The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball Blog

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.

Bart Giamatti is once referred to as the AL President, but was the NL President from 1986-89 (this is correct elsewhere in the book)

I submitted a bunch of additional entries for the index which didn’t make it in. For your book reference amusement:

Animal House, 175
Bluto, 175
bums, bleacher 93
Caddyshack, 173
Catie the ballgirl, 174
Choose Your Own Adventure books, 35
Denver, John, 179
ginger snaps 103
ground rule double see rulebook double
Human Rain Delay see Hargrove, Mike
intestinal parasites, 228
InnerSpace, 228
Kant, Immanuel, 247
Katie the ballgirl, 174
McDuck, Scrooge 221
McMaster-Carr catalog, 162, 163
Quaid, Dennis 228
produce 103, 104
Schilling, Curt 231
toothbrushing, 156
secret of life, the universe, and everything 237
rulebook double 101
Village People, 179
WNBA, 232

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.

Commentor Ashley:

I saw an interesting piece of cheating today – I’m not sure if it’s actually cheating or not, which tells me even more that it is. It was during Friday’s Cubs-Nationals game. In the bottom of the fourth inning, Mark DeRosa walked. During the next batter’s (Cesar Izturis) at-bat, DeRosa attempted to steal second. The catcher made the throw, the tag was applied at second, and DeRosa was called out.

I didn’t realize what happened until they showed the replay. To make a long story short (too late), during the play, the umpire was below the baseline between first and second, giving him a more diagonal point of view, rather than a straight on one. When the second baseman caught the ball he lowered his glove between DeRosa’s arms in order to make it look like he applied the tag before DeRosa reached base (because the way DeRosa slid in, his body blocked the umpire’s point of view of the second baseman’s glove). DeRosa was called out, but not only did the second baseman not tag DeRosa before he reached second, he never tagged him at all!

I talk about this in the book – it’s part of the larger tradition of trying to influence umpires. From framing pitches to the open intimidation of umpires in the early days, this kind of thing is quite common.

In the book’s steroids chapter, I worked with one of my favorite Baseball Prospectus guys, Keith Woolner, on the statistical analysis of Bonds seasons that appears in part. Anyway, he’s been hired by the Cleveland Indians. I don’t know if they’re going to use the method in the book to look at players for possible steroid use, but he comes with my full endorsement and I wish my team had hired him.

Some of the best cheating goes on in the preps, where plays intended to create confusion or deceive the target are much more likely to work.

From the Arizona Daily Star

With one out in the fifth, the game tied at 2, and Dorados speedster Zach Tarbet on first base, Ironwood Ridge coach Nick Allen called for the “Rainbow Play.”
Knowing Tarbet’s reputation as an aggressive base runner, the Nighthawks tried something new. The trick play went something like this:
As Tarbet took off from first, Ironwood Ridge ace Zach Morales threw a fastball to catcher Jake Wilhelm. Rather than try to gun down Tarbet, Wilhelm tossed a rainbow-arched pop-up toward second baseman Brandon Collins.
The entire Ironwood Ridge crew — coaches included — screamed “pop fly” and pointed toward the sky, drowning out the CDO voices. Running with his head down, Tarbet tried to read the Ironwood Ridge fielders that were selling and yelling for the phantom fly ball, and he stopped and turned back toward first base.
If Tarbet would have continued toward second, he would have stolen the bag easily.
Instead Collins fielded the throw from Wilhelm, and Tarbet was caught between first and second base and was tagged out.

Check out the full story: they practiced the play just to get that one player out. Sweet stuff.

(h/t to Adam Stein for the suggestion)

Omar Minaya may get into trouble for a conversation he had with Miguel Cabrera.

From the Sun-Sentinel:

While the Mets were taking batting practice and the Marlins were stretching, Mets General Manager Omar Minaya engaged third baseman Miguel Cabrera in about a 10-minute conversation.

What’s interesting to me is that Cabrera’s not a free agent until after 2009 — three seasons down the road. It’s possible that Minaya was making a long-term pitch (“I’ve always been a huge fan, and we’d love to have you here”) trying to get a foot in the door, hoping that if Cabrera does reach free agency, he’ll say “I’d like to make sure we talk to the Mets.

But really? Three years ahead of time? It seems unlikely.

These complaints do get taken seriously, too — Pat Gillick got fined when he made a phone call to John Olerud (by all accounts innocent but which, the story went, might have endeared Olerud to Gillick and made him more likely to sign with the M’s), who later signed with the Mariners. This is amusing because the Mets, subject of this complaint, were the complainers then and the subject of the complaint now.

Still, as unlikely as it was that Minaya was making a super-quick pitch for the Mets as the free-agent destination of choice, if you’re the Marlins, no harm in complaining. The worst case is you protect your players against more threatening conduct by being aggressive.

(hat-tip to Joe Aiello for the Sun-Times link, and everyone else who sent in other articles)

I just got a copy of last week’s USA Today Sports Weekly, and there’s a great review for the book by Devin Clancy. I can’t offer a link because it’s online, so I have to go the old-fashioned way: typing.

This book offers a complete, well-researched and entertaining look at every single kind of cheating. It offers both a historical perspective and a practical guide for both players and fans who want to learn to cheat or spot cheating.

Buy it from Amazon or your local bookseller.