Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1050: The Big Leaguer Born at Sea

Episode Date: April 27, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Chris Coghlan’s slide and the Pirates’ new international players, then answer listener emails about Korean baseball, fixing slides, the impressive JC Ramirez, baseball and humility, Space Jam and Hey Arnold!-inspired scenarios, Clayton Kershaw’s undoing, Billy Hamilton’s speed vs. on-base ability, a mysterious Seager, a pitching-change clock, Eric Thames-esque […]

Are you crawled out of the sea? Stayed into my arms Stayed into my arms Are you crawled out of the sea? Stayed into my eyes Sade into my eyes Hello and welcome to episode 1050 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. My name is Ben Lindberg, I'm a writer for TheRinger.com,

and I'm joined as always by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hi. This is our first almost round number together as co-hosts. Half century milestone, not quite a big one, but still 50 episodes. Takes a long time to get to 50 episodes for some podcasts. I don't think I've been present for all 50 though. Didn't you do some when I was on vacation? That's true. You were traveling. Yes. So my round number is going to be something like 1,057.

All right. We'll celebrate then. So I don't have anything to say about the Chris Coughlin slide. Sam Miller already has done one of his patented crowd analyses where he will look at all the people who were looking at that play and that's

always fun but that was awesome yeah no that was that was spectacular i i can't tell there's two ways uh you can look at this we've seen some really wizard like i think slides from players like ichiro and then you think oh well only a player like that could do it but then you see chris coglin do that and you realize oh oh, they're all elite athletes, every single one of them. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. I was really taken aback by this. We watched so many baseball highlights that most of them were sort of intellectually impressed by. If a player does something good, you say, oh, that was impressive. But we've seen a hundred plays that look more or less like that. That was impressive, but we've seen 100 plays that look more or less like that.

This is just totally different. This doesn't look like a baseball play. This looks like it comes from a different sport, and it's Chris Coughlin. Yeah, I was really rocked back on my heels by this one. Yeah, I wonder at one point he decided that was going to be his move. I know. Has he done it before? I haven't read any articles and interviews interviews with Coghlan about it.

I'm sure it's all that has been asked in the Blue Jays clubhouse. But I don't know. I guess it's a little like you'll see a player in like a hockey shootout. Try some really weird maneuver. Sometimes they'll like pick the puck up on their stick and try to put it in. But at least then you have like time to plan because, you you know you're coming up in like 30 or 60 seconds Coughlin had a split second unless he reached base and he said I am going to somersault over the catcher even if there's not a play at hand plate yeah I don't know the Blue Jays entered the day with the second fewest runs scored in the majors I think so maybe it was just a pure desperation move like we really need to score some runs, even if it requires a maneuver that no baseball player haslin score like he just scored and that is miraculous and then the day before

a pitcher i'd never heard of ariel hernandez shows up for the cincinnati reds he was a selection a little over a year ago in the minor league portion of the rule five draft so like the lowest of the low and then uh jj cooper talked about ariel hernandez is potentially possessing two 80 grade pitches which by the way that's insane comes up he throws both of those 80 grade pitches against the brewers retires all eight batters he faces with five strikeouts and then the reds immediately demote him oh by the way he was throwing 100 miles per hour and he has craig kimball's curveball so it's like it's nothing it just shows up what is it what would that have meant if it was 15 years ago before we had all this velocity inflation?

And then you have this nobody show up throwing a hundred with a breaking ball at 88. That's fantastic. And then they just demote him, even though they're the Reds, the Cincinnati Reds demote him. And I'm sure he'll be back because he's great. Granted, in his record, he's kind of walked like nine batters per nine innings. So he hasn't been very good. But it looks like he's mostly figured it out.

I don't know. He's great. He's great. But he just shows up, does that, goes away. Nobody cares. And then Chris Coughlin scored like that. And then today we're going to talk about God knows what. But it's like those are just amazing sporting.

Anyway, let's talk about something else. The Pirates called up a guy. Okay. Yeah. Is it possible that the Reds have become our most talked about team it's good we're talking about the reds every episode now there's a lot it's i really wanted to be dismissive of them but like lorenzen is interesting and iglesias is interesting there's hernandez is interesting and and they had this guy uh wandi peralta who i'm just waiting to

write about and if you take him i swear to god that's what's going to happen here but wandi peralta by the way he's only thrown like eight or nine innings so far, but batters missed more often than they've made contact when they've swung against them. It's insane. He has like easily the highest swing strike rate in baseball. And he, like everybody else,

he throws really hard with a good slider. So he's fun. And Oh, by the way, he has one of the fastest bases. Did we already talk about Waddy Peralta on this podcast? I think we did. Just briefly.

Yeah. I asked Michael Lorenzen on my other baseball podcast about how the Reds had worked more quickly than any other team. He didn't really have a great answer. He didn't say it was like their secret strategy or anything like that, but he was seemingly aware of the fact that they have worked quickly. And yeah, as you pointed out, Peralta has been the quickest, right? Yeah. I feel like a Lorenzen answer would be something along the lines of, I have all the best pitches and all the best swings. There's nothing I can't do.

Ask me about me. All right. You wanted to talk about another NL Central team. Yeah. Reds division rival, I guess, to the Reds have rivals. Are they too bad? Anyway, the Pirates have made some news lately because, well, one, they're bad, but they've called up a pitcher named Dovidas Nevaroskis.

He is the first ever Lithuanian player in Major League Baseball history. And just today they have called up Mpo Gift Ngope, who is the first ever not only South African player in the Major Leagues, but the first general African player in the major leagues. Now, granted, Nevaroskis, I think, was called up because of problems with the pitching staff. And then Gopay was called up because David Fries has some sort of hamstring or groin injury, some sort of minor thing. And Gopay has not been dominating the minor leagues. He's 27 years old. He stands five foot eight, which is very cute and short. But these seem like moves that mean a lot to other people and are less about the roster and tactics of it all. I don't think Nevaroskis and Ngopae are going to lead the Pirates to the playoffs, but nevertheless, it's very cool to see first-time players according to baseball reference. Now,

this takes us up to, I've got 20 places of origin that have one player in Major League history. Would you like me to read them out? Because I'm going to. Yeah, sure. Go ahead. All right. So starting from the bottom, we've got Vietnam, one, Switzerland, Singapore, Philippines, Lithuania, Latvia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Honduras, Guam, Greece, Finland, Denmark, China, Belize, Belgium, American Samoa, Afghanistan, and the always popular At Sea. There's one player, according to baseball reference, who was born at sea. There's one player according to baseball reference who was born at sea. It's Ed Poirier who played in 1914.

He pitched in three games. I kind of... His birthplace is listed as Atlantic Ocean. He lived to be 25 years old. I'm just going to have to click through to see what the deal is with Ed Poirier, why he was born on a boat.

Let's check out the bullpen wiki. Ed Porre, according to this page, was born at sea. Okay, we know that. We established that. There does not appear to be any actual biographical information. Further, I guess, born December 5th, 1888 in a ship on the Atlantic Ocean. He did not die at the age of 24. That was a misprint.

1954. So he lived to be 65, which is okay, that's fine. Pretty good for someone born at sea. I currently don't have more biographical information on Ed Porre. I have not looked it up. Let's see. However, if there's

I believe more people who have died at two people have died at sea so okay that makes doubling it up yeah you'd think it's pretty dangerous but not ed porre he died in pennsylvania we have a nub clanky and an arthur erwin manager earl weaver apparently died at sea i guess it's not so funny because we were talking about people dying, but you know, seas are a dangerous place. One, the Atlantic Ocean has claimed one, the Pacific Ocean has claimed one, and the Caribbean Sea has claimed one. But in any case, we've got all those countries with one player from them. And so I will ask to you, I suppose, what is the meaning of the first ever African player, the first ever

Lithuanian player? This is an old game I think you used to play. Is this data point or trend? Well, I don't know all the details of each of their stories. I'm hoping to interview them, possibly have them on a podcast to find out about that. And I can read about it too, but I don't know. Are they just like freak occurrences who i don't know moved from those countries and got into baseball or are they products of baseball programs in those countries do you know the details i don't know the details of well i should say i don't know the details of either but let's see never ask us he didn't like get born in lithuania and then moved to the united states he doesn't have a high schooluania and then move to the United States.

He doesn't have a high school listed anywhere. And Ngope, I know that there's obviously a South African WBC team that has been put together. Baseball has made inroads in Africa. And at some point, we were going to see an African player show up in the major leagues. Ngope has been in the organization, however, for a while. He signed with the Pirates at some point, such that he played in 2009 with an affiliate. So he's been around for nearly a decade. I think he's been on some prospect lists. And then this year, his minor league OPS is just 687. So he hasn't even been that good. But still, he showed up. And I

think if you are a baseball playing community in either Lithuania or Africa to very different places, there is a meaningful difference there there is significance in having a player reach the highest level even if only briefly right so yeah sure this gives in gopay a certain cash it cachet uh cachet this is when i reveal myself as a writer not a talker yeah so wikipedia says that that Ngope's mom was a clubhouse attendant for the Randberg Mets. The Randberg Mets is a softball team, I think, in South Africa. And evidently he was signed. He was invited to MLB's Academy in Italy where the Pirates signed him. So yeah, I guess he's a product of the fledgling baseball community there. So that's interesting. I'm not sure about Navaraskis, but yeah, I mean,

I'm sure even if there isn't usually a ton of interest in baseball in those countries, having a representative in the big leagues will probably generate some interest and attention, and that can only lead to good things for the sports growth so cool for those guys and cool for everyone i'll read to you a headline from a blog entry i've not read the blog entry but we have the quizzical case of ed porre cruise ship baby or baseball's first merman does it answer the question uh this appears to be a satirical blog entry however it concludes ed porre ship baby merman or resident of atlantis the truth is out there although we do have a uh a saber entry ed porre society for american

baseball research there is something written up here so if you give me one minute to try to read this entry. Well, I can't. There is no entry. Never mind. There are no words, only all the same information that we already had. So I think we shall assume for now that he was born on a cruise ship. Yes. Hopefully not a rescue ship. Earl Weaver evidently died on an Orioles fantasy cruise. That's not what anyone had in mind for that event, I'm sure.

I have no follow-up to that. Yeah. All right. Let's get to some emails then. So Eric Thames has hit, I think, three home runs since the last time we spoke, which wasn't all that long ago. So Eric Thames' question, this is from Ed. He says, as everyone is currently aware, Eric Thames spent This is from Ed he says As everyone is currently aware Eric Thames spent three years in the KBO And returned to MLB this season

And is currently on fire for the Brewers There's also the case of Jim Aduchi Who in 12 games in Toledo The Tigers AAA team Hit 349, 375, 488 Before being called up last week And in two games with the Tigers Has hit 600, slugged 1,000.

I know these are small samples, a Chimaduchi sample particularly, but is there a potential trend here? Is the KBO better than people thought? Well, I guess it depends on what people thought, but when you have the case of Thames, who clearly is, he's probably not this good, although who am I to say? He's only gotten better since we've talked about him before. He's hitting much better

than he did in his best KBO season. I think we can safely say that KBO is not better than the big leagues. But yeah, there's that. Thames has been successful. Django Gong has been successful when he has been able to play

and hasn't been under legal problems. Daeho Lee hit fairly well, although he wound up exposed kyun su kim has hit pretty well not a whole lot of power but he's been above average hitter and youngho park has at least shown that his power is legit he's just had kind of a a strikeout problem that was probably connected to a hand or wrist injury that he had for a while so the players that have come over have been able to hit kyunjin Ryu also has been able to pitch when he has not been horribly damaged. And we've seen a handful of very successful Korean relievers.

So I think that it's still... The league as a whole is not on the level of, say, the Japanese baseball. But I don't know. I guess it's a little like Cuba, where when you select from the very top that the players tend to be successful. I would think that just Gong alone would have increased the scouting presence

and the attention on the KBO, which I think it did because we saw some players come over in the immediate aftermath. But Thames is going to be a big one depending on how long he keeps this up because it's going to cause baseball probably to give a more serious look to the expats who are playing over there now and we've talked about a few of them the one that always comes to my mind is you might go navarro for some reason but there's there's a number you can just click on a kbo leaderboard and baseball reference look for the bold face names and those are players with major league experience and if

you are open-minded about bringing some of those players back because they learned whatever they learned then fames is going to be sort of a different kind of pioneer from Django Gong but this is this is so much is this is this the most fun story in baseball I think it's the most fun story in baseball right now I think so yeah I mean it's hard because it's not like everyone who goes over there and hits better should be brought back if they struggled when they were here in the first place. Thames seems to be different in that he became a different hitter while he was there. Obviously, he became a different person physically while he was there, although he was always a pretty big guy. And, you know, he learned discipline. And as we mentioned, there's the theory that maybe he

learned to lay off breaking balls because he saw so many there. So there's that sort of thing. Obviously, lots of hitters go over to the KBO or Japan and they put up big numbers. That doesn't mean that they are fixed or improved and that they'd be better if they came back over here. So that is a tough scouting challenge to determine which guys are just feasting on inferior pitching and which guys actually developed while they were there. And I would think that KBO must be tough because there are not hard throwers there really, except for the occasional foreign player who throws hard. Thames, when Michael and I interviewed him over the winter, admitted that he hadn't really seen many hard throwers over there. And so that's a scouting challenge in the same way that it was for Mike Trout, for example, when he wasn't facing high level competition in New Jersey. And so he kind of got pushed down

the draft board in some teams cases because of that. And that doesn't mean that you can't hit good pitching, but it's just hard to say if you can, if you never have. So it's a challenge for teams. And I wonder whether there will be an effort to, I don't know, try to measure bat speed or try to get some of those players in workouts where they are facing good velocity just to see how they handle it. Because you don't really know if they're facing 80 something and breaking balls can they hit 95 96 it's hard to say until you get to see them do it and you might not get to see them do it as a fun fact last year eric thames is actually the second best hitter in korea there was a uh hyungwoo choi who had an ops that was 10 points better he is not a boldface

name he's uh three years older than Thames, but that would be interesting. Now, you, I will call upon your brief experience in scouting school and having been there. When you watch Eric Thames, obviously one will be biased by his results, but what do you see in Eric Thames? Because

when I look at him hit, he is so quick to the ball. There is no kind of load. There's like no exaggerated step. He's just so strong and so quick. I really don't know what weakness will or would be exposed in a hitter like this. Right. Yeah. No, it doesn't look like he's exploitable. He doesn't swing at any bad pitches and his swing seems pretty compact and quick and powerful. And definitely some of the home runs he's hit recently have been a result of reds,

just moving pitches like the one he hit out from Amir Garrett the other day, the one he hit on Tuesday, those are just meatballs right down the middle. And so it's not like every home run he's hit has been some sort of Aaron Judge shot that goes 450 feet or that like he hits balls that no one else can hit out out like it's not like you've done one of your patented posts about how he hit a ball that was farther outside than anyone else has ever hit a home run off of that sort of thing. His home runs have come on some meatballs. And I wonder, I was just looking at the zone rate against him, and it seems like just

even in maybe the last few games, pitchers have been avoiding the zone even more against him, as you would expect them to. So yeah, I don't know. If they don't throw him meatballs anymore, it still doesn't seem as if he's going to struggle because he's not swinging at those pitches so it just doesn't look like he's a guy who's gonna fall off all that much although obviously he's not going to hit 11 home runs every month yeah i guess eric thames really is barry bonds that's uh you look at what he he signed for and clearly there was a healthy amount of skepticism uh another player who's been successful in korea recently is will and Rosario.

Super strong, terrible defensive catcher. Went over to Korea to, I don't know, maybe he's catching. I hope he's not. He's been a successful power hitter, but this offseason he was available and he generated, it seems like, basically zero Major League interest. So he re-signed in Korea. And I wonder if Rosario were available again next offseason, whether he would get more of a look based on what Thames has done.

But then, I guess, on the other hand, Rosario has still struck out three times as often as he's walked in Korea. So maybe he has not quite solved that part of the game. Okay. We got a few follow-ups to the episode with Grant when we talked about the whoop that Giants fans and A's fans evidently do to psych out relievers in the bullpen or just pitchers in general. All of the responses, it seemed, were from West Coast listeners who said that they'd seen this in the Kingdom or in Tacoma or even in San Diego or something like that. So it doesn't seem like it's isolated only to the Bay Area, but it does seem to be a West Coast thing more than anything else, which is interesting.

I wonder how that got started. We did get, I think, one tweet maybe about it happening in Wrigley, and we also got linked by Jay Keith in Los Angeles, who dug up a reference to this happening in Mexico City in the 60s at a baseball game, and also in Louisville in the 80s. Another response to that comes from Eric, who says, just listened to the podcast about the Machado slide and everything that followed. It seemed like a lot of that problem started because Pedroia got hurt and had to be helped off the field. What if Machado had been wearing plastic spikes? Do you think a ban on metal spikes could cut down on this sort of stuff? What other implications could a change like this have?

Yeah, so I don't know the complete difference between metal spikes and plastic spikes if you have plastic spikes that are shaped just like the metal spikes well plastic is going to hurt too however i think the bigger problem is that these things usually happen because a leg gets twisted or you know some ligament snaps or an ankle gets rolled and that's not really a problem of the spike so much as it is the problem of the grown man sliding into your body when you are in a vulnerable position so i think given that i don't think that what the spike is made of really makes the difference as much as the whole body going in makes the difference agreed all right question from robert jc ramirez is sort of weirdly

interesting ramirez was converted from the bullpen to the rotation due to the lack of depth for the Angels, and it has been done despite the fact that Ramirez hasn't been a starter since 2011. As a starter this year, Ramirez has sat around 96 miles per hour with his fastball and at 90 with his slider. Have the Angels actually found something of worth from a reliever who was readily available to the league as recently as last year. I don't know if you've looked into JC Ramirez at all. Seems like the sort of guy you might write about at some point, but he was showing up in my spreadsheets the other day when I was writing about the new pitches of 2017 because he has thrown a curveball that he did not throw in previous years according to the pitch fx classifications that harry pavlidis does he has changed his pitch usage in some other really striking ways like he

threw a four seamer 60 at the time last year it's down to 14 this year he's throwing a sinker like a quarter of the time and then the curve and he's throwing way more sliders than he ever threw before. So it's kind of interesting that he has totally changed his pitch selection in this role, which is something that you see a lot of pitchers do when they're moving from the bullpen to the rotation or vice versa. You have different demands and you see the same hitters more or fewer times in the same game, that sort of thing. But it is interesting that he is doing this and seeming to succeed. He's thrown six games, three starts, and his ERA is nothing spectacular, but everything else looks pretty good.

He has a good FIP, XFIP, etc. He is not walking too many guys. He is striking out more guys than he did as a dedicated reliever. So this is pretty interesting. I googled and found an article from the spring where he talked about bringing back the curveball and how he used to throw it at some point, and he brought it back this year because he knew he was going to be starting and it completely changed his results and that sort of thing so definitely interesting in that he is what 28 and you don't often see guys go from bullpen back to rotation at that age and be better than they were in the bullpen. So if he keeps that up, that would be pretty interesting. Yeah, right. There's a few angles here. One being that Ramirez

has never really been good, even when he was a reliever in the minors and the majors. He hasn't been special. He's thrown hard for a while. But I think the reason this really comes up is because he's coming off a really good start against the A's. He was his first successful start in the majors. He was not very good against the Royals. He was not great against the Astros. And then yesterday he went, what, seven, I think, shutout innings and he got up to 92 pitches. He threw super hard. He doesn't lean on his fastball too much. He's averaging like 97 and a half with his four-seamer, which is even harder than he threw in any previous year. Yeah, yeah. He is legitimately interesting.

He was one of those people to keep your eye on in the Angels spring training. It was like him and they were working on Alex Meyer's mechanics, and he was someone who blah, blah, blah. Alex Meyer can't throw strikes. But one interesting little twist about J.C. Ramirez is that against the A's, if I'm reading this correctly, he allowed 14 batted balls, and one of them was a grounder. So just based on that i

have an idea of what jc ramirez looks like in the strike zone also i think the a's are a fly ball hitting team because they're starting to resemble the a's from 15 or so years ago but in any case yes ramirez very interesting he is a player i would be writing out probably today if not for the fact that in our company slack you know already said interested in jc ramirez because you know sometimes beats me to up-and-coming pitchers so this is when i will play the role of hoping that for a short amount of time jc ramirez fails to make you know look bad and then he changes something he gets better and then i can write about him later in the summer and then i can say like yes i am on the jc ramirez bandwagon i'm not there yet but the stuff clearly interesting enough to keep your eye on jc ram. Ramirez as a rare, interesting angel starter in the absence of Garrett Richards.

All right. Question from Joey. I just watched Justin Turner get thrown out on the bases with Adrian Gonzalez at bat, and it got me thinking, do you think ballplayers have humility in moments like this? Like, did Turner get back to the locker room and say, my bad guys, I goofed. And Gonzalez said, it's okay, pal. I probably would have struck out anyway. And they left it like that. Do we even want them to have humility in that way? Is it somehow weak if they do? I think they do. I think we've seen enough post-game interviews, even when players will say to the press, like I made a mistake. I made a bad decision. I think there are certainly ways in which players

will not admit that they're doing things wrong. I think this is a problem with the recently DFA Leonis Martin. I think there was an issue. This is secondhand because I didn't read the article, but I think there was an issue in spring training where Martin was like, I would like to keep hitting ground balls. And then Edgar Martinez was like, but you shouldn't. And then Martinez was like, but I'm gonna. And then Ed Martinez a few weeks later was like, well, you're off the team. shouldn't and then martinez like but i'm gonna and then martinez a few weeks later was like well you're off the team so yeah i think there are certainly areas where players are stubborn but when you have a case like a bad out on the bases or forgetting how many hours there are in the field then i don't really i don't think that there's a player who's going to like double down and say no

i was right i was right about the two outs being the third out or something or i made a great decision on the bases and it's just the umpire blew it or the other team made a great play. I think that, yeah, I think in a situation like this, certainly with a veteran who's been around, like Justin Turner, he's going to tell Adrian Gonzalez

or his entire team, whoopsie doodle. And then Gonzalez will be like, well, that's fine. I haven't been very good anyway. Yeah, I mean, I find self-deprecation to be a very endearing quality most of the time, not just in baseball, but in life.'re invincible and great and not want to admit weakness. But I think it's an attractive quality when someone who is good at things is willing to admit that they are sometimes bad at things. So if a player were to come out and say something like that, I would like him even more for it.

and say something like that, I would like him even more for it. I guess you run the risk of seeming like you don't care enough, like you're just being kind of offhand or flip about it, like you made a mistake, and a lot of fans take those things seriously, and their mood is riding on every play and every game, and so if it seems at all like the hitter or the player isn't taking that hard, maybe some fans would object to that. But I would like it. And I'm sure it does happen to a certain extent. You hear it sometimes.

Yeah. A few years ago, Jose Altuve, this is 2015, Jose Altuve a few years ago, led the league with 13 caught steals. He was picked off eight times, and he made 19 other outs on the bases, including eight at home. In Jose Altuve's rest of his career combined, he's made seven outs at home. So I don't know what Jose Altuve thought he was doing in 2015, but I would assume

that after each of those outs on the bases, he went back to the dugout and expressed some form of humility, because otherwise, I think the Astros would be extremely frustrated with what Jose Altuve was. Yeah. All right. Question from Chris in the timeless classic Space Jam. The NBA commissioner announces that until the health of the players can be guaranteed, the season would be canceled. This happened after just five top stars became incapable of even dribbling a basketball. My question is how many top MLB players would have to have their baseball prowess Yeah, I don't think they knew and so this would basically

be like if a bunch of players got the yips all of a sudden right okay so this is essentially if a whole bunch of my trouts were swapped with a whole bunch of ben lindberghs and jeff sullivans then how long would it take okay so one would be weird are we assuming this is happening basically simultaneously yeah i guess so yeah okay so if it if you have a bunch of players let's say like five or six or ten players you just suddenly look like they have an advanced stage of a neurological illness and it just happens all of a sudden you can't hide that people would be asking questions immediately i think they would have studies commissioned almost immediately and i think that if it's widespread like that then you would have players uh quite fearful uh we've already seen a

we've already seen some baseball events canceled because of the zika virus because there was concern about uh players and their their families getting a disease and I think that if you had something like this even if it might be irrational although I don't know what the aliens are going to do that you would have players fearful that well if it happened to other players who are good it could happen to them players would be resistant to play I think it would take between I mean it could be one but i think you it's really proof of spread so if it happened to multiple maybe at least four players then you had have enough of a crisis that there would at least be a suspended baseball season and and it would stop there now i

don't know there's not necessarily linked to like this performance and then the players being like grave danger in terms of staying alive off the field. Maybe it's just their baseball skills being sapped. However, I think if you're a player looking at Mike Trout dropping everything, unable to even hold a baseball bat, then you think, well, this person can't really live a functional life. I don't want to play baseball anymore. Now, granted, I don't know how you would, as a player, conclude that it was contagious only through the act of playing baseball. You might just figure that you'll get it anyway, but I think that the players would not be in the right state of mind to keep playing. Yeah, I agree. And we

have a related question, sort of, from Sean Cusack, a Patreon supporter. He says, let's say for some unexplainable reason, every batter Clayton Kershaw faces for the rest of his life gets a clean base hit often. All his pitches stay exactly the same. Movement and velocity, he has the same command, but the batters just keep getting hits. How long would it be before he throws his last major league pitch? Keep in mind he's got a contract that the Dodgers probably wouldn't want to just release because of five or six terrible starts. And I guess we've answered similar Mike Trout questions in the past like if he's suddenly bad although maybe this is different in that he is not bad process wise but his results are inexplicably

bad yeah I don't think it would take very long at all the I think a critical component of this question that's missing is whether this happens to Kershaw whenever he pitches anywhere or whether it's just in the major leagues because if he's throwing all the same stuff, if he allowed constant hits for even like two starts, you would have the team looking into it, trying to figure out what's wrong. If it happens three starts, then they would deactivate him. And I don't know exactly what you do with the Clayton Kershaw, but like have him throw side sessions or send him to extended spring training or something. So that's where it gets interesting. If he goes to extended spring or some low-level minor league program and then he's just giving up hits all the time,

then you think, well, something clearly is broken. However, if he's just dominating extended spring and the low-level minors, then you say, well, he's Clayton Kershaw again, and then you just bring him back up, then he allows constant hits, and then you send him back down, then you bring him back up, and you have this constant shuffle. Because as long as he's under contract and throwing Clayton kershaw level stuff you're going to think he's going to be fine because of course how would this how would this ever happen how would this

ever happen but that's the thing like if he's throwing just as hard with the same movement and spin rate and everything there's no way to bench him without essentially admitting that something supernatural is happening like unless you have a reason like if he's i mean that's the thing how would you ever justify it this would have beyond baseball implications this would be some sort of existential crisis right because it would almost necessitate that there be some sort of curse on Clayton Kershaw if he is still the same guy in every way except that he keeps giving up hits. Yeah, I think that if something like this started to happen to Clayton Kershaw, then it would be a short amount of time before we would all start putting a lot

more stock in things like fortune cookies. Yeah. All right. Do you have a stat segment? Let's do it. Eric Thames eric thames stat segment sort of eric thames to this point has hit 11 home runs the overwhelming majority of which have come against the cincinnati reds who we continue to discuss on this podcast i was curious about players dominating other teams as a consequence of this this is probably something you've looked at before but i don't care a baseball reference does not make it super easy to look up greatest or highest all-time home run totals against individual teams because when you use the play index to search for splits against

opponents included in there are interleague splits splits against winning percentages of 500 or better and splits against winning percentages under 500 those splits will dominate the individual team splits that was something i didn't need to go through but in any case i wanted to go into this the splits against winning percentages under 500 those splits will dominate the individual team splits that was something i didn't need to go through but in any case i wanted to go into this and look at the players who have hit the most home runs against a team in a season i can do that so i decided instead to look at the players who have homered the most against the reds so this is all time eric thames is already tied for 12th place with eight home runs against the reds a few years ago anthony rizzo hit eight home runs against the Reds. A few years ago, Anthony Rizzo hit 8 home runs against the Reds.

He did that in 42 more plate appearances. Eric Thames currently has no PS against the Reds. That's over 2. That is over 2. The whole number 2. That is what Eric Thames has been doing to the Reds. At 8, it's a list that includes names like Willem McCovey, Eddie Matthews, Hank Aaron,

Ron Gant, Dante Bichette, Moise Alou, and it continues. Now, going forward, Derek Lee has hit nine home runs in a season against the Reds. So has Lance Berkman. So has Lance Berkman. He did that twice. So has Hank Aaron, Will Clark, moving up to 10. Chris Bryant last year hit 10 home runs against the Reds, which is something I guess I kind of missed, but also internalized, because I think the Cubs did all of their damage against the Reds, which was an easier point to make before they won the World

Series. However, first place is a tie at 11. Eddie Matthews hit 11 home runs against the Reds in 1953 and a player named Earl Torgerson in 1950 hit 11 home runs also against the Reds. I am not or have not been familiar with Earll torgeson he is not quite on the level of eddie matthews however he did have an 802 ops for his career he had 149 home runs many of which came against the reds good for him i continued looking for other splits abandoning home runs so okay everybody knows ops plus or at least most everybody on this podcast knows ops plus do i need to go over T OPS+, again? Yeah, we've done it before, but might as well.

Yeah, might as well. It's essentially OPS+, relative to your overall OPS+. So if you have a really good performance against right-handed pitchers, and you really struggle against lefties, then your T OPS+, will be quite good against righties, and quite low against lefties. The average, of course, being 100, just like with OPS plus. So I looked at players who've been the most dominant all time against individual teams relative to what they usually were. I don't know how much sense that makes. So the way this came

out is that there's a the list is leaded by a couple or almost leaded by a couple of pitchers which is not so interesting like Don Carmen is up there in a split even though his OPS in the split was 206 he just didn't hit so like the second most dominant performer of all time against one team was

pitcher Bob Turley who could not hit however against the twins he had a 577 OPS which gave him a T OPS plus of 236 whatever Bob Turley could not hit however against the twins he had a 577 OPS which gave him a T OPS plus of 236 whatever Bob Turley could never hit except against the twins where he was slightly less terrible but number one more fun there is a player who was recently on a hall of fame ballot did not go anywhere Todd Zeal in his career against the Anaheim or I guess also California Angels he batted 118 times. He had an OPS of 1.356.

Which means he had a T-OPS plus of 246. Todd Zeal was basically 150% better against the Angels. Than he was against anybody else. Reading down this list we have a Wayne Krenchicki. Who was dominant against the San Diego Padres. Julio Logo, dominant against the Phillies. I'm going to quit reading this list because it is not that interesting. I looked then at current, or I guess active players who have been the most dominant against teams. I lowered the minimum here to 50 plate appearances, and I looked at both T-OPS plus and regular OPS to see who has been

most dominant, and then also who's been most dominant relative to their own baseline. The same player and the same split lead both leaderboards. So Travis Snyder in his career, sort of a busted top prospect, but also, you know, eight years of major league experience. So he did okay. Travis Snyder, career 709 OPS. Can you guess who he dominated in his career? Because he's dominated them more than anyone has ever dominated anybody? I do not recall Travis Snyder's career with that level of detail. Who's been a bad pitching staff for basically the last decade? The Rockies. Minnesota Twins. Travis Snyder has batted 54 times against the Minnesota Twins. His OPS has been 1.385. 54 times against the Minnesota Twins. His OPS has been 1.385. That is the highest active OPS for any player against any team with a minimum of 50 plate appearances, which actually surprises me a little

bit. I was expecting something higher. In second place, Trey Turner dominating the Braves, then Corey Dickerson dominating the, here we are, the Reds, Chris Davis dominating the Giants, and then Josh Donaldson dominating the Phillies by T-OPS plus instead of full OPS. So just in terms of dominance relative to oneself. Again, we have Travis Snyder against the Twins with a T-OPS plus of 285, which is fantastic. Showing up on this list for, it's not exactly the same, but in interleague games, which whatever, I guess accounts for something. Sandy Leone, Garrett Parker, both tied at 228. T-OPS plus. Anyway, back to teams. Ryan Hannigan against the Padres.

T-OPS plus of 226. Chris Dickerson against the Pirates. 224. Kendris Morales. I don't know. Where are the interesting names? Here we go. Clayton Kershaw against the Rockies.

Oh, T-OPS plus of 212. He's batted 87 times and he has a 578 ops so all right clayton kershaw i guess while i'm looking at this i might as well look at a sort in ascending order right to see who's been terrible because it's sort of the opposite so let's let's do that active players who has been the worst uh oh look john lester less interesting jan gomes okay janon gomes t plus of negative 23 against the oakland athletics where's a fun name in here let's see jay bruce negative 12 against the yankees addison russell negative 10 against the dodgers does it get more interesting yeah

just a handful of pitchers on here mike leek not been good as a hitter against the cubs well he's not a very good hitter so that makes sense bartolo cologne bartolo cologne is a negative five tops plus against teams with a winning percentage of 500 or better boy that's a stat that is not fun to say out loud on a podcast yeah that's like one of those stereotypical stats that people think is what sabermetrics is like the the meaningless small sample split that is actually the opposite of what sabermetrics is like the the meaningless small sample split that is actually the opposite of what sabermetrics is like what a guy does on night games on tuesdays in the seventh inning or whatever that's one of those yeah right all right so let me let me just conclude this not quite a leaderboard statistic but just looking at trey turner and how i guess you could say he is

played favorites trey turner has batted at least 50 times against two teams, the Atlanta Braves and the New York Mets. Not a surprise. They are division rivals. Trey Turner against the Atlanta Braves has posted a 1.347 OPS and Trey Turner against the New York Mets has posted a 475 OPS, a difference of basically 900 points for Trey Turner. By T-OPS plus, it's a difference of 195 to 11. Trey Turner has played favorites in the National League East. Feels like Daniel Murphy, since leaving the Mets, would maybe have been added to this list for his performance

against the Mets. I can look that up in a, not quite a split second, but several split seconds. Okay. Daniel Murphy, this is easy enough because he's played his entire career with the Mets. I can look that up in a not quite a split second, but several split seconds. Okay. Daniel Murphy, this is easy enough because he's played his entire career with the Mets except for the last year and change. So do you have a guess? Daniel Murphy has batted against the Mets 95 times. Okay, that's pretty good. Can you guess the first digit of his OPS? One. Correct. Can you guess the second digit of his OPS? One? Correct. Can you guess the second digit of his OPS? I'll give you the decimal. I'll say three?

One. It's one. Daniel Murphy against the Mets. He's batted 95 times, which feels like it's a lot, but okay. He has batted 386. He's slugged 727. He has a 1.148 OPS. The only team against whom he has a higher career OPS is the Kansas City Royals at 1.179 in a far smaller sample. So Daniel Murphy has dominated the New

York Mets. Yeah. Okay. Question from David. Is there any proof that leadoff walks score more often than leadoff singles? Answer, no. I guess that is the end of the answer. No, I googled. There have been several studies on this because this is one of those things that gets repeated over and over and over again. That's why David asked. He heard it on a Nationals broadcast. And it is not true. One of the first results I found was from John Duan at Bill James Online, and he found that a leadoff single scores 38% of the time. A leadoff walk also scores 38% of the time. The average runs scored in the inning are also the same.

runs scored in the inning are also the same so that was just one year but there are several studies i found very quickly confirming that very same thing we've all heard this expression the dreaded leadoff walk i think pretty much every broadcast says it even the some of the smarter broadcasts why assuming the pattern is pretty much always held true and i don't know i can't think of any reason why i wouldn't have why do you think where's the threshold where just enough lead-off walks score that people start thinking lead-off walks always score because at 38 obviously it's it's practically one out of every three yeah i guess it's just more frustrating in some way like when you see a pitcher allow a single, that's something that the batter earned in a way. Of course, batters earn walks by being selective and fouling off pitches and all of that also, but maybe it's less obvious that they do. So if a pitcher comes out and starts a naning by immediately putting himself behind in

that way, I suppose it's frustrating and feels silly and like a waste. And then you remember when it comes back to bite you and you can conveniently forget all the times when it doesn't. Yeah, right. There's there. People hate the lead off walk. People hate when a reliever comes in, walks the first guy faces.

People hate the, the two outs, no pressure walk. I think people just really hate walks. I think there's a definite strike bias. Now, of course, for a pitcher strikes are good, good but you know walks are not the end of the world obviously and it's like the the whole thing about pitching to contact to try to be more efficient well you pitch to contact you actually aren't efficient your at bats might last less time but you're

going to have more at bats because there's going to be more hits and that's not actually a a good thing for a pitcher orative team Alright different David asks Obviously OBP says a lot about A player's production but what Billy Hamilton recently did on the Base paths singled to lead off the Game then stole his way to third and scored On a Joey Votto sack fly

Billy Hamilton does this sort of thing all the time Made me realize that not all OBP is created equal That is a team can probably stomach someone With Hamilton's sub 300 on base percentage If, when he actually does get on base He makes the most of it So could a player with a sub 300

OBP actually be just as productive As a guy with, say, a 390 OBP, if he can essentially Stretch any single into a triple with his wheels More broadly, when evaluating A player player how much should we weigh his propensity to get on base versus the value he adds relative to other players once he actually gets there yeah well so the good news is we do have base running metrics that try

to assign run values to scale on the bases it will surprise very few people that billy hamilton is pretty much the best base runner of at least maybe not all time but recent time he's been fantastic of course this year he also has not been able to hit which is a very common theme for him however in 2015 uh at least according to fangraphs bailey hamilton added more than easily like a win and a half basically on the bases last year he did the same thing so far this year he's already three runs better than average on the bases another way to kind of look at this is that last year 30 percent of the time a runner reached he came around to score which is pretty good baseball reference actually keeps track of this in a hard to find statistic that they call run scoring percentage it's a percentage of times a base runner eventually scores a run so when billy hamilton was on base he scored 46 percent of the time that's very high uh that is a a good sign regarding his base

running now that wasn't so outlandish because jose reyes was at 45 percent delano to shields is at 48 percent eddie rosario was at 45 percent i didn't realize a rosario reached base ever last season but he did enough to score D Gordon scored 43 percent of the time I can keep going in Desmond scored 42 percent of time etc so I guess the fastest players seem to score somewhere between 40 45 percent of time that they are on base of course Billy Hamilton is better than his raw OBP just like name any tiger is worse than his high obp because they can't run the bases there are limits and as much as i think people like to think of a single and a steal as being the same as a double it's definitely not because doubles move runners up more and singles and seals do not so

you can't just give billy hamilton credit for that it's all about partial runs but nobody nobody gets makes up for a terrible obpP quite like Billy Hamilton does. That is that much we know for certain. David also asks what Billy Hamilton's slugging percentage would be if you added his stolen bases to his total bases. He says stolen bases don't count as total bases, but that seems sort of silly. Well, if you do that, last year he slugged 343. He had 141 total bases and 58 steals. If you add those 58 steals to his total bases and then divide by his at-bats, suddenly he has a 484 slugging percentage,

which is awfully good for an elite defensive center fielder. I don't know whether that makes perfect mathematical sense to do that, but there's certainly something to the idea. He is obviously contributing those bases, even if he's not doing it with his bat. And that does go a long way toward making up for his lack of power and lack of on-base ability. Billy Hamilton, by batting runs last season, Fangworks put him at a value of negative 12.4 runs, which would have made him the batting equivalent of basically Kevin Pillar.

Well, that's fitting. Kevin Pillar sucks too. But when you fold in base running value, then that gave Billy Hamilton an offensive value of plus 0.4 runs basically average and that would have put hamilton on par with a player such as well you know escobar does that do it for you bernard span yosemite tomas players who aren't considered uh i guess good but who are not offensive zeros so that's what billy hamilton is you fold in the base running to his offense and he is officially as good,

but not better than Younel Escobar. Okay. Well, that's kind of a bummer. Yeah. Question from Steven in Portland. Imagine you're a team president and your best scout unearths a fourth Seager brother. You know that this Seager is 18 years old,

plays baseball, and is roughly 6'2 and 215 pounds, somewhere between Kyle and Corey. Would you sign this player's sight unseen? And if so, what's a reasonable bonus or contract, ignoring the draft in this hypothetical? Isn't this basically like the thing about signing Clayton Kershaw's kid sight unseen? Yes.

I guess it's the exact same thing. This is an adult instead of an infant. Okay, so we have a baseball-playing fourth Seager. We know that one of the Seagers is great. We know that a second Seager is basically great, and we know that a third Seager is at least organizational fodder. He's around.

This is Justin Seager we speak of. Know the name Justin Seager, but then you can also immediately forget it. The whole bloodline thing has worked out often enough for people to notice. It's tempting to think about yeah i would sign him sight unseen i don't know what a fair bonus would be but i would pay him i don't know sight unseen i'd pay him like a i don't know fourth or fifth runner that's not very much to me organizationally it's uh kyle seager was not a real high draft pick but kind of underrated i think that if you look at kyle seager you can see why he was underrated because he doesn't look like an elite athlete.

He doesn't really. He looks like an adult baby a little bit. Sorry, Meg. Well, this is nothing new to her. So, yeah, I would pay him the equivalent of a fourth or fifth round draft pick, and then I would probably scout him so that he's sight seen after he's in the organization yeah well that's one caveat that you pointed out via your email response to this question which is why do we not know about this seeker what are they hiding and

that would have to make you worried about this right yeah he's uh i mean he's a member of a famous baseball family. He's a member of a bloodline with three very good baseball-playing siblings. Why are we not aware of this fourth Seager? And that would perhaps make you worry about the fact that he was not better known. So if you take that into account, maybe you just have to assume that he is the runt of the litter or something. Yeah, that's true. Okay, so my first private response actually is better than my first public response private response is superior i do yeah there's there would be a real mystery here why do why have none of the seagrass discussed the fourth seagrass brother is kind of like what was his name hugo the simpsons child in the crawl space in the attic. I think you, yeah, you definitely have to wonder if it's like Hugo Seeger, then maybe I just kind of keep my distance.

Yeah. All right. Question from Kaim. This one is actually somewhat similar to the earlier Space Jam and Clayton Kershaw hypotheticals. This one is inspired by the 90s Nickelodeon cartoon Hey Arnold, which was an excellent show. He says during this episode called Dangerous Lumber, every time Arnold comes to bat, he unintentionally hits one of the fielders or the pitcher. So my question is this, if there were an MLB player who every time he steps up to

the plate and makes contact, he beans and most likely injures one of the fielders on the opposing team, how long would it take for the league to notice? Would the league take action against this player? Hypothetically, this player would hit 1,000, but he would also injure a lot of other players in the process. Do you recall this episode? It's on YouTube. I didn't remember it well. I watched a brief clip of it and intended to watch the whole episode because, hey, Arnold was good, but I ended up up not having time so it's out there for anyone who wants to look so if we were to make this hypothetical in any way realistic we're probably talking almost all the time about comebackers that hit pitchers

I don't really know how else batted balls hit field I guess you could sort of indirectly cause like outfield collisions I guess that would count and then you're actually injuring at least two maybe even three players at the same time. God, that's hard. I don't know what you would do. Or some sort of weird spin. We actually got a different question about a player who reaches on error every time. And you said it would be like the most fascinating story in baseball that he is somehow applying some weird, unique spin that no fielder can account for.

somehow applying some weird unique spin that no fielder can account for yeah as much as we get all these weird hypotheticals that come into a baseball podcast really they all end up submitting to scientific journals because there's a lot that would be unexplained because the thing about somebody who hits a home run every time or injures defending players all the time or reaches on air all the time is that it takes like five instances in a row before you're like okay this this is there's clearly something supernatural going on so in this god in this case where i don't oh my god okay so let's let's say it's a guy who's just constantly hitting comebackers that ding off pitchers heads which is terrible so if you do it twice i mean the player would retire he would walk away yeah there would be you'd be so overcome with grief and trauma what gets lost a lot when a

player hits one of those horrible dome comebackers off a pitcher is that you know obviously the person most affected is the pitcher whose brain hurts right but you have this this player who's just racked with guilt because he just did that to a person you think of baseball as such a safe game when i was in when i was in high school, I was a pitcher, and I got clocked in the head by a comebacker off the bat, and I was messed up for, I don't know, a year. Effects continue now. But the person who hit the ball was also traumatized.

Not, of course, to the same extent. That person was not hospitalized, but we had a bond form over the incident where he caused my brain to swell in my head. So it's horrible to do that to anyone. If you do it once, obviously you kind of get over it. You think, okay, that was a fluke. You do it twice in a row, you think, oh my god, I am the second least fortunate, or I guess third least fortunate person in the game today. fortunate or I guess third least fortunate person in the game today

but then you do it three four or five times in a row and I think that you would have a player who would he would require canceling almost immediately we're talking like one or two games he would not be able to get over it and so you would have a player I wouldn't say that he developed the yips but he would be so

afraid to swing that he would become unplayable so I think the player would take action before the league now if the player were a complete sociopath or like there's a character on the expanse the sci-fi show this season who just had like the a magnet passed across the lobe of his brain that's responsible for empathy and so he is completely fine with like millions of people dying in pursuit of his scientific interests. If he were like that, then if he were allowed to continue to play, he'd be the best player ever, right?

Because not only would he get a hit almost every time, probably not every time, there'd be some friendly caroms and he would be thrown out. But I think he'd be the best hitter ever. And that's even before accounting for the fact that he is just decimating every other team's pitching staff. So he'd be immensely valuable, but no team would be heartless enough to continue to employ him because he'd be a menace to society. Eventually fans would start protesting and boycotting this team's games. Rob Manfred might intervene and say that this guy can't play anymore because even if he maintained his innocence, I think if you were to do this every time, people would assume that you were doing it on purpose somehow, that you just had the best bat control ever and you were aiming for opposing players because there's no way it could realistically happen by chance so this guy would not get to play more than i don't know a game or two even

assuming that he is not wracked with guilt and takes himself out of the game before then which most players would yeah right at some point either the team would stop he'd stop playing either because of his team making the decision the the league making the decision, maybe America votes him president. So we don't really know what's going to happen with this guy. But, you know, even if he's like essentially blackballed from Major League Baseball, let's say he is a total sociopath. Obviously, he got to a high level, so he was very motivated to continue to playing. He's probably going to play elsewhere. motivated to continue to playing he's probably going to play elsewhere maybe even if not with an affiliate he'll go to indie ball or he'll go to japan or south korea or mexico and he'll just damage pitchers there so he's just it's going to be this thing that just doesn't end provided the player wants to just keep going you can't really put him in jail for this you know you unless he's

just like you can prove that he's a wizard which which, well, I guess we've tested for witches before, but we haven't done that for a while. So he would just ruin lives in different countries for probably years, and it would become this weird... I mean, you co-ran an independent team, and there would be so much attention on this player that people with indie league teams would have sort of a conflict where they think,

well, this would be good publicity, but bad for cerebral health in the area if we signed this player. So I don't know if he'd get like the Jose Canseco treatment to just kind of float around or what, but if he, and you know, even if he stopped playing baseball, does this, is this a carryover thing where like, no matter what he does, someone gets injured whenever he does anything successful? I don't know what you do. You can't put the person in jail, but society would be better if this person were in prison. Yeah. All right. Let's see if we can get a quick couple under the wire. Michelle says, after Bryce Harper's two home run game, one of which was a grand slam, I have to ask this question, which team will be the first to

intentionally walk Bryce Harper with the bases loaded? It's got to happen, right? I don't know. Him or Eric Thames first. I'm not sure which one's sooner going to take place. I don't remember. Tom Tango has written an entry,

or maybe it was Mitchell Lichtman, I don't remember, who did it, talking about whether the math ever made sense to actually intentionally walk Barry Bonds with the bases loaded. Barry Bonds is, of course, the standard bearer for being God at the plate. Eric Thames is South Korean God. Barry Bonds is American God. And I think, I don't know, do you remember the article off the top of your head?

Was it ever actually justified? I don't remember the conclusion, but it's extremely, extremely rare, if ever, and that was the best hitter ever. Right, and you figure that behind Rice Harper will always be another good hitter, whether it's Daniel Murphy or the rejuvenated Ryan Zimmerman or Adam Eaton or any of the other Nationals. It's not like it goes Bryce Harper pitcher. So there's going to be a good hitter next.

I don't, especially in this day and age where managers think more rationally than ever because they're basically puppets of the front office above them and every front office is run by wall street alumni i guess that it's very difficult for me to see bryce harper actually walked with intentionally walked with the bases loaded you could see sort of unintentional intention or unintentional intentional walk intentional unintentional walks i forgot which way it is but you'll see guys pitch around them with a base load because they're just terrified and so of, that's going to happen.

But I think it's more likely that you will see him intentionally walked with the bases empty sometimes. Yeah. And of course, there was speculation that Harper being pitched around last year was one of the things that led to his slump. I was sort of skeptical about that being the primary reason, but potentially it's something that could get in a player's head if you did it, but it would have to really get in his head to do it because otherwise it would backfire. I wanted to say something about that. People have given Joe Madden a lot of credit because he intentionally walked Harper a bunch in May. But if I recall, no, it was the Phillies who did that first. They walked him a whole bunch in a series at the end of April. And I'm tired of Joe Maddon getting credit that he doesn't deserve.

That's great. Okay, he walked Harper a bunch. Well, the Phillies did it first. So just shove it about Joe Maddon. He got the World Series. He's clever and everything. That's fine. He wears funny glasses.

Phillies did it first. All right, last one, if we can answer very quickly from John. We know it is unlikely that there will ever be a limit on the number of relievers that can be used per inning or per game. It's not that unlikely because it's something Rob Manfred has talked about at least, but hasn't happened yet. How about a pitching change clock? The reliever has X number of minutes to get from the bullpen and commence game action. If the reliever gets to the mound early, he can throw warmup pitches. If the reliever walks slowly from the pen, no on the mound warmup pitches. There can be a penalty associated with breaching the pitching change clock, such as a free ball to the batter, free base to the batter, all runners move up a base. The clock will help mitigate the time wasted during pitching changes,

but the reliever will more or less have to be ready immediately out of the pen. This is something that Joe Posnanski and Mike Schur talked about recently on the POScast, and they were recommending this and I think they allowed for one warm up pitch or something when the reliever comes up just because mounds are a little bit different and you don't want to run the risk of

the guy hurting himself because he's not used to the surface or something like that but their point was basically that it's crazy to have relievers throw a ton of pitches in the bullpen a lot of the time and be completely ready and then come out and throw 10 more or whatever on the mound, taking up a ton of time when, in theory, they could just start pitching. This has at least been discussed enough. I don't remember if there's something like that that exists in the minor leagues. And yeah, obviously when relievers come in, it's kind of a drag. But I think even if you limit it to like a two minute process, still, it's such a boring delay because it's two minutes of nothing.

Even a pitching change itself, that's two minutes of downtime. You have the manager having to come out and they saunter for like 15 freaking seconds before they get to the mound and then they do their signal. And then the reliever clock starts ticking so even a faster reliever process of course does not eliminate the problem so still kind of just annoying to see relievers come in even though it makes perfect strategic sense all right i'm gonna close with a little clip in our stat segment last week you talked about the brent Brown play in 1998 it was one of the last games of the Cubs season they were tied in the wild card they were up seven nothing after six innings and

then they were up seven five in the ninth and bases loaded two outs and Brent Brown a late inning defensive replacement dropped the ball three runs scored the Cubs lost many people pointed out that this is a famous play in Cubs lore not not only for the play, but for Ron Santos' reaction to the play. Swung on, fly ball, left field. Brant Brown going back. Brant Brown drops the ball. He drops the ball. Three runs will score, and the Brewers have beaten the Cubs. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who've already done so include Danny Madden, Damian Masterson, Nicholas Rapp, Joel Gillespie, and Dustin Palmatier. Thanks to all of you.

You can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, and you can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. If you need more baseball audio, Michael and I will have a new episode of the Ringer MLB show up today. It's our last episode exclusive to TuneIn. For those of you who are looking forward to our return to iTunes, but you can stream it for now at tunein.com slash the Ringer. We talked to Jeff Blum, former big leaguer and current Astros broadcaster. We also

talked to Mitchell Schwartz, Kansas City Chiefs offensive tackle, our first NFL player on the Baseball Podcast. It makes sense when you listen to it. Keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast at fangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We will talk to you soon. But I've been out on them choppy waves and it's hard to say where this land begins and that water stops. I got sea legs. I got sea legs. I got sea legs.