– [Jon] A man by the name of Rooker is leading a small group of travelers along route 30 in western Pennsylvania. They are walking west. They've been walking for many days, and in fact have traversed nearly the entire state of Pennsylvania on foot, a total of nearly 300 miles to this point. Many others have done this. A traveling attorney
preferred to do so in 1886, a time when he wouldn't have had to contend with car traffic. In more recent times, one lifelong walking
enthusiast did so as a hobby, a senatorial candidate
did so to drum up support, and a small party made the
journey as a form of protest. But Rooker is no hobbyist, and has no prior experience
with distance walking. He is not running for
office. He is not protesting. He is simply a 47-year-old man walking through extraordinary pain with blisters all over his feet.
The vast majority of this
route falls along roads that were not designed
for pedestrian traffic. The speed limit is often
45, even 55 miles per hour, with shoulders that are
completely ungenerous. It would be considerably dangerous to walk even one mile along these
roads, let alone hundreds. This is no place for a person to be. Rooker is walking here on route 30 when a motorist attempts
a sudden turn off the road, into the path of an
oncoming tractor-trailer. It appears as though in
order to avoid a collision, the truck will need to swerve right into the shoulder
where Rooker is walking. He freezes. Thankfully, the trucker instead throws the brakes,
narrowly avoiding an accident. And the man continues walking. Why? (dramatic expectant music) We're about to enjoy a baseball game between the two Pennsylvania teams, the Pittsburgh Pirates and
the Philadelphia Phillies. Both teams are having a down year, but these Phillies are a
tight-knit, fun-loving bunch. They stick together, laugh together, wear the same pair of pants together. As for the Pirates?
Well, they're just about to introduce themselves way
better than we ever could.
Right now, you're gonna
see something happen that almost never happens
in a baseball game. – [Alex] At the outset of this clash of co-tenants of the
National League's cellar, that's certainly not
immediately foreshadowed, with the start featuring
as normal an occurrence as there can be in a baseball game: a walk drawn by budding
superstar Barry Bonds. Following a groundout that
moves him into scoring position, Andy Van Slyke drives him home. With the next four Pirates reaching base, all of a sudden Pittsburgh
has a four-run lead, ending the evening of Phillies starter Larry McWilliams in the blink of an eye, while fans are still filing
into Veterans Stadium.
Even a pitching change
can't stem the tide, as reliever Steve Ontiveros
walks his first batter, extending the streak of
Buccos reaching base to six. Finally, a bit of relief
as that at least brings up the pitcher spot in their
lineup. Just kidding. Bob Walk hits a two-run single, extending the streak to seven,
and matching their highest scoring output in any
inning so far this season. Still with just one down, their
precocious leadoff hitter is set to bat once again. So
we're not exactly done yet. With Bonds at the dish,
not only does he extend the streak to eight, but
with two runners aboard, he clobbers his third homer
in his last four at-bats off these guys as the
lead mushrooms to nine, still with just one out. For those unfamiliar with Barry Bonds, he will go on to homer and
walk more than anyone else has ever homered or walked, and today he has hit a
homer and drawn a walk before the Phillies have recorded their second out of the game.
That comes soon as Jose Lind
ends the base-reaching party with his second groundout. Just means it's time for Andy
Van Slyke to start a new party when his grounder eludes
second baseman Tom Herr, who perhaps lacks his usual mobility while dealing with a
foot problem in the wake of fouling a couple balls
off of it a few days earlier. The procession continues
with a Bobby Bonilla walk, a Gary Redus single that
drives home run number 10, and a Jeff King walk before
the 28-minute half-inning mercifully comes to a close,
with a double-digit Pirate lead before Philadelphia's even
had their first turn to bat. Let's take stock of
what exactly that means. During this time, teams
scored at least 10 runs in an entire game only around five or six percent of the time, so needless to say, doing
so just in the first inning for all intents and purposes
puts the game to bed.
It's the most runs scored in any inning in MLB so far this season, and no prior team has ever
scored so much so fast and not cruised to victory. – [Jon] Well, looks like the Pirates have guaranteed themselves a win, barring something really weird happening. I sure hope nothing weird happens. Here is the Phillies' win probability, as calculated by Baseball-Reference. It updates at the end of
each plate appearance. You won't be surprised to learn that, after being blown up
for 10 runs in the first, their chances of winning are
estimated at one percent. Even that seems pretty high. Their percentages don't go
into decimals, but if they did, you gotta figure this would
sink even lower than this.
So Alex and I set out
to find every instance in Major League Baseball history of a team scoring at least 10 runs
in the first inning. And we're here to tell you, this is borderline impossible to research. Searching the entire history
of baseball inning-by-inning might be doable if you
are a Retrosheet wizard, but run-of-the-mill dorks
like us don't stand a chance. So I reached out to Katie
Sharp at Stathead and asked, is there any way you can possibly pull every instance of an MLB team scoring 10 or more runs
in the first inning? Well, everybody please
say thank you to Katie, who got right back to us and
said, "yep! Here you go." (gentle bright electronic music) As you might imagine,
detailed record-keeping was pretty spotty in the
early days of baseball, but we do have an almost
entirely complete sample of every game played since 1915. – [Alex] According to that data
we were generously provided, out of the more than
quarter-million all-time games MLB teams had combined to play so far, this is just the 28th
instance a team scored at least 10 runs in the first inning.
And unlike a few of the first
27, where that didn't occur in conjunction with a lead of 10 runs, since the Pirates are the
road team and hit first, they do indeed possess
such a massive advantage. Now in the bottom half
of the first inning with Ready at second
base, Tom Herr lines out to bring to the plate All-Star Von Hayes, and he gets all of a 3-1 fastball, with his deep blast to right-center taking a 20 percent bite out
of his team's deficit. Philly's chances of
winning have now jumped from about one percent to three percent. Down by eight entering the second inning of a game that's still pretty out of hand, the Phillies opt to rest the ailing Herr, which is the only real development that transpires over the
next inning and a half.
Replacing him at second base is utility infielder Steve Jeltz. (woman singing in foreign language) – [Jon] Steve Jeltz. One
of only three players in Major League Baseball history to have been born in Paris, France. He belonged to an American military family that later moved to the Paris of the Western hemisphere:
Lawrence, Kansas. There he wound up becoming
one of the best players on the KU baseball team. Which, admittedly, is not saying a lot, as Kansas
is more of a football school. I'd like to take this
opportunity to bury the lede, which is that Jeltz later went on to become a bounty hunter,
and cut to the quick: as measured against the standard set by Major League Baseball hitters, Steve Jeltz is a really bad hitter. The Phillies called him up to
the majors in the first place because they were in desperate need of a reliable defensive shortstop. But as a position player,
your value is mostly defined by what you're able to do at the plate. And … alright, let's
conduct a full inventory.
Steve Jeltz has 1,701
career plate appearances entering this moment. We'll run through 'em all,
from most to least common. 491 groundouts, 290
strikeouts, 246 singles, 217 flyouts, 214 walks, 51 double plays, 45 lineouts, 36 doubles,
32 bunt groundouts, 25 reached on error, 17
triples, 13 foul popouts, 9 fielder's choices, 6 sac flies, 3 ground rule
doubles, 2 hit by pitch, 2 bunt flyouts … 2 home runs. (bright airy music) – [Alex] After debuting
for the Phillies in 1983, Jeltz worked his way into becoming their everyday shortstop
entering the '85 season, where for the first
four months of the year he was a mainstay in their
lineup before his play prompted an August demotion to the minors. If we use total bases per
at-bat, AKA slugging percentage, to assess the level of damage one is able to inflict with their bat, we see he ended his partial
season slugging just .219, 12 points lower than any other big leaguer who had at least as many
at bats as did Jeltz.
The next year, Jeltz
played the whole season, starting 132 games at shortstop for a healthy sample of 439 at-bats. He parlayed 'em into a
slugging of just .262, 18 points lower than anyone
else with at least 400 at bats, and 133 points lower than
the average big leaguer. 1987 actually saw his
production spike to a level that was just regular low instead of, well, whatever it was before. But then we get to 1988,
the last full season of data at our disposal to this point. And it's as though Jeltz is radioactive. He has formed his own spacious island where he can be bothered by
no one.
Pure peace and quiet, residing over 20 points below anyone else who batted as much as he did. If we add up those four
full-time seasons of his for a cumulative look compared
to every other big leaguer who had at least 1,000 at
bats during the same period, that paints a crystal clear portrait of the kind of pop we can expect out of the bat of Steve Jeltz. For everyone else, the .300
line is the absolute valley. For Steve Jeltz, he sinks
underneath it by over 40 points. But that's not all. He also hit
zero home runs in this time. If we look at every big leaguer, we see that Wally Backman
hit the next-fewest homers of anyone who batted as much
as Jeltz, and he hit three. No one else hit fewer than five. As for Jeltz's homerless brethren, his 1,307 at bats amounted
to nearly three times runner up Julio Cruz. – [Jon] I say this with all due respect, and as we'll soon get into, I think a good amount of
respect is due: why is he here? Why is Steve Jeltz a full-time
Major League Baseball player? Nothing to do but start digging.
Here is every player since 1960, around when advanced fielding
stats became available, to have made at least 2,000
career plate appearances and finished with a career
slugging percentage below .300, which is pretty abysmally low. Also abysmal, I'm looking
at the screen right now and I'm realizing that should say 2,000 plate appearances, not 3,000. That's my goof, I made this chart. It's always me who goofs
something up, it's never Alex. I'm so stupid. Anyway, despite that, some of these 28 players can at least claim some kind of specialty. Quite a few were prolific, or at least notable, base stealers. So let's remove everyone
who stole at least 50 bases, leaving us with 17 guys. Next up, fielding.
Here we're relying solely on
Total Zone Rating per year, which admittedly is a little
reductive on our part, but it does correctly identify guys like Rafael Belliard as terrific fielders. You can understand why a team would want a guy like him on the roster. Let's narrow it to guys who register below average in this fielding category. We are left with a
fraternity of eight guys. Eight players throughout
modern baseball history who are very bad hitters,
don't steal many bases, and are below-average fielders. Their one commonality is that they're all utility infielders, guys who will give you the option of plugging them into a
couple of different positions and will at least offer
serviceable fielding. This is why they were
able to stay in the bigs for as long as they did, despite being bad at everything there are numbers for. This type of guy, as defined here, has gone completely extinct
in Major League Baseball.
We haven't seen one in more than 30 years. And Steve Jeltz, who retired in
1990, was the very last one. (dramatic electronic music) At this point, finding bright spots in his statistical profile is
a lot like panning for gold, but we can at least say that he was able to mitigate the impact of his catastrophic lifetime batting average of
.210 at least a little bit by being kind of okay at drawing walks. And that's what he does here,
drawing a walk from Bob Walk. Bob Walk? More like Bob Walk. Moments later, Von Hayes knocks Jeltz home with his second consecutive home run. Thanks in part to Jeltz, the
Phillies' win probability has now rocketed from a distant
three percent to a menacing five percent. The rest of the third inning
passes largely without incident, as does the top of the
fourth.
And with two out in the bottom half of the fourth inning, Randy Ready draws a walk,
sending Jeltz back to the plate. Look, we already know that
he's really bad at this. It's plainly evident when you
turn over his baseball card and look at the back.
And not just the stats, but the bio, the place
where they're generally expected to say nice things about you. Steve Jeltz really got clowned on the back of his own baseball card, which seems like something
that should not be allowed. We get it. He sucks at hitting. But there is so much more to
be understood about this guy.
This is a totally
unscientific sliding scale. Let's suppose it ranks the talent of every single American
who's ever played baseball at at least the high school level. So of course, we're talking
about millions of people here. And at the very top you have the likes of, well, Barry Bonds. Toward the bottom, you have players who got to the high school level and just couldn't hit the curveball. And toward the very, very
bottom, you have a guy who only made the team in the first place because I could feel okay, but couldn't hit anything to
save my life. I was terrible. The vast majority of this
scale is made up of players who never played past high school. Again, we're generalizing here, but around the 95th percentile,
that's probably where you start to find average
level college players, independent-league players,
low minor leaguers. It's not until you reach
the 99th percentile that you start finding players
who have a chance in hell of ever making a Major League roster.
And the ones who not only get there, but stay there for a while?
Well, then you're talking about maybe the top 10 percent
of the top one percent. Steve Jeltz is about one
micrometer above that line. Untold millions of players
gave it all they had and couldn't make it within miles of him. Look at the whole
picture and you see a guy of absolutely extraordinary ability. Of course, we don't see it that way. The unspoken deal, fair or not, is that once you find yourself
in this hyper-elite tier, your performance on the
field becomes a product for the rest of us to consume. This is the bargain that allows this guy to criticize the ability of this guy. And of all the places
one could possibly land on this enormous spectrum,
it's this specific tiny one that will land you the most criticism and the greatest disrespect. You're the least good
player on the biggest stage.
And Philadelphia
sportswriters never let him, or anyone else, forget that about Jeltz. When the Phillies held a
1980s reunion event in 2003, one columnist went on and on about how much he didn't want him there. In 2010, a good 20 years
after Jeltz retired, another saw a fan wearing a Jeltz jersey and was appalled that anyone
would want to honor a guy with such bad numbers,
failing to understand that sometimes, for reasons
unrelated to numbers, you just like people.
Sometimes they would actually make substantial critiques of
Jeltz, saying, for instance, that he was "eminently uncoachable," although assertions like
these carry a lot less weight coming from the same writer
who once described Jeltz as "the mayor of the
Phillies' leper colony." They called him a "donkey." They
called him a "talentless serf." It was as though they
truly despised the guy and saw things like
his low batting average as personal moral failings. Over the years, Jeltz heard a lot of noise from the city's fans as well. But throughout his time in
Philly, he took it all in stride. He saw it as part of the deal,
and a price well worth paying for the immense privilege of simply being a big-league ballplayer.
All those sportswriters were
so busy trashing the guy that they failed to recognize a man who did every last thing
he could just to get here. Some in the building perceived
his behavior as showboating. It's hard to know exactly what he possibly could have
been showboating about, but regardless, he made it a point to start carrying himself
more professionally. Most remarkably, Jeltz
learned how to switch-hit past his 26th birthday.
