Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 203: Strikeouts and Defense/Shortest Pitching Careers/Novelty All-Star Games/World Series of Worst/Rooting Against No-Hitters

Episode Date: May 15, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss listener emails about whether rising strikeout rates make defense less valuable, whether the worst teams should face off at the end of the year, and more.

I'm not sitting in my garage today, but if I were, there's a cricket in my garage, just like old times. Not for long. Oh, that's a good point. Good morning, and welcome to episode 203 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Ben Lindberg with Sam Miller. It is Wednesday, so it's an email show. We got a lot of really good emails this week, so many that we are considering doing two email shows just so we can get to all of them. So maybe we'll do that unless something pressing comes up.

We'll see. You can continue to send them in at podcast at baseballprospectus.com. But we have picked out a few for today. Do you want to start with one? I can't find the one I want to start with, so you start with one. Okay. This one is from Timothy. He says, A lot has been made of the high strikeout rates over the last few seasons. Does a high strikeout rate negatively impact the value of defense, positively impact, or have none at all?

How large will strikeout rates have to be to impact defensive stats? And I think this is a really interesting subject, and I talked about it, I guess it was a few months ago on Clubhouse Confidential, but I think it definitely has an impact, and we are already seeing that impact. It's not really something that you would notice necessarily just from watching the game, but I looked up the number of batted balls that the typical pitching staff allows just through the BP sortable reports. And last year, so 2012, the average pitching staff pitched, I guess, around 1,450 innings or so and allowed 4,392 batted balls. So 4,392 batted balls.

That's in 2012. In 1980, when the league strikeout rate was much lower so so last year it was 7.6 strikeouts per nine in 1980 it was 4.8 strikeouts per nine so so in 1980 basically the same number of of innings per year the same number of games uh the typical pitching staff allowed 3,458 balls in play. So 4,392 last year, 3,458 in 1980. So that's like 934 fewer batted balls allowed by the typical pitching staff last season as opposed to 30-ish years ago. So that definitely has an impact if there are

fewer batted balls being allowed, and that's not an insignificant amount of batted balls being allowed, then of course there are fewer opportunities to make plays and just sort of, I mean, less of what contributes to a win is defense now. And I mean, good defenders are still more valuable than bad defenders, obviously, but the spread is smaller. It's like if you had, I don't know, if you had fewer plate appearances per season or something and you have Brendan Ryan and you're comparing him to, I don't know, Mike Trout or something. I mean, the fewer plate appearances you have Brendan Ryan and you're comparing him to, I don't know, Mike Trout or something,

I mean, the fewer plate appearances you have, the less of a difference there's going to be between those two hitters' values. So it's sort of the same thing with defensive stats. The fewer balls in play there are, the fewer chances and the fewer opportunities to make plays, the less a good defender can distinguish himself from a bad defender. So average is still average, but there's less of a spread or less of a range between, say, the worst and the best, or there's just less variation because there are fewer opportunities. And I think it kind of, it's a self-perpetuating or self-reinforcing trend, I think, because the fewer batted balls you have, I guess the less emphasis you put on having a good defender.

And so maybe you will stick an Adam Dunn in the outfield or something, someone who is not good defensively. And whether you're actually thinking about this consciously or not, you might put less of an emphasis on defense because there are fewer balls in play. So you might play a big hulking slugger type who hits for a lot of power and strikes out a lot because it's not going to hurt you as much. And then you have another hitter in the lineup who strikes out more. So that could be another reason why strikeouts keep climbing and climbing because defense matters a little less. And so you're more willing to play a guy who hits for power and strikes out a lot. And then defense matters a little less than it did even. So it's an interesting subject. I think I'm glad it was asked by Timothy. I completely misread the question and thought that he was asking mainly

because I was focusing on the last sentence. I was thinking he was asking you whether it impacts the quality of defense that fielders play. Because you'll hear announcers talk all the time about how defense is better if the fielders are on their toes. And I thought you were going to try to give me an answer for that. And no matter what you said, I was going to argue with your methodology. Yeah, I wouldn't touch that. Okay. Have you ever seen anybody try to answer that?

No, I don't think so. We talked once about pitcher pace and whether that affects defense, but I don't think so. All right, so I'm going to talk for a while. Yes, please do. This one has nothing to do with you. This is from Nicholas. Has any pitcher made his major

league debut and only recorded one out or no outs and i assume what he's asking is and then never pitched again um because lots of people have made their major league debut and only recorded one out or no outs uh like hundreds uh but he says i remember steve garrison in 2011 for the yankees recorded two outs and i doubt he will come back to the majors. I assume somebody has gotten fewer, but who? And so I have the answer to that. And as you expect, there are players who have gotten zero outs. And yet, while that might not surprise you, I have answers that may surprise you.

So first of all, the raw numbers, there are 21 players who have done this, who have pitched in the major leagues and yet never retired a batter. And they're mostly, what I'm surprised by is that they're mostly actual pitchers. And usually they're pitchers in their early 20s, or in some cases, their late teens who came up uh pitched poorly got sent back down and never pitched again i actually was expecting to see quite a few position players who had pitched um ineffectively for a few batters and uh and left and there were some of those but only three of the 21 which uh shocked me i i really i would have guessed half of these people would have been position players. The most that anybody has faced without getting an out is Doc Hammond. Probably baseball reference,

my guess doesn't have a pronunciation guide for Doc Hammond, who in 1922 pitched one game at the age of 21, seven batters faced, no outs, three hits, three runs, three hits, three walks, I should say, and a hit batsman. Six earned runs, never got an out, never pitched again. So he's the low mark. Nobody that I found was split up over multiple years. So came up, had an outing with no outs, got sent back down, and then years later, came up, had an outing with no outs got some back down and then years later came up had an outing with no outs got some back down and that was it so these are all so far as i could tell uh if not well there was one guy who had two games everybody else was one game one of the guys who had two games is dick davalillo vick vick davalillo who in 1969 pitched two games he's the only one who pitched two games without getting an out.

And he's a position player. He's one of the three position players. And in a four-game span, he pitched twice. And once his team was only down six, and once they were down eight, and both times he got relieved after two batters. So I'm not sure why he was put in there if not to do exactly what he did and both times he was relieved by pitchers and you know down six i mean i don't know maybe that's just how they rolled back then but uh that was interesting to me uh uh one of the the other of

the other three position players one is a guy named sam mayor who pitched one game but only played 10 as a position player and up to that point he had kind of been split in the minors he had 88 minor league innings he was a 21 year old um the weirdest game well actually this might actually be the second weirdest game was stan musial who faced one batter uh did not retire him but the batter reached on an error and the weird thing is that it happened in the first inning. You might know this story. Somebody out there knows this story.

But Musial, of course, was a pitcher coming up and became a position player, was converted, I think, after he went maybe to fight in war or something like that, or maybe just in the minors. He hurt himself or something and converted. But when he was 32, he pitched to one batter in the first inning, and it was a publicity stunt. The batter he was facing was Frank Baumholtz, who was second in the batting race that year,

and this was the last home game of the season. Musial was first in the batting race. So it was some kind of, like, weird stunt that I bet made Frank Baumholtz feel, like, really bad. And the thing Baumholtz feel like really bad and the thing is Musial Musial wasn't really in on it his um his manager just came out and called him to the mound and made him pitch and so he pitched to one batter uh the ball was grounded off the shin of the third baseman it's pretty much considered a bad scores decision that it should have been a hit but it was ruled as an E5.

And just like that, he went back out to the outfield, and Harvey Haddix returned to the mound. Harvey Haddix had taken his place in the outfield, and Musial was embarrassed by it. And so never pitched again. And the weirdest, though, is Robin Yount's brother, Larry, who never retired a batter and entered a game but never faced a batter. And then his career was over.

He was 21. He heard himself warming up in his major league debut, pulled from the game, never pitched again in the major. So he is in baseball reference. He appeared in a game. One game, zero batters for Houston in 1971. So the last very odd thing about this, though, is that this list of 21, Yount is the last one. This hasn't happened in 42 years, which is crazy to me.

I'm shocked because there's more teams. There's more relievers. There's a lot more relievers. Unless Steven Garrison joins the list. No, Garrison got two outs. Oh, right. According to our email. I didn't even sort by retired,

so there's no active player who even currently fits this description. Even a guy who might have come in yesterday. There are none. That's crazy to me. I don't know why it is. would think that it would have would be growing um but alas this is a doomed thing but all in all i think what i learned from this and particularly from the museal example is that baseball used to be a lot more fun and it is unthinkable that the museal thing would happen today yes and uh that sort of bums me out but

also i don't what were they even thinking it doesn't make any sense so there are many things that would probably be unthinkable about today's game to someone of museal's era um so maybe they would say the same thing i don't know it's weird in different ways yeah well yeah i mean pablo sandoval would be pretty unthinkable in Muzio's era. I mean, the strikeouts. We just talked about the strikeouts would be unthinkable. It is interesting that there hasn't been a guy. I wonder if teams are being more selective about who they promote to the majors.

Well, I think compared to the 20s, that's definitely true. I mean, to get to the majors now, I think that the spread of talent in the 20s was massive. And so like there were guys who were maybe not more before the 20s, but even in the 20s, I think there were guys who were coming up who were basically like, you know, the gap between them and Babe Ruth would have been the gap between Justin Verlander and like, you know, maybe a senior in high school right now. So I think that's certainly one reason is that probably a lot of these guys were that guy. But, you know, there were examples.

Well, actually, not really. There have only been like six since 1940, since the war. And one was Musio, one one was yount those are both special circumstances one was davalillo which was a special circumstance so there's basically been one legit example of this since world war ii well it's always nice when we can supply a factual answer to a question in an email show it doesn't happen yeah any no it doesn't but anytime uh anytime you want to send a question that can be answered with Baseball References Play Index, that's second only to weird rule changes in my mind.

All right. What else do you have? You had a bunch. All right. So let's see. A quick one. Daniel Hutchinson. Sorry.

God, I did it again. Daniel, who's… In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We'll provide his full address later on in the show. Please let us know where you work next time. Daniel says, having just listened to you wonder about what would make for an interesting All-Star game and what would have happened if baseball went the novelty route, I found myself wishing the All-Star game consisted of pitchers hitting and playing the field

and position players batting. I feel like Chris Davis and Wilson Valdez would be starting pitchers. Giovanni Gallardo would bat cleanup, et cetera. Now, I feel bad doing this, but I'm actually only reading this to say that I hate this idea. And this is exactly, well, I mean, it's a fine idea. It would be fun. But the reason that I would not be in favor of it is that I think that there's nothing about it that would particularly tell you about baseball because everybody would be playing in such unfamiliar roles that it would almost be like the only reason to do this is to watch people be uncomfortable and to do something that they're not qualified for and yet um in a in a very artificial setting so to me this

would be no better than taking major league baseball's all-stars and having them um play geoguessr or like um write poetry or you know do something that they're just not qualified for um so to me it would it wouldn't be taken seriously in any particular way. And I think that the sorts of novelty things that appeal to me are ones that secretly teach you a little bit about baseball. And I just don't think that we would see it here. Yeah, I mean, I'd watch it once. I would watch it once. Yeah, I would. But I would watch, I mean, it would basically just be like, it would be like Celebrity Apprentice, right, I would. But I would watch, I mean, it would basically just be like,

it would be like Celebrity Apprentice, right? It would be famous people doing something that they're not good at. And the baseball would be almost incidental to that. Okay? I do like Daniel's other question. You want to, I don't even remember what it was. He just says, am I the only one who feels strange when I hear sports news people hyping David Ortiz's late game double on Monday night?

This was a while ago. To extend his hitting streak to 26 games, do you think there's a point where baseball people would say, no, that's too many missed games between at-bats for us to call this consecutive, et cetera, et cetera. And I do kind of feel that way because, I don't know, I guess part of the reason that you would care about a hitting streak to the extent that you would. I mean, I guess I enjoy it less when it's one of those hitting streaks where the guy went one for four 20 days in a row and he actually batted like 250 over the head stretch. So I enjoy that less. And I guess I also enjoy the ones that are spread out over multiple seasons less because I don't know. I guess they're interesting to the extent that they are interesting. They're interesting because, uh, of the, the probability aspects. And I guess that carries over across seasons to some extent, at least. Um, but I don't know, it's also kind of, you want to feel like the guy was especially

locked in over that period of time, or he was doing something consistently over that period of time that was leading to the hitting streak. And obviously that's not going to carry over six months of offseason. Yeah, the point of a hitting streak is that it's supposed to be a proxy for hotness. It's supposed to be a way for us to visualize and appreciate a player's hotness. And when you split it up like this, you undo the hotness factor. Now, I think it's such an incredibly blunt measure of it that it has no significance in that sense

to a person like you or me. And so they've already lost me on that. And I only appreciate it as a statistical quirk. And the statistical quirk remains exactly as quirky if you split it up. There is no loss of quirk. So as quirky if you split it up. There is no loss of quirk. So I'm actually fine with it. I was rooting for David Ortiz to get a double.

I watched that at bat, and I was into it. All right. And probably only because it was Ortiz. And I had one. I think there's something funny about it. I don't know why, but fat guys having hitting streaks for some reason amuses me. They can't beat out hits. But also because I had just noticed about two minutes earlier that David Ortiz's hitting streak was already longer than any hitting streak Ted Williams had ever had,

which goes to the central flaw of hitting streaks. Ted Williams didn't get hitting streaks because he would go over two with three walks a lot of the time. And Ortiz, I was rooting for Ortiz's hitting streak specifically because Ortiz is also a hitter who would be unlikely because so much of his value is in drawing walks and hitting home runs, both of which are either not properly recognized or are completely ignored by a hitting streak. All right. So Brian says, in reference to a tweet I had earlier today in which I suggested the Marlins

and the Astros should play a World Series in between innings of the regular World Series, Brian says, what do you think of a rule change where the worst team in each league would have to play a three-game series at the end of the season on World Series travel days? The day before the World Series started, they would play the first game and then play on subsequent travel days.

Just as the second wildcard team creates a new incentive for more marginal teams to compete, so this rule would create a more interesting race to the bottom. I have thoughts on this. Do you have thoughts on this, Ben? I'm in favor of more baseball at all times. So I like having baseball on off days instead of there being off days. Other than that, I guess, well, it would be interesting, I guess, from a draft perspective. I mean, if the team is, is, well, that would be weird though would you be

trying to lose so here's here's i think what you do all right this is actually i think how you do it and i i'm glad that brian had this idea because um it reminded me of an idea that i also had at one point which is and there is a day i don't know if i would would do it on travel days maybe i would but there there's definitely uh there's a day i think in between the second wild card game and not the second wild card game the the wild card games uh actually this i might have had i might have been thinking of this this might have come up two years ago after game 162 when everything went bonkers you remember that yeah and and then the next day it was just like so depressingly quiet because there was no action for like three days

uh and so i think what you do anyway to get to the point is you have this series between the 29 and 30th teams and they play uh either one game or three games or five games, however you want to fit it in. And the winner gets the first overall pick and the loser gets the 10th overall pick. And I think what that does is incentivizes a lot of baseball, in fact, because you don't actually want to be the worst team anymore in baseball because you're not going to necessarily get the number one pick. It's sort of like having the lottery where you're not guaranteed the number one pick just by being the worst.

You risk getting the number 10 pick and that would be really bad. And then as far as the game, so I think that would incentivize some of the late season action between bad teams as teams try to avoid this fate. If you know that the third worst team in baseball gets the number two pick and the, the second worst team gets potentially the number 10, it's a big difference. And, uh,

I think it would make the series itself pretty exciting because the difference between one and 10 is huge. And in that case, you actually have a name attached to it. I mean, everybody would know in a lot of years exactly what was at stake, exactly the player who is at stake. And that would be exciting.

And, um, and it wouldn't be too crippling for the team that lost. So you would basically ding them for losing the series. You would ding them for being a bad team. I mean, I think there's always been a problem with baseball, with all leagues that set up their drafts so that the worst team gets the first pick, where you're incentivizing the wrong thing.

You always want to incentivize teams to win, and this is this rare case where in the interest of fairness, you actually create an incentive for them to lose, and that's a bad thing. Sports should never do that, and sports should strive not to do that. I think that this would actually ease some of that dissonance in baseball. I'm all in favor of it it's a great idea Brian and if you're in a position to make this happen and you were just asking us for

like to go ahead go ahead Brian yeah I guess I don't know maybe there's some value to having the World Series kind of have the stage to itself and to everyone talking about the same series at the same time and, I don't know, kind of anticipating it on the off days?

Or maybe just watching football instead, which is probably what people are doing? Yeah, I don't personally like the travel day aspect of it as much. I think I would rather see it as an in-between series thing, either before the first series starts. So that, as it is right now, there's this unfairness that maybe baseball

would say is planned, but this unfairness where the wild card, where the play-in teams are having to use their ace in order to get to the next series. And maybe that's the goal. Maybe that's what they want. But you might argue that it would be nice if every team could set up their rotation, you know, equally so that baseball gets to showcase the best pitchers,

each team's best players as much as possible in the postseason. And just so that, you know, you don't have these weird situations where one team is resting for a long time and one team is not. have these weird situations where one team is is resting for a long time and one team is not so i think it might be uh it might fit in between the end of the season and the start of the next season um brian also by the way tax on at the end would teams feel that they needed to take it seriously for marketing reasons at the very least while owners would probably hate it and fans generally love it how would players feel um if there weren't a real significant uh prize attached to it everybody would hate it the players would hate it the owners would hate it and that's the problem with a lot of

great ideas that we come up with on this show i think even in this case everybody would hate it i think it's probably a non-starter because the players would hate it the astros don't want to play three more games at the end of the year they are determined whether they are the worst team where the worst is the second worst i mean they are absolutely desperate to get out of there by the end of the year. If you're not a playoff team, there's not one guy in that clubhouse who wants to stay for five minutes more. And so this would be a hard thing to negotiate. Yeah.

All right. How are we doing on time? I don't know. I suppose let's maybe do one more. Sure. Has any jumped out at you? Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, there's a quick one, I think. We out at you? Oh, yeah, okay.

Well, there's a quick one, I think. We can answer this. Oh, the Perfect Games one? Yeah. Yeah. Kerry says, at what point do we start to root against Perfect Games and no hitters? This season, I have already reached that point. Well, then what are you asking us for, Kerry?

You've already reached that point. Somebody needs to teach Kerry about pronouns. But it's a good question. What made them fun? He says was he, I'm assuming he was the rarity, but after last year, that seems to have gone away. I'm sure that after a couple of years without these accomplishments, I will return to rooting for them again. Looking forward to hearing what you guys think.

Uh, Ben? Uh, yeah, I, I generally agree, I guess. I mean, I'm, I don't know when I'm watching any one particular game and I'm kind of into it and I guess there's some part of me that is always rooting for it because I like to see that. Um, but when it has gotten just, I mean, over the last few years when there have been, you know, when there's six of them or whatever, and everyone's talking about the year of the pitcher. And it, I mean, it does kind of depreciate the accomplishment a little bit. And it's the rarity of the achievement that makes it so special and so fun when it does happen.

So I'm glad that, I mean, we talked about this the other day. I'm glad that all of those one we talked about this the other day. I'm, I'm glad that all of those one base runner games were one base runner games. Um, yeah, I mean, I guess if we went a full season without one, then I would be perfectly happy if we started off next season with a couple, but for the most part, uh, the rarer, the better, as long as you see one every once in a while i uh i haven't rooted for no haters for a very long time um uh because i don't know i i just watching them a lot of times you're not it just i don't know that okay that was a terrible sentence

uh all right let me restart i i do love perfect games. I think perfect games are great because the strain on everybody is really, really great. I mean, knowing that a strikeout in a wild pitch would ruin it, that any air would ruin it, that any walk would ruin it. I mean, we've talked about this too. We've talked about everything. But we've talked about how I'm just in awe that these guys can throw a strike when they need to throw a strike, that the moment that it really comes down to where they have to throw the ball into this tiny little zone, that they don't completely panic and,

and spike the ball into the ground blows me away. It's my favorite thing about baseball players is that they can pull that off. I don't know how they do it. And a perfect games, the margin for error on a perfect game is like thousands of times smaller than the margin for error on a no hitter. And so I do love a perfect game. So there is a point where I start to get sweaty watching a perfect game, whether I care about the pitcher or not. I mean, I actually feel extremely tense and I like that. No hitters, totally pointless.

Don't like them, don't care for them, don't understand why people root for them. A hit is no different than a walk, and it's this weird quirk of baseball 150 years ago that we treat it differently, but I just don't care. I don't see it. However, I will say that even though a perfect game is more, I don't know if exciting is the right word, but it makes me sweaty, I would rather watch, if given the choice, I would rather watch a guy threaten 20 or even 21 strikeouts

than threaten a perfect game. I start doing the math on that in the second inning. Although, to be fair, I start keeping track of perfect games in the second inning, too, if I care about the pitcher. But I start doing the math any time somebody strikes out five in two innings and I'm on it. And I'll watch the rest of that game until it becomes mathematically too unlikely. And I could see, I mean, nobody struck out 21. And I could see it being the case as we move into this like super strikeout era. I could see it being the case that over the next,

say 10 years, 17 to 20 becomes sort of the new no hitter that you start seeing that like four or five times a year, but 21 never, never gets broken. And every time the pressure builds for that guy, is he going to get 21 and by the time 21 actually happens it's a huge huge deal and so the max strikeout game might be the new the new thing we watch together yeah that'd be fun it's not that way though right now it hasn't really taken hold yet i i've uh i mean there have been games where there was a game last year i think where chris sale struck out like nine at the first 10 or something like that and nobody was talking about it particularly on on the twitter not like i think they would if he'd had a no hitter through five for instance i don't think

it's quite as exciting just from moment to moment and that if you're watching a perfect game or a no hitter there is that tension on every single pitch uh i mean any pitch can end it. Whereas if you're talking about a max strikeout game, I mean, the probability changes a bit from pitch to pitch, but even from out to out, it's not necessarily over if a guy puts a ball in play. So there's a little less tension from moment to moment, but I agree that it would be very exciting. I would like to see someone go for 21. Yeah. All right.

Well, maybe it'll happen tomorrow and we'll talk about it at the end of the show. All right.