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In this episode, Dan gives a rundown of run expectancy in baseball, along with different scenarios on how run expectancy plays out according to the RE24 matrix. Dan also gives helpful nutrition tips for middle school athletes.
Links: Run Expectancy and Bunting article mentioned in the podcast; Try the Early Work Strength Program for free here.
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EP106 Transcript: EP106 – Run Expectancy Plus Nutrition for Middle Schoolers
You’re listening to the Dear Baseball Gods podcast. In this show, I help parents, players and coaches better navigate their baseball careers.
All right. Welcome back to Dear Baseball Gods. In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about first run expectancy and second nutrition from middle school ballplayers. So obviously nutrition is a part of being good athlete. It’s something that can be really tough, I think for parents to control and it’s tough for younger kids to understand and buy into.
So we’ll chat a little bit about some of the do’s and don’ts for that. So before we get going, obviously it is the holiday season. So if you’re listening here in 2020, and you’re looking for a gift for someone in your family. Who’s a baseball nerd. Just remember that in the show notes of today’s podcast, you’ll find my two books.
You’ll find my online courses. And you’ll find also links to my strength conditioning program called early work. So if you’re looking for the baseball fan, your family, the athlete, and your family, or friend, definitely check out the show notes with lots of my other content that’s giftable and is going to keep giving as you go.
So first here on the docket today is run expectancy. So if you haven’t heard this term run expectancy, is it sort of, I wouldn’t really call it a sabermetrics stat, but it’s something in the whole realm of right. Advanced stats, which make a sabermetrics, but run expectancy basically means this it’s how many runs can be expected on average in a given.
Base out state. So a base out-state is first and second. It’s two bases and no one out that’s no outs. So the base and out interaction. So bases loaded two outs is a base out-state bases loaded, no outs is a different base out state. So there’s 24 of them. So that’s. All the different combinations of zero, one or two outs, and then all the different combinations of base occupation.
So runner on first runner on second and runner on third, first and second, first and third, second, and third bases loaded. So all those, they make a matrix of basically 24 options. So for every base out-state there’s major league data. That’s shown how many outs have been scored given that state. So obviously the highest one would be bases loaded and no one out.
So I’m gonna rattle off just a couple and then I have a. Two pieces of content here. Number one, I have an article about run expectancy and bunting. So I’ll link that in the show notes. And that article shows some of these charts where you can see the different interactions of base out States. It’s actually really interesting for any baseball fan.
Whether you’re a coach or player doesn’t matter, or just a casual baseball fan, it’s really interesting to say, Oh wow. They score 0.78. Ron’s on average when it’s a runner on second and two outs or more one out or whatever it is. So, but a couple interests with seeing once a note. So for bases loaded, Which has the highest run expectancy with no outs is 2.29 runs are scored on average when a pitcher is faced with a bases loaded and no outs situation bases loaded, two outs drops to 0.75 runs.
So obviously you have to get one key hit. And when you get that key hit, you’re typically in a plate, two runs. but most of the time, you know, batting average is what they are. You’re not going to get that key hit and you’re going to get zero run. So again, these are all averages and it’s pretty interesting.
So obviously there are some situations where with bases loaded, no outs, the team will score 11 rounds in that inning. But again, that’s just for the inning as a whole with bases loaded, no outs, the max you could score is four runs. And the minimum you could score is zero runs. So again, those averaged out over the entire course of a huge major league season than multiple seasons of data combined give all these different averages.
So this is interesting. And I’m going to talk about this in a subsequent podcast, but this is interesting because as a coach, you want to have an idea of what are the most valuable base out States. And so this is where it gets really interesting with bunting in that. A runner on first and no outs is more valuable.
Your, team has a higher run expectancy with a runner on first and no one out then a runner on second and one out. And so this is where it starts to fly in the face of sac bunting, because we know from major league data, at least. So at least bunting in the major leagues. If you were to bond a runner from first to second and give up an out.
You would actually hurt your team’s chances of scoring that inning. And you would hurt the expected amount of runs. Your team would score in that day. Now this is easily, you know, humans are dumb, so it’s easy to say, well, I did it this day and we got the hit and we scored her on. And that helped if you know, we hadn’t got that.
We hadn’t been in a second, you know, then he wouldn’t have scored on that single well, that’s all well and good, but you have to look over the long-term and say, how many times have we done this? Where we’ve scored and that’s what these run expectancy tables do. They’re saying here’s a thousand situations where they bond the runner from first to second, or he just was advanced a second.
And then how many times did he score in that situation? Well, again, it’s been pretty much proven at least the major league level that, it hurts your team’s chances of scoring or how many runs you can expect in that situation, bunting, or runner from first to second, that’s just one example. And so.
Here’s the big thing about it. Let me, well, let me read off a couple others that I have here. So first and second with no outs is 1.44 runs expected, if the first batter. So when you have a clean inning brand new winning, no one on no one out that’s 0.48 runs as expected. So that obviously sort of matches the average era.
So about a half a run per inning is about a 4.5 era. which is about average. era. That makes sense. If you get the first out that cuts in half to 0.25 runs in a, again, a base out state of one out and no one on. So it’s pretty interesting. So if you get that, first batter out for the new inning, you’re essentially cutting that team’s chances.
Or cutting the expected runs in half. It isn’t really probability. It’s how many runs should be expected in that situation on average. So if you’re, you got the first runner out, or you got the first hitter out in four innings, the team would expect a score, one run over those four innings. Right? So they would probably still scrape across a run one of the four innings where you got the first runner out.
Or the first batter out. So again, that’s, it’s really interesting and it’s good just to like, get your mind around what you’re doing as a coach and why, because a lot of coaches still just bunt because they’ve always been bunters and you know, they’re biased and you know, when they, when it works. They Pat themselves on the back.
That that was a good thing to do. And when it doesn’t work, they’d sort of dismiss it and that’s again, sort of like selection bias, confirmation bias. you only pay attention to the results that you want and you don’t pay attention to the results that are counter to your position. So again, run expectancy has some issues.
So we’re going to talk about a bunting more specifically in another podcast, but you know, it’s not just run expectancies. The only thing there’s also a win probability. So even though it might, you might expect to score less runs by bunting a runner from first to second, if you did this in the ninth inning, when it’s a tie game that does increase your chance of winning the game.
So if you did this in the second and then it does not really, so there are some stipulations, so it’s not a. Bunting is the devil situation. There’s just, you have to understand some of the stats and then how you can use them and apply them. And the other thing is this is all MLB data. So run expectancy from MLB .
Data is not going to apply super well to 12 U baseball or 16 U baseball, where outcomes are much less certain. The thing about major league data is especially when you’re starting to apply, run expectancy to bunting, which run expectancy. It applies most to where you can control what. You’re going to do so you can’t use run expectancy that much when you’re just saying, Hey, Joey Votto, go get a hit.
Like Joey Votto is going to try his best to get a hit, no matter what, but if you’re wondering whether you should bunt Joey Votto, that’s where the run expectancy tables start to influence your decision. You know, that’s where it matters a lot more. Or if you’re trying to hit and run for Joey Votto, that’s going to start to influence your decisions a little bit more.
That being said in the major leagues, when someone puts down a SAC bond, the outcome is almost certain, right? You don’t put down a SAC bond and then beat it out. That’s not a thing you can sometimes put on that. You know, the sneaky bunt for a hit push, a bunch of the right side, dropped down a grape and on the, for third baseline, when they’re not, we know third base is on his heels and you beat it out, but that’s not a SAC bond.
So true SAC bonds, in the big leagues. You’re out, right? Like you’re out. And so that’s where these tables make sense where we can say, Hey, if you sac bunt here, it’s going to reduce your run expectancy. Whereas at 13 U baseball, if you sac bunt here, they’re going to throw that ball. Into the bleachers one out of every eight times, probably.
Right. They’re gonna not pick the ball up. They’re going to like, you know, try to grab it out of the grass. The grass is going to be thick or they’re just going to pick it up and it’s going to stay there. Then they’re going to get panicked or they’re going to throw the wrong base. Or they’re just like so many things you do it.
That young age is when you’re just not as highly skilled at baseball. So the outcomes are much less certain to where it probably makes a lot of these, a push when you’re starting to talk about bunting. But again, we’ll talk about that more in another episode, but it’s just, important as a coach to start to understand how outs interact with the game.
And this is a big takeaway from the Moneyball, book and movie is that giving away an out is the worst thing you can do. And you just essentially out are the currency of baseball and you never want to sacrifice an out for a base. That’s essentially the take home message from, their work with on base percentage.
And with run expectancy tables, and sort of the combination of the two is that outs are precious and trading them for one base is almost never a good move, except in some situations, very late in the game where it’s clear how many runs it requires to win the game. So hopefully this explains this explanation of run expectancy was helpful.
And again, check out the show notes below for an article that expands on this written by me just a couple of years ago.
All right. In section two today, let’s talk about nutrition for middle school ballplayers. So the number one thing to remember is young kids don’t know anything about nutrition. So I think at this point in your life, you’re a parent or coach starting to educate them on what food is and what foods comprised of right.
Macronutrients, micronutrients. So macronutrients being fats, carbs, you know, all that stuff, protein micronutrients being all the vitamins and all the things that we still don’t know are important and healthy for us. Because we still don’t know that much about, human nutrition. There’s still a lot out there.
Like we know that a cluster of broccoli is healthier than just the sum of the vitamins that we can detect within them. Right. We know it’s got fiber. We know it’s got vitamin C. We know it’s got vitamin K and vitamin A, and it’s got all these different compounds in it that we know we’ve identified. But even then it wouldn’t be better for us to take a pill with that exact cocktail of micronutrients.
It still wouldn’t be better for us than eating the broccoli itself. That there’s a sort of holistic, you know, the sum, of the parts is not greater than the whole here. And there’s still a lot of compounds chemically that we just don’t understand how they interact with human health. And so it’s at the very least a good assumption to say that still eating whole foods is the healthiest thing we can do.
And of course, giving, you know, vitamin supplements are helpful in the breath of nothing, but. You know, it’s still, there’s a lot to know about nutrition. So for young kids starting to learn about it is an important process because they just don’t understand what makes a person fatter than you know, than someone else.
And you know, what makes one food healthy versus another. And there’s a lot of interactions that we don’t think about. So one, I’ll give you one example. Avocado toast, I think is one of the most overrated, healthy foods out there. When you start to look at it from a, how much fat and carbs are in it perspective.
It’s not that much different than a slice of pizza. Like a pizza has a lot of carbs and a lot of fat from the cheese. And advocado toast has a lot of fat from the avocado and a lot of carbs from the bread. So they’re actually from a macronutrient standpoint, pretty similar from a micronutrient standpoint, there’s a lot of like healthy things about.
Avocados, but in that sort of cocktail, it’s not necessarily like the healthiest option for maybe like an adult. Who’s trying to keep their weight down for example. And you know, the interaction between all the foods in your meal is really, really important. And young kids can start to learn a little bit about that when they’re younger.
And again, I don’t think, I’m not saying. Avocado toast is not a healthy option, but I just don’t think it’s, I think it’s a little overrated to be honest. So my point here is that young kids don’t know much about it. It’s hard to trust what they’re learning in school. And a lot of the stuff that we used to learn in school was like really outdated and the food pyramid and boring.
And, you know, I think one of the best things you probably can do as a parent is just start ask your kid to cook with you, or just like try to be engaged, help them engage with their food and the preparation of it. And have them try new things. And, you know, I have a young nephew and it’s, you know, he’s two, but it’s cool seeing him try new foods and lots of outside the box, things that like, I didn’t eat when I was two, like I didn’t eat a pomegranate until I was like, I don’t know, probably 20, 25.
It’s not obviously a food, many people eat consistently, at least in the US but, you know, here’s a two year old trying pomegranate seeds, you know, over our holiday weekend. So. That stuff is good. It’s just building this, confidence where they can try new foods. And obviously I’m probably preaching to the choir.
I’m sure many of you parents out there have been trying to get your kids to branch out and try new foods for eons. But I do think that educating your kids is going to help the buy-in because if they’re not bought into why is food good for me, or why is having a diversity of foods that I eat good for me?
Or why is nutrition important for me as an athlete, then they’re just going to eat the tastiest things that they can get their hands on. And I think that’s a realistic thing to do. At the end of the day, it’s the same thing. Like animals do it. They’re just going to eat what they can get and they’re going to eat more of the taste of your things and then the not tasty things.
And I think when we don’t have a good educational base about what we eat and why. Then we do the same thing, right? Like if I had two choices, I didn’t know anything about the health benefits of either. If I had a, you know, I had a bowl of plain oatmeal and I had a slice of pizza, I would always eat the pizza.
It just tastes better. So why would I ever choose the oatmeal? You know, unless I had some reason for it. And I think sometimes we take that for granted. So the big thing is obviously kids are going to fall into two buckets. Usually it’s on the one bucket where they need to add weight. Like they’re too scrawny.
They’re not strong enough and they want to gain weight. The other bucket obviously is the kids that are a little overweight and need to lose weight. So the big thing of middle schoolers is it seems like they’re not going to make big changes to their body composition. Like an adult would because a lot of it’s just the genetic stuff.
Like we’ve seen lots of kids in my Academy where they’re just a little chubby. They had kind of had baby fat and it’s not really anything. Because it’s not really about their activity. It’s not so much necessarily all the time about their food choices. Of course, sometimes it is, but sometimes that’s just like their body for that point in their development.
And when they hit their gross Burt, I’ve seen a lot of chubby kids become skinny kids, which is honestly fascinating and bizarre. But just, it’s a good thing to remind yourself of that. It’s not always the way they are today is not the way they are. They will always be necessarily when they hit their growth spurt and finished growing.
It’s pretty crazy how much baby fat can endure, even until the end of high school. So, but even then, like making healthy choices obviously is important. And again, you have to this, I think it comes back to still psychology because kids have to be bought into why they’re eating, what they’re eating, or just has to be completely controlled by you parents.
So obviously you can control what’s on their plate. Of course, we’ve all been in that stalemate. And I was too, as a kid where no, I’m not eating that. I’ll sit at this table as long as you want me to, but I’m not gonna eat that. And that’s tough. And so again, I think having some sort of democratic process and some sort of like, Hey, you can be involved and decide what you want to eat, but let’s start to branch out and find other things that you might like that are maybe healthier.
And I think that’s important. Of course, the big thing here, especially for kids that want to gain weight is packing and planning ahead because. In middle school, especially, you don’t know how to cook, right? Like you might know how to cook a couple of things. I can’t remember when I learned how to like make ramen or Mac and cheese, but it was maybe like eighth grade, early high school.
I don’t know. But obviously, if they don’t know how to make that much many quick meals and quick meals are the hardest thing, right? The easiest things for on the go, which a lot of kids need, because they’re so busy is fruit, which, you know, won’t expire. If it’s in their backpack all day, you know, like bars, unfortunately there’s more bars than ever out there on the market.
Many are, who are many of which are made of like whole foods a lot more so than when I was in college, which was just like this mush packed into like a little. They’re just disgusting. Obviously shakes are a lot, I mean, they’re getting pricey and I don’t personally really take many shakes, but, those are helpful.
Obviously nuts are always great because again, they don’t expire beef jerky and just like simple sandwiches, like peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and banana stuff like that. And of course, again, I’m probably preaching the choir for most of the parents who have been urging your kids to take healthy stuff like that with them.
The one thing I would say is your kids don’t need Gatorade. Now I think it’s fine. If they’re like a treat. I think it’s fine, it’s like a super hot day, but in general, calorie containing beverages are a big source of, just unneeded sugar and Gatorade is not necessary to play sports. It just isn’t. So. I think most nutritionists from what I’ve seen recommend lower sugar sports drinks.
So you could take Gatorade and half and just dilute it by half. And it’s still got plenty of sugar in it and it’s got the electrolytes that they’ll need. But again, electrolytes are very overrated as well, unless you’re a distance runner or it’s super hot doubleheader catching, unless it’s like a really exceptional heat and sweat kind of day, you just don’t really need electrolytes to get through your workout.
You’re going to get tons of electrolytes from the typical American diet. And so I would just urge you to, to rethink, because I’m not gonna make any civic food recommendations, but I would urge you to rethink calorie containing beverages and their healthfulness and their necessity because Gatorade wants you to know that Gatorade is necessary for good performance, but it just isn’t, it just doesn’t.
So there’s a lower calorie option, Gatorade and Powerade and all the other brands. Coconut water is a healthy option. It’s got less sugar than Gatorade does. You can also buy the Gatorade mix, which I grew up on. Then you can make it a little more dilute. That’s also a good option and also saves you a good amount of money.
So those are all choices and options to think about. And obviously like for the kids who need a little bit of weight loss those are going to be important. Things, not guzzling down, extra a hundred grams of sugar a day. So, you know, with all this stuff, I think the biggest things are packing your kids, healthy things that they like to eat.
Prioritizing real food. I still don’t think. 12 year olds need to be eating a lot of protein shakes. I think that’s a little bit lazy and it’s not real food. Like it’s just a fractionated food. It’s the way from, you know, whey proteins healthy enough. But whey protein is a fraction from milk.
I’m not saying that they should be drinking whole milk all day either, but. Again, I think as a parent it’s harder. And it, for me as an adult, trying to eat healthy in my daily life, it’s harder to plan around whole foods, but, you know, I think the efforts are worth it because with a lot of these new concoctions, we still don’t know the longterm health ramifications either.
Is it good for a 12 year old to be guzzling protein shakes from age 12 till lay into adulthood for 30 years taking protein shakes for 30 years, there’s a lot of little artificial things in it. We’re still just pretty new. It’s still like a little bit of an infant. Industry all the health supplements.
So again, I know they’ve been FDA approved, all that sort of stuff, but I think the best thing is to always be pretty skeptical of anything. That’s not a whole food, or if it’s like a bar, you know, was this just like a bunch of different whole foods mashed up and, and made to a bar? That’s definitely going to be better than some of these ones that are just again, like fractionated foods that are long, long since resembling anything like a real food.
So that’s a big thing to consider. And again, I wish I had more like definite do’s and don’ts, but I think, again it takes buy-in because younger kids, they want to eat what they want to eat. Right. So for you, I think the challenge is the psychological aspect of getting them to buy in to understand what healthy food is and what unhealthy food is and why they would want to find new foods that they like, and also to take control of their nutrition as a tool, to be a better athlete.
That’s it for today’s episode of Dear Baseball Gods. I’d greatly appreciate it. If you’d subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts, don’t forget in the notes of this show. You’ll find links to my pitching manual pitching isn’t complicated. My memoir, Dear Baseball Gods.
My online video pitching courses and my new baseball strength training program called Early Work. You can sign up right now for a free 14 day trial to Early Work. And if you’re interested in one of my online courses, you can save 20% on any one of them using the promo code baseball gods. Thanks again for listening and stay on your hustle.
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