that feels kind of weirder. And so anyway, the names that you see, some of the names are definitely minor league free agent type names.

And so I had felt like this was probably a year for a lot of minor league free agent types to appear. But on the other hand, the minor league free agents, if they're not in a, like a lot of the time they get signed as AAA depth for teams and then they find their way onto a major league roster at some point. And because there are no AAA games, there's just a lot fewer players who are kind of in the mix to be that depth. True. Yeah.

If you're not on a roster right now, then it's hard to squeeze in. Well, that's what I'll blame it on if I have a tough year, although it'll be harder to do if you are hitting on all your guys. Yeah. Six out of 10. Yeah. In a couple of weeks, that's pretty good yeah and and matt harvey got signed so he i saw that he could be number number seven all right so i wanted to taunt you about that um let's see i wanted to let's see i wanted to mention the rays and the orioles played a game that went to extra innings and i just want to give you the sequence of of those extra innings just

because well i'll get to it but i just want you to hear this game okay so top of the 10th tie game rays get a runner on second hit into a 7-5 double play okay so we're already at 7-5 double play in you know one and a half minutes into this extra innings. And then the Rays get walk, walk, wild pitch. Runners on second and third. And then strikeout. So that's a pretty good half inning. Yeah. Next half inning, ground out, chopper, ground out to third base.

Runner advances to third. And then, let's see, I think it it's a six two put out on the next play so ground out to the short stop play at home runner out potential walk off winning run at home thrown out at home and then third out of the inning after that so that's a pretty good half inning the winning run thrown out at home on a tag play pretty good also so we go to the top of the 11th runner on second again strike out and then three four line out double play so we got another weird double play and then bottom of the 11th sacrifice intentional walk first and third one out strike out runner doesn't score and then

walk off base hit so like that's 35 good minutes of baseball and so i you know the washington post has that weird policy where their staff are not supposed to vote which i think is in the new york times too right no no i know new y Times, I do not believe have that. Well, you can look it up, but I'm pretty sure it's not New York Times. Anyway, it's a weird policy that pretty much everybody mocks. And one time I heard an editor who supported the policy, and he was giving kind of reasons for why he thinks it's a good policy. And one that I, again, it's a dumb policy, but one that has always

stuck with me is that he cited a study that showed that when people are shopping for cars and they kind of have it between like, oh, I'm going to get a Jetta or a Civic, but I can't decide. It's hard to decide. Ah, what should I do? What should I do? What should I do? And then they decide. And then the next day you pull them and they're just telling you how great the Jetta is, how like how much better than civics Jettas are. And like they really once you make a tough decision, you really put a lot of energy into finding evidence to support that decision and to justify that decision. And you basically become a fanatic for that decision. that decision and so the posts thinking as well if you if you vote then it's not just that you're like i don't know somehow influencing what you cover but that you will actually be have motivated reasoning to find evidence for your reason a dumb policy it is it is the times too by the way unless

they've changed it since last september which i doubt my goodness i'm i am owned okay the point is that i since i have decided that i like the extra innings rule i'm just like i'm finding more and more reasons to like it every game to me seems like a perfect little game but even the thing about how like it doesn't even need to be like i thought i used to think bad policy bad bad solution for a non-problem. And then I decided good solution for maybe a non-problem. And then I started talking myself into it actually not being a non-problem. And I now think that, yeah, it is good that games end sooner. Because really, there's such a small, small number of us who want to see

the super long game. And the people who want to see the super long game are not even really the fans of that game, that team that's playing. If you're a fan of the team, you don't want to see the game keep going. You really do want to see it end. You're in it for the outcome. So it seems to me that the people who want to see the super long games are just the fans in other cities that just want to watch baseball and have baseball be on and see weird things happen. Anyway, that point is, what I'm getting at, Ben, is that we do want to see the weird things happen sometimes. We want to see a 20 inning game. Part of what makes a 20 inning game possible or delightful is the fact that it's just barely possible. And then sometimes it happens. And when you see it happen, you feel like you've seen something new, something novel,

something totally unexpected. And we want that. So here's my proposal. This is my compromise. We keep the rule as it is, or even better start the inning with bases loaded, but that's another time. Keep the rule as it is, and then have either one day a week, or maybe one month a year, have either one day a week or maybe one month a year where the rule is suspended and games can go as long as they want. And so there are still 20 inning games in baseball. They're just, they're even rarer. And then you enjoy them even more for their rarity. It would be kind of fun to be in suspense about whether you would happen to get one of those in the one week when it could happen. But I don't know if you were never used to doing that.

The thing about that extra inning rule potentially is that maybe it affects how managers manage in the first nine innings, right? Because you don't have that thought in the back of your head, hey, this thing could go 17 innings if it's tied. And if anything, that would probably encourage you to make more pitching changes, right? Pull your starter earlier, which in general, I'm not really in favor of as a spectator. it and just change your strategy, your tactics. I don't know if it would be even more tiring or deleterious to your team after the fact, just because, I don't know, you weren't accustomed to that or you hadn't constructed your roster in such a way that you had planned for that contingency, but probably not. I'm probably just thinking of little niggling things that aren't really all that important. And yeah, maybe it'd be nice to bring that back every now and then. It's just the consistency, I think, makes it seem more major league as opposed to Bush

League, right? Like right now, it's so new and we only know it from the minor leagues. And it seems like it's perverting the way that baseball is supposed to work or has always worked. And if we just do it for a few years, probably we'll get used to it. We'll be fine with it. You're already fine with it. You like it better. So if we keep it around, then eventually all of the resistance will fade away. But if you switch from one week to the next, then I don't know, maybe it just feels arbitrary and like you're messing with records

and competitive integrity or something. I was thinking that a good day to do it would be, or a good month to suspend the rules would be September since you have expanded rosters. So you're not going to be as worried about, you know, finite resources anyway. And if not a month, a good day to do it would be Friday because we don't have anything to do the next day. Like I said, obviously some people work, a lot of people work on Saturdays, but it is a day of leisure and it's mostly night games. I think that super long extra innings during day games is, is much worse than during night games at night. You get the feeling that you're, that weird things are happening, spooky things are happening

and also that you have earned it by staying awake. But, and it's just cooler and they sort of be at the ballpark for hours and hours right whereas an afternoon game really just feels tired you're you know you've got all the then you really feel like you're burning you're burning daylight hours so and you wouldn't want it on a saturday because you have day games the next day and a travel day maybe so yeah friday seems like the best bet yeah a reader named david emailed to suggest a change to the extra innings where you could reset the batting order in the tent and i read that and i we've talked about that as well

but i read that and i thought no we already have a way that we do like i i actually thought no the tradition is that it's the last batter that made an out has to go to second and be the base runner and i thought i'm there have been six of these games and i'm already like we have a tradition and we can't change the tradition yeah all right last thing just a brief observation about the fake cheers i have found the fake cheers. I have found the fake cheers to be frustrating in one instance. And that one instance is a lot of times. So most of a baseball game is happening off screen. For the most part, you only see a small section of the field on your television screen. And so if a guy gets a hit and off screen, you know, like the camera shows him, you know, rounding second base, for instance,

off screen, you know, like the camera shows him, you know, rounding second base, for instance. And then off screen, the defense, maybe the right fielder has, has fumbled the ball in the right field corner. And you count on the crowd to give you the, the, the volume that, that something is happening off screen. You count on the crowd noise to tell you when a runner is unexpectedly going, when you thought that the play was maybe ending, but then the runner is trying to take an extra base. There's all these instances where things are happening off screen and the crowd is actually telling you that something is happening by getting a little bit louder. And because I'm hearing cheers that sound like base hit cheers, I am getting this lulled sense of believing that nothing else is happening.

Interesting off screen, because if it were, then the crowd would be cheering. If that makes sense. So it is the, the inability to have that nuanced crowd noise is kind of misleading to me and is distracting to me. So that has been a Bob.

That is, I don't, did I convey what I'm talking about? Do you understand what I'm talking about? Yeah. And so that's been to me the big letdown of the fake crowd noise is that it cannot handle, it cannot communicate to me what is happening off screen, which crowd noise generally does. Uh-huh. So that sense of anticipation that you're about to see something or that there's more going on than meets the eye, you're just not getting that anymore. Yeah. You just, you watch,

yeah. You just don't know that it's happening. You, you can only see a sliver of the game as it is. And so this has taken away a little bit of your kind of quote unquote view of what's happening from home. You're seeing it an even smaller sliver because all you have now is the visual in front of you. If any fake crowd noise operators are listening, they can take that into account. Start building in some side noise for no apparent reason. Yeah. Yeah.

At the right time. Yeah. Yeah. Right. All right. I want to get to some emails, but I do have one thing to kind of quiz you on or get your thoughts on. Usually about a week or two into the season, you talk about rates, offensive rates, pitching rates, things that maybe look like they've changed from a previous season. And then you force me to predict whether that will stay the same by the end of the year or whether it's just a small sample thing that will regress.

And we haven't done that this year. I don't know if you're planning to do that this year or if this year is just so strange in so many ways that it almost defeats the purpose. But there is one thing that has kind of interested me and perplexed me so far, which is the batting average on balls in play, which is down quite a lot, really. And that's something that doesn't fluctuate all that much, and I've been trying to figure out why that is. So let me lay it out here. We are recording on Wednesday afternoon, and right now the Major League BABIP is 276, and that is very low considering that the league-wide BABIP really over the past 25 years has barely moved at all. It's just, you know, a few points in this direction, a few points in that direction, but it was 296 in 1994.

It was 296 in 2019, and it hasn't moved all that far in either direction in any of the intervening years. And that's always been kind of confounding because so many things have changed during that time. You'd think that players have gotten better, that they're hitting the ball harder, that they're better at fielding. Maybe those things cancel out. But also you have the shift. You have all of the optimized, and so you would expect that this would change. It was lower in earlier eras of baseball history, but it stubbornly refuses to move. But so far this year, it has moved. And again, of course, that could be a little bit, but I think usually it varies along with the weather, with the temperature. I don't know if there's a strong correlation there, but for instance, last year, I think it was about 290 in March and April and then went up to the high 290s or even 300 in midsummer and then dipped a bit in September, October. I don't know if it's always like that, but I think that's the general pattern probably. Yeah, I think it is. I think that, in fact, every year during this segment, we talk about Babbitt being low and then wonder about it. But it's usually, yeah, like 290. Right.

And, of course, the weather explanation doesn't apply because it's August right now. So this is when temperatures are at their warmest. So it could be, of course, that it's not so much about the weather. It's about hitters being behind pitchers or something, and that would still apply and perhaps could apply even more this year. So that's one possibility. One thing that makes it kind of tough to tell is that it's hard to compare StatCast data from last season to compare stat cast data from last season to Hawkeye data from this season, the new provider of stat cast information. So if you look at, say, exit velocity, it looks like it's down about a mile per hour, but it's hard to know whether

that is reflecting hitters actually hitting the ball less hard or whether it's just the change in the technology. And similarly, the league-wide weighted on base average right now is 301 and the league-wide expected weighted on base average is 324. So there's a big gap there, which makes it seem as if batters are not getting the results that you would expect given how hard they're hitting the ball and where they are hitting the ball. But it's tough to say because XWOBA is kind of calibrated for the way the ball behaved prior to the season. And there might be Trackman Hawkeye issues there too. So that's not conclusive. So that's something to consider, but not necessarily an explanation. It seems like the ball has been a little less lively, my sense is. And I think Rob Arthur is

working on something about this that will probably be published this week. But just looking at some of the less advanced stats, it does seem like maybe the ball is a little less lively this year. So that could have something to do with it. And Tom Tango was tweeting about this, and he compared just like any period of this length. And he noted that the BABIP was way down or that defensive efficiency is way up. And he said, since the start of the 2020 season, fielders have converted into outs 71.1% of the 7,630 balls hit into play. In 2019, there was no stretch where fielders converted as many plays into outs. The average was 69.1%. 2020 is 3.8 standard deviations from 2019. So it does seem strange. And this could be slightly related to the ball, but again, like the BABIP hasn't fluctuated all that much with the massive fluctuations in the ball over the last several

years. So I don't think that could account for it completely. And I do have one other kind of interesting theory. This is something I've been corresponding with a listener named Jeff about. And there's an article, I don't know if you saw it in the Wall Street Journal a couple of days ago, by Ben Cohen and Joshua Robinson. And they made the case that in other sports, players have just gotten better at certain things, arguably because there are no fans in the stadiums, and so there are fewer distractions. So they pointed out that in the NBA to that point, the percentage of free throws was higher, and the percentage of corner three-pointers was higher, like higher rates than had ever been seen in the league before. And also in soccer, the rate of success on direct free kicks seems to be up pretty significantly.

And they kind of had a couple theories or hypotheses in this article, and I couldn't tell which they were putting more weight on. in this article and I couldn't tell which they were putting more weight on. But aside from the, well, small sample fluke explanation, they suggested that maybe players just practiced a whole lot over the few months that they weren't playing. So, you know, in basketball and soccer, maybe it's easier to practice a skill like free throw shooting or shooting the ball than it would be to practice a lot of baseball skills. It's not like fielders have been practicing, you know, fielding fly balls, hit off fungos or something because there wasn't anyone to hit them to them. So I don't know if that could be an explanation, but it seemed like they were mostly suggesting that it would have to do with the lack of fans,

and that could be the case in baseball. If you buy this in NBA and in soccer, it would be hard to see in certain skills because it's, you know, batter versus pitcher. And if they both have an advantage, if they're both better at things, then you might not even be able to discern that difference. something that if there are fewer fans or no fans, there's less noise. If you use the crack of the bat to gauge the ball, then maybe you get a better read on the ball. Maybe there are fewer distractions from, say, the white shirts that are blocking out how the ball comes off the bat, and you don't get as good a read of it for that reason. Maybe you can hear the other fielders call for the ball or something better than you could in a packed stadium. So there are kind of compelling reasons why that could be the case, but again, it might be nothing. Or I guess, you know, defensive positioning could have dramatically improved or something, but I don't know why that would have happened really

over one winter. Worth noting though, that shifting is way up again, as it is every year. Infield shifts have been about 35% more frequent than they were in 2019. Don't think it's more defensive replacements with bigger rosters, though, because apparently, according to Tango, this Babbitt drop is even bigger in early innings. Yeah, you know, another thing that the idea that there's no that it's a much cleaner background visual, which would seem to be, I have not read the Wall Street Journal article, but would seem to be the most likely cause for free throws and corner threes is a little bit surprising,

but holds up as like a potential cause and effect. I wouldn't think that the background of fans would be that distracting, particularly for ground balls, which, well, I guess for ground balls or well, are we looking? Yeah.

I would think not for ground balls for fly balls. I could see it being a factor for like, you know, various crack of the bat and then, you know, measuring where it's going to go. Like we're talking about a pretty small effect. And so for drives and fly balls i could definitely see it not not that you're losing the ball in the in the crowd but that it would give you you know like a one percent worse

kind of perspective on yeah on it according to to tango's tweets it seems like the biggest difference is on line drives and ground balls more so than fly balls, although there's a slight fly ball effect too. Line drives and ground balls. Yeah. Uh-huh. Okay. Interesting. And so I could see it.

I don't know if I think this is a good thing to suggest or not, but there's also the fact that basically everybody's an American League team this year. There's also the fact that basically everybody's an American League team this year. And by as far as I can tell, the American League BABIP over the last decade has been, you know, like three-ish points lower than the National League BABIP. I don't know exactly why that would be, but maybe something about pitchers. Babbit has got to be garbage, right? But pitcher pitchers, Babbit is bad. But on the other hand, pitchers take up a fairly small portion of balls in play because they strike out so much. And maybe if you replace all those pitchers with, with kind of like lesser hitters, they're going to have a better BABF than pitchers do,

but they're going to have a lower BABF than the average hitter, and they're going to make up a much higher percentage of balls in play than pitchers did. So they might be dragging the number down, if that makes sense. Right? Like if DH BABF is a little low because they tend to be slow, sluggish people, and now you're going to throw a bunch of those slow, sluggish people in and have them take up a much higher. Anyway, the point is that it looks to me like NL BABIP is about two points higher, two or three points higher over the last decade than AL

BABIP. So that explains a couple points of it, perhaps right there. And then of course, there's the small sample aspect of it. I mean, the most, I don't know, this is the question, I guess, at the heart of this. I mean, take away the specific thing that we're asking. And if I just tell you that I have identified a thing that's different this year, performance that's different this year, and you don't know what it is, I'm not even going to tell you what it is. And I say, what do you think is the most likely cause of this difference? You would probably say, well, it's one of like four things. It's either, I just said four, but I don't know how many I'm going to name.

It's either the lack of crowd, which is a big change. It's the late start, the unusual start, the spring training being three weeks and abnormal. So that's the second possibility. Or it's the weird player pool that like, it's just a different group of players. Or what other things could it be? It could be, well, you know, those are kind of the main causes, right? And so you're thinking, well, is it it's going to be, it's going to be either late start, or the you know, maybe it's the AL thing that everybody's got the DH,

you know, the rules changes, everybody's got the DH games only go 10 innings, and so on know maybe it's the al thing that everybody's got the dh you know the rules changes everybody's got the dh games only go 10 innings and so on so it's either going to be rules changes no fans strange start to the season or something about like the just the weird competitive atmosphere and so in this case i would probably feel like i would lean toward it being the anomalous start to the season i feel like in most in most cases, that's my first hypothesis is, well, how did the weird start to the season cause this? Because it was a really weird start to the season. Yeah. The idea of having spring training, three months off,

three weeks of quarantined practice, and then let's start a championship season is very, very, very weird. And to me, that's even weirder than no fans. And it's even weirder than having rules changes. And it's even weirder than having this strange, whole strange 60 game experimental season. So I would probably always be trying to fit my hypothesis into that. into that. Yeah. Although if anything, you would think that fielders would be rusty or worse because of that. I mean, maybe batters are also worse in some way that is affecting the opportunities, the quality of the batted balls. Maybe it's just easier opportunities or something, but I wouldn't think fielders would have an advantage. If anything, they'd be worse probably, right? Yeah. You would think that yeah i don't know it's weird so and again it could be a small sample thing i saw a tweet by alex chamberlain of rotographs who said he looked at the 15 day moving average of league babbitt since the start

of the 2017 season and it has dipped below 280 a handful of times so it's not outside the realm of possibility maybe it's just more noticeable because it happened at the start of the season but i'm looking forward to seeing whether it turns out to be anything if you look at the inside edge defensive stats on fan graphs and you look at the like 10 to 40 plays and the 40 to 60, that's where the big improvements seem to be. Like in theory, they are judging by the difficulty of the play, you know, so they're accounting for that already. Although there could be some bias that creeps in there. So I don't know, it's hard to say. There's probably some things you could do with data, advanced data, maybe that we don't have access to that would be revealing here whether

it's like the routes that fielders are taking to the ball or maybe you could look at reaction times or you know their first movement or acceleration some of that might be yeah i have a sort of a slightly dumb hypothesis that fits into the no fans thing. Is it conceivable that hearing the crack of the bat better? Yeah, I mentioned that. Oh, you did? Yeah, so you might not get fooled on a ball and come in if it's hit hard or something. Yeah, that was rude of me.

Wow. We both thought of it independently. Not only did I not listen to you say it, but then I interrupted you to blurt it out. Holy cow. It's a compelling one. i think it's interesting more interesting than most of these early season fluctuations that i never know whether to believe this one at least there's some reasons to believe it might be true and real although i guess they wouldn't really apply beyond the season anyway but just to explain

why this was a weird blip if that's all it turns out to be so we'll see yeah well it's interesting because i have here a list of 27 factors that i've uh listed that could affect the quality of play this year and uh and now i have to add to the to that not now i get to add to this. 28 is the different backdrop for fielders. Yeah. Which I had not considered. I had considered other aspects of not having fans there, but not that one. Mm-hmm.

All right. Let's do a few emails. Hiroshi says, if this season comes to an end early, say 25 games for most teams, can Luis Robert or any other rookie win multiple Rookie of the Year awards? In such a case, no one loses their rookie status in 2020, for they can't have enough at-bats, innings pitched, or rostered days. I assume that MLB would implement a prorated eligibility, but if such a shorter rookie season would happen, then can we regard those 2020 rookies as proven big leaguers?

Well, this is not exactly a judgment call. This is going to be a decision the league will make. So good question. Should they be eligible? What would you do? What would your policy be? I guess what's the point of the Rookie of the Year award? People have different philosophies on this. Some people think it's the rookie who performs the best of the Year award? People have different philosophies on this. Some people think it's the rookie who performs the best in that year, so, you know, the war leader. Or it's maybe the rookie who is most promising. So if you want to end up with a Rookie of the Year who turns out to be a great player, then you might go with someone who looked good and was impressive but didn't actually have the best stats in that season. And if you just want to reward the rookie who just was the most valuable in that year, then you'll end up with some Bob Hamlins.

And I guess that's okay too. Those guys had their season in the sun. Well, but we don't care about what the rookie of the year is for this year. We're not talking about who should win it this year. We're talking about who should win it next year and so what qualifies them as a rookie we the bob hamlin thing is totally irrelevant well you're just looking for reasons to slam bob hamlin but if you want to it is the point of keeping them rookie eligible so that they can win again is that i mean ultimately it doesn't really matter rightookie eligibility is

how we decide on whether someone is a prospect we can still rank or not, how you decide whether someone's eligible for the Rookie of the Year award, but it doesn't really have that much bearing on anything else long-term, right? It's not service time. So really, I think it kind of comes down to like, would you want someone to have a second crack at it or would you want someone who won like i would think that if you won the award then you would be ineligible again i don't know that's probably how i would do it just because you want to what have you finished second yeah i don't know i mean would you want the same person to win an award that is supposed to be for a rookie right it's just you know yeah greg jeffries got votes two years in a row uh yeah

so you can be in normal circumstances you you can be i mean obviously you can be a rookie for for more than one season because that's how they do it. But the idea of a Rookie of the Year award is to reward the newcomer, right? It has nothing. And that's the thing about it is that they have not carved out any like prohibition against like 37-year-olds who come from, you know, a different professional league. year olds who come from, you know, a different professional league. They haven't drawn a distinction between a 28 year old journeyman and a 19 year old who, you know, skipped every level except low way. They it is just newcomer, the newcomer to the league who is new to this league this year. And so I think for for that reason, you have to say that this year, as a shortened year, is nonetheless a full year for the sports history.

Assuming that the season goes, you know, like I think if the season got canceled after 25 games, they wouldn't name a rookie of the year. I don't think they're naming awards for a season that ends up being shortened from here. awards for a season that ends up being shortened from here. But if they make it to the end of the 60 game schedule and they name a rookie of the year, then I think that you have to say that it is prorated. It's something like instead of normally it's what, 130 at bats for a full season. I don't think you prorate it exactly like that, but I think you say something like a third of a season. So if you play 20 games, if you have, say, 70 at bats or something, then you lose your rookie status, in my opinion. Yeah, I think I go along with that. So, okay.

So we'll say, I would like to do it by games, but I guess you have to do, you know, if a player uses a pinch runner and never bats, then you want to be consistent. So I'll say 63 at bats. I mean, I want to do plate appearances, but they do at bats. Nice round number. 63 is 3.1 per, right? Per 20 games. So 20 games, 3.1 per would be 62. So I'm going to say 62 at bats. And then what is it now it's 45 innings it's

50 innings i'm going to say uh 20 innings okay 20 innings or 62 at bats otherwise you're a rookie next year all right sam has spoken okay do you want to do a stat blast here? Sure Alright this is a new stat blast song cover submission by friend of the show Lucas Apostolaris of Baseball Perspectives Really? Yes with Tom Kelly on the alto sax Tom Kelly? Not that one Oh A friend of Lucas's I assume I didn't ask and Carlos Mata Alvarez on tenor sax

Oh my goodness. Oh, that's right. Lucas is a jazz musician. Yes, he's a recording artist. That's right. He has a new album out. He is quite an accomplished jazz musician. Yeah.

Okay, so I'm going to have to hear this. Well, no, I don't want to hear it. I'm going to hear it privately. Okay. I don't know. All right. So this one's a little complicated, so I'll do my best. The other day, Aaron Judge was batting. It was the bottom of the fifth inning. There was a runner on base, and the Yankees were trailing by a run,

and it had started raining, and there were like, there'd been like a lead-up. They'd been showing weather maps and stuff. It was very clear that there was going to be a huge rainstorm coming. They'd already canceled the next day's game. And so you had this feeling that any pitch could be the last one, right? If it started raining, that could be it for the night. And so the traditional rules for baseball have always been that if a game reaches five

full innings or if the home team is winning after the top of the fifth is over, then the game is official. Even if the rest of the game gets rained out, it's official. And if it doesn't reach those five complete innings and the rest of the game gets rained out it's official and if it doesn't reach those five complete innings and the rest of the game gets rained out then all the innings that were played no longer exist they they just get washed out they don't even get like really like recorded they're not official stats they replay the game later but they start over instead of picking it up where it was and so for for a hitter who's in a situation like judge that

creates this possibility of a very suspenseful very unusual type of walk-off right because knowing that the game might get delayed and maybe rained out any second any pitch there are not three but four possibilities on each pitch he could make an out and in the inning and make the game official and probably maybe the last out of the game or he could make an out and end the inning and make the game official and probably maybe the last out of the game. Or he could drive in the runner, tie the game, make the game official and possibly guarantee the game is at least suspended and replayed from where it is. He could homer, give his team the lead, make the game official and possibly walk off with the victory or he could like foul the pitch off and then have the umpire declare enough is enough the game gets rained out wiped away

every existence of it is is forgotten and so this situation doesn't exist in any other inning after the bottom of the fifth because by then the game is already official so if it were to get rained out suddenly that it doesn't matter the game is already in the books and doesn't exist in any other inning after the bottom of the fifth, because by then the game is already official. So if it were to get rained out suddenly, it doesn't matter. The game is already in the books and doesn't exist in any inning before the bottom of the fifth, because nothing that the batter does then will make it official. It's still going to have to keep going. And so that's not going to be the end of the game, but in the bottom of the fifth, it's always possible that the game will somehow be made official, rained out before it's completed and so it's in my opinion a very stressful situation so so that's what aaron judge was in the middle of now unfortunately they're not doing that rule this year this year they've decided that rather

than start non-official games all the way over they're just going to pick up where they left off even if it's one pitch into the game so So that takes a lot of the suspense out of the judge at bat. Not entirely because he still knows that if he makes an out, then the reins maybe start falling and now he is just locked in the loss. And if he hits a homer, then maybe the reins start falling and he might have just locked in a victory. But it's not quite as suspenseful because he's not responsible for bringing the game to official status. All right. So I got to wondering whether anybody has ever had a walk-off of this sort in this sort of situation that Judge was in. So in the bottom of the fifth, a team trailing, rain falling, batter driving in a go-ahead run and the game immediately immediately

put into a rain delay that eventually becomes a full-on cancellation a kind of a a rain out walk off in the fifth all right okay so sort of the answer is sort of the not exactly what i just described not fully what I just described, but kind of close in a combination of games, sort of. So I'm only looking at games that have taken place since stadiums got lights. I'm sure that versions of this happened in the years of darkness and forced endings,

but I just wanted to know when it's actually raining. So there are, as far as I can tell, three games that ended in walk-offs in the bottom of the fifth in the lighted era so the rangers won a game like that in 1984 with wayne tolliver driving in the winter before the game was immediately called the reds won a game like that in 1948 when someone named augie gallon drove in the fifth inning winning run and the game immediately ended uh was official and ended and then the dodgers won a game like that in 1942 when billy herman drove in augie gallon again

i mean that's kind of crazy right augie gallon in two of the three instances in in major league history all right what are the odds very slim very slim now a key detail here is that in all three cases the team that won the walk-off was already tied the game was already tied so they were official enough that my understanding is that had they been rained out from there they already would have been resumed rather than restarted from scratch. I'm not 100% sure on that, but in a minute, I'm going to tell you why I think I'm sure on that. So these were walk-off fifth inning victories, but they were not the sort of walk-offs that made the game official. They're not the sort of walk-offs where an out

would have made the game official in the other direction as a loss. The games were already in the bottom of the fifth, I believe, official at that point in the tie. There was one walk-off hit in this genre that did make a game that had not been official. Al Kaline in 1956 was batting with the bases loaded, trailing by one, and the rain was coming down. And this is the situation I'm describing. A hit would win it, well, would make it official and give the Tigers the lead. An out would make it official and give the Senators the lead upon that moment. And Kaline, instead merely grounded into a fielder's choice to tie it, he was called safe at first.

There was a big argument on the field. The Senators could not believe he'd been called safe at first, but he was called safe at first. The call held. And while they were arguing, the rain was still just pouring down and they halted it. They paused the game. They never picked it up again that day. As the game story in the newspaper said the next day the rains came and stopped everything it was declared a legal game and the statistics will count all because of al k line's fielder's choice they never ended up finishing the game the box score lives on forever as a two-two tie which means that al k line had what i'm going to guess is baseball's last walk-off tire tying hit. Walk-off tie, tie, walk.

I don't know what to call this. Walk-off tire? Walk-off tire? And by doing that, instead of like fouling three pitches away, he saved the game from getting washed away into oblivion. So that's it. Clutch. Very clutch.

In fact, I have in my notes here, I have, is this the greatest clutch hit ever? And I thought about it and I don't think it was. I'm like, I don't think Al Kaline. Well, it was a fifth place team playing a seventh place team for one thing. But it was in a way kind of clutch. And so the sort of walk-off that,

like the crazy thing sort of walk-off that like the crazy thing about the walk-off for the other ones it was a walk-off that they didn't get to celebrate for an hour or two until the game was officially banged later and so that's maybe the longest delay for a walk-off celebration ever those those three games that i described the k-line walk-off tie he wouldn't have known i don't think he would have known that one was official until the end of the year so i think al k-line might have had a walk-off tie that he got to celebrate three months later you think everyone showed up at his house and tore his shirt off? Yeah.

Maybe they did. Maybe he thought they were and really it was just a mugging. Alright, I've got a couple more emails here. This one is from Michael who says, as I write this email the Colorado Rockies are 7-2. As we record this podcast the Colorado Rockies are 7-2. As we record this podcast, the Colorado Rockies are 8-3.

Allow me to take you into my newly created hypothetical world where the Rockies become the 2019 Dodgers, but only if no fans are present. When fans are present, the Rockies go back to being the team they have been for their whole history, a 473 winning percentage. If you were a season ticket holder for the Rockies, would you commit to never attending a home Rockies game if it meant they instantly became a 91-win team every year and would win a guaranteed World Series in the next 15 years? I mean, you're presuming that every other Rockies fan will agree to this?

Yeah, I guess so. If you all know that, or just your personal choice well what's the i mean if if every other ticket holder is agreeing to this then what's the option you're gonna go and ruin it just you you alone are gonna ruin it you have the ability to decree what everyone has to do they all look to you for whatever reason. You're the king of Rockies fans. I don't want that either. Let's just say that it's going to be a vote among all fans, and you're just deciding what you're going to vote. Yeah, definitely you would vote to not go.

Yeah, I think so. Well, I mean, it's a sacrifice. If we're saying season ticket holder only, maybe he's just saying season ticket holder as a proxy for someone who just really likes to go into Rockies games. Yeah, I'm saying that I've never been a season ticket holder, so I don't necessarily understand the relationship to going to the ballpark every day that a season ticket holder would have. If you went to 81 games a year, it would really beving you of something yes that you're used to but if you're even an average person and you just don't even have the option anymore of going to see your team play a ball game that's a sacrifice you're surrendering something the funny thing is that

it's they only become a 91 win team and so if this were to become 101 win team every year then it would be definitely no doubt about it. You would you would love to have your favorite team be a powerhouse dominant all the time. And you would sacrifice the in person experience. And you would just go to some Rockies road game somewhere you'd find a way when you're on vacation to go to a Rockies road game. I don't know how far Colorado is from Seattle, but, well, they're not even in the same league, so that's a problem. But you'd find a way to go to a Rockies game here and there.

You'd experience it on TV and radio. I think you'd be perfectly fine. That seems like a pretty easy yes. Now, the question is, would the Rockies, as an organization, do that? And I think the answer there has to be no right you yeah the there's just not enough revenue to be gained by being a much better team than you are but without any fans i don't think i don't think you would make the numbers work no probably not yeah that's tough i mean uh

cores is a really nice ballpark too that might change your calculus a little bit if you were in some really crappy ballpark where it's not much calculus a little bit if you were in some really crappy ballpark where it's not much fun to watch a game anyway or it's impossible to get to or something that's a little different from cores which is quite picturesque so it'd be tough and and what if you could never i guess this applies to the playoffs too so you can't go and see your team win in person if they're celebrating on the field. They just won the World Series. It's an empty ballpark with no one else participating in that communal joy in that same place.

So you're definitely losing something. But if it really is that they are just going to be a 473 winning percentage team every year, I mean, if it's never a winning team, I think that's a pretty easy choice. But if you have the Rockies that you've had to this point where they're usually not a winning team, but they have been sometimes at least they have made the playoffs, they have made runs, then it's tough. It's a lot to give up. Yeah. And let's clarify that they don't instantly become a 91-win team because a team that wins by magic wouldn't be that satisfying, I don't think. I think what we can agree on here is that something about the Rockies becomes identified with they are better without fans

and their true talent level goes up 10 wins a year. So they might win 98 games some years, and they might win 84 games some years. But if you reframe this as your presence at the ballpark makes your favorite team a dozen wins worse, just you being there, rather than helping them in any way, you are just a burden on them. They hate it when you show up then i think then you would gladly say oh well i don't want to be a burden i'm i'm trying to help you i i go to games partly to to yell support and so if by showing up to support you i'm making you much less talented then i think it would be an easy a fairly easy sacrifice to make yeah okay and it's it's you, I assume. It's not like this year where every team has to play without fans. It's all the other people who root for all the other teams get to go see their team play. And so you're missing out. It's not we're all missing out. It's you specifically are missing out in a way that no other fan base is missing out on so that might make it a little tougher for me just getting to

see everyone else enjoy that experience and being deprived of it personally but but yes i think i would still do it it's uh you know the the home ballpark following experience is really pretty good these days seattle is 20 hours from denver i have got to get my maps straight that's not even close no phoenix 13 hours wow wow mountain time all right other ben says i was wondering how you think the draft should be organized for next year if 60 games are played i imagine the draft order will be determined the way it always is but where do they draw the line surely if the season is canceled on monday the two and one marlins or at that time where two and one marlins wouldn't have the 28th pick should they just add the 2020

totals to 2019 what do you think oh adding adding the totals that's a pretty good one yeah well the goal is to the whole reason that there is a reverse order set the way that it is is that they think that bad teams need help to get out of their holes and that you don't want bad teams to get stuck in their holes permanently you want to have you know some sort of league-wide parity so you give a little boost to the teams that need it the most. And if we're concluding that this year simply doesn't have any particular predictive value and isn't a fair representation of where the team actually is in talent, then that seems kind of out the window.

I think there's already a problem with that logic. I think if you look at teams that finish near the bottom every year because so much of it is intentional so much of it is by design sort of it's like planned planned bad years you're basically rewarding a team three years from now that's already going to be good in three years that it's it's the logic has kind of become kind of crooked as it is so i don't i already don't really like the way that they do it i mean you're rewarding teams like you know big market teams a lot of the time that astros and the tigers and teams of that nature so i don't know that it's already great uh not that i've named two huge market teams or anything like that but it's not

tiny market teams it seems to me that the i don't know maybe just do it by you don't really want to generally encourage teams not spend but maybe after the fact is a one-time thing where there's no incentive power to it you just simply do reverse order of payroll this year again you wouldn't want to do that going forward because then teams would have more incentive to cut payroll. But after the fact, you simply say, well, this will be a year where small market teams get an advantage. It is inherently disadvantageous to be in a smaller market. It's weird that baseball has this system where they expect humongous markets and tiny markets to compete on equal terms,

mostly equal terms as it is. So maybe this year you just go toward balancing that imbalance, or you just do market size. Maybe instead of payroll, you just do reverse order of market size and you don't really care if the World Series champion happens to get the first pick. If they're a small market, you just roll with that this year yeah i wonder even well i guess it still still really matters even though the the draft has changed the way it has and reduced and fewer rounds and everything you're still just talking about the the top pick here mostly although there's bonus pool implications too but yeah i don't think i would want to change it just for one year in some

dramatic way. I mean, you know, if the season had ended already, then maybe if there were just no predictiveness, no correlation to talent on the teams, you know, if the Orioles had one of the best records or something, then it would be weird. But unless you're going to do a real overhaul, which as you said, maybe they should just use the fundamental indicators of whether you think a team is at a disadvantage or at an advantage, then this would be an impetus to do that. You might just say, well, we should have done this anyway, and now we have this weird year, so let's just make this the time to do it but that's gonna have to be something that's you know discussed at length and collectively bargained i i assume and so you couldn't just snap your fingers and say do that so it might just end up being simpler and more

feasible to say yeah we're just gonna stick with it and roll with it and it'll just be one of those things that's weird this year like everything else yeah you could just also just do lottery for the whole thing yeah yep true all right since you're the extra innings expert can i get your ruling on this this last one here yeah i'm more fanatic than actually okay this is from david he says one aspect of the new extra innings rule that i don't recall anyone discussing is whether or not it is fair or makes sense for the teams to continue their batting orders where they left off at the end of the ninth. As you have discussed, the reason the rule works to shorten games is that even though each team ostensibly has equal odds of scoring, the odds of both teams scoring the same number

of runs in a given inning are reduced. In reality, it seems like a team which happens to end the ninth at the top of their order would have an advantage over a team that ends the ninth near the bottom of their order. Maybe it's just a philosophical thing, but to me, starting with the runner on second seems to be intended to reset the situation, even everything up, and try again from an equitable but more offensively advantageous state. Instead, the system can quote-unquote blindly place one team in a much better situation independent of merit. I get that in the old slash standard playoff rules, teams simply continue their batting orders as normal, but adding the runner on second seems to break the continuity of the game significantly. The base out state no longer correlates to the hitter's outcomes in the normal way, but the location in the lineup still does. So would it be more fair to let each team start the 10th

wherever in the lineup they so choose? Would it be more fun in this alternate scenario? I think it would make sense for the chosen batter to hit batter N with batter N minus one starting on second base. You know what this would conceivably do is it might re-incentivize teams to put a speedy even if you were low on base percentage hitter at the top of the order although maybe just then you'd bat him ninth and then that way when you make your decision in the 10th it would be as much about getting your fastest runner

on second as your best hitter up you'd like to do both. Ideally, you'd like to have your fastest runner on second and your best three hitters coming up. So maybe this would cause teams to have their speedy guy bat ninth and then even more motivation for them to bat their very best hitters first and second so that they can have that perfect extra inning setup. Is it designed as a reset? Is an extra innings situation designed as a reset? The funny thing is that if you have a game that's been evenly played through nine innings and one team has the top of their order up and one team has the bottom of the order up, it could be because the team that has the top of the order up

has gone through their lineup one more time. And so they have earned the right to have the top of the order by going through their lineup one more time and so they have earned the right to have the top of the order by going through the lineup one more time but it could also be the opposite it could be that they have not yet that they had slightly fewer batters reach base and so that has them going through the order now slightly behind the other team but getting this big advantage in the 10th neither here nor there is the goal to reset do you think well really the goal is to end the game more quickly it's not really to reset because if it were to reset then you'd say everybody is eligible all the pitchers are eligible there is clearly residual there is residual effects from the nine innings that you have just played

that are going into the 10th so that you have just played that are going into the 10th. So if you have used seven relievers and the other team has only used one reliever, then that team has an advantage. The team that's only used one reliever has an advantage and they don't erase that advantage. And if you pinch hit with your catcher and he ended the ninth inning and now he has to pinch run in the 10th, well, that's a decision you made in the the ninth and it seems fair to say that we're bringing that forward as well i think it the the where in your lineup you happen to be is bad luck like it does feel like it's just out of your

control and it's bad luck and it makes a huge difference yeah and so i can see why you wouldn't want luck to be so heavily weighted in the 10th inning. But I don't think that the goal is to reset everything and to start at square one. I don't think that that's the intention. baseball is supposed to be played, that it's not tradition, that it's some abomination would be even more so adopting that position if you just suddenly decided that the batting order no longer applies and you can just decide who gets the hit, which is one of the real fundamental things about baseball compared to other sports is that you can't do that ever. And I don't know if it's a good thing about baseball. I mean, it's in some ways an unfortunate thing because you don't get to send the great hitter up to see the super exciting closer versus cleanup hitter type at bat. You might just get your worst hitter in the lineup

at that moment. But it's also one of the nice things about baseball, I think, or at least I appreciate it because it's different. It sets baseball apart, and there is something kind of nice and just about the fact that you are bound by this batting order and neither side can get away from it. So to tear that down along with everything else that has been destabilized this season, just how you end extra inning games how long games are etc that would be i think a bridge too far for most people and i'm not sure if philosophically i like it yeah i'd be fine with it i'm not fighting for it but like i said earlier at this point uh i am really open to whatever yeah i mean it would be fun like i guess i can't argue that it's less fun

to get to see the best hitter come up right because yeah i think david if david i don't even think david is making the it would be more fun no that's like a different argument and this is really kind of a little bit more of a confounding one because I am not sure whether we should aspire to have the 10th inning be relatively equal grounds for both teams or not. But I think not. I think I like the idea that what you do in the nine innings prior still does have an effect on the 10th inning for you. I don't think I would like to take that away. Yep, I think I agree. Okay. All right, that will do it for today. Since Meg and I spoke on the last episode, Shohei Otani was confirmed to be done as a pitcher for this season. Not unexpectedly, although Joe Madden said he still

believes he can be a two-way player in the future. And of course, Otani came back and hit a home run in his first at-bat as a batter after suffering that injury, which sort of reminds me of September 2018 when he got the elbow injury and he was officially shut down for the rest of that season as a pitcher, and it was pretty clear that he'd have to have Tommy John surgery, and for any other pitcher, that would have been it. We wouldn't have seen him again,

but Otani came back as a hitter, and he homered in his first game back, and then he homered twice in the next game, and it was just a stark reminder of how different he is from everyone else. Most pitchers hurt their arm. That's the last you see of him for a while. Otani hurts his arm. Next thing you know, he's in the batter's box and he's hitting home runs. I guess you could take that as a sign that he should just be in the batter's box all the time and not worry about pitching. But to me, it also kind of confirms just how special he is

and how much I want to see him do both of those things and stay healthy someday. But we can revisit that conversation another time. Either way, we have Mike Trout with his newfound dad strength homering three times in his first two games back. Also, since our last episode, Nick Magical separated his shoulder, went on the injured list, sounds like he might be back before the end of August, but also might have to have off-season surgery. We just can't have nice things this year. So I hope he gets well soon too. I also hope you'll support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks.

Jay, Ross Mitchell, Elle, Adam Morrison, and Alec. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. Keep your questions and comments for me and Sam and Meg coming via email at podcastatfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And I will be back with Meg for one more episode

before the end of this week. Talk to the left. I'll pull you to the right. I'll pull you in all directions. I'll pull you to the left. I'll pull you to the right. I'll pull you in all directions. If a hitter comes up in the bottom of the ninth inning, trailing by one with the bases loaded,

that hitter can do three things, right? That hitter can lose the game. Let's say there's two outs. He can lose the game. He can win the that hitter can lose the game to say there's two outs he can lose the game he can win the game he can tie the game three outcomes yeah okay three possibilities correct yeah yeah okay you sound unconvinced i'm wondering if this is a trick question but if it is i don't see how okay