Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1723: Absolute Zero

Episode Date: July 23, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the return of the debate about batting around and other unending debates they do or don’t care about, whether MLB should borrow the NFL’s plan to make clubs forfeit games that can’t be played because of unvaccinated players, Willians Astudillo being back in the big leagues, and listeners’ […]

How can you tell the good act from the bad? He can't even remember his name. How can you do what needs to be done when he's a follower and not a leader? Hello and welcome to episode 1723 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lemberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hi. Meg, I got sucked into the batting around debate again. What? I don't know how this always happens to me. Ben!

I care about it for some reason. I've tried not to care. I don't care about every other internet debate that comes up again and again. I don't care if a hot dog is a sandwich. I don't care what kind of chili you like or dislike. Really, every food-related debate. Don't care. Matter of taste, semantics, whatever. Even other divisive baseball conversations that come up over and over again, like striking out the side, which is something that we've hashed out on this show before. To strike out the side, does it have to be a 1-2-3 inning or is it just that every out has to be a strikeout? Don't feel strongly about it. But batting around, for some reason, I get invested and I take a position and it maddens me that other people take a conflicting position and people keep bringing it up over and over and over again and will never be free of it.

I mean, I warned you, Ben. I warned you on Twitter. It is a trap. I saw your tweet. I know it is. That's bait. I know it is. No mind has ever been changed on this matter as far as I can tell.

It's something that gets passed down. I don't know if it's passed down from whoever taught you about baseball or my theory is that it's just like your local broadcasting crew when you are introduced to baseball, whatever they say batting around is, that's what you assume batting around is, which I think that's one reason why it gets my goat is that I feel like I found out relatively late in life that anyone disagreed with me on this. I was not even aware that there was a debate. And so I think because I wasn't aware of that from the start, I'm taken aback every time because we've had this conversation on the show. We don't have to relitigate it here, even though everyone else is. But I am a batting around his 10 batters person, and I feel very strongly about that. And I guess I understand how anyone could disagree. There's a reasonable argument on both sides. But really, the fault is with me for allowing myself to care about this. hitter hitting twice in an inning right yes okay we are in agreement that is how i think of it i am sympathetic to the persistence of there being a debate it is a strange thing about because i think that most people relate this question to a clock face like that's how we understand it and it is it is an odd thing about how we mark the delineation of time how we note the change from one day to the next right that there is some simultaneity in that moment when the clock strikes

midnight right that i get it but also i don't care like i think I'm right. I see why other people think what they do. I don't agree with them. They don't agree with me. We don't have other stuff. Are we really so bereft of new things to worry about? I'm surprised by that because Twitter seems to introduce new controversy that I never knew was controversy every day. It seems to be an endless, an endless spring, a font of controversy, as it were. And so it is remarkable that we retread

this one. But maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. Perhaps what is appealing about this one is that unlike so many of the other things that we have decided to litigate on twitter imperfect forum for it that it is this one is like it doesn't matter right it is extremely low stakes so low stakes entirely inconsequential to any matters of state and so health and safety yeah yeah so maybe i mean the only person whose health or safety you're potentially concerned with in this scenario is the pitchers because who knows what's happening inside that guy's body and mind but i i saw it and i am a walking meme because i i i did the the shaking finger that's bait i did it in my office and then i was like i guess i have to

post this gif because otherwise i just live as the the gif forever i just become the meme it's like saying candy man into the mirror or something he shall appear i blame mlb's cut for account for restarting this i think they're intentionally drumming up this debate over and over again, because 2015 was like a big flare-up of this debate. And there were like reputable papers that were writing about this. The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post were doing articles about this. And at that time, MLB's Cut4 site did a blog about it. And I think that's probably when we talked about it on the podcast for the first time. And then there was an extended discussion in the Effectively Wild Facebook group, which was memorialized on Deadspin because it just went on and on to an absurd degree. But MLB's Cut4 account in July 2019, they made a video

where they surveyed a bunch of all-stars about this question during the all-star break. They asked them whether they thought that it was nine batters or 10 batters, and then they put that up, and that restarted it. And then they just did it again last week, I think it was, where they talked to another selection of All-Stars at the All-Star game, and they asked them about it too. And so I think that is what is happening here. They know that it will get people like me going. And so they bring it up again and again, and it gets us every time. And in both of those occasions, they did a poll, they did a Twitter poll about what people think. And just from both watching the videos that they did where they asked actual all-stars, and most of them seemed to lean toward 10 batters. And in the polls that they did on Twitter in 2019, it was 70.8% of respondents said

that it was 10 batters. And this time around, it was 77.1% of respondents who were in favor of 10. So I guess the 10 contingent is growing here among Cut4's Twitter followers. So we are firmly in the majority here, I think, at least on Twitter, although as we know, Twitter is not real life. But I think we're in the right and I think we're in the majority, but there's a significant enough minority that will put up heated arguments on the other side of this that it's just never ending. And I love when people will just like enter into evidence things that have nothing to do with

baseball and they think that settles it you know hey study the lyrics from Bill Haley's rock around the clock and therefore you will see that it is you know that does not necessarily settle the debate it becomes very much a semantic one like I can say you know the first batter has to come up again it's around right it's not batting through the first batter has to come up again. It's a round, right? It's not batting through the order. You have to come full circle. But then people will say, well, on a circle, don't you reach the same point in the circle when it gets to the point where you started?

And it's just totally meaningless and nonsensical. And I feel bad for even bringing it up again. I'm engaged in internal debate about whether I want to respond to that more or if I want to just be the change I want to see in the world and say, yeah. Yeah.

Just say next topic, please. Ben, next topic, please. Okay. So another thing that there is unfortunately debate about and that you also tweeted about is this new NFL solution possibly to unvaccinated players. So the NFL informed the clubs that if a game cannot be rescheduled during the upcoming 18-week season due to a COVID outbreak among unvaccinated players, the team with the outbreak will forfeit and be credited with a loss for playoff seeding. So that seems like a stronger incentive than we have so far in MLB, at least, where there are certainly rules that get relaxed and protocols

and everything, but you don't actually forfeit a game. You might put yourself at a worse position in a game because you have fewer players available to you because they're not vaccinated, but this would be a significant step. And I don't know whether this is something that could be ported over to MLB easily, because obviously you do have a stronger players association, and maybe there would be some disagreement about whether that's something that should be agreed to, even though, of course, the majority of union members have been vaccinated and agree with being vaccinated. But still, it might be tougher to implement in MLB, but it's kind of a middle ground between just banning players who've not been vaccinated and saying

you're required to be vaccinated to play and doing what we are currently doing, which has not been vaccinated and saying you're required to be vaccinated to play and doing what we are currently doing, which has not been sufficient to convince everyone. I think that I have two, I have a couple of thoughts here. The first of which to your point about the Players Association, I think there's one sticking point in this that would be particularly irksome to the MLBPA. And I could see needing to either be modified or or abandoned altogether that if a game is canceled and cannot be rescheduled within the the regular 18 week schedule and for all you nfl fans out there yes we are doing 18 weeks this year it makes no sense that neither team's players will

receive pay for that week which i don't, particularly for the team that is not experiencing an outbreak. Why should they suffer? Which I imagine that what they are, in addition to like owners never minding if they don't have to pay players, I imagine that what they're trying to do here is foster some solidarity, right? That you have responsibility, like, you know, this is like solving the issue of the commons or what have you. responsibility like you know this is like solving the the issue of the commons or what have you but i think it would be harder to pull off quite this way an mlb and have it be as strong an incentive

which isn't to say that it wouldn't be an incentive and potentially for some teams a very powerful one but i think that part of what makes this so meaningful in the nfl is the brevity of their season right despite me complaining about there being an extra game tacked on there. Now that the stakes for any individual game are just so much higher because of what proportion of the season it accounts for and the implications that can have to your, to your seating in the playoffs. So I think that that would make it tricky to have the same, to, you know, sort of have the same oomph. And I, I also think that when you look at baseball, the number of sort of dichotomous haves and have nots strikes me as greater than it does in

football, especially over the course of a long season, we tend to see like the good teams be good and the bad teams be bad. Whereas I think there's both more inherent volatility in the NFL and I think a bit more parity in terms of the quality of teams. So I imagine that for a lousy team, this is not necessarily the incentive that we would want it to be. Indeed, if you're a really lousy team and you're in a hard tank, you might have a perverse incentive to have games forfeited. I mean, that would be, you'd get in trouble, I would hope.

I would hope that the commissioner would be like, no, hold on a minute. But I think that the number of teams where, you know, one or two games is going to be the thing that keeps them in or out of the playoffs is is small although we do have some division races that are quite tight this year so it's not that it wouldn't matter it's just that i don't think it's quite as broadly applicable as it is in the nfl but i do think that this is a pretty powerful incentive to get vaccinated the risk you carry

if you are not and your team has to shut down from an outbreak is tremendous like this you know this may well make or break a couple of teams seasons depending i don't know what the current vaccination rate is among the nfl player population so i don't know i will admit to not knowing how hard or easy a time they have had in making the case to players that they need to get vaccinated so i'm not sure how big of an issue this actually is, but one can imagine it making quite a bit of difference in any given season. So yeah, those are sort of my thoughts. Get your shot.

Yeah, we can hope that this won't be as acute an issue by next season. Like this isn't something that they're going to implement in MLB during the season, obviously. So by next April, you know, maybe enough people and players will have been vaccinated or maybe the Delta variant won't be so prevalent as it is now. And maybe it won't be as big a problem next year, but it very well might be. We are very likely stuck with this thing for the foreseeable future. So you might have to consider something like this. And yeah, maybe it might make some sense because, you know, I have some, I don't know, sympathy or sadness for

people who have just been bombarded by misinformation, you know, in some segments of the population. It's like, in a way, you could say it's not their fault, you know, like they're just in the wrong bubble or echo chamber or whatever, and they've been kind of brainwashed in a sense. But MLB players are not in that camp, you know, maybe they were at some point, but these players are getting advice from teammates, from trainers, from front office people with their teams, like they have access to the accurate information. front office people with their teams. They have access to the accurate information. So persisting in ignorance, if that's what it is, is just, I don't have a lot of sympathy for that. And I don't know whether there are certain players who think the risk of side effects from the vaccine in the short term is greater than my chances of contracting COVID and having a symptomatic case. Like, I guess you could construct that argument because, you know, I didn't have any side

effects when I got my vaccine, but you did. You know, I know plenty of people who did and are kind of knocked out of commission for a day or two. And so I guess you could say, well, if I'm an elite athlete and I think I can stay safe and get through the season without this, then I'm not going to jeopardize a game or two where I might not be able to play or something like that. I don't know that I've seen many players make that argument. Usually they don't explain their rationale. They just say it's a personal choice or whatever so that they don't have to get into it. And usually there isn't

a follow-up. And even if there were a follow-up, we kind of know what the answer would be. So, you know, I think at this point, like if you still haven't made the decision to do it, I don't know what would convince you other than even stronger incentives like this or disincentives to not doing it. So that's something that might make sense to consider if this is still sort of the status quo heading into next year. Yeah. I think that if you have access to expertise, and we should say that it goes

beyond just trainers and front office personnel, both the Players Association and the league have made epidemiologists and other doctors available to players to answer their questions about the vaccine. So there is a good bit of expertise sort of at their disposal to help to answer sort of earnest concerns about what this means for their own health and and what have you if that is not persuasive right if the the unfortunate sort of political soup that this has this issue has found its way into is what is drawing you away from getting a vaccine, I think the idea that it has the potential to significantly impact your economic well-being, unfortunately, will be a pretty powerful incentive for a lot of guys. And obviously, that hit is more significant in an 18-game season

on a per-game basis than it is for 162 games. But, you know, I think that there is something to the NFL's understanding of sort of how those incentives weigh out against one another and what might end up sort of ruling the day. And yeah, I think, again, it's just it's it's so it speaks to a broader sort of societal and educational issue that this is the conversation we have to be having around this rather than being able to more immediately and sort of viscerally communicate the relief that you experience when, you know, you know, your loved ones are safe and you know that you are safe and that, you know, you are not, um, in a position where you are going to as readily endanger other people like that, that isn't what,

what tugs is, is really too too bad because that feels like it should be such a powerful message, right? And it feels amazing to feel that, right? Well, you only feel the relief if you're worried about those things in the first place. I suppose that that is true. I suppose that that is true. So, you know, it's one of those conversations

that I just, it makes you sad. It makes you bummed out because it is indicative of a broader problem that we have when it comes to science education and misinformation and all sorts of other things. But I think that this approach, while crude, does also speak powerfully to people. And, you know, if it's the thing that makes the difference for them and is what persuades them to get a shot i don't i don't care like the lottery things great you want you need to pay people five hundred dollars okay fine like whatever whatever we have to do i support

us doing because some you know it's getting kind of grim out there again. And I would like that to stop personally. Yes. Yeah. And I see a lot of people say that these are professional athletes. Like they'll do anything. They'll work so hard. They will try to optimize every little aspect of their performance just to squeeze out a little extra edge. And yet they will not get this shot, which, you know, maybe puts them in jeopardy or puts other people in jeopardy or puts their team in jeopardy, if only just because they might not be available for a game.

And it's true that does seem kind of confounding that you have these people who, on the one hand, are incredibly motivated to really maximize their performance and then are doing this thing that seemingly is the opposite of that. And I guess I wonder just what percentage of the players are thinking that way and what percentage are just sort of subject to the politicization of this issue that has influenced so many people's thinking. Are there some players who are saying, yes, I know this would be a good idea, but I'm not going to do it because the political party or leader that I disagree with says I should or something? Or are they just in the camp that thinks, no, this will actually hurt me because I've been subjected to this misinformation about it being harmful? Or are there some who just think it's just not a significant risk in my age group and everything, which is true to an extent. But of course, if you're unvaccinated, then these

strains can maybe mutate more and grow more powerful. And then we end up with a Delta variant, et cetera. So I don't know how many players are actually looking at it that way. I would assume that most players who have chosen not to get vaccinated don't think that they are costing their team a chance to win or something or that they are hurting themselves. I don't know what percentage like think that way or just think, no, this is all nonsense and there is no actual risk. I would assume that it's probably mostly the latter. And so in that way, there is no actual conflict there to resolve, really. You know, they don't think that they are hurting themselves or their team. They're just probably wrong about that. So this is an issue that I think, you know, should be even less

subject to debate than batting around. And yet it provokes even stronger debates. And with infinitely higher stakes. Yes. Much higher stakes. All right. So we're going to do some emails today. I have one that inspired a stat blast. But last thing I want to say before we get to emails, you anticipated on our last episode that when we talked about possible variations on the cycle that it would prompt a lot of feedback.

And you were right about that. We got a lot of emails and tweets and Facebook comments. So I have collected some of those suggestions and I will just run them by you here. Maybe we can do a little lightning round on alternate cycles. And most of these alternate cycles that were suggested are for like bad games. It seems like people suggested many more ways that you could like suck in several ways within the same game than you could excel in several ways within the same game. So I don't know what that says about us or our audience or human nature. But Dennis suggested the defensive cycle, which is a double play, a triple play, a put out separate from the double play and triple play, and an assist separate from the double play and triple play.

So just kind of filling up the stat sheet on defense, the defensive cycle. Sure. I mean, like, we should just have several different cycles. It should be like, you know, it should be like Wagner. Ring cycles? I guess there's only one ring cycle, isn't there? Oh, undone. Undone, my own joke.

Undone. Well, there are multiple parts to that cycle. That's true. Dennis also suggests the hustle cycle, which is the steal of second, steal of third, infield hit or bunt hit, and extra base taken. infield hit or bunt hit and extra base taken and maybe also reaching on a drop third strike or other candidates could be a hustle double which would be kind of tough to quantify or reached on error which may or may not involve hustle but that's the basic idea the hustle cycle i wouldn't i suppose that if we put steel of home in there it starts to be so rare that it just effectively isn't a cycle that is ever achieved, right? Right.

That's what I'm understanding. degree of rarity where it's not like unheard of it's not impossible it's not vanishingly rare but it's rare enough that it seems sort of special and notable when it happened and yeah you have to be not too common or it's not exciting anymore see no hitters at the beginning of the season but it has to be also like not unheard of or we just you know it won't be worth paying attention to so andrew patreon supporter suggested out of all the possible cycles this has to be the worst pick off caught stealing put out on the base pass and runner interference so you know that's kind of in that camp of that's really rare yeah but the bad base running cycle basically yeah yeah like the the toot plan cycle sort of plan cycle

and jr along those lines says after listening to y'all discuss what would be the opposite cycle i liked ben's idea of strikeout double play triple play and missing one more so i thought of two the pickoff is always embarrassing that would make a great mark of the final stain of futility i even thought about making it caught looking swinging strike strikeout, and then double and triple play. Either works for me. So these are just like collections of bad outcomes. Just the cycles of futility, essentially. Does a two-plan cycle start with beans?

We got this tweet from at MLB Hall of Misery Tagging along on the cycle convo I would like to propose the silent cycle Because it sounds cool It's all the ways of getting on without making contact So hit by pitch Walk, intentional walk And reaching after a drop third strike So I kind of like that one

The no contact cycle I like that one I'm getting a bit hung up by the idea that some of those things are like i i attribute i don't know i don't know if i'll i will articulate this well but like a hit by pitch is like a you know it's like a taking one for the team kind of thing and walks are a mark of patience and then those other things are like other people goofing and so i don't know that i find it categorically consistent in that way but that isn't the category that it is

being ascribed and so i should get over it yeah i guess even reaching after a third strike like you need some amount of speed maybe like maybe there's some skill to that or even intentional walk i i guess well i don't know whether that would be a reflection on you or the hitter who is hitting behind you. But like, you know, an intentional walk, that means that you're good enough to scare someone unless you have like a pitcher coming up after you. So Austin says, listening to a discussion of cycles reminded me of a cycle I had theorized while playing youth baseball, where the potential for this series of unfortunate events is much

more likely. It is called the pain cycle or the unfortunate on base cycle. This is sort of similar. It captures different types of pain or unfortunate events that can come upon a hitter while resulting in them getting on base. The cycle consists of the following in any order, hit by pitch, reach on error, catcher's interference, strikeout plus wild pitch. Reach on error, catcher's interference, strikeout plus wild pitch. And the hit by pitch, of course, represents physical pain. The reach on error represents melancholy or depression as the positive of reaching base is spoiled by the 0 for 1. The catcher's interference represents a sense of being robbed or longing as the potential of the uninterfered swing is forever lost And then reaching on a strikeout With a wild pitch embodies failure

As from experience making it to first Never shakes the feeling of failure From striking out As a Mariners fan I find the sort of Like sad girl summer vibe of this Particular cycle to be appealing In a way that the others haven't but

Yeah aww You feel very melancholy at the end of it, I would imagine. Yeah, I like the breakdown of the different types of pain. Well, sure, because there are so many different kinds. Robert says, how about the futility cycle? See, people thinking along the same lines here. An out made with bases empty, an out made with one guy on, an out made with two guys on, and an out made with the bases loaded

so not just four outs but your teammates were doing their jobs as six runners get left on base i like this one but i will raise the same sort of objection to it that i did with bringing in a triple play in particular and also a double play which is that it is very dependent on the abilities of others and i i want there to be i want the the cycle to have rested ownership away from other players on the field which i know it never does perfectly but this one does strike me as being a little too dependent on the the victories of others but that might be nitpicky. Here's one from Phil. What about a strikeout cycle called strikeout, swinging strikeout, foul-tipped caught strikeout,

and dropped third strike, reaching base? I like this one because it acknowledges the dropped third strike as a strikeout, which is how it ought to function. So I think I like this one because it allows me to advance other bits of my ideology. Yeah. Jonathan says, I listened to your conversation about different kinds of cycles in episode 1722 and wanted to mention my idea for the stickless cycle, a cycle that can be achieved theoretically without a bat. This is very similar to the no contact cycle that we mentioned earlier. There are the classic four events that

need to take place, a walk, an intentional walk, a hit by pitch, and a reached on drop third strike. There's also the natural stickless cycle where the drop third strike is a called strike for a passed ball. So that would probably not happen, but that's sort of similar. Peter says, thought I might propose another bizarre cycle option among the many you might have gotten. And I call this the blunder cycle, as it's all on the hitter's ability to cause blunders by the defense. This one also has a potential statistical impossibility if one suggests it must all be done in the hitter's single time around the bases. Make it to first on a drop third strike. Advance to second on a throwing error on a hit.

Force the pitcher to balk. Advance to third. Make it to home on a throwing error on a hit, force the pitcher to balk, advance to third, make it to home on a pitch to the backstop. What I like about this potential case is that, like the infamous Will Craig-Javi Baez duel, the question of whether the hitter in this situation is some sort of mind genius or just incredibly lucky would lead to debate for days, months, years. One would have to ask if the hitter is doing something to influence the pitcher, the catcher, the infield, or anything. The score would be completed entirely through errors made by the defense. Obviously, the statistical possibility here is infinitely small, but isn't that the point of the podcast? I like it. Yeah. It's a pretty good one. Yeah.

All right. Joe says, I was listening to your discussion of a failure cycle and specifically how you talked about how we like both rarity and things that are in a player's control. So I thought of something I called the unforced error cycle. This is similar to the blunder cycle. Not exactly sure what the element should be, but I was thinking something like caught stealing, thrown out on the bases, two plans, fielding error, throwing error. So this could be defensive and offensive mistakes in the same game. defensive and offensive mistakes in the same game. Other potential elements are failed sacrifices or particularly failed sack bunts, passed balls for catchers, or you could even work in some hitting things that we could judge to be unforced, such as swinging strikeouts at pitches outside the zone

or grounding into a double play or something like that. See, I think that some of those things are a bit too esoteric for the average fan to really hold on to like you're not paying attention to swinging strikes outside the zone i mean maybe you are but i don't think most people do and so you want there to be some distance if you seemingly inspire a bunch of errors in the defense should we call it the bias cycle yeah that's me snapping at my microphone i bet it sounds great i can hear that yeah all right and i got two more here matthew says i'm adding another suggestion to what i am sure is a quickly growing pile falling on your conversation about a potential cycle of negative events a mega cycle if you will i agree with meg that a triple play feels more like a defensive

achievement as opposed to a failing by the batter here are the four categories that i would suggest strike out hitting into a double or triple play, being caught stealing, either making a fielding error or being thrown out trying to take an extra base. I lean toward making a fielding error because it is more clear cut and would allow for easier searching of old games. The case for using being thrown out trying to advance is that it makes all four events on the offensive side of the ball. And then the last one I have here is from Andrew, who says, on the subject of negative

cycles, my friend group has long referred to a strikeout, groundout, lineout, and flyout as having. Sorry, Dylan, about to do a swear. You know what? I'll spare Dylan the trouble of having to bleep this. I think you can all imagine it rhymes with hit for the cycle, but it substitutes a swear for hit. Yeah, I like that. The reasons for those four are largely arbitrary as with any cycle.

Pop-ups are aesthetically just a particularly poorly hit fly out, so it would be less interesting to include those as opposed to line outs or strikeouts. Although come to think of it, if we're taking the name of this seriously. A pop-up is a worse outcome than a line-out. I haven't looked into how often this occurs, but I presume this would be significantly more common than Ben's batted ball cycle, what with the current prevalence of strikeouts in the game. Whether or not you want it to be common is, of course, a matter of preference. And if you're interested in other silly cycles, we've also long referred to games with a single a double and two homers as a miggy cycle as we are detroiters and we figured that miggy would need to hit a second homer and actively choose to stop at third in order to ever hit for the cycle what a mean compliment

i know it kind of is it's like a very mean superlative. Yeah. He linked to a thread in our Facebook group where one of our listeners, Jessica Brand, was looking up both the players with the most Miggy cycles and the players with the most games where they finished a triple short of the cycle, the proverbial triple short of the cycle. I did a little baseball reference stat head search myself for that. the cycle. I did a little baseball reference stat head search myself for that. And the players who have had the most games where they are triple short of the cycle are among the best hitters in history, as you might imagine. Lou Gehrig has the most ever with 42, at least since 1901. And then it's Babe Ruth at 41, A-Rod at 39, Miguel Cabrera at At 37, Albert Pujols. At 36, Ted Williams and Barry Bonds tied at 35. But the MIGI cycle, the games with no triples, but at least one single, at least one double, and at least two homers. There are five hitters who have tied with four such games. Bob Johnson, Vladimir Guerrero Sr., Ken Griffey Jr., Juan Gonzalez, and just decided to stop at third

because he wanted to get the cycle. And I'm not entirely sure what would happen in that event. I went to the rulebook and I tried to figure out if there was a rule specifically forbidding that. And the closest I could come up with is what is currently rule 4.01e, or at least it's a comment to rule 4.01e in the 2021 MLB rulebook, which says that the umpire shall not give an alternate ball to the pitcher until play has ended and the previously used ball is dead. After a thrown or batted ball goes out of the playing field, play shall not be resumed with an alternate ball until the runners have reached the bases to which they are entitled. After a home run is hit out of the playing grounds the umpire shall not deliver a new ball to the pitcher or the catcher until the batter hitting the home run has crossed

the plate which would suggest that the game at least according to the rules should just pause forever yeah if the runner stops at third then the umpire is not supposed to give a ball to the pitcher and the game is not supposed to go on in practice. I doubt that that is what would occur. I don't think that would freeze the game forever. I think we would find a way around this, but I don't know if there's a specific rule that says, no, you cannot stop at third. You have to run the bases. oh, you cannot stop at third. You have to run the bases. Yeah, I mean, I think that the rule book probably makes the not naive assumption that you want to score as many runs as you possibly can. I wonder if there is a single player. I don't know that there's even one player

in all of professional baseball. I'm not just talking about the majors. I mean, the minors too and NPB and the KBO and every professional league, the gents who are playing indie ball here in the States. I don't know that there is a single professional baseball player who would prefer to not score in order to achieve a cycle. I don't think that there is even one.

I suggest that N equals zero. Yeah, no, I mean, stopping at second when you need the double or something like that, maybe you would do that. I think there are fewer than ten guys who would do that. I think it's fewer than ten. I think it's fewer than ten. If this

were to happen, I like the idea of it being like Sam Miller's Skunk in the Outfield, where it just sort of stops the game and no one knows what to do. But if this were to happen in practice, I assume that probably the umpire would just eject the player maybe. Maybe. You'd have a pinch runner who would complete the home run trot or it might be like there have been a few real life situations like this where someone hits a ball over the fence and then the trot is interrupted at some point. Like in the 1999 NLCS, the Robin Ventura game, where he hit a ball over the fence and then he was just swarmed by all the Mets, who kind of stopped him after he crossed first base.

And so he never actually scored. And he was credited with a single, I believe, even though he hit the ball over the fence. And he was credited with a single, I believe, even though he hit the ball over the fence. And there is a similar situation like in the famous Harvey Haddix game in 1959 where Joe Adcock hit what should have been a three-run walk-off home run. But then Henry Aaron, who was on base, he passed second and then he saw the winning run score and he just left. He left the base path because the game was over. And then I think Adcock passed him. And so Adcock was credited with a double, I think, on that play and Aaron was out. And so they won the game by one run instead of it being a three run homer. It was a walk off double. So you could probably have a situation like that where the player would

get credit for, I guess, maybe you would get credit for the triple, though, in that case. Because if you do reach third base and then you refuse to go any further and you get ejected or, I don't know, you get mobbed at third base or something, then maybe you actually would get credit for the triple. So it could work in that sense yeah i mean maybe but i i think that i think that we'll never know because like i said there are zero yeah there's just zero there are zero guys who'd be like i don't want to hit a home run i'd rather be at third base that doesn't i don't i i i know it's a big it's a big country our country and so you can find pretty much every example of human behavior you would want to and i am confident that this is one that doesn't exist yeah all right oh and hey uh welcome back to the big leagues williams astadio i just have to mention that he's back unfortunately it's

at the expense of alex kirilov who is having wrist surgery and is probably done for the year but the silver lining for fans of astadio is that he is back in the big leagues. And you know what? Even if he is not a star, I'm just happier when he's here. The big leagues are a better place with Williams-Astadio. Yeah, agreed. All right. Let's answer a few questions here.

Tom, Patreon supporter. This is a sort of a quick one, simple one at least. Is Zach Greinke the last pitcher to get his first career win against the Montreal Expos? It seems like he would be, but no idea how I would check that. schedule and results page on Baseball Reference, and I looked at the winning pitcher in all of their losses after the game in which Greinke got his first win against the Expos, which was in June of that year, which just reminds you that Zach Greinke has been around for quite a while. This is his 18th major league season. He is 37. He'll be 38 in 1983. And he has had quite a career, but it started against the Expos. Well, it technically didn't start against the Expos. It started against the A's on May 22nd, 2004, but he got his first win against the Expos on June 8th, 2004. And I got

almost to the end of the 2004 schedule without finding anyone else Who got their first career win There were a few guys who got their second or third career win And I thought this was going to hold up It was going to be Zach Greinke But no, it is not Zach Greinke This fun fact, this trivia question Was stolen from him By Bartolome Fortunato

Of the Mets, Mets reliever Fortunato? Yes Who pitched against the Expos on September 22nd, 2004 and was credited with the win. And he was not the starting pitcher in that game. So Granke was the last starting pitcher to get his first career win against the Expos.

But Fortunato was the last to get his first win against the Expos. And he only ended up with one more Major League win. He finished his career 2-0 in the Major Leagues, but that first one came against the Expos. However, since CeCe Sabathia retired, Granke has been the only active pitcher to have pitched against the Expos. So he does have that distinction of last pitcher to have pitched against them who is still in MLB. Fortunato. Yeah.

Human names are the best. They're the best. We have so many good names. All right. Sean says, let me first say I am totally opposed to the zombie runner and any other similar rule in extras. Thank you very much, Sean. All emails to Effectively Wild should start with that, even if they are unrelated to the zombie runner rule. I will not read on unless you state that in your first sentence. I believe the game should be played the same in the 14th inning as the first,

but a thought occurred to me that I'm wondering if it could be a compromise of sorts between traditional extra inning purists and the zombie runner. I'm talking, of course, about a ghost runner, and many people mistakenly call the zombie runner I'm talking of course about A ghost runner and many people Mistakenly call the zombie runner A ghost runner but Sean here is talking About an actual ghost runner Like the kind he played with as a kid Well no not literally

I guess but It would not be surprising If we got that email either but This is not that Sean continues instead of the zombie runner, in extras you'd put a ghost runner at second base. This runner, like the way I played it as a kid, would only advance when he was forced to advance.

So if the batter hits a double, the ghost runner only makes it to third. Essentially, the only way to score a ghost runner would be for a real-life player to get to third base. This would make it easier to score, and easier to score multiple runs than the standard, the traditional setup, which would lessen the chance of a tie inning after inning,

but also would not be as easy to score as the pass ball, sack fly, game over type zombie runner scenarios. To be clear, I also envision this as a true ghost runner in that there's nobody actually running the bases. We just count a run once a batter reaches third or two runs if a batter scores. It'd be confusing as hell and we'd need some more back-end coding to account for these runs in the statistics, but the more I think about it, the more I think I'd prefer this to the current zombie rule. I also think there's some benefit to at least more people being familiar with a ghost runner than a zombie runner. Not many kids would start an inning with a runner on second, but growing up playing in the backyard, we often had ghost runners. This might be very dumb and apologies if it's been proposed before elsewhere. I hate even

giving MLB the idea because I very much want to return to normal extra innings. But if we have to compromise, is this merely a bad idea or the worst idea? and my initial reaction is that the zombie runner rule is a very bad idea and this is a worse idea than that and so this is in fact the worst idea i agree with you i i just don't imagine i mean the the apart from anything else the idea that you wouldn't actually have a guy out there and allow the defense to remove the possibility of a run, right? That seems like a non-starter. So there's that problem.

I don't know any literal ghosts, so that's another gating factor. But yeah, I think that what we should strive for is to not compromise on the underlying principle that this does not represent baseball as it is played normally and that it is sort of an unnecessary alteration to the game's mechanics um outside of you know pandemic times uh because as we discussed last time they're just really like the number of games that are the marathons the 17 18 20 innings like they're just they're vanishingly small as a part of the overall sort of game pool in any given season so no and also i'm just thinking about

actually having to code this um not me personally but you know but like us at at Fangrafts or BP or Baseball Reference and it being just a real pain in the ass. So I think that it's bad for that reason too, although things being inconvenient to code has truly never stopped anyone before. So I don't imagine it being dispositive in this moment. Yes. I'm sure Sean Fortman could figure this out and David Appelman and Sean Dolinar could figure appleman and sean dolan are good oh sure yeah but they'd be annoyed the whole time yes right like they could definitely do it because they're all very good at what they do but they would be irritated the entire time the worst part is the spectator experience like can you can you imagine like being at the ballpark and you have to keep in mind that there's a theoretical runner on that base and then the score changes on the scoreboard without anyone actually crossing home plate visibly.

Oh, nightmare. On the broadcast, do you think that they would superimpose a floating sheet or a ghost runner or a stick figure or something? Yeah, I think they would. Yeah, I think they would. The Ghostrunner stick figure something. Yeah, I think you would. But in the ballpark, you wouldn't really be able to do that unless you have like some kind of augmented reality solution or something. So, yeah, I think this would be terrible and confusing.

I do like that it would be a little harder to score. Yeah. But it's not worth the tradeoff. At least the zombie runner you can see. And you can also like tag out you know or or he could do something good or bad on the bases whereas the ghost runner cannot do anything except move station to station so yes this is uh the worst idea but a valiant attempt at trying to bridge the gap here sure it's just uh it somehow takes a terrible idea and, uh, does the opposite of improve upon it. Yeah. I mean, sometimes you gotta, you gotta throw stuff at the wall and

it doesn't all stick. And so I applaud that. I think that there are times, you know, baseball is, isn't, is in some ways a very straightforward sport and in other ways is quite complicated. And I think that in terms of making it something that is enjoyable from a spectator perspective, we should earn that complication, right? It should be complicated in a necessary kind of way. We shouldn't overcomplicate otherwise simple moments just for the sake of it, because it can get quite confusing

and people aren't going to remember. And maybe, although maybe we would finally have more use for like the the technology they use to like bring tupac back um because i feel like that's probably been sitting around somebody invented that and then they were like oh well yeah right the holographic runner yeah waiting for more use cases here but uh i don't want baseball to be one of them because i think it's unnecessarily confusing and it makes it, you know, it takes the like defense out of it in a weird way. And I don't I don't care for any of that.

I would be excited to see how broadcasts account for it for like one game. So maybe the solution is to try it in spring training and see how the broadcasts do. And we know it's bad. We know they'll they'll you know, it's not their fault. It's a it's bad. We know it's not their fault. It's a hard thing to do well because it's a bad idea. So maybe we try it for one game so that someone can get an article out of it. But that's the extent of the run that I'd like it to see. I thought of another ultimately meaningless point of contention that bothers me more than batting around and almost as much as the zombie runner rule, which is MLB versus the MLB.

Oh, that's that's like a pet peeve, which, you know, you could say I should let it go. And everyone understands what it means Like when someone says the MLB I understand what they're saying So I should say hey you have successfully Conveyed your meaning here That is the purpose of language I should not be a prescriptivist about this And yet I am And I don't know anecdotally at least

It seems like uses of the MLB Have been on the rise Really? To me at least I hope that that's not the case and that it just bothers me so much that I've noticed it more. But that is one that I cannot abide. No, I can't edit more stuff, Ben. I can't edit any more stuff. That's true. You have a real practical stake in that because you actually have to edit it out. Although I you could just say hey anything goes no we'll get it no see see you've you've i took this bait i took it ben took it took it gobbled it up that bait

no it doesn't sound right when you say it it is it is not to me it is on i guess it does i don't see but here's here's the thing about this. Can I make you feel better about feeling fussy about it? Sure. I don't think that people who are using the MLB, and look, we all say silly stuff. We all make grammatical errors. We all typo. So it's not a big deal.

It doesn't make you like a monster or anything. We're not so fussed by it as to say that but i don't think that the that the folks who routinely say the mlb are doing it with any kind of conviction that that is the correct way to say something unlike batting around where the people who believe that you know it's just that the the leadoff hitter does not have to then bat again like they firmly believe that that is the correct position and that you and i and 77 of fans apparently because you know i'm sure that that that twitter poll was representative are wrong i think we're wrong whereas i think that this is just a weird slip of the tongue where they are used to referring to the nfl and the NBA and aren't really thinking about why that makes sense when you break down

the acronym into its constituent words and why it doesn't make sense when you do the same thing for Major League Baseball. So I think it's okay for us to say, hey, like that's not quite right because they aren't taking a moral stand. They don't have a perspective on this. They're just making a small error. And, you know, one day they might be at a dinner party and they'll say the MLB and they won't realize that someone who works for MLB will be there. And then that person will give them a look like you don't even know what you're saying and they'll feel embarrassed. And so what we're really doing is sparing them the inevitable embarrassment of a bad dinner party. So we should say, excuse me, it's actually MLB.

Yeah. Well, and we need to be nice about it. If you're a jerk about this stuff, then you start to get into really fussy prescriptivist territory that we have no interest in going there. So we should be nice. But I think it's fine to say hey uh by the way you know uh think about it when you say like you wouldn't say the major league baseball unless you're referring to the baseball used in the major league right yes so uh so yeah i i think that it's fine to have a perspective on this and to politely and yet consistently share that perspective with those who err. Because what are editors if not the most annoying person you know who goes to dinner parties? Right.

Yeah. That one bothers me much more than, say, you know, unique and whether you can be more unique or the most unique. That one I'm kind of okay with because I think there can be degrees of uniqueness and that we are all unique in some way, but some people are unique in more ways. And so they are maybe more unique. But that is not an – but see, Ben. I did it again. I took your mate again. Gotcha.

Next topic, please. Well done. Well done. Well done. All right. Question from Adam C., Patreon supporter. I've been listening through your episode catalog from episode one. It's been a constant chuckle over how everything has changed and nothing is different. Like episode 199 had a mention of a Clay Buckholtz minor controversy over sunscreen and rosin.

It seems like every other episode has an opinion or prediction that I've wanted your hindsight on. Instead of listing the dozens of questions, and because I know your love of predictions, I'll ask umbrella questions. What aspect of the game that you currently defend will you take an opposing view on in the future? And what has been your most radical and or surprising view change that you've had in the past 10 years. I think it would be a fun off-season exercise to go over older episodes and trace predictions and changes. If you do, I have enough questions to get you at least a spring training. That might be fun when we are in the doldrums of the winter. But as for the current questions,

anything that you believe now that you think that you might not believe in the future and anything that you have already changed your mind on. So I might shock you, but I might not. Okay. I imagine that I will come around to the robo zone. This part will probably not surprise either you or our listeners having heard me talk for the last five minutes, but I'm a fan of precision. I'm easily wooed and swayed by precision. I think it's part of why I struggle with Twitter as a platform, just as a nice side. And so I think that while all of the things I've said about not wanting the robo zone stand now,

I think there will come a time and it probably will not be immediately upon implementation but you know a couple i don't know however many will need but a couple of seasons from now when we have smoothed out the the issues and we've all adjusted to the rulebook zone and we finally get to know how tall everybody is, like actually how tall, that I will look back and say, I held on to that for too long. I think that there is a difference between believing something now and looking back and saying that was wrong from the beginning. I mean, I think that there are very real practical sort of hurdles that need to be cleared to implement a robozone well, sort of hurdles that need to be cleared to implement a robo zone well, and to sort of the degree of precision that we need to be satisfied with it. But I think that a time will come when

that is possible. Like we've been to the moon. So and you know, you can track a baseball for every little bit of its flight, like we can do amazing stuff. So I imagine that a time will come where it is sufficiently precise, and where we are sufficiently accustomed to it. And I will look back and say, not that I was wrong from the beginning, but that I held on to pitch framing for too long. And not because I want to be a fuddy-duddy, but because I like pitch framing. acknowledge some of the limitations that having a human umpire calling the strike zone like inflict on the game every day i get i get all of that but currently i am opposed to the robo zone but i imagine all that lovely precision will sway me and then i'll be like it's so precise yeah that's that was what i thought of when you very politely sent me this question ahead of time so I didn't sit here and go, uh, for fun. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. And I might choose the same one, I suppose. It's a weird one because if I know that I'm going to take an opposing view on something in the future, then I would just change my view now, right? So I probably can't anticipate the things that I'm going to change

my mind about. If I could see now what would sway me then, then I would already think that. So it's a tough one to answer, but that's a good one. And I was thinking that mine might be coming around to the idea of banning the shift, which I have not come around to and I may never come around to, and they may just ban it before I even have a chance to come around to it. But I could envision a scenario where defense gets so good and so perfected that it just does become a bit of a bummer that every ball in play is an out. And once we've seen like every creative kind of defensive alignment, like the standard overshift now doesn't excite me anymore. There was a time when I thought, hey, this is cool and this is innovative and this is creative. And now it's just like the standard defense, basically. So it's better to let players stand wherever they want to stand, wherever they think they have the best chance of making it out. And that could just say that batters should adjust to this and that shouldn't be on MLB to intervene to give batters a pass

on being unable to adjust to the way that defenders are playing them. But if this persists to the point where we have seen every possible defensive alignment and none of them is new or interesting or creative anymore, and batters have been unwilling or unable to change and defenses have gotten even better, then yeah, maybe at a certain point you do have to intervene. I don't think we're there yet, and we may never get there, but that was one that came to my mind where it's not inconceivable to me that I could change my mind on that. And I think that is the closest I've come to coming up with something that I've changed my mind about. I think I've become more willing generally to say that we should change the rules to make the game look more like we want it to look. Whereas in the past,

I think I was more just laissez-faire, let it go. It's on the players to counter adjust. Whereas now, yeah, I'm kind of maybe in favor of restrictions on how many pitchers you can carry on a roster, let's say, because I think it is good to have starting pitchers go deeper into games. So that's the sort of thing where in the past, I might have been more agnostic about that. And I've also taken stronger stances on things over time. In the past, I don't think I really had a dog in the DH debate, whereas now I am pro-universal DH. So I've waded into those waters where in the past I might have said, eh, whatever, vive la différence or whatever. But I've kind of changed my mind and been swayed more toward one side. And I guess I might put strikeouts in that camp too, where at some point I came around to, okay, this is probably too many strikeouts or this is more

strikeouts than we would want ideally. And so we should do something about that. Whereas for a while I was like, eh, you know what? It's not that many more strikeouts really than we used to have. And would you even notice if we weren't hyper-focused on the stats and baseball's still pretty good even with all the strikeouts and everything. And I still feel that way, but I also feel like, you know what? We should take a more proactive role when it comes to figuring out what we want the game to look like and then actually making it look like that. I think mine is a little more, isn't necessarily like baseball proper. It has more to do with baseball analysis, which is that I think that until maybe even the last two or three years, I was pretty well convinced that any changes in our understanding from an analytics perspective would be pretty marginal. I thought we were kind of done with big, wow, that's a really different kind of thing. That sense, I think, was informed in some ways, but also just really, you know, really quite faulty, uh, in a lot of others. And so I've been very happy to be wrong about that actually, because I think the idea that we

still have, you know, maybe the change isn't low hanging fruit or the change in our understanding isn't low hanging fruit. Like, you know, we should, you should sacrifice bunt less, right. Or like walking, you know, getting on base is valuable, even if it's a, as a walk rather than a hit, you know, like those things we've sorted, but it's very exciting that we just might be in a, I think a really great era for better understanding something as fundamental as fastballs and how they play and what makes them good and what imparts movement onto them and meaningful movement. And so I think that I thought we were closer to done. And I'm very happy to have been wrong about that because I think there's a lot of really interesting stuff to still be explored and answered and

sort of debated. And if the batting around debate is any indication, thank God, right? Because otherwise you'd be stuck doing that forever. I mean, to be clear, we're still stuck doing that forever. Like this is the timeline that we have chosen. But I think that we will get to talk about other stuff too in a way that will, you know, 10 years from now, we'll look back and be like, wow, I just know a lot more about the game than I did. And it's because of stuff that we didn't even realize would advance our understanding, you know, five, 10 years ago.

So that part's really cool. Yeah. And this is something we've devoted an entire episode to. And this is something we've devoted an entire episode to. But I guess over the time, I've kind of started to look at things more from the fans' perspective than the front office perspective. Especially when it comes to the aesthetic implications of the game. Whereas in the past, I was really intrigued by any innovation. Anything that could help a team win, that could be in competitive advantage.

And that's still appealing to me on some level. But also there is a bigger part of me now that thinks about like, well, would this make baseball better? You know, it would make this team better, but would it make the sport better? Would this be more fun to watch? And that kind of goes hand in hand with what I was just saying about kind of shifting my view when it comes to where the league should intervene you know because being less of a like free market will solve everything in baseball to you know we might actually have to have some regulations here because things are kind of getting out of hand yeah you you've come around to my idea of a baseball regulator yes all right i've got two more here this one is from patrick i really like this one in hockey teams will often pull the goalie in favor of an extra skater if they are within one goal within two minutes or less left in regulation. Is there an equivalent of this possible in baseball? What if a team could pull their center fielder for an extra out in the eighth inning if it meant playing with no center fielder in the ninth?

If it meant playing with no center fielder in the ninth. And I like this. I like that you can do this in hockey. And as I understand it, almost every team does do this at some point in the last couple minutes of a game when they're trailing. And it adds some stakes and it makes things look different. And when you have that empty net, it's anxiety-inducing. And it does help you score. And it's kind of a cool analytical question. I know that there have been a bunch of studies, and I'll link to one from HockeyGraphs from last year that kind of look into, well, when should teams pull their goalie? And I believe that in general, the analysis shows that they should pull their goalie earlier than they do, but that they have been pulling their goalie earlier and earlier in recent seasons, maybe as the awareness of those studies has grown and as NHL teams have gotten more analytically oriented. They are pulling the goalie earlier, but still perhaps not as early as they should. And you might imagine that there's some risk aversion there.

You know, it sort of takes some gall to pull the goalie and just have an empty net there for a while, but it does make sense. And that would be a cool calculation in baseball if you could do it. Now, I don't know if it would be as simple as you get an extra out and you lose one fielder. That might be too big an advantage. I'm not sure. I know in some old episode, Sam and I tried to figure out what the impact of playing one fielder down all the time would be. And our back of the envelope calculations was that it would actually be a pretty big deal and that losing one fielder in every game might be the difference between a good team and a bad team, but getting an extra out would be a huge advantage too. But I could see where it would vary by team and by situation. Like, well, do you have a good center fielder?

Maybe your center fielder is not very good anyway, or maybe you have such a great strikeout pitcher on the mound that your chances of getting a batted ball are not that great. Or maybe you have a ground ball strikeout guy, and so you're not even likely to have a fly ball hit to the center fielder. And so then it becomes more advantageous for you to pull that fielder and get an extra out. It'd be a lot of good fan graphs content that could come from figuring out whether this was smart or not, or whether teams should be doing it more or not and then you know it would be a way that like managers or i guess it would ultimately be like front offices steering these decisions but

i was gonna say it might be a way for managers to distinguish themselves but probably not but still like it'd be a little variety and then you'd get the site of like a two-man outfield and like how are you gonna position your fielders to compensate for this and maybe you'd get some great diving plays that come from that and you know who would be the extra out would it just be the next batter up or do you get to choose or something like there are a lot of interesting wrinkles here and i kind of like that idea of the trade-off of losing something to get something and baseball doesn't really have a direct equivalent for that currently, but I think this could work or some variation on this could work. We could rethink our approach to disincentivizing certain behaviors on the field if we did a better job of making the aftermath of those moments the present use problem as opposed to future you. Because future you is, you know, if you can push it down to future you, you're like, oh, whatever.

You got to make it present use problem. And so baseball should have a penalty box. It needs a sin bin. Also like sin bin. What a great name for a thing. Sin bin. So many good names out there, Ben. Yeah.

I wonder if you could choose which fielder to pull. Like you can't pull the catcher, which would be the closest equivalent to pulling the goalie. But could you choose like, well, I'll pull the left fielder because left fielders have the fewest balls hit to them. And then maybe you get like a smaller advantage. Like maybe you pull the left fielder and you get an extra out, but the hitter has to start with one strike on him or something. So it could come down to that even where it could be like micromanaging,

like figuring out how often are balls hit to this position or do I have a good fielder at this position or not? So if you have someone who stinks in left field anyway and you figure, well, probably many balls are not going to be hit out there, then you might be more likely to do that. So it'd be an interesting game-by-game and team-by-team calculation. And there are a lot of variables involved. So I like this idea. I'm in favor. I think it's good. And then this is two questioners, one question. Eric says, he says this question stems from a

Reddit thread in which someone has played Ronald Acuna Jr.'s career in MLB The Show into his 60s. I believe he is 64 and still not retired at this point. While holding the glut of all-time records that you might expect from someone with a 45-year career, I couldn't help but notice that his war had gone negative for his career. My question is, how old would a superstar the likes of Acuna have to play to actually wipe out the entire value of his career? And this question from Wyatt, which was submitted before Albert Pujols' semi-renaissance with the Dodgers here. He says, Hypothetical occurred to me. Suppose that for some reason the league and players agree that all career 50 plus war players are to be given regular playing time until their career war reaches zero. And for some reason, players are happy to keep playing as they chip away at their career war total. How many healthy seasons, say 140 plus games a season for position players or 32 plus starts for a pitcher?

Would it take for an aging star to get all the way to zero? Do we know much about aging curves beyond 40 years old? How about 50? Would Zach Greinke eventually become a knuckleballer? Would Mike Trout be forced to play into his 70s? Would you still watch baseball if it became an exercise in reminding us both of our own mortality and of the endless march of time? So playing to zero, how long would it take for a star player

to erase all of the value he had accumulated? Gosh. How many? I'm going to ask this question in the meanest way possible. And I'm sorry. How much war has Albert Paul lost since he left St. Louis? It's not that much. Well, since he left St.. Louis I assume he's still positive

I guess since the Since the dip Yeah so let's see He became a sub-replacement level player According to Fangraphs In 2017 And so yeah since 2017 2017 to 2021

Even including his little bit of a Dodgers bump He's only down 3.2 War over those 2017 to 2021, even including his little bit of a Dodgers bump. He's only down 3.2 war over those 505 games and more than 2,000 plate appearances. But of course, he is not into his 50s or his 60s yet. And the rate of decline would accelerate, I assume. So it's tough because a lot of the problem with aging is that you become more injury prone and less durable. And if that's the case, then you're just not available to play. Right. And therefore you are not able to subtract from your career war total. So in this scenario, is this like a they shoot horses, don't they kind of thing where it's like you have to

keep playing no matter what so even if you're injured you just have to keep playing because if that were the case then you would lose war quite quickly but if it's only when you are healthy and you know age-adjusted fit to play that you are actually in the lineup then it would take a bit longer because you know once you get to a certain age it would just be like you'd be pulling things left and right you'd be having surgeries every season it would be pretty bleak and that would hurt your ability to be bad in a sense unless you are forced to play even while you are injured but but if we were even to just throw out injuries and just assume like you stay healthy.

Yeah, but you just are bad. But you're bad. Then how long would it take? And man, I mean, the question about like, do we know much about aging curves into your 40s and 50s? It would be a fascinating experiment. Yeah, I guess you could probably,

I mean, I'm sure there's like physiological data on like, you know, your hormone levels as you age and your muscle mass. And, you know, we have data on that just on human beings in general. And then I guess we also have like other sports where, you know, you have over 40 or over 50 or over 60 divisions, right? And maybe it's track and field or whatever. And so you would know like, okay, what's the typical decline from this age group to the next? So I guess even though you wouldn't really have much direct baseball precedent, aside from your Julio Francos and your Jamie Moyers, who would be outliers and not really representative of the typical player anyway you could probably kind of port some of those stats over just from general life and other kinds of competitions to figure out how this would work yeah but i think i think it would take a very very long time i think it would take a long especially like i mean obviously how long it would take would in part depend on how good the player was right yeah right you know because you would decline more gracefully and

also because you would have a bigger worse exactly away i don't know how long do you think it would take ben i think there would come a point where you would start chipping away at it pretty quickly like yeah we don't generally see players in the majors get below, like, you know, two wins below replacement or so. Like, it's hard to be that bad in this day and age and to consistently be in the lineup. So if you were just a staple in the lineup and you're, like, in your 50s and, you know, you've lost your bat speed at this point, like, I guess you could run the numbers and figure out like you know once you're down into like 200 wobba territory 100 wobba territory like you would start piling up the negative war quite quickly at that point if you're still an everyday player getting tons of plate appearances or racking up innings So I think eventually you would get to the point where you're a negative five war player. And then like, I don't know what the theoretical maximum amount of badness is. Like if you just make it out every time, it would be tough if you're a pitcher because like at a certain point you would just stop getting out, basically. And then I don't even know. I guess they would just leave you out there

indefinitely. It would just be you'd give up 10 runs a game or something until they finally mercifully pulled you. But back on episode 1615 last year, Sam estimated that a civilian would be about a negative 20 war player over the course of a season. And then inspired by that, there was that Reddit post by someone who actually ran the numbers and calculated that it would be about negative 15 war for that poster, who was just an average 30-year-old, essentially, with a zero batting average and zero slugging percentage and an on-base percentage of 30. If the person were playing defense, it would be worse. That same Reddit user had a follow-up post

where they determined that if a potato were playing center field with no defensive value, obviously, then you could get to a war of negative 45. But I'm assuming in our playing to zero scenario that you are forced to DH, which means that the offensive bar is high, but the damage that you do on defense is limited. And a really great player is going to probably be able to get a hit every now and then or have a better

on base percentage than 30 even well into their 40s maybe even into their 50s so we can be a bit more conservative but i think you could get to some like negative 10 war seasons, certainly. And that might happen in your fifties. Like I'm going to guess that even for a player like Albert, who has, you know, depending on your, your war metric, he has a, what does he have? According to fan graphs, he's at like 90 ish war or he was before he started his decline. And according to to baseball reference he's like at 100 or so i would say for him he's an all-time great but probably by 55 yeah maybe he'd get there i don't think he'd have enough time to do it by 50 and like clearly he is still semi-competent as a player now but yeah by 55 and your typical player even your typical star i'd say probably by 50 or so because there's just gonna come a point

where your skills just crater yeah you really start eating up all of that war and i think that even in that scenario you probably would actually never get there because i think pride is pretty powerful as oh yeah i mean no one would want to get there right in this scenario you're forced to for some reason right yeah but i think that you would like uh maybe you'd ask someone to break your leg like please get me out of this in the least painful way possible yeah Yeah, because once you get to the negative 10 war level, if you got to that point, then even a 100 war is disappearing in 10 years. And most players are not as good as Pujols to begin with, and so they're not at 100 war, and they don't have as high a point to fall from so yeah i think if you took like the typical retirement age for a star and you added 10 years like you know for the

first couple years you'd be bad but not that bad but then like for for the second half of that 10 years you would really really be bad and you wouldn't decline as quickly as like if you just, you know, if someone retired at 35 and then you said, hey, when you're 45, come back and play with little physical activity in between, then you'd be worse than if you were playing this entire time. Your decline would not be as precipitous. You'd be staying in shape and seeing pitching all of that time. But still, I think by 55, I think just about everyone's there.

Yeah, I think like 10 to 15 years is probably what you're looking at. And then you're getting into like, oh, no, my back hurts. Yes. It hurts so bad. I mean, though, when you're 45 that's true yeah all right i will end with this stat blast they'll take a data set sorted by something like e r a minus or o b s plus and then they'll tease out some interesting Ticket discuss it at length And analyze it for us

In amazing ways Here's to Deist of Lost Okay, this is a timely question From Stephen, who writes us to point out something that I had not noticed and that I would never have noticed and that I wonder if even you, as a Mariners fan, because this is Mariners-related, would have noticed. And the subject line is, the Mariners, parentheses, impossible, quest for a perfect homestand. And Steven writes, I'm a lifelong Mariners fan and love the podcast. I had a Mariners related stat blast question for you. With the Mariners starting an important homestand this Thursday against Oakland and Houston, it's a seven game homestand. I glanced back at past Mariners performances in extended

homestands, five games or more. During this research, I noticed that the Mariners' performances in extended homestands five games or more. During this research, I noticed that the Mariners have not had a perfect record in an extended homestand in quite a while. The Mariners last went undefeated during a homestand of five games or more from April 15th to April 21st, 1991, in which they swept a six-game homestand against the A's and Twins. Since that homestand in 1991, the Mariners have hosted 299 homestands of five or more games. In none of those homestands did the Mariners have a perfect record. This blew my mind, especially considering the Mariners' record in 2001. I was wondering whether a perfect homestand is something that's actually statistically difficult to accomplish,

or whether this is another Marininer statistical outlier. From a quick glance, seven teams had a perfect homestand of five or more games in the first half of 2021 alone. Is there any team with a perfect homestand drought comparable to the Mariner's drought, either active or historic? How common are these perfect homestands? Is this drought even more improbable than the mariners 19 year playoff drought any insights would be helpful so this kind of blew my mind too i don't know if this is something like mariners fans talk about i guess not right i was not aware that there was like a three decade perfect homestand drought for the mariners here, but I sent this question to frequent StatBlast consultant Ryan Nelson, and as usual, he sent me a great thorough response here. So he writes, some baseline reference points. From 1871 through 2020, there have been 29,560 homestands.

Of these, 14,020 were homestands of five or more games. Only 389 of these, or 2.8%, went undefeated by the home team. So this is a fairly rare thing to do, and some off-the-cuff stats say that there would be about a 24% chance in any given year that a team would have a single homestand sweep based on 10 5-plus game homestands a year, which has been the average since 2000. So just based on that, you would think that this is still very strange that the Mariners have not done that, because if you have a 24% chance to do it in any year and they haven't done it in 30 years, then that's pretty weird.

So Ryan says, not surprisingly, the longer the homestand, the less likely a home team is to sweep, as shown in the chart below. And as usual, I will link to all of this data on the show page. But if you have a one-game homestand, which happens sometimes, the team just plays one game at home, then you have a 54.6% chance to sweep, which makes sense because historically, home field advantage is home teams win about 54% of the time. If you have a two-game homestand, your sweep odds are down to 31%. Three-game homestand, 17.3%. Four-game homestand, 10%. Five-game homestand, 6.4%.

Six-game homestand, 3.3%. I could go on all the way down to 16-plus game homestand, which is 0.044% of a sweep. Ryan says, the four longest homestand sweeps were all in the 1800s, the longest of which was by the 1897 Boston Bean Eaters, who from May 31st through June 19th rattled off 16 consecutive home wins to go up to a 33-12 record. They would win the National League that year with a 93-39 record. If we look since 1900, these monstrous streaks become less common.

We see five 10-game homestand sweeps, one 11-game and one 12-game, a modern record held by the 1961 Yankees, who swept the Tigers in three, the Senators in four, and Cleveland in five. They would win the World Series that year with a 109-53 record. The runner-up is the 1988 Red Sox with an 11-game streak. To answer the question at hand, below are the years that each active franchise last had a five-plus-game homestand sweep. So as Steven mentioned, seven teams, the Red Sox, the Astros, the A's, the Mets, the Brewers, the Dodgers, and the Padres have had one this year. Last year, three other teams did. In 2019, it was one team. 2018, three teams. 2017, five teams. 2016, two teams. 2015, two teams. 2013, three teams. 2012, one team. 2011, one team. 2008, one team. That was the Twins. 2002, one team. That was the Rockies and then the Mariners in 1991. So every active franchise

has done this at least since 2002. And most have done it in the last decade. And the Mariners have not done it since 1991. So there's like a full, you know, 11 years longer than any other current team. The Mariners have gone without a homestand sweep of five or more games. Stephen writes, this would lead us to believe it is historic, but it is not that unprecedented. So some consolation here for Mariners fans. As a recent example, the Rays did this for the first time ever in 2018. So that was a 20-year streak for them. The Rockies also haven't done this in nearly

20 years since 2002. And then he says, here are all the streaks in baseball history longer than the Mariners' current one, with Yellow Rose being since team inception, not since last homestand sweep of five-plus games. So there have been longer streaks and some much longer streaks than the Mariners' current since 1991 streak. So the longest ever is the Braves, who had a five-plus game homestand sweep in 1963, and at that point, it had been a 51-year streak, and 1942 Dodgers, 43-year streak. So there are 10 teams that at some point in history had longer streaks than the current Mariner streak. So that is some consolation. However, given the era, I think the Mariner streak is more impressive. And Stephen and Ryan wrote, this is a hotbed of potential interesting stat

blasts. So send me any more questions and I'll dive in. And I did have a few follow-ups. The things that occurred to me were, has the average length of a homestand changed much over time? Yeah. Because that might make it more or less difficult. And does the average length vary much by team? I was thinking, I don't know, like maybe because the Mariners on the West Coast and they have to travel farther, maybe they tend to have longer homestands or something. That was just a theory. And then I also wanted to know, of course, we're talking about the longest homestand sweep droughts. What are the longest road trip sweep droughts? So I asked all those questions and Ryan writes that homestand length peaked in the early 1900s and has been dropping over time since about World War II.

And I guess the peak year was 1943. During World War II, it peaked around 11 games and has since fallen closer to 6.5. And Ryan writes, as I would have speculated myself, I imagine this is due to easier travel, more teams, and interleague play, among other things. Of course, if you can fly, it's easier to have shorter homestands than if you're taking a train around. So last year, the average length of a homestand was under five games for the first time since 1875, presumably due to COVID scheduling and the shortened season. due to COVID scheduling and the shortened season. But that's the point. And Ryan includes a graph here that shows a slow but steady decline dating back to the 40s in the average length of a homestand.

So in that sense, the Mariners doing it in this era of shorter homestands on average makes their drought more impressive or less so, if you want to look at it that way. He says, when it comes to length by team, we can look at homestands since 2000 and there is some variance, but it does not seem to be statistically significant. Technically, the Reds have a statistically significant shorter homestand length at an alpha of 0.05, the standard significance level. But with 30 teams, we would actually expect that one of the 30 would randomly be quote unquote statistically significant. So I wouldn't read into it, but he includes the data just for fun. And the Reds are on the high end with an average homestand length of 6.3. The Reds are on the low end with an average homestand length of 6.3. And the, well, the Expos, but that's a small sample, but the Mariners actually

do over that period have the longest average homestand. So maybe there is something to what I was saying about West Coast teams and more travel because the Angels have the second longest. But the variation, it's not much. So like the Reds are at the low end at 6.3, the Mariners at the high end at 6.9. So, you know, that doesn't really excuse them that much. And then lastly, some info on road trips. So he has the stats on road trip sweeps by trip length. So, you know, same sort of progression, except your odds of sweeping a road trip are obviously lower because you are the road team and don't have home field advantage. But he writes, it is readily apparent that it is much harder to sweep a long road trip

than a long homestand. This is to be expected considering it is regularly accepted that winning on the road is harder than at home. The five longest road trip sweeps are all in the modern-ish era and are as follows. The 1931 Philadelphia A's had an 11-game such sweep. In 2017, Cleveland had an 11-gamer. I don't know if that was during their record 21 game overall winning streak or not. And the 1951 White Sox had an 11

gamer. The 1957 Red Legs had a 12 gamer. The 1953 Yankees had a 14 gamer. They won 18 straight games from May 27th through June 19th, of which the last 14 were all on the road. That is a pretty nice road trip. The year of the last five game plus road trip sweep,

so by franchise here. So like Cleveland did it last year, the Dodgers did it in 2019, the Angels and the Astros and the Mets did it in 2018. So again, most are pretty recent here, but there have been some long droughts. So Marlins, 1997, Blue Jays, 1993, Rangers, 1991, Tigers, 1990. So now we're into territory that's going back further than the Mariners drought, which makes sense that you'd have some longer droughts for a road trips sweep drought.

Royals, 1977, Philliesies 1976, Twins 1970. And here's an interesting one. The Padres have never had one. So Ryan writes, that's right. Somehow the San Diego Padres in over 50 seasons have never swept a five plus game road trip. They are 0 for 467. To be fair, the Diamondbacks, Marlins, Rockies, Royals, Rays, and Blue Jays franchises have all only done so once. But also to be fair, the Yankees have

done it 10 times and the Dodgers have done it 10 times just since moving to LA. Super teams gonna super team, I suppose. So this is an interesting one. In addition to all of the other interesting things that the Padres have never done or had never done until recently, like get a cycle or throw a no-hitter or win a World Series, because they're facing the A's and the Astros in this seven gamer that is starting on Thursday. But something to watch that maybe they could potentially do it. So one of these weird stats that we can track that the Mariners have not swept a homestand of five more games since 1991. And the Padres have never swept a road trip of five or more games i can't decide if i am comforted by the idea that like it is you know that not everything is bad that there are ways in which this is difficult right or if i'm disappointed that they're not like

more obviously terrible so that they're like they could be good at something yeah you know yeah it's not like they haven't had plenty of good teams that were capable of doing this during those three decades so right which is an indication you know that like it's not the only there are a lot of a lot of ways by which we can say a team good or bad like we can we can use a lot of different yardsticks to measure there um but it does seem like you should be able to do it it just seems like you should because uh because it's a long time i mean the playoff drought thing is a long time too but this seems like it's easier yeah send your fans home happy yeah so steven thank you very much for the observation which was borne out by

the data. And thanks to Ryan for supplying that data. And that will do it for today. Well, the Mariners lost the opening game of their homestand to Oakland, so this will not be the homestand sweep. The drought continues. We recorded this episode prior to the raise trade for Nelson Cruz, but we were planning to make the next episode about trades anyway. So stay tuned for some talk about that Cruz trade and the prospects the twins received in return. I'll also mention one more submission for the alternate cycle that was submitted after we recorded. This is from listener Robert, who says July 20th, 2021 Royals at Brewers, Carlos Santana, singled, grounded out to second, grounded out to short, grounded out to first, and grounded out to the pitcher. Switch the single to a ground out to third, and this is truly

funny. That would be the ground out cycle. Ground out to every infielder. That might be a good one. A pop-up cycle would be very rare. A fly out cycle, hitting a fly out to every outfielder, would probably be fairly common. But the ground out cycle has some potential. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. 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. Matthew Yeo, Randy Stearns, Nicholas Perry, Patrick Morris, and Paul Ferraro. 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 Meg coming via email at podcast.fangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you then. And the same as I am Collapsing once more by your side Finally there is clarity This tiny life is making sense And every drop numbs the both of us

But I alone am standing