Episode 1907: Where's There a Wills?

Summary[]

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the man who tried to return Roger Maris's 61st home run ball, two Mickey Mantle letters, the 2017 Zac Gallen/Sandy Alcantara trade, how Maury Wills changed (and dominated) basestealing, and Aaron Judge's recent value even when he hasn't hit homers, then answer listener emails (38:15) about hitters setting their own strike zones, Atlanta's extreme day/night winning percentage split, the shift ban and the Stanky rule, which pitchers will suffer from the new pickoff-attempt rules, and immaculate innings that include an automatic strike from the pitch clock (with a digression into "timer" vs. "clock"), followed by a research-intensive Stat Blast (1:05:53) into whether working quickly improves the defense behind a pitcher, and a double Past Blast (1:27:58) from 1907, including an ahead-of-its-time proposal by the eccentric Bob Unglaub.

Topics[]

Sal Durante, the fan who caught Roger Maris's 61th home run ball
Mickey Mantle letter telling a young fan not to be upset that Mantle gets walked so much, but which ends with an odd paragraph about the virtues of democracy.
Mickey Mantle letter telling about a sexual act received beneath the right field bleachers during a game. (The letter was a prank.)
What if the Cardinals had never traded away Zac Gallen and Sandy Alcantara?
Remembering Maury Wills, who passed away at age 89. Wills revitalized base stealing in the 1950's and lapped the league.
Misleading camera angle on Aaron Judge's deep fly ball
Aaron Judge's value even if you ignore the home runs
What if hitters were allowed to choose a custom-shaped strike zone?
Atlanta's extreme winning percentage splits in day games vs night games
Could the shift ban result in players being called for the Stanky Maneuver?
Which pitchers would be most hurt or helped by the new restrictions on pickoffs?
Is it an immaculate inning if one of the strikes was an automatic strike?
Is it a "pitch clock" or a "pitch timer"?
Does the defense improve when a pitcher is working quickly?
Past Blast #1: Chicago Cubs play an exhibition game after their grandstand burns
Past Blast #2: Bob Unglaub's proposal to increase offense by forbidding outfielders from playing deep
Bob Unglaub's mediocre career but colorful personality
Albert Pujols reaching 700 career homers
DraftKings ad promoting things that don't exist any more

Email Questions[]

Arik (Patreon): I have an idea that I've been pondering for a while: once robo-zones are a reality, let's allow the batter to customize their own strike zone! We would set a minimum cross sectional area, and require that it be contiguous (though maybe not? that would be fun, too). I think would this have the benefit of increasing offense, since the batter could customize their strike zone to their own "hot zone." And it would have other benefits as well: zone construction theory would add some new dimension to the game to offset the loss of catcher framing, and it would also render the TV strike zone overlays suddenly more relevant (and more tolerable to this viewer).

For the fans in the ballpark, I doubt there would be much impact, because very few if any are in a position to tell whether a pitch is a strike or not currently anyway. Implementation would be technically simple... as long as you have the batter correctly identified it would all be computerized, sending the custom zone to the robo-umps and the TV broadcast's computers. Communication of the zone to the pitcher would be a more interesting technical challenge, but nothing insurmountable IMO.

Sam: I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is something you guys have covered in the past, but I was perplexed after Atlanta’s loss to the Nationals earlier this afternoon when I found that, despite their 93-56 record, the Braves are only 22-26 in day games!

This feels like small enough of a sample to be at least partly just some randomness — and I haven't checked how many of those day games were in the first month of the season, when the Braves were closer to a .500 team — but I'm curious how normal these kind of day/night game splits are? And can you think of any reason why a team could be better at night than during the day?

The only thing I can think of would be a West coast team traveling East, then having to play at what feels like 10am, but that of course doesn’t seem like it can be relevant here... though now I’m curious if anybody has done such an analysis to see if there is such a bias against West Coast teams in day/night splits?

Chris: A possible upside of banning the shift: could the banning of the shift lead to teams being called for violating the Stanky rule? Teams would have to have players in prescribed spots when the pitcher starts the windup, but then a team has its players try to move quickly to a new, more advantageous position as the pitcher goes through his delivery. An umpire could say that these sudden moves are distracting to the hitter and call a ball. Any hope that the Stanky rule could have a new generation of violators?

Andrew (Patreon): I have enjoyed the discussions on rule changes, and somewhat selfishly as a fan view them through the lens of "what players does this help or hurt?" I have seen a fair bit of discussion on the shift ban and how Joey Gallo and Corey Seager might benefit. I’ve also seen discussion of fast guys who can get more SB with the bigger bases and pickoff limit benefitting a lot.

One I haven't seen discussed that I'm puzzling over: which pitchers will be helped or hurt most by the pickoff limit? Would a person who is great at pickoffs be robbed of a key tool to get outs or at least prevent stolen bases and running starts? Or will pitchers who are terrible at holding runners be more hurt because runners can run rampant without the mitigating effect of frequent pickoffs? Or is this all a negligible effect for pitchers?

Tyler (Patreon): With the addition of the pitch clock in 2023, I feel like Effectively Wild should get out in front of a potential scenario and clarify it before it potentially occurs.

An immaculate inning is a nine pitches, nine strikes, three outs. However, if next year a batter gets an automatic strike penalty from the pitch clock, he could in theory strike out on two pitches. Meaning a pitcher could throw eight pitches and still get nine strikes and three outs.

Is this more impressive even though the pitcher threw fewer strikes? Is this less impressive through no fault of the pitcher? Should this inning be called immaculate or should it have some other name?

Jon: In the new (to me?) Draft Kings commercial it opens with a dudebro saying that baseball is dead? Nah. Then he goes on to say pitchers are hitting grand slams....but as you know, pitchers don’t hit anymore. What are they talking about?

Noah: In a DraftKings ad on MLB.tv, the spokesperson says "baseball is dead? We have pitchers hitting grand slams, 4 man outfields, [something about odds that I didn't catch], and it's about to get so much better!". But those things either no longer happen, or won't starting next year. So what gives? Am I to believe an ad that says baseball is getting better with those things going away is going to get better with betting? I sure don't think so.

Stat Blast[]

How many pitchers would be affected by the pitch clock?

Baseball Savant prominently calls out on its Pitch Tempo page that the Pitch Tempo is pitch-to-pitch time, but the MLB pitch timer doesn't start until the pitcher receives the ball from the catcher, about 6 seconds later.
Baseball Savant has a "Timer equivalent" column which subtracts 6 seconds from the Pitch Tempo.
Ben looks at the 188 pitchers who have thrown 500+ pitches.
Only 10 of these pitchers are at or over the 15-second bases-empty limit. Shohei Ohtani is among them, but Ben is not worried.
16 of the pitchers are at or over the 20-second bases-occupied limit.

Does a fast-working pitcher improve the defense?

Ben investigates the long-held belief that a fast-working pitcher improves the defense.
Ben studied this question in 2017 and found no correlation. He's undertaking it anew now that we have StatCast data that breaks down defense by pitcher, controlling for overall team defense to produce an "expected runs prevented", and compared it to the actual results.
He found a correlation of 0.03 between pitcher tempo and change in defense quality. Basically, there's still nothing.
Ben thinks that maybe fielders just prefer a fast-working pitcher because they aren't spending time standing around.
Meg thinks that fielders say that they perform better behind a fast-working pitcher not because the pitcher is working quickly but because the pitcher is working at a consistent speed. This reduces anxiety over when to be prepared for the next pitch.

Notes[]

Meg has mostly recovered from her cold in Episode 1906, but has a lingering cough. She struggles to stifle it during the podcast.
Sal Durante offered the home run ball to Roger Maris, who told him to sell the ball, confident that the person who buys it will eventually give it to Maris. Which is exactly what happened.
Ben asked Marty Appel (former Yankees PR director) about Mickey Mantle's letter to the young fan. Marty recognized "WA" as William (Bill) Ackman, head of Yankees Special Services, who wrote the response and "maybe but likely not" gotten Mantle's approval before mailing it.
In 2017, the Cardinals traded away Zac Gallen, Sandy Alcantara, Daniel Castano, and Magneuris Sierra to the Marlins for Marcell Ozuna. At the time, Jeff Sullivan studied this trade in Episode 1149, which seemed reasonable at the time. Gallen was later traded by the Marlins to the Diamondbacks for Jazz Chisholm Jr. Ben and Meg imagine a world in which the Cardinals had never traded them away.

Maury Wills

Stolen bases were high in the dead ball era, since it was hard to advance on hits. They became unpopular in the rabbit ball and live ball eras, reaching a low point in the 1950's. Maury Wills arrived in June 1959 and led the National League in stolen bases from 1960 to 1965, a record six consecutive years (tied with Vince Coleman).
From 1960 to 1965, Wills stole a total of 376 bases, best in the majors. A distant second was Luis Aparicio with 258, and an even more distant third was Lou Brock at 146.
Meg asks Ben, if the new pickoff rules lead to more stolen bases, how many years it would be before any team adjusts what they scout for. Ben thinks it normally would take several seasons, but if the uptick is due to the new rules, it could be sooner.
In 1962, Wills peaked at 104 stolen bases, breaking Ty Cobb's record of 96. Cobb did it in a 154-game season, and the commissioner said that he wouldn't acknowledge that Cobb's record was broken unless Wills broke it in 154 games. Interestingly, Cobb played 156 games that year due to replays of tie games. Wills had 95 stolen bases in 154 games, and 97 in 156, so he did beat Cobb's record in the same number of games.
In 1962, the next highest number stolen bases was 32, by Willie Davis.
Ryan Nelson looked up the biggest gap between the leader and the second place finisher for stolen bases, both by absolute number and by ratio.

Year	Leader	Second place	Difference
1962	104 Maury Wills	32 Willie Davis	+75
1974	118 Lou Brock	59 Davey Lopes	+59
1982	130 Rickey Henderson	78 Tim Raines	+52

Year	Leader	Second place	Ratio
1962	104 Maury Wills	32 Willie Davis	+3.25
1939	51 George Case	23 Mike Kreevich	+2.21
1959	56 Luis Aparicio	27 Willie Mays	+2.07

Aaron Judge

Ben and Meg were both fooled by the camera angle on Aaron Judge's deep fly ball, which looked like a no-doubter.
The Red Sox were pitching around Aaron Judge. Ben takes credit for giving this advice in Episode 1905. Ben also acknowledges that some of the meatballs people were throwing him were just missed spots.
In his two homerless games, Aaron Judge has nevertheless has a wRC+ of 257.

Per-batter strike zone

Ben wonders if batters would even know what their best zone is. He compares it to Kit from A League of their Own: "Lay off of those high ones." "I like the high ones!"
Ben and Meg agree that the per-batter zone is impossible. A per-batter zone would be too great an advantage for the batter. Each batter can learn a single zone, but the pitcher would have to adapt to a zone that changes constantly.
Meg jokes that the changing zone would quickly reveal which pitchers read the scouting reports.
Meg thinks baseball should have something like a "Spirit Week". In high school, there would be a week with each day having a theme like "Dress like the 1980's". Baseball would have a week where each day introduced one new wild rule for that day only. She lists the mound that moves up and down, the pit, the per-batter zone, and allowing mole-people.

Atlanta's extreme day/night split

Ben did a Stathead query (linked below) and found that this is the sixth worst day-game split on record.
The record is also held by Atlanta. In 1970, they were 9-29 in day games, and 67-57 in night games.
Curiously, last year's Yankees are in fifth place. They were 23-34 in day games, and 69-36 in night games. Nobody really noticed.
There are few enough day games that Ben doesn't think there's anything going on.

Stanky Rule violations

The idea is that players would set up in a legal position, and run to a better (but illegal) position as the ball is pitched.
Ben doesn't think this violates the letter of the Stanky Rule, which prohibits deliberately distracting the batter. The intent here is not to distract the batter. Nevertheless, if batters complain of distractions, they may refine the rule.
Meg thinks this won't be a problem.

Which kinds of pitchers will be most hurt by pickoff restrictions

Ben compares this to Jon Lester not being able to throw pickoffs. Despite this being well known, runners were reluctant to take advantage of it. He wonders how long it will take for runners to become comfortable taking bigger leads once all "free" pickoffs have been used up.
Ben thinks it's natural to assume that taking away a tool would hurt most the pitchers who employed that tool the most.
Meg thinks that despite all this, the effect will be small.
Ben wonders if runners will start deking pitchers into wasting their pickoffs. Meg is sure this will happen. Ben notes that this cat-and-mouse game will not affect pace of play because the clock is still ticking.
Meg asks Ben if he thinks pitchers are attempting pickoffs at the correct rate. Ben thinks they are under-utilizing pickoffs. Social pressure (and booing from opposing fans) suppress pickoffs.

An eight-pitch immaculate inning, and pitch clocks vs pitch timers

Ben notes that it's not a pitch timer because you aren't timing the pitches themselves. You're timing the span between pitches.
Meg compares it to a kitchen timer, which counts down.
Ben agrees that "pitch timer" is more accurate, but everybody uses the term "pitch clock" and nobody is confused.
Ben thinks it's still an immaculate inning, but it should get a special name. He can't come up with a good name for it, though. "Clock-assisted immaculate inning" devalues the feat too much.
Meg doesn't think it will happen frequently enough (if at all) to need a special name.

Past Blast

Wooden grandstands were on their way out due to fire hazard. In the first Past Blast, there was a fire in the grandstands prior to the start of the game. The players helped rescue the fans, and then played the game as scheduled, using the light from the fire as daylight faded.
Bob Unglaub's proposal was little-noted at the time, but ties into today's rules on player positioning. Unglaub's proposal was to forbid outfielders from being positioned more than 80 yards from the plate, so that sluggers could get hit the ball over the defense and get extra-base hits.
Unglaub was outspoken in demanding that he be paid his worth, although he was a relatively mediocre player.
As manager of the Boston Americans, Unglaub won four out of his first five games with an "all bunting" strategy. This strategy didn't hold up, and he was replaced after posting a 9-20 record.

Final notes

Albert Pujols is at a 144 wRC+. Ben calls Pujols's final season "unbelievable, really literally, very difficult to believe."
A DraftKings ad from June says, "Baseball is dead? Nah. We've got pitchers hitting grand slams, a team playing four-man outfield, and the best crop of baseball talent ever." Listeners note that pitchers hitting grand slams are no longer a thing due to the universal DH, and the four-man outfield will soon be illegal.