Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 891: The Support Saberseminar Edition

Episode Date: May 25, 2016

Ben, Sam, and listener Corey McMahon plug the Saberseminar, then answer listener emails about automated strike zones, Jackie Bradley, Mike Trout, Bill Wambsganss, Willians Astudillo and more.

I'm going back to the ones that I know, with whom I can be what I want to be. Just one week for the feeling to go, and with you there to help me, then it probably will. Good morning and welcome to episode 891 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by The Play Index at baseballreference.com and our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello. Heyo. So once a year, we do an email show in which we are joined by a listener who has donated

for the privilege of being on the show, or primarily, probably, for the privilege of supporting worthy charities. But a nice side benefit is that that person gets to be on the show. So every year, every summer, our friend Dan Brooks and also Chuck Korb organize the Saber Seminar, a great baseball event that is held in August in Boston. And it is held to benefit the Jimmy Fund, which is an anti-cancer charity. And this year will also benefit the Angioma Alliance, which is another research-based charity. And so it's a great cause, it's a great event, and it's going to be held on August 13th and 14th in Boston this summer. Unfortunately, Sam and I couldn't make it last summer because we were running the Stompers, but this year it looks like we will both be there.

There is even a possibility that we'll be doing something podcast-related, although that is still to be determined. And you can buy tickets right now by going to saberseminar.com and clicking on tickets. There are always a ton of really great guests from baseball teams and baseball writers and people presenting really interesting research. It is my favorite baseball event of the year, and I hope you can make it. So go get tickets while you still can.

All the proceeds from the event go to those charities. And we are joined today by someone who has made his donation to those charities and gets to talk to us today, or we get to talk to him. And he will also be at Saber Seminar this summer, Corey McMahon. Hey, Corey. Hey, guys. So Corey is an Effectively Wild listener and also a Patreon supporter. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Corey, what do you do? I am a software developer and I live in Chicago. I've been listening to Effectively Wild for several years now. I don't know exactly how long, but I wanted to thank you guys for offering this. It's a really great cause, and I'm very excited to... Anything on top is a bonus, so getting to join you guys today. Yeah, it's fun for us too.

So we're going to get to emails. Does anyone want to say anything before we do? I need to correct the record from yesterday's episode. I went talking about how much R.A. Dickey was owed when he was traded for Travis Darnot and Noah Syndergaard, I added the extension that he signed afterward. So pretty much that whole segment was just wrong and irretrievable. So sorry, everybody. Sorry to you, Corey. Thank you. I'm glad you're here.

I can at least tell one person that I let down. Accept your apology on behalf of the listenership. According to an unconfirmed report in the Facebook group, there was also a part of that episode about Hiroki Kuroda. And a three-year deal was alluded to in his case also. But it was actually three one-year deals. Is that right? I don't know. I did at least search that and I

probably just misread. That would have probably been, instead of laziness, that would have been poor reading comprehension. So sorry about that as well. Blanket apology for any contract errors in that segment. Rich Hill still deserves all the money. Okay. So we're going to take some questions and I guess we might as well start with a question from Dan Brooks, who set this whole thing up. So Dan says, depending on whom you ask, catcher is debatably either the most or one of the most important defensive positions in baseball. Suppose baseball goes to an automated strike zone, which eliminates framing. How unimportant does catcher become as a defensive position? Where on the spectrum does it fall? If an umpire no longer has to slotimportant does catcher become as a defensive position? Where on

the spectrum does it fall? If an umpire no longer has to slot behind the catcher in order to see the pitch, does catching technique change dramatically? Would catching equipment change dramatically? So if catcher is right now the number one premium defensive position, and I guess it probably is, right? It's either that or shortstop And I think everyone would rather be a shortstop Than a catcher Catcher is hard and you have to wear things And you have to get hit by a lot of baseballs and bats Sounds awful and I don't know why anyone does it

But I love catchers and appreciate their contributions So if you take away framing And now it doesn't matter How the catcher catches the pitch It only matters that he does catch it and prevents it from going to the backstop but otherwise doesn't have to frame it nicely doesn't have to be particularly still or stable but literally every literally everything else though is the same all it's the same it's exactly the same and and like even in this scenario

the the robot ump could still if he wanted to if uh if he or she wanted to, I don't know how they would dress the robot. But if the robot wanted to, could even hover over the catcher's shoulder for aesthetics. Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, you could at a baseline level just literally run down the table of catchers from most valuable to least valuable you need someone to stand there and run after a wild pitch, but I would wonder why you would even have a catcher. And if you thought that wild pitches were rare enough occurrence that you would instead decide to change the game in a way. If you're changing the game already so greatly, why not just eliminate the catcher as a position and have the balls i don't know get sucked into some vacuum and sent back out to the pitcher do you mean from the league perspective or

the team individual team perspective from the league yeah yeah the team could do this on their own because otherwise every ball would be a passed ball and you could never hold runners yeah and there is a catcher's box that you're confined to why not have some giant vacuum suck up the pitches? That was where I went with this, but I didn't have a good answer because it seemed like the simple answer is just to subtract framing warp from each catcher, and I didn't do that. An even simpler answer would be to not subtract framing from warp and just acknowledge that for a long time, we didn't really pay attention to the framing and we still considered catcher to be the premium position on the field. There are still things about it. I mean, most humans just don't want to do that. And it's rare that you can find a human who does want to do that and will do that and is also capable of catching the baseball. So the

framing aspect to the value, I mean, it is reshaped what we think about catcher value, particularly within the subset of catchers. But for the most part, we already treated catchers like is this rare breed going back a century and a half. And so I wouldn't think it would do much. I mean, I don't think that you would, I don't think there are a lot of Ryan Domets out there in other words. And so maybe Ryan Domet makes it, but you know, even before the framing, nobody really wanted Ryan Domet to catch. And my guess is that there aren't a lot of guys out there who would suddenly flood the sport with their, you know, playable bats, but stabby catching

techniques. Yeah. I think unless you do go to the vacuum model, you still have to have guys who are mobile enough to block pitches and also be in a position to throw. So this maybe makes throwing more important again, or it's, you know, throwing was always regarded as maybe the most important thing a catcher could do defensively. And now we've discovered that it's probably not, but it still matters and would matter even more relative to the other defensive skills that a catcher has to have if you were to eliminate framing. So you still have to put up with an awful lot to do this. It wouldn't be quite as tough a job as it was when there were more serious home plate collisions and when there

was framing, if this is a post-framing future. But still, I think relative to pretty much every other position, you're still asking a lot of the fielder. He has to crouch. He has to wear a mask. He has to wear pads. He has to call the game. That's still a big thing that the catcher does. He has to watch the running game. So there's still more involved in catching than in probably any other position. And I would think that the pool of potential players is smaller and you can still have a greater impact than anyone except, I don't know, maybe a shortstop. So you're right. I think catcher was always regarded as the top of the heap even before we knew how important framing was. So best guess from both of you, I think there were 61 catchers on opening day rosters this year.

If we lived in a world where framing didn't exist, where it was all done by lasers, balls and strikes were called by lasers. How many of those 61 would you guess would be replaced by other people who didn't make opening day rosters? Well, I'm guessing 61. I'm guessing there were two per and then I think I saw one team that had three. I'd say maybe like eight, I think. Okay. Yeah, I was going to go a little bit higher but not too high maybe in the 15 to 20 range i just i still think we're teams are obviously very savvy about framing now but i feel like maybe they haven't been for long enough where they have other personnel that they that would be better even taking out the framing yeah it seems yeah unlikely it'd have to be teams that had a catcher who was

competent defensively at a at a high level of the minors so he could at least catch and throw if not quite as adeptly and had a better bat significantly better bat so i don't know how many how many teams would fit that description but i'm saying a minority yeah if you could go if you made this change and then could in like one timeline and then didn't make it in another and went 10 years in the future i think that you would have almost entirely different catchers because you would through the minors they would have you know sought out people with different skill sets but i think in terms of if you just changed it today, no, almost no changes would be made. See, I think that, um, I think that most baseball skills correlate pretty well to each other. And

so in fact, the guys who are good at framing, I think are probably also the guys who are good at blocking pitches, who are good at throwing and, uh, who are, you know, maybe even good at, at working with the staff that there's just, There's just this shared, it's not always clear why, but there's this shared overlap of these skills. And so I would bet that even if you completely quit filtering or training framing ability, I would bet that you still end up with mostly the same types of people going into catching and the same ones making it. But it's hard to know for sure. And I don't think they're going to test it. Now, let me

one more thing about this. It isn't totally inconceivable that in the future, in the long future, that it might be seen that catching might be seen as too dangerous, that it might be seen as something that's just not worth it to have so many guys getting injured. And of course, also, they're the players who are sort of most vulnerable to concussions. And concussions are obviously something that sports takes very seriously. And so let's just say that it was at some point put on the table that without an umpire, you wouldn't need a catcher. So you did go to the vacuum approach. Is this it? Would it be? Could you imagine that working at all? Or is it just do we like having the one person? need to have one person facing the TV screen to remind us that, you know, I don't know why. I don't know why, but is it aesthetically just too disrupting to even contemplate replacing the catcher? Because everything else a catcher does, other than the running game, could theoretically be, I mean, you know, you don't need the catcher to call pitches. You don't need the catcher to

manage the staff. You could have your, you know, your pitching coach manage the staff. You could have your shortstop manage the staff if that was their responsibility. The running game would certainly be a big part of it, but otherwise, eh? I think the aesthetic thing is big. The reason actually that I think this came to my head is because I play on a softball team here in Chicago and we were short players one day and just didn't have a catcher. In our case, the umpire just threw the ball back because there was still an umpire. But yeah, I think with all the history of the game we have now, it would look so strange. Yeah. I mean, that is the most visually appealing part of a baseball game. If you're watching, everyone always says, what do you watch when you watch baseball? And

usually you're watching the catcher, you're watching the catcher's glove, you're watching to see if the pitch hits the target and what the pitch is going to be. And so from pitch to pitch, that is the most constant source of entertainment. So that'd be a big loss. I've been, by the way, I've been thinking about that because I do watch the catcher's glove pretty much on every pitch. That's how I choose to focus on the game. And I feel like if you really want to understand what's happening in the game, focus on the catcher's mitt more than anything else. And so then I've been thinking about this in other aspects of my life. You know, I'm a very close watcher of baseball and expert even, but I'm not in other things. And so I've been thinking about what I should be focusing on in other things I consume. And I've decided, I've sort of realized through

trial and error and a lot of thought that when I'm watching movies now, I primarily focus on noticing every cut. If you just, if you just, every cut, every, you know, every time the camera switches, if you notice that, you really start to see the director and what the director wants you to notice a lot more. And then for TV, it's if you listen to the generic stock music that they use. Because the TV music is a lot different than movie scores where the score is really battering you and it's very obvious. With TV, it's a lot more subtle and it's often, I think, just sort of generic music that wasn't written for the show. And if you listen to that, you get so much more attuned to the plotting of the show.

And so now I'm thinking about that for other things. I have to figure out how to listen to a song, which doesn't seem like something that would be necessary, but I'm not a very good music listener, I don't think. So I need to figure out what the key to unlocking a song is, whether I should be listening to like the bass, because I never listen to the bass. I never hear the bass. I really have to try to hear the bass. Maybe you should listen to Song Exploder. I don't know what that is. Podcast.

Oh. All right. Question from Evan Haldane, a Patreon supporter. Whenever I see players hit monster home runs, I think what a waste of a scarce resource. A 470 foot home run is just as valuable as a 320 foot one. And if they're swinging that hard, far harder than is necessary, you have to think they're sacrificing contact on all the other pitches they swing at. Do you think there is truth to this, or is there enough added benefit

to powerful swings even when a player doesn't quite barrel up? P.S., this is kind of similar to Sam's advice on getting to the airport. If you don't hit many just enough home runs, you're swinging too hard. I'm going to let Sam take this one. Well, I don't think that they have it. I don't think hitters, I would guess that for the most part, the hitters who hit the most home runs do hit the most just enough ones. I would think that it's somewhat of like a fairly predictable curve that tapers off at the end and that you just want to hit it as far as you can all the time. And that there's not really such a thing as a just enough home run hitter that the just enough that the guy who maybe hits maybe, you know, Coco Crisp nine out of 11 of his home runs are just enough.

But like that, you know, Giancarlo Stanton probably has like that are just enough. And he's got a lot more beyond that. Yeah. So that's the guy that you would talk about if you're answering this question. So John Carlos Stanton is well known for hitting home runs that go way, way, way, way, way beyond the fence. That would still probably be home runs if he swung a little less hard. And he's struck out in, you know, 34% of his plate appearances this year. He's off to a rough start. But he's the kind of guy who, maybe the one guy who you would say, well, he's so strong that maybe he should cut down a little bit because he still has the strength to hit a home run where no one else would. And he could benefit from increased contact. But still tough to say because swinging hard.

Most of the ballsy hits are not home runs. Yes, right. That's the thing. If he swung harder, then maybe there'd be even more. Yeah. Yeah. That's the problem. It's that hitting the ball hard is beneficial no matter what. I mean, at certain angles, it's actually better to hit a softball that would fall in rather than a ball at an angle that would just lead to an easy outfield fly. But on the whole, it's better to hit the ball hard. And to hit the ball hard, you want to swing hard. And you can't always count on making perfect contact, obviously. So you don't always know that you're going to barrel up the ball. Because if you did, then sure, maybe you wouldn't have to swing as hard but you might just miss it and if you just miss it then swinging really hard is helpful

because that might just be enough to get it out anyway so I think that there's really no no other way to approach the problem than to swing hard if you're a home run hitter if you're a guy who has that power and you're not just trying to make contact, then I think it is always beneficial to swing hard. I don't know. Maybe on certain counts it makes sense to cut down more than some modern hitters do, but probably not for the reason that they don't need the power. I think everyone always needs the power. I think everyone always on the ball. And I don't think that's true. And I also don't think that, for example, if Giancarlo Stanton swung with less power, that he would be more accurate because I assume he, in batting practice, swings quite hard. Or when he's doing, at least trying to simulate game-like situations, he's swinging hard. Maybe when he's warming up in

batting practice, he's swinging less hard. But another thing this kind of brings up that's somewhat like that is the couple of guys you have around the league who choke up on, say, two strike counts, which is kind of equivalent. I think they tend to be able, you know, they can't get as much power when they do that. It's not exactly a change in the effort they put into it, but it kind of has the same effect. And so maybe that would be an argument in favor of uh this question in favor of swinging less hard or in this case choking up a little bit to get less power i'm also not convinced that john carlos stanton swings harder than the average hitter he swings harder because he's stronger but i'm not sure that he's swinging at a higher effort percentage than you know than everybody else uh

he might be he might already be swinging it slightly lower. I don't know. I do know that – so I had a friend who had a conversation with me when Nelson Cruz got signed by the Mariners, and I don't know why. For some reason, we were having some debate where I was foisted into the position of having to argue against Nelson Cruz, and I was pointing out that, you know, we'd have to wait and see. He's played in hitters parks his whole career and really some of the best. And who knows how much the, you know, how much power would be suppressed now that he goes to Seattle. And my friend says, oh yeah, but Nelson Cruz, he's park proof. He's one of the,

you know, he might be the one guy who you don't even care what park he's in because his home runs go out anywhere. And you hear that from time to time. And I don't know if that's ever been studied, but that seems to be ripe for debunking. And this sort of, I don't know if this is the same idea or not, but I don't know. It seems like balls that go out because you got all of it. And the ones that go farther, go Farther because you got even more of it And the ones that don't go out don't go out because you didn't get all of it And it's really much more About that than how much you're swinging hard

Yeah Okay we got two questions about Jackie Bradley From Patreon supporters One from Jeremy Bernfeld who says Jackie Bradley is currently Showing a 160 OPS plus From the bottom of the Red Sox order, and he is swinging a hot, hot bat. Is there a rule for when John Farrell should move him up?

Is it immediately or when stats stabilize or not at all? And Dan Gorton says, similarly, Jackie Bradley Jr. is on an impressive 25-game hitting streak, featuring a 409 batting average, 471 on base base 806 slugging since the beginning of the streak with numbers like that how come jackie bradley is consistently hitting seventh in the lineup well he was he was at ninth and then he was at eighth right so he has moved up to seven yeah and and of course he he ended the season hitting very well last year too so it's not just this first quarter of the season but about it's sixth yesterday in fact yeah well yeah so as we are talking the the lineup for Tuesday's game is posted and he is seventh but that is versus a left-handed pitcher and he's a left-handed hitter so I think the the main answer is just that the Red Sox are really good at hitting

and they are by far the best offensive team in the major leagues this season. And so the lineup is pretty crowded. And of the guys ahead of him, it's sort of hard to pick out which one you would demote. In this lineup, with a lefty starting, Chris Young is batting sixth, just ahead of Bradley. And of course, he's kind of a lefty killer. So that's why he's up there. But the guys ahead of him, Betts, Pedroia, Bogarts, Ortiz, Hanley Ramirez, those are all really good hitters.

If you look at qualifying hitters on the Red Sox this year, I think Bradley is the second best behind Ortiz. I think Bradley is the second best behind Ortiz. But if you look at projections, then he is the fifth best projected hitter in the Red Sox lineup. And number six right behind him is Pedroia, who obviously has a lot of seniority and status on the Red Sox and maybe is even perhaps a better player than the projections suggest if he's healthy now. But, you know, that's a reason why he would be batting ahead of Bradley. It's not worth, you know, moving Pedroia down to the bottom of the lineup and moving Bradley up for a few points of Woba or whatever.

So really it's just that there are a ton of great hitters on this team. And as good as he's been, he hasn't done it for as long as some of them have. And so he has moved up a bit. And if he keeps hitting like this, presumably he'll keep moving up. But it doesn't seem like in this particular lineup it's that egregious. And of course, all the lineup stuff,

we obsess over it for a good reason. It's a thing that's under your control, but it also doesn't matter that much, especially if you're talking about two spots in the lineup here or there. It can matter a little bit if you're talking about the worst hitter hitting first or the best hitter hitting ninth or something, but if you're talking about this guy who's hitting seventh should be batting sixth or something, then it's not that big a deal. So that seems like the best answer to me this is kind of the red socks lineup is really crowded

problem yeah but but okay ben though how many games would his hitting streak have to be that if you were the manager you would move him up just to increase the chances he gets an extra at bat because if i mean dude if the guy had a 55-game hitting streak and you batted him seventh and he, you know, goes over three because he only gets three at bats, and if you batted him leadoff, he would have gotten four, you'd kind of feel like, you know, they'd be writing books about you 65 years from now.

So how, assuming that, let's say, assuming that Bradley Betts, Bogarts, Hanley Ramirez, and Dustin Pedroia are all equal hitters. They're just all exactly equal. How many games in the hitting streak before you would move Bradley up? Not because Brad, the key thing is that Bradley didn't start up high. You wouldn't obviously move him down at this point. They're like, they're keeping things The way they are because it's working that's why That's why you don't do it you don't do it because It's working it's not an obvious call To readjust everybody's

Doing well and you don't want to signal Anything to anybody else and so you just keep doing what's Working but if Bradley Started in the seventh spot and had This hitting streak and he was exactly equal To those guys I named how many games Until you move him up to a higher spot to get him the extra at bat for his hitting streak? I guess after 30.

Okay. So that's pretty close. I don't know what the Red Sox franchise record for hitting streak is. It's close. I think it's like 29. I think it's Dom DiMaggio. It's 34. Okay.

So yeah, if he gets to 30, then that seems worthwhile. Who do you move down in that? Who do you move down in that? Who do you move down in that? The problem is that everybody you'd move down, they're either significant like they're Dustin Pedroia or David Ortiz, and you don't mess with those two, right? Or they're in a significant

spot, like Betts is your leadoff hitter. That's not just one of eight spots. It's your leadoff hitter or one of your nine spots. And arguably, Bogarts is the same thing. He's your number three hitter. And that's the center. It was a big vote of confidence at the beginning that they put him there. And he's leading the league in batting average. And he probably thinks that means he's the best hitter in the league. And so you don't necessarily want to move that. And then Hanley's the obvious. I

mean, you could bump Hanley down to six without the world ending, I think, but then you're only getting Bradley up to fifth. So then maybe you move Bradley up to third and Bogart's down to fifth or Bradley lead off and then Betts to fifth, maybe, or Betts sixth. I think you can move Betts to sixth. I mean, right now Bradley's got a, you know, not just is he hitting everything crazy, but he's got a much better walk rate than Betts. And even if you thought they were roughly equal hitters, Bradley brings that sort of leadoff skill set just as much as Betts does and maybe more. So that's probably what you do.

You probably just bat him leadoff and move Betts down and say, sorry, kid, you're 23. My question is, if we agree it's not that important. Why haven't they done it already? If he is, he is, I didn't realize he was that close to the Red Sox franchise record, you would think that if it doesn't harm anything, they would do it just because marketing reasons around hit streaks, and they have a vested interest in it continuing, you would think? I don't think you can market a hit streak until at least, at at least 22 and probably closer to where he is. I think it's really just getting serious now. And even that, it's not that serious.

I mean, he's still not halfway to Joe DiMaggio. That is amazing. But I think now that it's at 27, I think it's a really real question. If they have him at 7, he's at 27. And yeah, if there's very little cost to it, and I guess the reason that you don't do it is because you don't want the team by total sheer coincidence and chance to go into a cold streak where they score, you know, nine runs in the next eight games and they go two and seven and people ask you, why'd you mess

with the lineup? It was working so well. So that's probably the perceived loss. But I do think that as you get closer, I would think that there'd be some pressure in John Farrell's heart to get his hitting streak guy up higher where he'll get an extra plate appearance. I mean, you're going to lose a plate appearance almost, if you're batting seventh, you're going to lose, you know, a plate appearance. I mean, you're going to lose a plate appearance almost, if you're batting seventh, you're going to lose, you know, a plate appearance, you're going to lose five or six plate appearances a week. Almost every game you're getting one fewer plate appearance than the leadoff hitter does.

And, you know, that's not always going to be the one that makes or breaks your hit streak, but it could be. Yeah. And I don't know whether there's been any reporting on this and on the reasoning for it or whether there's any sort of psychological factor at play here. I don't know whether it's, you know, Bradley had that disastrous rookie season and got sent down and maybe he's just kind of happy blending in with the bottom of the lineup and he's happy where he is. happy where he is. And maybe if you have a guy in the middle of a hit streak, maybe he doesn't want to bat in a different spot in the lineup, whether it's just for comfort reasons or superstitious reasons, or maybe if you've had 25 hit games in a row, then you don't want to suddenly start batting leadoff, even though it makes sense statistically. So I don't know whether it's more Bradley or more Farrell or how much anyone should be blamed, but it'll be interesting to see as he nears or passes 30,

if he does, whether that leads to a change. The Red Sox right now as a lineup have a team OPS that would have been, I think, 11th in the American League last year, like for individuals, like it would have been the 11th best on the individual leaderboard. Yeah, it would have been better than, you know, better than Jose Abreu last year. Yeah, they've been really good. All right, play index. Sure. So Patrick Dubuque had an article today at Baseball Prospectus on the reached on an error and on the kind of early baseball decision to make stats a somewhat value non-neutral and to decide to not just record what happened, but to penalize guys based on whether you thought they did it right, whether they did it right. So it wasn't enough that he reached base to know that he reached base. He had to know if he reached base

the right way. And so Patrick argued that, in fact, we should be past that. We shouldn't do that anymore. And we should have a true honest on-base percentage that includes not just reached on airs, but catcher's interference. If we give Guy credit for getting hit in the foot with a pitch, why don't we give him credit for putting pressure on the defense? And this is a position that Ben agrees with. This is one of the reasons that Ben loves Nori Aoki. And in fact, we have signed, I don't know if you know this, Ben, but we have signed some books with the inscription, reaching on an error is often a skill. Yes. And so I wanted to look at the reached on error all timers. So I took everybody since

expansion era, so 61, everybody with at least 4,000 plate appearances. I did a play index search for total times on base with an error, including errors, and total times on base not including errors, subtracted. That's my column E, reached on error. Then I created column G for reached on error divided by plate appearances to see who the champion is of reaching base on an air. And generally, what's the sort of profile, would you think, Ben? A right-handed hitter who is fast and pulls the ball and hits it on the ground. And Corey, since if I know anything from television,

it's that the panelists must disagree, what would you say? Something radically different, right? No, I was going to say the exact same. No, no. You would say that it's big lumbering sluggers who strike out a lot, right? Embrace debate. Sure. All right.

So the bottom of this leaderboard is big lumbering sluggers who strike out a lot. bottom of this leaderboard is big lumbering sluggers who strike out a lot it is guys like well adam dunn is the all-time worst reached on air hitter all time uh he reached on an air one every 250 plate appearances uh and just above him is movon carlos delgado strangely curtis granderson who yes strikes out a lot but also runs well. David Ortiz, Ryan Howard, Pat Burrell, Jason Giambi, those guys. Top of the leaderboard is less predictable and didn't have a lot of the names that I was sort of expecting to see on there. You know, Bob Horner is the number two all-time in reached on air. Greg Gross is up there. I don't know why I said that like that was significant. Nobody knows who Greg Gross is. There are some speedy guys like Willie McGee and Otis Nixon near the top. There are some bad

hitters like Ray Sanchez at the top. Rondell White is up there. Thurman Munson is up there. Before I reveal the champion though and tell you about him and why this matters and why it struck a chord. There's also a real era tilt to this. There are a lot more guys from the early years of my search and not a lot from the later years of my search, which led me to a little detour to baseball references, season by season, offensive rate performances or whatever. And I looked at fielding, league year-by-year fielding averages, and I didn't know this. I didn't really know this. I don't know if you knew this, Ben, and Corey, I don't know if you knew it either.

If you do, then you can say, I knew that! That's how, when I was a kid, I was a big champion of the I knew that when I was a kid. All right, errors are way, way down from, say, 50 years ago. And that's partly because there's a lot fewer balls put in play. There's a lot more strikeouts, obviously. But also fielding percentage has gone consistently up. And fielding percentage is not necessarily reflective at all of what's actually happening. It could just be changing norms, changing expectations, changing positions from official scores. So it's been going up fairly consistently going all the way back to the 40s or 50s. And so this year at 985, we have the highest fielding

percentage in recorded history league-wide. At 0.57 errors per game, we have the second lowest. .985, by the way, is tied with 2013. Second lowest errors per game. And.57 compared to, say, to pick a random year, 1975, there was.96. So there was almost half of an extra error per game 40 years ago than there is now. half of an extra error per game 40 years ago than there is now. And I'm just curious if either of you would like to speculate on whether you think that this is a matter of the offense being different, the defense being better, the defense being different, or scorekeepers being different. And again, I'm focusing more on the fielding percentage than the raw errors, because I know that the strikeouts is the major driver, but fielding percentage also

higher than it's ever been. So pick one of those. I would pick fielding being better. I would pick the same. Really? Yeah. So I would say that you have more players who specialize in playing only baseball at a younger age. So theoretically, defensively, they have more reps, but I suppose you could also say offensively they have more reps. But then just anecdotally, you see a lot of young phenoms coming up. That's, I guess, maybe more recent, but I guess mostly the specialization thing would seem to indicate to me

that you probably have a lot just superior defensive talents coming up. That and also, I'd say, increased value of defense throughout baseball in player development and acquisition would be my two reasons for attributing it to that. Sam, you disagree? Yeah, okay. I wonder if I also, you had to figure, I might be wrong about this, but you have to figure that baseballs are hit harder than they used to be. And probably even that fast runners are faster, but maybe that's a little more controversial. But baseballs are hit harder. And I wonder if there are just more plays that could be considered airable than there used to be. I mean, a large percentage of baseballs you can't make an error on because once they're hit, they're out of error territory.

They're a hit. They're determined to be a hit. And if you catch it, well, then that's an out. But if you miss it, it's not going to be an error. And maybe the standard for error hasn't actually gone up or gone down, but there are more balls that are hit out of the possible range of an error. I'm not really sure. I would guess it's mostly the scorekeepers though, the official scorers, who I would guess are just less prone to call errors. I don't know. Maybe they just don't like, they feel bad. Maybe there's more attention on their calls, and so they get a little more conservative with it.

their calls and so they they get a little more conservative with uh with it anyway to go back to the list the champion is a fella named mickey stanley and mickey stanley was a center fielder with the tigers mostly in the 1960s and early 70s and he was a center fielder like i said with a good contact hitter a little bit of. So that fits the profile that you described. Ben, Corey, you were way off. He was a 17-win player. Fine, okay. Miggy Stanley, probably best known either. He won a few gold gloves,

but maybe best known because in the 1968 World Series, on the eve of the 1968 World Series, his manager decided to have him play shortstop in the World Series, like with no prep. Like just decided World Series about to start, wanted to get another bat in the lineup. So shifted a career outfielder to shortstop. I'm reading from the Sabre bio, which I will again note, as I try to always remember to, all of these are great and brilliant. This one, which was written by Sherry Netshaw, is no exception. It's great. But this is the shift of a career outfielder to the unfamiliar position of shortstop during the 1968 World Series

has been called one of the boldest managerial moves in the history of the game. Most observers were skeptical of the move. In his memoir, Tuned to Baseball, Ernie Harwell declared, At the time, I thought it was a bad move. I checked about 25 experts on the eve of the series, and they agreed with me. But it worked. And basically, as far as I can tell from the Sabre bio, the premise for moving Stanley to shortstop, for thinking he could do it,

is that he liked to take infield practice before games. He would go out a little early so that he could field ground balls, and he just liked it. As he put it, I would get to the ballpark early, and I loved taking ground balls. I was always the first one on the field. I just loved catching ground balls. Norm Cash said, you're not too bad over there. I'm almost positive Norm Cash put a bug in Mayo Smith's ear. It was a shock. Anyway, the reason that reached on air as matters to Mickey Stanley is because of something else that was mentioned in this Sabre bio. Throughout the course of Stanley's career, three attributes stand out. First, he was a self-admitted below-average hitter with a career batting average of.248.

In 1999, Mickey jokingly told the Grand Rapids Press, My grandkids know I played for the Tigers. I don't tell them I was a bad hitter. They'll find out for themselves soon enough. Stanley is one of only 54 players with a minimum of 5,000 plate appearances with an average below.250. And you probably know where this is going. Mickey Stanley was not a bad hitter. Mickey Stanley, if you give him credit for having this skill, which seems to me like undeniably is a skill. He reached on airs, you know, five times more than some other hitters

did. He did it 118 times in his career. And if you give him credit for singles, not even doubles, and I'm sure some of them were doubles, some of them were triples, or three base errors, I should say, then his career changes a lot. His career as a hitter, his career stats change. I just said he was the only hitter or whatever one of whatever hitters under 250 with that many plate appearances his slash line in his career was 248 298 377 not a very good hitter you give him a single for each of those reached on errors he's now a 271 320 400 hitter he's way past the 250 uh threshold that they set for him and it's not like these errors didn't mean anything He added 6.1 wins, a win probability added

With his errors alone And so I think it's I think Patrick's right It's time to stop pretending that Mickey Stanley didn't get on base He got on base and he did something Alright, we all salute Mickey Stanley Use the coupon code BP

When you subscribe to the Baseball Reference Play Index to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. All right, question from Tom Praisewater. If a starting pitcher gave up a home run on the first pitch of the game and then the second and then the third, et cetera, how many consecutive home runs would he have to give up to get yanked? How would this vary if he were Jose Fernandez or Velasquez or David Price? It would be tough to pull him all that quick

because his pitch count would still be low and the bases would stay empty. It's hard to answer because as the question says, you would have a low pitch count and empty bases, but eventually you just sit there and laugh and have to eventually well not laugh if you're the manager but the rest of us and say eventually you'd have to be like this can't continue any longer so i would say i i don't i feel like i'm just yanking a number out of thin air but that's what we do here nine maybe maybe like lower maybe six i feel like six you're down six oh and you're probably just like okay time to hit the shower but i don't know i don't

know what the record is in a major league game i don't know how many times this has actually happened in multiple pitches to start a game but yeah i would i think i would say something similar to your second answer. I'd probably say five. It might vary. If this were a rookie in his first start or something, then maybe you would get him out after, I don't know, three, maybe, just to avoid scarring him forever. And if it were an ace, then maybe five or something like that. But yeah, at some point you would just have to acknowledge that this is not his day, that he is throwing meatballs and not fooling anyone. And I don't think anyone could complain that much. I differ from you guys both a little, mainly because I'm extremely confident in my answer. Like this is a situation where if we were on Price is Right, then the appropriate, because I want to go lower than you. The appropriate thing to do would be to guess $1. But I'm actually going

to go ahead and guess the answer, I believe, because I think I can win both showcases. I think that's how confident I am. I believe that if you are a pitcher under the age of 24 or with, you know, say fewer than 250 innings in your career, either or, it's four. The answer is four in almost every instance, in almost every running of this. And if you are a pitcher with more experience than that, the answer is five. There's almost no variance from manager to manager or situation to situation, unless you just, if it's, unless you happen to have an extremely taxed bullpen, uh, or, uh, it's the first game of a double header, or maybe if you've scored like nine runs in the top of the first, and this is the bottom of the first, then maybe, but otherwise I just think it's four and five. Uh, also I just have a, were you guys

answering in what you would do or what you think managers would do? What I think managers would do, and I think I also would do as well. Although I'd be pretty curious just for science, just to leave him out there and see how long this continues. You really do have to wonder why the pitcher is still throwing first pitch strikes. Yeah, right. Well, yeah, obviously that. Yeah, right. maybe make them inclined to continue to push it, but I don't know. Right, which is probably the opposite of the case, but yeah, I could see them thinking that. But I would also think that a lot of managers would just be really strongly tempted to leave the pitcher out there until he threw a non-home run pitch just for bolstering confidence reasons so that his only memories from that day are not home run related. But at a certain point, so I don't know.

We sort of said the same answer, Sam. I said five for an ace, or really probably for most people, unless it's a rookie who you'd be especially worried about shattering their confidence. I kind of hope it happens because I'd like to see this play out in practice. Okay, so a related question or a similar question from Mike who says, suppose that Mike Trout goes 0 for 4 tonight. He goes 0 for 4 again tomorrow and the next night and the next night and so on. So long as Mike Trout is in the major league lineup, he will not get a hit.

How long would it take for the Angels to bench him? How long would it be before the Angels cut him altogether? How long would it take for Mike Trout to give up and retire assuming he refuses to retire how long would teams give him a chance to return to his old self oh boy it's not easy no no no i know um when you say bench him do you does are we thinking that means semi-permanently or how long until they give him a day off? I think your answer is probably going to include both of those. Yeah.

So I feel like after like a week you give him a day off, I mean, that would be a pretty bad, it would be a medium level slump. And then after a couple weeks, it becomes a quite bad slump and then after a couple weeks it becomes a quite bad slump but i think full-time benching after i don't know two a month two months but it's mike trout so i don't i don't know i don't know you guys go first yeah i mean i'm i'm just looking at andrew jones baseball reference game log for 2008 and uh this is not he did not not go 0 for 4 every day. But you know, he had a total and utter career collapse that was somewhat out of nowhere. And he was, you know, paid handsomely to play baseball for them. And they waited until game 20 to give him a day off,

at which point he was hitting 159, 274, 286. And then he kept on being bad they gave him another day off at day 28 and then they gave him another day off at game 32 and then he was kind of playing pretty much every other day to that point and then they finally found a way to DL him in August. So that's the Andrew Jones precedent. I would think that with Trout, you get a blow at 0 for 28. So seven days, and he gets a day off no matter what. And then you probably get a second day off earlier than you would otherwise think, so maybe another day off, say, at 0 for 44. And then I would think that, I mean, if it were literally 0 for,

I would think that once you get toward triple digits, like maybe 90, somewhere between 90 and 120, you put him in a semi-platoon until he bounces out of it. You probably shut him down before the season goes too far. I don't think you want him to go past over 300 or so. So you shut him down. You probably shut him down at about 220. Find a reason that he's injured. Give him a fresh start the next year. And I don't think he makes it past week three with his job. And then he probably gets one more spring training invite and is released in May of the third year. And I would think that he would get a job from some team

for another two years, maybe three years, and out of baseball by year six, maybe year seven, at which point we're assuming he's 0 for his last, you know, 480 or so. Yeah, well, so six or so. I think it happens more quickly than that. I think, well, I think you're right on most of the benchmarks that you laid out, but I don't think it takes six or seven years for a guy who can't ever get a hit to be out of the game even if he was mike trout before then i think it sort of depends on how he looks or like what the explanation is for this i mean obviously this is we're into

supernatural territory here because if you're mike trout you're you're gonna miss hit a ball and get a infield single out of it at some point but that's the conceit of the question so we're sticking with it so it depends i mean if he's if he's completely healthy and and he doesn't know what's happening to him and he doesn't know why this is happening then obviously you'd get a a longer leash than if there's some obvious mechanical problem and then you give him some time off and you try to fix that problem and if you couldn't fix it then then maybe you'd you'd get rid of him more quickly like if he has some kind of batter yips kind of thing where he just

he doesn't know how to swing he can't swing he forgot how to swing he swings way too early or way too late or he never swings. I mean, something obvious like that, then I think you'd give him time off very quickly because it would be obvious what the problem was. And so you'd wait until he could fix it to play him again. But if he still looks like Mike Trout and you can't really figure out what's wrong, then the leash is longer. But I think you're right on the the basic framework of that you give him a week and then he gets a day off and then he gets more and more days off as this slump persists that's a fun one to think about though yes it's hard to imagine both of these because we in the obviously in the premise

of the question know it's going to continue but you would think everyone would be thinking that he oh he's got to break out of it, well, at least for a while until it becomes the new normal. All right. A question from Jack who says, so I am watching Antiques Roadshow tonight, and a descendant of Bill Wamsgans, I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Baseball reference makes it sound like whamsgams, but I'm going to go with Wamsgans, has a piece passed

down from him. He apparently had an unassisted triple play in the 1920 World Series, which sounds pretty cool, but the woman who brought in the piece said, with some lament, he used to always say he had a 13-year career, but he could have been born the day before the triple play and died the day after, for all anyone cared. This piqued my curiosity, so I looked up his 13-year career, which was completely unremarkable. 2.1 total wins above replacement, below average hitter, etc. So, is this guy, now deceased, rest in peace, being a dick? Or is that me, for thinking if not for the triple play, it wouldn't have mattered if he was born at all, for all anyone cared. So, essentially, does he have grounds to be aggrieved that all anyone remembered him for was this one play or should he be happy or should he have been

happy that anyone remembered him for anything i before we answer this i i wanted to answer this not because of not because i have a good answer but because I just really want this quote on record in the podcast. This is like the deepest, darkest quote I've ever heard from a player. Yeah, but I could have been born the day before and died the day after for all anyone cared. That's an amazing thing to say. What, to his daughter? To his granddaughter. It's just an incredible quote.

And he used to always say it, too. It was like you couldn't have a conversation with the guy without him saying it. You really got to wonder why the family wasn't doing more to validate his existence. Because I assume that he did a lot after he retired, too, for them. You know, played card games with them. Sure. Thought him how to ride a bike. Ah, man. Go ahead, someone. you know played card games with them sure thought about a ride a bike ah man go ahead someone as for the question i guess i don't think he necessarily i mean he can be aggrieved but uh i don't know how justified he is i mean i assume most people can count on

one hand the number of baseball players of his era that they can name. So it is pretty cool that he got into the history books for something when most players did not. That's all I got for this one. It's sort of funny too that I had never heard of him. And in fact, he is not in my world and now the world of everybody listening to this known as the unassisted triple play guy, but he's known as the doer son of a gun. You know, like he's known for being the most depressed ball player. He could have been born in my in my view. He could have been born the day before this quote and died the day after and it wouldn't have mattered.

Yeah. Most people you would think would hang their hat on that. You're right. There's nothing that, you know, I'm sure that when he was playing, he got to reap all the benefits of being a professional ballplayer. Like I bet he was treated pretty special. It would have been even better if he'd been born 75 years later and then he really could have lived it up.

But, you know, he got what he was paid for and more. And it's hard to think that he – it's sort of sad to think that – and I think I feel this way a lot of times when you read various quotes from athletes who reveal their unfulfilledness in their careers because you don't want to be reminded that even your dreams will leave you unfulfilled, that even reaching your dreams will leave you unfulfilled, and that he would basically make to the top of the sport, play for 13 years, and then feel like it wasn't enough is true and honest and kind of a sad, sober reminder. But, you know, he got a, look, he, he is like the equivalent of, you know, a guy in a, in a pretty good, he's, he's the wonders, right? He's the guy in a pretty good garage rock band who scores a novelty hit, who, who for some reason writes some weird novelty hit that becomes a, a jingle for laundry detergent. And, uh, you know, you get to cash the checks and you've got some record that you existed.

And maybe it's not how you wanted it to happen. Maybe he would have rather, you know, won the Triple Crown. But he's got no more of a grievance than almost literally every player who was ever on a team with his who we don't know. Yeah, the answer would be a little different maybe if he had been a great player. And his greatness as a player is now overlooked because of this one play. He's not a particularly good player. He did last for 13 years, so that's an accomplishment, obviously. But, you know, his only black ink was leading in sacrifice bunts.

And he got MVP votes one year. He finished 21st in MVP voting, and he was a sub-replacement player that year. So he was just not a great player. And so if you're going to be remembered as a baseball player, then for him personally, it's kind of nice that he's remembered for this one really great play. Because otherwise, I don't know how you'd remember him. You'd remember him as a below-a average player who just hung around for a while. And maybe he thought of himself as something better than that. But I'm just I'm imagining him hanging out at like a reunion dinner with, you know, Frank Brower and Charlie Jameson and Riggs

Stevenson and and Wally Shaner and Sumter Clark. They're all hanging around, and he starts going off on his people-only-remember-me-for-my-unassisted-triple-play-in-the-world series skit, and they're just rolling their eyes. You know, Phil Bedgood over there going, oh, there he goes again, complaining that people only know him for his unassisted triple play. And meanwhile, all these guys did landscaping for 45 years after they retired. And so did he, probably.

But, you know. Just by being talked about on a podcast, you know, what, 30 years after he died, he's in the very, very tiny percentage of human beings who have ever lived, whose memory or whose accomplishments have survived the death of their immediate family and friends. Like, you know, the vast majority of people are completely forgotten in every way. And so he is clinging to notoriety because of this one play. And that is better than most people get. So even if you're remembered as a great baseball player, well, you might say, well, there was so much more to me. I was a great father. And I was a great bowler in my spare time. And you're just remembered as a baseball player. But even being remembered as a baseball player is better maybe than not being remembered at all, which is most people's fate. And even famous people get their many accomplishments boiled down to a single sentence in the obituary. So this is just kind of the way it goes. So he has it better than most people do. And on that happy note. Can we end with one more interesting observation?

We'll give Corey his money's worth here and end on a less depressing note. So Joe writes in about a player I had never heard of, but now I'm a big fan of. And he says, As a Braves fan, I cope by reading minor league box scores and keeping tabs on the organization's prospect wealth. There's a lot of publication and noise around the big boys. But while digging into the minor league rosters, I was taken aback by Williams Astadillo, a 24-year-old catcher who plays for the Mississippi Braves, which is AA. And I will update the numbers

that he sent in here, but the guy has 1,667 at-bats in the minor leagues and only 68 walks and 53 strikeouts. That translates to a 4% walk rate, actually a 3.7% walk rate, and a 2.9% strikeout rate over the duration of his minor league career. I'm wondering if you were in need of a catcher, would this data put him on your radar or would you steer away because of the low walk rate? So this guy is a 24-year-old Venezuelan catcher, although to describe him as a catcher maybe sells his other defensive abilities short because he has played left field and third base and first base and second base and a lot of third base, really. He's been all over the place. And he is the no true outcomes hitter. He just, he puts the ball in play almost every

time. He has 10 career home runs. So he is the solution to fixing baseball's lack of contact problem is just promote Astadillo because he will put every ball in play. And another interesting thing about him is that he is in the top 10 in BP's framing runs this year among all catchers, which is major leagues, AAA and AA. This year among all catchers Which is major leagues, triple A And double A He is in the top 10 with 5 framing runs Added or saved

This season so far So evidently he is a good defensive catcher As long as he is not replaced by a vacuum He can frame pitch as well And that makes him valuable So I'm a big fan of Williams Astadillo And Carson Sestouli Recently described him as a, Carson

wrote, wasted at five foot nine and 182 pounds, Astadillo bears a distinct physical resemblance to an overripe pear. I was going to say he was out to lunch when necks were given out. That too. Yeah, he's got a good, he's got a really good biopic yeah but he also um in his final year in um in venezuela he had 220 plate appearances and struck out twice in the venezuelan summer league two in a 220 plate but definitely would make me more likely to know i mean i would not bet on a guy with this profile.

And value is value. And you can tell, like, he's, you know, he hasn't been a particularly great hitter. But, well, you know, but he's got a, you know, 313, 354, 397 slash line. I mean, I fall in love with guys like this at the low levels. I had a huge, huge prospect crush on a guy named Brian Horwitz some years ago, knowing full well that he was never going to turn into anything, but just, I really wanted him to. Uh, and so I'm, I'm falling for it again, but, um, I mean, most guys don't have any, most guys at this level who are really fringe, they don't even have one really good tool.

And, uh, if you can have one really good tool. And if you can have one really good tool, if you have one thing on a baseball field that you do exceptionally well, there's a pretty good chance, a much better chance that there will be somebody somewhere who figures out a way to use that. And, you know, if you can put the ball in play, look, at the very, very least, if you can put the ball in play every single time, the law of Babbitts is going to get you hit. You're going to hit as well as Andrew Jones did that one year, even if they're all singles and even if there's no walks. So for a catcher, I'd take it.

Yeah, I'd keep this guy in my system. Yeah, sure. Yeah, as long as you don't say anything that would, with the obvious caveat that I'm not a super close prospect follower, so I don't know how these things tend to translate. But unless you saw something in his profile that you thought would lead to below average Babibs as he moves up, I wouldn't put all my chips in for it, but I would have some confidence that he has a chance. Yeah, I'd bet almost anything that there's going to be below average Babibs, too.

Until this season, he had been a consistently over 300 Babib guy. Yeah. And he's in the 250s now. But yeah, I like him. And I just found a gif of him humping Lakewood Blue Claws mascot Buster, which I will link if anyone wants to watch that.

So we'll be watching you, Williams. You know, you know, this guy had a long career in the minors and yet all anybody, as far as the world is concerned, he could have been born the day before he humped that mascot and died the day after. All right,

Corey, thank you for doing this with us. We never know what we're going to get when we say that we'll have a co-host come on. We never know if it will be a person we will enjoy talking to, but thus far it has been, and this has been no exception. So thanks for coming on. Is there anything you want to promote or give a plug to while you're here? I do operate the website for the Corey Kluber Society,

CoreyKluberSociety.com, but other than that, which actually I'm just noticing is out of date, but other than that, no, nothing to plug. Thank you guys for having me. Yeah, sure. Thanks for coming on. How's the Corey Kluber Society feeling these days? Not as good as it has, but

we have eternal hope. There we go. Okay. Alright, so again, remember Not as good as it has, but we have eternal hope. There we go. Okay. All right. So, again, remember, get your tickets for Saber Seminar. Go to saberseminar.com. This event has raised over $100,000 over the past five years.

So you are giving to a good cause. And if you go, you're getting to go to a great event. And we'll see you there. So that is it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon, as Corey has, by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Today's other five Patreon supporters are James Smith, Chris Bussell, Rob Haverkamp, Robbie Lee, and Stuart Verhulst. Thank you. You can buy our book, The Only Rule Is It Has To Work, our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team. Go to the book's website at theonlyruleisithastowork.com

to read reviews and excerpts and interviews, or if you've already completed it, to see stats and photos and videos that will help flesh out the story for you. If you've finished the book and you liked it, please tell your friends, tell your family, buy a copy for your dad for Father's Day, and leave a review on amazon and or goodreads help us spread the word you can join our facebook group at facebook.com slash groups

slash effectively wild and you can rate and review the podcast on itunes please keep the emails and the questions coming to podcast at baseball prospectus.com or by messaging us through patreon if you're a supporter we will be back with another show tomorrow.