Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 338: Giving Thanks for Your Emails

Episode Date: November 27, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss the Hall of Fame and answer listener emails about brawls with Brian McCann, catcher framing, park effects, and more.

Are you going on Thanksgiving Day to those family celebrations? Passing on knowledge down through the years at the gathering of generations. of generations. Every year it's the same routine. All over. All over. Good morning and welcome to episode 338 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Ben Lindberg with Sam Miller. This is our last show before the Thanksgiving break, so we're doing email show. Before we start that, I guess we can update an old topic about Deadspin buying a Hall of Fame vote. They have successfully done so. Someone has agreed to submit a ballot, I guess, voted on by Deadspin readers. Is that how it's going to work? That's how I understand it, yeah.

The irony would be if it ends up being a really bad ballot anyway, which could happen. I don't know whether the typical Deadspin readership would be in line with, I don't know, like the standard sabermetric consensus on what a Hall of Famer is, but I don't know whether the solution to improving the voting is necessarily a fan vote. I get no impression from this that the that the point is to turn in the best ballot yeah i know it's just a this is this is like process and the it's right it's it's basically street art right it's basically like vandalizing something serious with like your um your your banksy or whatever this is this is banksy Banksy. Isn't this supposed to be Banksy? Isn't it supposed to be Banksy? I think so, yeah.

I think so too. So I don't know. I don't know whether that improves anything though. Well, we already talked about this. I guess we already did a podcast about this. I think the nice thing is that it is not dictated what it's supposed to be. So in fact, there is like a meta level where it is crowdsourcing about what kind of crowdsourcing it will be. Like first, the voters will decide on their own what they want this to be.

And then once they've decided what they want it to be, or I guess simultaneously, it's sort of a strange thing where you vote twice at once without knowing what everybody else is going to do, then they'll find out what it actually is. So I would guess that there, I don't know, I guess, I mean, I would guess that there will be, if I had to guess,

I would say that Bonds and Clemens are automatic. Bonds and Clemens will get in and that probably the plurality beyond that would be mockery votes, but that they will be diluted by too many mockery candidates, perhaps. And so the serious votes will then prevail with like a sort of even like a secondary plurality or whatever. Like they will be the strongest subset. And so it will end up being, I would guess it will end up being pretty close to the 10 names that you would pick if you had a real vote. What do you think? Yeah, if I had a vote and didn't have the 10-person restriction, I think I would probably vote yes on at least 14 guys on the ballot this year.

Yeah, I counted 14 and maybe 15. Yeah, there were a couple. You and I disagree on BGO. I think BGO – McGuire is my cliff guy. Yeah, me too. So that means that there's at least one that we have different because I don't have BGO. I have, yeah, Bagwell, BGO. Is it Larry Walker that we disagree on maybe?

I like Larry Walker. Well, no, you have one that I – I have one that you don't have because you have Biggio and I don't have Biggio. So is it Schilling? Do you have Schilling? No, I have Schilling. Mussina? You have Mussina. I definitely have Mussina, yeah. Yeah, I have Bagwell, Biggio, Bonds, Clemens, Glavin, Maddox, Martinez, Mussina, Piazza, Raines, Schilling, Thomas, Trammell, Walker.

Yeah, pretty much mine. I didn't notice which name you didn't have. What do you think it would look like if Hall of Fame voting just worked like All-Star voting? You have Piazza, and you have Edgar, and you have Flavin. Yeah. Oh, Kent. Kent. I have Kent. you have Glavin. Yeah. Oh, Kent. Kent. I have Kent.

Do you have Kent? I did not put Kent in there, but I didn't really look hard. I might not have Kent in there. Kent was one of my 14, but I put seven seconds of thought into this list. Yeah, I'd have to take a closer look. But what do you think it would look like if it were just opened up to fan voting? Would we be more annoyed by the results or less annoyed? I guess we'd be less annoyed in that we'd have fewer people writing

sanctimonious columns about why they voted for someone, or maybe we'd have even more, but we wouldn't actually bother reading them. Uh, but the actual results, do you think they, I mean, we'd have, you know, there'd be, there'd be no PD guys getting in, right? And Jack Morris would, would still be getting in probably. Do you think, is that just a baseball writer candidate or is that just a baseball fan, non-sabermetric baseball fan candidate? Man, I don't know.

I don't, I don't know how the vote would go. I mean, the only real, I guess the only thing that we have that is similar is the all-star voting. And the all-star voting is pretty good until you get to the final vote, in which case it goes completely bananas and it's basically just random and people are voting for their geographic region. So it's always hard to know what incentives develop to sway the internet voter. It does not take much to get the incentives all out of whack and have them voting on something totally absurd. of whack and have them voting on something totally absurd. I would think that the popular opinion is probably in line with the typical writer, but the popular opinion on the internet skews much lower and much younger and therefore

would be pretty well aligned with yours. I think there would be a couple of guys who you appreciate more than the average 24-year-old, and maybe one or two that you appreciate a lot less. But I would bet that your 10 and the Internet 10 would be pretty similar. I would bet. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure ESPN has done some vote and you could probably go see. Yeah. All right. What questions are you going to answer? What if you had to text your answer in, though?

And normal texting charges apply. Yeah, it would be totally different. If you had to text your answer in, it would be out of control. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. All right. So what are we talking about? All right.

So I've got, I don't know, five, but two of them are basically just me reading long responses. So, all right. Since there are two from Eric, Eric Hartman, I will read one first so that I can read the second one later. Eric says, my question is simple and lacking in whimsy. Does a great framing catcher specifically help a control pitcher or a wild one more? And this is a great question that I'm glad he asked and I'm surprised I've never asked you because it seems clear that a control pitcher helps a great framing catcher or at least intuitively it would make sense. I guess it is not clear that that is the case, and that's why Max quit adjusting for pitcher, right? Because

he found that it actually didn't make a big difference. But intuitively, we all think that it does, and that a guy who's catching Greg Maddox is going to have a lot better chance of stealing strikes than a guy who's catching Francisco Liriano. But whether that is actually truth or not, the flip side question is interesting. And I would think that it would help a wild one more. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't looked into this. I don't know whether anyone has looked into this. My instinct was I kind of went back and forth. At first I thought wild just because you really need those extra strikes. And even if maybe you're getting fewer of them because you're not able to target a certain area where you could get your catcher to frame them. Just the, I don't know, just the marginal benefit to a wild pitcher of getting some more extra strikes would be more valuable than to a control pitcher.

Then again, I don't know, if there were a pitcher with such great control that he really could just put the ball, you know, a few inches or he he knows that his catcher is good on low pitches or outside pitches or whatever it is and he can really hit that spot potentially it would probably be more valuable for him but i guess you and i are both sort of skeptical about pitchers command right like and their their ability to to do that What was that stat that, like, you looked up a stat and then I piggybacked on it? It was like with 3-0 pitches to pitchers. 2 pitchers, yeah.

On 3-0 counts, 2 pitchers, they throw the ball in the strike zone. 67% of the time, right? Two-thirds of the time. Yeah. Right, when you have a free free just an automatic strike and i i guess that might be sort of skewed by the fact that you don't necessarily need to throw it in the strike zone because you know that on 3-0 the zone is bigger no no no no no no it's you you there is no incentive to to not throw it right down the middle to a pitcher because you know

he's not swinging there it's different we didn't do 302 tory hunter yeah where you might theoretically talk yourself into the need to be cautious there is zero chance that that pitcher is swinging really at the next pitch either now it might it is skewed somewhat by the fact that the pitchers who are going to go 302 another pitcher are going to be wilder pitchers but But we decided it didn't skew it all that much. And I forget, what did you do? What did you do? You did another one, right? No, I think you had done 3-2 and then I did 3-0.

Ah, there we go. I think that was it. But so even if, I mean, even if it's a pitcher with better than average control, you know, maybe he can throw a strike when he wants to three quarters of the time. So, and we're just talking in the zone or not in the zone. So that kind of makes me skeptical that a guy could be so good that he could place it consistently, you know, in a, in the pretty small area where a framing, a good framing catcher makes the difference you know it's really just like a range of a few inches i guess he could do it more often than someone who

doesn't have good command but um what was your thought process for wild uh that it takes more technique to make a frame look good, and particularly it takes more technique to not lose strikes that are in the strike zone. Is it the case that, it is the case, right, that framing makes a bigger difference on getting strikes that wouldn't otherwise be strikes than on losing strikes that should. Yeah, I think so. It just seems to me that there's a lot of strikes that Francisco Liriano throws that he doesn't get because he's missing to the wrong side of the plate. And so besides the stealing strikes aspect of it, you would have the losing strikes aspect of it a lot more. There'd be a lot more balls where the catcher's skill would be in play.

But, you know, you're right. The flip side is really whether the pitcher can change his game plan knowing he has a good catcher. And if he can, then probably the sort of second level, like the ability to have a new strategy. Like we're no longer just talking about the ability to get a strike, you know, blessed upon you every once in a while. But to actually have a different strategy would probably be greater. That's right. It was that I did the 3-2 and you did the 3-0, and they were almost exactly the same. And that's what made me think the 3-0 wasn't a skewed uh sample because the 3.2 wouldn't

be particularly skewed i mean there's nothing about going 3.2 to a pitcher that screams wild i mean it's slightly wilder maybe than usual but basically it's just you know normal business so the fact that they were almost identical made me think that there was something to it anyway uh Anyway, so what are we saying? Do we have a consensus? No. I guess not. Further research required. Okay. All right.

Scott asks, what's the over-under on the number of Yankees Red Sox brawls that feature Brian McCann as a central figure? and I'm the reason I read this is because it seems interesting to me how our opinion of Brian McCann right now is that he is the policeman of the league, he's a punchline for his enforcement of unwritten rules it's the joke everybody was

making but it's also like in the BP annual it's part of in the BP annual, it's part of his comment is noting that the stuff that he did, the blocking Carlos Gomez, actually probably plays pretty well on the market because it established him as a leader and as a take-charge catcher. And this is really his reputation now. And yet, this wasn't, as far as I can tell, and I checked with two other people before this podcast,

as far as I can tell, this is a new reputation. This wasn't like his reputation a year ago. He had basically one year with two events or so, and maybe he had more this year, but you could very easily make the case that this was very specific to the time and place, the team he was on, what he perceived to be the need of the team, and that it will be really dramatically different

when he's with the Yankees. So I'm not sure that we should expect this to necessarily carry over. I mean, he's always been a guy who's had a good reputation for makeup and kind of on the field stuff. Not creating brawls but being a smart player.

So it could just be that he was very good at reading the context and that in fact he'll go to New York and it'll be a totally different role that he takes on and maybe we'll love it. I guess what I'm just saying is that maybe this is the last chance to get your licks in on Brian McCann. But please don't because already too many people have. But yeah, but right.

I said the same sort of thing in my transaction analysis that that thing that infuriated everyone on the internet probably just endears him to teammates and maybe to all players in a way. And that, yeah, I think there were some articles written before those incidents about how he was taking on more of a leadership role because there was a leadership void with Chipper Jones retiring and he was kind of the guy who'd been around for a while

and he's a veteran now and he was stepping into this position. So you're right. Maybe he goes to the Yankees and on the Yankees, he's a young guy all of a sudden. He's 30. He's a spring chicken. Youngest position player in their lineup. That's sad. No David Ross either, by the way.

That might have been significant yeah so I'll put the over under on brawls at zero you have to put it at a half and I'll take the under alright I will also take the under

alright Kevin says I was listening to Friday's email show, and I was appalled at your lack of imagination in trying to come up with strategies as radical as never punting in football. How about eliminating the specialist duty of pitchers and instead filling a team of 25 hitters with 15 or so all-rounders who could also pitch? According to Google search, MLB position players have 7.8 runs allowed per

nine as pitchers, but maybe you think that by selecting position players who would make good pitchers and by giving them a little bit of actual training, you could knock their talent down to about six. Keep in mind that you could get the platoon advantage for any hitter you wanted since you could change pitchers and keep them in the game at a different position. The MLB average was about 4.2 runs per nine last year, so you'd have to make up two runs per game to make this work, but you get a lot of advantages. You don't have to spend money on pitchers.

You can sign star hitters for the top of your lineup. You don't have sucky hitting pitchers, if this is an NL team, and you have 25 credible position players, so you can platoon the heck out of your lineup and be aggressive about pinch hitting, pinch running, defensive substitutions. Would I recommend this? No. I don't think the math works, even with generous assumptions generous assumptions was hoping the starting runs allowed nine of position players would be more like the high sixes but it's radical and you can see how it might make sense to somebody

especially at a lower level parentheses though i guess roster limits are less restrictive in college and such so uh i mostly wanted to read this and ask you a question that's not even really part of this but uh if the ml position player mlb position players have a 7.8 runs allowed per nine as pitchers uh if they were tasked with pitching more than one inning in a blowout like if if one if uh casper Wells actually started a game, and you can say that maybe there are enough Casper Wells, that fatigue is not an issue, and arm injuries and attrition aren't issues,

but he is pitching meaningful innings, right? So not blowouts, meaningful innings. What do you think that runs allowed per nine would be do you think that's actually do you think that's a realistic estimate or are we seeing are we just seeing like a totally fake kind of baseball where the hitters aren't even trying i i don't think that i would guess that the the fact that it's a blowout doesn't change things all that much because there's there's still pride at stake right i mean hitters don't hitters don't want to strike out against a position player and position players i think want to show off a little bit when they're on the mound right so i i don't

think anyone's really not trying at i think if you if you put those players, if those players just became pitchers and they focused on pitching full time, then I would think they could get it down to, I don't know, 6.5 or something if they were real full-time pitchers with coaching and repetition and instruction and everything. I still don't think that they would be good. They'd still be pretty terrible, but probably better. Maybe they would have been better if they had, you know, at the appropriate age been coached as a pitcher because the people, the position players who get selected to pitch in those games often have pitching experience. And maybe if they had devoted themselves to that from a young age, they could have been better. But I think they'd

still be pretty terrible, not of the the blowout thing but just because they would they'd be more devoted to it they could be a little better than that yeah it's one of the things that most blows my mind about baseball that non-pitchers can come in and face like adrian gonzalez and strike him out like yeah just absolutely i will never get used to that and um i would like to think that it's a motivation issue, but you're right. When you watch this, they look like their eyes are open and they're trying to hit the ball. They look unhappy when they strike out. Hang Up and Listen once had a thing. Josh Levine had a little item about how NBA players,

when it's halftime and the buzzer's about to you know the buzzer's about to sound and they're 55 feet away well there's no law there's nothing there's no reason not to shoot the ball right you might get three points and so you know you'd help your team right and so they all throw it up but there's somebody did an analysis and in fact they all throw it up a half second too late because they don't want that going on their field goal percentage. They don't want their stats to be affected by a shot that they have almost no shot of actually making. So players are keenly aware of how their stats affect their next contract. Yeah.

And so you're right. I mean, it probably is. It might actually even be the case that they're more motivated um knowing that it is a free opportunity to get to pad your stuff yeah and selfish a chance where your selfishness is totally allowed it's like there is no i mean obviously most 99 of the time what's good for you is good for the team but there's not even like a thought about like you know taking a first pitch to wear down the guy or to give your pitcher a chance to you know breathe there's not even a thought about taking a first pitch to wear down the guy or to give your pitcher a chance to breathe.

There's no chance of situational hitting. There's no like, oh, he struck out because he was swinging for the fences. What a jerk. Just swing for the fences. Do whatever is in your purest, purest, purest self-interest. And they still don't do all that well. So, yeah, it's weird. It's probably right.

So anything else about this idea? I like the idea in general because obviously it wouldn't work. It's too bad it wouldn't work because it would be kind of fun. But, I mean, it does seem like the closest idea to a radical idea is to not have any starting pitchers. And the first thing that you realize if you switch to a no starting pitchers team is how much money you save because you don't have to pay for starting pitchers. And relievers are generally, especially if you're signing 70 of them, a lot cheaper. So I like the idea of giving up on an expensive part of your team and filling it out with cheap ones. One of the great insights of Bill James' writing is that replacement level players are pretty good.

you know, paying, if you're overpaying for mid-tier guys, when replacement level players are sort of closer than we ever realized, you're spending too much on not that much gain. And so I like the idea of setting an even different replacement level that's even lower than replacement level and being even cheaper. Like if you could, if you, if it turned out that the average college pitcher is only, you know, wins worse than even the replacement level pitcher, and you could just go hire 1,000 of these guys for nothing, then it'd be fun. But it probably isn't the case. Are you going to bring up Dan Brooks' email? I am.

I am. I'm going to read it for like 12 minutes. That's the next 12 minutes of this show. can edit it it's very long it's a good email though it is a good email all right so uh dan brooks uh in response to the same topic uh which we were smitten by we were smitten by the topic the by the football coach who never punts uh and probably didn't think critically enough about it. So Dan writes, the reason going for it onside kicking is better in high school is kickers kind of suck and are generally inaccurate, bad at kicking the ball far, making it less likely they will convert field goals into points and kickoffs into negative plays.

And onside kicks will be more successful because the opposing team has a weaker hands team and your team will be better coached to deal with them than the opposing team because you practice this dumb strategy. So the listener asked for a similar situation in baseball. I'm reminded of a team who in my town's little league, 12 and 13 year olds, would bunt often, like a lot. Six or seven bunts every time through the lineup. Why? Well, let's see. Bunting players are much less likely to strike out, especially at 12 years old. Young catchers suck and can hardly get up and throw to first, let alone second. Young pitchers are generally not used to feeling their position. Young third basemen are not used to chasing down the ball. Young first basemen are often confused, not knowing whether to stay put

and guard the bag or charge and grab a bunt near him. The baselines are shorter and it's easier to beat out even a good play. Even an out at first often advances one or more runners. Crappy fields mean the ball would take a weird bounce and not be easy to pick up if you get there in time, etc. This makes bunting way better, all caps, at 12 and 13 than it is in the pros, like you've scored dozens of runs per game. But most Little League coaches don't have all their hitters bunt. Why? Because it's a crappy strategy that takes advantage of the fact that your opponents have poor defensive skills.

And rather than spending the time playing real baseball, you'd rather exploit the crap out of them. The guy doing cost-benefit analysis on his 14-year-old football players is this guy. Don't be this guy. Basically true. I don't know that guy. Basically true. I don't know that high school football is... I think high school football is okay. High school football is practically semi-pro

in many parts of the country. And I don't know. I don't know that I'm as worried about high school football players' feelings, especially if it's... I mean, you know, if it's running up the score or something, then maybe that's something. I see Dan's point.

I don't think it's exactly analogous because I think bunting is something that you have to learn to do eventually. Maybe it's done too often or historically has been done too often, but there's a point to bunting. There's a benefit to bunting. Major leaguers should bunt sometimes. And obviously, if you're bunting all the time with literally little leaguers, then you are depriving them of some training actually

hitting the ball. And I can see why that would be a bad thing. But in the example of the coach who never punts, in the interview that we heard, he said he was basing this on college data, first of all, and just, you know, extrapolating that it would work even better in high school. But the data that he was basing it on that suggested that, you know, not ever punting is a good idea was based on college. And similar analysis has been done on the NFL, right? Like even there, it's not a strategy that makes sense all that much. not a strategy that makes sense all that much. So he, I think is, you know, I don't think he is,

he's depriving these kids of, of something that they should be learning how to do in a way it's, it's everyone else's fault for not, you know, for, for making them do those things when they really shouldn't have to. Like he's, he's sort of in the right here not making them do those things the fact that when they get to be older and suddenly they'll be asked to punt or kick field goals and they won't know how to i don't know if he's really responsible for that because that's uh that's an inefficiency that everyone else should be taking advantage of but they're not yeah i mean it's not they're not perfectly comparable they're not the same scale um i one i mean the bunting is yeah like you say it's it's every it's you know if you're doing it almost every play you're you're essentially stopping baseball from happening uh whereas you know the not punting is

occasional. And not punting doesn't really show up the other team either. I mean, I guess if you make a show of it and go on the Today Show and talk about yourself, then maybe you could make the case that you're sort of showing up your opponent, maybe. If it's

fourth and 40, and you're at your own one-yard line, and you do it, there's a point where it's like so showy that maybe it is showing up the opponent. But, you know, basically the no punting isn't a big deal. The onside kick is a bit. I mean, that is sort of an odd way to play, and it really does capitalize on your opponent's failure in a way that no punting doesn't. And I don't know, I could see that if I were a coach, I could see not wanting to do that for class reasons. But, you know, it's true. I mean, the point, since we're a baseball show, the point that we often come back to is that your chances to do something really creative in baseball are fairly limited. And when you start thinking about ways that you could do it in baseball, it doesn't really work unless you're talking about 12 or 13-year-olds.

And for 12 and 13 year olds yes that seems like a pretty uncool thing to do i um i guess i'm most reminded of like the way that when i was 12 or 11 i would uh really try to abuse the gender split in co-ed games and and then i turned 13 and was like oh man i'm like a horrible human being and you just play right it's not that important to win yeah well i guess you could make the argument that most of these kids aren't gonna go on to play baseball at a high level anyway so you're teaching them a more valuable lesson you're teaching them how to quit now exploit the that and exploit the opponent's weakness.

Baseball's boring. It's just one guy bumping all the time. Yeah, become football fans. All right, last one is from Eric. Yeah, from Eric. Did it come from a different email address? Might have. I'm not sure. All right.

Let's say through some magic Petco Park started playing exactly the same as Coors Field starting on opening day next year. How long would it take us to realize? And secondly, to realize it's not just noise. I think it would. I mean, usually people say like you have to wait for a full season or longer for park factors to be... Like five years. It's like five years before you can say with reliability usually, right? I mean, if you look at how Citizens Bank ballpark has played, for instance, it's all over the place.

Any five-year sample or I guess any three year sample would likely be misleading yeah and especially if there's no reason for the change if there's no fence moving in or humidor or I don't know something that would explain

why the most extreme pitchers park is playing like the most extreme hitters park or vice versa it would probably take me years before i'd believe it right because well no i i think that this specific question uh the answer is two days before we noticed it and probably six weeks to two months before we thought it was with 50% likelihood that it was more than just noise. I mean, to go from Petco to Coors would be, it would be, players would be complaining about it or at least mentioning it by the second day. But it would be so difficult to talk myself into

why it was happening in the absence of no, in the absence of an explanation for it. why it was happening in the absence of no, in the absence of an explanation for it. How would you rationalize? I mean, how would you? Well, yeah. If the question had, especially if the question was starting on, you know,

game, you know, 39 of a season with nothing changing if it happened. If it started on opening day, we would probably be more attuned to things being weird and to showing up, you know, like that's how our brains work. But yeah, if nothing changed. Like I would just, you'd almost have to assume that something, like some team was doctoring the ball or something, right? I mean, that would be like the most likely explanation,

and it's not likely, but. You would still acknowledge, though, that something was at play, that something had changed the offensive environment, which is just as good as a park factor. I guess I'd have to. But, yeah, I guess I don't know how long it would take statistically before the odds of this scoring pattern happening at this park would make it so far-fetched

that it could just be chance. But I don't think it's a matter of the statistics. I think the statistics would be telling, and they would convince us, but I think players would be talking about it immediately, like just by the second day. I really think by the second day, there would be articles about you know what players felt like out there i mean they know how hard they hit the ball you know how hard you hit a ball immediately like i mean i've never played in the majors but i have played softball and you hit the ball and you know immediately whether it's over the left fielder's head yeah and i guess it's it would depend on on their explanation for why it was happening. Because usually you'll hear, well, the fence is short, so you don't have to hit it that hard for it to go out. Or maybe you'll hear the ball carries really well in this direction. There's a wind tunnel or something where it just flies out that way.

flies out that way um so i guess if they had if they had some like like if they were just as mystified as we were and they were like i don't know how we're scoring all these runs we're just we keep hitting the ball really well then i don't know that i would buy it until like statistically it was so improbable that it could happen by chance. But if they had some explanation, like, I don't know what, but if they had some explanation that could convince me that something real had happened, then I would have no choice but to accept it.

End of the show. All right. Well, this brings to an end the nice little run we've had of weeks ending in multiples of five. So we'll be back next Thursday. Right. Yeah, you guys can tell us.

Look, I've gotten a lot of tweets and emails and Facebook group comments about how terrible it is that this is happening. So if you think it's so terrible that we should just take a couple days off next week, we could do that. I don't know whether it's worth it to you. But that would be one resolution. Otherwise, I guess it'll be a while until we're back on

the optimal schedule. But it's something to look forward to. So we hope that you have a nice break, nice Thanksgiving. We are thankful for your support and listening to us and

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