Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 964: The Return of the Cold Call

Episode Date: October 12, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Kidz Bop, answer emails about facing MLB pitching, a time-traveling manager, and communicating with catchers, and then cold-call the star of the Play Index segment.

The crowd go psycho even if I don't move. Some like to cool cause I'm so smooth. Then something happens, feet start tapping. You can't hold back when Rakim's rapping. The man you've been waiting for, rougher than ever. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together. Hello and welcome to episode 964 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by our Patreon supporters and the Play Index at baseballreference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of ESPN, who's been at ESPN Orientation the last couple days, which is why this is the first podcast this week. Do you feel oriented now?

Super oriented. And you've been in Indio at a concert, and we just off-air talked about that concert, and I made a smash- mouth joke that now nobody can hear because I can't. I'm incapable of repeating jokes. Yeah, they can just imagine it. It was a good one. It was pretty good.

I watched the All-Star video today, of all things. I did, yeah. My daughter is super into Kidz Bop right now. And so we have been going through the Kidz Bop archives. And the Kidz Bop greatest hit, first of all, Kidz Bop, I don't know if people know this, but it has evolved a lot over the years. I'm sure everybody knows it. But it has evolved a lot over the years.

It used to basically be one grown-up singing the lead vocals. to basically be one grown-up singing the like lead vocals and then you just have kids like as a chorus screaming like exclamations in the background or like you know um punctuating certain words or maybe singing the chorus and they just it was just this blend of of high-pitched kid voices and it wasn't very good and now what they do is I guess they have like a cast for each album of like four kids who sing the songs in the style of the musicians. And honestly, it's really good now. Like there are absolutely songs that I prefer the Kidz Bop version because the production is note for note. I mean, it is like the it is just a sheer rip off of the production. And then you have the vocals, which are, you know, adequate, they're fine. They're

basically, you know, they're not indistinguishable, but they're super, they're competent. But then what you don't have usually is like Ludacris's terrible verse at the end, or like Dark Horse, that Katy Perry song, Dark Horse, i hate that song uh but i realize now that i mostly hate it because juicy j's you know 16 bars or whatever are just about the worst rapping that's ever been done and they just cut that and it's much better anyway the point is that the kids bop greatest hits track one track one on kids bop greatest hits is all-star by smash mouth i mean when you think about like 15 years of pop music although i guess they probably put the greatest but the greatest hits probably came out chronologically after like the third disc or something so maybe it's not that

impressive but still first song and so today we were uh we i played the original for her the video i played the video and what i always love about 90s videos is just how many of them are attached to some movie that you like don't think about being attached to the movie so like this one the video which i mean this is like a huge massive cultural touchstone song and like half the video is mystery men skits uh and like i i always i always if i ever were just asked to write randomly i have always had in mind that the second post i would write in a random thing i would be like on 90s music videos and the movies that they were attached like the sort of like discordant movies that they were attached to. So like Aaliyah's Are You That Somebody,

which is like, I think one of the 10 greatest pop songs of the decade. And it's, you know, especially profound now because it came out just before her death. And it's really, it's an amazing, amazing, amazing song. And the video is like her dancing and Dr. Dolittle scenes are playing on the walls. Or like the Red Hot Chili Peppers song, Soul to Squeeze, has this big Coneheads tie in.

Like this song is just nothing Coneheadsy about it. Anyway, so Smash Mouth. And so then for the last hour, I've been trying to figure out what the Meteor Men Baked to Differ even means. And so that's all. I just wanted to let you know that Smash Mouth has been a big part of my life today. Did she prefer the original or the Kidz Bop? Didn't care.

Didn't care. Just great no matter who's singing it. So we're going to do emails. Our plan is to do one of our simulcast Patreon games on Friday night, the first game of the ALCS. So we're basically just going to talk during the baseball game, and I will send out the details to Patreon supporters in the next day or two. So basically we have to save our material for that because we are not Tom Verducci. We don't have excellent anecdotes from when we talked to the third base coach just before the game.

So we have to save our banter for those three hours of talking that we're going to do for the Blue Jays-Indians game. So we're going to take some emails now, and we'll see how that goes. So you have an email you want to make up. Yeah, I'll just make it up right here. you have an email you want to make up? Yeah, as I, I'll just make it up right here. I was the other day, the other day I was watching Vladimir Putin play hockey against NHL players. So this was for his birthday last year. He got to play in a hockey game against a bunch of Russian NHL players. And there was a big crowd and so on. And he scored seven goals. And because that's, that's what you do. Yeah. So he scored seven goals. They awarded him a giant MVP trophy, etc. So my question to you guys is,

if you have the chance to face a major league pitcher, to really face major league pitching, you go out there and, you know, Kershaw or, you know, maybe Yovani Gallardo, I don't know, is willing to pitch to you for as long as you want and for as real as you want. How would you want to be pitched? Would you rather they let you hit seven home runs or, you know, seven singles? Like, would you rather they lay in 65 mile an hour bp and then you could tell everybody yeah i went yard off giovanni gaiardo or whatever like would you rather get the mvp trophy at the end of it or would you rather he throw 94 and you would know what it's like but you would look i mean you would just all of your weaknesses would be laid bare. You might conceivably be in a hospital if a ball hit you.

And you'd be terrified. It'd be terrifying, terrifying. Or is there somewhere in the middle that you would like to be? I think I would want a few pitches at real speed. I would want him to throw his whole arsenal, basically. Show me every pitch that you have, just so I can see what that actually looks like and embarrass myself. Yes, but it would mainly be an information gathering mission. And then I might ask him to just dial it back to

whatever degree I would need him to dial it back to in order to have some sort of realistic chance of hitting the ball. What do you suppose that is? Probably like 30% of his, I don't know. So 27 miles an hour. Yeah, well, not that exactly. I'm trying to calibrate it. You're saying a standard deviation away from the mean. Right, yeah. i i need him to

i mean i don't know i'd need him to throw like it was a batting cage or something and he was just throwing straight cheese so if he did that then you know i could say i did that i guess not that it would be that great an accomplishment if he's clearly not trying. Would you even say that you did that? Like, it seems like if I hit BP fastballs off of, I mean, true BP, like, if he were letting me hit slow fastballs, I don't think I would tell anybody. Like, I maybe would tell them I got to experience it, but I would have, I would walk it back so far before i even started telling the story yeah it's not something you can brag about if he's just lobbing it in there he's just it happens to be him it could be anyone else right it could be you know riley breckenridge could throw you you know solid 78 mile an hour straight fastballs if he you know yeah if he were friends with you

so it would be more valuable really really, to have him go 100% for as long as he's willing to go just to gain more information. Would I ever even come close to making contact if I were facing a full-strength major league pitcher? Could I bunt against that guy? Would I even be able to stand in the batter's box without wetting my pants? It would be a valuable research exercise. So really, I think it would be a valuable research exercise.

So really, I think it would probably be best to actually face the guy pitching at 100%. Just to be clear, that was not a totally random Riley Breckenridge reference. I remember it just flashed into my memory before I said it that like six years ago, there was some angel who needed to take BP in the offseason and uh so Riley went out and pitched to him yeah he was the local guy anyway I how much would would the answer change if there were um 16,000 of your uh loyal subjects in the uh in the crowd or if there were I mean would would it change if there was a crowd? Well, I'd enjoy it even less than I would have otherwise. And this is like a nightmare to begin with. I think Jeff tweeted something about nothing scares him more than the idea of just standing

in the batter's box for one Noah Syndergaard pitch. It would be just terrifying to do that. So the first 30 or so pitches that where I sat behind the cage, or stood up against the cage during spring training BP with the stompers with the stompers were scary to me. They Yes, the sound was scary to me. I was behind I was behind a net. And they were throwing 80 mile an hour BP fastballs and just hitting them. And that was that made me uncomfortable. I wouldn't say scary, but it made me uncomfortable Yeah so yeah I would not want to do this

So if I had a crowd of spectators I don't know that that would Change anything I think I would be self deprecating About it and be open about the fact That I was about to embarrass myself and Hopefully the crowd would be on my side So I think that would be alright

I think the answer for me would be it it would slightly depend on whether this was a game situation where I was only going to get three or four pitches per at bat and only three or four at bats or whether I was going to get, you know, an hour of dedicated attention to me. But I think with the latter scenario where maybe say I get, you know, even 20 minutes, I think that like you, I would say, okay, show me all of them first, snap off I get, you know, even 20 minutes, I think that like you, I would say, okay, show me all of them first, snap off your best, you know, slider. And then once I've seen all of them, I would say, all right, all fastballs now. I don't want to have to guess. So all, and I don't want to. Good fastballs. But good, all, yeah, 100% fastballs.

I want, I want the real cheese. And then mixed in there, I might say, you're welcome to mix in other pitches, but let me know ahead of time. Because I really don't want to be, if a fastball is coming at my face, I want to know that that is, that I don't have to prove how cool I am by hanging in on the breaking ball. But it's not a breaking ball, it's a fastball. But I think I would want to see the real stuff pretty much only. Now, if it were in a fake game situation and I had to hit, I might say, all right, high 80s. If you can hit high 80s, if you can sort of sit at the high 80s, give me that instead of the 94. Yeah, I'd probably ask him not to hurt me,

just to be very careful about not hurting me. I don't actually, I don't, I don't actually think I would hit high eighties any more than I would hit mid, mid nineties, by the way, but I don't think that I would want to try low eighties. I, I don't think that that would give me the experience I was going for. To me, that would be a little too much like parachuting in a, you know, in, in virtual reality instead of actual parachuting. Parachuting in virtual reality instead of actual parachuting Yeah Okay, so let's take a question from Ryan who says Hey guys, I was doing the dishes when I was listening to episode 962

Where you were discussing the fraud manager Loved the answer That said, while doing those dishes I misheard the question And thought it was if a manager from the 1940s was the beginning of the question So my question is If a manager from the 1940s was the beginning of the question. So my question is, if a manager from the 1940s was brought forward in time and made the manager of a modern MLB or AAA, let's say MLB team, how well would they do? Let's take the technology out of the question, if possible, and just think about managerial decision making and actions. Would they be mostly fine? Ned Yost learned right.

Would it be a total disaster? How many wins would it cost? Also, what if it was a robot program to react like a 1940s manager and it couldn't learn? Obviously much worse, but how bad? So if it's a 1940s manager who is totally stuck in his ways, I guess how bad would he be? And if it were just average 1940s manager,

how bad would he be? Well, it's interesting average 1940s manager, how bad would he be? Well, it's interesting because let's say that, let's think of a strategy and we'll set for the premise of this question that this is a strategy that we consider very important and crucial to winning. So let's say that that strategy is not bunting to, you know, a runner over to third after a leadoff double in the first inning. So you've got, you're the GM and you go to your manager or your whoever and you go to the manager and you go, you shouldn't do this. Look at this run expectancy table. That manager, modern day manager is like, get out of here. Like, I know what I'm doing. I'm a modern day manager.

But if you go to the 1940s manager and you go, well, this is how we do it now. I wonder if he'd go, oh, okay. And just like it would seem futuristic. Like I don't imagine, I bet you that if you, I don't know exactly the timeline of vaccine introductions. But I would guess that if you took a thousand people from 1940, transported them here, sent them to a doctor and said here's your mmr shot all a thousand be like thank you doctor futuristic doctor this is awesome it is the future after all which is better than the percentage of 2016 people exactly there's some percentage of 2016ers who would not uh and who don't who don't realize that they have a futuristic doctor. Like they don't realize that that doctor is in somebody else's future.

He's just a dude in the present. And you pick flaws in your peers. So I think that I would speculate that the 1940s manager would totally take your word for whatever you said. I think that this is how we do it now would be a pretty pretty persuasive argument maybe even to a fault probably but i think that you'd get better reaction from the 1940s manager and i don't think there's anything uh fundamental about a 1940s human that is uh that you know that would otherwise or a 1940s brain that would otherwise be inferior or a liability. I think they're basically the same.

So I might take a pliable 1940s manager. Okay. So what if it's a set-in-his-ways 1940s manager and he comes in and he is not cowed by all the technology and the non-baggy uniforms. And he is just a representative of his era, and he's going to cling to the old ways no matter what. How much does he want to do? Well, no matter what, unless he comes to a conclusion on his own. So I would guess that the first couple weeks, he might do a lot of funny things,

and after two or three weeks, he'd be pretty orthodox. I don't think that he would have his starters going complete games every day beyond the first couple weeks. I think at a certain point, he would either feel silly or he would see his team getting beat and think that those guys actually have a pretty good idea. I'm going to try that idea too. So, of course, the question is how long would it take

before he was managing to the save? Yeah, that's probably right. out pretty quickly because if he does try to throw his starters into the ninth every day, they're going to get tired and they're going to start getting shelled. And maybe he'll realize that they're not conditioned the way the old guys do. Or he might just realize, oh, these guys are throwing really hard. These guys are all really good at baseball. These are better than the players I had before. So he might understand that, oh, this is like a max effort game now. I can't do what I did anymore. But, yeah, I mean, the biggest problem, of course, I think, is that he's going to have a tough time relating to the players, right? He's not going to have any of the same cultural touchstones that they have.

He's going to be way out of touch. He's going to say some very off-color comments in the clubhouse he's disagree disagree no i think if he i think you're imagining a guy what i think right now what you're imagining is actually your grandfather as as you know your grandfather like you're a man well you're like my grandfather was alive in the 40s and he's 96 and that guy would have a hard time relating to players day but if you're talking about a a manager of you know median managerial age i think they'd get a kick out of it i think it would be like i i think it'd be super cool to have a friend from the 40s and i mean it was it doesn't seem to be a problem for captain america no that's true yeah i don't i still think i would

uh you really think that the players are going to be like, he doesn't know the history of reggaeton. I can't, you know, like relate to him. Like, he's just a he's just a he's just another human being who like knows ragtime or something. I don't know. That seems fine to me. Yeah, I mean, I don't think he's gonna be like demanding that they put Tommy Dorsey on the clubhouse stereo or anything. But I, you know, he's, he's not going to, well, put it this way, if I were running the team, and this guy were giving press conferences, I would want my media relations person standing by all the time, just ready to cut it short if he starts veering into some territory that was

acceptable in the 40s and is not acceptable now. But yeah, I mean, just on a day-to-day relating to players basis, it might not be all that different. I don't know how much the baseball man, Patois, has actually changed that much in, you know, 70 years or so. So I think you're right. It might be a little bit better, So I think you're right It might be a little bit better But he'd have a hard time adjusting To the way that rosters are constructed The way guys are used to being used

He's not going to be bringing in relievers For matchups or anything And that's the way that these guys are used So there might be some sort of just Team intervention where they just Sit him down and say hey this is How we play baseball now This is how we've always played baseball.

You have to use us something close to this way or we won't know what to do. Or I don't know, maybe it'll be a triumph and he'll bring back the four-man rotation and he'll just have his good pitchers pitching all the time and he'll send his relievers down to AAA and he'll call up some bench bats and he'll be platooning and pinch hitting. I don't know. Maybe he'll actually bring back some things that have fallen out of style but were actually good. Obviously, he's going to be bunting all the time, you know, all the strategies that have fallen out of favor, now intentional walks and sacrificing and pitch outs and all of that.

He'll be doing that a lot, at least at first. But teams did that for many, many years, and there were still really good baseball teams. Of course, they were competing against teams that were also doing that. But I don't think that would make a good team into a bad team. It would hurt a little bit. Yeah. So it is my position that, as stated, that what you're describing is how it would work at the beginning and that he would adapt on his own pretty quickly to most of this stuff and i would say that uh by two weeks he would be close to indistinguishable do you accept the premise and if so what timeline do you give him for his general transformation where he is, you know, 96% baseball man?

Yeah, well, I think it depends on the guy's personality. If he's just extremely stubborn, or he's just so disoriented by his trip to the future that he's just clinging to his old ways, then maybe he just hangs on to it until you fire him. But if he's just an average guy, He just hangs on to it until you fire him. But if he's just an average guy, then I agree. I mean, he'd be talking to people all the time. Maybe he would go find some of his former players from the 1940s who are 80 or 90 now and until I could give him a phone number for one. He could call up Ned Garver, find out how baseball has changed over the last 60 years or so. And so, you know, he could talk to people who've been around the whole time that he skipped past and find out how that happened exactly.

And you could catch him up on baseball history. And, yeah, I mean, it's just that the pressure from your players would be pretty extreme all the time. players would be pretty extreme all the time. If you're doing crazy stuff, you don't even have your 1940s coaching staff with you, presumably in this scenario, which if you did, that would at least give you some backup, some people on your side. But if you're alone, you'd have to be just extremely stubborn to stick it out very long in the face of pressure from your ownership and your GM and your players and the media and everyone. So I agree that most people would conform pretty quickly. So he'd probably still bunt more than the typical manager bunts, maybe up until even

the end of the season if it's a full season. But I don't think he's going to be, you know, it would take some time, I think, for him to adjust to bullpen management. You know, it would take some time, I think, for him to adjust to bullpen management. I mean, that's just such a different animal than it was then where your bullpen was just, you know, with the exception of a couple guys, it was just you didn't use it unless you had to, really. And the guys out there were just kind of stuck there because they couldn't start. And it was totally different. So rotation patterns were somewhat different. So it would take some time.

But yeah, I mean, after a month or so, I think he probably looks pretty similar just because the pressure would be unbearable if he were to persist. It'd be interesting to know how many of his lineup or his strategic decisions would be strategic decisions would be swayed by his view, his view of the athleticism of the players. So like, as it is right now, pitchers throw these incredible sliders and hitters hit them incredibly far still because the sliders are amazing and the hitters are amazing. And I wonder if instead of seeing that there's like a relative equilibrium that has maintained itself, you know, relatively, although different in certain ways and different in certain styles.

But like if you were, you know, if you're coming from an era where you call for six-tenths of a sacrifice bunt a game and you bring it here, I wonder if you would just go, there's no way I'm bunting with that guy. He is so big and strong. He's just so much stronger than anybody I ever saw. And the same way if you wouldn't ever take a starting pitcher out because you're like, he's throwing 96. It's the seventh inning. He's throwing 96. He's amazing. Yeah, right. I don't know. Pretty fun email episode so far. Yeah, pretty good.

All right. Question from Taylor. What about having an earpiece inside the catcher's ear to tell him information for each batter coming to the plate like the NFL does with quarterbacks? You get a limited amount of time to speak to the catcher like a play clock in football. You already see catchers with armbands, so I'm wondering what kinds of effects the earpiece might have on gameplay and strategy trying to remember our lasers uh conversation but as i think as i recall you are uh pro unrestricted use of technology in in gameplay right generally yes although i'm also pro players having to do the opposite. Oh, were you the opposite? Maybe you were the opposite. Well, in that specific conversation, I was.

I was against laser range finders for outfield or positioning in-game because I like the idea of players having to figure that out on their own or coaching staffs having to direct the players in real time. I don't know. It just seems like that's strategy. That's part of the game. It's something that teams can use to differentiate themselves from other teams. And I like the idea of them having to kind of live or die with whether their players and coaches are good at those things. So I like the idea of leaving it in their hands.

And I guess this is similar. As Taylor alludes to, we already are at a point where catchers are taking things onto the field with them, just like outfielders are. You've seen the Dodgers outfielders, you know, take for every hitter who's coming up and some sort of scouting report or what to throw him in certain counts. And so it's not really all that different from having an earpiece and having someone just say that information to David Ross instead of writing it on an armband and then attaching it to him. on an armband and then attaching it to him so or i mean there's a bunch of managers with a bunch of catchers uh in a bunch of situations and on a bunch of teams that even you know they call pitches or they uh direct the base running what do you call that suppression techniques i would they call pickups suppression techniques it's snappy uh catch on yeah and so um so it's not like they put up a dating game wall between the catcher and the dugout as it is. You're allowed to communicate. So an earpiece would be, depending on who's on the other side of that earpiece, would be really no different.

piece would be really no different. The question is who is on the other side of that earpiece and whether you think that the field staff should have pretty much open communication with as many people in the organization as you want to in real time. And to go along with that as much access to information, supercomputers, tape, and so on as you want them to. But it sure seems fine to me. I think what you should... You could even... Somebody asked a question a long time ago about whether umpires

would benefit from knowing what the pitch was before it comes in. And so if you were going to, you could give the umpire an earpiece too. And then he could always know and not get fooled by by the pitch although i

don't know how big a problem that is as it is but as long as it's not slowing anything down and if it is a unobtrusive way to help athletes reach higher levels i think that that's generally philosophically consistent with what we like to see in baseball? Would it change? Would it have much effect on gameplay or strategy? Or would it mostly just be 2% better than all the same things that they do right now? Yeah, I think it depends on, as you said, who is on the other end of the earpiece. So I think if you were to have this system set up, I would bet that maybe you'd, this is when we'd finally see like a, you know, stat head kind of person in a coaching role in the dugout in uniform, just because that information would be very valuable.

And you wouldn't, I mean, you could, you could have someone just write it down, put it in a binder and then just have a coach read it to you if you wanted. So, so yeah, if this were a direct pipeline to the front office person with the supercomputer or something, that might change the balance of power a little bit and shift it even more toward the defense and pitching. But if it were just talking to the bench coach or the pitching coach or something about what the scouting report says,

then that probably wouldn't change anything we see on the field dramatically. I wonder if you would see pitching coaches not going to the mound as much because they could just give their instructions, detailed instructions to the catcher, and then the catcher could go out to the mound and not burn a visit. So I wonder if the lack of pitching, lack of pitching coach visits to the mound would actually slow things down because now a pitching coach could essentially by proxy have as many visits to the mound as he wants and uh could send the catcher out you know seven times in an inning or whether it would slightly speed it up by removing the full pitcher walk to the mound probably not

the latter yeah i could see the former i could see it slowing things down if you give people more complicated more information they're probably going to you know to use it in some way and uh it maybe takes it might take time to use that information. There might be more slowdowns, more catchers kind of stalling for two seconds while they're listening to somebody. Yeah, there's always some kind of unintended consequence, like with the umpires example you mentioned. I wonder whether that would buy us an umpire. So if he knows that a slider is coming or something, he's already thinking, oh, this is less likely to be a strike. It's going to be out of the zone so you know maybe if it's a borderline pitch he's thinking oh this is a slider so odds

are it was out of the zone maybe that biases him in a way you wouldn't want him to be biased it's a great point all right so playing decks sure um so madison bumgarner gave up a home run to Jake Arrieta. And something clicked in me where I thought, I bet Madison Bumgarner has allowed more home runs to pitchers than any other pitcher. I don't know why I thought that, but I just, I thought, I bet that's true. And then I went and I looked it up and Madison Bumgarner had never allowed a home run to a pitcher. So it's just completely wrong uh and so i wanted to see who had allowed the most home runs to pitchers uh and uh the act the answer among active players is madison bumgarner's teammate matt cane who has allowed four uh and i actually first limited the

search to during bumgarner's career and cane, you know, obviously still at first with four. And that's sort of notable because Matt Kane hasn't pitched that many innings during Bumgarner's career. I mean, he has, but there's others who have pitched more. I guess he's pitched a lot. But anyway, that's not enough for a play index, though. So I then went to see who had allowed the most home runs to pitchers ever. And for the career, it's, I think, Mickey Lulich.

That's not that interesting. But I stumbled into one of, I think, one of the most striking, I don't know, to me, striking records that I've ever heard of. And I just heard of it today. So I went to the single season, to the single season home run record, or I guess home runs allowed to pitchers record, and what, it's five. So Matt Cain has allowed four in his entire career. He is the active leader for career home runs allowed to pitchers with four. And this guy allowed five in a single season but what's especially interesting about it

besides that which i think is pretty interesting on its own is that uh this guy who i'll just tell his name is bill hands and what what his name is a body part all right so bill hands allowed five home runs in a season in which he was a quite good he had a 2.89 era uh the next year he won 20 games the year after that he won 18 games. He was good at pitching, and he was even good the year that he managed to somehow allow five home runs to pitchers. But what's especially impressive about Bill Hands allowing five home runs to pitchers in a season is that he did it in 1968, the year of the pitcher, the year that Bob Gibson allowed five runs all year to the entire league, the year that the home run rate was the second lowest in post-integration history, where home runs were hit at roughly half, half the rate that they were hit this year in the majors,

somehow in the year of the pitcher where it is just nothing but insane pitching records that are so insane that they devalue the entire thing. This guy somehow managed to allow five home runs to pitchers. And they were all pretty important home runs. Actually, one wasn't that important. I think he was down for nothing and he gave up a solo shot in like the second inning. But the other four were all pretty important. Two of them tied the game. One of them gave the other team the lead. And the fourth one cut a lead to one. So I have a hypothesis for this. Bill Hands is, besides this fun record, is one of the very worst hitters of all time. By OPS, he is the 14th worst hitter

of all time among pitchers out of like, you know, thousands of pitchers, right? I set a reasonably high plate appearance minimum. So maybe it's maybe it's only many hundreds, but 14th worst by slugging percentage. He's the fifth worst ever. But there's one thing that the 14th worst hitting pitcher of all time and the fifth worst slugging pitcher of all time did pretty well, which is he drew a lot of walks. He had a better walk rate in his career. And this is an era where there wasn't even that much walking, but this is a 2.82. So in fact, this was in an era where the lowest rate of walks per game in history happened. And, uh, but he walked, uh, more in his career, more often, more frequently in his career than Adrian Beltre, uh, Robinson Cano, uh, Manny Machado, Daniel Murphy, Xander Bogarts, Jose Altuve, a bunch of really good hitters.

So he had an absolute deficiency as a hitter and also a strategy that created some value to him, which was presumably never, ever, ever swing. And maybe Bill Hands just projected and thought that everybody was like him. Couldn't hit, didn't want to and so he would throw fastballs right down the middle and uh and they would get hit a long ways he uh he led the league and uh he had the lowest walk rate in baseball that year at just 1.3 walks per nine so he was a guy who was just pumping fastballs in i guess or pumping strikes in josh tomlin is totally he is totally the job i mean i was wondering whether i would find a guy who was just pumping fastballs in, I guess, or pumping strikes in. Josh Tomlin.

He is totally the, I mean, I was wondering whether I would find a transition to say Josh Tomlin's name. So that's how it happened. I like that it happened. I don't know if it'll ever be beat, but if it is, it'll almost certainly be in a context where it makes a lot more sense for a pitcher to give up five home runs to other pitchers. And one last small detail in this. Hand's slugging percentage, which is the fifth worst ever.

His isolated power is also down around that line. In 500-plus plate appearances in his career. He had six doubles, no triples, no home runs. But even better, even topping him, Barry Zito in his entire career, 418 plate appearances, never had an extra base hit. He has an isolated power of zero after 400 plate appearances, which is itself a pretty amazing fun fact, if you ask me. Yeah, that's pretty good. I mean, he has the advantage over modern-day pitchers of the fact that he threw almost 260 innings that year. Right. He was pitching more innings, and his opponents were also pitching more innings.

So he was facing more pitchers. Yes, right. There was no DH, of course. And this was after the schedule expanded to its current length so he was facing pitchers twice as often or maybe more than twice as often because pitchers were probably staying in games later so yeah can i get i want to just put uh i i just remembered i have a bow for this story sure uh he faced by the way he faced 74 pitchers that year so i don't know what normal is but it's probably something like 60 these days two a game maybe two a game for 30 starts a little less than two a game for 34 starts something like that so that's not that big a

difference all right so bill hands uh made you laugh um because his name is Bill Hands. There was one other pitcher who I thought had an argument for being the most home run to pitcher prone pitcher ever. And this is a guy who allowed only four in his career, but he did it in just 400 innings, which is a lot of home runs for not a lot of innings. If you look at the career home run allowed list and you just scroll down uh the innings involved uh this one jumps out at you and his name is rich hand

that's the same body part but singular yeah there you go all right all right his nickname was froggy uh he bill hands nickname was yeah really, really slim Wikipedia page. I was surprised. For a guy who had 110 wins, you normally get more than that. Uh-huh. Apparently he was nicknamed Froggy because his spare pitching motion reminded his teammates of Don Larson's no-wind-up style. So because Larson was known as Big Froggy,

Hands became Little Froggy, and then I guess Little Froggy. And then, I guess, just Froggy. Wait a minute, though. Why is Don Larson Big Froggy? Yeah, that's a good question. Ah, okay. So this is from another source. This is from a Peter Gollenbach

book. Froggy, his teammates called Hans Froggy because he threw with the same delivery as the Yankees' the don larson who loved to go frog hunting okay i guess that makes sense all right so you can use the coupon code bp to get the discounted price of 30 on a one-year subscription to the Play Index. All right. Joe asked, in a confused attempt to shorten games and appeal to the fabled millennial demographic, Major League Baseball eliminates pitchers and replaces them with pitching machines.

These machines are still located on the pitcher's mound. They throw four-seam fastballs that are guaranteed to be in the strike zone, although they can be anywhere in the zone. How fast would the pitches have to be in order to generate similar levels of offense to what we see today? I would guess, by the way, I would guess that within, I'll say, 75 years, I would put the chances of a pitching machine-driven sport replacing pitchers at maybe six or 7%. Like, I think it is a non-zero percent chance that it'll happen. And maybe even, it might even be that there's not even a real field. It might be completely virtual within 100. Just saying. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Well, so we once talked about...

And before you yell at me, I just said there's a 93% chance that it's not going to happen. So I cool it. I'm saying it's probably not, but... Yeah. So we once answered an email from someone who asked, I think, if there was like a pitching machine or a robot that could throw like the best pitches in baseball or just any pitch it could throw you know whoever's cole hamels's change up and rolled his chapman's fastball and you know whatever it can throw the best pitches but it can only throw one per plate appearance or one per at bat and after that it has to throw the same pitch every time and we basically said that this big

pitcher would get crushed because basically the idea was that the unpredictability of pitching is extremely important. And so even if this person threw, you know, Mariano Rivera's cutter every time or Zach Britton's sinker every time, if it was in the same location and the same speed and everything, it would be just easy to beat up on this pitcher because, A, if it was outside the strike zone, you could just always take it. And if it wasn't, you would just know what was coming. So this is sort of similar. This is always a fastball and it's always in the strike zone. So you know what's coming and there's no guesswork. So the question is just, I guess,

at what point does the fastball get so fast that you can't hit it no matter what Even if you know it's coming Even if you start your swing early I mean there's that video of like a Japanese hitter swinging at like a 200 mile per hour pitch or something Siyoshi Shinjo Oh was it Shinjo? Yeah And I think I want to say it was like 155 miles an hour.

Yeah, it was very, very fast. And how did he do? I don't remember how he did. He eventually timed it, and I think he hopped a couple up or something like that. Yeah. It was really hard. It was edited like a Japanese game show, and it was very, very hard to follow. Right, yeah. So if it's that fast then i think you're you're in trouble anyway so i mean if it's like say it's a 110 miles per hour so it's

you know five miles per hour faster than anyone has ever thrown in a game but you know it's coming and it's always a strike are we so we're uh we. So we're just starting. We're just moving. We're going to tick up a little bit at a time. 110 is your first volley. You can't even start with Syndergaard because they're not – first of all, he's not throwing in the strike zone every time. Second of all, he's got multiple pitches. And so there's not anywhere close to a test of this.

But also, I mean, some portion of the math here is that walks would be completely eliminated. And if you imagine a baseball with no walks, offense is going to just absolutely plummet. So that's an issue. Yeah, that's true. But I mean, how effective would someone with one of the best fastballs in baseball be if you took away all of his other pitches? If he can work all four corners? Remind me, the premise of this question is that you can pinpoint it? I guess so. I mean, if it's a pitching machine, I don't know how that would work.

They're guaranteed to be in the strike zone, although they can be anywhere in the zone. So this presumes that the pitching machine is basically bowling with those gutter filler pads. But the location is more or less randomized. So you couldn't just dot all four corners in whatever order you want. You'd be throwing some mistakes. I don't have a great way of thinking through this. I would say that at 106, if you knew it was a fastball but

you didn't know the location i'm going that they'd hit it yeah that they'd hit it pretty well i think so too all right so 110 you know it's a fastball every time you time it perfectly every time, but you don't know location. I think they hit it. Yeah. I think so there's basically four runs a game scored 4.4 runs a game scored right now. Take out the walks that plummets, but add the predictability of the pitching machine. Maybe it goes up. Does it go up enough to get you back to 4.4? Hmm. Be a lot of home runs. Yeah, right. I know. I think I'm going to push it.

I'm going to say yes. Okay. All right. 1.12. I, hang on, I'm imagining this pitch. That is fast. Yeah. That is fast. That is fast. Yeah, wow.

Puts it in perspective. I'm going to say no. I think that if you get a pitching machine at 110 that throws only strikes, only fastballs for only strikes, boy, I'm about to say something that really seems crazy. Then it makes me want to go down. I was going to say if you have a pitching machine that only throws strikes at 112 miles an hour, I think it would be a little better than the league average pitcher.

That sounds nuts. If you have a pitching machine that only throws strikes at 106 miles an hour, I'm now saying no. I'm going back. I'm going back. I'm now going down to 104 i'm setting if i want to have 4.4 runs a game not even 104 10 yeah 10 assuming there's average movement on it that it is neither the great sinker nor a nathan eovaldi fastball uh i am going to say 103 oh man even that the league average pitcher is only as good or is

as good as a as a machine that throws strikes every single time at 103 miles an hour man i was so far off when i first started on this i'm going down to 101. Okay. What about you? Are you still at 110? Well, I said no at 110, right? You said no at 110, yes at 106. Right. Yeah. I'm going to stick with that. I just don't know if I know that much about millennials, if this would appeal to them. Is this like our millennials? Just, yeah. It doesn't really seem consistent with what millennials are into. It doesn't really seem consistent with what millennials are into. No. Okay, so we will end there.

I've got a couple other good questions that I'd like to answer, but maybe we'll answer them during our Patreon broadcast. I guess we'll be back before then with another episode, probably. While we were talking, I found an interview with Bill Hands from 2010. He is still with us. He's 76. But this is a story from 2010. And he is talking about, let's see, the story says he didn't blow away hitters, but he threw strikes. His 1968 strikeout to walk ratio was 4.11. This story does not mention his home runs to pitchers record. And Hands wasn't afraid to throw one that a hitter might launch out of the yard. My father always talked about

Frankie Frisch, who said how walks can kill you, he said of the Hall of Fame second baseman and manager of three teams. So whenever I got to 3-1, I said, here it is. So that's how it happened. You want to call him? Yeah, let's call him. Alright. Alright, call him all right all right all right

here goes i'm dialing hello hi bill my name is sam miller i'm a baseball writer with espn and my friend ben lindberg who's also a baseball writer is here with me say hi ben hi bill hello we're doing a baseball podcast together right now and we just were talking about you because we stumbled upon a sort of an odd i guess you could call it a record but it's sort of an odd part of of your career and and we wanted to ask you about it do you have a minute sure all right it's a i'm going to prepare you it is a very odd record and we know that like uh i don't you might not want to be reminded of this but we discovered that in 1968, when you allowed five home runs to opposing pitchers, that that is an all-time record. And we were amazed because of what a great pitcher you were at that point in your career.

Okay. I wasn't aware of that. I thought you were going to tell me about my 14 consecutive strikeouts. Tell us. Wait a minute. Tell us about that. consecutive strikeouts. Tell us about that. I will. At one point, I struck out 14 consecutive times in between sacrifice bunts. My old story was that I broke Sandy Koufax's record of 13. Well, believe it or not, the conversation we were having about the home runs allowed the pitchers led us to talking about what you were like as a hitter. So I want to ask you about that as well. But I want to know if you had a philosophy when you were facing an opposing pitcher. Well, in 1968, when I had an elbow problem, and it actually hurt me to swing the bat. And that is why I was as poor as I was. I was never a good hitter. But the year that I set that strikeout record was the year that it,

for whatever reason, it didn't hurt me to throw the ball. It hurt me to swing the bat. So you say you were never a particularly good hitter. You did draw a lot of walks though, especially for a pitcher. So was that kind of intentional? Was that your strategy when you went up there? Well, my strategy was to get on any way I could. And if they were going to walk me and they thought I was going to smack one, maybe they pitched around me a little bit. But that's really not true. I'm always amazed at how often pitchers do swing,

especially nowadays because pitchers are even worse hitters than they were in your day. And when they're ahead 2-0 in the count or 3-1 you still see them swing and it it just sort of blows my mind that they would be trying to get the guy throw two strikes right yeah it always it seems like they should um but uh and you did so well i was going to ask you were traded from the cubs you were traded to an al team just in time for the DH, the first year of the DH. So you didn't have to hit anymore at that point. That is correct. Were you relieved to move over there and not have to hit anymore?

Not really. Not really. Even later on, I always liked the brand of the National League better. I didn't like the DH. I thought it basically extended careers for guys that couldn't play in the field. And I think that's true even with guys like as good as he is at David Ortiz, you know, liability in the field, but a great hitter. Did you like hitting? I think if I'd have been better at it, I would have liked it. We had a lot of fun,

you know, pitchers always took batting practice and we had a lot of fun doing that. of fun you know pitchers always took batting practice and we had a lot of fun doing that did you ever stop being uh i would be terrified if i were up there and i saw it you know 94 coming at me did you ever stop feeling that sort of worry when you were up there no i don't think i ever thought about it i mean uh i always kind of looked for the fastball as a hitter and uh you know if they threw a breaking ball i was dead oh and so if you didn't go up there feeling like uh your life was in was in danger every time someone let go of the ball no i never considered that were you a good hitter when you were um growing up were you always a great hitter as a little leaguer and and in high school i would i would say uh not a great hitter

so when you're on the mound, when you're the pitcher, and the opposing pitcher comes up to the plate, what are you thinking of as far as how you pitch him, how you go after him? And do you think it was any different than what every other pitcher was thinking in that situation? Well, obviously there's better hitting pitchers than others. And you would know that. But you felt like that was the easier out of the inning, so to speak, and you attacked them. You attacked them because you didn't think they were going to do anything to you. Was it really as simple as just going right at them? I mean, did you think about hitting corners at all?

Did you think about mixing up your pitches? I thought about hitting corners with strike one, so to speak uh you know you get ahead of somebody then you're then you're trying to make a pitch and trying to make them chase or whatever do you remember giving up a bunch of home runs that year to pitchers or are we picking up really i uh i i think jerry kuzman hit one off me uh he did. Yeah, he did. You have to tell me who else. I don't remember offhand. I mean, my God, you're talking, is that 50 years ago or 40 years ago? I don't know.

Somewhere in between. Yeah. Yeah, I imagine it was a little bit different because in the 60s, pitchers were actually better hitters than they are now. So I don't know if it was that much different or if you guys still basically looked at the pitcher on the other side and said that should be an easy out. I think that's the way I approach it. You gave up home runs that year to Mudcat Grant, Larry Jaster, Jim Maloney, Phil Necro, and then Jerry Kuzman tied a game against you with a solo shot.

Okay. So I guess it wasn't that memorable. I didn't know that. Yeah. I always wondered mainly, I mean, we wanted to call mainly because I wondered if there was any particular, I don't know, if guys got on you, if your manager got on you, if you gave up a home run to the pitcher, if it was extra memorable, if it was any different than giving one up to any other hitter.

I would say no. They probably were thinking, how do you let that jerk hit one out, you know? Yeah. You know, I like to throw strikes. And, I mean mean if they uh guessed right and i put it where they were looking uh you know they're gonna hit it yeah and can i ask you one more in 1968 you know there were 3.43 runs per game scored in the national league and then just two years later there were 4.52 runs scored so you, you know, over a run per game, more scored per year,

just in that two-year span. And you were pitching in the NL in both of those years. So what was the difference, you know, with your approach, at least? I mean, did you just feel like you really could just lay it in there when offense was down across the league? Did it change how you went about your job? No, I don't think it did. I mean, it's just like pitching in Wrigley Field. I didn't alter the way I pitched. Wrigley Field was a great place to pitch when the wind was blowing in, and it wasn't so much fun when the wind was blowing out. Right.

And, I mean, the strike zone was changing dramatically a lot. They were, you know, expanding it or making it smaller. The mound was lower or higher, and you were a control guy, and you led the league with your walk rate in 1968 so i guess that just made your job easier you didn't have to be quite as precise because maybe there was a bigger target i don't know about that and i just um like i said that's probably why i gave up five home runs to pitchers. I was throwing strikes. Yeah, right. Okay. And then I guess my last question is, did you like your nickname? It didn't bother me.

I'm still called that. Yeah. Are you rooting for the Cubs? Are you still rooting for the Cubs? Of course. Pretty excited right now? Of course. I hope I'm not cursing them.

Yeah. Well, you were signed by the Giants, so I was wondering who you were rooting for in that series. Originally, yeah, but I mean, I like the Giants. I mean, that was my childhood team when they were in New York, and I was fortunate enough to sign with them, and I do root for them, but my heart is with the Cubs and not the Giants. Well, you put in some time with some bad Cubs teams, although some of your Cubs teams were actually really good.

That 69 club is one of the harder seasons for a Cubs fan, too. I imagine that that would have been one that, if you met a Cubs fan 20 years later and he found out you were on the 1969 team, it probably flashes back to the Miracle Mets. Probably does for most people. I mean, you've got to remember something that in 68, we were formidable. And in 69, I really think we had the best team. And, you know, Cub fans had been starving for a number of years for any kind of an appearance in, you know, in the after season, so to speak. And, you know, we were a big deal in Chicago in 69. And you were a huge part of that team. That was your best year.

And by the, you know, advanced stats that we have today, they say that you were the third most valuable pitcher in the National League that year. But but even by, you know, the contemporary stats, I mean, you pitched 300 innings, you won 20 games, you had a ERA under two and a half. How did you not make an all star team that that year? It seems like you really should have. Well, the story was that I believe, and I'm not sure I'm absolutely correct on this, but the story was that the opposing managers or the various managers in the league picked the pitchers. And my understanding that year was that I had the same number of votes as a couple other guys. And I think Jenkins did, too. And I think neither one of us were picked because like a straw poll or something.

I don't remember exactly what happened. I have to say this. There was a guy by the name of Tommy McDonald. He played for the Eagles back in the old days. And he was an artist and he painted pictures of guys that made the all-star team and i still have that picture so i was on there but i lost out in a straw vote or so of some type of thing you'd have to do a little homework on that we might have all the stats and information on that. Yeah, we might have to call Tommy McDonald next.

There you go. There you go. All right. Well, Bill, thank you very much for your time. And if we ever find another record that's a little bit more fun to tell you about. Okay. Well, you can look up my strikeout record, too. How's that?

Okay. Thanks, Bill. Thank you. Okay,, too. How's that? Okay. Thanks, Bill. Thank you. Okay, guys. Bye. See you. Okay, so that worked out well. We mentioned Ned Garver earlier in this episode, our first pitcher cold call.

Bill Hands was our second. So thank you to Bill for playing along. So we'll leave it there. Right. Okay, you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have already done so Kerry Breen, William123 Alex Farron, Jonathan Arkless

and Thomas Gifford. As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode I'll be sending out the information about Friday's Patreon supporter simulcast in the next day or so so keep an eye out for that. You can buy our book The Only Rules It Has To Work our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team go to the website at theonlyrulesithastowork.com for more information. And please consider leaving

us a review on Amazon and Goodreads if you like it. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. You can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. You can email me and Sam at podcast at baseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon. I know we didn't get too much playoff talk today. If you want some of that, Michael Bauman and I did a bunch on an episode of the Ringer MLB show earlier this week, so you can check that out. And Sam and I will talk to you soon. the sky and across the water water and

across the sky