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Welcome to Wharton Moneyball. Welcome to a full hour of sports analytics here on
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the Wharton podcast network. This is Kade Massie hosting with my longtime colleagues, friends, collaborators, co-
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co-f faculty, Audi Winer, Eric Bradlo, our fourth co-host, Shane Jensen is out and about this week and next week. I
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think Shane will be back. Shane's doing some Shane things. Some combination of
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us are here almost every week of the year. talking 48 49 weeks of the year and going on coming up on 11 and a half
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years. Glad to be here. Always glad to be here. We're recording on Tuesday afternoon. The show will go up sometime
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Wednesday and uh we're going to pursue the usual format this week. We're going
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to have a guest in half the show, go open lines in the second half of the show. Our guest this week, we are
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delighted to welcome back to the show, longtime friend of the show, an original friend of the show, a foundational piece
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of the show, Rick Peterson. Rick is, as many of you guys know, been associated with baseball his whole career. He was a
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pitching coach in the big leagues for many years. He is the author of a book called Crunchtime. He is an expert on
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high performance and especially high performance under pressure. And we're always delighted to get a chance to talk
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to Rick Peterson. Rick, thanks for making time for us. Welcome back. >> Always a pleasure. Long time. Great
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memories. >> Absolutely. You did uh you were a regular feature for the first few years
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of the show. You kind of coached us into uh this whole thing, which we appreciate
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and um we're glad to have you back. Listen, you you came to our attention not least because uh you know, just the
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fact that Billy Wagner giving his Hall of Fame speech mentioned you and gave you a shout out, that's a nice thing.
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Eric was at the Hall of Fame induction. and he makes an annual pilgrimage there with some of his family. So, we thought
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it'd be fun to talk with you about that and find out what else you've been up
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to. But, let's talk about Billy Wagner. I'm going to turn it over to you and
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Eric to talk about Billy Wagner and what that meant to you to hear from that and
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and your experience with >> Well, I I have to say it it was it was my first experience ever. And when Billy
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went in, I gave him a call and we we spoke for about half an hour or so, 45 minutes. And it was interesting because
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the tears of rolling down our cheeks of both of us was just amazing because you realize like you're just filled with
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entire incredible gratitude and how fortunate we've been to have the careers
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that we've had and and made a difference in so many people's lives. But but and
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then and then Billy invited me to his private party for the Hall of Fame. And that was the most incredibly special
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moment uh one of the moments that I've had in my career. And very seldom as a
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coach do you ever actually get feedback from the people that you coach and objective feedback even even more
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importantly. And Billy was very open about so many moments that we had, you know, during that time we were together
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in New York and and really just talking about the real special qualities that Hall of Famers have. And I've been
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fortunate to coach over seven Hall of Famers actually. And and the common thread with the Hall of Famers is just
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they're all the same. And these people are the most processoriented people that I've ever met in my career.
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and they and and and as as a teacher you become a great student. There's no way
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that you could teach anybody until you become a student of that particular person so that you understand, you know,
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where they are, how they think, how they feel, how they act, how they process information. Because as I think, as we
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all know, it was one of the openings, I think, of our the show when I first came
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on, a trip to the mound. And when you make a trip to the mound, you basically have about 30 45 seconds in order to get
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this person's mind refocused. I mean, you're not going out there because he
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just struck out the first two guys on six pitches and he's got nobody on base,
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you know? You're going out there because we're in trouble. It's crunch time. It's
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crunch time at that moment. And to be able to hear his feedback about how I was able to send a message to him that
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was that was very fruitful for him to be able to turn around his thoughts and be
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able to get back to execute one pitch at a time to get out of that jam and and to
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close out that save for a win. So, and to once again, very seldom do you get that kind of feedback and I think it's
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like it's just so helpful and and so productive um so that you can realize, you know, how someone thinks and feels
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and acts when when they're performing at the at the very peak level of their
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careers. >> Rick, what do you what do you remember? What's something you remember about
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Billy Wagner as a player or coaching Billy Wagner? What's something concrete
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when you think about him as a player in your time with him? What's something
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that comes to mind? What comes to mind more than anything else is Billy. Billy was possessed. Abs
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and and and that's a common thread with all Hall of Famers that I've coached.
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They are possessed to be best. Whatever it takes to be best and what they want to know is what's the process to help
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them be best. And it was very interesting because Billy always struggled with his slider. It was
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always, you know, trying to stay behind it instead of getting around it. and and
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and we would come up and in fact as again as a student of the person you're teaching I kept trying to help myself
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understand how can I help him feel this I mean right now they have rapsido you know they have more technology than
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they've ever had before they we didn't have that back when I was coaching Billy
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at that time you know had we had that then you could really show them you know through the technology but but back in
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that day you know you were doing it through through feel and helping him get to understand because once you feel But
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then you experience it and then you know how to repeat it. And one of the one of
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the things that we did and it was on video we we had videotape of it on SNY where they filmed a segment where
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Billy's pitching uphill. So the rubber's behind the mound. He's pitching uphill
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and we had him throw his slider about 30 feet instead of throwing it 60 feet. You
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know where you're getting out there with extension. You know, we had him throw it
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at 30 feet that you have to get behind the ball to throw it down to stay behind it. And here's Billy Wagner uphill with
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his eyes closed throwing sliders at 30 feet. You know, any anybody that would come and witness this would think like,
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"What the hell are these people doing here?" You know, don't they know that
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the mound is backwards and they're only thrown at halfway distance to the the
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home plate? But that was the way that he could feel it. Right. And and it was so
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it was so fascinating that that every single day we would go out there that he was available for that night to pitch
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that night to close out a game. It was always about that process that night, who he may face, who he may not face,
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and so that the preparation was just off the charts. So basically, by the time he
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got in that game, he had already he had already got those guys out in his own mind. And now now it was their time to
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get punished by Billy Wagner. >> Yes, Rick, I got a few questions. So, first Billy told an interesting thing.
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>> I'm sure you know this. He's right-handed. >> He broke his arm as a young man
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>> and then started throwing lefty. Can you just give all of us first of all in your
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entire career obviously with you know >> all the teams you work with the Orioles
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how hard how impossible is that to believe? Let's start with that. >> Impossible to believe. It's more than
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impossible to believe. and and and it's it's it's so impossible to believe
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because I think in our DNA, you know, the left side is our left and right side of our brain, you know, help us balance
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out like what we do things right and left-handed. And I I've seen so many guys be able, if I'm not mistaken, I
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think the Grom can throw left-handed very well. I mean, I I we've had I've
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had pitchers that throw both right and left-handed. Um, which is incredible. They had a glove that they could switch
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both ways. So if a left-hander came up, he switched the glove over to face him lefty. Um you know, but for Billy to go
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that but but here here's the other big factor. We would always do um physical
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testing talking about data. So for example, the data of how high you can jump and how far you can jump. If I'm
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not mistaken, I think around the average of a professional athlete is about 27 inches vertical jump. Billy Billy jumped
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like 32 34 inches off the charts. And when we did the physical testing that that year and and then and then also the
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standing broad jump, how far you can jump. So if you jump over 90 inches and you jump into 100 100 over inches,
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you're talking about high-end velocity. I mean, so for young prospects that they
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they start to say, well, he's only 86 in high school. Well, how high does he jump
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and how far does he jump is is a great predictor of of how much velocity is left in that DNA. And so when when Billy
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came that year, when we got the physical testing back, I asked him, "Give me the
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list, but take off the names because I just wanted to look at all the pictures. >> This is great."
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>> And I and I looked at Billy and I looked at those numbers. I went, "That's got to
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be that's Billy Wagner. That's 100 right there." You know, that's 100 miles an
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hour, you know. And so so you talk about an athlete, an incredible athlete, explosive athlete. I mean, that's why in
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golf like Rory Maroy, you know, it's not how it's not how big you are, it's how
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fast you rotate. So, let me and how fast. >> Let me ask you a related question to
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that. >> I'm going to give you a a person's stats, Rick, and you tell me whether
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this person should retire. 7-2 with a 143 RA, 37 saves, and a whip of 0.87. How does that sound to you? Not
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bad, right? >> Sounds like >> Wagner's last season. What the hell did
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he No, could maybe you could provide last night. Why did he retire? >> I think the fire went out is really what
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it comes down to. It wasn't about performance and and and I think the thing >> actually it was his best season
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statistically. >> It was one of his best seasons statistically, right? Without question.
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Off the charts with Atlanta if I'm not mistaken. Right. >> Exactly. >> And and I think more than anything else
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when these athletes get to that point that fire that fire is stoked like you can't even imagine. like when Pedro
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Martinez would pitch, you didn't even want to get near him. It was like an inferno. It was like Waco, Texas, right?
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And and so when you look at those kind of guys, once that fire goes out, the performance level is going to be
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affected without question. And I and I think Billy, you know, with a young family at that point and he wanted to
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spend time with his kids, family became, you know, a major priority after traveling around because I not mistaken,
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I think Billy started with Houston and then went and then then I think he went to Philly and then he came to New York,
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he went to Boston and then I think >> 100% correct. >> Yeah. Then he finished up in Atlanta,
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right? I mean, so when you're bouncing around like that with a young family and
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you're trying to raise kids and you're in and out of school systems and, you
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know, you want to keep the family together, that's a big factor. But but I think there's nothing better than
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someone who finishes their career at at a peak of their career as opposed to there's nothing worse than seeing an
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athlete a peak performance athlete that who falls off and and they they their fire keeps burning but their physical
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talent has has gone. >> And the last thing I'd love to get A's thought on this too. Um why did it take
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I mean I remember Billy Wagner well. You couldn't hit off Billy Wagner. He was
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the best closer or one of the best cloa was the best closer. I'm biased. I'm a
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Yankee guy, but statistically we all agree Rivera was the best. >> Well, I think we're biased cuz he was
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the best. >> Yeah, it's not biased. He was the best. >> He was the best.
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>> Billy Wagner, like why did he have to wait 10 years to get into the Hall of
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Fame? I mean, what the hell? Billy Wagner's numbers didn't get better or
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worse. 422 saves, a whip of one. I mean, just in an RA of 2.3, just an incredible
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career. >> I think he struck out one-third of the total batters faced, you know, that's
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incredible. Close to 30 close to 30%. >> I can try to give some answer to that
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question before I answer ask my own, but I think that has to do with the fact that we have a hard time valuing
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relievers. It just is a difficult statistical thing to do. And because they pitch in in total number of innings
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so few, we tend to be very uh mixed minds of how to value. So Rivera, of course, we just we saw it, right? Um and
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probably Wagner, too. But >> you struck out, by the way, Rick, 1,200 batters in 900 innings.
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>> It's amazing. But but but let me add to your point, Audi. the people who vote
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for the Hall of Fame never put a uniform on that that that besides the the what do I say the
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>> veterans committee now or whatever they call it now >> right whatever they call it that thank
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you for helping me um and the writers that never put a uniform on they have no idea what it's like to be in that dugout
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in the ninth inning when you got all the money on the table I mean I remember like not too long ago I was in working
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out and it and and Sandman came on you the the song and someone goes, "Oh, I
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love this song." They go, "Do you like this, Rick?" I said, "Every time I hear
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it, I get sick to my stomach. I want to throw up." They go, "Why?" I said, "Cuz
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we lost. Mariano just came into the game." Right. Right. And and so because
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writers don't know what that's like to pitch in the ninth inning when you have
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all the money on the table and you have no idea what that does to the moralization and the demoralization of a
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team when you lose games in the last inning after after you've battled for two and a half to three hours and now
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the last 15 pitches of the game. You know that cost you the game. That is the most miserable feeling for a team and
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it's so difficult to bounce back and writers don't understand the value of a
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closer because they've never been in that place to understand the emotion of
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what it's like in that ninth inning. And to have somebody like a Billy Wagner or
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I I I think back on it. I also coached uh uh Trevor Hoffman when he got his 600 saves. So my two Hall of Fame closures I
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was able to coach as a you know as as a you know as a professional. He would talk about what a dream, right? Two of
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the greatest closers of all time and and Mo, you know, was the greatest of all time without exception. But what that
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does for and to have that guy on your team, the value of that to know that this is an eight inning game and and you
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start managing the game in that way to make sure that you have a lead to come into the eighth inning. You know, you
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may do some things creatively, you know, to create an option for that guy to come
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into the game. Can I ask a related question, Rick, since I know you know it's been years since we've talked to
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you about biomechanics, but obviously that was a lot of what you talked about. >> Is there something different in the
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required physic, let's call it measurables or biomechanics of a reliever than a starting pitcher?
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>> No, not at all. You know, because the bottom line is your arm has to be on
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time at foot contact. And if you are, you're going to have a better chance to
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make quality pitches because because you're on time. >> So Rick, let me uh let me ask you a
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couple questions related to a couple things you said earlier. >> First of all, you're talking about Billy
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Wagner's kind of um genes or his DNA. So predicting future talent. But let's
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let's scroll back a little bit. It's been a number of years since you've been
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on our our show, right? Um and we've all seen um pitchers throw harder and harder
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and harder. So much so that the top end is of course now 102 103 is appearing fairly regularly when it was
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ridiculously exceptional five years ago. >> But scrolling it even back to high
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school. I have I teach a high school summer program and some of my students were are our athletes. We have
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16-year-old kids throwing 85 88 and they're not getting much attention from division one teams because it's become
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so common. What how did this could you have predicted this as being possible? And and I imagine something has changed
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in the in the training process, the coaching process, if you will, to make these extraordinary velocities so much
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more common place cuz our DNA isn't any different. That takes, you know, tens of
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thousands of years to get to. Right. Right. >> So, what what do you what's your what's
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your what's Can you explain us what's what's it doing? Is it the training
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programs or um is it typically your start? Well, it's it's the training programs and and they're and they're
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training people to to move as fast as they possibly can. And and the danger with that, like you I call them uh
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gorilla throws. Like you you'll see people they take these running crow hop throws and throw the ball as hard as
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they possibly can like into a wall or into a net or or a distance if you have a partner throwing with that you're
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throwing with. But but the bottom line of that it's maximum effort and and what's so critical that that in order to
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stay healthy you it's a black or white yes or no. There's no gray area here.
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You you have to be on time at foot contact. Your arm has to be in a certain position at foot contact. You either are
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or you're not. And if you're late at foot contact, you're going to get
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injured. So if you have pitchers training at max effort, it's very difficult to be at on time at max
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effort. That's why you look at golf long drive contests. Those guys can't play in
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the on the tour. They can't put the ball in play. In three minutes, they can put
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one in play at 400 yards. But but to put 14 of them in play, you know, for 18 rounds, forget it. They they can't
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because because max effort, it's impossible to be on time, you know. So what happens is when you're training
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people at max effort levels and and I think the same thing conversely with what's happening offensively, it's all
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about exit exit velocity off the bat. And and so what's happening now, if you
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want to get higher exit velocity off the bat, you have to swing at a certain plane. And in order to swing it at a
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certain plane, you're going to swing and miss an awful lot is what it comes down
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to. But when you make contact, the reward, you know, the riskreward is going to be there. the reward's going to
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be there, but the risk is a ton of strikeouts, which you see strikeouts off the charts in Major League Baseball.
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>> Hold on, let me let me let me follow up on that because I haven't heard that
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before. And that's interesting to me. You're saying that for maximum swing
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velocity, they're trained to always be on the same plane. And if you deviate
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from that plane in order to reach wherever the ball might be, you're going to be coming off that maximum velocity
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and probably out of the groove that you're accustomed to. Is that right? You're trying you're trying to hit the
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same swing plane for maximum velocity. Are you saying no? >> Not necessar not necessarily same swing
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plane, but a swing plane that's going to lift the ball, put the ball in the air.
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They don't want the ball, they don't want the ball in the ground anymore. So
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line drives, even though when you look statistically analytically, a line drive has the highest batting average than
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than a ball hitting the air. A line drive is still the best way to hit, but but that's you're not hitting home runs
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with line drives. You got you got to get underneath the ball to lift it. and to have that kind of swing plane. I mean,
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that's why you see now back back when I was a pitching coach, the fast ball down
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and away had the highest philos or had the highest value for a pitcher. I mean, that was the one area and it still is
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today. They just don't try to execute pitches down and away as often as they
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do. They want to elevate the ball because because when you see swings and misses in the big leagues, the bat the
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bat is underneath the ball. the ball goes over the bat, you know, and and in that kind of swing plane, the way to the
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way to combat that is throw breaking balls down and fast balls up. So that so nobody pitches east and west anymore.
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They pitch north and south. I mean, that that's where the value has has become
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because they've changed the swing plane for hitters. But then you see strikeouts
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off the charts and especially with high-end velocity and but what you're saying the trade-off for that Audi the
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high-end velocity is that you have less innings because guys can't you can't
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maintain that high-end velocity for seven eight nine innings and that's why innings pitched keeps going down.
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Velocity goes up, innings pitches go down. >> But but injuries have not have not
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diminished in any me way. They're they're as higher as higher than ever.
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>> Well, they're higher. They're higher because because it's you're it's more
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difficult to be on time. But but the thing that is bene more beneficial is that they're pitching less,
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you know. So if they pitch more, injuries would even go off the charts even. So what what has struck me is it
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seems that the balance that we're in the holding pattern doesn't really make any
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sense because you have pitcher starting pitchers going five and four or more relievers finishing a game
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>> and almost every game one might blow up because they don't have what it takes.
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>> Um and my so the the question is if if I told a starter that they needed to go
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seven or eight >> they might have to pull back >> a percentage point or two to make it
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>> would that be cost effective? I mean value effective to a team would they how
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much would a would that starter have to give up in in in I guess earn run average if you will to
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>> wouldn't have wouldn't have to give up anything actually would the earn run
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average would go down if they learned how to pitch pitching has not become as lo we've lost the art of pitching and
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we've got the grunt of pitching now and and one of my one of my favorite stories
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when Sandy Kofax came to spring training with us when I was with the Mets he was
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telling a story that Sandy Kofac the beginning of his career was a hard thrower that couldn't throw strikes and
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couldn't pitch effectively and and this particular game in spring training he
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was scheduled to pitch five innings and the person who was going to back him up to pitch the last four missed the bus
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and so he was he said hey look I can pitch a couple extra innings you know I'll pick up a couple of his innings so
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Norm Sherry his roommate and catcher said to him hey listen Sandy if you're going to pitch a couple extra innings
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it's still spring training just back off a little bit. Back off and and pace
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yourself. Sandy Kofax pitched a no hitter that day, complete game no hitter. And he said, "That's when Sandy
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Kofax arrived when I understood I can take the grunt out and and and and one of the comments that he made in spring
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training to our young pitchers. See how easy see how easy you can throw hard."
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What a great statement from a Hall of Famer. And so you you hear all these guys, Smoltz, Maddox, I mean, one of the
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one of the great uh documentaries is one of a kind. It's it's all about Greg
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Maddox about it's about an hour and a half long. And he talks about the art of
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pitching. You know, he was never focused. And and in my opinion, I think that's what happens with golf. Golfers
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when they start learn how to play, they want to learn how to swing faster and hit the ball further before they learn
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how to hit the ball accurate. they got it backwards. They would be much better off learning how to hit it
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hit it accurate and then add on to speed and distance in my opinion. They're
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coaching it backwards. >> Well, what you're what you're saying is is that it's very much counter what I
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guess most of the teams are actually behaving. >> Of course, that's why a Greg you'll
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never see a Greg Maddox to your point. you'll never see a Greg Maddox, you know, but was it, you know, or Tom,
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>> you know, Audi and I had John Smoltz on the show >> and we asked him specifically,
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>> would Greg Maddox even make the major leagues and he said, "No way."
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>> They wouldn't give him a shot at it. >> I won 355, >> right? they wouldn't they wouldn't give
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him a shot at and and and and and what what's so interesting, you know, when it
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comes down to that is that the fact that, you know, they've gone from, like I've said before, like I just mentioned
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earlier, the art of pitching is no longer, you know, part of what's taught. What's taught is is the grunt of
00:24:00
pitching. How hard you can throw it and how hard you and and how how much depth you can get on a breaking ball so that
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you can pitch north and south. Rick, I've always wanted to ask this question. Let me just build on Audi's.
00:24:12
See the logical conclusion. I'm going to say it in a technical way, then a non-technical way. Like why can't
00:24:17
we be basian in the following sense? If it looks like Rick Peterson has his stuff that day, let's leave him in for
00:24:24
seven cuz we know there's inter queename variation and withiname variation. But if this looks like a one
00:24:33
of the good days for Rick Peterson, let's leave him in longer. If it looks like one of the worst days, we can pull
00:24:38
them out faster. But why wouldn't we have the intention of having to say, "Slow down the pitching a little bit. Go
00:24:45
seven. This is one of your good days." Is that a bad strategy? >> No, it's a great strategy, actually. I
00:24:52
mean, it wouldn't be I wouldn't phrase it the way that you phrase it, and I
00:24:55
wouldn't teach I wouldn't teach it the way that you're explaining it, but but
00:24:58
what we would teach I mean, I used to call our pitchers, you've heard me say
00:25:01
it a zillion times on our shows, professional glove hitters. you get paid to hit the glove. Now, what's so amazing
00:25:08
to me when you watch a game, if you watched the home run hitting contest before the All-Star game, the catcher
00:25:14
would give the sign or not not the sign, the pitcher who was pitching, the catcher had the glove, waist high,
00:25:20
middle, middle for the home run hitting contest. When you watch a game, the catcher gives the sign and puts the
00:25:27
glove waist high, middle, middle. I'm like, the same target for home run hitting contest is what you're doing
00:25:34
during the game, you know, and and and talking to people that are still in the game today. They're not focused on
00:25:40
actually executing hitting the glove, making pitches. I mean, I think the most amazing thing, um, when you talk about
00:25:46
Greg Maddox again, he pitched he pitched a 78 pitch shutout and afterwards the writer said, "Greg, what's your, you
00:25:55
know, what's your analysis of today's game?" He said 74 out of 78. And they
00:26:00
said, 'What? What does that mean? He said, 'I hit the glove 74 out of 78
00:26:04
times. And it and it and it brings me back again to golf because I've gotten
00:26:09
into golf a lot. You see, I have a Pebble Beach hat on and I play what I call Chi-Chi golf. And and it comes from
00:26:15
Chi-Chi Rodriguez. And they asked Chi-Chi years ago in an interview. They said, "Chi, how have you won been a
00:26:21
great championship golfer for all these years and you really don't have a great
00:26:26
golf swing?" He said, "It's very simple. I put the ball on the tea. I look at the
00:26:30
ball and I hit the ball where I where I want to hit the ball. Then I get to the ball. I look at the pin and I hit the
00:26:37
ball to the pin." And that's how >> a lot it sounds a lot like either Yogi
00:26:41
Bear or Joe Deio. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> Story of hitting. I look at the ball. I
00:26:44
hit the ball. >> I hit the ball. It's it's the same, right? And that and that's how I play
00:26:49
golf. I don't have a lot of swing thoughts, you know? I have target thoughts. You know, where where do I
00:26:54
want to hit the ball? not how am I going to hit it there, but where am I going to
00:26:57
hit it and I and I feel like I've gotten good enough that, you know, I can hit
00:27:01
the ball where where I'd like to hit it more often. >> So, it's interesting. I mean, I don't
00:27:06
want to segue the conversation to golf more than it already is, but I will um uh teach a lesson that Mark Brody, who's
00:27:15
really the the chief, you know, the sports golf analyst, he's kind of like the Bill James of golf golf analytics,
00:27:22
um he came and spoke to our our students this past summer. >> Oh, wow. >> And and he said he said it's interesting
00:27:28
because he actually asked the students a question. If you are have to hit the ball really
00:27:34
far at a loss of accuracy or not as far with more accuracy, what is proven to be
00:27:40
the better strategy among professionals? So, this you have to be careful with this because it's not this is not your
00:27:46
average player. And it turns out um farther with less accuracy tends to be a better bet. Um it's what we call the
00:27:52
riskier move. And >> unless you're in the majors and the rough is this high.
00:27:56
>> Well, yeah. So this is uh and so it's interesting because it it's it's it does
00:28:01
have a parallel in pitching in so far in sense that the it's we've been pushing
00:28:06
enormous movement massive velocity potentially I would argue and what you're telling us at the at the expense
00:28:12
of control um and of course and much more I think also the the expense of innings pitched and I think it's the
00:28:18
innings pitched that has been the killer and as as Eric and I as Yankee fans we we can't take it. It's like they pull
00:28:24
the the starter after the fifth and then you get four clowns get out there only to get you get the team
00:28:30
>> even if and Audi my point is and I'd love Rick's thought on this. Even if
00:28:32
they're not four clowns, one clown's going to have a bad day. >> Right. Right. Well, that's an
00:28:39
interesting we've been hearing that some this year. It's it's you know, we learn
00:28:42
best from the things we pay the closest attention to and so you guys are learning from the Yankees. But that's a
00:28:46
neat little hypothesis and model. It's a model waiting to happen. Oddie, you need
00:28:49
to get that one out there. Rick, we're gonna have to let you go. We appreciate
00:28:53
you making time for us. Great to catch up with you. Congrats on getting another of your proteges into the Hall of Fame.
00:29:00
It's been a great summer for you. >> Loved it. Great to see you guys again,
00:29:04
man. >> Absolutely. Rick Peterson. >> Good to take care. >> All right. Come back and join us after
00:29:08
the break. >> Welcome back. Welcome back to Wharton Moneyball. Welcome to the second half of
00:29:15
this week's show. Just off the line with Rick Peterson. Rick was a mainstay of
00:29:21
our show when we got off the ground 11 years ago. Haven't talked with him in a
00:29:25
little while. He got a big shout out at the Hall of Fame ceremony this year. Fun
00:29:30
to get back in touch with him a little bit. Let's Let's uh I'm I'm still here
00:29:33
Cade Massie with my colleagues, co-host Eric Bradlo, Audi Winer. Shane is out. Shane will be back. Probably not till
00:29:40
September, but he is going to be back. Eric and any reflections on our catching up with with Rick and then we'll talk a
00:29:48
little bit about MLB around the league. >> Well, you know, as a non actual
00:29:54
professional baseball player or even a former, you know, amateur level professional baseball player, it's hard
00:29:59
to to make prescriptions. But one of the things that he said was repeatedly is that the athletes today are not taught
00:30:07
to become pitchers, but they're they're um they're just learning how to throw
00:30:12
really hard. What was the word for it? A grunt, I think he said. Uh and >> art of pitching, the grunt of pitching
00:30:18
instead of the art. So they they they're it's almost like max effort, enormous
00:30:23
philosophy, trained to have enormous velocity, loss of movement, but less less desire to hit the glove. Um in
00:30:32
fact, I can say a little bit about that because I've actually studied control.
00:30:35
They tend to not the catcher doesn't tend to set up um where he wants to throw it because that that sign gets
00:30:41
stolen. And so and they've they've learned not to show demonstrate where
00:30:45
the pitch is coming by having the catcher um throw that out. >> Interesting. Okay,
00:30:50
>> which is actually interesting. So, so it often looks like they're setting up down
00:30:53
the middle, but there's actually no intention to do that. They have this pitchcom which allows them to
00:30:57
communicate with each other. So, they know perfectly accurately where they're
00:31:00
expected to throw it. So, that's a little twist, but I feel like there's
00:31:06
something a lot, you know, correct about what Rick is saying. That's my instinct.
00:31:11
But still I there's so many super smart people working in baseball and if this
00:31:15
is so obvious that they can pitch a little bit a little bit less and go seven >> and or they could learn to someone would
00:31:23
be doing it and correct and yet it's not. Now there obviously there's there's
00:31:27
a psychological component to this. There's a lot of group think and a lot of uh a lot of factors here that maybe
00:31:33
we can't possibly explain. So I'm not willing to write it off but I am a
00:31:37
little suspicious as it of the story being as simple as that. So let me by the way a that's the same exact thing I
00:31:43
was going to say which is we study this all the time which is if we assume that firms are rational
00:31:50
>> and we see an effect size of this magnitude that isn't like well there's
00:31:54
eightway interaction to figure this out pitch a little slower go a little longer
00:31:59
I mean if that were purely true at its face value people would be doing it well so what
00:32:06
could what could be influencing that okay number one But before before we go longer, just for the record, I'm going
00:32:13
to enter into the record protesting the assumption that firms are rational and perfectly optimizing. All right, let me
00:32:19
just >> I said if I said if >> Okay, I'm just pro I'm just I'm just
00:32:23
noting. >> All right. Um so what could stop firms ball teams from doing that? One is um we
00:32:31
say that for pitchers slow it down, gain more accuracy. How strong is that relationship? We
00:32:40
don't know that that's true. Like we know it's true maybe in aggregate, but
00:32:45
it may not be true for the pitchers that can pitch really fast. That's one theory
00:32:49
that could be there. Okay. The second could be that it's a selection problem
00:32:56
that the pitchers who can pitch really fast are the ones in the majors. The ones that can pitch slower with accuracy
00:33:02
aren't there. Mhm. >> That's another argument that you could make that would kind of invalidate this.
00:33:07
The third one could be the guy who throws slower might get hit more often while he's pitching, but still better
00:33:16
than the replacement, but the manager won't give him the opportunity to pitch
00:33:20
that many innings. So, I could come up with even if the firm were rational, I can come up with whether you want to
00:33:26
call them economic or stories that would prevent that from actually happening in
00:33:32
practice. And I think the three examples I gave just off the top of my head, I'm
00:33:35
sure I could construct more. >> Well, I I just want to know whether fundamentally actually less than about
00:33:42
control, but but longevity. If if if uh if Charl if Rodon doesn't throw as hard
00:33:48
as he can, maybe he can go seven or eight innings and and uh and my question is what's the
00:33:54
loss? >> Well, we actually, by the way, you remember Audi, we asked Rick this
00:33:57
question. It's got to be eight, 10, nine, whatever, 10 years ago. Like how do you measure
00:34:02
Like if you're going to draw a graph on the x- axis is some measure of effort
00:34:07
and on the y ais is let's say ability to continue or probability of injury. What
00:34:13
should be on the x-axis? Should it be the number of pitches? Should it be the maximum effort on you know and he
00:34:20
mentioned very clearly throwing a pitch 1023 is infinitely more effort than throwing
00:34:26
it 95 96 or vice versa. >> Yes. So, uh, he taught us, this is something that he taught us early in his
00:34:32
in the years he was the show, the, um, that it's max effort that hurts your arm.
00:34:37
>> Correct. >> And that if you pull back a percentage point or two or three or whatever that
00:34:41
number is, the effort on your ligaments, your tendons, your muscles, your your is
00:34:47
just substantially less. We'd say the elasticity of that is is is is large, right? Um, but my follow-up question to
00:34:55
that is what is the corresponding loss in value? >> Yeah, that's the question. And that I
00:35:01
don't have the answer. >> Also, let's also be clear, >> we should also be um forwardlooking and
00:35:06
not myopic decision makers, which means the person that also throttles back 3% might actually be able, let's say it's a
00:35:13
starter, might actually be able to pitch 30 games and not get injured. That's
00:35:17
right. So, now there's also additional value there. Well, let but let me just
00:35:21
add one complication in actually running any of these experiments. And we talk about the Maddoxes not getting a look.
00:35:26
And the truth is Maddox would be less effective presumably these days just because batters have become better and
00:35:36
they they've adapted well maybe Maddox is a bad example because the main thing
00:35:39
that they've adapted to is speed. I mean the guys the the guy you know Nolan not
00:35:44
Nolan Richards like J.R. Richard or whoever with the the guys who were throwing over 100 miles an hour in the
00:35:48
in the 80s they're that's normal now and batters have literally become acclimated to some
00:35:55
extent they've become acclimated they have and that's that's hard to hard to
00:35:58
talk about but and so all these trade-offs are are are hard to measure I mean you talk about innings pitch though
00:36:04
so in the grid war paper I wrote and published a couple years back um and we ranked pitcher seasons by their by the
00:36:12
most value um contributed by a starting pitcher and it's Sandy Kofax who leads
00:36:18
that kind of handily. Um and the reason for that is 42 starts pitching eight nine innings every time out and 17 or 19
00:36:28
shutouts. It is more value cumulatively than say Pedro Martinez who have is the best pitcher on a per start basis but
00:36:38
only went 27 starts across the season or 28 which is so so substantially fewer that you just can't contribute that much
00:36:45
value. So I'm willing to let them be a little bit less valuable on a per inning
00:36:50
basis as long as I get more innings out of them. And I think that might be the thing that is being missed today. So
00:36:56
that's this is a we need to take it to one of our uh current baseball execs and
00:37:00
get some insight because the starting place for this conversation is someplace I want to come back to which is look you
00:37:05
know when the Dodgers have 50 people or or whatever 40 50 people do running analytics
00:37:11
>> they're looking at this kind of thing and so it's a little hard to believe and
00:37:14
they've also got you know they can experiment at the farm leagues and so um it's a little hard to believe that it's
00:37:19
not at least near optimal but it's interesting. All right, guys. Let's talk
00:37:23
a little bit um a little bit of baseball around the league, but let me give you a
00:37:27
little update. I played softball this weekend for the first time in forever, just casually hit around, but I have I
00:37:33
want to report because we talk a lot about age curves. So, I want to report on age curves in softball by skill, by
00:37:43
baseball skill, and I'll give just an observation. Here are the observations.
00:37:46
Hitting doesn't degrade that much. It's really delightful to see the guys that I
00:37:52
played with still able to stroke the ball quite nicely. Not not, you know, you don't go out there for 10 years and
00:37:57
you still hit good balls. It's really really kind of surprising and nice. Throwing I would put kind of in the
00:38:03
middle and a lot of heterogeneity. Some of my guys look good whipping it around.
00:38:07
Some of my guys maybe not as good. Me definitely not as good. But the one that really suffers
00:38:12
>> running, >> the running really suffers is defensive range. I mean, nobody's got any range.
00:38:19
It was hilarious. You'd hit a ball at somebody in the outfield. I go, "There's
00:38:23
a nice fly ball for them to shall fall like five feet away from them." Like,
00:38:27
"No, nobody could move. It's absolutely astounding." Yeah, that's I've observed
00:38:33
that. I was the for quite a few years I was captain of our sort of our local synagogue uh team in our league and we
00:38:39
had about 12 16 teams and my secret strategy was I put the youngest players in the outfield regardless of what they
00:38:48
position they wanted or not because they were the only ones who could reliably get to a fly ball. Oh, it's obviously
00:38:53
odd. You see guys moving, you know, as they get older. Like even think of the even think of the Pete Roses. You know,
00:38:58
eventually a lot of people get moved to first base or of course DH. And so it's
00:39:04
the hitting. I mean, this is kind of known hitting doesn't go away as quickly
00:39:08
as things like running and range and other stuff like >> Well, I just extrapolated it deeper into
00:39:13
the uh data sample that we've had before. And we >> Yeah, we had John Carlo out in out in
00:39:18
the outfield for a few games. It was like watching a softball. I still don't
00:39:21
know why he hasn't played for the last five games given he was the player of
00:39:24
the week and batted 530 over the previous I don't understand what I don't
00:39:28
understand what Boone is doing but >> neither do I. >> Okay. So other than the Yankees I mean
00:39:34
for example there was an article in the athletic I think this morning about the Brewers and there's a question about
00:39:40
whether you actually believe in it or not. Clearly the top record in the league. Um they they've been lucky and
00:39:46
batted balls in play. I think since early in the season, they've had by far the highest success rate on baddest
00:39:52
balled balls in play. That's that's supposed to regress. Do do you think
00:39:56
there's anything to be said for like this? You they're lauded for this team
00:40:00
concept, you know, they're running baseball, they're running bases correctly and they're hitting the cuto
00:40:04
off man, all this old school stuff. Is that just storytelling or do you think there's value to be had?
00:40:11
>> I think it's storytelling. I think they're they're you know a lot
00:40:15
of value can be contributed by lots of players doing better than expected. There's one of the really nice
00:40:21
presentations our Moneyball Academy students did this summer sort of broke down the uh the San Francisco um Giants
00:40:30
epic 107 win season from a couple years back where they were predicted to have about 75. Remember that?
00:40:35
>> Yeah. >> And and so what they did was sort of they broke down each each each player.
00:40:40
Nobody had a ridiculous season. it just but a whole mess of players enormously outperformed what was expected. Now they
00:40:48
didn't try to answer why or whether that continued. That was one of the weaknesses. They didn't actually address
00:40:53
look at those players in the future. Um and there wasn't any attempt or really
00:40:58
it's a hard problem of course to figure out why. But I think if you looked at
00:41:02
the Brewers you'd see lots and lots of players doing well. No collectively hitting better and and let me ask. It's
00:41:10
not little things like probably have looked at this. Let's let me condition let's just take the nine starters for
00:41:16
the moment. I'm going to condition on total war. Are you would you rather have
00:41:22
nine twos or three sixes and six zeros? >> Do we know empirically if we look at the
00:41:29
distribution of war and its contribution to winning percentage is there anything
00:41:34
about this is Kade's sort of the way I interpreted K's question. Is there
00:41:39
better to have a uniform distribution? Obviously, we'd rather have more total
00:41:42
than less total, but condition on the total. Would you rather have a flatter distribution or it concentrated with a
00:41:48
small people? >> I think I I we can all try to answer that in our heads. Maybe I know what I
00:41:52
would say. Um and uh and I even have a reason why. But I will say that mathematically, not mathematically, but
00:41:59
um the implementation of war treats them as additive. So >> that's I knew that
00:42:04
>> they they don't care, but that is a weakness in war because they're not
00:42:08
additive. Um, and this is something that goes back to some of the oldest work in
00:42:12
baseball research is that one of the nice things about most people's baseball
00:42:16
is approximately linear and approximately additive, but only approximately. And where that fails is
00:42:23
that there's a multiplicative component of baseball. And it has to do with the
00:42:27
fact that that um getting runners on, it's a cumulative process. Yeah. And so my instinct would
00:42:34
be if I had 20 more, I'd rather see it divided out flat rather than accumulated
00:42:39
and but you don't typically have that because >> but carry it carry it one line further.
00:42:44
That's because you don't want those you don't want those barend spots. You want
00:42:48
guys on bases available to be hit around. >> That's right. And that and that that
00:42:51
what that's what leads to it's the interaction of player quality. One of
00:42:55
the classic problems in basketball and hockey and soccer and football is figuring out the right collection of
00:43:02
players that bring value in a symbiotic way. Right. Nobody asks that question with baseball.
00:43:08
>> Well, let me ask let me ask you a version of that question that I had never thought about until you gave the
00:43:12
example of your students, which let's be clear, we're talking about high school
00:43:15
students project presentation on the Giants from a few years ago. >> You know, Eric, you'll know that we talk
00:43:20
about this. You feel this some in golf and you wonder about it in golf. I'm not
00:43:23
sure if there's ever been a good empirical study. Like, does a golf does a golfer's playing partner's performance
00:43:29
affect his or her own performance? Is there positive correlation in any way with who you're playing with? Is has
00:43:34
anybody ever looked at that in baseball? Like the Giants, everybody is above expectation without knowing why. We
00:43:41
could posit a few possibilities. So, for example, it could be coaching, it could
00:43:46
be clubhouse atmosphere, it could be positive examples. It could be a lot of things but just empirically does it
00:43:52
exist? Is there any is there any correlation between player performance that we've observed?
00:44:00
That's the simple question. Is there is there is there within team a crossplayer
00:44:05
correlation of any kind or is any part of their performance correlated positive?
00:44:09
>> So that can only be psychological or coaching or something not >> quantified. And so, and
00:44:15
>> hold on, Eric. Just I mean, Eric Audie, just because it's coaching doesn't mean
00:44:19
it's not quantifiable. >> Well, it it's hard to measure. I don't
00:44:23
think anyone has I I've never seen anyone attempt to measure it. >> Well, could you not measure it? Could
00:44:27
did Did your buddy Did your student not just show an example of a positively correlated
00:44:33
uh above expectation performance by the Giants players? No, but Audi, why would the following true? My my intuition is a
00:44:40
little bit the opposite, but it could be wrong, which is um if the people around
00:44:45
me perform better, let's call it offensively for the moment. Then when I get at bat, it'll be a higher leverage
00:44:53
situation for me and for the pitcher. And therefore, people tend to bat better in those situations. In other words,
00:45:01
there's men on base, they can't pitch around me as much, etc. So why wouldn't
00:45:06
there be an a literal dependence? >> Yeah, mechanical. You're talking about
00:45:10
mechanical correlation. >> Yeah, mechanical. No psychological anything else just, you know, look way
00:45:16
let's imagine that I was what's the gdunkan experiment. Will Aaron Judge,
00:45:21
although he's doing great already, but would Aaron Judge bat better if he came
00:45:25
up with bases loaded every single time? Okay, but Eric, but to answer the question that I'm trying to ask, you
00:45:32
would want to condition that stuff out and we'd be good statistitians and would
00:45:35
somehow condition that out. And we're basically looking for clubhouse effects,
00:45:40
whether it's from a coach or whether it's because Derek Jeter is a god or
00:45:43
whatever, there's some kind of clubhouse effect that the everybody's just kind of
00:45:47
up. I mean, has it is there >> I didn't want to condition that out, but
00:45:51
okay, we can condition that out. Um, >> yeah. No, Eric, you're right. there's
00:45:54
going to be a mechanical one and then so that's a higher bar for there being some
00:45:58
psychological thing you have to condition that out and find out whether there's something on top of that and I'm
00:46:02
not saying there is I'm just saying couldn't you look for that and isn't
00:46:07
that exactly what people say a clubhouse a good clubhouse is or >> you could look at residual performance
00:46:14
and see how much residuals are correlated you could do it within innings cross games within se you know
00:46:21
seasons you could do it m maybe maybe This is a way to think about managers is you know the ability to look at
00:46:28
cumulative or correlated residuals of multiple players. The these are all reasonable things you could do if you
00:46:34
had a baseline model of performance. You could measure exceedences and see whether correlated.
00:46:40
>> This is Rick gave us an example and it's just an anecdote butcher's team thought
00:46:45
that there was correlated performance in Peterson's pitching staff facing Ichiro.
00:46:50
Right. So that's that's the kind of thing we're talking about just kind of
00:46:53
writ large and it's a little surprising that it hasn't been it's you know if
00:46:57
it's there by the way I want to give Audi credit for like the one of his classic lines
00:47:02
about this stuff over our 11 years together is we're not saying it's not
00:47:06
there it's just that if it is it's too small to observe and I'm just asking
00:47:11
have we even tried to observe it that >> I don't think we have but I'm going to
00:47:14
follow up with another another wonderful mathematical result that I don't know
00:47:19
how transfers over too perfectly. But in the theory of large deviation, so we study in in probability the the behavior
00:47:26
of sums of random variables and we know the central limit theorem and all kinds of the law of large numbers tells us
00:47:33
about what's what's supposed to happen on average. But what what some people
00:47:36
ask is what happens when there's an especially large exceedence, something that's extraordinarily rare. Um what do
00:47:42
you look for? What are the properties of the random variables conditional on this
00:47:46
extraordinary exceedence? So one possibility is that you've got a a bunch of really really big values that that
00:47:52
that caused it. Another another possibility which turns out to be the truth is that you don't the large
00:47:58
exceedence is not driven by a bunch of extreme outliers. It's driven by sort of
00:48:02
a tilt in the entire distribution. Um so lots and lots of small performances lead
00:48:08
to that small better than average performances lead to that exceedence. And so if you transfer that to a say a
00:48:14
baseball or an athletic team, when you get a team that is not is not expected to do well, is doing extremely well uh
00:48:22
like the Brewers are like the Niners did. Not the Niners, sorry. The Giants did a few years back, what you should
00:48:27
expect to see is lots and lots of highly above average performance. >> I love it. I mean, you've given us that
00:48:33
before. This is one of the, you know, things I've learned about probability from talking to you for 11 years, which
00:48:37
is great. We need to be reminded of it. But I think that sets up really well for
00:48:43
evaluating whether there is a clubhouse effect or a coaching effect because that
00:48:47
I think that story what you just described is exactly what teams would say when they think they've got that
00:48:53
going on like a good clubhouse I've got good coaches. Now the cynic or the skeptic I should say would say no it
00:49:00
goes the other way. The winning teams feel good. It's not that really good teams win, but there ought to be some
00:49:07
way to look at whether that correlation ex or where the correlations exist and the size of the correlation and whether
00:49:12
it exceeds Eric's mechanical correlations. >> All right. Okay. Enough on the stats for
00:49:17
the moment, fellas. Any other themes across the MLB right now before we change? >> Well, I think at some point we got to
00:49:24
address some of our early seasons prediction predictions. Um, I think my unfortunately for Yankee fans, my
00:49:29
forecast on Aaron Judge's final, uh, batting average is looking pretty accurate. Um, it's sliding down into the
00:49:36
330s now. I think I predicted around somewhere around 320 to finish. >> I think that would be possibly even
00:49:42
optimistic at this point. >> And the other one is Colorado. Colorado is not breaking any records for losses
00:49:48
this year. >> No. Damn it. And I think we had a pretty uh brisk conversation about that and I was
00:49:55
arguing you cannot regression to the mean is going to be the king as it is in both examples.
00:50:01
>> They're not even particularly close anymore. >> No, they've got 35 wins already.
00:50:05
>> Yeah, they I mean I was just looking at this. They have 36. >> 36.
00:50:09
>> I mean could they go whatever three and 34? They could, but no matter fact
00:50:14
they've won four straight. >> Yeah. >> Um all right, guys. On the golf front,
00:50:19
Sheffer wins yet again. Eric, are you more or less impressed when he wins the second FedEx tournament? So, we're
00:50:26
talking about a tournament of only 50 players, but they are the best 50 players. Is it more or less impressive
00:50:31
to win that tournament? That's actually a good statistical. >> Um, I think of course what you need to
00:50:38
know is how many of those players are playing in the 130 person tournament anyway. So, we've got to beat those 50
00:50:43
and 80 more. And we know, you know, both the comments you've made that Rufus has
00:50:47
studied. It's not like the 73rd ranked golfer you've never heard of and that
00:50:52
person can't win. That person can absolutely win. >> This is a question we've never asked
00:50:56
before, Eric. Like what is take take say say the fill size is 130 typically or whatever the number is. What's if for
00:51:04
the average player or maybe a good player, what's the break even point, the top X players
00:51:12
versus a full field? What's your intuition? >> Right? >> Because you know the top 10 players,
00:51:21
you probably have a better chance against the top 10 players than you would have full fulfilled. That's kind
00:51:25
of fun, isn't it? That is that even true? This is an interesting question because
00:51:31
this is what we're experimenting with. They played 75 guys or 80 or whatever it
00:51:35
was two weeks ago. They played 50 this past weekend. >> 70 then 50 and then this week it's 30.
00:51:40
>> 30 this week. So is this is kind of like how impressive are these wins? So this
00:51:45
let's go back to the original question. How impressed are you with Sheffford
00:51:47
winning the second 50 person tourn? >> Oh I think it's extraordinarily
00:51:51
impressive. I mean, he's beating all the top golfers in the world and um I think
00:51:56
that's absolutely impressive. Um, you know, I forget what it is. He's got 13
00:52:03
now or 12 or 13 straight tournaments. He's been in the top eight. He's won
00:52:07
four of them. Um, this is like the longest streak in like 50 years since Tom Weissoff or something like that in
00:52:14
1973. I mean, he's on a heater and >> Okay, hold on hold. What did you just
00:52:20
say is best since Tom Weissoff? I haven't heard his name in a while. >> The best since Tom Weissoff in terms of
00:52:25
number of consecutive like top 10 in tournaments. >> Okay. Okay. Interesting.
00:52:30
>> I'm just saying he's not only making the cut, he's in the top 10 of every
00:52:36
tournament he plays right now. And that's it's like a 13 straight or some
00:52:40
number like that. So that's incredibly incredibly impressive. And um you know
00:52:46
again I remember a year and a half ago we were saying man he doesn't have that many
00:52:51
majors for that many wins. He's got four majors now. He's got 18 wins in the
00:52:56
since his first win three and a half years ago at age 25. He now has 18 wins in that period of time. I mean it's
00:53:04
incredible incredible the golf that he's playing right now. And if he if he does
00:53:09
it for another three or four years, you have to put him in the top echelon of golfers ever because, you know, once you
00:53:17
get to the eight and above major wins, by the way, then you're in the Gary Player. You know, you're in the
00:53:24
>> Hold on. Let's I I'm I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. I learned a lifetime
00:53:28
lesson with Tiger Woods, not get ahead of myself on projecting. Let's not make
00:53:32
Let's Let's have that conversation when we get closer, but I do want to ask a
00:53:34
different question about the the FedEx Cup. Historically, they've struggled with the right format. You know, guys
00:53:41
qualify for this, they earn certain amount of points, and then they want to somehow when they get down to these
00:53:45
final tournaments, reflect what they've accumulated over the previous year. And
00:53:50
so, guys would start out with advantages, you know? >> Yeah, they got rid of that.
00:53:53
>> They got rid of all that. And and so I'm curious your opinion on it because it is
00:53:57
a very different thing. But I'm having a hard time not feeling like, well, this
00:54:01
this is so much better. This is so much simpler. And really when it's not like
00:54:05
you play the NFL playoffs and if you beat the wild card round, if you win the wild card round by 35 points, you get an
00:54:11
advantage in the divisional round. I mean, that's it doesn't happen anywhere.
00:54:15
>> Tell you how much I hated that previous like the 30th person would start at even
00:54:20
and then the first person would start at minus 10. That was literally what it was. And I'm like, what a waste. What a
00:54:26
total waste. And now the top 30 people in the FedEx standings all start in a regular tournament at even par. And
00:54:33
let's see who wins the game. >> You made the cut. You made the cut. It's
00:54:36
categorical. You move on. >> That's it. You got the same chance as anybody else to win this tournament.
00:54:42
>> But but but the the uh that's just the tournament win. They still have this
00:54:46
separate points accumulation thing, right? >> They do, but but Scotty Sheffer's
00:54:50
already clinched that. >> Okay. Okay. >> No, he's number one by far. He's number
00:54:54
one by far. So I suppose as much intrigue as we have is around the RDER Cup and will it be after this next week
00:55:01
that the White Rider Cup qualification >> next Wednesday is when um the six
00:55:06
automatic qualifiers are basically set for both teams. Um but um Keegan Bradley who is the US captain um next Wednesday
00:55:15
is when he announces the six captains picks and of course the big thing there is does he pick himself because he's
00:55:21
number 10 right now. Okay. And by the way, he is in the final 30. >> Yeah.
00:55:26
>> And let's imagine he wins this. Then he have to pick himself. I mean, come on.
00:55:31
>> Well, I mean, where where give me the overunder on his position in the top 12
00:55:38
and whether he'll pick himself. So, if he's 12, maybe not. If he's seven, he
00:55:42
does. What about in between? I think if he has a strong perform, he he has a top 10 performance this week,
00:55:51
which would move him up because obviously a bunch of the players playing this week are Europeans, so they would I
00:55:55
think if he has a top 10 this week, >> he picks himself for the RDER Cup. Okay.
00:56:00
>> Momentum. Momentum. We know momentum matters in golf. Like >> momentum, it will move him up. It would
00:56:04
move him up from It would both >> both are going on. That's exactly right.
00:56:07
Okay. Yeah. >> All right, guys. Near the end now, but we got to talk football.
00:56:12
NFL just finished preseason week two. We are three weeks away from two and a half
00:56:17
weeks away from kicking off the NFL. We are a week and a half away from week one
00:56:22
in college football. But this weekend, fellas, weekend, week zero, we are on with
00:56:30
one of the rivalry games in college football. Kansas State, Iowa State, and Ireland kicking off noon Eastern time.
00:56:39
The season's off the ground. This is actually um a fun game, a meaningful game. They are both top 25 teams. Kansas
00:56:46
State is 17 or so and Iowa State is 22 or so. I think K State's favored by about three. They're both considered
00:56:56
contenders in the Big 12. Of course, half, probably half, at least six or eight teams are considered contenders in
00:57:02
the Big 12, but they are two of the favorites in the Big 12. So, it's a meaningful game and we're off the
00:57:06
ground. Audi, we've just lost. Eric Audi, are you excited about college football? Hey, I know we've pulled you
00:57:11
into pro football. What is your attitude towards college football? >> Okay, so this is an incredible
00:57:18
incredible moment for college football because it is so much in transition with the way it's professionalizing and at
00:57:26
that level I'm very interested in it. Um I'm interested in predicting what's
00:57:30
going to happen, trying to understand what it means to have all these all this paid athletes, the NIL's the fantastic.
00:57:38
I love thinking about it because it it's great data. Um, in fact, just listening
00:57:42
to you, I immediately had an question. I wonder what the answer is. Is conditional that you're not talking
00:57:47
about a top one or even top five teams. What is the RMSSE in rank preseason on a
00:57:55
on these on a team like these? So, you said 17 22. I mean, how well do we really know that information? Could it
00:58:02
be a top five team or a top 50 team or what's the uncertainty on? Let me let me
00:58:07
try to let me interpret RMSSE. You're saying if if by the end of the season we
00:58:12
can take their rank to be their true rank, which isn't true, but let's let's
00:58:15
just say that >> you're asking what's the era in the preseason ranking versus their final
00:58:21
ranking essentially. >> And I I've known that in the past precisely because I've because you
00:58:27
because we do modeling, Massie People, we do modeling. And so you want to you want to know that about yourself. if you
00:58:31
want to have some sense of um how much these things travel over the course of a season and and um I can't I don't recall
00:58:39
the exact number but it's what do you start to say something? >> Well, this is this is before there's
00:58:44
been any game so I'm actually asking something. You sure it travels along as
00:58:48
as observations? >> No, I mean no no I mean from week zero to end of year how much does it travel?
00:58:54
And the the 90% confidence interval is substantial. I mean, it it may be I don't know if it's plus or minus it's
00:59:02
it's at least plus or minus 10, but I think it's more than that. I don't think
00:59:06
it's plus or minus 20. >> Okay, that's what I want because it's
00:59:09
plus or minus 20. That's a huge swing. >> Yeah, that's too big. But it does 10
00:59:13
does 10 doesn't seem right. Well, 90% confidence that maybe it's plus or minus
00:59:16
10. Maybe maybe it's in that range. But, you know, this is kind of meaningless as
00:59:21
well, Audi, because you know, these distributions in the middle, they're all
00:59:24
stacked up and everyone's real close to each other and you could be 10 spots
00:59:27
away and only a point and a half off, but at the top, they're more spread out.
00:59:31
>> Okay, so a better question is, well, how likely is it that either of these two
00:59:34
teams are going to be in the playoffs? >> The chance that one of these two, they
00:59:41
would have to win the Big 12 almost certainly to be in the playoff. and the chance that one of these I think it's a
00:59:46
16 team league, you know, the the pre-season last place team last year won the conference. And
00:59:55
so there's a lot of uncertainty, famously uncertain in that conference. One of the chance that one of these two
01:00:00
teams wins the Big 12, I'm going to say about a quarter >> that one of the that one of them will
01:00:07
win it. So about a quarter that and and obviously the team that wins this game will have a big step up on that versus
01:00:13
the other guy. Um, plus they both have interesting quarterbacks, especially KState's quarterback, dual threat guy.
01:00:19
Um, they're both really well coached teams. Um, it's a good it's a good solid
01:00:23
opener. It really is a good solid opener. I >> So, that does make it interesting
01:00:26
because what you're said you're saying is that the out the outcome of this will
01:00:29
actually be quite informative about which of these two. >> Yeah, that's that's that's a good way to
01:00:34
boil it down, Audi. This is a meaningful game for the playoff. If you if that's
01:00:38
if that's if that's the criteria you bring, it's a reasonable one. As a as a
01:00:41
as a as a very casual college football fan, that's a meaningful that's a
01:00:45
reasonable question to ask and I would I would bull it down. >> And the other qu interesting thing as
01:00:49
you point out is the other reason why you watch college football is you're watching the future NFL stars, but not
01:00:55
knowing who they are yet. So, it's fascinating to look at this data. It's
01:01:00
almost as if it's right. So, you talk about these two interesting quarterbacks. For all we know, in five
01:01:05
years, we're looking at a s potential star. I mean, >> well, let's put let's put it let's put a
01:01:10
finer point on it. Brock Pury is the starting quarterback for the 49ers, famously as the last guy drafted a few
01:01:17
years ago. Brock Perie played about 17 years as the Iowa State quarterback. And nobody thought, everyone thought he was
01:01:24
a classic Iowa State quarterback. No one thought he was an NFL quarterback. And you might look at their current
01:01:29
quarterback in similar in a similar lens, at least with that with that with that history. it makes it more
01:01:34
interesting. The uh the KA quarterback's a little bit different animal and very
01:01:38
fun to watch and who knows who who knows we haven't seen his progress since last
01:01:43
year. We'll see how good of a quarterback he is. >> So, I'm going to follow up with another
01:01:46
question for you. Like you asked me why I watch of college potentially are interested in college football. I I'll
01:01:51
summarize that in three three reasons why I think people are very interested in college football. One because you
01:01:58
care about your college, right? So if you ask me which colleges I would follow would be Yale and Stanford respectively.
01:02:04
I actually care about I look at the the sports pages to see how those two teams do uh without that much I don't have too
01:02:12
much of a stake in it. Never really watch too much but yeah so that's you watch because you went you're wearing a
01:02:17
Texas that's your alma mater. You are invested in that school and its performance and therefore you watch. The
01:02:23
other reason why you watch is because you you is these are in certain level these are players who are going to be
01:02:29
stars in the future, right? So you're you're watching young guys who are
01:02:33
developing and eventually going to be terrific and you're and and that's
01:02:36
another reason. A third potential reason why you're watching is because you usually love the game college football.
01:02:41
You just like this version of of of football, which I would to to respond to that I would ask we don't typically see
01:02:49
that in other sports. We don't have that enormous interest in the sport and you
01:02:56
know no one really watches minor league baseball except you know just as a fun outing. No one's following it. You don't
01:03:02
see I don't know what what's G-League basketball >> but you're going to but you do watch
01:03:07
college basketball and >> you do right it's the same thing right so it's so the question is um what is it
01:03:15
when someone says it's it's the game what is it about the game >> so first I'll try to be relatively quick
01:03:21
because God knows I could talk about this for a long time there's very >> I have I have a I got to get moving
01:03:25
myself >> okay but my attempt one it's the atmosphere and the passion around
01:03:30
college football is different from college. There's a pageantry, to use kind of a schlocky word, but there is a
01:03:35
pageantry about college football that doesn't exist really for any of our other sports. We're talking about
01:03:41
100,000 person stadiums and the color and the marching bands and all that stuff. And when you're when you've been
01:03:46
raised on it, it's just kind of in your bones and so you're just kind of
01:03:50
reactive. So that's the biggest differentiator. The game itself is a little more jagged, a little more
01:03:56
volatile. the standard I was I bet if you ran the numbers the standard deviation on what happens each play is
01:04:03
very different in college than it is in pro >> and that adds some it adds it's
01:04:07
sloppiness but it adds excitement to it. Um those are the two main things and then you know the last thing I would say
01:04:13
is in recent times college football has influenced professional football dramatically. A lot of the innovation
01:04:19
has bubbled up. It hasn't come down. But in in not all of it, of course, because
01:04:23
it's a very sophistic and and and they're and they are literally professionals that spend their
01:04:28
lives on it. But some of the big changes in the game has bubbled up. I mean, just
01:04:32
the dynamic the dynamic nature of the game, the dynamic nature of quarterbacks, that's been kind of forced
01:04:37
on the NFL in some sense. So, those are the those are the chief reasons. But, by
01:04:41
the way, Audi, you named two teams, Yale and Stanford. Stan, there's only five
01:04:46
games, week zero games. Five week zero games. Stanford's one of them. Stanford's playing Hawaii. I think it's
01:04:52
even like prime time game Saturday night. And this he's not going to be on the field and you won't really feel his
01:04:57
presence, but Stanford's got an interesting story. And Andrew Luck. >> Yeah.
01:05:01
>> Former number one draft pick, Andrew Luck is the GM out there. And unlike
01:05:06
most GM arrangements at the college level, he's actually the co head coach co reports to him and so it's this
01:05:12
unique situation and you know, he's kind of a guy people pull for. He he his
01:05:17
career was shortened and it's kind of a second career for him. So, we'll see how
01:05:21
it goes. His dad was a was a also a quarterback. He even played a little professional ball. Um but he was
01:05:27
famously one of the top ads in like the 90s, early 2000s. So, here comes his son
01:05:32
again. Um kind of a >> So, is that the role athletic director? I never heard of a GM for a football
01:05:36
team. >> Well, hold on. Am I Yeah. Yeah, I think he's GM, not at No, no, maybe I've
01:05:42
forgotten the title. Maybe I've forgotten Andrew Lu's title out at Stanford, but GM is that there's GMs all
01:05:48
over the place now, Audi. This is the innovation personnel. There's not just
01:05:52
GMs, there's personnel departments, there scouts. All that we've seen in
01:05:55
professional football has expanded into college football now >> as it should
01:05:59
>> as it has to. And so it's kind of a fun time on the personnel front because the
01:06:05
job opportunities have doubled more than >> although what I'm going to take away
01:06:08
most before we say goodbye is your observation that you raised on it and the pageantry of it and the excitement
01:06:17
of 100,000 people. It's something that I would love to to experience. So we're
01:06:23
going to have to set that up at some point. >> Okay. Well, that's easy. There's two
01:06:26
there's two possibilities in my life. One is Texas OU which is played at a neutral site which is remarkable because
01:06:32
of its neutral sight. The other is um Texas A&M that you know any a night game
01:06:37
at&m especially against Texas is as good as anything. And Audi the best way to
01:06:41
think about what it's like the only comparable experience I think would be a
01:06:46
a big soccer match especially an English soccer match with that pageant tree. That's the way to compare it. Okay, we
01:06:53
got to go. We got to get out of here man. That's that uh that's week zero.
01:06:57
But we can't help ourselves. Here we go. Here we go, man. All right. For Audi
01:07:01
Winer, who was here the whole time. Eric Bradle almost the whole time. And Shane
01:07:05
Jensen, who didn't show up for a dad gum minute, but we knew he wasn't going to.
01:07:08
In absentia, Shane, many thanks. Deion Simpkins, thanks man. Deep Patel, many, many thanks to you. Marissa, many thanks
01:07:14
to you as well. Our producer, thanks for you guys for listening. Come back and join us next time. Between now and then,
01:07:22
enjoy your sports. [Music]