Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 488: Only the Finest Listener Emails

Episode Date: July 9, 2014

Ben and and Sam banter about records they’d like to see broken and answer listener emails about the Yankees’ facial hair policy, trying not to hit homers, and more.

You've got to know to really change it, keep it off the record, off the record. You've got to know to really change it, keep it off the record, off the record. Come on! Good morning and welcome to episode 488 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg. Hi. Joined by Sam Miller.

Hello. Hi, Ben. How are you? Pretty good. How are you? Okay. Spent a lot of the day trying to come up with a topic, and then you reminded me that it's email Wednesday.

Will it work tomorrow? We'll see. Probably not. Too bad. Do you want to talk about it anyway? No. Okay. Anything else? It might work tomorrow. Okay. Anything else to cover?

No, sir. I did a quick play index earlier. Not the play index segment, but just a quick introductory play index because I realized that it's been a long time since we had to do a Ryan Webb games finished without a save update. It's been a while. He hasn't had a game finished since May 29th. It's been a while. He hasn't had a game finish since May 29th. And I play index to see where this ranks among his longest streaks without a game finished. And this is his second longest. Actually, it's tied for his second longest streak of games.

It is his second longest streak of innings without a save. He went 18 games from April 21, 2011 to June 4, 2011. He went 18 games in 16 and two-thirds innings without getting a game finished. He is now up to 13 games in 14 and two- thirds innings without a game finished. So I don't know what it means. The Cespedes family barbecue boys were going to ask him about this, but then I never heard back from them. Yeah. So I guess let that be a lesson to everyone.

Don't count on the Cespedes family barbecue boys. All right. Well, let's do some emails. So this is an email from David who asks, what if overnight a rule was enacted that made home run score negative runs? This is a thing, Ben. It is. You don't even need to finish this.

This is an actual, we have real life, there's a real life sport that actually does something that is almost equivalent to this. But anyway, you can keep reading. Could hitters adjust their mechanics to avoid hitting home runs, or would the need to hit the ball as hard as possible outweigh the risk of hitting it too hard? What was the comparison you were going to draw? Well, in slow pitch softball, slow pitch softball, I don't know if it's slow pitch softball. Yeah, I think it's slow pitch softball. In professional softball,

there are, let me think, you're limited to how many home runs you can hit, I believe, because they could just hit home runs all day long. They could just hit home runs every single at bat all day long. I mean, they're the 40 best slow pitch softball players in the world. And if they wanted to, they could hit a home run every single at bat all day long. I mean, they're the 40 best slow-pitch softball players in the world.

And if they wanted to, they could hit a home run every single time. So you're limited. And once you hit your max, if you hit a home run, I think it's an out. And so by a certain inning, I've watched literally one slow-pitch softball game in my life. It was like USA versus like australia or something and uh so this is what i'm basing this on but uh i'll pretend that i'm slow pitch softball aficionado uh by a certain point in the game uh home runs become risky not just because you don't um not just because you've maxed out and each one would be an out or whatever it is uh but because

you don't want to get to that point just in case you accidentally hit a home run i guess so you start thinking about it even before um but uh the game that i watched the one game the one game about a sport that's not the same as baseball upon which i'm going to draw all my conclusions uh they didn't have much trouble not hitting home runs um Changes things somewhat. Shrinks the field a little bit. But baseball is different, right? Because every power hitter, every single one,

will tell you that they were not trying to hit a home run. They were just trying to square the ball up, hit the ball hard somewhere. If you try to hit home runs, then that way lies doom. Exactly. So they're only trying to hit the ball hard. So the question is whether a Major League Baseball player who's hitting non-slow-pitched baseballs can do it.

What do you think? Hmm. I think there'd be an occasional accidental home run. I think on the whole they could do it, but there'd also be, I think they would, if a home run is negative one runs, do you lose as many runs as there are runners on base? Maybe that's how it works. If so, that would be a pretty significant disincentive, depending on the game situation So I would expect that there would not be many home runs But that there would also be corresponding declines In the other kinds of extra base hits Yeah, so let me ask you Let me rephrase the question slightly, ever so slightly

So let's say that Let's say Giancarlo Stanton is currently worth five, whatever unit of measurement you want to use. He's a five, okay? And let's say Hunter Pence is a four. And let's say Alex Gordon is a three. And let's say that, I don't know, Jose Altuve is a two. And let's say Eric Ibar is a 1.

And these are intended to correspond to their home runs as well. I got that wrong. Ibar is a 2, and Altuve is a 1. No, Altuve can't be a 1. No, you're pretty hard on Altuve. Ibar is a 2, and Juan Ligares is a 1. Okay. So that corresponds basically to their overall value

right sure that those five four three two one that that works pretty much lagares one ibar two whoever i said three uh gordon three pence four stand five that that's fairly that's that's fairly on point for their offensive value right it's also you know more or less on point for their home run ratio right yes okay so let's say that in this world where home runs are outlawed are negative then what does stanton become what does pence become what does gordon become what does ibar become and what does lagares become and we're not talking about hitting. Ignore defense. We're just talking about his hitters.

Well, Stanton would be dangerous. Stanton would be, I mean, he's, I think he would have a hard time not hitting home runs. He hits the ball so hard. How many home runs do you think he would hit if a home run were uh equivalent of a double play how many home runs in a season uh seven seven yeah i don't think he can help it seven's pretty low seven it's interesting because seven is either low or high i would have gone with either a lower number or a much higher like i could have seen 25 and i could have seen like two i wouldn't have bought seven but seven's fine i don't think it would be 25 uh he's you think that 18 of his home runs no you know you think well so if he has 40

home runs you think no fewer than 33 of them are in his control? That he could adjust to eliminate 33 home runs? Sure. He'd be a much worse hitter, though, because he'd also have fewer. I don't know how fine the control is. He could give up the home runs, but by doing so, he would just ground out to second base over him. To do that, he would have to so adjust that he would lose all of his singles. Because his singles, when you think about it,

his singles are essentially just home runs that miss by a quarter of an inch. Not just from space, but from 300 feet above the park, they look exactly the same. They basically hit the bat in the same. Like they, they basically hit the bat in the same spot. They're just slightly lower trajectory. He hits them really hard, but just at a slightly lower trajectory and therefore they become singles, right? Yes. I mean, if you're, if you're a Ligaris, then you might not change anything. You probably wouldn't probably shouldn't change anything. Cause he he's he hit four home runs last year he's hit two home runs this year so that wouldn't even be worth worrying

about he should he should hit the ball as hard as he can because as hard as he can is unlikely to result in a home run and he would cost himself more in in every other kind of hit by by trying to eliminate any possibility of a home run. So for, so for him, clearly he would keep doing what he's doing for Stanton, a guy who, if he's healthy,

might hit 40, then you have to start to worry about that. Is he worse? Is he worse than Ligaris? Uh, I don't know. Cause you have the negative impact of the seven home runs as well as the fact that he can't do any of his natural hitting. So he might be as bad as Ligaris generally,

and then you add the seven negative home runs, he might be worse. Are you willing to say that Ligaris becomes a three and Stanton becomes a two? Maybe both threes. I don't know. two? Maybe both threes. I don't know. Stanton has as many, he has as many home runs this year as he has doubles, the same, the same number. And he, he's not a triples guy. He has one triple. So yeah, I don't, I don't know if he were, if he were to, I mean, at a certain point, I guess, If he were to, I mean, at a certain point, I guess, would it even be worth it for someone like Stanton to just swing hard? And maybe, because I feel like if you tried to control your batted ball type,

like there's some, there was some evidence that a hitter can hit a sack fly. I remember citing that study by John Walsh where he looked at sack fly situations and whether hitters actually hit more fly balls in that situation, and they did, although it wasn't much of an effect. It was something. You would think that hitters could somehow control that, just not hit the ball on a home run-like trajectory. But I guess that's harder than it sounds because Stanton will just hit line drives that leave the ballpark, and they're not really all that distinguishable from a double off the wall.

Okay, but what if Stanton's only goal was to hit singles up the middle? He could do that. Don't you think that if you told him that he was going to get paid a million dollars for every single up the middle, that he would be able to do that a significant amount of time? Like, don't you think that he could probably... Wouldn't you guess that if he really wanted, if he really wanted, he could hit 340 with all singles up the middle i don't think so you don't think so i think tony gwynn

could do that i don't know if stan but stan is much stronger than tony gwynn and i mean he obviously doesn't have some of the skills that Tony Gwynn has. He doesn't have the bat control. He strikes out. He doesn't have the bat control, but he has much more bat speed. Yes. And, I mean, if there was no incentive for him to hit home runs and

doubles, I don't know. I'm not sure. I mean, Stanton, by the way, this is a tangent, and we don't need to necessarily go too far on this, but I think it's fair that Mike Trout gets the most attention as the best player in baseball. He is clearly the best player in baseball. He is the best player since somewhere between peak A-Rod and Bonds and babe ruth somewhere somewhere he's one he's better than anybody since one of those three um and so he deserves everything but it feels like stanton

as the clear number two best player in baseball doesn't get enough credit right now because stanton right now is he is he is a better base runner this year than billy hamilton by base running metrics he is absolutely going to win a gold runner this year than Billy Hamilton by base running metrics. He is absolutely going to win a gold glove this year, I think. And he's a top three or four hitter in the game. And he's 24 years old. And we just don't pay nearly enough attention to him, I don't think. Some of us put him on their MLB TV must watch.

Not all of us put him on you do mlb tv must watch but you not all of us for the most perverse cheap smutty reason like all you want to do is just see him hit a baseball in one direction that's it like you don't have any there's no poetry in in your john carlos stanton uh it's it's nothing but smut and filth. But I'm saying that John Carlos Stanton is actually the second best player in baseball as an all-around player, which itself is a generic term that gets thrown around for weird reasons. But all-around player, John Carlos Stanton currently is. He is right now leading the majors in wins of a replacement player at baseball prospectus. Yeah.

Anyway, what were we saying? So could he hit 340 with singles? You say no. I say yes. I think that in this world where home runs are penalized, I don't think I would change my ranking of the five players. Hmm. Well, I would compress them.

How about that? I would compress them. I would say that instead of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, it would be like 2.2, 2.6, 3.4, 3.7, and 4.1. Mm-hmm. But same order. Yeah, you'd think that Someone as talented as Stanton could

Adjust to these new rules And still excel It's a good question which is why we answered it Uh huh I also don't know just for the record I also don't know I didn't think you definitely had the answer So this question

Comes from Andrew, who says, I just read a funny little story on the interwebs about how Brandon McCarthy's wife was happy about his trade to the Yankees because it means he'll have to shave his beard. It got me wondering, though, what if he refuses to shave? What happens to McCarthy and or the trade? Would the trade be nullified with all players returning to their previous teams? Would McCarthy simply be benched for the remainder of the season with no pay until he shaves? Or would the Yankees release him and make him a free agent? I understand that if you choose to sign with the Yankees as a free agent, you agree to adhere to their facial hair policies.

But how about those guys who are forced to go there as part of a trade? So in practice, of course, no one would actually defy these rules. No one would want to make such a big stink about it. This seems, I mean, it would kind of be the ultimate unwritten rules violation to make your facial hair, to put your facial hair before the team. Wait a minute, though. He's already put his facial hair before his spouse. Isn't that why we generally assume the mask that we wear is to attract a mate and to uh keep that mate attracted to us so yeah he's already

established that uh he will choose beard over uh the love of his life and his physical partner so let's not put anything past brandon mccarthy okay yeah that's that's a fair point. So in practice, you would never see this. We have never seen this. This policy has been in place for quite a while. And to my knowledge, no one has outright refused to fall in line. But for the sake of discussion, because Andrew asked, we could speculate about what happens. So I asked a former Yankees employee about this. Oh, he left, huh? Yes. You're one source, but the Yankees left?

Because he wanted a goatee. So he had to leave. The beard rule doesn't apply to all staff, does it? I don't know. I don't recall seeing anyone with a beard when I worked there. Goodness. Not sure. It might just be a culture of fear thing where you don't necessarily want to test it. So I asked and he said that, you know, people always shave. They never object to shaving.

But if someone refused, he thinks that they would have a case in an appeal. He said teams can have their own finable criteria, but that criteria can't be egregious he said he thinks it's moot because no one would be the first to to change it but he to challenge it but he did point out that there is a creeping stubble correlated to how well you're playing sort of informal rule that some star players have gotten away with more facial hair than others which is certainly the case. He cited Jason Giambi and Andy Pettit and Roger Clemens, and there was a period where Bernie Williams had some significant gray stubble going on

and Cano had something there. So there is a little leeway there, depending on how valuable you are to the team. But no one has actually tested it. But if someone wanted to, if someone wanted to be the trailblazer here, maybe they would have a case. Maybe someone could be the Kurt Flood of facial hair. I don't even know how to apply any reasonable standard to this.

What other position is there in the entire world where you simply get traded to another company and you have no say over it? Right. It makes no sense. I mean, I guess the alternative they could say, they could argue, is, well, you could retire. Yes. But that doesn't really seem right by the way i was watching the television show veep the other day and there was a joke about one character's five o'clock shadow and they were he was the most most smoothly shaved man i've ever seen and i just thought this show doesn't even have the courage of its convictions to let him grow out a five o'clock shadow

for that episode. Because, I mean, I don't, these guys get, for a TV, they get shaved so close. Like, I am never in my entire life as closely shaved as this guy was. Like, if I shave and I'm done shaving, I have more stubble than this guy had.

And yet, they decided that he had enough shade which was no shade that they could make a joke about his stubble it was weird good show otherwise i'm only on season one i it's okay i hear it gets better in season two gets much better in season two yeah would you care to do play index sure uh so i was watching phil hughes tonight and uh phil hughes was uh is currently presently no relieved has been relieved uh was mowing down the seattle mariners he had eight strikeouts and no walks and that's basically what phil hughes has done for the for the last three months, basically since about his fourth start of the year. He strikes out a bunch of guys and never walks anybody. And I was thinking about the year I was born, which is 1980. I was born in 1980. And I was thinking about, golly, he's had two walks or more twice this year.

Twice. Wow. Once was two and once was three. And so I was thinking about how the year I was born, he would have been seen as like this robot from the future, right? If you could transport Phil Hughes back to 1980, it would be like he was speaking another language. They just wouldn't know how to handle him whatsoever, right? And so I started wondering about, well, the nature of that, I guess. And in particular, wondering who this year is setting records that would be records in

1980, but are not records currently. Because 1980 is not that long ago. I mean, I'm not that old. No, you're a young man. Young man. And so in 1980, these things would have been historic. We would have heralded them. We would have paid attention every start.

But just a scant 34 years later um things have changed and they're not historical and so i um uh so i wondered what records are currently being set that would have been records in 1980 but are not necessarily but could be records today so uh i went the places where you would think I went. So first, strikeouts per nine for a qualified starter in 1980. The record was 10.7 per nine by Sam McDowell in 1965. And Hugh Darvish would be on pace to break that record this year at 11.03 strikeouts per nine. Surprisingly, he's the only one. Which is surprising surprise right surprisingly is

that a fair assessment surprisingly yeah i'd say so uh strikeouts uh to walk ratio the record is 7.1 uh as of 1980 by fergie jenkins uh and this year there are three pitchers on pace to break that record um phil hughes is currently leading at about roughly 9 after tonight's start. David Price is at roughly 8 after tonight's non-start. He didn't start tonight, so I guess just after tonight. And Masahiro Tanaka is at 7.2 or was before tonight's start, and I'm not going to do the adjustment. So three players on pace to break that record.

Nobody is on pace to break the walks per nine record, although Doug Pfister is extremely close. The record in 1980 was Red Lucas at 0.74. Doug Pfister is at 0.76. Doug Pfister is at 0.76. FIP, let's see, FIP for a non-starter, for anybody, the record was 1.56 in 1980, a gentleman named Steve Hamilton, who I've never heard of.

And there are seven pitchers currently on pace to break that as relievers this year. Although one of those relievers is a starter, Clayton Kershaw, is also on pace to break that as relievers this year. Although one of those relievers is a starter, Clayton Kershaw, is also on pace to break that mark. Saves, of course, classic one. The record in 1980 was 38. There are currently 14 pitchers on pace to break that record, which is not any longer a record. Strikeouts per nine as a reliever or as a, yeah, as a reliever. Hang on. Is that right? Yeah. Oh, you know what? I'm not sure Clayton Kershaw is qualified.

So he might have been left off the strikeouts per nine as a starter for good reason because he doesn't qualify. But anyway, strikeouts for a reliever was 11.3 per nine. 11.3 per nine, Ben. There are 22 pitchers currently on pace to top that. Among them, Brett Cecil, Tony Sipp, who is basically free talent. Strikeout artist, Tony Sipp. Josh Fields, who is having a very poor year, and Brad Boxberger,

who was traded by a team that was looking for a good reliever. And then one last one, stolen base percentage. The record for stolen base percentage minimum of 30 attempts in 1980 was 94% by Amos Otis.

Craig Gentry is on pace to break that. He has not been caught yet. I'm not sure he's ever been caught in his entire life. Jose Reyes is on pace to break that. Jose Altuve is very close to on pace to break that. And Andrew McCutcheon, Mike Trout, Jordan Schaefer, and Michael Brantley have not been caught yet, although they are slightly below the pace to get 30 attempts. So those are all records that would be really exciting in 1980 and are completely unexciting right now.

Totally irrelevant. I have just flooded you with information that you don't care about one bit. Two questions for you, Ben. One is do you have any other stats that you think the game has changed significantly since 1980 where we could be seeing pre-1980 records and not noticing them? Because I could do another live play index. Fewest intentional walks for a league leader I don't actually I don't know how to do that

yeah that might not be a play index thing that might just be a clicking on the leaders page okay not that okay so so you don't have one uh so the second thing is that it it feels like and i might be wrong about this so i wanted to get your input it feels like um that records themselves have become much less significant in the last few years. And that's because we focus on statistics that don't really have any history. So we don't actually pay much attention to when a record is broken. Do you get that feeling?

I guess there's, for instance, let me mention for instance, the strikeouts per nine record has been broken a few times in recent years. I think Carlos Marmo broke it. I think maybe Craig Kimbrell might have then broken it after him. Various pitchers have set records for strikeouts per nine. And if this were a statistic that people paid attention to in like 1985 it would have been like a special tops card there would have been updates in the newspaper it would have been an answer in the baseball crossword puzzle that we filled out in baseball digest the following

year it feels like there would have been you know some attention significant attention paid i mean when i was a kid i just remember there being records broken every year there were like eight to ten records that we paid attention to every year you know like the guy who had i remember eddie murphy breaking the home runs uh sorry uh most times hitting home runs from both sides of the plate in one game record. That was a record we paid attention to, Ben. This was something like I remember that record being broken and I remember documenting it in my baseball card collection the next year. And yet while we have more statistics than ever and while we have more access to those statistics than ever, it feels like there are almost no records

that get any significant attention right now. Like, you have to, you could break a traditional record statistic, although as we've talked about on this very show, there are very few that are in position to be broken right now, partly because the offensive environment has changed, and partly because pitchers don't pitch as many innings as they used to.

So almost any counting stat is kind of off the table. But you could break a traditional record stat, and we don't care that much, like Miguel Cabrera's Triple Crown, for instance, not a record, but not that much attention given to that. Or you could break the stats that we do care about, but only we care about them and there's no history. Nobody was paying attention to it eight years ago and so it's not like there's this kind of build up of like, oh, we've been waiting 40 years for someone to have a true average over whatever. So are records just dead? Is this the end of records? No, we've been talking about the games finished without a save record all year.

I think maybe it's that there are so many stats. We're just bombarded with stats all day long. There's, you know, every single game story has some stat from Elias about this being the third time that this guy gave up this many runs against this team. And it's everywhere on Twitter, and there's just so much coverage. And it's so easy to look up stats with the play index

or by consulting some database that you're not being handed these statistics from on high by one single source. You're getting everyone digging it up on Twitter and doing it themselves. So maybe that has taken away from the specialness somewhat. I don't know about the, I mean, strikeouts per nine record was never the sort of record that the average fan would know. That was nowhere nowhere near that's my point that's my point though is that it's a very it's a more important record than switch hit home runs you know games hitting home runs from both sides of the plate and yet uh nobody cares about it and yeah so like there's this clash between the things that we care

about now and the things we cared about just 15 years ago. Like there was a hundred and some odd years where the stats were fairly consistent. And then now in the last 15 years it's been more or less completely over flipped. But the other thing is I think also as you mentioned, we hear almost every day I see some fact about a player who has done something that nobody else has done before and so it becomes hard to separate the ones that are meaningful from the ones that aren't meaningful and so i'm i wonder can you think of any like what would be your top five records to be broken like what would be the five records that you would be the most excited in july if a player was on pace to do this um or you know maybe in a game or maybe in his career he was on track to

break a record what would be the what would be your top five most triples okay yeah that's a good one triples are fun I'd be into that I would definitely turn on any game where 21 strikeouts is a realistic possibility and I would definitely I would I would watch any at bat

where a player had a chance to hit 5 home runs that would be pretty significant to me yeah most steals where a player had a chance to hit five home runs, that would be pretty significant to me. Yeah. Most steals, single-season steals, would be exciting. I would watch Hamilton or someone if he were challenging that record. Yeah. I mean, I'd certainly watch the hitting streak. And hitting streaks I don't find particularly compelling,

but I'd be interested in watching as a guy got close to the record, if only just for the sort of monitoring the psychological effects of all the attention being paid to him. I guess, yeah, I would too, but the achievement itself, we would have a hard time getting too excited about it because we know that it's just a sort of arbitrary grouping of random events we're horrible fun hating people and then and then there are other things like for instance you know like uh i would love to see a plus 60 defender but i would love to see it i wouldn't

care about the record i would love to see that guy wouldn't care about the record i would love to see that guy it's not the record that i would care about like andrelton simmons last year was a tremendous joy to watch but it's not like i was tracking his defensive run save to see if he was going to set the record i just liked watching the guy who did set the record and i think it's sort of the same with with war warp i don't know that i i don't know that I care that much about the stat itself so much as maybe a little bit I did care about Trout like for instance his first year was very

fun to watch his war grow although partly because I spent the entire summer reporting on him right but I don't know the two that I've named so far are single game stats maybe I just don't know. The two that I've named so far are single game stats. Maybe I just don't have the attention span anymore, which is sad.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess I'd be interested in watching a home run race. Would you? I can't get that excited it's so unrealistic right now that it's like a man and a guy hitting 74 home runs is almost unfathomable

I agree it would but almost any stat that if he went 50% beyond the typical league leader at this point like I'd be interested in seeing a guy win 30 games. I don't care about him really winning 30 games, but that's such an extreme number that it'd be, you know, just be fun to watch the number.

I guess I'd be pro 30 games. It'd be interesting to see anyone challenge a record that just he has the historical decks stacked against him that much if he's but i tell you i did i watched the francisco rodriguez 62 save season 62 i think he had and it was so unfun yeah that's yeah but why it's the same thing like the deck was stacked against him as a record that had hung on for since what 88, 88? He crushed it. Nobody had really even come close to Thigpen for some years even. I don't remember Thigpen ever really being seriously challenged. I might be wrong. There's no reason that by

the same standards I shouldn't have been excited to see the numbers add up for Frankie, but it was just not fun at all. There was nothing interesting about it. It just, you know, it seemed like it might happen, and then it happened, and then I forgot. I'd like to see maybe a pitcher setting a record for relief innings. That'd be cool. Oh, yeah, but again, you're interested in seeing, well, maybe, okay. You're more interested in, I mean, you're interested in seeing well maybe you're more interested

I mean you're interested in seeing a shift in strategy you don't care about the record what is the record then? what record is that? you're interested in seeing it be the record held by I'll tell you in a second

with the baseball reference play and that's one of the most famous numbers in baseball. Remind me. I will in about 30 seconds. I would say that, I don't know. I guess Strike Out to Walk is the one that I pay more attention to, but I barely pay any attention to it at couldn't you know i i don't i

barely pay any attention to it at all but you know when a guy like sean doolittle is extreme or when a guy like david price who's a little less extreme now but was extreme i pay more attention to that um but again like the record holds no no emotional place in my heart playing nexus searching the record for relief innings in a season without a start is mike marshall oh yeah 1974 208 i'm sorry 208 and a third innings more than i would guess i'd be interested in things like uh uh most caught stealings, most box, most wild pitches. Maybe highest caught stealing percentage for a catcher.

That'd be fun. Oh, that's a good one. That's a really good one. Yeah, I would definitely be into that. All right. Okay. End of Playindex. Yeah, that one went on a lot.

That had a long tail. So subscribe to Playindex. I actually went on a lot. That had a long tail. So subscribe to the Playindex. I actually had another tail. I had another direction I was going to take it, but I'm not going to now. Okay. So subscribe to the Playindex using the coupon code BP to get the

discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription and to get the ability to run interesting queries like the ones that we just did or even more interesting ones uh what do you think about that guy who said today that he was going to get a play index subscription but first he wanted us to run a play index query for him i was not gonna i was not gonna give in you you answered him you ran his his search he wanted to know the the most runs scored in a game without a home run.

That was a little sketchy. If I have to say so myself, I'm going to subscribe to PlayOnX, but just for now, how about you run this one for me? See, I felt like he was just running the program for a test drive. If he asks for a second

one, I will report him for spam. If he's for a second one, I will report him for spam. Yeah. If he's waiting for his paycheck to clear or something, he's waiting for his ship to come in so that he can get the one-year subscription to Playindex, okay. If he's trying to take advantage of our good natures and of Sean Foreman and baseball reference, then I don't approve.

I'm not a friend of the show. Anyway, I was just looking at the list of Major League Baseball record breakers by season on Wikipedia, and there aren't any in 1980. I think this page needs some help. There's not a single record breaker in 1980 listed. In 2013, Alex Rodriguez broke the record for most career Grand Slams. That's a modestly interesting record.

Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. That was definitely something that we would have paid attention to in 1988. It would have been a big deal. A huge deal. In fact, Don Mattingly hitting six in a season

was a record back roughly 87, 88. And that was its own baseball card, as was Don Mattingly's hitting home runs in eight straight games. Although I think that would be a pretty big deal even now. If someone hit home runs in nine straight days, I think that they would get a blog post or two. 2012, Jamie Moyer became the oldest player to win a game, oldest pitcher to win a game. Jim Tomey set the record for most walk-off homers. And in 2011, not that different from your Eddie Murray stat, Mark Teixeira set the record for most games hitting home runs

from both sides of the plate in a career. Oh, right. No, I'm wearing my Mark Teixeira most home runs from both sides of the plate in a game in a career t-shirt right now. Commemorative t-shirt. Yeah, what's the number on the back? You can't see because you're wearing it. It was 12. Only 12, huh? I'm not sure if it was Eddie Murray. I remember Ruben Sierra did it. I remember Ruben Sierra did it.

Ruben Sierra had one of those, like most times doing that in a season maybe or maybe back-to-back days or maybe twice in a doubleheader or something like that. That was a big one. There were a lot of Switch hitter-related records. It's interesting because Switch hitting was, you know, it's not like Switch hitting was novel in the 80s. But in the 80s, in the 80s there were so many switch hitter records just like having you know the most games where you hit a triple from the left side and a single from the right side in august was like a record okay let's do one

more question this one comes from james in fay, Arkansas. He wants to know, has any sabermetrician ever put themselves in, let's say, spring training of 1982, collected... So I think this is asking us whether any sabermetrician has time traveled. Has any sabermetrician put themselves in spring training of 1982, collected all the data that would have been available had advanced metrics been around at that time, projected what would happen that year, and then compared it to what actually happened. If someone does that for every baseball season with reliable statistics, will there be an era in baseball that is closest to the advanced metric projections or one that is farthest?

Skip, skip. I wonder if the confounding variables of our time, pitcher injuries, instant replay, etc., make our era more or less predictable than others. Perhaps if you place humans on a field and make them play 162 games, the results will always be similarly unpredictable. So there is that theoretical limit to how good a projection can be in i suppose any season right even if you have a even if you have a perfect projection system and perfect knowledge of everything not only just

every player's true talent level and just everything you could possibly possibly know there's still you can't you can't come closer on on average, what is it, six games, something like that? Six or eight or something, yeah, because of sequencing of hits and BABF and things like that. Right. So the question is whether this era or any era is more or less predictable. And we have the ability to run retroactive projections. the ability to run retroactive projections we we have not done that for every season but you can you can do retroactive pakodas or maybe some other systems too and and come up with what the system would have said in spring training of 1982 and see whether it's close to 1982 of course we wouldn't

really be able to project playing time which would be be a problem. You'd have to just go based on rate statistics. So James mentioned instant replay, and Russell Carlton actually wrote about the effect of instant replay on randomness earlier this year in an article for Fox Sports. He said, the instant replay system that we now have has fixed a problem that was affecting something around 1.5 to 2% of all runs scored in baseball. So he was arguing that about 2% of runs scored

in baseball went to the wrong team because of calls that were made incorrectly. And so he says, it has therefore made a team's record less dependent on luck to the tune of half a win or more for a sizable handful of teams. So that's something. If you're a good team, you're now less likely to be waylaid by an incorrect call and have something go against you.

There's less randomness in that sense. So that's something. I'm trying to think of other factors that might have made things more or less predictable. I mean, there are certain years. EDs are the classic one, right? Yeah. So there are certain years where the ball changes uh and we wouldn't wouldn't have been able to predict that in advance or or yeah peds if you are people often actually

sometimes raise that objection to projection systems that if we are uh particularly pakoda which is based on comparables to some extent if we are if we're using players from say the ped era as comparables for players in the post-ped era or the pre-ped era pre-ped era whatever other era then you could argue that maybe the the aging curve is no longer the same and and possibly there would be some some minimal effect there where it would be skewed a bit by the uh by the use of that time so so that's one thing i guess if you're i mean in a in a clean era things would be more predictable right in general i assume uh if if there's no option well use PEDs, then you wouldn't have to worry about certain players suddenly starting to take something

that would change their true talent level. I mean, a clean era would be more predictable for the next clean era. A non-clean era might be more... It might be that a non-clean era would be more predictable in general. I don't know. Could be yeah, you're right, probably so are there any other factors

that have introduced or removed randomness from the game that you can think of I mean maybe I mean James mentioned pitcher that's a Tim McCarver joke yeah, I mean, James mentioned pitcher. That's a Tim McCarver joke.

Yeah, I get it. James mentioned pitcher injuries as a factor. So, I mean, maybe you could say that. Right, well, if you're Matt Harvey and 17 of your 30 comps are before 1975, then what, you know, to some degree, and they probably aren't, but to some degree what use are they right right yeah i mean there are more well we talked about this with stan conti that it's really difficult to say whether there are more or fewer injuries but that's the point is that the guys who were hurt in before 1975 aren't much use to matt harvey because they're just going to start sucking and the guys who weren't hurt

aren't much use to matt harvey because they maybe were maybe less likely to get hurt like you have two factors you have the fact that lots of players were playing through pain and that perhaps fewer players were hurt. But most of Matt Carver, I mean, if you actually look at Matt Harvey's 30 comps, most of them are from the last 15 years. So that's probably not an issue. But could be. So if there are fewer career-ending injuries, maybe that would be an element that would make baseball more predictable. It's tough.

I remember getting this question and thinking that it was a very good question and I couldn't quite get my head around it and was hoping that we wouldn't talk about it. Sorry to disappoint you. All right. It's a good question, though. So somebody should write a piece about it. It's really more of an article than a podcast question yeah or it could be a listener email if you want to write in or it could be a post in the facebook group at facebook.com

slash effectively wild in which there's there's currently a thread that's about 40 50 comments long about scenarios that could lead to Jose Molina triples. So if you want to do something more productive, go to the Facebook group, facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild and write a response to this question or some other question. And we will accept emails at podcast at baseball perspectives.com. We welcome your ratings and reviews and subscriptions on iTunes, which are always appreciated. And we will be back with another show tomorrow. I can't place this tune it's nothing

just whistling nothing like a little tuneless whistling well it has a tune it's just not a published tune I don't think it's going to be it's cold