Co-host (possibly Maddie or a sports analyst) (25:30)
Yeah, the. The one, two, three strikes you're out. But the so. Well, yeah, we'll talk about that pitch later. So the Cubs have not really announced how they're going to do this. I don't know if anybody has asked specifically to Craig Council what the plan is. And then you think, oh, what's the big deal? Well, can I tell you why it's a huge deal and there was an entire piece that was that my guy Joe Sheehan wrote. And yes, as we are getting closer to baseball season, you will hear from Joe. If you haven't subscribed to his two baseball newsletters right now, you need to subscribe to are Craig Calcatera cup of Coffee and the Joe Sheehan newsletter that you're not an informed enough baseball fan and you're not understanding the game well enough and the context, most importantly, of everything that goes on without following these two guys. And they're almost daily thoughts for Craig, it is pretty much daily. And the challenge system, according to Joe, how he breaks it down and this is, it's been in the use, in use in the minors. So we do have data, we do have an understanding of how this is, this is all worked. A team that wins the challenge, keeps it. One that loses a challenge loses it. You lose two, you're done for the game. Okay? Are we clear on that? You win, you keep challenging. You lose two, you're done. Yes. Last spring's experiment matched the minor league results with about 50% of challenges being successful. You flipping a coin until you get two tails, you'd expect to get to four flips on average. But there's variance around that means. Okay, that's the math on it. 50, 50 challenges are too valuable to let players control their usage. Unbounded players react instinctively. They'll be wrong about half the time. So it's up to the manager to control challenges to ensure they're used when they have the most value. And what Sheehan says in this piece, it's an unnecessarily complicated system that turns what should be a black and white piece of information, ball or strike, into a decision that requires layers and layers of analysis. Oh, God, here goes Bernstein again, taking something simple and making it really complicated. No, because you're going to be remembering this when the Cubs are in the playoffs and they are in a deciding game or they're in a game you don't even realize at the time is a deciding game. We saw it last year in some of those at bats with Brad Keller against the Padres. You remember those calls with, with Machado and Tatis and some of these guys in these unbelievable high leverage situations. You don't control leverage in baseball. You don't control leverage in baseball. You control. You don't control leverage in baseball. The value of a challenge waxes and wanes from batter to batter and pitch to pitch. Here's an example. Leadoff hitters had a 110 ops plus last year. Number three hitters had a 117 ops plus. Number eight hitters average an 84. So there's far more value in a challenge by Aaron Judge or Freddie Freeman than won by Anthony Volpe or Andy Pius because there's more value in the rest of their plate appearances. Challenges should be conserved for use by or against a team's better hitters. Now, that's not the only factor. Every plate appearance occurs in a context that's expressed in a run expectancy chart. Played appearances with runners on base and runners in scoring position have more value than ones with bases empty. Challenges should be conserved for use in situations when the most potential runs are in the balance. Win expectancy can be taken into account. A missed call later in the game has a greater win expectancy impact than one earlier. And we see this in how basketball teams do it. Just sort of feeling it when there's a call goes unchallenged in the NBA because they'd rather have the challenge later. That's just intuitive. They're not looking at a chart. A failed challenge in the top of the third of a two nothing game is one that you cannot use in the top of the 9th of a 33 game. They have to be conserved for leverage. Now that's just the start of it. In any plate appearance, the leverage shifts pitch by pitch between pitcher and batter. We focus on calls that end or could end a matchup strikeout walk. The big swings happen earlier in the matchup when a batter takes the first pitch and he falls behind oh and 1. His expected ops is.607. If he's 1 and oh, the expected ops is 8:06, that's 200 points of ops hinging on the call being right. And that's not even the big one. The difference between being ahead 2 and 1 and being behind 1 and 2 is 300 points of ops. So you should be more angry about a blown call on one and one than those in any other category because of how difference how big a difference they make in the course of the at bat and the game. I want you just remember this that that one and one call in leverage can be the game. Challenges should be reserved for pitches where the gap in value between a ball and strike is largest. 1 and 1 and 3 and 2. The ladder is the difference between an on base percentage of 1000 and an on base percentage of 0. A team could do worse than to start a policy of only challenging three and two pitches, though it means you're not challenging enough. The decision has to be made immediately. There's no time to consult a teammate. Players are supposed to react to the call and not consider the context. That's how the system's designed. The best approach is red light, green light. Make it like signs for base runners in which a player knows heading to the plate whether they are allowed to challenge a call based on their skills and the state of the game. This is this is all managerial here. These players are versed in basic strategy, which means challenge, high value counts challenge 11 challenge 32 decline 0230 he said. I say players though I'm thinking through eyes of hitters. This is, Sheehan says. One of the things I've hated the most about 15 years of catcher framing conversations is the way they treat batters as NPCs just there as a bystander. The interactions of pitcher, catcher and umpire what a great frame job is more often also what a great take of a pitch outside the strike zone the batter did and was conspired against is that my hope has been that we can get full ABS refocus on the pitcher batter matchup rather than one on three that these had bass disintegrate into we're not there yet, but the batters have some recourse. So here's the decision matrix that ends up being a complex table of game state, batter, pitcher, platoon considerations and the count. The count you start the process before the batter walks to the plate. Red green system the batter sees from the dugout via the or via the third base coach Only my best hitters can challenge the first two times throughout the Sorry Kyle Isabel, but we need to save the challenges for Bobby Whitt Jr. No batter can challenge without at least one runner in scoring position. No pitcher can ever challenge. These are Joe's ideas. The success rates on challenges last spring Catchers 56% Batters 50% Pitchers 41 it makes sense because catchers have a great angle, batters lesser and pitchers are finishing their motion as the pitch crosses the plate, he said. I would have a blanket policy of Pitchers can never challenge rare, situational or player specific exceptions. Catchers reserve challenges for good hitters, higher leverage situations, critical counts, he said. Let Sidon Rafaela take a Kyle Bradish slider to get to one and one in the bottom of the second. Even if you think the call was wrong, you'll be fine. As the game moves on, expand the pool of players who can challenge or for catchers, hitters who can be challenged more hitters are given permission with runners in scoring position when leading off an inning. Your better power hitters can challenge the runner on first and no runners on depending on when you have one or two left as a factor. Now your data and strategy people have to create a matrix based on the situation, the hit or the pitcher. They fed the information into the dugout in binders or tablets. The manager or the bench coach sees the data, lets the player know whether he has permission to challenge. The challenge system isn't going to change baseball much, sheen says. I'm curious as how the who gets to challenge issue plays out. Will rookies be asked to wear bad calls so veterans can have challenges available? Will batters focus their challenges on big swing counts or react to a 20 pitch that they think was low? Which teams let pitchers challenge? All these things are interesting fodder for discussion. Said I'm not sure the sport needed another area for analytics departments to shine. Those staffs will have a greater impact on who challenges and when than anyone else will. They're too valuable to leave them in the hands of the players. See that that's the big conclusion here is now you need an in game pitch challenge department. Maybe it's one guy, maybe it's three people. But I want Craig Counsel and Will Venable asked all of these questions. Even if they don't answer, that's fine. To what extent is there a nascent analytics team that is able to do this? Are you going to have hard and fast rules? Are those rules going to change? How often are you going to assess the success or failure of your own rules to do this? Because this would and all as much as you may think, oh, this is a waste of time now. This is unnecessarily complicated. Wait until the first time you think you got screwed. Wait until that time because I want to do this now. Because you're going to be, you're going to be coming here and you're going to be saying why didn't they this, why didn't this? What is their policy? Let's figure it out now and let's start asking managers now about how seriously they're taking this and where they think, especially the Cubs, who do have a very strong analytics group. Maybe ask Carter Hawkins about it. But there are so many unintended consequences of this that you know, we're going to see in October and November. 100%. 100%. This is going to matter in October and November and it might just matter for the Cubs.
