Episode 1096: Pivoting to Pivot Tables

## Summary

*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.*

## Topics

* Interview with Jack Dumoulin
* Microsoft Excel World Championship
* Jack's interest in baseball
* Tommy Pham's surprise season
* Bat boning: Joe Sewell's bat
* Reasons for injury prone players
* Counting sacrifice bunts as at-bats
* Inconsistency in recording pitch velocity
* Is defense underrated?
* If two players had to touch the ball before recording an out

## Banter

* Mike Trout has almost taken over the WAR leaderboard after being out due to injury for several weeks. He has closed on Jose Altuve and Aaron Judge.

## Email Questions

* Forrest: "Tommy Pham is 20th in WAR and 8th in WAR per plate appearance and it's August and neither Jeff nor Carson has yet written about him. Is he another Jason Vargas? Is he another one of those types?"
* Matt Trueblood wrote in with a story from Joe Sewell who claimed to use the same bat for 14 years.
* Jeremy: "Are there actually any players out there who really are injury prone because of a low pain tolerance or a less than stellar work ethic?"
* Victor: "I've tried but can't find a compelling reason why sacrifice bunts don't count as at-bats. Do you think every out should count as an at-bat, even sac bunts? If sac bunts and sac flies were counted for 0-1 in the box score how much would managerial or hitter strategy change?"
* Travis: "Is it possible that Statcast and modern radar technology is giving vastly different readings than their technological predecessors in spite of the pitchers being the same? I don't think there is any double that pitching velocity is up but is there any truth to this?"
* Patrick: "What do you think of this? Defense is underrated because it decreased the times through order penalty that pitchers face. More efficient defense equals fewer total pitches thrown to get through the same number of innings. Plus fewer baserunners allowed pitchers to pitch from the windup rather than the stretch."
* Matt: "What if two players had to touch the ball before a forceout could be recorded? How much would global batting average on grounders rise?"

## Notes

* Jack won $10,000 in prize money as part of his Excel championship.
* Dickie Thon was worth 13.5 WAR in the 1982 & 1983 seasons but never fully reached his potential again after being hit in the eye by a pitch. Thon still played in MLB until 1993.
* Jeff thinks that sacrifice bunts should count as an at-bat. Ben agrees but neither feels very strongly about thinking that baseball needs to force a change.
* Last year in the Pacific League (NPB) the league batting average was .259. If sacrifice bunts counted as an at-bat the average would have dropped to .252.
* Jeff thinks that the theory Patrick poses could be true but that the overall effect would be very small.

## Links

* Effectively Wild Episode 1096: Pivoting to Pivot Tables