The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball Blog

Jason Ferguson sent a link to this story of attempted cheating in a UT-Missouri game this month. Check it out:

In the bottom of the sixth with UT leading 5-0, Peoples stood on third base with two outs. Chance Wheeless popped up along the third-base line near home plate, and Missouri catcher Trevor Coleman, his back to third, called for the ball.

So did Peoples, who was running toward home.

“I thought, ‘I’ll give it a shot,’” Peoples said. “I didn’t know it was that illegal.”

Coleman cleared out, believing an infielder was behind him. The ball dropped to the turf, and bounced foul. Home-plate umpire Ken Eldridge called Peoples for interference, and the inning ended. Coleman, after collecting his catcher’s mask, barked at Peoples.

“I couldn’t really understand him, but I’m sure he had a few choice words,” Peoples said.

This kind of verbal interference was entirely common in baseball’s early history (this is in the book), and it’s always nice to see some reach back for a classic. You never now – as we saw in that other “pop up” story, sometimes the umps don’t make the call and you get away with it.

Tonight’s game, Casey Fossum facing Kenji Johjima.

- Fossum throws a breaking pitch into the dirt that may (or may not) have hit Kenji’s foot.
- Kenji protests and starts to argue when the umpire doesn’t award him a base.
- His manager, Mike Hargrove, comes out to argue.
- The umpire signals to Fossum for the ball, presumably to look it over for evidence that it hit Johjima: scuffs, discoloration, etc.
- Fossum throws the ball over the catcher to the backstop, ensuring that it’s scuffed, discolored, and useless as evidence.
- No base is awarded to Johjima.

That’s a great heads-up play by Fossum there. Making the throw plausible meant he avoided being ejected on general principle, too.

In light of the Torii Hunter/Mike Sweeney champagne payoff, I wanted to ramble a little about how a different sport handles this kind of thing. Baseball, with an eye to the extremely corrupt era before the post-1921 cleanup of the sport, has extremely harsh rules about transactions between players — technically, the punishment for Hunter and Sweeney was a three year suspension — but other sports take a radically different approach.

Take pro bicycling. Bicycling’s a much more complicated team sport, with many teams of differing strengths and weaknesses competing against each other at once. Every day stage is like a game, every race like a season.

There, payoffs are entirely normal, and it doesn’t undermine competition at all. A small, underfunded team might be employed by one of the stronger teams to perform a certain task: to attack at a certain point, or to take the lead and buy the stronger teams’ riders an easier day to recover, and so on. It means that the smaller teams make money, helping their long-term fortunes, and the stronger teams end up spreading the wealth while adding an additional layer of strategy and competition.

I think there’s a perfect baseball parallel: September games. When teams get to carry 40 players on their active roster, the game changes. Teams out of contention field lineups that are intentionally, knowingly not the best present-day competitive squads, because they want to see what some 20-year-old outfielder has, and armed with twenty pitchers, they can afford to burn two every inning playing petty matchup games if they want.

You’ll hear about it if a competitive team faces a squad way out of any race: if the out-of-it manager is old school enough, he’ll put his veterans out there and try and put up a good fight to “preserve the integrity of the game” while other franchises will argue it’s in their best long-term competitive interests to field younger squads and screw around to see what their prospects have.

This can affect playoff races. Say a week into September, the wild card teams in the AL are Detroit, Chicago, and Oakland, and they’re separated by a game or two. The White Sox face the Twins, the Indians the Angels, and Oakland the Rangers.

What lineups those teams face could determine who goes to the playoffs and who doesn’t. If the Rangers try out some fresh-faced starters and get socked around by the A’s, if the Twins hand out playing time to prospects up from their deep farm system and the White Sox score at will on their way to a series sweep, or if the Tigers face a Mariners team eager to get on with rebuilding, well, any of those teams could swing the race.

Why not, then, allow teams to openly pay off a team to beat their opponent, even to – to borrow more directly from pro cycling – to hire them to play the team that has the best chance to be competitive?

It would provide a way for the A’s to ensure that if they lose the wild card, it won’t be because the Tigers rolled over a half-asleep Mariners team.

You’d have to work out a way to make it above-board and if not public, at least disclosed within baseball. You could file, for instance, with MLB, and say “We agree to pay the Twins $1,000,000 per win against the White Sox, with an additional $500,000 if they sweep the series.”

The downside, of course, is that a team like Kansas City might use that as blackmail, setting a price per game and threatening to run out some AAAA-level pitcher if their price isn’t met. You could simply prohibit any offer except by paying teams, though that wouldn’t stop the kind of negotiation-through-media we see in other situations.

And moreover, the other problem is that it could be (as it is in cycling) a larger advantage for rich teams in races against poorer teams: New York could easily afford to spend the money to make sure a wild card opponent faced stiff competition through the end of the season, but Minnesota doesn’t have the kind of budgets to pay teams off to play hard against New York in the same way.

Besides, I don’t think it’s that huge a deal: the difference between giving the Royals an incentive to run out a lineup with a better chance to win that day and saving the money wouldn’t be all huge a difference. It’s certainly a lot less than the interleague draw, for instance.

There’s no chance that anything like this happens, but what turns out to be really interesting is bicycling’s approach to another one of baseball’s deadly ills: performance-enhancing drug use. It’s even weirder, and I think it’s the direction baseball will end up having to head.

Derek Jacques pointed me to this a beautiful example of heads-up, if unsuccessful, cheating.

In yesterday’s Yankees @ Mets game, in top of the 6th, the Yankees have Jeter at first and Posada batting, with one out (the AB starts about 5m into the top of the 6th).

Posada hits a line drive, Reyes snags it in his glove, and clearly has control of it as he raises it and grabs it with his hand, then almost sets it down on the infield as he reaches all the way down to put the ball into the dirt, as — well he’s hoping it’s as if he dropped it. He lets it roll a few inches, picks it back up, and throws to second.

What he realized might happen, in that split-second after snaring it, is that if he dropped it, he could get the force on Jeter at second and possibly even start a double play to get two. The worst thing that could happen if the force is on is they replace Jeter, a good baserunner, with Posada, who is slow.

Fortunately for the rule of law, the second base umpire got a good look it, ruled the catch was made, and Jeter returned to first safely.

Like framing the pitch, or the good tag, or when outfielders trap the ball and hold it up as if they’ve caught it, Reyes made an attempt to deceive the umpires to help his team. It’s dishonest, and baseball has a rich tradition of plays just like this. Reyes had the right idea. Maybe next time he’ll make it look a lot better, or catch the umpire not paying as close attention, and help his team through deception.

Yesterday, Mark Stacy wrote:

There’s a play I see sometimes that probably doesn’t strictly fall into the category of cheating, but … I call it “out on general principles.” Such a play occurred in last night’s Pirates-Marlins game.

Dan Uggla was on second with less than two outs, no runner on first, when the batter grounded to short. Uggla tried for third anyway and Jack Wilson threw to Jose Castillo at third for the tag out. Well … it was hard to tell from the replay, but let’s just say it appeared possible that Uggla beat the tag. But the out call stood and Uggla didn’t argue.

My take on this is that if you do something that strikes the umpire as dumb, such as try to advance on a ball right in front of you, you have to be really, REALLY safe (like the third baseman drops the ball or the throw goes into the dugout) or you’ll get called out whether you’re safe or not. “General principles” because the principle is, if you do something dumb you deserve to get called out.

I write about this in the book a bit, and it’s worth expanding on a little.

Umpires get a lot of calls wrong. They’re human, and perception’s a funny thing. There are two ways you’ll frequently see outs go the wrong way:
- as Mark notes, on many plays, there’s almost a default call, and you have to clearly be on the other side of it to be called out
- the umpire seemingly makes a decision based as much on the aesthetics of the play as what actually happened

It’s also true (as I point out in the book) that there are wide variances between umpires in how often they call out runners stealing second, for instance. But generally speaking, on close plays at first, the runner’s out. If you have a Tivo or similar DVR, watch how many plays the runner actually does get there in time: a couple years ago, when I was just starting the book, I couldn’t believe how severe the prejudice is. To be safe consistently, you really have to be over the base as the ball arrives, and even that doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the call.

Generally, this is accepted. In practice, umpires as a group enforce it on each play, so there’s no particular bias against any team or player.

More interesting is the “good-looking” play. I jokingly complain in the book about Derek Jeter’s sweep tags (because when he pulls it off against my home team it’s hard to appreciate his artistry), which sometimes don’t even touch the runner but still get him the call, but it’s true in many other cases. It’s much the same way umpires really are to some extent vulnerable to pitch framing, where a pitch may be called a strike if it goes where the catcher set up and they catch it cleanly but a ball if they have to reach across to snag it as it almost gets by them.

If a third baseman receives a throw from the outfield early, fields it cleanly, and applies a smooth tag, they’re far more likely to get the call even if the runner gets a hand in, and if the throw comes in off the base and requires the fielder to dive to make the tag, they don’t get the benefit of the prejudice to call an out.

It’s an interesting phenomenon, and as long as umpires are human (and that’s a whole other subject) it’ll be another area where players can find ways to take advantage of them, and why sometimes, the smoothness of the tag matters just as much as whether or not the tag is actually made.

After yesterday’s bit on protective gear and how it can encourage hitters to get plunked with potentially dangerous consequences, I did some more reading on it, and there’s another issue I hadn’t considered: batters wearing protective padding may encourage pitchers to act more dangerously.

For example, see this:

Bicyclists who wear protective helmets are more likely to be struck by passing vehicles, new research suggests. Drivers pass closer when overtaking cyclists wearing helmets than when overtaking bare-headed cyclists, increasing the risk of a collision, the research has found.

While I’m not sure how much stock to put in it, it does raise a point: if you assume that pitchers generally don’t want to injure the hitters, but elbow protection and other protective gear makes hitters more aggressive about being in the zone, that may be compounded when pitchers now feel freed from any responsibility to not bean a batter — because armored, they can take it. More balls in and off the plate, even more plunkings — and the strategy evolves.

One of the things cut from the book was a discussion of equipment: uniforms and uniform code violations (which are common and largely trivial, unless they spark brawls).

The only thing I really miss is the elbow pad. One of the issues baseball’s had to deal with is the Biggio Problem: players who armor up and then take a ball off the padding for a free trip to first. Baseball’s struggled with how to regulate the issue, as it has with many similar problems, because there are several issues:
- Players being hit intentionally clearly is not what the rules intended to be a productive strategy for hitters
- Player safety is, rightly, one of baseball’s most important priorities
- Umpires traditionally have rarely enforced the rule that states being hit by a pitch that is in the strike zone does not result in a free base

Biggio, essentially, by hanging his elbow into the zone, is exploiting a rule designed to protect him. So far, baseball’s only real action is to require players to have a valid medical reason to wear armor up to the plate, but really, when Jeff Weaver can have one of the worst six-game starts to a season in baseball history and then go on the DL with an almost transparent excuse, we can admit it’s not hard for a player to get the team doctor to sign off on protective gear.

Other proposed solutions include not awarding a free base if the ball strikes the protective gear, which raises a whole other set of enforcement questions, and banning pads entirely, which would put players at greater risk of injury.

This last issue, though, is more complicated than it first seems. A player wearing padding may intentionally hang in on pitches trying to get hit, putting himself at far greater risk of being hit in an unprotected location.

For a good parallel, check out this article on NASCAR, where it appears that safety improvements result in more dangerous behavior and more accidents.

If allowing players to have pads has a similar effect, and the net result is more injuries, then the solution of banning protective padding entirely may actually end up reducing the number of hit batters and reduce the number of resulting injuries, by forcing players to act more safely.

In light of the Phelps-Johjima collision and the conversation that followed, I wanted to quote umpire Zack Rebackoff, from his book “Tough Calls: An Illustrated Book of Official Baseball Rules” (which I highly enjoyed and recommend if you’re interested in the subject). In it, he talks about the history of the home plate collision, and how it affects enforcement:

Catchers have been getting away with little tricks since the game originated. After all, when the play is at the plate, anything goes…including blocking, hooking, neighborhood tags (tagging someone in the neighborhood of the base or body) and even so much as appearing to control loose balls after collisions. Let’s not forget that the steamrolling runner is capable of his own tactics, such as, but not limited to, bulldozing and kicking the ball loose. Therefore, the umpire must be a trifle more lenient when calling plays at home plate. The “dish” is the ultimate fortress for maximum defense, while the offense strives to break through and claim a run. To say anything goes would really not be absolutely correct, but may the feistiest man win.
In view of this slight leniency, it would be safe to assume that most umpires working home plate are not looking for obstruction to occur at the plate.

p. 125, emphasis in the original text

Rebackoff goes on to say that a large part of the problem is that umpires are focused on the sweep tag and the plate, and can’t watch for where a catcher can legally be positioned, and so on.

He also relates seeing one incident in a Midwest League game as a spectator. The catcher blocked entirely the runner coming home from third instead of fielding a late and wide throw, stopping the runner’s progress. That achieved, he went up the line and left to get the throw, and then tagged the (probably concussed) runner out.

No obstruction was called.

In The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball, in the steroids chapter I put some stats together to test a theory. In Game of Shadows, Bonds complained that when he was “on” (actively taking steroids) he hit better those weeks, and when he was “off” (not taking them, so the body continues to naturally produce testosterone) he felt weak and ineffective (relatively). Using game stats, I tested that hypothesis (“Bonds will hit better for three weeks and then worse for a week, continuing through a whole season”) and the result’s in the book.

A reader wrote to take issue with its completeness, arguing that the benefits of steroids would come not just from having them actively coursing through the veins, but also in the training and muscle-building that would last all season. That off week is padded, so to speak, by the extra bulk built up and maintained by all the time on.

This is entirely true: the work in the book only attempts to measure whether the complaint in Game of Shadows can be turned into a theory and tested.

What about the other question, though – what’s the overall effect? Ignore whether he went up and down in a regular pattern during a season. How far did it get him? From what we know, it was the McGwire-Sosa home run chase of 1998 that so annoyed Bonds that he decided to begin using steroids the next season.

Here’s a quick-and-dirty napkin calculation. It doesn’t take into account how he should have aged or anything else. It’s really quick, though. From 1986-1998, age 21-33, Bonds hit a home run 21% of the time he made any hit. Then for 1999-2007, it lept to 35%. His lowest HR/H rate in that period, 2006, is 26.3% (only two are higher in the prior run).

If you use the 86-98 rate, he’d have hit 202 over 99-07 so far. Use a generous 26% rate, and you get up to about 250. In real life, he hit 333. Or, -131 in the first case, -83 in the second case.

Which on the career mark would put him at 602 to 660 – a season behind or possibly just having passed Willie Mays.

Obviously, that doesn’t do the topic justice, and it makes an unfortunate assumption that every year after 1998 is included, even after the collapse of BALCO. It doesn’t look at the intentional walks, and it also assumes that Bonds from age 34-42 hit home runs as well or better than his 21-33 selves. Still, it’s interesting to make a rough calculation like that and realize how quickly these things add up, and also how great a player Bonds was before 1999.

On of the common and unnoticed ways that rule breaking affects the game is how selective enforcement of the interference rules results in dangerous and frequent cheating. In double plays, where the runner to second is allowed a free shot at the fielder and the fielder isn’t required to touch second to get the force out, and at home, catchers are allowed to block the progress of the runner and runners are allowed to run full-tilt into the catcher, either to try and knock the ball loose or to even stop them from fielding the ball.

I saw a particularly violent example of this today, in the Seattle-New York game. The play starts at about 1:20:30 in the feed. Josh Phelps, coming in to score from second on a single by Jeter, runs home. Johjima sets up in front of the plate and a little to the first base side to receive the throw. Phelps has a wide open shot at the plate and, even if he couldn’t see that the ball was late coming in, could have run through or slid, forcing Johjima to come all the way around and make a sweeping tag, but pretty much he’s home free.

Phelps takes Jojima out. Here’s a still to show how far he went to make this hit.

Phelps has to go so far off the plate that after driving into Johjima, he goes back to touch home. Johjima, as a possibly revelant aside, is the only Mariner really hitting well so far this year. If the umps are going to let you take a shot and possibly get him out of the game, why not go for it?

From the Seattle Times blog:
Phelps said “When I saw him starting to crouch down, for me, it tells me he’s getting ready to receive the ball. I can’t just let himn tag me real quick.”

Johjima said he “was kind of surprised because I had left the plate open.”

Washburn then plunked Phelps in the sixth. Skipping the subject of whether headhunting’s ethical or not (it’s certainly against the rules to hit the batter on purpose), under baseball’s code, that’s entirely acceptable for a pitcher to throw a pitch at a batter on purpose. I don’t think I need to go into how dangerous it can be to get hit.

Actually, there were two: he throws inside, low, and misses Phelps, and then goes up and in to get him on the arm.

The ump warns both benches, which is a whole other dynamic in how these things escalate (short version: there’s a huge incentive for you to be the guy who does the plunking that results in the warning, because it prevents retaliation).

The total:
- Josh Phelps makes a strictly speaking illegal but allowed hit on Johjima, which even the Yes! Network announcers said was unnecessary. Considering that Johjima was looking away, this is even more dangerous than it seems.
- Jarrod Washburn makes a strictly speaking illegal but allowed pitch at Phelps, an intentional throw designed to hurt Phelps, if not injure him.
- with two outs in the 7th and no one on, Scott Proctor throws a pitch clocked at 96 behind Mariner shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt, Proctor’s ejected.
- An angry exchange of words, dugouts empty. The throw’s bad enough, but people get hurt (and suspended) in brawls too.

The history of allowing catchers to block the plate and runners to try and bury them resulted in an opportunity for Phelps. Phelps took his chance. The Mariners then resort to their own allowed but tolerated opportunity to get revenge, and then Proctor takes revenge for the revenge. One dangerous play created by the selective enforcement of the rules would up creating three different dangerous incidents in the game.

These kind of openings exist as vestiges of baseball’s early days, when collisions and rough play were much more common, and hitting the opposing batter routine (this is in The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball‘s coverage of the McGraw Orioles and those times), and games like today’s provide an interesting snapshot of how far the game has come since those days, and how opportunities that remain are exploited.