Changes: Episode 1847: We Want a Catcher, Not a Belly-Scratcher

Revision as of 13:54, 17 May 2022

Summary

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Josh Naylor's record eight RBI after the eighth inning and the hot-hitting Guardians, José Ramírez taking a hometown discount to stay in Cleveland, Rangers manager Chris Woodward's seemingly misinterpreted joke about Yankee Stadium, the perils of interpreting text-only quotes, Mets hitting coach Eric Chávez's theory about MLB selectively juicing the ball, another way in which life is getting harder for hitters, Josh VanMeter's nightmare inning as an emergency catcher for the Pirates, and Rays pitcher Calvin Faucher's rude welcome in the majors, plus a Stat Blast (1:14:26) about Sean Hjelle, Tyler Rogers, and the greatest disparities in consecutive pitchers' release points, a note about a Bill Veeck plan to sign a "giant" hitter, and a few followups.

Topics

Josh Naylor's late-game RBI record, and the Guardians' offense
José Ramírez accepting a below-market contract extension to stay in Cleveland
Rangers manager Chris Woodward's misinterpreted joke about cheap home runs in Yankee Stadium, and the dangers of quotes taken out of context
Mets coach Eric Chávez's belief that MLB is selectively juicing balls
A new way of attacking hitters
Josh VanMeter's terrible eighth inning as an emergency backup catcher
Calvin Faucher's no good very bad debut
Highest single-game total win probability added
Sean Hjelle, Tyler Rogers, and the largest distance between consecutive pitcher release points
Assorted follow-ups on previous episodes

Email Questions

Joe: I was watching highlights of Josh Naylor's remarkable comeback heroics on May 9th, wherein with two home runs in late/extra innings, he lifted the Guardians win probability from 4%-39% then again from 32-89% for a total of 92% WPA . This has me wondering, with late game bombs and zombie runners wildly swinging win probabilities back and forth, could a player end up having more than 100% win probability added in a game? Say for instance the White Sox managed to tie the game up again, then in the top of the next inning Josh Naylor came up and hit another 3-4 run homer. Have there ever been >100% WPA performances in the past?

Evan: Is there any way to Stat Blast this? This absolutely has to be the greatest disparity between release points for consecutive pitchers.

Stat Blast

Highest single-game total win probability added

A StatHead query shows the leader is Art Shamsky, who added 1.503 total WPA on August 12, 1966 with three home runs. It was a losing effort. This was covered in Episode 468.
Josh Naylor's performance ranks him 195th among batters. It's the highest single-game WPA since Jed Lowry, who had a total WPA of 94.8% on July 16, 2021.

Largest disparity in consecutive pitcher release points

Sean Hjelle (pronounced "jelly") is listed as 6-foot-11, although he claims to be (and has been measured at) 6'11½", which would make him the tallest major leaguer ever.
He was relieved by Tyler Rogers, a submarine pitcher. Is this the largest disparity in release points of consecutive pitchers?
Release point data is available only as far back as 2008.
Although Hjelle is the tallest pitcher, he does not have the highest release point because his arm slot is roughly ¾, rather than over the top. The average pitcher is 6'2½", but although Hjelle is nine inches taller than the average pitcher, his release point is only six inches higher than average. The difference shrinks when you remove sidearmers and submariners from the average. Hjelle's release point is only 70th highest in MLB this year.
Tyler Rogers does have the lowest release point this year, at 1.37 feet.
Ben and Lucas Apostoleris had to use the Pythagorean theorem to calculate release point distances, since there is a change in both the horizontal and vertical axes.
For pitchers of the same handedness, the largest difference was when Hideki Okajima was relieved by Javier Lopez, on April 12, 2009, with a difference of 6.5 feet.
Hjelle/Taylor ranks 15th, with a distance of 5.6 feet.
One name is all over this leader board: It's Chad Bradford, who was an extreme submarine pitcher, with his hand occasionally scraping the ground.
Tyler Rogers appears on the leader board a few times, some ahead of Hjelle. He followed Dany Jiminez for a distance of 5.8 feet.
For opposite-handed pitchers, the largest distance was 10 feet, accomplished by Alberto Castillo and Kam Mickolio on August 22, 2008.
Bill Veeck looked to hire an 8-foot giant to complement Eddie Gaedel. Ben doesn't think an 8-foot player would be any problem for a pitcher. What made Gaedel so hard to pitch to was that his strike zone was tiny. The giant's strike zone would be huge.

Notes

Josh Naylor's late-game RBIs record

On May 9, Josh Naylor hit an RBI double in the eight, a game-tying grand slam in the ninth, and a game-winning three-run homer in the 11th, for a record 8 RBI in late innings.
The Guardians have the third-best offense in MLB by wRC+.

José Ramírez's contract

José Ramírez gladly accepted a $150 million contract extension with the Guardians, rejecting the advice of his agent. Some estimate he could have made $200 million on the open market. Ramírez expressed his desire to enter the Hall of Fame as a single-team player, and the extra money means little to him.
Meg suspects that Ramírez would not have accepted anything, and that he had a personal lower limit. She says that Ramírez is welcome to consider non-monetary factors when choosing a contract, as long as it doesn't depress the market and set a bad comp for future players.
Meg: "I never want there to be another deal for us to have as a comp, but I feel bad that we bring him up all the time, but we want to stay away from Ozzie Albies territory." In 2019, Albies signed a terrible contract extension with Atlanta (many articles linked below).
Ben figures the players union was not too pleased to hear about this.

Chris Woodward's misinterpreted joke

Rangers manager Chris Woodward said, referring to Gleyber Torres's walk-off home run in Yankee Stadium, "That's an easy out in 99 percent of ballparks. He just happened to hit it in a Little League ballpark to right field."
Yankees manager Aaron Boone replied (in a "How can you not be pedantic about baseball?" moment) that Woodward's math doesn't make sense "Because there are only 30 ballparks."
StatCast says it would have been a home run in 26 ballparks.
Woodward later said that he was joking. Levi Weaver, who covers the Rangers for The Athletic, recognized Woodward's wry humor.
Ben notes that this failed joke will follow Woodward on his future trips to New York.
Meg suggests that Yankees fans could chill out a bit, seeing as they are well atop the leaderboard. "Save your sass for when you are only a game up."
Ben and Meg note the dangers of reporting quotes in text form, since the tone of voice doesn't carry through. They are relieved that, aside from NoContextEWPod, their words are rarely taken out of context.

Eric Chávez's conspiracy theory

Ben notes that the Mets "lead the league in conspiracy theories about the baseball." Previously, Pete Alonso believed that MLB chooses between juiced and dead balls depending on whether more pitchers or hitters are reaching free agency, to depress their value.
Hitting coach Eric Chávez says that some players have told him that MLB uses juiced balls for nationally-broadcast games. Chávez claims to have confirmed this by personal observation.
Ben doubts this theory holds water, in part because he doesn't believe MLB has its act together enough to pull it off. Meg is also skeptical.
Ben notes that if MLB wanted more offense, "wouldn't they just build the whole plane out of the juiced ball?"

A new way of attacking hitters

FanGraphs interviewed White Sox analytics coordinator Shelley Duncan, who explained that teams are now studying hitters' "swing profiles". Hitters meanwhile adapt their swings depending on which pitcher they are facing.
Ben notes that these types of advances tend to help pitchers more than they do hitters. Ben says that it's harder for a hitter to swing "higher than normal" at a pitch, since your training has always been to try to swing at the pitch.

Josh VanMeter's catching adventure

Pirates catcher Roberto Perez had to leave the game due to injury, and their backup catcher Andrew Knapp had already been ejected for arguing balls and strikes from the bench. Second baseman Josh VanMeter had to suit up and catch the eight inning. He had not played catcher since he was 14 years old. The Reds scored seven runs that inning.
Ben notes that the pitchers became less effective when VanMeter was catching. He suspects they didn't have confidence in the new catcher and ended up losing command.
Ben and Meg express great admiration for VanMeter going into the game at all. They suspect they wouldn't be able to catch in the major leagues without soiling their underwear or suffering major injury.
Ben and Meg discuss whether they would be more likely to catch a fastball or a breaking ball.
Ben thinks he would be able to track the fastball. Meg thinks that even breaking balls are moving so fast, it wouldn't matter. She'd be chasing everything to the backstop.
Meg thinks VanMeter should get an award for just doing it at all.
Russell Carleton wrote an article (linked below) on emergency catchers and concluded that they would cost their team 50 runs over a full season. After watching VanMeter's performance, Meg thinks Russell was being too generous. She thinks a bunch of regular catchers may have been included in the query by mistake, and that a lot of the cases of emergency catchers were in blowout games where the opponents weren't trying very hard.

Calvin Faucher's no good very bad debut

Calvin Faucher had a disastrous debut. He came in relief in the seventh inning, gave up two singles and a walk to load the bases, and then had to face Mike Trout with Shohei Ohtani on deck. He walked Trout and then gave up a grand slam to Ohtani, Ohtani's career first.
Ben would still rather be in Faucher's situation than VanMeter's.

End-of-episode notes

Alex Pavlovic tweeted that Gabe Kapler intentionally followed Hjelle with Rogers to create maximum discomfort. Unfortunately, the pitching change occurred between innings.
Episode 1843 follow-up: A listener gave stirrup socks as a baseball skeumorph. Stirrup-style socks were originally created because players believed that the dye in socks were a health hazard.
Episode 1846 follow-up: A previous pedantic corner said that the chyron "pitches this at-bat" should be "pitches this plate appearance". But really, it shouldn't even say that, because it's not a plate appearance until the batter is put out or reaches base. If the inning ends with (say) a pickoff, then there is no plate appearance. One listener suggested, "Pitches seen since batter began facing pitcher this time through the order."
Episode 1845 follow-up: Max Scherzer's streak of "teams winning games he started" ended at 18.
Episode 1846 follow-up: Ben rejects calls that he should have ended the episode with "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?". He maintains that Olaf is an abomination. Frosty the Snowman is okay, "but Olaf is in a class of his own."

@@ Line 19: / Line 19: @@
 | outro=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mI3Jhy-W1s The Mother Hips, "Emergency Exit"]
-}}{{#vardefine:downloadlink|https://media.blubrry.com/effectively_wild/s/cdn-podcasts.fangraphs.com/EffectivelyWildEpisode1847a.mp3}}{{IncompleteNotice}}
+}}{{#vardefine:downloadlink|https://media.blubrry.com/effectively_wild/s/cdn-podcasts.fangraphs.com/EffectivelyWildEpisode1847a.mp3}}
 ==Summary==
 ''Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about [[Josh Naylor]]'s record eight RBI after the eighth inning and the hot-hitting Guardians, [[José Ramírez]] taking a hometown discount to stay in Cleveland, Rangers manager [[Chris Woodward]]'s seemingly misinterpreted joke about Yankee Stadium, the perils of interpreting text-only quotes, Mets hitting coach [[Eric Chávez]]'s theory about MLB selectively juicing the ball, another way in which life is getting harder for hitters, [[Josh VanMeter]]'s nightmare inning as an emergency catcher for the Pirates, and Rays pitcher [[Calvin Faucher]]'s rude welcome in the majors, plus a Stat Blast ({{tcl|tc=1:14:26}}) about [[Sean Hjelle]], [[Tyler Rogers]], and the greatest disparities in consecutive pitchers' release points, a note about a [[Bill Veeck]] plan to sign a "giant" hitter, and a few followups.''
 ==Topics==
+* [[Josh Naylor]]'s late-game RBI record, and the Guardians' offense
-* {List or summarize the main topics, noting prominently mentioned players or teams and making internal wiki links to them (even if those pages have not been created yet).}
+* [[José Ramírez]] accepting a below-market contract extension to stay in Cleveland
+* Rangers manager [[Chris Woodward]]'s misinterpreted joke about cheap home runs in Yankee Stadium, and the dangers of quotes taken out of context
-==Banter==
+* Mets coach [[Eric Chávez]]'s belief that MLB is selectively juicing balls
-* {- If applicable. For banter, note prominent teams and players, and make internal links for them.
+* A new way of attacking hitters
-- Links and mentions do NOT have to be made for players and teams mentioned in passing.}
+* [[Josh VanMeter]]'s terrible eighth inning as an emergency backup catcher
+* [[Calvin Faucher]]'s no good very bad debut
+* Highest single-game total win probability added
+* [[Sean Hjelle]], [[Tyler Rogers]], and the largest distance between consecutive pitcher release points
+* Assorted follow-ups on previous episodes
 ==Email Questions==
+* Joe: I was watching highlights of Josh Naylor's remarkable comeback heroics on May 9th, wherein with two home runs in late/extra innings, he lifted the Guardians win probability from 4%-39% then again from 32-89% for a total of 92% WPA . This has me wondering, with late game bombs and zombie runners wildly swinging win probabilities back and forth, could a player end up having more than 100% win probability added in a game? Say for instance the White Sox managed to tie the game up again, then in the top of the next inning Josh Naylor came up and hit another 3-4 run homer. Have there ever been >100% WPA performances in the past?
-* {For EMAIL episodes: copy the question and who asked it from the [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-8lpspHQuR5GK7S_nNtGunLGrx60QnSa8XLG_wvRb4Q/edit#gid=0 question database], and link prominent teams and players.}
+* Evan: Is there any way to Stat Blast [https://twitter.com/extrabaggs/status/1522796082970783744 this]? This absolutely has to be the greatest disparity between release points for consecutive pitchers.
 ==Stat Blast==
+'''Highest single-game total win probability added'''
-* {For STAT BLAST segment: transcribe the scenario that the host is trying to answer (you do NOT have to transcribe the method used within the Stat Blast, but note its findings and any other pertinent info.)}
+* A StatHead query shows the leader is [[Art Shamsky]], who added 1.503 total WPA on August 12, 1966 with three home runs. It was a losing effort. This was covered in [[Episode 468: Questions of a Questionable Nature|Episode 468]].
+* [[Josh Naylor]]'s performance ranks him 195th among batters. It's the highest single-game WPA since [[Jed Lowry]], who had a total WPA of 94.8% on July 16, 2021.
+'''Largest disparity in consecutive pitcher release points'''
+* [[Sean Hjelle]] (pronounced "jelly") is listed as 6-foot-11, although he claims to be (and has been measured at) 6'11&frac12;", which would make him the tallest major leaguer ever.
+* He was relieved by [[Tyler Rogers]], a submarine pitcher. Is this the largest disparity in release points of consecutive pitchers?
+* Release point data is available only as far back as 2008.
+* Although Hjelle is the tallest pitcher, he does not have the highest release point because his arm slot is roughly &frac34;, rather than over the top. The average pitcher is 6'2&frac12;", but although Hjelle is nine inches taller than the average pitcher, his release point is only six inches higher than average. The difference shrinks when you remove sidearmers and submariners from the average. Hjelle's release point is only 70th highest in MLB this year.
+* Tyler Rogers does have the lowest release point this year, at 1.37 feet.
+* Ben and Lucas Apostoleris had to use the Pythagorean theorem to calculate release point distances, since there is a change in both the horizontal and vertical axes.
+* For pitchers of the same handedness, the largest difference was when [[Hideki Okajima]] was relieved by [[Javier Lopez]], on April 12, 2009, with a difference of 6.5 feet.
+* Hjelle/Taylor ranks 15th, with a distance of 5.6 feet.
+* One name is all over this leader board: It's [[Chad Bradford]], who was an extreme submarine pitcher, with his hand occasionally scraping the ground.
+* Tyler Rogers appears on the leader board a few times, some ahead of Hjelle. He followed [[Dany Jiminez]] for a distance of 5.8 feet.
+* For opposite-handed pitchers, the largest distance was 10 feet, accomplished by [[Alberto Castillo]] and [[Kam Mickolio]] on August 22, 2008.
+* [[Bill Veeck]] looked to hire an 8-foot giant to complement [[Eddie Gaedel]]. Ben doesn't think an 8-foot player would be any problem for a pitcher. What made Gaedel so hard to pitch to was that his strike zone was tiny. The giant's strike zone would be huge.
 ==Notes==
+'''Josh Naylor's late-game RBIs record'''
-* {List noteworthy tangents, quotes, highlights, miscellany not covered above.}
+* On May 9, [[Josh Naylor]] hit an RBI double in the eight, a game-tying grand slam in the ninth, and a game-winning three-run homer in the 11th, for a record 8 RBI in late innings.
+* The Guardians have the third-best offense in MLB by wRC+.
+'''José Ramírez's contract'''
+* [[José Ramírez]] gladly accepted a $150 million contract extension with the Guardians, rejecting the advice of his agent. Some estimate he could have made $200 million on the open market. Ramírez expressed his desire to enter the Hall of Fame as a single-team player, and the extra money means little to him.
+* Meg suspects that Ramírez would not have accepted ''anything'', and that he had a personal lower limit. She says that Ramírez is welcome to consider [[Avocado Factor|non-monetary factors]]  when choosing a contract, as long as it doesn't depress the market and set a bad comp for future players.
+* Meg: "I never want there to be another deal for us to have as a comp, but I feel bad that we bring him up all the time, but we want to stay away from [[Ozzie Albies]] territory." In 2019, Albies signed a terrible contract extension with Atlanta (many articles linked below).
+* Ben figures the players union was not too pleased to hear about this.
+'''Chris Woodward's misinterpreted joke'''
+* Rangers manager [[Chris Woodward]] said, referring to [[Gleyber Torres]]'s walk-off home run in Yankee Stadium, "That's an easy out in 99 percent of ballparks. He just happened to hit it in a Little League ballpark to right field."
+* Yankees manager [[Aaron Boone]] replied (in a "How can you not be pedantic about baseball?" moment) that Woodward's math doesn't make sense "Because there are only 30 ballparks."
+* StatCast says it would have been a home run in 26 ballparks.
+* Woodward later said that he was joking. Levi Weaver, who covers the Rangers for ''The Athletic'', recognized Woodward's wry humor.
+* Ben notes that this failed joke will follow Woodward on his future trips to New York.
+* Meg suggests that Yankees fans could chill out a bit, seeing as they are well atop the leaderboard. "Save your sass for when you are only a game up."
+* Ben and Meg note the dangers of reporting quotes in text form, since the tone of voice doesn't carry through. They are relieved that, aside from [https://twitter.com/nocontextewpod NoContextEWPod], their words are rarely taken out of context.
+'''Eric Chávez's conspiracy theory'''
+* Ben notes that the Mets "lead the league in conspiracy theories about the baseball." Previously, [[Pete Alonso]] believed that MLB chooses between juiced and dead balls depending on whether more pitchers or hitters are reaching free agency, to depress their value.
+* Hitting coach [[Eric Chávez]] says that some players have told him that MLB uses juiced balls for nationally-broadcast games. Chávez claims to have confirmed this by personal observation.
+* Ben doubts this theory holds water, in part because he doesn't believe MLB has its act together enough to pull it off. Meg is also skeptical.
+* Ben notes that if MLB wanted more offense, "wouldn't they just build the whole plane out of the juiced ball?"
+'''A new way of attacking hitters'''
+* FanGraphs interviewed White Sox analytics coordinator [[Shelley Duncan]], who explained that teams are now studying hitters' "swing profiles". Hitters meanwhile adapt their swings depending on which pitcher they are facing.
+* Ben notes that these types of advances tend to help pitchers more than they do hitters. Ben says that it's harder for a hitter to swing "higher than normal" at a pitch, since your training has always been to try to swing ''at'' the pitch.
+'''Josh VanMeter's catching adventure'''
+* Pirates catcher [[Roberto Perez]] had to leave the game due to injury, and their backup catcher [[Andrew Knapp]] had already been ejected for arguing balls and strikes from the bench. Second baseman [[Josh VanMeter]] had to suit up and catch the eight inning. He had not played catcher since he was 14 years old. The Reds scored seven runs that inning.
+* Ben notes that the pitchers became less effective when VanMeter was catching. He suspects they didn't have confidence in the new catcher and ended up losing command.
+* Ben and Meg express great admiration for VanMeter going into the game at all. They suspect they wouldn't be able to catch in the major leagues without soiling their underwear or suffering major injury.
+* Ben and Meg discuss whether they would be more likely to catch a fastball or a breaking ball.
+* Ben thinks he would be able to track the fastball. Meg thinks that even breaking balls are moving so fast, it wouldn't matter. She'd be chasing everything to the backstop.
+* Meg thinks VanMeter should get an award for just doing it at all.
+* Russell Carleton wrote an article (linked below) on emergency catchers and concluded that they would cost their team 50 runs over a full season. After watching VanMeter's performance, Meg thinks Russell was being too generous. She thinks a bunch of regular catchers may have been included in the query by mistake, and that a lot of the cases of emergency catchers were in blowout games where the opponents weren't trying very hard.
+'''Calvin Faucher's no good very bad debut'''
+* [[Calvin Faucher]] had a disastrous debut. He came in relief in the seventh inning, gave up two singles and a walk to load the bases, and then had to face [[Mike Trout]] with [[Shohei Ohtani]] on deck. He walked Trout and then gave up a grand slam to Ohtani, Ohtani's career first.
+* Ben would still rather be in Faucher's situation than VanMeter's.
+'''End-of-episode notes'''
+* [https://twitter.com/PavlovicNBCS Alex Pavlovic] tweeted that [[Gabe Kapler]] intentionally followed Hjelle with Rogers to create maximum discomfort. Unfortunately, the pitching change occurred between innings.
+* [[Episode 1843: I Think You Should Leave|Episode 1843]] follow-up: A listener gave stirrup socks as a baseball skeumorph. Stirrup-style socks were originally created because players believed that the dye in socks were a health hazard.
+* [[Episode 1846: One-Night Standings|Episode 1846]] follow-up: A previous pedantic corner said that the chyron "pitches this at-bat" should be "pitches this plate appearance". But really, it shouldn't even say that, because it's not a plate appearance until the batter is put out or reaches base. If the inning ends with (say) a pickoff, then there is no plate appearance. One listener suggested, "Pitches seen since batter began facing pitcher this time through the order."
+* [[Episode 1845: Bang Bang, Maxwell's Sunday Homers|Episode 1845]] follow-up: [[Max Scherzer]]'s streak of "teams winning games he started" ended at 18.
+* [[Episode 1846: One-Night Standings|Episode 1846]] follow-up: Ben rejects calls that he should have ended the episode with "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?". He maintains that Olaf is an abomination. Frosty the Snowman is okay, "but Olaf is in a class of his own."
 ==Links==
@@ Line 76: / Line 147: @@
 *[https://www.newspapers.com/clip/101297707/telegraph-forum/ Link to Bill Veeck "giant" idea]
 [[Category:Episodes]]
-[[Category:Incomplete Episode Page]]
+[[Category:Email Episodes]]
 [[Category:Ben Lindbergh Episodes]]
 [[Category:Meg Rowley Episodes]]