Episode 1909: The Podcasts Will Continue Until Morale Improves

Summary[]

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the inadequacies of dental insurance and Ben's rewarding trip to Citi Field, a Marlins marketing strategy, Richard Bleier's balk debacle, pitchers getting the memo about throwing strikes to Aaron Judge and Judge's difference-making performance even when he doesn't homer, preliminary Stat Blasts (41:33) about the most consecutive secondary pitches thrown to a batter in a game and the redundancy of RBI as a Triple Crown stat, finding things to savor in the regular season even with a shortage of standings suspense, more Stat Blasts (59:33) about the Braves' extreme day/night split revisited, Fibonacci Sequence scoring, getting replaced before a second PA in both ends of a doubleheader, combined/relay cycles, Albert Pujols and homering on the most dates during the regular season, and games getting away from cruising pitchers, plus a Past Blast from 1909 (1:33:56) and a real-time reaction to Judge's 61st (1:38:40).

Topics[]

Richard Bleier's three balk calls within a single plate appearance
Aaron Judge is not seeing as many strikes from the Blue Jays
Aaron Judge is still amazing when not hitting home runs
Batter who received the most consecutive secondary pitches in a game
Is RBI redundant as a Triple Crown stat?
Reviewing playoff odds
Enjoyable players to watch despite the lack of suspense over who will make the postseason
Why does Atlanta have such an extreme day/night split?
Line scores that match the Fibonacci sequence
Starter getting only one PA in both ends of a doubleheader
Substitute completing a cycle started by the first player
Batter with home runs on most unique dates from April 1 to September 3
Pitchers who were "cruising" and then "let the game get away from them"
Past Blast: Teams hiring scouts to check out reports of great young players
Ben and Meg watch Aaron Judge hit his 61st home run live on the podcast
Lindsey Adler's story where she interviewed relievers about what they would do if Aaron Judge's 61st home run landed in the bullpen

Banter[]

Meg complains that dental insurance is a scam
Ben enjoys his visit to Citi Field to interview Sandy Alcantara
Marlins appeal to Mets fans to come to the game to cheer on the Marlins when they play Atlanta

Email Questions[]

Steven: I'm trying to find players who led the league in home runs and batting average who did NOT win the Triple Crown.

My hypothesis is that if you league the league in both average and homers, you have a near 100 percent chance to lead the league in RBIs as well. I don't know the best way to check something like that and in the past I'd throw it out to the Beyond the Box Score staff, but alas!

Anyways, thought it'd be an interesting thing to check and an interesting discussion since RBIs are just a follow-on of the other two.

Matthew: Mid-listening to episode 1907, so apologize if it is addressed later. I wanted to provide some insight on the day night splits. As a Yankee fan, I noticed many people complained last year that the Yankees put sub-optimal teams out for day games. No evidence of this, but would love to hear if there is any substance behind the claim and if it applies to the Braves.

Joey: I noticed a Yankees score a couple weeks ago that was the start of the Fibonacci series. Specifically, the game was the Yankees-Angels game on August 30th. The Yankees score went 1 in the 1st, 1 in the 2nd, 2 in the 3rd, 3 in the 4th, and then they did not score the rest of the game. I was wondering how common this series is in baseball and whether anyone has gotten longer into the sequence than this? I can't imagine many teams have gotten to 5, and few (if any) have gotten to 8.

If we were pedantic about the sequence (and who isn't about baseball?), the sequence would more appropriately be 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 (for a 9-inning game).

Jackson: My name is Jackson and I'm a bit of a Mike Brosseau super fan. I was watching today's Brewers double header when Brosseau got used in a bit of an interesting way. He hit leadoff against the lefty opener of the Giants in both games before being replaced by Jace Peterson in both games in his second AB. I don't think I have seen a starter in both double header games only have one plate appearance, much less as the leadoff hitter. I was wondering if this has ever happened before in a double header or even in back to back games before.

Mike (Patreon): I saw this tweet today, about Albert Pujols homering on all but five dates between April 1 and Sept 30. Is that a record? Has any player homered on all the dates in that range?

Chris: During yesterday's Astros-A's radio broadcast, I noticed a few references to the game getting away from A's starting pitcher Ken Waldichuk. He ended up giving up 5 ERs in the 3rd inning but he had nearly gone through the Astros lineup with 1BB and 3ks before a Maldonado single started the 1-out rally. Waldichuk didn't make it out of the 3rd inning.

This question isn't about Waldichuk's performance, but about any pitcher that was seemingly "cruising along" before hitting a brick wall. What is the worst start of a pitcher who was doing this? For parameters, I think a good starting spot would be either 1 time through the order of no-hits, no runs, limited baserunners, and striking out 5 or more batters before everything went wrong?

A similar start by deGrom on 18SEP could fall into this scenario. His line was 5IP - 4H - 3ER - 0BB - 13k... but three of those hits were given up in the 6th inning with two hits and a HR before he was relieved.

Stat Blast[]

Batters who received the most consecutive secondary pitches in a game[]

New FanGraphs writer Kyle Kishimoto wrote about Jakob Junis throwing 51.5% sliders.
Lucas Apostoleris from Baseball Prospectus helped Ben with this Stat Blast, using pitch data starting in 2008.
The most secondary pitches to a single batter in a game is 23. None of the first 23 pitches to Pete Alonso on May 25, 2022 were fastballs. The starting pitcher was the aforementioned Jakob Junis.
The previous record was 22 non-fastballs from the start of the game thrown to Kyle Seager on September 8, 2021.
In third through fifth place are all games started by Lance McCullers, who is known for throwing secondaries and breaking balls.

Is RBI redundant for the Triple Crown?[]

Ryan Nelson helped Ben investigate Steven's question about players who missed the Triple Crown due to RBIs.
Entering Wednesday's game, Aaron Judge has a one point lead in batting average, and a huge lead in home runs. He also has a lead of 9 RBI, which is a fairly safe buffer.
The following table shows the number of batters in each category since 1900.

League	Triple Crown	HR+RBI leader	RBI+BA leader	BA+HR leader
NL	5	54	18	6
AL	10	57	17	14

In both leagues the least likely miss is BA+HR.
Ryan found that players who led the league in HR+RBI win the Triple Crown 13.5% of the time, RBI+BA 42.8% of the time, and BA+HR 75% of the time. So it is indeed the case that RBI does not add much.
Ben and Meg speculate what traditional stat could have replaced RBI. Stolen bases is too hard: Only three players have ever led their league in home runs and stolen bases.

Why Atlanta is so much worse in day games[]

The listener's research compared player performance in day games with overall performance, and also considered player usage.
Hitters were randomly worse in day games.
Atlanta used their good pitches less in day games.

Fibonacci scoring[]

Ryan Nelson found that, through 2021, 341 games began "0-1-1-2", and 11 games began "0-1-1-2-3". None were able to tack on a 5.
There were 23 games which began "1-1-2-3", and none of them were able to add a 5.

Starter substituted out after one PA in both games of a doubleheader[]

Ryan Nelson reports that overall, 0.3% of starters are pulled before their second PA, presumably due to injury for the most part.
Through 2021, there have been 14 times a player was pulled before their second PA in both games of a doubleheader. The phenomenon peaked in the late 1960's (5 occurrences). A full list is linked below.
It hadn't happened since September 29, 1973: In both games, Bobby Grich of the Orioles walked in his first PA and then was defensively replaced by Frank Baker. The Orioles had already clinched the division, and these were the last two games of the season.
Ben surmises one factor for its recent rarity is the decline in doubleheaders overall.

Substitute completing a cycle started by the first player[]

On September 27, Ramon Urias was a double away from the cycle but injured himself. His replacement, Jorge Mateo, hit a double. Meg is touched. "Aw, so he completed his friend's cycle. That's nice."
One proposed name for this phenomenon was "zombie cycle". Meg came up with "relay cycle". She asks Ben if he would be more interested in combined no-hitters if they were called "relay no-hitters". Ben: "No."
This was the 22nd time a substitute completed another player's cycle. There are also a few three-player combined cycles.
Records do not tell us enough to know which substitutions were injury-related, but Ben suspects that they are the predominant reason. There were 8 defensive replacements, 5 pinch runners, 9 pinch hitters, and 2 double-switches.
One of the combined cycles was started by Barry Bonds, who was probably substituted out just to give him a rest, since it was the last day of the season.
The previous combined cycle was on May 17, 2016, when Brad Miller got a single, double, and triple, and then pinch hitter Taylor Motter hit a home run.
Meg: "I want to be clear: I don't find this to be actually meaningful. I just find it to be kind of a nice thing."

Home runs on unique dates[]

Ryan Nelson found that, not surprisingly, the leader is Barry Bonds, who hit home runs on all but three dates. The leaderboard is filled with home run kings.
Lou Gehrig hit a record 18 homers on June 8th.

Pitchers who were "cruising" and then "let the game get away from them"[]

Ben says that studies have found no basis for the concept of "cruising".
Ryan Nelson looked for various ways this could be defined.
The worst outing after facing the mininum through three innings was Gene Packard, who on August 3, 1918 started with 3⅔ innings of perfect ball, had a two-hit shutout through six, then gave up four runs in each of the last three innings. Fortunately, his team scored 16, so he got the win anyway.
Two pitchers gave up 11 runs after three perfect innings: Johnny Marcum on June 15, 1935 and Jerry Casale on June 7, 1960. Both were the losing pitcher.
Another metric would be the most consecutive base runners allowed to end an appearance that had been a shutout until that point.

Scoreless innings	Consecutive baserunners	Pitcher	Date
3	10	Ed Heusser	07/15/1940
4	9	Tex Carleton	09/14/1937
5	8	Wilbur Cooper	09/20/1916
		Earl Whithill
		Art Houtteman	06/08/1950
7	8	Bob Smith	04/29/1930

Art Houtteman's case is examplary: Perfect through 4⅓, a one-hitter entering the sixth, got two outs, and then HBP, 1B, 1B, 2B, IBB, 1B, BB, 2B, and then he was pulled.
The best recent case is Chris Nerveson on September 9, 2011. He had a no-hitter through four and a one-hitter entering the sixth. He got two strikeouts, and then gave up a 2B, 2B, BB, 3B, 1B, 2B, 1B. The inning started with a 1-0 lead and he left down 1-6.

Notes[]

Meg learned that she will have to undergo an expensive dental procedure, and her insurance doesn't cover any of it.
Ben is still amazed that he can just hop on a train, walk right into Citi Field, interview a player (in this case, Sandy Alcantara), and come home. The locker room was almost devoid of any media.
The Marlins figure that Mets fans would root against Atlanta, which means that they would (temporarily at least) be Marlins fans. Meg notes that this is not the same as selling opposing team gear in the stadium (Episode 1906) because the fans you're courting are going to cheer for your team (or at least cheer against the opponent).
Ben notes that balks are a Rorschach test: If you are told that something was a balk, you're more likely to see a balk.
Ben finds it amusing that there are people who are utterly convinced they saw a balk, and others who are utterly convinced there was no balk.
Richard Bleier had not had a balk called on him for his entire 8-season career so far, nearly 300 IP. What triggered this sudden enforcement?
Ben and Meg note that it's hard for a pitcher to change his mechanics at the snap of a finger.
It would be funny if the umpire turned on the stadium microphone and started reciting the Jon Bois balk copypasta.
From September 1 to September 19, pitchers were throwing strikes to Aaron Judge at league average rates, even though "he was having a month for the ages in a season for the ages." Ben takes credit for pitchers taking his advice and throwing him strikes at only half of the league average rate.
Ben notes that nobody remembers who gave up Aaron Judge's 40th home run, but people will remember who gave up home runs 60 and 61. Pitchers may be trying to avoid being remembered in that way.
Meg finds it funny that the fans are booing when Aaron Judge draws a walk or even hits a double. She points out that analytics shows us how Judge is valuable to his team even when not hitting home runs.
Meg: "Roger Maris's family deeply wants him to surpass their father." Ben: "So they can go home?" Meg: "They look so tired. I do not know if they have clean laundry."
Ben is enjoying the end of the season. Meg: "I hate every day of it. It is torture."
Ten teams have reached 100% probability of making the postseason. The Mariners are at 99.8%. Meg moans. "I feel sick."
Ben suspects that every player (except maybe the jerks) has some small number of dedicated fans. Ben: "Maybe you form that bond in childhood before you even totally understand who is good and who is not. And then maybe years later, you look and see that they were sub-replacement." As a child, Meg was enamored of Dan Wilson.
All the relievers Lindsey Adler interviewed joked that they would keep the ball, but admitted that in reality they would give it to Aaron Judge. One pitcher said that he doesn't fetch home runs hit by the opposing team, and some pitchers are superstitious about it.