Episode 2163: Littell Big League

Summary[]

Ben Lindbergh talks to Rays pitcher Zack Littell (4:33) about his expectation-surpassing conversion from relieving to starting and his affinity for cruise ships. Then (23:33) Ben brings on author and film critic Noah Gittell to discuss his new book about baseball movies and American culture, Baseball: The Movie, followed by six Stat Blasts with frequent Stat Blast correspondent Ryan Nelson (1:16:14).

Topics[]

Converting relievers to starters[]

Interview with Zach Littell
Zach's initial contact with the Rays after they claimed him off waivers
How the Rays approached him about being a starter
Maintaining velo after become a starter
Does he prefer being a starter or a reliever?
Strategy of having the catcher set up in the middle of the plate
What makes a good reliever-to-starter candidate?
Mentally adjusting to a different pitch profile as a starter
How being a starter affects his value in arbitration and free agency
Correcting the record on Zach's 84 days a year on a cruise ship (discussed on Episode 1508)
How his family got into cruising
How he practices pitching on a cruise ship
Zach's elite status on Royal Caribbean
Zach's favorite cruise

Baseball movies[]

Interview with Noah Gittell, author of Baseball: The Movie
Noah's definition of a "baseball movie"
How film critics view baseball movies
The ignoble origins of the baseball movie
Why the 1980s were the heyday of the baseball movie
How important is baseball accuracy to a baseball movie?
Is the "big game" overused?
Most difficult decisions in choosing movies to include in the book
Why are the Mets over-represented in baseball movies?
Why baseball movies have more progressive themes
The hidden world of the Christian baseball movie
Evengelical baseball players using movies to reach out to potential churchgoers
Could the baseball movie stage a comeback?
Untapped potential baseball movie story lines
Baseball showing up in unexpected places in popular media
Why baseball is more cinematic than basketball or American football
Favorite unsung baseball movies

Stat Blasts[]

Stat Blasting with Ryan Nelson
Players who have hit for the lifetime cycle in the most ballparks
Worst record when entering the bottom of the ninth ahead 1-0
Highest number of both strikeouts and earned runs allowed in an outing
Game where the two teams have the lowest combined winning percentage
Pair of teams whose games are most/least consequential
Most career outs recorded before allowing a hit

Banter[]

Introducing Zach Littell

Final Notes[]

Ben invited knuckleballer Matt Waldron to appear on the podcast, but Waldron had a really bad outing and understandably decided to solidify his performance before doing interviews.

Email Questions[]

Craig: I was playing a game in my dynastyLeaguebaseball.com league in which TJ friedl hit for the cycle. It was a road game for me, but he had previously hit for the cycle in a home game earlier in the season. I know you've done a stat blast about the rarity of cycles in the past, but My mind was racing and I became very curious about something…has any player in the history of Major League baseball had a single, double, triple, and home run in every ballpark? Not necessarily in a single game, but have they had each type of hit over the course of their career. Obviously this would mean every ballpark that was around during their career. We hear talked about as an accomplishment when players have homered in all 30 ballparks. But what about the cycle over their career? Maybe ballparks isn't the best way to look at this, but against every team they faced? I would be absolutely shocked if someone did this unless it was from a very long time ago especially with the lack of interleague play. If the answer is no one, what player has the highest total? Or did anybody in the past do it against just the teams and their respective league?

Joel: After last night's game, the Tigers are now 1-3 in games that they went into the bottom of the 9th up 1-0*. What are the worst team records and most losses in a season by teams in games where they had 1-0 leads going into the bottom of the 9th? For the Tigers -who have scored a disproportionate segment of their runs late- that record seems strange to me.

Jacob: Some friends and I were talking about Alek Manoah’s callup, and I joked that he’s either going to get 12 strikeouts or let up 12 earned runs, to which my friend responded “or both”. That got us wondering, what pitcher has had the most of the lesser in a single game? For example, has a pitcher ever had both 10 K and 10 ER in a single outing? Feels like you’d have to era-limit it, because there’s probably some Tungsten Arm O’Doyle type in the 1890s that pitched a 13-inning complete game and got like 15 of each. I suppose a simpler, but less interesting question would just be who has had the most combined. But then you’d probably just get a pretty bimodal distribution of starts with a lot of Ks and a few ERs, then some starts with a lot of ERs and a handful of Ks. Not totally sure what the balance between those would be though.

Wilson (Patreon): At the conclusion of today’s games, the Marlins and Rockies have a combined record of 16-48. Is that the most combined losses in a series played this early in the season (using the point at which every team has played between 30-35 games as the rough benchmark)? This seems like a particularly futile series between two teams who fell on their faces right at the starting pistol, but I’m sure there have been even sadder early season series, I just can’t find any in cursory googling.

John (Patreon): I don’t play immaculate grid, but I still found myself on the BR page that lists players who have played for both the Rockies and Pirates. This unimpressive list has Denny Neagle at the top of the WAR leaderboard with 10.7. I got to thinking about how the Pirates have been mostly irrelevant for the entire existence of the Rockies, and the Rockies have been the Rockies for the entire existence of the Rockies. So in addition to not sharing a lot of good players who have played for both franchises, they also have not played a lot of important games against each other. How could we measure this? I’m thinking of something along the lines of championship probability or something like that, but on a team and game level. Maybe we could find which two franchises have played for the highest stakes, on average, over the course of all their matchups in history. The flip side—I am just guessing—is something like the Pirates and Rockies, who have played each other year after year with very little other than pride on the line.

Michael Eisen (Patreon): Were you aware that last year Austin Cox set the record for most outs recorded before allowing a hit to start a career? It got some mentions out there but I hadn't heard it. I came across this because a friend asked me if Cole Winn's 18 outs (and running) were unusual, and so I parsed the RS data and Cox was at the top of the list. I hope he takes some pleasure in this fact as he toils in AA. In any case, here's the full list. It's a lot of no-names. Most accumulated this innings in relief, but my own personal favorite Billy Rohr remains the closest to going a full 9 hitless in his first appearance.

Stat Blast[]

Players who have hit for the lifetime cycle in the most ballparks[]

Ryan Nelson looked for players who have gotten a single, double, triple, and home run in every ballpark they had played in.
Eight players have accomplished this, all from the first half of 20th century, when there were only eight teams in each league. They are not household names, like Braggo Roth (8 for 8) and Bill Bankston (1 for 1).
Dave Winfield is the closest to accomplishing it in more recent times, who has a lifetime cycle in 27 of the 33 ballparks he played in. (Many of the 26 franchises changed stadiums during his career.)
Since 2000, the leaders are Curtis Granderson (24 of 34 stadiums) and Jose Reyes (23 of 40 stadiums). Nobody else is above 50%.
Accomplishing this is much harder nowadays with many more teams and comparatively few opportunities in cross-league stadiums.

Worst record when entering the bottom of the ninth ahead 1-0[]

Ryan Nelson found it unusual that the Tigers even had four games where they entered the bottom of the ninth ahead 1-0. No team has had more than five such games in a season, and only 28 teams have had four. But the Tigers have four and it's only May.
Historically, teams holding a 1-0 lead into the bottom of the ninth have a record of 1486 wins and 329 losses, a .819 winning percentage.
No team has ever gone 1-3 in these types of games.
The only team to go 0-3 in these types of games were the 1963 Mets, who hold the worst modern era single-season road record (tied with the 2010 Pirates) at 17-64.
Ryan reads from a game story of the Mets's August 27 loss which ended on a walk-off two-run Little League home run thanks to a fielding error, a throwing error, and a mental error.
Ryan notices that the game story spells reliever as "reliefer".

Highest number of both strikeouts and earned runs allowed in an outing[]

Ryan Nelson found that the highest is 10, as predicted by listener Jacob. On August 24, 1939, Howard Mills threw a complete game for the St. Louis Browns against the Yankees, giving up 10 earned runs but also striking out 10.
Nine of each has happened seven times, mostly pre-war, and most recently on May 22, 2003, when Ryan Dempster allowed 9 earned runs and struck out 10 in six innings.
In Alek Manoah's first start for the Blue Jays this year, he went four innings with six strikeouts and six earned runs. With a total of 6+6, people would just call it a "bad start".
If you look for just strikeouts plus earned runs, in which a pitcher had at least seven of each, the leader is Bob Feller with a total of 22 (7 strikeouts and 15 earned runs) on August 26th, 1938, and then just a month later, he got 22 again, but this time with 18 strikeouts and 4 earned runs.
If you remove the minimum of seven strikeouts and earned runs, the record is 23, accomplished by Steve Carlton and Randy Johnson, both of whom had games with 19 strikeouts and 4 earned runs.

Game where the two teams have the lowest combined winning percentage[]

Ryan Nelson looked for games with the lowest combined win percentage for two opponents (minimum 64 games, which is what the Rockies and Marlins had).
The record is .101 when the 6-34 New Haven Elm Cities played the 2-37 Brooklyn Atantics on September 11, 1875.
Since 1900, only one game has had a worse combined win percentage than the Rockies-Marlins game, and it was last year! On May 5, 2023, the 6-26 A's played the 8-24 Royals, for a combined winning percentage of .219.

Pair of teams whose games are least consequential[]

Kenny Jackelen gathered the average championship leverage index (cLI) for all two-team pairs, calculating regular-season, postseason, and combined. An average game has a leverage index of 1. More consequential games have higher leverage indexes.
The most average match-up is the Mariners and Angels, with a lifetime average cLI of 1. Their games are just average stakes.
The most high-stakes match-up is the Yankees and Dodgers, who have faced each other 83 times with an average cLI of 51.4 (!). Of them, 66 were postseason games, which have high cLI. If you consider only regular-season games, then their average cLI is 0.99, just average stakes.
For regular-season games, the leaders are Cleveland and the Yankees. They have an average cLI of 2.48 in 2013 regular-season games.
The lowest average cLI belongs to Royals vs. Padres, whose 21 games have an average cLI of 0.41.
If you raise the minimum to 50 games, the lowest belongs to the Royals vs. Rays, with an average cLI of 0.49 over 187 games.
The Rockies and Pirates are at 0.55 with 231 games.

Most career outs recorded before allowing a hit[]

Listener Michael researched his own Stat Blast on pitchers with the most outs or batters faced in a career before giving up a hit. "It's a lot of no-names."
Austin Cox set the record last year. Michael found that Cole Winn's 18 outs puts him in an 11-way tie for 36th place.
Billy Rohr came the closest to throwing a no-hitter in his debut. He took a no hitter to two outs in the bottom of the ninth before giving up a single.

Notes[]

Meg is traveling, so Ben invites guests "or you would have a very long monologue to listen to."
Zach says he didn't take any special steps to pace himself to throw multiple innings. His pitch mix changed so as not to rely on fastballs as much.
Zach says that as a reliever he liked the potential of appearing in every game. But having to get psyched up every game is mentally taxing. He likes having a few days to recover after each start.
Zach says that he starts every game targeting pitches down the middle, and then based on how his command feels, he might explore the edges of the zone, but he still throws mostly down the middle. "The Rays are pretty adamant about that."
Zach says that he was misquoted in the article that said he spent 84 days a year on a cruise ship. He actually had spent 84 days in his life on a cruise ship.
Zach's mother loves cruising, so their family trips were usually cruises.
While on a cruise, Zach wears a sleeve over his hand to practice pitching, but mostly he just does regular exercises and treats it as a week off from pitching.
Zach says his favorite cruise was his honeymoon cruise, where they sailed through the Panama Canal.
Noah was excited to learn he would appear on the same episode as Zach Littell. "I love that guy. No one else's name sounds like mine."
Ben: "I blurbed this book, which I don't do unless I really read it and like it."
Noah struggled to find a good definition of "baseball movie" because criteria like "baseball has to drive the action" doesn't apply to "obvious" baseball movies like Field of Dreams.
Noah settled on two criteria to be a "baseball movie": First, baseball must be integral to the plot (you can't swap in another sport). Second, if you were describing the movie to somebody, you would say "Well, it's a baseball movie." For example, you wouldn't say "Night Swim is a baseball movie about a haunted pool." You'd say "It's a horror movie about a haunted pool (owned by a baseball player)."
Even though The Naked Gun has a half hour of baseball, it's really a parody of cop movies, not primarily a baseball movie.
For the first several decades of cinema, baseball movies did terribly. Pride of the Yankees was the first real successful baseball movie by making baseball a symbol of America. Since then, baseball movies have reflected the country they existed in. In the 1970s movie The Bad News Bears, the team exists only because of a class action lawsuit. The Natural and Field of Dreams were reflective of the rural crisis of the 1980s.
Noah calls out a sequence in Rookie of the Year where the main character enters a game to pitch the seventh inning, they show a montage of him striking out nine batters, and it's now the top of the ninth. He also criticizes the premise of the movie, that the Cubs will have to be sold because the team is so bad that fans aren't showing up to games. In reality, the Cubs are one of the least likely teams to have fans abandon them.
Noah on "big games" in baseball movies: "I think we we can't have enough of them, to be perfectly honest."
When Noah saw the scene in Fever Pitch when Jimmy Fallon's character, dejected after the Red Sox lost the ALCS, sees some Red Sox players in the bar enjoying themselves and realizing that he's taking the loss harder than the players, "it really started to change the way I thought about being a fan."
Noah notes that the Mets show up in small ways in lots of movies. For example, Billy Crystal's character wears a Mets hat in City Slickers. He suspects that it's because the owners were not particularly selective and were happy to cash checks in exchange for letting people use the Mets in their movies. The Mets have an underdog quality and are conveniently located in a major movie-making city.
Evangelical arms of movie studios have been quietly making lots of baseball movies. The films are "incredibly wholesome", tend to be set in rural areas, and feature a character who is struggling to overcome a major life obstacle.
Baseball movies are a harder sell to studio executives nowadays because it is losing popularity among young people, and it doesn't play well internationally.