Episode 1251: A Giant of the Game

Date

August 2, 2018

Summary

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about a hiking analogy, the Nationals jettisoning relievers Brandon Kintzler and Shawn Kelley, and the no-longer-so-unhittable Justin Miller, then answer listener emails about Joey Gallo’s zero sac flies, Andrew Romine, red lights, and 3-0 swings, the ideal baseball height, the value of a roster spot, where to draw the line when covering players having horrible seasons, a pitcher who always allows a run per inning, why defenders sometimes reposition themselves with two strikes, the diminishing returns of adding relievers, and teams scoring (and out-scoring their opponent) in every inning of a game, plus Stat Blasts about teams with the most and fewest major-league debuts and the historic state of league-wide shortstop offense.

Topics

Joey Gallo
Slowest possible strike
3 - 0 Red light
Ideal hight
Mike Petriello
A one run pitcher
Kicking a guy when hes down
Positioning on a shift
Too many relievers
Scoring in every game

Intro

Joel Plaskett Emergency, "Red Light"

Outro

Sloan, "Keep Swinging (Downtown)"

Banter

Hiking
Brandon Kintzler
Shawn Kelley
Justin Miller

Email Questions

Joseph (Patreon): Evan Grant just pointed out that Joey Gallo has never had a sacrifice fly (at least according to baseball reference). While seemingly impossible, there has to be a stat blast lurking about a fly ball power hitter who hasn’t had a sac fly in over 1,000 plate appearances. Explanations? Dumb luck plus lots of Ks?
Mike: Why does Andrew Romine have a red light on a 3-0 pitch against Garret Cole? I understand why, under conventional logic - its because he is a terrible hitter and he has a better chance as a broomstick than he does as a swinger. But on a 3-0 count against Garret Cole, everybody knows he is getting a fastball right down the pipes. Isn't that, in some senses, an ideal time to swing? It's the best prediction he has at the pitch he is about to get. So if he makes contact, it's likely to be the best type of contact he could make. If he whiffs or fouls, it's no worse than not swinging at all. And, maybe more importantly, if he swings 3-0 every now and then, won't that make it somewhat more likely that one day when he doesn't swing, someone tries an offspeed out of the zone on him?
CJ (Patreon, and inventor of Vroom-Vroom Guy): What is the ideal height for a baseball player? I don't mean who's better between Jose Altuve and Aaron Judge. I mean, like, two feet? 10 feet? 40 feet? Baseball was obviously developed with normal human proportions in mind, but is that the limit? Would a 15-foot player be able to generate enough effortless power to make up for his enormous strike zone? Would a 400 foot player's baserunning be enough to offset that a slide into second would probably kill 2,700 people in the left field stands? Another way to ask this: what would be the best height for Mike Trout to be, assuming all his skills remained intact?
Scott: MLB's Mike Petriello accidentally tweeted out an Effectively Wild email question. How many wins is an extra roster spot worth to a contending team over two months of the season?
Matthew (Patreon): Piggybacking off a Mike Petriello joke. If roster spots were actually tradeable commodities, what kind of value would teams place on them? What type of team would trade/trade for such spots? Thanks again for all that you guys do!
Aaron: I have been inspired by some recent conversations about the value of consistency, even if that consistency is mediocre. I wandered how bad a pitcher could be if he were consistently bad. So I am giving it a crack. I was highly entertained by the listener who coined the name Vroom-Vroom, so I will name my guy too. Let's call him The Sieve. The Sieve can be used for up to one inning per game and he will always give up exactly one run in that inning. Under normal circumstances a pitcher who gives up a run an inning isn't staying in the big leagues long, but if he could be counted on to just give up one run in any inning, he could be incredibly valuable in 2 or 3 run save situations. Could this player make a big league roster, and if so - how many runs would a team need to be leading by to deploy The Sieve in the 7th, or 8th inning of a game. If you think that most closers will succeed in a 2-run save spot at a rate that would make the Sieve unfit for a roster spot, could his spot on the team be saved if he could be deployed for any number of innings - then teams could guarantee a win anytime they build a lead that exceeds the number of remaining innings. Given that teams often win games when they have sizable leads, how many wins do you think the Sieve is worth - I presume traditional WAR standards won't play here since he will obviously be below replacement level by those standards.
J. Keith (LA): On today's Angels broadcast, one announcer (Victor Rojas?) remarked that with catcher Francisco Arcia making his MLB debut, the Angels have now used 51 (I think he said) players this season, with 10 of them making their MLB debuts. "That's crazy," said the other announcer (Mark Gubicza?). That was the extent of the discussion. So... How crazy is this? What numbers or stories can you provide that put this in perspective?
Dunigan: Jeff Pearlman wrote an article at the Athletic about how bad of a season Chris Davis is having. He took some heat in the comments section about how the article may have mean spirited. My question is hypothetically how bad does Chris Davis have to be before journalist stop writing about him completely? At some point he would be so bad there would probably be an increase in how much people write about him, but at a certain point it would be too ugly. Would this happen at a .100 BA? .050? −10 WAR? As a writer how do you balance doing your job versus not kicking a player while he's down?
Bill: Can you explain why defenses sometimes make changes to the shift with two strikes, in particular, why a 3B (who is initially playing where the SS would play) will swap positions in the shift with the SS (who is initially playing roughly where the 2B would play)?
Dunigan: With the Yankees adding to their already stacked bullpen by trading for Britton, I'm wondering at what point it no longer makes to pay market price for reliever at the deadline. I assume the value of adding one good reliever to the bullpen decreases as the skill level of the current bullpen goes up. Britton will likely see fewer innings with the yankees since their bullpen is already crowded with good reliever compared to if he would have been traded to a different contender. Due to this he will likely add less value to the Yankees and therefore is worth less to them then a team with a weaker pen. Maybe this trade still makes sense for the Yankees due to the price they paid for the Britton and the value he will bring, but at what point is a bullpen so good that it really doesn't make sense to pony up and trade for another arm? If you have say 4 of the top 15 relievers, does it make any sense to add anyone from a value standpoint? And if you do, would it be wise to spend market value considering likely the value of adding a reliever diminishes the better your bullpen gets - this is almost certainly true if we only consider playoffs where you can run on fewer arms and even use starters in relief. At some point the additional arm is hardly going to be adding any value.
Arjune: Yesterday (July 7), the Diamondsbacks defeated the Padres 20-5. Although that's an uncommon score, what was more interesting to me was that the Diamondbacks outscored the Padres in all but two innings (the fifth, which was 0-0 and the ninth, in which they didn't bat). My question is this: how common is it for a team to beat a team in every single inning of a game?
Bobby: I’m currently watching highlights of yesterday’s Nats-Mets “game”, and in addition to piling on a ridiculous number of runs, the Nats scored in 6 of the 8 innings in which they batted. As a Cubs fan, I vaguely remember them losing a game in the 90s in which one of their rivals managed to score in every inning, and hearing that it was a pretty rare thing. I’ve kept half an eye open for such games ever since and haven’t seen any. (Though I could have missed a lot of them)
- Was it actually the Cubs who had that happen to them, or am I remembering it wrong?
- How rare is it for a team to score a run in every inning in which they bat? Is it unassisted triple play-rare? Perfect game-rare? No-hitter rare?
- Is it more or less likely in the true-outcomes era we’re watching now? I can see arguments in both directions and I’m too lazy to try and set up some kind of a simulation? Ok, I also don’t have the chops to set up a simulation like that, but mostly it’s laziness.

StatBlast

MLB debuts
- An earlier StatBlast covered the most players used per season: 64 by the injury-plagued 2014 Rangers.
- At the time of the remark, the Angels were tied with Orioles with 9 debuts. The most debuts are from the Padres and Mets, with 10 each.
- The 2015 Yankees have had the most debuts in a season with 18.
- 34 teams in major league history have not had a single debut, the 2004 Reds are the most recent.
Shortstop offense
- This season, shortstops have been better than average with a tOPS+ of 102.
- The only other time shortstops have been better than average is 1947, with a tOPS+ of 102.
- Shortstops are having their best offensive season ever.

Notes

“The point is August sucks” - Jeff after trying to make a post trade deadline mountain climbing analogy.
With a runner on third and less than two outs, Joey Gallo is worse than league average (32% vs. 51%) at scoring the runner.
Joey Gallo has the 8th longest streak of games with 1 PA and no sacrifice flies to start a career. Players ahead of him include Jose Uribe (343 games, 1076 PAs), John Shelby (1093 PAs), Steve Sax (303 games, 1258 PAs).
Someone told Jeff that Nathan Eovaldi has not allowed a ground ball to third base. This is nowhere near true.
Episode 1240 follow-up: Andrew Dominijanni from the Hardball Times calculated that the slowest possible pitch for a strike is 27½ MPH. Ben invites listeners to "go do it on a mound somewhere and film it and send it to us."
Andrew Romine playing mind games on 3-0 pitches is a waste of time because nobody is paying any attention to what he does on 3-0.
Mike Trout hasn't swung at a 3-0 pitch since September 2016.
A giant-sized pitcher would be able to place the ball directly in the strike zone since he can reduce the distance to the strike zone to basically zero. A giant-sized batter would be so tall that the pitcher couldn't throw the ball high enough to reach the bottom of the strike zone.
Eduardo Escobar sent out a thank-you tweet to his fans that depicts him as a giant, looming over Target Field. The image was created by a member of the Effectively Wild Facebook group and sent to Escobar via Instagram a year ago, who must have saved it for future use.
Jeff guesses that the value of an extra roster spot is not large because the additional player will by definition be replacement-level. Tom Tango attempted to calculate the value of a roster spot and concluded that it's worth less than a win. Ben notes that the 10-day DL and shuffling relievers to AAA gives teams ways to add a virtual player to their roster already.
Jeff confidently states that The Sieve would never make the majors because nobody would even consider the possibility that he has a secret power. If you knew about The Sieve's powers, then Jeff figures he could be a valuable reliever, but the hard part is recognizing and then trusting in his power.
- Reddit later took up the question twice. Would you take a relief pitcher, in which every inning he appears in, exactly one run is scored? (bring him in when the bases are loaded with no outs, and you escape with only one run allowed), The Value of Predictability; or, Sabermetric Analysis of a Reliever Who Gives Up 1 Run Every Inning (Spoiler: Extremely valuable).
Jeff doesn't think there's a lower boundary for covering an underperforming player, because his numbers will be impossible to ignore. Ben says that journalists would try to report on how the player is dealing with the problem rather than on the slump itself. They need to be gentle in order to preserve access to the player.
Jeff notes that Chris Davis is recovering from his slump. He also observes that Kole Calhoun in May had an OPS of .374, and a wRC+ of 3 (!), but over the past month and a half, his OPS is an amazing 1.018. "What a dumb sport this is!"
Jeff figures that after two strikes, the defense assumes the bunt is off and rearranges their defense accordingly. Ben suspects teams may have count-specific spray charts.