Effectively Wild Episode 1096: Pivoting to Pivot Tables
Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan talk to 17-year-old Jack Dumoulin, the first American winner of the Microsoft Excel World Championship, about how baseball stats helped him get good at spreadsheets, his high-school baseball career, how he won the championship, and his dream of working for an MLB team. Then Ben and Jeff answer listener emails about overlooked players near the top of the WAR leaderboard (with a focus on Tommy Pham), Joe Sewell on bat boning, player injury-prone-ness, whether sac bunts should be counted as outs, Leo Mazzone and a velocity mismatch, whether defense is underrated, and what would happen if two fielders had to touch a ball before one of them threw it to first.
Audio intro: Julian Lennon, "Make it Up to You"
Audio outro: Jethro Tull, "17"
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Among Cardinals position players, only Matt Carpenter has more WAR over the past 2 calendar years than Tommy Pham.
I wouldn’t be so sure a bat made in the 1920s would be lower-quality than today, at least when it comes to the wood. My understanding is that all the ash (and maple, but I don’t think anybody was using maple bats in the 1920s) used for bats today comes from farmed trees. The ash used in bats in the 1920s would have been wild and almost certainly slower-growing, which makes for a finer grain and a better wood that is less prone to splitting.