Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 685: A Couple Complaints About Replays and Appeals

Episode Date: May 28, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about home runs and a Dan Jennings quote, then discuss some oddities of baseball’s replay and appeal rules.

Good morning and welcome to episode 685 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives brought to you by The Play Index at baseballreference.com i'm sam miller with ben limberg of grantland hi ben hi how are you okay can you hear the ticking of my kitchen clock yeah i'm worried that it will remind you of the mortality that you try so hard to forget by talking about baseball it just drives me we're running out of time we have to we have so many podcasts to record i have a i already i always have a clock in view ticking in fact because uh i want to well i want to know pretty much the second we've gone long enough in this in this podcast that if we had to stop talking, we could. Because until we get there, every show starts with the feeling that we're not going to have anything to talk about.

And we're going to run out of time. It's a very obnoxious thing for a clock to do. Ticking. We don't need to hear you every second. I know how long a second lasts. All right. Well, seconds are ticking, so let's talk. All right.

Got a little bit of banter. Okay. Craig Goldstein sent me an article apropos of our discussion about the LA Times not being impressed by Bo Jackson's home run and feeling like nobody else should be either. Sent me an article from about a week ago about how nobody should be impressed by John Carlos Stanton's home run. Why should we not be impressed? I'm impressed.

This was the one that went, you know, out of Dodger Stadium. Yeah. And the LA Times headline was, I don't have it in front of me, but it was literally something like, John Carlos Stanton's home run did not go out of Dodger Stadium. Oh. It was like they were arguing that because it hit off of a canopy or something, it doesn't count, which, fine. Probably doesn't.

Still pretty impressive. I'm impressed by all of his home runs. Yeah. No, let's see. So this headline is, sorry, John Carlos Stanton Homer was not hit out of Dodgers. The home runs that he hits not very far, I think, are maybe the more impressive ones. The ones that just barely go out, but they are super low and super fast. And opposite field often.

Those are the ones that impress me the most speaking of home runs and hang time which we were on yesterday's show you we we speculated about what the average hang time of a home run was what did you say i said four and a half yeah so you were almost on i was too high so i i asked g Rabarchek, who started ESPN's Home Run Tracker, although at the time it was called Hit Tracker. He now works for the Red Sox, but he still does some stuff for Hit Tracker. And I asked him what the average hang time of a home run is, and he says it is 4.88 seconds. Okay. Yep. Pretty good. Mm-hmm.

That's a long time. All right. So that banter's out of the way. Let's see. Somebody had a hypothesis for the lefty low ball hitters. Well, I don't know if it was a hypothesis for the lefty low ball hitters. It was relevant information that has led to, I think, perhaps a hypothesis that I would have about lefty low ball hitters. Maybe he was trying to offer this hypothesis too. But basically that not everybody who hits lefty is actually left-handed. Some of them are right-handed people, right-handed humans who bat left-handed. And so the hypothesis offered is that because they're right-hand dominant, they don't get top hand, basically. And so because of that, because they're right-hand dominant, the swing is suited for low balls and less suited for high balls.

And so I don't know if this is true. You and I recently were told that this was a case, right? Didn't we just like two days ago hear somebody complaining that right-handed throwers don't get their top hand? We have heard a lot about top hands and bottom hands in the last few days. So that may have been one of the things. Yeah, top hand's a big part of Stomper's strategy. And so in this discussion, yes, we heard a similar complaint that right-hand dominant players are always trying to lead with their dominant hand, which is their bottom hand.

And that would explain. And so anyway, this would this is just to say that it would be interesting to see if, in fact, you divided the left handed hitters into a population of right handed throwers and non right handed throwers. If you would see the same low ball dominance for the left-handed throwers sounds like a post it does and dan jennings amazingly dan brooks pointed this out to me and yet we're talking about it in the non-dan brooks but there's an even better quote from dan jennings this is not about dan jennings but after his second win he said quote wins are like donuts you want to keep eating them okay all right there's so many things that i don't get about this quote like why donuts why not anything good in life? Wins are wins.

Like, it's not, like, there's not unclarity about whether wins are good or bad. Wins are, wins are much less unambiguous than donuts in terms of goodness. Like, there are people who don't like to eat donuts. My wife does not like to eat donuts. Everybody likes wins, though. You have an interesting way of saying donuts. Donut. Oh, heavens. No. Yeah. Donut. Donut. wins though you have an interesting way of saying donuts donut no heavens no yeah donut donut donut

donut it's a donut no donut donut so regional dialect differences the point is that you it would be much better to say eating a donut eating a donut is like winning a baseball game right or something like that where anyway so that's one thing but the other thing is that the implication of this is that you don't want too many of them you shouldn't have too many or it'll turn you sick right so so the like it implies that dan jennings is carefully rationing his don't pin pick that he's only allowed to have one a weekday and then uh one on each weekend or something like that that he's you can't have you can't have too much you get addicted he's just showing his lack of experience with this quote he doesn't know how to talk like a manager. Exactly. One thing is for sure, Dan Jennings

is not going to get addicted to winning. He is intent. And the other thing that Dan Brooks pointed out is it's not like Dan Jennings just discovered baseball. He's been doing this for, he's been doing baseball winning for a long time. So

I don't feel like you need to get a quote from him about what it's like to win. It's a good thing. Everyone understands that. It's generally understood that we want to win. Yeah, it is. All right. I wonder, but what kind of donut is it? I don't know. Someone can do a follow-up. Yeah. All right. That's my banter. You have any? Nope. Other than my home run hang time. Oh yeah. Which you sn that's my banter you have any nope other than my home run hang time oh yeah once you snuck into my banter and my ticking clock all right so ben uh i wanted to talk about replay and a couple of details uh that have kind of emerged in the in the year plus that we've had replay questionable things or things that disagreements that have arisen and that I'm not sure were

really anticipated. And one is very new, and it's kind of the first time that this issue that I know of has come up. The other has repeatedly come up, in my opinion. And so I wanted to talk about each of those two things and then also see if, well, these would be things, well, you'll hear, but these would be things where you could maybe make an argument that replay should be scaled back in these specific instances. And then I would like to know, having lived through it for a year and a half at the end,

I would like to know if you have anything that you would like to see replay beefed up on. All right, so the first one, and this was a very interesting situation. Chris Davis, Chris with a K, Davis hit a home run a couple days ago against the Giants, situation chris davis chris with a k davis hit a home run a couple days ago against the giants and the giants appealed it and the umpire said yep he didn't hit that home run he didn't touch home plate the home plate umpire was looking at the plate saw it said that the foot did not touch the bag and then the brewers challenged that and the replay officials overturned it now i'm not that interested in in that this is. All that is pretty irrelevant. What is interesting, what is relevant, the question is that

Bruce Bochy, on his pregame show the next day, was asked, oh, so pretty sharp of Andrew Susak, right, that he saw that? And Bochy said, well, actually, our replay guys saw it. Sean Dunstan saw it, And he called down to us. Sean Dunstan's the replay guy? He's sitting there watching the replays? Heck yeah. Wow.

Okay. It's usually just some anonymous video guy. Well, it's not. For the Giants, it's Sean Dunstan. All right. And so he called down to Bochy, alerted him, and then Bochy appealed. Now, this is very odd to me and potentially again it seems well i don't know if it's against the rules but it seems like it could very easily

be against the rules that they used their replay guy for non-replay purposes he was essentially using the benefits of this camera these cameras all these banks of TV screens or whatever they have to see all these replays, in order to help them on the field, right? It seems like very, very questionable. Doesn't that seem very questionable? Well, how does that differ from the typical close call where you get to look at the replays and change something? They weren't asking for a replay.

They were asking for an appeal. And an appeal is different than a replay. Right. An appeal. So let's talk about what an appeal is because appeals are nuts, man. Okay, so when you think about the weirdness of this play, first of all, it's really weird that you hit a home run and the ball is gone. It's,

it's like you theoretically have forever to touch home plate. You theoretically, you, there's no, there's nobody coming to tag you. You're not avoiding any tags. So baseline rules don't apply. And there's no threat that that ball is going to somehow become live so there's no time element

theoretically you ought to be able to hit a home run go get your four-year degree at a major university come back and touch home plate right yeah the question that we answered the other day from dominic about fans throwing home runs back onto the field that was the second part of a question that was related to this where the first part was what would we consider a runner to have to do to be ineligible for the home run you know how far would he have to run away for it to not count anymore so yeah it's very nebulous all right so already we're in weird zone. Now, here's the next part. Susak, after he finds out about this, goes to the umpire, or maybe at the same time, I don't know, maybe Susak saw it too, but he goes to the umpire and goes, did he touch home plate? And the umpire says, I can't tell you. Which is so, like, why this, why do we have to go through this then just tell him

just say yeah he did or no he didn't if you say yeah he did then you save the 12 seconds of an appeal if you say no he didn't then you i mean presumably once you say i can't tell you so there's no harm in appealing that theoretically these guys could appeal every base that every batter or runner ever touches or didn't touch uh so there's no there's nothing limiting susax appeals and like what if you're the umpire why does he need to appeal if you're the umpire why don't you just say why can't you just say oh didn't touch the base yeah this is this reminds me of what people wanted the replay system to be, right? Not a challenge system where it's up to the teams or the manager to spot something that did or didn't happen, but you just have some central review place in New York where, where they currently consult when there is a review you would just have that sort of eye in the sky monitoring every play and just telling the umpires when something happened and that's kind of awkward to implement maybe you would just have the players going about their business and then suddenly it would be like

wait stop we're getting a message we have to do that play over again or something you'd never completely know when a play was official it would be weird but that is sort of what people wanted it to be wanted the system to be where if you really care about getting every call right then there shouldn't be a challenge system it should just be monitored by someone who will alert the umpires when something goes wrong and then then sean dunstan wouldn't have had to call down because someone in the replay review office would have done the same thing but but we're no you're conflating review and appeal we're not even talking about replay we're not the the review is irrelevant to this except for the fact that dunstan used a tool that is not intended for what

he used it for that's why that's why replay is here it's that dunson has been given access to cameras that allowed him to cheat okay so that's what we're talking about now we're talking about the weirdness of appeal rules because they're already weird they are essentially what you're saying with replay with uh replay review uh except in this other part of the game it's the same kind of basic logical flaw, where why does the team need to appeal? Why doesn't the umpire just get to say who didn't touch the base? Why is there this tiny little added gamesmanship element, like where the team has to monitor whether the base was touched? The umpire should monitor whether the base was touched, right?

It feels very weird. Appeals are very weird. Like, it really feels like the umpire could just say, you didn't touch or you left the base early, you're out. Like, it's not like when a basketball player shoots a shot after the clock, like, well, the referee can't say anything unless you appeal.

Like, I don't know, did he? I don't know. Like, and you ask, like, did he get that off before the shot? I don't know. I can't say anything unless you appeal. Like, I don't know, did he? I don't know. Like, and you ask, like, did he get that off before the show? I don't know. I can't tell you. I'm just the ref. I can't tell a formal appeal. So when would the umpire say it if he were going to say it?

Because he couldn't say it right after the guy passed the base and didn't step on it because then he could go back and step on it. So he would have to bring it up when when he gets back to the dugout when the other when the next batter comes up and the at bat is official or something it's a good question when is an appeal when how long could chris davis have been gone and still come back before the appeal was made i mean there is a line at which apparently an appeal is allowed and that if they do the appeal, then Davis is out. So whenever that line has been crossed, I guess, is the same time the umpire could say it.

I don't know. It's a stupid rule. You shouldn't be allowed to do it. You should just get a home run. Yeah. All that said, that's a separate thing, I guess, or it's not. But that's not what – it's not like Bochy did not go out and file a challenge. He filed an appeal and he filed the appeal using the tools that have been implemented for the challenge, not for the appeal. And so the point is that Sean Dunstan is using and probably other teams are using this this video feed in order to kind of cheat. And so wonder what else can they use it for can they use to steal signs like rj anderson's piece today at bp in

which he cracked some teams signs from the second base camera so sorry the center field camera are they using it to steal signs can they use it to do other things? I don't know. But like it feels weird that there's this line, there's this direct telephone line between the manager who's not even allowed to have a smartphone on the bench and these guys in an office where they have access to dozens of camera feeds and probably every other bit of information that the rest of the world has and they can just phone them like they can just call them up and say this and so that seems like kind of maybe i don't know i mean i guess i don't really care if they have the smartphone and the all the things but given that they're not allowed to so what did he he called the the dugout phone that that connects to who what who did he call how did he talk to him that he called the dugout phone the one that connects to the replay room the one that the one that he calls when he says you should challenge that so i don't know if there's uh is there a rule that you can't do that is it like in in football where the gm got in trouble for texting the guy on the sidelines or whatever. I don't know what the rules are. I mean, if the GM wants to go down and talk to the manager on that replay review phone,

he could do that. And you're saying that that is cheating, except it's not if it's not prohibited. Yeah, I don't know what the rule is. Yeah. So, I mean, you could always just, you can have a guy watching replays in the clubhouse and then run through the tunnel and talk to the manager it takes longer and it's not as effective so you're objecting to the the ease of it just you can pick up the phone and you have a whole bank of things i mean you could always

have a you could put a bank of tvs in your in your clubhouse if you wanted to right in your video room you could do that if you wanted to just right? In your video room. You could do that if you wanted to. Just have every angle there and have someone lean out the door and say it. Yeah. So I don't know if it's necessarily like an exploit in the replay system or whether it's something that theoretically you could do anyway. Maybe it's just, it's easier to do, theoretically you could do anyway maybe it's just it's easier to do but i i don't know you could always i mean anyone on the team could have noticed it and mentioned it so sean dunstan is technically on the team in a sense and he noticed it so i don't know i don't know if i mind if you

have a rule that says but he didn't know he noticed it because he got to look at this right right but how would you even it seems like a tough thing to to i mean what would you how would you even restrict what the replay guy could say well under the system where the team does the replays if you centralized it where mlb did it and they weren't giving tips to either team but they were only answering questions then they wouldn't be tipping off teams but as long as the the team is reviewing it someone from the team is reviewing it then doesn't seem like there's really a way to limit what they can say yeah of course there is you just say you can't say this and you I mean you maybe this this you have this phone call anytime you have

that phone activated it records and major league baseball can review and see if you're talking about things that are not pertinent to a video review which this was not this was not pertinent to a video review yeah i guess you could do that you could i mean and if you were worried about so you could do that and you could also that – that would theoretically prevent Schwan Dunstan from using it to do anything else that's beyond the scope of what the video cameras are supposed to be able to do. You could also have it be the case that – I mean, I think this is – I don't know if this is good or bad, but you could have it be that that phone only dials one way, and so Bochy can consult with somebody when he has a question about a close play, but that you wouldn't have these situations where the video review guy is calling down and saying, we spotted something, spotted something that isn isn't i don't know there's

something there's something about that guy with the cameras that's fun and interesting and when the last year the marlins were really good at this they would find these little calls like guy guy missed a base guy missed first base closely and he called down and said oh he missed first base and nobody would have spotted that nobody Nobody would have known it. It's not like the manager. It's not like Richmond, Redmond was like, huh, I wonder if he touched first base. I'd better call my guy. It was like somebody spotted it and called down. And it wouldn't bother me if that was removed from the game.

But it also doesn't really bother me that it's there, I guess. It's kind of fun. Again, the point here that I'm making is that this was not about using the cameras to find a challengeable play. A challenge and an appeal are different things. An appeal is outside of the challenge process. It is

part of the non-challenge part of the game. I think that they conflated these things and I would probably suspend all of them for a quarter of the season for it okay uh every one of them very harsh on both sides both teams okay second thing and this one is uh much more common but they're going to have to create a rule for base runners that control of the bag is less literal than touching the bag right when a guy slides in and for a thousandth of a second his body is off the bag

by a thousandth of an inch and you can see this on replay but he has never lost control of the bag in any way that has ever been acknowledged by baseball players and umpires that sucks right don't that's got to stop right we don't like that pedantic view of control of the bag do we i don't think so it's it's the same as the football defining a catch problem, right? Like you can never completely tell when a guy has possession at any exact moment. And so you end up with weird calls where the replay makes it look like it's not a catch or it is a catch when it was intuitively the opposite to everyone who was watching. So, yeah, I agree. it to everyone who was watching. So yeah, I, I agree. That seems, it's hard to draw the line and say we want to be this accurate, but not a hundred percent accurate. But, but yes, I,

I agree that is, it doesn't really make baseball better if that is something that people have to worry about. Right. I mean, if you, if you come off the bag because you came off the bag, then right, you are in danger, you should be out. But I just, I don't know, I don't really know how to make a defense of my position that is stronger than it played, accepts this type of sliding that we now see is very commonly, you know, I don't think we knew that guys were coming off the bag, for instance, before video review was instituted. I was not expecting or anticipating this problem. I didn't know that these guys came off the bag almost every time. I don't know if it's almost every time, but like a lot, like, I don't know, maybe a quarter of slides of contested slides of, you know, close plays. It seems like there is a split second where

their body is off the bag after it's been on the bag, but not like they've gone past the bag or they've over slid or they've fallen off. Just, you know, like bumps, like how you're riding your bike and your bike is on the ground but if you had a high speed camera every once in a while it wouldn't be on the ground it you know hit a pebble or whatever and you know and it just feels like you have to change you have to change the way the game is played if you're going to redefine a slide to be stricter than or to redefine contact and control the bag as stricter than it is you can't just we can't keep playing baseball the way it's been played for 100 years if there's no allowance for

tiny momentary seconds split seconds of loss of control of the bag so there was a piece over at bucks dugout by david minnell about a week ago that was very good, and it looked at how instant replay has changed base running and plays at the bag. And because now you have to, this is a little bit different, but because now you have to actually tag the guy, which seems appropriate to me, but I can see the player's argument that it's less appropriate, and this article kind of makes that case a little bit from the player's perspective.

Because you have to tag the guy, you have to really stay down there and keep your glove down you can't just sort of swipe the tag or you know put the tag down and then pop it up and and of course it you it seems like pretty obvious that you should have to tag a guy if the the rules of the game say you should tag him you should tag him but every you know that i think that the players from the player's perspective they knew they could tag the guy that was easy the reason that they did the swipe or the players' perspective, they knew they could tag the guy. That was easy. The reason that they did the swipe or the pop, the down and up tag, was for safety. That they didn't want to get hurt. And when you have guys sliding in hard with their cleat spikes coming at you and all that,

you'd rather not put your wrist down there and let him you know crash into you at full speed and so it was just sort of allowed and now it's not allowed because we have a much more technical definition of what a tag is and so base runners so fielders have to really keep their gloves down there and stay there and as neil walker says it it's it's more dangerous now and i'm less i'm i'm a little bit more on the fence about that. I kind of do like to see a tag, but I respect that position. But it's the sort of the same thing extends to keeping the tag on the guy after he's coming to the base. You're just basically creating a little bit more of a physical altercation, a physical activity at the base. And so that's kind of a more practical way that base running has changed.

It's become a lot more physical, but I don't know. So those are two things that maybe I feel like replay has encroached or gotten to be a little bit too much of the game. So then my question for you, the final question is, is there anything where you feel like replay is still underutilized and it could be a bigger part of the game? Having seen it, do you have a craving for more? Is there anything where you still have an appetite? Like, for instance, an appetite that one might have for donuts so what is ineligible balls and strikes interference foul tips check swings

no oh you're saying what is ineligible in in real life right now or what is ineligible for this question what is ineligible for replay review right now i don't know those things that i just said i think so we've talked about balls and strikes before i i'm i'm mildly anti-computerizing that or making it i i don't know replay replay review would be a weird thing i think if you were going to do replay review of balls and strikes then you should probably just do computerized it seems like a strange thing if you were to appeal to appeal an umpire's decision or challenge an umpire's decision and then have it be upheld or struck down by the computer if you if you trust the computer to make that call more than the umpire then you should just use the computer so that seems like a that would be a sort of a strange

intermediate step but other things maybe foul tips i mean sure why not check swings sure why not everyone talks about how it would be nice if you at least had to appeal if the if the home plate umpire on a questionable check swing at least had to check with the base umpire, and I'd be fine with that. And I suppose I'd be fine with a replay review of that also. Maybe you would need more strict definitions of what a check swing is or isn't because it seems like such a subjective thing

that I don't even know how you would conclusively decide whether it was one or not, even if you could watch it a bunch of times. like such a subjective thing that I don't even know how you would conclusively decide whether it was one or not, even if you could watch it a bunch of times. Like when we see replays of Czech swings, often the broadcasters will say completely different things about whether he held up or not. So I don't think anyone knows exactly where the border between swing and Czech swing is, but being able to challenge it would probably make it a little better. Seems like being able to just appeal, have a mandatory appeal to the base umpire would work just as well. So I don't think there's a really obvious area to expand it, but in general,

I'm happy with it. I think it's made baseball better and I would in theory expand it to to other things I wouldn't be worried worried about further encroachment if there was something else that seemed to make sense I don't know if there is really a an urgent type of play that comes to mind immediately yeah I think the one thing that I would be most in favor of is is giving the the guy the replay guy more power to overrule the umpires i don't like the conclusive rule that it has to be clear and conclusive or whatever that seems nuts to me i mean the whole point of replay is that this guy with this with eight high speed cameras it probably has a better view than the dude who's looking at it in real time once from whatever angle. And once we accept that he's better, that that guy's better, which is why we have it,

we have it because that guy's better. The guy in the booth is better. I don't understand why his opinion is worth less if he goes, well, it looks like like this to me but it's not conclusive and this other guy who said the opposite but obviously also wasn't conclusive i don't know why the guy in the fields not conclusive overrules the guy in the booths not conclusive seems pretty obvious maybe just to keep the game going faster just that's the But I think the opposite has happened. I think that what happens is that we get these longer, maybe I'm wrong, but I think we're getting longer reviews on these quote-unquote inconclusive ones

because they're trying to find the conclusive angle. And really, it's usually, even in the quote-unquote inconclusive, I think it's usually pretty clear within a couple of viewings which way you think it went. And then you watch it 12 more times and you go, I don't know. I can talk myself out of this. And then in looking for the conclusive view, you end up taking longer.

I mean it seems pretty simple to me that you just give them 90 seconds. Give the guy in the booth 90 seconds and then the TV shut off. And then the guy gets to say what it was okay yeah all right well my clock has probably ticked about 2 000 times so i think we've talked enough okay all right so we will be back with one more show tomorrow facebook group facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild sponsor play index. Go to baseball reference.com. Use the coupon code BP. Get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. Email us at podcast at baseball prospectus.com.

We will talk to you tomorrow morning.