Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 681: Marlins Madness, Sabermetric Milestones, and Other Emails

Episode Date: May 20, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about the Marlins’ unorthodox managerial move, Play Index about doubles, and answer emails about innings counts, sabermetric milestones, and more.

🎵 Come and if we lean and Step, step to the video Good morning and welcome to episode 681 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by The Play Index, baseballreference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hello. How are you? Okay. Hello. Hello. How are you? Okay.

Okay. This could be our last bi-coastal podcast for months. By the time people are listening to this, I will be flying to Sonoma for Stomper's spring training. Going west like Don Draper. Gonna do Tai Chi on the cliffs. I imagine some people haven't seen that see sorry i spoiled the tai chi gotta stay up on culture to listen to this podcast take it on tangent sometimes i feel like a

frontiersman i'm going out there putting down stakes in sonoma sending for my girlfriend a couple days later once i've planted my flag on the spot of ground out there. Yeah. Looking forward to it. I was looking at the weather in Sonoma. Weather talk is always a popular podcast segment and it looks good. I really like the weather out there. What's it like? Well, the highs are like in the mid 80s, which is basically the same as New York. I've been thinking of it as a hot place, but it's not actually hotter than where I am currently. It's maybe a couple degrees higher, the highest during the day,

but then at night it falls to like 50 every night. It's amazing. It's paradise. No humidity. No humidity. Lots of sunburns probably, but that happens to me anywhere that I step outside. So looking forward to it.

All right. Want to talk about anything before we do emails? No, I just want to sit here for a couple minutes now that you've brought up the fact that the season is starting and be paralyzed by fear. What I want to do. Can we do that? Yeah. Well, you can do that. I'll talk about the Marlins for a second because we didn't get to talk about the Dan Jennings thing yesterday.

And just wanted to say, like, as bonkers as it is, and it's absolutely bonkers and everyone has written about how bonkers and crazy Marlins it is. It is kind of uniquely baseball that it's bonkers, right? Like in any other major sport, hiring with dan jennings background would not really raise an eyebrow probably i mean maybe a little bit i guess most head coaches in the nba or a lot of them were assistant coaches beforehand and jennings is not any kind of coach he's he is unique really in baseball history because he's neither a former manager or a former coach or a former player. We've seen lots of younger managers get hired recently with no former managerial experience. So that seems to be a thing now.

But all of those guys are former players. Or, you know, there are a few guys who haven't been managers or players, but they've been coaches, they've been bench coaches, they've been minor league managers, whatever. They have some sort of dugout experience and Dan Jennings doesn't. But in any other sport, someone with Dan Jennings' long track record in front offices and, you know, his reputation is very good in the game. in front offices and you know his reputation is very good in the game it would not be that big a deal if he were hired to be a head coach and maybe we've talked on some previous podcast about well whether this would ever happen and i don't i don't know what we said but it has happened now and i don't and we've talked about maybe why it doesn't happen in baseball more often and how maybe the distinction between the word coach and the word manager actually hints at a different nature to the job, that it's not so much about the strategy, that the tactics are sort of simpler in baseball, and that it's really about managing and making players happy and having them feel that they can identify with you and everything. And maybe he won't be as good at that, but it's kind of a test case, right?

Even if it came about in a kind of crazy way and it's the Marlins and it's wacky, if it works, I mean, it's kind of like a Groundhog Day thing. Like if he sees his shadow, which would be whatever, a clubhouse revolt or something, then we'll go six million more weeks without a manager who was not a player before. But if it's just okay, if nothing terrible happens, if it's not a total disaster, then maybe even though it was kind of wacky in Marlins, maybe someone else will consider it.

Maybe someone else other than Jeffrey Loyo will consider it. So it's kind of an interesting precedent. Yeah, I think that it's not quite enough to set a precedent because he's not just a guy with no experience being the manager. He is, in fact, the person who hired all these guys and has worked with them for many of them for their entire careers. He maybe drafted them. He probably saw them at every step of the way that they rose through the organization and probably gone out there and shown them how their shoulder was flying open or some dumb thing that he maybe wasn't qualified or maybe he was qualified. Who knows?

So they've seen him around. He's not just a guy in a suit who showed up. But, yeah. Do you think that makes it easier for him to fit in or more awkward? I mean, is it like your boss coming into the break room and asking what everyone's laughing about or something? I don't know. I guess all these guys kind of they're indebted to him in a way

he put the team together he put them on the team so in that sense they know that he kind of believes in them it's not like he came from somewhere else he literally hired them or did something to put them on the team

and I guess you could look at it as a punishment if it's a bad team then he now has to go sit at the tag out and watch his bad team perform even though the team is really no no worse than we would have expected it to be is this a demotion i don't know it's sort of a kind of the way that we typically think of these roles it sort of is i think or i don't know i would treat it as one probably except it's really murky how it came about because supposedly it was like his idea or his suggestion or the front office's suggestion and and with the marlins and loria you never really know exactly what the impetus was so i i don't know if he if it was totally his idea then maybe maybe not yeah it sort of feels like uh like you know that movie uh

fury the the brad pitt war movie yeah i didn't see it the tank movie the tank movie so they uh their crazy director made them all go to Navy SEAL boot camp or whatever the Navy SEALs call their boot camp. And so, like Brad Pitt for a week had to like crawl around in the mud and sleep two hours a day and all that. And it's like, well, that's a demotion, right, for Brad Pitt. Like to go from being Brad Pitt to being Navy SEAL in training is a demotion except that just by getting to declare, like by having the freedom in his life to do that, like you

couldn't do that. Like they wouldn't let you do that. And so the fact that Brad Pitt has agency of like almost total agency and can just go be a Navy SEAL for a week, it actually is a way of signaling that he is in control. So probably technically a demotion, like you say, the way we think of it, but doesn't really feel that way because he gets to just say he's doing a thing. Like he gets to just declare that he's going to do a thing. And most guys don't get to do that. He played, what's his history as a player? Like he played briefly in low a or something is like a

as an undrafted is that right it's harder to look up because there is an actual dan jennings in the major leagues right now which kind of confuses things it looks to me like there is a minor there is a minor league player page for dan jennings date that and throws all unknown and no stats so it's either him and he i guess didn't get in any games or it's not him and he doesn't have a player bridge tried out for the yankees in 1984 who signed him he appeared in spring training for the greensboro hornets so appeared in spring training okay so yeah he played in played college baseball and almost played in the minors, but didn't quite. And he coached in high school. All right, so what are you looking for in this?

As an analyst, as a studier of the game, as a person who's interested in seeing how this goes, what signs are you looking for in the first couple, few weeks? Tactically speaking, I mean, the most well the more the more interesting question is whether you just start getting articles from players with anonymous muttering quotes about you know because i'm sure there's probably some dissatisfaction in some quarters so you're curious to see if that starts leaking out and whether it goes full bobby valentine and you can watch that happening or you know if if he takes a pitcher out and the pitcher doesn't accept the butt pad or whatever you know little little signs signs of he just turns around and gets slapped in the stomach i don't know

little signs of defiance so but that's maybe the more interesting thing i don't even know what else you would look for if you could see if he suddenly starts like constructing the lineup differently or i don't really have a sense of mike redmond as a tactician just kind of average as far as i know i haven't really studied it but it would be interesting to see if he does start doing something different with bullpen management or the lineup or stops sacrificing or whatever the optimal things that people talk about that managers should do. I don't know what else, really. Yeah, I'm leaning less awkward.

I can't quite get a handle on whether it will be more awkward or less awkward because he knows them, but I think less awkward. I mean, he is an authority figure. That is essentially what a manager is, is an authority figure who has baseball knowledge. And he has been in these guys' lives as an authority figure who has baseball knowledge. I mean, the only thing that's changed is where he sits and what his shirt is. So I think that he has a huge, significant leg up. So I think that he has a huge, significant leg up.

I think if the Reds had hired him, I could see it being a big story right away with some snipping. But the fact that it's the Marlins and these are his guys, I think it could probably be pretty seamless. But then that makes it a little less precedent setting for anybody else. Yeah, maybe it's not like a lot of teams are suddenly going to start moving their GMs to the dugout, but you could move. Does that apply to front office people who've been around the team in some capacity? Like, I mean, Craig Council was a front office person for the Brewers. Of course, he was also a player, but if he hadn't been a player, for instance, and yeah. Well, yeah, if you're a special assistant who comes to

spring training because you're a former player and you like give advice on how to throw a change up that's not really a front office and that guy is a player so we're gonna eliminate him i'm gonna say if you're a director of player development then yes i think you are qualified to be a manager even if to move into the manager's chair, even if you have Dan Jennings credentials. Otherwise, if you are anything else lower than the GM, I would say probably not. Well, there's a perception, right, that players want the manager to be kind of a buffer or a level of protection between them and the front office sort of, and want them to have their backs or, you know,

be the guy in their corner when the front office meets to discuss their fate or something. And, and this guy is the front office. I mean, he, he just was the front office and he still is sort of the front office. So I don't know whether that makes a difference or not,

whether they feel like they can't relax, like, you know, they can't just be like, you know, they can't just be loose in the clubhouse because they've got the guy who was just the GM and probably still has a lot of the GM say in the organization because there isn't an official GM who's been hired. It's people who are already there kind of filling in. So if Dan Jennings wants to make a move or something, he can probably just make a move like he probably has more more power more sway than the typical manager does so what are you envisioning

they're going to want to keep secret from the gm that they didn't want to keep secret from the manager like are you suggesting that dan jennings is going to fire them because they're they're like locker is messy or because they swore too much or what? Yeah, like in the completely accurate representation of the A's in Moneyball where there are guys dancing after a loss and Brad Pitt walks in and then he trades Jeremy Giambi because he was listening to music after a loss or something. I don't know. You just have to be on your best behavior in a way

that maybe you wouldn't have to be for the manager. You'd feel like you had to be quiet and respectful all the time. You can't just kind of have your typical clubhouse hijinks. Yeah, that doesn't quite ring significant to me. All right. Well, I just think if it goes off more or less without a hitch, even if the Marlins don't suddenly turn around and make a run or anything like Jack McKeon style, even if it just goes okay and they don't do worse than they were doing and there's no mutiny, then at least there's one example. Because before there

was no example. You could not point to a time when it worked because it hadn't been tried and now even if it's not completely analogous it's at least closer to analogous if there is a team that wants to try this in the future so it'll be interesting it's weird and wacky but it's more interesting than for us than if they had hired some other Mike Redmond type. So questions. Let's take a question from Mike. We have learned so much from this era of sabermetrics, but what has been the most beneficial towards increasing team wins slash wins above replacement?

The emphasis on on-base percentage over batting average feels like the banner insight, so I'd like to make that ineligible. If you had to pick three nuggets of wisdom of the sabermetric era, which do you think have had the most impact on how teams are constructed and how games are played? So do we consider the reliever usage, for instance? I mean, what counts as sabermetric? Do we consider it sabermetric that teams use relievers usage, for instance. I mean, what counts as sabermetric? Do we consider it sabermetric that

teams use relievers more, that they are, A, worried about overusing their starting pitchers, and B, interested in capitalizing on the benefit of the first time through the order and one-inning dominance and all that sort of stuff? Or is that just like baseball? Does that predate it? Is it too obvious? Is there not enough of a spreadsheet like what we need to set some parameters on what counts as an option here yeah that's tough it's kind of a hybrid because the the pitch count monitoring i think counts probably it seems like the impetus for that came from analysis and actually looking at numbers. It was definitely happening, though, even before 100 became the magic number. Yeah. Nobody was throwing 200, for instance, in 1992 anymore.

And they sort of were before that. So it had already kind of been happening. And then, of course, the modern bullpen is generally credited to Tony La Russa, who is both considered in some quarters a proto-stat head and in some quarters the least stat-heady person in the game. So it's hard to know which bucket you put that in. Yeah, that's tough. I would probably lean against including that. Okay. I mean, dips is number one, right?

Yes. Even bigger than OBP over batting average, I think. It's not as though anybody was ignoring OBP. It was maybe a subtle shift, maybe a big shift in terms of what you look at. But you knew when a guy walked, and it was obvious that this was a thing that was happening that a batter walked like yeah you could find like you could find examples of you know quotes from baseball history from people saying he gets on base or i'm just trying to get on base or it's not like it was a totally unheard of and completely unvalued skill.

It wasn't a revelation. It was a reprioritization a little bit. I mean, I was seven years old and I knew a walk's as good as a hit, right? I mean, we all yelled that at the guy who was neither going to get a walk nor a hit because he was terrible. A walk's as good as a hit is what you yell to the guy who's never going to get a hit. Now that I think about it, a walk's as good as a hit is basically an insult. Definitely. It's like moving the outfielders in.

Yeah, and so, yeah, I think dips is number one, because before that, I don't think you would have found anyone who believed that. I don't know that you would have found anyone who said that Pedro Martinez, you know, once the ball was hit in play against him was more or less the same as anyone else i don't i don't think anyone was thinking that i don't think anyone was valuing players like that so that definitely changed things because then you get it opens up a whole new avenue to say that someone is undervalued or overvalued because of that thing so that i think is probably the top so we need two more unfortunately i guess i would say uh adjusting

stats based on the context in a more rigorous and scientific way is probably significant i mean everybody everybody knew that for instance you know Fenway Park was good for hitters and that Astrodome was bad for hitters. But I remember, I don't remember who it was, but somebody said that, I think actually somebody said this fairly recently about newspaper reporters or something like that, but that basically they see a park as either being hitter friendly or pitcher friendly, but they don't have any idea of knowing exactly how hitter friendly or how pitcher friendly. And so they just get lumped in. Like every park is seen as extreme on one side or the other. And I don't know why I'm saying that because it's not really

relevant to the question, but I'm just making the point that I, like, I think that probably while there was always an awareness that some hitters had an advantage over other hitters just based on where their feet were standing and in what era, it wasn't really, I don't think, probably measured well or weighted properly. And that's a pretty big deal. As we've seen, I think as we do see, that it can make a really big difference. When you look at a guy with a 770 OPS at AT&T or Safeco, and he's a superstar, I just don't think that that would have happened 20 years ago, and I'm not sure that even teams were really well enough aware of that

20 years ago or 30 years ago. So I don't know. I'll go with that. And for a third one, how about the destigmatization of strikeouts? Would you count that as sabermetric just in in the way that it's maybe fueled the continued rise of the league strikeout rate so you want pitchers who strike guys out i mean that is you know closely correlated with throwing hard and throwing hard has always been the number one valued thing so i don't know about that, but at least for hitters, it's kind of maybe opened the door to more of the strikeout-prone type of slugger,

which maybe goes hand-in-hand with the walking and the on-base percentage. But there's not much stigma associated with the Adam Dunn type of hitter, maybe the Jock Peterson type now. And maybe that comes from just the awareness that a strikeout really isn't worse than an out of some other kind. I feel like that might be getting really close to the one that we're not allowed to say, the OBP instead of batting average. Because I kind of feel like maybe there's never been a guy

who didn't get a chance because he struck out. There's been guys who didn't get a chance or were underused because they were hitting 210. And now we know that that's not as significant as on base and slugging are. But I don't know. I mean, there have always been, like Babe Ruth had the record for have always been, like, Babe Ruth had the record for strikeouts, and then Reggie Jackson had the record for strikeouts, and Bobby Bonds had the record for strikeouts.

I mean, guys who struck out were often very good. I mean, you kind of had to be, like, not paying attention to think that a guy was bad because he wasn't striking out. He was bad because he wasn't getting hits, home runs, walks, doubles, triples, and rib eyes right yeah yeah that's fair so what else is there defense i don't know that defense really qualifies i mean maybe because it's gone through a couple cycles where it was like defense doesn't matter and then defense really does matter and we definitely have better measures of defense

than we did but still it doesn't usually contradict how well a scout would say someone is at defense i mean there might be the occasional johnny peralta type who just doesn't really look that good but the stats pretty resoundingly say that he is pretty good, and maybe Johnny Peralta doesn't make all the money that he's making if there are no stats that say Johnny Peralta's pretty good at defense. But other than that, I mean, if you want to lump in shifts, and that's one of the more visible changes, at least just aesthetically, but probably not changing the game completely other than on a cosmetic level. How about just the ability to better project players?

I mean, every team's got their own projection system, and I imagine they're all a lot more accurate than the naked eye or your gut instinct. And so probably teams are just more efficient these days about getting better performances or paying for better future performances, knowing with a little bit more accuracy what a player is likely to do. Yeah, and those come from Bill James' insights that the peak for a player is 20-something, not 30-something, and that minor league statistics matter and correlate with how a guy does in the majors. And those are kind of the big foundational pieces of projection systems. So that counts, I think. That seems like a good third one. All right. I think that sounds like a better second one. I'm still not sure that the second one was very good. Okay. Here's one that I know that you know the answer to. It's from Alex P. in Minnesota.

How much is a double turned into an out in a one-score game worth? I ask because I've decided to take credit for one during the Twins slash Rays games I went to on May 15th. I was sitting along the third baseline in the second row, and a sharp grounder got past Trevor Plouffe at third and came along where we were sitting so naturally a guy in front of me started reaching hard for the ball and I yelled don't touch a few times to him luckily he heard me and alerted the guy next to him to not touch the live ball and Escobar grabbed the ball and gunned down James Loney at second for the second out of the inning. This event increased the win probability from 37.2% to 39.1%, but I'm guessing that's not including the notion

that he could have just as easily been on second base instead of just a regular old out. So instead of calling a dead ball for interference and getting the guy, who gave me the credit for keeping him from touching the ball, kicked out of the stadium and a double to Loney, I played the hero and saved the play so back to my original question with the retail price of 45 for one and 169.50 for four with extra fees included for both do the twins owe me the price of my seat how about the four people in my party all right so obviously yeah he's right that the 37% is what their chances were before the play started, but not when the play was unfolding.

And the alternate outcome of that play would have been a 30% win probability. And so he is responsible for 9% of a win, and 9% of a win is $630,000. And so it seems pretty clear from that that he is owed some money, except there are some issues here. One is this goes to the sort of the framing issue where we've struggled for a while to figure out, okay, well, who gets all that credit for the framing? Is it all the catcher? Is it partly the pitcher? Does the pitcher get some credit for throwing the pitch in a frameable way? And I mean, while this guy is responsible for keeping his neighbor from touching the baseball, his neighbor also did not touch the baseball.

Like he did the advice. He allowed himself, I don't know if even framing is the best analogy. It might be that he allowed himself to be coached. And so it's like saying, oh, well, for every home run that Andrew McCutcheon hits, it's like defensive positioning. Yeah, it's like defensive positioning. Exactly. So how much of this guy's defensive rating does the coach get to claim credit for? And I think that at best, at best, I'm going to give him 80% credit, and I can see giving him 5% credit. I mean, simply being the person who is on the field, in the box, taking the swing, as this guy who didn't touch the baseball is, is worth something. Now, on the other hand, the emailer also probably was in a position that he could have reached down and grabbed the baseball

if he had wanted to. And he chose not to do that. He didn't even make a big deal out of it. He just simply didn't do it. He didn't even email us saying that he didn't do that. He just chose not to do it. And so then are we now rewarding the near toucher, the guy who almost touched for being bailed out instead of the guy who simply did the right thing all along and never even attempted. And so then, okay, so then do we have to take that $630,000 and divide it by every person who was within reach of it? Or do we go back to saying that the default is that nobody is going to touch it and only the person who prevented the outlier event, our emailer in this case, gets credit for that $630,000. I don't know. I'm not sure. So I can now go anywhere from 5%. I can actually go anywhere from 0%

going to him to 100% going to him. So what percent does it need to be for him to be worth more than the price of his ticket? Well, oh, it needs to be like... 0.00, some number of zeros. It's like.005, I think. Uh-huh. So like 1 20th of 1%, I think. So we're giving him that much credit. But, Ben, he's pre-arb.

As far as I can tell, since he's pre-arb, his pay is set. The club doesn't have to give him anything more than was arranged and agreed to by the contract. And so he had a contract to get a baseball game and pay money to do it. He has no arbiter who's going to hear him. He has no free agency in this matter. He is pre-arb. All he gets to do is have his contract renewed uh by the club so i'm going to say that because of that he gets nothing

just like mike trout didn't get a raise after his rookie year not even a simple raise and what if it angers alex so much that he never attends another twins game or we establish that that that doesn't happen right it doesn't happen from first-year players. I mean, every once in a while, you might have a... Back in the day, you might have had a veteran holdout, but when's the last time you saw a pre-arb player simply refuse to retire? No, it never happens.

I think he should get an Eduardo Escobar bat or something. I think that would be nice. Play index? All right. So, Ben. Yeah. Are you aware of what Adrian Gonzalez is doing? Hitting well?

Yeah, more specifically? Nope. All right. Adrian Gonzalez is on pace to hit 72 doubles. I think that's right. He has 17 in 37 games. And at that pace, he would have 72 doubles. And you know I think that's right, he has 17 in 37 games. And at that pace, he would have 72 doubles. And you know what that would be?

A record. That'd be a record. All right, so as we all know, the record for doubles in a season is 67 by Earl Webb. And as we all know, for many years, the record for home runs in a season was 61 by Roger Maris or 60 by Babe Ruth before that. And Babe Ruth's 60 and Earl Webb's 67 happened at about the same time. And there were

many threats to the Babes record. Guys hitting 50, guys hitting 57, guys hitting 54, guys hitting eventually 61, and then hitting 70, and then hitting 73, and then hitting 66 as well. And lots of people have done what Babe did or come close. And lots of people have done what Roger Maris did or came close. But Earl Webb, it never happens. Nobody ever comes close. And so the obvious thing that you would deduce from this is that, well, it was something about the era that they played in made doubles. It was a high doubles environment in a way that has never been replicated. And it was a home run, a high home run era in a way that was replicated. And we're simply never going to live in that doubles world anymore. Just like we're never going to see anybody who hits 36 triples or whatever the record is,

which is such an outlandish record that we don't even talk about it and I don't even know how much it is. So that's your conclusion. However, going against that hypothesis that it's simply impossible to hit 67 doubles anymore, that was a different time, it was a different era, is the fact that there are constantly people on pace to hit 67 doubles at this point in the year. And so I started wondering this because I always have a doubles watch going in my head because there's always somebody who's on pace and I think, oh, it'd be cool. So this year, for instance, Adrian Gonzalez is on pace, as I said, so is Matt

Carpenter. And I looked at who had the most doubles in their team's first 37 games and using the play index to find basically how many players had hit doubles and how many games and then seeing the total. It sounds complicated. It wasn't. It was simple. It's the play index. It's very simple. I found that through 37 games, we have two this year. We had two last year. We had two last year. We had three in 2013 who were on pace.

Mike Napoli, Joe Maurer, Manny Machado. Last year, Trevor Plouffe and Chase Utley. We had one in 2012. We had one in 2010. We had three in 2007. Since 2002, there have been 19 hitters who have been on pace through 40 games, not 37, but through 40 games, to break Earl Webb's doubles record. 19 homers, by contrast, since 2002. Only one, two,

three, four, five hitters have managed to be on pace through 40 games to break the home run record. And I'm not even talking about the Barry Bonds home run record or the Mark McGuire home run record. I'm talking about the Roger Maris home run record. Only five players since then have been on pace to break Roger Maris' home run record. So we have this weird situation where one record gets challenged quite often and even gets broken fairly often

and yet doesn't have nearly the number of players on pace through 40 games that a different record has, and that record never gets broken and never even gets challenged. Nobody has hit 60 doubles even. 60, not even 65 or 63 are enough to make you nervous, but not even 60 doubles in 1936. So yeah, so apparently April and May is the month where everybody hits enough doubles to get me interested,

and then nobody ever comes close. Interesting. Do you have a theory? Yeah, I just think that doubles are less reflective of true talent, and that it's a lot easier to fluke your way into a bunch of doubles early in the season. Doubles turn into homers, right? That's a saying. So maybe all the doubles that the guys are hitting early in the season Turn into homers late in the season

And then that record gets broken Could be That's why in 2003 Eric Hinsky broke the all-time home run I remember that Early season doubles It isn't The names are not nearly as impressive Well the names

The 19 who've been on pace Adrian Gonzalez, Matt Carpenter, Trevor Plouffe, Utley, Napoli, Maurer, Machado, Votto, Jason Wirth, Maglio, Utley again, Derek Lee, Mike Lowell, Lyle Overbay, Preston Wilson, Jose Vidro, Eric Hinsky,

Alfonso Soriano, and Mike Lowell. So those are pretty good names. Those are good hitters. And a couple of repeats. Those are, I don't know what I was going to prove with those names. It started with something. Last time I got to Mike Lowell the second time, I forgot what my point was. I'm glad we got a second

Trevor Ploof mention in this podcast at least. Just on that basis, this Play Index was a success. A double Ploof. Yep. Play Index,on code BP. Discounted price. $30 on a one-year subscription. Go

to Baseball Reference. You're there every day anyway, spending most of your workday on that website. So just go to the Play Index section one of these times and subscribe. Which record will be broken first? Bonds 73 or Webs 67?

Say Web. I can definitely see Webs any day. You know, like I know I just said the thing about how no one's had 60 in 70 years, 80 years. And yet, it doesn't seem that outlandish to hit 68 doubles, does it? I think that the one that more people were on pace for at a certain point in the season would be the easier one to break. That's the point of this play-in that we just talked about. So you asked me the question.

So that's the answer. Yeah. Todd Helton at 59 one year. That's the most in our lifetimes. Of course, Chuck Knobloch. Yeah, Chuck Knobloch was on pace, I think, when the strike came in. That was very late in the season to be on pace or at least fairly close to it. But the other thing, the other reason that you might think that it's a better bet that somebody will break webs is that 50 double seasons, just 50 doubles, not 60, of

course, but 50 double seasons have really gone up in history. And even the lack of offense in the past few years hasn't really calmed it down. So last year, two players hit 50 doubles. Since, I don't know, since 2000, there have been 19 players who have 50 doubles, whereas there were none in the 40s, and was i guess three from 1940 to 1985 so it so basically in a half century there were like five and then now they've been 19 in 15 years so this new generation of parks must be more doubles friendly than the the cookie cutter ones or something yeah it must be that and probably fewer triples maybe along the way for those guys, although

maybe not. Some of the homers turned into doubles. Longer season, of course, than some of those years. Some of the singles turned into triples and then those triples turned into doubles. All sorts of things are turning into things.

Even though nobody's really come close to threatening Webb, just the fact that so many guys are hitting 50 obviously makes it much more likely that one will bust through than when nobody was hitting 50. So it'll probably happen. I would bet that Webb's record goes before I finish this sentence. Earl Webb, it didn't happen.

Earl Webb's record will be broken before ryan webb gets a safe it's worth it's worth watching both okay question from joe b one particular pet peeve that i have developed recently is the apparent use by teams of innings as a measure of a pitcher's workload this seems to be lazy at best and ignorant at worst, since innings are merely a measure of outs achieved by the pitcher and therefore just a somewhat accurate proxy. Given the rise of pitch counts, though, you'd think that teams could easily keep tabs on a pitcher's true workload, including warm-up efforts. Is there a reason that teams continue to discuss innings instead of pitches when addressing their pitchers' efforts? That's a good question. So first of all, teams are keeping track of their pitchers' total workload now.

It is recent. I think for a lot of teams it's just this year, but they are. They have this wearable technology. Many teams have this now that monitors all the effort that pitchers put in to all of their throws except during the game. And it probably won't be long before it's in games too. And I mentioned this in a piece on ESPN that came out a couple hours ago. So that's one answer.

But the other, so I guess maybe that will invalidate everything I say next. But, I mean, warm-up pitches I, aren't generally seen as being strenuous. They are not seen as being nearly as training as what you do on the mound. And even on the mound, pitches that you throw in stressful situations have long been seen as more stressful than pitches that you throw in less stressful situations. And also, I think that you're, less stressful situations. And also, I think that you're basically these guys, how do I put this, they throw kind of the same amount outside of games. No, like that's a constant. Like they're some guys throw more warm up pitches than other guys, or some guys might throw more in between starts, but they basically throw the same amount forever. Like that's their routine. And what you're really worried about when a guy is getting

fatigued is, has he been throwing more than he is used to, more than his body has told him over decades it can handle comfortably? And that's really the variable that fluctuates because some days he needs to throw more pitches than others, or some months maybe he needs to make more starts than others, or he has to pitch back-to-back days more than others or whatever. So that's the thing that is really changing. And so I think that's probably the been, you know, mentally adjusting in their head, knowing that a guy warmed up X number of times besides coming into the game. Yeah, I think it was a little bit of inertia and innings were always available and pitch counts weren't particularly in the minor leagues. Or or even now if you're looking at amateurs and you're in the draft maybe you can probably get pitch counts now but well you wrote about that too

so it's but it's harder to track and harder to collect that kind of information and innings is just easier everyone has innings I did a an article a couple years ago where I interviewed Glenn Fleissig from ASMI and then also interviewed a front office person. And I asked the front office person this question, why innings instead of other things, or do you look at other things in addition? And he said, I am reading, I think innings is first and foremost what you look at, if only because it's sort of built into our profile of a pitcher. We have certain expectations for every spot in the rotation. So what your ideal number one starters profile looks like is going to be different from what

your number five starter looks like. Along with that, the idea is that those top of the line starters are usually guys who can give you 200 plus innings. So that's kind of where innings comes from, because if you slice it up too finely, it becomes very difficult. You say, well, you know, we expect him to throw 90 pitches per outing or 12 pitches per inning. It's not something that's easy to break down and project, if that makes any sense.

And he said that at the time, at least, it was difficult to get information about bullpen usage and warm-up tosses. And he said innings is just sort of the benchmark. And in this case, he thought that better was the enemy of good, and that he thought the industry was kind of changing and getting more granular about this stuff. So I think that is probably the case. But it's, I don't know, maybe innings, like if the breaks between innings, if some teams think that maybe that matters for whether it helps pitchers recover or makes them more liable to be injured because they're sitting on the bench or something, maybe that gives you some extra information that the raw pitch count doesn't. I don't know, because it tells you how many times he was up and down during the game. Maybe there's something to that, but I don't know.

I'm sure all the smart teams are doing the smart things. I hate it when you do that, Ben. When you read a question that you have the answer to, but then you leave a little moment of pause, like you're waiting for me to answer it. I'm like oh great ben didn't ben didn't bring an answer to this one so then i got to talk for a while and then oh sure okay here's the answer i was googling okay all right good all right one more

question is from john 51 minute geez 51 minutes that's a long podcast Should we stop? I already promised a question What is it? John says that Jason Wojcicki Just tweeted that he wished there were no such thing As extra innings, what if that were true? What if every game lasted exactly nine innings Or was limited to a single extra inning Or anything that isn't boundless like it currently is

If it's tied at the end, it's a tie And the standings are like they are in soccer. Three points for a win, one for a tie, none for a loss. How would strategies change? How different would the game be? Is this an interesting idea or a dumb one? Did mentioning Jason and ties so close to each other make you think that this was about players wearing ties?

I think that you asked me this a long time ago, Ben, and I think the main thing that I thought is that managers don't use their pitchers as aggressively as they could because every manager is secretly, or maybe not secretly, terrified of the a 19-inning game. I think that there would be a lot more pitching changes, smaller pitching staffs while also using more pitchers in each game, shorter outings from starters, and basically you would have an even lower run scoring environment. Would you see some sort of risk-averse behavior at the end like you see in hockey, though? sort of risk averse behavior at the end like you see in hockey though like in the new hockey system where teams just they get points for getting to overtime and so you see that like in the last few minutes of a tie game there aren't as many goals scored as they are as there are in a game where

someone is already winning or losing because the teams are just kind of skating around, holding the puck, whatever, just trying to get to overtime so that they can get that point for overtime. And in this case, you get one for overtime and three for a win. In this, in John's scenario, you get one point for hockey. I'll check. But in John's scenario, yeah, you get three for a win and one for a tie and none for a loss. So you would have some incentive to get a tie as opposed to nothing, but I'm not sure it's analogous to hockey exactly. Well, so if you're, I don't know if this, I don't know what it's like in hockey. So it's possible that they do dumb things or it's possible they do smart things. I don't know. But let's say it's a tie game going to the ninth and your baseball teams, right? Your two baseball teams. One of the teams is probably less likely to win, even though it's a tie. And even though probably the most likely outcome is a tie,

one is less likely to win. Their bullpen's not as good or they've used their closer already or they can't use their closer because it's a tie game and they're on the road or whatever. And one of the, they're not at home, the bottom of their lineup is coming up, whatever the case may be. In real terms, one team would be much more likely to win or at least a little likely to win, right? So to take this, all of those facts and put them in hockey terms, if you have one team that's more likely to win, then the team that is less likely to win has every incentive to play for a tie. And in hockey, you can do that probably. You can play a certain kind of defense or you can sit on the puck

or you can hit people in the face with your fists. I don't know what you do, but you do whatever you can to preserve the tie. Do some icing. You could do some ice dancing. You could do some ice cream making. You can do anything with the ice. So that team does whatever it can to preserve the tie and therefore makes it probably harder for the team that is favored to win without doing something suboptimally that exposes them to risk. And so probably there actually is some rational reason they play for ties in that situation, right? Yeah.

The team for whom a tie is actually the better outcome over the course of many simulations will play for the tie, and perhaps that style of play makes it so that the team that was favored now also has to play for a tie or risk doing something too rash. Yeah. In the NHL through the 99 season, teams earn two points for a win in regulation or overtime, zero points for a loss and one point for a tie. But in 2005, they changed it to have shootouts at the end of overtime. And then the winner gets two points and the overtime loser gets a point. And there was something different from 99 to 2005.

But the new structure encourages teams, I'm reading from 538, in tie games to play for overtime where the total number of points awarded to the teams increases by 50%, three versus two. That's absurd. It's pretty crazy, and it's pretty crazy and it's a huge it really makes a big difference it's an interesting article well all right yeah okay all right so that is it you can keep emails coming to podcast oh icing is a hockey term yeah

you thought i just meant like being Being on the ice just doing ice activities I thought it wasn't Thought they were making ice You can keep emails coming to Podcasts at baseballperspectives.com Our Facebook group is at Facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild We got our

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