Effectively Wild Episode 2089: Putting the WAR in Awards

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the proper pluralization of “POBO,” then (7:12) answer listener emails about baseball with a five-second pitch clock, how long fans will continue to boo pickoff attempts, what it would take for a team to pay a particular fan to attend (or not attend) its games, Freddie Freeman’s base stealing, bringing turnovers to baseball, clubs that could achieve “perfectly average success” in the 30-team era, the limits of fan tolerance for playoff expansion, a proposal for the postseason to be like college bowl season, boosting starting pitchers with a “bullpen bank,” whether Harold Baines would’ve been better off declining Cooperstown induction, Adam Wainwright and the Hall of Fame, and fan voting on Hall of Famers, plus a Stat Blast (1:30:13) about whether awards voting has gotten more homogen(e)ous and more closely correlated with WAR. Audio intro: Harold Walker, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Tom Rhoads, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to POBO pluralization exchange Link to info on forming plurals Link to pitch tempo leaderboard Link to speed chess wiki Link to Episode 1453 Link to Tango on pickoff attempts Link to Bruce Chen’s pickoff attempts Link to Gonny Jomes wiki Link to MLB Ballpark Pass-Port Link to MLB Ballpark app Link to Stathead on 1B SB Link to FG post on Freeman’s steals Link to L.A. Times on Freeman’s 20–20 Link to graphic on Freeman’s 20–20–200 Link to Sam on Freeman’s improvements Link to NYT on O’Neill’s 20–20 Link to Stathead on oldest 20–20 guys Link to Pujols steal streak video Link to H-E-B wiki Link to baseball exceptionalism wiki Link to EW on batters catching pitches Link to The Athletic fan survey results Link to NHL playoff format wiki Link to playoff randomness by sport Link to “paper champions” study Link to Ben on the SP protagonist Link to Ben on pitcher limits Link to @dril “turning a big dial” tweet Link to latest Hall of Fame ballot Link to HoF tiers EW discussion Link to article on Baines induction Link to Ben on Baines Link to Jay Jaffe on Wainwright’s 200th Link to Jay on HoF SP standards Link to EW episode 114 Link to HoF by election method Link to Ben on Mauer’s candidacy Link to EW emails database Link to homogenous vs. homogeneous Link to Kenny Jackelen on Twitter Link to Ryan Nelson on Twitter Link to B-Ref awards voting results Link to awards data, all years, with WAR Link to awards data with calculations Link to Ryan’s Stat Blast graphs Link to concentration ratio explainer Link to HHI explainer Link to SABR study on WAR and awards Link to win probability of scoring team Link to Secret Santa sign-up sheet  Sponsor Us on Patreon  Facebook Group  Twitter Account  EW Subreddit  Effectively Wild Wiki  iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)  Get Our Merch!  Email Us: [email protected] var SERVER_DATA = Object.assign(SERVER_DATA || {}); Source