Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 531: Emails and Talk About Tanking

Episode Date: September 10, 2014

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about tanking, job searching, rule changes and more.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Please speak the letter that I wrote Good morning and welcome to episode 531 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland.com, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hi. How are you? Okay. I apologize to everyone for fumbling on yesterday's show. Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello. Hi. How are you?

Okay. I apologize to everyone for fumbling on yesterday's show. That was a football analogy. I was traveling and was awake too long and overslept. Missed my podcast date. We forgot to mention Comeback Player of the Year candidates Willie Mopena and perhaps Vladimir Balentine. Yeah, I don't know whether I would say that we forgot to, but we did neglect to.

Uh-huh. Some people mentioned some good ones that we didn't talk about. Yeah. David Wright was one that was mentioned. It's a decent one. And Joey Votto. Yep, those are good ones. Sorry, I'm somewhat distracted by a play index unrelated to this show ryan webb finished a game on monday his let's see his 87th

career game finished without a save we were notified by a few different people one listener steve wolkin was in attendance at the game and was taking pictures of Ryan Webb's entrance and posting them to the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. He said it was the highlight of the game. We got an email from listener Kevin Whitaker who pointed out, I will quote, he says, from a quick scan of his baseball reference game logs, this is the first game that Webb has finished after entering with a four-run lead.

So the closest he has come to a save, at least of the one-inning variety, to date. I don't know whether, if it's not a save situation, I think they're, are they all created equal? Or does the fact that he got a four run save or a four run finish, make him any more likely to get a save in the future. It seems significant. Four is almost, I mean,

you know, it's almost three that you see set up guys get that four run ninth a lot. Yeah. Even occasionally a closer to get, get work in or something. If he hasn't pitched in a while. Yeah. So it feels significant. It's interesting that he's

never had a game that close. I mean, I guess that goes to the point, right? Is that he's never had a game that close because it's too close to a save. We know one thing about Ryan Webb, and it's that he will pitch any time except for when there's a save. And so presumably

the closer to the save, the less likely he would be to be in there. And so I think the very fact that he's never been in that situation suggests that it is closer to a save, that probably many managers have chosen specifically to avoid Ryan Webb. So it does make me worry that there would be... I mean, that to me is pretty close. We're one accounting error away from him having a save.

Like if they just, like if the scorekeeper at the end of the game was like double checking his math and realized, oh, oh no, it was a three run lead. That could happen. He'd have a save right now. Yeah. All the time I'm reading about guys who actually had one more RBI. Exactly. 150 years from now, some saber researcher is going to dig up Ryan Webb's save.

So that makes me nervous. I'd like to have a wide margin. All right. Anything else? I forget. I'm just looking at the play index. You're just captivated. I forget. I'm just looking at the play index. You're captivated. I am.

I'm trying to figure out which season in history is the most Yaziel Puig of 2014. Who is he most like? Because I wanted it to be somebody. It's almost Junior Spivey. And wouldn't that be great? You just don't think of him being like junior spivey at all um and it's almost joe mauer like don't you think of puig as being the exact opposite of joe mauer yes i mean they're almost like if you were graphing players based on their you know fundamentalness or whatever, they would be on different sides of the graph.

One would be upper left and the other would be bottom right. And yet he is almost having Joe Maurer's season. Joe Maurer's age 20. You could say age 22 or age 23 season, really. But Maurer had this huge batting average at the time because he never struck out. And Puig does strike out, and I think that invalidates it. Otherwise, it's pretty close. OPS plus and the walk rate and the power and the speed

are dead on, 13 and 8 for each. I mean, they're just totally dead on. It's very close. It's like a 98 similarity score or something. But it's just not close enough. And unfortunately, I kept on looking and looking and looking. This is not for the podcast. I mean, we're on the podcast.

But if anybody's thinking this is the Play Index segment, it's not. Unfortunately, I just refused to take yes for an answer. And I kept on looking for a better one. And I found it. And it's not a particularly compelling answer it's it's Will Clark in 1992 bitch like what are you gonna draw what are you gonna draw from Will Clark in 1992 like it's not totally hysterical no it's not it's not intuitive not counterintuitive it's just a guy who had a season that's like this one sorry about that they are very similar but

I mean what nobody even knows nobody even remembers what Will Clark was in 1992 was that when he was still the best player in baseball or was it when he was in his decline phase where he had no power nobody knows the answer is that he was right in the middle

that was basically his well not really. The year after, I guess. Anyway, boring. Too bad. Going to write about it anyway? No. I wasn't going to write about it.

I wasn't going to write about it. Pure curiosity. Well, Ben, I had to kill time while waiting for you to play again today. Oh, ouch. There was another piece of Play Index research from a listener named Ross, and this was six days ago. So it's maybe, it's not really out of date, but there have been subsequent developments,

but it was an interesting piece of research. So Ross wrote, the terribleness of the Brewers the past week or so made me wonder if any teams have had a stretch this bad, 0-8 with at least a negative 38 run differential, which I called close enough to the current mid-game negative 40, and still made the playoffs. So I went to the play index and used the coupon code BP to get it for the discounted price of $30. I then went to the team streaks analyzer and set the games in streak to eight and sorted by run differential.

Unfortunately, I had to go year by year. So I went back to 1995 combination of the 94 canceled playoffs and this being the first year that Ross remembers. This is what he found. three teams so the 2008 dodgers in august won 84 games uh ultimately won 84 games for for a stretch in august they had a streak an own age streak with a run differential that bad so they went on to win 84 games and win a terrible division the 2006 cardinals that won 83 games and won a terrible division. And the 2003 Minnesota Twins, a team that won 90 games but outperformed their Pythagorean record by five games. Only three teams, two won fewer than 85 games and the other played like an 85 win team. Now I am sad. And as I told Russ, the play index doesn't guarantee that you will be happy at the end of your query,

but it will answer your question, and you just have to make it a question that doesn't make you depressed at the end of it. And so that was six days ago, and maybe that was telling. The Brewers are now six games out in the Central and 1.5 games out in the wildcard as we record this. So not a lot of precedent for a stretch as bad as the Brewers had been on and still making the playoffs. And another update on something that we talk about fairly often, the pace of game stuff. Jack D'Alessio wrote something on Sports and Earth about the Atlantic League's experiment with time of game. We talked about that before. And to refresh, teams were limited to three 45-second timeouts each in a nine-inning game. And a timeout was defined as a mound visit from a manager, a coach,

or a catcher, or an infield that doesn't result in a pitching change. Umpires were directed to be more diligent in enforcing the rule that restricts batters from stepping out of the box, as well as the 12-second rule. Umpires were encouraged to keep the game moving in a timely manner and were reminded to stick to the strike zone as defined by the rules, which is larger than what was traditionally enforced. Pitchers were limited to six warm-up pitches at the beginning of an inning, or when they enter the game if it's in the middle of an inning.

They'd been allowed eight before. And that was it. So nothing too crazy, nothing too experimental. And from this, the results have been that the league has reduced the time of game by nine minutes so far. Yeah, so when I was reading that, and the line before nine minutes is, so far it's working, right? And then it said nine minutes. And so then I spent some time wondering whether nine minutes matters.

Do you think nine minutes is noticeable to the average fan? I think so, but barely. I don't know. If all of that nine minutes is guys stepping out of the box or standing on the mound. Then over the course of a season, if you're an Atlantic League regular devotee and you're watching every single day, maybe, maybe I'd notice a little bit. I don't know. It's not huge. So what if they just started every inning with a runner on first?

That would be exciting, right? I mean, isn't baseball really particularly boring when there with a runner on first uh that would be exciting right i mean isn't baseball really particularly boring when there's no runner on i mean on the one hand you could say when there's a runner on first the pace of game slows down more because the guy's got to you know check him a lot but um it sort of feels like having base runners makes the, it creates at least a sort of a progression toward action, toward scoring. And so, I don't know. I mean, again, it just goes to the pace versus time factor. Nine minutes doesn't seem like enough that you're really going to notice it in your life. seem like enough that you're really going to notice it in your life. You're not going to be able to take that vacation that you've always wanted because now you have extra time in your life. But it speeds up the pace of the game. Maybe instead of pace, maybe you just need to make more situations interesting. So my idea of having, my terrible idea, I should note,

my terrible idea of having home runs count for more when you're losing so that the game always feels closer and the team that's behind always feels like they're more in it would do that. That's the idea behind that. So yeah, having a runner start on base every inning would do that too probably the problem is that then well no there isn't that is no problem so uh yeah would you start him on first second or third i started him on third then you wouldn't have the uh pitcher holding him on problem that's true it kind of would be fun if there was always a runner on third. Yeah.

And if you drive in the runner on third, new guy on third. Immediately replaced by a new guy on third. Yeah, that would raise the stakes. Yeah. All right, so this is the listener email show, though you wouldn't know it so far. We have some emails picked out here I will read some of them now let's start with

Steve the same listener who had the pleasure of seeing Ryan Webb on Monday he says ok so this probably isn't a very interesting question for the show always a good start of a listener email show often a completely inaccurate.

Yeah, true. We get a lot of questions from people who think that the question is fascinating that doesn't really appeal to us. But sometimes the exact opposite of true is true. So Steve says, for someone who has the required data analytics skills and the interest to do so, how hard is it to get a job with a team? Are there armies of econometrics PhDs lining up to do this? Or would someone like me, software engineer, knows SQL inside and out, has used R professionally, understands statistics, can set up databases and systems, etc., have a reasonable shot of getting a job like this? et cetera, have a reasonable shot of getting a job like this? Lastly, how crazy would I be to choose to leave a good paying engineering job to do this kind of work, even if it were possible? Is this a situation of crushing workload for low pay because folks are in it for the love of it?

Or would it compare favorably, at least not, or at least not amazingly unfavorably? favorably. So my understanding is the pay will not be comparable, at least compared to the top of the scale that you could probably get somewhere. And I don't know whether it's a crushing workload for low pay. Maybe it varies to some extent by team. But yes, probably, compared to what you could do somewhere else, there will probably be longer hours and lower pay. And it's a case where you have to weigh your interest in the subject matter, I guess. And maybe if you're a numbers person, maybe numbers are all the same. Maybe it doesn't matter what you're querying. It's all just the same sort of

construction and you're pulling stuff from relational databases and maybe the queries are the same either way. But just the knowledge that one is baseball and one is not, and one is helping a baseball team win games and one is not, is enough for you to settle for low pay. I don't know how competitive it is compared to, say, a high-paying, desirable job in the tech world. It seems competitive to me, but if someone who was highly qualified for a job that would pay many times more per year were to apply for a baseball job just out of love of the game, I bet you'd be

a pretty strong candidate for that. Why did you want to work for a team back when you used to want to work for a team? Well, I was an English major, so it wasn't like I had some lofty salary expectations waiting for me after college. So that wasn't even necessarily a consideration. But the same reasons that anyone does to get to feel like you are contributing to a baseball team and you get to work on stuff that interests you all day, which, as it turned out, I was able to do anyway from writing about baseball. But same sort of reasons. Yeah, I think that I would be less interested in it being about baseball

and more interested in it being about something you could root for, something that you get to wear the team's shirt and watch them and have there be daily stakes. One of the things that's hard about work is that the stakes are often, well, it matters for people who are not you. You're doing the work, but you're not part of a team exactly. There's sort of an individualism to your own career and the profits go generally to somebody else. And so that's frustrating. But with baseball, you have a team.

You have all the experience of being a fan of a team, which we all love. Like that's what we're into. We all choose it and we devote ourselves wholeheartedly to it. And so then you just amplify that by like a million because you're actually literally part of that team. So I think that's one thing. And then the other is just that everybody would be interested in your job. And people like having jobs that are interesting to other people. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, you hear some baseball people say that they try not to mention that

they work in baseball or that they dread bringing it up. Because if you mention that you work for a baseball team at some social gathering, then automatically there are people there who are interested in what you do. And they will pepper you with questions about that. And maybe for some people that gets old after a certain amount of time. But I imagine that they still on some level enjoy the fact that people would have those questions, even if they don't necessarily want to hear them.

Yeah. Steve also asks if I'm starting to try to do interesting baseball research on my own, what resource is there for me to get a good understanding of the current consensus views on topics or the best work so far on a topic to jump off from? It doesn't make sense for me to go out and do my own clutches real research when it's already been sliced and diced to hell. Is there an easy way of doing a literature search to understand what ground has already been covered? And there are some ways.

and there are some ways and as Steve alludes to later in his email we we had Matt Denowitz from the Sabre archive on episode 469 and we talked to him about his efforts to categorize baseball research and make it all available easy to find but even uh just just searching at various sites is a decent way to do it. Steve says that he doesn't have time to go back and read 15 years of Baseball Perspectus, but presumably he has time to go to Baseball Perspectus and type something into the search bar and look through the article archives. And hopefully whatever search term he puts in that's relevant to whatever topic he wants to research would turn up an article. You can also just Google things and you can ask on Twitter possibly

if you want to canvas people. But just Googling, just looking at the major sites and searching is not a terrible way to do it. I wonder if it would be even better for him to just not get the current consensus views on topics and to just start from scratch and build his own consensus views. Maybe. Or not consensus views, his own views, and see where they line up.

I'd be interested to... I mean, actually, this probably wouldn't be good for him, but wouldn't it be a fun project to find somebody smart who has some interest in sport and just put them in a room and say, we want to read your work for the next year, but we're not going to show you anything that anybody else has ever done. And just see where it goes. Wouldn't that be a bizarre and strange experiment that could be amazing?

Yeah, I'd like that a lot. Yeah, if you could somehow wipe the mental database of someone like Rob Arthur, for instance, who we had on the podcast recently, and he retained all his skills and his interest in baseball but not his pretty complete knowledge of the baseball research that's been done, and then he could just cover old ground. It might be good for the community as a whole to have him go over everything that's been done

and revalidate it or find mistakes or come up with new angles to cover. At the same time, what he's doing now is probably even better, just having him push research into new areas. So yeah, it'd be nice. Okay. All right. So this question comes from Scott.

When will we see the first comeback player of the year awarded on the strength of defensive statistics? That would have to be a post-statcast, post-public availability of statcast stats development, right? As you mentioned in your chat at PP this week. I think it will be never. I just don't think that the average fan in any sport cares as much about defense as offense. And Comeback Player of the Year is a fun award. It's a trinket. It's not a real analysis award.

And so it has as much as anything to do with the way players are perceived as any kind of rigorous analysis. And so I think it will always reflect the very popular narratives around players. And I think those in baseball, as in most sports, are always going to be driven more by offense than defense. Yeah, that could be. But you never know. As you mentioned in your chat at BP this week, it could turn out that we need a very small sample to tell certain things about players' defense once that test is out, if it ever is. Yeah, do you want to answer that question that I got on the chat? What is your answer to that? The question was how long,

how much stat cast data, or how many years of stat cast data, is that what it was, will be needed to have uh reliable defensive metrics for players yeah so my answer was that it uh that you can't answer it because until we have stat cast data and we start plugging in the reliability of you know and start until we start actually testing the reliability of certain things uh we can't say what it'll be, right? You have to have some access to the data before you're able to assess how good the data is. However, I think once we have a handle on the data, I don't know the answer, right? Clearly, I just said I don't know the answer. But it wouldn't surprise me if it was something extraordinarily short, like a couple of weeks, and you can get 95% confidence on a on a player's defense yeah i think i agree with

that because the things that the things that stabilize most quickly now are things that are just entirely dependent on one player mostly dependent on one player like swing rate is something that stabilizes quickly because a hitter can just decide whether he wants to swing or not it's not dependent on you know it's maybe slightly dependent on the mix of pitches he sees if he's facing a control pitcher or or someone who throws a lot of pitches out of the zone but for the most part it's kind of an inherent thing some guys swing a lot and some guys don't and there's nothing preventing them from doing that. And so that stabilizes quickly. And the same thing is true or would seem to be true with certain things on defense. Like, I mean,

arm strength is something that a scout would put a grade on in one throw maybe in some cases and so you can't do that with with the current statistics that we have about outfield arms where you're just looking at the rates of runners advancing over a long period but if you have the velocity of the throw and the angle of the throw and everything then then you you know pretty much right away if that guy has arm strength and then arm accuracy might take a little bit longer, but not that much longer. And things like a first step or a break, that's something that you would think would be really quick. If you could tell if a ball is hit in someone's vicinity,

how quickly does he start moving toward it? That seems like something that you'd be able to tell almost immediately. Maybe one day he was zoning out a little bit, and so that wouldn't be a great reflection. But on the whole, you'd think that would be a pretty consistent skill. So, yeah, it seems to me that that is the thing. As I've speculated before, I would be surprised if it completely turns our understanding of who's good at certain things on its head. The main benefit seems like it'll just tell us the same things much more quickly and with more confidence.

So I'm with you. Yeah. I mean, there is a sort of alchemy in hitting that you can't necessarily measure. As you noted, we can tell a batter's swing rate tendencies very quickly and his control of the strike zone very quickly and his speed to first very quickly. to first very quickly but there's there's this sort of magic that's that happens that in between those that kind of creates enough noise that we can't really say in 50 at bats whether he's a good hitter the same the way that we can say within 58 bats what his you know swing rate tendencies are but with fielding like 98 of it is just getting to the ball, right? And there isn't really the same magic to fielding. If you can get to the ball, you'll probably catch it.

And so I feel like being able to very quickly and precisely measure all of these components of defense will probably be pretty conclusive pretty quickly. All right. One more quick one before play index this is from michael the subject line is sort of a terrible pun i don't know how you feel about this what is it pondering adam's hall of fame resume when he's done um skip it michael asks sam and ben adam Michael asks, Sam and Ben, Adam Dunn currently has 462 clear. You're not skipping it. I'm not skipping it.

I said skip it. I said skip. We only have so many good questions. I can't afford to skip it. I'll pick another one. We're skipping that one. I refuse to answer it. Email does not call for a pun.

Fine. I'll answer it privately. That's good. Let's see how about um uh let's try adam okay okay uh this is also a quick one why must every time a pitch hits the dirt or is caught by the catcher in the dirt does the umpire change the ball and if the pitch glancing the dirt corrupts the ball why aren't ground balls many of which also hit the dirt before being fielded also replaced or at least inspected by the umpire why are they it does seem like they are just way way way way too quick to take a ball out of play it does i mean if the if the upside is that you make it harder to cheat and you make things safer,

maybe you do it when there's any kind of scuff on the ball because if you're making a judgment call every time, well, then you have to make a judgment call every time. Then you have to decide whether the ball is too scuffed up to make it clear whether someone is doing something to it or that it's less visible and therefore dangerous. And maybe you just take it out of play right away to simplify things. And it's not like Major League Baseball can't afford baseballs. And those baseballs end up doing some good in some other way, presumably, right? They turn into batting practice balls or

they get thrown to a fan or they serve some other sort of good. right? They turn into batting practice balls or they get thrown to a fan or they serve some other sort of good. And so why wouldn't you in a sport that has record revenues, why wouldn't you always want a pristine baseball in play? But then again, he makes a good point in that if you're going to do that every time a ball hits the dirt, then maybe you would do it every time there's a grounder when the ball is traveling almost as fast. Well, I assume that they, I don't know. I mean, I always assume that they do any time the ball hits the dirt. I mean, that's the rule, right?

If it hits the dirt, it goes out of play. So I assumed that there were a lot of ground balls that were followed by the ball being tossed out of play. Jason and I were just talking about this. In fact, we were, let me ask you this, Ben. Okay. We were talking about Paul Molitor, who Jean Rogel, Rogel?

I think so. Yeah. Recently noted was the only player in the Hall of Fame who's had Tommy John surgery. And that is a great fun fact because Paul Molitor is obviously not a pitcher, but not only is he not a pitcher, he has probably, in my estimation, he has probably thrown fewer baseballs than any Hall of Famer in the Hall of Fame, right?

There's probably no player in the Hall of Fame has thrown fewer baseballs during game action than Paul Molitor, right? Sure. Don't you think that's probably true? Sounds reasonable. And so then we started wondering, okay, is that really true? And so we had to decide which throws we're going to count. So the first baseman, for instance, doesn't throw a lot of balls in plays, but he does throw every time he catches the ball,

he has to throw it to another player. And so we were going to count that. I mean, when he was playing in the ball, he has to throw it to another player. And so we were going to count that. I mean, when he was playing in the field, he was playing third base and second base and even a little bit of shortstop. So maybe if you're counting competitive throws as opposed to just throwing the ball in, then maybe during those years when he was playing the field, he was making more throws than, say, a left fielder does. Yeah, but although a left fielder, every time there's a base hit to the outfield, that's a throw. True, true.

So not assists. I'm not saying he's made fewer assists. And that's the distinction, is that he has probably made more assists than a typical first baseman and probably, I mean, certainly a typical left fielder. But every time the ball goes to the outfield, which happens an awful lot, an outfielder throws the ball in. And a first baseman, every time there's a pickoff throw, for instance, he's got to throw the ball back to the pitcher. And so there are a lot of throws. So I was thinking about settling down for a big counting project. Haven't done it yet. But in the meantime, we were trying to decide what counts as a throw. And so the first baseman gets the ball after a grounder,

after the ball is thrown to him. And Jason hypothesized that he throws the ball out, that he might throw the ball out. But we don't – I've never seen the first baseman toss the ball out of play. But does he? I've never seen the first baseman toss the ball out of play. But does he? Do you know when a ball hits the infield dirt and the fielder fields it, throws it to first, first baseman catches it, out is made,

what happens? Does the first baseman toss the ball out of play because it's been scuffed? Does the pitcher toss it out of play after time has been called because it's been scuffed? Or does the ball just stay in the game and they keep pitching it i don't know you'll see if a first baseman tossed the ball into the stands if it's the last out of the inning and he's walking back but otherwise yeah i've heard i remember a broadcaster um i remember a broadcaster

chiding a first baseman one time chastising a first baseman one time, chastising a first baseman one time, because he had taken the ball out of play. It was like a short hop or something on a pickoff throw or something like that. And he, yeah, what about on a pickoff throw? When there's a short hop on a pickoff throw, do they toss the ball out of play?

Seems like the pickoff throw always gets returned. Yeah, it does. Anyways, to the point, sometimes broadcasters will note that a player on the defense has taken the ball out of play on his own accord because it hit the dirt. And the

broadcaster will note that that's dumb. It's self-defeating. The defense benefits from having the ball in play for longer. Anyway, that's slightly off topic. I forget what we were talking about. Molitor? Molitor. But before that, we were saying that, what, there are too many balls taken out of play, not enough. What's the question?

What, there are too many balls taken out of play? Not enough? What's the question? Well, it seems to me that there is no number that could be too many, right? They seem to find a way to use all the baseballs. Yeah. You know, it's not like the nation's landfills are full of baseballs. I mean, people like to have those. I assume most of those baseballs end up being hit out of the park in batting practice, which make people happy. So I guess it doesn't matter.

Yeah. Okay. Play index? Sure. So piggybacking off your September call-ups research from last week, I wondered who the best September call-up is of the last, say, 15 years. And so I went back to 2000. I think I answered that question, although I didn't speak about it. Oh, really? Yeah. So probably a different method, so we'll see. I guess.

Well, probably a different method. How many methods? Maybe not. Well, we'll different method. How many methods? Maybe not. Well, we'll see what yours says. All right. So I went to the Playindex split finder. I searched for everybody in their first season by September splits. And then I clicked the little button that says, you know, compare to season total or whatever the case, whatever you click. And that way I could see whose September stats were also their full year stats so that I knew that they were September call-ups. And then I just sorted them. So for hitters, I did it on runs created.

And who did you get? You might have gone further back, too. I think mine was Warp, possibly. So it was all of play, not just hitting. I went back to 2000, and the most productive September debuts I got at 1.1 warp each were niger morgan for the 2007 pirates and jasmiel pinto for the 2013 twins interesting so morgan by runs created was fourth on my list and pinto was sixth on my list um and my number one was derrick barton in 2007 who also was 1.3 war, baseball reference war. So also darn good. So other guys, Jesus Montero was up there, Ryan Zimmerman's up there, Joey

Votto was up there, and then guys who aren't good, Chris Parmele, Jeff Baker. And I did the same for pitchers. You didn't do the same for pitchers, did you? I did not. So for pitchers, the champion that I got was, well, actually, before we go to pitchers, I just wanted to say one thing about Barton. Barton that year hit, let's see, Barton in September hit.347,.429,.639 for a.1067 OPS in about 84 played appearances. So in case you were wondering whether there's anybody who could challenge that this year, the best player currently who's not close because of playing time to Barton,

who's not close because of playing time to Barton, but is close in terms of rate stats, is Corey Spangenberg. Spangenberg? Spangenberg? Spangenberg? Right. Who's at 353, 389, 706 in, of course, pitcher's era and a pitcher's park.

So is out hitting Barton, but only 18 plate appearances. 79-706 in, of course, pitcher's era and a pitcher's park. So it is out hitting Barton, but only 18 plate appearances. And Sean O'Malley, I guess, is hitting well, but he's only batted twice. He somehow manages to be second on this list. Actually, in 2014, he has second in runs created by a September call-up in two plate appearances. He's two for two. So otherwise, nobody's close. But the thing about Barton is that I remember Barton's September call-up in my memory as being the peak of thinking Billy Bean was a genius, could not fail, was

the smartest person who had ever done anything in the game. And I remember this because I remember the A's were really good. They were battling the Angels, and Barton, who had gotten as part of the Mulder trade, had just been so amazing as a minor leaguer. I mean, he was a catcher, too, at the time. I still thought he might catch. And he came up and just absolutely hit like crazy. And upon looking further, I realized that my memory has completely made this up.

Like, Barton did come up. He was impressive. He was gotten in the Mulder trade. But by the time he came up, the A's were not good anymore. Like, they won like 74 games that year. There was no pennant race. They were awful. And I don't know.

Memory is a weird thing. I have memories of things that happened before my daughter was born in which in my memory my daughter is with me doing them. Do you ever have that? Well, I don't have a daughter, so that'd be weird. Your daughter's everywhere. No. No.

All right. For pitchers... I've imagined myself at things. I remember myself having done things that I didn't do, but yes. For pitchers, it's kind of three contenders. James Paxton last year is a contender. Josh Paxton last year is a contender. Josh Beckett in 2001 is a contender. I'm going with Dylan Gee, though, in 2010.

33 innings, 2.18 ERA. Basically a win, a warp. Either way, you go. But the reason that I went forward with this and the reason I'm going on and bringing it up is not because you care about Barton or you care about Dylanylan g but because i wanted to tell you one thing about september call-up pitchers so september call-up pitchers as a group uh this group of pitchers who uh i think i limited it to pitchers who had thrown like uh i don't know five innings or two innings or i think

two and i think two innings no three innings maybe. Anyway, they as a group have a 4.76 ERA, which isn't notable one way or another. They have a losing record, which isn't surprising. But there's one thing about them that is notable as a group. These 274 pitchers who have come up as September call-ups for the first time, there's one thing notable about them, Ben, and that one thing is that they have a balk rate that is triple the league average. Triple.

Triple the league average. Wow. That's a massive difference. I mean, we're talking about 3,000 innings that these guys have pitched combined as September call-ups. So this is no small group of pitchers pitching in small samples. 3,000 innings and triple the league's balk rate. They are about 30% above the league's intentional walk rate, if you were wondering about that. I don't know why you would be, but the balks are really something.

So I think we can deduce that September call-ups are a nervous bunch. So keep them in mind this September when you're watching a September call-up this month. Keep in mind how nervous they are and watch for the balk. I wonder if that's true of all rookies in their first month. It might be. I would like a watch for the Bok public service announcement. Yeah, okay. Well, listeners are diligent about looking for things that we talk about.

Let's see. I'm going to see if... Please alert us of any Boks that you notice this month with any rookies. There have not been any this month. This month, no September call-up has balked. In fact, no first-year player has balked this month this month no september call-up has balked in fact no first year player has balked this month at all call up or not hmm maybe teams are doing a better job of talking to their call-ups and preparing them for their experience there are two current call-ups this month who have pitched but not recorded an out so So keep Dario Alvarez and Kendall Graveman in mind.

I always like guys who have Major League pages but no outs recorded. Okay, good one. And I also piggybacked on your play index segment from last week. Was it last week, the Jordano Ventura one? About how he had not allowed a stolen base Or a stolen base attempt And he still has not And the Royals happen to be in town this weekend

So I went up there and talked to lots of Royals About that streak And how that streak has happened And there is an article up about that At Grantland this morning If you were listening on Wednesday morning So you can find out more about that. I saw that fun fact on

the Yankees broadcast, Ben. Yes. I saw quite a coincidence that just a couple days after we talked at length about it, it was on the broadcast. That was quite a coincidence. Very coincidental. I didn't hear your name.

I did not. I didn't hear your name. I did not. I didn't hear your name. Okay, so let's do the traditional post-play index question. This one comes from Chris, who wants to know if the Orioles should tank.

Up by 10 games in the AL East, the Orioles' only real playoff-related race for the rest of the season is for the best record in the American League. Main competition is from the AL West teams. Currently, they are four wins behind the Angels and four games ahead of the A's and five games of the Mariners. With these teams playing each other several times and the Orioles' remaining games being against AL East teams that have been or will be soon eliminated from playoff contention, is it not crazy to think that the Orioles could end up with the best record in the AL? I can't believe I just wrote that sentence.

However, should they want it? If they get the best record in baseball, there is a good chance that their reward will be playing the winner of an A's Mariners play-in game. Both teams have a higher first, second, and third order winning percentage than the O's. Meanwhile, whichever team finishes with the second best record in the AL will get to play the winner of the AL Central, the Royals, Tigers, or Indians, all of which have lower first, second, or third order winning percentages. So if the Orioles end up with the best record in baseball, their reward could be to play possibly the second best team in the AL in the ALDS,

and if they advance, the best team in baseball in the ALCS. Even if there is not an all-AL West play-in game, whichever AL West team that does make it will be favored over whichever weak AL Central team makes it. Obviously, I know that the playoffs are a crapshoot and all that, but it seems to me that the Orioles should rest some starters, pitch Ubaldo Jimenez three or four times, try some September call-ups in the bullpen over the last few weeks of the season,

maybe give Ryan Webb a few save opportunities, and aim for the second-best record in the AL. I'd rather face the AL Central and have one fewer ALCS home game than have that extra home game and face two AL West players' opponents. In baseball, this is a new phenomenon because of the recently expanded playoffs. In other sports, though, losing on purpose for playoff seeding is something that happens regularly. See Australia's basketball team. I have not seen Australia's basketball team, but I will now.

Is it ethical for the Orioles to do this against some unwritten rule? How blatant could the Orioles get? I feel like see Australia's basketball team is like a horse e-books tweet. Right. So is it ethical? Do you have any? I guess it's no less ethical than tanking to get the top draft pick, but we've talked about whether that's ethical in the past, I think.

And is there any unwritten rule against this? I would say no. I would say the situation is too rare, too new to have even unwritten rules about it, maybe. And do you agree that it's in the Orioles' best interest? If the scenario that he has laid out here, and I haven't checked to make sure that all of those matchups are actually what they would be, but if this is true, then I suppose so.

I don't... The thing is that if you play the wildcard winner, you might have cleared their ace. Maybe, yeah. Although it's difficult for the wildcard winner to arrange things such that the ace pitches in the play-in game. It's difficult, but it's like a 40% to 60% chance that they do. And if you figure both teams do, or if you figure both teams have a 40% to 60% chance of doing it, figure both teams do or if you figure both teams have a 40 to 60 chance of doing it and even if the odds are that one of them will and then the one that does will then be favored in that game

um so now with the a's that's probably not that significant i don't even know how the a's order good pitching uh rotation should be ordered like you those four pitchers, I have no preference for any of them one through four. Samarja, Kazmir, Lester, and Sonny Gray. I mean, I guess maybe I do a little bit, but very little preference. And whereas the Mariners great preference right huge preference massive preference so um yeah you're right i mean what are the odds that you're going to get the mariners what are the odds the mariners are going to get to line up felix hernandez and what are the odds that clearing him so that he only pitches in game say three if he pitched so if he pitches one two

three yeah he would he would have to wait until game three, right? Yes. So only having to face Felix once instead of twice would be significant, but that's not, of course, that's not guaranteed that it's going to play out that way. But I think that you would take the wild card team. I don't think that it is in their interest to face the team that has a couple days to rest, to set their rotation, even if by third order winning percentage they're a slightly inferior team. So I'll just say that.

But is it ethical? I'd say that it is unethical once you're on the field to not try your hardest. That doesn't mean that you are required to put your best team on the field. You're allowed to make, in my opinion, ethically, you can make roster decisions that have long-term benefits instead

of short-term benefits, and that is perfectly fine. However, it is not acceptable once you are on the field, once the game has started, to make decisions that will purposefully pursue a defeat. And it might be somewhat difficult for those two things to coexist. It might be difficult to prepare for a loss and then fight like hell for the win once you're on the field. So you might argue that it becomes unethical then to even choose the roster construction things. But generally speaking, I think, yeah, it's fine to rest

your players a lot and to align your rotation in a way that has the long view and so on and so forth as long as there's no shenanigans once the play has begun. Okay. And I don't think there's... I think the unwritten rule would be that you can't make it too obvious and it basically can't be farcical. All right.

You have to have plausible deniability. Lastly, a rule change suggestion from Sam, another Sam, who wants to know what would happen if batters were allowed to tag up on fly balls. Oh, I like that one like you hit a fly ball you stand on home plate till the ball is caught and then you take off for first how does that change the game and sam mentions that he is drunk on whiskey when he sent us this question i liked

that question i liked the idea i've come down against it though and the reason i've come down against it though. And the reason I've come down against it is because if you, in this, in this world, in this universe where this is allowed, every good catch would essentially be for not, you know, you'd, you'd have, it would be somewhat difficult because if you're a batter and you hit a ball into the gap, you have to decide whether to tag up or not. And so you might, the gap you have to decide whether to tag up or not and so you might you would have probably no triples because probably anytime a ball looked like it was going to be i mean the the value of getting on base is much greater than the value of an extra base so my guess is anytime you hit a fly ball really any fly ball you would probably just start you would tag up immediately and so therefore if a great catch was made you'd still reach base and if the great catch was missed you would probably just start, you would tag up immediately. And so therefore, if a great catch was made, you'd still reach base.

And if the great catch was missed, you probably would still end up at first base because you were tagging all along. So it would just be like any fly ball, you'd tag. And the two interesting things that can happen on a fly ball are it splits the gap or there's a great catch, and both of those things would be kind of turned into nothing. gap or there's a great catch and both of those things would be kind of uh turned into nothing so if only there were a way to do it so that a can of corn was eligible for this right then it would then it would be fun if you could do it such that such that a routine throw where the outfielder's just camped under it for a while and it's not interesting because 99.99% of those

are caught yeah and it would add some intrigue but but too many too much fallout yeah good way okay coming it up good suggestion all right so please support our sponsor the baseball reference play index by going to baseballreference.com using the the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. And please join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. Send us emails for next week's listener email show at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. And rate, review, and subscribe to the show on iTunes. And we will be back with another show tomorrow.