April 9, 2024 • 27 mins
timestamps:
0:00 Intro
00:38 Scoring Injustice Deep Dive
16:51 Quality At Bats
24:19 Highest and Lowest Pitches Hit
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to Jimmy's Three Things on this fine
Tuesday morning. My name's Jimmy. I got three things I
want to talk about. One, a grave injustice has been
done to the first baseman out in Anaheim. Two quality
at bats? Is your team doing well, who's doing the best,
who's doing the worst. Is the person doing the best
related to the person doing the worst? Maybe number three,
(00:21):
just a quick little baseball savon. I want to the
highest pitch that's been hit and the lowest pitch that's
been hit on the season thus far. Quick sipping my coffee,
and then away we go. Okay, we are starting with
Nolan Shanuel and the grave injustice that has been done
(00:43):
to his hitting streak. Listen in to Angels announcer Wayne Randazzo.
Listening to Angels announcer Ran Dazzo going off on baseball
and bringing up all of the dirty laundry because of
what happened to the first base.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Negative story after negative story, standaled after scandal, a fiasco
in Oakland. You have this these ridiculous looking jerseys. You
have the MLBPA challenging the league about the pitch clock
today because of constant pitcher injuries, and yet not to mention,
your global superstar is embroiled in a betting scandal. But
(01:17):
on top of all of that, you have a young
player trying to make a name for himself or has
come up and reach base safely in every single game
that he has played, and the league allows this scoring
change to go on to end his streak. Kill this story,
a positive story that's happening in Major League Baseball. It
is an absurdity.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah, I mean when you think about all the positivity
from all over to social media world, how it pressed
everybody to start in your career. He was this in
college last year. He was still playing in college baseball
at this point. And then they have that taken away
on a base hit. It was a base hit.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
It was a clear hit. It wasn't even really a
borderline call. It was a clear base Hitka.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Like I said in the pregame show, the NBA doesn't
take an assist away from the James and he's got
a triple double.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
And he's trying to add that on that record. This
doesn't happen. Fired up about it. So, first, if you're
not familiar with Nolan Shanuel, which I believe is how
you pronounced it. I did a Jimmy's Three Things topic
on him last year because he went up to the
majors real quick. The Angels were promoting everyone really really quick. Sean. Oh, well,
(02:23):
last someone told me to pronounce it rhymed with manuel.
I'm wrong, Sean, Shawnawell, Sean, oh, well, that's what baseball
Ofference says. That sounds so weird to me, Shawnawell, all right,
I guess so. So anyway, he comes up last year
in twenty twenty three, and let's look at his game
log and you can see the hit column. He's got
(02:43):
a one in the first ten games that he played.
Then he doesn't get a hit in the next two.
But you go over to walk and he's got a walk,
and then he's got two walks, and then he's got
hit hit hit, hit hit, no hit, but a walk,
and then hits, hits, hits, no hits but a walk.
So anyway, on bass streak going strong here all of
last season. He starts this year with the same thing.
(03:05):
Walk in the first game. The next game he reached
on an error that doesn't count. Oh that's the game,
that's the game we're talking about. So after that.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Hit hit.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Walk this game, he came in at the end and
got hit by a pitch that would extend it. Okay,
and then no hits but a walk walk. So I
think April seventh, two days ago, as I record this,
it would have actually ended. But what happened was they
(03:41):
changed the scoring on a play. I'll let you see
the play first, and then I'm gonna deep dive into
similar plays and the whole process of appealing a score
and score changes. There's a Twitter account that does a
great job explaining it. This is the play in question.
Hadda longest on base speaks begin a career.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Right side play by mount Castle and then Palman couldn't
cats of all, so a run scores.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
We'll see if that is ruled a kid or not
with the so they did rule it a hit initially.
The first baseman, for those that are just listening, had
to dive to his right and he makes the stop.
It's not ordinary effort, it's it's a nice diving stop
by the first baseman to corral the ball. After that,
the play is pretty routine. The pitcher's got to cover,
gotta throw it at the picture. They didn't sync up
(04:32):
there and that's where he reached. But the first initial
stop is not normal. So there's an account called MLB
Scoring Changes that does a really good job tracking all this,
and he says that this is the second change on
this play. This was originally a single and a dropped
(04:55):
catch error on Bowman, which I didn't know you could
really do that that like, it could be a single
and then an error, which it makes total sense. I
actually love that this is a possibility. But I thought,
because he didn't advance and he's safe, it's either got
to be a hit or an error. I didn't know
you could say single on the hit because it was
(05:16):
an extraordinary effort to make the play not routine to
stop the ball, and then say but once he did
stop it, they should have made it. So then they
give an error on Bowman, the pitcher who's covering. I
didn't know that was something you could do. But I
like that they hit. It was a great diving play
that stopped to hit, So give the batter credit for
(05:37):
a single, and then the error is after that they
changed that to a single and then a throwing error
on mount Castle. So the same thing. Nolan still gets
his single, but now the error instead of being on
the pitcher who was running to field, the ball is
on the first basement for not hitting him in the
(05:58):
chest kind of throws it as a tall pitcher throws
it down by his knees. Then the third change changed
it to a straight missed catch error. So just no,
just mount Castle just gets an error on the play,
no single, and that ends the on bass streak for
Nolan Seawann Nowell Shawnawell, and it retroactively ends the streak
(06:24):
at thirty games. He was two away from second all
time truck Hannah in nineteen eighteen. This guy who's been
tracking them forever scoring changes, he says, this is a
strange call at best. My years doing this, I've only
ever seen one other play with two changes on it.
He says. I was fine with the hit call. It's
a low throw after a dive to a moving target
that is six foot five. This is one. This one
(06:47):
is interesting to say least, but the implication on a
major record chase of historic portions makes that newsworthy. So yeah,
this changed a lot of things. Then he did follow
up a ton with the process of how this goes down,
which I think found really fascinating because it's just really
in the cracks and crevices of score of scoring baseball games.
So hand up if you're a nerd like me, and
(07:08):
into that, he said, you know, he's reacting. I can't
to I can't believe MLB did this to Shanuel, how
can this get changed? Six days later, and then he
explains that this wasn't done by MLB. Scoring decisions get
changed in a couple of ways. The simplest is the
official scorer reviews a play after the game and ends
and changes it. That's very common, like after watching replays
(07:30):
or some other stuff, I change my mind and then
there's a form they fill out and they submit it
gets sent in and changed it. Sometimes MLB or like
sports notices scoring rules being applied incorrectly, and when the
when that happens the game is over, they will alert
kind of like, you know, hey, guys, there's no way
that that could be reached on error that he's like,
that could be a wild pitch, should be passed ball
(07:50):
blah blah blah blah. And then the other way is
via appeal, which can come from the player or the
team never an a that makes sense, and the MLBPA
the players collectively bargained for this the rights to control
their own stats in a way, and they bargained for
(08:13):
a appeal committee on scoring changes. So the appeals committee
is made up of former players, which was collectively bargained for,
and those players or former players make one of them
will make the decision. Players teams have a seventy two
hour window to appeal anything. They generally do it right away,
(08:33):
but it's up to seventy hours to allow for traveling things.
Once an appeal is lodged, the committee reviews it separately,
but they can talk to each other, so you know,
they just say, hey, did you see this, judas, or
they just do it one at a time. In the past,
appeals have taken anywhere from five to fourteen days to
get fully taken care of. I've noticed this year that
window has closed about four to six days tops, where
(08:54):
MLB would prefer it for fantasy purposes as well. But
he's just saying this isn't an MLB did this. It's
the MLBPA bargain for the ability to appeal to change scores,
and then it goes to a group of former players,
So these are players making this call. So that's the process.
So then if you and then someone said that the
(09:16):
the three oh sorry, the three former major leaguers are
Raje Davis, greg Or Blanco, and Dan o'tero. That's an
outfielder and outfielder and a pitcher, no infielder. In my mind,
you should have probably an infielder and an outfielder and
a pitcher on this committee. So you have if you want,
players that can relate. But infielders where a lot of
(09:37):
errors most errors happen, I feel like aren't represented on
the appeals committee. That seems to be a miss. So
then if you think about this, Okay, the first ruling
was which I liked. The first ruling was, hey, it's
a single on the hit, but a throwing error on
(09:58):
Mountcastle or no, it was a catch error on Bowman.
And then it went to the scorers and they probably said, well,
that's a pitcher, tall pitcher covering the bag. That's extraordinary
effort for him. It needs to be pretty easy. They're
not fielders. Pitchers stink, basically, so let's switch it. Mountcastle's
got to hit him in the chest with that throw,
(10:20):
And that was the official scorers change. Then it goes
to appeals and I'm guessing Mountcastle or someone representing Mountcastle
with a team is like, hey, now, no, like that's
a crazy stop. He dove to stop it. Mountcastle should
not get an error on that play. We appeal. We're
(10:40):
gonna appeal that. Mountcastle's like, I don't want the fucking error.
He should have caught it. I hit him in the glove. Yeah,
it was low whatever. And then the committee of players say, okay,
we'll look into this, and they go, yeah, it's just
an error all around. You should have just made the
play routinely, which is the craziest of the three rulings
(11:02):
in my opinion. So what I did is I went
and found in the past in the years of video,
so I'm limited. My search is limited here just to
like twenty sixteen balls hit by lefty batters where the
first basement has to dive to their right to make
the stop. Similar hit distances all around ten feet they
hit the ground, so like similar projectory on the ground,
ball launch angle, similar exit velos, and I tried to
(11:24):
find similar ones to see how this has been scored
in the past. I'll just play all of them for
you now, and then I compared and contrast and have
some analysis on all of it.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Fust off the glove on Telez and Mark.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Counto thinking too, he's headed there.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
He's gonna be out. Took a pizza, Marcando.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Tried Ton.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
And Alonzo can't knock it down. They will bring the
tying run the plate, one ball, one strike on Alby's
after the Ozuna flyout, had a rollover, and that's gonna
be off the leg of here and all these is
going to reach.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Round ball and grabbed there by Leveyu but ro Donald
late coverings carper to beat.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
It just doesn't carry this kind of weather. Round ball,
why to first?
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Cuthbert fields it, threw it behind Duffy, but what a job,
and Duffy missed the bang.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Duffy did a great job to save Cuthbert a throwing here. Okay,
So of those five, the first three were ruled singles
because the first baseman doesn't even stop the ball. The
next two were ruled throwing errors on the first basement.
So right away the original scoring to give the pitcher
an error. It seems like there's not a lot of
(12:59):
history of pitchers getting the air for not catching it
unless they're standing there and it's right at their chest.
I would gather. But this tells the exact story of
why people say the error stat is overrated because in
the other the two clips, you have DJ Lemayhew diving
and making the stop, and if he doesn't make this stop,
(13:19):
it's going to be a single. But he makes the stop,
then the throw is a little behind Rodin and now
it's a throwing error on DJ. So he's better off
just not getting to that ball the way errors are ruled,
which everyone knows at the follows Baseball knows same. Here
Cuthbert makes that stop a little less effort than DJ,
so if he didn't get it, also, the shift would
(13:41):
have happened. But is the second basins right behind him.
But making the stop can hurt you if you don't
complete the play. So I synced up all of them
and I have again like I did last week. The
red dot is when they put it in play. Right
here is when all the balls got put in play,
and you can see the white dots and bottom of
my screen here that's when the fielder hit it. So
(14:03):
this one is an outlier. That's a hot shot. He
didn't get it. That's a single greenish single. Red is
throwing air. The one in question is this gray one.
It's the second fastest ball to glove, so in theory,
you know, second least reaction time of the bunch. The
two with the longest reaction time are the ones that
did get stopped by the first baseman. That adds up,
(14:25):
and then they gave the mirrors and then there's two here,
So then I compared, let's compare the singles. If you're
looking at the screen here, the two on the wings
the left and right were ruled a single. They're all
hit right here and then it's put in play and
(14:45):
the first baseman on the other two don't get to
the ball where mount Castle, as quick reactions, makes a
diving stop, gets to the ball. Now that leads me
to believe that if he had not stopped this ball,
it would have been a single for Nolan Shanuel, which
means I think the original two rulings were correct, that
(15:06):
it's a single on the hit, and then if you
want to apply an error afterwards, you can. History gives
those to the first baseman usually, but not to the
pitcher from my little deep dive here, and then yeah,
if you look at the other ones where it was
ruled a throwing error there, they're all synced up hit
and the ball gets to Nolan or not Nolan, I
(15:28):
keep calling it Mountcastle faster he makes the play. These
two guys make the play. DJ's is a really nice
play and they throw it and it just doesn't really
get to the back. Now, both of their throws are
worse than Mountcastle, who hit him in stride just low.
So my conclusion, that's stupid. And I think the player committee,
(15:55):
I don't know if they knew about the streak. Some
people might say that you shouldn't take that or account.
You got to go the game market it. It would have
been awesome to promote an Angels player like this, a
young player like this, and I think, do think, without
stretching it to like fabrication, you do have to take
that in mind. And they need an infielder on this
appeals committee because that is a hit that is a
(16:15):
single across the board. It's and then the fact that
you can go single and then an error on the throw.
I'm fine with that single error on the pitcher covering,
fine with that, but I guess Mountcastle. Mount Castle appealed
and it feels like he got spided and they were like, well,
We'll just give you an error on the whole fucking
thing then and then that hurt Shanul on the process.
(16:37):
I don't like it, you know, Sean, Noell, I apologize.
I just tried to go No one can. I'm saying
your name wrong this whole time. Apologize about it. But yeah,
grave injustice done to the city of Anaheim of Los Angeles.
Next topic, what do we got? What did I queue up? Next? Oh?
Just quality at bats. I'm kind of really into quality
(16:58):
at bats. I love because the Yankee's stunk at it
last year and now they're getting better at it, so
it's exciting me and making starting pitchers work is good.
So quality at bats have There's a lot of different
formulas for this. A lot of college coaches come up
with their own. The website that I'm using classifies this
(17:18):
as a quality at bat. You get a hit, I
think we can all agree. You work a walk, think
we can all agree. You get hit by a pitch,
not your fault. You get credit. You didn't get out
of the way. A sack hit a sackfly move them
runners over, let's do it. You know, a well hit
out so like a barrel they probably used, but barrel
rate launch angle. I somewhat disagree there, only because I
(17:41):
watched Gary Sanchez hit hard liners to left field over
and over and over again, rockets to left field over
and over again, or hard line drives to the shortstop
over and over, and they're like, oh, his Babbip says,
he's just getting unlucky. Oh, like he's hitting the ball hard,
and it's like he's hitting the ball hard to the
same exact place and they just shift the guys right there.
There's no unluckiness here. It's just routine. So sometimes I
(18:04):
don't like that, but I agree if you smoke the ball,
it's a good at bat. But I don't know if
you come up first pitch, smoke the ball right at
the center fielder deep fly and he catches it easily,
So I don't love that. But they include that here
and then seven plus pitches in a plate appearance, So
you made the pitcher work, you fouled some off, you
kept it alive. I like that definition. So I have
(18:27):
the equality at bat leaderboard for the season on a
Google sheet, and I can maybe take this and share
the link for you guys. Ty France is leading now.
He doesn't have a lot of plate appearance because he platoons,
I guess, but seventy four percent of his plate appearances
(18:50):
have been quality at bats. The next highest is Freddy
Freeman with sixty three and Mookie Bets with sixty two.
So seventy four is pretty high, and I don't think
he's qualified. But I just did all players because we're
so early in the season. Adlie Rushman comes in fourth
place with sixty one percent, and then you got Mark
Conna Detroit and Logan o'hoppi at sixty percent each. That's
(19:14):
the all the people in sixty So six out of
ten times seven out of ten for ty Frans, they're
giving you a quality at bat. I love it. Good stuff.
If you want me to sort it by team, I
can try and find the team with the most above fifty.
How would I do that? Let's see equality at bat percentage,
(19:35):
filter by values. No, filter by condition is greater than
forty nine? That didn't work? Is it like point forty nine?
That didn't work? Nothing's working? I blew it. I blew it.
(19:57):
How do you do that? Filter by condition greater than
forty nine percent? It's not gonna work. Didn't work? Didn't work?
I give up someone who knows she's better than me.
Let me know anyway, Arizona, you got two players at
(20:19):
fifty percent. I think average is forty one or something
like that. Atlanta, I don't know who's got the least
amount of quality of bats. That'll be easier to do
the way we have this set up. Christian and Carnascio
Strand twenty eight point nine and Spencer Torkelsen. They're both tied.
Oh and Gavin lux three way tie for last place
(20:39):
quality at bat percentage. Nick Allen in Oakland, Castianos Renfro,
Brandon Lal Victor Stott also not doing great. Alonso not
doing great. Bummer Bummer bummer, Trey Limscombe Rochester in Rochester. Okay,
that's a weird one. So that's your quality at bat leaders.
If I share that, you can toggle it, but I
mean it's moot. Once we keep going. Then your pitch
(21:03):
is per played appearance, which I also love. I found
very interesting because Bo Naylor of the Cleveland Guardians has
the best pitches per played appearance percentage right now. He's
averaging five point one pitches every play appearance. That's really
really good. It's one hundred and forty three pitches and
twenty eight played appearances. He is number one in all
of baseball and number last in all of baseball is
(21:26):
his teammate and his brother, Josh Naylor, who averages two
point eight five. So the Nailer brothers are booke ending
the leaderboard, which I thought was cute and I liked
it and I shared it with you, So there you go.
I can definitely do this one right. Let's see what
do you think averages? Get out of here? Get out
(21:47):
of here? Average is probably the top. One hundred is
four four is pretty good. But I'm gonna go We're
early in the season, ISS gonna be high. I'm gonna
go four to one five. Let's filter this filter conditions
is greater than four point one five? I mean this
(22:09):
doesn't work? Then I'm didn't work. I don't really understand
why it's not working. Am I dumb? My dumb guy?
We have changes to like number, filter by condition? Got it?
How to change it to number? All right? So let's
see which team as the most above four point one
(22:30):
to five pitches. Arizona has three, Atlanta has three, Baltimore
only has one, Boston only has one, the Chicago is
that all Cubs do. I mean the White Sox have none.
They have three, Cincinnati has two, Cleveland just has bon Naylor,
Colorado has Nolan Jones. The White Sox have Mancata, Detroit
has three. Good job, Houston only has one. Chas McCormick
(22:54):
not good Houston. Kansas City as two, La has three,
Moncie Mookie and f Read And then Anaheim is doing
great right now, a happy trout, Hicks, Rendon and Sean
Owell crushing it. Milwaukee only as one. Minnesota has three.
The Mets have won, The Yankees have three. I thought
that was higher. Oakland has two, Pittsburgh has four, way
(23:16):
to go, Saint Louis has four. San Francisco one s
had a Tampa Bay one two, three, four, five? Are
there winners? Is sac Pelasios Yande Siri and Randy is
that our winner five might be our winner. Joey Gallo
good good work. So that's pitches per played appearance. And
that ends our second thing. A little interlude Tail from
(23:40):
the Dugout. Frank Lukese, I'm reading from a book, Tales
from the dug Out for those just listening. As our interlude,
Frank Lukese managed a game via Milwaukee talkie. Lukesse, the
Classic Sea Pine Bluff Judges manager from nineteen fifty three
to nineteen fifty four, was serving a suspension and was
(24:01):
banned from the ballpark. So we sat in a van
behind the outfield wall, peered into the field and transmitted
his orders from a walkie talkie to someone in Pine
Bluff's dugout. Where did you go, Frank LUKESSI? That's from
Tim Haggerty's book Tales from the Dugout. All right, the
last thing we're gonna do is I want to find
(24:22):
the highest and the lowest pitch that has been hit
into play this short season. So we're gonna go baseball savant.
We're gonna go by batter the season twenty twenty four,
the played appearance result a base hit, a pitch result
(24:43):
in play. Those probably nullify each other. And then we're
going to change the included stats so that we can
see plate Z the Z access and search. They should
give us every hit so far this season, but I
(25:08):
want to see plate So is this gonna be the
lowest or the highest? Christian Vasquez has one that was
one point four to two, or it's one of these
two which one. Oh no, it can't be that one.
That one was too based fifty for the first time
(25:30):
a couple of years ago. Line to center field that
will land to base him. So it didn't seem that low.
I guess that's pretty low. He's down there. I thought
it was gonna be like on the ground, like ankle height.
That's like the top of his shin guard height. So
that's the lowest. Now we got to find the highest.
(25:50):
So that was one point four feet off the ground.
I don't think I'm doing that right because I think
it's from the X axis. Volgelback has the highest, and
I guess it's this one against Luke Weaver that was
(26:11):
pretty high. So there's the lowest right here, and there's
the highest. The highest is Luke Weaver pitching, Daniel Volgelback hitting.
He hit it for a Was that a home run?
Was that the homer he hit or is it a double?
And the lowest was Christian Vasquez as the batter Tim Herron,
(26:34):
the pitcher to two count was a curveball, and it
was a single right back over the pitcher's head in
front of the center fielder where I believe the Volgelback
one he got on top of the one where Soto
kind of lost it but it hit the wall and
right there you go. That's the highest pitch and the
(26:55):
lowest pitch hit thus far this season. If people want
to keep tabs on that, we can keep tabs on it.
See if they get beat. That was Jimmy's three things.
Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoy
these episodes and these little deep dives suggest topics for me.
I prep every Monday night Tuesday morning on the train.
Ind so that's when I'm gonna be putting it all together.
Hit me. Then if you got a good one you
(27:16):
think you want me to deep dive into and subscribe
to the channel and leave a comment and share with
your friends, and thank you very much and see you goodbye, goodbye,
Hello, and welcome to Jimmy's Three Things on this fine
Tuesday morning. My name's Jimmy. I got three things I
want to talk about. One, a grave injustice has been
done to the first baseman out in Anaheim. Two quality
at bats? Is your team doing well, who's doing the best,
who's doing the worst. Is the person doing the best
related to the person doing the worst? Maybe number three,
(00:21):
just a quick little baseball savon. I want to the
highest pitch that's been hit and the lowest pitch that's
been hit on the season thus far. Quick sipping my coffee,
and then away we go. Okay, we are starting with
Nolan Shanuel and the grave injustice that has been done
(00:43):
to his hitting streak. Listen in to Angels announcer Wayne Randazzo.
Listening to Angels announcer Ran Dazzo going off on baseball
and bringing up all of the dirty laundry because of
what happened to the first base.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Negative story after negative story, standaled after scandal, a fiasco
in Oakland. You have this these ridiculous looking jerseys. You
have the MLBPA challenging the league about the pitch clock
today because of constant pitcher injuries, and yet not to mention,
your global superstar is embroiled in a betting scandal. But
(01:17):
on top of all of that, you have a young
player trying to make a name for himself or has
come up and reach base safely in every single game
that he has played, and the league allows this scoring
change to go on to end his streak. Kill this story,
a positive story that's happening in Major League Baseball. It
is an absurdity.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah, I mean when you think about all the positivity
from all over to social media world, how it pressed
everybody to start in your career. He was this in
college last year. He was still playing in college baseball
at this point. And then they have that taken away
on a base hit. It was a base hit.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
It was a clear hit. It wasn't even really a
borderline call. It was a clear base Hitka.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Like I said in the pregame show, the NBA doesn't
take an assist away from the James and he's got
a triple double.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
And he's trying to add that on that record. This
doesn't happen. Fired up about it. So, first, if you're
not familiar with Nolan Shanuel, which I believe is how
you pronounced it. I did a Jimmy's Three Things topic
on him last year because he went up to the
majors real quick. The Angels were promoting everyone really really quick. Sean. Oh, well,
(02:23):
last someone told me to pronounce it rhymed with manuel.
I'm wrong, Sean, Shawnawell, Sean, oh, well, that's what baseball
Ofference says. That sounds so weird to me, Shawnawell, all right,
I guess so. So anyway, he comes up last year
in twenty twenty three, and let's look at his game
log and you can see the hit column. He's got
(02:43):
a one in the first ten games that he played.
Then he doesn't get a hit in the next two.
But you go over to walk and he's got a walk,
and then he's got two walks, and then he's got
hit hit hit, hit hit, no hit, but a walk,
and then hits, hits, hits, no hits but a walk.
So anyway, on bass streak going strong here all of
last season. He starts this year with the same thing.
(03:05):
Walk in the first game. The next game he reached
on an error that doesn't count. Oh that's the game,
that's the game we're talking about. So after that.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Hit hit.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Walk this game, he came in at the end and
got hit by a pitch that would extend it. Okay,
and then no hits but a walk walk. So I
think April seventh, two days ago, as I record this,
it would have actually ended. But what happened was they
(03:41):
changed the scoring on a play. I'll let you see
the play first, and then I'm gonna deep dive into
similar plays and the whole process of appealing a score
and score changes. There's a Twitter account that does a
great job explaining it. This is the play in question.
Hadda longest on base speaks begin a career.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Right side play by mount Castle and then Palman couldn't
cats of all, so a run scores.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
We'll see if that is ruled a kid or not
with the so they did rule it a hit initially.
The first baseman, for those that are just listening, had
to dive to his right and he makes the stop.
It's not ordinary effort, it's it's a nice diving stop
by the first baseman to corral the ball. After that,
the play is pretty routine. The pitcher's got to cover,
gotta throw it at the picture. They didn't sync up
(04:32):
there and that's where he reached. But the first initial
stop is not normal. So there's an account called MLB
Scoring Changes that does a really good job tracking all this,
and he says that this is the second change on
this play. This was originally a single and a dropped
(04:55):
catch error on Bowman, which I didn't know you could
really do that that like, it could be a single
and then an error, which it makes total sense. I
actually love that this is a possibility. But I thought,
because he didn't advance and he's safe, it's either got
to be a hit or an error. I didn't know
you could say single on the hit because it was
(05:16):
an extraordinary effort to make the play not routine to
stop the ball, and then say but once he did
stop it, they should have made it. So then they
give an error on Bowman, the pitcher who's covering. I
didn't know that was something you could do. But I
like that they hit. It was a great diving play
that stopped to hit, So give the batter credit for
(05:37):
a single, and then the error is after that they
changed that to a single and then a throwing error
on mount Castle. So the same thing. Nolan still gets
his single, but now the error instead of being on
the pitcher who was running to field, the ball is
on the first basement for not hitting him in the
(05:58):
chest kind of throws it as a tall pitcher throws
it down by his knees. Then the third change changed
it to a straight missed catch error. So just no,
just mount Castle just gets an error on the play,
no single, and that ends the on bass streak for
Nolan Seawann Nowell Shawnawell, and it retroactively ends the streak
(06:24):
at thirty games. He was two away from second all
time truck Hannah in nineteen eighteen. This guy who's been
tracking them forever scoring changes, he says, this is a
strange call at best. My years doing this, I've only
ever seen one other play with two changes on it.
He says. I was fine with the hit call. It's
a low throw after a dive to a moving target
that is six foot five. This is one. This one
(06:47):
is interesting to say least, but the implication on a
major record chase of historic portions makes that newsworthy. So yeah,
this changed a lot of things. Then he did follow
up a ton with the process of how this goes down,
which I think found really fascinating because it's just really
in the cracks and crevices of score of scoring baseball games.
So hand up if you're a nerd like me, and
(07:08):
into that, he said, you know, he's reacting. I can't
to I can't believe MLB did this to Shanuel, how
can this get changed? Six days later, and then he
explains that this wasn't done by MLB. Scoring decisions get
changed in a couple of ways. The simplest is the
official scorer reviews a play after the game and ends
and changes it. That's very common, like after watching replays
(07:30):
or some other stuff, I change my mind and then
there's a form they fill out and they submit it
gets sent in and changed it. Sometimes MLB or like
sports notices scoring rules being applied incorrectly, and when the
when that happens the game is over, they will alert
kind of like, you know, hey, guys, there's no way
that that could be reached on error that he's like,
that could be a wild pitch, should be passed ball
(07:50):
blah blah blah blah. And then the other way is
via appeal, which can come from the player or the
team never an a that makes sense, and the MLBPA
the players collectively bargained for this the rights to control
their own stats in a way, and they bargained for
(08:13):
a appeal committee on scoring changes. So the appeals committee
is made up of former players, which was collectively bargained for,
and those players or former players make one of them
will make the decision. Players teams have a seventy two
hour window to appeal anything. They generally do it right away,
(08:33):
but it's up to seventy hours to allow for traveling things.
Once an appeal is lodged, the committee reviews it separately,
but they can talk to each other, so you know,
they just say, hey, did you see this, judas, or
they just do it one at a time. In the past,
appeals have taken anywhere from five to fourteen days to
get fully taken care of. I've noticed this year that
window has closed about four to six days tops, where
(08:54):
MLB would prefer it for fantasy purposes as well. But
he's just saying this isn't an MLB did this. It's
the MLBPA bargain for the ability to appeal to change scores,
and then it goes to a group of former players,
So these are players making this call. So that's the process.
So then if you and then someone said that the
(09:16):
the three oh sorry, the three former major leaguers are
Raje Davis, greg Or Blanco, and Dan o'tero. That's an
outfielder and outfielder and a pitcher, no infielder. In my mind,
you should have probably an infielder and an outfielder and
a pitcher on this committee. So you have if you want,
players that can relate. But infielders where a lot of
(09:37):
errors most errors happen, I feel like aren't represented on
the appeals committee. That seems to be a miss. So
then if you think about this, Okay, the first ruling
was which I liked. The first ruling was, hey, it's
a single on the hit, but a throwing error on
(09:58):
Mountcastle or no, it was a catch error on Bowman.
And then it went to the scorers and they probably said, well,
that's a pitcher, tall pitcher covering the bag. That's extraordinary
effort for him. It needs to be pretty easy. They're
not fielders. Pitchers stink, basically, so let's switch it. Mountcastle's
got to hit him in the chest with that throw,
(10:20):
And that was the official scorers change. Then it goes
to appeals and I'm guessing Mountcastle or someone representing Mountcastle
with a team is like, hey, now, no, like that's
a crazy stop. He dove to stop it. Mountcastle should
not get an error on that play. We appeal. We're
(10:40):
gonna appeal that. Mountcastle's like, I don't want the fucking error.
He should have caught it. I hit him in the glove. Yeah,
it was low whatever. And then the committee of players say, okay,
we'll look into this, and they go, yeah, it's just
an error all around. You should have just made the
play routinely, which is the craziest of the three rulings
(11:02):
in my opinion. So what I did is I went
and found in the past in the years of video,
so I'm limited. My search is limited here just to
like twenty sixteen balls hit by lefty batters where the
first basement has to dive to their right to make
the stop. Similar hit distances all around ten feet they
hit the ground, so like similar projectory on the ground,
ball launch angle, similar exit velos, and I tried to
(11:24):
find similar ones to see how this has been scored
in the past. I'll just play all of them for
you now, and then I compared and contrast and have
some analysis on all of it.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Fust off the glove on Telez and Mark.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Counto thinking too, he's headed there.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
He's gonna be out. Took a pizza, Marcando.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Tried Ton.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
And Alonzo can't knock it down. They will bring the
tying run the plate, one ball, one strike on Alby's
after the Ozuna flyout, had a rollover, and that's gonna
be off the leg of here and all these is
going to reach.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Round ball and grabbed there by Leveyu but ro Donald
late coverings carper to beat.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
It just doesn't carry this kind of weather. Round ball,
why to first?
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Cuthbert fields it, threw it behind Duffy, but what a job,
and Duffy missed the bang.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Duffy did a great job to save Cuthbert a throwing here. Okay,
So of those five, the first three were ruled singles
because the first baseman doesn't even stop the ball. The
next two were ruled throwing errors on the first basement.
So right away the original scoring to give the pitcher
an error. It seems like there's not a lot of
(12:59):
history of pitchers getting the air for not catching it
unless they're standing there and it's right at their chest.
I would gather. But this tells the exact story of
why people say the error stat is overrated because in
the other the two clips, you have DJ Lemayhew diving
and making the stop, and if he doesn't make this stop,
(13:19):
it's going to be a single. But he makes the stop,
then the throw is a little behind Rodin and now
it's a throwing error on DJ. So he's better off
just not getting to that ball the way errors are ruled,
which everyone knows at the follows Baseball knows same. Here
Cuthbert makes that stop a little less effort than DJ,
so if he didn't get it, also, the shift would
(13:41):
have happened. But is the second basins right behind him.
But making the stop can hurt you if you don't
complete the play. So I synced up all of them
and I have again like I did last week. The
red dot is when they put it in play. Right
here is when all the balls got put in play,
and you can see the white dots and bottom of
my screen here that's when the fielder hit it. So
(14:03):
this one is an outlier. That's a hot shot. He
didn't get it. That's a single greenish single. Red is
throwing air. The one in question is this gray one.
It's the second fastest ball to glove, so in theory,
you know, second least reaction time of the bunch. The
two with the longest reaction time are the ones that
did get stopped by the first baseman. That adds up,
(14:25):
and then they gave the mirrors and then there's two here,
So then I compared, let's compare the singles. If you're
looking at the screen here, the two on the wings
the left and right were ruled a single. They're all
hit right here and then it's put in play and
(14:45):
the first baseman on the other two don't get to
the ball where mount Castle, as quick reactions, makes a
diving stop, gets to the ball. Now that leads me
to believe that if he had not stopped this ball,
it would have been a single for Nolan Shanuel, which
means I think the original two rulings were correct, that
(15:06):
it's a single on the hit, and then if you
want to apply an error afterwards, you can. History gives
those to the first baseman usually, but not to the
pitcher from my little deep dive here, and then yeah,
if you look at the other ones where it was
ruled a throwing error there, they're all synced up hit
and the ball gets to Nolan or not Nolan, I
(15:28):
keep calling it Mountcastle faster he makes the play. These
two guys make the play. DJ's is a really nice
play and they throw it and it just doesn't really
get to the back. Now, both of their throws are
worse than Mountcastle, who hit him in stride just low.
So my conclusion, that's stupid. And I think the player committee,
(15:55):
I don't know if they knew about the streak. Some
people might say that you shouldn't take that or account.
You got to go the game market it. It would have
been awesome to promote an Angels player like this, a
young player like this, and I think, do think, without
stretching it to like fabrication, you do have to take
that in mind. And they need an infielder on this
appeals committee because that is a hit that is a
(16:15):
single across the board. It's and then the fact that
you can go single and then an error on the throw.
I'm fine with that single error on the pitcher covering,
fine with that, but I guess Mountcastle. Mount Castle appealed
and it feels like he got spided and they were like, well,
We'll just give you an error on the whole fucking
thing then and then that hurt Shanul on the process.
(16:37):
I don't like it, you know, Sean, Noell, I apologize.
I just tried to go No one can. I'm saying
your name wrong this whole time. Apologize about it. But yeah,
grave injustice done to the city of Anaheim of Los Angeles.
Next topic, what do we got? What did I queue up? Next? Oh?
Just quality at bats. I'm kind of really into quality
(16:58):
at bats. I love because the Yankee's stunk at it
last year and now they're getting better at it, so
it's exciting me and making starting pitchers work is good.
So quality at bats have There's a lot of different
formulas for this. A lot of college coaches come up
with their own. The website that I'm using classifies this
(17:18):
as a quality at bat. You get a hit, I
think we can all agree. You work a walk, think
we can all agree. You get hit by a pitch,
not your fault. You get credit. You didn't get out
of the way. A sack hit a sackfly move them
runners over, let's do it. You know, a well hit
out so like a barrel they probably used, but barrel
rate launch angle. I somewhat disagree there, only because I
(17:41):
watched Gary Sanchez hit hard liners to left field over
and over and over again, rockets to left field over
and over again, or hard line drives to the shortstop
over and over, and they're like, oh, his Babbip says,
he's just getting unlucky. Oh, like he's hitting the ball hard,
and it's like he's hitting the ball hard to the
same exact place and they just shift the guys right there.
There's no unluckiness here. It's just routine. So sometimes I
(18:04):
don't like that, but I agree if you smoke the ball,
it's a good at bat. But I don't know if
you come up first pitch, smoke the ball right at
the center fielder deep fly and he catches it easily,
So I don't love that. But they include that here
and then seven plus pitches in a plate appearance, So
you made the pitcher work, you fouled some off, you
kept it alive. I like that definition. So I have
(18:27):
the equality at bat leaderboard for the season on a
Google sheet, and I can maybe take this and share
the link for you guys. Ty France is leading now.
He doesn't have a lot of plate appearance because he platoons,
I guess, but seventy four percent of his plate appearances
(18:50):
have been quality at bats. The next highest is Freddy
Freeman with sixty three and Mookie Bets with sixty two.
So seventy four is pretty high, and I don't think
he's qualified. But I just did all players because we're
so early in the season. Adlie Rushman comes in fourth
place with sixty one percent, and then you got Mark
Conna Detroit and Logan o'hoppi at sixty percent each. That's
(19:14):
the all the people in sixty So six out of
ten times seven out of ten for ty Frans, they're
giving you a quality at bat. I love it. Good stuff.
If you want me to sort it by team, I
can try and find the team with the most above fifty.
How would I do that? Let's see equality at bat percentage,
(19:35):
filter by values. No, filter by condition is greater than
forty nine? That didn't work? Is it like point forty nine?
That didn't work? Nothing's working? I blew it. I blew it.
(19:57):
How do you do that? Filter by condition greater than
forty nine percent? It's not gonna work. Didn't work? Didn't work?
I give up someone who knows she's better than me.
Let me know anyway, Arizona, you got two players at
(20:19):
fifty percent. I think average is forty one or something
like that. Atlanta, I don't know who's got the least
amount of quality of bats. That'll be easier to do
the way we have this set up. Christian and Carnascio
Strand twenty eight point nine and Spencer Torkelsen. They're both tied.
Oh and Gavin lux three way tie for last place
(20:39):
quality at bat percentage. Nick Allen in Oakland, Castianos Renfro,
Brandon Lal Victor Stott also not doing great. Alonso not
doing great. Bummer Bummer bummer, Trey Limscombe Rochester in Rochester. Okay,
that's a weird one. So that's your quality at bat leaders.
If I share that, you can toggle it, but I
mean it's moot. Once we keep going. Then your pitch
(21:03):
is per played appearance, which I also love. I found
very interesting because Bo Naylor of the Cleveland Guardians has
the best pitches per played appearance percentage right now. He's
averaging five point one pitches every play appearance. That's really
really good. It's one hundred and forty three pitches and
twenty eight played appearances. He is number one in all
of baseball and number last in all of baseball is
(21:26):
his teammate and his brother, Josh Naylor, who averages two
point eight five. So the Nailer brothers are booke ending
the leaderboard, which I thought was cute and I liked
it and I shared it with you, So there you go.
I can definitely do this one right. Let's see what
do you think averages? Get out of here? Get out
(21:47):
of here? Average is probably the top. One hundred is
four four is pretty good. But I'm gonna go We're
early in the season, ISS gonna be high. I'm gonna
go four to one five. Let's filter this filter conditions
is greater than four point one five? I mean this
(22:09):
doesn't work? Then I'm didn't work. I don't really understand
why it's not working. Am I dumb? My dumb guy?
We have changes to like number, filter by condition? Got it?
How to change it to number? All right? So let's
see which team as the most above four point one
(22:30):
to five pitches. Arizona has three, Atlanta has three, Baltimore
only has one, Boston only has one, the Chicago is
that all Cubs do. I mean the White Sox have none.
They have three, Cincinnati has two, Cleveland just has bon Naylor,
Colorado has Nolan Jones. The White Sox have Mancata, Detroit
has three. Good job, Houston only has one. Chas McCormick
(22:54):
not good Houston. Kansas City as two, La has three,
Moncie Mookie and f Read And then Anaheim is doing
great right now, a happy trout, Hicks, Rendon and Sean
Owell crushing it. Milwaukee only as one. Minnesota has three.
The Mets have won, The Yankees have three. I thought
that was higher. Oakland has two, Pittsburgh has four, way
(23:16):
to go, Saint Louis has four. San Francisco one s
had a Tampa Bay one two, three, four, five? Are
there winners? Is sac Pelasios Yande Siri and Randy is
that our winner five might be our winner. Joey Gallo
good good work. So that's pitches per played appearance. And
that ends our second thing. A little interlude Tail from
(23:40):
the Dugout. Frank Lukese, I'm reading from a book, Tales
from the dug Out for those just listening. As our interlude,
Frank Lukese managed a game via Milwaukee talkie. Lukesse, the
Classic Sea Pine Bluff Judges manager from nineteen fifty three
to nineteen fifty four, was serving a suspension and was
(24:01):
banned from the ballpark. So we sat in a van
behind the outfield wall, peered into the field and transmitted
his orders from a walkie talkie to someone in Pine
Bluff's dugout. Where did you go, Frank LUKESSI? That's from
Tim Haggerty's book Tales from the Dugout. All right, the
last thing we're gonna do is I want to find
(24:22):
the highest and the lowest pitch that has been hit
into play this short season. So we're gonna go baseball savant.
We're gonna go by batter the season twenty twenty four,
the played appearance result a base hit, a pitch result
(24:43):
in play. Those probably nullify each other. And then we're
going to change the included stats so that we can
see plate Z the Z access and search. They should
give us every hit so far this season, but I
(25:08):
want to see plate So is this gonna be the
lowest or the highest? Christian Vasquez has one that was
one point four to two, or it's one of these
two which one. Oh no, it can't be that one.
That one was too based fifty for the first time
(25:30):
a couple of years ago. Line to center field that
will land to base him. So it didn't seem that low.
I guess that's pretty low. He's down there. I thought
it was gonna be like on the ground, like ankle height.
That's like the top of his shin guard height. So
that's the lowest. Now we got to find the highest.
(25:50):
So that was one point four feet off the ground.
I don't think I'm doing that right because I think
it's from the X axis. Volgelback has the highest, and
I guess it's this one against Luke Weaver that was
(26:11):
pretty high. So there's the lowest right here, and there's
the highest. The highest is Luke Weaver pitching, Daniel Volgelback hitting.
He hit it for a Was that a home run?
Was that the homer he hit or is it a double?
And the lowest was Christian Vasquez as the batter Tim Herron,
(26:34):
the pitcher to two count was a curveball, and it
was a single right back over the pitcher's head in
front of the center fielder where I believe the Volgelback
one he got on top of the one where Soto
kind of lost it but it hit the wall and
right there you go. That's the highest pitch and the
(26:55):
lowest pitch hit thus far this season. If people want
to keep tabs on that, we can keep tabs on it.
See if they get beat. That was Jimmy's three things.
Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoy
these episodes and these little deep dives suggest topics for me.
I prep every Monday night Tuesday morning on the train.
Ind so that's when I'm gonna be putting it all together.
Hit me. Then if you got a good one you
(27:16):
think you want me to deep dive into and subscribe
to the channel and leave a comment and share with
your friends, and thank you very much and see you goodbye, goodbye,
Popular Podcasts
1. The Podium
The Podium: An NBC Olympic and Paralympic podcast. Join us for insider coverage during the intense competition at the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. In the run-up to the Opening Ceremony, we’ll bring you deep into the stories and events that have you know and those you'll be hard-pressed to forget.
2. In The Village
In The Village will take you into the most exclusive areas of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games to explore the daily life of athletes, complete with all the funny, mundane and unexpected things you learn off the field of play. Join Elizabeth Beisel as she sits down with Olympians each day in Paris.
3. iHeartOlympics: The Latest
Listen to the latest news from the 2024 Olympics.