Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1702: Just a Bit Outside

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about why “Zombie Runner,” not “Manfred Man,” remains their preferred term for the automatic runner, zombies in general, position player pitchers vs. pitcher hitters, the benefits of forfeits, the increasing rate of pitcher hitters not attempting to put the ball in play, MLB’s bad timing with NFTs, the minor […]

Behind you another runner is born Don't look back, you've been there See the mist as your bracket's the end And it's underneath the moonlight Passing suns to your heartbeats in the moonlight Like a drum And you will run your time A shooting star across the sky

And you will surely cross the line Hello and welcome to episode 1702 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Bandgrass. Hello, Meg. Hello. We've got ourselves a guest today. We will shortly be talking to Ethan Singer, who is the creator of Umpire Scorecards,

which if any of you listening are on Twitter or on the internet and consume baseball content, you very likely have come across something that Ethan has created. He started the at umpscorecards Twitter account and just recently launched a website, umpscorecards.com, and it's all dedicated to assessing the accuracy of umpires and grading them on a game-to-game basis and now on a season-long basis and looking at the impact team-to-team. So we're going to talk to Ethan, who is still a student, about how he created these resources and processes the information.

And it turns out to be pretty tricky to actually judge after the fact whether a pitch was a strike. Maybe not quite as tricky as it is in the moment behind home plate while wearing a mask, but still pretty tricky. And there's a lot of nuance and technique that goes into it. So that'll be a fun conversation. And I've been interested in that even as someone who, like you, has reservations about robo-umps and feels somewhat romantic about not just the human element for umpires, less so that than I think the human element that comes into play with catching and how hitters interact with the strike zone that is called into play with catching and how hitters interact

with the strike zone that is called by umpires and how pitchers interact with it, etc. I still see a lot of value in having this available. And it's clear that there's a demand for it because there are 81,000 Twitter followers. And that's a lot more than we have put together. And his account is a lot newer. So we probably should have tweeted about umpire accuracy instead of whatever else we've been tweeting or not tweeting about. See, the failure in your logic is that I want 81,000 Twitter followers. I don't know. I don't know about that, man. Sometimes I'm like, I think one is too many.

Yeah. Hmm. Well, we will have Ethan soon. A couple things I wanted to mention. The first is that I've been seeing a new term for the zombie runner start to circulate, catching on in some quarters. And I want to try to nip it in the bud. And maybe I'm risking this dry sand effect here by mentioning it on a podcast.

It's clever. I just don't like it as much as I like zombie runner. And so I want my preferred term to catch on. But people have started calling it the Manfred man. And I like it in theory, but I think a it requires some knowledge of 60s and 70s rock music. So immediately, you're losing a lot of people, rock music. So immediately you're losing a lot of people. Not me. I appreciate it, but many will not. And also, I think it is not condemnatory enough. I think the zombie runner is clearly negative. There's a negative tinge to that term. Whereas the Manfred Mann, clever as it is, it doesn't necessarily express the idea that the Manfred man is a bad thing. I guess it's sort

of mocking a little bit, but it could also be sort of celebrating Rob Manfred for having the boldness to innovate and put a runner on second base to start extra innings. So I don't care for it. I think it's hard to say. I think the Manfred man is hard to say a little bit. I think you get caught, your mouth gets caught up on all those M's and N's. It's like a man, it's hard to say a little bit i think you get caught your mouth gets caught up on all those m's and n's it's like a man it's so hard to i agree with you i think that the zombie runner it denotes terror and crisis and something coming to get you barbara and that is that's much more in keeping with the the dread that we feel at the prospect of this rule persisting beyond our pandemic times whereas the manfred man is like you know i don't know a bunch of british

dudes with haircuts so what's that that's not that's not anything no i like zombie runner because it's very evocative and it captures the reanimation of the hitter who made an out and is now being restored to the bases. And also it's Ghostrunner adjacent. So people who've been using Ghostrunner, it's easy to wean them off Ghostrunner and use zombie runner instead. And I object to Ghostrunner just because that was an existing term in use for a runner who's invisible. It's not a real runner. An imaginary runner you're marking the base with because you don't have enough people to be on the base. So that is a different meaning, I think. And so zombie runner is close enough, but I think better captures it.

So Manfred Mann, I chuckled. It's clever. It's witty wordplay, perhaps, but I hope that it doesn't catch on. I hope zombie runner does. And I know the Rangers broadcasters have been using Zombie Runner and I've been in some tweets that they have tweeted about it. And so that's gratifying to hear it being used in actual major league games. So I hope it catches on. Of course, I hope the Zombie Runner itself does not catch on and that we will no longer have to say it because it will no longer exist. But if it does exist, then I hope that we can use the term that is my favorite. Yeah, I support you, Ben. I think that you're right about this, as you have proven to be on many of the things related to the zombie runner. And again, I like the idea that there might be

fast zombie runners, the slow zombie runners, because the zombie genre has expanded its purview it no longer requires them to be slow some of them are very fast and that makes them even more terrifying because really that's just like i don't know make sure you're wearing sneakers and don't fall down why does everyone always fall down in horror movies i think they always fall down i think that people are are sure on their feet than that i think that's, I don't know that that holds water, Ben. I don't think it's realistic perhaps. You do have to account for the pressure of the situation. Sure.

You know, it's not quite analogous to our daily movement, so I'd imagine that if you were perhaps running through the woods and some slavering beast is after you and trying to eat you, then maybe your balance wouldn't be up to its usual par. But still, it does seem like it's an exaggerated rate. And slow zombies,

they don't scare me at all. You can out walk them. I don't get it. Yeah. And look, I don't want to discount how impactful root systems might be to one's experience of the woods like that that might come and get you even if there isn't a zombie involved but it just seems like people fall down a lot and i don't know just like stop turning around to see the zombie and focus on running forward and looking at where you're going and i think you're gonna survive more often than not it's kind of amazing i like the walking dead's been on for like 20 years and uh i think those are like medium-paced zombies i stopped watching that show because it was the like quality to gross ratio wasn't quite right for me you made the smart

decision i've watched every episode of that show and every spin-off of that show i could not tell you why oh yeah the spin-offs are multiplying but yeah that show, and we don't have to get into a lengthy digression about that in zombies, but they really get you when they're in groups. Of course, that's the real risk. And yet, it does seem one of the displeasures of watching that show is how often you are yelling at the screen saying, why are you not doing this very obvious thing that you would do in this situation? And it's because the zombies are too slow and they're not that menacing unless the people do things that they shouldn't do to get themselves in trouble. Yeah, I just I think that focus on running straight on and and watching where you're going and you're going to be OK more often than not. Although, you know, like there's nothing that says that zombies would only afflict people who are really good at strategy. So maybe in that respect, it's, it's very accurate and sort of true to life that, you

know, you get some, you get some, some thinkers and then you get some folks that are just going to get eaten, you know, um, or unlucky. Um, you know, sometimes the thinkers don't make it either and we don't want anyone to get eaten by a zombie thinker or no. So, um, I guess that's what we'd have to say about that. What are we talking about on this episode? I guess this is one downside of the term zombie runner is that it encourages unscheduled and perhaps unwanted segues into actual zombies. we can move on from that to another of my hobby horses, which is pitcher hitting, because this was brought to my attention just this week when we had another instance of a pitcher really

ostentatiously not hitting, just having to hit, but making no effort whatsoever to hit. And I think we talked about this earlier this season when there was a Taiwan Walker plate appearance against Matt Harvey, and he just very clearly was not going to lift the bat off his shoulder. He was just going to stand there and take whatever came his way until he either walked or struck out. And of course, he struck out. This happened this week, and it was maybe even funnier. And it was sort of a ridiculous situation because it was pitcher-hitter against position player-pitcher. And really, that's just a race to the bottom. And I've been meaning to try to figure out analytically which is worse, which is more incompetent, a pitcher who is

trying to hit or a position player who is trying to pitch. They're both pretty terrible. And really, you could say it's one of the sort of nice but albeit strange things about baseball is that we so regularly get to see people do things that they are not qualified to do and are not trained to do and not selected to do. I mean, in many sports, how often do you see someone perform as incompetently and look as incompetent as a pitcher-hitter does or a position player-pitcher. And these are fairly routine things. Pitcher-hitting is an extremely routine thing, and position player-pitching has become a fairly routine thing. And one thing that I do value about pitcher-hitting is that the steep decline over time does enable us to see how much better players

have gotten at doing the things that they are actually trying to be good at. And so it's helpful to have pitcher-hitting as kind of a contrast to that. But really, are there other sports where you so regularly see people who are asked to do things that they're not at all prepared to do at that high level of competition? It takes like really catastrophic injury to multiple people for that to happen, right? It takes like really catastrophic injury to multiple people for that to happen, right? Because even when you have, you know, like your average backup quarterback is like generally significantly worse than your starter, sometimes like really, really worse than your starter, but like often can throw a pass downfield.

Like they're not going to be good. They're a backup for a reason and you want your starter in instead, but they're at least operating in the same general position group right it's only when like really bad stuff happens and you're getting like the emergency quarterback that things go awry or you know sometimes in football you'll get you know injuries to to some part of your kicking apparatus that's not the way to describe it i am a football fan. But you'll get something will happen to your long snapper. Yeah, or everyone catches COVID and you're signing the 50th string person who's available. Right, or your punter suddenly has to kick field goals for you.

But even there, it tends to- Even then, I mean, with pitcher hitting, you're getting guys who have not hit since Little League in some cases, and they're in the big leagues doing it. had been since, you know, maybe early college, potentially high school since he had done that. And I just remember never having to see him ever take a single snap. So it didn't matter. It was just like a thing you knew. And if you wanted to feel anxious, you could be. And even I didn't really indulge that because it's like, oh, we at least have a backup. So, yeah, it's a very it's a very unusual circumstance in some sports. I mean, I'm sure that we'll get emails from people being like, it's exactly like this thing. And that's cool.

I am excited to learn about it. But it is a very strange bit of business to have someone essentially flip from offense to defense when they don't already play that position. Exactly. You know, when they don't already play both sides of the ball. I am aware that there are sports where you do both things. Yes. This is not one of those situations. So there you go. In the NHL, you get the emergency goalies every now and then, and that's kind of a fun story, but they are still goalies. Like they may not be professional

goalies or high level professional goalies, but they are goalies, whereas a pitcher-hitter is, in many cases, not really a hitter in any real sense, except that he is being tasked with hitting. Anyway, this came to mind because Archie Bradley had an at-bat, and Archie Bradley, on the Phillies now and is a reliever, so is obviously not hitting regularly, although he started in the past with the Diamondbacks, and so he hit at times not well. He has a career 095, 094, 095 slash line. That's your basic 189 OPS in 68 plate appearances, and that was a little lower after his plate appearance this week, and what made it funny is that, as I said, he was going against a position player pitcher.

In this case, it was Reds infielder Mike Freeman, a former teammate of Archie Bradley. And the Phillies were up 17-3 in this game. And it was two outs in the ninth. So this is not a situation where anyone is incentivized to try their hardest, but Archie Bradley did not try at all. And he did not pick the bat off his shoulder for the first two pitches. Before the third pitch, he briefly faked a bunt, I think jokingly, and then put the bat back on his shoulder and left it there. And it was, I think it was a four pitch strikeout.

So he did not swing, did not even feign that he was going to attempt to swing. And so having seen that and having seen Tyjuan Walker do the same in a little bit less of a lopsided situation, I wondered whether this was getting more widespread. The pitcher played appearance where the pitcher just does not even try to look like a hitter. where the pitcher just does not even try to look like a hitter. And I can't quite quantify that, but I can quantify whether there was a swing or any attempt to make contact with a pitch. So even a bunt attempt or a bunt,

any reason why the pitcher would have lifted the bat off his shoulder or made any actual motion to try to put the ball in play. And I asked Lucas Apostolaris of Baseball Perspectives to look this up for me, and he was able to go back to the beginning of this century and just look at the percentage of pitcher plate appearances and position player plate appearances where this doesn't happen, where there's no attempt to swing. where this doesn't happen, where there's no attempt to swing. And unsurprisingly, the pitcher rate has increased astronomically. It is much higher than it has ever been before.

And it's still low, like it's still fairly rare. But it is now up to 7.04% of pitcher plate appearances in which the pitcher just takes every pitch until it's over. And this is a lot higher. This is like two and a half times more common than it was like in 2002. It was 2.71% of pitcher plate appearances. Now, again, it's 7.04. And there does appear to have been a large leap this season specifically, just from from 2019 we can throw out 2020 because pitchers basically didn't hit but just in 2019 it was like five percent so still you know almost twice as frequent as it was 20 years ago or less than 20 years ago but now it has really jumped up over seven percent and that's still a small number, but a appreciable number. And it

probably makes sense that it has spiked both over time and also suddenly just this season, because you have pitchers who did not hit at all last year and pitchers who probably expected that they wouldn't have to hit this year and may not have done as much preparation as they would have done otherwise if they had done any and maybe also they feel like pitcher hitting's days are numbered and the universal dh is coming in so why try so yeah it's now an all-time high rate and just for comparative purposes lucas also gave me the position player rate, and that has not increased over the same span at all. In fact, it has if there was a bunt that is now over 20% which is all also pretty high there was one year 2009 when it was up that high previously but otherwise this is the second highest rate so you know makes sense because pitchers are bad at this

and I think most of them know that they're bad at this and injury rates are high. So, you know, why bother? Obviously, why bother if you're going against a position player pitcher in a 17 to 3 game and it's a former teammate of yours? But even in other situations, you know, it may just not be worth the risk of pulling an oblique or hurting your hand or something. So you just stand there and take it until the suffering is mercifully over. I know that this is not exactly the same thing because, you know, there are going to be instances, I mean, every single game where a pitcher has to hit in the course of a couple of times, right, in the course of being a starter. And so it is not as if you necessarily have the option to concede because why would you do that? You're trying to win a baseball game but when things get really really out of hand and the score is a football score perhaps part of the confusion here is that they thought they were playing football after the score had gotten to where it did but i do wonder sometimes about why we're so reluctant to forfeit just generally and then if and then you know what is a what is a pitcher keeping the bat on his shoulder but forfeiting the plate appearance right he's not forfeiting the game he's still gonna go try his hardest when he has to pitch but you're essentially

conceding the plate appearance and i just wonder if we we shouldn't have a bigger conversation about why we're so reluctant to allow for forfeits in some situations. Because I don't know that the difference between a pitcher forfeiting a given plate appearance earlier in the game, not, you know, in the ninth inning with two outs and a blowout, but just earlier in the game, is actually as different. It is definitely different, but I wonder if it is actually as different as conceding when the score is wildly divergent and the gap is wide and sort of insurmountable late in game. And that's a bigger conversation than we can have right now because we're just trying to get to the point where we say, and now our guest.

But I wonder about conceding and forfeiting because generally I think we don't want people to do that because there's already enough of folks not trying very hard or trying as hard as we think they ought to. But I think it's a little different when you're just being forced to do a thing that really should be ancillary to your job description. So maybe at some point in the future, we could contemplate a larger conversation about forfeiting

and when we think it's acceptable. And it's funny because like next year, hopefully we just don't have to deal with this because they won't be up there hitting anymore. Yeah. And we answered that email recently about like a pitcher protest and what if they all struck out on purpose and tried to make a point of it.

So we've touched on that. And obviously, putting in a position player pitcher is a form of forfeiting. It is conceding in a sense, but not actually doing so. And there's nothing in the rules that says you can't do that. It's just kind of an institutional cultural reluctance to do that. So I don't know what you would have to do to persuade people to take that step because at that point, they're not harboring any hope of a comeback. We're all kind of wasting each other's time a little bit. I guess maybe some players like accumulating the stats or something. Not Archie Bradley. He's not going to be paid any

better if he gets a single in that plate appearance as a reliever, but you mean Mercedes, for instance. So I guess that there's some incentive for some players to want to play on, and there's just a larger, I think, cultural disincentive to look like quitters, essentially, even if you are essentially throwing in the towel as soon as you bring in that position player pitcher. So unless they really codified it where they said, you know, mercy roll, essentially, which we've talked about that probably in the past, unless they did that, I don't know whether they could get a team to take that step of not just effectively throwing in the towel, but actually throwing in the towel. And to be clear, I'm not saying that they should.

I just think that we should talk more about it because uh we we talk around it a lot yeah not you and i specifically but like right you know the zeitgeist to the extent that it contemplates forfeiting in baseball games at all it tends to talk around it when it does yeah i think i'd rather have forfeits in really lopsided blowouts than I would have a zombie runner in a close game. So that's where I stand. And certainly not a Manfred Mann. by MLB's decision to use Lou Gehrig Day as kind of a test case for NFTs, which was kind of icky because that is a moment where a man is announcing a death sentence, essentially. And it means a lot to a lot of people and we're turning it into an NFT. And I know that in that specific case, I think the proceeds were going to go to charity, but it was also clearly like, hey,

can we make this into a sustainable business? And there was a quote, I think, proceeds were going to go to charity, but it was also clearly like, hey, can we make this into a sustainable business? And there was a quote, I think, in the press release from MLB's VP of Business Development who said, when you think about NFTs, there is this concept of it being a fad. What we're looking to do is to build a long-term sustainable business. And I have bad news for the VP of Business Development, which is that it certainly looks like a fad. And we kind of talked about this yesterday, just the irony of MLB getting into this, just as it seemed like the bottom was fortunately falling out of this market. a report just about how the NFT market bubble has popped and the transactions are down like 90% from their peak and it's just kind of falling apart across the board. And I don't think it's going to go away entirely, but it doesn't seem like people are shedding a lot of tears outside of maybe a few tech crypto bros who made a killing here.

I don't know that anyone is particularly attached to this because as we mentioned, yeah, the NFT may be a unique thing that you are chiseling out on the blockchain for yourself and that can all watch it so it's sort of this meaningless distinction so i would not be sorry to see this happen and for mlb to have terrible timing and to have missed the boat when it came to capitalizing on this uh market that burned bright but hopefully has burned itself out at least until they figure out how to do it without destroying the environment and using an inordinate amount of electricity yeah which seems you know not that i don't know that there's a thing that would ever justify the environmental impact that this has for me so just like to be clear i don't know that this is like a bar that they could ever ever clear but they sure haven't here because uh we've all we've all seen the speech and then why do you you know we don't have to relitigate why we don't understand the particular individual

incentives here but yeah it seems as if there are other ways that mlb might go about making their business sustainable and it doesn't involve a thing that ends up being mostly a speculative market i don't know that's just one podcaster's opinion and it's not involve a thing that ends up being mostly a speculative market. I don't know. That's just one podcaster's opinion. And it's not only because they've made me feel old, although it is at least a little bit. We'll admit that part. You know, it's like, I don't, I don't. See, it made me feel old initially because it was like, wait, what is this?

Do I have to care about this? Why don't I understand this? But then it became clear that actually it is terrible. It isn't just that I missed the appeal because I'm not young and hip enough. No, it's that it actually is bad and almost totally without redeeming qualities. And so it's okay that I was initially repelled by it because it's not like listening to new music and it's not like listening to new music and it's not to your liking

and you say music used to be better in my day. That is a subjective matter and many people have different opinions. With NFTs, I'm not sure that many people do have different opinions. Maybe a small minority do. But anyway, I figured I would pass along that report just because it seems that MLB has gotten in on this at just the right time to

not be able to make much money off it, which is maybe for the best, but also sort of amusing. And the other report that I wanted to pass along relevant to something we've discussed lately is that it sounds as if four minor league pitchers have been ejected and suspended for using foreign substances this season, all in low A or high A. And we have talked about how there have been some reports that MLB is about to crack down on this and they've been gathering the data and the intel and suddenly they're going to spring into action and nab every offender. I don't know if that's actually going to happen, but I do wonder whether picking on these players in low A or high A is their way of kind of testing that out, you know, doing a trial run where no one is really paying attention and no one has the standing to be upset about it or to make much of a fuss about it. So I feel a little bit bad if that's the case for the minor league pitchers who are the test cases, the sacrificial lambs here. But I also sort of approve of trying to do something about this problem. And perhaps this is a step toward that. So anyway, there is

reportedly a meeting on Thursday, which is possibly taking place as we speak. We haven't heard anything about the outcome of that, but supposedly foreign substances was one of the items on that owners meeting agenda. So there may be some concrete action that comes of this and perhaps those minor league pitchers getting tossed is sort of the tremor before the full earthquake. the tremor before the full earthquake. Yeah, it is in the rule book. Oh, yeah. And so, yeah, it is interesting and will be interesting to see how this gets applied going forward.

Mostly, I appreciated that when this story was initially tweeted out by J.J. Cooper of Baseball America, he tweeted a grab from the rule book. And that's how i learned that the 2021 rulebook is finally online oh wow that's a big day for you yeah i you know like episode when you read the rulebook start to finish the the 2019 one was up there for a really long time and they never updated it with 2020 and i kind of give them a pass because it was a busy year and you know a lot was going on um but then then the calendar switched to 2021 and a new rule book was agreed to and it took a really long time, but now it's here.

And so it's like a really big day for me. But yeah, terrible for these guys. I do wonder if you started at those lower levels, whether that would then percolate upward eventually. Like if it were like the pitch clock or the zombie runner, unfortunately, if it were one of these things that were sort of tested and enforced in the minors first, would that be a way to eradicate it without having the uncomfortable confrontation of doing it in the major league spotlight? Because eventually that would be sort of similar to what

we talked about the other day, which is what if you just legalized it for players who were already doing it, right? And then you just phased it out over time. That would be essentially what this is. So like ban it in the minors and then hope that no one gets in the habit of using the foreign substances and then they graduate to the big league level and maybe you're not enforcing it as strictly anymore, but they just won't be accustomed to using it. Or maybe they would just start using it then because then it would matter even more and the incentive would still be there. shift if this is going to be taken seriously at the big league level i think you're going to see a lot of guys who are like well i guess i'm gonna figure out how to do a different thing and so i think this might be a situation where the the strict enforcement at the major league level actually is what ends up being a chilling effect and i the the part that i'm really curious

to see is what effect it has on amateur players, right? Because if you watch a college game, you see the same set of things. I imagine that the substances they have access to are perhaps different, but you still see guys going to their head and going to their belts and messing around in the glove. And so I imagine that part of that is due to the fact that they understand that there will not be, for the ones who have big league aspirations that there will not be a serious culture of enforcement around foreign substances and so they want to have as much spin as they can on their fastball

or in all their other pitches for that matter and so i want to see what the knock-on effects are outside of affiliated ball too because you know you can't it would be a real shame if you got drafted with one thing and then they're like oh you can't do that thing again yeah yes yeah and the last thing i wanted to mention is that mike marshall passed away on monday at age 78 the former pitcher of the 60s and 70s and early 80s he pitched for 14 years and he had quite a career. Of course, most famously won the Cy Young Award in 1974, but had, I think, four top five finishes, five top 10 finishes in the Cy Young Award race. And just really one of the best baseball reference pages because your mind boggles when you look at some of the seasons that he had and the way that he was used in those

years with the Expos and Dodgers and other teams. And he was also very much a trailblazer when it came to biomechanical analysis and trying to prevent injuries and optimize performance. And Jeff Passan has a good piece up at ESPN about that now, which I will link to. But that was something I heard all the time talking to people for the MVP machine who cited Mike Marshall as an influence and the way that he was thinking of these things in a really counterintuitive and kind of iconoclastic way. And, you know, maybe some of his claims were a bit exaggerated.

And certainly he was a prickly personality and wasn't always the most persuasive when it came to getting people on board with his techniques. But in the use of slow motion video and talking about what we now know as seam shifted wake and spin axis and all of these things, he was really ahead of his time. So he kind of gave rise, I think, to a lot of the way that pitching development works now. But on the other hand, the way that he pitched is not at all in evidence in today's game. And we got a question about that from a listener, Shane, who said the baseball world learned about the passing of Mike Marshall today. This was earlier this week. Someone I have quite the

soft spot for because of his unicorn-like usage. Marshall's use to me resembles a reverse starter. He would be asked to work anywhere from one to six innings and broke records for pitcher appearances, games finished and more, and even won the Cy Young Award in 1974. My question is, why do you think this form of pitcher usage has never really caught on? Do you see it as a potential avenue for new developments in pitching usage? With the rise of the opener as a strategy and with Joe Musgrove pitching five innings in relief to finish the game against the Astros Sunday, strategy and with Joe Musgrove pitching five innings in relief to finish the game against the Astros Sunday, I can't help but feel it's odd that this type of usage hasn't at least been experimented with by more teams over recent years. Any thoughts on this? And really, I mean, it looks like not just out of another era, but some sort of alien world or something. When you look at his

line from 1974, 106 games pitched, 83 games finished, 21 saves, 208 and a third innings pitched. It's just wild that he was used all the time like that and racked up that kind of workload. And that was in the days when you had starters going 250, 300 innings, you know, real workhorses. But he was used for not quite as many innings, but just all the time. I mean, most of the team's games he was being used and we don't see anything like that now where the innings limits and the pitch counts are stricter than ever, but also teams are stricter than ever when it comes to like using pitchers on back-to-back days or back-to-back-to-back days. So do you think this could ever come back into vogue?

Might we ever see another Marshall-style pitcher? Is there anything teams could learn from that model? Oh, God, I don't know the answer to that question. Me neither. I mean, we haven't seen it, so probably not. The whole trend over time has been less and less usage and fewer and fewer appearances so it would take a real sea change but if you could have someone who could pitch like that it would be immensely valuable to you especially in this era it's just i don't know who has the

arm to do it or could train to do it and it's just so out of step with the times well and i i imagine that the the real answer to that question, like if we had a magic wand that could reveal to us the players for whom doing this is feasible from like an injury prevention perspective where you don't have to be as concerned about wear and tear for whatever reason, I imagine that teams would be like,

and then they would elect to have some of those guys because those are valuable guys, especially as we're entering an era where it seems like we are very likely to have limitations on how many pitchers you can have on the roster, right? And so you want to have guys who can really do what's being proposed here, but we don't have that. And so I think that what will likely happen is that you continue to see pitcher usage dip or at least plateau because you don't, if you're wrong, right, if you don't have the magic wand and you are overtaxing a guy, the risks to you and to the player is potentially catastrophic, right? At the very least, it might be career altering. And the downside to not doing that is just that he

doesn't go quite as long. And so I think that that risk reward calculus is always going to lend itself toward throwing fewer pitches rather than more and you're gonna have guys who sort of volunteer to throw more than that and there are you know like if you're a guy who can go 200 innings and you can accumulate a bunch of stats that's valuable not only to the team but to you potentially right it might make you well compensated in free agency and it might boost numbers that get you paid in arbitration but i i think that not just for those reasons but to to really try to manage load for guys and keep them as healthy as possible that you're just going to see teams really reticent to do that and even the guys who

volunteer right like you know bauer wanted to throw every day not every day but he wanted to throw really often yeah and he wanted to throw a lot and i every day, but he wanted to throw really often and he wanted to throw a lot. And I think that the, the number of players who are going to be keen to sort of volunteer for that kind of a workload is going to be limited because they're also concerned about the health of their arms and, you know, are probably wanting to pitch enough to be valuable and to stay a starter and to be compensated like one, but are going to be mindful about sort of maintaining their health so that they can go as many seasons as possible. And so I think those things are likely to counterbalance it.

So yeah, I think Russell Cartland has written about the potential for some sort of hybrid role where it's kind of in the middle. It's not the one inning guy and maybe it's not exactly a long man, but maybe it's kind of in the middle. It's not the one-inning guy, and maybe it's not exactly a long man, but maybe it's like a three-inning reliever or something, and we kind of don't even have a term for that that is in common usage because it's so rare now. And as you see the lines blur between starters and relievers, and you look at the Rays pitching staff, and it's like, what is this? Is this an opener? Is this a bulk guy?

Is this just something in the middle? I don't know. It's just all kind of a big jumble of guys who go three or four innings or whatever. So I guess that kind of in a way brings you closer to the Marshall model, but also not really because they're still working pretty sparingly. I think you would need either an advance in injury prevention, which Mike Marshall probably would have said, hey, follow my plan and no one will ever get hurt again. Or you'd need some real restriction on pitcher usage, either in game or over the course of a season or on the roster at any one time. And that would maybe make teams a little more willing to try it. But yeah, as you said, you kind of like err on the side of safety and protecting pitchers, which is good. And maybe we've taken it too far, but you don't want to ruin anyone's career. Although you also don't want to impair anyone's performance by having them pitch a lot less than they're physically capable of pitching. So it's a tough balance. And I don't think we're anywhere close to figuring out exactly what the ideal balance is so that's going to keep evolving but yeah it doesn't seem like we're any closer to swinging back toward the Marshall model unfortunately as fun as that would be

yeah I think that that's right and I'd rather us be careful and have guys careers extend as long as they can and have them avoid major surgery or injury setback because pitching is just bad for you anyway. No matter how careful you are and what kind of load management you do, there's always a risk because it's just an incredibly taxing activity. And so we don't need to help out. I was about to say that in a weird way. We don't need to help out the UCLs. It's like, no, we really do need to help them out. We don't need to. They need all the help they can get. Right. We don't need to be any more cavalier with them.

Not the people who want pitchers to go longer being cavalier, but, you know, like they're prone to breakage all on their own. They don't need any assistance in that regard. So, yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. There's a new article every day about how injury rates are up.

Pitcher injury rates are not up relative to last year but last year was way up relative to previous years and hitter injuries are up compared to previous years so tissues man yeah whatever's happening now is also not the solution because that's not working either it's like baseball is really hard and you have to be really athletic to play it i know and yet it seems like there should be fewer injuries than this. I mean, I know that pitchers are throwing harder than ever and hitters are bigger and stronger and swinging harder than ever and everything, but it's not a contact sport. And it seems like one of the virtues of baseball should be hopefully that there's less risk of this sort of thing.

Obviously, there's less risk of catastrophic head injuries and that sort of thing, but Right. happens we must admit that and so it would be nice if that translated to like guys not getting hurt so that the best players were on the field all the time but it doesn't seem to be happening either even though teams are devoting all these resources to high performance and optimizing training and nutrition and all of that but that's a larger conversation so we hope that everyone stays safe and healthy yeah and we will miss mike marshall and hope that there will be another Marshall-esque pitcher someday. And now we will take a quick break and we'll be back with Ethan Singer and talk about assessing umpires. But my baby comes around at midnight And there's a timing on the window Her eyes are black and her face is white

My baby's been on the ground My baby's been on the ground My baby's been down on the ground And now she's got me so in love So I'm coming home, coming home Oh, back from the bed All right, we are back now and we are joined by the founder and proprietor of the Umpire Scorecards Twitter account at umpscorecards and umpscorecards.com, Ethan Singer.

Hello, Ethan. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? Good, and happy to have you. So I want to ask you about the origin story of how you got into umpire analysis and what made you want to start the account, which has gotten quite popular. And you started the scorecards Twitter account just last August, and you're already well over

80,000 followers and climbing pretty rapidly. And I've concocted an origin story for this in my head where you were victimized by an umpire in Little League in a pivotal moment and you took a pitch that was outside the strike zone and it was called a strike and you were the goat and you've had it out for umpires for years and so you've dedicated yourself to learning the coding skills necessary to bring umpire analysis to the masses so that you could expose their fallibility. But the real story, I imagine, is a little less sinister than the supervillain origin story. So how did you get inspired to do this work? Sure. Well, I certainly wish I had an origin story

nearly as interesting as something like that. But unfortunately, it is significantly more lame. But unfortunately, it is significantly more lame. I started a couple of years ago. Over the summer, I was sort of, I read this article by a professor at Boston University who had written about the volume of missed calls in Major League Baseball. And it just randomly, I guess, came across my feed or something like that. And I was pretty interested. I mean, every baseball fan loves to complain about umpires every chance they get. So I was among that crowd. But one piece of the puzzle

that I thought was missing was, you know, we don't only care about how often these calls happen, but we also care about how much they affect the players, the pitchers, etc. So that's when I get that. That could be considered like the very beginning. But then last summer, I sort of had this idea where, well, maybe I can look at this at a game by game level. And I sort of built out this program, which, you know, gets all the data for the games and splits it up into all the different games and generates these graphics. And then, you know, for a while, I was just making

graphics by hand and posting them on Reddit, but they were really, really ugly. And we're not getting really any traction. So I figured Twitter might be the way to go. So I added some Twitter implementation into my programs. And yeah, then here we are today. I mean, for a while, I was coasting there with about five or six likes per tweet. But then the Yankees had a sort of like big game in the playoffs. And there were a couple other big ones and then sort of just took off from there. And I'm curious, we can get into some of the differences here. How would you distinguish what you're doing from some of the prior iterations

that we've seen of this? Because I think there have been sort of umpire bots in the past that have tried to grade out umpire performances. And some of those have gotten close, but they've been wanting. And I'm curious both sort of how familiar you are with those and whether they had any role to play in how you thought about differentiating your own model, which I laud you for being both more sophisticated and seemingly much more accurate. So I'm curious how that process came to be for you. Sure. So I mean, there's definitely a lot of things that I looked at online before starting. I'm not necessarily sure I remember the specific accounts, but just I guess the sorts of things that I kept in mind while I was starting was, you know, I don't want to overly criticize

the umpires, which I know a lot of accounts have done, focusing specifically on, you know, the most important missed calls, the farthest missed call, stuff like that. I wanted to be as objective as possible and just focus on performance as a whole, including when, you know, performance is really good. And I mean, I'm sure there's other things I thought about. I really thought one of the, you know, the most important things is the visual aspect of it and making it aesthetically pleasing as possible. I'm not quite there yet. It's still

a bit cluttered. There's a lot of information, but at least, you know, there are some nice looking graphics and some fun colors on there. So I think those were some of the big inspirations that I tried to iterate on, like versus the some prior versions that I had seen, just making it look nicer and making sure to be as objective and as analytical as possible. Yeah. And can you talk a little bit about the difficulty of assessing accuracy? Because we know it's difficult to call pitches correctly.

Umpires are very good at their jobs. It's just an impossible job to do perfectly. So that part is obvious. I mean, you can tell why it would be tough to, you know, a pitch that is moving at 90 something miles per hour and moving and, you know, your view is obscured. And how do you tell whether it's an inch off the plate or not? Obviously that's hard, but people might think, well, it's probably relatively simple to quantify after the fact how accurate an umpire was, but that turns out to be pretty complicated too, because there is uncertainty about where the ball was.

And there's also uncertainty about where the strike zone was. So can you explain why that's the case? Yeah, sure. So there's a there's a ton of uncertainty for sure. The first probably the most obvious concern is that the true strike zone, as by the rules is three dimensions. It has a component that spans like from the front of the plate to the back of the plate. Whereas if you use data, you're looking at a 2D representation of the strike zone as the ball crosses the plate. So that's sort of the first major, you know, issue in determining whether a pitch is a ball or a strike. And then some other ones are, as you mentioned,

the top and the bottom of the strike zone are not preset in the rules like the left and right side of the strike zone are. They're determined specifically by the batter's stance, which is hard to quantify to the, I mean, it's very hard to get a precise, you know, where exactly we should draw this line. And then from there, you know, once the ball is thrown, there's some variability in terms of what the data will say about where the pitch was. So not only do we not know where the strike zone was, but we also don't know, at least to an incredible amount of precision, where the ball actually was. And so, you know, for a while, I was looking at these measurements as if they were exactly right, and that they had no tolerance. And I got a little bit of criticism

for that in my earlier days. So now I sort of bake in a little bit of randomness into the, at least into the location of the ball. But it's certainly, I would still today not say that it's entirely accurate. At least from my perspective, there is no sort of perfect way to know whether this pitch is a ball or a strike. What I'm doing now is sort of a, you know, a best guess type situation where I'm just trying to present this data as transparently as possible without saying, you know, I know that this was a ball, I know that this was a strike. So yeah, I guess those are the major difficulties in determining whether it's a ball or a strike. Well, and you don't just concern yourself with the accuracy, you're also interested

in the consistency of the umpire from team to team. And I know that in earlier iterations of this project, you actually didn't have a consistency score, but now you do. What was the process like there and what were some of the challenges you faced in trying to arrive at something that was not only accurate when it comes to consistency, which I know might be confusing given that you're also concerned with accuracy, but also easy to sort of translate and explain to someone looking at the graphics that you produce? Yeah, that's a great question. So in between last season and this season, so just in the offseason, a consistency metric was by far the thing that was requested the most

by people online. Because I mean, you know, it's somewhat intuitive. If an umpire is calling every pitch outside of the box at a certain location, a strike, then, you know, maybe it's not exactly accurate, but the batter can know it will be called a strike. So in that sense, consistency may be more important than accuracy, at least in certain cases, not all the time, but certainly in some cases. So that was sort of the inspiration. And then in terms of difficulties, the biggest difficulty, like you said, comes in sort of taking a complicated, you know, really a math question and turning it into how do I communicate this in terms of just in a single game, how consistent is this umpire? So what it

essentially is, is if you drew a box around every pitch that was called a strike, and then you took all of the balls that were called, or all the pitches that were called balls, how many of them landed inside that strike box that you had already drawn? Now, that's an oversimplification. The strike box is not actually a box. It's a very oddly shaped polygon. And there are some other considerations too. But that's essentially the way it works. And I think it's a good baseline. It's pretty easy to explain to people.

I think it makes intuitive sense. You don't want something that's called a ball to have also been called a strike in the same game. Obviously, that would be somewhat inconsistent. There's obviously, there are better things, especially on a season. Like if you had a whole season's worth of data, there are more accurate things you could do in terms of consistency, which I hopefully will be adding to the site at some point. But in terms of just a single game, this consistency metric is, I think, what I'm going to stick with. Yeah. And you talked about the difficulty of determining the top and bottom of the zone and you're sort of relying on MLPs stringers essentially, right? Who are sort

of setting that maybe before every plate appearance or pitch. And sometimes there are errors in that data, which I guess would unavoidably be reflected in yours just because that's the source. And I know there are a few different methods people have used to try to get around that. Maybe you could just use the pitches that actually have gotten called strikes against those hitters over a long period of time to sort of indirectly see where their zone top or bottom is, or you could just use their height and model it from there. Although then, of course, you're relying on listed heights, which are also inaccurate. So I guess there's no perfect method, but I know MLP does some post-processing of these things and kind of

cleans things up after the fact sometimes. So how do you make use of that? Or, you know, sometimes as you note on your site, things will change a little bit between when you have the Twitter graphic up and then when the numbers are reflected on your site. I think we talked about the John Lipka game on the podcast a few weeks ago that had a really high percentage, maybe one missed call on the Twitter graphic, but I think his max accuracy is lower now on the site. How does that data change over time? And I guess what's the magnitude of the difference typically? Yeah, so typically it's not a large magnitude. We're talking, you know, one or two changes in terms of whether it's a ball or a strike as sort of the maximum.

And at least from what I've seen, most games there are not changes. It really comes down to, least from what I've seen, most games there are not changes. It really comes down to, you know, the specific types of pitches and specific incorrect calls that can change. Like if there's one that's right on the top or the bottom of the zone, those are ones that can typically change, but ones that are well outside of the zone or that they're incorrect in terms of, you know, the horizontal location, those more often than not do not change with the post-processing. So that, you know, that's a positive. It would not be, it would be pretty bad if like every game after they did some post-processing, all of the results changed. But yeah, this is, it's sort of an unavoidable problem. I mean, it's not exactly unavoidable, but my goal is to sort of, you know, bridge somewhat of a gap between the super

analytical and technical results with a sort of clean, easy to read comes out right after the game, or at least the morning after the game, you know, in this format that fans can understand. And so, you know, so a part of that is that I don't want to wait two days after a game has ended for me to post them. So unfortunately, that means that sometimes it'll come out on the Twitter in the morning. And then if I had waited another day, I would get a different result. So this specifically impacted me recently when I was uploading data to the site and I wasn't using data from today. I was using data from months ago because I had to upload all that data to the site and that data had been post-processed, whereas the data that I'm getting now is not being post-processed every day that I upload it. So

there's a little bit of an inconsistency there, which is not ideal, but hopefully I will figure out some way to get around that in the future. We'll see. And do you have any designs on being able to show people sort of year over year changes in an umpire's profile? Because I imagine that part of what's interesting to folks here is, you know, we have a couple of names that for better or worse are well known to us in the umpiring community. And I think that there is a sense that umpires are sort of bad forever or good forever. And I'm curious if we or if you have plans to, you know, be able to show sort of year over year trends, because I know I'd be interested to see if there are areas where maybe an umpire was struggling in particular in one season and perhaps has gotten better or worse on that score in a subsequent season. Right. Yeah. So the answer to your question is yes. Hopefully at some point in the near future, you'll be able to see more than just the season's worth of data. But I was trying to get it out by the day that I got it out by. So unfortunately, I was not able to add too much more. But yeah,

that will be coming in the future, multiple seasons worth. You're talking to someone who runs a site where as soon as we release a new feature, someone is asking, but what about this thing? So you have my sympathies. Exactly. Yeah. I've already gotten quite a few. You should add umpire bios. You should add a lot of things, but hopefully I'll get around to them at some point. Yeah. So I wonder how you think about how the content that you are putting out will be used and received and applied. You are just putting the information out there for people to do with as they will. But I think we all know that people get angry at umpires.

And so by kind of arming them with the information here, I suppose you are providing ammunition. I suppose you are providing ammunition, you know, if someone wants to be aggrieved about how an umpire performed in a certain game or be bitter about it or be angry at that umpire, you know, now they have hard data. So, and, you know, sometimes there are cases where an umpire has a great game and everyone shares that tweet and says, hey, what a great job. But I think that is probably outnumbered quite a bit by, you know, the bad games and people being upset about that. So again, like, you know, you're just presenting the information and I guess it's kind of out of your hands what happens after that. But I wonder what level of, I don't know, responsibility you think you have to kind of either, you know, shape that discourse in some way or whether you had any misgivings about putting this information out there because of that reception? Yeah, it is a question I think about a lot. The first thing I'll say is that you probably would think that the games with low accuracy

outnumber, or at least in terms of popularity, outnumber the games with high accuracy. But more often than not, that is actually not the case. Some of the ones that do the best are the ones where there is high accuracy. I'm looking at the homepage of the site right now, which shows out of the last week of tweets, the three that have the most likes, and two are games with really high accuracy. And the third is a game with low accuracy it's interesting it's a it's a it's definitely obviously an interesting there's both both are are pretty widely popular but in terms of your question about you know how i'm impacting the the umpire analysis online

scene i certainly i have a lot of thoughts about it. One thing that I will say is that, you know, in games where it's really egregious and my umpire score would be, you know, in the mid 80s or something along those lines, the fans are already, you know, there's there's compilations of all the pitches that have been missed that are being widely shared, stuff like that. It's not, you know, I'm not introducing this new piece of evidence where everyone was saying, oh, this umpire was great before. I thought they were great, but now I realize they're actually bad and let's talk about it on Twitter. It's usually just me adding to the, you know, to the, I'm adding flame to the fire. I'm not, you know, maybe I'm not exactly starting the fire per se. You're not rubbing the sticks together. Yeah, exactly. Whereas on the other hand, when I post about a game that was umpired really well, more often than not, there was no discourse on the game at all. Funny how that happens. Yeah, exactly. I mean, nobody's talking about it. And then all of a sudden, you know, these sometimes I mean, the tweet that has the most likes on my account

is the libk game by far, where initially I said he had missed one call by far, that has the most likes on my account is the LibK game by far, where initially I said he had missed one call. By far, that is the most likes. I think it's around two and a half times any other tweet, any other scorecard on my account. So, you know, and there's as accurate as I can and then trying to, you know, affect discourse in a way that's somewhat objective and not trying to skew too much to the umpires are terrible side or skew too much to the, you know, maybe we should be nicer side, just sort of trying to be as objective as possible and, you know, just let fans go from there. Right. Yeah. And I think for what it's worth, I believe just looking at the numbers on your site and talking to some people at Baseball Perspectives about their model, which is not public, but is maybe a couple percentage points higher in terms of the average

accuracy rate. So what you're putting out there, I guess, even though it will point out when umpires are incorrect, I guess, compared to certain models, maybe it is making them look even better than they are, if anything. But I guess there is no perfect model, as we're saying. And also, as you're saying, this information is pretty pervasive already and people are going to be mad at umpires regardless. And also, I think, A, the information is free. I mean, it's not a secret. It's not something that leaked. You know, it's out there for anyone to do with what they will. And also, it's on our screens, right? All these broadcasts have K zones. And so you're seeing it on a pitch to pitch basis. You're looking at game day and various other tools. And those are in many cases, less accurate, most likely, you know, compared to what you're doing. So if anything, maybe it's kind of a corrective to that. And I wondered whether you could talk at all about those screens,

since that is the most prevalent way probably that we interact with this data and umpire evaluation, even if on the broadcast, they're not tabulating the number of missed calls, you're seeing whether that dot is inside or outside the strike zone. But in many cases, that is not really reflecting reality. Yeah. I mean, it's very analogous to the work that I do in the sense that, you know, I tweet it in the morning and then in the afternoon, it might have, it might not be accurate by then, you know, we're only talking to maybe an inch of difference, but it's still somewhat important, but they're trying to do a very similar thing to me, which is just provide this information so that a fan can experience it as they're watching. And so obviously, like you said, they have some difficulty in updating the height in

the height of the top and the bottom of the strike zone on a pitch by pitch basis. They can't exactly do that. If the camera is shaking or if the camera is off by a little bit, things like that will cause problems in the broadcasting system. But I mean, obviously, I still think it's a really valuable tool to be able to watch during the game. And yeah, obviously, I mean, you would wish that it was said the exact location of the pitch every time

so that you wouldn't have, you know, people mistakenly think that they had been wronged or that their team had been wronged. But I think that is somewhat the price we pay for everybody wanting, you know, I mean, we asked for K-zones on TV. They're only there. Did we? Yeah, maybe not.

But it's certainly, it was a hope of mine. I know the local broadcaster that I watched for a while did not have it. And I was very thankful when they added it. Yeah. Yeah. So there's obviously a demand for what you do. Right. Exactly.

Right. I'm curious, as you've seen so many of these propagate over the years that you've been running the account, are there particular areas of the strike zone that you identify as problem areas across the board, even for umpires who tend to be more accurate on average than some of their colleagues? You know, honestly, I wish I had a good answer to that, but I do not. Most of my work has been focused on a game by game basis. And I haven't done too much, you know, over the season for each specific umpire, I guess research, but I do know that, like in terms of the very rudimentary

research I've done, specific portions of the strike zone, at least on a year-to-year level, can have some amount of variance in how many incorrect calls there are there, depending on, like, the batter handedness. For example, I think, if I'm remembering correctly, inside to left-handed batters, I think. But I don't want to, don't quote me on this. I'm not exactly sure, but I do know that there are specific portions of the strike zone that will be more often called incorrectly than others. I promise I will stop asking you for new features to your site. Well, I will ask you about a feature that you already have, which is the team

breakdown on a season level, where you sort of sum up the calls that have gone for or against the team and provide a run value there. Have you found that to be a popular feature for fans who feel like their team has been jobbed by umpires? And is that every fan base that feels that way? Because I imagine it probably is. There probably aren't that many fan bases who are thinking, boy, the umpires calls have really gone our way this season.

Because I think, you know, just the cognitive biases that we have, you tend to remember the things that go against you more readily than the things that go your way. So it's an interesting point. So first of all, yes, it is probably the most, I guess, requested feature. Just when it was released, it was one of the things that was asked about the most. And people were tweeting their specific teams, especially White Sox fans who had been, I think there was a sort of an understanding that early in the year, some umpires had not been very nice to them. sort of an understanding that early in the year, some umpires had not been very nice to them. But in terms of, you know, does every fan base have a complaint? It's this is an interesting one. Because, for example, if you look at the if you look at the graph on the on my site, which is essentially just a scatterplot of how every team has been treated, you might look at it and say, well, you know, there are these teams in the upper right quadrant

who have been treated very nicely by batter or to their, you know, the umpires have treated their batters very nicely and their pitchers very nicely. But it is a bit misleading. I will, you know, be mean to my own graph here. It's a bit misleading because it's the impact versus the average, not just the impact overall. So you'll notice that if you go to the, you know, just the teams page and look at how every team has been treated overall, almost every team, everyone except for the Marlins, every team's batters has lost runs over the season. It's not like zero is the middle and some teams are above zero and some teams are below zero, every team has lost runs because of missed calls. And the reason that is, is because, you know, if you say, you know, an umpire is equally likely to call a ball

a strike and a strike a ball, batters are much more likely to take balls than they are to take strikes. So over the season, you'd expect these incorrect calls to overall hurt batters instead of help batters, even though sometimes they do help batters. So overall, you see that over a year, almost all of the teams, I mean, we're only in, we're in June now. And at this point, there's only one team who's been benefited by umpires, and it's by 0.56 runs over the year. And that's the Marlins. Everybody else is negative, going all the way down to the Dodgers who have lost almost 16 runs. So, you know, these teams might not be, you know, the fan bases might not be able to say, oh, well, they've hurt our team more than the other team. But pretty much every fan base is

able to say that missed calls over the year have hurt our team, and we would have scored more runs without them. I guess a related question in here, I'm going to ask you to sort of speculate or at least use your experience of the replies to your Twitter account, which, you know, the accuracy of that in terms of describing real phenomena, I suppose, is in question. But I'm curious if people seem to be more agitated in response to bad calls hurting their batters or their pitchers? Is there one that seems to strike people as a graver injustice than the other? Because I think that if you're in the ballpark, fans just yell at umpires regardless of how good the job is. And they seem to want good calls to go their way when their pitcher is on the mound and also when they are at the plate. And that's

fine because being a fan is sort of an exercise in being at least a little bit irrational. But I'm curious what you have seen people respond sort of the most vigorously to in terms of calls that have gone against their team and if it tends to be stronger on one side of the ball than the other. Right. If I had to speculate, I would definitely say that it was calls that impact the batter. I think it's sort of a more, I don't know,

I definitely see more of a reaction. For example, there was a Yankees game just today, and I was getting a lot of mentions for it. And all of nearly, I'd say probably 95% of the mentions are looking at this is what Ryan Yarbrough's pitches were, and they were called, they were called strikes, not, you know, this is what Derek Cole'sough's pitches were and they were called strikes, not this is what Derek Cole's pitches were and they were not called strikes. I think most of the time people care about how their own batters have been treated because it feels like maybe I'm not exactly sure why. But to me, it's sort of like, well, it's my team's turn now and this is how we've been affected for some reason. I'm not sure exactly

why, but I mean, even in situations that are really comparable, like the same bases loaded, two outs, three, two pitch on both sides, you'll see more comments, at least from one team's perspective on the event where their team was batting, not on the one where their team was pitching, even if both of them went against the team that they favor. And one thing I wanted to clarify about how to judge accuracy is that I guess there are multiple ways you can do that in that you can try to figure out was this pitch in the rulebook strike zone at some point, or you could look at the zone as it is actually called and say, here's the typical probability that a pitch in this location will be a strike. And then you can sort of measure umpires just against the zone as it is in reality,

as opposed to as it is in the graphic or in the rule book itself. And if you were doing the latter, then you probably wouldn't want umpires to be 100% accurate because there are certain pitches that technically would probably be strikes. And if you were using a robo zone, it would say that was a strike. But in practice, umpires have not been calling that pitch a strike. Hitters have not expected for that to be called a strike against them. We saw this issue with the Atlantic League testing the trackman zone and thinking that was a strike. And, you know, it's maybe a curve ball that just kind of clips the front bottom edge of the zone. And

then it sinks so low that by the time the catcher catches it, it doesn't look like it possibly could have been a strike, but it is technically. So I guess you could do it multiple ways. And do you see a merit to doing it one way or the other? Because I think BP has done it maybe both ways, but also in that way of just looking at the typical probability and then not necessarily doing a binary right or wrong, but kind of incremental probabilities. So just sort of adding up, if this is a 10% strike in most situations and the guy calls it a ball, then maybe you assess just part of an incorrect call instead of a full correct call. So yeah, have you thought about doing it in that way? Is it just too complicated or too hard to explain? No, it's it's it's definitely an interesting

question. In terms of my preference, I think I'm of the type of baseball fan that if I had to choose, I would rather just the call be correct every time, no matter how crazy it might seem that it is a strike. You know, if it hits the zone and falls out by the time it leaves the zone and you say, oh, wow, you know, there's no way that was a strike. I think that if it is a strike, if it was a strike, it should be called a strike. So I'm sure that's part of the my like bias that has gone into the creation of my system. But in terms of why I don't do it incrementally, and I just look at every call and say, was this accurate? Was it not accurate? And then wait each call by the same amount, no matter how close it was. I think I mean, it's one is

certainly a question of difficulty. And then the other is just a question of how can I relay this evidence back out to fans the next morning? And so if I use this sort of incremental approach, I think it's definitely more confusing in terms of, you know, what the value of each missed call was, how do we come up with these values, whereas doing it sort of just like, was this right? Was it wrong? What percent of the time were you right? It's a much simpler thing to communicate. I guess related to that, I think one of the things that Ben and I have talked a lot about on the podcast as we anticipate the arrival of the robo zone is the process of education that's

going to need to go on with hitters certainly, and I guess pitchers too, but with fans more generally about what the zone is going to look like and sort of retraining them to have, you know, not that you always, again, have to react rationally as a fan to the call on the field, but to sort of retrain their intuitive sense of was that a ball or a strike and was that called correctly? And you're thinking about this a lot, right? How you present that information in a way that's digestible. And so I'm curious what you maybe think we could all be doing now to help fans understand what the zone might look like when we do get robo bumps. Because I continue to say, like, if you think people are grumpy now just just wait

because it's gonna it's gonna be pretty different in in some instances from what they're used to and I think that that might take some time to sort of acclimate ourselves to yeah it'll definitely be a change I think it'll be you know similar to other changes that have come in other sports in the you know in professional soccer. A lot of leagues are adding more stringent technology adjacent to offside rules where they draw these really specific lines. And there's pretty harsh reactions to that. Sports leagues all over the world are implementing new technology pretty much every season to

increase their performance. So I think you're right. There will definitely have to be some amount of, you know, just like you said, education about how fans should react and what they will know as a ball and as a strike. But I think ultimately, if it's well defined and it's transparent, they tell us how, you know, exactly it's measured, where the strike zone is, the top and the bottom specifically, then, you know, personally, I would the strike zone is the top and the bottom specifically then you know personally i would be much happier i think just knowing that a ball was a pitch was a ball or a pitch was a strike to know exactly what it was i think would stop keeping me up at

night versus you know what i know now which is well was it correct was it incorrect there's it's you know much more big now so regardless of of whether, I think just being able to be certain in the call would make a lot of fans pretty happy. And were you a RoboUmps advocate before you started this project? And if so, are you still as staunch an advocate now that you have built a brand that depends on fallible, flawed humans? Yeah, it's interesting. I was definitely, so I've always been pro-Robo-Ump, just because, you know, I'm of the opinion that if there is a way to improve accuracy, we should do it. You know, nothing more, I don't have a vendetta against umpires or anything like that. I just think that this is a blind spot in the game that,

you know, if we're trying to increase the amount of runs that are scored every year, this is decreasing runs. And if we have the technology to do it, which maybe we don't at the moment, but if we did, then we should implement it. But certainly now, having done, you know, this for a while, I think I've sort of changed my opinion. I'm still definitely pro robo-ump, but I'm less, you might call it anti-umpire than I was before. I think I came into it not necessarily knowing how difficult the job of being an umpire really is. I mean, my work is hard enough already. And I'm just telling you, like, if this number was greater than this number, or this number was less than this number, but they have to do it in real

time. I mean, it's an incredibly difficult job. So, you know, my opinion is not that, oh, well, umpires are terrible. Let's just throw in the robots. My opinion is that umpires might not be doing, you know, they're not performing as well as you would expect like a computer to do, but they're still performing really well. So, you know, we shouldn't bash them. They're, you know, they're trying their best. But at the same time, you know, this is a sport and there are rules in the sport that are well defined within the rulebook. And yet somehow they're just like not followed a lot in the sport that are well defined within the rulebook. And yet, somehow, they're just like not followed a lot in the game of baseball, which is really interesting. There

are not a lot of analogous things in other sports. Like if you watched a football game, it would not be common to see them, you know, call a touchdown when it's not a touchdown, like, you know, 15 or 20% of the time in a game That would be sort of absurd and you know That is Create a ref chain, but yeah You know it's interesting. I have gotten a lot of comments about like will you be making this for hockey? Will you be making this for NCAA basketball? Stuff like that. But baseball yours out in the public sphere sort of increases support for robo-umps, which I think is pretty robust as it is. And again, as we were saying, it's not news to anyone that umpires make mistakes.

But I do wonder whether having this hard data has really confirmed that way of thinking. And Meg and I have some reservations about that, as we've discussed on the show. Not so much about the technology, which might not be 100% perfect, but would probably be more accurate and consistent than humans. But, you know, not only are we not anti-umpire in the sense that we recognize how hard the job is, but we're pro-catcher and catching. And we enjoy the craft of catching and framing. And I also have some concerns about what will happen if the strike zone is the same on every pitch, which sounds like a positive. It sounds like it should be the same on every count,

but I do think that there may be some advantages to having it shrink and expand as the count changes to essentially give an advantage to whichever party is behind in the count. And so I do kind of wonder, you know, given that hitters are already sort of screwed if they're down 0-2 or 1-2 in this day and age, if the strike zone is the same size on 0-2 as it is on any other count, then the job gets even harder. Whereas now, you know, you might get a little leeway there. The zone shrinks a little bit. You could take that borderline pitch, whereas you wouldn't be able to then. So I think that keeps plate appearances more competitive, more entertaining maybe. So I will be curious to see how that works out. But the reason why I wondered about how this

changes public support is that I was curious about whether you have heard from the league at all about your efforts here, because I know going back years when pitch FX data first became available and people were doing umpire analysis, MLB was pretty touchy about that back then. And I think they felt like, hey, we're giving you this free data, although they did that by accident initially, but we're giving you this data and you although they did that by accident initially. But we're giving you this data, and you're using it to make us look bad or make umpires look bad or make the sport look bad. And so there used to be umpire cards on Brooks baseball. And I believe that MLB asked or ordered that those be taken down.

And so maybe that's why there was an opportunity for you here that there weren't widely available leaderboards or you're not going to find this on Baseball Savant, right? But I wonder whether that's changed, A, because I think the information is more accessible. There's this public stats API now, so it would be hard to restrict how people use that information, I think. Whereas in the past, there would be individual feeds that would be sent to certain sites and in theory could be cut off. But also because MLB seems to be pro-Robo these days. So not that they want to embarrass the umpires

or make people doubt the legitimacy of the games, especially with gambling going on and everything. But I wonder whether they think, well, you know, if it convinces people that we need robo-umps, then maybe it's nice to have it out there. So have you heard in either direction, anything, any pushback, any praise, anything? Well, the short answer is no, I haven't heard anything from the MLB specifically. I have heard, you know, some stuff from umpires just in general online and, you know, who had some

reservations about the way I did stuff. And coincidentally, the ones who, you know, first convinced me that it was going to be a good idea to add some level of tolerance into my accuracy ratings was actually a group of umpires. So, you know, it's not like it's been all sorts of, you know, animosity between me and the umpires online and certainly not between me and the MLB, at least as of now, crossing my fingers as I say that. I have not gotten, you know, any cease and desist orders as of yet. And I had sort of the same question about whether this has opened up any other opportunities for you. has opened up any other opportunities for you. I wonder whether a project of this nature has brought you to Teams' attention or whether that is something that you want to pursue, because I see on your website you've done a lot of database projects and some of them have nothing

to do with baseball or sports. So is this a direction you want to keep going in or have you kind of been pulled in this direction because of the response? It's probably a little bit of both, honestly. There certainly has been, I mean, you know, it's a, it's a big project and there's some amount of luck in it that it took off, but, you know, it was a lot of work. And so I'm very thankful that seemingly some people have, some people have noticed. But yeah, like, like you said, I mean, there's still a lot of other types of research that I like doing. Yeah, like, thank you for plugging the website. You can check that out. And yeah, so I'm not exactly sure. I'm still, you know, not like, I don't have to decide at this moment. So yeah, I'm definitely still looking into some, you know, different things that I can

do. Yeah. And for people who don't know your backstory, I mean, you're still in school, right? You're studying. Can you kind of explain what you're studying and what skills you've picked up that have been helpful here if people want to do this sort of thing themselves or figure out what skills would be useful to create this kind of project? What has led you down this path? Sure, I'd love to. So I'm currently a sophomore and I study statistics and computer science. And there's a lot of things that I think are sort of important on a project like this. One is definitely just finding something that you're super interested in.

That makes everything easier. The work becomes a lot less tedious. It's much easier to work for long periods of time and work on many things at once if you actually enjoy the work that you're doing. So try to find a project that you find interesting. And then, you know, I didn't really know a ton about, you know, programming and APIs

before I got started in this project. So, you know, if you're trying to start a project, definitely don't consider the fact that you don't know everything about what you're about to embark on as a reason not to. So yeah, that's like definitely some advice that I have. And then I guess the other advice that I have is, I don't, I mean, this is sort of like a great case study of just put something out into the world

and then maybe people will enjoy it. And then maybe you will benefit from that. So, you know, just like kind of go for it, I guess. That's kind of the philosophy that I had while doing this and evidently it worked out somewhat well. Well, assuming that you stick with the Empire stuff for a little while, what are some site features that you have planned?

I'm not asking you for a specific thing. I'm giving you an opportunity to tell us all what you have planned coming up so people will stop asking you. That is a great question. So the big one is, well, there are a few big ones, I should say. One is like more long-term data from years past. And so part of that will be, you know, like over time analysis that you'll be able to do. Another one is, this is sort of more of a technical thing on my side, but like every morning I still wake up and press the run button, which I kind of would not like to do in the future. It's much better than what it was before which was me typing in all of this data on to like a template that I had Built but now you know, it's much easier I just press this little green play button and it goes for me

But it's still kind of a pain because you know, sometimes I forget and then I feel bad and then I get all these tweets And you know, where are the scorecards? So instead I would probably like to automate that at some point And you know, there's just some other stuff her the scorecards. So instead, I would probably like to automate that at some point. And, you know, there's just some other stuff. I think really just the long term one. And then, you know, they're like I sort of lightly mentioned earlier, a season long consistency metric for umpires, because the metric that I use right now is it's fine, but there's definitely ways to improve it. But only ones that work, at least from what I've thought of on a season as a whole,

instead of on a game by game basis. So adding something like that to the umpires page, maybe. But for the moment, you know, it's summer. So I think I'm just going to relax and keep working and we'll see what happens. Yeah, well, congrats on the reception and on launching the site and your

success in finding an audience. And hopefully the umpires don't feel too bad about it. You know that some people feel sorry for umpires and I kind of do too. I guess they sign up for it. They know that they're going to be in for some scrutiny if they're a major league official and the information is out there. And of course, they're all getting graded and evaluated behind the scenes constantly with MLB's own zone evaluation system. So not necessarily anything new to them, but I am curious to see how it all works out with RoboUmps and how that would change the culture of umpiring and just how it'll change the way the game is played and the aesthetics and all of that but that is a matter for future seasons although probably not in the too distant

future i would think so yeah you can find the twitter account umpire scorecards at ump scorecards you can find the website with the faq and all the stats and glossary and contact information at umpscorecards.com. And you can find Ethan's website at ethan-singer.com. He is also on Twitter, although not nearly as active as he is at umpscorecards at Ethan P. Singer. So thank you very much, Ethan. Looking forward to what you come up with next. Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me on. All right. That will do it for today. By the way, the outcome of that owners meeting I mentioned earlier in the episode that was reportedly scheduled to touch on sticky substances is apparently that the crackdown is coming. Ken Rosenthal tweeted, MLB informed

owners this week of severity of issue with pitchers applying foreign substances to baseballs. Enforcement is coming, but league will follow a process involving communicating with players and umpires unions as well as all 30 clubs. John Heyman tweeted, evidence was presented at the MLB owners meetings to suggest that the use of illegal foreign substances by pitchers trying to enhance spin rates and get an edge is very prevalent in the game, so the crackdown will now commence in earnest. Joel Sherman says there are three areas of emphasis. First, placing a greater responsibility on teams

to enforce rules against doctoring the ball within their own clubs. Second, empowering umpires to check, especially caps, gloves, and uniforms for signs of illegal substances on a pitcher. The strategy likely would be for umpires to check each pitcher as he enters the game, remove any questionable piece of uniform or equipment,

and provide a warning that a return of an illegal substance would lead to ejection from the game and discipline by MLB. And third, what we talked about earlier, stepping up enforcement in the minor leagues as a way to address a systemic problem within the sport. So we shall see, perhaps starting sometime soon. And then maybe we will see whether the league-wide spin rate dips, which would be very interesting. 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. Jacob Davis, Richard Anderson, Ted Miles, Sam Klein, and Ryan Fraser. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. 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 Meg coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance and we will be back with another episode

before the end of the week. Talk to you soon. I don't care what it does to me.