Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 911: Good Knuckleballs, Bad Ballpark Deals

Episode Date: June 23, 2016

Ben and Sam talk to Professor Alan Nathan about the physics of knuckleballs, then talk to WFAA’s Brett Shipp about his reporting on public funding for the Rangers’ new ballpark.

For my sake, won't you put your knuckles down, boys? My, my, for my sake, won't you put your knuckles down, boys? My, my, for my sake, won't you put your knuckles down? Hello and welcome to episode 911 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by our Patreon supporters and the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello, Sam. Yo.

We're going to combine a couple quick interviews for this show. couple quick interviews for this show. So later on, we'll be talking to Brett Shipp of WFAA in Dallas about the Rangers stadium funding news. But first, we're going to follow up on something we bantered about yesterday. Sam and I tried to summarize the research of Professor Alan Nathan, who is a physics of baseball expert and author. And we were talking about Stephen Wright, Red Sox knuckleballer, and a couple of really interesting pitches he threw. And so we tried to sort of read the research on the fly and put it into the podcast, but we thought it would probably be better if we just talked to Alan Nathan ourselves. So Alan, welcome back to the show. Yeah, good to be here. Okay, so did we do a decent job of summarizing how most knuckleballs work,

which is that the movement is erratic in that you never know which way the knuckleball is going to break, but once it does break in a certain direction, it generally continues to break in that direction. It is not a butterfly. I think as you wrote, it is more like a bullet. It just goes in one direction, even though that direction. It is not a butterfly. I think as you wrote it as more like a bullet. It just goes in one direction, even though that direction is unpredictable. Yeah. You did a great job actually summarizing what I wrote. Actually, you read what I wrote, so I guess you had to get it right. But it certainly summarizes what I still believe to be the major effect of a knuckleball. And that comes from my analysis of a bunch of games from both R.A. Dickey and Tim Wakefield from maybe four years ago now,

I forget exactly the year, and where I got the raw tracking data from SportVision, PitchFX, where I got the raw tracking data from SportVision, PitchFX, and simply played around with the raw tracking data and found that for most, not all, but for most knuckleballs in those four games, the smoothness of the trajectory really doesn't look any different than for what you might call normal pitches, fastballs, curveballs, et cetera. Of course, what's different is that the knuckle, whereas a fastball or a curveball or a slider break in a pretty well-known direction, the break on a knuckleball seems to be completely random, both in magnitude and in direction. So it's hard to tell which way it's going to break, and therefore it's hard to catch. It's hard to hit. However, there are definitely some exceptions to that. And on my website, and I think I wrote an article about this, there was this one particular

pitch that R.A. Dickey threw a few years ago in a game against the Tampa Bay Rays that definitely didn't satisfy that smoothness criterion. In fact, the pitch had two breaks to it. It broke one way, and then later on in the pitch, it broke the other way. And if you look at the pitch in slow motion, the trajectory that you actually find from the tracking data pretty much agrees with what you see with your own eyes, namely multiple breaks. So, okay. So if it's basically ran, if the first movement or, you know, whatever, the first deviation is basically random, why wouldn't it keep on moving randomly? I guess what I'm asking is once it takes its first dart or whatever, does it change the physical properties of the pitch such that a second

dart is exceptionally unlikely? Or is it just a matter of there only being so many microseconds for it to move and there's just not enough time for it to be affected more than once typically. Yeah, probably the second thing that you said is likely. If the pitch were to travel over a longer time, a longer distance, it probably wouldn't exhibit multiple breaks. But over 55 or so feet, most of them end up just breaking in one direction. So one of the things I try to understand when analyzing these pitches, first of all, when you look at these pitches in slow motion, you really can learn a lot. And one of the things you can learn is you can look at how that ball is released. You can see the seam orientation and you can actually follow the spin of the ball. I mean, most knuckleballs spin a little bit, and you can see how much it's spinning, and you could see the spin axis.

And despite what the pitchers themselves say, where they are trying to release the ball, this is what they say, they try to release the ball the same way each time, what I have found is that when you look in slow motion, that's not the case. There are small little differences. And my supposition for the reason for the erratic movement is that these small differences in various things, like how the seams are oriented, how fast the ball is rotating, the rotation axis, maybe the speed matters. Those small little changes in how that ball is released lead to big differences in what that pitch actually does. So that one pitch that I mentioned about R.A.

Dickey, once I had the tracking data for it, I could sort of create a model for what's going on. And then I could examine what happens if I make a small little change. So, for example, that one pitch, if I recall, underwent something like one and a half revolutions between release and home plate. play. If I change that to one revolution rather than one and a half, at least in the context of my trajectory model, the pitch would have ended up looking very, very different. And so that's my model for why the movement is so erratic, despite the fact that mostly the trajectory can be quite smooth. And do we know what characteristics of a specific knuckleball and individual pitch make it more likely to break a lot or to break in multiple directions? Yeah, that's the key question. And I don't have an answer for that. I would love to have the answer

for that. And at the moment, I don't. But it certainly has, the movement has mostly to do with the flow of the air over the seams of the ball. So it certainly depends a great deal how those seams are oriented. Again, I can give you one possibility. If the ball is rotating very, very slowly, then the seam orientations relative to the direction of movement of the ball is changing. relative to the direction of movement of the ball, is changing. And therefore, since the movement is due to the flow of air over the seams,

the air is seeing a different seam orientation as the ball progresses, and that could lead to multiple breaks. So I think one of the keys to getting to the possibility of getting multiple movement is to have just a little bit of rotation. I think one full rotation is probably close to the upper limit. If you start it spinning too rapidly, then the direction of the force that the air is exerting on the ball is changing so rapidly that the ball simply can't move to keep up, can't move rapidly enough to keep up with it. So it more or less goes straight. So, you know, a bad knuckleball would be one that has, say, two revolutions between release

and home plate. You probably would get very, very little movement from that. So something, you know, between a half to one revolution is probably ideal. And that certainly was the case for that one Dickie knuckleball that I looked at. So if there was a Michael Jordan of the knuckleball, could he throw that R.A. Dickey pitch over and over? Or is it sort of luck that Dickey was able to deliver that pitch? able to deliver that pitch. Is the pitcher as susceptible to the randomness as the hitter is, or is there a little bit more agency on the pitcher's part? Again, another good question. So again, I keep on returning to this one pitch that I already Dickie. Dickie, in his public interviews about how he throws the knuckleball, he has said that

he tries to throw that knuckleball with just about a half revolution of topspin on it. The particular one that I'm talking about didn't have topspin at all. It had sort of bullet spin. You could just look at the high-speed video of it, and you see that that ball is rotating with gyrospin or bullet spin. And so I've never interviewed, I've never talked with Dickey, but if I were to talk with him, I would ask him, well, you know, this pitch did something really weird. Did you try to throw it in that manner? I don't know the answer to that question. According to what he has said publicly, he doesn't try to throw it that way. So I think in a way,

it is a matter of luck or there's some degree of randomness as to how that ball is released. Now, it's not totally luck because I think, you know, there is some range of orientations and spin rates and spin directions that would lead to, you know, good things happening with that knuckleball. And they probably try to stay within that range. But within that range, there's probably, I'm guessing there's probably a lot of randomness that is mostly imperceptible. I mean, the pitcher probably doesn't know that he's releasing it in a way that's somehow random

from one pitch to another. So the reason this came up yesterday is that Stephen Wright threw a pitch to Alex Avila earlier this week that certainly appeared to break multiple times, and there was a kind of shaky camera going on in the slow motion replay, and maybe that made it a little bit deceptive, but it appears to break to the right and then break back to the left from the center field perspective, and Avila struck out on the pitch. So I asked you about this one specifically, and you've done a little work to look into it. And you told me that it is definitely the weirdest one you have ever seen

even more so than the Dickie pitch we've been discussing. So what was going on with this Steven Wright pitch to Alex Avila? Yeah, first, let me, let me just say that I managed to get some bootleg data on this from a source that I won't reveal. So I actually have the, in this case, I have the track man, which is part of the StatCast system. I have the track man trajectory for that pitch. And it definitely is weird. The tracking data shows a trajectory that basically agrees with your own eyes. I mean, it really does. I mean, so this is a case where the perception is the reality.

Oftentimes it's not, but in this case, the perception is the reality. It's exactly what you just said. The pitch started off and it broke to the pitcher's right. So it started to go to the outside part of the plate with a left-handed batter. And then at the last minute, it seemed to break back to the left again. So you could see from where the catcher caught the ball that it was darting to the left, to the pitcher's left as he caught it. So there was definitely multiple breaks in this. And all of those pitches that I looked at four games worth of Dickey and Wakefield knuckleballs from several years ago, I have never seen anything that looks quite like this. This is such an unmistakable double break that, you know,

it's very, very clear cut. So I hope to write an article about this. I'm in the process of doing some more analysis on it. And I actually have the pitch FX tracking data from one of Wright's earlier games, the May 30th game against Baltimore, in which there were some other weird pitches. So anyway, I have the raw tracking data. I'm in the process now of looking at the data and trying to quantify what you mean by a multiple break. In this case of the pitch from a couple of days ago, it's so clear cut. You just see it with your own eyes. I believe that there is a way to quantify that in a non-biased way that can determine that. And that's what I'm in the process of trying to do. Well, hopefully it'll work out and there'll be a nice article that I'll write as a result of it. All right. Well, great. I'm glad to hear that science can confirm that we're not crazy and

that this pitch actually did what our eyes told us it did. Good to know. And the Chris Davis pitch from that May 30th start that also made the rounds on the internet, another Stephen Wright pitch, you showed me the plot for that one too. And it seemed like there was maybe a hint of multiple breaks, but not as dramatic, not as clear cut as the one this week. Yeah, I would say that it's pretty unmistakable, but nowhere's near as dramatic as the right one. The right one to Avila is absolutely spectacular. Yeah, and as you pointed out to me off-air, the pitch was scored a foul tip, even though on the slow-mo replay it appears to have been a clean swing and miss, which suggests that the umpire may have been fooled just as much as Avila was. The only one who could figure out where that pitch was going was catcher Christian Vasquez, who has a well-deserved reputation as an excellent receiver. All right, well, we will look forward to further research

in that article, and we'll let people know where to find it. We'll also link to the most recent GIF in case people haven't seen that. You can follow Alan on Twitter at P-O-B Guy, Physics of Baseball Guy. You can find a link to his site also, which is baseball.physics.illinois.edu. Alan, thank you as always for shedding light on a confusing subject. If I may just get one more word in, congratulations to both of you on that great book. I really enjoyed reading it and I look forward to seeing both of you at the Sabre seminar later this summer. You can have a lot more words if that's what you want to talk about.

All right. Well, that's high praise for you guys. It was a great read. I very much enjoyed reading it. It must have been a fantastic experience for you guys. Yeah, it was. Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it. All right. All right. Well, good talking to you. All right. Bye-bye. All right. So after the break, we will be back with Brett Shipp, who will talk to us about the Rangers Ballpark Boondoggle. glad you enjoyed it all right all right well good talking you all right bye-bye all right so after the break we will be back with brett ship who will talk to, which is the ABC affiliate in Dallas-Fort Worth. Earlier this week, he was the co-author of a report on the new Rangers ballpark and some funding details that he brought to light.

And the broad strokes of the story are the same as they are with many stadium funding deals. The team is getting a good deal. The city or the taxpayers seem to be getting a raw deal. But the specifics are interesting in this case. So can we start with whether you think there is a need for a new Rangers ballpark? Because, you know, many people see this news and they say, well, this ballpark's only about 20 years old. Do they actually need a new one? But you were at the game yesterday and you were tweeting about the inhumane conditions because it was 93 degrees out there. Yeah, it was a degree of sarcasm. Yeah, a degree of sarcasm that I said that actually it was 93 degrees out there last night and there was a decent little breeze. There was probably, I haven't looked at the attendance figures,

but I'm guessing there was 25 to 29 out there last night, and nobody seemed to be complaining. Nobody was using fans. Nobody was. It just seemed to be an average summer night at the ballpark, and everybody's wearing shorts and flip-flops, and the atmosphere was great. I mean, it is a beautiful ballpark. They've been keeping it up.

It does seem odd that there would be a conversation that was unforced. Really, guys, this was an unforced conversation about a need for a retractable roof stadium. It came out of nowhere. And so, personally, would I like to have an air-conditioned environment in August to go see a Rangers game? Yeah, that'd be nice. But I think I, along with other fans, really kind of like what's out there now.

But that's not really the focus of my story. I think you know. Before the focus of the story, I want to ask one more question along those lines. When I was down in Angels territory, there was a sort of smugness with Angels fans that the Rangers ballpark was a disadvantage for them. And that even if the Rangers were ahead by six games in May or June, there was this feeling that they wouldn't make through the summer, the heat would would wear them down. Do you have any sense of whether, you know, the Rangers fans, you know, the sort of Rangers community considers the ballpark to be a competitive advantage or a

competitive disadvantage because of the heat and because of the way the ball plays? No, there's a book by Mike Shropshire. I don't know if you've read it. If you haven't, you need to. It's probably one of the funniest baseball books ever written, called Seasons in Hell, about the first few years and the origins of the Texas Rangers and some of the craziness that went on with Billy Martin, the clubhouse, et cetera, et cetera. And there's been some really, really, really, really bad baseball played at that stadium for a long time.

I grew up in Dallas, and for anybody to suggest that there's a competitive advantage that the Rangers have or the Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs had before them, I would not only laugh, I would belt out a hearty chuckle that, when's the last time we won a World Series? I mean, that's a competitive advantage. When you rack up World Series like the Yankees have, you just, you know, that's not even a legitimate conversation. Really? Really? Please. You know, it's not that bad on a summer night.

There's a breeze out there, and these guys are conditioned athletes. Play ball. Just play ball. There's a breeze out there. And these guys are conditioned athletes. Play ball. Just play ball. So you can certainly see why the Rangers would want a retractable roof stadium if someone's willing to give it to them. And apparently someone is.

So you wrote about this earlier this week. And so the deal was that this ballpark is supposed to cost $900 million. Now, of course, you know, these ballparks never end up costing what they're estimated to cost. But the deal was 50-50, basically. The city funds half of it. The team funds half of it. That's bad enough because as we've seen over and over and over again, the city never seems to make its money back from these ballpark deals. But as you discovered, it's actually worse than that. So why is it worse than that? Well, I just think that it is, and I've been told this by stadium economists who understand deals and how they're done and know the nature of these deals. And Robert Boddy out of Lake

Forest College in Illinois and Rick Eckstein out of Villanova. We used them to take a look at this master agreement. And both of them said this is not just a bad deal, it's an awful deal and perhaps unprecedented in that when you come out and you tell fans that they're going to pick up half of a billion-dollar stadium, that's a lot of money. That's getting upwards of unprecedented territory. But when you secretly in the back door take away another $300 million worth of assets from those fans and give it back to the stadium so they can do their half of the construction deal,

that again gets into unprecedented territory. and that's the complaint here. Look, we're talking about $800 million coming from the city of Arlington, $300 million of that inuring to estimated $300 million inuring to the Texas Rangers for them to cover their part of the construction costs, that just could be an unprecedented deal. And look, if the citizens of Arlington say, we're okay with that, we're okay with that, we understand what the details are, we've read the fine print, bring it on, bring it on. But do not call this a 50-50 deal and then backdoor it into an 80-20 deal, because that's not fair.

That's not fair. And you need to be up front. If you're going to ask taxpayers to foot most, if not all, of the bill of these stadiums, let them know it. Just let them know it. And if they still decide this is cool, then fine. Bring it on. And the good thing is now because of my report, no pat on my back, but now they do know. Now they do know. And that's now it's a fair, now it's a fair fight for those who are opponents of and want the new stadium and want to keep what they've got.

So this, you had to really dig into the fine print to find this. So it's essentially that there is a search yard, there's a tax that's applied to parking, and usually the proceeds from that would go to the city, to the taxpayers. But in this case, they're actually going to the team. And you talked to the mayor, you had to sort of ambush him at a city council meeting because he didn't want to talk to you. And so do you get the sense that this is something that he did, you know, fully understanding the ramifications of this clause? Do you think he was hoodwinked or do you think that this was just a sweetheart deal that he gave because he thought it was very important to keep the Rangers in Arlington, even though they were not even threatening to leave? Yeah, I think that's a great question.

Yeah, I think that's a great question. And my honest answer is, believe it or not, is I don't think you really understand what the deal was. I'm not sure that it really matters, but I don't think any of those council members read the deal. I don't think they care. And you touched on that. I'm not sure they care. They just are. They're like the bobble-headed doll. They're like, okay, if the stadium owner wants something or a team owner wants something, the answer is yes. Bobblehead, bobblehead, bobblehead, yes. And I don't think they care what the details are. It is the Arlington attitude. They are conditioned to believe that they are the entertainment capital of what we call the Metroplex. And it is their duty and responsibility to maintain these sports enterprises within their confines of their authority. And so that's what this is about, making sure that the Rangers are kept happy because they belong in Arlington, they've been in Arlington, baseball's never been outside of Arlington, and whatever it takes, whatever it takes.

But it is important to point out, there was nobody vying to get the Rangers out of Arlington. That wasn't even a conversation. It's this ethereal notion that, oh, well, Dallas was going to put a stadium downtown. No, uh-uh, uh-uh. That was not a conversation that anyone was having. And when it came time for the Cowboys to consider where they were going to move

from Irving, they did briefly consider Dallas. But guess what? Dallas didn't have the money to build a billion-dollar stadium. Arlington does because of their lack of mass transit and that sales tax revenue they had to give to the team. So that's why the Cowboys moved to Arlington. That's why the Rangers are going to stay in Arlington. And there is that attitude. We're just going to keep these teams here, whatever it takes. Right. And occasionally a politician will actually pay a price for ushering in one of these deals you mentioned in your report that the mayor of Miami, for instance.

But often there are no real ramifications except for the people who end up footing the bill. So lastly, I guess, is there any means of stopping this? Is this set in stone or at what point in the process is it? I don't know. And you mentioned Miami. That's my story tonight. mention Miami. That's my story tonight. I'm doing, we went and kind of did a, not a forensic look, but a, you know, a capsulized look at what happened in Miami and kind of comparing what's happening here in Arlington versus what happened in Miami. And now such a dynamic set of circumstances, but that, yes, before the stadium was even built, once Deadspin outed the true finances of the team owner, and they figured out, wait, we don't have to give up all this money.

We were lied to. The mayor got recalled and tossed out of office in the biggest landslide of a mayor recall in history. And the new mayor, Carlos Jimenez, who I like very much, is so well-spoken. He's so plain-spoken. He's like this, Arlington, listen to me. If you're going to do a deal, if you're going to do a public-private partnership, you might want to get something out of it. You might want to make sure that there's something in it for you

because the value of your franchise is going to go up, double. Whatever it is now, you get a new stadium, it's going to double. Shouldn't the city have a take on that? Shouldn't they be able to claim a chunk of that value increase? And that's what he's saying. That's what he says tonight. Arlington, make sure you're getting something out of it. At this point, with this contract, Arlington gets nothing. Nothing. Well, it's the same basic story repeated over and over with a new wrinkle in each local market that seems to make it worse every time. So we will link to Brett's report. You can read it and watch it. And I encourage you to check out the full thing.

You can also find him on Twitter at Brett underscore ship. S.H.I.P.P. All right. Well, Brett, thank you for diggingH-I-P-P. All right. Well, Brett, thank you for digging deeper into the contract and shedding some light on this and also for talking to us. All right, boys. Thanks for having me on. Okay. That's it for today.

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