Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1367: Vlad Tidings

Episode Date: April 26, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the long-awaited promotion of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., baseball-watching etiquette at a bachelorette party, and Mike Trout if he weren’t trying, then answer listener emails about Rhys Hoskins, Jacob Rhame, and the latest unwritten-rules flare-up between the Phillies and Mets, Tyler Wade, Andrelton Simmons, and a questionable application of […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1367 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm well. Good. Flawless intro, by the way, on your first take. Did not take, didn't take multiple tries at all. No, definitely not. Did great.

So we're doing emails today, but also banter. I guess the news of the day is Vlad, right? It's really the news of tomorrow because he will be promoted on Friday and make his Major League debut. But that's exciting. The wait is finally over or about to be. The wait is over. I have an etiquette question for you that I have not prepared you for. Okay.

The reason that we are going slightly out of sequence this week is that I am traveling to Arizona for a very dear friend's bachelorette party this weekend. I'm in her wedding. And this fun with Vlad, it starts tomorrow when I will be at a bachelorette party. And I am wondering, if I watch this game on my phone, would she be allowed to kick me out of her wedding? It's probably too late, right? It's a little too late to find a replacement. It's true. Although I guess all her other friends and family will be around so she could just sub someone in.

But it's a night game, so that's a problem. Yeah, but we're making dinner at the house that we're renting for the weekend the first night. So maybe I can surreptitiously duck out for a couple of choice at-bats and then find my way back to the party. surreptitiously duck out for a couple of choice at bats and then find my way back to the party. Yeah. Or you can just pull up the app if the app happens to be working and functioning at the time and you can follow it that way. I guess that's not quite as satisfying, but it's something. Given how long the wait has been and given your profession and your duties to fan graphs and baseball, I think it would be understandable if you just ducked out to see what Vlad was doing. Yeah.

It's been so long in the making and there's been so much bitterness associated with how long this has been in the making that it almost feels like now that he's actually here, it's like he could have been here before. We could have been watching him all this time, but it's still exciting. And if you look at the Fangraphs projections, I think the rest of season steamer ones, at least I just glanced at, he projects to be like the 11th or 12th best hitter as Vlad's was by Eric Langenhagen, that you're probably in pretty good shape. Yeah. I'm just, I can't wait. I'm so excited. I just can't wait. Yeah, I think my favorite part of this whole thing is Vlad Sr.'s Twitter account.

Yes. And just his very earnest and loving tweets about his son. It's just, it's very sweet. He's just like tweeting news about Vlad Jr.'s call up with like heart eyes emoji. And let's see, he has one that says, my son, the country that saw you as a child will now see you turn into a big one. I don't know what that is. It's kind of a big one, but working hard, everything can be done.

I'm proud of you. Love you, heart. And it has the picture of them with a young Vlad Sr. and much younger Vlad Jr. standing next to him. It's very nice. It's not many fathers or parents who get to see their children become big leaguers. And I like that. It's just like, it just sounds like your typical little league dad who's just kind of clapping from the sidelines. Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty endearing. And I think you're right. The earnestness of it is really what, what does it?

Cause he knows, you know, he knows what that moment feels like. It's so unusual that, you know, a big leaguers parent would, would really know what that feels like when he takes the field for the first time. So I think that it's this lovely, it's just lovely. It's so great. It would have been so great a couple of weeks ago, but I guess better late than never. Yep. Now we have reasons to watch the Blue Jays or at least one reason to watch the Blue Jays.

And I guess it'll be Mike Fiers will be the first pitcher to face him. I just got an email from some PR person, which is the bane of my existence, just constantly getting emails. Although you just tweeted about liking getting those because you can just delete them without looking at them, which is true. There's a satisfaction to just being able to know I don't have to engage with that at all. Yeah. The real satisfaction I always do because I'm just in this constant war where I'm trying to unsubscribe from these PR email lists that I don't know how I get on. Like I guess there's probably just maybe they just buy like media people's addresses in a group or

something. And then suddenly I'm getting all kinds of alerts about things that I couldn't possibly care about. And some of them do have unsubscribe links at the bottom. And it's always really satisfying to see you will not receive emails from this person again, even though I don't know why I received that email. And anyway, those are constantly piling up. I just got one that is related to Vlad Jr. and says that his upcoming MLB debut against the A's is causing ticket prices to take a significant jump. Evidently, ticket prices are up by 58% for Vlad Jr.'s debut just overnight.

So if you want to see Vlad Jr., go get your tickets. They're harder to come by than Avengers at Game tickets, I guess, at this point. Wow. it's almost as if when you put a good product on the field, people want to come and see it. Yep. It's almost as if that's true. Unsubscribed from that email. There we go. So what else is going on in baseball? What else is going on in baseball? The Phillies and the Mets are up to some, some silliness. They sure are. Yeah, we got a listener email about this, so I guess I'll just introduce this banter topic by getting this email out of the way.

This is from Richard. He says, Any thoughts on the Hoskins trot from last night? For context, Mets pitcher Jacob Rehm threw a ball over Reese Hoskins' head on Tuesday night. On Wednesday night, Hoskins faced him in the ninth inning and hit a dinger. He then proceeded to do a very slow trot around the bases,

which was clocked as the slowest ever recorded, 34.2 seconds. The question is, is this better, worse, or equivalent to a bat flip? I feel like I can see the argument for any of these. For what it's worth, Rehm's comment after the game was not inflammatory. He basically said it was his right to take as long as he wanted with the trot, because if I make a better pitch, he doesn't get on base. Yeah, so I'm in favor of bat flips, and I'm kind of fine with this because I think that there should be— I typically don't like it when celebrations transition into making the guy who just did a goofy thing feel bad, right? When that's the motivation behind the celebration, because then it's not a celebration. You're just kind of being a little jerk, right? And I don't like that. But I do think that shame is very powerful. If Hoskins assumed that these pitches around his head were in any way intentional and there had been some plunking in this series of hitters of various teams.

So he would perhaps be justified in thinking that it was a little bit of a like, hey, we're out, I think pretty conclusively after this game that like, this poor guy is just like made a bad pitch maybe, uh, and is fine with there being, um, you know, a cessation of hostilities. Cause I think that pitcher should not throw at batters. It is very dangerous. And I think that if a guy who has done that and you suspect it to be intentional, even if it proves to be unintentional later, uh, does something like that, I think it's okay to be like, well, I gotcha. See, this is what happens. I'm going to getcha. Even though it is, if the circumstances were different and it were about that and there had been no throwing around one's head, I would find it to be a little bit rude because it stops being about being joyful at this thing you've done that's very hard and starts being about being a little jerk. But I don't think that's what was the motivation here.

So I'm fine with it. And pleased to hear that, like, they're just going to hopefully move on from this. Yeah, one would hope. I wasn't watching this game live. And so when I caught up, I had to read about the sequence of events that led to this. I caught up, I had to read about the sequence of events that led to this. And it's just like a bottomless abyss of like one really silly rules violation leading to another and then another and then another. So trying to trace it all the way back here, I think how this started was there was a game where the Mets were up 8-0 and Juan Ligaris was on first base, and he was running on the play.

And so that's a no-no, of course, because the Mets are already up 8-0 at that point, and Robinson Cano is singled. And so Ligaris went from first to third. And so the Phillies were upset about that, and then they retaliated by throwing at Michael Conforto in the following at-bat, which I don't think they hit him, but the intent was kind of clear. But then the Mets retaliated for that. That was Jacob Rehm throwing at Hoskins, and he threw two pitches that I don't think he should have thrown at Hoskins because these were kind of dangerous looking pitches. One was behind him and kind of like head level. That's where hitters really hate to have the ball go much more so than getting plunked on the butt or the thigh or something. It's pretty dangerous. And then Hoskins looked upset. And then there was another pitch that was

more over the plate, but also high. And Hoskins kind of looked like he was considering making something of it. And then he was just jawing at the catcher and ultimately he went to first base. And then he got his sweet revenge by hitting a big giant dinger against Reim. And that is probably the sweetest revenge that you can possibly get much more so than charging the mound or yelling at the guy or whatever you want to do. And he took his time. He took more time than anyone else has ever taken, evidently, to round the bases. And

I applaud him for that action. All the stuff that led up to that was very dumb. But I think that was a good way to handle it. No one got hurt. Maybe this ends it all. I don't know whether some other Mets reliever will now take it upon himself to carry this into their next matchup. But maybe this is it, and it's a nonviolent, peaceful resolution. There was a very half-hearted bench clearing when Rehm threw at Hoskins, and guys were just milling about just barely on the field. But it didn't go any further than that, and I think that's a good thing. And what could be better, really, than stretching out the pitcher's shame about having just a allowed long home run I think this is a good way to handle it yeah I think it's the baseball equivalent of just landing like that

perfect that perfect zinger that perfect comeback so I think that this is fine and now they can be done and we have shown throughout baseball history that baseball men are very good about letting things go. And so I'm sure there will be no further problems. But it does seem that this one, at least in terms of the parties directly involved, can sort of be finished now. And so there should be a conversation in the clubhouse

about how all the guys who had an emotional investment in this moment are satisfied with the conclusion they've said what they needed to and now we can move on yeah it's kind of like i'm sure rob manfred somewhere is instituting a rule about home run trots that take longer than 30 seconds and putting a home run trot clock somewhere in in the rules but i think this is good it's kind of like in the outro to our last episode i mentioned something that one of our listeners suggested in the facebook group which is if you get plunked after bat flipping then you just bat flip the hit by pitch i love this idea yeah which someone actually suggested in your fan graphs chat this week so i don't know if that

person heard it there or came up with it on their own but i like that idea too that's just uh it's like no i'm not going to take this i'm not going to escalate it but i'm just gonna establish that this behavior is acceptable and you're stuck with it right yes i'm going to say my piece but my piece will not involve throwing anything at you and then we can all move on right so the other controversial thing that happened on wednesday and this is another thing that we got an email about in this case from mitch who is one of our patreon supporters so this is a replay review that happened in the yankees angels game on tyler wade and i will read what mitch says here a call went against my favorite team has got to be the worst least sympathetic complaint possible in baseball And I will read what Mitch says here. because replay was able to catch the microsecond after the play had fundamentally concluded,

wherein Andrelton Simmons might have been touching Tyler Wade's back while Wade shifted his weight from one foot to the other and came marginally off the bag. This has got to be the worst use of replay ever, right? It's not trying to get a play right. It's not checking a home run. It's just snipping the right camera frames to manufacture an out from nothing. So there was a long replay review on this play, and ultimately Wade was ruled out, completing a double play that started with a really nice Mike Trout catch

and then ended with this very anticlimactic replay review where it was determined by the officials in New York that Tyler Wade, just in the process of shifting his weight, was not entirely in contact with the bag while Andrelton Simmons was touching him with the ball, and so he was out. So what do you think of this use of replay? So I generally hate it. In general, it is my least favorite genre of replay review.

I like that replay exists. I think it is important that replay exists. I think that given what we are able to see on replays, on broadcasts in particular, it is important that we have replay. But this is not what anyone envisioned when they thought of replay. And so I think that it's tricksy in a way that like you know mitch said isn't isn't fun this isn't getting a call right this is you know rooting around for an out where we just didn't think outs existed there before throughout baseball's history really there's no outs to be had there and now we know there are and so teams are automatically and necessarily going to look for them and i get that that impulse, but I don't like it.

But I have a but. Oh, there's a but. Okay. I really – so there is an angle of this replay where you can see Simmons, see that his foot has come off the bag, and know to tag him. And so I am actually okay with this specific one because I do think that there was like, you know, there's like a little bit of skill here. This is him being aware of what's going on in the field around him and engaging with it and like being like, I can go grab this out. I can go find it. You know, it's not like when a guy slides in to second and comes off the bag and it's just that the, you know, the second baseman has maintained the tag. And so then a guy is out. So I don't like it generally, but I think I'm okay

with this one in particular because there's a little more action and skill to it, even though it's very small for just a second. And he's probably only looking for this because he knows that replay exists, right? Like Simmons from 10 years ago probably doesn't look to do that, maybe, at least not as consistently because replay doesn't exist. So I will admit the influence of replay in this moment, but I think I'm okay with this particular one. Yeah, I think it makes sense to draw a distinction between this play and the momentum play that we often bemoan,

where it's just a guy is sliding in and because physics works the way it does and baseball players are big and they're running fast and they just happen to extend a little bit beyond the bag. And sure, there's technique to sliding, and you could say that there's a skill to not coming off the bag and making sure you don't do that. That's true. But I think if you are above the bag as you are getting tagged, it's like the, I think Dave Cameron wrote about this for FanCrafts at some point. He made a proposal that essentially like the airspace above the bag itself, like once you make contact with the bag,

if you get tagged above that airspace like in the air above the bag after you have slid over it if you're just kind of like taken off the bag by your momentum that that just shouldn't count that you should just have like a free space when you slide in there and i think that's probably right in this case though i mean you could say that wade was a little too nonchalant. Like this was not an unforced error. He did do this. You know, he said, I think after the game, he said, I've got to be smarter than that. Maybe he's just trying to be a stand-up guy and not whine about replay. But there is, I guess, some fault.

Like you do have to be aware of where the fielders are and where the ball is and make sure you're actually touching the bag and it's the sort of thing like without replay i'm sure he would have been ruled safe and it just wouldn't even be a consideration and so this wasn't what replay was designed to do but like you i do find this a little bit less objectionable than i do that other type of play and i i did i did feel very badly for him though very badly for him though because he's a guy who's getting an opportunity mostly because of the entire Yankees roster being composed of ghosts. And so you always feel bad for guys like that when they have little mental mistakes like this

because you know that their opportunity might not be as secure as other players' opportunities are. So you do feel badly for him. And that particular kind of little shifting foot to foot, I do that if I'm at a game and it's a minor league game and there aren't bleachers. I do that.

So I was just like, yeah, buddy. No one's trying to tag you. Yeah, exactly. You have an excuse. Yeah, exactly. You have an excuse. Yeah, they're going to get me. So I felt badly for him. But didn't they end up winning that game? Yeah, and I believe he ended up scoring the winning run.

So he's fine. He's doing great. Everyone's fine and we can just appreciate. That allows us to just appreciate Angelson Simmons, which we always enjoy doing. It was a pretty heads up little move he had there. That part's cool. Yeah, yeah. I saw this little exchange in the replies to the official MLB account's tweet about this play with the video.

So let me just read this exchange. It involves a few different people, one of whom is an Angels fan. So one guy says his foot was still on the bag the other guy says nope he raised it for a half second when he was tagged then someone else comes in and says imagine using replay on a hidden ball trick because you're two and eight in the last 10 so he is a bitter i guess about this and then an angels fan comes in and says imagine never winning a world series oh wait because i think the previous person was a Mariners fan. Sorry.

Oh, jeez. So then the Mariners fan, I think I'm losing track of the people, says, imagine wasting Mike Trout's career. Then the Angels fan comes back with, at least we get to, wink face emoji. Wow. That's a terrible comeback. At least we get to. He's gloating about getting to waste mike trout's career that is the most dramatic cell phone i've ever heard in my life that is

the worst one he's gloating about getting to watch mike trout i guess which is true but does it make up for being bad all the time i don't probably not oh no. No. I mean, I have to say he, I'm assuming it's a he, it's Tori, deserves what he gets there because, like, to go from talking about that play to immediately bringing in the World Series, you've escalated dramatically, and so now all bets are off. Yeah, no, that is a terrible comeback, and he should be ashamed. All right.

Can we stay in Angels land for a second, though? Yeah, please. Just because those games have been the late games on the last couple days, so I've been thinking about the Angels, and I regret to inform the collective that while Cole Calhoun is off to a better start than his start last year, he's still not doing very well. So that's sad. It's got negative war right now. Although, you know, some of that is like early small sample defense stuff.

But just a 78 WRC plus does have five home runs, though, because that is what baseball is in 2019. So that thing happened and then can i talk about the mike trout thing that happened yes okay so uh i tweeted about this i'm going to do that annoying thing where i talk about a tweet of mine but there was a moment in uh mike trout's game on the 23rd where and i believe that this ended up being a fly out for him uh at the end of the played appearance where or the ipad played appearance, but I can't quite recall if it was that one or if he ended up walking. But anyhow, I was watching the Yankees broadcast of this game and the Yes booth noted after

Mike Trout had fouled off what they thought was a hittable pitch, that if he was 100% locked in, he wouldn't have done that. And then it made me, well, first, my reaction was, well, that's very silly to say because through the 23rd, Mike Trout had a 208 WRC plus and was walking 26% of the time and only striking out 12% of the time. So I think that's pretty locked in. If I were going to describe locked in, I would look at Mike Trout and be like, Hey, here's this guy who's pretty locked in. But then it made me think, and we have maybe entertained to this idea before I was like, what if Mike Trout is not a reliable narrator and is actually not a hundred percent locked in is perhaps holding back and is not reaching his full potential. And so it makes me wonder if that

were true, if my crazy hypothetical were true, because I wanted to come up with a Mike Trout hypothetical that was not about us making the best baseball player any of us will ever watch in our lifetime worse, which is what we always do with Mike Trout hypotheticals, which I find to be a very strange but very human impulse. And so I'm wondering what what if this is not the best version of mike trout and if he is consciously holding back that version what would be the optimal time for him to reveal the actual best version do you wait until you're back in the postseason or do you perhaps fearing that you will not get there reveal it sooner at a different time i think you wait until the angels are good again, because I don't think anything Mike

Trout can do can make the angels good again on its own. I think he has done all he can on that score, and it just hasn't generally been enough. I mean, this hypothetical isn't so far from the reality of Mike Trout because he does keep appearing to get better every year and whatever he's not so great at one year he then decides to be better at and just instantly is like last year his improvement he came into the year wanting to be better at defense and then he just was and it seemed like the only thing that was different was that he was just willing himself to be better. Like that was literally it. Like he was practicing more. He was kind of running faster in the outfield. It was just kind of a conscious decision on his part. So

that kind of is almost what happens. I mean, that's kind of the amazing thing about him, I think, is that he does keep finding new and different levels. So I don't know if it's an effort thing or whether it's an experience thing or what, but I think he has many layers and he has not shown them to us yet. I just have this vision of him like Scooby-Doo villain style pulling off a mask, revealing an identical mic drought beneath it, being like, style pulling off a mask revealing an identical Mike Trout beneath it being like me all along still the best player in baseball but better but even better yeah all right I've got a question from James uh you wanted to get to this one James asks if MLB umpires currently make 14 incorrect ball strike calls a game on average how many do you think they would make if the hitter and catcher were both transparent and there was nothing blocking

the view that the umpire had of the ball crossing the plate so i wanted to talk about this because mostly i find the question very funny because it it makes a it either is making a very sort of sassy assumption or makes no sense at all. And I don't know that it helps either way. Because I think that if you were suddenly encountering transparent people, you would not do better at your job. I think that you would be very uncomfortable being able to see the insides of people. And so you would probably call more balls and strikes incorrectly than you did before.

But here's my question about James's question. Are we to assume that they are not only transparent but also naked? Because in order for the transparency, assuming you could get over the, like, you know, Cronenberg body horror of suddenly seeing the insides of people while they're walking around they're still wearing uniforms right yeah i was picturing it as like a like a floating kind of not quite as opaque as an actual person but still looking like an actual person but you can see the ball through them so so sort of jellyfish like yeah i suppose that's what i had in mind i don't know that it would okay so let's just let's take that um less

salacious version of this question to heart and just assume that that's what james meant and james i am sorry for goofing on you but it just it struck me as very funny and it made me laugh when i received it so i wanted to share that laughter i don't think that it would i don't know how much it would really help because i think that some of this is framing right and not being able to see perfectly but you're still i think that you would still have like visual acuity issues and i think that you would still have guys get kind of fooled a little bit by good framing, even if the because the really good framers like that glove motion is subtle. And so I still don't think I don't think that it would help a ton. I think you'd probably get a couple more right than wrong. But I don't think that it would help unless they were truly transparent and also naked. unless they were truly transparent and also naked. Yeah, I don't know.

I'm picturing them as like Jacob and Robert Marley from the Muppet Christmas Carol. I don't know. It's less distracting if you can't see their innards. Right, that's the other thing. You're still blocked by their guts and stuff, right? It's not as if they suddenly stop having organs, like vital organs. If they just weren't there at all,

if it were just you calling the pitches and no one standing there at all, well, I mean, I guess you couldn't really do that because you need to see where the top and the bottom of the zone is at least. Right, you wouldn't have the... But if you had... I'm so glad that I made you spend time on this. If you had like floating bars that illustrated the top and bottom of the zone, I think, you know, if there was nothing in the way that you probably call.

I mean, umpires still get a shocking percentage of calls correct now with, you know, obstructions and framing and all kinds of, and the speed of pitches and all kinds of stuff. I mean, we, we like to goof on umpires because sometimes they do their jobs very poorly, but they really do their jobs very, very well, um, considering how hard it is, especially. So I think that you would, you would get a lot of calls, right. But I think the, that the people watching would not care because they would so be distracted by these transparent people. watching would not care because they would so be distracted by these transparent people on the field. Right. Yeah. Or maybe it's like, you know, how the K zone is superimposed on the screen when you're watching. So maybe it's like the hitter and the catcher also have the visual quality of the K zone. Sure. So I don't know. I think that it probably wouldn't affect things much just because I think if the umpire is properly positioned in the slot, I think umpires are generally pretty good about not letting things get in their way.

That's like their whole job back there. So I'm sure there are some extremes of like tall catcher and short umpire that make things kind of difficult. But for the most part, now maybe you're getting like a slightly off-center view because you're looking over the catcher's shoulder. Right, you're sliding over so that you can get a view of where he's receiving, yeah. Yeah, so maybe that distorts things a little bit, and maybe if you don't have to do that, if you can just stand directly behind the catcher and the plate

because you can look through the catcher, then maybe you get a slightly more accurate perspective stand directly behind the catcher and the plate because you can look through the catcher then maybe you get a slightly more accurate perspective on pitches on the corners or something but yeah for the most part i think the limiting factor when it comes to umpire accuracy is just that pitches go really fast and the pull is moving around a lot and it is hard to see so yeah whether or not the figures are transparent so all right question from sad rangers fan jenny her description of herself not mine if you were you but with the talent to be a major leaguer what type of player would you be for example what i would like to be is a defensively excellent third baseman who can hit okay, but I'd more likely be a hard throwing but sometimes wild relief pitcher who can have great streaks but who can get very emotional in a bad outing.

I feel like Jenny and I would get along. I guess I can give my answer to this question because I thought about it. I like baseball, like one aesthetic of baseball that I like very much is when the results that a player gets are somewhat incongruous with what their physical form would suggest they are. So like part of why I love Jose Altuve is that it's like really cool that someone Jose Altuve size, who is, he is my size. I mean, he is listed as taller than me, but that is a lie. I have seen him on the field. He is my size. So he is not tall and he is able to send the ball very, very far with regularity. And so part of why he is such a joy is that it feels incongruous.

And so we delight in the way that that all mashes together. So I think that if I were picking, I would want to be a player in maybe that L2Vian mold where I have surprising power for someone my size, or alternatively a very hard throwing reliever, because people will also look at me and be like, that's very surprising that this, you know, not tall person can throw so hard. So I think that would be my answer. And I, I would probably not get angry at bad outings, but I think that I would make a lot of very sad faces that someone like me in my seat would make fun of on the internet. And that would feel like justice, right? That would just feel like the karma that I am due. Yeah. Thanks. be a reliever too. It just, it seems like a lighter work schedule. I mean, you don't have to work every day. You have to work unpredictably and you don't really know when you have the day

off, but just kind of sitting in the bullpen and chatting with your friends seems like a good time. Seems like a lot of good stories happen in the bullpen. You make good friendships there and you just don't have to work as much. I think it is unpleasant probably to fail as a reliever because the spotlight is on you at all times. And if you're bad, you don't know when you'll be able to come back and be good. And you just don't get as much work. So if you only throw 10 pitches or something and half of them are bad, that just probably leaves you feeling pretty bummed out after the outing. But I don't even really want to be a good player in this scenario. It's so foreign to me to aspire to

athletic accomplishment. I like playing sports and playing with my friends and stuff, but even then it's just kind of a casual recreational thing. And when people get too serious about actually winning or not, then that turns me off. So if I were a baseball player, I'd want to be good enough to justify my presence there. I wouldn't want to be like a sub-replacement level person who people were criticizing for even being on the roster. But I think more than actually being good at baseball, I'd want to be like the cool baseball player who like gets along with writers and stuff, which is probably like a failure of imagination on my part because I'm imagining like me, he's a baseball player, but he's just like us. And he does good tweets. And like, you can go get a good postgame quote from him. And he gets along well with the writers and stuff. But oh, man, I need to set my sights higher, I think. But that's kind of what I would want to be the guy like, like, occasionally, we come across a player who's like a really good

writer or something. And it's like, oh, wow wow, like this guy is not only an elite athlete, but does my job really well. And if he weren't such a good athlete, he could probably just take my job and be better at it. a big league baseball player but like also has other skills that would make me respected by non jocks i guess who would be like oh wow he's just like us except better at baseball so that's what i want i think that aspiring to be a very affable version of someone is isn't a night that's nice that's nice ben that's nice of you. I like that. It's charming. Yeah. I want to be the go-to guy that you go through for the post-game quip or something. And I would pride myself on not resorting to cliches, although I probably would because it is terrible to be interviewed constantly. And I pity all players who have to talk to us.

But I would try my best to give interesting answers. I want to be like the, I mean, you can be good and also be that guy because you can be Joey Votto, who is funny and engaging and always has interesting things to say, but has also been one of the very best players in baseball. So I guess that would be good too, being cerebral and good. It's not mutually exclusive. So if you're in the reliever mold, you would fashion yourself as maybe like, well, especially with the Star Wars stuff and the video game stuff. Like you'd aspire to be like a Sean Doolittle.

You'd be, you would want to be Doolittle-ian. That's hard to say. I don't know if I got that right at all. Yeah. Yeah. Like so that an editor says, hey, I think one way that we could make this piece about a baseball player interesting is if you went and played video games with that guy and you'd be that guy. Yes. I'd be the go-to cool baseball player for non-baseball players to hang out with.

That would be my job. I would bridge the gap in the clubhouse. I'd be like the safe guy that all the nerds who are uncomfortable in the clubhouse could go feel like they could talk to yeah i like that that's good no one else would feel this way i don't think everyone else is like i'd want to be really good and make lots of money and uh be famous and yeah i don't know i i'd also want to like hang around for a long time too i'd like being like the grizzled vet Who just like keeps getting jobs And looks too old to be a baseball player

But is one anyway That'd be fun Yeah that sounds great Alright question from David Inspired by the recent question About distributing 35 wins Of a replacement across a team I was wondering if the baseball gods

Came to you, a very good teenage baseball player, and said that you would be worth 50 war in your MLB career, but it was up to you to decide how you distribute the wins. And after you decided, your memory of the decision would be wiped men in black style. How would you distribute 50 wins above replacement over your baseball career? I guess this kind of depends on what your professional, like what do you want to accomplish in the course of your career? I suppose if you were looking to, if you're looking to say maximize your earnings, you would want to have a couple of early promising seasons and then like maybe two really good seasons as you're going through arbitration so that when you're about to hit free agency, you have like a track record of improving

over time and also demonstrated like maybe all-star level production so that you could get a big deal maybe. Because you could front load all of that and then be bad after you got the deal, but then your work life is going to be terrible and people are going to be calling on you to retire early and they're going to compare you to Albert Pujols, but not the good Pujols and you're going to feel badly about yourself. And you won't know that you made that choice to get a big contract, so you'll just think that you're bad now. Yeah. So you won't even be conscious of the strategy of the decision. So I think that that would probably be my preference plus then you're you know you have good peak years and hopefully could like go win a world series so you can check that off your list i think that would be

my preference because feeling bad at your job every day is like one of the most demoralizing things that can happen to a person that doesn't involve like illness. So I think that that would be my answer. your team's World Series wins? Like if you knew you were going to get a certain amount of championships from your favorite team in your lifetime, would you want that to be when you were a kid or when you were old or middle age or what would be the optimal way to distribute those things? And don't remember what we said because that was a long time ago, but if you're a 50 war player, you're solidly Hall of Very Good caliber player.

You're like, you know, a couple good years away from having a real Hall of Fame case. I mean, there are players with 50 war or fewer in the Hall of Fame, so you could be one. I guess if you wanted to maximize your chances of making the Hall of Fame, then maybe you would want to have just a really high peak but a short career. Right. That's kind of what it comes down to. Like if you want to be remembered as like a legend of baseball, then you want to be like Mike Trout for like six years or something and that's it. It's like Trout's like last whatever six seasons or something.

Just imagine that were your whole career. Now that would probably entail like a career ending injury or illness or something. And that would be unpleasant. But like even if you had like a Dale Murphy-esque kind of career where you just got old early and you had a Hall of Fame peak but just didn't pad your stats. early and you had a Hall of Fame peak but just didn't pad your stats. I mean, that would be pretty good because then you're remembered. Like, how many war does Dale Murphy? He must be in this range, right?

Let's see. Let's see. Dale Murphy has, by our war, Dale Murphy had 44.3 war over the course of his career. Is that right? Yep. Yeah. All right. So he's that right? Yep. Yeah. All right. So he's roughly in this range. Yeah.

I'm thinking of someone like, gosh, I don't know, Ray Lankford isn't even quite this good. He's more of like a 40 war guy, I think. But someone like that who is consistently good but didn't have as many star level seasons. Right. I think I'd either rather be the guy who just burned very bright for a fairly short period of time and had a hall of fame peak and was one of

the very best players in baseball for that short period maybe picked up an mvp award or something like if you just want to be remembered that is probably the best way to do it on the other hand what if you just really like playing baseball and you just really like being a big league player and you want that to last as long as possible in which case maybe you just want to stretch this out into like a an omar viskell type career i mean viskell is uh in that dale murphy or range, not quite 50, but 40 something. And he played for 25 years or whatever and just got to play baseball well into his 40s. So if I really liked baseball, then I guess I would want to devote a greater percentage of my life to doing the thing that I like, even if I'm not as great at it at any one time.

doing the thing that I like, even if I'm not as great at it at any one time. So I guess I'd take like being an average player for a quarter of a century or something. That'd be pretty nice. Especially if you are also the guy in the clubhouse that all the nerds go talk to. Exactly. Because then you can have a nice long career. And then at the end of it, you know, you could go, you could go write for someone or work in a front office and you'll have all these friends from the game because you're the affable guy who played video games and was intellectual i think that uh we're learning a lot about you ben i know yeah these answers are sort of the same i guess but yeah and i want to be the guy who's like the last active

player from that decade to still be in the game. He's the only one who remembers baseball at that time. And he's also the guy who makes the most fans feel good about themselves because he is older than they are. That is a valuable service for a player to provide, just making people feel less old because there is a big leaguer older than they are. So that's nice. less old because there is a big league you're older than they are so that's nice and also you get to be a source of fun facts like you can be the guy who like links some player from decades earlier with some player from decades later and it's like what that guy was on teams with both of those guys that's crazy and you get to be that kind of guy who it's like the first hitter you faced was like Hank Aaron or something. And then like the last hitter you faced was like Mike Trout or something.

I'm probably exaggerating the span there, but you know what I mean? There are people like that, like the Jamie Moyer type career where it's like you can't believe that this guy spanned both of those careers. So that would be nice too. And that's a much more fun version of the guy who would also you know provide a fair number of fun facts i would imagine but you know maybe if he has 50 war 40 of those are in the first couple years and he gets a big deal and then he's only worth he keeps playing but he's worth like one win a year and you're like oh that guy what happened to him people people would worry about you people would wonder what had happened to you yeah or could you

turn into well how about like jason giambi jason giambi i'm on his baseball reference page right now 50.5 war so he's right on on the dot here he played for 20 seasons he was an an MVP and an MVP runner-up. And then he had that phase at the end of his career with like the Rockies and Cleveland where he just played like 60 games a year or something. And sometimes he kind of hit and sometimes he didn't really hit, but he was just like the clubhouse mentor type. Like, I don't know that I have it in me to be the clubhouse mentor veteran leader type. I don't know if I have enough like team spirit, but if I did, that'd be a good role where you get like the best of both worlds. You get to be a star at the top of the game. And then you also get to be the role player

who just kind of takes it easy and dispenses advice and gets a graying beard that'd be kind of nice too yeah and you know someone some some little jerk like me would screenshot you with like an all-white beard and be like oh my god look at this make some dumb joke yeah sorry denard span well we thought that was majestic does denard span have a job right now oh now we're now we're going to bomber territory if if someone had told me they would give me a million dollars if i knew that uh jason giambi had 70 plate appearances with cleveland in 2014 i would not have a million dollars at age 43 i would be like no he did not surely you're Surely you joke. I remember him going – I remember that year where he, you know,

was back with Oakland for a little bit and then was with Colorado. I remember that. And then I think we got into the financial crisis and I have some gaps in my baseball memory as a result of that. And so, yeah, I would not have a million dollars because I would have told you that he was done playing in like after that first year where he was in Colorado. I just maybe did not remember. Probably should have been done playing after.

It didn't go well. His last three years, he hit 185. He still took his walks, but yeah, not so great. But the clubhouse leadership was off the charts. And that was nice because if you hang around that long, you also get to be perceived very differently. Like, like Jason Chiambe was like part of this wild bunch and this like sweaty, long hair type guy with the A's and this like wild child. And then he went to become a corporate Yankee for a while. And then there was like steroid stuff and pituitary tumors and like weird detours that his career took. But then he resurrected himself as this like old mentor leader just dispensing wisdom, which I don't think anyone would have imagined for him like 20 years before. So that's kind of cool, too too when you can be both of those things like i'm really looking forward to like the adrian beltre phase of yassiel puig's career

where he is just like the clubhouse leader who is uh teaching all the kids the right way to play the game i think that's coming so that's gonna be great and i would like to be i's going to be great. And I would like to be, I'd like to be someone, you know, who can, who can like, I like that the, the general consensus is that like young guys shouldn't be given a terrible time in clubhouses now. And I feel like we've really seen a sea changer on the vibe with that. And, you know, especially because the league is getting younger, so you kind of can't be a jerk to like the best player on your team for very long without it being really weird. But, you know, I'd like to, I'd like to be an enforcer of like that culture that we're not gonna you know give

these these young kids such a hard time so like that would be you'd feel like you were doing some good right like an anti-hazing force for good like no you don't need to wear that pink backpack or this dress or whatever archaic convention is the Ricky Hazing. Yeah, that's a good point. All right. I think we learned a lot about ourselves in these answers. So now we have to talk about Cameo. Oh, my God.

Your new favorite website. I've never loved anything as much as I love this. I was having a weird day and now my day is better. Casey J. has drawn our attention to the website Cameo. And I was familiar with Cameo, which is, for those who don't know, it's a website where celebrities of all sorts and of all degrees of celebrity from who's that guy to, wow, that person's actually famous and shouldn't even be on this website. But it's a place where celebrities can sign up and essentially sell themselves to fans

who pay a preset amount of money to get a video message recorded by that celebrity. So if you want to wish your kid a happy birthday or something and your kid has a favorite actor or reality star or musician or athlete, then you can pay the price that that person sets and they will read a script or they will follow some general instructions and say, hey, happy birthday, buddy, whatever. So this website is a lot of fun to browse because you can see this selection this odd assortment of celebrities from all walks of life and also how they value themselves and what dollar amount

they put on their time so casey he wanted us to do like a cameo draft of baseball players or just ask like why do guys do this and how many videos do you need to record to actually make this worth your while? And I will say that the selection of baseball personages on Cameo is pretty thin. So there are, as we speak, 1,399 athletes, loosely defined athletes on Cameo, and 59 of them are baseball people not even all players not all active players some retired players some like tv anchors and like sideline hosts and and people like that who are related to baseball but not actual baseball players but there are some real baseball people and they range from like actual legends to players so obscure you've never heard of them because they're still in the low minor leagues. So what stands out to you about the baseball selection on Cameo?

I'm hesitant to say all the things because I wonder if I should just write this. But I will share a couple that stand out to me. First of all, Dan Straley's picture is just like an emoji of him. It is not his actual picture. I find that very funny. I think that it is quite funny that Ben Verlander is on here. Yes. You can get a message from Ben for $15.

I would like to know how many uh like parents of baseball fan children who are not themselves baseball fans accidentally get ben verlander to record a birthday message for their baseball obsessed child because they don't know it's not justin must be the majority overwhelming majority absolutely i mean ben verlander, he was what, a former Tigers 14th round pick, who I believe is not playing baseball professionally anymore. Could be true. He is on here. And I can't imagine that, I mean, I'm sure there are some Ben Verlander fans out there,

but many of them must be thinking, wow, what a steal, because it's Ben Verlander wearing a Tigers uniform. So if you were a Justin Verlander fan and were not paying close attention, you might think this is Justin. And wow, what a great deal. Fifteen dollars for Justin Verlander. But it is not good. Is that I wonder if that is a humbling experience for him to be constantly receiving requests for Justin to do things. And then the funny thing about this is that you can see on the site like a few recent videos that these people have made, like actual examples of the cameos that they have created. So you can just

watch and see how their delivery is and whether they are half-assing this or not. And so there are a few actual Ben Verlander videos there that you can watch. So it's not like everyone's requesting one and then asking for a refund when they realize they made a mistake. So yeah, I don't know. Hope he's making a lot of money on this. $15. I will say Jose Canseco is on here. Yes, of course.

Very, very predictably that if there's a way to make money, Jose Canseco is in on it. And he recorded a congratulatory message to the Reading Bullies, who are a lacrosse team of some level, I think probably like high school. And I swear, I am 99% sure that he is flexing one pec in this video, but not the other. Because it just keeps throbbing a little bit. So that exists. And I encourage all of you to stop doing your jobs for the rest of the day and just watch that over and over and over um the example text for jose can say because you can you can do the videos for someone else or for yourself which is delightful and the they give you sample text right so for jose can say go my instructions for jose

can say go are hey my bro br and I, Chad, love your stuff. Can you say what up to Brad and tell him to keep his antlers long? Thanks, bro. I don't know. I don't know. First of all, could not imagine two names of people more likely to say bro twice in a message than Brad and Chad. So nailed it.

And what? I feel like that is probably an allusion to an inside joke that if we picked out we would be very nervous so occasionally one reason that this site makes news sometimes is that famous people will be duped into saying something truly terrible because because they don't realize so you you get like, I think Brett Favre was convinced to say some like nationalistic slogan or something because he just did not know what he was being asked to say. So that happens every now and then. Please don't do that to poor unsuspecting celebrities. But that I think the baseball, it's a pretty wide range.

I think the baseball, it's a pretty wide range. It ranges from Roger Clemens, who charges $500 for a cameo, to Chris Vial, I guess it would be, who charges $5 and may possibly be overpriced. Nick Vial is a Mets minor leaguer in Aval, who currently has a 5.63 ERA, but in only seven games out of the bullpen. So anyway, good for Chris Fial, I guess, for making that money. But there is a very broad range here, even if it's not a wide selection of players. Is there anyone who stands out to you as either overpricing themselves or underpricing themselves by a notable amount just just given what seems to be the going rate here for baseball celebrities well i've accidentally clicked on the animals sub thread so now i'm very distracted by that but here we are we're going to navigate back so it strikes me that i want to know who wants to pay $200 to have Kevin Pillar wish their family member a happy birthday.

Yes. That seems wrong. Johnny Damon at $100 seems too low to me. Yeah. If anyone's going to give you a good message, it would be Johnny Damon, right? He's going to give you your money's worth, I would think. I would think so. Gosh, who else on here seems underpriced?

That's what's up because Kevin Pillar is the second highest priced person on here at $200. I can't imagine. If you click on his page, there are actual example videos. So evidently someone has decided to pay Kevin Plarr $200 for videos where he seems to be like sitting shirtless in bed and recording this from the like the shoulders up and he's got good facial hair. But yeah, like Kevin Pillar, $200. I can't imagine.

Yeah, that seems wrong. I like that Lance McCullers Jr. priced himself at $99. Yes. Presumably to appear like a bargain compared to the likes of well johnny damon and derek holland yeah and derek holland at 100 yeah and whit merrifield sorry whit uh so that that one made me laugh that one made me laugh mccullers is the only one who is not pricing himself at an increment of five so that tells me he is taking this seriously he is not pricing himself at an increment of five so that tells me he is taking this seriously he is really pricing himself to sell here and yeah i like carl spania at 75 i bet

yeah would give you a good message i'd want a message from carl spania i think seems like a stand-up guy ozzy guion at 50 he's gonna give you a good value for 50 i would think but it's just a very random assortment of other like orlando hudson for 25 odog for 25 that's not bad cole tucker 20 can you get him on the come up uh uh have you have you looked at any of these other categories i don't want to make this not about baseball for a hot second but i'm gonna make it not about baseball for a hot second, but I'm going to make it not about baseball for a second. Have you looked at the Game of Thrones category here? No, I have not. Okay, there are two people with a picture of the Night King as their two different actors. Oh, well, there are multiple Night King portrayers, right?

Well, I guess. I've learned something. And one of the other gents in the Night King's army. I think, and one of the other gents in the Night King's army. And then just some people who are like really terrible on the show, like just characters that you do not have any sympathy for. And so I'm very curious what their rates would be. I would imagine the guy who plays young Hodor actually does very well. He might be underpricing himself at $20

because I bet that there are a lot of people who are sympathetic to his plight yeah just to move off of baseball for a hot second yeah i'm gonna guess the game of thrones core cast is well compensated because there's there's no one there's like no dinklage on here like no one no one you would really recognize is is on here so i i think they're probably doing pretty well they don't have to put themselves on cameo yeah that's which you know look good that's that's good that's encouraging there's a family category on this which i am oh these are people who are family friendly okay oh sean astin is on here for 200 bucks buddy you got that lord of the rings money what are you doing oh i'm gonna spend well i'm gonna edit daily prospect notes when we're done and then i might spend some time on this website yeah i have never commissioned a cameo

but i have spent a significant amount of time browsing the options at least so yeah more baseball players get on here it's looking really light so if you are a notable baseball player there could be a market inefficiency here because there's like three times as many basketball players and like seven times as many football players. It's just I don't know if this is a reflection of like baseball not being popular on a national level or what, whether this is the latest evidence that baseball is dying. for like the cranky columnist to trot out like the underrepresentation of baseball players on cameo compared to other major sports as the the latest sign of the apocalypse but i don't know what it means but yeah get on there baseball players i mean there are a lot more football players but some of them are not very good jake butt is on here and he's pricing himself at 25 dollars and that is you you should know your own worth, sir. People love that.

They love that name. It's hilarious. I'm surprised there aren't more minor leaguers on here just like desperately trying to afford their lifestyle. But maybe it's a reflection of like baseball having guaranteed contracts and less serious injuries. Maybe they just don't need it. I don't know. But yeah, kind of a thin group. Very strange.

I wonder what the turnaround time on one of these is. How far in advance of a loved one's birthday would you have to plan to get Ryan Healy to say, Happy birthday? I think it actually says, if you click on their page page, it says like if you go to Kevin Pillar, it says typically responds within two days, which is a funny thing when you think about it, like the routine of a major league player and all the other things they have to do. And yet he's finding time within two days to respond to cameo requests. So I guess it's fairly high priority.

If you're making like, is kevin platter making like let's see his his salary right now is uh 5.8 million for this year and he's earned 10.6 lifetime and uh probably has quite a bit of career earnings ahead of him. So how many cameos do you have to do at 200 a pop before it's even like, is this worth my while? Yeah. I don't know. I think it's a fair number. Yeah. I just. I don't know.

Well, I guess it is a way to, you know, in a sport where people don't feel like they are well known as individuals, perhaps to like, you know, interface with fans in a way that matters. But I don't know. It seems. For money. Yeah. It just seems very, like one of the Ryan Healy ones is like, go, I'm Ryan Healy. You should like use this real estate agent.

It's like, who's that for? Who is, who is like, you know, I wasn't going to do it before, but now that Ryan Healy sitting in a hotel room from the road, he's told me, that's the guy. I don't know. I guess he's well-traveled, so he has probably had to rent some rooms in his day. I guess that's true.

Although, if you're in the Seattle market, I mean, he is the only mariner on here, so I guess you take what you can get. No offense, Ryan, your videos are fine, I suppose. But it just does seem very strange that you would say this is the guy of all the mariners, this one. Well, I guess it's he who decided he was the guy. Yeah. There's just, yeah, you don't really get Felix on there.

He's just, yeah, you don't really get Felix on there. He's just not available. He joined in January of this year, so he must have had some optimism for how his season was going to go. All right. I've got a couple last quick ones here picked out. Let's see if we can get through them. I have a question from Connor who says, How much would the game change if baseballs could be bounced into the strike zone? The strike zone stays the same and pitchers can pitch normally but are also able to bounce pitches for strikes.

It has always bothered me that batters can still get hit by a pitch on a ball that bounces. So why not also make them worry about pitchers bouncing balls into the strike zone? And this may have been covered at some point on the podcast. balls into the strike zone. And this may have been covered at some point on the podcast, but the nice thing about doing this podcast for like almost seven years at this point is that if I don't remember, then certainly no one listening does. So we can safely repeat ourselves now. Oh, gosh.

I think it would be a disaster. I think it would change baseball very fundamentally, although I don't know how often pitchers would really be inclined to do that. Right. Do you think that pitchers would do this very often? I don't know that they would. I don't because just think of like mechanically how much of a change it would be. It would be kind of cool, I guess, if there were like if this were like something that only a couple guys could do.

Right. Then I'd enjoy it because it's like, hey, this guy's got his special trick and it's kind of fun to watch him do it. If everyone did it, then it wouldn't be fun because it would probably just make pitchers even better and less predictable and more unhittable. Because it's probably – I mean, I don't know that you can do this consistently because it's probably hard to anticipate the bounce and you've got spin and it's unpredictable. And how do you go from reliably throwing, you know, 60 feet to throwing 55 feet sometimes? And what does that do to you? And so it's probably not worth it. But if someone could perfect this like a cricket style delivery and could just just seamlessly change between them that'd be fun

but only if it were a real outlier right i think that if if that were the case that it would be delightful but i think that it would be i think it would just for a lot of guys just wreak havoc on their on their mechanics they would just be all out of sorts trying to do this and then you know if it doesn't go the way you want to if you try to bounce it into the zone and it doesn't work and there are runners on and the ball guys away from the catcher so i think that the incentives would be pretty powerful not to to try it all right yeah i don't think i like it at all no i don't like it yeah i only like it as like a trick pitch like an ethos equivalent but it doesn't bother. I don't think it's actually inconsistent that batter want to protect batters in that way while not

rewarding pitchers because you're rewarding pitchers for their control and command and for being able to place pitches inside the strike zone and unless they are intentionally bouncing it into the strike zone then that is not rewarding that at all so that is kind of okay with me i don't i don't think there's any part of me that would want this or that would even expect to see it all that often but i don't know i guess if you threw a pitch just like without spin you could probably do it more consistently and maybe you wouldn't need to throw it with spin because if you could just like skip it into the strike zone that would just be so surprising and disorienting that even if it

bounced straight up and occasionally you will see like someone hit a bounced ball right and and that's kind of cool but i'm sure that would be difficult to anticipate like on the one hand the ball would get to the plate a little bit slower but to go from anticipating pitches on the fly to then having to deal with bounces and not knowing which was coming that that would be bad because if if you're cricketing then you know it's going to bounce and if you're baseballing you know it's probably not going to bounce and going between them that's that's pretty tough yeah i don't like it all right get it all last one this is from alex patreon supporter he says i was watching baseball this evening, as one is known to do, and was thinking about the conversations going on about the pitchers being so good these days and the overall need for an increase in pace of play. It struck me, what if the ball were a little heavier? Mind you, I only mean a little bit heavier. But seriously, what would the effect be of the ball being heavier? It would make pitchers slower, I imagine. Balls wouldn't fly as far.

Presumably this would also have an impact on fielders and catchers throwing. Also, if MLB decided to make the balls a little heavier, how long do you think it would take for players to notice? And another listener named Johannes asked almost exactly the same thing, except like, I guess, larger balls instead of heavier balls. So changing the baseball's dimensions to make them bigger or heavier would that be good or bad i think that they would notice right away yes i think pitchers would notice right away i think they'd adjust pretty quickly but i think they

would notice right away would it make it better i don't know can you make me do physics on the fly yeah right that's i don't think i mean yeah pitchers would hate it they hate it like even if the ball feels a little bit slicker the seams change and right like imperceptible to a normal person way or like the difference between the minor league ball and the major league ball in the past or the ball in japan and the ball here they know that it's it's the tool of their trade. So they would definitely notice and hate it. And I think if the ball were heavier, I mean, you'd get more stress on pitchers' arms unless they slowed down. You might get more injuries. You might get pitchers throwing slower, which I guess that could help combat strikeouts, especially if the ball is

bigger and therefore easier to hit. So it might help reverse the strikeout increase, but it could also come at a cost to injuries. The ball wouldn't carry as well if it were bigger. I think I recall from the physics of baseball that the weight of the ball doesn't matter as much to how far it carries, but the size of it does. The size of it does, right? Because it's about drag, right? Right. So if you had a bigger ball, it would not carry as far. It would be easier to hit. It would probably travel slower. And I guess all of those things would address what some people consider to be problems with baseball,

which is too many strikeouts, maybe too many homers. But I think it would probably cause pitchers to hurt themselves. And I think I'd probably prefer just deadening the ball because there's a lot of precedent for that. And if you deadened the ball, it wouldn't necessarily be easier to hit, but it would give hitters greater incentive to make contact and maybe change their swings in such a way that they would prioritize contact because the ball wouldn't travel as far when you put it in the air. So that might lead to the effects that you want to see without being quite so heavy handed. Right. Yeah. effects that you want to see without being quite so heavy handed. Right. Yeah. I, I tend to be in favor of adjustments that are, I mean, I should say that I'm going to say that I'm in favor of small adjustments. It's not like the adjustments that have adjustment implies intent. The changes

to the ball over the last couple of years have been super significant and they've had pretty large impact. So it's not as if you have to make it weigh 10 pounds for it to suddenly change the game. But I tend to think that small changes to equipment and rules are preferable because then it allows the evolution of the game to be driven by player skill and strategy rather than by making the ball lively or what have you. So I don't like this one either.

I'd be opposed. Vote nay. Yeah, same. All right. I guess we can wrap it up there. So I will talk to you next week. Sounds good. So after we finished recording,

Jacob Rehm was suspended two games for headhunting. Reese Hoskins was not suspended any games for having a really slow home run trot. So now we know lollygagging around the bases, not punishable. Throwing baseballs near guys' heads, lightly punishable. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going. Alex Goodwin, Jamie Herbst, Kevin Schlock, Corey Gowan, and David Tate.

Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Please replenish our mailbag. Keep your questions coming via email to podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. Megan, Sam, and I will see them. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Dylan is crashing on my couch right now, so it sounds strange to thank him. While he is a house guest, but he is editing nonetheless. You can pre-order my book, The MVP Machine, which comes out in less than six weeks now. As mentioned last time,

Travis Sacek and I are offering some pre-order bonuses to people who put their orders in before the book comes out. We're going to be sending out a bonus chapter, an exclusive conversation between me and Travis about the reporting and writing of the book, and some other goodies that we accumulated during the reporting process. So if you want to get on that, pre-order the book and email your order confirmation or a screenshot of the receipt or a picture of the receipt if you bought to get on on that pre-order the book and email your order confirmation or a screenshot of the receipt or a picture of the receipt if you bought it in person to the mvp machine at

gmail.com that is the mvp machine at gmail.com and you will receive all of those extras when the book comes out on june 4th so we'll be back with one more episode this week. Talk to you soon. He's the next Messiah Hello and welcome to my... I messed it up already. What do we say? Oh no. Just freestyle. Oh no. Just freestyle. Hello and welcome to episode 1367 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast.

Oh no. Podcast. Podcast. It's a podcast, not a codpast. What would that even be? The man who was grumpy about us laughing is going to be furious. Take three.