Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1432: The High-Pressure Promise

Episode Date: September 18, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the return of Luis Severino and the Yankees’ prospective playoff roster, how teams will use their pitchers in the playoffs, a Sonny Gray fun fact that sort of checks out, Yu Darvish’s strikeout spree, and an extremely long September game, discuss the arrest of Felipe Vázquez, and answer […]

Oh, highway boys all sleeping out With their dirty mouths and broken strings Other eyes are shining like the sea for you, the queen of San Luis to say for you the queen of san luis i'm a ghost to you you're a ghost to me birds of you san luis hello and welcome to episode 1432 of effectively wild a baseball podcast brought to you by fan graphs and our patreon supporters i'm meg Rowley on a special Wednesday edition. Midweek Meg. Midweek Meg.

And I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg. Hi, Ben. Hi. How are you? You were for the ringer. I didn't say that part. That's where you work. It's true.

How's it going? It's going okay. It's not my usual recording day. Thank you to Sam for being flexible so that I can get on a plane at an ungodly hour on Friday and head to Fall League. Yeah, for a good reason. It's not fun to get up super early for a flight, but when you're taking that flight so you can go to the Arizona Fall League, it makes it worth it. It makes it a little easier to get up.

Yes, it changes the complexion of the early morning pretty substantially. I will take a brief moment to just remind folks who are interested in the Fall League, especially if they're going, that the board has a special Arizona Fall League seasonal tab with all of the – this is not every player who will be in Fall League. These are all of the dudes who are currently on the board, so all of the most relevant prospects. You can click on over there and see what teams they're on and Eric and Kylie's reports and video if they have it, which they do for most of these guys. So if you're going to be at one of these ballparks in Arizona

and you're like, hey, who's that dude? I don't know about him. You can just navigate over to the board on your phone and it's all right there for you easy those guys do good work that's that's sean dolnor and david appleman who built the board good stuff so i mentioned that i was going to the tuesday yankees angels game and i was sort of bummed because i had planned to go to that game in part because i thought i would get to see Trout and Otani, and I did not. I was doing a reunion of the 2009 Yankees baseball operations interns. A lot of us are still in the area, so we all went to a game together and complained about how we didn't get World Series rings, and it was sort of fun to see everyone and remember that time in my life. But did not get to see Trout, did not get to see Otani,

did get to see Luis Severino making his season debut. And it was pretty impressive. I mean, accounting for the fact that, again, the Angels lineup had very few good hitters in it because Justin Upton is done for the year too. Tommy Lostella has been out forever. So this was a very patchwork piecemeal lineup but Severino looked good just independent of the quality of competition he was throwing pretty hard he was getting some swinging strikes Jay Jaffe wrote about this for Fangraphs but Severino threw about 67 pitches and he looked a little bit better after the first inning he didn didn't throw quite as hard, I guess, as his previous season average from last year. But he was getting up to like 99. This stuff was clearly pretty good.

And this is a big boost to the Yankees potentially. You have to wonder when you get a guy back this late in the season what role he'll play in the playoffs. in the season what role he'll play in the playoffs and i'm writing something for later this week about guys who come back really late in the season and have gone on to play significant roles in october but yankees got him back they got jordan montgomery back that didn't go quite so well and then they got dylan batances back which went well for one game and then went as poorly as it could in the next game because he immediately hurt himself again with a partially torn Achilles and now he's done for the year and that is super sad especially like heading into free agency and it looked like he might be able to salvage something from this season and then it

disappeared as quickly as it had come but Severino coming back is a pretty big boon to that staff and based on Aaron Boone's recent comments, he has mentioned like piggybacking starters and just going really bullpen heavy, I guess, aside from James Paxton, who's been very good for the past six weeks or so. That staff could really just kind of do all bullpen games for the playoffs or just like starters going two or three innings, four innings maybe, and then bringing in the bullpen. It's going to be a whole lot of that from the Yankee staff and probably not just the Yankee staff, but especially the Yankee staff this postseason. Yeah. If they can get an extra inning or two out

of Severino over the course of an entire month, that might end up making a really significant difference in their ability to stick in October. You always have that moment. I watched this start from the comfort of my home in very rainy Seattle. And you always have that moment when a guy's coming back, especially late, where you're very nervous to see the velocity readings. I was just sitting there like, oh no, what's going to happen? And I think he threw a change up for his first pitch and then like a true, you know, four seamer for a second. And the, you know, the little flame shoot, he was throwing like 97. I was like, okay, this is okay. You know, he'd had a couple of tune-ups in AAA, but it's like, it's that strange thing where they come back so late, you know, they start to run up into not having a place to really do rehab games

you know so I it was it was a great relief even though he did manage to walk Brian Goodwin so yes one of the guys I went to the game with still works for the Yankees he was actually good enough at his job to get hired and stay there and get promoted over the past decade. And I could see him just glancing like his eyes were darting to the velocity reading on the board after every single pitch because for him, this really mattered. This was something significant. And I'm sure he was just like twitching, not being able to look at the live data that he probably has access to and just having to be out there among the masses looking at a single number

but those numbers were pretty reassuring yeah it'll be man i just i i still think that in all likelihood and granted there are other good teams that are in the al field and anything can happen in a short series and but you just figure that if there is if we look back at the end of this season and the yankees have won a world series we're going to look back on that boone quote about them you know being able to mix and match and get creative and just be like it'll it'll be like in that movie the snowman right like i gave you all the clues you could have saved her it's just like that it's just like a terrible murder movie except that it'll be the Yankees against the entire uh you know the rest of the majors so yeah and with Stanton almost

back now it's gonna be such a strange Yankees postseason roster I don't know exactly what it'll look like because they still have time for like a couple guys to get hurt and a couple other guys to come back before the regular season ends but the team that is actually competing in October is going to be pretty different from the teams that actually got them there and some guys who played big roles in getting them to this point probably will not play big roles in the postseason and vice versa so it's going to be strange yeah it is a weird reality of the 2019 Yankees that there are going to be dudes who probably don't make that postseason roster we're like but that guy's so good now somehow

yeah what an odd thing speaking of an ex yankee one guy that the yankees did not get the most out of in recent years was sunny gray which sort of stands in stark contrast to their getting career years out of every other single player this season. But Sonny Gray, I saw a fun fact about him, and I kind of questioned it when I saw it. I thought it was lying, as all fun facts do. And then I was sort of surprised when I looked it up. So Sonny Gray made his 32nd consecutive start in which he allowed six hits or fewer, which is a new Major League record excluding openers, because if you count openers, Ryan Stanek just blows everyone else away in that category.

But he passed Nolan Ryan, which sounds very impressive. And when Sonny Gray was told that he had passed Nolan Ryan, he himself was sort of overwhelmed, he said, to be mentioned in the same sentence as one of the most competitive people that have played this game. It's crazy. I don't know what I think about it. To be honest with you, you might have to ask me tomorrow. I don't know what he thinks about it today, but I was pretty impressed, except that I thought, well, Nolan Ryan, workhorse, this stat probably is deceiving us because in order to allow six hits or fewer as a starter, yeah, probably you have to be pretty good at limiting hits, but also it matters how

deep you go into the games. And so if you're not throwing complete games, then that's going to make it easier to not allow seven hits or more. And so I figured that Nolan Ryan during his streak of 31 consecutive starts that was just snapped probably went way deeper into games and threw many more innings. But it turns out that's not the case, actually, because this was old, late career Nolan Ryan when he was like 44, 45. This was from May 1st, 1991 to June 1st, 1992. And Nolan Ryan threw 178 innings in his 31 starts. Gray threw 179 and two-thirds innings in his 32 starts. So essentially the same number of innings and innings per start.

Pretty much equivalent. So my apologies to the fun fact generators for questioning them although of course there is still an era effect here and that this is kind of a low batting average year that makes it a little bit easier so were 1991 and 1992 those were before the big offensive explosion of the 1990s so the league batting average was pretty similar then to what it is now. And also there are lots of guys who just never got within spitting distance of the streak because they were throwing complete games every time or going really deep into games and allowing more hits. So it does still sort of lie. But the fact that he passed Nolan Ryan is somewhat

impressive. Although maybe earlier in his career, Nolan Ryan had streaks that were snapped because at that point he was throwing 300 innings a year or whatever. So anyway, just wanted to mention that since we are very vigilant these days about policing fun facts. think about what this means to me and get back to you yeah how many the world would be so much better if more people were like i don't know how that makes me feel i don't know what i think about that i'm gonna think about it and get back to you yeah take your time collect your thoughts sam says that to me sometimes when i ask him a question and he's like i don't know about that i've got to take some time sometimes he'll answer a listener email and just be like, I got to go on a long walk and think about that and make up my mind. And yeah, we should probably all aspire to taking some time to reflect on what it means when we do something better than Nolan Ryan. Yeah. And that he would, you know, appreciate like, I mean, obviously he knows who Nolan Ryan is. I don't mean to imply that Sonny Gray doesn't, but it's like, yeah, that is a weighty thing.

And it might be a thing you have to sit with for a moment to think about, you know, where he's been versus where he is. I was looking while you were chatting, I was just looking at some of his like year over year stats. Cause you know, obviously we know that Sonny Gray is having a much better year this year than last year. And you wonder why. And then you look at his, like his pitch type values and you're like, Oh, it's cause everything's better.

It's just clearly that everything's better this year. So he's had quite the turnaround and it has to feel incredible to him on its own, let alone that it puts him in elite company. It just seems like a thing that someone would want to take a beat to reflect upon. Yeah, he's thrown more sliders this year. A lot more. Yeah, and that was a thing when he was with the Yankees and he said they wanted him to throw more breaking balls, but he didn't have a good one. But I guess the Reds have gotten through to him and helped him with that. And also there's been some visualization stuff that he is doing differently.

So another thing is that Nolan Ryan was like a legendary hit preventer. So it's kind of cool to pass Nolan Ryan in this category because he was someone who often led the league or the majors in hits allowed per nine innings. He walked a ton of guys. He allowed a lot of base runners anyway, but he was very good at preventing hits. So if you want to set a record for not allowing a lot of hits, that would be a good guy to pass. But yeah, 265 career BABIP for Nolan Ryan.

That's pretty good. That'll get you to the Hall of Fame. Yeah, that's pretty good. I wonder if I will ever be able to correctly gauge Sonny Gray's age. I don't think I will. I think I'll always think he's younger than he is. What is he, like 30-ish? He will be 30 in November.

His birthday is November 7th, according to our player pages. his birthday is November 7th according to our player pages I think it's the combination of having a somewhat boyish look and also being named Sunny what's a name that you think of as a young person's name so I'm always going to think that he's like

perpetually 25 so congrats Sunny it's like not a bad thing I suppose do you have to stop going by Sunny at a certain age is your Sunny card revoked? I guess there are older people who go by Sonny, right? Sure. Sonny Boy Williamson.

I don't know. I guess you can be Sonny once a Sonny, always a Sonny. It would appear that Sonny is his full name per baseball reference is Sonny Douglas Gray. Douglas being like a grown person's name. I remember when I learned that Sonny Gray had a son and I found that funny for at least a minute. Sonny Jr. I don't know. I don't know what his kid's name is. But I also at the time was like, you're not old enough to have a child. You are but a child yourself. And he was like,

no, I'm like a grown person. What are you talking about? Yeah. Because I was at that game i was not following along with other games very closely and so i was not really paying attention to the cubs reds game in which i guess this was the game in which sunny gray set that record yeah but also it was the game in which you darvish started by striking out everyone. And I don't know if this was a thing on Twitter as it was happening, but he was very much on pace to have the record-setting strike. And then he ended up with only two more in his seven innings. So he just sort of stopped striking guys out, but it looked like he was very much on the path to doing that. And he did do it over his previous nine innings. He struck out 24 guys over a nine inning span, which is pretty impressive, but not all within one game. So

sort of disappointing that he didn't keep up that pace but that must have been exciting to follow in real time yeah i kind of checked in and out on that game as i want to do i did manage to tune in just in time to watch sunny gray uh single which was sort of funny but yes he looked he looked quite good i think if you're a cubs fan you have to be encouraged by the the turnaround that he's enjoyed lately because it's been significant, notable for a team on the edges of the postseason. Especially because the Cubs right now are tied for a wildcard spot. There's quite a chance that they will need to win that one game to advance

if they are even lucky enough to get to that point i know jay jaffe is having a field day he's so excited team entropy tiebreaker scenarios they're looking pretty good right now yeah jay had a team entropy had a had a good night i say everyone embrace the chaos god let jay show you how yeah it's pretty exciting yeah cardinals are only two games up in the central right now you've got the Brewers and the Cubs tied because the Brewers never lose anymore without Christian Yelich so weird they just don't lose in September oh well yeah it's it's been pretty fun and there's like what 11 games to go for all or most of those teams and the Cardinals and Cubs will be playing each other for like seven of them

that's gonna be pretty fun yes very fun it it is i watched part of that brewers game as well you'll be unsurprised to learn that i did that given that in addition to them getting their arguably their best starter back i wanted to check in on that business uh that chris paddock was starting so i had to check in on the sheriff, who is now done for the season, unsurprisingly, given how many innings he's thrown in the past. But it was kind of nice that they actually got a player back. You know, we've been losing all these guys, and it's very sad.

And so it was just kind of nice to have somebody come back. Yeah, Blake Snell came back too. Some guys are coming back. And he looked good. Yeah, he did. And the Razor are gettingnell came back too. Yeah. Some guys are coming back. And he looked good. Yeah, he did. And the Razor are getting other guys back too. Yeah, they are. So did you in the midst of your reunion have occasion to check in on the very, very long game that the Giants and the Red Sox played? I was home by that point.

I guess that's true. Yeah. I was following along with that. by that point. I guess that's true. Yeah, I was following along with that. That was a very, very long game and an extremely September expanded rosters game too.

I did not start watching that game until it got into extras because I was watching other stuff. But it's just, I think by my count, there were 48 players that were used in that game. 24 pitchers.

Baseball Reference had the total pitch count at 547 pitches thrown oh my goodness it's a lot yeah 24 pitchers i think i saw that that tied a major league record i think that's right and steven vote set a major league record for the most pitchers caught in one game 13 which will be tough to to break with September rosters slimming down next season. And they didn't, I don't think they, I think they were out. They were out. Couldn't have had any more, maybe. Yeah, that went a very long time.

Had a nice moment. It had the Mike Yastrzemski home run, which was really cool. Yastrzemski homer in Fenway. And there are tweets showing like side-by-side views of Yaz and Yaz Jr. or Yaz very much Jr. Two generations removed Yaz, both heading home runs in Fenway with somewhat similar looking swings. That was kind of cool. Kevin Biggio also had the cycle this night, which he became the second son of a big league father who both had cycles after the wards. The Bigios both cycled too, which is kind of cool.

So good night for sons doing things that their dads or granddads also did. But yeah, that game went on way, way, way after that home run was hit. And I did not watch it. that home run was hit and I did not watch it. I don't know what it was like for the players slogging through that with really nothing at stake at all at this point in the season. I think the person who was the most obviously expressive, well, there was a moment where Brock Holt could have ended the game, but grounded out with the bases loaded. So in an inning, who knows when, it happened very late. He was mad. You could see him do some swears on TV. But Bruce Bochy was really the most expressive of the lot.

He kept taking his hat off and rubbing his eyes and looking mad. And he was ready to go home. I had occasion over the weekend to watch in person with some high school friends Felix's start against the White Sox, which is a game that ended on a sort of controversial home run call. And we don't have to litigate that here because that game was a billion years ago and it's two teams no one cares about. Although no one really cares about the Red Sox and the Giants at this point in the season either. But it had the vibe when they said, yeah, it's a walk-off home run by Omar Nevaez of just like, look, it's September. We're very tired.

It's time to go home. And I think that Bruce Bochy had that vibe the whole. He's like, look, I want to win, but also I am sleepy. Yeah. Sleepy face. He's ready to call it a career at this point. Yeah, he's like, we're really doing this. Yeah.

By the way, I do wonder, we were speaking about Severino and Yankees' piggyback plan, whether this October will really be a break from recent Octobers when it comes to pitcher usage, or whether it'll just be a continuation of the trends that we've seen in recent Octobers. Because as I've written a couple times, October tends to be a vision of the future, and often MLB's dystopian future when it comes to like game length and strikeouts and reliance on home runs and pitching changes and using pitchers for much shorter outings playoffs at least in recent years that's when we get kind of a sneak preview of like what the regular season will look like a few years hence it's like

the ghost of christmas future or something except that we we never change anything after coming back and seeing what the future was like we just get closer and closer to it every year and so if you look at like the playoffs from i don't know several years ago and maybe the percentage of innings going to relievers and the strikeout rate and that sort of thing. Eventually, the regular season catches up to what the playoffs looked like a few years ago because you have the best teams, kind of the cutting-edge teams tend to be playing in October. You have more strikeouts. You have just teams kind of managing in a way where they really place an emphasis on winning every single game.

And so they are pulling out all the stops and they're kind of showing you how you win in baseball if you're really desperate to win. And in the regular season, of course, there are other considerations about resting guys and not using them in quite the same way, but we are getting closer and closer to that. So this year, I wonder whether the Yankees and the Rays and other teams that might go more toward that model, like how many bullpen games are we going to see? I mean, last year... It's going to be a lot, I think. Yeah. Last year, the A's did a bullpen game in the wildcard game, or they tried to. It didn't go so well. That was a staff that was very reliant on its bullpen and in the wildcard game or they tried to it didn't go so well that was a staff that was

very reliant on its bullpen and just didn't really have a starting pitcher who you would want to have starting in a must-win single game but you could see them you could see the Braves you could see the Yankees you could see all these teams not all of them like there are some teams obviously that have great traditional starting rotations like the astros the nationals they can throw three or four guys at you who would be very daunting to face in let's say a division series but there are going to be bullpen games more than ever before probably this october so if you don't like that get used to it because we're going to get a lot of it i wonder if i would be interested in being able to identify a couple of casual like quite casual baseball fans so like fans who've

maybe watched 10 total games over the course of the entire season and put them in you know like an awkward cnn style focus group and just watch them react to, I mean, probably the baseball more than anything, right? Like the actual ball, like how many home runs we're likely to see. The pitching changes I think will be bountiful and probably inspire a reaction. But I am curious, you know, this is our biggest look in audience of the entire year and there's some stuff that i think will be you know that we we have talked a lot about how you don't necessarily notice it in any given game but the announcers are going to talk a lot about it it's going to be the only game you watch and it's going to be all of our all the trends we've seen on steroids that's a loaded phrase in baseball

but it's going to be that you know dialed up to 11 and i i'm very curious like what the tip what a very casual baseball fans impression of the sport is based on that and i think i would like to get that impression with the game sound turned off so that the announcers are not influencing yeah that because I bet there will be a lot of commentary on that as well. Yeah, it would be interesting to see like they do during debates sometimes where you have like the real time. Yeah, the focus group where they're just like, oh, I like this person because they said this thing.

Oh, no, I'm turning on this person now. And yeah, that would be kind of interesting to see in baseball i feel like i saw a study about this at some point using mlb tv data maybe at saber seminar or some sort of data but that'd be interesting to just be able to see like okay what actually turns people off about baseball like either literally when do they turn the game off or just in terms of their real-time reactions to it? Is it just like this pitching change was the straw that broke my back, this pushed me over the edge, I can't watch anymore because we had a fifth pitching change? Or is it like a sixth homer? Does that actually negatively affect people's perceptions of things? Or is it strike strikeouts or is it just taking too long between pitches what is it exactly that leads to that negative reaction i feel like that would be pretty telling because we're all kind of just guessing most of the time about what people actually like and dislike about baseball right and you know i mean you and i are definitely not

going to turn it off anyway but even if we were not doing this professionally we have to right we're not the we're not the turnoff people they've already won they've captured me yeah but other people have other choices they can make different choices in their lives yeah they want to and so i would be curious what sort of choices they would make because you know i don't know that casual fans are necessarily who we have to cater the aesthetic or direction of the game to because they are casual right they're they're a looking audience often just in october but i think that it is and it would be an interesting sort of sanity check for some of our assumptions about the direction that the game is going to hear from observers who probably won't be able to name a lot of the people on the rosters that they're watching, right? Yeah, that's right. All right. Well, that's all the banter I've got. There is something else that we have to briefly discuss before we get to some emails. Yeah, I feel like

we should at least mention this terrible situation in Pittsburgh with Vasquez. It's an odd thing to talk about because it's so obviously terrible. Right. And it feels like it should be so obviously terrible that we don't grapple with it because we all know that this is like an awful thing. But it does feel like it merits mention. relieved that the response that the pirates were able to give, at least to their fans in and around the ballpark, seemed to be very decisive, right? Like his banners were taken down, they pulled the scorecards that had his imagery on it. And I just, you know, these sorts of things are so terrible, and the people that they affect the most directly, both in the incident themselves,

and then in the people who have a strong emotional reaction to it, tend to be the ones that are thought of the least often, which is his victim in this case and then survivors. And so to see that sort of, we can all just show greater care when it comes to how we talk about this stuff. And so I was at least encouraged to see that there was some attempt, you know. He's still on the roster, I guess, though technically on administrative leave, but there was an attempt to sort of exhibit that standard of care here. And it's just a weird one because people were asking me in my chat, what do you think the pirates are going to do? And my response was just, well, hopefully the

pirates aren't going to be in a position to do anything, right? Like if these allegations proved to be true and the list of charges is quite long, you know, hopefully that this is something that is taken out of their hands entirely and he faces the kinds of consequences he needs to, and hopefully the young woman involved gets the support she needs. So I don't know, it just felt like a thing we should mention, but it's what a, I mean, putting that within the context of the pirate season seems so misguided, but it's just, you know, it's an awful thing. And I hope that everyone continues to behave in a way that is thoughtful toward people who have a lot invested and have personal stakes

that are often brought to bear even when it's someone else who's a victim. So anyway, that's what I wanted to say. Yeah. In this case, as opposed to many of the domestic violence cases, this seems like something that the legal system may actually handle and thus it will not be left in the baseball team's hands, which is ideal. I think baseball teams should do a better job than they have done historically at handling that sort of case too. But it is kind of a difficult situation often for those teams to be placed in and to have to be the one that sort of prosecutes because the law is not equal to the task. And in this case, it seems to be, at least based on what has been reported and released so far, that, yeah, maybe it will not be left to the pirates to make this decision. Although maybe in this case, there are different societal standards, obviously, surrounding these different crimes, for better or worse. And this is such a sickening

thing that even if it were left to the baseball team, I don't know that they would make the wrong choice in this case. But the circumstances are almost irrelevant when it comes to an alleged crime like this, but it seems almost extra sickening just based on what's been reported about how this began and how reportedly it happened at a baseball game. The first contact was made, which again, obviously the crime itself is just as horrible. However, it happens, but the fact that, I mean, just the image of it happening at a baseball game because it's the picture of players and kids interacting at a game is among the more wholesome and happy things that you can conjure to your mind. And so to think of something that started that way turning into this predatory atrocity is just even more terrible. So we'll see how this develops. But based on what we have seen

so far, I don't know that we will have to reckon with the idea of Vasquez in a baseball uniform again in the future. Yeah, I think that that decision and sort of set of circumstances is likely to be taken out of all of our hands, which is the way that this stuff is supposed to work So yeah Alright so let us do Some emails this is A question from Stefan Who is a Patreon supporter I have this theory I have Been thinking about which is that if Mike

Trout didn't exist Mookie Betts would be the beneficiary of the kind Of impressive early career attention That Trout is otherwise receiving However because he's in Trout's shadow, and maybe because so much of his value comes from fielding, I don't see nearly as much attention to his early career war accumulation as I'd expect. I see that he's 17th in career war through his current age since integration on Fangraphs. I don't have the ability to query for this on Baseball Reference,

but I know they're even more favorable on his war thus far. This is impressive, but it's also a little bit less impressive when you look at other names around him, like Andrew Jones and Cesar Cedeno and Grady Sizemore, who did not keep up their top 20-esque careers and fell off from their early career performance. Jones home run king hype, so I don't want to fall into a similar trap with Mookie Betts. But do you see his early career performance as more likely to fall into the Jones and Sizemore camp or more likely to fall into the camp of other Hall of Famers with great early careers? I'm leaning toward thinking he'll fall off since so much of his value in war comes from incredible defense and that won't sustain into his 30s. But I want to believe that I'm watching another no doubter first ballot Hall of Famer in his prime. but I want to believe that I'm watching another no-doubter first ballot Hall of Famer in his prime. Well, we can provide a little more context around the question of at least who he falls into this category with. So Jay wrote about bets within the context of what the Red Sox might do with him next year, which is sort of a bummer, but he looked at the highest position player where this is using.

Fangraphs wore through an age 26 season since 1993. And Trout is number one. Alex Rodriguez comes in at two. Then we have Pujols. Then, yes, we do have Andrew Jones. And then there's Betts at five and Bryce Harper at six and Manny Machado at seven. And it goes on. I think it's always sort of silly to talk about a 26-year-old who isn't Mike Trout within the context of Hall of Fame

talk. But I am sympathetic to the argument that some of that a good deal of his value, Betts' value, I should say, comes from defense, but it isn't as if he's a slouch at the plate, you know? No, not at all. You know, he has a career 135 WRC plus. He's's having a down year uh from his MVP season by having a 135 WRC plus so for this season so I I don't know that anyone's a no doubter at 26 because so much can transpire between that age and the end of their careers and you know he could be he could be injured he could become less effective all sorts of things could happen but he's on a good trajectory and he does seem to be at least of of this current sort of mid-20s crop the the most obvious beneficiary although i imagine even though i think the pace is is less impressive that

if there were no mike chow we would probably also talk a great deal more about francisco lindor than we do but that would probably be as much about performance as it is about him just being a dynamic and interesting dude. So, uh, yeah, I think bets would be probably toward the top of that list. He's, he's, uh, engaging. He's really good. He plays for the Red Sox. All of those same things seem to combine to suggest that he would be probably the most notable, right? The most notable baseball player. Is that crazy? Yeah. Well, I think that I wouldn't really compare him to Andrew Jones, even though the wars are comparable through that age. It's true. But if you want to talk about more of the war coming from defense, Jones, I think, is much more skewed in that direction than Betts is. Jones through age 26 had a 113 WRC plus. And as you just mentioned, Betts had a 135. And there's some debate about was Andrew Jones as incredibly otherworldly great as a center fielder as the stats seem to suggest? And is it fair to compare across eras when you have players from times with much more primitive

stats and not as granular defense. And you're comparing guys from the baseball dark ages to Jones and then Jones to guys today where we have these zone-based stats and stat cast-based stats. So it's not quite a clean comparison. I think Jones was a great outfielder. And if he had aged better and declined more gracefully, then he would be a Hall of Famer. He's pretty close to one, as it is. And I think Betts is a better player. He didn't come up quite as early as Jones, so Jones had a

head start there when it came to accruing career war. But if you look at like the modern era, so going back to 1901, Betts ranks 30th among all hitters in career war through age 26. And almost everyone above him is a Hall of Famer. Almost everyone around him is a Hall of Famer. So if you had to bet whether Mookie will make the Hall or not, historically speaking, you'd absolutely have to say that he will. He is very much on a pace to do that. And there are guys around him who did not end up making it, not just Jones, but Cesar Cedeno, Veda Pinson. Those are a couple very oft-cited examples of guys who were on Hall of Fame trajectories in their 20s and then just didn't do much or not nearly enough in their 30s to get them there. But that is the exception, really.

When you've been as good as Betts has been through this point in his career, that tends to lead to a Hall of Fame career, and I would bet on it leading to one for Mookie. No pen intended. It wasn't even me. It wasn't me that did it. It was you. Yes. So I'd also say Sam answered this via email and he was saying that he thinks that maybe having Trout around has actually benefited Mookie in that it has made us focus more on war.

Mookie is a guy who benefits from looking at a holistic stat as opposed to the standard stats although his standard stats are also very good but I think there's some truth to that but yeah if we didn't have Trout maybe we'd make more of Mookie just because he'd be the best thing going like since he came up I think Trout has been by far the most valuable player in baseball but then Mookie is second. And I think there's a sizable gap, if I remember correctly, between Mookie and the next best guy. So Mookie would be, I think, the acknowledged best player in baseball if Trout were not around. So I guess in that sense, he suffers from the comparison, but maybe also he benefits in that we pay closer attention to the stats that

make Mookie look the best yeah I think that that is I think that that is right he is he has so often been the the appropriate foil over the course of his his career to Trout uh that it I think he has gotten attention that he would have merited on his own, to be clear. It is not as if Mookie Betts wouldn't be noteworthy were it not for Trout's existence. But I think that having, especially in a season like last season where there was that sense that, okay, he might actually outpace Trout this year. I think it does benefit him. They do end up a little more clumped than I think you remember. Gosh, Mike Trout is so good. they do end up a little more clumped than i think you remember gosh my trout is so good from 2014 this is just on the position player side obviously but from 2014 which is bets his

first like real season in the bigs to 2019 trout 52.4 war by fangraphs war mookie bets 36.8 and who's next uh josh don Donaldson comes in 33.1. So a little bit closer. They end up clumped a little bit. But yeah, man. Mike Chow, pretty good. Yep. All right.

Question from Jake. I was thinking about Sam's whole baseball time machine and about the baseball my kid will be watching, which got me thinking about how you all talk from time to time about quote-unquote fake baseball. I know fake baseball was the late 19th or early 20th century. I don't always know what the time frame is, but when you talk about inventing the single motion catch and throw, I know that it applies. My question is, what will my kid think was fake baseball when he gets older, or when will the baseball we are currently watching be considered fake baseball and does that differ from say the early 2000s so yeah we we joke from time to time

about how very early baseball is like barely baseball in the sense that we discuss it today whether because the rules were different or because the quality of play was just so much lower sam will sometimes say that real baseball began in 1988 because that's when we have pitch by pitch data. And maybe that's when the caliber of competition got close enough in his mind that you can kind of make that comparison. So we're sort of joking, but sort of not because the baseball players today are so much better than they used to be. And I guess the question is then at what point does today's baseball look as lowly compared to modern day baseball as, say, early baseball looks compared to today? I think that the answer is going to be very disheartening to both of us, which is that I think it's as soon as we have a RoboZone. I think the transition to a RoboZone is going to, once an entire generation of fan has grown up

not knowing what it is to have an umpire calling balls and strikes behind the plate, I think they're going to look back and say, what on earth were you guys doing? And you could have started. Now, we know what the technical limitations of the current robozone are. So I am going to sort of like be a little bit hyperbolic here to make the point. But they're going to say, and you could have done it earlier than you did. And you just sat there with that imperfection for years and years and years. And that's, I think, I think that they will look back and find us a little bit silly. I think it'll read differently than say,

you know, when we think about baseball looking like baseball, you know, people draw lines, as you mentioned, in a bunch of different places. I think, you know, the place where we really start to feel like competition

began to approach what it could be was after integration, right? It's this artificial thing that there was an entire population that wasn't able to play and so it'll read differently than that will but i think that it will it'll seem very antiquated it'll be like it'll probably be akin to like the forward pass in football. I'll be like, what are you talking about? You had to guess? And a guy could steal a strike? He could just take it?

Like a thief getting a pie off a windowsill? I think that that's going to be, no one has stolen a pie off a windowsill. To be clear, I don't know that that ever happened. I think it might be pretend, but I think that that will be a thing where young people look back and are like oh it's like you existed before the internet or something you know yeah that is a really good point yeah baseball before that will start to seem very quaint and archaic probably once that happens and once you get used to it. Although I will say that that won't necessarily change the game itself dramatically.

Like it certainly will change how we perceive the game, how we watch the game, but like how the game is played and the quality of the players playing won't necessarily shift dramatically based on that. So that's one argument for maybe that change not being quite as dramatic and i don't know that it will change like the style of play all that much like certainly for catchers it will but based on like the atlantic league this year it seems like in the second half of the season since they've been using the robot umps the strikeout rates and the walk rates and all and the level of offense just hasn't really changed all that dramatically. It basically looks like baseball did before, except that the umps aren't calling the balls and strikes. So yeah, maybe in terms of fan perception, that will change things. But the game on the field,

I don't know that it will seem like such a clean break. I think that when we wrote the MVP machine, one thing we did was try to look at the level of play over time. And that can be tricky because, of course, players are always playing against their contemporaries. And so it's difficult to assess how much better one year's players or one decade's players are than another's. But there are various ways you can do it. And we had one method in the last full chapter of the book that showed that, yes, the quality of play has obviously increased dramatically over time and steadily over time. And it looked like it had plateaued about 15 years or so ago. And then since then, the quality of play has been increasing about as rapidly as it ever has at almost any point in baseball history, whether that's because of Moneyball or because of new player development practices.

Players are just getting better about as quickly as they ever have. And so if that continues, then we will get to a point where players are noticeably better. And obviously the game itself is changing very quickly in terms of how it's played on the field. So that's one thing. Like, it's just difficult to make comparisons. We were talking about Sonny Gray and Nolan Ryan earlier in this episode or about how the playoffs will look different this year. It's just kind of tough to look back at earlier eras of pitcher usage and actually make comparisons there because the jobs were so different. and game will continue to change at the pace that they have been for the past 10 years or so with shifting and strikeouts and home runs and pitcher usage and all of that evolving so rapidly maybe we're at a point where that's all happening all at once and it will start to slow down i don't know or maybe we'll see rules changes that make other tactics and strategies more favorable, and then we'll go back to those things. And so it's very possible that things will just look a lot different in not too long. The one thing I would say is that we are able to quantify player performance now

much better than we could in the past. So there's a lot of debate about, well, how hard were guys actually throwing in the 1920s or whatever? How hard did Walter Johnson throw? How hard did Bob Feller throw? And there were all these methods that people used at the time to try to assess that that have varying degrees of reliability. And now I think maybe you'll look at 2008, like the advent of the pitch tracking era, as a separate era because we can actually quantify how hard were guys throwing and how much were their pitches moving. And now with StatCast since 2015, we can say how hard are guys hitting the ball and how hard are they running and all those things. So all the stuff that we speculate about now when it comes to the athleticism of today's players versus earlier eras, we will be able to answer those questions now. So we can really answer the question of how much better are the players in 2050 than the players in 2015 because we will have been measuring at least some of the same things with a high degree of accuracy. So maybe that's something that will enable us to actually set cutoffs

with some reasonable criteria and say players are X percent better now than they used to be. Well, and I think that we'll probably just unpack that a little bit more. Whoever figures out the great advance in defensive metrics i think will probably have a great deal to do with that right because all of the public facing like it's fine they're fine they do a fine job but they they're not great like i don't think anyone say they're great there's room for improvement and we have the means right because we know where they are now so i don't know why i'm so sing-songy this episode,

but I think that we will probably see particular benefit on the fielding side where we can do a better job of accounting for hopefully in the coming years with very smart people who will probably be smarter than me, be able to give a better single number to defensive performance that accounts for all sorts of things that are tricky to account for, like positioning and whatnot. So that would be cool. Yeah.

Or what if we get to some breakthrough in injury prevention or treatment and pitchers don't have Tommy John surgery? They don't blow out their elbows anymore. Or we have nanites or something so that you can repair a hamstring strain overnight and players don't have to be day-to-day anymore. Everyone's just at full strength all the time. That sort of thing. Even if it's just preventing career-ending injuries for pitchers, let's say, that would be a dramatic difference where you'd have to like compare careers of players who played in an era when careers could just get cut short versus the era where careers could go

on as long as the talent allowed them to go on so that's going to be really tricky if you get to the point where we can just like repair elbow damage or shoulder damage like the the normal fraying and lack of elasticity that happens to all players as they throw thousands of pitches or get older like what if you can have a like a 20 year old arm when you're 35 or something then i mean that will change human civilization in many ways not just, but that will make it kind of difficult to compare like aging curves and who knows. I mean, the aging curves today are even different from what they were 10, 20 years ago with players coming up and being so good right away and then seeming to decline more quickly. So it's kind of tough to set a cutoff. But I don't know if I had to guess at a time when like the baseball of today seems kind of antiquated or we look back and say, yeah, but players then weren't what they are now. Like, when is that now? When do we do that now? I guess Sam does it with 1988.

does it with 1988 but you know do we do that with players in like the 90s or something or does that still seem recent enough i mean we were watching baseball then maybe it's like when depends how old you were maybe because when you were actually watching it you don't want to admit that you were watching an inferior product or inferior athletes or it just seems like things couldn't have changed that dramatically because it's within your own lifespan and your your baseball watching period i think the thing that we probably make note of the most often sort of within eras is the velocity spike right like the average fastball being what it is now compared to what it was in the 90s when we were watching baseball as kids, I think that's probably the place where we note the difference in the game the most often just because it is quite stark and it's easy to point to. But yeah, I think that there are probably things that we're missing because it's hard to reflect on change over the course of one's life while you're in it. So, you know, this is why we all get very emotional during retirements

or people being demonstrably less good because we're forced to confront that sort of passage of time contemporaneously, which makes us uncomfortable. Yes. Yeah. Speaking of which, Felix's last start is what, next Thursday? Next Thursday. Yeah.

Man. So I'm going to write about him for the site for next week. And I think Jay has something kind of planned too. But I will say that on Saturday, as I mentioned, I saw Felix start against the White Sox. It was also the Mariners commemorated Ichiro's retirement and Ichiro spoke. And I was with friends who grew up here in Seattle

and went to high school with me, but they are not baseball people in the same way that I am. And I had some feelings about that day. And they looked at me a little funny for the feelings that I had some feelings about that day. And they looked at me a little funny for the feelings that I had. But yeah, the Mariners announced the final Kings Court. And my niece started preschool this year and my younger brother turned 21. And neither of those things hit me quite as hard as, which is probably a thing I should talk to a professional about but

anyway it uh it's a very it's a very strange thing i won't i won't go into it too much because i am gonna write about it i am gonna write about it you guys but um it is a it's sad well we'll talk about that next week i imagine all right i've got a couple more here. This one is from Dan. He says, I am currently a graduate student at Ohio University. And this morning, my professor said something I found quite thought provoking. We were talking about the building of Petco Park, since it's a class about facility and event management. When my professor segued by saying, nobody cares about the San Diego Padres except for Padres fans. This sort of threw me back a little bit simply because I immediately thought about Fernando

Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, Chris Paddock, Manuel Margot, and others and how exciting their team projects to be in the future. This made me ponder the question of how long does it take for a franchise that has struggled mightily for such a long time, having last made the playoffs in 2006, to return to respectability in the minds of the average baseball fan. So how long does it take to erase the stain of a long period of losing or mediocrity? I am trying to find year-over-year Astros attendance because they seem like a good barometer for this. I think that the answer is that it can turn around pretty quickly.

And I think that San Diego is sort of uniquely positioned for it to turn around quickly because of the other circumstances in their city. And I'll get to that in a second. The Houston Astros in 2012, which was a year where they won 55 games. My stars, Houston. What a terror. I know you were doing a thing, but what a mean thing to do. Their estimated payroll that year was $37 million. It's a crime.

They were 16th out of 16. Oh, because this was the- Oh, yeah. Right. Okay. So they because this was this is right. OK, so they have a weird thing. OK, so that's still the NL. Yeah. So let's just let's let's go to the following year. Then we'll go to 2013 where they won a whopping 51 games and they were 13th out of 15 in the AL by attendance. The following year when they did a little bit better, but not much better, 70 and 92.

They were 12th. And then in 2015, right, which was the, they arrived and they went to the playoffs. They were 11th and then they have steadily climbed since. So they were eighth in 2016, sixth in 2017, third in 2018 and fourth so far this year, 2019. So it took, what, five years for it to really rebound. But the thing that San Diego has that Houston, for instance, and obviously this is a crude measure, and they did win a World Series, so that helps to solidify the rebound of attendance, but they're the only game in town, really. I mean, this is the opportunity that the Padres have, which we talked about way back at the beginning of the season, which is they could make San Diego a baseball city because they're the only of the big four professional men's leagues.

They're the only one there. They don't have the NFL to compete with. There's no basketball. So I think that if they put a good competitive team on the field and make the playoffs, I think that it might rebound fairly quickly because they're a great thing to rally around. They have these wonderful dynamic players, many of whom are sort of demographically similar to a lot of the people who live in San Diego. And so you're going to have this great sense of community between the team and the city potentially.

So I just think that they have a really cool opportunity ahead of them to be a significant part of the cultural landscape of that city. And their team is well positioned to do it going forward, assuming that they keep getting return from the guys who are good and their prospects pan out. So I think that they could turn it around pretty quickly. Yeah. It was probably not inaccurate to say the professor said that nobody cares about the Padres except for Padres fans.

That has certainly been true, I think, for the past 15 years or so. Yes. Over that period, the Padres were certainly the most nondescript team, I would say. Oh, yeah. Just, I mean, not necessarily the worst, but just the least attention-getting. They just never really mounted a respectable run. They rarely had star players. They just really did not demand your attention if you were not a Padres fan.

And even if you were, they didn't really demand it either. So I think that is true. And it takes some time for that perception to change, but not that much time. I think their record this year won't really be distinguishable from their recent records. They have 68 wins right now with 11 games to go. They have 68 wins right now with 11 games to go. So they're going to end up with probably low 70-something, which will look a lot like their records from, I don't know, four or five years ago. So that doesn't really show the progress.

And, yeah, if you're an average baseball fan, not even really a Padres fan, but just a general baseball fan, you're probably not paying much more attention to the Padres right now than you used to be. If you are a very plugged in baseball fan, then yeah, you are because you're watching Paddock and you're watching Tatis and you're following this farm system that they put together. And they did at least make people temporarily perk up and say, hey, the Padres when they signed Manny Machado, like signing one big free agent to a deal that your franchise has not signed in the past and the kind of player that your franchise has not really had most of the time, that can at least make you the story for a day. The Padres were more of a story on the day they signed Manny Machado than they had been in years, probably. And Machado has not had one of his best seasons this year. But that just, I think, showed that, okay, things are kind of changing here. I know that Padres fans were excited about that move

because there'd been a lot of complaints about ownership and their willingness to spend. And so that seemed to mark a new direction. And we had all been paying attention to the Padres more closely because of the talent that they had assembled. And so if you're a baseball fan who has your finger on the pulse of what's coming down the pipeline in the next few years, then you've been paying a lot more attention to the Padres. you've been paying a lot more attention to the Padres and I'm sure that really serious Padres fans have been paying more attention to the team and have been more optimistic about the team because of all that talent that's on the way but I don't think the average mainstream fan is really going to reassess a team that has been bad for a long time until that team gets good again and the Padres are not quite good again although maybe

they're close but I think it probably is just like the first year that they're good again that they're a playoff team you have to pay attention to them if they're a team that is like one of the best eight or ten teams at the end of the season if they're playing in October like when the Astros got back to the playoffs people were aware that the Astros were coming out of that dark time that they had that they decided to have so I don't think it takes all that long really if you're paying some amount of attention to baseball to realize when things have changed yeah Yeah, and it's a fun, dynamic team. For the people who actually live in San Diego, obviously this matters a lot more,

but it's a beautiful ballpark. Yeah. It's just, I don't know, it's sunny there. It's a nice place to visit if you're a visiting fan, right? Because you get to go be in California when it's dreary other places. So I think that they could, if they put a winning team on the field and make the postseason, we could see a rebound pretty quickly.

Yeah. All right. Last question. This is from a different Ben who says, I've just read about Aaron Judge promising a fan a home run and then going out and hitting a home run. Last month, it was Mookie Betts doing the same thing. A very quick Google search shows Hanley Ramirez, David Ortiz, and Sal Perez doing the same over the last few years. I think we deserve a story with a home run promise that does not end with a home run. This clearly happens many times for every time that a player does deliver on the promise, yet we, the fans, are kept in the dark.

As inside-ish media people are you aware of any home run promises that were not kept and therefore not made into stories no but neither am i no this i would like to i would like to learn of a of a pathological home run liar there must be many it's like right it's like an extreme form of publication bias. When you run a scientific experiment that yields some interesting results, then you get it in all the journals. And when you find something that just confirms the null hypothesis or whatever and says there's nothing to see here, then maybe that doesn't get published. Although I know that some journals are making more of an effort to publish that sort of story too but yeah if we

wanted to be intellectually honest here I guess we should document every instance where a player promises a home run and then some poor kid is just let down because their hero does not come through. There is the famous Seinfeld episode

where Kramer gets Paul O'Neill to promise to hit two home runs for a kid who's in the hospital and O'Neill hits one homer and then he hits what looks like it's an inside the parker for a second homer but it turns out that it's just a triple and then he scores on an error

and so the kid says it doesn't count so it's about a little boy in the hospital I was wondering if you could do something to lift his spirits. Sure, I can help you there. Yeah, well, I promised him that you would hit him two home runs today. You what? Yeah, you know, a couple of dingers.

You promised a kid in the hospital that I'd hit two home runs. Yeah, what, no good? No, it's no good. It's terrible. I mean, you don't hit home runs like that. It's hard to hit home runs. And where the heck did you get two from? Well, two is better than one. That's ridiculous. I mean, I'm not a home run hitter. if you haven't seen it.

That is a good one. But yeah, I don't know. It just doesn't really get reported why would it get reported like would the the kid or the kid's family go to the press and say this player promised to hit my kid a homer and he didn't deliver so i just i don't know how that story would really get into print but it must happen very often yeah i just don't i think that i would i would be so chicken and i would play it so safe i think i think if i were going to promise a young and like like often when it's kids like they're sick kids i know like they're not right you know it's like they're like there for like make a wish or something so it's like you really don't want

to mess with that. Yeah. It's very serious. So I think I would be inclined to promise like, you're going to have a great time. Cause like they will. Kids love going to baseball games. That's a very safe promise. Especially if you are interacting with a baseball player beforehand,

you're already having a great time cause you got to talk to a professional baseball player. So you're feeling pretty great. But I cannot imagine, cause what do you do do do you walk over after and say like actually i was trying to teach you a lesson in disappointment and recovering from like small uh bits of sadness like what are you gonna say yeah i was gonna like there could be some value in that i guess if it were not a sick kid if it were just like sick kids i know that's the thing if it were just a regular kid it's're so often sick kids. I know. That's the thing. If it were just a regular kid, it's like, look, you know, in life sometimes you have to get used to disappointment and I can't move heaven and earth and my powers are only

so limited. Like, it'd almost be a valuable lesson to say, look, I'm a major league player. I'm among the best in the world at what I do. And yet even I can't hit home runs on command. But if you're talking about a kid who's like in the hospital, it's like, is there actually value in saying that to that kid? Probably not. You want to tell that kid maybe that dreams can come true and the improbable can happen. So, yeah, I don't know what the best thing to do is here. There was a Fangraphs post last month, I think,

Justin Clue wrote about home runs and the history of promising homers. I don't think he had any in there that were promised that were not delivered on, as I recall. Yeah, he did attempt to find some and struggled to do so, as I recall, in that editorial process. He was like, you have to write about it if you don't yeah the other thing he pointed out is that like not only is it hard to hit home runs but players always say that it's even harder when you're really trying to hit them yeah and so if you have promised a sick kid that you're going to hit a home run then that's going to be on your mind and then you're going to be really trying to do it and that will probably make it even less

likely that you do it although I guess if you are going to make that promise this would be the year make all your homer hitting promises before they change the ball back if i were a player i do not think i would ever promise a kit i would just say like look the next time i do hit a home run that one's for you yeah that's you. I'll dedicate it to you. I'll make some special motion when I cross the plate and you'll know that I'm thinking of you when I hit it or something like that. And that would be nice, right? That would still be cool for a kid. And then there wouldn't be any disappointment unless I never hit a home run again. But yeah, that's what I would do.

It's still a nice little tribute and the kid still feels good, but you don't feel this overwhelming pressure to deliver in that moment. I would definitely chicken out and not do that either. The bar for kids being entertained by stuff is pretty low. Like, you know, it's pretty low.

My niece has watched Moana like a million times, and she doesn't get a lot of screen time, and she's still seen that movie like a billion times. It's just going to keep going up. The number is just going to keep getting bigger. Kids are entertained by all sorts of things. I think of a little kid heard from Aaron Judge, the next home run, that one's for you, buddy.

Then Aaron Judge did it. That kid would lose their mind. They would be so joyful because they would know that one was for me. I don't think it's such an easy. It's so much safer. It's just so much safer. Yeah. I would be so afraid of disappointing the little kid.

I would be the worst baseball player. I mean, I would be the worst baseball player from a skill perspective, but if I would be a mess so much of the time, it wouldn't be good. It would be bad. Or like, I'll scratch your initials in the dirt at home plate, or I'll, I don't know, I'll write something on my batting gloves or my helmet or something or my cap, and you'll see this message that I have, or I'll wave to you or something or my cap and you'll see this message that i have or you know i'll

wave to you or something people are like endlessly entertained by like their friends sitting behind home plate waving when they get good seats right so what if you are a player and you're like i'll wave to you when i'm in the batter's box or something and that would be a nice thing the kid would think that would super cool probably just as cool as hitting a home run. So, yeah. I'm not saying we should retire the home run promise, but I would retire it. You're just saying that people should be more comfortable being cowards is what you're saying. Yeah.

Be more comfortable with your cowardice. I would be. Can I tell you a thing? Sure. Speaking of people who wave, that has started to provoke actual anxiety in me when I watch baseball games? So sometimes people are waving at the camera because they know where the broadcast cameras are. And they're like, hey, I'm saying hi to my mom at home. I'm saying hey to my buddy.

Sometimes you will see people waving across the ballpark. And it appears that they are trying to attract the attention of someone else in the ballpark have you ever made any notice of this i would like it to be a law that the broadcast has to find that person and let me know if they found each other i worry about it i'm like that person's phone probably died that that's their other buddy in section 145 they're trying to meet up for a beer they don't know if they can find each other the waving does not seem like it could possibly work but i would like the broadcast camera to alleviate this source of stress that i've allowed to creep into my life suspense about whether these people have made contact or not yeah that's a good point. Is it a good point? Well.

It's a very Meg point at the very least. All right. We've talked enough, I think. I think that's probably true. All right. Enjoy the AFL and we will discuss it next week. Thanks. I will bring my mic.

You will get a live report. Cool. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks for listening. You can support the podcast on patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild signing up to pledge some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get yourself access to some perks we will be doing our two usual live stream conversations during playoff games this year so if you want to get in

on those and watch a couple games with me and Megan Sam, you should sign up for Patreon this month. The following five listeners already have done so. A listener who goes only by T, Sean Muir, Isaac Hess, Zach Works, and Andrew Diaz. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. You can send us your comments and questions 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 buy my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players. Your ratings and reviews for the book are appreciated as well. We will be back with another episode a little later this week. I think it will be a fun one. Of course, we plan for all of them to be fun ones. So we will talk to you a little later this week.

I'm sorry when I'm just thinking of the right words to say. I know they don't sound the way I planned them to be. But if I had to walk the world Make you fall for me I promise you I promise you I will