Episode 2198: Schrödinger's Catcher

Summary[]

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the end of a historic Clayton Kershaw streak, pitcher errors and unearned runs, the lack of top prospects traded at the deadline, the short-handed Marlins vs. the stripped-down Rays, the latest sign of the White Sox apocalypse, the resurgent Blake Snell, Brett Phillips the full-time pitcher, and whether the percentage of pulled homers is increasing. Then (52:11) they talk to Sports Reference software developer (and primary developer of Baseball-Reference.com) Kenny Jackelen about the possibility that catcher Danny Jansen could break B-Ref by having played for both the Blue Jays and Red Sox in a single game, how Kenny might prevent that problem, and other anomalies that B-Ref has had to adjust for, followed by (1:23:36) a few postscript updates.

Topics[]

Interview with Kenny Jackelen, primary developer for baseball-reference.com (and frequent Stat Blast consultant)
How suspended games create wormholes in the space-time continuum
Can Danny Jansen legally enter the game for the Red Sox?
Why Danny Jansen playing for both teams in a game messes up the database
Possible solutions to the database problem
The 2020 season and Shohei Ohtani breaking many assumptions about baseball
Data anomalies in the past
Hidden gotchas
How to present Jansen's data on Baseball Reference if he does enter the game

Banter[]

Clayton Kershaw's first regular season start without a strikeout, ending his record streak of 423 games
Is it right that pitcher errors make runs unearned?
No top prospects (or very few, depending on whom you ask) traded at the deadline
Marlins rostering only 23 players because they traded away so many
Rays depleted roster, having traded away so many players at the deadline
White Sox manager Pedro Grifol's remarks on the team's losing streak
The futility of the White Sox
Blake Snell performance back up to par
Jordan Montgomery continues to struggle
David Fletcher's second career as a pitcher takes a setback
Brent Phillips conversion to full-time pitcher in the minors
Patrick Corbin might lead the league in losses for the fourth time
Percentage of home runs to the pull side

Final Notes[]

Mike Trout out for the season due to second meniscus tear
Episode 2194 follow-up: Listeners share information on Hall of Fame plaques, the difficulty in creating bronze reliefs, and what may have gone wrong
Episode 2189 follow-up: Listener notes that shortstop Oneil Cruz's aggressive forays into the outfield (often ill-advised) suggest that he could rob a home run
Ben thinks of the song Box Elder when he hears the name Bryce Elder.

Email Questions[]

Thomas (Patreon): So, today's Cubs game against the Cardinals really got me thinking about something that's been bugging me for a while. I looked it up in the Wiki but couldn't find anything, so I'm hoping you have some thoughts.

Hayden Wesneski gave up 11 runs in 4 innings pitched today. It was not the worst outing by a Cubs pitcher ever, but not great. He was only charged for four earned runs, though, because of two errors that eventually led to the Cardinals' runners scoring. Ok, fine, except that it was Wesneski himself who made the throwing errors! It has always astonished me that pitchers aren't charged with runs that are demonstrably their fault--how much more 'earned' could a run be than one that happens because the pitcher woofs the ball over the second baseman's head?

So, two questions here: one, (Stat-blasty) how many of these "unearned" runs occur every season, and is it enough to skew ERA standings? Or, two (a hypothetical), if you're a pitcher who loads the bases at the start of an inning, isn't there an incentive to muff a play to take those runs off your books?

Notes[]

The episode title is a reference to the thought experiment known as Schrödinger's cat in which a cat can be viewed as both alive and dead simultaneously.
Clayton Kershaw did have a strikeout-less outing in the 2023 NLDS.
Behind Kershaw in "consecutive starts with at least one strikeout" are Tom Seaver (411) and Nolan Ryan (382).
Ben and Meg agree that it's weird that pitcher fielding errors make runs unearned. Ben suggests that we make up another term to cover these runs.
None of the top 100 Baseball America prospects were traded at the deadline. Four of Eric Longenhagen's top 100 prospects were traded.
Ben figures it makes sense that there were no/few top prospects traded at the deadline because the overall talent pool was light this year.
Ben: "Maybe they should require [that a team roster 26 players] in case Marlins ownership gets any ideas from this. 'Oh wow, we didn't know we could do this. We only have to pay 23 players?'"
Ignoring Sandy Alcantara and Jesús Luzardo, who are on the IL, the highest-paid Marlins player is Jesús Sánchez at $2.1 million. Editor's note: Everyone else is under $1 million.
Pedro Grifol denied that he blamed the team's bad performance solely on the players. After the team's 17th consecutive loss, he did say, "We're in the middle of it now. We're in the frickin' eye of the storm." Ben notes that the eye of the storm is the calm part (though the team does have an off day, so maybe that's the calm part). Also, Ben notes that if 17 straight losses is "the middle of it", then does that mean they're heading for a 34-game losing streak?
Ben compares the White Sox to an eclipse (which Pedro Grifol famously also eschewed): "You don't stare directly at it. You have to have some sort of protective eyewear. And I'm not really watching the White Sox. I'm following them from afar, but I am following them pretty closely from afar."
The White Sox winning percentage and the MLB league wide batting average are both .245. Both are low, but the winning percentage is far worse. The White Sox have a .277 OBP, the lowest since the dead-ball era, tied with the 1965 Mets. They are on pace for an "inconceivable" 39 wins.
FanGraphs ranked the White Sox farm system 30th at the start of 2022 and 27th at the start of 2023. At the start of 2024, they made it to 11th, and now they are 3rd. So that's nice.
David Fletcher's recent pitching performances in the minors have not been encouraging. In his most recent start, he went only 2⅔ innings and gave up 10 runs, all earned.
The other pitchers to lead their league in losses for four seasons are Pedro Ramos, Bobo Newsom, and Phil Niekro. Ben: "As everyone says, to lead the league in losses, you have to be good enough to keep getting the ball. I don't know that Patrick Corbin is good enough to keep getting the ball, but he keeps getting it anyway."
This season, 26.7% fly balls were pulled, tied with 2020 for the second highest fly ball pull rate in the pitch tracking era. Last year was the peak at 27.0%. By comparison, it was 23.4% in 2010 and 21.4% in 2015.
If you limit to just barrels (Statcast era), 43.2% of barreled flyballs have been pulled, compared to the 2020 high of 43.3%. By comparison, it was 36.2% in 2015.
This year, 66.5% of flyball homers were pulled, compared to the 2014 high of 71%.
In general, home run pull rate is inversely correlated with ball liveliness. A more lively ball allows weaker hits to go for homers. In 2019 (peak live ball), the flyball homer pull rate was only 56.7%.
A strict reading of the rule book says that a player, once removed from the game, may not re-enter, and it doesn't make an exception for a player who changes teams. However, this was permitted in the minors: Dale Holman got the game-winning hit then finished on the losing team.
Ben noticed that just a few days after Danny Jansen was traded to the Red Sox, the Baseball Reference Daily Newsletter announced two job openings and jokes that the jobs were specifically to deal with the "Jansen Apocalypse".
Suspended games create anomalies like Juan Soto getting a home run in a game that officially occurred before he was called up. Baseball Reference includes special code to report Soto's debut date properly.
Kenny on preparations: "It's mostly just been me posting about my anxiety on Slack."
Right now, the Baseball Reference database indexes stat lines by player and game, but not by team. Jansen having two stat lines in the suspended game would be rejected as a duplicate. It's unclear how many hidden dependencies there are on the existing database structure, so simply changing the key could have unintended consequences.
Baseball Reference could redesign their databases, or they could just treat it as a one-time anomaly and add special code just for Danny Jansen. The choice depends on how likely this is to occur again.
The database identified a player as a DH in a 1923 game. Closer examination shows that he appeared twice, once as a pinch hitter and as a pinch runner. He was sent in as a courtesy runner when a player had to go to the bathroom mid-game. Courtesy runners were common in early baseball, either to substitute for a player who was temporarily unavailable, or as a tactic to get visiting star players into the game more, so the team could sell more tickets.
The 2020 season broke many rules, such as "there is no DH in the NL", "a normal game lasts nine innings", and "every inning starts with the bases empty." The last two affect WPA calculations.
It's not unheard of for what was believed to be a one-time event to become more common. The Ohtani rule was initially a one-time thing for the 2021 All-Star Game but became an official rule in 2022. Kenny: "There are very many code commits in our our code base that have Ohtani's name in them."
Pat Venditte also messed up the database because it had previously created lefty-right splits based on the pitcher's listed handedness.
JD Martinez winning two Silver Sluggers in one year (at different positions) also broke the database, which had assumed that you could win only one award per season.
In 1971, Chris Cannizzarro changed teams while a game was suspended, but he did not enter the resumed game for his new team, so the data disaster was avoided.
The Twitter account MLB Scoring Changes noted that if Jansen had two strikes when he was substituted out, a strikeout would be charged to him. This leads to a hypothetical scenario where Jansen comes in as catcher, the pinch hitter strikes out, but the third strike is dropped, and the throw to first is wild. The runner rounds the bases and is thrown out at home, resulting Jansen being credited with a strikeout, reaching first on error by Jansen, and then being tagged out by Jansen.