Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1580: Meet Me Halfway

Episode Date: August 21, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the three-year anniversary of the Effectively Wild outing to see the total solar eclipse at a minor league game in Oregon and whether the backlash to the kerfuffle over Fernando Tatis Jr.’s 3-0 grand slam made this week a watershed for MLB’s unwritten rules, then answer listener emails […]

You can drive my car, see how it rolls, feel a new energy as it quietly goes. Just singing this song won't change the world Hello and welcome to episode 1580 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Did you know that today is three years since the eclipse? Oh, is that right? Yeah, well, sort of. Friday is three years since the eclipse? Oh, is that right? Yeah, well, sort of. Friday is three years since the eclipse itself. Today is three years since I showed up at Jeff's apartment in Oregon.

And I met Jeff for the first and only time in real life. And I met Meg for the first and only time in real life. And on Friday I met, well, on Eclipse Day I met Dylan for the first and only time in real life and uh on friday i met uh well on eclipse day i met dylan for the first and only time that's right yeah in real life and you know i have been thinking about that day a lot today i was talking to my daughter about the eclipse and i i don't think that there's maybe any day of my life that is more unlike what we're what we're living in right now what we're doing right now we all we all we all traveled across the country in planes and trains to crowd in to a minor league stadium where there are there are no minor league stadiums open right now except one in buffalo with other fans there

are no stadiums with fans right now so that we could stare at the sun. You and I and Jesse all slept in the same car overnight. We then drove back from the eclipse and sat in extremely crowded, cramped conditions together, breathing air and singing, just singing, just singing. So many droplets in the air. So many droplets. We just sang so hard for five hours, three different households sharing our germs so happily together. And, you know, that I think that is, I think I told you, you and Jeff this recently, but I think that that outside of like days like, you know, wedding or child being born, like really extremely exceptional days, I think that's probably the best day of my life,

maybe my happiest day of my life or the best memory in my life. And, you know, it just, it just goes to, I think, something that Meg said a few months ago, which is that the core of what we're getting out of all this, out of both our careers as writers and also our fandom as fans, is it truly is the relationships. I mean, we get stressed about whether an article is going to come together and whether it's going to land well and whether it's going to be a hit and whether we're going to get farther in our careers and whether our team is going to win.

But really, I just don't think there's been any greater reward than the ability, the chance to have spent that day with you guys. And to have that memory. I think it was all worth it for that day. Yeah, that was a really great day. We were doing a 90s sing-along, if anyone's wondering why we were singing in the car. But that was a great ride, which I had sort of dreaded because I figured we'd be stuck in the car for hours, which we were. We were. But it turned out to be a good thing.

We were, we, it was 40 minutes from Portland that we went. And so we left the night before because we had been warned that the traffic might be apocalyptically bad. And so we left the night before expecting bad traffic even then, because that's what they had warned us. And there was no traffic. We flew 40 minutes there and then we watched game of thrones in the car and then we all tried to sleep in in jeff's car which was like what a subaru or something yeah and his girlfriend now wife camped out in the woods in a in a in the in the patch of of of soil along a strip mall parking lot. And Patrick Dubuque, unknown to us, I think had shown up at the Denny's that was right next to our car, but we hadn't connected. So I think he spent the evening in that Denny's, which you couldn't do anymore.

And then we went to the game. And then when we left, we hit that traffic. And it took, I think, six and a half hours in oregon august heat and we just sang eve six like the whole way it was amazing yeah it was really nice i guess that's the only time that the whole effectively wild team has been together yeah in the same place so yeah all right good day yeah well we've got emails lined up for today. Got some good emails this week. Listeners really came through with some thought-provoking ones and good stat blast inspiring stuff.

So I guess we'll get to that because of our recording schedule this week. We sort of sidestepped the whole aftermath of Fernando Tatis' 3-0 swing gate. But I wrote about that elsewhere and talked about it on the Ringer MLP show, so you can check that out if you need to hear my takes. we got those first comments from the respective managers and we had Machado getting thrown at and it seemed like it was same old, same old and haven't we learned anything? And then I think the tone really changed over the next couple of days. And my takeaway was that this was sort of a watershed week when the unwritten rules kind of died or it became clear that their time is very limited because even the managers who made those initial comments were really forced or pressured or inspired to walk them back the next day and

Tatis just kept playing the way that he wanted to play and he stole a base up by six runs and made it pretty clear that he would not be cowed by this whole experience. And he hit a home run and Machado hit a grand slam and everyone just sort of moved on. And there was this outpouring of support, not only by pretty much every writer or media person, but also tons and tons of players, active players, recently retired players, long retired players. They all kind of came out and said, we should not be worried about this. He's a fun player and players should be allowed to have fun and do good things. And so I don't know if this is the last time we will have a controversy or non-troversy like this, but to me, at least it sort of sent the signal that, okay, the dominant mode of thinking about these things

has changed. And even if you still have some reservations about it, you might not express them because you are quickly going to be shouted down by everyone else who says stop being such a stodgy stick in the mud. Yeah, I hope so. This was in some ways a perfect case to overturn that sort of criticism because for one thing, this is not like some sort of like hallowed unwritten rule even. Like there were, I think, a lot of players who spoke out for the simple reason that like it's not something

that has been enforced in any way for 50 years that everybody grows up knowing. It really gives you the sense that to some degree, like a lot of this stuff is just getting made up by the gatekeepers as they go along. And I think that it's true. I think a lot of these unwritten rules, so-called unwritten rules,

they don't have long histories. They're just made up by people who want to, you know, feel powerful for a moment. And so the fact that this was a very easily knocked down quote-unquote rule helped. I think the fact that it's a player who is universally popular and who everybody sees is good, is good for the game, is good for the game in all sorts of ways,

but in particular the way he plays is like carrying every sports cast right now and i think the fact that the uh the pitcher whose name we never even have to learn like immediately threw so obviously behind machado was it was just like so so like ugly and incongruous with the notion that we're like out here enforcing manners and and like good social behavior like if you want to make the claim that the unwritten rules are about like you know etiquette or whatever then you just completely undercut it by turning violent right away i mean it just shows that this is entirely about your own ego as a picture that it has nothing to do with like our shared humanity at all.

I mean, not that anyone would have believed it, but it doesn't. And you just look like the, you know, antagonist that you are in the situation. So yeah, it just made it real. I mean, who's going to step up and defend the unwritten rules police in that scenario? And so it made it really really good because yeah it created a like a pretty unanimous chorus that that deece is the hero in this story so maybe next time this happens with a different player or a different rule maybe don't automatically side with the right sort of like august scolds of the game and Just think about how a lot of times they're just really wrong.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's my hope too. So we'll see if it plays out that way. Yeah. My guess is that there are new unwritten rules to come and that the gatekeepers will always adjust their tactics. So I doubt that the future is as optimistic as maybe we would have.

All right, let's get to some questions. This is from Anthony, a Patreon supporter who says, during the Cubs Cardinals game just now, Len Casper offhandedly joked that Kyle Hendricks was pitching game one of a seven inning double header like he wanted to start game two as well. I hadn't thought about it until then, but that actually seems pretty possible, right? The gap between games isn't very long. If an elite starter pitched seven innings in game one and still had a pitch count around 75 or 80, I would be very tempted to use them for the first inning of game two if they were amenable to it. Do you think there's a chance any pitcher does that this season? Well, it would be extremely fun. It'd be a great little note in a biography, and I would love to see it happen. It is a cool little possibility that this fluke situation that

we're in opens up, but it seems still really unlikely to me. It seems like even if you finished your game in seven innings and say 65 pitches, and it still seems pretty unlikely for a number of reasons. One is that unless you have an opener scheduled for the next game, you're probably, I think a manager wouldn't really want to mess up his starting pitcher, his game two starting pitchers routine, right? He doesn't, most starting pitchers don't want to come into the third game. Unless your pitching staff is already in an opener plus bulk pitcher situation,

then it probably isn't really going to be that comfortable for the game two, the game two plan. And all you're getting out of it is, you know, an extra one or two innings from your good pitcher. But it's not going to probably be his best one or two innings because he's already thrown, you know, he's now at the it's not going to probably be his best one or two innings because he's already thrown you know he's now at the end of his of his day anyway so he's already probably a little worse you're already the times through the order effect is yeah in effect in fact not only not only that

but you're you're accelerating it because now he he has to go back to the top of the order and so in fact the top of the order is seeing him if anything, slightly sooner for the third and or fourth time. So it's probably not worth it unless you have an either an extremely, extremely shallow pitching staff behind that pitcher, or that pitcher is just so much better than everybody else on your staff and that game you're in like a really must win or like a really high stress part of your part of the season for the standings. I think that it probably wouldn't make sense. Now, I assume they won't do this for the postseason. They won't try to do postseason seven inning doubleheaders. I'm sure they won't do that. But if they did, then maybe you could imagine it a little bit more easily

then because then you're willing to pull out all the stops. But I don't think it's likely, unfortunately. And actually, you know why? the reason that it is somewhat likely is because it would be very cool and it would be a historical anomaly and for the same reason that it makes no sense to have a player play all nine positions in a game but still it happens sometimes for fun you could imagine this happening for fun you could imagine that kyle hendricks wants to to do it and so he says hey skip let me go out there for another inning. And everybody laughs, and then they go, why not? Yeah.

I mean, this is all like they changed the playoffs after the season had already began. Why do we have to care too much? So let's just do it. So maybe that'll happen. I guess that could happen. I could see like Trevor Bauer in the last start of the season or something. He prides himself on being a workhorse,

and he's about to enter free agency anyway. So maybe he would demand to do it and maybe the Reds would be in or out of the playoffs at that point and they'd say, fine, sure, go ahead. But other than that, I think it's very unlikely because A, how many opportunities are there to do it really, given what pitch counts are these days? You don't often get a guy who gets through seven with such a low pitch count that he has a ton of leash left so that cuts down on the number of potential times that you would do it and then there is some break between games and it just seems because of risk aversion alone i would think that most managers wouldn't want to do it even if

they didn't think that it really dramatically increased the injury risk. Just imagine the perception, you know, if the guy hurts himself in inning one or two of game two and you left him in there and he pitched a complete game in the first game and then there was a break and then you brought him back out and he hurt himself. You would never know necessarily whether it was because of that, but you'd get blamed for it. I think a manager would say, well, why incur this risk? Why make myself a target for doing something untraditional that isn't actually going to help all that much and just might make it look like I jeopardized this guy's health? I just don't think anyone would really want to make that decision, especially in this season when pitchers have been even more likely to get hurt seemingly because of the abbreviated ramp up to the season. Anything that's going to

increase the risk is probably just a no-no because you're not getting a huge benefit from it. Now, if you're one of these teams that has to play many, many games in the space of not as many days, then there is, I suppose, some benefit to just getting as many innings as you possibly can. But I just don't think it outweighs that desire not to be blamed for hurting someone, whether in that start or in successive starts. You probably also would have to do it at home because the time between the game is already not insubstantial. And if you add another, say, 12 minutes for the visiting team to bat before you get to the home team's half of the first inning, then we might start talking

about too long of a gap for it to be natural. I could imagine other scenarios possibly where maybe you could have a pitcher who closes out a game and then starts the next game that if you wanted to have, say, say you wanted to have a bulk pitcher who could bridge the games and maybe pitch the final couple innings of one game and then the next couple innings of the first game, because you wouldn't want that pitcher to pitch necessarily both halves of a game if if it were not somewhat continuous and so you could still have a you know a theoretically i think you could fit a save and a start into the same day with this with this rule but all of these probably are more about being clever than about

this being like a natural strategy that we're likely to see used. Okay, question from Kevin. A buddy and I were having a pretty heated debate yesterday regarding the hit-by-pitch. This stemmed from a conversation about the unwritten rules, Tatis, et cetera, and I believe it has further reaching consequences with other situations in baseball. The question I pose is, without an actual statistic, is there a way to gauge a pitcher's intent on a hit by pitch

my buddy believes that somehow 90 percent of hit by pitches are unintentional and 10 percent are i however believe or lean on something like 45 percent intentional and 55 percent unintentional obviously we pulled these numbers out of thin air i was a long time ball player never really made anything of a career out of it and had a lot more dugout knowledge than my buddy. My buddy watches a ton of baseball, just like I do, so that's the context. He ends by saying, if anyone has developed a stat or another way to gauge intent, I'd love to hear about it. Okay, good question. So I want to ask you two questions here. One, what percentage of hit-by-pitches in Major League Baseball do you think are intentional? And two, if you wanted to solve this question, what would be your method?

Well, I'm definitely closer to Kevin's buddy than Kevin, I think, in that I believe that most are unintentional, and in fact probably the that most are unintentional and in fact, probably the vast majority are unintentional. Although there are degrees of intention, right? I guess you could say it's semi-intentional. If your intent is to throw inside and move someone off the plate, let's say, then you're at least accepting an elevated risk that you're going to hit the guy. So it's not the same as say, you know, you're aiming for the outside corner and it just completely slips out of your hand or something. Yeah. I wouldn't. Yeah. I wouldn't count those. If you're not trying to hit him.

Binary. I was trying to hit him. I'm not trying to hit him. Then I think probably 90, 10 sounds about right to me. And I'd probably go higher than lower higher than 90 are unintentional yeah i think the vast majority are unintentional i do too i i think yeah i do too i think the vast majority are unintentional so uh like like i could see it being like 96% are unintentional. Yeah. I think a small handful a year are intentional. So then how would you go about this? Yeah.

Well, obviously there's no foolproof method. I think you can't really go by body language. There are certain times maybe where body language helps, but other times where it might just kind of confuse you. I mean, with the Machado one, right, the pitcher quickly glanced down at his hand as if to say, oh, I lost my grip on it. I mean, he was miming it being unintentional, but I don't think anyone believed it was unintentional. And clearly MLB didn't either because MLB suspended him for that. So that could probably be misleading even more often than it's helpful because usually you have some kind of poker face on and that's the case whether or not you meant to do it. Which, you know, sometimes you will see guys just walk toward the plate or say something or put their hand on their head or, you know, really signal that they have some remorse or that it was an accident.

But that's uncommon. So there are various other ways you can do it and that we always do it, right, which is just basically looking at the situation. Look at the score. Look at the inning. Look at whether there's any obvious motivation or history. Look at the inning. Look at whether there's any obvious motivation or history. Look at the count. Look at the base out situation, right? All of those things help.

Or the pitch type and the velocity. Did you do it with a fastball or an off-speed pitch? And I think I've done this many a time, trying to gauge this in my own mind. Well, oh, you know, it's a close game. He wouldn't have wanted to do it there. Or it was the sixth pitch of the plate appearance or something. And if he were going to do it intentionally, he would have done it sooner. Or it was an 82 mile per hour curveball or something. And if he really had wanted to hit him, then he would have just thrown a fastball, which you can control better and which would sting a little bit more. So all those things help. And I bet when you factor all of that in, and I guess you could make it some kind of computation. I mean, you could build an algorithm, right? An equation that you could plug in all of those factors and it would spit out how likely this is

and you'd have to add some subjective factor for whether there's any history between these two players or between these two teams or whether there's obvious retaliation motivation i think we're pretty good at gauging it based on that we're not going to be perfect and some guys will get framed it'll be an accident and it won't look like one and vice versa. But I would guess that if you just had the public guess collectively and just trusted in the wisdom of crowds, you'd get to like 85% or 90% correct gauging whether it was intentional or not. Yeah, the tricky thing.

So the way that I think I would kind of start to do it would be to compare first i would compare hit by pitch rates in high leverage low leverage and medium leverage and i would assume that you're that virtually no intentional hit by pitches would happen in high leverage which which might not be true, but it seems like it. You occasionally you really maybe you might see a pitcher who's just, you know, such a such a red ass that he he just can't wait. He's he's got to be violent.

And so maybe that maybe that slips in. But I think for the most part, you don't see a lot in high leverage. So then I would first see whether there are more hit by pitches in low and medium leverage. But the problem with that is that the batter is part of the equation too. And a batter is more likely to try to get hit or let himself get hit when it's a high leverage situation. And the hit by pitch is likely to reward his team. There's no point in sticking your elbow out if it's low leverage and the game is already basically

decided anyway so you would you would probably would expect a certain amount of high leverage hit by pitches yeah more than the other kind and you might even see more inside pitching with high leverage even yeah and you'd also i, just want to look at the career rates or seasonal rates of these players. That would be a big tip off. I guess it wouldn't necessarily be definitive with pitchers because you could just have someone who does a lot of intentional hit by pitches. But with batters, at least, that's clearly a persistent skill.

Some guys get hit a lot. Some guys don't. So you would want to factor that into your model. Well, yeah. But I'm trying to factor that into your model. Well, yeah, there's just not. But OK, so but I'm trying to make it as simple as possible. What I would then look at is whether the percentage of hit by pitches that come on fastballs is higher in low leverage, medium leverage and high leverage. And if there were a lot of hit by pitches, I think you would see a lot more hit by pitches on fastballs in low leverage, because that's clearly the that's more likely to be the pitcher targeting the batter. And if you don't see more, a higher percentage of hit by pitches

from fastballs in low leverage, or a significant amount more, then there probably aren't that many filling that bucket up. And so that's probably what I would look at. Rate percentage of hit by pitches in each leverage state that come on fastballs as a way of seeing whether there's kind of design there. That's probably how I would start. Yep. That's a good way to do it, I think. Oh, by the way, did you see that? I just saw the tweet of this.

I didn't read the article, but I guess maybe in the last couple of weeks, Bill James looked at hit by pitches, the likelihood of hit by pitches after a batter homered in a game by decade. I haven't seen that, no. And again, I saw the tweet. I didn't read the article.

So forgive me. This could be all wrong. But I believe he found that in the 40s or 50s, again i saw the tweet i didn't read the article so forgive me this could be all wrong but i believe he found that in the 40s or 50s you had a significantly higher likelihood of getting hit by a pitch after you homered in a game and that the rate has been dropping ever since which could be a combination of two things it could be that there's less retaliatory pitching inside and or that well that just that that there's less retaliation in people's mind It could be that there's less retaliatory pitching inside and or that, well, that just that, that there's less retaliation in people's mind. It could also be that you're less likely to face the same pitcher twice. And so the pitcher who allowed the home run,

if he's out of the game, you know, wouldn't feel the need to back you off the plate. And those aren't necessarily, those are more like you're talking about where it could be that it's retaliatory. They don't like that you homered off them. Like we all hear the stories of how old timey pitchers just didn't like getting homered off and so they knock you down. Or it could be about trying to kind of regain control of the inner part of the plate and pitch gets away. But that is to me, that's another way that you can see design at work and suggests that there used to be a higher percentage of pitches that were intentionally hitting or backing batters off and that now there's less intention, assuming that the tweet I saw reflected the findings.

Okay, this one is from Max. Given the unique nature of the season combined with the high number of changes last season, do you think we'll see any managerial changes this season? Can chairs even be wobbly in 2020? Which is a good question that I hadn't thought about because, of course, we entered the season with 10 new managers, right? A third of the teams have new managers this year. So you have had managers go one and done, but that's rare, of course. And then you have so many extenuating circumstances this year that you might be more inclined to just write off a disappointing year as, well, 2020 can't hold the manager responsible. Yeah, you're a lot less likely to get fired for a losing record, but it could also be a lot harder

this year to hold a team together and to keep a team from having, I don't know, tension or chaos or spiraling or any number of things that become headlines. And so I could imagine that a GM could definitely feel like a relationship with a manager was ruptured this year just as much as in any other or that a manager lost his clubhouse this much just as in any other or that a manager was getting you know an embarrassing tabloid type situations over whatever squabbles or mismanagements this year as any other i think you're yeah you're a lot less likely to have the classic well it's our third losing year in the road time time to bring in someone new and i would not expect any gms to get fired over this season but yeah i can imagine a manager getting fired yeah that's true i think it is the first time since 2003 that there have been this many new managers in a year and

maybe that's tied for the most ever because there weren't this many teams for many years before that. But you're right that there are other potential stressors and things that could kind of tear a team apart, like the Cleveland clubhouse situation. Not that anyone's blaming Terry Francona for that or suggesting that he has failed to do his duty in any way. But you do have situations like that where you have all these protocols that I guess the manager is not the sole person responsible for making sure that, say, players don't leave the hotel. I mean, there are officials who are supposed to be watching out for that stuff. And to some extent, it's just personal responsibility. But if you did have a team that wasn't doing that, and the manager was unable to enforce that, or there was just huge divisions

because of that, then I guess that's something that you wouldn't see in a typical year that could lead to someone making a change. But so far, I don't know that we've seen anything, at least based on what we know publicly, that would suggest that that has happened. And we have seen managers get fired, you know, not many games into a season, right, just with a slow start to a season. So it's not as if GMs or owners would say, well, they only had 60 games. So even though they got off to a slow start, we can't fire them because who knows, small sample, they might have 60 games. So even though they got off to a slow start, we can't fire them because who knows, small sample, they might've turned things around. But some might think that,

I mean, if you ended up with a bad record, but you were supposed to have a good team, then that would probably be something in your favor. Just, hey, it's this weird short year. And maybe if he'd had more time, they would have actually shown their true talent. So you might get a pass. And if you're like a first year manager, like Dusty Baker, for instance, got extended already and maybe he would have anyway, but it just seemed like, well, you can't have this be his one chance. You know, at this strange season, we have to at least give him a full crack at this thing.

So I could see that happening too if someone was close to the end of the road, but you don't want this to be the final time. You want to give him a real shot at a full season to show what he can do or what the team can do. Then maybe you hold off at least to see how next season starts. I think we're all performing at sortoptimal levels these days. Generally speaking, the mood in the world is, I think, pretty patient. I think we've been pretty patient with each other. This has been a year where I think a lot of our expectations for ourselves and for each other have just been put on pause. and for each other have just kind of been put on pause. Nobody's, you know, like a lot of the things that you were ambitious about or aspirational about six months ago, you've just had to accept it. That's not happening this year.

And it's okay that, like, we're having to tell ourselves that it's okay that we're not performing that well. Like, I'm having to tell myself a lot that it's okay that you're not at your best right now, that your mood is affected and that your, you that your family life is affected and all of that. And as part of telling yourself that, I think we're telling each other that a lot. And I think that that sentiment is really out in the world. And so it does seem like the bar for telling someone that they are failures at their job and now they're fired is is probably just

higher across the board and so like yeah again not only would i expect a manager to not be fired for you know basic run-of-the-mill record in a fake 60 game season not not a fake season but like 60 games is like a fake sample but i also think think that the bar for declaring somebody's tenure failed is higher anyway. So I could definitely see it happen. I'm not saying it will happen because I think that we're all just trying to make it till next year and get a fresh start, but it could. All right, stat blast. We've got another cover came in.

They just keep coming just as I think we're at the end of them. This one is from Eric Gallipo. And I believe it's the first one in which data is pronounced data. So he is blazing new trails here. We'll take your data sets sorted by something like year and minus for OPS plus And then we'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length and analyze it for us Amazing ways Here's to's step-by-step Today's step-by-step so

so I liked that one. Yeah, me too. All right. I would listen to more from Eric. Okay. Get back in the studio, Eric. That's what I'm saying. That is not exactly my kind of jam, but it is a jam I respond well to.

So if he wants to write more music, I'll listen. Okay. it was good i told him i thought it was good so let's see here this one is very frivolous this one was inspired by william who noticed a great fun fact that i want to give full credit david schoenfield of ESPN, my colleague, who I first saw publicize this fun fact some months ago, but William also noted it and brought it to our attention. William writes, notice that the top four Mariners leaders in career ERA all have the same number, 3.42. So the Mariners top four career ERAs are all 3.42. Felix Hernandez, Randy Johnson, top four career ERAs are all 3.42. Felix Hernandez, Randy Johnson, James Pacton, and Hisashi Iwakuma all are retired or no longer on the Mariners. This figures to stand for quite some time. I'm not sure this is as individually impressive as hitting 247, four straight years, but it strikes

me as more statistically unlikely. Is that correct? I guess there isn't any way of calculating that, but this blew my mind and I felt like it needed to be shared. So I'm going to briefly attempt to answer the question of whether it is a better or worse fun fact than Chris Davis hitting 247. So just again, to clarify, if you look at the Mariners career leaderboard for ERA, the top four are all basically tied at 342 they're not technically tied in the same way that chris davis didn't technically hit the exact same batting average four years in a row but it's the same number 3.42 weird numbers so ben let me ask you better or worse like cooler or less cool weirder less weird more or less likely what do you think way worse way worse this is a way worse fun fact yes okay sorry william but explain i mean it stands out to me too it's uh it's worthy of note and discussion but the chris davis fun fact is just

one of my favorite fun facts of all time and it was really fun just as a participatory thing too this is something that we're noticing after the fact these guys are no longer on the mariners we can't track it or anything whereas the chris davis one was like day by day at least in that last year when we were all aware of it you would root for him to get a hit or not get a hit in every at batbat so that he could do it. And it seemed so improbable. And I suppose this is also very improbable, but just not in a way that amuses me and titillates me nearly as much. But it's not as though the Mariners have disbanded as a franchise.

They will have other pitchers who will join these leaderboards. And any pitcher could both ruin it single-handedly or join at 3.42. Every single pitcher who joins the team once they get 500 innings could become the fifth player to have a 3.42 ERA. Well, maybe if you tell me that it is incredibly unusual, that would help because no one had done what Chris Davis had done, which is part of what made it so special. You think I'm going to find other teams that have the top four ERA? There's only 30 teams, Ben. It's pretty unusual. In fact, the Mariners are the only team whose top four ERAs are all

the same. Okay. Well, that doesn't actually change how I feel, I guess. More unusual? Of course it's... It's different people, which just, that I think makes it less entertaining to me. The fact that Chris Davis did it every year, despite the astronomical odds against that. That was more riveting to me than a few different guys independently arrived at the same destination, which is, I guess, kind of interesting, but it's like, you know, a lot of other people hit 247 every year and you could have multiple 247 hitters on a team and I wouldn't really care but the fact that one guy did it every year if if Felix or Randy Johnson or Paxton or Iwakuma had 3.42 ERAs every single season I'd be interested in that but this just doesn't get me going to the same extent why do you think that you cared

about the Chris Davis thing not not that you shouldn't have but why why did you i mean you know you know that it's just a weird coincidence you know that there's no intelligence to these numbers there's no the numbers themselves are not trying to land on 247 chris davis wasn't trying to hit 247 it wasn't a goal of his chris davis career batting average at that point wasn't even 247. It wasn't even his true talent. It was close. It was close, obviously, but it wasn't. And so this was just a weird, this was nothing more than numbers turning up oddly symmetrical by total accident.

And it was great. No, it wasn't total accident. I mean, it was clearly a consistency to it. I mean, he was... Clearly, he was like roughly a.247 hitter. Right, and it could have fluctuated very easily just through randomness alone. It did, in fact, every single day, it did.

Yeah, right. Any single at-bat knocked him off.247. If the season had ended one at bat earlier or gone one at bat longer any of those years he wouldn't have hit 247 so there's nothing pure about this it just it it is crazily unlikely there's nothing interesting about it except that it's crazily unlikely right they they pulled him out of a game early right like his last game i think in one of those years just so that he would be that average or i don don't know if that was why, but that it worked out that way. So you're right. It's arbitrary. And even if he did have a 247 true talent every one of those years,

it would still be largely due to chance that he actually ended up at 247 because batting average fluctuates wildly. Even if you are the same player, you might end up with a dramatically different batting average just because of luck and BABIP and all of that. Well, and you literally can't hit 247 on half of the number of at-bats that you could end up with. Yeah, so it still spoke to some consistency, though. Like you can't go into a terrible slump, you can't have some injury that incapacitates you.

And you also can't break out and become a dramatically better player unless you're also very unlucky at the same time. And so there was something nice about the metronomic quality of him doing that year after year in a statistical category where we are very accustomed to a lack of consistency. a statistical category where we are very accustomed to a lack of consistency yeah so if i could sum up then the things that you liked about it are that it's it's crazy unlikely um it was participatory you could have fun watching it and you could have fun watching the fluctuations and seeing it come together at the last minute and and it does speak to something true, which is a sort of consistency of a player. And if, for instance, I were to pick four random players out of a hat, and then they all hit 247, that would be equally

unlikely, but it wouldn't speak to consistency because those players have no relationship to each other. They're not speaking to each other in any particular way. But Chris Davis season to season is in fact, has some continuity has some sort of like structure in reality chris davis is one actor throughout this okay all right well that all that good i'm glad you you explained all that that is all very fair i agree that the mariners era thing is not is not as fun and will not be as fun until a pitcher is perhaps close to challenging it or close to potentially joining it i i would have some enjoyment watching a pitcher who maybe was at 3.43 a day before the you know he's about to hit free agency for instance but you're we're

talking about you know a day that it might be fun, not a whole season or multiple seasons where it might be fun. All right. So anyway, so again, I agree, not as fun. Now, as to the question of whether it is as unlikely, just to that particular point, I think it is actually more unlikely. So all we're really talking about is that these are both three-digit numbers that through very little more than random chance all happened to repeat four times, which is a very unlikely thing to happen. And so the question that you have to answer for how unlikely it is, is the typical range of a player's batting average over four seasons bigger? Or is the typical range of the top four pitchers in a franchise's history bigger? Because

you're if if if all these numbers, if batting averages were entirely evenly distributed from zero to 1000, then the odds of having the same batting average four years in a row would be, you know, a thousand to the power of three, right? A thousand times a thousand times a thousand. But in fact, batting averages aren't randomly distributed throughout that whole range. Most players over a full season will have a batting rate average over the course of four seasons. We'll have a batting average within a range of like, how many points do you think? Over the course of four seasons, we'll have a batting average within a range of like, how many points do you think? Like, what's the typical range over the course of four seasons of full season batting averages for players? So like the absolute value of their combined changes?

No, not the value of the combined changes, but just the range from the highest to the lowest over a four-year period for an individual player on average. Oh, gosh. 40 points? 40 points. And then you compare that to what is the average range from a franchise's best career ERA to fourth best career ERA. And what do you think the range is for that on average? I have no idea, but it probably, well, where are we setting the minimum on? 500 innings, because that seems to be what both David Schoenfield and William used in order to exclude some rando relievers. Okay, gosh, 75 points. 75 points. Okay, so if that were the case,

then it would be a lot less likely that you would see the four eras that are all aligned because you're drawing from a pool of basically 75 numbers 75 three-digit numbers whereas the batting average you're drawing from a pool of 43 digit numbers on average true although with davis you've got one player and in this you've got many potential players although if we're talking about only the the best ones maybe that changes things but you know you have a lot of pitchers who pitch for the mariners or any other team and could amass 500 innings and have some shot at ending up in that range well yeah but they don't they don't matter they're not the four best we're only talking about the four

best so you can have infinite numbers of worse ers that don't have anything to do with this. So in order for one of those hypothetical pitchers to get into this picture, they would have to have one of the four best ERAs, which means they would bump another person out of the four best ERAs. And you've already established that you think there's a 75 point range between the best and the fourth best. And so they would be within that range. By definition, they would be within that range. There are only going to be

four numbers. You're going to have four numbers either way. All right. So the answer to this question is that the average batter over the course of four years has on average 42 points difference between their best and worst batting average. Wow. All right. That is over from the years 2016 to 2019. There were 113 batters in my sample who played all four years. And I did lower the plate appearance threshold below 502. And so that probably creates a little more spread. Chris Davis qualified for the batting title all four years. If I said it qualified for the batting title all four years, I think that you'd have a different result.

But I also believe that if Chris Davis had only batted 240 times one year, we still would have made a big deal about his form. So 42 points is the median there. For club's top four ERAs, 39 points is the median. And so basically comparable. The odds that you're going to have those four numbers be exactly the same are pretty comparable. They're slightly better for the pitchers because they're only drawing from a pool on average of 39 three-digit numbers, whereas the hitters are drawing on average from a pool of 42 three-digit numbers. So it's slightly more likely that you would have the ERA,

but we've already established that there were 113 players who played all four years from 2016 to 2019. And there are only 30 clubs and there have always only been 30 clubs and there will probably only ever be 30 to 32 or 36 or whatever clubs. And so you have a much higher likelihood of finding a batter that is going to do four years in a row with the same batting average than you're to finding a team that has the same. Now, that's not quite true because of course a team exists throughout time and maybe, you know, maybe in 1956, the Red Sox had this happen, or maybe in 1917, the Yankees had this happen. But then the next year happened and their career ERA leaderboard shuffled. But we'll never see that. Whereas if any batter in history had had four batting averages in a row that were the

same, we probably would have found it during Chris Davis mania. Yeah. So anyway, a lot fewer chances for a team to have four ERAs in a row or that were identical, just as unlikely as a batter having a run of four batting average in a row. And with a lot fewer opportunities, I think the pitching thing is a lot rarer. Now that said, I picked ERA. There's other stats. Yeah. And there's other stats than batting average. We probably would have freaked out if Chris Davis had the same slugging percentage four years in a row. Maybe not quite as much, but probably. Or the same number of RBIs four years in a row.

Another three-digit number. Or if a club had the same batting average. Yeah. People talk about like what Adam Dunn's home run totals or Nomar Mazzara's home run totals, right? Yeah. Sort of similar. So, yeah.

So it's hard to know which genre of repetition would be less likely in the aggregate. But I will say to William, I think that this is less fun, but it is more unlikely. And it is enjoyable. And that's it. That's where I'll leave it. Okay. All right. Well, maybe we can close with a couple answers to other step-last style questions that I have here. This is from Nathan, a Patreon supporter, who says, The Brewers radio crew was all over Adrian Hauser's 1-2-3 inning versus the Cubs today. He threw 25 pitches and they were convinced that would be close to a record which i doubt answer this did you get an answer yeah however hauser threw another

one two three inning the next time on only four pitches that might be a record how would you even measure this largest difference in pitches thrown between consecutive one two three innings is this stat blast material i guess it is now wait a minute though the i are you answering the question of the largest difference okay good because the second part's not good no i i'm not interested in in the biggest difference between pitch counts in in one two three innings that's just no but i did want to know what the most pitches ever thrown in a one two3 inning is particularly by a pitcher who pitched that whole inning himself. And I got an answer to this from Lucas Pasteleris of Baseball Prospectus, who was able to go back, I guess, to the beginning of pitch count data in 1988, although it's not totally comprehensive,

but close. So the Brewers radio crew was convinced that 25 would be close to the record. Nathan doubted it. I think you and I both also doubted it. What did you think or what do you think? I think I estimated 34-ish. Uh-huh. Yeah, because you'd think, or the way I was thinking of it is, I mean, the average is now close to four pitches per plate appearance, right?

And that's been going up over time. And so even if you had three average back-to-back-to-back plate appearances, that gets you almost halfway to 25. And you'd think if the average is that high, then the most extraordinary inning for pitch counts would have to be considerably higher than that, or that's the way I was thinking of it i was thinking i was thinking 14 11 9 yeah right that was how i envisioned it possibly happening yeah but it turns out that the the brewers radio crew was

kind of right now i i don't know if they were right to be excited because, as you'd expect, there are a lot of innings clustered in the same sort of range, but the record is 28. Ugh. Yeah. It's no fun. Yeah. I really would have thought it would be more. So 28 has happened, according to Lucas's data, three times. And we sort of sidestepped the whole what's a one two three inning debate which I feel like we've defined that at some point on the podcast right because people will say well

it doesn't mean that you have to get everyone out or is it just that you face the minimum can you walk someone and then get a double play or something anyway Lucas just looked for three batters three outs and he did list what the outcomes of those plate appearances were so I could distinguish if I wanted to. But the top three are all just no base runner innings, and it happened most recently in 2011. Raphael Bettencourt was pitching for the Rockies. It happened in 2005. Dan Heron was pitching for the A's. And in 1998, Bartol Colon was pitching for Cleveland. All of them threw 28 pitches in a 1-2-3 inning. And that is sort of a letdown because I really expected there to be an outlier inning where, you know, like it's not that unusual to see a 10-pitch plate appearance or something. So if you just happen to have three of them clustered together, then you've got yourself a record inning, but that's just never happened.

Yeah, I say disappointing, and as a record it is disappointing, but I guess in one sense it's also kind of nice because it's now pretty easy to to start rooting for that if that's something you want to watch for you don't even really have to watch that hard if the first batter of an inning manages to foul off like you know foul off a bunch of pitches and go to an 11th pitch in the at bat you're totally in range at that point like a simple 11 pitch at bat in the first you know to start an inning even like nine and you're in range you can start watching for that and so um maybe i actually prefer that it's 28 rather than 34 because if it's 34 now you're into that zone where like it's hardly even worth

worth uh hoping for it yeah well the fact that it hasn't happened that 28 is the max and even 28 hasn't happened in almost a decade now which is odd again because again there are more pitches per plate appearance being thrown now so you would think that the the record would be more recent or that this would be going up and being broken regularly but it's not so so here's my theory for why or to kind of maybe to help explain why in order to do this obviously you need a very long at bat and a long at bat is going to probably go to a full count and on base percentages on full counts are about are almost 500 and so in order to have these three long plate appearances in a row, you already have a situation where seven out of eight of them

are going to lead to a base runner. Yeah. Now, you could always have a double play in there, and that might count, although it didn't count for, well, it would have counted for our querying, right? Lucas would have included that, three batters, three battering. But now you need a double play and it gets harder. So like the game that Brandon Belt had a 21 pitch plate appearance a couple years ago,

that followed a seven pitch plate appearance and preceded a six pitch plate appearance. So in that sense, you had you are in that sequence. You had a 34 pitch three batter sequence. had a 34 pitch three batter sequence and if andrew mccutcheon had instead of lined a single with the sixth pitch of his at bat if he had say lined a one hopper to the short stop which would have then been a likely six four three double play that would have been a 34 pitch inning so it's totally doable it's it could be done and i think i will see it happen in my life yeah i hope so and i wonder whether it would be noticed if it did happen a lot of these games some of these record games are long enough ago that they're inaccessible but oh that's the

other thing huh going back and and looking i i'm curious to see whether like would the the broadcasters have noticed that history just happened? I mean, would they make a comment like, oh, one, two, three, but he really had to work for it or something? The Brewers did, and it wasn't even a record. That's true. Yeah, right. Yeah, 25 in an inning has happened 80 times. So I don't know if that was even worth getting excited about.

But if they were getting excited because they knew that the record was 28 and they were close, they didn't know that. But if they had, I would sympathize. Anyway, I will be watching for this, I think, now that I know it, even though the fact that it hasn't happened means it's not likely to happen. I mean, there have been so many half innings. There have been so many even one, two, three innings in that time. And that and that's, I guess the other fun thing is that you get a lot of cracks at this thing. Even if you're watching one game in a night, you get a lot of tries at the record. So pitches per plate appearance are of course up considerably, you know, since 1988 when we started getting pitch counts. But do you think that long plate

appearances are more or less likely these days because it's a lot there's a lot it's a lot harder to well there's a lot more strikeouts basically and so you it seems like it would have been a lot easier to foul 13 pitches off against 1940s pitchers true but then i guess it also would have been easier to put one in play at some point along the way yeah right yeah and. Yeah. And I wonder whether, I guess in these record ones, in the 28 pitch ones, it went strikeout, out, out, out, strikeout, out, and out, out, out. So I wonder whether you're more likely to get this with strikeouts or field outs. I guess it doesn't really matter. this with strikeouts or field outs. I guess it doesn't really matter, but that's something that you often hear people say, like pitch to contact, because it'll keep your pitch count down. Although I don't think that really works because if you pitch to contact, you probably allow more hits

and you're worse and they're base runners and you end up having to face more hitters. So it doesn't really help you in that way, at least as much as people think. But I wonder whether you're more likely to do this in, I guess it doesn't really matter because you're going to get to 3-2 and a lot of fouls anyway, if you're going to make a run at the record. So it's just the last pitch that determines whether it's a strikeout or a ball in play. So long plate appearances are going up. They've been going up over this period of the pitch count era. Okay. How did you determine that? I looked at pitch count, plate appearances with 10 or more pitches in 2019. And I compared that to

2008 and 1998, which had the same number of teams and therefore roughly the same number of plate appearances total. And there were about 50% more last year than there were in 1998 okay and to end here's the other answer and this is something that is sort of similar and that it's not something i had ever thought to watch for or root for while watching a game but it's now something that i will have on my mind this question is from drew who says i'm currently currently watching the Twins play the Brewers and through four and a half innings, neither team has allowed a hit. At the start of the fifth inning, I found myself cheering for no hits in the top of the fifth to complete what I considered a quote-unquote no hitter since neither team had allowed a hit through nine half innings. Would you cheer for this like a no hitter?

Is this more common than I think? Do teams frequently combine for no-hitters to start games, or is this actually something amazing I am watching? And that's a good question. I had never thought of this before, but it's kind of a no-hitter, except it's two halves of a no-hitter on two different teams rather than one team pitching an actual complete no-hitter. than one team pitching an actual complete no-hitter. And I sent this one to listener Adam Ott and his trusty RetroSheet database, and he's been kind enough to help out with questions like this. And he looked it up. He sent me a list.

I have a list of those pitch count innings too, so I will put spreadsheets of both of these things online if you care to peruse them. But here's Adam's answer. I have 106 games with no hits through four and a half innings in my database, which is 1918 to 2019 with some earlier games missing. That is about half as common as a normal no hitter. The last occurrence before this year was April 4th, 2019, Washington Strasburg versus the M, Cindergard. It was broken up in the bottom of the fifth. So this is interesting. So what Drew was watching there hadn't happened for a year,

for a full season, basically. So it's rare, and it's rarer than no hitters even. And so I was trying to puzzle out why that would be. I have some theories. Okay. I'll tell you what Adam suggested. And he thought at first, the first way he put it was, my guess is that two pitchers pitching well and two offenses struggling, four different things with low probability is less likely than one pitcher pitching exceptionally well and one offense that is really struggling, two things with an even lower probability. Then he also formulated it this way. In every game, there are two opportunities for a no-hitter to occur, one for the home team, one for the visiting team.

However, there is only one opportunity for a 4.5 inning combined no-hitter to occur. Since there are double the opportunities for a real no-hitter, it makes sense that they occur twice as often. This seems like the more likely reason, although my response to that was, isn't each of the individual half no-hitters much more likely to happen than either of the full single team no-hitters, both because they're they're shorter obviously and also because you've got the reduced times through the order or fatigue effects too right pitchers are less likely to give up hits in the first four and a half innings than they are in the last four and a half innings so

well i think that's true that part is true but the they're shorter part what do you mean by they're shorter like you mean the pitchers are what do you mean by they're shorter like you mean the pitchers are what do you mean by they're shorter because they're not collectively they're not shorter collectively it's 27 hours yeah i just mean if he's saying it's less likely to happen because it's like two different things happening instead of one thing happening then i was kind of questioning that rationale because each of the two things is much more likely so the one thing i don't think that's what he's saying he's saying he's saying that every game you start let's just say there's a major league baseball season that's 100 games like the whole season is 100 games okay so there you could have two you have 200 opportunities to have a no hitter because the home team and the away team,

both are going to face the other team, right? So theoretically, if there were no bats that year, you would have 200 no-hitters, right? Right. Whereas you could only have 100 combined team, both team no-hitters in the first half because the two teams are simultaneously engaged in this together so at the very most in a world with no bats there would only be a hundred so you would have half as

many and so since there are half as many opportunities for this now you could also have a hundred second half of the game no hitters yeah but but we're not we didn't look for those yeah and so so his logic that there should be only half as many, even if they were equally distributed, simply because there are half as many opportunities, I think is absolutely true and makes sense and definitely makes me scribble out my hypotheses. Okay. So not worth sharing any of your first drafts? Well, small factors, I think. One is that a no-hitter is probably more likely to be thrown by a good pitcher. A good pitcher is more likely to be on a good team, and a good team is less likely to be no-hit themselves because they're likely to have good hitters.

So the team that is likely to throw a no-hitter is unlikely to be no-hit, is somewhat less likely to be no-hit. And so having half of a no hitter thrown on one side is actually working against the likelihood of having half of a no hitter thrown on the other side. Similarly, home field advantage would make a no hitter a little bit more likely. And in this case, one of the teams is on the road. And so they're less likely. And the third is, is i believe i think this is true right isn't there statistical evidence or or historically at least empirically pitchers that

get close to a no hitter seem to complete them more often than you would expect by good pitching alone that like there's like a sort of a horse to the barn factor going on where once a pitcher gets past like six or seven, their rate of hits allowed actually drops a lot more. I remember writing something at Grantland, I think, about the fact that strike zones seem to expand like in the last inning of no hitter attempts. Yeah. Defenses might get more alert, more likely to dive for balls that they might otherwise hold. Plus some more pressure, but maybe the pressure helps more than it hurts. Yeah, so I think that if you look at what innings no-hitters get lost in,

I think fewer get lost in the ninth and the eighth than you would expect based on normal seventh, sixth, fifth no-hitters lost. And so that wouldn't be a factor for this imaginary no-hitter that we've just conjured up out of nothing because they're not aware that they're in in they're doing this yeah okay well i like this i mean it's uh it's not something you see often but if this were to happen if you were watching a game like this then historically you would be excited because hey we've still got two shots at a no-hitter here this This is when you'd start to perk up and say, hey, they've both got this going. But really, you should be thinking, I just saw something that's even more uncommon than a no-hitter.

History has already happened here. You have, over the years, you have really embraced just like, you've embraced numerology. You used to be so anti-numerology, but now you like seeing sequences of numbers come up in weird ways. I'm endeared. Yeah, I don't even care that much about regular no-hitters. Like when Kenta Maeda was going for one, I saw that it was happening and I didn't tune in. I just wasn't motivated enough to look. motivated enough to look but now i'm like the the hipster no-hitter guy i guess i don't care about the regular ones but the half double no-hitter that's exciting to me yeah i'm on the stat cast no-hitter watch well you know that's that's my thing but but are you still watching for the perfect umpire game is that still something you're paying attention to but only on one side only doesn't matter if he blows 10 on the other side paying attention to it. But only on one side. Only on one side.

Doesn't matter if he blows 10 on the other side. Still interested in that, but it's just not something you can monitor in real time, unfortunately, really, which is, that's the problem with this. If I notice that this is happening now, I will root for it. But you don't get a celebration if it happens. The game just keeps going. You don't get any mob on the mound and a guy gets to jump around and tear his jersey off or anything. The game just goes on. It's the next inning and eventually someone allows a hit. So it's kind of anticlimactic and no one in the stadium is getting excited about it the way that they are with a traditional no-hitter. So this will not achieve the same fame

as the real no-hitter, but this is my no-hitter now. So thank you, Drew. Okay. Okay. That last one was kind of a cool brain teaser, sort of like our discussions on recent episodes about why and how the automatic runner rule in extra innings actually shortens games. Clearly it does, but you have to think about it from a probabilistic perspective in order to figure out why it does. Baseball is fun that way. Sort of a puzzle that makes you smarter in other ways.

Helps you learn how to think about things that have nothing to do with baseball. So hope you enjoyed today's episode. By the way, we do plan to discuss Tom Brenneman's homophobic slur and subsequent suspension this week. We wanted to wait and get a guest on and do that conversation justice, so we will be bringing that to you next time, along with some unrelated additional content. In the meantime, you can support Effectively Wild 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. Emily,

Michael Mancini, Andrew Lindsay, Matthew Bensley, and Dutch Lombrowski. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Sam and Meg coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins, as always, for his editing assistance. And we will be back with one more episode before the end of the week.

Talk to you then. When I'm on my own, when I'm all alone We will be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you then. Is it a dream? Is it a dream coming true? Lead me that way