Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1419: Benetti’s Booth

Episode Date: August 20, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller bring on White Sox play-by-play broadcaster Jason Benetti to banter about sharing the broadcast booth with Bill Walton, Mike Schur, and Mike O’Brien over the weekend and what the success of the experiment says about the future of broadcasting. Then Ben and Sam mull a one-of-a-kind dropped third strike on […]

So we change partners, time to change partners, you must change partners again. Good morning and welcome to episode 1419 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs.com brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I am Sam Miller of ESPN along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hi. Hi, Ben. Ben, I want to banter about the Bill Walton and also mike sure broadcasts of white socks angels games this weekend yeah but i don't want to just i mean i don't want to just talk about it i don't want to just be like ah did you hear that funny thing i thought we should actually if we're going to banter we should banter with with jason benetti he's our friend right yeah so he i told him we might call him so let's just call him.

He's not a guest. He's just part of the banter, right? Just want to be clear. Sure. I emailed with him about these games, but I'd like to talk to him about it. Sounds fun. All right. Jason, hello.

You went viral this weekend. I feel okay, but it might have just been a cold. Uh-huh. Did you learn that quick thinking from Bill Walton or from Mike Schur? It's been a wide range of quick thinking that I've been a part of the past couple of days. It was awesome. This weekend was just ridiculous and wild and insane and truly amazingly fun. Yeah. So let's back up. Whose idea was this?. So let's back up.

Whose idea was this? So actually, let's back up further. You are the White Sox play-by-play broadcaster for TV broadcasts, and your color commentator this weekend on Friday was NBA legend Bill Walton, and on Saturday was Good Place creator Mike Schur, and many other things, but Mike Schur, legend Bill Walton. And on Saturday was Good Place creator Mike Schur and many other things, but Mike Schur, legend of the internet. So they did the color commentary. They were in the booth with you, not for a half inning,

as often happens with like, say, Michael Milken or the GM, but for the whole game, right? From first pitch to last. Yeah, they were in the booth the whole game. And Sunday, by the way, we had Mike O'Brien, the creator of AP Bio on NBC, and he was on SNL along with a writer for SNL. You may have seen him do a star turn as Jay-Z on a J.K. Simmons episode once. He did a skit that's well known called Grow a Guy, a video short. So he's also a very funny guy that we had on sunday and he's a big socks fan so yeah they they all were in the booth uh with me for nine which was a grand grand time

and so whose idea was this and what was the concept the concept is basically hey you're in la steve stone's taking the four games off he gets two series off a year and so son Stone's taking the four games off. He gets two series off a year. And so Sony was taking the four games off and Anaheim, we believed at first because he had taken two off in Washington. We had a quick two gamer against the Nats earlier this season. So the four game series that looked at all plausible, that wouldn't have been like right after the all-star break was Anaheim. So we said, Brooks Boyer, actually, the top VP of marketing said, hey, if Steve takes these games off, why don't we go ahead and just pair you

with some people that are out in California who are entertainers or celebrities or whatnot and see where it goes. And what was your reaction to that immediately? Yes, immediately. Really? Let's see where it goes. Oh yeah, let's have fun.

I mean, there are so many creative people who love baseball, or so many creative people who, in the case of Bill Walton, love Earth and the existence of the planet and people inhabiting Earth, that why not just go ahead and see what they bring as analysts slash observers slash people looking through their own prism and see what happens. Was there some trepidation mixed in with the excitement? Because baseball games are pretty long. So if they start and you just don't have great chemistry or the other person is just not

saying anything or it turns out they know nothing about baseball, which in Bill Walton's case, maybe it doesn't matter. But in some people's cases, maybe it would. I mean, were you worried about, oh, there's significant potential for this to run off the rails? Or did you just feel like, well, if we pick the right people, it can't go that wrong? Well, the other component is if you have somebody from another industry, if at the very worst, like if they literally know nothing about baseball and have never seen a game and like you may end up in the booth, then you talk to them about their lives for nine innings. And like you explain baseball if you need to, and you have a good

time just being a conversationalist. So I can honestly tell you there was no fear at all because I felt like we would have good conversation no matter who it was. I can't eat an enchilada with no fear at all. Everything, there is some potential for disaster in every act that we do. Are you not like me? I mean, it seems to me, look,

I would imagine that for your guests, for the one time color commentators, it would be very scary because you would think like, oh, no, what if I say something dumb? What if I botch this, but I would think for you, you have a don't you have a sort of a isn't being a broadcaster for a Major League Baseball game, a little bit like hosting a party where you have to take the initiative to keep the conversation going, to keep everything running smoothly, and that you have to sort of curate

this whole three-hour experience. And isn't having this different thing with people who are not experienced in it, like just throwing you into a totally unknown, unforeseeable, who knows what the outcome will be sort of situation? It is. And had we done this interview beforehand, I would have gone in scared because now I'm

panicked about a thing that's already happened. No, for me, I've gotten a chance to work with so many different people at ESPN. Dan Dockich, Robbie Hummel doing basketball. Kelly Stauffer became a great friend from our football time together, and we're not doing games anymore together this year. But Mike Petriello and Eduardo Perez from the StatCast shows. I'd never done a home run derby before until last year, and I'd certainly never done a run derby before until last year. And I'd certainly

never done a stat cast show before last year. And both of those combined happened in front of us when we worked together for the first time at ESPN, quite often, you'll end up just on this spreadsheet and you'll look at the game you have. And it'll be this analyst that you've like watched coach or something like Jim Calhoun. I did two years of basketball with Jim Calhoun, the Hall of Fame, UConn basketball coach. And it's like, if you have one game with a person, you have to make it seem like you were best friends because the audience doesn't care that you don't know one another. So I think I've been like classically trained as a play by play announcer to just believe that it's got to come off great. And it's on me if it doesn't. Yes. So how did each of these three different people approach it? Did you have a sense of like whether to them they saw their responsibilities differently or their goals differently? I kind of feel like this is a Goldilocks situation, knowing your work and knowing you a little bit.

Like Mike and I text sometimes about the Sox. We got to be friends through Mike Hall at the Big Ten Network. So I turned to Mike and I said, I feel like Goldilocks because Walton is just so ridiculously off the grid. And then Mike Schur is such a huge baseball fan that I knew he wanted to do baseball and I knew he'd have opinions about everything. And like, he wanted to do well because he's always wanted to do this type of thing. And then I was like, Mike O'Brien, you're kind of in the middle as your comedy is a little zany, but you're a Sox fan. So I know, you know, baseball. So I kind of feel like there's a Goldilocks situation happening here.

And it turned out that was the case. Like Mike Schur is definitely a deeper dive baseball fan, you know, from the Parks and Rec attorneys at law that are like Babbitt for et cetera, et cetera. Like obviously huge baseball fan. Mike O'an knows the socks really well but isn't going to tell you about like craig counsel's managing in terms of how often he hits and runs and uh walton was walton so it was it was a really interesting thing but kind of understanding the strengths of everybody was something that I thought about significantly going in. And then you just do it. You go. So Welton, obviously longtime sportscaster himself in a different sport, but with Mike and Mike, how much of a primer did you give them on here's how this works and here's what I'm going to talk

and here's when you should talk and not talk? Was there any kind of just crash course in calling a baseball game before it began? Not really, because I didn't want either of them to think too much like, oh, I have to talk here or I have to talk there. And it was funny because, you know, I don't think I'm blowing him up by saying this, but Mike Schur like wanted very specific directions on how to get to the stadium because he said he could lost otherwise. And, and I was like, okay, like rules would might be a good thing, but I also baseball is so conversational. I don't need to be calling pitches, especially because this was a sanctioned weekend that people were going to know to be different. Like Mike Schur especially has watched so many baseball games.

You and I talked about this a little bit by email then. But like by the third inning, he was telling a story and then said, oh, that's a pretty lethal changeup. And then went back into the story. And I didn't even have to prompt him. It was like all of it by osmosis has just seeped into him and he became a baseball analyst which was outstanding and then and then Mike O'Brien I was like what do you need to know and he was just kind of looking at the stat pack and I turned to him like half an hour before the game and he circled like in big bold black ink he circled one of the stats on the stat pack that we get of like

splits and all this stuff. And I turned to him. I was like, oh, you know, what are you doing? He was like, 521, Jason. 521. I was like, 521 what? He goes, I don't know. This is ridiculous. Why do you have all this stuff? I can't read it. This is your first ever baseball game doing this job right this is a job that's true well i understand that it starts and then you play yeah but that the offense can't touch the ball and that the defense goes first and that there's no time limits and you just go until somebody says it's over sounds very much like a dead show it's a timeless game i love timelessness you're timeless well i've been dead for quite a few years and we all may be by the end of the night

so how were the demands different on you? I mean, very different, I guess, Friday compared to Saturday, let's say. But how was your job different from how it is with Stoney, who you have this relationship and rapport with? And of course, he's been doing this forever. Yeah, the only major difference is is the sponsorship reading. I felt like I ended up doing more of because it's a bunch of random stuff on a page that you have to get cued to do by a producer. We had Mike O'Brien do the team White Sox drop-in, so like Dollar Hot Dog Wednesday and stuff like that because he's a Sox fan. Mike sure did a couple promos, and he did an an amazing job especially with one for marquette bank which yeah are the read for marquette bank i have wanted to make fun of all year long but i can't because i'm like you know the team announcer it says

it says they have a fun rewards app which includes roadside assistance and cell phone protection and access to fraud specialists. I specifically wanted him to do that one because I knew he'd be like, what the hell is this? Those aren't fun rewards. And he came up with a better word. He was like, they might be vital rewards, but they're not fun rewards. Right. Well, I would imagine that this will start a trend because it's not often that you get a game between two teams that aren't in the pennant race in the middle of August that will get this kind of attention unless someone says something horrible

or like curses or someone speaks when they don't know that they're back from break or something. And this was just, you know, between Bill Welton just saying so many things that could be sound bites and Mike Schur and everything. I think it got a lot of attention, probably more attention than a White Sox-Angels game in mid-August would have gotten. I would like to say something before you answer that. So it's basically the same question asked a little bit differently. So Friday night was very fun for me because I'm blacked out from Angels games. And so I was just watching this Twitter timeline of just nothing but Bill Walton quotes that at a certain point, you couldn't tell whether everybody else was doing a Bill Walton bit or not,

whether these were all real. And I think they were all real, but like Bill Walton asking how many innings are in a baseball game is like an interesting thing to read about. But like also some really like hysterical and very insightful and surprising and funny, funny quotes that were just meant to go viral. My favorite was when you, apparently, I'm trusting that this is real, but you asked, what's your favorite Steinbeck? And Walton replies, you're one of those young guys who has been forced by the media of today to live in this qualitative and binary decision-making world. You should just say, what are some of the Steinbeck

books you like? And so this was made for Friday night on Twitter. It was, I mean, if your business model is win Friday night on Twitter, massive, huge success, couldn't do any better than this. Your business model though is like mostly like my dad is lying on the couch watching his favorite teams play baseball. And, uh, he wants to, like, if that was a change up. And so did you did you get the same kind of positive response from the people who were like actually in Chicago watching a ballgame? Was this I don't know. Was this hated? Yeah, it was hated by some. Right. Everything's hated by some.

But, you know, the pope on Twitter is hated by some, right? Everything's hated by some. You know, the Pope on Twitter is hated by some. And so I just, it was a glorious, lovely, psychedelic experience that not everybody wants to get, wants to even dive into, wants to hear about. get wants to even dive into wants to hear about there there there are some people who just don't enjoy that sort of thing and that's fine but there are also some people who don't enjoy nine innings of or however many there are right and ground right or however many they're right some people know and and just like straight up like ground ball to short and oh, he throws a change up and here's the slide. Like some people don't enjoy that every night. And I tend to think like we gave the other people one night. Everybody else gets 159. Yeah.

I mean, for me, it was like the best Saturday night I've had in a while, which probably says something about my social life. But it was just like me and my wife and our dog just sitting on the couch listening to Jason Benetti and Mike Schur talk about Mike Trout and Shohei Otani. It was a dream. That was what I want every Saturday. Mike Schur is such a knowledgeable baseball fan that he, I don't know how you feel, Ben, but for me, he just like seeped into that chair and then started saying things that a baseball analyst really should say. Like if, if he did this for a week and he just had all of the chance to prep that a normal analyst, do you know how good he would be at the job? I mean, he really would be outstanding at the job.

And the best compliment I heard, and I heard it on Twitter and I heard it from our TV truck, actually, they said, in the best way, this sounds like a podcast and a baseball game at the same time. Yeah, that's right. So if we're talking about the future of broadcasts or what takeaways we might have from this weekend that would apply to the industry as a whole, did you learn anything about like maybe what we should be thinking about what the soundtrack of a baseball game should be? Should it be? Do you think there's an appetite for maybe less direct, you know, three hour, very focused, immediately responsive to what happened on the screen commentary? Or is it should it be more conversational? Should it be more more varied? Do you feel like this can scale? I think the global perspective can scale that like, the way we do it doesn't always have to be the way we do it

i wouldn't ramrod bill walton into somebody else's booth that i wouldn't like for people to tell me like what celebrity analysts would be good or creative or clever but i do think the understanding that baseball can be fun and joyous and also also like why I love Bill is because he asked all the questions. I started thinking about the aging curve as I was sitting next to Bill, because when you're very young, you ask all the questions, even the ones you're not supposed to ask, like, mom, how old are you in front of 15 people? And then you get to a point where society just says, oh, you're not supposed to ask those questions. And then we live like that. Well, Bill has found somehow the other edge of that bell curve where he just asks all of the questions you would expect somebody watching

for the first time to ask. Like James McCann did our postgame interview and it was roughly eight minutes long, which is a little heavy for a baseball postgame interview and it was roughly eight minutes long which is a little heavy for a baseball postgame interview while a catcher's standing there in his gear and he had eye black on and bill's first question to the guy who hit a grand slam that he gushed about was what's that makeup you have on your face and then his next question was his next question was, how long does it take for you to wipe it off? What was the answer? And he was like, oh, it comes off pretty easily. And then Bill asked him later on, what do you eat for a pregame meal?

He asked after the game. The post-game interview? Asked about the pregame meal. Yeah, and he also, very valid question, what's the record for strikeouts in an inning? And my response, I'm getting killed for this, I in the moment was like, it's either four or five. And I was trying to say three currently like in this game.

And now everybody thinks I don't know the record for strikeouts in an inning. But I was like, how do I explain drop third strike to Bill Walton in 15 seconds going to break? So I like slightly Bill Walton panicked. And then we explained it in the eighth inning. But that, that those are the types of questions he asked. And I love that that's there.

And I do think that's how you bring in new audiences is you have to go back to when you're sitting in the stands at a baseball game. Some of the best things you do is people watch, keep score, ask questions about why people are doing specific things on a diamond. Like, why does he wear stirrups? Why does he wear number 28? Why are there this many lights in the light tower? Like, why does he use that walk-up music? That's what we're there for. And I do think Bill's general curiosity should come out more in baseball broadcasts when I do them, when everybody does them. Yeah, it's interesting because you don't want to take it for granted that your audience knows all of every detail. Like you can't get away with explaining something just once and then

saying, well, now I've told everybody I never have to say it again. But on the other hand, if you're watching every game, it can be sort of repetitive. And so there's something delightful about not about somebody who comes in and asks basic taken for granted questions, but that are that are like really like the eye black thing is not even on the radar of things that I think I would need to explain. You know that there's there's a imaginativeness to it that led to so many of the surprises, I think. Bill, when we were in Maui, we had a Gonzaga game, and Mark Pugh, the head coach of Gonzaga, his dad was a pastor of some kind. He's a religious man. He ran a church, whatever his title was. And Bill started asking Mark about that, And he whittled it all the way down to the cross streets of the church, wherever Mark grew up. He wanted to know every detail. And I think like that, he's got a writer's perspective in a booth, which I think is something that if it were more pervasive in baseball, and I'm not trying to kill any,

like there are some great announcers who do this all the time, but I think that would be a major factor. And I also, I also think in the minor leagues, and I tweeted about this at the beginning of this season, but in the minor leagues, the people who are young announcers are play-by-play announcers, but they're also salespeople and they're Photoshop people and they create baseball cards and they copy stat packs. And this isn't me lamenting that young people shouldn't work hard. It's that in the minors, the job that makes the most money out of play-by-play and all those other things is not play-by-play. And so we're not training storytellers for baseball. And sitting next to Bill Walton for a game, Stud Circle and Greg Gumbel and Lori Lightfoot, the new mayor of Chicago, and so many different people came up that I'm sure Google was firing with what is he talking about, but also the

picture is going to break and all of this stuff. He wanted to embrace Southern California. And I think his storytelling ability is something we might have a shortage of in baseball across the country, in part because of the minors. Well, I have just one last question for you. You know, Mike sure likes what you do, and you asked him to come on and do it, and he did it. You are a huge, huge fan of The Good Place. If he asked you to come on and actually, like, read lines, like, be a character, be a, you know, a guest character

and deliver lines, would you do it? What are you trying to do? There's no quid pro quo here. No, I'm not saying he's going and deliver lines would you do it what are you trying to do there's no quid pro quo here no i'm not saying he's going to but would you would you feel would you uh i don't know would you do it would you have would you go out of your comfort zone like that because one of the things i do admire about this is that the three people who you had do this actually did it i would not no i like that's what I love about being around people like that. Like I, my plan for life is to surround myself with people who would do that. And I, you know, I'm just so grateful they all did. Like I, I would love to know the nuts and bolts of how

he does what he does and how Bill's mind works and how Mike O'Brien, I asked Mike O'Brien a bunch of questions about SNL and pitching sketches and all that because I'm, I'm interested. So like, yeah, I do it, but I'd also be pretty panicked and not be very good at it. Like I admire, especially Mike, because he's such a big baseball guy. I could not get out of my mind how quickly and seamlessly he sat into that chair and then became a baseball analyst. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't think I could do that on his set and I don't think it would be close. Would I enjoy being out of my comfort zone? Yeah. But I just, I think so

much of his mind, the fact that he sat down and did it the way he did is brilliant. Really, maybe you wasted your time going to Syracuse and calling AAA games and working all these sports. And here comes Mike with no experience, just feeling right at home. Maybe that's what we need. We need fewer entrenched professional broadcasters Like Jason Benetti And more complete amateurs off the street So you tried to panic me earlier And now I'm completely panicked What is your replacement level?

What's your war? Right, right Broadcaster war Oh, come on though Look, they all jumped out of an airplane But he was the skydiving instructor that of an airplane but he was the that he was the you know the dive the skydiving instructor that you're strapped to like this does not work without benetti if you had put bill walton and mike sure mike o'brien together in the booth it might have

been oh my gosh well so so the one thing i'll the one thing i'll say about classical training and whatnot, the one inning, the one half inning, when I was truly out of control, when I did not have the ship, was in the third inning of the Walton Knight, Lucas Giolito's brother came in, Casey. And Casey is a 20 year old being trained as an actor at a very prestigious academy in North Wales, which sounds like very rural, but it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a very prestigious academy. And I had not met Casey before. I know Lucas's family from the last couple of years, but Lucas's uncle, Mark Frost brought in Casey. And I just said during the break, Casey, you want to do a half inning with us? And he said, absolutely. And I forgot Bill Walton was there. So I bring Casey Giolito, who's never done a sporting event in his life, in the middle of me and Bill Walton.

And Bill just starts talking about how like his brother used to beat him up and then ask, did Lucas do that to you? And then he says, where'd you go to high school? Casey says, Harvard Westlake, like my brother. And Bill says, oh, you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. to Mark and I talked to Lucas and I was like, hey, is Casey okay? Like when he turns 21, the first five beers are on me. But I forgot that Bill was there for like the half second I was eager to get Casey on the show. And the poor kid just got worn out by Bill Walden. Well, I hope that Mike takes a gap year after he finishes The Good Place and just becomes a baseball broadcaster before his next show. And I'm torn because I want Steve Stone to come back because he keeps plugging my book on the air. So we got to get him more airtime, get him back in the booth. But this was a lot of fun.

And I hope it becomes an annual tradition. And I hope it becomes an annual tradition. I can imagine it getting to the point where it's overdone and suddenly we have celebrity games left and right. And people get annoyed because it's a high stakes game. And suddenly someone who has never seen the team before is coming in and calling their game. But in moderation, I think this was great. And I hope that you guys do it. It was great.

And I really am glad that it went as well as it does. Because Jason, you are one of the great broadcasters in the world. I mean, it is so great what you bring to every game. But the fact that you were the broadcaster who pulled this together and had it go so well, I think that now you're just like, you're a, you're legend. Like you will, I will remember this. Baseball fans will remember this from the 2019 season for like decades. And that's fantastic. Like there will be an oral history of this. You better write down your notes. There will be an oral history of this weekend in 20 years, maybe 25 years. So be, you know, be prepared for that.

Is this a pitch meeting? Like I am not writing. I'm not your editor. Yeah. But be, you know, be prepared for that. Is this a pitch meeting? Like, I am not writing. I'm not your editor. Yeah. But I appreciate you guys saying that. Like, I have been so fortunate to be around creative forces of nature in all of these undertakings that are a little off the beaten path. And if not for that, and the support of our crew our crew like i don't mean to make this a press release but it it has to be said like our producer keon our director todd our our stats guy dave ross creating all the pictures going to break and being ready for bill and cutting video and like having the video of detweiler square getting mentioned in Parks and Rec so we could tell the Rod Detweiler story that he used his name.

Like, that's great production stuff. And the Sox let us do it. And it was kind of their, you know, it was Brooks Boyer's idea to have this happen. So the fact that I have these people around who let this happen and march forward with it is super, super cool. And I hope good for baseball. I think so. All right.

Well, thank you, Jason. Thanks for bandering. Thanks, Jim. All right. Talk to you soon. Sounds good. So, Ben, speaking of trying to explain the rule about getting to run to first on a drop third strike, I don't know if you saw the Scooter Jeanette play this weekend,

but it was the weirdest drop third strike play that has ever existed. I'm certain of it. Did you see it? I did not see it. All right. Two things happened that you have never seen before. Two. Two things that you've never seen before.

Simultaneously and not exactly dependent on each other. So the first thing that happens is Scooter Jeanette swings at strike three. exactly uh dependent on each other so the first thing that happens is scooter jeanette swings at strike three it hits his back foot and then shoots away from the catcher now i read the rule book for this segment it should be a dead ball but it was not called a dead ball it was just treated as a live ball so scooter jeanette's like looking at it and goes oh okay and so then he runs to first catcher runs to chase it down but this ball is really traveling and so then scooter jeanette reaches first base looks and the catcher still doesn't have it so then he tries to go to second and he gets thrown out at second on a strikeout

so two things and so after this play the giants had a coach who was um you know like uh at the at the you know at the phone to the replay room where normally you look to see if you want to get it reviewed. And I mean, Jeanette was out by like 40 feet at second base. So there was no real dispute about that call. And I think he I don't know what that conversation was like because there was nothing to challenge. But it seemed like it was just like he was just talking talking to the guy. Like, did you see that? Like, what was that?

It was an amazing play. Like I said, I think that if, if Jeanette had reached second, I think that the play would have actually been overturned. I think all of that only it's weird because so in the official box score for the rest of history, it will be the case that he struck out and then

was thrown out at second. So the play exists. But if he had been safe at second, I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't exist because it would have been overturned, if that makes sense. Because it definitely hit him on the foot. And I am 99% sure from my reading of the rulebook that it's a dead ball and he can't advance. Wow. Anyway. Yeah, I would not want to explain that to Bill Walton. All right. Anything else you want to talk about? Well, 1.58 home runs per game. That is how many home runs teams have averaged this month.

1.58. For those who did not look at the baseball reference page that lists the average number of times things happen per team per game as obsessively as we do that's incomprehensible that's i mean even for what we knew was a record season last month july was 1.44 which is obviously higher than any previous season, but 1.58 is just off the charts. The league as a whole is slugging.464 this month. Just the average hitter slugging.464. These are obviously records, and I don't know what happened.

I don't know whether the ball got changed again somehow, or whether it is just the already aerodynamic ball coupled with warmer temperatures that has propelled this to even higher heights. But 1.58, every single day, I'm seeing some stat that would have been impossible to believe in any previous season. I'm glad you pointed that last thing out because it is true that if you add,

like if you add, say, 10% more home runs or 20% more home runs, it creates a clustering effect whereby you get many, many, many more than 10% or 20% more notable events happening, notable feats, notable groupings of home runs. So the thing, for some reason, because I don't know,

I've been really paying attention to six home run games, home runs, uh, games where a team allows six or more home runs. I don't really know why I care about six. I, I it's because I was looking up a fun fact about the Orioles and I saw how rare they are and how common they've become. And so then since then I've been noted, like Giants won a game the other day where they allowed six home runs, they allowed six home runs, and they won that game. Yeah. And so as of yesterday, there might have even if there were probably two yesterday, but as of yesterday, there were 26 games with six home runs allowed this year. So 26, there were nine in 2014 and 15 put together. And so obviously home runs are not up 300 or 600% since 2014 and 2015. They're, you know, they're up like 30 or 40% or whatever. I don't even know, 50% something, a lot. But because you increase it by a little bit, and then there's this effect

where they start to, you know, they start to group together. And so you have more three-home-run games from individuals and from random individuals. And you just have a general sense that you're getting like 900 more home-run fun facts every day than you did, even though it's only like an extra half a home-run a game. And so, yeah, August has been wild. The year's been wild. So 26, six six home run games this year there were 24 in the majors through 1948 yeah we've reached the point now where i i keep seeing things that i think are records and then i look them up and the record was actually set

earlier this year or like i'll see that something was record breaking and then it just broke a record from like June or something. That keeps happening to me. So there was a game with 11 combined home runs hit, I think this weekend, I forget which it was because there were so many home runs hit. I think it was maybe that Nationals game that went to extra innings. The Brewers, yeah, the Brewers brewers game where yellow hit a couple dingers and i was thinking 11 combined homers that's a lot what's the record oh it's 13 from june from the diamondbacks and the phillies which i pretty sure i talked about at the time but forgot

about already or like the the dodgers just had a record like most home runs hit over a five-game span. I think they hit the numbers. I think it was 22, and they broke a record that the Yankees had just set like slightly earlier this season. So we've now just gone to an even higher level where now we're breaking records that were set just a couple months ago, Now we're breaking records that were set just a couple months ago, and we're going through the whole record breaking just because we've reached just a higher gear, even though we were already at a record level. So it is really wild. And whether or not you think it is too much or not enough or just right or whatever, the fun facts are probably too much just because they are even more inflated than the home run rate itself. Yes. At this point, there's just nothing really you could say that would impress me. I don't know

that there is any home run record that even though Aquino keeps hitting home runs and hit more home runs over the weekend. And so, you know, he set a new record for most homers in first X career games. I have lost track already. There's just almost nothing you could do now to impress me because every time I hear one of these, I just heard 10 others and I just dismiss it as, well, it's 2019. No, right. We've reached the point where it flips around. Everything has the opposite effect.

So instead of the fun fact, the home runs telling you something about the player, the more shocking the fun fact the home runs telling you something about the player the more shocking the fun fact the more it tells you about the home runs and so like i i would say that that flipped for the first time with scooter jeanette again another jeanette reference today with scooter jeanette hitting four home runs in 20 in a game in 2017 i feel like that was the moment when the first wave of home run fun facts, it quit being about what the players were doing. And it started being about what you could prove about the ball based on which players were doing it. So earlier this year, we played a very, very quick round of like, can you believe how many

home runs that guy has? And I'm just curious if you look at the home run leaderboards right now, do you have any, are there players that still make you feel like emotion? Like, wow, him? Or is it all just so baked in that if I told you right now that Wilmer Flores had 28 home runs, you wouldn't know whether to be, like, I'm lying, I think he has six. But do you know that he doesn't have 28? Doesn't everybody have 28? Right. Yeah. Well, that was actually something Mike Schur said on that

Saturday broadcast because Jose Abreu came up and Jose Abreu's stats were impressive looking on the surface. He had 26 dingers and Mike Scherer was like, oh, well, that's good. That's a lot of homers. But then he said, of course, literally every player in Major League Baseball has 25 home runs this year. So when you look at Jose Abreu's stats and context, they're not really impressive at all. He's having his worst offensive season.

So I think the only one that has really thrown me for a loop lately, when I realized how many home runs Jorge Soler had. That's mine too. Yeah. Yeah. And now he's got 35. But when he got to 30 or 31 and I did a double take because I had no idea that he was hitting that well. And, you know, he's not having an incredible offensive season. He's having a very

good one but it's just the the homers and that was that kind of shocked me yeah yeah i uh danny santana has 21 homers did you know that no danny santana came into this year with 13 career homers in 1200 career at bats so he has 21 so that So that one, I would say that I was surprised that Brian Anderson has 20. I don't think of him as being that kind of a hitter. So he's got 20. He's going to end up with 27 dingers this year. I didn't say this.

Teoscar Hernandez has 19 homers. He'll end up with 24. Freddie Galvis has 19 homers. The other day we were talking about although geez freddie galvis had 23 years ago yeah that was the era right scooter jeanette type moment i think michael bowman may have written an article about that for the ringer just when freddie galvis hit 20 homers while not being good in right and he wasn't even good at all he was quite quite poor actually but yeah i didn't say this during the bryce harper

conversation but when you asked or when we were talking about whether philly's fans like uh like bryce harper or whether they'll see his season as as whatever one of the things that helps him i think is that that the average fan is not necessarily looking at you know league indexed stats and bryce harper is going to end this year with you know 30 homers and 100 RBIs more than that probably and that still has a sort of a broad general like uh stamp of approval attached to it and you know it's probably so he has 26 homers and 90 RBIs right now he'll probably end up with like 34 and 110 and in a lot of ways, it will be a less impressive offensive performance than he had when he was, you know, 20 years old and didn't get

an MVP vote. But because those numbers are inflated and boosted, I think it plays well for his, it plays well for the public. And I think that's good. Let me ask you something though, about Bud Selig. So the general story, one of the storylines of Bud Selig's career is that so there's a strike. Lots of people assert that they're giving up on the game. They're not coming back. They're not giving that greedy bunch of millionaires and billionaires their money. And baseball is in a sort of a crisis point. And then the home run race between Sosa and Maguire comes along and spurs all this interest in it, brings the national pastime back. We're all on board.

And in a broader sense, the lively offensive era of that decade makes the sport fun. There's all sorts of new stars, new incredible achievements, records broken and everything. And the thinking goes that Bud Selig and Major League Baseball knew what was going on, but it wasn't really in their interest to look too close at it and too closely at it to dig too deeply into what players were using, because this was all good for the sport at the time. It seemed like it was good and necessary for the sport at the time. And so then it was good and necessary for the sport at the time. And so then it kind of makes it, to take that to this conclusion, then it seems sort of weird that,

like Bud Selig's in the Hall of Fame, but Barry Bonds isn't, when they were, you know, essentially allies in this project to bring the game back through, like, power-boosted energy. And so I think now, though, looking at baseball in 2019,

that the great failure of Bud Selig arguably was not realizing in 1995 that he could have just juiced the ball and then nobody would have had to do steroids. He could have come down hard on steroids right away, never would have had to have anybody try to chemically enhance their bodies to hit more home runs. He wouldn't have had to ignore it. He could have just juiced the ball, home runs. Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa still hit their 70 and their 66. And then we have an innocent game where all that's happening is a league is taking some control over its equipment to try to make a better entertainment product. Well, I think the ball was juiced at that time, for one thing. I mean, not openly, but I think it was in probably 93 or so,

there was a giant leap in the home run rate. I think that whole era, I mean, the outliers, the single season home run record setters, yeah, I think they were doing things that helped them hit more homers. But I think that offensive era as a whole was helped by a baseball change that was probably also unintentional like this one. So I think that was going on. And I also don't buy the Sosa-McGuire brought fans back to the game argument either, because the recoveries in attendance and revenue were actually bigger before that home run race than they were after. If you look at the percentage change year by year,

there was the huge dip in 95 after the strike, but then things rebounded very quickly and they didn't rebound more after that home run race. So I don't buy that whole narrative, but I asked him when he was on the podcast because I was very curious to hear what he would think of this current era because the whole stain on his commissionership or the biggest one is that people hold the steroid era against him

and say he should have been more proactive and that that's this big ruin the game's legacy and it screwed up all the stats and everything and yet here we are with more home runs being hit even then and if i were bud selig i feel like i would seize on that and say well it wasn't just the steroids here we are with strict testing and a lot fewer steroids than we had then and there's still more homers being hit. And to me,'t seem to react to that at all. He still just sort of said, you know, steroids were bad and I wish there hadn't been any. So I guess, yeah. Would you say he reacted to any of your questions at all?

He did answer generally in the topics that I brought up, but he seemed to have a script that he was going to get through. So yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Should we move on? Sure. Okay. Fernando Tatis Jr. was sidelined for the rest of the year, most likely for the rest of the year this weekend. And I thought that would be a good time to talk about something that I've been thinking about a little bit lately. Occasionally we will get this question. I think occasionally maybe we have even answered it, although maybe you and Jeff answered it or maybe none of us have answered it. But the question that we sometimes get is when will Mike Trout no longer be the best player in baseball? What would happen? What is likely to happen? Is he just going to age out of it or is it more likely that somebody else who is currently playing is going to reach that peak and I feel like obviously by definition that day is always getting closer

whenever it happens but I was thinking about Tatis this year and whether the emergence of Tatis and Acuna and maybe Cody Bellinger as well, who it's hard to remember sometimes, but he's 23 years old, has actually made it so that the threat is more imminent than it has been. 24 now. Old man. 24. Okay. Age 23 season, but is 24. Yes.

Whether the threat is more imminent right now than it has been any other time. the threat is more imminent right now than it has been any other time. And so I just want to talk about this sort of topic a little bit broadly. When, I don't know, when will Mike Trout not be the best player in baseball, Ben? At the moment, if you are the sort of the doomsday clock for that, what is your assessment of his status there right now? Well, no one has come along who I think will be better than Mike Trout is currently. So it's not that I'm worried that a better player than Trout is going to come along anytime soon. It's just a question of when will Trout become a worse player and when will those lines cross so that someone who is not quite as good as he was or is at his peak will surpass him and i mean you'd have to bet i wrote something friday about young hitters this year and you wrote something last year about young hitters young hitters are

historically good right now and this year they are even better. They're having their best season ever. If you look at, you know, 21 and under hitters or 22 and under or 23 and under or 24 and under, you can even go to 29 and under. They're having their best season ever. Their share of the league-wide wins above replacement for position players is the highest it's ever been. And I think there are a lot of reasons for that, but player development has improved and player evaluation has improved and knowing when to promote prospects has improved. And all of these things are conspiring to produce players who are better at younger ages. And I got some help from Mitchell Lichtman for that article and re-ran the aging curves. And there was an article

that Jeff Zimmerman did at Fangraphs six years ago now, where he made the case that players are just not improving anymore once they get to the majors. They're just as good as they're ever going to be. And then they just are at a plateau for a while and then they get worse. And we re-ran the aging curves for like the steroid era and the pre-steroid era and the post-steroid era and even like the last seven seasons or so. And the trend isn't quite as extreme as that. Like there's still something of an improvement when players get to the majors, but it's much less dramatic than it used to be. Players get to the big leagues much closer to their peaks than they used to even

before the steroid era. And then they tail off much more quickly in their 30s. The 30s are rough. And so if Mike Trout does follow that path, he's obviously done the first part. He got to the big leagues almost fully formed as the best player in baseball. And so does that mean that he will then decline more quickly? I don't know, because I think people have done aging curves for phenoms, for like truly great players at early ages. And I forget what the conclusion of those is, but I don't think it's that they just turn into pumpkins and expire at age 30. It's not like you can do aging curves for players like Mike Trout, really, because there have been like five of them in that neighborhood.

So I would guess, based on everything I've seen, that he's going to be great for much longer because he keeps getting better and he has such a broad array of skills and he seems so determined and all he cares about is baseball and he just such a broad array of skills and he seems so determined and all he cares about is baseball and he just works on baseball constantly and whatever weakness he has he makes it a strength but as i was saying last time i don't really think i'm actually that good at predicting how players will age so my confidence in saying that oh mike trout is going to age better than the typical player does is fairly low no we

don't yeah we obviously don't have any idea how he's gonna age when he starts aging we can say that he is certainly not in any way aging right now this if you look at war per on a per game basis this is his third best season ever last year was his second best season ever. Last year was his second best season ever. Only his rookie season was higher, and that was bolstered by an off-the-charts defensive rating that he has not repeated. So the precociousness of the young stars, I feel like in one sense is fool's gold, because you look at Tatis and you say, holy cow, he's on a per game basis this year. He was incredible. Like if you prorate it over the course of a full season, he's like seven and a half to eight and a half wins already.

And he's only 20. And we're used to saying he's only 20. And so he's going to get, he's going to get better. There's the, there's the, the fact that the true superstars, the ones who emerge as superstars at 20 usually don't get a lot better. They're already like Ted Williams and Mike Trout and Mickey Mantle and others. They're almost often as good at 20, 21, 22 as they pretty much ever get. So there's that. But there's also the fact that in this era where you show up already fully formed, it

is especially true that you can't necessarily anticipate growth. So Tatis is not obviously as good as Mike Trout right now. And it is. So like I say, it's sort of fool's gold to think he's going to get older and necessarily get better. Same with Acuna. Same with Bellinger. Same with Acuna, same with Bellinger. However, the broader trend of younger players being better now, of showing up more developed, particularly as more refined hitters, seems like it is a more, not necessarily for these specific players, but is a more broadly a threat to Trout's dominance because the players who are going to be showing up in the

majors are going to have all the war benefits, as we talked about a couple of days ago, of defensive position, of being able to play at the best point on the defensive spectrum of their career and probably put up better defensive numbers. And so to tie this specifically to Mike Trout's war. And so you're to tie this specifically to Mike Trout's war. So Mike Trout's worst season, and this is his worst season. Okay, so every other season is better than this. But his worst season by war per game was 2014. He was worth 0.048 war per game. And almost nobody ever matches that. Like for instance, Ronald Acuna this year is worse than that. But some players do. So in 2002, for instance, there were three other players that matched that. And in 2013, there were seven, which is a big year. And then there were 0-6, 2-4, 6. And this year, if you count Tatis, who will not end up qualifying for the batting title

and therefore would not normally be in this. But because he played 350 played appearances and we saw him, I'm going to count him. You'd have eight. So this year there were eight such players. That is the most players in Mike Trout's career who were as good as Mike Trout's floor. Does that make sense?

Have I expressed that? And last year there were six, which is a lot for compared to the average of the other years. So there is some suggestion that, uh, in these numbers that young players, and, and by the way, every one of those players, so 14 in the last two years have met Mike Trout's floor, which is a lot on its own of those 14, uh, only one was over the age of 27. And most of them were them were quite a bit younger

than that. So I think that just not necessarily with Tatis specifically or Acuna specifically, but with presumably other elite prospects showing up presumably more fully formed as hitters and being able to pair that with their speed and their durability and their defense it does feel like we have entered a just kind of a higher war era that the youth brigade brings with it higher wars higher ceilings for wars there's just that there's just not that much you can do with your war if you're playing first base or if you're even playing right field but you're a you know plus two defender you to to get to where Mike Trout is you need to have a very healthy

defensive component to it that usually does not exist after one's late 20s the thing I like about this era is that we get to enjoy these guys at their peak or anticipate enjoying them at their peak or something close to their peak for a very long time. So it used to be that when a player was at his peak, which was, let's say, 27 or something like that, you didn't have to look very far into the future to imagine him getting worse. Because you'd get to that point and maybe there'd be a plateau for a couple years and then the next thing you know he's 30 and you know he's getting a little bit worse and when someone like Tatis comes along at 20 or Wansodo comes along or Acuna you know that barring injury or something For the next decade This guy is going to be one of the best players in the game

And you can kind of count on that And as I wrote last Friday It's like every athlete's career Comes with like a countdown clock And sometimes you can hear that very loudly And sometimes it's very faint And with someone like Tatis It's very faint You feel like like Tatis it's very faint you

feel like he's going to be around forever he's not actually but he is going to be around at this level presumably for longer than most of the stars in earlier eras were unless you think he's just going to fall off a cliff at age 30 because that's what's happening to players now and so maybe there will be less of a graceful decline phase. I don't know, because the next wave of great young players will be coming up at that point. But still, you can look forward to many years of this kind of excellence, whereas you couldn't necessarily with someone who was peaking at 26, 27, 28. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. So I haven't answered the question.

Wait, before you answer the question, I want to raise one other thing that you in particular are equipped to answer. Do you believe that all the trends that you wrote about in the MVP machine around player development and being able to, well, you wrote a book about it. I'm not going to sum up your book.

I'll let the New Yorker do that. What was I saying? Do I think that these trends? Oh, yes. Does this also, do you think this also contributes to the raising of the war ceiling? Like, I know that there's all sorts of players who are better now than they would have been. Like, there's guys who would have been one or two or three war players who are now four or five or six war players. But do you think we're going to see more 10 war seasons? Because that's a big part of this question is, is can anybody reach the Mike Trout level of 910

reliably before Mike Trout's decline? If we're if all we're doing is waiting for Mike Trout's decline, then the question is, well, when are we all going to be really sad because Mike Trout is declining? But if the question is, is the answer going to be someone is going to pass him, then that means, well, when is someone else going to be at a 9-10 regular peak? So are there going to be other players that are at 9-10 war peaks in coming years because of these player development trends, because of the tools that players have, because of their access and familiarity with data, is it going to lift certain boats higher than boats have ever really previously risen? Or do you feel like we're moving to the point, have been at the point, but also are moving

to the point where these are just things that are so incorporated into player development and coaching throughout the game that it will all essentially be a wash. They'll all be better, but nobody's going to be able to use these tools to become a 11, 12, 13, whatever win player and surpass Mike Trout. Yeah. At first blush, it seems like maybe you should get more outliers because you'd get someone like Cody Bellinger, who was a good prospect and very good as a rookie, but more of like, you know, maybe a five win player or something. And now he's going to be an eight win player in that region. And maybe it's because he reinvented his swing over the offseason and he tuned it up and he used his swing sensors and he went to see the swing gurus and so for him maybe that got him to a higher place than he would have gotten

otherwise although it's certainly possible that he might have gotten here anyway but I think in general as the caliber of play in the league as a whole increases, it should make it more and more difficult for someone to stand out from the pack the way that Trout is. And so I think the replacement level keeps climbing because there will be more pretty good players who are available to be picked up. There'll just be a deeper pool of decent players out there, and that kind raises the the lower level too and i think also because you should have fewer bad players for the good players to beat up on and it's not like you can capitalize on people who shouldn't even be in the big leagues because there's just not enough talent and you can pad your stats against those guys those guys just won't be there anymore because

it's so competitive so no if anything i would guess that it would be harder for a mike trout to exist yeah i yeah i hadn't even thought i mean i was thinking of it from the lines of will there still be outliers will there still will this still benefit certain outliers more than everybody else but yes the raising of the the although i guess the raising of the replacement level will also affect mike trout and so yeah we could start seeing Trout without any decline at all. Maybe his war might start to inch down just because the level of play around him is getting a little bit better. One last detail before we actually answer this question. How do you define is better than Mike Trout?

How would you define, how would you identify a player? Because obviously there have been a couple. Mookie Betts beat him in some of the wars one year. Bryce Harper beat him in one of the wars one year. And Bellinger, I believe, maybe leads him in one of the wars this year. I don't think he does anymore. He did for a while. Okay.

So, but what would you define as somebody is better than Mike Trout? Well, it would need to be not just a single season. Okay, so but what would you define as somebody is better than Mike Trout? seasons or something and you wait the most recent seasons more we talked about this with clayton kershaw and when did someone pass clayton kershaw and there was that 538 article about it because they have their elo ratings that are just based on how the player has performed and the quality of competition and at a certain point it just said maxers or whoever is better than clayton kershaw now and there was a day when you could say that that happened so I would need I guess like the rest of season projections to say that someone is better than Mike Trout for me yeah but the the problem is that the rest of season projections are based on the previous three seasons they are yeah and so that would mean that the player by

definition was better the previous three seasons in order to i mean other than other than the influence of an aging curve which is a small part of a projection but basically a projection will never say a player is better than mike trout until he has already demonstrated it for a few years yeah and so it's maybe maybe you would say that it would be a player will be better than Mike Trout two years before. There's an old joke from Archie Comics where an old lady asks Moose, I think his name is Moose, where a bus stop is. And Moose says, oh, that's easy. Just wait until I get off and then get off one stop earlier. The projection system, you could just say wait until the projection system says somebody is better than mike trout and then go back two years and that's when it was i feel like i will be comfortable

saying somebody is better than mike trout when they have had two years in a row better than mike trout and uh in and i would say in a uh per game so so like mike trout being injured for 30 games does not get you in that necessarily like you have to beat him on a per game basis two years in a row and no one's doing that no one has no one has done that mookie bets mookie bets is the only person so mike trout's third worst season by per game. His worst was 2014. His second worst was 2013. His third worst was 2017. So 2017 is quite a bit worse than his, his career average per game. But even that one, only four players during his career have ever even matched that. Um, two of them are, are Mookie bets. One is Bellinger this year and one is Bryce Harper. So no one has gotten anywhere close to that point. But I would say beat Mike Trout two years in a row.

What if someone beats him one year by a wide margin? Oh, so like the sum of two years? Well, because I'm thinking Mookie Betts beat Mike Trout in war last year, but by like half a win or so, which, you know, it's a rounding error. It's within the margin of error. Trout, I think, was a better hitter than Betts. So it's, you know, war is not precise enough to actually make those distinctions really. And because it was defense mostly that accounted for the difference, that's even bigger error bars. So Betts had higher wars than Mike Trout last year, but I am not confident in saying that Betts was better than Mike Trout last year. And in fact, I would not say he was just because we've seen Trout be better before and since.

So you would need at least multiple years, or you'd need someone to like blow him away one year. Or what if Tr trout has a down year and he's he's not hurt or we don't know that he's hurt but he just has like a five win season or something well let's let's imagine a scenario where so like right now mookie bets for instance has he's coming off a 10.9 more year i think trout was like 10.5 in a couple of more games so bets this year has a 129 ops plus uh trout of course is like 190 and bets has five war and trout is over eight so if mike trout had as mookie bets is doing has had played every game had a wrc plus of 130 and was on pace to have like a six war season in a full year,

no interruptions, no injuries, nothing like that, would that be enough to say, okay, yeah, he's worse than, he has now been passed by Bellinger? I could, okay, so I could see it. I take your point. I don't know. I would have to look at the circumstances in that moment, but I take your point. If Trout were say simultaneously worse than 10 or 15 other players without, without even accounting for like time missed and were say three or four wins worse

than one player, I would be open to saying yes, that now I would be open to it. Although I still think his projections the next year would blow all those people away. Yeah, probably. It would take a while. And maybe it would take too long, but maybe that's how long it should take. I don't want this to be one bad year though, Ben. I don't want the answer to this to be Mike Trout has a down year

and then comes back the next year. Well, he's got to have a down year for this to happen because. I want him to be worse though. I don't want him to. Do not ever tell me that I just said I want Mike Trout to be worse. I'm going to cut that out. I was taken out of context. For this to happen, I think that it needs to reflect an actual decline or somebody has surpassed him.

Somebody has actually risen to a level above him. I don't want to talk about one down year. But you don't know if it's a decline or a down year until the next year. No, so that's why I'm not going to... I don't think I'm going to allow a down year unless it's truly terrible. So essentially he can't lose the title in one season

no matter what he does basically like given within the bounds of realistic mike trout performance like he i assume he's not going to be like andrew jones in in los angeles and so given that i you know he'll be us you know if he's no worse than bryce harper is this year for instance then mike trout cannot lose it in a single year that is That is right. And yet, what if some of the more granular stats suggested that he actually had lost some skills? That was part of the Kershaw thing was, oh, well, he's just not throwing as hard as he was before, so he can't be as good as he was then. So what if Trout suddenly he loses a bunch of sprint speed and he's not hitting the ball hard anymore.

I mean, I might just assume that he was hurt and not telling people. So it might still take more than a year to convince me that he had actually lost that talent. But that would add to the case of someone else, I think. I feel like at the very least, I owe him another month of the next season if it's all still there on May 1st of the second season then then fine I don't necessarily need two full years but I need at least a year and a day and uh and of course it also look if it's if it's if this happened if this were to happen next year for instance uh and Cody Bellinger were to repeat then i think then it becomes very a lot easier to say it just depends on how strong the competition is yeah too if is

it a one year is it is it a player who is who has only risen to that level for one year then i'd be less likely so but i want it to be i don't know i think i want it to be multiple years in in most cases well neither of us has actually answered the question. Do we want to? I don't even want to contemplate the future where he is not the best, but that was the question. Yeah. Well, do you want to contemplate a future where Cody Bellinger regresses next year? Because if he is, Cody Bellinger is going to be, you know, over 10 this year, maybe. Close. Almost.

High nines. Yeah. So if, you know, it's hard to say no, certainly not until after, you know, until he's at least in his 30s. Sure. Then you're basically saying that you don't consider Bellinger or Tatis to be a real rival for that crown. I don't currently consider anyone close. I wouldn't say anyone's close. So for me, it has to be Trout just aging and getting worse. Yeah, okay.

Then you've answered it then. You still believe that it will ultimately be, given the people that we are aware of in existence in the world you still believe it's an aging issue and not nothing before that well it it has to be almost by definition right because he's yeah because you don't say no one's been this good so yeah yeah no you're right or you think someone will be better or you're willing to stake your claim that we have another historic greatest player of all time on the horizon. Or already here.

So, yeah. Okay. So, I think that you're right. You have convinced me that this is not a worthwhile topic of conversation at this point. Well, I guess I should have done that 20 minutes ago. No, it's good. It's worth talking about it to get to that point. You're right.

He is not under threat right now. The only threat still remains time and ligaments and the degradation of human cells. Yeah, and so if you had to guess, would we just say, what, four years? He'll be

32. Is that enough? I feel more worried about the competition now than i did a year ago and particularly given bellinger and yelich simultaneously doing things that i just did not expect either one of them to do and and having it look entirely real like there's nothing nothing about either one of those players looks accidental or like one year spikes in Yelich. It did for a year and then I got proven wrong. And then the rise of Tatis and Acuna in particular as these just incredible, basically Trout type players. Tatis is a little different. They're both obviously a little different, but the way that Trout came up as both unthinkably strong while also having all the energy and electricity and fast twitch muscles of a young person seem it seems like uh trout was unprecedented and and now we're starting to see more players like him at least so uh so i might have a year ago thought it would be 34 and now

maybe i think it's 32 on the other hand hand, he, this year has also improved. He, he is continually getting better and it's, there's always been the conversation that we have about how, like when he has a flaw, he fixes it and he's so good at adjusting, but, but you know, other things were getting worse. And so it's always hard to say he's getting better. I do think that this year and last year, he's probably better than he was at any point before this. I think these two years are peak Mike Trout, not just in certain skills or in certain ways that he has adjusted, but at the total package, I think is better than it's ever been. Yeah, because the 2012 was very defense heavy, and that may not be as reliable as now when he's just by far the best hitter. So I trust that more.

Yeah. So 30, I'm going to 30, 33, 32, 32 to 34, I think. Yeah.

Right. Okay. All right. All right. That will do it for today. Thank you for listening and you should watch Jason Benetti every chance you get, even when he is not co-broadcasting with Bill Walton or Mike Schur. Steve Stone is good, too.

I'm excited for the White Sox to get good again, because that will mean more people will listen to Jason and appreciate how good he is. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already pledged their support and gotten themselves access to some perks. Matthew Yeo, David Bosniak, Joseph P., David Bloom, and Michael Veloso. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild,

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We will be back with another show a little later this week, so we will talk to you then. Waves across the sea In the dark I built a radio tower To hold hands Across the sideways I built a radio tower To hold hands Across the sideways The sideways