Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1424: Dance With the Bat That Brought You

Episode Date: August 30, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about GPS, resisting the urge to take the bait on bad takes, and the debate about access for broadcasters who double as team personnel, answer listener emails about not replacing broken bats, earning/working walks, and players with underutilized skills, and close with a discussion of Félix Hernández’s future and […]

This time I'm just gonna take it or I'm never gonna shake it I just close my eyes and make it so that all this living in it's gonna affect me now Oh God, I gotta be above it now And I can't let them all just break me down Hello and welcome to episode 1424 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast brought to you by Fangraphs and our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Iinger. Ben, how are you? I'm doing all right. How are you? Doing well. I had another Goldman dream.

This time I had to play softball. That's interesting. Yeah, it was weird. I wouldn't think that that would be the aspect of your Goldman experience that would come back to haunt you. It's very close to the good things that you do now. I know and I never did do that when I was there. It's very strange. And on a day I wrote something even terrible.

Yeah. Maybe you're haunted by your failure to play softball, which could have been the lone bright spot during that experience. Perhaps that's true. I had a thought about you and Sam's, your guys' GPS conversation from the other day. Lay it on me. Which is that I, and this is perhaps a question that would be better directed at Sam as, you know, a driving sort. But I find, like, I just use Google Maps on my phone and it goes through the Bluetooth in my car and it says there is a 15 minute slowdown ahead. in my car and it says there is a 15 minute slowdown ahead so i haven't had the experience of being misdirected and in quite a good while because when it's a traffic related thing so that

i know because it tells me and so then i have confidence that it's not telling me to get off the highway for just no stinking reason and so i wonder if we just need to get sam a different navigation system yeah that could be. Actually, we got an email from a Patreon supporter, Jeff Snyder, who sent something along those lines. He said, not all GPSs are equal. They work differently. Some work better than others, and some have more intuitive controls. For example, most GPSs have settings where you can tell it if you want to prioritize a shorter distance or shortest drive time,

settings to tell it whether you want to prioritize a shorter distance or shortest drive time, settings to tell it whether you want to avoid toll roads and a lot of other things. These work better on some GPSs than on others, and they're much easier to find and intuit what they mean on some GPSs than on others. And he said, I think that ties in pretty well with the baseball analytics analogy. Not all teams have the same quality of analytics. Not all teams are equally good at explaining their analytics to their on-field staff in a way that gets them to understand and buy in. And just as one bad experience with a bad GPS can make you distrustful of even the best GPS, one bad experience with analytics, whether due to bad analytics, dumb luck, or user error,

can make one distrustful of analytics, which I think makes sense. Yeah. So we got to get Sam a new thing. Although I will say one place where I probably agree with Sam is that GPS is not good at knowing that the highway entrance ahead is, they'll like stagger you, it'll be metered so that cars aren't all entering, you know, I-5, for example, at once to try to control the flow of traffic. And the worst, the worst is when you're in the line. You can't, you can't get out of the line because the only way out of the line is to get on

I-5. And then Google will say, there is a 20 minute slowdown ahead. Consider alternate routes. And then I'm like, I can't, I'm trapped here. I'll never get to leave. So that part is terrible. It's very easy to avoid all of these problems just live in a city

that is laid out on a grid so that all the streets are numbered and you know exactly where everything is and you can walk to everything and never drive I recommend that highly because goodness knows there are no transit issues in New York not if you work from home

that's true that does help Not if you work from home. That's true. That does help things. Okay. So that's, yes, everyone should work from home. It's the best and it's equally accessible to all people. So it's fine. Yeah. You don't see other people, but other than that, yeah. You won't be able to go to the grocery store after 4 p.m.

because you might have a small panic attack. If you do, you see all those folks there, but otherwise foolproof. I did want to just say a PSA and you just briefly alluded to the fact that you wrote something, and you did the thing that we talked about a week ago that you were planning to write. It's now out there. So you wrote your recap and analysis and philosophical musings about the 12-minute baseball game continuation, And it was great. I really enjoyed it. Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Writing is really hard. It's really hard when you are out of practice. I need to build up my arm strength. And I will say, even though he will

be irritated that I am saying it again and embarrassing him. I did send Sam several plaintiff, will you please read this and make sure it's good? And he, as he is wont to do, had very useful suggestions that made that piece better. So thanks. Thank you, Sam, for editing assistance. We'll thank Dylan later in the episode, but we will thank Sam now.

Yeah, I saw some tweets or comments that were like, you should write more, which is probably annoying to hear. I mean, it's probably nice that people want to read more things by you. But also, it's not as if you don't write more because it just never occurred to you to write more. I would like you to write more so that I can read you more. But you are pretty busy with that other job and other people's writing, which is a big part of it. I mean, having edited a baseball site myself, I know that it was difficult to plan out the whole site's content and make sure that you're covering everything and then also have to

worry about your own stuff. It's a lot. It is. And we're going to try to get in the habit again. Because, you know, I like writing too, even though there were moments while doing this where I was like, writing is impossible. Why does anyone do this? I've said to people, I give advice to people when they ask me about writing where I'm like, you should treat it like a job. And, you know, get in a rhythm and have a routine. And I think that that is generally good advice.

And, you know, get in a rhythm and have a routine. And I think that that is generally good advice. But I also had moments while writing that where I was like, if I do not sit in exactly this chair and listen to the same three Oasis songs on repeat, this piece will never get done. Those were the only conditions under which it could be written. So it did make me have greater sympathy for my staff when they um are struggling with with things so do you always write to the same three oasis songs that was just it changes that's why it's so hard because you never know which ones are the ones that are gonna do it what what artist what chair you should be sitting in how your legs should be crossed yeah it's all very particular yeah i can't really listen to anything there's some i can listen to things without lyrics can't really listen to anything. There's some, I can listen to things

without lyrics. Like I could listen to explosions in the sky or something, or I could listen to like grateful dead if it's some of the more meandering stuff and it just kind of, you know, recedes to the back of your mind as you write or, or classical or something. But most of the music I like, I guess I just like too much to listen to while I write or it's just too distracting. So that's sort of sad because I have to imprison myself in some silent featureless room in order to actually be productive, which is a shame. But work from home. Yeah. So I think we're going to get to some emails maybe that sam and i have skipped over but

we have a few other things that we wanted to touch on and i was sort of inspired by a tweet of yours on thursday that was sort of a subtweet of responses to an article that was published on Thursday, which I have not read. I have sort of absorbed by osmosis more or less what it was about, but it was one of these typical, you know, analytics are bad or analytics are, I don't know, I guess just sort of the standard reactionary old school kind of like numbers are wrong about certain things and numbers miss things, which no one actually really disagrees with. But it becomes this sort of straw man thing. And anytime you get one of those columns, there is always a big backlash on the part of baseball Twitter that we belong to. And you tweeted something to the effect of what if we just didn't?

What if we didn't take the bait? What if we didn't take the bait? What if we didn't rise to this? What if we just kind of let it disappear? And the people who have an appetite for that kind of content can consume it if they care to, but we will just let it pass us by instead of feeling the need to object to it every time. And I agree with that. I want to acknowledge off the bat that I get mad about all kinds of silly stuff. And I am able to persist in my anger sometimes for weeks.

And so I would not claim that I do this perfectly by any means. And I have gotten mad about much, much goofier and less important stuff. Although I think we can probably agree that like what Nick Castellanos thinks about analytics does not actually rise to the level of important really in any sphere, even in ours. But yeah, I just some takes. I don't mean to say that we should not have an ongoing conversation with people who don't prioritize or value analytics about how those, how analytics are valuable, because we should continue to have that conversation.

I think it's good for us to be able to articulate in a concise way why baseball works better when it is sort of conducted within this set of parameters. I think that it forces us to talk honestly about the data that we use and the stuff that we maybe acknowledge would be and could be data, that we don't know how to use or quantify yet. So I think that there's value in having an honest conversation about the limitations of analytics because it keeps everyone on their best behavior. And I think some takes are just like obviously bad. And they're obviously bad. They do not require further dunking. They dunk on

themselves because they are obviously bad. And I think that, you know, the nice thing about winning is that you can meet situations with a spirit of generosity. I imagine that Nick Castellanos found the last year of his professional and probably personal life as a result of the professional bleed over to be very frustrating. And some of the things he said in that article were like goofy and wrong. But there is also, you know, I think we can be we can have a generosity of spirit towards someone who found himself in a situation where he felt devalued by a particular way of conducting baseball that he maybe doesn't have a perfect understanding of, despite being at times a very good player, especially at the plate, not in the field.

That was very bad. I'm sure he felt bad about that too, but in a different way. And so I think that we can probably look at that and say, hey, here's a guy who's had a hard time, and now he's in a good situation with the Cubs, probably because the Cubs looked at his bat and were like, you know, this is a good bat. We should have that in our lineup every day. Yeah. The article's like he has spray charts that show that he would have been better away from Comerica. And it's like, well, that's data. That's data. Right.

So you're like, hey, you're so close. Just take one more step. Yeah. And so this is easy to dunk on and and i understand that there is still within our community and part of the world an impulse born of fights that i did not have to have in public and so i will acknowledge that too where you had to you had to push your way into a system that did not have space for you. And so I think having a defensive reaction is totally understandable. And we can just let some of this stuff go because it's just

obviously bad. It's an obviously bad take. It's an obviously ill-informed take, I think would probably be the right way to characterize it from a guy who's had a tough time and now is in a better situation and is like, heh, gotcha. So we can let some of these go. Yeah. And it's switched from punching up to punching down in the past 10 to 20 years where it used to be that this was the majority take on things. And so you had these outsiders, this fringe group that looked at baseball a different way, and no one was listening to them, and they weren't getting the prominent jobs at media companies. They weren't getting the jobs with teams. And so they felt the need to take this sort of snarky adversarial stance because that was the way to get heard, and it arose out of

their frustration at being marginalized, I think. And gradually, that way of thinking infiltrated the game and has now become the dominant way of thinking. And so when one of these articles comes out, or we get these quotes from a player, it just time or to dunk on it and celebrate the dunking in a way that we once might have because it would have gotten us attention or it would have made the point in a stronger way than we would have to now because you just had to be heard. You had to shout just to try to break through, whereas now you really don't have to do that. And so there's a feeding the trolls aspect of it if you do give it a lot of attention that is probably what the person who said those things or wrote that article wanted not necessarily sometimes they just legitimately believe those things and think those things and they're just speaking their mind but sometimes they are trying to rile up the numbers nerds and we always seem to take the bait. We're so rileable.

Yeah. And that perpetuates this kind of article, I think, because if there's an audience for it, then someone's going to keep writing it. So it's kind of frustrating because you see certain things and the critiques of numbers and sabermetrics, there are legitimate critiques, of course, and there are a lot of things you could say about the effect that it's had on the game and many negative, perhaps, effects that have come from it inadvertently.

But also you see people critique the numbers or say that there are certain things that numbers can't quantify, and sometimes that's true, but other times it's not really true. I mean, there's a sentence in this article that says, and where are the analytics that show how being thrust into a playoff race instead of being stuck on a team that has been outscored by 257 runs can dramatically change your performance? And you could do an analysis of that. You could look at players who've gone from bad teams to good teams in the middle of a playoff race and see if it actually affects things. I would guess that on the whole, it probably wouldn't and players

are who they are, but there could certainly be cases where that's not true and a player is energized. And just because I'm a numbers person doesn't mean that I would deny that that could happen or that there could be clubhouse effects. I mean, no war doesn't account for those things, but we are honest about it not accounting for those things and that there might be things that it doesn't account for that are actually valuable. So maybe it's partly something we brought on ourselves by being a bit dogmatic in the early years where we would just dismiss these ideas out of hand, and sometimes there was more merit to them than the first wave of sabermetricians allowed. So it may be sort of

a response to things that we aren't actually saying anymore, but maybe were said at one time, and that person just hasn't updated their understanding of what the current conversation is. But yeah, I think the point is just let it go. Let it slide. Read some of the other really excellent baseball writing and interviewing that's going on all around us. Yeah. We learned that Nick Castellanos, in addition to being a bad outfielder, is an abysm.

Not updating priors. Yeah. Like, you know, I went to Sabre seminar and all the team people were people for, I knew, right? We knew all those folks. Dave Cameron's wearing a team polo now. Yeah. Well, it was like a pullover, like a little half-sit performance sweatshirt.

It was not a polo. I will not impugn him and add him to the polo brigade. But, you know, we like won this fight. All the front office folks but you know we we like won this fight all the front office folks think the way we do i think you're right that they you know are thinking about baseball and analytics has advanced and is more nuanced and open to you know not to say that the the first generation didn't acknowledge their own uncertainty but I think is because we are able to quantify so much more, we're able to think about, uh, different pieces of information that we might

have excluded before as having value now. And all of those things are true. And if we want to have a conversation about that, I, I vote that we just have that conversation. We don't need to spend part of it acknowledging this silliness, right? This was like when the Home Run thing came out, and I don't remember who wrote that one. It might have been also Nightingale. You know, talking to Goose Gossage about his preferred aesthetic of baseball, and I got so, this was a day where I got so mad. I got so mad at baseball Twitter for spending all this time.

I was like, do not, don't you dare undo the aesthetics conversation I've been wanting to have for 10 years by seeding this ground to goose gossage. You don't have to. Just be the baseball aesthetics conversation you want to see in the world. Just have it. It doesn't need to have this silliness.

Those are the warming up that I had to do into the mic that you had to hear before we started recording. Just do your throat clearing and move on to the conversation you want. Yeah, there are good versions of these articles. Gossage because you know he is going to say the things that he always says when writers go to him then you're really just looking to inflame passions or make a certain reaction whereas if you just wanted to make the case that yeah in certain ways baseball is maybe less aesthetically pleasing than it used to be we can make that case with numbers even even if numbers are partly

responsible for bringing it about we can quantify it and present it very case with numbers, even if numbers are partly responsible for bringing it about. We can quantify it and present it very well with numbers. But yeah, if you're going to go to Goose Gossage, then you know exactly what you're going to get because you could Google 10 other articles where writers did exactly the same thing. the social media amplification effect in microcosm where whatever the worst take is or the worst news is we are hyper aware of it because it might have happened in an earlier era but we might not have known about it so there were terrible baseball articles being written all the time many more than there are today oh yeah and yet we would not come across them because they'd be in the local paper or whatever and they would not be on the internet, and they'd not be nationally accessible. And so now, whatever the worst article of the day is, that's the one that we all know about because people are tweeting

about it. And that's kind of unfortunate. It's like, there are a lot of things that I like about Twitter. I know it's true, though. I do like interacting with readers. I think they generally don't say certain things to me that maybe they have said to you. And I am lucky in that respect. So that's part of it. But there are a couple things I really like about Twitter. One, it's very helpful in a reporting sense. So if I want to talk to some minor league baseball player or something, I can follow him, and often he will follow me back, or I can even tweet at him, and then he will follow me back, and then suddenly I'm talking to that minor league player, and it's so much easier than going about it some other way. So it has been very helpful for finding sources for stories. And then another thing I really like about it is that I am constantly coming across people on Twitter who have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, and I have no idea who they are. And sometimes even when I try to figure out who they are, I can't figure out who they are. Like maybe they're YouTube stars or they're like EDM artists or DJs or comics or I don't even know what they are.

artists or DJs or comics, or I don't even know what they are. But I really like being reminded constantly that there are people who are famous who I have no idea who they are. There are just so many quote unquote celebrities out there who have these large followings that I am completely ignorant of, which I kind of like because it's sort of humbling in a good way. And it reminds me that we are all off in our own little worlds and that the things I care about are not the things that a lot of other people care about and vice versa. And you can find a large audience and yet be completely unknown to other people. And I like that about Twitter. But the thing I don't like about Twitter is that you get these articles where people will say, I don't know, a trailer comes out or something, and it'll be like, the trailer for this movie is out and people are not liking it. And then there will be like

five embedded tweets from people with five followers or something who are complaining about that thing. And you can get an entire article just out of like searching for someone who doesn't like a thing and then embedding those tweets but of course you can always find someone who doesn't like something or is saying something about something because there are millions and millions of people and they're tweeting all the time so it's one of those things where people are not any worse than they used to be i don't think it's just that we are exposed to the worst of them much more than we used to be. Yeah, I think that that's right.

And sometimes we all have a day, you know. Sometimes I respond to doofy men on Twitter about their doofiness and I should go do literally anything else. So I do not, you you know i don't mean to put myself in a rarefied air around this stuff and i think that you're right there it tends to funnel the very worst and so we should we should we should have a system we should have a twitter buddy system where when we see one of those really bad takes we take it to one of our our g chats or our group texts and we're like hey i know this is really bad and they'll go yeah and we'll get the

validation we need that it's really bad so we do not feel alone but then we can say should i tweet about it and they'll be like nah and then and then we'll just you know what'll happen is we'll just all tweet less and that's always a good idea yeah so that's that's my proposal that we're not dunk where no dunking need be done and that we uh you know it's just another way of spending time with our friends and loved ones sharing the bad tweets with them i don't know if that's better but there will be less tweets there will be fewer tweets excuse me my goodness yeah or you could just use that time to go watch a cute pet video because that's something else that you can find on twitter half of those are probably stolen from someone's instagram i know but still

you could spend an entire day consumption anywhere right you could spend your whole day just watching cute pet videos on twitter if you wanted to and And there are worse ways to spend a day. Yeah, that's true. So one other thing I wanted to mention, there was a very interesting article by Mark Krig on The Athletic on Thursday. Most of Mark's articles are very interesting, and this was no exception. This was about the conflict of interest that arises for certain people who are both broadcasters and team employees in some

capacity. So the notable example of this that Mark leads his article with is a Sunday night baseball conversation on ESPN where A-Rod and Jessica Mendoza were talking about what the Yankees should do at the trade deadline. And Mendoza said that they should go after Noah Syndergaard. And it was weird and awkward because A-Rod kind of works for the Yankees and Jessica Mendoza works for the Mets. And so it was like, what are we listening to here? Are these team employees actively conducting trade conversations on the air? And this is the case with a lot of other broadcasters these days. with a lot of other broadcasters these days. And Mark has a whole list of people who fit this description. So David Ortiz, I guess when he is on the mend, and Leiter, and David Ross,

and Pedro Martinez, and Nick Swisher, and Rick Sutcliffe, and Jim Tomey, and Jim Cott, and Dan Plesak, and Ryan Dempster, and Terry Collins. And some of these people are employed by teams in sort of a ceremonial capacity. So they're like ambassadors for the team. They will show up at events and shake hands and take pictures. And so that doesn't seem like for a team. And the way that Jessica Mendoza's role with the Mets was described, it sounded like a more wide-ranging team advisor, baseball operations type role. And so it is sort of strange because she was saying that essentially that Syndergaard was on the market on a national TV broadcast. And that was kind of weird. It was weird.

So there's this whole debate about, well, what do we expect broadcasters to be? And are they really journalists? And you have some professors of journalism in the article who are saying this is clearly a conflict of interest and it's wrong and this is not the way journalism should work. And on the other hand, I don't necessarily expect journalism out of my baseball broadcasters. I just kind of want them to describe the game and banter about baseball. And the things that they're giving away are probably not going to be things that they shouldn't be. I would worry about it slightly if I were hiring a broadcaster to work for my baseball operations department just because teams tend to be so tight-mouthed and probably to a fault, probably more than they have to be. But still, if you were having secretive conversations with someone who is about to be on the air,

I would worry a little bit about what they would let slip. But I don't fret about this all that much, but I think it is kind of a fascinating debate yeah i think that i think it is right to distinguish and i don't think it's just a semantic difference between say like a former player who like you said either goes to events or like the i think the role that a lot of these guys end up occupying is they'll go to spring training for a couple days and they like talk to the young guys right right because if you're a young prospect in the yankees organization like hearing from a rod is probably really cool right like to hear like this is like learn from my mistakes here's how to be a pro like you know

so i think that there is that is a different role you are not privy to like much in the way of inside information you certainly don't have any control over decision making within the organization. I don't know how different in practice Jessica Mendoza's role is from that because, you know, there's sort of a, there's always a squishiness in the way that this stuff is described. You know, when her role was announced, it did sound much more substantive than, and I'm going to go talk to guys in spring or what have you. But it is uncomfortable. I think that her situation is a bit unusual because normally it is former players

who are occupying this like one foot in each world camp. And because I tend to not always enjoy former players as broadcasters, my reaction is just, well, pick one or the other. And if the other thing they pick is not being in the booth, like that's okay. But Mendoza occupies a different kind of spot in the landscape where I think it would be a real shame for not just for ESPN, but like for all of us to not have her perspective anymore, because there are so few women who occupy that role. There are not a lot of women who occupy the role that she seemingly has in the

Mets organization in baseball either. And so, you know, I guess like, for one thing, I kind of would like it if teams would like make it worth Jessica Mendoza's while to just like go be a team employee. But I do think that it's the sort of thing where you at least you at the very least should have some very clear guidelines about what you can talk about on air and what you can't. And there should be some rigor around that, right? Like whatever the broadcast is, you know, not all of these folks work for ESPN, whether it's ESPN or Fox News or what have you, like they should have some internal rules about conflicts and what you can talk about on air. And if they determine that she's able to

do the rest of her job, you know, sufficiently, then I guess it's okay with those provisions in mind, or at least I think I would feel more comfortable. But I do wonder about the ability to do the sort of media background part of your job. I think you're right that these folks don't often occupy a position of being like real journalists, but they do talk to, I mean, you know, Mark highlights this in his piece. They do talk to team employees of rival know mark highlights this in his piece they do talk to team employees of

rival teams sometimes in division and you know they're probably not entirely candid with media members anyway but you do wonder if you know they if someone working for uh i don't know like the nationals is gonna give jessica mendoza as much information as she might have otherwise gotten because we're like i don't want to send that stuff to the mets front office so i i do think that even if you have clear broadcast guidelines there is a question that i don't know that we have an answer to about how effective you can be and how it might impact your ability to do other parts of your job just by virtue of them looking at you as having, you know, your Mets hat on instead of your broadcaster

hat. Because broadcasters always wear hats. You know what I mean. Metaphorical hats. Figurative hats. Mark says that MLB sent a memo around advising teams of the broadcasters who are also employees for teams. Sure.

And they do have the right to say that they can't come in the clubhouse and they can't conduct those interviews. And Mark says he doesn't know that that right has actually been exercised very much. But, of course, the Astros have done it. Of course it would be the Astros. The Astros banned Al Leiter from their spring training camp and said he couldn't come because of this conflict yeah it would of course be the Astros who would do that but yeah I don't know that you're getting that much do you get that much

inside info from being in the clubhouse given that players and managers are always so cagey whenever they are talking to a media person and it's on the record. I mean, I guess it's only fair to let them know what the parameters of the conversation are. And so if they think you're a writer, then they will talk to you in a certain way. And if they think you're a team employee, they may talk to you in a slightly different way and if you're both then i suppose it's it's only right for them to be advised of that and they can choose what they want to do with that information it would be the same as you know i think it's good for you to be clear about even though like people should just assume everything's on the record unless they say

it's not right like it is a courtesy to indicate to an interview subject that that's true it's not, right? Like if there's a courtesy to indicate to an interview subject that that's true, it's not so dissimilar a situation. And yes, of course it would be the Astros, but I don't know that I actually fault them for saying like, nah, thanks, but no thanks. You know, team employees are actually not about the secret sauce, but team employees are often quite candid with one another

in the service of doing whatever business they have to do. It's the potential disclosure beyond that that I think is probably something that concerns them most profoundly, although Nick Swisher being on this list just is making me think of really funny stuff. It's really funny. But I don't know. I think that it is probably best if you are in an actual substantive baseball ops role, which is how Mendoza's hiring was presented. If you have to pick a lane and kind of stick in it, if you're just going around the complex in Florida because you're David Ortiz and you being there has some benefit to minor leaguers or what have you. I think that that can probably be appropriately separated from having a more substantive role. But, you know, it's just a it's a weirdly cozy

relationship. The parameters of it aren't well defined, at least publicly. We haven't heard much from any of these networks about the conversations they've had internally about conflict of interest. And maybe that would make us all feel a little less, you know, uncomfortable about it. I mean, that conversation between Mendoza and A-Rod, like on the one hand, it was super weird. But on the other hand, like we kind of knew Syndergaard was on the block. Right. So you're right. It wasn't information we didn't have before. But it does feel different coming from someone

who has an affiliation with the organization. I didn't think about A-Rod as being closely tied to the Yankees in that moment, which is maybe a Meg problem, but I was like, he's not making baseball ops decisions. Yeah, no. Yeah, and evidently his actual role with the team has sort of been dissolved recently. So, eh.

Eh, but yeah. It's probably better to have clean lines about this stuff. It can be a tricky thing to navigate on its own without additional sort of grist for the conflict mill. So I think that if I were in a position of being able to make a decision about this, I would probably say, so pick a thing. All right. Should we do a couple emails here? Yeah. We don't have to do all the ones that I highlighted because we did that thing.

We're like, what are we going to talk about? And then we're 40 minutes in and Dylan's probably like, oh, you guys are the worst. But there were a couple that I thought were interesting. I will start with one from listener Sean, who was watching. He says, I was watching the Indians game. This is from earlier this week. And Lindor chipped his bat on a foul ball and switched his bat out. And I know this is dumb. Sean, it's not dumb.

We're answering it. But it made me think how much things would change in an AB if the batter could not get a new bat during his AB, no matter what happened to his bat. I think a hockey stick that breaks mid-play, the player usually finishes the play, then gets a new stick. I just think it would be fun to see how players would try to use a dead, broken bat to their advantage

and how the defense might play that particular situation. Obviously, a foul ball that saws off a bat would leave the hitter with just a handle for the rest of the pitches and would almost certainly result in a backwards K. Could be a fun topic to discuss. We agree. Thanks, Sean. And Sam responded to this noting that he thinks, and I think that he is right, that it was Bill James who suggested batters should only get one bat per plate appearance as a way of disincentivizing shattered thrown bats that put spectators and opponents at risk. I always thought that was a good idea. Yeah. So I think for one thing, there are fewer broken bats than there used to be.

I know that there have been articles written about that. I'll link to some. I think there's better quality wood being used or the manufacturing process is better so you do see fewer broken bats now than i think you used to but it still happens and it would be kind of funny if a player were forced to take the rest of in a bat with a sawed-off handle i mean it would not increase offense it would decrease offense it would increase strikeouts that is just about the only outcome although it's possible that a pitcher could be so psyched out by this that he would just not be able to throw strikes but i would guess that that would not be the case if you literally can't swing then all you have to do is lob it into the strike zone and that'll be that i guess you could bunt with a bat handle but it's probably

not safe so very uns very unsafe first of all you'd get splinters yes splinters are terrible we don't talk enough about how bad splinters are is like a thing that happens in the world they are awful they often take too long to resolve i got a splinter in boston when we were at saber seminar and it took a minute to get it out. And I had to do bathroom surgery, which is never a good idea. So splinters are bad. Plus, I don't think guys would stand into bunt at all

because if it hits, first of all, just the ricochet of the impact of the ball on the bat handle would be uncomfortable because of the vibration that you would get. And I think that you would get a lot of guys who just get their fingers nicked by the ball, and that would hurt and maybe break some fingers. So I think guys would just stand there.

I don't even think they'd try to blent. Yeah, which wouldn't be much fun after the first time. No. It would be fun the first time, and it would be fun, well, it would be tragic in a way that we would need to worry about, but it would be fun the first time a guy really just cannot throw strikes. Yes. But then it would be a lot like the intentional walk thing, where we'd be sitting there waiting

for something to happen and you know miggy only hit that one got that one hit right stop being fun after that yeah if there were a strategic element to it like presumably if you swing harder you're more likely to break your bat so sure if this were something that disincentivized swinging hard and therefore maybe increased contact, then that would be one thing. Or if there were certain attack angles and swing planes that made it more or less likely that your bat would break, and so maybe that would become part of the player's consideration. So if there were a way that you could nudge players toward a more contact-friendly game by telling them that, hey, if your bat breaks, you're stuck with it, then sure. But I think it happens so

rarely that it's probably not worth adjusting your behavior because of it if that would impair your performance in all of the other at-bats where your bat does not break. So I don't think that there would be big benefits here. And it's not really consistent with how baseball has always worked. Like if your equipment breaks, if something's wrong with the ball, then you toss it out and get a new one. And you're not forced to play with the same. If your gloves lacing comes apart in the middle of the game. You can go get a new glove. We have not really ever played baseball such that you have to finish the game with the equipment that you begin the game with and you're responsible for its upkeep during the game. So that would be a change and I don't think it would be a positive one. Well, and I don't think it would actually disincentivize like it wouldn't

course correct for the issue that like say bill james was trying to which is a threat to other players or to spectators because yes presumably like you said if you swing less hard you break fewer bats but you're never going to get a wholesale move away from that. And so there's still going to be bats broken that could then impale someone terribly. And now we just have even fewer balls in play. So it's not a dumb question and it is funny to think about, but ultimately no dice for me, I don't think. I agree. Okay. The other one of these four that I picked out and sent you in advance that I like a lot is this one from Chris. Now, Chris other one of these four that I picked out and sent you in advance that I like a

lot is this one from Chris. Now, Chris will go on to say that he misheard what happened in this broadcast, but I think that the question is still interesting. So he says, during the seventh inning of a Blue Jays TV broadcast of Saturday's game against the Mariners, Dan Schulman mentioned that Kevin Biggio had earned his way to a 3-0 count. Chris goes on to say that he had used the more typical worked his way to a 3-0 count. Chris goes on to say that he had used the more typical worked his way to a 3-0 count,

but we're just going to talk about this anyway. Kevin is a prolific walker, but does not swinging at anything earn him his 3-0 count or the four-pitch walk that ensued? What are the standards that must be met for a batter to earn or work really a count? And I think this is a great question. Even work, if that's what it was, implies that the batter brought that count about in the same

way that earned does. And of course, he just stood there while the pitcher threw three balls. So from that perspective, he didn't do anything. He was just the beneficiary of that but we do always hear that you work the count full or if there's a long at bat inevitably the broadcaster will say good at bat here yeah just because you're making the pitcher work but also because well because you're making him do that that's the implication that you have exerted your influence to have that happen as opposed to just being a passive participant in this plate appearance. And I think there is a lot of truth to that. It's probably also true that there are long at-bats that are not good.

That makes sense to me. Even if you get some benefit from getting the pitcher's pitch count up, which in this day and age of the big bullpens and the times through the order and everything, I'm not sure that there's as big a benefit from that as there used to be. But there are probably long at-bats where you got to the long at-bat because you missed a few pitches that you should have hit really well and you fouled them off instead. Or maybe you took pitches that you shouldn't have taken or you got a little lucky because the umpire bailed you out at some point. So I don't know if it's automatic that, say, every 10-pitch plate appearance is a good plate appearance, or that if you could isolate the batter's contribution to it, it would be good.

But I think, obviously, there are things that batters do. There are players who take lots of pitches pitches and that is partly just them standing there but it is also them exerting their will and choosing which ones to swing at and fouling some off and making good decisions yes i agree i think that we tend to think of walks as charity rather than as work yeah free pass free pass right which is funny because like that is not the way we talk about hit by pitches which are entirely the result of the pitcher goofing up right so it's but i think the fact that you have to like you have to wear one you have to physically wear one we it's it's not work but it's's, uh, you know, it hurts. So we're going to give, give guys credit for that.

Like, you know, I get that. And I don't think that all walks are work, but I think more of them are the result of skill than, than we typically associate with terminology like free pass. So yeah, I think that we should acknowledge the skill because we all know that getting on base is super valuable so yeah and we get the question from time to time whether certain batters get smaller strike zones or bigger strike zones like do certain batters get the benefit of the doubt and from what i've seen obviously catchers can influence the size of the strike zone. Even pitchers can if they are working at the edges and they have good command and they kind of put it where they want to and they can just expand by a couple inches cleverly and subtly. I think maybe there's an experience effect that I've written about before where veterans will get some benefit of the doubt.

But I don't think there are certain hitters who really tend to get like a lot of extra real estate or get a smaller strike zone. But, of course, there are batters who have a much better sense of the strike zone and they won't help the pitcher out and they won't swing at a pitch that they shouldn't swing at that will be a ball so that's a big part of it it's like when you don't swing you are deciding not to do something but that's still an action that you're you're taking you're deciding not to take that action and it takes a lot of restraint because it's hard not to swing at pitches that are going really fast and moving a lot and look a lot like the other pitches and not everyone has that ability so just to get into a deep count is kind of a credit to the hitter because he has not gone out of his way to swing at pitches that would be balls and if he has fouled off some tough pitches to extend the at-bat, then that's something too. So yeah,

there's work. You've got to put in the work to get to a, not necessarily a 3-0 count, but to get longer than that. I mean, there are at-bats where the pitcher is just so wild that no one would have swung at those pitches except a couple guys. But yeah, it's tough. You've got to earn it. Yeah. It's a good question, I think. Yeah, I think so too. Even if you initially misheard, you then figured it out. That's a good question. We've got another question about the underutilization of skills. I guess this is kind of a good follow-up from Daniel in New Haven.

Hey, how's New Haven? I often think about the premise that if a base runner has a successful steal percentage greater than 70%, then they should be stealing more often as this will increase overall expected runs. What else could this idea that too much success entails an underutilization of a skill be applied in baseball? For example, shouldn't this entail that if a player is a top fielder at their position, they should inherently be playing a more difficult and important defensive position. While this may not be feasible for all players, e.g. the best defensive first baseman, shouldn't the top defensive second baseman certainly be tested out at shortstop,

assuming their skills still mostly translate? Thanks so much. So the idea here, despite all my misreading, is shouldn't we try guys out at other stuff when they've shown they're good at some stuff? And what are some of those places? And I actually don't think the defensive spectrum is a good example of this at all. Yeah. Yeah, there are cases where someone could probably handle a more challenging position. And sometimes it's because there just happens to be an even better fielder at that

position for the same team so like Mookie Betts could play center field but the Red Sox have Jackie Bradley in center field so yeah that kind of thing happens and I suppose you could say that he would be more valuable to another team so they could trade him and get even more than he's worth to them but he's Mookie Betts. He's worth a whole lot to them. Yeah, just keep Mookie Betts. I think that's a good idea. So, yeah, and like sure, second baseman who grades out really well at second base, maybe he can handle short, but maybe he has the range for it but not the arm.

And so there are things like that where if you're – and obviously like catcher is a good example like catcher is a premium defensive position but if you're a good catcher that doesn't mean you can just go out and play a good center field or something so but i do think one place and you know like you have guys who are playing positions that are you know where they are perhaps in a different era would be just barely keeping their noses above water. But because of good positioning, for example, they can play a position that is further up the defensive spectrum than they might otherwise,

because they just get told, hey, stand there instead. And over the course of the season, it works out fine. And then you get to have that bat in the lineup but i think that a place i wonder i wonder if a place where this is true actually comes not with play on the field but with the transfer of sort of institutional baseball knowledge from veterans to rookies toward the end of their careers so you have guys who've been in the game. I bet we might not agree on the analytics, just to take us all the way back to the beginning of our conversation, with, say, Albert Pujols. But I bet that Albert Pujols would make a pretty great coach,

but he's trying to play baseball. So he is only transferring some of his knowledge while he's in the dugout, and they're doing when they practice and whatnot. But he would be a probably a very good coach and we're not having him do that because we're like hey you gotta play out the end of this really big contract and so i wonder if that's a place where it's a skill and it's one that is harder to quantify certainly and we don't really quantify it at all but i wonder if that is a spot where guys might be underutilizing a thing

that would be very beneficial to other players, but it's because they're busy playing baseball at the same time. Trying to think of any other areas where being really good at something means that you should be acting differently or should be doing something different, like plate discipline maybe. Maybe. If you take a lot of pitches maybe you should actually be trying to swing it more strikes but if you have like a low swing rate

at pitches in the strike zone then maybe you're just not doing something all that well or or like the complaint that people would always have about joey vato where it's like he's got to drive in runs he's taken all these walks and it's probably not true, but it could be true at certain times, maybe if depending on the day and the situation and who's behind you in the lineup, maybe you want your best hitter swinging away, even if in general it's good to take walks.

Or like I could see, this isn't exactly the same thing, but I could see guys who play a lot of positions in the field and are praised for their positional versatility. I could see the distribution of their innings at different positions being not perfectly optimized, right, where they are not playing where they maybe ought to. But you're presumably getting some benefit from whatever guy is in that spot being in that spot so maybe it kind of just balances out in the long run yeah i've decided i don't need to answer my fourth email that is okay well we did just get one from a patreon supporter jeremy bernfeld that i was reminded of because of something you just said about how players don't necessarily pass along all their knowledge because they're busy playing instead of coaching.

But Jeremy said, spurred by our recent discussion of Hugh Darvish learning his knuckle curve from Craig Kimbrell, it seems there's a professional unwritten rule among baseball players to provide each other tips, feedback, and coaching. Isn't this akin to revealing trade secrets that should be highly guarded? Aren't these players competing against one another for playing time, contracts, and fame? I'm not referring to little tips about facing a particular pitcher, but I think I would be private about a big element like a new pitch. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but I'm surprised by how often this appears to happen.

I think it's really important to be able to not be miserable at work. Yes, right. i think is the thing i think that when you don't like your co-workers or you have a contentious relationship with them it affects your ability to think about anything else at all yeah right so you don't want to be rude you have to get along with these people and if they're like hey how do you throw that then you just don't want to be the person who's like i'm not going to tell you but i am gonna spend the rest of the season in very close proximity to you so yeah it's just awkward yeah imagine you're in a you're in a major league bullpen and you have one cool trick unlock a prospect's potential just came up and

are you going to be the guy that says no I'm not going to help you and then you have to sit on that little bench all together so close that sounds awful and it's like a pay it forward sort of situation because probably someone helped you and showed you some tip

and so you want to pass that on to the next generation or at least you probably should want that. Maybe it's like an example of biological altruism. You know, why do we, why do any animals do things that don't directly benefit us? Sometimes it benefits our family or it benefits our tribe. So there's an evolutionary advantage. And in baseball, your team is your tribe. So there are times, though, where it crosses teams.

Like there's the now famous example of Mariano Rivera teaching Roy Halladay his cutter. And I know that Tyler Kepner, who I think told that story, said that some Yankees hitters weren't thrilled that suddenly Halladay was throwing a really great cutter that their own teammate taught him. Not sure how much of that was like ragging on Rivera and how much of it was genuinely like, why are you helping out the enemy here? But that, I guess it's just part of the like baseball brotherhood and we're all part of the same profession that is limited to a very small number of people and it's this highly specialized job and so even across team lines you share that sort of thing maybe in an earlier era that would have been less likely to

happen but players typically don't really hate each other these days and like they're making way more money than they used to and they don't have to get off-season jobs. And so I think their financial futures are more assured than they used to be. So that's probably part of it too. And I think they probably know that, sure, maybe, you know, a guy learns a thing a little earlier if someone else helps him out. But, you know, the amount of time that a secret is really a secret in baseball is so brief anyhow that I think is really a secret in baseball, it's so brief anyhow that I think that they probably on balance would say, let's all get along at work and

treat young guys well. There does seem to have been a real sea change around the expectation for how veterans interact with rookies, which I think is incredibly positive. for how veterans interact with rookies, which I think is incredibly positive. And so I think that it's probably just like, you know, we got to get along to get along. And I think also these days,

it's just harder to have secrets than it's ever been before. It's always been hard, as you were saying. But these days, if you want to know how someone holds a ball or throws a pitch, just look at the high-speed, high-def, super slow-mo footage footage and you don't even have to ask. It's right there. Or if you want to know where he throws pitches or how he sequences pitches or which pitches he throws more often, like it's all right out there on the internet. So there's no way to protect it really. Yeah. So, so be nice. Yeah. It still does happen. Like there was a little anecdote that was written about that I recounted in the MVP machine where Pat Mahomes, the former pitcher said that in 1991, he asked Jack Morris how he

threw his splitter. And Morris said, get away from me, you you little very profane word you'll be trying to take my job next year so that attitude is out there and I get it like if you're in a positional battle with someone who's fighting for the same job as you in spring training or something or you know that a benefit for an improvement by one player would directly harm your chances, then I mean, I wouldn't really fault the player for trying to live their dream and preserve their future and take care of their family and everything by making sure they still have a major league job. But I guess usually it's not quite so obvious how teaching someone something might hurt you. So I guess it's just kind of a social nicety.

Yeah, I think that's right. Last thing, are you enjoying the Felix experience? This is probably like a whole podcast and an article or something. But Felix has been back for two starts. They've been pretty good. Yeah. He's lowered his ERA from 6.52 to 6.02, which is a positive. And I guess that's good.

Like he's got maybe a month left in his Mariners career. I mean, we'll see if he continues to pitch credibly, then maybe he gets a job somewhere. Maybe he settles for a minor league invite at this point. I guess the Mariners are more likely to extend that sort of invite right because of what he means to that franchise and where they are competitively although i know maybe there's been some friction also with his role yeah i think i think that there has been friction between Felix and this Mariners regime. I think that how that friction plays out, I could see Felix, if he doesn't have other options and is extended, you know, like a invite to spring training on a minor league deal with the Mariners, maybe taking it. I could also

see Felix being appropriately proud and declining that. But yeah, it's been, I think credible is like, that's like a really nice way of describing his last two outings, right? Like there have been spots of trouble. He's clearly not what he was. And that is very sad for me. I probably have like, I think I have one, I have one Felix piece left in me and uh it will not be a happy one and i've been kind of like accumulating stuff over the last

couple months about it but um it is nice that he's not getting blown out you know his first start back he pitched well enough and was in line for the win and then had got a no decision so it felt very vintage felix even though he did not look like vintage felix but he had a couple moments where you're like yeah i get this it's weird to have felix's change up like not work that's gross so it's been it's been okay i didn't watch a lot of that Seattle game, that Mariners game yesterday, but I did watch the first couple innings when he pitched. So he is accomplishing something he did before, which is he's making me watch Mariners games.

So in that respect, it's like old times. But yeah, he is such an important athlete to the city of Seattle. He's so important to the city of seattle he's so important to the mariners franchise this is going to sound like overwrought but like felix is a big part of why i have the job i have now in a roundabout sort of way so he is a player who will always be very important to me personally i feel the most like a fan when i am engaged with felix pitching in one shape or another so i'm very relieved that this is not embarrassing because i was nervous that it would be embarrassing and that was going to be heartbreaking in a way that i would not make

let you make me talk about in public. So this is nice. I'm pretty sure he got a win maybe yesterday. Maybe not. I think he did, yeah. It'd be nice if he could just close out this month by, actually he didn't get the win. Was it another no decision?

Yeah. It was Matt McGill who got the win. Good for him. Good for him hopefully felix can just keep going five and giving up two runs or something for the rest this month and that's a credible that is a credible back of the rotation guy right yeah i mean it'd be great of course if he had like one more gem in him that'd be wonderful but i just don't know if he does there was there was a very brief moment and it did not last more than an inning or two but that first start back against

the blue jays he he retired them like i think he was perfect like through one it was like one inning and i will admit a part of my brain was like do do it, do it, no hit, the Blue Jays, perfect game, the Blue Jays. It was not to be, but that lizard part of my brain is still turning when it comes to him. Yeah. Yeah.

I could see how he would want to go somewhere else if he does want to keep pitching and doesn't get a good offer that you might just want a fresh start. You might not want to continue on in a diminished capacity and role for the place where you were a star and the face of the franchise and all that. It might just be easier to go somewhere where no one knows you and no one remembers what you used to be and just try to make a living at it. On the other hand, maybe it means something to him to be a career mariner.

He's the one who stayed where so many other mariners left. So I don't know. In a sense, it's sort of a shame when players who've had great accomplished careers and have spent those entire careers with one team, then like their journeyman phase in the last year or two where they play for all these teams and then you forget that they ever played for those teams until you see a picture of them in that uniform and it's like yeah bizarre world yeah there was a moment when he when service went out to pull him from that blue jays start and i will say like there has been friction between felix and

this mariners regime as i said and some of that has specifically been him in service not aligning that's a nice neutral way of putting it and that exchange was actually very pleasant and and friendly which made me happy and relieved but there was a moment where you know all the guys come in because felix is getting taken out and Kyle Seeger gave several like very firm like attaboy pats and I was just like these two dudes what it must be like between like the stuff that they must talk about looking around at this Mariners team being like who are all of these guys you know we're the last ones standing from the prior regime. It was just like a very nice moment of seemingly very genuine camaraderie between two players who have like, Dylan, I'm going to do a swear and you're going to leave it and like have seen some shit. So it was it was nice.

I was like, yeah, Kyle gets it. Yeah. All right. Well, I suppose we've talked enough. I've been thinking about this iTunes review we got this week that most of our iTunes reviews are very positive. And this one is not not positive. It's a three star review. And I feel like it's a very fair review because occasionally there will be a bad one. And I'll feel like, oh, that doesn't really represent what this podcast is but this one i think is accurately represents what we do here and this person maybe likes that a little less than a lot of other people do so this person writes less banter more baseball please which goes against everything we stand for but it says there are no really good podcasts for fans who want to hear about developments in the game such as pennant races, organizational moves, etc.

Then it insults another person's podcast which I will skip over to be polite and then it continues. Effectively Wild has some good content, thank you, but they spend too much time bantering about quote-unquote clever things like whether baseball players like their jobs, perfect games by umpires,

etc. Their best product is the season preview team by team where you learn about changes, who is improving, declining, etc. It's great stuff, but they seem to hate doing it because they say so on every episode. podcast is, I suppose. I mean, we do so many episodes that we end up talking about almost everything at some point. So if someone's having a notable season, if some team is having a surprise season or a disappointing season, we will talk about that. We've talked about pennant races. And yes, we do do the season preview series team by team. And in the playoffs, we will talk a lot about teams and games and individual decisions. So it's not as if we ignore what is happening in the season, but it's true that it's also not a podcast where we talk about every game and here's what happened in that game. And we go over all the players who are doing all the things.

It's just not really that kind of show. And I don't think any of us wants it to be that kind of show but I understand why this person would or would want that kind of show to exist maybe it does I don't know but to me it's just sort of like the kind of conversation you have at a baseball game which is not solely focused on that baseball game and talking about exactly what you're seeing in front of your eyes, but talking about what that makes you think about or things that it reveals about the game or about life. I feel like we're in a years-long exercise here to understand this sport and why we care about this sport and what it says about other things. And it seems like the stuff people find most memorable about the podcast is not our trenchant analysis of someone's roster construction. It's the strange stuff and the silly stuff and the tangents we take. So that leaves a little less time for talking about the pennant race. Although we do talk about that too. It's just that it doesn't change that much from day

to day. So there's only so much you can say blame baseball i can i tell you i never look at our itunes reviews yeah i do because they're generally nice and it's positive reinforcement and if something is negative yeah i would take that into account too like this person is making a legitimate critique here it's not necessarily one one that I want to make changes based on, but I also understand this position. Yeah, I think that that's fine. And I hope that you send an email to every front office telling them to have more interesting pennant races. We talk about them all the time. Yeah, right. Maybe it's also just that we watch less baseball than people would think given our jobs. I mean, we watch a lot of baseball in that it's on in the backgrounds and we see the highlights and we see the interesting things. But because we're not covering one team, we're not analyzing the sports through that lens of like individual games and individual decisions. So we talk about the notable stuff, but I rarely sit down to watch a full three-hour game

because I'm not rooting for any one team. And so maybe I consume the sport on a more 30,000-foot view, I guess, than most fans who are coming to it through one team and watching that team's games every day, as i think we all probably used to so it changes how you consume the sport i suppose now i'm looking at these i watch a lot of baseball games front to back which i shouldn't do actually i should watch fewer of them front to back it's a bad idea it's not an optimal use of time. But yeah, I think

you're right that, you know. The third review from the top says Meg is my favorite. You should read more of these. I'm looking at the I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it, Ben. I'm going to say no. Saying no to the devil today. But yes, we appreciate constructive

feedback and not all feedback has to be positive. And I like the one bad review in here that says, the other two don't care about baseball at all. And I don't think they know me, Ben. I don't think they know me. No, I don't think so. Which of us is it that doesn't care about baseball? I don't know.

They think you care a lot about baseball and they think that Sam and I don't care so. Which of us is it that doesn't care about baseball? I don't know. They think you care a lot about baseball, and they think that Sam and I don't care about baseball at all. How about that? I can assure you that's not the case, that I care more than you care. I think we all care. We all care. We all care, and we're grateful that everyone listens. And, you know, we'll just to to keep getting better where we can but we will definitely not stop the clever talk no there will not be less banter no we will continue

to try to be clever where we can yeah that's nice all right well talk to you next week sounds good one thing we almost discussed today but didn't quite get around to is something that we've seen a few people saying in response to our recent discussions of a baseball mercy rule, the idea that there could be some unintended consequences there. Tim, for instance, writes in to say, one item that was not discussed while going over the mercy rule is the potential negative effects of the unwritten rules. In high school, there is a mercy rule of 10 runs and you get into some dicey situations when teams are leading by eight or nine and are going for the mercy rule to save pitching some coaches will still steal and keep their starters

in others will call off the dogs a lot sooner trying to keep the game going to get their backup some playing time i could kind of see it going either way that either you would want to trigger the mercy rule and so you would try to run up the score but maybe it might have the opposite effect where it's almost embarrassing to lose by mercy rule. And so maybe it would even be amplified because you were trying to trigger that. You could also have teams that are far enough behind that they almost certainly would not be able to come back, but are not quite far enough behind to activate the mercy rule. Maybe they would try to have the score run up against them. So if a team's down by eight runs or nine runs or something, maybe they put in a position player pitcher just to try to

end their suffering sooner and not have to actually use good pitchers to get through the last couple innings of a game they're not going to win. So all of that could happen. Tim also raises one more interesting question. He says, when the mercy rule comes into effect to cause a walk-off, high school teams generally celebrate on a level between normal high fives and mosh pit at the plate. My guess is that Major League Baseball teams would not celebrate at all. I kind of wonder, if you had a walk-off hit that knocks the other team out by mercy rule,

what would the etiquette of that be? That's something that we should probably discuss at greater length on an episode at some point. But players are just so hardwired to celebrate walk-offs, and yet if you're walking off by mercy roll and you're really embarrassing the other team if you're celebrating, I'm sure that would be something that the other team would be salty about. So maybe you would just have this general milling about even though you just won the game, which would be weird. Almost like when a game ends on a replay review and you see the players celebrate, but then they have to kind of hang around and wait to see if the call will actually be upheld.

And then once it is, the moment has passed and you can't really celebrate with the same fervor that you would have otherwise. Anyway, we will see, or maybe we won't. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up to pledge their support to the podcast help keep it going get themselves access to some perks john salona david hasler conrad schwartz mitch rutkin and james bennett thanks to all of you you can rate review and subscribe to the podcast on itunes and if you rate and review it maybe we'll see it maybe we'll talk about it knows? You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild.

Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg and Sam coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. If you are a supporter, thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. You can go get my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players. You can leave ratings and reviews for that, too, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players. You can leave ratings and reviews for that, too, on Amazon Goodreads, and we appreciate it if you do. That will do it for this week. Thanks for listening. We hope you have a wonderful long weekend, if you have one.

We'll be back to talk to you next week, but probably after Labor Day. Until then, happy baseball.